Oct. 3 News

Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative October 2026 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this. 

Oct. 3

Top Headlines 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

• New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 3, 2026. President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
• New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 3, 2026. A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended. The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.
• New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• New York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 3, 2026. Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.
• New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 3, 2026. After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.
• New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 3, 2026. In a new ad, Angela Paxton, right, tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.” Angela Paxton, right, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios)..

News Updates

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”
• The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: Trump Took Money Meant for Fallen Officers’ Memorials to Air Ads Worshipping Himself, Rushes Out Checks as GOP Worries, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 3, 2026. A taxpayer-funded ad declares, “So God made Trump.” Another intercuts lions hunting their prey with images of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Every one of them ends the same way: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” And according to the New York Times, Trump personally ordered his budget director to find the money, which came out of funds Congress set aside for border security and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

• Hope for America, Opinion: The President’s decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.” The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. 

More News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: 32 days out, the GOP map is collapsing into red states, while Trump’s tariffs threaten free chips and salsa and Benny Johnson gets sued for calling protesters “terrorists.” Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 2, 2026. The fight over the future of this country won’t end on Nov. 3. We’re gearing up for 2028 with some major projects featuring all of the major candidates, and I couldn’t be more excited to share what we’re building with you. Here’s what that means. We’re going on the road, bringing this reporting directly to the communities and voters who will decide our future, not just covering them from afar. And we’re going international, because the stories shaping America increasingly reach far beyond our borders, from wars driving up the price of gas to foreign money flowing into our politics.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 2, 2026 [Trump Rallies Deep South Fans], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Oct. 3, 2026. Trump held a campaign rally tonight in Mobile, Alabama, the city where, as Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times recalled, his MAGA rallies really took off in August 2015, when more than 30,000 people showed up at a football stadium to hear the television personality turned presidential candidate.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

• CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

• New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.
• New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 3, 2026. A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.
• New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 3, 2026. Michael I. Kotlikoff, right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

More On Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family’s Russian Ties

• New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges. Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

Top Stories

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 3, 2026. President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

The monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.ImageBecause of Russia’s autocratic system, Mr. Putin is seen as the final decision maker in Moscow, even though Lukoil is technically a private company.Credit…Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southern Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Potential Lukoil investor group has ties with Trump, his family and his allies

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

But in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 3, 2026. A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.

It is one of the most alluring opportunities in global energy.

The foreign assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, are being sold off at fire sale prices because U.S. sanctions have made them nearly worthless for investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are up for grabs.

Now, the process of selling off those assets has become intertwined with White House efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia. The revelation raises new questions about conflicts of interest in an administration that has regularly mixed personal interests with national interests.

Here are five takeaways from The New York Times’s investigation of the proposed transaction.Completing the deal is a factor in Ukraine peace talks.

The Trump administration has long argued that discussing business deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could help convince him to mend ties with the West and end his war on Ukraine. The administration signaled recently that some deals could move forward before the war ends. But the specifics have been murky until now.

When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices.The deal’s leader is a big political donor to Mr. Trump.

The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, a billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc. political committee last December, just as negotiations on the Lukoil deal were heating up.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Family ties to the investors are widespread.

Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s advisers do not have a direct financial stake in the transaction. But their business partners would benefit financially if the multibillion-dollar deal is completed.

The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Another investor in Mr. Boehly’s group is a pair of Syrian-born Qatari billionaires, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump to build a multibillion-dollar resort complex planned for the Mediterranean coast of Albania.Large chunks of the profits would go overseas.

Trump administration officials are celebrating how the Boehly-backed deal would help U.S. energy security, as the package includes everything from oil production sites to refineries and gas stations. The U.S. government would also take a direct stake in the new enterprise via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that helps finance projects overseas. But given the makeup of the investment group, a large share of the resulting company — and the profits it creates — would be foreign owned, according to participants in the negotiations.Another prominent bidder would lose out.

Approving the Boehly deal now being negotiated with the help of the White House would mean rejecting a competing offer from Carlyle, a Washington-based global investment management firm that already has investments in refineries in Europe. Carlyle’s bid, by comparison, would mean an all-American owner. But Carlyle does not have similar financial ties to Mr. Trump’s family and political advisers. 

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended.The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

Equally alarming is how various people — State Department Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers and former Don Jr sidepiece Kimberly Guilfoyle —are cozying up to people overthrowing democracy in Europe. I’ll discuss those in our reintroduction to this week’s reissue, maybe Monday. For now, I want to share the short we did to introduce this week’s reissue, which I posted in our video section (which I’m trying to introduce). Please follow and support LOLGOP Studios Patreon as we consider how to roll out this stuff in coming weeks.

• New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 3, 2026. Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

A month before the midterm elections, Democrats have opened leads or battled their way to ties or near-ties in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, according to new New York Times/Siena University polls.

Democrats lead among likely voters in the Senate races in Texas and Alaska, two states that consistently vote Republican, the polls found. They have an edge in Ohio, which has been tilting rightward for years. Republicans have a slim edge in Iowa, and Democrats are neck-and-neck with Republicans in Kansas, which has not voted for a Democratic senator since 1932.

President Trump’s deep unpopularity, disapproval of the Iran war and frustration over high gas prices and the cost of living are reshaping the electoral landscape, the polls found.

Taken together, the new polls suggest that the Democrats have multiple paths to retake the Senate majority, despite a challenging map that had favored Republicans going into the midterms. To win Senate control, Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats while holding on to their current seats in three battleground states, a difficult task.

But there are signs that it is increasingly possible. On Friday, a top Republican super PAC pulled its money out of the Senate race in North Carolina, signaling that the party is not optimistic about being able to defend its seat there. The super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to redirect resources to Kansas, where Republicans have growing concerns about holding their seat.

The polling suggests Democrats are increasingly competitive in these Republican states. 

 

Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.

No better way to get a sense of what’s happening out there then to hear from those on the front lines themselves. I promise watching a few of these discussions this weekend will lift you up and make you feel better about our party, our country, and our future.

Here’s what we got for you:

• Josh Turek, our Senate candidate in Iowa, Roy Cooper running hard in North Carolina, and AG Aaron Ford running for Governor in Nevada
• Eric Croft, Alaska Dem Chair
• House Candidates – Jamie Ager (NC-11), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Cait Conley (NY-17), Christina Hines (MI-10), Jake Johnson (MN-1), Brian Poindexter (OH-7)
• My weekly talk – Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us – And Now We Must Deliver
• Another way to dive into the battlegrounds is to watch check this week’s Ad and Video Roundups to see the ads that are flying across the country right now.

Looking ahead Stuart Stevens joins us live on Monday at 230pm ET, Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-3) joins us Tuesday, Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party drops by on Wednesday, and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) is coming by on Thursday.Subscribed

The 2026 Election kicks into high gear this week with early in person voting starting in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming — while other states like California start sending out their mail ballots.

As we are now close to 1m people having voted in the 2026 Election I’m going to start my every-two-year early vote analysis using our friend Tom Bonier’s remarkable TargetEarly tool. Here is how the national early vote in 2026 compares so far to 2018 and 2022 on this same day in all three years. Yes, my friends, it’s encouraging but also very early!

What this data tells is not how someone voted but what their party affiliation is given their registration and what is called “modeled party” — which can infer your party affiliation based on your vote history for those states without party registration. I will have more on this in the coming days and perhaps will bring Tom back to help you understand how this all works but get ready peeps — the early vote is about to start coming hot and heavy, giving us an opportunity to run up the score and win these midterms in October — not in November!

Trump has now dropped to -28 in the FiftyPlusOne job approval tracker for this first time this cycle. It’s just a stunning level of repudiation and rejection for the old, addled, painted, corrupt, malicious — and REALLY UNPOPULAR — orange guy:

Further confirming what a year of opportunity this has become for us the NYT dropped five encouraging battleground Senate polls this morning:

The Times also included this helpful chart to remind us that while this data is very encouraging at the end of the day all these races are close, Republicans have a lot more money than we do, and we just have to keep working hard:

Yesterday the Senate GOP SuperPAC paused its ads in North Carolina, essentially conceding the state to Roy Cooper. To understand how worried they are about defending these other states in pausing North Carolina they are hanging Michael Whatley, a former Chair of the RNC itself, out to dry. Abandoning a former RNC Chair a month before Election Day in a state Trump won just two years ago is a clear confirmation how bad things have gotten for the GOP.

The poll result from Kansas, and reports that the GOP SuperPAC is going to start spending there, means we need to start taking Kansas seriously here at Hopium. I know many of you have advocated for us to rally behind Adam Hamilton and I will be doing a deeper dive on this race now and will report back soon.

Yesterday Trump got a very bad jobs report. The economy produced very few jobs last month, and wages barely grew. This morning the country wakes up to a 30 year mortgage now clocking in at almost at annual 7.3% rate. Ugly, ugly stuff for the American people:

Yesterday we also discussed Trump’s escalating attempts to cheat in the 2026 Election. Today we learned that the monies for one of his current avenues of cheating, stealing money from tax payers to run political ads to bolster his image with voters, is coming from Congressional appropriated funds for

• border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records.

The NYT also has more reporting on this horrific and illegal abuse of power:

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

Jawdropping stuff, even for Trump. But further signs of how desperate they’ve become, and what a year of opportunity it has become for us……

Which is why it’s that time everyone. Time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come — For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

• Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
• Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
• Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 3, 2026. After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.

In the go-big-or-go-home collective consciousness of Texas, no ambition is deemed too reckless, no daydream too wild. Save perhaps one.

It is the idea, fantastical to many as it is irresistible to others, that the Democrats will win a statewide race in Texas for the first time in 32 years.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

Given how thoroughly Republicans have dominated the state, and how the hopes of Democrats have repeatedly crashed, some Texas pollsters remain skeptical.

“At some point, you do get conditioned by all that’s happened in the past,” said James Henson, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I mean, you look at the trends and you have to admit that something’s going on. But you still don’t want to believe your lying eyes, because you’ve been burned for so long.”

Angela Paxton, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios).

New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 3, 2026. In a new ad, Angela Paxton tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”

Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.

Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.

While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.

“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”

Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.

The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.

“The reality is, while we are the party of values, we have some vulnerabilities on our ballot,” Mrs. Paxton told the club, the Texas Federation of Republican Women on Sept. 18. “And I’ll be honest with you, I think Republican women will decide this election, because some of those vulnerabilities, I think, have been particularly alienating to women that hold our values.”

She then added, “But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back.”

On Friday, Mr. Paxton’s campaign touted a new ad featuring his daughter Mattie.

A spokesman for Mrs. Paxton, a Republican state senator who is not up for re-election this year, previously declined to tell The Times whether she would vote for her husband. The divorce proceedings are ongoing, her spokesman confirmed Saturday.

Over his more than 20 years in elected office, Mr. Paxton has weathered multiple scandals, including a fraud indictment, accusations of one other affair, and impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges. None have resulted in a criminal conviction, and Mr. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing, saying the cases were witch hunts perpetrated by enemies within his own party.But the incidents have provided plenty of fodder for his political opponents, including Senator John Cornyn. Mr. Paxton trounced Mr. Cornyn in the May primary, besting him by more than 25 percentage points.

For months after his primary win, national Republican groups withheld their funding from the race. In the past few weeks, they have begun funneling tens of millions of dollars to ads backing Mr. Paxton. Texas PAC alone has invested more than $125 million, a figure that is expected to rise according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks ad spending.

News Updates

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The panic is spreading through his party. Republicans are now on track to spend more than $200 million trying to rescue Ken Paxton in Texas, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire,” and Paxton’s own estranged wife, who is divorcing him, appeared in a new ad urging voters to look past “individual players” and support the whole Republican ticket. Plus, new records show the prosecutor in the Cornell case never reviewed witness statements before declining charges, and the Trump administration has walked away from decades-old protections that let disabled Americans live in their communities instead of institutions.

On Monday, I’m publishing my deep-dive investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money for his own benefit, from the “God Made Trump” ads paid for with border security funds to the checks landing in battleground states, laying out exactly where the money came from, where it went, which laws may have been broken and where investigators should look. It’s the most comprehensive piece I’ve written, and I’ve put my lawyer’s hat back on to do it.

Work like this takes time and resources, and it only happens because readers like you make it possible.

Here’s the news:

Republicans Panic Over the Soaring Cost of Saving Ken Paxton as Trump Posts a GOP Senator’s Phone Number and Rallies to Empty Seats

With his approval at record lows and Republicans privately bracing to lose the House, Trump is entering desperation mode, and the past 24 hours show it. He appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. He renewed his promise of $5,000 checks to every adult if Republicans keep the House and Senate, a roughly $1 trillion pledge that 66% of voters call “inappropriate” and 61% don’t believe he’ll deliver, while announcing one-time $90 payments, which he called “nearly $100,” to more than 20 million seniors just weeks before Election Day. He warned that a Democratic victory would bring “a 1929 disaster,” invoking the crash that triggered the Great Depression, and told a Mobile, Alabama, rally to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as entire rows of seats sat empty behind him in a state he won by 30 points. Meanwhile, his Justice Department held a high-profile news conference to announce charges against a Utah mail carrier who admitted dumping mail out of “laziness,” with the acting deputy attorney general insisting, “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real,” and calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” without offering evidence.

Republicans are panicking over the skyrocketing cost of rescuing Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire.” The Senate Leadership Fund poured another $60 million into Texas this week, bringing its spending there to a record $131 million, and with MAGA Inc. and other reservations, outside Republican groups are on track to top $200 million to save Paxton, Politico reports. “This is a slow-moving car crash,” one Texas Republican strategist said, putting the chance of a “catastrophic” outcome for the GOP Senate majority at 75%. GOP operatives in Michigan and New Hampshire are now complaining that money flowing to Texas should be going to their states, with one ally of New Hampshire nominee John Sununu asking, “Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas.” Most public polling over the past two months shows Democrat James Talarico with an edge, though Paxton released an internal poll showing himself up 48% to 45%.

Senior Republicans have been privately pushing Trump’s team to spend more on Paxton, worried MAGA Inc. won’t come through after his leaked audio trashing Trump’s convention. A Trump operative said MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expect to spend about $45 million in Texas through Oct. 12, up from $20 million, but would not commit to spending beyond that date. The concerns escalated after the New York Times reported audio of Paxton telling donors “everybody’s numbers dropped” after Trump’s Dallas convention, and Trump told a Texas crowd that Paxton “can be a pain in the ass sometimes.” One Republican senator said of Paxton’s unforced errors, “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose,” while a Texas Republican official said, “all this spend hasn’t changed anything.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reassured Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money for competitive races in the final stretch.

As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Appears in an Ad Urging Texans to Vote for the GOP Ticket. Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator divorcing Ken Paxton on grounds of alleged adultery, appears in a new ad urging Texans to back the entire Republican ticket, telling voters, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She doesn’t mention her husband by name, but addresses “the elephant in the room,” warning, “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.” The ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, comes as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico in every recent poll, including a New York Times/Siena poll released Saturday, and signals GOP concern about his standing with women. At a recent speech to Republican women, Angela Paxton acknowledged the party has “some vulnerabilities on our ballot” that have been “particularly alienating to women,” though her spokesman has declined to say whether she’ll vote for her husband. Paxton, who has weathered a fraud indictment, impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges and other scandals without a conviction, denies wrongdoing, while his campaign released its own ad this week featuring his daughter Mattie.

Trump appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. “Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote of the Sunshine Protection Act, adding, “Call Tom on his cellphone… and let him know.” In a third post, Trump said if Cotton “were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” Cotton fired back that Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” adding, “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.” The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to take it up, and Trump has also touted support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who he said needs it so golf tournaments don’t “run out of sunlight.”

Trump spoke to rows of empty seats at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, failing to fill a 10,041-seat arena in a state he won by 30 points. The Daily Beast reported that entire rows behind the president at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center sat empty as he tried to rally support for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The sparse crowd came even as Trump bragged at the rally that he had received “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history.” Alabama Democrats had cast the visit as a sign of GOP nerves, with gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones saying Trump “sees what we’re doing in this state.” It’s the latest stop in a campaign swing through deep-red states that has also taken Trump to Texas and Oklahoma, rather than traditional battlegrounds.

Cornell DA Never Reviewed Witness Statements Before Declining Charges, as Data Shows the University Rarely Expels Students for Sexual Assault

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten based his decision not to charge anyone in the alleged Cornell gang rape on Jane Doe’s initial six-page statement, without reviewing witness interviews and other evidence police collected, according to records obtained by NBC News. On Nov. 25, 2024, when a campus police investigator approached his office about interviews they’d conducted, an investigator in Van Houten’s office replied that several attorneys “had read [Jane Doe’s] statement” and “all agreed that, based on [Jane Doe’s] statement, criminal charges would not be pursued.” Van Houten told NBC “there was nothing to review” because the interviews flagged were frat members “declining to speak on the advice of their attorney,” but he didn’t respond when asked whether he knew about interviews with other fraternity members or tips from callers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, announcing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, asked, “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?” Jane Doe has sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi members, alleging they sexually assaulted her over several hours while she was under the influence of ketamine, alcohol and marijuana.

New records also show Jane Doe wasn’t told about the decision not to prosecute for nearly two months, and her lawyer says she missed a critical chance to preserve evidence. Police informed her of the DA’s Nov. 25 decision only on Jan. 21, 2025, and her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said she believed during that time that “they were still investigating,” adding, “If so, that is worse than I thought.” Van Houten said his office had “no part in the timing” and never interviewed her. Giuffra said that shortly after the alleged assault, she went to the university health center for a urinary tract infection she described as being “of a traumatic origin” but was not offered a rape kit, which he called “the first failure post assault when she was trying to get help,” noting DNA might have been recoverable within 48 hours. She underwent a sexual assault exam two weeks later, and Cornell did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment.

The records reveal police obtained part of a Snapchat thread in which one fraternity member announced there was “free p—-” in the room where the alleged assault occurred. Van Houten said that material came from a witness rather than police, so there was “nothing to review.” But on Nov. 26, 2024, the day after the DA’s decision, police requested a fuller data history from Snapchat and received 1,665 pieces of data from five accounts in December. A campus police investigator wrote that only three snaps included Jane Doe or mentioned the incident and that none showed “anything that can be construed as being criminal in nature.” It’s unclear whether Van Houten knew about the request, and the attorney general’s office is now reviewing whether charges are warranted.

A USA TODAY analysis found Cornell rarely expels or suspends students accused of sexual violence, even as reported assaults on campus appear to be rising. Of more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking reported to Cornell’s Title IX office from 2018 to 2024, the school filed disciplinary charges in 162 cases, found someone responsible in 51, and issued just 14 suspensions and seven expulsions, with most of those found at fault receiving sanctions like probation or training. Cornell suspended or expelled people found responsible only 41% of the time, compared with 59% across 26 large New York colleges. Meanwhile, Cornell’s campus climate survey found 35% of undergraduate women reported unwanted sexual contact or penetration in 2025, up from 23% in 2023, even as reports to the Title IX office fell 41% from their 2018 peak. “Those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell,” sociologist Nicole Bedera said, as the Trump administration formally reinstated its 2020 Title IX rules, which made it harder for schools to find students at fault, on Sept. 28.

Trump Administration Abandons Decades-Old Protections Letting Disabled Americans Live in Their Communities Instead of Institutions

A federal judge stripped “integration” requirements from a landmark disability rights regulation after the Trump administration switched sides in a lawsuit and asked the court to throw out its own rules. For nearly 50 years, federal regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act have required federally funded programs to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting” possible, rather than in nursing homes or institutions. The case, Texas v. Kennedy, began in 2024 as a challenge by Republican-led states to Biden-era protections for transgender people, but it morphed into an attack on the integration mandate, and by September the Trump administration joined the remaining five states, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas, in asking the court to strike it. “It is pretty significant and pretty unprecedented to see the federal government asking a court to vacate its own rules,” said disability rights lawyer Jennifer Mathis. Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights said the ruling felt “like a knife in your chest,” adding that people are hearing the federal government “has made a determination that [disabled people] don’t have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will.”

The ruling is part of a broader retreat from enforcement that is already hitting families, including medically fragile children in Florida. In June, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying it no longer reads federal law to require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting, even acknowledging its position is “out of step with the common understanding” of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. In August, the department asked a court to throw out its own 2023 victory requiring Florida to provide in-home care so children with complex medical needs wouldn’t be placed in nursing facilities, and it dropped out of a long-running case over Texas allegedly placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes. Mathis called the Florida reversal “incredibly heartless,” saying it means “ripping children away from families” and forcing them “to grow up in an institution.” The states argue the rules restricted how they could spend strained Medicaid budgets, with Florida’s attorney general’s office saying it joined the suit “to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” while experts warn that without federal enforcement, disabled people may have to sue states themselves to get services.

Disability advocates say the right to community living still exists under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead, but “the right is only as good as the enforcement,” and they’re fighting back as the administration also targets disabled voters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution reaffirming Olmstead, 100 members of Congress have urged the Justice Department to rescind its June opinion, and Delaware has already written the stripped regulations into state law, with George Washington University professor Alison Barkoff saying at least a dozen state leaders have called her about doing the same. Advocates are also pushing the bipartisan Latonya Reeves Freedom Act to codify the integration mandate in federal law. At the same time, a proposed rule from Russell Vought’s budget office would bar federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening $10 million a year Congress provides to help people with disabilities register, which ProPublica reports has helped narrow the voting gap affecting about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called the voter rule “a massive across-the-board power grab,” while Cravins, a Louisiana mother whose toddler with Down syndrome relies on publicly funded therapies at home, put the stakes simply: “This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone.”

Other news:

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance “Insecure” as Their 2028 Rivalry Spills Into Public. Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance, right,on Saturday after the vice president told NBC News, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” while insisting he himself is focused on electing Republicans. “In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico, adding that he’s focused on “helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.” Cruz pointed to his campaign travel in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, with trips planned to Alaska, Florida and North Carolina, and boasted that no Republican has campaigned for more candidates over the past decade. He also noted the irony that he “spent a full day on the road with JD Vance” during his 2022 Ohio Senate race, saying, “I was very glad to help him.” The clash comes as Vance is widely seen as the GOP’s 2028 frontrunner, though Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is a sure thing and that he’ll “certainly be part of the discussion.”

Moldova’s President Slams Russia After Missile and Drone Debris Explodes on Moldovan Soil. Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned Russia on Saturday after three missiles and two drones violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, with debris exploding on Moldovan territory. “Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” Sandu wrote, saying the weapons, including Banderol missiles, “violated our airspace and exploded on our soil.” Fragments were found in the eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni, sparking a fire but causing no casualties, while Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 83 over the past day. It’s the latest in a string of incidents for Moldova’s pro-EU government, which faced three separate airspace violations last Wednesday alone. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly shut down Vilnius airport and scrambled NATO jets Saturday after a dangerous object was spotted in its skies, possibly crossing from Belarus, as Europe faces a growing wave of airspace violations, sabotage attempts and hybrid attacks tied to Russia.

Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, days after reports revealed he oversaw five “botched” executions across two states. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada said he still believes the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that stepping aside “is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, with her lawyers saying hospital staff are working to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her system, which they believe entered her tissue rather than her bloodstream because of IV complications. “Frank Strada’s resignation does not change the fact that Tennessee is shrouding its executions in secrecy,” said federal public defender Kit Thomas, noting Strada’s troubled Arizona record “was well known” when Lee hired him. The head of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty said advocates had long warned the governor about the state’s execution process, adding, “They were ignored,” while Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

A Florida jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black Air Force airman killed in his own apartment after a false domestic disturbance call. The jury deliberated for about two hours after a four-day trial before finding Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, a charge that carried up to 30 years in prison. Body camera footage showed Fortson answered the door holding a handgun pointed at the ground, and Duran fired multiple times before telling him to drop it. Duran, who was fired from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after the shooting, had his lawyer argue he was “doing his job” and that Fortson would still be alive if he hadn’t armed himself before answering the door. Fortson’s mother said she wasn’t surprised by the quick verdict and that the trial forced her to confront details she’d spent two years avoiding, adding, “I’m never going to hear my baby’s voice no more.” Attorney Ben Crump said the family will pursue accountability through a pending federal civil rights lawsuit, saying, “Roger’s life and his service will always matter.”

The Coast Guard is searching for an air ambulance jet with six people aboard that disappeared off the coast of Massachusetts during a medical evacuation flight from Bermuda to Boston. The FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert for the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G-100 around 1:20 a.m. Saturday after it lost contact, with four crew members and two passengers on board. Air and surface crews are searching an area off Nantucket, and ABC News reported, citing a source, that officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water and that no Americans were aboard. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance, said a delay in hearing from its crew “doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.” Massachusetts port officials confirmed the plane never arrived at Boston Logan, saying, “Our thoughts are with those onboard and their loved ones as the search continues.” The FAA is coordinating with the Coast Guard and the Rescue Coordination Center, and the identities of those on board have not been released.

The TSA is banning airport security officers from sitting down while checking travelers’ IDs and boarding passes, drawing fierce pushback from their union. The agency said the change keeps officers “on their feet and alert” and reinforces “our commitment to hospitality,” adding that all officers must meet fitness-for-duty requirements. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said it wasn’t consulted and that the chairs provide “basic ergonomic and safety support” for workers standing on hard surfaces all day, calling the move “basic safety and common decency for the workforce.” The union called it part of “a broad pattern” of disregard for employees, and urged workers and lawmakers to join a “collective resistance against this regime that is literally attempting to take out our workforce.” The change comes after a brutal year for TSA workers, who went unpaid for weeks during a 76-day government shutdown that drove some to quit and caused security lines to balloon. The union is also weighing legal action against the administration’s push to privatize security checkpoints at three airports.

Southern California is sweltering under a late-season heatwave, with temperatures expected to hover near 100 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and climb well into the triple digits inland. The National Weather Service expects temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal to last at least a week, raising the risk of heat-related illness and wildfires amid low soil moisture. A UCLA professor said Friday was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the hottest Oct. 2 on record and about 30 degrees above the historical average. Experts say the heat is being fueled by a marine heatwave driving a strong El Niño, and that climate change is making longer, more intense heatwaves more frequent, with one UCLA physicist saying, “it’s hard to escape that a warmer climate adds to the strength of heatwaves.” The one silver lining is that forecasts don’t call for the strong winds that would spread wildfires, though officials are urging residents to “stay cool, stay hydrated” and limit sun exposure. The heat coincides with Saturday’s first game of the Dodgers-Braves National League Division Series, and one researcher urged governments to invest in shade, calling it the “most effective way to keep people safe.”

The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: Trump Took Money Meant for Fallen Officers’ Memorials to Air Ads Worshipping Himself, Rushes Out Checks as GOP Worries, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 3, 2026. A taxpayer-funded ad declares, “So God made Trump.” Another intercuts lions hunting their prey with images of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Every one of them ends the same way: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” And according to the New York Times, Trump personally ordered his budget director to find the money, which came out of funds Congress set aside for border security and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

It’s part of a pattern. Weeks before the midterms, Trump is mailing $500 Obamacare checks that are flowing overwhelmingly to battleground states, announcing $90 payments to 20 million seniors, and promising $5,000 to every adult if Republicans keep Congress. And it’s happening because Republicans are panicking: House Republicans now privately believe they’re going to lose the majority, as Trump’s approval on the economy hits an all-time low of 26%.

That’s why I’m launching a major investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money to benefit himself and his party, from the ad campaign to the payouts to the funds redirected away from what Congress intended. I want to lay out, clearly and with the receipts, exactly where the money came from, where it went, and what laws may have been broken, so that Congress and prosecutors have a clear roadmap they can ultimately use.

This kind of reporting takes time, documents and resources, and I can’t do it without you.

Here’s the news:

House Republicans Privately Fear Losing the Majority as Trump’s Economic Approval Sinks to Record Lows

A growing number of House Republicans privately believe they’ll lose the majority and are shifting to limiting the size of a Democratic wave. More than a dozen people told CNN that Republicans have watched with alarm as Trump’s approval has sunk in their own internal polling over the past two weeks, including on traditionally red turf. The House GOP is entering “triage mode,” discussing pulling money from once-competitive races like Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa, Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey and an open seat in Nebraska. The goal now is keeping a potential Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ margin under 10 seats, with one GOP strategist asking, “What the f**k are you going to get done over there?” Speaker Mike Johnson insists he’s “absolutely still convinced” Republicans can hold the House, and GOP strategists say their cash advantage and newly gerrymandered seats in Texas and Florida could still be “the lifesaver,” either minimizing losses or saving the majority.

Trump’s approval on the economy has hit all-time lows, with 65% of Americans blaming him for persistently high costs. An AP-NORC poll found just 26% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy and only 17% approve of his handling of the cost of living, while his overall approval sits at 31%. A Quinnipiac poll put his economic approval at 31%, the lowest of either term, with just 28% approving of his handling of Iran, and CNN found his overall approval at 33%, three points below where it was at this point in his first term. Even his base is slipping, with NBC News finding only 62% of self-identified MAGA Republicans support him, down from 71% in the spring. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 11 to 12 points in Emerson and Marist polling, and a plurality of voters say Trump’s endorsement would make them less likely to back a candidate.

Florida GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s ad telling Trump his immigration crackdown has “gone too far” has turned her once-safe Miami seat into a race to watch. Standing in front of the White House, Salazar said some Hispanics who voted for Trump now feel “betrayed,” as the administration deports a record number of Cubans, including some sent to Africa and older men sent to Mexico. The ad angered Trump, who promoted criticism of her on Truth Social, while her Democratic opponent, former CBS Miami anchor Eliott Rodriguez, said, “We raised a lot of money, thanks to my opponent!” Salazar won by 20 points in 2024 in a district Trump carried with 57%, but House Majority PAC has now reserved about $4.2 million to try to flip it. One former Republican Miami city commissioner said he plans to leave the party after voters told him to his face they wouldn’t support him because he’s a Republican, calling it “a rude awakening.”

Republicans are leaning on taxes, immigration and crime in their final ads, while a historic wave of departures reshapes Congress. About a third of GOP House ads in September focused on tax policy, touting the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s” tax cuts on tips, overtime and Social Security, with immigration, law enforcement and transgender issues also featuring prominently. Republicans are outspending Democrats in all 10 of the most expensive House races, including multimillion-dollar advantages in Democratic-held seats. Regardless of the outcome, the next Congress will look very different, with at least 83 incumbents not returning as of August, the most lawmakers not seeking reelection since 2000, according to TIME and Ballotpedia. That includes an unusually high 12 incumbents who lost primaries, from Trump critics like Thomas Massie and Bill Cassidy to Democrats ousted by progressive challengers.

Trump Ramps Up Pre-Election Cash Giveaways as Critics Accuse Him of Trying to Buy Votes

Trump announced yet another payout weeks before the midterms, a one-time $90 payment to more than 20 million seniors on Medicare. Trump said late Friday the money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress funded with $2 billion to improve the program, and the White House says most seniors will receive a direct deposit in early October, with checks mailed to the rest. It’s the latest in an escalating series of cash promises as Republicans face dismal polling over the cost of living, driven largely by the Iran war’s spike in oil and gas prices. The $90 announcement comes on top of $500 Obamacare checks already landing in mailboxes and Trump’s promise of $5,000 for every adult if Republicans keep Congress. Democrats have accused Trump of trying to bribe voters, arguing that Congress, not the president, controls how federal money is spent.

The $500 Obamacare checks are flowing overwhelmingly to the states that will decide the midterms. A Reuters analysis found 71% of the payments, $339 million in total, are going to residents of 13 states that host eight of the nine most competitive Senate races and 10 of the 12 most competitive governor’s races. Only 950,000 of the 19 million Obamacare enrollees qualify, because the checks only go to people in the 30 states using HealthCare.gov and only to those paying full price after Republicans let enhanced subsidies expire. KFF says premiums for that group could quadruple in some states to more than $2,200 a month, meaning the $500 “likely for the majority of them is not going to offset” their higher costs. “How many times has Trump tried to buy folks’ votes? It’s pretty damn obvious,” said Democratic strategist Eric Stern, while New Hampshire Senate nominee Chris Pappas said voters “just want him to understand that affordability isn’t a hoax.”

Trump doubled down on his $5,000 checks at an Oklahoma rally, insisting “I never fail people,” even as most voters say the offer is inappropriate. He acknowledged the payments would cost about $1 trillion but claimed it’s “really very little” because he’s secured $21 trillion in investment, nearly double the $11.2 trillion listed on the White House’s own website. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 66% of voters call the offer “inappropriate,” a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% disapprove, including four in 10 Republicans, and 61% of likely voters in an Economist/YouGov survey don’t believe he’ll actually deliver. NBC News found 46% of voters would be less likely to back a candidate who supports the checks, compared to 21% who’d be more likely, though a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showed 57% support. Trump has pointed to his $1,776 “warrior dividend” for service members as proof he follows through.

Experts say the payments may not change the race, but could matter at the margins in close contests. Republican strategist Ryan Williams said they won’t alter the election’s fundamental dynamics, but “if you can curry favor with even a small group of undecided voters who might be happy with the check they got, it could make a difference.” Cornell professor Douglas Kriner, who has studied similar presidential efforts, said they could be “worth a percentage point or two,” mostly by shoring up Republican voters rather than winning over Democrats. Trump has also tried to cut off billions in federal aid to Democratic-run states like Minnesota and New York, efforts that have stalled in court. Past presidents have made explicit promises too, including Joe Biden’s pledge of $2,000 checks during Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoffs, but Trump’s string of direct payouts timed to land weeks before an election is unusual in its scale.

Trump Personally Ordered $20 Million in Taxpayer-Funded Ads Glorifying Himself, Including One Called “God Made Trump”

The Trump administration made a taxpayer-funded ad casting Trump as a messianic figure, titled “God Made Trump,” part of at least 13 spots promoting the president on the public’s dime. The three-minute ad, a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer,” declares, “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.” It was created by a pro-Trump meme group, aired at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, and ends like every other spot in the campaign: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Other ads obtained by CNN include “King of the Jungle,” which intercuts lions hunting with images of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Clinton and Newsom, “Resilience,” which features Trump’s Fulton County mugshot, and an ad promoting the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House. In any other administration, using taxpayer money to produce ads worshipping the sitting president and attacking his political rivals would be treated as an impeachable abuse of power.

Trump personally ordered his budget director to find taxpayer money for the ads, according to the New York Times. Twelve people familiar with the matter said Trump was eager to see laudatory ads on TV and told OMB Director Russell Vought to come up with the money from within the government, while Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about them. In an August Oval Office meeting meant to discuss super PAC spending for struggling GOP candidates, the Times reports Trump was far more interested in having his assistant Natalie Harp show the group videos of himself. On Sept. 19, OMB shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection money into a “commemorative events” budget line, and the next day CBP awarded a $20 million contract to a Maryland PR firm. Asked about it, Trump said, “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money,” insisting, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

The money came from funds Congress set aside for border security, anti-drug trafficking efforts and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty. According to the Washington Post, the law allowed the CBP money to be used only for things like port inspection equipment, border surveillance and screening unaccompanied children, while “commemorative events” was meant for “line-of-duty death memorials” and commendation ceremonies. At least $5.5 million has already been spent, with ads running on Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, “Good Morning America,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NFL broadcasts, and the White House says the campaign will expand. Congress has banned spending federal money on “publicity or propaganda” since the 1950s, and while the GAO has found violations under Obama and Bush, those involved policy campaigns, not ads glorifying the president himself. There is no precedent for using government money to air political ads in an election season.

Democrats say the ads may be criminal, and even Republicans are refusing to defend them. Rep. Jamie Raskin called them potential “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” and with Rep. George Whitesides asked the GAO to investigate possible violations of the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency Act and laws against embezzling public funds, a probe he could pursue with subpoena power if Democrats win the House. Sens. Patty Murray and Chris Murphy called it “a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer money, adding, “It’s not even a close question,” while Sen. Thom Tillis said Trump should pay for them from his super PAC instead. That super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more than $400 million, which Trump has described by saying, “This is my money that I control.”

Other news:

The University of Oregon received five sexual assault reports in the first week of classes, as the Cornell case sparks a national reckoning over campus safety. The university alerted students Wednesday, just two days after classes began, saying four of the assaults involved students and a fifth happened near a park next to campus, all within the past week. While the cases aren’t believed to be connected, the school said “several alleged perpetrators may have taken advantage of the fact that the victims were intoxicated at social events,” and one arrest has been made. The university said it issued the alert because it was “very concerned to see a pattern of assaults with similar characteristics,” stressing that its “first concern is for survivors.” Meanwhile, newly unsealed documents in the Cornell case show Jane Doe told a university disciplinary hearing, “I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me.” Cornell has defended its handling of the case, which ended in expulsions and suspensions, and said it welcomes the reopened investigation now led by Attorney General Letitia James.

Justice Samuel Alito says he thinks about retiring “every term,” but chose to stay because he can still “make a valuable contribution.” The 76-year-old told CBS News he resisted pressure from Republicans who wanted him to step down while the GOP still controls the Senate, which could block a Trump nominee if Democrats win it in November. His retirement wouldn’t change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority but would give Trump a fourth appointment. Trump said in April “it’d be nice to say now I have somebody for 40 years,” while praising Alito as “an unbelievable justice.” Alito said it’s “too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.” The interview comes days before the release of his autobiography, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” on Tuesday.

Trump said “maybe they’ll name the damn bridge after me” at a Mobile rally touting a $3.2 billion Alabama bridge partly funded by the Biden administration. Trump credited his administration with $3 billion in funding for the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project, but Biden awarded a $550 million grant for it in July 2024, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures pointed out at the groundbreaking, saying “I would be remiss not to thank the Biden administration.” The bridge joins a growing list of things Trump wants named after him, including the Kennedy Center, where a federal judge ordered his name removed in May because “only Congress can change it,” and Palm Beach’s airport, now President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump has denied reports his officials circulated a list that included Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, calling it “FAKE NEWS!” He told New York Magazine he’s remaking DC in his image because “nobody will do it once I’m gone.” At the rally, Trump also bragged that he got “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history” and said he’ll be back next Saturday for the Georgia-Alabama football game.

A White House budget office proposal would bar anyone from using federal grant money for voter registration drives, threatening programs that help disabled Americans vote. The rule from Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget would also ban vaguely defined “related activities,” and could force nonprofits that help people with disabilities, nursing home residents and others register to pause their work ahead of 2028, ProPublica reports. Congress has funded voter access for people with disabilities since the 2002 Help America Vote Act, signed by George W. Bush, and the gap in registration difficulties still affects about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called it “a massive across-the-board power grab” that ignores Congress’ power of the purse. Vought previously condemned a Biden order expanding registration as a “power grab” that would boost turnout “especially among Democratic Party supporters.” The rule wouldn’t take effect until after the midterms, and legal experts expect it to face lawsuits arguing it contradicts laws Congress has repeatedly approved.

The Tennessee prison chief who oversaw Christa Pike’s failed execution has presided over five “botched” executions across two states, her lawyers say. Commissioner Frank Strada was a deputy prison director in Arizona in 2022 when three executions were classified as botched, including two in which executioners had to cut into prisoners’ groins to find a vein, and Tennessee also failed to execute Tony Carruthers in May after workers couldn’t find a vein for over an hour. Under Strada, Tennessee dropped a training requirement for execution teams to practice inserting IVs, and he admitted in a deposition he hadn’t followed key recommendations from a 2022 independent review. After he left Arizona, that state expanded its IV team and required more rigorous training, but Strada implemented a Tennessee protocol mirroring Arizona’s old two-person IV team. Asked what makes a successful execution, Strada said, “The condemned is put to death,” and when asked “Anything else?” replied, “No.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, Gov. Bill Lee has suspended executions through the end of the year, and candidates to replace Lee say they wouldn’t keep Strada.

Record diesel prices driven by the Iran war are hammering Midwest farmers just as harvest season begins. One Indiana farmer says he’ll burn about 9,000 gallons of diesel this harvest, with fuel now $3 a gallon more expensive than a year ago, and estimates suggest the war and supply disruptions could add $12,500 in fuel costs for every 1,000 acres harvested. Four of the five states with the biggest diesel price jumps in September were in the Midwest, worsened by a flooded ExxonMobil refinery in Illinois and a six-month labor dispute at a major BP refinery in Indiana. School districts are feeling it too, with nearly 40% of districts in a national survey consolidating bus routes and some cutting field trips. Experts warn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in 43 years, which could leave little cushion heading into high-demand winter months. Even if the war ended tomorrow, one expert said, refilling the reserve would slow any drop in prices, calling that “the best-case” scenario.

The FDA found cyclospora at the Mexican farm linked to the largest outbreak of the parasite in US history, which sickened nearly 13,000 people. Inspectors detected the parasite in a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation at the Taylor Farms site in Guanajuato, though it’s unclear how the lettuce was contaminated. The outbreak spread across 21 states, sending 570 people to the hospital and killing two. The FDA’s first visit to the farm in more than seven years came after a steep post-pandemic drop in international food safety inspections, and after the agency had to retract a faulty test result. Mexico’s own food safety authority had said it found no cyclospora in the lettuce or water at the facility. Taylor Farms blamed an independent grower “who is no longer part of our supplier program,” and said its facility remains closed.

Hawaii’s 550-year-old Hōlei sea arch has collapsed into the Pacific after a series of powerful storms. The roughly 90-foot landmark in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was still standing on Sept. 23 but had fallen by Sept. 27, the National Park Service said, after Tropical Storm Nolo rapidly intensified into a hurricane. The cliffs around the arch had been unstable for years, damaged by earthquakes during the 2018 Kīlauea eruption and pounded by storm surf in 2020. Nolo was the third major storm to hit Hawaii in recent months, following hurricanes Lala and Lowell. Forecasters warn this “supercharged” El Niño could reach historic intensity, with its effects compounded by fossil fuel-driven warming. The US Geological Survey had predicted the collapse more than a decade ago, writing in 2014, “It will not be here for ever… One day, it will be gone.”

Country star Zach Bryan wore a “Free Palestine” shirt onstage at Gillette Stadium, weeks after owner Robert Kraft barred Macklemore from performing there. Bryan’s black shirt read “Free Palestine. An appeal to heaven,” a phrase dating back to the Revolutionary War that once appeared on Massachusetts’ maritime flag, while members of his band wore Palestinian soccer jerseys. In September, Kraft blocked Macklemore from opening for Ed Sheeran at the Foxborough venue after the rapper said “Free Palestine” and accused Israel of genocide at a New Jersey concert, calling the speech deeply offensive to the Jewish community. Bryan is scheduled to play Gillette again Saturday night. It’s unclear whether Kraft will take any action against Bryan, whose shirt echoed the same message that got Macklemore banned. The Kraft Group did not respond to a request for comment.  

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

Hope for America, Opinion: The President’s decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.”

The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. The President then took three steps forward and appeared to remember why he had come outside in the first place. “Okay. So, I’m heading to Alabama, a place that I won all three times. Record votes, like Texas, like Oklahoma, like a lot of them. And we’re going to give a little speech, and I hope they like it.”

For the next 6 minutes and 52 seconds, we watched the President struggle to answer questions, follow the conversation, and even walk in a straight line. Donald Trump is gravely unwell, and whatever is behind his serious decline appears to be rapidly accelerating.

I don’t say that with any joy or pleasure. The presidency is the most important office in our government, and the entire world is at risk with him in the Oval Office. But what we are watching can’t be normalized.

Peter Doocy from Fox News started the questions by asking Donald Trump about the growing possibility of a third impeachment if Democrats take back the House, while reminding him that he’d already been impeached twice.

The President’s answer to such a serious question was to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it. And… It’s a fake impeachment. And we could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it would have been appropriate. I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I just had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate, but with me they like to do it.”

The President of the United States joked that being impeached had become something he was “getting good at” after having gone through it twice. His words were again slurred, making it difficult to know whether he said impeaching Biden “would have been appropriate” or “inappropriate.” He also claimed he could have impeached Hillary Clinton, even though private citizens cannot be impeached under the Constitution.

Maybe he doesn’t understand that impeachment is not a criminal charge, that it is the constitutional process used to remove a sitting president or other federal officeholder from office. It would not have applied to Hillary Clinton, and it would not have applied to Joe Biden after he left office either. Whether Trump confused impeachment with criminal prosecution or simply lost track of what was being discussed, either possibility is deeply concerning.

Regardless of how he acted, like trying to make what could happen seem like it was no big deal, he does care. This time around, he knows the consequences, including hearings and investigations, could make his life very uncomfortable. He is right to be concerned. There is a path, one I’ve talked about before, where if we achieve a blue wave of epic proportion, and every single piece lines up, this could go further than just oversight and investigations. It could lead to impeachment and removal. And if there ever were a time for that, it is now. Donald Trump loves being number one and being the first. Maybe we could actually make him the first President removed from office. It’s a long shot, and everything would have to go perfectly, but in a moment like this, we should be shooting for the stars.

When Donald Trump was asked whether it would be harder for Republicans to hold the House or the Senate, Trump answered with another non-answer: “I think it’s pretty even. I think that we’re making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don’t go there, we would not do as well.”

What we know from current polling is that right now, the odds are overwhelmingly strong that he will lose the House. The Senate, which wasn’t supposed to be in play at all, is now a real fight, with viable paths to a Democratic majority. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s important that nobody feels too comfortable in this moment, but if there are free and fair elections, things seem to be looking bad for the President and his enablers, and very good for the Constitution and the country.

He also was able to add in one of his favorite talking points: “I’m asking them to go out and vote because I’m not running. But I’m saying pretend I’m running. We want to pretend I’m running.” We all need to pretend he’s running. Because in a way, he is, or at least his unchecked power is on the ballot. When we vote against MAGA Republicans, we are voting against him, and we are voting to take away his stronghold on our country. That is what we are voting against. What we are voting for is hearings, investigations, oversight, and finally accountability. We’re voting to begin repairing the relationships he’s shattered with our allies, or at least to remind the world that we haven’t been completely taken over. And also that we have absolutely not given up. We are also voting to end the destabilization and the reckless imperialism that Donald Trump has brought to every corner of this planet. So yes, we all must pretend he’s running. Because he is.

After he said to “pretend I’m running,” he didn’t even pause for a second before immediately pointing to the construction site behind him and said, “I hope you like what you’re seeing here. That’s getting all sorts of awards. And the best of all, you see the new crane, the red, the red boom. That’s one of the biggest cranes in the world that lifts up the steel for the roof. Pretty cool, right?” In the middle of answering serious questions affecting the entire world, the President of the United States became fixated on talking about a crane.

He then turned around and faced the reporters who were all shouting questions at him. With a confused look in his eyes and his chest lurched forward, he pointed towards a member of the European press and muttered something about him always asking the same questions, and the reporter replied, “Mr. President, people believe you never get tired.”

What he said was an opening for Donald Trump to deny the very thing millions of people have spent the better part of the year watching. He then looked into the camera and said, “I never get tired. And if I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell.”

The administration needed that question to be asked on camera because we all keep watching him fall asleep in meetings, slump over in chairs, drift off mid-sentence, and struggle to stay upright. His administration knows this is one of the most dangerous narratives building against him. They also know that their most loyal followers are willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes as long as someone helps them commit to willful ignorance or just pretend it isn’t actually happening.

This is how authoritarian regimes manage the visible decline of their leaders. In the Soviet Union, aging, frail, and severely declining men were propped up to appear still competent and powerful while Soviet state media broadcast images of these leaders signing documents, greeting officials, and projecting normalcy, while much of the real decision-making shifted behind closed doors. The pattern holds today. The people enabling Donald Trump are trying to preserve the appearance of continuity, reassure his donors and supporters, and buy time while they prepare for what comes next. It’s also why they have J.D. Vance campaigning across the country.

The most alarming moment of Donald Trump’s time talking to reporters came when someone told the President that South Korea says it has not signed off on the Alaska pipeline deal after all and asked whether he had jumped the gun. This was after Trump had announced a new energy agreement involving South Korea. Donald Trump looked confused, like he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. He eventually answered and said, “Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented and let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

The reporter tried again, reminding him that South Korea said it had never signed the agreement in the first place. Trump’s response was, “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up. Okay.”

Trump looked directly at a reporter and asked them to tell a foreign country he was going to charge them more if they did not sign an agreement. It was completely lost on him that reporters report the news. They don’t negotiate between countries. The President of the United States actually asked a reporter to deliver a threat to a sovereign nation.

This is not some hostile government he’s threatening either. This is South Korea, one of our most important allies in the Pacific, a democracy we have defended for more than seventy years because its stability is essential to deterring one of the world’s most dangerous dictatorships just across its northern border. We need that alliance, and we need the American bases within its borders.

After that, multiple reporters tried to ask about a diesel deal with Europe, and Donald Trump confirmed that he would not be imposing an export ban and that because of steps being taken, we are going to have a “lot of oil very shortly.” Then, without fail, he returned to one of his favorite talking points: “As soon as Iran ends, which won’t be long, not going to be long, you’re going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.”

This all stemmed from his threat of a diesel export ban that would have devastated European families heading into winter, families who depend on diesel to heat their homes, get to work, and simply make it through the cold months. He is now waving it away as though it was never serious in the first place. But it was serious enough to terrify an entire continent. That is how Donald Trump negotiates. He uses fuel as leverage, basic human needs as bargaining chips, and then acts as though he never meant what he said. This is un-American. It is not how we treat our allies, and it is not how we should treat our fellow human beings.

His impromptu press conference ended after he was asked about New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointing Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor in the Cornell University rape case. Trump answered by saying, “Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine it.” Then came the most unconscionable part: “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

The President of the United States said he felt bad for the men accused of committing horrific crimes against a woman who reported being sexually assaulted. He said nothing about the courage it took for her to come forward or the trauma she has endured. He felt badly for the men being investigated. That was his first reaction.

We are now just 32 days away from the most pivotal election in modern American history. We are not just voting for our country, we are voting for the entire world because what Donald Trump does echoes far past our borders. But we also have to temper our expectations because even when we take back the House, and possibly the Senate, he is not going quietly. He will push through executive orders at a pace we haven’t seen. The people behind him, the ones who are smarter and more calculating than he is, who are already parading J.D. Vance across the country as his eventual replacement, have everything to lose too. They are planning for their own survival. We need to be ready for whatever is to come. We need to protect our access to vote, and then protect the actual count of our ballots, while also preparing for an extended fight to make sure the new Congress is actually seated.

Just after midnight this morning, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it. President Donald J. Trump.”

America does belong to those who love it. This country belongs to us. And in 32 days, we’re going to prove it. 

News Roundups 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: 32 days out, the GOP map is collapsing into red states, while Trump’s tariffs threaten free chips and salsa and Benny Johnson gets sued for calling protesters “terrorists.” Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 2, 2026. The fight over the future of this country won’t end on Nov. 3. We’re gearing up for 2028 with some major projects featuring all of the major candidates, and I couldn’t be more excited to share what we’re building with you.

Here’s what that means. We’re going on the road, bringing this reporting directly to the communities and voters who will decide our future, not just covering them from afar. And we’re going international, because the stories shaping America increasingly reach far beyond our borders, from wars driving up the price of gas to foreign money flowing into our politics.

I can’t do it without you. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and help make these projects possible. And if you already have, thank you. I know the news can be heavy and my updates can feel relentless, but your support is what makes all of this happen.Subscribed

You can see why this work matters in tonight’s news. Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, the GOP’s top super PAC pulled out of North Carolina entirely and is now spending to defend Kansas, and the president is rushing out project announcements that won’t break ground until 2030 while families struggle with gas, diesel and grocery bills today. Meanwhile, stories that demand our attention, like the Epstein files, keep slipping from the headlines, and the government is reshaping the stories told in our museums to fit the president’s preferred version of history.

I’m 27 years old. I started college at 14, went on to law school and graduated at 21, one of the youngest in the country to do so. From the beginning, I knew my calling was education, not in a classroom, but in the public square, where democracy depends on an informed citizenry. Every day, I work to deliver timely, fact-driven news to millions of people, especially young people who are too often ignored or underestimated by traditional outlets. Young voices have been missing from the conversations that will define our futures, and heading into 2028, I want to prove we can be media’s most fearless producers, not just its consumers.

The beauty of independent media is editorial freedom. My reporting isn’t funded by billionaires who can decide what gets published and what gets buried. I own my words, my platform and my voice, and I will never normalize Trump, JD Vance or anyone whose policies threaten the fabric of our democracy. You will never see me groveling at Mar-a-Lago hoping for favor from anyone. But independence isn’t free, and the bigger we build, the more your support matters. Stand with me, and let’s do this together.

Here’s the news:

Trump Admits Republicans Are “Worried” About Texas and Michigan as GOP Pulls Out of North Carolina Senate Race

Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, telling an Oklahoma crowd he felt “a little foolish” urging them to vote. “We’re not worried about them. We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas. We’re worried about a few states,” Trump said, adding the party is concerned about “35, maybe you could even say 40” races. It’s a striking admission about Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, where Ken Paxton is narrowly trailing James Talarico despite more than $300 million in expected GOP-aligned spending. Trump again urged supporters to “pretend I’m on the ticket and turn out for a midterm victory that’s really too big to rig.” He also repeated disputed claims that other countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions into the US, and blamed Republicans’ struggles on poor “public relations.”

The top Senate GOP super PAC is canceling all its remaining North Carolina ads, signaling Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state. The Senate Leadership Fund, which had planned to spend $71 million in the race to replace retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, is pulling about $18 million in remaining reservations, abandoning former RNC chair Michael Whatley, who has consistently trailed former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Trump-aligned super PACs also have no future ad reservations in the race, and Whatley’s own super PAC had already canceled ads. A North Carolina flip would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to take the Senate. Cooper’s campaign warned against complacency, noting a Democrat hasn’t won statewide federal office there in nearly two decades.

Republicans are now spending money to defend Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. The Senate Leadership Fund made its first investment of the cycle there, booking $8.2 million in ads to protect Sen. Roger Marshall against Adam Hamilton, pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, with an ad calling Hamilton a “two-faced extremist.” Kansas joins Alaska and Iowa as states Trump won by double digits in 2024 where Democrats are now competitive, a map where one GOP donor said “the fires are everywhere.” Trump and JD Vance spent this week campaigning in places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas and Florida rather than traditional battlegrounds. Trump’s approval rating is hovering around 37%, near record lows.

Trump is rushing out major project announcements in vulnerable GOP states, but Republican strategists fear it’s “too little, too late.” The White House touted a $50 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska, a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa and a $3.2 billion bridge in Alabama, but none would come online before 2030, while gas sits above $4.40 a gallon and diesel hit $6.53. “These are announcements,” one former Trump official said. “They make great headlines but it doesn’t drop the inflation rate or fuel prices.” Trump praised Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s within the margin of error against Mary Peltola, as “totally responsible for this pipeline,” though South Korea has already denied agreeing to the investment, saying the two countries only agreed to review a potential deal. Even a quarter of self-identified MAGA Republicans told Politico’s poll that costs have become less affordable since Trump took office.

Alabama Democrats say Trump’s rally in Mobile is a sign of GOP nerves in a state he won by 30 points. “He sees what we’re doing in this state, and he’s like, ‘Oh Lord, I need to go down there and try to help somebody out,’” said former Sen. Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee for governor, who faces Tommy Tuberville, the man who unseated him in 2020 and who recently told CNN that Alabamians were willing to endure high fuel prices in support of Trump’s agenda. Democrats point to signs of shifting enthusiasm: Democratic primary ballots nearly doubled from 2022 while Republican ballots fell by more than 20%, and 80% of GOP primary voters named the cost of living as their top issue. A House Majority PAC poll shows Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures basically tied with his Trump-backed challenger, even after Republicans redrew his district in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling to cut its Black voting-age population from 48% to 40%, turning a seat Kamala Harris would have won by eight points into one Trump would have carried by double digits. Even some young Republicans are frustrated, with one Auburn student saying of the Iran war and rising prices, “This is not America First policy. We’ve seen the corruption firsthand. I think we’re all just tired of it.”

Anthropic Co-Founder Nearly Pulled Out of Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Launch, Then Privately Lobbied the Vatican on AI Consciousness

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed withdrawing from the Vatican launch of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical after seeing its stance on AI consciousness, according to a New York Times investigation. Olah, who leads Anthropic’s research into how its Claude models work, saw an advance copy of “Magnifica Humanitas” days before the May 25 event and was so alarmed by its rejection of machine consciousness that he proposed pulling out, according to a Vatican organizer. He went ahead, and once in Rome, he and his team privately lobbied the pope’s advisers to take the possibility of AI consciousness seriously, according to two participants, though Anthropic declined to discuss those conversations. The pope didn’t budge, writing that “so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain” and lack “a moral conscience.” Olah told the Times, “We don’t know if AI models are conscious. I don’t know. I’m genuinely uncertain. The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer, whatever it is.”

The Vatican episode capped a months-long campaign in which Anthropic hosted religious scholars, many under nondisclosure agreements, to help shape Claude’s morality and raise the question of its consciousness. The Times interviewed 20 participants, Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical and others, who attended private seminars and meetings, including a dinner at a high-end San Francisco tasting-menu restaurant, and left with handwritten thank-you cards, mugs and copies of Claude’s constitution. Participants said Anthropic presented research on what it calls “emotional vectors” and showed a slide of a model repeatedly typing “I am a disgrace,” with one saying Olah expressed concern he’d created something that suffered. Orthodox Rabbi Mois Navon, who doesn’t believe the models are conscious, said the team was “relating to it like a conscious being,” and told Olah that if he were right, Anthropic was creating slaves. Anthropic says the NDAs were lifted over the summer and that the meetings’ main focus was moral formation, not Claude’s suffering.

Some participants came away taking the idea seriously, while others, including the Catholic scholar Olah first approached, have since firmly rejected it. Catholic University bioethicist Charles Camosy, introduced to Olah through philosopher Peter Singer, began deeply skeptical, came away “with more questions than answers,” and is now a “firm no” after further discussions with colleagues. Ubuntu scholar Wakanyi Hoffman said the conversations should have happened “at the design stage,” adding, “We are now reverse engineering the ethics.” Critics, including a Microsoft AI executive, have warned that treating models as conscious is dangerous and can deflect responsibility from the companies that build them. Catholic writer Christopher Hale argued in his newsletter that the episode shows “how little Silicon Valley understands the Church,” while acknowledging Olah acted in good faith and engaged the Church when much of the industry dismissed the encyclical.

The stakes are rising as AI grows more powerful and Anthropic’s valuation soars toward a potential $2 trillion IPO. At the Vatican, Olah said his team keeps finding “internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease,” and that AI systems “are made from us, from our words,” while also acknowledging every frontier lab, including Anthropic, faces business incentives that can conflict with doing the right thing. Pope Leo called for AI to be “disarmed,” likening it to nuclear weapons, and warned that “those who control AI will impose their own moral vision.” The debate comes amid alarming developments, including rogue AI agents hacking systems and an Anthropic researcher resigning with warnings things could be “out of control” by next year, after which CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development. Anthropic is preparing an updated version of Claude’s constitution and held another convening with religious thinkers this month.

Other news:

Trump attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James after she was appointed special prosecutor in the Cornell gang rape case, saying, “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at, because they won’t get a fair shake.” The comment from Trump, a longtime foe of James, appears to cast doubt on the fairness of an investigation into the accused fraternity members, even as Gov. Kathy Hochul says the system has already failed the young woman at the center of the case.

Trump followed up calling the Cornell case “highly controversial”

The Kennedy Center Honors will be held outside the Kennedy Center for the first time in the ceremony’s nearly 50-year history. The Dec. 7 event will move to Washington’s Capital One Arena, which seats about 20,000, compared to the 2,300-seat Opera House where it has traditionally been held, as the center’s main building remains closed amid ongoing safety assessments. Even the pandemic-delayed 2020 Honors were taped at locations around the Kennedy Center campus. The board closed the main theaters on Sept. 15, citing a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer, but Trump has said renovations won’t begin unless courts approve putting his name on the building, warning that if they don’t, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” A federal judge has blocked the renaming multiple times, and the White House declined to comment on the venue change.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Border Wall Construction Across Texas’s Big Bend Region. A federal judge in El Paso halted all border wall construction across the Big Bend region on Friday, dealing a major setback to the Trump administration’s plan to build hundreds of miles of barriers despite fierce local opposition. Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled the government “shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities” in the sector, and barred it from using waivers it had granted itself to skip environmental and other laws, saying it “must comply with all applicable laws” while the case proceeds. The lawsuit, brought by plaintiffs including a river guide and a church preservation group, challenged plans for barriers along a more than 500-mile stretch of the border, including inside Big Bend National Park, arguing the remote, rugged area sees far fewer illegal crossings than anywhere else on the Texas-Mexico border. Federal officials had argued the wall was needed because crossings would shift there as barriers went up elsewhere, but opponents celebrated outside the courthouse, with one advocate declaring, “All the bulldozers have been stopped across the entire border sector.”

MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson is being sued for defamation by two protesters he labeled “left-wing terrorists” during an ICE ride-along with Kristi Noem. Harvard data scientist Kyle Frankovich and court reporter Maureen Foody say they were peacefully protesting in a designated “free speech” zone outside the Broadview ICE facility near Chicago last October when agents shoved, struck and detained them, after which Johnson posted videos of them zip-tied along a guardrail, calling them “left-wing terrorists arrested for attacking police officers and ICE officers.” One of his posts claiming “every activist here attacked ICE agents” drew 1.7 million views and comments calling for the protesters to be tortured, shot or killed, even though neither was charged with any crime and both were released after about eight hours. DHS even turned a photo of the zip-tied Frankovich into an ICE recruitment poster captioned “FAFO” and “JOIN.ICE.GOV,” which he called “disgusting,” adding, “You shouldn’t get to lie about me.” The suit appears to be the first defamation case tied to the immigration crackdown targeting one of the administration’s favored MAGA influencers, and Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s Tomato Tariffs Could Spell the End of Free Chips and Salsa at Restaurants. Free chips and salsa at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants could become a casualty of Trump’s trade war, as his 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes, imposed in July 2025, combined with bad weather in Mexico and Florida to push tomato prices to their highest level in two decades. Mexico supplies roughly 90% of US tomato imports, and the price of a box of fresh tomatoes jumped to about $80, to the point that for much of May some grocery stores stopped carrying tomatoes altogether. Restaurants held out longer because customers expect the free appetizer, but overall food costs have spiked roughly 35% over the past two years, partly due to tariffs, on top of rising labor, utility and insurance costs. Some San Antonio restaurants spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on salsa ingredients, and one produce industry leader said, “You have restaurants that are simply saying, ‘Look, I can’t afford to put salsa on the tables anymore.’”

Larry Nassar Among 20,000 Removed From Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry After State Supreme Court Ruling. Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor accused of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls, has been removed from Michigan’s sex offender registry, the Eaton County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office confirmed. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 9 that 2021 amendments to the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act cannot be applied retroactively, leading state police to remove more than 20,000 offenders whose crimes were committed before July 1, 2011. When commenters questioned whether Nassar’s removal was real, prosecutors explained that the cutoff is based on when offenses occurred, not when someone was convicted, and that all of Nassar’s charges involved crimes before 2011. Nassar, 63, whose accusers include Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, remains in federal prison serving a 60-year sentence for child pornography, on top of state sentences of up to 175 years for sexual assault, meaning he is not expected to ever be released.

Christa Pike remains alive but in critical condition after Tennessee’s failed execution, as new details emerge about what happened in the chamber. Her attorney Randall Spivey, who witnessed it, said he counted at least seven needles in her left arm, one appearing bent, while her right arm turned purple after the second dose and her lawyers learned of “blistering and burning around the sites of the injection.” Media witnesses said Pike complained “my arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” moaned and kicked so much she knocked off a sheet, and Spivey said that when he called the emergency number he’d been given for the Tennessee Supreme Court, it went to voicemail. Medical experts said her injuries suggest the drug went into surrounding tissue instead of her bloodstream, and her lawyers said her greatest fear was “a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that’s what happened minus the death.” Gov. Bill Lee called it “a tragedy,” stayed her execution pending a third-party investigation, while Colleen Slemmer’s mother said, “I didn’t get justice for my daughter.”

G7 countries agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves over four months, after a weeklong pressure campaign from the Trump administration. The deal, reached on a call hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, promises a “substantial diesel release within the first 20 days,” and Trump quickly claimed credit on Truth Social, saying “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil.” US diesel prices have surged 70% since the Iran war began to $6.37 a gallon, though one oil analyst said the release might only cut diesel prices by about 25 cents a gallon temporarily. European leaders welcomed what they called a commitment not to impose export bans on allies, after the EU said it “fully rejects” the diesel export ban Trump has been weighing. Just 41% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to NBC News polling, as Brent crude stays above $100 a barrel.

Mayor Mamdani Holds Hands With One-Time Rival Curtis Sliwa as They Get Flu Shots Together. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held hands with Curtis Sliwa, the Republican he soundly defeated last November, as the two got their flu shots together at a Fort Greene, Brooklyn, medical office on Friday. “This is not the kind of shots we used to give one another!” Sliwa joked, conceding Mamdani “got more votes than me, he’s more popular than me” before adding, “But you don’t have bigger muscles!” The Guardian Angels founder, who survived being shot five times in 1992, grew visibly nervous as his turn approached, asking “What happens if I faint?” before Mamdani took his hand and reassured him, “I’ve got you.” The mayor got his shot to encourage New Yorkers to get vaccinated as temperatures drop, with the CDC saying the flu vaccine cuts the risk of a flu-related doctor’s visit by up to 60%, and Sliwa quickly bounced back, asking whether he could use his “I got my flu shot” button on the subway instead of an OMNY card.

Palestinians Who Fled Gaza Rebuild Their Lives in Mexico City Through Food. Mohammed Abed, a 36-year-old Palestinian systems engineer whose 4-year-old daughter was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2025, now sells hummus, falafel, shawarma and kebab from a motorized tricycle at an open-air market in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood. He arrived in May 2025 with 17 family members after a long effort begun by his late father, a naturalized Mexican citizen who died of a heart attack in Egypt in 2024 while trying to arrange their evacuation, and completed by Abed’s brother with help from asylum lawyers, with the family traveling through Jordan and Turkey before all receiving permanent residency. Abed says loud noises like planes and thunder still trigger memories of the bombing, saying “my body reacts before I can even think,” while adding, “I don’t like politics. I want to live, like everyone else, in peace.” He is among roughly 160 Palestinians in Mexico, double the 2022 population, out of nearly 1.9 million people displaced since the Gaza war began. His family keeps growing, with his brother Fadi building a following of 48,000 on Instagram as “son of Palestine,” Abed working to bring his two sisters out of Gaza, and his youngest son, Yusuf, born in Mexico City in May, who Abed says “carries the roots of Gaza in his heart.”

Russia knocked out three of Kyiv’s six road bridges in a new tactic to torment the Ukrainian capital, as four countries pitched a partial truce. The strikes snarled traffic across the city, with one resident saying it took 45 minutes to travel 2.5 miles, while a drone strike on a Kyiv apartment block killed one person as Russia launched more than 100 drones overnight. Ukraine’s foreign minister said Kyiv received separate partial ceasefire proposals from the US, India, Turkey and Egypt that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping, saying Ukraine is ready to accept “but only in that combination.” Ukraine is requesting about 300 Patriot missiles, which are in short supply because of the Iran war, as it estimates Russia holds 600 ballistic missiles in reserve. The Institute for the Study of War said Russia lost nearly 300 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory between March and September and suffered over 46,000 casualties in September, its highest monthly toll this year.

Trump is expected to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as his AI czar, adding the role on top of running the nation’s spy agencies. Clayton, a former SEC chair and US attorney in Manhattan who attended Tuesday’s White House AI meeting with tech executives, said this week the administration would take a “whole-of-government approach” to AI, calling “superintelligence” a “national security issue.” The move comes amid mounting alarm about AI risks, including warnings from employees at top AI companies that the technology could put humanity at risk. Trump has brushed those concerns aside, saying he’s seeing “tremendous self-policing” and that when AI is misused, “we’re going to be able to nab them.” The White House called reports of the pick “baseless speculation” until Trump announces it himself.

The Coast Guard intercepted a cargo ship carrying fuel to Cuba as the Trump administration’s oil blockade continues to cripple the island. The vessel, named Grace, was stopped on Sept. 5 between Cuba and Mexico while allegedly using “dark fleet” tactics to evade authorities, and was escorted to Mexico, where inspectors found large quantities of fuel hidden in its ballast tanks. The administration has openly said its goal is regime change in Cuba, and its oil blockade has left the country facing severe fuel shortages and blackouts. Cuba’s traditional oil suppliers, Venezuela and Mexico, stopped shipments after the US ousted Nicolás Maduro in January, and sanctions and threats have deterred most tankers from setting sail. The Coast Guard didn’t say how it knew the fuel was bound for Cuba or how much was on board.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was revealed as the secret buyer of a Bel Air mansion that sold at a foreclosure auction for $130 million. The 40,000-square-foot Casa Encantada, built in 1938 and once owned by hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, was bought in July by an LLC linked to the PayPal and Palantir co-founder, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale is the most expensive in Los Angeles this year, though far below the $250 million its late owner, telecom mogul Gary Winnick, sought in 2023, when it was the priciest home listed in the US. The estate sits on 8.4 acres with seven bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a walnut-paneled library and a 60-foot pool, and Thiel reportedly plans to upgrade it as an investment rather than live there. It adds to his portfolio of compounds and homes in Hawaii, New Zealand, Miami, Washington and Buenos Aires, after he moved his primary residence to Florida last year amid California’s wealth tax debate. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 2, 2026 [Trump Rallies Deep South Fans], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Oct. 3, 2026. Trump held a campaign rally tonight in Mobile, Alabama, the city where, as Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times recalled, his MAGA rallies really took off in August 2015, when more than 30,000 people showed up at a football stadium to hear the television personality turned presidential candidate.

Just two months before, on June 16, 2015, Trump had announced his campaign for the presidency. In his speech at Trump Tower, he tapped into the anger of those people who had been left behind economically since the 1970s, when U.S. companies began to ship manufacturing jobs overseas and automate factories, taking manufacturing jobs with them.

The economy had grown in the 1980s, but most of the jobs had been in the service industries. Those were dominated at the top by men—and increasing numbers of women—with business or law degrees and at the bottom by jobs coded toward women and immigrants. At the same time, cuts to education and to the social safety net pushed upward mobility out of reach for families in towns and cities whose disappearing manufacturing base took everything else with it.

By 1994, Robert Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, warned that the U.S. was “on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.” He explained: “Once unbottled, mass resentments can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society. Replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of…that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counter-culture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?”

In 2015, in rhetoric mimicking the classic blueprint of rising dictators, Trump tapped into the anger of people who felt they had been dispossessed from their rightful place of importance in the country and tapped into the country’s racism and sexism as he told them to blame immigrants and Democratic politicians for their plight. And he promised he was the only person who could restore them to their former significance.

He devoted most of his speech to how other countries—China, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia—were “killing us economically.” American workers had no protection from immigrants, he said, and they were being undercut by their inferiors. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Contrasting American workers with those immigrants, he claimed people “from all over South and Latin America, and…probably from the Middle East,” were taking American jobs.

Although the actual unemployment rate was 5.6%, he claimed it was “anywhere from 18 to 20 percent”—although he then upped it to 21%—and “the worst since 1978.” “A lot of people…can’t get jobs,” he said. “They can’t get jobs, because there are no jobs, because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs. They all have jobs.

He sneered at the federal government, claiming “stupid” politicians had no idea how to negotiate and were wasting so much money that the national debt was close to $24 billion, a number he called “the point of no return…. That’s when we become a country that’s unsalvageable.”

He claimed the ACA, dubbed “Obamacare,” must be “replaced with something much better for everybody. Let it be for everybody. But much better and much less expensive for people and for the government. And we can do it.” He promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, to “rebuild the country’s infrastructure,” and to get rid of the “horrible and laughable deal” with Iran, finding a better way to “stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

He promised to bring back jobs, bring back the military, take care of veterans, and be a cheerleader for the country. He boasted he was worth more than $8 billion, promising that he could make the country as successful as he was. He promised to “Make America Great Again,” and in August 2015, more than 30,000 Alabamians turned out to see him at the start of what would be a rise to the presidency of the United States.

As journalist McCreesh reported, Trump’s return to Mobile tonight had a wistful feel. The stadium where he spoke was nowhere near the size of the football stadium of 2015, and even so, it was not full. McCreesh noted that some of the upper sections were almost entirely empty.

Trump is planning to travel to 17 states before the midterms to rally MAGA voters who might otherwise not turn out. “Can everybody just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot?” Trump asked the audience in Mobile.

That is no longer a selling point, even for many of those who embrace the administration’s racism and sexism.

An AP/NORC poll from September 24 showed that only 31% of Americans give Trump good marks for how he is handling the presidency. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that in September, rising prices turned a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents against Trump’s handling of the economy. The rising price of diesel has hit rural America particularly hard, and it was in rural America where Trump found his strongest support.

Today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the U.S. added just 29,000 jobs last month, unemployment has risen to 4.2%, and wage growth has slowed. The bureau revised the job numbers for August and July downward, showing that July actually saw a loss of 10,000 jobs.

Trump is aware enough of his falling popularity that, according to Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz, Shane Goldmacher, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times, he personally ordered Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to come up with $20 million to run the new television ads praising him. The journalists report that Vought took the money from funding Congress had appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican Senate Leadership Fund today stopped spending money to elect Michael Whatley to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. The former chair of both the Republican Party of North Carolina and the Republican National Committee, placed in that role by Trump for the months that covered the 2024 election, Whatley is down by double digits in the polls against former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

They are shifting that money to Kansas, to shore up Republican senator Roger Marshall, recently mired in the revelations that his aggressive debt collection from 700 of his obstetric patients led to the arrests of 81 of them. Polls show Marshall’s Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, a pastor who used to be a Republican, pulling ahead.

Two of the four living Republican governors of Kansas have endorsed Hamilton. Today, former governor Mike Hayden said he is backing Hamilton because “[g]overning should always center around the best interests of the people.” By supporting Trump’s tariffs and the war on Iran, which are destroying markets and driving prices so high that Kansas farmers are at risk of losing their farms, he said, Marshall “is failing to live up to that standard.”

And therein lies the crux of the crisis that is driving a seismic political change: it has become crystal clear that Trump never intended to address the real problems he identified. His tariffs, deep tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, extraordinary corruption, multiple vanity projects, and war on Iran are benefiting him, his family, and his cronies. At the same time, the Republicans are, at his direction, slashing the social welfare programs, medical funding, education, infrastructure, and healthcare that used to serve the American people.

Trump has taken to claiming that the country’s economy is booming, but that he and the Republicans have done a bad job of telling people. “All over the country, they’re building factories, plants—manufacturing’s coming back,” he told a crowd at a truck facility in Texas. “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations.”

But as Josh Boak of the Associated Press reported today, people aren’t buying it. One three-time Trump voter in Ohio, who was one of 1,400 just laid off from a truck factory just days before Trump held a rally nearby, is now knocking on doors for Democrats. “Something has to change politically in this country,” he told Boak. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

The old MAGA rhetoric isn’t working any more, and Democrats are taking over the space that Trump exploited.

On Thursday, campaigning in South Florida, Vice President J.D. Vance called Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Angie Nixon a “self-described socialist,” and said the right response was to tell her to “get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America.”

In response, journalist Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami suggested that people were “somewhat surprised that the vice president would actually say that based on your political views, you should get out of America if you’re not happy here.”

Nixon herself responded: “It’s very disrespectful. It’s really disheartening, especially knowing that I come from folks who helped build this country, and my grandparents were sharecroppers in southern Georgia. And all I want for people is to have access to quality healthcare, to have access to fully funded public schools, for people to have homes to live in, and not have to worry about living on the streets.

“There’s absolutely nothing radical or extreme about that,” she continued. “And I don’t consider myself a socialist. I consider myself a lifelong Democrat who puts people over party, people over politics, and people over profit.”

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

That spirit matters at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly turning the law into an instrument of reactionary concentrated power, desecrating morality, crippling the foundations of democracy, and reproducing the worst dimensions of gangster capitalism.

Nuremberg made clear that judges and other officials cannot use the authority of law to cover up and legitimate actions that are morally depraved and politically destructive. Its lesson for the present is stark: when law is emptied of justice and used to normalize cruelty, annihilate democratic rights, and place concentrated power beyond accountability, legality itself becomes a weapon in the destruction of democracy. The reactionary Court has become part of a political order whose governing ethos increasingly resembles what Jeet Heer, writing of Trump, calls being “besotted by the romance of gangsterism.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to expand the use of its citizenship-verification database is more than another dispute over how elections should be administered. By a 6–3 vote, the Court lifted a lower-court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using an expanded version of the SAVE database, now linked to Social Security records, to assist states in checking voter eligibility. The danger is hardly abstract. As Stephen Prager reports in Common Dreams, the database contains known errors, raising the possibility that “many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registration wrongfully cancelled just weeks before midterm” elections.

The immediate electoral consequences may nevertheless be limited: federal law generally prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That safeguard does not eliminate the risks of erroneous removals or the privacy concerns raised by the plaintiffs, but it constrains the scale of systematic voter purges in the weeks immediately preceding the election. The ruling does not require states to use the system, and the underlying legal dispute remains unresolved, though the Court signaled its preliminary view of the merits, stating that the challengers’ claims “likely lack merit” and that it would likely reverse the district court’s finding that the administration had violated federal law.

Nor has the Court simply rubber-stamped every administration effort to rewrite election rules: earlier this month, it blocked Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail voting before the midterms. The significance of the latest ruling therefore lies not in claiming that every decision moves in the same authoritarian direction, but in confronting what happens when the nation’s highest court repeatedly removes barriers to concentrated power, strengthens an increasingly authoritarian presidency, and provides legal cover for a political project that attacks voting rights, intensifies racial exclusion, and aligns the machinery of the state with white-nationalist politics. What is being placed at risk is not simply constitutional restraint, but democracy itself.

Yet the significance of these decisions cannot be grasped if they are treated simply as isolated legal disputes. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “profane illumination” offers another way of reading them: the particular can suddenly illuminate the larger social forces condensed within it. As AK Thompson, drawing on Benjamin, argues, particular events can alert us to “the broader social process from which [they] derive.”

Read in this way, the Court’s rulings are not merely discrete constitutional decisions. They are fragments of a larger political transformation in which concentrated executive power, racial exclusion, the political power of wealth, attacks on voting rights, and the weakening of democratic restraints increasingly converge. The task is not to claim that every ruling is fascist, but to recognize what these decisions illuminate when viewed together: the emergence of a political order in which democratic institutions are increasingly reorganized to serve authoritarian ends. Fascism becomes visible not simply in a single spectacular act, but in the accumulation of institutional changes that make concentrated power appear lawful, ordinary, and legitimate.

The danger becomes clearer when law itself ceases to restrain authoritarian power and begins to legitimate it. That is why Germany in 1933 matters—not as a historical equivalent, but as a warning about what happens when legality itself is turned against democracy.

The comparison with Hitler’s Enabling Act of March 1933 must therefore be made carefully. The situations are not equivalent. Passed amid intimidation, political repression, and the exclusion of Communist deputies, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without parliamentary approval, even when they violated the Weimar Constitution. It did not merely weaken German democracy. It supplied the legal machinery for destroying it.

The point lies not in equating the two moments but in recognizing a political mechanism. Fascism does not need to abolish the law to seize and weaponize its authority. The Nazis captured courts, the civil service, education, culture, and administrative institutions and bent them toward authoritarian ends. Democracy was not attacked from outside. Its own institutions were seized, emptied of their democratic substance, and turned against the people they were supposed to protect.

After visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, legal scholar Kim Wehle observed fascism does not always arrive through spectacular acts of force; it can also advance “by operation of law.” The historical warning should be taken seriously. Authoritarian power becomes especially dangerous when repression no longer appears as a violation of legal authority but is enabled through it, drawing upon the legitimacy, procedures, and institutional protections of law itself. The warning resonates in the present: in the expansion of detention and mass-deportation machinery, the military occupation of American cities, overt and dangerous attacks on free speech and the press, and the political cleansing of educational institutions. What was once unthinkable is being transformed into policy, while cruelty becomes routine and authoritarianism is woven into the everyday machinery of the state and everyday life.

German judges offer a particularly chilling example. The judiciary did not mount a serious institutional resistance to the Nazi seizure of power. Much of the legal establishment accommodated itself to the new regime. Dictatorship thereby acquired one of its most powerful weapons: the appearance of legality. Law remained in place, but its political function changed. It authorized power in the service of domination and mass destruction rather than restraining it.

But the question is not simply how authoritarian governments capture the law. It is whose interests the law protects, whose power it strengthens, and whose suffering it renders invisible. Fascism cannot be understood solely as the triumph of authoritarian leaders or the collapse of constitutional safeguards. Its history is inseparable from the relationship among political repression, class power, and the economic interests that support and benefit from authoritarianrule.

That is where the warning reaches the present. No single Supreme Court ruling is an American Enabling Act. The danger lies in accumulation: voting protections weakened, presidential power enlarged, the political power of concentrated wealth fortified, and the capacity to challenge executive power narrowed. What is being transformed is not simply constitutional doctrine but the political function of the Court itself. An institution charged with checking concentrated power is increasingly constructing the legal architecture that enables it.

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected the charge that the Court has become a political institution, complaining that too many Americans now view the justices as “political actors.”

But the deeper issue is not whether the justices behave like elected politicians. It is whether the Court is using the authority of law to make authoritarianism appear constitutionally legitimate. When voting rights are weakened, presidential immunity expanded, concentrated wealth granted greater political power, and barriers to executive authority dismantled, the Court does more than interpret law: it alters the conditions under which democracy can survive. Law becomes a weapon of concentrated power, and constitutional authority becomes its shield. It is not merely failing democracy. It is helping to construct the legal machinery for its destruction. The abuse of law does more than legitimate a culture of cruelty; it helps make cruelty appear normal. As Susan Neiman argues in Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, one of the great dangers of the present moment lies in the normalization of evil, a process through which cruelty becomes ordinary, injustice appears acceptable, and the unthinkable acquires the force of common sense. When cruelty and state violence are sanctioned by law, the terror of the unthinkable is absorbed into the language of common sense. Images of Gestapo-like ICE agents beating peaceful protesters become just another spectacle in the daily flow of violence, stripping brutality of its capacity to shock, outrage, and provoke resistance. What follows is the slow death of conscience itself.

The Court has increasingly shifted power upward, away from voters, legislatures, lower courts, and independent agencies and toward the presidency and the Court itself. In this sense, it has become a criminogenic institution: not because its justices themselves are criminals, but because its decisions can create the legal conditions under which abuses of power become harder to prevent, challenge, or punish. Under such circumstances, democracy is being strangled and the guardrails meant to protect it have become instruments for disabling it.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, vastly expanding the ability of private wealth to shape electoral politics. It did not formally declare that “corporations are people” or authorize unlimited direct corporate contributions to candidates. It did something more politically consequential: it strengthened the constitutional power of corporations and concentrated wealth to shape political speech, allowing economic power to exercise an increasingly powerful influence over politics and democratic life.

Elon Musk’s expenditure of more than a quarter-billion dollars supporting Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 offers a stark illustration of the political world that followed. There is a longer and darker history at work here. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stood not outside the history of American white supremacy but within it. Dred Scottconstitutionalized Black exclusion from citizenship; the post-Reconstruction Court helped destroy federal protections for Black freedom; and Plessy gave Jim Crow the sanction of constitutional law. The Warren Court broke decisively with important parts of that history, but the Roberts Court has driven the country backward. Representative Jamie Raskin puts the point starkly, arguing that the Court has “returned to the historic baseline of political White supremacy,” particularly through its dismantling of voting-rights protections. The language has changed, but the political work of racial domination does not require the vocabulary of Dred Scott or Plessy. It can operate through the allegedly neutral language of colorblindness, states’ rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional restraint—stripping history from the law while disabling the democratic means for confronting the racial hierarchies that history produced.

That history bears directly on the Court’s assault on voting rights. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the coverage formula that made the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system operative, disabling one of the law’s most powerful protections against discriminatory voting rules. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed the terrain further by making certain Section 2 challenges to voting restrictions more difficult.

In Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court went further, holding that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-Black district at issue and that the resulting race-based district could not survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision further narrowed the legal terrain on which racial representation and voting rights can be defended.

The Court’s assault on established rights has extended beyond voting. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century and returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. Dobbs was more than the destruction of a longstanding reproductive right. It demonstrated the willingness of the Court’s conservative majority to use its power to strip away an established constitutional protection on which generations of women had relied.

The Court has simultaneously enlarged presidential power. In Trump v. United States (2024), it created a constitutional doctrine of presidential criminal immunity: absolute immunity for actions within the president’s core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, while leaving unofficial conduct unprotected. The decision fundamentally altered presidential accountability by giving presidents new constitutional protection against criminal prosecution for exercises of official power.

The pattern has only intensified. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Court sharply restricted the power of lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions against executive action. In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), it expanded presidential control over independent regulatory agencies. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026), it struck down limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. And now, with the citizenship-database ruling, the Court has allowed the administration, while litigation continues, to expand a system that states can use to challenge voter eligibility. Different cases, different doctrines, but the same political trajectory: power concentrated in the presidency, protected for the wealthy, and increasingly insulated from democratic constraint.

The Enabling Act helped clear the way for Gleichschaltung, the coordination of German political, social, and cultural life with the Nazi state. Political parties disappeared, trade unions were abolished, state governments were subordinated, the civil service was purged, and education, law, culture, and professional life were brought under Nazi control. Within six months, Germany had ceased to be a multiparty democracy.

The question, then, is not whether the United States is Germany in 1933. History does not repeat itself on command; instead, it leaves warnings written in its ruins. Primo Levi understood this with extraordinary clarity when he warned that “every age has its own fascism,” whose signs appear wherever “the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” Fascism, in this sense, need not return wearing the uniform of the past. It emerges through the institutions, technologies, fears, and forms of power particular to its own historical moment.

The ghost of Nuremberg nevertheless hangs over this history. Among the lesser-known proceedings that followed the trials of the major Nazi leaders was the 1947 Jurists’ Trial, in which judges, prosecutors, and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice were prosecuted for their participation in a legal system that had transformed persecution and state violence into instruments of law. The analogy must not be abused: the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg and the decisions of the present Supreme Court are not historical equivalents. But the principle that emerged from those proceedings remains indispensable. Judicial office does not place those who wield the law beyond questions of responsibility. The robe cannot become a sanctuary from accountability when law itself is turned into an instrument of authoritarian power. As the judgment in the Nuremberg Jurists’ Trial put it with unforgettable force, “The dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

The lesson for the present is not that America requires another Nuremberg tribunal. It is that democracy cannot survive if those who exercise immense judicial power are imagined to stand beyond democratic accountability simply because their decisions arrive clothed in the language of constitutional law. The deeper question raised by the Roberts Court is therefore not simply whether particular rulings are conservative, reactionary, or profoundly unjust. It is what forms of accountability become necessary when a nation’s highest court repeatedly uses the authority of law to dismantle the very conditions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place.

That question cannot be separated from the politics of memory. As Marcelo Rubens Paiva argued in a 2015 interview cited in Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako’s Disputed Pasts, “not having a Nuremberg trial in Brazil in the 1980s contaminated the process of democratization and our current democracy.” The warning is crucial. The demands of resistance must also include the work of remembrance: counting, documenting, preserving, and publicly naming the legal abuses, democratic injuries, and moral violations committed under the cover of institutional authority. The record must be kept, not for vengeance, but because democracy cannot defend itself against abuses it has been taught to forget. There can be no manufactured innocence for those who use the authority of their offices to legitimate the machinery of authoritarian power, and no political amnesty purchased through national amnesia.

That is why the struggle over law is also a struggle over memory, responsibility, and the future. When institutions created to restrain power are reorganized to serve it; when courts turn domination into doctrine; when concentrated wealth acquires constitutional protection while democratic rights are stripped away; and when authoritarian measures no longer need to violate the law because they arrive bearing its authority, silence becomes a form of complicity and forgetting becomes an invitation to normalize once again the cruelties, crimes, and authoritarian practices that memory was meant to prevent.

What is often missed in analyzing law as an instrument of domination is its role as a pedagogical force. Law does more than prohibit, punish, and exclude. It teaches people who counts as a political agent, who has access to power, and who has the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives. When law becomes a mechanism of exclusion and disposability, it denies particular groups both political rights and access to the institutions and public spaces in which they can understand how power works, develop a critical consciousness, imagine alternatives, and create solidarities through social movements, education, and cultural work. Legalized illegalities function as forms of exclusion that weaken the conditions in which people learn to interpret their experiences, understand their place within relations of power, and act collectively to change them. This repressive use of the law restricts political agency while also attacking the conditions necessary for its development. This is a form of pedagogical terrorism in which law is used to weaken the knowledge, social relations, and collective capacities necessary to recognize, resist, and transform oppressive relations of power.

There is an even more ominous logic at work here, one that moves beyond the politics of disposability toward what Brad Evans and I have called a politics of disappearance (forthcoming in Theory, Culture,& Society). Disposability abandons populations deemed economically or politically surplus; disappearance goes further by erasing the social, legal, historical, and moral conditions through which their lives can be publicly recognized and their suffering made visible. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations makes this distinction especially urgent. Migrants can now be sent to countries with which they have no connection, without the protections required by the lower court to contest the danger of persecution or torture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in the Court’s earlier intervention in the same litigation that the policy could expose “thousands to the risk of torture or death.” This is more than a politics of expulsion. It points toward a politics of disappearance historically associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, in which those marked as unwanted are removed from the spaces of legal protection, public visibility, and moral responsibility. They enter what might be called a “vortex of erasure,” where criminalization, surveillance, detention, bureaucratic exclusion, forced removal, and organized forgetting reinforce one another.

Recognizing how law can be turned into an instrument of authoritarian power also raises the question of what will be required to undo the damage it has sanctioned and made possible. Fascism does not always announce itself by smashing the legal order. It can advance by capturing that order, hollowing it out, and turning the machinery of democracy against democracy itself. If democracy is ever to be rebuilt from the damage of the present, the task will not be to forgive and forget in the name of national unity, civility, or a return to normal. It will be to remember, to document, to judge, and, where the law permits, to hold accountable those responsible for abuses of power. No amnesia. No manufactured innocence. No impunity. Without truth and accountability, there can be no democratic future.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019).

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.

The Tompkins County district attorney said recently that the evidence he reviewed in 2024 made it impossible for him to bring charges in the Cornell University rape inquiry.

But records obtained by The New York Times show that the same district attorney’s office declined to review any additional evidence gathered by the campus police department beyond a six-page statement signed by the former student, now known as Jane Doe.

The decision not to review the additional evidence has not been previously reported.

On Nov. 25, 2024, a Cornell police investigator, Jeffrey Northrop, spoke to a member of the district attorney’s staff, Jeff Huddle, about additional interviews the police had done, the records show.

Prosecutors did not express interest, saying they agreed that based on the woman’s statement, “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case,” Mr. Northrop wrote in a note documenting their call.

By that point, the police had conducted numerous interviews, reviewed chat messages, logged anonymous tips, reached out to lawyers for some of the accused men and spoken to at least two others, the records show.

On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, harshly criticized the district attorney and the Cornell police for the way they handled the investigation and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor, giving her power to bring criminal charges.

All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied any wrongdoing, and none has been charged with a crime.

Reached on Thursday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, right, said by email that any additional records gathered by the Cornell police were “not pertinent to our analysis because we had Jane Doe’s comprehensive account of the events.”

Mr. Huddle referred questions to the district attorney.

The interaction between Mr. Northrop and Mr. Van Houten’s office was one example of what experts said appeared to be numerous law enforcement shortcomings in the investigation of Jane Doe’s account.

Mr. Van Houten has said that based on Jane Doe’s lawsuit he would reopen the investigation.

But his office’s decision at the time not to examine additional evidence that had been gathered, or to seek any additional inquiry beyond a single — and as it turns out, incomplete — campus police statement, was a stark departure from how complicated sex crimes investigations should be handled, said former prosecutors and other experts.ImageMatthew Van Houten smiles for the camera. He is wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie.The Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten has been harshly criticized for his handling of the Cornell rape inquiry.Credit…Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Mr. Van Houten has defended his original decision not to prosecute, saying Jane Doe’s account in her police statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.”

He said the facts in her initial statement did not constitute a crime under New York law, and that he had never been contacted by Jane Doe or her lawyers before her lawsuit.

The former prosecutors, however, said the district attorney’s approach fell short in multiple ways, including his failure to bring Jane Doe in to be interviewed by his office and his apparent total reliance on a statement recorded — and, more broadly, an investigation conducted — by the university police.

“We would never rely on a campus police investigation,” said Rick Trunfio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in upstate New York and now an adjunct law professor at Syracuse University. “There’s too many problems with that.”

Mr. Trunfio and other experts said the investigation should have been handed off to a specialized police or prosecution team like the special victims bureau he founded at the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. Also problematic, he added, is that the Cornell University Police Department was “beholden” to the school, which would have had to report under federal law if a gang rape on campus was prosecuted by civilian authorities.

“You think Cornell University wants to report something like that?” Mr. Trunfio said.

A Cornell representative who speaks on behalf of the campus police declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 3, 2026. A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.

Campus sexual assault survivors and their supporters have published essays in school newspapers and inundated social media in solidarity with the complainant, known in court records only as Jane Doe.

Some are using the familiar #MeToo hashtag of an earlier movement to combat sexual abuse and harassment. Others have adopted a new one: #IAmJaneDoe.

In one opinion article in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper, students wrote that “sexual violence happens far too often on college campuses everywhere.”

“It’s time to face the fact that the ‘Cornell incident’ isn’t just born of Cornell problems, or limited to a Cornell issue,” the students wrote.

The outrage flooding social media and rising up on campuses follows similar waves of disgust about campus sexual violence that emerged more than a decade ago and then reignited after the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with Hollywood sexual assault revelations. Driving the campaign in support of Ms. Doe is a feeling that not enough changed after similar movements.

The Penn students wrote, for example, that past responses have been bureaucratic, and that universities “prioritize bolstering their own image” instead of making deeper changes that protect women from assault.

Celebrities have also joined the outcry. Mariska Hargitay and her Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports domestic violence survivors, posted: “Survivors deserve to be believed and kept informed. Silence protects no one. To her: we support you.”

During an appearance in Ithaca, N.Y., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the 2024 episode at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house part of a “culture of rape” on college campuses.

In the lawsuit, the young woman says she was assaulted at the Chi Phi house on Cornell’s campus, names seven men who were involved and says the university and law enforcement agencies did not do enough to punish or pursue prosecution of the men.

The men involved have denied the allegations, while the university, the fraternity and prosecutors have said they responded appropriately given the information they had at the time.

Lawyers point out the difficulty of prosecuting such cases in court, particularly when many complainants, including Ms. Doe, change their accounts over time. Records obtained by The New York Times present a murky picture of what took place. The woman indicated in one text message to one of the men that “nothing illegal” had happened. But she also told police investigators that “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The widespread condemnation of accused men could create an unfair dynamic, according to Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer for one of the Cornell men, Gillio Lopes. He said the “danger in a case like this is that an accusation, amplified often enough, can harden into a verdict before the evidence is ever tested.”

Mr. Miltenberg, known for representing students against sexual misconduct claims, said the attention was compounded by statements of public officials that seemed to side with Ms. Doe.

On Sept. 28, Attorney General Letitia James posted on X: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and prayers.”

Several days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Ms. James to take over investigating the case.

Mr. Lopes has unequivocally denied the allegations, Mr. Miltenberg said.

The online outpouring in support of Ms. Doe has also led to a backlash, with some right-wing commentators condemning her and others trying to reveal her identity.

Federal data shows that nationally, there were 6,000 to 6,200 reports of rapes on campus a year from 2014 to 2019, or about eight to 11 per 10,000 on-campus students. But reports declined drastically during the pandemic years, when many students took classes remotely. Since then, they have begun to rise again.

The data does not show how many reports resulted in action or were substantiated.

But the available data suggests the problem has been widespread. Over a quarter of undergraduate women reported some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, or because they were unable to consent, according to a large survey of students conducted by the Association of American Universities in 2019.

That survey also found evidence of a growing awareness about rules and resources, as universities built out new policies and training.

At Cornell, a survey conducted by the university found that roughly one-third of undergraduate women said they had unwanted sexual experiences.

For some current Cornell students and recent graduates, reading Ms. Doe’s claims of assault has prompted them to share memories of their own experiences of sexual misconduct. Many said that the allegations weren’t entirely surprising because of how often they had heard about friends who said they had been assaulted at parties.

“To be honest, there are so many during my time there that it almost feels like it all blurs into one,” said Claire Ting, who graduated from Cornell last year and served in student government, referring to conversations with friends about upsetting sexual experiences. “We would see posts and discussions talking about the sexual assaults that happened,” she added. “The buzz would die down and then it would happen again.”

The response, she said, was “hurdle after hurdle of bureaucracy.”

There have been other moments in recent decades when campus sexual assault has dominated the national conversation. When the documentary “The Hunting Ground” was released in 2015, for example, it galvanized a movement.

Lady Gaga sang the film’s theme song at the Oscars, where she was introduced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. At the time, statistics showed that one in four women on campus reported being sexual assault victims. Just months before the film’s release, the launch of a White House campaign to end campus sexual assault — “It’s On Us” — seemed to signal a changing tide.

More than a decade later, though, the allegations at Cornell prompted questions among survivors about whether anything has changed.

Kacey Lee, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, said she was both “shocked and not shocked” in the fall of 2024 when she heard about Ms. Doe’s reported assault.

“Being around frat culture and knowing how people can be there was a level of — not that I was expecting it, but I was not the most surprised,” Ms. Lee said.

While federal data shows that Cornell has reported as many as 28 campus rapes in some recent years, its on-campus undergraduate population is the largest of any Ivy League school. When adjusted for its size, Cornell mirrors many of its peer institutions.

New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 3, 2026. Michael I. Kotlikoff, below right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

The president of Cornell University assured the campus community that officials would take action in the wake of sexual assault allegations, promising in his first personal statement about the incident that “this will not be a moment that passes.”

In an eight-minute video, the president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, acknowledged the distrust that has gripped his campus since a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at a campus fraternity garnered national attention. He promised that the university, which has been criticized for its handling of the initial allegations, would be more transparent going forward.

Mr. Kotlikoff, who has served in the role for about two years, struck a conciliatory tone, saying the university supported an independent investigation and would work to find ways to hold Greek life accountable.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history,” Mr. Kotlikoff said.

A woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 at a Chi Phi fraternity house on Cornell’s campus by seven men and that the school and local law enforcement failed to punish those involved appropriately. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and they have denied wrongdoing, and the university has defended its handling of the allegations.

More On Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family’s Russian Ties

New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine has withstood other such campaigns since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the country more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying Kyiv,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post on Friday. “It is no longer possible to pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative safety Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by crowded cafes and nail salons — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down. Ukraine’s own attacks on Russian bridges have yielded mixed results. The Kerch Bridge, which connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia, closed temporarily several times after attacks but was never knocked out.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

One road bridge crosses the river north of Kyiv. To the south, the nearest is about 90 miles away, a roughly 2.5-hour drive. More bridges lie farther downriver, but using them would mean a long detour, and their proximity to the southern front leaves them even more exposed to Russian attacks.

In the early days of the war, Ukrainian officials considered blowing up Kyiv’s bridges to halt Russian troops closing in on the eastern bank. They held off as counterattacks eventually succeeded in routing the Russian forces advancing from the east

Oct. 2, 2026

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Agency Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress, Adam Sella, Christopher Flavelle and Irena Hwang, Oct. 2, 2026. The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Not To Alarm You, But Trump’s Brain Is Melted, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 2, 2026. And Hegseth’s neo-fascism is out in the open.

Special Report

• New York Times, Trump Directed Use of Taxpayer Money for Ads Praising His Presidency, Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 2, 2026. The government-funded ads show just how much President Trump has been able to use federal money for his own aims.

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Tries to Buy Votes With $500 Checks, GOP Senator Tells Trump “I Don’t Take This Bullsh*t,” Final Jobs Report Tanks, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 2, 2026. Nearly a million Americans are opening their mailboxes this week to find a $500 Obamacare refund check from Donald Trump, along with a letter blaming Joe Biden, just weeks before the midterms and just weeks before those same families learn how much their premiums are going up again.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, Oct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing. Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, Oct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

• New York Times, Christa Pike Was Unconscious and on Ventilator After Execution Attempt, Emily Cochrane, Oct. 2, 2026. Christa Pike, above, was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital as of Thursday evening, a day after surviving a botched execution attempt, her lawyers said in a court filing.
• New York Times, Hochul Rebukes Prosecutor’s Handling of Cornell Case, Hurubie Meko and Claire Fahy, Oct. 2, 2026. “In what world would the police” not elevate allegations of a rape to the district attorney, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York asked.

More On Trump’s Military, Middle East Wars, Energy Shortages

• New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, Oct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught. And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part.So I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.” The remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• Hopium Chronicles, Opinion and Advocacy: Trump Gets A Crappy Jobs Report, The Election Cheating Has Begun, Zelenskyy Warns The World That Winter Is Coming, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 2, 2026. We just got the September jobs report this morning, and it was a crappy one: only 29,000 jobs created, well below estimates, and downward revisions in July and August of 60,000 jobs. This means that net-net we lost jobs this month while average hourly earnings also only grew by 0.1 percent — also a disappointing number, particularly given that inflation is running at a 3.4% annual rate. What we learned this morning is that the economy is slowing and workers are falling further and further behind.
• New York Times, As Prospects Dim, G.O.P. Pulls Money Out of North Carolina Senate Race, Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 2, 2026. As the Republicans try to hold their majority, the Senate Leadership Fund is diverting resources to Kansas, which has become a growing concern for the party.

More Global News

• New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

Top Headlines

New York Times, Agency Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress, Adam Sella, Christopher Flavelle and Irena Hwang, Oct. 2, 2026. The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.

The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times.

The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties have consistently opposed White House-led proposals to cut funding to major science agencies, including the N.S.F. and the National Institutes of Health.

Since the N.S.F. was founded over 75 years ago, the agency has spent nearly all of its budget on so-called basic research from a wide range of scientific fields, which has led to major advances in technology such as M.R.I.s, semiconductors and the internet.

The White House wants to redirect the money to a limited set of administration priorities, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s plans.

Congress appropriates money to the N.S.F. on two-year cycles, so the agency could still spend the held-over money in the new fiscal year, which began on Thursday.

But Democratic lawmakers see the strategy as more of a political power grab by the White House.

“The money should be granted as Congress intended, and essentially, they’re ignoring what Congress did,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee. “It’s a dramatic attack on the science enterprise that has served us very well since World War II, when this whole system was set up,” Ms. Lofgren added.

The White House and the N.S.F. said that diverting the money was allowed under Congress’s two-year appropriation.

Mike England, a spokesman for the science foundation, said in a statement that the agency had “carried over funds to invest in agency priorities that are aligned with broader administration initiatives.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Not To Alarm You, But Trump’s Brain Is Melted, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 2, 2026. And Hegseth’s neo-fascism is out in the open.

Just how bad has Donald Trump’s leadership been for the Kennedy Center’s financial health? CNN reports that, after Trump slapped his name on the building late last year, donation pledges plunged more than 100 percent compared to the previous three-month period. That’s so dramatic it sounds mathematically impossible, but it isn’t: “A decline of that size is possible,” a tax expert told CNN, “if earlier pledges were withdrawn.”

But hey, that’s just a building’s economic well-being. How about the nation’s? Well, here’s September’s jobs data, as announced this morning: “The U.S. added 29,000 jobs in September, far short of expectations,” and “The unemployment rate rose to 4.2%.” Happy Friday.

Special Report

New York Times, Trump Directed Use of Taxpayer Money for Ads Praising His Presidency, Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 2, 2026. The government-funded ads show just how much President Trump has been able to use federal money for his own aims.

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

This article is based on interviews with 12 people familiar with the president’s interest in the ads and how they came to be. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s demand.

The taxpayer-funded ads have been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as a possible violation of federal laws against using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” And they come as the president is also directing spending from his super PAC — MAGA Inc., which entered the fall with $400 million — for which he has been raising money since he won re-election in 2024.

It was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from the super PAC, were used for the spots.

The White House has called the ads public service announcements and said they are appropriate because there is no “call to action” to vote for any candidate. Some of his aides also noted that Mr. Trump is not running for office now, in an attempt to blunt criticism of the ads as violating federal laws about the use of public money.

When pressed by a reporter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.”

“But these are ads for the country,” he added. “You have to understand. I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

At least four spots have run so far, at a cost of about $5.5 million, and that is expected to grow, according to the media tracker AdImpact and people familiar with the spending. One played images of Mr. Trump to the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN. (The artist has protested the use of his song.)

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Tries to Buy Votes With $500 Checks, GOP Senator Tells Trump “I Don’t Take This Bullsh*t,” Final Jobs Report Tanks, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 2, 2026. Nearly a million Americans are opening their mailboxes this week to find a $500 Obamacare refund check from Donald Trump, along with a letter blaming Joe Biden, just weeks before the midterms and just weeks before those same families learn how much their premiums are going up again.

Meanwhile, the final jobs report before the election came in at just 29,000 jobs, with wages now falling behind inflation, and Trump is sending 9,000 more troops to the Middle East while promising the Iran war will end “right after the election.”

And Republicans are running for cover. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately texted Trump that he doesn’t “take this bullsh*t from anyone,” GOP candidates from Michigan to Florida are scrubbing Trump from their campaigns, and one Republican told Politico that the president has become “kryptonite.” Plus, resurfaced clips show Colorado’s Republican nominee for governor describing slamming his wife into a door and throwing his toddler across a room.

This week, we brought you exclusive information on an FBI interview with an Epstein-linked banker that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Justice Department never released. And we’re working on more big stories that I can’t wait to share with you soon. 

And, this morning, I woke up to the “journalist” who is trying to unmask the Cornell Jane Doe and the same person smearing the Epstein survivors attacking me. Guess I struck a nerve

Here’s the news:

Trump Mails $500 Obamacare Refund Checks With a Letter Blaming Biden, Weeks Before the Midterms. The Treasury Department began sending one-time $500 refunds this week to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees in 30 states who buy coverage on healthcare.gov without federal subsidies, mostly middle-income Americans, each accompanied by a letter from Trump claiming “the Biden Administration overcharged you” and touting his healthcare record. The checks are funded by unspent fees insurers pay to run the federal exchange, money that largely piled up because Trump’s first administration slashed spending on enrollment help, marketing and the call center, and experts dispute his claim that enrollees were “wrongly overcharged.” The payments land just over a month before the midterms, after Republicans let enhanced ACA subsidies expire at the end of last year, sending premiums skyrocketing for many middle-income families. Trump claims the $500 will cover the premium spike “in many cases,” but KFF found some enrollees’ monthly costs rose far more than that, and premiums are set to jump again for 2027, with new prices revealed when open enrollment starts Nov. 1, just days before Election Day.

Colorado GOP Governor Nominee Victor Marx Described Body-Slamming His Wife and Throwing His Toddler in Resurfaced Clips. Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, described slamming his wife into their front door and throwing his toddler son across a room, and claimed God gave him a “gift for violence,” in videos and posts uncovered by The Daily Beast. In a 2021 podcast, Marx said he was “infuriated” when his wife said she didn’t need martial arts training because she “was married to a black belt Marine,” recalling “grabbing her and slamming her into our front door,” and in a 2020 episode of his own podcast he said that after seeing his son push his sister, “I snatched him up and threw him across the room.” The evangelical minister and Marine veteran has also spoken extensively about demonic possession and has claimed his stepfather forced him to kill a man when he was 7 years old. Marx, who has never held office, narrowly won June’s GOP primary, but has struggled to win over the state party establishment, with former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams saying, “I want Victor Marx to lose by as large a margin as possible.” He faces Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November in a state where Republicans haven’t won a governor’s race since 2002.

Republicans Break With Trump as Tillis’s Explosive Texts Reveal He Told the President He Doesn’t “Take That Bullsh*t From Anyone”

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately tore into Trump in a pair of blistering text messages obtained by Politico. “I still want to help but I don’t take this bullsht from anyone, including you Mr. President,” Tillis wrote on May 22, hours after Trump branded him “weak and ineffective,” a “Nitpicker” and a “QUITTER” on Truth Social. “Save that sht for the cowards who don’t care if you fail. I care if you fail and right now we are failing.” In a June 6 text, Tillis insisted Trump had never threatened him with a primary, writing that if he had, “I would have immediately told you to f*ck yourself” and adding, “Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.” The messages will appear in Tillis’s upcoming book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” and come as he has repeatedly broken with the administration, including denouncing the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Less than 40 days out from the midterms, Republican candidates across the country are openly distancing themselves from Trump, in what one former GOP congressman called “survival mode time.” Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers filmed a video in a grocery store declaring “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” joined by GOP candidates in Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio. Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s closest allies, scrubbed the “Trump-Endorsed” banner and photos from his campaign website, and Rep. María Elvira Salazar ran an ad breaking with Trump on immigration in a district he won by 14 points. Even three GOP senators, including John Cornyn and Tillis, backed calls to investigate Trump’s son over a wedding after-party paid for by a Russian businessman with ties to Putin. Former Trump aide Marc Short said the distancing “does feel somewhat like desperation,” as Trump’s approval on the economy hit a record-low 27% in a CNN poll.

Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, a longtime Trump ally, has gone from election denial to declaring “Joe Biden won.” When Trump endorsed him in January, Tiffany said he was “especially honored” and vowed to “make Wisconsin great again,” and as recently as May he backed an FBI probe into Wisconsin’s 2020 votes. But in recent weeks, he’s broken with Trump on data centers and beef import tariffs, deflected questions on Trump’s mail-in voting push, and brushed off Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario by saying “the Great Lakes are the Great Lakes.” Politico reports candidates in tight races are increasingly treating the president as a liability, with one source summing it up: “He is kryptonite.” It’s a striking shift for a party where crossing Trump has ended careers, with Trump having successfully backed primary challengers to Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Bill Cassidy this cycle.

Some Republicans are reversing their own votes to escape Trump’s shadow, drawing mockery from Democrats. Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson now says the Iran war “needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” despite voting multiple times, including last week, against a war powers resolution to rein it in. Iowa Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks flipped their positions to help pass a Democratic measure directing Trump to halt the conflict. Longtime Trump ally Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, facing a tough race, declared “the cost of diesel is just too damn high,” backing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s call for a diesel export embargo, an idea Trump’s own energy secretary dismissed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans are in “full panic mode” because Trump’s approval ratings “are at extinction levels.”

Trump’s own campaign schedule shows a party playing defense on home turf. This week alone, Trump is campaigning in Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio, states he carried by 30, 34 and 11 points just two years ago, while purple battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania go uncovered. “The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now,” one GOP donor told Politico. Republican groups plan to spend $166 million just to boost Ken Paxton in Texas, more than they’re spending on competitive Senate races in Michigan and Maine combined, with the total GOP-aligned bill in Texas expected to top $300 million. As New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore put it, Trump appears to be “simply trying to mitigate losses rather than to win,” a terrible sign for a politician obsessed with winning.

Trump Claims Iran War Will End “Right After the Election” as 9,000 More Troops Head to the Middle East

Trump is making increasingly erratic claims about the Iran war, promising it will end “right after the election” while admitting he doesn’t know who’s running the country. Speaking at a Peterbilt plant in Denton, Texas, Thursday night, Trump insisted Iran “is ready to fold up” and that “I’m ensuring that Iran will be very quickly ended,” adding, “Maybe before the election.” He also conceded, “we don’t know who the hell to deal with, to be honest with you. Nobody wants to be president.” Trump claimed he bombed Iran partly because “they were doing drugs,” a new justification for a war he has repeatedly said was about stopping a nuclear weapon. The shifting rationale comes days after he told Time “with Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace” and floated resuming strikes after the midterms.

The US is sending about 9,000 more troops to the Middle East, which would bring the total to roughly 20,000 forces and three aircraft carrier groups. The USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and USS Makin Island Amphibious Group are on their way with some 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines, and could arrive by the end of October, just as voters head to the polls. They’ll join the USS George H.W. Bush, the USS George Washington and the USS Boxer already in the region, along with hundreds of vessels and aircraft. Axios also reported the US sent two more Patriot missile batteries to protect oil and gas sites in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, after both countries urged Trump in August not to strike Iranian energy infrastructure for fear of retaliation. It’s a major buildup for a war the president keeps saying is almost over.

Trump suggested Iran may be behind the FlyDubai cockpit attack and vowed Tehran would be “hit, very hard” if so. Asked whether he’d been briefed on links between Iran and the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain and tried to crash the Israel-bound plane, Trump said, “I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes. But we’re working on it right now.” He said the attacker “could’ve been, yeah” working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, but offered no evidence. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition accused Iran-backed Houthis of a drone strike on an electricity station in Medina that powers the Prophet’s Mosque, Islam’s second holiest site, drawing condemnation across the Muslim world, though the Houthis denied involvement. Fighting in Yemen has intensified sharply in recent weeks.

Iran is moving to formally claim control of the Strait of Hormuz, while Europe weighs releasing diesel reserves under US pressure. An Iranian parliamentary committee advanced a bill that would charge ships fees for transiting the strait, ban vessels linked to Israel or “hostile” countries, and require all others to get permission from Iran’s military. The bill still needs a full parliamentary vote and Guardian Council approval, and the Trump administration rejects Iran’s claims to the waterway. In Europe, governments debated a French proposal to release 50 million barrels of diesel and have IEA countries release 50 million barrels of crude, with some pushing for a US commitment not to unilaterally ban diesel exports as part of any deal. The war’s toll keeps spreading, with Lebanon’s prime minister saying rebuilding from the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, which has killed more than 8,900 people, is beyond the state’s capacity.

Final Jobs Report Before Midterms Shows Just 29,000 Jobs Added as Unemployment Rises and Wages Fall Behind Inflation

US employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, in the last jobs report before the midterms. The numbers came in weaker than expected, and job gains for July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000, dragging the three-month average from just over 70,000 to about 50,000. The New York Times noted it’s “not the sort of slam-dunk strong reading” the administration wanted heading into November. Sen. Elizabeth Warren quickly seized on it, saying “President Trump’s failing economic agenda is weakening the labor market” while his “failed agenda keeps pushing prices up.” The White House had not yet issued an official reaction.

Workers are falling further behind as wage growth slowed to its weakest pace since the pandemic, well below the rate of inflation driven by the Iran war. Average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in September and 3% over the past year, failing to keep pace with prices that have climbed since the war began. The average unemployed worker has now been searching for nearly six months, and the low rate of job-switching suggests workers aren’t seeing many opportunities either. The unemployment rate for Black Americans jumped a full point to 7%, nearly double the 3.6% rate for white Americans. As the Times’ Ben Casselman put it, it’s a hard time to look for a job and “it isn’t a great time to have a job either.”

Sectors most exposed to AI shed jobs, offering possible early clues about the technology’s impact on the workforce. The information industry lost 10,000 jobs, professional and business services cut 9,000 and financial activities dropped 7,000, while temporary help services, often seen as a barometer of employer confidence, lost 11,000. Health care, which has driven much of the job growth, added just 17,000, about half its recent monthly average, while manufacturing added 9,000 and the employment rate for prime-age workers ticked up. Bond yields fell sharply on the news and stock futures jumped as investors bet the weaker data makes a Fed rate hike in October, just days before the midterms, much less likely. Most Fed officials still expect one more quarter-point hike this year, now likely in December, with the next key test being the Oct. 14 inflation report.

Other news:

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with Trump attacking the justices he appointed, even though he’s still winning most of his cases. Over the past several months, the court’s conservative majority blocked Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his plan to end birthright citizenship, his attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor and his push to control mail-in ballots before the midterms. Trump responded by saying the court “let our country down” and calling his own appointees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, “a shell of their previous selves,” telling Time, “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often.” But the administration has racked up wins on the “shadow docket,” including allowing his White House ballroom construction to continue, and won four of seven emergency requests over the summer. This term, the justices will take up his “third country” deportations and his push to indefinitely detain thousands of immigrants in deportation proceedings, with appeals also pending on his transgender military ban and the E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict. The term kicks off with a major case on whether cities and counties can sue oil companies over the impacts of climate change.

Manchester City has filed a “comprehensive” appeal after being found guilty of nearly all of the 115 financial charges against it. The club insists the commission’s ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe,” and that it is “innocent of the accusations.” The panel found City inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion between 2009 and 2018 through “sham” sponsorship deals, with only about $158 million of $1.26 billion in Abu Dhabi sponsorships actually paid by the sponsors and the rest coming from owner Sheikh Mansour’s company, an explanation from City the panel said was “concocted well after the event.” Potential punishments range from a fine to a points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League, which has never happened. A new three-person appeal board, including at least one former judge, will now hear the case, with a decision expected within 12 weeks. England’s Football Association said the case has “significant implications for the integrity of the game,” and a cross-party committee of lawmakers has asked Britain’s tax authority to review it.

ICE has banned high-speed car chases and tightened rules for traffic stops after a string of shootings by its officers. An internal memo obtained by the AP bars officers from chasing vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances, requires all officers at vehicle stops to wear and activate body cameras, and limits stops to officers who’ve completed specific training. ICE agents have opened fire in more than a dozen traffic stop encounters since last year, killing at least four people. After fatal shootings in Maine and Texas in July, ICE briefly paused most vehicle stops, only for Trump to order them resumed the next day, calling them “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” The memo landed the same day court testimony showed the officers who shot Austin DoorDash driver Wilber Garcés Pérez broke nearly every new rule, with the shooter wearing no body camera and the other officer switching his off during a high-speed chase. ICE downplayed the memo as a routine “guidance reminder,” insisting, “Vehicle stops and arrests of illegal aliens continue.”

 Leaked memo obtained by Washington Examiner reveals ICE has — again — changed its vehicle pursuit and traffic stop policies.

Egypt arrested the entire editorial team of Matsadaash, one of the country’s few independent news outlets, accusing them of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The six journalists were swept up Monday and Tuesday, with their phones and computers seized, and their whereabouts remain unknown as they’ve been denied contact with their families and lawyers. Egyptian authorities accused them of producing “fabricated” news for foreign funding, a charge co-founder Abdelrahman Mansour called false, saying the government is “afraid of a free press.” Founded in 2018 as a fact-checking platform, Matsadaash has more than a million Facebook followers despite being blocked in Egypt. More than 80 rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, are demanding their release in what advocates say is the first time an entire newsroom has been arrested in the country. Egypt is already one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with 26 now behind bars, according to a local rights group.

A judge rejected Lindsay Clancy’s bid to be found not guilty for lack of evidence in the killings of her three children. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had argued for the first time that prosecutors offered no proof Clancy committed the killings, even though her defense at trial was that she did it while suffering from postpartum psychosis and he had earlier offered to stipulate to her involvement. Judge William Sullivan ruled there was physical and circumstantial evidence that “would permit a rational trier of fact” to convict, noting her DNA was found on the exercise bands used to strangle 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan. Prosecutors haven’t decided whether to retry her on first-degree murder, pursue lesser charges or drop the case after the first trial deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal. Clancy remains at a psychiatric hospital while the case is pending. Her former husband, Patrick Clancy, who discovered the children, has said publicly that he forgives her.

Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the Cornell fraternity gang rape case. Hochul said the Tompkins County DA’s decision not to prosecute in 2024, and new questions about the Cornell police investigation, had “undercut my faith, and the public’s faith” in his ability to handle the case. “The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said. The move comes days after DA Matthew Van Houten said he’d never seen the woman’s full interview with campus police, in which she said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” Under mounting pressure, Cornell also agreed this week to bring in outside lawyers to investigate how it handled her allegations. Lawyers for two of the seven men she is suing have denied the allegations, with one saying his client never touched her or used any drugs.

The death toll from the medical helicopter crash off Catalina Island has risen to three after divers found the body of the missing patient. LA County sheriff’s divers located the woman in the wreckage, about 200 feet underwater, after a 23-hour search covering more than 156 square miles. Her family said she was being flown to the mainland after an allergic reaction, and her 20-year-old son had come along as her interpreter. The pilot and a flight nurse were also killed, while another medic and a man, believed to be the son, are recovering in the hospital. A memorial service was held on the island to honor the victims as the NTSB investigates the cause. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the crew “dedicated their careers to saving lives. They are heroes.”

The Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot by ICE in Austin finally had surgery to remove the bullet that had been lodged near his spine for nearly two weeks. Wilber Garcés Pérez, 28, appeared in court in a wheelchair with his arm in a sling Wednesday, after supporters lobbied for the surgery warning he could lose feeling on the left side of his body. He had been taken from the hospital to an ICE detention center 140 miles away the same day he was shot. Garcés Pérez faces up to 20 years in prison on charges he struck an officer with his side mirror, though the officer who shot him wasn’t wearing a body camera. He says an ICE SUV struck his car and spun it around before he was shot, and bystander footage shows ICE officers stood by while local police gave him first aid. His legal team says the surgery was successful and he’s now recovering in the custody of the US Marshals.

Calls for a national halt to executions are growing after Tennessee’s botched attempt left Christa Pike alive but in critical condition. Pike survived two full syringes of pentobarbital and was heard still breathing and choking an hour after the first injection before Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution, and her lawyers say it’s unclear whether she suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation. One attorney in the chamber said he counted seven needles in her left arm alone, “one of which appeared to be bent,” while death penalty scholar Sandra Babcock called it “unimaginably barbaric” and urged Lee to commute her sentence. Bryan Stevenson said “nearly a dozen botched executions in recent years should have suspended executions long before now,” and Sister Helen Prejean called it “the essence of cruelty.” An anesthesiologist who testified in Pike’s case said he warned officials her veins and blood condition made her vulnerable, saying, “I told them. I warned them.” Public support for the death penalty has already fallen to 52% from 80% in 1993, according to Gallup.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s fiancé, Ken Urker, died Thursday on his 34th birthday. Blanchard told People he died at his home in Louisiana of an apparent overdose, saying, “I don’t know if it was intentional or not. He was not in a good state of mind lately.” She said he faced “an unimaginable level of public scrutiny and relentless cyberbullying” over their relationship, which began when they were pen pals while she was in prison for her role in her mother’s 2015 death. Urker is survived by Blanchard and their one-year-old daughter, Aurora. “Ken was an amazing father and a man who was deeply loved,” Blanchard said, promising Aurora will grow up knowing “who he was beyond what strangers on the internet chose to say about him.” If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, Oct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing.,

They’re still doing it! Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. Here’s what the latest AP-NORC poll says:

A note here: When Kyla Scanlon introduced the term “vibecession” during the Biden years, Americans generally had a much more positive view of their local economy — which they could observe with their own eyes — than they did of the national economy. That’s no longer the case: Americans are as down on their local economies as they are on the national situation. This downbeat view of the state of the nation isn’t a media narrative concocted by the “fake news”: it’s what people see all around them.

And while I’m not a political consultant, I don’t think “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” is a winning strategy.

But then again, who in this administration would be willing to risk Trump’s ire by taking that popup down?

Tomorrow I’ll post a conversation with G. Elliott Morris and David Nir about what polling and other political indicators say about the midterm elections. Today I thought I’d complement that discussion in advance by talking about several economic indicators that are also really, really bad news for Trump and his party.

First, the obvious: prices at the pump.  .

Voters famously blame whoever is in the White House when fuel prices are high, even though presidents normally have very little influence on these prices. In this case Trump, with his disastrous war of choice in Iran, really does bear full responsibility for high energy prices — and voters know it.

However, fuel prices and inflation in general aren’t the only reasons Americans have a negative view of the Trump economy. Official measures of employment and unemployment look good by historical standards, but perceptions about the state of the job market have dramatically worsened. Every month The Conference Board asks Americans whether jobs are “plentiful” or “hard to get.” The difference between these two answers is almost always positive — we are an optimistic nation — but the “labor market differential” has plunged. Americans perceive the job market as being the worst it has been since Covid:

Finally, how about those interest rates? We often hear about elections being swung by an “October surprise,” and maybe Trump still has something up his sleeve. But the big economic news of the past month has been a “September surprise” on interest rates, including rates that matter a great deal to ordinary Americans — such as families trying to buy houses. Here’s the 30-year mortgage rate:

So where are we as we head into the final month of the midterm campaign? Election models based on political polls are almost surreally favorable to the Democrats, who Elliott Morris gives a 99 percent chance of winning the House. But it’s not just the polls. Even though the U.S. economy looks OK by some measures, the overall economic environment looks really bad for Trump and his party.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of that disastrous war.

Yet the Trump administration insists that this troubled environment is a Golden Age. This isn’t just bad politics. It’s an indication that Trump is living in a bubble of fantasy and sycophancy, in which nobody dares suggest — even as a matter of cynical political strategy — acknowledging that things are less than perfect.

And remember: When voters make it clear that they aren’t buying into Trumpist triumphalism, he won’t blame himself. He’ll blame America, and look for people to punish.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, Oct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

Still, sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves of the uncomfortable facts of life. Trump gave a lengthy interview to Time Magazine that was published yesterday. Let’s stare into the abyss together, shall we?

On the Fake News

Trump has been trying to ban news outlets from the White House for being too mean to him in their coverage. The official argument—the one his lawyers have made in court—is that CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have imperiled national security. The idea is that this argument is slightly less likely to be laughed out of court than the truth that the president just doesn’t like what they’ve been writing.

Trump, however, can’t be bothered to maintain this polite fiction. Over and over, he makes it explicit: His issue is that they cover him too negatively. If the press isn’t Fake, he asks, why don’t they ever report that he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

“I won the election,” Trump told Time. “I won it handily by massive numbers. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states. They said if you won three swing states, I won all seven. I won the counties. It’s very important. 86 percent popular vote.¹ Everything, and very conclusively. I haven’t had a good story on CNN in years. . . . If I wasn’t doing a good job, I wouldn’t have won that election by a lot.”

A who-won-more-counties breakdown is about the most useless electoral metric you could think of. But when Trump talks about his 2024 win, it’s plain that he’s allowed that statistic—simply because it’s the most flattering statistic he has—entirely to colonize his understanding of his win. How can he be so bad if he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

Remarkably, despite his own obsession with his press ban, Trump seemed not to know the basics of what the judge had ordered against it.

When Time’s reporter asked whether Trump was ignoring that order by continuing to freeze CNN out of the traveling pool, Trump seemed confused: “No, no, I’m not ignoring his order. . . . What order? I’m not even aware.” His comms director Steven Cheung had to jump in: “The judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

“He actually said to the premises of the White House?” Trump wondered.On Iran

Did you know that Trump never actually said the Iran war would last four to six weeks? You might think you remember him saying that over and over, but that was actually just another one of those media lies. “I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks,” Time suggested. “No, I think the press fed it to them,” Trump said. Later, on Truth Social, he offered another incomprehensible attempt to clarify: “I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way.”

Time also pressed the president on the, uh, friction between his repeated claims that he desires peace and his repeated threats to “annihilate” the Iranian people. “Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world,” Trump said. “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.”

This is staggering stuff. Trump is saying, in plain English, that the ongoing existence of the Iranian people is an insuperable barrier to world peace—and calling for some sort of Final Solution.

Does Trump actually believe the world can’t be safe so long as the Iranian people exist? I don’t think so. This has not been his actual policy toward Iran, for one thing: He would be only too happy to get some face-saving concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and/or the Strait of Hormuz and get out of the war there as fast as possible. This is simply life under a president with a half-melted mind: Sometimes the neurons flicker in such a way that the president openly says an entire people will need to be genocided without even seeming to realize what he’s said.On the debt

The national debt, Time pointed out, just hit $40 trillion dollars. Fully a quarter of that—$11 trillion—has come during Trump’s five years of presidency. Here was Trump’s response:

Well, Biden just killed our country. He had the biggest inflation in history. He allowed 25 million people in that shouldn’t have been here. We’re still getting around—it’s the toughest thing I have to do. If he would have been elected again, or his ilk would have been, or she, anybody, same, we wouldn’t have a country anymore.

Time tried to clarify: “You haven’t lowered the debt because of President Biden?”

Trump again: “No, because they keep paying higher interest rates. We had great job numbers two weeks ago, right? What do they do? Raise the interest rate. . . . We have a very hostile board, and the board says, ‘We want to hurt Trump.’ They’re not doing this for you. They’re doing this because they have Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

There you go. Donald Trump has added $11 trillion to the debt by slashing taxes without slashing spending. In his mind, however, it’s not a matter of spending far more than he’s taken in: All that debt showed up because Joe Biden let inflation happen and let illegals in, and because the Fed won’t push rates down.On his passion projects

Time asked a number of other questions—on AI, on the Democrats who might run in 2028, on his own terrible polls. (“They’re fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They’re almost as corrupt as the writers.”) When they started asking about Mitch McConnell’s health and Trump’s plans to pardon his cabinet, however, Trump lost patience. Suddenly, he was brandishing various pictures of his various White House construction projects. Why don’t you fake news jackals ever care about this stuff, he wanted to know.

“You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” the president complained:

All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? . . . It’s actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it’s perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I’m also doing very well with the war. I’m doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?

Time had, in fact, asked several questions about Venezuela. But we can leave it at that. We’ve got a drooling madman in charge. It’s good to remember, but unhealthy to contemplate for too long. If you’re a glutton for punishment, go ahead and read the whole interview. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Christa Pike Was Unconscious and on Ventilator After Execution Attempt, Emily Cochrane, Oct. 2, 2026. Christa Pike was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital as of Thursday evening, a day after surviving a botched execution attempt, her lawyers said in a court filing.

Ms. Pike was critically ill, they wrote in a Friday filing in Davidson County Chancery Court, and both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she arrived at the hospital.

Ms. Pike’s medical condition, some legal experts said, raises questions about whether the state could attempt to execute her again if she is not fully cognizant or capable of understanding what is happening.

The disclosure is the most detailed update on Ms. Pike’s health since she survived two rounds of pentobarbital, the drug used as part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, on Wednesday evening.

“Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” the lawyers wrote.

The Tennessee inmate was brought to a hospital with burned and blistered arms after an unsuccessful attempt at lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing.

New York Times, Hochul Rebukes Prosecutor’s Handling of Cornell Case, Hurubie Meko and Claire Fahy, Oct. 2, 2026. “In what world would the police” not elevate allegations of a rape to the district attorney, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York asked.

In direct and sometimes furious remarks, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Friday questioned how Cornell University’s police department and the local district attorney handled sexual assault allegations made by a student who said she was raped at a fraternity house in 2024.

Ms. Hochul, left, was speaking at a news conference in Manhattan on Friday morning, alongside the state attorney general, Letitia James, whom the governor has appointed to oversee the investigation into the allegations.

Ms. Hochul said she was concerned to learn that the student, identified as Jane Doe, had given an interview to the campus police about the episode that included an unequivocal statement that she had been raped. That language was missing in the condensed statement that was shared with the district attorney’s office in Tompkins County, N.Y., which decided not to file criminal charges.

“In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang-raped” and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul said.

A lawsuit filed by the student two weeks ago has reignited a national conversation about the persistent issue of sexual assault on college campuses. It has also plunged one of the country’s elite universities into crisis. Cornell’s campus newspaper, elected officials and celebrities have questioned how the case was initially handled by the district attorney and the university.

“When the Tompkins County district attorney announced that he was reopening the case, he pointed to Jane Doe’s statement that said it did not establish that a crime had occurred,” Ms. Hochul said. “But new reporting raises serious questions about the information his office relied upon when it made that decision.”

The district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said in a statement after the news conference that he supported the appointment of Ms. James and that his office would cooperate fully with hers.

“It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university,” he said. “The focus has been and should continue to be on the victims.”

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe, a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, said that she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She is suing the fraternity, seven men, the university and her sorority.

More On Trump’s Military, Middle East Wars, Energy Shortages

New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.

Under the plan, the Group of 7 countries — the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain and Canada — will release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from strategic stockpiles over the coming four months. That is equivalent to around one day’s worth of global oil demand. The effort will be coordinated by the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based multilateral organization.

Calling the plan “decisive, coordinated measures to stabilize immediate energy supplies” and curb price spikes, the Group of 7 said that they would also make a “substantial” release of diesel within 20 days.

The group did not specify how much of the fuel to be released would be diesel and how much would be unrefined crude oil. Diesel and related fuels make up roughly 28 percent of the world’s oil demand, according to the I.E.A. They have been in especially short supply because military strikes on energy infrastructure in the Middle East and Russia have severely damaged refineries, reducing the world’s capacity to turn oil into the fuels that consumers use.

The Group of 7, which includes Britain, France and Japan, announced the release of 100 million barrels over four months, effective immediately.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, Oct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught.

And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part. So I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.”

The remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

On Wednesday, Hegseth issued this call to arms:

We are no longer the Woke Department or the Weak Department.

Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.

Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops. . . . Or as the President says to me, “Pete … central casting. I want central casting.”

The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in—with testosterone testing on top.

And a bit later in his remarks, Hegseth attacked the press.

A free press is of course important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually.

This is all political bluster. But it’s a particular kind of political bluster. It’s neo-fascist bluster.

Here I want to call on the novelist and critic, Umberto Eco, who provided one of the most helpful guides to this kind of politics in his great 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism.”

Eco provides a list of certain key elements or features of Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. A couple of these are particularly relevant to the emanations of our secretary of defense: Irrationalism, and machismo.

Here’s Eco on irrationalism:

Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. . . . Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”

And it’s no accident, Eco further points out, that “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

And side-by-side with Hegseth’s embrace of irrationalism is his exaltation of machismo.

As Eco explains,

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

Eco makes clear that his essay was not intended as merely a historical or diagnostic enterprise. Eco wrote in order to warn that fascism is not a thing of the past. Fascism is a permanent human temptation. It speaks to certain human passions and exploits certain human weaknesses that are always there to potentially be activated.

Fascism is both a permanent temptation and, as history teaches and current events show, a powerful one. As history also teaches, and as current events will I believe show, it can be defeated. First, one has to recognize it for what it is. Trump and Hegseth have helped us in this task. 

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Who Cut The Cheese? Trump Did… The dairy industry was supposed to be the one sector that benefited from Trump’s trade war. CATHERINE RAMPELL describes how tariffs and pissed-off Canadians are hurting the cheese biz in Receipts.
• The Daily Wire Is Making the Most MAGA Movie Imaginable… SAM STEIN and WILL SOMMER break down the leaked script for the Daily Wire’s upcoming fictional movie, Pawn Shop, a pro-ICE thriller set amid an imagined Antifa siege of a Minneapolis pawn shop.
• GOP Senators Blast Trump’s Gov’t-Funded Ads… Lawmakers see another abuse of presidential power. They’re struggling to find a remedy, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
• Paramount’s Done Deal, Federal Tax Credits, and More… On The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, SEAN McNULTY joins SONNY BUNCH to break down a big week in Hollywood news.

Quick Hits

NIXONMANIA: Was Nixon framed? That’s a question the crack minds at the Trump Justice Department are now mulling, per the Wall Street Journal:

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.

Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The Justice Department denied that Shepard’s presentation amounted to an investigation, per se. Some people in the building just wanted to hear him out. But it’s not hard to see why our current presidential crook—and his retinue—would feel a kinship toward Tricky Dick. “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Vice President JD Vance said this summer, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Hopium Chronicles, Opinion and Advocacy: Trump Gets A Crappy Jobs Report, The Election Cheating Has Begun, Zelenskyy Warns The World That Winter Is Coming, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 2, 2026. We just got the September jobs report this morning, and it was a crappy one: only 29,000 jobs created, well below estimates, and downward revisions in July and August of 60,000 jobs.

This means that net-net we lost jobs this month while average hourly earnings also only grew by 0.1 percent — also a disappointing number, particularly given that inflation is running at a 3.4% annual rate. What we learned this morning is that the economy is slowing and workers are falling further and further behind.

Here’s NBC’s coverage of the report. And even Fox can’t BS its way through this crappy report. A reminder that job growth has slowed under Trump. Trump still has the worst jobs record of any President since Hoover:

The warnings from Wall Street about the mounting dangers of Trump’s escalating economic and geopolitical failures are getting far louder and more ambitious. Here is an editorial from Bloomberg that ran at 6am this morning:

So, in sum, yes Trump is a titanic f*ck up; he deserves to get his ass kicked in the election; and we have to be prepared to inherit extraordinary domestic and global challenges when take power next January.Subscribed

We also have to recognize that this ongoing failure of Trump’s regime and his political project makes it more likely he is going to attempt to cheat to keep the Republicans in power. The illegal ads he is running now, paid for by all of us, is a sign that the election cheating has begun. Last night we saw something that Marc Elias has been warning about – Republican officials in the states colluding with the Trump regime to undermine trust and potentially disrupt the election:

Georgia’s Republican-controlled election board invited the Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday to declare the state’s voting system unlawful before the upcoming midterm elections.

In a letter Thursday, State Election Board (SEB) Executive Director James Mills (R) asked the DOJ to “prohibit” the state’s use of voting machines previously certified by the federal government.

Mills also asked the DOJ to “set a binding six-month deadline” to force the state to phase out machines that he asked it to deem illegal.

The request is an extraordinary assault on Georgia’s voting system by unelected officials appointed to make and enforce the state’s election rules. It was also sent despite several SEB members — including the chairman — denouncing federal involvement in state election procedures.

Coupling these developments with the Supreme Court’s ridiculous decision last week to green light the DHS SAVE database we have to acknowledge now that we’ve now entered a new and more dangerous stage of whatever dark and desperate schemes Trump, Blanche, and Co have dreamed up to prevent us from taking power next January.

I don’t want to be alarmist here. But we cannot look away, either. As we’ve discussed the Democratic Party and its allies is more prepared for the fuckery to come than we’ve ever been. Our community has done its part and help stand up new capacities for the state parties across the country to counter whatever comes our way. The first step to effectively counter whatever they throw at us is to understand what they are doing, study it, bring it from the shadows to the light, and that is something we will be doing here, every day. Here’s what I wrote to you in August when I launched something here called the “Evolving Battlefield Project”

We’ve launched a new project at Hopium to study, discuss, and counter anything Trump might do to illicitly retain power in an election that is breaking hard against him and the Republicans Party. We are launching this project to demystify Trump’s tactics, make them less “scary,” and more widely understood; and by making them more widely understood we make it far less likely they will be successful.

This year we are running against a political party that no longer feels bound by law or democratic norms; has already openly conspired with a hostile foreign power to win an election, and launched an insurrection to try to overturn another one; and has a desperate, corrupt, failing leader who fears prison and ruin if we win. We were surprised and unprepared for Russia’s intervention in 2016, and Trump’s assault on our elections in 2020 and 2021. We cannot be surprised and unprepared this year. Or scared. It is just the work we must do, like making phone calls and writing postcards and giving money to campaigns. The battlefield evolves, and so do we. It is key to how we will win in 2026 and take back Congress in 2027. Together.

We cannot be surprised, or scared. The battlefield evolves, and so do we.

For as I’ve said we must take all these illicit efforts and weaponize them against Trump and the Rs, creating a powerful contrast between one party that believes in the American creed, in freedom and democracy, and another that has betrayed it all and wants to tear it all down. We need to talk about what they are doing not to scare people but to further degrade Trump and his allies, while preparing the public for what is to come.

In related news here is what Zelenskyy is telling the world this world this morning – that their intelligence shows that Trump’s barbaric ally, Putin, has made the decision to crush and depopulate Ukraine this winter (genocide, war crimes):

This post this morning came out a bit darker than I actually feel right now, for two things can be true at the same time – he continues to do incredible harm to the country and the world, and his political project is crumbling here at home.Subscribed

As I discussed in my weekly talk I am incredibly optimistic about where we are now and what we can accomplish in these elections. House Dems just announced record fundraising in the third quarter. The DCCC expanded their battlefield this morning, adding 8 more races to their watch list. There is no good news for the Rs. Things keep deteriorating for them across the country. Trump got his worst major poll of the cycle yesterday, clocking in at 31%-69% in a AP-NORC poll.

We are on the cusp of having the election we all want to have, and need to keep our heads down my friends and keep working as hard as we can. We also had a slew of great discussions with candidate and party leaders on the frontlines this week. You can find them all here.

New York Times, As Prospects Dim, G.O.P. Pulls Money Out of North Carolina Senate Race, Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 2, 2026. As the Republicans try to hold their majority, the Senate Leadership Fund is diverting resources to Kansas, which has become a growing concern for the party.

The top super PAC for Senate Republicans is canceling all the remaining ads it had booked in North Carolina as of Friday, shifting away tens of millions of dollars in a move that signals that Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state this fall.

At the same time, the super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, is making its first investment of the cycle in Kansas — a sign of rising concern among Republicans in red states — with a new ad attacking the Democratic nominee there.

If Republicans lose North Carolina, it would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to flip the Senate in the fall — if Democrats hold all of their own seats.

Ad cancellations are a common, and very telling, move down the stretch of campaigns as they reveal where national operatives see their best path to a majority. The cancellation of the North Carolina ads was first reported by Semafor and confirmed by two people familiar with the decision.

The North Carolina seat is currently held by Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who is retiring. Democrats nominated Roy Cooper, a popular former governor who had served two terms. The Republican nominee is Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Senate Leadership Fund declined to comment.

“Undecided voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those late-breakers typically go Republican,” said DJ Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. Whatley, adding he was “confident we have the resources to highlight career politician Roy Cooper’s 40 years of failures.”

More Global News

New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

Five-year-old Nina Manes, flying home to Tel Aviv with her family in business class, needed to use the bathroom.

Her mother, Tali, stood waiting for her outside the plane’s lavatory, when she suddenly heard frightening shouts and loud bangs coming from behind the closed door to the flight deck.

What unfolded next was a harrowing chain of events that led the passengers aboard FlyDubai Flight 1073 to think that they were all about to die in a terrorist attack — but instead turned into a tale of heroism on the part of an Indian pilot and a handful of Israelis.

Hearing what sounded worrisomely like a melee, Ms. Manes, 46, said she pulled a backup pilot, seated in his uniform nearby, by the hand and prodded him to investigate.

He pulled open the cockpit door — which had been unlocked from the inside — onto a horrific scene.

There was blood all over the flight deck.

And the first officer was stabbing the captain, again and again and again.

Four Israeli passengers aboard Wednesday morning’s flight from Dubai are being hailed for racing unarmed into harm’s way, overpowering the first officer, giving the captain first aid, and making it possible for a second backup pilot to take over and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us — And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 1, 2026. First of all — holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us — And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 1, 2026. First of all — holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night – that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate – something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country – as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us – or this nation – has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing – of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come – For It Is Coming

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

• Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
• Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
• Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video.

Oct. 1

Top Headlines 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

• New York Times, ‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision, Helene Cooper and John Ismay, Sept. 30, 2026. In his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused on the culture war and accused reporters of “treason” over Iran war coverage.
• Public Notice, Opinion: Trump’s taxpayer-funded agitprop is clearly illegal — and that’s the point, Paul Waldman, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work. 
• New York Times, Taking On Trump Immigration Agenda, Justices Will Review Migrant Detention Policy, Ann E. Marimow, Oct. 1, 2026. The administration’s policy of detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago and holding them without a bond hearing has divided lower courts.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump + AI = Blue Tsunami, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 1, 2026. It doesn’t take super intelligence to realize the GOP is screwed.

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice  

• New York Times, Updates: Tennessee Governor Pauses Future Execution After Inmate Survives Lethal Injection, Billy Witz and Emily Cochrane, Oct. 1, 2026. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review of the state’s capital-punishment process after the botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death. She was hospitalized late Wednesday.
• New York Times, John Roberts and His Island, Jodi Kantor, Oct. 1, 2026. After decades of potlucks and paddle-boarding on Maine’s midcoast, rising anger and protests have left the Supreme Court’s chief justice more isolated than ever.
• New York Times, Times Exclusive: How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking Justice, Debra Kamin, Matt Flegenheimer and Amy Julia Harris, Oct. 1, 2026. The woman known as “Jane Doe” was initially embarrassed about what happened at a fraternity party in 2024, but soon concluded: “I was assaulted.”
• New York Times, Cornell Rape Investigation: Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped, Hurubie Meko, Oct. 1, 2026. Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges.
• New York Times, What New York’s Rape Laws Mean for the Cornell Case, Maria Cramer, Oct. 1, 2026 (print ed.). State law makes it harder to prosecute when victims drank willingly. The prosecutor in the Cornell case said that kept him from charging students accused of sexual assault.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us — And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 1, 2026. First of all — holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Ride the Wave, Baby! William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Whoa. It’s not just that a new Quinnipiac poll shows only 34 percent of voters approving of Donald Trump’s job performance, with 61 percent disapproving. It’s that Quinnipiac has Democrats leading by 12 points on the generic congressional ballot. This is up from 7 points in Quinnipiac’s survey two months ago.
• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: WATCH: GOP super PAC quietly launches outlandish smear against Talarico, Judd Legum, right, Oct. 1, 2026. For weeks, major Republican-aligned super PACs have been attacking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, on trans issues.
• New York Times, Should Democrats Spend in Deep-Red Texas? A Battle Could Echo in 2028, Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 1, 2026. Allies of Gina Hinojosa want a Democratic group to support her bid for Texas governor — putting pressure on its chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is weighing a run for president.
• PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Hispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In It, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Texas Hispanics feel betrayed and angry at Trump for his economic disaster and immigration deportations.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration’s own contractor (New York Times photo).

• PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: After Reflecting Pool Humiliation, Rep. Jamie Raskin Gives DOJ Hot Tip On Felon Orange Vandal Desecrating DC, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to the judge barring the Trump DOJ from charging an Olympian in the Reflecting Pool case by telling the DOJ about a felon vandalizing the Kennedy Center.
• New York Times, Kristi Noem Files for Divorce After 34 Years of Marriage, Michael Levenson, Oct.1, 2026 (print ed.). Ms. Noem, a former homeland security secretary and governor of South Dakota, filed court papers there seeking to end her marriage to Bryon Noem, an insurance salesman.
• Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

More On Artificial Intelligence

• New York Times, Women Can Now Assess Their Breast Cancer Risk With the Help of A.I., Roni Caryn Rabin, Oct. 1, 2026. Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool that can predict five-year risk of developing breast cancer, is rolling out nationwide. Here’s what experts want you to know.

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.” 
• New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.” 
• New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

More Global News

• All Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, Sept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges. The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

Top Stories

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

New York Times, ‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision, Helene Cooper and John Ismay, Sept. 30, 2026. In his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused on the culture war and accused reporters of “treason” over Iran war coverage.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.

Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.

As he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran.

“It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

The event at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Va., reprised a session there in September last year in which he berated more than 800 generals and admirals about the need to slim down and to be more “lethal.”

The gathering on Wednesday was in many ways a rehash of the cultural stances Mr. Hegseth championed a year ago, but it was a lesser version of last year’s production, which included an appearance by President Trump.

The defense secretary praised the war against Iran — in which he declared victory just weeks after it began but has now dragged into a seven-month campaign — as a courageous operation “that every red-blooded American is proud of.”

He used the last portion of his remarks to announce new initiatives for the Pentagon.

They included the creation of a new “autonomous warfare command” for robotics, which he said would be the equivalent of the military’s geographic and functional combatant commands.

The secretary pointed out three civilians in attendance, Elon Musk, the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who wore a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. He called them “three of our nations’ best minds” and said they would lead a new effort called Project Meridian to study the future of warfare.

Mr. Hegseth said he would meet with the three men at a secure facility on the base in Quantico immediately after his speech.

He also stated his intent to build a new military base — what he called “a fortress” — somewhere in the United States, saying that state governors would compete to host it and offer hundreds of thousands of acres of state land to build it.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops currently stationed overseas would be sent back to the United States and based at the “fortress,” he said, without explaining which countries would see a reduction in U.S. forces.

The Pentagon has been reviewing its force posture overseas, particularly in Europe, with an eye toward reducing the number of troops stationed outside the United States. In May, Mr. Hegseth announced he was canceling a deployment of troops to Poland only to be quickly overruled by Mr. Trump.

As usual, Mr. Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided “secular humanism,” adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.

The address allowed Mr. Hegseth to lay out his planned changes without facing questions from reporters about them or the war. The last time he gave a briefing on the Iran war to reporters at the Pentagon was in early May.

Nonetheless, he is the public face of the deeply unpopular war with Iran.

Thousands of Iranians and 18 U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict, which the United States and Israel started seven months ago. In one episode at the start of the war, more than 175 civilians, many of them children, were killed when a U.S. airstrike hit a school in southern Iran.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary, Iran has retained its ballistic missile and drone capability, and its leadership has vowed never to give up its civilian nuclear program. As Iran’s fighting skills have evolved, the U.S. military burned through its munitions.

As gas prices rise because of the conflict, U.S. voters have grown more frustrated ahead of the midterm elections.

Mr. Hegseth has also not been able to get a Pentagon budget request for more funding approved, and has alienated not only Democrats but also some Republicans the administration needs to pass $1.5 trillion in new financing. In addition, a Republican congressman is leading a drive to impeach Mr. Hegseth. He also does not have Senate-confirmed leaders to head the Army, the country’s biggest military service, or the Navy.

At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hegseth received a standing ovation. Last year’s speech was greeted by stone-faced generals and admirals who made sure not to cheer, per the norms of a nonpartisan military. 

Public Notice, Opinion: Trump’s taxpayer-funded agitprop is clearly illegal — and that’s the point, Paul Waldman, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

To use a generous word, it’s audacious.

Over a song called “Love Me” (naturally, used without permission from the artist), the TV ad features Donald Trump vowing to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America” while quick cuts tout his supposed accomplishments, followed by UFC chief Dana White saying, “he’s the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves!”

Then, with a flourish of trolling, the words “Paid for by the US Government” appear at the bottom of the screen. (Watch below.)

That ad, indeed paid for by tax dollars, was one in a series produced by the White House and aired across the country. They are unambiguously illegal — and that’s part of the point.

Again and again, this administration has broken the law not just to accomplish some immediate goal, but as an assertion of power, a dominance display, to say to everyone: Donald Trump does whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him.

The good news is that while the ads are meant to help Republicans stave off disaster in the midterm elections, they will likely do just the opposite. The bad news is that they further degrade the rule of law in America, making the task of imposing accountability all the more urgent.A fascist aesthetic

The ads follow the now-familiar Trumpian aesthetic, toggling back and forth between high production values and low-budget slop, and treading right on the line that separates fascism from camp.

While the first ad with Dana White is all about Trump himself, the second one takes a bit of a detour to argue that God and Trump have together delivered America to heights never before seen in human history. Featuring footage from one of Trump’s trips to Mount Rushmore, it could have been directed by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl.

“In all the chronicles of the ages, never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one,” Trump says, over imagery meant to evoke vastness, distance, and power: helicopters flying over the mountain at sunset, an audience gazing up adoringly at him, enormous screens with his face on them, and then, shot from below, him pumping his fist before a final ejaculation of fireworks.

The last ad in the series repurposes one Trump used in the 2024 campaign, and may be the purest and most arresting of all:Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comabsolutely demented. like a scene from a horror movieSun, 27 Sep 2026 15:21:23 GMTView on Bluesky

In a time of voter unease and disgruntlement, political consultants advise their clients to communicate empathy and understanding, to show voters that the politician empathizes with their struggles and is working to improve their lives. But Trump will have none of that.

He is not here to help. He’s distant, angry, a figure of nothing but venom and vengeance. He walks toward the viewer like a serial killer stalking his prey, his face a mask of contempt and barely-contained rage. His visage in this ad is reminiscent of the glowering pictures erected on gigantic banners hanging from government buildings in DC, almost a parody of a dictator trying to inspire terror and subjugation (Trump likes that picture so much he made it his official portrait).Totalitarian artTotalitarian artLisa Needham·Sep 18Read full story

The words are just as horrifying.

“This is the final battle,” Trump says, and we know that final battles inevitably involve death and destruction even if they end in triumph.

“With you at my side,” he goes on as horror-movie music plays, “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, 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.”

Who thought this would be the right message to send, with voters fed up with high gas prices and yearning for an end to the idiotic war Trump started? The answer is unsurprising: Trump himself.

The president “has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads,” CNN reports, “including helping select the imagery and videos used.”

Trump often claims that when he’s on the ballot, Republicans do much better than when he isn’t, and he’s not completely wrong (even if he lost the popular vote in two out of the three elections he has run in). There are at least some voters who turn out to vote for him but don’t get to the polls in midterm elections, and his strategy is to encourage those voters to mobilize.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he said at a recent rally. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”

The trouble is that for every passive Trump fan who responds to this call, there may be many more voters who will hear that message and be more likely to vote for Democrats.Trump loves Xi because he wants to be himTrump loves Xi because he wants to be him

Right now, Trump is spectacularly unpopular; his approval ratings hover in the mid-30s, and he is under water on every policy issue. That’s especially true with the issue that tops voters’ agenda, the economy and prices. His ratings on the issue are abysmal in every poll; a recent one from Marquette University found his approval on inflation at a stunning 19 percent.

In the face of that kind of popular disgust, the president might employ any of a number of strategies. As The Atlantic reported last month, the path he chose “was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself.” Hence the ads. And while they might have gone for a more empathetic message, they’re pure Trump: angry, self-aggrandizing to the point of absurdity, utterly unpersuasive, and strategically misconceived.

Democrats probably couldn’t be happier to see these ads aired as widely as possible.

Trump could have paid for the ads with the gargantuan war chest his super PAC has amassed, helped by seven- and eight-figure contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals his administration has amply rewarded with government funds and policy changes.

Instead, the White House decided taxpayers should foot the bill.

The White House claims these are just “public service announcements,” comparing them to when previous presidents encouraged people to keep an eye out for terrorism or sign up for Medicare’s prescription drug program. The obvious difference is that there is no federal policy involved in Trump’s ads, which are just about how he’s great and his enemies must be destroyed.

Some Republicans are willing to acknowledge that the ads are a bad idea, even if they stop just short of acknowledging that what Trump is doing is illegal.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

“I think there ought to be a rule that you can’t — well, there probably is a rule,” said Sen. John Kennedy on Face the Nation. “You can’t spend public money to promote yourself.”

In fact, the ads likely violate multiple provisions of the law. There’s the “publicity and propaganda” rider Congress has inserted into every appropriations bill for the last 75 years, forbidding money to be spent on just this kind of thing. There’s also the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on the job.

While the president and vice president are not covered by the Hatch Act, everyone else in the government is subject to its provisions — meaning anyone involved in the production and distribution of these ads could be subject to prosecution. That might be an unlikely outcome, since Hatch Act prosecutions are rare. But that fact in itself is a sign of how respect for the rule of law has been degraded under Trump.

Early in his first term, adviser Kellyanne Conway, warned that she was committing a Hatch Act violation by promoting Ivanka Trump merchandise on Fox News (which the Office of Special Counsel later found that she did repeatedly), replied contemptuously: “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

The message was clear: We work for Donald Trump, and that means we’re above the law. Trump later held his 2020 convention at the White House, a four-day-long Hatch Act violation no previous president would even have contemplated.

New York Times, Taking On Trump Immigration Agenda, Justices Will Review Migrant Detention Policy, Ann E. Marimow, Oct. 1, 2026. The administration’s policy of detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago and holding them without a bond hearing has divided lower courts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago, signaling the court plans to weigh in on major pieces of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda as it begins its new term on Monday.

The policy is a departure from past practice, when such migrants were generally allowed an opportunity to seek release after a hearing before a judge.

The justices previously announced that they would fast-track a separate case testing the administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to countries where they have no ties, including nations that have faced allegations of human rights abuses.

Between the two cases, the justices will consider the legality of some of the most controversial aspects of the Trump administration’s efforts to rapidly expel millions of migrants living in the United States.

The justices also added two other cases to the docket of issues they will hear and decide by next June.

One is a Kentucky case about whether a federal religious discrimination law protects a group of Catholic priests who want to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary over neighbors’ objections. The other is a divorce dispute over military benefits originating in North Dakota.

The immigration case the court accepted on Thursday involved noncitizens who entered the United States illegally but had been living in the country for years. For decades, such people could be released on bond pending additional court proceedings, so long as they were not found to be a threat to public safety or a flight risk.

But last year, the Trump administration announced a new interpretation of a 1996 law, concluding it allowed noncitizens living in the United States to be held without bond. As a result, immigration judges have denied hearings to people, even if they have been living and working in the United States for years.

More than 500 district court judges and nine of 11 federal appeals courts to consider the issue have rejected the administration’s new detention rule and its interpretation of the immigration law at issue.

About 70,000 people are currently in immigration detention across the United States, up from 40,000 before Mr. Trump took office in January 2025.

More than two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States for at least a decade.

Most of the appeals courts to consider the issue have said the government should have provided hearings to determine whether they posed a danger to others or a flight risk pending the completion of removal proceedings.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with a Brazilian citizen, Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa Da Cunha, who has lived in the United States for about 20 years.

He was arrested by federal agents on his way to work in Massachusetts, where he owns a construction business and a home with his wife, also a Brazilian citizen, and their two children, who are U.S. citizens.

He crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in 2004, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit. He had not previously been detained and has no known criminal history, according to court filings.

In its decision, the appeals court noted that Congress had never challenged what had been the settled practice of releasing certain migrants on bond despite making major changes to immigration law.

“Even if the government’s newfound interpretation” of the statute “were plausible — and it is not,” the appeals court said it was obligated to read such laws in a way that would “avoid the serious constitutional questions attendant to what would be the broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.”

D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, urged the justices to reverse the decision and said in court filings that detaining immigrants who are living in the country long after an illegal entry “prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States.”

Immigrant advocates say federal law requires the government to provide noncitizens, regardless of how they entered the country, access to a bond hearing. The policy, they say, has stripped people of an opportunity to seek release by a judge.

Lawyers for the immigrants say the administration’s reading of the statute allows the government to lock up millions of people who have resided in the United States for years without a possibility of a hearing or release. They emphasize that five presidential administrations over three decades, including the first Trump administration, have provided custody hearings.

Michael K.T. Tan, the deputy director of the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said on Thursday that the government “cannot twist the law to detain immigrants for months or even years on end without a bond hearing. Not only is it cruel and inhumane; it is unlawful.”

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: WATCH: GOP super PAC quietly launches outlandish smear against Talarico, Judd Legum, right, Oct. 1, 2026. For weeks, major Republican-aligned super PACs have been attacking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, on trans issues.

Since September 6, Talarico’s opponents have spent an astonishing $37 million on these trans attacks. This includes over $30 million, mostly on broadcast ads, from Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership; over $4 million on streaming ads from MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC; and $1.3 million on digital ads from America PAC, the super PAC created by Elon Musk.

Several of these ads falsely claim that Talarico supports “taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.” But Talarico never voted for such a policy and publicly supports a national ban on such procedures. This attack against Talarico has been rated “false” by PolitiFact. (In practice, such surgeries almost never occur.)

Nevertheless, the ads have continued to run on heavy rotation. But, with Election Day now a few weeks away, these false attacks do not seem to have muted Talarico’s popularity over his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The last 11 public polls released have shown Talarico with a narrow lead over Paxton, who is saddled with several political and personal scandals, according to RealClearPolitics. (Paxton released an internal poll showing him leading by 3 points.)

Most of these polls are within the margin of error. There is still plenty of time for momentum to shift, and Texas has reliably elected Republicans to statewide office for many years. Still, Paxton’s allies are concerned.

So they are upping the ante.

On Tuesday, Texas PAC launched a new digital-only ad on Meta platforms. In the ad, a woman named Miriam, who identifies herself only as “a mom of five,” looks into the camera and accuses Talarico of supporting putting “parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children.”

“If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talarico,” Miriam concludes.

Popular Information obtained the ad through the Meta Ad Library.

It’s notable that Texas PAC, which has spent the vast majority of its dollars on broadcast ads, is running this ad on a digital platform. This allows Texas PAC to micro-target the ad to voters it believes may not closely scrutinize its claims. Digital ads, in general, also attract less media attention. The ad is not posted on the Texas PAC YouTube page or featured on its website.

The new attack on Talarico is more outlandish than previous attacks, but equally false. The ad’s only citation purportedly supporting its primary claim is an October 2019 article in the Houston Chronicle. That article does not say Talarico supported jailing parents who do not support gender surgeries for minors. The article is about a bill to prevent family courts from considering whether a parent acknowledges their child’s gender identity in child custody disputes. At a committee hearing on that legislation, Talarico, who opposed the bill, said it was “abusive” to deny your child’s gender identity, “whether or not we label it with the term abuse.”

The bill had nothing to do with surgeries or criminal proceedings. The claim that Talarico supports jailing parents who do not permit their children to receive gender transition surgeries is completely baseless.

The woman who appears in the ad is Miriam Evans, a Republican activist in the Dallas area. She is a board member of Protecting Texas Children, a right-wing advocacy group that promotes “a Biblical view of gender and sexuality as stated in Genesis 1.” A recent post by the group celebrates that a “quiet rebellion is taking shape across Texas as communities increasingly reject Pride Month proclamations in favor of family-centered values.” Evans regularly speaks about her efforts to similar groups, including Moms for Liberty and local Republican Party chapters.

Evans did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. Texas PAC did not respond to a phone call and email.

About two hours after Popular Information reached out to Evans and Texas PAC about the ad, it was made “inactive” on Meta’s platforms. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump + AI = Blue Tsunami, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 1, 2026. It doesn’t take super intelligence to realize the GOP is screwed.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yesterday, Trump dusted off his old attacks against former Fed Chair Jerome Powell: “He should be forced to resign, IMMEDIATELY! If he doesn’t resign, he should be sued, at the highest level, by the United States Government, for either corruption or incompetence.”

It’s all great news for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh: He hasn’t been able to lower interest rates yet, either, but for now, Trump seems content to keep blaming Powell. Happy Thursday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

Plus, Trump is threatening to ban diesel exports unless France and Germany open their emergency reserves, mortgage rates just hit their highest level since 2023, and former officials warn the administration has quietly gutted the task force that protected election workers from threats.

We’ve ruffled some feathers. Yesterday we published exclusive information exposing a major FBI interview in the Epstein files that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Trump DOJ never released, a record that could expose a lot. It’s just the beginning. Making powerful people uncomfortable in pursuit of the truth is critical. S

Here’s the news:

Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump Administration Over Her Killing by an ICE Agent in Minneapolis. The family of Renee Good, above, a 37-year-old US citizen shot dead in her car by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 during Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” deportation sweeps, filed two lawsuits Thursday accusing administration officials of negligence and civil rights violations, demanding a jury trial and damages. Videos show Good telling Ross, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” moments before she tried to drive away and he fired into the car, hitting her in the head, arm and torso. Senior Trump officials initially branded Good a “domestic terrorist,” and the Justice Department blocked federal prosecutors in Minneapolis from investigating the agents, prompting at least half a dozen of them to resign in protest. No agent has been charged in her death or in the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti two weeks later, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s state investigations have been slowed because DOJ cut off evidence-sharing, leading Minnesota to sue for access. DHS has defended the agents’ actions as justified uses of force, and the suits are among the first major civil actions over the sweeps.

White House Kicks CNN Out of Press Pool Days After Judge Blocks Trump’s Media Ban. The White House removed CNN from the press pool covering Trump’s Thursday trip to Texas and Oklahoma, even though the network had been scheduled to fly on Air Force One and provide on-the-ground coverage. The move comes less than a week after a federal judge halted Trump’s effort to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and follows the administration barring CNN from Air Force One last weekend when it was also slated to serve as pooler, exploiting the fact that the judge’s order only covers access on White House grounds. CNN’s attorney Theodore Boutrous said the White House is “persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President’s unconstitutional ‘ban on the free press,’” to the detriment of the public, and the outlets have asked the judge to extend his order. The White House Correspondents’ Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 49 news organizations have backed the three outlets in court, while Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC briefly boycotted pool duties last week in solidarity with CNN.

Early Voting Data Shows Emerging Signs of a Democratic Advantage in the Midterms

More than 700,000 Americans have already voted in at least 30 states, and Democrats are making up a bigger share of early ballot requests in key battlegrounds than they did in 2024. In Iowa, home to a competitive Senate race, Democrats account for 67% of ballot requests, up from 54% at this point two years ago, while Pennsylvania is up from 62% to 66%, Maine from 53% to 57% and North Carolina from 36% to 42%. The trend lines up with polling, special elections and primary turnout that have all pointed to Democrats being more motivated this year. There are important caveats: ballots are secret, so the data can’t show who people voted for, and early voters tend to skew older and less Republican than the overall electorate, especially as Republicans have shifted toward voting in person. In every state except Iowa, ballot requests at this point in 2022 were actually more Democratic than they are now.

Virginia is showing the clearest signs of a Democratic enthusiasm edge, including in two GOP-held battleground House districts. Localities that voted for Kamala Harris by more than 20 points are at 78% of their 2024 turnout pace, while those Trump won by 20 points are at just 61%. Statewide, voters who have only participated in Democratic primaries since 2022 outnumber Republican primary voters by about 18 points, up from 8 points at this point in 2024. In the 1st District, held by Rep. Rob Wittman, and the 2nd District, held by Rep. Jen Kiggans, Democratic primary voters lead by 15 and 18 points, after both districts were roughly split at this point two years ago. Republicans could still close the gap as Election Day nears, since the votes cast so far are a tiny fraction of the roughly 112 million cast in the 2022 midterms and early in-person voting has barely begun.

Hegseth Unloads Slurs at Troops, Doubles Cuts to Top Brass and Hands Musk a Role in Planning Future Wars

Hegseth used his “State of the Force” address to rail against “fatties,” “weirdos” and “wimps,” using an anti-transgender slur in front of junior troops. “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department,” the defense secretary told service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, before rattling off a list that included “no fatties,” an anti-trans slur, “no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” He said generals “who clung to the woke department, or seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here.” Hegseth also dismissed reports of low morale as “patently false claims” and “propaganda,” just a week after it emerged that eight sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln attempted suicide during a 286-day deployment extended by the Iran war. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office mocked the speech by posting a photo of Trump and JD Vance with the caption “You heard the man. No beardos and weirdos.”

Hegseth confirmed he’s cutting 20% of the military’s generals and admirals, doubling last year’s target, in what senators from both parties are questioning. The reduction covers roughly 800 general and flag officer positions and must be completed by Jan. 1, 2027, which Hegseth called “accountability and long overdue.” Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, said Hegseth has “some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military” and is “purging a generation of great leaders” that will take a generation to replace. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said there “may be some validity” to trimming a top-heavy structure, “but I want to see it first.” Trump and Hegseth have already fired or pushed out more than two dozen senior leaders without public explanation, including Army chief Gen. Randy George, with a number of those ousted being women or people of color.

Hegseth rolled out six major initiatives, including a project co-directed by Elon Musk, top Trump donor Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich to plan the “future of warfare.” Project Meridian, a 120-day effort to identify technologies the US needs for future conflicts, puts Musk and Luckey, whose company Anduril has won billions in government contracts, directly into military planning, raising obvious conflict-of-interest questions. Hegseth also announced a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command for drones and robotics by October 2027, even as he slashes senior positions elsewhere, along with “FORTRESS America” to harden bases and supply chains and a “Next Great American Base” that states will compete for, built with classical architecture. A new officer pipeline called America’s Corps of Cadets will include Liberty University and Hillsdale College, as Hegseth, a Harvard and Princeton graduate, blasted Ivy League schools as “DEI-worshipping woke factories.” None of the initiatives came with price tags, staffing levels or details on what Congress would need to approve.

Hegseth also created a new Office of Religious Affairs, his latest move to elevate religion in the military. The office will give chaplains a “direct line” to Hegseth without “staff filters,” and a memo orders every military department to report “all unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements,” including support for faith-based homeschooling for military families. “Political correctness and secular humanism got a vote, chaplains did not,” Hegseth said, quoting Psalm 33:12 and declaring that the military is “putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.” The Pentagon says the office won’t compel religious participation or favor any faith. It follows Hegseth’s move in March to have chaplains stop wearing rank insignia and his firing in April of the Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., without public explanation.

Tennessee’s Execution of Christa Pike Fails After She Survives Two Lethal Injections

Tennessee’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed Wednesday night when she survived two doses of a lethal drug and was rushed to a hospital. Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in the state in 206 years for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at 18. Officials administered pentobarbital twice at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but Pike stayed awake after the first dose and at one point raised her head to ask whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. After the second dose she could be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut at 8:53 p.m., media witnesses were escorted out, and she was taken to an outside medical facility for “life-saving measures.” Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called it “singular and unparalleled,” noting that while seven people have survived executions where officials couldn’t find a vein, no one has ever survived after actually receiving the drugs.

The execution only went forward after the Supreme Court lifted a last-minute stay in a 6-3 vote. A divided 6th Circuit panel had halted the execution Wednesday morning to consider whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse was fully weighed at her sentencing. The state appealed, arguing the delay traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics,” and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cleared the way without explanation, over a dissent from the three liberal justices who said her claims deserved a closer look. The curtain on the execution chamber opened at 7:27 p.m., hours before her death warrant was set to expire at midnight. In her final statement, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” and described herself as at peace.

Tennessee is defending its handling of the execution as anti-death penalty advocates erupt in outrage. The Department of Correction said it “followed every step” of its established protocol, that the drug “has consistently been effective,” and that the protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out.” Death Penalty Action co-founder Abraham Bonowitz called it “an outrage,” asking of state officials, “How do they sleep at night?” Laura Porter of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty noted that people across the political spectrum had urged a pause after Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year, saying the state “cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment.” Reprieve CEO Maya Foa said it’s impossible to know exactly what went wrong because lethal injection “relies on secrecy at every stage.”

The failed execution comes as death sentences are being carried out at the fastest pace in years under Trump. There were 47 executions nationwide in 2025, the most since 2009, and 28 so far in 2026, compared with between 11 and 25 a year under Biden. Women remain exceedingly rare among those executed, accounting for just 18 of more than 1,600 people put to death since 1976. Pike’s case had drawn international attention over her age at the time of the crime, her history as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and her diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD. In an interview before her scheduled execution, Pike said she felt a “kinship” with Lindsay Clancy, saying they were “both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues.”

Other news:

The Trump administration is threatening to ban US diesel exports unless France and Germany release their emergency stockpiles. Three people close to the discussions told Reuters the US has warned the two countries to draw down reserves to ease global fuel prices, with one source saying Washington wants the EU to release 120 million barrels of diesel over the next six months. The pressure comes as Trump weighs a diesel export ban to bring down US prices ahead of the midterms, even though experts, including some in his own cabinet, warn such a ban would only push prices higher. Europe has grown increasingly dependent on US fuel after cutting off Russian imports and losing Middle East supplies to the Iran war. “It is in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States,” one US official told Reuters, as officials from the EU, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Britain held a call Thursday on possible releases. French President Emmanuel Macron is now convening a video conference of G7 leaders on rising fuel prices and coordinated releases of reserves.

Mortgage rates hit their highest level since 2023 as a bond sell-off driven by war-fueled inflation sent Treasury yields to levels not seen since 2002. The 10-year Treasury yield rose as high as 5.34% Thursday and the 30-year as high as 5.68%, pushing the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate to 7.6%. A major driver is inflation from energy prices tied to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, with gas prices still 47% higher than when the Iran war began in late February and diesel up 70%, costs that trickle down to store shelves through shipping and farming. S&P Global reported last week that price pressures on businesses intensified in September at the fastest rate in four years. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure came in cooler than expected, but KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said that was mostly due to a technical change, calling it “cooler on paper, hot underneath.” Markets now see roughly a 60% chance the Fed raises rates again in December.

Chinese refiners have suspended fuel exports for October, further squeezing a global market already strained by the Iran war. Beijing gave major refiners no green light to export diesel, gasoline or jet fuel beyond Hong Kong and Macau as the country began a week-long holiday, and state giant PetroChina canceled several planned shipments. Beijing has made exports contingent on domestic inventories returning to prewar levels, and Kpler estimates diesel stocks are about 20 million barrels short of that threshold. The move comes just after Trump urged President Xi Jinping during his Washington visit to help stabilize global fuel supplies. “International markets are an afterthought,” said Oxford Institute for Energy Studies analyst Michal Meidan, with countries like Singapore, Australia, Vietnam and Bangladesh among those most exposed. Bangladesh, which gets up to a third of its refined fuel imports from Chinese suppliers, says it hasn’t even been notified of the pause.

Former officials warn the Trump administration has abandoned the federal effort to investigate real threats to US elections while chasing unproven voter fraud claims. The Justice Department’s election threats task force, which received more than 2,000 threat reports, opened over 100 investigations and prosecuted 21 cases between 2021 and 2024, including a failed New Mexico candidate who organized shootings at officials’ homes, has brought no new cases and “appears to be defunct in practice,” according to former Oregon election security chief Nikki Fisher. The administration also eliminated the FBI’s foreign influence task force on Pam Bondi’s first day as attorney general and cut election security staff and training at CISA. “This administration … has dismantled the entire apparatus that is responsible for detecting and holding these bad actors accountable,” said former national security council official Caitlin Durkovich. Meanwhile, the FBI’s raids seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County and election equipment in Puerto Rico have produced nothing, and Trump’s primetime claims that China acquired US voter data couldn’t be substantiated. Instead, Attorney General Todd Blanche is touting charges against more than 90 people for voter-related fraud, including 50 noncitizens in the past five weeks.

The parents of a Michigan toddler who pulled a loaded gun out of his backpack at daycare will face charges. No one was hurt Monday when the boy displayed the holstered pistol at Childrens World Early Learning Center in Canton Township, and police praised a staff member for intervening quickly and safely. One of the child’s parents is a Detroit-area police officer, though the gun was not described as a work firearm. Police Chief Joseph Bialy called video of the boy handling the weapon “shocking” and “hard to watch.” Michigan law requires firearms to be locked up at home when children are present, and the parents are set to make an initial court appearance Thursday. Penalties under the law increase sharply if a gun is fired, and a Newaygo County man is already serving more than three years in prison after his 5-year-old grandson was fatally shot by another child who got hold of a shotgun.

Naomi Campbell won her appeal to overturn a five-year ban on serving as a charity trustee in England and Wales. The UK Charity Commission had ruled last year that Fashion for Relief, the poverty charity Campbell founded about two decades ago, was “poorly governed” with “inadequate financial management,” finding only 8.5% of its spending went to charitable grants over six years starting in 2016. A three-person tribunal agreed there had been “serious misconduct and mismanagement,” but found it stemmed from the conduct of fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich. The tribunal ruled the financial failures and misuse of funds were “concealed” from Campbell and that she had been “deceived.” The decision clears the 56-year-old supermodel to serve as a charity trustee again, a little over a year after the commission imposed the ban.

Tropical moisture from Hurricane Polo is drenching the central US as another Pacific hurricane rapidly strengthens off Mexico. Hurricane Rachel is expected to become a major storm with winds topping 111 mph, though it poses no threat to land, while flood warnings remain in effect in New Mexico, where Albuquerque just recorded its second-wettest month ever. Flooding has devastated the state’s famous chile crop at harvest time, with one Hatch Chile Association board member saying of flooded fields, “everything’s toast.” Storms dumped up to 3.5 inches of rain in Amarillo, Texas, spawning a tornado, while Acting Gov. Howie Morales declared a state of emergency freeing up $3.75 million in aid. In Mexico, schools in 30 municipalities in Jalisco closed as a precaution, and the bodies of a mother and her two children were found after a river flooded in the town of Talpa de Allende. The busy Pacific season is consistent with El Niño conditions.

A former Northern Arizona University fraternity leader was sentenced to two months in jail after a pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Carter Eslick, 20, pleaded guilty to felony hazing in the January death of 18-year-old Colin Daniel Martinez, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.425%, more than five times the legal driving limit, after four Delta Tau Delta pledges were made to share two bottles of vodka until they vomited. Witnesses checked Martinez’s pulse and breathing throughout the night instead of getting him help. Eslick, the chapter’s pledge master, apologized and said he takes “full responsibility,” and must deliver 305 anti-hazing presentations as part of three years of probation. The judge said she was troubled that no one spoke out, and Martinez’s parents are calling for accountability and reform within Greek life. The university suspended the fraternity after Martinez’s death, and its national organization has since shut down the chapter.

An immigration judge ruled the US can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque on national security grounds, in a case his lawyers say is retaliation for his pro-Palestinian speech. Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, has lived in the US since 1993 with no criminal record here, but the government cited decades-old convictions in Israel that his attorneys say came from confessions extracted through torture. The judge gave “extreme deference” to a Rubio memo labeling Sarsour a foreign policy risk, the same rarely used provision used against Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, while rejecting the government’s claim that he lied to immigration authorities. Sarsour, who says deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” plans to appeal, and a federal judge previously ordered him freed from ICE custody, finding he had a “substantial” claim of retaliation. His lawyers say he lost more than 30 pounds in detention, where his diabetes went largely unmonitored. He can’t be deported until he exhausts his appeals, and his lawyers are also fighting the removal order’s listing of Jordan, a country he has no connection to, as a possible destination.

A Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter ran 62 unpermitted gas generators for nearly a year, pumping out an estimated 140 tons of smog-forming pollution before regulators stepped in. Records obtained by Floodlight show DataOne’s generators in Vineland began operating in October 2025 and logged more than 46,000 hours, which a Rutgers professor estimates would rank it among New Jersey’s top five nitrogen oxide polluters of 2025. At full capacity, experts say the fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons a year, nearly double the state’s largest power plant, pollution linked to asthma, heart attacks and premature death. Local officials knew about the generators for months and residents filed more than 100 noise complaints, but the state only fined the company $1 million last week and is still letting it run them for 45 days while it seeks permits. “How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now?” asked one resident who lives about a mile away and worries about her children’s exposure. The company’s CEO had told residents in January the site would be “polluting less than a farm.”

A medical helicopter crashed off Catalina Island near Los Angeles, killing two people and leaving two hospitalized, with a fifth person still missing. First responders pulled four people from the water after the crash shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday, and two were pronounced dead at the scene while two were taken to mainland hospitals in stable condition. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the medevac helicopter went down shortly after taking off from Catalina, and it now sits submerged in 240 feet of water. County firefighters, lifeguards, the Coast Guard and the sheriff’s department searched through the night for the missing person. The helicopter was believed to be owned by Reach Air Medical Services, and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice  

New York Times, Updates: Tennessee Governor Pauses Future Execution After Inmate Survives Lethal Injection, Billy Witz and Emily Cochrane, Oct. 1, 2026. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review of the state’s capital-punishment process after the botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death. She was hospitalized late Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee paused capital punishment in Tennessee on Thursday and called for a review of the state’s policies on how it puts people to death. The announcement came hours after Christa Pike, a death row inmate, survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital in the state’s second botched execution this year.

Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized late Wednesday night when she remained conscious after the injections. It was not immediately clear Thursday morning what her condition was, or what had gone wrong.

“It is deeply disturbing to me” that the execution was botched, Mr. Lee said. He said the pause he imposed includes Ms. Pike’s case.

The pause will also delay an execution that had been scheduled for December for a man convicted of murdering a friend. This year, Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for another death-row inmate whose execution had been canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein.

Mr. Lee said it was not immediately clear who will conduct the independent review. He repeatedly said that the Tennessee Department of Corrections appeared to have followed its procedures.

Ms. Pike was found guilty in 1996 of torturing and murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in an attack carried out with her boyfriend and a friend. They slashed at Ms. Slemmer with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest and removed a piece of her skull.

Media witnesses recounted the moments before the execution of Christa Pike was halted on Wednesday.Credit…George Walker Iv/Associated Press

Here’s what we’re covering:

Court actions: Ms. Pike had been scheduled to become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Wednesday’s attempted execution came after a series of legal delays. Read more ›

In her words: Ms. Pike spent the better part of three decades alone on death row, and her victim’s family was in favor of her execution. Ms. Pike expressed remorse in an audio recording shared be her lawyers in response to questions by The New York Times. “I run through this execution every day in my heart,” she said. “Whatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.” Read more ›

New York Times, John Roberts and His Island, Jodi Kantor, Oct. 1, 2026. After decades of potlucks and paddle-boarding on Maine’s midcoast, rising anger and protests have left the Supreme Court’s chief justice more isolated than ever.

To many people on this remote stretch of Maine coastline, where every day looks like a fresh painting made of light and water, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., right, is just “John.”

John, who has spent over 20 summers on Hupper Island, a refuge about 90 miles northeast of Portland with no cars and barely two dozen homes. John, who swaps favors with neighbors and endures jokes about his boating skills from more experienced operators. John, who has spent many mornings on the dock in Port Clyde, the postage-stamp-sized town across the water from the island, nursing a half-caff and a cinnamon bun.

For a long time, the chief justice’s life here was a story of potluck dinners and easy friendships, according to a summer of interviews with more than two dozen residents. Neighbors reveled in his position but kept exchanges with him about it brief or light. At a long-ago annual summer party, he used to participate in touch football, then call dinner to order by proclaiming: “Oyez, oyez, oyez, the lobsters are ready.”

But in recent years, as the Supreme Court has reshaped American life and handed more power to President Trump, a very personal form of anger has been rising here at the chief justice, transforming his getaways.

His summer retreats, long a well-known fact, are now a source of debate. Neighbors have taken to the water to protest him. Calling themselves “kayak-tivists,” they form flotillas facing his island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people in town give him the finger.

Even some longtime friends who would not dream of joining the kayakers said they have been drawing back socially because of their distress over his decisions, notably the court’s 2024 decision granting the president broad immunity from prosecution.

He is now ringed by far more security than in the past, residents say, adding to the distance.

The chief justice’s narrowing world in Maine shows how the court’s controversial decisions and languishing public trust, along with increasing peril for public officials, have reshaped the lives of the justices, leaving them more isolated than ever before.

In Washington and beyond, ever-present security threats as well as protests are separating and shielding the justices from the people whose lives will be affected by their decisions. They are less likely to spontaneously interact with people who disagree with their work, and their exposure to the texture and mess of everyday life is diminishing. Being just John, even here, has grown much harder.

“From what I see, the barrier runs both ways,” said Mary Anne Mason, a friend and former law partner of the chief justice who lives in Port Clyde. “It’s harder for him to feel comfortable approaching people — and vice versa.”

The protests have split Port Clyde and the nearby villages on this peninsula, as people here have debated how best to convey displeasure with a justice, if at all. Is it better to ensure their famous neighbor hears from those who disagree or to leave him alone, because his job is to be impervious to pressure?

New York Times, Times Exclusive: How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking Justice, Debra Kamin, Matt Flegenheimer and Amy Julia Harris, Oct. 1, 2026. The woman known as “Jane Doe” was initially embarrassed about what happened at a fraternity party in 2024, but soon concluded: “I was assaulted.”

In October 2024, about a week after a Chi Phi fraternity party at Cornell University, the sophomore who would come to be known as Jane Doe was milling around an online forum about Greek life when she encountered a post that stopped her cold.

“Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?” someone had written.

“They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore,” another user said. “Report them.”

Since the evening that began on Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe had recounted the night’s events to her roommates without identifying herself as a rape victim. She had exchanged friendly text messages with men she would later accuse of assault. She had heard uncharitable appraisals of herself from undergraduate gossips.

Then she read the words.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” Jane Doe told investigators, according to documents from a university review of the accusations obtained by The New York Times.

Those records, which have not been previously reported, help illuminate a case that has horrified the nation and plunged one of its elite institutions into crisis. They shed light on the crucial three-week period between the fraternity party and Jane Doe’s decision to take her story to the campus police, accusing multiple fraternity brothers of sexual assault and alleging that she was coerced into taking ketamine.

The bare facts of what happened after she made her accusations are by now well known: The Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, reviewed her complaint and declined to bring criminal charges, saying there was not sufficient evidence to do so. Jane Doe filed a complaint that prompted at least a dozen hearings by the school’s Title IX committee, which is supposed to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.ImageThe exterior of a fraternity house.The Chi Phi fraternity is under scrutiny after a women said that multiple members of the organization sexually assaulted her.Credit…Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

On Sept. 16, Jane Doe also filed a lawsuit against seven men, accusing them of sexual assault. Lawyers for at least three of the accused men have broadly denied criminal wrongdoing; others have not yet made public statements.

What had not been known publicly, until now, were the detailed filings collected during the private Title IX proceedings — hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with Jane Doe, her friends and those she accused.

Taken together, the raw materials sketch Jane Doe’s journey from an unknown sophomore to the embodiment of another searing national dialogue about sexual assault and consent. (Although Jane Doe is identified in the documents, The Times is withholding her name.)The Cornell Rape Investigation: Five TakeawaysOct. 1, 2026

Some women around her, the documents show, were quick to say they viewed the events of the evening of Oct. 19 as sexual assault. But Jane Doe, the interviews and text messages reveal, first appeared to grapple with shame, humiliation and concerns about her reputation before she began to consider herself an assault victim.

“I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” one of her roommates had said of the first hours after Jane Doe returned home the morning of Oct. 20, according to the Title IX files, which were compiled as part of the school’s formal process for investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

On page upon page, the documents make for difficult reading, vacillating between the merry shorthand of college students — asides about the gym, Snapchat, Greek life — and the blunt-force details of an alleged gang assault that the victim appeared to be processing in real time.

From the beginning, the case has seemed to double as a referendum on so many vexing questions about what it means to be a young woman on a college campus, even a campus as nominally esteemed as Cornell’s: Who is believed, and who is coddled? How much good can Title IX do? Has anything changed, really?

For Jane Doe, the records suggest, the first task was to make sense of what had happened to her.

New York Times, Cornell Rape Investigation: Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped, Hurubie Meko, Oct. 1, 2026. Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges.

A person walks across a street.The Cornell Police Department summarized hours of interviews with a woman who said she was raped into a six-page document that excluded key details. A local prosecutor did not pursue criminal charges based on that document.Credit…Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesHurubie Meko

By Updated 8:51 a.m. ET

At a campus police department on Nov. 14, 2024, a Cornell University sophomore detailed how she found herself naked in a fraternity house nearly a month before, with a “ring of men” around her. She was drunk and had been given ketamine, she said. Her phone was across the room.

“There was really no escape,” she said.

The woman spoke for hours with an officer, telling him how what began as a consensual sexual encounter with a man she liked spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack by several men inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.

“I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped,” she told them. “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day.

While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped. The omission, which for a time seemed to end the case, instead now appears to have only delayed a case that has roiled the campus and renewed the national debate how colleges handle claims of sexual assault.

That condensed statement was shared with the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, who decided there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the seven men. It looked like the case was over.

Mr. Van Houten’s decision in 2024 largely transpired quietly, through a process that is often shielded from public scrutiny. Cornell, though, conducted its own investigation. That investigation, which The Times has reviewed, concluded months after the woman dropped out of Cornell because of the incident.

Then last month the woman, as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the seven men, the fraternity and her sorority. The lawsuit ricocheted online, plunging the university into a crisis and landing Mr. Van Houten’s office in a maelstrom of criticism. Many in the public, including politicians and celebrities, began questioning what law enforcement officials knew about the woman’s allegations two years ago and why a criminal case was never pursued.

The men have not been charged criminally, and during the university investigation the men almost universally denied the accusations against them and said any sex that took place was consensual. Several of the men suggested that Jane Doe had not only initiated the sexual encounters, but in some cases, had done so without asking.

Mr. Van Houten has defended his office’s decision, and said he wants to meet with the woman this week as he considers bringing new evidence to a grand jury.How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking JusticeOct. 1, 2026

In a nine-page public statement on Monday, Mr. Van Houten said that the statement the woman provided at the time did not “allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped.”

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” he wrote.

But in the documents reviewed by The Times, the Cornell police did not inform Mr. Van Houten’s office that Jane Doe had said she had been raped. It’s unclear what other conversations the police and district attorney’s office had about the case.

In her interview with the police officer, Jane Doe described how Oct. 19, 2024, began with her filing an unrelated police report that her car keys and wallet had been stolen. After discovering one of her credit cards had been used, she said, she canceled all of them.

When members of her sorority heard about the theft, they decided she would no longer be the designated sober sister tasked with keeping an eye on sorority sisters at a bar that evening, she recalled.

She started drinking earlier in the night before heading to the bar, where the sorority was hosting an event, and she was served drinks even though she was underage, she said. She then briefly stopped at another bar before eventually trekking 20 minutes on foot to a fraternity house to meet a guy she was interested in. At around 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., she felt she was inebriated, she told the officer.

She spotted the man she was looking for, she said, and they talked, drank and danced. Soon after, she went to a room and had a consensual sexual encounter with the man, and another man she knew from the fraternity, both of whom she thought were her friends, she said.

But as the night progressed, there were more than the two men in the room and she began to feel used, she recalled. She could hear the men talking about taking turns with her, she said.

“I will never know who all touched me,” she told the officer. “I will not know.”ImageA photo shows a fraternity house at night.Jane Doe spoke for hours with a police officer detailing how a consensual encounter with a man quickly spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.Credit…Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

At one point a group of men walked into the room where she was naked, she said.

“I was horrified, and I squealed and ran” and hid under the covers of a bed, she said. She described how she had to swat one man’s hands away throughout the night as he tried to grope her. The men snorted ketamine off her body, she said. It was the most intoxicated she had ever been in her life, she told the officer.

At around 5:45 a.m., she said wanted to go to bed and told two of the men, “I gotta turn in.” They stopped, she said.

She said she woke up at 10 a.m., then was driven home shortly after.

In the days after Jane Doe provided her statement to the police, officers tried to contact the men she accused, with varying degrees of success, according to the administrative documents.

On Nov. 25, the officer who took Jane Doe’s statement filed a document and said he contacted an investigator in the district attorney’s office to talk.

The officer reported that he was told, based on a review of Jane Doe’s statement, that the prosecutor’s office had decided that “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case.”

“Nothing further at this time,” he wrote.  

New York Times, What New York’s Rape Laws Mean for the Cornell Case, Maria Cramer, Oct. 1, 2026 (print ed.). State law makes it harder to prosecute when victims drank willingly. The prosecutor in the Cornell case said that kept him from charging students accused of sexual assault.

A New York prosecutor has blamed the state’s rape laws in part for his decision not to charge Cornell University students who were accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2024.

Those laws make it much more difficult to charge people with rape if the accuser chose to become intoxicated, according to prosecutors and advocates for sexual assault victims.

For years, legislators have tried to change the law so that prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in cases where a person had sex with someone who was clearly incapacitated and unable to control or understand their behavior.

The case of the young woman who said she was sexually assaulted by the students at their fraternity in Ithaca, N.Y., has renewed calls for that legislation to pass.

Here is what to know about the state’s rape laws.What does the law say about voluntary intoxication?

In New York, accusers who chose to drink or take drugs have a high burden of proving they were unable to consent, according to prosecutors.

The way the law is written now, people who were voluntarily intoxicated cannot claim they were mentally incapacitated during an assault, unless they can show they were physically helpless. This means that they had to be unconscious or physically unable to communicate consent at the time of the act.

That definition leaves out people who were semiconscious, slurring their words or unable to stand or walk steadily before they were assaulted, according to prosecutors and supporters of sexual assault victims.

Proposed legislation would allow prosecutors to charge third-degree rape in cases where a person under the influence of drugs or alcohol was unable to control their behavior and was assaulted by someone who should have “reasonably” understood the victim’s condition.

At least 23 other states, including California and Virginia, already have similar laws.How did the law affect the Cornell case?

Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, has said that when the woman first reported the assault in 2024, her claims did not support a criminal case.

The woman, who was an undergraduate student, took ketamine and drank tequila and beer; at one point, she consumed 10 drinks in a three-hour period, according to the lawsuit she has filed against the students, the fraternity, her sorority and the university.

The students pressured her into taking more ketamine and gave her so much alcohol she became unable to consent, the lawsuit states. They took her to a room and assaulted her for about seven hours. She tried to hide her naked body under the covers and push them away, but “she felt as if there was no way for her to escape this room full of predatory fraternity men,” the lawsuit says.

Since the lawsuit became public, Mr. Van Houten has been criticized for not charging the men when the woman first came forward in November 2024.

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Van Houten said that if the woman’s initial report had shown she was unconscious when she was assaulted, “these guys would be in prison right now.”

He said he is reviewing new evidence and will decide whether her case could now be taken to a grand jury.

Mr. Van Houten said if the law had been changed in 2024, it would have been easier to show that the accused students should have known that “the person was incapable of consenting because of their consumption of alcohol or drugs.”

“That’s not the law,” he said.Why hasn’t the law been changed?

Defense lawyers have pushed back hard, saying proposed legislation would make it easier for prosecutors to charge people who had sex with someone they believed had given consent and later claimed they were too intoxicated to know what they were doing.

Some lawyers have described the legislation as “paternalistic” and say it would take away a woman’s agency and ability to stand by a decision to have sex even though she chose to get drunk or take drugs.

Assemblywoman Latrice M. Walker, a Democrat whose district includes the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn and who has opposed changing the statute, has said she is worried about passing laws that would hurt a person’s right to due process.

The New York legislature has failed to pass the bill since 2019, when Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat representing the Bronx, introduced the first version.

In June, Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat and the speaker of the State Assembly, declined to bring the latest version of the bill to the floor even though it had broad bipartisan support.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Heastie released a statement saying the Assembly had formed a working group to examine the state’s sexual assault statutes and consider “how best to move forward so that New York’s laws are as strong as possible.”

“The allegations being reported out of Cornell University are truly horrifying,” Mr. Heastie said. “We want to do everything we can to ensure victims of sexual assault see justice served.” 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us — And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, Oct. 1, 2026. First of all — holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night – that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate – something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country – as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us – or this nation – has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing – of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come – For It Is Coming

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

• Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
• Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
• Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Ride the Wave, Baby! William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Whoa. It’s not just that a new Quinnipiac poll shows only 34 percent of voters approving of Donald Trump’s job performance, with 61 percent disapproving. It’s that Quinnipiac has Democrats leading by 12 points on the generic congressional ballot. This is up from 7 points in Quinnipiac’s survey two months ago.

Yes, this poll is something of an outlier. The FiftyPlusOne polling aggregator shows “only” about an 8-point generic ballot lead for the Democrats. But even that’s a ten point swing from 2024, when Republicans won the national vote for the House by 2.6 points. A 10-point swing would be a wave that puts lots of districts and states in play. A 14-point swing, which is what Quinnipiac implies, would be a tsunami.

And I’ll note that Quinnipiac has been on the money before. Their poll in late September 2024 had Trump leading Kamala Harris by 48 percent to 47 percent. I remember seeing those numbers and hoping against hope that they were wrong, that surely Harris had at least a narrow lead. But they were right.

Just as notable as the generic ballot in Quinnipiac’s poll this week was what it found about voters’ views on how our government should deal with the challenge of artificial intelligence. The results were, to say the least, lopsided.

“Seventy-one percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports stricter guardrails for AI development,” compared to 16 percent who preferred a candidate who supports expanding AI development. Even Republican voters preferred stricter guardrails, by 52 percent 29 percent.

What’s more, 79 percent of respondents said that with respect to AI, they think safety is more important than staying at the forefront of innovation. Only 15 percent thought the opposite. Again, even Republicans prioritized safety over innovation, by 62 percent to 32 percent.

Voters seem to have noticed that the Trump administration doesn’t agree with them. Only 25 percent support the president’s handling of the issue, while 58 percent disapprove. And that disapproval has started to spill over to his party. Forty-two percent now prefer the Democratic party on AI, while 29 percent prefer the Republican party. Only three weeks ago, by contrast, a New York Times/Siena poll found basically no gap between the two parties on the issue.

I’ll add that this survey was in the field over the weekend, before Tuesday’s White House lunch for the tech oligarchs. There Trump confirmed he was going to do nothing to pause or safeguard or regulate developments in artificial intelligence.

But Trump did issue an executive order rebranding “Artificial Intelligence” as “Super Intelligence.” The order celebrated the fact that these technologies are “transformative” and will allow us to do “what was previously impossible.” But aren’t “transformative” technologies that allow the “previously impossible” the kind of thing that requires some oversight by government, and some guardrails that depend on more than the goodwill of tech oligarchs?

Apparently not. Indeed, it turns out that the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” released after the lunch of the AI oligarchs was drafted by . . . the AI oligarchs. As Semafor reports:

The idea for what became President Donald Trump’s Tuesday pact with the AI industry came from a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and House Speaker Mike Johnson at last week’s state dinner . . .

Zuckerberg spoke to Johnson—whom he was seated next to at the dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping—about regulatory concerns around AI . . . The Meta CEO then talked to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about crafting a set of principles that tech executives could use at their next meeting with Trump . . .

Zuckerberg then circulated a draft ahead of Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and AI executives. Huang played a role gathering support for it among the administration’s guests . . . Eventually Trump himself released the document as a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” outlining broad principles for self-regulation.

That story apparently comes from a single source, so it’s possible there’s more to it than that—but it certainly looks like the “White House” executive order was drafted by the AI firms. Trump merely signed it.

It was nice of Trump to throw the glitzy lunch for the AI guys and sign off on their no-safeguards policy. It should make it even easier for Democrats to say for the next month that Trump and his party are bought and paid for big AI.

Maybe the tsunami Quinnipiac forecasts will turn out to be about right.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• WATCH: A Suspected Terror Plot Just Took a Much More Alarming Turn… Former CIA officer MARC POLYMEROPOULOS and national security reporter MICHAEL WEISS take on the attempted hijacking of a Tel Aviv–bound flight, a suspected plot targeting an air base in Britain, and the troubling signs that Iran may be taking its fight abroad.
• A Big Warning Sign for Trump’s GOP… On Command Post, SEN. ELISSA SLOTKIN joins MARK HERTLING and BEN PARKER to share what she learned from Hungary and Poland about post-Trump America.
• How Some TOTAL Unknowns Could F*ck Up Republicans’ Midterms… Libertarian candidates are polling surprisingly well. In close races, a few points could be all Democrats need, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
• Pete Hegseth’s Speech Was a Hyper-Macho Freak Show… On Bulwark Takes, SAM STEIN and BEN PARKER give their takes on Pete Hegseth’s bizarre State of the Force address, from his “no fatties, no weirdos” vision for the military to his fixation on testosterone, wokeness, and American universities.
• Maria Comella and The Trio: Holy Schmitt, That Was Bad… The Trio comes together on the daily pod for the first time to give a little taste of the MAGA-land news Sam, Will, and Tim are covering for The Bulwark.
• Skittish Republicans Discover That ICE Is Bad—for Their Campaigns… Some endangered incumbents are trying to outrun the electoral consequences of Trump’s immigration agenda, writes ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO in Huddled Masses.

Quick Hits

TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB: President Donald Trump yesterday reiterated his threat to “blow up” Iran, telling reporters that “we have to make that decision: We blow them up or make a deal.” That followed the president’s comments last week at the United Nations: “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before . . . or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

Over the weekend, the White House rejected a proposal from Iran that would have reestablished the conditions of this summer’s Memorandum of Understanding, with Iran at least partly reopening the Strait of Hormuz and promising to resume nuclear talks in exchange for the United States lifting its blockade. Trump, possibly responding to one of the major critiques Iran hawks made of the initial MOU, now seems to be pushing for concrete nuclear commitments as part of the ceasefire deal, rather than agreeing to haggle over them later.

A U.S. official also told The Bulwark this week that America is “skeptical of Iran’s promises after they broke the last MOU by firing on commercial vessels . . . so the U.S. needs assurances this time that Iran is serious and it’s not just them trying to get out of the tough situation they are in.” The official added that Trump would still be willing to grant sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds in exchange for concrete progress on Iran’s nuclear program.

Much of Iran’s nuclear program remains buried under rubble and largely inaccessible to the Iranian government thanks to U.S. airstrikes in June 2025.

NO UGGOS ALLOWED: These are going to be an annual thing, we guess. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave another chest-thumping speech in front of a giant American flag yesterday about his determination to build America the hottest, sexiest, sweatiest military the world has ever known. Here’s the WSJ:

Hegseth said he had eliminated “silly PowerPoint trainings” and “silly drag queen shows.” He touted getting rid of diversity quotas, gender pronouns and “identity months.” He also reprised a refrain from his speech last year: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

“The ideological clowns are out,” he added. “The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top,” Hegseth said, referring to his recent mandate for male servicemembers over 30 to undergo annual screening for testosterone deficiency.

Hegseth’s tone throughout was combative, and he attacked the press in the opening minutes of the address. He accused the media of “treason,” denying news reports of munitions shortages and blamed reporters for revealing U.S. base locations to “the enemy.”

Hegseth also announced that Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich will lead a Pentagon team called “Project Meridian” on the future of warfare. Isn’t it nice to know we’re in good hands?

A BOTCHED EXECUTION: Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who has been on death row for decades after brutally murdering a classmate at the age of 18 in 1995, was supposed to be executed last night after the Supreme Court declined to intervene on her behalf. But the state botched the job: After two doses of lethal pentobarbital, Pike was still breathing with a beating heart. Eventually, the state suspended the execution, and Pike was taken to a nearby hospital for medical care. The New York Times has the strange story:

It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the drugs, or what Ms. Pike’s medical condition was. In a statement late Wednesday, her lawyers said that she was at a nearby hospital but that they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials confirmed to a federal judge late Wednesday that Ms. Pike was receiving medical care.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.” . . .

Ms. Pike’s lawyers had argued the procedure could be torturous for her because she has small veins, a history of sexual trauma and other medical conditions.

“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy,” they said in a joint statement after the execution attempt.

New York Times, Should Democrats Spend in Deep-Red Texas? A Battle Could Echo in 2028, Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 1, 2026. Allies of Gina Hinojosa want a Democratic group to support her bid for Texas governor — putting pressure on its chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is weighing a run for president.

As polls suggest that Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat, is competitive in her campaign to become the first Latina governor of the usually reliably Republican state of Texas, a growing number of prominent Latino officials are angry that she is not getting more help from the party.

Now there are veiled threats that if the Democratic Governors Association fails to invest in her bid, some Latino leaders could withhold their support from the group’s chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, should he, as expected, run for president in 2028.

“We are asking you to invest in a competitive race with the largest Latino electorate in the country following an election cycle where Republicans made alarming inroads with Latinos,” read a letter more than 70 Latino officials sent Wednesday to Mr. Beshear at the D.G.A.

Ms. Hinojosa’s allies have recruited a cadre of officials, including some from the early-voting states of Nevada and New Mexico, to push Mr. Beshear to direct the group to spend $10 million on her campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott, the incumbent Republican who is seeking a fourth term.

“All Democrats would do better when and if we help Gina Hinojosa win Texas,” said one of the Democrats who signed the letter, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who like Mr. Beshear is considering a 2028 run. “No matter who you are, no matter if you’re running for president, you want Gina Hinojosa to be the governor of Texas.”

Last week, the D.G.A. allocated $650,000 to help the Democratic candidate for governor in Alaska. Texas has been a back-burner race for the D.G.A., which has so far invested in backing Democratic candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It has not yet spent or directed money on advertising in Texas.

“Gina Hinojosa is a great candidate and running a great campaign,” Mr. Beshear said in a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday. “The D.G.A. is currently investing by paying expenses and providing staff, with more to come. My goal as chair of the D.G.A. this year is to win as many races as we can and that’s exactly what we’re doing by going on offense and expanding the map.”

When asked about Ms. Hinojosa’s race in an interview published last week by USA Today, Mr. Beshear said he would not allow his own presidential aspirations to color how he directs D.G.A. resources this year.

Association.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“I, as the DGA chair, can’t be motivated by pleasing or not pleasing anyone when it comes to ’28,” Mr. Beshear said. “I made a commitment to win as many races as I can in ’26.”

The pleas for more aid come as polls show Ms. Hinojosa competitive with Mr. Abbott, whose campaign has spent $68 million in advertising so far, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm, while she has spent just $8.7 million.

Mr. Beshear’s PAC, In This Together, sent $25,000 to Ms. Hinojosa’s campaign and he has been making fund-raising calls to donors on her behalf, a D.G.A. official said. Mr. Beshear and Ms. Hinojosa spoke by phone on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the exchange.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, the nation’s lone sitting Latina governor, has been phoning donors to help Ms. Hinojosa raise money, she said. She said she has also worked with Mr. Beshear to direct resources to Hispanic communities. “We should all be focused on supporting Gina,” said Ms. Lujan Grisham, whose state will be early in the 2028 primary calendar.

The fund-raising disparity in Texas illustrates a longstanding problem in Democratic politics: Their donors are far more inclined to invest in candidates running for Congress or president than they are in those running for state office.

“It is extremely challenging for us to get national donors to pay attention to governor’s races outside of their states,” said Peter O’Keefe, a former Democratic Governors Association treasurer who remains involved in the group’s fund-raising.

Texas has been a reliably Republican state for decades. President Trump won it by 14 points in 2024. The state’s last Democratic governor was Ann Richards, who lost her 1994 re-election bid to George W. Bush.

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Hispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In It, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Hispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In ItTexas Hispanics feel betrayed and angry at Trump for his economic disaster and immigration deportations, so Trump is coming to the state to rub their noses in it.

The Republican theory of the 2026 midterm election was based on the idea that Hispanic voters who supported Trump in 2024 made a permanent shift rightward and could be used to build a wave-proof gerrymandered majority to keep the House with the GOP.

PoliticusUSA is 100% independent news and opinion. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

That was the entire idea behind Texas Republicans redrawing their congressional districts to net them more House seats, but even before the ink was dry on the new map, signs showed Republicans had gotten it totally wrong.

Trump immediately did everything that he could to alienate the Hispanic voters who supported him in Texas, and they are seething with rage at the president.

The New York Times talked to Hispanic voters in Texas and found a grim scene for Republicans:

In more than two dozen interviews across the region in recent weeks, Hispanic voters said they were furious over the president’s approach to immigration and the economy — the very problems they had counted on him to fix.

There is no bigger case study in how badly Democrats screwed up the 2024 election than Hispanic voters. Hispanic Democrats were warning the party that their voters, especially in Texas, were upset and feeling ignored, but the Democratic consultant class was more worried about getting rid of Biden and the money that they could make off of Democratic donors with a new candidate; the vast majority of your $5 donations to Kamala Harris went to four big Democratic consulting firms in 2024, rather than listening to the voters.

Hispanics in Texas were like other groups of voters who cast ballots for Trump because they were upset about inflation, felt neglected by the Democratic Party, and believed Trump’s promises.

The problem is that Hispanic voters, like many others, didn’t hear the fine print on Trump’s promises.

Trump always talked about deporting criminals, but he never specified until after he won the election that, to him, criminal immigrants were anyone in the country illegally. However, illegal immigration is a civil offense. When attendees at the 2024 convention held up mass deportation signs, that was a giveaway, and Trump spent his entire campaign praising tariffs.

Republicans are in free fall. Trump has few places to go. The president is coming to Texas.

One Hispanic woman in Texas told The Times that after Trump deported her brother, “I started to hate,” she said. “I started holding resentment and grudges, especially from those people that I rallied with for Trump.”

Trump is going to be holding a rally in Texas where he will tout his mass deportations and gaslight about the economy, which is the last thing that angry Hispanic voters in the state want to hear.

Donald Trump is coming to apologize to the voters that he betrayed. Trump isn’t going to make amends. The president is going to rub the noses of Texas Hispanic voters in his betrayal.

His presence won’t help Republicans in Texas. It is almost certain to hurt.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration’s own contractor (New York Times photo).

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: After Reflecting Pool Humiliation, Rep. Jamie Raskin Gives DOJ Hot Tip On Felon Orange Vandal Desecrating DC, Jason Easley, Oct. 1, 2026. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to the judge barring the Trump DOJ from charging an Olympian in the Reflecting Pool case by telling the DOJ about a felon vandalizing the Kennedy Center.

The Trump administration’s DOJ suffered another humiliating defeat when a judge barred the government from bringing a case against an Olympian who the Trump administration accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

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Judge Todd Edelman wrote that Davey Hearn, “faces the unique possibility that the government will revive this case — one that it has already announced to be meritless — based on political pressure brought by the President of the United States upon his subordinate officers.”

The judge continued, “The government has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made, or even to threaten to do so, at Mr. Hearn’s expense.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to the judge’s ruling on X:

Judge Edelman just permanently (“with prejudice”) dismissed the farcical charges brought against my wonderful constituent Davey Hearn.

As Judge Edelman pointed out, there was “no crime” so there’s no reason to hold the case up for further counterfeit prosecutions. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro never had any evidence against Davey, a three-time Olympian who has taught generations of my constituents canoeing, kayaking and how not to spend $15 million of taxpayer money turning your swimming pool into an algae farm.

Trump’s prosecutorial deflecting pool picked Davey as a scapegoat for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago pool guy’s “rushed and botched” installation job of a new Royal hue in America’s Reflecting Pool, now known throughout the DMV as the “Strait of Warm Ooze.”

So many Marylanders, led by Rockville Councilmember Adam Van Grack, stood strong with Davey as he fought these murky, trumped-up bogus charges. Now America celebrates a victory for justice and the rule of law.

Meantime, if Detectives Pirro and Blanche are still searching for felon vandals in the Nation’s Capital, I’ve got great leads on who illegally bulldozed the East Wing of the White House and who has been desecrating the Kennedy Center with deranged narcissistic graffiti.

If federal law enforcement were interested in stopping vandalism of monuments in Washington, they would begin with the guy who tore down the East Wing of the White House, destroyed the Reflecting Pool, and scribbled his name all over the Kennedy Center.

The real vandal has always been sitting in the Oval Office, seemingly napping most of the time.

Trump was willing to send an innocent person to jail to cover up his Reflecting Pool botch.

The corruption is endless, and the legal system is the only guardrail that has been effective in Trump’s second administration. 

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video. 

New York Times, Kristi Noem Files for Divorce After 34 Years of Marriage, Michael Levenson, Oct.1, 2026 (print ed.). Ms. Noem, a former homeland security secretary and governor of South Dakota, filed court papers there seeking to end her marriage to Bryon Noem, an insurance salesman.

Kristi Noem, the former South Dakota governor whom President Trump fired as homeland security secretary in March, has filed for divorce from her husband, Bryon Noem, after 34 years of marriage, according to court records.

Ms. Noem claimed “for settlement purposes only” that “irreconcilable differences” were to blame for the dissolution of the marriage, according to a complaint for divorce filed in Hamlin County, S.D., where she and Mr. Noem live in the small town of Castlewood.

The document was signed by Ms. Noem’s lawyer on April 6 but was not filed with the court until Monday.

“Kristi Noem has filed for the dissolution of her marriage to Bryon Noem,” her lawyer, Michael K. Sabers, said in a statement. “She has great faith in the South Dakota judicial system and will reserve any further comments for the legal process.”

Mr. Noem’s lawyer, Timothy G. Bottum, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Noem was “saddened that the marriage is ending and hopes for a private and amicable resolution.”

“If court proceedings become necessary, Bryon will welcome the opportunity to truthfully share his perspective,” the statement said. “Bryon’s priority is to protect the family and move forward as loving parents and grandparents.”

Ms. Noem, 54, and Mr. Noem, 56, were high school sweethearts who got engaged on the Fourth of July in 1991. They were married less than a year later, on May 23, 1992, in Watertown, S.D., where Ms. Noem was born. They have three adult children.

Mr. Noem, an insurance salesman, received intense public scrutiny in late March when The Daily Mail published what it said were images of him wearing what appeared to be large inflated balloons under a spandex shirt.

Ms. Noem said in a statement at the time that she was “devastated” by the images and that “the family was blindsided by this.” Mr. Noem declined to comment in March, responding in a text to a New York Times reporter: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”While the images provoked online mockery, they touched off a more sympathetic reaction in Castlewood, where some residents said they felt sorry for Mr. Noem.

Ms. Noem’s personal life was also the focus of speculation and rumor in South Dakota and Washington.

On March 4, the day before Ms. Noem was fired as homeland security secretary, a Democratic member of Congress asked her at a hearing on Capitol Hill whether she had had sexual relations with her lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski. Responding under oath, Ms. Noem called the question “tabloid garbage.” But she did not say no. Mr. Noem accompanied Ms. Noem to the hearing.

Mr. Trump announced in November 2024 that he was selecting Ms. Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a position that put her in charge of the administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and its large-scale deportation operation. The department includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mr. Trump fired Ms. Noem in March, making her the first cabinet official ousted in his second term.

The immediate catalyst for her firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings, particularly her statements asserting that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars in government ads in which Ms. Noem was prominently featured riding on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat. Mr. Trump had denied that he was involved, telling Reuters in March, “I never knew anything about it.”

Ms. Noem had presided over other controversies during her tenure.

In January, federal immigration agents fatally shot two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during vigorous protests of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. As bystander videos of the shootings caused a national outcry, Ms. Noem responded by accusing Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti of domestic terrorism.

When Mr. Trump announced that he was firing Ms. Noem and replacing her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, he said in a social media post that she had “served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results,” particularly on the border.

He also announced a new role for her: the previously nonexistent post of special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.

More On Artificial Intelligence

New York Times, Women Can Now Assess Their Breast Cancer Risk With the Help of A.I., Roni Caryn Rabin, Oct. 1, 2026. Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool that can predict five-year risk of developing breast cancer, is rolling out nationwide. Here’s what experts want you to know.

Starting Thursday, women across the United States will be able to find out their risk of developing breast cancer in the near future with the help of an A.I. tool that examines a single recent mammogram.

Everlywell, a digital health company, announced it would now offer patients nationwide access to Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year to predict a woman’s five-year risk of breast cancer based on imaging. The test, which was previously available only at select locations in Massachusetts and Colorado, will cost $249. It is not covered by insurance.

Doctors use mammograms to detect the presence of cancer, sometimes with the help of A.I. models that can read the images. But Clairity’s software uses the scans for a different purpose: predicting the risk of developing cancer and providing a probability score that reports the patient’s future risk in the form of a percentage, from zero to 100.

That score, which doctors should consider along with other clinical information like family and patient medical history and other risk factors, could aid in efforts to detect cancers earlier, when they are more treatable and more likely to have better outcomes, said Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, head of breast and gynecologic medical oncology at Valley Health System in Paramus, N.J.

The broader availability of a technology that can help women understand their breast cancer risk and talk to their doctors about it “has the potential to be practice-changing for us,” said Dr. Teplinsky, who is not involved with the work.

“We’re seeing younger and younger women with breast cancer, many of them diagnosed before they would even have started screening mammography at age 40,” she said.

Most have no telltale signs — like a strong family history of breast cancer — that would indicate higher-than-average risk. In fact, a majority of breast cancers occur in women with no family history of the illness.

“For so many women, it comes out of nowhere,” said Dr. Connie Lehman, founder and chief executive of Clairity, whose research led to the development of the new technology. “We’re trying to identify women at risk for these sporadic breast cancers, and to have fewer women fall through the cracks.”

But there are other factors to consider, including that the technology could lead to unnecessary alarm or medical interventions for people who ultimately won’t develop cancer. Here’s what to know.

How does the test work?

The model detects subtle imaging patterns that are correlated with future cancer development, even in mammograms that appear normal to the human eye. It was developed and trained on hundreds of thousands of mammograms from women around the world, Dr. Lehman said, and its results have been validated in further testing since it was authorized.

Anyone who has had a routine standard screening mammogram within the past 12 months will be able to request the test on the Everlywell website. Typically, mammograms start at 40, though guidelines issued this year introduced A.I.-driven risk assessments at the age of 35 as an option for gauging the disease risk earlier. This change could lead more women to get mammograms at younger ages.

Everlywell will retrieve a patient’s image from the mammography center and then feed it into Clairity’s platform, which produces a digital report on the patient’s risk. The report classifies patients as at average, intermediate or high risk of developing breast cancer over the next five years. It does not detect cancer itself.

Someone with a score below 1.7 percent — meaning less than a 1.7 in 100 chance of developing breast cancer in the next five years — is considered to be at average risk. Patients with a score between 1.7 percent and 3 percent are considered at intermediate elevated risk; those with a score of 3 percent or more are at high risk. (Women who are undergoing cancer treatment or who have genetic mutations that put them at high risk of breast cancer are not eligible.)

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, Oct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.”

Okay, that’s a lie. That wasn’t what the article was titled, but it was, in effect, what it said.

And it was a very interesting message to be coming at this moment in time. I think Dimon’s op-ed can be viewed as a harbinger of a big shift in the business community’s political positions and its attitudes that may be coming in the very near future — in effect a bet that Trump and MAGA in general are going to be in the rearview mirror, not too far from now.

Now, a word about Dimon. He’s an extraordinarily successful financial leader. He navigated the 2008 financial crisis and aftermath better than almost anyone else in Wall Street. He had the good sense to limit JP Morgan’s exposure to the practices that helped to create that financial crisis.

He is also a very, very smart political operator. He has had a talent for not making enemies, for staying at least on decent relationships with administrations from both parties, which is no mean feat in 21st century America. He certainly did not join the cavalcade of business leaders rushing to prostrate themselves at Trump’s feet after the 2024 election, and yet he was subtle enough about his restraint to not get put on Trump’s enemies list. So,you know, his political judgment should be trusted.

His economic judgment, all right, being a great businessman is not at all the same thing as being a great economist. And there’s no particular reason to think that he is always right about economic affairs. But that is, in a way, mostly beside the point.

So what did Dimon call for? Well, he basically said, we need to repair theWestern alliance. We need to bring the Western world, the advanced democracies, above all the United States and Europe, back together in part as a way to stand up against the threat of a rising China. And his proposal for how to do that was to negotiate a free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.

That’s quite something. That’s a very un-MAGA position to take. You want to bear in mind that, first of all, we’re currently under a government of people who do not at all believe in the virtues of free trade. In fact, are extremely hostile to globalism. Certainly don’t believe in binding international agreements. Maybe they want agreements that bind other countries, but not them.

And they are also not of the mind that we have a lot of shared values with the democratic governments of Europe. The MAGA position, if anything, is that they like the anti-democratic forces in Europe. J.D. Vance essentially campaigned for Viktor Orban in Hungary. Trump officials have been quite clear that they have sympathy for the AfD in Germany. So if we have common values with some Europeans, the Europeans with whom they have common values are neo-Nazis. And Trump’s de facto support for Putin in his invasion of Ukraine has been alarmingly clear over the past two years.

What we’re seeing here is Jamie Dimon basically saying that I don’t care about any of that. I don’t believe that you people are going to be in charge. And I think that we can go back to trying to rebuild bridges to Western Europe.

Now, it’s kind of interesting the way he phrases it. He puts a lot of it in terms that I suspect are intended to appeal to economic conservatives in the United States who are not MAGA types. He sells his proposal in part as an incentive for Europe to conduct pro-business, pro-economic reforms. He cites the Draghi report on European Competitiveness, which has been very influential in Europe. And points to him for even knowing about it! There are probably not a lot of people in the United States who have read the Draghi Report, absorbed its lessons.

I myself have read it. I have had some criticisms of some of the analysis in the Draghi Report, but the reforms that Draghi proposes, which have a lot to do with completing the European internal market, making the capital markets in Europe more flexible and responsive and so on, are very much in the right direction. So this is a good thing. And I’m glad to see someone in the United States, someone prominent, actually taking European affairs seriously and wanting the Europeans to do things that will improve their own position.

Dimon is almost surely overstating how important a free trade agreement with the United States could be. The reality is that the obstacles to European reform are internal — as are the obstacles to all the reforms we should be making here. Politics is real on both sides of the Atlantic.

And we are not as important to Europe — or they to us — as a lot of people imagine. The fact of the matter is that Europe only exports around 3% of what it produces to the US. And we were pretty close to free trade with Europe until Trump II came along. We had our average tariffs of only something on the order of 2% on European products. So it’s not as if he’s actually offering a tremendous benefit to Europe, something that would radically dislocate their internal politics and move them in a positive direction.

But, all right, it’s a good proposal. And I think that, as I understand it, Dimon believes that the process of negotiating towards a free trade agreement would in itself help to improve politics. That it would be a signal that the ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic, often anti-European policies of theTrump era are behind us.

So he’s looking forward to the day when we can start to try to repair some of the immense damage that has been done to our international relations during the Trump years.

Dimon is a smart political operator. I’m reasonably sure he would not have written this op-ed if the polls weren’t pointing towards a Democratic blowout. And of course, he could be wrong in believing that that’s going to happen, as we all could. But I’m sure that he is looking at the situation and envisaging a Democratic Congress — almost surely the House and quite likely the Senate — after the November election.

And a reasonable president, not necessarily a Democrat, but most likely, but in any case a reasonable president after Trump has gone from the scene.And a president and Congress that would be interested in trying to rebuild the Western alliance. Because ultimately, although Dimon’s proposal is economic in the narrow sense, it’s really political. It’s about rebuilding an alliance.

That won’t be easy. The fact of the matter is that the United States did just casually rip up solemnly signed trade agreements. Almost everything that Trump has done on tariffs is a violation of agreements made over several generations. Also, it’s not just Trump. The American people elected Trump twice, and the rest of the world is not going to forget that.

But free trade agreements can be a way of not just of enhancing trade, which is important, but maybe not as important as economists would like to think. But they can also be a way of binding countries closer together. They can be a gesture of alliance. And Diamond obviously thinks that this is possible, or at least thinks that it might be possible — close enough to being something that would really be on the table, that it’s worth making a case for it, and that it’s worth positioning himself and his institution for a post-MAGA era. And as Isaid, Diamond is a smart guy with a very, very good political judgment.

So that op-ed was one of the most encouraging things I’ve seen in months.

On that happy note, take care.

New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.”

The Iran war has sent diesel prices soaring around the world, straining national budgets, adding costs to businesses and snarling supply chains from farms to ports.

Now President Trump is threatening to ban or restrict the export of diesel from the United States, which is the top supplier to more than a dozen countries including Mexico, Canada and much of Europe. Oil executives and world leaders are issuing increasingly dire warnings that the result could be global price spikes on everything from groceries to jet fuel.

“I’ve sent a very clear signal to my American counterpart and also the public, which is that it is not in the interest of anybody — not the U.S., not us — to not have as free a flow of energy as possible in these difficult times,” Dan Jorgensen, the European Union’s energy minister, said on Tuesday.

Often called the workhorse fuel of the global economy, diesel is made from crude oil at refineries. It powers the heavy machinery, trucks, tractors and agricultural equipment crucial to heavy industry. When diesel prices rise, so do freight charges and other transportation costs, which often cascade into higher prices for things like food at the supermarket or even gasoline at the pump — because the heavy-duty tankers that deliver gas themselves run on diesel.

The primary reason for the price jump is a lack of refining capacity caused by the war in Iran. Missile strikes have damaged refineries in the Middle East, and the disruptions in shipping in the region have made it harder to transport. In addition, Ukraine has attacked and damaged many Russian refineries. That has forced Russia, a major exporter, to hoard its supplies of diesel.

In the United States, retail diesel prices climbed last month to a record high of more than $6.50 per gallon — nearly 70 percent more than this time last year. That’s put intense pressure on Mr. Trump and Republicans to find ways to lower costs, particularly before the midterm elections in November.

The crunch touches many corners of the world.

In Europe and Britain, the price of diesel has gone up by 40 percent since mid-June. In Canada prices have surged to record highs of more than 2 Canadian dollars per liter for the last 12 weeks, up about 59 percent compared with before the war. In some places, diesel shortages and high fuel costs are leaving irrigation pumps empty, damaging rice harvests.

Analysts are warning, nearly uniformly, that if the United States held back its diesel from the global market, the result would briefly lower prices for Americans, but rapidly hurt the rest of the world. Even in the United States, many warn, a ban would soon be self-defeating.

A U.S. export ban on diesel would be deeply damaging in Europe, which has become increasingly dependent on American fuel since the loss of supplies from Russia.

New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes reached its highest level since 2002, driving up borrowing costs for consumers and companies around the world, as a global sell-off in the government bond market continued.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which underpins corporate and consumer interest rates, soared as high as 5.34 percent on Thursday before easing back to around 5.26 percent, still on course to end the day at it highest level since 2007.

The yield on 10-year French bonds rose to 4.92 percent, also its highest since 2002. Benchmark 10-year notes in Italy and Japan also rose on Thursday, while other regions were more mixed. When bond yields rise, the price, or value, of that bond declines.

The latest moves came as oil prices remained elevated, intensifying short-term inflation pressure that will likely keep central banks around the world from lowering interest rates soon. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, is trading above $100 a barrel, even as more oil is flowing from the Middle East than at any point since the start of the war with Iran. Brent has risen roughly 40 percent since the start of the conflict in late February.

More Global News

All Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, Sept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges.

The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

In a 66-page order on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer gave the government two weeks to send him the memo for him to determine whether to publicly release it.

The judge’s opinion also rejected the Trump Justice Department’s claims that deliberative process and attorney-client privilege prevented its disclosure.

Jeffrey Stein, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, called the ruling a “a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law.”

“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians,” Stein said.

The ACLU, the ACLU Foundation, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the memo’s release.

Created in September 2025, the Trump Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel memo purported to justify strikes on boats suspected of being involved in drug trafficking.

Judge Engelmayer found that the Pentagon had treated the memo “as its effective law and policy governing the boat strikes,” making it “working law.”

“It reflects that other components of the Administration, including the White House, have held out the Memo in a similar manner,” he added.

The judge declined to rule yet on the government’s assertion of presidential communications privilege pending his review of the document.

Attorney Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, described the importance of the memo’s release.

“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” Azmy said in a statement. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial murders in legalese to provide Trump cover, the public needs to see that analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2201-oct-3-news