Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

In the run-up to the November election, federal officials have sent conflicting signals about whether law enforcement agents could show up at polling places.

FBI Director Kash Patel declined to rule out deploying FBI agents to voting sites. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE does not plan to patrol polling places, while leaving open the possibility that agents could respond to threats or serve warrants nearby. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said it will continue sending federal personnel to polling locations as part of its election-monitoring efforts.

The mixed messages are already shaping preparations around the country: In Wisconsin, election officials are being trained on how to respond if armed federal agents appear at polling places, while in Michigan, the attorney general’s office has prepared agents, state police officials and legal filings to respond quickly to election-related incidents.

The uncertainty has left election officials preparing for scenarios they may never face and voters unsure what federal presence, if any, to expect in November.

A recent University of San Diego poll found that 40% of Americans said they think it’s likely that ICE agents will show up at the polls, and a third said their presence would reduce their trust in elections.

Federal law sharply restricts the deployment of armed federal agents at polling places, and experts say election officials have tools to respond if agents show up in violation of those restrictions.

Federal law prohibits U.S. officials from sending or keeping “troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” with only narrow exceptions for when those people are voting or if their presence is necessary “to repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Another federal law prohibits voter intimidation, with up to a yearlong prison sentence for anybody who intimidates, threatens, or coerces somebody else with the purpose of interfering with another person’s right to vote.

“It’s low likelihood, and it’s certainly impossible that any sort of federal presence could be there at every polling site in America,” said Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government. “But without knowing for certain, people are concerned.”

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Blacksberg said that voters especially worried about the possibility of federal law enforcement at the polls could vote by mail, drop their ballot at a drop box or or use another alternative voting option available in their jurisdiction.

The prohibition on deploying armed federal personnel to polling places is a criminal statute, said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships for the Campaign Legal Center. “The person who orders the agents or officers to the polls also would face criminal liability for doing that,” he said.

In most jurisdictions, Diaz added, election officials are empowered to remove people from the polls if they’re causing a disruption or violating polling place rules, and they can work with local law enforcement to enforce those rules. If a voter sees federal agents at polling places in a manner that may be illegal, Diaz said, they should alert their local election officials.

Federal agents could also end up near a polling place for reasons unrelated to the election.

That happened in May, when a traffic stop led to a car being pulled over near a polling place, and ICE agents showed up to question the driver. Local law enforcement quickly showed up to tell the federal agents to leave the premises. County officials said voters weren’t questioned and polling places ran normally despite the brief ICE presence nearby.

Courts have confronted voter intimidation before

There’s little precedent for the possibility of federal agents at the polls, but courts have addressed other efforts involving law-enforcement personnel at polling places.

For example, in 1981 the Democratic National Committee took the Republican National Committee to court for allegedly seeking to revoke the registrations of minority voters in New Jersey and enlisting off-duty officers to intimidate voters by standing at the polls in heavily Black and Latino precincts. The Republican Party entered a consent decree that lasted over three decades, heavily restricting its planned election security efforts.

The decree is no longer in effect, but it could be cited in future cases “if something really grotesque were to happen in the area of voter intimidation by people looking like law enforcement” said Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor who served as an expert witness in the case.

She also said voters should feel confident that election officials are prepared to respond to federal interference.

Recent Votebeat reporting illustrates that around the country, top state prosecutors, secretaries of state and local election officials are preparing for scenarios like ICE showing up at the polls and preparing legal filings in advance. Some have rehearsed how to respond if federal agents seek access to polling places, ballots or voting equipment, while others are lining up attorneys and law enforcement who could act quickly.

The prospect of federal agents at polling places is already being litigated.

In September, nine groups filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and several other agencies and officials over statements the groups say amount to threats to deploy federal agents to polling places. The groups argue such a deployment would violate federal law, including a section of the Voting Rights Act that bans voter intimidation. They are seeking an injunction blocking federal agents from being used in ways that unlawfully intimidate voters.

The Justice Department, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has rejected its premise, arguing that federal officials have never said they would send law enforcement to polling locations. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling places. The case is still in its preliminary stages.

Local police have a different role at polling places.

Unlike federal law enforcement, local police routinely coordinate with election officials around polling place security.

In many cases, Diaz said, local law enforcement are at the polls at the request of election officials, who have received extensive harassment and threats since the 2020 election. Law enforcement often coordinates with election officials to keep officials and voters safe without their presence intimidating voters, he said.

“It’s far more normal for a county official or a state official from a law enforcement agency to be at or near the polls because usually they’re working with election officials, versus federal law enforcement, who have no role in the election process,” he said.

But even a lawful local police presence “can raise concerns about voter intimidation.”

In August, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin said they would be sending some deputies to polling locations to ensure a safe and secure election. That drew criticism from the ACLU of Wisconsin and other groups. The sheriff responded that deputies had conducted brief and routine polling place visits for years.

A few days later, legal groups sent the sheriff a letter saying that while local law enforcement can play a helpful role in elections, their presence can intimidate voters — and that intimidation may violate state and federal law.

Even when local law enforcement is working with election officials, officers are subject to the same voter intimidation restrictions as anybody else, Diaz said.

“It’s important for them to behave responsibly and transparently with election officials and with the public to reassure voters that they’ll be able to vote safely,” he said, adding that officers should carefully avoid inadvertently creating an intimidating presence for voters.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post What to expect at the polling place amid uncertainty over federal agents appeared first on Salon.com.

We’ve spent our entire political careers in different camps. One of us was a Democratic governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The other served as a conservative Republican in Congress for over a decade, representing a deep-red district in the Indiana heartland that President Donald Trump won in each of his three presidential elections by over 30 points.

But before we got into politics, we were both physicians in internal medicine and cardiothoracic surgery, respectively. We’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for the patient-provider relationship to guide and determine the right care. And that’s why we’re so alarmed that nearly half of Americans, according to a recent survey by KFF, the independent health organization, now report that their health insurers have delayed or denied coverage for a doctor-recommended treatment within the past two years.

Corporate insurers should not be at the forefront of patient care. Delays and denials put patients’ health at risk. And they often lead to preventable complications and higher long-term spending.

We both believe reforming the health insurance system is a moral and an economic imperative, as do many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Even in a bitterly divided Congress, we have seen encouraging signs that reform is possible.

In recent months, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to hold insurers accountable — especially when it comes to “prior authorization,” the notorious and widely despised insurer practice of denying certain procedures and treatments unless doctors and patients first obtain permission. In a recent American Medical Association survey, 95% of physicians said they’ve seen prior authorization requirements delay necessary care. Nearly four in five have witnessed patients abandon treatment because of problems with the process.

Leaders in both parties already agree that improvements to the American insurance model are necessary. The bipartisan Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act would move Medicare Advantage prior authorizations to an electronic system and require quicker response times and greater transparency from insurers. Significantly, over 300 House members and 70 senators have cosponsored the legislation. This summer, it cleared two House committees unanimously.

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Lawmakers are also finding common ground on transparency. In July the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a bipartisan bill that would require health insurers to publicly report how often they deny claims.

That scrutiny is overdue. Medicare Advantage insurers denied more than four million prior authorization requests in 2024.

When patients and their doctors appealed those denials, insurance companies reversed roughly 80% of their initial decisions. That high reversal rate suggests insurers are denying lots of medically appropriate procedures, tests and treatments — and hoping that doctors and patients will be too busy, sick and frustrated to follow through with an appeal.

That’s often a safe, albeit callous, bet. For too many Americans, fighting insurance companies can feel like a battle they cannot win. It often requires tremendous mental and emotional fortitude at a time when they are simply trying to get well. That is why Congress must take on that fight for them. Families already pay extraordinary sums for health coverage — by some measures, the monthly cost of employer-sponsored family health coverage now rivals the typical monthly mortgage payment. And still, these families face denials, delays and difficulty accessing the care and medicines they need.

As physicians, we know that time matters when someone is sick. As a Democrat and a Republican, we also recognize how rare genuine consensus is in Washington. That’s why we’re cautiously hopeful that after the midterms, Congress will seize the opportunity to make prior authorization and broader insurance marketplace reforms a priority.

The post A health reform both parties can get behind appeared first on Salon.com.

I was wrong about Fox News. Or rather, I was wrong about what the network can be useful for.

The conservative media behemoth is celebrating 30 years on the air this week. I have been a loyal, daily viewer for about half that run. I remember the inaugural episodes of “The Five” and “Outnumbered.” Before Marc Lamont Hill was helping elevate the conversation on one of the country’s biggest podcasts, I watched him school Bill O’Reilly as a Fox contributor and Temple University professor. And who can forget Alan Colmes, forever assigned the role of hapless Democrat?

For years, I believed there was no particularly good reason for a serious progressive to go on Fox News. The network touts its “fair and balanced” tagline, but it is not a neutral venue and it does not deserve to be treated like one. Its business model is grievance. A Democrat on Fox is a prop. The network invites them into the studio so its audience can watch them lose. Why submit to the bad faith interruptions and the inevitable social media clip engineered to make the left look elitist or insane? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has made me reconsider that.

The Michigan Democratic Senate candidate has emerged as an anomalous fixture on the conservative network, dominating segments with a cool composure that leaves hosts alternating between hostility and reluctant infatuation. El-Sayed is not merely surviving Fox News hits. He is dominating them, and the hosts know it — and Donald Trump definitely knows it.

The president raged on social media about El-Sayed’s Monday appearance on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that Fox News spends more time covering “Democrat jihadists” than they do GOP candidates. Trump’s temper tantrums highlight a fundamental structural weakness in contemporary conservatism: Right-wing ideology is inherently hierarchical, predicated on the worship of strength and dominance. When El-Sayed goes onto Fox and refuses to shrink, when he looks a host in the eye and dismantles talking points with data and empathy, it scrambles the entire authoritarian matrix. 

The psychological fallout among the network’s talking heads has been equally telling. Jesse Watters, a stalwart of the network’s macho posturing, has spent weeks gushing over El-Sayed with an almost comical bewilderment. After the Democratic candidate casually skewered his Republican opponent Mike Rogers as a “beta” on air — eliciting an involuntary chuckle from Watters — the Fox host found himself helplessly admitting that he liked the progressive Democrat despite himself.

This is a model for the left — and there is a lineage here. 

Democrats on Fox News used to be cast in a narrow role: the tame liberal who could be invited on to lose politely. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was one of the first politicians on the left who seriously engaged with the network’s audience. He appeared on Fox during his 2016 presidential run and talked directly about wages, healthcare and corporate power. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign proved a Democrat can leave the network Roger Ailes built with their own viral moments. He routinely met a hostile premise with calm facts, a sharp answer and a smile that made the host’s irritation look frivolous. 

El-Sayed is the next stage of that evolution. He adds something that many national Democrats still lack: an understanding that a media hit is not a policy seminar. It is about making the audience see who is in command. El-Sayed has figured out how to talk to the people who love Fox without pretending that the network is something it isn’t.

He refused to let Fox’s presenters dictate the terms of the conversation. In August, El-Sayed sat for a 25-minute one-on-one with Watters, who confronted him with the inventory of right-wing obsessions: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump’s war with Iran, transgender athletes and his Muslim faith. Watters wanted to compress El-Sayed into a caricature, a radical leftist Muslim candidate who could be made alien and threatening to the people watching at home.

El-Sayed did not take the bait. When Watters pressed him about abolishing ICE, he did not surrender the moral argument or get stuck in a defensive loop. He pointed out that the U.S. enforced immigration law before ICE’s creation and that the agency’s existence has not solved the problem Watters claimed to care about. 

“We were able to enforce our immigration policies without shooting people in the face and the back of the head,” El-Sayed said, while dodging several of the culture war questions and steering the interview back to healthcare and affordability. When Watters raised surgery for minors in the crudest possible terms, El-Sayed answered by asking whether the host was circumcised. Right-wing influencers howled that it was a nightmare. The clip went viral anyway.

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El-Sayed’s appearance on Monday with MacCallum was masterful policy communication. The host pressed the candidate on terrorism, the Iran war, Medicare for All and campaign financing, and the two talked over each other at points because El-Sayed kept answering the question behind the question. 

On terrorism, he was unequivocal that the victim is never at fault. Then, he pivoted: “Why are we fighting this war, to what end? Who benefits from it? Why did we do this? What are we paying for it?” 

When MacCollum played a clip of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defining socialism as everyone having what they need to live a dignified life, and then asked if that disturbed El-Sayed as a capitalist, he dismantled the frame in seconds. “Well, Martha, I assume you went to good public schools.” 

Yes. 

“And you got to drive on good roads today.” 

Pretty much. 

“And when you put your garbage out, somebody comes and picks it up.” 

Yes. 

El-Sayed embodied the most devastating move in American politics: When someone tries to explain socialism to you, explain the socialist parts of the life they already love. MacCallum pressed him on campaign finance and high-profile donors, and El-Sayed did not stutter or retreat. He pivoted to the fundamental reality that ordinary people across the political spectrum despise: the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics.

This connects directly to a deeper truth about the American electorate that corporate-backed consultants consistently fail to grasp. And there is evidence it is landing. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, El-Sayed outperformed other swing-state Democratic Senate candidates in capturing a vital sliver of 2024 Trump voters, securing 8% compared to paltry single digits elsewhere.

This is not because those voters have suddenly embraced intersectional environmentalism or Medicare for All in its entirety; it is because working-class Americans are profoundly alienated by corporate malfeasance, stagnant wages and the hollow promises of career politicians. When a candidate like El-Sayed — just like Sanders and Buttigieg before him — speaks directly to economic class struggles without patronizing rhetoric, a significant percentage of non-ideological working-class viewers listen. And they recognize the fundamental truth in the critique.

The left does not need to pretend that Fox News has suddenly become fair. It has not. One candidate’s successful appearance does not redeem a network that has fueled racism, conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant panic and the authoritarian politics that brought Trump to power. 

But refusing to appear on Fox News is no longer a tenable position if it merely concedes millions of viewers to an information ecosystem with no meaningful counterargument that can reach them. 

The post Abdul El-Sayed is the Democrat who keeps dominating Fox News appeared first on Salon.com.

How Many of These Guys Are There?

The latest report about far-right extremists in Georgia Republican candidate Mike Collins’ orbit comes from the Daily Beast, which identified two people associated with the far-right group American Patriots USA serving as campaign-appointed “convoy captains” in his bid for Senate. Convoy captains head up grassroots organizing efforts in Georgia’s counties.

American Patriots USA is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist” group, or a group that believes “white identity should be the organizing principle of the countries that make up Western civilization.” It was founded by a Klan leader who attended the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

One of the two convoy captains identified by the Daily Beast served as a state director of American Patriots USA, and the other as a vice president of the group, the outlet reported.

These two are the latest in a long line of extreme far-right figures who have surfaced in Collins’ orbit. Perhaps most notoriously, Collins’ son-in-law was identified by CNN as a white nationalist influencer with millions of followers who has promoted the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front, called for Muslims to be deported from the country, and shared the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control politics in the U.S. The Washington Post found a former Collins staffer posting a swastika and an image of himself in a Klan robe to Twitter. Slate discovered that Collins’ (now former) chief of staff informed a group chat that included Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer that he was trying to use his influence to spring notorious Holocaust denier and troll Chuck Johnson from prison.

Perhaps — perhaps! — you might be inclined to think Collins is just unlucky, and these guys are turning up all around him by coincidence. But I can’t see these repeated headlines emerge without thinking about Collins’ unique online persona, which includes multiple jokes about killing immigrants through a method far-right Latin American dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, were known to deploy against their political enemies: tossing them from aircraft. These “death flights” have become a jokey meme among online extremists, one with which Collins is seemingly very familiar.

Jose Antonio Ibarra would make a great first passenger for the new Pinochet Air.

— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) February 24, 2024

“Another week, another scandal for Mike Collins, who is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates,” Collins’ opponent, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), said of the Daily Beast report, adding that Collins will “have to answer” during tonight’s debate “for his extensive and disqualifying ties to white nationalism.”

Trumpworld Reportedly Looking for a Scapegoat

• Politico informs us that, amid indications of a dismal upcoming midterm election, political operatives around the president are turning on two leading figures in his orbit: Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, and James Blair, who served as White House deputy chief of staff. The two now run the pro-Trump Super PAC MAGA, Inc., through which Republicans are routing much of their midterm spending.
• Ironically, the cause of the fracas is that LaCivita and Blair recently spent several days in the Balkans, advising a pro-Putin party in Republika Srpska. The New York Times broke that story earlier this week.
• Trump reportedly isn’t pleased. His problem here, to be clear, is not that the two were helping a pro-Putin political party, but that they were doing so with a month to go before what is expected to be a GOP rout, during a time when they presumably should have had their hands full back in the U.S.
• “I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!” Trump posted to Truth Social yesterday, a reaction to the Times’ reporting that, per Politico, has MAGA world all atwitter.

Tabs

• Don’t miss the Wall Street Journal’s deeply bizarre story about Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle’s insistence that a MAGA donor pay off her American Express card.
• The Trump administration successfully pressured Canada and the EU to drop their sponsorship of a disinformation conference at which one panel would examine the U.S.’s role as a spreader of disinformation, the Guardian reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, about whom Trump recently said, not at all ominously, “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right Russ?”

“He’s gonna be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion,” Trump added. “He’s got some great things happening.”

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to exert control over the Federal Reserve’s economic policy. His primary demand? Cut interest rates. 

Ed Martin Tells All (Sort of)

President Donald Trump is, apparently, being advised on the midterms by former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters. The two met Monday at the White House.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of a series of state crimes related to a plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Colorado’s Democratic governor then commuted her sentence earlier this year amid a pressure campaign by Trump.

After the meeting on Monday, former DOJ official and longtime conservative gadfly Ed Martin helpfully blabbed about what the two discussed, enthusing to the MAGA news outlet Real America’s Voice he was “going to break some news.”

“There is local control,” Martin said of U.S. elections. “However, the laws that govern the system, like safety and national security, are federal laws. So Tina Peters, famous Colorado clerk, was in the Oval Office today just two hours ago talking about this question. The president’s taking it seriously.”

Martin claimed that voting machines are compromised by foreign governments (a familiar, baseless allegation), and suggested that Peters and the president were discussing what he could do about it.

“If the Congress won’t pass the Save America Act, and they won’t, the president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do,” Martin said. “And it’s not a local issue when it’s national security, and it’s clearly national security. So we’ll see how it plays out. But again, four weeks from today, we have an election that has to be safe, has to be secure.”

Martin, of course, is not the most reliable narrator. The Jan. 6 organizer-turned-pardon attorney was ousted from the DOJ after Todd Blanche reportedly became extremely annoyed with his grandstanding. So, though ABC did independently confirm the news of the Trump-Peters meeting, take Martin’s description of what occurred with a grain of salt.

After the meeting, Trump spoke to the press, making seemingly contradictory statements about mail-in voting. “Vote by mail or vote in person. I’d rather have a vote in person. But they can vote by mail if they want, because we seem to have no choice,” he said, adding his usual claim that “there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail.” He did not, however, announce any new, election-related plans.

It’s also not terribly clear from Martin’s description what he and Peters want the president to “do.” Activists in their world have at times tried to pressure Trump to declare a national emergency, and, while that could stoke the chaos in which Trump thrives, experts say it wouldn’t give him any new authority over elections which, as Martin acknowledged, are run by the states.

Everybody’s Thinking About What a Democratic Senate Majority Would Mean for a Supreme Court Vacancy

The big news, as Kate Riga wrote for TPM, came yesterday, with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito insisting to Bloomberg Law that he did not plan to retire in the last months of 2026 should Democrats retake the Senate.

• Ever since both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas — the furthest right, and oldest, justices on the Court — declined to retire at the end of the Court’s last term, speculation has run rampant about whether they might swiftly step down in late 2026, allowing the White House to work with the Republican-controlled Senate to confirm a similarly right-wing successor before Democrats, potentially, take over.
• Democrats, for their part, are taking a page from Mitch McConnell’s playbook and mulling the possibility of refusing to confirm Trump’s nominee for any opening on the Supreme Court during the last two years of his term. “We’ve got to do exactly what McConnell did to us,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told NBC, one of several Democrats to express that sentiment.
• Republicans, meanwhile, told Politico they are ready to spring into action, though they doubted they would need to. If a justice has plans to retire, “They would have done it already,” Thune told Politico.

You have questions, we have answers. Since TPM readers are as obsessed with political minutiae as our staffers are, we’re launching a special limited-run bonus version of the pod in this final month before the 2026 midterms. Introducing: the Polltober Show.

On Tuesdays, Josh and Kate will get into the weeds on all things midterms, drawing on questions that you — our lovely readers — will submit! If there’s anything you want to know about specific races, candidates, chamber control, the courts, the polls, whatever, just drop your queries in the YouTube comments on the latest episode of the TPM Show or the Polltober Show itself. Our producer Jackie Wilhelm will scoop them up and pass them on to Josh and Kate to mull over.

Look forward to getting into the weeds with you!

Donald Trump has spent his political life treating the press as a prop. Friendly outlets are the audience he performs for, while hostile ones are the villains he performs against. But the president has never had to confront a prop that has stopped cooperating. It’s why he has spent several days raging at nearly every corner of the media, including the one network he has long treated as his own. Increasingly obsessed with controlling the image of his political decline rather than reckoning with reality, Trump has set out on a campaign of intimidation as his usual spectacle starts to finally fizzle out following more than a decade of domination. But browbeating Fox News and continuing to sideline CNN and POLITICO cannot conceal what is there in plain sight: shrinking crowds and falling poll numbers.

Over a whirlwind weekend of rallies across Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, the cracks in the MAGA facade became impossible to ignore. Trump has always treated crowd size at his rallies as a proxy for legitimacy and domination. In his eyes, the image of an overflowing arena functions as proof that the country loves him, that the media lies about him and that his political project remains invincible. This is why the sight of empty seats in high school gymnasiums and muted cable coverage that tell a less flattering story cuts so deeply. 

“In actuality, my Events for very good Republican Politicians are probably more crowded than ever. There are no empty seats, there haven’t been for years, and there never will be. The Rallies are ‘HOTTER’ than ever,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday, demanding that “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty.” The president was referencing a Times report that during an event on Friday, Trump’s venue on the campus of the University of South Alabama was not full and that Trump’s midterm campaign swing feels “more like a farewell tour.”

But the day before, Trump had turned his fire on a less obvious target.

“Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally that took place in Ohio last night, or the ones in Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma over the past two days,” he posted on Truth Social Sunday morning. The rallies were “absolutely phenomenal, better than ever,” he insisted. “Our people want to see our Rallies, and reports on our Rallies, on FoxNews, or they will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).”

It was the second time in five days Trump had attacked the conservative media powerhouse by name, and this time he brought a hit list. He accused Fox of forcing Democrats down MAGA’s throats and demanded to know who fired “the great Maria Bartiromo,” the ex-host who reportedly shared internal network communications with the administration. “Who makes these decisions at FoxNews?” Trump asked, before demanding the network cover his “happenings” or soon have the ratings of “FAKE NEWS CNN or MSNOW,” because “Fox tried this act once before, and almost went out of business (and always right before an election!). That can happen again!” 

But Fox had already covered the Ohio rally before Trump posted his tirade. A Snapstream search found that “Fox and Friends Weekend” aired a segment on his event supporting Senate hopeful Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in Vandalia shortly before Trump’s post, focusing on his data center comments. Significantly, though, the network’s pattern across the four-state swing shows that hosts tease the president’s speeches, throw to a live correspondent report, but rarely air the rally live. While Fox didn’t air Trump’s Ohio speech live, it ran a report at the top of the hour and showed Ramaswamy warming up the crowd. The network did the same in Alabama on Friday, and in North Carolina last month. 

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There are exceptions. Sean Hannity cut into his show on Thursday and aired 36 uninterrupted minutes from Oklahoma. But the usual approach is no secret — and it didn’t start this weekend. Tellingly, after Trump’s attacks, Fox opened “The Five” and “The Will Cain Show” on Monday with rally clips. 

The president has been escalating his rhetoric against the network for months. In April, he told Fox executives to “take Jessica Tarlov off the air.” He has also gone after hosts Bret Baier and Shannon Bream, complaining that the latter failed to challenge a Democratic congressman on her Sunday program. As CNN’s Brian Stelter noted, Fox has calculated that Trump’s rallies — which are long, repetitive and rarely produce news — are “not a ratings magnet right now.” The Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Texas apparently was not either, meriting just one segment on “The Five” per day; most speakers were never shown on the network. Ironically, the unprecedented spectacle resulted in a rare reverse bounce that left Trump’s net approval declining and the Democrats’ advantage on the generic ballot increasing. 

When CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Trump about the NBC News/Telemundo poll that found his approval with Latino voters at just 27% on Monday, he cut her off, “You’re fake news! You’re CNN. You’re fake news. My poll numbers are great, and all you have to do is look at the crowds we’re drawing.” Days before, he delivered a characteristically crude address that singled out CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins in front of a hostile crowd, eliciting angry boos and vicious chants. Trump’s media strategy depends on collapsing every unfavorable fact into the same category: enemy propaganda.

The administration’s treatment of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO made that purpose impossible for even the White House press corps to ignore. On Monday, the White House barred POLITICO from traveling aboard Air Force One, preventing the outlet from fulfilling its role in the presidential press pool, having been scheduled to serve as the print representative. Trump has already kicked CNN out of the television pool on the plane, replacing it with friendly outlets including LindellTV and Real America’s Voice. 

The legal fight over that control comes to a head Thursday, when Trump-appointed federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly is scheduled to hear arguments on whether to extend the block on the president’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House. Last month, Kelly issued a temporary restraining order requiring the administration to restore the outlets’ credentials, rejecting, at least at that stage, the administration’s national security rationale for yanking access.

The Justice Department nevertheless asked the court late Friday to permit the ban’s reinstatement, suggesting in the government’s filing that “bona fide journalists would identify sources instead of relying on anonymous sources.” This reasoning is especially rich, coming from a White House that routinely briefs reporters on background, requiring them to grant anonymity under its own ground rules. One “reporting incident” cited against POLITICO was a June story quoting a “senior administration official” — exactly the arrangement the White House demanded. 

From the courtroom to Truth Social, Trump’s increasingly unhinged media attacks expose a serious weakness in his political model. He is a president with nothing to sell. But he needs constant confirmation that his movement is growing. When even Fox News declines to provide uninterrupted validation, the illusion becomes harder to sustain.

The American public is increasingly seeing through MAGA’s smoke and mirrors. Ultimately, no amount of bullying, executive bans or early morning social media rants can paper over the fact that one month before the midterm elections, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added six more candidates to its “Red to Blue” list this week, districts Trump won by an average of 16 points or more in 2024.

The post Trump lashes out at Fox News as MAGA rally crowds shrink appeared first on Salon.com.

Welcome, Thom, to the Senate ‘Oops’ Caucus

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has a book to promote. In it, he revealed this week, he delves into his greatest regret: voting to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The president referred to Pete Hegseth as right out of Central Casting — and I agree with that: He’s an actor. He’s not a manager,” Tillis told MS NOW’s Morning Joe.

This confession comes with a hint of déjà vu. An outgoing senator with a brand as a moderate — at least within the spectrum of today’s Republican Party — regrets a pivotal confirmation vote. Perhaps it brings to mind Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the doctor-turned-legislator who, despite his reservations, confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. Kennedy then immediately broke promises Cassidy said he had made to him, and began acting on his life’s work to undercut the vaccine regimen in America. Who could have seen it coming?

Emine Yücel has a piece out at TPM this morning about another potential member of the “Oops” Caucus in the making: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who, now that she is locked in a tight reelection fight, is outspokenly critical of White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought. Vought’s manifold creative ways to impound congressionally appropriated funds — seen by many experts as indicative of a veritable constitutional crisis — is, of course, a slap in the face of the Senate Appropriations Committee Chair, Collins.

But Collins voted to confirm Vought. Vought was confirmed by all 53 Republican senators. All Democrats voted against him.

As Emine details, Vought’s views, at the time of that vote, were clear. During Trump’s 2024 campaign, Vought, now famously, was caught on tape saying of government agencies, “we want their funding to be shut down.” “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said.

He did not hide these views during his confirmation hearing, during which he said he believed the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, passed to rein in the Nixon administration’s refusal to spend congressionally appropriated funds, was unconstitutional. Collins voted for him after all this was public. Collins’ office did not answer Emine when asked whether the senator regrets her vote.

These “Oops” Caucus stories share a few factors: a senator viewed by much of the media as more reasonable or centrist than their colleagues, and a Trump administration figure taking actions that are exactly in line with who they were publicly known to be. Is it believable that Kennedy, America’s leading vaccine skeptic, would choose not to act on those beliefs once in government? Is it believable that Vought, who declared his intent to starve the government of funds, would then not do so once confirmed? Is it reasonable to believe that a weekend Fox News host, known for his extreme Christian views and lack of personal control, would undergo a total transformation once given authority over the most powerful military in the world?

Tillis’ support for Hegseth was particularly egregious given that he initially urged key witnesses to come forward against the nominee, suggesting that, if they did, the nomination would fail. As the Wall Street Journal reported in January 2025:

Tillis personally assured Danielle Hegseth in a call on Jan. 19, witnessed by two other people, that if she signed the statement testifying that she believed her former brother-in-law Pete Hegseth has an alcohol-abuse problem and was abusive to his second wife, it would carry weight, and potentially move three votes—his own, along with the votes of Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), those people said.

Danielle Hegseth did as Tillis asked. Tillis nonetheless cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth.

It takes 51 votes to confirm a member of the administration in the Senate, and in many cases, a two-thirds majority — 67 votes — to remove one. Once these people are in, they are in. The time to examine their records closely is before they are confirmed, not after. The “Oops” Caucus is made up of veterans of the Senate who know how this works. Keep that in mind when assessing their second thoughts.

To his (limited) credit, Tillis goes some way toward capturing the situation in his book, confessing that his and similar senators’ failure to do the job they were elected to do came from the fear of losing it.

“I know for a fact that there are others like me,” he writes, “Republicans who agreed to go along with the early demands of the Trump team no matter how ridiculous they were, believing that failing to do so would mean the end of their political career, and who now see that things have gone way too far.”

Trump Says He’ll Pay for Those ‘Government-Funded’ Campaign Ads After All

A rare climb-down from the commander in chief.

• The news came in a Truth Social post: “The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money.” He claimed (falsely) that this is “a rather standard thing to do” but said he would now “pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.,” a Super PAC.
• The U.S. government has spent more than $10 million on these ads, the New York Times reports. The money came from funding appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.
• The ads appear to violate a provision of the 2026 appropriations law saying money can’t be used for “propaganda.” The new arrangement likely violates the law as well: The Campaign Legal Center, a good government group, has filed a complaint with the FEC over Trump’s claims to control MAGA Inc.’s money — Super PACs are supposed to be independent of the politicians they support. But the FEC is nonfunctional, with four of six commissioner seats vacant, and nothing is likely to happen.

Georgia Election Board Employee Allegedly Goes Rogue, Requests Federal Intervention

Last week, a letter surfaced from the Georgia Election Board, signed by board executive director James Mills, requesting that the federal government intervene in his state’s election. Addressed to attorney general Todd Blanche and cc-ing Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, the letter asked that the agencies get involved with and oversee numerous aspects of Georgia’s 2026 election.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office denounced the letter. “People who are serious about election security don’t inject chaos in the eleventh hour,” a Raffensperger spokesperson told MS NOW.

Then, over the weekend, the story got weirder: Members of the state election board alleged that Mills never was authorized by the board to send the letter, and was essentially using his position to freelance ahead of the election.

“We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to,” the chair of the board, John Fervier, told reporter Jessica Huseman, who broke that aspect of the story for Votebeat.

The five-member Georgia Election Board, readers may remember, was restructured in 2023 to provide Republicans with a significant majority. President Trump has praised various members of that majority, who have entertained conspiracy theories about the way in which the state conducts its elections. A year before the DOJ launched its own investigation of the 2020 election in Fulton County, the Georgia Election Board ordered one.

Fervier, the chair who accused Mills of freelancing, is a Republican but has frequently clashed with his three Republican colleagues on the board and instead voted with its sole Democrat. He’s also clashed — sometimes very publicly — with Mills, who was hired by the board but is not on the board.

Another Republican member of the board also expressed displeasure with Mills to Votebeat’s Huseman, saying that, though this letter may have been inspired by a resolution the board voted on that urged Raffensperger’s office to begin software updates for voting machines and empowered Mills to seek federal help around those updates, Mills’ requests to the DOJ and DHS went far beyond that. That member, Salleigh Grubbs, also said board members were not given a chance to review Mills’ letter.

“In private enterprise, if I told an employee I wanted to see something before it goes and he did this, we’d be having a very different conversation,” Grubbs said. “I thought we were all on the same team.”

This mess is kind of funny, but also very serious. More broadly, this is the kind of thing we should expect heading into the midterms — an official, and perhaps not even an important official, acting on their own to encourage the Trump administration to get involved in an election and take sweeping action. The DOJ and DHS have not yet responded in any public way to Mills, but the administration has valorized similar figures who have gone rogue, such as former Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters. Requests like Mills’ give the DOJ material to spin into whatever narrative it wants.

Bolsonaro’s Son Is on the Cusp of Becoming Brazil’s President

Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, came in first place in the country’s presidential election Sunday with 47% of the vote, beating President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had 45%. Because neither candidate cleared 50%, the race will now go to a runoff on Oct. 25.

• Jair Bolsonaro, of course, was at the center of a Jan. 6-like auto-coup attempt after Lula beat him in 2022. The younger Bolsonaro has framed his campaign around revenge for his father and his associates, who were handed jail sentences.
• The right has been ascendant in Latin America, with reactionary candidates winning several elections in a row. Many explicitly align themselves with Donald Trump.
• Runoff systems, such as the one in Brazil, have sometimes blunted the rise of far-right factions. I’ll be watching to see if that happens here.
• Brazil is often compared to America in that it more successfully addressed a very similar auto-coup, prosecuting the former president behind it. Should Flavio Bolsonaro win election, that contrast will become less clear cut.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

GLADSTONE, Missouri — The right to an abortion in Missouri is on the verge of disappearing, again. 

It’s a threat that loomed over Tiffany early on a recent September morning, when she drove into Gladstone, just north of Kansas City, for her abortion. 

The 26-year-old mother of three made the two-day trip to reach the clinic just a couple of weeks after finding out she was pregnant. Despite living in Springfield, a city of about 170,000 near the Arkansas border, she couldn’t find an appointment for an abortion at her local clinic until late October, near the end of her first trimester. 

Instead of waiting, she decided to spend the night at a friend’s house halfway between her home and the Planned Parenthood in Gladstone — the first clinic that could take her — hours away. After her appointment, she planned to drive back home in time to meet her children when the bus dropped them off.

“I love kids so much,” she said, sitting on an exam table, waiting to see the doctor. This abortion, she explained, “has everything to do with loving my own children, that I already chose to have.”

But in November, the rights of Missourians including Tiffany to get such care — which has been slowly becoming more available across the state after a 2024 vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution — may come screeching to a halt.

A proposal known as Amendment 3 would reverse that vote and ban abortion in the state constitution, allowing the procedure only in rare cases: when pregnancy constitutes a medical emergency, upon the discovery of a fetal anomaly or before 12 weeks in cases of rape or incest. It would also ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors, even though such care is already illegal in Missouri.

A New Chapter in Vance’s Effort to Police Who’s American

JD Vance visited Florida yesterday, stumping for candidates in races that for a few cycles have been safely red. Among them was Republicans’ candidate for U.S. Senate, Ashley Moody, who was appointed by governor Ron DeSantis (R) to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio and is now running for reelection against Angie Nixon, a Florida state legislator. Nixon is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who won a surprise primary victory over Trump impeachment figure Alexander Vindman.

As Vance attacked Nixon, he cast her as a dangerous radical. “When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘Then get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America,’” the vice president declared. The crowd cheered.

Nixon responded swiftly.

“The most ordinary man imaginable came to my home state to tell me to ‘get out of America’ while they enjoyed the comfort of buildings my ancestors built,” she wrote on social media. “Imagine standing on the shoulders of the ppl who built this country & then telling their descendants they don’t belong here,” said Nixon, who is Black.

“Wanting lower property insurance & healthcare for families isn’t un-American; it’s what working people deserve,” she continued. “They can take their tech-bro cash and their weird, intrusive agenda somewhere else, because I’m not going any damn place.”

Recent polls in Florida have shown Nixon running behind Moody, and Democrats’ candidate for Florida governor, David Jolly, neck-in-neck with Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds (R). Trump won Florida in 2024 by 13 points. Vance’s remarks Thursday were in Polk County, a reliable MAGA stronghold.

Vance, who, famously, once mused about whether Trump was merely a “cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful)” or “America’s Hitler,” has attempted a reinvention as a kind of MAGA intellectual. A key aspect of that has been policing who is truly American. He devoted much of his speech at Republicans’ midterm convention to discussing his view of the American “birthright,” and has articulated the idea that those whose ancestors have been in America for longer have greater claim to it.

Defining Americanism by its idealistic principals alone would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said in a 2024 speech to the Claremont Institute, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that as part of its work spreads information about hate groups.

“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he added, seeming to suggest that peddlers of hate are more American than members of a group, founded by Jews to fight antisemitism, that denounces them.

Dems Propose to Slash Russ Vought’s Funding if Trump Continues to Violate Anti-Propaganda Laws

A new bill introduced by Senate Democrats seeks to penalize Trump for running campaign ads on the taxpayer’s dime.

• Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced the bill, which would cut the White House Office of Management and Budget’s funding by $20 million each time the Trump administration violates laws prohibiting taxpayer funding of propaganda, as it has been in recent days by running campaign ads as “public service announcements.”
• One such law violated by these ads is the 2026 appropriations bill, agreed to by members of both parties and signed by Trump, which includes the line: “No part of any appropriation contained in the act or any other Act shall be used directly or indirectly, including through a private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”
• Actions like this turn the spotlight to appropriations committee chair Susan Collins (R-ME) who has often critiqued the administration’s violation of appropriation laws, but done little to rein it in.
• Collins, who is in a reelection fight, has acknowledged that the ads are being payed for with money appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security, and that running them goes “around the appropriations process.”

For more than a year, journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan had been trying — and largely failing — to raise awareness about the very strange story of Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp. Shortly after the 2024 election, the New York Times journalists published a profile of the lithe blonde in her early 30s, complete with photos of her gazing at Trump adoringly, explaining how she left him love letters with language like, “You are all that matters to me.” On Aug. 16, Haberman was still trying to raise the issue during an appearance on MS NOW, describing Harp as Trump’s “human binky.”

But in the end, it was Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who woke up much of the public to this disturbing relationship by mentioning Harp on the campaign trail. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” the senator said of Trump, the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

The defensive reaction from the White House was so over-the-top that it backfired, drawing more attention to the relationship. 

But a mystery remained. Haberman, Swan and many others had been talking about Harp, but it wasn’t until Ossoff said something that the White House truly lost their minds. 

The reaction likely had little to do with Ossoff’s comments, as elegantly as they were constructed. No, this recoil was more about the messenger than the message. At 39, Ossoff isn’t just young. He is strikingly handsome. The boyish good looks of his early career have matured into something closer to the old-fashioned allure of a 1960s-era movie star, such as Gregory Peck or Warren Beatty. Broad-chested, with great hair and a winning smile, Ossoff has a cool demeanor, good sense of humor and moral seriousness in a proportion that’s rare in politics — and that hasn’t really been seen since Barack Obama. Ossoff, in other words, can get it.

I’m talking about votes. 

Put another way, Ossoff is everything the 80-year-old president wishes he were, but isn’t. Harp’s presence is a touchy, daily reminder to both Trump and his staff of the president’s thick catalog failings as a human being. Having a young, handsome, talented man mock Trump for his emotional support aide had to have stung with a special precision. No one needs to tell the president or his staff that Ossoff feels just fine about himself — and doesn’t need a full-time emotional support aide to follow him around, praising his every move.

Considering how much the White House communications staff is extremely online, they are also likely to know that Ossoff has become quite the thirst trap, even among young women and gay men who otherwise aren’t especially political on social media. As Grace Panetta of The 19th recently explained, the senator is a reliable, if unwitting, model for light-hearted crush content, much like what creators generate in tribute to movie stars like Timothée Chalamet or Tom Holland.  

“Take a scroll through Instagram and TikTok, and you’ll see fan edit-style videos of Ossoff at campaign rallies and in Senate hearings,” Panetta wrote. Women jokingly call out Ossoff’s “slutty Atticus Finch cosplay” or predict that Ossoff will be “a hot president in my lifetime.” It’s reached the point where a reporter from TMZ asked Ossoff if he has “BDE,” which is not short for Big Dictionary Energy, despite the senator very much seeming like he’d be a fan of Oxford’s quintessential publication. 

Ossoff’s sex appeal doesn’t just offer a striking contrast with Trump’s oversized suits and comical combover. He’s also very different than men in the Republican ranks who are closer to his own age and, like himself, are widely seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates. At 42, Vice President JD Vance is also the subject a lot of online content. But most of it portrays him in a comically unflattering manner, with tiny dead eyes, oversized cheeks and a maniacal grin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 55, isn’t mocked for his looks, but he is often portrayed as a sad sack, a man too slow-witted and spineless to be much use beyond his role as Trump’s patsy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 46, is blessed with good looks that even three breakfast gin-and-tonics can’t take away. But with the help of Colin Jost on “Saturday Night Live,” he is mostly viewed like an overgrown frat boy crushing beer cans on his forehead. None come even close to the dreamboat treatment Ossoff receives. 

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This disparate treatment is especially amusing because the MAGA movement has insisted for years that they are bringing back a more virile masculinity — supposedly to cure all the allegedly poisonous feminism inflicted upon America by those WNBA-loving Democrats. No doubt there are some people impressed by all the workout videos posted by MAGA leaders, though that audience probably doesn’t have much crossover with people who get second dates. But what all the chest-thumping and push-up contests of the right really communicates is overcompensation rather than reclaiming some “lost” masculinity.

Beneath the right’s meltdown over Ossoff’s relatively tame comment about Harp was a molten layer of male insecurity. Steven Cheung, the volatile White House communications director, tweeted, “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics.” White House spokesman David Ingle called the senator a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid.” Both unwisely lobbed these insults from X accounts featuring photos of themselves. The handy comparison left the observer to contemplate how, with MAGA, it’s typically true that every accusation is itself a confession. Similarly, Trump compared Ossoff to Pee-wee Herman, a reference to a film that is older than the senator and only served to underscore how old and out of touch the president is. 

MAGA’s belief that masculinity is on the decline is more a reflection of their personal fears and resentments than an accurate picture of the world. Men who can just act normal continue to do fine, or as much as one can in this economy. As with many of the thirst-trap Democrats that are rising stars, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a large part of Ossoff’s charm is that he possesses an easy masculinity, one comfortable with women’s equality. MAGA influencers may deny it, but men who actually like and respect women tend to be more attractive to women and gay men.

Being chill with women’s power projects confidence. Insecure men are the ones who demand that women are forced into subservient roles, just so men can feel bigger. It speaks to an internal belief that they can’t win without cheating. That’s loser energy, not the Big Dictionary Energy being given off by Ossoff and this new crop of young, vigorous Democratic men. 

The post Jon Ossoff’s not-so-secret weapon against JD Vance and Marco Rubio appeared first on Salon.com.

On Thursday afternoon in Dallas, in what looked like a farewell tour, the president of the United States told his Texas followers to “Hold your nose” and vote for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a man he also described as a “pain in the ass.”

Donald Trump then sped off in the presidential limo known as the Beast — at nearly 100 mph, according to pool reports — and headed for an event in Oklahoma. Republicans gazed in mock wild wonder, palms outstretched, claiming they have no idea why they’re staring at potentially historic losses in the midterm elections next month. 

Afterwards a MAGA supporter told me that Trump’s performance was just “presidential humor.” And fair enough. Donald Trump has spent a lifetime being, in effect, the Wednesday night open-mic comic at a backroom bar in some college town in Missouri. 

Neither capable of growth nor understanding, he’s that guy with just one punchline. He’s a one-trick pony: “Sir, she said. Sir.” He’s the most talentless man ever caught in the bright glare of the light he demanded from the world.

But he is persistent. That’s his superpower. The grift? Oh, that part he learned from experience. But he’s naturally persistent, and out of that grew the corruption, fearmongering and boundless anger — all driven by his superpower. He learned to be transactional. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.  

The first Trump administration was an accident, largely brought about by the split I witnessed firsthand between Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ supporters at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia during the last week of July 2016. What a shock: The Democrats destroyed their chances through infighting. Who knew?

Trump never thought he’d win that election. Some Republicans, who later fled the party, never accepted him as a legitimate heir to the GOP’s legacy when he did. Now, critics and fans alike have pointed out that there’s no doubt he’s the rightful heir to the Republican Party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; more corrupt than Nixon, a happy practitioner of Reagan’s economics and more of a mean-spirited-wimp than Hunter S. Thompson ever thought Bush could be. 

Trump’s refusal to bust up monopolies while cutting staff to the National Park Service and selling off public lands has removed any illusions that he might be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. His lack of military service takes him out of the realm of being a Dwight Eisenhower Republican. As for Abraham Lincoln, Trump has tried his best to divide a nation, not unite one. 

Since Trump never thought he’d win in 2016, he never really planned anything; he let the Republican establishment run things until he got comfortable sleeping in the big chair in the Oval Office and declaring each week “infrastructure week” while doing nothing about it. 

Then came COVID, and in 2021 Trump found himself out of power after, of course, refusing to concede the election and inciting a failed insurrection. That failure fueled his persistence and led to his 2024 re-election. The failure also fueled his anger. His subsequent 34 felony convictions in New York and the federal investigations into his actions became motives for Trump to seek and destroy all who tried to bring him to justice.

His persistent greed, anger and need for revenge empowered him during his first 100 days back in office in 2025, leading to sweeping, Nazi-esque changes sold to the public by discrediting or co-opting the media. 

Meanwhile, the former East Room of the White House looks like Dresden during postwar reconstruction; the Kennedy Center is starting to resemble a Greek ruin; the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is empty and broken, and for some reason that can only be understood under the influence of hallucinogens and Red Bull, he now wants to build a triumphal arch and stuff it with weapons.

We have no idea why we’re at war with Iran and no idea how to negotiate a peace. Trump’s latest attempt at that answer came in the Oval Office on Wednesday when he said, for what must be the fifth or sixth time, that he could just blow Iran up. 

At least 58 people have died after being remanded to ICE facilities. Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin shrugs that off and says nothing ICE does is controversial and he’s not running “Holiday Inns — these people broke the law.” His superpower seems to be life-ending, militant ignorance.

Then there’s Russia, Ukraine, China and a host of other scandals. Those include but aren’t limited to spending taxpayer money on political ads, the price of diesel fuel, the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, antisemitism, misogyny and the L.A. mayor’s race. 

While covering Trump is always a challenge, covering his minions is another story. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who made his bones trying to kill the Affordable Care Act and challenging the results of the 2020 election, made a complete fool of himself this week in the Senate while attacking former special counsel Jack Smith. 

Schmitt’s superpower is apparently making an ass of himself in public. By misrepresenting nonsensical evidence, he accused Smith of perjury. When called out for his sophomoric display, he then went on right-wing media and lied some more.

Smith, who still reminds me of Coach Beard in “Ted Lasso,” explained that his prosecution wasn’t politically inspired. It was driven by facts. “My service has spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations. I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” he said. “My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law and the core principles on which our country was founded,” Being driven by facts and principles is a pretty decent superpower and should describe most people, including reporters, lawyers, scientists, politicians and clerics. 

“The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence,” Smith said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

That conclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone after all this time. Trump told me in the Brady Briefing Room, six weeks before the 2020 election, that “If you stop counting the votes” there wouldn’t need to be a peaceful transfer of power. He’d just stay on indefinitely.

Trump thus teaches us that persistence pays off even if the proposition is criminal and the facts aren’t in your favor. That’s why he currently commands the center ring of the circus.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, we have the aforementioned Sideshow Ken Paxton, one of the most loathsome individuals ever to climb out of the primordial ooze and declare himself a human being. This is a man so vile that even Trump hates him, and so do the Trump-happy Texas Republicans who have been known to embrace faith healers and hunt snakes in shorts and cowboy boots. They tried to rid themselves of Paxton, but he somehow slipped away.

Paxton’s superpower is his lack of spine and his greasy nature. That, combined with Trump’s (ahem) support, is the reason Paxton isn’t in prison. 

But time has its way with everyone. After more than a decade of deploying his superpower, Trump is noticeably faltering, even conceding from the Oval Office this week that his party may lose the midterms. The man who has traded on fear, corruption and grift for so long that he looks like a cartoon Tasmanian devil without the charm has now come to resemble Otis, the sleepy town drunk in “The Andy Griffith Show” (look it up, for heaven’s sake). 

Waiting in the wings is “Hillbilly Elegy” JD Vance, worming his way through the crowd. That’s his superpower: He’s a bearded human worm. If you don’t like him, you might place a bet on Marco “The Juggler” Rubio. His superpower is handling a variety of tasks without the loud explosive thud of total failure often seen from Trump, Vance and Pete Hegseth, who’s more like the the secretary of fashion than the “secretary of war.” That makes “Li’l Marco” a bright star in Trump’s dark firmament, even if it’s evident nobody likes him.  

Hegseth, on the other hand, is among the dimmest. His superpower seems to be the ability to cosplay a vain summer camp counselor in the Adirondacks from a bad Hallmark comedy.  

For the comic book fans out there, the Republicans are led by a Yellow Lantern with fading powers, delusional in his beliefs and actions, too fearful to change and faced with the overpowering realization that his time in power is quickly coming to an end. 

He even sent an email to supporters Thursday claiming “This could be my final four weeks as president.” Sure, it was another grift, as well as fatalistic and totally disingenuous. 

They may have to pry Trump out of the Oval Office with a crowbar and a handful of sedatives in 2029, if he lasts that long. But next month’s midterm elections, should they go as badly as Trump obviously fears, will mean the effective end of his presidency. What comes after that could be chaos. Don’t expect mature or professional behavior from a party that can’t tell the difference between an NBA game in Atlanta and a women’s college basketball game in Silver Spring. Just realize it’s the same party that wants to punish transgender Americans while rewarding the ultra-rich. 

The only question that matters is this; Does Trump have enough juice left in his Yellow Lantern ring for one last fearful victory? At his mini-convention in Dallas he told his followers to “cheat like hell.” At the same time Trump asked everyone to vote as if he were on the ballot; unfortunately for the Republicans, many will do just that. At this point, it’s almost as if Trump is campaigning for the Democrats. 

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Seems appropriate. Most of the Democrats are counting on winning by simply saying, “I’m not Trump.”

Folks, they’re not putting Vance out in the field for the Donald’s sake. He’s there for the same reason: Because he’s not Trump. Soon enough, JD could graduate from the sideshow to the center ring.

Should Trump and the Republicans suffer the historic midterm blowout everyone sees coming — barring armed confiscation of ballot boxes — the president will play the victim, a martyred hero who will claim the elections were rigged and blame Joe Biden, China, Canada, our NATO allies and Iran. If he somehow finds a miraculous recharge for his ring, he will use his superpower to foment further revenge and retribution. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.

I’ve been told that everyone has a superpower. If so, I’ll defer to what my father told me was mine: asking annoying questions. I still have a few for you, Mr. President.

The post Trump’s superpower is fading. Can he recharge before the midterms? appeared first on Salon.com.

‘Nearly Every Claim Uttered in These Ads Is False’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has joined other Democrats this week in demanding answers about President Trump’s midterms campaign ads — which promote nothing but himself — and the apparent use of taxpayer dollars to finance them.

I wrote earlier this week about the top Democratic appropriators in Congress calling for investigations into the ads and confirming reports that the White House moved some $20 million in taxpayer funds out of the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the vanity project. Raskin and Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Tuesday to look into the reported shuffling of funds.

“Accordingly, we are writing to formally request that the GAO investigate the source, accounts, and total amount of taxpayer funds used by the Executive Office of the President to produce and distribute this advertisement across major television markets and official White House social media channels,” Raskin and Whitesides wrote in the letter to acting Comptroller General Orice Brown and special counsel Charles Baldis.

The two are asking for a formal investigation into how much the advertisements cost, how they have been paid for and whether any federal laws were broken in either the creation of the ads or the use of tax dollars to fund them. Raskin and Whitesides asked both agencies to look into whether the ads are a violation of the Hatch Act, the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act or other federal criminal statutes.

“The Trump Administration knows what they are doing is unlawful, as evidenced by their halfhearted attempts to defend their actions. An anonymous White House spokesperson called the ads ‘educational,’ and suggested that they are ‘clearly not political’ because the ‘president is not on the ballot,’” the lawmakers wrote. “Yet just a few short weeks ago, at his poorly-rated Republican National Convention, President Trump pleaded for his rapidly dwindling ranks of supporters to vote, begging them to ‘pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.’ The White House can’t have it both ways.”

The lawmakers also, amusingly, fact check many of the claims Trump makes in the ads to argue that they could not possibly serve as “public service announcements” — like those made during the COVID-19 pandemic — as the White House has claimed.

“President Trump is obviously desperate for the American people to ‘love’ him, a problem that goes beyond your jurisdiction,” they wrote. “But stealing taxpayer dollars to pay for Mr. Trump’s narcissistic ego trips is plainly illegal. Your agencies have an important responsibility to hold accountable members of his Administration who violate the laws and policies under your purview.”

Raskin and Whitesides join their colleagues Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) as well as Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) in asking questions about what exactly is going on with the egregious shuffling of funds for the ad campaign, seemingly designed to help Republicans win races next month (even though many vulnerable Republicans are trying to put a 10 foot pole between themselves and Trump’s political toxicity at the moment). The top Democratic appropriators are concerned about this because it appears as though the money was moved and used for something outside of its congressionally appropriated purpose — taxpayer dollars that were allocated for Customs and Border Protection in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year.

The ads have run on major airwaves in recent weeks including Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS, and also during NFL games over the weekend.

Obviously, Democrats are concerned about the corruption and violation of federal law. But this trend of Trump inserting himself into the midterms because he’s worried Republicans are going to lose a chamber of Congress simply because he is not on the ballot — and Republican stumbling as they alternately embrace the administration’s failing policies and distance themselves dramatically from the unpopular president — has been a rare moment of levity in our current hellscape.

President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, which just passed its seven month mark, is deeply unpopular among Americans, new polling continues to suggest. A survey from the Associated Press/NORC Research Center published Thursday reports that 71% of adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the Iran war, started alongside Israel in late February, while 69% say the war has not been worth fighting.

“More than half of adults say the country as a whole, the national economy, and their local economy are worse off since Trump was reelected in 2025,” the survey reports. “Most Americans (73%) say the country is heading in the wrong direction, including 92% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans.”

The president seems to realize this growing frustration could cost Republicans dearly in the midterm elections next month, possibly losing GOP control of the House, Senate or both. “It’s possible,” Trump mused to reporters outside the White House Thursday. But he continues to insist that the Iran war is worth it — ostensibly to prevent the nation from obtaining a nuclear weapon, despite the nuclear stockpiles of both the U.S. and Israel — while doubling down on threats and deploying even more troops to the region. 

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On Thursday, officials told the Wall Street Journal the Pentagon is sending a third aircraft-carrier strike group and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, expected to arrive at the end of November. It would add around 10,000 more troops to the region, putting further strain on the Navy, which has been under pressure from near-record deployments and supply shortages.

But it does seem like Trump is waiting until after the voting to renew bombing Iran, as the Journal reported in late September. In a sprawling interview with Time published Thursday, the president said as much. “Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world,” he said. “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.”

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Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise

The Missouri gerrymandering fight felt a lot like old-school Republican politics: boring, procedural trickery to rig the systems of government in their favor. 

‘They Are the Party of Data Centers’

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) has some major data center skeletons in his closet from his time as lieutenant governor of Ohio.

He knows it, his Democratic challenger — the longtime Ohio elected official Sherrod Brown — knows it, his colleagues in the Senate know it, voters back home are well aware (thanks to an ad blitz from Brown’s campaign in recent months). For the past several weeks, Husted has been trying to convince his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate to pass a piece of legislation that functions as little more than a press release to state utility regulators; I’ll get into that more below. The bill would, essentially encourage our nation’s Big Tech oligarchs to cover the cost of rising utility expenses tied to data centers and AI model training.

I wrote about the dramatic saga surrounding Husted’s legislative push as a remedy for his past fervent support for data center development in Ohio extensively here if you’d like to catch up. The TL;DR is that after years of championing new data center construction in the state as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, Husted is now calling for regulations to be placed on who foots the electric bill for data center-related spikes in energy prices in local communities. He is also joining Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in supporting a pause on sales and tax breaks for tech companies that want to build new facilities in Ohio. (It’s not just Republicans and it’s not just Ohio; several other states and even blue cities are passing new regulations or have placed temporary moratoriums on data center construction in their areas.)

Husted’s long-shot bid to try to pass the bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act, was blocked by Senate Democrats this afternoon. While Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) voted with Republicans today, it wasn’t enough to overcome the 60 vote filibuster in the upper chamber and Senate Dems were able to block it on a procedural vote, 57-43.

While the bill passed the House 417-3 earlier this month, Senate Democrats (besides the four who voted with Republicans) have been roundly criticizing the legislation as nothing more than a show pony for Husted to use during the waning days of his campaign to combat Brown’s relentless attacks.

Also, the bill is simply limp. It requires that state utility regulators consider implementing the new federal standards that direct Big Tech companies to cover the cost of rising electric bills and grid updates needed to run their data centers — within two years of the bill’s passage. Republicans like Husted have argued that the legislation would compel state utility regulators to act on the new federal standard. But even some Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in saying the bill is little more than a suggestion. Per MS NOW:

“Would I like to do more? Yeah,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said. “But on the other hand, is it better than nothing? Yeah.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., agreed that the bill doesn’t accomplish much, noting that most utilities are “managed through local and state decision making.” 

But he also agreed that it “probably would help” Husted in his re-election efforts.

My colleague Emine Yücel was up on the Hill this afternoon as senators headed in to vote on the legislation. She was able to catch up with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who each slammed the measure and the GOP’s last-minute attempts to do clean up on its past position on accelerating nationwide AI development.

“Donald Trump is going to tweet 10 times between now and the election how much he loves data centers. Their position is clear. They are the party of data centers. They are the party of fealty to the AI industry and this fakery that they are putting on the floor right now isn’t going to fool anybody. So they’re desperate,” Murphy told reporters including TPM.

Murphy continued, going off on the Trump administration and President Trump personally for his role in encouraging the Big Tech oligarchy:

The data center conversation is a proxy for corruption. You know, people see that there is a deep integration between these big billion dollar tech companies and the Trump administration, and they don’t like it, and the proliferation of data centers is a sign to people that the only thing that matters in this administration is money and billionaire corporate power … Yes, sometimes this is about water use and land use, but it’s really a question of corruption and the data centers are an avatar for a corrupt relationship between the technology companies and the Trump administration. That’s why, that’s why the last bill they’re doing is an attempt to change two years of this corruption story. It’s going to laughably not work.

Warner put his opposition to the legislation quite frankly.

“The American public does not like data centers, capital data centers. They’re concerned about job dislocation, and they’re now concerned about safety,” he said. “And we are ignoring not just the CEOs, but frankly, you talk to the banks, you talk to corporate America … they need the safety assurance as well.”

— Nicole LaFond

Andy Beshear has a favorite song: “Universal Sound” by Tyler Childers, the Grammy-winning country artist with a special place in the Kentucky governor’s heart. That title is something of a metaphor, about connecting to a deep, abiding spirituality accessible to us all. It’s meant to be an ecumenical message — just like the one Beshear hopes to deliver.

“Universal Sound” carried him through a “nasty” reelection campaign in 2023, which ended with a comfortable victory over his GOP opponent, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who had been hand-picked for the race by Sen. Mitch McConnell. Amid mounting speculation that Beshear could become a leading contender in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, “Universal Sound” may well become familiar to more voters.

Beshear’s newly published book, which is de rigueur for potential candidates seeking to raise their political profile and lay out a vision, is also stoking talk of 2028. With its title taken from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country” explores how President Donald Trump and his administration have, in Beshear’s words, “hijacked” Christianity, and how the governor’s brand of inclusive faith underpins his political life, offering readers a blueprint for governing with compassion. 

I interviewed Beshear last week on the sidelines of Bourbon & Beyond, the music festival held annually in Louisville, Kentucky. He spoke about a reinvigorated religious left, addressed the tricky question of whether Trump should be considered a Christian, discussed his willingness to take unpopular stands in a red state, hinted at his plans for 2028 and explained why, as a politician often compared to Mr. Rogers, his kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness. (Full disclosure: My husband, the novelist Silas House, served as Kentucky poet laureate under Beshear, and I once briefly assisted the governor on a writing project.) 

This conversation, which took place in a backstage trailer vibrating from the country and hip-hop tunes emanating from nearby stages, has been edited for length and clarity.

Governor, thank you for taking the time to talk. “Go and Do Likewise” is centered around the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. What do you think that story has to tell us and teach us today? 

Well, it’s a perfect story for a moment of division. So the parable of the Good Samaritan is about a man lying bloodied and naked on the side of the road, and everybody that looks like him and thinks like him and votes like him and prays like him and loves like him goes to the other side of the road, ignores him and walks on. But Jesus chooses someone who’s raised to hate that man on the side of the road — the man on the side of the road was raised to hate the Samaritan — and that’s the person he has come over, not kick the man while he’s down, but lift him up, carry him to safety and, if you read it carefully, pay for his healthcare moving forward.

But the parable of the Good Samaritan is more than just a story to emulate; it’s an instruction, because Jesus then looks at the crowd and says, “Now go and do likewise” . . . This is one of the fundamental — not teachings but instructions of the Bible. It’s for us to be good, especially when it’s hard. For us not to judge people, and at people’s worst moments, to just be good to each other.

Faith is obviously so important to you, and I’ve heard you many times refer to it as your “authentic why.” What do you mean by that?

Well, first, I would never impose my faith on anyone. I’m not somebody who thinks that my faith needs to be written directly into law. That’s Christian nationalism, and I’m against that. But I do think in an age of authenticity — when your Instagram video is important and your TikTok video is important — people want to know you, what drives you. They don’t have to agree with what drives you. They just want to see that it drives you to do good. And for me, that is my faith.

It tells me I’m supposed to leave this world a little better than I found it, and that’s one of the reasons I’m still [here]. You know, I thought that two terms as governor would be enough, and they still may be. But I see a world now that’s moving backward and not forward. And doesn’t faith call you to stand up and to speak out at that moment?

What do you think being in that position — I imagine you sitting there in Frankfort at night, weighing this [calculus] — has taught you?

First, I believe in any job that I’ve taken on. I am fully dedicated to the people of Kentucky, and when I fight with the president, it’s not because I’m a Democratic governor and he’s a Republican president. It’s because he’s doing something that hurts the people of Kentucky, and whether it’s popular or not, that was the job I took on to do my very best to move us not right, not left, but forward.

But you know, [the COVID pandemic] taught me a lot of lessons. I did what I thought was the right thing, that might not be the popular thing, the thing that would save the most lives. And you know what I found? As long as you’re willing to respect people enough to explain your why and not just your what, doing the right thing is oftentimes the politically popular thing, even if it wasn’t beforehand. People respect conviction, even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. And when you’re willing to explain why you did something, people can disagree with you but still believe you’re coming from a good place.

One thing I’ve been thinking about as I read your book is that the religious left used to be such a strong force in American politics. You know, Bobby Kennedy, all of his work —

All of the War on Poverty, even if not couched in those terms —

Yes. Bobby Kennedy’s work for social justice was rooted in his Catholicism. Jimmy Carter, famously a Sunday school teacher, spoke about his faith a lot. Even Hillary Clinton, in her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign and administration, talked about her faith and took a lot of flak from establishment media. What happened to the religious left? Why do you think it declined, or kind of went underground?

Well, what I think we’re seeing now, when you see the James Talaricos of the world, our Kansas Senate candidate [Democrat Adam Hamilton] who’s a Methodist minister and others . . .  you know, the media will always try to take something as a tactic. They’re like, “Why are Democrats talking more about faith right now?” instead of “Why are people of faith running as Democrats right now?” And I think it’s because there is such a manipulation and a hijacking of faith going on, in such a transparent manner, that people of faith are saying, “I’ve had enough.”

When you see Donald Trump hold a Bible in a way that you’re pretty sure he’s never held it, much less never read it; when he says he doesn’t think there’s any way he’s going to heaven, he doesn’t seem to be worried about it; when he walks out after Erika Kirk gives voice to the Golden Rule in such a beautiful way, and says, No, no, I believe in the exact opposite; when you see JD Vance using faith to kick people while they’re down instead of lift them up, and to judge as many people as possible — then I think people of real faith want to stand up and take that back. Or at least to provide the counterexample. I think people are tired of seeing faith used for bad in public life instead of for good, and that’s the core of why I wrote the book.

You don’t shy away from going after President Trump. You write that he “makes people feel good about themselves by telling them it’s okay to be the worst version of themselves.” At another point you say, “Trump may occasionally talk about Jesus (or ‘Two Corinthians’), but he has missed the point. Jesus lifted up the very people this Republican administration pushes down . . . Trump throws Gatsby parties with his billionaire friends, while Jesus hung out with the exact opposite. Trump clears the very people out of city parks that Jesus would minister to.” 

That’s a powerful indictment. You’re saying that the president doesn’t love his neighbor as himself.

No, he calls his neighbor “the enemy from within.” It is the most stark contrast. I think about “love your neighbor as yourself” versus the president [characterizing] your neighbor as the enemy from within. I also think about Erika Kirk saying, I forgive my enemies, and Donald Trump saying, no, I hate my enemies . . . It’s just the exact opposite of what the Bible is supposed to teach us.

At one point, you question if he even knows the story of the Good Samaritan. 

I’m not sure he does.

Christ said, “You will know them by their fruits,” right? Do you think President Trump is a Christian?

I try not to question people’s faith, because I admit that that is judging. But he is not living and he is not governing like a Christian. Now, when you think about the miracle of the fishes and the loaves in each of the four first books of the New Testament, it’s that important. Jesus, in a time of scarcity, makes sure everybody has enough. Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to take food off kids and seniors’ table [and] was willing to use starving Americans as leverage during a government shutdown. That is not living or governing like a Christian, and I doubt they ever run out of food at the White House. 

I think about the “Big Ugly Bill,” and it’s causing kids to lose having enough food, but it’s also taking doctors away from the sick. And while I think he was talking about spirituality, the actual words of the Bible — which many people believe is the direct word of God — is that Jesus said a doctor is for the sick. Yet there’s a lot of sick [people] that aren’t going to have a doctor. So Donald Trump certainly isn’t living out faith. And for those that preach that he is a person of faith, my granddad, a lay Baptist minister, always said, you know, faith without action —

Yeah, is “dead.” In the book you call for a “Great American Reset.” What do you mean by that? How would you define that?

I did not live through McCarthyism, but we have read about McCarthyism — about attacking and othering people, throwing them in jail — and Donald Trump’s doing it right now. He’s so desperate, he’s calling people communists. I mean, just blatantly ripping off Joseph McCarthy. But the president himself is doing it. But we reached a point where people said enough, and they took a breath, and we came back together and did not repeat it — at least until now. 

I don’t want to leave a broken country to my kids or to anyone else’s. I don’t want to leave this divided of a country to anyone else. I don’t want to leave a country where we are told it’s OK to hate each other and that your neighbor is the enemy. And so while I judge MAGA politicians, I don’t judge MAGA voters — and I don’t even use that phrase. Why? Because I want them to take a breath and to say, “OK, you know, let’s do something better. You know, this went too far. Let’s repair the wounds that we have,” so that we don’t move from retribution from one side to retribution to another side, and back and forth and back and forth, but that we get something more like what we had growing up. 

When you were talking, I thought of another scripture — “the repairer of the breach” from the Book of Isaiah, which Bill Clinton used quite a bit. That’s kind of what you’re talking about, bringing people back together, healing divides.

I feel like we’ve done that better in Kentucky than most places. I still don’t always agree with the way people vote, but if you look at where we were with [my predecessor as governor] Matt Bevin, [who was] going after everybody who is different, othering anyone and everyone, judging everyone . . . Look at where we are now. That last [presidential] election, you didn’t see nearly the signs or the flags or anything else. You saw people who, in the very least, wanted to genuinely respect their neighbors.

You talk about that happening here in Kentucky. How do you think that can begin nationally, though, when a lot of MAGA Republicans out there think, as you write in the book, that “Democrats are Satan in the flesh”?

Well, Republicans right now are costing them about $4,500 extra a year in tariffs, about $800 extra a year in gas. If they need diesel, it’s even worse. So they might think that Democrats are Satan in the flesh, but Republicans are bankrupting them. If you want to eat, to be able to afford groceries for yourself or your kid, if you want to be able to see a pediatrician for your child in your own community, you’re going to think about things a little bit different. Democrats have the chance to grab that lane. And we should be. That’s where we should want to be. That’s certainly where I’ve always governed. 

Think about a soybean farmer, and you and I both know we got a lot in Kentucky, and I’m not sure if any of them voted for Kamala Harris. But look at what’s happened to them. First, the USAID program’s eliminated. That’s one of their major clients, because if you feed starving nations, people like the United States better. Then [Education Secretary] Linda McMahon comes in, using her wrestling knowledge, to end the farm-to-cafeteria program. Then Donald Trump — and he alone decides on tariffs — throws them on China, and they stop buying our soybeans. They’re the largest purchaser in the world. They move to Brazil and Argentina.

Then he decides to get in a war with Iran that he doesn’t even explain to the American people a couple days before in his State of the Union. And now the price of diesel, which runs all farm equipment, is at an all-time high. If that’s not enough, a third of the world’s fertilizer runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So, a soybean farmer that voted for Donald Trump, who believed that was their guy, is totally betrayed, trying to decide if they’re going to plant crops at all, or if Donald Trump has bankrupted their family farm.

You’re the most popular Democratic governor in the country, according to the polls, and this book is introducing you and your beliefs to a whole other set of people, of potential voters. What are your plans for 2028?

Well, I haven’t made any final decisions, but I will say when I walked off the stage in 2023 . . . I looked at [my wife] Britainy, and I said, “Hoo, I’ll never have to run for anything ever again.” As I’m here today, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. And I’ll make that decision later. 

But I think about two core tenets of my faith. Number one, that I am made by a loving God that calls me to love other people, and that ought to be the baseline. And number two, I ought to leave things better than I found them.  

Listen: When you’re governor of a place you love, it’s enough. It’s special. What we’ve done in Kentucky together, all of us, people of all different parties over the last seven years, [has] been transformational, and I couldn’t be more proud — and I was willing to go out on top . . .  But I can’t watch a country slide back. I can’t see progress that folks in Selma marched for 60 years ago, undone by a rogue Supreme Court. So I don’t know exactly what my role will be in the future, but I just will not leave a broken country to my kids or anyone else’s. I will not.

I want to ask you sort of a different question. Let’s say that a popular Democratic governor, who has been elected twice to that job in what many see as one of the reddest states in the country, decides to run for president. What would they offer the American people?

Well, a vision of both reviving the American dream, of proving to people [who] believe the economy is broken that it can work again. That if you work hard and play by the rules that you can get ahead — that you can take your kids on the same vacation that you went on, that you can leave your family better off. That we can fix the darn government that people look at as corrupt right now, and we can heal this divide that is such a threat to our future as Americans. And none of us enjoy — none of us wants to be mad at the person that lives across from us. I think we can get back to being, yes, an imperfect nation, but one that’s stable, [where] at least we are moving toward progress each and every day.

Right now, polls are showing that Democratic voters want fighters, leaders who are unafraid of punching back against corrupt and MAGA politicians. Some Democratic politicians are resorting to using strong language, dropping F-bombs to get their point across. You, by contrast, have built your political identity on leading with kindness. “Kentucky’s Mister Rogers” is how many people see you. One of your book’s chapters is titled “Be the Adult in the Room.” So I wonder if you think there’s room for that kind of politics in the party and America today, coming in the wake of Donald Trump.

Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. If I’m Kentucky’s “Mister Rogers” — he went up against Trump before Trump. He went up against a Republican incumbent governor that attacked him every day for four years, and the “Mister Rogers” is the one still standing. A lot of people can claim they’re fighting in different ways from the bluest of states. How many people have sued [Trump] 30-plus times from the reddest of states? How many people speak out against him when it could negatively impact their approval rating instead of positively impact their approval rating? 

You know, every day that I stand up for Kentuckians and Americans, every day that I fight back against this administration, I have more to lose than anybody else. But what’s an approval rating worth if you’re not going to use it for something? So there are different ways to fight, and here’s what I’d say to a lot of people: If somebody’s yelling, and you yell back, then nobody can hear a thing. There’s effective ways to defeat that person to fight and win. But shouldn’t we want one that will actually win in the end? And so I think that when people look at who’s fighting in the hardest of places, they see this governor. 

The midterms are about six weeks away. What do you think the Democratic Party is getting right, and where do you think it’s falling short?

I think that they are getting right how hard the world is on American families right now. I hate to use the “affordability” word, because I believe it’s becoming like a political science term. What it really [means] is that your medical bills cost too much. That’s why we forgave $250 million in medical debt here in Kentucky [via executive order]. It’s that your utility bill is going up. It’s that groceries are too much, and my goodness, gas is through the roof. We need to make sure that we’re communicating in terms that the American people communicate in. 

You said something at a recent book event that caught my ear, that the Democrats have gone too far on a few things. I’m wondering what those might be.

We went too far on overregulation. We’ve got to protect our environment, we’ve got to protect our workers. But if we make things so onerous, then it takes a long time to accomplish anything. If you believe we need more housing, and it takes that much longer to build housing, then people lose out. If it takes too long to build a factory, you don’t have those jobs that pay the good wages. So we’ve got to have a sense of urgency . . . Democrats have to design our policies in a way to get results, and if we believe truly in something, even if we’re only 80% right on what the policy looks like, understanding if we get it done faster, it benefits more people.

You come from what many observers would call the party’s more traditional wing. Right now, there’s a lot of energy behind progressives like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, and democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. Do you think there’s room in the party for this wide range of political identities?

I think — and you’re not doing it — but I think that the media tries to put everybody in a box to have a narrative. How many people in a Trump plus-30 state that have vetoed every anti-LGBTQ+ bill that [has reached] their desk would suddenly be lumped in as a moderate? And that’s not to suggest I view myself as a progressive. I just — I don’t view myself as either. I view myself as pragmatic.

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My job is to stand up for my people and all their rights, live out my faith and to see everyone as a child of God, but [also] to solve problems. And that’s where Democratic governors are. You know, I think that this debate can play out in the House and in the U.S. Senate, where they might have different caucuses. But governors aren’t one of 50 or one of 24 in a party. You’re one of one, and your job, if you’re doing it right, is to get things done, to actually improve people’s lives. So, I can’t be as ideological as someone who votes on the amendment to the rule, right? My job has to be to figure out how to get the best results for our people on each and every day. 

Are you worried that Republican attempts to deploy terms like “communist” across the board will hurt the Democratic brand overall?

Oh, I think what the president’s doing is so hyperbolic and so transparent that people see right through it. There is only one elected official in the entire country actively engaged in socialism, and his name is Donald J. Trump. 

The definition of socialism is government ownership of the means of production, and he is the only person negotiating a U.S. government interest in a private company. But, you know, what you do is you call people the name that you’re worrying that you are, and so he’s calling people “communist.” So now that he’s engaged in socialism, which he is, what is the difference between that and communism? It is the people in charge enriching themselves, which he and his family are doing. It’s turning the police and the justice system into your own personal force, which is what he’s doing. You see in each and every one of these that the things that Trump is calling people is what he’s actively engaged in.

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