President Donald Trump gave a lengthy defense of his Texas midterm convention Thursday, boasting about its audience and reminding reporters of his successful presidential campaigns in the state. However, the argument also pointed back to a much less comfortable reality for Republicans: In parts of South Texas where Trump made major gains in 2024, his numbers now appear to be sinking. Trump was responding to a question about Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, who was reportedly caught on tape complaining that the September GOP convention in Dallas had damaged Republican candidates. “That convention was a tremendous success,” Trump said, claiming it drew 107 million views, before adding, “I won Texas all three times.” In audio obtained by The New York Times, Paxton said the convention “dropped our numbers” and that “everybody’s numbers dropped.” His campaign has disputed the report and released its own internal polling showing him leading Democrat James Talarico by three points. The more striking numbers, however, are coming out of South Texas. Madison Andrus, an official with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that Trump’s job approval stood at just 36 percent in Texas’ 15th Congressional District and 35 percent in the 34th District. In the 28th District, Andrus said Trump’s approval was down to 28 percent, while 60 percent disapproved. "Just 28 percent of people approve of the job he is doing right now, with 60 percent disapproving. It’s just truly abysmal numbers for House Republicans to try to overcome," Andrus said. He added that South Texans are struggling with the cost of living, which contradicted claims made by Henry Cuellar's challenger for his congressional seat, Tano Tijerina. The figures stand out because Trump performed strongly across the region in 2024. Sargent noted that Trump carried the 15th District by nearly 18 points and the 34th by about 10 points. Those margins were part of a Republican improvement in South Texas, where Democrats once dominated federal races. Another survey from House Majority PAC showed Democrat Bobby Pulido leading Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz 54 percent to 41 percent in the 15th District. Andrus said voters she is hearing from are focused heavily on everyday costs, including groceries, gasoline, health care and beef. That part of Trump’s response may matter most. While the president continues to point to past wins, convention crowds and online viewership, Republican candidates in South Texas are dealing with a different problem of whether the voters who moved toward Trump two years ago are still willing to stay with the GOP now.

The Senate Leadership Fund’s pulling money from North Carolina is the latest signal the Republican Party is giving up hope of holding that Senate seat.

On Friday, a chat between two top MAGA influencers became “VERY uncomfortable” when it erupted into a full-blown argument over a discussion of Israel’s relationship with the United States. The incident spoke to a rising trend within conservative politics as MAGA and the wider GOP fracture over disagreements regarding America’s controversial ally. “MAGA vs. MAGA just got VERY uncomfortable,” posted journalist Alice Williams over a clip featuring a pair of President Donald Trump’s key allies. “Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer went head-to-head on air — and this stopped feeling like a debate real fast.” Loomer – a staunch advocate for Israel – was appearing on Bannon’s War Room podcast when she attempted to argue that the Republican Party is afflicted with “Israel Derangement Syndrome.” Bannon cut her off, however, asserting, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on a second. If the Israeli government had dealt straight with us, you wouldn't have had this problem. They're liars. They've been stone-cold liars. They gave bad information. So I'm not going to let that go unchallenged.” Bannon was referring to reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had used bad information to persuade Trump to launch war with Iran. “Netanyahu's government has been atrocious, and we should have regime change in Jerusalem and we should have it immediately. They've lied to the American government. They've lied to the American people consistently. You say Israeli Derangement Syndrome. I certainly don't have it.” Trump’s relationship to Israel has been a matter of growing division among his allies and the wider Republican Party. Earlier this year, longtime MAGA loyalists Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with the movement for a number of reasons, among which was its willingness to extend favor to Israel. As Politico recently explained, “Self-identified 'MAGA' Trump voters are more supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its relationship with the U.S. than those who don’t identify as MAGA but still voted for the president. Nearly half of MAGA Trump voters say they back Israel and approve of the actions of its current government, while just 29 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters say the same, according to the survey. A plurality of MAGA voters (41 percent) say Israel is justified in its military campaign in Gaza — compared with 31 percent of non-MAGA voters. And 24 percent of MAGA voters say the country was initially justified but has gone too far, compared with 31 percent of non-MAGA voters.” While Republican support for Israel was strong immediately after Hamas’ October 7th attacks, according to Politico, “Amid the war with Iran and a growing unease about Trump’s foreign interventions, the country’s standing appears shaky among the non-MAGA wing of the GOP and among young conservatives. Non-MAGA voters are 10 points more likely than MAGA Trump voters to believe the Israeli government has too much influence over U.S. foreign policy.”

Republicans are using the courts to hunt for noncitizen voters. Democrats worry the G.O.P. is trying make it harder for eligible voters to cast ballots — and paving the way to try to toss valid election results.

And what else happened this week under his administration.

On Friday, a former lawyer with the Department of Justice warned that President Donald Trump is propping up “flimsy,” “politically motivated prosecutions” to bolster his claims of election fraud. This is according to former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who writes in the New York Times that Trump’s legal attacks on a “tired mailman” and other “civilian” targets not only make a mockery of his voter fraud claims, but prove his “weakness” is growing. “When the deputy attorney general personally announces an indictment from Justice Department headquarters, it signals a matter of national importance,” writes Oyer. “So when Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter announced that he would hold his first news conference, observers rightly expected a major case. Instead, Mr. McCotter announced an indictment of a rogue postal worker for improperly disposing of mail.” As Oyer explains, the case involved a Utah mail carrier who was covering a colleague’s route and said he began feeling “overwhelmed,” and sought to “lighten his workload” by discarding a batch of undelivered mail in a church dumpster. He told federal law enforcement that this was a “poor decision” made out of “frustration” and “laziness.” While he claimed he thought the mail was junk ads, prosecutors say it included 300 primary mail-in ballots. As a result, he was charged with a single felony for the destruction of mail. But while his intention clearly had nothing to do with election interference, “that did not stop the Justice Department from offering him up to the public as an election saboteur,” writes Oyer. The deputy attorney general called him — a 34-year-old with no prior criminal history — “a danger to the public and to the integrity of the electoral system.” Attorney General Todd Blanche and McCotter went all over Fox touting the prosecution of the “tired mailman”, but according to Oyer, “Their chest-thumping highlights how desperate Justice Department leaders are to substantiate the president’s claims of election interference, and how miserably they are failing. At the news conference, Mr. McCotter admonished reporters: ‘Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real.’ In other words: We may not have much proof, but trust us.” While polls show that few have been convinced by the claims of election fraud Trump has been pushing for over half a decade, “what’s different and scarier now,” writes Oyer, “is that the Justice Department’s leadership is working together to validate the president’s election lies from the top down. Turning fiction into fact is now part of the job description. A refusal to concede that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election has become a litmus test for all his political appointees. Initially, Mr. Trump’s justice system targeted specific individuals who had angered him — such as Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) or the former F.B.I. director, James Comey. Now, it has adopted a dragnet approach, trawling to find perpetrators on whom to pin conspiracies cooked up by the president. Ordinary citizens are being ensnared.” Oyer points to examples like David Hearn, who merely put his hand in the water of the Reflecting Pool while taking a bike ride, only to find himself arrested and tried for a felony in an incident that blew up humiliatingly in the faces of Trump and his allies. Cases like this prove that Trump has moved on from targeting high-profile figures like Comey and Kelly. “They were people the president viewed as enemies,” writes Oyer. “Now, he’s getting desperate and targeting civilians.” As she concludes, “So far, the courts have consistently rejected Mr. Trump’s politically motivated prosecutions. Most Americans can see these cases for what they are: flimsy and pathetic — a sign of Mr. Trump’s weakness.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says a combination of sour economic sentiment, the worsening job market, and higher borrowing costs amounts to “really, really bad news” for President Donald Trump and Republicans heading into the midterm elections. Writing Thursday on his Substack, Krugman argued that the White House is trying to sell Americans on an economic picture that increasingly conflicts with how voters say they are doing. He pointed to the latest AP-NORC poll, which found 74 percent of adults described the national economy as poor, compared with 26 percent who called it good. The same poll showed brutal numbers for Trump, who campaigned on economic prosperity for everyday Americans. Just 26 percent approved of his handling of the economy, while 73 percent disapproved. On the cost of living, 17 percent approved of Trump’s performance and 82 percent disapproved. The survey of 2,140 adults was conducted Sept. 24-28 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. Krugman also highlighted a change in how Americans view the economy close to home. During the Biden administration, he wrote, “Americans generally had a much more positive view of their local economy — which they could observe with their own eyes — than they did of the national economy.” The September AP-NORC survey found 61 percent of adults said the national economy was worse off than when Trump took office in 2025, while 23 percent said it was better. Fifty-five percent said their local economy was worse off, compared with 20 percent who said it was better. Krugman’s second warning sign was the labor market with official employment measures remain relatively strong by historical standards, but he noted that Americans’ perception of job availability has deteriorated. The Conference Board reported this week that 23.6 percent of consumers said jobs were plentiful in September, down from 24.5 percent in August. At the same time, 21.9 percent said jobs were hard to get, up from 20.3 percent. Consumer confidence fell for a third consecutive month. Housing costs add another problem, with the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage jumping to 7.28 percent this week, according to Freddie Mac, its highest level since November 2023 and the biggest weekly increase in four years. Krugman pointed out the “troubled environment” based on those numbers, go against the administration's characterization of the country as being in a Golden Age. “And while I’m not a political consultant, I don’t think ‘Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?’ is a winning strategy,” he wrote. With a month remaining before the midterms, Krugman said the economic environment matters as much as political polling. Although some headline economic statistics remain solid, he argued that voters’ experience with prices, housing costs and the job market is moving in the opposite direction from the White House’s message.

Polls show close contests in competitive Senate races and rare independent polling in Virginia congressional races.

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings has warned President Donald Trump that he could face a “tsunami” of congressional investigations into his business dealings if Republicans lose control of either chamber in November. Jennings made the warning Thursday night on CNN’s NewsNight during a discussion with host Abby Phillip about a new promotion tied to Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin. Mediaite reported Friday that the contest offers top holders access to a Nov. 22 dinner at Trump National near Washington, D.C. The top 29 investors are promised VIP access, while the four highest-ranked holders will receive 18-karat Trump-branded gold watches. Asked by Phillip about the arrangement, Jennings said he did not know enough about the project to defend its details and assumed White House lawyers had reviewed Trump's private business activity. “My other advice is that all of these arrangements, whether it’s this one or anything else, you really, really have to dot all your I’s, cross all your T’s and anticipate that every single bit of this is going to be investigated, should you lose control of either chamber,” Jennings said, continuing: “And you have to be ready to be fully transparent about that when that day comes.” Jennings stopped short of predicting a Democratic takeover of Congress, but said Trump and those around him should prepare for extensive scrutiny if control changes hands. “I don’t know what the future holds. I’m not in the prediction business,” he said. “But on arrangements like this, I think they need to be prepared for a tsunami of investigatory activity.” Phillip then pressed Jennings on whether he believed it was appropriate for a sitting president to attach his name to a cryptocurrency venture. Jennings acknowledged that the arrangement bothered him. “I’ll be perfectly honest, these kinds of things make me uncomfortable because I don’t like the idea of his name, while he’s the president, being used for things, you know, where people could get hurt,” he said. “And something like this, people could get hurt.” The latest promotion follows a previous event for major $TRUMP holders, which took place at the president’s golf club last year and another event at Mar-a-Lago in April. The memecoin has also lost substantial value, and as Jennings alluded to, his supporters have been financially hurt by investing in the coin that quickly plunged in value while the president reportedly earned over $600 million from the venture. Senate Democrats criticized the latest dinner announcement Thursday, calling it another Trump “grift.” Organizers say the November event will not include a private meet-and-greet with Trump and that the president will not accept gifts from attendees.

Sales of big pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles have dipped as more Americans buy hybrids and smaller cars.

We’ve seen any number of public political blowups lately in which, whether out of frustration, intention or distraction, one side just seems to make up allegations in hopes that the facts will catch up. From vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that turn out to be bad contracting work to criminal cases alleging wide anti-Donald Trump electoral conspiracies that repeatedly fall apart for lack of evidence, we allow ourselves to get much more focused on the shiny new allegation than on building the case towards finding blame. Roy Cohn-trained Trump has made a political career or two of doing so, of course, with public campaigns against the Central Park Five’s pre-judicial guilt findings and Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but continuing even this week with resignation of yet another would-be prosecutor who cannot find evidence to match Trump’s insistence of a “Grand Conspiracy” to have launched an investigation of Russian attempts to influence his 2016 election campaign. Trump Trump’s focus on finding criminal fault with “enemies” include the case alleging that former FBI director James B. Comey Jr. wanted to assassinate him by photographing seashells arranged as “86 47” on the beach, and the unending efforts to seek perjury charges against former chief government virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Special Counsel Jack Smith. It is the nature of what our politics have become. Each step downward toward blame-first politics makes the next yet more slippery and easier. Ludicrous Jack Smith Hearing Whatever the intended purpose of bringing Smith before riled Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the effort was a laughable failure. Republicans angrily pursued Smith for obtaining congressional phone toll records – not their content, a standard investigative tactic to verify testimony about those calls before and on Jan. 6, 2021, but they never came close to challenging the meat of Smith probe of Trump’s leading role in the insurrection attempt. Indeed, charges were dropped after a Justice Department order following a Supreme Court decision effectively granting Trump preemptive immunity for official acts. Still, the facts have never changed despite Trump’s attempts to rewrite history either about Jan. 6, 2021, nor about Trump’s holding classified information held in bathrooms and ballrooms at Mar-a-Largo. The hearing was so short of evidence that Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri embarrassed himself and colleagues as he accused Smtih of perjury over attending a basketball game in Georgia as a pretext for some conspiratorial link-up with state prosecutors there also pursuing Trump. Schmitt cited emails and smirked, until it became clear through questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. that the game was wrong. Smith had not been at a basketball game played by the Atlanta Hawks, but in Maryland, at another game involving the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Even if it had been true, Schmitt looked foolish proving a point that went nowhere. On Wednesday, Attorney General Todd Blanche attacked federal judges in Minnesota, accusing them of bias after they spoke out in news interviews against evidence-free immigrations that they had been forced to hear. Meanwhile, it is Blanche who has called his own fight with courts a “war.” Blanche wants an investigation of those judges and for them to recuse themselves in immigration cases but sees no hypocrisy in having been Trump’s personal defense lawyer. As deputy attorney general, Blanche told a Federalist Society event in 2025 that the administration was at “war” with judges he called activists, Bloomberg Law reported. Meanwhile, of course, there are no federal charges in the fatal deaths of citizen protesters at the hands of border patrol agents in Minneapolis. Of course, it is Blanche who has oversight of that case in Florida where now two prosecutors have walked away claiming that there is no evidence of a conspiracy that Trump wants to find. Pretending at the Institutions Too The Washington Post brings us reporting to show that the Kennedy Center was solvent when Trump took over. Trump removed the professional staff, insisted on choosing the entertainment offered, and was surprised to see revenue, donations and bookings plummet. Now we face Trump demands that because the law won’t allow him to put his name on the building, he may just raze the institution, which he claims is hopelessly in debt and failing. The Post examined 15 years of the institution’s confidential board documents and tax filings, showing that since taking over the center, the institution has borrowed everything its bank would lend it, dipped into money donors had given on the condition it never be spent and written off pledges from supporters who stopped paying. Trump said the center was “losing hundreds of millions of dollars” when he took over, and his board has warned of “bankruptcy.” Not to get lost in the details, there are kernels of financial dispute here, but Trump’s version does not account for his own role in cutting development staff or spending the endowment money of the National Opera or many other things that The Post lays out. Suffice it to say, it is a lot easier to make up the financial problems than it is to document them. In like fashion, a Federal Reserve watchdog found no criminal wrongdoing by former chair Jerome Powell in its investigation of the central bank’s expensive headquarters renovation, according to a report released on Wednesday. The findings effectively clear Powell after the Justice Department opened an unprecedented criminal investigation into then-Fed chair, which became public in January. The report did find need for better supervision, but no criminal violation, as Trump had pressured to determine. Naturally, there is no apology to Powell nor to those fired from the Kennedy Center, to the former Olympian who faced criminal vandalism charges for examining peeling paint, nor to Fauci or Special Counsel Smith. Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

The additions include Kansas’s 2nd, Michigan’s 1st, North Carolina’s 13th, New Jersey’s 2nd, Oklahoma’s 5th, Texas’s 9th, Virginia’s 6th and Washington’s 5th.

Mediaite reports Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) backed out of a planned C-SPAN appearance after his planned “gotcha” of former special counsel Jack Smith went down in flames this week. “Politico’s Dasha Burns, who also hosts Ceasefire on C-SPAN, explained in a preview of Friday’s edition of the program that “Senator Schmitt was supposed to appear on this program with Senator [Chris] Coons [D-DE], but he pulled out a day after that hearing.” The hearing Burns was citing is the spectacular Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee blowout where Schmitt thought he’d pressed Smith into a corner, only to discover that he was entirely wrong about his premise. Schmitt suggested Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks NBA game on Feb. 3, 2024, implying that Smith in Georgia to collude with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was separately prosecuting President Donald Trump. “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” Smith said. “I’m sure of that.” Bit Mediaite reports “Schmitt responded smugly, ‘I think you’ve already perjured yourself.’” But the former special counsel later recalled that he had instead gone to the Iowa-Maryland women’s college basketball game to watch Caitlin Clark play, prompting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to determine that Schmitt had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes. She also advised Schmitt to get his case together before lobbying insults and calling people “dirtbag.” Republicans blasted Schmitt for his colossal error while others pretended he had not been publicly dismantled. But other Republican insiders claimed Schmitt knew his assertions about Smith were unvetted, but presented them as factual anyway. "With correct knowledge of the conversation, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt was warned ahead of time by Republican staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Jack Smith text he wants to use to catch Smith in a line were 'unvetted,'" MS NOW anchor Michael Steele reported on Wednesday, breaking a story exclusive to the network. "Schmitt? Well, he decided to use it anyway." Democrats like Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) mauled Schmitt, calling his mistake “abysmal” and “laughable." Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes offered a scathing description of how Schmitt conducted himself during the confrontation, “smirking as he presented” a posterboard based on mistakes and poor research. Other reports suggested Schmitt's gaffe was so monumental that it is already impacting the job prospects of his staff, with Ethan Harper, the general counsel to Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), expected to leave his role on Friday for the White House Staff Secretary’s office next week, according to three people familiar with the plans. The sources said that transition was now in doubt following Schmitt's awful blunder, the people said.

As billionaires become a popular political target, a new book urges Washington not to lose sight of a much larger, and quieter, group of wealthy business owners.

Could a Democratic-led House actually do anything about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? Maybe not.

The legislation is part of a bipartisan backlash against a technology that has been abused by law enforcement.

President Trump spent the day preaching to his most fervent fans, not the voters he will need to help elect or re-elect a slate of Republicans fighting in states from Alaska to Maine.

CNN chief national correspondent John King says Republican sources are reacting with disbelief when hearing of President Donald Trump’s latest bid for self-enrichment. Trump recently purported to having gotten inflation “totally in control, and we've done a great job,” while adding that “I haven't done a good job with is explaining it to people.” But in keeping him honest, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said Thursday that “costs are not down. They're up. They're rising faster than they were when he took office.” Additionally, Trump’s approval numbers suggest a growing number of voters “simply are not buying what he is selling the way they did at the start of his second term.” According to the latest financial filings, Cooper said cryptocurrency ventures are putting over $1 billion a year in the president's pocket, and he asked King if voters are noticing how much he's enriching himself while in office. But King said it’s not just voters who are noticing Trump’s schemes and beating down their own doors to go vote against them in early returns. “Among the most loyal Trump voters, I was texting a bunch of them today. Remember, a lot of them don't see these stories. They watch and live and breathe in the MAGA media ecosystem that doesn't tell them bad things or questionable things or ethical things about the president of United States,” King told Cooper. “I texted our CNN story to several today. One said, ‘this guy is out of his mind,’ but then five minutes later texted me back: ‘are you sure this [story] is legitimate?” The story, King said, sounded so unreal as to need assurance that it was not “fake news.” King added that a voter he interviewed in the contentious state of Georgia said she had “invested in two of Trump’s crypto funds and lost about $20,000.” “She blames the president for that, and she's mad at the Republicans,” said King. “Now she's planning to vote Democrat for Senate in a very big race there in Georgia.” “The most important group, Anderson, are those Republicans who voted for Trump maybe twice,” added King. “Or they voted Trump, Biden and then back to Trump because they thought he would fix the economy.” These groups, according to voter groups King had been texting, say the president “is not focused on what they care about most. They think he's just lost, that he's doing things that are all about him and not about them. Democrats, meanwhile, are cooking with energy this cycle, said King. “When you talk to Democrats, ‘grift’ is a word that comes up often, and they are highly motivated by it. Don't get me wrong: ‘affordability’ is the biggest issue in this election. But Democrats who already didn't like trump, think he is using his office to enrich himself. And they are highly motivated. And they say that's the reason they will run through a brick wall to vote on Election Day," King warned. - YouTube youtu.be

Since assuming office last year, President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on free speech, targeting both journalists and commentators who criticize him and his administration. In theory, Democrats are standing up to Trump's anti-free speech actions — but a new report reveals that, in practice, many Democratic governors seem to be capitulating. The New Republic's Daniel Boguslaw wrote about how Democratic governors are responding to National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, an executive order that allows Trump to pursue people who are “anti-fascism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." The journalist pointed out that the FBI has tried to force states to work with them in pursuing these initiatives — and they have so far not fought back. "Gavin Newsom of California shirked the question [of whether he was working with the FBI], telling The New Republic in a written statement only that 'California’s security efforts operate wholly under state law and appropriate safeguards,'" Boguslaw wrote. He added, "New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office attempted a more acrobatic maneuver, claiming that 'New York State Police assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force focus only on genuine criminal or terrorism investigations, follow New York’s laws, and do not participate in civil immigration enforcement or the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center.' That answer is misleading. The FBI Joint Mission Center is the central hub for administering NSPM-7, but its participants are only a few dozen federal employees based in Washington, D.C." Referring to the third most populous blue state, Boguslaw wrote that "Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also demurred on the question of how exactly local and state police are participating in the FBI’s ongoing Illinois NSPM-7 investigations, telling The New Republic, 'Regardless of any actions taken by federal officials under the direction of the Trump administration, Illinois remains committed to maintaining the integrity of its own processes and will continue to ensure law enforcement information is handled appropriately and focused on legitimate public safety purposes, not political agendas.'" This is not the first time Democrats have been accused of quietly capitulating to Trump while pretending to stand up to him. From college presidents who work with him in squashing pro-Palestine campus protests to law firms that settled with him and abandoned liberal pro bono causes, the left has in general been accused of caving to Trump's bullying instead of fighting him. In this context, Trump has pursued a number of his media critics, such as sending subpoenas to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Axios and The New York Times for their reporting. He has also banned outlets like Politico, MS NOW and CNN from covering him in the White House, even outright admitting that it is viewpoint discrimination. "After MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued the Trump administration on Monday over the president banning their reporters from White House grounds, Trump’s communications team sent congressional Republicans talking points Monday night in defense of the president’s decision," MS NOW's Mychael Schnell reported in September. "According to the document obtained by MS NOW, the White House wants Republicans to argue that “no president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press” and that the First Amendment does not grant reporters access to the White House."

U.S. Central Command will hold a daylong conference at its Tampa headquarters after seven months of war in Iran.

A recent study says Americans’ support for political violence fell in 2026, but MAGA supporters remain the most likely to justify it. PsyPost covered the research, which was published as a preprint on SocArXiv and not yet peer-reviewed. But early nationally surveys suggests that American public support for political violence decreased heading into the 2026 midterm elections, contrary to popular fears. “The findings indicate that while partisan tensions remain high, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say political violence is never justified in general, and very few say they would be willing to commit it,” reports Psypost. But those numbers do not necessarily hold true for the MAGA political enclave, say researchers. When researchers examined differences among political groups, they found that MAGA Republicans and MAGA supporters who do not identify as Republicans tended to report higher levels of justification for political violence compared to Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans. “For instance, 50.5 percent of MAGA Republicans and 52.5 percent of non-Republican MAGA supporters considered violence usually or always justified to advance at least one objective, compared with 35.8 percent overall,” reported Psypost. “… Among respondents who considered violence justified, non-Republican MAGA supporters were more willing than others to commit violence against 12 of 14 target populations.” These numbers ranked second behind strong Democrats, who were slightly more prone to justify violence against private armed militias and federal immigration agents. “Declines in support occurred across the political spectrum overall, though changes within individual groups were mostly small,” Psypost reported. “MAGA Republicans moved slightly in the other direction on several items about the potential need for violence and civil war.” “We found, as others have, that support for political violence is generally stronger on the political right than on the political left,” said research leader Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Centers for Violence Prevention at the University of California. This dynamic mirrors the team’s earlier findings, reports PsyPost, pointing out that in a separate study recently published in PLOS One, the researchers analyzed baseline data collected from the same survey project in 2022 and found that Republicans and conservatives were much more likely than Democrats and liberals to view political violence as justified for specific objectives. But most respondents reject political violence in general, Wintemute added, saying the “willingness to commit political violence … is rare across the board.” “The vast majority of respondents in our surveys reject political violence altogether, and most of those who consider it acceptable are not willing to become involved in it themselves,” he explained.

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, moved to slash his agency’s inspector general’s office. Democrats called for his resignation.

The state struck 20,000 names from the public database after a ruling by the state’s highest court.

President Donald Trump has made at least $1 billion so far promoting his cryptocurrency, a coin that was sold primarily to his own supporters. Those same supporters tended to lose all of their investments as a result of that business venture, which critics describe as a scam, and even Trump backers like right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan are starting to turn on the president as he continues to deregulate the crypto industry and personally profit. Speaking to former President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser on Thursday, MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace pointed to these developments to make an important point — namely, that Trump actively hates his own supporters. "What's amazing to me, Ben, as someone who's covered Trump most days for a decade — and that's on me — is to see how much he hates his voters," Wallace told Rhodes. "I always thought that Steve Bannon was, for his political views and his contribution to the degradation of our politics, odious. But as a political person inside Trump's operation, genius. And he made Trump's voters think that Trump cared about them. His absence, or his refusal to do whatever he did the first time, has taken the mask off." Wallace continued, "And Trump hates his own voters more than he hates any of us, because we never thought he was anything other than someone who would make the Secret Service stay at his hotels and make foreign governments buy hotel rooms they never slept in. We read all of David Fahrenthold's reporting in the first term and believed it: he was stealing from the government. The people that voted for him a second and third time either didn't believe it or didn't care." She concluded, "And there's no one around Trump that can protect his voters from knowing that he hates them so much that he didn't just fail on the economy after he promised to fix it — he is stealing from them. None of us invested in his meme coin. I barely know what that is. But they did. And the fact that he can't even pretend to respect his voters is, to me, just an epic political story." Rhodes concurred with Wallace's blistering assessment. "He knows that they're the ones who will be the suckers, right?" Rhodes told Wallace. "We're not going to buy a Trump meme coin. The people that will buy Trump steaks are the same people that will buy a Trump crypto venture, right? And so he counts on that. The people who are the most blindly loyal to him are the people who are the easiest for him to take advantage of. And that's a really dark truth, but it is a truth of American politics and Trump family corruption. The people that they need to take advantage of are the people that most believe in them." Congressional Democrats have already promised that, if they retake power in the 2026 midterm elections, they will use their authority to investigate the myriad business ventures Trump has engaged in to profit while in office during his second term, including his cryptocurrency business. - YouTube youtu.be

The progressive Senate candidate is offering olive branches to Jewish voters and campaigning with Kamala Harris to attract Black voters. Polling shows it may be working.

The diverted funds include tens of millions of dollars Congress approved for countries impacted by the war in Ukraine.

Federal authorities on Thursday charged a Boston-area man with harassing Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster and wife of Trump aide Stephen Miller.

The controlled substance is approved as an anesthetic, but also has long been abused as a party and date rape drug.

The ruling is the latest in a string of decisions finding that the administration bent federal law to keep loyalists in key prosecutorial posts.

President Donald Trump has made it very clear that, if it is within his power, he will steal the 2026 midterm elections rather than allow Democrats to win them. If he succeeds, America will cease to be a democracy — yet even if he fails, he has already made democracy in America into an "if" rather than a given. That, at least, is the assessment of Dr. Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University. When he spoke with me for AlterNet, Levitsky made it clear that there is a non-zero chance of Trump successfully turning America into an effective dictatorship before the 2026 election cycle is over. The question is not whether he has the legal authority to declare martial law, send the military (and/or ICE and/or other forms of law enforcement) to seize ballots or to demand Republicans in Congress simply refuse to seat Democrats. From a strictly legal perspective, he cannot do any of those things. The concern is that Trump also has what Levitsky described as "de facto" power — that is, the capacity to effectively implement these or other anti-democratic measures in defiance of the law. After all, Trump has already engaged in mass deportations, silenced media critics, levied tariffs, destroyed national monuments and slapped his name all over the place regardless of the legality behind those measures. Perhaps most notably, he attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and was able to regain power thanks to the complicity of right-wing media and the complacency of America's top legal and business institutions. In that sense, as Levitsky pointed out, American democracy is already in a sense permanently weakened. We are no longer a consolidated democracy, or one in which democratic institutions consistently work even if there are other social injustices; we are an unconsolidated democracy, or a government in which it is never entirely certain whether basic democratic structures will remain in intact. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length. Trump trying to steal the midterms through brute force. Rozsa: President Trump has repeatedly said, either directly or through various surrogates, that he is considering declaring a national emergency, implementing martial law, sending ICE or the military to the polls, and in other ways directly hindering the actual process of the election occurring. Does he have the power to do these things? Levitsky: Well, it depends whether you're talking about de facto power or legal power, constitutional power. I'm not a constitutional expert, but most would agree that he does not have the formal power to do these things. The Constitution gives the federal executive almost no power over election administration. That is left to the states. So the kind of federal intervention that Trump is talking about is almost certainly unconstitutional. The real issue, of course, is whether he has the de facto power to do it, whether he can pull it off. And first, I'd say from the outset, I have no doubt that Trump is willing to order some sort of a coup against democracy to try to overturn the elections. He has shown over and over again that he is not a democrat and is perfectly willing to engage in really old-school authoritarian tactics to overturn elections. We don't know for sure whether he can get away with it. There are some troubling signs. One of them is that we're just completely unprepared for a sort of radical seizure of power in this way. The courts have been pretty good, not great, on Trump's efforts to sort of overstep his bounds on elections, but courts move slowly. And it's just not at all clear, if on election night Trump were to order the seizure of ballot boxes, declare some kind of an emergency, mobilize troops, that courts could move quickly enough to stop it. So at the very least, it would create a massive, massive crisis. But ultimately, I don't think he's got the power to get away with it. Unfortunately, we're living in a world where the chances of it happening are well above zero. But looking at, one, Trump's public support and his political power, which is in pretty sharp decline: there's a lot of evidence that the most successful assaults on democracy are carried out by presidents with 70, 80, 85% support, whether it's Putin or Hugo Chávez or Fujimori or Bukele. All of these guys had 80% support. Trump's at 35, 36. And secondly, if you look at the Trump administration's record in planning, orchestrating, carrying out major policy initiatives, from DOGE to the Liberation Day tariffs to the war in Iran, it's just utter, utter incompetence, lack of foresight, lack of coordination, lack of planning. Fraud is hard. Repression is hard. Destroying constitutional rule is hard. If I had to bet a dollar — glad I'm not — I don't think these guys have the capacity to do it. Rozsa: When I talked with Justin Levitt from Loyola Law School, he was very doubtful that Trump could use law enforcement and/or the military in this way. I then interjected with a recent quote from attorney Peter Ticktin, who is one of Trump's advisers. When someone told Ticktin that there would be riots if Trump attempted a coup, Ticktin responded, quote, "Our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are." Levitt then replied that this was a fantasy. But my question is, do you think Ticktin has a point, logistically speaking? Levitsky: What does "logistically speaking" mean? Rozsa: That because their armed forces are a lot bigger than the forces that could be arrayed against them, they could ultimately carry out a coup. Levitsky: Well, this is a little frustrating because, again, there is a non-zero chance that they could carry out a coup. The reason why I think it's a relatively low probability — and we're dealing with a lot of speculation here — is that they have to pull off two things to militarize in that way. One, they've got to get the military to go along with egregiously, openly anti-democratic behavior, which they might, but it's not certain that the military would go along. And secondly, repression is really hard, especially if you're talking about an unpopular government in a context where there isn't a perceived crisis. In the aftermath of something like 9/11, or if we were at war, or if there were a real subversive organization in the country — if Americans were really scared about something, or if they really liked Trump — they'd be more likely to tolerate repression. This is a context that is very unfavorable for carrying out repression. Look at what the Trump administration tried to do in Minnesota. They made the streets of Minneapolis look like El Salvador in the 1980s for a while, and it blew up in their face politically. And so if they couldn't militarize Minneapolis in January 2026, I think chances are that an effort to do it at the national level would fail. Rozsa: Certainly, I hope you're right, but here is my counter to what you're saying, and I want to emphasize I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but this is the thought that keeps occurring to me. It's the information ecosystem in which a lot of Americans choose to live. To illustrate what I mean: after January 6th, I kept hearing over and over again, "That's it. Trump's political career is dead. He just attempted a coup." Even some right-wing media outlets were initially critical of him. But then the far-right outlets were backing his attempts to gaslight people about what happened, and soon even the more mainstream conservative outlets began to fall in line, either downplaying it or contributing to the gaslighting, so that by the time the 2024 election rolled around, an event that had once been considered disqualifying was no longer an impediment to him being reelected. Using that same reality, what is to stop CNN, which is soon going to be taken over by a pro-Trump family, and Fox News and all of these conservative outlets from spinning their own version of events regarding Trump's coup attempt, and in so doing, reducing the backlash against it? Do you see what I'm saying? Levitsky: Yeah, look, I take your point about January 6th and the elite reaction to January 6th. After the shock wore off, after two or three days, when Republican politicians kind of put their finger to the wind, the elite abdication that occurred after January 6th was shocking. I certainly didn't expect it, and it was really costly. The reason why we have Trump today, and the reason why we're facing this threat, is exactly the dynamic you just described: that elites just decided to look the other way. Could that happen again? Well, the thing to watch, and what was really critical in the 2021–2024 period, which I agree with you was just really, really decisive, was the behavior of Republican elites. Almost all Republican elites got in lock[step]. A few of them wandered off the reservation for a couple of weeks, but they all came back. And the ones who didn't, like Liz Cheney, were purged from the party. The unified Republican message that January 6th was okay, was justified, was acceptable, that the election might have been unfair — it was the fact that it was a unified message coming from the Republican elite. That's what allowed that myth to persist and allowed Trump to remain politically viable. So one of the keys, one of the things to look for, is how Republican leaders would respond to this coup. If there is unified or even majoritarian Republican politician support or acquiescence or even silence in the face of this coup, then we're in worse shape. If a number of leading Republicans speak up, we'll be in better shape. But even so, Trump has less support, even in his own coalition, than he had back in 2021. I think the evidence shows that the support is weaker. It's thinner. And you can throw in CNN if you want, but the right-wing media ecosystem is real, but it's a third of the country. It's a third of the country. And a third of the country may well mobilize or support a coup attempt. I think there's reason to think that much of that MAGA base would support it. But Fox News lying about the coup is not going to affect majority public opinion in the United States. Rozsa: CNN, by the way, will also lie about it now that it's been purchased by the Ellisons. And I would say I'm not only concerned about Republicans — Levitsky: CNN might lie about it. We don't know that. Rozsa: I think they will. I think Ellison has made it very clear where he stands. But my — Levitsky: Ellison wants to make a lot of money in the medium term. And with Trump this weak, that's a hell of a bet, to bet on a coup. Rozsa: Well, the other point I wanted to make is it's not just Republicans who need to go along. Jacob Weisberg wrote a great book called Profiles in Cowardice about individuals who aren't part of that coalition, but for transactional reasons decided to participate. People like Jeff Bezos, people like the head of the law firm Paul, Weiss. That type of logic, which argues that only a sucker makes a sacrifice in the name of principle, that a smart person goes where the power is — that could also facilitate a coup. What do you think? Levitsky: I think you're misreading the balance of power today. This is not December 2024. It's not January, February 2025. Trump is in a political [corner]. He's politically weakened. And I'm as dismayed at the behavior of Paul, Weiss and universities and Jeff Bezos as Jacob Weisberg is. But those guys are making a different calculation today. To jump on the Trump train as it's descending into chaos is a much, much [riskier bet]. It turned out to be a pretty stupid bet in early 2025. The law firms that cooperated, the universities that cooperated — they're not better off for having acquiesced to or appeased Trump than those that ultimately resisted. But as Weisberg lays out in his book, there was a logic to it. And it's not a very pretty logic from the standpoint of someone who cares about democracy, but there was a logic to it. I don't think that logic exists anymore. I think it's utterly irrational for somebody who's thinking about making money in the next two years to support a coup led by somebody that's unpopular. It's super high-risk. Trump trying to steal the midterms through legal chicanery. Rozsa: Now I want to talk about another way that Trump could pull this off. Let us say, hypothetically, that he isn't able to overturn the results through physical force and all of his efforts at frivolous litigation fail. He could, through the bureaucracy, get Democrats who were elected ultimately rejected. And I'm thinking of two possible methods. The first is through bureaucrats that he's embedded in positions of election administration and certification who believe in the Big Lie. And the second is by convincing Speaker Johnson or Leader Thune to reject Democratic victories when they are handed over to Congress in 2027. What do you think of either of those possibilities? Levitsky: In terms of the first one, there's been talk in my world of kind of packing local election administrations with election deniers, and to some extent that has happened. But I don't think it ever amounted to as much as the supporters hoped and people like me feared initially. And again, looking at this administration and its efforts — its war efforts, its tariff efforts, its DOGE efforts — it strains my imagination to think they could pull off some kind of extraordinary coordinated feat like this. The Johnson Congress option — Rozsa: Or Thune. Levitsky: Or Thune, yeah. I think that is more credible. First of all, it's entirely legal, it turns out. If Republican candidates scream fraud and Johnson can point to a, quote-unquote, contested election, it is actually in his power to decide who gets the seat. And looking at his behavior, I think he'd do it. And if the balance of Congress [hinges on] a handful of seats — three, four, five seats — I'm going to worry a lot about that. To the extent that the Democrats achieve some sort of a landslide, that becomes less likely, becomes more difficult. We have to be very thankful that Trump is so unpopular that the Republicans are tanking this badly in the election. If it were a very close election, I would be very worried about that outcome. I'm a little less worried because I don't think it's going to be two or three seats holding the balance. I think it's going to be much more than that. Rozsa: Now, when I asked the same question of Professor Levitt, he said, and I'm quoting, "The key moment isn't anything that Mike Johnson has a part in. The key moment is who's put on the roll of potential House members when at noon the House dissolves as a body. At 12:01, there is no House. There is no Speaker Johnson. He's just a dude. The Clerk of the House is the person who controls the roll. The Clerk of the House has a non-discretionary, very clear statutory duty to recognize the potential members who show up with certificates of election from their states, the things that the state officials have certified." Do you agree with his analysis there? Levitsky: I'm not enough of an expert on that to say. I have no opinions. I just don't know. Rozsa: Well, I want to ask this. Do you think it would be possible, if it seemed like Speaker Johnson was considering playing along with Trump's coup attempt, that Democrats could perhaps convince a few anti-Trump Republicans in the House to hold an early election to replace Johnson as speaker with someone who won't go along with him? Levitsky: Yeah, I think that's actually a relatively likely scenario. Again, and thank God, because Trump is so unpopular and because this sort of a coup would be so unpopular — there's uncertainty, but I think there's a pretty good chance that Democrats could find a handful of Republicans — it wouldn't take many — they need to vote Johnson out. Rozsa: Of course, my concern is that they'll face so much pressure from the Republican media that they'll ultimately be cowards and just toe the party line. Levitsky: It's certainly possible. But again, given the balance of public opinion and political strength right now — I mean, in part just given Trump's age and his physical condition — it's very hard to bet on Trumpism in the medium term right now. Much harder than it was even, you know, a year and two quarters ago. Trump's long-term consequences for American democracy — regardless of the midterms. Rozsa: I want to take a step back from these immediate questions and ask something much deeper. What does it say about the health of American democracy that these worst-case scenarios are even plausible? I've been following politics since I was a teenager in the late 1990s. I've been covering it professionally since the 2012 election. And in my lifetime, at least, there was never any serious threat to democratic institutions. Based on my research into American history, the closest analogy I can think of was the 1860 presidential election, which ultimately led to a civil war. But even then, it didn't seem like people were questioning that Lincoln had been legitimately elected. They simply didn't want him to win, because then he would limit the expansion of slavery. What does it say about the state of democracy right now that these things are even possible? Levitsky: I'll put it in boring political science terms. It means that the United States, at best today, is an unconsolidated democracy. I've argued that the United States has actually slid into kind of mild competitive authoritarianism under Trump 2.0. I don't think the regime at present is fully democratic. But even for those who argue that Trump's abuses are not sufficient to say that we've lost our democracy, the U.S. has become what political scientists call an unconsolidated democracy. My day job is as a Latin Americanist. I've studied political regimes in Latin America for years and years and years. And what I was brought up learning was that democracies in countries like Peru and Argentina were unconsolidated in the sense that there was always uncertainty that all the powerful actors would play by the rules of the game. There was never certainty that everybody was committed to democratic rules of the game. The United States for years and years and years was held up as an example of a consolidated democracy, where everybody knew that everybody was committed to democratic rules of the game. You could take for granted that elections would be free and fair, that everyone would play by the rules, that the government would play by the rules. There would be uncertainty over the outcomes of elections, but there was never uncertainty around the procedure of the elections. And that is long gone — since the 2020 election, but certainly with all the discussion we've had around the election today. Even if one agrees with me that the likelihood of a coup is relatively low, there is a lot of uncertainty. There's uncertainty about whether the election will be fair. There's uncertainty about whether the government will accept the results of the election, or that there'll be an effort to manipulate the outcome of the election after the election. That uncertainty is a classic sign of what we call an unconsolidated democracy, an unstable democracy. And that sets the United States apart from all other established democracies in Europe and in Canada, and makes it much more like some of the unstable democracies we see in Latin America and elsewhere. Rozsa: Have there been any of those unstable democracies in Latin America that went back to being consolidated democracies? Levitsky: Yeah. Very often, sadly, after they tip into a period of authoritarian rule. But yeah, Argentine democracy was considered an unconsolidated democracy in the 1980s. There were several coup attempts. Today, it's considered a consolidated democracy. Brazil may not be a great example, because they had a similar — Rozsa: With Bolsonaro. Levitsky: In 2022. Yeah. So maybe it's not fully consolidated. I think they handled it better than we did. But Argentina is a much more consolidated democracy than it was in the 1980s.

The latest event will take place next month at the president’s golf club in Northern Virginia.

The White House Office of Management and Budget added $20 million to the pot for commemorative events a day before DHS awarded an advertising contract of the same amount.

Republicans have to campaign without having done much to address the cost of living.

Roger Rogoff was Western Washington’s new U.S. attorney for less than hour before President Donald Trump fired him via email. Now a judge is giving him his job back. Politico reports a federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, rejecting a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs. “The president cannot unilaterally fire a United States attorney appointed by the district court,” U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian said in a ruling from the bench. Bastian added that doing so “would upend the framework created by the Constitution and the statutes, which together balance the president’s right to appoint and the Senate’s right to confirm.” Politico reports that the ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Roger Rogoff, whom Trump allegedly fired from the job of U.S. attorney for the Seattle-area Western District of Washington immediately after the district’s federal judges appointed him to the role a few months ago. The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to circumvent the Senate confirmation process to appoint loyalists in top positions, said Politico, particularly in instances when district judges have exercised their authority to select someone else as the U.S. attorney whom Trump has fired. Bastian, an Obama appointee, argued that Rogoff is a U.S. attorney and has legally occupied that role since he took the oath of office July 15. In his ruling, Bastian also stripped Trump appointee Charles Neil Floyd of his power after Trump temporarily installed him in Rogoff’s place, determining that the administration had “improperly granted” authority to Floyd. What may prove more vexing to Trump is that the judge additionally took steps to thwart any attempts by Trump to undermine the judge’s authority or transfer it to someone else. Politico reports Bastian ordered that the executive office of the president, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are all barred from “any purported firing” or removal of Rogoff from his post, interference with his service in the role and from treating anyone other than Rogoff as the U.S. attorney. The Seattle Times reports the district’s 17 sitting federal judges appointed Rogoff after Trump failed to formally nominate his own pick for U.S. attorney. Trump instead appointed Floyd as interim last year and later used a workaround to keep him in the spot as “first assistant” U.S. attorney. Other judges have taken a similar path, with one judge ruling that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's handpicked interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was also unlawfully serving. That decision complicated cases Halligan’s office had been pursuing.