Archives for category: Elections

Mary L. Trump is Donald Trump’s niece, the daughter of his late older brother. She knows him well. She is a trained psychologist. She has beeen earning the world about him since early in his first term. It’s safe to say that she loathes Uncle Donald.

She wrote today:

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Trump Trolls Trump. It has been 635 interminable days since Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2025. But there’s good news. The midterm elections are just 17 days away. So first up, make sure your voter registration is up to date. And if you can vote early, please do so. As always, we are here to ridicule and mock mercilessly this inept, corrupt, and dangerous regime.

Let’s dive right in with a truism that has become increasingly difficult to deny. Donald lies like most people breathe. In fact, I think in some cases he lies more fluently than I breathe. It’s second nature to him at this point, or maybe it’s just his nature.

Sometimes those lies get us into serious trouble. Earlier we saw Donald promising, as he has done time and time and time again, that he would bring energy prices down by 50 percent. That hasn’t happened. And actually the very opposite has happened because his war on Iran, his war of choice, has helped drive energy prices up across the board.

I think it’s worth remembering that Donald lied about this too, because back in 2024 when he was asking Americans to put him back in the White House, which sadly 78 million of us thought was a good idea, this is what he had to say.

We will expel the war mongers from our government. Look at Trump. Just look at this guy. He’s going to go to war. He’s going to take us. No, no. Look at me. I’m the one that kept us out of war. I’m the only president that didn’t start a war. I didn’t start a war. Started no war. I was the first president in decades who started no new war. There are wars all over. He said, “Bring back Trump. It’ll all end. It all ended. We had no problem. I’m going to keep you out of wars. I kept you out of wars. We had no wars with Donald Trump as your president. Remember when crooked Hillary Clinton used to say, “He’s going to get us into a war. Look at him. Look at his rhetoric.” I said, “No, my rhetoric’s going to keep us out of wars.

Really? Threatening genocide is not going to keep us out of wars. Oh, wait a second. He’s threatening genocide against the country he went to war with, an unprovoked war of choice. No one knows how long this war is going to last because he keeps lying about that too. In fact, he told us it would be a matter of days or a couple of weeks. It’s been over six months.

The truth of the matter is, although we are actively still at war with Iran, a war that is expanding because Donald has completely lost control of it, we lost simply by getting involved. Back in June, Vice President Baby JD Vance told us that a deal with Iran was just around the corner. So it isn’t just Donald who is lying to our faces about how things are going. This is Vance in an interview with Robert Costa on CBS’s Sunday morning recorded on June 9th.

Right now, I feel that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program, not just now, not just while Donald Trump is president, but for the long term, to where my kids can say when they’re adults, Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon. That’s the goal of the policy, and I think we’re very close to achieving that goal, but we still got some wood to chop and we’re going to keep doing it. You say very close. How soon could the deal happen before the midterm elections? Oh, absolutely. No, I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections. Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.

Well, it’s not like there’s much difference between a week and months from now. Before the midterm elections though, absolutely, which as I mentioned, are only 17 days away. Also, remember the goal of this war is to make sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear capability. And if that’s really what Donald and his ilk were interested in, then guess what he shouldn’t have done? Rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal, which actually had Iran agreeing not to develop nuclear weapon capability. These guys cannot win for losing.

Speaking of which, back in April, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott appeared on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo. Remember her? I mean, I know she is much missed and lamented, but Scott’s message was simple. Sure, the war is raging kind of out of control. Sure, prices are rising, but don’t worry your pretty little heads about that. Everything’s on track. And we of course have Donald to thank for all of that. Scott had another message for the American people though, and this is what it was.

Great news, by the way. The fact of the matter is that all of the cylinders are kicking. It is good news. You can even feel in our environment how good things are getting. Gas prices continue to come down, which means that your groceries will come down a little bit as well. We’ve got a lot of good signs in the economy. We just need to continue to execute and have confidence in the choices the American people have made by making President Trump their president and keeping Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. Let me just say for the average person in the country, President Trump loves you.

Well, I don’t know. Does he? Considering he doesn’t know what love is, I find that highly suspect and untrue. Gas prices are coming down, aren’t they? Well, no, they’re not, because Brent crude oil is now over 105 dollars a barrel, which translates to diesel, the stuff that trucks need to get around, at 6.27 dollars a gallon. So I don’t think Donald loves you. The economy is not doing well.

As I mentioned, with the midterms this close, I can’t wait until I can actually say the midterms are two weeks away. But Donald, he’s not quite taking in what’s happening. How does he think things are doing? How does he think he’s doing? Because really, that’s the only thing he’s concerned about. Well, let me ask you this question. If Donald were asked to grade his own performance on the economy, what grade do you think he would give himself in the midst of economic catastrophe? 

We’re doing an unbelievable job. Costs are coming way down. I inherited very, very high costs and they’re all coming down now. The food, the groceries, it’s all coming down. We’ve done a great job. I think we should be giving an A plus on the economy, but I think it’s coming. People are starting to talk about it.

Interviewer: I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home, and I wonder what grade you would give.

A plus, Donald responds.

A plus, the interviewer repeats.

Yeah. A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, Donald says.

Well, it makes sense that he would give himself a grade that doesn’t exist. Now, Donald is laser focused on the needs of the American people. He’s working day and night to make sure that our lives are improved. I mean, you can tell by the fact that crews are working around the clock to get the ballroom built. That’s not making my life better. He’s making oil deals with Russia to help refill their much depleted coffers to aid them in attacking our ally Ukraine. That’s definitely not making my life better.

Unfortunately though, according to him and his enablers, we’re still dealing with the damage Joe Biden left behind. Donald has a few words for his predecessor. Donald has told us that he is working his considerable ass off. 

He has one ability I don’t have. He sleeps. He can sleep. This guy goes on a beach and he lays down on one of those beach chairs. They weigh six ounces and he can’t lift it, but he has an ability to fall asleep while on camera. He can lie down on one of those things and in minutes, he’s stone cold out. How does he do it? And he’s got cameras because he’s in prison, so they have cameras on him. And then they show him sleeping on the beach. You’ll never see me sleeping in front of camera. I have to tell you, he’s a different guy. He looks different than he used to. He acts different than he used to. He’s even slower than he used to be. And I wouldn’t say he’s at the top of his game. Would you think their message is Sleepy Joe because he’s not all there? Right now, I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago, but who the hell does? You’ll never see me sleeping in front of Joe.

I mean, that’s the reaction to listening to Donald talk about himself because I have never seen a sleepier person. That hypersomnia is not a good thing, but it’s so much nicer when he’s sleeping, isn’t it? Again, as we’ve talked about before, Donald is a master of projection, and clearly when he’s talking about Sleepy Joe Biden, he’s talking about himself because I have never met such a hypersomnolent person in my life. Although to be fair, sleepy Donald is my favorite mode of Donald.

I want to turn now to Donald’s relentless crusade against corruption. Wait a minute, sorry. Is crusade a synonym for embrace? Embrace of corruption? Well, let’s find out.

We know that Baby JD Vance is in charge of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which is fabulous. This was established by executive order back in March. The only thing that surprised me about that is that he didn’t ask Elon Musk or Ken Paxton to head that task force, but we’re talking about criminals here, hardened criminals, and Donald, as is his want, is looking at them very strongly, which is a phrase I still cannot make sense of. I do not know what it means to look at something very strongly. I think Superman was able to do that, but he had laser beams coming out of his eyes.

Now, Donald explains exactly what he has done to crack down on criminality. Before you get excited, it does not mean he’s had himself arrested. As I listen to him describe these criminals, I have a lingering question. You may have the same one, here is what he said:

91 percent of the crime in Washington DC, as an example, was caused by 2.1 percent of the population. These are many career criminals, sick people, mental problems.

Okay. I mean, I know DC’s a small town, but I didn’t think it was so small that Donald comprised 2.1 percent of the population. Oh wait, but it’s not just him. He has a lot of co-conspirators out there. If you add in all of his co-conspirators, then maybe yes, those hardened career criminals, the Vances and the Hegseths and the Musks and the Bessents and all of them might indeed make up 2.1 percent of the DC population, and they are absolutely committing over 90 percent of the crime there.

As we approach the midterms, please, please make sure your voter registration is up to date and know where your polling location is. Check both of those things repeatedly because people can get struck off the voter rolls without their knowing it right before the election, and sometimes polling places change. Republicans are going to pull out all the stops, so we need to stay on top of this.

You don’t want any surprises when you go to vote on election day if you vote in person. A lot of states offer early voting, so check your options and if you can vote early, please do so. I am one of those people. I’m old school. I like to go vote on election day, but vote early, vote by mail in states where you still think that’s the safe thing to do.

And when you step into that voting booth, remember how we got here and who brought us to this very dark time in our history. Encourage other people to vote and remind them that Donald himself said he wants us to pretend he’s on the ballot. So that’s very clear. Vote Democratic up and down the ballot.

“I can always say that the next president will get a lot of credit for what I’ve done. Please remember it was me, not them,” Donald says.

Oh, we will remember. We will remember. And as we’re remembering, we are going to tear down everything on the planet that has your name on it.

Thank you so much for joining us for Trump Trolls Trump week 91. Remember, mockery is our superpower, and we will be here every single week to call out the hypocrisy, the ineptitude, and the outright corruption of this incredibly dangerous and misguided regime. 

Go vote. 

This is Charlie Chaplin’s “Great Dictator” speech.

Chaplin says that we don’t need a dictator.

After almost two years of Trump’s second term, we know he is not wiser or more efficient than a democratically elected leader. Indeed, he is most assuredly less wise and less efficient than any democratically elected leader.

He repeatedly makes decisions that drive up prices and impoverish American citizens, while cutting taxes for the richest Americans.

He launches vendettas to pursue and punish anyone he dislikes.

He has built tributes to himself and hung giant flags on government buildings to celebrate his face.

He has virtually destroyed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

He has gilded the austere and elegant Oval Office by covering it with gold doodads.

He speaks at public events with crude and vulgar language that demeans the Presidency.

He has alienated our allies and honored our adversaries with his fawning friendship and obsequious admiration.

He has attacked and insulted the free press.

We do not need a king or a dictator.

We need leaders who honor the Constitution and uphold the rule of law.

This Saturday is “No Kings” day across the nation.

Find a group standing up for democracy and the rule of law and stand with them. March with them. Honor the best in our ideals.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the daily news if you care about the scandals of the Trump administration. There’s so much happening, so many news stories about corruption. Who can keep count?

Heather Cox Richardson today gives us an account of current corruption scandals. Any one of us could add scandals that she didn’t have room for, like conflicts of interest and profiteering. My example, Presidential pardons. Is it mere coincidence that wealthy donors get pardoned quickly? Is it coincidence that they are relieved of their obligation to repay the people they defrauded?

One thing is sure. The Trump administration is a stark illustration of kakistocracy, corruption, and greed.

Heather Cox Richardson writes:

There is an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There’s also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. Then, as corruption becomes the party’s driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach.

OK, that second old saying is shared mostly among political scientists, but it’s accurate, and it’s right up there with the rats and the ships to describe what’s happening in Trump’s orbit now.

The saga of Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was recently forced to resign from her post as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, continues to expand. Guilfoyle left her post after news broke that she had tried to get a donor, Eric Deters, to pay down her credit card debt. She and her lawyers countered the story by claiming Deters was withholding money she had earned, and said the text messages he shared with news outlets were false.

Guilfoyle dated Don Jr. from 2018 to 2024 and was engaged to him the last four years of that time. Now there are rumors that during her time inside the family as a trusted loyalist, she kept a “burn book” about the family.

While that may or may not be true, the fact that there’s such a threat out there reflects the cracking loyalties of Trump insiders. More to the point might be the video released today by Deters himself, saying that he had launched a lawsuit against Guilfoyle for defamation and that he would depose her and Don Jr. and demand subpoenas to clear his name. He also vowed to play a 16-minute phone conversation tomorrow that he claims has information which “might just bring down the entire Trump administration, an administration which I have supported from Day One.”

Note that the story of Guilfoyle’s alleged shakedown is breaking now, although it happened more than a year ago.

Also in the category of old stories coming to the surface is one reported yesterday by Marc Caputo of Axios. He wrote that Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba is saying that another one of Trump’s advisors, Ric Grenell, did not deposit her billionaire husband’s $5.6 million donation to the Kennedy Center. According to Habba, Grenell asked that the donation be routed through a $17.6 million payment for a business deal, an accusation Grenell called “absurd.”

Trump appointed Grenell to be U.S. ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence during his first term. After retaking office, he named Grenell as a special envoy to Venezuela before putting him in charge of the Kennedy Center.

A fight that has been going on for more than a year in the administration broke into the open this morning in a Politico story by Daniel Lippman. He explained that Trump named Italian Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who introduced Trump to First Lady Melania Trump at a party in New York City, as a special envoy at the State Department with a portfolio of cultural diplomacy. But Zampolli apparently ignored that assignment and struck out on his own on a wide range of issues, infuriating Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told James Fontanella-Khan of the Financial Times in April. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War…anything to advance the America First agenda.” More than 16 administration officials have been included in the angry email chains Zampolli and Landau have exchanged, which at one point led to communications about the fight with a top-level foreign official.

At one point Zampolli accused Landau of leaking to reporters what appeared to be the story that Zampolli had tried to get custody of his son by asking Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the boy’s mother. That story created its own scandal when Ungaro, a former model, threatened to expose information about the president and first lady. Landau responded to Zampolli’s accusation, which he sent to more than a dozen other officials, saying: “Your threats and accusations are getting more and more bizarre, defamatory, and inappropriate for broad dissemination on email.”

An administration official told Lippman that the State Department was “generally squeaky clean and professional and above it all.” In contrast, these exchanges were “cartoonish and embarrassing.”

By this afternoon, Lippman had a follow-up story: Zampolli had been fired.

It is not just the current associates of the president who are problematic. Today, news broke that two women have named former Republican representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), along with his friend former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg and others, in a civil lawsuit, alleging that from 2017 through January 2019, “Gaetz and Greenberg coordinated recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts….”

In 2024, the House Ethics Committee reported that Gaetz “regularly” paid women, as well as a 17-year-old girl, for sex, and bought and used illicit drugs while a member of Congress. Those accusations helped to sink Trump’s nomination of Gaetz for U.S. attorney general in 2025.

Gaetz’s response was hardly a denial: “I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” he wrote. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee Report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”

One has to wonder why anyone would want to be part of such a mess, but Trump’s new White House press secretary provides an answer: in a normal administration she would never make it through the door. Trump has described Katie Zacharia as an “attorney,” and she has identified herself as a “general counsel” and seemed to claim she worked as an attorney in China. 

But after Judd Legum of Popular Information noted there was no sign she had ever passed the bar exam or been admitted to a state bar, Philip Wegmann and Alexandra Bruell of the Wall Street Journal reported today that, in fact, she failed the California bar exam when she took it. That, itself, is not unusual—the California bar exam is notoriously difficult—but it does mean she is not qualified to call herself an attorney. 

Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan team defending democracy led by attorney Norm Eisen, has asked the State Bar of California and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate whether Zacharia practiced law without a license in California, where doing so is a crime. 

Tonight, on his show, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity seemed to undercut Zacharia, asking her why she had chosen to describe herself as an attorney when she could just have said she “went to Pepperdine Law School and then took a different career path.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that Hannity’s stance likely reflected that Trump is turning on her.

Rhein Amacher, the man who started a right-wing media frenzy when he claimed to have proof that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico had sought mental health treatment in Ohio, backed away from that claim today…sort of. Amid suggestions that he might well have run afoul of HIPAA penalties for trying to obtain health information duplicitously, he posted that “this entire situation has been blown completely out of proportion,” and wrote, “As far as I’m concerned, this matter is closed.” Later, in response to a post saying he had lied, he added: “Never lied, I just doubled down on wrong information.”

A blockbuster story by Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post today explained that the administration has been able to keep donations for Trump’s ballroom largely secret by using a nonprofit to collect the donations and then channeling that money “into a White House account the president directly controls.”

The reporters gained access to a list of the 57 donors who have committed to giving $100,000 or more to the project. They found that “the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.” Large technology companies Nvidia and Apple committed $25 million each. Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin pledged $10 million each.

Individuals on the list who are associated with Trump include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son Brandon, chair of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, who contributed stock worth more than $2.5 million, and the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Republican donor Joseph Popolo Jr., and his wife, who gave $1 million. Missing from the list is Trump himself, who claimed he would be helping to pay for the project.

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark was right when she called the ballroom being constructed where the East Wing of the White House used to be “a monument to corruption” built by “a corrupt American president.”

On Tuesday, Charles Gorrivan, Lydia Beyoud, and Nicola M. White of Bloomberg reported that on March 23, a few traders placed billions of dollars of contracts predicting that the price of oil would fall just 15 minutes before Trump posted on his social media platform that he had changed his mind about striking Iranian power plants. The deals were worth billions, and analysts from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) flagged the traders and the deals and sent a referral to the Division of Enforcement to decide whether to open an investigation into insider trading. But in a virtually unheard-of move, the administration asked the CFTC to withdraw the referral.

The journalists note both that there have been many trades apparently tied to Trump’s announcements and that between a 20% cut to CFTC staff during Trump’s second term and the agency chair’s vow to curb “over-zealous regulation,” enforcement actions have dropped dramatically from the numbers during the Biden administration.

Steven Portnoy and Katherine Faulders of ABC News reported today that the White House is claiming that all Trump’s conversations about plans to renovate the Kennedy Center are covered by executive privilege and therefore can be kept secret. This is a dramatic expansion of the concept of executive privilege, which enables the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny, extending it to consider virtually all conversations private.

Apparently in anticipation of Democratic investigations, Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo as soon as he took office, claiming presidents can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.”

A new Fox News poll released today showed that voters’ top concern is “corruption in government,” with 88% worried about it compared to 12% who are not. Corruption tops even “inflation and high prices,” which comes in at 85%, and “gas prices,” which concern 83% of voters.

In a conversation with Rob Finnerty of Newsmax, aired tonight, Trump suggested he would pardon everyone in the administration, including himself, to make sure none of the people around him have to “go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

It is no wonder that Republicans eager to stop Trump are backing Democratic candidates for the midterms. Today 58 Republicans and Independents in New Hampshire declared their support for the Democratic Senate candidate, Representative Chris Pappas, over Republican candidate John Sununu. Those supporters include Don Bolduc, who was Trump’s pick for the Senate in 2022 but who lost to Democrat Maggie Hassan by 9 points after he embraced Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election.

One of the Republicans supporting Pappas told Kevin Landrigan of the New Hampshire Union Leader: “Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into something I no longer recognize.”

—

Notes:

https://www.wflx.com/2026/10/15/ex-florida-congressman-matt-gaetz-among-defendants-named-newly-filed-civil-lawsuit/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-matt-gaetz-house-ethics-report-alleging-he-paid-for-sex-with-minor-used-illicit-drugs-as-congress-member

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/matt-gaetz-lawsuit-trafficking-florida-01120754

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-president-elect-donald-j-trump-announcing-the-nomination-congressman-matt-gaetz

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/white-house-press-secretary-katie-zacharia-didnt-pass-bar-exam-714a484e?st=WpsS95

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eric-deters-files-defamation-lawsuit-against-kimberly-guilfoyle/

https://newrepublic.com/post/216609/kimberly-guilfoyle-hiding-secret-burn-book-trump-family

https://www.axios.com/2026/10/14/trump-kennedy-center-donation-maga-feud

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/email-fight-state-department-trump-administration-01119676

https://www.ft.com/content/2a7f4575-8c94-4258-9ff4-6b6c74815d07?syn-25a6b1a6=1

The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown

Ex-Diplomat who threatened to expose secrets about Melania Trump is talking to Congress

Amanda Ungaro, the Brazilian model and former U.N. ambassador who roiled First Lady Melania Trump in April by threatening to expose unspecified information she has on President Trump and the First Lady, is apparently talking to the House Oversight Committee…

Read more

a month ago · 1765 likes · 34 comments · Julie k Brown

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/paolo-zampolli-fired-state-department-trump-01121739

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/10/15/secret-documents-reveal-donors-behind-330-million-trumps-ballroom/

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/11/trump-doj-executive-privilege-democratic-probes

​​https://talkingpointsmemo.com/the-brief/trump-administration-braces-for-a-possible-democratic-congress

https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-claims-executive-privilege-kennedy-center-conversations-secret/story?id=137298571

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-13/cftc-staff-told-to-retract-analysis-of-suspicious-oil-trades-on-iran

https://www.axios.com/2026/10/15/chris-pappas-don-bolduc-new-hampshire-senate-endorsement

https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/bolduc-joins-republicans-independents-backing-pappas-for-senate-10f2fd54

X:

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RheinAmacher/status/2110720637560037810

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Trump has demonstrated again and again that laws mean nothing to him; alliances mean nothing to him. All that matters is his inflated ego and the chance to get richer.

A few days ago, he brazenly abandoned the brave Ukrainians who have battled the powerful Russian nation to a standstill.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. has passed stern laws sanctioning any country that does business with Russia. The first sanctions law passed in 2022, not long after Russia’s launching of the first ground was in Europecsince 1945.

The second law imposing sanctions on trade with Russia was passed only a month ago to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who despised Putin and supported Ukraine. Trump now dishonors his good friend Lindsey Graham.

Trump ignored those laws when he announced his intention to buy diesel fuel from Russia. Ukraine and out European allies were shocked by Trump’s brazen reversal of U.S. policy. It’s no secret that Russia will receive billions of dollars from the US, which will help pay for its war against Ukraine. It will also help pay for Russian shipment of weapons to Iran.

Most puzzling is that Trump is getting only enough diesel fuel for a few weeks at most. The first shipment, “300,000 tons,” will satisfy our diesel needs for half a day. The shipment amounts to 2.5 million gallons. American consumption of diesel fuel is 4 million gallons daily.

He assumes he can hoodwink American farmers with his deal with Putin. This might help him in the midterm elections.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes how quickly Trump switched sides:

Victoria Deineko holds her daughter Mia while standing in front of a multi-story residential building damaged in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

It is rare to see a country switch sides so dramatically during a war, but here we are, watching Trump abandon Ukraine as it fights for its survival and instead assist Russia. And as Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities, homes, and hospitals, killing civilians, Ukrainian officials say they went two nights in a row without the advance warnings they normally receive from the United States before Russian ballistic missile attacks. During the latest wave of Russian attacks, six people were killed and approximately 600,000 Ukrainians were left without electricity.

As if that weren’t bad enough, reports began coming out of Ukraine overnight that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had suddenly restricted Ukraine’s military StarShield satellite service, leaving Ukrainian officials blindsided. StarShield operates under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, and the sudden 100-mile-per-hour speed limit imposed on military terminals disrupted Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian drones, carry out reconnaissance, and maintain communications.

Ukrainian troops were also having problems staying connected even when moving below the new speed limit. Drone operators were losing live video feeds or having to slow their drones down, leaving them more vulnerable to Russian attacks. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said several missions had to be canceled because of this. Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed the restrictions and said that he did not believe the timing was a coincidence, considering Trump’s recent threats against Ukraine. Musk later posted on X that StarShield is controlled by the U.S. government and that decisions about restrictions are made by the military and ultimately Trump. By Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that the connection was working better, although the speed limit had not been lifted.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was among the first to react as reports came out about the restrictions, taking aim at Musk. “Hey, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he wrote on X. Poland continues to help pay for Starlink services used by Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.

Sikorski is right to call this out publicly. Why would any country want to spend billions buying American weapons or depend on American technology if the U.S. can decide when and how it can be used? And this is yet another reason America’s allies are paying close attention to what is happening in Ukraine, wondering whether they could be next.

The restrictions come just days after Trump announced a deal with war criminal Putin to ease sanctions on Russian diesel and allow the U.S. to buy Russian fuel, giving Moscow another source of revenue to fund its brutal invasion. As Ukrainians were dealing with the sudden SpaceX restrictions, Putin’s bagman Kirill Dmitriev announced earlier today that the first contracts for Russian diesel sales to the U.S. could be signed within days. Speaking at Russian Energy Week, Dmitriev said that the U.S. and Russia were communicating almost every hour to work out the logistics of resuming shipments.

Trump’s decision to reopen Russian diesel sales has drawn opposition from some in Congress. Twelve U.S. senators, including six Republicans (just six), warned that the deal would provide Putin with more money to finance his invasion. Some lawmakers also questioned whether this deal violates U.S. sanctions laws.

And while Trump is making deals with Putin, he has also lashed out at Zelenskyy, demanded elections in Ukraine, and threatened to cut off intelligence and military assistance unless Kyiv stops striking Russian oil refineries. After two nights without the usual missile warnings and the sudden StarShield restrictions, Ukrainian officials have every reason to question whether they can still trust the United States.

It’s also interesting how Trump keeps demanding elections from Ukraine but has no such demands for Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 25 years, while jailing and assassinating opponents. And the double standard doesn’t end there, because Russia continues bombing Ukraine’s power plants and other energy infrastructure, while Trump demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

This is all happening as Russia helps Iran target American forces and interests in the Middle East. According to recent U.S. intelligence assessments, Russia and China have been supplying Iran with satellite imagery for targeting and components for weapons. But Trump dismissed the reports, even though they came from his own intelligence agencies. In a Truth Social post, he called people raising concerns “Radical Left Morons and Lunatics,” claimed that any Russian or Chinese assistance was minimal, and added, “I don’t believe they are at all.” So Trump is dismissing his own intelligence agencies’ findings about Russia helping Iran while easing sanctions on Russian diesel and threatening to cut off intel sharing to Ukraine.

And the blame for what is happening does not stop with Trump. Republicans in Congress who have remained silent or defended his decisions bear full responsibility. There are a handful of Republicans who have objected to Trump’s fealty to Putin, but far too many others have either supported his treatment of Ukraine and his attacks on European allies or refused to challenge him. One man could not carry out such a dramatic reversal of American policy without the backing of his party, which has allowed him to continue making concessions to Russia even as Moscow threatens the security of European allies.

None of us should be surprised, of course. We have watched Trump worship Putin and defend Russia for more than a decade, even siding with Moscow over American intelligence agencies. But watching him ease sanctions on Russia, threaten to cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, and oversee new restrictions on StarShield while Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities is infuriating. This is no longer just about Trump abandoning Ukraine or pressuring Zelenskyy into a peace deal. He has put the U.S. in the position of assisting and funding Russia’s genocidal war while actively undermining Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Trump has picked a side, and it’s Russia.

Voter suppression is active in Texas. In Tarrant County, where the city of Fort Worth is located, the Republican members of the county election commission voted to close 92 polling places. Many are located in districts that are black, Hispanic, or low-income. The vote of the commission was 3-2 to cut the number of polling places, with three Republicans outvoting two Democrats.

The Dallas Morning News reported:

Tarrant County will not be required to restore nearly 100 polling places that county officials cut, a judge ruled Tuesday, dealing a setback to voting rights advocates and minority groups weeks before a high-stakes midterm election.

District Judge Patrick Gallagher did not provide a reason in his one-page decision, handed down after a day of testimony from voters and county officials.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month that argued the cuts disenfranchise Tarrant County voters, with the heaviest burden falling on Black and Hispanic communities. 

Four women — city councilwoman Deborah Peoples, former city councilwoman Kathleen Hicks, and retired judge Maryellen Hicks, who are all Black, and Fort Worth ISD trustee Camille Rodriguez, who is Hispanic — filed the suit. 

“Tarrant County is eroding the right to vote,” Susan Hutchison, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judge Tuesday.

After the ruling, attorneys for the plaintiffs noted the judge denied the request but did not dismiss the lawsuit outright as requested by the county. That means the case could return to court, albeit after the election. The judge also did not weigh in on whether the cuts were discriminatory.

“We have to redouble our efforts to make sure everybody votes,” they said in a statement.

Tarrant County officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Dallas Morning News.

The four women told the judge Tuesday they worried the cuts would mean longer commutes and waits to cast a ballot and lower voter turnout on Election Day, particularly in low-income and minority neighborhoods.

For example, in 2022, the 76103 ZIP Code, a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood in East Fort Worth, had three polling places. All three were cut this November. [Emphasis added]

In the 76115 ZIP Code, which is largely Black and Hispanic in south Fort Worth, four of the five polling places were cut. [Emphasis added.]

Maryellen Hicks, 77, said she has mobility issues and worries she will be unable to stand in a long line. Her longtime voting site was among those cuts. Asked where she planned to vote, Hicks replied, “I have no earthly idea, quite seriously.”

Tarrant County Election Administrator Clint Ludwig, who drafted the list of polling placesto cut, acknowledged that he did not assess how the reductions would affect Black and Hispanic or low-income voters, who are less likely to have reliable transportation. He also testified that he did not seek input from Black or Hispanic organizations about the reduction.  

Ludwig said he considered several factors, such as site availability, previous voter turnout, distance from other polling places and handicap accessibility.

The elections official repeatedly said it would be impossible to add polling places at this point, although he did say the county keeps five to 10 back-up options that could be added if necessary. 

Early voting starts Oct. 19, and Election Day is Nov. 3.

County commissioners voted last month 3-2 over the objections of dozens of residents to cut 92 Election Day voting sites, from 316 in 2022 to 224 on Nov. 3. It also cut early voting sites from 50 to 47.

Yet Ludwig said he expects roughly 40% more voters this year than in 2022.

Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez, all Republicans, voted for the proposal. Democratic commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles voted against the proposal. O’Hare and Simmons are both running for county judge.

Republicans said the move saves money and improves efficiency. O’Hare called the plan sensible and said that “no Tarrant County voter should feel they don’t have enough time to vote.”

Marc Elias is a leading lawyer in defense of democracy. He has won numerous federal and state cases in defense of voting rights. In this post, Elias refutes The Big Lie.

By Marc Elias · Democracy Docket founder

This weekend, in an interview with Ted Koppel on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Steve Bannon confirmed what I have been saying for years: “The core belief of the MAGA movement is [Trump] won the 2020 election.”

When confronted with the fact that Trump and his allies lost more than 60 court cases challenging dddddddssstsdtsrsrssssssssssrsrrerzzfzzrz sadp the election results, Bannon resorted to a familiar GOP tactic. He falsely suggested that the cases were thrown out on technicalities: “We can go debate this another time, but we didn’t have standing. We never even got into court.”

Even worse, Koppel told viewers that Bannon was “technically correct; they didn’t have standing. They couldn’t find a judge who thought they had a significant case worth hearing.”

Koppel may have meant that the cases failed because they lacked merit. But what he said is simply wrong.

Trump and his allies found plenty of judges willing to hear them out, in many cases through hours or even days of testimony and argument. Those judges listened, weighed the evidence and ruled against them.

I know, because I was the lawyer who helped Joe Biden defeat those cases one by one.

Correcting the record matters as we approach another election in which Trump and the GOP are once again spreading lies. So let me put this one to bed, once and for all.

In 2022, a group of prominent conservatives reviewed every one of the 64 cases that Trump and his allies brought in the six key battleground states. The group included former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, former Republican Sen. John Danforth and retired federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, along with two other retired federal judges and another former Republican senator.

Their conclusion was stark: “Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Most importantly, their report directly rebuts the claim Bannon is making today: that Trump never got his day in court. “Of the 64 cases brought by Trump and his supporters,” they wrote, “twenty were dismissed before a hearing on the merits, fourteen were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before a hearing on the merits, and 30 cases included a hearing on the merits.”

In other words, fewer than one-third of the cases were dismissed by a court before reaching the merits. In another 14, Trump’s side walked away rather than test its claims in front of a judge.

Trump’s problem was never a lack of opportunity. As the report’s authors put it, “Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states.”

Consider the record.

In Arizona, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party went to court claiming that Election Day votes for Trump had been wrongly thrown out. Over a six-hour hearing, the claim that thousands of voters had been disenfranchised fell apart. The campaign narrowed its case to a handful of ballots and the judge dismissed it.

In Wisconsin, Trump requested recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s two largest Democratic strongholds. The recounts increased Biden’s lead.

Trump then lost in federal court and before the state’s conservative-majority Supreme Court.

The federal judge, whom Trump himself appointed, found that Trump had standing, held a daylong hearing, and ruled against him anyway: “This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits.”

When the Trump campaign asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out more than 221,000 absentee ballots, the conservative court refused. As one justice noted, the president “failed to point to even one vote cast in this election by an ineligible voter.”

In Nevada, Trump’s electors filed and litigated a full election contest, with evidence submitted by both sides. They alleged everything from a vote-buying scheme to illegal voting to malfunctioning voting machines in Clark County. In the end, the judge found that they had failed to prove their allegations “under any standard of proof.” The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously affirmed.

In Michigan, the Trump campaign’s lawsuit over ballot counting rested on a poll watcher’s account of what someone else had told her. The judge rejected it as “inadmissible hearsay within hearsay.” In another Michigan case, a judge heard evidence on claims of fraud at Detroit’s TCF Center and found the plaintiffs’ version of events “incorrect and not credible.”

In Georgia, every ballot was counted three times, including a full hand count. There, one of the Trump campaign’s first lawsuits fell apart within a day. It concerned just 53 absentee ballots in Chatham County. County election officials testified that the ballots had arrived on time, and the judge dismissed the case at the end of the hearing.

Then there is Pennsylvania, where Rudy Giuliani appeared in court himself. He told the judge there was “widespread, nationwide voter fraud.” But under questioning, he admitted, “This is not a fraud case.”

In dismissing the lawsuit, the judge wrote that the campaign had offered “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.” On appeal, a Trump-appointed judge wrote for a unanimous panel: “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

Many of these cases were reviewed by appeals courts or state supreme courts with Republican-appointed or conservative majorities. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up any of them.

The Big Lie survives because reporters fail to push back on claims like Bannon’s. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election is a disease, and every suggestion that Trump never had his day in court helps it spread.

Over the past six years, that disease has infected our politics and our culture, and it has bred new conspiracy theories along the way. It drove insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol. And it helped Trump win a second term, and with it a second chance to undermine our democracy.

To fight back, we must correct the record — not just for the past but for the future.

Republicans in Congress are clearly out to incriminate Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate former President Donald J. Trump for his role in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

In the latest debacle, Senator Eric Schmitt garnered headlines for making a huge mistake. He wanted to trap Smith in a lie so he could be charged with perjury. He claimed to have proof that Smith flew to Atlanta under the pretext of watching a basketball game when his real purpose was to meet secretly with Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis. Smith said it was untrue. On the night in question, he was not in Atlanta. Instead, he attended a women’s basketball game in Maryland, in which the phenomenal Caitlin Clark played.

Blogger Parker Molloy pointed out that the news coverage of Schmitt’s collossal error overshadowed the importance of Jack Smith’s eloquent testimony. Molloy’s blog is titled “The present Age.”

What is bizarre about the Republicans’ rage towards Jack Smith is that they are trying to exonerate the man who tried to stage a coup against the Constitution and overturn the election. I know they are afraid of Trump and cower before him. But must they join in the fantasy that the bloody January 6 insurrection was no big deal, just a load of faithful patriots visiting the U.S. Capitol. They were there. Weren’t they hiding under their chairs and in secret rooms?

Molloy writes, in part:

If, like me this week, you heard about this hearing via social media or just a stray article that made its way through your feed, you probably saw one specific highlight: Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) swung for the fences during his questioning of Smith, and… well… it didn’t go how he thought it would.

The short version (which you’ve probably seen) is that Schmitt claimed Smith had been at an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 and suggested he’d gone to Atlanta to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Both Smith and Willis had been involved in investigating Donald Trump’s alleged crimes and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024?” he asked. Smith said no. Schmitt continued: “The day before, Fani Willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor.” And Smith said that he had never met Willis during his time as special counsel, and he had definitely not been in attendance at that Hawks game.

Schmitt then whipped out a poster board that purported to show evidence that Smith had lied under oath.

“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself,” Schmitt said, dripping with smug confidence. And as you probably know by now, no, Smith wasn’t at that game. He was actually at a University of Maryland women’s basketball game that night. Schmitt seemed to have been confusing the Hawks (NBA team) with the Hawkeyes (NCAA team).

To use a basketball term here, Schmitt air-balled this one big time.

(Somewhat unrelated, but the Warriors-Hawks game Schmitt accused Smith of attending was the one where Steph Curry dropped 60 points, setting a season high. So, hey, I guess if you’re going to put a guy at the wrong basketball game, you might as well pick a good one.)

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) (L) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) display a sign accusing former Special Counsel Jack Smith of meeting with Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on September 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. The committee is holding the hearing to examine Smith’s probe into Donald Trump. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Now, this flub is notable for a couple of reasons. That morning, Axios’s Jim VandeHei reported that Schmitt “is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.” I find it hard to believe the timing was a coincidence. The story ran on the same day Schmitt would try to grab the headlines with a grandstanding moment in which he’d catch Smith in a lie, committing a crime. This was supposed to help propel Schmitt to political stardom in the GOP, but instead, he came away looking like a clown. Even after being corrected, fact-checked, and called out for all of this, Schmitt continued to insistthat he was right, long after he’d been proven wrong. No surprises there.

To add to the egg on his face, there’s the additional irony that he’s the same guy who, back in August, accused Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan Abdul El-Sayed of not knowing ball for saying “Beat Ohio” in reference to Ohio State University (for the record, El-Sayed was right; University of Michigan and its fans regularly do say “Beat Ohio” when referring to OSU, sometimes as a bit of a taunt as Ohio State fans and alumni are known to get a bit touchy whenever someone doesn’t refer to it as “THE Ohio State University.” Hell, former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh even renamed a practice drill after the phrase).

And yes, all of this clearly is a story. It’s absolutely newsworthy that Schmitt botched his big moment on the day that Axios puffed him up. It’s newsworthy that he clearly thought this was such a slam dunk, and that guys like Benny Johnson and Sean Hannity rushed to post about it on social media, despite the fact that they had literally everything wrong. (Both later deleted their posts.) And yes, it’s newsworthy that Schmitt still won’t actually admit that he made a mistake.

But there was a lot more to the hearing that kind of got lost in the Schmitt show. And if you were paying attention to this as someone who doesn’t closely follow politics, you probably missed it. Smith said a lot of stuff that should shake the country to its core, but instead everyone ended up talking about Eric Schmitt.

And it’s not to say that news organizations ignored the other aspects of Smith’s testimony. They didn’t! But the whole thing got overshadowed by Schmitt’s moment. And I guess that the one thought I had as I read more about what happened during the rest of the hearing was that I kind of wish there was a way for news organizations to capitalize on the viral moment to help inform the public about everything else that happened, to use the viral moment specifically as an opportunity.

But to avoid contributing to the Schmittiness of this, I suppose I should also give a quick rundown of what Smith said during the hearing that I think more people should be aware of. So what did Smith actually say?

Smith told the Senate that people are being threatened with prosecution for being seen as opposing the president

In his opening statement, T-minus about 60 minutes before Schmitt grabbed the spotlight, Smith told the committee this:

As with my appearance before the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, I am prepared to answer your questions truthfully. I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives, and I will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.

As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. Individuals are threatened with criminal prosecution because they are perceived to have opposed the president. Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s longstanding core values and traditions.

History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It’s often weakened by attacks on the institutions and the public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January of 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the agents, prosecutors, and staff who worked on my team, simply because of their unwavering dedication to the rule of law.

I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States. However, I remain confident that the rule of law will endure, because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day. Throughout our legal system, public servants have remained faithful to their oaths, despite extraordinary pressure to do otherwise. Their example demonstrates that while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.

Back in July, House Judiciary Chairman and alleged knower of a disgusting abuse scandal at THE Ohio State University Jim Jordan referred Smith to the Justice Department, accusing him of knowingly making false statements in his December deposition. At issue are text messages that Smith’s team obtained involving 44 members of Congress, including Jordan. These texts were obtained through the National Archives in response to a request for White House phones. Since we live in bizarro-world, Todd Blanche, Trump’s defense attorney during Smith’s investigation, is now the attorney general. Every day is a new horror, basically.

I digress. Back to the hearing. Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Smith whether whistleblowers who’d talked to Congress about Smith’s investigation should themselves be investigated. Smith said: “I’m not aware of any whistleblowers being investigated. I believe public servants should be protected. The members of my team, that you just mentioned, I’m extremely proud to have worked with them. And the fact that they have been targeted illegally, lost their jobs illegally, and had their lives turned upside down by this Department of Justice is an outrage.”

It is a long but very interesting post. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full.

France continued to be disrupted by numerous student protests against conditions in the nation’s schools. Labor unions, parents, and teachers joined the protests, in which hundreds of thousands of students complained of poorly maintained, overcrowded and understaffed schools. Hundreds of schools have closed.

France will have a Presidential election next spring, which is currently led by far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. It’s also deep in debt and suffering a major economic crisis. Meanwhile, major ports are blocked by fishemen protesting the high cost of fuel. An analysis of the converging crises concluded: “Whoever prevails after this autumn of discontent, the crisis may force a more basic reckoning: France can no longer afford its social-welfare state.”

Students, however, do not accept the idea that their education must be sacrificed to the nation’s fiscal crisis. In the student protests, some schools have been burned, some students have suffered severe injuries, police have used tear gas to quell the protests.

President Trump feels compelled to comment on everything, so he offered comments that displayed his xenophobia and ignorance. He said on his Truth Social: “…what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!”

The student protests have nothing to do with immigration or Islam.

The New York Times reported:

Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as labor unions rallied in solidarity with high school students who have spent two weeks blockading schools to protest understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.

Marches were held in more than 40 cities, from Caen in the north to Marseille in the south, as activists, teachers, parents and university students joined swelling protests that had spread to hundreds of schools across the country. Tuesday’s marches drew roughly 256,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry; a major union said the figure was more than twice that many.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu signaled that the government had heard the protesters’ demands and was taking them seriously. He also said regular classes would be “completely suspended” on Thursday and Friday so that principals could host sessions with students.

The protests on Tuesday were mostly peaceful, but a fire was started in Lyon and police officers unleashed tear gas in Nantes. The biggest march was in Paris, where the Interior Ministry said there were 56,000 demonstrators.

The demonstrations are a litmus test of the longevity of a protest movement that began late last month in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread to hundreds of schools across France.

Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began, and Mr. Lecornu told lawmakers on Tuesday that 215 students and 85 school staff members had been injured. He condemned the violence, saying “violent individuals who mingle with the nonviolent high school students” were to blame for any unrest. Others, including a major union of French judges and prosecutors and a prominent human rights group, have accused the police of using disproportionate force against students as young as 14.

Reuters reported:

STRASBOURG/LYON/PARIS, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Police fired tear gas at protesters outside French high schools on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents took to the streets on the biggest day of what Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described as the most violent school protests in decades.

The protests, in which a teenager lost a hand on Monday, were the latest manifestation of public anger in a country where the far right ‌and far left are surging ahead of a presidential election in the spring.

The government is under pressure to tame public debt amid weak growth, and has struggled with basic tasks such as passing a budget since President Emmanuel Macron’s allies lost their majority in a 2024 parliamentary vote.

Lecornu told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had so far been injured in clashes, “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system”. His office said more than 700 police officers were also hurt.

Marine Le Pen has promised to cut public spending if she is elected. That won’t resolve students’ concerns.

In January 2027, the federal government will launch a new voucher program. It’s available to states if the Governor opted to participate. The program was part of what Trump called his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but which critics called “One Big Ugly Bill,” because it locked in big tax cuts for the wealthiest while cutting benefits for middle-class and poor Americans.

At the recent conference of the Network for Public Education, our board met to discuss whether we would support resistance or collaboration. Although we understand that some schools want to capture any money they can to support their students, we decided to stand strongly for the principle: PUBLIC DOLLARS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. AND ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS. we concluded that if public schools accept vouchers, it will normalize the ideas embedded in the program, that is, that education is a consumer good. We believe it is a civic responsibility.

Leigh Dingerson’s description of this new program was published by In the Public Interest, which reports about the privatization of everything.

Public schools may participate in the program, but only for programs and activities that they do not already provide, like after-school tutoring, transportation, and field trips.

Leigh Dingerson wrote:

The idea that government has an inherent interest in providing a free, public education for every child used to be sacrosanct, except among a small set of radical reformers like Milton Friedman. But a 40-year campaign for “school choice” has quietly gathered steam. Proponents of privatization are now openly acknowledging that their sights are set on eliminating public schools. They want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (founded to ensure the civil rights of children in schools) and offer no-strings-attached public dollars to private and religious schools. And now, a lawsuit filed in Nebraska just this month argues that the U.S. system of public schools violates the First Amendment and asks the state to declare public schools unconstitutional.

The first nationwide, federally funded school voucher program is set to begin in January, but it has already become a political football in both red and blue states. Governors are being pressured to allow vouchers to be handed out in their states, and deep-pocketed special interests like the Heritage Foundation and large faith-based networks are spending tens of millions of dollars to build the infrastructure to funnel federal funds into private and religious schools.

There is much we don’t yet know about the program, including the mechanism to collect and dole out the money via Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). Regulations are being developed by the Department of the Treasury and are expected within weeks. But we do know this: States are not obligated to participate in this program. In fact, governors or other designated agencies must decide annually whether to allow federally funded vouchers to be handed out in their states.  

What Can Be Done?

The implications of almost-universal private school vouchers are enormous. The federal tax credit voucher program signals a massive shift towards a privatized, market-based system with few if any guardrails to serve our most vulnerable students, ensure equity, rein in discrimination, or address educational quality.

What can state advocates and policymakers do?

Encourage your governor to opt out of the program.

  • The governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon have publicly announced their intention to decline to participate in the voucher program. Remember that the decision to participate or opt out of participation in the program must be made Governors may simply wait a year to see how the program plays out.

Consider legislation to narrow or guide your state’s participation.

  • Vermont has enacted a law that establishes criteria under which the state will participate in the program. It includes that SGOs have a “core mission of providing educational opportunities to economically underprivileged students” and that neither the SGO nor any school that receives funding under the program may “discriminate against any student” in a variety of categories. It also requires each SGO to report annually to the House and Senate Committees on Education, including data on the use of the voucher funds and the individuals receiving them.
  • In Rhode Island, the legislature has passed legislation which requires that both the legislature and the governor must jointly approve any decision to opt in to the program.

Watch for efforts to commit state funding to corporate entities vying to help administer the program.

  • A number of corporate entities have been created to “facilitate” and profit from the implementation of this program. For example, in Florida the legislature recently earmarked $2 million in its budget, apparently to contract with LearningSpring, a Denver-based start-up affiliated with the Koch network, to offer an online platform to help administer the federal voucher program.

Understand where your state might have authority to protect public education and ensure the integrity of taxpayer spending in the private market.

  • Familiarize yourself with your state’s private school (and homeschool) regulations and consider legislative language to strengthen them, and understand any state requirements for registered nonprofit organizations and whether they place any restrictions on, or allow oversight of, Scholarship Granting Organizations.

 What’s the matter with vouchers? The research is clear.

School vouchers are not new. We have half-a-century of experience with vouchers. Education Law Center’s Public Funds for Public Schools Project documents the many additional and important down-sides to vouchers. Among them:

 As students return to schools this fall, some have noted that this may be “the last normal year” for American schools.  It’s important for advocates of public education to make sure this critical institution doesn’t crumble.

Leigh Dingerson
Senior Research Fellow

Additional Resources

The following organizations offer additional resources on vouchers and the federal voucher program:

Education Law Center
Public Funds for Public Schools project.
The National Coalition for Public Education
The Network for Public Education

Robert Hubbell is a steady and wise blogger who has a knack for interpreting events as they happen. While Heather Cox Richardson looks at the day’s events from a historical perspective; Hubbell has a keen perspective honed by age and experience.

At a time when the public is skeptical, even fearful, of artificial intelligence, Trump has embraced this powerful technology with fervor, reassuring the tech titans that the federal government won’t regulate them but will trust them to regulate themselves. Simultaneously, Bill Gates was worrying in public that AI had the potential to wipe out a billion people. This is a “don’t worry, be happy” moment for Trump and his circle. They Pooh-pooh the growing number of people who worry about what big data centers will do to their water supply, their electricity bills, their jobs, their lives. Trump doesn’t get it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have chosen to use the weeks before the mid-term elections rehashing the investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral loss in 2024. They have chosen this moment to prosecute Jack Smith, who led the investigation of Trump. In their attempt to prove that Trump was unjustly targeted, they are successfully rekindling bad memories of January 6, 2021, when Trump summoned a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Five years later, is this a winning hand for them. Hubbell thinks not.

He wrote about yesterday’s events;

Tuesday was a wild news day, but the throughline is this: Republicans are missing this moment in America, only five weeks before the midterms. They are clutching to the transitory retrograde spasm that propelled Trump to the presidency for all it is worth. They have no platform, no values, no principles, and no vision, so they cling tightly to the culture wars they exploited for a decade. But Americans have moved on to new issues, including the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence, the growing economic chasm between the haves and have-nots, the crushing burden of medical debt, the unaffordability of higher education, and the imploding economy for those who work for a living.

As the electorate recoils in disgust and fear over the coming onslaught at the hands of AI, Trump posed with nineteen AI oligarchs at the White House (eighteen of whom are men). At that meeting, Trump surrendered control of AI’s future to the handful of billionaires who will most benefit from the reckless development of a technology that will put millions of Americans out of work while polluting their communities and driving up electricity costs. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. See CNN Politics, Trump’s blasé attitude toward AI risks backfiring politically.

Per CNN,

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

So, at a time when more than 70% of Americans fear AI and want the government to regulate it,Trump entered into a deal that handed control of AI to the men most likely to profit from its unregulated development. See NBC News, After summit with tech titans, Trump calls for ‘self-regulation’ by AI companies.

When in the history of the world has “self-regulation” by monopolists ever inured to the benefit of the people—as opposed to the generational wealth of the monopolists?

At the luncheon, Trump and the AI oligarchs signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence.” The term “super intelligence” is insulting to humans. “Artificial intelligence” correctly signals that the technology is a probabilistic prediction model about which words follow other words. Calling it “super intelligence” signals that it is superior to human intelligence—which it is not and never will be. But Trump sees a profit opportunity in convincing people that they are inferior to AI, so he chose the moment five weeks before the midterms to align himself with the AI oligarchs and their dangerous vision of the future.

The “Accord on Super Intelligence” (which has not been made public—another worrisome sign) allegedly commits the AI tech companies to “building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review.” See The Guardian, Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’.

You have got to be kidding, right?

If the AI tech companies are not already “building robust controls” and “detecting issues with the technology” and submitting it to “multiple layers of auditing and risk review,” then those tech companies should be shut down immediately. And if they are already employing those practices, then Trump got nothing in exchange for his agreement to let the AI oligarchs regulate themselves.

But the larger point is that hosting an AI oligarchs’ lovefest at the White House was Trump’s strategy for stopping his freefall in the polls. It was a monumentally stupid idea that was improbably exceeded in its stupidity by Senate Republicans who thought that the best way to distract from inflation, the Iran war, and existential fear of AI was to remind voters that Trump mounted an insurrection in 2021. They did so by bringing former special counsel Jack Smith to the Senate for a hearing.

For the third time, Jack Smith gave a commanding performance, reminding congressional Republicans that he had developed evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes and unlawfully took national defense documents when he left office. See PBS, WATCH: Jack Smith says he would prosecute Trump again for ‘serious crimes against our nation’.

Apart from the gross error of believing the American people are focused on Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s crimes instead of the war, inflation, and the AI threat, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt’s questioning of Jack Smith turned into a debacle for the ages. Senator Schmitt believed he could prove that Jack Smith attended an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 to surreptitiously conspire with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

After Jack Smith said he did not attend the game, Senator Schmitt smirked and accused Smith of perjury. Senator Schmitt concluded by calling Jack Smith a “dirt bag.”

When Jack Smith was handed a copy of the texts that allegedly placed him at a men’s professional basketball game featuring the NBA Atlanta Hawks, he said he could explain.

Instead of being at the Atlanta Hawks men’s professional basketball game, Jack Smith was at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa. The University of Iowa’s sports teams are known as “the Hawkeyes” (not the Hawks). See C-SPAN, Sen. Schmitt confuses Hawks and Hawkeyes While Accusing Jack Smith of Perjury. The C-SPAN clip is 7 minutes long and contains the gist of the exchange.

Right-wing media was prepared for Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap—which failed in a spectacular fashion when it turned out that Senator Schmitt did not know the difference between the NBA Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. 

Several right-wing podcasters and commentators released canned statements saying that Schmitt had trapped Jack Smith in perjury but they later deleted those statements when they realized that Senator Schmitt had committed a face-plant for the ages. See Rolling Stone, Eric Schmitt Gaffe in Jack Smith Hearing Covered as Win by MAGA Media. (“Johnson deleted his post later on Tuesday, after it had been up for hours with a community correction. Sean Hannity also picked up and ran with Schmitt’s story, but deleted his post highlighting the moment soon after.”)

But the more significant point is that Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap for Jack Smith was intended as his stealth launch as a vice-presidential candidate in JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign. Hours before the Senate hearing, someone planted a story with the ever-obliging Axios that there was “buzz” that Senator Schmitt might be JD Vance’s running mate. See Axios, Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.

Axios reporter Jim VandeHei wrote, “We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator.”

The Axios story was obviously planted by JD Vance or Eric Schmitt. It aged badly in four hours.

More to the point, if JD Vance thinks Eric Schmitt is a good VP candidate, it confirms that Republicans are more out of touch than imagined. Vance exudes arrogance and creepiness— “anti-charisma.” Eric Schmitt would add sneering smugness with a dollop of white nationalism to the ticket. 

The fact that anyone thought to float a trial balloon of Eric Schmitt as a VP candidate shows that the next generation of Republican leaders are missing the moment and failing to anticipate the future direction of the American electorate.

Other examples abound. The backlash against the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation policy has been severe. Rather than deporting the “worst of the worst,” Trump has effectively kidnapped law-abiding, productive members of American society and deported them to troubled countries with which the deportees have no connection. So, for example, the US has agreements to deport people seized in the US to (among others) Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. See Refugees International, Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch (2026)

In the face of the backlash, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of renditions to third-party countries. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue its policy of deporting immigrants to third-party countries, at least for now. See Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for Now.

Even if deportations are warranted and lawful, sending deportees to third countries with which they have no connection (and are often violence-prone) is cruel and inhumane. Trump and Stephen Miller appear to derive perverse pleasure from inflicting suffering on immigrants seeking asylum in the US.

And in a development that seems designed to ensure Ken Paxton’s defeat in his senatorial race against James Talarico, federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE agents with assault. See Man Shot by ICE Agent in Austin Is Charged With Assault – The New York Times

A similar story is playing out in education. On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it was officially removing a Biden administration rule that added LGBTQ protections to Title IX. See Education Week, Ed. Dept. Officially Kills Biden Rule That Added LGBTQ+ Protections to Title IX.

The Trump administration exhibits animus toward LGBTQ+ people in general, and toward transgender people in particular. Although the administration often justifies that animus on the grounds of preventing transgender people from participating in women’s sports, the repeal of the Biden-era rule is an attack on women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. As explained in the Education Week article,

The 2020 rules [imposed by Trump] notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. . . . [¶]

The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

In other words, at the very moment of national outrage over Cornell’s investigation and punishment of male students accused of a gang rape in 2022, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to hold their attackers accountable. See Human Rights Campaign, You Get No Say: Trump Administration Abandons Rule Protecting LGBTQ+ Kids and Survivors of Sexual Assault in School Settings, Denying Public Any Chance to Weigh In.

As I said in the introduction, Republicans simply do not understand the cross-currents of change that are sweeping the country. Instead, they are running a playbook that ignores the fact that their standard-bearer has become everything that he ran against in 2016.