* A rapidly moving story out of Brazil: “Defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States following a stunning loss to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s election, according to multiple media reports.”
* Reaching a tragic threshold: “The fast-moving Ebola outbreak in Congo has reached 10,000 confirmed cases, government data showed Tuesday, as health authorities race to slow the spread of the disease in multiple African countries.”
* Keep a close eye on this one: “The US Federal Election Commission’s website has been targeted by a hacker or hackers, disrupting the agency’s electronic filings system a week before the November 3 elections, according to an email seen by Reuters.”
* A revolving door keeps spinning, Part I: “Jennifer Shuford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s deputy director and chief medical officer, is leaving the administration after a short tenure, she confirmed to The Washington Post late Monday night.”
* A revolving door keeps spinning, Part II: “Jeremy Lewin, one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s key advisers, is exiting the Trump administration ahead of the midterms.”
* A closely watched case: “A federal judge on Monday night indefinitely blocked the Trump administration from removing even a single tree from a public golf course in Washington, D.C., that President Donald Trump intends to immediately transform into a championship-style course. She has ordered the government to provide notice of at least 10 business days before any closure or ‘irreversible modification’ to East Potomac Park.”
* I’ll be eager to learn where, exactly, he intends to put the White House press corps: “President Donald Trump appeared to confirm that he is considering relocating the press from the White House in a record-breaking post on Truth Social.” The post read in part, “I am thinking about moving the Press, and putting them in a different location, but I will use that location for very badly needed space.”
Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Dems want damning surveillance report
A pair of Democratic senators are accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of hiding a report that “details serious abuses of Americans’ rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., are trying to pry loose a report they say the administration is legally required to make public after a FISA court opinion detailed abuses of the program in March.
Since retaking office, Trump has expanded the federal government’s arsenal of creepy surveillance tools en route to building what appears to be an unprecedented spy machine that can track Americans. It’s in that context that Democrats — with some GOP help — tanked a vote in June that would have extended the controversial FISA powers that give the government broad latitude to sweep up data, including information belonging to Americans.
In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche, the two Senate Democrats said the damning FISA report from on alleged surveillance abuses should have been released already — and demanded that it be released now so lawmakers can consider whether to extend FISA powers next year.
The administration has now had over seven months to declassify and release this opinion. It is time to stop violating the law and finally release this opinion. And if this administration won’t follow this simple statutory directive, it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702.
Artificial intelligence bots are increasingly gaining unauthorized access to people’s bank accounts, according to new reporting from Axios. The report homes in on concerns among bank officials about security in the age of AI.
A judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after the company lost a lawsuit alleging that the company broke New Mexico’s consumer protection laws and jeopardized its users after the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago. Meta has vowed to appeal the ruling.
After Mississippi’s Republican attorney general issued legal threats last week, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee, Scott Colom, deleted an ad using AI tools to mock his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. I wrote about how it seems like Republicans are fretting over this race in a deep-red state.
Samuel Sey, a popular right-wing influencer known for supporting Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown, reportedly has been detained by immigration officials and is now facing deportation after allegedly overstaying a temporary visa.
The good news is the Pentagon apparently has some guidelines around the development of AI tools to avoid the risk of escalating wars or harming civilians and troops. The bad news? Defense officials aren’t always adhering to these rules, according to a congressional report.
Anthropic says its AI tool accessed Georgia voting data typically only available to people who pay for it. The company and Georgia’s secretary of state said no individual voter records were accessed, but the intrusion marks yet another disturbing security breach involving AI. A new report explains why “the company’s statements about what its bot accessed raise more questions.”
An investigation from The New York Times suggests that Alpha School, the network of AI-fueled private schools that have been backed by the Trump administration and vow to offer a superior learning experience, is failing to live up to its promises.
Several MAGA influencers have recently been in Brazil and Serbia, hoping to sway elections in both countries — but the pro-authoritarian candidates they supported flamed out over the weekend. Now, especially when it comes to Brazil, Trump and a bunch of extremely online conservatives are pushing lies about the election being rigged, as my colleague Brandy Zydrozny explained.
If reporters can only maintain their access to the White House by staying in Donald Trump’s good graces, they will not be free to do their most vital work, and the public will be deprived of information that is essential to its democratic role as a check on corruption and despotism.
If Trump has his way, the press pool will eventually consist solely of enablers and courtiers, of whom there are already too many. They will not raise the pressing issues that the American people need Trump to address. We will not see how he reacts to tough questions — whether he answers them at all, gets angry, lies, attacks, changes the subject or gets flustered.
The founders put freedom of the press in the First Amendment to guarantee an independent and uncensored press that could fully inform the public and hold the government accountable.
And the threat of being targeted in the future is already distorting the reporting of news organizations. According to an ABC News lawyer, the network’s news division has been tempering its election coverage ahead of the midterms, for fear of retribution.
Trump most recently punished MS NOW, CNN and Politico by banning them from the White House. They sued, and a federal judge tentatively restored their access. But Trump is appealing. He is making a preposterous argument citing national security. The White House has continued to exclude CNN and Politico from pool duty on Air Force One. The Independent’s correspondent, Andrew Feinberg, was kicked off Air Force One on Thursday after he somehow infuriated the president the day before. And as Trump said last month, “There may be others to follow.”
These actions amount to an unconstitutional attack on the public’s right to trustworthy and undistorted reporting about the president and his policies.
For this reason, I am one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on Monday by the champions of the free press at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. My fellow plaintiffs include Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch; Yale history professor Beverly Gage; and Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare.
We all rely on newsgathering and reporting from members of the White House press corps. Our right to that information would be abridged if the only reporters left there were either toadies or too scared of losing access to ask tough questions and speak the truth.
Indeed, because of the chilling effect created by Trump’s threats, my rights (and yours) to trusted information from independent news organizations are already being violated.
The only way to truly protect our right to independent reporting is for the courts to deliver a ruling that prevents Trump or any other president from ever doing this again, to anyone.
And that is no small thing. The founders put freedom of the press in the First Amendment to guarantee an independent and uncensored press that could fully inform the public and hold the government accountable.
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787. “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
When the Supreme Court rejected the Nixon administration’s efforts to block newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote, “In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors … Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
For over a century, every president has recognized the obligation to provide spaces nearby where the press can engage in First Amendment-protected newsgathering.
Both the practical and the constitutional necessities were obvious. Particularly in times of crisis, the pool’s presence as independent witnesses in the White House and on Air Force One — attesting to the president’s health and safety, for instance — is essential so the American people don’t just have to take the government’s word for it.
The lawsuit from the currently targeted news organizations is a good first step toward restoring the status quo. But the only way to truly protect our right to independent reporting is for the courts to deliver a ruling that prevents Trump or any other president from ever doing this again, to anyone.
As a press critic who believes that the most essential job of a political reporter is to hold the powerful accountable, I have criticized the White House press corps over the years — but only in practice, not in principle. Its members are the only outsiders whom Trump is required to admit into his bubble of sycophancy. They alone can ask him difficult questions, get him to respond to facts he would rather not acknowledge, and confront him with his lies. They alone can demand answers. And they do that on behalf of the American people, who have no such opportunity.
Trump’s new de facto policy — which he himself described as a “ban on the free press” — cannot be allowed to stand.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted U.S. visas after his weekend loss to incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested race that bucked a trend of conservative electoral results in Latin America.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws, said “the State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States.”
Bolsonaro, who had President Donald Trump’s tacit support, had been under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in Brazil and had been ordered to surrender his passport.
The State Department official did not say if Bolsonaro had already left Brazil or if he and his family were en route to the U.S.
Bolsonaro’s campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, said he hadn’t spoken to the defeated candidate since early Tuesday morning.
“We had no news from Flávio or his lawyers about what happened,” Marinho said. “I received a text message from him, he said he wanted to take a break and then he would talk to us. That’s the only message I had from him.”
Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas, had publicly encouraged him to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
Bolsonaro has touted his relationship with Trump and visited the White House in May. The family connections go deeper: Brother Eduardo Bolsonaro was convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration and sentenced to four years in prison. A warrant was recently issued for his arrest.
Trump did not offer a full-throated endorsement of Bolsonaro in the runoff against Lula, as he has with some other right-of-center candidates in Latin America. But he suggested on Monday, without providing evidence, that Brazil’s election was “rigged.”
Bolsonaro’s decision to leave Brazil came as a deadline for him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon Tuesday. It remained unclear whether he had complied.
Bolsonaro was served with the order to surrender his passports Monday, a day after his stunning loss. Bolsonaro said he received it outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula. After that defeat, Jair Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Florida. He returned three months later.
The sealed Supreme Court order, viewed by The Associated Press, was issued Sunday. Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat and has made unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.
Bolsonaro raises questions about election he lost
Bolsonaro initially asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that prompted authorities to extend voting by two hours.
On Monday, he urged the electoral court to investigate alleged election fraud and nullify Lula’s and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin’s candidacies, which the electoral court has never done before.
“I never thought about leaving the country,” Bolsonaro said in a video published on his social media channels. “I will hand over my passports and I will defend myself from this aberration. It is a clear attempt to intimidate me. But I will not be silenced.”
To overturn the result, Bolsonaro would have to present evidence of fraud affecting Lula’s 4.4 million-vote margin and convince the eight-member electoral court before the results are certified on Dec. 18.
Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, received more than 64 million votes, compared with fewer than 60 million for Bolsonaro, a margin of nearly 4%.
A Brazilian diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the matter said his country’s government was aware that Bolsonaro had left the country.
Outside the presidential residence in Brasilia, Lula told a few dozen supporters he did not have precise information of Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, but said he had left Brazil.
Brazil is “the second country” of the Bolsonaro family, Lula added.
“The first is licking American boots,” the reelected president said. “Those who are not liable do not fear. A fellow that secretly leaves his country, that’s because he is liable for something.”
Bolsonaro said in a video posted Monday on his social media channels that he was attempting to organize opposition among his congressional colleagues to the election results. His eight-year term as a senator expires Jan. 31, 2027, which will also cause him to lose special jurisdiction at the country’s Supreme Court.
Bolsonaro is under investigation by Brazil’s Supreme Court for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in two cases. In one, he’s accused of using a sports betting company to launder fraudulent deductions from government pensions paid to senior citizens. In the other, he is accused of accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker.
He has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, and has claimed Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is heading one of the investigations, is a Lula ally. Prosecutors suspect the funds from the banker were used to pay his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro’s, expenses and to promote Flávio Bolsonaro’s political agenda with the Trump administration, documents show.
Mauricio Marcon, a lawmaker of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, also questioned de Moraes’ objectivity on Tuesday. “Seven minutes after the election, Alexandre de Moraes ordered his passports to be seized,” Marcon said. Bolsonaro “will represent us in a free country. He will continue to be our leader.”
Brazilians had earlier taken to social media to ask where Bolsonaro was. Reporters gathered outside his home in the capital, Brasilia, but he did not appear.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Security of Argentina denied reports the Brazilian senator had entered the country. Brazilian media outlets reported that many Bolsonaro allies had been unable to reach him.
Paulo Figueiredo, a close ally of Bolsonaro’s who lives in the United States, was asked about the senator’s whereabouts and did not answer directly.
“At this moment — following months of intense work that were unfairly thwarted — I have no desire to speak with the press. I kindly ask that you do not persist. Should I have a statement to make on any matter, I will reach out,” Figueiredo said.
When House Republicans made a surprise announcement in mid-September, sending members home early and abandoning plans for a busy September, there was uncertainty about why, exactly, GOP leaders wanted to do even less work. It wasn’t long before Capitol Hill observers settled on an answer.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was poised to force a vote on Sept. 17 on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and by all accounts, the measure was likely to generate a fair number of bipartisan votes, which would have been deeply embarrassing to the beleaguered Pentagon chief, the White House and the party itself with seven weeks remaining in the election cycle.
And so House Speaker Mike Johnson let members know their last pre-election workday would be Sept. 16.
The move successfully kicked the can down the road, although with Election Day just a week away, Congress has very nearly caught up to that can. Roll Call reported:
The author of a draft House resolution to impeach the Defense secretary said Monday he plans to force a vote on the measure the week of Nov. 9.
The Pete Hegseth impeachment resolution is a “week one” issue for the House lame-duck session, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a phone interview.
For a long while, as the political world turned its focus to the midterm elections, the lame-duck session appeared to be on some faraway horizon. That’s no longer the case: Members will return to Capitol Hill in two weeks — the week after Election Day — and they will find the Hegseth impeachment resolution waiting for them as they get back to work.
“I give it better than a 50% chance of passing,” Massie, who was defeated in a GOP primary in May, told Roll Call. “Will all the Democrats vote for it? I think the answer to that is yes. And then the second question is, do I get a handful of Republicans? And I think they’re probably more inclined in the lame-duck session to vote for it than they were before their campaigns were over.”
We’ll learn soon enough how that vote turns out, but in the meantime, it’s worth keeping in mind that in the next Congress, if there’s a Democratic majority, Hegseth should prepare himself for fierce pushback. As recently as Saturday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next House speaker should Democrats fare well next week, told MS NOW, “Pete Hegseth needs to be pushed aside by the president, or we’re going to have to deal with that situation if he is not.”
A day earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported, “House Democrats are setting their political sights on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, pushing for his impeachment as the first spoils from anticipated wins in the midterm election.”
The day after Jeffries’ comments, Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a decorated military veteran, appeared on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” and said, “Pete Hegseth remains incompetent and is not doing what’s necessary to protect our service members, which is why he’s my priority No. 1 if we retake the majority, to make sure we oust him from the Pentagon, because our service members actually deserve competent, serious, real leadership that will protect them and do the right thing.”
For most of American history, only one Cabinet secretary has ever been impeached: In 1876, the House impeached Secretary of War William Belknap — after he left office — over alleged bribes. (He was later acquitted by senators.)
Nearly three years ago, Belknap got a little company: House Republicans impeached then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas despite having uncovered no evidence the DHS secretary had done anything to merit impeachment. (The Senate dismissed the effort and didn’t bother with a trial.)
Will Hegseth join this tiny club? Watch this space.
The FBI searched a mansion in Beverly Hills, California, on Tuesday connected to a major donor of formerDemocraticRep. Eric Swalwell.
Lourdes Arocho, an FBI spokesperson based in Los Angeles, told MS NOW that the agency executed a search warrant at an address along Roxbury Drive. Court documents are sealed and there are no arrests planned, Arocho said.
Beverly Hills city records list the address as belonging to Stephen Cloobeck, a timeshare real estate businessman who backed Swalwell for California governor after dropping out of the race himself. Swalwell ultimately exited the race and resigned from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
The FBI’s national office said the agency “conducted an operation in the Los Angeles region related to an ongoing criminal investigation.” It did not provide additional details.
MS NOW has reached out to an attorney for Cloobeck and an attorney for Swalwell for comment. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
It is unclear whether the FBI search was linked to Swalwell, who is facing multiple investigations connected to allegations of sexual misconduct, including one by the Department of Justice. In August, the FBI raided Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C., and seized his phone as a part of the investigation.
Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Swalwell dropped his campaign for California governor and resigned from Congress in April after the accusations against him surfaced. He denied the allegations but conceded he made “mistakes in judgment” when announcing his resignation.
Cloobeck said he cut ties with Swalwell after the allegations. He has also been embroiled in controversy of his own. In May, he faced state charges for allegedly threatening witnesses in his then-fiancée’s criminal case in which she is accused of seducing and stealing from rich men. He pleaded not guilty in August.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Last week, Israeli soldiers detained me for harvesting olives in a grove near Bethlehem. I was one of about 70 people — rabbis, American and Israeli Jews, and Palestinians — helping Palestinian farmers harvest trees their family has owned for generations.
My detention made headlines. But it’s not the story. The story is the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
The olive grove we were harvesting as part of the Protect the Harvest effort belongs to families from Nahalin, a Palestinian village south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. The villagers have not been able to harvest their olives for three years, because of attacks by Israeli settlers.
Brad Lander on a bus after he was detained during the olive harvest.Courtesy Brad Lander
In recent weeks across the West Bank, settlers have attacked Palestinian farmers, volunteers, European diplomats and a Washington Post journalist. In our case, though, when security guards from the adjacent settlement of Beitar Illit spotted us, they didn’t confront us themselves. Instead, they called the Israeli army, and soldiers detained us for harvesting olives on private Palestinian land at the invitation of its owners. In other words, we were doing nothing illegal nor anything that required coordination with the Israeli government.
Of the 70 folks I was detained alongside, the IDF soldiers held a Palestinian woman from the family who owns the land longest of all. Their message was clear: don’t try to harvest that land again.
What I saw in Nahalin is part of a broader pattern I have seen across the West Bank: settler violence and state power working hand in hand to dispossess Palestinians of their land and expel them from their homes.
In Mughayir, the sister village of my Brooklyn synagogue, families once farmed olives and dates and grazed flocks on land stretching down into the Jordan Valley. Today, the village has been stripped of nearly all of it — by a government order that uprooted its olive trees, by a permanently locked gate cutting it off from the main road and by attacks from nearby settler outposts. One older man was assaulted and pepper sprayed earlier this month by settlers, just for walking into one of his few remaining fields.
In Taibe, a shepherd showed me a video of settlers and soldiers raiding his compound at night, beating his family and taking 40 of his sheep on a newly arrived settler’s claim that they were his.
These are not isolated incidents. A recent report from Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that settler violence, combined with Israeli government policy, has made more than 1 million dunams — roughly 18% of the West Bank — inaccessible to Palestinians, and has displaced over 100 communities.
In Al-Walaja, in eastern Jerusalem, villagers have sought approval of a zoning plan for more than a decade. The Israeli authorities have refused to grant it without explanation — a recurring dynamic in Palestinian communities — only to then cite the missing zoning plan as an excuse to demolish their homes. Half the village is under demolition orders. Residents pay taxes to the Jerusalem municipality. But the main government service they receive is the bulldozer.
Al-Walaja in eastern JerusalemCourtesy Brad Lander
In the Jordan Valley near Jericho, I saw the ruins of what were, until recently, the Bedouin communities of Mu’arrajat and Ras Ein al-Auja, where hundreds of families lived. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, settlers began a campaign of harassment that escalated to an attack on the village elementary school. Residents pleaded to soldiers for protection, and they were told it would be provided — but only during the day. So one night, settlers — no, let’s call them terrorists — came and burned the homes, one by one. When the pogrom was over, every house was destroyed, and every family gone.
The term for that is ethnic cleansing.
A young Bedouin woman named Aliya, who lived through it, told me the story. She now lives with her family in a refugee compound without running water. Despite it all, she’s studying remotely for her master’s degree. It should not take the arrest of a U.S. congressional candidate or a group of rabbis to bring attention to her story. But American media provides little opportunity for Palestinians’ voices to be heard.
The West BankCourtesy Brad Lander
None of the Palestinians I met in the West Bank can vote in this week’s Israeli elections, even though the resulting government controls their lives. I devoutly hope Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party loses, and that a new government will take steps to rein in settler terrorism like this. But neither prospective coalition is promising to stop settlement construction, end ongoing occupation and apartheid or protect the human rights of Palestinians — much less recognize a Palestinian state.
Here in the United States, though, the midterm elections do offer an opportunity to demand change. We are not bystanders to ethnic cleansing in Israel and Palestine: our tax dollars help underwrite it.
In Congress, I will work to end U.S. military aid to Israel while it violates international law and Palestinian human rights. I will support the Stop the Settlements bill to ban trade and impose sanctions on companies who build and bankroll the settlements — something U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently announced. I will support recognition of a Palestinian state as U.S. policy. I will work with a broad coalition of American Jewish and Muslim groups that don’t always agree with one another, but who are committed to ending the occupation.
Before I left the West Bank, I spoke with a group of Palestinian high school students at the Talitha Kumi school in Beit Jala. Most speak Arabic, Hebrew, German and excellent English. They experience injustice on a daily basis. Their families can’t vote, but still they told me about their Model UN. They were glad to learn I’m Jewish, and they thanked me for being there. They want a free Palestine, but they also believe in democracy and want to live peacefully alongside Israelis.
Brad Lander with a group of Palestinian high school students at the Talitha Kumi school in Beit Jala.Courtesy Brad Lander
There are, to be sure, many complex issues in resolving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
But don’t let anyone tell you these young people are raised on hatred. That they deserve freedom and opportunity any less than your kids or mine. That it is in any way “democratic” that their families can’t vote. That stealing their land is consistent with Jewish values. That it’s a good use of our tax dollars to fund their subordination. Or that we can’t find partners for peace.
As is true of the first two criminal cases the Trump Justice Department brought against James Comey in Virginia and North Carolina, the third set of charges, made public this week in Washington, D.C., presents multiple legal issues.
A potentially fatal threshold issue is that federal prosecutors may have blown a key deadline — indeed, the key deadline, one that could kill the latest case against the former FBI director before it even gets going.
The Washington charges, stemming from allegations of unlawfully sharing sensitive government information with a journalist, have a 10-year statute of limitations. That means prosecutors must bring them within a decade of the alleged offense.
The DOJ apparently brought the case just in time to make the 10-year window for alleged criminal conduct from 2016. But regardless of the allegations’ validity on their merits (which a jury could decide down the road, if it gets that far), a more pressing issue is the type of legal instrument that prosecutors used to bring these charges. They usedan information, which doesn’t require grand jury approval, as opposed to an indictment, which does. The reason that’s a possibly fatal problem is that the law for these charges says they must be brought within 10 years by “indictment,” without mentioning “information” as an option.
Comey’s lawyers made that point in a pending motion to dismiss. They noted that Congress has referenced both informations and indictments in other laws; therefore, the defense argued, lawmakers know how to specify the difference but chose to require an indictment here. The defense asked the judge to “enforce the text that Congress wrote and dismiss the information as time barred.”
Opposing the dismissal motion, the DOJ argued that it’s both premature and that the difference between informations and indictments isn’t as big a deal here as Comey claims. Prosecutors cited the general five-year statute of limitations law, which references both indictments and informations; from that, they argued that the 10-year law for Comey’s charges, which mentions indictments but not informations, is really only about extending the limitations period, not about the form those charges must take.
The bottom line is that if Comey is correct, then the DOJ’s failure to obtain an indictment within the 10-year period is not a mere technical foot fault — it’s the end of the case before it begins. This latest case, therefore, starts with a crucial court battle over whether it’s a case at all.
It’s a battle that the DOJ could have avoided by securing an indictment. We don’t know why it didn’t do so. We do know, generally, that it has had trouble securing approval of charges from citizens called to grand jury service in President Donald Trump’s second term in some of the administration’s most political cases in the nation’s capital.
At any rate, this felony case won’t proceed toward trial without prosecutors first securing an indictment. That grand jury process is required unless a defendant waives their right to it, which we have no reason to expect here. So even if prosecutors win this threshold battle and succeed in stopping the clock with their placeholder information, they still need to clear that grand jury hurdle.
If they do so, then that would only put prosecutors in a position to face the more standard pretrial motions to dismiss before the case can make it to trial. I say “more” standard because a notable feature of litigation in Trump’s second term has been defendants raising claims that they have been vindictively or selectively prosecuted by this revenge-fueled administration.
As with grand jury refusals to approve indictments, even potentially successful motions along those lines had been rare. Yet they have been raised in a series of high-profile cases in Trump’s second term, including in Comey’s other cases. If this latest one proceeds, then we should expect him to make such a motion here, too. We should also expect it to be taken seriously in this third attempt to prosecute the Trump target with criminal charges that were lodged on the eve of a 10-year deadline — charges which, Comey’s lawyers observed in their pending motion to dismiss, previous prosecutors refused to bring.
And that’s before even getting to a potential trial, where the government would have the burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. In the factual background section of the DOJ’s pending opposition motion, it said the government “uncovered evidence” that, when Comey was FBI director during Trump’s first term (before Trump fired him in 2017), he told his staff to share information with a New York Times reporter to “correct misinformation” from another outlet’s reporting about email surveillance.
Like all defendants, Comey is presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
His Virginia charges, which related to his congressional testimony in 2020, were dismissed pretrial last year, because a judge found the Trump-backed lawyer overseeing the case, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed. The DOJ is appealing.
Meanwhile, the judge in North Carolina is considering Comey’s pretrial motions to dismiss that case, which stems from his posting a photo of seashells on Instagram that the government argued amounted to a criminal threat against the president.
According to Donald Trump’s version of events, ahead of his Saturday night campaign rally in Georgia, his own team encouraged him not to celebrate higher gas prices. The president ignored the good advice.
In fact, Trump spent quite a bit of time at the event bragging that oil and gas companies are “making a fortune” as a result of higher gas prices, so consumers struggling to pay their bills should be glad they’re paying more at the pump.
As for members of his team who encouraged him not to make such comments, the president added, “I said, ‘I don’t give a damn. I’m going to say it.’”
In the same set of remarks, however, Trump also added a related thought that didn’t generate nearly as much attention: “You know, you’re still paying lower than [you were under] Biden.”
When all else fails, this is the card Republicans play when the public discussion turns to gas prices. It’s a talking point rooted in the idea that consumers might be frustrated now, but they should remember that conditions were even worse when Trump’s Democratic predecessor was in the White House.
Americans have paid more for their gasoline and diesel at the pump on average during President Donald Trump’s second term than they did under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, according to the AAA. […]
The price of a gallon of regular gasoline has averaged $3.472 since Trump took office almost two years ago, edging out the $3.471-per-gallon average for Biden’s term, according to data from the AAA.
In general, gas prices were unremarkable across much of Biden’s term, but after Trump’s friends in Moscow decided to launch an unprovoked war in neighboring Ukraine — a move Trump described at the time as “genius” — prices spiked. When Republicans talk about Biden-era gas prices, they’re hoping Americans forget why, exactly, costs climbed during the Democrat’s term.
Nevertheless, when we look at the broader average, which includes the Russia-imposed spike, the AAA data shows consumers were paying roughly $3.47 a gallon during the Democrat’s presidency — which is less, not more, than the average during Trump’s second term.
What’s more, a Bloomberg News report added that Americans have never paid as much as they’re paying now so late in the year, as opposed to the summer driving season.
Is it any wonder why Trump is peddling unpersuasive nonsense? On one of the key issues of the day, the Republican is confronting a reality that is proving unspinnable.
The Department of Justice is now targeting Washington state, threatening election officials with legal action if they do not set aside ballots the Trump administration believes could be cast by noncitizens.
In a letter to Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs that was obtained by MS NOW, the Justice Department said it found 400 alleged noncitizens who, “with a high level of confidence, have voted in elections” in the state.
The federal prosecutors demanded that Washington’s top election official review the list “within 24 hours” to determine whether there are citizens on it, and to set aside any ballots returned by suspected noncitizens. Acting U.S. Attorney in Washington Neil Floyd and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Serrano told Hobbs to instruct local election officials “to not verify the signature and/or tabulate the ballot until citizenship can be determined.”
“The United States is concerned with the number of noncitizen voters, both enrolled and actively voting in the State of Washington, as allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” Floyd and Serrano wrote, adding that “we do make criminal referrals to our state counterparts.”
If the state’s top election official does not comply, the letter states, “the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.” Washington began mailing ballots in mid-October.
With just seven days until Election Day, Washington is the second Democratic-led state to be targeted by the Trump administration with such a letter. The Justice Department sued California earlier this month over its refusal to segregate ballots from some 20,000 people the administration claims are noncitizens.
In another election challenge, the Justice Department sued Alaska last week to block the results of the U.S. Senate election if the Republican incumbent, whose Democratic challenger has the same name, does not win.
Federal prosecutors said in the letter to Washington state election officials that the “individuals identified are or were noncitizens,” adding that “they may have subsequently naturalized.” The department said it expects to soon receive “a second list of individuals believed to be noncitizens who are registered to vote” from the Department of Homeland Security that it will share with state election officials.
The letter includes several errors. The election date is wrong, written by the federal prosecutors as Nov. 2, 2026, when Election Day is Nov. 3. The federal attorneys also misspelled voter rolls, writing “voter roles” when referring to the Justice Department’s attempts to obtain sensitive voter data from the state.
In a press release Monday, Floyd said the 400 alleged noncitizens “are registered to vote and have voted in multiple elections.”
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Floyd said. Many of the people on the list are lawful permanent residents or “green card” holders, Floyd’s office said.
The Washington secretary of state’s office said it is carefully reviewing the Justice Department’s request.
“We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process,” Hobbs said in a statement. “We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed.”
Hobbs said the timing of the request “is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results. At the same time, thousands of voters were recently disenfranchised in our August Primary due to delayed postmarks.”
Helen Smith, a spokesperson for Hobbs, noted that the DOJ system frequently flags U.S. citizens as noncitizens, risking their right to vote.
As the White House’s anti-fraud task force struggled with its principal task, Team Trump last week turned to a new idea: crowdsourcing. Under the Republican administration’s latest gambit, Americans who uncover and report cases of fraud will be eligible for cash rewards.
Donald Trump specifically said at an Oval Office announcement that “people will make millions of dollars by turning others in.”
That’s an extraordinarily unlikely scenario, although the fact that the president was turning to regular people to help uncover evidence seems effectively like an admission that the task force has fallen short of success. Oddly enough, a week later, Trump, frustrated that his own team hasn’t found evidence of systemic voter fraud either, rolled out another crowdsourcing plan.
On Monday afternoon, he published an item to his social media platform that read in its entirety, “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
During a brief Q&A with reporters, the president stopped whining about Barack Obama’s Cheesecake Factory joke long enough to reiterate his support for the idea.
Trump: "I'm also going to be issuing a $1 million bonus or reward or whatever you want to call it for anybody that reports voter fraud, leading to the arrest and conviction of somebody. We're giving that person $1 million."
“I’m also going to be issuing $1 million bonus or reward, or whatever you want to call it, for anybody that reports voter fraud, leading to the arrest and conviction of somebody,” Trump said. “We’re giving that person $1 million.”
Some skepticism is in order. It’s not at all clear whether this new initiative exists in reality. The New York Times reported, “The White House did not immediately respond to questions about where the money would come from for the ostensible rewards or how Americans are supposed to report fraud accusations.”
I guess it’s possible that Trump might agree to cut checks with his own money (he made at least $2.2 billion last year, so he could afford it), but the president isn’t known for easily parting with cash. That means he’d have to get the money from somewhere else, and to date, Congress hasn’t appropriated any such funds. He would also have to create some kind of mechanism for reporting allegations of fraud, which does not currently exist.
The project struck me as interesting, though, because of the motivation behind the apparent scheme. As a factual matter, voter fraud in American elections is exceedingly rare; and the U.S. system is both strong and secure, even if Trump and other Republican conspiracy theorists have spent many years desperately trying to convince the public there is a national scourge tearing at the very fabric of our democracy.
The offer of $1 million payouts is notable, in other words, because it’s the latest in a series of moves intended to undermine public confidence in elections by pointing to an imaginary crisis.
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an election law expert, told The Washington Sun that the White House’s latest move is “part of a larger project on the part of Donald Trump to generate distrust of the election system by touting election fraud as some kind of problem.”
If recent history is any guide, these efforts are likely to get worse in the coming days and weeks.
KFAR AZA, Israel — Israeli American Keith Siegel doesn’t do politics, he said. Even, and especially, after he was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza for 484 days.
But when asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closing argument going into Tuesday’s voting that only he can keep Israel safe, Siegel simply said, “I don’t agree.”
On the eve of the first election since then, Siegel, now 67, made a rare visit to his home in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz a mile from the Gaza border where 80 people were murdered and 19 were taken captive by Hamas on Oct. 7.
As automatic gunfire and mortar rounds went off in the distance near the Palestinian territory, Siegel said he wanted the devastation and trauma to end.
“I hate war and I hate killing and I hate death, and unnecessary death, from my point of view,” he said. “I don’t only think about us Israelis, I also think about children in Gaza that were born into this reality they didn’t choose.”
Kfar Aza, Israel is seen on on Oct. 24, 2026. Julia Jester / MS NOW
The gruesome Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas fundamentally reshaped Israeli politics — and created a formidable challenger to Netanyahu: Gadi Eisenkot, his former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff turned rival who could be the one to oust the longtime prime minister from power.
In December 2023, two months into the war against Hamas, Eisenkot’s 25-year-old son, Gal, was killed while fighting in Gaza. Six months later, Eisenkot resigned from Netanyahu’s emergency war Cabinet, citing a lack of strategy to end the conflict.
Eisenkot’s personal loss motivated him to run against his former boss, his grief resonating with Israelis still reeling from that day and the ensuing war fronts. He has promised an independent inquiry into the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks.
Siegel said he is not focused on blame, but he — like many Israelis — wants answers as to what went wrong leading up to and in the aftermath of the attacks.
“This enormous failure, people that were in charge need to be held accountable or need to be responsible for what happened, primarily in order to do everything possible that something like that won’t happen again,” Siegel said.
Keith Siegel speaks on Oct. 24, 2026, in Kfar Aza, Israel. Julia Jester / MS NOW
A recent poll from Israel’s Channel 12 found responsibility for Oct. 7 was likely to influence the decisions of 70% of voters, with 83% saying Netanyahu bears at least some degree of responsibility and only 8% saying he doesn’t at all.
Even after the results of the election come in, it may take weeks for a new prime minister to be chosen, which likely will require multiple political parties to come together in a coalition.
On Saturday night, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square for an anti-Netanyahu demonstration, bringing together voters across the opposition “change” bloc.
First-time voter Tal Schneider said the attack by Hamas made him realize having a healthy government is “life or death.”
”It’s dangerous,” said Schneider, 18. “I’m going to serve in the army, and if I will be in a never-ending war, I don’t want to serve. But I want to serve, I want to protect my people, but this government is so corrupt that it will be impossible.”
Maya Katorza first became politically active in early 2023, protesting Netanyahu’s push to overhaul Israel’s judicial system. But Oct. 7 opened her eyes.
Hostage Square is seen on Oct. 22, 2026, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Julia Jester / MS NOW
“It was really shocking,” she said. “Made it much more like our life depends on it.”
“There is a power here I personally didn’t feel before,” said Katorza, wearing a shirt featuring the Hebrew lyric, “I have no other country,” which she got from a restaurant helping Israelis evacuated from kibbutzes attacked on Oct. 7.
Throughout Israel, communities came together to fill the gaps left by the Netanyahu government in the aftermath of the attacks, from transportation to food supply to counseling.
Tami Lubitsch, a clinical psychologist and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, is offering volunteer mental health services from Alaska to Israelis impacted by Oct. 7.
“The country is falling apart,” Lubitsch said. “It’s just a government that can’t do anything right, and that’s kind of the nature of it. When you devote yourself to the mentality of war and hatred, it’s gonna affect everything. They’re building a culture of hate, and if that would continue, the very moral foundation of Israel would be gone.”
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Ben Yehuda Market during a campaign visit on Oct. 22, 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel. John Wessels / AFP via Getty Images
Still, not everyone places the blame on Netanyahu.
Ely Ram, who was serving in the IDF on Oct. 7 and has spent time in Gaza, blames the “bad people” of Hamas and said without Netanyahu, Israelis would not be allowed to protect their country.
“I’m afraid,” Ram, 24, said at a Tel Aviv bar a few blocks away from the massive anti-Netanyahu rally. “Because the other side doesn’t want Israel’s security.”
The wars fought on multiple fronts by Israel since Oct. 7 — in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran — have put a strain on the Israeli military, making the debate over requiring military service for the country’s roughly 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men a defining issue in this election.
According to a September poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, 72% of Israelis want the ultra-Orthodox Haredim, who avoid military service with religious study of the Torah, to be drafted.
An Ultra Orthodox Haredi Jewish man confronts Israeli police during a protest against military conscription and the arrest of draft evasion yeshiva students on May 28, 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel. Aruallan / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images
“It’s the fact that you can go into Gaza as a combat soldier not knowing if you’ll come back alive or how long we’ll be staying there because the prime minister doesn’t allow recruiting religious people, so the amount of soldiers are fewer and fewer and fewer,” said first-time voter Tal Pinkas, 18, who is supporting retired Gen. Yair Golan and The Democrats.
Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, thinks Netanyahu is making a “catastrophic mistake” by hoping the people of Israel will have short memories.
“We’ve had in these four years an endless amount of events that have shaken Israeli society to the core,” he said, citing judicial overhaul protests, Oct. 7, the war in Gaza and the Iran war. ”Israeli society is spent. It’s tired. It’s not post-trauma. It’s going through trauma still.”
These events, Hazan said, have moved Israelis in two directions: to the political right and becoming more religious. While both shifts should be beneficial to Netanyahu, if he loses power, a public outcry for more accountability around the Oct. 7 attacks would have played a significant role.
Katorza, who supports Golan and The Democrats, is worried about Israel’s reputation on the world stage.
“I think about all foreign affairs of Israel going down the drain with the politics of this government,” she said. “There was never a time that Israel was so unliked and so unsupported by both sides of the political map in the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats.”
A test for Netanyahu
The Netanyahu government’s response to Oct. 7 has prompted international criticism and condemnation. On Monday, a United Nations report concluded that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank and is continuing to commit genocide in Gaza, even amid a so-called ceasefire. The Israeli government rejected the U.N. report, calling it a “misinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal.”
Mourners attend a mass funeral for Palestinians, whose bodies were recovered from the rubble of a residential building hit in an Israeli strike in October, 2023, on Oct. 1, 2026, in Gaza City. Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Gaza war, according to estimates from the Hamas-run health ministry, which U.N. agencies consider to be accurate. UNRWA estimates that about 82% of structures in Gaza have been damaged and about two-thirds of those have been destroyed.
But if you ask Israelis across the political spectrum, many reject claims of genocide in Gaza, arguing Israel has no other choice and works to mitigate civilian casualties.
Shay Tiram, who is voting for Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist Party, said starting on Oct. 8, Netanyahu did “a very good job” and called accusations of genocide a “hoax” and “brainwash.”
“We know that we are a nation of peace, and we didn’t choose this war,” said Tiram, 35. “But you attack us, we have to protect ourselves … We need to displace them.”
A choice for Israelis
A cyclist rides beneath a pedestrian bridge displaying electronic election billboards showing former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 23, 2026, in Tel Aviv. Erik Marmor / picture alliance via Getty Images
In the closing days of the election, many voters saw the race as a choice between the two front-runners for prime minister, Netanyahu and Eisenkot.
While both Netanyahu and Eisenkot agree on certain policy issues, including opposition to a two-state solution, there is daylight between them in a few key areas: the West Bank, President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan and military service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews.
“There will be a change of policy, but it doesn’t usually meet the standards of what outsiders see as a change of policy,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster and political analyst.
“Netanyahu and his coalition want to annex Gaza, they want to rebuild settlements, and they want Palestinians to leave,” she said. “Eisenkot is not going into it with quite the same convictions.”
Supporters of Eisenkot believe he could provide a fresh slate as a less polarizing personality, even with similar hawkish politics to Netanyahu.
In his closing argument at a rally in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Eisenkot vowed to deliver on his campaign promises on Oct. 7 accountability, ultra-Orthodox military participation and ending Hamas rule of Gaza within 18 months.
“Anyone who believes that ‘our Israel’ can survive another four years like this is operating under a dangerous delusion,” he told his supporters. “Draft evasion, failure, negligence, and lies—this is the path of the ‘government of draft-dodgers.’ If we continue down this road, Israel will very soon cease to be the country we know. This is a final wake-up call.”
Israeli opposition leader and former military chief Gadi Eisenkot campaigns ahead of Israel’s upcoming general election on Aug. 17, 2026, in Kiryat Malachi, Israel. Amir Cohen / Reuters
Netanyahu, for his part, has contrasted Eisenkot’s lack of diplomatic experience with his own long-standing relationships with world leaders.
Netanyahu has repeatedly highlighted his endorsement from Trump, emphasizing the need to finish the war with Iran, which he has been characterizing in increasingly apocalyptic terms, including with an artificial intelligence-generated photo of a nuclear bomb cloud over Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu has also continued to try to depict any increase in the political power of Arab Israelis as a threat to Israel’s identity.
On social media, Netanyahu described an opposition government that could include Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Ra’am party, as one that “robs Israel of its Jewish identity and concedes and bows to our enemies or a strong right-wing government that works to protect the state of Israel, that will finish the job and remove the Iranian threat once and for all.”
With Arab Israelis voting at a record high rate, they could become critical in the coalition building process if neither Netanyahu or Eisenkot reach the needed 61-seat Knesset majority outright, which is unlikely based on polling.
Arab leaders have historically been excluded from the Israeli government — but some voters say that should change.
Leon Tsi — whose childhood friend was brutally murdered by Hamas at the Nova Festival massacre on Oct. 7 — said Abbas should have a seat at the table should Tsi’s preferred candidate, Eisenkot, win.
Israeli politicians often tout Israel as a rare example of a democracy in the Middle East, Tsi, 35, said, “so act like one.”
“There are different kinds of Judaism, different kinds of Muslim, different kinds of groups,” he added. “And we have to recognize it.”
Keith Siegel speaks on Oct. 24, 2026, in Kfar Aza, Israel.
Hostage Square is seen on Oct. 22, 2026, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Ben Yehuda Market during a campaign visit on Oct. 22, 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel.
An Ultra Orthodox Haredi Jewish man confronts Israeli police during a protest against military conscription and the arrest of draft evasion yeshiva students on May 28, 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel.
Mourners attend a mass funeral for Palestinians, whose bodies were recovered from the rubble of a residential building hit in an Israeli strike in October, 2023, on Oct. 1, 2026, in Gaza City.
A cyclist rides beneath a pedestrian bridge displaying electronic election billboards showing former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 23, 2026, in Tel Aviv.
Israeli opposition leader and former military chief Gadi Eisenkot campaigns ahead of Israel's upcoming general election on Aug. 17, 2026, in Kiryat Malachi, Israel.
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In case Republicans weren’t already worried about South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee, has received endorsements from two former South Carolina governors — including one Republican.
Two former Governors of South Carolina – one from each party – have endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews who is running against Sen. Darline Graham R-SC
With a week remaining before Election Day, former Republican Gov. David Beasley and former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges star in a video endorsement in which they throw their support behind the pediatrician taking on appointed incumbent Sen. Darline Graham.
Beasley, a former chair of the Republican Governors Association, said in the ad that “Annie understands that leadership isn’t about making people angrier. Well, it’s about making things better.”
* As MS NOW reported, election officials in Alaska filed a motion Monday night asking a federal judge to “immediately” dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that seeks to block the results of the state’s U.S. Senate race should incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lose, claiming it has “no legal basis.”
On a related note, while the DOJ case is predicated on the idea that voters will be confused by the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the same ballot — despite the fact that the same ballot clearly identifies one of them as the “Republican incumbent” — it’s worth noting that there were also two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s ballot in 2014, and the state’s electorate managed just fine.
* In Maine’s U.S. Senate race, the latest Marist poll found Democrat Troy Jackson with a narrow advantage over incumbent Republican Susan Collins, 49% to 47%.
* A relatively new super PAC called Building the Future, which represents the data center industry, initially launched an ad hoping to boost Graham in South Carolina, and now it’s spending more than $1.5 million in support of Republican Ty Masterson’s gubernatorial candidacy in Kansas.
* Donald Trump headlined a rally in Mississippi on Monday night, where the president said, “I’m here because Cindy is doing great,” referring to Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Of course, that didn’t make a lot of sense: If the incumbent were “doing great,” there’s no reason Trump would have traveled to Mississippi to help her campaign.
* In Pennsylvania’s four most competitive U.S. House races, the latest polling from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena University found Democrats with modest leads in three of the contests. The fourth race is Republican Rep. Scott Perry’s rematch against Janelle Stelson, a Democrat and former news broadcaster, and the poll found them tied at 48% each.
* And in one of Iowa’s most competitive congressional districts, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the House Republican leadership, is airing an attack ad alleging that Democratic nominee Sarah Trone Garriott is “dangerous” when it comes to children. What the ad neglects to mention is that the critic who makes the claim previously pleaded guilty to charges related to child endangerment.
LONDON (AP) — Two men were charged Tuesday with national security offenses over a suspected plot against RAF Fairford, a U.S.-run military air base in England, U.K. police and prosecutors said.
British nationals Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both aged 24 and from London, were charged under the National Security Act, the Crown Prosecution Service said. They were due to appear in a London court on Tuesday.
Abdulkarim is charged with assisting Iran’s intelligence service, and Essghir is charged with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the U.K.
RAF Fairford, in western England, has been used by American bombers to strike Iran during the U.S. war with the country.
Essghir was arrested outside the base on Sept. 27, when police officers and army bomb-disposal experts swarmed the rural area and searched for explosives. Scores of residents were evacuated from their homes.
Police later said they had found an accelerant — gasoline — in vans at the scene but no explosives.
Essghir was initially released on bail before being re-arrested last week. Abdulkarim was arrested in the past week. Six other men have been arrested and released on bail as investigations continue.
British authorities have linked Tehran to the incident, which led the U.S. to pull its bombers from RAF Fairford. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that the suspected plot was “almost certainly” directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Iran has denied involvement, although it has said that it considers any base used to attack its territory a legitimate target.
Earlier this month, the head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency warned that both Iran and Russia were expanding their attacks against the U.K., and that the RAF Fairford incident was not unique.
Ken McCallum, who leads the U.K.’s domestic security service, said Tehran is seeking to intensify its attacks in Britain beyond the traditional targets of Iranians opposed to the country’s Islamic authorities. He said more than 50 people have been arrested over Iran-linked plots in the past year.
Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, the head of National Counter Terrorism Policing in the U.K., said, “We have seen a range of incidents in recent months that we believe have been directed by the Iranian state … [and] we are working together to intervene, identify and respond to that threat”.
This is the Oct. 27, 2026 edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
Hello, “Morning Joe” family!
We love hearing from you. Here’s what was on your mind this week. As always, you can write to us anytime.
CALLING THE MORNING JOE FAMILY: MIDTERMS MAILBAG
On Election Day, the “Morning Joe” family will answer reader questions about the midterms in the newsletter. Do you have a question to ask? Send it to us here.
LETTERS FROM OUR READERS
I don’t have a question, just a comment. I enjoy watching “Morning Joe” when I get the chance. I have been experiencing some health issues. The Morning Tea gives me a chance to catch up. I’m not always able to get to my computer, so that is why I fall behind. Oh one more thing … Go Brewers!!
—Joe W., Weston, Wis.
No question — just thanks for the wonderful interview with Amy Acton and recap in The Tea. Ad was as low as it could go — a disgrace … I hope Amy succeeds.
— Georgie H., N.J.
I see a lot of similarities between Trump brushing aside the notion that the ad against Amy Acton crosses a line and the seemingly callous way in which Michael Dukakis answered the debate question about why he would still be against the death penalty even if his wife were brutally raped. Not to say those things are on par, but do you think the complete lack of empathy for a child rape victim will stick to Trump and become a major part of his legacy the way the debate response sunk Dukakis?
— Wendy B., Fort Wayne, Ind.
I don’t generally agree with judging people by what group they identify with, but it’s hard not to judge the Republican Party as more corrupt, lying, and hateful than I’ve seen in my life and I’m an old man. Can we the people sue these politicians for lying about us in these ridiculous campaign ads and then doubling down when proved wrong? Are we so far gone in this country that defamation lies can never be prosecuted? Of course even if prosecuted they will bankrupt us through the process and that may even be their plan … all of course with impunity.
— Keith M., Stamford, Conn.
My daughter who is a senior in college asked me yesterday: Why isn’t Election Day a national holiday? Wouldn’t that make it more likely for more people to vote? They could even make it a holiday every other year; midterms and presidential election years. Could alternate that day off with Columbus Day, almost make it a floating holiday. Israel has it this way, where everyone is off that day.
— Matt R., Arlington Heights, Ill.
One week to Election Day. Wow. I’m finding I’m getting more and more excited with each day that passes. I feel I should be feeling more and more anxious, but I’m not.
— Scott, an MS NOW Member
Not a question honestly, but a huge thank you for all of your insight and knowledge. It is what gets me through this nightmare. I so enjoy you ALL! Thank you!
Last week, on the heels of Trump administration officials going after Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Barack Obama issued a statement condemning the obvious and politicized abuse, explaining, “It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say.”
As part of the same statement, the former Democratic president added, “And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.”
The reference to the former FBI director made a lot of sense in light of the Republican administration’s crusade against James Comey, although Obama could not have known what would happen eight days later. MS NOW reported:
Former FBI Director James Comey is facing new federal criminal charges in Washington, D.C., accusing him of unlawfully transmitting sensitive national defense information and conspiring to disclose it to a reporter, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Prosecutors filed the two-count criminal information under seal on Oct. 5, alleging Comey improperly disclosed national defense information while serving as FBI director in 2016. The charges include unlawfully transmitting national defense information to an unauthorized person and conspiracy to commit that offense.
According to the filing, Comey was responsible for some kind of sensitive leak on Oct. 5, 2016. The crime carries a 10-year statute of limitations, which made it all the more notable that Trump’s Justice Department brought the new charges on the last possible day.
In a statement, the former FBI director said the developments “would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to.” Comey added, “Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent, and I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”
It might seem like ancient history, but nearly a decade ago, Trump saw Comey as a political ally. In fact, in January 2017, just two days into his first term, the president appeared to literally blow a kiss at the then-FBI director at a White House event, thanks in part to Comey’s role in undermining Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy.
The affection did not endure. Days later, Trump told Comey he expected “loyalty,” and after Comey did his job instead, the president fired him in the hopes of derailing the FBI’s investigation into the Russia scandal.
When Comey, a lifelong Republican, went public with his concerns and criticisms about Trump, the president came to see the ousted FBI chief as one of his chief enemies, and in April 2018, he started demanding that Comey be prosecuted for crimes that Trump struggled to identify.
It’s taken several years, but the president is seeing the results he’s long sought.
When Trump’s DOJ first charged Comey last year, it was a devastating moment for American law enforcement. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported that within the DOJ, many insiders believed it was “among the worst abuses” in the history of the institution. Describing the circumstances as “shocking,” Dilanian added, “It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”
Indeed, among the most striking things about the Comey case was that it had barely a pretense of propriety. A failing, desperate and unpopular president wanted a critic to be charged, without regard for merit; he publicly demanded the indictment; and he found officials who were willing to feed his appetite for revenge. It was a tragic lesson that Americans now live in a country where the president’s political opponents are prosecuted at his command.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former DOJ official who now teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, told The New York Times, “What we are seeing is the almost wholesale collapse of the Justice Department as an organization based on the rule of law.”
The case ultimately collapsed, but not before a federal judge blasted prosecutors for what he described as an “indict first, investigate later” attitude. Around the same time, a bipartisan group of former federal prosecutors and judges wrote in a court filing that the case was an “assault” on the justice system.
In theory, Trump’s DOJ should have been chastened by the condemnations and by the case’s failure. In practice, the shamelessly weaponized department decided to give it another try, charging Comey again in April, alleging he used Instagram to call for violence against Trump by way of a purported seashell-related code.
Legal experts were reportedly “shell-shocked” over the preposterous nature of the case, and with good reason: No fair-minded observer could defend or take seriously such spurious charges.
Nevertheless, there’s now another case.
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the cases, though there’s no reason to assume that a conviction is Trump’s intended end point. On the contrary, in the broader context, the new indictment checks a different set of boxes for the Republican president.
First, Trump appears eager to make it clear he can orchestrate federal prosecutions based entirely on his whim and petty desires, without regard for merit or evidence. There is, for all intents and purposes, a White House enemies list, and the president seems eager to intimidate and instill fear in those whose names appear on it.
Second, Trump is sending an unsubtle signal to other federal prosecutors who might be inclined to prioritize the rule of law over the White House’s wishes. Indeed, when it comes to the pursuit of the former FBI director, the prosecutors who chose not to bring charges against Comey were replaced with those who would follow political instructions. As a second set of charges moves forward, the message to other prosecutors couldn’t be clearer: Play along with the revenge campaign or face unemployment.
And third, the Comey prosecution allows the president to demonstrate he can force his perceived enemies to endure legal, personal and financial hardships as a direct consequence of their defiance of him, even if the indictments are a joke and the defendants are ultimately acquitted.
Trying to convict the former FBI director is largely irrelevant. The corruption is the point.
With a week left till the midterm elections, Democrats are on edge.
Every day brings some new reason for concern. The Department of Justice files last-minute challenges to election procedures in severalstates. National Guard members are photographed in front of a ballot drop box in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump casts doubt on the results of a Brazilian election that his ally lost, using his old election denial playbook.
It’s no wonder, then, that an AP-NORC poll earlier this month found a 20-point drop in the percentage of Democrats who were confident that votes would be counted accurately since 2022.
In this environment, then, a social media post in which a Democrat alleges that a touchscreen voting machine flipped her vote to a Republican candidate is likely to catch fire online. This time, it came from Stella Parton, sister of the late musical legend Dolly, who said she had to tap three times to correct her vote for senator in Tennessee. “Don’t let them rig this election,” she wrote.
We’ve been here before. Pretty much every election cycle, someone has a bad experience with a touchscreen voting machine and it goes viral — especially if it’s a voter from the party that is out of power.
I get it. There’s something about touchscreens that’s inherently stressful as it is. My text messages are always just a few letters off, I accidentally got Diet Coke at the newfangled soda machine, and my car stereo keeps playing the wrong song when I’m on the highway. Those are bad enough. But to think I might fat-finger my way into voting for the wrong candidate is far worse.
It’s a leap, though, to go from that to the idea that this is proof of rigging the election. In fact, it would be one of the dumber ways to try that.
This particular conspiracy theory has always struck me as silly.
Just think about it. Why would a machine that has been hacked to change the outcome of an election show you that it’s doing it?Wouldn’t it make sense for the machine to pretend it’s counting your vote and then record something else? I know I’m supposed to fact-check this sort of thing with more high-minded logic, but this particular conspiracy theory has always struck me as silly. The problem here is that the screen isn’t calibrated correctly, which is an easy fix.
The other reason it bothers me is that there is an actual problem with touchscreen voting machines, and it gets a fraction of the attention of these viral “vote switching” posts.
The problem is that there are some touchscreen voting machines where your vote is stored electronically — and nowhere else. That means if it was hacked somehow, there would be no way to prove it. Thankfully, election officials realized a few years ago that this was a bad idea, and nearly all touchscreen voting machines now come with a paper receipt. If you notice that your paper receipt doesn’t match your intended vote, you can tell a poll worker right then and there. The receipts can also be manually checked during a recount or election audit later.
Problem solved — almost. According to data compiled by Verified Voting, only 1.3% of voting machines are touchscreens without a paper receipt. (The technical term is direct-recording electronic voting machine without a voter-verified paper audit trail, or DRE without VVPAT.) The remainder exists because voting machines are expensive, and they’re usually paid for at the local level.
Still, most states have replaced these machines already. There may be a couple lurking in a rural county somewhere, but there’s really only one state that still has a lot of them in use: Louisiana.
In fact, every single voting machine in Louisiana is a DRE without a paper receipt. To their credit, state lawmakers seem to have recognized the problem and passed laws to replace the machines, but it’s been a slow-moving process with an uncertain price tag. Still, it should be a massive source of embarrassment to the state that they haven’t fixed this yet.
So the next time you see a viral video claiming that votes are being changed, you can be reassured that it’s just a poorly calibrated touchscreen and can’t change the outcome of the election thanks to those paper receipts.
Unless, of course, it’s in Louisiana.
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Remember Katie Zacharia? She served as Donald Trump’s White House press secretary for about five days before her embarrassing tenure ended abruptly nearly two weeks ago.
Zacharia has said very little in public since losing a job the president never should have given her, but this week, she spoke to the California Post about her extraordinarily unusual experience, pointing to, among other things, her lack of preparation. From the article:
Defending her rocky press room performance, Zacharia claimed she was given “only a few hours of actual briefing material” on the morning of her first press conference. She said former press secretaries, including Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ari Fleischer, and Sean Spicer, reached out to express sympathy over what she called an inadequate “runway” to prepare.
In some ways, this helps capture what made the Zacharia story so notable in the first place.
To be sure, it was (and is) notable that the president chose an unqualified and conspiratorial commentator to serve as his chief spokesperson. But just below the surface, the way in which Trump hired and fired Zacharia reflects a spectacularly dysfunctional White House that struggles to complete basic tasks.
The president and his team, without any meaningful vetting process, chose a conspiracy theorist to be the public face of the White House, three weeks before nationwide elections, and then threw her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation. Failure was both predictable and unavoidable.
But a competent West Wing would have known that in advance and taken steps to avoid a humiliating disaster.
“As the midterm elections draw near, the machine has begun to sputter,” The Atlantic’s Jon Chait noted after Zacharia’s ouster. “In the span of days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he would livestream a public execution, only for Trump to overrule him, [and] the administration fired Kimberly Guilfoyle, its ambassador to Greece, for engaging in corruption so overt, it embarrassed even the most corrupt administration in history. … In the midst of this multicar pileup, Zacharia briefly stepped forward as the administration’s stammering face.”
The fact that her failure came as a surprise to Team Trump speaks volumes about its competence — or lack thereof.
As for the former press secretary’s future, Trump told reporters two weeks ago that he expects her to continue to serve in his administration, “maybe a more pleasant form,” though that may not be altogether true.
“Zacharia teased that new career announcements are imminent, vowing to remain an outspoken Trump ally from outside the executive branch,” the California Post’s article added.
To a degree without modern precedent, White House Cabinet secretaries have spent recent months on the campaign trail, serving as pieces on an electoral chessboard to be moved around to the benefit of the Republican Party — despite ethics laws that are supposed to keep some distance between these powerful officials and partisan political activities.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t the only offender in the Trump administration, although he has arguably been the most ambitious, making all kinds of appearances with vulnerable GOP incumbents and even trying to orchestrate partisan strategies to give Republican lawmakers a boost.
To that end, Kennedy appeared at a partisan campaign event in Michigan on Monday, against a backdrop of several key contests up and down the ballot, most notably a highly competitive U.S. Senate race that may very well determine which party controls the chamber in the next Congress.
That Kennedy was critical of the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, wasn’t too surprising, since this was one of the principal reasons the event was organized. What was notable, however, was how Kennedy targeted the Senate hopeful.
After briefly claiming to have some expertise about the Muslim Brotherhood — the conspiratorial secretary is an environmental lawyer by trade and has no meaningful background in studying transnational religious organizations — Kennedy shared his perspective on “Arab Muslims.”
RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."
“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world,” he declared. “And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
In context, I think the point Kennedy was trying to make had something to do with criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is itself a pointless observation, since El-Sayed has already denounced the organization and denied any ties to it. But instead of focusing on one group, the health secretary ended up trashing the accomplishments of a half-billion people.
For the record, whether the anti-science activist understands this or not, his criticisms were plainly inaccurate: Plenty of Arab Muslims have received those honors, and plenty of Arab Muslim authors have published works of literature. (In fact, Muslim authors such as Abdulrazak Gurnah and Naguib Mahfouz have won the Nobel Prize in literature.)
What’s more, as Kennedy ought to know, the United States is currently at war in the Middle East, and there are U.S. troops stationed in allied nations in the region. For a White House Cabinet secretary to declare that Arab Muslims are somehow inferior in the fields of science and literature isn’t wrong, it’s wrong on a geopolitical scale.
But there’s also the broader electoral context. As Donald Trump leans into Islamophobic rhetoric in the midterm cycle’s closing days, and the closing message of the president’s party relies heavily on overt and unapologetic bigotry, Kennedy traveled to the state with the largest percentage of Muslims to question the contributions of 500 million people.
Many Muslim voters also took an enormous risk two years ago, moving toward the Republican Party. Now, as many of those same voters feel used and betrayed by the party, if GOP officials are counting on them to remain a part of the Republican coalition, they’re likely to be disappointed.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 24 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
With just days until Election Day, the truism “all politics is local” feels especially relevant this year. Some of voters’ most consequential choices will be the bubbles they fill in for statewide ballot measures and local races. These contests will have a direct effect on their communities — like in Montana, where a highly consequential race has been flying somewhat under the radar.
On Nov. 3, voters there will choose a justice for their state Supreme Court. Two district judges are running: Amy Eddy and Dan Wilson. While the race is officially nonpartisan, Eddy is generally viewed as liberal-leaning, backed by labor unions and conservation groups. Wilson is generally viewed as conservative-leaning, backed by the Montana Republican Party.
The Associated Press says the fight over this court “ranks among the most intense” of the nearly two dozen states also electing justices this fall. Millions of dollars are being spent to win this one seat.
Montanans are trying to fight dark money in politics once again.
Montana’s Supreme Court currently leans liberal, 4-3, but if Wilson wins, that majority flips. In just the past several years, Montana’s Supreme Court has issued major rulings protecting legislation around climate, reproductive rights and democracy.
On climate, the court ruled 6-1 in 2023 in favor of 16 young people who sued the state, arguing that its promotion of fossil fuels violated their right to a clean and healthful environment under the Montana Constitution. It was the first ruling of its kind in the country.
On abortion, Montana’s Supreme Court responded to the Dobbs decision by turning to its own state constitution to expand abortion access. That’s the power of state courts: They can protect certain rights even when the federal courts no longer guarantee them.
On voting, in 2024 a 4-3 ruling from the court struck down four voter suppression laws, including one that would have ended Election Day registration. The court held that those laws impermissibly interfered with the right to vote. It noted, “The record shows that more than 70,000 Montanans have utilized election day registration to vote since 2005 and that many electors would be disenfranchised without the availability of election day registration.”
Republicans in the state didn’t love those decisions, which is probably why there’s so much attention and money going into this race.
To be clear, the money flows from both sides. According to the Brennan Center, two political action committees — Montanans for Freedom and Responsibility and Justice Watch — have spent a combined $1.8 million on ads against Wilson. And the PAC More Jobs, Less Government has spent about $460,000 on television ads against Eddy.
According to the Google Ads Transparency Center, another PAC targeting Eddy is the First Principles PAC, which is linked to none other than Leonard Leo. At least one anti-Eddy ad funded by First Principles PAC can be found on YouTube.
Leo, a right-wing money man and longtime Federalist Society chairman, is the same man who helped handpick the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Leo’s network has been involved in state court races across the country.
Now, you may be asking: Why is this particular state race so important to Leo, who doesn’t live anywhere near Montana?
Just consider those decisions noted above. Montana is the fifth-largest coal-producing state in the country, and its court handed down the nation’s first constitutional climate ruling. On abortion, Montana’s state constitution continues to protect access after Dobbs. Meanwhile, Leo’s network has poured millions into anti-abortion groups pushing for bans all over the country.
If this story feels like déjà vu, it’s because we’ve seen a version of it. In Wisconsin last year, more than $100 million from both sides of the aisle was spent on a single state Supreme Court seat, a national record. Elon Musk spent at least $20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans. He tried to promise $1 million checks to those who voted. The liberal candidate won anyway, by about 10 points.
But here’s some fun history: Montana has, in fact, lived through this before. In the early 1900s, wealthy industrialists known as the Copper Kings bought legislators, judges and even a U.S. Senate seat.
In 1912, Montana voters fought back through a ballot initiative, banning corporate spending in elections outright. That law stood for a century until 2012, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down, citing Citizens United.
Now Montanans are trying to fight dark money in politics once again. On the ballot this year is a measure that would bar corporations, unions and dark money nonprofits from spending on elections in the state, which President Donald Trump won by almost 20 points.
The Montana Chamber of Commerce sued to keep the measure off the ballot and lost. The state Republican Party, of course, opposes it. But former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot supports it, calling the measure a “brilliant idea.” He added, “If we get this done, it’s going to spill over and be an example for every other state in the nation.”
Here’s where we come full circle. The ballot measure would target exactly the kind of money that funds most PACs: anonymous dollars routed through nonprofits. And if the measure passes, expect a legal fight, one that could land before the Montana Supreme Court — the very court Leo’s PAC is spending money to flip.
This November, Montana voters will answer two consequential questions on a single ballot: who sits on their highest court and whether corporations get to keep spending money to influence their elections.
That’s why you should never overlook these downballot races. The billionaires writing those checks in back rooms aren’t just trying to shape outcomes in Washington, D.C., they’re working to extend their influence all the way down to your state government and local communities.
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