Today’s edition of quick hits.

* 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.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 10.27.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

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 post Vote on Pete Hegseth’s impeachment is on the way — and it probably won’t be the last appeared first on MS NOW.

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.

Except that’s also not true. Reuters reported:

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 post New data shows why Trump should stop talking about Biden-era gas prices appeared first on MS NOW.

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."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-26T21:03:50.135Z

“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.

The post As his team struggles to find voter fraud evidence, Trump turns to crowdsourcing (again) appeared first on MS NOW.

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

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree.bsky.social) 2026-10-26T17:57:34.529Z

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.

The post Tuesday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.27.26: Annie Andrews picks up key GOP endorsement appeared first on MS NOW.

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.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post The DOJ’s cases against Comey will likely fail. For Trump, a conviction may not be the point. appeared first on MS NOW.

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.

The post Katie Zacharia blames brief White House tenure on lack of prep appeared first on MS NOW.

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."

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-10-27T00:55:48.501Z

“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.

The post RFK Jr., on the campaign trail in Michigan, trashes the accomplishments of ‘Arab Muslims’ appeared first on MS NOW.

When Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail in Michigan over the weekend, the former Democratic president took aim at his Republican successor on a variety of fronts, but he seemed especially interested in mocking Donald Trump’s misplaced priorities.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV,” Obama said. “The guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn.

“And there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.”

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-24T19:12:37.597Z

The comments drew hearty laughter, probably because Obama was right: Trump really is fixated more on remodeling, renovations and interior design than on his weighty responsibilities. That preference has gone poorly, because Trump’s presidency is failing and because the Republican’s gaudy taste has turned the Oval Office into a showcase for gold curios.

If the incumbent president were capable of thinking strategically, he would have taken this opportunity to push a constructive message that reflected the concerns of the American mainstream and proved Obama wrong. Trump instead spent Monday doing the opposite.

Before departing for Mississippi, for example, the Republican held a seven-minute Q&A with members of the White House press corps, and he spent more than half of it whining in response to Obama’s ridicule.

Soon after, the president headlined a rally in support of struggling GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, where he spent another six minutes whining in response to the joke.

The pushback was itself foolish. To hear Trump tell it, Obama is “a stupid person” and “a lousy president” who “doesn’t like” companies like the Cheesecake Factory. The Republican also said he had spent “peanuts” on White House renovations, which seemed like an odd way to characterize roughly $1 billion in investments.

Just as notably, Trump wants Americans to know he’s worked tirelessly with the world’s “finest artisans” to overhaul the presidential mansion and make it “beautiful.” (He didn’t comment on Obama’s reference to Saddam Hussein, about whom Trump has said positive things in the recent past.)

So as Obama poked fun at his successor’s fixation on vanity projects and his failure to focus on what really matters, triggered Trump thought it would be good to fixate on his renovations in the most vainglorious way — and to prove Obama right.

The post Triggered by Cheesecake Factory joke, Trump inadvertently helps prove Obama’s point appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Getting to the bottom of the Starlink matter: “Elon Musk weighed in on Saturday with his first explanation of the disruptions to the Ukrainian military’s satellite system, saying in a post on X that Ukraine had violated the terms of service for his Starlink internet service by using it ‘for offensive drone strikes to kill people.’”

* In related news: “Ukraine’s military Starlink system was working normally again on Saturday morning, the country’s defense minister said, raising hopes that the 10-day disruption of the country’s vital satellite internet service by Elon Musk’s SpaceX was ending.”

* Conditions in France: “Protests across France over a worsening cost-of-living crisis and growing inequality descended into violence for a second straight weekend. France’s Interior Ministry said 410,000 people took part in protests in several major cities, including Paris.”

* The obviously right call: “A federal judge on Monday ruled that Maureen Comey, a former senior prosecutor at the Justice Department and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was unlawfully fired and is entitled to back pay.”

* There’s credible excuse for withholding this evidence: “The federal government has stopped sharing evidence with Minnesota authorities who are investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers, state officials said in recent court filings.”

* This buyout initiative would reduce Microsoft’s global workforce by roughly a fourth: “Microsoft said Monday that it’s offering buyouts to a wide swath of employees as it strives to balance a costly artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out with capital efficiency. The software maker announced a new voluntary exit offer for certain workers in the U.S., Canada, India and the United Kingdom at its experience level of 70 or below. Microsoft will offer buyouts to about 60,000 workers, part of the company’s efforts to trim costs and retool its workforce for the AI era.”

* Doellner should probably keep in mind that Democrats and independents buy cars, too: “Audi chief Gernot Doellner drew heavy criticism on Monday for ​appearing alongside US President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the battleground state of Georgia, with the head of Germany’s top union saying it violated the ‌automaker’s company guidelines.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Monday’s Mini-Report, 10.26.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

Over the course of Donald Trump’s second term, there have only been a handful of prominent officials who have resigned in frustration and expressed public concerns about the president and his administration. One of them is Marc Rosenblum.

Rosenblum served as the executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s statistics office. When he resigned over the summer, he declared in a LinkedIn post, “I’m thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration. … Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change.”

Luis Miranda, a top DHS spokesperson during the Biden administration, told Wired, “Marc was exactly what every American should want in a career public servant. The Trump administration has governed by silencing or ignoring facts and information they believe doesn’t line up with their extreme rhetoric, and that has damaging implications, so it’s no surprise career officials whose job is transparency are unable to do those jobs.”

All of this came to mind last week when Rosenblum made headlines for a new and related reason. The Washington Sun reported:

A former top statistics official who resigned from the Department of Homeland Security this summer says the government is overstating how many unauthorized immigrants have left the country during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Marc Rosenblum, whose blistering resignation letter from a decade-long career at DHS garnered national attention, is behind a new estimate published Thursday that says between 790,000 and 1.9 million immigrants departed the U.S. from Jan. 20, 2025, to July 31, 2026.

According to the Republican administration’s official line, Trump and his team have pushed out more than 3 million undocumented immigrants during that period. According to the official who directly oversaw the Department of Homeland Security’s statistics office, that number simply isn’t believable.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin could help shed additional light on what’s true by releasing detailed information to bolster the administration’s claims, but so far he has refused to do so. In fact, last month, when pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on the lack of data transparency, Mullin said, “Every time we give numbers out … you guys want to go in there and pick it apart.”

In other words, according to the DHS chief, the administration could provide the public with information, but then people might scrutinize the information — and that’s just not a door that Team Trump is prepared to open.

The problem, however, isn’t limited to DHS. At the FBI, Director Kash Patel and his team have faced accusations for months about manipulating statistics for political purposes. And just two weeks ago, MS NOW reported that the Patel-led bureau had padded its total number of arrests by including ones that were made by state and local police forces.

Making matters worse, when the administration isn’t inflating data, it’s hiding. In fact, Politico reported two weeks ago that the IRS was supposed to have released detailed data on the impact of the Republicans’ 2025 package of tax breaks, but Team Trump decided to delay the release for reasons it did not want to talk about.

This came on the heels of Trump’s Commerce Department announcing sweeping new changes to the proposed 2030 census, including plans to exclude undocumented immigrants and immigrants who are in the United States legally but have yet to secure green cards or citizenship.

What we’re dealing with, in other words, is a Republican administration that lies about data, inflates data, hides data, fires those responsible for compiling data and in some instances even makes up data.

The public, here and around the world, has long been able to rely on the integrity of statistics from the United States government. Less than two years into Trump’s second term, that confidence is evaporating.

The post On multiple fronts, the Trump administration faces accusations of data manipulation appeared first on MS NOW.

For those concerned about Donald Trump trying to derail election results he doesn’t like, Friday was an unsettling day: The Justice Department filed a preemptive lawsuit aimed at blocking certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race — but only if the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, loses while his rival with the similar name remains on the ballot.

Usually, Trump waits until after Election Day to try to overturn the will of the voters. As of late last week, he took a step toward doing so before the votes are tallied.

Legal experts from the left, right and center took a good look at the litigation, and the reaction was universal amazement at how ridiculous the case is. Richard Pildes, a New York University law professor who specializes in election issues, went so far as to say, “It is one of the weakest election lawsuits I’ve ever seen.”

The question then became why in the world the Justice Department would embarrass itself with such an absurdity. We didn’t have to wait too long for an answer.

On Monday afternoon, the president boasted to reporters that the case was filed at his behest. “I’m the one that said, ‘Do it,’” Trump declared. On Saturday and Sunday, he continued to not only defend the lawsuit — his argument was rooted in part on the idea that Alaskan voters might not know what “incumbent” means — but also claimed that he was directly responsible for the case’s existence.

The president’s public comments helped shed light on the unfortunate origins of this foolish case, and why it’s a bad idea for federal law enforcement to file lawsuits based on the whims of a former television personality whose only legal background is being charged with dozens of felonies. But Trump also offered a timely reminder about who’s pulling the strings at Main Justice. The New York Times reported:

Mr. Trump has grown increasingly agitated about the dueling Sullivans, among other election-related grievances. He has demanded the department take legal action, even as some department officials raised concerns about the merits and constitutionality of the case, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general during the Biden administration, told the Times, “The department is taking commands from the president and throwing spaghetti at the wall to file meritless lawsuits. The ultimate goal is undermining faith in the election, intimidating voters and discrediting results the administration doesn’t like.”

It has long been obvious that the West Wing effectively controls this Justice Department, but to the extent that any pretense existed, it’s now gone. Indeed, it wasn’t long ago when the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington abandoned Reflecting Pool prosecutions, drawing outrage from the president who expected to be personally consulted about developments in a baseless vandalism case.

“From the moment President Trump was re-elected, he has muscled his way into the driver’s seat at the Justice Department, leaving tread marks on its time-honored independence from the White House by demanding, and sometimes directing, investigations into his enemies,” the Times reported in August. “But his tight grip on the steering wheel has often threatened to lead the department off a cliff.”

Two months later, the problem appears to be intensifying.

During Blanche’s confirmation process, Blanche made it clear that he, unlike Trump’s first-term attorneys general, envisioned his role as that of an instrument of the president’s will. Indeed, while Trump has ended up clashing with all of his other attorneys general, Blanche was positioned to succeed where others failed because he willingly accepted the idea that his office is an extension of the West Wing.

But recent events have brought into sharp relief the fact that Blanche’s goal is to serve one American, not 340 million Americans. It’s precisely what makes Trump’s former defense lawyer the AGINO — the Attorney General in Name Only.

The post Who runs the Justice Department? Blanche and Trump aren’t bothering to hide the answer. appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Ohio’s gubernatorial race, the editorial board of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland announced months ago that it would no longer make endorsements in top-of-the-ballot races. After seeing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s notorious attack ad, the editors changed their mind and endorsed Ramaswamy’s Democratic rival, Amy Acton. From the endorsement:

There are moments when a community must decide what it stands for, when its institutions have a duty to speak and when silence itself becomes a statement. Ohio has reached such a moment.

Vivek Ramaswamy, seeking the highest office in this state, has produced a campaign advertisement that weaponizes the sexual abuse his opponent, Amy Acton, suffered as a child. People across the political spectrum have rightly condemned it.

But condemnation has to mean something. Our politics have been debased for a decade, but this we will not accept. A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party.

For his part, the GOP nominee is still airing the disgusting attack, though his campaign has switched from a 60-second version to a 30-second version.

Ramaswamy also appeared on Fox News on Monday morning and accused Acton of being “crazy” and “unstable,” which came after Donald Trump spent part of the weekend reiterating his support for the vile attack.

Also on Monday morning, Acton appeared on MS NOW and said, “I can tell you that decency is on the ballot in this election.”

* In Mississippi’s unexpectedly competitive U.S. Senate race, Democrats supporting local prosecutor Scott Colom began investing in the contest last week. And soon after, the Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate Republican super PAC, announced that it’s spending more than $1 million in the hopes of rescuing Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

These moves precede the president’s scheduled rally in Mississippi in support of Hyde-Smith.

* In Texas’ U.S. Senate race, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico continues to pick up some GOP endorsements, including a new one from Thomas Phillips, the former Republican chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

“Paxton’s longstanding reputation will embarrass Texas in ways our state simply cannot afford,” Phillips wrote in an op-ed for The Beaumont Enterprise, referring to Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

On a related note, ProPublica reported last week that the scandal-plagued GOP nominee’s trust invested $600,000 in a convicted fraudster’s company, Paxton’s “tough on crime” claims notwithstanding.

* In South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, a new super PAC representing the data center industry is scrambling to try to help appointed Republican Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

* And in North Carolina, The New York Times reported that new mail ballot rules are opening the door to thousands of ballots not being counted.

“At issue is a requirement that voters seal not only the outer envelope of their mail ballot but also an inner envelope that contains the ballot itself,” the article explained.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.26.26: Fallout from Ramaswamy ad continues appeared first on MS NOW.

Last week a judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to release the Rev. Edward Nalwamba, a Ugandan priest who had lived in Colorado for more than 25 years before being sent to an immigrant detention center 13 months ago. The priest’s health deteriorated during his detention, to the point that he now relies on a wheelchair.

After a court set him free, the private prison company that operates the detention center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly wouldn’t provide Nalwamba with a wheelchair, so fellow detainees literally carried him from the facility.

Days earlier, a federal judge blocked DHS from carrying out a variety of field operations focused on uncovering alleged voter fraud in nine states as part of a broader push to identify noncitizen voters. The New York Times report on the developments noted:

[Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin], who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that the scope of the operations also raised concerns about voter intimidation. She noted that according to agency memos, the Homeland Security Department “surveils, covertly infiltrates and interrogates the staff of nonprofits and churches conducting voter engagement” and had targeted nearly 150 such nonprofit groups as of July.

The Trump administration, in other words, was found to have conducted covert surveillance inside houses of worship, in addition to conducting interrogations of the churches’ staff.

This was not the first time the Republican administration was found to have spied on churches.

A few months into Donald Trump’s second term, the president’s team launched a task force that was intended, according to the White House, to eradicate “anti-Christian bias” within the federal government. At a launch event in April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi began by attacking Joe Biden, whom Bondi said had “abused and targeted Christians.”

The slander was baseless. What’s more, when the task force tried to bolster its accusations with a lengthy written report, the allegations against the former president and his Democratic administration largely fell apart.

But more than a year after Team Trump started making a concerted effort to convince Americans that Biden and his White House “abused and targeted Christians,” it’s the incumbent president and his Republican administration that continue to clash with faith communities — up to and including surveillance of churches.

It’s hard not to forget the incident from July, when ICE agents hauled off a nun who was wearing her habit and walking down a public sidewalk en route to Sunday Mass (she was released from federal detention after a backlash from members of Congress), but such examples keep cropping up.

Indeed, there have been related controversies surrounding Team Trump suing a Catholic diocese in New Mexico to seize 14 acres of land for additional border barriers; the Pentagon’s narrowed list of officially recognized religions; Trump picking fights with Pope Leo XIV; the administration stripping funding from Catholic charities; a White House offensive against the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde for her defense of marginalized communities; and instances in which federal agents have shot faith leaders with pepper balls.

If these developments had unfolded during a Democratic administration, is there any doubt Republicans and conservative media outlets would have launched hysterical campaigns about the “Democratic war on religion”?

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post The Trump administration keeps clashing with faith communities appeared first on MS NOW.

One of the recurring themes this election cycle is a sense of betrayal: There are a growing number of constituencies that backed Republicans two years ago, only to feel abandoned by Donald Trump and his party.

Farmers, for example, voted for the president by lopsided margins in the 2024 race, and many have been let down by an administration that’s repeatedly made matters worse for the agricultural industry. Latino voters also shifted to Republicans in large numbers two years ago, confident that Trump would focus his deportation agenda on violent criminals. They now know better.

Similarly, many Muslim voters also took at enormous risk in 2024, moving toward a GOP nominee who championed a Muslim ban in his first term. Two years later, it’s a community that feels used and betrayed by a party that has seized on Islamophobia as the foundation for its closing message in the midterm elections.

But it’s also worth sparing a thought for those who believed Trump when he promised he was committed to “making America healthy again.” An overwhelming body of evidence leaves little doubt that he didn’t mean a word of it. The New York Times reported on the findings of a devastating investigation:

In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states and Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters and coal-burning power plants. About 3.3 million people live within three miles of at least one affected facility.

The exemptions represent the biggest presidential intervention in enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the half-century since President Richard M. Nixon signed the bedrock environmental law. And that is only one of the ways the Trump administration is dismantling a variety of federal environmental protections.

The Times documented in great detail the degree to which the Republican administration has systematically dismantled public safeguards to champion the wishes of polluters and chemical manufacturers, in ways without precedent in American history.

I’m mindful that much of the “MAHA” movement’s base is comprised of activists who are focused almost entirely on opposition to vaccines. But to the extent there are others who are genuinely interested in making America healthy again and who have sincere concerns about the spread of cancer-causing pollution, the Republican White House has gone to stunning lengths to express total indifference to those issues, instead elevating chemical industry lobbyists to leadership roles inside Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.

“Donald Trump and [Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] keep treating MAHA activists like disposable political pawns and now wonder why many resent it,” Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse recently said in a statement. “There’s not one MAHA promise Trump hasn’t been willing to break once the checks clear from his big chemical, food and tobacco donors. Food, air, water safety and kids’ health have all been compromised to feed profits for makers of addictive fruit flavored vapes, cancer-linked pesticides, and PFAS forever chemicals. And every time RFK Jr. proves himself a phony by making excuses for Trump’s latest MAHA double-cross, like making glyphosate great again.”

Time will tell how many of these constituencies move toward Democrats in the midterms or decide not to cast to ballots at all; but after the dust settles on the election cycle and the president and Republican leaders assess what went wrong, they might want to start by acknowledging the Americans who felt betrayed after counting on the GOP to deliver.

The post As Election Day nears, a growing number of constituencies feel betrayed by Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

As October got underway, Donald Trump threw an online tantrum by way of his social media platform, lashing out at Sen. Tom Cotton because the Arkansas Republican hedged on a daylight saving time proposal supported by the White House. The president, however, didn’t just throw around some juvenile names.

After making the case that Cotton was focused on his “ego” and failing to put “Arkansas first,” Trump publicly released the senator’s cellphone number and encouraged Arkansans to use it.

Nearly two weeks later, as the president expressed fears about Texas’ U.S. Senate race, he threw another online tantrum, this time targeting Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, whom Trump labeled a “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE” political hack who would deserve the blame if state Attorney General Ken Paxton loses.

On Friday, after Trump’s Justice Department filed an outlandish lawsuit targeting Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (who is not up for re-election this year) denounced the radical gambit, declaring in a statement, “Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot. The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”

Naturally, the president who demanded the lawsuit wasn’t pleased. In yet another lengthy online rant published Saturday night, Trump labeled Murkowski “the Republicans’ Worst Senator, by far,” before falsely saying that the senator “only got elected” because of the state’s system of ranked choice balloting, which he falsely described as “corrupt” and a “total Democrat [sic] scam.”

He added that Murkowski “probably wants” Democrats “to steal the Election,” before adding, “Lisa Murkowski is a DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country. You just don’t get any worse!”

Trump concluded that if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, “everything we’ve done for Alaska will come to an immediate hault.” (In context, I suspect he meant “halt.”)

For good measure, shortly before midnight, the president kept going, adding in a follow-up tirade, “They’ve been trying to get rid of Lisa Murkowski forever in Alaska, then she came up with the Ranked Choice Voting SCAM.” (Again, it’s not a scam; Murkowski isn’t the one who came up with it; and the system was not responsible for rescuing her career.)

That Trump holds the GOP senator in contempt is not exactly new, but the recent series of harangues directed at senators from his own party is a timely reminder that this guy, 11 years into his political career and nearly six years into his presidency, still has no idea how to deal with Congress.

Evidently, as the president sees it, if he can just harass his ostensible allies enough through online antics, then maybe they’ll succumb to his intimidation efforts and follow his demands.

Except, as he probably ought to know by now, his harassment efforts tend not to work. Cotton didn’t change his mind about daylight saving time; Cornyn hasn’t become a Paxton cheerleader; and Murkowski hasn’t backed off her criticisms of an indefensible lawsuit.

What we’re left with is a president who keeps picking pointless fights with intraparty allies, whose support he might yet need in the near future, in the run-up to critically important U.S. elections — which is every bit as foolish as it sounds.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post ‘A disgrace’: Trump finds yet another Republican senator to condemn ahead of the midterms appeared first on MS NOW.

As last week neared its end, struggling consumers confronted yet another discouraging development: Oil prices reached levels unseen since April. With so little time remaining in the midterm election cycle, and with affordability on the minds of so many Americans, common sense suggested this would be a topic Donald Trump would avoid at his latest campaign rallies.

And yet, the Republican president apparently couldn’t help himself.

Trump: "While oil prices are temporarily high … the United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-25T00:27:47.633Z

Saturday night in Georgia, Trump began by assuring his supporters that gas prices would “be falling dramatically” just as soon as he figured out a way to end the war he launched against Iran. If he had stopped here, it would not have been notable.

But then he kept going.

“The United States’ oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars,” the president said, conceding that he wasn’t sure whether to bring this up, and that members of his own team advised him, “Please don’t mention that, sir.”

He blew off the good advice.

Trump’s own team told him not to celebrate higher energy prices shortly before Election Day, since Americans generally don’t want to be told to be happy about their pain at the pump. He decided not to listen, evidently because he’s delighted to see Big Oil cash in, regardless of the impact on unhappy consumers.

The president first rolled out this talking point just two weeks after launching the war, using his social media platform to argue, “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

That line proved wildly unpersuasive and was quickly dropped from the White House’s talking points, before making an unexpected comeback at an event in Arizona two weeks ago. “Our country is making more money than it’s ever made because of the fact that oil is so high,” Trump boasted, effectively telling American consumers to be glad they’re paying more at the pump.

As a substantive matter, the problem with Trump’s claim that “we’re making a fortune” is that the word “we” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It’s true that the United States is producing a lot of oil, and it’s also true that higher prices help generate oil industry profits. But since the number of Americans who benefit from oil industry profits is very small, few will likely celebrate the ongoing hit to their wallets.

But as a political matter, it’s remarkable to see the Republican — who has gone out of his way to make the midterms a referendum on himself — execute such a bizarre strategy at the worst possible time.

“I can just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump,’” he said. The trouble is, there’s nothing fake about such headlines: Trump really did talk about all the money Big Oil was making while people were suffering at the pump, which he then promptly followed with, “I don’t give a damn.”

If Republicans are very lucky, voters won’t hear about this.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump ignores his own team’s advice, celebrates higher oil prices appeared first on MS NOW.

In the recent past, countless international observers had ample reason to fear the ascendancy of strongman leaders in nations around the globe, as democracies suffered one setback after another. Donald Trump’s return to the American presidency offered a dramatic example for the West, but the broader authoritarian pattern extended elsewhere.

This year, however, democracy and its champions are starting to turn the tide.

In April, then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suffered a lopsided defeat, ending his radically regressive 16-year reign, despite the White House’s intervention on his behalf.

Six months later, the 14-year reign of Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic also crashed, thanks in large part to a student-led progressive movement. The Associated Press reported:

The long-ruling authoritarian leader on Sunday conceded the defeat of his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party to a grassroots movement of university students who led protests for almost two years against him before unseating him in a historic change of government. […]

The diverse youth movement’s message that rampant corruption, cronyism and organized crime under Vucic were eating away at the country resonated widely with voters.

Sounding a rather pitiful note after having been rejected by his own country’s electorate, Vucic attributed his defeat to a series of perceived enemies, including “the deep American state, the one that is also against President Trump.”

The celebrations in Belgrade continued anyway.

People in Belgrade celebrated following Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic speech conceding defeat to a student-led protest movement in a historic election that ends his long grip on power and heralds a new political era in the Balkan country. reut.rs/4zkXvww

— Reuters (@reuters.com) 2026-10-26T05:03:08Z

“I ​have just spoken by phone with the leaders of the Students’ List, who won the elections in Serbia, to congratulate them on their victory,” Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said in a statement. “I assured them of Hungary’s support. I was delighted ​to hear how much strength our victory in April had given them during this difficult struggle.”

Hours later, the world learned that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a surprising fourth term, defeating his right-wing rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, four years after Bolsonaro’s father attempted a coup that ultimately sent him to prison, and who also enjoyed the White House’s backing.

As The New York Times noted, Bolsonaro refused to accept the outcome, “increasing the risk of unrest over the election result.”

Time will tell what becomes of conditions in Brasília and who ultimately succeeds Vucic. But as the dust settles on these elections, there is an obvious and heartening through line connecting the election results out of Hungary, Serbia and Brazil: Democracies defeated autocracies.

Every country has its own unique political dynamics, and the victors in these countries are hardly identical. But when leaders of the global authoritarian movement lose, it’s worth celebrating — because when voters reject candidates like Vucic and Bolsonaro, it’s not just a setback for them and their parties, it’s also a failure for the movements they help represent.

That said, there’s fresh evidence to believe the White House hasn’t yet gotten the message: The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is eyeing Orbán to serve as the next United Nations secretary-general, which is both bonkers and evidence that the broader democratic fight remains ongoing.

The post Voters in Serbia and Brazil add to the losing streak of authoritarian candidates appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The highest oil prices since April: “Oil prices rose further on Friday, as hostilities across the Middle East continue to raise fears in the energy markets that the oil supply from the region would remain throttled. The price of Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, jumped above $117 a barrel on Friday, taking its increase for the week to almost 6 percent.”

* A relatively quiet hurricane season is picking up: “Vance became a hurricane Friday and the National Hurricane Center said it would strengthen rapidly as it nears Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Vance was a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph) as it churned about 455 miles (730 kilometers) south-southwest of Acapulco, and could become a major Category 3 hurricane before the end of Friday, the center said.”

* The Starlink matter is not yet resolved: “Ukrainian interceptors still cannot use the internet at high speed to shoot down Russian attack drones or conduct mid-strike operations as of Friday morning, Ukrainian officials and a drone operator said, despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying SpaceX founder Elon Musk had lifted speed restrictions on his Starshield service.”

* A twisted sense of entitlement: “Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday cited genetics to declare that Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’ and reiterated his claim to Ukrainian territory, saying, ‘I think that it is not their territory but the historical territory of Russia.’”

* There’s a sentence I didn’t expect to read: “First lady Melania Trump has brokered a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine in the war-ravaged city of Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians, the White House announced on Friday. The localized ceasefire is set to begin Oct. 29.” (Let’s note that the White House announces a lot of things, many of which aren’t true.)

* In the Middle East: “Israeli soldiers shot and killed two men who the military said had launched an attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Friday morning. At least five people were injured, including some critically. A few hours later, Israel ordered the army to prepare for a full closure of the West Bank.”

* Keep an eye on this one: “The Department of Justice on Friday charged two former top FBI officials with lying to Congress about their involvement in the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden. The charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who worked on the FBI’s now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, stem from a brief they gave to members of Congress about the task force’s investigation of Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.”

* Heartening scientific research: “A groundbreaking vaccine reduced the risk of death or recurrence of melanoma by almost half, an encouraging signal for a treatment seeking federal approval that has boosted the fortunes of drugmakers Moderna and Merck and could usher in a new wave of cancer treatments.”

* And The New York Times published a fascinating report on the Pentagon setting up review boards at bases around the world, specifically designed to kick transgender troops out of the military. Uniformed service members on these panels, however, keep doing the opposite, agreeing to keep the trans troops rather than firing them.

Have a safe weekend.

The post Friday’s Mini-Report, 10.23.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

Among the more amazing things about Donald Trump’s crusade against Rep. Ilhan Omar is how utterly brazen it is. The president and his team could at least try to keep up appearances, to maintain some kind of pretense that the scrutiny of the Minnesota Democrat is legitimate — but the Republican officials have largely decided not to bother.

On the contrary, Trump publicly demanded an investigation into a political opponent — which is itself an abuse — all the while making clear that he hoped to strip Omar of her citizenship and to deport a sitting congresswoman who dared to cross him. Soon after, federal departments did as they were directed to do, in pursuit of the president’s stated goal.

“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,” Barack Obama said in a statement. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”

Despite highly dubious evidence of wrongdoing, federal agents seized the laptop, cellphone and passport of a sitting member of Congress, at which point the president who demanded this probe received a highly unusual briefing from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

While there’s still no evidence that the Minnesotan has done anything wrong, Trump took some time during his Thursday night rally in Iowa to insist that Omar resign. The Republican added that “the Democrat [sic] Party has conceded her seat” and she will no longer be permitted to serve in Congress.

Trump calls for Ilhan Omar to immediately resign & says, "please inform our great Speaker, James Michael Johnson that the Democrat Party has conceded her seat … she will not be allowed to me a member of that body any longer"Trump's crowd in Iowa then starts chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-23T00:27:55.342Z

At that point, as if on cue, his followers chanted, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

After the event, the president published a statement to his social media platform, again calling on Omar to “IMMEDIATELY resign from Congress,” adding that someone should inform House leaders that the congresswoman has “openly admitted to FRAUD, and she will not be legally allowed to be a Member of this August Body.”

In reality, of course, Omar has not “openly admitted” to any wrongdoing and has repeatedly denied the White House’s allegations. No one has conceded their seat — Omar is likely to be re-elected in 11 days — and she is absolutely still permitted to serve on Capitol Hill, doing the job Americans in her district elected her to do.

I have no idea what, if anything, will come of this relentless campaign. Given that Team Trump also ordered an investigation into Omar’s records in his first term and that probe was eventually abandoned for lack of evidence, the president might want to temper his expectations.

But that this is happening at all reflects unmistakable authoritarian tactics.

“The investigation of her is a chilling example of the federal government using its immense power to silence a critic,” the editorial board of The New York Times explained. “It is an affront to free speech, the rule of law and American ideals.”

The editorial added, “In the case of Ms. Omar, the administration has gone back more than a quarter-century to investigate a prominent critic. If her naturalization can be revisited, it suggests that no naturalized citizen is safe. It also indicates that the federal government can go searching for any decades-old problem to hound somebody who has criticized the White House. Those are the tactics of authoritarian societies.”

The post Trump’s crusade against Ilhan Omar follows a familiar authoritarian playbook appeared first on MS NOW.