Getting charged with election fraud while fueling bogus allegations of election fraud — that’s the MAGA way.
In the Trump era, it’s not uncommon for Republicans to be charged or even convicted of voter fraud while their conservative movement pushes false — and fundamentally racist — claims of election chicanery. My colleague Steve Benen has covered this trend for years.
We, of course, can’t forget the insurrectionists pardoned by Donald Trump after they fueled a riot at the Capitol premised on lies about voter fraud. Or the Trump allies who agreed to pay up in 2024 after concocting a fraudulent voter suppression scheme.
And earlier this year, I wrote about the former official at Turning Point Action who comported himself as a champion of election integrity before pleading guilty to election fraud.
Certified hypocrites abound.
And now, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that scandal-plagued conservative activist James O’Keefe and pro-MAGA content creator Cam Higby have been charged with various crimes over an alleged plot involving fake identities presented to election workers in an effort to sow doubt about the integrity of next week’s midterms.
Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O’Keefe and another man with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft for filming themselves misrepresenting their identities to election judges during the Minnesota Aug. 11 primary.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said they were alerted by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office that James O’Keefe, Cameron Higby and others were trying to undermine the state’s vouching system.
Videos posted by O’Keefe’s operation show them wearing burkas outside precincts during the primary. Moriarty said the voter names they used included some residents who were dead and at least one who voted.
Here’s the way O’Keefe’s operation recently defended the effort:
In a press release in August, O’Keefe’s group, which calls itself the “Justice League,” said the people in the video “did not cast ballots. The investigation was intended to test the limits of Minnesota’s vouching law and document how election workers apply it on Election Day.”
On Monday, he claimed that the “only way” Republican candidate Michele Tafoya can lose her Senate race in Minnesota is if liberals “cheat.” That’s the context for O’Keefe and Higby’s alleged scheme, which Media Matters recently described in more detail:
In August, O’Keefe and other right-wing content creators affiliated with his Citizen Justice League descended on Minnesota to attack the state’s voter voucher system, claiming to be registered voters in various precincts and asking poll workers if they would be able to vouch for several unregistered individuals who lacked photo ID.
Videos of the stunts, produced by Higby, O’Keefe, and Rubin, make the broad claim that Minnesota’s voucher system, which allows for a registered voter to “vouch” for the identities of up to eight unregistered individuals living in the same precinct, is a natural source for fraud.
Media Matters noted that some of the footage has been promoted by the Trump administration and conservative media. And the racism involved was unsubtle:
In the videos from O’Keefe and Higby, the pair dressed in what O’Keefe described as “full traditional Muslim attire” and adopted fake accents to impersonate registered voters and ask if they could vouch for several friends or family members.
But intimidation appears to be the primary intent here. O’Keefe is known for launching bogus sting operations that conservatives can use to peddle MAGA propaganda, potentially placing their targets in various kinds of danger. In 2024, I wrote about how one such operation apparently fueled violent threats toward staff at a shelter for immigrants in Arizona.
Now, Republicans are attempting to conjure up voter fraud claims to gin up backlash over a crucial Senate race in which polling has consistently shown the Democrat with an edge. And Minnesota’s Hennepin County apparently isn’t standing for it.
Taylor, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, is running in a House district that white Tennessee Republicans — acting on the president’s behest — gerrymandered in ways that carved up the state’s only majority-Black district, seemingly ensuring that the district would be represented by a white Republican.
And when all is said and done, Taylor may indeed cruise to victory over his well-known progressive opponent, fellow state Sen. Justin Pearson. But Taylor’s acknowledged history of sending unsolicited nudes has thrown a wrench into his campaign.
Taylor faced mockery and fierce rebuke this week for responding to an exposé by describing the nude photos — some of which he apparently sent in his 50s — as “youthful indiscretions.” According to the Nashville Scene:
Multiple sources say they had received or seen nude photos from Taylor, who is running for U.S. Congress in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. Taylor acknowledged to the Scene that he had sent nude photos in the past but dismissed them as mistakes that have since been forgiven by his wife Kimberly.
“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor tells the Scene when asked about a history of texting nude pictures. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of and we’ve worked through it a long time ago. My god and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”
As the outlet noted, these were hardly “youthful indiscretions”:
One individual — who requested anonymity, citing fear of retaliation — says they received an unsolicited nude picture from Taylor as recently as 2021, before he was elected to the state Senate. A second eyewitness source independently confirmed the nude photos sent by Taylor. At that time, Taylor was 53.
I'm disturbed to learn of Brent Taylor’s pattern of sending unsolicited nude photos to multiple women.
The fact that he would dismiss his behavior as “youthful indiscretions" despite it happening recently, in his fifties, & while he held government office is ridiculous.
To reiterate, Taylor is still headed into Election Day with the advantage manufactured for him through gerrymandering. But his campaign is providing yet more fodder to point out the hypocrisy of a MAGA movement that claims to promote Christian values but celebrates and enables men known for sex predation, such as Trump.
The Tennessee Republican has given liberals a gift this election season: “My opponent was sending unsolicited nudes while on the doorstep of qualifying for the Denny’s senior menu” is one hell of a closing argument against someone who shouldn’t be anywhere near a congressional seat.
This is the Oct. 28, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
“You can even come to Mar-a-Lago … The problem is that for $5,000, the most you’ll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I’m not even sure you could buy that.”
— President Donald Trump joking at a political rally in Texas yesterday that U.S. adults could not afford to eat at his Florida estate
One week. That’s all that stands between James Talarico and one of the biggest political upsets in modern Texas history.
As he barnstorms the Lone Star State in the final stretch, the political athlete is clinging to a narrow lead over Attorney General Ken Paxton. MS NOW’s data polling partner FiftyPlusOne found Talarico at 49% to Paxton’s 46.2%, and a Fox News poll put him ahead, 51% to 49%. Those are small margins, but they point toward the possibility of a remarkable result. A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988.
What makes Talarico’s position even more impressive is what he’s up against. Paxton has Donald Trump’s machine behind him, along with Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar checkbook. The world’s richest man has already poured almost $190 million into the contest, routed through a Senate GOP super PAC. That’s pushed combined ad spending past $500 million, putting the race on pace to be the most expensive in Senate history.
But Talarico hasn’t flinched. He’s called out the billionaire money flooding the airwaves and hammered away at Trump, Musk, and the issues that matter most to Texans. As I said months ago, the top three issues in this campaign will be costs, costs, and costs. Talarico leads Paxton on that key issue and is crushing the impeached attorney general with independents, 60% to 32%.
The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both call Texas a toss-up. Dan Rather might say the race is “tight as a tick.” And Texas Republicans maintain a big structural advantage. But Talarico is turning the campaign’s final corner and heading into the homestretch with momentum, a winning message, and a lead.
With Election Day less than a week away, his campaign is kicking into overdrive. If the past is prologue in this race, expect Talarico to take it to the limit one more time. And this time, it’s for the win.
CHARTS OF THE DAY
Source: Gallup poll of 1,200 U.S. adults conducted Oct. 1-19, 2026. Margin of error: ±4 percentage points
WHAT THEY SAID
Jonathan Lemire on Trump campaigning
“Those who work for Donald Trump in his second term are true believers. But the president’s been in a bubble, and his crowds, who keep laughing at all his jokes, are much smaller than they used to be. It’s working for that small group of die-hard, dedicated supporters, but it is not playing outside those rooms — and it’s not going to help Republicans next week.”
John Heilemann on DOJ vs. Alaska
“This is so far over the bright line into authoritarian regime territory. The Department of Justice is saying that if the Republican wins, they won’t challenge this case. But if anybody else wins, the result is invalid and should not be certified. That is truly remarkable, dangerous, and astonishing, all rolled into one.”
Sam Stein on Mike Johnson’s loyalty test
“Mike Johnson is going to play a critical role in whether or not we have a peaceful transfer of congressional power. If Trump believes that the elections are contested and they shouldn’t be seated, will Mike Johnson acquiesce? I’m genuinely happy there are layers of protection here, but also dismayed that it’s even got to this point.”
2026 is showing us the future of American politics.
Tuesday could mark the end of the Trump era. That was Nate Silver’s read on Ezra Klein’s podcast.
“He’ll still be president for two more years,” Silver said. “But the minute the election, the votes, are counted … the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck.”
Silver compared the political landscape to the George W. Bush administration after 2006.
Trump will “still be president for two more years,” Silver said. “But the minute the election, the votes, are counted … the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck.”
Nate Silver
The map already looks like “a different regime,” Silver said. “Kansas is competitive, Texas is competitive.” Charlie Cook called it “a unicorn election,” unlike any of the 22 he’s covered, per the Cook Political Report. The swing group isn’t suburban independents but “normally reliable Republicans,” many in farm country, who think Trump made “colossally bad decisions” on Iran and trade.
This cycle has also rewritten some of the rules for 2028.
For one, district maps are now redrawn mid-decade. President Donald Trump pushed Republican legislatures to redraw, and after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling, the South did just that.
The next redistricting round is already on the line Tuesday. Democrats could win a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010, and Cook noted that states like Georgia, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa “could be critical when it comes to upcoming redistricting fights and battles over election integrity in 2028.”
Democrats have moved on Israel. A dozen Biden-era officials who resigned over Gaza released a pledge Wednesday morning asking 2028 candidates to reject both Joe Biden’s and Trump’s Israel policies and not to hire the officials behind them, per The Washington Sun. Roughly half of Democrats now say Israel committed genocide in Gaza. One Democratic fundraising source told the Sun that 2028 campaigns were “waiting to see if [Democratic nominee] Abdul [El-Sayed] wins” in Michigan before deciding how much Biden’s Gaza record matters.
The attention economy has come to dominate politics. “Politics is the alchemy of turning attention into power,” El-Sayed said, per The New York Times. Vice President JD Vance, a MAGA standard-bearer in 2028, played the same game.
In a press gaggle Tuesday, Vance called El-Sayed “a bit of a psychopath” with “a lot of weird friends” and would not say whether he’s a jihadist, per CBS News. Basically, the thinking is that conflict gets attention, and attention gets power. Not everyone is playing, though. The Times split Democrats into two camps: “electric” and “normal,” and the normies are doing fine. “When was the last time you saw a viral clip from Roy Cooper?” the outlet asked. (Cooper is cruising in North Carolina.)
Heterodoxy is back for Democrats. Wins by Democrat James Talarico in Texas or Mary Peltola in Alaska would put pro-oil Democrats from red states back in the Senate, where the current number is “a caucus of zero,” per Politico.
“All of the above is back, baby,” one Democratic strategist said.
Iowa’s Rob Sand, who is running for governor, “eschews Democratic norms,” opening town halls with a prayer and a rendition of “America the Beautiful.” He leads by 7 percentage points, according to FifityPlusOne polling averages. In Washington state, the party is wide enough to include both Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — a former Congressional Progressive Caucus chief and a Blue Dog Coalition co-chair, respectively — who, despite very different records on transgender issues, have united to oppose a ballot measure forcing girls “to prove their sex to the state every year,” as Gluesenkamp Perez put it, per MS NOW’s Julianne McShane.
Politics could be headed for a nationalists versus democratic socialists divide, à la Europe. On the left, Democratic Socialists of America insurgents won high-profile primaries throughout the country, driven by youth enthusiasm, general anger at the Democratic establishment and a sense that these are outsider candidates with normal, non-politico backgrounds.
The economic case is populist: A plurality of battleground voters say the biggest corruption problem is “greedy billionaires and corporations using their influence to rig the rules,” per Cook.
On the right, the closing message is about belonging.
“America belongs to those who love it,” Trump said in Lubbock, Texas, per the Times.
“Michigan belongs to those who love it, not those who hate it,” Vance said in Howell, Michigan, per WDIV.
Vance also accused El-Sayed of “explicitly anti-white racial hatred,” and at the rally said he “allegedly came from Egypt.” (El-Sayed was, in fact, born in Oakland County, Michigan, where Mitt Romney grew up.)
Politics is increasingly nationalized. Trump’s gravity pulls every race toward him.
“Just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot,” he has told crowds, per The Associated Press.
Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins called this the hardest race of her career. And the lack of local media outlets (213 counties have no local news source left, and 1,524 more have only one, per Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism) means that more and more, politics is presented and consumed through a national prism. (Which is another reason it’s important that pols compete in the attention economy.)
Artificial intelligence is disrupting everything.AI-manipulated videos, likely from the Russian network Storm-1516, are spreading fake allegations about Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown and Talarico.
And a Princeton researcher used roughly $20 in AI credits to reconstruct the order of nearly all in-person ballots in the Georgia counties he studied, and he could match some voters to their ballots. Data centers have become a closing message from Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District to the Kansas and Texas governor’s races. Silver thinks AI “could be the biggest issue of 2028.”
One week before the midterms, President Donald Trump has a new offer for anyone who can help him prove what he has been insisting for years.
“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!” Trump posted Monday.
The White House didn’t say where the money would come from, and Congress hasn’t authorized any such fund, according to The Washington Sun. The offer appears designed to generate headlines. Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and one of the country’s foremost election law experts, called it “part of a larger project … to generate distrust of the election system.”
It’s tempting to dismiss this as old news. “Trump cries fraud” has been a familiar headline for a decade. But that misses how much groundwork has already been laid. Trump’s “stolen election” narrative for these midterms is prewritten.
The president and his allies have spent the final weeks of the campaign “showering his supporters with a relentless stream of doubt about the legitimacy of the election, priming them to question results if Republicans lose,” according to a Washington Post analysis published Tuesday. Nearly 600 high-profile right-wing accounts, podcasts and outlets have published more than 7,000 statements this year questioning the election’s integrity, per the Post. Claims about noncitizen voting and mail ballots are twice as common as they were in the 2024 cycle. Trump himself has made nearly 300 such statements in his second term.
The message is landing. Just 45% of Republican voters are confident noncitizens will be kept from voting, compared with 90% of Democrats, a Pew Research Center survey found. Only 28% of Americans are confident Trump will accept the results if Republicans lose, according to a Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll.
To see how this works, rewind to June. Who would have imagined it would take Spencer Pratt losing the Los Angeles mayor’s race to show it?
‘Not possible’
Then-Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt speaks to the media outside of an election night party at Don Antonio’s Mexican restaurant on June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles.Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
By the morning after the June 2 primary, Pratt, the former reality TV star running as a Republican, was comfortably in second place. He had about 30% of the vote to Councilmember Nithya Raman’s 22%, and he was on track for a November runoff against Mayor Karen Bass.
Then Los Angeles kept counting. Five days later, Raman passed him.
In itself, that was not surprising. Democrats make up a supermajority of the city’s electorate. Bass is a Democrat, and Raman ran to her left. Los Angeles also counts slowly, checking signatures and examining ballots by hand.
None of that takes fraud to explain. And yet.
“Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!”
Swap out Pratt’s name for a Republican House candidate in Orange County, suburban Detroit or South Texas, and it’s easy to see how this could work.
Trump hasn’t stopped previewing. On Monday, he said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comeback win “looked like another rigged election.”
You may reasonably ask: How is this new? Trump has sown distrust about elections for years, after all. What’s different this time?
What’s different is that Trump has help. In 2020, he had the “fraud” narrative but not a federal government willing to act on it. Now he has both.
‘I work for President Trump’
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Todd Blanche during a roundtable at the White House on Oct. 21, 2026.Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
The institutions that pushed back last time have been rebuilt around Trump’s wishes.
Start with the Department of Justice. Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general in 2020, stood up to him, saying publicly that the department hadn’t seen fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome of that year’s presidential election. Would Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer and now his attorney general, do the same?
The next day, reporters asked whether there was any scenario in which the Justice Department would try to block states from certifying their results. Blanche said the department had no intention of improperly interfering, but invoked a hypothetical “doomsday scenario” and wouldn’t rule it out. “To say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that, of course, I’m not going to say that,” he said.
Blanche isn’t alone in leaving the door open. Consider Jay Clayton. In June, while he was still the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Clayton went on CNBC and declined to endorse or rule out widespread fraud, saying “the opportunity for fraud” exists. At his confirmation hearing to become director of national intelligence, he wouldn’t directly acknowledge who won the 2020 election. The Senate confirmed him in July.
And there’s Bill Essayli, the hard-charging Trump appointee who runs the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. After Pratt’s loss, Essayli announced he had “multiple election fraud investigations underway.” (To his credit, he also knocked down at least one of the false claims about the race, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.)
Now Essayli is out front on the administration’s push to get California to set aside mail ballots from voters it says are noncitizens. “We believe it’s at a minimum of 20,000,” he told Fox News Digital. The Justice Department has said its list came from purchased voter data analyzed by third parties. California officials say an initial review of a sample found that 1 in 4 people on the list were born in the U.S.
On Monday, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined, 2-1, to rule on the department’s request. A Trump appointee on the panel wrote that the administration appeared to lack the constitutional power to demand it.
None of that has slowed the spin. “BOMBSHELL: Trump exposed that 20,000 noncitizens flagged on California’s rolls are just ONE batch!” Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier posted to his 1.2 million followers.
Trump’s Justice Department files a suit, influencers tout it as a “BOMBSHELL” and the base gets more convinced the system is rigged, making the next claim easier to sell. The courts may keep saying no, but the new filings keep feeding the story.
The DOJ is already promising a postelection fight. Its observers “will be eyes and ears for any violations, and may take legal action afterwards. Stay tuned!” Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, posted Friday on X. Ben Hovland, whom Trump fired from the Election Assistance Commission, expects the department to act as “the administration’s personal law firm,” according to The Washington Post.
Back in June, the risk was that the Justice Department had gone from a guardrail against baseless election fraud claims to a participant in fanning them. A week from Election Day, that’s no longer hypothetical.
‘Something is wrong here’
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson during a news conference outside the Capitol on May 8, 2024, where he introduced the SAVE Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The bellowing isn’t just coming from Trump.
It’s coming from Congress. “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said about the elections in California after Pratt’s loss. “Everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.”
It’s coming from governors. “California keeps dumping votes,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted in June as Pratt’s odds of making the runoff dropped. “Count until you get the result you want?” DeSantis, notably, never explicitly endorsed the “stolen election” rhetoric in 2020.
In today’s Republican Party, suggesting election fraud is the price of admission, and nobody has to produce evidence to pay it. Every time a speaker or governor makes such a claim without evidence, the Overton window shifts, making the claim sound a little more “reasonable.”
Johnson was a relatively obscure member of Congress in 2020 when he led an amicus brief supporting Texas’ bid to invalidate the election results in several swing states. Now he’s House speaker, which puts him within arm’s reach of a little-noticed step in the transfer of power. The House clerk assembles the roll of members-elect, the official list of those who will be sworn in when the new Congress convenes in January. If Johnson moved to fire the clerk, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told The Washington Post, it would be “a ‘break glass’ scenario.”
Democrats aren’t assuming the best. “We’re making the presumption that the president will not accept the results,” Himes said.
‘As steadily as a metronome’
Election workers sort ballots during early voting at City Hall in San Francisco on Oct. 21, 2026.David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images
California shows why there’s no winning this argument.
Perhaps no state takes longer to count its votes. And California is poised to matter enormously again. In 2024, nearly a week after Election Day, nine of the 16 uncalled House races that would decide control of the chamber were in California, the Times reported. This year, the state’s newly drawn districts include several of the most contested races in the country.
In June, a Democratic consultant told the Times that the most effective way to speed up California’s count would be to eliminate security measures such as signature verification and provisional ballot checks. The “fix” for the problem Trump described would require gutting the safeguards he says are missing.
So a slow count that ends in Democratic gains becomes evidence of fraud. A fast count that would require stripping out protections becomes evidence of fraud. A steady count doesn’t help, either. In a filing Sunday, the DOJ complained that California’s counties “continue to process tens of thousands of ballots as steadily as a metronome, willfully indifferent to the fact that upwards of 20,000 of those ballots may have been cast by noncitizens.” There is no outcome that doesn’t feed the narrative.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, voters will choose between Bass and Raman on Tuesday. Pratt won’t be on the ballot.
Then-Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt speaks to the media outside of a election night party at Don Antonio's Mexican restaurant on June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Todd Blanche during a round table at the White House on Oct. 21, 2026.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson during a news conference outside the Capitol on May 8, 2024, where he introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Election workers sort ballots during early voting at City Hall in San Francisco on Oct. 21, 2026.
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.
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!
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.
Login
