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.