The Trump administration is trying to put the kibosh on a website that has published information exposing the identities of thousands of officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS has been key in waging Donald Trump’s deadly and racist crusade against immigrants and people who support them. The administration’s efforts to shield the mostly masked agents — often citing unsubstantiated threats of violence — have inspired activists to find ways to expose those carrying out the crackdown.

Some groups, such as the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, have used public records to spotlight DHS employees who have been charged with sex crimes against women and children. And now the Trump administration is freaking out after the transparency group DDoSecrets published leaked information identifying more than 40,000 employees at DHS, including some involved in undercover operations.

As The Guardian reported:

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked ⁠an Icelandic hosting company on Thursday to take down or limit access to data related to thousands ⁠of agency personnel, saying ⁠the content ​put them at risk, according to the request posted online by hosting company FlokiNET.

The database “places more than ⁠40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking and physical harm,” the request said.

ZeroFox, a company authorized by the US ⁠Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to pursue content removal actions, cited the figure in ​an email to FlokiNET.

FlokiNET’s ‌CEO, Kolja Weber, told ‌Reuters that his company would not remove the DHS data because it ‌included government employee work addresses and work phone numbers, not personal phone numbers and addresses.

Trump has gutted several aspects of the country’s cybersecurity apparatus and left various institutions vulnerable as a result. MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow recently discussed the problem this has created for states:

Last month, the FBI was hit with a cyberattack that current officials and outside experts described to MS NOW as one of the worst counterintelligence disasters in modern history. At the time, one FBI agent gave MS NOW their unvarnished opinion on the source of the breach: incompetency.

From Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig’s report:

“This was a vulnerability that supposedly they thought they patched, but managed to miss one of the ways to patch it,” the agent said in a text message, adding that the cause was “definitely incompetence.”

It’s unclear whether or how the Trump administration’s idiotic push to gut the nation’s cybersecurity defenses played a role in the latest DHS hack. But it seems abundantly clear that it hasn’t helped matters.

The post Trump administration freaks out over leaked data on DHS officials appeared first on MS NOW.

With Election Day approaching, backlash continues to mount against the top election official in Arizona’s most populous county — a MAGA loyalist who has used his office to promote election conspiracy theories and empower conservative activists.

I’ve homed in on Maricopa County’s Justin Heap in recent months as many Arizonans — including many of his fellow Republican election officials in the Phoenix-area county — have sounded the alarm on the county recorder’s push to give himself and Donald Trump’s allies more power to intervene in Maricopa’s electoral processes. More than half of Arizona’s residents live in the county, meaning any chicanery that occurs there could significantly affect key state races next week.

Some GOP candidates in Arizona think their chances in next week’s elections are bleak, potentially giving someone like Heap — who has encouraged the Trump administration to intervene in the state’s election processes — incentive to meddle.

Amid such concerns, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Arizona chapter has flagged disturbing reports of voters being falsely told by poll workers that they needed to show ID to drop off their mail-in ballots. Arizona law states that voters can show ID when they drop off ballots if they want to speed up the tabulation process, but doing so isn’t required.

In the video below, you can see Heap pushing back against the ACLU’s claim during a sit-down with a Phoenix television station — only to be told that one of the outlet’s reporters experienced the very same thing when trying to drop off a ballot.

Recorder @azjustinheap contradicts himself yet again.

In an interview with a local station, he said pollworkers were not instructing voters they must present ID to vote.

(This is against the law, voters still have the option to drop ballots for themselves and family members in… https://t.co/vwC216PuNE

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) October 30, 2026

Earlier this year, Heap stood alongside then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Phoenix press conference, where she said her department — which under Trump has served as a vector for white supremacist propaganda — would ensure that “we have the right people voting.”

It’s rhetoric one might expect to have heard during the height of the Jim Crow era — and Heap was right there. Which is to say, he has given Arizonans no reason to take him at his word on anything he says regarding election integrity.

The post MAGA election official in Arizona tries to downplay disturbing reports about poll workers appeared first on MS NOW.

Some influencers in MAGA world are at one another’s throats over the arrest and possible deportation of one of the movement’s loudest anti-immigration cheerleaders.

Samuel Sey, a Christian blogger and Ghanaian immigrant, has gained popularity for his vocal defenses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waging Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. But as I explained in this week’s Tuesday Tech Drop, he was arrested last week after reportedly overstaying his visa.

The Department of Homeland Security told The Christian Post that Sey is “an illegal alien from Ghana” who has accepted “voluntary departure” from the country.

The MAGA movement, it seems, is torn over the ordeal.

On one hand, a Black immigrant who overstayed his visa would seem like a prime target for a movement like MAGA. On the other hand, a Black immigrant willing to celebrate Trump’s brutality toward immigrants is useful to the movement for propaganda purposes — and that seems like a big reason why some conservatives are expressing sympathy for him.

Christian nationalist influencer Joel Webbon faced some backlash over a prayer in which he thanked God for Sey’s arrest and for “shutting his mouth from spewing out more lies and slander against your servants.” Webbon, who also prayed for Sey’s deportation, is someone known for promoting bigotry and arguing that the U.S. could use even more racism.

Webbon’s remarks drew criticism from various conservative commentators and influencers who apparently have a soft spot for Sey despite MAGA’s mass deportation push. But that’s clearly not a universal stance among conservatives — even Sey’s podcast co-host, who has praised Trump’s immigration policy as “loving,” said his views were “unchanged” after Sey’s arrest.

So much for the Trump administration’s claims of only targeting the “worst of the worst” immigrants. And while some conservatives are bristling over that fact, others are still sticking to the script.

The post Pro-ICE influencer’s possible deportation sparks infighting in MAGA world appeared first on MS NOW.

The stench of eugenics continues to waft through Donald Trump’s administration.

A new report from The Bulwark sounds the alarm on disturbing remarks made by Ellis Boyle, a North Carolina-based U.S. attorney, during a discussion about crime with conservative influencer Cassie Clark. The outlet reported on Boyle’s comments about removing people with “bad” gene pools from society:

“What I’ve observed is, you know — it occurs to me, and this is not a new thought; I heard someone else say it. And I started looking — and if you look, you see it: 5% of the population cause 90% of the crime.”

And Boyle kept going:

“I think there’s a big component — if you took out [the] 5% of the population that’s bad and removed them from society, so they don’t create mayhem and create, you know, babies with the gene pool of more bad, then I think, in two, maybe three generations, think of how great this population would be. But that’s something that takes willpower.”

In response to the backlash against Boyle, Clark attempted to defend him from criticism, writing on X: “Removing the people who keep hurting everybody else from free society is called incarceration. … What it is not is eugenics.”

Yet Boyle advocated for removing people from society to limit their supposedly bad “gene pool” — which is absolutely a key tenet of eugenics.

Boyle’s office didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

Trump’s bigoted and baseless remarks about some immigrants having “bad genes” that make them prone to criminality have echoed textbook eugenicists by suggesting that America’s woes could be addressed by altering the nation’s genetic makeup.

The president and Elon Musk, the Republican Party’s biggest donor, have made a habit of trafficking in this kind of racist pseudoscience — and so have others in their orbit.

Late last year, I wrote about about people with ties to Musk and a bunch of other Silicon Valley tech bros appearing in the Epstein files, with emails showing that they discussed eugenics. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another prominent voice of racist pseudoscience, has been accused by critics of using the nation’s top health agency to support eugenics ideology as well. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a top infectious disease expert, said in his resignation letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that eugenics “plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated” at Kennedy’s agency.

Members of the MAGA movement routinely take umbrage at people making historically accurate comparisons between them and groups like the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Aside from the movement’s numerous Nazi scandals, ceasing to promote eugenics would certainly make those comparisons seem less apt.

The post U.S. attorney’s eugenics comments spotlight extremism within the DOJ appeared first on MS NOW.

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.

Per MPR News:

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.”

Trump has gone on several racist rants about Somali immigrants in Minnesota, accusing them of engaging in fraud and other criminal behavior — often sounding every bit like a klansman attempting to stoke a race war.

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.

For the record, making false voter fraud claims and being forced to walk them back is not new for O’Keefe.

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.

The post James O’Keefe and Cam Higby face election fraud charges in Minnesota appeared first on MS NOW.

Tennessee’s Brent Taylor has joined the list of political candidates whose campaigns have been rocked by sexting scandals this year.

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.

Despite his evidently revealing nature, Taylor — who has spoken out against sexual harassment in politics — has declined to say how many times he has sent unsolicited nudes. And Pearson is pouncing on the scandal:

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.

More pic.twitter.com/ks94PtLsGp

— Justin J. Pearson (@Justinjpearson) October 27, 2026

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.

The post GOP candidate’s sexting scandal gives Democrats hope in Tennessee appeared first on MS NOW.

The hive of bigotry buzzing around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a national security threat. And it should be a top investigative target for Democrats if they retake the House.

Democrats are already pondering how to force the scandal-plagued former Fox News host from his Cabinet post if they prevail in next week’s midterm elections. But even if that happens, House committees will need to address the culture of abject bigotry Hegseth has enabled at the Pentagon, particularly his permission of white supremacist ideologies — given that officials in various administrations, including Donald Trump’s first one, have deemed white supremacists as the country’s biggest domestic security threat.

CNN is out with a new report showing that this racist rot has reached the marrow at the Defense Department. The report homes in on deranged social media posts from Ryan Higgins, a top faith adviser at the Pentagon who CNN said has helped shape some of Hegseth’s unhinged speeches. Per the report:

On his social media platforms, CNN found Higgins defended a video President Donald Trump shared depicting the Obamas as apes, said same-sex marriage was “abominable,” and speculated about how many abortions former Vice President Kamala Harris might have had, citing her age and claiming she had a “long record of sleeping around.”

He’s also asserted that the “Separation of Church and State does not exist” and has posted extreme rhetoric about immigrants.

“They act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women,” he wrote in one post responding to tabloid coverage of sexual crimes allegedly committed by immigrants in Europe.

I recently wrote about how MAGA world has borrowed from groups like the Ku Klux Klan in using the threat of rape as an anti-immigrant scare tactic. CNN’s report cites numerous other bigoted posts from Higgins that portray him as an election denier and someone who loathes the idea of women aspiring toward anything but baby-making, thinks LGBTQ people are satanic and — crucially — believes brown Muslim people are the scourge of the earth.

Yet when asked for comment by CNN, a Pentagon spokesperson touted Higgins and the job he’s doing:

Higgins did not respond to requests for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense called Higgins a “valued member of the Secretary’s team” who “does an outstanding job serving as a senior adviser.”

“He has been completely focused on the spiritual health of our troops and the historic establishment of the Office of Religious Affairs,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

Parnell did not respond specifically to detailed questions about Higgins’ posts reviewed by CNN.

These are the kinds of people surrounding Hegseth as he has expended Americans’ lives and tax dollars to carry out what he has described as a 21st-century “American crusade.”

My colleague Steve Benen has written about Hegseth’s disturbing relationship with the Rev. Douglas Wilson, who has spread Islamophobia, advocated for repealing women’s voting rights and tried to glorify chattel slavery. And I’ve written about Joshua Haymes, another pastor associated with Hegseth who shares those same wretched views.

Probing this web of influence and the ways it’s infecting the Defense Department should be a priority for Democrats. And the good thing, politically speaking, is that — thanks to Hegseth — it has never been easier for liberals to help voters draw a connection between this kind of bigotry and the nation’s biggest woes.

A major reason Americans are paying more for everything from gas to groceries these days is that a bunch of Islamophobic, hypermasculine hate-mongers in Trump’s regime are choosing to play war games with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and apparently failing.

The post A top Hegseth faith adviser embodies the racist rot at the Pentagon appeared first on MS NOW.

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.

They wrote:

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.

Read more at Gizmodo.

AI bots’ banking break-ins

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.

Read more at Axios.

Massive Meta judgment

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.

Read more at MS NOW.

Republican outcry over Colom ad

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.

Read more at MS NOW.

Pro-ICE activist reportedly faces deportation

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.

Read more at The Roys Report.

What AI guidelines?

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.

Read more at NPR.

Anthropic bots get alarming access

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.”

Read more at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Alpha School shortcomings

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.

Read more at The New York Times.

MAGA influencer meddling fails

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.

Read more at MS NOW.

The post Senate Democrats warn that the Trump administration is hiding a damning surveillance report appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump’s seemingly endless quest to isolate the U.S. on the world stage continued last week when his secretary of state openly promoted the CIA as a tool for destabilizing foreign governments.

Here’s Marco Rubio in a post on X from Friday, encouraging Cubans — whose suffering the Trump administration has compounded with sanctions designed to fuel a national uprising — to “create the change you desire” by partnering with the CIA.

To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba – now is the time.

The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) October 23, 2026

That sure sounds like “Come work with the CIA to help us topple your government,” which explains why the negative replies were replete with Bay of Pigs references and other “coup” talk.

It’s not exactly a secret that the CIA has been used by U.S. governments to undermine foreign governments and activist groups. But there’s a kind of brazen idiocy in thinking it was a good idea to offer such partnerships in such a public fashion.

Think about it: Even Cubans who might be open to such an offer would be wise to question the judgment of an administration that would so willingly broadcast it for all to see on Elon Musk’s pornography- and racism-filled platform.

And anyone not legally in the U.S. who agrees to help the administration topple Cuba’s government will need to acknowledge the harsh reality that aiding Trump’s CIA wouldn’t necessarily stop the president’s immigration officials from targeting them down the line.

And as former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul noted, Trump’s support for authoritarian figures elsewhere should give pause to any Cubans considering Rubio’s offer.

Your decision to back autocrats and oligarchs in Venezuela instead of democracy should give pause to anyone hoping you are committed to democracy in Cuba.

No better way to inspire Cuban democrats than to support democracy in Venezuela. https://t.co/zATr8OAVqa

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) October 24, 2026

Trump does not care about upholding democratic principles in the Western Hemisphere, or anywhere for that matter. His administration has aligned itself with authoritarian-style leaders across Central America and South America. Now, it’s eyeing regime change in Cuba — and looking to draft confederates in one of the most glaring ways possible.

The post Rubio uses social media to urge Cuban turncoats to work with CIA appeared first on MS NOW.

Mississippi Republicans’ newfound objection to AI-generated ads is the latest sign that MAGA world is fretting over the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The Democratic candidate, Scott Colom, said late last week that his campaign would delete an ad created with the help of artificial intelligence tools that depicted his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, hurrying away from reporters, as she has done before. The ad has been online for weeks, but Mississippi’s Republican attorney general demanded that Colom’s campaign take it down.

According to Mississippi Today:

Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Friday that Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, likely violated state law with a digital ad that featured an artificial intelligence-generated depiction of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith running away from reporters.

Colom told Mississippi Today he would delete the post because he didn’t want Fitch to launch litigation with taxpayer money. That came after Fitch sent Colom a complaint letter demanding that he remove that ad from his social media accounts. If he did not, the complaint said, the attorney general’s office could file an injunction against him.

“As violations of this election integrity law can carry criminal penalties, Attorney General Fitch has also asked Scott Colom and his campaign to preserve all records related to this matter so as not to obstruct justice,” the statement reads.

The article quotes Colom as saying Hyde-Smith is “clearly desperate” and that her allies are attempting to “weaponize the justice system to distract from the real issues, which is that she has sold out our farmers, sold out our small businesses, and sold out our families.”

You can judge for yourself whether you believe the Mississippi GOP truly cares about the scourge of AI-generated political ads, but the party’s fierce support for President Donald Trump — whose social media feeds have become cesspools of political AI slop — raises doubt in my mind.

What seems more likely to me is that Mississippi Republicans are trying to undercut Colom’s campaign, which has already garnered laughter for another ad targeting Hyde-Smith — in a midterm race the GOP didn’t think would be competitive.

Republicans have reportedly voiced concerns that Hyde-Smith’s Senate seat appears to be in play for Democrats in next week’s election, amid backlash toward Trump and the GOP. The fact that the president scheduled a rally in Mississippi one week out from Election Day reflects such concerns, despite forecasters giving Hyde-Smith the edge in their estimates of how the race will shake out. The GOP candidate has said Trump would come campaign for her “if I get in trouble,” and it looks like that’s what’s happening.

Short of a victory, one could argue that Colom improving on Democratic Senate nominee Mike Espy’s 2020 election numbers would be a remarkable feat for liberal activists in Mississippi, which boasts the largest percentage of Black eligible voters out of any state in the country but has — with help from decades of racist voter suppression — remained almost exclusively under control of white conservatives.

Colom is looking to change that. His ads prove that his campaign has the GOP’s attention — and help support Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s argument that Democrats need to invest more heavily in Southern states.

The post In Mississippi’s Senate race, GOP targets Democratic candidate’s ad appeared first on MS NOW.

One group is oddly overrepresented among those whom Donald Trump has trotted out during his recent rallies ahead of the midterms: dudes who used to take blows to the head for a living.

Yes, just like in 2024, Trump is leaning on aging boxers — including some with disturbing histories — in his late-stage voter mobilization push.

Convicted rapist Mike Tyson sang the president’s praises during a recent rally in upstate New York. In turn, Trump touted Tyson’s brutality during his prime, calling him a “very dangerous person.” Floyd Mayweather Jr., who served time for domestic violence, recently touted Trump at a rally in Arizona.

And Evander Holyfield appeared alongside Trump this week at a rally in South Carolina, where the president evoked Holyfield’s name to cheer on a supporter who punched a heckler in the crowd. The retired boxer made headlines in 2014 for making homophobic remarks, which certainly makes me wonder what he thinks about Trump’s lecherous observations about men’s bodies lately.

The racial component here is unavoidable. As his administration wages war on Black America in a host of ways reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, Trump is trotting out old Black boxers during rallies — events filled with bigoted diatribes — in a way that might suggest he’s not actually leading a movement fueled by blatant racism. It’s also easy to see how these kinds of men can be made into pawns in a conservative movement that is steeped in toxic masculinity and displays of bravado.

In reality, Trump’s return to office has done very little for men, substantively speaking. He has failed to make good on his vow to bring back supposedly manly jobs — and, in fact, women have accounted for almost all of the net job creation that has occurred since he returned to office.

It’s a topic MS NOW’s Chris Hayes discussed with journalist Adam Serwer during a recent episode of “Why Is This Happening?” And it seems like at least part of the reason why Trump’s support among men has shown signs of softness.

Given all of that, prizefighters of past and present have basically become shiny objects that can distract MAGA men from the president’s failings. I’ve written previously about Trump’s use of combat sports — both boxing and mixed martial arts — to give his movement an air of toughness that he seems to lack on his own. Journalists like Luke Thomas have excellently homed in on this trend in even greater depth.

And the question for voters is whether they think these alliances serve any purpose other than to stroke fragile male egos. If political expertise were measured in jabs taken to the head, endorsements from Tyson, Mayweather and Holyfield might mean something of value. But that obviously is not the case.

These endorsements seem to me, more than anything else, like favors called in for a wannabe strongman whose clout is waning among a core constituency. In other words: weakness masked as strength.

The post Trump’s midterm closing message keeps featuring aging boxers appeared first on MS NOW.

The CEO of Turning Point USA’s independent offshoot in the United Kingdom is facing scrutiny after he was recorded discussing murder-for-hire abilities.

The scandal surrounding Jack Ross is inconvenient, to put it mildly, for a conservative movement that has sought to portray liberals as the primary culprits for sowing deadly violence. After TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, the MAGA movement shamelessly used the killing to encourage a federal crackdown on liberals and to demonize liberalism itself as a vector for political violence.

According to a new report from Al Jazeera, part of an investigation called “Contract Killers and the Far Right,” Ross was shown on camera discussing his ability to coordinate paid acts of violence with a right-wing extremist named Allan Nesbitt.

According to the report:

Ross made clear that he and Nesbitt had a long history together. Ross was filmed by our undercover reporter agreeing to pay Nesbitt thousands of pounds to stage a fake political rally designed to show support for the lifting of UK sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Ross also told Al Jazeera’s undercover operative that for “a certain amount,” Nesbitt and his contacts could arrange physical attacks, saying they could “kick the f*** out of someone. They can start cutting people’s faces up. That’s another amount. They can stab someone,” Ross said. “They can shoot someone. They could kill someone.”

Al Jazeera reported that Ross “denied our findings ‘completely,’ telling us that everything he said to our undercover reporter was not meant seriously.” Turning Point UK, which was launched by Kirk and operates independently of its U.S. affiliate, and TPUSA didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

Despite the “I was just joking about murder” defense, Ross has already been suspended from the U.K.’s Conservative Party. And according to The Guardian, police in Scotland are looking into the matter.

The silence from Republicans on this is telling. It almost goes without saying that if the CEO for an offshoot of, say, the NAACP or the activist group Indivisible were recorded discussing paid opportunities for murder and other violence, conservatives would be airing the footage constantly.

Yet it seems this macabre story is of little interest to MAGA world. The hypocrisy here is clear as day.

The post Turning Point UK’s CEO under scrutiny after being recorded discussing murder-for-hire appeared first on MS NOW.

A new federal lawsuit looks to drive a stake through the heart of Donald Trump and his family’s questionable cryptocurrency empire.

The Trump family’s crypto ventures brought in more than $1.4 billion in 2025, as his administration has pressed for crypto-friendly policies. This is part of why polling shows that most Americans think Trump is profiting from the presidency in illegal or unethical ways.

And in a lawsuit filed Thursday, a shareholder of Circle Internet Group — a competitor of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company — accuses the Trump business of “corruptly profiting” off crypto deals and says the president has violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. (A spokesperson for Circle said the company “did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing.”)

The lawsuit specifically cites the sale of a major stake in World Liberty to an entity involving the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser — also known as the “Spy Sheikh” — four days before Trump’s inauguration. The suit also details how a UAE-backed firm led by that same official used World Liberty cryptocurrency to make a $2 billion investment in the crypto firm Binance.

The lawsuit comes as some crypto enthusiasts turn on Trump over his profiting off the industry while in office. The president and his representatives have always said his crypto investments are above board, with a White House spokesperson calling the new lawsuit “frivolous” and adding, “There are no conflicts of interest.” A World Liberty spokesperson called the lawsuit “without merit” and has previously said Trump had no role in the company.

Such claims are disputed by people like Protect Democracy’s executive director, Ian Bassin, who has argued that Trump’s crypto dealings are blatantly unconstitutional. And Matt Pelikan, a lawyer whose firm filed the lawsuit, said in a statement:

President Trump has turned his office into a source of private profit on a scale without precedent in American history. The President’s business dealings are not only corrupt, they are illegal.

This lawsuit only stands to fuel voters’ anger over government corruption: A recent Fox News poll showed nearly 9 in 10 voters as extremely or very concerned about corruption. So, with the midterms less than two weeks away, anything that stands to remind the public about Trump’s terrible track record on this issue seems like a threat to Republicans’ electoral hopes.

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