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.

The U.S. Marine Corps values loyalty to one’s fellow Marines and to doing the right thing even when it’s easier to do what’s wrong. It’s not a huge surprise, then, that some Marines have been saying “no” to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who’s demanded the expulsion of all transgender service members despite their demonstrated fitness for service. In two of three of these boards, formal hearings roughly similar to a trial, Marines have voted to retain transgender fellow Marines. And in the third case, the board expressly concluded that despite its vote, the Marine should be retained due to his “commendable service record and unique skills.”

The votes to retain are similar to jury nullification, and they send the clear message that honor restrains them from kicking out Marines who have met and continue to meet every Marine Corps standard. Thus, their vote to retain despite evidence that the Marine in question is or may be transgender.

Trump and Hegseth have already decided that any record of gender dysphoria, even if the service member never transitioned, requires a Marine or solider or sailor or airman to be stripped of the nation’s uniform

It is an Orwellian world that Marines and military members from the other services enter when ordered to sit on separation boards that Hegseth ginned up to kick out folks who refused “voluntary” separation. (It’s no less Orwellian for military lawyers made to facilitate such proceedings.) Military separation boards, in general, wield discretion to decide whether it’s in the best interest of the service to retain a fellow service member despite their alleged misconduct or diagnosed physical disability, these are boards in name only. President Donald Trump and Hegseth have already decided that any record of gender dysphoria, even if the service member never transitioned, requires a Marine or solider or sailor or airman to be stripped of the nation’s uniform. Hegseth means for these boards to do one thing: Confirm an indication, past or present, that the service member is transgender. That’s it.

They are directed to disregard the full record of the service member before them; to ignore their long history of honorable service including combat deployments; to look away from their superb performance evaluations; to not listen to their stellar character witnesses; and to pretend away the individual service member’s demonstrated excellence in an occupational specialty critical to a military at war.

Plainly put, the board members are ordered to lie and say that the service member is unfit to serve and thus play a role in depriving the U.S. military of that service member’s substantial training, experience and willingness to serve. It’s no wonder, then, that most Marine board members thus far — as well as most Navy board members — have ignored such nonsense and voted to retain. Their moral compasses demanded it.

This doesn’t mean that the Army and Air Force board members who have gone along with Hegseth’s lies don’t have moral compasses or that they enjoy being complicit with the cruel subterfuge that these boards represent. But despite whatever moral dilemma they may have between being asked to follow their values or follow orders, they have come down on the side of following orders. And they have had help. From Hegseth’s top civilian lawyer in the Pentagon to the services’ military judge advocate corps, Pentagon and military lawyers have contributed to the rationalization game that allows the Orwellian discharge boards to churn along. Legal top cover is a great way to rationalize dishonesty and justify morally bankrupt decisions that are inconsistent with one’s values.

But it’s disappointing that military lawyers have helped enable these gaslighting boards, especially since June when a Washington, D.C., federal judge agreed to make all transgender service members remaining on active duty part of a class protected by her preliminary injunction. That judge ordered Hegseth not to separate transgender service members (originally, only the named plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States) until their federal litigation challenging the transgender ban on constitutional grounds is complete.

Navy and Marine Corps boards voted for retention in nine of 12 cases, challenging an administration that treats transgender identity as grounds to end a military career.

— The Advocate (@advocate.com) 2026-10-27T17:18:21.537Z

But Judge Ana Reyes has still not issued her written ruling to that effect — she’s likely waiting to see what the Supreme Court will do with the government’s late August emergency petition challenging her preliminary injunction — and the services, surely reacting to pressure from Hegseth, have been accelerating the boards. But Reyes’ oral ruling gave and continues to give military lawyers strong legal ground to advise their commanders that holding separation boards — at least since June 30 — is contrary to a federal judge’s order. Yet the boards continue.

Hopefully more boards will follow in the footsteps of those service members who have decided to be guided by their values of integrity, loyalty, honor and respect. As social psychology studies have long shown, situational dynamics are incredibly powerful. Such dynamics have surely contributed to some boards rubber stamping the administration’s counterfactual determination that no transgender military member is worthy of continued service. There’s no reason to think that boards that refuse to rubber stamp Hegseth’s orders can’t be similarly influential.

While the unbelievably powerful dynamic of obedience to authority (recall the Milgram shock experiment) is almost impossible to interrupt, we’re seeing evidence that almost impossible isn’t the same as completely impossible, and that values and common sense can trump a service member’s order to lie and do what’s wrong.

The post Pete Hegseth’s purge of trans troops hit a wall: Marines who refuse to lie appeared first on MS NOW.

This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 27 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

How many scandalous activities do you think Donald Trump Jr. can get up to on one hunting trip? Well, new reporting from the Financial Times suggests that his summer trip to Mongolia was about a lot more than hunting.

Let’s start with scandal No. 1: While on that trip, a guide told the Financial Times that the president’s son shot and killed an endangered sheep. As awful as that is, it is unfortunately not that surprising. Donald Trump Jr. has reportedly killed at least two more of that same kind of endangered sheep in the past decade.

Scandal No. 2: While most Americans are struggling to pay for gas at the pump, it appears that this hunting trip may have cost taxpayers nearly $19,000. According to federal records reviewed by the Financial Times, the U.S. embassy in Mongolia’s capital paid $18,715 for hotel rooms tied to an unspecified Secret Service visit at the same time as Donald Trump Jr.’s trip.

As a member of the president’s family, he is entitled to Secret Service protection, but I remember the days when that kind of taxpayer expense tied to a luxury vacation of a member of the first family was a scandal in its own right.

I really don’t think the president of Mongolia wanted to talk to Donald Trump Jr. because of their shared love of hunting. I think it had a heck of a lot more to do with the fact that he is the son of the president of the United States.

Speaking of spending money on the president’s family, that brings me to scandal No. 3: It turns out that attendance on this weeklong hunting trip was the prize given to the highest bidders as part of a series of charity auctions. Records indicate that one bidder paid $140, 000 and another $225,000 for the honor and privilege of joining Donald Trump Jr. on this seven-day hunting trip.

At the auction, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly tried to incentivize bidders by joking that he is “very sexy in camo.” But I doubt the president’s eldest son’s looks or personality are why anyone was willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go hunting with him.

As the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington put it to the Financial Times: “Buying access to power is an ethics concern, whether it’s through a charity, a wedding, a campaign donation or a lavish gift.”

Speaking of access to power, that brings me to scandal No. 4: After Donald Trump Jr.’s week of hunting, the Financial Times reports that he traded his “sexy” camo for a suit and held a series of meetings. One of those meetings was a dinner with Mongolia’s president.

After the dinner, a spokesperson for the Mongolian government reportedly posted photos on Facebook and wrote that the leader and Donald Trump Jr. discussed U.S.-Mongolia relations and potential business opportunities.

The Facebook post was then quickly taken down. A spokesperson for the Mongolian president told the Financial Times that the two did not discuss politics at the dinner. A spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr. told the paper that it was just an unofficial meeting where they largely discussed the outdoors.

But I really don’t think the president of Mongolia wanted to talk to Donald Trump Jr. because of their shared love of hunting. I think it had a heck of a lot more to do with the fact that he is the son of the president of the United States.

You would think that would be the biggest possible scandal Donald Trump Jr. could get himself into on a hunting trip, right? He is supposed to be firewalled off from his dad. Donald Trump Jr. and his brother run the family businesses while their dad runs the country. Even the implication that Donald Trump Jr. might be using his relationship with his dad to try to set up some sort of political or business deal with the president of another country is a huge deal.

But somehow, that is not the biggest scandal from this one hunting trip — that would be No. 5: According to that report, for two days of this Mongolia trip, Donald Trump Jr. was joined by Umar Kremlev. You may remember him as the Russian oligarch who secretly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renting a private island for part of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding weekend in the Bahamas just a few months before this trip.

At the time, Donald Trump Jr. described Kremlev as a personal friend and said they had no business relationship. President Donald Trump and Kremlev have since said the president’s son paid the Russian oligarch back, though we have yet to actually see any proof of repayment.

When asked about Kremlev’s attendance at Donald Trump Jr.’s recent hunting trip in Mongolia, a spokesperson for the president’s son repeated the fact that the two have no business relationship and said their friendship is largely based on their “shared love for hunting, fishing and the outdoors.”

Again, I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I doubt Kremlev’s affinity for Donald Trump Jr. has to do with hunting. He is a Russian oligarch. He is part of Vladimir Putin‘s inner circle.

As the former counterintelligence director of Donald Trump’s own national security council told the Financial Times, “The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponise that.”

Allison Detzel contributed.

The post New report finds Trump Jr.’s Mongolia trip went far beyond hunting appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* In light of the latest economic data, this decision was hardly the obvious one: “The Federal Reserve kept its key rate unchanged Wednesday at about 3.9% despite stubbornly high inflation, as Chairman Kevin Warsh suggested its policies are already showing signs of having an impact.”

* A remarkable turn of events in Brazil: “Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family landed in Miami on Wednesday after fleeing Brazil. The stunning move came after 48 hours in which Bolsonaro refused to concede to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and then threatened to attempt to annul the election result.”

* In related news: “A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Tuesday ordered a police investigation into alleged ties between a donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance and the presidential campaign of Flávio Bolsonaro in the run-up to Sunday’s election.”

* A devastating disaster: “One high-speed Spanish train slammed into another that had stopped on the tracks Wednesday, killing at least 68 people and shredding carriages in the country’s second deadly rail collision this year. The regional government for Castilla La Mancha confirmed the death toll and said another 58 people needed medical treatment in hospital.”

* A case of ongoing interest: “Three news organizations that sued the White House after President Donald Trump banned them from the grounds have amended their lawsuit. They are now asking a federal judge to permanently restore their access, not just to the White House but to other areas including the Oval Office and Air Force One. The amended complaint filed by the news outlets — MS NOW, CNN and Politico — comes two weeks after U.S. Judge Timothy Kelly indefinitely reversed Trump’s ban and restored their access to the White House.”

* The need for secrecy in this case is hardly obvious: “The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said on Tuesday that it would not unseal a search warrant executed by federal agents at the home of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota this month. The office also asked a federal judge to deny requests for the warrant’s release.”

* The White House sure has lost a lot of cases like this one: “A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Donald Trump-backed lawyer has been ‘unlawfully serving’ as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. The decision regarding Bill Essayli’s service does not immediately take effect, and Essayli said the Supreme Court ‘will ultimately decide’ the legality of his tenure.”

* A little something to keep democracy advocates up at night: “As Election Day nears, recent events have prompted some FBI agents to express concern, according to seven people with knowledge of internal discussions among the ranks, that they may be ordered to seize voting machines or take other actions that disrupt election results.”

* The passing of a legend: “Dolores Huerta, an icon of the labor movement in California who co-founded the United Farm Workers, died Wednesday at the age of 96, her family announced.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Wednesday’s Mini-Report, 10.28.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Annie Andrews says, “Democrats have failed on the border.” She says, “I don’t support Medicare for All.” Asked which national Democrat she would want campaigning with her, she didn’t name one.

Days before Election Day, Andrews is tied with Republican Sen. Darline Graham, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in almost 30 years. A New York Times/Siena poll released Wednesday puts both candidates at 48%, with 3% undecided.

Andrews, a pediatrician who has never held public office, is running as a centrist, criticizing her own party on some issues and praising the Trump administration on others.

While moderate messaging is little surprise from a Democrat in ruby-red South Carolina, what stands out is how much distance she has put between herself and the national Democratic brand.

Her lines on the border and Medicare for All came at a debate this month where she also hit back at Graham for calling her a “socialist” and trying to brand her “Bernie Ocasio Mamdani.”

On the campaign trail, she has expressed support for no taxes on tips or Social Security, a key provision from the GOP’s reconciliation bill, and likes reminding voters that she was “raised in a Republican household.” But she has also criticized the Iran war, called President Donald Trump’s attacks on her “not presidential” and slammed his tariffs as “unconstitutional.”

For Andrews, the moderate modus operandi is a no-brainer.

“It’s common sense, because I believe all those things,” she told MS NOW of her strategy during an interview in Columbia. “Democrats have failed on the border, and I am not, in fact, a socialist.”

Andrews compared tailoring her message to developing a treatment plan for a patient.

“You can’t make a diagnosis if you don’t listen, and then coming up with a plan to fix it,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been doing in every corner of the state and that’s what people are responding to.”

The poll suggests the approach is resonating. Andrews wins 97% of Democrats, but she also draws 59% of independents and 22% of Republicans, according to the new poll — a remarkable share of GOP voters in a state as conservative as South Carolina.

Andrews is pitching directly to that coalition.

“Whether you voted for Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, or anyone else, if you care more about your bills than the politics in Washington, this campaign is for you,” Andrews said in a statement reacting to the poll. “That’s why independents and Republicans are joining this campaign, and that’s why we’re going to win.”

Andrews’ message reflects the mood on the ground.

Ryan Manuelsmith, a 29-year-old substitute teacher from Columbia, is a lifelong Republican who plans to vote for Andrews. It will be the first time he has voted for a Democrat. He told MS NOW he was “disillusioned” with the Republican Party and was drawn to Andrews’ middle-of-the-road approach.

“I looked at Dr. Andrews’ platform and positions, and I don’t agree with all of them, but overall, I think she’s the best option for this country,” Manuelsmith said. “I think she’s the best option for the state.”

He acknowledged that South Carolina is “a very conservative state” and is unlikely to change “to be very leftist and progressive very quickly.”

“So I think, in general, I think moderate politics is more needed in this country as a whole — but I think if you’re going to be a Democrat and you want to win a statewide election in the great state of South Carolina, you got to be on the more moderate end,” he said.

It isn’t only disaffected Republicans who like the approach. Deborah Martin, a 71-year-old retired law enforcement officer from Columbia and a longtime Democrat, said she was “fine with” Andrews’ down-the-middle strategy.

“I think that is a good way to go,” Martin said. “We need to be able to go both sides of the area and get people to get behind her, and I think that’s a good route to go.”

Andrews is leaning into her centrist pitch in the final stretch of what has been a roller-coaster race in the Palmetto State. In a sign of the height of the stakes, Trump is scheduled to return to South Carolina on Thursday for another rally with Graham. It will be his second in two weeks and his third in three months.

The visit comes a little over three months after the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham — an event that began Darline Graham’s political career and gave Andrews a new opponent in the race.

Trump will speak in Rock Hill, in a northern part of the state that Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., carried in the primary. His remarks will almost certainly include attacks on Andrews, who has become one of the president’s favorite targets.

At previous rallies and on Truth Social, Trump has used an anti-transgender slur to refer to Andrews. Her response to his first use of the word was another break from some in her party.

“I want you to hear me loud and clear: I don’t support biological men playing women’s sports and I don’t support — and haven’t ever performed — gender surgery for minors,” she said in an ad.

Graham, meanwhile, has been hacking away at Andrews’ moderate approach. During an interview on “The Brian Kilmeade Show” this week, Graham accused Andrews of “deceiving” South Carolinians.

“Now all of a sudden she’s running these ads like she’s some moderate — I mean, it’s a complete lie,” Graham said, pointing to her stance on transgender surgeries and guns. “She’s deceiving the people of South Carolina, and like I’ve told several people, that’s really what bothers me more than everything.”

“She’s lying to the great people of South Carolina,” she added.

Andrews has kept her party at arm’s length in other ways, too. In the postdebate spin room this month, MS NOW asked her which national Democrat would be most effective campaigning with her in the closing stretch. Her answer was blunt.

“I’m not looking for any partnerships with national Democrats right now because this race is about returning this Senate seat to the people of South Carolina,” she responded.

She has brought in a few national figures, including Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. But she has kept her pitch aimed at voters across the spectrum.

“This is a campaign, as I said on the stage, that is for independents who are ready for change, for Republicans who feel left behind by their own party and for Democrats who are daring to feel hopeful,” she said.

The post As Trump heads to South Carolina, Democrats eye an upset appeared first on MS NOW.

Israelis on both the left and the right appear convinced that Tuesday’s election could be among their most consequential. The rest of the world seems singularly unimpressed, because the issues separating Israel from Arab countries like Saudi Arabia — with which Israel seeks normalization — or from westerners, including many younger Americans, were simply not contested.

Almost 78% of Israelis voted, the highest since 1999. The 5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have never been able to vote or otherwise access the system that controls every aspect of their lives.

However, turnout was especially high among the 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have been increasingly taking part in the Israeli system. Like many Jewish Israelis, they are hoping to finally dispatch Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for a record 19 years. Netanyahu on Wednesday said without evidence, “The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters,” and he demanded an investigation by multiple agencies.

Given that the occupation and settlement program in the West Bank — as well as Israel’s exceptionally cruel policies in Gaza — will almost certainly remain largely unchanged, the rest of the world can be forgiven for shrugging.

The prime minister’s domestic critics blame him for Israel’s catastrophic intelligence and emergency response failure when Hamas gunmen from Gaza attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people and abducting 251 others. They want an independent inquiry into those failures, while Netanyahu and his supporters blame military and intelligence officials.

Israel’s devastating war in Gaza — the “mighty vengeance” Netanyahu vowed on Oct. 7 — has alienated much of the world. Over 75,000 people — almost all Palestinians and at least half of them civilians — have been killed. Virtually the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. As a result, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, though his Israeli critics have ignored that. Responsibility for state failures on Oct. 7 remains controversial — but the utter devastation of Gaza really isn’t. While much of the rest of the world appears profoundly horrified and alienated by the rampage, most Israelis don’t seem to care.

Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot lost a son who was fighting in Gaza, but he’s hardly promising a notably different approach. That’s also essentially true in the occupied West Bank, although Eisenkot does promise to rein in violent Jewish settlers increasingly terrorizing Palestinians.

Yet when it comes to Israel’s relentless drift toward the eventual annexation of the West Bank, without providing Palestinians in the occupied territories citizenship or voting rights, he hasn’t outlined a significantly different vision from Netanyahu. Both categorically reject Palestinian statehood, which is the only viable formula for peaceful coexistence. Yet Israel’s settlement project, and the complex apparatus of systematic ethnic repression in the West Bank it requires, isn’t especially controversial and certainly wasn’t a campaign issue.

It’s understandable that many Israelis view this election as a decisive test of their national character. Numerous crucial questions regarding the nature of their society seem at stake. Will the rule of law prevail with a continued independent judiciary, which Netanyahu has tried to dismantle? Will ultraorthodox men continue to enjoy state benefits while avoiding military service? Is Israel’s economy fundamentally healthy, or threatened by looming international sanctions because of the occupation? And, most of all, is the “Jewish character” of Israel simply a matter of broad ethnic solidarity or a narrower religious imperative that supersedes democratic traditions among Jewish Israelis?

These are certainly momentous questions, and the closely fought election is only the latest indication of how deeply divided Jewish Israelis have become as their society has shifted toward the religious and nationalist far-right.

But no matter the answers, given that the occupation and settlement program in the West Bank — as well as Israel’s exceptionally cruel policies in Gaza — will almost certainly remain largely unchanged, the rest of the world can be forgiven for shrugging.

This is just another Israeli election in which the occupation and issues regarding millions of Palestinians chafing under their highly oppressive and deadly rule haven’t arisen as significant controversies for Israeli society.

Since Oct. 7, under Netanyahu, Israel has been surrounding itself — not just in Gaza, but also Syria and Lebanon — with “buffer zones” that have been violently depopulated and, in many cases, rendered uninhabitable. Combined with the war against Iran, largely fought by the United States but loudly instigated by Netanyahu, Israelis appear to be building themselves a future of conflict, confrontation and warfare into the foreseeable future. Since 2025, Netanyahu has even been asking Israelis to regard themselves as a “super Sparta.”

Eisenkot may avoid such language, but he hasn’t sketched out policies that would allow Israel to avoid that fate. If Israel doesn’t quickly change course, it may well end up there with or without Netanyahu.

The rest of the Middle East and broader world, including many younger Americans, are already developing a distinct and reasonably dim view of the emerging Jewish “super Sparta.” Yet this vision wasn’t really on the ballot on Tuesday. It’s becoming hard to avoid concluding that this path is now a Jewish Israeli consensus.

The post Israel’s election won’t change a thing for the Palestinians appeared first on MS NOW.

Ahead of the 2020 elections, Donald Trump told anyone who would listen that a Joe Biden victory would lead to “a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen.” The then-president’s claim was obviously foolish and quickly discredited by reality.

The Republican is nevertheless recycling the line, declaring at a campaign rally in Mississippi this week, “If the Democrats win, you will have a 1929-style economic depression. What they want to do is so bad for our country, you’re going to end up with a massive recession or depression.”

The incumbent president never got around to saying how this economic calamity would happen, which parts of the Democratic agenda are so dangerous or why he was so spectacularly wrong when he made the same prediction six years earlier.

But what struck me as especially notable was that even Trump doesn’t seem to believe his own fearmongering.

Just hours before his event in Mississippi, the president briefly spoke to reporters, one of whom asked how he’d “work with Democrats if they have control of the House or the Senate.” He replied:

We’ll figure a way. Look, I have strong veto. I hope that that won’t be the case, but if it is, that’s happened before with many presidents. And you have strong veto and you end up working out deals.

Oh.

So on the one hand, Trump wants Americans to believe that a Democratic majority on Capitol Hill would transform the nation into a hellscape in which transgender Muslim immigrants come to your home to turn your children into communists.

But on the other hand, Trump also wants Americans to believe that if there is a Democratic majority, he’ll veto bad ideas while working on possible bipartisan agreements — which is unlikely to sound all that scary to many voters.

The president made similar comments in early September, telling Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “I’ll block all their bad stuff for two years. It won’t be the same, but I’ll be a blocker, what can I tell you?”

He then added that he’ll “probably be able to make deals” with the possible Democratic majority.

The Republican Party’s line is that the stakes in this election cycle are effectively existential — but Trump’s line is that it just won’t be that big a deal if Democrats prevail. That’s quite a message for the incumbent president to take to the electorate in the cycle’s closing days, but here we are.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump downplays concerns about a possible Democratic majority, stepping on his message appeared first on MS NOW.

Three news organizations that sued the White House after President Donald Trump banned them from the grounds have amended their lawsuit. They are now asking a federal judge to permanently restore their access, not just to the White House but to other areas including the Oval Office and Air Force One.

The amended complaint filed by the news outlets — MS NOW, CNN and Politico — comes two weeks after U.S. Judge Timothy Kelly indefinitely reversed Trump’s ban and restored their access to the White House. Since that ruling, the Trump administration has continued to bar reporters from those three news outlets from the pool, which guarantees coverage of the president at all times.

The White House press pool was formed as part of a long-standing agreement between the White House and news organizations in which a small group of journalists agrees to cover the president — often traveling with him — on behalf of the entire press corps. On the days the White House has banned CNN and Politico from serving in the pool, other outlets have declined to fill in for them in solidarity.

Lawyers for the three news outlets argued the Trump administration’s restrictions surrounding pool coverage also violate both the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. They are asking Kelly to restore access to all three outlets as it existed before the ban was implemented for all presidential events designated for pool coverage.

“These exclusions reflect an unstated policy to carry out the President’s directive to take his viewpoint-discriminatory and retaliatory ban ‘as far as you can,’’” they wrote in the amended lawsuit.

They alleged that the president has explicitly said he wants to limit Oval Office access to news organizations that he believes cover him unfavorably, pointing specifically to a White House statement that said the banned news organizations have “no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.”

The lawyers also specifically argued that the White House’s interference with CNN’s ability to perform its role as the primary television network for pool duty violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. CNN is in a unique position because it is the only one of the three affected organizations that serves in the primary television network pool — the group of five networks that rotate to offer real-time television coverage of the president.

“For 45 years, CNN has been one of the five networks that staff, equip, and bear the costs associated with the primary network television pool upon which the American public (and the White House itself) relies for real-time coverage of the President in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and at the many other presidential events that due to size and other constraints simply cannot accommodate all members of the press corps,” the complaint says.

The lawyers pointed to the significant costs CNN incurs to perform its pool duties, including crews, equipment, staffing and travel.

“These substantial investments — which were made in reliance on the White House’s longstanding practice of honoring pool assignments — entitle CNN to continue to fully perform its pool duties when designated,” the lawyers wrote. “Defendants have deprived CNN of its liberty and property interests by interfering with CNN’s ability to perform those duties with no notice, no standards, and no opportunity to be heard.”

A White House official responded to MS NOW, saying, “No person and no journalist has a constitutional right to access to the President’s Oval Office, Air Force One, or other sensitive and private facilities.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Without the pool — particularly without CNN’s cameras — several of Trump’s recent events have not been covered in the usual way. CNN and Politico were both scheduled to serve as the pool for Trump’s trip to Mississippi on Monday. Once again, the White House barred them from traveling on Air Force One, and the secondary pool reporter — for a print, not TV, organization — had to step in to provide written updates of the trip.

The Air Force One trips also provide Americans coverage of critical historic events, the lawyers argued, pointing specifically to coverage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and of George W. Bush during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Lawyers for MS NOW, CNN and Politico argued that restrictions on pool access affect not only the media organizations in question but also the public’s access to coverage of the president.

In a statement, lawyer Ted Boutrous, who represents the news organizations, told MS NOW, “Despite two court orders restraining it from implementing the President’s unconstitutional ban on CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, the White House has continued to violate the First Amendment and due process by excluding those news organizations from areas such as the Oval Office and Air Force One — the very locations that the President most frequently engages with the press.”

“These exclusions, intended to punish and chill coverage of the administration that the President doesn’t like, make it harder for the press to cover some of the most important events in the world for the benefit of the American people. CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO will continue to fight to vindicate their rights to report the news,” Boutrous added.

The issue of pool restrictions has already arisen in the case through court filings and arguments, but it has not been a part of the question directly before the judge. The first phase of this case focused primarily on access to the White House itself as it existed before Trump’s ban. Until now, the lawsuit did not directly address pool access, but lawyers had made the argument that journalists need White House credentials to participate in the pool.

“The record is clear that President Trump made the decision at issue,” Kelly wrote. “And his announcement of the ban and later remarks explaining the reason for it makes this a straightforward conclusion: President Trump likely banned Plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him.”

In the wake of the ruling, the Trump administration appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that appeal remains pending.

Kelly’s ruling was somewhat of a foregone conclusion, because the D.C. Circuit has held that the White House may not arbitrarily deny a journalist a press credential since press access to the White House is protected by the First Amendment and may not be revoked without due process.

The issue of pool access is less settled, though.

Last year, the D.C. Circuit allowed Trump to block The Associated Press from covering the president in certain spaces, at least for now. That order found it was legal for Trump to restrict access to a news organization in invite-only spaces, like the Oval Office or Air Force One. That ruling paused a lower court’s ruling that had sided with the AP to affirm their access.

But that appellate ruling was only a pause in a lower court’s ruling, which means it is not binding legal precedent. That case remains pending, and there has been no final ruling on the merits.

Lawyers for MS NOW, CNN and Politico also argued that the facts have developed since the D.C. Circuit found that access could be restricted. They said Trump has held the majority of his press availability in spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One, and because of that, those spaces cannot be restricted to some outlets under the First Amendment.

“In 2025, President Trump made two appearances in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room where he fielded a total of approximately 51 questions,” they wrote. “By contrast, he held 95 press events in the Oval office where he fielded no fewer than 1,991 questions. On Air Force One and on the tarmac, the President made himself available to the press 70 times and fielded no fewer than 1,186 questions.”

“While the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room remains a critical forum for reporters to gather and report the news, of the nearly 5,000 questions the President has entertained from reporters in these traditional areas, 97% were either in the Oval Office or in connection with his travel aboard Air Force One,” they added.

These statistics, they argued, make pool access not only critical but guaranteed under the First Amendment.

The post MS NOW, CNN and Politico amend lawsuit, seeking to restore access to Oval Office and Air Force One appeared first on MS NOW.

Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker sued conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings for defamation Tuesday over comments Jennings made on his podcast in August. Piker is seeking more than $72 million in damages.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., Piker’s attorneys allege that Jennings falsely said on his eponymous podcast that Piker was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched,” had a “plan of returning our country to lynchings” and that the U.S. “should resume lynchings against black people.”

Piker’s legal team argued that Jennings’ statements about Piker, who has more than three million followers on Twitch and millions more across other platforms, were not opinion but falsehoods. They allege that the video of Piker that Jennings shared with his viewers was “falsified” and heavily edited to take sarcastic remarks out of context.

The lawsuit cites one of Piker’s videos, streamed in October 2024, in which he commented on a debate between a Black conservative commentator and a Black liberal commentator. Criticizing the conservative commentator’s position that “woke” district attorneys harm Black communities, Piker says:

“He said, ‘We need more Klansmen, okay? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening? This is what I like as a Black man. Also, there’s no real racism in America.’ My man said, ‘Woke DAs,’ dude. What are you saying?”

The video was shared by other prominent Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“Mr. Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said,” the lawsuit argued. “He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show.”

Piker, who has been campaigning with Democratic candidates ahead of the midterm elections, has been at the center of a political firestorm after his controversial 2019 comments about the 9/11 attacks resurfaced, along with more recent comments he made comparing Israel to Hamas.

Several GOP candidates have zeroed in on the social media influencer and his presence on the campaign trail. In response to the criticism, Piker apologized for his 2019 comment that “America deserved 9/11.” Still, Democratic candidates who campaigned with Piker, including Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Colorado Democratic Congressional nominee Melat Kiros, have since downplayed their relationship to him over the backlash.

Piker’s attorneys said the streamer’s reputation has been damaged because of Jennings, who they characterized as a sophisticated political operative, and that his actions have affected his professional relationships with platforms and advertising partners on which his business relies.

“Mr. Jennings continues to falsely portray Mr. Piker as a violent racist who advocates the lynching of Black people. And Mr. Jennings continues to damage Mr. Piker’s reputation and his livelihood,” the lawsuit said.

Representatives for Jennings did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment on the lawsuit.

The post Hasan Piker sues CNN’s Scott Jennings for defamation appeared first on MS NOW.

As Election Day nears, recent events have prompted some FBI agents to express concern, according to seven people with knowledge of internal discussions among the ranks, that they may be ordered to seize voting machines or take other actions that disrupt election results.

Current and former FBI officials told MS NOW that in the wake of recent Trump administration actions that they believe were designed to sow doubt in the election process, some agents have expressed deep concern that they could be ordered to take legally questionable steps to investigate dubious claims of election fraud. The individuals requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

MS NOW has also learned that advocates for free and fair elections are preparing ways to give FBI agents advice if they fear they have been assigned a task that is illegal or unethical, according to two former law enforcement officials who have knowledge of the plans.

“I’m worried about that situation for sure,” a current FBI official said. “We have all the evidence we need to expect at least one U.S. attorney and one FBI agent to be willing to sign on to such actions, such as Georgia and Arizona.”

Federal law prohibits armed agents at polling places, but the current and former FBI officials who spoke to MS NOW are worried, after seeing incidents like ballot seizures in Fulton County, Georgia, that the Justice Department could seek to obtain warrants based on thin or specious allegations of voting irregularities — warrants that could, in theory, allow armed officers to legally swoop in and seize ballots or machines.

Such seizures could prevent voters from casting ballots and officials from counting them, and could interfere with the chain of custody normally required to ensure against tampering, experts say.

In opposing the administration’s demand for state voter rolls, the Democratic National Committee warned that the Justice Department’s demand in California “appears to be a plausible threat that DOJ will attempt to engage in warrant-based ballot seizure.”

The conservative-leaning ranks of FBI agents and progressive-leaning nonprofits and legal advocates aren’t normally aligned. But some agents share the fear of the administration interfering in vote counting because of the Trump administration’s legal attacks on state elections and the president’s rhetoric in advance of the Nov. 3 midterms.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment by MS NOW.

In an October lawsuit, Trump’s Justice Department insisted that California officials temporarily remove an estimated 20,000 voters from its rolls based on the unverified claim that they were “likely noncitizens.” But in partial reviews of the list, the state said in a court filing, it found many registered voters who appeared to be born in the U.S. — and thereby citizens — which made the administration’s claim “unreliable.”

Current and former FBI officials cited the FBI’s dramatic seizure of ballots in Fulton County, outside Atlanta, in January, after obtaining a warrant based largely on previously debunked allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

In March the FBI also obtained electronic voting records and equipment from Arizona’s Republican-led review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, after a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to the state Senate.

Neither action has resulted in criminal charges. The fear is that a seizure of state election materials on the day of voting could cause irreparable harm by breaking the chain of custody of the ballots or leaving vote counts unreliable.

MS NOW reported in July that two Atlanta-based FBI intelligence analysts were fired for refusing to participate in the administration’s investigation into the 2020 election that spurred the Fulton County ballot seizure.

“I and others are worried that the FBI will be the administration’s arm into seizing voting machines or issuing warrants on questionable probable cause,” said Rob D’Amico, a former supervisory FBI agent and an MS NOW contributor.

“The Fulton County, Georgia, search warrant demonstrated how people who questioned such moves will be removed, and so many have already,” D’Amico said. “It is going to take people of high moral character to hold the line between doing what they’re told and doing what is right and lawful.”

Many state officials are preparing in advance for ways to block a repeat of the seizure in Fulton County.

A state attorney general — whose office declined to be named for strategic reasons — sent a letter to the chief judge or judges of their federal courts asking preemptively for the opportunity to reply before any warrants are issued for ballots or voting equipment. The letter reminds the court that these matters are not so urgent as to preclude judges from allowing the state to weigh in.

Two people who work closely with state election officials told MS NOW that election administrators for months have gamed out scenarios they never before considered, including what to do if federal agents show up at polling places, what to do if the top election official is taken into custody, and how to use mobile voting equipment to fill the void if a polling place is taken offline because of a raid by federal law enforcement.

On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James reminded voters — which also read as a warning to the Trump administration — that armed federal officers are not allowed at polling places under state and federal law.

“I’m concerned about any actions that introduce uncertainty in the chain of custody of machines or ballots such that it becomes impossible to verify the true count, or introduces such doubt that no one believes the result,” one former FBI official said.

Attorney General Todd Blanche recently declined to rule out taking postelection actions, and both he and FBI Director Kash Patel declined to publicly oppose sending federal agents to polling places. An 1865 law prohibits agents’ presence in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Last week, Blanche left open the possibility that the Justice Department might try to block states from certifying votes in the midterm elections.

He said he had no intention to “improperly interfere with elections” but said he couldn’t envision every possible scenario and predetermine that the department would not act.

“Of course, I’m not going to say that,” he said. “But am I planning my days around the election to be somewhere to not certify? Of course not.”

Blanche has also publicly questioned why sending immigration enforcement officers to polling places would be objectionable.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked Patel whether deploying FBI agents to polling places on Election Day would violate the law.

Patel answered: “I don’t know that we can’t legally do it.”

Patel said agents and intelligence analysts would work from FBI field offices on election security but left open going to polling places if there were a violation of law.

One former senior FBI agent said he was concerned about federal agents showing up at polling places and creating an intimidating presence. The former agent said that in the past, “we were extremely careful about going nowhere near polling places, and even instructing agents to go unarmed to vote, just so there was never any whiff of federal activity near a polling place.”

Others said agents had expressed concern that they would be asked to take investigative steps that made them uncomfortable, either because they were legally questionable or were outside the scope of an FBI agent’s training.

“There is a fear of backlash from the current headhunting and being subjected to future investigations because of illegal things they will possibly be made to do this cycle,” another former official said.

The former senior FBI agent said he worried the administration’s goal would be simply to muddy and disrupt elections that don’t go their way.

“This administration is clearly willing to throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks,” he added. “And even if it’s unfounded, it will find life on social media. So, big picture, I’m concerned they’ll cast doubt of the results, tie states up in litigation and try to delay certification. All to avoid accountability, which, of course, is Trump and this administration’s fear. “

The Trump administration’s current flurry of investigations into alleged election fraud and public announcements about them appear to violate four decades of Justice Department policy. That policy has long barred taking overt investigative steps in suspected election fraud until after voting is finalized, with the goal of not unnecessarily interfering in or questioning the integrity of the election while voters are going to the polls.

The director of the Justice Department’s election crimes branch resigned his post in protest when Trump’s then-attorney general, Bill Barr, temporarily waived the policy in 2020. He returned to his post when the Biden administration reinstated the policy.

Lisa Rubin contributed to this reporting

The post White House actions spur worry among FBI agents about being called to polling places, sources say 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.

Headed into Election Day, it’s not exactly a secret that House Republicans are likely to lose their majority. Democrats only need a net gain of a handful of seats, and all of the available evidence suggests that won’t be a problem.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, keeps taking issue with the evidence.

“Republicans are no longer responding to polls,” the GOP leader told Fox News over the weekend. He added, “I’m telling you these polls are off — all of them.”

On Monday night, the Louisiana congressman returned to the network and pushed effectively the same line. “I’m telling you the polling is inaccurate,” the House speaker said.

Maybe so. Maybe Johnson’s right — we can probably all think of instances when polls have been off to one degree or another — and it could be the political world is in for an enormous surprise next week.

But if that were to happen, Republicans themselves would be among those who are shocked.

As a matter of campaign strategy and tactics, I can appreciate why Johnson is pushing this line with so much enthusiasm. He is, after all, Congress’ top GOP lawmaker. If he were openly accepting the available data on public attitudes, the House speaker would effectively have to admit the odds of him holding onto his gavel are poor, which wouldn’t exactly motivate his party’s rank-and-file voters to cast a ballot.

But regardless of Johnson’s motivations, even his own party doesn’t genuinely believe his talking point. We know this for certain because Republicans keep moving campaign money around to protect vulnerable GOP incumbents — not based on pleas and anecdotal evidence, but because of their own polling data.

The same is true for Donald Trump’s campaign schedule. The president hasn’t invested his time in states such as Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi and Kansas — states he won by enormous margins two years ago — because he finds local conditions pleasant this time of year. The White House political operation is deploying Trump in response to polling data, even as Johnson insists that Republicans “are no longer responding to polls.”

Of course they are. There’s nothing else for them to use when making difficult electoral decisions.

The post Speaker Johnson says the polls are wrong. His own party doesn’t appear to agree. appeared first on MS NOW.

Before a court considers whether former FBI Director James Comey committed a crime, it must decide whether the Justice Department brought the kind of charge Congress required before the statute of limitations expired.

The answer would matter in any federal prosecution. It matters even more here because the case revealed Monday cannot be separated from President Donald Trump’s lengthy public campaign against Comey.

Since firing Comey as FBI director in 2017, Trump has repeatedly called him corrupt and demanded that he be prosecuted. This was no private frustration. Trump put his wishes in writing online. He pressed then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue Comey and other perceived enemies last September. “They’re all guilty as hell,” he wrote, adding that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Days later, Comey was indicted.

That first prosecution, involving Comey’s congressional testimony, was dismissed because the prosecutor who obtained the indictment had been unlawfully appointed. A second case, based on Comey’s “86 47” seashell photograph, remains pending.

The latest case dates to October 2016. Prosecutors allege that Comey directed someone to provide a reporter with national defense information about a secret court order requiring Yahoo to scan emails for messages potentially connected to a foreign terrorist organization. Comey denies wrongdoing, and his lawyers say the matter was previously investigated twice without charges being brought.

On Oct. 5, exactly a decade after the alleged conduct, Justice Department lawyers filed a criminal information under seal. A “criminal information” is a formal accusation signed by a prosecutor. An indictment contains similar allegations but with one crucial addition: A grand jury has heard the government’s presentation and agreed that probable cause exists to bring the charge.

Informations are legitimate in the right circumstances. They are commonly used when defendants intend to plead guilty and formally waive their right to an indictment. Comey has not waived that right, and the Justice Department does not appear to claim that it could take him to trial on the information alone. The government’s narrower position is that filing the information kept the case alive, leaving prosecutors free to obtain an indictment later.

The ordinary five-year statute cannot save this case.

Under the ordinary federal statute of limitations, that argument is not especially strange. The general rule gives prosecutors five years to bring most federal charges. It says the government acts in time if an “indictment is found” or an “information is instituted.” Applying that language, courts have allowed prosecutors to file an information before the deadline and obtain an indictment afterward, even without a defendant’s waiver.

But the ordinary five-year statute cannot save this case.

To prosecute Comey over conduct alleged to have occurred in 2016, the Justice Department is relying on a special provision giving the government 10 years to charge certain national defense offenses.

That provision is worded differently. It says that an “indictment” has to be brought within 10 years. It does not mention an information.

That is where the Justice Department’s theory becomes difficult to defend. The law allowing prosecutors to stop the clock with an information gives them only five years. Essentially, the DOJ is trying to take the 10 years from the first law and the easier filing method from the second — but Congress never combined the two.

Congress clearly understood the difference between an indictment and an information, because both words are used in the general statute. Yet when lawmakers granted prosecutors twice as long to bring this particular category of cases, the statute used only one. If Congress intended both charging documents to have the same effect under the special provision, it wouldn’t have omitted one.

The government says filing an information to preserve a prosecution is widely recognized federal practice. Some appellate decisions permit exactly that. But those cases generally interpret the ordinary limitations statute, the one that expressly includes both charging documents. They do not settle whether prosecutors can use an information under a different provision in which Congress referred only to an indictment.

A statute of limitations is part of the law governing prosecution, not administrative clutter around the edges.

The Justice Department is likely to argue that the special law merely changes the number of years available, leaving the rest of the general limitations framework intact. Comey’s position in his motion to dismiss is that the special provision supplies its own instruction: An indictment must come within 10 years. The statute does not say that prosecutors may file whatever charging paper they have ready at the deadline and obtain the indictment later.

This may sound like legal hair-splitting, but it’s important. A statute of limitations is Congress’ judgment about how long the government should have to place someone in criminal jeopardy. It is part of the law governing prosecution, not administrative clutter around the edges.

These limits exist because evidence grows stale, witnesses disappear, and memories become less reliable. They also reflect a basic principle: The federal government, with its enormous investigative resources, eventually must decide whether it has a case. Congress gave prosecutors a generous period of 10 years for these offenses.

It’s also noteworthy that this allegation did not suddenly appear at the last minute. According to Comey’s lawyers, the disclosure was examined in 2017 and again in 2019 without a criminal case being filed. The Justice Department had years to review the evidence and, if it wished, present the matter to a grand jury.

Federal grand juries traditionally favor prosecutors: No defense is present, the government controls the evidence, and the standard is only probable cause. But that advantage depends partly on trust, and Trump’s Justice Department has squandered a lot by repeatedly pursuing people the president has publicly demanded be charged.

That makes the missing indictment here more significant. An information bypasses even this modest outside check, allowing prosecutors to file an accusation when the president has announced the outcome he wants.

The government had 10 years and missed its deadline. When a president demands a prosecution, the rules should be enforced more strictly, not less.

The post The latest attempt to prosecute James Comey has a fundamental flaw appeared first on MS NOW.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve kept its key rate unchanged Wednesday at about 3.9% despite stubbornly high inflation, as Chairman Kevin Warsh suggested its policies are already showing signs of having an impact.

“Inflation remains elevated,” the Fed said in a statement released after its two-day policy meeting. Holding off on an increase will allow “the accumulation of more information” that will help determine what policy the Fed should pursue “to ensure a timely return of inflation” to the central bank’s 2% inflation target, the statement said.

The Fed raised its benchmark rate last month for the first time in three years, defying President Donald Trump’s demands for rate cuts, in an effort to get inflation back to its 2% target in a “timelier” manner. The Fed is tasked by Congress to combat inflation, and it does so by lifting rates to slow borrowing and spending and cool price increases.

Wall Street investors and many economists continue to expect a quarter-point rate hike at the central bank’s next meeting Dec. 8-9.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor’s 500 index and Nasdaq index all dropped after the Fed announcement but regained much of their losses by closing bell.

The Fed’s decision comes just six days before a midterm election that has focused heavily on concerns around the cost of living and affordability. Consumers have generally soured on an economy weighed down by more expensive gas, groceries, and clothing, among other items. Warsh denied the election played a part in the Fed’s staying pat.

“Politics played no role in the decision,” he said at a news conference after the announcement. “I just spent two days with my colleagues upstairs. I didn’t hear an utterance about politics.”

Warsh faces plenty of challenges in getting inflation back to target. Some of the forces pushing up prices — specifically the rapid buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure and higher energy prices — may not be easily tamed by higher interest rates.

Still, Warsh said the “overwhelming consensus” among Fed officials is that what they’ve done “is starting to work some,” noting that credit conditions “tightened for some businesses and households.”

He said specifically that as large tech firms ramp up their borrowing to build data centers, higher rates will have a greater ability to cool that investment.

“Do interest rates matter?” Warsh asked. “I believe they do, and I don’t think they’re divorced from the rest of the economy.”

Two Fed officials dissented from Wednesday’s decision, with Fed governor Lisa Cook and Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Beth Hammack voting in favor of hiking rates by a quarter point. This is Cook’s first dissent since she was appointed to the board by President Joe Biden in 2022.

Cook has been targeted by the Trump administration, which tried to fire her last year, though the Supreme Court in June ruled she could keep her job while litigation played out. No president has fired a Fed governor before, a sign of the Fed’s longstanding independence from day-to-day politics. Trump renewed his attempt to remove Cook last month by setting up a committee to look into allegations Cook committed mortgage fraud, which she has denied.

Trump has also slammed the Fed for raising its key rate last month, though he largely blamed the central bank’s rate-setting committee, rather than Warsh, whom he appointed.

Parts of the economy are already being hit by higher rates, which were lifted by market forces, even before the Fed hiked last month. The average 30-year mortgage rate reached a three-year high of 7.4% earlier this month, though it has since slipped a bit. Higher mortgage rates have made buying a home unaffordable for 5 million more Americans since the beginning of the year, according to Oxford Economics, a consulting firm. Over time, Fed rate hikes can make mortgages, auto loans and credit card borrowing more expensive, adding to Americans’ sense that things like homes and cars are getting pricier.

Inflation picked up in September, when consumer prices rose 3.7% compared with a year earlier. The increase was much bigger than the 2.4% rate in February, just before the Iran war.

And on a monthly basis, the consumer price index — the most widely followed inflation gauge — rose 0.3% in both August and September. At that pace over a full year, inflation would rise much more quickly than the Fed’s 2% target.

A separate inflation measure more closely followed by the Fed, the personal consumption expenditures price index, comes out Thursday and is forecast to have jumped 3.6% in September from a year earlier, up from 3.4% in August. Core prices, which exclude the food and energy categories, are forecast to have risen 3.1%, up from 3% the previous month.

The Fed’s policy meeting is part of a busy week for central banks around the world. The Bank of Canada will also meet Wednesday and is forecast to lift its key rate a quarter point, to 2.5%. Policymakers at the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan are both scheduled to meet Thursday and are expected to keep their key rates unchanged.

For Warsh and the Fed, another key consideration is that the U.S. economy is growing at a healthy pace and unemployment remains low, at 4.2%, even if hiring is also sluggish. The government will report Thursday on growth for the July-September quarter, which is expected to reach 3%, according to a forecast by data provider FactSet. That would be up from 2.2% in the April-June quarter.

Many economists argue that solid growth is evidence that interest rates aren’t particularly high and the economy could withstand higher rates to combat inflation.

The post Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady despite elevated inflation appeared first on MS NOW.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, urged every American to read what he called an “extraordinary” new report on Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Raskin told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace that he and his fellow Democrats were demanding an independent special counsel to investigate the pair’s decadeslong relationship.

The 50-page report, released Monday by House Judiciary Committee Democrats, drew on interviews with the committee, survivor accounts, FBI records and documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Democrats allege in the report that a “growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women,” and they accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of “doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it.”

In response to the report, a White House spokesperson said, “None of these allegations are true,” and said Trump had been “fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein.” And in a statement to MS NOW, a DOJ spokesperson called the report “nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public.”

Trump and Epstein’s relationship, spanning from the 1980s to the early 2000s, is well-documented. Trump has said their friendship ended around 2004 and that he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes. He has denied that he engaged in any sexual misconduct with any woman connected to Epstein.

Raskin said the Justice Department’s refusal to thoroughly investigate Epstein’s “enablers” and possible co-conspirators “forced Democrats’” hand. “The idea that you run a billion-dollar global human trafficking ring, and only two people are guilty of crimes, and one of them happens to be deceased,” was hard to believe, he said.

The Maryland Democrat also accused the Justice Department and Attorney General Todd Blanche of failing to cooperate with other investigations into Epstein and his associates. “With foreign governments that are asking for information from the DOJ, Todd Blanche is not helping,” Raskin said. “Same with states that are engaged in doing state-level investigations and prosecutions related to potential crimes that were committed in their states.”

“We’re demanding an independent special counsel to take this over from the Department of Justice, with the hopes that the truth will come out and justice will be done for hundreds and hundreds of victims,” Raskin said.

He urged viewers to “read the report,” saying, “The detail is extraordinary. But we’re not even trying to make the case here. We’re not prosecutors. But we’re saying the Department of Justice has completely abdicated their responsibility.”

“And why?” Raskin asked. “We cannot understand any reason other than they’re trying to protect Donald Trump.”

You can watch Raskin’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.

The post Top Democrat urges Americans to read ‘extraordinary’ new report on Trump-Epstein ties appeared first on MS NOW.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday told Hillary Clinton to respond to a petition from President Donald Trump that seeks to revive his lawsuit that claims she conspired with others ahead of the 2016 election to “weave a false narrative” that his campaign colluded with Russia.

Lower courts have rejected Trump’s suit, and he wants the justices to intervene. Clinton and her civil co-defendants initially waived their right to respond to Trump’s petition. Had the court not requested a response, that would have all but guaranteed that the petition was headed for denial.

Although the response request is good news for Trump, it doesn’t necessarily signal the court is certain to grant review of his petition. Because it takes only one justice to request a response, it’s unclear how much of an appetite there is on the nine-member bench to take this one up. Response requests don’t specify how many justices asked for the response, nor do they explain why the response was requested.

It takes four justices to grant review.

Clinton’s brief opposing Trump’s petition is now due Nov. 27. The justices will consider in a private conference at some point after that whether to grant review. The Democrat recently made news for endorsing expanding the number of justices who sit on the court that currently has a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees.

Trump argues that he put off bringing the civil case during his first term due to his presidential responsibilities at the time. In his petition, his personal lawyers cast high court review as “necessary to protect the Presidency, and to prevent judicial disagreement from becoming a license to punish its advocates.”

The lower courts have rejected Trump so far. A conservative appeals court upheld a district judge’s ruling that dismissed his suit and imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions against him, Alina Habba and her law firm. The appellate panel noted that many of his and Habba’s legal claims “were indeed frivolous.”

The panel also cited the Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling in Clinton v. Jones that said Bill Clinton couldn’t avoid judicial process in civil litigation while he was in office. “If a president can be haled into court, he cannot be excused from suing to enforce his rights,” the panel reasoned.

In his Supreme Court petition, Trump’s lawyers maintained that there is an important distinction between suing and being sued. They said the Clinton v. Jones precedent “permitted another citizen’s suit against the President while requiring respect for the Presidency; it did not require him to pursue his own claims while in office or lose them.”

They also cited the Supreme Court’s 2024 criminal immunity ruling in Trump’s favor to argue that courts can’t make presidents decide whether to initiate personal litigation while in office. His lawyers are pressing that position as the president pursues an array of personal litigation, including multiple defamation claims.

This case is not Trump’s only pending bid to persuade the justices to revive personal litigation that he has lost in lower courts, nor is it the only one to invoke the presidency in doing so.

Although the Supreme Court has already rejected one of his two petitions seeking to reverse his defamation losses against the writer E. Jean Carroll, his second petition is awaiting a response from Carroll before the justices decide whether to grant or likewise deny that one. There, too, his lawyers cite the criminal immunity ruling in seeking to overturn the $83.3 million judgment Carroll won for statements Trump made during his first term.

The president is also pressing a defamation appeal against CNN over the network’s use of the phrase “big lie” regarding his 2020 election claims. That petition is awaiting a response from CNN, which, as happened in this Clinton litigation, the court requested after the network waived its right to respond.

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LONDON (AP) — Russell Brand acknowledged in a London court on Wednesday that he had been obsessed with sex as a younger man, but denied multiple charges of rape and sexual assault, saying the claims have had a “devastating” impact on his life.

The British actor-comedian entered Southwark Crown Court alongside his wife, Laura Gallacher, to testify in his own defense, telling reporters that “today is the day for truth and justice.”

Brand, 51, stood in the witness box and took the oath, then gave his full name: Russell Edward Brand. He answered “no” to each charge as his lawyer, Ian Winter, asked whether he was guilty of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault.

Brand denied forcing any of the six alleged victims to do anything against their will.

“Consent is fundamental, essential, necessary, and indeed in many ways more important than sex itself,” Brand said.

Brand said the allegations had had a “devastating” impact, with friends and colleagues abandoning him. He said no one with relevant evidence had been willing to testify in court on his behalf.

“My entire life has been consumed by these events, these allegations, these accusations,” he said, adding later that dealing with the “traumatic” allegations had come “at the expense of my marriage, my children and health.”

Brand said he was even barred from staying with his baby son in hospital after anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him in a newspaper and a TV documentary in 2023.

“The reason given by Great Ormond Street Hospital when my son was receiving open-heart surgery and subsequent treatment was due to the material published,” he said.

Six women accuse Brand of misconduct

Over the past two weeks of the trial, prosecutors set out their case, and the jury heard from six women who accuse Brand of sexual misconduct between 1999 and 2009.

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones told jurors that Brand was “ruthless, he was calculating, he was manipulative. And, the prosecution say, he was a sexual predator.”

Known for risqué stand-up routines and battles with drugs and alcohol, Brand rose to prominence in the early 2000s, hosting television programs and his own BBC radio show. He appeared in Hollywood films including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to the Greek” and was briefly married to pop star Katy Perry.

In recent years, he has moved away from mainstream media, relocated to Florida, and built a large online following with videos mixing wellness, conspiracy theories, and discussions of his religious devotion.

The allegations cover a decade when Brand went from rising stand-up comedian to major celebrity in the U.K.

The first victim alleges that Brand raped her in a hotel room during the Labour Party’s annual conference in the seaside town of Bournemouth in 1999. Another woman alleges that in 2001 Brand tried to drag her into the men’s bathroom at the London office of music channel MTV, where she worked.

A third woman alleges that Brand orally raped her in 2004 in the toilet of a London bar, and a fourth says Brand kissed and groped her at a London radio station in 2004 or 2005.

Another complainant says Brand anally raped her at his home after she met him at one of his shows in 2009, while the sixth says the comedian demanded a massage and pressed his face into her groin during the recording of an advertisement in 2009.

Prosecutors say the women don’t know one another and separately went to police after the TV documentary was broadcast in 2023. The Associated Press doesn’t name victims of alleged sexual violence, and British law protects their identities from the media for life.

Brand says all encounters were consensual

Under cross-examination by Karmy-Jones, Brand acknowledged he had dedicated a lot of his earlier life to “beyond reckless philandering.”

“As I became more successful and famous I was very comfortable allowing that to facilitate sexual access, which I agree with you was wrong,” he said.

He said “yes” when asked if he had been obsessed with sex when he was younger, but “no” when the prosecutor asked: “Do you accept that you were desperate for it and sometimes couldn’t function without it?”

As he completed a day on the stand, Brand was asked again whether he had committed the crimes he is accused of.

“Not guilty is my plea in every single case,” he said.

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Amid a flurry of Justice Department efforts to target people whom Donald Trump doesn’t like, two former FBI officials were charged late last week with lying to Congress — in a case of particular interest to the president.

Remember the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop? As part of a Republican investigation into the matter, Nikki Floris, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, and Bradley Benavides, another FBI official, briefed members of Congress about the contents of the computer. Last week, Trump’s DOJ charged them with allegedly making false statements about their level of involvement into the investigation.

Their attorneys condemned the charges as political “nonsense,” announced 10 days before closely watched elections, and it didn’t help matters that the president told reporters after their arrest, “I heard they were bad people.” He did not say from whom he’d heard this.

Nevertheless, the case appears to be off to a rough start. After prosecutors added an obstruction charge to the case, for example, a federal judge dismissed it.

But just as notable was what we learned from Bryan Witt, a veteran FBI agent, who testified Tuesday and shed light on what transpired behind the scenes. The New York Times reported:

In mid-July, President Trump gave a prime-time speech in which he raised concerns about a disputed F.B.I. report that China had tried to interfere in the 2020 election in an effort to defeat him.

At the heart of his address was a bitter complaint: that some of the bureau’s intelligence officials had purposefully sought to play down the report to undercut his claims about the race.

According to Witt’s testimony, one day after Trump targeted FBI officials in his remarks, FBI Director Kash Patel directed prosecutors immediately to investigate the officials for obstruction and conspiracy.

Witt conceded that FBI officials saw the inquiry as a “witch hunt,” and he personally saw the effort as a “huge distraction,” but the push ultimately led to charges against Floris and Benavides.

The Times report went on to note that Witt “asserted from the stand that he had never before worked on a case where instructions came directly from the F.B.I.’s director. He added that Mr. Patel and his deputies often checked on his progress, pressing him and his colleagues to move as aggressively as possible.”

Time will tell what becomes of the case, though it’s a safe bet that the defendants’ attorneys have taken a keen interest in what Witt had to say. But the broader takeaway from the agent’s testimony is unavoidable: Trump snaps his fingers, and Patel follows the president’s orders.

White House control over the Justice Department has been well-documented, but its control over the FBI is just as overwhelming. Patel, best known as a podcast personality before Senate Republicans elevated him to his powerful role, may lead the bureau, but there is fresh reason to believe he’s effectively a DINO — Director in Name Only.

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This is the Oct. 28, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to 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.”

The post Joe Scarborough: Talarico’s position even more impressive considering what he’s up against appeared first on MS NOW.

The parents of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January, accused the Trump administration of withholding information about the investigation into their son’s killing. On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough slammed the government’s inaction and said America “is not going to forget” Pretti.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Michael and Susan Pretti said that in the nine months since their son’s death, neither the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota nor the Justice Department had provided their family with the “basic information the law affords,” including the identities of the officers involved.

Alex Pretti, 37, was filming federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis when he intervened after an officer pushed a woman to the ground. Video of the encounter shows agents tackling him, removing his gun and shooting him multiple times. In the aftermath of the shooting, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti posed a threat to federal agents and accused him of domestic terrorism.

The shooting prompted federal and state investigations. However, state and local officials have said federal authorities stopped sharing evidence after initially turning some over. Hennepin County has sued the federal government for access to evidence.

In a statement, the Justice Department said investigators were following “standard practice,” adding: “Communications with family members, if any, come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing. Those communications do not typically occur during an investigation.”

But Scarborough wasn’t buying it. He accused the federal government of stonewalling and said officials should “stop trying to subvert justice and stop trying to protect the killer.”

“Everybody should know the killer’s name in America,” he continued. “The person who killed Alex Pretti, execution style, everybody should know his name, and everybody should know all the evidence.”

Scarborough said that despite its best efforts, the Justice Department would not be able to “wipe it all away” and “make everybody forget this.”

“The parents aren’t going to forget it,” he said, “and America is not going to forget it either.”

The MS NOW host compared the situation to the 1988 film “Mississippi Burning,” which is loosely based on the abduction and murder of three civil rights workers during Freedom Summer in 1964. “Except we are substituting bigoted Mississippi sheriffs who are trying to cover up evidence of slain civil rights workers” with “DOJ officials,” he said.

“Now it’s the Trump administration that’s literally trying to sweep a killer — a killer’s execution-style killing in the streets of America — under the carpet,” Scarborough continued. “It’s not going to happen.”

You can watch Scarborough’s full commentary in the clip at the top of the page.

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