Some influencers in MAGA world are at one another’s throats over the arrest and possible deportation of one of the movement’s loudest anti-immigration cheerleaders.
Samuel Sey, a Christian blogger and Ghanaian immigrant, has gained popularity for his vocal defenses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waging Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. But as I explained in this week’s Tuesday Tech Drop, he was arrested last week after reportedly overstaying his visa.
The Department of Homeland Security told The Christian Post that Sey is “an illegal alien from Ghana” who has accepted “voluntary departure” from the country.
The MAGA movement, it seems, is torn over the ordeal.
On one hand, a Black immigrant who overstayed his visa would seem like a prime target for a movement like MAGA. On the other hand, a Black immigrant willing to celebrate Trump’s brutality toward immigrants is useful to the movement for propaganda purposes — and that seems like a big reason why some conservatives are expressing sympathy for him.
Christian nationalist influencer Joel Webbon faced some backlash over a prayer in which he thanked God for Sey’s arrest and for “shutting his mouth from spewing out more lies and slander against your servants.” Webbon, who also prayed for Sey’s deportation, is someone known for promoting bigotry and arguing that the U.S. could use even more racism.
A new report from The Bulwark sounds the alarm on disturbing remarks made by Ellis Boyle, a North Carolina-based U.S. attorney, during a discussion about crime with conservative influencer Cassie Clark. The outlet reported on Boyle’s comments about removing people with “bad” gene pools from society:
“What I’ve observed is, you know — it occurs to me, and this is not a new thought; I heard someone else say it. And I started looking — and if you look, you see it: 5% of the population cause 90% of the crime.”
And Boyle kept going:
“I think there’s a big component — if you took out [the] 5% of the population that’s bad and removed them from society, so they don’t create mayhem and create, you know, babies with the gene pool of more bad, then I think, in two, maybe three generations, think of how great this population would be. But that’s something that takes willpower.”
In response to the backlash against Boyle, Clark attempted to defend him from criticism, writing on X: “Removing the people who keep hurting everybody else from free society is called incarceration. … What it is not is eugenics.”
Yet Boyle advocated for removing people from society to limit their supposedly bad “gene pool” — which is absolutely a key tenet of eugenics.
Boyle’s office didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Trump’s bigoted and baseless remarks about some immigrants having “bad genes” that make them prone to criminality have echoed textbook eugenicists by suggesting that America’s woes could be addressed by altering the nation’s genetic makeup.
Late last year, I wrote about about people with ties to Musk and a bunch of other Silicon Valley tech bros appearing in the Epstein files, with emails showing that they discussed eugenics. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another prominent voice of racist pseudoscience, has been accused by critics of using the nation’s top health agency to support eugenics ideology as well. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a top infectious disease expert, said in his resignation letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that eugenics “plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated” at Kennedy’s agency.
The Trump campaign’s 2024 ad “Kamala Harris is for they/them” was devastatingly effective, and top Trump strategists credit it with winning over persuadable voters they badly needed. After that, it seemed safe to assume the attack would lose some of its punch. Democrats would have learned how to answer it.
So the estimated $58 million that state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee in Texas, and his allies have spent on ads about the issue this cycle looked like a desperate “fighting the last war” move. Paxton is an unpopular candidate without a strong economy to cushion him, and his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, has been ahead in nearly every public poll since July.
That turned out to be only half right.
We spent last week in Texas for the latest installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” talking with Hispanic voters in Harris County who backed Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats from the Houston suburbs, right-leaning voters from the Fort Worth suburbs and Trump voters in Hood County.
Among the right-leaning voters who are wavering, the issue has not lost any of its power. It probably isn’t enough to get Paxton over the finish line. But the barrage, which has included dirty tricks — like a fake transgender “resource guide” mailed to school-age kids — is working on the Republican base. It’s getting angry voters to the polls for Paxton, and it’s keeping conservatives who can’t stomach him from crossing over to Talarico.
The ads still work for many Republicans
Texas voters participate in a focus group moderated by Elise Jordan.MS NOW
Ashley, a Republican mother of four in the Fort Worth suburbs, is one of the angry ones. Both campaigns have denied sending the mailer.
“I honestly don’t care who sent it. I just don’t want the info in my house,” she said.
She would never consider voting for Talarico, who went to seminary and talks openly about his faith.
“Just because you went to seminary doesn’t mean you have Christian values,” she said. “If you’re supporting LGBTQ in any form or fashion in that regard, that’s not Christian.”
Susan is the other kind. She lives in the Fort Worth suburbs, has kids in high school and college, and almost always votes Republican. In the primary, she voted for Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton beat. She ought to be persuadable.
She feels about Paxton’s character the way she felt about Trump in 2016, when she voted third party. Trump’s first term won her over, and she voted for him in both 2020 and 2024.
“I would probably just not vote or vote libertarian as a protest,” she said. “I just cannot bring myself to vote for Paxton, and yet I know Talarico is in favor of this.”
“This” is what she sees as Talarico’s overly permissive approach to transgender issues involving minors. In 2021, during a hearing on a bill limiting students to school sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth, he argued that “there are six really common biological sexes.” He recanted last month on Fox News. But the ads have made sure those old remarks are everywhere, and Susan takes them as his real worldview.
She’s sympathetic to what she thinks is a misguided attempt at Christian compassion. But the transgender debate roiled her kids’ high school, so it’s personal, and it matters more to her than the issues where she’s closer to Democrats. She’s against the war with Iran, and she’s frustrated with how Trump has handled Immigration and Customs Enforcement, corruption and the economy.
There were eight right-leaning voters in our Fort Worth-area group. Six had voted for Cornyn in the primary, and several received mailers addressed to their children. Seven said where the candidates stand on transgender policy for kids would factor into how they vote.
A vulnerability for Democrats among Hispanic Trump voters
The issue also hits a nerve with the conservative Hispanic voters we met in Harris County. They voted for Trump in 2024, and they’re unhappy with the economy and with an immigration crackdown they consider overkill. That gives Democrats an opening on policy. Where Democrats keep losing them is on culture and shared values, and nothing matters more there than transgender rights.
“There’s certain things that are just a no-go for me, and it’s non-negotiable,” said Angelika, a mother of six. Cultural issues keep her “more towards the Republican side, because I believe Jesus should be in school,” Angelika explained. On transgender rights, she added, “I don’t want anyone teaching my kids about that kind of stuff.”
“You can’t have a kid, you know, deciding if you’re going to be a boy or girl at the age of seven, eight, or nine,” said Guillermo, who still leans toward Talarico.
Some of them didn’t buy Talarico’s walk back, which they found insincere and political.
“If you are going to say something, stand by it,” Caroline said. “On the other hand, Ken Paxton too, with all the scandals and the corruption, it’s kind of picking the lesser of two evils for me.”
Not everyone had closed the door. Adrian, a married homeowner from northern Houston, said he was open to Talarico if the Democrat would clarify where he stands.
“Talk more about religion, more about transgender,” he said. “If he focuses more on that and the cost of living, I would consider him.”
Why an undervote may not be enough
Texas voters participate in a focus group moderated by Elise Jordan.MS NOW
Four focus groups can’t tell you how a statewide race will go. But what we heard suggests the ads may get Paxton an undervote: conservatives who dislike him turning out but leaving the Senate race blank. Others, like Susan, may cast a protest vote for the libertarian. Neither group is crossing over to Talarico. But that isn’t enough for Paxton if Talarico keeps winning independents by double digits, as he has in recent polls, and Democratic voters stay this turbocharged.
The anti-transgender ads could turn out to be Republicans’ Maginot Line. After World War I, France spent a fortune on fortifications built for the last war, and in 1940, the Germans went around them. Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million nationwide on their own wall of ads. It may not hold back voter anger over the cost of living, corruption and Trump’s immigration crackdown, or the usual midterm backlash against the party in power. The fight has already moved somewhere else. Millions squandered, and more people are angry.
“I feel like it’s the Republicans that are constantly talking about this stuff, and I’m like, ‘Okay, but that doesn’t make my brisket cheaper,’” said one participant, an independent from Fort Bend County who generally votes Democratic.
This is the Oct. 29, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
“These are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years.”
— Former President Barack Obama, criticizing the Trump administration at a rally outside Atlanta yesterday
Modern political history offers few closing arguments as out of touch, self-defeating, or downright bizarre as the one President Donald Trump has made on the behalf of his fellow Republicans ahead of next week’s midterm elections.
As I write in my latest piece for The Atlantic:
Trump’s primary rationale for why voters should support the GOP, as best I can tell, is that the affordability crisis is a “hoax,”Bill Maheris a “loser,” and Sen.Jon Hustedof Ohio has a nice physique.
That easy-to-mock message has been accompanied by a staggering number of missteps. Just for starters, he’s belittled the impact of his stalled war with Iran, sided with Russia as it continues to pummel Ukrainian cities, defended an attack ad from the GOP candidate for Ohio governor that repulsed other top Republicans, downplayed high energy prices while boasting that U.S. oil and gas companies are “making a freaking fortune,” embraced AI as the nation turns against it, obsessed over White House construction projects, and spent a lot of time talking about handsome men, Husted being just one.
I took a look at some of Trump’s recent rallies, and very few of the arguments he makes are actually helpful — or even relevant — to Republican candidates.
He’s broken key promises to drive down costs, deport only “the worst of the worst,” and stay out of foreign wars.
He’s on the wrong side of many of the day’s top issues.
And he now lives, even some Republicans privately think, in a gilded bubble, palling around with billionaires, oblivious to — and, even worse, uncaring about — the problems facing so many voters.
His approval rating has slipped to the low 30s, and he’s become so politically toxic that some Republicans in tight races don’t want him anywhere near their state or congressional district, fearing his rallies will do more harm than good.
Yet the president plans to spend much of his time on the campaign trail in the coming days, largely in deep red states now suddenly in play.
Source: Gallup poll of 1,200 U.S. adults, conducted Oct. 1-19, 2026. Margin of error: ±4 percentage points
A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE APPLEBAUM
A new investigation in The Atlantic documents the suffering of civilians in Russian-occupied Oleshky, Ukraine — and warns of a Kremlin propaganda spectacle as American journalists prepare to visit under a humanitarian ceasefire credited to Melania Trump.
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic, joined “Morning Joe” today to discuss the upcoming media visit, the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, and her recent reporting from Venezuela.
JS: Your colleague Zarina Zabrisky has written about the horrors of Russian occupation in Oleshky. What happens to Ukrainians living under Russian control?
AA: When the Russians go into a piece of Ukraine and take it over, they murder the leaders. They arrest people who have Ukrainian flags or symbols. They set up concentration camps — they call them filtration camps — to interrogate people and sometimes torture them. They remove the Ukrainian language and change the school curriculums.
And they shoot dogs. Why? Because the dogs make noise and might attack soldiers, and the Russians want control. And of course, they also kidnap children.
JS: Ukraine has repeatedly sought a humanitarian ceasefire. Why is Russia agreeing now, just days before the midterms?
AA: Oleshky is a town that’s been deprived of food and outside medical supplies since December, so people have been starving. The Russians have finally agreed to a ceasefire, and they’ve credited Melania Trump. It seems to have been negotiated by her PR guy who did her documentary. They’re allowing in some reporters from Newsmax, and maybe Fox News.
JS: And what do you expect those American journalists will see?
AA: The belief is that there’s going to be a kind of propaganda show where people say, “Oh, we’ve always been well treated by the Russians.” These are all Ukrainians, and the concern is that they’ll be taken to Russia rather than allowed to cross the river to Kherson, which is under Ukrainian control.
It’s a real test of the integrity of those journalists. Will they help cover up what’s happened in places like Oleshky, or will they tell the real story?
WG: Can Ukraine survive with President Trump effectively throwing his lot in with Putin?
AA: This war is over when the Russians decide to stop fighting. What the Trump administration has done for the last year and a half is give the Russians the feeling that it’s worth continuing. In other words, the Kushner and Witkoff negotiations have prolonged the war. Having said that, the Ukrainian front line is holding. They are not about to collapse, and there’s no indication that they will stop fighting.
JS: And what about the pressure on Ukraine to give up territory?
AA: This is not a real estate deal. It’s not like, “Oh, we’ll give you this block for that block, and you can build your building.” When you give up territory, it means giving up people to this totalitarian regime. If surrender means the Russians come in, kill your leaders, kidnap your children, and destroy your culture, why would you stop fighting?
JL: You recently traveled to Venezuela. How does what you saw compare with the Trump administration’s account?
AA: What we’ve created is a coalition of two kleptocracies. You have the Trump administration doing very opaque oil deals with what was the Maduro regime. Now Venezuela is run by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president.
But opposition leader María Corina Machado has just returned, and the scenes of joy show Venezuelans’ desire for democracy. They want to make their own decisions and have their oil benefit them.
Katty Kay: And what has changed in daily life for ordinary Venezuelans since Maduro’s departure?
AA: Not much. There’s still very high inflation. I went to a market in Caracas where the prices were written on a whiteboard because they have to be changed every day. People talk about the difficulties of paying for education for their kids. Everybody still thinks about emigration. The feeling is that they’re trapped and waiting for a change.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.
Like many voters, Addison Smith went to her local polling place to cast a ballot in the upcoming midterm elections.
Unlike most, she had to fly four hours to get there.
A student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Smith was eager to vote in the competitive Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton and worried she wouldn’t be able to get a mail ballot in time. So her dad offered to pay for a plane ticket to Houston.
“Kinda chic to fly home to vote in the midterms,” she wrote on TikTok, above the caption “They need me.”
“I just made a little quick TikTok about it because I was like, everyone should go vote, and I think that’s important, especially in states where the registration deadline hasn’t passed or early voting is still open,” Smith told MS NOW.
College students sometimes travel long distances to vote because they live away from home and move frequently, which can complicate voting by mail. In 2024, a University of Miami student flew from Florida to North Carolina to vote. In 2020, two American University students rented a Volkswagen Golf and drove 30 hours from Washington, D.C., to Texas after their mail ballots didn’t arrive. A Johns Hopkins medical student spent $600 on a last-minute flight from Baltimore to Florida to vote.
But those were presidential elections. Midterms typically draw fewer voters, and the president isn’t on the ballot. Still, Democrats appear more motivated this year. A Pew Research Center survey found that supporters of Democratic House candidates were 17 percentage points more likely than Republican supporters to say they were extremely motivated to vote.
Texas is a particular draw this year, with a competitive Senate race and a closely watched governor’s race.
Ella Alvarez, a 19-year-old University of Oklahoma student, drove 4 1/2 hours from campus to her home in Abilene, Texas, to vote last week. A first-time voter, Alvarez described coming home as a no-brainer. She’d been waiting for her chance to vote.
“I’m really soaking it all in, and I’m able to understand on my own for once, like what this really means now, and how lucky are we to have such amazing candidates right now?”Alvarez said. “I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to go home and vote for them, and it was too important to me to mail-in.”
Alvarez voted for Democrats “all across” the ballot, including Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for governor.
“Young Texans aren’t the future of this party, we are the present of this party,” said Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a statement to MS NOW. “Young people understand this isn’t just about one election, it’s about building a Texas Democratic Party ready to win power for the next 30 years and beyond.”
For some young voters, the motivation is opposition to President Donald Trump. In the fall Harvard Youth Poll, 63% of young people who said they would definitely vote described their congressional vote as opposition to Trump and his policies. The poll also found a 16-point gap between young Democrats and Republicans who said they would definitely vote: 50% of young Democrats, compared with 34% of young Republicans.
Jahnavi Rao, who leads the youth voter registration group New Voters, which has run more than 1,300 voter registration drives in high schools around the country, said that social media has played a role in boosting this engagement.
“The last year has been incredibly destabilizing for the country as a whole and globally,” she said. “Young people are more aware of that than anybody due to it being constantly in our faces through social media.”
Still, enthusiasm is only one measure of an election. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders drew 27,000 people to a Manhattan rally before losing the New York primary to Hillary Clinton by 16 points. And in 2022, the final Economist/YouGov poll found Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting — 59% to 48% — but Democrats held the Senate, and the much-hyped “red wave” never materialized.
TikToks like Smith’s suggest that some voters feel intensely about this election — and are eager to turn that feeling into action. But only Tuesday will reveal how many less enthusiastic voters turn out anyway.
This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.
Over the past week, the public has learned of three efforts by the Department of Justice to charge perceived enemies of President Donald Trump with federal crimes. One of those efforts, an attempt to indict former White House aide turned Jan. 6 committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, failed on Tuesday after a Washington, D.C., grand jury did not have the votes to return what’s known as a “true bill.”
The other two have resulted in the opening of criminal cases: one against former FBI Director James Comey, the third such effort against him in just over a year, and the other against two former FBI employees alleged to have lied to a congressional committee about what they knew about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
And with the midterm elections literally days away, despite this seeming escalation in prosecutions, the Justice Department has maintained that political considerations had nothing to do with the timing or existence of these criminal matters.
As a DOJ spokesperson told The New York Times, “The standard is purpose, not proximity to Election Day. Department policy does not require the department to stop ongoing work during an election season.”
Yet even assuming that Justice Department prosecutors are acting in good faith, that description of DOJ policy is incomplete.
A memo issued in 2024 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland mandated that prosecutors not time “criminal charges or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election.” The memo went on to say, “Such a purpose, or the appearance of such a purpose, is inconsistent with the Department’s mission and with the Principles of Federal Prosecution” (emphasis added).
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request to confirm whether the memo was still in effect. MS NOW is unaware of any evidence that it has been rescinded.
Moreover, the Justice Manual — sometimes called the bible of federal prosecution by current and former DOJ personnel — provides that any issue or even “the perception of an issue” concerning an investigative or prosecutorial action during an election season demands consultation with the Public Integrity Section, the deputy attorney general and/or the attorney general themselves. In other words, Trump political appointees, up to and including Attorney General Todd Blanche, are the final arbiters of whether a prosecutor’s purpose is legitimate.
Given that, some or all of them must have signed off on these recent prosecutorial developments. But the mistakes made by DOJ lawyers in each of these cases suggest both a rush to the courthouse and a desire to stretch the law, criminal procedural rules or both in ways that might fail or have already faltered.
Take the most recent criminal charges against Comey, unsealed earlier this week. Those charges center on the purported disclosure of allegedly classified information by an FBI employee to a New York Times reporter who published an article hours later. According to the DOJ, Comey intentionally caused that disclosure on Oct. 5, 2016, knowing the information was classified.
But the case against Comey, filed 10 years later to the date, was not initiated through an indictment, which requires a vote of at least 12 grand jurors in a federal court. The Justice Department charged Comey via an information, which does not require grand jury involvement and therefore typically can be filed much more quickly than an indictment.
Because the statute of limitations for each of the charges against Comey is 10 years, the DOJ seems to have assumed it could charge Comey by information within that window and then later obtain an indictment, which (barring a defendant’s waiver) is necessary to prosecute felonies.
But now the department is instead defending Comey’s near-immediate motion to dismiss. And his legal team’s argument has nothing to do with the substance of the charges or claims of selective or vindictive prosecution, which it supported with extensive documentation in the two prior cases against Comey.
Instead, Comey’s attorneys argue that the plain language of the statute of limitations pertains only to indictments, not informations or criminal complaints, the third way federal criminal cases can begin. A Washington, D.C., federal judge will hold a hearing on that motion Friday.
The case against former FBI analyst Nikki Floris and former agent Bradley Benavides seems to show signs of a similar rush to the courthouse. That case was instigated on Oct. 20 through a criminal complaint, which typically contains a written statement of “the essential facts” of the offense charged, usually submitted by a federal law enforcement agent under oath and then approved and signed by a federal magistrate judge.
But within days — and literally in the middle of the night before a preliminary hearing — the Justice Department filed what it characterized as a “superseding” criminal complaint. The new complaint lacked a signature from either the agent, swearing to its veracity, or the judge himself. It also was filed under the name of a different FBI agent, without any explanation.
The magistrate judge, Zia Faruqui, was furious, asking the DOJ lawyer whether he was aware of any prior federal case in which a magistrate judge had allowed a superseding criminal complaint without a judge’s sign-off. The lawyer acknowledged that he was not — and ultimately, the judge refused to sign the new complaint, telling the prosecutors, “I am concerned about what your view of the law is.”
The hearing was further derailed when Bryan Witt, the agent who replaced the original affiant, took the witness stand to defend the government’s finding of probable cause to charge Floris and Benavides.
On questioning by Floris’ lawyer, Witt testified that the day after Trump complained during a national address that some FBI intelligence officials had downplayed a report that China had tried to interfere in the 2020 election in order to defeat him, FBI Director Kash Patel directed the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City, Missouri, to investigate some of those same officials, including Floris. Witt further testified that the letter arrived “right in the middle of a major public corruption case,” that the new investigation was “a huge distraction” and that he had concerns from the outset that “this would be viewed as political.”
He also admitted that he never interviewed Floris, though he said it would have been “incredibly useful” and normally would have been something agents did, and that the initial complaint contained factual inaccuracies. As of Wednesday afternoon, Faruqui was still weighing whether prosecutors had probable cause to charge Floris and Benavides.
In light of the challenges the DOJ has encountered in that case, one may wonder if it would have been more effective to slow down and present an indictment to a grand jury. Yet the department’s failed attempt to secure an indictment against Hutchinson — its third potential own goal in recent days in D.C. federal court — might explain why it didn’t.
Because grand jury proceedings are secret, it is unclear why the grand jury did not indict Hutchinson. But according to public reporting, including from MS NOW, lawyers from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division proposed charging her with false statements to Congress, crimes not usually within that unit’s ambit.
The Justice Department’s inability to indict her comes after an unusual number of similar losses in other cases in Washington that have involved known targets of Trump’s ire, including an attempt to indict six members of Congress who, through a video, encouraged military service members to refuse to follow unlawful orders.
And with days to go before the midterm elections and with a president who is openly taking credit for the DOJ’s litigation strategy, it could be that no matter what charging instrument the department chooses, it is working too fast — and with too conspicuous a veneer of partisanship — to succeed.
Getting charged with election fraud while fueling bogus allegations of election fraud — that’s the MAGA way.
In the Trump era, it’s not uncommon for Republicans to be charged or even convicted of voter fraud while their conservative movement pushes false — and fundamentally racist — claims of election chicanery. My colleague Steve Benen has covered this trend for years.
We, of course, can’t forget the insurrectionists pardoned by Donald Trump after they fueled a riot at the Capitol premised on lies about voter fraud. Or the Trump allies who agreed to pay up in 2024 after concocting a fraudulent voter suppression scheme.
And earlier this year, I wrote about the former official at Turning Point Action who comported himself as a champion of election integrity before pleading guilty to election fraud.
Certified hypocrites abound.
And now, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that scandal-plagued conservative activist James O’Keefe and pro-MAGA content creator Cam Higby have been charged with various crimes over an alleged plot involving fake identities presented to election workers in an effort to sow doubt about the integrity of next week’s midterms.
Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O’Keefe and another man with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft for filming themselves misrepresenting their identities to election judges during the Minnesota Aug. 11 primary.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said they were alerted by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office that James O’Keefe, Cameron Higby and others were trying to undermine the state’s vouching system.
Videos posted by O’Keefe’s operation show them wearing burkas outside precincts during the primary. Moriarty said the voter names they used included some residents who were dead and at least one who voted.
Here’s the way O’Keefe’s operation recently defended the effort:
In a press release in August, O’Keefe’s group, which calls itself the “Justice League,” said the people in the video “did not cast ballots. The investigation was intended to test the limits of Minnesota’s vouching law and document how election workers apply it on Election Day.”
On Monday, he claimed that the “only way” Republican candidate Michele Tafoya can lose her Senate race in Minnesota is if liberals “cheat.” That’s the context for O’Keefe and Higby’s alleged scheme, which Media Matters recently described in more detail:
In August, O’Keefe and other right-wing content creators affiliated with his Citizen Justice League descended on Minnesota to attack the state’s voter voucher system, claiming to be registered voters in various precincts and asking poll workers if they would be able to vouch for several unregistered individuals who lacked photo ID.
Videos of the stunts, produced by Higby, O’Keefe, and Rubin, make the broad claim that Minnesota’s voucher system, which allows for a registered voter to “vouch” for the identities of up to eight unregistered individuals living in the same precinct, is a natural source for fraud.
Media Matters noted that some of the footage has been promoted by the Trump administration and conservative media. And the racism involved was unsubtle:
In the videos from O’Keefe and Higby, the pair dressed in what O’Keefe described as “full traditional Muslim attire” and adopted fake accents to impersonate registered voters and ask if they could vouch for several friends or family members.
But intimidation appears to be the primary intent here. O’Keefe is known for launching bogus sting operations that conservatives can use to peddle MAGA propaganda, potentially placing their targets in various kinds of danger. In 2024, I wrote about how one such operation apparently fueled violent threats toward staff at a shelter for immigrants in Arizona.
Now, Republicans are attempting to conjure up voter fraud claims to gin up backlash over a crucial Senate race in which polling has consistently shown the Democrat with an edge. And Minnesota’s Hennepin County apparently isn’t standing for it.
Taylor, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, is running in a House district that white Tennessee Republicans — acting on the president’s behest — gerrymandered in ways that carved up the state’s only majority-Black district, seemingly ensuring that the district would be represented by a white Republican.
And when all is said and done, Taylor may indeed cruise to victory over his well-known progressive opponent, fellow state Sen. Justin Pearson. But Taylor’s acknowledged history of sending unsolicited nudes has thrown a wrench into his campaign.
Taylor faced mockery and fierce rebuke this week for responding to an exposé by describing the nude photos — some of which he apparently sent in his 50s — as “youthful indiscretions.” According to the Nashville Scene:
Multiple sources say they had received or seen nude photos from Taylor, who is running for U.S. Congress in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. Taylor acknowledged to the Scene that he had sent nude photos in the past but dismissed them as mistakes that have since been forgiven by his wife Kimberly.
“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor tells the Scene when asked about a history of texting nude pictures. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of and we’ve worked through it a long time ago. My god and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”
As the outlet noted, these were hardly “youthful indiscretions”:
One individual — who requested anonymity, citing fear of retaliation — says they received an unsolicited nude picture from Taylor as recently as 2021, before he was elected to the state Senate. A second eyewitness source independently confirmed the nude photos sent by Taylor. At that time, Taylor was 53.
I'm disturbed to learn of Brent Taylor’s pattern of sending unsolicited nude photos to multiple women.
The fact that he would dismiss his behavior as “youthful indiscretions" despite it happening recently, in his fifties, & while he held government office is ridiculous.
To reiterate, Taylor is still headed into Election Day with the advantage manufactured for him through gerrymandering. But his campaign is providing yet more fodder to point out the hypocrisy of a MAGA movement that claims to promote Christian values but celebrates and enables men known for sex predation, such as Trump.
The Tennessee Republican has given liberals a gift this election season: “My opponent was sending unsolicited nudes while on the doorstep of qualifying for the Denny’s senior menu” is one hell of a closing argument against someone who shouldn’t be anywhere near a congressional seat.
This is the Oct. 28, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
“You can even come to Mar-a-Lago … The problem is that for $5,000, the most you’ll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I’m not even sure you could buy that.”
— President Donald Trump joking at a political rally in Texas yesterday that U.S. adults could not afford to eat at his Florida estate
One week. That’s all that stands between James Talarico and one of the biggest political upsets in modern Texas history.
As he barnstorms the Lone Star State in the final stretch, the political athlete is clinging to a narrow lead over Attorney General Ken Paxton. MS NOW’s data polling partner FiftyPlusOne found Talarico at 49% to Paxton’s 46.2%, and a Fox News poll put him ahead, 51% to 49%. Those are small margins, but they point toward the possibility of a remarkable result. A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988.
What makes Talarico’s position even more impressive is what he’s up against. Paxton has Donald Trump’s machine behind him, along with Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar checkbook. The world’s richest man has already poured almost $190 million into the contest, routed through a Senate GOP super PAC. That’s pushed combined ad spending past $500 million, putting the race on pace to be the most expensive in Senate history.
But Talarico hasn’t flinched. He’s called out the billionaire money flooding the airwaves and hammered away at Trump, Musk, and the issues that matter most to Texans. As I said months ago, the top three issues in this campaign will be costs, costs, and costs. Talarico leads Paxton on that key issue and is crushing the impeached attorney general with independents, 60% to 32%.
The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both call Texas a toss-up. Dan Rather might say the race is “tight as a tick.” And Texas Republicans maintain a big structural advantage. But Talarico is turning the campaign’s final corner and heading into the homestretch with momentum, a winning message, and a lead.
With Election Day less than a week away, his campaign is kicking into overdrive. If the past is prologue in this race, expect Talarico to take it to the limit one more time. And this time, it’s for the win.
CHARTS OF THE DAY
Source: Gallup poll of 1,200 U.S. adults conducted Oct. 1-19, 2026. Margin of error: ±4 percentage points
WHAT THEY SAID
Jonathan Lemire on Trump campaigning
“Those who work for Donald Trump in his second term are true believers. But the president’s been in a bubble, and his crowds, who keep laughing at all his jokes, are much smaller than they used to be. It’s working for that small group of die-hard, dedicated supporters, but it is not playing outside those rooms — and it’s not going to help Republicans next week.”
John Heilemann on DOJ vs. Alaska
“This is so far over the bright line into authoritarian regime territory. The Department of Justice is saying that if the Republican wins, they won’t challenge this case. But if anybody else wins, the result is invalid and should not be certified. That is truly remarkable, dangerous, and astonishing, all rolled into one.”
Sam Stein on Mike Johnson’s loyalty test
“Mike Johnson is going to play a critical role in whether or not we have a peaceful transfer of congressional power. If Trump believes that the elections are contested and they shouldn’t be seated, will Mike Johnson acquiesce? I’m genuinely happy there are layers of protection here, but also dismayed that it’s even got to this point.”
2026 is showing us the future of American politics.
Tuesday could mark the end of the Trump era. That was Nate Silver’s read on Ezra Klein’s podcast.
“He’ll still be president for two more years,” Silver said. “But the minute the election, the votes, are counted … the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck.”
Silver compared the political landscape to the George W. Bush administration after 2006.
Trump will “still be president for two more years,” Silver said. “But the minute the election, the votes, are counted … the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck.”
Nate Silver
The map already looks like “a different regime,” Silver said. “Kansas is competitive, Texas is competitive.” Charlie Cook called it “a unicorn election,” unlike any of the 22 he’s covered, per the Cook Political Report. The swing group isn’t suburban independents but “normally reliable Republicans,” many in farm country, who think Trump made “colossally bad decisions” on Iran and trade.
This cycle has also rewritten some of the rules for 2028.
For one, district maps are now redrawn mid-decade. President Donald Trump pushed Republican legislatures to redraw, and after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling, the South did just that.
The next redistricting round is already on the line Tuesday. Democrats could win a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010, and Cook noted that states like Georgia, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa “could be critical when it comes to upcoming redistricting fights and battles over election integrity in 2028.”
Democrats have moved on Israel. A dozen Biden-era officials who resigned over Gaza released a pledge Wednesday morning asking 2028 candidates to reject both Joe Biden’s and Trump’s Israel policies and not to hire the officials behind them, per The Washington Sun. Roughly half of Democrats now say Israel committed genocide in Gaza. One Democratic fundraising source told the Sun that 2028 campaigns were “waiting to see if [Democratic nominee] Abdul [El-Sayed] wins” in Michigan before deciding how much Biden’s Gaza record matters.
The attention economy has come to dominate politics. “Politics is the alchemy of turning attention into power,” El-Sayed said, per The New York Times. Vice President JD Vance, a MAGA standard-bearer in 2028, played the same game.
In a press gaggle Tuesday, Vance called El-Sayed “a bit of a psychopath” with “a lot of weird friends” and would not say whether he’s a jihadist, per CBS News. Basically, the thinking is that conflict gets attention, and attention gets power. Not everyone is playing, though. The Times split Democrats into two camps: “electric” and “normal,” and the normies are doing fine. “When was the last time you saw a viral clip from Roy Cooper?” the outlet asked. (Cooper is cruising in North Carolina.)
Heterodoxy is back for Democrats. Wins by Democrat James Talarico in Texas or Mary Peltola in Alaska would put pro-oil Democrats from red states back in the Senate, where the current number is “a caucus of zero,” per Politico.
“All of the above is back, baby,” one Democratic strategist said.
Iowa’s Rob Sand, who is running for governor, “eschews Democratic norms,” opening town halls with a prayer and a rendition of “America the Beautiful.” He leads by 7 percentage points, according to FifityPlusOne polling averages. In Washington state, the party is wide enough to include both Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — a former Congressional Progressive Caucus chief and a Blue Dog Coalition co-chair, respectively — who, despite very different records on transgender issues, have united to oppose a ballot measure forcing girls “to prove their sex to the state every year,” as Gluesenkamp Perez put it, per MS NOW’s Julianne McShane.
Politics could be headed for a nationalists versus democratic socialists divide, à la Europe. On the left, Democratic Socialists of America insurgents won high-profile primaries throughout the country, driven by youth enthusiasm, general anger at the Democratic establishment and a sense that these are outsider candidates with normal, non-politico backgrounds.
The economic case is populist: A plurality of battleground voters say the biggest corruption problem is “greedy billionaires and corporations using their influence to rig the rules,” per Cook.
On the right, the closing message is about belonging.
“America belongs to those who love it,” Trump said in Lubbock, Texas, per the Times.
“Michigan belongs to those who love it, not those who hate it,” Vance said in Howell, Michigan, per WDIV.
Vance also accused El-Sayed of “explicitly anti-white racial hatred,” and at the rally said he “allegedly came from Egypt.” (El-Sayed was, in fact, born in Oakland County, Michigan, where Mitt Romney grew up.)
Politics is increasingly nationalized. Trump’s gravity pulls every race toward him.
“Just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot,” he has told crowds, per The Associated Press.
Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins called this the hardest race of her career. And the lack of local media outlets (213 counties have no local news source left, and 1,524 more have only one, per Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism) means that more and more, politics is presented and consumed through a national prism. (Which is another reason it’s important that pols compete in the attention economy.)
Artificial intelligence is disrupting everything.AI-manipulated videos, likely from the Russian network Storm-1516, are spreading fake allegations about Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown and Talarico.
And a Princeton researcher used roughly $20 in AI credits to reconstruct the order of nearly all in-person ballots in the Georgia counties he studied, and he could match some voters to their ballots. Data centers have become a closing message from Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District to the Kansas and Texas governor’s races. Silver thinks AI “could be the biggest issue of 2028.”
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