The midterm elections are just days away, and while anything can happen, the broad consensus among pollsters suggests a bad night for Republicans.

Hoping to shore up a victory for his party, President Donald Trump seized upon an idea: bribe the voters.

"If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them," Trump pledged in September, "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000."

According to Vice President J.D. Vance, this "dividend"—which would cost more than $1.3 trillion—would come from the "extraordinary amount of revenue" generated by Trump's tariffs. Of course, that math doesn't work: According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the U.S. took in just under $300 billion in tariff revenue between January 2025 and July 2026, not counting the amount it has had to refund after the Supreme Court found they were illegally imposed.

At that rate, it would take years of tariffs just to pay for Trump's dividend. Adding insult to injury, of course, is the fact that tariffs are paid by Americans, meaning we would be taxing ourselves to pay for our own disbursement.

But in the campaign season's closing days, Trump has made a number of other threats and offers, contingent on his party's success—a completely risible use of government power.

In September, three Ohio Republicans—Rep. Mike Turner and Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted—petitioned the president to build a planned Space Force training academy in their state.

"Every other state wants it," Trump said this month at an Ohio campaign rally. "If we win the midterms, Ohio will be very, very strongly considered."

Some of his pledges have been much more explicitly transactional.

On October 17, the Department of Defense—which Trump calls by its original name, the Department of War—announced a conditional $80 billion loan to pharmaceutical manufacturer Antheia. That same day, at a campaign rally in Kentucky, Trump made a pledge to the state's voters.

"If the Republicans win, the Department of War will be investing $100 million in the pharmaceutical company Antheia to revitalize a gigantic drug manufacturing facility in Winchester, Kentucky," he said. But he prefaced it by telling Rep. Andy Barr, the Republican running for the state's open Senate seat, "you have to win, Andy. Otherwise, forget it."

Days later in both Kansas and Iowa, Trump brought up E15, a gasoline blend that contains up to 15 percent ethanol derived from corn. It has advantages and disadvantages as an alternative to traditional gasoline, but it's a boon for corn-growing states.

"Normally, E15 is not allowed during the summer because warmer temperatures increase fuel evaporation and thus the formulation of ground ozone ('smog')," writes Benjamin Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute.

The government can waive that restriction to address disruptions in the fuel supply, which it did in March amid gas price shocks related to Trump's war in Iran. The House passed a bill in May to make the waiver permanent and allow E15 to be sold year-round, which Trump backed in June; the Senate version of the Farm Bill includes a year-round E15 amendment, but Democrats have held up its passage.

"With Roger Marshall in the Senate," Trump told Kansans last week, "we will make year-round E15 permanent. But if [Democratic candidate] Adam Hamilton is in, I'm not doing it."

He then made the same pledge in Iowa, where Rep. Ashley Hinson is the Republican Senate nominee. "With Ashley in the Senate, we will make it year-round E15," Trump said. "We'll make it permanent."

Of course, it's nothing new for politicians to make big promises in exchange for your votes. Typically, they're all hollow to at least some degree.

And Trump's pledges do reflect some version of reality: Keeping the Senate in Republican hands will make it easier for him to do certain things. But some of his others have been downright indefensible, less like typical political bribery than outright extortion.

At a rally in North Carolina last month, he tied hurricane disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to Senate candidate Michael Whatley's election.

"We spent more than $2 billion [in] FEMA funding," he told attendees. "You're waiting for some additional money…and I'm gonna get that to you, Michael. Now if Michael loses, I'm not sending it." He added right after, "I'm only kidding, you're gonna get it."

Other times, he didn't take it back: Trump appeared at a campaign rally in Georgia this week, stumping for Rep. Mike Collins to unseat Sen. Jon Ossoff, and part of his sales pitch was that if Ossoff wins, he may just ignore the state.

"President has a lot of power," he said, and there's "a big difference when he likes the people representing a state. Collins could call me anytime he wants." But if Ossoff wins, he added, he won't take the call, and he even narrated a hypothetical conversation to make his point: "'Tell him I'm not in.' 'But he needs money for Georgia.' 'I don't give a damn what he wants!'"

Also this week, Trump railed about the Senate race in Alaska, where Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan faces not only former Rep. Mary Peltola but a retired teacher also named Dan Sullivan. The New York Times reported this week that the Peltola campaign actively recruited the second Sullivan to run explicitly as a spoiler, to siphon votes away from the senator.

"I have delivered for Alaska at Historic Levels," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "The Democrats are trying to steal this important Republican Seat and, if that happens, everything we've done for Alaska will come to an immediate hault [sic]."

It's one thing to say the federal government shouldn't provide aid to states—and since taking office, the administration has cut or paused such disbursements by $177 billion. Last week, the FEMA administrator indicated that going forward, states should expect to shoulder more of their own disaster aid.

But this goes much further, with the president explicitly conditioning aid on whether or not the state's voters have displeased him.

Perhaps, as in North Carolina, Trump was simply joking; the White House did not respond to Reason's request for clarification.

But there's certainly precedent to suggest he was serious.

"Last September, the Department of Energy (DOE) recommended cancellation of 624 grants for clean energy projects that had been approved by the Biden administration," Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote in July. The government then "winnowed it down to 284 grants, all but one of which had been awarded to projects in states that were represented by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election."

In March, Politico reported that Trump had approved 89 percent of disaster aid requests from states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators but only 23 percent of requests from states with Democrats in those offices.

According to the Idle Rambling Substack, the trend continues: Trump has rejected nearly half of aid requests from Democrat-led states in this term while only rejecting 18 percent from Republican-led states.

But perhaps worst of all, he threatened not to pay out damages to people who suffered harm.

Between 1953 and 1987, the water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina was contaminated by leaks of fuel and dry cleaning chemicals. The government estimates that as many as 1 million people, both service members and their families, were exposed to toxic chemicals. The Department of Veterans Affairs officially recognizes eight diseases stemming from exposure, including multiple cancers and Parkinson's disease.

In 2022, Congress passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, which waived any federal government claims of immunity and allowed veterans to sue over exposure to tainted water. As of September 2026, the Department of Justice says it has paid out more than $879 million, out of more than $1.1 billion in settlement offers.

"We're also fighting for our great veterans, and taking care of those veterans who brought claims related to water contamination at Camp Lejeune," Trump told North Carolina rallygoers last week. "And if we win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible." But "if we don't win, there's no money. If we do win, you're getting it."

It should be clear by now that Trump values personal loyalty over all else. To that end, there is nothing he finds more disreputable than failing to do what he says.

In the closing days of this campaign season, he is making that more explicit than ever, tying his party's success in a state to whether the state is entitled to equal treatment under the law.

Trump was right that presidents have "a lot of power." He's also a living example of why they shouldn't.

The post Trump's Latest Attempt To Salvage the Midterms: Bribe and Extort the Voters appeared first on Reason Magazine.

In a July 16 letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a "preliminary review" suggested there "may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote" in her state. Weber was skeptical—for good reason, it turned out. Three months later, the Trump administration reduced that estimate by nearly 90 percent, saying about 20,000 "likely noncitizens" had received California vote-by-mail ballots.

The Justice Department gave Weber and Dean Logan, Los Angeles County's top election official, 48 hours to determine whether any of the people on the government's list were in fact citizens. Otherwise, it said, Weber and Logan should segregate those ballots and refrain from processing them until citizenship could be verified. After Weber and Logan declined to comply with the Justice Department's demands, it asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring them to do so—a request that he rejected in a scathing opinion on Wednesday.

"Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch," writes U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee. "This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections. If Plaintiff's last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process. Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve."

The Justice Department delivered its list of "likely noncitizens" to Logan three weeks before Election Day. At that point, Los Angeles County already had sent ballots to 5.9 million voters and processed 331,000 of them. Logan said he was "legally prohibited" from doing what the Justice Department wanted because it had failed to explain the methodology used to compile the list, raising the possibility that citizens would be denied their voting rights.

There was ample reason for that concern. On July 17, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin averred that "as many as" 15,903 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada. The following month, when the DHS submitted a list of allegedly illegal voters to Nevada election officials, the number had fallen to 185—99 percent lower than Mullin's original figure. It turned out that every one of those 185 voters was a U.S. citizen.

"DHS has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote" in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, Mullin said in July. He was echoing President Donald Trump, who for years has grossly exaggerated the extent of illegal voting by noncitizens, often in service of his own vanity.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, for example, that he would have won the popular vote in 2016 but for "the millions of people who voted illegally," and in January 2024 he warned that noncitizen voters "could very well affect the next election." In a speech the night before Mullin's announcement, Trump asserted that the DHS had "identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections."

Judging from Nevada's experience, the actual number may be closer to zero. It is hard to say, because the methods used by the DHS remain hazy.

In the California case, Carter says, the DHS "purchased a voter file that appeared to reflect 'the actual voter rolls in California, that as of August 2025, may be used for the 2026 federal election.'" It "then 'enhance[d]' the voter data through a 'reliable third-party data analytics'" and used records maintained by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to find "an internal USCIS immigration number" that "may" correspond to each registered voter. "The matches are scored," Carter notes, "because 'the resulting data may be incomplete, outdated, or mismatched.'"

The DHS "then compared the potential identity matches to Department of State and Social Security Administration data to screen out U.S. citizens," Carter adds. "In the next step, a confidence level was assigned (where a high score supported a 'strong identity link') and a manual review was conducted for each match to 'determine which registered voters'" were "likely to be aliens." Then came "a 'quality review' to identify issues such as 'duplicate entries' and 'incomplete records,'" followed by "an 'enrichment process' that utilized 'additional unique identifiers' to 'improv[e]' the matching process."

The government did not initially specify the source of the "reliable third-party data analytics." But it later revealed that "the third-party platform it relied on was
Lexis Nexis," Carter notes. "It remains unknown how Lexis Nexis performed its analysis, such as how it 'linked names to Social Security numbers not available on the California public voter file.' Plaintiff likewise did not explain what its 'enrichment process' entailed or how it occurred. Plaintiff also provided 'no error rates' or 'validation against a reliable benchmark' that would enable a determination of the accuracy of its findings. Omissions of this critical information prevent an evaluation of Plaintiff's procedure, including how Plaintiff reduced its initial claim of nearly 200,000 alleged noncitizens to 20,000 individuals."

Potential sources of error include conflating people with similar or identical names and outdated records that do not reflect recent naturalization. Because it is unclear how the DHS tried to address such problems, it is not surprising that Weber and Logan did not want to rely on the Trump administration's list, especially given its pattern of dramatically reducing the putative number of illegally registered voters.

"It is well-documented that matching voter registration records with data from other
administrative databases 'presents numerous challenges,'" Carter writes. And given the potential for error, he says, "Plaintiff's allegations are not credible." He adds that the TRO sought by the Justice Department "would likely lead to voter disenfranchisement" and "would create a significant administrative burden for Defendants, leading to chaos and upending the election."

In any event, Carter says, the Trump administration does not have legal standing to seek such an order. The government's main argument was that California officials, by refusing to segregate ballots from people on its list, were interfering with its enforcement of 18 USC 611, which makes it a misdemeanor for "any alien to vote" in a federal election.

"Defendants do not 'interfere' with the United States' ability to enforce Section 611 by
administering an ongoing election in accordance with established State and Federal law, rather than assuming new obligations pursuant to a federal criminal law they are not responsible for enforcing," Carter writes. It is well established that state officials have no obligation to enforce federal law, he notes, and that they cannot be "commandeered" to do so.

Nor does the federal government need such assistance to enforce Section 611. "The very same day the United States filed its TRO [application] in this Court, the Department of Justice brought charges against 28 individuals" in California under that law, Carter notes. It is not clear how many of those defendants, who represent 0.0001 percent of California's 23 million registered voters, actually cast ballots. But "if fraudulent voting occurs," Carter says, "the United States should uphold the law and bring additional Section 611 indictments against those non-citizens it believes actually voted illegally in the current—or a prior—election."

The Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for conducting elections, subject to explicit limits imposed by Congress. But the Justice Department's actions in this case "are indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials," Carter writes. The department "has filed at least thirty-one lawsuits in federal district courts across the country seeking complete voter rolls from the States. Out of the twenty-six decided cases, the DOJ has prevailed in precisely zero."

In addition to "its failed attempt to seek State voter rolls," Carter notes, "the United States has also requested that States act based on the Executive's own lists." But "sister district courts across the country have cast doubt" on the reliability of those lists for the same reasons that Carter cites in this case.

On October 23, the Justice Department "sent letters to every county in California requiring them to set aside the votes of alleged non-citizens," Carter notes. "The letters stated that election officials 'risk significant federal scrutiny' if they failed to comply with the Government's demands. The government reiterated its threat in open court yesterday, stating that State and County election officials who do not comply with their letter risk federal charges under 18 U.S.C. § 2, which criminalizes aiding and abetting the commission of a criminal offense. The court reiterates what it said yesterday: these threats must stop."

The post Trump's Claims About Noncitizen Voting Are 'Not Credible,' a Federal Judge Says in a Scathing Decision appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Next week's election is a pivotal one for Colorado, as voters will decide a pair of ballot questions that could secure the state's low-tax, small-government reputation—or shatter it.

Confusingly, there is a slim possibility that they decide to do both. More on that in a moment.

The two competing ballot measures could hardly be more different. The first, Proposition 136, would cap individual and corporate income taxes at 4.4 percent—the state's current flat rate.

The other, Amendment 87, would rewrite the state's constitution to allow for a progressive income tax. It would also set new rates, ranging from 7.4 percent on income over $500,000 to 8.4 percent on income over $1 million. And it would offer a modest tax cut to the lower end of the income spectrum: Individuals earning less than $100,000 would pay 4.2 percent, while those earning less than $25,000 would pay 3.7 percent.

Even with those offsets, Amendment 87 would be a massive tax increase. Both advocates and opponents agree that it would generate about $2–3 billion in additional annual revenue for the state government.

For now, the higher tax rates created by Amendment 87 would only apply to incomes over $500,000. Unsurprisingly, supporters of the measure are framing this as an opportunity to make the wealthy "pay their fair share."

There are two reasons why that argument is a bit deceiving.

As Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the Tax Foundation, points out, "the new rates would be statutory, while the authorization for a graduated-rate tax would be enshrined in the constitution, permitting the legislature to adjust rates later." Lawmakers would not have to get permission from the voters to make those changes, so Coloradans would be trading away their flat income tax for a new model where income taxes could be hiked by the legislature at any time.

Second, the new rates are not indexed to inflation. As a result, "a household making $450,000 a year in today's dollars would be moved into a higher tax bracket within eight years if their earnings increased by 3% annually," reports The Colorado Sun, which crunched the numbers. Such "bracket creep" would also push more workers over the $100,000 threshold, nullifying the small tax cut for workers making less than that.

Politically, the progressive income tax proposal is dividing Democrats. The Colorado Democratic Party has endorsed Amendment 87 (along with many of its usual allies, like the AFL-CIO and the state's largest teachers union).

But Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has called the proposal "a huge blank check to politicians" that will "cripple our economy and reduce jobs."

In comments to a Denver TV station, Polis also highlighted how higher taxes in Colorado would make the state less competitive with its neighbors. "Utah has a very similar tax rate to what we have. If ours is double, we can't compete for businesses," Polis told Denver7. "It's game over. We will not be able to attract new employers to Colorado if the voters adopt this."

It's not just Utah. If the amendment passes, Colorado would have a significantly higher top income tax rate than any of its neighbors. (The current highest in that group is New Mexico, with its top rate of 5.9 percent.)

Under Colorado law, constitutional amendments typically need 55 percent approval to pass. However, Amendment 87 requires only a simple majority* because it technically repeals provisions in the constitution, rather than adding new ones. Similarly, Proposition 136—the one that would cap the income tax rate at 4.4 percent—requires just a simple majority.

It is possible, though unlikely, that both could pass. That would create a conflict, since the state's income tax can't be capped at 4.4 percent and also hiked to more than 7 percent on incomes over $500,000.

If that happens, the ballot question with the larger share of support would win, per state law. "In short, that means Amendment 87 would need to both win majority support from voters and surpass Proposition 136 in total votes to go into effect," explains the Denver Post, which has encouraged residents to vote against both ballot measures.

Accordingly, Proposition 136 must win majority support from the voters and surpass Amendment 87 (which needs 55 percent to pass, don't forget) to be implemented.

It is all a bit confusing, but the outcomes are worth watching. Colorado has long been a bit of an outlier among "blue" states for its relatively low taxes and booming population. It's now up to the voters to decide if that remains true.

*CORRECTION: This article incorrectly described how Amendment 87 could be passed into law. 

The post Jared Polis Warns Colorado's Progressive Tax Ballot Measure Could 'Cripple' the Economy appeared first on Reason Magazine.

When Abdul El-Sayed ran for governor of Michigan in 2018, progressive media hailed him as the next Barack Obama. El-Sayed did not appreciate the comparison. "I get compared to Obama because my name is funny, and I'm brown, and my politics are about inspiring us to believe in each other again," he told Vox at the time.

In El-Sayed's telling, Obama was a "fairly centrist, middle-of-the-road" Democrat. He did not intend that as a compliment. El-Sayed believed the administration's policies were not nearly progressive enough—indeed, he believed Obama had betrayed the agenda he ran on. The far-reaching financial, environmental, and labor regulations that Obama pushed through were not nearly enough for El-Sayed.

El-Sayed ultimately fell short in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Eight years later, he's a much savvier political operative; now running for the U.S. Senate, he has welcomed Obama's support this time. Yet El-Sayed's commitment to a left-wing agenda has hardly diminished. If he defeats his opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R–Mich.), he will be one of the most far-left politicians to win a statewide election in recent memory—and in a purple-ish swing state that President Donald Trump won twice.

Like his friend and mentor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); unlike Sanders, El-Sayed maintains that he is a capitalist rather than a socialist. Yet his political project has much in common with the DSA, and he has given every indication that he will align himself with DSA-affiliated members of Congress—veterans such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) and likely newcomers such as Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, both of New York, who rode similar waves of populist resentment to victory over establishment Democrats.

El-Sayed's left-wing bona fides were evident during his debate with Rogers on October 8. The Democrat proposed giving the federal government vast new powers: up to 50 percent control over AI companies, a socialized health insurance program along the lines of Medicare for All, and price controls on the domestic oil industry. Asked what he would do to bring down the national debt and pay for all the new spending he wants, he had a simple, three-word answer: "Tax. Billionaire. Wealth."

El-Sayed's support for higher taxes exempts one important constituency: seniors. Like many Democrats—and Republicans such as Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.)—El-Sayed wants to exempt retirees from property tax increases, a policy that critics have branded "total boomer luxury communism" because it forces younger, less wealthy Americans to shoulder ever more of the social burden. The new wave of leftist Democrats think that higher taxes on the 1 percent, combined with cuts to the military budget, would be sufficient to pay down the debt while vastly expanding the social safety net.

In fact, El-Sayed has proposed tying Pentagon spending to education, such that an increase in money for the military would necessitate more funding toward schools. Don't expect this to work the other way around: Under El-Sayed's plan, a decrease in Pentagon spending would not force the government to stop throwing so much money at failing schools.

Ann Arbor and Onward

El-Sayed was born on Halloween in 1984. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, an affluent, predominantly white suburb north of Detroit. His parents divorced when he was young, and El-Sayed lived with his Egyptian father and white stepmother. In high school, he was captain of the football, wrestling, and lacrosse teams. He continued to play on a club lacrosse team at the University of Michigan, which he attended from 2003 to 2007. (We overlapped briefly, though I never met him: I attended Michigan from 2006 to 2010.)

That meant going to Ann Arbor, a progressive college town with a long history of radical activism. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the prototypical '60s New Left student activist group, was founded in Ann Arbor in 1960; its first president, Alan Haber, still lives there. The White Panther Party, a sort of hippie counterpart to the Black Panthers, was based in Ann Arbor for a while; in the 1970s, the socialist Human Rights Party won multiple seats on city council. Liberalism, as well as radicalism, has thrived in Ann Arbor: The same year the SDS was born, future President John F. Kennedy came to the town to propose the international volunteer organization that eventually emerged as the Peace Corps. In the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, the student-run Michigan Daily naturally endorsed the inspirational liberal candidate, Obama, over the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton.

Over the course of the next decade—as left-wing enthusiasm for the Obama project faded and was replaced by bitter disappointment—El-Sayed enrolled in Oxford University and then Columbia University, pursuing a career in public health. (He never completed a residency, which has led to some scrutiny, even from friendly media figures, regarding his decision to describe himself as a physician.) In 2015, the mayor of Detroit appointed him the city's executive health officer. He resigned that position in 2017 to run for governor. That pattern repeated itself a few years later: He was appointed health director of Wayne County, which includes Detroit, in 2022, and resigned in 2025 to run for Senate.

Unlike in 2018, El-Sayed's hard-left politics and contempt for the Democratic establishment were now well-calibrated to prevail in the primaries. He defeated a more moderate candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens (D–Mich.), in part due to her support for Israel—an issue that El-Sayed frequently discusses. The same phenomenon has played out all over the country, with establishment Democratic figures paying a huge price when perceived as indifferent to voter outrage over Israel.

What works in the Democratic primaries does not always do as well in the general election. But while El-Sayed's politics are well to the left of the state he seeks to represent, the president's unpopularity may be enough to push him over the finish line. El-Sayed is narrowly ahead of Rogers in the latest polling. The Republican has finally resorted to breaking with the president on key policy issues—he has said that he wishes to end some of Trump's tariffs, conceding that "Canada is not our enemy"—but it may be too little too late.

Moreover, El-Sayed's left-wing foreign policy positions, which are not necessarily antithetical to libertarian views, count for more in Michigan than in other places. The state has a significant Arab-American population that politicians have ignored at their peril. In 2024, dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden's failure to curtail Israel's war on Gaza prompted many Arabs in Michigan to cast ballots for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, or even Trump, over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Republicans have sought to portray El-Sayed as insufficiently supportive of Israel, but that doesn't always play well in Michigan—particularly at a time when dissatisfaction with Trump's blunders in the Middle East is strong among Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans.

El-Sayed does have a possible Achilles heel on foreign policy: His association with the far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. To many outside observers, the candidate's courting of Piker reads as a huge unforced error. Not only did El-Sayed seek the approval of an internet personality best known for praising authoritarian governments and evincing sympathy for terrorist groups, but he brought Piker to Michigan, put him in front of a camera, and made him a de facto representative of the campaign. For everyone except the toxically online, Piker is a bizarre and marginal shock jock, a man who says things like "America deserved 9/11." Piker is what happens when you pay too much attention to podcasts. He is also a reminder that while the insurgent left often claims to speak for ordinary, blue-collar working people, its agenda tends to be most popular with the affluent and elite-educated. In El-Sayed's showdown with Stevens, polls had her up 22 points with noncollege voters and 46 points with black voters. (Stevens herself is white.)

Yet El-Sayed prevailed, and he dealt with the Piker issue by shunting him to the sidelines. When asked about Piker, El-Sayed dutifully recites that a Twitch streamer from California has nothing to do with a Senate race in Michigan. (The obvious retort is Well, you brought him here.) He has also adopted right-coded language to explain why he should not be held responsible for Piker's inflammatory comments, telling Politico that he was over "this whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture."

The GOP, meanwhile, may have gone overboard in the other direction. Rogers, a traditional Republican more in the George W. Bush mold than the Trump mold, is not exactly a right-wing firebrand, yet he could not stop himself from suggesting that El-Sayed has some sort of connection to Islamic terrorists. Just as Democrats should genuinely worry that linking up with people like Piker will cost them Jewish votes, Republicans should think more about whether reflexively calling Muslims terrorists is a bad strategy to win in Michigan.

After all, the form of radicalism that El-Sayed typifies is not really Islamic. It's not even foreign. It's the radicalism of left-wing economics, of making the federal government larger and more robust. He wants to prohibit corporations from buying houses and to punish companies like Airbnb over "housing dislocation." He wants to raise the capital gains tax, the inheritance tax, and the top marginal tax rates. He wants to give the Federal Trade Commission expansive new powers. He thinks higher education should be free for everyone. If he makes it to the Senate, El-Sayed will be a reliable vote for the Sanders agenda, including moratoriums on new data center construction, a much stronger Environmental Protection Agency, and, of course, Medicare for All. Indeed, one of El-Sayed's most frequent criticisms of Obama over the years has been that the Affordable Care Act did not go nearly far enough, and that it may have even been counterproductive to the mission of building a socialist health system.

Obama appeared alongside El-Sayed in Detroit on October 24. The candidate was savvy enough not to bring up his thoughts about Obamacare.

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This Week on Free Media

I explain why it would be wrong to nationalize Elon Musk's companies.

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Worth Watching

I finally watched You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder's quasi-documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. It was made with considerable technical skill, and there's plenty to like about it—but ultimately I landed in the same camp as Reason's Christian Britschgi. We will discuss the film on this week's episode of Freed Up; look for that later today on the Free Media YouTube page.

The post Abdul El-Sayed Is a Socialist in All but Name appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The plot thickens: Last night, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, said he would launch an investigation into Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola. This is because of late-breaking allegations that Peltola's staffers tried to recruit candidates to run in the Senate race that could confuse voters into not voting for her opponent.

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Scenes from New York: A Brooklyn woman, Halima Salman, was apparently training with ISIS. Salman, an American citizen, was brought to Syria by her father when she was a teenager and somehow developed close ties to the terrorist group. "Salman, who faces up to 10 years in prison at sentencing, is believed to be the first woman accused of being an ISIS member to stand trial in federal court," reports The New York Times. (There are a lot of jokes I could make here, most of which would not be so tasteful, so I'll let our esteemed commenters handle it.)

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QUICK HITS

• "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered Tuesday's Israeli election with a governing majority and is now on course to exit with something less," reports the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. "That's one way to understand the result, but it was also widely anticipated. The surprising news is the opposition's failure to come out ahead of Mr. Netanyahu. He may not have won, but the opposition lost.…At present count Mr. Netanyahu's Likud party is in first place, projected to win 26 or 27 seats in Israel's 120-seat Knesset. That's down from 32 in the current Knesset but up from the 19 or 21 in pre-election polls. The opposition Yashar party of former military chief Gadi Eisenkot lags at 21 seats."
• "Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday left the central bank on track to raise interest rates again this year, even as he stuck to his refusal to offer any explicit guidance on the future path of policy," reports Bloomberg. "Operating within his self-imposed communication boundaries, Warsh used his assessment of a strong economy and warnings over persistent inflation to signal the Fed's job is not yet done. The message reinforced expectations that officials will raise borrowing costs in December—after holding them steady Wednesday—with the potential for another increase in early 2027."
• Allie Beth Stuckey is politically burnt out, says Bloomberg.
• The differences between sex realism and gender realism, and what sex-realist feminists are actually fighting for.

The post Antics in Alaska appeared first on Reason Magazine.

On Wednesday, the Office of Energy Dominance Financing at the U.S. Department of Energy announced it had closed a $5.1 billion loan package to Alliant Energy—a utility company with over 1.5 million customers across Iowa and Wisconsin—to "lower electricity costs, expand firm power generation, and strengthen grid reliability" in the Midwestern states. 

The loan package is part of the Energy Department's response to President Donald Trump's April 2025 executive order directing the agency and its secretary, Chris Wright, to ensure the nation uses "all available power generation resources" to expand and secure America's electric grid amid growing demand. 

In a press release, Alliant said the 30-year loan package will finance 1.6 gigawatts of new natural gas generation, 240 megawatts of increased capacity at its existing natural gas facilities, and a gigawatt of energy storage. The loan package will also allow Alliant to add 2 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas storage. All told, these upgrades and additions will generate enough electricity to power 2 million homes annually, according to the Energy Department.

Alliant estimates the deal will result in "up to $1.2 billion in cumulative customer savings," as well as the creation of "more than 1,600 local jobs" through construction projects financed by the loans. Of course, some of the savings likely stem from Alliant receiving more favorable loan terms from the Energy Department than it would from an open-market lender. 

A report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining the deal's terms shows that the interest rate to be charged on each loan aligns with the government's borrowing costs. However, the markup on each loan will remain a fixed percentage, regardless of whether lending to Alliant becomes riskier or more expensive. Under the deal's terms, Alliant has until May 15, 2056, to repay the loan, but it is only responsible for paying interest until the first principal payment is due in 2052. 

The Energy Department said the deal is the Trump administration's 10th financial close and its "sixth and seventh utility financing completed through the Energy Dominance Financing Program." As of September 30, the department had issued $132 billion in loans and guarantees through the program, including $47.5 billion announced in conditional commitments, and disbursed $53.2 billion. 

While the Trump administration is taking credit for the deal, the loan is essentially a repackaging of a $3 billion conditional commitment offered by the Biden administration in 2025 as part of its last-ditch effort to spend as much taxpayer money on green projects as possible before Trump took office. Under the terms of the Joe Biden-era deal, Alliant would have used the loan to "finance multiple clean energy and battery energy storage system projects." Instead, the company will now receive an additional $2.1 billion in funding, without the climate goals the Biden administration stipulated.

Gregory Beard, director of the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, said the agency is "putting capital to work." The deal is perhaps better described as the Energy Department usurping a role that should be reserved for private-sector, institutional lenders. "This type of government involvement is only another example of the current Energy Department distorting the power generation market," says Tom Opdyke, director of energy and environmental policy at the R Street Institute.

The agency's meddling seems even more unnecessary given that Alliant's revenue is expected to grow 6.8 percent annually over the next three years, with its profit margins increasing from 18.4 percent to 22.2 percent, according to the stock research and portfolio-tracking platform Simply Wall St.

The timing of the announcement also raises some red flags. While an Alliant spokesperson tells Reason they spent "months reviewing the details and finalizing contracts" before the loan package "was finalized this week," the money is conveniently being directed to energy projects in two fairly competitive states in this year's midterm elections. The Cook Political Report has the Iowa Senate race as a toss-up and several incumbent House Republican seats in Iowa and Wisconsin leaning Democrat.

The loan package could be a ploy to boost Trump's and Republicans' favorability with the electorate in Iowa and Wisconsin by appearing to address a cost-of-living issue high on voters' list of concerns. "Even if that's the case, those things aren't going to happen by Election Day, and voters' opinions aren't likely to shift on the promise of future jobs and savings," says Opdyke. "So it might be too little, too late."

Trump is scheduled to speak this weekend in an Iowa-Wisconsin border town.

Whatever the reasoning, the loan package is effectively a subsidy for Alliant to expand its operations and grow its customer base at a lower cost. It's cronyism that enriches Alliant and disadvantages its competitors, at American taxpayers' expense.

The post Trump Hands Alliant Energy $5.1 Billion in Loans Ahead of Key Midterm Races in Iowa and Wisconsin appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Perceptive citizens of the great state of Alaska may have noticed that there are two Senate candidates on the ballot named Dan Sullivan: the incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, and Dan J. Sullivan, a completely unknown person who is not actively campaigning for the seat.

The intention seemed obvious: The false Sullivan is trying to siphon off some votes from the real Sullivan in hopes of benefiting the actual challenger, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola. But while it was clear who stood to gain from this scheme, how this had all been arranged remained unclear. Until now.

The rumors are apparently true: Political strategists working closely with the Peltola campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) explicitly recruited the other Sullivan, according to bombshell reporting by The New York Times. All deny any involvement, but the Times has them dead to rights:

The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola's team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent's support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.

The campaign consulted with Jerid Kurtz, a Democratic operative, to find and recruit Sullivan, a retired teacher. Kurtz went so far as to fly to Sullivan's remote Alaskan village and personally convince him to run. Sullivan said he "didn't have any interest in being a politician," but loathed President Donald Trump and was eager to help Democrats win the Senate.

Elisa Rios, Peltola's former campaign manager, willingly admitted all this to the Times, claiming that voters deserved to know the truth; reading between the lines, it seems like she's a disgruntled former employee. However, she reconsidered before publication and asked the Times to disregard her interview. The Times quite reasonably declined. In any case, numerous other staffers confirmed her story.

Trump's Justice Department has filed suit, claiming that the other Sullivan's presence on the ballot would render the election illegitimate if Peltola wins. It seems unlikely the administration will win that argument, and these sorts of tactics are nothing new.

They are still quite contemptible, however. Peltola, who was well aware of the scheme, is trying to trick the people of Alaska into voting for the wrong person so that she's more likely to win. Maybe that's not quite so despicable as Vivek Ramaswamy's ad about Amy Acton, but it's just as dastardly—and much more likely to damage the integrity of the election. Ramaswamy's actions generated significant bipartisan backlash; will Democrats who claim that democracy itself is on the ballot speak up and denounce this?

The post To Confuse Voters, Mary Peltola's Campaign Recruited a Second Dan Sullivan appeared first on Reason Magazine.

My home state of Ohio has earned a not-so-nice distinction in the 2026 election: It is the site of "the ugliest" contest in the country. Nasty attack ads have been an ongoing feature of the governor's race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton—piercing many a peaceful Hulu-watching session on my end with allegations that Acton is a pill-popping drunk and Ramaswamy a con man.

But the nastiness reached a whole new level in recent weeks, with the release of a Ramaswamy campaign ad implying that Acton lied about childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather.

Understandably, many Republicans bristled at being viewed as the party that defends accused child rapists. Not Trump. His only regret here is that he didn't get to run an ad like this, he said.

The ad features Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, from whom Acton has been estranged for decades for what seem like very good reasons. When Acton was 12, her mom took her stepfather's side when she accused him of sexually abusing her for years.

In 1978, Acton's stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with child rape. Records from the case, obtained by Signal Statewide, "also contains a reference to a previous incest charge against Cledith Arthur from 1974…although it's not clear how that case was resolved."

Acton's mom lost custody of both Amy and her brother. But the stepfather was never tried, since he and Acton's mom fled the state. He remained a fugitive—and married to Amy's mother—until he died in 2004.

In the new Ramaswamy campaign ad, Acton calls her daughter a liar. "It's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar," says Arthur in the video. "She lies about her past.…She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help."

Arthur doesn't outright say "she lied about being molested by her stepfather," but given the historical context here, the implication is pretty clear. In effect, the Ramaswamy campaign has helped Acton's mom accuse her daughter on a national scale of making it all up.

That's despicable, even by political campaigning standards.

And—providing us with some hope for humanity—it also backfired. People roundly condemned the ad and the Ramaswamy campaign for running it. Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, corroborated her story. Even many Republicans have objected to the ad.

There are still some lines you don't cross, public figures left and right seemed to agree.

Public figures except President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

Telling Republicans to "stop whining" about the ad, Vance said he was getting "a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America."

"Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar," Vance continued.

Trump went further, calling the ad "very powerful" and urging the Ramaswamy campaign to keep it up. Trump also criticized the current Ohio governor, Republican Mike DeWine, for calling the ad "deeply troubling."

DeWine is a moderate Republican who, for the most part, adheres to pre-Trump standards of decency. Their differing reactions here seem a perfect microcosm of pre-MAGA and post-MAGA standards for conduct and bounds of acceptability.

DeWine "probably wants a Dumocrat to win," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last Thursday. "I suggested, on the other hand, that Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!"

Talking to reporters that same day, Trump just kept repeating that if an ad had been made with his mom calling him a liar, the press would love it. He stuck to that talking point again and again, acting clueless about the childhood sexual abuse allegations at the center of this whole controversy.

The idea that the president would passionately post about and answer questions about this without knowing the whole story is almost beyond belief. But even if Trump somehow didn't know the full context when he first started talking about it, he was made aware and then kept right on praising the ad.

Trump on Ramaswamy Ad: The mother is calling the daughter a terrible person and a liar. Why would you shield somebody from that? Why would we do that? So I told him, leave it up and say thank you God. I only wish I could have had an ad like that. pic.twitter.com/M2TYz3jhUy

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 23, 2026

At a campaign rally in Iowa last Thursday, he said, ​"I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody."

Ramaswamy has also defended the ad, saying, "Unfortunately, the person I'm running against does have serial problems with the truth" and that the ad highlights a "pattern" of the "people who are closest to her" telling Ohioans not to vote for her.

But this is no longer just about one candidate's mistake or one campaign's poor judgment. The response from Trump and Vance has raised Ramaswamy's ad into bigger and uglier territory.

​"It's actually kind of hard to find a prominent Republican who is defending the ad other than Vivek Ramaswamy himself, Vice President JD Vance and, quite fervently today, President Trump," noted CNN's Kaitlan Collins last Friday.

But Trump and Vance are the leaders of not just the Republican Party but the nation. And as we've seen again and again, Trump's responses tend to set the tone for what will become acceptable among conservatives by and large.

"Vance's acceptance of this campaign ad only breathes life into the disease that we should be seeking to cure," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told The Washington Post.

Do voters agree?

Whatever happens with Ramaswamy next Tuesday, it will be impossible to know how much of it is related to this ad campaign and how much of it is related to many other possible factors. But it's hard not to look at the Ohio gubernatorial election results now as something of a referendum on what type of political discourse is OK. Are voters over Trump-style belligerence and nastiness? Or do they accept the premise that politics is a war in which no low is too low if it helps you win?

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In the News

Release the FISA Ruling: "Two Democratic senators who have long overseen US intelligence say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court's findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans' communications without a warrant," reports Wired:

Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans' messages from intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires. The court approved another year of surveillance anyway. The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration's own deadline for releasing it passed in September.

"This opinion details serious abuses of Americans' rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and, by law, should have been released before September 13," wrote Wyden and Schiff in a letter to the director of national intelligence and the U.S. Attorney General. "Yet this opinion remains hidden over a month later, suggesting that the administration hopes to secure a renewal of Section 702 while keeping Congress and the public in the dark."

Wishful thinking from Flock. Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told a conference of cops to believe him rather than what's right in front of their eyes. The backlash to Flock "is not real," he said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, per leaked audio obtained by 404 Media:

"Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it," Langley said about the many viral posts criticizing his company's technology. "Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, I'm the last person, my wife as well, she's like 'This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things,'" he added, repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity.

"It's anonymous bots, and so it is not real," he continued. "Inorganic activity has led to organic activity, but when I look at protests across the country, it is the same people with the same signs and the same message. That's not normal. That's not organic at all." Langley's comments echo another unsubstantiated theory that said opposition to Flock comes from a far-left network spreading propaganda at the behest of China.

Cute spin, but I don't think "Russian bots" can explain this congressional hearing, or Sen. Josh Hawley's (R–Mo.) Stop Flock Abuse Act, or this recent court ruling, or Connecticut's new restrictions, or canceled contracts, or all the charges that police officers are facing for abusing Flock, or poll results like these.

The backlash is widespread and multifaceted. Backlash to Flock "has just exploded, like no other issue that I have seen in my time at the ACLU," Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told Reason recently.

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On Substack

Techlash on the campaign trail. Democrats have been panning data centers in campaign ads, but artificial intelligence was the subject of only a small fraction of ads, notes the Blue Horizon Project, an initiative from Chamber of Progress "to restore tech optimism in the Democratic Party and reset the relationship between Democrats and the technology sector." And when Democrats have focused on AI and data centers, it's been more about economics than general anti-AI sentiment, Dave Vorland writes:

Data centers are the important exception to the lack of ads focused on AI and technology. In AdImpact's tables, they appear among the three leading Democratic advertising topics in 5 of the 21 Toss-Up House races. They are not politically irrelevant, and dismissing the local backlash would be a mistake.

But look more closely at what these ads actually argue. Using AdImpact's data on 2026 campaign spending, ads matching either a tax-language screen or energy message, or both, account for $69.76 million, or 76.2% of all data center advertising.

The race with the highest spending on data centers is the Ohio Senate race, where Democratic spending accounts for $32.10 million. AdImpact's data shows Sherrod Brown's campaign spent over $1.5 million to air a data center ad 3,100 times. The message shows that while he is willing to hit his opponent for the data center tax breaks, his solution is ensuring that data centers don't raise energy costs, an idea that could have been drawn directly from our Data Center Development Playbook.

Vorland points out that "AdImpact's data for 2026 Congressional spending shows that less than $2.5 million went to ads supporting a data-center construction pause, moratorium, ban, or stopping new construction, a minuscule portion of the Democratic ad buy."

Interesting that "let data centers build but don't subsidize them" is the implicit message here. It feels like at least somewhat of a good sign that Democratic candidates don't by-and-large think "ban new data centers" is a message that voters want to hear.

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More Sex & Tech News

• An interesting essay in Works in Progress looks at "the rise of prudishness" and what demographics might have to do with it.

• "Technology has advanced for centuries, shuffling workers among occupations, industries, and regions without making human labor obsolete," writes Nathan Smith at Human Progress:

As machinery pushed millions of Americans away from farming over the past century, most workers moved to factories, towns, and cities. They ended up with more comfortable lives than their predecessors plowing the fields. The AI economy will likely follow the same path: destroying jobs while creating better ones.

• The New Jersey Assembly recently advanced a bill that would increase prostitution penalties, and several other prostitution-related criminal justice bills are pending in the Assembly and state Senate. Tara Burns has details.

• Florida's attorney general said he plans to introduce even more stringent social media regulation, even as the state's earlier restrictions on minors using social media are still being challenged in federal court.

• Sarah Hepola takes a stand against…vibrators?

• British tech regulator Ofcom says its Online Safety Act isn't actually stopping kids from seeing "harmful content" online. So it wants to do more of it. "Instead of suggesting to repeal the Online Safety Act because it does not seem to be working or because it imperils online freedom, Ofcom's report proposes to broaden the law's scope," writes Reason's Meagan O'Rourke.

NEW: The Online Safety Act has been a failure, according to a new report from Ofcom.

Ofcom have found "no significant change" in children encountering harmful content since the law came into effect last July. This is despite the signifigant threats to free speech and privacy.

— Matthew Lesh (@matthewlesh) October 22, 2026

• "Social media decentralized the information environment and weakened the influence of expert opinion. LLMs are likely to have the opposite effects," writes Dan Williams at Persuasion. "Whereas social media has been a democratizing technology, LLMs are a technocratizing force. They shift influence back towards expert opinion."

• Ten states have no birth centers and eight others only have one, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. "Two dozen centers closed between 2023 and 2026, with some publicly blaming onerous regulations and steep increases in malpractice insurance," notes Ohio Capitol Journal.

The post Ramaswamy's Attack on Amy Acton Was Bad Enough. Trump and Vance Made It Worse. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The House looks pretty likely to go Democrat, but the Senate appears to be more in play. Basically, Democrats need to pick up four seats to get control of it; seven races are considered toss-ups by Cook Political Report as of right now, just a few days before Election Day, but Democrats have leads (within the margin of error) in all of them, despite heavy Republican spending in most.

"If Democrats win all seven races, along with the ones in which they are favored, they would secure their largest Senate majority since the Obama administration," notes The Washington Post. "If Republicans win all seven races, they would maintain their current 53-47 majority in the Senate, picking up a Democratic-held seat in Michigan to offset a loss in North Carolina."

The math is less daunting for Democrats than it was at the start of the cycle. They need three of the six Republican-held toss-ups to reach 51, assuming they also hold Michigan, the only Democratic seat on the list. Michigan looks like the GOP's best shot at going on offense, since Mike Rogers cleared the Republican field without a primary while Democrats slugged it out all through August.

Meanwhile, the rest of the map looks like a list of Republican problems rather than Democratic strengths; make of that what you will. Maine is the only Republican seat up this year in a state Trump lost in 2024; Ohio features Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat by just four points in 2024 while Trump carried the state by 11; and Alaska has Mary Peltola, who in 2022 became the first Democrat to represent the state in the House in half a century. Each of these races is close for its own reasons, but the reasons happen to cut one way this year.

Not included in the list of toss-ups—Alaska, Kansas, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Texas, and Ohio—are Georgia, where Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff looks likely to win, and New Hampshire, an open seat that anyone could technically take but that looks likely to go Democrat. Toss-up is merely a description of how close races look right now; earlier in the cycle, Georgia and New Hampshire were considered toss-ups, but Democrats are now favored to win. These things aren't static, of course, and different forecasters think about each race differently. Some of the toss-up races are primarily due to one party—frequently Republicans—running really terrible candidates (such as Ken Paxton in Texas, whose prospects we discussed on this week's Reason Roundtable). Other races have their own specific quirks, like in Kansas, where a Democratic Methodist pastor who is broadly liked (with no voting record to ding) is running against a Republican incumbent, who is facing headwinds related to high diesel prices that have raised the cost of running farm equipment and shipping goods, along with beef import tariffs that have pissed off farmers.

It's always possible pollsters are wrong. But most pollsters surveyed by The New York Times—including Nate Silver and Patrick Ruffini, both former guests on my show, Just Asking Questions—seem to believe Democrats will win both the House and Senate.

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Scenes from New York: "After a woman said she was raped at knife point in Central Park over the weekend, the police said on Monday that they had stepped up patrols of the park as they searched for an assailant," reports The New York Times. "The 39-year-old woman told the police that she was jogging on the east side of the park near East 66th Street shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Saturday when a man dressed in black approached her brandishing a knife. He dragged her into a wooded area, raped her and ran off, the police said." This is the latest in a string of crimes in the area, including the murder of a 63-year-old homeless woman who slept in the park, and a 32-year-old woman who was robbed while riding a bike.

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QUICK HITS

• "Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil for the US hours after losing the presidential election and being ordered to surrender his passports, Folha de S.Paulo reported citing allies of the conservative senator," reports Bloomberg.
• Microsoft shrinks headcount.
• "Fox News is suffering a catastrophic drop in viewership, which has plunged to historic lows just before the midterm elections, according to new data. Preliminary Nielsen ratings obtained by Status ahead of their official release show that the Trump-friendly juggernaut is on track to post its lowest-rated month in total day viewers since December 2023, averaging just 1.1 million total viewers throughout October 2026," reports The Daily Beast. "Among the key 25-54 demographic coveted by advertisers, the outlet is headed for its lowest-rated month in a quarter-century, averaging a paltry 98,000 viewers. The collapse represents a brutal 27 percent drop in total viewers and a 32 percent dive in the 25-54 demographic compared to last October."
• Subprime mortgages for people with bad credit! How could this go wrong?

.@PhillyMayor Cherelle Parker tells @EmilyRPeck that the city hopes to launch its historic mortgage program "before the end of 2026."

"Imagine getting a mortgage, a 30-year commitment, with no PMI," Parker said, and accessible "with less-than-perfect credit." #AxiosLive pic.twitter.com/DDDYMWBMAL

— Axios (@axios) October 27, 2026

The post A Democratic Senate? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

"The long-term goal is to achieve statehood and autonomy," says Kymone Freeman, the Green Party candidate for Washington, D.C.'s nonvoting delegate seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. "The short-term leverage to achieve that is tax resistance."

Like many D.C. locals, Freeman believes it's unfair that residents of the nation's capital pay federal income taxes without a voting representative in Congress. Freeman has made it a key plank in his policy platform that D.C. residents should be exempt from paying federal income tax until the district is granted statehood. "We're celebrating the 250th anniversary of America's resistance to taxation without representation, so I think it's time," says Freeman. The nation's capital is a federal district, not a U.S. territory like Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, so D.C. residents are still subject to federal income tax requirements. 

Federal district or not, imposing income taxes on D.C. residents without representation would likely offend America's Founders, who met in New York in October 1765 and proclaimed that it is "inseparably essential to the freedom of a people…that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives." Taxation is a form of theft. Compounding the issue, D.C. residents have little recourse to challenge their tax burden.

The U.S. is the only democratically governed nation to withhold voting representation from citizens living in its capital. Worse, local officials—such as the city's mayor and the D.C. Council—must solicit congressional approval for the district's budget and laws with little more than a figurehead serving as their lone representative in the federal legislature. Reason's analysis of the Internal Revenue Service's latest available adjusted gross income data shows that D.C. tax filers paid more federal income tax per return than residents in any other state, about $26,900, compared to a national average of roughly $14,300.  

While that's partly because the city has many high-income earners, data show that excluding those in the city earning over $1 million, D.C. residents still paid more in income tax per return than filers in any state, about $16,500 compared to $8,900 nationally.

"We don't have a system where public policy is determined by public input because of the status quo," says Freeman. But challenging that status quo has proven difficult, as Congress resists attempts to make D.C. the 51st state. In 2021, the House of Representatives passed a party-line bill sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D–D.C.) to establish D.C. as the 51st state. It later died in the (barely) Democratically controlled Senate.

Democrats once opposed D.C. becoming the 51st state; however, they've since warmed to the idea, unlike Republican lawmakers at the federal level, who have been reluctant to support statehood for D.C., viewing it as a move that would give Democrats an electoral stronghold. That argument has some truth: No elected Republicans serve on the D.C. Council. The city hasn't had a Republican mayor since its local government was established, and the district has reliably voted for a Democrat in every presidential election since 1964.

Even though Republicans at the national level do not support statehood for D.C., the District's local GOP does support ending taxation without representation. Denise Rosado—the Republican candidate for D.C.'s delegate seat—thinks statehood for the district is "unlikely" and "undesirable." That hasn't stopped her from campaigning for an end to federal income taxes in D.C., an outcome she claims can be "accomplished quickly."

That's doubtful given Congress' pace. Still, there's no logic in making statehood a prerequisite to abolishing the federal income tax requirement for district residents.

The post In D.C.'s Delegate Race, 2 Candidates Agree: No Federal Income Tax for District Residents appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Will Bibi survive? Israelis head to the polls today for the first election since the October 7, 2023, attacks. The election is widely seen as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu's, or Bibi's, governance. Supporters say the last few years have been a success, as he "seized half of Gaza, dramatically expanded West Bank settlements, decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon and coaxed President Donald Trump into going to war against Iran," per The Washington Post—"all while offering a full-throated defense of Israel against accusations of war crimes and genocide."

But "many of those who seek change have rallied around the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist former military chief who, according to final polls this week, was running slightly ahead of Netanyahu," reports The Washington Post. "Heading a sprawling bloc that ranges from Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who once managed a West Bank settlement council, to Yair Golan, a retired general known for his dovish views toward Palestinians, Eisenkot has pledged to investigate Netanyahu over his response to Oct. 7, to force the ultra-Orthodox to enlist and to rein in violent settlers in the West Bank." Eisenkot says the war against Hamas has been a failure, since the terrorist group is still in power. He is in opposition to some of the far-right alliances Netanyahu has made and broadly critical of Netanyahu's wartime leadership.

So far, turnout has been extremely high, the highest in 45 years—though the day isn't over yet; at publication time, it's about 3:30 p.m. in Israel. Polls close at 10 p.m. An estimated 70,000 Israelis have returned from overseas to cast their votes.

Here's how Israeli elections work, courtesy of The New York Times: "Every party creates a ranked list of its candidates, and voters choose a party or slate. The leader of the party with the most votes could become the country's next prime minister—though it is not automatic—if that candidate can form a government, but the parliamentary system is complicated and involves extensive negotiations.…No single party has ever won a majority of votes, which means parties must form factions and party leaders try to forge a governing coalition of at least 61 lawmakers. Within seven days of the official election results being announced, Israel's president, who plays a mostly symbolic role, meets with elected representatives of the parliamentary factions. Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, will assign a member of the Knesset—usually the leader of the party or faction that has won the most seats—to form a government." That person gets roughly a month to negotiate with potential allies and form a government; if they fail, another person gets picked to attempt the process.

"If a candidate who has been selected to form a government can propose one, along with a policy agenda," continues the Times, "and their proposal wins a plurality of votes in the Knesset, the government is formally invested, and that candidate becomes the prime minister."

"If neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot can form a governing coalition in the 120-seat parliament," reports Reuters, "Netanyahu could stay on as caretaker until another election is held. His opponents have managed to wrest him from the premiership only once since 2009, and that took four inconclusive elections in two years. He was back 18 months later." So, Netanyahu seems unlikely to win outright, but likely to still be in charge at the end of all this—very much not a mandate, and something that would probably trigger elections again next year.

Kalshi and Polymarket betting markets seem fairly confident that Eisenkot will emerge victorious; polls are less optimistic.

Who's in charge in Israel, and how much of a mandate they believe themselves to have, matters an awful lot when it comes to American policy in the Middle East; tensions with Iran are still high, and though it's receded from view to some degree, shipping is still snarled in the Strait of Hormuz, with no resolution in sight. Given the complexities involved with forming a government, we're not going to get a clear answer for a while, but we will get some indications over the next few days as to how Israeli citizens are thinking about Netanyahu, his legacy, and the path forward.

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Scenes from New York: "Many young professionals in their 30s have reached a breaking point in recent years and moved away in droves to raise families—contributing to an enrollment crisis in New York City's school system," reports The New York Times in an interesting reported piece on people in their 30s struggling to make ends meet and delaying milestones like getting married, having kids, and owning their own places. "Am I entitled to have what my parents had? I'm not sure," said one 31-year-old schoolteacher out in Queens. "But it's hard to know that I can't [have it]."

I don't think these people are totally off base; the tradeoffs are intense right now, with rental costs growing ever more wild. It's a shame most New Yorkers don't seem to understand the relationship between market-distorting policies (like rent control and stabilization) and housing costs getting so out of whack, and increasingly favor handouts (free daycare) to alleviate the strain they feel from the high cost of living.

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QUICK HITS

• DoorDash is in talks to acquire Instacart; will someone please do a wellness check on Elizabeth Warren?
• "While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports," reports Reuters. "The meltdown, tanking the mainland STAR50 index, of AI and semiconductor leaders by 40% in less than four months ​and vaporising some $480 billion in market value, is an ill omen for wobbly world markets and a dampener on China's efforts at encouraging its savers into stocks to ‌fund the AI boom."
• "Most classrooms, most of the time, are nonideologically muddling along with a mix of lecture and activities—just like most classrooms, most of the time, are nonideologically muddling along with a mix of phonics and guess-and-bluff reading strategies," writes Kelsey Piper for The Argument on school curricula. "That means that fixing classrooms takes more than bold truth-telling about what works. It's going to take changing how we teach teachers, acquire curricular materials, and measure results."
• "Clashes erupted in Paris as a mass march drew to a close Saturday, with more than 400,000 people rallying across France over school funding and soaring living costs in a fresh challenge to President Emmanuel Macron," reports the Associated Press. "Police made nearly 1,000 arrests, the government said."
• Don't miss this week's Reason Roundtable!

• As for me and my house, we will cook up amazing hockey-themed parties and never let the AI overlords take this from us:

I cannot be replaced by A.I. became I come up with extremely niche and/or ridiculous themes. i.e. Fourth birthday party for my son was "Miracle on Ice, USA vs. Soviets 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid" (we painted the hockey players together, which is why they're, uh, imperfect) https://t.co/P4NvKaIPjy pic.twitter.com/JhwJCTDdYa

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) October 26, 2026

The post Israel Goes to the Polls appeared first on Reason Magazine.

When the White House rolled back tariffs on coffee, fruit, beef, and farm equipment, it was effectively an admission that the tariffs were raising prices—and that Americans, not foreigners, had been paying for them.

Now, in the closing stages of the midterm campaign, the White House is once again rolling back some of those import taxes—and once again making an awkward implicit admission.

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become politically toxic.

The administration announced late last week that it would lift the 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian imports, apparently in an attempt to help Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) survive a tough reelection campaign in which the tariffs have played a significant role.

If this is indeed an attempt to sway voters in Maine, it is not a very convincing one. The Trump administration is removing tariffs on some agricultural and mechanical goods, as well as packaging and plywood, The Wall Street Journal reports. But Trump is also imposing new 50 percent tariffs on "other Canadian goods, including carpet, certain valves, and waste products."

Collins issued a statement thanking the White House for the changes. This is what members of the U.S. Senate have been reduced to—begging the president to cast his capricious, tariff-happy eyes toward products that will hurt people in other states more than in your own. (In fairness to Collons, she has voted repeatedly to roll back Trump's tariffs, but not enough of her fellow Republicans went along with it.)

Still, it's worth asking: What exactly is the pitch to voters here? Here's a tariff cut, now vote for Republicans so the president can continue to arbitrarily tax imports whenever the mood strikes?

It's easy to see why Trump's tariffs have become so unpopular. They are a huge and broad tax increase—the Tax Foundation estimates that 54 percent of imports are subject to Trump's tariffs, which are costing the average household about $1,000 annually—that was imposed without congressional authorization or popular support. They create more losers than winners, as downstream businesses and consumers pay the price for the protectionism offered to American manufacturers. Even the supposed "winners" of the tariff policy tend also to be "losers," since so much manufacturing depends on importing raw materials and intermediate goods.

Perhaps more surprising is how unwilling Republicans are to defend the president's signature economic policy. Or to even talk about it.

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip crunched the numbers and found that House GOP candidates have not run a single ad talking about the tariffs during this election cycle.

Just such a fun chart here from @greg_ip. If only we could tease out some meaning. Ah, well, nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/1X4AWcWQMV

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 23, 2026

That silence speaks volumes. Trump says "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." But it is now "one of the most hated words in politics," writes Ip.

The only Republicans to mention trade or tariffs in a campaign ad, as far as I've seen, is former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is now running for the Senate seat in Michigan (and thus was not included in Ip's analysis). And he's calling for an end to the "tariff war."

There is a lesson here that hopefully will linger beyond the next week: If you support a policy that deliberately and unlawfully raises taxes and prices, voters will not reward you for it.

It's a lesson that the Republican Party learned long ago, but apparently forgot.

Against economists' advice, a Republican-led government in 1930 implemented a huge tariff hike intended to protect American farms and factories at the start of the Great Depression. Instead, those tariffs worsened economic conditions and triggered foreign retaliation.

When voters went to the polls in 1930, the first midterm after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, they registered their displeasure. The GOP lost 52 seats in the House that year. Two years later, an even larger landslide would sweep Democrats into power in Congress and the White House, ushering in the New Deal era that reshaped the federal government forever. The two lawmakers who lent their names to the legislation were among those who lost their seats, fittingly.

The most notable difference this time around is that Congress didn't actually pass a tariff bill. The trade barriers were instead imposed directly by the executive. Voters don't seem to care. Republicans were too cowardly to stand up to Trump's unilateral power grab, and now they seem too ashamed to try to defend that policy (and their largely complicit response) on the campaign trail.

As they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And "doomed" may be a fitting way to describe the Republican majority in Congress right now, thanks in no small part to Trump's tariffs.

The post Trump's Tariffs Are Politically Toxic appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Alaska's U.S. Senate race features four candidates. Two are named Dan Sullivan: the Republican incumbent, and a political neophyte.

Republicans say the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot is an illegal act of election interference. The federal government is now suing to keep Alaska from certifying the election results, but only if their guy loses.

"One of the biggest election scandals in history has been the Democrats' installation of a fake Dan Sullivan (not the US Senator) to deceive voters in Alaska," White House advisor Stephen Miller wrote on X. President Donald Trump called it "a disgrace."

"Democrats pulled a dirty trick by enlisting a decoy, Daniel J. Sullivan, to run against Republican Alaska Sen. Dan S. Sullivan," The Wall Street Journal editorialized. "Please spare us the lectures about election interference."

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state of Alaska and its election authorities.

"Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the
ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan," the filing warns, "the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election. The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska."

Alaska uses a ranked choice ballot, in which voters are given four candidates and rank each one in order of preference. Along with the Sullivans, the candidates are Mary Peltola, a Democrat who is polling narrowly ahead, and Gerald Heikes.

The Justice Department lawsuit says Republican voters would be too confused by the presence of two Dan Sullivans to properly fill out their ballot: "Some supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will inadvertently vote for Daniel J. Sullivan. Other supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will be confused as to how to rank the three Republican candidates as to defeat Peltola."

Given this, "there is a substantial likelihood that a certification of the election will reflect an electoral process that lacked integrity," the lawsuit proclaims. "To guard against this danger, it is vital that [Alaska] not certify any election result" in which "(1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska's rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election."

In other words, the state of Alaska should only certify the election if Sullivan wins; if Peltola wins, but it's close, then that could suggest it "lacked integrity," and the state must instead conduct "an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan."

The lawsuit has a number of problems. First and foremost, it's completely inappropriate to treat an election as fair only if your candidate wins, even if it is what Trump believes.

It's also too late to bring an action of this kind: The state elections division decided in June to bar Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, but a state superior court reversed and the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the reversal before the end of that month.

And yet the feds waited until less than two weeks before Election Day—when ballots have been printed and tens of thousands of Alaskans have already voted—to bring this suit.

If the Justice Department was truly concerned about voter confusion, it should have brought a lawsuit months ago. But even then, it's not clear what it could have done: "DOJ has no power to decide which candidates can appear on the ballot," writes UCLA School of Law professor Richard L. Hasen.

Besides, it's not illegal to mislead or even outright lie to voters. "If 'voter confusion' were a legitimate reason to overturn election results, that would imperil a great many election winners, as voter ignorance—and exploitation thereof by candidates—is a widespread and longstanding problem," writes George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin.

It does seem more likely than not that Daniel J. Sullivan is indeed running just to pull votes from the senator with the same name.

But as I pointed out earlier this month, the ranked-choice ballot itself can take care of this problem: Republican voters who wish to reelect Sullivan can simply rank both Dan Sullivans first and second; if and when Daniel J. Sullivan fails to capture more than 50 percent of all votes, he will be eliminated, and his votes will transfer to all their second choices.

The ballot itself makes it clear which Sullivan is which: The sitting senator is labeled as both Registered Republican and incumbent.

Despite Miller's claim that letting two Dan Sullivans on the ballot "reveals pure contempt for voters," it's the objecting Republicans who appear to lack faith in their voters.

"People are totally confused," Trump told reporters. "A lot of people don't know what 'incumbent' means."

When CNN's Dana Bash asked Attorney General Todd Blanche what crime is being alleged, he replied that "it depends." He elaborated: "There could be a crime, but the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard."

This isn't even Alaska's most complicated election in recent memory. In 2010, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller, she announced that she would still run as a write-in candidate—requiring voters to not just know about her ahead of time but to add her name by hand.

Improbably, Murkowski prevailed, defeating Miller by more than 10,000 votes.

If Trump, Blanche, Miller, and others are truly concerned that the ballot will be too confusing for Alaska Republicans, they could expend some energy showing them how to use the ranked choice ballot.

In fact, Sullivan has done just that, posting a video on X explaining how to rank all candidates except Peltola.

What they can't do is force a state to reject the results if their guy loses.

"Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year's ballot," Murkowski wrote on X. "The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit."

"I believe that this lawsuit is abusive in its intentions and borders on frivolous in its arguments, and that it is destined for defeat in the courts should it reach the merits," Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson noted in a statement. "This lawsuit is an assault on the constitutional design by which states, not the federal government, run elections. The issue in question is one for the Alaska Supreme Court to decide under Alaska law, and the Alaska court did just that."

The post Justice Department Targets Alaska Senate Election appeared first on Reason Magazine.

California's experiment: Will California's proposed wealth tax, Prop 40, pass next week? And if it gets passed, will it end up actually costing the state money instead of generating revenue?

The basics: The proposal features a one-time 5 percent tax on people with net worths over $1 billion who lived in the state on January 1, 2026 (with the net worth amount calculated as of December 31, 2026). The idea for the snapshot date is presumably to prevent capital flight once the tax passes. The tax's supporters say the tax's revenues will amount to $100 billion and will fund California's health care system, which need to make up for federal Medicaid cuts.

Seven billionaires, representing 30 percent of the total billionaire wealth in the state, left California before January 1, 2026, when news of the possible tax broke. Peter Thiel, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are among the deserters. The French economist Gabriel Zucman—an intense defender of the wealth tax—seems committed to the idea that this flight won't matter too much. He argues that while removing those seven brings down revenue estimates to $89 billion, adding in less-prominent small-time billionaires raises revenue to $115 billion.

This is silly. As The Washington Post's Megan McArdle points out, there's no reason to believe those less-famous billionaires would stay put. We have a hard time estimating what the total preemptive flight looks like, and how many billionaires have successfully taken up residency elsewhere.

"Either the tax is annual—and in that case it generates revenue annually, and some billionaires leave," claims Zucman. "Or the tax is one-time—in that case it generates revenue in just one year, and there is no incentive to leave. It can't be both at the same time." Zucman doesn't seem to consider that billionaires have already left, as soon as the idea was seriously floated, thus taking early steps to shield their wealth from the state.

Will it pass? "Likely voters are essentially where they were a month ago," reports Politico, based on recent polling data, "with 46% in favor of Proposition 40 and 43% opposed—despite a recent push by backers of the measure, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, to rally support." Interestingly, "a strikingly high share of registered voters (84%) said they'd been exposed to advertisements or messages about the tax, but a 45% plurality said the communications had not swayed them, and those whose views had shifted were just as likely to be more opposed as more supportive."

There's another complication: On that very same ballot, voters will decide on Propositions 41 and 42, competing measures that could keep Prop 40 from taking effect. Prop 40 will be nullified if either one gets more votes; but Prop 40 will nullify both of them if it gets more votes. Prop 42 would bar new taxes on personal property such as businesses, investments, retirement accounts, trusts, and art collections—things Prop 40 targets. It also bans retroactive taxes, thus making Prop 40 impossible to pull off.

Back in January, Pirate Wires' Mike Solana spoke with a bunch of billionaires who were worried about the tax and making plans to flee, partially out of distrust that the tax would be one-and-done. "Three men I spoke with in the largest billionaire Signal chat said they ran an informal poll, and seventy percent of the chat (around sixty people, not all of whom were billionaires) indicated they would leave the state if the ballot proposition passes," reports Solana. "According to that same poll, around 15% have already left the state."

"There is now real danger in appearing successful in the state of California," writes Solana, "as the far left, imbued with a great deal of power, and benefiting now from several years of wealth scapegoating throughout the mainstream press, attempts to liquidate its perceived enemies in business."

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Scenes from New York: I'm fully aboard this train these days, though open to being convinced why I'm wrong:

If you truly *love* American cities, you MUST support strict enforcement of laws against anti-social behavior. Paying bus fares, red light cameras, camping on sidewalks, smoking on trains, off-leash dogs, etc etc

If people want to do whatever they want, that's FINE in the… https://t.co/XU0WQR30yz

— Bobby Fijan (@bobbyfijan) October 26, 2026

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QUICK HITS

• "Brazilian markets are heading for a major rout when local trading begins after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pulled off a stunning comeback to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate that many investors preferred," reports Bloomberg. This will be da Silva's fourth term.
• Is dynamic pricing on the rise? Customers say yes, but most companies say they're wrong. My thought: Even if it's not currently happening to the degree angry customers claim, it certainly will be big in the future, as online shopping takes over and AI makes implementation easier. Consider the upside, though, noted in this Wall Street Journal piece: "Much current angst is focused on electronic shelf labels, which have replaced the printed labels that dotted shelves at groceries and other stores. Research on digital shelf labels in the U.S. and Europe, where grocers have widely used the technology for more than a decade, found the labels don't lead to surge pricing, in part because price changes are obvious to anyone walking by. Rather, research found, grocers have used the labels to discount goods that are about to expire, reducing food waste."
• Great Washington Post headline: "Europe is running out of other people's money."
• President Donald Trump claims the ships passing past Cuba on their way home from Iran will just, uh, handle the situation there. Sure.
• Interesting:

Striking detail in the big NYT piece on Taiwanese families adjusting to working at the huge new TSMC chip plant in Arizona: their surprise at the lack of rigor in US schools. pic.twitter.com/YkSPzbHCuE

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) October 26, 2026

The post Will the Wealth Tax Fail? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, is the latest politician to suggest that the Second Amendment might shield the right to bear arms, but only those that existed at the time that it was adopted: namely, flintlock muskets. It's a not-so-clever way of trimming back the Constitution's protections. The argument's flaws should be clear: the U.S. Supreme Court has already dismissed that line of reasoning, and a world in which the Bill of Rights applies only to 18th century technology would be one where freedom exists only in museum exhibits.

---

"Everyone Should Have Equal Rights to a Musket"

"I'm gonna swear an oath to the Constitution. The Constitution has a Second Amendment in it, but the Second Amendment, just so we all are clear, even the most conservative folks, they hew to this idea called originalism, and originalism is the idea that you should interpret the Constitution in the context in which the Constitution was written," El-Sayed insisted at a campaign rally. "When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets. So, yeah, everyone should have equal rights to a musket."

So clever. The Bill of Rights passed in the 1780s, so it must only apply to 1780s things. Except that the courts have thoroughly dismissed that ridiculous line of reasoning.

"Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). "We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications…and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search…the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding."

---

The Founders Lived in a Time of Rapid Innovation

The reason for this should be obvious. The founders were not unaware of progress. Many of them were scholars and innovators. They were certainly aware of (and enthusiastic about) continuing advancements in technology. During the then-recent revolution, American troops had faced off against a small unit of redcoats armed with Ferguson breech-loading rifles. A decade before the Bill of Rights was adopted, the 22-shot Girandoni repeating air rifle was introduced, one of which was later sent along on the Lewis and Clark expedition. And Kalthoff and Lorenzoni repeating flintlock firearms had existed for well over a century.

Not to mention, the founders made extensive use of printing presses to distribute pamphlets and official government documents, including the new Constitution, rather than having them hand-copied as they would have been a few centuries earlier. Technology marches on.

That last point illustrates the foolishness of the only-1780s-tech argument, as Scalia pointed out. What use is a First Amendment that applies only to hand-cranked printing presses and unamplified voices? That would leave the internet, television, radio, telephones, and all post-revolutionary means of communications unprotected from government censorship.

By the same token, a Fourth Amendment stuck in the 18th century might shield us from government agents kicking in the door and rifling through our papers. But it would have nothing to say about wiretaps, computer searches, surveillance cameras, thermal imaging, and the like.

---

The Founders Sought To Limit Government, Not Create Small Carve-Outs for People

Founders who were well aware of innovation and often contributed to it themselves (think Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson) knew that science and technology constantly advance—because they helped it do exactly that—as would the government's intrusive capabilities. And they believed they were creating protections for broad natural rights against limited government, not small carve-outs from the authority of an all-powerful state.

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others," Jefferson wrote in 1819. "I do not add 'within the limits of the law'; because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."

The Bill of Rights isn't an ancient artifact to be applied only to a snapshot of life as it existed around 1789. Its amendments are intended to protect timeless individual rights, however those rights might be expressed in an always-evolving world.

---

El Sayed: "To Protect People From Government Tyranny"

El-Sayed went on, in his increasingly incoherent monologue, to acknowledge that the Bill of Rights was intended "to protect people from government tyranny," and "the idea was that you had the right to bear arms against your government should they become tyrannous." He floated the idea, for some reason, that "the Coast Guard, and state militias" are how this idea was implemented. I don't want to delve too deeply into whatever argument is being presented here, because I've sacrificed enough brain cells by listening to him speak.

But kudos to El Sayed for admitting the Bill of Rights is intended to protect us from government. The only way that can possibly work is if, as government's capabilities become increasingly sophisticated, the protections of the Constitution's first 10 amendments extend to safeguarding our rights from ever more advanced potential intrusions.

The Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights don't preserve a snapshot of life in the 1780s. They were written to protect eternal principles of individual liberty. And they're certainly not limited to muskets.

The post Abdul El-Sayed Would Freeze the Bill of Rights in the 18th Century appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Evil Andrew Heaton has a modest proposal for his partisan peers.

 

The post Evil Heaton 'Fixes' Gerrymandering appeared first on Reason Magazine.

West Des Moines, Iowa—Iowa voters may disagree on immigration, taxes, and the economy, but government surveillance is drawing opposition from across the political spectrum.

An Emerson College poll of 750 likely Iowa voters, conducted between late August and early September, found that 61 percent opposed police use of automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, compared with 26 percent in support.

The backlash comes as police departments across the state increasingly rely on surveillance technology supplied by private companies such as Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions. Their cameras record license plates and vehicle information, feeding searchable databases that allow law enforcement to piece together motorists' movements, including those of people suspected of no crime.

As Iowa's gubernatorial and congressional campaigns enter their final stretch, voters are increasingly pressing candidates on whether they intend to place limits on the technology. Jacqueline Thompson, an ordained elder in the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church and a self-described centrist Democrat, said she has been concerned about government surveillance for years.

"It's always been important to me [and] I've always thought that was a problem," she said before a campaign rally at a senior living community in Des Moines earlier this month. "So, when people started jumping on the bandwagon saying it, I was like, 'Hello, I've been here already!'"

Thompson pointed to two Democratic candidates, Nate Willems, who is running for Iowa attorney general, and Taylor Wettach, a candidate for state auditor, as having caught her attention with their emphasis on corporate oversight and access to government records.

For Thompson, the renewed attention to privacy is a welcome development in a political environment where Democrats and Republicans rarely find common ground. "It's kind of nice to hear the people come back to the middle [and discuss this]," she said.

Flock Does Not Have Enough Guardrails

Police surveillance technology has spread across Iowa faster than the rules governing its use.

A recent study identified at least 62 Iowa law enforcement agencies that had accessed other agencies' Flock databases, including departments that did not operate cameras of their own. Police departments can therefore search information collected well beyond their jurisdictions without having to install a single camera themselves. The study (led by Megan Graham, a clinical associate professor and director of the Technology Law Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law) found significant gaps in transparency surrounding ALPRs.

The constitutional implications are already being tested in court. On October 1, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a sheriff's deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by searching a motorist's location history through automated license plate reader systems operated by Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions without a warrant.

The search turned up more than 50 records of the driver's whereabouts across multiple states over a month. In the 38-page ruling, the judge ordered the resulting evidence suppressed, describing the technology as a form of "indiscriminate mass surveillance." The decision is not binding in Iowa, and legal challenges to ALPR surveillance still face an uphill battle, but it adds to the legal scrutiny of police tracking motorists without warrants.

The University of Iowa study also raised concerns about unauthorized database access, erroneous alerts, and the potential use of locally collected information for federal immigration enforcement.

Flock Safety says it has not provided U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol with direct access to its systems. But the researchers found that local law enforcement agencies elsewhere in the country had conducted searches on behalf of federal authorities, effectively allowing them to obtain information without direct access.

Taxpayers are also footing the bill. Cedar Rapids reported operating 76 cameras at a combined average cost of more than $20,000 a month, according to the study.

Researchers struggled to determine the full extent of surveillance across Iowa. Some agencies refused to disclose the number or locations of their cameras, while others withheld records concerning unauthorized access or erroneous alerts, citing confidentiality.

The cameras are not limited to Iowa's largest cities. Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, said they have spread across large, midsize, and smaller communities, prompting a surge in opposition over the past year.

The backlash "has just exploded, like no other issue that I have seen in my time at the ACLU," Eastwood told Reason in an interview. Candidates running for state and federal offices are increasingly getting asked if they support police departments using ALPR cameras, she said. 

Some local governments are already reconsidering their contracts. Indianola and Waukee suspended their Flock camera arrangements, Iowa Public Radio reported in August. Dallas County paused a planned rollout while awaiting guidance from state lawmakers. Ankeny, which operates 16 Flock cameras, is reportedly expected to reconsider a possible contract extension next year.

The backlash also cuts across the immigration debate. While concerns about federal immigration enforcement have helped draw attention to the cameras, critics argue the same surveillance infrastructure can be used against anyone, regardless of which party controls the government.

"This is a nonpartisan issue because people recognize that surveillance can be weaponized against anyone the government wants to weaponize it against," Eastwood said. "An increase in police surveillance impacts certain populations more, right now [but] nobody is immune."

Politicians Face Pressure To Cut Ties With Flock

The opposition is beginning to force Iowa's candidates to take positions on a technology that, until recently, attracted relatively little attention outside law enforcement and civil liberties circles.

Among the gubernatorial candidates, interviewed by Iowa Radio last month, Republican Zach Lahn has called for state-level regulation, arguing that the widespread collection of information about where people drive is unacceptable. Meanwhile, Democrat Rob Sand has expressed support for safeguards governing the collection and use of license plate data and said he would sign legislation if privacy concerns persisted. But he has also pointed to the cancellation of some Flock contracts as evidence that the market is responding to public concerns. 

For now, neither approach offers much clarity on whether police should be required to obtain warrants before searching motorists' location histories or how far restrictions on data collection should go.

Ryan Johnson, a libertarian-leaning Republican who works as a machinist near Waterloo, said he could accept cameras in certain locations, such as downtown areas or near traffic signals. But he objects to their spread into residential neighborhoods and public spaces.

"Just having Flock cameras everywhere, [in] residential [areas], putting them at parks and pools, we don't need that," Johnson said while attending a Lahn rally earlier this month.

So far, some of the most concrete changes to ALPR practices have come from Flock itself. In August, the company announced that it would reduce its default data-retention period from 30 days to seven and require officers to enter a criminal case number or code for each search. The changes would not, however, require police to obtain a warrant before accessing the records.

Gary and Nancy Guthrie, a Democratic couple attending a Des Moines rally supporting Chris Jones for secretary of agriculture, remain skeptical of the cameras.

"I don't have a good feel for that," Nancy Guthrie said. "Personally, I'm very much against Flock cameras."

For all the attention the issue is receiving on the campaign trail, Iowa voters have yet to hear much about what legal limits candidates would actually impose on police surveillance.

The post Iowa Voters Don't Want Police or Flock Tracking Their Cars. Politicians Are Still Catching Up. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

New Yorkers won't be voting on any citywide offices this year, but they do have five ballot initiatives that could shape the city's future more than any politician on this year's ballot. Mayor Zohran Mamdani created a version of the Trump administration's infamous Department of Government Efficiency in New York called the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE). The plan is for COGE to modernize city operations and accelerate public infrastructure and permitting—in that vein, COGE placed five proposals before voters on the November ballot, largely targeting the bureaucratic processes governing new construction and business activity across the five boroughs.

Questions 1, 2, and 3 on the ballot would end or reduce the use of public hearings in different city review processes. Question 1 would, according to the ballot language, "simplify [the] process to use public space for uses such as ramps, planters and cafes, by removing mandatory hearings and Council disapproval of sidewalk cafes, while maintaining community and Council input." Question 2 would "reduce paperwork for City contractors by authorizing [the] Procurement Policy Board to simplify [the] contractor questionnaire….[And] remove mandatory hearing for required client services report." Question 3 would "simplify review of street safety projects to reduce construction timelines," among other changes. Question 4 is about simplifying permitting.

These policies were not directly introduced by Mamdani, but they reflect a governing philosophy that New York City and other big cities desperately need: a local government that won't allow a small group of organized opponents to obstruct progress for the city at large indefinitely.

Nowhere is the bottleneck against much-needed development clearer than at public review hearings. In theory, a public hearing is democracy at its purest: Every voice is heard. But in practice, it usually becomes a slow-motion filibuster. The most persistent and best-organized opponents get a megaphone, with little to no input from the millions of New Yorkers who would broadly benefit from more housing, better infrastructure, and businesses that can open without getting wrapped in red tape.

The 2026 ballot questions, if approved, would take small steps toward addressing these problems. If they all passed, it wouldn't be a seismic change—a planter here or a parcel of land there. But that's kind of the point: Should routine administrative decisions require another round of formal public review hearings to hold up any change, big or small?

The post Even Under Mamdani, New York City's Ballot Questions Might Cut Red Tape and Public Review Hearings appeared first on Reason Magazine.

There has been much consternation this week about the use of fake polls in the media, with some government officials promising swift, and legally dubious, punishments for broadcasters that use them. 

The use of these fake polls came to light on Wednesday, when The New York Times reported that "well-known polling aggregators," including the paper itself, had been citing fake surveys by Wedgewood Polls. The fake polling scheme was revealed when the outlet FivePlusOne contacted Wedgewood Tuesday for comment about an investigation into the pollster. That night, Wedgewood posted a now-deleted statement declaring that it was an "experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall barrier to entry in the modern polling industry." The fake pollster claimed it was "far too easy" to be taken seriously in media and public commentary. 

A similar "social experiment" was revealed in August, when the Los Angeles Times reported that a poll by Median Strategies showing Mayor Karen Bass "leading ahead of Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide margin" was "bogus." An earlier poll by Median Strategies showed Francesca Hong, who lost her race for Wisconsin governor, up by more than 20 percentage points. Median Strategies told the Times that the firm was "created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification."

If Wedgewood's polling stunts were in fact social experiments (pollster Nate Silver is very skeptical of this explanation), then the experiment worked. Nobody is completely immune to deceit. And while savvy media consumers have become more attuned to detecting AI writing and video fakes, masses of people still fall for more than fake polls, as they have for a long time.

In 2018, when the word "slop" meant food for pigs and before anyone wrote posts using ChatGPT, the Intelligencer asked the question: "How much of the Internet is fake?" The answer, the outlet concluded, was "a lot."

At the time, Reason's Nick Gillespie noted that the article was a "sobering and obvious revelation that much of what we browse, engage, and interact with is in some fundamental way, total bullshit." Gillespie solemnly observed, "we're living not in the disintermediated, utopian world chronicled in the early days of Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe's Wired, but something closer to the endlessly creative, weird, off-kilter, semi-insane world imagined by Philip K. Dick and, later, Neal Stephenson."

Eight years later, the "semi-insane" world is no less insane, and humans, as they always have, are falling prey to increasingly intricate schemes and hoaxes. In September, Semafor's Max Tani revealed that a large number of YouTube videos—several of which garnered hundreds of thousands of views—were made by "ghost creators." In these videos, presented as news reports, real actors were paid to read AI-written scripts "laced with misleading claims and outright falsehoods." According to Tani, these "accounts appear to be run not by political operatives trying to win, or foreign intelligence efforts seeking to destabilize the US, but by engagement junkies detached from the stakes of politics." While any semi-media-literate person in 2026 could tell you that not all YouTube videos should be taken as fact, the scale of the operation was staggering. 

The deception crisis plagues the media as well. Recently, the platform Qwoted, which connects journalists with sources, had to remove a supposed art therapy expert from its website after her "details were found to be false," reported the Press Gazette. According to the Gazette, the fake therapist's insights had been cited in several outlets, including Psychology, Forbes, Glamour, and Vice. I have also raised concerns about news outlets and commentators citing polls published by EduBirdie, a Cyprus-based company that sells human-written academic papers to students for $8 a page (ethics aside, what a bold business model in the AI age).

So what is to be done? As Gillespie wrote in 2018, there are existing legal levers to root out fraud, but any top-down approach to squashing online lies "will be poorly applied, repressive, and ultimately arbitrary." Government-led crackdowns on COVID-19 "misinformation" have proven him right. Outsourcing the arbitration of truth would only diminish our access to information, and no one entity, particularly the government, should be trusted to determine what is true or false. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has not learned much from the pandemic era and has instead repeatedly tried to crack down on media coverage it doesn't like.

Ideally, media organizations would act as B.S. detectors, but clearly, they often fail to do so. So, consumers are left to wade through lies, AI hoaxes, and so-called "social experiments." This may be tedious work, but it is necessary for consumers to evolve as technologies change. This sleuthing for scams may even be enjoyable. Why pay to have your brain scrambled by Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary when you can drive yourself insane by tracking down and scrutinizing widely cited statistics and polls?

The post Worst <i>Nathan for You</i>–Style Scheme Ever? A Polling Company Claimed Its Fake Polls Were a Social Experiment. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

To many people, but especially libertarians, voting can feel dispiriting: By definition, every person on the ballot wants in some way to exert control over your life.

Perhaps that's why it's refreshing to see a candidate for office who truly seems not to want the job.

Brady Rogers worked as a robotics engineer for four years, but he quit in 2019 after deciding the corporate world wasn't for him.

"It was just a bit unfulfilling," Rogers tells Reason. "I wanted to do something a little more impactful with my skills….So I left to find something else that felt worthwhile."

He started The Rogerie, a retail store in his hometown of Kelowna, British Columbia, a city of about 170,000 people. Rogers and his wife collect shredded plastic waste and extrude it into filament for 3D printers, which they use to create new housewares to sell in the shop.

Then earlier this year, Rogers again got the feeling that he could be doing something beneficial with his talents. This time, it meant running for the Kelowna City Council.

But he had to stand out in a crowded field—he would be one of 37 candidates running, and only the top eight would win a seat.

So, he settled on a strategy: openly admit his lack of qualifications and how little he even wanted the job.

"I guess I'm running for Kelowna city council," read his campaign website. "I don't like meetings, I don't like having to be certain places at certain times, and I'm allergic to stuffy offices. But unfortunately, I happen to like Kelowna, and think I can help do some good."

"Do I enjoy politics? No," he adds. "Do I know what I'm doing? No. But am I qualified? Also no."

That lackadaisical attitude carried over into his campaign signage: Yard signs featured pictures of Rogers with sullen, shrugging expressions, alongside slogans like "I barely want to do this" and "Let's see what happens?" In a winking reference to political gerontocracy, one sign even bragged that he was "Under 60!"

The ploy worked, and the campaign went viral.

"I certainly thought it was clever. I thought it would work, but it was really just how I honestly felt when I started," Rogers admits. "I was pretty conflicted about committing to a four-year thing that I didn't even really fully understand the ins and outs of, but at the same time I saw the opportunity to have a bigger impact. So, I was conflicted, and I figured that's a good, honest place to start a campaign."

Ultimately, he won a seat: He placed fourth out of 37 total candidates and even beat three incumbents, one of whom lost her seat.

The irony of Rogers' outwardly indifferent attitude is that he actually does have a policy platform: On his website, he advocates finding solutions to homelessness not necessarily by spending more money but by making better use of the resources that the city and province already provide. He also notes that Kelowna taxes land and improvements at the same rate, which "means we tax someone for improving their property while relatively rewarding someone who sits on valuable, underused land." Writing this week at Reason, J.D. Tuccille made a similar point.

Of course, Rogers' underqualified and disinterested campaign persona is only partially true—he did, after all, want the job, or at least he saw it as a viable means of improving his city.

Still, it's refreshing for a candidate to treat public office as something less than a higher calling.

Ultimately, Rogers thinks that authenticity is why his campaign caught on and was ultimately successful with voters, when many campaigns struggle to create viral moments or capitalize on social media trends. Perhaps other people could even learn from him.

"I think why mine worked so profoundly is that it is a little bit of humor, but immediately behind it was a legitimate platform and me as a real person with the skills and a real desire to do something," Rogers says. "And I think that resonated. I think people [have] an appetite for a new kind of politics."

The post He Won a City Council Seat by Openly Admitting How Little He Wants the Job appeared first on Reason Magazine.