Political News

It’s election time, so the White House, according to Bloomberg’s Katy O’Donnell and Caitlin Reilly, is weighing whether to give the rich more tax breaks. Republicans! They just can’t help themselves!

Cutting taxes on the rich is a uniquely unpopular idea. Since 1939, Gallup has been asking, “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich”? In 1939, 54 percent said “should not” and only 35 percent said “should,” even though the Great Depression was raging and the New Deal was well along. Since 1939, though, the should nots have been falling and the shoulds have been rising. Today, a 52 percent majority say the government should redistribute wealth by taxing the rich heavily, and a 47 percent minority say it should not. (The current vogue for democratic socialism isn’t happening in a vacuum.)

If you put the question in a manner more appetizing to moderates—do the rich pay their fair share?—61 percent say no, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. Fully 81 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners also say no, along with a not-inconsiderable 41 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.

Given these realities, the White House, if it endorses a tax cut, will try to sell it as a middle-class tax cut. The Democrats have tax-cut proposals of their own that target lower-income people. I’ve explained previously that I prefer the alternative approach of cutting payroll taxes at the low end and eliminating the Social Security tax ceiling at the high end. But earlier this month my New Republic colleague Monica Potts made a convincing case that the Democrats’ tax-cut gambit has run its course. So maybe the priority ought to be protecting what revenues we have left and reducing the deficit wherever possible so the bond market doesn’t rage out of control. No tax cut will help with that.

On Tuesday, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and Larry Kudlow, who held that post during Trump’s first term, discussed on Fox Business the two tax proposals Trump is contemplating. One is to index the capital gains tax, and the other is to exempt from capital gains tax home sales below $2 million. (Currently the exemption goes up to $500,000.) The first of these is a more obvious giveaway to the rich. The second mimics the Obama administration’s strategy of shielding the haute bourgeoisie when it hikes taxes on the rich. Biden tried a version of this and failed, producing no major tax increase on the rich, because his Democratic congressional majority was too timid to impose one. In Trump’s version, the context for cutting taxes for the haute bourgeoisie is a tax cut for richer folks, too.

The dialog between Kudlow and Hassett conveyed that particular air of unreality characteristic of Fox World. (It was on Kudlow’s Fox Business show, which is called Kudlow.) Kudlow began by noting that the Congressional Budget Office had just projected this year’s budget deficit to be $2.1 trillion, up from February’s estimate of $1.9 trillion. “The budget deficit for the first ten months of the year is $1.8 trillion,” Kudlow said. “I’m not sure I understand why.”

Kudlow was baffled because he actually believes, contrary to 45 years’ evidence, the GOP’s propaganda that tax cuts pay for themselves. They do not. The tax cuts in last year’s budget reconciliation bill, for instance, slashed federal revenue by an estimated $570 billion. In addition, the Supreme Court made Trump give back about $166 billion in tariff revenue, of which Trump’s already rebated about $100 billion. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Theo Francis and Celia Bernhardt, these rebates have been so big that they’re juicing the stock market.

Anybody who follows the business news should know all this.

Kudlow asked Hassett to explain this mystery of a persistently high deficit. Hassett explained the bit about tariff rebates. He also complained that the CBO isn’t factoring in the Trump administration’s reduction of the civil service workforce by 300,000. The real figure is 155,000, according to an April report by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. If we assume, very generously, that Trump’s unloaded another 45,000 civil servants since April, then Hassett’s estimate is still off by one-third. The budget-hawk nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that a 10 percent reduction in federal employment will save $350 billion over 10 years. The Partnership for Public Service says that Trump cut 12 percent. Let’s once again be generous and call the federal workforce cut 15 percent. That’s $525 billion over 10 years, or $53 billion per year—peanuts compared to the cost of Trump’s tax cut, which Hassett didn’t mention, or the cost of Trump’s tariff rebates, which he did.

In Fox World, as opposed to the real world, it is not thought illogical to follow a lamentation about government insolvency with a plea for tax cuts. Kudlow cited a McLaughlin & Associates poll that said 62 percent of voters approved of indexing the capital gains tax to inflation. The idea, which Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has pushed in Congress, possesses obvious appeal; why should you pay taxes on inflation? Income taxes are already indexed to avoid “bracket creep,” which is when inflation pushes you into a higher marginal-tax bracket. Why not index capital gains taxes, too?

Because capital gains are already taxed at a lower rate than labor income. The top capital gains rate is 20 percent. The top labor-income rate (which is also too low) is 37 percent. Get back to me when you’ve eliminated that differential—and when you’ve also eliminated the “angel of death” loophole that lets assets escape capital gains tax when passed on to heirs—and we can talk. But if we ever do index capital gains like we do income-tax brackets, we’ll have to figure out some way to capture lost revenue—because remember that $2.1 trillion deficit? You don’t want to make it $3 trillion. According to the Yale Budget Lab, indexing capital gains would cost $170 billion over 10 years if it applied only to assets purchased after 2025, and almost $1 trillion if it applied to all assets.

Then there’s the distributional impact. People making less than about $100,000 would receive virtually no benefit, according to the Yale model (and would likely pay more income tax to cover the lost revenue). People making more than about $3 million, on the other hand, would save $350,000 in taxes. If McLaughlin & Associates had bothered to furnish voters with that information, its poll results would have been quite different.

Kudlow also said participants in the McLaughlin & Associates poll “probably want a break on the capital gains tax for the sale of a home, maybe up to $2 million.” The poll did indeed show that 52 percent of voters wanted to increase the capital gains exemption on home sales from the current $500,000 to $1 million. But the poll made no mention of exempting home sales all the way up to $2 million, which would affect a small minority of all home sales. Bloomberg’s O’Donnell and Reilly pointed out that according to the National Association of Realtors, only the richest 15 percent of homeowners—a group already wealthier than the general population— would benefit from bumping the exemption up to $2 million. The other 85 percent avoid capital gains tax already through the very generous $500,000 exemption.

Hassett expressed interest in these two policy proposals but didn’t commit Trump to them. Kudlow, however, said he’d spoken to Trump already. “He liked the idea of the indexing, he liked the idea of a bigger exemption,” Kudlow said.

If Trump endorses these tax proposals, he’ll say they’re an affordability play and argue that lowering capital gains tax will encourage more people to sell their houses, thereby lowering prices. But Democrats should answer that these are just two more Trump giveaways to the wealthy, most especially the indexing of capital gains. There are many ways to reduce the cost of housing: zoning for higher density where appropriate; investing in infrastructure; eliminating tariffs on lumber, steel, and aluminum to lower construction costs; subsidizing low-income housing; and so on. Throwing money at millionaires and billionaires is the most regressive way conceivable to lower housing costs, and there’s no great reason to believe it would even work.

Intriguingly, Fox News has lately been hitting Donald Trump with terrible polling news. In recent days, Fox has found Democrats slightly ahead in Senate races in Maine, Texas, and Iowa, and up by a lot in North Carolina. Critically, Trump’s own favorability numbers are very bad in all those states, even though he won three of them, two by double digits. In all four, his numbers among independents are shockingly awful. Meanwhile, on the Iran war—which is central to why his standing is cratering—Trump aides are privately soothing his anger. The Atlantic reports that Trump is “furiously” ranting about Iran, and his aides are showing him all this data on Iran’s economy, which supposedly illustrates that if he does nothing and bides his time, Iran will surrender any day now. Doing nothing is the smart play, sir! Yet as Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki argues in this episode, Trump’s inaction on Iran is a big albatross for GOP Senate candidates. Legacki explains why Iran is central to the battle for the Senate, why those Fox polls are grounds for cautious optimism for Democrats, and what could still go wrong for them. Listen to this episode here.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Wednesday that she will be leaving her job as President Donald Trump’s chief propagandist at the end of the month. For her taxpayer-funded salary of $195,200 per year, Leavitt has repeatedly lied, attacked, and defamed on Trump’s behalf. While he has often publicly sparred with his own team and openly denigrated them…

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Gas prices hit all-time August high, tanking GOP’s midterm chances The Iran war is not Republicans’ friend. Democrats demand face time with Paramount chief before CNN takeover After what David Ellison did to CBS, it’s fair to ask some questions.

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Fauci circus proves GOP doesn’t give a sh-t about the Constitution…

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On Wednesday, the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling blocking key measures of Texas’ sweeping voter suppression law, SB 1.

A lower court previously ruled that the law, which effectively made it harder for people to vote with assistance, violated disability civil rights laws. It also created more barriers to voting by mail.

“It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote, according to Democracy Docket. “That is why voting by mail jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”

There is no evidence that mail-in ballots are “prone to fraud.” An analysis from the Brookings Institution found an “average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043 [percent].” Or, about 4 votes per 10 million votes. Mail-in voting can be very important for disabled and aging people, who otherwise may have to deal with accessibility challenges with getting to the polls and access issues when voting itself.

One of the plaintiffs of the initial lawsuit, La Union del Pueblo Entero v. Abbott, filed in 2021, is the historically Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta. One of its members, Candace Wicks told me in 2024 that she was frustrated about the barriers disabled people faced while voting since SB. 1.

Disabled people, Wicks said, “face barriers every day in terms of discrimination in our daily lives.” SB1, which she sees as a form of disenfranchisement, is to her just one example.  “We need to make our democracy accessible to everybody, regardless of our ability,” she said.

Research from the Brennan Center found that SB 1 in Texas had devastating impacts when many of its provisions in effect. A 2025 research paper found that thousands of Texans, disproportionately people of color, had their ballots rejected in the 2022 primary due to SB. 1. People whose ballots were rejected were less likely to vote in the 2022 general election in November and also were less likely to vote in 2024.

Wednesday’s ruling could impact turnout for the 2026 Texas Senate race, where Democrat James Talarico has a shot at flipping that Texas Senate seat Blue in a contest against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend as much as $20 million on “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” like shock gloves, border czar Tom Homan confirmed on Thursday—gloves that deliver painful electric shocks to people who ICE officers are trying to subdue. “It’s another device to help someone be compliant when they’re not. You just can’t go from zero to 100, right…

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, along with the Theatre Development Fund (TDF), the city will invest millions to provide free and discounted tickets for city teens to visit theaters and museums. Mamdani also made sure to draw a connection between taxing the rich and a government that works on behalf of its citizens. “We’re here today talking in some ways about art…

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The Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board first tried to close the Center in May, but that decision was blocked by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who argued that the board’s decision “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.” On Thursday, the board voted again, this time deciding to close the center for two years so that they can renovate the building in President Trump’s image.

Judge Cooper still has to review the board’s plan for the center’s closure, which they have until next week to provide.

The board also voted to put Trump’s name back on the center, circumventing the law stating “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas” by putting “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” somewhere on the building.

“This morning’s decision to close the Center and the surprise agenda item to put Donald Trump’s name back on the building was more of the same,” said Democratic Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty, who successfully sued the Center in May. “This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed. I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”

This is just one of the many useless aesthetic overhauls that President Trump has taken on during his vastly unpopular second tenure—from the Reflecting Pool, to the East Wing of the White House, to the Ballroom. His takeover of the Kennedy Center, attacking it for being too “woke” did real damage to the institution, as ticket sales plummeted and the Center’s cultural legitimacy suffered.

“My word: just think about how low his self esteem is that he needs this so badly? Most human beings would have felt the shame of all this,” journalist Chuck Todd wrote on X. “I know this isn’t a new take. But it doesn’t make it any less sad or pathetic.”

Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday as U.S. states scheduled three lethal injection executions in one day. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a motel maid in 1985 and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man is scheduled to die later for killing of a 5-year-old girl he paid her mother to abuse.

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Pentagon out of ideas to end Iran war after Hegseth killed ‘woke’…

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Can an average guy build a killer drone in his garage?

That’s the question reporter Matt Smith set out to answer over the course of 11 months, armed with zero engineering background and only a handful of AI chatbots to guide him, in this collaboration between Mother Jones and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

His goal: a fully autonomous self-guided drone, one a theoretical evildoer could walk away from even as it continued carrying out its mission—with no humans involved. AI companies claim their models have built in limits or “guardrails,” but Smith wanted to see how well those would actually hold up.

It didn’t take much convincing. The chatbots handed him a shopping list—everything from propellers to an onboard computer—and walked him through the assembly and programming, coaching a man with the technical chops of an 11th grader.

Watch what happened next—and what it reveals about how close AI has brought us to a world where anyone can build an autonomous killer weapon.

Because if a guy with zero training can get this far, the question isn’t whether he succeeded—but who else is asking.

Read the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article which outlines the project in more detail here.

The Trump administration responded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s killing of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January by opening up investigations into left-leaning groups days later.

The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security opened probes into labor unions, a climate change organization, socialist groups, and other organizations to find out if they had aided protesters, whom the government called “violent opportunists and agitators,” against the administration’s crackdown in Minnesota.

According to government documents, these investigations were invasive, gathering information on individuals and groups who have never been suspected of committing crimes. For example, over three years of financial records were subpoenaed from the Sunrise Movement, a climate activism group, and the Communications Workers of America, the labor union that represents the staff at The New Republic.

The government also sought three years’ worth of wire transfers from the Service Employees International Union, the U.S.’s biggest health care union, saying they were inquiring about “domestic terrorist financing.” Those time periods predate the 2025 launch of the government’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota.

In addition, government agents began extensively spying on protesters and organizers at libraries, parks, churches, and online meetings, recording license plate numbers as well as names and proceedings. They also infiltrated Signal group chats, attempting to learn about protests and their targets’ political opinions.

All of this suggests some kind of ulterior motive on the part of the Trump administration. The DHS investigations seem to imply that the government was trying to find or manufacture criminal activity based on dissenting political speech. Federal prosecutors even went so far as to show a grand jury a PowerPoint slide alleging a conspiracy to obstruct immigration agents by 18 groups, including the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labor federation.

While none of the groups targeted by the inquiry have faced criminal charges, the government in June charged 15 people with interfering with immigration agents. The government claims the defendants are part of the left-wing antifascist movement, or antifa. Instead of going after the crimes committed by its own agents, the Trump regime wants to charge the people who protest those crimes.

A group of Democratic senators sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its administrator Mehmet Oz, warning about changes made to federal guidance for nursing homes that they say could lead to intimidation of senior voters. The senators, led by Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren and California’s Alex Padilla, note that the Trump administration’s directives could…

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New York GOP Representative Mike Lawler chose to go back and forth with Dana Bash rather than make any commitment to return the $10,000 he accepted from his embattled colleague, Ohio Representative Mike Miller—who was sued by his ex-wife today for accidentally sharing images of their two-year-old daughter’s genitalia while attempting to discredit other disturbing accusations against him.

“You received $10,000 from Congressman Miller’s PAC this election cycle. Your campaign spokesman told Politico you have no plans to return the money. Now Miller, of course, has been accused of abusing his ex-wife and his daughter—allegations he denies,” Bash asked Lawler on CNN Thursday afternoon. “Why have you decided not to return the $10,000?”

“Well, first of all, there’s been a lot of allegations leveled. I know Max very well. I’ve talked to him personally over the last two years about this very difficult family situation—it’s tragic. I don’t think anybody disagrees about that,” Lawler said. “But this is something that should play out in family court. I think the fact that some in the media and my Democratic colleagues have tried to turn it into a spectacle and,
you know, use this situation for political points is wrong.”

He then turned focus away from Bash’s question and onto his upcoming midterm opponent Cait Conley, who took money from former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in 2017. Spitzer resigned in 2008 after he was caught in a prostitution ring.

“Okay, so I’m asking you specifically about Max Miller ... you said you’ve talked to him a lot privately,” Bash pushed. “It sounds like you’re saying that you’re not returning the donations because you get into that because you believe him?”

Miller has been accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head, scalding her with boiling water, breaking his two-year-old daughter’s collarbone, and using drugs. Miller has denied all of it, referring to the boiling water specifically as a “playful incident.”

When asked about the allegations, Lawler was defensive. “Look, this is a private family matter that unfortunately has spilled out into the public. It should be adjudicated in family court. Max has been accused, Max has also made accusations against his ex-wife. It is tragic,” he said, refusing—like nearly every Republican in Congress—to seriously condemn the allegations against Miller and call for his resignation.

“Obviously, I don’t condone any level of abuse, but ultimately there’s been nothing that has been corroborated here, which is part of the reason why Max is continuing to run for reelection.”

The most full-throated GOP rebuke of Miller came from his father-in-law, Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter,” Moreno wrote on X. “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them.”

Virtually every Republican except Emily Moreno’s father has deferred to the House Ethics Committee, refusing to call on Miller’s resignation, even as Senator Moreno calls him someone who needs “serious psychological help.”

“This is the typical Washington media game where it’s always: An allegation comes up, you must return the money,” Lawler said. “It’s the typical game. Everybody plays, and it doesn’t actually do anything to further the situation. If there’s evidence that Max did something, then obviously there should be a thorough investigation of that. But thus far, there’s been nothing to verify any of the claims that have been leveled. I think it is a tragic family situation. We all know people who have gone through nasty divorces.”

Lawler didn’t say whether he thought this was simply a “nasty divorce” or what precisely was “tragic” about the family situation. Then again, he didn’t have to.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth denied that military servicemembers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are dealing with poor conditions, saying Thursday that reports describing such conditions were “completely misrepresented.”

“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth said to reporters while on a visit to Panama. “Some deployments are longer than others and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere conditions with fewer port calls—it’s incredible.”

Multiple outlets, including the Military Times and Stars and Stripes, have reported low morale and mental health concerns among sailors as the Abraham Lincoln’s deployment stretches well beyond its initial end date in May. The aircraft carrier is reportedly experiencing water contamination, plumbing problems, disruptions in mail delivery, and food shortages, with pictures of meager, tasteless-looking meals going viral.

The situation has led to safety issues, exhaustion, and burnout among servicemembers, and multiple sailors have reportedly tried to jump overboard or otherwise harm themselves. Hegseth didn’t mention those reports Thursday, despite family members of crewmembers stationed aboard the ship explicitly raising them during heated town hall meetings last week with military leaders, including acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao. One spouse reportedly told officials at a meeting that her husband had messaged her earlier that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.”

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote a letter to Hegseth Wednesday demanding answers about conditions on the Abraham Lincoln and to visit the ship.

“The Lincoln’s extended deployment raises broader questions about the Navy’s ability to sustainably generate carrier forces while preserving servicemember well-being, maintenance schedules, fleet readiness, and the capacity to respond to future contingencies,” Blumenthal wrote.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the USS George Washington aircraft carrier will soon be deployed to the Persian Gulf from Japan to replace the Abraham Lincoln, which has been deployed for 250 days and hasn’t had a port call for a record 200 days. The change, which U.S. officials told the Journal is part of a previously scheduled rotation plan, will come as a long-awaited relief to the beleaguered sailors on the Lincoln.

On February 27, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) stood before the Cuyahoga County Court to request an emergency civil protection order (CPO) requiring that his ex-wife Emily Moreno stay away from him.

Miller’s rationale, he said, was that Moreno was harassing him with serious accusations that were untrue. Under penalty of perjury, he said he had evidence to prove it. 

“I filed today because my ex-wife is making allegations against me,” Miller told the magistrate judge, Jessica Bartolozzi. “She is making allegations against me…that never happened. And I have video and text message evidence showing the contrary of that.” 

Miller eventually dismissed the petition for a CPO voluntarily after the order had been in effect for five months; his lawyer testified in late July that Miller no longer had any “concern for his safety and well-being at this time.” In recent filings, however, Moreno’s counsel suggests Miller fabricated his initial reason for concern.

Miller had been granted the emergency CPO in February partly in response to his claims that he had evidence disproving Moreno’s accusation that he had injured her during a custody exchange of their daughter on February 1.

Moreno’s allegation that Miller shoved her against a wall that day had surfaced during an interview with detectives who were investigating possible child abuse related to their two-year-old daughter’s broken collarbone. As Mother Jones reported last month, Moreno told the detectives she couldn’t rule out Miller had caused the toddler’s injury because her ex-husband had also allegedly been abusive towards her. (The child abuse allegation was, in the end, “unsubstantiated,” which means there was not sufficient evidence to prove abuse or neglect.)

Miller has vehemently denied ever physically hurting the child or Moreno—including during the February custody exchange in question. “I have evidence supporting that fact,” Miller said when requesting the CPO, explaining that his girlfriend was an eye witness to the exchange and that video footage proved the girlfriend was present. 

But a few weeks after the temporary protection order was granted, Miller and his lawyers recanted some of the highly specific evidence Miller repeatedly attested to possessing. One of his lawyers, Pamela J. MacAdams, emailed Moreno’s lawyers about the situation in mid-March.

“After reviewing the ring doorbell tapes from February 1, 2026, we learned that [Miller’s girlfriend] was in fact not likely present at Max’s home during the time of the child exchange,” said the email, which was referenced in the domestic court filings. “We simply ethically feel the need to disclose to you this edit to our assertions about the evidence of that day.”

According to Rule 3.3 of the Ohio Professional Rules of Conduct, lawyers in the state are ethically and legally required to speak up if they come to understand that material evidence was not accurately described to a court.

“If a lawyer, the lawyer’s client, or a witness called by the lawyer has offered material evidence and the lawyer comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable measures to remedy the situation, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal,” states the rule, entitled “Candor to the Tribunal.”

In an August 6 motion, Moreno argues that Miller’s lawyers failed to take the required remedial steps. While they did email Moreno’s lawyer, Miller’s attorneys did not inform magistrate Bartolozzi that their client made “false statements.”

“Petitioner’s attorneys had an affirmative obligation to alert this Court. The obligation for ‘candor towards the tribunal’ is not satisfied by writing a letter to opposing counsel. Simply put, opposing counsel is not the same as the court,” the motion, filed by Moreno’s lawyers, contend. Neither Miller’s lawyers nor spokespeople responded to Mother Jones’ request for comment.

Filings suggest Miller or his lawyers had informed police and the Department of Family Services that they had “mistake[n]” what happened during the February 1 custody exchange. But by not informing the body that issued the emergency CPO, Moreno’s counsel argues that Miller’s CPO was based on a fictional account.

“Without [the girlfriend’s] corroboration, Petitioner would have no proof this incident did or did not occur. As such, her ability to verify Petitioner’s claims regarding the incident were necessary, and Magistrate Bartolozzi’s issuance of an ex parte CPO would have been founded on the basis of Petitioner’s allegations of her presence and video proof. That CPO lasted five months,” the motion says.

In a series of questions and answers between Miller and one of his attorneys, this is how Miller initially described his supposed eye-witness evidence from the February 1 custody exchange in which Moreno has said she was assaulted.

Andrew Brown (Miller’s lawyer): Did you thereafter collect evidence to establish that that is untrue? 

Miller: Yes. 

Brown: Is one piece of evidence that you collected a witness statement from an individual who was present there? 

Miller: That is correct.

Brown: Okay. And what is that statement, and who made that statement, and what is the general statement? 

Miller: My girlfriend, her name is [redacted], very nice lady. She works night shift. So her shift starts at 7 pm, and she leaves usually around 6:30. Every time that Emily comes for pick up time, [girlfriend] hides…

Brown: Did [girlfriend] say she was present during the custody exchange?

Miller: Yes, she was.

Brown: Did [girlfriend] say she didn’t hear any kind of distress, commotion, pushing, shoving, thumping, anything of that nature?

Miller: That is correct, and she was looking through the window to make sure, and she always does this, she always looks after me during pick up time because she knows that it’s a very tense time for us, and so she was always keeping an eye on things that are happening at pick up time because she knows that it’s a very tense time for us, and so she was always keeping an eye on things that are happening at pick up time.

Brown: Do you have video surveillance at your home?

Miller: I do.

Brown:: Do you have video Ring doorbell surveillance?

Miller: I do.

Brown: Do you have video surveillance overlooking your driveway? 

Miller: I do. 

Brown: Does the video surveillance from your home establish that your girlfriend was present immediately preceding the custody exchange?

Miller: Yes. 

Miller has faced calls from at least six Republican Senators—including ex-father-in-law Bernie Moreno, Jon Husted, Roger Marshall, and Katie Britt—to drop his bid for reelection. However, the window for Miller to withdraw and to be replaced on the ballot passed earlier this week.

While Miller dismissed his motion for a protection order in late July, his custody battle with Emily Moreno is ongoing. The next court appearance is currently slated for two days after Election Day.

The Trump administration has lost roughly one quarter of the country’s MQ-9 Reaper drones as part of the president’s ongoing war against Iran. 

Three U.S. officials told The Washington Post Thursday that the U.S. military had lost at least 45 Reaper drones. Each low-flying surveillance and attack drone costs between $30 million and $50 million to produce, depending on what type of sensor each machine carries, placing the potential total cost of the missing or destroyed Reapers at up to $1.3 billion.  

A fourth U.S. official told the Post that not all of the Reapers were shot down—some of them crashed after the operators’ connection to the drone failed. 

At the beginning of the war, there were approximately 185 Reapers in the U.S. military fleet, including 165 in the Air Force and 20 in the Marine Corps. Marines spokesperson Lt. Col. Joshua Benson said that none of the Marines’ Reaper drones had been lost. 

In May, Air Force Lt. Gen. David Tabor told the Senate that the number of remaining drones had fallen to roughly 135, noting he was “concerned” about the losses. 

Reaper drones join the growing list of weapons that the U.S. is shedding faster than it can replace. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies published in May estimated it will take until at least 2030 to restore the U.S. missile stockpile to pre-war levels, leaving a multi-year “window of vulnerability” for the United States in potential future conflicts. Since that study was published, the United States has only continued to execute military strikes, and Trump’s war against Iran has racked up a total estimated bill of more than $100 billion.

It’s been more than five months since Trump launched his military onslaught against Iran, and multiple reports have raised concerns that the United States is running out of weapons. Trump administration officials have denied the reports, even after they reportedly sent the president into a rage. 

Despite insisting that the U.S. weapons stockpile is far from depleted, the Trump administration has launched a desperate campaign to boost weapons manufacturing. 

Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave industry leaders three weeks to submit their plans to “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities.”

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that the department was actively focused on boosting munitions acquisitions to provide “the weapons our warfighters need at the pace the threat demands,” but he claimed the effort predated Trump’s seemingly endless war. 

President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and poorly planned war in Iran has stranded more than 5,000 troops on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East for more than 250 days, with the servicemembers onboard experiencing such a deterioration in both their mental and physical health that it’s caused multiple crew members to attempt to jump overboard, CNN reported on Thursday.

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On Thursday, the surveillance technology company Flock announced that it will limit access to its network of over 120,000 automatic license plate readers following disturbing reports dating back to at least 2021 of police officers abusing the technology for criminal activities like stalking.

In his blog announcement, Flock CEO Garrett Langley did not mention the widespread public backlash against the technology, which, in significant part, led more than 20 local governments to begin rolling back their use in July. He only stated that the policy updates work to address “three areas that are critical to the company: strengthening privacy, accountability, and security.”

Among the updates: Flock is now making mandatory a previously optional feature that flags “abnormal activity” for review, shortening the default recommended data storage period for Flock surveillance products from 30 to seven days, and establishing optional limits on data sharing between police departments.

I've learned a lot in nine years of building @Flock_Safety. Some of it from our customers, and some of it from the communities they serve.

Today we’re announcing the changes that came from listening. A new standard for privacy, security, and accountability in public safety…

— Garrett Langley (@glangley) August 13, 2026

The ACLU said in a Thursday statement that most of Flock’s policy changes are “merely retreads of previous inadequate safety measures” it highlighted last month. While Flock claims its new policies will empower local police to dictate what other users can and cannot search their data for, the nonprofit said the company is assuming that its system already prevents improper search queries.

Clearly, this isn’t the case. In a statement, Tom Bowman, the policy counsel for security and surveillance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said that the policy changes are still “asking thousands of police departments to police themselves, despite evidence from across the U.S. that this lack of guardrails is unsafe.”

In other words, Flock’s answer to a crisis of trust is to ask for more of it.