Political News

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The worst couple you know is officially divorcing. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her husband, Bryon Noem, filed for divorce in South Dakota on Tuesday, tying a pretty bow on a long-winded saga that was … quite captivating. As many might recall, the couple’s tattered relationship came to the forefront of everyone’s social media accounts when a tabloid broke the news…

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MAGA influencers are slamming Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for an ad released by the state that pushes welfare-to-work requirements without conforming to racist, anti-Black tropes. Huckabee Sanders, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, released the ad on Monday. It depicts a young white man lazily playing video games as Huckabee Sanders…

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On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill banning law enforcement officers in the state from using electrical shock gloves, a “pain compliance” tool and recent hit with ICE officers that function similarly to tasers at a lower voltage. ICE recently purchased about 6,000 pairs of the gloves, which have been roundly condemned by human rights groups as “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture”—for $16.7 million dollars.

“This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed.”

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement that accompanied the bill’s signing. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities.”

The ban will go into effect in 2027 as part of a suite of bills Newsom signed in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in California, including a 25 percent tax on companies that operate immigration detention facilities in the state, a ban on face coverings by federal agents—a previous version of which was blocked by a judge—and a law expanding oversight requirements for federal immigration detention centers in California.

As I have previously reported, the shock gloves ICE purchased have been the subject of several lawsuits, including a wrongful death suit:

A pending wrongful death lawsuit alleges that a 43-year-old man named Jonathan Mansfield died because corrections officers shocked him 27 times with the gloves and 13 times with a Taser. Two of the glove shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds. The manufacturer’s recommended limit is 15 seconds. A man with heart problems sued over allegations that he was shocked at a Las Vegas trade show, as the Associated Press reported.

And in 2023, a man who was incarcerated in Kentucky’s Bullitt County Jail sued an employee of that jail for shocking him repeatedly with the gloves. “The gloves feel just like a taser,” Josh Elswick, who was in handcuffs and shackles when he was shocked, said. Bullitt County Jail representatives told local media they would stop using electric shock gloves shortly thereafter. 

California’s ban on shock gloves is likely to be challenged in court—and the Department of Homeland Security has already promised that it will flout any such law. As a DHS spokesperson told me earlier this month, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from any safety equipment is despicable and a deliberate attempt to undermine and endanger our officers. To be crystal clear: we will not abide by unconstitutional bans. The Supremacy Clause makes it clear that California’s sanctuary politicians do not control federal law enforcement.”

Jeff Niklaus, CEO of Compliant Technologies, the firm that manufactures the gloves, blamed “political bias” and lack of understanding of his product for the ban in a September 22 YouTube video.

“We were never contacted by any legislator or agency within California,” Niklaus said, calling the firm’s gloves the “safest, most humane deescalatory product probably ever to come along.”

In a sign of just how dire the midterm straits are for Republicans, the GOP is now scrambling to save their Senate in Nebraska, a state President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points just under two years ago and where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 2006. The White House on Tuesday announced that Trump will campaign in the Cornhusker State next week, where not only is GOP Sen.

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From here on out, a civil rights group will receive the same treatment in Florida as the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday the implementation of the “anti-sharia law” he signed earlier this year, officially designating 90 groups as terrorist organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the largest Muslim advocacy group in the nation.

Florida’s authority on the matter superseded the State Department, which does not list CAIR as a terrorist organization, thanks to a state law (H.B. 1471) that went into effect in July. That allowed Florida’s domestic security chief to officially identify terrorist organizations without the involvement of the federal government.

The state government proceeded with the matter without input from the public.

The Muslim Brotherhood and antifa also received the terror group designation. Other groups targeted by the action include the Venezuelan crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, two Mexican drug cartels, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran.

The groundwork for the new labels came by way of an executive order DeSantis signed last December. At the time, CAIR’s Florida chapter sued DeSantis, claiming that the order, which stripped the group’s access to state resources, was unconstitutional.

Another lawsuit from the group is expected following DeSantis’s latest action.  

“There is nowhere in that notice any allegation or evidence that CAIR has engaged in any violent or dangerous act in violation of Florida or U.S. law,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU National Security Project, said Tuesday following the decision, noting that the ACLU plans to file for a preliminary injunction on behalf of CAIR’s Florida chapter. “And that’s the first requirement for something as serious as this.”

Shamsi added that the “relentless” effort to label CAIR as a terrorist organization is “unnecessary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional.”

Better Know a Democrat is an interview series to give voters a closer look at candidates in competitive races across the U.S. As North Carolina state Senate candidate Jess Rivera seeks to unseat a Republican incumbent in the general assembly, her winning could flip the outcome of some of the country’s strictest abortion laws. “I support someone’s right to life. I support someone’s right…

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The food delivery driver shot by ICE agents last week, Venezuelan immigrant Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, was charged with one count of assaulting, resisting, interfering, and impeding a federal officer on Tuesday.

The Department of Justice accused Garcés Pérez of ignoring federal agents’ instructions and driving away from them when they tried to pull him over in Austin, Texas. As he left, the DOJ claimed, his driver’s side mirror hit one of the agents in the chest. An ICE agent said that after a short, high-speed car chase, Garcés Pérez tried to hit him with his car, at which point the agent said he shot into the car and hit Garcés Pérez in the back.

Parts of the incident were captured by a body camera, according to the DOJ, but only still images have been released to the public so far. Garcés Pérez disputes the government’s account, stating that a black SUV came out of nowhere and tried to hit his car while he was in the middle of a food delivery.

Garcés Pérez said that he thought the SUV was an aggressive driver and tried to drive away, only for the SUV to ram his car and turn on its police lights after the crash. He was then shot after the car was stopped, according to The New York Times.

Since the incident, Garcés Pérez’s lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said that he has languished in ICE’s custody without adequate medical care, having spent just three hours in a hospital before being taken into ICE’s detention center in Pearsall, Texas without being able to see his wife. A spokesperson for Lincoln-Goldfinch said in a statement Tuesday that the bullet is still lodged in Garcés Pérez’s body even after nearly nine days.

“Rather than provide the life saving medical care he needs, D.H.S. and the government are playing games with his life,” the statement said.

Former special counsel Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday in what was a clear attempt by Republicans to distract from how bad things are. The whole thing was pretty distasteful, but GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri took the cake—and subsequently some humble pie—with his conspiracy theory-laden gotcha question, in which he called Smith a “dirtbag.

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Supreme Court conservatives ensure midterm chaos…

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is doing everything he can to clear the deck of battle-tested leaders as he prepares to drag President Donald Trump’s supposedly “six-week war” into its eighth month.

Hegseth is plotting to cut 20 percent of the Pentagon’s slots for admirals and generals, two officials told The Hill Tuesday. The secretary will formally announce the reductions during his State of the Force address in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday.

Hegseth has already overseen a vast reduction in the number of top-ranking military personnel. At the time of his confirmation, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. Now there are just five—the smallest number to lead the service in years.

In May, Hegseth signed an order directing the U.S. military to slash the number of active-duty four-star generals, as well as general and flag officers, by 10 percent, and reduce the number of general officers in the National Guard by a minimum of 20 percent. At the time, Hegseth claimed the “Less Generals, More GIs” policy would allow for a leaner military structure, but provided no guidance for how these cuts ought to actually be made.  

In April, Hegseth fired Army chief of staff General Randy George, and forced out at least three senior officers who were believed to be in the running to be George’s replacement. All in all, Hegseth has forced out at least half a dozen senior officers, undermining military readiness in the ongoing campaign in the Middle East. 

Hegseth’s leadership has come under increased scrutiny amid mounting reports that he concealed casualties among U.S. service members, depleted the U.S. military weapons stockpile, directed massive, unchecked government spending, and allowed horrific conditions aboard long-deployed U.S. ships that led to a number of attempted suicides. 

There’s also the matters of killing school children and nearly starting World War III—both tied to his overreliance on artificial intelligence.

Earlier this month, the House announced that it would end its voting session early in order to avoid an impeachment vote on Hegseth. The vote won’t take place until after the midterm elections, but a number of Senate Democrats have already signaled that supporting an impeachment vote against the secretary would be a worthwhile use of political capital, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday. 

The Supreme Court has decided that the Trump administration can resume deporting immigrants to countries other than their place of origin.

The nation’s highest judiciary on Tuesday paused a lower court ruling that blocked the government from deporting people to locations they had no relation to without due process. The decision came by way of an emergency ruling that did not include a vote count.

The Supreme Court is expected to pick the issue back up again in December when it will hear oral arguments. A final ruling is expected next year.

This is a developing story.

“First of all, the polls are fake.”

When asked about competitive congressional races in Iowa, Donald Trump predictably dismissed Iowa Republicans’ lackluster polling numbers as “fake” and blamed Democrats for the high prices squeezing farmers and other businessmen across the state—even as the war in Iran has sparked soaring energy and fertilizer costs. 

Video by Peter Berger

“I don’t know, I love Iowa,” Trump said during an Oval Office address announcing a new $15 billion steel plant in the state. “I’ve always been very strong with Iowa. There’s been some things that the Democrats have done that are very bad for our country.”

Meanwhile, one Iowa farmer stressed just how difficult the economy has become for small business owners.

“Folks that have trucking businesses, they’re just bleeding money right now like crazy,” he said during an appearance on MSNOW. “Farmers are bleeding money like crazy. We need to get this problem resolved, and we need to get it resolved right away.”

Still, Trump appears unmoved by the economic warning signs, as prices climb and his poll numbers continue to slide.

“I got more votes than anybody in history during the last election,” said Trump. “I’m more popular now than I was then.”

On Wednesday—the fourth day New York’s annual Climate Week—a federal judge handed the Trump administration a major victory by striking down New York’s landmark Climate Change Superfund Act.

Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled that the law, which sought to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for climate change-related damages, overstepped the state’s authority because it was preempted by the national Clean Air Act and interfered with the federal government’s ability to conduct foreign affairs. Castel’s ruling comes just a few weeks after a similar decision by Judge Brenda Sannes in a parallel case brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, business groups, and fossil fuel companies.

“So is it taxpayers who are going to pay for it? Or is it billionaires?”

Enacted in 2024, the New York law was part of a major push in Democratic-leaning states to crack down on carbon pollution in a way the federal government has so far failed to do. It employed a familiar strategy from the 1980s: Make polluters pay. Modeled after the federal Superfund statute for toxic waste dumps, New York’s climate superfund law would have charged fossil fuel companies $75 billion over 25 years to fund climate adaptation and infrastructure projects. Since the measure’s introduction in 2023, lawmakers in other states have pursued similar legislation. 

As of now, the back-to-back court decisions directly apply only within New York state. But these rulings could offer the fossil fuel industry a roadmap for challenging similar laws, and the judges’ reasoning could ultimately be adopted by other courts, including the Supreme Court. Now, state lawmakers considering their own climate superfund legislation face a difficult choice: Change course in response to the New York rulings, or push ahead and try to defend their bills in court.

I spoke to lawmakers and advocates from Minnesota, Washington, Connecticut, and Vermont, all of whom have either drafted legislation, are considering legislation, or, in the case of Vermont, have successfully passed their own climate superfund law. While slightly different in their state-specific parameters, the legislators and activists behind these bills share the same goal: With climate-related damage already costing states and residents considerable amounts of money, the companies responsible for a significant share of historical emissions should help cover the bill. 

In Minnesota, a superfund bill has already been introduced, and legislators in Washington and Connecticut are planning to propose bills for their upcoming legislative sessions. Bloomberg recently reported that lawmakers in California, Illinois, and Massachusetts are all continuing to move forward with superfund legislation. 

After the first New York ruling, I asked Minnesota State Rep. Athena Hollins, a deputy floor leader for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, what she thought of the decision. “I find it personally disappointing,” she replied, “because the reality is these costs are coming.”  

According to NOAA’s archived Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database—which is now run by Climate Central after being shuttered by the Trump administration—Minnesota has experienced 62 confirmed weather or climate disaster events exceeding $1 billion between 1980 and 2024. Climate change has contributed to higher temperatures and more intense rainfall in the state, leading to major challenges for its agricultural sector and outdoor adventure industry.

Hollins, who introduced and co-sponsored Minnesota’s superfund bill earlier this year, told me that Minnesotans could face $20 billion or more in climate-related costs by 2040. “That’s roughly a third of our state’s current budget,” she said. Her state’s superfund legislation would charge major polluters for damages to bridges, roads, and buildings caused by greenhouse gas emissions. That money would pay for natural disaster recovery, infrastructure projects, and public health efforts linked to pollution. 

Infrastructures costs, Hollins notes, are inevitably going to rise.  “So is it taxpayers who are going to pay for it?” she asks. “Or is it billionaires?”

For Hollins, the New York rulings “has literally no bearing on what we’re doing in the State of Minnesota.” She also notes the “shaky” appellate court precedent on which the rulings are based aren’t necessarily relevant to federal courts in Minnesota.

Washington State Rep. Shaun Scott, a Democratic Socialist representing part of Seattle, actually sees the New York ruling as a “silver lining” for his own state—a roadmap for avoiding legal vulnerabilities in crafting his own legislation.

“We have watched with great interest the way the federal government has dealt with New York State because we understand there’s the potential that we will experience similar roadblocks,” Scott said. “It gives us the opportunity to see where any landmines might be and legally sidestep some of them.”

“It gives us the opportunity to see where any landmines might be and legally sidestep some of them.”

In Scott’s view, Washington State is uniquely positioned to successfully pass a climate superfund law, given its passage of the Climate Commitment Act in 2022 requiring greenhouse gas emitters to buy pollution credits. Last year, he spearheaded the passage of the Wildfire Alleviation Support Act, which charges major financial and tech firms that rely heavily on data centers and uses the funds for the state’s wildfire resilience efforts. The state is particularly vulnerable to wildfires given its large, lush forests and decreasing snowfall earlier in the season, and, according to Scott, overuse of energy-intensive data centers has contributed to that risk. Scott hopes to use these existing laws as models for a future climate superfund bill, which he plans to introduce in the upcoming legislative session in January. 

To help draft the bill, Scott’s office has been working with 350Seattle, a climate justice organization that advocates for communities most impacted by climate change. Akiksha Chatterji, 350Seattle’s campaign director, said the group began organizing around superfund legislation after seeing Vermont and New York move forward with their laws in 2024.

Chatterji says the New York litigation won’t deter 350Seattle’s plans. “We are very clear that no matter what the outcome is in other states, we are moving full steam ahead because rulings in those circuits don’t impact us.” 

In Connecticut—which is subject to the same appellate court precedents as New York—State Rep. Josh Elliott expressed more concern about the implications of the Empire State’s legal battle. Connecticut’s bill, a cost-recovery program, would calculate what share of emissions since 1995 is attributable to the largest fossil fuel producers. Then the state would issue payment demands. It would put the proceeds toward adaptation work on stormwater upgrades, flood mitigation, coastal protection, and grid resiliency. The bill received a public hearing in February and is expected to reach the floor in January 2027 when the legislature is back in session. 

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy damaged approximately 3,000 homes across Connecticut, and over the last few years, the state has faced increasing rainfall, coastal flooding, and infrastructure injuries and deaths due to extreme weather events.

“People pay for it through their property taxes,” Elliott said. “But the costs of externalities should be borne by the companies that pollute.”

Across the border from New York, Vermont is also facing a legal challenge—brought by the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute—over its own “polluters pay” climate law. Vermont State Sen. Anne Watson, a co-sponsor of the bill, is hopeful that it won’t suffer the same fate as the New York law. “We feel very good about our legal standing moving forward with the law,” Watson said, “and what happens in Vermont can be wholly different.” A decision is expected sometime this fall.

In the summer of 2023, Vermont experienced catastrophic flash flooding, with devastating road and bridge washouts and landslides. In Montpelier, where Watson lived at the time, she said the conversation quickly shifted from if extreme flooding would happen again to when it would happen again. Shortly after the bill was passed in May 2024, Vermont experienced another summer of major flooding. 

“It was so painfully apparent that the costs of climate change were falling on residents, on business owners, and on municipalities that all just simply could not afford it,” Watson said. “And [we were] also recognizing that this was going to keep happening.”

“The costs of externalities should be borne by the companies that pollute.”

A recent Brown University study reported high support for climate superfund laws across nearly all surveyed states, finding a 3-to-1 ratio of support to opposition for these bills during public hearings. In Vermont, for example, Ben Edgerly Walsh, a climate and energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which helped support Vermont’s law, told me that his organization received 12,000 petition signatures in favor of the legislation during the summer of 2023 before it was introduced. “For a state like Vermont, where you’re talking about 650,000 people total,” he said, ”that is really significant grassroots support.” 

But what the Brown report also showed is that, behind the scenes, lobbying groups opposing climate superfund bills outnumbered supporters. “Those lobbying interactions are probably the most influential in terms of swaying legislators,” said Trevor Culhane, a research associate at Brown’s Climate and Development Lab and one of the co-authors of the report. 

Apart from oil and gas companies, the Justice Department’s Energy and Natural Resources Division has also joined the fight against climate superfund legislation. In 2025, the DOJ filed two motions for summary judgment challenging both New York’s and Vermont’s climate superfund acts. After Judge Castel issued his ruling, DOJ official Adam Gustafson said in a statement, “Both [New York federal judges] hold that the federal government is responsible for setting national policy on global pollution, not states.” Of course, the Trump administration has little interest in actually doing that. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded its own authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The administration has also weighed in on various climate liability lawsuits in which plaintiffs, including state governments, are seeking damages from fossil fuel companies under various state and federal laws. Celebrating the dismissal of one such lawsuit, brought by the state of Michigan, Gustafson said in a statement last week, “We are pleased that the district court has rejected another aggressively anti-energy lawsuit, and we are committed to protecting American energy from this sort of state overreach.” 

The most anticipated climate liability case will be before the Supreme Court next week, with the justices scheduled to hear arguments over whether Boulder, Colorado, can sue Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil. The underlying legal questions of the case are distinct from climate superfund litigation, but a broad ruling in Suncor’s favor could be used to inform legal analysis on future climate litigation, said Alejandro Camacho on a recent webinar sponsored by Covering Climate Now and Point Source. “Climate superfund statutes could start to borrow from the analysis of the court pretty immediately,” he said.

When I asked Anne Watson, the Vermont lawmaker, about challenges coming from private industry and the federal government, she smiled. “This isn’t going to make us back down. Maybe it’s a little intimidating in certain ways, but we’re not giving up,” she said. “I think it’s just a matter of time before the fossil fuel industry is held accountable.” 

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Inside Washington

Katie Hobbs is holding the line in Arizona. Now, she’s under attack.

With midterms that could shift control of Congress rapidly approaching, the gubernatorial election in Arizona might not be high on the average Democrat’s radar. But incumbent Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is facing a potentially hard race in a state Democrats don’t want to lose. 

Hobbs is “the person who is keeping the legislature at bay,” explained Thomas Volgy, a professor at the University of Arizona and the former mayor of Tucson. The governor’s veto power is currently the last line of defense against right-wing legislation passed by the Republican-controlled state Senate and House of Representatives. On one Friday in late June, for example, Hobbs vetoed 88 bills, including a bill that would have banned the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in hiring and another that would allow people who detransition to sue the medical providers who aided in their gender transition care. As of mid-July, Hobbs had signed 993 bills into law and vetoed 541 since assuming office. “Her responsibility as a Democratic governor is to make sure the legislature does no harm,” Volgy added.

Since she took office in 2023, Hobbs has also presided over a number of crucial policy fights, and is making the pitch that she needs four more years to see them through. 

“In my second term, I will continue to prioritize lowering costs, creating good-paying jobs, protecting water, and investing in public education,” Hobbs wrote in a statement to The New Republic. “I want to put Prop 123 on the ballot to secure much-needed support for Arizona’s public schools without raising taxes, while continuing to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse in the ESA program,” she said, referring to a proposition to raise money for public education and the state’s “Empowerment Scholarship Account,” or ESA program, which is a school choice funding program.

Arizona’s ESA program was established in 2011 and became universal in 2022, giving students public funding to spend on private education. The program is, unsurprisingly, controversial among state Democrats. “Enacting meaningful reform to Arizona’s out-of-control ESA program is critical,” said Stacy Pearson, a state Democratic strategist and co-founder of Lumen Strategies. “We’ve got districts across the state closing public schools” because state funds are used for the ESA program instead.

Arizona is one of seven states in the Colorado River Basin. The next negotiations for water rights in the region will take place in 2028. The governor plays an active role in those negotiations, directs the state Department of Water Resources, and, of course, holds veto power over legislation that could threaten the state’s water supply. As governor, Hobbs has focused on conserving the state’s groundwater resources, even if it means blocking housing development in some cases. Early in her term, she canceled the land leases of a Saudi Arabian farming company, Fondomonte, which her administration said was excessively pumping groundwater to grow alfalfa. While Hobbs has focused on conservation, Biggs is a proponent of desalination efforts, which Hobbs hasn’t focused on as governor. 

Polling throughout the summer showed Hobbs leading her opponent, Representative Andy Biggs. Some of those leads were more significant than others: In a mid-August poll, she was up 15 points, while a different poll conducted at the same time showed her only up two points. But public polling has been limited since mid-August, and there was a significant development at the end of that month.

Hobbs, who only won her 2022 election by some 18,000 votes, has been plagued by an investigation into alleged pay-to-play scandal: a foster care provider who donated hundreds of thousands to her campaign, and was subsequently awarded a rate increase by the state. On August 21 this year, the state attorney general announced that there was no evidence that Hobbs broke the law, and declined to prosecute her. Though the attorney general’s investigation absolved Hobbs of any blame, Republican-aligned offices and groups like the auditor general’s office are conducting their own reviews. Republicans in the state house hired a Trump-aligned attorney to investigate Hobbs, and Republican lawmakers issued subpoenas to Hobbs, the attorney general, and others in mid-September. (One of those lawmakers, State Senator Jake Hoffman, stepped down from leading the investigation after The Arizona Republic raised questions about over $1 million received by his political consulting businesses to help elect Biggs.)

Hobbs’s campaign has argued that Republicans are using the now-closed investigation to smear Hobbs ahead of the election. “With just 27 days until early voting begins, it’s no surprise partisan extremists are launching desperate political stunts,” Michael Beyer, Hobbs’s communications director, wrote recently in response to attacks by Biggs.

Volgy doesn’t think the investigation into Hobbs is the biggest factor in this race. “The driving force behind this election is Donald Trump, and he’s doing very badly in the state,” he said, citing the Iran war and rising costs. President Trump has a net approval rating of -19 points in the state, an all-time low for the president.

“Getting reelected in a red state is going to give her an opportunity,” Pearson said, to do more of what she’s already been doing. “To just shut the system down until meaningful reform is on her desk.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

President Trump’s announcement on Monday of a plan to build a $15 billion steel mill in eastern Iowa comes amid increasingly bad numbers for him in that state. Last week, a Marist University poll not only found Democrat Josh Turek up eight points against Ashley Hinson in Iowa’s Senate race—it also found that 43 percent of respondents “say their congressional vote is mostly a vote against President Trump.” The same poll also found Democrat Rob Sand up a shocking 12 points against Republican Zach Lahn in the gubernatorial race. Voters disapproved of Trump 58 percent to 41 percent.  

News outlets on Monday widely gestured to the midterm context in reporting the steel mill news. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who’s currently either neck and neck with or slightly trailing Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan in Iowa’s 1st congressional district, announced mid-Monday that she’d be joining Trump for the announcement event—and added that the steel mill would be located in Lee County (part of her district). The Des Moines Register’s Brianne Pfannenstiel on Monday pointed readers to prior coverage “about a mysterious company buying up land in Lee County,” as well as a reported “special legislative session to address a tax incentive package for this deal,” explicitly pitched as coming “*before* the midterms.”  

Whether this gambit will pay off amid voter frustration over a lot of other problems, though, remains to be seen. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports Hinson taking heat from voters frustrated over high fuel prices and Trump’s war on Iran. Meanwhile, Trump is continuing his vendetta against the Des Moines Register over a poll published shortly before the 2024 presidential election. After a judge threw out Trump’s lawsuit against the Register last week, a member of the president’s legal team told Politico that they’d be taking the case to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Elsewhere:

• The Guardian reports shocking findings from a Center for Biological Diversity review of federal records: Almost 25 percent of continental U.S. rivers contain dangerous levels of the herbicide atrazine, a potent hormone disruptor known to “chemically castrate” frogs, which can damage human reproductive systems as well as numerous other organs. (Unsurprisingly, it’s especially hazardous to developing fetuses and children.) Read Tom Perkins’s full report for more on how atrazine became so widely used in the U.S., despite being banned in dozens of other countries.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Tuesday at noon, New America hosts “Power at the Polls: Confronting Basic Barriers to Accessible Democracy,” a virtual discussion about factors jeopardizing voting rights for Americans with disabilities. Speakers will include Rebecca Cokley, Mia Ives-Rublee, Dom Kelly, Lee Drutman, Asim Dietrich, and Sydney Saubestre. 

Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution hosts a forum on “meeting long-term care needs for an aging United States.” Panelists will include Maggie Elehwany of Argentum, Nicole Howell from the National Council on Aging, Haeyoung Yoon of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Stanford economics professor Neale Mahoney, University Hospital CEO Carole Johnson, the Urban Institute’s Tisamarie Sherry, Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark, and Brookings’s Aviva Aron-Dine and Tara Watson.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative

Q: How did your new book come about?

A: Groundwork has worked hard to expose how corporations combine their pricing power with new technologies to nickel and dime consumers, and my new book is really the culmination of that work. Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet is about the dizzying array of high-tech tricks, traps, and grifts that companies now use to rip us off. Price gougers are coming for almost every line in your household budget.
Q: What is the most difficult thing about the work you’re doing?
A: One of the things I learned while writing the book is that these manipulative pricing tactics are lurking everywhere. Pricing is now a highly engineered science, and there is a cottage industry of consultants, pricing advisers, and AI pricing startups out there to help companies figure out how to empty your wallet. These practices are often opaque; it’s quite difficult for veteran researchers—let alone everyday shoppers—to uncover them. But when consumers see something fishy (for example, if two friends realize they are getting charged different prices for the exact same concert ticket), they should speak up. You can help researchers and regulators investigate and crack down on these insidious practices.
Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?
A: Last year, Groundwork teamed up with Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union to expose the secret experiments Instacart was running on families buying their weekly groceries. It sparked a media frenzy, massive consumer backlash, and even an FTC probe. Just two weeks later, Instacart reversed course and shut down its pricing lab. This summer, I’ve been blowing the whistle—in the media and testifying on Capitol Hill—on Walmart’s use of AI-powered pricing and shopping technologies, like their profitable new chatbot, Sparky. Just a few days ago, the CEO wrote a letter to shoppers backtracking on these wildly unpopular practices. Sunlight is a powerful disinfectant.
Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?
A: The first one is personal: my three-year-old son, Alfie. It’s hard to despair about the state of the world when you look through the eyes of a boundlessly energetic, curious, and clever kiddo. I’m also motivated and inspired every day by my colleagues at Groundwork. I’ve long said we are an organization that punches way above its weight (regularly bringing Fortune 500 companies to heel!), and that’s because of the hard work and brilliance of the team. Stay tuned: We have plenty more in store in the months ahead.
Interview by Monica Potts

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

On this day in 1962, President Kennedy authorized the use of federal troops to integrate what public university? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

It turns out that President Trump took money for his self-adulating ads from the Department of Homeland Security. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House paid for multiple pro-Trump ads specifically with money from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

The ads in question praise the president and highlight claims of his achievements in office. One of them plays the JMSN song “Love Me” as President Trump declares “America will never be a communist country.” Another seemed to copy a 2024 campaign video, where a black-and-white Trump is walking while his voice talks about “the final battle.” Another shows pictures of Mount Rushmore while Trump narrates “the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history.”   

Trump reportedly was involved in the ads’ creation and pushed for them himself. They include a “paid for by the U.S. government” disclaimer, which would seem to violate federal laws such as the Hatch Act against the executive branch promoting political causes. The Trump administration claims they are public service announcements. 

In a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday, Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy said that “using government funding to create or air political ads like the ones that have been running over the last few days is illegal and a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars.” They reported that Trump has set aside $20 million of DHS funds for the ads.

“The American people deserve answers about how this president is literally stealing their tax dollars to air campaign ads celebrating himself—while doing nothing to help them afford health care or housing. These ads need to immediately come off the air, taxpayers need to be paid back for this theft, and everyone responsible needs to be held accountable for this corrupt and illegal propaganda,” the senators wrote. 

The ads have aired almost 90 times across national television as of Sunday on networks including MS NOW, CBS, Fox, and Newsmax, costing an estimated $337,000. They’ve also aired on local stations 2,311 times at an estimated cost of $1.4 million. 

“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” a White House spokesperson said last week. “The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.”

President Donald Trump’s war on the First Amendment has sent public confidence in press freedom plummeting. According to a Gallup poll released Tuesday, 69% of Americans believe that U.S. media has a lot of freedom—the poll’s lowest rating yet. That’s down from 82% during former President Joe Biden’s last year in office in 2024. The poll also found that Republicans are living…

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The State Department offered a government contract to Oxygen Forensics even after federal officials were made aware of the company’s ties to Moscow.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber (an American) and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They were also accused of orchestrating a scheme to conceal the company’s Russian ownership from the federal agencies to which they supplied phone hacking software.

The government knew of this by at least August 28, when Oxygen Forensics sued a former employee-turned-whistleblower, Max Weissberg, for making the plot public. Nonetheless, the State Department agreed to a $50,000 contract with Oxygen Forensics that same day, according to federal procurement data obtained by PunchUp.

Reiber advertised that his company, which provides forensic and archival services for electronic data, exclusively sold American-made software and had no foreign ownership.

Yet five Russian nationals, including Davydov, allegedly owned and controlled Oxygen Forensics through a holding company based in Cyprus, according to a criminal complaint released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The company’s software, too, was Russian, the complaint alleged.

Several executive agencies were affected by the scheme: the Defense Department and components of the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service, the National Computer Forensics Institute, Homeland Security Investigations, and the DHS Office of Inspector General, according to the complaint. But the federal procurement data would suggest that the State Departmnet—as well as the U.S. embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, that awarded the contract—could also have been compromised.

The Virginia-based group allegedly concealed its true ownership after the U.S. imposed additional sanctions on Russia in early 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine. Months later, Reiber—of Boise, Idaho—was appointed the company’s CEO, president, and chairman of the board, while mentions of Russian ownership were stripped from the company’s public filings, according to the complaint.

Details released in the affidavit suggest that Reiber was well aware of the conspiracy. In November 2023, Reiber wrote to Davydov and the other alleged Russian accomplices after a reporter asked about Oxygen Forensics’ connection to a Russian company. Reiber noted at the time that the reporting “could destroy” a pending contract with the National Computer Forensics Institute, and that the “current existence of this company hangs in the balance,” according to the criminal complaint.

Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton once again proved on Monday that he is a generationally bad candidate when he defended a sweetheart deal he gave to a pedophile charged with repeated sexual abuse of a third-grade boy. The deal Paxton made with Adam Hoffman—who was represented by the donor at the center of Paxton’s impeachment scandal—has been a persistent line…

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OpenAI called off plans to launch its latest GPT-6.1 Astra model on Tuesday, after the system failed to meet the company’s safety standards. 

The model was scheduled to release sometime in October, but OpenAI’s head of safety systems, Saachi Jain, told the Wall Street Journal that GPT-6.1 Astra, as compared to the previous GPT-6 Astra, was less honest about notifying users of the steps it did or did not take to achieve a task.

Jain described to the Journal that the models needed to strike a balance between proceeding with tasks on their own and taking shortcuts to provide an easy answer instead of doing a thorough job—a behavior Jain and others in the industry call “laziness.” Astra is OpenAI’s top-tier model. 

The startup’s cancellation comes amid a series of security threat incidents—tens of thousands of which it is reportedly investigating, according to a Saturday Axios report. OpenAI apologized on Monday for how it hacked Australian government websites in June, accessing non-public data and adding files onto the server: “We are sorry and working to do better in the future,” the startup in part wrote in a statement. 

Also on Monday, the company said it would only continue training after it has improved safeguards—including making its internal testing security strong enough to contain models and establishing live monitoring of models. 

Lawmakers and officials across the political spectrum are outraged. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, filed a temporary injunction to a June lawsuit, which claimed the company knowingly released unsafe products to the public, that OpenAI should stop developing new products without safety standards approved by a third party. 

Despite suggesting they would “do better in the future” to ensure safe AI development, as I wrote on Sunday, OpenAI has a history of aligning with the Trump administration to expand development. Many companies, such as OpenAI, Google, SpaceX, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle have military agreements with the Defense Department. 

On Tuesday, several of their leaders, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, are set to meet with President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson for lunch to discuss AI.