Political News

The White House announced Friday that right-wing commentator Katie Zacharia will serve as the new press secretary, filling the vacancy left by serial liar Karoline Leavitt. Zacharia is a perfect fit for the MAGA movement. Like many other figures hired for senior positions under President Donald Trump, Zacharia is a product of right-wing media, having appeared as a pundit on networks like Fox…

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On Friday, President Donald Trump made a Columbus Day announcement, unveiling a big statute to distract the public from his failures on foreign policy and the economy ahead of the November midterm election. As he rambled away about wars, his delusional greatness, and how terrible America was before he returned to office, Trump veered into his political party’s fixation with children’s gender…

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Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay took a comedic jab at President Donald Trump right after the decision to award her the prestigious honor was announced. Trump has been repeatedly passed over for the prize despite lobbying for it for over a decade. Walking out to applause at a conference in Nuremberg, Germany, Pillay said, “Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more I may…

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Creepy born-again Catholic Vice President JD Vance was asked how he squared his perverse version of Christianity with the Trump administration’s decision to livestream a firing squad execution, and he offered up a shortened version of the stages of grief. First up, denial: “I’ve seen these announcements,” Vance said. “I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen. Let’s sort of see.

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Vice President JD Vance just asked Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton out for drinks.

Vance’s strange invitation came during a Friday rally in his home state of Ohio for embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“[Vivek] Ramaswamy is running against a crazy person,” Vance said. “Amy Acton, I have to be honest with you, I don’t know that much about her, other than she was the woman who wanted to mask all of our two-year-olds and keep them from going to school.” Acton served as the head of the Ohio state Health Department from 2019-2020.

“Now I did promise Amy that I would meet her at a bar later,” Vance continued. “I understand that she’s into that sort of thing. So I’m gonna try to get to know her a little bit better.”

This is yet another shot in a cheap GOP smear campaign to convince Ohio voters that Acton is some raging alcoholic and drug addict. The Ohio Republican Party has run ads calling Acton “unstable” and violent based on a 911 call from 2019 in which her daughter said she was “drinking and throwing things” while on medication, arguing with her stepfather in their home. Police arrived, made a report, and nothing came of it. Seven years later, and it’s the Ohio GOP’s primary dirt on Acton, with Vance even sampling the low-hanging fruit.

Acton denies that she has ever had a drug or alcohol problem. She and Ramaswamy, the hedge-fund billionaire and failed pharmaceutical startup founder, are locked in a fairly close midterm race for the governorship.

President Donald Trump simply can’t stop trying to vindictively investigate and prosecute people. His latest target is a repeat victim: Lisa Cook, who still has her job on the Federal Reserve Board—much to Trump’s chagrin. Part of what highlights just how weird and dystopian this is—and how much this is still just Trump going after Cook rather than a normal investigation—is that Trump…

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Cornell rape scandal proves women’s safety is never the priority…

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President Donald Trump announced Friday that the U.S. would lift sanctions on the sale of Russian diesel—a move that will help Russian President Vladimir Putin far more than it’ll help Americans.

The Treasury Department announced that the U.S. would waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market until April 2027. In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplace. Russia agreed to supply another 500,000 tons in November and then “1,000,000 tons thereafter,” Trump added.

Javier Blas, the energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg, observed that these commitments to the United States were too small to make a “meaningful impact” on the nationwide surge of diesel prices.

In reality, 300,000 tons is equivalent to only 2.2 million barrels, Blas wrote in a post on X. To give you an idea of just how little that really is, before the U.S. attacked Iran, an average of 3.6 million barrels of refined petroleum products traveled through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Now only 677,000 barrels of refined products are moved through the essential trade passageway every day.

Meanwhile, Russia will get the right to sell its oil globally. Congress last month passed a sweeping sanctions bill, which Trump signed, punishing countries that purchase Russian oil. Now it seems the United States is one of them.

If Trump thinks his latest move cozying up to Putin will potentially help in the upcoming midterm elections, he has another think coming.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin faced off against reporters Friday following another shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons, where at least one agent unloaded multiple rounds into a car, injuring 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in New York. New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that ICE agents opened fire on Belgal as he sat in his car with his 5-year…

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Turning Point USA’s AmeriFest returns this December, and the speaker lineup is once again a proper who’s who of the MAGAverse.

The event, which takes place in Phoenix, Arizona from December 17-20, will again be headlined by Vice President JD Vance. Former Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, former White House advisor and far-right activist Steve Bannon, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, anti-transgender activist Riley Gaines, former presidential candidate Ben Carson, right-wing provocateur Nick Shirley, former Representative Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump Jr., Erika Kirk, and a host of other prominent voices on the right will also be speaking.

Notably absent from the list of esteemed speakers is Tucker Carlson, as he was a large part of the reason last year’s AmeriFest—the first since TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination—was largely unsuccessful. Carlson got into a back and forth with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro in 2025 after Shapiro called him and Candace Owens “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”

Carlson responded by attacking Shapiro’s fealty to Israel, and the entire event became a stark representation of the serious rifts within the conservative movement. This year will follow what will likely be an unsuccessful midterm election performance by the Republican Party, which may in turn impact the nature of the event.

The United States issued sanctions on the International Criminal Court Friday, just hours after President Donald Trump lost the Nobel Peace Prize to one of the institution’s former judges. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions cutting the court off from any U.S.-based financial services, technology companies, and U.S. currency. The Trump administration set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies to wind down their business with the war crimes tribunal. 

“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video statement on social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

Rubio has previously argued the court has become “radical and extreme,” though Trump has outright admitted Rubio’s campaign against the ICC is meant to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

U.S. officials maintained that these sanctions had been in the works for months, and the timing so close to the Nobel Prize award ceremony was merely coincidental, according to the Associated Press. But these sanctions are exactly the kind of petty behavior we’ve come to expect from a president who’s spent years begging for the prestigious award.

Instead, the award went to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer with a decades-long career. Last year, Pillar led a United Nations commission that found the Israeli government had committed a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Nobel committee said Thursday that Pillay had been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

Pillay took an immediate shot at Trump after she learned she had won the award Friday. “Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” she said, causing the room to erupt into laughter. 

Trump attacked the ICC after it issued arrest warrants against Israeli government leaders, including Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Since then, the U.S. has sanctioned court officials and prosecutors, as well as other international leaders who document and speak out about Israel’s crimes, including United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese.

Big money has long dominated American politics, with wealthy donors, corporations, and special interests dumping tons of cash into presidential and congressional elections. This year is no exception. But what’s different is that the quid pro quo of campaign money for preferential government treatment is more brazen than ever before and has become part of the cornucopia of corruption running through the Trump administration. 

In this new episode of Stress Test campaign finance reporter Russ Choma joins hosts David Corn and Garrison Hayes to analyze the $1.7 billion that has been poured into the election so far—including hundreds of millions from crypto and sports betting, industries that were barely on the political map in 2020. “There’s no sign of deceleration,” Russ says in the episode. “There’s no sign of slowing down, it’s only acceleration.”

So much of what’s happening is hidden from public scrutiny, because super PACs can obscure donors, and issue ads and targeted turnout operations can go unreported. It’s like “dark matter in the universe that you can’t see,” David observes. The threat to democracy is real, because donors get to cash in by having the administration align with their deregulatory goals, or, in the case of Elon Musk, can gain control of an agency or decimate whole sections of government. “They’re getting more than total access,” Russ explains. “They’re getting inclusion.”

“There have always been a lot of people who believe that the government was corrupt,” Russ says. “But the problem is that now they’re right.” And this cynicism isn’t just a side effect of all this money. It’s a goal. After all, the most effective thing a campaign can buy, Russ notes, is a negative ad, designed “to make you not vote.”

But there could be some hope. Voters are telling pollsters they see more corruption these days, and when that collides with a sour economy, apathy can curdle into anger. Just ask Viktor Orbán, voted out in Hungary after 16 years in power due to a combo of a poor economy and rampant corruption. Might such synergy be happening in the United States?

That’s all in today’s episode of Stress Test. Find it on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/MotherJones.

And want more on how money is warping American politics? Russ Choma covers Trump’s crypto fortune, his financial conflicts, and the cash behind the midterms. Check out his latest.

This transcript was generated with automated tools and may contain errors.

David Corn: This is Stress Test from Mother Jones. I’m David Corn.

Garrison Hayes: And I’m Garrison Hayes. Welcome to the third episode of the show, David. Oh, no, no, to our audience. Welcome to you. And also welcome to you, David. How are you doing today?

DC: Well, welcome to you, Garrison. It’s great to be back with you. And I hear that when I was gone, you did a great show with Tim Murphy about the backlash to data centers and how that’s become a bipartisan issue during this campaign.

GH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a great conversation about how this is a rare bipartisan issue where you’re seeing backlash and pushback and real anger from both Democrats and Republicans and really everyone in between and beyond, especially in the state of Texas. Our colleague Tim Murphy has been out in Texas a few times, and he has another trip upcoming, where he’s been reporting from the ground on the way that these data centers and the backlash to them are really shaping the political atmosphere there. In fact, he told me about how the governor, Greg Abbott, has made this huge 180 kind of turn from being a champion of data centers to being against them.

DC: Wow, I wonder why. It couldn’t be principle, could it?

GH: You know, he actually invited, you know, Google. They had this big press conference where Google’s spending $40 billion on multiple campuses across the state. It will be their largest data center kind of AI footprint in the country, maybe even in the world. There are other huge projects out there, and none of those projects are actually coming to an end, even though the governor is talking about a pause or a moratorium on data centers going forward.

So there’s a lot to dig in there. If you missed that episode, I really encourage you to go back and watch it. It’s such an important issue during these midterms. You can catch it on our YouTube channel. That’s the Mother Jones YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss any of the episodes coming up.

Okay, listen, today’s gonna be a good show. We’re talking about money in politics, specifically campaign money—in other words, what you can and cannot buy in American politics. And we’re gonna talk about some of the big spenders, some of the big receivers of that money, who wishes they had more money, perhaps, who has more money than they need.

DC: Yeah, everybody.

GH: Everyone. Okay, so that’s an inclusive list. But we’re also gonna talk about Trump and how he and the vice president, JD Vance, are hitting the campaign trail. David, you’ve covered many, many, many, many—

DC: Don’t remind me.

GH: You’ve covered many elections, my friend. So talk to me about what you’ve seen and whether what you’re seeing from the Trump administration—so President Trump and Vice President JD Vance—is this stuff normal, the way they’re hitting the campaign trail?

DC: Well, in a way, yes, but also no. You can tell a lot about a campaign and how things are going politics by looking at a politician’s travel itinerary, right? Because right now we see JD Vance and Donald Trump hitting the campaign trail, but they’re going to places where they shouldn’t be—where they shouldn’t have to be going. Oklahoma, for instance. They’re going to states and districts where usually the Republicans would have a lock on that election by this point. So it shows that they see what everybody else is seeing: a possible gigantic blue tsunami heading right toward the White House.

There are races across the country that, quite frankly, are amazing political experts because they’re competitive: Senate race in Iowa, Senate race in Kansas, in Texas, and even the governor’s race in Texas might be within a few points. So Republicans are in, I think, the technical term, freaking out, and they’re worrying about races. And that means—you know, listen, the president, who’s not quite an asset for the Republican Party at this point in time, when he’s at 31 percent approval rating, according to the AP, still has limited amount of time and places he can go in the five weeks left in the election here, or less than that maybe. And so it makes a big—it’s a big deal where you decide to deploy him and JD Vance.

The same with money. We see Republicans taking their money out of certain states, like North Carolina, where they thought they were competitive in the Senate race there, and shoveling it into South Carolina, where they shouldn’t be competitive, and also to Texas. So that’s how you can tell what they’re thinking, by looking where the money and the president is going.

But I have to say this: When he’s at such a low approval rating, the Trump brand ain’t so strong, and you have to wonder to what degree his campaigning helps people. Now, it may help people in deep—candidates in deep-red states if you can gin up Republican turnout there. But at the same time, a lot of Republicans are running away from the president, and they don’t want their voters in their states to be thinking about Trump.

And listen, he’s out there, and I have some notes here to the side. You know, in one campaign stop recently, he said he knows more about inflation than anyone else, and he knows more about everything than anyone else. When people already are not thinking highly of you, talking about how well you know inflation when inflation is a concern to them is really not smart.

But I think this topped it for me, at least. At one rally, he said you need to be a student at the top of your class at MIT to turn on a lawnmower nowadays, you know? But I got rid of all that stuff. Now you can have a lawnmower. What the heck is he talking about? I have yet to see one focus group where people are complaining about lawnmowers. But don’t take it from me. Let’s hear directly from the president of the United States.

[Clip plays.]

GH: Inspiring. Inspiring stuff.

DC: Garrison, these are not what you call ringing endorsements, right? And it’s always about him. Pretend I’m on a ballot. Most Republicans running right now would rather he not be on the ballot, would rather he be put in exile in Mar-a-Lago.

GH: Yeah, it’s hard to kind of—it’s almost distills down so well the fear that I heard from so many Republicans in the 2024 cycle that Trump was really tanking the party, that he was more or less a dead end for the Republican Party. That, yes, he’s very popular; yes, he has this magic way with the American people to get them to vote for him. He has all this charisma, but really there is no viable succession plan. There is no real plan for after Trump.

And we have, as you see on the screen, Vice President JD Vance. But even with Vance, you know, so many voters have said online, and I’ve heard them myself, that he just doesn’t quite have the it factor. And I think it really does present a real problem for Republicans going forward. And we will see. I mean, talk about stress test. This midterm will actually be a real stress test for the Republican Party to see how they chart a path forward after Trump.

DC: Let’s talk about one of the big issues in any campaign, and it only keeps getting bigger, and that is big money. I talked a moment ago about how Republicans are shifting and, you know, where they’re putting their dollars, but we’re talking about tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, campaigns keep getting more and more expensive, and that just gives more power to the people who can provide those dollars. So fortunately, we have with us today Russ Choma, a reporter from—for Mother Jones, who’s one of the experts on campaign finances. He’s been covering this almost as long as I have. So let’s bring on Russ.

Russ Choma: Well, thanks for having me, guys. There’s obviously a lot to talk about this year. The money gets bigger every year, and we’re here again, and it’s even bigger.

GH: It’s even bigger. One thing that’s really stood out to me is just how much AI and crypto and Polymarket and these betting markets and all of that—how much of that money is actually going into this election. We saw in New York there was a big kind of AI race there. And some of these things are kind of constantly popping up in the conversation. It feels like these industries are funneling a ton of money into politics. And I’m curious if that sense is true and what you’re seeing as you’re reporting on this.

RC: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s more than a feeling. It’s what’s actually happening. And it’s interesting because for years and years there were always sort of the same set of special interest groups. And, you know, sometimes with new technology, some, you know, new interest groups would be added, but it’s amazing how instantly both prediction, sports betting, crypto, AI have all sort of—and they all sort of merge into one industry in a lot of ways—have sort of popped onto the scene.

I think the last good count that I saw, about a $1.7 billion has been put into this election. And about a quarter billion of that is just from crypto and sports betting. That’s just the money we know about. It’s a huge, huge, huge sum. But for them to go from two—2020 basically not being on the map to that much money in a midterm, it’s not even a presidential election, is really, really stunning. So yeah, it’s more than a feeling. It’s really happening.

DC: And what strikes me, Russ, is that in the past some big donors have been more—well, sometimes they have wider interests, like, say, the Koch brothers. They want deregulation, they don’t like environmental controls, they want low taxes. It’s basically the conservative libertarian agenda, like, straight through. And we’ve seen that with other major guys who run hedge funds and people like that. The way that George Soros on the Democratic side has a wide liberal, progressive agenda.

But with these guys, it’s highly, highly specific. This is about as quid pro quo–ish as you can get. And I just want to give props to Andreessen Horowitz, the big venture capital fund with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. They’ve given over $115 million together to both an AI super PAC and a crypto super PAC.

And these two guys are just bringing this technology, this Big Tech money in in a very direct, very brazen, blatant—I would call it institutional corruption that is undeniable. They tell you what they want. They want to run free with AI and crypto, and they are putting in a lot of money to do this. I mean, to me, that seems almost a little bit different than some of the big money we’ve seen in the past.

RC: Yeah, I think that, like, the Koch brothers wanted to change America broadly, and these crypto guys and AI guys, they’ve got very specific wants. But at the same time, I mean—and I think we’ve seen this through the Trump administration—like, they’re trying to change regulation in general. And they’re trying to just have a broad, open—you know, while she always was lobbying for the carried interest loophole, they want everything, these guys. But yeah, you’re right. It does seem very transactional. They are after very specific things. And the amount of money they’re putting in is—I mean, there’s no subtlety to it.

GH: You know, there’s this sense that whoever raises more money—it’s kind of like the money race. Like, whoever just raises the most money will win. We saw that challenged a little bit in 2024, if I’m remembering correctly, Russ, that Kamala raised—Kamala Harris raised close to $1 billion, while Donald Trump raised, I think, a bit less than that, if I’m remembering correctly. And so is it really that simple, that whoever raises the most money just kind of wins? Or how should we be thinking about that?

RC: Yeah, so, I mean, for decades that was absolutely correct. And both if you were an incumbent and if you raised more money, it was, like, something like 90 percent of the time or more, you won reelection. That has been scrambled, and that does have something to do with Citizens United. It has—I mean, Trump scrambled it in a really big way in 2016. He didn’t raise more money than Hillary, and he won. And so it was scrambled. Part of it is his, as you were referring to before, his personal charisma, as what it is—for what it is.

But, you know, there’s a lot of other things going on as well. And part of it is it’s hard to track the money. So Kamala’s campaign raised a lot of money, but there were also a lot of outside actors who were on Trump’s side who didn’t necessarily get counted in with the Trump campaign money. And that’s sort of the unknown.

And that’s sort of—again, and I think, you know, with Elon Musk, like, the money he put in last time, he put it into specific places, and he put it into Pennsylvania get-out-the-vote. It was a big question mark: Would that work? Seems to have worked in some degree. And so that’s part of the problem with this one is that, you know, I just said $1.7 billion, but there’s also money that we don’t know about that could be coming in.

DC: Yeah, I want to ask you about that. I want to get to some of the most expensive races, but just to put a fine point on this, there’s something called dark money. We’re talking the money—the figures that we just talked about is money that goes to super PACs that have to declare where they’re getting money from and where they’re spending, and to campaigns, and to the Republican and Democratic outfits, the national campaigns, the Senate campaigns run by the Democrats. But there’s something else going on there. It’s like dark matter in the universe that you can’t see, right? There’s a whole possible flow of money that we may never know about.

RC: Yeah. And so one thing is the super PACs have to say that they got money, but they don’t—they can be fairly vague about who they got money from. They can get money from an LLC, and you don’t know who put that money in the LLC. So some of that money, even though it’s technically not dark money, it’s disclosed, we don’t know where it came from.

But then there’s this other class of money, and, you know, there are all these sort of arcane rules that were written for a different era, which have been applied to this one, which have allowed sort of, like, loopholes. And it’s allowed groups who maybe don’t get out and actually give money straight to the campaign but start spending money in other ways.

You know those ads, they’re called issue ads, where it’s like, call Congress and tell them that you don’t want them to, you know, and then it has some absolutely outlandish thing. And it’s not really trying to get anyone to call Congress, but it’s just trying to send, like, a scary message. And there’s—those, for instance, don’t get counted in that $1.7 billion. The things like the get-out-the-vote operation, which is just broadly get out the vote, but if Elon Musk is only targeting it at certain types of people, that doesn’t get reported. There’s all this money, and we don’t know what we don’t know.

And it’s been true every election since Citizens United. But I think the thing is—to what we were referring to before about this big influx of money from crypto and AI—is the money’s coming in on a different scale. So if it’s been there the whole time, we have to assume it’s coming in on a different scale than it’s ever come in on before.

I guess the one sort of counter to that, and this is something as a campaign finance reporter has always sort of, like, tweaked me, is that a lot of the apparent public feelings or shame about putting money into politics has gone away. And this is true on both sides. So it is possible that people are just—I mean, this thing where we have billionaires just opening their checkbooks and writing hundreds of millions of dollars. There was a time, even after Citizens United, where that wouldn’t happen because it was so unseemly. And now it just sort of seems to be the way we do politics. So, I mean, I guess that would be the one possible counter, is that everyone is just so brazen now.

But I do think that it’s very likely that there is quite a bit of money, if only because some of the ways they’re spending money are unsavory. You know, they’re sort of on dirty tricks, they’re on negative—which they might not be ashamed of spending the money, but they don’t want to give away the trick.

DC: So we may never know, really, all the deep money influences that are affecting this election or future elections. Let’s talk about some of the most expensive races that are happening now. We have Texas, we Ohio. Where have you seen the biggest influxes of money?

RC: I mean, the Ohio race is huge, and Texas race is huge. And Texas is always huge. But again, I think that this year in particular—and I think Ohio especially is seen as, like, such—I don’t wanna say bellwether ’cause that’s the cliché about it, but I mean, there’s a lot riding on this, and there’s a lot of big donors who feel very strongly about it, and they’re just spending. And—

DC: And we should say that the marquee race there, as you see on the picture here, on the video here, is James Talarico, the Democrat, running against Ken Paxton, the Republican, for a Senate seat, which once upon a time it would be almost inconceivable to think that a Democrat would be competitive for this seat.

RC: Yeah, no, and I mean, that’s, like you were mentioning before, I mean, we’re seeing money shifting. We’re seeing Republicans pulling out of some states, some of the big spenders, and we’re seeing Democrats going in. But I think there’s also—and there are competing factions as well. I mean, there are donors who don’t care what the GOP thinks, and they’re gonna send money in, and they’re gonna send money in for a certain type of candidate.

And I think that that was what we saw in the Texas primary, in the Republican primary, is we saw sort of different factions within the GOP fighting over that. The president happened to be one of the factions, and his faction won, but the money is not always universal. And—but again, like, that’s where it’s become this thing where very openly we’re using money to sort of settle these things, where I feel like before we—

DC: We should also say that there’s a competitive governor’s race in Texas too, where the Democrat’s been outspent, I think last I saw, 10-to-1, and yet Gina Hinojosa, running against the incumbent, Greg Abbott, is only a few points behind. So to your point earlier, Garrison, this is a place where even though she’s being tremendously outspent, she still has a—you know, she’s still in the fight, although that money differential might be too much for her to overcome.

GH: Yeah, it’ll certainly be challenging, as I understand it. To the point that both you and Russ are making, it’s been, what, 32, 33, 30-something years since a Democrat has won statewide there. And I guess, you know, to the point of our show, which is this idea of stress test, I’m curious, Russ, what we should be stressed about. Yes, you, you have to tell us what we should be stressed about. But, you know, as we think about money in politics, where should, you know, we be placing our attention, and what do you think should really be stressing the American people out?

RC: Yeah, I mean, I find the whole thing extremely stressful, but I think—

GH: Well, there it is.

DC: Well, you have to cover it, Russ.

RC: Yeah, yeah. I think that the—some of the specific things, actually—so here’s the thing that I find stressful, was that, you know, for years after Citizens United, and people would ask me and other campaign finance reporters, well, when are we gonna have some reform? When are we gonna have some change? And I was always very sort of cynical or skeptical about it, and I said, well, the next time we have a big scandal, the next time we have a Watergate, because most of the modern campaign finance rules are derived from Watergate.

Watergate was a campaign finance scandal, and it was one that was so bad that even people in the president’s party agreed we have to do something. And so a whole raft of changes came in, not just campaign finance, but all the big campaign finance rules came from that era. And so I always told people, well, you know, I think we’re going to need a big event, you know, something that really shocks people to get to the point where we want to have some reform and have some new serious rules and some serious thinking. And I think one thing that stresses me out is I don’t think we’re approaching that point.

I think that there are a lot of people who are outraged about this. I think that the numbers are shocking. You know, we’re seeing money come in in unprecedented ways. And I don’t have a feeling that anyone is getting that much closer to saying, all right, after this election, we’ve gotta do something about this. Like, there’s no sign of deceleration, there’s no sign of slowing down, it’s only acceleration. And it’s sort of like everything AI says, you know, it’s sort of accelerant has been put on it, and it’s taken off on a crazy level.

DC: So let’s talk about—you know, we’re talking about the quid here. Let’s talk about the quo. What examples do we see here of money coming into politics, particularly campaigns, and what people are actually getting for that? You know, Elon Musk, he has, you know, multiple, you know, billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with many government agencies, correct? You know, with NASA, obviously, but defense, and he has ideas for building a tunnel across from Alaska to Russia, all this stuff.

So the money he puts in, $100 million is nothing. Andreessen Horowitz has $100 billion in assets that they manage. If they put in $100 million into this campaign, and they’re doing more already, that’s one-tenth of 1 percent, if I did the math right. So what other examples do we see, Russ, of why this is a good investment, why people get good ROI?

RC: Well, I think it’s more than just the contracts. I mean, Elon Musk got an office, you know, and he got basically to control an agency that took apart other agencies. And I think that you’re seeing a lot of these big donors—and this is why I talk about, like, changing the whole landscape, the regulatory landscape—is they’re getting spots on seats of important commissions and rulemaking things. So it’s, you know, it’s not just I’m giving you some money and I’ll get this gift back. They’re getting more than total access. They’re getting inclusion, which is wild.

And again, I think that it seems a little weird to me as a reporter that, you know, both Elon Musk and Andreessen and a few other people, they’re surpassing what, say, George Soros has given. And George Soros has always been—for the right has been a big bogeyman, and the Kochs have been a bogeyman for the left. But I mean, those guys are being left behind by the amount of money that’s being put in. And we’re not quite seeing, like, the outrage over it, but yet they’re also getting so much more than I think that the Kochs or Soros ever imagined they would get.

DC: You just made me think of something, so I’m gonna go off the script we have for a second here. And that is, we’ve seen the Trump years just brazen corruption from Trump himself, right? And from his family. We’ve talked about that. We’ll be talking about that more as Stress Test goes on into the season. And it’s all corrupt, it’s brazen, it’s blatant. Republicans don’t say a word about it. There’s no Justice Department investigation. We know why.

And so compared to Trump making 7 billion, Andreessen Horowitz putting in a mere 100 million, it seems like chump change. I mean, he has sort of enhanced the whole culture of corruption, and maybe that’s why, Russ, we don’t see that type of reaction that you just said was absent.

RC: Yeah, no, and I think that a big thing—and this is not specifically about these midterms, although you’re seeing it play out in the midterms—is that Trump has changed the—what’s acceptable to do. And I think that also the constant headlines about his own corruption and all that, it changes the bar. But that’s a—you know, we are seeing sort of in polls people’s belief that the government is corrupt at an all-time high. And there have always been a lot of people who believe that the government was corrupt, but the problem is that now they’re right.

There’s a lot of corrupt things going on that haven’t—actually, they were the kind of things that people imagined were going on before but weren’t. And now we’re seeing them go on. And, you know, but that in itself is something that can affect the election, because it’s the kind of thing that depresses voters, and it depresses voter turnout when you don’t believe that there’s any point in voting because things aren’t gonna work out for you.

And I’ll say that a big part of campaign finance that I don’t think it’s talked about enough is that the most effective tools that a campaign can spend money on are negative ads. And the negative ads aren’t supposed to make you vote for someone, they’re supposed to make you not vote. And that’s the thing that has been proven. Positive ads don’t have very successful, if any, benefit to a campaign. A negative ad—other than name identification, I suppose. But a negative ad cannot—won’t make anyone switch to your side, but will make people stay home. And that’s, again, the more money there is, the less they’re trying to get people to participate.

GH: That’s the thing that stresses me out, Russ. Russ Choma, thank you so much for being here, joining us today. And listen, if you’re watching this, I hope you learned something. To our viewers and to our listeners, you can follow along for more of Russ’s reporting on MotherJones.com. He’s phenomenal. Thanks, Russ.

RC: Thanks, guys.

GH: All right, David. How are you feeling after listening to our colleague? More stressed or less stressed?

DC: Well, you know, I’ve been covering campaign finance for a long time myself, and it’s just always been frustrating that there’s not much more public revulsion against, you know, basically paying—you know, paying the ump, paying the referee. I mean, if there was one MLB baseball game and you found out that the pitcher was paying the ump, it would be in the news, and it would be a gigantic national scandal. But for decades, we’ve had big-money interests, you know, a lot on the right and some on the left, paying legislators who are supposed to do work for us, serve the public interest. And so it’s been a pretty corrupt, rotten system, and as Russ pointed out, it’s gotten worse.

But I’ll say this, and I’ll take issue with my colleague Russ on this one point. People do see—people are now telling pollsters that they see more corruption, and they don’t like that. And he says that depresses voting, and I think it has in the past. At the same time, though, I think it is adding a bit to voter anger. When you have corruption on one side and a bad economic status on the other side, people start making the connection.

And we just have to look to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán was voted out of office not too long ago after 16 years there and ruling as an authoritarian. And one of the major driving forces was the rampant corruption going on there. His son was driving around a car worth $100,000 or something, and the economy was not doing well, and people kind of melded those issues together.

So I think there is a sense now that Trump, you know, the crypto, the Russian guy, you know, financing Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding, and all this other stuff going on is beginning to register a bit. So I’m still stressed out about campaign financing, but I also think that maybe there’s a ray of light here, that other people out there will start paying a little more attention to the corrupt side of it.

GH: I think you’re spot-on. You know, we’ve been living in the kind of anti-incumbent kind of era in America for at least the last 10 years, maybe a little bit longer, depending upon when you start the count. But people are not enjoying the way things are, the status quo. And I think for the last decade, it’s been very much a, well, it’s the Republicans, and then when the Republicans fail, it’s the Democrats, and then when the Democrats fail, we’ll go back and choose Republicans again.

And I think sooner or later the American people will start to put the pieces together. I’d argue that they are already starting to put the pieces together, that there are these big-money spenders behind the scenes who are often influencing in ways that go beyond the ballot. And I think people will become increasingly sick of that kind of America. And so, you know, there’s always—there are always calls to end Citizens United and all of that. And maybe one day that will happen. But I do think you’re right, David, that we’re seeing a real frustration, a real anger, and people are starting to put those pieces together.

DC: That’s all we have for you on this episode. If you missed the first two episodes of Stress Test, you can go see them at our YouTube channel—that’s youtube.com/MotherJones—or wherever you get your podcasts.

GH: Remember that our great journalism, like the incredible work that Russ leads and does his reporting, and this show is made possible by your support. Yes, you. Your views and your subscriptions keep us going. So don’t forget to like this video or this podcast wherever you get it. Share it with a friend. Subscribe on our YouTube channel. That’s youtube.com/MotherJones. And if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment down below. We’re reading them, even the bad ones—even the bad ones. Or at least our producers are. We will be right back here in your feed again in just a few days with another edition of Stress Test. Thanks for watching.

On Thursday, the woman Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been dating for nearly two years was indicted by a grand jury on three criminal counts:
grand theft, telecommunications fraud, and misuse of a credit card.

The charges against Jaclyn Alatrash, first reported by Mother Jones, are in connection to allegations from her ex-husband that Alatrash used his personal credit card to purchase more than $9,000 worth of items on Instacart after they legally separated. The ex-husband, Matthew Kampert, told Mother Jones that Alatrash was never an authorized user on his credit card, even when they were married.

The Rooster, a progressive blog in Ohio, first reported on these allegedly fraudulent Instacart charges in May. Instacart records obtained by Mother Jones show that many of the deliveries went to Miller’s Northeast Ohio residence. These charges included $50.99 from Spirit Halloween, $107.31 from Ulta Beauty, $152.08 from the Vitamin Shoppe, and $207.81 from Costco, among many others.

A police report from the incident charges that Miller’s girlfriend had used Kampert’s credit card from September 2025 to January 2026. Kampert told Shaker Heights police that the dissolution of their marriage was finalized in February 2025—seven months before Alatrash allegedly started using his credit card.

Miller’s bid for a third term has already been rocked by allegations from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, who accused him of throwing hot water at her, shoving her, and pointing a gun at her. After these accusations were reported by Mother Jones and other outlets, Moreno’s father and fellow Ohio Republican, US Sen Bernie Moreno, said Miller “should not serve in the House of Representatives” and needed “serious psychological help.” Miller has repeatedly denied ever being violent towards women.

During a sworn deposition related to Miller’s ongoing child custody dispute with Moreno, he testified that he has been dating Alatrash since December 2024. In an interview that was included as a court exhibit in their custody case, Miller previously called Alatrash a “very nice lady.” Miller and his lawyer Larry Zukerman—who has also represented Alatrash in a separate matter—did not immediately responded to questions about the indictment from Mother Jones.

Alatrash, a Cleveland-area anesthesia assistant and body builder, is scheduled to be arraigned in Cuyahoga County, Ohio on October 23.

This is a developing story.

Another day, another damaging leak for Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton. In the latest installment of things Paxton told GOP donors at a closed-door fundraiser, Paxton said Sen. John Cornyn—the longtime incumbent whom Paxton defeated in a primary runoff in May—wants Paxton to lose and thus is not helping his campaign. In the audio, leaked to CNN by a donor who doesn’t support…

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The White House has chosen its new press secretary: MAGA communications adviser Katie Zacharia.

The 42-year-old was previously the senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social. The news of Zacharia’s ascension to the White House inner ring was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by CBS News.

Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt, who exited the role in August to join Fox News as an on-air contributor.

This is a developing story.

On Friday, President Donald Trump announced the creation of a new committee to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, even after those claims were shown to be incorrect, and after the US Supreme Court in June rejected his previous attempts to fire her.

In a written memo, Trump announced that this new committee will hold a hearing at the White House two days after the midterm elections in November and demanded that Cook show up to testify. Trump’s ongoing effort to oust Cook represents the first time the president has tried to fire a member of the Fed’s board in more than a century, since the central bank was established as an independent entity that sets monetary policy free of political influence.

“To assist me in carrying out that responsibility, the Committee shall investigate the allegations against Governor Cook and report to me whether there is ’cause’ for Governor Cook’s removal.”

“As President, it is my job to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law,” Trump wrote in the memo. “To assist me in carrying out that responsibility, the Committee shall investigate the allegations against Governor Cook and report to me whether there is ’cause’ for Governor Cook’s removal.”

This is the latest development in a saga that began more than a year ago, when Trump loyalist Bill Pulte—the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)—leveled thin accusations of mortgage fraud against Cook and other prominent Democrats who have clashed with Trump.

Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has fumed that the Fed won’t lower interest rates, a move that would ease the costs of borrowing money for homes and businesses—and make some voters happy ahead of the midterms.

Then, in August 2025, Pulte—a vigorous defender of the president that some have called a “mini-Trump”—claimed in a social media post that Cook had designated two homes as her primary residence simultaneously in order to get a better mortgage rate. Pulte posted screenshots of Cook’s mortgage applications on social media when making these claims, raising questions of whether he was using his position atop the FHFA—which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—to access private housing loan information on Trump’s political foes.

Pulte referred Cook for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department and Trump piled on, saying the allegation was enough to fire her. But no criminal case ever materialized. Additional loan documents showed that the alleged mortgage fraud was instead probably a clerical error. What’s more, Pulte’s efforts to weaponize mortgage information against Trump’s political foes led to formal scrutiny: The Government Accountability office said it is investigating whether Pulte misused his position to access mortgage data, and the FHFA’s inspector general is also reportedly looking into his conduct.

Reporters also found that Trump himself and others in his cabinet appear to have made similar errors to Cook in their own mortgage applications. Cook sued over the attempt to fire her, and two separate courts blocked her removal. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which also said the way he’d tried to fire her was not allowed.

But that Supreme Court ruling did not bar Trump from trying to fire Cook again. Trump has every reason to attempt a redo: American dissatisfaction with the US economy and historic inflation is at an all-time high ahead of November’s elections, and Trump’s appointee to run the Fed, Kevin Warsh, recently raised rates instead of lowering them. Trump’s announcement on Friday appears to be his latest effort to exert some control over the central bank by ousting Cook, which would enable him to appoint a loyalist in her place.

Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed held a press conference ahead of his debate with GOP opponent Mike Rogers Thursday. When one reporter asked why criticisms of his relationship with left-wing influencer Hasan Piker weren’t comparable to scrutiny of his opponent’s relationship with President Donald Trump, El-Sayed pulled no punches. “That’s a serious question?

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A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Trump restricts media as he wines and dines an authoritarian…

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Donald Trump promised to stop using taxpayer money to run campaign-style ads celebrating himself and his administration in the run-up to the midterm elections. But the ads tagged “Paid for by the U.S. Government” have continued blanketing national airwaves, despite shifting explanations and promises of changes from the White House.

So, this week, the Democratic National Committee filed suit against the Trump administration. The suit asks a judge to stop Trump’s ads, calling them propaganda that marshals government resources in support of the President’s
party—as it seeks to keep control of Congress.

“This use of Congressional appropriations for partisan purposes violates the clear command of federal law,” the DNC lawsuit claims. “Fundamentally, the ads undermine free and fair elections.”

Despite Trump’s claims they are simply public service ads, the ads offer red meat to the base Trump’s trying to mobilize: promises that he will protect us from communism. Shots of the border wall. Trump, looking steely-eyed into the camera, asking viewers to help him “liberate America from these villains once and for all” and “expel the warmongers from our government.” It’s not just ironic that Trump would make that claim about warmongers; it’s also a rehash of a campaign ad he ran while running for president in 2024.

When the ads began running—with airings focused on weekend sports games—they immediately provoked a reaction from both sides of the aisle, with the obvious campaign message making even some Republicans uncomfortable.

The lawsuit joins one filed by watchdog group Common Cause last week, which asks a judge to intervene because the law pretty clearly says federal tax dollars can’t be used to pay for propaganda. That’s the actual language of the law—this year’s appropriation’s bill, pushed through by Trump’s own party and signed by him, clearly states: “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used directly or indirectly, including by private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”

The ads were funded by a $20 million appropriation to the Department of Homeland Security. While it’s notoriously difficult to determine exactly how much has been spent on ad-buys, some recent estimates top $12 million.

Common Cause’s lawsuit, filed jointly with a Democratic House candidate from Alabama, argues that it doesn’t matter what Trump says about the ads being public service: It’s clear what’s he’s up to.

“What’s more, although the ads don’t specifically name Democratic candidates, they disparage issues and positions that Trump and Republican candidates have tried time and again to tie to Democratic candidates,” the suit claims. “So despite the White House’s insistence to the contrary, common sense demands what
any viewer understands: These ads are not public-service announcements—they are personal publicity and political propaganda through and through.”

Trump himself has wavered on the ads—first defiantly saying they were public service, amid reports he had demanded them himself, and later saying that his super-PAC, MAGA Inc., would pay for the ads. But as a new ad about the capture of Nicolas Maduro began running, Trump said that his super-PAC would fund future ads, but that would not count the ads that have already run.

“The U.S. government is not supposed to be in the business of putting out ads that have political propaganda,” says Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

At the end of the day, Brown says, the oversight responsibility for ensuring tax dollars aren’t used for propaganda comes down to Congress, which controls the appropriations and writes the appropriations law that Trump’s ads seem to violate. Federal agencies have inspector generals offices to police their spending, but this is coming from Trump directly—”So we don’t have as many oversight mechanisms, except for Congress,” Brown says. “Congress needs to exercise it’s power of the purse and find out and demand answers.”

The New York Times reported over the weekend that the ads came at the behest of Trump personally, who okayed the federal spending on the ads, while simultaneously considering whether his super PAC, MAGA Inc., which appears to be sitting on as much as $415 million, should pay. According to the Times, Trump has spoken possessively of the super PAC money, saying, “This is my money that I control.”

And Trump has, over the years, repeatedly seemed to conflate his political cash with his own pocketbook, and the ads seem to be repeating another pattern Trump has engaged in before—mixing and matching money to solve his problems.

Famously, Trump used his charity’s money to settle lawsuits, and used his foundation as a political tool throughout the 2016 election—activities that led to his having to personally pay $2 million in damages to settle a lawsuit over the misuse of funds.

Even Republican lawmakers are disgusted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream a federal execution.

Hegseth confirmed Thursday that the Pentagon plans to livestream the military firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Obviously Democrats were outraged by the plan, but even a few Republicans weren’t on board with turning state-sponsored murder into a spectacle.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said that Hegseth’s decision was “beyond disgusting.”

“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” he wrote in a post on X. In his new book, Tillis wrote that confirming Hegseth was the “biggest regret” of his career.

Georgia Representative Austin Scott also opposed the decision. “I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” he wrote on X, referring to the violent Islamist ideology.

In a response to Hegseth on X, former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger put it more bluntly: “There will be a day, and soon, when nobody will acknowledge even knowing you.”

Meanwhile, Laura Loomer, the self-proclaimed Islamophobe who advises the president, voiced her support for the plan straight out of an extremist’s playbook.

“[Hegeseth] is amazing. Truly amazing. I can’t wait to watch Nidal Hasan’s live-streamed execution for his act of Islamic terrorism. We are very lucky to have [Hegseth] ! I voted for more dead jihadists!” she wrote on X. In reality, she voted to make our country more like the violent regimes she claims to hate.

Internationally, public executions are rare, but still occur in Afghanistan and Iran, according to The Guardian. In 2025, the Taliban carried out six public executions, and the Islamic Republic carried out 11.