The New Republic

Donald Trump is dragging his feet in dealing with the recent pneumonic plague case in Russia.

Speaking with reporters on the White House South Lawn Tuesday evening, the president appeared completely disaffected and uninterested in the matter, offering short replies about his approach to the worrisome outbreak.

However, in doing so, Trump also revealed that he hasn’t yet spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Have you spoken to President Putin about the plague in Russia?” one reporter asked.

“I have a call scheduled, yup,” Trump said.

“When is that call scheduled for?” the reporter followed up.

“Very soon,” Trump added.

When asked by another reporter if American intelligence agencies had more intel on the suspicious death, Trump relented that he was in “deep discussions” with U.S. officials and could speak about it “probably tomorrow.”

But Trump did not answer any other questions on the matter, including an attempt to specify if the timeframe for speaking with Putin was contained to sometime this week.

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, died of severe pneumonia on the night between October 1 and October 2. Russian health officials have not yet confirmed that her death was the result of pneumonic plague, or explained how she got ill, but her death sparked enough regional concern to place 200 people who had been in contact with Shipilova into quarantine.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, announced Wednesday that 90 percent of the people placed into quarantine had been released after thousands of lab tests came back negative for dangerous pathogens, according to Reuters.

The agency rejected assertions that the lab worker fell ill from exposure at her workplace, noting in a statement that Shipilova was vaccinated and therefore “immune to the dangerous infections with which she worked.”

President Trump wants to bring his own personal Camp David to Palm Beach.

The Palm Beach Post first reported last month on the president’s plans to turn his Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach into a private, Camp David–style club for leaders and foreign dignitaries. In a September 3 letter to Palm Beach County commissioners, the president proposed that he would “provide access to all” club facilities at “no cost to the federal government.” While the Trump family owns the property, it lays on land leased by Palm Beach County, hence the gracious proposal letter.

The plans have appeared to progress significantly, with the county seriously considering the proposal, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The president has long found Camp David to be undesirable for his tastes, saying in 2017 that he could only enjoy the historic retreat center “for about 30 minutes.”

“Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysee Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County,” attorney Harvey Oyer, who is representing the property, wrote in his letter to the county commissioners. “It would further cement Palm Beach County as one of the most recognizable brands and destinations in the world.”

“The property is minutes away from the Donald J. Trump International Airport, does not have buildings looming, does not have houses along the course, has great security features, is close to law enforcement, and happens to be a highly-rated golf course,” an anonymous White House official told the Post. “These are features that are necessary for any presidential retreat.”

This is the most corrupt president in modern history trying to use his own private property to replace a historic presidential retreat center—which is in perfectly fine condition and was more than adequate for every other president and diplomat before him. But while we may see this new property, which Trump intends to keep under his own company, as another grift, Trump is framing it as a “gift” and a “lasting contribution” to all future presidents, even offering to comp membership fees for them. Thanks. Now he’ll never need to leave Palm Beach ever again.

Maine Senator Susan Collins, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the midterms, faced a humiliating reality check Tuesday night during her debate against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.

In the first of four televised debates, Collins struggled to defend her efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s disastrous policies.

“Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp, and road salt removed from the tariff list,” Collins said.

“I didn’t mock the fact that she got road salt back, I mocked the fact that, what about everything else? We can’t eat road salt,” Jackson said. “And the thing about it is, is that everything that she’s doing with Iran war, stuff like that, there’s going to be so many less people that’ll be able to afford to drive that I’m not even sure the road salt is going to be worth anything either.”

It was a startling moment dealt by a comparatively novice challenger against a five-term senator, highlighting just how Collins has failed to truly stand up to Trump.

Collins has voted five separate times to extend Trump’s military campaign in the Middle East. A study found that as of July, the average Maine household has had to pay $3,900 more for goods and services during Trump’s second term.

President Trump isn’t going to like how the European Parliament is allowing him to be depicted.

An eight-foot tall statue covered in 23-karat gold leaf has been erected at the building in Strasbourg, France, showing a naked, overweight Trump being carried on the back of a much smaller man, while the president holds a golf club, a tiny world-shaped ball, and the scales of justice. The base is inscribed with the words “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back,” attributed to “The King of Injustice.”

The statue’s creator, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, calls his creation “The Orange Plague,” and said it’s a satirical outcry against volatile U.S. environmental and foreign policy.

“Trump represents one of the greatest threats to the rule-based world order, democratic values, and our common effort to solving the climate crisis,” Galschiøt said in a statement. “We must address this issue and stand together against such destructive influence.”

“If someone is so thin-skinned that they cannot tolerate this sculpture being exhibited in the European Parliament, then they have no place on the world stage,” said Danish member of the European Parliament Per Clausen at the statue’s unveiling.

Trump has been mocked by statues before. Before the 2024 presidential election, a 43-foot tall naked statue of the president toured the U.S., appearing in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The president’s supporters at the time called the statue “political violence.” Golden statues of Trump also appeared at the time in Portland and Philadelphia behind statues of naked women with the inscriptions, “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.”

More recently, statues and art installations addressing Trump’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have popped up in Washington, D.C. Trump himself usually avoids commenting directly on these satirical art pieces, instead condemning them through spokespeople. He has yet to comment on this statue in France.

Yet another leaked recording of Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton has landed. 

“It’s the war, it’s gas prices.... It’s over $6 a gallon for diesel,” Paxton said at a donor meeting when asked what issues were “dragging” on him and his campaign, according to audio obtained by Axios. “People are feeling that pinch. So I’d say that’s probably the biggest problem … food prices, everything else.... That’s by far our biggest problem, and I think that’s why we’re having a hard time with numbers.” 

“How do you respond to it?” a reporter asked. Paxton went on to give his spiel on his tax cut plan called “Protecting the Texas Promise Plan.” He said he wants people to use it on everything from “gym memberships” to “GLP-1s.” 

He went on to note that he was essentially powerless to stop President Trump’s war on Iran—the very thing causing the problems he previously listed. “I have no control over the aspects [of the war]. So many of the factors of this federal race are uncontrollable. I don’t make the decisions, I don’t know what’s behind some of the decisions.” 

This is at least the third time Paxton has unknowingly been recorded sending either subliminal or direct messages to Trump in recent days. Just a week ago at a fundraiser, he told someone that Trump’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas was having a direct negative impact on his numbers. And two days ago, an audio was released of Paxton essentially saying his own Senate race was being operated by outside forces in Washington. 

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.,” he said last month. “I don’t control the message or what we’re doing.... I don’t have ability to change anything,” Paxton continued. “So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”

This amount of leaks from one of the GOP’s most important Senate campaigns this cycle feels shocking, especially when each leak is Paxton indirectly blaming Trump for low poll numbers and affordability issues that he has to cover for. It seems obvious that he’s upset with the Trump administration—as he keeps confirming to donors over and over again.  

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 7 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump erupted in a crazed, manic tirade this week about the South Carolina Senate race. He raged wildly at the Democratic candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, smearing her with an anti-trans slur and unleashing all kinds of dim-witted lies about her to boot. Notably, this comes as a major GOP super PAC just poured $5 million into South Carolina to shore up GOP Senator Darline Graham. One Republican admitted that the GOP needs an “insurance policy” in the state, and two GOP-aligned pollsters have found the race to be very close.

We think the odds remain very long here, but now that Trump has signaled alarm about this race, we’re getting a download on it from Jalisa Washington-Price, a veteran South Carolina-based Democratic operative who heads the Democratic-aligned PAC Fresh Start. Jalisa, thanks for coming on.

Jalisa Washington-Price: Thank you for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So let’s start with the money. Axios reports that the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the leading Republican super PAC, is putting $5 million into this race as an “insurance policy.” One source told Axios: “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

Jalisa, two things. One, what does it say that they have to put this money in here, that they can’t take South Carolina for granted? And number two, are you seeing signs of their spending yet?

Washington-Price: Right. We haven’t seen signs yet, but as you know, we know that it’s coming, right? And South Carolina isn’t supposed to be on anybody’s battleground map this election cycle. But looking at the numbers, right, even right-leaning pollsters and polls show Annie Andrews in striking distance with Darline Graham, and a noticeable amount of undecideds still out there, right?

And that’s just not noise. Those are real numbers, that’s real enthusiasm that we’re seeing on the ground and hearing even from some of these pollsters that have been paying close attention to this race.

And the fact that Republicans are having to spend here, instead of being more competitive in these places that we were expecting, like in Michigan, you know, in some of these other states—it says a lot. And it’s also a warning sign for Republicans too, right? Like, what’s to come in November.

Sargent: Well, absolutely. So let’s talk about Trump losing it here. He viciously attacks Dr. Andrews, the Democratic challenger. She’s taking on Senator Darline Graham, who’s the sister of the late Lindsey Graham. Trump called her a vicious anti-trans slur twice and posted this:

“She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, high taxes, a weak military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away. She is against our Great Second Amendment!”

Trump also called her a low-quality person, while insisting Darline Graham is a high-quality one who can be trusted to have the right values. Jalisa, you just want to start by responding to all that?

Washington-Price: It’s unfortunate we have to respond to this and respond to the president’s comments. But as the saying goes, when you’re winning, you talk about your candidate, and when you’re losing, you talk about your opponent.

Trump’s post was almost all about Annie Andrews, and it tells you everything you need to know. When a conversation is about grocery prices and gas and health care, he knows he and the Republicans are going to lose that conversation and lose that discussion.

Sargent: Let’s talk about South Carolina for a sec. Trump won there by a whopping 18 points in 2024. Lindsey Graham won his last election there in 2020 by over 10 points. This is a red state. Can you just give us the rough demographic breakdown?

Washington-Price: So we have about three and a half million registered voters in South Carolina. Two out of three of those voters are white, and about one in four are Black, right? There’s no party registration in the state of South Carolina, so as of now, anybody can vote across lines in the primary. So it makes it hard for us to kind of track registered Republicans or Democrats in the state.

But what we’ve seen, particularly with the base of Democrats in South Carolina, Black voters—some of your voters in places like Columbia, which is a very Democratic county, somewhat of Charleston and in Greenville, some of your larger counties—you’re seeing the base very excited, not only for Annie Andrews but for Democrats across the state, right?

So you’re seeing that enthusiasm. You’re also seeing kind of the disenchantment with Republicans, and we like to call them non-MAGA Republicans, who are just tired of the fight. And they’re tired of, again, these culture wars that Republicans have been putting on our state, and they are ready for change.

And white voters, they make about six in ten for Darline Graham. And then we see about three in ten for Annie Andrews, according to the latest polls. And for Black voters, I think we have up to eight and nine out of ten for Andrews, which are real numbers, right? Like, those are real numbers. They’re showing real enthusiasm.

And we’re hoping to get those numbers up and really go after some of these undecideds. I think the last poll had about eight, almost 9 percent undecided, still out there and up for grabs.

And I know Annie Andrews, her team, as well as the IE—we are doing everything we can to talk to those voters and put the real issues in front of them, and really showing Annie Andrews’s credentials. She’s a pediatrician, she’s a mom of three. She’s fought her whole life for affordable health care, and she has a real plan to get South Carolina and this country back on track.

Sargent: So brass tacks here. If you get really, really good turnout among Democrats, and Annie Andrews gets 90 percent of Democrats, something like that, maybe even higher, does well with independents—what percentage of Republican voters does she have to get to win?

Washington-Price: Percentage of Republican voters that we believe she would have to get to—I think it’s a short answer, roughly about one in five Republicans, if we can give or take away from the Republicans, right? I think we would do well. So roughly we would need between 15 to 20 percent of Republicans to get over 50 percent.

Sargent: That’s hard!

Washington-Price: It is. It’s very hard, right? And we always knew it was going to be an uphill battle, right? But again, I think even going back to the primary—you know, South Carolina was a part of the conversation around redistricting, right? And we were one of the southern states to reject redistricting in the state.

And one of the reasons I think that was, too, is because I think Republicans in South Carolina saw the enthusiasm and kind of the fire that that lit around Democrats. We had some of the highest number of early voters among Democrats, and particularly Black voters in the South, show up in our primary.

And those voters aren’t just going away, right? They’re continuing to be fired up. We’ve been continuing to fire them up and communicate to them, on top of trying to pull over some of the Republicans. And I think that has to be our goal and our strategy in order to win.

It’s not going to be easy. South Carolina has not voted for a Democrat in the Senate since Jim DeMint. And I can’t tell you how old I was when that was. So it’s also—if you see even, like, David Beasley, who came out publicly condemning—he was a Republican governor in South Carolina—he came out condemning Trump and his comments about Annie Andrews.

I think you’re seeing more Republicans even kind of create a permission structure for Republicans in South Carolina to say this is enough. We’re tired of this. It’s time for something new. And I think you’re going to see even more of that as we get closer to election day. It’s not going to be easy, but we are very optimistic about it. And I think Republicans see that too, right?

Sargent: Well, yes. And since you brought up David Beasley, who’s a former Republican governor of South Carolina, I just pulled up his response. He was quite condemnatory of Trump. He was quite strong on this. He said, “This is abhorrent. Elections don’t have to be about cruelty and lies. South Carolina deserves better.”

That’s strong stuff. David Beasley, I’m guessing, is a fairly well-respected former politician. Is there an outside chance that a sizable bloc of Republican voters listen to a retired Republican in the MAGA era, when Donald Trump is issuing his commands to them to see her as as trans or whatever the hell he thinks he’s saying?

Washington-Price: Yeah, I really do believe so, right? And it goes back to what I said early about some of these Republicans creating a permission structure for other Republicans to be able to vote for a Democrat. And I think David Beasley laid it out correctly. It’s like, there is no place for that type of rhetoric anymore in the political conversational landscape.

Again, Trump and these Republicans know, when you talk about the issues, you talk about affordability, you talk about health care, they lose every time. And that’s why he goes back to kind of these culture wars that he’s no longer winning. I think you want to see more Republicans come out publicly and get at some of this stuff too.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about the polls. There’s Trafalgar, which showed Darline Graham up a hair, by 43 to 42, over Annie Andrews. InsiderAdvantage had a poll finding Graham at 46 and Andrews at 45. So both of those have the race at around a point, which is just unthinkable. And those are Republican pollsters as well. Are you guys polling?

Washington-Price: We have a poll out in the field now, so we’re hoping it comes back soon.

Sargent: OK. And where do you guys think the race is right now, candidly?

Washington-Price: I honestly think we’re in two-to-three-point striking distance from Darline Graham. Even when you think about kind of the generational divide—I think even the last polling, and we’re seeing it on the ground, had every age group under the age of fifty break in for Annie Andrews. Again, you think about enthusiasm, you think about who is excited and wanting to show up to the polls for a change, those are the demographics and that’s the age group that we know will show out, right?

And I think even if we can’t convert some of these Republicans, to your point, if we can get them to stay home and just, you know, throw their hands up with it, that’s a win for us. And it kind of goes back to the messaging that we are trying to drill home to these voters, right? Who is going to be best for your families, who’s going to be best for your future, your kids’ future?

And I think that’s what we’re seeing in the polling. I think folks believe that it’s going to be Annie Andrews, and that Darline Graham does not have a plan for the state, and that she’s just going to be a rubber stamp for Trump and his failed policies. And people are tired of that.

Sargent: Would you guys like to see some Democratic money come into the state from places like the Senate Majority PAC or from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee?

Washington-Price: We would definitely love to see it, right? And I think there’s a long-term play for South Carolina. If we can flip the seat for Annie Andrews, I think it sends a signal across the country. It sends a signal across the South that we are competitive and we can stay competitive.

Georgia and North Carolina have done it, and we are right in the middle of both of those states. We share media markets with both of those states. And we think, you know, any resources that come into South Carolina will benefit Democrats, and it kind of is an investment that is a long play for Democrats in the South.

Sargent: Well, it’s worth pointing out that both Georgia and North Carolina right now, those races have Democrats pulling away. In Georgia, it’s Senator Jon Ossoff, who looks like he’s basically on track to having this sewn up. In North Carolina, it’s Roy Cooper, who’s running for the open seat there. He also seems to have this close to sewn up. Republicans are pulling money out of both states.

I mean, as long as I’ve been following politics, if you had told me a while ago that the states where Democrats would be running away are Georgia and North Carolina, I would have looked at you like you were nuts.

Washington-Price: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Sargent: And so the demographic story in Georgia and North Carolina is sort of similar. They’re very similar to South Carolina.

Washington-Price: That’s right.

Sargent: Well, I’m going to ask you about that, because Virginia’s the big success story. That’s the southern state that really first kind of moved in this direction that we’re talking about, with population growth in the northern parts of the state, the D.C. suburbs, kind of slowly outnumbering the vast rural structures of the state.

You see something similar but a little less pronounced in North Carolina, with some other East Coast hubs kind of really developing and becoming more Democratic and kind of slowly catching up with the rest of the state, which is enormously rural and red throughout. Is something like that happening in South Carolina? What’s the process there?

Washington-Price: I think so, right? South Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Like, that is something that has been reported within the year. And I think you’re seeing that for a number of issues.

We’re seeing folks moving from across the country to places like South Carolina because of the affordability crisis that’s happening across our country. And they’re looking for opportunities, they’re looking for cheaper childcare, they’re looking for, you know, some affordable housing.

But what does that mean for a state like South Carolina, with these new people that have maybe come from bluer states or maybe even come from more moderate states, right? Like, how do we engage them? How do we get them kind of baked into the political culture in South Carolina? And how do we get them to vote for Democrats? And I think that is the type of long-term investment that we’re hoping not only the party, but some of these committees also will see and want to tap into.

And we’re seeing it in places like Mississippi and Alabama too. I do a lot of work across the South, and some of that’s kind of the same story we’re seeing across the board. You’re having folks that are moving into the state. You’re also having people move back, right, from the state, who were born and raised there, maybe left because of a number of issues, but they’re moving back. And we have to be able to capture those folks, engage with them, and talk about issues that are important to them.

And I think it’s a real opportunity for Democrats. But it has to continue and start now. Georgia and North Carolina didn’t just happen overnight. It took some work. And there’s a host of people, including, like, Stacey Abrams, who is to thank for that.

But I think because of that, you know, we’re seeing what Democrats can do when they win in these southern states. And I think we just have to keep hammering home on what it means for Democrats to win in the South.

Sargent: Well, Democrats need a southern strategy long term, because of what’s happening with some of these demographic changes in the North.

Washington-Price: That’s right.

Sargent: Which is, you know, chipping away at their Electoral College strongholds.

Washington-Price: That’s exactly right.

Sargent: OK, so you guys, the Fresh Start PAC—you guys are going up on the air in coming days, right? How much money are you putting in, and what’s the ad?

Washington-Price: This first tranche of ads that is coming out is about health care. It’s really hammering in on Annie Andrews’s kind of credentials and her fight when it comes to lowering health care costs in South Carolina. I think this first ad—and I’ll send you the article too, Greg—but we want to put about $2 million behind the first ad, and we’re still raising money. We’re hoping we get some more money.

Between me and you, I maybe shouldn’t announce this, and this might be breaking news, but we also have some testimonials from Republicans who have been lifelong Republicans who are breaking away from the party and voting for Annie Andrews, the first time voting for a Democrat. But they’re tired and they’re fed up.

Sargent: So these Republicans are going to be in these ads?

Washington-Price: Yeah. We have some testimonials with Republicans that are on camera, that are going to be in ads.

Sargent: Why don’t you give us one or two names? Nothing wrong with breaking news here.

Washington-Price: So one I can give you is—his name is Scott Singer. He was a former county councilman from Aiken County, which you could say is a mostly Republican county, or goes back and forth. It’s Joe Wilson’s district. But he was a lifelong Republican, and he is tired of the party. He has said that he’s voting for Annie Andrews this election cycle.

Sargent: And he’s going to be in your ad saying that.

Washington-Price: He’s going to be in our ad saying that.

Sargent: OK, well, listen, best of luck to you all. It’s going to be an uphill climb, but it’s certainly worth watching.

Washington-Price: It is. Greg, thank you so much for your time and having me on.

I’m nervous about the polls and election forecasts projecting a huge Democratic wave. And I think you should be too.

Why? For two reasons. First of all, the numbers, as eye-watering as they are, may be setting us up for disappointment, even if Democrats have a solid night next month. They simply seem too good to be true. According to polls and forecasts, the Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win back the House. Fairly progressive Democrats (Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, Maine’s Troy Jackson) are leading in blue-leaning swing states. More centrist Democrats (North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff) are comfortably ahead in swing states that traditionally lean a bit red.

It gets better. Democrats seem poised to win several races in states that have been reliably red in the Trump era: Alaska and Texas Senate, Iowa governor, the Senate and gubernatorial contests in Ohio. They have an outside chance of winning the governorship in Texas and Senate seats in Iowa and Kansas too.

I’m not done. Democrats could win enough governorships and state legislatures that a majority of Americans live in states with a Democratic trifecta next year. A Black politician from Milwaukee (David Crowley) is favored to win the governorship in Wisconsin, overcoming long-standing resentment against the state’s biggest city. In Georgia, Keisha Bottoms has a real chance of becoming the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history.

Twenty-one months ago, after Donald Trump won a second term, I would have been thrilled if just one or two of the things I enumerated above happened. Now, the polls suggest a blue wave that would even eclipse 2006 or 2018. If the polls are right, we are looking at a political earthquake akin to 2008, when America, including Indiana and North Carolina, chose a Black man to be president. Democrats winning statewide elections in Texas raises the prospect of the party being competitive in the state that delivers the most Electoral College votes (40) to Republicans, putting GOP prospects in presidential elections in peril. If El-Sayed wins, it will be even harder for centrist Democrats and Republicans to argue that a potentially transformative politician such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can’t be elected president.

Some data experts say that we should trust the polls; others argue that they might be inflating Democrats’ chances. In my view, polls are generally reliable, but they can’t predict the winner of a race that’s within three to five points—as many of these contests are.

I’ll admit it: I don’t have a data-based reason to doubt the polls. It just comes from covering U.S. politics for more than two decades and being a Black person in America. I will believe that a Democrat can carry Texas the moment that the Associated Press or one of the television networks officially declares that Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico or gubernatorial hopeful Gina Hinojosa has won—and not a moment before. After all, a Democrat last won a Senate race or gubernatorial race in Texas in 1990. I worry that animus against Black women and Muslims is an understated barrier for Bottoms and El-Sayed, respectively. I worry that too many voters in the South both love Trump and hate Black people for Cooper or Ossoff to win by more than a few points. I worry that Maine’s voters can’t quit Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins, no matter how often she disingenuously claims to be deeply concerned by something Trump has done.

And honestly, to assume that the big blue wave that’s being projected won’t happen is probably better for my mental health. I was saddened when the 2016 and 2024 elections did not permanently force Trump out of politics and put a woman in charge of the country for the first time. I was dismayed at how close the swing states were in 2020, considering how terrible Trump’s presidency had been.

My advice for TNR readers and other liberals would be to assume that Democrats win 48 or 49 Senate seats, 225 House seats, and nothing major in Ohio or Texas. That’s not a prediction; it’s an exercise in setting expectations at a realistic but low level.

Here’s a second reason to be wary of the polls: They are creating expectations that the mainstream media might use against Democrats. In January 2025, if you told reporters at AP, The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and other centrist news outlets that Democrats were going to win 225 House seats and 49 Senate seats in November 2026, they might have been skeptical Democrats would do that well. In January, I wrote a piece that was titled “Amazingly, the Democrats Have a Shot at a Senate Majority,” reflecting how unlikely that seemed even nine months ago.

Now, polls and election forecasts based on those surveys are projecting a much stronger showing for Democrats. The “median outcome” of the election is 242 Democratic House seats and 52 in the Senate, according to FiftyPlusOne, an election site run by G. Elliott Morris and other alums of FiveThirtyEight. Other sites view it similarly: 235 Democrats in the House and 51 in the Senate (Decision Desk HQ); 232/52 (VoteHub); 234/52 (Split Ticket).

If Democrats fall short of these projections, even if they win 229 House seats and 50 in the Senate, I am quite confident the mainstream media will revert to its preferred approach to covering politics: centrism/false equivalence/balance/both sides/“independence.” Centrist news outlets will use headlines like “Voters Dislike Trump but Aren’t Sure About Democrats Either,” “Americans Hate Both Parties,” “American Voters Deliver a Mixed Verdict.”

This is nonsense, of course. Trump is an incredibly unpopular president, so disliked that Republicans are struggling to win in Texas. He is also an authoritarian figure bent on eroding democracy, including the freedom of the press. But the mainstream media is still eager to cast itself as above the fray, neutral, and certainly not opposed to a president trying to destroy its industry. If neither Talarico nor Hinojosa wins, the media will likely not cover this election as the decisive rejection of Trump that it almost certainly will be.

So for now, I’m taking the polls seriously but not literally, to borrow a formation from earlier in the Trump era. I am confident that Republicans will do worse in Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and other red states than usual. I am sure that some Democrats will win by larger margins in many swing states than seemed possible two years ago. But I will be delighted and surprised if there are Governors Bottoms, Crowley, and Hinojosa or Senators El-Sayed or Talarico. It could happen, though. The polls in 2026 look as rosy for Democrats as 2008. They were right back then. They could be right again.

It is January 3, 2027. The Democrats, fresh off their sweeping victory in the November elections, are set to take the majority in the House of Representatives.

All that remains is for the House clerk to compile a list of new members from the certified winners of the November races. It is an administrative technicality, a rote task that has gone off largely without incident every two years since 1789.

At least it did before Donald Trump turned the Republican Party into an election-denying cult. Now it has become the latest tool in the GOP arsenal to overturn election losses. Following the Democrats’ triumph in November, House Speaker Mike Johnson replaced the nonpartisan House clerk with a MAGA loyalist. Citing allegations of election fraud, the new clerk announces that he will not accept the documents certifying Democratic wins in key races. As a result, the members-elect cannot take their seats. 

The Democratic National Committee unleashes an army of lawyers to challenge the move. But when the matter arrives before the Supreme Court, the Roberts majority, invoking the “political question doctrine,” rules that it cannot interfere in the internal operations of another branch.

And just like that, the Republicans have stolen the midterms.

According to election experts, this scenario, though unlikely, is entirely feasible. Worse, such a scheme might prove to be a dress rehearsal for the main event: a GOP gambit to overturn the 2028 presidential election. In 2020, Trump lost the election but tried to hang onto power regardless. Why would 2028 be any different?

Sure, Trump is barred from running for another term, but the Roberts majority might not see it that way. In any case, one would scarcely expect a different nominee to show more respect for the democratic process. That includes JD Vance. “If I had been vice president” in 2020, he once mused, “I would have told the states … that we needed to have multiple slates of electors”—a reference to an illegal scheme to keep Trump in office.

Freedom-loving people need to plan ahead to counter any Trumpian coup. Fortunately, there is an effective blueprint that we can follow.

The idea of the Trump administration successfully defying an election loss might seem fanciful. After all, these guys are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Perhaps they would try, but could they really pull it off?

They probably won’t. Even still, complacency is dangerous in the face of a cold-blooded autocrat who’s already challenged laws and defied norms willy-nilly. What Trump and his allies lack in brains, they make up for in power. He failed to reverse the 2020 election because the White House and federal bureaucracy were staffed by professionals who refused to go along with the plan.

That is no longer the case. The institutionalists who once stymied Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are long gone. In their place are MAGA flunkies committed to doing the president’s bidding. With their help, he could conceivably defy any resistance from Congress and the Supreme Court.

Leading experts agree that the U.S. has transitioned to authoritarianism during Trump’s second term. The days when constitutional checks and balances were enough to keep a rogue president in line are over. What’s more, defeating a Republican at the ballot box no longer guarantees that he will accept defeat.

Still, Trump is not some omnipotent demigod casting thunderbolts at will upon his hapless subjects. No dictator can rule without the people’s consent. Withdraw that consent, and he is just another guy with a spray tan and a chancy comb-over.

Nonviolent rebellion—the strategic use of protests, strikes, and similar methods—has paralyzed authoritarian regimes and forced despots from power the world over. It can work in America too.

Political scientists have found that nonviolent rebellion is the most reliable path from dictatorship to democracy. Decades of research point to four steps that successful rebellions follow.

Consider Serbia, where a handful of students launched a movement called Otpor! (“Resistance!”) that brought down strongman Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. The first step was to get organized. Members set up chapters in dozens of towns, trained volunteers in nonviolent resistance, and forged links with labor unions, nongovernmental organizations, independent media, and opposition parties.

Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. Instead of trying to avoid it, they harnessed the public outrage that it sparked. This backfire effect proved to be their best recruitment tool.

Eventually, Milošević forced through constitutional changes that allowed him to run for another term. Soon after, he called an early election. When the votes were counted, he had lost decisively. But he was not about to heed the will of the voters. The movement had to ramp up the pressure, but how?

Protests can be effective at signaling public support. But they rarely damage a regime on their own. So the third step was to diversify resistance methods. The rebels complemented their protests with a general strike that brought the country to a halt.

The fourth and final step was to sweep away the dictator’s pillars of support. For months, the movement had been courting police officers, officials, and other regime insiders. When hundreds of thousands converged on Belgrade on October 5, Milošević’s loyalists saw the writing on the wall and abandoned him in droves. Even the police stood aside. He had no choice but to concede.

It was a stunning feat. But it would have been much harder to pull off were it not for Otpor!’s efforts to maintain nonviolent discipline. Pitched street battles with police might have galvanized Milošević’s allies to close ranks rather than defect. Such violence could also have sapped public support for the rebellion, preventing the backfire effect from working.

If the conventional political process is not sufficient to restore democracy, nonviolent rebellion remains the most effective tool. To counter GOP election theft, Americans might have to mount a rebellion of their own. The good news is that our fellow citizens have already produced one such movement during Trump’s second term.

When jackbooted federal thugs began forcing Minnesotans into unmarked vans, Minneapolitans responded. First, they got organized. Activist groups trained citizens in specific resistance tactics. They also established support networks for immigrant families who had been forced into hiding.

Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. The sight of armed thugs manhandling children brought waves of new recruits into the resistance. By the end of January, local organizations had trained nearly 30,000 citizen-volunteers to monitor federal agents.

Third, they deployed a range of nonviolent resistance methods, including protests, boycotts, and the tracking of ICE agents.

As for step four—sweeping away the dictator’s pillars of support—Trump and his goons took care of that by themselves. The tragic killings of two resisters, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, proved to be a tipping point. Public anger over the shootings prompted numerous allies to break from the president. A leading GOP gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota dropped out of the race. Republican members of Congress spoke out against the roundups.

With the pressure mounting, Trump was forced to beat a public retreat. Gestapo enthusiast Greg Bovino was shown the door. Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was relieved of operational responsibility and eventually sacked.

In the coming years, Americans might have to replicate this feat on a bigger stage. Only this time, the goal will be to reverse a stolen election. The four steps above offer a road map to victory. But the work starts now. If Serbia and Minnesota proved anything, it is this: The people determine whether the dictator rules—not the other way around.

There is a strange irony in the career that Francis Fukuyama recounts in his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man. The Stanford political scientist and former neoconservative rose to prominence, of course, by famously asking in 1989 whether humanity had reached the “end of history.” Arriving in The National Interest magazine just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fukuyama’s well-timed query perfectly articulated an idea then becoming a new form of political common sense: Western-style liberal democracy was the eventual destiny of all humankind. Even if some details remained to be sorted out—and some holdouts remained to be convinced—liberalism’s enemies were exhausted and the future seemed determined.

Now in his seventies, Fukuyama’s new retrospective inadvertently reveals that it’s the liberal democratic model that seems unready for the next century. Able to see the flaws in his system but unwilling to countenance the type of politics that might transcend them, Fukuyama has produced a book emblematic of a “centrism” still proudly fighting the last brushfires of the twentieth century long after the wildfires of the twenty-first have swept by them. Apparently meant as a kind of valedictory statement, In The Realm of the Last Man announces not just the latest phase of Fukuyama’s career but the exhaustion of the ideas that career rested on.

This career, as he reveals in the book’s opening vignette, began in California, where he first arrived to take up an internship at the Rand Corporation in 1978. That position was part of a quest to avoid what Fukuyama calls an “overdetermined outcome”: becoming an academic. “While I was growing up,” he writes, “I told myself I didn’t want to be a professor,” a path he rejected even after getting his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1981. The son of first- and second-generation Japanese immigrants, Fukuyama came from an academic family. His father, Yoshio Fukuyama, was a congregationalist minister and sociologist who served on the faculty at the Chicago Theological Seminary and Penn State. His mother, Toshiko, herself the daughter of an economics professor and university president, had survived World War II in Japan before emigrating to the United States in 1949 to attend the University of Chicago.

Yoshio, his son writes, was a “committed liberal and pacificist,” the source of some tension as Francis drifted rightward during his college years under the mentorship of Allan Bloom (the classicist most famous for authoring The Closing of the American Mind). The elder Fukuyama had narrowly escaped internment by the U.S. government during the war thanks to a scholarship program that helped Japanese American students attend universities outside the military exclusion zones on the West Coast. His parents and siblings had not been so lucky, spending the entirety of the war unjustly incarcerated in camps in Colorado and Arkansas. Whether those experiences influenced his father’s views, Francis does not say; regardless, Yoshio “and his church were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.” Yoshio often suggested that his son had been “brainwashed” by right-wing professors, and during a visit to California in the 1980s wondered aloud whether Francis would ever leave the Department of Defense–aligned Rand and “get a real job” elsewhere.

Fukuyama would, eventually, become a professor like his father, the result of another transition in which Bloom played a key role. In 1988, while Fukuyama was working for the State Department, Bloom invited him to speak at the University of Chicago as part of a lecture series gloomily titled “The Decline of the West.” Fukuyama accepted, provided he could present a “more optimistic take.” His talk was called “The End of History?” and it was published in article form the following summer.

In the piece (which he later turned into a bestselling book), Fukuyama championed a new political order—that which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as Cold War tensions ebbed and the welfare states of the West staggered under the weight of rising oil prices and slow economic growth. The new order was a fusion of two insurgent sets of ideas, often called “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism.” The former responded to the declining Cold War by arguing for the U.S. to use its power to aggressively spread liberal democratic ideals across the world. The latter, meanwhile, proposed solving the economic crises of the period by gutting the welfare state to free the economy to innovate and grow.

Fukuyama, for his part, saw this moment as the end of a long process of human evolution, one spanning from the primitive societies of the Stone Age past to the advanced industrial economies of the twentieth century. This idea of human history as an evolutionary process was borrowed openly from Alexandre Kojève, a Russo-French philosopher famous on the continent for a series of lectures he gave on philosopher G.W.F. Hegel in the 1930s (and about whom Fukuyama had learned from Bloom). Building on Hegel, Kojève depicted history as a millennia-old battle for “recognition” between dominant groups—“masters”—and their subordinates—“slaves.” The masters would employ belief systems to justify their rule, while the slaves would, with time, develop new ideas that revealed the weaknesses in the masters’ system. The result of the conflict between the “thesis” of the master and the “antithesis” of the slave would be a period of conflict and confusion, before a new “synthesis” was born, fusing the old ideas with the new. This three-step process was destined to continue on repeat until a final structure emerged, one that equally distributed recognition between master and slave, removing the age-old sources of conflict by granting all parties the recognition they desired. Kojève believed just such an idea system had arrived with the emergence of liberalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—history had thus “ended,” not in the sense that there wouldn’t continue to be wars and historical events, but instead meaning humanity had reached its evolutionary end point.

Fukuyama’s career-making triumph was suggesting that the events of the late twentieth century indicated such an end might really be in the offing, pointing to Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic and political liberalization of the Soviet Union, Deng Xiaoping’s contemporaneous opening of the Chinese economy, and a wave of democratization and economic liberalization in the global south. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire seemed to further confirm Fukuyama’s thesis, transforming an obscure State Department staffer into an intellectual celebrity.

Finally accepting his scholastic fate, he took up an endowed chair at George Mason University in 1996. The first of several academic posts (including later positions at Johns Hopkins and Stanford), it was the beginning of a long and successful career as an academic, consultant, and public thinker. The “end of history” idea, meanwhile, came to define the age, as a dominant United States loomed over a globe seemingly destined to transform into one vast mirror image of America.

More nuanced a scholar than many other neoconservatives and pro-market idealogues, Fukuyama emerged from all this as one of the most talented defenders of this new post–Cold War order, his very reticence in its support seemingly signaling his reliability. Never an orthodox neoliberal calling for the complete deregulation of the economy, for example, Fukuyama remained an ardent supporter of economic liberalization—usually finding other causes, like “social trust,” a concept he wrote about a great deal in the late 1990s, to explain problems others might have attributed to money’s machinations. He was also relatively wary of the use of military force abroad and yet still signed two open letters urging the United States to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, one in 1998 and another, more significantly, in late September 2001.

It was with Iraq that things began to unravel. In private, Fukuyama was growing increasingly skeptical of what became George W. Bush’s March 2003 invasion of the country—hedging his bets in editorials and interviews over the course of 2002, suggesting that removing Saddam was justifiable but dangerous and that the U.S. should not proceed without U.N. support. He also reportedly warned, or cautioned, his friend and fellow neocon, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, against the invasion in a classified briefing in early 2003. He took a clear public stand against the war, however, only in 2004, after it was too late.

“The problem,” as he admits in the book, “was psychological … not a matter of policy judgment.” Though Fukuyama “knew full well that the intervention was likely to lead to huge unintended consequences,” he felt “a mental block against taking a public stand against the views of longtime friends” and allies like Wolfowitz, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, and the columnist Charles Krauthammer. By the following February—as the situation in Iraq worsened and the invasion’s supporters continued to insist the mission was a success—Fukuyama had had enough, determining that his “friends … had taken leave of reality.” He would denounce the war in the pages of The New York Times soon after.

Fukuyama later broke even more decisively with neoconservative thinking in his 2006 book, America at the Crossroads, and would endorse Barack Obama in 2008. By this point, not only had neoconservatism lost its shine due to the disaster in Iraq, but so too had neoliberalism, thanks to the Great Recession that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers that September. As he writes in the memoir, “The twin failures of the war and of the financial system did a lot to discredit conservative ideas about the uses of military power and of free markets, mistakes for which America paid a huge price.”

Fukuyama mixes a strange complacency about the deeper problems confronting liberal democracy with attacks on straw-men versions of those who seek its reform.

Fukuyama deserves a great deal of credit for abandoning his previous positions once it was clear they were wrong—a rare enough trait in academia, as well as the punditocracy—but, as a widely respected scholar who apparently knew better, staying quiet about the war seems a bigger mistake than he acknowledges in these pages. He also further tests the reader’s tolerance for his mea culpas by describing the isolation he suffered after being cast out of neocon social circles—recalling a silent and “a painful ride up … in an elevator to a party” with Krauthammer and his wife, for example—right before admitting his break with the movement was “nothing like having your brains drilled out by an opposing militiaman, or losing your legs to an IED.” It’s an odd juxtaposition, however humble the intention.

On the whole, Fukuyama does not seem properly chastened by the events of the past two decades—mixing a strange complacency about the deeper problems confronting liberal democracy with attacks on straw-men versions of those who seek its reform.

These issues appear to stem from his continued attachment to the end of history thesis. In his mind, the biggest problems of the world in 2026—Donald Trump and the rise of authoritarianism draw most of his attention—are part of the tribulations of the “last man” of his title. The “last men” (and “last women”) are all of us living today in liberal societies. We, Fukuyama argues, are the “last” because we live in a time and place when history has ended, where all the big questions have already been answered. This, he suggests, is fundamentally unsatisfactory for many, because an inherent part of being human is in fact the desire to be part of history, to struggle for causes larger than oneself. “When the world is actually in pretty good shape,” he writes, and “there are no great causes worthy of risking one’s life,” people start to get restless. Thus, they pursue “struggle for struggle’s sake,” taking apart a perfectly good political order in the foolish pursuit of an impossible perfection. The primary culprits here for Fukuyama are “the extreme right and left.”

While he reserves most of his ire for the MAGA right, Fukuyama is also unwavering in lecturing members of the (so-called) radical left. Much of the analysis on this score is thin and unreasoned. Though Fukuyama admits that the left focuses on problems truly in need of fixing—like economic inequality, climate change, and “the plight of Palestinian civilians … in Gaza,” for example—he still thinks most activists are motivated primarily by boredom. Of students protesting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, he sniffs, “What they want is a break from their lives of steady but unheroic striving.” Ignoring the glaringly obvious differences between U.S. policy in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, he argues that if the protesters were serious about improving the world they would be “similarly outraged at the situation of Ukrainians besieged by Russia.”

In another sleight of hand, he proclaims that “virtually all progressive visions for an alternative to the current liberal order have been tried already,” or “have already been happily incorporated into present day social democratic welfare states.” (Never mind the work his ideological fellow travelers did to dismantle the midcentury welfare state decades ago.) Briefly acknowledging the desirability of a carbon tax, he also castigates “extreme environmentalists” and the very small “de-growth” movement, leaving the reader with the impression that the latter effectively characterizes the entirety of the environmentalist cause. On all these issues, he insists paternally, the real answer is not “radical change” but the “boring” work of “slow, steady … reform.” Who is going to bring about this reform if not the very people he is dismissing, and when and how it should be expected to arrive, are questions he leaves unanswered.

And herein lies the problem with the “end of history” as an idea: It’s an intellectual trap, limiting our ability to imaginatively confront the future. If the current form of liberal democracy is more or less the best we can hope for, then Fukuyama is right and no problem is worth too radical a reform. We must throw up our hands and simply wait for things to somehow, miraculously, get better—wait for the powers that be to have the spare time to fix up the small projects left unfinished in our otherwise well-founded post-historical home. Meanwhile, perhaps we can take up woodworking, one of the several hobbies (along with photography and flying drones) that Fukuyama describes in strange, avuncular asides that fill the book.

Herein lies the problem with the “end of history” as an idea: It’s an intellectual trap, limiting our ability to imaginatively confront the future.

But as it is, the end of history thesis plainly fails to account for important features of our reality. As long as capital continues to dominate the worker, liberal society will be inherently unstable—as is the case today, thanks to four decades of neoliberal economic policy and the rampant inequality it created. End of history liberalism also hides another master-and-slave relationship that must be addressed: that between wealthy industrial states and those of the former colonized world. As long as the bond between affluence in the one and poverty in the other is obscured, the liberal synthesis will continue to generate destabilizing antitheses among the world’s poor and oppressed, in Gaza and elsewhere.

Finally, there is the dialectic between humanity and nature. The very idea of historical progress is premised on the flawed assumption that humanity has separated itself from its natural origins, that—as Kojève himself described it—human progress “creates … a non-natural World, a cultural historical human World” where “man lives an essentially different life from that of animals.” Such logic renders the environment a mere object for our disposal, an utterly plastic means to human ends, open to whatever purposes we seek to put it toward, whether they be rampant consumerism or launching rockets to the moon. Nature in 2026 is exposing that lie, forcing on us the recognition it deserves—whether as equal or master remains to be seen—flooding into our homes, melting our cities, and burning our fields.

Liberal democracy’s achievements should be cherished—yes—but they should not be embalmed. Reflecting on a long career tied to the idea, Fukuyama can perhaps still afford to live at the end of history. The rest of us cannot.

It was 9 a.m. in Kyiv, and I showed up at class ready to teach Vaclav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” his celebrated 1978 essay about totalitarian control, but was feeling rough around the edges because I had been in a bomb shelter until 5:30 a.m. that morning. So had my students.

This was my first time back in Ukraine for more than 30 years. I had previously come in Ukraine’s first year of independence in 1992. Back then, I had been invited to spend the year as a visiting professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, which was opening its doors for the first time since Russian Czar Alexander I shuttered them in 1819. It was a time of great hope and aspirations for Kyiv Mohyla and for Ukraine, which was attempting to navigate its existence after centuries of czarist and Soviet rule. The same could be said for me and my fellow idealistic (primarily young) American and European lecturers: We had responded to the “people power” that swept Central and Eastern Europe at the time by volunteering to teach in universities across the region as a part of an organization called the Civic Education Project. This idealism was symbolized by Havel himself, who had transformed from dissident playwright to president of Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic.

Now, in 2026, I came for two reasons: to give a commencement speech at Kyiv School of Economics, or KSE, one of Ukraine’s most dynamic higher education institutions, and to help oversee and teach in an educational program for advanced high school students called Language and Thinking (affectionately known as L&T) offered at KSE by Bard College, where I am acting president.

Bard runs L&T around the globe, from its main campus on Annandale-on-Hudson to seven prisons in New York state to our program at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. L&T is really the introduction to the liberal arts and sciences, involving a careful reading of texts and a variety of writing practices that emphasize the iterative process between ideas and the written word. Most of all, it is about voice and agency, helping students to understand that they have the capacity to develop and express their own perspectives and views, that they are empowered thinkers. It is, as I say in countries that offer more traditional education systems, the antidote to rote learning. One can imagine how powerful L&T can be for young people whose own voices are being crowded out by artificial intelligence and the endless noise of social media.

In the Ukraine iteration of L&T, students read everything from Antigone to the Ukrainian Constitution. In the classroom at KSE, what struck me was how the program offered a metaphor for many of the changes I have seen in Ukraine over these past three decades, a way of tracking the trajectory from Kiev, as it was known under Soviet rule, to Kyiv, which reflects the Ukrainian pronunciation and symbolizes independence and autonomy. When I was in Ukraine, just after independence, the region was still often referred to as fSU, former Soviet Union. The economy and culture still reflected the Soviet imprint, as well as centuries of Russian imperial rule.

Although the country was visibly at war following Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022, and ubiquitous phone apps rang regularly warning of drone and missile attacks, the streets of Kyiv were bustling with vibrant café and restaurant life, something totally absent while I was previously there and the country was in the midst of post-Soviet economic collapse. More importantly, Kyiv had become visibly Ukrainian, instead of a mix of Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian: The language I heard on the street and in the cafés was Ukrainian, not Russian, and the sense of patriotism, be it in the display of national symbols or the various forms of memorializing the war dead, was palpable.

In the early 1990s, I taught students who had been raised in the Soviet style. They felt that they would accelerate academically if they repeated what I, the professor, said, often in shockingly verbatim forms, offering long recitations of things I had said in class. It was extremely difficult for them to understand that I wanted to know what they thought. It just did not compute.

The students I taught this summer, many from Kyiv but also from frontline communities in the east and south, were remarkably different. These young people are the first generation shaped since Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. They were unquestionably and unambiguously Ukrainian.

But they were also Ukrainians who experienced war on a daily basis. The course was in part a sobering search for normalcy that could be achieved by diving into texts. But this was not a simple escape or diversion. After just a couple of days, they were, like their country, confident in their views—their individual views—and determined to articulate them, even if they were a multivocal community.

Perhaps the most inspiring moment came when I taught Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” in which we interrogated something I have been thinking a lot about lately, which is “living in truth.” The essay is about pressures in post-1968 Czechoslovakia—that is, after the Soviets brutally put down the “Prague Spring” uprising—to, as it were, passively comport to and perpetuate the myths of the post-totalitarian order by becoming obedient agents of a hollow ideology.

That was not these students. For them, the daily realities of war are so present and raw that there is no space for artifice. Their engagement with social and political issues spoke to the heart of “living in truth,” which Havel described as “an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility.” Their very act of participating in an educational program in the face of a massive assault by the Putin government that has attempted to impose a uniformity of thought and eviscerate any notion of academic freedom was itself an act of living in truth.

But their engagement was not simply an act of resistance. Their manifest nationalism and confidence in being Ukrainian did not mean that they were afraid to criticize the Ukrainian government: Many students were openly critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and sympathetic to anti-government protests that took place over the summer in response to the dismissal of young Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is viewed as the architect of Ukraine’s massively successful drone strategy.

I couldn’t help but notice, moreover, that they were embracing their freedoms in ways that reflect back to us our own reluctance to fight for those freedoms in the United States: the freedom to learn, the freedom to think for oneself, the freedom to disagree in the classroom and in the public square.

For me this was a remarkable turn. When I had originally gone to Ukraine as I was completing my doctorate at Oxford, I was full of youthful exuberance and arrogance as I was teaching students about things like human rights and rule of law. Now, I was being reminded both of the ways in which so many in America today, both individually and institutionally, and particularly in positions of leadership, are willing, as Havel said, to “live within a lie.”

What would Havel think of the top officials at Florida International University, the home of the Havel Center for Human Rights & Democracy, after they sanctioned students for standing in silent protest while wearing “ICE OFF FIU” T-shirts, charging that they violated policies prohibiting “expressive activities” inside campus buildings? What would he think of the academic institutions that have expressed enthusiasm for the different versions of the administration’s “compacts,” or that are choosing to wave the banner of neutrality enthusiastically in order to avoid punishment from the regime, just as the greengrocer, the central character in the Havel essay, did in posting the sign, “Workers of the world, unite”? Would he think that they were perpetuating, as the greengrocer had, the ruling party’s ideology?

The antidote to the melancholy that I felt in reflecting on the transformation that had taken place in my own country in the decades since I first visited Ukraine was situated in the infectious idealism of my student, the chief organizer of the course, Yana Lahoda. Yana is a rising senior at Bard who is from near Zaporizhzhia, where Russians still occupy the nuclear power plant where her father worked. She still speaks Russian with her parents, who now live in Germany. But she is determined to be part of the effort to build a new Ukraine. The L&T program is only the first step in her plans: When she graduates, she intends to return to build an early college in Ukraine as a part of an effort to jump-start what she hopes is a civically robust postwar Ukraine. For her, living in truth is not a choice but a reality that exists in every fiber of her existence.

Havel wrote of young people who were “given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles of living with a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities,” and yet who “decided on a different course.” Yana’s determination, in the face of a genuine existential threat, was a stark reminder of the power of idealism, the importance of education, and the fact that courage is not simply manifested in broad public gestures but in small acts of resistance. Acts that so often begin with writing and with thinking.

Donald Trump unleashed a long, crazed tirade this week about Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina. He attacked her with the vicious slur “tranny” not once but twice. He smeared her with numerous lies about her positions, insisting she is for “Defunding the Police” and “Transgender for Everyone.” The source of Trump’s rage is obvious: He fears the race is unexpectedly competitive. Indeed, two GOP-aligned pollsters—Trafalgar and Inside Advantage—recently found the race to be within one point. This is very bad news for Trump, and worse, Republicans plainly have their own polling showing something similar: A major GOP Super PAC just poured $5 million into the contest. The odds here are very, very long, especially once GOP money starts flowing. But since Trump clearly fears the race, we got a download on it from Jalisa Washington-Price, a veteran South Carolina Democratic operative who runs the pro-Andrews PAC Fresh Start. She explains the demographics of the state, why national Democrats should invest here, why the road ahead is very difficult—but not impossible!—and where this race fits into the recent history of the South. Listen to this episode here.

President Donald Trump falsely claimed Tuesday that his military campaign against Iran ended eight months before he started it.

In the latest installment of Senior Moment or Shocking Admission?, the president offered an outrageous defense against anyone complaining that his so-called “six-week war” had stretched on for more than seven months.

“We really ended it as soon as the B2 bombers hit, because that was the end of their nuclear [program], that was 95 percent of the reason we did it. Maybe 100 percent,” he said.

Trump was referring to a series of strikes using “bunker buster” bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025. That was a full eight months before he ordered attacks in March 2026.

Clearly, those strikes didn’t actually end the war in the Middle East.

This particular comment is concerning in light of the Trump administration officials who have previously contradicted Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program presented any imminent threat to national security.

If Trump’s initial bombing campaign had satisfied his desire for violence, then 22 U.S. servicemembers would likely not have been killed, hundreds more would not have been injured, and the Department of Defense wouldn’t have tried to cover it up. Multiple U.S. bases in the Middle East would still be standing, and the DOD wouldn’t have tried to cover that up, too. Hundreds of Iranian civilians, including dozens of school children, would still be alive. A U.S. battleship would never have been deployed for hundreds of days, leading to a number of attempted suicides. The Pentagon would not have spent more than $45 billion, and the U.S. military weapons’ stockpile would not have shrunk to dangerous levels.

If only Trump’s pissing contest with Iran had somehow ended before it ever started. Yes, if only.

Kash Patel’s FBI slammed Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in a wildly partisan, and likely illegal, propaganda video Tuesday.

In a two-minute video posted on social media, the supposedly nonpartisan agency decried “democratic socialist leaders” for calling to defund the police. The video included footage of multiple Democrats calling to defund the police, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, current and former Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar, and, of course, El-Sayed, who is running for office in November’s midterm elections.

“Not reform. Defund the police as policy,” the video’s narration stated. “As the path they said would keep you safer. In the cities that led the charge, the street told a different story. What followed was a complete failure.” There is little data that supports this, and crime rates have been in decline for years.

The video praised Patel’s leadership, and touted a major increase in the arrest of violent criminals. It’s worth noting that Patel has reportedly instituted a policy of double-counting these arrests with those made by other law enforcement agencies, and has faced criticism for his disastrous leadership.

Federal law clearly prohibits the use of government funds for campaign purposes, partisan political messaging, and propaganda. A wildly inaccurate attack ad against a Democratic candidate would more than count under all three of these categories—and it’s more than a little ironic that the FBI’s latest video preaching law and order likely violated federal law. But under the Trump administration, it’s clear that nothing will be done.

Recently, the Trump administration has used at least 5.6 million taxpayer dollars to buy a series of at least 15 campaign-style advertisements touting the president’s agenda ahead of November’s midterm elections. In order to make and air those videos, the Trump administration stole the money from the Department of Homeland Security, specifically from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

President Trump is preventing Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore from speaking at an event in Baltimore County in the state on Tuesday.

Defense firm Andruil Industries is announcing that it is building a two-million-square-foot submarine manufacturing facility in Sparrows Point, Maryland, a deal that Moore helped put together and that is expected to create thousands of jobs. Trump is visiting the site and speaking about the investment on Tuesday and is barring Moore from speaking, the governor told The Baltimore Banner.

“That’s correct,” Moore said to reporters following a debate with his Republican gubernatorial opponent, Dan Cox. “I will not be there later on today. This was going to be a deal that we helped break. This is going to be the largest private investment that we have seen in over a decade inside the state of Maryland.”

“If the president of the United States wants to bring the circus in town and tell me that I’m not allowed to speak, despite the fact we were the ones that helped bring the deal, then I will let the circus be conducted while I go back to the work of the people of Maryland,” Moore added.

An unnamed White House official told CNN that Moore was “graciously” invited as a guest but didn’t deny that Trump was blocking the governor from speaking.

“It’s unfortunate that the Governor is now making a multibillion-dollar announcement about himself by throwing a tantrum over a federal initiative that will bring sorely needed jobs back to his state thanks to President Trump,” the official said.

Other Maryland Democrats, such as Representative Johnny Olszewski Jr., whose district encompasses the new facility, were scheduled to speak but pulled out after news that Moore wouldn’t be allowed to make remarks.

Trump has never been a fan of Moore, uninviting him from a bipartisan dinner that included nearly every other state governor, accusing him of committing electoral fraud, and blaming him for a sewage spill in the Potomac River. Meanwhile, Moore is leading his Trump-supporting Republican opponent, Dan Cox, in polls for November’s election.

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.

Inside Washington

Maine’s 2nd congressional district, covering 92 percent of the state, is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River. And right now, the largely rural, white population is getting ready to choose between two candidates: Democrat Matt Dunlap, who is a progressive and an avid hunter, or Republican and former two-term Governor Paul LePage, who once said “tell them to kiss my butt” when asked about criticism from the NAACP. 

In the race to replace Democratic Representative Jared Golden, who isn’t seeking reelection, polling is mixed. Dunlap, a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s, or DCCC, Red to Blue program supporting candidates in close races, was up six points in a University of New Hampshire poll from late September. Other surveys, however, show a dead heat or LePage slightly ahead.

On Monday, Dunlap held a health care–focused press conference, amid a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the Trump administration’s war on Iran and tariff policies. These issues are a particularly powerful weapon against LePage, who vetoed Medicaid expansion six times as governor and called last year’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act “the greatest thing that can happen to the Maine people” (LePage was referring to the bill’s “no tax on tips” provision, but the legislation also cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion).

Dunlap said that the cost of health care is one of the main issues he’s heard about from Mainers. In a conversation with The New Republic, he described a conversation with a resident who was considering selling their home to afford health care costs and another person whose insurance costs went from $560 to $2,700 per month when Affordable Care Act subsidies expired in December.

Mainers are also worried about the cost of gas and heating oil, which could hurt LePage like it hurts every other Republican candidate in 2026. Maine is more reliant on heating oil than any other state in the country, and prices have skyrocketed this year. “The first frost warning for much of the state is tomorrow night, maybe tonight,” said Mark Brewer, the chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Maine, which is located in the second district. “It’s cold here. Winters are long here.”

LePage has tried to distance himself somewhat from President Trump’s agenda. He came out against Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and has emphasized his focus on affordability as governor. The district is historically conservative, and voted for Trump all three times he was on the ballot. But, said Amy Fried, a retired professor of political science at the University of Maine, “This district is one where people are OK with splitting their tickets.” She explained that, in election years past, it wasn’t unusual to see houses with signs for Trump, GOP Senator Susan Collins, and Democratic Representative Jared Golden together in one yard. “Or pretty much any combination you could think of,” she added.

Republicans in past elections have typically portrayed their opponents as out-of-touch leftists. So far, LePage has struggled to apply that playbook to Dunlap. “He doesn’t look like a wild-eyed radical in any way,” said Fried of Dunlap. “His personality is extremely even-keeled, and a friend of mine said the other day that he looks like an insurance salesman.” 

Asked about LePage recently telling Fox News Digital that the race is about “common sense versus crazy,” Dunlap seemed unfazed: “That’s what they say when they don’t have anything else to throw at you,” he told The New Republic. “MAGA Republicans,” Dunlap said, “are very good at demonizing and bringing up the wedge [issues] about the woke agenda and the Democratic Socialists of America.” But, he added, “I’m less susceptible to that because I hadn’t heard of the Democratic Socialists of America until we heard about the Mamdani campaign.”

Dunlap has also played up his experience as a fisherman and hunter. He’s a founding board member of the Maine Youth Fish and Game Association, and the former executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. One ad shows him fishing, boating, hunting, and shooting a rifle. At the end of the video, he puts down the gun and turns to the camera, saying: “I’ve always defended our Second Amendment rights, and in Congress, I’ll do the same.”

“You can’t question his bona fides on outdoors kind of stuff, or guns,” said Brewer. “He can go toe-to-toe with any Republican on those issues.” Golden, who won this district four times, is a Marine Corps veteran who has similar credibility on guns, an important issue in the district.

Both Brewer and Fried echoed what polls have suggested: This is a tight race that could go either way. Brewer said that much could hinge on the support that Dunlap gets from national Democrats in the next month. He pointed to the DCCC’s apparent hesitancy to add him to the Red to Blue program—Dunlap beat out the DCCC’s preferred candidate in June, but wasn’t added to the program until late August—as a potential issue. “The support still, to me, doesn’t seem like what it would be, or what it could be, or maybe should be in this tight of a race,” he said. “I think he could use some more money.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Early voting is now in progress across multiple states, having started on Monday in Maine, California, Nebraska, and Montana (although there it’s technically called a “late registration” period for absentee voting). New Mexico, Indiana, Wyoming, and Ohio begin on Tuesday, and Arizona starts on Wednesday. Early voting and early absentee voting (differentiated by whether a ballot is cast directly into a ballot counter) has been underway in Illinois and Minnesota for weeks. Several other states join next week. Pennsylvania technically doesn’t have early in-person voting, but it actually sort of does, since you can show up, get a mail-in ballot, and then hand it back. Voting rights advocates have typically urged people to vote early if possible, in part for convenience and to avoid lines, and in part so that there’s time to sort things out if there’s a problem. On Saturday, President Trump urged Republicans to vote early or by mail—measures he has previously opposed and tried to restrict.

As key Senate and House races in Texas, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Alaska, Ohio, and more continue to dominate headlines, fewer people are watching California. But over the weekend, Bernie Sanders stopped by California’s conservative Central Valley to give Democrat Randy Villegas a boost in his attempt to unseat David Valadao in the race for California’s 22nd district. Ever since Villegas’s victory over moderate, DCCC-backed Jasmeet Bains in the primary, part of the narrative in this race has focused on whether Villegas is too far left for this “historically conservative, low-turnout area,” as CalMatters puts it. But as Sanders’s visit shows, Villegas isn’t running away from his progressivism. Dems have been fixated on beating Valadao for years, so if a progressive is finally the one to do it, it’ll be quite the story. While public polling in the 22nd has been almost nonexistent this cycle, a Democratic PAC poll in June showed Villegas up four points.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement on Suncor v. Boulder, the big climate case the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for on Monday. Suncor Energy is asking SCOTUS to throw out the suit from the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, over the devastating damages of climate change, including from the Marshall fire in 2021. “Coal, oil, and gas companies have made trillions of dollars in profits from the sale of fuels that are driving the climate crisis. They have knowingly misled the public for decades” and lobbied to delay climate policies, said NRDC senior vice president for environmental health Matthew Tejada. “Now a staggering bill is coming due.… The fossil fuel industry has a responsibility to help pay for the damage its products have caused.”

On Wednesday at 4 p.m., the Center for Strategic and International Studies will host a webcast looking back at the anthrax postal attacks 25 years ago. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs will moderate a discussion between Wendi Kuhnert of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former GOP Senator Richard Burr.

On Thursday, the Institute for Policy Studies will hold its 50th annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, honoring Unidos MN and La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana for their work mobilizing “communities” to “defend their rights.” Unidos MN gained widespread recognition training people to document ICE abuses in Minnesota, and in recent months has shifted to getting out the vote for the midterm elections. La Liga, also known as the Mexican Workers’ League, is a relatively recent independent union—as opposed to the dominant so-called “protection unions” in Mexico that tend to favor employers’ interests.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Aaron Eisenberg, political director for United Auto Workers Region 9A

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?
A: Region 9A represents 50,000 active and retired members across New York, New England, and Puerto Rico. After notching some amazing victories in New York this year, right now, our priorities are electing our former member Troy Jackson to the U.S. Senate in Maine, training our members to run campaigns and run for office, passing local and state legislation to strengthen worker power, winning unemployment for striking workers, and making it easier to unionize.

Q: The UAW backed insurgent—and ultimately victorious—candidates like Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York primaries this year, while many established unions supported their opponents. What did the UAW understand about this political moment that others missed?

A: In the last few years, we have had many strikes, pickets, and actions where we have called on politicians for their support. Those who showed up consistently in solidarity proved themselves to our members and earned their support in the future; those who did not were also remembered. Mayor Zohran Mamdani had been on the picket line with all eight of our UAW locals in New York City in the two years prior to his run. Claire Valdez was a unit chair in Local 2110 and was a UAW leader. Darializa Avila Chevalier was a leader within her public defense unit in Local 2325. Our members were ready to throw down for them as candidates when they ran.
Q: Winning elections is one thing. How does the union ensure that union-backed candidates deliver for working people once in office?A: Everything we do, including endorsements, aims to build beyond elections. In New York City, we have now seen the fruits of this with the creation of the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power—an office that we and other allies proposed to the administration, and which will be led by a former UAW organizing director, Tony Perlstein. We are also in consistent dialogue with our elected champions to support our members during legislative fights and contract battles, as well as on specific issues like unemployment for striking workers, universal childcare, and Medicare for All.
Q: What’s your favorite part about working in the labor movement?
A: Waking up with a sense of purpose. We have an immense challenge in front of us, and yet the power of working people coming together has overcome insurmountable obstacles time and time again. Working with members, trusting people to grow, developing new leaders, and shifting power away from the billionaire class to a multiracial, working-class mass movement is the battle of our times, and I can think of no more worthy cause.
Interview by Indigo Olivier

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

With Trump having visited Nebraska: A Nebraska Republican senator once defended a Nixon Supreme Court nominee criticized as mediocre by saying: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?” Who was he? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

A man was arrested Sunday for allegedly impersonating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and intimidating voters at a Miami polling site for Brazil’s presidential elections.

According to his arrest report, 46-year-old Danilo Alves Silva was aggressively pacing between polling locations and interacting with people who seemed to be “in fear” of him at Miami-Dade College’s Kendall Campus. He was wearing an ICE costume that he allegedly purchased on Amazon, complete with a blue “ICE raid jacket,” an ICE hat, sunglasses, jeans, and tactical boots, according to the arrest report. His face was covered with a camouflage mask and he was speaking into a handheld radio.

When confronted by detectives and sheriff’s deputies from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, Silva said that he was wearing the costume “so that I can come here to see people’s reactions.”

“The people were gathered and were clearly in fear that, as they portrayed it, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agent was interfering with their election, possibly deporting individuals,” the arrest report reads.

Silva claimed that he himself was a Brazilian voter and he changed into the ICE costume after casting his ballot, apparently just to see what would happen. To make matters worse, he attempted to bribe law enforcement officers after his arrest, telling them, “I will get you paid if you let me go.”

Brazil’s closely watched presidential election is seen by many as a referendum on President Trump’s influence in South America, pitting right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of disgraced Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, against leftist incumbent Lula da Silva. The election will move to a runoff in October.

This arrest comes amid widespread anxiety that ICE or other federal law enforcement officials at the polls may interfere in voters’ ability to cast their ballots on America’s Election Day, less than a month away. FBI Director Kash Patel himself hasn’t ruled out sending the bureau’s agents to voting locations in November, ostensibly to prevent “violations of the law,” though their presence would more likely frighten and intimidate voters. Impersonators like Silva could have the same effect.

President Trump accepted a diamond ring as a gift in June and seems to have stashed it away somewhere.

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are asking what happened to the “18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones that the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) gifted to President Trump,” in a letter addressed to the director of presidential gifts, the head of the General Services Administration, and the archivist of the United States.

“To date, we are not aware of any public reporting indicating the current location of the ring,” Warren and Blumenthal wrote in the letter, first reported by Newsweek. The AWDC, which represents the diamond trading industry in Antwerp, Belgium, delivered the ring to the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, a few weeks before the White House announced that European diamonds would be exempt from tariffs.

Warren and Blumenthal said when they asked the AWDC if the gift was a bribe to Trump, they were told it was a gift to the American people, not the president. The organization denied any connection between the tariff exemption and the ring, estimated to be worth close to $30,000, in a statement in August.

“The discussion about U.S. import ‌tariffs was entirely separate from [the gifted ‌ring],” the organization said.

In July, the White House claimed the ring had not been presented to Trump, the senators wrote. Federal law states that gifts given to the president by anyone other than a foreign government have to be screened, categorized, and evaluated by the White House Gift Office.

“If a gift is made to the President personally, it may be retained by the President, while those made out to the government of the United States are cataloged and distributed to the appropriate government agency,” Blumenthal and Warren’s letter states. “The circumstances in which AWDC gifted this ring, and the lack of clarity about its disposition, raise significant questions about whether the President has in fact accepted the ring as part of a quid pro quo agreement to reduce diamond tariffs.”

Trump has a history of taking gifts that are ethically questionable at best, like that luxury private jet from the government of Qatar. His lack of transparency could mean that the ring has been hidden away in the White House or one of his estates.

Students across France are protesting underfunded and understaffed schools, but President Donald Trump has decided to co-opt the movement for his own xenophobic aims.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday, the U.S. leader claimed that “what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” Trump wrote.

But there’s no evidence for that. Since September 17, students, parents, and teachers in 40 French cities have collectively closed hundreds of high schools in protest of poor classroom conditions and deteriorating schools, demanding smaller class sizes and better funding for the country’s educational system.

Since then, portions of the nationwide demonstration have converted some of the anger towards police brutality and the racism underlying it. Protesters have been spotted with signs reading “ACAB,” an anti-law enforcement slogan that stands for “all cops are bastards,” and “we are all antifascists.” Others have been spotted with signs expressing anger at France’s government as well as the National Rally, the country’s far-right party.

Immigration has not been a part of the conversation in France—but that hasn’t stopped far-right American thought leaders from weaponizing the protests for their own political gain stateside.

Ex-InfoWars host Alex Jones, who still owes Sandy Hook victims $1.4 billion for claiming the school shooting never happened and instead was staged by child actors, shared images of people on fire during the protests last week, falsely insisting that the demonstrations were a “racial uprising against the indigenous whites” in France.

In another post, Jones said that there were “dead bodies everywhere” as a result of the protests. In truth, zero deaths have been reported—although one student in Lens reportedly lost his hand after picking up a stun grenade fired by riot police, according to Al Jazeera.

Fox News host Tomi Lahren suggested that the protests should be a “cautionary tale” for Americans, fabricating a connection between the student protests and a supposed problem with diversity.

“This is something we’re learning from Europe, and we would be wise to learn from Europe: They decided they wanted to have open borders,” Lahren said on-air Saturday. “When you let so many people come into your country, leech off of your system, then the people who are from there are going to at some point get upset.”

But the conservative perspective appears to be completely divorced or entirely uninformed by reality—at least according to the people present in the streets.

“Young people are worried about their future, and we can understand them,” Mickaël Sauvage, a 50-year-old aerospace worker and union member that attended the protests, told The New York Times Tuesday. “The trap is that the government is pushing them to violence, so that public opinion will turn against them and their demands won’t be heard.”

John Murdock, a top conservative lawyer at the Department of the Interior, has quit over what he calls an “assault on the rule of law.”

Murdock is stepping down after 18 years at the federal agency because, as he wrote in a bombshell resignation letter obtained by The Guardian and Public Domain, “We are headed in the wrong direction.” A self-described conservative Christian, Murdock’s resignation letter makes it clear that the Trump administration’s impact on the Interior Department, and its blatant disregard for environmental regulation, has gone too far.

“Simply going fast and breaking things is not, in my view, the solution,” Murdock wrote. “Flooding the zone with shit is a strategy for producing a shitty country.”

Murdock went on to list actions outside the Interior Department that most concerned him, both as a citizen and an attorney: “Masked federal agents; the abandonment of Afghan allies; pardons and payouts for rioters and those who supported them; the rapid dismantling of USAID; our military likely committing war crimes; plus, a president who demeans the dead and sees himself as Jesus comprise a partial list of the instances that have left my mouth agape.”

The longtime lawyer also cited specific experiences he had over the course of his career. He was especially concerned by a statement from Matt Giacona, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who announced to the public that the Trump administration was “upholding the highest environmental standards” soon after completing a large oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration explicitly bypassed federal regulations in the Endangered Species Act, Murdock wrote, and Giacona lied about it with impunity. “I have seen my supervisors behave in ways that I would never have expected,” Murdock wrote.

In a response statement, a spokesperson for the Interior Department reaffirmed the agency’s devotion to Trump’s agenda. “One former employee’s personal disagreement with the Department’s policies does not transform lawful policy decisions into an ‘assault on the rule of law,’ nor does his inflammatory rhetoric make his opinion accurate,” the spokesperson said. “The Department stands firmly behind its work to implement President Trump’s agenda consistent with federal law.”

Murdock’s departure is the latest in a string of federal officials resigning in protest against the Trump administration. The Interior Department alone lost thousands of workers following Elon Musk’s DOGE escapades last year.

“I walk away from the stable salary and benefits of a government job and my retirement likely becomes less lucrative and more complicated,” Murdock wrote. But that calculation is worth it, he wrote—“I will preserve my integrity. Thankfully, the arithmetic is easy.”

In the early hours of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, Tehran targeted a makeshift tactical operations center in Kuwait, killing six U.S. military personnel and injuring more than 30 others. Not only did the Department of Defense fail to provide the personnel stationed there with the necessary tools to defend themselves, but multiple service members who were injured in the attack say their government also neglected them in the aftermath.

The Associated Press spoke to a group of nine service members who all claim that the U.S. military’s medical system failed them after they were injured in the deadly attack on March 1.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Lincón, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffered extensive injuries from shrapnel, including to his left vertebral artery, which put him at risk for a stroke. However, his injuries were not considered serious enough to get him admitted to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Instead, he was dismissed to the Army barracks and instructed to schedule outpatient appointments.

“I was just kind of on my own, at least it felt like that,” Lincón told the AP. He underwent weeks of specialized outpatient care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington. Months later, he is still struggling to receive traumatic injury benefits under the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance.

Another service member, Major Stephen Ramsbottom, said he waited over four months to receive MRI results after he had shrapnel removed from his head. “I’ve had to build my own case for everything,” Ramsbottom told the outlet. “It’s very frustrating.”

While some of the most injured service members were evacuated within two days of the attack, others weren’t so lucky.

One group was not evacuated out of Kuwait for 10 days after the attack, including Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, who had shrapnel embedded in his face and legs. When the soldiers were eventually evacuated, they were strapped to the floor of a cargo plane and taken to Germany. When the group arrived, Bearman said he learned that the military had not documented them as wounded in combat, so they would not receive medical treatment at Landstuhl. Bearman told the AP they were not documented as wounded in combat due to a coding error.

“Never did I think that if I was wounded that these things would happen,” said Bearman. “Some sacred trust that I thought would never be broken was broken.”

The military also failed to provide timely evaluations of the soldiers. Some soldiers told AP they they only learned they had traumatic brain injuries after they returned back to the United States. Many of the troops who spoke to AP did not know the severity of their own TBIs.

“It’s disappointing but not surprising,” said Dr. James Kelly, chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation, a group that studies brain injuries in the military. “In a war scenario, it goes on a fair bit.”

It seems that the Department of Defense’s failing medical system is the system working as it was designed: The Pentagon has shuttered large military hospitals in the Middle East and regularly redeploys troops after they receive a mild TBI diagnosis.

The Pentagon downplayed the severity of the retaliatory strike, and U.S. Central Command initially claimed that only five service members had been seriously wounded. The day after it happened, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the deadly strike in Kuwait “a squirter,” and later complained that reporting on the troops killed was a ploy to make the president look bad.