The Slopaganda Midterms

This election cycle is rife with “slopaganda” — that is, AI-generated “slop” used for political propaganda. In a fascinating recent piece in the Washington Post, TPM alum Matt Shuham noted that roughly 164 of these ads have appeared on TV or online, mostly in service of Republican candidates. As Matt points out, the ads are bizarre: “Political spinmeisters have used AI to dress candidates in superhero costumes, show a rifle-wielding Donald Trump in a foxhole, depict entire societies as Lego figurines, and also to put words in opponents’ mouths.” 

I encountered one of these ads in the wild last month featuring a familiar face: Marshall Rawson, the subject of my first big investigation as a reporter here at TPM. Rawson is the GOP nominee for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives and, our investigation found, a pretty extreme guy — perhaps the most extreme candidate on the ballot this November. A quick refresher: 

• Rawson was actively involved with a white supremacist group called League of the South that advocates for the southern states to secede from the U.S.
• He appeared at the infamous Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia back in 2017, and could be seen in a photo standing near James Alex Fields Jr., a neo-Nazi who drove his car into counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer
• He has condoned slavery and called for the execution of queer people 
• A lot of his campaign donors were white supremacists.

He’s running for the state House seat in a deeply conservative part of north central Florida and is widely expected to win in the general election. Rawson hasn’t denied any of my reporting, or distanced himself from his white supremacist activism. I tried my best to find a Republican who would denounce him, but came up empty. 

What I’ve seen instead over the past couple weeks is Rawson receiving public messages of support, including from his likely future colleagues in the Florida state House. Perhaps the most excitable support he’s received, however, has come from the University of Florida College Republicans. The group was only reinstated by the university last month, having been disbanded back in March following a photograph showing two of its members giving Nazi salutes. 

One of its first orders of business after being reinstated? Producing this deeply bizarre piece of slopaganda: a video featuring an AI-generated Rawson walking through an adoring crowd of Red Hats in sunglasses and a trench coat; coasting along a Florida waterway in a fanboat; and standing in a field, clad in all white, his arms outstretched, Christ-like. 

Vote @MarshallRawson for Florida House District 10 pic.twitter.com/qZC7wIjcVy

— UF College Republicans (@UFCR) September 25, 2026

The video is set to the rap song “Already” by Kodak Black — a musical selection that upset at least one of Rawson’s biggest fans. Chandler Langevin is a city councilman in Palm Bay, Florida and the executive director of the American Restoration Coalition, which a Raw Story investigation earlier this week revealed as a “Republican group with white power ties openly plots infiltration of Florida government.” Langevin and his ARC cohorts knocked on doors for Rawson during his primary campaign. 

“Video is great, music is awful. Play our music to it,” Langevin replied on X (emphasis mine), seeming to state that he didn’t like the use of a Black musician’s song. “An edit to Dixieland would go hard… Freebird goes hard in right wing edits too.” 

“You right,” the UF College Republicans account replied. 

Back in 2017, one week after I covered the “Unite The Right” rally, writer Alex Pareene penned a prescient blog in Jezebel titled “Charlottesville Was a Preview of the Future of the Republican Party.” His thesis — that the extremism of the “alt-right” would go mainstream, taking over the GOP — would become my own over the next nine years. Still, I feel like my head is spinning, staring at this little interaction on X, reflecting on just how radical the party has become. To attempt a summary: 

The GOP nominated Rawson, an unrepentant white supremacist who marched in Charlottesville, for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives. A recently re-instated college Republican group, disbanded after its members gave Nazi salutes, posted an AI slop video on X — rebranded from Twitter by a trillionaire and GOP megadonor who gave two Nazi salutes during Trump’s inauguration — in support of Rawson. The video used a song by a Black man, which upset a local Republican activist, himself part of a GOP group with white nationalist ties that is trying to put more Rawson-like extremists into Florida government positions. Despite all of this, Rawson is all but assured to be a state legislator in Tallahassee next year. 

I really did expect our politics to become this extreme. I’m just not sure I anticipated how bizarre it would be too. 

Ignore Women’s Basketball at Your Own Peril!

With every new detail, Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) mortifying attempt to make former Special Counsel Jack Smith perjure himself seems more and more bumbling. 

As everyone with an internet connection knows by now, the junior senator from Missouri had whipped up a grand plan to prove that Smith was in Atlanta the day after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) admitted to having a relationship with one of her prosecutors amid the investigation into President Donald Trump’s election interference in Georgia. That’s it. That’s the big smoking gun he was looking for: that Smith and Willis were in the same giant city for one night as proof (?) that the two were colluding in trying to take Trump down. 

But he couldn’t even muster that. When he revealed the explosive texts supposedly revealing that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game (in Atlanta!! Where Willis is!!), Smith was befuddled. Eventually, he offered that he’d attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game against the hosting Maryland Terrapins (a game, notably, much closer to Washington D.C.) around that same date to see now-Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark in action. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that Schmitt had mixed up “Hawks” with “Hawkeyes,” explaining the error. That turned out to be too generous a guess.  

The efforts of Schmitt and his staff to vet the texts — which reportedly did not include the names of the teams, but did include coordination over seat number and location — went only as far as googling which NBA games started at the time mentioned in the messages. 

“Well, we had text messages from [Smith’s] team that he was at a basketball game, and the only game at 7:30 tip-off in the NBA was in Atlanta,” Schmitt told Politico, adding, “I didn’t know he was a Caitlin Clark fan. Now we know.”

Schmitt simply forgot that women’s sports exist. It didn’t occur to him that Smith might be more interested in watching Clark rain down 38 points on the Terps’ heads amid her team’s run to the title game than to witness the dazzling spectacle of the 36-46, playoff-missing, 2024 Atlanta Hawks.

Let this be a reminder to Republicans: Everyone watches women’s sports. 

That’s the Stuff

you ok, babe? you’ve barely touched your Mr. Beast’s Feastables Liquid Death Peanut Butter Cup Soda-Flavored Sparkling Water pic.twitter.com/E7UzFvhRsP

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) September 28, 2026

How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?

1. Name two states where the Senate seats look increasingly out of reach for Republicans, causing the party to pull back on funding and ad buys. 
2. This vulnerable Republican announced he’d break with Donald Trump on key issues, criticizing the admin’s withholding of infrastructure funds for blue states like his.
3. Which two basketball teams did Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt (MO) confuse while spectacularly failing to frame former special counsel Jack Smith with perjury?

Answers below

Tell Us How You Really Feel

“If you’re evil you are at least competent. If you’re evil, you’re not bad. You’re actually maybe kind of good. You’re at least getting something done.” – Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel

Ken Paxton Got Ridiculed for Nothing

The blows just keep coming for Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton. In new audio leaked to the New York Times, the state’s Republican attorney general admitted that President Trump’s weird September midterms convention in Dallas actually hurt his campaign. “When we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped,” Paxton said at a private event with conservative lobbyists and donors. It is perhaps a bit rich for Paxton to be pointing fingers at Trump, since he’s done a great job at making voters dislike him all on his own. The guy was already unpopular in Texas, where state lawmakers from his own party voted to impeach him over allegations of bribery and unfitness for office. While he survived that effort, the stink of corruption didn’t go away; a focus group of Texas swing voters recently used the words “crook,” “crooked,” “amoral” and “disgusting” to describe him to the New York Times. Paxton only won the primary because of a last-minute endorsement from Trump, and has been languishing in the polls against Democrat James Talarico. The president has lately taken to kicking the AG while he’s down, mocking him at the Dallas convention as not “the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen” and following up with these recent remarks at the White House: “Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses. And I say this — it’s so insulting to him, but I might as well say it — you might not like the way he looks. You might not love his look. You might not love his television interviews, but he was the best attorney general in the country.” Hope it’s all been worth it, Ken!

Sure, Sounds Chill

The Trump administration has spent months trying to put its thumb on the scale in the midterms, from igniting a nationwide redistricting war to trying to seize detailed voter records from the states. Admin officials have also repeatedly threatened to post federal troops at polling places just, you know, in case. All of this flies in the face of plain constitutional language mandating that the states have primary oversight over election administration.

Mike Collins, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, totally gets that. He is, he said this week, “a firm believer in local elections are state and local level.” He’s such a believer in local elections, in fact, that he thinks it would be “fine” to have federal troops at polling places in order to ensure that people “have confidence in their elections.” Got it!  

The Influencer Grifters Working Hand in Glove With Trump + Co.

Josh Kovensky joined the excellent Posting Through It podcast to talk through some of the “content creators for the authoritarian state.” We’re talking Nick Shirley, Tyler Oliveira, Savanah Hernandez, Nick Sortor and some of the other online influencers who push out propaganda for the Trump administration, particularly on immigration. (Some have even embedded with ICE on ride-alongs and toured detention facilities). 

“You can see them giving and taking. You can see the symbiosis, right?” Josh says. “[They’re] with administration officials telling them what they think is happening and the officials are responding in real time, responding with what they’re going to do in terms of federal policy.”

Department of False Equivalencies

This summer’s wave of progressive primary victories was met with a flood of articles fretting over whether Democrats were seeing the rise of a “Tea Party of the left.” University of Pittsburgh associate professor Paul Elliott Johnson explained why those comparisons don’t hold up to scrutiny. 

Tea Partiers were motivated by an anti-systemic energy that had deeper roots than the current ire of Democratic voters, and the demographics of the GOP meant the party ultimately embraced a “burn it down” approach to governance. The insurgent left within the Democratic coalition remains focused on conventional liberal issues like human rights, affordability, and taxing the wealthy. 

why does the WaPo print headline on the botched TN execution read like The Onion

— Chris Ingraham (@cingraham.bsky.social) 2026-10-02T12:43:47.565Z

Trivia answers: 1) North Carolina, Georgia 2) Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) 3) The Atlanta Hawks and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes

Breaking Down the Different Flavors of GOP Midterms Cope

It’s never a good sign when the Senate Majority Leader suggests the election prospects for his own party look grim. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) admitted in a recent interview that he believes even losing Senate control in the midterms to be a real possibility for the GOP, saying, “I worry about that, for sure.” 

Donald Trump is largely responsible for this situation. He’s fully leaned into unpopular policies (building AI data centers, going to war in Iran, launching trade wars with allies, etc.) that have driven up prices, and, despite his dismal approval rating, is insisting there’s no daylight between himself and the rest of the party. As he said at his weird fake midterms convention in Dallas, “Pretend that I am on the ballot.” 

Even accounting for all the usual caveats about poll margins, it does seem like the Democrats are on track to have a strong midterms cycle. So Republican candidates are experimenting with different flavors of cope as they look towards Election Day. Nicole and John have tracked some of this in Where Things Stand and The Brief, respectively, so we tried to come up with some handy categorizations. Here’s what we’ve got.

All Aboard the Islamophobia and Red Scare Express

Some red state MAGA loyalists are playing the culture war hits, trying to keep the focus on nonexistent crises rather than any of the issues actually affecting their voters. We’re talking Sharia takeovers, communist creep, and stolen elections. As Josh Kovensky reported earlier this year, Texas Republicans Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for reelection, and Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Senate nominee, pioneered the strategy of targeting the local Muslim community in their midterms messaging. Abbott spent the summer fighting “a proposed mosque-anchored housing development outside Dallas” and “campaigning against what he calls the imposition of Islamic law,” per The Guardian.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the gubernatorial nominee in Alabama, has taken it upon himself to become a foremost critic of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a “TERRORIST” and “RADICAL ISLAMIST” who would “do everything he can to destroy America.” 

Other Republicans are red-baiting their hearts out, with Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) claiming that Medicare for All is a “communist” policy and Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) labeling Democratic immigration policies “crazy communism.” 

Self-proclaimed “MAGA warrior” Mike Collins is going for an “all of the above” approach in his Georgia Senate race, promoting xenophobia; pushing 2020 Big Lie conspiracies; and advocating to compensate some people prosecuted for Jan. 6. (Meanwhile, he’s doing little to distance himself from the many racist extremists in his orbit — including in his family.)

Flirting With Criticism

Republicans in swing states and seats are trying to toe the line, breaking with Trump on specific issues, particularly ones germane to their states or districts. They’re leveling targeted criticism and trying to display independence.

So you’ve got midwestern Senate nominees Mike Rogers in Michigan and Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa calling for an end to the Iran War, saying soaring gas and grocery prices are harming their voters. Both previously supported the war. Last week, Iowa Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks even voted to support removing U.S. forces from Iran.

Rogers has also bucked Trump’s AI boosterism, calling for a “national security framework” on the technology and for a one-year moratorium on new construction in Michigan. Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) has gone further in his reelection campaign, sponsoring legislation to make data centers pay their own utility bills.

In Florida, Rep. María Elvira Salazar used her first TV ad of the general election to warn that Trump will lose Latino voters thanks to his overly aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportation policies. Salazar, who serves as assistant whip, claims that she risks losing her seat in a district Trump won by 15 points. 

Trump Will Always Be Daddy

While most vulnerable Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Trump, a brave few are hugging him tight. Take Eric Flores, who is running in a South Texas district currently represented by a Democrat, and where Latino voters will determine the result. Praising Trump’s immigration policies, Flores told Fox, “When people say that folks are running away from President Trump, I’ll tell you, I’m certainly not doing that. And let me tell you why: Because he has made promises to South Texas, and he has kept them, especially when we look at border security.” 

We Don’t Know Him

Probably the funniest genre of response comes from Republicans pretending that Trump straight-up doesn’t exist. As John noted in the Brief this week, several Republicans have stripped mentions of Trump from their campaign websites, including Florida congressional candidate Mike Beltran, Iowa congressional candidate Joe Mitchell, and, most recently and notably, Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Daniels. 

Team ‘We’ll Defy Expectations!’ 

Despite all indications that Democrats seem likely to take back the House, Speaker Mike Johnson insists Republicans are going to defy history and “grow the majority.” 

“It’s a contrast election, and people are making a contrast between common-sense solutions and candidates, and really crazy, which is represented by the other side,” Johnson told Fox News Digital in September. “I am very bullish about the outcome on election night.”

Rep. Ryan McKenzie (R-PA), who spoke at the GOP convention, also predicted Republicans are “actually going to defy the historic trends. Why is that? Because the Democrats are so far left they are totally out of touch.”

GOPers Blame Americans’ Data Center Opposition on China

Watching the Super Bowl last winter, I saw a commercial from my local electricity company that seemed a little… political.

Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) was trying to convey something to me that seemed tangentially related to bipartisan data center opposition that has been rising nationwide and is especially poignant in the D.C., Maryland, Virginia corridor also known as “Data Center Alley.” 

“Private power plant companies that control our power supply are failing to meet demand,” the ad said, with PRIVATE POWER PLANT and CONTROL OUR SUPPLY in capital, neon letters. “When there’s a shortage, prices go up.”

The ad was indirect but — and without speaking to the merit of its intentions — the vibe was pretty obviously trying to leverage public outrage about skyrocketing electricity bills related to energy demands from AI data centers. I was struck by the idea that my electric company would wade in any way into such a charged political issue — a self-interested energy corporation joining hands with riled-up townspeople and climate activists against a common enemy.

If you ask Reps. Jason Smith (R-MO) and John Moolenaar (R-MI), that enemy is the Chinese Communist Party.

Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means committee, and Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on China, sent a letter Tuesday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano blaming American data center opposition on an orchestrated disinformation campaign supported by the Chinese government. Yes, you did read that right.

“This is not an organic grassroots movement,” Smith said of data center opposition. Instead, Chinese-backed nonprofits are being used to “manipulate public discourse surrounding the technological infrastructure necessary to win the AI race.”

Smith and Moolenaar’s proof? An OpenAI report which found Chinese-linked influence over social media content “claiming that data center construction was raising electricity prices.” (It is.) And a report that X, owned by AI mogul Elon Musk, identified 200 bots posting anti-AI stuff on the site. OpenAI found no evidence that the campaign it uncovered influenced public opinion.

Instead, data shows that 58% of registered voters believe data center construction by big companies will do more harm than good, according to a September NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released Wednesday. 

Data centers are even more unattractive when they’re local, with 60% of Americans, including 54% of Republicans, responding that they would not be comfortable with a data center in their communities, according to a Pew Research survey published Tuesday. And Pew’s survey also found negative sentiment about data centers increased by 16 points among Republicans between January and August.

This feels like an issue uniting Americans across party lines in grassroots opposition, driven not only by NIMBYism, or even by the documented harms to climate posed by energy-sucking super computers, but also by the desire of the everyman to stand up against entities they believe pose a direct risk to their immediate communities and their pockets.

In attempting to blame anti-AI sentiment on a foreign adversary, Smith and Moolenaar have opted to follow their leader, President Donald Trump, off the “AI opposition is a hoax” cliff. 

Trump has said opposing data center construction will make communities “backwards and poor”; tried to prohibit states from regulating AI; included expanded tax benefits for data center construction in his “Big, Beautiful Bill”; and called disconcerting warnings from AI company CEOs about the risks AI pose to humanity a “hoax.” This week, he’s trying to rebrand the tech from artificial intelligence to superintelligence, a move which may conjure unintended connotations.

The president’s contrary positions on AI and data center construction have pushed Republican politicians, especially those facing competitive midterms, to split from Trump.

While Smith and Moolenaar are both up for reelection, they’re in uncompetitive districts ranked by Cook Political Report as solidly Republican. But Ohio Republican Jon Husted is facing backlash to his once-strong support for data centers as he’s locked in a dead heat with former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). Other Senate Republicans are pushing to support Husted’s bill focused on shielding people’s electricity bills from data center energy usage hikes. In Texas, Democrats are hoping their early opposition to data centers can help them win statewide office for the first time in more than two decades. And at least 27 states have passed legislation that datacentertracker.com categorizes as “favorable for communities.”

For what it’s worth, Twitter’s former head of corporate communications told Axios all evidence points to data center gripes being authentic, not the product of a “Chinese psyop.”

“If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something,” communications consultant Jim Prosser told Axios, “it’s probably not a Chinese psyop. It’s probably not a mass delusion people are having on these issues.”

5 Year Plans

no dad, owning a successful lesbian covid conscious bar in western mass was YOUR dream. I’M going to clown school

— leah (@kmewisfc) September 23, 2026

How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?

1. Who was the anonymous White House source cited in the Politico story Trump is using to justify denying the publication access because the reporting “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods”?
2. After effectively shutting down the Kennedy Center when he wasn’t allowed to put his name on it, which culturally significant national landmark is Trump apparently trying to slap his name on next? 
3. Which musician was scheduled to headline a MAGA music festival that ended up getting canceled because it failed to sell more than a handful of VIP tickets?

Answers below

Anti-Vax or Pro Rock?

Campaigning for state auditor in Minnesota, failed gubernatorial candidate and real-life doctor Scott Jensen wants to know why western medicine keeps ignoring the science — from hundreds of years ago. Jensen’s medical license has been challenged for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and he has admitted to “quietly” being a member of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS/AFD), known for its anti-vaccine activism and for its founder, Simone Gold, being involved in Jan. 6. As Jensen told an interviewer, “The notion of electromagnetic powers, of minerals, and rocks, and things like that, that could have curative capabilities, we’ve ignored.” 

Given the widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging machines and the countless rock and mineral-derived chemicals used in modern medicine, we’re uncertain who the “we” is here. But sure, Dr. Jensen, go on. “We” would recommend a bong hit first, but know that your views on legalized weed have changed, despite co-authoring a bill supporting legalization in 2019. Not sure what you have against plants, but good luck with your rocks.

Knowing Where You Live is the Robot’s Job Now

“There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.” — Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company

Maybe This Should Have Been the Strategy All Along

Trivia answers: 1) JD Vance 2) The Ford Theatre 3) Kid Rock, of course