Subtle Trump Distancing May Not Be Enough

Republican Rep. Thomas Kean Jr (R-NJ) may be best known on the national scene as the son of the former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and the Republican member of Congress who piqued curiosities when he missed months of votes earlier this year, later to reveal he had been hospitalized for depression. He’s also the Republican incumbent in a key battleground House race coming up next month where he faces an increasingly popular Democratic candidate in a race that the Cook Political Report now rates as “lean Democratic.”

Projections about the race started to shift in mid-September. While Kean was able to flip New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District back in 2022 (mind you, after the seat went to a Democrat for the first time in decades in 2018) and he won reelection by five percentage points in 2024, President Trump won the district by just about 1 point the same year. So, it was hardly an exercise in bravery when he decided to aggressively break with Trump on a few key issues during debates with his Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett last month.

But Kean was one of the first Republican candidates this cycle to break with Trump on an issue that TPM has been following closely throughout Trump’s second term, as he innovates on the idea of political retribution against his perceived political foes and those who did not vote for him for president. I wrote about Kean breaking with Trump in detail here, but, in essence, Kean, on the debate stage, stood up for the infrastructure projects that Trump’s White House decided to shut down as part of some Russ Vought-led anti-DEI retribution campaign against blue state and city officials in the New York City/New Jersey area.

“I will challenge anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” Kean said last month, when asked about the Trump administration’s freeze on federal funding for the Gateway rail tunnel project — a $16 billion infrastructure renovation plan for the tunnels that connect Manhattan to New Jersey.

But the distancing from Trump may not be enough. It appears that Republican congressional leadership has all but written off his reelection campaign as a lost cause. While both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have traveled to District 7 to stump for Kean and Bennett, respectively, the New York Times reported last week that there is a pretty glaring sign that the Republican Party has abandoned Kean’s bid. Per the Times:

Top Republican super PACs aligned with President Trump and congressional Republican leadership are cutting off financial support for two Republican House members seeking re-election, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.

The decision represents the first instance this cycle of national Republican groups abandoning incumbents as the party scrambles to prevent more widespread losses in the midterm elections.

Officials with the two super PACs decided to cancel all remaining advertising booked for Representative Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa over the weekend after internal G.O.P. polling had showed their re-election chances dimming.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, the political action committee aligned with Johnson, is reportedly “redirecting $10 million from the seats it is effectively ceding in Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio and spreading it across 16 new districts, two of the people said,” in the Times’ words.

Campaign finance filings from last week show that Bennett out-raised Kean by more than $2 million last quarter, though Kean still holds a cash advantage overall. Despite signs of a potential flip, Kean’s campaign is projecting confidence he’ll hold the seat.

“This is still a very well-funded effort that will be at parity with our opponents,” Harrison Neely, a spokesperson for his campaign said. “And historically, that hasn’t been the case in this district, we’ve always been outspent.”

‘We Are Not Impressed by Their Case’

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has escalated its pre-midterm crusade against California, using the myth of widespread noncitizen voting as its justification for novel and bizarre adventures to try to undercut trust in elections ahead of the midterms.

Just last week, the DOJ sent a letter to election officials in Los Angeles demanding election administrators take a series of actions after claiming it found thousands of noncitizens who were registered to vote in the state. DOJ officials laid out a list of steps they wanted local election administrators to take to ensure that these people, who it alleged were “likely noncitizen voters,” didn’t receive mail-in ballots or have their votes counted.

Since then, the Justice Department has also sued the state of California and threatened investigations and the potential prosecution of any election worker in the state who might knowingly process ballots from noncitizen voters. The DOJ has previously issued similar warnings to election officials across the nation.

Noncitizens voting in federal election is vanishingly rare and there is no evidence to show that it has impacted the outcome of any federal election. But President Trump and his allies roll out the conspiracy theory that it is widespread anytime he loses, or thinks he’s about to lose, an election, as TPM has reported for years.

On Monday, federal law enforcement arrested 11 people and charged 28 people residing in California, accusing them of making false statements and submitting fraudulent voter registrations. Each of the people charged have legal status in the U.S. but are not U.S. citizens, the DOJ said. The Justice Department is calling the sweep of arrests “Operation Protect the Vote.” The DOJ in an online statement accused California election officials of not properly maintaining the state’s voter rolls and ignoring its wild claims that there are some 20,000 noncitizens registered in the state.

My colleague David Kurtz got into the DOJ’s potentially unfounded accusations in Morning Memo a bit more last week, which you can catch up on here. There are plenty of reason to be suspicious of the DOJ’s claim that it has found tens of thousands of noncitizens on California’s voter rolls. The DOJ has been trying to force states to hand over their voter lists and/or to run their voter rolls through a faulty federal database that has a poor track record with finding eligible voters to be ineligible. Courts across the nation have blocked the DOJ’s campaign to seize voting records from states.

California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters on Monday that there is not a widespread issue with voter fraud in California and described the DOJ’s arrests as “a drop in the bucket” of the state’s 23 million registered voters.

“They provided no — no basis, fact, evidence, substantiation, backing for that allegation, all they provided was a list of people and nothing about why they’re purportedly ineligible,” Bonta said, referencing the DOJ’s claims that it’s identified 20,000 noncitizens on California’s voter rolls.

“If they have such information we would be happy to review it, but they’ve provided none. And what words they’re using are very important,” Bonta continued. “They’re not saying that ‘we have conclusive proof,’ they’re not saying ‘we know,’ they’re not even saying ‘we think we know.’ They’re saying ‘we believe it’s likely.'”

Bonta then brought up the last time that the Justice Department claimed to have found tens of thousands of noncitizen voters in Nevada earlier this year. Those claims fizzled out entirely.

“We are not impressed by their case, we are not impressed by their position. Our north start is the law and the facts and they have neither on their side,” he said. “We believe their case is meritless and we’ll make our position very clear in court.”

Of Course a 2020 Fake Elector Is Involved in This Saga

As key members of the Trump administration refuse to give straight answers about whether they intend to send armed federal agents to polling places in a few weeks — which is against federal law — Wisconsin election officials are grappling with the vacuum that that ambiguity has created.

For more than a year, we’ve been covering the wishy-washy responses from Trump administration officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to serious questions about the matter. President Trump has remained vague on the issue as well. The reason executive branch officials are facing questions about whether this is something they’re considering is twofold. The Trump administration has made it clear it has every intention of pulling out all the stops to interfere in states’ rights to administer their own elections, and Trump’s election denying allies outside the administration (e.g. Steve Bannon) are agitating around the idea. Trump himself has also expressed profound regret about not enlisting members of the military to seize voting equipment in 2020.

Hegseth has creatively dodged on the matter repeatedly in public, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee back in April that he has “never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won’t” when questioned about deploying service members to voting sites. Patel and Mullin have been a bit less slimy about it by essentially admitting its something they’ve thought about doing. Patel recently told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he plans to have agents and intelligence analysts stationed at FBI field offices during the election in case there are any election security-related issues that need to be investigated. And Mullin has walked a similar line that leaves the door open for armed officers at polling places in particular (if far-fetched) circumstances.

“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” he said last month.

Election officials are now being forced to step in and address the potential for disruption should the administration concoct some sort of emergency justification for sending armed federal officers to key precincts. Federal law prevents the government from sending any armed troops, agents or officers to polling place unless it is to “repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted on Thursday to sign off on guidance that will be sent to local election officials to help them navigate such a situation. Here’s what the guidance says, according to the Associated Press:

The memo tells Wisconsin’s roughly 1,800 clerks who administer elections what to do if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Department of Homeland Security officials, FBI agents or local law enforcement shows up at the polls.

If officers arrive, the guidance says the head of the polling site should inform the municipal clerk, who should then tell the county clerk and the state elections commission. If the agents are there to observe, they must check in like any other observer and be subject to rules governing them, the guidance says.

Only one member of the board, a Republican, reportedly voted against sending out the guidance, in comments that actively diminished the threat and potential for major disenfranchisement in key parts of the country.

“I personally think this guidance is unnecessary because we have not seemed to need it the past 201 years,” Republican Commissioner Bob Spindell said, per the AP.

It may not surprise you to learn that Spindell was one of Trump’s fake electors in Wisconsin during the 2020 election.

A Texas Energy Company, Dr Phil & Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Friends

President Trump made one key motivation of his imperialistic ambitions in Greenland clear in a Truth Social post early this morning, claiming that a “massive oil, gas and mineral exploration” was set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland!”

He is referencing the paltry-for-the-U.S. security deal that he was able to eke out of Greenland and Denmark last month, which Trump has hailed as some sort of victory for his longtime vision of the U.S. taking Greenland under its control. In reality, Denmark, the U.S. and Greenland signed an agreement in September that allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. It appears as though the deal has, for now, quieted Trump’s broader ambitions to take the island by force.

The deal does not give the U.S. any new mining or drilling rights and Greenland banned all future oil drilling back in 2021. Greenland officials have already combatted Trump’s statement, according to CNN:

While Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm acknowledged that “there are activities by US companies,” he told CNN that “we are very far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”

“There are many smaller explorations underway but these could take years to become operational,” he added, echoing researchers who have pointed out the difficulties and enormous expense involved in extracting resources from Greenland.

I haven’t really seen anyone mention this in their coverage so I wanted to elevate some reporting I did a few months back about a Trump-linked Dr. Phil drilling project that is in the works in Greenland — and almost certainly what Trump is referring to here (Reuters does mention the project in passing in its coverage of Trump’s remarks). The connection becomes more explicit in this line of Trump’s Truth Social post:

There are Experts that are saying that the amount of easily available Oil is far greater than that of almost any land, anywhere in the World and, even more importantly, from a Security Purpose in the Defense and Offense of both the United States of America, and Europe, is second to none.

Trump is likely referring to the project that a Texas-based firm, Greenland Energy, is trying to embark on in Greenland’s remote Nunap Qeqqa, or Jameson Land. Greenland Energy executives have claimed they have reason to believe that $1 trillion worth of crude oil may lie beneath the surface of Jameson Land. 

Reports surfaced in August suggesting the company was readying resources to begin drilling in the region, even though it did not yet have permission from local officials or the Greenland government to do so. The government is currently still reviewing whether Greenland Energy has the right to drill in the area due to its partnership with a UK company that secured the rights to drill in Jameson Land before the 2021 ban.

I wrote about the whole thing extensively here. But in essence, the Texas-based Greenland Energy project had Trump’s finger-prints all over it before he made things so explicit in this post. Executives for the company have mentioned “disruptions to key shipping corridors, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz” as a motivating factor for embarking on the project and Dr. Phil’s media company has partnered with Greenland Energy to make a docu-series about the drilling venture.

Add to the fact that Greenland Energy personnel have close and obvious ties to Trump and his hegemonic salivating over Greenland, per my piece back in August:

The signs were all there before Trump shouted about them on Truth Social just after midnight last night.

— Nicole LaFond

Trump Doesn’t Like When Women Act Corrupt in Public

President Trump stood by his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she weathered the blanketgate news cycle (when she reportedly screamed at a Coast Guard pilot after her blankie went missing); as she faced affair allegations; as she fashioned herself into the face of his administration’s ruthless immigration crackdown with her social media cosplaying; throughout the entire, disastrous Minneapolis operation.

It wasn’t until reports surfaced suggesting she had inappropriately doled out contracts to friends and spent millions of the department’s budget on advertisements that mostly featured her riding horseback near American landmarks — and Republicans began asking questions about it — that Trump pulled the rug out from under her. During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, Noem claimed Trump had signed off on the ads — the death knell to her career atop the agency carrying out the most barbaric aspects of Trump’s second term agenda.

While former Fox News darling-turned Trump family member-turned ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle officially accepted her ousting from Trump world in a post on Twitter Tuesday afternoon, her tale is similar. She faced the president’s wrath only because she did not hide her corruption well enough.

Allegations about Guilfoyle’s conduct while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Greece — a position she was given around the time Don Jr. broke off their engagement and moved on to a Miami socialite — began surfacing in the Wall Street Journal in September. The reported conduct included allegedly threatening a Greek official, reportedly trying to bribe a Trump donor with influence in exchange for paying a credit card bill, and allegedly accepting improper gifts. Guilfoyle has denied the allegations and continued to deny them as she announced she’d leave the post Tuesday. But Trump began hinting on Monday that the hammer might soon drop. That’s potentially because the latest reporting from the WSJ on the Guilfoyle allegations included damning quotes from Guilfoyle doing the corruption, on a recording.

“Well, we’re looking at it,” Trump told reporters Monday when asked about the allegations. “We’re not happy.”

By Tuesday morning, Trump’s new press secretary confirmed her departure during the White House press briefing, and Guilfoyle posted a long message on X about her devotion to Trump world — despite the brutal and public sacking.

Serving as the United States Ambassador to Greece has been the honor of a lifetime. I will forever be grateful to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for entrusting me with the extraordinary privilege of representing the greatest country in the history of…

— Kimberly Guilfoyle (@kimguilfoyle) October 13, 2026

About That New Press Secretary

A Calculated Delay

The Trump Justice Department has mapped out its coming attack on mifepristone — much thirsted for by anti-abortion advocates, but deliberately delayed to avoid midterm backlash — in a new court filing. 

The first step to imposing new restrictions (or reimposing ones previously lifted) is to conduct a “safety review.” Experts often point out that there are few drugs that have been studied and scrutinized as much as mifepristone, making the pretense of discovering some heretofore unknown risk factor fairly absurd.  

“FDA is on track to obtain study results by mid-December 2026,” DOJ wrote of its review. “FDA will then need to review and evaluate/interpret the results and draft a report. FDA expects to complete that process not later than March 2027.” 

The agency will then use those “findings” to justify a change to mifepristone’s REMS — Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy — or restrictions meant to police the use of highly dangerous drugs. Mifepristone’s safety profile has never justified these restrictions, but the anti-abortion movement’s decades of smearing the drug as unsafe has successfully made it harder to get under Republican and Democratic FDAs alike. 

The Biden administration took the largest strides yet in removing some of these barriers. Most importantly, it lifted the in-person dispensing requirement, which has allowed patients even in red states to be prescribed the medicine over telehealth by doctors in blue ones, and receive it in the mail. So far, blue state shield laws have protected those providers from prosecution by red states, though a massive legal reckoning on these state jurisdictional issues is certainly coming. 

That Biden-era REMS change is the crux of a Louisiana lawsuit against the FDA seeking to restrict mifepristone, with the state arguing that allowing the drug to be remotely prescribed and mailed undermines its abortion ban and forces it to expend money on Medicaid patients that have mifepristone-related complications. This week’s filing is part of that lawsuit. Historically, these lawsuits have struggled to amass legitimate examples of such mifepristone-related injuries, and Louisiana’s complaint leans heavily on state sovereignty. 

The DOJ filing stated that the FDA is looking at the in-person dispensing requirement in particular. 

“Following completion of its study and review, FDA will decide whether changes to the Mifepristone REMS Program are necessary and, if applicable, initiate any such changes in accordance with established processes,” it said. “FDA anticipates that it will be able to provide an update to its estimated date of completion as more information becomes known, particularly in March 2027 when it expects to complete its report on the final study results.” 

This filing is as much a signal to the anti-abortion movement as it is an attempt to get Louisiana to cool it until the midterms are safely finished and the FDA can do the dirty work itself. Activists have been outraged at the lack of movement in President Donald Trump’s second term, though they were somewhat assuaged when he nominated Heidi Overton — who has called mifepristone “dangerous to women” and celebrated Dobbs — as the new FDA commissioner. She has not yet received a confirmation vote. 

A ‘Bad Faith’ Crusade

The Trump Justice Department went to court Wednesday to continue its fishing expedition for the most sensitive information about trans children.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in two parallel cases: one in which a federal district judge in Massachusetts quashed a subpoena of Boston Children’s Hospital, and one in which a federal district judge in Texas upheld a subpoena of Rhode Island Hospital while a federal judge in Rhode Island quashed it. 

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. The DOJ sued Rhode Island Hospital in the northern district of Texas, a blatant attempt to try the case in a region full of Trump judges. The child advocate for the state of Rhode Island responded in kind, moving to quash the subpoena in the less right-wing (and more relevant) district court of Rhode Island. 

“The government moved to enforce a subpoena in a Texas court 1,500 miles from the hospital, its many patients and the records sought by the subpoena — records including personal information for an entire class of minor patients,” said Eric Olshan, the attorney for the hospital. 

“Is forum shopping evidence of bad faith?” asked Judge Lara Montecalvo, as the hospital and child advocate argued that the subpoenas are not part of a legitimate investigation under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act — as the government claims — but an attempt to endanger trans kids.

The “quagmire” of the dueling courts, as Judge Ojetta Thompson put it, tangled up the second set of arguments, as the judges tried to figure out what happens if they decide the case one way and the Fifth Circuit does the other way.  

But the heart of both cases is clear, argued the hospitals: The government is abusing its broad investigatory powers to attack trans kids under the pretense of probing drug labeling and prescription. And it’s doing so this way to circumvent the reality that policing the practice of medicine is the job of the states — the better to pierce the shield of protection many blue states have erected around gender affirming care. Making life as difficult as possible for trans kids and adults in states Republicans control isn’t enough; the Trump administration wants to stamp out every safe haven. And it’s working: Even hospitals in blue states are dropping gender affirming care rather than fighting the full might of the Justice Department. 

“The government has made explicitly clear its detest for these individuals,” said Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, attorney for Boston Children’s Hospital. “It has said, in connection with transgender military people, that they are incapable of service and honor and dignity.” 

“They know that asking for that information is going to keep those people from getting the care they need,” he added. 

Alito’s October Surprise

Justice Samuel Alito said that he plans to stay on the bench through the current Supreme Court session, part of a rare spate of interviews he gave in recent days to promote his new book.

“I intend to stick around through this term,” he told Bloomberg Law. “I made that decision many months ago.” The current Court term will end in June. 

The comments run counter to Republicans’ break-glass plan, should Democrats take the Senate: Coerce Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, both in their seventies, to step down so they can be replaced by younger conservatives during the lame duck.

“It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement,” Alito told CBS when asked about the strategy.

It’s not, in fact, hard to imagine what kind of nominee President Donald Trump would replace the two with, though their reluctance to retire does put Republicans at some amount of risk. If Democrats win the Senate, Alito and Thomas would have to survive until Republicans win it back to maintain the right-wing supermajority on the Court. Alito is 76 and Thomas 78.

If Democrats do get a majority in the upper chamber this November, leadership is saying they won’t greenlight Trump’s judicial nominees, still smarting from Republicans’ theft of Merrick Garland’s seat and ramming through of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination just before the 2020 election. 

“The bottom line is: One of the reasons we want to do everything we can to take back the Senate is not let Trump put such horrible justices — MAGA justices — on the Supreme Court and the lower courts,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told NBC.

Schumer’s inclusion of lower courts is notable, as vacancies there are certain. During his two terms, Trump has appointed nearly 300 federal judges across district and appellate courts (plus his three appointments to the Supreme Court). These courts dwarf the Supreme Court in the number of rulings they issue. 

These dynamics up the ante for Democrats to not only win a Senate majority, but a Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA)-proof majority. Fetterman became the first Democrat to return a “blue slip,” which lets district court judge nominees from their home states be considered in committee, this June. He’s not alone, though, in his willingness to let Trump reshape the federal judiciary in his image: 19 Democrats have voted to confirm at least one Trump judge in his second term.

Giddy Democrats Get Another Kansas Senate Shock

Editor’s note: Nicole is taking some much-deserved time off around her birthday this week, so other TPM staffers will be filling in on Where Things Stand. She’ll be back on Tuesday Oct. 13.

‘So That No One Will Escape’

So-called “challenge coins” have become particularly popular souvenirs in the Trump era. Some have been distributed at the highest levels of government and inside facilities playing a key role in the deportation surge. Others are novelty items popular among both fans and foes of the current administration. And one being sold online as a token of an ICE division in Arizona features a particularly dark comment about “hunting” people. 

The coin in question was listed for sale on eBay and is branded “U.S. ERO Yuma ICE.” Along with a snarling wolf-like creature, the coin, which is in the shape of a police badge, features two twisted mottoes.

“There is no hunting like the hunting of man,” it says.

On the other side, the coin has a small emblem with a horse’s head emblazoned over crossed swords and the phrase “NE QUIS EFFUGIAT,” which is Latin for “So that no one will escape.” That second ominous slogan also popped up in court documents that alleged a federal agent who used a prohibited chokehold on an immigrant in Massachusetts during a traffic stop was wearing a hat emblazoned with the motto.  

While it is not clear that the “hunting of man” coin is an official government product, ERO is the abbreviation for “Enforcement Removal Operations,” which is an ICE division that, per the agency’s website, “manages all aspects of the immigration enforcement process, including the identification, arrest, detention and removal” of people who are in the country illegally. As a result, it has played a key role in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

The eBay seller who listed the coin described it as being from Yuma, Arizona, where ICE has had an ERO presence. While the seller did not respond to a request for comment from TPM, their eBay store page indicates they are a manufacturer based in China. Their other offerings include challenge coins associated with military units, local sheriff’s departments, and other federal law enforcement agencies. 

Along with the other slogans and the snarling animal, the coin features desert imagery, a watchtower, and the words “SILENT,” “PATIENT,” and “RELENTLESS.” 

Challenge coins have long been a tradition at various government agencies, particularly among military and law enforcement. During Trump’s second term, several top administration officials have apparently crafted and distributed their own challenge coins including former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, who had an especially elaborate custom piece featuring the Punisher logo, and the president himself. 

Within the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, challenge coins have been created and handed out by officials; private, not-for-profit employee associations within the agency; and more unofficial sources like unions, outside political groups, and merchandisers. The coins have become popular with collectors in addition to members of the government. 

An ICE spokesperson provided a statement to TPM saying the coin was not “purchased with department funds or produced through official department channels.” The spokesperson did not answer a question about whether the agency had any concerns about the coin.

Back in April, we reported on a challenge coin that was distributed to staff inside of a federal building in Minnesota that served as a hub for the controversial “Metro Surge” operation that led to a surge of deportations and detentions around Minneapolis. At the time, a DHS spokesperson provided a statement indicating the department and its component agencies had processes for reviewing “branded merchandise” and for addressing “coins or patches that may not have been properly approved.”

Since doing that story, we have kept an eye on the robust online marketplace for ICE-themed challenge coins. New items consistently pop up. Like other law enforcement challenge coins, they often feature violent and offensive imagery. For example, one recent eBay listing for a coin branded “NYC ERO” was decorated with a depiction of the Statue of Liberty as a menacing skeleton. The ICE spokesperson also said that coin was not “purchased with department funds or produced through official department channels.” 

The eBay seller offering the Liberty coin for sale indicated it had been crafted for federal agents. In a message to TPM, they said their coins “are either sourced directly from other agencies or directly from the manufacturer who has been charged with the distribution of the coins on behalf of the agency or a particular unit within the agency.” 

“This one came directly from the manufacturer,” they added.

Whether these twisted tokens are coming from inside ICE or simply from the agency’s fans, they are a telling symbol of our current moment. They are evidence that, for some people in this country, the promise of Lady Liberty welcoming the huddled masses yearning to breathe free has been replaced with a vision of hunting down humans and a far more disturbing motto: No one will escape. 

‘Nearly Every Claim Uttered in These Ads Is False’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has joined other Democrats this week in demanding answers about President Trump’s midterms campaign ads — which promote nothing but himself — and the apparent use of taxpayer dollars to finance them.

I wrote earlier this week about the top Democratic appropriators in Congress calling for investigations into the ads and confirming reports that the White House moved some $20 million in taxpayer funds out of the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the vanity project. Raskin and Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Tuesday to look into the reported shuffling of funds.

“Accordingly, we are writing to formally request that the GAO investigate the source, accounts, and total amount of taxpayer funds used by the Executive Office of the President to produce and distribute this advertisement across major television markets and official White House social media channels,” Raskin and Whitesides wrote in the letter to acting Comptroller General Orice Brown and special counsel Charles Baldis.

The two are asking for a formal investigation into how much the advertisements cost, how they have been paid for and whether any federal laws were broken in either the creation of the ads or the use of tax dollars to fund them. Raskin and Whitesides asked both agencies to look into whether the ads are a violation of the Hatch Act, the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act or other federal criminal statutes.

“The Trump Administration knows what they are doing is unlawful, as evidenced by their halfhearted attempts to defend their actions. An anonymous White House spokesperson called the ads ‘educational,’ and suggested that they are ‘clearly not political’ because the ‘president is not on the ballot,’” the lawmakers wrote. “Yet just a few short weeks ago, at his poorly-rated Republican National Convention, President Trump pleaded for his rapidly dwindling ranks of supporters to vote, begging them to ‘pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.’ The White House can’t have it both ways.”

The lawmakers also, amusingly, fact check many of the claims Trump makes in the ads to argue that they could not possibly serve as “public service announcements” — like those made during the COVID-19 pandemic — as the White House has claimed.

“President Trump is obviously desperate for the American people to ‘love’ him, a problem that goes beyond your jurisdiction,” they wrote. “But stealing taxpayer dollars to pay for Mr. Trump’s narcissistic ego trips is plainly illegal. Your agencies have an important responsibility to hold accountable members of his Administration who violate the laws and policies under your purview.”

Raskin and Whitesides join their colleagues Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) as well as Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) in asking questions about what exactly is going on with the egregious shuffling of funds for the ad campaign, seemingly designed to help Republicans win races next month (even though many vulnerable Republicans are trying to put a 10 foot pole between themselves and Trump’s political toxicity at the moment). The top Democratic appropriators are concerned about this because it appears as though the money was moved and used for something outside of its congressionally appropriated purpose — taxpayer dollars that were allocated for Customs and Border Protection in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year.

The ads have run on major airwaves in recent weeks including Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS, and also during NFL games over the weekend.

Obviously, Democrats are concerned about the corruption and violation of federal law. But this trend of Trump inserting himself into the midterms because he’s worried Republicans are going to lose a chamber of Congress simply because he is not on the ballot — and Republican stumbling as they alternately embrace the administration’s failing policies and distance themselves dramatically from the unpopular president — has been a rare moment of levity in our current hellscape.

‘They Are the Party of Data Centers’

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) has some major data center skeletons in his closet from his time as lieutenant governor of Ohio.

He knows it, his Democratic challenger — the longtime Ohio elected official Sherrod Brown — knows it, his colleagues in the Senate know it, voters back home are well aware (thanks to an ad blitz from Brown’s campaign in recent months). For the past several weeks, Husted has been trying to convince his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate to pass a piece of legislation that functions as little more than a press release to state utility regulators; I’ll get into that more below. The bill would, essentially encourage our nation’s Big Tech oligarchs to cover the cost of rising utility expenses tied to data centers and AI model training.

I wrote about the dramatic saga surrounding Husted’s legislative push as a remedy for his past fervent support for data center development in Ohio extensively here if you’d like to catch up. The TL;DR is that after years of championing new data center construction in the state as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, Husted is now calling for regulations to be placed on who foots the electric bill for data center-related spikes in energy prices in local communities. He is also joining Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in supporting a pause on sales and tax breaks for tech companies that want to build new facilities in Ohio. (It’s not just Republicans and it’s not just Ohio; several other states and even blue cities are passing new regulations or have placed temporary moratoriums on data center construction in their areas.)

Husted’s long-shot bid to try to pass the bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act, was blocked by Senate Democrats this afternoon. While Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) voted with Republicans today, it wasn’t enough to overcome the 60 vote filibuster in the upper chamber and Senate Dems were able to block it on a procedural vote, 57-43.

While the bill passed the House 417-3 earlier this month, Senate Democrats (besides the four who voted with Republicans) have been roundly criticizing the legislation as nothing more than a show pony for Husted to use during the waning days of his campaign to combat Brown’s relentless attacks.

Also, the bill is simply limp. It requires that state utility regulators consider implementing the new federal standards that direct Big Tech companies to cover the cost of rising electric bills and grid updates needed to run their data centers — within two years of the bill’s passage. Republicans like Husted have argued that the legislation would compel state utility regulators to act on the new federal standard. But even some Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in saying the bill is little more than a suggestion. Per MS NOW:

“Would I like to do more? Yeah,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said. “But on the other hand, is it better than nothing? Yeah.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., agreed that the bill doesn’t accomplish much, noting that most utilities are “managed through local and state decision making.” 

But he also agreed that it “probably would help” Husted in his re-election efforts.

My colleague Emine Yücel was up on the Hill this afternoon as senators headed in to vote on the legislation. She was able to catch up with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who each slammed the measure and the GOP’s last-minute attempts to do clean up on its past position on accelerating nationwide AI development.

“Donald Trump is going to tweet 10 times between now and the election how much he loves data centers. Their position is clear. They are the party of data centers. They are the party of fealty to the AI industry and this fakery that they are putting on the floor right now isn’t going to fool anybody. So they’re desperate,” Murphy told reporters including TPM.

Murphy continued, going off on the Trump administration and President Trump personally for his role in encouraging the Big Tech oligarchy:

The data center conversation is a proxy for corruption. You know, people see that there is a deep integration between these big billion dollar tech companies and the Trump administration, and they don’t like it, and the proliferation of data centers is a sign to people that the only thing that matters in this administration is money and billionaire corporate power … Yes, sometimes this is about water use and land use, but it’s really a question of corruption and the data centers are an avatar for a corrupt relationship between the technology companies and the Trump administration. That’s why, that’s why the last bill they’re doing is an attempt to change two years of this corruption story. It’s going to laughably not work.

Warner put his opposition to the legislation quite frankly.

“The American public does not like data centers, capital data centers. They’re concerned about job dislocation, and they’re now concerned about safety,” he said. “And we are ignoring not just the CEOs, but frankly, you talk to the banks, you talk to corporate America … they need the safety assurance as well.”

— Nicole LaFond

‘Shockingly Corrupt’ PSAs

House and Senate Democratic appropriators are unleashing on the Trump administration and confirming reports that the Trump White House moved taxpayer money out of Customs and Border Patrol to fund midterms advertisements running on major broadcast airwaves that promote President Trump.

While the White House is trying to describe the ads as “public service announcements” similar to what previous administrations have run about COVID-19 or Obamacare, at least one of the ads appears to be a literal rerun from Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Congress’ top Democratic appropriators demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and threatened investigations Tuesday as more details of the egregious shuffling of taxpayer dollars surfaced. The move appears to be, at best, a major violation of the Hatch Act (a 1930s-era federal law that places limits on the political activities of federal executive branch employees — and a law that Trump officials ignored throughout his first term in the White House).

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration used congressionally appropriated federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the recent spate of pro-Trump ads that have appeared on Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS — some of which even aired during at least two NFL games on Sunday. Specifically, the money was moved from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. Both the WSJ and CNN have reported that Trump personally pushed for the ads and was involved in their creation.

While the White House refers to the ads as PSAs — “These public-service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House told the WSJ — each has run with the alarming disclaimer: “paid for by the U.S. government.”

The ads all have the brand of Trumpian flair that landed former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in hot water. One features Trump talking while images of Mount Rushmore flash on the screen: “the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history,” Trump says. Another is eerily similar to an ad that Trump’s campaign aired in 2024. Per the Associated Press:

The latest of the ads, a spot first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”

A third includes a bunch of photos of Trump at various White House events. “America will never be a communist country,” he declares. It’s in line with one of the only talking points he and other Republicans have been able to come up with to campaign on this fall, as they fear-monger about a communist takeover of America because a handful of Democratic socialist candidates won primaries in New York City, Michigan and Colorado.

Dems to Mullin: This Is ‘Illegal Propaganda’

A few Republicans have mildly criticized the White House over what appears to be a blatant misuse of taxpayer funds.

“It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters earlier this week.

Democrats are, however, aggressively sounding the alarm about the matter, arguing it is not just the usual Trump corruption but likely “illegal propaganda.” Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), the top Dem appropriators in the Senate, wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin today, saying the $20 million that was shifted to pay for the ads used taxpayer dollars allocated for CBP from Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year. They said the money was intended for “for commemorative events relating to border security.” They demanded the ads be taken off air and sent Mullin a list of questions about the arrangement.

‘I Will Challenge Anybody Who Gets in My Way’

My colleagues and I have been tracking the creative ways in which vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in November have been distancing themselves from President Trump in recent weeks, as his approval rating craters — due to his war in Iran and rising gas prices, the ongoing affordability crisis generally, his inhumane immigration crackdown, and the role he’s played in ushering in a new Big Tech oligarchy, among other reasons.

This has taken different forms. Only half of the Republican candidates running for office or up for reelection this fall showed up to his Trumped-up party convention in Dallas earlier this month. Others have edited or scrubbed language from their campaign sites to put some daylight between themselves and Trump’s political toxicity. Others have tried to walk a very narrow line between backing the president’s agenda, while distancing themselves from his most unpopular actions this term. This has taken its most colorful, entertaining form in the data center dance some Republicans are performing.

We’ve got a new example of a vulnerable Republican contorting himself to distance himself from Trump this weekend that also converges on a theme that TPM has been focused on during Trump’s second term, as he weaponizes the executive branch for his own political aims. Condemning Trump’s retribution crusade, both against his perceived political enemies and blue states and municipalities as a whole, has been a regular talking point for Democrats the last two years. You don’t really catch Republicans talking about it — or acknowledging it for that matter. And while Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) did not directly criticize the retribution campaign the Trump administration has waged against New Jersey, he distanced himself from it during a debate on Sunday night.

Kean, you may recall, was absent from Congress for months earlier this year as his office cryptically attempted to keep his hospitalization due to depression under wraps. He acknowledged his situation bravely and publicly when he returned to Congress after missing more than 100 votes, and was roundly mocked for his honesty by the far-right, rage baiting congresswoman, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and others.

Kean is facing a tough reelection challenge from Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, in a race rating that Cook Political Report recently switched from a “toss up” to “lean Democratic.”

During the debate on Sunday evening, Kean broke with Trump on the Lake America drama, and some key issues, including announcing his opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to open an Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigrant detention center in his district. He also vowed to fight the administration’s blockade on funding for the Gateway rail tunnel project — a $16 billion infrastructure revamp to build a new train rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and to make repairs to the 100-year-old tunnel that currently connects New Jersey to Manhattan.

In February, the Gateway Development Commission sued the Trump administration for withholding funding for the project, and in June a federal judge permanently blocked the Trump administration from freezing the funding.

But it is all tied to an early-in-Trump-II endeavor by Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to punish New York City — and specifically, the Democrats who represent the city’s constituents. Officially, Vought announced in September 2025 that the Trump administration would withhold “roughly $18 billion” in federal funding from New York City for infrastructure projects, claiming “unconstitutional DEI principles” followed by the construction companies completing the projects. Per a Politico report from October 2025:

The Department of Transportation had written New York to inform the state the two projects were under administrative review to determine whether the state was subsidizing infrastructure contracts with taxpayer money based on discriminatory principles, referring to DOT’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.

However, it was around this time that the government shut down for the first time in Trump’s second term, primarily because Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats on how to address the unfolding health care crisis spurred by then-expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. It would later become the longest government shutdown in modern history. Trump administration officials quickly found a way to show their cards — revealing that the frozen funds for the project was less about some amorphous use of woke DEI hiring practices and more about punishing Democrats and the people they represent.

“Until USDOT’s quick administrative review is complete, project reimbursements cannot be processed, including a $300 million disbursement for the 2nd Avenue Subway. The remaining federal funding for these projects totals nearly $18 billion,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told Politico at the time. “Thanks to the Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies shutdown, however, USDOT’s review of New York’s unconstitutional practices will take more time. Without a budget, the Department has been forced to furlough the civil rights staff responsible for conducting this review.”

And so, on Sunday, when he was asked about the funding freeze, Kean did not, of course, get into the Trump administration’s broader retribution assault, but he did try to plow some middle ground in defending the project and breaking with the president.

“I will challenge anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” Kean said.

‘I Would Underscore the Seriousness Of the Violation Here’

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election meddling scheme was declared unlawful by the California Supreme Court, which just issued unanimous decisions in two cases focused on Bianco’s seizure of 650,000 ballots in California this spring.

I’ll unpack Bianco’s extremist background and ties to the far-right constitutional sheriff’s movement a bit more below, but, crucially, Bianco seized ballots in April that were cast in the state’s 2025 special election — when voters approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to conduct redistricting mid-cycle. As you’ll recall, Newsom put forward Proposition 50 in an attempt to offset the damage of President Trump’s nationwide gerrymandering crusade.

Prop 50 was placed on the California ballot specifically in response to Texas’ redrawing of its congressional district lines, which is expected to net five seats for Republicans in the U.S. House in the midterms. Newsom was one of several Democratic officials across the U.S. who worked to combat Trump’s gerrymandering blitz, a bullying campaign Trump launched last summer in an attempt to pressure Republican-controlled state legislatures nationwide to redraw their district maps mid-cycle to help Republicans hold the House this fall. Texas was the first to act on Trump’s demands, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Florida and others. Enough Republicans in Indiana’s state Senate bucked Trump to quash the effort there. Trump endorsed primary challengers for those who refused to bend the knee, and most of those who stood up to Trump lost their primary elections in May.

Anyway, back to California and the MAGA sheriff seizing ballots. California voters approved Prop 50 — which amended the state constitution so that state officials could, temporarily, bypass normal protocol for redistricting and approved new maps that gave Democrats an additional five seats in the House — with a 64% vote in November 2025. Shortly thereafter, Bianco seized the ballots from election officials as part of what he claimed to be an investigation into complaints from Riverside County activists (i.e. election conspiracy theorists) who claimed the vote count did not match the number of ballots election officials received.

The California Supreme Court ordered Bianco to halt his investigation back in April while the case challenging his seizure played out in court. The state’s highest court ruled on Thursday that Bianco did not have the authority to take the ballots, issuing unanimous decisions in two separate cases brought against the sheriff — one by Riverside County voters and another by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta. The Supreme Court declared that Bianco’s actions threatened election integrity in the state of California. An excerpt from the ruling in the case brought by voters:

We hold that the seizure of the ballots was unlawful. California law long has recognized that voted ballots require special care and handling to safeguard them from alteration or tampering. Consistent with this principle, the Elections Code narrowly limits the circumstances in which a court may order the production of ballots for inspection, and even in those narrow circumstances, requires that ballots remain in the physical custody of the responsible elections official.

“I would underscore the seriousness of the violation here. This is not a case involving a few documents,” Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu said in a concurrent opinion. “It involves the unlawful removal and handling by armed deputies of over 1,000 boxes of documents — and not just any documents, but the most precious documents of the citizenry in a democracy: their votes.”

‘We Are Not For Sale’

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson officially kicked off his reelection campaign last Sunday for the Feb. 23, 2027 mayoral election where he will face a crowded field of challengers. At least 14 people have announced their intention to run for mayor of the Windy City, though that number is expected to drop once nominating petition filing deadlines pass in late October.

I’m talking to you about the Chicago mayoral race because, in one of his most sweeping actions he’s taken since launching his reelection bid, Johnson today announced a city-wide temporary moratorium on data center development and expansion in Chicago for 12 months. The move is backed by a handful of city alderpersons, and the ordinance will block any new construction or expansion while the city of Chicago focuses on developing a “comprehensive regulatory framework for data centers,” a press release announcing Johnson’s ordinance said.

Johnson is selling it as a temporary pause that will give the city time to develop a strategy for how to allow local data center development that spurs economic growth, while not actively allowing for the kind of rampant construction that Americans across the political spectrum now vehemently oppose. Community resistance to these new facilities has reached a fever pitch as we enter the final stretch of the midterms campaign cycle. A growing mountain of evidence shows the infrastructure that houses cloud computing and artificial intelligence model testing is increasingly draining communities’ water supplies and contributing to rising electric costs.

“Chicago is open for business, but we are not for sale,” Johnson declared in a statement announcing his decision. “We welcome innovation, investment, and the jobs and opportunities that come with it, but growth must be done responsibly and in a way that protects the health, safety and quality of life of Chicago residents.”

Some of his opponents in the mayoral race argue the measure doesn’t go far enough, claiming the mayor is just buying himself time for his reelection bid. Others, like Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, have claimed that backlash to data centers is overblown and that a temporary ban on new construction ignores the fact that there are already 39 active data centers operating within city limits.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has already joined a handful of other state leaders that have overturned or temporarily paused new tax breaks for Big Tech companies looking to build new data centers in the state. Ohio is another place where Republican candidates are desperate to show voters they support some level of softening of the state’s decade-old tax incentives for data center construction.

Several other cities across Illinois have already placed a pause on new construction of the facilities as public backlash spreads. Chicago joins several major U.S. cities that have recently placed new restrictions on development while they try to sort out how to properly regulate new construction and to pass off any monetary or environment costs onto the major tech companies fueling the AI boom. (Americans are increasingly revolting against AI itself as whistleblowers warn of doomsday scenarios and artificial intelligence threatens jobs).

It’s a bipartisan issue that elected officials across the political spectrum are rushing to be on the right side of. Except President Trump, who has actively insulted Americans who are suspicious of the new projects and whose administration is actively trying to change federal policy that allows for community input at the onset of new data center construction.

‘A Toaster Is a Wedding Gift’

A Republican member of the Senate broke party ranks on Monday in a letter to the chair and ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking that the panel subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and gather more facts about his “active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, his continued pursuit of international real estate deals involving direct meetings with foreign heads of state, and his reported investments in defense contracting.”

In his letter, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) argued that his colleagues were being hypocritical in their singular focus on President Biden’s son Hunter Biden throughout the former president’s entire term while turning a blind eye to Don Jr. and the “questions” that have “arisen about the relationships of President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with foreign business figures and the acceptance of significant gifts. These include a lavish wedding afterparty, on a private island, provided by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who reportedly traveled to China as part of a delegation accompanying Vladimir Putin shortly before giving the gift.”

“A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else,” Curtis continued. “Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now.”

In his letter to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (R-IL), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively, Curtis also argued that Hunter Biden should be dragged back before the panel as well, and urged the committee to “launch an investigation into the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, preferential treatment, or access by domestic and foreign interests.”

“The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president. Nor should congressional oversight begin and end when control of the White House changes hands,” Curtis wrote.

Curtis is not up for reelection until 2030, so he does not fit neatly within the (minor) trend of Republicans gently bucking the president ahead of what polls say could be a dismal midterm election for the GOP. A handful of Republican members of Congress up for reelection have called out Trump on his immigration policies or the war in Iran or on data centers — an issue that is becoming a major flashpoint for Republicans this cycle, even in red states, as Trump refuses to allow for any nuanced position on the matter (due to his whole being in bed with Big Tech thing).

Curtis had previously described reports of Don Jr.’s lavish wedding gift from a Russian oligarch as “corruption.” ProPublica uncovered the cartoonishly venal episode, which involved Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev funding the post-wedding festivities for Don Jr. and his new wife on exclusive islands in the Bahamas. Kremlev has close ties to President Vladimir Putin. President Trump has claimed that his son paid Kremlev back for the extravagant vacation. Don Jr.’s wife is, apparently, still confused about what the issue is.

Grassley has not yet responded to the letter from Curtis, but Durbin posted a statement on Tuesday. He mildly countered Curtis’ claims about Hunter Biden, arguing the former president’s son has “already given Congress a sworn deposition on this issue” but said he supports Curtis’ request for transparency.

“Corruption must never be tolerated. @SenJohnCurtis has made a good faith request that the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate the lavish gift of a Russian oligarch to President Trump’s son as well as any wrongdoing by the son of former President Biden,” Durbin wrote in a post on X. “In fairness, Hunter Biden has already given Congress a sworn deposition on this issue. Donald Trump Jr. has not. To ignore this is to run the risk of being complicit. I will join in supporting Senator Curtis’ request of the Judiciary Committee.”

Corruption must never be tolerated. @SenJohnCurtis has made a good faith request that the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate the lavish gift of a Russian oligarch to President Trump’s son as well as any wrongdoing by the son of former President Biden.

In fairness, Hunter… https://t.co/Gd6qMhySRk

— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) September 22, 2026

Trump Manages to Silence Himself

The news outlets that make up the TV pool that covers the White House and the president’s schedule joined together on Monday to announce that they would not be “designated as pool coverage of the president” until further notice after President Trump banned CNN from the White House.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who is also the chair of the TV pool, wrote in a memo to journalists in the White House press corps. The memo was obtained by the Washington Post and others on Monday.

“There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country,” it said.

The news comes after President Trump announced last week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House — and journalists from those outlets were turned away from the White House grounds. Lawyers for the banned news outlets and individual journalists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, alleging violations of the news organizations’ First Amendment rights.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three news organizations said in a statement on Monday, per CNN.

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The members of the TV pool news organizations announced their boycott on Monday morning as well.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media and NBC News, the five cable networks that make up the rotating White House TV pool, wrote in a statement on X Monday.

The pool is a system that news outlets have been using for decades to help split the cost of having cameras follow the president’s moves on a daily basis. Per WaPo:

The assigned network records and distributes a live feed that other news outlets can use. Without a TV pooler, there will be scant video coverage of Trump unless news outlets take their own video or use feeds provided by the White House.

The Washington Post also announced it would not publish any photos of any presidential events on Monday until midnight ET.

There are legitimate concerns about the vacuum created by the news outlets’ absence — and what this White House might do to fill the void. A year ago, Trump’s White House blocked the White House Correspondents’ Association from choosing members of the White House press pool, effectively taking control over which news outlets could send reporters to cover White House events.

But for today, at least, Trump managed to silence himself. His attempt to unveil his new White House helipad was not televised live on the usual cable news channels Monday. Here’s footage from Newsmax of the event. You can’t hear him.

LMFAO — Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-21T17:51:50.189Z

A Republican member of Congress who is running for reelection in a Florida House district that is not considered to be competitive put out an ad on Thursday in which she breaks with President Trump’s at-times lethal immigration enforcement and mass deportation policies.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) said in the ad, first flagged by a New York Times reporter.

“The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she continued later in the video.

NEW: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) just rolled out a straight to camera ad breaking with Trump.

"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far….The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today" pic.twitter.com/uxPeLaittt

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) September 17, 2026

Salazar is a member of Republican leadership — she serves as the assistant whip — and she represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District, a south Florida district that President Trump won with 57% of the vote in 2024. Trump endorsed her reelection campaign, and the congresswoman has been a staunch supporter of much of Trump’s second term agenda. “SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in February, endorsing Salazar. But she has recently become vocal about the administration’s aggressive crackdown on undocumented immigrants who don’t have a criminal record.

The contours of that crackdown are made clear by a recent New York Times analysis of arrest data from the month of July. It found that the majority of those arrested that month had not been charged with or convicted of a crime. Just 4 percent of those arrested in July had a previous violent criminal conviction. The Trump administration has been claiming since the beginning of his second term that the Department of Homeland Security would mostly be targeting violent criminals with its mass deportation operation. That promise has repeatedly been shown to be false. Per the Times:

A surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke.

The congresswoman has been clashing with members of the House Republican conference for months over Trump’s hardline immigration position. She introduced a bipartisan immigration bill in July — an updated version of the DIGNITY Act (H.R. 4393) — which would provide undocumented immigrants with no criminal record an avenue for securing a work permit and legal status, but not citizenship. Here’s how she described the legislation in a statement announcing its introduction:

The bill consists of five core principles: (1) ending illegal immigration once and for all; (2) fixing our outdated asylum system, (3) providing a dignified solution for undocumented immigrants living in America; (4) protects American workers and supports industries; and (5) ensuring the United States remain prosperous and competitive in the future.

The Dignity Act is based on the biblical principles of Dignity. It will restore law and order to our immigration system and support American workers. It was written in consultation with American businesses leaders, agriculture and farming industries, the faith-based community, immigration reform groups, and border security experts.

The bill has not gone anywhere in the House and she has been targeted by far-right members of the Republican caucus who describe the legislation as nothing more than an “amnesty” bill.

Salazar has been vocal about her frustration with Trump’s immigration crackdown in Florida in other ways as well. Earlier this week she called out the Trump administration over its arrest and detainment of a Florida journalist named Luis Galeano. She called on the administration to not deport him to Nicaragua because it would pose a serious threat to his safety after Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stripped Galeano of his citizenship due to his criticism of Ortega’s administration.

My statement on the detention of Nicaraguan journalist Luis Galeano. 🇺🇸🇳🇮
– – – –
Mi declaración sobre la detención del periodista nicaragüense Luis Galeano. pic.twitter.com/9rT1cvfmAv

— María Elvira Salazar 🇺🇸 (@MaElviraSalazar) September 14, 2026

While Salazar’s district is not considered competitive, her latest vocal condemnation of the Trump administration’s inhumane mass deportation campaign is a sign that Republican candidates are wary of how they will fare in districts with heavy Latino populations, like south Florida and across Texas.

Big Tech Skeletons

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) was appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance’s vacant Senate seat after Vance became vice president. He is currently running in the November 2026 special election to serve out the remainder of Vance’s term and is fending off an aggressive challenge from longtime Ohio Democrat and former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

While Husted is a household name in Ohio thanks to his 25 year political career as a Republican in the state, there is one element of his legacy as lieutenant governor in Ohio — the position he held until Republican Gov. Mike DeWine hand-picked him for the Senate — that is not just coming back to bite him, but making Brown’s job incredibly easy: Husted’s past fervent support for new data center construction in the state.

As lieutenant governor, Husted was a stanch supporter of Ohio’s tax breaks for data center development, which were passed by Ohio lawmakers a decade ago to spur economic growth in the state. Ohio is currently home to at least 240 data centers — with one currently being constructed in Pike County that’s on track to be the world’s largest.

Ohio is one of several states that previously passed sales tax exemptions for the equipment needed to run data centers in order to help fuel the artificial intelligence boom. But that was before public outrage at the rampant development of new facilities for training AI models boiled over, among Americans of all political stripes, to become a dominating issue of the 2026 midterms. Husted was a major champion of new data center development in Ohio. He led ribbon-cutting ceremonies and issued press releases celebrating the construction of the new facilities in the state for years as a top official. Here’s one from February 2019, celebrating news that Google would construct a new $600 million data center in the state.

“Google investing in Ohio to open a new data center is great news for our state,” he said.

Republican Shapeshifting 2026

Uproar at how the data center boom is impacting water supply, air quality and affordable electricity in communities across the nation has only reached a fever pitch in the last year or so. Politicians, primarily Republicans, who previously championed both data center construction and unregulated AI advancement are now scrambling to change course as these issues become politically toxic.

I wrote about this last week, but Ohio is one of several states that once encouraged data center construction with tax breaks for Big Tech companies whose politicians are now looking for ways to pause or repeal those tax incentives in response to voter demands that elected officials do something — anything — to keep the burgeoning American tech oligarchy in check:

Husted is one of many Republicans trying to shape-shift on an issue they staunchly supported even months ago. While President Trump does all he can to make it impossible for members of the Republican Party to hold any position of nuance (You’re either 100% swallowing what Big Tech is shoving down our throats or you’re “backwards and poor”), Republican leadership in Congress has tried to create a middle-of-the-road policy position for vulnerable members and candidates this fall. It goes like this: Republicans are all for data center construction as an economic driver for rural and urban communities, but tech companies need to be footing the bill for rising electric costs.

It’s a messaging framework that Husted himself has adopted in recent weeks as he looks for ways to adjust to the public’s scorching outrage and his opponent’s relatively easy task of skewering him with related attack ads. In August, he told the local Ohio Statehouse News Bureau that he is in agreement with DeWine and Ohio state legislators’ push to, at the very least, place a pause on sales and tax breaks for tech companies constructing the new facilities in Ohio. He argued that big tech has done “a terrible job of talking about the value and virtue of” their technology.

“They’ve earned that backlash,” Husted said. “They haven’t been as forthcoming about the benefits that will come in terms of local jobs and construction worker jobs and reduced property taxes, and they haven’t offered things like paying the energy bills for local communities, for the power plants they build.”

Meanwhile, in Congress, Husted is using the last remaining days of the legislative session before the upper chamber goes on recess to try to convince his colleagues to take up a bill that he’s co-sponsoring that would force the tech companies behind data centers to cover the cost of utilities for their buildouts. The “Ratepayer Protection Act” would require state utility regulators to make sure that data centers and other big energy consumers cover the cost of any updates to the grid that need to take place to ensure their operations, among other things.

Politico has a new piece out today unpacking how this legislation is working its way through Congress and the work that Husted is doing to try to get his colleagues on board with quick passage in the Senate if it clears the House this week (tl;dr, it’s unlikely that Senate Democrats will jump to help a vulnerable Republican senator amid slam-dunk attack ads being lobbed at him by one of their former colleagues).

FBI At the Polls Bc I’m Annoyed

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and seemed, at least initially, interested in following federal laws against deploying armed federal law enforcement to polling places this fall.

Under federal law, armed federal agents or members of the military cannot be deployed to “any place where a general or special election is held.” That’s established. The reason that Democrats are routinely pressing Patel, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, the head of the Defense Department and other Trump administration officials about whether federal law enforcement officers — whether it’s FBI agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers or others — might be deployed to the polls this fall is because President Trump has been agitating around the idea for some time.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump was vocal about his interest in deploying the military domestically to seize voting machines in counties he thought he should have won. Since then, and in the wake of his second term’s nationwide immigration crackdown — the lethality of which has prompted widespread backlash and protests — his allies outside of the administration have been pushing the White House to send ICE officers to the polls in the midterms. Trump’s allies, like podcaster Steve Bannon, have promoted the line that Democrats win elections only when they cheat and have noncitizen voters cast ballots in federal elections for them. The conspiracy theory has been debunked repeatedly over the years, but Trump’s belief in it has formed the basis of most of his legislative agenda for his second term — and has animated all of his Justice Department’s efforts to seize the constitutionally-protected right to administer elections from the states.

‘Don’t Know That We Can’t Legally Do It’

While Patel initially stuck to boilerplate lines about how he has done nothing but follow the law during his tenure as FBI chief, he also suggested that he thinks it is not necessarily illegal for FBI agents to be sent to polling places. It appears he may have been arguing that agents are allowed to follow up on violations of law, a line that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has used when asked if ICE agents might be sent to the polls. (“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” Mullin said earlier this month. “If we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.”)

“I don’t know that we can’t legally do it,” Patel said in response to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asking him to commit to not sending FBI agents to the polls in November. Patel said that he would follow the law and keep agents and intelligence analysts stationed at FBI field offices in case there were any election security-related issues to address.

“The FBI will follow the law,” Patel said. “If there’s a reason to go there, because there’s been a violation of law, we will, otherwise we won’t.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) questioned him about Justice Department policy that restricts federal law enforcement activities or investigations at polling places on Election Day.

“Are you aware of the Justice Department’s long-standing guidance that states that FBI agents cannot conduct investigations inside polling places on Election Day, and that federal prosecutors have no authority to send FBI special agents or deploy U.S. Marshals to polling places?” Klobuchar asked.

“I’m aware,” Patel replied.

“Will you commit to following clear federal law and DOJ policy and not deploy federal agents to polling places?” she asked.

“We will always follow the law and the guidelines,” he said.

But when Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) began questioning Patel about the matter, Patel started wildly obfuscating.