Sam Stein and Will Sommer break down the foreign money scandal involving Alina Habba’s new husband, Ric Grenell, and the Kennedy Center. They also examine the protests roiling Albania over Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s controversial resort project, and Bari Weiss’s pursuit of right-wing internet conspiracy theories at CBS News.
Plus, the strange cast of characters gathering for a $3,000-a-ticket citizen journalist event at Mar-a-Lago, Laura Loomer’s White House ambitions, and Nick Fuentes’s online dating drama.
In Donald Trump’s telling, he wins everywhere, from Florida to California, when the votes are counted properly, and his campaign rallies do nothing but juice the Republicans he deigns to share the stage with. “MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!” he wrote this month.
But Punchbowl News notes this morning that Trump’s actions tell a different story. Even though Trump said in September that he’d spend the last month before the midterms rallying the faithful in battleground districts, Trump has been steering well clear of competitive House races, preferring to play defense in parts of the country where voters are friendlier (and his crowds are larger).
This is worth remembering, ahead of whatever stolen-election nonsense Trump tries to pull next month: Deep down, even Trump knows he’s not as popular as he pretends to be. Happy Monday.
Join Will Sommer and Sam Stein today for MAGA Mondays at the early time of 9:00 a.m. EDT on Substack and YouTube.
(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
Speedrunning Abandoning Ukraine
by Andrew Egger
Almost two weeks ago, on October 7, Donald Trump mentioned offhand that it was Vladimir Putin’s birthday and the two of them had a call set up. The call went ahead two days later, and Trump has been snuggling closer to Russia and taking a sledgehammer to Ukraine ever since.
You could tell the birthday chat was trouble from the jump. Russian media cheerfully reported on the “substance” and “warmth” of the phone call, with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov reporting that “nobody wanted to hang up first.” The same day, Trump abruptly announced a dramatic swerve in his own energy policy: Far from increasing sanctions pressure on Russia, Trump now said the United States would waive sanctions in order to start buying diesel fuel from Russia directly.
One day later, on Saturday, October 10, Trump still had Putin’s assessment of Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky top of mind. “[Zelensky] wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Trump told reporters. He even called for Zelensky to be removed from office: “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals, and for some reason never does.” (Maybe it has something to do with Russia demanding he give it huge chunks of Ukraine as the price of peace. Hard to say, really.) The same day, Trump officials threatened that America might stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine if attacks on Russian energy infrastructure continued.
The next day, Trump placed Zelensky in an even greater bind by unilaterally announcing an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Neither side had agreed to any such thing. (“They agreed,” Trump added the next day, “because I said they agreed.”) Thanks to Trump’s renewed enthusiasm for Putin’s lies about the war, this announcement created immediate and massive diplomatic asymmetries. Ukraine, desperate to get back in Trump’s good books, immediately began trying to honor the energy ceasefire; Russia, eager to capitalize, kept right on pounding Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Zelensky’s unilateral honoring of the energy ceasefire did little to change Trump’s mood. Instead, the United States spent last week handicapping Ukraine’s war efforts in big and small ways. On Tuesday, October 13, Russian missiles pounded Kyiv without the usual advance warning provided by U.S. intelligence. That same night, Ukraine discovered that new restrictions had been placed on its Starlink satellite internet service—crucial infrastructure without which it could not pilot its drones. This service would later be partially, but not entirely, restored; subsequent reporting from Reuters said that the order to slow Ukraine’s satellite internet came directly from the White House, although Trump denied that he ordered it personally. (Subsequent reporting suggested Starlink owner Elon Musk was the one who first proposed the slowdown.)
On Friday, October 16, Trump gave Russia even more sanctions relief—preventing new sanctions on Russia and tariffs on buyers of Russian oil from going into effect, although he himself signed those sanctions into law just last month.
Over and over again since the birthday call, Trump has made his new position on the war clear: Nothing but incentives and wheedling praise for Russia, the war’s imperial aggressor, and nothing but threats and insults for Ukraine, the war’s blameless defender. And yesterday, he gave us his clearest explanation of his thinking yet.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Why the kid gloves for Russia?
“I . . . don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump said. After all, look how nicely Russia was behaving!
“Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way.”
And anyway, what was so great about Zelensky and Ukraine?
“[Zelensky] is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including in the United States,” Trump went on. “Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World.” Zelensky, Trump added, “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now.”
It’s amazing how many of Trump’s psychological pathologies are here on display at once. There is, of course, his bewildering personal adulation of Putin himself, which makes it all too easy for the Russian dictator to feed him out-and-out lies about the state of the conflict and who is responsible. There’s his alpha-dog approach to geopolitics, which he believes shows great strength and in reality shows great weakness: The United States, Trump apparently believes, ought not lift a finger or offer a word of protest if the world’s other great powers decide to invade their neighbors. Instead, those great powers must be cherished and coddled, lest we “drive them away from the bargaining table” and they decide to intervene in our own imperial adventures.
Note how different this argument is from the old MAGA ones about how the whole conflict is an expensive boondoggle halfway around the world that we shouldn’t be involved with at all. Trump, fully in his own imperial era, has jettisoned such provincial “Donroe Doctrine” thinking. He just argues, openly and explicitly, that it’s better for the United States to be allied with Russia. All this is music to Putin’s ears: The Russian dictator, the Wall Street Journal reports, is now proposing a tripartite summit between the United States, Russia, and China to hash out the ultimate fate of Ukraine.
If you’re as sick as we are of our president sucking up to tyrants, ride with us.
There’s another psychological need on display here, too. Over the last month, Trump has deliberately been trying to shift Americans’ focus away from his interminable boondoggle in Iran and back toward the conflict in Ukraine.
Part of the idea is to get them to blame high gas prices not on Trump, who attacked Iran, but on Zelensky and/or Putin. But it’s also a matter of presidential posture. In Iran, Trump looks feckless and weak. He doesn’t have the stomach to escalate the war further, and Iran keeps flatly ignoring his threats to do so: Remember his July ultimatum that he would blow up “ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” for every ship Iran attacked in the Strait of Hormuz?
In the Russia–Ukraine conflict, however, Trump thinks he looks strong. After all, Ukraine needs the United States—and how better to demonstrate that need than by withholding the things they need while lecturing them that it’s really their own fault? When the focus is on Iran, Trump looks like a wimp. When it’s on Ukraine, he thinks he looks cruel, but also strong. He knows which focus he prefers.
The Power of Negative Thinking
by William Kristol
A note on two findings in the new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll that came out yesterday.
First, the generic congressional ballot has moved decisively in the Democrats’ direction. In July, Democrats had a 3-point advantage when voters were asked whom they intended to vote for in November. They now hold a 50 to 42 percent lead among registered voters—and one should probably add another point or two for a likely disproportionate Democratic turnout.
So two weeks out, Democrats are in good shape.
But there’s another finding in the poll that suggests they could end up in even better shape. Respondents were asked if they would rather see the next Congress controlled by Democrats to act as a check on Trump, or see a Congress controlled by Republicans to support Trump’s agenda. Fifty-eight percent of registered voters preferred a Democratic Congress, while only 39 percent preferred a Republican one (up from a 53 percent to 42 percent margin a year ago).
So the same poll that shows an 8-point margin on the question of whom you intend to vote for has a 19-point margin on the question of whom you want to control of Congress.
Now, obviously there will always be some traditional Republicans who will say they’d like to see a check on Trump—but, being Republicans, will still vote for the Republican candidate in their state or district. Not every Trump-disapprover is going to turn against every Republican candidate running for the House or the Senate. There’ll always be a gap between the ballot choice and the broader question of the direction of Congress.
But closing that gap just a little would make a big difference. Getting just a few more of the 58 percent who want a Democratic Congress to act on that wish, and thus moving the generic ballot margin from high single digits to low double digits, would turn a wave into a tsunami on November 3.
It seems to me, then, that Democrats have just one job over these final two weeks: To remind voters, over and over again, that the only way to check Trump from driving the country further into a ditch is to vote blue.
Democratic candidates can at least implicitly acknowledge that voters don’t have to love everything about the Democratic party. They can even say explicitly that voters don’t have to decide to pledge their troth to the Democrats forevermore. But they can bring home to voters that they need, at least this once, to walk away from the Republican party in order to check Trump for the rest of his time in office. It’s what the voters want. It’s also what Democrats can actually do over the next two years.
A closing argument that focuses on the need to check Trump would have the advantage, always desirable but not always achievable in politics, of being both popular and true. Democrats just need to keep on making it.
The Pro-Ukraine Right Is Running Out of Excuses for Trump… The president’s latest embrace of Putin is making their already awkward position untenable, writes CATHY YOUNG.
Dems See Trump’s Corruption as the Grift That Keeps on Giving… Their midterms closing argument connects the president’s enrichment to the squeeze on Americans’ wallets, reports LAUREN EGAN.
Trump’s Own Energy Secretary Just Contradicted His Russia Story… Trump rewards Putin, Republicans squirm, and Lindsey Graham’s legacy lies in ruins. WILL SALETAN joins SAM STEIN on Bulwark Takes.
Quick Hits
FREEDOM FUEL REVISITED: Remember “FREEDOM FUEL”? In early July, with gas prices already soaring due to the war in Iran, Donald Trump and his allies began trumpeting something strange: a chain of star-spangled gas stations that had started selling below-cost gas at a number of Pennsylvania locations. White House press staffers traveled to the stations for photo ops and to credit “President Trump’s strong leadership” for “price relief at the pump.” It wasn’t until almost two months later that we learned one explanation for how the upstart chain could afford to sell the gas so cheaply: Per a lawsuit, they’d stiffed a supplier over payment for it.
Now, new reporting from Politico puts even more meat on the story’s bones: The “FREEDOM FUEL” project began in part as a political back-scratching effort from a small klatch of allies—including, bizarrely, Baltimore Ravens special teams coach Randy Brown—who were also pitching the White House on some far bigger projects, like a deal to reopen an oil refinery in the Virgin Islands. Here’s Politico:
It is . . . a high-octane metaphor for the president’s approach to governing, with all its corner-cutting and haste and disdain for regulation, its triumph of marketing over substance and consistent fights with the press. As in many such stories, the tale of Freedom Fuel features private business interests finding bizarre ways to pander to the White House. Despite the operators’ and the administration’s best efforts, and the seemingly innocent promise of cheaper gas, the tale of Freedom Fuel also shows how the administration’s free-wheeling approach to problems can create an even bigger mess.
Other than the corruption, the most notable thing about the wheeling and dealing so typical of this White House is how bizarre it all is. Read the whole thing.
FRANCE GONE WILD: We don’t spend a lot of time on French domestic politics around here, but it was hard not to notice the extraordinary riots that convulsed the country this weekend, as Emmanuel Macron’s government feebly called for order and calm. The New York Times checks in:
Mr. Macron said in an evening broadcast interview that he would seek to lower gas prices — a key complaint from some protesters — during a diplomatic trip to the Persian Gulf this week.
But he offered no concrete concessions, and appealed for “order, calm, not an escalation,” criticizing calls to “take to the streets, to protest, to create disorder.”
He also warned that “Those who looted will have to pay back, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable.”
On Sunday, the violence and protests had largely subsided, apart from sporadic skirmishes and looting involving small numbers of rioters in Paris, as the unrest gave way to political finger pointing.
Politicians from the far left to the far right criticized the government for a police response deemed too weak or ill-prepared — with some calling for the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, to resign.
Mr. Nuñez told journalists on Saturday that the police had not been understaffed, but that it was hard to contain rioters “when they’re scattered in small groups.”
(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Creative Commons, Shutterstock)
ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN A BOSS or had a boss knows that the influence of a superior extends far beyond explicit instructions. Subtle signs of expectations, priorities, values, and preferences can be just as important, if not more so. This is especially true in the military, where the hierarchy is rigid and formal. Commanders are responsible not only for the orders they give but for their “command climate.” When that climate becomes religiously tinged, it creates a dangerous situation—for our military, for our country, and for the Constitution.
This is why I find Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s increasingly overt use of evangelical Christian language and symbolism in his official role so troubling.
Military service has a way of stripping life down to its essentials. During deployments, especially in combat, soldiers confront fear, grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty in ways that are difficult to explain to those who have not experienced them. Faith can become an extraordinary source of strength; it can provide comfort to a frightened young soldier, give meaning to a grieving family, and offer hope to a unit struggling after battlefield losses. I’ve witnessed those moments, and I’ve seen chaplains help soldiers and assuage their families’ grief through some of the most difficult experiences imaginable.
Hegseth has every right to his personal religious convictions, as does every service member. There is nothing inherently inappropriate about a secretary of defense attending worship services, seeking spiritual guidance, or discussing the importance of faith in his own life. Nor is there anything wrong with strengthening the military’s chaplaincy, ensuring religious accommodations, or providing better spiritual support to service members and their families. These are goals I wholeheartedly support.
But Hegseth has gone further. He invited his personal spiritual adviser to lead a worship service at the Pentagon. He has repeatedly used explicitly Christian language in official communications. Just recently, he described his department as putting on the “armor of God,” because “while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.” His rhetoric and actions raise legitimate questions about whether the department is strengthening religious freedom for everyone or elevating a particular interpretation of Christianity within the chain of command.
Get reporting that asks the right questions, analysis that exposes the right facts, and commentary that’s always honest:
FAITH HAS AN IMPORTANT ROLE in the military—but it isn’t missionary work or evangelism. When we lost soldiers in Iraq, chaplains were among the most important members of the unit. They offered something orders, operational plans, and military briefings could never provide: compassion in the face of unbearable loss. Chaplains are representatives of their own faith traditions, but they are also commissioned officers serving a diverse military community. Chaplains of every denomination will sit quietly with an atheist struggling with grief, without attempting to convert that person or suggesting that the absence of religious belief makes the grief less meaningful. Every chaplain is deeply committed to their religious convictions while recognizing that the soldiers they serve are entitled to their own. They also understand the distinction between providing religious ministry and imposing religious belief.
Over nearly forty years in uniform, I commanded soldiers from different religions, backgrounds, cultures, and communities—some deeply religious, others irreligious. What mattered to me was their character, competence, and commitment to one another. In combat, the soldier beside you does not become more trustworthy because of the way they pray. Trust comes from knowing that person will do their duty, protect their teammates, and uphold the nation’s and the profession’s values.
Commanders and all leaders in the military have an equally important obligation. They are responsible for creating an environment where every soldier can practice a faith, change a faith, or profess no faith without fearing that those choices will affect their standing in the unit. That responsibility is particularly important because of the nature of military authority. When a commander speaks, subordinates listen. In a hierarchical organization where assignments, evaluations, promotions, and careers depend on leaders’ judgments, the distinction between encouragement and pressure can become dangerously blurred.
That’s why leaders at any rank or position must be particularly thoughtful when discussing their personal religious convictions. While they need never be ashamed of their faith, they also should not use their rank, authority, or influence to suggest their beliefs are preferred.
The Constitution to which every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, and guardian swears an oath protects religious liberty by prohibiting government establishment of religion and guaranteeing free exercise. It also prohibits religious tests for public office.
FREEDOM FROM RELIGIOUS PRESSURE isn’t just a right guaranteed by the Constitution and a requirement for a multi-confessional force drawn from a country that has always been divided by religion. It’s also an important part of the heritage of the American military from its earliest days, bequeathed to us by George Washington.
Before Washington was president, he was our nation’s first top military commander and the creator of the Chaplain Corps. While he was an Anglican/Episcopalian, he was a staunch believer in religious liberty and pluralism. He did not require members of either the Continental Army or the United States Army to subscribe to a particular religion. (Interestingly, he also didn’t have specific religious requirements for the people he enslaved.) As president, he attended services of various faiths, including Catholic, Protestant, and Quaker services. He was clear, in a letter to Virginia Baptists worried about the lack of protections for religion in the original text of the Constitution, that he would never have endorsed the document if he thought it didn’t protect freedom of religion.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
He rejected the notion that religious freedom was something a majority graciously granted a minority. Liberty of conscience was an inherent right of citizenship. A general who had commanded a revolutionary army and a president helping establish an entirely new form of government understood that national unity did not require religious uniformity. His own religious convictions did not give him the authority to define someone else’s identity.
What a contrast with the current secretary of defense.
A secretary of defense should be the strongest advocate for every service member’s freedom of conscience, including those whose beliefs and faiths differ profoundly from his own. He must ensure that religious accommodations are respected and that no soldier ever feels compelled to participate in a religious activity to demonstrate loyalty or professional commitment.
A SECRETARY OF DEFENSE SHOULD ALSO BE a person whose religious faith makes him humble, responsible, and committed to serving others. I’ve spent much of my adult life studying Washington, and, like him, I rose to the rank of lieutenant general (the rank Washington held when he died) after experiencing my share of failures. Those failures taught me that leadership requires learning from mistakes, acknowledging shortcomings, and understanding that the responsibilities entrusted to any leader must be greater than any personal ambitions.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to the character George Washington in the musical Hamilton. The depiction is, needless to say, an imperfect representation of the man, but it captures part of his essence by portraying leadership through virtue. Like Washington the historical figure, Washington the character self-consciously performs a show of leadership that the rest of us can emulate.
Washington the man was very private about his religious convictions and beliefs, but there’s no doubt that he took the moral teachings of religion extremely seriously. He spent a portion of his Farewell Address on the necessity of religion—in the sense not of a particular faith, but of moral instruction—for a people to remain free.
I can’t help but infer that it was Washington’s seriousness about faith and virtue that led him to address his own failings head on. As a young man, he famously wrote out 110 rules of civility, perhaps so that he could be polite to everyone he met. He also knew that he had, at times, a short temper, which he spent his entire life learning to control. And it’s hard to interpret his decision to free all his slaves upon the death of his wife, Martha,1 as anything other than an admission that slavery was morally repugnant.
Washington the character from Hamilton sings an entire song about how replaceable he is. In “One Last Time,” he explains that, with his decision to voluntarily resign from politics rather than seeking a third presidential term, “the nation learns to move on” and “outlives me when I’m gone.” To my mind, the sense of serving something that is greater than you, and will outlast you, is a deeply religious one.
During the show’s finale, as Eliza Hamilton describes her efforts to fight slavery, something Washington himself failed to do during his lifetime, Washington lowers his head in shame. To me, that gesture says more about leadership, character, and the contradictions and aspirations of American history than any lengthy biography.
Hamilton: The Revolution, the book co-written by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter about the creation of the musical, describes the struggle of Christopher Jackson, the actor who inaugurated the role of Washington, to portray the man he admired but whose participation in slavery he could never reconcile. In researching the role, Jackson wanted to understand Washington’s strengths, failures, and shame. He eventually concluded that portraying Washington truthfully required acknowledging both his greatness and his moral failings. Jackson once offered an observation that has stayed with me: “The idea of our nation is perfect, the execution is not.” A remarkable insight into the American experiment, and into the responsibility of those entrusted with leading it.
When, in the musical, Washington tells Hamilton he won’t run again for president, Miranda has Washington cite a favorite biblical passage—one that appears as a motif throughout his correspondence, including in his letter to the Newport Hebrew congregation: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” It’s a beautiful image of peace, security, and belonging. But as Miranda and McCarter explain in their book, those words meant more to Washington than a peaceful retirement at Mount Vernon.
Every American who serves our nation deserves to sit safely beneath their own vine and fig tree, without fear. Washington understood that promise, and our military leaders must ensure we keep it.
DONALD TRUMP’S “OCTOBER SURPRISE” of a renewed bromance with Vladimir Putin has developed with startling rapidity. Maybe he’s delusional enough to think that buying a few days’ worth of diesel fuel from Putin and blaming Volodymyr Zelensky for the high prices will save him from a Republican midterm bloodbath. Maybe he anticipates that a Democratic House—and perhaps a Democratic Senate—will constrain him after the elections and sees a last chance to advance a pro-Russian agenda with a free hand. Either way, it has been a very grim development in the war in Ukraine: Whatever the eventual fallout, it has already done tremendous damage on account of the disruption of Starlink/Starshield communication signals that are, among other things, essential to the interception of Russian drones.
But one may find some dark humor in the plight of pundits on the right who have long maintained that, ackshually, Ukraine had no better friend than Trump. Take Washington Post columnist (and former George W. Bush speechwriter) Marc Thiessen, whose greatest hits include, “Putin is stalling and Trump is angry. It’s time for ‘maximum pressure’” (March 31, 2025), “Watch Trump make good on his Ukraine promises” (July 9, 2025), and “Putin made a big mistake with Trump” (September 25, 2025). In recent days, Thiessen has been mostly quiet on the subject; in his tweets, he has occasionally pushed back against inane anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia right-wing commentary but also chided Volodymyr Zelensky for being imprudently confrontational in response to Trump’s insults.
A pro-Trump, pro-Ukraine position has always required awkward mental gymnastics, but now it demands downright contortionism. In one cringeworthy moment, radio host and Fox News contributor Hugh Hewitt was caught in the middle of a Fox appearance when informed of Trump’s remark to the press that Ukraine needs a new president. Hewitt, visibly taken aback, conceded that it was “shocking,” but quickly bounced back to suggest that it was just “jaw-jaw”—Trump venting his frustrations about the “international economy” and diesel fuel prices. Not to worry, he reassured his audience: Zelensky is here to stay, and “Russia is the bad guy. The president knows that.” Are you sure, Hugh? Trump, at that point, was saying things like, “Zelensky could have settled this war many times—many, many times” and “I think, actually, Putin wants to make a deal more than Zelensky.” (Meanwhile, as anybody with a brain that hasn’t been fried by Trumpism can tell you, it’s Putin who has repeatedlyrejected Zelensky’s offers for a ceasefire and direct talks.)
And Trump shows no sign of reversing himself. He has indefinitely delayed the sanctions on Russia spelled out in the Lindsey Graham sanctions bill, which he had only recently signed. His latest social media rant explains that he doesn’t want to endanger a peace deal with Russia, on which “great progress is being made.” He claims that Ukraine is “in shambles.” He also viciously bashes Zelensky, accusing the Ukrainian president not only of driving up diesel fuel prices with his strikes on Russian oil refineries—a claim refuted by a lot of people, including Thiessen—but of wanting to keep the war going for his own greed, because of the money he’s getting from Europe.1
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THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES over the past year and a half when a Trump pro-Ukraine “pivot” seemed possible. On a few occasions, Trump did vent his frustration about being jerked around by Putin and did sound troubled by Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities in which civilians, including children, died. He did, a little over a year ago, call Russia a “paper tiger” while praising Ukrainian battlefield prowess. Meanwhile, Zelensky seemed to have developed impressive Trump-whisperer skills, showing remarkable flexibility and grace even after being publicly berated in the infamous Oval Office showdown in early 2025. And many hoped that the American president, in whose vocabulary “loser” is the ultimate insult, would be sufficiently impressed by Ukrainian successes to decide that Zelensky, not Putin, had the proverbial cards. Maybe, once he saw that Putin had failed to make much progress in the Donbas despite stalling for time—and that Ukraine was making headway—he would decide to back the winners.
If so, now would have been the perfect time for that decisive pivot. Ukraine has wrested the momentum back from Russia on the frontlines and is bringing the war home to Russia in ways even the most wild-eyed optimist could not have predicted in 2022. (On Sunday, it launched a massive drone attack on St. Petersburg, striking a major oil terminal and a data center.) Claims of Russian territorial gains publicly made by Putin and by Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, are so ludicrous that even Russian war-hawk bloggers are refuting them. And yet Trump is pivoting in the other direction harder than ever. Even some conservative pundits who are still pooh-poohing “hysteria” about Trump’s affinity for Putin and insisting that the Democrats were crying wolf all along are conceding that . . . wait a minute, maybe there is a wolf.
We can concede that some “Russian collusion” claims have been hyperbolic. No evidence ever emerged that the Trump campaign conspired with Russian agents to steal emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 (only that people linked to the campaign were actively working to obtain those hacked emails). Nor is there any real evidence that Putin has Trump on a leash because of kompromat (whether “pee tape” or Epstein related), or because he was recruited by the KGB decades ago.
Yet many of Trump’s recent actions certainly raise the familiar question: If he were a Russian agent, what would he do differently? It’s possible to think of a few answers—like removing Venezuela’s Russia-friendly dictator Nicolás Maduro, seizing a Venezuela-bound Russian-flagged tanker, or pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil. But it is also abundantly clear that for the most part, Trump sees his interests as coinciding with Putin’s—and that his view of the war in Ukraine has always been broadly favorable to the Russian side. As Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov put it in a YouTube interview:
[Trump] has always admired Putin. . . . He never hides his strong sympathies for Putin, for Xi Jinping, for Kim Jong-un. He’s always saying what great guys they are—first and foremost, because they don’t have to listen to anyone. And Trump would love to be able not to listen to anyone. That stupid Supreme Court, those stupid Congress members, Democrats—they all get in his way. But no one is getting in Putin’s way. And that’s part of his worldview. First of all, he likes tough guys who can whack anyone they want—preferably with a cannon. Secondly, he is convinced that the world is divided among these three tough guys: himself as top dog; Putin, who is his role model; and Xi Jinping, whom he has to accommodate. Everyone else must submit.
Expatriate Russian writer Dmitry Bykov has made a somewhat similar point in recent interviews. Trump, he believes, regards Zelensky as “a beam in his eye” because the Ukrainian president represents everything Trump despises: “politics based on values” and resistance to a worldview that revolves around the right of the strong and the art of the deal. To this, one could add that Trump will never stop seeing Zelensky and Ukraine as Joe Biden’s project and the war itself as Biden’s fault, with Zelensky as Biden’s errand boy. He also sees Russia as a far more attractive business partner. And, no matter how successful Ukraine’s war effort can be, it’s doubtful that its successes can shake Trump’s base narrative: that Russia is unbeatable because it’s much bigger, has more resources, and supposedly wins all its wars, and Ukraine should submit for its own good. Trump may even believe that if the Ukrainians are doing well, it’s only thanks to American aid—therefore, Zelensky should shut up and do as he’s told.
The reality is that, for whatever reason, Trump is now acting as Putin’s ally—even if the constraints of American politics will only let him “pivot” so far.
That leaves pro-Ukraine, pro-Trump (or anti-anti-Trump) conservatives in an extremely awkward position. Right now, some are simply ignoring the issue—like Fox News columnist David Marcus, who hailedTrump’s Venezuela operation in January as part of a strategy “tightening the noose around Russia” and as a likely prelude to a ceasefire in Ukraine. (He doesn’t seem to have posted about Ukraine on X since early September.) Others, like National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, quoted above, are willing to vocally condemn Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine while refusing to consider that their earlier anti-anti-Trumpism may have been wrong. Still others, like pro-MAGA tech tycoon Palmer Luckey, are whatabouting Trump’s diesel deal with Putin by pointing out that the European Union buys a lot more Russian fuel.
The EU’s energy policies that have helped Putin stay solvent are certainly open to plenty of criticism. But it’s worth noting that EU countries have sharply reduced their imports of Russian oil and are set to phase out natural gas imports next year. No less important, they are not trying to strong-arm Ukraine into ending strikes on Russian energy targets or disrupting key assistance in a fit of pique at Zelensky’s refusal to comply.
Could Trump “pivot” again if he decides it’s to his advantage? Maybe—but no one should wait to find out. For now, the Trump/Putin alliance seems to be the order of the day: Putin, no doubt emboldened by his rapprochement with Trump, is already floating a three-way summit with Trump and Xi to decide the fate of Ukraine. At this point, anyone committed to Ukraine’s freedom and sovereignty must be committed to stopping Trump. And professed Ukraine supporters who have acted as his enablers could start by admitting that they were wrong instead of lecturing Zelensky on manners.
Live from Charlotte, the gang welcomes Pete Buttigieg for a night of politics among friends. This recording of Bulwark LIVE is exclusively for Bulwark+ members.
(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Donald Trump to face accusations of corruption after he first arrived in Washington in 2017. In fact, within seventy-two hours of being sworn in as president, he got hit with a lawsuit alleging he’d violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
But while the Democratic political class was outraged by Trump’s corruption—even turning his failure to “drain the swamp” into a key pillar of their 2018 midterm strategy—the harsh reality was that voters didn’t really care.
Focus groups Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell conducted at the end of Trump’s first term and in its aftermath showed wide ambivalence to the corruption charges. Many Trump supporters downplayed his immense wealth and refusal to show his tax returns by saying things like “he can’t be bought” and “what politician doesn’t do it?” As Carolyn, a disaffected 2016 Trump voter from Florida, put it in one 2020 focus group when asked about the various scandals: “It bothers me on a personal level, but I didn’t vote for him to be my friend.”
Or as Drew, a repeat Trump voter from Colorado, put it in 2023 when asked about Trump making millions selling t-shirts and other merchandise featuring his mugshot: “Well, more power to him then, right?”
Today, though, there’s reason to believe that the public’s earlier ambivalence has faded, and that Trump’s corruption is not only breaking through in a big way, but could sway the course of this year’s midterms. A recent Gallup survey found a record number of Americans believe government corruption is widespread, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that a majority of Americans believe Trump has inappropriately profited since returning to office. A Fox News poll released last week showed that corruption in government was the top issue for registered voters, followed closely by inflation and high prices.
Far from fearful that they’re re-running a playbook that proved relatively ineffectual in 2018, the Democratic officials and strategists I talked to say
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Trump is lifting sanctions on Russian energy, his own energy secretary is contradicting his explanation, and Republicans are scrambling to defend the indefensible. Sam Stein and Will Saletan take on Trump’s latest gift to Putin, Elon Musk’s troubling role in Ukraine’s Starlink crisis, and the disastrous legacy of Lindsey Graham, who helped bring Trump back to power believing he could control him.
For years, American spies and diplomats have suffered mysterious, debilitating injuries. Was Russia secretly targeting them, and did the CIA cover it up? Former CIA officer Mark Polymeropoulos, whose career was ended by Havana Syndrome, and Michael Weiss welcome 60 Minutes investigative journalist Michael Rey to examine explosive new evidence, a suspected Russian microwave weapon, and the government’s treatment of its own officers.
The Havana Syndrome: Secret Weapons, a Government Cover-Up, and the Greatest Spy Mystery of Our Time by Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados:
Tim Miller talks with journalist Caolan Robertson, reporting from Ukraine’s front lines, about disruptions to the satellite communications Ukrainian soldiers depend on, Marco Rubio’s baffling explanation, and the deadly consequences of losing that lifeline. They also discuss Russia’s escalating attacks on civilians, Ukraine bringing the fight to Russian territory, and how Trump’s relationship with Putin is being viewed by Ukrainians.
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James Carville joins Bill Kristol to explain why he's cautiously optimistic about a massive Democratic wave, with Republicans facing unexpected threats in Florida, Texas, and even the Deep South. They discuss Trump’s disastrous polling, the GOP’s crumbling coalition, the possibility of election interference, and what a crushing Republican defeat could mean for Trump’s billionaire allies and the future of American politics.
(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
ONE REASON HEALTH CARE is such a good issue for the Democrats in this year’s midterms is that pretty much everybody from the party’s different factions agrees on the problem and the solution.
For the moment.
In the short term, the problem is that Donald Trump and the Republican party cut Medicaid, then refused to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, putting health care at risk for tens of millions of Americans.
The solution is to undo the cuts and renew the subsidies, which is precisely what Democratic leaders say is at the top of their agenda for a hypothetical new Congress and—if Trump won’t go along—a hypothetical trifecta two years later.
But the American health care system had big problems even before Trump and the Republicans delivered those blows to Medicaid and “Obamacare.” Millions of people lacked insurance, though far fewer than before the Affordable Care Act, and millions more struggled with high premiums or out-of-pocket costs.
That’s why Democrats are talking about next steps for finally getting to truly universal coverage—which, in turn, has restarted old arguments about whether to seek a total health care sector reset with Medicare for All or to seek more incremental changes, some of which would still be highly ambitious and some of which would not.
That debate got a ton of attention in the primaries. And while it has subsided a bit since, because it’s now Democrats versus Republicans rather than Democrats against each other, it is sure to kick up as soon as the midterms are over.
One person who has been thinking a lot about that debate is Andy Kim, the Democratic junior senator from New Jersey. He’s already got an idea for how the party should move forward if it gets the chance to legislate: He wants to act quickly to guarantee health insurance to all children as a first step toward bigger and more comprehensive reforms, through a proposal he calls “MediKids.”
It sounds intuitively simple, which is a bit deceptive once you get into the policy weeds. The thirteen-page bill Kim and three cosponsors introduced in July comes with all kinds of unanswered questions and, if implemented, would force all kinds of tradeoffs. Those include possible effects on existing private insurance and, naturally, the fiscal impact.
But those things would be true of any major health care proposal, as they would be for sticking with the status quo. And MediKids has plenty going for it, including the potential to keep the party united and to build some momentum for bigger changes, all while helping a bunch of children get health care they desperately need.
As Kim made clear to me in an interview—which you can watch below—that’s not a bad sales pitch.
KIM, WHO HAS BEEN IN CONGRESS for less than ten years and in the Senate for less than two, is not especially well known either to the public at large or inside the wonky world of health policy. But he sits on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. And health care has played a key role in his political career, which started in 2017 when the newly elected Trump and the Republican Congress set out to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
At the time, Kim’s wife was pregnant with their second child, whom doctors had determined was seriously underweight and at risk of severe health problems, and possibly not surviving at all. “The doctors came in and talked to us, and they said, ‘You know, there’s a problem,’ which is the last thing you want to hear when you’re there for an ultrasound,” Kim told me.
“It was devastating to get this news,” Kim went on to say, “and while I’m there taking my wife to the hospital constantly for different therapies, to see what we can do to get the weight up, I was watching the TV and I was watching the news, and my own congressman from New Jersey is leading the charge on trying to gut pre-existing condition protections.”
Kim was referring to Tom MacArthur, a House Republican whose deal with GOP leaders, hatched quietly when it appeared negotiations had broken down, got legislation through the House and over to the Senate. Repeal never got through the upper chamber, stopped there by the dramatic thumbs-down vote of Arizona Republican John McCain. But Kim ran for Congress, making a defense of the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions the centerpiece of his campaign.
Kim’s victory was part of the 2018 blue wave, in which the backlash to repeal played a major part. Since then he has continued to talk about health care reform and developed a special interest in children’s coverage—very much because, he told me, he’s a young father who understands what’s at stake.
“Thankfully my baby was born, we’ve been able to manage his health challenges, now he’s an all-star on his soccer team, and I’m really proud of that,” Kim said. “But ever since then, it really just stuck with me—the concerns about health care for everybody, but in particular when it comes to kids, when it comes to those who are most vulnerable, those who can’t look out for themselves, those that we as adults have a responsibility for.”
Kim, a Rhodes Scholar, also made it his business to learn about policy and the history of reform—leading him to propose MediKids, which, among its other virtues, is relatively simple to explain. It would automatically enroll every newborn into a new insurance program, giving parents the chance to opt out if they have alternative coverage in place. Kids could then stay on the program until they are 26 years old.1
Automatic enrollment, which would start two years after the law’s enactment, is the crucial element. Most children are eligible for some kind of insurance already, thanks to not just the Affordable Care Act but also to expansions of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a 1997 reform. But because the patchwork of existing programs can be extraordinarily difficult to understand and navigate, kids fall through the cracks constantly, which can mean (among other things) that they miss out on screenings, checkups, and other preventive measures that keep them healthier later in life.
More children are bound to lose coverage in the future thanks to Trump and the Republicans: The “One Big Beautiful Bill” requires would-be beneficiaries to go through even more onerous enrollment processes—and pushes states to question eligibility a lot more aggressively. That’s one reason most analysts predict more children are about to become uninsured. Automatically enrolling children would prevent that kind of slippage from happening.2
Kim emphasized to me that he does not see MediKids as a stopping point for reform, or an alternative to any of the more sweeping proposals that would seek to insure people 26 and older. On the contrary, he said, he imagines this as a chance for Democrats to move fast and deliver benefits quickly to a politically sympathetic group before turning their attention to more ambitious changes.
Critically, Kim said he believed that covering all children would create a public “expectation” of universal coverage that would create support for filling in the gaps at other ages—perhaps, again, through some kind of automatic enrollment.3
“Are you really going to have this type of care,” Kim asked, “and then all of a sudden—when you’re [26] years old—want to give it up? I think it’s going to be something that’ll absolutely put us on that path for universal care.”
KIM IS BY NO MEANS the first politician to think of reaching universal coverage this way. Many of Medicare’s original champions, back in the 1960s, envisioned gradually expanding the program to cover people at different ages until eventually it covered everybody. Democrats in Congress and running for president in the early 2000s also proposed kids-first strategies.
In fact, two of them, former West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller and former California Rep. Pete Stark, actually also called their proposal “MediKids.”4
A distinguishing element of Kim’s proposal is that he wants to cover children through Medicaid, not Medicare.5 The reason is a sign that he’s thought about this proposal seriously. The benefit package for basic Medicare has large out-of-pocket costs (that’s why most people have some kind of supplemental coverage, or enroll in “Medicare Advantage” private plans, which fill in the biggest gaps).
Medicaid, by design, has virtually no out-of-pocket spending and comes with a much broader set of benefits, including coverage for services like testing for lead poisoning, which is especially critical for babies and children with developing brains vulnerable to damage from such toxins. “Over 23 million kids are underinsured, which means their coverage isn’t meeting their needs,” Kim said. “That’s absolutely an abomination, in my opinion.”
Kim said he was also trying to be practical, by trying to expand coverage “in a way that isn’t trying to create some brand new agency, department, bureaucracy.” But Medicaid has some well-known weaknesses, too. Among other things, it can be hard for beneficiaries to find specialists who will accept it, because it pays providers so little.
Kim says boosting those payments would be an essential part of any legislation. That would add to his program’s costs—as would the possibility that some employers would stop offering coverage to dependents, so that the public sector would effectively be absorbing some of the health care expenses that employers now bear.
“Democrats will be looking for ideas that could represent additional steppingstones to universal coverage, and kids are a sympathetic group and relatively inexpensive to insure,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the health policy research organization KFF, told me over email. But, he noted, “Providing universal coverage to a group like kids who in many cases already have private insurance raises thorny issues about what happens to the money employers are paying into the system now.”
Kim said he hadn’t gotten a Congressional Budget Office estimate yet, but said it’s important to keep in mind the program’s long-term benefits. “I think of health care for children in particular being really an investment in this country,” Kim said. “Healthier kids mean healthier adults, which means a healthier workforce, which means a more productive economy.”
THERE WAS A TIME, not so long ago, that insuring children was a bipartisan cause. But it’s hard to imagine many Republicans going for a plan of even modest cost, let alone one that offers coverage to undocumented immigrants, as MediKids would.
Kim said he crafted his plan with that in mind, figuring it could pass through the reconciliation process—in other words, with just a simple majority in the Senate, rather than the sixty votes it would take to overcome a filibuster. “This is not a messaging bill,” he said. But getting all the Democrats on board could present its own challenges.
In most states, private insurers run Medicaid plans under contract, making MediKids a potentially tougher sell with progressives who are reluctant to support expansions that build on any form of private coverage. And while Kim envisions passing MediKids as a quick, targeted action, there’s no guarantee it couldn’t bog down a new president and Congress as much as bigger reforms might, potentially squandering the chance to do more.
Those political questions are important for Democrats to consider, as are the policy and budgetary implications of MediKids. But with any real chances of enactment likely two years away, now is the perfect time for Kim to showcase his idea, and see how it holds up to scrutiny.
The legislation calls for making Medicaid available to anybody under 26, though it would enroll only newborns automatically. It’s not hard to imagine a version that would include aggressive outreach to boost enrollment among older children born before the plan took effect.
The Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill “uses technology to create added friction, barriers, and redetermination hurdles to make eligibility harder to maintain,” Bruce Lesley, president of an advocacy group called First Focus that helped shape the MediKids plan, wrote after Kim introduced it in July. “MediKids removes those barriers to care for children and, as Medicare does for seniors when they turn 65, creates a default and expectation of enrollment at birth, guaranteed, continuous coverage, no annual paperwork barriers, no churn, and no families navigating a bureaucracy to keep a child covered.”
Rockefeller and Stark were some of the most dedicated and relentless champions for universal coverage of their time. You can read more about Stark, who died in 2020, here.
Medicaid is the program for low-income people, operated by the states in partnership with the federal government. Medicare is the program for seniors and people with disabilities, which the federal government runs on its own. Some people qualify for both, because—for example—they are both elderly and low-income.
(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
GEORGIA HAS HAD CLOSE ELECTIONS in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024—but right now Sen. Jon Ossoff’s lead is pushing into the double digits. Why?
One reason is that Ossoff completely eviscerated his opponent, Rep. Mike Collins, in a couple of recent debates for voting to direct money to data-center developers and for hiring “half the Third Reich” to staff his congressional office. In a particularly arresting image, Ossoff said that Collins would be grabbing a billy club if John Lewis were marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge today.He did all of this with the cadence of Atticus Finch, but didn’t spend so much time in the muck that he failed to speak with soaring, Obama-esque rhetoric about the promise of America.
It was a performance bound to set off a lot of speculation about a presidential run—which Ossoff promised not to make. In short, Ossoff is doing exactly what I’ve been begging Democrats to do.1
But the things that I love about him are not always a one-to-one match for what voters will like about him. So we asked some Georgia Trump voters who now disapprove of the president what they thought about Ossoff.
David Frum joins Mona Charen to discuss Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin, the absurdity of his Russian diesel deal, and the damage he’s doing to America’s standing in the world. They also discuss why Wall Street considers the U.S. a riskier borrower than Greece, the failure of Trump’s deadly drug boat strikes, and what it will take to repair the damage after Trump.
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Recorded live in Columbia, South Carolina, on October 16, 2026, Tim Miller, Sam Stein, and Will Sommer take a hilarious tour through the latest MAGA madness: Kimberly Guilfoyle’s increasingly messy scandals, Tucker Carlson’s inexplicable horse commentary, James O’Keefe’s $3,000 journalism awards, the mystery of $60,000 in missing beef, and the growing civil war among young Republicans.
Gen. Mark Hertling and Ben Parker welcome renowned military strategist Eliot Cohen to discuss what makes great leaders, the dysfunction inside Trump’s Pentagon, and the difficult choices facing military officers. Drawing on lessons from Churchill, Afghanistan, and Iraq, they explore why wars go wrong, how to recognize victory, and what history teaches us about military strategy.
Happy Saturday! We kicked off our fall tour last night with a sold-out show in Columbia, South Carolina. Annie Andrews and Bakari Sellers joined us for an evening of Southern politics, 2028 superlatives, The Next Level and The Trio. A great crowd and a great way to start the tour. Charlotte, North Carolina is up next.
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Congratulations are in order for our Brewers fans on the sweep of the Dodgers! A few came to last night’s show repping the Brew Crew. And to my Dodgers friends: Welcome to the Cleveland bandwagon.
Last night’s ALCS game was postponed as the gales of November came early, but I remain hopeful that my Guardians will join Milwaukee for what might be called the Edmund Fitzgerald World Series.
I’m sure Rob Manfred (boo) loves the all-small-market World Series we’re now guaranteed. Mister Commissioner, just remember, as Ray Ratto observes at Defector: Good baseball isn’t necessarily beautiful (or super profitable!)
No Kings! Stay safe out there if you’re participating in today’s events. We booked our fall tour long before today’s date was announced, so we won’t be in as many places as we’ve been in the past. I’ll also miss sending a dispatch from the Queen City, which always shows up big! Meanwhile, the Bad Orange Man is across the river at Northern Kentucky University today, for some reason. You know things are going poorly when you have to play defense in… Kentucky.
Keeping the record: Trump’s pardons sent January 6th defendants home to communities across the country. J6 Tracker follows what they do next, including new arrests and runs for office. Separately, the January 6 Memory Project preserved DOJ press releases and other statements from more than 1,000 cases and made them searchable. Two useful resources for keeping the public record public. Take a look at who’s back in your community.
Bulwark Book Club pick for October: The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865–1915.
Mona Charen, JVL and the author Jon Grinspan will discuss the book with Bulwark+ members on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 1:30 p.m. ET. More details in this post.
(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
EVEN THOUGH PRESIDENT TRUMP’S EFFORTS to bend elections to his will have so far largely failed, don’t mistake defeat for retreat. The federal government’s highest power centers are working overtime to tilt the election in the administration’s favor.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice sued California, accusing the state of harboring noncitizens on its voter rolls. The suit was filed forty-eight hours after DOJ mailed county election officials a password-protected thumb drive purportedly containing a list of alleged noncitizen voters. This item was delivered with an ultimatum: use the list within the next two days to review the names and prepare to separate their mail-in ballots when returned—or get sued. An L.A. County official rejected the thumb drive as an insecure medium for such a list, and the lawsuit against the state followed.
On Friday, the administration escalated from litigation to threats of criminal prosecution. In a letter to Los Angeles County officials, DOJ warned that knowingly counting ballots from people federal agencies had identified as noncitizens could make election workers criminally liable—even though California officials say the administration has provided no evidence to substantiate its claims. Trump amplified the threat on Truth Social: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”
The administration’s tactics in California mirror what the Department of Homeland Security tried in Nevada, where Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed nearly 16,000 noncitizens were on the voter rolls and sent a letter to state officials pressuring them to review each case. Upon scrutiny, that number fell to 185 and then to zero. The pretext for the purge completely fell apart, yet the Trump administration keeps pushing these sorts of voter-fraud narratives and making demands for election officials to go to great lengths to restrict voting access.
While January 6th showed Americans what one vivid form of election subversion looks like, schemes of that sort rarely announce themselves with the clamor of an insurrection. More often, they are carried out through the subtle machinery of government: paperwork, pressure, propaganda. And the authoritarians in the Trump administration are not discouraged by failure. They’re like battering rams, hammering at the system again and again, hoping it will eventually break down in a way that benefits them.
So don’t miss what’s happening now. Trump’s election interference effort is well underway.
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The falsehood that has been used to provide a basis for all the administration’s actions is simple: They pretend voter fraud is widespread. This initial lie has a natural corollary in turn: The only way to stop the fraud is to put the Trump administration in charge of who gets to vote.
Based on this false framework, Trump has issued a pair of executiveorders intended to put his appointees in a position to control who can vote in our elections. The administration has interpreted these orders expansively as an instruction for agencies to create new voter requirements, to compel the states to provide unredacted voter rolls, and to prohibit mail-in ballots unless voters were placed on a new federal voter registry. Those plans faced heavy resistance, even in red states, as the Constitution strictly leaves the power to administer elections to the states.
When those efforts faltered, Trump pivoted. He demanded that Congress pass the SAVE America Act to enact some of these restrictions and requirements, but even a Republican-controlled Congress wouldn’t pass it. At the same time, DOJ tried to get the voter data another way: by suing states to hand it over. But the courts are shutting those efforts down, too; the Trump administration is 0–26 in those cases, with Republican-appointed judges delivering some of those defeats. Additionally, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the postal rule, keeping mail-in voting safe, secure, and out of Trump’s hands for now.
DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) tried to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in terrorism preparedness grants unless states and local governments accepted the imposition of FEMA’s de facto nationwide election code. The agency’s demands included stipulations about what kind of voting equipment to use; the means by which voters cast ballots; how post-election audits and ballot reconciliation processes are conducted; and how to make citizenship checks on voters and election workers. A judge recently blocked DHS from withholding the grants, and FEMA has rescinded the unlawful election-related requirements the agency had attempted to impose.
At this point, Trump should have taken the dozens of Nos to amount to a larger No. He didn’t. He keeps pounding away.
Trump gave a primetime speech in July, during which he accused
There are a lot of red states with big elections this year where Democrats are 'sayin' there's a chance,' like Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, or Iowa, where they may have more than just a chance. The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey joins Sarah to talk about her travels with Iowa's two leading Democratic candidates, the other long shots Democrats are eyeing in red states, and what disaffected Trump voters are saying about all of it.
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Tim Miller ventures outside the Bulwark bubble for a candid conversation with Mario Nawfal, a Trump-friendly influencer who’s having serious buyer’s remorse. They discuss Trump’s disastrous Iran war, the voters abandoning his coalition, his increasingly dangerous obsession with his legacy, and his willingness to throw Ukraine under the bus to appease Putin.
(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
AT A CAMPAIGN RALLY in Alaska earlier this week, Donald Trump, chuckling, introduced Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to the MAGA faithful in this way: “And we have the FCC head, the most-feared man in government here, Brendan. Thank you, Brendan, what the hell are you doing here?”
Nominally, Carr was there because the FCC was announcing a nine-figure investment in broadband infrastructure in the Alaskan wilderness. And while this move connecting upwards of hundreds of Alaskans to 4K-quality Netflix is undoubtedly of great import, the real reason Brendan Carr was in attendance is far simpler: He has become one of President Trump’s favored tools of government interference in day-to-day life, a living avatar of the president’s own distaste for freedom of speech and the right to criticize the government.
Carr has accepted the role with zeal, oozing into his newfound fame as the president’s poison sludge with oily dexterity. Anytime there’s something media-related that Trump wants squelched, Carr folds his arms, pushes his frameless glasses up his nose, and gets to jawboning. Anytime there’s a media deal the president wants slow-walked to extract concessions from an enemy of the people (that is, the free press), Carr slams on the brakes. And anytime an administration-backed deal comes before the FCC, well, no problem at all—even if the concessions being made by the FCC to permit those deals are patently illegal.
“The FCC has become a political arm of the administration,” FCC commissioner Anna Gomez told me in a phone interview. “Prior to this administration, our decisions were based on technical expertise and policy concerns, not the political whims of the White House.”
I’ve yet to speak to a longtime observer of the FCC who thinks Carr is acting within the normal bounds of the office. What was once a government regulatory body more concerned with broad questions about what counts as profanity or with technical questions about broadband access has devolved into something much uglier, more partisan.
That he’s also a hypocrite isn’t the worst part of all this—the worst part is
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