Our top story today. The people who built the MAGA movement are starting to walk away from it. Farmers who have voted Republican their whole lives are watching soybean prices crater while diesel hits a record. Truckers are getting crushed at the pump. And the superfans who followed Trump from rally to rally for years are now calling him a fraud. These are the people who put him there.

We’ll also get into another taxpayer-funded Trump ad, new reporting that Trump offered to sell weapons to China, Trump rejecting a deal with Iran, and the White House getting caught faking numbers once again.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. MAGA Voters Turn on Trump

For years, more than half the soybeans American farmers shipped overseas went to China. When Trump picked his trade fight, China stopped buying, prices fell, and farmers ate billions of dollars in losses on last year’s crop. Then tariffs pushed up the cost of the equipment they need to plant, repair, and harvest.

Then came the war. Diesel was under four dollars a gallon in February. It’s now around six and a half, a record. Right in the middle of harvest. One Missouri farmer who voted for Trump told Fortune his combine burns 200 gallons a day, and he’s paying twice what he paid last year.

For a farmer, this stuff snowballs fast. You lose money on this year’s crop, you borrow more to plant next year’s, and now you’re paying that back at a lower price too. It doesn’t take long before the whole operation is underwater. Farm bankruptcies were up 46 percent last year. In Iowa, they tripled. Since then, basically every decision Trump made has made things harder for farmers, not easier. And they are sick of it.

But it’s not just the farmers. Some of Trump’s most loyal superfans are turning too. These are people who sleep in line to get the front row at his rallies. One of them bought an RV in 2018 just to follow him around. She told Politico the moment it broke for her was that cabinet meeting last summer, when Trump brushed off questions about the Epstein files. She said it was like a dagger in her heart, and that a veil lifted. She now calls him a fraud and a liar. Another, who has been to more than a hundred rallies, said Trump can’t be trusted on the war and he might not vote at all in November.

Just five weeks before the midterms, the farmers who have stood by Trump and the superfans who camp out for his rallies are both walking away. These are the people who gave Trump another term. They believed his promises, but since the day he got back in the White House he hasn’t done anything but let them down.

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2. White House Recycles Trump Ad With Public Money

On Friday we reported on the “Love Me” ad, a 30 second ode to Trump paid for by the federal government. In case you thought that was a one-off, the administration released another gem over the weekend. It ran during Fox News Sunday, Saturday Night Live, and two football games, costing the taxpayer north of a million dollars. So what was the message they needed your money to broadcast? Have a listen.

First of all, “expel the warmongers?” Pretty ironic, Donald.

Anyway, if that seemed like a Trump campaign ad, it’s because it was. The White House literally took a campaign ad Trump ran in 2024, took out the logo, and ran it with public money. This, by the way, from the administration that’s “laser focused” on fraud and waste.

The ad is bad enough, but the defense is just an insult to our intelligence. The White House put out a statement that referred to these ads as “public service announcements” intended to promote patriotism. They even compare the ads to efforts by FDR to rally the country during WWII.

They also cite past administrations’ use of TV ads to explain policy changes. For example, Obama running ads showing Americans how to sign up for Obamacare, or Bush explaining Medicare Part D.

Those ads helped Americans understand new government benefits and how they could access them. But this ad doesn’t offer anything new. It couldn’t possibly be promoting or explaining a new Trump policy, because it was made before he even took office.

Don’t take it from me. Here’s John Kennedy, the Republican Senator from Louisiana.

“The administration sees it differently.” Kennedy is hedging his bets here, but he obviously knows this is wrong. Other Republicans were right there with him. Thom Tillis called the ads inappropriate and compared them to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Thomas Massie said the ads would be normal in a banana republic. Watchdog groups are already filing their complaints with the GAO.

The blatant corruption is nothing new. But next time this administration tries to tell you about waste and weaponization, just remember who’s talking.

3. Trump's Illegal Arms Pitch to China

David Perdue is Trump’s ambassador to China. He went on Fox News Sunday to talk about Xi’s Washington trip, and he made a pretty startling admission: Trump offered to sell Xi American arms.

First of all, that would be blatantly illegal. The US banned arms sales to China in 1989, after Tiananmen Square. That’s federal law. But this president flouting the law is nothing new.

The contrast is far more revealing. This is the same president that held back a 14 billion dollar arms package to Taiwan so he could use it as a bargaining chip. A democracy facing invasion gets stonewalled. The communist dictatorship trying to crush them gets the sales pitch.

It’s just one way this summit has highlighted Trump’s hypocrisy. We already talked about the pageantry: the flyovers, the gifts, the personal touches. But if you weren’t convinced the first time around, here’s Trump himself in 2015 on Obama’s reception for Xi.

So that was the plan: a Big Mac and then straight to business. It just goes to show you how much Trump has changed. Back in the day, he was the one sounding the alarm on the PRC. Since then, he’s been choosing his friends and enemies based on the leaders he respected and related to, even if they were tyrants.

His administration is no more serious. Over the weekend, the White House deputy chief of staff posted an AI generated video of him and the Trump family riding a golden luggage cart through the White House and spraying champagne, presumably dressed for the state dinner.

When it wants your vote, this administration will project patriotism. It will slam communism and celebrate American identity. But they gave up on the principles behind that identity long ago. They stopped caring about the difference between democracies and dictatorships. Countries like Taiwan and Ukraine have paid the price.

Luckily, inconvenient as it is for this administration, we still live in a democracy where your vote matters.

4. Trump Turns Down a Way Out of Iran

The New York Times reports that, on Friday, Iran put an offer on the table: reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart nuclear talks. In exchange, they want the naval blockade lifted, sanctions eased on their oil, and a ceasefire that includes Lebanon. Trump rejected the offer.

Iran only wants to reopen the strait, he claimed, because “they’re losing so badly,” and “we’re winning tremendously.” But after so many declarations of victory, voters aren’t buying it. A CNN poll found 64 percent of Americans don’t think Trump is winning this war. 75 percent don’t think he even has a plan.

And when Republicans like Congressman Tom Kean Jr. try to spin his lies, they hear voters’ frustrations first-hand. Have a listen:

That’s a live audience laughing at the mere suggestion that Trump is winning.

But nobody is more frustrated by the war’s losses than our veterans. Just this past week, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon added 37 more troops to the wounded list, without even a press release. The Post only found out by combing through the Defense Department’s casualty database. That total now stands at 861 wounded and 19 dead since February.

And veterans are hitting back. Founded by Iraq veterans, VoteVets wants to sink the Republicans who have supported the Iran War. According to The New York Times, the group spent over four million against Republican Ashley Hinson in Iowa, who voted for the war six times. And it plans to spend 60 million dollars backing 331 Democratic candidates across the country. That makes it one of the biggest single-issue advocacy groups in the midterms.

Listen, we are now seven months into this war. And the costs keep mounting for both the American public and our military. Voters are fed up. Veterans are fed up. And Hegseth knows that it’s so bad, he’s trying to cover up the evidence.

But Trump doesn’t care. The president conveniently promised voters that the war would end after November’s elections. But he’s reportedly telling his aides something different: that he will start bombing Iran again once the votes are counted.

5. White House Fakes Fraud Numbers Again

During a speech at the Republican midterm convention, JD Vance claimed to have found 250 billion in fraud since the president appointed him czar of the administration’s fraud task force. But The New York Times went through the task force’s own ledger and the numbers don’t add up.

Let’s start with the Justice Department. In its first week, the new fraud division claimed 340 million dollars in enforcement. But about 280 million came from cases investigated months or even years ago, including one from Minnesota in 2022. That work happened under the Biden administration. Vance couldn’t help but count his rival’s success as his own.

The task force also counted Medicaid funding pauses to California and Minnesota as two and a half billion in fraud prevented. But punishing blue states by pausing support for health care doesn’t count as saved money. And it certainly doesn’t prove fraud.

Which brings us to the largest chunk. The task force counted 122 billion dollars of pandemic loans, given out by the Small Business Administration, as fraud. But those loans were flagged as potentially fraudulent. Not recovered. Not even proven.

And look, fraud is undoubtedly a massive problem. According to estimates by the Government Accountability Office, the federal government loses anywhere between 233 to 521 billion dollars annually. But the GAO’s former head said the figures that Vance and his task force have cited lack transparency. And they haven’t been independently checked the way they normally would be.

But let me be clear. JD Vance doesn’t have to pad his numbers. Think about that Trump ad, plastered across your TV screens, paid for by your taxes. If his task force wants real fraud, it should investigate its own administration, starting at the top.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Saudi Arabia has not ruled out building a nuclear weapon, according to classified documents sent to Congress. That finding lands in the middle of a 90-day congressional review of President Trump’s deal to help the kingdom build a civilian nuclear program. While the deal initially caps Saudi uranium enrichment below 5 percent, a further study and a written agreement reveals that the cap can rise to 20 percent. That level of enrichment can be fairly quickly pushed to weapons grade material. For context, Obama’s 2015 Iran deal, which Trump harshly criticized, capped enrichment at 3.67 percent. Members of the deal have dismissed concerns. The State Department says the U.S. “does not and will not support a Saudi nuclear weapon program.” The Saudi Energy Minister has said the program will be “peaceful.” But the deal does not require the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors access to every stage of a country’s fuel cycle. And geopolitical tensions incentivize noncompliance. In 2018, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he would build a bomb if Iran completed the development of its own.

• Senate Republicans are spending their last scheduled week in session before the midterms trying to pass bills they can campaign on, as their candidates slip further behind Democrats. The centerpiece is a vote expected this week on Sen. Jon Husted’s bill to protect consumers from electricity costs driven by the data center boom. Husted is one of the most vulnerable Republicans on the ballot. And he’s running against an opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has spent millions on ads tying him to rising power bills. A recent poll revealed that 69 percent of likely Ohio voters said data centers are mostly bad for home energy costs. Husted says his bill will show voters that he and other Republicans are “serious about driving down electric prices.” But Democrats aren’t convinced. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a fraud,” pointing out that compliance is voluntary. The bill also wouldn’t take full effect for another two years.

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Go deeper at AdamKinzinger.com

Last week, Donald Trump walked Chinese President Xi Jinping down the White House colonnade, showing off what he calls his Presidential Walk of Fame, a row of portraits of every man who’s held the office. They reached Trump’s two terms. “Trump, and then Trump,” he says, gesturing proudly. Then they reach the next frame, and instead of a portrait of Joe Biden, there’s a picture of an autopen. “And this is the autopen,” Trump says. “It’s Biden.”

Xi laughs. His entourage laughs along with him.

And Donald Trump, beaming, has absolutely no idea what just happened.

Trump, a bottomless pit of petty insecurities, thought he was humiliating his predecessor, Joe Biden. To Trump, that he was doing so to the leader of America’s chief rival was a bonus.

What our president didn’t realize is that he’d just turned the presidency and the United States itself into a punchline. I saw a tweet from Sarah Matthews of The Bulwark about the moment and it got me thinking that this has been happening for Trump’s entire life.

This short moment is, in fact, the whole moral arc of Donald Trump.

Even from the very beginning, Trump could never get the approval he so desperately craved. Trump grew up in Queens, an outer borough kid who spent his whole life desperate for the approval of the Manhattan elite across the river. The old money, the society pages, the people who decided who really mattered in New York.

When he finally made his fortune, he built his answer to them in gold. Lots of gold.

He splashed his name across buildings. Then across steaks, vodka, an airline, and wine. He put gold leaf on everything imaginable. Trump was so proud of himself. He thought his gilded lifestyle broadcast wealth and taste.

The people he was trying to impress thought it did the opposite. To the Manhattan elite, the gaudy towers and the shameless self-branding weren’t proof he’d arrived. They were proof he never would. The very brand that made him a household name, the one that eventually carried him to the presidency, was, to the people whose approval he wanted most, an embarrassment. He never got the invitations he was chasing.

Today, instead of Manhattan’s high society, Trump now craves the approval of the world’s strongmen.

When Xi arrived at Joint Base Andrews, Trump rolled out the red carpet, literally, and a video went viral of American service members on their hands and knees in the final moments before Xi’s plane door opened, scrubbing and smoothing that carpet while Chinese officials looked on from the doorway.

A little over a year before that, Trump gave Vladimir Putin the same treatment in Alaska, personally greeting him on the tarmac, honoring him with flyovers, rolling out a summit on American soil for a man who invaded his neighbor and has never once returned the courtesy of a real concession.

Trump believes that showering of these men with the spectacle of American power is how you earn their respect. It isn’t, and the people watching from China, Russia, and other rival nations know exactly what they’re looking at.

The Turning Point and The Verdict

In April of 2011, President Obama stood at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and spent several minutes making Donald Trump the joke of the room. In a completely fair turnabout, he mocked the birther conspiracy that made Trump a political icon on the right. Then Obama mocked Trump’s show, his taste, and even the idea of a Trump presidency.

At one point Obama put up a comical rendering of what Trump’s White House might look like if he ever got the job: a towering hotel, a casino, a golf course, and a huge gold chandelier out front. The room erupted in laughter. Trump sat there and took it, smiling through gritted teeth, while a room of elites laughed at him instead of with him.

His longtime adviser Roger Stone later said that was the night Trump decided to run for president. All it took was Trump finally feeling real humiliation.

You know the rest of the story, but one point stands out here:

As president, just this year, Trump tore down the White House’s East Wing to build himself a $300 million ballroom, plenty of gold trim included.

It is safe to say that Trump didn’t learn the lesson Obama’s joke was trying to teach him. He instead turned the punchline into gaudy reality over a decade later. And he’s proud of it. Obama mocked Trump for his tawdry self-promotion, and Trump, who went on to do everything Obama said, somehow still doesn’t get the joke.

However, one final humiliation awaits Donald Trump.

Come 2028, this country will no longer have to wake up wondering what fresh humiliation he’s about to inflict on us in front of the world. But his part in the story doesn’t end there.

History will be the ultimate judge of Donald Trump’s presidency. And history won’t care how many retweets he got or whether the morning shows called something a win. History will judge this president on the whole record and hand down a verdict that no amount of gold plating can improve.

That verdict is already clear: Donald Trump will be remembered as the worst president in American history.

That’s the final humiliation.

In the end, we can draw small comfort from that compared to the damage he has wrought on America.

But, and this is more than a small comfort to me, it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to Trump.

I just hope that his legacy is the one joke he can finally get.

— Adam

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Happy Sunday, everyone. Are you ready for some good news?

This administration has spent years going after American science. It proposed the largest cut in NASA’s history, roughly a quarter of the whole agency and about half of its science programs. Researchers have been pushed out, labs consolidated, missions zeroed out on paper before anyone could even argue about them.

But last month, one groundbreaking telescope left the launch pad anyway. And the story of how it got there is our good news this Sunday.

It’s called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named for the woman who became NASA’s first chief of astronomy and the first woman to hold an executive job at the agency. Roman spent her career fighting for a space telescope nobody in Washington thought the country needed. She won that fight too. We ended up calling that one Hubble. You may have heard of it.

Now the telescope named after her is about to make Hubble look quaint.

Roman carries a mirror the same size as Hubble’s, but paired with a camera so wide it captures a piece of sky roughly a hundred times larger in a single shot. What would take Hubble two thousand years to process, Roman can do in one. Astronomers expect it to survey a billion galaxies, map the structure of the universe across cosmic time, and hunt for the answer to one of the biggest open questions in physics: whether our entire model of dark matter and dark energy is simply wrong.

It should also expand the list of known planets around other stars from around six thousand today to as many as a hundred thousand. Every scrap of that data, 1.4 terabytes a day, the fastest stream any NASA astrophysics mission has ever produced, goes public immediately. Free, to any astronomer or curious kid with a laptop.

And my favorite detail? The telescope’s primary mirror wasn’t built from scratch. It started life as a spy satellite mirror, one of two donated to NASA years ago by the National Reconnaissance Office after the intelligence community decided it didn’t need them anymore. A piece of hardware built to look down at the Earth got repurposed to look out at the universe instead. Somewhere in that swap is a pretty good metaphor for what this whole mission has been.

Because Roman has been fighting for its life since long before it ever reached orbit.

Three years running in his first term, this President’s budget asked Congress for zero dollars for the telescope. He wanted to kill it outright. Three years running, Congress said no. And Congress said no again this year, when he made one last-ditch effort to gut the funding.

Even with all of that hanging over them, the people actually building Roman didn’t wait around to find out how the fight would end. They ran two shifts a day. They worked Saturdays, and plenty of Sundays too. Management kept pulling the launch date earlier and earlier, racing to get the thing off the ground before anybody in Washington got another chance to cancel it.

It worked. The team finished eight months ahead of schedule and under budget. Roman lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the morning of August 30th, beginning a three-month, million-mile journey out to its permanent post.

Then, two weeks after launch, NASA announced the mission’s first win. Roman’s first course correction, the delicate engine burn that sets a spacecraft on its final path, was so precise it used less than a tenth of the fuel engineers had set aside for it. Combined with other savings along the way, that leftover fuel means a telescope designed to operate for ten years now has enough left in the tank to work for more than twenty.

The metaphor is hard to ignore. For years, this administration called the project wasteful. It came in early, under budget, and is now going to outlive its own mission plan by a decade.

Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist, said she expects the most exciting science from Roman won’t be the discoveries anyone predicted at all. It’ll be the ones nobody saw coming and raise entirely new questions for the missions that come after this one. “There’s no telling,” she said, “what more we’ll know and have seen by this time next year.”

That’s the thing about real science. It rarely pays off on a schedule anyone in elected office ever gets to enjoy. Roman is expected to keep sending data back into the 2040s. Nobody who fought over its budget this year, on either side, will still be serving in Washington when its biggest discoveries finally arrive. That’s exactly why a project like this is easy to kill on a spreadsheet. And it’s exactly why it’s worth protecting.

For once, enough people in Washington understood that. In a Congress that can’t reliably pass a budget on time or agree on what happened on a given Tuesday, a bipartisan majority has now stood up for this one telescope four separate times.

That is not nothing. In this town, these days, that might be close to a miracle.

Somewhere out past the moon right now, a mirror that used to spy on this planet is turning around to look at the wonder of the universe instead. And one day, we’ll learn yet undiscovered secrets about this journey we’re all on, all thanks to the determination of the engineers at NASA and some unexpected bipartisanship down here on Earth.

And that, my friends, is good news for your Sunday.

— Adam

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I mentioned this on yesterday’s show, but we are launching some new designs for you to wear before the election, and after! Take a look at the new selection at Wear Them Out!!

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Our top story today. We just got our first real look inside ICE’s deportation operation, and it’s a lot bigger and a lot messier than anybody knew. The government’s own watchdog found tens of millions of dollars wasted on detention space that was never used. And while it may seem like ICE’s crackdown was losing steam, new reporting this week shows it’s actually been surging. They’ve just been hiding it.

We’ll also get into Trump rolling out the red carpet for Xi Jinping, the White House finally bending under midterm pressure, Senate Republicans blocking one last Iran war vote, and the ad your tax dollars just paid for.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Watchdog Finds ICE Wasted Millions on Empty Detention Space

Last year, Congress gave ICE a whopping 45 billion dollars to expand detention. The agency clearly didn’t know how to handle all that cash. When the GAO followed the money, they found waste around every corner. Millions spent on tents that were never used. Pricey warehouses that are still sitting empty.

ICE can’t even figure out how to spend the money it hasn’t blown. They told GAO they would have a plan for their newfound fortune by next August. That’s almost a year from now.

It’s a good thing this report came out. ICE has been flying under the radar lately, even as arrests have surged. As the New York Times reports, the discrepancy is by design.

In recent months, ICE has shifted its whole strategy. Instead of big raids in one city at a time, enforcement is now spread out across the country. Officers are working with local police in red states and ignoring sanctuary laws in blue ones. They’re picking people up at laundromats, traffic stops, and even in hospital rooms.

Governors in some of those blue states have pushed back, saying ICE is blatantly violating their laws while threatening them at the same time. Here’s Tom Homan, the man running this operation, when he was asked about those objections.

That’s the guy in charge of the largest deportation operation in American history, not to mention a boatload of taxpayer dollars. And that’s how he talks about actual elected officials who have questions.

When Americans saw this operation up close back in January, they were horrified. They took to the streets. On every channel there was chaos and more news of officers acting like the rules didn’t apply to them. The White House took a beating, and ICE took the hint. If people don’t like what they see, don’t let them see it. Spread it out. Move into the shadows. Stay away from the crowds and the cameras.

This is how an agency acts when it knows the American people aren’t on board. We’ll keep reporting on ICE. So keep listening, and don’t let them hide.

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2. Trump Rolls Out Red Carpet for Xi

President Xi got the whole nine yards yesterday. A military honor cordon with F-22s and B-2s overhead. A review of the Rose Garden, which is now a patio. And a state dinner with Trump’s favorite tech toads. Xi even took home a bald eagle statue for his trouble.

But what really came out of the pageantry? Not much. The tariff truce got extended to January, but there was no lasting deal. Trump sidestepped questions on Taiwan, and Xi was similarly noncommittal on Iran.

In other words, on substance the summit was a nothingburger. But Trump’s treatment of Xi does tell you a lot about his twisted priorities. Even Republican senators were bothered. Listen to Thom Tillis on CBS:

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a president who finds more in common with despots than democratic leaders. War criminal Putin gets invited to the G20. The leader of our greatest adversary, a man Trump himself accuses of election meddling, sails through an easy summit in Washington. Autocrats get wined and dined while leaders like Zelensky get ambushed and chided. Ukraine is the most egregious example of the contrast, but there are others too. Does Trump give the same reception to Japanese or Korean leaders, the ones who deal with Chinese aggression every day? Of course he doesn’t.

That contrast is also highlighted by Trump’s attacks on the press. While PRC propagandists were roaming the White House grounds, we had American reporters fighting for their press badges.

The real source of Trump’s admiration for figures like Xi is jealousy. He wishes he could freeze out the media just like the PRC does without some pesky court getting in the way. Spending time with dictators lets him indulge in that fantasy. And he’s doing it more and more, because the reality at home is getting worse.

3. White House Lets Candidates Ditch Trump

For months, the West Wing has been pushing candidates to run on Trump and promising retribution for anyone that does otherwise. If you listen to this show, you know those threats have flopped. Candidates all across the map have been running from Trump for a while now.

Things are so bad that even the White House is acknowledging reality. Politico reports that Trump’s team is finally giving candidates in tough spots room to distance themselves. Where the base is still loyal, it’s also deploying the president to rally MAGA voters and stop the bleeding.

That bleeding is happening in some pretty shocking places. Take Florida, for example, supposedly a MAGA firewall. A GOP official put it simply: we are hemorrhaging. Trump won the state by 13 points two years ago, but that doesn’t matter anymore. This is a national phenomenon.

Florida was once a battleground state, but even places that haven’t voted blue in 50 years are on Trump’s itinerary. Next week, he’s holding rallies in Oklahoma and Alabama. There’s not even a competitive race in Alabama. A republican president only goes there five weeks before an election when his party wants to hide him from swing voters by any means necessary.

Senators especially are feeling the heat. Axios reports that the Senate Republican campaign arm is begging donors for millions of dollars to defend three red seats that weren’t on anyone’s list six weeks ago. This is what it looks like when an entire party panics.

4. Republicans Campaign Against a War They Just Voted to Continue

Yesterday the Senate voted on a resolution to end the war with Iran. It failed, 49 to 50. Four Republicans broke ranks. Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis. Every other Republican voted no. That was the last vote on this before November, and the twelfth resolution like it to fail since February.

Now, on its own that’s not surprising. What’s surprising is how many of these same Republicans are out on the campaign trail saying the opposite. The Washington Post found vulnerable GOP candidates who once backed the war are now running against it.

There is no better example of this discrepancy than Jon Husted. On Tuesday the Ohio senator, who’s up for reelection, told Politico the war needs to end as quickly as possible. On Thursday he voted to keep it going.

And that in a nutshell is how the Republican party is operating right now. Tell you what you want to hear, then do what daddy Trump wants. And hope nobody calls you out on it.

5. Trump Uses Your Tax Dollars to Buy an Ad About Himself

Starting Wednesday, an ad began airing on Fox News and other cable news outlets. It’s thirty seconds of your worst nightmare.

Trump vows to defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America. Fast cuts from MAGA rallies build into bold claims about the president’s successes, from “largest tax cuts in history” to “defending law and order and police.” Don’t worry, I won’t make us watch it.

One thing that sticks out is a refrain that plays over and over: “love me.” It sounds desperate and dictatorial at the same time. And that’s no accident. Trump keeps breaking record lows in his approval rating, week after week, without a convincing record to turn it around. So the ad goes straight to a simple demand: Love me, or else.

And now the worst part. A well-hidden detail at the end of the ad: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” That’s right. Your government is promoting its own president. And yet again, Trump is blurring the lines of legality.

Federal law bans spending taxpayer money on what the statute calls publicity or propaganda. The government’s own auditors have long read that to include ads that exist to make the president look good. Which is exactly what this ad does.

Regardless of questions about legality, the Atlantic called the ad what it is: a self-serving public service announcement. The president knows he has lost the public’s support, but he also knows that he can’t earn it back with such an abysmal record. So he’s reaching into your pocket to try and buy it back.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that his government has spent the past year preparing for U.S. military invasion and planning cuts to its economic dependence. Carney called preparations for U.S. military action “just risk management” of an “extreme tail risk”. and said planning for it is “just risk management.” He also laid out a plan to cut Canada’s dependence on American technology. That includes moving off Elon Musk’s Starlink and weighing Sweden’s Saab Gripen fighter against a planned order of 88 F-35s. Trade talks between the two countries collapsed in late August, and both sides have traded rounds of tariffs since. Carney says he still talks with Trump often and wants potash added to any revived deal. Canada supplies almost 90 percent of the potash the U.S. imports. Earlier this week, Trump said he’d rather buy it from Belarus, a Russian ally under U.S. sanctions for its role in the war in Ukraine.

• A new NewsGuard audit found that leading AI chatbots cite partisan “pink slime” sites posing as nonpartisan local news in 48 percent of their answers about midterm candidates and issues those sites cover. Only one of 168 responses flagged a source as partisan. ChatGPT cited the sites most often, at nearly 71 percent, followed by Copilot and Perplexity at 54 percent and Claude at 50 percent. Grok came in lowest at 29 percent. Microsoft was the only company to respond. A spokesperson said Copilot is “designed to ground answers in high-quality search results” and encourages users to review its sources. Left-leaning sites were cited three times as often as right-leaning ones, though NewsGuard attributes that to their far higher publishing volume rather than chatbot bias. Networks on both sides have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this year promoting their stories on Facebook and Instagram. NewsGuard now counts 1,179 pink slime sites in the U.S., compared to 937 remaining daily newspapers.

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As someone who has run for office many times, I am always cautious about over-reading the polls more than a month before election day. But, try as hard as I might to look at these numbers with a critical eye, there’s no denying that Democrats are surging right now and are positioned to have one of the best Election Days in recent memory.

Their advantage holds across all types of political environments. Political handicappers at the Cook Political Report, who get to see private polling from both parties, rate nine of the most competitive Senate races as lean D/R or tossups, with the GOP on defense for seven of them.

And in the House, Democrats hold a similar advantage and are favorites to take back the chamber.

And while having the experts on your side is great, there’s another way to tell that the GOP is scared. Look at where they are spending their campaign dollars and you’ll know exactly what they believe is happening on the ground.

If you’re looking for the neon, flashing sign, here it is: two GOP candidates for Senate put out either a press release or ad opposing Trump’s war with Iran in the last two weeks.

Ashley Hinson, running for Iowa’s open Senate seat, cut a spot standing in a grocery store aisle. “Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran,” she says.

Mike Rogers, running for Senate in Michigan, said in his ad, “The war in Iran needs to end to bring costs down.”

The GOP’s own hand-picked Senate recruits, on the ballot this November, are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV airtime to put daylight between themselves and Donald Trump’s war.

There’s a reason the Iran War and higher prices are hurting the GOP so badly. Because Trump made two promises in 2024 that helped deliver him the election. Trump promised no new wars and to bring the cost of living down starting day one.

Instead, he started a war of choice with Iran with no plan to end it. He also insisted on tariffs, in defiance of most modern economists, that helped drive prices on most everyday items up instead of down.

While most people in DC don’t hold a high opinion of everyday Americans, there’s something that always seems to sneak up on the Beltway around election time.

Voters notice. They always do, eventually.

There’s more polling than I could possibly include that shows voters have, indeed, noticed, but one sticks out to me. A new Echelon Insights poll found that only 34 percent of Republicans now call themselves primarily supporters of Donald Trump, down from 59 percent in January of last year. 56 percent now say they’re supporters of the Republican Party first. That number completely flipped in twenty months.

That isn’t to say that these people are going to vote for Democrats in November. But it does mean the Trump cult of personality is cracking from the inside.

Conservative radio host Steve Deace put it even more bluntly in a now-viral tweet about Iowa from GOP sources on the ground: “if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.” The next day, on his show, Deace further lamented the situation starting, “the environment is this bad in my home state of Iowa, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, folks.”

Reputable public polls show Democratic challengers leading in both the Iowa Senate and governor’s races by real margins.

And then there’s Texas. Polling consistently Democrat James Talarico leading Ken Paxton for Senate and Gina Hinojosa within three points of incumbent Governor Greg Abbott. Texas has been a heartbreaker for Democrats in recent cycles, but poll after poll shows these races more favorable to Talarico and Hinojosa than ever imagined.

In Georgia, incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff holds such a commanding lead that most Republicans have written off the race. The same story is true of former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper who is running to fill an open seat in North Carolina. Two historically red states are virtually off the map in September. Stunning.

But it isn’t just specific races where Democrats are overperforming.

The generic congressional ballot, the data point most professionals use to measure the national mood, has Democrats up an average of about nine points nationally. While the Republican push for mid-decade redistricting created structural barriers for Democrats in the House, a generic ballot of nearly double-digits would be more than enough for Democrats to take back the House with a comfortable majority.

But (and there’s always a but) I want to give you the whole picture, because these columns only mean something if I do. Polling is not destiny. I’ve watched races tighten in October after looking finished in September, some of mine included. I’ve watched a sure thing evaporate because a turnout model was wrong, or a late story broke badly, or a campaign got too comfortable.

I am not telling anyone in the broader pro-democracy coalition to relax. Nothing here should take a single person’s foot off the gas between now and November.

But with that caveat firmly in place, I feel comfortable saying that the data and Republicans’ actions all point the same direction. This is shaping up to be a wave election. And Trump built it himself, one broken promise at a time.

In the ocean, real waves don’t happen suddenly or accidentally. They build a long way out before anyone standing on the shore even notices the water pulling back. That is what you’re looking at right now. The water is receding on Republicans.

Don’t wait for the wave itself to grab your board.

Surfs up!

— Adam

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Our top story today: Last night, a federal judge blocked Trump’s press ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and ordered the White House to give their press passes back. The judge just so happens to be a Trump appointee, and he’s ruled against Trump on this exact thing before. And Trump clearly knew it was going to happen again, because leading up to the ruling he was online trashing the judge and calling him disloyal. Now, this is the Trump White House, so of course reporters from all three outlets were still turned away at the gates this morning. We’ll get into that.

We’ll also get into Trump inviting Putin to the G20, which he’s hosting at his own golf club, the MAGA influencers who’ve moved on from Trump, a shipment of stealth fighter parts that went missing and turned up in China, and why the Senate map just got a lot scarier for Republicans.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump's Own Judge Blocks His Press Ban

Last night, just after midnight, Judge Timothy Kelly ruled on Trump’s ban against CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and he sided with the press. He ordered the White House to immediately restore their access for the next 14 days while the case proceeds.

He wrote that the ban was most likely unconstitutional, and that the press passes were pulled without any due process at all. No notice, no chance to respond. Nearly 50 news organizations had signed a brief backing the outlets.

The White House tried to argue this was about national security. Kelly didn’t buy it. He pointed out that’s not what Trump said when he announced the ban. Trump said it was about fake news. And some of the stories the White House flagged as dangerous were routine, months old, and written by reporters who didn’t even have White House passes.

Kelly was appointed by Trump, in his first term. Before the hearing, Trump posted that he expected the “totally disloyal” judge to rule against him. And this isn’t Kelly’s first time doing this. Back in 2018, he’s the judge who ordered the White House to give CNN’s Jim Acosta his press pass back. Eight years later, he’s looking at the same thing from the same unhinged President, and he has to tell him, once again, you can’t do this.

So that should be the end of it, right? Well, this is the Trump White House. Here’s what happened at six o’clock this morning:

And the same thing happened for CNN and Politico. The outlets went right back to the judge and asked for an emergency hearing, and he gave the White House until lunchtime to respond. Right as we were putting the show together, the White House let the reporters back in, just before that deadline.

Look, the Secret Service at the White House is no joke. They are on top of things over there. This wasn’t some technical glitch. We’ve seen this from this White House time and time again. They lose in court, and they just ignore it and see how far they can push before someone stops them.

And it’s notable that this is happening the same day Xi Jinping arrives for a state visit. The Chinese president is walking into a White House where American reporters were being physically blocked from covering it. He’ll feel right at home.

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2. Trump Invites Putin to G20 at His Golf Club

Marco Rubio confirmed the rumor at the UN: Trump has invited his best buddy to the G20 summit in December. Naturally, it will be held at Trump’s own golf club. Here’s Rubio on the decision:

People that we might disagree with? Really Marco? Let’s be clear. This is a man who is under U.S. sanctions. This is a man with an arrest warrant from the ICC for kidnapping Ukrainian children. This is a man who is prosecuting a brutal war against Ukrainian cities that I’ve seen with my own eyes. This is a war criminal.

Rubio shouldn’t need to be told. As a senator, he was a hawk who understood that Putin needed to be shunned. Europeans still understand that. That’s why Putin doesn’t show up at these events. He’s not welcome, and he shouldn’t be.

So what happens if Vladimir makes an appearance? Well, we can guess based on what happened a few weeks ago. At a smaller G20 summit in Asheville, the Russian finance minister made a rare appearance. European allies couldn’t stand to be in the same room. They wouldn’t even let him in the group photograph.

Imagine how they’ll feel being face-to-face with the man who has single-handedly plunged their continent into chaos. If Putin is the guest of honor, a lot of the allies we actually need to be talking to will probably just skip the meeting altogether. I don’t blame them. It’s like if we showed up to the G7 and they rolled out the red carpet for the Ayatollah.

Look, I’m sympathetic to some of the arguments here. Putin needs to be in the conversation if we want to end the war in Ukraine. But there’s a time and a place. You meet on neutral ground and get the job done.

This doesn’t have anything to do with peace or dialogue. Trump just wants to wine and dine with a guy who relates to his struggles. Putin knows what it’s like to be despised abroad and increasingly unpopular at home.

3. MAGA Influencers Are Done Talking About Trump

We’ve been talking a lot recently about the politicians running from Trump. The candidates dodging him and the senators voting against him. But there’s one group we haven’t gotten to: the influencers. The podcasters. These are the alternative media powerhouses that helped Trump win in 2024. Many of them promised their audiences that only Trump could save America from the radical left.

It’s been a while. So how do they feel about Trump now? Well, the Wall Street Journal ran an analysis on 70,000 hours of their content. Take a look:

Mentions of Trump’s name are down nearly 70 percent from their peak before the 2024 election. Much of the downturn has come since the Iran war, which seems to be a sticking point for many of these influencers: Tucker Carlson, for example, broke with the White House after failing to convince Trump to back off.

Tucker is a unique case. Most of these influencers still haven’t come out against the administration outright. More commonly, they’ve shifted focus to culture war topics or attacks on specific Democratic candidates like James Talarico.

But their apparent loss of interest in Trump tells you a lot about MAGA. Remember that most of these guys are in it for the views and the money, so they talk about what the base wants to hear. Based on this data, Trump just doesn’t get them fired up anymore.

They may not switch sides. And some of them will still turn out just to stick it to the libs. But others will stay home, because Trump has disappointed them at every turn and has no positive vision to offer.

Trump is MAGA. If the name isn’t selling, it means the movement is on life support. And that’s good news for the country.

4. China May Have Our Stealth Fighter Parts

Politico reports that a contractor for Lockheed Martin was moving a shipment of F-35 parts from Australia this summer, headed to the U.S. for repair. But it never got there. Somewhere along the way, the parts were rerouted to Hong Kong. That includes the cockpit canopy and a weapons-bay door.

The Australians claim that the parts were unserviceable anyhow, so nothing sensitive was lost. But the F-35 is the crown jewel of American air power. Both its canopy and its weapons-bay door have a stealth coating that is only meant to be accessible to U.S. allies. Now it might be in the hands of our greatest adversary.

So why were the parts diverted? Nobody has any answers. The Pentagon says it’s investigating the incident. Congress, who had been briefed in June, has opened its own inquiry. And the Chinese Foreign Ministry says it’s not aware of the incident. Of course not.

Now, I don’t know exactly what happened here. Obviously, it could just be incompetence. Somebody slapped the wrong label on a crate. But it could also be another example of the Iran war stretching our military thin. Stuff this sensitive usually moves on military cargo planes. Right now, a lot of those planes are tied up in the Middle East. And according to Bloomberg, these parts went by UPS.

Either way, this is a major national security problem. China may now have its hands on pieces of a jet the United States has spent around two trillion dollars on, and we still don’t know how it happened.

5. Senate Map Swings Toward Democrats

The Cook Political Report moved three Senate races toward Democrats yesterday.

Georgia is now listed as “Likely Democrat,” which comes as no surprise. Democrat Jon Ossoff now commands a firm lead against a scandal-plagued opponent, who has also tied himself to Trump’s agenda.

Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic Senator since 1930. But it has shifted from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican,” even after JD Vance campaigned for the struggling GOP candidate this past month.

And lastly Cook has moved South Carolina from “Solid” to “Likely Republican.” The GOP has a candidate on the ballot with the last name Graham, but there’s a chance that still might not be enough.

Those shifts build on Senate momentum for the Democratic Party in August, when both Texas and Iowa moved from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-up.” And they compound Republicans’ problems elsewhere. The more Senate seats the GOP has to defend, the thinner its money gets spread, and the sooner it has to decide which candidates to cut loose.

That is already taking place in North Carolina. Democrat Roy Cooper holds a double digit lead over his opponent, Michael Whatley, who is now facing cuts to funding from the GOP. Congresswoman Nancy Mace is even writing off the seat, posting: Republicans will “for SURE” lose the Senate race.

So where does that leave us? There are six Republican-held seats rated toss-up or better for Democrats. They need to net four, and Cook says the range is now anywhere from one to five. That’s a true toss-up for control of the Senate, about six weeks out, in a map Republicans thought was a lock not too long ago.

Republicans are playing defense in places they never expected to. Let’s keep it that way. Make sure you vote in November.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• TechNet, the trade group representing the country’s biggest tech companies, filed a public comment urging the Trump administration to withdraw its proposed $103,265 fee on new H-1B visa applications. While the tech industry has largely backed Trump, the two sides stand at odds over the steep visa fee, which deter U.S. employers from temporarily hiring foreign workers. TechNet argues the fee “undermines the president’s championing of American global competitiveness,” and could set the U.S. back in the AI race with China. The administration argues tighter visa rules will force companies to hire American workers. And they have had to defend that position before. When Trump signed an executive order imposing the fee on H-1B visas last year, the Chamber of Commerce sued and a federal judge later struck it down. DHS is now pursuing it through formal rulemaking. That could hold up better in court, but skeptics expect new legal challenges to arise.

• The CDC opened an order for updated COVID-19 vaccines through its Vaccines for Children program, ending a delay of nearly a month. The program serves nearly half of American kids, including children on Medicaid and those without adequate insurance. For weeks, pediatricians could order the FDA-approved shots for privately insured patients but not for children in the federal program. HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said the CDC “has not yet finalized procurement decisions,” framing the holdup as responsible stewardship of taxpayer money. A federal health official blamed the delay partly to a slow review of CDC clinical guidance. That guidance falls back on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine policy recommendations last year. A federal judge has blocked most changes, but two survived: there is no recommendation for pregnant women, and healthy kids now must first consult with a doctor. The youngest children face the most risk. Nearly half of kids hospitalized with COVID between late 2022 and spring 2024 were between 6 and 23 months old.

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Right now, the most-watched politician in America is a 34-year-old democratic socialist who serves as New York City’s mayor. His enemies think he’s a Manchurian candidate. His fans think he’s a revolution.

And I think Zohran Mamdani is going to shape the Democratic Party for the next decade for reasons beyond the social media videos that vaulted him to stardom or the controversies that come with governing.

Let me start with what you already know. He set the political world on fire seemingly overnight. He is telegenic, quick, disarmingly funny, and he runs one of the most relentless media operations in American politics. He understands the media ecosystem we all live in now better than anyone. In an environment that rewards speed, personality, and a camera you’re not afraid of, he is close to a perfect specimen.

But that’s what we all see on social media. The interesting part is what happens when you slow down and let him actually think out loud.

Because when Mamdani gets a longer format , he shows a deeply strategic mind that rarely makes it into the viral, short-form videos. And more surprising, he demonstrates a streak of pragmatism that is at odds with the cartoon version of him that both his fans and his enemies have drawn.

At a recent summit of mayors, he was asked about the state of the left, and he said something fascinating. He argued that progressives have essentially surrendered enormous political territory without a fight.

Changing How You Read the News: Here’s Why It Matters

Americans aren’t just disagreeing; we’re being shown completely different stories.

Every day, news outlets decide what to publish. In polarized media environments, audience demographics can split coverage. If you rely on only one side of the media spectrum, you could miss stories entirely, not because it isn’t credible, but because it doesn’t align with certain editorial priorities.

That’s why I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

That kind of visibility is rare right now, and it changes how you understand the news. I’ve worked out a deal with them; if you want that level of insight every day, head to GroundNews.com/AdamK and subscribe to get 40% off the Vantage plan, the one I use.

Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias. By subscribing, you support both our channel and their independent team working to keep the media transparent.

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“Quality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. Efficiency…has been taken on as a right-wing concern. Rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern.”

- Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Not what you’d expect to hear from the poster boy for the DSA, is it?

But he’s right. Somewhere along the way, the left decided that ordinary human concerns, like whether the streets feel safe and clean, whether government actually works, whether taxpayer money is spent without waste, meant you were hiding Ayn Rand novels in your attic.

Instead of owning the very issues they were trying to solve with an involved government, they ceded the ground. And Mamdani’s point is that ceding the ground just hands the issue to the right, gift-wrapped and ready to be turned into attack ads.

Here’s how he put the consequence:

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’”

- Mayor Zohran Mamdani

I’ve read plenty of Democrats lamenting that the party still fails to connect with voters, even when Donald Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed. Mamdani gives them a clear answer why.

If you genuinely believe that the government can do good in people’s lives, then you should be obsessed with making it run well. You should want to be the party that hunts down waste, fraud, and abuse and fixes the broken agency, because a government that works is the best argument your side has.

Instead, by treating efficiency and quality of life as conservative traps, Democrats too often ended up as the defenders of a status quo that hardly any American actually likes.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Most Democrats who said something like Mamdani would get skewered. Called a squish or neoliberal or worse.

The reason Mamdani can say these things is the same reason certain other politicians have been able to move their parties.

Richard Nixon could go to China because no one on earth could credibly call Nixon soft on communism. His hawkish bona fides were so airtight that he had the freedom to do the once-unthinkable thing, and his base followed him rather than revolting.

More recently, Donald Trump could drag the Republican Party into unthinkable positions because the base had already decided he was one of them. His loyalty, (unlike his presidency) was unimpeachable, so he got latitude nobody else received.

To be clear, I am not comparing Mamdani to Nixon and Trump on substance or character. But what they share is the latitude to take positions nobody else in their parties can and change opinions in the process. This is perhaps the most valuable currency in politics.

“Right now, the most-watched politician in America is a 34-year-old democratic socialist who serves as New York City’s mayor. His enemies think he’s a Manchurian candidate. His fans think he’s a revolution.” - Adam Kinzinger

Mamdani is, to his base, one of them. He ran as a democratic socialist and won, and no one is going to accuse him of being a closet centrist or a sellout to capitalism. Which means he has room to say the hard things without being branded as a traitor.

Now imagine a moderate Democrat delivering those exact same lines about efficiency and waste and quality of life. They’d be accused of parroting Republican talking points before they finished the sentence.

To his credit Mamdani has already walked the efficiency walk. In his first Mayor’s Management Report, an audit showed measurable gains in government performance on things citizens actually care about: pothole repairs up 27%, composting up 25% to a record, speed bump installations up 25%.

And in May, Mamdani launched COGE (the Commission on Government Efficiency) to find even more ways to make city government work better. In doing so, he went straight at Elon Musk’s pet agency DOGE in an attempt to wrest back the mantle of good governance from the chainsaw-wielding billionaire.

That’s why I keep my eye on him. Not because I agree with him on every policy. But because he has a sharp strategic mind and the credibility to say uncomfortable truths to his own people and be heard rather than exiled.

Mamdani is a serious politician who is playing a longer game than his critics realize.

Underestimate him at your own peril.

— Adam

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We’re back at it with another Ask Me Anything! This week we will leave the topic wide open to whatever is on your minds.

Hegseth impeachment? Trump press ban? Trump and Greenland? Drop your questions below in the comments!

Thank you being a part of this community. You’re the reason I can keep speaking the truth about what is happening in our country.

-Adam

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Our top story: the Big Beautiful Bill is starting to hurt the people Republicans need in November. The tax cuts hit first. The cuts to programs like Medicaid and food assistance were delayed on purpose, and that delay is running out. The New York Times reports the effects are showing up in people’s mailboxes and grocery bills right as they begin to vote.

We’ll also get into Trump’s speech at the UN, a Republican senator asking for an investigation into Don Jr., the GOP spending big to defend states it shouldn’t have to worry about, and a reminder of what the relationship between a president and the press is supposed to look like.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump's Big Beautiful Bill Cuts Land Before November

Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill on July 4th of last year. The main event was the tax cuts, more than four trillion dollars over ten years, and the biggest share went to the wealthiest Americans. To pay for it, Republicans made cuts to Medicaid, health care subsidies, and food assistance programs.

The tax cuts took effect right away. But the program cuts were scheduled to phase in later, at the end of 2026 and into 2027. You don’t need to be a political genius to see why. Republicans wanted the tax cuts in people’s pockets before November and everything else to land after.

But it didn’t work. The New York Times reports the pain is arriving early. Food stamp work requirements are kicking in and people are being dropped. Health insurance premiums went up for millions when the subsidies expired. Work requirements for Medicaid start in January, with states allowed to start early. And some have.

The people feeling this are not who you’d expect. Much of the pain lands in rural counties and small towns, places that voted for Trump by big margins. Hospitals there are cutting beds and staff because they’re losing Medicaid patients. We covered a rural hospital in Missouri two weeks ago that cut its maternity ward in half.

And this is just the start. More restrictions on food assistance and Medicaid hit October 1st, a week from today. So the number of people feeling this is going to keep growing right up until Election Day, and Republicans don’t have a way to stop it now.

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2. World Leaders Stop Clapping for Trump

Yesterday, Trump gave a 40-minute speech to the UN General Assembly. It was pretty much what you would expect: he made exaggerated and bogus claims about his achievements, and called concerns about AI a hoax. He insisted that he’s settled eight wars since taking office, and threatened to “annihilate” Iran.

But the reaction from the assembled diplomats was a little different this time around. Take a look at this clip.

Did you hear that pause? That was supposed to be a big applause line. Trump got crickets. It’s an embarrassing moment, for sure. But it goes deeper than that.

How the UN has reacted to Trump’s speeches over time tells you a lot. Back in 2018, he was still a joke. They laughed at him. But soon they saw how he was willing to turn his power against people that offended him. So they started clapping. They flattered Trump, hoping to avoid his anger. But now they’re watching that leverage crumbling as the American people turn on him. They see the same polls we do, and know MAGA is on its way out.

World leaders are acting accordingly. Even as Trump plows ahead on AI, they’re gathering to build frameworks without him. Canada is courting the EU and other allies. And NATO is exercising without us. They won’t twist themselves into a pretzel for a lame-duck president.

That silence in the room wasn’t really about America. It was about Trump. The world still wants a strong, reliable United States. They’re just not going to pretend this is it anymore.

3. A Senate Republican Breaks Ranks on Don Jr.

Last week Adam reported on a Russian oligarch close to Putin who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Don Jr.’s wedding. He paid for a private island, fireworks, and even helped plan it. Caught red handed when the story broke, Don Jr. paid the man back and tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, wasn’t having it. Yesterday, he sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking it to subpoena Don Jr. He wants to dig into his business dealings, his relationships with foreign nationals, and any influence he may have peddled.

Curtis’ argument is simple. Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign ties. They sent subpoena after subpoena looking for dirt on him. Why stop now? Especially after something as egregious as this wedding scandal.

Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, has joined the request. But the Republican chairman still hasn’t said what he’ll do.

The American people deserve to know whether the president’s son is selling access, and who’s buying. We know Trump couldn’t care less about corruption. But this is a chance for Senate Republicans to follow Curtis’ lead, show some spine, and get to the bottom of this. With ballots going out for November, it may be their last chance.

4. Republicans Play Defense in Trump Country

In the House, Republicans hadn’t anticipated a fight that would expand beyond a few-dozen competitive seats. Now they’re scrambling to make up ground in unexpected races.

Since the start of August, nearly two-thirds of advertising funds were spent in races with GOP incumbents. And the majority has been spent in districts Trump won by 5 or even 10 points. That amounts to 460 million dollars.

It’s the same story in the Senate. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority. And most of the seats up this year are taking place in states Trump won handily. They thought the Senate map was easy. Now they’re on the defensive.

Republicans are pouring cash into North Carolina, where the Washington Post reports that the party is deeply worried about its candidate running against Democrat Roy Cooper, the former governor. Cooper currently leads by 12 points. They are equally desperate in Kansas, where the Washington Post found enthusiasm fading in a state Trump carried by 16 points. The same thing is happening in Alaska, Michigan, Iowa, Georgia, and even Texas.

“We need to stop the contagion,” one senior GOP official explained, when describing the midterm landscape.

How have GOP candidates responded? By distancing themselves from the president. Byron Donalds is running for governor in Florida, and he has been one of Trump’s most loyal allies. But his loyalty only extends so far.

Here is Donalds’ campaign website in early September. It features a photo of him and Trump. And the top slogan promises “Byron is committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again.” That commitment didn’t last long.

Here is his same campaign website now. The photo of Trump has been scrubbed. And instead of “Enact the Trump Agenda,” Donalds has a new slogan: “Accountable, Achievable, Affordable.” He seems to have done research about what truly matters to his constituents. And it certainly isn’t Trump.

Donalds probably won’t be the last Trump loyalist to make some last-minute changes to their website. When the party is spending hundreds of millions to hold seats it thought were safe, you’ll see a lot more candidates decide they’d rather talk about affordability than about Trump.

5. Obama Showed How a President Handles the Press

We’ve been covering Trump’s war with the press all week. He banned three outlets from the White House. So the networks pulled their cameras. And Trump did not take that well. He went on an angry tirade on Truth Social, launched his own state TV program, and went after a CNN anchor at the UN.

Here is how JD Vance defended the ban:

His argument is clear: Trump has the power to ban any outlet that provides unflattering journalism. But the First Amendment exists to stop the government from punishing reporters for what they write. Freedom of the press isn’t a privilege the president hands out. It’s a right.

We once had presidents who valued that right, who valued the Constitution. Here is President Obama at his final press conference.

What a difference ten years makes. Obama admitted that he did not always appreciate the coverage he received, but he accepted that journalism is meant to hold powerful leaders accountable to the people. He understood his duty to journalists, to the Constitution, and to the American people. And he carried it out with dignity and poise.

It’s worth remembering what this used to look like, so we know what we’re trying to get back to. Trump has repeatedly abused his presidency to dismantle our democracy, but we still have the right to vote. And that remains the ultimate verdict on his power.

This November, let’s use it.

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• A New York Times investigation published Tuesday found that Project Bullhorn, a Democratic-aligned group, paid more than 100 social media creators up to $30 per video to post about affordability ahead of the midterms. Only about a third of them appeared to live in the states they posted about. One creator who called himself “Austin, Texas born and raised” was actually from Leicestershire, England. Another posed as a struggling young man near Dallas. He later admitted in a since-deleted video that he didn’t even live in Texas. Project Bullhorn declined to comment. A person familiar with the campaign said creators are supposed to live in those states or have close ties to them. The tactic isn’t limited to one party. A pro-DeSantis clipping campaign produced 1,441 videos and more than 6 million views. Some of those accounts were based in Pakistan. Republican Spencer Pratt spent more than $55,000 on clipping firms during his failed run for LA mayor. Early this month, an unidentified nonprofit offered up to $1,500 for videos supporting mail voting. Few of these posts are labeled as paid content. In most cases, the law doesn’t require them to be

• The FBI confirmed it is investigating a possible breach of its jobs portal after the cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed it stole data on “almost all” FBI agents. The group gave 404 Media a sample covering 5,000 supposed agents, including the names, home addresses, phone numbers, and details about agents’ spouses. The FBI said it is “aware of claims regarding unauthorized activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating.” Two people with knowledge of the breach said investigators find the claims credible and see it as a significant counterintelligence failure. Investigators believe the hackers exploited a flaw in Oracle PeopleSoft, HR software ShinyHunters attacked in June. Oracle has since patched that bug, and investigators are still working out whether the group reused it on an unpatched system or found another way in. ShinyHunters says it went after the FBI in retaliation for a May public alert about the group. This is the second major breach of a sensitive FBI system this year. In April, China-linked hackers broke into an FBI wiretap system.

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Last week, Speaker Mike Johnson had a problem. A resolution to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was on the House floor, and under the rules, his members were going to have to vote on it within two days.

So he sent them home.

He called an early recess, seven weeks worth to take it past the November election, and swore up and down it had nothing to do with Hegseth. Nobody believed him.

And here’s the kicker: the impeachment resolution wasn’t filed by some firebrand Democrat. It came from Thomas Massie, a conservative Republican.

But with Democrats poised to regain control of the House, impeachment is about to get much more attention, and very quickly.

So let’s talk about impeachment, a topic I know a thing or two about, because it’s serious business.

Impeachment is not a censure vote or a strongly worded letter. It is a major guardrail provided to Congress by the Constitution to give it the power to tear a person out of the government of the United States.

In 1974, a Republican named Tom Railsback voted to impeach a president of his own party, a man he admired. He worried it would end his career. He did it anyway, because he decided his oath to the Constitution outranked his loyalty to Richard Nixon.

When I voted to impeach Donald Trump, the seriousness of the moment outweighed everything else and knew what it would cost me. When I cast my vote, I did not feel triumphant. I felt the weight of history on my shoulders.

If impeachment ever feels fun, you’re doing it wrong.

So when I tell you Pete Hegseth has earned impeachment, know that I don’t say it lightly. I say it because I take the word seriously, and because the case is overwhelming.

The Case Against Hegseth

We have to start with the boat strikes.

For a year now, on Hegseth’s orders, the U.S. military has been blowing up small boats it says are carrying drugs. At least 231 people are dead. Roughly 69 strikes.

The government has shown no evidence these boats were smuggling anything. It has released almost none of the victims’ names. United Nations experts have a plain term for what this is: extrajudicial executions.

And Hegseth brags about it. He says we’ll “hunt them down and kill them.” He says he’ll treat them “exactly how we treated Al-Qaeda.” Human beings, blown out of the water without a trial, without a charge, without so much as a name.

Second, there’s what he’s done to the military itself. He has purged the senior ranks, firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy Secretary, and battle-tested commanders in the middle of an active war. Our armed forces have always belonged to the country and the Constitution, not to a party or a president. In an attempt to install loyalists, Hegseth is jettisoning vital experience right when we need it most, and that makes America less safe.

“So when I tell you Pete Hegseth has earned impeachment, know that I don’t say it lightly. I say it because I take the word seriously, and because the case is overwhelming.” - Adam Kinzinger

Finally, there’s the war with Iran. Under the Constitution, a president can’t wage war on his own and needs Congressional approval after 60 days of combat. Hegseth never got that authorization. And when a federal law kicked in that was supposed to force the issue, the administration’s legal justification was so flimsy it would have embarrassed a first-year law student.

Hegseth talked this president into an illegal war of choice with Iran and promised it would be quick. It wasn’t. At least 18 American service members have been publicly confirmed killed in the Iran war. But according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal casualty figures, the actual military death toll is at least 22. And after tens of billions of dollars all average Americans have to show for it are higher prices on gas and groceries.

Any one of these would be a scandal. Taken together, they’re more than enough to fill a resignation letter. Congress should be kind enough to sign it for him.

The Choices Ahead

While Pete Hegseth deserves to be impeached, I am not going to pretend impeachment has no downsides. Pretending it doesn’t is the trap waiting for Democrats if (when) voters hand them the majority in November.

This is the most corrupt administration in American history. A new Democratic majority could spend its entire first year doing nothing but impeaching members of this cabinet who deserve it and never hit the bottom of the list. The temptation will be enormous.

But the voters who hand Democrats that majority won’t be doing it to impeach people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Most Americans couldn’t pick Howard Lutnick out of a lineup. And nobody is voting on the finer points of the War Powers Resolution.

They’re voting because gas costs too much. And because a war they never asked for is grinding on and making life worse. And because it is impossible to miss Trump’s corruption.

Put plainly, Democrats owe it to the country and to future generations to hold this lawless administration accountable (Trump himself is a discussion for a whole different article). But they will also owe a duty to the people who gave them a majority for reasons that have nothing to do with impeachment. And those two imperatives can sometimes be mutually exclusive.

To any Democrat who finds that balancing act exhausting, I’d say this: good.

That struggle isn’t a burden. It’s the beating heart of the job you dreamed of and spent months asking voters for. Wrestling with what’s right for the country in 50 years versus what’s right by the voters who trusted you today is called governing.

A politician who doesn’t feel that tension is the one who probably shouldn’t be trusted with the power to make tough calls in the first place.

So here’s where I land: impeach him.

But do it with the full weight of history on your shoulders. And do it without forgetting, for one single day, who sent you to Washington and why.

— Adam

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Our top story today: the FBI was building a bribery case that ran straight through Susan Collins’ office. Trump killed it. He fired the agents working the case, including one who was targeted for investigating his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. ProPublica broke the news this morning. At the center of it is a defense contractor who admits he bought his way into the defense budget with a check to a Collins Super PAC, run through a shell company. He’s serving more than seven years in prison for it. And it wasn’t just Collins. The FBI had officials of both parties wrapped up in this case by the end of 2024. Then Trump took office and squashed it. The corruption in this country is staggering and I am sick of it.

We’ll also get into Trump’s press ban backfiring in real time, his big beautiful arch becoming a sniper nest, Republicans begging for a diesel export ban they used to hate, and the housing chief who built a dirt file on the Attorney General.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Protects the Swamp

In late 2019, Susan Collins was staring down the reality of losing her seat in the U.S. Senate. To cover for a poor political environment, Scott Reed, an ally who ran her Super PAC, sat down at Corner Bakery near the Capitol with three executives from the Hawaiian defense contractor Navatek. The year before, Collins had helped the company land a Navy research contract in Maine. Now her fundraiser went asking for half a million dollars. The boldness and audacity of these people is startling.

Here’s the problem, among many. Federal law prohibits corporations and federal government contractors from making contributions in connection with federal elections. And volleying a donation to a Senator that coincides with a government contract in-hand is subject to scrutiny as bribery. So the company’s CEO, a man named Martin Kao, said he’d set up a shell company to hide the money. The PAC chairman replied by email: “very smart. Thanks for doing this” and so Kao named it the “Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers.” However, he forgot the letter “S” at the end of “scientists” on the filing. That typo tipped off the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, to the $150,000 that Kao passed through to the PAC.

That’s the check. $150,000. A week after it cleared, someone from the PAC emailed a lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number, because, “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.” Two months later, Kao told his executives that Collins had committed to $32 million in Navy contracts for the company. The Senate followed through on at least $10 million in the budget for Navatek that year. Collins reportedly used her position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to tilt the balance of where the contracts went.

Kao got caught. He pleaded guilty in 2022, and he’s doing seven years now behind bars. But before he went in, he spent two years talking to the FBI’s public corruption unit. He gave them a 50-page road map: more than a dozen members of Congress, their staff, the lobbyists, the phone numbers. He said the politicians knew exactly what the money was for. His words: “it takes two to tangle.” By the end of 2024, they had approval to open a broader bribery investigation into Congress.

Then Trump came back and his administration purged that unit agent by agent. One of the lead agents was fired in a one-page letter for having worked to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Her partner in the case was pushed out this year. Same story at the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. Trump’s people ordered it to drop the case against former New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Trump ally. The lawyers resigned en masse rather than participate in such a scheme.

Now, Collins’ office calls all of this outlandish and says the FBI found nothing and she’s never been charged. But here’s what doesn’t need an answer. Trump didn’t kill this case to protect Susan Collins. He killed it because the people running it had also investigated him. And the collateral damage is corruption cases in Washington falling by the wayside. Lewandowski. Witkoff. Trump Jr.’s wedding. Nobody’s looking anymore, because the people whose job it was to look for corruption got fired for doing their job.

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2. The White House Press Revolts

Last week, Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House for what he called “fiction and lies” that amounted to national security threats.

Obviously, those companies are suing. But the rest of the press pool wasn’t having it either. On Monday the five networks that make up the White House TV pool, including Fox, put out a joint statement protesting the ban. Then, along with most of the pool photographers, they packed up their equipment and left.

Despite the boycott, Trump tried to go ahead with an event commemorating his precious new helipad. Here’s how that went:

“Can’t hear what the president is saying.”

If only it were like that all the time.

Even the Newsmax host had to admit Trump’s strategy backfired. And you know this gets to him. As much as he claims to hate the media, Trump lives for those cameras. He picked his cabinet based on who he thought would do the best on camera. Some of his top aides, like Pete Hegseth, were commentators on TV.

See, here’s the thing. Trump needs the press more than the press needs him. What is Trump without his oval office rants and signing ceremonies? What is Trump without reporters to show his scale models and renovation projects? Nothing. As I said at the DNC in 2024, he is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. All those distractions from the real job? They only work if the press shows up.

3. Trump's Arch Becomes a Sniper Nest

You’ve probably heard about Trump’s arch by now. A gaudy monument between the Lincoln Memorial and the hallowed ground of Arlington Cemetery being pushed forward over the objections of architects, historians, and veterans who would prefer to keep the area quiet.

On Sunday, Trump reached for the same old national security excuse. This time, it’s even more ridiculous. He said that at the “strong request of the military,” he’s converting the arch into a top grade military complex. Apparently it will now serve triple duty as a sniper’s nest, drone base, and ammunition storage. Asked to explain the bizarre plan, the Pentagon reserved comment.

Anderson Cooper asked Andrew McCabe, a former deputy director of the FBI, for his take. Have a listen:

He couldn’t hold back a chuckle. I don’t blame him. Snipers stationed on top would be too far to protect any likely target in DC proper. Unless we’re in 1812 and the British are coming to burn Washington, there’s no reason for an installation like this next to the Potomac.

So why do it? Because national security is the magic word. It’s how you make those pesky lawsuits and complaints go away.

It’s just another slap in the face to veterans from this administration. If you’ve visited Arlington Cemetery, you know the atmosphere is a lot different from DC proper. It’s a place of quiet respect where veterans take center stage. Trying to steal the spotlight with a gilded vanity project is bad enough. Justifying that project in the name of national security is sickening. If the arch does get built, we can only hope it comes crumbling down with the rest of this president’s twisted legacy.

4. The GOP Panics Over Diesel

Yesterday, we discussed how Trump’s war in Iran is responsible for record breaking diesel prices, despite the president blaming Ukraine. That raises the cost of farming and trucking, which in turn raises the prices of groceries and other consumer goods. And the GOP is panicking.

The Financial Times reports that Republicans are telling the White House to stop the bleeding by banning diesel exports before the election. A congressman from Tennessee has filed two bills. Iowa’s delegation sent a letter in support. And here’s Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan:

“The Iran War has to end.” And until it does, Rogers adds, Michigan families need an embargo on diesel exports to bring prices down. That’s a direct shot at a president who insists he’s winning the war and that gas prices aren’t his fault.

Remember, Trump even endorsed Rogers. Now that endorsement is dead weight. Rogers is slipping further behind his Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed in the polls, and he’s decided the way back is to break with the president and his agenda.

When the Biden administration floated the same idea, 61 House Republicans signed a letter calling the export ban a catastrophic mistake. They concluded it would hurt our allies, wreck supply chains, and actually raise prices within a few months.

Four years later, Republicans are desperate enough to demand a policy they know doesn’t work. But that doesn’t matter to them. They just need to convince constituents that they are doing something, anything, to fix the mistakes made by backing Trump and his reckless war.

Mike Rogers understands what other Republicans are coming to realize. The only path back is to break with Trump.

5. Trump's Revenge Machine Turns on Itself

Bill Pulte runs the federal housing agency. And believe it or not, even that agency has become a political weapon for Trump.

Last year, Pulte decided to dig through the mortgages of the president’s enemies. That includes Senator Adam Schiff, Attorney General Letitia James, and Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve. He referred all of them for prosecution.

The Wall Street Journal reports he pulled one more file: Todd Blanche.

At the time, Blanche was second-in-command at the Justice Department, and he had a disagreement over the Schiff case. Pulte wanted to press charges. Blanche’s office refused because, to nobody’s surprise, they couldn’t find a crime. Officials told the Journal that Pulte responded by searching through Blanche and his son’s mortgage records, looking for anything to pressure the Attorney General’s office into indicting Schiff. He found nothing.

But the story doesn’t end there. Instead of pursuing the Schiff case, Blanche pursued an investigation into Pulte about whether he leaked case details to outsiders. Blanche even found that one of Pulte’s associates asked a congressional candidate to be a source for a negative story about his mortgages. That’s on the record.

No charges ever came in the Schiff case. And Trump has refused to fire Pulte because, the Journal says, he values his loyalty. He’s just another puppet who willingly takes the marching orders behind the president’s revenge campaign.

But just for a second, that campaign turned on itself. That’s how these things work. You build a machine for finding dirt on enemies, and eventually everyone’s an enemy. Even the president’s personal lawyer, sitting at the Justice Department, has gotten caught up in it.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Paramount cleared the last major hurdle to its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday, settling an antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of states. The concessions include an independent board to protect the editorial independence of CNN and CBS News, a commitment to release 30 movies in theaters each year, and an additional $1.5 billion in film production spending over five years. Paramount CEO David Ellison praised the deal, saying the shared aim was an outcome that “best serves consumers, workers and — most importantly — the creative community.” The states were less optimistic. California’s attorney general bluntly stated that the settlement is “not a vote of support for this merger.” Connecticut’s attorney general, meanwhile, said the states were “deeply disappointed” they couldn’t get a full divestiture of CNN and CBS News. The combined company will now control both CNN and CBS News, two major streaming services, and two film studios. Ellison’s family ties to President Trump and his installation of Bari Weiss atop CBS News have fueled fears about political influence over two major newsrooms.

• French President Emmanuel Macron summoned party leaders and presidential candidates to the Elysée Palace to brief them on Russia’s escalating sabotage campaign against Europe, warning of the threat of civilian casualties. Macron explained that the Russians aim “to intimidate us and break our support for the Ukrainians,” and noted that “no one is safe.” Just a day earlier, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had intelligence that Russia intends to strike European countries backing Ukraine with drones or missiles. The Russians will claim the attacks are accidental, he added, but they are actually designed to test NATO’s Article 5 commitment. The warnings follow a sharp uptick in incidents. In one week alone, Italian jets shot down an explosives-laden drone over Lithuania, Russian fighters violated NATO airspace, and Russian drones struck a Ukrainian train within two kilometers of the Polish border. In August, a drone rigged with explosives was flown into a cargo plane carrying weapons for Ukraine at Germany’s Leipzig-Halle airport, which failed to detonate. Analysts say the attacks are calibrated to stay just below the threshold that would trigger a NATO military response.

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Earlier this month, a young man sat on a park bench in San Francisco, opened his phone, and told the world that extinction could be imminent.

His name is Jacob Coxon. He had just resigned from Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies. In a series of posts, he claimed AI companies were behaving recklessly, “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Now, I take that seriously and you’re perfectly right to feel trepidation around this technology. In fact, some of the smartest people alive, people who understand this technology far better than I ever will, are genuinely frightened of it.

But you probably already know all about the warnings. What happened next is what I want to focus on.

Within days of that viral tweet, the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei published a long essay calling for the entire industry to slow down and for the government to step in with new rules. And within a single day, Amodei’s two fiercest rivals, the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk stepped forward to agree with him.

The most powerful and competitive men in the industry, who agree on almost nothing, suddenly agreed on a specific set of rules, practically overnight.

Interesting.

I’m not going to tell you that this whole thing was staged, because I’m not in the business of inventing conspiracies. But I know a convenient sequence of events when I see one.

A jolt of public fear, followed immediately by the industry’s biggest players locking arms around their own preferred solution is not something to gloss over. Because the people framing this entire debate for you are the people with the most money on earth riding on how it ultimately winds up.

So, I am going to put a human face on this artificial topic, and look at three of the CEOs doing the shaping, what each one actually has at stake, and try to help us think through how normal Americans should view the whole AI debate.

Sam Altman

Start with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. For much of the last two years, Altman has been on a tour of apocalyptic predictions, warning that AI would eliminate huge swaths of human work and strip people of their agency and purpose.

Now ask yourself who benefits from that message. It tells every investor on earth that they cannot afford to miss this, that the money has to pour in now, that the boom is coming whether you like it or not.

The trouble is that scaring people has consequences you can’t laugh off later.

A big part of the fierce public backlash against data centers traces straight back to this. The industry spent two years telling people to be afraid and then acted surprised when people got afraid. You don’t get to light the fire and then complain about the smoke.

Elon Musk

Then there’s Elon Musk, who is trying to present himself as the sober voice in the AI room.

This is the man who bought Twitter and remade it into a right-wing echo chamber. He then attached himself to the Trump campaign, spent hundreds of millions of dollars electing Trump and MAGA candidates, and was then handed a metaphorical (and literal) chainsaw and told to go cut government spending through the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Musk took a wrecking ball to the federal government, did real damage to agencies people depend on, but ultimately failed to actually slow spending.

And now he wants us to trust his judgment about the safe and responsible development of the most powerful technology in human history. Forgive me if I don’t.

Dario Amodei

The third figure is Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, the man whose essay kicked off the most recent furor over AI regulation. Dario is less publicly polarizing than Altman or Musk, but don’t think that makes him less influential.

Dario’s argument is that the whole industry should deliberately slow down, and that the government should require safety measures across every major lab. A lot of you reading this will hear that and think, “Good, finally, a tech leader asking to be reined in.”

That makes him the responsible one, right?

Here’s where I’d ask you to step back for a minute. Because I’ve been in government, and I’ve learned to get more suspicious, not less, when the most powerful companies in an industry start asking to be regulated.

“We are all worried about the ghost in the machine. We can’t forget about the men behind the keyboards.” - Adam Kinzinger

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Look at what he actually proposed. His first step is to have the government require independent evaluators embedded inside every frontier AI lab. That might genuinely be a good idea. But notice who can easily absorb a rule like that: a giant, well-funded company that already has the lawyers, the compliance staff, and the billions to handle it.

And notice who cannot: the smaller competitor, the startup, the new entrant who might otherwise have challenged the giants.

A rule the big players can afford and the small players can’t isn’t just a safety measure. It can also be a moat, dug by the incumbents, to keep everyone else out.

When the titans of an industry all lock arms around the same rules, everyday Americans should get more wary, not less. Rivals don’t agree that fast unless the deal is good for all of them.

Left and Right Vs. Silicon Valley?

What I’m describing has a name. It’s called regulatory capture, and it’s one of the subtle ways powerful interests rig the game.

It works like this: an industry gets so big and so complex that the only people who understand it well enough to write the rules are the industry’s own leaders. So the rules end up getting written to serve them, often under the banner of safety or responsibility, and the effect is to lock in the dominance of whoever is already on top.

The public thinks it’s being protected. What’s actually happening is that the next generation of innovation is being stifled before they can ever gain a foothold.

Here’s why this matters beyond AI. This is one of the rare fights where people who agree on almost nothing else can come together.

The progressive who distrusts corporate power and the free-market conservative who distrusts monopolies are looking at the same danger from two directions and meeting along the way.

They will not agree on the final set of rules, and that’s fine. They only have to agree on one thing first: that a company being enormous and building something world-changing is not evidence that it has your interests at heart, and that we must fight regulatory capture by these industry giants with everything we’ve got.

That’s the unlikely coalition that this issue is creating and we can’t let it go to waste.

China Is Watching

This is where I’ll speak from the part of my life spent on national security. The competition to build the most advanced AI in the world is not a friendly race. It is a contest with real strategic stakes, and China is trying to win it.

Put frankly, a world in which an authoritarian government builds a decisive lead in this technology is a dangerous world. So, I am not saying we should halt American innovation or pretend the risks of falling behind aren’t real. They are. We have to lead.

At the same time, if we hand the policy that governs this technology to men whose incentives point right at their own bank accounts, we won’t win the race with China.

We’ll just get a more concentrated, more captured version of our own industry, with comforting words about national security as a consolation prize.

The Older Danger

Yes, AI could be dangerous. I believe that. Take the risks seriously: the job losses and the runaway systems and everything in between. And the whole of the U.S. government should be working towards a national AI regulatory framework.

But don’t let the noise about the technology distract you from the older, more familiar threat of powerful people building a system that works for them while the public is busy fighting other battles.

That’s called a kleptocracy, where the richest and most powerful get to loot the hard work of ordinary Americans and then build the rules to lock their advantage in place.

For two years these men in Silicon Valley have told us this technology is too powerful, too dangerous, and too complicated for anyone but them to be trusted with.

It is the oldest trick the powerful have. Frighten people, then present yourself as the only one who can keep them safe. In fact, it rhymes with a familiar politician’s pitch over the last decade or so.

I don’t buy it, and neither should you. Not because the danger is fake. But because the men pointing at it have their other hand in your pocket.

So, remember to take a step back when someone starts talking about the future of artificial intelligence. Ask who benefits. And find the people across the aisle who are asking the same question, because they’re out there, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.

And the future of America, and maybe even humanity, might depend on us finding that solidarity.

— Adam

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Our top story today: Remember those deals Trump announced with the pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices? The Rose Garden ceremonies with the CEOs and claims that prices would be coming down 600 percent? Well, the contracts just came out, and they were secret for a reason. Turns out the deals with the drug companies were really just deals for the drug companies. And the man who signed them, RFK Jr., is about to headline an anti-corporate health summit, paid for by corporations. I’ll break it all down.

We’ll also get into Pete Hegseth running out of Republican friends, Trump’s big Greenland deal that gave us what we already had, what Trump says about the midterms when the cameras are off, and the President deciding Ukraine is to blame for six-dollar diesel.

And today is a very special day. 3 years ago, I posted my first ever article on Substack. Back then, I had no idea what to expect and NEVER dreamed we would end up here. And by pure coincidence, today also happens to be the 100th episode of The Kinzinger Report.

Thank you for being a part of this community and thank you for trusting me in a very busy and loud news environment. I am so glad you’re here and, guess what? The best is yet to come.

So, in honor of 3 years, if you believe in this fight and find this work valuable, the best way to support my independent journalism is by becoming a paid subscriber. I’d be honored if you’d join us.

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Ok, let’s get to it.

1. Trump's Secret Drug Deals Exposed

Over the past year, Trump has signed agreements with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies to bring American drug prices in line with what other rich countries pay. He held the signing ceremonies at the White House. And then the administration locked the contracts away. RFK Jr. signed these deals himself, and has refused requests to make them public.

But Public Citizen has pried two of the contracts loose through a public records lawsuit, and the Washington Post published what’s inside. Here’s what the companies got. Protection from Trump’s tariffs on drugs. Incentives to raise their prices in other countries. Broad confidentiality clauses, where the government promised to treat everything as exempt from public records law. And in one case, the company’s two biggest sellers were carved out of the discount entirely.

And about those numbers Trump keeps bragging about. The contracts show key terms were still unresolved on the day the CEOs stood next to him at the White House and promoted the deal. A separate analysis found the savings could be 80 percent lower than the White House claims once the side deals are counted. So once again, this White House is announcing deals before they’re final. And once again, they’re lying about what the deals actually do, just so they can claim victory and Trump can have his press conference.

And remember, the guy who signed these deals is also the guy who built a movement promising to take on corporate power in health care. That movement, Make America Healthy Again, is holding its big summit in Washington next week. Politico looked into who’s paying for the event. The list reads like everything the movement was built to fight. And, of course, plenty of companies that happen to be waiting on an approval from Kennedy’s department.

In exchange, they get a private dinner with health department officials. And almost 90 percent of the money in the movement’s political PAC came from just ten donors, half of them with ties to the drug industry.

So let’s put these two stories together. The contracts that were supposed to take on the drug companies protect the drug companies. The movement that was supposed to fight corporate influence runs on corporate money. And the people this administration promised to fight for got left out of the deal entirely.

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2. Hegseth Runs Out of Friends

Even in an administration full of clowns, Pete Hegseth has always stood out, especially to those of us who know a thing or two about the military. But through all the firings and leaks and testosterone tests, Republicans in Congress have stood by him.

As the midterms approach, that’s starting to change. Last week, Hegseth almost became the first defense secretary in 150 years to face an impeachment vote. Mike Johnson had to send the House home to save him from the humiliation.

Seven Republicans have now voted to end his war in Iran. A Republican senator called him out as one of Trump’s worst aides. And the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee says he’s tired of the churn, and it’s easy to see why. Since Hegseth took the reins at the Pentagon, eighty generals and admirals have been fired or blocked from promotion.

The DOD is a ghost town: the Army has no confirmed secretary and no confirmed chief of staff in the middle of a war. And the leaders who remain have lost confidence in Hegseth’s leadership.

All of this was predictable: Hegseth was never qualified to be Secretary of Defense. And so instead of focusing on real wars, like the one in Iran, he’s spent his energy prosecuting a culture war at the Pentagon. In the process, he’s drained the Pentagon of the leadership it needs now more than ever.

3. Trump Backs Down on Greenland

On Friday, Trump announced what he called a permanent security agreement with Denmark and Greenland. Here’s how he described it.

“Permanently and conclusively addressed.” An “infinite life” agreement. Marco Rubio also praised the deal, saying it completely settles Trump’s concerns. Big talk. So what’s actually in the deal?

The United States gets permanent basing and overflight rights, and Greenland promises not to let China or Russia build bases on the island. The prohibition on our adversaries is a nice bonus, but this is roughly the deal we got in 1951.

If you’ve been following this story, you’ll notice something missing from the agreement: Greenland itself. Since taking office, Trump has said he wanted to own Greenland. That’s why he threatened Denmark with tariffs and got into a scuffle with our NATO allies. It’s why Greenlanders took to the streets and made it clear they had no interest in American ownership. Here’s how they took Friday’s news.

“Nothing has changed.” That about sums it up. Greenland is still Danish, and the US gets a little more of the access it already had.

Look, I’m glad it ended this way. A stronger security deal with an ally is a good thing. But if this was the end result, why all the drama? Why did Trump spend 20 months threatening NATO and damaging our standing across Europe and the world, only to back down? The answer is simple: he couldn’t get what he wanted and had to settle. It really makes you wonder. Maybe he isn’t such a master negotiator after all.

4. Trump Knows He's Losing

In public, the President stands by every decision that he has made. The Iran War, the mass deportation campaign, the tariffs. All of it is a smashing success. And any outlets or polls that report otherwise are fake news.

On Saturday, he even posted a list of 25 accomplishments.

There’s a lot to unpack here, from lies about ending “eight raging wars” to gaslighting about “the historic tariffs to bring back American manufacturing.” But I’m left wondering: Why would the greatest president ever have to convince the public of his success? Why would he have to prove anything?

Trump’s denial of obvious failures and fraudulent claims of success aren’t surprising. His long-time mentor and fixer, Roy Cohn, taught him a combative, win-at-all-costs playbook. The core rule? “Attack, attack, attack; admit nothing, deny everything; and claim victory no matter what happens.”

Now that playbook seems to be falling apart, at least in private. According to the Washington Post, four people from his inner circle describe a president who has gone quiet and serious when presented with his abysmal polling. He listens. He doesn’t argue. And he’s cautiously admitted to advisers that some of his decisions have created a tough midterm environment for Republican candidates.

From any other president, that admission isn’t that shocking. Political calculations happen, whether we like it or not. But this is a man who has never admitted a mistake in his life. If Donald Trump is telling people in private that this is partly his fault, that tells you how bad things really are. He’s losing. And the Republicans are sinking with him.

5. Trump Blames Ukraine for His Gas Prices

Diesel is up about two and a half dollars from a year ago. Trump’s solution? Scapegoat Ukraine.

While golfing in Ireland last week, Trump said that Zelensky has to stop knocking out diesel fuel refineries in Russia because “the world is hurting.” And he repeated that threat on a phone call with Zelensky yesterday ahead of their meeting at the UN tomorrow.

That’s the message from one president golfing on his private course to another fighting a war for his country’s very existence. What a coward.

But let’s take apart Trump’s blatant lie. Independent estimates say Ukraine’s refinery strikes have cut Russia’s refining by at least a fifth. Ukraine says it’s more like 40 percent. That’s one of its greatest strategic accomplishments during the war. And it shouldn’t have a widespread impact on the domestic or global oil market. The United States doesn’t buy Russian diesel. And we use sanctions to pressure other countries not to buy it either.

The reason diesel is expensive is that Trump’s war with Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz back in February. That’s the chokepoint for a fifth of the world’s oil. And Trump knows it, which is why he keeps trying to tell us it’s open or about to open. And it’s why our goals for the war have seemingly shifted from stopping Iran’s nuclear program to just getting the strait open again.

I was in Ukraine two weeks ago. I saw what they’re fighting with, and what they’re fighting against. They’re hitting the one thing Putin can’t replace: his fuel. And our president is asking them to stop for a midterm election that he’s bound to lose. That’s a favor to Moscow, paid for by the American public.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• The Trump administration is preparing sweeping sanctions against the International Criminal Court, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The measures would ban most transactions with the ICC after a six to seven month grace period, cutting the court off from U.S. dollars and much of the global financial system. The State Department wouldn’t preview the decision, but the formal announcement could come as soon as this week. And it doesn’t come as a surprise. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has vowed to dismantle the court “brick by brick,” calling its pursuit of officials from nonmember states a dangerous precedent and a threat to American sovereignty. That precedent didn’t bother Rubio in 2022. As a senator, he co-sponsored a resolution calling on the ICC to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine, despite the fact that Russia is not an ICC member either. The U.S. has already sanctioned individual court officials, including its president, deputy prosecutors, and several judges, in retaliation for arrest warrants against Israeli officials over the war in Gaza. These new sanctions would target the institution itself.

• Hundreds of demonstrators locked arms to form a human chain around the Kennedy Center on Friday evening, protesting President Trump’s efforts to close and remake the institution. The rally came two days after photojournalists captured images through Air Force One’s windows showing Trump reviewing a poster board with an apparent construction rendering titled: “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” The photo circulated online ahead of the rally, appearing to boost turnout. And it has already been incorporated into a pending lawsuit over the center’s fate. Center officials said this week’s closure was temporary and driven by safety concerns after a large chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. But the shutdown caps a disastrous year and a half under Trump’s stewardship, marked by plummeting ticket sales and a talent exodus. A federal judge recently ordered Trump’s name removed from the building, which Congress named to honor President Kennedy after his assassination. Organizers said a typical Kennedy Center protest draws 60 to 100 people, but Friday’s crowd was the largest yet.

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