Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. Donald Trump has always had a strange fixation with Russia, and he’s done plenty of pro-Russia things over the years. But in the past few weeks he’s delivered Moscow one win after another. That continued Friday night, when the President signed an order waiving the Russia sanctions law that Congress passed 86 to 11 and that he signed himself just a month ago. It was supposed to take effect yesterday. But Trump jumped in at the eleventh hour to help his good friend Vladimir Putin.
We’ll also get into Republicans turning on each other two weeks before the election, JD Vance telling a town hall he’s seen no evidence of corruption in this White House, the president’s war with a judge over a golf course, and what Bari Weiss has CBS News chasing in Michigan.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Guts Russia Sanctions
In September, Congress passed a bill called the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. Graham spent the last months of his life fighting for the bill, and the Senate backed it 86 to 11. Trump signed it, and it was set to take effect yesterday.
Friday night, with no notice, he signed an executive order waiving almost all the bill’s sanctions, citing the national interest. The White House later explained that the sanctions would get in the way of peace talks.
Then on Sunday, Trump went to Truth Social to try and defend himself.
He says his decision is simple. He’s negotiating peace and doesn’t want to drive Russia from the table. Then he goes after Zelensky for hitting Russian diesel refineries, “knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets.” Russia, he says, is “sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World.” And Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
The country that invaded is the generous benefactor delivering cheap fuel. The country that got invaded is the one that doesn’t want peace. That’s the Kremlin’s version of this war, posted by the President of the United States.
Think about what Putin has gotten out of this White House in a matter of weeks. A deal that lifts a ban on Russian fuel imports for the first time since 2022. Starlink throttled on the Ukrainian front lines. Missile warnings to Ukraine cut off. The president contradicting his own intelligence agencies to claim Russia isn’t helping Iran. And now the toughest sanctions bill Congress has ever passed, neutered before it even took effect.
Putin didn’t negotiate for any of this. He didn’t give up a single thing. He just got it.
As usual, the only Republicans pushing back are the ones with nothing to lose. Thom Tillis, who’s retiring, called it “beyond irresponsible.” John Cornyn, who Trump already ran out of his seat, said “Lindsey would be appalled.” The rest of the party is keeping quiet.
In Moscow, Putin’s envoy called it a historic moment. Congress passed this law to punish Putin. Once again, Trump threw him a lifeline.
2. GOP Braces for Midterm Disaster
Politico talked to more than a dozen top Republican operatives and lawmakers. They found a party prepared for disaster in November and already looking for who to blame. The House is blaming the Senate for blowing a safe map. The Senate is blaming Trump for forcing out strong incumbents and backing disasters like Ken Paxton. The candidates are blaming the party committees. And everyone is bracing for Trump’s fury.
Many are on the record about their frustrations with the leadership and its priorities. Bernie Moreno, who will probably run the Senate campaign arm next year, said that if the Democrats win, “It won’t be because of their left-wing lunatic candidates, it’ll be because people are pissed off about gas prices.” Anna Paulina Luna accused the GOP House committee of focusing on “their next steak donor dinner.” Another House Republican said the committee is “living in a bubble” while Republicans are getting killed. Many were frustrated at the holes weak candidates are burning in the GOP war chest. Paxton alone has eaten nearly 200 million.
The President is coping with the fact that he picked many of those weak candidates. On Thursday, he posted that if Paxton loses, “it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove.” Cornyn is the incumbent Trump pushed out when he endorsed Paxton.
But the GOP is also starting to realize that Trump’s poor political instincts aren’t limited to candidate selection. Politico spoke with GOP operatives who have been begging the administration for a midterm message and getting nothing but political disasters: a live execution, taxpayer-funded ads, and cozying up to Putin. One said of the president: “He has constantly been distracted. It’s insane.”
At the end of the day, the GOP is reaping what it sowed. Candidates and donors can blame Trump all they want, but they’re the ones who turned a blind eye to the corruption and chaos and rode his coattails to power. The voters haven’t forgotten. The blame game will go on for a while. But we can only hope that when the dust settles on this midterm debacle, some of them will finally look in the mirror.
3. Vance Blames Biden Again
Saturday night, CBS News held a town hall with the vice president in Michigan. The voters came with real questions. A small business owner barely making ends meet. A Detroit barber who voted for Trump twice but is switching sides over gas prices. A man whose wife was killed by an Iranian strike in Kuwait. A nun pressing Vance on how his Catholic faith squares with ICE tactics.
Asked about gas prices, Vance reached for old reliable, blaming Biden for making the US vulnerable to the energy spikes caused by the Iran war. The moderator pointed out the obvious: it’s been almost two years. We’re no longer in the Biden economy. This is Trump’s economy, and Trump’s war.
But the most egregious answer was on corruption. The moderator brought up the President’s boatloads of crypto money and the Guilfoyle scandal, and asked Vance to address voters’ concerns. Here’s his response.
He later said that “If somebody’s selling access to the White House, that’s disgusting and despicable and they should suffer consequences.”
If JD Vance hasn’t seen a shred of corruption, he’s either blind or covering his eyes. But he almost certainly does see corruption. He probably sees it every day, at every level of the administration. Maybe deep down he does think it’s wrong. But when he joined Trump’s ticket, he signed up to throw those principles away.
Voters don’t have that obligation. You and I know just how deep the corruption goes. Don’t let them forget it this November.
4. Judge Halts Trump Golf Project
Trump has taken his latest legal war over his Washington, D.C. makeover to East Potomac Golf Links. It’s a century-old public course along the Potomac River. Trump wants to turn it into what he calls a world-class venue.
The project met backlash right away. And in May, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to give notice before any permanent changes.
So what did the administration do? It filed the notice at 4:55 on the Friday before a holiday weekend. Then crews cut down more than 400 trees on the course.
The judge was furious. “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” she said. She ordered the work to be halted until October 26th. And she demanded that senior officials testify in court about the tree removals.
Now Trump is going a step further. This past weekend, the Justice Department called on the judge to remove herself from the case. The associate attorney general wrote that the judge’s “conduct in this case continues a pattern of animus against the Trump administration.” And that her demands were needlessly urgent.
Trump weighed in too. This morning, he blasted the judge on Truth Social, calling her “a crazed lunatic” who “may be insane.” He also announced that “work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY!”
Think about that. A federal court has ordered the work stopped. And the president just announced it’s starting anyway.
And look, Trump can complain all he wants. But the midterms are two weeks away. Americans are struggling with gas prices. With healthcare costs. With grocery bills. And Trump would rather pick a fight with a federal judge over his golf course than fix any of the problems he created. Voters notice.
So the GOP operatives are right. Trump is distracted. But only from serving the American people. I’m sure Trump’s powerful friends will be delighted to start swinging golf clubs at their sparkling new course on the Potomac.
5. CBS Caught Pushing GOP Smear
For weeks, Trump and the GOP have accused Abdul El-Sayed of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
What is the story built on? A tweet posted by his half-sister, talking about his mother’s activism with the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1970s. More than a decade before El-Sayed was born.
El-Sayed has denied any tie. And he shouldn’t even have to. There is no evidence he has one. This is nothing more than a smear campaign to scare off his voters. But it is still being pushed, even by a major news outlet.
Take Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News. She has reportedly pushed the network to chase thin theories about progressive candidates. That includes pushing staff to investigate conspiracies about James Talarico’s mental health and El-Sayed’s connections with the Muslim Brotherhood.
That brings us to this weekend. At a town hall in the small town of Caro, Michigan, a man who called himself Tommy demanded El-Sayed disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed shot back. Here’s the exchange.
Tommy, as it turns out, is Thomas Teepell. He was previously operations director for GOP Senator Josh Hawley. He was hoping for a gotcha moment. Instead, El-Sayed took the question and ran with it, and the crowd stood with him.
But not CBS’s chief legal correspondent. She praised Tommy on X. And she called El-Sayed’s answer “the kind of spectacular self-own most people only dream about triggering.” That post didn’t last long. Hours later, she deleted it and apologized for violating network standards. But the post fits a pattern at CBS under Weiss.
And look, hard questions are fair game. CBS pressed Vance at his town hall this weekend. That’s the job. But there’s a difference between scrutiny and a smear.
No other Senate candidate is asked to answer for his mother’s college politics. El-Sayed is because of his name and his faith. It’s just plain embarrassing. We are better than this.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Iran is escalating attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to drive up oil prices before the midterms. Iranian officials and diplomats told The Washington Post that Tehran sees the weeks before November 3 as its best window for leverage over Trump. They are looking to punish him at the ballot box, the way the hostage crisis hurt Jimmy Carter in 1980. Iran has hit more than 20 vessels so far this month. One of them sank. Tehran frames the attacks as a response to American escort missions. National security adviser Mohsen Rezaei said “Trump has resorted to smuggling by hiring a number of thugs who operate in the coastal waters of Oman.” He also claimed Iran now targets five or six ships every night. The escorts are working. U.S. jets, drones and special operations forces have pushed Gulf oil exports close to prewar levels on several days, according to analytics firm Kpler. But Kpler estimates the risk still adds about $30 to every barrel.
Democrats are on track to win a majority of the nation’s governorships for the first time since 2010. Thirty-six states hold governor’s races on November 3. Nineteen of them are open seats. And they are notably competitive, even in red states. Democratic candidates are even bets in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio, three states that haven’t elected a Democratic governor in two decades. They’re also surprisingly competitive in Texas and Florida. Republicans are badly outspending the Democrats. In Ohio, for example, Vivek Ramaswamy has put more than $36 million of his own money into his race. And in Georgia, billionaire Rick Jackson could spend $200 million. But this is still a window of opportunity for the Democratic party. Nine years ago, Democrats held just 15 governorships. Today they hold 24. And the winners from this cycle will shape the 2028 presidential race and the redistricting that follows the 2030 Census.
