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Raw Story
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[l] at 10/13/26 6:07am
Fears mounted Tuesday following an emergency order issued by the Trump administration designed “to mitigate blackout risks” ahead of a “period of elevated demand,” an order that impacts more than a dozen states in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.“Nothing to see here, just [an] energy crisis in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia,” wrote conservative journalist and author Jessica Marie Baumgartner, sarcastically, in a social media post on X.Issued by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday, the emergency order goes into effect starting Tuesday and authorizes PJM Interconnection — a regional electricity grid operator — to direct backup generation resources “as a last resort,” among other measures designed to avoid energy blackouts. The order will be in effect through Friday.Baumgartner suspected the emergency order was issued due to the enormous energy requirements of AI data centers, with the Mid-Atlantic being home to well over 1,000 such facilities. The energy demand for some AI data centers is equivalent, according to the International Energy Agency, to the “annual electricity consumption of 100,000 households.”“The 13 mid-Atlantic states & District of Columbia currently experiencing an energy emergency due to power grid overload have a combined 1,386 global data centers,” Baumgartner wrote. “Remember, China has fewer than 400. Can we realistically talk about the energy demands of big tech tyranny?”In a statement, Wright took an indirect shot at the Biden administration’s energy policies and renewable energy resources while praising the Trump administration’s own energy policies.“While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts,” Wright said.Nothing to see here, just a energy crisis in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.https://t.co/GQfddD8MWz— Jessica Marie Baumgartner (@jessmbaum) October 13, 2026
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[l] at 10/13/26 6:00am
On a floor above one of the world’s most famous hotel lobbies — where the elite of fashion and finance are annually styled for the Met Gala’s red carpet — there's a salon run by a man Jeffrey Epstein's survivors accused of grooming them.The Mark on New York City's ultra-exclusive Madison Avenue — just six blocks from the mansion Jeffrey Epstein called home — has hosted many of the world's top A-listers.It also hosts the man Epstein’s house manager, during a deposition to survivor Virginia Giuffre’s attorneys in 2009, listed among famous frequenters of the disgraced financier’s Palm Beach estate.Despite his name appearing in about 1,500 Epstein File entries and in multiple related lawsuits, Frédéric Fekkai continues to live a super-luxe lifestyle of yachting and jet-setting — and the country's elite still clamor for his services.“I saw guests at the house that were celebrities,” the house manager, Juan Alessi, said, listing off names. “Mr. Trump. That’s a celebrity. Mr. Robert Kennedy, Junior. Mr. [Frédéric] Fekkai.”Fekkai continues to coif the curls of the very rich, some of whom spend $75,000 a night to reside in the building his salon calls home — despite two high-profile, if unsuccessful, lawsuits from Epstein survivors that claimed the celebrity stylist groomed them like "dolls.""Both lawsuits against Mr. Fekkai have been dismissed; the last one, with prejudice," his lawyer, Joshua Perry, told Raw Story."As our filings show, he did nothing wrong."Today, Fekkai’s name appears on small bottles of expensive products that multiple celebrities swear by — and also in approximately 1,500 Epstein files and at least nine federal and state court cases linked to Epstein and those who survived his abuse.The name has also echoed in the House of Representatives, where, in July 2025, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) listed off men — including the stylist — he argued should be prosecuted in connection to Epstein's activities. Fekkai has never been charged with a crime.But on NYC's Upper East Side, The Mark Hotel continues to boast of its association."The Mark is home to the world’s most famous hairstylist, Frédéric Fekkai," the hotel tells visitors to its site. “The full spectrum of services that Fekkai made famous … are all readily available to our hotel guests with a simple call to the concierge."Representatives of the Mark Hotel did not respond to questions from Raw Story.Epstein survivors chase Fekkai’s name through courtsJohanna Sjoberg — a young woman Giuffre once recalled finding perched on then-Prince Andrew’s knee — was giving a massage when she heard the name of Fekkai, she told attorneys in a 2016 deposition.“I heard [Epstein] call someone and say, 'Fekkai is in Hawaii,'" Sjoberg said. “'Can we find some girls for him?'”This is just one of multiple references to Fekkai that Raw Story was able to discover in court cases seeking justice for survivors of Epstein’s abuses in the 17 years since Alessi, the house manager, named the stylist as a visitor.Fekkai’s name appears in a 2015 court filing in a survivor’s lawsuit against the United States; court filings made in 2020 in a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate; a 2021 filing in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor; and two 2023 court filings from anonymous survivors’ lawsuits against Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft and JP Morgan Chase, among others.Those filings include depositions, repeated pleas for information, the first draft of Giuffre’s memoir, and a reference to an accusation from Sarah Kellen, Epstein's former assistant, that Fekkai assaulted her — before she met Epstein — on a trip to Hawaii.Fekkai’s spokesman denied the latter allegation in May this year.When South African survivor Juliette Bryant sued Epstein’s estate in 2019, executors Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn refused to hand over information about Fekkai — arguing such data was irrelevant.“It seeks information that is neither relevant to Plaintiff’s claims nor proportional to the needs of this case,” their attorneys complained.“It is also overly broad and unduly burdensome.”Her case against the estate settled out of court, the docket shows.“Epstein sent me to Frédéric Fekkai,“ Bryant wrote in May of this year, alongside a photo of herself as a young girl. “To make my hair blond.”Epstein sent me to Frederic FekkaiTo make my hair blond https://t.co/Bzo6xfBU6q— EPSTEIN SURVIVOR - JULIETTE ROSE BRYANT?❤️⚔️ (@JulietteBryant) May 24, 2026That same month, five survivors (two of whom say they were children when Epstein abused them) sued Fekkai in New York, accusing him of enabling Epstein’s abuse as he profited from their friendship.“Fekkai groomed the victims to look as young as possible under Epstein’s direction,” the lawsuit stated. “Epstein would direct Fekkai to bleach victims blond and groomed them like dolls into Epstein’s and other’s liking.”One of the plaintiffs told CNN Epstein walked her over to Fekkai at a Saint-Tropez beach club and asked, “How could they make her look younger?”Fekkai’s attorneys denied all claims in the CNN report.Raw Story was unable to reach the plaintiffs for comment.Fekkai’s attorneys successfully argued that the lawsuit, which claimed he and his salons helped "Epstein for over 15 years by enabling Epstein’s sex trafficking and sexual abuse of women and children," be removed from New York Supreme Court to federal court.The New York City Council had recently passed an amendment to its Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, creating a new 18-month window in which survivors could file civil claims about attacks that happened years ago, and allowing them to sue the entities that enabled the violence. The window covers violence that occurred before January 9, 2022, and runs through July 29, 2027.The revival window gave survivors a better shot at success in state court, but federal judges have been divided over whether it’s valid under state law.Fekkai’s attorneys claimed successfully that the stylist had a right to be heard in federal court because, among other reasons, he and the survivors suing him live in different states. Campaign finance records show Fekkai’s residence is in Greenwich, a ritzy Connecticut town an hour outside New York City.The plaintiffs' attorney, Jennifer Plotkin, filed a motion voluntarily dismissing the case on June 10, 2026 — but without prejudice, which would allow the case to be brought again.The survivors filed a new lawsuit against Fekkai in New York Supreme Court in September this year, adding two new plaintiffs and a defendant (a Fekkai stylist based in New York City) to their complaint.Once again, Fekkai’s attorneys argued this was a “fraudulent” ploy to seek the jurisdiction and successfully moved to bump the case to federal court.“This is a frivolous suit brought on provably false claims of fact and an incoherent legal theory,” Fekkai’s attorney, Perry, wrote in a court filing from September. “By operating a chain of salons where Plaintiffs purportedly got their hair cut — just like literally tens of thousands of other customers at those salons every year — Frédéric Fekkai somehow is accused of liability for Jeffrey Epstein's sexual violence.”Attorneys for the survivors once again agreed to voluntarily dismiss the federal court case on Sept. 22, only this time with prejudice. In a statement, cosigned by both parties' attorneys, it was noted Fekkai made no admission or concessions of any kind.Such courtroom battles are why Epstein survivor Kathryn Robbs is currently lobbying for the Trafficking Survivor Recovery and Accountability Act, which would establish, on the state level, the crime of benefiting from a trafficking venture and create a path for civil action.In May, Robbs testified at the New York State Capitol that one in eight children will be sexually assaulted before their 18th birthday and that the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children received 30,000 reports of potential human trafficking in 2024.“Trafficking is not sustained by one single actor — it is not just Jeffrey Epstein,” Robbs testified.“It is a network including financial backers, businesses and other intermediators who often escape accountability.”‘Disgusted and sickened’Fekkai’s financial ties to Epstein’s world have been a matter of court record since at least 2023, when anonymous survivors filed suits against two multinational banks — and submitted the same piece of evidence.Evidence in both of those cases included a 2019 Daily Beast report on funds Les Wexner, Epstein’s most important client as a financier, poured into Fekkai’s multi-million dollar business.In that report, representatives for both Fekkai the stylist and the brand claimed Epstein had only used the salons after the eponymous company had been sold, and Fekkai had been ignorant of Epstein’s actions.“Frédéric is disgusted and sickened by Epstein’s activities, which no one was aware of in 2000 and 2002, when Frédéric accepted a ride on his jet,” Fekkai’s representative told the Daily Beast at the time. “Had he been aware, he would never have boarded that plane, let alone with his 5-year old son, his son’s nanny and his girlfriend at the time.”The Epstein Files have since revealed that the two stayed in contact for years after that — one effusive employee of Epstein’s outright declared in 2017 that Fekkai was her boss’s friend.The files also show Fekkai asked Epstein for help housing his nanny in September 2010, one year after the financier had been released from prison after being convicted of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution.“Hes [sic] at my house now,” Epstein wrote of Fekkai in November of that year. “I know [sic] him for ten years.. I helped his company form.”Fekkai’s name also appears in emails listed in the Epstein Files about a boat trip off Saint Barthélemy in December 2010 and a film premiere of “The Great Gatsby” in May 2013.Fekkai was invited to a birthday celebration for Epstein in January 2013 and asked if he could bring his personal masseuse to Epstein’s massage room in November 2010.Many exchanges occurred after Epstein had been registered in New York as a sexual offender — a fact reported at the time by the New York Post in February, 2011.Epstein was dubbed an “NYC sex creep” on the front page of the Post the same month — and a royal’s “sex offender friend” by the Daily Mail in March.“Cool seeing you,” Fekkai emailed Epstein in December 2012.In 2013, Fekkai suggested “coffee and catch up" and helped Epstein schedule a woman’s hair appointment, according to the files.“What's the hair length now?” Fekkai asked. “Can she come to t=e [sic] salon tomorrow at Bendel between 9-10 am?”That same year, Epstein connected Fekkai with Desmond Shum, a Hong Kong businessman worth millions, according to the files.A Fekkai brand spokesperson told the Beast in 2019 that the stylist was “not involved in the salons” when Epstein’s victims were sent there, as Procter & Gamble bought Fekkai’s business for $440 million in May 2008. But the New York Times reported in 2005 that Epstein held a charge account at Fekkai for his personal assistants.And Wexner, the billionaire client, began boosting Fekkai's business in 2004, when companies he controlled — Bath & Body Works and C.O. Bigelow — began selling the stylist's products, the Beast reported. A Wexner-backed private equity firm purchased a majority stake in Frédéric Fekkai, Inc. in 2005. In January 2019 — by which point Fekkai had bought back his brand — Epstein's accountant Bella Klein struggled to keep track of many Fekkai receipts for service that were being sent to him.And Fekkai twice identified Procter & Gamble as his place of work in 2014, once in a friendly email to Epstein and once in a $10,000 donation to the Republican National Committee.The same year, Fekkai asked to use one of Epstein’s apartments on East 66th Street, shuffled his schedule to accommodate Epstein and sent him a photo from the Fekkai website. Frédéric Fekkai (as identified by CNN) appears behind Jeffrey Epstein. (Epstein Files) In the years that followed, every major New York City newspaper — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily News and the New York Post's Page Six — covered the subsequent scandals surrounding Epstein following his guilty plea to soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution.In October 2018 — less than a year before Epstein, facing federal sex trafficking charges, would die in a Manhattan prison cell — Fekkai and Epstein shared a friendly exchange.“Ping me when you return,” Epstein wrote. “All good?”“Are you here this week?” Fekkai replied. “Best regards, Frédéric.”‘My Guy’ New York City's elite has continued to regard Fekkai as the best.Actresses Awkwafina’s and Greta Lee’s Met Gala looks in May 2024 both featured Fekkai salon products — as celebrity hair stylists Kylee Heath and Jenny Cho were quick to share with their tens of thousands of followers.Michelle Yeoh modeled Fekkai’s products the same night as she sported a signature “'90s-inspired wet look.” View this post on InstagramA post shared by FEKKAI (@fekkai)In the years since Fekkai bought back his business in November 2018 for an estimated $35 million, his name won accolades, prestigious partnerships and celebrity praise.Graza, the company that made drizzling olive oil a thing (at least in the U.S.), joined up with Fekkai for a 2024 marketing venture and, on its website, continues to call him a “friend.”The same year, Allure Magazine awarded Fekkai with “best hair mask.”In 2022, Martha Stewart shared a photo of Fekkai styling her hair — and explained to Travel & Leisure in 2025 that Fekkai was “my guy.”There is no suggestion that any of these companies or individuals were aware of allegations against Fekkai at the time.In October 2018, as Fekkai prepared to drop millions to buy back his brand, he told “The Cut” he climbed mountain ranges in the South of France when he needed a moment of quiet and piloted helicopters as a hobby.“What do you splurge on?” Fekkai was asked.“Yachting, sailing trips, discovering hotel gems,” Fekkai replied. “Luxurious travel and experiences for my family.”Juliette Bryant, the South African who sued Epstein’s estate, would spend years battling eating disorders, substance abuse, panic attacks and severe anxiety, as her lawsuit contended.The anonymous survivor who sued Deutsche Bank, pleaded for anonymity in her complaint because she was still terrified of retribution three years after Epstein’s death.Giuffre — whose advocacy for transparency tied Fekkai’s name to Epstein’s 17 years ago — died by suicide amid a custody battle for her children, as friend and co-author Amy Wallace told PBS.“Her marriage had broken down,” Wallace said. “There had been allegations back and forth, and her husband had won a restraining order against her, keeping her from seeing or communicating with her kids, which was very, very difficult for her.”In the same interview, Wallace quotes a plea Giuffre makes to readers of her memoirs, describing her inner life."I know this is a lot to take in, the violence, the neglect, the bad decisions, the self-harm,” Giuffre wrote.“Imagine if a trauma reel like this played in your head all the time, as it does mine.”Giuffre’s memoirs have been published twice — first in her court case against Epstein and secondly in “Nobody’s Girl,” published after her death.Both versions reference Fekkai, but the formal edition’s reference is much more fleeting.“It often seemed to me that Epstein and Maxwell behaved like actual parents,” Giuffre wrote.“Soon, [Maxwell]’d be telling me how to do my makeup, how to dress, and where to get my hair cut (the celebrity stylist Frédéric Fekkai groomed many of the girls in Epstein's world, including me).”“The Billionaire’s Playboy Club,” Giuffre's first version of the memoir, tells a darker narrative — one in which Giuffre is twice manipulated by Epstein with a single salon visit.Giuffre tells readers she was being rewarded by Epstein after another girl practiced sadomasochistic acts on her with weapons.“Jeffrey gave me a thousand dollars to go shopping in downtown Manhattan to find a classy dress,” Giuffre wrote, “on top of being sent to the exclusive beauty salon of celebrity stylist ‘Frédéric Fekkai’ for a new look.”“It was amazing, to be pampered like royalty,” Giuffre wrote of her visit to Fekkai. “I walked out of there feeling like I had replaced a young girl with a young woman.”But when Giuffre returned “more blond,” Epstein revealed she had in fact been groomed to attend Naomi Campbell’s birthday party in the South of France.And after a night of drinking champagne with celebrities and royalty, the teenage girl found herself lent out to a rich man, she claimed in her book.
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[l] at 10/13/26 5:55am
Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney revealed two pressing reasons that Elon Musk is pouring record sums into the midterms for two reasons.Musk is on track to be the top Republican donor this cycle, spending at least $276 million on the midterms since July, much of it on the closely watched Texas Senate race, and Gibney, the director of a new, nearly four-hour documentary about the world’s richest man, provided "CNN This Morning" with a one-word answer when asked what the tech mogul gets out of backing President Donald Trump.“Money,” Gibney said. “I mean, it’s kind of twofold – money, and an ability to escape any kind of criminal or civil reckoning for some of the stuff that his companies have done.”Gibney noted that Musk and Tesla had been facing a Justice Department criminal investigation over claims about Tesla’s full self-driving technology, along with several civil probes.“So once Trump became president, as far as we know, all of those investigations are gone,” he said, adding that Musk got rid of some of them himself through his role at DOGE.The filmmaker named fear as the second motivation for Musk dumping his vast fortune into the November election.“Now I think he’s terrified that if the Democrats were to take control of one or both houses of Congress, that investigations might resume,” Gibney said. He called that fear the reason for Musk’s “kind of unprecedented” spending.Gibney said fear also made the film hard to produce. He talked to hundreds of people, but most would speak only on background or off the record because they worried Musk would sue them. Some immigrants, he said, “because of Musk’s relationship with the president of the United States, were afraid of talking because they might be deported.”He also argued that Musk’s reach goes well past politics, pointing to Starlink, SpaceX and Musk’s Pentagon contracts. "I think you could say that Starlink, in a way, it has a connected purpose, but it also has a purpose of surveillance, so, and it's also a collection purpose," Gibney said. "It's collecting data for his AI systems. His AI systems have fully infiltrated the Pentagon per Pete Hegseth, and yet his frontier AI system is the worst, so it’s clearly a kind of a payoff.”“His power is immense,” he added, “and we haven’t even spoken about the sort of propagandistic power he wields through the control of his platform X.”Musk turned down an interview for the film. “In place of saying, no, thank you, he insulted me directly,” Gibney said. So the filmmakers built an avatar of Musk that mouths real audio clips of him, a nod to his belief that people are living inside a simulation. Gibney described Musk as “an Oz-like figure” trying “to shape our reality.”That worldview, Gibney argued, lets Musk treat mass firings as a game.“If you think that we’re living in a game, then you can engage in a kind of performative cruelty and think that it’s funny to brandish a chainsaw,” he said. He went on to claim that Musk’s abrupt shutdown of USAID led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.“It’s deadly serious and a joke at the same time,” Gibney said. - YouTube youtu.be
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[l] at 10/13/26 5:40am
President Donald Trump reportedly “overrode” the wishes of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in picking a new press secretary, according to the Daily Mail and The Daily Beast.Trump announced the pick, conservative personality Katie Zacharia, 41, on Truth Social on Friday. She will replace Karoline Leavitt, who said in August she was leaving to spend more time with her family. Trump called Zacharia someone who “has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.” Zacharia is a communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group and previously served as the Republican National Committee’s press secretary in 2024.Wiles, 69, preferred controversial CNN commentator Scott Jennings for the job, the Mail reported. But Trump was "impressed by Zacharia’s TV appearances" and called her directly about the role, the paper said. Leavitt reportedly supported the decision when Trump asked her opinion. Zacharia is scheduled to hold her first briefing Tuesday.The Mail reported that one official described the move as one of several apparent slights directed at Wiles, whose influence in Trump’s second-term operation has increasingly been questioned.“This is seen as one of many recent microaggressions of Donald to Susie. He is taking back control, and it is starting to feel more like the first term,” an administration official told the paper.Another administration source told the Mail: “Susie wanted someone who would be loyal to her and instead Trump chose someone loyal to him, as it should be.”The Beast noted that the Mail’s reporting follows an August report from its sister Substack, PunchUp. That report said Wiles learned of Trump’s nomination of Richard “Lance” Schroyer to lead ICE only after the president announced it on social media in June, after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin met with Trump while Wiles and other senior advisers were out of town. Schroyer is an associate of Mullin’s and was subsequently dumped by the White House. The White House denied that officials were blindsided.
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[l] at 10/13/26 5:24am
Anticipating taking control of at least the House, with a shot at the Senate, Democrats are already laying the groundwork for a flood of investigations into White House corruption under President Donald Trump.And they are making it known which targets are at the top of their list, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Politico reported.Democrats "can’t repeal Trump’s tariffs" while he’s in the White House, Politico reported, but they plan to haul in top administration officials, and possibly corporate executives, to explain how he chose his targets in the trade war and why others got a pass. Democratic lawmakers and aides on the House Ways and Means, House Foreign Affairs and Senate Finance committees are focusing on suspected quid pro quos that may have benefited wealthy interests and foreign governments.“We’re going to legislate, but we will investigate, as well,” said Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), who sits on Ways and Means. “There’s some low-hanging fruit when it comes to the appropriate investigations that need to be done in this administration’s pay-to-play scheme that is so prevalent.”Two cases are among those drawing scrutiny. The first is Trump’s decision to lower tariffs on Switzerland after a visit from Swiss business leaders who gave him a Rolex clock and a gold bar. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has said the tariff rate was raised to 39% and later lowered to 15% days after the gifts, which he said included a gold bar worth more than $130,000. The Swiss delegation insisted "it cleared the presents" with the White House ethics counsel, Politico reported.The second is a move to ease export restrictions on the United Arab Emirates, months after an Emirati royal invested in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency company.Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA), who is in line to chair the Foreign Affairs subcommittee that oversees export controls, said she wants to examine policy changes allowing more advanced U.S. chips to flow to China and the UAE.“It is as much about specific companies as it is about how the [Commerce Department] is being run and how these deals are being allowed that are still giving China access to our most advanced chips,” she said, adding that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was “implicated” in some of those deals.The countries and companies that have drawn scrutiny from Democrats have denied wrongdoing, Politico reported, arguing that Trump’s trade shifts are driven by sound policy and mutual economic benefit. The Embassy of Switzerland said it "continues to engage with members of Congress from both parties."Democrats are betting that an anti-corruption message will resonate with voters worried about the cost of living, Politico reported. Following through on that message, the outlet said, is poised to create “an uncomfortable few years” for the president and his top economic officials, as well as for corporate executives and foreign leaders who have sought to shape his trade decisions “through favor and flattery.”
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[l] at 10/13/26 5:13am
Singer Harry Styles dedicated a brief moment during a recent performance to Oscar Belgal, a migrant shot in his vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with his 5-year-old child in the back seat, and the hosts of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” reacted Tuesday with fury.“I just wanted to take a moment to think about Oscar Belgal tonight, and I want us to just think and remember to just look after each other,” Styles said during his performance at Madison Square Garden in New York City.Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade immediately launched into a laundry list of allegations that have been made against Belgal, while also falsely accusing the migrant of having “attacked his neighbors with a machete,” a misrepresentation of claims made by Belgal’s former neighbors.Ainsley Earhardt, another host on “Fox & Friends,” said that Styles’ comments had persuaded her against bringing her own child to one of his performances.“I have a child who's 10, a lot of her friends love Harry Styles so all the moms are getting groups together and going to these concerts,” Earhardt said. “I wanted to take [my daughter] to it — now I'm like, I don't want her to be subjected to that! And of course, everyone in the audience is clapping!”Kilmeade jumped in to attack those who applauded Styles’ remarks as “pro-machete people,” whereas Fox News’ Lawrence B. Jones argued that Styles made the remarks at the instruction of his public relations team.“People online are saying that you're glorifying someone with a criminal record! This is a guy that police were trying to arrest because he's broken the law!” Earhardt, who has repeatedly praised President Donald Trump, a convicted felon, added.
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[l] at 10/13/26 5:03am
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s wife is collecting a salary from a religious nonprofit that ministers to young congressional staffers, but she won’t say who's bankrolling it.Kelly Johnson, a faith-based counselor, refocused her Louisiana nonprofit, Onward Christian Education Services, on Washington after her husband took the gavel in 2023, reported the Washington Post.According to an IRS filing, the group’s new mission is to help “the hundreds of unreached young women” working around Capitol Hill to “find purpose, belonging, and Christian community.” Through the group, she offers free counseling, gives speeches and leads “spiritual heritage tours” of the Capitol that highlight the nation’s Christian history.“I’m a missionary here,” she told the Post. “It’s kind of a calling in this life for me.”Financial disclosures show the nonprofit paid her $50,000 in 2024 for roughly 10 hours of work a week, and her salary makes up almost 90 percent of everything the group has spent since it was founded in 2019.The source of the funding is unclear, according to a Post review. In its early years, the group took in an average of more than $60,000 a year in contributions, but donor names are redacted in public filings.Johnson described “several large benefactors” who are “primarily just individuals who have an interest in this and have a heart in this.” She declined to name them, wouldn’t say whether they also give to her husband’s campaigns and refused to give the Post unredacted records.In 2024, the nonprofit reported no revenue at all, yet it still paid Johnson her full salary, which drew its reserves down to $5,797. She said she had been too busy with her husband’s new job to fundraise.The group’s paperwork has also been spotty. It filed nothing with the IRS for its first three years and paid $6,475 in penalties. It went another two years without filing until a Post reporter asked for the records. Johnson, who also keeps the books, left her own salary off a 2023 form and has revised earlier revenue figures without explanation.Ethics experts told the Post the ministry’s purpose isn’t the issue, but they expressed concerns about how closely it is tied to the speaker’s office.“It should make everyone uncomfortable that the speaker’s wife would be raising money for a mission to serve congressional staff,” said Meredith McGehee, a longtime advocate for campaign finance transparency. “It really dances on that blurred line of separation of church and state and using public resources for private interests.”Philip Hackney, a nonprofit law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, wondered whether donors could use the organization to gain access to the speaker. “Is it serving a political purpose or is it serving an actual charity?” he asked.Davina Hurt of Santa Clara University warned that young aides could feel obliged to take part. “If you want to advance through the ranks, you will feel pressure to some degree,” she said.A spokesman for the speaker said no staffer has ever been pressured to participate, and Mike Johnson praised his wife’s work, saying she “has a true gift with people.”
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[l] at 10/13/26 4:51am
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday aired humiliating footage of pervasive empty seats at President Donald Trump’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, one week after Trump insisted he has never had an empty seat and never will.Collins, hosting “The Source,” showed video from CNN’s crew inside the Covelli Centre revealing bare stretches in the arena’s upper levels. She allowed that it was hard to know how much to read into the turnout, then turned to Trump’s own claims.“But he is the one who’s saying there are these big overflow rooms,” Collins said.Her guest, Democratic strategist Karen Finney, said Trump was trying to spin his events as if it were still the 2016 or 2024 campaign, and argued Democrats should want him on the road.“I say keep him out there because he is mobilizing Democratic voters. He is doing more for our base, frankly,” Finney said.Collins wasn't the only reporter who noticed. Washington Post White House correspondent Emily Davies posted on X in real time as Trump took the stage, writing: "There are entirely empty sections in the arena where Trump is currently hosting a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. Both parties see this area as key to winning the races for Senate and governor. These photos were taken as Trump walked on stage." Davies, who shared the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Post's Jan. 6 coverage, attached photos documenting the bare bleachers behind the president.Trump has made crowd size a running fight with the press. Last week he demanded The New York Times be arrested over its reporting on empty seats at his rallies. On Saturday, reporters documented whole empty sections in Clarksville, Tennessee, echoing scenes at the GOP’s Dallas midterm convention in September.The Tribune Chronicle estimated 2,500 to 3,000 people attended, down from roughly 7,000 when Trump rallied in the same arena in 2017 and about 5,500 in 2022. Youngstown station WFMJ found that tarps covered roughly 25 percent of the arena’s seating, and that the crowd never occupied more than about two-thirds of the seats left open.At one point, Trump himself raised the subject of attendance. According to The Daily Beast, he called Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, 30, “beautiful” and suggested a team might want her help selling tickets.The venue is the same where Trump told the crowd in 2017 not to sell their homes because the area’s factories would fill back up. GM’s Lordstown plant, then the region’s largest employer, closed in 2019.The rally comes as a CNN poll released last week showed Democrat Sherrod Brown leading Republican Sen. Jon Husted 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, with Democrat Amy Acton up 8 points on Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor’s race.
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[l] at 10/13/26 4:39am
President Donald Trump went back to Ohio to rally support for Republicans in the Rust Belt, where entire sections of a hockey arena sat mostly empty, and some of the voters who helped power his rise say they’ve stopped buying what he’s selling.The Washington Post reported that the upper levels of Youngstown’s Covelli Centre, home to the Phantoms junior hockey team, were largely empty during the rally, and Trump, who often brags about the size of his crowds, said nothing about the attendance.Former Trump voters in the onetime steelmaking powerhouse told the Post they see a growing disconnect between their own struggles with grocery, housing and gas prices and the president’s embrace of artificial intelligence and the data centers proposed across the region.“I hate [AI and data centers] with a passion,” said William Akel, a 26-year-old soda delivery driver from nearby Niles who voted for Trump in 2020 but backed Kamala Harris in 2024. “AI is going to take the jobs, and then what jobs are we going to have? Probably fixing the AI?”“I think he’s just lost in the sauce,” Akel added. “He sees [AI] as a way to make more money. … They’re putting billions and billions into all that. Where’s it all coming from? You’ve got people starving here.”Brian, a 54-year-old from Liberty who voted for Trump in all three of his elections, lost his welding job of roughly 25 years and called the local job market a “ghost town.”“I’m extremely disappointed in him,” he told the Post. “I fell for it.”He now plans to vote only in local races, and he also doubts Trump’s promise that tech companies will cover the extra electricity costs that come with data centers.“We’re going to pay for all of this,” he said. “We always do.”That frustration is bad news for Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), who faces a challenge from Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown. In an August memo obtained by the Post, the National Republican Senatorial Committee called data centers “the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.” A recent New York Times/Siena poll found voters trust Brown over Husted on the issue by 11 points.At a Husted rally nine days earlier, the crowd went noticeably quiet as Trump praised data centers. “We want them,” he said. “Look, there’s so much money to be made for Ohio, you can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China.”On Monday, Trump steered clear of the topic and talked up Husted’s football career instead, at one point saying he “looked at his a--,” and he went after Somali and Haitian immigrants. He also claimed Ohio’s steel industry is “roaring back to life” and repeated that he has brought in $21 trillion in investment, a figure NBC News reported is nearly double the $11.2 trillion tallied on the White House’s own website.Even Mike Loychik, a 63-year-old loyal Trump supporter who plans to vote for Husted, admitted he’s frustrated.“He seems like he talks about himself more than the issues,” Loychik said. “So it’s kind of a turnoff right now.”
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[l] at 10/13/26 4:25am
Republicans on Capitol Hill are worried that some of their own members won’t bother returning to work after the November midterms, according to Politico.Lawmakers will come back to a long to-do list and, Politico reported, a mere 24 legislative days to get anything done.“The question becomes: Who shows up for work after the elections?” Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) said in an interview. “Attendance is an issue right now.”Scott said some items “ultimately … have to get done,” including an extension of government funding past Dec. 11 and the annual Pentagon policy bill. Farm, transportation and surveillance programs are also up for reauthorization, Politico reported, and "all carry potential partisan flashpoints."Bipartisan bills overhauling energy permitting and the college sports industry are also pending, but Politico reported that many lawmakers fear they could be left behind if Democrats win control of either chamber and seek more influence over the final products.“What do you think?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said when asked about the prospects for bipartisan accomplishments in the lame duck session. “I mean, why? If you think about it, if Democrats win the House, why would they?”Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted last month that passing another reconciliation bill would be “difficult” even in a lame-duck session, Politico reported. Politico said that likely undercuts another idea Republicans have floated for the post-midterms session: clearing a debt-limit increase through the end of President Donald Trump’s term, which Thune has acknowledged as a possibility. Retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said, “I don’t like that idea,” adding that she had to “hold my nose” in voting for the last debt-ceiling increase.Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will also face a House vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, forced by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who lost his primary after Trump endorsed his opponent. Johnson has called the effort a “publicity stunt” and said Republicans would table it when the House returns. With the Iran war weighing on voters’ views of the GOP, Politico noted that some Republicans with an eye on the next election "could break ranks."
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[l] at 10/13/26 4:00am
If you're reading this, you've noticed something different about Raw Story today.We have a new look.A completely redesigned website went live early this morning. It's cleaner and easier to navigate, and it's built to put our journalism front and center.But the most important changes at Raw Story aren't the ones you can see on your screen.They're happening in our newsroom.At a time when news organizations across the country are cutting staff, eliminating reporting positions, and scaling back coverage, Raw Story is doing something different.We're investing in more journalism.And we're able to do it because of you.For 22 years, Raw Story has operated as an independent news organization, without a billionaire owner or a corporate board dictating our editorial priorities. We've built an audience of approximately 7 million monthly users and a community of 30,000 paying subscribers who believe independent journalism is worth supporting.That support is allowing us to expand our investigative reporting at a moment when accountability journalism has never been more important.As editor-in-chief, one of the most rewarding parts of my job is working with the journalists who dig beneath the headlines, follow the money, examine public records, and ask questions that powerful people do not want answered.Our investigative team now includes Kathleen Culliton, Alexandria Jacobson, and Jordan Green, with Matt Laslo providing reporting from Capitol Hill.These journalists are doing the kind of work that takes time, persistence, and resources. They pursue stories beyond the daily news cycle, scrutinize the people and institutions that shape our lives, and work to uncover information the public deserves to know.It's the kind of reporting that can't always be measured by how many clicks a headline generates.And it's exactly the kind of journalism we believe is worth investing in.Putting our original reporting front and centerOne of the changes I'm most excited about is something you'll notice right at the top of our new homepage.We've introduced a dedicated Top Story section designed to showcase Raw Story's most important exclusive reporting, with a particular emphasis on the investigative work our team produces.For years, Raw Story has been known for delivering breaking political news and keeping readers informed about the stories shaping Washington and the country. That coverage remains an essential part of what we do.But we're also producing original investigations and exclusive reporting that deserve to stand out from the constant churn of the news cycle.Our new Top Story section gives that work a prominent home.When our reporters uncover something significant, we want readers to see it. We want those stories to have the visibility they deserve, whether they're exposing wrongdoing, revealing previously unreported information, or providing deeper accountability reporting on the people in power.And as we continue investing in investigative reporting, you'll see more of that work featured prominently on Raw Story.Built for this momentOur new website launches just three weeks before the midterm elections.That timing matters.The decisions being made in Washington, in statehouses, and behind closed doors will have consequences long after Election Day. Voters deserve journalism that goes beyond political talking points, campaign spin, and the outrage of the moment.They deserve reporting that asks difficult questions, checks the facts, and holds public officials accountable, regardless of party.That has always been Raw Story's mission.Our redesigned website is intended to make that journalism easier to find, read, and share. It gives our reporting a stronger home and creates a foundation for the ways we want to serve readers in the years ahead.You'll notice a cleaner design, improved navigation, and a better reading experience across devices.But a better website means little without meaningful journalism to fill it.That's why I'm especially proud that this launch is accompanied by an investment in our reporting team.Journalism worth supportingAcross the news industry, the financial pressures are real.Advertising markets are unpredictable. Technology platforms have changed how audiences discover news. Newsrooms are being asked to do more with fewer resources.Raw Story faces many of those same challenges.But we've made a deliberate choice about our future.We believe the best way forward is to build a stronger relationship with the people who value our journalism and to reinvest that support in the reporting that matters.That doesn't mean every story will be easy to produce, every investigation will deliver a dramatic revelation, or every day will bring a blockbuster headline.Good journalism takes work. Sometimes it takes weeks or months of research, interviews, document requests, fact-checking, and difficult editorial decisions before a story is ready to publish.As the editor responsible for our investigative team, I see that work firsthand.And I want our reporters to have the time, support, and editorial independence to do it well.This is just the beginningToday's launch isn't a finish line.It's the beginning of the next chapter for Raw Story.We'll continue strengthening our investigative reporting, expanding our coverage of the people and institutions shaping American politics, and finding better ways to bring that journalism to readers.We'll also keep listening to you.A website redesign is a significant change, especially for readers who visit us every day. We hope you'll explore the new site, discover stories you might have missed, and tell us what you think.And while the design may be different, our commitment remains the same.We will follow the facts. We will ask tough questions. We will hold powerful people accountable. And we will continue pursuing stories that deserve to be told.None of this happens without the readers who believe in what we do.To our subscribers and supporters: thank you for making these investments possible.To our longtime readers: thank you for making Raw Story part of your daily routine.And to anyone visiting for the first time: welcome.We've built a new home for Raw Story. Now we're going to fill it with journalism that matters.
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[l] at 10/13/26 3:30am
Something stinks.Astoria is one of my favorites on the Oregon coast, a small town of around 9,000 people with great restaurants and craft shops. Two of them, a coffee shop and ceramics studio, are owned by a small businessperson, Audrey Long, who’s mailed herself five postcards since August to test the mail. The results have been grim, particularly since Oregon is a 100% vote-by-mail state.So far, only two of the postcards have arrived, and the first one took more than a month (and Oregon doesn’t even send out ballots until this week). Across the street from one of her shops, the town’s City Hall isn’t getting its mail reliably, either. And the same is true for the tenants of a 40-unit apartment building next door, according to reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting.Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is looking into it, his office telling OPB’s reporter, “The timing of these issues is especially concerning.”At first, I figured this was a one-off; something weird or broken in the Astoria post office. But when I mentioned this on the air last week, my lines were flooded with calls from states across the nation saying that they’re having similar problems with the mail. The calls have continued every day since.An American listener who follows us on YouTube from Germany called to say that his ballot was mailed out on September 19th (the law requires all foreign-resident ballots to go out by then) and he’s tracking it online, but it still hasn’t arrived at his home in Mannheim.Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order limiting who could get a mail-in ballot that the Supreme Court knocked down last month. But apparently he’s still working on the Post Office, just in some different ways, many of which are being kept under wraps. But there are some clues.Raw Story’s Alexandria Jacobson reports that nearly 1,000 armed private security guards have been deployed to at least 55 postal facilities in places with lots of Democrats like Atlanta, Phoenix, Denver, and Chicago.Instead of using the Post Office’s own police force, Trump’s people have hired Prosegur, a Spanish multinational armed mercenary force that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund blacklisted in 2024 over what its ethics council called “an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious human rights abuses.”The company has also been accused of intimidating union organizers across Latin America, which may be why Frank Albergo of the Postal Police Officers Association worries out loud that nobody from the Postal Service seems to be supervising them. He described the result as “private contractors in and around ballots without any federal control.”In other words, we’re already partway there: armed men who answer to a foreign contractor and Trump instead of to the public, with no transparency and no clear reason for their being there, are overseeing the buildings our ballots pass through this month.Then there’s Trump’s wannabe Schutzstaffel of armed, masked, anonymous, unaccountable thugs now equipped with electric gloves that are used for torture in other countries and who seem to delight in shooting people — including American citizens like Renee Good — in their cars. Democracy Forward just released 166 pages of internal ICE records they got with a FOIA filing, and the result is shocking.This renegade agency that seems to answer only to Trump and Stephen Miller has now collected 50.6 million voter roll records from the Justice Department.What the hell is ICE doing with our voter records? And what could their having our personal voting habits possibly have to do with controlling immigration?But it gets worse: they also got another 48.4 million “voter records” from what the documents call the “independent sources” of election denier Heather Honey, who’s now the Department of Homeland Security’s point person on “election integrity.”Before 2020, Honey was a private investigator who worked counterfeit-goods cases, with no background or experience in elections or voting machines. She’s an outspoken election denier who still claims Trump won in 2020.And she’s the source of the false claim that “Pennsylvania counted more votes than it had voters,” which Trump repeated from the stage at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, and which so enraged the mob that then attacked the Capitol, trying to “hang Mike Pence” and ended up causing the deaths of five police officers and the hospitalization of 140 others.When The New York Times dug into those same documents, it found that Homeland Security has already opened investigations into 150 “good government” nonprofit organizations that register voters. The papers show that they’ve considered sending undercover agents into some of these nonprofits to “disrupt activities.”Trump’s toadies are also seeding the ground with stories that would justify massive intervention in the final moments or subsequent counting days of the election. In July, former plumber and current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed they’d discovered more than a quarter million noncitizens on the rolls in just four states and threatened to send state officials to jail for even the smallest infractions, if they make any mistakes during this election.Pretty quickly, that number of 250,000 non-citizens on the rolls — widely reported on right-wing media — dropped like a stone. DHS revised its count to claim that there were 185 noncitizens registered in Nevada, one of those four states; when the state investigated, they found that every single one of those 185 people was a lawful citizen.But if Republicans lose the election this fall, it’s safe to assume Trump will revive that 250,000 number, true or not; he’s never been afraid to tell “truthful hyperbole” (as he calls lying in his book).Then there are the polling places and the count itself. The Justice Department is dispatching “monitors,” and voting rights groups and local governments are in court right now challenging the administration’s plans to put armed federal agents at the polls and counting operations.This administration has also joined Russia and Belarus as being the only three countries in the world to refuse to allow in international election monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has overseen our elections for decades. What are they hiding?And their arrogance is astonishing: when a federal judge recently told a DOJ attorney he’d require advance notice before a state released its “citizenship lists,” the answer, as Democracy Docket reported, was “If you want to enjoin us, enjoin us.”In other words, like with the East Wing/Ballroom, reflecting pool, arch, killing people in boats in the Caribbean, or bombing Iran without congressional authorization (or dozens of other examples), “We’ll do our crimes right in the open and get done what we want and you can sue us and yell about it later. We win anyway.”Like so many of his crimes that he pre-announces, Trump told the Times earlier this year that he “should have” deployed the National Guard in 2020 to seize voting machines in swing states like Georgia.— He’s falsely claimed that states are mere agents of the feds when they count votes, so the president can tell them what to do and how to do it.— He mused to House Republicans about canceling the midterms altogether, said out loud that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 places, and told NBC he’d only accept the results this fall “if the elections are honest.” We all know what that means when a Putin acolyte says it.— Asked by TIME about declaring a national emergency around the election, he refused to rule it out.We should take him seriously: he’s already tried to overthrow our legitimately elected government once before.At 2:24 on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, already aware that the Capitol had been breached and violent thugs were searching for the electoral college ballots and terrifying members of Congress, he tweeted that Mike Pence “lacked the courage to do what needed to be done.” To defy the results of the election, in other words. His mob surged and began chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as Trump gleefully watched on TV from the White House.Most concerning, that year there were still lawyers in the White House and the Justice Department who could tell him no. They’re all gone now, replaced by election deniers, neofascists, and lickspittles.Speaking of neofascists, the two guys who run his MAGA Inc. $415 million SuperPAC spent part of the past few weeks helping a Putin-aligned candidate and party win an election in the Balkans. When the right-wing winner was announced, he profusely thanked Putin for his help and future close cooperation.And it’s not like we haven’t seen Republicans steal elections before. After Jeb Bush purged some 90,000 mostly Black and Hispanic voters from the Florida rolls just before the 2000 election, his brother “won” by 537 votes. The state Supreme Court ordered a recount and, ignoring the 10th Amendment and the Constitution, five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court halted the count.A year later, a consortium of news organizations finished examining the ballots and found that if every disputed ballot in the state had been counted, Al Gore would have come out ahead. As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”But that recount didn’t happen because a crowd of Republican congressional staffers — backed up by lawyers Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, and Amy Coney Barrett who’d come to Florida to help out — held their “Brooks Brothers Riot,” pounding on the doors and windows of the Miami-Dade canvassing board until it shut down its hand recount.And then there’s the purging of legitimate voters — by the tens of millions every election cycle — which is where Republicans find their best result. As a Demos report notes:“Between the close of registration for the 2020 general election and the close of registration for the 2022 general election, states reported removing 19,260,000 records from their voter registration rolls. This was equal to 8.5% of the total number of voters who were registered in the United States as of the close of registration for the 2022 general election.”Additionally, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the War on Voting, 17 million voters were purged in the two years leading up to the 2018 election, fully 10 percent of America’s voting population, according to the Brennan Center.Given that the most radical purges took place among Black and youth voters in Republican-controlled Red states with large Blue cities, those 8.5 percent and 10 percent “national averages” could well be two or three times that percentage in the states where these purges were concentrated.The Brennan Center added that most of the purge activity was taking place in former Confederate Red states that — before five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in their 2013 Shelby County decision — had to have purges double-checked and pre-cleared by the federal government:“The median purge rate over the 2016–2018 period in jurisdictions previously subject to preclearance [Red states] was 40 percent higher than the purge rate in jurisdictions that were not covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act [Blue states].”So we need to be ready for anything from slowed-down mail to bogus lists of alleged noncitizens to Spanish agents with guns overseeing our mail-in ballots.
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[l] at 10/12/26 7:49pm
MS NOW's Rachel Maddow dismantled a GOP senator's excuses for stiffing a baker out of nearly $700. Recent reporting shows that Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), stiffed a local bakery, Holly's Sweet Treats in Hutchinson, of a nearly $700 bill for custom campaign cookies he ordered in 2020. That seemed like an odd thing to do for someone currently locked in a surprisingly close re-election battle who used medical debt to terrorize patients at his old OB-GYN practice, Maddow argued. "The lawyers working for him routinely ... pressured judges to issue arrest warrants," noted Maddow. "And Marshall thereby got his patients arrested for unpaid bills as low as $114," sometimes having their wages garnished — all while applying an interest rate of 18 percent APR to patients' unpaid medical bills.Marshall has tried to claim this was standard practice, Maddow said — but The Kansas City Star looked into it and found that "the 18 percent annual interest rate ... was by far the highest of the roughly 150 medical practices whose public records were reviewed." And furthermore, she noted, "the lawyer who represented Roger Marshall and many of the lawsuits he filed against his patients, [said] that it wasn't like a standard rate at all. It was Roger's choice.""Perhaps, given how famous Roger Marshall now is for being real strict about other people not paying their bills, Roger Marshall suddenly decided it was time to pay for the cookies, decided to make a big public show of him finally paying off that bill," said Maddow, noting that he took to X to proclaim he "repaid the bill from 2020, double." But Maddow took a look at the math and found that didn't quite add up."Let's see, the bill was ... $678.75," said Maddow. "Double that is $1,357.50. Roger Marshall paid $1,300." In other words, he said, "he didn't pay all these sweet treats double ... by his own account, he's still stiffing them $57.50.""That said, if they wanted to charge him, say, I don't know, picking a number out of the ether, 18 percent interest like he charged all his patients?" said Maddow. "Then Roger Marshall still owes Holly's Sweet Treats way more than that. I mean, don't hold me to the math, but by my count, if this had been six years at 18 percent interest, that would mean Roger Marshall still underpaid the bakery about by about $112, which is very close to the $114 for which he had at least one of his patients arrested." - YouTube youtu.be
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[l] at 10/12/26 7:27pm
Veteran political journalist Jim Acosta said Monday that President Donald Trump has revealed a "25th Amendment crisis" on the country's hands as he stumps for Republicans in formerly safe districts. Acosta joined former Republican lawyer George Conway on the debut episode of his podcast, "Psycho Politics," where the two reacted to some of the comments Trump has made during his recent rallies. They played a clip of the president boasting to a crowd, "I could say the stupidest things, and you would clap." Acosta argued that comment was important for a couple of reasons. On one hand, it revealed that Trump's mental decline is "staring us in the face," and it's up to the country to decide how to respond to it. In another sense, the comment is symbolic of a "25th Amendment crisis" crisscrossing the country. "What do we do with a President of the United States who is unstable and in serious decline? It is just staring us in the face at this point," he said. "And the more he does the rallies, I think the case becomes crystal clear that we have a 25th Amendment crisis on our hands ... This is the guy who is giving Vladimir Putin the store when it comes to Ukraine."Acosta also said he felt bad for the audience who clap along with Trump as he says his wild bits during these rallies. "It's almost like they feel sorry for him. Like he's the last kid picked on the football team or something," Acosta said. Trump’s Mental Decline Is Now a National Emergency (w/ Jim Acosta) by The BulwarkRead on Substack
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[l] at 10/12/26 7:02pm
President Donald Trump's rally for Ohio Sen. Jon Husted went off the rails when he made a seemingly lustful comment about the senator's body."I don't do this with men very often," Trump told the crowd. "I started examining his body because I didn't know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole... And then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He's got these claws."Trump's odd reverence for Husted's butt got plenty of attention from commenters on social media."ookayyyy," wrote The Bulwark's Sam Stein."This is all perfectly normal. Nothing unusual about this at all," wrote Mississippi Press Association executive director Layne Bruce."Is he getting gayer as he gets older? Is that a thing?" wrote YouTube political commentator Benjamin Dixon."'Penthouse, I never believed that your letters were real, until recently…'" wrote comedian and editorial columnist Robert A. George."I guess i’ll be the one to do this. Does anyone have a good pic of Husted’s ass so we can judge for ourselves?" wrote former Republican operative turned Never Trump activist Tim Miller.
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[l] at 10/12/26 6:52pm
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) received an embarrassing fact-check during a local congressional debate Monday night. Boebert faced off against Democratic challenger Eileen Laubacher in a debate ahead of the midterm election for the Colorado 4th Congressional District seat. During the event, Boebert was asked about her support for President Donald Trump's decision to attack Iran, and let slip one comment that the moderator simply couldn't ignore. "We do not have boots on the ground. I do agree that this is expensive and I hear from Republicans that they want this to come to an end," Boebert said. "What are you doing to stop it?" moderator Kyle Clark, a journalist at local news station KUSA-TV, interjected. "We are having conversations with the Department of War and with the president and his administration on a regular basis about how to come to an end," Boebert continued, before letting out her most puzzling claim of the exchange. "This was never about regime change, as my opponent thinks. This was about making sure Iran never had a nuclear weapon, and I support that and I support those efforts." Clark was quick to correct the record. "For the record, the president gave shifting rationale for the war. At one point it was regime change. At one point it was the bomb, and there were others in the mix," Clark said.
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[l] at 10/12/26 6:34pm
Some political analysts were disgusted on Monday night after President Donald Trump dished out a backhanded compliment to a rising MAGA darling. Trump held a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday to stump for Republicans like Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. During his speech, he had a side conversation with former NFL coach John Gruden, who traveled with the president to the event, about Sophie Cunningham, a professional women's basketball player who has backed the Trump administration's efforts to exclude transgender women from women's sports. "A lot of men like to go and watch her. She's beautiful. You're not allowed to say that anymore... any time a politician says a woman is beautiful, that's usually the end of his career," Trump said. "You wouldn't mind her on your team, not to help you with points, but to help you with attendance. You're attendance would be way up!"Trump's comments sparked a firestorm on social media. "Trump says Sophie Cunningham sucks at basketball but he likes her because she’s hot," Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the MeidasTouch Network, posted on X. "Ugh, he’s such an old creep," Mehdi Hasan, founder of Zeteo News, posted on X. "Oh. My. God. Even he knows she’s not actually a good player," Hemant Mehta, a "Jeopardy!" champion, posted on X. "Sort of a backhanded compliment," the political commentary account "PatriotTakes" posted on X. "Pig," Michael Salfino, fantasy sports writer for The Athletic, posted on X. Trump: A lot of men like to watch her. Sophie Cunningham is a beautiful young woman. You probably wouldn't mind her on the team not to help you with points, but to help you with attendance. https://t.co/qYkNgUpUa6— Acyn (@Acyn) October 12, 2026
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[l] at 10/12/26 6:09pm
Disgraced former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took a jab at a Texas-born country music star for campaigning with the Democratic Senate candidate — and got decimated by a blunt one-liner.Kacey Musgraves shared a stage briefly with Texas state lawmaker and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico, who in recent polls has largely been leading scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton and is hoping to be the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas in three decades. Talarico posted photos from the event to Facebook, writing, "Thank you for having me last night, Kacey Musgraves!"Noem took to X with a screenshot of the post, and replied, "I’ll take @ellalangleymsic (sic) over Kacey Musgraves any day. And if I’m choosin’ Texas, I’ll take Ken Paxton over James Talarico."Musgraves, however, had a swift clapback."I don’t think you have a dog in this fight but if you did you would have shot it," she wrote.Musgraves is referring to how Noem bragged in her own book about shooting a puppy she had deemed untrainable.In an additional bit of humiliation, multiple commenters on X noted that Ella Langley, the country star Noem had held up as better than Musgraves, appears to have untagged herself from Noem's post.Noem oversaw the beginning of mass deportation policy in President Donald Trump's second term, but was unceremoniously fired earlier this year — in part because Trump was outraged by how much taxpayer money she spent on an ad campaign promoting herself.
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[l] at 10/12/26 5:48pm
President Donald Trump lashed out at a protester who disrupted his rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday, calling the person a "paid protester" and "scum."Trump traveled to Ohio to stump for Republicans such as Sen. John Husted (R-OH) and Senate candidate Michelle Tafoya. Embattled GOP lawmaker Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) was also spotted at the event, and Trump traveled to the site with former NFL coach John Gruden and influencer Jake Paul. "He's a paid protester. They're all paid!" Trump said. "They get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They're scum!" The crowd chanted "U.S.A" as security escorted the protester out of the building.
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[l] at 10/12/26 5:41pm
The head of Catholic ministry to the U.S. military is objecting to plans to broadcast the execution of Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan and is advising Catholic soldiers not to take part in it, Politico reported on Monday.Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the public execution plan last week, which triggered widespread controversy, as it would be the first military execution since the 1960s and the first public execution of any kind in the U.S. since 1936.Archbishop Timothy Broglio said in a Monday statement that any Catholic soldier picked for the firing squad should request to be excused, because the duty conflicts with church teaching. Hasan is set to be executed by firing squad on December 3 for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people. Broglio said he joins other Catholic leaders in opposing both the death penalty and the livestream.He noted that he led the funeral for Michael Grant Cahill, the lone civilian among the dead, and acknowledged the gravity of the crime. But he questioned the broadcast.“Does exposing the public to his execution serve any purpose?” Broglio asked.Broglio also cautioned that televising the execution could damage how the world views the American military, arguing it would link troops to terrorists by showing a man in a wheelchair being killed.Broglio is not alone; even a number of Republican lawmakers have expressed disapproval of the public execution plan, including Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), and even Vice President J.D. Vance said he doesn't want to watch it. President Donald Trump, however has gotten behind the plan.
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[l] at 10/12/26 5:27pm
President Donald Trump's new press secretary may be carrying a lot more baggage into the White House than initially thought, according to a new report. Katie Zacharia, who began her tenure as the Trump administration's press chief on Monday, has echoed a number of conspiracy theories, ranging from elites running pedophilic cults to the debunked Pizzagate theory on Trump's Truth Social platform, according to a review of her social media history conducted by CNN's KFile. She also supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was fighting a "network of elites." Zacharia has also scrubbed some of her previous posts where she was critical of the administration's immigration policies and warned they could lead to a midterm "bloodbath," according to the report. The report alarmed some political analysts, who shared their reactions on social media. "How is this not a bigger story?" Medhi Hasan, founder of Zeteo News, posted on X. "Well, she'll fit right in,"Jon Favreau, host of "Pod Save America," posted on X. "In other words, a typical Trump insider," Amy Siskind, an author and activist, posted on X.

As of 10/13/26 6:30am. Last new 10/13/26 6:30am.

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