Former President Barack Obama issued a rare statement Sunday rebuking the Trump administration for targeting the president’s political enemies, namely for launching a federal investigation into Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,” Obama said in a lengthy statement shared on social media. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”
The remarks come after federal agents raided Omar’s Washington D.C., home last week, confiscating her laptop, cellphone and passport, as well as other notebooks and documents related to her and her family’s immigration.
“To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old,” Obama said, noting that both she and her father became naturalized citizens five years after arriving from Somalia.
In diatribes against Democrats, President Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out Omar, whom Obama described as “one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics.”
Trump has called Omar “garbage” and broadly condemned Somalis. Vice President JD Vance has also joined in, at one point claiming in March, without evidence, that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America.”
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said last week that her office is investigating potential improprieties related to Omar’s financial disclosures, but the search warrant that authorized agents to seize Omar’s belongings listed potential violations related to immigration, not finances.
Lawyers for Omar have demanded the immediate return of all of her property.
“Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case,” Obama wrote on Sunday. “Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.”
The search came just weeks ahead of the pivotal midterm elections. Obama weighed in as he prepared to take his star power to Michigan next weekend to campaign for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson.
The former president added that “the fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit a record low as his party faces a reckoning with voters just 16 days before Election Day, new polls show.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos survey released Sunday shows 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s job performance, with 66% disapproving and 52% strongly disapproving. That represents a drop of four percentage points from July and eight points from this time last year — an all-time low in this polling.
As MS NOW’s Elections & Analytics team has noted, Trump’s approval rating has hovered below 40% for months in most surveys, signaling a politically perilous environment for Republicans.
Democrats’ fortunes are rising in the final stretch to the Nov. 3 midterm elections as they seek to regain control of Congress.
The poll, conducted Oct. 9-13, shows 52% of likely voters said they would vote for a Democratic candidate in their congressional district while 44% said they would choose a Republican. That’s a 5-point gain from the same poll conducted in July.
Among registered voters, 55% favor Democrats, with 44% preferring Republicans. MS NOW’s polling data with partner FiftyPlusOne shows Democrats with a 9-point edge on the generic ballot.
The NBC survey shows 71% of U.S. adults say the country is on the “wrong track” — a resounding rebuke of Trump and the Republican Party two weeks before the midterms as GOP candidates face stiff competition on their home red turfs.
The findings underscore widespread dissatisfaction with the president’s unilateral decision to take the U.S. to war with Iran and its costly effects on the economy, including the steep price of gasoline and diesel. The poll shows that 67% of respondents identified gas prices as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem.
“Those disapproval ratings are just a reflection of the pain people are feeling on the ground when, you know, they see this administration enter into this $50 billion war that is deeply unpopular and misguided,” South Carolina Senate Democratic candidate Annie Andrews said Sunday on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” when asked about recent polling in her state showing Trump’s unpopularity.
Andrews, who is facing Republican Sen. Darline Graham, said shrimpers and fishermen in the Low Country “are barely making ends meet because they’re being crushed by these diesel prices.”
Pope Leo XIV resumed public appearances on Sunday, leading prayers at the Vatican just five days after undergoing lung cancer surgery and one day after leaving the hospital.
“I would like to thank all those who have prayed for me in recent days. I have truly sensed your support. Thank you!,” Leo said from a balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
The Catholic leader, 71, announced his planned surgery last week to remove a “small, localized” nodular lesion on his right lung. During the 90-minute operation, doctors confirmed he had lung cancer but said the operation to remove a lower lobe of his lung was successful, according to the Vatican.
“This experience has made me feel particularly close to all those who are living with illness or infirmity,” Leo said. “Now that I have overcome this delicate phase, as you know, I will gradually resume my activities, always with God’s help and your prayers.”
The surgery and cancer diagnosis marked Leo’s first major medical episode of his papacy. It is yet unclear whether the pope will require additional treatment.
His planned trip to Latin America next month, which includes visits to Uruguay, Peru and Argentina, remains unchanged as “there are no clinical reasons why this visit should not take place,” Professor Stefano Margaritora, the physician who operated on the pope’s lung, told Vatican News.
“The Holy Father has put his heart and soul into his recovery, as the most motivated people do after this kind of operation,” Margaritora said. “As a result, he needed very little assistance from us. His determination to recover quickly has been effective in every respect. It was truly commendable.”
Leo was elected last year following the death of his predecessor, Pope Francis. Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, is the church’s first American pope.
PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday voiced the public’s “anger” and “shame” over rioting and looting during nationwide protests against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. At least 1,800 people have been arrested.
“Those who looted will have to pay back for the damage, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation.
He blamed “unrestrained violence” on “insurrectionist elements from radical far-left groups, joined by numerous criminals.”
Macron has earlier held an emergency meeting with senior government officials, a day after masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities. He said he had instructed prefects to work with mayors to protect public buildings and businesses in the coming weeks, including by banning protests when necessary.
Flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall in the city of Limoges, in central France, causing its roof to collapse and nearly destroying the building.
Hundreds of protesters gathered again on Sunday at the Place de la République in Paris amid a heavy police presence. Officers used tear gas as tensions flared sporadically in the neighborhood, with small groups of people trying to set bicycles and trash bins on fire.
“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X, citing the looting of hundreds of businesses in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux.
About 550,000 people took part in protests across France, according to authorities, while organizers put the figure at about 800,000. Demonstrators answered calls from a labor union, student organizations and activists hoping to revive the “yellow vest” movement, which emerged in 2018 to protest social injustice.
Mass protests in France are often marred by violence on the fringes of otherwise peaceful marches, leading to clashes with police. The arrest tally reported Sunday approached the nearly 2,000 recorded nationwide during a single day of yellow vest protests in December 2018.
One person died of a heart attack, Paris police said in a statement, without providing details. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating.
Parisians deplore shattered shops and a damaged square
Dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass littered the area around Paris’ Place de la République on Sunday. Looting and damage were also reported in other tourist and shopping districts.
Paris police said 855 people were arrested in the capital region. The city’s prosecutor’s office said 557 remained in police custody.
“I am actually stunned by the level of destruction and violence that was expressed,” said government employee Marie Peyreigne, 57, wondering what had led to the mayhem.
Parisians inspecting the damage photographed the partially dismantled base of the square’s central monument, a statue of Marianne, a symbol of France.
Jean Foissy, 74, said he had wanted to join the protest but encountered “a wall of riot police and fires everywhere” and returned home.
“I was very scared,” he said. “I’ve been a Parisian since I was born, so when I got here, it almost made me want to cry because I find it so bad, it hurts me.”
Margaux Eude, 26, said she supported the protest movement but “didn’t think it would escalate like this.”
“It’s the troublemakers who came, and it breaks my heart because it delegitimizes the movement,” she said.
Political leaders trade blame ahead of presidential election
Political leaders across the spectrum sought to parlay the fallout of Saturday’s riots into political capital, looking ahead to next spring’s presidential election.
Far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen criticized Macron’s centrist government as “exhausted, disoriented and seemingly incapable of doing anything other than commenting on its own powerlessness,” in a video posted Sunday on social media.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, accused Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of “playing with fire,” alleging that “by banking on degradation, you have only succeeded in uniting all youths and workers’ unions.”
Mélenchon, who joined the Paris march Saturday, insisted that “my message is clear: those who share our fight have no business in looting or destruction.”
U.S. President Donald Trump posted “France is burning!” on his Truth Social platform, apparently linking the unrest to “the immigration of people from an entirely different world.”
“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he wrote.
French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting and have repeatedly attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and other people who joined to loot.
Hundreds of businesses looted across the country
“The scale of the damage is considerable and unprecedented,” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire wrote in an open letter. “Paris is a city of freedoms, debate and demonstrations. It must remain so. But it must also be a city where everyone can work and run a business safely.”
Police said groups of hundreds of people formed unauthorized marches across central Paris on Saturday. “By late afternoon, a new phase began with the arrival of large numbers of people whose sole aim was to steal and loot, taking advantage of the unrest,” police said.
The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, the three largest cities, requested a meeting with the prime minister in the coming days “given the extent of the damage and the seriousness of the situation.”
In the southern port city of Marseille, some protesters briefly forced their way into the lobby of City Hall and a group of people wearing hoods and masks damaged a police station. In Lyon, a fire broke out inside a tourist office.
In Limoges, a group of “radical troublemakers” broke into City Hall while there were elected officials, employees, security personnel and members of the public inside, Maurice Barate, prefect of the Haute-Vienne region, said. “Despite the presence of so many people, they deliberately set the building on fire. It is an extremely serious and unspeakable act.”
In eastern France, the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office said an investigation has been opened after a 17-year-old girl was injured during the protests and lost an eye. On Saturday, another investigation was opened after a young protester lost a hand in Saint-Etienne.
The injuries come as police have drawn sharp scrutiny over their use of grenades and other riot-control weapons during recent demonstrations.
The buzzy new A24 film “You Can See Everything” is a one-of-a-kind documentary. It features a psychic clash between two masters of deception with distinct skill sets. In one corner is Nathan Fielder, a comic and creator of a number of popular shows, including “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” which bizarrely blend fiction and reality and involve manipulating strangers. In the other corner is Elizabeth Holmes, the notorious once-billionaire founder of Theranos who was convicted of defrauding investors in one of the biggest business scams of the 21st century.
The premise of the film is that Holmes invites Fielder — who directed the film alongside Lance Oppenheim — to spend enormous amounts of time with her and her family 34 days in 2023 before she begins an 11-year prison sentence for committing fraud. She says her goal is to prove her innocence through transparency. “I know I didn’t commit a crime,” she tells Fielder. And she intends to prove that, somehow, by allowing a camera crew to surveil her life in a rented home in Southern California for about a month.
The entire arrangement is hilarious and absurd on its face — why would Holmes invite Fielder of all people into her life in an effort to clear her name? Why would showing her behavior in this contrived reality TV-like setup be effective at countering the stigma of her crimes? And what could Fielder unearth about Holmes that the public might not know?
The central source of tension driving the film is captured in its ultra-viral teaser showing Fielder and Holmes sizing each other up with their faces just inches apart, prompting the viewer to ask: Who is getting played here?
“You Can See Everything” is a movie about how hard it is to ascertain the truth, the limits of perception and the unknowability of other humans. It serves as a highly entertaining and at times trippy comment on the way people cynically use narrative as power in post-truth, huckster-ruled America. It’s also at times rather shallow, closer to a cheap trick than a provocation about the elusive nature of truth.
The first part of the movie is all about Fielder spending time with Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans, along with their two babies. Holmes and Evans’ bid for “radical transparency” involves extended scenes of mundane daily life — eating, childcare, walking on the beach. In what appears to be a demonstration of just how open they’re willing to be, Holmes breastfeeds in front of Fielder and the camera crew; in another scene, Evans showers in front of the camera — with nothing left to the imagination. Yet at the same time, both of them are constantly evasive when answering questions, using “I don’t know” to respond to questions that they clearly know the answers to, or asking for straightforward questions to be rephrased in order to buy time for new evasions.
Holmes’ intent isn’t that complicated a question, and she isn’t merely misunderstood.
The film further embraces the paradox of the whole “transparency” setup by letting us observe and listen in on Holmes and her (unnervingly controlling) partner’s attempts to co-direct the documentary, and to put on a show of trying to woo investors for an improbable successor company to Theranos. Altogether, it’s a compelling mix of stagecraft and manufactured reality. And it only gets weirder as the movie progresses.
The part of the movie that’s unsatisfying is Fielder’s fixation on getting Holmes to admit to understanding what she did wrong. Holmes resolutely insists that she not only doesn’t think she did anything wrong, but that she has never lied in her adult life. Equally striking is that she claims to not even understand why people believe she lied about what her infamous Theranos blood testing machine — which never fulfilled the advertising that said it could conduct hundreds of diagnostic tests with just a few drops of blood — could do.
The focal point is the ambiguity of her meaning when she says she really believed the machine was capable of doing things it had not yet demonstrated the capacity to do. Fielder seems to entertain the idea that this may be a communication problem that originates in Holmes’ mind. He shows her a video of Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on first” comedy routine to illustrate how people can talk past each other by perceiving the same words differently, and she claims to have no comprehension of it. Evans insists this is proof that she just “thinks differently.”
The implied meaning of Fielder’s inquiry appears to be that we cannot know what Holmes truly believes, and thus we cannot rule out a kind of psychological innocence surrounding her intent.
While Fielder is also hard to read, it does seem that he takes her denialism seriously — and in A24’s press notes he admits, “When I watch the footage back I see myself genuinely conflicted and struggling to make sense of these moments and what was happening.” But the only reason the question appears meaty for the audience is because the filmmakers have deliberately narrowed the information we can use to bear upon this question. Many people who watch this movie will not be familiar with the details of the Theranos fraud case, or may have forgotten them. But reportage and the legal proceedings against her demonstrate unequivocally that this isn’t all just a big misunderstanding about the meaning of a couple of words.
Trial evidence and investigative media reports showed that Holmes knew her machine was not producing accurate or reliable results and that she covertly used traditional machines to produce results her machine could not — and passed off many of those results as her own machine’s performance. To woo investors, she falsely claimed that the technology was used on the battlefield in Afghanistan. She admitted in court that she personally affixed the logos of big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer to reports that would falsely indicate that those companies had endorsed Theranos’ technology. She has admitted that her company advertised her blood diagnostics machine as being able to do more than 200 tests — while it could only do 12. Not only did Holmes rob investors of huge sums of money, she also gave tens of thousands of patients incorrect diagnostic tests that had dangerous real-life consequences for them.
In other words, Holmes’ intent isn’t that complicated a question, and she isn’t merely misunderstood. She is without question a full-on scammer.
To me, her wide-eyed denials and incomprehensible tentativeness in this movie are an obvious and ludicrously ham-fisted attempt to lie once more, to win back public opinion. In addition to sapping her arc of its suspense, it also then pushes the audience in a strange direction. The narrative of Holmes as an oddball idealist who might just be misunderstood is an essential part of the movie’s engine — which mostly points to her troublingly domineering partner as the real villain of the story.
But two things can be true at once: She’s deceptive, and her partner is also a bad guy. Yet I suspect the narrative of the movie is likely to be received as quasi-exculpatory of Holmes in the eyes of some audience members.
Some might say that Fielder deliberately allowed Holmes to work her “magic” on the public. But magic doesn’t work when you can see the mechanics of the trick.
Whether wittingly or not, the way Fielder tries to make Holmes more mysterious than she is also reminds me of a broader social problem we have in American life: our struggle to tackle how flagrant lying has become a norm in politics and our information environment. Many political observers — including me, at times — are vexed by the question of politicians’ intent when they spread false information, use language that insinuates an incitement to violence or bigotry, or defend modern day genocide. This process often involves giving bad actors the benefit of the doubt as we weigh their subsequent denials. Some of that problem simply can’t be solved, because stated intent, in the abstract, is irrefutable. But a part of the solution is often watching what people do — instead of what they say.
Across the country, millions of Americans are already voting, midterm election ballots are in the mail, and these elections are nearing their end. Rather than address voters’ concerns about the war with Iran or high prices, though, the Trump administration continues its obsessive campaign to interfere in the voting process and undermine election results. Through threatening letters and pursuing suspect litigation, the Justice Department is harassing California officials who are busy ensuring Americans can vote.
This week the DOJ gave California officials 48 hours to review a list of 20,000 names, which the federal government claimed were registered voters and “likely noncitizens.” When state officials did not meet that deadline, the administration sued, asking a judge to prohibit California from counting mail-in ballots from those voters until their status can be verified.
The White House’s approach is rushed and based on faulty data, and already has led to gross inaccuracies.
As the former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, I can characterize the DOJ’s demand in one word: absurd. It ignores both the law and the basic processes and procedures for running elections in the United States. As the California Secretary of State noted in response, the DOJ is “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”
The real work of maintaining voter lists is already subject to specified legal provisions, not the flawed list-matching the administration keeps pushing. State list matching is part of that maintenance, but like all parts of the process takes time and resources, given that Americans are constantly moving, changing their names or otherwise affecting their voter eligibility. The White House’s approach is rushed and based on faulty data, and already has led to gross inaccuracies.
The administration’s pressure on California is the latest and most extreme in a series of efforts by the Trump administration attempting to undermine Americans’ confidence in the voting process. It has repeatedly made exaggerated claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls that are not backed up by the evidence. In so doing, the Trump administration is dusting off and federalizing an old voter suppression technique.
The playbook starts by trumpeting an eye-catching number of supposedly fraudulent voters – say, 20,000. This usually generates headlines and feeds an impression of widespread fraud to scare Americans about the integrity of elections. When these allegations are scrutinized or when the administration finally provides supposed evidence, the number quickly dwindles. What is left are a small number of exceedingly rare cases – exceptions and outliers. But the debunkings often fail to dispel the original efforts promote a narrative that our elections are not trustworthy and that reforms or actions making it harder to vote are needed.
This pattern is not new. For at least a decade, President Trump has been spreading misinformation about widespread noncitizens voters.
Earlier this summer, in a primetime address, President Trump made outrageous claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly tried to support these numbers, but as was expected, the claims were baseless. As an example, DHS claimed nearly 16,000 non-citizens were on the voter rolls in Nevada. Yet when pressed for specifics, DHS provided the Nevada Secretary of State with a list of just 185 individuals in question. An investigation revealed that all were U.S. citizens.
This pattern is not new. For at least a decade, President Trump has been spreading misinformation about widespread noncitizens voters. In 2016, he falsely claimed that he would have won the popular vote if it were not for the alleged non-citizens voting, including in California. He tried to find evidence to support this claim by creating a “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” which was ultimately dissolved after finding no such evidence.
In the current Trump administration, the DHS, the DOJ, and even the Census Bureau are being politicized and pressured to support these baseless claims. The result is manufactured chaos and confusion meant to undermine confidence in elections.
If voters hold President Trump accountable for his administration’s failures at the ballot box in November, it is predictable this narrative will serve as the basis for additional DOJ litigation and additional conspiracy theorizing from the president and his allies. The Trump administration is weaponizing the federal government, at taxpayer expense, to undermine the will of the voters if the results are not helpful to the administration.
Rather than directing DHS and DOJ resources toward finding the “worst of the worst,” as Trump promised during his campaign, the administration is wasting taxpayer dollars on political theater—or worse. It does so at its own peril: Americans are frustrated and want leaders to address the real issues affecting their lives. We choose those leaders at the ballot box. Our democracy is stronger when every eligible American who wants to vote can make their voice heard, regardless of which candidate they support. If you have not done so yet, make your plan to vote and show up for our democracy.
Greg Abbott has been governor of Texas for nearly 12 years. He debated Wendy Davis in 2014, Lupe Valdez in 2018 and Beto O’Rourke in 2022. He won all three elections.
But suddenly, in 2026, with public polls showing a closer race against Democratic nominee Gina Hinojosa, Abbott has decided a debate is unnecessary.
Come on now.
After Abbott declined four proposed debates, Hinojosa held an event outside the governor’s mansion Thursday. Recent polls show a close race despite Abbott outspending her more than six to one on advertising.
Abbott’s campaign is willing to spend millions telling Texans what to think about Hinojosa. But putting him on a stage where she can challenge his record? Apparently, that’s a bridge too far.
And Abbott is hardly alone.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has declined to debate Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico. On Wednesday, Talarico took questions from voters across the political spectrum in a nationally televised town hall. Paxton declined an invitation to participate in a comparable event.
In Florida, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody has declined to debate Angie Nixon. In Mississippi, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said there’s “no point” in debating Democratic nominee Scott Colom.
Why are so many Republicans making the same decision in the same election cycle?
The campaigns have offered different explanations. Abbott says he’d rather meet voters at community events. Moody says she won’t give a “self-proclaimed socialist” a stage. Hyde-Smith’s campaign says there’s “no point” debating Colom because of his positions. Paxton’s campaign said he would debate Talarico if there were neutral moderators, then objected to a proposed Fox News forum and did not respond to CNN’s town hall invitation.
I have some thoughts.
In 2014, I was deputy communications director for the Democratic nominee for governor in Nebraska. It was not a pleasant year to be a Democrat running for office.
President Barack Obama was in the White House, and Republicans had turned the Affordable Care Act into a political liability. In Nebraska, where Republicans already had a significant advantage, the national environment made an uphill campaign even harder.
It was difficult to keep the conversation focused on the issues we wanted to discuss when the national debate kept pulling it elsewhere. Healthcare was supposed to be one of the Obama administration’s signature achievements. Instead, Republicans made Obamacare a central argument against Democrats up and down the ballot.
There was no escaping it.
Republicans are being asked to defend the president’s agenda.
That is the political environment I recognize today, except Republicans are now being asked to defend the president’s agenda.
Donald Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs, raising costs for American businesses and consumers. Then came his war of choice in Iran. Gas and diesel prices climbed, raising costs for households and businesses. And Americans are still waiting for a clear explanation of how this war will end.
Where were Republicans in Congress?
Some raised objections, but many stayed silent, defended the president’s decisions or cheered him on. Now, with Trump’s approval ratings sinking, Republican candidates face an uncomfortable reality. Some are trying to distance themselves from parts of his agenda. Others are embracing him, betting his support will carry them through November.
But the decisions have already been made. The tariffs were imposed. The war began. Americans are dealing with the economic consequences.
A debate means explaining those choices — or why you didn’t challenge them — while someone a few feet away questions your answer.
I can understand why a campaign might not want that.
But refusing to face those questions is cowardly.
On a recent episode of Clock It, Eugene Daniels and I discussed the growing number of candidates declining debates. I asked what I think is a basic question: “If you want the power to represent people, why shouldn’t you have to answer questions in front of those people?”
A debate isn’t the only way for candidates to face difficult questions. A town hall lets voters challenge a candidate directly, without an opponent standing next to them.
Talarico did exactly that on Wednesday.
Paxton has campaigned across Texas, including on a statewide bus tour. But he declined the CNN town hall and a debate with Talarico. Those offer sustained questioning that campaign events don’t necessarily provide.
Abbott has spent years championing a school voucher program that fundamentally changes how Texas approaches public education. Hinojosa has made opposition to it central to her campaign. Texans could hear Abbott explain why he believes his approach serves their children — and hear Hinojosa challenge him on the consequences for public schools.
There are also questions about property taxes, the cost of living, immigration enforcement and the governor’s use of state authority. These decisions affect millions of Texans.
Republicans aren’t the only candidates declining debates. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has also declined to debate her opponent. She should face scrutiny for that, too.
But the pattern among Republicans this cycle is striking, particularly because their party is exercising power in Washington.
Greg Abbott is governor of Texas. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Ashley Moody are U.S. senators. They’re asking voters to keep them in office, yet choosing whether to face public scrutiny while they still need those voters’ permission.
We spend a lot of time examining candidates’ experience, policies, temperament and judgment. We should. But we should also ask what they believe they owe the people they govern.
A politician who treats difficult questions as optional is telling us how they understand the power they hold.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about these Republicans isn’t what they might say on a debate stage. It’s what they believe they no longer have to explain.
Evan Brechtel contributed to this report.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Symone Sanders Townsend and Luke Russert, watch“The Weeknight”every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MS NOW, and check out Symone’s podcast with Eugene Daniels, “Clock It.” Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
Will Hannah Horvath’s son, Grover, who should be about 10 years old now, spend his winters in the Hudson Valley (where Hannah’s college teaching gig took her in the final season)? Is the boy, like his mom, a master of back talk and lacerating asides? Has Hannah’s best friend, Marnie (Allison Williams), resumed her fledgling music career, or has she become a real estate agent (or maybe a tradwife)? Is Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) still married to that Byron guy, and has she honored her vow to rid herself of Hannah, Marnie and Jessa forevermore? As for Jessa (Jemima Kirke), has she found any joy in her life outside of those moments when she is actively trying to destroy it?
My biggest concern won’t be how these women will engage with each other, but how they’ll engage with the show’s male characters.
But when the “Girls” reboot actually airs, my biggest concern won’t be how these women will engage with each other, but how they’ll engage with the show’s male characters. The show ran from 2012-2017, the entirety of former President Barack Obama’s second term and the first seconds of MAGA’s interminable dominion. In that giddy period of hope and change, Dunham and her writing partner, Jenni Konner, could freely splay the messiness of female erotic desire across cable television screens. That messiness made “Girls” a wildly controversial show, as did its insistence on drawing attention to the blurriness of sexual consent.
How will that messiness and bluriness be rendered in 2027, an era of radically reconfigured sexual and gender politics?
Months after the final episode of “Girls” aired, the #MeToo movement burst onto the scene, drawing global attention to workplace harassment and sexual assault. In 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned. In 2024, buoyed, in part, by the rise of the manosphere, President Donald Trump came back for his endless Act II. Presently, an alleged gang rape at Cornell University has reopened a national discussion about consent and systemic gender-based violence.
Many millennial, zillennial and Generation Z women are experiencing not only a shrinking pool of desirable or even eligible male partners, but a palpable erosion of their civil rights. Accompanying their feelings of heteropessimism is a heightened sense of fear. After all, a man can sexually abuse a woman, subsequently defame her, and still become our president.
All of which is to say, Ms. Dunham will be writing her characters into a very different cultural moment.
The original “Girls” charted the professional and personal escapades of four overeducated, underemployed, 20-something-year-old millennial women. As befits fictional heroines in the optimistic Obama years, they fully owned their sexual exploits. Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shosh rather joyfully flirted, experimented, dated and hooked up (sometimes with one another’s ex-boyfriends).
With a candor that continues to astonish,“Girls” serially portrayed women making problematic romantic and erotic decisions. In “One Man’s Trash,” Hannah spends a weekend with a total stranger. In other episodes, Jessa works through her emotional difficulties by sexing up randos in the bathroom of the local bar. Marnie meets an impossibly pretentious artist named Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone), who verbally demeans her and repeatedly calls her by the wrong name. None of this prevents her from accepting an invitation to his studio, where he proceeds to lock her in a box as part of an art project.
The heart wants what the heart wants and all that, but scenes such as these are going to strain credulity in 2027 (a Gen Z student of mine expressed disbelief that these women entered male lairs without sharing their location with 400 girlfriends). Then again, it’s not as if Dunham didn’t see the #MeToo movement coming. The sixth season’s “American Bitch” (you can read my analysis of it here) chronicles Hannah’s afternoon in the home of a recently canceled novelist. Writer Chuck Palmer has been accused of sleeping with fawning coeds on his campus visits. Hannah has used her blog to call him out. What makes the episode so unsettling is Hannah’s own arousal during the visit — at least prior to the moment Chuck exposes himself to her.
The straight men of “Girls” were mostly a mix of narcissists, artistic posers, finance bros, pervs, pill poppers, smack addicts and profoundly unserious fellows.
The straight men of “Girls” were mostly a mix of narcissists, artistic posers, finance bros, pervs, pill poppers, smack addicts and profoundly unserious fellows. Interestingly, the male heartthrob at the center of the series, Adam (Adam Driver), is not slated to return in 2027. Whether that is due to his fame, his reported tussles with Dunham on set or something else is not clear. Narratively, that’s too bad, because Adam is one of the few gents on “Girls” who I could imagine: 1) converting to Orthodoxy, and/or 2) joining the manosphere in a plot twist. Brooding, hot, moody and at points unusually emotionally vulnerable, Adam is also given to violent outbursts. One graphic scene led many to believe that he had likely raped his girlfriend, Natalia.
The women of “Girls” are nearing 40 now. They will inhabit a culture whose sexual norms are rapidly changing. Will they be pursued by younger men, a trend breathlessly chronicled by outlets like The New York Times? Or will they strike up romances with artificial intelligence chatbots?
Knowing Dunham, it will likely all go very wrong for her characters; in her narratives, our ideals and aspirations are always wont to be mangled (by ourselves). As Hannah once fretted about her newborn: “What if I raise him perfectly and he does everything right and then he rapes like a jazillion people?”
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged supporters Saturday to speak out in defense of new U.S. sanctions against Russia, hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing a sweeping package of restrictions targeting the Russian economy.
The White House’s decision has further raised fears that Ukraine could be left exposed to Moscow’s escalating assaults with winter approaching.
“A decision was unfortunately made in America to completely disregard the Lindsey Graham Act, which was supposed to impose truly effective pressure on Russia to bring this war to an end,” Zelenskyy wrote.
He also expressed hope that the new sanctions could be revived. “This Act could have helped enormously — and still can! But it needs to actually work, and every voice in support of it matters,” he said.
Kyiv says Moscow carried out a ‘massive’ energy strike
Zelenskyy also said Saturday that Moscow had carried out a massive strike on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, targeting more than 15 sites across the country.
“The sheer scale and unrelenting pace of Russia’s strikes, specifically against our energy sector, are unfortunately having severe consequences,” he said.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russian forces launched four cruise missiles and 332 attack drones overnight. All of the missiles and 289 of the drones had been suppressed or destroyed, it said.
Russia’s heavy bombardment of the power grid ahead of winter has been an annual feature of the war, aimed at wearing down Ukraine’s appetite for the fight by denying civilians heat and running water. Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia is stockpiling ballistic missiles for more attacks in the coming months.
CLEVELAND — Every morning, Dwight Bullard pulls into the station selling the cheapest gas he can find and puts exactly $100 worth into the rented box truck he uses to haul tires around Northeast Ohio.
On the August morning MS NOW was riding with him, regular was $3.92 a gallon.
“There goes my $100,” he said, watching the pump click off. It didn’t even fill the tank. Six months earlier, the same day’s driving had cost him $60 or $70.
He did the math in the truck: Add in the $600 for the rental truck, and the weekly cost of doing what he describes as the best job he’s had is $1,100. Do that every week for a year, and it’s way more than what he is trying to save to buy a truck of his own.
Ask him who he blames for the high price of gas, and he doesn’t hesitate.
“Trump! I blame Trump, man,” he said. Then, a beat later: “Well, that’s what I hear. I ain’t really into politics, but I know it’s got something to do with the shit he’s doing over there.”
Dwight Bullard (right) delivering tires in Northeast Ohio in August 2026.
MS NOW walked him through the data: the war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, a fifth of the world’s oil, a global market that sets the price at a gas pump in Cleveland, his hometown.
Dwight is 34, with two daughters under 10. He drives the tire route until about 4 p.m., goes home to shower and on some days works a second job running food at a Mexican restaurant until 11 or midnight. And then he’s up at 5:30 in the morning to do it again.
One thing he has not done is connect his situation to the folks in elected office in his state or Washington, D.C. He’s also pretty sure he has only voted once in his life: in 2012, for Barack Obama. He did not vote in 2024.
“Most of the people I know, we ain’t really voting,” he said. “My homeboys, we just making shit happen. Living day to day.”
Does he regret sitting out the last presidential election? “Considering where we are now, hell yeah.”
MS NOW went to Cleveland to get some time with a group of voters whom both parties talk about constantly, but who almost nobody is spending a lot of time or money talking to: young Black men who have stopped voting, or never started.
One of the races that could decide control of the Senate is happening in Ohio, where Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown is trying to win back his old seat from Republican Jon Husted. The polling has shown the race consistently within a few points, and the math on who could decide it is not that complicated.
A voter-file analysis by HIT Strategies, a public opinion research firm, found more than 100,000 registered Black voters in Ohio who sat out the last three federal elections. The firm also found, through focus groups, that these voters were more open to being mobilized this year, pushed by the cost of living and souring views of President Donald Trump.
In June, the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation released a study with a finding that should stop Democrats cold: In the 2022 midterms, 603,000 eligible Black voters in Ohio didn’t cast a ballot. That is more than twice the margin by which JD Vance won his Senate seat that year.
Shayla L. Davis, who runs the foundation, said she was “heartbroken” when she got the findings back.
Shayla L. Davis, President and CEO of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation.MS NOW
Sitting in the UnBar Cafe, a Black-owned coffee shop, she noted that in 2023, the Republican-controlled state passed one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country. Essentially, it’s a “use it or lose it” rule that strips people from the voter rolls for not voting. That, combined with the apathy she is seeing especially with young Black men, helps explain to Davis why what was once a swing state has so far failed to regain that status.
“My own son, he’s 28 years old. He stopped voting,” said Davis, formerly a state representative and city councilwoman in the Cleveland suburb of Garfield Heights. “He’s cynical. He doesn’t believe that anyone is standing up for what he believes. He believes that all the rhetoric is performative and that everyone is all the same. And that breaks my heart, but I can understand exactly where he’s coming from.”
Her son grew up in a house where his mother’s name was constantly on the ballot. She remembers the election night party she threw in 2008 and him running out of his bedroom, a kid full of joy that Obama had won. That’s the moment she keeps trying to get him to remember.
There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the gender divide in the Black community. Black women are more consistent voters, and more consistently punching their cards for Democrats. Those numbers aren’t actually that stark though: 92% of Black women voted for Harris in 2024 compared with 78% of Black men.
It’s the generational divide that is more worrying for people like Davis. Younger Black voters are just hitting the ballot box less compared with the generations before them.
Her concern is that there is just a lack of connective tissue to the days when Black people didn’t have the right to vote. Pair that with the lack of movement on issues young Black voters care about, and it’s a recipe for apathy.
“Older Black voters are going to show up and vote,” Davis said. “It’s a generational gap of what they actually experienced. My son never experienced any of [the Civil Rights Movement]. He only hears the stories and he’s hearing the stories third-party. He’s hearing it from me, who didn’t experience that either.”
There are groups trying to change that, like Cleveland VOTES, a nonpartisan civic organization that three years ago started a seasonal, part-time canvassing team it calls The Squad. There are just five of them, but last year they logged more than 114,000 contacts.
MS NOW walked with them on a Wednesday afternoon on the East Side, in a stretch of the city where co-founder Erika Anthony says turnout is lowest. They weren’t asking people who they were voting for. They were handing out flyers for “Carnivote,” an event with free food, backpacks for kids and a round of “Democracy Jeopardy.”
Erika Anthony, co-founder of Cleveland VOTES.MS NOW
Jerry Pena, who manages the group and is its only man, explained the strategy.
“You go to people’s doors, you quickly approach them with voting, the conversation shuts down,” he said. “It’s over because they’ve seen what their vote does, right? It’s disappointed them over and over again.
“The conversation needs to change more to ‘What do you want to see in the future in this neighborhood? How can we get there?’ But if you start with voting, done deal.”
Jerry Pena, a member of Cleveland VOTES, in August 2026.MS NOW
At 2 p.m. on a weekday, when door-knockers might expect to find retirees — older Black voters who may not need a ton of convincing — they kept running into young Black men.
Outside a convenience store, a 29-year-old who gave only his first name, Robert, said he hasn’t voted for anyone in years. “I just didn’t feel like nobody deserved it,” he said.
He added that nobody, not a Democrat or a Republican, knocked on his door in 2024. Then, unprompted, he started talking about policy. He’d recently been in jail, where “they treat you like animals,” and he couldn’t understand why people were still locked up on weed charges in a state where recreational possession was legal.
He had strong, specific views about the carceral system. He knew exactly what would make it better. Robert had just never connected those ideas to the people who decide what the laws actually look like.
When MS NOW described Robert to Anthony afterward, she said that is exactly why Cleveland VOTES started: She and her co-founder were working with people coming home from prison and kept hearing the same disconnect.
“We would say things like ‘Do you want to have the ability to influence who sits on the [judicial] bench?’” she said. “When we started painting the picture for folks, they’re like, ‘Oh, I have the ability to do that.’”
The biggest takeaway isn’t that these voters are tapped out — it’s that almost no one has even tried to tap them in. Every single Black man MS NOW met that day said some version of “No one has tried to convince me to vote.” Nobody is paying these men any attention.
“We as a country have gotten way too hyperfocused on the electoral cycle versus thinking about the holistic nature of community building,” Anthony said. “There are policy decisions being made every day, locally, countywide, statewide and at the federal level. And if we’re only talking to folks two weeks, three weeks before an election and just expecting them to magically open their eyes and see why this is valuable to them. [By] then, we’ve already missed the boat.”
Which raises the question of who exactly is asking. Davis said that since her foundation’s report came out on Juneteenth, one federal official’s office has reached out. Neither Senate campaign had called.
“They don’t have to call me,” Davis said. ”Just pick the report up and do something about it.”
Brown’s campaign says it is doing that. According to a campaign aide, Brown started his outreach earlier than any of his other campaigns ever had. He has met with Black faith leaders in Ohio cities since last fall, held roundtables with Black men, hosted “pledge to vote” events with Divine Nine organizations and spent $250,000 on ads airing on radio stations with predominantly Black audiences.
Husted’s campaign initially agreed to meet with MS NOW for this story, then canceled due to a scheduling conflict and did not immediately respond to emailed questions about what efforts his team has made to reach out to Black voters.
MS NOW sat down with Dwight, the tire and restaurant hustler, and his mother, Kari Jones, who is the kind of voter campaigns dream about. She passed out flyers for a city council candidate at 10 years old. Her neighbors call her for political advice. Her mother and daughter call her from the voting booth to ask who they should pick.
She has made sure that Dwight has stayed registered for years. She has not been able to persuade him to do anything with that registration since 2012.
Kari Jones and Dwight Bullard in August 2026.MS NOW
What changed for Dwight between 2012, when he said casting a ballot for Obama “felt like I did something,” and now?
“I guess I never really saw a change,” he said. “I never really seen what it did firsthand to people, so I just never really cared to vote. Like, it is what it is. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”
Thinking on it, he realized he and his friends do actually talk about politics. All the time. “We sit [in the barbershop] and talk about the rent, the streets, that big-ass pothole on Dunham. We talk about that but we don’t talk about the source of the problem.”
Something had clearly shifted. After that morning truck run, Dwight went back to the shop and a co-worker asked what the MS NOW cameras were there for. He explained, then asked whether his friend voted. Not really, the co-worker said, but he did vote in local elections.
“I’m like, ‘Damn, he’s my age,’” Dwight said, adding: “When it comes to anything else, talking Marvel movies, music, we can relate. So when I heard him say that, I’m like — makes sense.”
Jones had been waiting for this. For her son to make these connections.
There’s a tree in her yard that Dwight spent a year telling her to get the city to cut down, afraid it would fall on her house, or her car or one of his kids. The city finally came to do it that morning.
“Who did you think was going to do it?” she asked.
“The city.”
“And who’s the city?”
The light bulb went off. Dwight was realizing that who is in office can actually make differences big or small to his and his family’s life. Not voting, he said, was “like a video game where you [are] not using the power-ups.”
She asked him if this had really changed his mind and if he would vote in November. “Yes, with you. And I’ll get the sticker,” he said.
I asked Jones what she would say to a politician who sat across from her and claimed they couldn’t figure out why young Black men in her state didn’t vote.
“Find out what’s important to them. Find out what’s affecting them. Find out what their knowledge is about politics. Because that’s the problem. They really just don’t know,” she said.
It’s just one potential voter, but it took less than a day. Nobody in politics had to do anything expensive to move Dwight Bullard.
It took a guy at work who likes the same movies, a tree in his mother’s yard and a reporter explaining how a strait on the other side of the world affected the price of gas in Ohio.
In a state where 603,000 Black voters stayed home last midterm, hardly anyone has been knocking on the door.
CORRECTION (Oct. 17, 2026, 10:30 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article listed the wrong city in which Shayla Davis served as a councilwoman. It was Garfield Heights, not Cleveland.
In the final weeks before the midterms, there’s a poll for just about everyone. One may show a candidate pulling ahead in a state that’s supposed to be hostile territory for their party. Another gives one of the parties a historic lead on the generic ballot. Whatever you’re hoping for on Election Day, you can probably find a poll that says it’s coming.
That doesn’t make it a good poll. Some of the most rigorous surveys out there may tell you exactly what you don’t want to hear, and even the best are not crystal balls. They are loaded with nuance, measure opinion at a single moment and carry uncertainty that’s easy to overlook in a fast-moving news cycle.
But polling is still a critical tool for understanding which races are competitive and which issues voters care about. The trick is reading them well. Here are three things worth considering to help you separate out meaningful patterns in the data from noise.
Polls are snapshots, not predictions
A poll can show which candidate leads a race when the interviews were conducted, but it cannot say for sure how people will vote days or weeks later. Campaigns are dynamic. Candidates’ positions evolve. Voters change their minds. In races where polls show many undecided voters, these shifts add another layer of uncertainty, because many of those voters will eventually pick someone. So pay attention to the share of respondents who are unsure or only leaning toward a candidate.
And like any snapshot, even the best poll is imperfect. High-quality pollsters work hard to make sure the people they interview accurately represent the voters in a state or district, but even excellent polls contain some noise. Smaller surveys typically have greater margins of error than larger ones. Results for specific demographic groups can be even less certain, since a survey may include only a small number of people from those groups.
Polls can offer a valuable snapshot of an election story as it unfolds. What they cannot do is predict with certainty how that story ends.
Not all polls are created equal
When most people come across a poll in a news story, the first thing they look at is the topline number: What is the poll telling me? But a better place to start is often with the source.
Who conducted the poll? How did they do it? What questions were respondents asked? Did the pollster release a methodology accounting for their decisions, or did they keep those details out of view?
These questions are important because how a pollster conducts a poll inevitably shapes what conclusions it — and, in turn, you — can draw from it. Most pollsters are well intentioned and have every incentive to get the numbers right, and reputable ones are transparent about their methods. They also generally don’t have a stake in the outcome or an incentive to try to shape the narrative around a race — unlike, say, a campaign releasing its own internal polling.
The lesson is simple. When a new poll comes out, look beyond the topline and spend a little time investigating how it was conducted. And never judge a poll’s quality by what it finds.
Polling contains unavoidable uncertainty
A common misconception with polling is that all differences are real and meaningful. For instance, in a poll of a congressional race that is 50% to 46%, it may be tempting to look at the candidate polling at 50% as the frontrunner and the one likely to win if nothing about the race changes.
But that is the wrong way to read most polls that show narrow gaps between candidates. Every poll contains some amount of uncertainty. That does not mean polling is broken, or that getting an accurate gauge on public opinion is impossible; it means that any single poll should be taken with caution and considered alongside other polls on the same race or issue.
One of the most common forms of uncertainty you will come across is a poll’s margin of error, which stems from the fact that a poll surveys only a sample of voters. In a 50-46 race with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, we can’t say for sure who would be ahead if every voter were surveyed, because the final result could be anything from a 53-43 race one way to a 47-49 race the other way.
And sampling error is just one of many challenges. Error can creep into a poll in many other ways, including how pollsters determine who is likely to vote and how they weight different groups to match the population they’re trying to measure.
That’s why context matters — a lot. Polling averages can be an excellent way of setting expectations when a new poll comes out and to avoid getting swept up in the hype around an outlier. Polls from reputable news organizations with strong track records can serve the same purpose.
And when two candidates are polling neck and neck, the best conclusion is often the most obvious one: If the election were held today, it could go either way.
No, what underwhelms me is a certain subset of Americans who are not attending these protests. This cohort (according to recent polls) apparently exists but appears to lack the courage to stand up and be counted in public: right-of-center voters that are more loyal to the Constitution than to Trump.
There ought to be nonstop protests across the U.S. against an illegal war that’s crippling millions of Americans’ budgets, making the world less safe and failing at every one of its constantly-shifting stated objectives.
A Fox News poll conducted between Oct. 9-12 found that among self-identified MAGA Republicans, Trump’s approval rating is 95% — a figure that would make most dictators blush. Meanwhile, among Republicans who don’t self-identify with the cult of Trump, the president is underwater: 47% approve, while 52% disapprove. Among independents, 22% approve and 78% disapprove.
Hey, non-MAGA Republicans and independents who live in objective reality, now’s a good time to show your faces in public!
It’s one thing to be a career GOP politician, terrified of crossing Trump for fear of losing their position of power. It’s spineless and opportunistic, of course, but at least it’s a reason. What’s the excuse for the rest of you?
Surely Trump’s relentless disrespect of American values and constitutional rights — like freedom of speech and religion; due process; birthright citizenship; prohibitions on bribes from foreign governments and warrantless searches; the freedom to walk outside without proof of citizenship — ought to have you mad as hell and taking to the streets. If you call yourself a libertarian or a conservative, then obviously you should see Trump as a greater threat to the rule of law and civil liberties than annoying woke college undergrads. If you’re a right-leaning independent, then Trump and his family gorging on ill-gotten countless billions must have you willing to let bygones be bygones and ready to march in the streets side by side with your liberal neighbors.
But I’m confident few, if any, of these folks will attend No Kings rallies this weekend. Whether because of apathy or fear of catching cooties from anything associated with Democrats or the left, the result is the same: they’ll be sitting on the sidelines as Trump gobbles up more American yardage for himself.
Hey, non-MAGA Republicans and independents who live in objective reality, now’s a good time to show your faces in public!
It’s possible that the polls predicting a “blue wave” election are correct. But a midterm “wipeout” isn’t enough for America to recover. Impeachments, investigations and public shaming ought to be the order of the day if Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress, but even that won’t do. For America to achieve some semblance of a shared national identity, there must be a near-universal call for a return to decency and respect for plurality. But that can only happen when roughly half the country demands the end of an unprecedented American personality cult that they’ve voted for in three consecutive elections.
I’m glad No Kings is drawing people to the streets and encouraging people to vote. It’s just not nearly enough. Not until the non-left — composed of non-MAGA Republicans, conservatives, libertarians and anti-woke centrists — confronts its own complicity and forges its own No Kings movement.
It knows she’s a WNBA player who inspired a Barbie, walked in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show and is a master at maximizing her brand. Her podcast is called “Unapologetically Angel.” She trademarked the term “Mebounds” in response to haters commenting on her field goal efficiency and has a marketing collab that synergizes her Reebok shoe and her deal with Hershey’s Reese’s chocolate.
It knows, too, her willingness to trash talk on the floor and motivate herself while getting in the heads of her opponents. Basketball fans have not forgotten Reese’s “you can’t see me” gesture to Caitlin Clark during the 2023 NCAA women’s national championship. Not all players and fans like Reese’s style, but getting likes is not what Reese is about.
Reese, 24, heads into Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday as the league’s defensive player of the year, poised to show that her experience level doesn’t matter at the league’s biggest stage.
Reese’s persona is built around refuting those who don’t believe in her ability and the force that she is, on or off court.
Reese, 24, heads into Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday as the league’s defensive player of the year, poised to show that her experience level doesn’t matter at the league’s biggest stage. She’s a winner through and through.
Reaching the finals is a goal Reese manifested around a year ago, when she watched the playoffs from home after missing them in each of her first two professional seasons.
Reese was the seventh overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft. She was an All-Star in her first two seasons with the Chicago Sky but felt the franchise wasn’t taking major steps toward winning at a high level.
And she said so, questioning the Sky’s approach to roster building, including its decision to bring back franchise legend Courtney Vandersloot, who was in her late 30s. The interview went viral.
“I’d like to be here for my career, but if things don’t pan out, obviously I might have to move in a different direction and do what’s best for me,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “But while I am here, I’m going to try to stay open-minded about what I have here and maximize that as much as I can.”
The comments were remarkable both for Reese’s bluntness and her bravery. Reese spoke up about what she believed wasn’t right and demanded better — something many working women struggle to do. Already, Reese’s legacy looks to be defined by the ways she has defied expectations for women, much like how Diana Taurasi did with how she, too, talked smack on the court.
Reese and the Dream wanted the same things: to improve, to grow and to win. As a franchise, the Dream had been both slighted and underinvested in before an ownership change in 2021.
Reese’s comments weren’t well-received by her Sky teammates or the front office. She was suspended for half a game and said her language “was taken out of context.”
Seven months later, the Atlanta Dream acquired Reese, who quickly found synergy with her new team. Reese and the Dream wanted the same things: to improve, to grow and to win. As a franchise, the Dream had been both slighted and underinvested in before an ownership change in 2021.
Reese helped reinvigorate the Dream fanbase, and the team invested in her development, helping hone her talents.
From 2024: Angel Reese has genius in her fingertips defector.com/angel-reese-…
Her buy-in to head coach Karl Smesko’s mantra of managing emotions and valuing each possession is evident in Reese’s poised approach to the postseason. Although a playoff rookie, Reese hasn’t looked like one. Across five playoff games, Reese has averaged 18 points, 8.4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1.6 steals and 2.2 blocks.
Smesko has also committed to working with Reese on her 3-point shot, a necessary skill for modern front-court players. He challenged Reese to practice shooting in front of her teammates during training camp, something that initially embarrassed her but has fueled her success shooting from deep during the postseason.
Smesko became Reese’s shooting partner not only to build trust with a team star but also to get to know her better. The two have a handshake that has ricocheted around social media.
It’s a fist pound, followed by the right knee going up and a shooting motion, and then both stick their tongues out.
karl smesko on why it's important to him that he is the one on the court pregame working with angel reese on her shot pic.twitter.com/Eqmz2LFyrf
As the Dream head into their first finals since 2013, Reese believes her impact is rooted in her fearlessness. She takes risks just like she did in Chicago.
“I always talk about you can’t be scared when it comes to this,” Reese told me earlier this month.
This fearlessness manifested against the Washington Mystics in her first-ever playoff matchup last month, she said. “I knew I was just going to be fearless. Go out there and play fearless, play with just so much poise, and just have fun and do everything that I can do. And that’s always how I’ve been in my career.”
Reese’s fearlessness and her high motor are widely known. Less appreciated are the ways she uses her instincts and sheer athleticism to impact the game at multiple levels.
Reese also earned the honor because of her mastery of opponents’ tendencies and making sharp, in-game adjustments that help position her team to win.
Accolades like Defensive Player of the Year reflect rebounds, blocks and steals. But Reese also earned the honor because of her mastery of opponents’ tendencies and making sharp, in-game adjustments that help position her team to win. She had not just the confidence but also the shrewdness to tell her veteran teammate DeWanna Bonner to pass her the ball at the end of Game 2 of the Dream’s semifinal against the New York Liberty. The idea was that Reese would help run out the clock and bait the Liberty into chasing her around.
“That’s just IQ right there,” Reese said when asked about the play. “I mean, it’s going to take them a couple seconds to chase me around the court. So, I told her to throw it in the backcourt and I’m gonna run around as fast as I can out there. I took as much time off the clock as I could, and we just executed.”
Reese is trying to do something that hasn’t been done in almost a decade: lead a team to a championship in her first three years in the WNBA, a feat last achieved by New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart in 2018.
Whether or not she becomes a league champion this season, Reese is already showing the world that her influence is equally great on and off the court.
Setting aside the jokes about the shortness of Katie Zacharia’s tenure as White House press secretary, the controversy over her claim to be a lawyer obscures a more damaging issue. For years, she promoted some of the most heinous and bizarre conspiracy theories bubbling up from the right-wing swamp. Simply put: Zacharia was ousted for the wrong reason. Her embrace of extreme and downright loony assertions amount to a much stronger basis for dismissal than her bogus lawyer claim.
Zacharia’s social media history suggests a worldview colored by baseless thinking, defamatory accusations and sinister fantasies — not exactly a good look for someone tasked with conveying the U.S. president’s policies and actions to the press and public with authority and integrity. The noxiousness of her posts and reposts was apparently evident even to her, since she deleted many of them before her new role was announced.
According to reporting by CNN, the Bulwark and the newsletter Popular Information, Zacharia has repeatedly accused people, particularly Democrats, of sexually molesting children. In April 2022, she reposted and later deleted a Truth Social post from “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander: “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.”
She repeatedly referred to Democratic operative and former White House chief of staff John Podesta as a “pedo,” apparently still connecting him to an outrageous child-abuse conspiracy theory that had been debunked years earlier. She later paid tribute to the late Robert David Steele, a conspiracist who claimed that children were being kidnapped and sent to a colony on Mars: “He was exposing the pedo rings of the elite cabal,” Zacharia wrote. “May he Rest in Peace and the work of his hands not have been in vain.” In another Truth Social post, she noted that “the radical left Hollywood elites are sick pedo cannibals.” She added, “Change my mind.”
If Trump does indeed find another role for Zacharia in his administration, questions should be asked.
Another of Zacharia’s reposts suggested that Joan Rivers’ death in 2014 was somehow connected to an insulting crack the comedian once made about the Obamas: “Remember that time Joan Rivers said Obama was gay and Michelle had a dick then suddenly died?”
This wasn’t the output of a mischievous teen troll; Zacharia’s controversial deleted posts and reposts date from as recently as 2022. By then, Zacharia was in her late 30s and had been employed in various senior communications roles, including most recently as an adviser to Truth Social, the Trump-owned social media platform.
Zacharia’s deleted posts on political issues were problematic for another reason. For instance, she re-posted and deleted a tweet accusing the Justice Department of covering up the crimes of people involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, an opinion at odds with the administration she was tapped to speak for. Last year, she advocated suspending habeas corpus — the fundamental right to challenge detention in court — for migrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an extreme and authoritarian measure. (Zacharia’s legal theory, if any, was that the Constitution justifies denial of this right in cases of rebellion or invasion.)
In its article Tuesday on this social media activity, CNN reported that neither Zacharia nor White House communications director Steven Cheung directly addressed the issue. In a statement, CNN reported, Cheung called her “uniquely qualified” and “whip smart to help inform the American people.” The White House responded to Popular Information’s request for comment by referring it “to the President’s TRUTH on Katie,” a post in which Trump praised Zacharia as “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.” Zacharia wasn’t asked about these posts in interviews with three conservative outlets, including Fox News, between Thursday and her ousting Friday.
Clearly, the safe space couldn’t last. Trump apparently realized that if she ever assumed the podium again, Zacharia would inevitably face a barrage of questions about herself. That, too, is problematic: A press secretary shouldn’t be the story. But Zacharia’s history of hair-raising statements rightly made her one.
The lawyergate bubble burst in just five days. On Thursday, in an interview with right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec — himself a noted purveyor of conspiracy theories — Zacharia acknowledged that she didn’t pass the California bar exam. On advice from legal experts, she said, she decided that it was proper to call herself a lawyer but not an “attorney.” She said much the same to the New York Times, which reported on Thursday that she had identified herself on LinkedIn as general counsel to a group led by a Trump loyalist. In the wake of a CNN report Thursday that Zacharia had shared at least 15 social media posts over the past two years in which she referred to herself as an attorney, she told Sean Hannity that those were retweets of a title she had been given — but she was out shortly after lunchtime Friday.
But if Trump does indeed find another role for Zacharia in his administration, questions should be asked. Among them: Did she really think Hollywood “elites” engaged in pedophilia and cannibalism? How did she come by this knowledge, and who are the individuals who’ve engaged in these repulsive crimes? Is the Justice Department still covering up Epstein’s crimes? Does she truly believe there’s a lost colony of kidnapped children on Mars? As press secretary, there was no way Zacharia could keep the public focus on war, the economy, healthcare and the midterm elections while also defending a conspiracy about Joan Rivers’ death. But a less prominent position doesn’t moot the questions that should be asked if Zacharia is drawing a taxpayer-funded salary.
For Trump, media controversy may be on brand. The White House’s most recent top spokesperson had been a font of misinformation, outrageous “theories” and mortifying lies. In view of her boss’ track record, that may not be a bug or even a feature. It may be why Zacharia got the job in the first place.
Before the upcoming midterm elections, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vt., has pulled off what he couldn’t in his two presidential campaigns. The self-described democratic socialist has managed to reshape the Democratic Party, and potentially its trajectory, with a new generation of upstart candidates he has inspired, mentored, funded or recruited.
Unlike in past years, when Sanders was relatively late in making endorsements to ensure he was backing viable candidates, he jumped in early this cycle — and he jumped in big, with more than 70 endorsements for positions in Washington and across the country, including House and Senate seats and state insurance commissioner races. Seventy-five percent of his endorsed candidates won their primaries, according to Sanders’ team.
Watch “Long Game: The Bernie Sanders Effect,” a two-hour special on MS NOW Saturday at 8 p.m. ET
Some who won the Sanders tap of approval are relative newcomers and are not the kind of candidates typically championed by a Democratic party establishment constantly worried about alienating centrist or right-leaning voters. The Wall Street Journal and Axios have suggested that Sanders has become a “kingmaker.” The midterms will help determine how true that is.
I conducted an extended interview with the senator for a special airing this weekend on MS NOW, called “Long Game: The Bernie Sanders Effect.” The two-hour special, which airs Saturday at 8 p.m., examines the improbable arc of Sanders’ life and political career, including his childhood in Brooklyn, where money was tight and his parents died young; his challenge to the longtime political machine in Burlington, Vermont, as an upstart socialist candidate for mayor; his two presidential campaigns, during which he drew some of the largest, loudest and most loyal crowds; and his effort to create a far-reaching progressive movement after he failed to win the nomination.
“The Democratic Party failed working-class people on economic issues,” Sanders told me in our sit-down. “I think they have a lot to be proud of in terms of fighting for civil rights, for women’s rights, for gay rights, for environmental stuff. But in terms of working-class issues, no. I don’t think they’ve done a good job. So a lot of workers out there say, ‘Well, you know, we voted for you. Our fathers voted for you. To hell with you.’”
Sanders is committed to trying to seize control of the House and the Senate for Democrats to provide a check on President Donald Trump’s power. But with a string of upstart candidates, who in some cases call themselves party “insurgents,” he and they are simultaneously challenging the Democratic Party itself and its cadre of consultants, corporate donors and traditionalist party gatekeepers.
“What we need to understand and figure out is how we bring together the insurgent working-class youth movement that is taking over the polls,” Ocasio-Cortez told me. “The energy and the momentum is with an ascendant generational shift.”
That so-called insurgency within the party that pushes a progressive agenda, rejects corporate funding, criticizes Israel and is determined to pull Democrats to the left has created some real heartburn inside the party.
El-Sayed and AOC are already thinking beyond 2026 bt test driving a national platform for the left. www.semafor.com/article/10/1…
“If those candidates succeed, then he is a kingmaker and his support will be sought after in 2028 and beyond,” said our MS NOW colleague Steve Benen, a political historian and writer who has followed Sanders’ career as a longtime Vermonter. “If those candidates fall short, it’s a very different story. Bernie Sanders starts to be seen as a villain among Democratic leaders.”
To some degree that has already started. Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and likely 2028 presidential contender, wrote a scathing column in The Wall Street Journal in July with the headline, “The ‘Bernie Bros’ Could Spoil Democrats’ Midterms.” Emanuel argued that Republicans would make every Democrat in the country answer for the most radical positions of the Democratic Socialists of America, such as abolishing prisons and defunding the police and the Department of Defense — even though many of candidates Sanders has endorsed are neither socialists nor DSA members.
For example, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for the Senate from Michigan, rejects the socialist label and instead calls himself a “progressive capitalist,” and has gladly accepted Sanders’ endorsement as well as a $1 million donation from proud DSA member, Ocasio-Cortez. Angie Nixon, who’s running for the Senate from Florida, joined the DSA in June and has accepted its fundraising and organizational support but has said she is not a socialist. Other Sanders-backed contenders — Senate candidates Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Troy Jackson in Maine and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin — are not socialists and never have been.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for the Senate from Michigan, rejects the socialist label and instead calls himself a “progressive capitalist,” and has gladly accepted Sanders’ endorsement as well as a $1 million donation from proud DSA member, Ocasio-Cortez.
Nonetheless, Republicans have used the socialist label and the more extreme aspect of the DSA platform to suggest Democrats are too radical for mainstream America. But as Benen explained, the socialist label doesn’t carry the taint or the baggage it once did, especially among young voters.
“For the longest time, you hear the word socialism, and you think Fidel Castro, you think of Soviet Union. You think these horror shows, and people were, I think were reflexively opposed to the very idea,” Benen said. “I think that now there are polls that show socialism itself is no longer this nightmare word that people are so afraid of. And, in fact, it’s growing. We were seeing it have increasing popularity, especially among younger voters.” He said Republicans using “socialism” as “this evil word to scare voters away isn’t working because socialism as a concept is becoming more popular.”
That insight applies to some places more than it does in others. Several of the Bernie- backed candidates embrace his money, his campaign infrastructure and the huge crowds he can bring to rallies more than Sanders’ democratic socialist label or ideology.
Whatever they call themselves, all of the candidates Sanders has endorsed tout the basic tenets of his progressive agenda: addressing economic inequality, providing healthcare for all, fighting corporate greed and rejecting a political system that rewards the rich while shortchanging the working class. Sanders argues that those messages resonate with voters everywhere, not just in blue-leaning districts, and he and Ocasio-Cortez, his frequent road companion, are testing that theory by taking their Fighting Oligarchy Tour and their prodigious campaign war chest to GOP strongholds to court the very voters establishment Democrats worry about alienating.
I think we are putting a major thesis to the test. But it’s about time that we do that because we have tried this old playbook over and over and over again.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard things like, or heard things insinuated, like a Muslim man can’t win in Michigan. Or that a candidate like Angie Nixon can’t win in Florida,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
When I asked her if that strategy would work in a general election, she said, “I think we are putting a major thesis to the test. But it’s about time that we do that because we have tried this old playbook over and over and over again.”
For his part, Sanders has created a new playbook in which endorsements come with an infrastructure that includes money, a system for identifying and motivating voters, an expansive and effective get-out-the-vote network, and the “Fighting Oligarchy” road show that began in early 2025. The tour draws massive crowds in a festival-like atmosphere that can generate enthusiasm and encourage voter registration.
It should be said that Sanders can complicate things for Democrats in swing states or districts. James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Ken Paxton, said he will skip the Fighting Oligarchy’s three-city swing through Texas next week as that race tightens.
With a string of primary wins, the test now is whether Sanders-backed candidates on the far-left, progressive flank, who won with enthusiastic support from like-minded voters, can appeal to less ideological Democrats, centrist independents and even GOP voters who have grown weary of Trump.
Sanders has always insisted the movement is not about him. But given the amount of time and energy he has invested and all the candidates he has endorsed, in many states on Nov. 3, it will be.
Michele Norris will be answering Members’ questions about her interview with Bernie Sanders during an exclusive Q&A on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order that puts on hold a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause was in the national interest.
Trump personally signed the legislation just last month and his move came just two days before a deadline set in the law itself for its implementation. It drew shift condemnation from congressional Democrats.
Named after late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the legislation had sought to clamp down more quickly on the flow of financial resources fueling the war against Ukraine.
Trump’s unexpected decision comes a week after he stunningly said the U.S. had agreed to purchase diesel from Russia to try to bring down global energy prices, despite that potentially hurting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published Oct. 1 found that Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the Iran war and blame him for higher prices. Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to near-historic lows and pressure is mounting as Republicans try to hold control of both chambers of Congress after midterm elections on Nov. 3.
Sanctions were seen as part of Graham’s legacy
Graham, a close ally and friend of the president, had just returned from Ukraine when he unexpectedly died in July. He had advocated for stricter U.S. sanctions against Russia as a way of pressuring it to end its war in Ukraine.
His colleagues in Congress responded with bipartisan support after his death and Trump attached his signature to the legislation — then changed his mind Friday.
The package had been meant to starve Russian President Vladimir Putin of the resources Moscow needs to continue its war in Ukraine after invading its neighbor more than four years ago. The bill, also drafted by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., had sought to sanction Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving.
It also directed Trump to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.
Blumenthal said in a statement that Trump was turning his back on “the majority of Americans, their representatives in both houses of Congress, and our European allies.”
“These waivers have nothing to do with our national security, and everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin,” Blumenthal said.
Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer noted on social media shortly after the announcement of the sanctions being suspended that he and others had “warned” Trump might make such a move. The veteran congressman, who spoke out against the bill as it was debated, called on Congress to “fix this flawed law to stop Trump from capitulating to Putin and ensure that it truly supports Ukraine.”
The White House did not immediately explain how pausing the sanctions was in the national interest. The decision was posted on the White House website late in the evening, and the notification noted that the report explaining the decision had been submitted to Congress.
Still, it comes as Trump has increasingly lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blaming him for failing to make a deal with Putin to end the fighting.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, had remained mostly quiet since the passage of the bill with large majorities in the House and Senate following Graham’s sudden death — with lawmakers urged ahead by Zelenskyy.
Trump’s action follows announced diesel deal with Putin
Under last week’s agreement, Trump said Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.”
Trump’s striking a diesel deal with Putin has been pilloried by Republicans and Democrats alike who say it will help Russia execute its war against Ukraine — without making a different to global fuel prices, which are elevated mostly due to Trump’s war on Iran.
The sanctions that Trump has now suspended, meanwhile, also had become a campaign centerpiece for Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister who was appointed to serve out the remaining months in his current term. She is now running to replace him in the Senate more permanently.
Darline Graham said in a statement after Trump signed the bill, “I wish Lindsey were here to celebrate this historic day.” In a debate earlier this week with Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, Graham — who has Trump’s endorsement and is expected to campaign with him in South Carolina next week — said she had been “so proud” to help get the measure passed.
She acknowledged, however, that it was the president’s purview as to how he implemented it.
“It gives the president tools that he can use if he so chooses, to end the war through economic sanctions,” Graham said Sunday during a debate in Columbia. “So that’s up to him as to whether or not he wants to use it, or whether he wants to use something else, but I think the purpose of it is to bring down the gas prices and ultimately end the war. And when the war ends, gas prices will fall.”
In a letter to Justice Department prosecutors Friday evening, lawyers for Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., demanded the immediate return of all property taken from her Washington home on Monday, when Homeland Security investigators executed a search warrant as part of an investigation into alleged immigration fraud and conspiracy.
That search deviated from the specific procedures mandated by the judge who approved the warrant, and may have violated Omar’s constitutional rights as a result, according to Omar’s lawyers Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz of Hecker Fink LLP.
Their seven-page letter also demands that the Department of Justice preserve and provide to Omar’s counsel within five days any video or audio recordings taken during the search, as well as any records reflecting Homeland Security Investigations’ reported review of Omar’s immigration status in 2019.
As a member of Congress, Omar is entitled to protections under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which provides immunity for her legislative conduct and protects certain congressional materials and communications from disclosure or use in legal proceedings.
The letter also challenges the perceived focus of the DOJ and Homeland Security’s investigation.
“There is no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status,” the lawyers write. “Still, recent experience teaches that the absence of a proper predicate has not stopped this Administration from pursuing politically motivated criminal investigations into President Trump’s opponents.”
The lawyers note that Omar, a frequent public critic of Trump, has been the target of criticism from Trump and members of his administration, with apparent efforts to harass and intimidate her. In particular, they cite several statements that Trump and Vice President JD Vance have made about Omar on social media over the past year. The lawyers allege those statements have contributed to serious threats of harm against Omar.
Omar’s lawyers also allege that the White House appears to be directly involved in the investigation, citing a Washington Post report that Anthony Salisbury, a White House official, is a member of the investigative team.
“This vindictive, retributive, and politically motivated criminal investigation into one of the President’s chief congressional critics violates Representative Omar’s constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers,” they write.
The lawyers also argue that the timing of the search at Omar’s home violates DOJ policy prohibiting prosecutors from taking or refraining from investigative or prosecutorial actions to influence an election.
Omar, who was first elected to Congress in 2018, is running for re-election to the House this year.
“Historically, the Department has refrained from this type of investigative activity so close to an election, so as to avoid even the appearance of politically motivated law enforcement actions. But the political motivations behind this pre-election investigation and search are clear as day. For the reasons given above, this search was neither justified nor lawful,” the letter states.
The letter was sent to two DOJ lawyers, Michael Wheat and Alessandra “Ali” Serano, both special assistant U.S. attorneys.
A veteran prosecutor from California, Serano was appointed in June by Attorney General Todd Blanche as the national coordinator for child exploitation and human trafficking. The DOJ announced that, as part of that role, Serano would “submit a report to the Deputy Attorney General updating the Department’s strategy for combatting child exploitation and human trafficking” within 120 days. That deadline is approaching within days.
Wheat, on the other hand, has recently been involved with a DOJ effort to obtain California voter registration records from county election officials, according to public reporting. The DOJ sued the state of California for access to those records earlier this week.
In addition to pushing back on the impetus for and timing of the search, the letter also details recent reporting from The Washington Post, which, citing multiple sources, revealed that the Trump administration investigated potential issues surrounding Omar’s naturalization during Trump’s first term and closed the investigation for lack of evidence of criminal conduct.
The letter also alleges that Monday’s search may not have comported with the specific instructions by the magistrate judge who approved the warrant. Among other alleged deficiencies, the lawyers say that although the judge ordered the HSI agents executing the warrant to notify both Omar and the Office of General Counsel for the House of Representatives, the General Counsel was not notified of the search until it was already a matter of public record. The lawyers argue that the delay deprived Omar of the opportunity to seek guidance about her rights as a member of Congress.
Additionally, the lawyers allege that Omar did not receive a copy of the warrant prior to the execution of the search and that she was prevented from contacting her counsel for more than an hour after the search began. They argue that those and other alleged failures prevented her from identifying and separating materials protected by the Speech or Debate Clause.
People or entities from whom property is taken pursuant to a federal search warrant may seek the return of some or all of that property pursuant to rules governing federal criminal cases. Omar, her lawyers note, will file such a motion if the seized property — which, as MS NOW reported, includes her laptop, phone and passport — are not returned promptly.
On Friday, the White House confirmed Zacharia would no longer be serving as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, just three days after her first and only media briefing. Her ouster followed criticism from pundits, ethics experts and, perhaps more importantly for Trump, a less-than-friendly interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Zacharia’s removal was also preceded by a California state bar ethics complaint alleging the now former press secretary had been incorrectly labeling herself a lawyer despite lacking a license to practice law. Indeed, when Trump was asked in front of cameras Wednesday in which state she had passed the bar exam, Zacharia responded, “When I moved to China.”
Zacharia has spent the past few days attempting damage control, for good reason. Few jobs require more public trust than representing the president of the United States. But trust, just like a license to practice law, must be earned.
Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law in 2011. But that is not the same thing as being a licensedattorney, a term derived from the word “appointed” that refers to a lawyer who represents clients. State bar authorities regulate their profession, providing law licenses only to applicants who pass a rigorous written examination. The bar examination tests a broad array of legal topics, including criminal law, evidence, torts, property, constitutional law, contract law and professional responsibility, among others. Applicants must also pass a background check for “moral character” to determine whether any events in their past might cast doubt on their integrity to serve as an officer of the court.
Even after a person is admitted to the bar, lawyers must continue to pay annual dues to the state licensing authority, fulfill any continuing legal education requirements and refrain from any legal misconduct. The goal of regulators is to ensure that clients are represented only by lawyers with the requisite training, capability and trustworthiness.
According to the bar complaint filed by Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog organization, Zacharia is not admitted to practice law in any U.S. state, including California, where she lived until her recent move to Washington, D.C. According to The Wall Street Journal, Zacharia sat for the California bar after law school but did not pass. She then worked at a law firm in Beijing for two years, but China licenses only Chinese nationals to practice law. Even if she were licensed in China, that would not be sufficient to practice law in the U.S.
California law makes it a misdemeanor to advertise or hold oneself out as “practicing law or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar.” Zacharia’s representations that she is a “lawyer” in television appearances for Fox News may have been misleading, but they likely do not arise to the level of holding oneself out as entitled to practice law under the statute.
For her part, Zacharia told The New York Times that this was all a misunderstanding, and that Pepperdine’s president personally told her it was fine to identify as a “lawyer” when appearing on cable TV, but that she should avoid “attorney” or “esquire.” (She also tried to clean up her earlier “moved to China” comment by claiming she had thought the question she was being asked was, “Where were you after law school?”)
But the questions about her conduct don’t end there. According to Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile, she served as general counsel for a conservative advocacy organization called Fix California, founded by former Trump administration official Richard Grenell, from 2024 to 2025. The general counsel is typically the top lawyer of an organization. That title suggests someone who is actively practicing law by providing legal advice for the organization and is permitted to accept service of process on its behalf. Recipients of correspondence on letterhead from someone using the title of general counsel would certainly assume that the writer was licensed to practice law. Using the title “general counsel” would seem to be “holding oneself out as entitled to practice law.” And without a license, that use would put Zacharia in violation of California law.
Similar accusations have been made against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, who uses the title “doctor” despite never having practiced medicine. What is different about El-Sayed is that he not only graduated from medical school but he also obtained a doctoral degree in public health from Oxford University in England, earning the degree — and title — of “doctor.”
Zacharia’s tenure may be historically short, but her hiring still raises questions about the vetting the administration uses in hiring candidates for important positions. While some may argue that Zacharia’s position as press secretary does not require a law degree, her resume puffing should have been disqualifying for a White House role built on credibility. America must be able to have some amount of confidence in the person representing the presidential agenda in the briefing room.
Of course, Trump voters have long made peace with accepting a president who lies. What difference does it make if his press secretary did, too?
Kansas state Sen. Cindy Holscher would like you to know she isn’t a demon, and her daughter, Maddie, isn’t a witch.
“I am not a demon,” Holscher told MS NOW by video chat from Wichita on Friday. “I’m a mom to three great kids. I’m a wife of 34 years. I’m an active person in my community that is fighting for all Kansans. and my commitment is to making life better for the people in our state.”
Holscher, the Democratic candidate for governor of Kansas, took time from campaigning a couple of weeks out from the election to confirm that she is not an evil spirit, because her opponent, Ty Masterson — the Republican president of the Kansas Senate who is currently leading in the polls — recently accused her of “demonic stuff,” casting their race, and a surprisingly close U.S. Senate contest, as “spiritual warfare.”
Masterson’s comments, made during a speech Sunday before the congregation at Praise Chapel in Wichita, included accusations against Holscher’s daughter, 21-year-old Maddie, who has gained a notable online following for posting videos on TikTok in support of her mom.
“Evil is maturing along with the brotherhood, and it is rising to a level that is just in your face,” Masterson said, his speech scored by swelling piano music and rounds of “amens” from the audience. “My race and the U.S. Senate race with Roger Marshall versus Hamilton. Those are spiritual battles.”
“My opponent, she didn’t even hide it, they’re doing like witchcraft spells on TikTok so she can win the governorship,” Masterson went on. “It’s like demonic stuff that they’re doing, right? Just in your face that way.”
Holscher told MS NOW she is a Christian.
“I was raised Lutheran,” she said. “You will find me at that same country church that I attended as a child.”
Masterson seems to have been referencing a couple of Maddie’s videos posted earlier this year. In one, Maddie waves her arms and smiles as her mother looks on, incredulous. “Summoning a spell so my mom wins Kansas Governor,” text on the post read. “Vote cindy for ks gov.” In another, Maddie and a young man do the arm waving dance in front of a refrigerator, a magnet with her mom’s picture stuck to the door.
Maddie, a senior at the University of Missouri studying statistics and public health, joined her mother on the video call. Like her mother, she, too, wanted to set the record straight.
“I’m not a witch,’ Maddie said, describing her TikTok account as “goofy” and “playful.”
“I’m just a 21-year-old college student trying to pass all my math tests right now. And supporting my mom throughout this campaign,” she added.
Maddie explained what anyone with a passing knowledge of the internet could have: her post wasn’t an incantation summoning evil spirits to help a Democrat win a governor’s race. It was a widely known TikTok meme. The audio comes from a Spanish-dubbed scene of “Charmed,” the show about three young witches that ran on The WB in the aughts.
Masterson did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.
The Republican’s comments are the kind of extreme rhetoric that’s become more routine on the right, including from President Donald Trump — in which politicians don’t just demonize their opponents but cast them as literal demons.
At his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas, Trump warned the audience that stakes of the upcoming election went beyond control of the White House.
“Either we surrender to the demonic forces,” he said, “or we defeat them in a landslide.”
In 2022, Trump said a Biden speech with red lights was “like the devil.” Last year, Trump shared a post that called Democrats “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.”
It’s hardly the first time a politician or movement has framed a race’s stakes in apocalyptic terms, cast an opponent as a monster, or linked a rival to the devil himself. Dr. Ben Carson, USDA’s National Advisor for Nutrition, Health and Housing, linked Hillary Clinton to Lucifer in 2016, the same year former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner called Sen. Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the Flesh.”
But explicitly demonizing a political opponent leaves no room for understanding or common ground, only “degrees of punishment,” said Whitney Phillips, an associate professor of information politics and media ethics at the University of Oregon and co-author of “The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-liberal Demonology Possessed U.S. Religion, Media, and Politics.”
“What else are you supposed to do with the devil other than punish them? You don’t set the dinner table for the devil. You kick the devil out,” Phillips said.
“In a pluralistic democracy, any kind of language or behavior that kicks people completely out of the civic realm is a problem,” Phillips said. “The ideal is that people respectfully disagree, not that they say, ‘You are so evil I can’t even conceive of you as another human being.’”
Holscher criticized Masterson’s record as president of the state Senate, his focus on culture war issues over affordability and his personal attacks.
“This is the type of strategy we have seen from across the aisle,” Holscher said. “When there isn’t a record to stand on, when there isn’t sound policy, or when you have candidates that are just so out of line with the people, they resort to attacks against their opponent and calling names.”
“What I do find really concerning here is that he seems to be obsessed with my college student’s TikTok,” Holscher said.
Maddie agreed.
“Ty is being very weird,” she said. “But whatever.”
Jordyn Woods has built a career as a model and entrepreneur, establishing her lifestyle brand, Woods by Jordyn, all while navigating the pressures of growing up in the public eye. But for Woods, understanding her value has been less about getting everything right and more about learning from the moments when things go wrong.
“Every time I failed, I gained confidence,” Woods told Know Your Value founder and “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski during a conversation at Forbes and Brzezinski’s 30/50 Summit in New York City on Friday. “I would say every time I didn’t do something right, every time something didn’t go the way I wanted it to, I developed confidence because I knew OK, now I’m one step closer to knowing the right thing to do.”
Woods continued: “I’ve never gotten better through everything working out. It was through every mishap or mistake that I got more confident because I knew what to not do.”
It’s a lesson that has extended well beyond business. At 19, Woods experienced the sudden loss of her father, who died of pancreatic cancer after going from being extremely healthy to passing away within a month. The experience fundamentally changed her perspective and helped set her on a path toward prioritizing fitness and mental health.
“I’ve just chosen to look at things that happened to me in a way of it happened for me rather than to me, and always just tried to be the most optimistic in in that journey,” Woods said.
Nearly a decade later, she sees how much that experience shaped the person she has become. But grief has also reminded her that life’s biggest milestones can bring complicated emotions. When she married her husband, NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns, this year, she felt the absence of her father acutely.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Jordyn Woods at the 2026 ESPY Awards on July 15, 2026 in New York City.Mike Coppola / Getty Images
“It wasn’t, oh my gosh, I’m getting married. It’s oh my gosh, my dad isn’t here to do this with me,” Woods said. Her older brother walked her down the aisle.
For Woods, knowing her value also means recognizing that personal worth cannot be measured solely by professional accomplishments.
“We put our value in what we accomplish, we put our value in being able to sit on this stage today,” she told Brzezinski. “But if I wasn’t sitting on the stage, I still do know my value.”
Still, she acknowledged that maintaining that confidence isn’t always easy.
“Right now, I mean, I’m on such a high right now after this year that I feel like it’s easy to know my value, but it’s hard to know your value when things aren’t going your way.”
Woods said she is learning to celebrate her successes without losing sight of what’s next. Even amid an exciting year, she finds herself pushing forward rather than pausing to appreciate how far she has come.
“I’m in the middle of celebrating my wins, but also pushing forward,” she said. “I feel like I don’t celebrate my wins. I know I don’t take anything for granted because anything can change tomorrow and the next hour. So I’m constantly having to remind myself that it is okay to celebrate some good things happening.”
Jordyn Woods arriving at Madison Square Garden on April 18, 2026 in New York City.MEGA / GC Images
One of those wins has been the success of the Tux Clutch Mini, an accessory from Woods by Jordyn that went viral during the New York Knicks’ championship run and was later featured at the Guggenheim. But Woods is already thinking about what comes next.
When Brzezinski asked whether she had retired the now-iconic bag, Woods revealed she was torn between celebrating its success and making room for something new.
“But it’s like, don’t you want to end on a high note … Let’s create something new,” Woods said.
The bag will have another moment in the spotlight at a Woods by Jordyn pop-up in SoHo over Halloween weekend, she said. But her instinct to keep creating reflects a larger lesson about entrepreneurship: success is worth celebrating, but it doesn’t have to define what comes next.
That forward-looking mindset is especially important when navigating the internet, where young women face relentless pressure to look perfect, build a personal brand and absorb public judgment.
Woods, who experienced social media’s evolution firsthand, said the pressure on today’s younger generation feels different. When she and her friends first joined Instagram, they posted freely. Now, social media can feel like a carefully curated business opportunity in which imperfection has little room to exist.
“I feel like I just got out of my awkward phase a couple years ago,” she said, noting that her 19-year-old sister never seemed to experience one.
For Woods, building confidence required self-reflection and learning to distinguish between other people’s struggles and her own identity.
“I feel like it was a lot of self-reflection and really identifying that most people are dealing with their own sense of trauma and pain and projecting that onto you, and that is not your trauma to carry.”
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