This year, Alaska held its primary elections on August 18.

As per a 2020 ballot measure, Alaska primary voters pick among all qualified candidates for a single office, regardless of party affiliation, and the top four then advance to the general election.

In the U.S. Senate primary, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan won 41 percent of the vote, while former Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, captured nearly 50 percent.

Dan Sullivan was also the distant third-place finisher—but in this case, it was Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher who is also running as a Republican but is not the same person as Daniel S. Sullivan, the junior U.S. senator for the 49th state.

The presence of dual Dan Sullivans is a headache for Republicans, who have fought to keep Daniel J. off the ballot, concerned he would split their votes and cost their candidate his seat.

"Mary Peltola and Chuck Schumer know they can't beat Senator Sullivan on his record, so they're resorting to deceitful political maneuvers that attempt to trick Alaskans and buy a seat," a Republican spokesman told Fox News.

"We are looking into it," President Donald Trump said this week. "It's a disgrace." In fact, NBC News reported in July that the FBI and Department of Justice had launched an investigation "looking for possible wire fraud or a conspiracy to deprive Alaskan voters of a free and fair elections process, which could be a civil rights violation."

In August, the government apparently issued subpoenas, though Daniel J. later said he had not received anything.

But is what he is doing actually illegal? For that matter, should it be?

Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, barred Daniel J. from the ballot in June after concluding that he was running "with the purpose of confusing or misleading the electorate and compromising the fairness of the ballot."

But a state superior court reversed that decision. "Despite the Division's assertion that Mr. Sullivan may be excluded from the ballot because he lacks 'good-faith,' there is no statute which provides such a criterion," wrote Judge Thomas A. Matthews. "The concept of 'good-faith,' or pure motive, or bona fide intent is simply absent." The Alaska Supreme Court agreed, keeping both Sullivans on the November ballot.

Granted, it seems extremely likely that Republicans are right, and Daniel J. is running specifically to hurt Daniel S.'s prospects.

"Campaign material metadata reveals that Amber Lee, a progressive consultant, authored a press release announcing [Daniel J.'s] Senate bid," WFMD reported in May.

Daniel J. told The New York Times that he was running as a moderate Republican in an attempt to steer the party away from its MAGA wing. But he also admitted that he had voted for the Democrat in the last three presidential races and for Peltola in her races for the U.S. House.

In Beecher's original order keeping Daniel J. off the ballot, she wrote that Daniel J. had asked to be identified as "Dan S. Sullivan" on the ballot, the same name as the senator's. (Alaska reporter Dermot Cole wrote in July that this was not true: Daniel J. wrote "Dan S. Sullivan" in an email to Beecher but followed up hours later to correct it to "Dan J. Sullivan.")

If Daniel J.'s goal truly is to mislead voters, then that is indefensible. But it's not clear that it's illegal, or whether it should be.

"I am not sure exploiting voter confusion about names is any worse than exploiting their ignorance about policy issues like crime, immigration, and health care," wrote George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. "Trying to prevent such exploitation through criminal and civil liability is likely to violate the First Amendment. In addition, it would likely end up giving incumbent political leaders broad power to curb speech and control electoral campaigns that they cannot be trusted with."

"This is a case about someone running for office with impure motives who is lucky enough to have a name that could confuse some voters," agreed election law expert Richard Hasen. "I don't see how the government could criminalize his running for office for having impure motives. And if it could do so, then it could be a crime every time that the Republican Party backs a Green Party candidate, or Democrats support a MAGA candidate in a primary in the hopes that the candidate would be weaker against a Democrat in the general election. This stuff happens all the time."

But it's entirely possible that Alaska's ranked choice voting system will solve the problem on Election Day.

After the August open primary, the top four candidates compete on a ranked choice ballot, where voters list the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets an outright majority, then the lowest performer is eliminated, and every ballot that picked them first is retallied and applied to their second choice.

As long as every Alaskan who wants to vote for Dan Sullivan—either one—lists both Dan Sullivans as their first and second choices, then the system will take care of any confusion. In the (highly likely) event that Daniel J. does not capture a majority on the first ballot, his votes will be retallied and applied to their second choices. The only plausible hiccup is if Peltola, the Democratic candidate, wins a majority in the first round—in which case either Sullivan would have lost anyway.

Of course, Republicans have opposed the ranked choice system since Alaska adopted it. Former Gov. Sarah Palin, who ran against Peltola twice unsuccessfully, said ranked choice was "so weird" that "it results in voter suppression."

In a post last week on Truth Social, Trump called ranked choice voting "Corrupt" and said it "shouldn't be allowed in our Country."

"I just left Alaska, where we have a real bad thing," Trump said Wednesday at a campaign rally in Arizona. "They have the ranked choice voting, where you go into I guess some kind of a test tube or something, and they pick whoever the hell they want. That's another disgrace."

As ever, it's not clear what Trump was talking about. And despite Republicans' complaints, ranked choice voting works quite well: According to the American Bar Association, recent research finds that it "is an improvement over plurality voting with clear benefits in terms of representation, campaign quality, mobilization, and turnout." It also "encourages greater consensus building as well as more civil political campaigns," and voters find it easy to understand.

In the event that a political party finds itself, for example, with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot, ranked choice voting is a perfect solution. If only the party weren't so hostile to it.

The post What Happens When 2 Dan Sullivans Run for the Same Senate Seat? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

President Donald Trump promised that his tariffs would usher in a "golden age" by prioritizing the interests of American workers.

Those workers, however, are now turning against Trump's tariffs.

Support for the Trump administration's tariff policies has fallen by 25 percentage points among blue-collar workers over the past year, according to new polling data from Echelon Insights and the Economic Innovation Group (EIG).

A poll conducted by the two groups in August 2025 found that blue-collar workers supported the tariffs by a narrow margin. Now, that same segment of the population has turned decisively against Trump's tariffs: 58 percent oppose them, compared to just 36 percent who support them.

Overall, support for the tariffs has declined from about 43 percent last year to only 34 percent. Opposition to the tariffs has grown from 50 percent to 59 percent. Elsewhere in the same survey, 68 percent of respondents said the tariffs have made the cost of living higher.

It's not hard to figure out why people have turned against the tariffs: They have contributed to rising prices across the economy.

The annualized inflation rate ticked upward to 3.7 percent in September, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). More BLS data released Thursday morning shows that the producer price index, which often operates as a precursor to inflation, is up 6.3 percent over the past year.

America's war with Iran has been a major factor in rising inflation, but the tariffs have played a significant role as well. In a study released last week, the New York Federal Reserve concluded that consumer prices would have declined slightly over the past year if not for the economic effects of the tariffs.

The tariffs have become so unpopular that not even partisanship can save them. "Among GOP-voting workers, only 3 percent select tariffs as their top priority," note Jordan McGillis and John Lettieri, policy experts from the EIG, in their write-up of the poll.

Other parts of Trump's economic agenda are not faring much better. The Trump administration has bought or seized shares of more than 30 private businesses over the past two years—ranging from major firms such as U.S. Steel to small mining companies with few customers. "The federal government's state corporatism is unprecedented," reports the Cato Institute in a new analysis of those deals.

Large majorities of workers across both major parties and all generations said they opposed the federal government taking equity stakes in American companies in the Echelon/EIG poll.

In short: This economic populism sure isn't very popular.

All of this is likely to be a major factor in next month's midterm elections. Regardless of how that shakes out, however, there are lessons to be drawn from this poll for both sides of the political divide.

For conservatives, these polling data should end the tariff experiment. It has proven economically damaging, and it is no longer a political winner (if it ever was).

Remember, the idea to hike tariffs and start trade wars with all of America's biggest trading partners was not some grand plan backed by careful study and thoughtful analysis. It sprung, half-baked, from the head of one man. Yes, there have been various attempts to support, in a post hoc way, Trump's desire for tariffs. All of that can, and should, be easily discarded. There is no reason to allow a lame duck president to continue to set such a politically and economically destructive path for the country.

Undoing the tariffs might also put a meaningful dent in rising prices. That should be a no-brainer after the midterms, no matter which party controls Congress.

On the left, this poll should be a reminder that Americans do not look favorably on the mixing of government and business. Democrats should promise to unwind the "equity stakes" that the federal government has taken under Trump's watch. Heading toward the 2028 presidential cycle, Democrats might want to borrow some old Republican talking points about how government shouldn't be picking winners and losers—they may find that message is still quite popular.

Yes, it's probably right to be skeptical that those things will happen. Trump's efforts to centralize economic power in the executive branch are likely to outlive his presidency—that's how these things always seem to go.

But there is a glimmer of hope here. Americans are soundly rejecting the Trump administration's big government policies.

The post Even Blue-Collar Workers Have Turned Against Trump's Unpopular Tariffs appeared first on Reason Magazine.

No longer so red: Long a swing state, Ohio went for President Donald Trump back in 2016, in 2020, and in 2024. Now, with midterms approaching, it looks likely to vote blue again, and there are early indicators that Republicans have failed to win over Ohio's working-class voters in particular.

"After the first days of early voting in Ohio, a state that could help determine control of the Senate, there are clear signs Democrats are more enthusiastic to vote," reports CNN. "So far, affiliated Democrats make up larger shares of pre-election voters than they did two years ago, even in the most Republican parts of the state. At this point in 2024, Republicans had a 30-percentage point lead over Democrats in counties that voted for President Donald Trump by 20 points or more, according to data from the Ohio Secretary of State. This year, that's shrunk to just five points."

Take this data with a grain of salt: It is just early-voter data.

But this is all rather high-stakes because Republicans are defending a Senate seat, as well as the governor's office. Two races for House seats are considered toss-ups. The conventional wisdom has been that Ohio is now solidly red, with three cycles of presidential election data to support that. But it's possible Trump has pissed off the voters who supported him to such a degree that Ohio will be sent back into swing-state territory.

"God knows we didn't vote for this," one voter—a pastor who went for Trump, then Biden, then Trump—told Reuters, referring to inflation. Other voters wonder about the decline in manufacturing jobs and the fact that the president has paid lip service to these problems but done very little to actually improve people's circumstances.

On Monday, Trump rallied in support of Sen. Jon Husted, who hopes to retain his seat. In the Mahoning Valley, the president announced a few new, uh, incentives to voters: a Defense Department facility based in Cleveland, and promises that a heat provider for Youngstown remained open. "The Youngstown area for decades used to vote Democrat, and then you ran for office in 2016 and flipped it red forever," said Husted in his speech. "Is that right, folks?"

OpenAI arrest: The FBI arrested a Saudi national who worked at OpenAI "and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording ‌device in an executive conference room," per the Department of Justice. Abdulrahman Alfozan had worked as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, in the San Francisco office. The company found the recording device "plugged into a USB port on the ⁠back of a television in an executive conference room," per Reuters. The device had a microphone and allegedly connected to a camera; the data it stored was encrypted.

"At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating ​model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated," said OpenAI. It's not clear who Alfozan may have been working for or with; he has been a permanent resident of the U.S. since 2020, with stints at Meta and Microsoft.

"If convicted, Alfozan faces up to ⁠five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release," notes Reuters.

Scenes from New York: Mayor Zohran Mamdani has reportedly reached a deal with the City Council to ban horse carriages in the city, per Politico. I'll admit, I don't really care, but I'm intrigued by the fact that the reason this has taken so long to get through has been because the union representing the carriage-drivers has been so successful at advocating for its members' interests.

QUICK HITS

• Pope Leo XIV was diagnosed with lung cancer, said the Vatican yesterday. He underwent a successful surgery, and there's no additional information about prognosis at this time.
• Daniel Cox's new book, Generation Uncoupled, makes the case "that problems with dating and romantic partnership are downstream from the decades-long deterioration of American social and civic life." Cox tells Derek Thompson (in a wonderful interview worth checking out): "There's a cultural dimension to all of this, as well. It's not entirely that young people have fewer social opportunities, but that they are encouraged to prioritize their own personal experiences and expression. On social media, self-optimization culture teaches young people that the most coveted rewards in life are secured through individual effort and ambition alone. There is a fear that our relational obligations can work against these goals by restricting our autonomy. It explains why more young people worry about what marriage and parenthood will require of them, rather than the benefits they offer. Not surprisingly, rates of family estrangement are at record highs, prenuptial agreements are more popular than ever, and most young people now feel that obtaining a divorce should be made easier." This obsession with self-actualization, or controlling one's circumstances, as well as risk-aversion, is something I'll be covering a bit in my book, City Without Children. This culture is shaping not only our decision to (not) couple up and get married, but also our decision to delay having kids, and how we parent them once they're here.
• "The bond-market turbulence last month seeped into results as the banks each posted weaker-than-expected revenue from their businesses trading bonds on behalf of clients, and dealmaking slowed more than they had anticipated," reports The Wall Street Journal. "In a somewhat rare occurrence, JPMorgan missed analysts' expectations."
• "The White House has asked Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, to resign, new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia told reporters on Tuesday, a day after President Donald Trump said he was considering firing her after allegations she asked a political donor for $100,000 to pay her personal American Express bill," reports The Washington Post.
• The FIRE ("financial independence, retire early") people are now saying the quiet part out loud: that living on canned lentils well into your 40s is practically the same as being imprisoned.

This is the greatest post in the history of FIRE Reddit. Perfection. pic.twitter.com/dh1tesicfi

— Conservative Dividend Investing (@CDInewsletter) October 13, 2026

• Not wrong:

"Blessed" is a useful religious concept that has no adequate secular equivalent

"I was lucky" almost wholly fails to convey the weight and sentiment of providence that comes when things go better than you had any right to hope

— Jack (@tracewoodgrains) October 13, 2026

The post Ohio's Democrat Momentum appeared first on Reason Magazine.