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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
The post Hundreds of thousands of Black men are sitting out elections in Ohio. Almost no one is asking them why. appeared first on MS NOW.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The post Before you share that midterm poll, read this appeared first on MS NOW.
A24
Elizabeth Holmes famously does not blink, whether she's pitching investors or, by her own admission, flirting with a guy.
Is her moony gaze haunting or hypnotic? A calculated act or proof of her naivete? At various points in A24's new documentary, "You Can See Everything," I vacillated between each of the above.
A good portion of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's movie could be classified as a provocative staring contest, as Fielder probes Holmes about her life and the demise of her company, Theranos, in the weeks before she reported to prison to serve an 11-year sentence in May 2023.
The answers he gets from Holmes are rarely satisfactory. (At one point, she insists she's never told a lie in her entire adult life; despite being convicted of fraud, she maintains her innocence throughout the film.) But with the camera zoomed in tight on Holmes' every micro-expression and clump of mascara, the movie's power is in the questions it raises in the space between her words.
In these profoundly uncanny scenes, I found myself fluctuating between being freaked out by the lack of emotion in Holmes' vacuous gaze and, to my surprise, pitying her. Then I'd quickly shift back to being freaked out, because what if pity was exactly the reaction that Holmes — a talented, convicted fraudster — was angling for? If she could manipulate her voice to sound more authoritative in the workplace, she could certainly adapt her face to appear more sympathetic onscreen.
It turns out that just because you can see everything, that doesn't mean you know anything. At least not for sure.
A24
Much like its subject, "You Can See Everything" is a slippery mind-trick of a film — part character study, part psychological thriller, part surrealist thought experiment. What it is not, despite its subject, is a movie about a tech company.
The story of how Holmes went from being named the youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes to being convicted of defrauding investors as the founder and CEO of the blood-testing startup Theranos is well documented. Holmes has already been the subject of a more traditional documentary, Alex Gibney's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley," which exhaustively maps the discrepancies within Theranos, and a scripted Hulu miniseries, "The Dropout," which dramatizes Holmes' origin story and attempts to illustrate how her ambitions outpaced her abilities.
Both of those works lean into the prevailing narrative about Holmes, who was often pitched as "the next Steve Jobs" and proved especially skilled at wooing powerful men to her cause.
"You want it to be true so badly," Tyler Shultz, a former Theranos employee-turned-whistleblower, says of Holmes' vision in Gibney's doc. "I was working with these devices every single day, and she could still kind of convince me. When I think back on those conversations, I just think, 'How did she do that?'"
A24
The Holmes we see in "You Can See Everything" is tamer, gentler, and, at times, far more submissive than many headlines would have us believe. Yet even Fielder isn't immune to her strange charisma.
Early in the film, Fielder admits to Holmes that he did a lot of research about her tenure at Theranos. He challenges her answers to questions, at one point telling Holmes, "I don't think anyone will ever believe you ever again."
Yet, as time goes on, Fielder seems alternately bemused and unnerved by the onetime wunderkind — though never to the point of aversion. On the contrary, Holmes seems to draw Fielder ever closer, like a close-up magician with a deck of cards in her hands and a trick up her sleeve.
Toward the end of the film, Fielder's memory is called into question. A friend asks if Fielder is retroactively polishing his interactions with Holmes, perhaps unconsciously, because he's grown to care about her. Maybe he wants to protect her.
Seemingly taken aback, Fielder replies, "I'm not putting my feelings into this. I'm just trying to be accurate."
It's one thing to be told someone is a master manipulator, as "The Inventor" and "The Dropout" plainly do. It's quite another to experience the manipulation firsthand. "You Can See Everything" offers audiences the latter.
During a Q&A after an early screening of "You Can See Everything" in New York, Oppenheim described how he, Fielder, and the crew would swap interpretations of what they'd just seen and heard after the cameras were switched off. "The disagreements were so dynamic," Oppenheim recalled.
It's been over three years since their close encounter of the Holmesian kind, and Fielder said he's still trying to process what he felt in her presence.
"I'm really curious to hear what everyone else thinks, and what they make of certain things," Fielder said. "I think it will actually help me understand."
"You Can See Everything" is in theaters now.
In Pakistan’s rapidly growing urban centres, daily life is accelerating. As cities expand, demanding work schedules and household management have made time one of our most precious commodities. Yet, while traditional conversations around food often focus on heritage recipes or shifting culinary trends, a quieter, structural revolution is unfolding. This transformation centres on reliable, daily access to fresh food and essential groceries – a fundamental human necessity.
For millions of households, putting nutritious meals and essential groceries on the kitchen table every day is a daily logistical challenge. In this evolving landscape, digital delivery platforms have moved beyond convenience and become essential infrastructure for modern urban living. The true breakthrough in Pakistan’s delivery landscape is the innovation that’s driving convenience and accessibility. Historically, securing fresh produce or a warm meal meant navigating dense traffic, dealing with localised supply shortages, or settling for whatever was available at the nearest market.
Today, data-driven quick-commerce models have fundamentally altered how Pakistanis access food. Through foodpanda’s hyper-local dark store network, pandamart, and intelligent routing algorithms, technology is shrinking the distance between supply and demand. By optimising rider routes and establishing localised fulfilment hubs, tech platforms drastically cut the time, cost, and friction of moving essentials from source to customers’ doorstep. Whether it is an early-morning delivery of fresh milk and eggs or an affordable dinner after a long workday, digital micrologistics have made food access consistent, predictable, and inclusive.
This structural shift speaks directly to World Food Day’s core message and its global guiding theme, “Innovate today, nourish tomorrow.” True innovation in modern food systems extends far beyond agricultural yields; it requires building smarter, resilient supply chains that eliminate waste, reduce friction, and bridge distribution gaps.
By digitising neighbourhood kiryana stores, empowering home-based food entrepreneurs through initiatives like HomeChefs, helping established (as well as new) restaurants expand their offerings to wider customer cohorts and optimising rapid last-mile delivery, foodpanda is helping construct an agile, modern food and grocery network across Pakistan. In a developing economy, this technological resilience cushions local food systems against urban sprawl, rising fuel costs, and supply chain bottlenecks. At its core, technology fulfils its highest purpose when it directly serves human needs.
In Pakistan’s evolving gig ecosystem, foodpanda anchors its platform around a central mission: to put a meal on every table. This motto reflects an operational commitment to give every consumer seamless, affordable access to fresh groceries and quality food with just a few taps on a smartphone screen. It means equipping micro-entrepreneurs and local merchants with digital tools to expand their reach and protect their livelihoods. It also means building a connected ecosystem where farmers, local sellers, delivery riders, and families thrive together.
As Pakistan accelerates its transition toward a fully digitised economy, online platforms play a role that extends well beyond delivering food. By turning technological innovation into reliable, daily nourishment, foodpanda is laying the foundation for a more connected, efficient, and inclusive food future for all Pakistanis – one delivery and one meal at a time.
The post How digital delivery is innovating Pakistan’s food ecosystem appeared first on Daily Pakistan English News.
For the third installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” we went to West Des Moines to hear from two groups of reluctant Trump voters — one group from the city’s suburbs and another from small towns and rural areas. Most have split their tickets in past elections.
Of the three states we’ve visited so far, Iowa offers Democrats the clearest and most hopeful picture. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ standing as a long-tenured institution may help her withstand Democratic momentum. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s struggles with some of his party’s traditional constituencies have kept the race tight.
But in Iowa, Democrats have taken the national distrust of Trump’s self-dealing and pointed it at Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, raising questions about how her wealth has grown since she entered Congress. The resulting cynicism may give Democrat Josh Turek enough of an edge to win: enough crossover votes and enough depressed Republican turnout.
Low marks for Trump
National polls show President Donald Trump at the lowest approval of his second term, and the Iowans we met were no more generous. All of them said they were unenthusiastic about voting for him in 2024. Asked to rate his second term on a scale of one to 10, none went higher than a six, most gave him a four or a five, and the lowest assessment was a two.
“Five is almost too generous,” said Diane, an independent. “He has a lot of room for improvement.”
One participant called him “unhinged.” Another described his second term as “a personal session, like his playground.”
For these voters, the clearest evidence of broken promises is the cost of living. Consumer prices are up 3.7% over the past year.
“Our prices were going to come down. Cost of living was going to get easier,” said Janella, a Republican. “Still haven’t seen it.”
Then there’s Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. In national polling, only roughly 34% of Americans say Trump’s decision to go to war was the right one. He promised no new wars, and when he took office in January 2025, the United States wasn’t at war. Now, voters see not only continuing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, but a new war with Iran that Trump launched.
“It seems like we’re in more wars than ever before,” said Tim, an independent.
Jack, another independent, tied the broken promise to avoid war to rising costs.
“I think we’re paying for that at the gas pump, grocery store, etc.,” he said. Gas prices have jumped 34% over the past year, and groceries prices are up around 2.5%.
They’d do it again
These voters went into Trump’s second term with their eyes open. Some dreaded a return to the drama of his first term and voted for him anyway.
“Do I really want to deal with all the drama that comes with him?” said Kristi, an independent, recalling her decision in 2024. “But then, what was my other choice?”
“He’s gotten worse,” Janella said, describing a president who has dropped any pretense of working with his own party, let alone with Democrats.
Yet for all their misgivings, when asked whether they would change their 2024 votes, all but one agreed they would vote for him again over Kamala Harris.
“There were no other options,” said Dirk, a right-leaning independent, raising his hand.
It’s this sentiment — that they would choose Trump again — that helps explain why Trump’s sagging approval hasn’t translated into decisive Democratic leads in some battleground states.
Two years later, what drives these voters as they weigh their Senate and House options is less Trump himself than a broader distrust of politics.
Kate, an independent, offered the most charitable view of Trump’s presidency.
“At least he is trying,” she said. “At least he is pushing a button somewhere.”
In theory, that’s a low bar for the opposition to clear. But these voters don’t see a compelling alternative from Democrats, or any vision that convinces them the party would do better.
No home with Democrats?
“Right now, we’re stuck with a Republican Party that will do nothing to offend Trump, and a Democratic Party that will do nothing except try to go after Trump, any way, shape, or form,” Dirk said. “So in the end, we all get screwed.”
The Iowans echoed what we heard from similar voters in Maine and Michigan: Democrats seem unmoored, fixated on Trump and short on concrete policy. Most alienating of all is their sense that Democrats look down on them for voting for Trump.
“I feel like they all think that we’re like racist,” Chandler said. “It’s like they always think that we’re all against everything. It’s just their agenda that they try to push on us.”
Some said those assumptions about their motives ignore the real circumstances and needs that shaped their votes.
“Personally, my vote was motivated by potential changes that Trump could make to the economy,” Anne said.
Democrats, Janella argued, were not paying attention to their lived reality.
“They need to stop all the fighting and bickering amongst themselves, and really genuinely take a good look at what the American people are dealing with,” Janella said. “This is our livelihood we’re talking about, and every single politician has forgotten about that.”
Will they skip the Senate race?
Disenchanted with Republicans and unconvinced by Democrats, some of the Iowans we met are weighing not who to support in the Senate race, but whether to vote in it at all.
The two groups split sharply. Of the 10 rural and small-town voters, six are leaning toward Hinson and four are considering Turek. None of the 10 suburban voters is considering Hinson; seven said they would leave the Senate race blank, and the other three are considering Turek.
Focus groups aren’t polls, and 20 voters can’t predict a statewide race. But if the 2024 electorate turns out again and that pattern holds in suburbs and small towns across Iowa, Turek could be well positioned to win. He wouldn’t need to convert Trump voters wholesale, just persuade some to cross over and many others to skip the race.
For Hinson, the danger isn’t that these voters have embraced Democrats. It’s that they’ve given up.
“You just lose all faith in everybody eventually because nothing gets done, and you lose trust and become cynical,” Jack said.
The post Iowa’s independent Trump voters are mad as hell — but still probably won’t vote Democratic appeared first on MS NOW.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 14 episode of “The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi.”
There is a famous saying attributed to Plato about the price society pays for treating politics with indifference: “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
Here we are — way past the “being governed by our inferiors” stage of things. We are being governed by a would-be autocrat, his ruthless Cabinet of sycophants and a cabal of oligarchs. Donald Trump has sent masked ICE forces into American neighborhoods, where they snatch our neighbors off the streets and fire at protesters and into vehicles. He’s targeting his most vocal critics for investigation, indictment, arrest and harassment.
But Trump and his accomplices aren’t stronger than you are, and participating now means more than simply voting — it means resisting.
On Tuesday, a judge indefinitely blocked the president’s press ban. For the last month, Trump has tried to block three news networks — MS NOW, CNN and Politico — from the White House simply because he does not like the stories they publish. Expectedly, a White House spokesperson has already said they will appeal the judge’s ruling.
Trump is following an established roadmap: an allegedly anti-establishment outsider takes advantage of a right-wing populist movement and is elected president in 2016. Yes, that’s how Trump came to power, but it’s also how Rodrigo Duterte was elected in the Philippines.
Duterte was a brutal leader who presided over what he called a “war on drugs.” But in reality, it was a justification for government-linked vigilantes to openly carry out savage murders in the streets of the Philippines. Those murders became known as “extrajudicial killings.” And to this day, nobody knows exactly how many “extrajudicial killings” took place under his leadership. Some estimate the death toll to be as high as 30,000.
Regardless, Filipino journalists with spines of steel pursued the story relentlessly, and the Duterte administration punished them for it. Many reporters and outlets were targeted, but few felt Duterte’s wrath worse than Maria Ressa, the founder of the digital news site Rappler.
Rappler was a fearless critic of the government. Its journalists wrote many stories laying out the truth about Duterte’s so-called war on drugs and the widespread corruption that happened during his administration.
In response, the government retaliated against Rappler — many times. In 2018, one of its reporters was once barred, without warning, from entering the grounds of the presidential palace, the Philippines’ equivalent to the White House.
During a nationally televised State of the Nation address in 2017, Duterte accused Rappler of being foreign-owned. In a follow-up statement, he added, “Not only is Rappler’s news fake, it being Filipino is also fake.”
A government task force accused it of being associated with communists as part of an effort to shut it down, and the outlet even had its license revoked at one point.
Ressa herself was targeted. In November 2018, she was charged with a series of tax-related crimes, including tax evasion. A few months later, she was arrested and charged under an anti-cybercrimes law that the Duterte administration widely used to go after journalists and other critics. A court found her guilty, but the case remains under appeal.
Despite all of those attacks, Ressa showed the world how to stand up to a dictator. She endured years of being treated as a criminal and never wavered from defending her rights and those of the free press.
All of the tax-related charges against her have since been dropped. Rappler’s license was also restored by the court, and it remains a top news site in the country.
In 2021, Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Meanwhile, Duterte is awaiting trial at The Hague after he was arrested and charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity last year.
In Ressa’s new book, “The Fight Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Standing Up to Dictators,” she offers Americans a blueprint for confronting an autocratic leader — and defending democracy before it’s too late.
“Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the decision that something matters more,” she wrote. “It’s the first step in the fight back.”
Allison Detzel contributed.
The post Journalists who stood up to an autocrat have a blueprint for fighting Trump appeared first on MS NOW.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 14 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
On Wednesday, Donald Trump delivered his most unhinged performance at a political rally that I have seen to date. I understand how easy it is to dismiss whatever nonsense falls out of the president’s mouth on a given day — after all, the nonsense is part of the strategy; he wants to distract us with it — but his speech in Bullhead City, Arizona, should not be ignored.
At nearly every one of his rallies this election season, Trump has told voters to pretend he’s on the ballot this November. And so, less than 20 days out from this hugely consequential election, I happen to think that every single Republican in every single race in the country should have to answer for the things he says. Every single Republican candidate for office who is telling voters they support this guy should have to explain to those voters where they stand on this madness.
Trump is unraveling at a pace we haven’t really seen before and he is making less and less sense.
That includes his comments from Wednesday’s rally about government workers who speak to the press. In an apparent reference to the first strikes Trump ordered on Iran in the summer of 2025 and the subsequent reporting that came out of the Pentagon, the president told the crowd that “leakers” are the “scum of the earth,” adding, “They ought to go to jail and be shot for the rest of their life.”
The question every Republican candidate should have to answer between now and November is: Do you agree with Trump that leakers should be shot? Do you agree with Trump that the U.S. government should shoot anyone who leaks information to the media? The leader of your party thinks leakers should be shot — do you agree? A simple yes or no answer would suffice.
Perhaps we might get a clearer answer on something a little less violent. During his rally on Wednesday, Trump also defended his decision to accept a jet as a gift from Qatar to use as the new Air Force One. “When you’re given gifts, you take ’em, right?” he said. “When they give you a 747, you say two words: ‘Thank you.’”
Again, any Republican candidate, if they support Trump, should be asked: Are you okay with the president of the United States accepting a $400 million gift from a foreign country that may want something in return? A gift that, I should add, reportedly raised several national security and counterintelligence concerns, is in open violation of the Constitution and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit, according to estimates.
Do you think that should be allowed? Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think the only acceptable answer to a gift like that from a foreign country is “thank you”? Are you worried about what Qatar or any other country may want in return?
Or at the bare minimum, do you think it is appropriate when so many Americans are struggling to put food on the table or to fill their gas tanks because everything is so expensive — thanks to Trump’s war with Iran — that the president is on stage in Arizona bragging about the cost of oil? Trump told the crowd the U.S. is “making more money than it’s ever made because of the fact that oil is so high.”
“Now, they’re going to say, ‘Isn’t it terrible? He talked about the fact that he doesn’t care about the little person,’” he continued. “I care about the little person like crazy. But the fact is, because of the price of oil, Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota and all these places, we’re making a fortune.”
Who, exactly, is making a fortune? Republican candidates should have to answer that question. And they should have to tell voters whether they think the high price of oil is a good thing, as Trump does.
Trump has said versions of all of this before. But what’s notable now is that he is unraveling at a pace we haven’t really seen before and he is making less and less sense.
For example, when, for some reason, he went on a bizarre tangent about the doctors he travels with. He told the crowd that doctors on the White House medical unit would refuse to treat sick rallygoers, considering them “collateral damage.” He also called himself a “freaking genius” for being able to complete a basic cognitive test.
President Trump on three cognitive tests he took: "I'm a freakin' genius" pic.twitter.com/oQPXTh4TAy
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 14, 2026
Trump-supporting Republicans, do you think Trump is a genius? Do you think the person who took that stage on Wednesday in Arizona is fit for office? Are you comfortable with him having control of the nuclear codes?
We know what they’ll say. But they should still be asked.
Allison Detzel contributed.
The post Trump’s unraveling should put every Republican candidate on the spot appeared first on MS NOW.
“Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
— Jeremiah 6:16
What is happiness, and how can we get some?
Twenty years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to ancient wisdom and modern science for answers in his bestselling book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” Now, in a newly updated anniversary edition, he revisits that timeless question in a world transformed by smartphones, social media, and AI.
Haidt joined “Morning Joe” today to explore the sources of happiness, why children need room to struggle and fail, and how technology is crowding out the experiences that make us human.
JS: This book came out in 2006, before the smartphone era. What struck you most when you revisited it 20 years later?
JH: Two things. First, the ancient wisdom that has been passed down for literally 100 generations has held up remarkably well. And second, a year after the book came out, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and said, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” We had no idea how profoundly smartphones would reshape our relationships and even the nature of our consciousness.
WG: So what is the happiness hypothesis? What actually makes us happy?
JH: Almost every ancient tradition says happiness comes from within. But when you combine wisdom from the East and West with modern psychology, the best way to understand it is that happiness comes from between: We need to be embedded in relationships, in productive work that matters, and in something larger than ourselves.
JS: So many of the 10 great ideas in your book parallel biblical teachings: Paul writing about doing the very thing he doesn’t want to do, Jesus saying, “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Why do we keep falling short?
JH: The ancients were incredibly insightful about consciousness, the tricks our minds play, the quickness to judge, human relationships, adversity, and suffering. My early work on moral judgment was all about how our inner lawyer is always building the case against others and the defense case for ourselves. We are evolved, engineered to be hypocrites.
Mike Barnicle: One casualty of smartphones that we rarely discuss is eye contact. What happens when we lose that human connection?
JH: The guys who created all this technology are generally not known for being very good at social relationships. They don’t understand that just interacting isn’t the same as making eye contact with another human being. And especially our boys: Because they spend so much time on video games and porn, and now gambling, they’re losing social skills.
JS: Young parents especially need to hear this: Hovering isn’t doing your children any favors. Why does backing off matter so much?
JH: One of my mother’s parenting dictums — which she learned from a therapist long ago in the ’60s — was “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Don’t rush in to help, because it’s the struggle that causes the growth. Your child’s emerging social sense needs conflicts, exclusion, and setbacks, within limits. This is why we have childhood, to have those experiences.
WG: How do we reverse the damage from smartphones and technology and reclaim our attention?
JH: It starts with a recognition that we are Team Humanity. We often think if an alien invasion comes, maybe we’ll recognize we’re all in this together. Well, guess what? The alien invasion is here: AI is, in a sense, an alien entity. We’ve got to reclaim our attention first. That’s the prerequisite to everything else.
JS: When the next president takes on education reform, what part should screens play in classrooms?
JH: They were pushed in without any research to show benefits, and there still isn’t any. They’re so damn distracting that they seem to be causing the decline in test scores and reading. The tech barons themselves tend to choose schools that have no technology. So, for the most part, rip it all out of elementary and middle schools until it is proven to be useful.
JS: Many kids today can’t write a sentence or get through a book. What’s at stake?
JH: This technology is hurting their education in exactly the ways you describe. Basic skills matter, and books most of all. Once you give a child a smartphone, they crave the quick dopamine, and it becomes very difficult to read a book. If we lose books, if we lose the accumulated wisdom of humanity because all the next generation can do is consume little snippets on TikTok, then we’re done as a civilization.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.
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Willie Geist on Trump’s one-man show
“This is how Donald Trump views the presidency: You just do what you want. Congress is irrelevant. You don’t have to go to them for tariffs — or to start a war. Inside his own West Wing, Trump’s saying he didn’t really need to talk to his chief of staff or the FBI. It all comes from him and only him.”
David Drucker on the Trump Cabinet
“In the first term, there’s a learning curve for the president and everybody who works for him. Now, in the second term, everybody knows what they’re doing, but there’s a level of exhaustion, and the talent isn’t as good. Over the last few months, things have begun to unravel, with everybody looking over their shoulder and the president in a bubble of his own making. This is all going to show itself after the election — when everybody will have to deal with the fallout.”
Elise Jordan on James Talarico
“Talarico comes across as humble and willing to admit his missteps. He is not angry, and that’s such a big part of what voters are responding to. When someone shows a modicum of ‘Hey, I’m willing to work with the other side, and I’m not a crazy extremist,’ that goes a long way winning these crossover voters.”
The post “Don’t just do something. Stand there”: Jonathan Haidt and Joe Scarborough on raising children in the age of AI appeared first on MS NOW.
Federal contracts are supposed to be competitive. When agencies invite companies to bid, they can compare prices and qualifications — and the public can see who gets the work.
There’s an exception for unusual and compelling urgency. If waiting would seriously harm the government, an agency can limit competition to a few potential contractors, or sometimes just one, but that’s meant for problems that can’t wait.
At the Department of Homeland Security, that exception has become a much bigger part of the way business gets done. In 2024, it covered less than 1% of the department’s contract spending. Through August of this year, it has covered nearly two-thirds, according to a New York Times analysis.
In the first half of fiscal 2026, DHS accounted for 92% of the $18.4 billion federal agencies obligated under the emergency exception, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Some of the contracts went to companies with little or no federal contracting experience: a startup was paid up to $915 million to help run the administration’s “self-deportation” effort, another was paid $464 million for a fleet of used planes and a newly formed company was hired to make ads starring then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The question is how those deals could be awarded with so little competition.
The question is how those deals could be awarded with so little competition and what Congress can do to make sure “emergency” means something again.
Several of those companies were new to federal work. Salus Worldwide Solutions, founded in 2023, had never held a federal contract before winning a $915 million deal to help run the administration’s “self-deportation” campaign. Lawmakers are investigating allegations that Corey Lewandowski, then a top adviser to Noem, asked contractors — including Salus — for payments. Salus and Lewandowski have denied any wrongdoing.
Salus’ founder, William Walters, also runs Daedalus Aviation. That company, which also had no federal contracting history, received $464 million to buy 10 used planes for DHS, including three luxury jets. Walters had donated $10,000 to a political group supporting Noem. Most of the planes have since sat parked, the Times reported.
The pattern extends beyond those two companies. Safe America Media was created just days before it won part of a $200 million DHS deal to produce ads featuring Noem. The agency said that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border constituted “an unusual and compelling urgency” to bypass the usual bidding process.
Other agencies have used different routes to award contracts without competition. At the Department of Health and Human Services, a deal to provide lawyers for migrant children went to Our Rescue, a group founded by Tim Ballard, whose story inspired the controversial movie “Sound of Freedom.” Reporters have not found any prior experience at Our Rescue providing legal representation to migrant children on this scale. At the Pentagon, a memo directed officials to spend up to $244 million on Palantir, with few details about why the company was selected. Trump’s ballroom, with a contract worth up to $500 million, is being built under a separate arrangement.
These exceptions and loopholes leave little room for outside scrutiny. Agencies can declare an emergency themselves, keep the justification secret and face limited chances of a legal challenge. DHS, for example, declined to explain why it needed the planes, citing national security. When a competitor challenged the Salus award, a judge ruled it had no right to sue. The ballroom took a different route: the office overseeing the White House mansion is not required to seek competing bids, though a White House official said it “consistently executes contracts following the law.”
Officials argued that urgent deportation goals justified bypassing the normal process.
The administration has said speed is the point. DHS officials have argued that urgent deportation goals justified bypassing the normal process, and the department has credited its ad campaign with persuading millions of people to leave the country. But the emergency exception was designed for situations where waiting could cause serious harm — not as a shortcut around scrutiny whenever an agency has an ambitious goal.
Congress has several ways to tighten the rules. It could require an agency inspector general to approve large emergency contracts before the money is spent, instead of reviewing them after the fact. It could also require agencies to seek fresh approval when a contract’s price rises sharply, a problem government auditors flagged at DHS years ago.
To make the process visible, lawmakers could require agencies to publish their explanations within days. If a justification includes classified information, the agency could send it privately to congressional committees rather than withholding it from everyone.
Congress could also require an automatic review when a contract goes to a company formed shortly before it won the work. And it could give watchdog groups a way to challenge questionable awards in court, since rival companies may not always have standing to sue. A separate change could close the White House construction loophole by requiring major projects there to follow the same competition rules as other federal work.
The obstacle is political. Even if Democrats win one or both chambers in November, Trump could veto a new law, and they are unlikely to have the votes to override him. But Congress must pass spending bills to keep the government open. Attaching procurement changes to those bills could give the reforms a better chance of becoming law.
There are Republicans who have raised concerns, too. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana pressed Noem over the advertising contracts shortly before Trump fired her in March. Still, questions about individual deals have not yet changed the system that lets agencies declare their own emergencies.
The emergency rule was built for things like a burst water main at a national park. Now it’s paying for luxury jets and a ballroom. Whether that changes depends on whether Congress decides an emergency should have to be proved, not just declared.
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has abandoned much of the diplomatic restraint that characterised his dealings with Donald Trump since their confrontation in the Oval Office in February 2025. In an interview on 14 October, the Ukrainian president accused his American counterpart of moving towards Russia and choosing the wrong side of history.
His intervention followed a series of American decisions that have increased pressure on Kyiv while offering Moscow economic and diplomatic advantages. A controversial agreement involving Russian diesel exports, uncertainty surrounding the provision of American intelligence and sudden restrictions on military satellite communications have brought relations between the two countries to their most difficult point since Trump’s return to the White House.
Zelenskyy’s criticism was unusually personal. Questioned about whether he felt betrayed by Washington’s recent decisions, he acknowledged the sense of betrayal but emphasised that Ukraine’s survival could not be treated as a commercial negotiation. He said Ukraine was not selling its country and argued that an American president claiming to act as an intermediary must not favour one of the belligerents.
The shift reflects the apparent exhaustion of a strategy Kyiv has pursued for more than a year: avoid openly challenging Trump, maintain personal contact with the White House and hope that American support can be preserved through diplomatic accommodation. That calculation is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as Washington’s demands threaten to constrain Ukraine’s military operations without producing corresponding concessions from Russia.
The immediate demonstration of Ukraine’s dependence on American technology came during the night of 13–14 October, when SpaceX imposed restrictions on Starshield, the military-grade version of its Starlink satellite communications service.
According to accounts provided by Ukrainian frontline commanders, the changes disrupted connections to terminals travelling above approximately 160 kilometres per hour, forcing the abandonment of several drone missions. The restrictions affected systems used for reconnaissance, interception and strikes against Russian military targets.
As EU Today reported on 14 October, the disruption exposed a weakness extending beyond individual drone missions. Satellite communications form part of Ukraine’s operational infrastructure, supporting the movement of battlefield information, remote weapons control and communications across areas where conventional networks are vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare.
An interruption imposed remotely by a commercial provider can therefore affect military capabilities without any physical attack on Ukrainian equipment. Decisions taken outside Ukraine’s military command structure can alter the effectiveness of systems already deployed on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s Defence Ministry subsequently opened discussions with American officials, SpaceX and NATO partners while examining alternative communications arrangements.
Later on Wednesday, former Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced that Starlink functionality at speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour was being restored. Work was still required to remove the restrictions on Starshield altogether. The partial reversal offered immediate operational relief but did not resolve the underlying dependency.
There is no established evidence that the Trump administration ordered SpaceX to impose the restrictions. Nevertheless, their timing, amid mounting disagreements over Ukraine’s military operations, has reinforced Kyiv’s concerns about relying on communications infrastructure controlled by an American company.
The dispute over satellite access coincides with growing uncertainty about American intelligence cooperation.
Following Russian ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv on 12–13 October, Zelenskyy complained that Ukraine had received no advance warning from its international partners. The attacks damaged residential buildings and energy infrastructure, while Ukraine’s authorities raised concerns about the absence of advance intelligence.
Advance information about Russian missile launches is particularly important when ballistic weapons leave civilians only minutes to reach shelters. Intelligence cooperation also supports Ukrainian air-defence units in assessing threats and preparing interceptions.
Trump denied on 13 October that Washington had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha likewise confirmed that cooperation continued. The absence of warnings about particular attacks therefore cannot be equated with a complete suspension of American assistance.
Yet the consequences of unreliable warning arrangements remain serious. For Ukraine, the distinction between information withheld, delayed or simply unavailable offers little protection when Russian ballistic missiles reach civilian neighbourhoods without sufficient warning.
The wider concern is that intelligence provision could become another instrument of diplomatic pressure. Accounts of negotiations over Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries have raised the possibility that Washington might use such assistance as leverage. Reports of explicit threats have been disputed, but the controversy has increased uncertainty surrounding a capability central to Ukraine’s defence.
The confrontation has also exposed a contradiction in Washington’s approach to the war.
Trump’s agreement allowing Russian diesel to return to international markets offers Moscow additional export opportunities at a time when Ukrainian attacks have damaged refining capacity and disrupted domestic fuel supplies.
The American administration has justified the arrangement partly through the need to ease fuel prices. Yet the initially announced quantities are modest in relation to international petroleum markets, raising questions about how much immediate relief the measure can realistically provide.
For Putin, its diplomatic significance may be considerably greater. Russia has secured a relaxation of American economic restrictions while Washington simultaneously presses Kyiv to limit attacks on the infrastructure that generates revenue for Moscow’s war economy.
The commercial implications of Washington’s sanctions reversal extend beyond the initial shipment volumes. The Treasury authorisation permits certain transactions involving Russian-origin diesel until April 2027, creating opportunities for international traders and financial intermediaries while leaving the broader sanctions framework formally intact.
Trump’s proposed energy ceasefire has compounded the difficulty. As EU Today examined earlier this week, Kyiv has offered to suspend strikes against Russian energy facilities if Moscow reciprocates. Russian attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure have nevertheless continued.
An arrangement in which Ukraine stops targeting Russian refineries while Russia retains the ability to strike Ukrainian electricity generation would remove an important source of pressure on Moscow without protecting Ukrainian civilians.
Such an outcome would change the military and economic conditions of the war in Russia’s favour, regardless of how Washington describes its diplomatic objectives.
Zelenskyy’s sharper language also reflects a possible reassessment of where influence over American policy can be exercised.
For much of Trump’s second presidency, Kyiv’s diplomacy has concentrated on preserving a workable relationship with the president himself. That approach assumes that personal engagement can influence White House decisions even when Trump’s broader political instincts favour accommodation with Putin.
The events of October suggest that this strategy has reached its limits.
Ukraine’s alternative is not necessarily an outright confrontation with Washington. Rather, it involves placing greater weight on Congress, the American defence establishment and the institutional relationships that have supported Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
There is a historical precedent. During Trump’s first presidency, Congress supported military assistance to Ukraine despite differences within the administration over relations with Russia. Under Joe Biden, congressional resistance also demonstrated how domestic American politics could determine the timing and scale of weapons deliveries.
The months-long delay in approving the 2024 military assistance package contributed to severe ammunition shortages at a critical stage of Russia’s offensive operations. Ukraine’s loss of Avdiivka illustrated the danger of making battlefield planning dependent on political negotiations in Washington.
The congressional elections on 3 November 2026 could alter the balance of power. A change in control of either chamber would increase opportunities for oversight, investigations and legislative pressure on the administration, although Congress cannot independently direct every aspect of intelligence sharing or presidential diplomacy.
A less compliant Congress could nevertheless make it politically harder for the White House to restrict Ukrainian assistance without explanation.
For European governments, the dispute carries implications extending well beyond the immediate confrontation between Trump and Zelenskyy.
The transatlantic security relationship has historically depended on the assumption that American military capabilities, intelligence networks and political commitments would remain available to European allies during a major security crisis.
That assumption is increasingly difficult to reconcile with an American administration prepared to link assistance to Ukraine with wider commercial negotiations and domestic political objectives.
The consequences are particularly acute in areas where European capabilities remain insufficient to replace American systems quickly, including satellite intelligence, strategic reconnaissance, missile defence and specialised communications.
Europe can expand weapons production, finance Ukrainian purchases and develop alternatives to American technology. Replacing the full range of capabilities provided by the United States, however, requires investment measured in years rather than months.
The problem will not necessarily disappear when Trump leaves office. His return to power demonstrated that the American foreign-policy consensus which supported European security for decades can be challenged through the electoral process.
Future American administrations may seek to restore traditional alliances, but European governments must now account for the possibility that another election could reverse those commitments.
For Zelenskyy, the immediate calculation is exceptionally difficult. Public criticism risks provoking further retaliation from a president whose administration still controls capabilities essential to Ukraine’s defence. Continued diplomatic restraint, however, has not prevented Washington from offering concessions to Russia or introducing uncertainty into Ukraine’s military planning.
His latest intervention suggests that Kyiv is no longer convinced that avoiding confrontation will preserve American support. The question is whether greater political scrutiny of Washington’s decisions can prevent a further erosion of assistance before Russia turns the resulting military advantages into territorial gains.
The European Commission is promising more support to Egypt, even as Egyptian warplanes reportedly bomb in Sudan and authorities carry out a campaign of violence against the refugees it hosts.
The civil war in Sudan includes reports of genocide, chemical-weapons use, mass rape, and starvation, forcing some 1.2 million Sudanese people into Egypt, which was described as a priority migration-busting partner by commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday (13 October), who also promised continuing support for Cairo.
In a letter sent to the 27 heads of state and government ahead of an EU summit on Thursday in Brussels, she spoke of “offering protection and durable solutions in … host countries”, as well as further aid for Sudanese people who had returned to parts of the country, now deemed relatively safe.
But her warm words stand in sharp contrast to internal EU documents on Sudan, released by the London-based group Statewatch earlier this month, and which speak of an Egyptian-led campaign of violence against the Sudanese it is tasked to help.
“The Egyptian authorities have continued arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation campaign against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, with a sharp escalation of forced deportations being observed since January 2026,” said the Irish EU presidency, in an internal document written in September.
Estimates suggest Egypt hosts over nine million migrants and refugees.
Some 80 percent are Sudanese, Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan nationals. Of those, just over 1 million are officially registered as refugees. Most come from Sudan.
And Egypt’s crackdown also comes amid a massive 74 percent funding cut for the UN’s refugee agency in the country, even as the EU’s financial support to Cairo increases, already totalling €5bn.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
The European Union has long presented itself as a global defender of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Yet its growing enthusiasm for closer relations with the Gulf monarchies raises an increasingly uncomfortable question: how much are those principles worth when substantial economic and strategic interests are at stake?
On October 16th, the European Parliament will host senior parliamentary representatives from the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
The conference, chaired by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, will address parliamentary cooperation, maritime security and the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
On paper, the initiative represents an entirely reasonable diplomatic exercise. Europe needs reliable energy supplies, secure international shipping routes and constructive relations with influential Middle Eastern governments.
But there is another side to this developing partnership, one that Brussels cannot simply dismiss as an inconvenient complication.
Several Gulf governments maintain political systems in which meaningful democratic opposition is severely restricted, freedom of expression is curtailed and individuals can face imprisonment for challenging those in power.
The question is not whether Europe should maintain diplomatic relations with such countries. It plainly must.
The question is whether those relations should be celebrated as strategic partnerships without demanding meaningful improvements in the treatment of their own citizens.
Saudi Arabia’s international image has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom has promoted ambitious economic reforms, tourism projects and international sporting events designed to present a modernising society. Yet this carefully cultivated image sits uneasily alongside its human rights record.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly documented concerns over executions, restrictions on political dissent, arbitrary detention and the treatment of women’s rights activists.
The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018 remains an enduring symbol of the dangers faced by critics of the Saudi leadership. A 2021 US intelligence assessment concluded that the Crown Prince had approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, an assessment rejected by Saudi Arabia.
Qatar, meanwhile, has attracted sustained criticism over the treatment of migrant workers, particularly during preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Although labour reforms were introduced, human rights organisations continue to question their implementation and the effectiveness of protections against exploitation.
The UAE, despite its reputation for modernity and commercial sophistication, has similarly faced criticism over restrictions on political expression, detention of dissidents and the absence of meaningful electoral democracy at national level.
Bahrain has been criticised for imprisoning opposition figures and restricting political freedoms, while concerns about migrant labour protections and freedom of expression extend across other Gulf states, albeit with important differences in their individual records.
These are not minor administrative shortcomings. They concern fundamental rights that the European Union claims to regard as universal and non-negotiable.
There is an unmistakable contradiction in Europe’s approach. The European Parliament routinely condemns authoritarian practices in Russia, Belarus and other countries where political freedoms are suppressed. It demands accountability, democratic reform and respect for international law.
Yet when dealing with wealthy Gulf monarchies, the language often becomes considerably more accommodating. Economic opportunity, investment, energy security and regional stability suddenly dominate the conversation.
Such selective emphasis risks creating the impression that Europe’s commitment to human rights is determined less by universal principle than by the commercial and geopolitical importance of the country concerned.
That is a dangerous perception for an institution whose international credibility depends heavily upon its moral authority.
If the imprisonment of political opponents is unacceptable in Moscow or Minsk, why should comparable abuses become less objectionable when committed by governments possessing substantial sovereign wealth funds or strategically important energy reserves?
Europe cannot reasonably demand consistency from others while appearing unwilling to apply it to itself.
None of this diminishes the genuine importance of cooperation with the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are essential maritime corridors connecting Europe with global energy suppliers and Asian markets. Threats to commercial shipping, regional instability and the activities of Iran-aligned armed groups present legitimate security concerns.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also demonstrated the dangers of excessive dependence upon unreliable external partners. Diversifying energy relationships is therefore a sensible strategic objective.
Moreover, Gulf governments possess considerable diplomatic influence, including relationships with states and political actors that European governments may struggle to engage directly.
But strategic necessity does not automatically confer moral legitimacy.
Indeed, Europe’s previous dependence upon Russian energy offers a particularly sobering lesson. For years, European governments convinced themselves that extensive commercial engagement with Moscow would encourage moderation and political stability.
Instead, economic interdependence failed to prevent Russian aggression, leaving Europe exposed when that relationship collapsed. It would be reckless to assume that expanding commercial relations with authoritarian governments necessarily produces political liberalisation.
The proposed conference also raises questions about the meaning of parliamentary dialogue.
The European Parliament is a directly elected institution, accountable to hundreds of millions of citizens through competitive democratic elections.
The political institutions of the Gulf states operate under markedly different arrangements, with varying degrees of appointed representation, limited electoral participation and executive authority concentrated within ruling families.
Describing these relationships simply as parliamentary cooperation risks obscuring fundamental differences in democratic legitimacy.
Dialogue can undoubtedly serve a useful purpose. But it should not be allowed to imply an equivalence between representative democratic institutions and political structures in which citizens have far fewer opportunities to challenge those governing them.
Nor should participation in prestigious European institutional events become an exercise in international reputation management for governments facing serious human rights allegations.
The European Parliament has an opportunity to demonstrate that closer cooperation need not mean abandoning its principles.
It could insist that human rights form a substantive part of future engagement, including scrutiny of political imprisonment, freedom of expression, judicial independence and migrant worker protections.
It could also establish mechanisms for monitoring progress rather than relying upon diplomatic assurances.
Such measures would not necessarily undermine economic cooperation. They would establish that the relationship carries responsibilities as well as benefits.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether Europe should talk to the Gulf monarchies, but whether it possesses the political courage to challenge them.
A European Union that condemns authoritarianism in one part of the world while accommodating it elsewhere risks reducing its professed values to little more than diplomatic convenience.
Europe may need the Gulf’s energy, investment and strategic influence, but it should not have to surrender its conscience to obtain them.
And if Brussels cannot reconcile its commercial ambitions with its democratic principles, it must confront a deeply uncomfortable possibility: that Europe’s foreign policy is increasingly being guided not by the values it proclaims, but by the wealth and influence of those sitting across the negotiating table.
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