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.

As part of a tough re-election campaign in Maine, incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins has emphasized on countless occasions that she’s willing to defy President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders. But while there’s some truth to that, the senator’s critics have long emphasized the asterisk that comes with that record.

The New York Times took a closer look at her voting record, which shows that Collins has broken with her party more than any other Republican senator. That said, the same record “reveals that her defections … have rarely thwarted the president during his second term.”

In other words, the longtime GOP senator has demonstrated a willingness to break ranks, except when her vote might actually affect the outcome. Or, as the Times’ report put it, “one of the most dominant and long-running lines of attack against her” is that Collins “only defies the president when it doesn’t matter.”

On Thursday night, in her fourth and final debate against Democratic nominee Troy Jackson, the Maine Republican was presented with a clear opportunity to prove her critics wrong. It did not go well.

YIKES#mesen #mepolitics

— danny (@dabbs346.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T23:18:56.838Z

A moderator asked Collins, “Can you name a time when you voted against your party and President Trump where it actually changed the outcome significantly?”

The senator began by saying there were “several examples,” though she specifically pointed to one: Early last year, Collins said, she helped organize an effort to defeat Pete Hegseth’s defense secretary nomination, though her effort ultimately didn’t work and the unqualified former Fox News host was confirmed.

“So that didn’t change the outcome,” the moderator replied.

Remember, Collins has faced one specific criticism throughout her re-election bid, and it was highlighted by The New York Times in a front-page article published this week. The senator and her team had plenty of time to come up with examples (any example!) to prove her critics wrong.

But she couldn’t. Then, presented with the opportunity and platform, Collins flubbed it, effectively proving the underlying point.

Whether Jackson and his party turn the debate exchange into a new campaign ad remains to be seen.

The post Pressed on her work with Trump, Maine’s Collins trips over key part of her record appeared first on MS NOW.

During a town hall event on CNN this week, Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico voiced a sentiment that was well received by attendees: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.”

The message has become increasingly common as the midterm election cycle has unfolded. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in particular, has built much of his 2026 candidacy on the proposition that corruption isn’t only a major national issue, it’s also the principal cause for the problems plaguing regular Americans in their everyday lives. “You aren’t the problem. Neither are your fellow Americans,” Ossoff routinely tells Georgians. “Corruption is why things don’t work for ordinary people.”

There’s fresh evidence that the argument is resonating with the public.

A Gallup poll released last month found that 89% of American adults believe that government corruption in the United States is widespread — up 10 points from a year ago, and 30 points from a Gallup survey conducted in 2006. Earlier this week, The Associated Press released the results of its latest national poll, which similarly found that most Americans believe that Donald Trump “is profiting off the presidency in unethical or illegal ways and is focused more on his wealth than helping people like them.”

But it was the latest Fox News poll that arguably surprised people most. The editorial board of The Washington Post noted:

President Donald Trump’s ouster of Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece this week reflected a belated recognition by the White House political team that corruption is a galvanizing issue in the midterms.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday indicates that corruption has become voters’ top concern, edging out inflation and gas prices. Six in 10 respondents said they’re “extremely concerned” about corruption. … The Fox News finding isn’t an outlier. An Economist-YouGov poll last month showed that most registered voters think Trump is corrupt. A Reuters poll in August revealed that almost 7 in 10 Americans — including about half of Republicans — believe Trump’s private business interests influence his presidential decisions.

These public attitudes are based on a lot more than just cynical assumptions. On a nearly daily basis, Americans are confronted with a fresh round of allegations surrounding the president and his team. “The cesspit of corruption that is Donald Trump’s presidency is finally getting the attention it deserves,” economist Paul Krugman recently observed. “It’s about time. … The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented — self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before.”

This week, MS NOW host Catherine Rampell wrote a column for The Bulwark in which she added, “Donald Trump is robbing Americans blind.” The headline on her piece read, “Just. So. Much. Corruption.”

Voters’ attitudes on this should send a signal to policymakers about their post-election priorities. We’ll learn in a few weeks whether Democrats can win a majority in either (or both) of Congress’ chambers; but if they do, some will no doubt make the case that the party should focus almost entirely on kitchen-table issues.

And while such a strategy would make sense, the midterms are making clear that there’s a direct link between corruption and affordability — and there’s a real public appetite for accountability and reform.

The post Democrats have made corruption a key midterm issue. Polls show voters agree. appeared first on MS NOW.

In the months leading up to Texas’ Republican U.S. Senate primary, the party was divided into a couple of camps. On one side was incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of most GOP leaders and their aligned super PAC, and who was generally seen as a safe choice who would fare well in a general election.

On the other side was the senator’s intraparty challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who enjoyed support from the party’s MAGA base, despite being the most scandal-plagued candidate of his generation, and who was generally seen as an enormous risk.

There were reports that Donald Trump was tempted to play it safe, before he ultimately endorsed Paxton, who cruised to an easy primary victory. The results haven’t exactly gone the way the president likely hoped.

Over the past several weeks, a variety of high-quality polls have been conducted in the Lone Star State, and not one of them has shown Paxton leading Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. This has generated a fair amount of panic in GOP circles, where the idea of losing a Senate seat in Texas had been largely unthinkable as the year got underway.

With this in mind, Trump is now taking a predictable step: He’s trying to avoid blame for a possible electoral disaster. Indeed, the president published a lengthy tirade to his social media platform on Thursday afternoon in which he tried to pre-blame Republicans he doesn’t like for a defeat that hasn’t happened yet. From the online rant:

Sadly, and very stupidly, John Cornyn, and his Liddle’ Buddy, Super RINO, Karl Rove, are doing everything possible to make it hard for Ken Paxton, the Greatest Attorney General in the History of Texas, and one of the Best in the United States, to win the upcoming Midterm Election. … They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!

If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.

As a factual matter, it’s true that Cornyn has done effectively nothing to help Paxton since their primary, but the suggestion that the senator is actively undermining his party’s nominee is difficult to take seriously (leaving aside the obvious contradiction of blaming a Paxton loss on “ineffective” opponents). The state attorney general’s troubles are his own fault, not Cornyn’s.

But these details are less striking than the implication that if Trump genuinely believed Paxton was well positioned to win, the president wouldn’t be looking to shift the blame for this race away from himself.

This is not to say that Talarico definitely will win — we should find out in 19 days — and with far-right megadonors throwing an enormous amount of money at Texas, it’s still possible that Elon Musk and company will successfully buy the seat for Paxton.

But Trump’s angry missive does not speak well of Paxton’s chances.

The post Fearing Ken Paxton’s defeat in Texas, Trump tries pre-blaming John Cornyn appeared first on MS NOW.

Dalton, Ga. — President Donald Trump is hitting the campaign trail in Georgia, which has long been the focus of his election fraud claims, both over his 2020 election loss and now as the state’s GOP-led election board questions its voting systems.

With early voting underway, Trump is hoping his Dalton rally, in the state’s northwest corner, will energize voters to flip a seat to the Republicans as the party fights to maintain control of the Senate.

Democrat Jon Ossoff holds a firm lead over Republican challenger Rep. Mike Collins, according to polling averages from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne. In the governor’s race to replace outgoing GOP Gov. Brian Kemp polling indicates a tight race, with Rick Jackson maintaining just a two-percentage-point edge over former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat.

Early voting in the state started Tuesday, and Georgians cast more than 190,000 ballots on the first day, an increase of more than 53,000 votes from the 2022 midterm elections, breaking the state’s early voting record for an off-year election.

Last month, the Georgia State Election Board wrote a letter to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security urging intervention in the state’s voting machinery. The board, comprising a majority of Trump-aligned allies, has repeatedly called into question the veracity of Georgia’s past elections.

In a statement, the state’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger highlighted those record-breaking early voting totals as evidence voters “have confidence in the integrity of our elections.”

“It’s a testament to our strong election system overseen by 159 of the best county election officials in the country,” Raffensperger said.

It is not the first time Georgia’s elections have been called into question without merit.

Earlier this year, the FBI seized 2020 election ballots from the state’s most populous county as part of an inquiry into alleged fraud. After that seizure, the president claimed, without offering evidence, that the ballots were “crooked.” He continued, “Let’s see what happens, and the Democrats are fighting like hell. They don’t want anyone to see those ballots. Did you see that? Let’s see what happens. It’s a disgrace but what are you going to do? We’re cleaning it up.”

The DOJ has not filed any indictments related to its investigation of voter fraud in Fulton County.

The federal and state scrutiny of Georgia’s midterm proceedings comes with two staunch Trump allies leading the GOP’s tickets in the state — Rep. Collins, its Senate nominee who has suggested he supports compensation for defendants found guilty in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and gubernatorial candidate Jackson, who compared Raffensperger to Judas for his actions defending Georgia’s 2020 results.

Amid all the attention and allegations on the state’s election systems, the president is headed to Georgia with Republicans facing significant headwinds with elevated inflation and voters’ concerns about the cost of living. Trump has told supporters his rallies are helping to turn the tide for Republicans, despite polling and national sentiment that suggest Democrats may be poised for electoral gains.

One of the key voting blocs the president is trying to retain for Republicans are Latinos who make up a large proportion of the population in Dalton, the site of his rally.  With a population of 35,322, nearly 55% in the city identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to 2025 census data. It is in a county that is part of the deep-red stronghold in the state, where Trump won by a 44% margin in 2024.

While Trump won record support from Latino voters in 2024, he has seen an erosion in some of that support, according to recent polls. That marks a shift Democrats are hoping to seize on this year.

The post Trump campaigns in Georgia, a longtime focus of his election fraud claims appeared first on MS NOW.

Ordinarily, when Donald Trump talks about high gas prices, the president tells the public that the struggling war with Iran is worth the higher consumer costs, which he expects to fall once the conflict eventually comes to an end.

But every once in a while, the Republican tries a different tack. Instead of arguing that higher prices are an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of his avoidable war in the Middle East, Trump occasionally tries to convince Americans that higher gas prices are a good thing.

Just two weeks after launching the war, the president used his social media platform to argue, “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

That line proved wildly unpersuasive and was quickly dropped from the White House’s talking points — which made it all the more surprising to see Trump recycle it seven months later during a Wednesday afternoon rally in Arizona.

Trump: "Our country is making more money than it has ever made because of the fact that oil is so high"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-14T21:06:31.603Z

“Our country is making more money than it’s ever made because of the fact that oil is so high,” he said. “Because of the price of oil, Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota and all these places, we’re making a fortune.”

In other words, with 20 days remaining before the midterm elections, and with the early-voting window opening in states across the country, the Republican wants Americans consumers to be glad they’re paying more at the pump.

As a substantive matter, the problem with Trump’s claim that “we’re making a fortune” is that the word “we” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It’s true that the United States is producing a lot of oil, and it’s also true that higher prices help generate oil industry profits. But since the number of Americans who benefit from oil industry profits is very small, few will likely celebrate the ongoing hit to their wallets.

But as a political matter, what strategic genius came up with this idea? How many voters can reasonably expect to see it as a positive that the average price of gas is $4.33 a gallon, up from $3.06 a year ago at this time?

The post On gas prices, Trump recycles a weird argument to pretend bad news is good news appeared first on MS NOW.

The series continues as we report on developments following April’s historic election and on the steps taken since then by the Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics:

• Another blow for Hungary’s richest man;
• New chief prosecutor nominee, plus a former chief prosecutor ready to testify on political pressure;
• Parliament has adopted the new child-protection law;
• A state secretary has unexpectedly left the government;
• Orbán to keep quiet on one of Hungary’s most important national holidays;
• Ukraine adopts the minority education law;
• More EU funds and money from the Norway Grants have become available.

Another blow for Lőrinc Mészáros

Last Friday (9 October), prime minister Péter Magyar and Dávid Vitézy, minister for transport and investments, announced that the state was suspending implementation of one of Hungary’s largest rail projects – the Budapest southern circular railway, and will launch a new public procurement procedure.

The works had been carried out by V-Híd, the most profitable company of Lőrinc Mészáros, who became Hungary’s richest man during Viktor Orbán’s premiership.

However, the European Court of Auditors uncovered serious public-procurement irregularities: V-Híd may have colluded with the company that drafted the project plans and thus already possessed information at the time of the tender that its competitors did not have. Because of this, the European Court of Auditors would withdraw EU funding from the project.

The Hungarian government does not want to forfeit the EU money and make Hungarian taxpayers foot the bill for the costs of the project, which is why it is terminating the contract with Mészáros’s company and launching a new tender.

The Hungarian state had already taken away from Mészáros the right to operate a motorway section, and later also terminated the 35-year motorway concession.

Previously, one of his food-industry companies had EU funding already granted to it withdrawn, while his energy company was excluded from a call for proposals financed from the repatriated RRF funds.

New chief prosecutor nominee, plus former chief prosecutor ready to testify

On Monday (12 October), president András Baka nominated a former chief prosecutor, Péter Fejes, for the post of chief prosecutor. His first nominee, Zoltán Szathmáry, was not voted through by the Tisza group in parliament after it emerged that his brother was implicated in the so-called gold convoy case, in which a Ukrainian cash shipment was stopped and confiscated by the Hungarian authorities.

Fejes was dismissed in 2012 from his position as chief prosecutor of Vas county by Péter Polt, the chief prosecutor serving the Orbán system, citing loss of confidence. Since then he has continued to work within the prosecution service and as a university lecturer, and he has no party affiliation. For the time being neither prime minister Magyar nor the Tisza group has stated whether they support Fejes’s nomination.

Since the change of government, another former chief prosecutor, Pál Fürcht, has frequently spoken to the media. Among other things, he has claimed that the gold convoy case was created for political purposes, and that the authorities raided the Ukrainian cash couriers on Orbán’s orders.

On Sunday (11 October), Magyar sharply criticised Fürcht in a Facebook post, reproaching him for having been a servant of the system himself. According to Magyar, Fürcht constructed a criminal case, on political orders, out of the notorious nightclub altercation for which the prime minister is currently under investigation on charges of theft.

It was likewise Fürcht who left former propaganda minister Antal Rogán out of the corruption case known as the Völner–Schadl affair.

In response to Magyar’s criticism, Fürcht said he was ready to make an official statement before any authority. In parliament on Monday, the prime minister was already referring to the former chief prosecutor as a future witness.

Parliament has adopted the new child-protection law

Child protection was one of the most important topics of the campaign and played a major role in Orbán’s downfall. Magyar kept the issue on the agenda even after his government took office; most recently, last Thursday, the prime minister and the state secretary responsible for the field, Szilvia Gyurkó, presented the report on the children’s home in Bicske.

This home had been run by a director who was decorated by Orbán and later convicted of paedophile crimes, together with his deputy, who helped cover up the abuses. The presidential pardon granted to the deputy shook the Orbán government and helped lead to its collapse.

On Tuesday (13 October), parliament adopted an amendment to the child-protection law, which takes a tougher stance against media content accessible to minors that propagates sexual violence, manipulation and exploitation, and would speed up the placement of babies abandoned in hospital.

The amendment removed those homophobic passages that the Orbán government forced into law in 2021, and which the Court of Justice of the European Union also ruled to be contrary to EU law.

Fidesz, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) and the far-right Mi Hazánk did not vote for the amendment; Magyar called this a disgrace.

A state secretary unexpectedly leaves the government

On Tuesday, András Tótth, state secretary for energy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and minister István Kapitány’s most important aide, unexpectedly resigned.

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As a tactical matter, it makes a degree of political sense to see Donald Trump touting individual projects in specific states ahead of the midterm elections. Indeed, the Republican is hardly the first incumbent president to try to boost an ally by delivering some good news to local voters.

The trouble with Trump’s version of this strategy is that it’s inherently dishonest.

Two weeks ago, for example, the president welcomed Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska to the White House, where the two celebrated a $54 billion South Korean investment in a liquid natural gas pipeline project in the senator’s home state. It wasn’t long, however, before South Korea’s government made clear that the deal wasn’t complete, and Korean Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan told reporters that he had “lodged a strong protest” with the administration over Trump’s announcement, which “went far beyond what was agreed.”

The same week, the Republican president hosted a separate event in the Oval Office and announced that the “largest steel plant in American history” would be built in Iowa, where party is facing several competitive races. “This deal is done,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, standing at Trump’s side.

The deal, however, isn’t even close to being done. The Washington Sun reported:

As of Tuesday, the company behind the project, Mesabi Metallics, and its Indian parent company, the Essar Group, did not own property in Lee County, Iowa — where the plant is supposed to be built — or in the state of Iowa, according to The Washington Sun’s review of property records. […]

The timing of the announcement has raised eyebrows among both Democratic and Republican state lawmakers, who were told months ago that Iowa was in competition with several other states, including Arkansas, for the steel mill. Some said they feared the midterms played an outsized role in the announcement, and the president was getting ahead of actual plans — possibly to the detriment of Iowans.

This week, it happened yet again. On Wednesday afternoon, Trump used his social media platform to announce “the largest Offtake Agreement in History,” which he said would include Taiwan investing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of liquefied natural gas from a proposed Alaska energy pipeline.

“This is the GREATEST Project in Alaska History, and this only happens with me in the White House,” the president added.

As Politico reported, what Trump neglected to mention was that funding for the project is still in dispute, and it’s possible that it will never actually happen.

To the extent that voters are basing their election decisions on the president’s recent announcements, they might want to read the fine print on his wildly misleading boasts.

The post In midterm desperation, Team Trump boasts about ‘done deals’ that aren’t actually done appeared first on MS NOW.

In recent years, as inflation has risen to the top of Americans’ list of concerns, every new report on the consumer price index has generated attention, but the latest CPI data was of particular interest this week for electoral reasons: This was the final report ahead of the midterm elections.

If it showed good news, Republicans would have a new talking point at a critical moment, offering the GOP an opportunity to argue that conditions are starting to improve. If it showed bad news, Democrats would point to fresh evidence of Republicans failing with less than three weeks to go before Election Day.

Unfortunately for American consumers — and the incumbent majority party — the latter prevailed.

The data, released Wednesday morning, showed consumer prices climbing quickly, largely as a result of the war with Iran, as wages failed to keep up with inflation for the sixth month in a row. This came on the heels of deeply discouraging data on U.S. job creation, creating a brutal one-two punch for the White House at the worst possible time.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the economy was a mess before the figures were released — just five days before the data reached the public, the president falsely claimed that consumer prices were “coming down very fast” — and it was hard not to wonder how the Republican would respond to the news that discredited everything he’s been saying for months about the affordability crisis.

As it turns out, his pitch included four main elements:

1. Denial: At a Wednesday-night rally in Montana, the president assured supporters, “We have very little inflation.” That not only positioned Trump against reality, it also put him at odds with the deep frustrations of the American mainstream.

2. Presenting made-up data: At the same Montana event, the president claimed that the inflation rate reached 1.7% in recent months — I have no idea how he arrived at this false number — adding that this was an improvement from 19%. Never in recorded U.S. history has the CPI ever reached 19%.

3. Rewriting recent history: Once again trying to blame Joe Biden for his failures, Trump claimed, “We inherited the worst inflation in history.” That’s not even close to being true, in part because the worst inflation in history happened 46 years ago, and in part because the inflation rate was down to 3% when Trump’s second term began — which was lower than it is now.

4. Literally unbelievable happy talk: “Your prices have come way down,” Trump added, hours after his own administration released data showing that consumer prices had gone up.

In other words, confronted with evidence of his own failure on the nation’s most pressing issue, the president apparently couldn’t think of anything coherent to say at all.

The latest Fox News poll, which was released hours after the CPI data, found that only 22% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of inflation. Given his latest nonsense, there’s no reason to assume that figure won’t sink lower.

The post ‘We have very little inflation’: Trump’s midterms pitch clashes with inconvenient truths appeared first on MS NOW.

Images of children brandishing replica firearms at campaign events spark formal investigations by human rights and legal oversight bodies.

Brazil’s 2026 electoral cycle has been marked by a rise in political violence across various states. Security data records 354 incidents of political violence over the past two years.

RELATED:
Flávio Bolsonaro Promises Fewer Ministries as Brazil Vote Goes to Runoff

These incidents include threats, physical assaults, and armed attacks targeting candidates, local election officials, and political organizers.

The root of this political tension lies in the structural polarization generated during previous presidential campaigns and administrations.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro and his political movement, known as “Bolsonarismo”, built an electoral base around conservative social values, the expansion of agribusiness, and a national security strategy centered on arming the population.

As a consequence, in the 2026 campaign of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, public security emerged as a primary concern for the electorate. The conservative coalition’s political strategy relies heavily on proposals for punitive criminal justice and the expansion of individual gun-ownership rights as solutions to urban and rural crime.

Critics and human rights organizations argue that the mass dissemination of political content promoting firearm use has created an environment where political disagreements escalate into physical violence.

The normalization of violent political rhetoric during nationwide public events has altered public discourse, turning political participation into a high-risk activity for grassroots organizers and opposition candidates.

Ideological Origins and the Pro-Gun Movement

The political platform supporting firearm expansion in Brazil is driven by a legislative coalition known as the Bullets, Beef, and Bibles caucus.

This group represents an alliance between public security hardliners, large-scale agribusiness producers, and conservative evangelical leaders. Together, these sectors advocated for statutory changes to alter the Disarmament Statute enacted in 2003.

During Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential term from 2019 to 2022, executive decrees relaxed requirements for acquiring firearms and ammunition.

The administration expanded the privileges granted to registered Collectors, Marksmen, and Hunters, known as CACs. Official records indicate that the number of registered CACs grew significantly during these four years, allowing private individuals to acquire high-caliber weapons and purchase thousands of rounds of ammunition annually.

Executive Order 9,847, signed in May 2019, allowed licensed gun owners to purchase up to 5,000 rounds of ammunition per weapon each year, up from the previous limit of 50.

The legal expansion of firearm access altered security dynamics in rural and urban areas. Studies published by the demonstrated a direct correlation between the rise in privately held firearms and the frequency of lethal altercations in local communities.

While pro-gun advocacy organizations maintain that private gun ownership provides individual self-defense against criminal enterprises, public safety researchers observed that a higher volume of civilian weapons eventually entered illicit markets through theft and improper registration.

In rural regions, the growth of armed civilian groups reinforced existing land disputes. Property owners, illegal loggers, and informal land prospectors utilized expanded firearm access to defend economic claims against rural workers and Indigenous groups.

AVISO🚨: Imagens extremamente fortes, mas necessárias para o povo de memória curta.
Bolsonaristas espancando mulheres em manifestações, quebrando o Congresso e atirando em pessoas. Todo o terrorismo dessa escória que quer voltar.

Compartilhe ao máximo.#DIREITATERRORISTA pic.twitter.com/J4r0xMpK3B

— Jurunense (@o_jurunense) October 12, 2026

The text reads, “WARNING: Extremely graphic images, yet necessary for those with short memories. Bolsonaro supporters beating women at protests, ransacking Congress, and shooting people. All the terrorism of that scum that wants to return. Spread this far and wide.”

Public Demonstrations, Armed Symbolism, and Religious Reactions

Political rallies in this 2026 campaign held across major urban centers featured recurring uses of military and firearm symbolism. During campaign events held in Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro supporters displayed replica firearms, tactical equipment, and political banners encouraging armed civilian mobilization.

A widely circulated image from a political rally showed a child positioned on top of a sound truck alongside campaign organizers, holding a firearm replica and mimicking shooting gestures toward the crowd.

Human rights organizations, including the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, issued formal statements criticizing the inclusion of minors in events promoting firearm use, pointing to federal child protection statutes that prohibit exposing children to violent material or weapons training.

Religious leaders responded to the increasing presence of violent messaging in political life. During the annual feast day celebrations at the National Sanctuary of Aparecida, Archbishop Orlando Brandes delivered a sermon addressing national unity, public ethics, and political discourse.

In his address, Archbishop Brandes stated that “a civil society cannot be built on hatred and weapons” and urged citizens to reject violent language in favor of peace and social justice.

The National Conference of Brazilian Bishops published subsequent declarations emphasizing that Christian ethical principles conflict with policies promoting unrestricted firearm ownership and armed confrontation. Church leaders called on political candidates to focus their platforms on poverty alleviation, healthcare, and education rather than public arming.

Brazil’s intelligence agency has confirmed interference by the US government in Brazil’s election in support of Flavio Bolsonaro, son of jailed former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. https://t.co/v7DQtHAVxA pic.twitter.com/tIzZgU0kUg

— tim anderson (@timand2037) October 4, 2026

Territorial Conflicts and Impact on Indigenous Communities

The proliferation of firearms and political rhetoric supporting land expansion intensified territorial pressure on Indigenous populations, particularly in the Amazon region.

Representatives of the Parakanã people, living in the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory in the state of Pará, submitted official complaints to the Federal Public Ministry and the National Indian Foundation documenting increasing land incursions by armed squatters, illegal loggers, and cattle ranchers aligned with local conservative political networks.

The Apyterewa territory, formally demarcated and ratified by federal decree in 2007, remains one of the areas most impacted by illegal deforestation and land grabbing in northern Brazil.

Community leaders reported that armed individuals entered protected areas, established informal access roads, and issued death threats against Indigenous leaders who monitored territorial boundaries.

Deforestation data from the National Institute for Space Research tracked a steady increase in forest clearing within the Parakanã territory during periods of diminished federal oversight.

Indigenous rights organizations highlighted that territorial conflicts represent both an environmental concern and a violation of constitutional rights guaranteed under the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.

The ongoing displacement pressure on the Parakanã and neighboring Indigenous groups underscores the direct connection between national political debates on gun ownership and rural security dynamics in remote regions.

Fake news on social media has once again taken center stage in Brazil’s presidential campaign ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff.

To favor the Liberal Party’s candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, the Brazilian far right has launched a smear campaign against Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inacio… pic.twitter.com/mrKSZmVGQk

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 9, 2026

Lula’s Counter-Proposals and Public Security Strategy

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva implemented regulatory changes aimed at restricting civilian access to firearms and strengthening state control over public security.

Immediately upon taking office, the federal administration issued Executive Decree 11,366, which suspended the issuance of new registrations for civilian weapon owners, restricted the purchase of high-caliber ammunition, and transferred the oversight of registered Collectors, Marksmen, and Hunters from the Brazilian Army to the Federal Police.

The policy platform of the governing coalition focuses on replacing civilian arming with coordinated state law enforcement and social crime prevention programs.

The administration re-established the National Public Security Program with Citizenship, allocating federal funds to municipal crime prevention, community policing, and educational initiatives aimed at vulnerable youth.

In federal security speeches, President Lula emphasized that reducing lethal violence requires public investment in infrastructure, basic sanitation, and job creation rather than increasing civilian weapon ownership.

To address territorial conflicts in protected areas, the federal government reactivated inter-agency enforcement operations involving the National Public Security Force, the Federal Police, and environmental protection agencies.

The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, established under the current administration, coordinated with the National Indian Foundation to resume the formal demarcation of Indigenous territories and conduct police operations to remove illegal miners and squatters from protected lands.

Future Outlook for Democratic Governance

The structural debate over firearm access, public safety, and campaign violence highlights a central division in Brazilian political life. Data collected by public safety research organizations demonstrates that the expansion of civilian weapons between 2019 and 2022 coincided with increased lethal incidents in rural land disputes and higher rates of political intimidation during national election cycles.

The resolution of these security challenges depends on the enforcement of constitutional protections, the regulation of civilian firearms, and the institutional support provided to Indigenous and rural communities. As Brazil navigates its upcoming electoral process, democratic institutions, civil society organizations, and international human rights bodies continue to monitor the impact of violent rhetoric on public participation and state stability.

Establishing long-term public safety requires a balanced policy approach that pairs rigorous law enforcement with targeted social investments. Rebuilding public security institutions, disarming illegal paramilitaries, and safeguarding protected territories remain central requirements for maintaining social stability and protecting democratic norms across the country.

Sources: TRT World – Xinhua – CGTN – Brasil de Fato – Resumen Latinoamericano – Página 12 – Radio del Sur – Folha S. Paulo – BBC – CNN – Barricada TV – El Mundo – Sputnik

More than a year ago, we launched our Hungary Briefing, a weekly round-up of the election campaign. Since the historic vote in April to remove Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government, the series has followed the new Tisza administration and its first moves in office. This week’s topics:

• How Viktor Orbán used Lőrinc Mészáros.
• According to Orbán, they deliberately did not give money to the liberals.
• Orbán’s brother also has a gold-convoy case.
• A wealth tax is coming.
• Support for Hungarian media beyond the borders.
• This week’s opinion polls: slight drop for Tisza, strong support for the Olympics

How Viktor Orbán used Lőrinc Mészáros.

The investigative outlet Direkt36 revealed important details about the links between Lőrinc Mészáros’s companies and Orbán-era propaganda in a new series of articles. The investigators obtained internal documents from a company called V-Híd, which showed that the firm belonging to the Mészáros portfolio paid out several billion forints between 2022 and 2026 to influencers in the Megafon network.

The oligarch was not stingy.

V-Híd is one of the most important and most profitable companies in the Mészáros empire, primarily engaged in railway construction. It owes its success almost entirely to the fact that it won huge public procurement contracts under Fidesz governments.

In recent years, V-Híd has become the dominant player in railway construction in Hungary, pushing out its competitors. Enormous dividends have been taken out of the company by the Mészáros clan (most recently, despite weaker results, 10 billion forints, or around €25m).

The Direkt36 article also reveals that Orbán-era propaganda was financed directly from the company’s revenue. Donation contracts were leaked showing that V-Híd regularly sent hundreds of millions of forints as “gifts” to Megafon. In 2024 alone, they sent 3 billion forints (around €7.6m at the time) in support to the influencer network.

The path of public money to propaganda

The formula was very simple: through public procurement, the government stuffed the Mészáros group’s companies with public money, and part of the revenue generated was channelled to the propaganda machine.

From 2020, Megafon was a key communication channel for Fidesz, where well-known influencers conveyed the party’s messages and huge sums were spent on online advertising.

The money won through public tenders did not only go towards financing propaganda. Direkt36 also uncovered luxury perks V-Híd and other Mészáros companies offered their staff.

Many would envy V-Híd’s team-building events. In 2024, nine employees of the company travelled by private jet to a château in south-western France, at a cost 62 million forints, or about €150,000, including €500 spent on cigars.

According to Direkt36, V-Híd has spent more than 1 billion forints in total – roughly €2.5m – on foreign trips in recent years.

On one trip to Tajikistan, V-Híd paid out €46,000 – the Central Asian country is a popular destination for exotic hunting excursions, and Mészáros also took part in such a hunting tour.

The Mészáros clan were also keen on yachting and spent money on private jets. One private jet linked to the Mészáros family was used at least once by Orbán himself.

The money did not go to the liberals

Fidesz has tied itself in knots after the arrest of culture minister Balázs Hankó. Hankó is suspected of aggravated breach of fiduciary duty causing particularly significant financial loss, committed in a criminal conspiracy, and the court has placed him in pre-trial detention.

The Hankó case blew up shortly after the elections, when activist Áron Molnár revealed that the National Cultural Fund had disbursed more than 17 billion forints (around €44m) to artists close to Fidesz for the purposes of the party’s campaign.

After a few months of investigation, the authorities reached the former minister, now a member of parliament, who said the allocation of grants had been lawful and that a politically-motivated show trial had been launched against him.

Shortly before he was taken into custody, Hankó told HírTV, a Fidesz-friendly channel, that being a Fidesz member or linked to Fidesz had never been a precondition for receiving NCA funding.

Orbán, however, explained the Hankó case differently in a speech at a closed-door event, from which former state secretary Péter Takács shared a clip. According to Orbán, Hankó was the only culture minister since 2010 who did not give support to the “liberals in Budapest”, and that is why, in his view, he was locked up.

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More than a year ago, we launched our Hungary Briefing, a weekly round-up of the election campaign. Since the historic vote in April to remove Viktor Orbán, the series has followed the new Tisza government and its first moves in office. This week’s topics:

• Two ministers from Orbán’s government have been held in custody.
• Former prime minister Orbán may have ordered the detention of Ukrainian cash couriers.
• The newly established National Asset Recovery and Protection Office has begun work.
• The European Public Prosecutor’s Office could also help recover stolen funds.

It has been an eventful few days in Hungarian public life. Efforts to hold former officials accountable are gathering pace: two former ministers have been remanded in custody over suspected breaches of fiduciary duty involving billions of forints and the acceptance of bribes.

The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) immediately took over four cases and began investigating them, including the visa business linked to Orbán’s brother. Meanwhile, a chief prosecutor who resigned from his post claimed in an open letter that Orbán himself had ordered the detention of Ukrainian cash couriers.

Two ministers from Orbán’s government have been held in custody

“The landing is beginning as part of ‘Operation Purgatory’,” prime minister Péter Magyar announced on Monday (28 September) morning. Later that morning, Hungary’s parliament lifted the immunity of Miklós Seszták, an MP and former development minister from the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP); Balázs Hankó, an MP and former culture and innovation minister from Fidesz; and prime minister Magyar.

Prosecutors requested that Hankó’s immunity be lifted on suspicion of breach of fiduciary duty: he is suspected of causing losses of 17 billion forints (€46.5m) to the state budget. Authorities are investigating Seszták on suspicion of accepting bribes and other offences. The former minister and the then chief executive of Hungarian National Asset Management are suspected of receiving approximately 12.6 billion forints (€34.2m), in bribes through an intermediary between 2015 and 2018.

Magyar himself requested the lifting of his own immunity after the deputy prosecutor general asked the speaker of parliament to initiate the procedure over an incident in June 2024. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General, Magyar deliberately dropped the phone of a man filming him into the Danube, an act it classifies legally as theft.

After the vote on his immunity, Seszták went to the Central Investigating Chief Prosecutor’s Office, where he was taken into custody. He said he had committed no crime and wished to give a statement. On Wednesday, a court ordered the former minister’s remand in custody.

Hankó initially waited in the Fidesz parliamentary group’s office for police to take him away. Under the rules, however, he should have presented himself at the Central Investigating Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

Under the Act on the National Assembly, police may enter the parliament building and take action there only with the speaker’s specific permission, while the Parliamentary Guard may neither forcibly bring him before the authorities nor take coercive measures against him. Parliament speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer therefore firmly called on Hankó to leave the building and cooperate with the investigating authorities.

Hankó subsequently held a press conference with his wife and children present, claiming that he was the target of a politically-fabricated case and declaring his innocence. He finally accepted the summons at 7.20 pm and left parliament, setting off to give a statement amid carefully-staged scenes. Orbán’s social media page live-streamed the entire episode (while the Fidesz leader was in Belfast cheering on Hungary’s national football team).

In a statement, prosecutors said that Hankó and his associates had used National Cultural Fund resources for purposes other than those prescribed by law on 1,079 occasions between 3 September 2025 and 30 March 2026.

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