Musk is the big Paxton funder: According to campaign filings released yesterday, Elon Musk sent $158 million in September to a super PAC that immediately gave that amount of money to a group backing Texas Republican Ken Paxton's Senate bid against Democrat James Talarico.

"On Sept. 9, the first day of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Musk gave $75 million to SLF," reports The Texas Tribune. "The next day, SLF put $75 million into a new entity called Texas PAC. By the weekend after the convention, the new super PAC was up on the air with a positive spot about Paxton's work on sex trafficking and a negative ad attacking Talarico as being for 'they/them, not you.'"

Then, two weeks later, "Musk gave an additional $83 million to SLF, according to the group's filing. Sure enough, SLF deposited $83 million into Texas PAC's coffers the following day."

It would be wild if Paxton still loses. Paxton has been embroiled in rolling scandals for years, and some current polls have him underwater by 13 points. A New York Times/Siena survey found only 38 percent of likely Texas voters believe he has "good character," versus 56 percent for Talarico.

Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, and that case dragged on for most of a decade before ending in a pretrial agreement. Then the Texas House, led by Republicans, accused him of bribery and abuse of public trust and successfully impeached him in 2023. The charges centered on allegations that he used his office to help donor Nate Paul—so you can imagine why Musk might want to curry favor with Paxton. Though Paxton was later acquitted by the state Senate, scandal keeps chasing him: Last year, his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on "biblical" grounds, citing adultery as one of the reasons.

Of course, many Republican voters at the state level saw the impeachment as nothing more than a political hit job, one echoing what's happened to President Donald Trump at the national level. But what far-right, already-convinced Republicans believe about Paxton is sort of beside the point: He needs turnout, and he needs to win over more moderate Republicans and maybe even some fence-sitters if he hopes to beat Talarico. It's possible Musk's cash infusion will help, but it's also possible a cash infusion of many millions of dollars won't be enough to rehabilitate Paxton's shitty image.

A poll from the University of Texas and Texas Politics Project conducted in August "contained four major warning signs for Paxton: a drop in his support from June, lagging GOP motivation to vote, worse favorability numbers than Talarico and Trump's approval being underwater in the state."

Scenes from New York: "When Gov. Kathy Hochul first ran for re-election, Republicans in New York tried to prey on fears over crime, rising inflation and illegal immigration to boost the chances of their ticket statewide in the critical 2022 midterms," reports The New York Times. "The strategy seemed to work. Republicans flipped four House seats in New York, while putting a scare into Ms. Hochul, who eked out a six-point victory over Lee Zeldin, then a Long Island congressman who now leads the E.P.A." This year, Republicans have picked Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, as the guy with the best odds of beating Hochul, and they're running on crime fears again. But it's not working so well.

The crime and public disorder is, to my mind, still a problem, but it's not as rampant as it once was during the peak pandemic years. And it's certainly not perceived as very bad right now.

QUICK HITS

• "Three children and a teacher were killed, and two others were critically wounded, in a shooting Thursday at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, authorities said," reports CBS News. "The suspect, a 16-year-old male, was shot and killed by a bystander, Bend police said.…Officials would not say exactly what type of weapon was used in the attack or how many rounds were fired. Multiple law enforcement sources told CBS News the suspect used a shotgun, and The Associated Press cited a law enforcement official briefed on the incident as saying it was a pump-action shotgun purchased by his mother."
• "A climate of radical paranoia around AI seems like it will be a feature of our world for the foreseeable future," writes Ross Douthat in The Free Press, "because human beings are really good at being paranoid about mysterious new things. With, of course, the AI doomers themselves being a prime example: As Mike Solana of Pirate Wires notes in his own recent reading of the doom canon, the prophecies of Yudkowsky and Co. are already moderately less credible insofar as they don't account for their own cultural success."
• "Taiwan is preparing to tighten export controls on AI chips to further align with US restrictions, according to a senior official in Taipei, joining a Trump administration clampdown on the smuggling of cutting-edge semiconductors to China," reports Bloomberg. "Taipei plans to add artificial intelligence servers and cutting-edge semiconductors to a list of controlled items, Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg News. After the measures take effect, he said, shipping restricted AI hardware to China will become a criminal offense under the Foreign Trade Act."
• I'll leave you with a quote from Kennedy (not John or Robert) to start your weekend off right: "Kimberly [Guilfoyle] talked about sex so cavalierly that she made Samantha from Sex and the City seem like Greta Thunberg."

The post Musk's Meddling appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Two ships sink: "A ​container ship and a dry bulk carrier have both sunk near the Strait of Hormuz in the past ‌24 hours after being hit by projectiles in separate incidents, maritime officials said on Wednesday," reports Reuters. One ship was Singapore-flagged and the other was Antigua and Barbuda–flagged; one crew member has died so far, but the majority were safely evacuated. "Attacks around the waterway have surged over the past 10 days, with Iran saying it is stepping up strikes in response to the US blockade of its ports and tougher sanctions introduced last month." Basically, Iran is escalating because the U.S. naval blockade—reinstated in July—has choked off its new oil exports, and Tehran's answer is to make sure no one else's oil gets out either. Shipping volumes in the Strait have plunged as attacks have escalated.

These two are the third and fourth commercial ships to have been sunk since the Iran-U.S. war began in February, depending on how you count. The India-flagged Haji Ali went down off the coast of Oman, and the Malta-flagged container ship Safeen Prestige was struck and later sank in the Strait of Hormuz as well. Back in July, a cargo ship sank after colliding with another vessel in the Strait, though that wasn't technically an attack. And in September, the U.S. destroyed several Iranian tankers—at least two in the Gulf of Oman area and one near Kharg Island, among others. So many ships have been caught in the crosshairs, though relatively few have gone down.

Why does the decline of religion matter? "The decline of American religion over the last thirty years bears…a significant responsibility for the dysfunctional state of American politics," writes Jacob Williams for Cracks in Postmodernity, reviewing Shadi Hamid and Matthew Kaemingk's new book, Can Religion Save Democracy? "Religious communities—churches, mosques, and synagogues—channel our spiritual impulses in a healthy direction. Religion—actual, traditional, 'organized' religion—appeals to mankind's need for wonder, mystery, and ultimate purpose; and it schools those impulses into forms conducive to civic virtues like humility, tolerance, forbearance, and constructive disagreement."

"Religion does all this," continues Williams, "because it achieves the Augustinian virtue of desacralizing politics and lowering its stakes to a less eschatological plain, in which we see political conflict as 'serious but not sacred.' Our need for ultimacy is directed onto what is actually ultimate—God—and not onto conflict with our fellow man. We learn epistemic humility by hedging our arguments with the recognition that, as Muslim scholars put it, 'God knows best.' Ritual formation reminds us at a deep 'pre-rational level' that we are not divine and that losing an earthly struggle is not final: 'prayer…is a daily concession speech.' Even belief in Hell, paradoxically, makes us less judgmental about one another's flaws, since if true evil will be punished in the hereafter, we can easily face the prospect of its survival in the here and now."

Scenes from New York: Comedian Shane Gillis is apparently in hot water, once again, for hosting Saturday Night Live and offending people with the jokes in his monologue. Gillis was, of course, fired from SNL back in 2019, immediately after being hired, because of anti-Asian slurs he'd used in a podcast the year prior, while doing a bit where he was pretending to be a landlord. The first time he was invited back to give a monologue, he "bomb[ed] on 'SNL' with Down syndrome and gay jokes," according to The Daily Beast. And then this most recent time, he offended people by saying, "I haven't been to the gym in so long, I didn't know women just dress like whores now." Given the prevalence of "scrunch butt"–style leggings, I kind of think he's dead-on, but I've also long been a Gillis apologist.

"In that very same monologue, Gillis denigrates men, gay men, his sisters, and himself—repeatedly," writes Reason's Robby Soave. "He admits that he's fat and ugly. That's the basis of the humor. It does not suggest that he has some problem with women or enjoys laughing at their expense and solely their expense. He's doing observational comedy, and no one is spared, not even Gillis." Gillis seems dumb as a bag of bricks, but he's actually quite incisive.

I do think there's a deeper thing going on, though, given that Gillis keeps getting into trouble, which is that bro-y culture no longer unites us as a country. Bros are dwindling in number and prominence. Gillis isn't widely regarded as funny because the culture killed off the bro. And I, for one, mourn that loss.

QUICK HITS

• Anthropic reportedly plans to IPO next month; OpenAI intends to wait until 2027.
• "When President Trump announced that Katie Zacharia would serve as the next White House press secretary, he referred to her as an attorney. But she hasn't passed the bar exam in the U.S.," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after graduating from law school at Pepperdine University in 2011, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, but she didn't pass." Truth be told, I don't think the fact that she hasn't passed the bar yet represents herself as a lawyer matters all that much; I think the fact that she seems terrible at public speaking is the greater problem, given her new role.
• James Talarico continues to really like his own line that "the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion." I don't think he's especially persuasive to the Catholic voter he was confronting in the above clip, who countered with an invocation of the Ten Commandments, but I guess voters will decide soon enough.
• "With less than three weeks until Election Day and Republican approval numbers down, President Donald Trump is taking unorthodox measures to drum up support for the GOP," writes Ryan Curtis for Reason. "Last week, Trump sent out $90 payments to over 20 million Americans on Medicare Part B—which covers doctor visits and regular checkups. The money was made available to help seniors 'pay for their Medicare Part B premiums,' which cost $202 per month."
• Watch the quote-tweeted video only if you dare:

These people will drag you back to 2020 tomorrow. We don't have to live like this. https://t.co/5U3DvNkrp8

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 14, 2026

The post Sinking Ships appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUICK HITS

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

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

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

• Not wrong:

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

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

— Jack (@tracewoodgrains) October 13, 2026

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