Recent polling suggests that concerns about government corruption are top of mind for voters heading into the midterm elections — and that the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has effectively become the face of repulsive self-enrichment to many Americans.

It’s in that environment that Florida Republicans are threatening criminal prosecution over a campaign advertisement spotlighting damning corruption allegations involving top state officials.

We’ve seen various Republicans using the Trumpian tactic of threatening to arrest people who are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Trump, a chief enemy of those constitutional rights, has called for journalists to be arrested for accurately reporting on crowd sizes at his rallies. And Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., faced mockery and condemnation last week for threatening to have a journalist prosecuted after she asked a question about his support for Trump’s deadly war with Iran.

Now Florida Republicans are threatening to prosecute television stations that air a Democratic ad spotlighting the Hope Florida charity scandal, which involves public money being directed to political allies by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ GOP administration.

As the Miami Herald reported:

The Republican Party of Florida is threatening television stations with criminal prosecution if they run or report on a scathing campaign ad addressing the Hope Florida scandal and a grand jury’s finding. The GOP is seeking a temporary injunction to prohibit the airing of the ads.

The Republicans had some daylight when Judge Lance E. Neff of the Florida First District Court of Appeal wrote an opinion ordering the expungement of a grand jury report, saying the panel exceeded its authority. The lawsuit once again brings it front and center during the stretch run to the Nov. 3 election.

Basically, a Florida grand jury concluded that the DeSantis administration — including Attorney General James Uthmeier and his predecessor, Sen. Ashley Moody — “misappropriated” taxpayer money as part of a “sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” with money from a Medicaid settlement. DeSantis, Uthmeier and Moody have all denied accusations of wrongdoing.

The leaked grand jury report said indictments weren’t feasible because nobody would “take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” adding: “This decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it.”

A couple of weeks back, Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeals ordered the report to be expunged, with one DeSantis-appointed judge arguing that it wrongfully “impugned” private individuals. But the issue remains under review by at least one state attorney and has continued to dog Moody’s Senate campaign. Moody has stumbled while answering questions about it, and the topic has become a major talking point for her Democratic opponent, Angie Nixon.

Republicans more or less have two pathways to address their PR problems: become more likable as a party, or seek to silence people who expose its warts. And it seems clear which route the party is taking.

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A bipartisan group of state attorneys general apparently isn’t buying OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s insistence that “the world should accept some bad things happening” in order to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence technology.

Amid allegations that OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has helped fuel school shootings and teen suicides, at least eight states are suing the company, accusing it of violating consumer protection laws and putting young users in danger.

The AGs are clearly paying no mind to President Donald Trump’s assertion that AI companies should be allowed to “self-police” as they rapidly develop their AI tools.

As The Guardian reported:

Eight US states sued OpenAI Wednesday, alleging the ChatGPT maker is harming children en masse.

Kansas, Arizona, Montana, Iowa and four others allege the company’s products carried out “willful, dangerous, reckless and unlawful conduct” by coaxing children into harming themselves.

“OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans,” Brenna Bird, the attorney general for Iowa, said in a statement. “OpenAI claims ChatGPT is safe while it’s giving dangerous medical advice, encouraging people to hurt others, and coaching people to commit suicide – all while pretending to be their fake friend.”

The lawsuits, which seek monetary damages and restrictions and court-imposed changes to how OpenAI builds its AI models, were also filed in Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska and West Virginia. An OpenAI spokesperson told The Guardian that the company has “built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product that many other AI products lack.”

The lawsuits underscore states’ interests in placing guardrails on AI companies as the Trump administration — led by someone who has invested heavily in the AI industry — seeks to prevent states from passing their own regulations. They also come amid widespread public concern about AI tools destroying humanity.

To be clear, such efforts by states have run into roadblocks. For example, Elon Musk recently won a partial victory when his AI company secured a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking a Minnesota law from going into effect that would ban AI tools that generate nonconsensual sexual imagery, including of children.

Nonetheless, the OpenAI lawsuit shows that several states are being rather relentless in pursuing AI regulations — no matter the obstacles.

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Nearly a decade ago, when Facebook admitted that its platform was used to incite genocidal violence in Myanmar, some may have been inclined to accept the company’s defense that it had been unwittingly used as a tool to benefit authoritarian regimes.

Ten years and numerous scandals later, some people may be less willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the company, which has repeatedly bowed to President Donald Trump and whose platforms have spread hate speech and far-right propaganda. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, appears to be censoring some left-leaning users, as conservatives have baselessly accused the company in years past of targeting them.

Meta faced widespread condemnation over the weekend for freezing the primary Instagram account organizers used to promote the anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrations that took place on Saturday. The account was down “several hours,” according to the activist group. Meta, which also owns Instagram, apologized and said that ”automated action” triggers such suspensions after “accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies.”

Nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said it filed a records request on Monday “for any communications between Meta and [the Department of Homeland Security] concerning the No Kings movement, protests or Meta social accounts.”

“The public deserves to know whether the Trump admin is coordinating with Meta to suppress or censor No Kings accounts,” the group, known as CREW, wrote on X.

Meta’s apology for restricting “No Kings” posts is hard to accept at face value when Meta is simultaneously facing allegations of undermining Trump critics elsewhere.

My Oct. 1 post about MAGA world’s efforts to sway Brazil’s presidential election in favor of Trump-aligned Flávio Bolsonaro referred to accusations about Meta undermining incumbent president — and Trump critic — Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign. The accusations I cited centered on Meta temporarily suspending an Instagram account that had promoted a viral video linking Bolsonaro to corruption, and another incident in which the company temporarily disabled Lula’s ability to run political ads from his campaign Facebook page. Meta has apparently restored capabilities for both accounts. In the case of the account that hosted the viral video, the company claimed it was restored after an “internal review” and went on to “apologize for the inconvenience.” Meta denied meddling in the election, saying in a statement, “Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false.” But the scrutiny continues.

On Monday, Brazil’s top electoral court gave Meta 24 hours to prove that it’s treating Lula’s and Bolsonaro’s campaigns equally. As The Associated Press explained, Meta has said the issues involving Lula’s accounts “stemmed from unrelated global technical glitches, strict anti-fraud measures, and regulatory compliance rather than targeted suppression.”

Presently, we’re seeing some of the top social media platforms in the world being used to protect powerful MAGA oligarchs and undermine their perceived enemies. Elon Musk’s X is a cesspool of racist propaganda and right-wing disinformation. And TikTok, partly owned by longtime Trump ally Larry Ellison, recently reversed its suspension of an account that had been promoting a documentary critical of Musk. And whether it’s enabling the Trump regime’s free speech crackdown on critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or boosting Bolsonaro’s electoral chances, Meta has been used to quiet some opposition to the MAGA movement on its platforms.

Trump is suffering from historic unpopularity. And no one seems more desperate to reverse that trend than his allies in Big Tech.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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A top election official in Arizona’s most populous county appears dead-set on having the federal government intervene in the upcoming midterms.

County Recorder Justin Heap’s shameless support for pro-Trump election denialism, and his encouragement of President Donald Trump’s allies to meddle with the upcoming midterms, have been well documented. Media outlet VoteBeat obtained emails to the Department of Justice in which Heap egged on a bogus probe of his own county’s elections. And his efforts to wield control over Maricopa County’s election system have drawn condemnation from local Republicans including the GOP-controlled board of supervisors and the county’s top attorney, who has accused Heap of handing over control of his office to far-right idealogues.

Last week, NBC affiliate 12 News in Arizona reported on Heap’s attempt to sic the FBI on the board of supervisors using bogus accusations of wrongdoing promoted by a known election denier.

According to the report:

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s top staffers called in the FBI to investigate an election tampering claim leveled at Heap’s partner in overseeing the midterm vote, the Maricopa County Board. The investigator’s report, obtained by 12News through a public records request, says a prominent election denier and the Republican National Committee brought the claim to Heap’s office. The social media post alleging the wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation center got 1 million views. Other feverish posts claimed there was “evidence of computer tampering.” But the investigator the FBI asked to look into the allegation concluded there was nothing to see there. There was no wrongdoing.

Right-wing influencers shared video of county officials working in an office and falsely suggested they had no authorization to be there. The Maricopa County Elections Department responded by explaining on social media that elections personnel were there working late.

pic.twitter.com/jRFrARTzN5

— Maricopa County Elections (@MaricopaVote) October 9, 2026

The context here is that for years Trump and allies like Kari Lake have promoted baseless claims of fraud in Arizona’s ballot tabulation systems. The 12 News investigation identified far-right activist Shelby Busch as the person who joined the Republican National Committee in raising the false claims to Heap’s office. Busch talked in 2024 about how she would “lynch” Heap’s predecessor, fellow Republican Stephen Richer, who was targeted by Trump allies for his refusal to promote pro-Trump election lies. (Busch subsequently said “the statement was a joke” and was “political hyperbole and no way meant as a threat of violence,” the Washington Post reported.)

Last week’s wild goose chase is typical of how MAGA election denial works: Right-wing influencers promote a lie, then right-wing officials pass it along to federal investigators, who can use the lie as a pretext for federal intervention in elections. It’s similar to what the Trump-friendly board of elections is doing in Georgia. And it’s something voters and officials who are interested in defending democracy need to beware of and on defense against in the weeks ahead.

The president’s polling has cratered to record lows, members of his administration appear to be resorting to authoritarian tactics as their primary means of maintaining power, and far too many Trump allies in positions of power are willing to lend credence to election deniers.

On that note, late last week, Heap told Arizona radio host Mike Broomhead that his office “did exactly what we should have done” in taking the bogus claims to the FBI.

The post Maricopa County election official keeps modeling election denial playbook appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump and the MAGA movement’s grip on white voters appears to be slipping, and in an effort to reverse that trend, it seems Vice President JD Vance has designated himself the pied piper of racist rage.

Numerous polls this year have spotlighted Trump’s declining support among white voters — particularly, white working-class voters who’ve been key to his and his party’s political success. Amid this trend, Vance — in speech after speech — has resorted to rhetoric seemingly designed to groom the white American psyche so that white voters turn their ire on nonwhite people rather than on Trump and the Republican Party.

The latest example came during a rally Vance hosted in Michigan on Thursday, in which he suggested Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is resentful of certain people and places because they’re “too white, too proud or too American.” He called El-Sayed a “weasel who should shut his mouth and show a little gratitude to the country that gave him everything.”

.@VP JD Vance says he feels bad for U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI): "I don't know why he resents the things that he does. Perhaps it's because he sees them as too white, or too proud, or too American." pic.twitter.com/6zTXQG3okK

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 15, 2026

Vance has returned to this well numerous times over the past year as Trump’s corrupt business dealings, economically destructive tariffs and his deadly war with Iran have turned off some in the MAGA base. You can see plenty of other examples of Vance launching similar appeals to white bigots — including here, here and in the following clip from last December, when Vance told an audience of right-wing Turning Point USA affiliates that they no longer had to “apologize for being white.”

Vance: In the United States of America, you don't have to apologize for being white anymore. pic.twitter.com/QikIDkXNy5

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 21, 2025

Back in August, the vice president gave an interview to Fox News suggesting that white people who support El-Sayed hate themselves. And keep in mind that all of this is coming from the No. 2 leader of a Republican Party that has spent years frothing at the mouth about liberals supposedly weaponizing “identity politics.” The question is whether white voters choose to indulge in what I’ve previously described on-air as the “racist slop” being offered up by the MAGA movement.

And here, history can be informative. White supremacist movements and organizations in years past — including the Ku Klux Klan — have all sought to unify white Americans around a single racial identity. This trend is explored in films like the documentary “White with Fear,” which shines light on the history of right-wing, racist fearmongering in the United States. White supremacist groups have historically managed to convince some white people to fall in line behind them, but they’ve also faced white backlash as some of the same people have been awakened to these groups’ corrupt ways and self-serving bigotry.

And despite Vance’s efforts, a similar outcome seems to be in play for the white supremacy-boosting MAGA movement as well.

The post Vance desperately targets white voters as Trump’s grip slips appeared first on MS NOW.

Polling suggests that concerns about corruption and healthcare costs are top of mind for most voters as Election Day approaches. A Fox News poll released this week showed large majorities of voters listed both in the top five issues they were “extremely” or “very” concerned about. A new report about President Donald Trump’s self-enrichment by way of the pharmaceutical industry underscores the uniquely awful political predicament Republicans have created for themselves by wedding their party to one of the most corrupt administrations in American history.

Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee previously spotlighted the ways that Trump’s stock investments in the oil and gas industries have benefited from his destructive geopolitical agenda, including his deadly war with Iran. Now, the committee is out with a new report on the ways Trump’s stock investments in the pharmaceutical industry have benefited from provisions of the (ridiculously) so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans forced through last year.

According to the new report:

As Americans face sky-high health care costs, President Trump and Congressional Republicans passed into law last year a new giveaway to Big Pharma that enables many pharmaceutical companies to keep charging seniors exorbitant prices for cancer treatments and other medications. This measure — which blocks the Medicare program from negotiating lower prices for several high-cost drugs — will add around $9 billion to the deficit.

The report cites financial disclosure forms that show that in 2025, “Trump held as much as $39.1 million in stock in the same Big Pharma companies that directly benefited from the giveaway that he and Congressional Republicans devised.” And that “these companies reported at least $54 billion in U.S. sales of drugs that benefitted from the carveout in 2025, a 13 percent increase from the year before.”

Trump has made more stock trades since returning to office than everyone in Congress combined. The White House has routinely said that these trades are handled by third parties over which Trump has no influence, denying allegations of corruption or conflicts of interest.

But it seems the majority of Americans aren’t convinced that the self-described “freaking genius” president has truly extricated his personal business dealings from industries that benefit from his policies: A recent AP-NORC poll found that 60% of adults think Trump has either illegally or unethically profited from the presidency.

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President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have desperately lobbed accusations of “socialism” and “communism” at liberals in their attempts to scare voters in this year’s midterm elections.

Conservative political leaders have instituted “anti-communist” propaganda to indoctrinate schoolchildren with anti-democratic talking points, and Trump’s regime has made a habit of railing against socialism in public — with some rather embarrassing results.

But fresh polling data suggests that a fairly large contingent of the Republican Party actually seems to like socialism. And it’s arguably all Trump’s fault.

The survey by the Economic Innovation Group and Echelon Insights shows that Republicans, at 29%, are more in favor of the government owning a stake in independent companies than independent voters and even Democrats.

Two years ago, what share of GOP voters would agree with government ownership of companies?

Now 29% of GOP voters do. More than Democrats.

This must be reversed. Those who pushed for this may come to regret it if America becomes a socialist country. pic.twitter.com/zgrZ1bjulb

— Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) October 13, 2026

The polling suggests majorities of each group oppose the idea. But the not-insignificant number of Republicans who are in favor suggests that Trump’s trend of having the government buy stakes in independent companies — communistic behavior that has led some critics to say he’s practicing “MAGA Maoism” — has led some conservatives to welcome the practice.

So much for all that past talk among Republicans about how the government shouldn’t be in the business of “picking winners and losers.” It has taken less than 10 years of Trump-style authoritarianism to get about a third of the GOP on the record endorsing an undeniably socialist policy, if not a communist one.

So as Republicans rattle on about the supposed scourge of socialism, it sure seems like a chunk of their own party isn’t on the same page.

The socialist threat is coming from inside the house https://t.co/vZJjrG2QlD

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 13, 2026

Or, as Scott Lincicome, a vice president at the libertarian CATO Institute, put it: “The socialist threat is coming from inside the house.”

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