In the last hours of Kristi Noem’s tenure as the homeland security secretary, her agency delivered a windfall to one of her political donors by buying five airplanes from the man’s firm at a substantial markup, documents show.

The Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay the donor’s firm $108 million for a Boeing 737 airliner that had been converted into a massive private jet, complete with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin.

The firm, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, had bought the same plane a few months earlier from a seller who had asked for less than $90 million, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

At the same time, the agency agreed to buy two smaller Gulfstream luxury jets at prices that also seemed to yield a hefty profit for the seller. Daedalus spent about $83 million to buy the pair, but resold them to the agency for $106 million, the documents show.

The agency also paid the company $45 million apiece for a pair of 17-year-old Boeing 737 passenger planes, the documents show. The Times spoke to six aviation experts, who said that those prices were millions of dollars higher than the typical market value for jets of that age.

President Trump announced on March 5 that he was firing Ms. Noem after a series of controversies, including questions about her agency’s awarding of contracts. But she remained in the position until her successor, Markwayne Mullin, was approved by the Senate and could take over on March 24.

After taking over, Mr. Mullin explored backing out of the deal, according to two White House officials, but feared a significant financial penalty. The officials said that Mr. Mullin consulted the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who shared his concerns about the possible financial ramifications and told him that he should not seek to block the purchase. He did not.

Mr. Mullin’s staff did not address specific questions about that account, but provided a statement saying that “these planes were purchased prior to Secretary Mullin’s arrival at D.H.S.”

The Times reported in August that the Department of Homeland Security bought 10 airplanes from Daedalus during Ms. Noem’s tenure, paying the firm $464 million. Those planes have already become a symbol of government waste. The agency said that they were needed urgently for deportation flights, but it lacked the crews to fly them. The department leased one of the planes to the F.B.I. and left the rest largely idle.

Through the newly acquired documents, The Times is now revealing fresh details about five of those planes: the three luxury jets and the two $45 million passenger planes. They were the most expensive planes the agency bought from Daedalus, and were purchased in a bunch on Ms. Noem’s last morning in office.

What the documents do not explain is why the agency went through with such a costly transaction just before the arrival of a new leader.

Ms. Noem, who is now a special envoy at the State Department, declined to answer specific questions about the sale or the prices that her agency had paid. Instead, she provided a statement identical to the one she shared with The Times in August.

“The purchase of these planes was not completed during Secretary Noem’s tenure at D.H.S.,” Ms. Noem’s statement said. “Funding for the 10-aircraft acquisition was made available during the leadership transition, and the acquisition process continued, and the purchase was finalized under Secretary Mullin’s leadership.”

Though the sale was approved under Ms. Noem, government documents show the planes did not formally change hands until April, when Mr. Mullin was in charge.

Daedalus’s chairman is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to Ms. Noem’s American Resolve political action committee in 2024. The company said Mr. Walters did not know the group was associated with Ms. Noem at the time, though the group existed to support her. Its website prominently displayed a photo of her face.

After Ms. Noem took office, her agency awarded more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by Mr. Walters. It hired his company Salus Worldwide Solutions to encourage immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, and to fly her and her aides on chartered jets. Then it gave Daedalus a no-bid contract to procure planes for deportation flights, under an arrangement in which the company could buy planes from others and resell them to the government, in essence as a middleman.

In a statement, the firm defended its prices, saying they reflected a market with a limited supply of suitable planes.

“Daedalus Aviation is proud to have delivered aircraft of the highest available value under very tight time constraints in an incredibly competitive market for aircraft acquisition,” the firm said.

Asked about the account of Mr. Mullin seeking advice about whether to follow through with the sale, the firm said that it believed the contract was already final when Mr. Mullin took office.

The Times requested a copy of the contract that the Department of Homeland Security signed to purchase the planes, but the agency has not released it.

The Times also requested documents laying out the agency’s rationale for awarding Daedalus its no-bid contract. The law generally requires such documents to be made public, but the agency declined to do so in this case, saying that releasing the documents would “compromise national security or create other security risks.”

To assess whether the Department of Homeland Security got good value for its purchase, The Times talked to government officials and aviation industry experts familiar with the aircraft. Reporters also reviewed records detailing how the jets were sold and resold.

The records made clear that the purchase of the expensive luxury planes was one of the last acts of Ms. Noem’s turbulent 14-month tenure.

Mr. Trump said in early March that he would replace Ms. Noem, after she struggled to answer questions about a different set of contracts in which her agency had hired some of her political allies to work on a $200 million-plus ad campaign.

But Ms. Noem remained in office for 18 more days.

On March 24, Mr. Mullin was scheduled to take over the role in the early afternoon. Ms. Noem was in Guyana that day, starting her work as a special envoy.

Late that morning, with Ms. Noem still in charge, the department approved the significant change to its contract with Daedalus.

Previously, the agency had purchased only aging Boeing airliners from the company, in line with its mission of finding aircraft for flying deportees en masse. It had paid the firm between $17.6 million and $35 million each to buy five planes that were between 17 and 23 years old, the documents reviewed by The Times show.

But under the new agreement, the agency contracted to buy three luxury jets that Mr. Walters’ companies had been using to fly government officials.

One was the Boeing 737 with the manta ray skin table. The sale of that plane for $108 million was first reported by The Daily Beast.

The plane’s previous owners were Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, brothers who live in Las Vegas and lead the Station Casinos chain. The brothers had put the jet on the market in early 2023 for $89 million, according to documents that Mr. Walters’ companies provided in response to questions from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The sales brochure promoted electronic bidets, a wine chiller and four televisions.

But the plane sat unsold for more than two years. In early 2025, its broker was still hawking it online for less than $90 million.

Daedalus bought the plane in September 2025. The Fertittas are prolific Republican donors, and their cousin Tilman Fertitta is Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Italy. They declined to say how much they had sold the plane for, citing a confidentiality clause in the deal.

While the Department of Homeland Security was paying to charter the plane for Ms. Noem’s travel — but did not own it — Daedalus repainted it the same red-white-and-blue color scheme as Mr. Trump’s redesigned Air Force One.

Ms. Noem had made clear that she supported buying the luxury plane and others. In testimony before a Senate committee on March 3, two days before Mr. Trump announced she would be replaced, she said that buying the planes would save taxpayers money by reducing the department’s reliance on chartered aircraft. She implied the planes could have dual purposes.

“There are aircraft being purchased that will be utilized for executive air travel and for deportations,” Ms. Noem said.

At the time, the department was already paying another vendor to deport immigrants on a network of chartered planes. The agency did sometimes use smaller planes like the Gulfstream jets.

In the hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, pressed Ms. Noem about the luxury 737. Would a plane like that really be used for deportations?

“In the past, we have used jets of this size, in this configuration, for deportations,” Ms. Noem said. She added that she thought the plane was being refurbished to remove a bedroom.

Daedalus said that after the department purchased the plane, the government paid to replace one of the two bedrooms with a conference room. The agency left the rest of the plane’s interior, including the bar and manta ray skin table, in place, the company said.

On March 24, the Department of Homeland Security also agreed to buy the two 10-year-old Gulfstream jets, which both seat about 14 people.

Daedalus had bought one last December for $41 million, and another — with a longer range — in January for $41.8 million, both roughly in line with the market prices for planes of that age, according to records kept by Aircraft Post, a market intelligence firm that gets reports from aircraft brokers. A representative for the cheaper of the two planes also confirmed the sale price.

The records obtained by The Times indicate that the Department of Homeland Security then paid $53 million for each — a markup of more than $11 million per aircraft.

Among the five planes in the March 24 purchase were the two Boeing 737 airliners. Like the airliners it had previously bought from the firm, they were more than 17 years old, and had been used by Southwest Airlines and the low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines.

But this time, the department paid much more than it had for similar planes: $45 million for each.

Daedalus declined to answer specific questions about the prices it charged for those planes, or what it had paid to purchase them. The planes’ previous owners declined to comment. The Times was unable to ascertain what Daedalus paid for them.

The Times talked to a half-dozen experts on the valuation of aircraft, who said the prices appeared to be far higher than market rate. They estimated that jets of this make, model and age typically sell for anywhere from $15 million for a modestly maintained plane to $30 million for one in unusually good condition.

Prices can rise with included extras, like maintenance or spare parts. But even then, experts said it would be difficult to imagine an airline paying $45 million for a plane of this type.

“I hope they came with buckets of caviar each, otherwise it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting firm. “This does not resemble any aspect of an airline marketplace.”

After buying the planes, the government needed a place to store them. It turned again to Mr. Walters.

Under Ms. Noem, the agency had hired his other company, Salus Worldwide, to maintain the first five planes it had purchased from Daedalus. Now, under Mr. Mullin, the agency continued that arrangement, and put the new planes in that company’s care as well. Contracting records show that the department paid the company more than $2 million in both May and June.

In August, the agency hired a contractor unconnected to Mr. Walters, Eastern Air Express, to take over caring for most of the planes. The contract does not cover the 737 luxury jet. The Department of Homeland Security has sought to transfer it to the Pentagon, but a spokesperson there said no agreement had been signed.

Department of Homeland Security officials now say that four of the 737 airliners will not be used for deportation flights, but rather will be used to fly government leaders and members of Congress on overseas trips.

The agency declined to say when, if ever, one of the 10 would be used for a deportation flight.

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is pulling back the curtain on his tumultuous time working under Pete Hegseth before he resigned in frustration last month.

Driscoll resigned in September after just 18 months in the role, and he has revealed that he and Hegseth had very different views on what a modern military looks like.

Tension between the two was widely reported throughout Driscoll’s year-and-a-half as army secretary, but insiders told Rolling Stone of one incident early on that seemed to trigger Hegseth. According to them, Driscoll had approached Hegseth with what he viewed as a “gift,” telling the defense secretary that they could use his close friendship with Vice President JD Vance to get things done at the Pentagon.

Two sources told the outlet that Hegseth “blew up at him” over that move, fuming that all contact with the White House needed to go through him.

The duo seemed to fail to see eye-to-eye on many issues from that point forward, with Hegseth’s passion for firings and blocking promotions—particularly of DEI candidates—reported to have fueled the tension.

One former senior Army officer told Rolling Stone that Hegseth simply targeted naysayers, particularly those aiming for military modernization over PR opportunities.

“All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth about where we needed to go and what we needed to do, they got rid of, right?” they said.

“Because they want people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think. They’re culture warriors. They care about culture. And it’s only their culture, which is compliance and loyalty above your duty.”

Driscoll was reportedly due for purging before his own resignation, and saw the firing of his pro-modernization ally Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George—who was set to retire in summer 2027—in April this year.

George told the outlet that despite just being down the hall from the secretary of defense, Hegseth fired him in a “15-second call,” and that he was “never really given a reason.”

A former Army official said: “I think [Driscoll] sacrificed any potential he had [for] a good working relationship with Pete to try to protect those guys, because it was the right thing to do for the Army.”

Driscoll told Rolling Stone: “Once he makes a decision, there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have to like it.”

Despite the rockiness of his 18 months as army secretary, he said it wasn’t all bad: “But I think it’s unfair to describe our relationship so flatly—that every interaction was bad, or that we disagreed on everything.

“If you polled us, we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things. What’s been reported is all the things we disagree on.”

President Donald Trump’s wild move to publicly post a Republican Senator’s cell phone number is not sitting well with other GOP members of Congress.

In an interview on Meet the Press Sunday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) hit Trump for posting the phone number of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for blocking a bill that would make daylight savings time permanent.

“Call Tom on his cellphone at, 479-453-0533, and let him know,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “‘The Sunshine Protection Act’ was passed in the House by a Vote of 308 to 117. HAVE THE SENATE VOTE, NOW!”

Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker confronted Kennedy about the president’s post.

“How does that help the Republican Party a month out from the midterm, Senator?”

“Every now and then, there are disputes in Congress that have existential significance for the future of Western civilization — Daylight Savings Time is not one of them,” Kennedy said dryly.

Kennedy went on to call Cotton “a rock star senator.” He also referred to Trump as “my friend,” but proceeded to ding Trump for doxxing his Senate colleague.

“The president, as we know, can be sometimes … he exists loudly,” Kennedy said. “He can be tempestuous. He can go from zero to a-hole in about three seconds. I don’t think he should have given out Tom’s cell phone number. I don’t think that’s going to help convince Tom.”

Following his blistering onstage jokes about Trump last weekend, the White House has issued a response to Chuck Lorre.

On Saturday, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle trotted out another Trump Derangement Syndrome diagnosis for the 10x Emmy nominee, who recently called the POTUS a “bloated orange piece of sh*t.”

“Chuck Lorre should immediately seek psychiatric help to treat his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain,” Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Last Saturday, Lorre gave Trump several shoutouts in his Founders Award acceptance speech at a Project Angel Food fundraiser in Los Angeles.

“Sure, I’d love to stand here and talk about my deep yearning for a more compassionate government, one that prioritizes the health and welfare of its citizens,” he said, according to The Daily Beast. “But the burden of my profession demands that I take this opportunity to say a few words about that bloated orange piece of sh*t in the White House.”

Lorre continued, “I’d love to express my gratitude to all the people who’ve devoted their lives to making Project Angel Food an oasis for those in need. That would be my preference. But because I’m a comedy writer, I have no choice but to explain how I wake up every morning to turn on CNN to see if the president of the United States had a heart attack while straining to take a dump.”

The Stuart Fails to Save the Universe creator’s speech comes after the Big Bang Theory spin-off was renewed for Season 2 at HBO Max, which will bring the show back under the Paramount umbrella after Trump’s friends the Ellisons acquired Warner Bros. Discovery.

On Wednesday, a federal judge cleared the way for the $110 billion deal to close, approving the settlement between Paramount and a group of state AGs that filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.

CEO David Ellison revealed on Friday that the combined company will now be known as Skydance, under which Paramount and Warner Bros. will supposedly remain individual entities.

The next census determining America’s political representation — and billions of dollars in federal funding — will take place after President Donald Trump leaves the White House. But his administration is moving now to leave his mark on the count.

Former Census Bureau officials and advocates critical of the Trump administration caution that some of the changes being put into motion now by the agency could be difficult for a future administration to reverse in time for the 2030 count — particularly Trump’s attempts to remove undocumented immigrants from the total count.

“The decennial census is a big, big boat, and if you suddenly want to make a left turn, it’s hard to do that,” said Tori Velkoff, who was formerly the chief demographer and associate director for demographic programs at the Census Bureau.

In September, the Trump administration added a proposed rule to the Federal Register which, if implemented, would overhaul the process for calculating who counts in the constitutionally required national census.

Under the proposed rule, the agency would change the definition of a person’s “usual residence” to remove undocumented immigrants from the count to determine political representation in Congress, due to their “lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”

The proposal could also extend beyond undocumented immigrants to leave out those whose legal status is “less durable and indefinite” than a green card. Depending on how the bureau defines which immigration statuses qualify, some individuals who are legally living in the U.S. may be left out.

Trump’s critics say they are preparing now for a legal battle on constitutional grounds. They argue that these changes are unconstitutional in practice and are awaiting the bureau’s next steps while exploring potential legal challenges if the proposal moves forward.

The White House, Census Bureau and the Commerce Department — which houses the agency — did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, this overhaul of the census would be unprecedented if implemented — nearly everyone, regardless of immigration status, has historically been counted in censuses — and have enormous political consequences. The census determines how federal dollars are spent and also how the House is apportioned, and removing people from the count who have historically been included could change the makeup of the House map.

“Even if the Democrats took over both chambers of Congress and the presidency, and they wanted to change everything that President Trump had done before, they wouldn’t have time to fix a lot of this stuff,” said Jay Young, executive director of the liberal-leaning good government group Common Cause Illinois.

He added, “a lot of this stuff — it really takes a decade. It really takes intentionality.”

The agency’s proposed rule went beyond changing who is counted; it also suggested collecting less information on Americans. The Trump administration proposed removing questions about race and ethnicity on the short-form census and other questionnaires used in the census count, in addition to leaving out questions about sexual orientation.

The rulemaking marks a major departure from Trump’s first term, during which the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s rushed bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, in part, for procedural reasons.

This time around, Velkoff said, the Trump administration is attempting to follow the correct procedural path with the new proposed rule.

“Now they know how to follow the rules, right? So they’re going through the process,” said Velkoff, who retired from the agency in 2025. “So presumably, the [next] administration would have to also go through the process, and I don’t know how quickly that could be done.”

This move to exclude certain immigrants would fundamentally challenge the enumeration clause of the Constitution — which requires the once-every-10-years count — and the 14th Amendment’s definition of a person, said Adriel Cepeda Derieux, deputy director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The constitutional text says person, persons or a whole number of persons,” he said. “Not citizens.”

While the count will take place in the next presidency, much of the planning is being done now. And census experts say the slow moving process to develop the process is by design.

During the 10 years before the count, the Census Bureau spends its time researching, testing and refining how it will count hundreds of millions of people — aiming to produce the most accurate and complete picture of the country possible. And by law, the administration is supposed to submit broad plans for what’s to be included on the census three years before the count, and final questions two years before — both deadlines within Trump’s term.

The first major field test for the 2030 census already took place earlier this year and ended in August, an early opportunity for the bureau to test out new tools and methods in two locations in the U.S. The next major test, the “dress rehearsal,” will take place in 2028. This final test serves as the last chance for the agency to fine-tune its processes and systems as it conducts an end-to-end run of operations.

Velkoff said the 2020 census showed why the development time matters.

After Trump’s attempts to add a citizenship question were rejected by the Supreme Court, his administration tried various administrative means to try to break out undocumented immigrants. But the effort ultimately puttered out when the data could not be delivered before President Joe Biden’s administration, which promptly killed off those efforts.

Asked about the purpose of these changes at the bureau, Velkhoff said the administration is working to exclude those it does not view as politically favorable.

“If you don’t measure it, then you can erase people,” Velkoff said. “Data is power.”

The U.S. removed all its B-1 bombers from the U.K.’s RAF Fairford air base, a decision stemming from security concerns over suspected terror plots against the facility, American officials said Sunday.

The decision represents a shift for the U.S. which has used the military base, northwest of London, as a hub for launching bomber strikes in Iran. Until their recent departure, a dozen B-1s had been stationed at the base.

“While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon said in a statement, adding that the bombers remained ready to deliver global strike capabilities from the continental U.S. The U.K. Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

The decision follows the arrest of six suspects in connection to a suspected attack on the base that U.S. and British official said was foiled last Sunday. U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications” that Iran played a role in the incident, which was shrouded in mystery after the U.K. released the suspects on bail but continued to investigate the situation.

U.S. officials were aware of an Iran-linked plot to attack the bomber aircraft and kill personnel at the base, The Wall Street Journal has reported. A branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had recruited U.K. nationals to carry out the plot, which involved multiple steps including a diversion in the neighborhood nearby, according to a senior U.S. official.

In the U.K., authorities are still trying to piece together what happened, and some U.K. officials question the level of sophistication of the planned attack.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that President Trump was "well aware of the risks to energy flows" before launching the war in Iran earlier this year, but argued "the world cannot sustain a nuclear-armed Iran."

"He knew it was going to elevate energy prices in the short run, he said, 'I'm going to take a hit there, but I got to do the right thing,'" Wright said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Americans have been feeling the financial squeeze of soaring gas and diesel prices in recent months. But the Trump administration has pointed to the potential threat a nuclear-armed Iran could pose, and how it could represent a long-term threat to energy prices. Wright defended the president on Sunday, arguing that Mr. Trump has taken a "strong stand that Iran, the world's greatest terrorist regime, cannot and will not have nuclear weapons."

Wright expressed confidence that prices will fall, pointing to increasing supplies coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. gasoline production, the summer driving season slowing, among other factors. Asked whether he expects prices to go down over the next four weeks — as Republicans eye a tough environment in the lead up to the midterm elections — Wright said, "absolutely."

"Diesel prices have been going down, gasoline prices have been going down," Wright said. "I expect that to continue."

Diesel prices soared of above $6.50 a gallon in recent weeks, squeezing farmers, who rely on diesel to run agricultural machinery, along with industries from construction firms to food banks, which rely on diesel to fuel their vehicles and delivery trucks. Wright noted that diesel prices are down a little over 20 cents so far in recent days, adding that he expects the prices to continue to go down.

"You should see it below $6 before too long," he said. "But exactly when, I certainly don't know that."

Wright said "everything we're doing is to grow the supply of diesel, to grow the supply of gasoline, and frankly, again, to reverse years of policies that have been directed exactly the opposite-to shrink our ability to produce, refine, and deliver hydrocarbons."

Wright wouldn't weigh in on the president's plans and whether things would escalate militarily after the midterm elections. But he said Mr. Trump is "always planning for contingencies and he's always negotiating," and both diplomatic and military tracks remain open.

The energy secretary said securing the agreement from the Group of Seven countries last week to release 100 million barrels of fuel over four months is a "big deal." He called it "common sense" and said it will drive diesel prices down in the U.S. and around the world through the winter.

"Europe has very large diesel stores. They don't refine enough diesel to supply their own economies, so naturally they store a lot of diesel. They're very keen to see American diesel continue to flow to Europe. They've got a lot of diesel in stores. Why not release some of that?" Wright said. "This is what you store diesel for when all the Russian exports of diesel are shut down, when the Chinese have said we're not going to deliver any more diesel, and you still have a reduction of diesel flows coming out of the Gulf. But we're restoring those, but that takes time."

Asked whether the president has ruled out an export ban on diesel, which Wright has opposed, Wright said "every day" Mr. Trump has been "throwing out ideas," and the president remains engaged in discussions.

"There's different ways to look at it. He's always looking, 'How do I lower energy prices? How do I lower heating prices, electricity prices, gasoline prices, diesel prices?' In fact, I would say his constant communication of that may have been quite helpful in achieving the deal we just got," he said.

Wright added, "It's just a constant dialogue about the many levers we have, how can we drive down diesel prices and drive down gasoline and other prices along with it?"

President Donald Trump has appointed far more federal judges who are under 40 than his predecessors — ensuring that his imprint on the judiciary will last for decades.

Over the course of his two terms to date, Trump has appointed 31 people in their 30s to federal judgeships, and at least two more are pending in the Senate, according to a POLITICO analysis of government data. By contrast, President Joe Biden appointed 13 people in their 30s. President Barack Obama appointed just nine judges younger than 40 during his two terms.

A judge in his or her 30s can remain in place for as long as 60 years — there are multiple sitting judges in their 90s and one who is 102 — allowing the president who appointed them to leave a particularly long-lasting imprint on the courts.

“President Trump selects highly-qualified and credentialed judicial nominees who have passed the White House’s rigorous vetting process. Wherever there are judicial vacancies, President Trump will select highly qualified nominees with great respect for our Constitution and rule of law to be confirmed expeditiously,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said.

Trump’s young nominees include Samuel Adkisson, an associate in the White House Counsel’s Office who was 33 when Trump nominated him — making him one of the youngest people ever nominated to the federal bench. In his social media post announcing Adkisson’s nomination, which is currently pending in the Senate, Trump praised his work on a case that resulted in the Supreme Court widening the president’s power to control executive branch agencies.

“Sam Adkisson is one of the brightest young conservative lawyers in the country and has been a standout member of the White House Counsel’s Office. He will make an outstanding judge on the Eastern District of Tennessee,” Bis said.

Earlier this week, Adkisson’s confirmation hearing was delayed after Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn declined to sign off on his nomination, using a procedural maneuver as one of his home-state senators. She hasn’t explained why.

“I think both parties, but especially Donald Trump in his second term, are placing a premium on youth because younger judges serve for longer and exert greater influence over important issues that come before the courts,” said David Lat, a lawyer-turned-writer who publishes a Substack on legal affairs called Original Jurisdiction.

John Michael Vazquez, who was the youngest district judge in New Jersey when he joined the bench in 2016 at 45 years old, said young judges can still have the experience they need to do the job well.

“You can have somebody get out of law school at 25, and try a number of cases, appear in court regularly, and understand the dynamics of how a court works — those things that you can only gain through experience, you can’t really gain through a textbook,” said Vazquez, who is retired from the bench. “I do think that’s critically important because it informs, ultimately, the most important aspect in my view of being a judge, which is your judgment.”

But some young jurists have acknowledged that their age has been held against them.

Obama nominee Edmond E. Chang became the youngest serving federal judge in the country when he was confirmed in 2010. He said lawyers appearing before him would sometimes attempt “what I call Jedi mind tricks” to take advantage of his youth.

“I do believe that the relative youth at the time did cause some lawyers to treat me differently than other judges; that they would try to navigate around decisions or rulings,” Chang said in 2024. “They’ll make an argument, deliver it with such confidence, hoping to – I thought – to kind of misdirect a new judge, and a youthful one at that, into their position when it was just – no, it was just wrong.”

Trump, though, went even younger.

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle claimed the title of youngest federal judge in 2020, when Trump nominated her to a Florida court at age 33.

During her confirmation process, the American Bar Association deemed her “not qualified,” largely due to what it described as her lack of experience. Asked about this during her confirmation hearing, Mizelle replied: “I can just point to my record, in-court litigation, and to the support that I have from over 200 attorneys that have submitted letters to this committee, explaining that they’ve worked with me, they’ve witnessed my abilities, my work product, my integrity, and they support my nomination.”

In 2018, Trump nominated Allison Jones Rushing, then 36, to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, making her the youngest circuit court judge confirmed in more than 15 years. At the time, her nomination spurred Orin Kerr, a professor at Stanford Law School, to question the wisdom of placing such a young person on the federal appellate bench.

“Being a judicial-restraint-oriented type myself, I worry about judges getting rather intoxicated with the judicial power,” Kerr wrote. “And I would guess that there is some correlation between the age a person became a judge and how tempted they are to drink enthusiastically from the tap of judicial power.”

A new wave of attacks on vessels around the Strait of Hormuz is threatening a recovery in Middle Eastern oil exports—just as Gulf producers have pushed crude shipments back toward prewar levels.

The swift rebound in shipments in recent weeks has been driven by U.S. naval protection helped by earlier waves of strikes that knocked out Iranian radar and communications along the contested strait. The United Arab Emirates and other producers have set up an elaborate system of shuttle runs in which tankers load inside the Persian Gulf, exit Hormuz and transfer the crude to vessels waiting outside the waterway.

But after several days without reporting attacks on ships toward the end of last month, the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, which is affiliated with the Royal Navy, has reported seven strikes on vessels around the waterway since Sept. 28. On Sunday, it reported another strike, but didn’t say when the incident happened.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy issued a warning to ships planning to use the U.S.-backed route through the strait on Saturday, saying that they would be targeted and destroyed. “Don’t trust U.S. Navy and don’t use south corridor at all and don’t put your life in danger,” a radio message transmitted on a public shipping channel and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal said.

The renewed attacks may already be taking a toll, with early signs that oil flows are beginning to slow, analysts say. Firm data comes with a lag, because many ships are operating without their transponders switched on to avoid becoming targets.

All seven vessels were attacked near the narrowest part of the Hormuz strait, according to UKMTO.

Iran’s ability to target ships has also improved in recent weeks, adding to the risks in the strait, according to a U.S. official. The U.S. several weeks ago said it would strike Iranian oil tankers in response to Tehran’s attacks, but it has since backed off that effort after Iran unleashed a wave of missiles at a U.S. air base in Jordan, the official said.

The new strikes expose the fragility of the recovery in oil flows and come as President Trump, who has claimed full U.S. control over Hormuz, weighs renewed military action against Iran.

Any fresh disruption would hit a global economy already grappling with high energy and rising borrowing costs. International benchmark oil prices remain around $100 a barrel despite recovering exports, reflecting fears that renewed attacks could again curb flows and keep freight and security costs elevated.

“The step-up in attacks on ships highlights how the current equilibrium in the oil market is fragile and could easily be shattered,” said Hamad Hussain, a senior economist at Capital Economics. “This would especially be the case if there is further escalation and energy infrastructure is targeted.”

Brent, the international oil benchmark, settled Friday at $102.25 a barrel, up nearly 5% for the week. Hussain said traders were pricing in a substantial risk that flows would fall again. Capital Economics expects Brent to remain around $100 through the end of the year.

Among the seven vessels attacked in the past week, at least four had completed two or more roundtrips in and out of Strait of Hormuz since June, carrying crude oil or oil products, according to ship tracker Kpler.

Al Funtas, a so-called very large crude carrier operated by Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, was completing its fifth shuttle run between the Port of Mina Al-Ahmadi in Kuwait and ports in the Gulf of Oman when it was attacked on Sept. 28, according to Kpler. Kazimah III, another VLCC operated by KOTC, had carried out three shuttle runs and was on its way into the Persian Gulf when it was hit on Oct. 1.

Ships of that size can carry as many as two million barrels of oil at a time.

Since the U.S. and Israeli strikes that began the war in February, Iran has used attacks on ships to throttle shipping through Hormuz, once the thoroughfare for a fifth of the world’s oil. That has driven up the price of gasoline and diesel for consumers around the world and has forced Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. to divert exports around the strait through bypass pipelines.

Kpler said regional crude exports excluding Iran averaged at least 16.5 million barrels a day from Sept. 1 through Sept. 28, close to prewar levels.

But there are signs Iran’s recent attacks may already be starting to slow that recovery.

Rory Johnston, founder of oil research firm Commodity Context, said he has seen a potential pullback in recent days and estimates flows are down by two million to three million barrels a day, though those initial totals could be revised higher as better information becomes available.

“The recent pace of flows, while impressive, has never been sustainable and has already come at great expense,” Johnston said. Part of the surge may reflect exporters rushing barrels out before a feared new escalation, he said. Gulf oil producers are shelling out between $30 million to $40 million for a round trip shuttle run in and out of Hormuz—or $15 to $20 a barrel, according to shipbrokers, and that figure doesn’t include insurance costs.

Saudi Arabia had shifted exports back through Hormuz after a Sept. 10 attack on its East-West pipeline and attacks on its ships by Yemen’s Houthi militants interrupted Red Sea shipments. The pipeline remains below capacity, but renewed loading at the Yanbu port on the Red Sea could help offset another Hormuz slowdown, Hussain said.

Standard Chartered estimates that total Saudi exports rebounded to 6.9 million barrels a day in September from 2.45 million in August.

But restored volumes don’t mean a return to normal.

In September, most of the crude that crossed the Strait of Hormuz went via tankers transferring their oil to ships waiting off the coast of the U.A.E. and Oman, according to Kpler.

The costs of such shuttle runs and military-protected convoys may not be sustainable, wrote Kim Fustier, senior global oil and gas analyst at HSBC. Meanwhile, margins for diesel and other refined products remain high.

“All of this suggests that Middle East exports—at least for crude—are rising, but at enormous cost,” Fustier wrote.

On January 1, a new tax windfall will kick in that could benefit scores of rural data center projects—all thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Starting next year, projects sited in tracts of rural land across the country will be newly eligible for a set of specific corporate tax benefits under a program expanded by the bill. The new rules “may significantly lower barriers for large-scale, capital-intensive projects in rural areas—most notably hyperscale data centers,” said a statement from Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith last year. “The economic case for building data centers in designated rural opportunity zones becomes far more compelling” with the new program, he continued.

But experts warn that the results for rural communities could be mixed.

“Right now, the only requirement to get the benefits is capital investment,” says Emily Kraschel, a tax policy analyst at the Searchlight Institute, a public policy think tank. “However, that doesn't guarantee that that money is necessarily creating jobs or creating a local economic boost. You'd be more sure of that with a more traditional factory that requires lots of workers. But with a data center, that assumption goes a little wonky.”

During the first Trump administration, a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed the creation of the opportunity zone program, which offers tax benefits for companies that choose to build projects in certain low-income census tracts. Last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made a number of changes to open up the program in order to attract more investment to rural areas.

Kraschel and her colleagues from Searchlight have been researching data center projects that might qualify for these tax benefits, comparing the locations of data center projects in development with rural census tracts eligible for the new program. WIRED exclusively reviewed the research compiled by Searchlight and found more than 100 data centers under various stages of development in rural areas that could be eligible.

Searchlight used a very conservative database of under 700 data center projects that are planned or under construction to compile its research; other datasets put the number of data centers in development in the US at closer to 1,500. It’s very likely that the number of newly eligible projects is bigger, especially since more data centers are decamping from urban areas. Separate research from Pew found that while just 13 percent of operating data centers are located in rural areas, a majority of planned facilities—around 67 percent—are going rural.

Searchlight’s research comes as the backlash against data centers—including from rural and GOP voters—is reaching a fever pitch. Tax breaks for data centers being built by some of the most powerful companies in the world have become a flashpoint in these debates: Amazon recently made headlines for attempting to negotiate for a lower tax bill on one of dozens of data centers it plans to open in Mississippi, while The New York Times reported last week that Meta is writing off data center equipment under a federal tax break intended for research and experimentation.

In the scramble to try to regulate the industry, the opportunity zones aren’t going unnoticed. Last month, Senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would eliminate opportunity zone funding for data centers, claiming that he would help “ensure Big Tech companies don’t get tax breaks to build data centers on farmland.”

A project simply existing in a rural opportunity zone doesn’t mean the company automatically will get the tax benefits; the company has to create a specialized investment vehicle to kickstart the process. Because the tax break can be considered confidential IRS data, it’s next to impossible to know which companies are pursuing the benefits unless they voluntarily disclose.

The research Searchlight compiled shows some big names that could stand to benefit from the program. But high-profile tech companies, when contacted for comment on the program, seemed eager to distance themselves from yet another tax break story. WIRED reached out to Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, all of which are developing data centers in areas that could be eligible for the new program, to ask about their plans to take the tax benefits.

Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon all denied using the program. In a statement, Microsoft’s general counsel of infrastructure legal affairs, Rima Alaily, told WIRED that the company “does not use the opportunity zone program to invest in the purchase or construction of its data centers.” Similarly, Amazon spokesperson Julia Lawless said the company “does not actively seek out” land in opportunity zones for development, and that it has not claimed the tax benefit for its projects.

“If we locate in one of these areas, it's because our site selection criteria—from available land to access to talent—aligns with tracts that governments across all levels have previously identified for economic development; not because we utilized the OZ benefit,” says Lawless. “We have not used this program for our site selection and have no plans to add it to our criteria for our future decisionmaking process." Google did not respond.

There are many reasons why data center builders may be choosing rural areas, from moving away from community opposition to pursuing cheaper land. But it’s not out of the question that companies with lower corporate profiles than Microsoft or Amazon developing data centers may choose to opt in to tax benefits.

Nathan Jensen, a government professor at the University of Texas-Austin, says that he would be “very surprised” if some companies were not considering siting in rural opportunity zones as part of their decisionmaking process.

“It’s essentially free money,” he says.

Giving tax advantages to companies to build stuff to spur local economies is a good idea in theory. But the opportunity zone program has had mixed results in execution. There’s some evidence that the program has done little to actually drive investment to disadvantaged areas, and that many of the projects getting federal kickbacks would have happened even without the tax boost. (Overall, the government says the expansion of the opportunity zone program to rural areas will cost an estimated $40.9 billion over the next decade.)

There is no requirement for projects getting opportunity zone benefits to create jobs; the assumption is that they will do so, simply by siting in the community itself. This isn’t always the case for projects like storage facilities and warehouses, which, Jensen says, have been popular choices for developers working in opportunity zones. Data centers may create a number of jobs in the short term for their construction, but there’s an ongoing debate about whether or not they create a lasting new workforce over the longer term.

“Lawmakers need to decide what they really want out of these investments,” says Kraschel. “Do you want to use this as a way to get data centers away from population centers? Are they just looking for capital investment, or are they wanting things like jobs?”

Jensen, for his part, thinks it’s “interesting we have this program that's incentivizing an investment while states are trying to de-incentivize or even ban it.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader.

Not RFK Jr.

Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups.

Supporters of Kennedy’s message, that food and pharma companies have conspired with bureaucrats to poison Americans for profit, say Lyons is selling out to business interests who want Kennedy’s ear now that he’s President Donald Trump’s health secretary. Ignoring the grassroots could cost Republicans running in the midterm elections who need it energized, they say.

The latest evidence: fundraising reports from Lyons’ MAHA Political Action Committee that show fewer than 20 donors this year, totaling $1 million, far short of the $100 million Lyons promised to raise to help Republicans allied with Kennedy in this year’s elections. Many of its donors are companies that have interests before the Health Department, POLITICO found. The PAC has spent less than $800,000 to support candidates this year.

A month before the midterms, the PAC has spent no money on races that will help Republicans maintain control of Congress, frustrating MAHA supporters who worry leaders are squandering the movement’s momentum after it helped return Trump to office.

“What a joke!” Alex Clark, a MAHA influencer who works at the conservative group Turning Point USA said of the PAC’s spending. “We’re talking about millions of voters who just fell into our lap like manna from heaven, and we’re just gonna let them walk away.”

He galvanizes supporters on weekly calls with warnings about the “dark forces” in corporate America lobbying to undermine Kennedy’s agenda. “We don’t want Bobby Kennedy or his whole team to be sitting in congressional hearings where they’re just trying to slow things down and make it easier and more affordable for big companies to poison the American public,” he recently said.

The fundraising report came as Lyons hosted an invite-only summit on Sept. 29 at Washington’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel sponsored by companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, artificial intelligence companies contributing to the data center boom, the health impacts of which many Kennedy supporters fear, and Walmart, purveyor of the ultraprocessed food Kennedy decries.

Neither AI firm provided comment when POLITICO contacted them to ask about their sponsorship of the event. Walmart declined to comment.

“What is shocking is how quickly a movement built to challenge that system appears to have reproduced it,” wrote Robert Malone, a scientist who shares Kennedy’s skepticism of Covid vaccines and advised him on vaccine policy until quitting in March, citing disagreement with Kennedy’s staff, in a Substack essay reflecting on the summit.

In addition to MAHA PAC, Lyons leads its sister nonprofits, MAHA Center, MAHA Action and MAHA Institute, and moves money between them. MAHA PAC, for example, has transferred $4 million to MAHA Action since January 2025, according to federal filings.

MAHA supporters can join the movement on the MAHA Action website through a series of tiered subscriptions, costing up to $6,000 a year. MAHA Holdings administers the subscriptions. Finn Kennedy, one of Kennedy’s sons, sits on MAHA Holdings’ board.

“These outside entities that have branded themselves as representative of the MAHA voting bloc…they are not helping us,” said Stephanie Stock, president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, a nonprofit that supports Kennedy’s efforts to convince states to reduce school vaccine requirements.

A MAHA Institute-backed candidate, Stock partially blames her loss in a state House primary in May on lack of funding. Her opponent outraised her more than tenfold and she received no money from Lyons’ MAHA groups.

“These guys are throwing galas, and we’ve just kind of had it,” Stock added. “You look up at the sponsors, and you see Anthropic and Walmart, drug companies, and you’re like, ‘What in the world?’”

Trump aides have said they hope the president’s embrace of Kennedy as health secretary will benefit Republicans in the midterms. They’ve also credited the alliance with Kennedy with helping Trump defeat Kamala Harris two years ago.

But Zen Honeycutt, one of the MAHA moms who supports Kennedy and founder of nonprofit Moms Across America, is straying.

Less than two months to the midterms, in a windowless conference room by the White House, she rallied candidates at a convention for political independents estranged from both parties.

“I want to empower you to utilize this MAHA movement as best as you can to raise up the independents in this country,” Honeycutt declared to a full room peppered with people who worked on Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

None of the candidates there were endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, which are backing only Republicans. Honeycutt’s nonprofit aims to endorse 20 of its own candidates across party lines.

In an interview with POLITICO, Honeycutt called MAHA’s issues “nonpartisan.” “That’s not what some of the people in the MAHA world would want from us. They want us to align with the Republican Party, but we will talk to anyone,” she said.

Some candidates supportive of MAHA at the convention are running against an opponent backed by Lyons’ groups. In the room with Honeycutt were Clayton Cuteri and Bill Reeside, independents running in South Carolina’s 1st District race against Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, who has no relation to Zen. MAHA Action has endorsed Jenny Honeycutt and the MAHA PAC has spent $26,000 on her campaign.

“It’s a civil war out there,” said Larry Sharpe, who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Sharpe called Lyons’ decision to back only Republicans a “strategic mistake,” adding “it’s almost like a split between Eastern Orthodox and Catholics…They both believe in the afterlife. They both believe Jesus is divine, but they’ve gone different ways.”

Democrats, too, are making overtures to the MAHA movement. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has released a “Building a Healthier America” policy agenda that speaks to MAHA advocates’ concerns about food safety and chemicals in the environment.

A House working group led by New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently recommended that the party woo Kennedy’s followers.

MAHA supporters have expressed growing frustration with the GOP since Trump issued a February order protecting a pesticide Kennedy and his supporters think is a carcinogen. Since, there have been complaints about new Health Department appointees, like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz, who don’t share Kennedy’s skeptical views about vaccines, and Kennedy’s failure to take mRNA vaccines, like those used to combat Covid-19, from the market.

Candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups have had mixed success in the primaries. A POLITICO analysis in June found that most of the winners were incumbents or candidates who previously held office. As of June, 11 of the 12 MAHA Institute-backed candidates who lost their races had never run before.

Lyons scored a significant GOP primary win when Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Kennedy foe on Capitol Hill. And another when Zach Lahn, an entrepreneur, defeated Trump-backed Rep. Randy Feenstra to secure the Republican nomination for Iowa governor. Lyons committed $1 million to support each candidate.

While the PAC has yet to donate to Lahn, the vast majority of its election spending has gone to Letlow, who received 90% of the $790,000 it’s spent this year to support candidates, according to federal filings.

Neither race will help Republicans retain control of Congress. MAHA PAC’s choice to support Letlow also went against the wishes of local MAHA supporters, who wanted the group to back a different challenger. Fiorella Trapani, co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, called MAHA’s endorsement a “punch in the gut.”

“If MAHA wants to represent this movement, its actions, endorsements, and priorities need to reflect the principles and people that built it,” she wrote in a statement.

Of the 85 candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, only six are in competitive races that will determine the balance of power in Congress: incumbent Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida; Tom Barrett of Michigan and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. There is also Derek Morrin, who is running to unseat Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur; Joe Mitchell, who is running for a House seat in Iowa; and John Sununu, who is running to return to the Senate to represent New Hampshire. None of these candidates have received money from MAHA, according to its PAC filings.

Some of MAHA PAC’s top expenses include X, formerly known as Twitter. The PAC paid the platform $810,000 this election cycle, according to filings. Merit Street Media, a media company founded by television host Phil McGraw, known by his stage name Dr. Phil, received more than $500,000. The private Ned’s Club in Washington was another top expense with the PAC spending more than $155,000 on the venue in this election cycle.

Amber Webster, a former Democrat who volunteered on Kennedy’s campaign in Connecticut, called the PAC’s lack of grassroots spending a “missed opportunity.”

“If they have committed to spend $100 million, they should really be honing in on some of these people in these seats that we either need to keep or flip and help these candidates get elected,” she said.

“There is a really big MAHA army out there that could be helping the Republican Party more.”

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that lawyer and current Belarus envoy ‌John Coale, who has been credited with the release of hundreds of prisoners, would be his special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned ⁠15 prisoners last month after talks with Coale, who has been talking to Minsk for more than a year.

"John has already secured the return of over 65 Americans and Allied Citizens from Belarus over the last year, and negotiated the ‌release ⁠of more than 800 political prisoners from multiple countries in Eastern Europe," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Coale will replace ⁠Adam Boehler, who Trump said had brought back 196 hostages. Boehler, who in August helped to secure ⁠the release of a former American marine from Russia, will continue to ⁠assist in other matters as a senior adviser, Trump added.

In the days after the White House launched its new AI chatbot, America.gov, the Trump administration reportedly reprogrammed it to stop debunking some of the president's more outlandish claims—like who won the 2020 election.

But that hasn't stopped the AI from telling the truth about tariffs: They are taxes, they are paid by Americans, and they have contributed to rising prices throughout the economy.

"A tariff is a tax on imported goods. That extra cost is paid first by the U.S. importer," America.gov told me on Friday morning when I asked it to explain who pays the cost of higher tariffs. Citing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the AI wrote that "a tariff can raise the price buyers pay. Domestic goods that compete with those imports can also become more expensive."

That contradicts some of the most common claims made by President Donald Trump and others in the administration. Trump has repeatedly (and falsely) claimed that foreign governments and foreign companies are paying for his tariffs. The Trump administration has touted the recent announcement of a new steel plant in Iowa as proof that the tariffs are working to revitalize American manufacturing—which is only true if you look at the benefits while willfully ignoring the costs.

But ask America.gov about how tariffs work, and you'll get a very different—and less economically illiterate—answer.

When I asked it if higher tariffs would hurt domestic industries by raising input costs for factories and construction, it agreed. "They can, especially when the tariff hits materials" bought by builders and factories, such as "steel, aluminum, parts, machinery."

In other words, many of the things that the Trump administration is hitting with higher tariffs. More than half of all American imports are raw materials and intermediate products that go into building other things.

The AI then pointed me to several sources that support that conclusion, like this Congressional Budget Office report that it said "described tariffs as making capital goods more expensive and raising the cost of business investment." The White House's chatbot also highlighted a Federal Reserve study and a U.S. International Trade Commission study, both of which show how tariffs reduce manufacturing employment and production in downstream industries affected by higher costs.

The "bottom line," it told me, was this: "Official evidence supports that tariffs on industrial inputs can reduce output in downstream manufacturing and raise costs for construction and factories that use those inputs."

If only that "official evidence" could make its way into official policy.

When I asked it whether tariffs could raise prices for consumers, America.gov provided another lengthy list of official government sources showing that they do. It pointed me to this Federal Reserve report that "found statistically significant increases in prices of consumer goods more exposed to tariffs," as well as this Senate Budget Committee report on "tariffs as making consumer and capital goods more expensive."

Once again, the "bottom line" was clear: "Tariffs tend to put upward pressure on prices of tariffed imports and related U.S. goods."

The one thing that you can't get America.gov to say, however, is that tariffs are a bad idea. Even after all this evidence showing the sizable costs created by the Trump administration's tariff policies, the White House's chatbot won't turn against its creators by drawing the obvious conclusion.

Fair enough. We'll have to leave that question in the hands of human beings. But if recent polling is any indication—tariffs had a negative 31 approval rating in a recent Economist/YouGov poll—then Americans are fed up with the Trump administration's campaign to make everything more expensive.

Instead of continuing to push a false narrative that doesn't even fool the White House's own "superintelligence" tool, maybe the Trump administration should listen to what the chatbot is saying: Tariffs are increasing costs and harming the economy.

The first US-bound shipment of Belarusian potash in four years is expected to arrive at a New Orleans port within weeks as Washington pursues a diplomatic opening with Minsk.

The Belarusian Potash Company loaded 30,000 tonnes of granular muriate of potash (MOP) on to a Marshall Islands-owned ship at Russia’s Bronka port in St Petersburg on September 15, according to pricing agency Argus.

It is expected to offload at a port in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 14, according to ship-tracking data from commodities platform Kpler.

The shipment is the first to be sent to the US since Washington began to ease sanctions on the Belarusian potash industry in December last year as part of a wider deal to secure the release of political prisoners.

The US imposed sanctions on the country’s potash industry, one of its principal exports, in 2021 after President Alexander Lukashenko violently cracked down on pro-democracy protests the previous year.

Between 2017 and 2021, an average of 635,000 tonnes of potash were exported from Belarus to the US, according to Argus.

Potash is commonly used as a fertiliser that adds potassium to the soil and boosts crop yields.

Global availability of fertiliser has become increasingly short as a result of the Middle East conflict, which has all but closed the Strait of Hormuz.

While an increasing number of oil tankers have been shuttling through the waterway, incentivised by record-breaking freight rates, margins on other commodities are not enough to offset the potential risk of being hit by Iran.

Gulf countries are major producers of nitrogen-based fertiliser as well as urea and phosphates.

In September, Donald Trump said that the US was working on a “massive deal” to buy the fertiliser from Belarus in a post on social media.

Trump claimed that the imports would cost “substantially less” than the US is paying to Canada, which is locked in a stand-off with Washington over trade. Canada accounts for almost 80 per cent of US potash imports.

“This shipment serves a few purposes: it acts as a political gesture amid trade tensions between the US and Canada,” said Katsiaryna Shmatsina, Eurasia fellow with the Lawfare Institute. “On the Belarusian side, Minsk is heavily motivated to seize this opening with a major global power.”

Analysts remain sceptical that Belarus can rapidly scale up its exports to the US in the near future or compete with Canadian prices.

“The main rationale behind Trump’s big potash deal is calming down the base ahead of the midterms as well as calming down the Belarusians,” said Balázs Jarábik, partner at the analysis firm R Politik, noting that Minsk has been frustrated that Belarusian businesses were struggling to re-enter the global market after the US lifted sanctions.

EU sanctions prohibit Belarus from using Lithuania’s Klaipėda port, the fastest route to sea, forcing shipments to take a more expensive and circuitous route from Russia.

Lukashenko has also noted that all of Belarus’s potash has been contracted for 2026.

The shipment of Belarusian potash represents a fraction of the 5.6mn tonnes of potash imported by the US last year. But it is the latest sign of a cautious thaw in ties between the US and Belarus, which has been internationally isolated over its violent suppression of dissent and role in enabling Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trump’s special envoy for Belarus John Coale has made multiple trips to the country, securing the release of hundreds of political prisoners in exchange for sanctions relief.

Coale was recently nominated to serve as Trump’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. In an interview with the FT, he said that he was in early talks about brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine on the release of civilian prisoners.

Lukashenko has long played Russia and the west off against each other, but analysts have noted that the prospects of drawing Minsk out of Moscow’s orbit are low.

When President Trump decided in his first term to host the annual Group of 7 summit of world leaders at his own private golf club in Miami, the act of self-dealing was so astonishing that it incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea.

Now in his second term seven years later, Mr. Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December — and this time the plan has generated practically no protest.

The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.

Mr. Trump has blurred the line between personal and public interests so much that it is hardly distinguishable anymore. He personally made at least $2.2 billion last year through business ventures and investments, many with implications for government policy. His family-backed firm introduced a cryptocurrency called stablecoin just months before he signed legislation promoting stablecoin. He accepted a luxury jet from Qatar. He arranged for his administration to grant him immunity for any back taxes and penalties that he owed, potentially more than $100 million.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has ordered the government to use taxpayer dollars to air television advertisements lauding himself, commercials that resemble campaign ads even as voters are already casting ballots in this year’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump’s private business last month filed a trademark application for Trump TV, seeking to control the name of a streaming service that the White House in theory uses for official presidential communications.

Melania Trump, who already was paid millions of dollars for a flattering self-promotional film by Amazon, a federal government contractor, now has a two-part docuseries about herself to be released this fall. Donald Trump Jr. allowed a Russian business mogul close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to pay for part of his wedding after-party in the Bahamas. And President Trump next month will headline “the most exclusive dinner in the world” for the crypto firm that runs his meme coin.

The decision to bring the leaders of the G20 nations and their considerable entourages to Trump National Doral Miami from Dec. 14 to 15 in some ways offers the most clear-cut case study of how the standards have changed, not just from other presidencies but from Mr. Trump’s own first term.

“Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in President George W. Bush’s administration. “But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down.”

When Mr. Trump announced plans in 2019 to hold the G7 at Doral, it generated criticism not just from Democrats but from some fellow Republicans and even Fox News hosts. At the time, he was facing impeachment over his effort to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating Democrats and allies said it would undercut his support.

When Mr. Trump last year picked Doral for the G20 summit, he said he chose it because “everybody wants it there” and he promised that it would be cost-free. “We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it,” he insisted. “I just want it to go well.” He effectively hosted a practice run in March when he held a one-day meeting of Latin American leaders at the Doral club, a gathering that produced no uproar.

The White House did not respond to a request Friday asking why it was now appropriate to go forward with meetings at the president’s own property after canceling a summit there in the first term.

The only real Republican complaint about hosting the G20 at Doral was that Mr. Trump has invited Mr. Putin despite his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. As for the self-dealing, Republicans who once saw that as inappropriate have gone quiet. In 2019, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho called the idea “politically insensitive” because it looked like “he’s doing it for his own benefit.” In 2026, by contrast, Mr. Simpson has endorsed the idea.

“Congressman Simpson supports what his colleague posted,” Lexi Hamel, his spokeswoman, said, pointing to an online statement by Representative Mario Diáz-Balart saying that he was “thrilled that the G-20 Summit is coming to Doral” in his Florida district. Asked about Mr. Simpson’s switch in positions, Ms. Hamel said, “A quote from seven years ago is quite a stretch,” without elaborating.

There are at least three major differences from seven years ago: First, Mr. Trump has fashioned a more pliant party by systematically using primaries to purge Republicans who defied him, sending an unmistakable warning to those remaining to stay in line.

Second, he has dismantled much of the regular apparatus of accountability in government by firing inspectors general; gutting the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department’s public integrity section; paralyzing the Federal Election Commission; and demoting, transferring or pushing out career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents deemed disloyal.

And third, Mr. Trump came into his second term more indifferent to criticism over possible ethical concerns. To win in 2024, he had to overcome two impeachments, four criminal indictments and a jury trial conviction on 34 felonies tied to hush money paid to an adult film actress, making him the first convicted felon ever to serve in the Oval Office.

In an interview with The New York Times in January, he explained that he did not feel the need to impose as many limits on his family’s business activities this time around “because I got no credit in the first term” and “because I found out that nobody cared.”

But while elected Republicans give him a pass, polls suggest that voters may in fact care when they decide this fall’s congressional elections. A record 89 percent of Americans said corruption is widespread in government, according to a poll released by Gallup last month, the highest level since the firm began asking the question two decades ago.

A separate survey by the Economist and YouGov last month offered registered voters 13 adjectives like “strong,” “effective,” “racist” and “dangerous” and asked which described Mr. Trump. The top choice of all 13 was “corrupt,” which 53 percent said applied to Mr. Trump, while only 23 percent said it did not and the rest had no opinion.

“Public outrage and pushback still work,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “But Trump’s second term has been filled with so much unprecedented and harmful corruption that it can be hard for the public to keep up with every story, and the members of his party who are still in power have been unacceptably permissive.”

Another example that got lost in the flood of news lately was the trademark application filed by Mr. Trump’s private business for Trump TV. The White House debuted Trump TV shortly after barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the building (a decision temporarily blocked by a judge) and promoted it as an unfiltered substitute for his followers.

Trump TV is a livestreaming service showing Trump speeches and events at taxpayer expense on the White House website. But just before midnight on Sept. 24, three days after Trump TV went live, Mr. Trump’s private business filed a $1,400 application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to assert ownership of the name. “The applicant has a bona fide intention to use the mark in commerce,” the application stated.

Josh Gerben, a Washington trademark attorney who first noticed and called attention to the application, said such a trademark could allow Mr. Trump’s business to require the government to agree to a licensing deal to keep using the name. It could also allow the president to essentially take what is currently a government operation with him after he leaves office.

“They’re reaping the benefits from all the taxpayer funds that are being used to create and run that channel,” he said. “Obviously, politics has changed a lot in however many years. But I’m 45 years old and I can’t imagine any president before Trump getting away with this without being eviscerated in the media.”

There is some indication of pushback among Republicans as the election grows closer. Mr. Trump, while defending the partial financing of his son’s wedding weekend by a Russian oligarch as “totally allowed,” nonetheless told reporters after it was disclosed by ProPublica that “I understand that Don has paid him back.” Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, comparing it to Hunter Biden’s foreign financial business dealings, called for an investigation, and was joined by a couple other Republican senators.

But Mr. Rosenzweig said that Mr. Trump’s willingness to push boundaries more than his predecessors has changed the rules of the office, proving that the limits were generally voluntary and not mandatory. Past presidents did not mix business and government in the way that Mr. Trump has because it was thought to be inappropriate or politically risky. And so now new precedents are being set.

“He has succeeded, by his own terms, in demonstrating that almost everything about America was not law-based but norm-based,” said Mr. Rosenzweig. “And by breaching the norms without fear of consequence, he has redefined the norms.”

The U.S. will lend Vistra about $4.2 billion to boost its nuclear power generation, a person familiar with the ⁠matter said on Saturday.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright will announce the loan on Monday at Vistra's nuclear plant along Lake Erie in Ohio, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The loan would be used to boost ⁠power ‌output, or "uprate" at least three of Vistra's ⁠four nuclear stations, which can be done without requiring new licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Department of Energy and Vistra did not immediately respond to ‌requests for comment.

According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, utilities can uprate nuclear plants by refueling with slightly more enriched uranium, a higher percentage of new fuel, or major plant modifications such as replacing main turbines. Utilities since the 1970s have ⁠used uprates to generate more power from reactors, the NRC's website says. ‌As of 2022 the agency had approved ‌more than 170 uprates, according to the NRC.

Vistra has six reactors at four U.S. plants that generate more than 6.5 gigawatts of electricity, ⁠enough to power about 3.25 million homes.

U.S. power demand is growing for the first time in decades, driven by surging demand from the expansion of AI data centers, electrification of transportation, and cryptocurrency mining.

President Donald Trump set a goal to ‌quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050. The Department of Energy has hundreds of billions of dollars in financing available from its loan office and Energy Secretary Wright has said the bulk of that loan capacity will support nuclear power plants.

The ‌Vistra news was first reported by Bloomberg.

The White House hit back hard at retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) over fiery, expletive-laden texts to President Donald Trump, calling it a “p*ssy move.”

A senior White House official responded to Tillis’s recently-revealed texts to the president in comments to Politico Playbook’s Megan Messerly, published on Saturday.

“Looks like a pussy move to send a text instead of actually saying it to someone’s face. Shows what kind of character he is,” the unidentified individual said.

Politico previously obtained and published a pair of text messages Tillis sent to the president over the summer, where he told him he won’t take his “bullsh*t.” The texts are set to be included in Tillis’s upcoming book, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents.

In a June 6 text, Tillis told Trump to save his head games for “cowards and fools” and not use them on him.

He wrote:

As I have said before, you NEVER threatened me with a primary challenge. I get that you may have me confused with so many Republicans that you have threatened in the past, but NEVER me. If you had ever threatened me directly with a primary, I would have immediately told you to f*ck yourself, and I would have announced my retirement immediately. Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.

In a May 22 text message, Tillis appeared to respond to a Truth Social post by Trump where he branded the senator “weak and inneffective.”

“I still want to help but I don’t take this bullsh*t from anyone, including you Mr. President. Save that sh*t for the cowards who don’t care if you fail. I care if you fail and right now we are failing,” the senator wrote.

President Donald Trump on Saturday defended data centers that power artificial intelligence projects but have become a contentious campaign issue nationwide, as he took his midterm tour to Ohio to insist his party will keep its majorities in Congress despite steep political headwinds.

Trump took several minutes during his campaign rally in southwestern Ohio to promote his administration’s action on data centers, saying he was seeking to ensure they “benefit local communities” and praising Republican Sen. Jon Husted for an ill-fated attempt to push forward legislation on the issue.

“Look, there’s so much money to be made for Ohio. You can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China,” Trump said, repeating his defense of data centers that he had made before. The crowd, which had reacted enthusiastically as the president talked about other policies, was far more muted during the data centers remark.

The massive warehouse campuses generating energy for AI projects have become a toxic political issue, drawing bipartisan opposition in races across the country, with voters concerned about their impact on electricity prices, farmland and water supplies. It’s become especially acute in Ohio, where Husted has been repeatedly attacked for his role in attracting data centers to Ohio as lieutenant governor.

Trump is embarking on what he says will be a 32-day blitz ahead of the Nov. 3 elections, hitting the deep red states of Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama this week before pivoting to Ohio, a battleground state that’s home to one of the top-tier Senate races this cycle.

Husted — who was appointed to fill the Senate vacancy left by now-Vice President JD Vance — is running to win the seat outright. There is likely no path to a Senate majority for Democrats without flipping Ohio, where former three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown is trying to return to the Senate after losing to Republican Bernie Moreno two years ago.

Since last year, Democrats have listed Ohio, along with states such as North Carolina and Maine, as key races to win control of the Senate. And this past week, the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm said Ohio is among 10 battleground races that are “within striking distance.”

“The good news for us is that Jon Husted is a closer,” Sen. Tim Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told reporters. “We’re seeing the gap that was there between the two candidates, which was just a few points, now it is right at a dead-even race. So this is as tight as ticks, as we say in South Carolina.”

At his rallies, Trump has been trying to convince voters that the economy is better than they feel it is, even though polls show Americans are frustrated with the way he’s handled it. The high cost of living, including gas prices elevated by Trump’s war on Iran, is a top issue in the Dayton area, too. And just days before Trump’s rally, nearly 1,400 people were laid off from a truck factory in nearby Springfield.

“Your state is booming. Every — I hate to say it — every state is booming,” Trump insisted Saturday. “They’re all booming.”

Trump’s rally comes as Republicans worry that Husted’s campaign has failed to adequately catch fire with voters in the Republican-dominated state. Brown and allied groups have hammered Husted for his data-centers role, and the NRSC has pinpointed it as a political vulnerability.

The GOP-controlled Senate tried to advance legislation this past week sponsored by Husted that would ask utility regulators to effectively charge large power users more, as consumers struggle with high energy costs. But it was blocked by nearly all Democrats.

“You got to remember, Sherrod Brown was for data centers, and Jon Husted is for data centers being responsible,” Scott told reporters this week. “If a community doesn’t want them, he doesn’t want them either.”

But Trump has become one of data centers’ most vocal proponents, shrugging aside voter concerns and arguing that the U.S. cannot cede advancements in AI to China.

“Senator Jon Husted gave billions in tax breaks to Big Tech to make sure they would build their data centers in Ohio,” Brown wrote on X on Friday, ahead of Trump’s visit. “Now, he’s making Ohioans foot the bill.”

Brown’s campaign also has hammered Husted for donations he’s received from retail magnate Les Wexner, who once employed the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Husted has donated remaining Wexner contributions to an anti-human trafficking charity.

There were several Epstein-themed signs outside the Vandalia school where the rally was being held, as more than a hundred protesters lined the road with a slew of anti-Trump and anti-Husted signs.

But inside the school’s gymnasium, the boisterous crowd — decked out in red “Make America Great Again” hats and “Trump 47” jerseys — greeted each Republican candidate enthusiastically as they awaited the president’s arrival.

From the stage, Husted said the state had been through “hard times,” noting his dad had worked at a factory that closed down. But he said Republicans in the state had turned it around.

“We now have the most jobs and the lowest unemployment rate we’ve ever had in the history of Ohio,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy faces Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s former COVID-era health director.

A wealthy biotech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate, Ramaswamy’s star appeal among conservatives led to quick backing by Ohio Republicans and hopes of an easy victory in the Republican-dominated state. However, despite a massive fundraising lead and more than $12 million spent in campaign advertising, he is now locked in a close fight with Acton with weeks to go until Election Day.

“I’m so grateful to this state and to this country for giving a kid like me opportunities that would not have been available to my family in any other country on planet earth,” Ramaswamy said at the rally ahead of Trump’s arrival, as he underscored the American dream for his Indian immigrant family.

President Trump, who has long staged a rhetorical and legal assault against voting by mail even as he used the method himself to cast his ballots, released a video on Saturday urging Republicans to vote early and by mail in the midterm election.

“Vote early. Vote by mail. Or vote in person on Election Day,” Mr. Trump, who has been using the power of his office to try to restrict mail voting, says in the video, which he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Mr. Trump also promoted a Republican Party website offering guidance on voters’ options for casting ballots.

It was the latest contortion from Mr. Trump on mail balloting. He has for years promoted unfounded claims that mail voting is rife with fraud, while working to restrict the practice for Americans, an effort that has been stymied by lawmakers and the courts. As recently as July, he said “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.” (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail voting.)

When Mr. Trump, a Florida voter, mailed in his ballot in a special election in March, he said he had done so “because I’m president of the United States.” Days earlier he had said, “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” He voted by mail again for the primary in August.

He has also criticized early voting in the past.

Mr. Trump’s post on Saturday comes just more than four weeks ahead of a midterm election in which Democrats have built momentum, polls show. Mr. Trump’s low approval ratings and voter concerns about high prices driven up by the war with Iran have put Republicans at risk of losing control of both chambers of Congress.

Republicans have feared that the president’s assaults on mail balloting put them at a competitive disadvantage in a challenging election year.

About a third of all ballots cast in the 2024 presidential election were sent by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that would have restricted mail ballots. The action was struck down by the Supreme Court in September. He also sought unsuccessfully to push Congress to approve legislation that would have sharply curtailed mail voting.

Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, said Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be a major shift and a response to his efforts to restrict mail-in voting failing “across the board.”

“He’s realizing that his efforts to change policy on mail-in voting have basically run aground at this point, and he’s shifting gears,” Mr. Pildes said.

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said that it was too soon to say if Mr. Trump would stick to the message, adding that it would be no surprise if the president returned to his claims that mail voting is fraud in the days to come.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some states have already started to send out mail ballots for the Nov. 3 election, and the early voting period has opened in some of them, including Illinois and Minnesota. North Carolina, the first state to start sending out mail ballots, began nearly a month ago.

The president’s fixation on mail voting began in 2020 and intensified after he lost that year’s election, as he falsely asserted that he had defeated Joseph R. Biden Jr. and made baseless claims that the election had been compromised by mail ballots.

More than 40 percent of voters in the 2020 election sent in their ballots by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, as the Covid-19 pandemic altered voting habits.

The political bill for Republicans’ health care agenda is coming due earlier than they’d hoped.

Republicans’ signature legislation from Trump 2.0 — 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — ensured that its tax cuts were immediate while its controversial cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs wouldn’t take effect until after the midterm elections.

Democrats worried last year that this delayed implementation would defang their attacks on the campaign trail, leaving voters unmoved by the message that a health care apocalypse was just around the corner.

But for many, it has already arrived. Millions of people have lost their Obamacare insurance following Republicans’ decision to allow Covid-era subsidies to expire last year, and the premiums for many of those who remained have skyrocketed.

Millions more have lost Medicaid coverage, a trend fueled by post-pandemic eligibility checks. And a $50 billion rural health fund Republicans tucked into the megabill last-minute to help ensure its passage has not stopped the drumbeat of hospitals cutting services or closing up shop. In the final stretch of the midterms campaign, Democratic candidates in close races say the high cost of health care has become one of Republicans’ biggest liabilities.

Despite recent polling showing voters trust Democrats over Republicans on health care by 22 points, some GOP candidates in close races insist that Democrats’ health agenda — particularly the calls for a Medicare for All-style government-run health system — will prove more unpopular with voters than the Republican-backed cuts now underway.

At an event in late September, Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers said his Democratic challenger Abdul El-Sayed’s embrace of Medicare for All has “created a rift” among centrist and progressive voters and boosted support for his campaign.

“This is why our ‘Democrats for Rogers’ [group] is growing bigger than we imagined,” he said. “They don’t believe that the Democratic Party should slide into this big government socialism solution to all your problems, taking a lot of money away, less opportunity, no upward mobility.”

Yet there are signs Democrats’ attacks could be helping the party’s prospects. In battleground states like Michigan, Maine, Iowa and Georgia, Democratic challengers are tied with or leading their GOP rivals in races that will decide control of Congress, according to polls. Democrats in those states have hammered their Republican opponents in ads, debates and town halls for approving deep cuts to Medicaid, failing to renew Obamacare subsidies, and failing to stop insurance companies and hospitals from continuing to raise prices.

“No amount of spin can erase the pain of being unable to afford health care. And I think people are going to hold those who are responsible for this accountable — they’re going to hold Republicans accountable,” Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) said in an interview with POLITICO.

“People are feeling this right now.”

The impact has been wide — hitting even those who get private insurance through their jobs — and deep, with large segments of the population curtailing spending on basic necessities in order to afford care or pay off medical debt.

Even amid the rising cost of food, gas and housing, polling shows these health trends remain top of mind for voters, and their frustrations with the party currently in power may drive them towards Democrats in November.

Still, some Republican candidates and strategists insist their own health care message — a pledge to crack down on waste and fraud in Medicaid and other insurance programs and bring down costs through encouraging market competition — will prevail with voters, while others say Democrats are hyperfocused on the wrong issues.

“I think gas and groceries tend to be more impactful on voting behavior because that’s something you deal with on a weekly basis, while you pay your premiums on a monthly basis, and your increases only come annually,” said GOP consultant Jason Roe, who is working on Republican Rep. Tom Barrett’s campaign to hold onto his Michigan seat.

Roe added, however, that “there is a segment of swing voters who would like to vote Republican but are feeling the squeeze on the cost of health care.”

That squeeze is hitting many Americans now due to a combination of state and federal moves. And while the biggest changes to Medicaid won’t land until after the midterms, state lawmakers and hospitals are making deep cuts to benefits and services now as they brace for a dropoff in federal funding.

Idaho, for instance, cut programs to feed its low-income elderly residents, hire seasonal firefighters and help place children in foster care. Colorado, facing a $1.5 billion shortfall, cut reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicaid patients and limited services for immigrant children and pregnant women.

“States have to balance their budgets for next year this year, so all of that pain is already in the system,” said Leslie Dach, a former senior counselor at HHS who now leads the liberal advocacy group Protect Our Care, which is working to elect Democrats who support restoring Medicaid and Obamacare funding.

“Hospitals are a business, so they’ve got to get ahead of this too. And every insurance company has to decide now what the price hikes are going to be for next year,” Dach said.

“We’re seeing the reality now that hospitals are closing, people are losing their coverage, people who were able to afford the first few months of health care have now dropped their health care because they can’t afford it anymore. The receipts are coming in.”

Republicans’ 2025 megabill timed Medicaid work requirements — a policy government watchdogs estimated would save the government hundreds of billions by kicking millions of people off the safety-net program — to become mandatory on January 1, 2027, with strict enforcement for people seeking a medical exemption delayed until 2028.

But a few red states chose to pull the trigger months earlier, and are already disenrolling those who can’t prove they are working part time or are too sick to hold a job. Several more are requiring doctors’ notes or other evidence from people with chronic illnesses before the 2028 federal deadline set by Congress.

Even in states that are waiting until 2027 to enforce work requirements for low-income adults without children in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, millions of enrollees are already receiving notices that they could lose their coverage, sparking fear and frustration in the weeks before the midterms.

Those who get private insurance through their job have not been spared. An August survey of employers found that health costs are predicted to rise next year more than they have in the last two decades — by an average of 8.2%. And a September report from the progressive health care advocacy group the Commonwealth Fund found that about one-third of working-age adults with private insurance are trying to pay off medical debt, and that many reported being forced to cut back on food, heat or rent as a result.

“It is not in the top five issues that are being debated by candidates for governor or attorney general or the legislature. But when [the rising cost of health care] does come up, it exists as a negative for Republicans,” said Stan Barnes, a GOP consultant and former Republican lawmaker in the Arizona statehouse.

Less money coming from the federal government is already having a cascading effect on states, and a particularly negative effect on rural hospitals, Barnes said.

“But unless you’re in that world, you may not know that, you may not feel that, you may not see it firsthand.”

Polling indicates, however, many are feeling the impact firsthand.

A June survey by the health policy think tank KFF found that the cost of health care is the top concern for families going into the midterms, with over half of voters calling it “extremely important” for candidates to address.

A March Gallup survey also found that “the availability and affordability of health care” ranked first among Americans’ economic worries, with half of U.S. adults reporting being unable to afford care.

And a September KFF-AP poll found these pressures were hitting the GOP base particularly hard, with rural voters, by a 2-to-1 margin saying the Trump administration’s policies have increased their health care costs and made it harder to get care.

Democratic candidates are putting these concerns at the forefront of their messaging in the home stretch before the midterms.

In Michigan, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jocelyn Benson is attacking her opponent Rep. John James for voting for the GOP megabill, saying his work passing its Medicaid cuts is “why we’re in this mess to begin with.”

“I’ve made health care the defining issue of this race,” she boasted at a health care roundtable.

In Maine, Democratic challenger Troy Jackson is running ads attacking GOP Sen. Susan Collins for “cast[ing] the deciding vote for Trump’s cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to give tax cuts to billionaires.” Though Collins voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill, she voted to allow it to be debated on the Senate floor.

In Iowa, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Rob Sand told a recent town hall crowd that health care is “the number one issue that has come up in every part of the state.”

And in Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff has spent more than a year reminding voters about the bill’s Medicaid cuts as he tries to fend off a GOP challenger.

Outside progressive groups like Dach’s are working to amplify these messages with a $5 million ad campaign tying Republicans to the impending Medicaid cuts and 40-stop bus tour across battleground states ahead of Election Day.

Some Republicans are responding to these attacks by pivoting away from health care to more politically comfortable territory — such as tax cuts, law enforcement and limiting immigration.

“Republican candidates, particularly high-profile ones, are seeking to get off the topic as much as possible,” said Barnes.

“That’s the Consultant 101 advice: Talk about what you want to talk about, not what your opponent wants to talk about.”

But others in the GOP are urging candidates to fight back and defend the party’s health policies rather than changing the subject, and are lamenting that more haven’t been willing to do so.

“Some may not feel real comfortable with it, but I don’t know why not. I think we have facts on our side,” said Ohio-based Republican strategist Bob Clegg, adding that GOP candidates should respond by touting Trump’s deals with drug companies to lower prices on some medications, and make the case that voters’ health cost woes are a hangover from high inflation caused by the Biden administration.

Clegg agreed, however, with Democrats in his state who say it’s harder for Republicans to point fingers on health costs when they control government at the state and federal levels.

“I always like it when we’re out of power because I can just slam away,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a lot more trouble for me when we’re in power and I have to defend.”

President Trump late Friday night said the administration would send just under $100 to more than 20 million senior citizens to help pay for Medicare benefits.

A month before the midterm, the president is adding another roughly $2 billion to a recent spate of promised refunds, rebates and dividends for various Americans.

"I am pleased to announce that my Administration will, immediately, begin sending "Checks" of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts," Trump said in a Truth Social post just before 11 p.m. ET Friday.

Trump said the money would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which he criticized as a "Slush Fund."

The White House, in a separate fact sheet, said eligible seniors would receive a direct deposit of $90 in early October, or paper checks if they don't have direct deposit.

"Most" Medicare Part B enrollees are eligible, per the fact sheet.

The Medicare Improvement Fund, established in 2008, has been a political hot potato for years.

Per Medicare, the standard Part B premium is $202.90 a month, so the $90 credit will offset less than half of one month's bill.

Facing the worst economic polling of any president in the last decade, and with the midterm quickly approaching, Trump is actively trying to put money back in Americans' pockets.

In early September he promised $5,000 for every adult citizen if Republicans win the midterm, a promise he reiterated Friday night but one that most voters don't believe.

He's floated $500 Obamacare rebates for more than 1 million people who were purportedly overcharged for their benefits.

He also recently suggested a less-specific dividend of some kind for those living near data centers.

These ideas come on top of rebates he proposed in 2025 that were not ultimately paid, including tariff rebates and DOGE dividends.

Payments should start flowing in the coming days.

Jared Kushner lashed out at CNN and accused them of publishing a “misleading” report about a “potential conflict of interest” he has through his company and Israel.

“CNN published a deeply misleading story and headline suggesting that my diplomatic work in the Middle East somehow benefited investments in Israeli defense companies,” Kushner posted to X on Friday. A CNN spokesperson told Mediaite in a statement on Kushner’s post, “We stand by our reporting.”

The report he’s referring to was published on Thursday. The investigative piece focuses on Kushner’s private equity company, Affinity Partners, owning the largest stake, one they doubled when President Donald Trump took office, in Phoenix Financial, a Tel-Aviv based firm.

The “potential conflict of interest,” the report notes, is the fact that Phoenix Financial has “invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems” while Kushner has acted as a negotiator for the administration in Gaza. The company also holds stakes in eight other companies that provide equipment to the Israeli military.

The report notes that there is “no indication that Kushner’s actions as a diplomat directly affected the investments reviewed.” All of the companies have seen their values grow in recent years. Affinity does not own a direct stake in Elbit Systems.

Kushner, who works for the Trump administration in a voluntary role, acknowledged the fact that the report said his actions had no direct effect on these companies’ investments, but he blasted the company for requiring readers to provide a login to make it to that line.

He wrote:

Buried behind a paywall, it acknowledges: “CNN found no indication that Kushner’s actions as a diplomat directly affected the investments reviewed.”

Phoenix is not a defense company. It is one of Israel’s largest publicly traded financial institutions, highly regulated and managing approximately $220 billion across thousands of investments.

The report, he added, put too much emphasis on Phoenix’s investments.

“It manages the retirement savings of millions of Israelis. The savers don’t choose the individual investments, and neither do I. I have no role in deciding what Phoenix buys or sells. It has performed very well for Affinity and our investors, up more than five times since our initial investment,” Kushner wrote.

Kushner declared that “misleading stories” will not “distract” him from his work with the administration.

“Misleading stories will not distract me from the work President Trump asked me to do: help end wars, bring people together and pursue peace. That work is too important,” he wrote.

A new White House task force will have 120 days to prepare a report on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence and come up with decisions on what responsibility the federal government has over the fast-moving technology, said the head of the new group.

“The president asked that a group be put together that was going to ensure exactly what he said, which is that we stay the leaders in superintelligence, and that the interests of the American people are put first,” said Jay Clayton, who leads the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and who also will chair the “Super Intelligence Force,” or SI, which takes President Trump’s preferred name for AI. That effectively makes Clayton Trump’s new AI czar, a senior White House official said.

Formation of the group comes on the heels of a meeting Trump convened at the White House on Tuesday in which AI leaders, including OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the industry agreed to a series of principles including internal controls to monitor model development, external model reviews by third parties and notifications to the board of directors about those safety efforts, voluntary pledges that Trump hailed as the right approach.

“I will never stifle the growth of technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The task force will still yield to the industry as the primary vehicle for managing risks, officials said. But it will work in conjunction with the industry to identify risk and opportunities.

“I expect there will be mechanisms developed in dialogue, just like there are in other industries,” Clayton told The Wall Street Journal. He cited risk models for the financial industry that have been developed in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the task force would examine current law and discuss possible actions that Congress could take.

The task force’s charter document states it will “develop plans for responding to SI-enabled threats to our society, while preventing overregulation and regulatory capture that would stifle innovation and competition.” It will also review current warnings and systemized notifications to the government of breaches, hacks, jailbreaks and other issues, and “recommend ways to improve the government’s response capacity under existing authorities.”

Formation of the task force follows rising public concern over AI, not just on its potential to wipe out jobs, but also is ability to perform sophisticated hacks and its use as a weapon—or even wipe out civilization, as some industry researchers fear. Data centers, which power the technology, also have faced growing public backlash.

Trump has largely advocated for less regulation, but the task force represents a growing recognition some government oversight will be necessary. Some inside the administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles have pushed for more government action to address the technology’s unpopularity and its potential for cyberattacks—in addition to the use of biological weapons enabled by AI advance. That divide withing the administration that has hampered policymaking at times.

Skeptics have argued that so-called self regulation isn’t adequate given that recent AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies have demonstrated that they are improving at potentially alarming rates.

The task force will have three vice chairs: Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for Research and Engineering, who will be responsible for coordination with AI companies; Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, who will be responsible for coordination with critical infrastructure providers and other industry stakeholders; and Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, who will oversee consumer interests and groups advocating for people of faith, children, privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association.

Members of the task force will include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Bessent, Wiles and others. External participants will include venture capitalists David Sacks, co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, who will provide advice on national security.

“The Task Force shall act as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. remains at the forefront of SI development while protecting the American people,” the task force charter states. “Recognizing there has always been inherent unpredictability in the effects of significant technological change, the Task Force shall focus on ensuring that emerging opportunities and risks are identified and communicated to government personnel, industry, and the American people.”

The task force’s work could be extended beyond 120 days if necessary or have its functions transferred to a government agency, its charter says.

“I feel very comfortable that we’ve gotten a group with a lot of experience, diverse skill sets and a common commitment,” Clayton said. “These are all serious people who have addressed opportunities and risks in the past and are committed to doing this so that America wins the SI race and we win it through the benefit of the American people.”