Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. Before we get to today’s news, take a few seconds to tap that ❤️ and restack this newsletter. That’s the best way to make sure these stories reach the most people.
Donald Trump is using everything from taxpayer money, promises of payments to voters and even possibly federal agents to tilt the midterms in favor of Republicans. Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton was just caught on tape admitting that he’s effectively just a puppet being controlled by GOP consultants in Washington. The Wall Street banker who first alerted Congress to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein was just found dead in what’s being investigated as a suicide. And a new report shows how Trump’s intensely devoted staffer Natalie Harp personally made sure the president’s taxpayer-funded propaganda ads idolized him.
One more thing before the news: we’re gearing up to sue Trump’s White House for locking out our reporter, Brian Karem. But unlike CNN, MS NOW and Politico, we don’t have an army of lawyers on retainer. We plan on calling on prominent First Amendment attorney Mark Zaid, but if we hope to have the court reinstate our press credentials, we’ll need to be able to pay him.
Less than a month out from Election Day, Donald Trump is now using the full weight of the federal government to steer the midterms in favor of Republicans. USA Today reports that this includes not only taxpayer-funded ads promoting the president on TV and nearly a million government checks landing in swing state voters’ mailboxes, but also federal agents combing through states’ voter databases.
Adav Noti of the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center told the paper that Trump is “trying to use all of the powers at his disposal to control the election results.” He also pointed out that while almost all of his efforts are illegal, the White House is plowing ahead anyway.
The list of Trump’s illegal and unprecedented acts is truly astonishing. The president rammed through mid-decade congressional redistricting maps explicitly meant to give Republicans an edge in the House of Representatives. He’s signed multiple executive orders trying to force voter ID laws on everyone and restricting efforts to vote by mail (even though Trump himself votes by mail in every election). He’s sent Department of Homeland Security agents on a wild goose chase looking for non-citizens on state voter rolls.
And that’s before we even get to the money. At the first-ever midterm convention Republicans hosted in Dallas, Texas last month, the president vowed to give every American adult $5,000 if Republicans hold onto Congress. Democrats and even some MAGA commentators said that sounded a lot like an illegal bribe.
This week, the Trump administration started mailing $500 checks that he’s calling Obamacare rebates to nearly a million people across 30 states — nearly all of whom either live in states with close Senate races or reside in House districts where Republicans are polling within the margin of error. And last week, Trump announced he was sending checks of nearly $100 to more than 20 million seniors, with the money coming from a fund Congress created back in 2008 to improve Medicare.
The president is also tapping into a pot of $20 million worth of taxpayer dollars that Congress appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security in order to pay for his pro-Trump TV ads. One spot that aired during the NFL’s Week 3 games on national TV includes a voice-over by Trump. It’s virtually identical to one of his 2024 campaign ads in which he declares he’s in a “final battle” against “the deep state.” There’s a longstanding federal law expressly prohibits the spending of taxpayer money on political ads, though the Trump administration insists these are merely public service announcements, akin to the clearly nonpartisan Affordable Care Act enrollment commercials that aired during previous administrations.
There’s some good news despite Trump’s unprecedented campaign of election interference. Both the federal judiciary and Congress have both blocked most of what the administration wants. Federal judges sidelined most of his proof-of-citizenship executive order. The Supreme Court prevented the U.S. Postal Service from rolling out his restrictive new rules for voting by mail. And his draconian voter ID bill didn’t even make it through a Republican-controlled Congress. David Becker, who is with the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told USA Today the president has a “remarkable record of failure.” However, he maintained that the federal government attempting to replace states as the key overseer of elections “should not be normalized.”
Trump may have a few more tricks up his sleeve. In his recent interview with TIME Magazine, Trump notably declined to rule out declaring a national emergency around the election or even invoking the Insurrection Act. Thomas Jefferson signed that law back in 1807 to help the federal government remain stable during an armed rebellion, and it’s safe to say he never envisioned that law being a tool for a president who was nervous about his party losing an election. Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon predicted earlier this year that agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would “surround the polls come November.”
Last month, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote to Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan that the military has no plans to send armed troops to polling places on Election Day and that he has received no orders form the commander-in-chief to do so. But Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is still urging caution, telling USA Today that the president “feels he is unconstrained” and “would try anything.”
Trump’s desperate moves should be taken in context with his plummeting approval rating, which continues to drop to new record lows thanks to his war with Iran. As the war continues to cause gas prices and inflation rates to climb, the latest polls show show Democrats leading in nine major Senate elections, including in deep-red states that Trump won by double digits in all three of his campaigns like Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas.
In 1952 the Supreme Court told Harry Truman that president can’t seize powers from Congress and the Constitution even during war. America’s elections belong exclusively to the states and the American people. A president who treats the U.S. Treasury like his own piggybank and federal agents as his own goons is clearly testing the limits of his power. November will prove whether he gets away with it.
One of those red states where Trump is in trouble is the longtime Republican stronghold of Texas, where Republican Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton spent his the entire GOP primary attacking longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn as a “Washington insider.” Paxton has promised Texans he would never become a puppet of the D.C. establishment. But according to leaked audio, the D.C. establishment is effectively running Paxton’s campaign.
In a recording leaked to Politico, Paxton is heard complaining about how he has virtually no say in how his campaign is run. The audio is from a September 24th lunch in Washington, that was hosted by D.C. lobbyists from the firm Williams & Jensen. Paxton told the dozen or so attendees that he had “never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign.” He told the group that his campaign’s messaging was all being dictated by D.C. Republicans, and went on to emphasize that he doesn’t “control message or what we’re doing.”
One lobbyist representing military contractors asked Paxton about how he’s connecting with “real people” back home. The Texas Republican said that in a federal race, campaign messaging typically “comes from other people a lot of times, which you don’t control.” One unnamed attendee confided to Politico that Paxton never explicitly mentioned Donald Trump or the White House, but “everybody knew what he was talking about.”
Paxton campaign adviser Nick Maddux told the outlet that the Republican Senate candidate was making a reference to super PACs, as federal campaigns are barred from officially coordinating with them. But in a separate recording from that same event previously leaked to the New York Times, Paxton blamed Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas for the lack of enthusiasm toward GOP candidates, saying the event “dropped our numbers.” The latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Paxton trailing Democrat state representative James Talarico by six points, despite Paxton pouting $20 million into a wave of new ads, along with an infusion of millions of dollars from the super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Americans ratified the 17 Amendment to the U.S. Constitution more than a century ago because they were tired of having their senators be chosen in backroom deals by party bosses and corporate donors. When a Republican candidate tells a room full of Washington lobbyists that he’s not in charge of his own campaign, he’s admitting that the old system is still alive and well.
Simon Andriesz, the British former Wall Street banker who first told Congress about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s close friendship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead over the weekend at age 57. According to the trade publication The Banker, Andriesz’s death is being investigated as a suicide.
Andriesz once worked for Lutnick at the firm BGC Partners, where Lutnick was CEO. Because he knew BGC Partners executives ended emails with their initials, he searched the Justice Department’s Epstein files database using the query “HWL,” for Howard William Lutnick. He discovered a 2018 email chain between Lutnick and Epstein about the digital advertising company Adfin that both men invested in, and shared that with the House Oversight Committee this year.
That email proved Lutnick lied. The Commerce secretary claimed he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005. But those emails show they stayed in friendly contact until at least 2018, a full decade after Epstein pleaded guilty to child sex crimes. Lutnick eventually admitted to senators that he took his family to Epstein’s Little Saint James island in 2012, but that he didn’t recall why. In May, he told the House Oversight Committee he only learned this year that Epstein invested in Adfin.
Andriesz had been sounding the alarm for years. BGC Partners fired him after he flagged accounting concerns to his bosses. When he spoke with the FBI in 2020 and 2021, he told federal agents Lutnick had undisclosed business ties to Epstein. According to the BBC, the FBI never investigated that tip. Andy Agathangelou, who founded a transparency group that hosted Andriesz at whistleblower events, confirmed his death to The Banker and called him a valued member of their community.
In 1778, as the Revolutionary War was still raging, the Continental Congress declared it the duty of every American to report wrongdoing by people in power. It also paid to defend sailors who had blown the whistle on their superior officers A country that lets its truth-tellers get fired and ignored while the powerful and well-connected keep their positions has forgotten one of the very first promises it made.
The New York Times is now reporting that Trump’s intensely devoted 35 year-old staffer Natalie Harp played a key role in the president’s controversial taxpayer-funded TV ads.
On August 7th, GOP strategists met with Trump in the Oval Office to urged him to spend money from his political action committee to bolster Republican candidates in the midterms. But Trump reportedly made the meeting about himself, and had Harp show the strategists several videos from the White House’s digital team that glorified him. One ad featured billionaire mixed martial arts fight promoter Dana White praising Trump, which ultimately made its way into one of the ads.
The Times reported that the first spots initially aired in the Washington, D.C. market so Trump would see them. They then made their way to national airwaves with the help of a $20 million pot of money from the Department of Homeland Security. Trump has shrugged off legal concerns, saying if anybody thinks the ads are wrong he would “gladly pay the money.” He also insisted the ads were “promoting the country” and not himself.
Harp has come under intense scrutiny as a gatekeeper who’s been nicknamed the “human printer” for her habit of constantly printing out flattering social media posts and articles from right-wing media for Trump’s benefit. Democrats worry she maintains tight control over the president’s information bubble. Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia put Harp in the national spotlight during an August campaign rally, saying Trump would rather trade stocks and “travel with Natalie” on the “flying palace” gifted to him by the Qatari royal family than do the job of governing.
Richard Nixon’s top White House aides were nicknamed the Berlin Wall because they were the sole deciders of who and what got through to the president. That sealed-off White House bubble led to the Watergate scandal. A president who only sees his own taxpayer-funded highlight reel can’t hear the country he’s supposed to serve.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. Once again, be sure to click that ❤️ and restack this post so we can break through and reach the people who really need these stories.