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Trump is shutting down a public golf course in D.C. because a judge won’t let him renovate it. He called for Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate to be criminally charged and removed from the ballot less than a week before Election Day. His most devoted aide has been moved into his ultra-private White House dining room, just feet from the Oval Office. And more than 900 women have been criminally charged for conduct during their pregnancies since* Dobbs v. Jackson*.
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Trump couldn’t have the golf course he wanted, so he is making sure nobody else can play on it either.
Trump is shutting down East Potomac Golf Links, a public golf course in Washington, D.C., after a federal judge halted his plans to demolish parts of the property. The closure will start Nov. 15.
The National Park Service signed a new lease agreement Wednesday with the National Links Trust, a nonprofit operator of municipal golf courses, to implement what the administration called sweeping renovations. The administration also said it would submit designs for a “World Class, championship-level golf course” to the National Capital Planning Committee.
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes had issued an order preventing the Trump administration and the National Park Service from cutting down more trees at the golf course while the lawsuit is ongoing. The order also requires the administration to provide notice 10 days in advance of any permanent changes to the property.
Trump posted on Truth Social that the course was dangerous and run-down, sharing photos of debris and damaged netting and threatening to hold Reyes accountable for anyone who is hurt on the property while the lawsuit continues. Most of the property damage occurred after his own administration started tearing it up.
The party that put a convicted felon in office would like to talk to you about integrity.
Trump on Wednesday called for Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola to be criminally charged and either forced to withdraw or taken off the ballot. The demand came after the New York Times reported that her campaign worked with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit candidates who shared the same name as her Republican opponent.
Much of The Times’ report is based on internal text messages provided by a former aide to Peltola. Legal experts said the actions described in the article aren’t illegal, just tricky.
Trump’s demand came less than a week before Election Day and during early voting, with more than 58,000 Alaskans already having cast ballots. Last week, the administration filed a legally dubious lawsuit against the Alaska Division of Elections, seeking a judge’s order to block the state from certifying a victory by anyone other than Sullivan.
Third-party Democratic and Republican groups have already spent millions of dollars in all three of Alaska’s statewide races to promote spoiler candidates. Two Wisconsin-based PACs have spent more than $2 million on the Senate race in an effort to boost Gerald Heikes, a Republican who received just one percent of the vote in the August primary and has raised no campaign money.
In the House race, the Alaska Republican Party went to court to keep Democrat Eric Hafner on the general election ballot. Hafner, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in New York for threatening judges and police officers, has never been to Alaska.
Not many people in Washington get to shorten their commute to 15 feet from the Oval Office.
Harp, 35, has been relocated to the president’s private dining room, a space just off the Oval Office where Trump watches television and makes phone calls. She used to work from a desk outside the Oval Office but now sits in a room that most White House staffers never get to see, according to a New York Times profile.
Most of the dining room is filled with printed-out news articles and documents, which Harp produces as the president’s “human printer.” The 80-year-old president does not use a computer and depends on Harp to feed him a steady stream of printed information throughout the day.
Harp has also been upgraded to riding in the back of the presidential limousine instead of traveling separately in the motorcade. Normally, the back seat of the presidential limousine is reserved for the president’s spouse or visiting heads of state.
Trump has a history of singling Harp out for special personal attention, including giving her and two other young female White House aides $45,000 last year for the “holidays.” In 2023, Harp wrote personal letters to the president, telling him she was “unworthy” of him and that he was “all that matters” to her.
In America, you can now be prosecuted for Googling the wrong thing while pregnant.
In the three years since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, more than 900 women have faced criminal charges for conduct related to their pregnancies, according to a new report by Pregnancy Justice. Researchers identified 902 women facing a total of 955 charges in 23 states, with the vast majority of cases concentrated in South Carolina (381), Oklahoma (222) and Alabama (204).
Of the 955 charges, the vast majority (876) were for child abuse, neglect or endangerment connected to use of substances in pregnancy. The researchers also found 13 specific allegations related to obtaining or researching how to get an abortion.
All three of the states with the most cases have passed near-total abortion bans and have courts that uphold the idea of fetal personhood. Lawmakers in South Carolina and at least eight other states have proposed legislation in recent years that would classify abortion as homicide, making violators eligible for the death penalty.
A growing faction within the anti-abortion movement, known as the “abolitionists,” is pushing to prosecute women who have abortions to the fullest extent of the law. Even the president of the Pro-Life Action League has warned turning every miscarriage into a criminal investigation would be tantamount to a police state.
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Democrats Introduce Bill to Close the “Elon Musk Loophole” in Campaign Finance Law. Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Robert Garcia have introduced legislation that would ban executives and top shareholders of companies with federal contracts from contributing to campaigns. The bill targets what they’re calling the “Elon Musk loophole,” which allows Musk to donate to campaigns while his companies have tens of billions of dollars in government contracts. Musk has donated $446 million to Republican candidates and Republican-aligned groups in the 2026 midterm cycle, making him the largest single donor to the GOP. Nearly half that spending has been concentrated in Texas, where he has funneled some $190 million into a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
** Drag Queens Deepfaked in Republican Campaign Ad Send Cease and Desist.** Drag queens from Western North Carolina have sent cease-and-desist letters to the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican House candidate Jennifer Balkcom after the two used artificial intelligence to insert the performers into a fake barn dance scene with Democratic candidate Jamie Ager. The performers, who use the names Divine Holeburn and Nova, say they have never met Ager and have never been to his property, and have given the campaign until November 2 to stop using their likenesses. North Carolina has no law governing artificial intelligence-generated material in political ads, and neither does the federal government, so the performers are also calling for new legislation to prevent campaigns from deepfaking real people into fabricated scenes.
** Democrat Turnout Is Exceeding Republican Turnout in West Virginia Early Voting.** In West Virginia, where Republicans have a 200,000-voter registration advantage, registered Democrats outpaced Republicans in the first four days of early voting. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner released numbers showing 66,855 West Virginians voted in the first four days, with Democrats casting 25,556 early votes compared to 24,191 for Republicans. 12,332 with no party affiliation or membership in non-recognized third parties voted. The gap is even wider in absentee ballot returns, as Democrats have returned 2,308 ballots compared to 1,441 for Republicans. Early voting ends Oct. 31, with Election Day on Nov. 3.
** Female Student Sues School District Under Title IX After Being Banned From Musical.** Ana Mota, a 17-year-old senior at South Grand Prairie High School in Texas, has filed a lawsuit against her school district after officials removed her from the role of Seymour in the school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. The district told Mota that to have a female student play a male part would violate SB 12, a state law that bans schools from teaching about LGBTQ+ identities and bars school employees from helping a student socially transition. The lawsuit argues that no provision of SB 12 applies to a cisgender student performing as a fictional character in a school play, calling the school’s interpretation “non-textual and overbroad.” The school district canceled the entire production after Mota declined a different role.
