Good afternoon. I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. Every restack helps us beat the MAGA propaganda machine.
Michigan Republican Mike Rogers got caught on tape pitching off-duty cops as poll watchers in Detroit. Elon Musk is pouring roughly $366 million into the midterms, and Democrats say he’s buying lies. More than 3,000 No Kings events are underway across the country today, aiming for the biggest midterm early vote in American history. And Katie Zacharia lasted five days as White House press secretary, but her farewell photo may outlast her in federal court.
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A leaked tape just made MAGA candidate Mike Rogers look like an authoritarian in the Trump mold.
In audio posted Saturday by the Michigan Democratic Party, Rogers, who’s running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, lays out his Election Day plan for the state’s biggest city.
“Let’s put retired or off-duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit,” he says. “Go ahead, try to intimidate them. Please.”
Rogers narrowly lost his 2024 Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin. Apparently, he’s still nursing the wound.
“I don’t want to wake up at 3, you know, go to bed at 2 a.m. a winner, and wake up at 4 a.m. a loser,” he said. “I’m kind of done with that.”
The state party accused him of wanting to intimidate voters and of falsely claiming his last election was stolen.
Detroit has heard this song before. In 2020, Republican challengers crowded the city’s absentee ballot counting center and banged on the windows while Trump pushed false fraud claims about the majority-Black city.
Former GOP operative Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark podcast, said pundits keep mistaking Rogers for a Romney-style moderate. In Miller’s telling, he’s actually a corrupt MAGA conspiracist who cheered on the Iran war.
“A despicable figure,” Miller wrote.
When your plan to win involves badges at the polling place, you’re not really confident about the election.
Elon Musk is spending roughly $366 million on this year’s midterms, according to The New York Times. Democrats on Capitol Hill told Raw Story Saturday they’re bracing for a flood of lies.
They’ve already seen plenty. In early September, Musk’s America PAC spent around $1 million on ads in five battleground states accusing Democrats of backing taxpayer-funded sex changes, Judd Legum’s Popular Information reports.
One Michigan ad claims Rogers’s opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, “supports sex changes for minors.”
His actual position: “I just think the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of healthcare you should have.”
Then there’s VoteSafe.org. It greets visitors with “Register to Vote.” You can’t register to vote there. Its privacy policy lets America PAC sell your data.
“This is cheating,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) told Raw Story. “He should be arrested for putting misinformation out there about people voting.”
Tlaib’s answer is to go hyperlocal. She hired a staffer whose only job is voter protection. Her campaign has mapped every ballot box and talks constantly with city clerks.
“We’re just going to combat it by being ahead of them 10 steps,” she said.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) kept it simple. “If someone’s trying to take away your vote, the best way to fight back is to vote.”
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More than 3,000 marches, cookouts, block parties and other gatherings are planned nationwide today, in the latest iteration of No Kings.
This time, some of the right’s best-known Trump critics are lining up in support.
Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Never-Trump conservative Bill Kristol are cheering on Saturday’s No Kings “Vote Early” events. Today, the anti-Trump organization has traded its street protests for something more practical: banking ballots before November 3.
“The first three No Kings were designed to send a message,” Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin told NPR. “We’re done sending a message.”
Volunteers are helping people confirm their registration, plan when and how they’ll vote and learn their rights at the polls.
The goal now is the biggest midterm early vote in American history.
Kristol drew a sharp contrast with the president’s own weekend.
“A tale of two Americas,” he posted Saturday. “Millions of Americans gather at local No Kings events to defend democracy.”
Trump, Kristol noted, spoke to a few thousand die-hards in Kentucky, then headed to a “Candlelight Dinner” at Mar-a-Lago with MAGA fat cats seeking favors from “the wannabe king.”
When the first No Kings protest hit in June 2025, Trump enjoyed a 44 percent approval rating. Today, he’s at 37, with 60 percent disapproving.
“Before it was fashionable, No Kings was there,” Kristol wrote in The Bulwark.
Kinzinger took aim at “a man in a gold-plated palace” without bothering to name him.
“Americans are waking up and the ground under this election is moving,” he said. “But hope isn’t victory. Nothing is won until the last vote is counted.”
Organizers are taking that seriously. They’re recruiting poll watchers, citing fears that federal immigration agents could show up at polling places and Trump’s push to restrict mail-in voting.
Outside Mar-a-Lago, a protester named Rebecca told MS NOW she hopes so many people vote that the election becomes “too big to rig.”
When Bill Kristol and Adam Kinzinger are rooting for No Kings, the king has a problem.
Katie Zacharia’s tenure as White House press secretary ended Friday after only five days.
That evening, she posted a goodbye photo beside Trump at the Resolute Desk, calling him “a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man.”
Sharp-eyed viewers were looking at the desk, where a blurry map sat on a stack of blue binders.
Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), knew the spot right away. “It’s Hains Point and East Potomac Park,” he wrote.
Why does that matter? East Potomac Golf Links, a century-old public course, is the subject of a federal lawsuit over Trump’s plan to rebuild it.
On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the National Park Service from cutting down more trees there. Crews had already felled about 430.
The administration’s defense? The tree-cutting has nothing to do with Trump’s redesign.
Navy veteran and commentator Travis Akers wasn’t buying it. Zacharia, he wrote, “may have inadvertently provided additional evidence in the court case.”
Five days on the job, and her most consequential act may have been the exit photo. That’s still a better record than most of this Cabinet.
If today’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather you didn’t hear, that’s exactly the point. A Senate candidate plotting to put police at polling places. The world’s richest man spending a fortune on lies. Millions of Americans voting early. And a press secretary who may have handed a judge evidence on her way out the door. Bezos, Murdoch and Ellison don’t fund this reporting. You do.
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One more thing before you go: hit the ❤️ and restack this edition. It’s what pushes these stories past the algorithm and into the feeds of people who’d never otherwise see them. And if your state has early voting, make your plan this weekend.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
