**The Pentagon quietly made it harder for many Americans abroad to vote in the midterms, **as Trumpworld fears that the blue wave could look more like a tsunami.
Does Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth want us to focus on his buffoonery? During
▶a speechyesterday, he railed on “ideological clowns,” announced the new “Office of Religious Affairs” inside the Pentagon, and preached about the importance of testosterone screening. “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors,” roared Hegseth. (Keep in mind, this guy is a former Fox News weekend host whodoesn’t wash his handsand almost hit a drummer with a thrown axe▶on live television.)
“He’s just a true believer, in way over his head, an asshole, and the living embodiment of the
Dunning-Kruger effect,” one DOD employee toldWhat A Day.“Generally, we consider him a joke, a deeply unqualified clown.”
Hegseth’s commitment to politicizing the military is serious. But focus on his wacky tomfoolery, and you’ll miss the all-too-serious way his so-called Department of War aims to undermine voting in the midterms.
The Pentagon quietly employed an emergency measure in August to change ballots that Americans living abroad use to vote in elections,
according to theandWashington PostNPR. Most importantly, the new forms eliminate a checkbox used by people to declare they have never lived in the U.S. — often,the children of longtime expatriates. Those people now lack a clear category to identify their status in the paperwork. The new forms also ask for new ID requirements.
The changes could effectively disenfranchise some overseas voters, according to advocates for American voters who live abroad. The Pentagon claims that the changes were made to comply with federal law — but didn’t tell the
Postwhich law. A total of 2 million Americans living outside the country are eligible to vote in U.S. elections.
The changes do not legally stop people from voting. But for some people, they could “make the process so difficult that you really have to want to vote to get through it,” Doris Speer, president of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, told the
Post. “The result will be confusion, chaos and fewer overseas votes.”
The Pentagon’s shady move comes as Trumpworld panics about Democrats potentially sweeping the midterms.
Republicans’ odds of keeping control of the House are dismal, and they could even lose control of the Senate — largely thanks to President Donald Trump. Americans blame Trump for sky-high prices ahead of the midterms,
according to a new poll. His economic approval justhit record low.
That’s only the beginning of the GOP’s problems. The war in Iran shows no sign of ending soon, and Trump recently threatened to “
blow up” the country. He also seems intent on making himself the nationalfigurehead for data centers, despite their unpopularity, and downplaying Americans’ fears about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
Trump is pretending like everything is just dandy,
insisting that“the country’s doing better than it has ever done. Others in his orbit aren’t so sure. “We’re gonna get crushed,” one House Republicanrecently predicted. “The only question is by how much.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re going to get creamed,” one longtime MAGA operative told Wired.
** Renee Good’s family filed two lawsuits today,** suing several Trump officials and the ICE agent who killed her in Minneapolis earlier this year. Together, the lawsuits allege unconstitutional negligence and excessive force, and a “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights by senior federal officials.” The White House and DHS didn’t immediately respond to
** The Trump administration demanded that France and Germany **release their emergency diesel reserves to lower global energy prices — or face a U.S. diesel export ban, Reuters reports. What a nice way to treat one of America’s closest allies!
** New Google satellite images revealed **the devastation of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. Huge tents camps line the coast. Piles of rubble lay where entire towns once stood. Rafah, a southern city that saw some of the heaviest fighting, looks like a pile of dust.
** On that note: Jared Kushner’s private equity company **has a huge stake in an Israeli firm that invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, CNN reports. The revelation comes as Kushner negotiates the future of the Gaza Strip with Israel and Hamas.
** The company that sells Trump’s meme coin** is advertising for “the most exclusive dinner in the world,” which only the 185 top buyers of the president’s crypto can attend. The top 29 buyers will get a VIP reception with Trump and a “Trump fragrance,”
** Tech CEOs privately asked Anthropic’s Dario Amodei **why he has been warning that AI poses an existential risk to humanity. During a visit to the White House this week, Amodei explained to his counterparts that “it is important to be honest with the public about model capabilities and not play down risks,” the
** Law enforcement officials in a Florida county were** taking down Flock surveillance cameras when they discovered 14 cameras that didn’t belong to them. It’s still unclear who owns the cameras, and if they were collecting data. Hate that!
** A judge permanently dismissed the Trump administration’s** case against Olympian David Hearn, who had been charged with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool (despite the total lack of evidence that he did so).
** An Israeli plumber who helped safely land a plane** — after a co-pilot allegedly stabbed another pilot on a flight to Saudi Arabia yesterday — said that he learned how to fly by watching a television show called “Air Crash Investigation.” I guess I need to start watching that! Also, shoutout to the
** Need help finding love? Move to Singapore! **The government launched a dating app to match singles, in an effort to reverse the country’s declining birth rate. Fun fact: Singapore attempted to set up its citizens with each other in the 1980s through something called the Social Development Unit. It didn’t work, so people started referring to the SDU as “Single, Desperate and Ugly.”
** Toy creator Alan Dorfman has made a fortune **by miniaturizing kids’ games. “He spends every waking hour trying to shrink things to their smallest possible size without losing their functionality,” the
** A Serbian couple took a trip to Slovakia and **loved the alpacas they saw, so they opened an alpaca cafe in their home country. No, it’s not just alpaca-
