Good morning. Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. It helps us bring in new readers and get out the vote.
More than 23 million Americans have already voted, and Democrats and independents are heavily outpacing Republicans. Government corruption has passed inflation and gas prices as voters’ top concern. Trump’s “smart wall” of AI cameras can now see more than a million people along the border, including kids on school playgrounds. And a Republican senator told Trump’s DOJ to get out of her state’s Senate race, a day after Trump admitted he ordered the lawsuit himself.
One thing before the news. Last week Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta pulled down the No Kings Instagram account in the middle of a national day of action. Big Tech is trying to silence independent voices, and it gets worse every day.
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Two weeks ago, the polls said Democrats were surging in red states. Now the ballots are saying it too.
More than 23 million Americans have already voted, The Hill reports, compared with about 15 million at this point in 2022.
In North Carolina, more than 1.2 million early ballots are in, up 37 percent from four years ago. Turnout among registered Democrats is up 47 percent and among unaffiliated voters 60 percent.
Republicans? Up just 3 percent.
Early voting is up 69 percent in Kansas, 41 percent in Maine and 24 percent in Iowa, according to the New York Times.
Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks turnout, said that’s why the battleground is shifting into red states.
In Texas, where James Talarico is trying to end a three-decade Democratic drought, more than 2 million ballots are in. Decision Desk HQ estimates Democrats make up 44.3 percent of them to Republicans’ 43.7, and Hispanic early voters lean Democratic by roughly 2.5 to 1.
Now the cold water. Texas doesn’t register voters by party, and Republicans still turn out heavily on Election Day. University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus warns that Democrats need urban margins big enough to overcome a rural Republican floor.
High turnout, he said, is “necessary for Democrats, but not sufficient.”
Then there’s the twist. After years of attacking mail-in voting, Trump recently told Republicans to vote early. McDonald thinks that pushed nervous Democrats to vote in person, where ballots are far less likely to be rejected.
Trump, he said, “may have inadvertently done a favor to the Democrats.”
He’s had a lot of practice.
For a year, every strategist in Washington assumed the midterms would turn on the economy. Then the grift caught up.
A Fox News poll this month found voters now rank government corruption as their number one concern, ahead of inflation and gasoline prices, The Wall Street Journal reports. Sixty percent say they’re “extremely concerned.”
It’s not hard to see why. Trump’s ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, resigned after being accused of soliciting $100,000 from a donor to pay her Amex bill. The family of a Venezuelan billionaire angling for a pardon offered Trump’s former personal lawyer a deal worth $50 million.
A Russian businessman paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding afterparty in the Bahamas. Two of Trump’s top political advisers flew off to consult for a Russia-aligned government. And Corey Lewandowski is under Justice Department inquiry over allegations he profited from his post at Homeland Security.
Trump, meanwhile, earned $1.4 billion last year from crypto ventures alone.
On Thursday, the president tried to get ahead of it. “I want my people to be honest,” he said, “and if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted.”
Democrats have spent $182 million this year on corruption ads, more than the previous four cycles combined. Inside the White House, aides are bracing for the investigations that follow if Republicans lose the House.
Marc Short, Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, summed up the voters who wanted an outsider to drain the swamp.
“Now it looks like they’re feeding on the swamp,” he said.
A president who campaigned on draining the swamp is now begging his own people to stop stealing from it. Ten days before an election, that’s not a message. It’s a confession.
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More than a million people in the United States and Mexico live where they can be seen by AI-powered surveillance towers, a New York Times analysis found. Four million more live within view of older cameras the government plans to upgrade.
The Trump administration has more than $1 billion to build 1,500 new towers. The goal is full coverage of the Mexican border, then Canada, the coasts and Puerto Rico.
Each tower sees about two miles. Radar picks up movement, the camera zooms in, and an AI model flags people and vehicles for the Border Patrol.
In Sunland Park, New Mexico, the camera can pick out children on an elementary school playground and track people walking in and out of their homes. In Laredo, Texas, one tower has a direct view into a bedroom.
The agency says the towers have no facial recognition. It also says footage can be shared with local, state and federal police, and even foreign governments. People near the border, in the government’s own words, can’t “opt out.”
Is it working? Nobody can say. The Government Accountability Office found the program has no master plan and no way to measure success. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it a “costly boondoggle.”
Eloisa Cavazos, 75, has lived near the Rio Grande in Mission, Texas, since the 1950s. Now there’s a tower across the street.
“It follows you,” she said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Friday that the Justice Department “should never have filed” its lawsuit over Alaska’s Senate race, according to Raw Story.
She attached an Associated Press story in which Trump said he ordered the lawsuit.
Here’s the backstory. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, a Trump ally, is trailing former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola by seven points in the latest New York Times/Siena poll.
Also on the ballot is Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg who calls himself a moderate Republican.
Republicans call him a “ghost candidate.” Trump calls him an “imposter.” Dan J. says the name came from his father and grandfather, and Peltola’s campaign denies having anything to do with him.
State courts put him on the ballot, and the state added the word “incumbent” next to the senator’s name so nobody would get confused.
That wasn’t enough for Trump. The Hill reports the Justice Department is suing to block the results if Sullivan loses.
Peltola called it a “desperate attempt” by Republicans to “cling to power.”
When a sitting Republican has to tell the Justice Department to stop meddling in her state’s vote, the party of “election integrity” is straight-up lying.
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. Twenty-three million Americans already voting, with Democrats and independents swamping Republicans in red states. Corruption passing gas prices as voters’ top worry, and a president begging his own people to stop stealing. AI cameras on the border watching a million people, including kids on a school playground. Comcast, which owns NBC, gave $7.5 million to Trump’s ballroom, which is why those newsrooms keep pulling their punches. Raw America has no owner, no billionaire, and no network. We are about to hire a Washington correspondent, and 3 percent of the people reading this going paid would fund it.
So if you want to support independent media that nobody can buy, become a paid subscriber right now. It’s about 17 cents a day, less than a weekly coffee. Subscribe or upgrade here.
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.
