Heading back

 After 3 weeks in Europe, I am heading back to the land of the orange shit turd and the fucking maggots....

Winning! Rates are going UP!.. Oh that is losing....

Mortgage rates just hit 7.28%. But there are ways to get a lower rate

By Samantha Delouya

Mortgage rates keep going up.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.28% this week, up from 7.03% last week, according to Freddie Mac data released Thursday. Mortgage rates have risen for six straight weeks, and this week brought the biggest one-week jump in nearly four years. Rates are now at their highest level since November 2023.

Turmoil in the bond market is driving rates higher. The 10-year Treasury yield has risen in recent months as investors worry that the Iran war and increased government spending could further stoke inflation and push the Federal Reserve toward higher rates for longer.

If you’re currently in the market for a home, the good news is you may be facing less competition from rate-sensitive buyers who are stepping back. But if you need a mortgage, the bad news is you will likely pay more in monthly costs than you would have just a few months ago.

But even with borrowing costs high – and potentially headed higher – a sub-7% mortgage rate may still be within reach for some buyers. The trade-off could be a riskier loan or a much bigger upfront payment.

Here’s what to know:

Get creative with your mortgage

Most home buyers opt for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage because it typically offers lower monthly payments and predictable costs.

But it’s not the only option. Other types of mortgages may offer lower interest rates, potentially saving borrowers money over the life of the loan.

A 15-year mortgage typically has a lower interest rate than a 30-year mortgage, though monthly payments are significantly higher. Another option that is becoming increasingly popular lately: adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs).

As of the latest data last week, “ARM loans, with rates around 80 basis points lower than fixed rate loans, accounted for 10.3% of applications, the highest share since October 2025,” according to Joel Kan, deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

But ARM loans, the mortgage products that helped fuel housing market risk in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis, are riskier than fixed-rate loans. They typically offer a lower fixed rate for five, seven or 10 years before resetting with market rates. If rates are higher when the fixed period ends, borrowers can be hit with sharply higher monthly payments.

“It may work well for some borrowers who are expecting to move or refinance in four or five years,” said Jeremy Luke, a divisional director at Chase Home Lending. “It may not work for all.”

Another way to get a lower mortgage rate is to take over someone’s existing mortgage as an assumable loan.

Not all home loans can be passed to a home buyer, but most government-backed loans, such as those from the Federal Housing Administration, the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the US Department of Agriculture, are assumable.

However, the approval process for an assumable mortgage can take longer. And because the buyer takes over only the seller’s remaining loan balance, they may need to bring significantly more cash to the table to cover the difference between that balance and the home’s purchase price.

Buy down your rate

The rate an individual buyer gets depends on more than market conditions. Lenders also consider factors such as the borrower’s credit score, debt-to-income ratio and down payment, said Jeff DerGurahian, head economist at loanDepot.

After shopping around, if you are unsatisfied with the rates you’ve been offered, it’s often possible to pay more up front in exchange for a reduced interest rate.

Permanent buydowns lower your interest rate for the life of the loan, whereas temporary buydowns, which can be cheaper, lower your rate for only the first few years.

But it’s important not to overdo it, DerGurahian said.

“You don’t want to put so much money down that you can’t do what you need to do to live in your house and live day-to-day,” he said.

Get someone else to cover a buydown

Sometimes, the home’s seller or a builder can cover the cost of a rate buydown.

Builders are leaning more heavily on incentives to attract buyers to new construction, offering concessions such as mortgage rate buydowns and closing-cost credits. In September, 66% of builders reported using sales incentives, up from 63% in August and the highest share since December, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ sentiment survey.

A buyer should also understand the demand picture in their local market, said DerGurahian.

If it’s a buyer’s market, that means the supply of homes in that area exceeds demand, giving home buyers the upper hand. If a homeowner is motivated to sell, they may be willing to offer concessions to attract a buyer. If sellers have the upper hand in a local market, though, it’s less likely.

Take advantage of programs designed to help

Certain buyers may have access to federal programs that can help them secure more favorable mortgage rates, including VA loans for eligible veterans and USDA loans for buyers purchasing homes in qualifying rural areas.

There are also banks and credit unions that offer relationship pricing or preferential rates.

For example, Chase occasionally runs “rate sales” where home buyers (and homeowners looking to refinance) can lock in discounted rates, Luke said.

Some banks, including Chase, also offer a discounted rate if customers move eligible deposits and investments into that bank, Luke added.

Don’t forget to shop around

It pays to shop around. Experts generally recommend applying with at least three different mortgage lenders to make sure you’re getting a competitive rate. Compare the rates offered, closing costs and other fees to get a clearer picture of the total cost of each loan.

And you don’t necessarily have to worry about multiple credit checks dinging your score. To shop around for mortgages without hurting your credit, limit your search to a window of 14 to 45 days, according to Bankrate.

Needs to do more than step back, unless he is on a cliff...

Alito bows out of blockbuster Supreme Court climate case

The conservative justice had previously resisted calls from environmentalists to recuse himself.

By Lesley Clark and Alex Guillén

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is stepping back from a major climate argument just a week before the court is scheduled to take up the case.

Alito had faced calls to recuse himself from Suncor v. Boulder over his financial interests in energy companies. A Monday letter from Scott Harris, clerk of the court, informed the parties that Alito “has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case.” The notice did not further explain his decision to sit out arguments Oct. 5, the first day of the court’s new term.

In the case, Colorado localities are seeking damages under state tort laws related to the effects of climate change. The suit named Suncor and ExxonMobil.

While Alito does not hold stock in those companies, he is invested in several other fossil fuel companies, including oil giants ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66. They are named in many lawsuits similar to Colorado’s that have been filed around the country. The future of those cases will be affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Suncor.

A spokesperson for the court as recently as May had said that Alito wouldn’t recuse because he didn’t have a ”financial interest in any party” involved in Suncor and that he was advised by the court’s legal counsel that “his recusal is not required.”

Alito did recuse himself when the court turned away an appeal from the companies in the Colorado case in 2023. But that recusal came as the court on the same day rejected appeals in similar cases involving other companies, including ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66.

The court spokesperson said earlier this year that Alito had “inadvertently recused” himself in the earlier Colorado case “because it was considered at the same time as other cases where the justice did have a financial interest in the parties.”

Alito had resisted calls to step aside from the upcoming climate argument, even as watchdog groups note that the entire oil industry is likely to be affected by the decision. California-based Consumer Watchdog has noted that both ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 have warned shareholders multiple times over the past decade about the potential financial consequences of the litigation.

The group called Alito’s recusal the “right decision, and one he should have made from the start.”

“The public should not have to wonder whether a justice’s personal investments could benefit from a ruling that shields the fossil-fuel industry from liability,” said Organizing Director Alexandra Nagy.

Conservative groups have also called for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself as part of a broader effort to discredit a judicial educational manual. The court has not acknowledged those requests.

Alito is one of just two justices to hold investments in individual companies, including in fields other than energy. The other is Chief Justice John Roberts, who holds just a few stocks, none in the energy sector.

Barrage of lawsuits

Barrage of lawsuits targets Trump’s funding cancellation

Lawmakers are looking to the courts to help protect Congress’ funding power.

By Jennifer Scholtes, Cassandra Dumay and Kyle Cheney

Lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s move to cancel $810 million in congressionally approved spending are piling up in courtrooms throughout the country as states and groups that receive federal dollars fight to keep the cash flowing.

In the final hours before the fiscal year ended late Wednesday, a half-dozen states went to federal court to challenge Trump’s latest use of a controversial “pocket rescission.” A group that helps students from migrant families go to college also filed suit, trying to preserve about $25 million in education funding Trump is seeking to claw back.

At least one federal judge so far has been sympathetic to arguments that Trump’s move, which essentially runs out the clock on Congress’ right to evaluate and potentially reject funding clawbacks, could be illegal: U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled late Wednesday to delay the expiration of $56 million for housing support services, temporarily blocking Trump from canceling the money.

The flurry of legal action comes as many lawmakers on Capitol Hill clamor for the courts to strike down Trump’s action as an illegal and unconstitutional encroachment on Congress’ power to dictate how federal cash is spent.

But the fresh lawsuits will not necessarily prompt a sweeping ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed Trump to go ahead last year with withholding $4 billion he canceled through the same budget tactic. The high court argued in that brief unsigned order that the Trump administration had made a strong argument that outside groups may not have legal standing to sue under the decades-old impoundment law.

In the lawsuit Wednesday by six states, the suing parties argue that the president has not only flouted that 1970s law, but also the Constitution and the annual funding bills Congress has enacted over the last year.

The group suing over the cancellation of funding for educating students from migrant families laid out similar arguments, contending that the Trump administration has violated the First Amendment by discriminating based on “protected speech, expressive activities, and viewpoints that are irrelevant to funding or activities” the programs support.

Cobb’s decision, meanwhile, is only temporary. She explained in an emergency order Wednesday that she acted because the suing groups “would lose out on significant amounts of funding due to allegedly unconstitutional actions.”

Airing ‘propaganda’

Top Democratic appropriator wants White House to pay for airing ‘propaganda’

Sen. Patty Murray is proposing to dock the Office of Management and Budget for violations.

Jennifer Scholtes

A group of Senate Democrats are rolling out a bill Thursday to cut funding from the White House budget office any time a president uses taxpayer dollars to pay for anything considered political “propaganda.”

The legislation led by Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, is unlikely to clear Congress unless Democrats win control of the House and Senate in the midterms. But the language could eventually be included in annual government funding bills and serves in the meantime as a way for Democrats to press their GOP counterparts on President Donald Trump’s ongoing use of federal funding to air campaign-style ads commending the president and his offensive against Iran.

“Congress cannot sit on its hands,” Murray said in a statement, noting that lawmakers in both parties have said in recent days that they oppose the taxpayer-funded ads the Trump administration is defending as “public service announcements.”

The bill would dock the budget of the Office of Management and Budget by $20 million every time an administration violates existing law barring the use of federal funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The head of the Government Accountability Office would be charged with determining if such a violation has occurred.

Major loss

Judge rules Trump can’t fire court-appointed prosecutors

The ruling is a major loss for Trump’s effort to install loyalists in key positions.

By Erica Orden

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys, rejecting a core tenet of the Trump administration’s approach to top prosecutorial jobs.

“The president cannot unilaterally fire a United States attorney appointed by the district court,” U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian said in a ruling from the bench. Doing so, Bastian said, “would upend the framework created by the Constitution and the statutes, which together balance the president’s right to appoint and the Senate’s right to confirm.”

The Justice Department said it will ask an appeals court to temporarily block Bastian’s decision while it appeals the ruling.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Roger Rogoff, whom Trump purportedly fired from the job of U.S. attorney for the Seattle-area Western District of Washington immediately after the district’s federal judges appointed him to the role in July.

In his ruling, Bastian, an Obama appointee, determined that Rogoff is the U.S. attorney and has legally occupied that role since he took the oath of office on July 15. The judge also stripped power from Charles Neil Floyd, whom the Trump administration had temporarily installed in Rogoff’s place, determining that the administration had “improperly granted” authority to Floyd.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to circumvent the Senate confirmation process to appoint loyalists in top positions. In cases when district judges have exercised their authority to select someone else as the U.S. attorney, Trump has fired that person.

In his ruling, Bastian not only restored Rogoff to the job, but also took steps designed to thwart any attempts by the Trump administration to undermine his authority or transfer it to someone else. Bastian ordered that the executive office of the president, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department are barred from “any purported firing” or removal of Rogoff from his post, interference with his service in the role and from treating anyone other than Rogoff as the U.S. attorney.

Lie Lie Lie............

Korea to Trump: We aren’t funding your Alaska pipeline, yet

President Donald Trump touted Korean funding for a long-stalled pipeline project in Alaska. The Korean government said they haven’t promised the money.

By Daniel Desrochers

The Korean government denied Thursday morning that it has finalized an investment for a long-stalled Alaskan natural gas project, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump tried to help boost the state’s Republican senator with a flashy Oval Office funding announcement.

“This is a great senator, who is totally responsible for this pipeline,” Trump said of Sen. Dan Sullivan, who stood beside him Wednesday at the White House. “This is a man that works with me, shoulder to shoulder.”

There is just one problem: Korea says the pipeline investment is still under review.

Korean President Lee Jae Myung and several other members of his government said Thursday that their investment in the Alaska pipeline remains conditional.

“The Alaska LNG project will proceed to working level under the preconditions that 1) its commercial viability is confirmed and 2) it complies with the legal procedures of the Republic of Korea,” Lee posted on X Thursday morning, according to a translation.

The government also issued a release saying “the two countries have agreed to begin reviewing the project,” and will proceed based on “commercial reasonableness requirements.”

The project involves a large-scale natural gas pipeline to transport energy from northern Alaska to the southern part of the state and would create a terminal that would help facilitate exports to Asian countries like South Korea and Japan. Presidents have been promising to tap into those isolated natural gas reserves in northern Alaska since the Carter administration, but several efforts have failed to attract investment due to concerns about cost and future returns.

Trump on Wednesday claimed South Korea had committed $54 billion in funding for the project as part of a $350 billion U.S. investment pledge Seoul made last year in a deal to lower threatened U.S. tariffs. He also said that Korea would spend around $120 billion on eight nuclear plants across four states and around $20 billion on a natural gas power plant in Texas.

It was the latest in a series of events the White House has held in recent days to tout massive foreign investment for projects in midterm battleground states — even if the details remain fuzzy.

Earlier this week, the administration highlighted a new steel plant in Iowa, but some industry experts are skeptical that the plant will be built given the troubled financial past of Mesabi Metallics, the company linked to it, and the fact that its projections are based on the current high U.S. steel prices.

Trump made it clear Wednesday that the LNG investment announcement had to do with Sullivan’s election chances. He denounced the fact that another candidate named Dan Sullivan — who is running as an independent — was allowed on Alaska’s ballot in November and told the reporters gathered that the incumbent Sullivan had his ear.

“I have to tell you this because he has an election,” Trump said at one point.

Trump and Sullivan emphasized Wednesday that the pipeline project would be transformative for Alaskans, and a developer claimed the project would be done in three years. No members of the Korean government spoke during the White House announcement.

If they had, they might have pointed out that the government in Seoul had already allocated its annual $20 billion U.S. investment commitment for the natural gas power plant in Texas — another state where Republicans are in a closely contested Senate race.

Arp 78

Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries. Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy, the island universe is an enormous 200,000 light-years across. Also known as NGC 772, it sports a prominent, outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's overdeveloped spiral arm is pumped-up by galactic-scale gravitational tides. Interactions with its brightest companion galaxy, the more compact NGC 770 seen directly below the larger spiral, are likely responsible. Embedded in faint star streams revealed in the deep telescopic exposure, NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with spiky foreground Milky Way stars.

How fucking crazy are they??

What to Know About Hegseth’s New Office of Religious Affairs

“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God.”

Kiera Butler

On Wednesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new entity within the Pentagon: the Office of Religious Affairs. The office, Hegseth promised the assembled troops in Quantico, Virginia, would “report straight to the top. No staff filters, no bureaucratic dilution, a direct line to the secretary.” Chaplains would “finally have an advocate at the highest levels.” What’s more, “policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.”  

A hallmark of Hegseth’s tenure at the Department of War has been his muscular Christian religiosity. Earlier this year, he spearheaded an initiative to bring prayer services to the Pentagon. Shortly after the start of the Iran War, during one such event in March, Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth’s own faith is relevant here: He is a member of a conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelicals Churches (CREC) that explicitly advocates for Christians to exert their faith’s influence over the government. As I reported:

At a February Pentagon prayer service, the featured speaker was Doug Wilson, the Moscow, Idaho, pastor who founded CREC. Wilson, who has described his vision of “a network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgement of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fundamental truth of the Apostles’ Creed,” has long argued in favor of Christian nationalism, and he has likened his fiefdom in Idaho—which includes a church, school, college, and publishing house—to a “working prototype” of what Christian nationalism could look like.

The new Office of Religious Affairs isn’t explicitly Christian; a memo (PDF) published yesterday specifies that “Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to compel religious participation or to diminish the free exercise rights of any Service member, civilian employee, or family member of any faith or no faith.” Yet earlier this year, the Pentagon released a new list of 31 religions officially recognized by the US Department of War, drawn from the 200 that had previously been accepted. On the new list, 22 of the 31 groups were Christian. Atheists, pagans, and humanists, all on the original list, had vanished. 

Details about what exactly the Office of Religious Affairs will do have not yet been released, but yesterday’s memo offers a few clues. In addition to moving chaplains directly under the control of the new office and overseeing the groups that decide who can become a chaplain, the office also will “sponsor and oversee research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.” It doesn’t define those terms, but Hegseth’s track record speaks volumes. As I reported a few months back:

In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth writes that the Geneva Conventions are unfair because the United States and Europe are the only ones that follow them. Instead, “America should fight by its own rules,” he declares. The nation’s soldiers should be “the most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.”

Hegseth also bemoans a defense force infected, he writes, with the “fucking scary” disease of progressivism, which “will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!” He warns, “Sometime soon, a real conflict will break out, and red-blooded American men will have to save their elite candy asses.” In July, Hegseth announced an initiative to screen troops for low testosterone and offer hormone replacement therapy to those found deficient.

Hegseth has also long been preoccupied by what he sees as a “spiritual battle” between secular and Christian culture:

On an episode of the podcast CrossPolitic [produced by Doug Wilson’s Canon Press] that aired shortly before Hegseth became Secretary of War, he railed against Godless America, lamenting that liberals “used patriotism to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible.” He also praised classical Christian schools for providing “a comprehensive worldview that prepares them for the battle to come, because we’re in a spiritual battle, and otherwise we’d be sending our kids in as fodder.”

Among the funding priorities listed in the Department of War memo about the new office are “faith-based homeschool support for military families,” faith-based suicide-reduction initiatives, and “contracted services from faith-based non-Federal entities.”

As I wrote, Hegseth’s own book echoes those themes:

Hegseth’s 2022 co-authored tome, Battle for the American Mind, is essentially a book-length extension of that metaphor. “Charging the ‘commanding heights’—the leftists’ educational Death Star—with Nerf guns will not suffice,” he writes. “We don’t want martyrs, we want victors.” Classical Christian education is our only hope to “give our kids and grandkids at least a fighting chance to save America and Christendom,” Hegseth concludes. He exhorts parents to “join the insurgency!” Children educated in this way, he believes, might stand a chance at defending their nation—because the wokes have failed miserably.

Notably, Wilson’s Canon Press publishes popular homeschool curricula. “Education is warfare,” the website says. “Canon curriculum is designed to help you raise faithful, dangerous Christian kids, one subject at a time.”

The new memo promises that within 90 days, the office will deliver “a comprehensive baseline report of all unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements.” In the meantime, Hegseth has lofty ambitions. “We’re placing spiritual health at the same level as physical health,” he said in his speech. “Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God.”

Will make your mind bleed........

Think Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Pentagon Request Is Outrageous? This’ll Blow Your Mind.

We already spend at least that much on the US military each year, and maybe a lot more.

David Vine

On April 3, four weeks after Donald Trump claimed the Iran War would be over in four to five weeks, and with his approval ratings in reputable polls dipping below 40 percent, the president made a wildly audacious ask: Congress, he said, should approve a Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion.

Such a number was unheard of. Congress gave the military an official budget of nearly $1.1 trillion for the 2025 fiscal year—more than the next five runners up (China, Russia, Germany, India, and the UK) combined. Now, counting supplemental funding for the War in Iran, which is entering its eighth month, Trump wants US taxpayers to shell out just under $1.6 trillion ($1,570,000,000,000) to a “Department of War” that’s so un-auditable it probably doesn’t know where it left the car keys.

That’s an increase of almost 50 percent for things that go boom.

As much as we Americans may value our military readiness, 65 percent of US adults polled by the Washington Post in late April opposed Trump’s unprecedented funding request, and two-thirds disapproved of his “little excursion” in Iran. (They still do.) The disapproval numbers would be higher still, no doubt, if those people were aware of a dirty little secret: We’re already spending more—way more—than what the Pentagon reports, and most media outlets dutifully parrot.

A recent report I helped coauthor for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) estimates that, properly accounted for, US military expenditures last year were at least $1.5 trillion, and possibly a lot more. If Congress grants Trump’s requests, we’ll be spending $2 trillion to $3 trillion on the military and its wars.

This isn’t just about Trump, but rather the DC establishment. For decades, the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon have been obfuscating military spending by means of arcane bureaucratic practices and budgeting tricks. And yet most journalists and experts quote the official numbers, which are profoundly incomplete.

Consider, for example, that the Treasury Department covers about $100 billion of the annual cost of supporting retired military personnel. And that the $7.3 billion the State Department shelled out for “global health programs” in fiscal 2025, according to data from USASpending.gov, is actually controlled by the Pentagon. (The money, as I point out in my book Base Nation, is used for military intelligence gathering and gaining strategic access to locations around the world.) Sometimes it’s smaller sums, like the $385 million the Justice Department shelled out that fiscal year to settle old Vietnam War claims and compensate people harmed by radiation from nuclear weapons testing.

If the routine concealment of hundreds of billions in military spending doesn’t feel scandalous to you, imagine the uproar were the Wall Street Journal to suddenly reveal that federal officials were secretly spending almost a half-trillion beyond what Congress budgeted for Medicaid, affordable housing, education, childcare, climate programs, or food assistance. This fuzzy accounting “is not a new phenomenon. It has been a bipartisan effort spanning years,” Air Force veteran and former military budget analyst Christian Sorensen told me in an email. “When the sheer size of the figures revealed in [the] accounting sinks into public consciousness, the body politic will be even more furious.”

“The true scale of the military budget is much larger than reported,” concurs Heidi Peltier, an economist and budget expert with Brown University’s Costs of War Project. This overlooked spending raises the total, she says, by “50 percent to 130 percent higher than is usually reported, a figure likely to stun most Americans.” 

Quantifying miliary expenditures should be a relatively easy task for journalists and researchers. It is not. “The non-obvious costs” of what budget expert Stephen Semler, a fellow at the progressive Center for International Policy, calls “status quo” military spending are “so vast that it’s difficult to take [their] measure,” he told me.

The POGO report details how military expenditures are spread across a host of federal departments beyond the Pentagon. And how, taken together, those amounts may exceed the total of what those agencies receive for nonmilitary purposes. This is not the result of some single diabolical plan, but rather the product of obscure bureaucratic processes wherein the Pentagon, over time, has taken control of money Congress appropriates to other agencies, as a Senate Budget Committee staffer told me on condition of anonymity. While lawmakers’ actions and motivations in some cases may demand further investigation, their collective complacency has allowed the military to claim a significantly larger share of the federal budget than the public is aware of.

Using five methodologies and data from three government sources, we calculated how much money the government really spent on the military. For fiscal 2025, depending on the methodology used and how one defines military spending, that number ranged from $1.5 trillion to $2.3 trillion. For example, most of the $33.5 billion in nuclear weapons spending tracked by USASpending.gov was tucked into the Department of Energy budget. And most of the $393.3 billion cost of military pensions, veterans’ benefits, and related retirement expenditures were found on the ledger of the Department of Veterans Affairs, thus relieving the Pentagon of a substantial long-term expense. The USASpending.gov data allowed us to identify billions more in the budgets of at least 15 other agencies, expenses that don’t make it into commonly reported military spending totals.

“No agency on Earth could fail eight audits and still get a $1.5 trillion check, except the Pentagon,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee from San Diego, which has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of military personnel, said in a statement. And without the accounting to prove the money is properly spent, she added, “we shouldn’t keep footing a bill that gets bigger every year.”

Even our estimates are likely undercounts, thanks to spotty federal budget transparency, classified funding, and Pentagon accounting failures. Indeed, the Department of Defense remains the only federal agency, as Jacobs noted, that has never passed a financial audit.

We taxpayers don’t get to choose everything our money is used for, and that’s part of the grand bargain. Progressives would rather not see their tax dollars supporting Trump’s deportation machine. And plenty of conservatives would repeal the Affordable Care Act tomorrow if they could. But even as we bicker over priorities, whatever our politics, an accurate accounting of where our money goes is indispensable to an honest debate.

That’s where Congress comes in. Lawmakers could stop putting military spending in budgets beyond that of the “Department of War.” They could also, for example, order the Congressional Research Service to compile an annual “total military” roundup that details everything in one place. Until that time, journalists and analysts might want to include a large asterisk whenever they cite the Pentagon’s official numbers.

The concealment of our true military budget, wittingly or unwittingly—as many members of Congress may not even realize this subterfuge is happening—shows just how out of control Pentagon spending has become, and how wildly disproportionate it is to the military threats we face. Because the reality is, we’re not merely spending more on our military than the five runners-up, but likely more than every other nation on Earth combined.

Why does this matter? Several reasons. Trump and his “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth have purged military leaders who put the Constitution first and stacked the Pentagon with loyalists. The president has dispatched National Guard troops to US cities and hasn’t ruled out ordering them to the polls during the elections, which would be in clear defiance of the Constitution. For people around the world, US military spending is a life and death matter, given the debacle in Iran—which Trump recently threatened to annihilate—and the president’s periodic threats to wage war on Cuba, Greenland, and Colombia, despite campaign promises that he would be the president who didn’t get the United States embroiled in foreign conflicts.

Put bluntly, a larger military budget means more war. It also means a bigger deficit, which pressures Congress to further slash funding for health care, Social Security, climate resilience, food safety, and all manner of domestic programs people depend upon. If Congress gave Trump what he asked for, our military spending would gobble up some 75 percent of discretionary federal funds.

In this light, his budget request should be treated as the sick joke that it is—an opportunity for the people and their representatives to insist on a different path.

Democrats and even some Republicans who claim to be concerned about our $40 trillion-plus national debt, have so far resisted Trump’s request for a Pentagon bump. In early September, the president signed a bill that extends current military funding levels into December. Both chambers of Congress are now in recess until after the midterms, so the matter may not even be resolved until after new members are seated in January 2027.

In the meantime, “federal lawmakers would be wise to read the tea leaves, analyze the numbers, and pursue a sound, moral budget before it’s too late,” Sorensen said.

That would mean reining in runaway military spending before laying a finger on the domestic programs that already help accomplish what should be the US military’s most fundamental purpose: keeping Americans alive and well.

Federal investigation into Trump PSA’s

Raskin leads calls for federal investigation into Trump PSA’s

The Maryland Democrat could lead the House Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.

Chris Marquette

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee is demanding federal inquiries into the amount of taxpayer money used to furnish a television ad blitz propping up President Donald Trump ahead of the midterms.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is poised to lead the panel if Democrats win the majority in November, joined California Democratic Rep. George Whitesides in sending a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Special Counsel. It asks the GAO to investigate the “source, accounts, and total amount of taxpayer funds used by the Executive Office of the President to produce and distribute this advertisement across major television markets and official White House social media channels.”

The lawmakers also asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether the ads “paid for by millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, constitute a violation of the Hatch Act, and determine who should be held accountable.”

The ads, which so far have run during NFL games and flagship Sunday news shows, depict Trump in a powerful and effective light, with glimpses of him posing for the camera, denigrating the free press and denouncing communism. Each includes the phrase, “paid for by the U.S. government.”

“These ads constitute an illegal use of taxpayer funds, perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that they are virtually identical to the ones Donald Trump used during his 2024 presidential campaign, and in fact use the same footage and the same inept ideological messaging,” Raskin and Whitesides contend.

Other congressional Democrats have also reached out to the administration in recent days to express outrage and ask basic questions about how the ads were derived and funded.

Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Chris Murphy of Connecticut — the top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, respectively — have written to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin regarding reports that the agency has redirected $20 million in funding originally intended for Customs and Border Protection to “bankroll the obscene political ads.”

A White House spokesperson called the TV spots “public service announcements” and said they are designed to remind “Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad. The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.”

A spokesperson for DHS said the agency “follows all applicable rules for contracting decisions and keeps all decision makers informed” and that “all contracting decisions are made in accordance with applicable law.”

The Office of the Special Counsel confirmed it received the letter and declined comment.

A spokesperson for GAO did not respond to a request for comment.

Data center bills

Bipartisan Senate duo drops new data center bills

It’s not clear whether Democrats will support measures not guaranteed to rein in costs.

Kelsey Brugger

A bipartisan Senate duo is rolling out two new data center bills one day after Democrats rejected a House-passed measure designed to shield ratepayers from costs associated with the facilities.

The measures from Sens. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) would aim to provide people with more information about the data centers being built in their backyards amid growing backlash against the nationwide proliferation brought on by the artificial intelligence industry boom.

One bill would establish a program within the Department of Energy to give communities access to technical expertise to better understand the costs and benefits of proposed data center developments. The other would require federal reporting on the environmental impacts of large data centers that consume at least 50 megawatts of power every day.

“Americans are rightly skeptical when a large company tells them not to worry about the impacts of a new data center in their community,” Curtis said in a statement, shared first with POLITICO. “The answer to that distrust is transparency.”

Blunt Rochester added in a separate statement that people have “legitimate concerns” about energy and water usage coming from data centers, and that her bills with Curtis would “ensure communities have a say in how these projects affect their quality of life.”

Curtis and Blunt Rochester, who both serve on the Senate Commerce Committee, recently teamed up on a letter to Chair Ted Cruz calling for hearings and forums to discuss the perils of rapidly-advancing AI technology. They have not yet received a response.

It’s not clear what the path might be for their new data center bills in the current Congress. While support from members of both parties could bolster the effort, neither measure would contain forcing mechanisms to bring down costs passed on from data centers to consumers — a rallying cry for Democrats ahead of the midterms.

Most Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation that passed overwhelmingly in the House earlier in September, from going to President Donald Trump’s desk because it would simply encourage tech companies to pay for data center infrastructure.

Democrats said the bill, championed in the Senate by vulnerable GOP Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, was ultimately “toothless” in failing to go far enough to ensure energy prices were curbed for consumers.

Revamp

Centrist Dems’ Supreme Court plan boosts momentum for revamp

Third Way wants term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code to be part of the party’s 2028 presidential discussions.

Calen Razor

Democratic efforts to revamp the Supreme Court gained momentum Thursday as an influential center-left think tank released a plan to limit justices’ terms and misconduct.

Third Way’s proposal, shared first with POLITICO, highlights growing unity across the ideological spectrum in the Democratic Party for significant changes to the high court as Americans’ trust in the institution hovers at historic lows.

The group says it also wants to inject ideas to overhaul the court — including legislation to set an 18-year term limit and an enforceable ethics code — into the party’s conversations leading up to the 2028 presidential race.

“This is one of those things that we think can and should be a part of the 2028 discussion, and those folks who are running should be asked about whether they would champion Supreme Court reform,” Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, said in an interview.

Key Democratic groups have increasingly been coalescing around ideas to overhaul the court’s structure and policing in light of accusations of growing partisanship and corruption among justices. In June, a number of key Democratic House caucus leaders, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus, released their own resolution calling for term limits for justices and a code of ethics.

“We think that the center left has been remiss in not being forward enough on reform proposals that would make our system work better for people, which is why some folks have gone to the further left,” Erickson said.

Third Way cited public opinion polling from both the Brennan Center for Justice and FOX News indicating more than 70% of respondents favored term limits for justices. An 18-year cycle would ensure the appointment of two justices every presidential term.

The group also wants legislation to hold justices accountable for ethics violations. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last month he supports “dramatic reform” on the Supreme Court starting with an ethics code so justices don’t act “above the law.”

The court in 2023 adopted its own formal ethics code for the first time in history, but that policy largely lacks some of the teeth that advocates have proposed.

One idea supported by some Democrats that Third Way is not endorsing: upping the number of justices on the bench. Erickson said that idea seems more like “a mutually assured destruction path,” as parties could go back and forth adding more justices.

The path forward for any court-focused legislation in Congress in the near future, however, is very slim without majorities in both chambers and control of the White House — something Third Way acknowledged.

Still, the group’s recommendations are meant “to show that the center left can also be bold and be addressing systemic problems to appeal to voters and their level of anxiety and anger about what’s happening right now,” Erickson said.

Name Names.....

Newsom orders California to say AI after Trump’s ‘superintelligence’ decree

The governor’s executive order comes as Trump tries to make the “superintelligence” rebrand stick.

By Tyler Katzenberger

Donald Trump’s quest to rebrand AI has a new opponent.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Wednesday requiring state agencies to refer to the technology only as “artificial intelligence” or AI. The directive came a day after Trump issued his own decree pushing the name “superintelligence” and recruited top tech executives to back his move.

“Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House — that’s why California continues to lead,” Newsom said in a statement accompanying his order, which asserted the decree was “informed by common sense.”

Newsom paired his announcement with a series of bill signings that impose new policies aimed at protecting workers against AI, such as layoff notices and limits on the technology’s use in disciplinary and firing decisions.

Trump told reporters Tuesday that he’s directing the federal government to use the term “superintelligence” because AI is “not artificial, we all agree on that.” Tech executives who attended a Tuesday luncheon at the White House used the term when speaking to reporters after.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang all signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” on Tuesday that encourages companies to closely monitor their AI models’ capabilities and stand up internal teams that ensure models don’t carry out unintended hacks. The document notably misspelled the U.S. as the “Unites States” in a line under Trump’s signature.

NATO meeting

Pentagon excludes key allies from NATO meeting

Some of Europe’s biggest defense spenders — and U.S. allies — were not invited to a Pentagon-led meeting to discuss the alliance.

By Paul McLeary, Stefanie Bolzen and Jack Detsch

The Trump administration is excluding several major allies from a gathering of NATO members next month — after previous threats to deploy a “naughty and nice list” against governments that have run afoul of the president’s priorities.

The planned meeting in Poland, which Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has spearheaded, is essentially a working group focused on NATO’s future, according to six diplomats familiar with the planning. But many of the countries who didn’t receive an invite — such as the United Kingdom, France and the Baltic countries — are big defense spenders and play key roles in the alliance, leaving their diplomats wondering why they’re being frozen out.

They question whether the administration is playing favorites in a way that could further splinter an alliance already struggling with increasing Russian aggression and depleted weapons stockpiles.

“We’re doing everything that is being asked of us,” said an official from an excluded ally nation. “We’re trying to understand what the criteria is and what the purpose of these meetings are. Not much has been passed on to us yet.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and the Pentagon declined to comment.

President Donald Trump and his top lieutenants have relentlessly criticized NATO since returning to power, on everything from members’ refusal to back the Iran war to the failure of some countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense.

“I always considered NATO, where we spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars per year protecting these same Countries, to be a one way street — We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need,” Trump railed in a Truth Social post this year. Last month, he snubbed another ally — South Korea — by abruptly scaling back a planned joint military exercise while complaining about Seoul’s refusal to join the war against Iran.

In April, as POLITICO first reported, the White House came up with something akin to a who’s-in-and-who’s-out list while it looked for ways to punish allies who didn’t adhere to Trump’s wishes.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has echoed that vision. He has encouraged “model allies” and warned that those that do not support U.S. interests will suffer consequences.

While details on the new NATO working group are still vague, it follows the threat of rewarding some at the expense of others.

Colby has held two similar meetings with invitees Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. The countries involved in the meeting — known as the Bergen Group format — insist it’s not meant to rupture the alliance, said a diplomat from one of the invited nations, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Instead, the group intends to come up with ideas it can bring to the full alliance for more stress-testing.

“This can be an engine for transformation,” for the whole alliance, the diplomat said. The person acknowledged that some allies are frustrated by the exclusion, especially since many have hit or surpassed the spending targets demanded by the Trump administration.

The U.S. might add Denmark to the exclusive club next given the agreement reached between the two countries to expand the American military footprint in Greenland, according to another person familiar with the planning.

Colby, who has been the catalyst for the initiative, held a first meeting of its kind in Bergen, Norway, in June and invited the six favored allies. “NATO allies that are rapidly meeting their Hague spending commitments, have the scale to contribute, and are ready to get down to practical business,” he wrote on social media after the meeting.

He noted this month at a conference in Washington that “the idea is to pull the whole alliance along,” adding that it “will be a better and stronger NATO that is more durable” and give Europe more military capacity.

Colby has taken a longtime interest in smaller format talks between NATO nations. He has focused in previous years on reviving Germany as a military power to contain Russia and dedicating American troops to deal with China’s rise.

But even invited allies question why Colby and other defense officials have cherry-picked attendees and left out some of the continent’s largest defense powers, such as Britain.

“If they try splitting NATO into the good ones and the bad ones, it is dangerous for the U.S.,” said another of the six diplomats. “But for Europe, this is existential.”

No they are screwed...

‘These guys are in a pickle’: Some Republicans spurn Trump on the campaign trail

Republicans are counting on Trump to energize the voters they need in November, even as some candidates fear his unpopularity could alienate the persuadable voters they also need to win.

By Erin Doherty, Alec Hernandez, Samuel Benson and Meredith Lee Hill

Republicans know President Donald Trump’s unpopularity poses a big problem for them in November. They also recognize he may be their only option to avoid a wipeout.

Five weeks before Election Day, many Republicans are facing a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don’t dilemma. Some candidates in close races are wary of alienating undecided voters by campaigning alongside Trump and the baggage that comes with him: high gas prices, voters’ persistent economic concerns and the prolonged war in Iran.

But keeping the president at arm’s length could make it harder to turn out the low-propensity base voters they need — voters that only Trump has been able to bring to the polls.

“These guys are in a pickle,” said one national GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape, like others in this article. “They may not want Trump to come to the district, but there are still things that Trump can do to help.”

Asked what would happen if Trump campaigned in a battleground state where their candidates were running, another GOP operative working on midterm races said: “I suspect my candidates would come down with COVID.”

But the candidates may not have much of a choice. Trump is increasingly inserting himself into the election in the closing stretch, ramping up his campaign travel with a slate of stops scheduled in red states, repeatedly imploring voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot and, most recently, appearing in taxpayer-funded campaign-style ads that the White House has claimed are public service announcements.

Some Republicans have encouraged Trump’s team not to send the president to a blue-leaning Omaha district and other key districts where his approval rating is underwater ahead of Election Day, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Brinker Harding is running in the Omaha seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.); his campaign didn’t respond when asked if he’ll attend Trump’s upcoming rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, about a two-hour drive away.

Others have said similar things.

“They’ve called me four times now to see if we want him to come, and I’ve said no,” one senior Republican involved in a House GOP battleground race in a district Trump safely won in 2024 told POLITICO.

Another Republican operative familiar with Republican midterm strategy said the party views its role — and Trump’s — primarily as driving GOP turnout, while the work of persuading moderates, independents and other swing voters falls more heavily on individual candidates.

“Where the president is going is being decided very strategically, to areas where we are trying to boost turnout among Republican voters,” the operative said. “We’re not going to be sending him into areas where it would necessarily be hurtful to our candidates.”

Others in red states that are increasingly competitive acknowledge that if they want to rally the MAGA base to the degree necessary to hold onto key seats, no one can deliver like Trump.

“He’s a turnout machine for the Republican Party, the president is,” said Ohio GOP Chair Alex Triantafilou, who will welcome Trump to his state Saturday. “I certainly know what some of the national polling and some of the pundits have to say about this. But he is always welcome to Ohio because we know that he fires our people up.”

Not everyone thinks Trump is a net-positive even in places he comfortably won.

A national GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there are “no indications that there are enough turn out voters to overcome dropping some persuasion voters.”

Outgoing North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said he doesn’t think it would be helpful for Trump to campaign in his state — which the president won in all three of his presidential runs, and where former RNC Chair Michael Whatley is struggling to tighten the race against former Gov. Roy Cooper (D).

“Not in my opinion — just if you take a look at the votes — you take a look at the independents. I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to get them out,” he told POLITICO.

“I think [Trump’s] job is to get the people out who traditionally vote for him and don’t show up in off-year elections,” he added. “Our job [as candidates] is to then … create some separation. It’s not like you’re breaking your loyalty to the president. ... So there are states I think he should go to, there are states I don’t think he should go to.”

The Whatley campaign, however, feels differently. “Who drives R turnout right now in NC — Trump or Tillis? We would welcome Trump back to NC,” said Whatley’s senior adviser, Jonathan Felts. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been to North Carolina to campaign with Whatley in recent weeks.

Trump’s upcoming stop in a red corner of Ohio outside Dayton is part of a broader campaign swing that reflects the political bind. Other stops scheduled include in deep-red states like Oklahoma and Alabama, as well as in red states with key Senate contests including Ohio, Nebraska and Alaska.

Ironically, the expanding battleground map could make Trump more useful to Republicans in some of the places they are most worried about. As the fight has spread into states and districts he won by double digits, simply turning out more of his base may be enough to make a difference.

The White House argued Trump is the “unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.”

“No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the President understands how to communicate with them,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said.

The Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee also said Trump is still a valuable turnout tool, and their candidates are eager to have the president visit their districts and to appear with him on the campaign trail. The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

But some of the voters Republicans most need Trump to activate — especially blue-collar white voters in rural areas who came out to vote for him but often skip voting in the midterms — are themselves unhappy with his presidency.

Recent POLITICO polling found that even some of Trump’s strongest supporters — those who identify as MAGA — are souring on his handling of key issues. A POLITICO Poll in August found that a 44% plurality of MAGA Trump voters said the Iran war has made things more expensive for them, while 38% said the war has had no real impact on their costs.

“It’s really Trump’s voting base that’s feeling the pain of Trump the most,” said another Republican operative involved in several battleground races across the country, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.“They have to turn those people out. But those people are pissed at Trump, so it’s this weird dynamic of like: ‘Does he help? Does he hurt? Can he go and encourage the disenfranchised, the really pissed off Republican Trump voter?’” the operative said. “That’s really going to be what decides the outcome of this election.”

It’s noteworthy which GOP candidates are enthusiastically coming out to Trump’s rallies — and which are sitting out or staying mum on their plans.

A spokesperson confirmed that Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who is locked in a tough race in a state Trump won by double-digits, will attend Trump’s upcoming rally outside of Dayton; a spokesperson for Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, did not respond to an inquiry about Ramaswamy’s attendance plans, nor did spokespeople for the trio of GOP House candidates running in Ohio’s competitive 1st, 7th and 9th districts.

Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa, recently said the Iran war needs to be “brought to a successful and immediate end,” in a rare public break with Trump. Hinson also did not attend a campaign rally Vance held in western Iowa in mid-September. She did, however, appear in the Oval Office behind Trump earlier this week when he announced a plan to build a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa.

But with an ever-darkening environment, some Republicans see any efforts to reverse course as better than nothing.

“Everybody sees the polling,” said Daniel Garza, a Texas Republican strategist and president of the conservative LIBRE Initiative. “Is the polling accurate? I have no idea. All I know is that turnout is going to be key to this, and anything helps right now, at this point.”

And the answer is.......

Trump’s energy chief asked Europe to release more than a third of its diesel reserves

Chris Wright’s detailed proposal is being sold as a way to bring down fuel prices without banning U.S. exports.

By Joana Lehner, Josh Groeneveld and Ben Munster

The Trump administration has circulated a proposal to European governments asking them to release a large portion of the bloc’s strategic diesel reserves to ease soaring fuel costs, according to four officials in European and U.S. governments.

The plan, put forward by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was pitched as an alternative to President Donald Trump's threat of a blanket ban on diesel exports from the U.S.

Under the proposal, EU governments would release 120 million barrels of diesel from their national strategic reserves over 180 days, a government official from a European country told POLITICO. The official, like others in this story, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the proposal's details publicly.

That would account for well over a third of the approximately 315 million barrels of diesel EU countries held in reserve as of June this year, according to Eurostat figures. Among EU countries, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland hold the largest reserves of the essential transport fuel.

POLITICO reported Tuesday that the White House was floating the idea of asking the EU to use its diesel reserves to bolster global supply and thus lower prices. A German government official on Thursday confirmed that the United States had contacted Berlin in the matter. 

Multiple countries in Europe were approached for a coordinated release, according to a person familiar with the Trump administration's plans. One major EU member was approached bilaterally in the U.S. last week, according to a senior European energy official.

"It was very hypothetical: ‘What do you think about Europe releasing some of the reserves in order to decrease prices, put pressure on supplies?'" the official said. "'It could also help our government not to continue the discussion on the export ban.'"

Wright, along with the U.S. oil and gas industry, opposes an export ban on one of the world's most in-demand petroleum products, and the proposal is seen as an attempt to find an alternative to such a drastic measure.

At a press conference Thursday, Commission spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen wouldn’t confirm whether the EU had received Wright’s request but said that any stock releases would only be agreed through the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based institution which coordinates energy policy among rich countries and oversaw an earlier stock release this year. She added that the Commission was in close contact with EU member countries and Washington.  

Meanwhile, President Trump on Wednesday confirmed that a diesel export ban by his administration was still on the table. “I’m thinking about it,” Trump said of the export ban at an Oval Office event. “I speak to [Energy Secretary] Chris [Wright] and [Interior Secretary] Doug [Burgum] about it a lot — they sort of think it’ll help diesel, but it might raise the price of other things.”

Trump declined to rule out restricting diesel shipments. “It’s something that we think about and we talk about every day,” he said. “But it just seems that it would have a negative impact on gasoline, so that would go up a little bit, and diesel would come down a little bit.”

Wright, who was with Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, said the administration would soon announce measures aimed at bringing down diesel prices. Europe would also be announcing moves to add supply to the market, he said.

“You will hear announcements from our friends in Europe about new diesel supplies that’ll come to the market that’ll meaningfully push diesel prices down,” Wright said.

Everyone knows he is full of shit...........

Trump threatens to 'blow up' Iran as talks stall

Iran says a formal reply came days after the U.S. president called its terms unacceptable.

By Milena Wälde

U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would decide “very soon” whether to “blow up” Iran, as Tehran said it had received Washington’s formal response to its proposal to end the seven-month war.

“We have to make that decision: We blow them up or make a deal,” Trump told reporters at an Oval Office press briefing. Asked how he planned to negotiate with Iranian officials, Trump replied: “Maybe you blow them up.”

Iran’s plan, conveyed during last week’s United Nations General Assembly, called for reopening the Strait of Hormuz within a week and restarting nuclear talks. In return, Tehran wanted the U.S. to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales and release frozen Iranian assets. Iran also called for a ceasefire on all fronts.

But Trump publicly rejected the proposal Saturday, saying Iran wanted a deal because it was “losing so badly.” He added: “They want to make a deal and I think that’s fine. I’d like to make a deal, too. But that deal would not be acceptable.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had seen Trump’s initial reaction but was still waiting for Washington’s position to be communicated formally through mediators. Qatar and Pakistan have continued efforts to revive negotiations.

The war began Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran. On April 7, Trump threatened to destroy Iranian power plants and bridges, warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Hours later, after Pakistan mediated, he agreed to a two-week ceasefire to allow time for negotiations.

Trump then declared the ceasefire “over” on July 8, though he said talks could continue. The two parties have not yet found an agreement.

Signs laws targeting ICE with shock glove ban. Good!

Newsom signs laws targeting ICE with shock glove ban, detention center tax

Democrats rushed to outlaw shock devices after reports that ICE planned to purchase gloves for officers.

By Lindsey Holden and Nicole Norman

Gavin Newsom signed laws on Tuesday that take aim at President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda — barring law enforcement from using shock gloves, banning the use of state property for immigration operations and taxing detention centers.

The new laws are likely to draw legal blowback from the U.S. Department of Justice, which has previously been successful in blocking state laws meant to rein in a federal immigration crackdown.

“California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities.”

Lawmakers introduced some of the legislation early in the year, after federal agents killed two people while conducting an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. Democrats rushed to pass the shock glove ban more recently, after the Associated Press reported in August that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to buy the gloves for its officers.

That ban applies to all law enforcement officers in California, including federal immigration agents. The legislation sunsets on Jan. 1, 2030, and it also requires the California Department of Justice to complete a safety study on shock devices by Jan. 1, 2029.

Two other laws Newsom signed will make state property off limits for immigration enforcement activities and will require the California Department of Justice to investigate incidents in which immigration officers fatally shoot civilians.

In addition, California will prevent the hiring of former federal immigration officers who have engaged in serious misconduct by law enforcement agencies. It’s a narrower hiring restriction than the one advanced by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, which would have screened or outright banned former federal immigration officers from a wide range of public-sector positions in California.

Newsom also signed AB 1633, which attempts to stymie immigration detention by placing a 25 percent tax on the gross receipts of private facilities in the state.

The governor’s signature on the bills could open the state to legal action from Trump’s DOJ, which has gone to court to fight other responses to last year’s sweeping immigration raids. Earlier this year, federal courts blocked one law forbidding federal and local law enforcement officers from using masks to conceal their identities and another requiring all officers to wear visible identification during operations.

In direct response, Newsom on Tuesday signed SB 1004, which will expand the ban on masks to state law enforcement agencies in an attempt to make it stronger legally.

Another bill the governor signed, titled the “No Kings Act,” gives Californians the right to sue government officials — including federal immigration agents — if they feel their constitutional rights have been violated.

The Department of Homeland Security slammed the new laws, saying “enforcing federal immigration laws is a clear federal responsibility.”

“No tax will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make California safe again,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “... ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country. Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”

Really???? Are they all fucking high????

Navarro warns Canada against election interference

Trump's trade adviser also told Canadians lobbying on K Street to "get the hell out of our country" during an event in Washington on Tuesday morning.

By Oliver Ward, Daniel Desrochers and Zi-Ann Lum

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro warned Canadians not to interfere in U.S. elections, a rhetorical escalation in the ongoing trade war between the two countries.

At an economic event hosted by a communications and policy firm in Washington on Tuesday morning, Navarro told any Canadians in the audience, “Please, if you’re on K Street, get the hell out of our country.”

“You’ve lobbied this country and you’ve been successful in the past and you think you can keep doing that,” continued Navarro, who serves as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in the White House. “Memo to Canada: You cannot do that.”

He then warned that Ottawa could face repercussions if Canadians “interfere” in the November elections in the U.S. — specifically singling out Maine and Michigan, both of which have hotly contested Senate and governors races and have been deeply affected by the intensifying trade war President Donald Trump launched against Canada in August.

The comments come the same day Trump’s import bans on about $1 billion worth of Canadian exports took effect and on the back of double-digit tariff hikes from both governments after trade talks fell apart last month.

Navarro declined to answer a question from POLITICO on his comment following the event.

Ottawa’s “dollar-to-dollar” retaliation for Trump’s August tariff increase, which went into effect on Sept. 8, disproportionately hit goods from Michigan, Maine and other U.S. states with competitive elections this fall. When imposing the duties, Canadian Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said they were a “wise and strategic” move to put political pressure on some U.S. elections by targeting specific products. “We think it’s the right thing to do right now,” she said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford also ran television ads last year in the U.S. criticizing Trump’s tariffs. The nationally televised ad aired during the 2025 World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers and featured former President Ronald Reagan warning of the hurt that tariffs cause the U.S. economy.

The Canadian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson, a former state senator, while Republicans and Democrats are in a neck-and-neck race for the Michigan Senate seat left open by the retiring Democrat Gary Peters. The contests could determine which party controls the Senate in 2027. Both states also have tightly contested House and governors races.

Collins has been openly critical of Trump’s tariffs on Canada, saying they will hurt the state’s economy and is lobbying the administration to secure tariff relief for specific products. In Michigan, Republican nominee Mike Rogers has hewed closer to the party line, backing Trump’s attempts to negotiate with Ottawa, even as the business community in the state has formed an advocacy group to push back against the tariffs.

Michigan’s economy is heavily reliant on trade with Canada, especially its auto sector, which is highly integrated across North America. Maine and Canada’s agricultural industries — like forestry products — are also heavily linked, as products cross the border between harvest and processing.

Navarro’s invocation of election interference ties the trade war to one of Trump’s top policy priorities: election security. For months, he’s hammered Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which purports to secure U.S. elections, despite a lack of Republican support for the legislation in the Senate.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and the ranking member of the Finance Committee, said Navarro’s comments were part of a “pattern of insults without facts.”

“Trump between now and Election Day, he’ll be using this for practically everything. If anybody has a sore on their knee, he’s going to say it’s election interference,” Wyden said in an interview at the Capitol.

Navarro is one of the few figures that has remained in Trump’s White House across the two administrations, serving as director of the National Trade Council and helming the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in Trump’s first term, during which he was also among the administration’s most vocal critics of Canadian trade practices.

In 2018, he responded to then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pushback on U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs with remarks he eventually walked back.

“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” he told “Fox News Sunday” in June 2018.

The trade adviser apologized two days later. “My mission was to send a strong signal of strength,” he said. “The problem is that in conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate.”

The revolving door of corruption...

Pharma's new top lobbyist is a former House majority leader

Eric Cantor, deposed by the tea party in 2014, has landed one of Washington's most lucrative lobbying jobs.

By Amanda Chu

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, has selected former House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor as its next president.

Cantor, a Virginia Republican who served as House majority leader from 2011 to 2014, will lead the trade group for branded drugmakers as it navigates growing scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress over its pricing practices, as well as increasing competition from China. Cantor, who starts on Nov. 9, has served as vice chairman and managing director at Moelis & Company, an investment bank, since his defeat in a 2014 primary to a tea party-backed challenger, Dave Brat.

Cantor was the first sitting majority leader in history to a lose a party primary.

Cantor will succeed Stephen Ubl, who announced his decision to step down earlier this year. Rob Davis, chief executive of Merck and PhRMA’s board chair, said Cantor’s “global business acumen coupled with policy and political experience at the highest levels of government make him an ideal person to lead PhRMA during this critical next chapter.”

The big fight...

New Democrats back candidates in deep-red districts

The centrist coalition is boosting seven candidates in districts Donald Trump won in 2024.

Riley Rogerson

The centrist New Democrat Coalition is expanding its endorsements into firmly Republican territory, another sign of the party’s ballooning confidence in their midterm prospects.

The group’s campaign arm, NewDem Action Fund, is endorsing seven candidates running in seats currently held by the GOP — including several that President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024.

They are Chris Backemeyer against Rep. Mike Flood in Nebraska, Kristina Knickerbocker against Rep. Mike Turner in Ohio, Mitchell Berman against Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin, and Raymond Smith against Rep. Greg Murphy in North Carolina. They are also endorsing Nancy Lacore in South Carolina, Teresa Benitez-Thompson in Nevada and Blake Gendebien in New York, who are running for open seats.

“I spent 21 years serving our country in national security roles, where the focus is on the mission and getting the job done,” Backemeyer said in a statement. “That’s the pragmatic approach the New Dems bring to Congress, and it’s what Nebraska’s First District deserves.”

Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, who chairs the fund, said that the endorsed candidates will have access to money, support and advice, as well as likely future visits from New Democrat members. Stanton said he intends to campaign with candidates in Arizona and Iowa.

The new endorsements come as Trump campaigns in deep-red regions ahead of Election Day. Stanton and his fellow New Dems see the move as a sign Trump and House Republicans are on their back foot.

“I’m not sure where friendly Trump territory is in the United States of America,” Stanton said in an interview. “Americans are very upset at the poor decisions of this president … but they’re even more mad at the Republicans in Congress who have rolled over and let him do whatever he wants without any resistance.”

The more New Dem-endorsed candidates that flip their seats, the more influential the already 100-plus-member caucus will be next term. The coalition will be well positioned to have would-be-speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ ear and his back, Stanton said.

“Every single endorsed candidate supports Hakeem Jeffries for speaker of the House,” Stanton said in an interview. “We will be a strong governing partner with Hakeem Jeffries to make sure that his speakership is as successful as possible.”

Guilty as hell...

What Jack Smith plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee

The former special counsel intends to stand by his investigations into Donald Trump, which led to criminal charges.

Chris Marquette

Jack Smith, the former special counsel who orchestrated the federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning that he stands by his decision to bring charges against the president — arguing that his investigations “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.”

Smith has faced unrelenting criticism from Republicans for presiding over what they view as partisan and flawed inquiries; some, including Trump, have called for him to be jailed. Yet Smith, in his opening prepared remarks obtained in advance by POLITICO, will maintain he made the right decision to prosecute Trump — both for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and for his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith plans to say, according to his written testimony.

Smith will note that grand juries in two separate districts reached the same conclusion his investigation did. He also will reflect that the country is facing “challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime” as U.S. citizens are routinely threatened with indictments because they are seen as opposing Trump.

“Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms,” Smith intends to tell lawmakers. “History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it.”

Tuesday will mark the third time Smith has appeared on Capitol Hill over the last two years. He has previously testified to members of the House Judiciary Committee — first privately, then in a public hearing — as Republicans have accused him of overstepping his bounds.

GOP lawmakers are particularly incensed over Smith’s moves to obtain electronic communications for dozens of House and Senate Republicans around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley revealed in July that Smith obtained text messages between 44 members of Congress and White House officials during that period.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Judiciary panel’s top Democrat, said in a floor speech Monday, that Smith is “a nonpartisan career prosecutor.” He also criticized his GOP colleagues for having “made no effort to obtain a copy of Volume 2 of Jack Smith’s report,” which details findings from the case involving Trump’s handling of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.

Sister of a toad is also a toad..........

Darline Graham rips Jack Smith for obtaining her late brother’s phone records

Smith said that Lindsey Graham was “a patriotic public servant.”

Chris Marquette

Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”

Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.

But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.

“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”

Of course........

Federal watchdog says Trump’s $810M funding cancellation is unconstitutional

A top Government Accountability Office lawyer told Congress the president doesn’t have the power to execute his latest ‘pocket rescission.’

Jennifer Scholtes

The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.

In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by POLITICO, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”

“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote, adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.

“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”

It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.

They need to say "Fuck You"

White House looking to Europe to release diesel from strategic reserves

The idea comes as high energy prices drag GOP in midterm elections.

By Ben Lefebvre, James Bikales and Mike Soraghan

The oil industry executives and White House energy advisers are pitching ideas to bring down record high diesel prices in a bid to persuade President Donald Trump not to impose an outright export ban on the fuel, four people familiar with the issue said.

Trump is expected to decide in the coming days what steps the administration can take to lower the cost of a fuel that has skyrocketed amid wars in the Middle East and Europe. Trump has multiple times voiced support for an export ban, an idea that the oil industry strongly opposes and that government officials in Europe and Latin America worry would leave them without a major source of the fuel that is crucial to their economies.

The idea pits the agriculture sector against the oil industry, whose arguments have been backed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Oil and gas executives and analysts have said a ban wouldn’t work and would eventually drive up fuel prices.

‘The motivation is to stop a ban,” said one oil industry executive familiar with the conversations.

Corruption Squad

The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

by William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg

In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C.

For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.

Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.

Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.

But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.

After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.

Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged.

Facing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme.

What he told them has never before become public. The Corner Bakery meeting, he asserted, was just one episode in a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress.

Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts. Kao and his close associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with over $40 million a year in government funding.

Most damningly, Kao told FBI agents and prosecutors, the company’s work for the government was of no real value. Navatek’s research under his stewardship never resulted in products the military wanted to buy, ProPublica found.

Kao’s tell-all interviews with the FBI lasted into late 2024. His confessions opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation. Agents sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.

Kao had credibility issues. He was now a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. And there were other challenges. Building a corruption case against elected officials requires extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement, in part because the Supreme Court has narrowed what counts as bribery.

Even so, by the end of 2024, the agents had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties. They asked their supervisors to approve a new investigation and contemplated using undercover operatives to gather more evidence. Although their effort was in its early stages, and it was unclear where it would lead, FBI agents asked Kao extensive questions about his dealings with Collins and her office.

Then Trump returned to the White House. Consumed by a campaign of vengeance, he stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers and demanded a purge of anyone who had ever investigated him.

The specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations, some of which were involved in Trump-related cases, were eviscerated. One of the agents who had taken Kao’s confession was pushed out as retribution for her role in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Dozens of agents and prosecutors quit amid the department’s destruction, including the career attorney assigned to Kao’s case.

Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.

The White House referred ProPublica to the FBI.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.” Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only “if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”

Williamson did not respond to questions about the new investigation launched in 2024 based on Kao’s previously unreported cooperation with the FBI.

ProPublica is revealing the existence of the case for the first time. We reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and thousands of pages of legal records, and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations, and the FBI inquiry to conduct our own investigation. We independently corroborated much of Kao’s account. Whether or not Kao’s dealings with politicians amount to criminal bribery, the Trump Justice Department has little interest in finding out, and his sheer success reveals how easily influence is purchased in Washington today. This is the first in a series of stories drawn from our reporting.

Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron. The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.

Collins’ office did not specifically address questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the senator’s relationship with Kao and the millions she helped appropriate for Navatek.

Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica in an email that Collins’ office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-for-play made by Kao, calling his claims “outlandish.” Collins’ campaign was not part of the discussions between Kao and the super PAC, and her office “fully cooperated” with the FBI investigation, Clark said.

“The fact that the FBI and Biden-led Department of Justice thoroughly examined the Navatek matter demonstrates this,” Clark wrote. “These issues were resolved in 2021 and concluded when the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.”

Collins is once again fighting to keep her seat, in a race that could determine control of the Senate. On the campaign trail, she spotlights the funding she directs to Maine while leading the appropriations committee, which she calls “the most powerful committee in the Senate.”

She demonstrated that power with Navatek. After the budgets became law, Collins’ office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive.

“I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M,” a naval official wrote in an email on Feb. 6, 2019. “The interested company is Navatek.”

In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Kao said, the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him: “You’ve seen me deliver,” Kao said.

Reed knew Kao was behind the $150,000 anonymous donation, emails showed, because Kao told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company. “Very smart,” Reed replied in an email viewed by ProPublica.

Reed did not respond to detailed questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the $150,000 donation and Kao’s allegations. “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison,” Reed wrote in a brief email. “I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.”

But an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Kao’s donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do in Kao’s recounting of the Corner Bakery meeting.

Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.”

Before Kao’s doomed reign as CEO, Navatek was a sleepy Hawaiian engineering company with a few dozen employees. It was founded in 1978 by Steven Loui, a talented engineer and scion of a powerful Hawaiian shipping family. Navatek was not a profit center but a vehicle for Loui’s passion projects, like an experimental catamaran for navigating Hawaii’s choppy waters.

The company benefited from the largesse of the legendary Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, multiple former Navatek executives and employees said, whose family had been close to the Loui family for generations. Inouye was a master of earmarks, a practice that allowed lawmakers to insert funding for specific companies by name in the federal budget. The self-styled “King of Pork” steered hundreds of millions in federal dollars to Hawaii. Former Navatek employees say he was affectionately referred to as “Uncle Dan.” “Before Inouye took an interest, Congress didn’t even know our companies existed,” a longtime Loui lieutenant wrote in a 1998 op-ed.

In response to ProPublica questions, Loui said that money appropriated by Inouye made up “a minority” of Navatek’s revenue.

Inouye’s death in 2012 made the company’s future uncertain. Not only was Navatek’s direct line to Capitol Hill gone, but Congress was doing away with the abuse-riddled earmark process. Now companies would nominally have to compete on the merits for government contracts.

Kao joined Navatek in 2008 as its chief financial officer. Loui charged him with replacing Navatek’s rainmaker and eventually named Kao CEO. He sold Kao the company in return for a share of the profits.

Kao was an unusual figure among the company’s low-key naval engineers and boat aficionados. He seemed to be aping a Wall Street tycoon, telling employees they could either be “a beast or a bitch,” a former executive said. He drove to work in a Ferrari and abruptly fired subordinates who displeased him — one time, in the middle of the night. “He had very little interest in the technology,” one former employee recalled. “Martin was only interested in dollar signs.”

Kao also exaggerated and lied. He told different people he had stepbrothers whose parents died in a fishing accident or an avalanche, a former employee recalled. He lied to Loui about having law degrees from both the University of California, Los Angeles and New York University. He once told a lobbyist who raised quarter horses that he owned a herd of polo ponies, just to one-up him.

Despite his erratic behavior, former employees agree Kao hit upon an effective way to replace the lost earmarks. If the company could not rely on a benefactor like Inouye, it would develop a stable of them.

Navatek targeted the powerful members who sat on the House and Senate appropriations committees. These members could no longer earmark money for specific military contractors. But they retained the power to budget millions of dollars for equipment or bespoke research and development. Because Pentagon budgets run thousands of pages and are largely prepared in secret, it is easy for appropriators to add a line item intended for a contractor like Navatek without leaving any fingerprints.

Soon, Kao had refined a playbook. Navatek would concoct a research project in partnership with a university in a member’s district or home state, and Kao would make a large initial campaign donation. Working with a team of pricey, well-connected lobbyists, Navatek would get meetings on Capitol Hill to pitch the research to congressional staff. Navatek kept spreadsheets, reviewed by ProPublica, that listed members of Congress as the “specialty” of certain lobbyists.

Separately, Kao later told the FBI, there would be a meeting of just the key players. One engineer, who traveled with Kao to D.C. to explain the technical side of a project, recalled being sent out of the room once the subject of money came up. Sometimes in these smaller meetings, members of Congress directly asked Kao for donations, he told the FBI. In other cases, he said, Navatek’s lobbyists would relay a request from an intermediary for a specific dollar amount.

Kao told the FBI that the lawmakers, lobbyists and Navatek brass understood these donations were bribes and that the payments were essential to the entire scheme. Kao believed he was buying Navatek’s way into the annual defense budget, not winning over members with innovative engineering proposals.

“I’m not red or blue, I’m green,” he would tell congressional staffers, a former Navatek employee recalled.

While a deal was being struck, Navatek and congressional staffers worked closely on the legislative process. Every year, Congress prefaces the defense budget with massive reports describing the purpose of inscrutable line items. Staffers would include a project description so specific that Navatek would be the only logical pick.

Often, Navatek composed language that ended up, word for word, in Senate funding requests, former employees said. In 2019, for example, Navatek’s priorities were tucked into page 185 of the 307-page report released by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee set aside $21.5 million for “hybrid composite structures research for enhanced mobility,” “electric propulsion for military craft and advanced planing hulls” and a “test bed for autonomous ship systems.” Although Navatek’s name does not appear on the page, these were all projects the company requested, according to internal documents and interviews with former employees.

Once the budget passed, lawmakers’ staff leaned on Navy officials to award Navatek the money. Former contracting officers told ProPublica they felt pressure to go along because money from those contracts funded their office — and because members of Congress had confronted dissenting naval officials in the past. “There’s only so many battles you can fight,” one said. So Congress sometimes got its way even when Navatek’s projects made little sense.

Inside Navatek, employees referred to this strategy as “the method.” And it enabled the company to string together tens of millions of dollars in contracts. The result was the same as getting earmarks: a reliable, growing revenue stream bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers.

“It was a simple enough play. Let’s find the small states that have complementary universities … [and] let’s get access to their senators,” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, told ProPublica. “I’ve met Susan Collins. You can get access to Susan Collins. Once we got the first things working with Maine, then we said, ‘Well, let’s keep reaching.’ And so we did.”

In a statement to ProPublica, Navatek founder Loui said Kao’s “unethical and illegal method of winning contracts” was a departure from how he operated the company prior to Kao’s ownership.

Kao boosted Navatek’s annual revenue from $10 million around the time Loui sold him the company to almost $40 million when he was arrested in 2020. In the second half of 2019 alone, Navatek paid a roster of five lobbying shops more than $500,000.

Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” Schiff said.

The key players in Kao’s pay-to-play deals went to great lengths to meet in person and leave no trace of an actual quid pro quo, he told agents. “That is why I literally had to fly to D.C. almost every week,” Kao later told the FBI. “Sometimes for a 15-minute meeting.”

But the FBI compiled emails, which ProPublica reviewed, that were suggestive of illegal bargains. Navatek executives and lobbyists spoke openly as if they were buying lawmakers’ assistance. In one back-and-forth, a lobbyist and a company executive described another senator as “fundamentally transactional” and having “a reputation as a pay-to-play office.”

In another message, Andy Winer, who former executives said was Navatek’s chief strategist, reminded Kao to budget money for political contributions based on how much the company wanted in congressional funding the following year.

“Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale.”

Eric Schiff, former Navatek executive

Winer was his guide to the political underbelly, Kao said. A consummate insider, Winer had parlayed six years as chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii into a lucrative lobbying career with a firm called Strategies 360. One of Winer’s former colleagues compared him to the slick lobbyist on the Netflix show “House of Cards” who toggles between the political and corporate worlds.

In another email exchange scrutinized by the FBI, Kao asked Winer about making a $5,600 donation to nudge along a senator who seemed keen to work with Navatek: “Would that ‘help?’”

Winer, who had already donated himself, replied, “With my contribution, I think it sends the right message.” He suggested Kao split up his donation to be “less conspicuous.”

The method didn’t always work. Once, Kao complained that a senator had reneged on a deal and he ought to get his donations back.

“You should not feel aggrieved nor should you ever put that in writing,” Todd Webster, another lobbyist Navatek hired, replied. Webster did not respond to detailed questions.

Winer said he stopped working with Navatek following Kao’s arrest. “The political contributions I discussed with Kao were understood by me to be lawful political contributions. I never participated in, witnessed, or had knowledge of any illegal political contribution, bribe, or agreement to exchange a political contribution for an appropriation, contract, or other official action,” Winer said in an email to ProPublica. “I never advised Kao to make a contribution in exchange for official action.”

Strategies 360 has new ownership that did not oversee Winer while he represented Navatek, its CEO, John Oceguera, said.

Navatek employees began to notice members of Congress visiting their East Coast offices. “You would be like, ‘Oh, there’s this senator walking around,’ and we would get a picture with them,” one engineer recalled.

While some projects involved potentially meaningful research, Navatek’s bread and butter was R&D that went nowhere. As a slideshow prepared by an executive explained, “We thrive in the valley of death,” the term for the bureaucratic gap where research languishes without being developed into a product. The slideshow noted that none of the technology had ever actually been deployed.

The Office of Naval Research did not respond to a request for comment.

In Maine, Navatek was studying ways to modify small boats to reduce the “slamming” impact felt by passengers at high speeds. With the help of the University of Maine’s giant 3D printer, Navatek made a prototype and unveiled it at a press conference where a Guinness World Records representative declared it the world’s largest 3D-printed boat. But Navatek executives knew the Navy had no plans to use the new design, former employees said.

“[The work] got rolled into a few PowerPoint slides and a white paper, and that was the deliverable,” recalled one who worked on the project. “The boats weren’t delivered to the Navy — the Navy didn’t even want them.”

Kao to Collins: “Here to Help”

The first time Kao came face-to-face with Collins, in 2018, he told the FBI, he had to pay for the privilege.

Collins would not meet unless he agreed to donate to her campaign, he said. While it is not illegal for politicians to exchange face time for contributions — in this case, just a few thousand dollars — it was not the last time Collins would seek Kao’s support.

Navatek had been eager to expand beyond Hawaii, and Maine was a perfect beachhead — a small, coastal state hungry for high-tech jobs that happened to be represented by a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Collins, more than most appropriators, likes to trumpet the dollars she brings home.

To work with Collins, Navatek hired a lobbyist, Glen Mandigo, who also lobbied for the University of Maine and was tight with her office. Mandigo asked how much Navatek wanted in funding and how much Kao was willing to support Collins, Kao told the FBI. The University of Maine did not reply to a request for comment.

In that first meeting with Collins and her staff, Kao pitched an $8 million boat hull research project for Navatek and the university. Collins seemed supportive. Not long after, Mandigo called Kao and said Collins wanted him to bundle tens of thousands of dollars for her reelection, suggesting Navatek throw a fundraiser, Kao said.

In an email to ProPublica, Mandigo denied taking part in a pay-to-play arrangement.

“I did not advise Navatek officials, nor would I advise any client, that support from Sen. Collins was contingent on campaign donations,” Mandigo wrote. He said that in his 25 years of working with Collins and the Maine delegation, “I never saw or heard of such behavior from the Senator or her staff.” Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica it was “wholly inaccurate” to say Mandigo was close to their office.

FBI agents had collected voluminous corporate records and email correspondence between Navatek and Collins’ inner circle. Much of that evidence aligned with the story they were now getting directly from Kao.

The FBI had spotted his out-of-the-blue donations in the summer of 2018, just before Collins included $8 million for Navatek’s proposal in the defense budget. Emails showed her staff made it clear to the Navy that it should send the money to Navatek. FBI agents also had evidence of Kao and Mandigo planning a fundraiser starting in April 2019. Their emails — with her scheduler and her campaign’s finance director — freely mixed talk of Navatek’s Collins-backed contract with plans to raise money for her.

The principals settled on hosting Collins for a publicity event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters in August 2019, where she posed for pictures with Kao and a model of the company’s experimental boat. Behind the scenes, the FBI saw in emails and company records, Kao orchestrated over $40,000 in donations from extended family in advance of the event. To avoid the legal cap on individual campaign contributions, the emails show, he told Collins’ team to reallocate his excess contributions to his father — which an agent highlighted and noted is against election law in a presentation to prosecutors — and sent them his father’s full name and address.

“This is perfect,” Amy Abbott, the reelection campaign finance director, emailed Kao after discussing his father’s contribution. “We are so grateful for ALL the Kao support!”

Before the event, Kao said, Collins, Abbott and another staffer met with him in private. One of the staffers told Kao the campaign expected more donations. It was in this meeting that Collins said, “You’ve seen me deliver,” he told the FBI.

Less than one month after the event, the Senate released a draft of the defense budget containing $21.5 million for Navatek’s pet projects in Maine. Kao emailed a Collins campaign fundraiser — who would in theory have nothing to do with a government contract — four days later, saying, “Thanks again for all the support from Sen Collins.”

“I’ve been involved in many tight races in the past and understand last minute ‘needs’ come up,” he continued. “We are here to help anyway we can … financially or whatever.”

Kao’s desire to donate even more money led to the fateful Corner Bakery meeting with the head of the Collins super PAC, called the 1820 PAC, Kao told the FBI. Unlike Collins’ campaign, which could accept only $5,600 per election from individuals, the super PAC could accept unlimited contributions.

The super PAC emailed Kao a memo before the meeting stressing the need to raise money with “urgency.” At the meeting, Kao and Reed, the super PAC’s chair, hammered out a deal for a six-figure donation, Kao told the FBI. Over email, Kao informed Reed of his shell company scheme, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. “They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on,” Kao reassured him. “Thanks for doing this,” Reed replied.

“Hi Scott: Had a chance to discuss 1820 with my CFO and attorney last night. They are suggesting setting up a separate new LLC to make the donations. Name of new LLC: Society of Young Women Scientists and Engineers.

In my personal real estate investments, we often use LLCs that can be set up to “facilitate” transactions. They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on. Totally legal and typically used in real estate transactions to conceal the identity of buyer/seller. Wanted to get your thoughts/concerns.”

—email from Martin Kao to Scott Reed, Nov. 22, 2019

“Very smart and glad your counsel understands. Thanks for doing this.”

—email from Scott Reed to Martin Kao, Nov. 22, 2019

“Great! We will proceed on getting this set up ASAP. Have a nice weekend.”

—email from Martin Kao to Scott Reed, Nov. 22, 2019

The FBI spoke to the other Navatek executives at Corner Bakery, who confirmed the meeting took place. One, David Kring, the company’s top scientist, told ProPublica he had no memory of what was discussed.

The other, Duke Hartman, told an FBI agent it was just “a get to know you meeting” with the chair of the super PAC and they did not discuss the “particulars of a donation.” Agents, records show, came to believe Hartman was lying about his role in Kao’s pay-to-play operation and would name him as a formal subject of a future investigation. Hartman was not charged. He did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

A few weeks after the $150,000 check to the Collins super PAC cleared, in February 2020, Kao and his team met with Collins’ office and secured a new round of funding.

“We were very warmly received,” Kao reported to his colleagues in an email obtained by the FBI. “Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” Records show the Senate allocated at least $10 million that year based on Navatek’s proposals.

Navatek’s ambitions peaked in mid-2020. As the company waited to see if Collins would survive her reelection campaign, executives prepared to ask their champion on the appropriations committee for even more funding the following spring, internal documents show.

Other documents from that time show the company was courting senators from seven additional states and gunning for more than $200 million in new appropriations. Navatek expected to have offices in more than a dozen states by the end of the following year, including a new 15,000-square-foot facility in the Portland, Maine, harbor.

Kao, meanwhile, closed on a $4.5 million beachside home in an exclusive Honolulu neighborhood; the backyard pool had a waterfall feature. He renamed the company Martin Defense Group after himself, joking that it would simplify his future takeover of Lockheed Martin.

“It was working well, and it would have continued to work well,” said Schiff, the former executive. “Martin got greedy. Just got damn greedy.”

Downfall, Cover-up

In early 2020, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit good government group, noticed something strange in the public filings for the Collins super PAC. The PAC had received a $150,000 donation from a newly created LLC with a typo in its name: the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, with no S at the end of “Scientist.”

This was the $150,000 Kao donated after the Corner Bakery meeting. The money had come from Navatek’s account, not Kao’s, violating a ban on government contractors making donations.

The center suspected the society was not a real group but a pass-through to hide the identity of a major political donor. It filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. It took only a few days for a Hawaii journalist to discover Kao’s wife’s name on the society’s paperwork, linking the shell company to Navatek.

Inside Navatek, Kao shifted into damage control mode. He spoke to Reed and the super PAC’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, and began to hatch a cover-up. In an email released in civil litigation, Mitchell suggested the society make charitable donations — preferably in Maine — which would make it seem like a legitimate nonprofit. “I want to be sure that the LLC proceeds with the ideas we discussed — giving scholarships and recognition to women in engineering, etc.,” wrote Mitchell. “That would help both of us, I think.”

Mitchell added, “We should develop a plan and timetable, so there are some scholarships given over the next several months, and particularly, perhaps in Maine, where the bad press was.”

Mitchell, who later played a major role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, did not respond to requests for comment.

Kao and his team settled on donating scholarships to women in STEM. They offered between $5,000 and $25,000 apiece to state universities where they were angling to win government contracts — that way, the cover-up would benefit them politically, too.

But Navatek’s and Kao’s problems were just beginning. Undeterred by scrutiny from the FEC, Kao defrauded the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program newly passed by Congress. He inflated Navatek’s payroll to amass loans of $13 million, according to a federal indictment. The Navatek founder, Loui, had long since soured on his chosen successor. This was the final straw. He reported Kao to federal authorities.

“This is not how Navatek behaved or conducted business before I sold the company to Martin Kao,” Loui wrote to ProPublica. He said Navatek was successful before Kao’s ownership and had many sources of government funding. After Kao’s arrest, he added, the company fully cooperated with law enforcement.

Loui has since regained control of the company and renamed it PacMar. He is dedicated to restoring its reputation and ability to execute government contracts, he continued. Loui said he fired employees hired during Kao’s tenure who were “not capable of performing quality, professional engineering and science tasks.”

“The company received no Collins-supported funding after Martin Kao’s arrest, nor should it,” Loui added. “What Martin Kao and his cabal did was wrong.”

On Sept. 30, 2020, law enforcement raided Navatek’s Honolulu offices and arrested Kao for fraud. Federal agents in windbreakers seized his laptop and ordered the company’s IT staff to copy the company’s internal servers.

Navatek’s public flameout attracted the attention of Michelle Ball and Kevin Gounaud, two experienced agents in the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit. Gounaud was a 20-year FBI veteran who had worked on elaborate undercover operations. Ball had made a name for herself taking on politically sensitive cases. In 2018, she led the investigation into Maria Butina, the Russian agent convicted of infiltrating the National Rifle Association in an attempt to influence the Trump campaign.

The agents began digging through thousands of records for details of Navatek’s lobbying operation, donation strategy and ties to politicians.

They zeroed in on Kao’s relationship with Collins. In a 60-slide presentation agents prepared for prosecutors, they highlighted contributions that Kao and his wife made to the senator in 2018, right before Collins placed the $8 million in research funding into the federal budget. Kao had also given Navatek money to various relatives to donate to Collins in 2019, sending her around $33,000 through these illegal straw donors, the indictment said. Kao’s wife and father did not reply to requests for comment.

The government charged Kao in two separate cases: one for defrauding the loan program and another for his campaign finance crimes. His love of talking like a wheeler-dealer — including over email — was a gift to investigators. In one email, he all but admitted the scholarships to young women were a diversion. “Whatever… just a pack of bitches getting free $,” he wrote.

In the face of overwhelming evidence, Kao pleaded guilty in both cases in the fall of 2022. Navatek by then was under court-ordered new management. Awaiting sentencing, Kao worked as a line cook at a Cheesecake Factory.

He began meeting with the same FBI agents and prosecutors who brought him down. For the agents, he was a rare witness: a contractor with deep ties to elected officials saying he would speak candidly about how Washington works.

Kao faced nearly a decade in prison. “My world and life imploded,” he would later recall in a letter to the Hawaii U.S. District Court. “I was fooled and foolish enough to believe that the power elected officials wielded, and [were] actively willing to sell to anyone wealthy enough to pay, was….‘smart business.’”

Over the next two years, Kao sat with agents for at least three dayslong interviews. He told them that politicians, Collins in particular, had been willing participants in his scheme. “It takes two to tangle,” he told them.

Taxpayers funded Navatek’s entire political operation, Kao said. “Most companies of our size do not have the resources to endlessly hire expensive lobbyists and make political donations,” he told the FBI. Navatek solved this by using money from government contracts to hire lobbyists and make campaign contributions, according to interviews, court testimony and internal company records. Diverting money from contracts for lobbying and political donations can be illegal.

For their final meeting, in September 2024, Kao handed the FBI the 50-page document detailing Navatek’s dealings with more than a dozen members of Congress and their staff. It was not only a confession but a road map, with the email addresses and phone numbers of people Kao thought agents ought to subpoena.

Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison. The judge in his case offered no leniency based on his cooperation with the FBI. Loui is battling Kao in court to recover the millions he contends Kao stole from the company.

Both Scott Reed and Amy Abbott remain in Collins’ inner circle. Abbott is the finance director for her 2026 reelection effort, and Reed again chairs the main Collins super PAC. Abbott, who is married to Collins’ campaign manager, referred questions to the senator’s communications staff. Clark told ProPublica that Abbott and other campaign staff were interviewed by the FBI and that the campaign was never a target of the investigation.

Earlier this year, Kao agreed to meet a ProPublica reporter at the Federal Prison Camp in Yankton, South Dakota, where he is incarcerated. But on two occasions when guards summoned Kao over the intercom, he refused to enter the visitation room. Over email, he said he was no longer willing to meet, citing the ongoing litigation. He declined through his lawyer to respond to detailed questions.

By late 2024, Ball and Gounaud, the FBI agents, had come to believe there was enough evidence to warrant a broader investigation into bribery of members of Congress, according to a memo seen by ProPublica.

Before they could embark on their new mission, however, they became casualties of Trump’s retribution campaign.

Ball and Gounaud worked for the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit known as CR-15, which specialized in investigating misconduct by elected officials. When Trump retook power, his new FBI director, Kash Patel, purged the unit agent by agent.

Ball was targeted for her work on the special counsel investigation of Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. She was fired in October 2025 in a one-page letter stating she had “weaponized” the Justice Department. She is challenging her firing in a lawsuit. Gounaud was pushed out in early 2026. Both agents declined to comment through their attorney.

Trump also targeted the Justice Department attorneys who worked with CR-15. The team, known as the Public Integrity Section, collapsed spectacularly in February 2025 after staff were ordered to drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Trump ally. The unit’s leadership quit en masse. Trump appointees ordered the remaining prosecutors to halt new corruption cases, just months after Kao made his detailed confession.

Before Ball was fired, however, she managed to take a key step forward.

Based on all the evidence, she persuaded her supervisors to approve a new investigation. It centered on South Carolina, one of the states Navatek eyed for a rapid expansion. The FBI had questions about a steak dinner Kao shared with Sen. Lindsey Graham.