China hawk’s influence

Trump’s Taiwan retreat tests his chief China hawk’s influence

Ivan Kanapathy, a longtime China hawk, is a top Asia adviser at the National Security Council at a time when the Trump administration has been particularly conciliatory with Beijing.

By Phelim Kine

It’s a tough time to be a China hawk inside the White House. Ivan Kanapathy probably knows that better than most.

Kanapathy, the senior director for Asia at the National Security Council, has devoted his career in Washington to warning of China’s expanding military footprint and arguing for the U.S. to prioritize defending Taiwan. But halfway through Trump’s second term, that viewpoint is losing out.

Trump has upended decades of U.S. support for Taiwan during his second term, delaying $14 billion in arms sales to the self-governing island and throwing doubt on whether the U.S. would jump to Taiwan’s defense if China were to invade.

“The Taiwan policy that Trump is pursuing is not what Ivan would do,” said a person who has known Kanapathy professionally for years. “He’s probably the most influential Taiwan voice in the government besides [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio, but it’s just not being communicated.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected any characterization of Kanapathy as on the sidelines or lacking influence.

“Ivan Kanapathy is responsible for ensuring that the interagency is advancing the foreign policy that the president was elected to implement. He is a crucial member of President Trump’s national security team,” Kelly said. The White House told POLITICO that Kanapathy declined to be interviewed.

As Trump hosts Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington this week, it is inevitable that the issue of China’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan comes up. If Trump doesn’t raise it, Xi is expected to. How Trump responds is important for not just Taiwan but other regional powers — who are watching closely to see if they feel they can still count on the U.S. to defend the region against Beijing.

And if Trump isn’t listening to those inside of his administration who could help him navigate that tension, he could further antagonize Asian allies that are already reconsidering their longstanding security partnerships with the U.S. — including how much they’re willing to step into its shoes as a counterweight to Beijing’s increasingly aggressive military footprint in the region.

“The U.S. has been pushing its allies to be more explicit in articulating what role they would play during a Taiwan contingency,” said David Sacks, a former political-military official at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Taiwan. “Muddled and inconsistent messaging will make allies much more reluctant to step up and play a larger role.”

The U.S. has also asked some of those same regional powers for assistance in its war in Iran, with mixed results.

In his role at the NSC, Kanapathy would generally be expected to be involved in helping Trump hit the right balance in his messaging on Taiwan. It’s unclear if — or how hard — Kanapathy is pushing, but Trump’s policy is sharply different from the views Kanapathy has expressed publicly in the past.

“There might be a little bit of Stockholm syndrome on Ivan’s part because he seems much more comfortable with things that I thought he would fundamentally object to,” said another person who has known Kanapathy for several years. The individual pointed to the delay in the Taiwan arms sale and the administration’s opposition to public appearances by Taiwan’s president in the U.S. as prime examples.

The first person who knows Kanapathy believes that his views haven’t changed, but that he’s sidelined.

“He briefs Trump on the importance of Taiwan, but he has zero influence on what Trump decides to do or says on Taiwan,” the person said. “He’s probably feeling like his opinion is not being heeded by Trump, so it’s got to be demoralizing.”

Another person, who is in touch with Kanapathy, said he hasn’t bought into the Trump administration’s Taiwan policy.

“Based on talking to Ivan and what he wrote when he was out of government, these are not the policies anyone would expect him to support, “ the person said.

The White House said in a statement that Kanapathy and other NSC officials’ role is to “provide options for the president’s consideration” but Trump “is the final decisionmaker and it is up to the foreign policy apparatus to implement his desired policies.” It added: “Unlike the Biden administration and others, the Trump administration maintains a top-down, not bottom-up approach.”

In one sense, Kanapathy is in a situation any adviser to any president has to deal with.

“Senior director at the NSC is an important job, but you’re a staffer — all you can do is give your best professional advice and your best professional judgment,” said Alexander Gray, who served with Kanapathy in the first Trump administration. “I don’t know what Ivan’s advocating, but I’m sure that he’s giving his unvarnished views and what the president ultimately does about that is the president’s call, and that’s the bargain we accept when we take the oath to serve in these roles.”

But this is a particularly sensitive moment in engagement with China and former government officials with deep expertise in diplomatic negotiations with Beijing say what they perceive as Kanapathy’s lack of input highlights the larger issue — that Trump isn’t taking counsel on his potentially explosive approach to China.

“The circle around Trump has really tightened and they’re so worried about leaks and determined to try to own the message that they’re just really not into letting the hired help sit in at the dinner party,” said a former senior government official with ties to people within the administration, referring to Kanapathy.

“This is false,” the White House said in its statement. “President Trump takes all views into account.” The administration also noted that Kanapathy attended Trump’s previous meeting with Xi in Beijing in May, and said Kanapathy was the White House representative for negotiations with Chinese officials in New York this weekend.

Trump has made White House policy on China a personalized approach based on what he calls “a good relationship” with Xi with little input from people with longtime China policy expertise.

“The China/Taiwan Desk officer for the U.S. government is Donald J. Trump,” said Randy Shriver, who was assistant secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration. “The decision as to whether or not to move forward on arms sales rests solely with the president.”

That disconnect could play to Xi’s advantage if he pushes for more U.S. concessions on Taiwan when he meets with Trump on Thursday.

“I fully expect Xi Jinping to raise Taiwan and push for a further delay in the arms sale and for a statement that the U.S. opposes Taiwan independence or supports Taiwan’s ‘reunification’ with China,” Sacks said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Kanapathy previously served as NSC director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the first Trump administration, which had a much more aggressively hawkish posture toward Beijing and repeatedly urged closer U.S. ties to Taiwan in the face of a rising Chinese threat to the island.

He declared “historical U.S. resistance to offering Taiwan security assistance” to curry favor with Beijing as “unjustified and unproductive” ina Foreign Policy article in 2022. In 2023 he co-wrotea Foreign Affairs article calling for the U.S. “to intervene militarily on Taiwan’s behalf” in the face of potential Chinese aggression. A year later he urged the president to use his “bully pulpit” to persuade Congress and the U.S. public that Taiwan is “a vital U.S. interest” ina Brookings Institution report.

While the Trump administration has challenged China economically with a trade war that pushed tariffs on imports to triple digit levels before Beijing and Washingtonsealed a truce in October, it has signaled a backpedal from longstanding security commitments in the Indo-Pacific.

The National Defense Strategyreleased in January omitted mention of Taiwan in favor of a more ambiguous reference to the “First Island Chain.” That’s a string of islands between China and the open Pacific that includes Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

Trump‘s assessment in early January of whether Xi might attempt a “decapitation” strike on Taiwan’s leadership deepened that official ambivalence. “He considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing,”Trump told The New York Times.

Senior administration officials appear to have gotten the message.

Pentagon policy chief and fellow China hawk Elbridge Colby sidestepped referring to Taiwan in a speech on U.S. Indo-Pacific defense priorities in South Korea in January and instead reassured Beijing that the U.S doesn’t seek “regime change” and saluted “China’s proud history.”

Kanapathy isn’t the first senior Trump administration official to go along with a policy that conflicts with that official’s long-held position. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was astrong supporter of USAID before he helped dismantle it last year.

Those reversals boost survival in an administration in which officials deemed insufficiently supportive of the president’s agenda face summary dismissal. The far-right activist Laura Loomer suggested that Kanapathy should have been fired for alleged insufficient loyalty last year.

The Trump administration has taken some actions to support Taiwan while Kanapathy has been at the NSC. It approved a record $11 billion arms sale to Taipei in December and has pushed initiatives aimed to boost the island’s deterrence against possible Chinese aggression, including at U.S. Pacific Command.

“In the first year of his second term, Trump approved more arms sales to Taiwan than [President Joe] Biden did in four years, including the largest single arms package for Taiwan ever,” the White House said.

A person familiar with Kanapathy’s work on Taiwan argued that a number of wins for Taipei are likely due to Kanapathy’s influence.

“If you look at what is happening at the operational level – more attention toTaiwan at PACOM, all thosespecial forces ‘English teachers’ in Taiwan, more visiblenational guard training in Michigan — they aren’t happening organically, they’re happening because Ivan’s pushing them,” the person said.

It’s also possible that Kanapathy is having sway over U.S.-China policy being implemented out of public view.

“There’s lots of parts of U.S. Taiwan policy that are so highly classified we have no idea what actually is being implemented in those areas,” Gray said. “Ivan probably feels like he is accomplishing a great deal of good in the role that he’s in, and that resigning would either not do any good or would be counterproductive.”

Carina Nebula

This treasure chest is full of stars. The featured image was obtained with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and shows a dust pillar in the Carina Nebula inside our Galaxy, roughly 7500 light-years away. It is formed by interstellar gas and dust, and shaped by powerful stellar winds and radiation form neighboring stars like the nearby Eta Carinae stellar system which is more luminous than 5 million suns. The star formation inside the pillar is excavating its head, creating the open lid of the chest. Astronomers estimate that there are about 70 stars in a compact cluster inside the pillar. This cluster is now thought to be only around 1.3 million years old. Its bounty of young stars includes a massive star approximately 19 times as massive as the Sun. More massive stars are rarer, shine brighter and evolve faster than less massive stars. They are the shiniest jewels in the treasure chest.

Messier 64 twice

Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A merger between M64 and a smaller galaxy was likely the cause of the opposing motion of the outer gas. Spiral galaxies were once thought to have peaceful histories. M64 was key evidence that spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, can and do experience mergers. Webb’s view of M64 will tell astronomers about the structure, motion, and composition of the galaxy’s dust and add context to the galaxy’s merger history and evolution.

IC 5146

When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star forming region, the cosmic Cocoon punctuates a nebula bright in emission and reflection on the lower right, with a long trail of interstellar dust clouds to the left, making the entire complex appear a bit like a comet. Cataloged as IC 5146, the central bright head of the nebula spans about 10 light years, while the dark dusty tail spans nearly 100 light years. Both are located about 2,500 light years away. A bright star near the colorful nebula's center likely supplies power and helps clear out a cavity. The long dusty filaments of the tail, although dark in this visible light image, hide stars in the process of formation. The featured image was captured in July from Death Valley, California, USA.

Kill AI

Voters are waking up on AI safety. So are these Senate Republicans.

Political and existential risks have spurred at least three GOP senators into taking action on artificial intelligence.

By Jordain Carney and Kelsey Brugger

House Republicans have left Washington till November. President Donald Trump is decrying concerns about the issue as a “HOAX.” But a few Senate Republicans are trying to nudge their party into doing something — anything — about artificial intelligence.

There isn’t much binding them together aside from the “R” next to their names, but Sens. John Curtis, Josh Hawley and John Kennedy have each been closely attuned as voters suddenly grow alarmed — not only about the data centers powering the AI industry, but the recent insider warnings about potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity.

Curtis is a Utah moderate who has been among the few in his party to take seriously scientists’ warnings about climate change. Hawley is a populist Missouri conservative who has long been skeptical of Silicon Valley business titans. And Kennedy’s simple-Louisiana-country-lawyer persona belies a relatively sophisticated understanding of frontier AI developments.

The trio is not coordinating efforts, but their individual actions were part of a clear push from the GOP’s back benches over the past week to get party leaders to wake up and address an issue they believe could tilt the upcoming midterms and certainly the presidential and congressional races in 2028.

“We might want to be on the side of voters — just a thought,” Hawley said, noting that while he has his own “views” on how Washington should respond, party leaders have offered members no guidance on how to approach the topic.

Hawley is taking matters in his own hands this week by convening a hearing in the Judiciary subcommittee he chairs on AI-powered Flock cameras. He’s also using another subcommittee gavel to investigate OpenAI over the runaway model that saw hundreds of rogue agents escape testing and hack another tech company.

Both Curtis and Hawley have teamed up with Democrats, who have generally been more aggressive in calling for AI safety measures — particularly since a former OpenAI and Anthropic employee went public saying advanced models could “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Hawley and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — who both sit on the Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee — pushed congressional leaders last week to hold a vote on their “risk evaluation” legislation, arguing that “frontier AI demands frontier legislation.”

Curtis, meanwhile, joined with a fellow Commerce Committee member, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), to call for “immediate public hearings” to “work through solutions that maintain America’s competitive edge in development while ensuring that these technologies serve human interests and remain fully under human control.”

Curtis said in an interview lawmakers need to “show that we’re adults in the room, that we can talk about this, that we can find solutions.”

“I don’t want to say we’re making it too hard, but I think we’re making it too hard,” Curtis said. “And what I mean by that is, there’s a lot of false narratives out there — we need to just jump on this immediately and clamp it down, or we need to not touch it, and all of that only I think causes anxiety back home.”

Both efforts could be seen as attempts to jolt more senior senators who are in positions to advance AI-related legislation. So far they are treading carefully amid skepticism among Senate Republicans that they will ever be able to overcome Trump’s opposition on AI regulations and recalcitrance among House GOP leaders, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

They include Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who indicated in an interview that he had no plans to hold hearings or take other action related to AI.

“I think that I’d be getting into the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee,” Grassley said, directing further questions to Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Cruz has been more deeply engaged than Grassley in AI matters, but his plans for action remain uncertain. He said last week he is still hoping to hold a committee vote on AI safety legislation this month before the Senate leaves for the final stretch of pre-midterm campaigning.

Cruz is engaged in negotiating a revised version of an AI safety bill that Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) first introduced in 2023. But multiple Commerce Committee Republicans said they have so far heard zilch behind the scenes about what the committee could do, and some doubt they will be able to get an agreement in time to act before the Senate leaves — possibly as soon as the end of this week.

While Thune himself has been the most engaged on AI issues among top GOP leaders, he still advocated for a “light touch” on industry regulation last week while acknowledging the “considerable amount of interest” among lawmakers in taking action.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said — as Hawley suggested — that he isn’t giving members guidance on how to talk about AI.

“People have opinions and they’re going to make their opinions known and talk to their voters,” he said.

And then there’s Kennedy, who recently said the industry is run by “high-IQ stupid people” and was the rare Republican who attended a briefing put together by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week to meet with AI experts to talk about potential safeguards for the technology.

He took his AI concerns straight to the Senate floor Wednesday, seeking to pass legislation this week that would require companies to install so-called “kill switches” for their AI models. In a speech before seeking unanimous consent to pass the bill, he delivered a homespun but technically detailed summation of the OpenAI swarm attack and the risks posed by “recursive self-improvement.”

His bill was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who instead proposed creating a panel to make recommendations about potential guardrails.

Kennedy said appointing a committee would be “the weenie way out” after warning his colleagues from the Senate floor that Americans were growing “very skeptical” of AI and the tech titans behind it.

“They’ve seen this vampire movie before,” he said.

In a separate interview, Kennedy said he hadn’t heard “anything” about action in the Senate to address AI and that lawmakers who ignore the growing voter uproar around the issue were courting peril.

“We really need to send a memo around explaining we’ve got midterm elections coming,” he said. “I may send that out.”

Waste of time to hear lies........

Major TV networks decline White House pool duties

The move comes after the Trump administration restricted access to the White House for CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO.

By Ben Johansen and Megan Messerly

The nation’s major television networks are declining to participate in White House pool duties moving forward in response to the Trump administration’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton wrote in an email to TV pool subscribers.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Boughton wrote in the email, obtained by POLITICO. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

The email, which was not sent to POLITICO in its official capacity, was designated “off the record” and “for planning purposes only.”

The “pool” refers to the press corps that travels with the president.

The move could make it more difficult for images and video of President Donald Trump’s activities at the United Nations General Assembly this week to get to the American public. The television pool provides video from events where space constraints prevent every outlet from sending its own camera crew, with footage then made available broadly to news organizations.

CNN was scheduled to serve as the television pool Monday. But a White House “daily guidance” email sent to reporters Sunday night listed no TV pool — which consists of the five major networks, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — at all.

Instead, it listed Hearst, which operates local TV stations across the country, as secondary TV crew in Washington, and the pro-Trump Real America’s Voice as secondary TV crew for the president’s trip to New York.

It was not immediately clear to what extent those outlets, which are outside the traditional five-network TV pool arrangement, would disseminate their footage more broadly.

White House television pool members, including FOX News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News, all pushed back on the administration’s media ban in a statement Monday morning.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government,” they said. “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Trump announced Friday that he was banning the three outlets from the White House “effective immediately,” accusing the outlets of reporting “FAKE NEWS.” He also threatened to extend the restrictions to other news organizations, including The New York Times and the Washington Post.

The administration began enforcing the restrictions Saturday, as journalists from all three organizations were denied access to the White House grounds. POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW filed a lawsuit Monday to immediately restore access for their reporters, who had their credentials confiscated by the Secret Service.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Monday morning, described his move as “instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS,” which he said has “grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”

“It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control,” he wrote. “It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

When asked for comment, the White House referred to the president’s Monday morning post on Truth Social.

Past attempts by the pool to use its collective power to negotiate has proven effective in prior administrations. In 2009, during the Obama administration, the Treasury Department sought to exclude Fox News from a series of pool interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, then-TARP administrator, despite the other pool networks receiving interviews. TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was a federal government program to help in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The Washington bureau chiefs of the five major television networks agreed that none of their reporters would participate unless Fox was included.

The administration quickly backed down and allowed Fox News to participate in the interviews.

When money comes to talk..

Nvidia’s clout tested as AI debate shifts

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and his army of lobbyists want Congress to lay off restricting exports, particularly to China, of AI-powering computer chips.

Calen Razor

Jensen Huang’s clout as the leader of the world’s largest company is about to be tested on Capitol Hill as debates around artificial intelligence safety intensify.

The Nvidia boss and his army of lobbyists want Congress to lay off restricting exports, particularly to China, of high-end computer chips — the building blocks necessary to power AI development. Lawmakers could include these guardrails as part of the annual defense policy bill set for negotiations this fall.

But despite Huang’s team having had some success over the past year in convincing lawmakers to peel back regulations that would hamper exports, the swift shift in the AI political landscape has led the company to start sounding out of touch — at least to some lawmakers’ ears.

One Senate Democratic aide, granted anonymity to describe private meetings, said Huang’s recent visits to congressional offices have “repeatedly been seen as tone deaf, as he’s openly dismissed or downplayed the risks of AI, including denying any likely workforce disruptions from the technology.”

“Jensen makes an argument — I’m not sure I fully buy it — that as long as the world is relying on Nvidia chips, that’s a good thing,” the Senate Intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Mark Warner, said in an interview. He’s among those who fear giving a top U.S. competitor more tools to advance AI technology, which other industry executives have recently warned could have catastrophic consequences for humanity if left unchecked.

Huang last week echoed President Donald Trump’s sentiment that no new AI laws or regulations are necessary. But even Trump this weekend seemed to concede there are some dangers to the emerging technology. In a Truth Social post, he announced an “AI Force” and an AI czar to lead it — though he offered few details about what powers it would have or whether its creation would need congressional approval.

Meanwhile, a trio of GOP senators is trying to convince their leaders to do something — anything — on AI safety, an issue they believe could tilt the midterms and 2028 elections.

Sens. John Curtis, Josh Hawley and John Kennedy aren’t coordinating their efforts, but each is making a push from the back benches to jolt more senior senators to take action, with Curtis and Hawley teaming up with Democrats on various efforts.

Curtis said in an interview lawmakers need to “show that we’re adults in the room, that we can talk about this, that we can find solutions.”

Hawley is also convening a hearing this week in the Judiciary subcommittee he chairs on AI-powered Flock cameras, and using another subcommittee gavel to investigate OpenAI over the runaway model that led to rogue AI agents escaping testing.

But any hopes of passing legislation are facing skepticism among Senate Republicans that they will ever be able to overcome Trump’s opposition to AI regulations and House GOP leaders who side with the administration, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

Kennedy said in an interview he hadn’t heard “anything” about movement in the Senate to address AI and that lawmakers who ignore the growing voter uproar around the issue were courting peril.

“We really need to send a memo around explaining we’ve got midterm elections coming,” he said. “I may send that out.”

Meanwhile, a deep dive in POLITICO’s magazine digs into the Trump administration’s complicated relationship with Anthropic and how officials’ perspective has shifted on AI this year as they discover the fearsome computing power being assembled by private companies on their watch.

Max Miller has been accused of abuse by three women......

Max Miller threatens legal action over Democratic challenger’s ‘defamatory’ ad

A lawyer for the Ohio Republican sent a local TV station a cease-and-desist letter for airing one of Brian Poindexter’s ads.

Riley Rogerson

Rep. Max Miller is threatening legal action to block a television ad created by his Democratic challenger, Brian Poindexter, that includes allegations of domestic abuse.

A lawyer for Miller is demanding Cleveland-area television station WKYC stop publishing “false, malicious, and defamatory statements” in a cease-and-desist letter sent Thursday and shared with POLITICO by the Poindexter campaign. Miller has previously denied the abuse accusations.

The ad and ensuing legal threat mark a major escalation in the race between Miller and Poindexter. For much of his campaign, Poindexter avoided directly attacking Miller’s legal troubles, highlighting instead his working-class background and affordability.

With the ad, the two candidates are litigating the accusations in the public eye and placing Miller’s family drama at the heart of the race.

Miller’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito — who has repeatedly represented President Donald Trump — said WKYC’s failure to comply with the cease and desist “will leave Congressman Miller with no choice but to pursue any and all legal rights and remedies available to recover damages for the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that Defendant will cause him to suffer.”

Miller is facing allegations of abuse from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno (R). They include accusations he poured hot water on Emily Moreno, held a gun to her head and broke his 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone.

The 30-second Poindexter ad depicts a local sheriff listing some of those allegations, and saying, “Thirty-four years in law enforcement tells me: Max Miller does not belong in power.”

A spokesperson for Miller declined to comment. WKYC also did not return a request for comment.

In a video response shared with POLITICO — which the campaign will use to fundraise — Poindexter rips up the letter.

“He’s threatening to sue because he doesn’t want people to hear the facts. Here are the facts,” Poindexter said. “Max Miller has been accused of abuse by three women. … Max Miller used his money and fancy lawyers to get himself out of his trouble his whole life. Not this time.”

Miller is not on the House Republican campaign arm’s “Patriots” list, which features the most vulnerable members who typically get the bulk of its spending. However, recent polling suggests a tight race between Miller and Poindexter, and national campaign brass has taken notice.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a top Republican super political action committee, placed a staggering $4.85 million ad buy for Miller to air Sept. 30 to Nov. 3. The National Republican Congressional Committee also dropped $450,000 on a three week ad-buy supporting Miller that started Sept. 7.

Spend $30 million......

Crypto super PAC to spend $30 million in bid to take down Sherrod Brown

The spending comes days after Democrats voted down an industry-backed crypto bill on the Senate floor.

Jasper Goodman

A super PAC funded by the cryptocurrency industry is preparing to spend at least $30 million in the Ohio Senate race to try to block Democrat Sherrod Brown from returning to Washington, the group’s most aggressive move of the 2026 midterm cycle to date.

The move by Fairshake, a super PAC group bankrolled by a trio of leading crypto companies, comes just days after Democrats voted down an industry-backed digital asset bill on the Senate floor.

The group spent more than $40 million in 2024 to help defeat Brown, who was then the Senate Banking Committee chair and a leading critic of the crypto sector in the chamber. Brown is now mounting a comeback bid in the Buckeye State, where he is facing Sen. Jon Husted in a special election to replace Vice President JD Vance.

The Ohio race has long been seen as a top target for the crypto group, which has more than $120 million in the bank. But its money had been kept on the sidelines for months as the crypto bill, known as the Clarity Act, was pending in the Senate, where it needed Democratic support to advance. The $30 million campaign against Brown, which the group confirmed to POLITICO, is by far its biggest play of the 2026 cycle thus far.

Brown was a key roadblock to industry-friendly crypto legislation when he served as Senate Banking chair — a perch he used to highlight risks associated with digital assets.

Ohio is one of several GOP Senate seats that Democrats are hoping to capture in order to chip away at Republicans’ majority in the chamber. Brown lost by about four percentage points in 2024 to GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno — who is now a leading crypto booster in the chamber — but Democrats hope he will perform better this year with President Donald Trump’s popularity lagging.

Brown’s campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement that Husted is “for sale and the billionaires and corporations pouring millions into this race know it.”

“Of course the special interests are panicking, they know Sherrod will fight the rigged system they’re feasting on to stand up for working Ohioans,” Eisenhauer said.

It’s unclear where else the crypto group will spend its war chest, which comes primarily from the crypto firms Coinbase and Ripple and the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz. It backed both Democrats and Republicans in key 2024 Senate races, but some Democrats fear that its spending will be more lopsided in favor of the GOP this cycle as the industry seeks to punish Democrats for voting down the Clarity bill.

File lawsuit

News outlets Trump banned from White House file lawsuit

POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW are seeking a restraining order to restore reporters’ access

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Three news organizations whose journalists were banned from the White House last week are suing President Donald Trump and three top advisers, calling the abrupt lockout a “direct assault on the First Amendment.”

POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW said in a joint statement Monday that they are bringing the federal lawsuit in a bid to immediately restore access for their reporters, who were denied entry to the White House complex on Saturday and had their credentials confiscated by the Secret Service.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the news organizations said. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The organizations filed the suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington. They are asking a judge to quickly rule Trump’s ban unconstitutional and prevent his aides from enforcing it.

Trump appeared to respond to the lawsuit in a social media post attacking the news media outlets.

“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America,” he wrote on Truth Social early Monday. “It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

The White House’s exclusion of the journalists followed an announcement from Trump on Friday that he was banning reporters for the three outlets “effective immediately.”

Trump’s post Friday was vague about the reasons for the ban, beyond complaining about “constant ‘reporting’” of what he called “FICTION and LIES.” Questioned about the move during an Oval Office photo op, Trump offered few specifics.

“It’s really just cumulative stories over the last few years. You get sick of it,” Trump said. “They’re smart people, but they purposely write negative news.”

The news organizations, represented by Theodore Boutrous Jr. of law firm Gibson Dunn, are filing suit against Trump, chief of staff Susie Wiles, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and Secret Service Director Sean Curran. The news outlets argue that the president’s ban violates the Constitution in multiple ways: The abrupt cancellation of White House access without notice violated the organizations’ Fifth Amendment due process and property rights, and the retaliation for the content of their reporting violated their First Amendment rights.

The suit contends that the ban is already “severely impeding” the news organizations’ ability to report on the Trump White House while also causing a chilling effect among other news outlets, who could find themselves similarly locked out if the president deems their coverage “insufficiently favorable.”

“The President’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House is a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process,” Boutrous said in a statement. “The President has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration. This ban on the free press harms the American people, who are entitled to rigorous, fact-based coverage of the President of the United States. The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible.”

Though long-standing legal precedents permit the White House to restrict journalists’ access to the building, courts have ruled that officials can’t apply those restrictions in ways that discriminate based on viewpoint or content.

Previous efforts by Trump to deny access to specific reporters or news organizations have run into resistance in the courts, although the most recent litigation led to a muddled result.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, officials suspended the White House hard pass of then-CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, with officials contending he kept speaking and clung to the microphone after Trump made clear he was moving on to another reporter. A judge ordered Acosta’s credential restored, citing a murky process surrounding the suspension.

A similar fight played out the following year, after a verbal altercation in the Rose Garden between a freelance journalist for Playboy, Brian Karem, and Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka. A federal judge ordered the White House to return Karem’s credential, concluding that the rules of decorum for such events were not clear enough to provide due process.

Last year, another legal clash erupted after Trump barred the Associated Press from attending East Room events and kicked the wire service out of the White House press pool, the small group of reporters routinely given access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and other sensitive locations frequented by the president. Trump’s action came after the AP refused to adopt Gulf of America, after he signed an executive order renaming the body of water long known as the Gulf of Mexico.

Though a federal district judge sided with the AP, the bulk of his ruling was temporarily put on hold by a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the most restricted areas such as the Oval Office and Air Force One were not subject to the broader First Amendment protections of the rest of the complex.

“These restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion,” the panel’s majority wrote. “The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.”

Although the appeals court’s June 2025 ruling was a preliminary one, it allowed Trump to follow through with his attempt to ban the AP from the Oval Office. The AP asked the D.C. Circuit’s full bench to take up the issue, but a majority of the court’s judges declined to do so.

Arguments aimed at a definitive ruling on the AP’s lawsuit took place before a three-judge panel last November. The court has yet to rule.

The D.C. Circuit ruled almost a half-century ago in a case involving Nation magazine reporter Robert Sherrill that journalists can’t be denied access to the White House arbitrarily or based on the content of their reporting.