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On a warm morning on Sept. 4, masked immigration agents rolled into Dover, N.J.

- Footage of** **the raids rippled across social media, sent people into hiding and reignited rumors that had been circulating for months: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were taking people to a nearby warehouse.

- The warehouse in Roxbury was one piece of a billion-dollar plan by the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants as part of President Trump's mass deportation efforts.

- That plan to convert warehouses into detention centers faced fierce backlash and legal challenges from residents and immigrant advocates. It was largely abandoned, and in several sites, including Roxbury, the government is legally forbidden by a court order from converting them to a detention facility, pending environmental assessments.

- But an NPR investigation has found signs that the New Jersey facility is being used. And the state's Office of the Attorney General says it is looking into similar reports.

- Contractor says he was told Stephen Miller wanted facilities to be "cruel" and "painful"

- In early 2026, Homeland Security bought 11 warehouses to turn into ICE detention facilities. They spent about a billion dollars on these.

- NPR spoke to an official at a government contractor whose company was approached to convert several of the warehouses into ICE facilities. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the government.

- "No one that we spoke to at DHS was for this idea whatsoever. The deputy director told us point-blank that they had pushed back very hard on it. Everybody knew warehouses are horrible places to put people," he says.

- At a meeting with a deputy director at DHS, he says, his company proposed an alternative: FEMA-style camps in Texas that would be more humane.

- He says that idea was swiftly shot down. While White House adviser Stephen Miller was not at the meeting, they were told that this was not what Miller wanted.

- The contractor says his understanding from that meeting was that "Miller did not want the facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane. We were told point-blank that that was not what the administration wanted."

- "Steve Miller certainly seemed to make that point to everyone that he wanted it to be cruel. This was what Miller had stated to the DHS at that time, to the DHS director and deputy director. What surprised me was just how adamant the people were that it was going to happen. Damn the consequences. I would say in 25 years of working with the U.S. government, I've never been in that position before."

- In a statement to NPR, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the contractor's comments were** **"false hearsay allegation(s) from someone who has never even met or talked with Stephen Miller." Bis also said that Miller "has never made any remarks to anyone about wanting illegal aliens to have worse detention facility conditions. It simply isn't true and this is defamatory."

- The White House did not respond to repeated requests to speak to Miller directly.

- DHS is holding on to the strategically positioned warehouses

- Early on, the warehouse plan was met with protests in both conservative and liberal towns. Several state attorneys general filed lawsuits to halt construction, based on environmental concerns.

- "It very quickly became an absolute boondoggle," says Michael Wriston, a former military intelligence analyst who co-founded Project SaltBox, a watchdog group that tracks ICE's expansion. "It was really about the optics of people being kept in these cages and these large warehouses.

- They wanted a lot of what they called B-roll to play on social media, but they didn't do any due diligence of making sure that they conformed with environmental policy or that the construction wouldn't disturb local water tables."

- A DHS official who served during Trump's first term, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared government retaliation, says that while they were not in the meeting the contractor described to NPR, they had often heard higher-ups in the administration wanting to make a point of showcasing difficult conditions immigrants were being held in.** **

- Then, with the departure of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in March, there was a shift: Her replacement, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, sought to do less showy immigration crackdowns. Today, Homeland Security is selling several of the warehouses.

- But they're still holding on to a few, including in Hagerstown, Md., Surprise, Ariz., and Roxbury, N.J. **"**These locations are very critical to ICE's deportation agenda," says Wriston, "because they fill in the gap in places where ICE does not have a robust detention network. They don't have a lot of jails there." They are also located in areas where there are no partnerships with the police who can house detainees in local jails.

- In Maryland, Arizona and New Jersey, following lawsuits from each of the state attorneys general, DHS has either agreed or been ordered by a judge to halt the conversion of the warehouses into detention centers, pending environmental impact assessments. But throughout the summer, in the towns surrounding the Roxbury warehouse, rumors started to bubble.

- A summer of arrests and rumors

- Over the summer, there was a historic surge in ICE arrests: around 100,000 people in July and August.

- In New Jersey, the rumor mill started churning. The Roxbury warehouse is located in a wooded area, on a road right off Route 46. Project NINJA (No ICE in North Jersey Alliance), a coalition that opposes ICE detention expansion, says several neighbors reported vehicles, often in a caravan, speeding up the road.

- "They're holding people in that warehouse," one woman says in a WhatsApp group in the town of Dover, which is about 15 minutes from Roxbury. "I have a co-worker who was taken there. They hold them there and at night they take them somewhere else." The message was forwarded to NPR by Dover Council Member Sandra Wittner.

- "But, you know, it's like third- and fourth-hand accounts," says Wittner. "It just didn't seem probable at the time because of the court order. But it kind of made you scratch your head a little bit."

- Then the morning of Sept. 4 happened.

- "We were taken to the Roxbury warehouse"

- A woman says she was driving to work when she saw a raid taking place in Dover. She decided to follow the car carrying people who were detained. "I just needed to know, is he going to Roxbury?"** **

- She took video as she trailed them up Route 46. She asked that NPR not use her name because what happened next made her fearful of what the government might do.

- She says the car she was following turned onto the woodsy road that leads to the warehouse.

- She says she waited to see if there was any more movement.

- "And then maybe five minutes after that, a white Dodge Durango started kind of circling around me," she says. "And then on his last loop, he started filming me. He had a yellow case on his cellphone. After that, a black Tahoe started doing the same thing. I was on a public sidewalk, and it was intimidating. It was really intimidating.

- I'm scared. But I am more scared for our community."

- Councilwoman Wittner says she strongly suspects ICE is using the Roxbury warehouse: "The immigration enforcement activity happened in Dover between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m."

- Wittner points to the woman who was able to follow the vehicle up Route 46:

- "The last vehicle entered the warehouse road at 8:25 a.m."
Meanwhile, footage of the raid started circulating on social media.

- Back in Dover, another woman says she saw the videos as she got her kids ready for school. NPR viewed the videos and confirmed their authenticity.

- In one of them, a worker is cornered against a wall by two masked agents. She says she was thunderstruck.

- "That's my father," she told NPR.
She asked that we not use her name because she fears being targeted.
At 8:25 a.m., she says, she got a call from her father. He's 59, she says, and he sounded disoriented. He told her he was handcuffed in some kind of jail.

- She found it strange, she says, because the Roxbury warehouse would be the only place he could have been taken in that short a time span.

- She also discovered a friend of hers had been picked up.

- She hasn't been able to speak to her father since then, and neither has NPR. But NPR located her friend in Honduras, where he's been deported. He requested anonymity, because he fears repercussions for his loved ones who are still in the U.S.

- "I was picked up on my way to work, on Friday, Sept. 4. The agents loaded me into a van. They took us to Roxbury," he said.

- He says he and the other people detained were handcuffed and held in the parking lot for several hours. He counted nine other men with him. "I just went into a state of shock," he says. "I signed my deportation papers. The next morning I regretted it. But I was scared. Eventually, they transferred us to a real facility."

- In a statement to NPR, DHS did not respond to a question about whether it was holding people at the Roxbury location. But it did give NPR a statement it has previously sent about ICE detention, saying DHS upholds strict standards and that immigrants can choose to leave detention by being deported.

- "We need our Congress members to conduct an oversight visit yesterday"

- The activists at NINJA say ICE's actions violate the legal order. The order lists several actions ICE can take with the site — mainly upkeep — but nowhere on that list is detention an acceptable action, they say.

- Harvard professor Andrew Mergen, a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Environment & Natural Resources Division, says ICE may technically not be violating the court order, which stipulated it would not convert the place into a detention center pending an environmental assessment.

- Ultimately, Mergen says, the situation shows the limitations of using environmental claims. "The community is acting here to prevent people from being detained," says Mergen. "And the administration seems to have cleverly elided that intention, by sort of saying,

- 'Well, we're not going to build this facility, but we're going to use this space in furtherance of detention.'"
He says he understands the frustration: "It's just infuriating if what you are trying to do is say 'No. Not here. Not here.' "

- Wittner says since the raid, she's heard from other close relatives or close friends of two men who were picked up that day, who say they were inside the Roxbury warehouse.

- She says the situation is unacceptable: "We need our Congress members to conduct an oversight visit yesterday, quite honestly. We need our state to aggressively pursue this investigation and demand to get inside."

- She says DHS has had time "to go in and clean up their mess if they, in fact, got caught doing something that they shouldn't have."

- Meanwhile, in Dover, the streets where the raid happened remain deserted.

- At an empty diner at lunchtime, a waitress who did not want to be named because of the climate of fear in town says one of the workers who was taken used to come here for a bite.

- Then she leans over and asks: "Do you know where they took those men?"

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is putting President Donald Trump on notice: If Democrats win control, they don’t intend to put “MAGA” judges on the courts.

- “The bottom line is: One of the reasons we want to do everything we can to take back the Senate is not let Trump put such horrible justices — MAGA justices — on the Supreme Court and the lower courts,” Schumer said in response to a question from NBC News about a potential high court vacancy if Democrats win in 2026.

- Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said he doesn’t think a Democratic-led Senate would confirm a Trump pick for the Supreme Court either.

- “Well, given the history of Trump nominees, I think it is slim to none that we would support a nominee from this administration,” Blumenthal said in an interview. “Because we’ve seen this movie, we know how it ends, which is a politician in robes who is following Trump’s orders on most major questions.”

- The remarks highlight the high stakes of the 2026 election for Trump’s final two years when it comes to judicial nominees, especially for the Supreme Court if there’s a vacancy. None of the nine justices has signaled plans to retire, but speculation has centered on how long the two oldest justices — conservatives Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76 — will stay on the court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts are the next oldest justices, at 72 and 71, respectively.

- Alito told CBS News in a recent interview that he considered retirement earlier this year, but ultimately decided against it.

- “It’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,” Alito said, while adding: “It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be, and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.”

- If Democrats win control of the Senate, they would have the power to determine which of Trump’s nominees for federal judicial postings get hearings and votes, including for a hypothetical Supreme Court vacancy.
But if Republicans keep control, the president will maintain his glide path to fill vacancies with his preferred nominees — adding to his nearly six-year total of 290 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices during his first term. All of those judges have been confirmed under GOP Senate control.

- Some Democrats say there should be no question of confirming a Trump pick after former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., held a seat open for 10 months under President Barack Obama to let a Republican president fill it instead. (Justice Neil Gorsuch ultimately filled that vacancy.)
“No, we’ve got to do exactly what McConnell did to us,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said.

- Gallego said he doesn’t want it to become a rule that no president can get a nominee confirmed by a Senate run by the opposing party. But at minimum, he wants Democrats to “even the scales.”

- Beyond that, “I don’t think you know you want to go down that road,” the first-term Arizona Democrat said. “But clearly you know McConnell and Trump used, I would say, their power, whatever you want to call it, to change the makeup of the courts. And I think we have to start moving it back.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said he wouldn’t count on Trump getting any Supreme Court nominee through a Democratic-led Senate.

- “I don’t think it would be impossible. You know, there’s a slim possibility, very slim possibility,” Kennedy said. “But there’s a possibility that somebody would confuse me with Brad Pitt. I mean, it’s possible, but it’s not likely.”
Kennedy, like most U.S. senators quoted in this article, spoke before Alito’s comments to CBS News were published.

- Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., who took her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat on the Judiciary Committee when she was appointed to the Senate, reacted directly to Alito’s remarks and connected it to her 2026 campaign for a six-year term.

- “Should Justice Alito choose to retire next year, a Republican-majority Senate will be needed to vote and hopefully confirm a Supreme Court nominee from President Trump,” Graham wrote on X. “If Democrats control the Senate, they will not even allow a vote. And if they allow a vote, they will defeat a Trump-nominated candidate regardless of their qualifications.”

- Another open question is how a Democratic majority would approach Trump judicial nominees for the lower courts.

- Blumenthal said that one of his litmus tests for Trump judicial nominees up and down the courts is that they must be able to correctly answer who won the 2020 election, a question that various Trump nominees have refused to engage on as the president persists with false claims that it was stolen from him.

- “We’ll stop a lot of these totally unqualified, ideologically right-wing nominees who won’t answer the question of who won the 2020 election,” Blumenthal said. “Among other questions.”

- Some Democrats with a long memory haven’t forgotten that McConnell slowed nearly all judicial nominations to a crawl in Obama’s last two years, when the Kentucky Republican first took charge as Senate majority leader. McConnell saw it as payback for Democrats abolishing the 60-vote threshold for lower court judges in 2013, which at the time was part of a rapidly escalating judicial war between the parties.

- Still, not all Democrats are willing to speculate on how they would deal with
Trump’s judicial nominees.

- Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, another member of the Judiciary Committee, paused and chuckled when asked if Democrats would confirm a Trump-nominated justice to the Supreme Court.

- “Well, I don’t know. I can’t speak for my colleagues,” she said. “Let us just say that I would be very much for Supreme Court reform. ... One that allows every president to nominate two Supreme Court justices, and then they move on” to senior status.

- Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the current ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, is retiring after this Congress. Next in line to chair the panel, should Democrats capture the Senate, would be Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

- Whitehouse declined to engage when asked what the dynamic of judicial nominations would be if he becomes chairman.

- “Don’t know,” he said.

- Josh Orton, the president of the progressive judicial group Demand Justice, said his organization is “prepared to oppose any Trump nominee, regardless of when the vacancy happens.”

- “On moral and political grounds, I don’t see any reason for Democrats to consider a Trump Supreme Court nomination,” Orton said, adding that Trump wants judges to be personally loyal to him, and would select them on that basis. “Any casual observer knows that Trump sees the Supreme Court generally as a political extension of himself — or that it should be.”

- Just last month, Trump issued a lengthy criticism of the Supreme Court on Truth Social for ruling against him on mail-in ballots, tariffs and birthright citizenship. “The Supreme Court has really let our Country down. ... These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote. “They are merely a shell of their original selves.”

Democratic candidates are holding leads over their Republican rivals in competitive Senate races in Maine and New Hampshire, according to new polls published on Tuesday, as the party maintains a polling advantage one month before the 2026 midterm elections.

- Maine: Democratic candidate Troy Jackson is leading in the race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins 51% to 47%, a new Marist poll found (updated Oct. 6).

- New Hampshire: Democratic candidate Rep. Chris Pappas is leading his Republican opponent, former Sen. John Sununu, 51% to 44%, according to a St. Anselm College poll, although 4% of respondents said they were unsure or voting for a third candidate (updated Oct. 6).

- Texas: Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leads Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton 51% to 45% in the latest survey from The New York Times and Siena University (updated Oct. 3).
Ohio: Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, leads incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted 49% to 46% in the latest New York Times/Siena poll (updated Oct. 3).

- Alaska: Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola is ahead of Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan 50% to 43% among voters 50 and older a new New York Times/Siena poll**(updated Oct. 3).**

- Iowa: Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson leads Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek 48% to 47% in the latest survey from the New York Times and Siena (updated Oct. 3).

- Kansas: Sen. Roger Marshall leads Democrat Adam Hamilton, a pastor at the largest United Methodist church in the country, 47% to 46% in the latest New York Times/Siena poll (updated Oct. 3).

- Michigan: Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is ahead of Republican Rep. Mike Rogers 50% to 49% in the latest Fox News poll (updated Oct. 2).

- Florida: Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon is tied with Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, both with 45% and 7% of voters are undecided in the latest surveyfrom St. Pete Polls and FloridaPolitics.com (updated Sept. 18).

- WHICH PARTY WILL WIN THE HOUSE?

- Multiple polls in recent weeks show Democrats vaulting ahead. In a New York Times/Siena poll released Sept. 15, 51% said they would vote for the Democratic congressional candidate running in their district, 43% said they would vote for the Republican and 6% said they didn’t know or refused to answer the question. Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin shows Democrats are favored by 8.9 points as of Monday, 50% to 41.1%, up from 6.7 points, 48.3% to 41.6%, as of Sept. 1. Kalshi betting odds show Democrats have a 91.7% chance of winning the House as of Monday.

- BIG NUMBER

- 37%. That’s Trump’s approval rating in the Silver Bulletin polling average, amid a string of surveys in recent months showing his approval rating at record lows amid growing fatigue with the Iran war and its impact on the economy. While Trump’s rating is low compared to most modern presidents at this point in their terms, the president’s party historically performs poorly in midterms elections, due to a combination of factors including low turnout in a non-presidential election year and motivation among voters who view the midterms as a referendum on the president’s agenda.

- KEY BACKGROUND

- Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate. The party won back control in 2024, flipping West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana, after four years in the minority. Cook Political Report rates the battle for control of the Senate as a “true toss up,” though it’s shifted three races towards Democrats in the past week. A split Congress or one that’s fully in Democrats’ control could significantly hamstring Trump’s agenda, though he’s circumvented Congress to enact some of his most controversial priorities, including mass immigration raids, the Iran war and reconstruction of the Capitol and surrounding areas. Democrats are also gearing up to launch numerous investigations into Trump if they regain control of one or both chambers, with probes set to focus on whether he has used the presidency to enrich himself personally.

A federal court in Washington, D.C., is to play host to a legal battle Tuesday morning pitting the Walt Disney Co. against the nation's chief broadcast regulator over just how far First Amendment protections can go during the presidency of Donald Trump.

- President Trump has repeatedly called for Disney's ABC TV to fire late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who has consistently mocked the president. Trump has also routinely denounced ABC's The View, accusing it of being liberal and unfair.

- Trump had earlier sued the network, before returning to office, over incorrect statements anchor George Stephanopoulos made about the verdicts in writer E. Jean Carroll's two lawsuits against Trump. ABC paid $16 million in a December 2024 settlement, including legal fees, to resolve that a month before Trump went back to the White House. But new Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro has authorized a high-stakes fight against the administration in court.

- Brendan Carr, whom Trump elevated to be the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, has echoed the president's complaints. And under Carr, the FCC is moving to review Disney's ownership of all eight of the stations it owns, as part of the ABC Network, years ahead of schedule. That followed months of social media posts from Trump urging that the FCC strip ABC of its station licenses.

- "There's not even a question as to what Carr is doing. What Carr is doing is unconstitutional," says Mark Fowler, a Republican former FCC chair under President Ronald Reagan. Fowler has filed a statement to aid ABC's lawsuit in which he likened Carr's actions to censorship. "The First Amendment is very plain in its wording and its meaning," he says.

- Technically, networks do not require licenses from the federal government to operate. Stations do need them to utilize publicly owned airwaves. They are perennially reviewed on a staggered basis and are typically renewed without much fanfare.

- Carr has cited the requirement of stations to serve the "public interest," initiated investigations of Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and, though he says the license review is not linked to ABC's content, he has blasted the network as biased.

- Disney and ABC are seeking to get U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan to issue an order preventing the FCC from accelerating the typical review process.

- She had compelled the FCC to hold off from moving ahead until this hearing. Media advocates, FCC veterans and legal observers say the move to challenge all ABC's local licenses at once is unprecedented. And were it to be successful, it would hurt ABC badly in the bottom line. Six of those eight stations are in major media markets and contribute significantly to the network's bottom line.

- "The overreaching by the FCC is one of the greatest threats right now that's facing journalism," says Bruce Brown, the president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

- In an interview with NPR in August, Carr said that the agency has not decided whether to pull the station licenses from ABC. Instead, he said, ABC is complaining about his drive to take the "public interest" component of the law seriously. And he said that the network is getting ahead of itself. The agency has not yet taken any action against ABC's licenses — merely sped up their review.

- That question may consume part of the legal wrangling on Tuesday as it will help determine whether ABC and Disney have standing to sue.

- Conservative groups, including the fundraising outfits for U.S. Senate and House Republican candidates, filed briefs to support the FCC, and by extension, the president's complaints about bias.

- "By any commonsense standard, evidence of broadcaster intent to advance the candidacies of Democratic Party figures on The View is not merely present, but overwhelming," the Republican fundraising committees say in a court filing.

- Even so, several groups often affiliated with conservatives have weighed in against the Justice Department's case, including the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Policy Innovation.

- They note that Carr has roundly condemned ABC over its content, and in seeming direct echoes of Trump's condemnations — at one point saying on a right-wing podcast in September 2025 that ABC getting rid of Kimmel "can do this the easy way or the hard way." ABC suspended Kimmel hours later over remarks he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

- The suspension was soon lifted after a public outcry.

- Fellow satirists Seth Meyers of NBC's Late Night and John Oliver of HBO's Last Week Tonight paid tribute to their ABC counterpart during an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Livetaped last week in Brooklyn.

- "You come up all the time. [Fans] will normally say, how does it feel, being disliked by the current president? And we always say, as long as you're on the air, we're fine," Oliver told Kimmel. "We are fully behind you — the way we're fully behind a bulletproof vest."

- The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has filed a friend of the court brief on ABC's behalf, hiring a former U.S. solicitor general who has argued repeatedly before the U.S. Supreme Court, to represent the organization at the district court level.

- Bruce Brown, president of the group, pointed at a series of other actions by Carr and other Trump appointees: The FCC has launched investigations into all broadcast networks, including NPR (save Fox, which is controlled by the president's allies, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch); The administration has cut off access for many journalists at the White House and the Pentagon, while federal agents sought access to journalists' devices to identify anonymous sources; all the while, the president has sought to delegitimize media outlets whose presentation of the news has sparked public displays of anger.

- "This is only one part of a wide effort by the Trump administration to intimidate the press — and to try to coerce out of news organizations the type of coverage the president wants to see," Brown says.

President Trump was elected in 2024, in large measure, with a mandate to bring down prices. But that hasn't happened. Instead, Trump is facing record-low approval ratings, and voters are blaming him for costs that have continued to rise since he took office this second time around.

- As a result, Republicans are likely to pay the price at the ballot box next month. One month out from Election Day, the electoral landscape has shifted even more so in Democrats' direction.

- They are favored to win the House, albeit with a fairly narrow majority. The Cook Political Report forecasts a five-to-15-seat net gain for Democrats at this point. That would give them in the range of 220 to 230 seats come January. (218 is needed for a majority.)

- The Senate has shifted more dramatically over the last several months. Six seats have moved more in Democrats' direction since June in comparing Cook's ratings from then to now. When the cycle first started, the Senate was a long shot for Democrats. Now, it's within reach.

- And that's largely because of the national mood, which is usually the case in midterms. Trump has just a 37% approval rating, according to an average of the polls. That's tied for the lowest pre-midterm approval in the last half century.

- The only other president to be that low in that time was George W. Bush in 2006. Back then, Iraq was spiraling into civil war, and Republicans lost both the House and Senate.

- Trump is also facing a historic intensity of opposition; 53% in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll said they stronglydisapprove of the job the president is doing, the highest ever recorded in the survey. That's not a great sign for Republicans with Trump insisting that the midterm elections be about him.

- As it is, history is unkind to the president's party in midterm elections. They usually lose about two dozen seats in the House and four in the Senate. It's even worse for the party in power when the president's approval rating is below 50%, as Trump's is now.

- There are multiple reasons Democratic gains might be limited, including mid-decade redistricting helping to insulate Republicans, fewer competitive-to-potentially competitive House seats, with most in districts Trump won in 2024, Republicans' campaign spending edge and the unpopularity of the Democratic Party.
That said, the headwinds the GOP is facing are very real.

- Republicans have lost their edge on the economy

- Economic issues continue to rate as the top problem and most important issue facing the country.

- Most presidents get more blame and credit than they deserve for the economy, but the war with Iran and Trump's tariffs were choices that have directly led to increased costs on many goods and energy.

- The economy is increasingly bifurcated with the wealthy doing well and regular people struggling. Wealthy Americans are seeing increases in their wealth and stock portfolios, which are dominated by AI companies.

- It's a different story for many others. Inflation is outpacing wages, meaning people's paychecks aren't taking them as far. There isn't a lot of turnover in the labor market, so if someone doesn't have a job or is looking to change, it's not an easy thing to do.

- Plus, many are turning against AI. In many places, it's driving up utility costs and, along with the rising national debt, is making borrowing more difficult.

- All of that is coming at a time when gas prices have skyrocketed because of the Iran war, and interest rates are creeping higher. In trying to tame inflation, the Federal Reserve hiked rates this fall. That makes it more expensive to borrow money and harder to pay for things like houses and cars.

- The blame for that sort of thing often gets pointed directly at the White House and the party in power, and right now, that's Trump and Republicans.
An AP/NORC poll released last week, for example, found that 65% said higher-than-usual prices are more because of Trump's policies than factors outside of his control.

- Just 26% said they approved of the job he's doing on the economy.

- An NBC News poll from September found that for only the second time in the Trump era, respondents said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans on the economy. (Though it was within the margin of error, the movement in the survey was clear.)

- The only other time Democrats led on that question was in 2018 – the last midterm year when Trump was president. Democrats won 42 seats and control of the House then.

- Add the widely negative views of the economy to the administration's immigration enforcement tactics, discretionary domestic cuts, the slashing of regulations and the government workforce, and it's all firing up Democrats.

- An opposition party enthusiastic to vote is a major warning sign for the president's party, especially in a midterm year.

- History is not on the side of the president's party in midterm elections

- In 18 of the 20 midterms since World War II, the president's party has lost House seats. On average, it's 26 seats, and it's nine more than that when a president's approval rating is below 50%.

- The last three midterm elections have seen fewer lost House seats, despite unpopular presidents, in large measure because the universe of competitive districts is smaller.

- The president, himself, though, has acknowledged multiple times the political headwinds his party faces in midterms.

- "Whether you have a great president or not, Republican or Democrat, they don't do well in midterms," Trump said Friday at a campaign rally in Alabama. "I don't know why. Nobody's explained it."

- There are reasons, however.

- First, turnout in midterms is historically about 30% lower than in presidential years. So, the voters most fired up to vote show up in outsized numbers.

- Anger is a great motivator, and often the voters more aligned with the opposition party most want to register their frustration. And, as noted earlier, the intensity of opposition to Trump is at historic levels.

- A CBS poll out Sunday found Democrats with the enthusiasm edge – 84% of Democrats and 82% of independents surveyed said they are "definitely" going to vote compared to 77% of Republicans.

- What's more, a key indicator of which party does well in midterms is pointing in the Democrats' direction. Surveys, including the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, ask a version of: "If November's election for Congress were held today, which party's candidate are you more likely to vote for in your district?"

- In an average of the 2026 polls, Democrats have a nine-point advantage on this question, known as the congressional ballot test.

- Democrats tend to need a larger lead on the question historically than Republicans, given how districts have been drawn. But +9 is in the range of what Democrats need.

- To put a finer point on it: in each of the past seven midterm elections, the party with the advantage on the congressional ballot has made gains.

- With independents and Latinos, two swing groups, souring on Trump during this second term, that's an added problem for Republicans in competitive districts.

- Their jobs are made even tougher when Trump says things like "pretend" he's on the ballot and makes the election a "referendum" on him.

- The White House's theory of the case is that Trump has had success turning conservatives out when he's on the ballot, and Republican candidates need them to show up in big numbers.

- But whether that's enough is going to be tested. In swing districts and some key Senate races, candidates also usually need voters in the middle to win.

- The bottom line is with less than a month to go until all the votes are in, the political compass is pointed in Democrats' direction. For multiple reasons, Democrats' gains might not be as big as similar numbers might indicate in past elections, but there is no doubt that, right now, they have the wind at their backs.

Leaders in California have denounced Donald Trump as “reckless” and “deranged” after the US president suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego – two liberal cities in the blue state that has been a frequent target of his administration.

- At a rally in ruby red Nebraska on Monday night, Trump told supporters that he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the fast-approaching November midterm elections. He then suggested high prices due to the war with Iran were a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.

- “They can take out a city,” Trump said in Grand Island. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The crowd applauded.

- “It’ll be over very soon,” Trump said of the war.

- The governor and the cities’ mayors quickly condemned the comments.

- “After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on X. “He is deranged and dangerous.”

- Newsom, a Democrat who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over his two terms, said from his press office account: “Let’s be clear: The President is advocating for an attack on 10+ million U.S. residents in two of America’s largest cities. This is not normal. None of this is. And we will continue to remind folks of that every day.”

- Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, assailed the president for making what she called “irresponsible threats” that “could potentially compromise” the safety of America’s second-largest city.

- “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a statement.

- “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a statement.

- Todd Gloria, the mayor of San Diego, said his city was “not collateral damage” in the president’s war. “We are not expendable. And we are never a “small price to pay,” he wrote on X “Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

- San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, is home to critical US military infrastructure.

- Online, the comments – part of a rambling, nearly hour-and-a-half speech – set off a debate about what the president actually meant. Was it a crude joke about two blue cities or had he, accidentally perhaps, disclosed confidential intelligence about potential Iranian targets?

- Some conservative activists argued that Trump, in his elliptical way of speaking, was referring to high gas prices when he argued that it was a “small price to pay”, and not the capacity of Iran to “take out” a US city.

Latino voters helped propel Donald Trump back to the White House. Now, they are turning on him, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll — a shift that gives Democrats a major opportunity to capitalize in a 2026 election that could hinge on states and districts with sizable Latino populations.

- Like the broader electorate, Latino voters are racked by major concerns about high prices and Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement. The president’s approval rating sits at 27% among Latino voters. Two-thirds say his administration’s deportation policies have gone too far and three-quarters disapprove of how he has handled the economy and the cost of living

- There are clear signs his party is paying the price.

- A greater share of Latino voters hold negative views of the Republican Party than at any time since 2016, and Democrats have leads on issues like dealing with the economy, immigration, the cost of living, corruption and healthcare. Two years ago, Latino voters gave Trump a 4-point edge over then-Vice President Kamala Harris on handling the economy. Today, they give Democrats a 21-point advantage on the same question.

- Against that backdrop, Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress, 59%-35%.

- That’s double the lead they had among Latino voters at this point in 2024, though not quite at the heights the party enjoyed at this time in 2018, according to NBC News polling from just before that election.

- Democrats have rebounded among Latino voters, but Republicans have held pre-2024 gains, too

- "What is your preference for the outcome of this November's congressional elections?"

- Nearly a fifth of Latino voters who backed Trump in 2024 say they do not prefer a Republican-controlled Congress, with 14% saying they support Democrats and 8% unsure in their preference.

- The shifts come after the Republican Party made Trump’s 2024 gains among Latino voters central to its plans to keep the House majority. In Florida and Texas, the party drew new, heavily Latino districts that looked deep red by the 2024 results — but many are shaping up to be competitive in the midterms as Latino voters’ preferences have changed. Statewide races in Texas, Nevada and more will also be shaped by the evolving Latino vote, though it will not move as one bloc everywhere in the country.

- The poll results, collected Sept. 21-28, “indicate a striking reversal of Republican gains with Latino voters and point to trouble ahead for Republican candidates in the midterms,” said Democratic pollster Aileen Cardona-Arroyo of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll with Republican pollster Micah Roberts and his firm, Public Opinion Strategies. Latino voters comprised around a tenth of the total vote in recent midterm elections.

- Roberts referred to Latino voters as “the swingiest of swing groups,” calling the reversal since 2024 “stunning.”
“What we can really say from this data is that 2024 was the outlier,” he said, adding: “Trump is a central figure. He’s had real consequences on our politics, and without his presence, I think none of these changes would be evident in the data among Latinos.”

- But the results among Latino voters are not all good news for Democrats, who have not seen their party’s image improve in two years. And while Democrats have a midterm lead, Republicans are pulling more Latino support than in any NBC News poll before the 2024 election cycle, too, dating back to 2012.

- “Despite a more favorable environment for Democrats, any Democratic gains this November will be driven largely more by opposition to Trump and the economic environment than by support for Democrats,” Arroyo-Cardona said.

- Trump struggles

- Latino voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the president’s handling of the cost of living (78%), the economy (74%), foreign policy (68%) and immigration (69%). Trump’s best issue of the five tested is border security — where 39% approve and 58% disapprove of his handling.

- Trump's rating on key issues

- Asked among Latino registered voters.

- His marks on foreign policy, the economy and cost of living are significantly lower than where then-President Joe Biden sat with Latino voters in September 2022, when Democrats had a better-than-expected midterm result despite losing control of the House. Then, 60% disapproved of Biden’s handling of the cost of living and 54% disapproved of his handling of the economy.

- Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Latino voters say the president’s policies have hurt economic conditions, compared with 23% who say his policies have helped and 11% who say they haven’t made much of a difference.

- Among Latino independents, just 10% believe his policies have helped the economy, while 72% believe his policies have hurt it.

- Meanwhile, inflation and the cost of living ranked as the most important issue to 33% of Latino voters. That made it the top issue in the survey — and a majority (52%) ranked it as the most or second-most important issue

- Which of these issues is the most important issue facing the country to Latino voters?

- And, what is the second-most important issue facing the country?

- Latino voters who say the cost of living is the most important issue also prefer a Democratic Congress by 22 points. That’s a shift from the 2024 poll, when Republicans had a 4-point edge among these voters.

- A sizable majority of Latinos (63%) say their family’s income is falling behind the cost of living, while 25% say it is staying even and 11% say it is going up faster than the cost of living, similar to findings in 2024.

- Luisa Santiago, a 59-year-old Florida retiree who participated in the survey, told NBC News in a subsequent interview that she voted for Trump in 2024 after a lifetime of voting for Democrats and convinced many of her friends to do the same. She was frustrated with the Democrats on the economy and on transgender issues.

- “It was a big deal when we voted for Republicans, and then we feel like it was a complete mistake,” she said, calling Trump a “disappointment.”

- “I’m more embarrassed than my friends because I was the one who convinced them to vote for him,” she added.

- Santiago lambasted the president’s deportation policies as “brutal” and “cold,” while also saying the difficult economic climate is weighing heavily on her and her family.

- While immigration didn’t rank as highly on the priority list, Latino voters expressed similar frustration with Trump’s hard-edged deportation policies.

- Two-thirds say Trump’s immigration enforcement measures have gone too far, 22% say he’s struck the right approach, and 9% say he hasn’t gone far enough.

- While 83% support deporting all undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes, just 37% support deporting every undocumented immigrant in the U.S.

- Roberts, the Republican pollster, pointed to the difference between support for deporting serious criminals and deporting everyone in America illegally as he imagined “what might have been” for Republicans.

- “There is support for a certain level of immigration enforcement, but the Latino electorate believes it’s gone way too far,” he added.

- In the poll, 31% of Latino voters say they or someone close to them started carrying identification over concerns about ICE enforcement, while 27% say they know someone who has been deported or detained by ICE in the last two years.

- Eighteen percent say they or someone close to them has considered leaving the U.S. over the last two years over concerns about ICE enforcement, and 17% say they or someone close to them has considered not voting in person this year because of concerns about ICE.

- Maria, a Florida voter in her 20s who responded to the poll, told NBC News in a follow-up interview that Trump has “fallen short” in the two years since she voted for him. She declined to share her last name while discussing politics.

- She highlighted frustration on the economy and on deportations, arguing that while Trump promised to deport the worst of the worst, “I’ve had many friends, family members deported.”

- “They were supposed to be here. They had paperwork, and it didn’t matter. And now they can never come back. One of my friend’s grandpas didn’t even get deported to his home country. He got deported to Mexico instead of Cuba,” she later added.

- Midterms fallout

- The numbers for Trump and Republicans could spell trouble in November in states and districts with sizable Latino populations.

- “In a lot of the heavily Hispanic and Latino districts across the country that Trump and Republicans did well, and better than ever in, in 2024, you’re going to see that reversal,” said Roberts, the Republican pollster, noting Trump’s tough numbers on immigration and the cost of living.

- “This entire poll is full of very clear directional signals that Latinos have turned from 2024 and are ready to make a different choice with regard to who’s in control of Congress,” Roberts said.

- Democrats’ 24-point lead on the generic congressional ballot is twice as large as their margin in the 2024 version of the poll. But it’s not nearly as wide as the 43-point lead the party enjoyed at this point in the 2018 midterms.

- Latino voters also now say Democrats would better handle the cost of living and the economy by significant margins, erasing the advantages Trump and Republicans have enjoyed in past elections.

- Who do you think would do a better job handling this issue?

- Among Latino registered voters

- Latino voters favor Democrats to handle other issues, and they break even on which party would better handle border security. More voters also say Democrats are more likely than Republicans to share their values and address the concerns of the Hispanic community.

- Amid the economic frustrations, voters are also more motivated to head to the polls in November. A sizable majority (72%) rank themselves a 10 out of 10 in terms of interest in November’s elections, compared with 54% at this time in 2024. Meanwhile, 62% say they are more motivated to vote this year than in midterms past.

- And a majority (54%) say their midterm vote is meant to send a signal of opposition to Trump, while 21% say they want to signal their support for Trump and 23% say their vote is not about sending a signal to the president either way.

- While the poll results offer plenty of short-term upside for Democrats, they also outline longer-term changes trending against the party.

- While Latino voters’ negative views of the GOP have jumped since 2024, views of the Democratic Party have not improved. Now, 62% of Latino voters have negative views of the Republican Party, a 16-point increase from two years ago, while 42% have a negative view of the Democratic Party, a 4-point increase from 2024.

- “I’m still wary about the Democratic Party because I don’t really know that much other than what I was fed,” said Maria, the Florida voter in her 20s, before adding that she’s still leaning toward voting for Democrats: “I feel like I have to put my faith in them now to fix things.”

- She said she voted for Trump in 2024 in large part because her family instilled a fear of socialism and Democrats in her.

- The poll found that socialism remains underwater with Latino voters — 13% feel positively about it and 41% view socialism negatively, with 38% feeling neutral about socialism.

- Cardona-Arroyo, the Democratic pollster, noted that the party has work to do after the midterms to develop a broader message.

- “What do Democrats do to move beyond this place where they’re running on opposition to the Republican Party, which I think will work in ’26?” Cardona-Arroyo said. “It’s sort of an open question of whether that will work in ’28.”

Kimberly Tait had been a registered Republican all her life, until she switched her affiliation to independent in 2016.

- The Gilbert, Ariz., resident always considered herself to be conservative but experienced a political identity crisis because she couldn't bring herself to align with the Republican Party under President Trump.

- "I'm not super progressive politically and I'm really pretty moderate." Tait said. "But the MAGA movement in and of itself is — it's just really gross to me."

- Now Tait — also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — has another politician on her ballot that turns her off: Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff and Republican nominee for Arizona's 5th Congressional District, a conservative stronghold.

- Lamb is favored to win the general election, but a lack of appeal to Mormon voters could make it a closer-than-expected race.

- While Lamb says he is a member of the LDS church, Tait is one of the Mormons in the district that question Lamb's adherence to the faith as well as his political motivations. Lamb's campaign slogan is "God, Family, Freedom," and, to her, the sentiment rings hollow because "the candidate and all that they represent is the antithesis of that."

- "Yes, Mark Lamb is a member of my faith. He also belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But from what I understand about Mark Lamb, the dishonesty that has been displayed in his public and private life is completely contrary to our faith," Tait said.

- The district and Lamb's candidacy 

- Arizona's 5th Congressional District covers the eastern part of the sprawling Phoenix suburbs of Maricopa County — Arizona's most populated — as well as Pinal County. The district has exploded in population in recent years, too.

- Kim Fridkin, a political science professor at Arizona State University, has lived in the district for roughly a decade and has watched it change.

- "A lot of people came in from other states and a lot of them from California and they definitely wanted to move to a more conservative place," she said.

- Fridkin added the residents are a mix of working, middle and upper middle class families. It's predominantly Republican (Trump won the district by roughly 20 points in the last presidential election), mostly white and fairly religious with a sizable LDS population. Two of Arizona's six LDS temples are located within the boundaries of the relatively small district.

- With Rep. Andy Biggs not seeking reelection to run for Arizona governor, voters in the district will decide between Democrat Elizabeth Lee, a nurse and political newcomer, or Lamb, who is endorsed by Trump and has a scandal-plagued past.

- Lamb has been accused of racist remarks and sexual misconductwhile he was Pinal County sheriff. The Arizona Republic released a multipart investigation into Mark Lamb where it alleges he had multiple affairs and sent sexually explicit messages to a woman outside his marriage then threatened to send law enforcement after her if she spoke publicly about it.

- One of the most prominent values the LDS church holds sacred is chastity, which includes no sexual relations of any kind outside of marriage. If a member is found to be out of step with covenants, church leaders can revoke certain privileges and can even move to excommunicate the member. The Arizona Republic reported that church leaders looked into claims about Lamb's sexual improprieties.

- Lamb, who did not respond to NPR's interview request, denied the allegations during an event at the Encores Conservative Club in June.

- "I've been called a racist. I've been called a misogynist … I'm going to tell you folks, these are lies. Every single bit of it," he said, referring to the multiple articles the Arizona Republic has published on Lamb's candidacy.

- Some Latter-day Saint voters struggle to support Lamb

- To Tait, Lamb as the nominee is the latest example of an unrecognizable Republican Party.

- "The idea of having yet another elected official who is accused of sexual misconduct towards women," Tait said, "that does not speak well to me, to my children. Like, what is that teaching our children?"

- Historically, Mormons vote for Republicans. But they have become a little less red over the last two decades, according to an analysis by YouGov. In neighboring Utah, where the LDS church is the predominant religion, Trump has faced some of his greatest opposition in a red state.

- So looking at a purple state like Arizona, LDS voters start to look more independent overall when factoring in a complicated relationship many have with President Trump over his crass personality and hardline stances on issues, such as immigration.

- Holly Anderson is one of those Arizona LDS voters that has become more purple.

- "I vote according to my personal values, and I believe that a leader should have character. I do not align with either one of the parties," Anderson told NPR.

- She said she loved the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. But the party has changed and Anderson said it would be hypocritical of her to support Lamb, even if they share the same religion.

- "In my faith, we really stand by 2 Corinthians 13:1. It's a very important scripture to us. It says 'In the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall every word be established,'" she said.

- "There's been multiple women who have come forth and exposed the things that he has done."

- Suzanne Lunt, another independent LDS voter in the district, doesn't plan on voting for Lamb in November, either.

- She grew up Republican and considered herself to be a moderate conservative. But after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, she decided to leave the party. During the 2024 presidential election, she was the co-chair of the Republicans for Biden committee.

- She's been called a Republican in Name Only, or a RINO, over her political stances. But she feels like the Republican Party and its leaders led her astray, not the other way around.

- "There are a lot of Republicans that I think are really RINOs because they're not upholding the principles that we've all admired all of these years," she said, referring to Republicans not supporting small government, protection of life and upstanding character.

- "I think we need to find people, and we're taught by our church leaders that we need to look at people who have character and who can represent us well," Lunt added. "Lamb comes across as so untrustworthy on a lot of different levels."

- While all three women believe Lamb will be victorious in November because of the district's conservative lean, they are noticing that more LDS voters are souring on partisan politics altogether.

- "I think there's definitely a turn in people's feelings and I think that there are more that feel like me that I'm aware of. I don't ever see anybody wearing their MAGA hats anymore and I think most people don't want to be associated with that craziness and the extremism," Lunt said.

- A Democrat's path to victory

- It will be a real uphill battle for a Democrat to flip a district that is rated Solidly Republican by Cook Political Report, but Elizabeth Lee is giving it a shot.

- The Democratic candidate has branded herself as "Nurse Lee." She is an infertility nurse and said working in the health care space has given her experience that would help her in Washington D.C.

- "Nurses are uniquely trained to walk into a situation very quickly, assess what's happening, what the problem is, and then pulling together the resources to solve it," Lee told NPR.

- Lee is trying to capitalize on the discontent some voters feel about the Republican nominee. On the campaign trail, she has outlined her priorities and qualifications while nailing Lamb for his lack of policy goals and in her opinion, character.

- "The GOP has nominated an extremely flawed candidate with the kind of alleged flaws that people nationally are fed up with, that people in this district are most certainly fed up with," she said.

- Fridkin, the professor of political science at Arizona State University, said while it will be tough for a Democrat to flip the seat, there are factors working in Lee's favor.

- "People are really feeling the effects of high gas prices and housing prices are really high and the water crisis is important in Arizona. All of these things are really hitting people where they live," she said. "That's when these types of low interest voters might be motivated to turn out, especially if someone is knocking on the door and telling them why they should."

- Trump's current unpopularity could play a role in the election outcome. One recent poll found that only 39% of Arizona voters approved of the president's job – the lowest rating ever recorded in the swing state.

- Additionally, Fridkin argues the independent vote is critical for either candidate to win. The largest group of registered voters in the district are Republicans. But there are about 195,000 independents — the second most in any district in Arizona — making them an influential voting bloc.

- From Lee's perspective, the needle is moving to the left. An internal poll Lee's campaign shared with NPR shows her gaining traction in the conservative district, especially among independents. The poll, which was conducted by Change Research, found Lee was trailing behind Lamb by three to five points.

- "We have spent a year making tens of thousands of phone calls, knocking tens of thousands of doors and knowing … independents are not for extremist politics," Lee said, "sets this race up for exactly what our recent polling showed. And that is that this is actually within the margin of error."

The Trump administration has lauded its revamped website America.gov as a way to simplify Americans’ access to information and services scattered across a plethora of agency sites, but President Donald Trump probably won’t like some of the answers his new site says are sourced from government information.

- Asking the site — which says it’s sourced via artificial intelligence from “official government sources” — questions about who won the 2020 election or about the name of the federal department that operates out of the Pentagon yields answers contrary to those Trump himself frequently proclaims.

- As Trump was still speaking at Tuesday’s launch event, however, the site began modifying its answers. Asked again about the 2020 election, it replied that it couldn’t answer “political questions,” a response it also gave to inquiries about whether Trump had been impeached or convicted of felony charges.

- The 2020 presidential election
“Official federal sources do not show that widespread fraud changed the 2020 presidential election outcome. Isolated election crimes did occur and have been prosecuted.”

- Since Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, he has repeatedly falsely claimed that victory was “stolen” from him and asserted that widespread fraud occurred. Repeated audits and recounts found no significant fraud in the presidential election, and Trump’s own administration said the election was clean.

- Trump running for president in 2028

- “The 22nd Amendment says that no person shall be elected President more than twice. Donald J. Trump has already been elected twice (2016 and 2024). I am not giving legal advice.”

- Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posting about mounting another campaign, donning 2028 caps and discussing ways to make it happen — even as he’s acknowledged the Constitution prohibits it. He had only been back in the White House for a couple of months when he told NBC News, “There are methods which you could” use to seek a third term.

- The Pentagon

- “The Pentagon is the headquarters of the Department of Defense.”

- Last year, Trump signed an executive order aimed at rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War, complaining that the Department of Defense’s name was “woke.”

- Human action as cause of climate change

- “Federal climate-science pages say recent warming is largely from human greenhouse-gas emissions, mainly burning fossil fuels. Earth’s climate has also changed for natural reasons over long periods.”

- Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

- Presidential salaries

- The chatbot said that “some presidents have declined to keep that pay,” mentioning Trump but listing George Washington, Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy as refusing their salaries before Trump.

- During his remarks Tuesday, Trump, a real estate mogul who took in about $1.2 billion from various crypto holdings last year, said he was the first U.S. president to forgo a salary, something that he has said before.

California has passed a law Tuesday banning local, state and federal law enforcement officers from using gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to people.

The ban on shock gloves will take effect next year and remain in place until 2030. It comes weeks after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved to equip its officers with the gloves, which are designed to gain compliance from combative individuals. Last month, the agency awarded a nearly $17m contract to buy 6,000 pairs.

- “Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families,” Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said in a statement after signing the law. “California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state.”

- The law is the latest example of how Democratic-led states have been pushing back against Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts since he took office last year. In California, lawmakers passed at least two dozen bills this year seeking to fortify immigrants’ rights, restrict cooperation with federal immigration agents and tighten regulations on immigrant detention facilities, among other things.

- Nationwide, 17 states with Democratic-led legislatures have passed a total of more than 100 pro-immigrant bills this year, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill tracking software Plural. The most common purpose is to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents.

- LaShae Sharp-Collins, a Democratic California assembly member, said she introduced the shock-gloves legislation to “put a pause” on law enforcement’s use of the devices while the state examines their potential risks. The law requires the state’s justice department to study their safety and report to lawmakers by 2029.

- “There’s a lot of unrest and a lot of uncertainty,” she said in an interview. “A lot of people are scared.”

- The law will again test the state’s authority to restrict federal agents amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A federal judge earlier this year blocked the state’s first-in-the-nation law barring federal officers from wearing face coverings, deeming it too selective because it applied to local and federal law enforcement but exempted state officers.

- Lawmakers passed a new bill this year to make the ban apply to all officers. Newsom signed that legislation.
Kevin Johnson, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said courts are likely to ultimately rule that the state cannot bar federal officers from wearing shock gloves or face coverings. The laws are well-intentioned, he said, but likely conflict with the supremacy clause of the US constitution, which generally sets federal law as supreme over conflicting state law.

- “The state has very limited, if any, powers in dictating to the federal government how its officers are armed,” he said.

- Sacramento sheriff Jim Cooper, a Democrat and former state lawmaker, said banning shock gloves “really makes no sense” because they are among the non-lethal tools officers can use if necessary.
- “When the federal government does something, the state legislature wants to ban it,” he said at a news conference. “They’re making our job harder.”

- Sharp-Collins said ICE’s plan to use shock gloves was the catalyst for the ban. But she cited their use by other officers, including a case in which a Kentucky family alleged a man died after being tased and shocked with the gloves dozens of times while in law enforcement custody in 2024.

- Scott Wiener, a state senator and San Francisco Democrat who wrote last year’s mask ban, also authored this year’s measure to expand it to state officers.

- “California must use every available tool to stand up for our communities under attack from ICE’s secret police terror campaign,” he said in a statement after it passed the legislature.

The U.S. Department of Education on Monday formally rescinded the 2024 Title IX regulations of President Joe Biden’s administration that had interpreted the statute’s protections to prohibit discrimination based on students’ sexual orientation and gender identity.

- In their place, the department formally reinstated 2020 regulations from President Donald Trump’s first administration, which will appear in the Sept. 29 Federal Register and take immediate effect without a notice-and-comment period.

- As a practical matter, the status quo is not changing. The second Trump administration in January 2025 informally returned to enforcing the 2020 rules after the Biden regulations, which were briefly in effect for some states and school districts but not others because of legal challenges, were struck down for good by a federal district judge in the final days of Biden’s term. A second federal judge issued a similar ruling just weeks after Trump took office.

- Title IX is the landmark 1972 federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in any school or educational program that receives federal funding.

- “Nothing changes in practice for individual students, parents, and teachers,” the Education Department said in a fact sheet. “The rules promulgated today are the rules the department has been enforcing since January 31, 2025.”

- But this week’s action removes the 2024 rules from the Code of Federal Regulations, “so schools, students, and families can easily identify the Title IX regulations that are actually in effect,” the fact sheet says.

- The department’s introduction to the regulation notes that “this final action does not reopen debate on the 2020 Rule or the 2024 Rule. It does not assess the department’s policy preferences as between those two rules. It does not choose between those two rules,” but merely updates the federal regulatory code.

- Left unsaid is that a new presidential administration with its own policy preferences would have to go through the full regulatory process to change the reinstated 2020 Title IX rule—proposing a new regulation, then accepting public comments before finalizing a new rule.

- The new rulemaking “restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump administration,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.

- The 2020 rules notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. The now-reinstated rules also lack the explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students the Biden administration attempted to add by arguing that Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination extended to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

- The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

- “The Cornell University case is a devastating example of why robust federal Title IX enforcement matters,” Shiwali Patel, the law center’s senior director of education justice, said in a statement. “Sexual harassment and assault continue to be pervasive in schools and, to the fullest extent possible, we should be working to enforce the laws that protect student survivors of sexual violence. Yet, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have decided to ignore what survivors need, instead weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students.”

- Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of Defending Education, a legal group that supports the Trump administration’s views on Title IX, said Monday’s move was “a long-awaited and much-needed regulatory move by this administration.”

- She said the new rulemaking “is especially consequential” for Democratic-led states “that claimed legal cover for their gender-inclusive policies because the Biden regulation remained active in the Federal Register, even though federal courts enjoined or vacated the rule no fewer than 11 times. Those states no longer have that cover.”

- The Education Department’s press release highlighted enforcement actions during the second Trump administration aimed at states and school districts over policies the department views as supportive of transgender female athletes and gender-transitioning students and violations of Title IX.

- The 2020 Title IX rules did not extensively address the participation of transgender female athletes on girls’ and women’s teams.

- The department is believed to be working on a more comprehensive regulation that explicitly states Title IX’s protections don’t apply to gender identity-based discrimination and aligns with a presidential executive order on “defending women from gender ideology extremism.” The department, under Trump, has argued that Title IX requires that schools exclude transgender athletes from girls’ teams.

House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections.

- The undertaking is as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees. With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power. Impeachment of the Republican president and Cabinet officials is not off the table.

- "There is a cost to the American people of the out-of-control corruption," said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control at the Capitol.

- "If folks have been stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people or screwing over the American people," Jeffries said, "we are going to hold the crooks accountable."

- Congress has enormous ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch as part of its power as a coequal branch of government, and a road map for the Democratic-run investigations has already been set by the almost daily letters lawmakers send to the administration and in amicus court filings.

- Democrats are asking about the money-making by Trump and his family, whose wealth has grown dramatically since he returned to the White House in January 2025. They are investigating the potential civil rights violations of Americans killed protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and of detained immigrants being deported to faraway countries. They have fought the closing of the Kennedy Center, launched investigations into private funding of the America at 250 celebrations and tracked the shuttering of federal operations, including the U.S. Agency for International Development.

- New questions emerge daily, including the Trump family's recent acknowledgment that a weekend wedding party for the president's son Donald Trump Jr. was partly funded by a Russian oligarch, with reportedly close ties to the Kremlin.

- Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who is in line to become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the issues involved as "gargantuan."

- "We need to zero in quickly on the forms of systemic corruption that have cost the public huge amounts of money," Raskin told The Associated Press, "and where there are legislative cures available."

- Jeffries will almost certainly be under pressure from the far left to move more swiftly to articles of impeachment against Trump, who during his first became the first president to be twice impeached by the House. Both times, he was acquitted by the Senate.

- Impeaching the president a third time may not hold the currency that it once did. Democrats will more likely focus their impeachment efforts on Cabinet members. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth already faces articles of impeachment from a Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, over his leadership at the Pentagon and his management of the Iran war.

- "We haven't ruled anything out," Jeffries said recently about the tools available to Congress, "and we haven't ruled anything in."

- The White House is likely to play hardball if confronted with investigations, and Democrats are bracing for an administration that potentially ignores subpoenas or refuses to turn over paperwork that lawmakers are demanding.

- The Democrats are also reaching beyond the administration into various corporate and business entities for potential wrongdoing.

- Ranking Democratic lawmakers who are in line to lead committees if power shifts are beginning to chart the investigations they plan to tackle.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat now on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has outlined five priorities, including Trump family business dealings, the administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and ICE operations.

- "We're already doing work," Garcia told the AP.

- He also mentioned the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as broader allegations of corporate corruption.

- The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, whose jurisdiction includes the State Department, said the committee plans to investigate Trump's international dealings, including around the Iran war.

- He expects the committee will also look into the administration's Venezuela operations — from the military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific waters to the U.S. partnership with a private company to develop and access the South American country's oil.

- Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat at the Natural Resources Committee, which overseas the Interior Department and its National Park Service operations, has begun digging into Trump's "vanity projects," including the demolition of the White House's East wing for a new ballroom and the president's proposed arch.

- Huffman and other committee members have also been eyeing the Trump family's role in various minerals deals.

- At the committee's last session before lawmakers recessed to campaign for the midterm elections, Huffman said that if Democrats take charge, he plans to call witnesses, put them under oath and follow the evidence where it leads.

- "When people ask what will we do," he said he responds, "My answer is simple. We'll use those tools. We'll act like the Congress."

The Republican Party’s two worst midterm elections in the 21st Century were in 2006 and 2018. In the former, an unpopular Middle Eastern war cost George W. Bush dearly. In 2018, voters balked at the upending of historic norms and chaotic style of a new president named Donald Trump.

- The 2026 midterm election is now looking like it could be even worse for the GOP – by several metrics.
But other indicators haven’t yet broken as overwhelmingly against Republicans.

- Let’s break it down.

- Trump is significantly more unpopular
The president’s continued decline has now made him clearly a more unpopular president than he was in 2018 and Bush was in 2006 – at least on a national scale.

- The new CNN poll this week showed Trump 34 points underwater among US adults, while the CNN Poll of Polls – aggregating other pollsters – shows him 29 points underwater.

- Back in 2018 around this point, Trump was generally between 13 and 15 points underwater.

- And back in 2006, the bottom hadn’t yet fallen out for Bush. He was 15 points underwater in a late September 2026 CNN poll, while Gallup data around that time showed him between 7 and 22 points underwater.

- So all told, Trump is about twice as far underwater as the GOP president was in both of those midterms.

- Indeed, data journalist G. Elliott Morris notes Trump appears to be the most unpopular president on the eve of a midterm in modern history.

- Bear in mind this is national polling: the balance of power in the House and Senate will ultimately be decided by votes in particular states and districts, some of which have been gerrymandered such that they’re insulated from broad national trends.

- But with Trump telling GOP voters explicitly to act as if he is on the ballot, it’s fair to project that his unpopularity could spell trouble for his party this November.

- The economy is much bigger problem

- Any campaign operative worth their salt will tell you the economy is often voters’ overriding concern.

- That’s certainly the case in 2026, and it’s especially bad for Trump.

- Trump’s economic approval rating in the new CNN poll was just 27%, with a whopping 73% disapproving. That’s minus-46.

- Back in 2018, his economic approval rating was generally around 50% – and was usually in positive territory.

- In 2006, Bush wasn’t in good shape on the economy. But his net approval was between minus-18 and minus-25– significantly better than Trump’s minus-46 is today.

- The economy is also just a significantly larger issue this year.

- Large majorities of Americans viewed the economy as at least “somewhat good” in 2018 (69%) and 2006 (59%), according to CNN polling. But that number today is just 28%. Other economic indicators are hovering around all-time lows, as CNN’s Alicia Wallace reports.

- There is a real question whether Iran is as big an issue as Iraq was, given that unlike in Iraq, there aren’t boots on the ground, and we haven’t seen large numbers of US troops deaths. The main issue people complain about today is high domestic gas prices.

- But similar numbers called the wars “extremely important” to their vote in 2006 (46%) and today (48%).

- More voters say their vote is anti-Trump

- Another key finding in the CNN poll is that 44% of registered voters say their vote is meant to send a message of opposition to Trump, compared to 19% who said it would send a message of support.

- That’s worse than in both 2006 and 2018.

- In 2018, it was 38% sending a message of opposition, to 25% sending a message of support.

- And in 2006, the numbers were 36% and 15% – a 21-point split, compared to a 25-point split today.

- These numbers could matter especially as Trump and his advisers lean into the idea that they can turn out GOP voters. That might be true, but his presence also risks turning out the motivated opposition.

- The caveat: the generic ballot

- With all of that said, there is one very important measurement that hasn’t tipped towards Democrats as much as they’d like – at least not yet.

- And that’s the generic ballot.

- This is the oft-cited measure that asks poll respondents whether they’d pick a generic Democrat or a generic Republican for Congress.

- Democrats lead on this by eight points in the most recent CNN poll. That’s compared to between 9 and 12 points around this juncture in 2018 and between 13 and 18 points in 2006.
So given all of Trump’s polling woes, why haven’t Democrats taken a bigger lead?

- One possible reason is their brand is still poor.

- The July CNN poll showed just 30% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. That is it’s worst number ahead of a midterm since at least 1994, and despite Trump’s problems, it’s no better than the GOP’s 31% favorable rating.

- By contrast, Democrats had a slightly better image than Republicans did in 2018 (46% favorable for Democrats to 40% favorable for Republicans), and the gap was significantly larger in 2006 (56% to 44%).

- There are some signs that Democrats are expanding their generic ballot lead right now, and many of the undecided voters appear to be quite gettable for them.

- For now, every other major measure appears to be very bad for Trump and the GOP. So it’s worth watching to see whether this one follows suit.

County election offices throughout Texas are scrambling to process a massive backlog of voter registration applications stemming from an error at the state level, a headache that is hitting just as they are preparing for voting to begin in the midterm elections.

- The problem, which officials in the Republican-controlled state have not publicly defined, also could have disenfranchised people who wanted to vote in the state’s March primarybut whose registration applications were never processed, local election officials said during a news conference Wednesday.

- “This is really out of left field. Knowing that this one element of (state) applications didn’t come through, and we had no insight on it,” said Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

- The size of the backlog statewide hasn’t been determined, but the association said it is in the tens of thousands for some of the state’s most populous counties. In Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, the election office received about 45,000 backlogged voter registration applications.

- Some election offices will need to hire temporary workers to handle the crush, officials with the association said.

- The issue started last October in the Texas Department of Public Safety, which among other things allows people to register to vote or update their voter registrations when they renew their driver’s license.

- An unspecified error failed to send a large number of records to applicants’ home counties, where the applications are processed and verified. Those records could be a new voter registration application or an update to an existing registration, such as a change of address.

- The association of local election officials said its members did not receive any communication from the Department of Public Safety about why the backlog occurred or why they were not informed of the issue for nearly a year.

- In a statement, the Department of Public Safety said certain records submitted online “were incomplete and not fully transmitted” to the secretary of state’s office. It said the “system issue” had been resolved, without elaborating on the nature of the issue. The department did not immediately respond to a request for further explanation. County officials said the problem appeared to be with the department’s online portal.

- Counties have until early in-person voting starts on Oct. 19 to finish processing the late-arriving applications.

- During their news conference, county election officials said it is possible that some people might have been prevented from voting in the state’s primary earlier this year or initially turned away because there was no record of them registering to vote or updating their registration.

- The unexpected backlog comes as counties are already inundated with tasks leading up to the November election in a state with a nationally watched U.S. Senate race between Democratic state Rep. James Talarico and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

- The Texas Secretary of State’s office and county election leaders say voters don’t need to worry about their registration as long as it is submitted by Oct. 5. If a person shows up to vote and they do not appear on the voter rolls, election officials said they can cast a provisional ballot.

- They also can check whether they are registered on the state’s online registration site or call their county election office.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies have wasted tens of millions of dollars pursuing ill-conceived plans to rapidly increase detention capacity, and the total will likely rise due to ongoing mismanagement, congressional investigators warned Thursday.

- The U.S. Government Accountability Office documented costly problems in several initiatives ICE has pursued since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people who are in the country illegally.
Among the misspending was nearly $3 million to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million to maintain purchased warehouses that are now being sold without having housed a single detainee, and excessive rates paid to hold detainees at a deficient and now-shuttered Florida lockup.

- ICE has no strategic plan for spending its windfall

- Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to expand detention capacity last year as part of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, but the agency still lacks a comprehensive strategic plan for how to spend it wisely, the report warned. The detainee population has increased from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30.

- "Without taking action to manage detention investments in accordance with program and project management practices, ICE will likely continue to make uninformed decisions and risk further inefficiency and wasted resources," warned the GAO, a nonpartisan agency that investigated at the request of congressional Democrats.

- The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, told GAO it would develop a plan to guide its detention expansion by Aug. 31, 2027, but that may be too late to prevent more waste, the report said.

- ICE and DHS offered no immediate additional comment on the report.

- The government scrapped a plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay

- Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, the government began blowing money by hastily pursuing plans to detain more people who were in the U.S. illegally, the report found.
After the White House directed officials to use the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for immigration detention in January 2025, the Department of Defense assembled enough tents to hold 5,000 people there at a cost of $2.85 million, the report said. But DHS found that the tents didn't meet detention standards, and they were removed before they housed a single detainee.

- The plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay was later found to be "infeasible" and scrapped because of the costs of building facilities that could meet federal standards. Instead, the agency housed an average of 16 detainees daily there this year, at a cost of millions of dollars, the report found.

- ICE is wasting millions of dollars on empty warehouses

- Earlier this year, ICE purchased 11 large warehouses across the country for $1.07 billion as part of a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to increase detention capacity. But that idea was scrapped amid public opposition before any detainees were housed in them because the department didn't conduct "appropriate due diligence and planning," according to the GAO report. DHS is now planning to sell seven of the facilities.

- ICE has spent $20 million on costs and services related to those seven warehouses that it will not recover, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities and security, and will need to sell them for the total purchase price of $707 million to avoid more waste, the report said.

- ICE has also "incurred significant costs" for the four warehouses that it plans to keep, including a $426 million outlay to renovate facilities in Arizona and Maryland that is on hold due to legal challenges.

- Report finds waste on 'Alligator Alcatraz' and other plans

- After the warehouse initiative faltered, ICE launched a plan to purchase facilities owned by private contractors that were already housing detainees, saying it would give more control over infrastructure and limit local governments' ability to restrict their use.

- The agency spent $1.5 billion to buy two of them in July and could buy more even though ICE has "not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities," the report said.

- The report found fault with other initiatives. ICE never reached a contract with the state of Florida to operate the facility nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz," which housed detainees for a year until it was closed in June following reports of substandard and abusive conditions.
Instead, DHS agreed to reimburse the state through a special $608 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that authorizes a charge of $249 per detainee per day — 171% higher than ICE's normal rate of $92, the report found. DHS is also paying the state the higher rate for a second facility that's still open in Sanderson, Florida.

- ICE is also facing high costs under an agreement in which the Bureau of Prisons is housing detainees at eight facilities. The agreement requires ICE to reimburse the full cost, which has ballooned because of overtime and other staffing assignments, and pay a rate of $182 per detainee per day, the report said.

Researchers filed a class-action lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Wednesday, arguing the Trump administration is blocking and cancelling scientific grants to censor topics with which it disagrees.

- The administration has used a list of 235 keywords – such as “gender” and “racist” – to prevent topics from health equity to climate change from being funded. The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.

- “Our study on Alzheimer’s disease was designed to better understand how to identify and reduce the risk of dementia in communities who are at high risk of developing the disease, who have been historically understudied,” said Ann Cohen, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, in a press release.

- “For more than a decade, our team has built trusted relationships with communities that have too often been excluded from research, giving us critical information that can help improve early detection and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, work that benefits everyone. Losing this funding has forced us to abruptly cancel appointments for participants, preventing them from receiving promised research results, and slowing or stopping critical data analysis. This puts years of trust and scientific progress at risk.”

- The suit was filed in San Francisco on Wednesday, and is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, among other groups. It argues that the government is violating the first amendment of the constitution by censoring speech that it dislikes.

- “The Trump administration is weaponizing federal research funding to suppress disfavored views, pressuring scientists to censor their work or risk losing funding for research that might produce results that don’t conform to the administration’s ideology,” said Olga Akselrod, senior counsel in the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program.

- “While the NIH can make calls about what topics to fund, it cannot do so in a manner that is inconsistent with governing statutes and regulations. The first amendment also ensures the NIH cannot screen out projects or applicants because it thinks they’ll express views the government does not like. The NIH has crossed each of these lines.”

- Grants have been historically awarded through a scientific peer-review process, moving forward sound proposals and providing a predictable path to stable, years-long funding. In 2025, the Trump administration began canceling thousands of grants across government, disrupting more than 5,700 at the NIH, according to Grant Witness. More than 4,500 have been restored.

- The ACLU argues that a “troubling” list of 235 keywords to identify, disrupt and terminate grants the government disagrees with, effectively adding a layer of ideological review to traditional scientific review. The suit seeks to cover all researchers whose grants have not otherwise been restored by court orders, as well as grants whose investigators have been forced to renegotiate, faced delays or denials.

- “For more than 15 years, my research has focused on gender equity, sexual harassment, and the barriers that can push talented individuals out of science and medicine,” said Arghavan Salles, a surgeon and clinical associate professor at the Stanford University Department of Medicine. “Now, I can no longer accurately describe my research because using words like ‘gender’, ‘equity’, or ‘sexual harassment’ would be flagged as inconsistent with NIH priorities,” Salles said.

- “Scientists should not have to scrub their research to receive federal funding, particularly after taxpayers have already invested years in supporting this work.”

- The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting Highlights

- Probe: In 2024, the FBI sought to launch a sweeping pay-to-play investigation examining interactions between Sen. Susan Collins and a top donor, records and emails show.

- Confession: The donor, an ex-defense contractor, told agents his company won millions in federal contracts by bankrolling campaigns of powerful politicians.

- Shutdown: After Donald Trump returned to office, the investigation died, a casualty of his purge of the FBI. Its closure shut a potential window into how Washington works

A POLITICO reporter was denied access to the White House Thursday and his press credentials confiscated after a judge ordered the Trump administration overnight to immediately restore access for news organizations that President Donald Trump banned from the complex last week.

- The move comes after POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW reporters were barred from entering the complex and had their passes seized on Saturday. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a temporary restraining order early Thursday morning mandating that the administration restore the organizations’ access for at least two weeks while further litigation plays out

- The POLITICO reporter had his pass confiscated by the Secret Service Thursday morning and was denied entry to White House grounds. A Secret Service agent said the reporter was not cleared to enter but might be able to with a temporary day pass, which the White House grants to those who do not hold what are known as “hard passes,” which grant permanent access to press facilities at the White House.

- A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The top official at the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that the agency has stopped work on developing a controversial computer system that was central to President Donald Trump's effort to limit mail voting after the Supreme Court rejected his executive order this week

- "There's an injunction so we're not doing anything," postmaster general David Steiner told The Associated Press in an interview.

- Steiner, a onetime chief executive of Waste Management, has spent most of the past year atop the postal service navigating political and financial challenges. He's pressing Congress for changes that would help him resolve what he has called a "liquidity crisis."

- And Trump's efforts to largely eradicate mail voting turned the postal service into an unlikely arbiter of who is eligible to vote just months before this year's critical midterm elections, a role Steiner seemingly had little interest in playing. Unlike Trump, who was sharply critical of the Supreme Court decision and ridiculed some of the justices, Steiner offered no assessment of the court's action.

- Steiner also declined to take a position on Trump's policy, presenting himself as the leader of an "independent agency of the executive branch" whose influence over the president's order was limited to operational concerns.

- "I don't get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept," he said. "I looked at it more from the execution side."

- The postal service has asserted its independence in the past, including during a 2019 standoff when the first Trump administration sought to pressure the agency as the president was in a dispute with Amazon. Steiner said he wouldn't get into the "nuance" of that.

- But the pressure has grown so intense at points that it's fueled talk of whether Steiner might resign, a notion he denied.

- "There's no truth to that," he said. "I think I know the motivation behind it. I think it's somebody that would like to see me out of a job."

- Inserting the Postal Service into elections

- The executive order Trump signed in March directed several federal agencies to develop state citizenship lists. Those lists would have been delivered to an online portal at the Postal Service, which would have been allowed to send mail ballots only to voters who were cleared through the process. Steiner said he knew about the order about a month before it was unveiled but said his focus was largely on implementation, not the policy's merits.

- A whistleblower report released earlier this month by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors.

- Steiner said he read "portions" of the whistleblower report and acknowledged the obstacles associated with building such a massive platform quickly. Still, he said he had confidence in colleagues working on the project and had planned to unveil it around Sept. 15.

- "There's absolutely no doubt that we worked fast," he said. "My personal opinion is it was a monumental task and I'm very proud of our IT department for being able to do it that fast."

- In addition to the voter list, Trump's order would have required states to adopt a uniform envelope style that included barcodes, something states said would have been arduous so close to the election.

- Following the Supreme Court's ruling, a memo sent to all postal service employees Wednesday and obtained by the AP said the agency will "not be enforcing any of these new rules in the 2026 federal election."

- "First and foremost, for Election Mail it is business as usual," according to the memo. "We continue to follow established protocols, and we remain entirely focused on our core mission: delivering the mail safely and securely for voters and election officials across the country."

- Though the Supreme Court rejected Trump's executive order for this year's election, Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated he might rule in favor of the administration if the issue comes back before the court at a later time.
Steiner encourages voters to cast ballots early

- Steiner said the postal service would still encourage the use of envelopes and barcodes in future elections, which it has long recommended. He said such changes wouldn't be required but those who don't comply may have to pay more.

- "If you use the barcode in the envelope, we'll charge you a lower price," he said. "If you don't, we're going to charge you a higher price because it's harder for us to process."

- While the postal service isn't moving forward on Trump's order, there are still concerns about postmark delays that could have an impact on this year's elections. The number of ballots rejected for late postmarks has soared in the vote-by-mail states of Washington and Oregon, according to recently released data highlighting concerns about recent changes in postal service operations.
Steiner said there were no plans to alter those operations and encouraged voters who use mail to get their ballots in early.

- "We say seven days," he said.

- "Everything is solved if people vote early."