Wednesday, October 28, 2026
A wall of Post-Its where kids try to define “health” in a country where the government is busy defining which teachers are allowed to exist.
Alice* spends a decade teaching high school English, survives being pushed out of a Catholic school for being gay, and finally lands in a public school where she naively assumes the Constitution might apply. Fast-forward to the Trump-era book bans and online witch hunts, and she’s suspended over social media posts about teaching banned books, doxxed in Facebook parent mobs, and labeled a “groomer” because she’s gay. So she does what any rational human would do when the state and a handful of frothing bigots decide your existence is contraband: she pulls down photos of her wife, strips her classroom library, quietly erases Oscar Wilde from the syllabus, keeps one tiny pride flag as contraband hope, and then gets out before the next Trump DOJ memo turns her into a test case.
This isn’t just about one teacher—it’s the point of the project. Trump’s push to gut LGBTQ protections under Title IX and deputize parents as morality cops doesn’t just shove queer teachers back into the closet; it rips away lifelines for queer kids who already know exactly who they are and now get to learn that the federal government thinks they’re a disciplinary problem. Studies show LGBTQ students do better when they have openly queer adults around; the Trump brain trust’s response is to make those adults disappear and call it “protecting children.” The result is fewer experienced teachers, more censorship, and a public school system where the only thing being rigorously taught is state-sanctioned shame.
So who loses the most when Trump’s education crusade forces teachers like Alice out? Not the Moms for Liberty Facebook admins—they’re doing great. It’s your kid, sitting in a gutted classroom with no queer books, no visible queer adults, and a government that has decided their identity is an HR violation. The administration calls it a moral victory; the rest of us might recognize it as a federally assisted mental health crisis.
Mark Carney explains that Canada "has what the world wants," carefully omitting that what the world wants is deregulated land, cheap labour, and a government willing to bulldoze its own laws on command.
Mark Carney is being toasted at Davos for bravely diagnosing the dangers of Trump-era power politics, while back in Canada he’s busy speedrunning the Trump playbook in business casual. His 250-page "Building Canada Strong" omnibus bill doesn’t build much except a maze of legal escape hatches for corporations: fast-tracked "regions of national interest" where environmental laws, Indigenous rights, and labour protections go to die so foreign investors can get their pipelines and mines on schedule.
The government has sidelined independent environmental review boards and handed approvals for pipelines, nuclear plants, and uranium projects to the very agencies that exist to promote those sectors. Cabinet oversight for most pipelines? Deleted, unless you’re carving out over 300km of fresh right-of-way. Indigenous communities that fought for constitutional consultation rights now get a one-year sprint to somehow assess all cumulative impacts of mega-projects, while CEOs wave their literal oil-and-gas "wishlist" that Carney is thoughtfully implementing like a very obedient former central banker.
And because no corporate wish list is complete without crushing workers, Bill C-39 slips in new powers to end legal strikes, while a "Productivity Mega Deduction" slashes the effective corporate tax rate from 13% to 6.4%, the lowest among major economies. Add C$280bn in subsidies, cheap credit, and public backstops from state funds, and you’ve got a heavily socialized risk, privatized profit bonanza dressed up as sober economic stewardship. Carney sells it as the price of surviving Trump’s trade war; what he’s actually selling is the country, piece by deregulated piece.
Trump glowers at a Fox News chyron that briefly contained information instead of adoration.
Donald Trump is once again furious that Fox News, his favorite propaganda network, occasionally remembers it’s technically a news channel. He’s raging on Truth Social that Fox is failing to properly "help" Republicans by gasp interviewing Democratic candidates and not airing every single rally like it’s the Super Bowl of grievance. The president of the United States is mad that a private media company won’t function as his in-kind campaign arm loudly enough, and is saying the quiet part at airhorn volume.
Not to be outdone, Laura Loomer is calling Muslim Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed a "jihadist" and demanding Fox "expose" him instead of interviewing him, while Peter Navarro helpfully clarifies the regime’s position: Fox is "supposed to be our side" and is betraying Dear Leader by criticizing his tariffs. Steve Bannon chimes in to declare that the Murdochs "hate Maga" for insufficient election-fraud hysteria, because anything short of 24/7 coup cosplay is now considered suspect.
And yet, the relationship remains as grossly symbiotic as ever. Fox still sends reporters to every Trump rally, airs them on Fox News and Fox Nation, and hands him pillow-soft interviews like Larry Kudlow’s 25-minute on-air valentine, which starts with what is essentially a campaign endorsement disguised as a question. Meanwhile, Fox stars Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt literally celebrate their wedding rehearsal at Mar-a-Lago with Trump in attendance, because nothing says "independent journalism" like holding your nuptials at the president’s for-profit club while your network pretends to cover him objectively.
The end result: the president and his allies are demanding total loyalty from a network that already acts like state TV most days, furious that it occasionally commits random acts of journalism. American conservatism’s leading media outlet isn’t being criticized for bias; it’s being attacked for not being biased enough to satisfy a movement that treats the free press as a disloyal subordinate rather than a watchdog.
Nothing says "open and transparent elections" like a towering flock of flamingos guarding the ballot box from anyone Ken Cuccinelli finds suspicious.
Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump official and current Heritage Foundation democracy whisperer, has discovered that the real threat to America is...people voting. He’s now one of the right’s leading pitchmen for "transparent" elections, which, in the way these things always work, means layering on voting restrictions that just happen to fall hardest on the people least likely to vote Republican.
Cuccinelli freely admits that most election problems are just errors, not fraud, and then somehow lands on the solution of treating every voter like a potential felon trying to sneak a ballot past the TSA. He insists we’d all trust elections more if officials would just admit mistakes and fix them—while he and his friends build a policy machine whose entire purpose is to convince Republican voters that the system is rigged unless Democrats lose.
As midterms loom, he goes on a podcast to explain why we need "beefed-up" restrictions, dance around the 2020 Big Lie, and even decline to endorse Trump’s suggestion that Republicans should simply "take over" elections. Apparently the plan isn’t outright coup this time; it’s the more respectable, Heritage-approved route of slowly closing the doors on disfavored voters and calling it reform.
Congress is preparing for a post-election cage match with President Trump over whether Pete Hegseth, the human YouTube comments section, gets to keep playing dress-up as Secretary of Defense while the administration stumbles toward expanded conflict with Iran and keeps the Ukraine war on autopilot. Democrats are signaling they’d like a defense secretary who has read at least one book not written by Mark Levin, and are openly threatening to block Pentagon funding unless Trump stops treating the world like a live-action Fox & Friends segment.
Republicans, meanwhile, are split between the usual rubber stamps and a few suddenly budget-conscious hawks who just realized that war costs money and, awkwardly, congressional authorization. The White House wants freedom to escalate with Iran and keep shoveling money around Ukraine policy with as little oversight as possible, while lawmakers remember—very faintly—that the Constitution gave them a role here beyond tweeting flag emojis. The result: a looming showdown where the Pentagon budget, war powers, and Hegseth’s continued LARP as a serious policymaker all get rolled into one massive "governance is for suckers" package.
The subtext is simple: Trump wants pliant war powers, a partisan TV warrior running the world’s largest military, and a Congress that signs the checks without asking why we’re drifting into fresh conflict. Lawmakers are pretending to rediscover separation of powers just in time for campaign season. If you were hoping someone might pause before handing an unstable executive a blank check for Iran while still juggling Ukraine, you must be new here.
A peaceful Minnesota polling place, moments before being declared a hotbed of voter fraud by someone who’s never met a fact-checker.
Minnesota, formerly known for lakes, lutefisk, and passive-aggressive politeness, is now the latest stage for Trump’s favorite double feature:
"Immigrants Are Coming to Get You" and
"Voter Fraud Is Everywhere Except Where We Can Prove It". The White House has turned a normal Senate race into a conspiracy pageant, where every ballot is suspicious and every brown person is a talking point.
Democrats are trying to talk about things like policy and governance, which is adorable, while Trump and allies scream about "integrity" of elections they keep trying to delegitimize. Accusations of voter fraud are being sprayed around like de-icer in January, with roughly the same subtlety, and immigration fearmongering is doing the usual heavy lifting for a party whose platform is now 60% grievance, 30% lies, and 10% merch sales.
So the Minnesota Senate race isn’t just about who goes to Washington; it’s about whether Trump’s strategy of calling democracy rigged whenever he’s on the ballot can keep warping entire states into permanent battlegrounds. The GOP brands it as "election security" and "border control"; the rest of us recognize it as killing faith in elections and scapegoating immigrants for sport.
Lisa Murkowski seen performing dark witchcraft, also known as endorsing someone who might actually try to govern.
Lisa Murkowski has committed the unpardonable MAGA sin: recognizing that governing is a job, not a loyalty pageant. The Alaska senator endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for governor instead of Bernadette Wilson, the Trump-blessed candidate whose main qualification appears to be an ironclad refusal to ever work with Democrats. Murkowski’s radical platform: maybe the governor should cooperate with the legislature so Alaska can function. Truly deranged stuff.
The Trump wing, naturally, responded with nuance and policy detail. Just kidding. Wilson accused Murkowski of having "abandoned Alaska values" and branded Kreiss-Tomkins "Just Keep Taxing" and a puppet of "extreme socialists hellbent on fighting President Trump" — because in Trump’s GOP, opposing the Dear Leader is now an explicit campaign issue in a state race. Meanwhile, Murkowski is also backing GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan while Trump’s Justice Department sues Alaska election officials to protect him from the terrifying threat of… another guy named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Murkowski, stating the obvious, noted that Alaskans can read and the state already fixed the confusion.
Trump, having nothing better to do than rage-post about a senator who occasionally acknowledges reality, fired back on Truth Social and crowned Murkowski the "Republicans’ Worst Senator, by far." Which, translated from Trumpese, means: "She will not fully submit to my personal control over the ballot, the courts, and the party." The Alaska GOP may be operating under ranked-choice voting, but Trump’s vision for the party is still strictly single-choice: him, always, everywhere, forever.
Israeli exit polls say Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right bloc and Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition are basically tied, which means nobody really won except the guy who gets to squat in the prime minister’s office as a "caretaker" while the country drifts in constitutional purgatory. Netanyahu’s camp sits at about 51–52 seats, Eisenkot’s at 49–51, and the magic 61-seat majority remains as elusive as accountability for either of them.
Arab parties, meanwhile, are projected to grab an unprecedented 18–19 seats, which mathematically makes them central to forming a government and politically makes them the bogeyman Netanyahu uses to scare his base. Eisenkot could, on paper, form a minority government with their support, but this is Israeli politics, where acknowledging Arab voters as legitimate partners is treated like inviting a skunk to a perfume convention.
Eisenkot gave a victory speech, told Netanyahu to act like a "decent leader" and leave, and — casually! — warned him not to start a war to save his political career. He even reminded the security chiefs that Bibi is now just a caretaker, not the messiah. Then Netanyahu wandered out after 3 a.m., also claimed victory, declared that only a "strong Jewish right-wing national government" is acceptable, and insisted Israel must not be "endangered" by relying on Arab parties. Democracy: great system, as long as the wrong people never actually count.
For extra dystopian flavor, Netanyahu bragged that "Iran is weaker than ever" and that, together with his "wonderful friend President Trump," they can eliminate the threat once and for all. Because nothing reassures a fragile, deadlocked democracy like a caretaker prime minister hinting at major military action, backed by a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted American ex-president who thinks foreign policy is a Fox News segment with missiles.
Screenshot of the manosphere’s spiritual home: a guy with a ring light explaining how democracy and women both ruined his life.
Apparently the "manosphere" – that vibrant online community of guys who turned their dating failures into a political ideology – is starting to ghost Donald Trump. After years of worshipping the world’s most thin-skinned alpha as their orange messiah, some of these grievance influencers are now flirting with fresher, even more openly authoritarian options. When your brand is permanent adolescence and weaponized misogyny, loyalty is strictly month-to-month.
What we’re watching is the same radicalization pipeline Trump supercharged now shopping around for a different strongman, because their current one is aging, needy, and occasionally remembers he has to win suburban women. The ecosystem he helped legitimize – the podcasts, the YouTubers, the "red pill" brain geniuses – is still pushing the same anti-democratic, anti-women, proto-fascist sludge, just maybe not exclusively wearing MAGA merch this season. The monster he fed is still out there; it’s just checking out other brands of authoritarianism like it’s browsing sneakers.
The Trump DOJ, seen here trying to protect ‘election integrity’ by pointing a legal flamethrower at the people counting the ballots.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter just spent three and a half hours listening to the Trump DOJ explain why it should be allowed to hold the entire Los Angeles County election hostage to a Trump-approved list of 20,000 supposed noncitizen voters, and somehow resisted the urge to throw the whole operation out the nearest window. Instead, he wrapped the hearing by telling DOJ officials, in extremely polite judicial language, to stop menacing state and county election workers like a mob crew with law degrees: “any threats to state and county election employees cease immediately.”
The Trump DOJ’s genius plan is to push the Big Lie of mass noncitizen voting by demanding a temporary restraining order that would force L.A. County to segregate and not count ballots from people on their magical list, effectively injecting a brand-new citizenship verification regime into an election while voting is already underway. Top LA federal prosecutor Bill Essayli helpfully kept the intimidation vibe going in court, insisting that processing those ballots could be a federal crime, because nothing says “free and fair elections” like threatening to prosecute the people literally counting the votes.
Carter signaled he’s likely to deny the TRO, appoint a special master to sort out the technical details, and hold a fast-tracked hearing in about two weeks — which, very inconveniently for Trump’s sabotage schedule, would push this circus past Election Day. The judge noted the real deadline is December 3, when results must be certified, and calmly told DOJ that if there’s an actual problem, “we can clean that up before December 3.” Translation: you don’t get to break the election in real time and then call it protecting election integrity. You want to prosecute actual noncitizen voters? Knock yourselves out. You want to intimidate election workers and freeze tens of thousands of ballots on a junk list? Absolutely not.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice, seen here bravely protecting federal agents from the terrifying threat of grieving parents asking basic questions.
The Trump administration’s law-and-order cosplay claimed another civilian, and now they’re trying to speedrun the cover-up. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at a VA hospital, was gunned down by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis back in January. The administration immediately branded him a domestic terrorist who “violently resisted” and supposedly threatened agents. Tiny problem: video shows him holding a cellphone, not a weapon, and getting shot in the back while lying in the street. He had no criminal record and a legal carry permit — which the agents helpfully solved by disarming him and then shooting him anyway.
The Prettis spent nine months politely knocking on the doors of law and justice, only to find Todd Blanche’s DOJ and Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor Dan Rosen hiding under their desks. The feds insist the state has no jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, then also refuse to tell the family whether the feds are actually investigating anything at all. Rosen finally met them in July after months of ignoring them, then declined to share even basic information, like whether anyone might ever face consequences for killing their son.
Meanwhile, Minnesota officials say the federal government has stopped sharing information about both Pretti’s death and the killing of Renee Good, another 37-year-old shot by an ICE officer during a protest. DOJ’s public response? A wonderfully robotic statement explaining that families aren’t usually told anything until there’s an indictment or trial — a nice, bloodless way of saying, "You’ll hear from us when hell freezes over." The Prettis are asking for accountability; the Trump administration is offering a masterclass in how to turn federal law enforcement into an unaccountable, armed rumor mill.
With a week left before the midterms, President Trump has turned Texas into his personal soundstage, jetting from Corpus Christi to Lubbock like Air Force One is a campaign Uber paid for by everyone except the campaign. Officially, he’s “stumping for GOP candidates.” Unofficially, it’s a live studio audience for the ongoing experiment in how far you can blur the line between governing and permanent rally tour before the phrase “abuse of power” files a hostile work environment complaint.
Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas GOP get the full presidential seal of approval: the guy who tried to overturn the last election is here to help keep in office the folks who’ve been busy gerrymandering maps, tightening voting rules, and treating migrants as props in a taxpayer-funded cruelty pageant. Meanwhile, Democrat James Talarico is planning a dueling event, because someone has to at least pretend this is still a normal election and not a traveling roadshow for soft-launching authoritarianism.
Trump’s second rally of the day in the same state isn’t about local issues so much as reinforcing the message that loyalty to him is the real ballot question. Policy is just background noise to the main act: a president turning swing-state democracy into a fan convention circuit, complete with merch, grievance monologues, and the ever-present implication that if the results go the wrong way, reality can always be “recounted” into submission.
Flávio Bolsonaro explains how he definitely didn’t lose while mentally checking which U.S. suburb he’ll be fleeing to on his brand-new visa.
The State Department has apparently decided that the United States is now the world’s leading witness protection program for failed authoritarians. Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, fresh off losing the presidential election to Lula and refusing to concede while muttering about fraud, is getting U.S. visas for himself and his family. The timing is charming: he jets out of Brazil just as a Supreme Court order tells him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports.
It gets better. Flávio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, currently serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup after losing to Lula in 2022 — you know, the thing Trump tried but didn’t quite get to finish. Jair, of course, previously escaped to Florida after his loss, because if you’re an aspiring strongman with legal problems, America under Trump is basically Club Med for coup guys.
The family ties are a full MAGA telenovela. Brother Eduardo Bolsonaro lives in Texas, was convicted in absentia in Brazil for illegally lobbying the Trump administration, and has a warrant out for his arrest. Naturally, he encouraged Flávio to leave the country if he lost. Trump, ever on-brand, didn’t fully endorse Flávio in the runoff but still managed to declare Brazil’s election “rigged” without evidence, continuing the global franchise of democracy denial from the comfort of his own legal disaster zone.
So Brazil jails coup plotters and takes their passports, while Trump’s America stamps their visas and hands them a microphone to whine about fake fraud. One country is trying to enforce the rule of law; the other is running a loyalty rewards program for defeated authoritarians. Guess which one keeps calling itself the world’s greatest democracy.
The president of the United States is now openly applauding a Quebec separatist premier while his own administration is supposedly trying to patch up a trade war with Canada. Because nothing says "good faith negotiations" like cheering on the dissolution of the country across the table. Trump congratulated Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon, whose Parti Québécois wants a third independence referendum, and even boosted an article bragging that the vote was a "blow" to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to keep the country unified against Trump’s hostility.
While Kevin Hassett goes on Fox to insist talks are "gathering steam," Trump is on the campaign trail accusing Canada of "massive tariffs" and "treating us badly," and his embassy is busy alleging Ottawa is meddling in U.S. politics by… imposing reciprocal tariffs. At the same time, Trump is hailing British Columbia’s new conservative premier-designate as proof that "Conservatives are moving strong in Canada!" — even as both he and St‑Pierre Plamondon politely pretend they are not part of MAGA North. The president’s relationship with Canada has now progressed from trade tantrums and "51st state" threats to actively rooting for the fragmentation of a key ally, because when you’re trying to fix a crisis you created, why not set the rest of the house on fire too?
Meanwhile, U.S. policy is being quietly rewritten by Susan Collins’ feelings, as the White House starts carving out exemptions from 50% tariffs to save itself from electoral blowback. So the official strategy appears to be: wreck relations with a neighboring democracy, accuse them of election interference for responding, praise separatists trying to break their country apart, then partially retreat when a moderate Republican senator gets nervous. Truly a masterclass in killing diplomacy while pretending to negotiate.
Alice Weidel, seen here auditioning to turn the European parliament into a very expensive suggestion box.
Marine Le Pen and Alice Weidel have looked at Brexit’s flaming wreckage, shrugged, and decided the real lesson is: don’t leave the EU, just gut it from the inside. Frexit may be on pause, but now the plan is a "Europe of nations" – which is a poetic way of saying "let’s turn Brussels into a hollowed-out mascot costume for Orbán fanfic." Weidel wants to abolish European parliament elections (democracy is such a drag on vibes), carve out German opt-outs on migration, defence and borrowing, and generally rewrite the rules so nationalism can cosplay as governance.
Le Pen’s National Rally, not to be out-grifted, wants to slash French EU contributions by 60% and strip Brussels of the power to propose common policies, because nothing says "21st-century geopolitical strength" like 27 separate countries trying to negotiate with Xi, Putin and a future MAGA White House while elbowing each other in the ribs. Far-right think tank fantasies that used to live in PDFs nobody read are now the actual programs of parties leading the polls in France and Germany – the historic engines of European integration now being retrofitted as demolition equipment.
Meanwhile, pro-European leaders are responding with all the urgency of a Brussels technocrat discovering a printer jam. Mario Draghi is out here warning that without a serious industrial policy, Europe will get steamrolled by China and the US, while Emmanuel Macron waves a tiny, lonely flag for "strategic autonomy" as everyone else practices their best WB Yeats impression: the center shrugs, the extremists are full of passionate intensity, and somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his MAGA heirs are watching Europe consider voluntary geopolitical disarmament and wondering how they got this lucky.
Bill O’Reilly popped up on NewsNation to warn that the U.S. could soon see French-style street protests "on steroids" if Trump keeps barreling along as president. So the guy who spent decades cheerleading every authoritarian impulse on Fox is now clutching his pearls about the logical endpoint of shredding institutions, stoking grievance, and governing via constant televised tantrum. Truly, a visionary.
Host Leland Vittert dutifully teed up the question about what happens if President Trump keeps doing, well, exactly what President Trump does: attack checks and balances, treat the law as optional, and light various parts of the electorate on fire for ratings. O’Reilly’s big insight is that this might not end well socially. Next week: a panel of arsonists explains that if you keep pouring gasoline on everything and flicking matches, you might get a fire.
The larger message from the Trump-era media ecosystem remains the same: help build the rage machine, profit from the chaos, then go on TV to gravely warn that the chaos you helped create could spiral. American democracy is being slow-roasted, and the people who turned up the heat are now selling themselves as the fire marshals.
The Biden administration spent years rebuilding alliances, institutions, and a functioning State Department, so naturally the Trump restoration has handed a chunk of Ukraine war diplomacy to… Melania. The former jewelry pitchwoman turned first lady has apparently "secured" a localized ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky, because when you think complex multi-party negotiations in a live artillery environment, you obviously think: Be Best, but for war.
Washington is now dutifully pretending this isn’t wildly abnormal — as if letting the president’s spouse freelance foreign policy with a nuclear power is just another box on the East Wing chore chart. No Senate confirmation, no real transparency, just a designer-clad emissary gliding through one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since WWII while the actual diplomatic corps gets treated like set dressing. The message to the world: why bother with institutions when you can slide into authoritarian warlords’ DMs via the First Lady’s office?
Sure, a temporary humanitarian pause is good for the civilians trapped under Russian occupation — they need food, medicine, and a break from shelling, not a lecture about separation of powers. But this White House is busy turning life-and-death diplomacy into a prestige side quest for the Trump family brand, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because this is how you launder personal influence through state power while everyone cheers the "win" and politely ignores the constitutional faceplant happening in the background.
Senate Democrats just discovered that in Trump’s America, "permitting reform" apparently means permitting the White House to use federal clean energy money like a campaign slush fund. Tammy Duckworth, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, and Jeff Merkley are telling Trump’s people to put back billions in clean energy grants they yanked in October 2025 and to put it in writing that they’ll stop canceling projects just because a state had the bad manners to vote against Dear Leader.
That ask isn’t coming out of nowhere: the Energy Department has already admitted in a court filing that the grant cancellations were based on politics, while budget goblin Russ Vought helpfully circulated a list of non-Trump-voting states like a revenge to-do list. A report from DOE alumni and Lawyers for Good Government says many projects are now stuck in "limbo" with "negligible" funding, especially in blue states, though the chaos is splashing on everyone. Meanwhile, bill co-authors Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich are out here trying to speed up renewables, as the rest of their party tries to make sure BAAJA doesn’t turn into a statutory excuse for Trump to shovel favors to fossil fuels and punish enemies. Faithfully executing the law is now such a distant memory that senators have to beg the administration to stop committing openly admitted, partisan sabotage of congressionally funded programs just to get a vote on a permitting bill. Totally normal democracy stuff.
Israelis are heading to the polls while Benjamin Netanyahu runs the classic strongman campaign: promise endless war, threaten national annihilation if you lose, and quietly work on kneecapping the justice system so that pesky corruption trial goes away. His pitch is basically, "Sure, there was the catastrophic October 7 failure, three years of war, and a democracy-crushing agenda, but have you considered giving me another chance to start something with Iran?" To really drive home the message, he posted an AI-generated nuke fantasy of Tel Aviv as campaign content, because nothing says responsible leadership like deepfake apocalypse porn.
Behind the curtain, it gets even more on-brand: Netanyahu spent weeks trying to get President Trump to sign off on a pre-election strike on Iran, and when that didn’t work, he tried to push the IDF into laying groundwork for an attack in the final 72 hours before voting. IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir had to play the role of the last adult in the room and refuse, warning that maybe, just maybe, staging a war to juice turnout and possibly cancel elections is not ideal. Meanwhile, some of Netanyahu’s closest advisers and his campaign manager allegedly took money from Qatar to shape Israeli public opinion during wartime. His rivals call it "treason"; Netanyahu says he had no idea. Apparently the only thing this guy never knows about is the corruption happening directly next to him.
On the other side, former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot is running on the radical notion of accountability—commission of inquiry for October 7, draft for ultra-Orthodox men, and maybe a government that doesn’t run on nonstop chaos. Naftali Bennett is helpfully reminding voters that the last four years have been a masterclass in dysfunction. The opposition is organized, motivated, and boosted by tens of thousands of expats flying back to vote, plus record-high turnout among Arab citizens. But Netanyahu doesn’t even need to win outright; he just has to block a majority and cling on as caretaker prime minister for another six months, because of course the system is perfectly optimized for one indicted man’s survival.
So the choice for Israeli voters is stark: a potential new government that might actually investigate how everything went to hell, or the guy whose campaign message is essentially, "Re-elect me or the nukes get it," while he eyes Iran and the judiciary like they’re both items on a clearance rack. Somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, Trump is probably wondering why he never thought to post AI images of obliterated cities as campaign literature.
John Thune and Ashley Hinson bravely workshop new ways to call themselves ‘independent’ while voting for whatever Trump wants.
John Thune is touring strip-mall bars in Iowa, bravely trying to convince voters that the Senate is both an independent institution and also totally fine with handing Donald Trump a blank check to wage an unpopular war with Iran. Rep. Ashley Hinson promises to be a "thorn in his side" when she disagrees with Trump, which is an adorable way of describing a voting record that’s marched in lockstep with the White House on war powers while gas prices scream at people from every street corner.
Back in D.C., Thune’s brand is that he’s a "kind," "decent" man who "doesn’t lose his temper" while calmly ushering through Trump’s massive tax, border security, and defense agenda and helping block any serious attempt to rein in the president’s war authority. Democrats keep forcing votes to limit Trump’s Iran adventure; Thune’s conference keeps saluting, then flying home to explain to voters how they’re totally worried about the war they keep voting to enable.
The Senate GOP chose Thune precisely because he’s the anti-MAGA showman: a soft-spoken institutionalist who makes authoritarian deference look respectable in a suit. As the war dents the economy and voters stare at their receipts, the big question is whether Thune’s genteel rubber-stamping will still count as "steady leadership" or just the moment the Senate officially rebranded itself as the White House’s upper-level HR department.
