A source told Barnes: "[Elon Musk] tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is that they were both in it."

Also recommend HCR's post yesterday, which opens with this banger paragraph: There is an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There's also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. Then, as corruption becomes the party's driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach. OK, that second old saying is shared mostly among political scientists, but it's accurate, and it's right up there with the rats and the ships to describe what's happening in Trump's orbit now. No Kings 4 is happening today, Saturday, October 17th.

Two things I've been playing around with: https://paidforby.info/ Photograph your mail. If your material involves a federal race, the app will immediately give you detailed information about who is paying for it. For state and local races, a Popular Information journalist will review your submission. And https://midterms.theleahfiles.com/candidates Select your state to see every race on your ballot and who is running in it. Below that is the money behind these races: who is giving, who is receiving, and what outside groups are spending.

From the second link (scroll down): Who is funding the outside groups? 2,100 people and 765 companies each put $25,000 or more into a committee that spent on a congressional race. $365.3M came from just eight people. That is 35 percent of the $1.04B that all 2,100 people on this list put into groups spending on House and Senate races. The most common targets of billionaire outside spending on attack ads? James Talarico (TX), Sherrod Brown (OH) and Abdul El-Sayed (MI). *** Popular Information (first link) has been running a series on misleading / false statements in political flyers and attack ads. The falsehoods billionaires are mailing to Ohio voters The anti-Acton mailer is a vivid illustration of why more journalistic scrutiny of political mail is necessary. Every claim on V-PAC's mailer is either flatly false or deeply misleading. The lie dominating Musk's 2026 political ads. Musk is blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting "taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids." WATCH: GOP super PAC quietly launches outlandish smear against Talarico. Shortly after Popular Information reached out for comment, the ad was taken offline. *** Related: 172 Billionaire Families Have Spent Record $1.7 Billion on 2026 Midterms So Far: Analysis The Leah Files on metafilter previously.

Democratic Party runs more than 60 military-intelligence candidates for Congress. If, as appears likely based on pre-election polling, the Democratic Party makes significant gains in November, the military-intelligence "caucus" inside the Democratic delegation could double or triple in size. They will vastly outnumber the relative handful of self-proclaimed "democratic socialists" to whom the corporate media has given so much attention, and whom pseudo-left groups cite as evidence that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.

As we have argued in previous such studies, the large number of military-intelligence operatives entering politics as Democratic Party candidates is the result of a two-way process. The Democratic Party leadership is openly encouraging the recruitment of such candidates, as it seeks ever-closer ties to the Pentagon and CIA. And large sections of the military-intelligence apparatus view the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle, in opposition to the erratic policies of Donald Trump and particularly his pullback from direct involvement in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Hat-tip to jeffburges in this thread. Why, besides NATO and Ukraine, would former military intelligence officers run for office as Democrats? Apropos of nothing, here are some other recent headlines: Report: Trump Used Grok to Help Talk Him Into Illegal Invasion of Venezuela. President Donald Trump was reportedly encouraged by Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, to carry out his illegal invasion of Venezuela during an hourslong session with the chatbot just weeks before the attack this January. In December 2025, Trump asked Grok questions for hours during a secret visit to the White House by Musk, per new reporting by Time Magazine. How Jared Kushner's firm's investment in an Israeli company could be a major conflict of interest. At the same time Jared Kushner has acted as a key negotiator in the war in Gaza, his private equity company, Affinity Partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel's military campaigns, a CNN investigation has found. Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump's corruption. On Monday, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, a billionaire Trump has openly urged to reshape the news industry in his favor — launched an unprecedented bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery by initiating a hostile takeover after losing an earlier bidding contest to Netflix. Paramount's offer draws heavily from Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar... Not even Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.

Right now, America.gov functions as an AI chatbot that bases its answers on official government sources. It was developed with the assistance of Google's Gemini and SpaceXAI's Grok, according to Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder who led development of the site for the Trump administration. In 2027, the site will move "from answers to actions," Gebbia said. Nevertheless, Trump encouraged Americans to start using America.gov right away. "This took a while to bring it to a point where it's so good," Trump said. "America.gov is a declaration to the world that every citizen of our nation will be treated with respect and dignity." The functionality of America.gov at launch, however, was awkward for Trump. By providing summaries of official government data and reports, it easily and comprehensively debunks many of the falsehoods that Trump frequently promotes.

Will this chatbot continue to contradict the things Trump says? Only time (and probably the results of the next few elections) will tell. This government has already made moves to: *Undermine government data collection and research and reporting *Remove information on climate change, minority issues, and public health from public-facing government websites *Delay or skew reports government reports hat contradict Trump's claims But 75 years of data-driven governance is probably a bit hard to erase overnight. In other government services news, via the Washington Sun: White House Drove Users to Official App Fraught With Trackers. he White House app shot to the top of the Apple App Store's news category last week after its new 24/7 broadcast channel, Trump TV, was swiftly positioned as a legitimate source for news while networks halted their pool coverage. After the Trump administration mandated that federal agencies force-install the app onto all government-issued mobile devices, cybersecurity researchers noted that no public security authorization or privacy assessments required under federal law had been completed. Pushback over the app's security apparatus forced White House developers to delegate tracking software to third-party services. But the app still includes scripts to monitor a user's location several times per minute, according to Gera, and it's unclear how that data is used by the White House or third-party services. The app also contains a latent keylogger script sourced online from an amateur developer based in India, according to Gera and confirmed by The Sun's analysis. Keyloggers most commonly appear in surveillance malware to store written text from a device, but they also can be used as a benign tool to analyze inputs like typing frequency. While it's unlikely to work on mobile devices, Fields said, it's still concerning that the White House is using a keylogger web-sourced from an foreign coder. App marketplaces require developers to disclose what data app developers collect from their users, which platforms like the Apple App Store enforce through a "privacy manifest." In the app's latest version, the White House left that manifest completely blank, implying it collects no data from users despite contradicting findings from cybersecurity experts. An unpublished feature within the White House browser extension allowed app administrators to create a political profile on a user, and included an "investigate" button to refer individuals to the Secret Service. Loge contends that rather than using user data for political strategy, the White House is more likely to leverage the information to steer supporters driven to the app toward one of Trump's merchandise or cryptocurrency ventures. "What we've seen is that Donald Trump is a businessman who's monetizing politics. Therefore, this app is a way to make money," Loge said. "The other people who could find this information either directly or through several layers of resale are, of course, hostile governments — foreign actors whose interests are the demise of American democracy." *** Federal government forces all federal employees to install malware on their federal government phones, should be the headline here. Anyway, don't install any software promoted by the Trump administration. And know that whatever you ask this America.gov chatbot will definitely be collected and recorded.

Democrats capitulate to MAGA media mogul. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) and 11 other states drop their lawsuit to block David Ellison's Paramount from acquiring Warner Bros. — and get little in return.

Extremely depressing news, so I've tried to include some pieces that emphasize the positive and re-commit to the fight. First, here's more coverage: The Ellisons Have Made This Movie Before In exchange for the plaintiffs (all Democratic attorneys general, sigh) removing one of the last remaining roadblocks to Paramount's $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount signed on to commitments with no real enforcement behind them. Even modest concessions — like $5 million a year for independent film — sunset within five years. There are no divestitures. And some terms are just laughable, like granting the conglomerate's owners oversight of the editorial independence of CNN and CBS News (which is probably why two of the attorneys general openly objected to this term). But with Paramount, you don't need a catalog of failed consent decrees to understand what is to come. You only need the record of the family making the promises: David Ellison, CEO of Paramount, and his father, tech billionaire and Trump ally Larry Ellison. And here's Matt Stoller looking for positives in this bleak situation: Happy Oligarch Day as Trump-Aligned Billionaires Take Over Hollywood So what does this whole collapse mean? Well, I'm in a strangely good mood. This acquisition, while certain to damage Hollywood and the media, required immense amounts of political capital to get through. Consider what it took: An aggressive President, a right-wing Congress, a deeply morose California Democratic establishment, California Governor Gavin Newsom and NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill, LA Mayor Karen Bass, stars like Tom Cruise and James Cameron, major movie theater chains like AMC, Regal, and Cinemark, unions like IATSE and the Director's Guild, JP Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon, much of Wall Street, every global antitrust enforcer, plus a highly dishonest and corrupt press all had to put their thumb on the scale to beat what was essentially a group of frustrated artists led by Mark Ruffalo, the Writer's Guild, some outraged antitrust lawyers, and a surly public. They had to lie, cheat, and steal. And they did. That is not strength, it is weakness. It is very different than earlier mergers, like Disney-Fox, that went through without any meaningful opposition. In this case, everyone saw the deal could have been blocked, a judge had already ruled multiple times that the case was reasonable, and Bonta just flip-flopped. When the Paramount-Warner deal turns out badly, and it probably will, everyone will know who to blame. Monopoly Round-Up: Paramount-WB Isn't Just a Loss, It's a Prelude We learned two important things in this battle. The first is what happens when an elected leader tries to say no to an oligarch after 45 years of unfettered rule by capital. That is, they get extremely angry and vicious. As G.K. Chesterton once said, "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all." Ellison threatened the entire state of California with moving Paramount out of the state, his legal team said they'd destroy antitrust law by appealing to a Supreme Court whose members they know personally, his allies controlled most of the media narrative about the case, and he engaged in an extreme version of corruption vis-a-vis the President.... The second level is about the Democrats, which is a political party few people really understand. The most important thing to get about the older generation of Democrats is they are fundamentally uninterested in the real world. They have a form of politics, but it is unrelated to governing.... Now, I've been careful to say that it's an older generation of Democrats who cosplay as substantive. This cycle is going to see a bunch of new people elected. Last year is when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won, and he definitely is perceived to have a different approach. How different is an important question. Abdul El-Sayed, who is probably the most important figure, is quite smart. We interviewed him for Organized Money. Melat Kiros and Angie Nixon both prevailed on campaigns that promised to break up big medicine and take on corporate concentration. So did Aisha Wahab in California. In Arkansas, Hallie Shoffner is campaigning against corporate concentration of farming. There will be more of this. They may show a different form of politics, taking the side of the anti-Ellison coalition, as it were. The point, though, is that what we just saw is not just a battle we lost. It is a prelude of the kind of tactics and coalitions to come. Right now, it's clear that billionaires don't have to follow the law. It's also clear there is now a serious challenge to that framework. It wasn't quite powerful enough to block the merger. But now we know how they are going to play the game.

Via Dropsite News: During his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump threatened to "annihilate the Islamic republic" of Iran if the two countries fail to reach a deal. Responding in a statement carried by Mehr, Iran's General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Command accused Trump of using the UN podium to justify U.S. "aggression" and described his threats as evidence of Washington's "strategic desperation," warning that Iranian forces were prepared to strike the U.S. and Israel with attacks more severe than those carried out earlier in the war.

Via Zeteo: In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard said it had information that a new attack was coming, and added that if so, "all U.S. bases and interests in the region will become targets of continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations." Furthermore, amid stark reporting on the "cascade of preventable failures" that led U.S. forces to annihilate at least 123 children at a school in Iran on day one of the war – the Trump administration hasn't owned up, but the evidence is overwhelming – multiple outlets reported regional preparations for renewed U.S. bombing. [Finally], as the Wall Street Journal depicted 'Veep' levels of mania in the White House – the president off the leash and alarming aides in the absence of departed press secretary Karoline Leavitt and chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has been addressing health concerns – the State Department issued a security alert to citizens across the Middle East, a common move ahead of military action. For Zeteo, Swin hit the phones, working his Washington sources, testing the strength of reports that Trump is looking for "foreign policy victories" ahead of the midterm elections. (Paywalled content I recommend throwing into archive.is or another paywall bypasser).

There is a unit inside the Justice Department whose only job is to prosecute corrupt public officials. It is called the Public Integrity Section. In January 2025 it had about thirty-six lawyers, and today it has two. When people ask why there are no indictments, no convictions and no special counsel, that is the answer. The people who would bring those cases were removed in the first year of the term. The referees left the field, and the game kept going.

Not exactly sure what the story is with The Leah Files on substack, though I would guess that this is the work of a team with resources, presented as the work of one person which raises questions like who's paying for this and why. Nevertheless I am sharing it because there's interesting information here. This section is, imo, the most important part of the summary, and I've saved it for arguing with strangers online: 3. Disabling the detectors Score at month twenty: 8.0 of 10 (8 on proven evidence). Weight: 15 points. This part of the record has the strongest evidence and the least public attention, and it is the part that determines the score. On January 24, 2025, seventeen inspectors general were dismissed in a single night without the thirty days' notice the statute requires. On September 24, 2025, Judge Ana Reyes held the dismissals unlawful, describing the violation as obvious, and declined to order any remedy, on the reasoning that the president could dismiss them again with proper notice. In February 2025 the director of the Office of Government Ethics, confirmed two months earlier to a five-year term, was removed, and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs was installed as acting head of both that office and the Office of Special Counsel, the sole enforcer of the Hatch Act. The Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which brings pardon-for-pay and foreign bribery cases, was reduced from about thirty-six attorneys to two, and its open cases fell from roughly 190 to about twenty. The FBI's internal audit office and its public corruption squad were dissolved. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was paused by executive order. The beneficial-ownership registry that would have identified the owners of anonymous shell companies was narrowed so that 99 percent of covered entities no longer report, and this August the database itself was ordered deleted. The Government Accountability Office found six violations of the Impoundment Control Act in 2025, and in September of that year the budget office cut off funding to the council of inspectors general, taking fifteen oversight websites and their whistleblower hotlines offline. This is why the bribery criterion is scored five on proven evidence when the reported pattern would support an eight. The people whose job it is to prove bribery have been removed. When the detectors are off, the absence of convictions carries almost no information, and the question "where are the indictments" describes the mechanism rather than refuting it. This is the Abacha model of governance. The most important figure in this article is not a dollar amount. It is the reduction of the Public Integrity Section from thirty-six lawyers to two.

Have you heard of mega master hearings? They are spreading.

My name is Alan and I work as part of Never Again Action's Content Team. I witness these hearings as an accompanier with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN). There I volunteer as one of many citizens who abhor what is being done in our names. We are silent observers on behalf of people and communities targeted by this war our government is waging on immigrants. People normally have two immigration hearings - a master and an individual. A master hearing is a session in which many peoples' cases are heard one after another. Often these hearings are for detained people trying to get bond. Past interactions with law enforcement frequently provide the government with justification to keep people locked up even when the incident was minor or the charge has been dismissed. An individual hearing comes next. The respondent and their lawyer (if any) are present and may bring witnesses to testify to the person's good character, community and family status, and so on. Circumstances like having US citizen relatives, being a sole provider for children, and similar are considered. These hearings take time and even though the denial rate is very high that's not enough for this regime. They have quotas, you see, and they continue to invent new and terrible ways to meet them. Enter the "mega master." A mega master is a mass session at which dozens of people are ordered to appear in person and rushed through. Often the people called in for mega masters are folks who had appointments for court dates in the future. They have asylum applications in progress and some have already waited years for their applications to be heard because the system is so broken and overloaded. Many receive the notice to appear in a language they don't speak and the date for them to show up is short notice. Many appear with children clinging to them because they have no childcare available. Then they're crammed into a courtroom and - if they're lucky - get a rote recitation in their language of what is going on and when they are next expected to appear. There is no chance to answer any charges or present any evidence. If people don't show up to these mega masters for any reason they are immediately ordered removed. All their pending cases are terminated, again with no opportunity to speak for themselves, or to have a lawyer challenge what is being done to them. Along with the mega masters, the regime has fired dozens of experienced immigration judges and replaced them with compliant political appointees who are expected to cut the corners necessary to hit arbitrary deportation quotas. Some of those fired judges are now - quietly - starting to spread the word about the true agenda. They tell us clearly that the purpose of mega masters is to deport as many community members as possible. People without legal representation are the most vulnerable and most easily expelled. Even those with lawyers face steep barriers in the mega master process. People should receive translations of critical documents, but advocates tell us that is not always happening. The most common excuse made by the regime for dismissing asylum claims is that people didn't file their applications soon enough. Many of the targeted people are children, often separated from their parents, who are expected to understand what is happening to them and follow rules that were never explained. Overall, the denial rate for asylum has reached 93 percent. Advocates and community organizers, using the regular court system, are continuing to push back, exposing how ICE is violating its own rules in pursuit of these unprecedented levels of cruelty. Mega masters are one new piece of a vast system of injustice. I close with a poem. The author is unknown - it is being passed around accompanier circles. I have not personally been present for these child proceedings. The adult ones I witness are heartbreaking enough. But this has finally made the public news so everyone can know that every word of this poem is true. The respondent is two years old. She appears in immigration court without counsel. Without parent. Without language. She is placed at the table alone. The clerk types anyway. I am here to observe procedure. I am here because someone decided my presence satisfies the law. The room smells of disinfectant and paper. The flag watches from the wall, flawless, unmoving. An interpreter is sworn in, then excused. The child responds to no language offered. She speaks only need, only gesture. The judge softens his voice, as if volume were the problem. "Do you understand why you're here?" She touches the microphone. It echoes her breath. She laughs once— surprised by the sound of herself made large. For the record, this is noted as nonresponsive. I write: She believes this is a room where adults will return her to what she knows. A government attorney clears his throat. Time presses onward. Stacks of cases wait. So does lunch. They ask her to point. To choose her future with a finger still soft from sleep. _ Her feet do not reach the floor. They swing— a small metronome of waiting. The judge asks her name. She answers with a sound that could mean thirst or home. She chooses a red crayon. She chooses the microphone's echo. She chooses nothing that can be kept. No one explains removal. No one explains asylum. No one explains mother in a language she understands. I am trained not to intervene. I am not permitted to hold her. I am not permitted to say that this is what abandonment looks like when it is procedural. She cries— the astonished cry of someone who has fallen through expectation. The bailiff looks away. The judge sighs. For the record, the respondent is found removable. She is escorted from the room holding nothing. Later I will sign my name beneath these observations. The transcript will appear clean. Complete. But I will remember her shoes— how they lit up when she moved, small blue flashes across the floor, trying, briefly, to testify. (Via Never Again Action)

The Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, which the House will likely vote on this week [note: has voted on and passed], looks like a no-brainer for supporters of Ukraine who have been calling for President Trump to get tougher on Russia.... But the bill is not what it seems. The legislation would impose no significant new sanctions on Russia, and it would allow Trump to waive any of its measures simply by claiming that doing so is in the national interest. In other words, a law that appears to handcuff Trump would offer him a key to free himself. What's more, its most important provisions are about not sanctions per se, but tariffs. The bill could provide Trump with the same kind of sweeping authority to impose tariffs that the Supreme Court took away from him in February, allowing him to intensify his trade war with many of America's allies and partners.

Posted this because I saw an absolutely shameful number of articles about the Lindsay Graham Sanctions Bill that focused on the fact that two Democratic members of the House crossed the aisle to vote for it, while not reporting anything at all about the actual content of the bill. Total journalistic negligence to frame this as "both sides" obstructionism without mentioning that the entire bill is a sham. I hope Democratic messengers are taking note of this and making a plan to get out ahead of the propaganda messaging before this bill gets to the Senate. PS Another headline bill that's not as advertised (voted down in the Senate, thankfully): Crypto legislation would greenlight Trump corruption.