President Donald Trump threatened to veto every piece of legislation put forward during the second half of his administration if Democrats flip control of the House or Senate during next month’s midterm elections.

“Well, I think the Republicans are going to win. But if there was, you call it gridlock, what happens is I veto everything,” Trump told reporters Friday morning while speaking on the South Lawn. “And then the Democrats come and they want to make a deal. So we’ll work it out.”

Historical precedent and polling data suggest Democrats are on the cusp of flipping at least the House next month and possibly the Senate, due to public frustration over the Iran war and high costs of living.

So, they will override his veto

TENT announced during a Thursday afternoon press briefing that it had filed a petition in Travis County court. Mimi Marziani, an attorney representing TENT, said the impersonation campaign has had a staggering impact.

“This incident has led to extraordinary damage to TENT as an organization, and also to threats that continue to come in against TENT staff,” Marziani told reporters during a Zoom call.

Marziani said TENT filed a petition under Rule 202 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. The rule lets parties seek court authorization to conduct depositions before formally filing a lawsuit, which could help them identify those responsible and assess possible legal claims.

“It is our belief, based on the content and timing of the messages and mailer, that it is a single, coordinated campaign and it is organized by a single entity or a single payer,” Marziani said.

A Republican district attorney in West Texas has opened a criminal investigation into pamphlets mailed to homes across Texas purporting to come from a transgender rights organization.

Sarah Stogner, district attorney for Loving, Reeves and Ward counties west of Odessa, told The Texas Tribune that her office is investigating the mailers as a potential forgery but said the scope could expand as new information comes in. Forgery is a state jail felony under Texas law.

Stogner said she felt the mailers — which were marketed as a resource guide for LGBTQ+ students from the Texas Transgender Student Union, a group recently formed in Wyoming — were an obvious bid to agitate voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

“If this ends up being legal, it is everything that is wrong with our current political climate,” Stogner said.

The origin of the mailers is currently unknown, Stogner said. The student union listed as the sender was formed as a limited liability company in Wyoming in September, records show. The group’s address on the mailer was listed as a Houston-area post office box.

By Sam StevensonAssociate News Editor0ShareNewsweek is a Trust Project member

President Donald Trump took a shifting tone on the midterms on Wednesday, pointing out that even if Republicans lose control of the House, Senate, or both, he would remain the U.S. commander-in-chief.

“I’m here whether we win this or not,” he told reporters in Arizona and Montana.

The shift in tone came just two days after he urged supporters in Alaska to “pretend” it was him on the ballot, a campaign message he has repeated often in recent weeks, as forecasts have shifted to favor Democrats to gain control of both chambers.

Republican candidates have been put on the defensive as Democrats have surged in polling and Trump has seen his approval rating consistently slope downward. GOP leaders have redirected money to once-thought-safe House districts and Senate races in an attempt to limit losses.

The White House insists that Trump remains central to the Republican campaign, with spokesman Davis Ingle describing him as the party’s “unequivocal leader” and saying his policy positions on the economy and the border presented voters with a clear choice between a “commonsense agenda” and the “Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction” in November.

The Republican former congressman Matt Gaetz has been accused of participating in the sex trafficking of two young women in a civil lawsuit filed on Thursday in district court in Florida.

The allegations, which Gaetz denied in a statement to the Guardian, are the latest developments in a long-running sexual abuse scandal involving the politician who resigned from Congress in November 2024.

In the 38-page lawsuit, filed in US district court for the middle district of Florida, the women identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 claim Gaetz and two others “coordinated the recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts” from them “during 2017 through January 2019”.

“The defendants collectively used their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability of Plaintiffs to commit the acts,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit contends that the alleged victims “were recent high school graduates” at the time of the alleged misconduct.

One of the defendants, Joel Micah Greenberg, a close associate of Gaetz, and the former tax collector of Seminole county, pleaded guilty in May 2021 to six federal offenses: sex trafficking of a child, illegally producing a false identification document, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, stalking, and conspiracy. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

Gaetz rejected the new lawsuit’s allegations in a statement to the Guardian.

"This is somehow a co-conspiracy from the deep state and transgender people."

-Matt Gaetz, any day now.

For workers wondering how far artificial intelligence could go, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has a straightforward answer — AI is going to change the job market, whether people are ready for it or not. Some jobs will disappear, others will change and new ones will likely emerge. But Dimon warned that the speed of that transition could matter just as much as the technology itself.

"As a business person, my view is don't put your head in the sand," Dimon said at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January. "It is what it is. We're going to deploy it. Will it eliminate jobs? Yes. Will it change jobs? Yes. Will it add some jobs? Probably."

They spend so much on eliminating jobs and social programs. The government enables this by giving them tax cuts with money obtained by taking food out of the mouths of children? We could never "afford" universal health-insurance, but we could afford to invest in eliminating human workers that just want to put a roof over their head?

Seems like a recipie for guillotines.

But, hey

A Tennessee court has overturned the conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court “erred” by preventing the killer from using the victim’s trans identity in his defense.

Samuel Ward Jr. shot Paris Lee six times outside her Memphis home in June 2022, according to the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office. He then drove 30 minutes home, leaving her to die. Ward was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.

But the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Jackson overturned that conviction on Monday and ordered a retrial. The trial court’s judge had disallowed the defense from presenting the victim’s identity as a transgender woman in its arguments.

“The trial court erred by excluding evidence of the victim’s assigned sex at birth, [and] the evidence was insufficient to support [Ward’s] conviction,” reads the Monday appellate court decision. “Because we conclude that the trial court erred… we reverse and remand this case for a new trial.”

The defense had argued it would be more reasonable for Ward to fear Lee if jurors knew she was assigned male at birth, and said jurors would be more prejudiced against Ward for killing a cisgender woman, according to Jamie Satterfield, an independent journalist who first reported the ruling.

The gay panic defenses has not gone away. Also, this rings of saying its not murder because transgender people aren't people.

President Donald Trump issued a foreboding proclamation during a speech in Maryland on Tuesday, just hours after he predicted a “Midterm Surprise!” in a Truth Social post.

“Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, who’s fantastic, he’s on a job, we have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks. Right, Russ?” Trump said. “He’s gonna be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion. He’s got some great things happening.”

Trump did not expand on what these so-called “surprises” would be.

Outside his role in the Trump administration, Vought is the primary architect of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term.

While not mentioned specifically by Trump, many critics online speculated that Trump was referring to some sort of plan to interfere in the midterm elections.

“Between this and his ‘midterm surprise,’ the time to prepare for him to try to steal an election is now,” Fox News host Jessica Tarlov wrote on X.

Other commenters suggested that Vought could use his official capacity to interfere with the elections.

"I know nothing about Project 2025"

-Trump, 2024

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says the ruling legalizing marriage equality nationwide marked “perhaps the decisive point” in America’s turn “against religious liberty.”

In his new book So Ordered, Alito focuses on Obergefell v. Hodges. The 5-4 decision was a landmark in civil rights, establishing a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry nationwide. But Alito, who dissented from the 2015 ruling, portrays it as a turning point against religious freedom.

Alito points to disputes involving LGBTQ+ rights as evidence that “support for religious liberty has cratered.” He cites cases involving businesses seeking religious exemptions from requirements governing services for same-sex couples or employee health coverage, including those that refuse to provide wedding services to gay couples or seek to limit health care for employees based on religious beliefs.

At a rally in Nebraska Tuesday night, President Trump told his supporters exactly what he thinks about the well-being of the American people.

Trump first said that the price of goods and services, which have gone up thanks to his ill-advised Iran war and tariff policies, were “just a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.

“They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.”

Conservative activists have argued that Trump didn’t really mean that losing the two cities is a “small price to pay,” but that he was referring to high gas prices. In that generous interpretation, Trump was arguing that his war, which has killed scores of civilians in the Middle East and an estimated 23 U.S. soldiers, is preventing Iran from waging large scale attacks on American cities. But Iran’s targets during the war have been U.S. installations in the Middle East, and it wasn’t targeting American cities before the war either.

California leaders, however, have taken his words at face-value.

Advocating for the mass death of his own citizens?

Pretty sure the person who made that cross you carry into an icon might have been more persecuted. Or, maybe, the people that the Nazis walked into gas chambers (incidentally, the very same types of groups of people your administration targets)?

The Group of Seven Nations agreed Friday to release 100 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles—following a desperate plea from the White House.

The G7 held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss global energy costs. The discussion came in the wake of a pressing call between Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the U.S. leader asked for assistance amid the current oil crisis and floated the idea of banning U.S. diesel exports, according to CBS Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Margaret Brennan.

Donald Trump announced after the meeting that “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately.”

The European barrels are expected to hit the market over the next four months.

“You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” he said. “All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative.”

The president had been asked about whether Mitch McConnell should resign from the Senate because of his health issues. Trump responded by indicating that videos of McConnell struggling were a “disappointment to a lot of Republicans,” before noting that “Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody.” He then exploded, questioning why they were asking about the White House renovations so much, and griping that they hadn’t asked him about Venezuela. Time pointed out that they talked about Venezuela at length earlier in the interview.

“I don’t understand. I’m sitting here. I’ve done all this stuff,” Trump said. “I took the White House and made it beautiful again.”

Here's a positive question about his deeds that a reporter should ask:

Mr. President, how good did it feel to rape children?

Rollins’ claim that prices for other protein sources were “coming down” is inaccurate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of eggs, while lower than in 2025, has increased in recent months, increasing by 4.3% from May to June, falling by 0.5% from June to July, and then increasing again by 2.9% from July to August. Pork and chicken costs both increased by 0.4% from July to August.

Meanwhile, prices for ground beef hit a new record after reaching an average price of around $7.16 per pound as of August, an increase of 0.6% from July and 7.9% when compared with the previous year.

“If Joe Biden said anything close to this, MAGA would’ve had a total meltdown,” argued Democratic influencer Harry Sisson in a social media post on X to his more than 400,000 followers. “Now this is just part of Trump’s messaging. Hypocrisy at its finest.”

Others, like the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, jokingly argued that Rollins was “about two weeks away from telling people they can always eat bugs.”

“You will eat the bugs, you will live in the pod,” quipped Damin Toell, a New York-based attorney, in a social media post on X.

A multi-millionaire telling people to eat other protein that they also cannot afford is about as close to a "let them eat cake" moment as we'll probably get.

There's been a great deal of backlash against Flock cameras, with constant vandalism and numerous reports of crooked cops misusing them, leading to more and more communities to cancel their contracts. While Flock has received the most backlash, there are other ALPR companies out there. Rather than ending their use of technology that spies on you, and in a move that doesn't really solve the problems associated with mass surveillance, some departments that have dropped Flock have simply switched to other companies that do the same thing, reports NPR.

One of those competitors is Axon. If that name sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen it displayed on body cam videos, since Axon is the leading supplier of body cams to law enforcement, according to The Intercept. After a bit of rebranding in 2017 (the same year Flock was founded), many people don't know that Axon is the company formerly known as Taser, the electrical stun gun — another technology that police never, ever misuse.

While Flock had to develop not only its technology, but also its law enforcement contacts and clients, Axon already had the clients in its Rolodex thanks to its other products. Law enforcement agencies may be fleeing from Flock contracts like rats from a sinking ship, but they still want ALPR technology. In places like Denver, Colorado, for example, switching ALPR providers is easy when you're getting your new camera tracking access through a supplier you likely already do business with.

A lower federal court on Wednesday imposed restrictions on deporting migrants to countries other than their own.

^screen grab of the article because NYTimes is really bad at copy + paste for text.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to create "mobile detention facilities" for immigrant detainees in Pennsylvania, according to publicly available government documents. It's part of a massive detention expansion that began last year when the agency turned into the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency, with a $75 billion supplement from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

This shift in strategy comes after ICE started buying large warehouses nationwide to turn into mega detention centers.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons described wanting squads of trucks rounding up immigrants and having the deportation process run like "[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings."

This idea doesn't seem that far a stretch away from the mobile execution vans from China.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Republican nominee for governor of Alabama, criticized transgender people, their parents and their doctors on the Senate floor Thursday.

Tuberville claimed transgender people are mentally ill and a danger to others.

He said that airline pilots who are transgender or wear fursuits are “deranged” and suggested more LGBTQ people should be institutionalized.

“It is the best interest of our country to bring back mental institutions as a normal part of our society, instead of sweeping it under the rug,” Tuberville said, standing next to a sign that said “Transgenderism is a Mental Illness.”

“I want to be clear about this gender confusion,” he said.

“It is not normal. It is a cry for help, and our society needs to stop affirming people who are suffering from this mental illness.”

Its creepy how obsessed they are with transgender people. Why are they so obsessed? To what point and purpose would institutionalizing these people solve? Like, I'm not seeing how transgender people existing harms people.

Also, who'd pay for this? We don't even have universal health-insurance in America. So, what? We involuntarily incarcerte transgender people and then charge them for their own extermination treatment?

Also also, how would the 5th Amendment come in?

Trump’s advisers have been working for months to move his focus away from baseless theories of election fraud. A group of outsiders is making that difficult.

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

Trump has already tried to claim greater federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered primarily at the state and local level. In February, he said Republicans should nationalize voting in at least 15 places. In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.” Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as “foolproof.” Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.” In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming elections.