Watch: Elon Musk is trying to bail out Republicans while flooding X with lies. Election Day is less than three weeks away, and panic is setting in for the GOP. “We see Republican groups pulling money away from House incumbents,” says host David Corn on the latest episode of Stress Test. “They’re cutting them off. They’re saying, ‘So long, Charlie! We don’t think you’re going to survive this blue tsunami.’” The one lifeline Republicans have right now is big money—and nothing gets bigger than Elon Musk, who has poured $366 million into this election cycle in an attempt to rescue at-riskRepublicans, making him the biggest known political donor in midterms history. But David warns, “It’s not just money with Elon Musk. It’s also disinformation.” On this episode, David and fellow host Garrison Hayes check the state of the race as we hurtle toward November. They’re joined by senior reporter Anna Merlan, who has been tracking Musk-amplified disinformation attacks on Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who’s been the target of a MAGA operation that falsely claimed he left the campaign trail for a secret stay in an Ohio mental hospital—as well as a homophobic smear from Vice President JD Vance. “This new stuff about him being gay and mentally ill—that’s an escalation,” Anna says. And she’s watching for more: “What tends to happen on X.com these days, especially after Elon Musk took it over, is that there is a lot of disinformation in October leading up to elections—purported leaks of consequential information.” Meanwhile, Garrison and David discuss the epic fall of Kimberly Guilfoyle, ousted as U.S. ambassador to Greece after a report that she asked a donor to pay off a $100,000 Amex bill in return for providing him access to administration officials, and the shocking DHS raid on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC., home. They explore the Trump administration’s pattern of targeting prominent Black women and what David dubs Trump’s “personal vendetta” against Omar. You’d think a president staring down lame-duck status would have bigger worries than settling scores. After all, reality on the campaign trail is biting hard: “Trump is running around the country trying to shore up Republicans in states where he should not need to be campaigning,” David says. All that, and your audience questions answered, on this Friday edition of “Stress Test,” our special midterms video podcast. Subscribe: youtube.com/motherjones. This transcript was generated with automated tools and may contain errors. David Corn: Elon Musk, a disinformation agent. Garrison Hayes: Trump sics the DOJ on a Democrat. Kimberly Guilfoyle— DC: What a story. GH: Yeah, and is it time for the GOP to panic? DC: This is Stress Test from Mother Jones. I’m David Corn. GH: And I’m Garrison Hayes. Welcome back to the fifth episode of Stress Test. We are three weeks away—can you believe it?—from the midterms and approaching the midpoint of this kind of pop-up video podcast that we’ve been on. So we thought it’d be a good time to come back together and to try to think about, like, what’s going on, do a little bit of a status check on how things are going. David, what’s on your mind? DC: Well, we see that the polls are not changing. They’re all moving in the same direction. They’re all benefiting Democrats, and it seems kind of baked into the cake. Trump is running around the country trying to shore up Republicans in states where he should not need to be campaigning. He went all the way to Alaska, and he took half the cabinet with him because the Democrats are looking good in the Senate race there. And we see Republican groups pulling money away from House incumbents, Republican House incumbents. They’re cutting them off. They’re saying, so long, Charlie, we don’t think you’re going to survive this blue tsunami. So people like Thomas Kean Jr., who’s a representative in New Jersey, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who’s in Iowa, they’re cutting them off, leaving them to their own devices. The one lifeline the Republicans have right now is big money, and the big news in big money this week, Garrison, was Elon Musk, right? He’s putting in 300—so far, $366 million into this campaign, making one of the largest donations ever in the history of American politics. I think he’s gonna top half a billion dollars. It’s going to Senate races. It’s going to get-out-the-vote campaigns and for senators and Republicans in the swing states, the key states. And it’s not just money with Elon Musk. It’s also disinformation. GH: Indeed it is. And so big money, Elon Musk, disinformation—to talk about all of this, we’re going to have a good conversation with our senior reporter here at Mother Jones, Anna Merlan. Anna, welcome to the show. Anna Merlan: Hi. Thanks for having me. DC: Yeah. I mean, everybody this week is going on and on about the money he’s pouring in—$158 million into Senate races—but you had a different take. Not only is he pouring money into this campaign, he’s a major force of disinformation. Explain. AM: Well, so this week we saw Elon Musk engaging pretty heavily with a story about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. There was some scuttlebutt on the right because Talarico had not been seen on the campaign trail for a couple of weeks. That’s because he had the flu. He was really clear that he had the flu. He was appearing remotely via Zoom at several campaign events because he had the flu. Instead, a couple of far-right, self-styled journalists started to make a different claim: that he had actually been secretly committed to a mental hospital in Ohio for an extraordinarily short period of time before reappearing on the campaign trail. So this story didn’t work for a bunch of reasons that we can get into, but one person who was very excited about it was Elon Musk. He was engaging directly— DC: So what did he do? AM: He was engaging directly with Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher, who are the two self-proclaimed MAGA-leaning journalists who were promoting this story. When they released a purported phone call between one of them and the mental health treatment center they claimed Talarico was at, he responded with two exclamation points. He also said at least twice in tweets that the Talarico campaign was hiding something that voters deserved to know about. So it’s pretty obvious that he had probably become aware of this story prior to Sortor and Amacher breaking it publicly. So he was a primary driver of people seeing this story. I mean, Sortor has a pretty good audience, but nothing like what Elon Musk has on the platform that he owns. GH: I’d love to get into why this story doesn’t work, because often, Anna, when these conspiracy theories come up, they’re based in some kind of thing that gives people a clue that there might be something going on. And so there are kind of this hodgepodge of facts that are unrelated, and they pull them together to make a story. But why are you saying that this story doesn’t make any sense? AM: There is a really basic timeline issue, which is that supposedly Talarico, according to Sortor and Amacher’s self-proclaimed reporting, had been released from this mental hospital in Ohio on Saturday night. That was a really big issue because he had been seen campaigning in person in Texas on Friday and Saturday. So they were crowing about a call that they had with this mental health treatment center in Ohio where, after asking someone at the facility several times if somebody by the name of James Talarico was there and getting several denials, eventually the person on the other end of the phone says, oh, he was discharged Saturday night. This person doesn’t sound clear, and this is after what turned out to be about six minutes of them asking this question in various ways. But regardless, that’s not how time works. If you see him in Texas on Friday, he cannot be in mental health treatment on Saturday. The other thing that happened is that the mental health treatment center, the Lindner Center, tweeted, James Talarico has never been treated here. Like, they were more than willing to just say, this is not real, this is not true. And this happened immediately. But that was apparently not enough for some of the people involved in the story to declare it not to be true. DC: Well, you know, it’s interesting because this is a mental health attack that they’re trying to put on to Talarico, and the other things that they’ve gone after him for, claiming he’s a vegan when he’s not—not that there’s anything wrong with that. And also, we saw what came from our own vice president, JD Vance, this week. Let’s look at that video and how he whipped up an attack against Talarico. [Clip plays.] DC: So he’s not only mentally ill and a vegan, apparently he’s gay. Wow. It seems to be the best they have at the moment. AM: Well, so there’s been a lot of this type of thing about Talarico, and some of it, again, Elon Musk has engaged in. There have been a bunch of quotes recirculated, for instance, about him denouncing white supremacy during 2020 and expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, him talking about, you know, trans inclusion in sports, him talking about the ills of capitalism—things that are taken to be extremely frightening by the right. And there’s been a lot of recirculating of those quotes. But this new stuff about him being gay and mentally ill, that is—that’s an escalation, I would say. DC: And we talked earlier about the money he’s putting in—10 million—tens of millions of dollars into get-out-the-vote efforts in Texas, and a lot of those are focusing on these sort of issues, claiming that Talarico has a radical trans agenda. AM: Correct. I mean, part of what’s interesting here is that after Elon Musk spent millions of dollars helping to get President Trump back into office, he said he was going to pull back on political spending. That was probably the result of a couple of things. One was that he put a lot of money into the Wisconsin Senate race, which didn’t turn out the way that he wanted it to be, including at one point he offered to essentially pay voters to vote, which you’re not allowed to do. He had to walk that back very quickly because it is illegal. And the other thing that happened was that he put a lot of support behind Germany’s far-right AfD party, even appearing to speak at an AfD rally, and during that election, again, AfD didn’t do particularly well. So in 2025, he said, you know, I’m going to pull back on political spending, I’ve done enough. But now here he is again, you know, a year later, getting more involved in the midterms, I think, than any other single donor ever has in history. GH: Yeah, and I guess the question that everyone’s wondering is, will this work? I mean, obviously he’s had some failures in the past, but do you think, here we are in this position again where Elon Musk is dumping a bunch of money into an election, do you anticipate that it’ll work this time? AM: I don’t actually think there’s a direct 1-to-1 predictor between amount of money and success, which I do think is what Elon Musk thinks. I think he assumes that a large enough amount of money will result in the outcome you want, but he should know that that’s not the case. That’s not what happened in Wisconsin. That’s not what happened, you know, with him appearing to speak on behalf of AfD. Like, it just doesn’t seem to work that way. But I guess we’ll see. And, you know, I guess he’s welcome under the laws of this country to spend as much money as he wants trying. DC: Well, Anna, we ask this question of all our guests: What’s stressing you out, or what are you watching for in the next few weeks before the election hits Election Day? AM: I feel like if I let anything stress me out at this point, I would be dead, so nothing. Just, I’m good. I will say I am paying a lot of attention to purported October surprises. You guys both know that before consequential elections, there’s often this thing termed the October surprise, a last-minute, consequential piece of information. What tends to happen on X.com these days, especially after Elon Musk took it over, again, is that there is a lot of disinformation in October leading up to elections—purported leaks of consequential information. You might recall, like, the Macron leaks that were attempted to float before a French presidential election a few years ago on Twitter that didn’t quite work. So I am paying a lot of attention to narratives that take hold on X in the next few weeks, especially things that Elon Musk is promoting. For instance, right now he’s very engaged with allegations about Ilhan Omar—either, you know, hiding the source of her wealth, you know, changing her last name. There is a lot of attempts right now to just kind of attach general suspicion to her in the lead-up to the election. So I would say that’s the primary thing I’m looking at today, but who knows what it’ll be next week. GH: Anna Merlan, thank you so much for joining us. We’ll definitely be paying very close attention to your reporting, and we appreciate you being here. AM: Thanks for having me. Thank you guys for your work. DC: Well, she mentioned Elon Musk going after Ilhan Omar, and this week, in what was a shocking move, the investigators from DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, raided the Washington home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, apparently looking for material relating to immigration forms filled out years ago, maybe even tens of years ago. This is unprecedented, Garrison, because, as you know, there’s a Department of Justice guideline that acts like these—investigations, raids, subpoenas—should not come so close to an election unless they are unavoidable. There’s a danger present. Someone may run away to, you know, flee the cops, go to another country. If there’s no reason to move this quickly before an election, so close to an election, you basically lay low. But the Trump administration is doing the opposite here. GH: They’ve, of course, you know, been targeting Congresswoman Omar for a while now. It’s a part of a larger anti-immigrant thing that they’ve been on. Obviously, we know Ilhan Omar represents a congressional district in Minnesota, and so all of this is connected to this larger project that the Trump administration has been pushing for quite some time now. But we also know that Ilhan Omar is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. She is a Black woman. And there have been a number of these kinds of targeted attacks from this administration on Black women. We have the Fed Gov. Lisa Cook. We, of course, have Letitia James in New York City. We have LaMonica McIver, who is facing 17 years for her interactions with ICE just last year. And so this is something that’s kind of been going on for a while, David, and it does feel in some ways unprecedented, but it also feels like something that they’ve been pushing. It feels very related to the objectives of this administration. DC: Yeah. And one small point that I see here, because I just came out with this book, How Russia Won, about the Russian intervention in the past elections to help Donald Trump, and in 2016, the FBI was conducting an investigation of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia throughout the 2016 general election period. And they were assiduous about not issuing subpoenas, not even bringing in people to interview, because they thought that might tip off the investigation to the public, and they did not want to affect the election in that way. The deep state, as Trump would say, was actually protecting the Trump campaign, and that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Of course, at the end of that campaign, James Comey revived the investigation of Hillary Clinton, and that had an impact on the campaign, and that’s the reason for this rule that they are violating. But Trump, you know, has made, you know, this crusade against Somali Americans a tremendous imperative for him—targeting her, but just the whole idea that Somali Americans are committing fraud, that they’re evil, terrible people. He said that, and they should all be shipped back to Africa. So this is racism. It’s a personal vendetta, and what it does, I think, also is just send a message that we’re in favor of cruelty, and if you get on the wrong side of us, we will come after you. GH: Yeah, it is, I think, a lot of those things. As I said before, there is this kind of personal fixation that the president has with Minnesota. To your point, the story around Minnesota, you know, quote-unquote, fraud—some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. We know that that’s all kind of a part of this story as well, that we’ve seen play out for at least the last nine, 10 months. But really, it kind of goes back. We know, of course, Ilhan Omar was a part of that kind of Squad group of folks elected to Congress during Trump’s first term. She has been an unapologetic opponent of the president, quite antagonistic and unapologetic in her kind of prodding of the president. So all of that feels deeply, deeply connected. David, I’m curious, what is Omar’s reaction to all of this, to her home being raided? How is she responding to this? DC: Well, she’s leaning into it. I mean, I’ve gotten many fundraising letters or emails from her. GH: Never miss an opportunity to raise a few bucks off of this stuff, right? DC: Yeah, don’t put a crisis to waste, ever. And so she’s, you know, defying Trump, standing strong, and using it to try to bolster her support. And indeed, this is, you know, elevating her. I don’t think there’s a question about her winning her election. But it is, again, you know, this is happening through DHS, and there are people who are worried about DHS agents or ICE agents showing up at the polls to try to dissuade people from being there, creating crisis, creating chaos, which is what Trump is looking to do. And, you know, they keep trying to bring this back to fraud, but let’s talk about corruption. Where’s the real corruption? I would say it’s coming from within the house. And we had no better example of that this week than—drumroll, please—Kimberly Guilfoyle. She was selling favors. The big news was that she asked a Republican donor to pay off her $100,000 Amex card while she was trying—well, while she was trying to get him favorable treatment within the government because he had a few tax issues. And, you know, she didn’t last too long, right, Garrison, once this news came out? GH: There’s a story within a story here about who gets the boot when there is, you know, controversy. I mean, I am thinking a lot in this situation about Tom Homan, who we know was also involved in some suspected corruption and money, and there’s, like, $50,000 in a paper bag, I believe was the part of the story, from Cava. DC: It was a bag from Cava, the fast-food joint, $50,000 in it, in cash. GH: A bag from Cava. Exactly, in cash. And the question is, like, did he get the boot? Has Trump done the work of distancing himself from Tom Homan? I think the answer is, of course, no. And so there’s always kind of this interesting tension, and maybe even to some degree a gender tension here, around who Donald Trump decides to punish and distance himself from. I’m thinking about Kristi Noem, of course, in this instance as well. None of these are excuses for the behavior, but I think there is kind of a meta-analysis, actually, that needs to happen here as well. DC: Well, let’s see what Trump once had to say about her and what he has to say about her now. [Clip plays.] DC: Well, the interesting thing here might be, you know, they were close, and they were close through all this period of time that Donald Trump Jr. is cutting assorted business deals, using the family name to get connections in the defense industry and elsewhere—what we might call grifting. So I bet Kimberly Guilfoyle has a lot of inside information about how Donald Trump Jr. has amassed the wealth he has gathered over the last few years. You got to be careful who you throw under the bus, particularly if they know something. In any event, the House Democrats take control of any of the investigative committees, she might be someone they look to talk to. GH: I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, for Kimberly Guilfoyle to get a subpoena of some sort if Democrats do take back the House. But, you know, David, the thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that it’s really hard to turn MAGA-world people against Trump. I mean, even if for a time they seem to move away from him, we’ve seen time and time again people kind of move back into his orbit. And so I would be curious to see if this situation and any pressure that Democrats can exert on Guilfoyle, if it would result in anything meaningful coming out of this from a probing perspective. DC: Well, the interesting thing is that Trump is sunsetting, right? You know, people—after the election, he will be lame duck. So his magnetic attraction to pull people back into his fold that he kicks out—you know, we’ve seen this with Steve Bannon, we’ve seen it with Michael Cohen—that gravitational force might weaken. And I think, too, you know, we’re here to talk about the midterms, and it’s my sense—and we see this—the Democratic candidates are leaning more into making corruption an issue. We talked about Talarico. He’s running campaign ads against Ken Paxton on all sorts of corruption fronts, including that he’s been bought off by big data to put up data centers that are very unpopular in Texas. We see other candidates across the country, Democratic candidates, using the theme of corruption. And I think it hits strongly now. It’s often hard to make corruption an issue for people, but when they’re having their own economic difficulties and they see Trump and his family literally pocketing billions of dollars in shady deals while he’s in the White House, and now we see Kim Guilfoyle using her power, her influence, to line her own pockets, I think these corruption themes might resonate a little stronger. GH: My question for you, David, then, is when or if Democrats, you know, take back the House—perhaps in 2028, if they are able to take back the White House—what power do they have to change things in a way that would prevent something like this in the future? DC: Well, they have two different things they can do. If they win back even the House, let alone the Senate, in this election, they can use the power of congressional investigations to start digging into some of the stuff—you mentioned Tom Homan. They can go back to all sorts of things. They don’t have to investigate them as crimes, but they still have the right to investigate them. And of course, if the Democrats should win back the White House in 2028, which seems a long time from now, they will control the Justice Department, and they’ll be able to look at all sorts of things that went on during the Trump years. But on the other hand, I would not put it past Trump to issue a blanket-wide pardon covering almost every political appointee who served in either one of his administrations. So that’s kind of far down the road at this point. But there is a lot they can start looking at, whether it’s Elon Musk, whether it’s Kim Guilfoyle, whether it’s Tom Homan—a lot of things out there. The problem that the Democrats are gonna have on these investigative committees, if they gain control, is deciding which investigations to launch. GH: Wow. Well, those are the things that we’re interested in and thinking about, but of course, we’re always curious what you are interested in and thinking about. We have a few audience questions that I want to tee up for us, David. We’re enjoying, of course, your comments. Go ahead and drop a comment now for something that’s on your minds, maybe something that’s stressing you out. And so we have a few comments that we wanna get into. I’ll start us out, David, and then you can take one and I’ll take another one, and we’ll get through these as quickly as possible. This is from someone who goes by FrankHodge7654. They say, the biggest stress test to our democratic republic in our history was the Civil War. The second-biggest stress test was the economic collapse of the 1930s. They say, the current crisis is a very important test. When the people in office do not respect the Constitution—that’s a lot of what we’ve been talking about today—and no one is responding effectively, Frank says. They’re asking, I guess, in a way, what would be the appropriate response? We kind of got into that a little bit, David, but I’m curious what your thoughts are on the appropriate response to the disrespect, as Frank puts it, for the Constitution. DC: You know, ultimately it boils down to you and you and you and you—to all of us—to vote for people who will uphold the Constitution as they swear to do when they take the oath of office. And, you know, we’ve had a president who got into power, you know, got into office not once, but twice, I think, by, you know, by hoodwinking the public in many ways, who has no respect for the Constitution. And what we might have thought in the past, that a political party—even his own political party—would put up guardrails to keep him in place and not let him tear up the Constitution too much, well, that wasn’t there, and they just folded and caved and became part of the Trump cult. So it’s really up to Americans, if they want to keep the democracy that they’ve been bequeathed by our founders and by people who gave their lives for this democracy in years past, to make this a priority for them and vote for people who they think will uphold the rule of law. I mean, it’s kind of Civics 101, but I don’t have much more to say than that. Let’s turn to—go ahead. GH: I’ll add one additional point here, David. I think you’re spot-on, but the thing that I’ll add—I mean, as FrankHodge7654 points out, you know, so much of this is directly connected to the unfinished business, I think, that this country has around its relationship to race and racism. I mean, obviously the Civil War was about slavery, and these things kind of create these chinks in the armor, these little kind of vulnerable points or vulnerability points for someone who does not respect the Constitution to come in and to lean into anti-immigrant sentiment or maybe racist rhetoric in order to gain power. And so all of these things are in their own way connected, and I think you’re totally right that the people, voters in our country, have to be thinking strategically about who they give power to. DC: That’s a good point. And until we resolve some of those issues, we will be vulnerable to demagogues who don’t respect the Constitution. So let me turn to a viewer who goes by the name Disky, DISKY01. I’m gonna read it off the paper here. Flock cameras are for license plate reading specifically, but I think this is an indication that people are finally beginning to understand the consequences of general mass surveillance. We can’t trust the federal government to do anything right now, and so it must be a local government issue. We have to ensure that our local governments enact stronger spying and surveillance laws against corporations, law enforcement, and governments. I think that’s true, but I think we’re gonna see this with AI as well. There’s going to be a big fight between who gets to regulate these new technologies, and Big Tech doesn’t want it to be state by state, locality by locality. They have a much easier chance of influencing the process if it’s done at the federal level, where they can throw in a lot of money, as we’ve seen and as we’ve talked about with Elon Musk, and as we’ve discussed on earlier episodes, big super PACs being funded by crypto and AI. GH: Okay, I think that’s enough for our audience section. I wanna move us to our final question that we always talk a little bit about, which is: What are you stressed or maybe not stressed out about this week? David, let’s start with you. Go ahead and tell us what’s stressing you out, or maybe what are you less stressed about than you were before? DC: Well, I’m less stressed out about the polls being really wrong. I mean, they may not be fully accurate, but they are moving in the same direction. They all show the same overall trend across the country in different races when you ask the question in different ways, so I’m not as worried about them missing something. What I’m, you know, stressed out or what I would be concerned about is something that Anna said earlier on the show, and that is an October surprise of some sort, but more or less being funded by a lot of money. The money coming in is just tremendous, and, you know, there’s hundreds—maybe tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars that we can’t track. That’s dark money that we don’t even see, and the ability of that money to finance an October surprise. Another story about James Talarico being, you know, taken off to a mental health institution—things that break on the weekend right before the election and where it’s harder to counter them, you know, whether it’s from Russian disinformation bots or from Elon Musk and MAGA influencers making things up on X. I worry about that coming and being pushed out with a lot of money. GH: Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly the thing that I’m stressing out about as well, David—this idea that people with the largest megaphones on social media are able to push these election-influencing bits of dis- and misinformation, and that these things get shared so widely. I mean, part of the reason, I think, why Elon Musk just amplifies stuff that’s, as Anna pointed out, just nonsense is because at the end of the day, we are susceptible, we are influenceable, we are able to take in this information, and a lot of times it does have an impact on our behavior. And so that’s kind of stressing me out, and how we kind of fight and push back against these things is kind of interesting to me. And of course, one of the ways to do that is to subscribe to Mother Jones, to subscribe to Stress Test, to stay in the know by being right here every single week. So that’s one of the things that you can do to lower your stress, and that’s what I hope—that’s what I’m allowing to lower my stress, is that we’re doing the good work of getting good information out there. DC: Well, that’s all we have in today’s episode. If you missed previous episodes of Stress Test, go to our YouTube channel. You can go there at youtube.com/motherjones, subscribe there as well, and find us wherever you find your podcasts. GH: Of course, a huge shout-out to Anna Merlan for her incredible reporting. Our great journalism and the work that we do here, like Anna’s reporting—this stuff is only made possible because of your support. Your views and your subscriptions keep us going, so don’t forget to like and to share and to subscribe to our YouTube channel, as David says. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave them down in the comments. We love to read your comments and to answer your questions, so make sure you ask a question down there in the comments today. We’ll be right back here in a couple of days with another edition of Stress Test. Have a good one.

It is rarely an auspicious occasion when a White House press secretary becomes the subject of headlines. But, by attempting the simple act of uttering words that is exactly what unfolded when Katie Zacharia stepped up to the podium on October 13 for her very first briefing. The appearance by the former conservative political commentator drew widespread ridicule, adding to the already existing charges that Zacharia’s resume was much too thin for someone occupying the president’s most visible communications’ role. But watching her take the podium, it was instantly evident that Zacharia had met the more unspoken but essential qualifications for landing a high-ranking position within the Trump administration. In other words, she had mastered the look: long barrel blond curls, severe makeup, aggressively high heels. Some on social media even marveled at how much Zacharia appeared to resemble the president’s daughter, Ivanka, with whom Trump has long appeared to be infatuated. > It’s against this trail of bad hair extensions, used-up Botox needles, and > crusty fake lashes that a familiar question returns to me: “What happens to > the self when surgery is embraced for the purpose of political conformity, > consciously or otherwise?” As with other members of Trump’s top brass, male and female alike, it is unclear if Zacharia has undergone the cosmetic procedures that have become central to the reigning aesthetics of Mar-a-Lago face. Her predecessor, Karoline Leavitt, certainly appeared to have done so in preparation for high-profile magazine shoots. Yet, one can easily imagine Zacharia strategically amplifying the MAGA aesthetic during the weeks of auditioning, when, in hopes of replacing Leavitt, she reportedly cross-referenced the president’s public schedule to book her TV spots, just to make sure that Trump would be watching. Clearly, it worked: On October 9, after weeks of these logistical gymnastics, Trump named Zacharia to the post. But the same White House briefing that exposed his new press secretary’s near-total incompetence also underscored the apparent limitations of this aesthetic in helping to keep one’s job. “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” Zacharia told reporters, referring to the embattled US ambassador to Greece amid an increasingly widening grifting scandal. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.” The unceremonious ouster marked quite the downfall, considering Guilfoyle’s MAGA credentials, and the fact that her erstwhile romance with Don Jr. meant that she almost became the president’s daughter-in-law. It also added to the growing list of women, once heralded by the right for “blazing a trail to empowerment” with their occupation of top roles, who have either been discarded or somehow convinced to leave the Trump administration: Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, just to name a few. Curiously, the men in Trump’s administration who have attracted the same, if not more, unflattering headlines of apparent corruption, drunkenness, and generally abhorrent conduct have remained effectively unscathed. All of which points to a major theme: Aesthetics may serve as a key entry point to power in the Trump administration. But they take a backseat to the inherent misogyny that animates every corner of the same administration—starting with the top. Against this trail of bad hair extensions, empty syringes, and crusty fake lashes, a familiar question returns to me: “What happens to the self when surgery is embraced, consciously or otherwise, for the purpose of political conformity?” Do the subjects register regret, or are they happy with what they see in the mirror? It’s impossible, of course, to know the inner lives of women like Guilfoyle and Noem. But last week, it seemed notable that, just as Guilfoyle’s ever-expanding scandals were seizing headlines, two older Republican women in Trump’s outer rings of orbit attracted their own derision for their apparent physical transformations. As I wrote in March of last year, I’m far from immune to what must be similar pressures when it comes to trying to maintain the look of youth. Still, it’s hard not to see the ridicule of these conservative women as a foreshadowing for the women who have adopted the look favored by a political movement to gain purchase in the president’s inner circle. As Zacharia stumbles, humiliating herself and the White House despite having won Trump’s gaze, it feels as though it is only a matter of time before we watch another MAGA woman get canned. In the end, the real winner in this group always seems to be pervasive misogyny.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an unusual warning this week to the country’s largest asset managers and a climate-focused investor group over their roles in a 2021 campaign that replaced board directors at ExxonMobil. The commission published a letter saying it had concluded a probe into the entities, and while it found no evidence of violations, it expressed “serious concerns” about their actions. Investor advocates and some former SEC staff say the letter clearly aims to suppress shareholder advocacy on climate change and pressure large asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, each of which were named in the letter, to steer clear of the topic entirely. It is only the latest move by the SEC this year to limit investors’ ability to address climate risks and engage with corporate boards more broadly. The Trump administration and Republican officials across the country have spent years clamping down on efforts to press corporations for climate action.  In 2022, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives opened an antitrust investigation into some of the same groups, accusing them of acting like a “cartel.” More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general also launched probes. Oil industry campaign contributions have gone overwhelmingly to Republican candidates. Mika Morse, who was a policy counsel on climate risk to former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, said many investors and asset managers view climate change as a significant risk to their portfolios and feel a fiduciary duty to engage with companies on the topic, but may now hesitate to continue that work. > “This is just part of this pressure campaign to ensure that the financial > system doesn’t take climate into account.”  “Investors are feeling really inhibited because of this fear that they will become the target of investigations,” Morse said. “And this type of harassment is really effective, unfortunately.” SEC Enforcement Director David Woodcock, who began that position in May, was an attorney at Exxon during the investors’ campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile. An SEC spokesperson said the investigation began last year and that Woodcock recused himself. The investigation probed the communications of some of the country’s largest asset managers and pension funds—including BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund—with a group called Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative that pushes for climate action by large corporate emitters. The report traced what it called a campaign by Climate Action 100+ beginning in 2019 to change Exxon’s board because of the company’s inaction on global warming. The California and New York pension funds were active in the climate group, and BlackRock and State Street joined the initiative in 2020. By 2021, a small activist investor firm called Engine No. 1 had launched a campaign to replace some of Exxon’s directors. That campaign focused on what the firm said was the company’s poor financial performance—Exxon had been removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average the previous year as its stock price lagged—rather than inaction on climate change. But the SEC letter said Engine No. 1 had communicated with some Climate Action 100+ members and with Ceres, a sustainable business advocacy group that helps coordinate the climate investor organization. That year, the campaign succeeded in appointing three new members to Exxon’s board, in large part by convincing large asset managers like BlackRock to vote yes.  It was a huge blow to Exxon and came at a low point for the oil industry. Profits had plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some analysts were predicting peak oil consumption had passed. Major investors lined up behind the notion that climate risks were systemic, and President Joe Biden had won election the prior year after pledging to shift away from fossil fuels. In the following years, the oil industry and its allies in public office and think tanks pushed back forcefully, filing lawsuits, launching investigations, and pushing legislation that targeted opponents in the financial sector, academia and elsewhere.  The Trump administration has incorporated this effort as public policy through the Department of Justice, SEC, and other agencies, siding with the oil industry in numerous lawsuits, for example. The SEC investigation examined whether the asset managers and other members of the climate organization coordinated their votes, which could have triggered onerous reporting requirements under SEC rules meant to give public insight into campaigns by activist investors to influence companies.  > “Climate Action 100+ supports investors as they assess and address the > financial risks that climate poses to the companies they invest in.” Firms like BlackRock are exempt from these reporting requirements even though they hold large stakes in many companies because they are considered passive investors. The SEC letter raised the question of whether the firms should have been required to report more extensively in the case of the Exxon campaign. Experts in securities law say the difference is significant and that a finding of violation could have had serious implications. Ultimately, the commission did not find evidence to support any of these claims but still issued a public report. Jim Moloney, director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, said the “report reminds asset managers and investors of their responsibilities with respect to shareholder engagement, especially in the context of organized efforts that follow a playbook similar to that of Climate Action 100+.” Shareholder advocates have criticized the SEC report, arguing that it sought to intimidate investors. “What we’ve seen in the ongoing investigations and attacks on climate groups is simply an opinion that shareholders should not be considering climate,” said Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel of As You Sow, a nonprofit shareholder advocacy group that is part of the Climate Action 100+. “This is just part of this pressure campaign to ensure that the financial system doesn’t take climate into account.”  Andrew Behar, As You Sow’s chief executive, said the campaign to remake Exxon’s board was an attempt to reverse the company’s declining financial performance, and it worked. He pointed to a sustained increase in Exxon’s value that coincided with the addition of new board members. Overall, Behar said, the campaign showed how capitalism is meant to work. Michael Boudett, general counsel at Ceres, said in a statement, “Climate Action 100+ has always operated within US securities law. It supports investors as they assess and address the financial risks that climate poses to the companies they invest in. It is up to every participating Climate Action 100+ investor to make their own decisions, including how they vote their shares.”  He added, “Understanding material risks, including financial risks from climate change, is central to that duty.” Many shareholder advocates have criticized the SEC more broadly under the Trump administration. It is generally supposed to have five commissioners with at least two from each party, but there are currently only two total, and President Donald Trump has not appointed any Democratic commissioners. Last week, the commission issued a rule saying it can reach a quorum with only one commissioner. BlackRock and State Street declined to comment, with a BlackRock spokesperson pointing to the SEC report’s declaration that the investigation “did not develop evidence that BlackRock or State Street agreed to vote proxies in certain manners or shared their proxy voting intentions with investors or others associated with” the Climate Action 100+. Exxon did not respond to a request for comment. As conservatives have targeted BlackRock, its positions have shifted. The asset manager left the Climate Action 100+ in 2024. Behar said that a few years ago, BlackRock voted in favor of nearly half the proposals his organization supported, which cover numerous social and environmental topics. Last year BlackRock backed hardly any. Morse said the SEC has identified all the ways investors try to press companies to manage climate risk and is working to shut down each path, from limiting their ability to file shareholder resolutions to making it harder for investors to meet with companies. “The total picture is pretty stunning,” Morse said.  After the commission proposed rescinding a rule on climate-related disclosures, Morse said she heard from many investors and people at corporations that they disagreed with the proposal but declined to submit comments because they feared retribution.  While she understood their position, she said, “This is such a low point for our democracy, that companies and investors would disagree with a policy but be afraid to comment.”

During the Republican Party’s “midterm convention” last month, GOP leaders argued that a Democratic victory in November would cause a Marxist takeover of America. “It’s going to be a communist country if they win,” President Donald Trump said from the stage—one of more than 60 reported references to the red menace made by speakers at the Dallas event. But backstage, top Republicans were feting an actual ex-communist. Sali Berisha, an octogenarian leader of Albania’s opposition party, posted pictures of himself with Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward; former DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin; Medicare and Medicaid administrator Mehmet Oz; Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters; Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford; Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers; and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, among others. Berisha—who began his career as a member of the Balkan state’s communist party under the regime of repressive Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha—wasn’t alone. He posed with the GOP dignitaries alongside Fatmir Mediu, a former Albanian defense minister who has built close ties to Republicans including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Berisha also posed with in Dallas. > Me Ken Paxton, Prokurorin e Përgjithshëm të Texasit dhe kandidatin republikan > për Senatin e Shteteve të Bashkuara. pic.twitter.com/E4uK94SDuc > > — Sali Berisha (@saliberisha_) September 10, 2026 These interactions were notable in part because the US State Department, during the Biden presidency in 2021, designated Berisha a “persona non grata” due to “his involvement in significant corruption.” Berisha faces criminal charges in Albania over those allegations. At the time, the department had barred Berisha from entering the United States. But a few months ago, the Trump administration reversed course, granting him a visa waiver that allowed him to travel to the convention. In posts on X, Berisha characterized his backstage confabs in Dallas as important meetings in which he alleged that his chief political foe, Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama, is a corrupt beneficiary of Albanian drug smuggling. Rama denies those allegations. “We presented to the senior officials of President Trump’s administration and Congress the truth about the narcostate in Albania,” Berisha posted in Albanian. “The consequences for the economy and the demographic blow from Rama’s regime must come to an end.” Berisha asserted that his interaction with Blanche and Woodward was no mere photo op, but “an important meeting for Albania-US relations.” > Në Konventën Republikane në Dallas, së bashku me z. Fatmir Mediu, pata nderin > të takoja Prokurorin e Përgjithshëm të SHBA, Todd Blanche, dhe Zv. Prokurorin > e Përgjithshëm, Stanley Woodward Jr. Një takim i rëndësishëm për marrëdhëniet > Shqipëri–SHBA. pic.twitter.com/f7S5tpLZsk > > — Sali Berisha (@saliberisha_) September 11, 2026 It remains unclear what exactly Berisha was doing in Dallas. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about his meeting with Blanche. Spokespersons for the Republican National Committee and for Berisha’s political party, the Democratic Party of Albania, didn’t respond to questions either. And Republicans involved in organizing the event did not respond to questions about how Berisha’s attendance was arranged. The midterm convention was, in effect, a Republican fundraiser, with attendees asked to pony up thousands of dollars just to get in the door. Prices varied by state, but an invitation sent by the California GOP showed a price tag of $5,000 just for a balcony seat, with a tiered system in which the top level, “Golden VIP Access,” cost $250,000. A person who attended the convention told Mother Jones that the Florida GOP initially asked for a minimum contribution of $20,000 for tickets to the event before reducing the price tag to around $2,000 amid a lack of demand. California and Florida Republicans did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Berisha traveled to Dallas at the invitation of the International Democracy Union, an alliance of right-leaning political parties. In a letter, which Albanian news outlets reported on, the group described Berisha as part of a delegation. But it’s not clear if anyone besides the Albanian officials traveled to the US as part of the group. The International Democracy Union did not respond to inquiries. Berisha’s photographs with Republican officials suggest a high level of access, according to the person who attended the event. It is illegal for foreign nationals to donate to US political campaigns. And the visit has raised questions from Berisha critics, including among Albanian Americans, about who helped Berisha gain entree to the officials. “How’d Berisha get in there?” asked Gary Kokalari, president of Albanians for a Democratic Albania, an American group that advocates against corruption in the Balkan state, in an interview with Mother Jones. Ahead of last year’s May parliamentary election in Albania, Berisha’s party hired Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Berisha’s party also hired Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster, and Paul Manafort—who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign and was later convicted of violating foreign lobbying laws—as electoral advisers. In public appearances in Tirana, Albania’s capital, though, LaCivita worked to link Berisha to Trump. “We want to help elect a prime minister who is a true friend of the United States and who will successfully work with President Trump and the United States,” he said in one appearance. The Democratic Party of Albania reported paying LaCivita’s firm, Advancing Strategies, more than $1.6 million for his work there. LaCivita, who helped organize the Dallas event, has said that his work for Berisha was limited to electoral advice in Albanian domestic politics and that he has not lobbied the US government on behalf of Berisha. LaCivita told Mother Jones this week that he had “no involvement” in Berisha’s presence at the midterm convention, adding that he is “no longer involved” with Berisha’s Democratic Party of Albania. LaCivita declined to say whether he met with Berisha during the event. LaCivita is already under scrutiny over his work for another Balkan politician. Early this month, LaCivita and James Blair, both of whom work for the Trump-controlled super PAC MAGA Inc., traveled to a semi-autonomous Serbian enclave in Bosnia and Herzegovina to advise the Bosnia Serb party of Milorad Dodik ahead of an election there, the New York Times reported. Dodik is a nationalist who has denied international findings that Serbs engaged in genocide against Bosnians during that country’s civil war. He has also faced US sanctions over his push for the Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia, in defiance of the US-brokered Dayton Accords of 1995 that created Bosnia’s complex government. LaCivita and Blair faced criticism from Republicans because their work for Dodik appeared to interrupt their work supporting GOP candidates ahead of the US midterms. Trump last week threatened to “terminate” LaCivita and Blair if their outside work created a “conflict.” Dodik’s government has employed an array of Trump-linked lobbyists, who last year succeeded in winning removal of sanctions on the Bosnian Serb leader. Berisha has pursued a similar plan. The Democratic Party of Albania employs Continental Strategy LLP, a firm that includes a former top aide to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, to lobby for the removal of Berisha’s State Department designation. Continental’s Justice Department filings have noted extensive contacts with the State Department, including with Dan Holler, a longtime Rubio aide who works as counselor in the department. Berisha denies corruption charges, and Continental has asserted that the Albanian leader was a victim of a politicized sanction process that constituted the kind of “weaponization” Trump himself claims to have faced. Continental said it has been paid $750,000 for this work. The payments came through a murky arrangement involving an organization called the “Make Albania Great Again Foundation”—which was established by a New Jersey contractor at a suburban residential address last year around the time the lobbying contract began, picked up the tab. A spokesperson for Continental did not answer questions this week about the origin of funds but said that the firm had “filed all appropriate paperwork and complied with all requirements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.” The spokesperson said that Continental “played no role” in Berisha’s visit to Dallas. Continental’s lobbying appeared to bear fruit this summer when the State Department issued the waiver that allowed Berisha to travel to the United States for the GOP convention. While Berisha has said the waiver resolved his US designation, the State Department has not confirmed that. The department has not taken down its 2021 designation of Berisha, which said he was designated due “corrupt acts, such as misappropriation of public funds and interfering with public processes, including using his power for his own benefit and to enrich his political allies and his family members at the expense of the Albanian public’s confidence in their government institutions and public officials.” The State Department did not answer questions about the status of Berisha’s persona non grata designation. These allegations continue to complicate Berisha’s political plans. He still faces charges in Albania alleging that he corruptly helped his son-in-law privatize public land to build apartment complexes in Tirana, Albania’s capital. Berisha, who denies those charges, also faces a ban on traveling to the United Kingdom. The new US Ambassador to Albania, Eric Wendt, recently declined to meet with Berisha, in what Albanian media outlets have described as a pointed snub. Berisha is a political survivor who has staved off challenges to his control of Albania’s opposition and still hopes replace Rama, who appears politically weakened by widespread protests in Tirana—demonstrations prompted in part by Rama’s approval of a luxury resort being developed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on Albania’s coast. While the Tirana protests against Rama have been characterized as anti-Trump, Berisha continues to tout his own ties to the US president. And he clearly regards his Dallas visit—and his photos with high-level Trump administration officials—as a valuable assets in the effort.

On Wednesday evening, conservative businesspeople, digital influencers, and US government officials flocked to the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, for the Latino Wall Street-organized inaugural Hispanic Heritage Gala. The event’s guest of honor was Javier Milei, the far-right president of Argentina, who has been described as “Trump’s doppelgänger” and a “proxy” for the US leader in Latin America. But that evening, all eyes were on another politician: Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and brother of  presidential contender Flávio Bolsonaro. Attendees in sparkly gowns and tuxedos swarmed to Eduardo for selfies and handshakes. Many asked after his 71-year-old father, whose health issues have allowed him to serve a 27-year sentence for attempted coup at home. Others gushed over his brother Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead in the first round of a close presidential race against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He talked to MAGA media (including the boxer-turned-LindellTV White House correspondent Cara Castronuova) and posed alongside Javier Negre, a controversial Spanish communicator dubbed the “King Midas of virality” for right-wing propaganda. At one point, a woman approached to pray with him for Brazil.  Eduardo is more than a cheerleader for his would-be presidential sibling; he is poised to become the next foreign minister of Brazil in a potential Flávio Bolsonaro government. Since moving to the United States in early 2025, the younger Bolsonaro has lost his congressional seat for missing more than 80 percent of sessions and a job as a federal police investigator for “abandoning his post.” Last week, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a warrant for his arrest after he was sentenced to more than four years in prison for trying to interfere with his father’s criminal case by lobbying the Trump administration. But in the MAGA world, Eduardo is a star—and his brother’s ascent to power is a fait accompli.  Eduardo Bolsonaro attended the Hispanic Heritage Gala in Washington, DC on October 14, 2026.Isabela Dias “We’re going to kick out the communist dictator in Brazil, and we’ll paint the continent blue,” Milei roared after warmly hugging Eduardo, who threw kicks in the air. Conservatives, he said, “cannot give an inch in our reconquest of the hemisphere.” Eduardo cautioned that the election results weren’t final yet, but the tone was openly celebratory. “When we confirm the victory of my brother Senator Flávio Bolsonaro as president of Brazil,” he said in a speech that followed Milei’s, “we’re going to achieve a new, what I call, the Golden Era of Latin America.” The optimism in the room wasn’t unjustified. Flávio came out ahead of Lula following the first round of voting, albeit by a small margin, and the election of conservative candidates to Congress all but guarantees that the legislature will move further to the right. The presidential race will be decided in a runoff on October 25. A Bolsonaro win would bring Brazil—Latin America’s largest economy and a coveted prize for its wealth of rare earths—back into the fold of populist right-wing leaders ideologically aligned with Trump, sealing the “orange wave” that has swept a region the American president sees as his sphere of influence. “We have everything to be just like the US,” Eduardo said.  The former lawmaker has used his ties to Trump’s circle to court the White House to impose tariffs on Brazil and sanctions on judicial authorities like Moraes while making the case for his father’s freedom. Trump heeded the call, linking a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods announced last year to a “witch hunt” trial against Jair Bolsonaro and accusing Brazil’s government officials of “persecuting” the former president. In May, a couple of days after Eduardo and Flávio Bolsonaro met with Trump, the US government designated two criminal groups active in Brazil as terrorist organizations. If Flávio Bolsonaro’s victory materializes, Brazil is expected to join the Shield of the Americas coalition. Despite his alleged connections to militia groups in Rio de Janeiro, Flávio has positioned himself as a tough-on-crime candidate, invoking the brutal regime of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador as an example to be followed. Flávio and Eduardo have visited CECOT, the mega prison where migrants sent by the Trump administration reported being tortured. At the gala, Eduardo name-checked Bukele and praised Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella, who calls himself “El Tigre,” for posing in front of body bags.  “Everybody who gives a hard time to the criminals, we love,” he remarked, adding that “for the first time we’re going to see all the countries [in Latin America] fighting narcoterrorism.” The audience approved. One real estate entrepreneur who does business in Honduras told me he found the speech “inspirational” and that Brazil should implement the “Bukele model.” As speakers on stage talked about getting rid of crime and defeating socialism, guests who paid between $3,000 and $10,000 to be there enjoyed wagyu meatballs, smoked duck with blackberries, grilled stuffed avocado, and smoked beef tenderloin. “The best is yet to come,” Eduardo declared, vowing to free Brazil, starting with his father.  The Brazilian elections have raised the specter of outside influence, with the country’s intelligence agency warning of risk of US interference in light of the Trump administration’s priority of reaffirming its hegemony in Latin America. Earlier this year, the Brazilian government denied visas to two senior State Department officials whose visit was intended to cast doubt on Brazil’s voting system ahead of the election. Several Democrats have accused the Trump administration of “acting as an agent of interference and destabilization,” citing a “troubling pattern of interference” in electoral processes in Argentina, Honduras, and Colombia. Trump, experts have observed, is playing “kingmaker” in the region. (The event’s organizers lamented that Trump couldn’t be there because he was in Alaska campaigning ahead of the midterms. But after several minutes of audio issues, they showed a recorded message from the president urging US voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot and get out to vote.) Speaking to reporters before the gala, Eduardo dismissed concerns that the United States is meddling in Brazil’s elections, repeating unfounded claims that, during the Biden administration, USAID funded NGOs and the media to prevent the re-election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 under the guise of fighting disinformation. “Brazil has already suffered international interference,” he said. “What I see now is the opposite.” First order of business would be to “purge this cancer called Alexandre de Moraes from the Supreme Court,” Eduardo said, calling the justice a “tyrant.” Otherwise, he added, his brother wouldn’t be able to govern. When asked if he had plans to return to Brazil, he said he wouldn’t want to go to jail, “being innocent.”  Eduardo Bolsonaro signed a painting by “America First artist” Lena Ruseva.Isabela Dias Eduardo moved around the ballroom shadowed by far-right blogger Allan dos Santos, a close Bolsonaro ally and self-described “most persecuted journalist in the world.” Dos Santos, who lives in the United States, is considered a fugitive from Brazilian justice in the context of probes into the dissemination of fake news and creation of digital militias. A fixture of US conservative events, Eduardo rubbed elbows with an Italian influencer who supports Germany’s far-right AfD party and schmoozed with CPAC chair Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes. She gave the Bolsonaros a shoutout in her speech, predicting Flávio would be elected president of Brazil. “We got Latin America back on track,” she said.  Toward the end of the evening, as guests danced to La Bamba, Conga, and the Macarena, I chatted with Lena Ruseva, who wore a long red dress with Trump’s face on it and the words “drill, baby, drill.” Calling herself an “America First Artist,” Ruseva said Milei had liked the portrait she did of him for the occasion so much that he wanted it for himself. She took similar pride in the painting she said she gave President Trump for one of his birthdays. Some of her work was displayed around the ballroom for auction, with bids starting at $10,000. Among them was a depiction of the American flag with the outline of Latin America on it. Eduardo Bolsonaro signed the piece in golden letters. “I told him I was going to keep it until he became the next president of Brazil,” she said. This article was published in partnership with Agência Pública.

The Trump administration has desperately searched for evidence that Rep. Ilhan Omar committed fraud, alleging she or her late father are liars for changing her age from 18 to 17 years old on her citizenship application. According to what US officials and other people with knowledge of the federal government’s investigation told the Wall Street Journal, the goal is to construct a case to strip the Minnesota congresswoman of her American citizenship and deport her from the US. Omar became a US citizen in 2000, five years after arriving from a refugee camp in Kenya after she and her family fled the Somali Civil War. Early Monday morning, the Journal reported, Homeland Security agents took Omar’s phone, notebooks, personal computers, and her passport during the raid on her DC home. Authorities have also reportedly handed out more than a dozen subpoenas, which the New York Times wrote Wednesday include Sahra Noor, Omar’s sister, and “at least one other member of her family circle.  On Monday evening, the crowd at an Ohio Republican rally chanted “deport” as President Donald Trump yet again hurled racist rhetoric at Omar, people from Somalia living in Minnesota—whom he called “Somali bandits”—and Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed (Trump called him “a jihadist”).  On Tuesday, the president suggested on Truth Social that Omar had also committed financial fraud: “Could it be that her highly paid accountant actually reported the money that was stolen from her fraudulent account activities in Minnesota?” The same day, Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney in Washington, said she is looking into Omar’s financial disclosures.  “There are several investigations going on,” she said Tuesday on Fox News. “If there was a crime that was committed, it will be prosecuted.” The US attorney also asserted it “doesn’t matter” that a nonpartisan, independent body found Omar blameless of wrongdoing and recommended the House Ethics Committee withdraw misconduct allegations when she substantially overstated her wealth in documents she submitted to Congress. All of this is happening just three weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is favored to win reelection.

President Donald Trump said Thursday morning that the government will no longer livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan. The firing squad killing, scheduled for December 3, will be the first such execution carried out by the military since 1945. “I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the execution of Hasan, who opened fire on dozens of people at a military installation in 2009, would be publicly streamable. Since then, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has come out in support of the plan (“no one has to watch it” if they don’t want to, Mullin said). The execution livestream’s supporters also include weapons-tech titans such as Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, who wrote that to “revel in the death of those who truly deserve it…is normal, good, and aligned with our natural and national order.” Eight in ten Americans, according to a poll released by ABC News today, disagree. So do 72 retired US generals, who wrote a letter calling the idea of an execution livestream “barbaric.” Parenting experts have voiced fears that children might inadvertently witness a man’s death via YouTube autoplay or memes. Though Trump called off the Pentagon’s plan to broadcast the shooting, he was clear that Hasan “will die as scheduled” on December 3rd. The United States has executed 31 people in 2026 so far. It’s one of a few dozen nations that have the death penalty on the books—most of which do not actually carry out executions. According to Amnesty International, only 17 countries, including the US, executed anyone in 2025. “The execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”

Christian nationalism—the idea that strict adherence to Christian theology should govern American political life, separation of church and state be damned—has been on the rise in America for years. Some vanguard elements of this revolutionary movement believe adherents are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States, seeking command of schools, public policy, and even the courts. Its ascendancy helped propel Donald Trump into the White House the first time, and it continues to find purchase at the highest rungs of government, including inside Trump’s second-term cabinet. How is the movement impacting the midterm elections? Our guest on this new episode of Stress Test is Kiera Butler, a Mother Jones national correspondent who has tracked Christian nationalism for years and documented the shifting fortunes of its top leaders. In Trump’s first term, the charismatic prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation held sway. In his second, the ascendant figures are more ascetic, chief among them Doug Wilson, pastor and founder of Christ Church, a more Calvinist congregation in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson also co-created the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a global network of 160 congregations—including the one attended by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “Pete Hegseth, who has started these worship sessions in the Pentagon, brought Doug Wilson in earlier this year as a speaker,” Kiera says. “You have this very clear line from this Christian nationalist leader, Doug Wilson, right to Pete Hegseth, who is very close to President Trump.” Kiera joins host Garrison Hayes to discuss the movement’s rising political influence, and the current state of religion in politics more broadly: how it is shaping leaders like Hegseth and JD Vance, and how the right has pushed to rebrand basic Christian empathy as a sin. Garrison, himself a former pastor, observes how the left is trying to reclaim the space: “You have a candidate like James Talarico, who is actively talking about Jesus as a person who invites the stranger and the immigrant. And so you have this kind of warring and competing vision of Christianity playing out in American politics.” What’s stressing Kiera out? “Fundamentalism in all of its forms,” she says. “When I look around and I see people who are against religious pluralism and who are actively trying to undermine the separation of church and state, that’s what freaks me out.” This transcript was generated with automated tools and may contain errors. Garrison Hayes: Talk about faith during these midterms is kind of everywhere. We’re talking about Islam and Judaism. And of course, if you’re anything like me, you’re interested in the conversation about Christianity that’s happening again during the midterms. If you’ve been keyed in on the political conversation that we’ve been having here in America, then you know that you’re well aware that this conversation about Christianity and faith isn’t only limited to the right wing. Both Democrats and Republicans are leveraging the common language of faith to appeal to voters in this time. And so, who better to talk to than my colleague Kiera Butler? She’s been diving deep into Christian nationalism, following it closely for a very long time. Welcome back. This is Stress Test from Mother Jones. I’m Garrison Hayes, and we’ve been talking about the midterms kind of nonstop. That’s what this show is all about. And I’m really, really excited to dig into this conversation. I’ll tell you, in the last episode, David Corn, my co-host, and I had a great conversation with Mother Jones reporter Russ Choma on the money side of the upcoming midterm election. There’s so much there around who’s funding who, campaign finance, potential malfeasance, all that stuff is kind of there, and you definitely want to go back and check it out. If you missed it, you can watch that on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/motherjones. Definitely go check that out. But I think this conversation is also really interesting and really, really important. We’re talking about the role of faith in the current political economy. So without further ado, I want to welcome national correspondent Kiera Butler onto the stage here with me to talk about today’s topic. Kiera’s been keeping a close tab on extremism and Christian nationalism here in the United States for a while. Kiera, welcome to the show. Kiera Butler: Thank you so much for having me, Garrison. GH: Of course, of course. I want to start with where we are right now. You know, I made something a little over a year ago after Charlie Kirk’s death. I watched his memorial service, and it felt like a revival. It also kind of felt like the kind of peak of Christian nationalist fervor in this country. I don’t know if I’m misreading that. You’ve been, of course, staying close on this. And so a year later, heading into the midterms, are we still seeing that same momentum that many Christian nationalist types were riding after the unfortunate and untimely assassination of Charlie Kirk? KB: Yeah, you know, that was certainly a flashpoint. Charlie Kirk’s murder hit a lot of people really hard in the Christian community, and not just Christian nationalists either. You know, I think that was a real reckoning in that community. And in some ways it was a unifying force, and in other ways, you know, we saw new divisions kind of coming to light after that. I would say that since then it’s not that there’s any less Christian nationalism, it’s just that it’s looking a little bit different, and we can get into that. GH: Yeah, I’d like to get into it. And it felt like in some ways some people were trying to use that as a way to advance a more stringent Christian nationalist agenda. And I’m curious if you were seeing the same thing up close. KB: Yeah, so I like to put the Christian nationalists into kind of two different buckets, right? You’ve got the kind of more old-school evangelical charismatic Christian nationalists. These are folks, I’ve done a little bit of reporting on the New Apostolic Reformation. This is a movement where, you know, self-proclaimed prophets will talk about politics as kind of a mountain to be conquered. There are these seven mountains that, you know, culture and entertainment and politics and education. There’s, you know, several more as well. And these folks, you know, if you picture kind of your evangelical megachurch, you know, the worship band, people kind of swaying back and forth, it’s a very kind of interactive style of worship. This was the movement that really defined Trump’s first presidency. You know, this is Paula White-Cain, who is actually still Trump’s spiritual adviser, but this movement was ascendant, and you saw January 6, 2021, was a big moment for these folks. You know, that this movement was very influential in that storming of the Capitol and in election denialism. In Trump’s second term, we’ve really seen the emergence, or I guess the ascendancy, of a different kind of Christian nationalism. We’ve seen a group of folks who I wrote about about two years ago for the first time called the TheoBros. These folks are Reformed Christians, and Reformed theology is a whole thing, as you know, Garrison. It’s—there’s a lot to it. But basically, these folks believe that God decides in advance who’s going to heaven. Their worship style is much more restrained. They sing hymns and psalms, you know, that they are not the, like, you know, soaring worship band, pastor in jeans, like, you know, strutting back and forth. They’re very almost puritanical in their worship style. These folks, though, are pretty extreme in their beliefs. A lot of them believe women shouldn’t be able to vote. A lot of them believe in bringing—they call it prison reform, but by prison reform they mean bringing back public flogging and public execution, which, you know, we’ve seen—we’ve just seen a whole news cycle about that recently. And, you know, they also—they’re self-proclaimed Christian nationalists. They will come right out and say, you know, I believe that the Ten Commandments should be replacing the US Constitution. So I should say, you know, that was kind of a long-winded way of explaining these two Christian nationalist camps that I notice and, you know, really saying that the latter, the TheoBros, I see as more influential politically these days. GH: Yeah, that’s a good point to kind of transition, because the idea here, you know, as you’re saying with the folks who are more influential, is to really have the ear of the president, the people who are really wanting to have a little bit more influence on exactly what kind of comes out. And I guess my question in all of this is, who are the people who have the ear of the president in this time, and who are the leaders that are influencing those who will likely be elected in these midterm elections? KB: One of the most influential Christians who has Trump’s ear is Pete Hegseth, secretary of, as he says, war. He is a Reformed Christian. He certainly belongs to this camp of TheoBros that I was just talking about. His faith—he belongs to a church that is in a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. This is a Christian nationalist denomination. It was started by a guy named Doug Wilson, who’s a pastor in Moscow, Idaho. I’ve spent a lot of time reporting about Doug Wilson and his beliefs, and he is the spiritual adviser of Pete Hegseth. And in fact, Pete Hegseth, who has started these, like, worship sessions in the Pentagon, brought Doug Wilson in earlier this year as a speaker at the Pentagon. So, you know, in Pete Hegseth, you have this very clear line from this Christian nationalist leader, Doug Wilson, right to Pete Hegseth, who is very close to President Trump. I will also say that JD Vance, even though he’s a Catholic, so he’s a kind of a different flavor, he mixes pretty freely with this group of TheoBros. A lot of the TheoBros have connections to Silicon Valley. And JD Vance became acquainted with them during his time in Silicon Valley with the world of Peter Thiel, another Christian thinker. And so JD Vance is—he’s very influenced by this, by the TheoBro movement, by some of the, I would say, like, postliberal intellectual circles that JD Vance moves in have influenced him quite a bit. GH: Yeah, well, Kiera, you kind of undersold yourself. You haven’t just been reporting on Doug Wilson. I want to come back to JD Vance and the folks inside the White House in a bit, but you haven’t just been reporting on Doug Wilson. You actually went out to Moscow, Idaho, to talk to him. You interviewed him, and I’m curious what that was like, and what did you see when you were there? KB: Yeah, I’ve actually been to Moscow twice now. So in Moscow, it’s—I have to say, it’s an adorable town. I felt so at home there. I used to live in Berkeley, California, and it reminded me of, like, a mini Berkeley, like college town, you know, think, like, little cozy cafes and, like, couches on porches, and, you know, the University of Idaho is the big college that’s there, and their mascot is the Vandal. And so you see this, like, little Vandal things everywhere. Super cute town, really beautiful part of the country. It’s kind of in the northwest corner of Idaho. But Doug Wilson has this project there. He’s trying to make Moscow, Idaho, into his own little Christian fiefdom. He’s said this. This is something that he’s, you know, fully, you know, states as a goal of his, and he’s done a pretty good job. He started this church, which is now a whole denomination of Reformed Christians. I think there’s something like 160 churches around the world in this denomination. In the county, Latah County, in Moscow, where he is, there are seven churches that are related to his original one. He started a publishing house that’s now a media company. It’s called Canon Press, K through 12 Christian school, a college called New Saint Andrews— GH: I’m jumping in only because, Kiera, I imagine someone watching this is like, okay, he has a, you know, a press and a media company and he has a church that’s maybe growing, perhaps. What are some of the things that a person or someone who subscribes to Doug Wilson’s beliefs, or maybe just Doug Wilson himself—he can speak for himself—what does he believe? As I understand it, there are things that they believe about women and about the gender roles and all of this stuff. Can you get into some of the beliefs? KB: Yeah, absolutely. So Doug is a proud—well, I’ll say Doug is a fan of the patriarchy. His religion, his denomination is patriarchal. Women do not hold leadership roles in his church. He believes in household voting, which is actually something JD Vance has mentioned too, where the head of the household would vote for the entire household. And Doug Wilson believes that men should be the heads of households, and that wives should be submissive to their husbands. That’s a strong core of his belief. Related to that, he also believes that women are ill suited for combat roles in the military, which of course gets important when you think about what Pete Hegseth is doing with the US military. And in addition to that, you know, he has the sort of beliefs that you would expect from a kind of a fundamentalist Christian. He believes gay marriage should be illegal. He believes abortion should be illegal, that abortion should be considered murder. GH: It actually may be helpful, Kiera, to just hear from Doug Wilson. I’d love to play a little bit of tape, a little snippet from your interview with Doug Wilson back in September, where you asked him about his relationship with the defense secretary, or the secretary of war, as he calls himself. And then I want to ask you about what you thought of his answer. So let’s hear from Doug Wilson first. [Clip plays.] GH: You know, it really strikes me that he is almost trying to downplay his kind of connection and role. That’s what kind of stood out to me. What stood out to you, Kiera? KB: Yeah, you know, what stood out to me in all of my interactions with Doug Wilson when I was there in Moscow is that he is kind of very different when I’m interviewing him, like, you know, when I’m talking to him in person, than he is in some of the viral clips of him that have gone around. You know, he famously said to CNN, like, women are the kind of people who people come out of. In it—I don’t know, like, in his speech at a National Conservatism Conference two years ago, he said, I’m a Presbyterian, not a Lesbyterian. He talks about the tranny flag a lot. He, you know, uses the word retarded, retard. He, you know, he is so much more measured when I’ve been talking to him one-on-one, or, you know, you saw his wife Nancy there in that clip, with her as well. It really is, like, I’ve been thinking of it as, like, a tale of two Dougs. GH: That’s fascinating. You bring out the—like, maybe you have, like, an energy that brings the respect out of him in some way. I don’t know what you think that is. KB: Well, I think part of it is that he knows who he’s talking to, right? Before I ever went to Moscow, I’d been emailing back and forth with him, and to his credit, like, he will always answer my emails, but he’ll often work in, like, a little dig at the end. Like, he’ll be like, Okay, and that’s what I think, and you can go write that in your commie publication. So he certainly is aware of the Mother Jones readership, I guess. The other thing I think that is relevant here is that he—every time he’s—he told me during that same interview that you just played a clip from, I asked him, like, is there any part of this when you have a clip that goes viral or, you know, when you say something particularly controversial and there’s a lot of media scrutiny, like, is there anything that’s good for you and your movement when that happens? And he said, absolutely, it’s great for us. You know, people see what I’m saying and they, you know, want to move to Moscow, Idaho, or they want to, you know, find their nearest Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches church. Another one of his core beliefs is that Christians—like, Christian nationalism is very literal to him. So in his ideal version of a Christian America, people of other faiths would not be allowed to hold office. And he gave me an example: Like, Muslims in his Christian America would be able to practice their faith, but they would not be able to build a minaret. So this is a very kind of muscular version of Christian nationalism that he’s imagining. GH: Yeah, there’s something about it that, you know, I don’t think it always goes unsaid, so I won’t make that statement, but it isn’t said enough that there’s something, I think, deeply bigoted about a lot of what Christian nationalism is trying to advance. I mean, you have—obviously this is Islamophobic in nature. We know that there is actually a ton of anti-Blackness that kind of pops up among some of these, quote-unquote, TheoBros, as you call them. And obviously we also have seen a great deal of antisemitism present in Christian nationalism. In the conversations that you’ve been having with Christian nationalists, have any of those elements of bigotry come up when they aren’t being polite, good little boys? KB: Yeah, you know, anytime you ask about immigration, that’s kind of the tell, right? That, like, you know, the both kinds of Christian nationalists, both the New Apostolic Reformation, kind of the charismatic, Pentecostal evangelicals, and the TheoBros, these Reformed guys, like, none of them are, you know, pro-immigrant in any way. And the only—well, no, definitely will not say the only, but an interesting tension comes when you think about Catholics, right? And, you know, JD Vance has gotten himself into some trouble with this. JD Vance obviously is very—it’s kind of a hard line on immigration, but his Catholic faith is in conflict with that. You know, there’s social justice teaching in Catholicism, that, you know, to be welcoming to immigrants, to, you know, extend empathy to immigrants is a core tenet of that faith. So there’s been some interesting tension there. And I’m actually curious, Garrison, what you’ve noticed along those lines as you’ve been looking at folks on the left and Christians in those circles. GH: Yeah, I mean, well, you have this big showdown happening in Texas, where you have the Republican Party has, of course, taken the position of being anti-immigration and taking pretty hard lines on immigration. And then on the Democratic side, you have a candidate like James Talarico, who is actively talking about Jesus as a person who invites the stranger and the immigrant. And so you have this kind of warring and competing vision of Christianity, I think, playing out in American politics. You know, it’s really interesting to see the way that scripture is leveraged on both sides of this conversation. I, of course, have my own perspective in all of this, but I’m really curious to see how Americans who have obviously voted now for Donald Trump—some subset, some section of Americans have voted for Donald Trump, who always ran on an anti-immigration kind of platform—they voted for him now three times, right? And obviously elected him twice. And so I’m kind of interested how a state like Texas, where this conversation isn’t just theoretical, it’s very much kind of playing out in the practical—I’m curious how that will play out from an electoral perspective. But it is interesting to see how Christians on the center left are thinking about Christianity as a way to advance their political agenda. And I don’t think it’s necessarily new. I wouldn’t describe it as new. Black Christians have absolutely across the South been using and leveraging their faith in electoral politics for a long time. I mean, the Souls to the Polls movement has been a really significant way to get Black voters out to go vote, but I’m seeing it in kind of outside of Black circles in a way that does feel a little new, and I’ve been really curious where that’s coming from. KB: I’m curious if you’re hearing in your circles anything about empathy, because one of the big themes over the last year or two, I would say, in the right-wing Christian nationalist circles is the notion of empathy as a sin. The idea that kind of an excess of empathy and/or misplaced empathy is sinful and is something that, you know, Christians need to repent for. And this, particularly with immigration, I would say, you know, folks are saying, like, you know, if you’re welcoming everybody and if you’re, you know, if you’re having a, you know, a bleeding heart for, you know, all of these people who are flooding over the borders, then that is a sin. You’re sinning. What are you hearing in your circles? GH: You know, I’m certainly hearing the opposite of that. This idea is, of course, a part of, to your point, a kind of certain type of Christian nationalist thinking. It’s certainly a talking point. There’s a commentator named Allie Beth Stuckey who wrote an entire book around this called Toxic Empathy. And so I’ll take the reporting hat off for just a moment here. And as a former pastor, I will say that the notion of having some kind of empathy for the stranger, for your neighbor, understanding, welcoming them in, that is a very common theme throughout scripture. You know, whatever you do to the least of these, you’ve done unto me, and, you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a really common theme throughout the synoptic gospels. And so it’s hard to kind of wrap my mind around, as a former pastor, it’s hard to really wrap my mind around this as a sin. Okay, that’s kind of difficult to find, I think, in scripture. But I will say, you know, I’m really curious, you know, what—you know, putting the reporter hat back on, you know, maybe for a moment here—I’m really curious if this is cutting through. And I, you know, Kiera, maybe you have access to some polling data and what people are actually feeling here in the moment, but I’ve been really curious to learn more about how Christians are responding to this. I mean, truly, love thy neighbor feels so fundamental to the kind of ethic of Christianity that it’s hard to imagine what Christianity is without it. And I would, you know, use that term, love thy neighbor, as kind of a proxy for this concept of empathy. KB: Yeah, I mean, that’s—to me, when I first heard about Allie Beth Stuckey’s book, and also a co-pastor of Doug Wilson’s, Joe Rigney, wrote a very similar book, and when I first heard about it, I thought to myself, just like you were saying, it seems incompatible with basic Christian teachings. But, you know, I think it was maybe it was last year when JD Vance was talking about this, when he sort of got into it about the ordo amoris, the Latin for rightly ordered love, I guess. He was talking about, you know, how you should love, or God wants you to love your family first and then, you know, your extended family, and it kind of is, you know, this concentric-circle model of who you should devote your care and empathy to, and the farther out you get from your kind of core nuclear family, the less you should love. And he used that to sort of explain his stance on immigration. And the pope actually came back and was like, That’s not what that means, which was—it was just kind of a funny little disagreement. But I agree, you know, I don’t have any polling. I don’t know whether there’s polling on this issue of empathy or not, and if there is, I don’t have it at my fingertips, but I am very curious about how Christians are receiving that notion. GH: You know, I think a lot of this really depends on something that I’ve heard pastors say for a long time, which is that people aren’t really reading their Bibles anymore, and that there’s this kind of—there’s a real concern that Christians are getting further and further removed from the kind of primary source text in all of this. I will say, as a person who again has kind of studied this stuff and was a pastor for a while, that a part of the Ten Commandments is, you know, the fourth commandment talks about the extension of rest, and it really goes all the way out to the stranger that’s in your country, the stranger in your gates, and then it works backwards from there all the way to the person who lives in your home, a family member. And so this kind of notion that one is supposed to love closer and then maybe kind of work your way out, it kind of, like, there’s something, I’d say, maybe intuitive about that, the idea of proximity, but I think the Bible writers go out of their way to invert that as a way of, I think, reaffirming the importance of loving those far away from you. Okay, this isn’t Bible study, Kiera Butler. KB: I do want to say, though, this made me think of something, and I can’t help but mention it. There is a Progressive Baptist church—and I live in Atlanta, and there’s a Progressive Baptist church in my neighborhood—and they have a bunch of signs outside the church, and one of the signs is, like, somebody drew, like, almost like a child’s drawing of Jesus, and the speech bubble says, Y’all, that is not what I said. GH: Right. Right. Okay. I want to move us on. You just kind of closed out a big investigation about this organization called Life Surge. I loved your episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. It was so good. You went to this event, you kind of dug deep. If you don’t know, Life Surge is a Christian roadshow that’s tied to the former star quarterback Tim Tebow, and it was great. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about that and where we can go find it. What’s kind of interesting about that investigation? KB: Yeah, so Life Surge is—their main event that they draw people in with is, like, a roadshow. It’s, like, a one-day event that’s where they kind of mix, like, worship and motivational speakers. Many of their speakers are, like, athletes, like really famous athletes like Tim Tebow, and, you know, they’ve had Magic Johnson, they’ve had David Ortiz, just, like, you know, super famous people. And during that day they try to get you to sign up for these—what they call Impact Classes, and they’re, like, financial—like, they teach you how to invest in the stock market, teach you how to, like, flip houses and, you know, allegedly make a bunch of money in real estate. And then once you go to the three-day classes, then they try to sell you on packages of investment training that cost, like, you know, packages that range from, like, $10,000 to, like, $50,000. And so my investigation focused on how folks who have done these classes have said that the salespeople are using faith to sell them on a product that they can’t afford. So I’ve, you know, talked to people who have ended up tens of thousands of dollars in debt and said things like, you know, that the salesperson said, If you’re having doubts about whether you want to buy this financial package, that was the devil. The devil was putting doubts in your mind. So that was the investigation. You know, an interesting thing, I guess, just in the wake of the investigation, Tim Tebow cut or paused his ties with Life Surge, and a bunch of the other high-profile speakers did as well. So that was—it was really interesting to see that impact there of our investigation. But, you know, I think because the investigation really got a lot of attention, I’ve gotten a lot of tips from people and, you know, threads to follow, and it really does seem like this is sort of the tip of the iceberg, the world of Christian finance seminars that people are, you know, spending a lot of money and at times losing a lot of money. This is a real wing of, I guess, the right-wing Christian movement that I had not explored before. So I think it’s something to keep an eye on going forward, for sure. GH: I think so, Kiera. I’m excited to see more of what you uncover. Okay, before we let you go, I want to ask you the question that we’re asking all of our guests here on this show: After all of your Christian nationalist reporting and all of that, what’s stressing you out the most? KB: What’s stressing me out the most? Fundamentalism in all of its forms. You know, I think—and that is not unique to Christianity, of course. To me, when I look around and I see people who are against religious pluralism and who are actively trying to undermine the separation of church and state, that’s what freaks me out. GH: Listen, to our viewers and our listeners, Kiera has another Doug Wilson story in the works, along with some of the excellent sneak preview reporting that you heard here today. It’s important, it’s fascinating. These stories are so, so important. They have incredible impact, as you already heard. So make sure you follow her reporting on MotherJones.com. Kiera Butler, thank you. KB: Thank you so much for having me. GH: That’s all we have for you in today’s episode. If you missed the previous episodes of Stress Test, you can watch them on our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts. Our great journalism here at Mother Jones—Kiera’s reporting, Russ Choma’s reporting, Ari Berman’s reporting—all of that is made possible with your support. Your views, your subscriptions keep us going. So don’t forget to like and to share and to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them for us down in the comments below. Our producers love reading your comments. We’ll be back in just a couple of days with another edition of Stress Test. Until then, take care.

“È la generazione, attraverso modelli, di un reale privo di origine o di realtà: un iper reale. Il territorio non precede più la mappa, né le sopravvive. È tuttavia la mappa che precede il territorio -la precessione dei simulacri- a generare il territorio”, Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacres et Simulation”, 1981. Jorge Luis Borges racconta di un antico impero in cui l’arte della cartografia si sviluppa sino al punto in cui i geografi imperiali pretendono che la mappa di una provincia occupi un’intera città. Questa deriva li porta, alla fine, a ritenere che l’unica mappa accettabile sia quella uno a uno, perché capace di dar conto dei dettagli di un impero tanto grande e meraviglioso. La mappa viene creata e sovrapposta a coprire il territorio. Il delirio collettivo si conclude solo con la generazione successiva: gli eredi dei cartografi si rendono conto che una mappa del genere non ha alcuna utilità e l’abbandonano al suo destino. Scrive Borges: “Nei deserti dell’Ovest restano ancora lacere rovine della mappa, abitate da animali e mendicanti; nell’intero Paese non vi sono altre reliquie delle discipline geografiche”. L’effetto collaterale dell’abbandono della mappa è la distruzione, con essa, delle discipline geografiche. Non a caso un effetto assai simile a quanto accaduto nei due precedenti “inverni dell’Ai” seguiti all’entusiasmo acritico degli anni Cinquanta e poi degli anni Ottanta. Dopo lo sversamento all’esterno dei laboratori di ricerca dei modelli linguistici seguito al lancio di ChatGPT, informatica e politica sembrano preda di un pensiero molto simile a quello dei cartografi del racconto di Borges. La sana fiducia nell’utilità di modelli matematici per predire il comportamento del mondo fisico si è tramutata in fede cieca e assoluta. Secondo le imprese della Silicon Valley (e i loro protettori alla Casa Bianca) dovremmo prendere questi modelli a nostra “mappa del mondo”, per orientarci nel prendere decisioni importanti, soprattutto in emergenza. In effetti l’intento dei ricercatori che hanno creato questi modelli linguistici è davvero molto simile a quello dei cartografi del racconto. Il procedimento di ottimizzazione del modello, ribattezzato addestramento, produce un “riassunto per sommi capi” di tutti i dati in mano al ricercatore che lo crea. Queste tecniche fanno parte della famiglia delle compressioni con perdita, di cui fa parte anche l’algoritmo per ridurre le dimensioni di un file musicale al formato .mp3. Nel formato “riassunto” (detto “il modello”) i dati meno comuni sono sottorappresentati, mentre quelli più comuni sono sovrarappresentati, producono quindi una simulazione distorta della realtà, un po’ come le mappe geografiche sono infedeli rispetto alle vere dimensioni dei Paesi (anche se per un motivo differente). Questo è uno dei sensi della frase “un modello linguistico funziona probabilisticamente”: le situazioni più comuni vengono rappresentate meglio di quelle rare. Detto questo, l’utilità di imbarcarsi in tale procedimento di ottimizzazione è che una volta “trasformati i dati in modello” possiamo provare ad accedervi attraverso prompt (ossia “sollecitazioni”) scritte nel nostro linguaggio. Se poi trascuriamo la perdita e fingiamo che il modello sia una simulazione fedele del mondo esterno potremmo risparmiare tempo, aumentare la produttività e risolvere problemi che, nel mondo reale, potrebbero richiedere tempi e risorse irragionevoli. Purtroppo, però, la perdita non solo non è trascurabile, a seconda dei casi -come vedremo- può essere una questione di vita o di morte. Nel trascurare la perdita si trasforma -come scrive il filosofo Jean Baudrillard- una simulazione in simulacro. Questo significa, per continuare a usare la metafora del racconto, pretendere di sostituire la mappa al territorio. Questa fallacia sarebbe rimasta confinata nel mondo della matematica astratta se le imprese della Silicon Valley non avessero un bisogno disperato di farci usare questa tecnologia per poter ripagare, almeno in parte, gli enormi investimenti al buio fatti dalla Borsa statunitense. Ma il costo di questi sistemi è talmente sproporzionato da non potersi ripagare grazie al mercato. È una tecnologia che può sopravvivere solo alle grasse commesse pubbliche, meglio se militari. Ecco perché, il 25 febbraio di quest’anno, il segretario alla Guerra del governo Trump, Pete Hegseth, ha lanciato un ultimatum ad Anthropic: rimuovere entro 48 ore ogni restrizione al suo Claude (uno dei maggiori modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni dopo ChatGPT) o perdere il contratto di fornitura con il Pentagono. La risposta di Anthropic è stata negativa e il contratto è stato rescisso, aprendo le porte alla concorrente OpenAI, i cui vertici sono entusiasti sostenitori economici della campagna di Trump. La richiesta del Pentagono era rendere possibile “ogni uso lecito”: una definizione volutamente ambigua, che avrebbe aperto la strada ai sistemi d’arma automatici (inclusi quelli atomici), così come ai sistemi di sorveglianza della popolazione civile, senza alcun controllo da parte della magistratura. La mossa era da attendersi, visto il memorandum rilasciato solo un mese prima, che imponeva al dipartimento della Guerra una politica “Ai first” con diktat su come potenziare lo sviluppo e la sperimentazione di agenti per la gestione delle operazioni di combattimento e il supporto decisionale basati sull'Ai, dalla pianificazione della campagna all'esecuzione della “kill chain” Un linguaggio da far accapponare la pelle, il cui significato è fin troppo chiaro: prevedere l’uso di modelli linguistici per calcolare gli obiettivi (come già fatto da Israele), arrivando a creare una kill chain, ossia una catena di montaggio degli omicidi automatizzati. Il software utilizzato per questa operazione? Il modello Claude, di Anthropic. Quindi, l’azienda che -almeno in apparenza- si sta coraggiosamente scontrando con il “cattivo” Hegseth per imporgli limiti sugli usi più scandalosi dell’Ai ha già, nei fatti, violato quei limiti che dichiara di voler presidiare. Questo apparente ossimoro è facilmente spiegato: una volta creati sistemi in grado di uccidere senza intervento umano, sperare che vengano “usati bene” grazie all’etica dell’utilizzatore è, per l’appunto, una pia speranza. È necessario intervenire prima, avendo il coraggio di bandire alcune tecnologie. A questo punto il bombardamento della scuola Minab il 28 febbraio 2026 -con le sue 175 vittime, in maggioranza bambine- assume l’aspetto di una terrificante conseguenza logica. Secondo i giornalisti investigativi statunitensi l’ipotesi più probabile è che Claude abbia commesso un errore: o per mancanza di sufficienti dati (le cosiddette “allucinazioni”), o perché i dati con cui era stato ottimizzato non erano stati aggiornati. A quel punto il bombardamento ha cancellato la scuola dall’isolato occupato in larga parte da un edificio della marina militare, eguagliando il territorio alla mappa, come preteso dai creatori di Claude. Altrettanto conseguente pare, a questo punto, l’ultima notizia di cui vogliamo dare atto: il regime iraniano ha dichiarato che dal primo di aprile di quest'anno considera le sedi di 18 aziende high tech statunitensi che può raggiungere con i suoi sistemi di bombardamento “obbiettivi legittimi”, a meno che il governo Usa non cessi i suoi attacchi. Forse l’idea di non sviluppare tecnologia militare, come prevedeva il regolamento originale di Google, non era solo una scelta etica. Era soprattutto una scelta saggia. “Scatole oscure. Intelligenza artificiale e altre tecnologie del dominio” è una rubrica a cura di Stefano Borroni Barale. La tecnologia infatti è tutto meno che neutra. Non è un mero strumento che dipende unicamente da come lo si usa, i dispositivi tecnici racchiudono in sé le idee di chi li ha creati. Per questo le tecnologie “del dominio”, quelle che ci propongono poche multinazionali, sono quasi sempre costruite come scatole oscure impossibili da aprire, studiare, analizzare e, soprattutto, cambiare. Ma in una società in cui la tecnologia ha un ruolo via via più dispositivo (e può quindi essere usata per controllarci) aprire e modificare le scatole oscure diventa un esercizio vitale per la partecipazione, la libertà, la democrazia. In altre parole: rompere le scatole è un atto politico. Stefano Borroni Barale (1972) è laureato in Fisica teorica presso l’Università di Torino. Inizialmente ricercatore nel progetto EU-DataGrid (il prototipo del moderno cloud) all’interno del gruppo di ricerca dell’Istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare (Infn), ha lasciato la ricerca per lavorare nel programma di formazione sindacale Actrav del Centro internazionale di formazione dell’Ilo. Oggi insegna informatica in una scuola superiore del torinese e, come membro di Circe, conduce corsi di formazione sui temi della Pedagogia hacker per varie organizzazioni, tra cui il ministero dell’Istruzione. Sostenitore del software libero da fine anni Novanta, è autore per Altreconomia di “Come passare al software libero e vivere felici” (2003), una delle prime guide italiane su Linux e altri programmi basati su software libero e “L’intelligenza inesistente. Un approccio conviviale all’intelligenza artificiale” (2023). © riproduzione riservata L'articolo “Del rigore nella scienza”: Borges, Anthropic e gli effetti della fede cieca in mappe infallibili proviene da Altreconomia.

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is developing a generative artificial intelligence tool to find patterns across data reported to a national vaccine monitoring database and to generate hypotheses on the negative effects of vaccines, according to an inventory released last week of all use cases the agency had for AI in 2025. The tool has not yet been deployed, according to the HHS document, and an AI inventory report from the previous year shows that it has been in development since late 2023. But experts worry that the predictions it generates could be used by HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to further his anti-vaccine agenda. A long-standing vaccine critic, Kennedy has upended the childhood vaccination schedule in his year in office, removing several shots from a list of recommended immunizations for all children, including those for Covid-19, influenza, hepatitis A and B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Kennedy has also called for overhauling the current safety monitoring system for vaccine injury data collection, known as Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), claiming that it suppresses information about the true rate of vaccine side effects. He has also proposed changes to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that could make it easier for people to sue for adverse events that haven’t been proven to be associated with vaccines. Jointly managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, VAERS was established in 1990 as a way to detect potential safety issues with vaccines after their approval. Anyone, including health care providers and members of the public, can submit an adverse reaction report to the database. Because these claims are not verified, VAERS data alone can’t be used to determine if a vaccine caused an adverse event. > “I would expect, depending on the approaches used, a lot of false alerts and a > need for a lot of skilled human follow-through.” “VAERS, at best, was always a hypothesis-generating mechanism,” says Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who was previously a member of the CDC’s Advisory Council on Immunization Practices. “It’s a noisy system. Anybody can report, and there’s no control group.” Offit says the system only shows adverse events that happened at some point following immunization; it doesn’t prove that a vaccine caused those reactions. CDC’s own website says that a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event. Despite this, anti-vaccine activists have misused VAERS data over the years to argue that vaccines are not safe. Leslie Lenert, previously the founding director of the CDC’s National Center for Public Health Informatics, says government scientists have been using traditional natural language processing AI models to look for patterns in VAERS data for several years, so it’s not surprising that HHS would move toward the adoption of more advanced large language models. One major limitation of VAERS is that it doesn’t include data on how many people received a vaccine, which can make events logged in the database seem more common than they actually are. For that reason, Lenert says it’s important to pair information from VAERS with other data sources to determine the true risk of an event. LLMs are also famously good at producing convincing hallucinations, underscoring the need for humans to follow up on any hypotheses generated by an LLM. “VAERS is supposed to be very exploratory. Some people in the FDA are now treating it as more than exploratory,” says Lenert, who is currently the director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Health Artificial Intelligence at Rutgers University. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, reportedly proposed stricter vaccine regulation in a recent memo sent to staff in which he blamed the deaths of at least 10 children on the Covid-19 vaccine without citing evidence. The deaths were reported to VAERS and had previously been reviewed by FDA staff. More than a dozen former FDA commissioners responded with a letter in The New England Journal of Medicine, expressing concern about Prasad’s proposed guidelines. The changes, they wrote, would “dramatically change vaccine regulation on the basis of a reinterpretation of selective evidence.” Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at Georgetown University, says that the use of LLMs could potentially detect previously unknown safety issues with vaccines. But since VAERS can contain inaccurate and incomplete data, he says it’s important that any leads are thoroughly investigated first. “I would expect, depending on the approaches used, a lot of false alerts and a need for a lot of skilled human follow-through by people who understand vaccines and possible adverse events, as well as statistics, epidemiology, and challenges with LLM output,” he says. With deep staffing cuts at the CDC, Goodman says it would be important to have plans and capacity in place to deal with any emerging data, including screening it and deciding what may need to be studied further and how. In the past, VAERS has flagged legitimate safety issues, including instances of a rare clotting disorder among some people who received the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine and rare cases of myocarditis, particularly among younger males, who got the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.