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A Texas Republican Wants a Billboard Featuring Trump's Endorsement to Come Down

Daniella Diaz — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:56:53 GMT

A billboard in Brownsville, Texas, featuring Republican congressional candidate Eric Flores. (Courtesy of the Gonzalez campaign.)

A billboard in Brownsville, Texas, featuring Republican congressional candidate Eric Flores so closely resembles his campaign ads it could be one of his campaign posters.

Except unlike his campaign posters, it prominently features an endorsement by and photo of Flores with President Donald Trump, which Democrats are now accusing Flores of trying to bury. The billboard also touts his “support” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In an Oct. 12 cease-and-desist letter obtained by The Washington Sun, attorney Eric Wang, who represents the Flores campaign, demanded that Lamar Advertising of the Rio Grande Valley, the billboard company that put it up, immediately remove the digital billboard.

Wang alleged in the cease-and-desist letter that the advertisement is designed to confuse voters into believing it is an official campaign message.

“The Billboard intentionally mimics the distinctive look of our client’s campaign signs and other materials to cause voter confusion,” the letter states. “The Billboard’s intent to deceive voters is unmistakable.”

The letter says the sign “fraudulently purports to be on behalf of” the Flores campaign. Across the bottom, it says it was paid for by the campaign of Rep. Vicente Gonzalez — the incumbent Democratic lawmaker running for reelection in the battleground district.

Trump did back Flores in December, saying he has his “complete and total endorsement” in a Truth Social post.

The cease-and-desist letter names the Northern Cameron County Democrats as the group that paid for the billboard, even though the billboard says it was paid for by Gonzalez’s campaign. NCC Democrats did not respond to a request for comment.

Lamar Advertising did not respond to a request for comment about the letter. The Gonzalez campaign told The Sun that as of Friday, the billboard is still up.

Flores’ campaign confirmed the authenticity of the cease-and-desist letter but disputed that it had anything to do with the Trump endorsement or the listed support of ICE.

"Vicente Gonzalez is a practiced scammer who has been running a con on South Texas voters for years. This billboard is just the most recent example,” Matt Brownfield, a campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “It is designed, on purpose, to cause people to think that it comes from the Flores Campaign. It is deceptive on its face. It is a scam.”

The letter does not explicitly dispute that Trump endorsed Flores or that Flores supports ICE. The legal argument in the letter focuses on the billboard's appearance and the possibility that voters could mistake it for an advertisement authorized by the Flores campaign.

The Texas Observer reported earlier this month that Flores' campaign signs no longer prominently advertise Trump's endorsement like they did during the primary. Instead, Flores campaign materials emphasize his biography and professional background.

That’s part of a broader trend of Republicans purging their campaign materials of mentions of Trump across the country, where GOP candidates are coping with the administration’s low approval ratings and affordability issues.

It also comes as candidates compete for voters in a South Texas congressional district where immigration, border security and the president's political standing are prominent issues. The district was redrawn after Trump captured the majority of the vote in the district in the 2024 election, making it one of the most competitive districts in the country.

Gonzalez's campaign accused Flores of attempting to distance himself from positions he had previously embraced.

“Eric Flores proudly bragged about his Trump endorsement during the primary. Now he’s ashamed and is trying to distance himself from the President and the hyperaggressive ICE raids devastating our economy, but voters see right through his charade and deserve to know the truth,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “If Eric truly feels this billboard is misleading, he should’ve met Congressman Gonzalez on the debate stage to explain his positions to voters. Instead, he walked away at the last minute because he couldn’t bend the rules in his favor.”

Like Gonzalez’s campaign, BOLD PAC, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm, characterized the cease-and-desist letter as trying to hide the endorsement.

“Eric Flores bragged about Trump's endorsement until South Texas saw what it cost them: higher prices and ICE in our neighborhoods,” Valeria Ojeda-Avitia, a spokesperson for BOLD PAC, said in a statement. “Now he's paying lawyers to hide it.”

FIFA Is Deciding on the Future of the Peace Prize It Gave to Trump

Alex Schiffer — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:54:57 GMT

President Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA President Gianni Infantino last December. (Sam Corum/AP)

President Donald Trump could go down as the sole winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.

On Thursday, the FIFA Council met in Zurich and decided that the social responsibility committee for soccer’s governing body will be assigned with evaluating the award, which was supposed to be handed out annually.

“There’s a decision taken to look at the peace prize and to take that through the social committee,” FIFA vice president Debbie Hewitt told reporters following Thursday’s meeting. “That was another issue that was raised: whether there should have been one, how the decision was taken to award it, and whether there should be another one. And those questions will be answered through the social committee.”

FIFA president Gianni Infantino gave Trump, who has long sought the Nobel Peace Prize, the award last December before the U.S. hosted the 2026 World Cup along with Canada and Mexico. Infantino named Trump the winner without going through the FIFA Council, which is the organization's decision-making body.

The award was first announced in November 2025, a month before Trump was named the winner. At the time, FIFA said it would be an annual prize to “reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace.” Article 2 of FIFA’s statutes prohibit political and government interference in football, which contributed to the backlash the governing body received after Trump won it.

The social responsibility committee consists of 22 people and is chaired by U Zaw Zaw, the senior vice president of the Asian Football Confederation, and includes former Argentinian star Javier Zanetti, who is its deputy chairperson.

The committee has a range of options. It could discontinue the award, make politicians ineligible to win it, or hand it out less frequently. The next FIFA Council meeting is scheduled for Dec. 16 in Doha, Qatar. A decision from the social responsibility committee is expected to be made in time for the meeting.

The National Zoo Is Asking the Public to Name Its Red Panda Cub

Justice Covert — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:34:46 GMT

The cub was born in June at a conservation campus in Front Royal, Virginia, to 3-year-old female Keahi and 7-year-old male Rocket. (Brooke McDonough/Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute)

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo is asking the public to vote on one of three name options for a red panda cub, including one that pays homage to the Queen of Country.

The cub was born in June at a conservation campus in Front Royal, Virginia, to 3-year-old female Keahi and 7-year-old male Rocket.

The 4-month-old female cub has already “distinguished herself with bold and feisty behavior,” officials said. Still, the cub is unnamed, and the zoo is looking for help deciding what to call her.

The three name candidates are “Pyra,” which the zoo says means “heat” in Greek, “Dolpa,” a region of Nepal home to wild red pandas, and “Dolly,” inspired by country music legend Dolly Parton.

Two weeks before the cub’s birth, two other red panda cubs were born on the campus. Since the births, keepers and staff have closely monitored the three. Red pandas generally have low survival rates, the zoo said in the birth announcement.

“The cubs are really just balls of fur that eat and sleep right now,” said Jessica Kordell, assistant curator of carnivores, in an August news release.

The public can cast their ballots online until Saturday, and the winning name will be announced shortly after.

Sign up for The Washington Sun Metro newsletter for essential coverage of the D.C. region.

Kristi Noem Is Out of a Job Once Again

Michelle Del Rey — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:12:29 GMT

Noem was appointed to the position in March after a brief tenure as homeland security secretary, which was marred in controversy. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Kristi Noem is no longer serving as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, the State Department announced this week.

The former homeland security secretary was appointed to the position in March after a brief tenure at the department, which was marred in controversy.

"Kristi Noem's envoy status expired last month and she is no longer in the role," a State Department spokesperson told The Washington Sun. "She is now a senior advisor to Deputy Secretary Landau and continues to work on the Shield of the Americas portfolio."

The Trump administration launched the coalition in March. It’s tasked with advancing strategies that stop foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere.

The coalition is composed of the U.S., Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago.

Noem concluded her role at DHS earlier this year and began her new post by traveling to Costa Rica to sign a cooperation agreement facilitating the transfer of third-country nationals ordered removed from the U.S., according to a news release.

Noem also traveled to Guyana and the Dominican Republic as part of her special envoy role.

The former secretary’s time at Homeland Security was fraught with controversy.

She’d been accused of using $200 million in taxpayer dollars for an ad campaign featuring herself on horseback in front of Mount Rushmore.

She’d also been scrutinized over her handling of the department after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

Corey Lewandowski, who had an unpaid role as the department’s “special government employee” and was her right-hand man, was also accused of attempting to profit from government contracts.

Lewandowski has denied the allegations.

Noem was fired the day after she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing. While being questioned, she referred to Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” and declined to apologize to their families.

The Washington Sun Metro: Representation Talks Taxation

Martin Austermuhle, Shamira Muhammad, Zara Norman — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:30:00 GMT

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:30:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/metro-newsletter/representation-talks-taxation-10-16-2026

The D.C. Council is holding a long-awaited invite-only public hearing on possible tax hikes. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Good morning. This is The Washington Sun Metro newsletter for Oct. 16, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!

In today’s newsletter: Possible tax hikes, Bard and the Guard and a red panda that needs a name.

Capital Weather’s Daily Digit — 6/10. Warm for mid-October with some sunshine, but humidity, increasing winds and late-day storms take away a few points. Full forecast from Capital Weather.

THE LATEST

D.C.’s license plates may say “Taxation Without Representation,” but today the city’s elected representatives will be discussing — you guessed it — taxation.

The D.C. Council is holding a long-awaited invite-only public hearing on possible tax hikes, covering everything from investment income and second homes to law firms’ and lobbyists’ currently untaxable proceeds, reports The Washington Sun’s Martin Austermuhle.

The discussion comes at a time of profound change for D.C., with a new mayor set to take office in January but already facing a likely $600 million budget deficit and slowing economic growth.

“The city faces a big shortfall and we’re going to have to solve it either by cuts or revenue increases or a combination of the two,” said Ward 3 council member Matt Frumin.

Progressive groups and some lawmakers are pushing for tax increases on wealthy households, calling it a matter of simple fairness. One bill would impose a local version of an existing federal tax on proceeds from investment income for high-income households, while another would increase property taxes for second homes that aren’t occupied on a full-time basis.

“When you break it down to who’s paying what and you see that people who are making millions of dollars are paying lower tax rates than people who are struggling, it’s just not fair,” said Ward 1 council member Brianne Nadeau, one of the main proponents of raising taxes.

Business groups and some tax skeptics counter that the worst time to raise taxes is when D.C. is already facing a slumping economy. “My worry is if we only do revenue and we only do weird goofy revenue things that no one else does, that’s going to hurt the long-term growth rebound,” said Joe Bishop-Henchman, the vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

Today’s hearing is just the start of a conversation, and sources tell The Sun that it’s unlikely that anything will move forward before the end of the year. Still, what happens today could tee up big changes once Janeese Lewis George takes office, as she’s expected to on Jan. 2.

DEEP DIVE

“This is not a war zone”: Not long after classes let out at Bard High School in Congress Heights on Wednesday, a group of National Guard members stood nearby and watched as community members gathered to hold a meeting about their presence.

Parents and students, as well as community leaders like Ward 2 council member Brooke Pinto and Ward 8 State Board of Education member Dr. LaJoy Johnson-Law, held a listening session to discuss the impact of having armed troops marshalling a majority Black community, The Sun’s Shamira Muhammad reports.

“[Students] are watching armed personnel come outside their school, get ready for their duty, strapping guns [and] bulletproof vests on their body, dressing themselves in tactical gear,” said Kianna Faucette, vice president of Bard’s PTO.

A Bard senior reported seeing “[troops] outside my window in class.” Another student said he tries to “quickly walk past” the guard members. Bard parent Erica Brown said she has seen them out in the area as early as 6 a.m.

“I am a fourth generation Ward 8 resident,” Brown said. “Regardless of what people may say about us, this is not a war zone.”

Pinto said council members are considering a 1,000-foot buffer zone around schools, while Johnson-Law added that the state board of education is introducing a resolution that would allow high schoolers in the District to obtain REAL IDs so they can prove their age to guard members.

FROM THE DISTRICT

L'Enfant Plaza DC Metro (5814x3876, AR: 1.50)

Metro is using the L’Enfant Plaza station as a testing ground for new system-wide signage meant to make trains easier to find, board and exit. But, as The Sun’s Will Hofmann reports, some customers complain the signs are more disorienting than dependable.

Cockroaches in oatmeal, dead mice in salad, milk containers covered in mouse poop — those are just some of the disgusting dishes a new lawsuit alleges a D.C. jail has served people incarcerated there since July 2023, The Sun’s Kendall Staton reports.

The Trump administration has formally invoked presidential communications privilege to withhold documents and block testimony about Donald Trump’s involvement in the Kennedy Center’s management, The Sun’s Torrie Herrington reports.

Lengthy elevator outages in D.C.’s public schools — some of which have persisted for months — are preventing students and teachers with disabilities or mobility issues from attending class and could violate their civil rights, The Washington Post reports.

FROM VIRGINIA

Less than a month before Election Day, Alexandria residents found flyers citing federal laws that bar immigrants who are in the country illegally from voting, The Sun’s Justice Covert reports. Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins said in a statement to The Sun that she believes the flyers, which were stuck to cars in the area, are an attempt to intimidate voters. Though the flyers featured the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seal and phone number, a spokesperson said the department was not involved in their distribution.

Around 4,000 fewer students are enrolled in Fairfax County Public Schools compared to last year, following a trend of decreasing enrollment numbers felt across the DMV, The Sun’s Justice Covert reports. This is the fourth consecutive school year FCPS has seen fewer students enrolled than the previous year.

FROM THE DINING ROOM

Tom Sietsema, The Sun’s food correspondent, writes about some under-the-radar cooking.

A D.C. chef is serving a controversial fine-dining ingredient, albeit not by name. Diners have to ask their waiters for details about what’s cryptically listed among specials as “You Didn’t See This On the Menu.”

The dish? Foie gras, the fatty liver of duck (sometimes goose). The veteran chef offers two slices of the delicacy, marinated in whiskey, sugar and black pepper, with quince and apple, along with slices of brioche for $42.

On Nov. 3, District voters will decide whether to ban the sale of foie gras. Initiative 86, known as the Prohibiting the Force-Feeding of Birds Act, is backed by Pro-Animal D.C., an advocacy group that collected 45,000 signatures to qualify the measure. If approved, the ban would take effect in July 2027. Violating the law could result in fines as high as $5,000. The measure is opposed by the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, among other groups.

The District chef I spoke to, whose name is omitted to avoid controversy, says he serves about half a dozen orders of foie gras on a busy night. “Why can’t I serve foie gras?” he asks. Referring to how other popular items are acquired, he adds, “What about cows and chickens?”

METRO MOMENT

Red Panda zoo (1179x1231, AR: 0.96)

The Smithsonian Zoo has welcomed a fiery new addition, and is asking for Washingtonians’ help in naming her. The female red panda cub — described as “bold” and “feisty” by the zoo — was born to parents Keahi and Rocket this past June.

Your three, pre-selected choices:

Dolly, after the legendary Dolly Parton.
Pyra, which the zoo says translates to “heat” in Greek, but historically has been used more morbidly to denote a funeral pyre.
Dolpa, after a Nepalese district home to wild red pandas.

You can cast your vote here.

SPORTS

What's it like to have kids in the NBA and WNBA at the same time? Angel Reese and the Atlanta Dream tip off in the WNBA Finals on Saturday. Meanwhile, her brother, Julian, is preparing for the NBA season with the Pelicans. The Reeses are just one of the seven basketball families who are represented in both leagues. The Sun's Alex Schiffer caught up with a few of them to try and find the secret to raising a pair of pros.

What to Watch This Weekend

Saturday

NWSL: Spirit vs. Gotham FC, 12:30 p.m. (CBS)

NCAAF: Maryland vs. Rutgers, 12:30 p.m. (BTN)

NHL: Capitals vs. Devils, 1 p.m. (Monumental)

MLS: D.C. United at Orlando, 7:30 p.m. (Apple TV)

Sunday

NFL: Cowboys at Packers, 8:20 p.m. (NBC)

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The newsletter was produced by Jaden Amos, Michael Errigo and Gaby Morera Di Núbila.]]>

Morning Sun: What the Money Says

Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright, Manuela Silva — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:01:00 GMT

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:01:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/newsletters/what-the-money-says

Supporters of Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola gathered outside the venue where the candidates debated on Thursday. (Becky Bohrer/AP)

Today’s notice: Reading the FEC reports. Debate night in Alaska. The final Maine Senate match. The siren call of the “reach seats.” House Republicans prepare for a post-election leadership fight. And: Nebraska implemented Medicaid changes early, and Republicans are feeling the heat.

THE LATEST

What’s in the FEC files: A particularly huge pile of money is sloshing around American politics right now, and this week is one of the few where we actually get to learn anything about it thanks to campaign finance laws. The Washington Sun’s Money & Influence Team (led by the inestimable, well-suited Dave Levinthal) pulled some of the big stories out of the FEC filings.

First, some smaller stories:

$978.68: The typical “win bonus” handed out by Democrat Graham Platner’s campaign after his Maine primary win.
$20,246.64: The “severance payroll” Platner’s camp gave his wife after the campaign ended.
$0: The amount paid to full-time campaign staff on Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-Kansas) disclosures.
$2 million: The amount the campaign of Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) is in debt to the congressman after a summer of losing two chances at a Senate seat.
$1.8 million: The amount Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida) owes himself from his campaign after a worse summer than even Norman’s.
$260.60: How much the campaign of Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) spent at a nightclub in the Philippines. His summer was no prize, either.

More: Musk Appears to Have Forked Over $158M to Help Paxton • Max Miller’s Campaign Is Deep in Debt — To Miller Himself • Will AOC Challenge Schumer in 2028? She Certainly Has a Cash Advantage. • Trump’s Legal Fund Is Flirting With Insolvency

FROM ALASKA

Debate notes: Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola directly read off note cards printed with tiny text so often at last night’s debate that Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan asked the moderators at one point if he was supposed to have gotten the questions in advance. Sullivan had notes, too, but appeared to ad-lib his answers a lot more.

Substantively, the debate featured Sullivan taking every opportunity to express disagreements with Donald Trump, particularly on the recent White House deal to import Russian diesel. Peltola defended herself against allegations she mistreated staff and attacked Sullivan over Trump policy moves like the war in Iran.

Changing color? “I believe it is turning purple. I can feel it,” former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, a member of a long-running Alaska political family, told The Sun’s Alex Roarty on a recent trip to the state. “It’ll probably take two more cycles to prove it.”

Politics here is not like politics in the Lower 48. The State Legislature for years has had an unusual bipartisan, moderate power-sharing agreement to silence partisan extremists, Alex writes. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another political scion, won a write-in reelection in 2010 after losing her primary to a Tea Party-backed candidate. Democrats think the GOP’s increasing shift away from a civil tone could open the door.

Republicans disagree, including Begich’s nephew Nick Begich, who is a Republican House member. “Alaska’s future is heavily dependent upon our ability to effectively advocate for resource development in our state,” he said. “And the Democrat Party, for whatever reason, has not been supportive of resource development in Alaska for many years.”

FROM MAINE

No love lost here: “Oh, shut up — I don’t even know that kid!” Democratic nominee Troy Jackson snapped at Republican Sen. Susan Collins during last night’s final debate of the Senate contest. That came after a member of the debate audience loudly interrupted Collins, saying, “AI data centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our waters,” and Collins labeled him one of Jackson’s supporters.

FROM ARKANSAS

Democrats’ French Hill conundrum: The Sun’s Paul Kane reports that Democrats are talking about spending resources to flip Arkansas’ 2nd District, which Hill has represented for years. It’s a sure sign the party is thinking about “reach seats,” places where, the theory goes, a little money could extend a blue wave. The problem, Paul notes, is that reach seats can be shiny objects that can distract from the actual battlegrounds where resources would be better spent. That’s what happened in 2020 — Democrats spent a lot on seats like Hill’s, only to see winnable races get starved for attention.

FROM A POTENTIAL FUTURE

Shrinking-presidential-influence alert: “Not one bit” is how one GOP lawmaker described how much Trump’s wishes will matter in the next House Republican leadership race. “Especially if we have lost, because people will blame him.” The Sun’s Kadia Goba and Reese Gorman preview a chaotic Republican conference with the possibility of a sizable midterm loss — and with Trump’s power to select leaders diminished, Speaker Mike Johnson’s future is uncertain.

“He will not run unopposed” for another term as conference leader, a senior Republican lawmaker said. Already laying the groundwork to replace Johnson are Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan.

NEW ON THE WASHINGTON SUN

Nebraska is running a Medicaid political experiment: The state imposed the Medicaid work requirements in the “one big, beautiful bill” in July, six months before it was legally required to do so. The impact has been swift: More than 1,000 people in the state have lost access to care so far. The Sun’s Avani Kalra reports that health care leaders, Republican observers and others now think it’s a key contributor to a political climate that suddenly has GOP leaders on the defensive in a state that’s reliably red.

“It’s gotten cast as you’re kicking people off health insurance and kicking people off government help,” said Perre Neilan, a Republican strategist in the state.

More: Musk Settles Lawsuits Over His $1 Million Election Giveaways • White House Press Secretary Explains Her Rocky Briefing Debut • Trump Donor Says His Guilfoyle Lawsuit Could ‘Bring Down’ the Administration

NOT US

Donald Trump vs. the Lorax, by Maura Judkis for The Washington Post
Anti-Israel Protesters Pose a Purity Test That Even Mamdani Can’t Pass, by Matt Flegenheimer, Sally Goldenberg and Liam Stack for The New York Times
YOLO Chuck: Schumer’s final fight, by Hans Nichols for Axios

Thank you for reading! If you liked this edition of The Washington Sun Newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was shared with you, please sign up — it’s free! Have a tip? Email us at tips@washsun.com. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts at newsletters@washsun.com.

The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr and Andrew Burton.]]>

The Washington Sun Launches ‘The Presidential Vibes Index’

Justin Peligri — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Mark Alfred/The Washington Sun

The Washington Sun is launching a new editorial project about the 2028 presidential election that captures sentiment around which candidates are surging and which are floundering. Welcome to The Presidential Vibes Index.

Every month, a group of national reporters, pundits of all stripes, political scientists and other experts from around the country will rank a list of potential Democratic candidates and another of potential Republican candidates. That information will be combined with other attention markers like polling and prediction markets.

The result is a reported ranking that attempts to answer the question: Who is winning the primaries today?

The Sun’s Evan McMorris-Santoro is the lead writer of the project, working alongside The Sun’s data expert, Andrew Van Dam.

“There are always two conversations early in a presidential cycle: What do the polls say about a candidate and what is the vibe around that candidate?" McMorris-Santoro said. "With our panel of plugged-in experts, we're bringing these two things together. We'll tell you who is winning and who is losing and help readers understand the hard-to-define aura around a campaign.”

The panel will consist of roughly 60 participants. Contributors include: Kirk Bado, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Zoe Chace, Ruby Cramer, Daniella Diaz, David Drucker, Lee Drutman, Jesse Ferguson, Kadia Goba, Matt K. Lewis, Dana Milbank, Aaron Parnas, CJ Pearson, Alex Roarty, Elena Schneider, Alex Seitz-Wald, Marianna Sotomayor, Kara Swisher, Ben Terris, Jasmine Wright, Salena Zito and more to be announced in the coming weeks.

The Vibes Index will publish monthly, starting shortly after the midterms in November and continuing until the 2028 election.

About the Methodology

This is not a scientific poll — by design.

Participants’ first pick will get 10 points; their 10th pick will get 1 point. The secret sauce is the expertise of The Sun’s panelists, not statistics.

The Sun will publish the rankings for candidates of each party alongside polls, betting markets and other attention markers (such as Wikipedia traffic). Those figures will be measured against our experts’ vibes.

About The Washington Sun

We launched in 2024 as NOTUS, a news site focused on national politics and policy. But as we watched others pull back on Washington coverage, we knew our hometown deserved better. So we invested, more than doubling the size of our newsroom in just six months.

Our work puts Washington front and center, and we wanted our name to do the same. So NOTUS — short for News of the United States — is now The Washington Sun.

We cover politics and policy and the people who shape life in Washington — not just at the White House and in Congress, but at the Wilson Building, at Northwest Stadium and in the neighborhoods where we live.

We report for the people who live here, the people who make policy here and the people around the world who care deeply about what happens here. We do it with original reporting, with deep sourcing and with an unwavering commitment to accuracy.

Contact The Washington Sun

To participate in the experts panel, reach out to Evan McMorris-Santoro: ems@washsun.com.

For press inquiries, reach out to Justin Peligri: JustinPeligri@washsun.com.

For sponsorship opportunities, reach out to partnerships@washsun.com.

Alaska Is Becoming a Swing State

Alex Roarty — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:40:00 GMT

Alaska Democrats are cautiously optimistic about Mary Peltola’s chances against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. (Becky Bohrer/AP)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Mary Peltola is widely perceived — at least in Washington — to have a real chance at winning her marquee U.S. Senate race here because of her talent as a politician and a brutal national political climate for Republicans.

But there’s an overlooked factor boosting her campaign ahead of November’s election.

After being a firmly Republican state for most of its existence, Alaska has slowly but steadily moved left in recent elections, becoming more supportive of Democratic candidates at every level of elected office. By 2024, the state was more politically similar to right-of-center battlegrounds like Ohio and Iowa, where Democrats are often at least competitive statewide, than to the conservative strongholds like Wyoming and Idaho it used to resemble.

And unlike Ohio and Iowa, Alaska is continuing to move left: A Washington Sun analysis of presidential results found that from the 2000 election to 2024 election, Alaska shifted 20 points to the left relative to the national popular vote. That’s the fourth most of any state, trailing only Vermont, Colorado and Utah, according to the analysis.

From 2008 to 2024, it moved further toward Democrats than any other state, a 17-point shift. (The GOP performed especially well in Alaska in 2008 thanks in part to former Gov. Sarah Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket.)

The change is evident on the ground. In interviews with The Sun, more than a dozen party leaders, elected officials and political strategists described a state whose cities have become more progressive, whose state legislative battlegrounds have swung toward Democrats and whose top elected jobs — including one senator and governor — might soon be under the party’s control.

Democrats, cautiously optimistic about Peltola’s chances against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, are even more bullish about the prospects of the party’s de facto gubernatorial nominee Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.

It all leads to a conclusion that even some die-hard Democrats in Alaska are squeamish to admit after years and years of Republican dominance: Alaska might be becoming a genuine swing state.

“I believe it is turning purple. I can feel it,” said Mark Begich, a former Democratic senator. “It’ll probably take two more cycles to prove it.”

The state’s political evolution has big implications for its Senate race this year, which some party strategists are counting on to help Democrats gain the four seats they need for majority control of the chamber in 2027.

But, just as importantly, the transformation might offer a long-term lifeline for a Democratic Party with few viable targets in Senate races in the coming years, boxed in by a map filled with red states. And even though the state only carries three votes in the electoral college, its tiny sliver of votes could make the difference in tight presidential races when so many states are otherwise noncompetitive. The state’s White House result in 2024 was the 29th most friendly to Democrats, just behind Florida and Iowa, two states trending the wrong direction for the party.

Competing in Alaska might not be a question of something the party wants to do, but something the party has to do.

“If Democrats can’t consistently keep Alaska on the political battlefield, where else can they make that up?” said David de la Fuente, a political analyst with the Democratic think tank Third Way. “And it’s hard to make an argument for anywhere else.”
Dan Sullivan,Nick Begich,Julie Fate Sullivan (5115x3410, AR: 1.50)Initially, after being admitted as the 49th state in 1959, Alaska was seen as a state that would reliably vote for Democrats. But an oil boom in the 1960s on the state’s north slope transformed Alaska’s economy and its politics, bringing with it immense wealth and a wariness of the Democratic Party’s environmental agenda. Alaska last voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 1964, when it backed Lyndon B. Johnson.

Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024, well short of the 25-point-plus victories George W. Bush racked up in the 2000s, but a double-digit victory nonetheless.

Alaska Republicans maintain that even if the margins are smaller than they used to be, the state remains reliably conservative at the federal level, in large part because of the incompatibility of the national Democratic Party’s environmental policies and the state’s economic needs.

“Alaska's future is heavily dependent upon our ability to effectively advocate for resource development in our state,” Republican Rep. Nick Begich said in an interview. “And the Democrat Party, for whatever reason, has not been supportive of resource development in Alaska for many years. And they've proven that as a core component of their national platform, they are not willing to support resource development in our state.”

Nick Begich, who also faces a competitive race this year against the Democratic-backed independent candidate Bill Hill, pointed out that Democrats like former senator Mark Begich and Peltola had won statewide general elections in Alaska before (in 2008 and 2022, respectively) only to lose their next election. It’s a sign, he said, that even if voters here are willing to give Democrats a chance, they’re rarely willing to stick with them after they’ve been in office.
Election 2026-Alaska (5184x3456, AR: 1.50)Even the most bullish Democrats say that even if the state is trending their way, it will always retain a distinct political independence. Alaska’s unique characteristics — its oil and fishing industries, native Alaskan population and rugged arctic climate — mean its politics are unlike any other state’s, often less ideologically driven and more focused on demanding basic material support for communities that would suffer without it.

It’s why the state elected an independent governor last decade and why the state legislature for years has had an unusual power-sharing agreement between Democrats and moderate Republicans, designed to exclude extreme voices in either party. It also explains how Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski won a write-in reelection campaign in 2010 after losing her primary to a tea party-backed candidate, drawing support from across the political spectrum.

Still, some Democrats have quietly touted Alaska’s emerging importance for years, especially after Peltola’s 2022 victory in the state’s at-large House seat. De la Fuente, the Third Way official, wrote an analysis in 2023 urging then-President Joe Biden to consider competing in the state during the next presidential election.

The state’s demographic profile — including a low share of white voters, relatively high union participation and low religiosity — aligned with the modern Democratic Party, he wrote at the time, and was a major reason the state had shifted to the left over the previous two decades. In his view, Alaska represented a much better bet for Democrats than states like Florida, Ohio and Iowa, which received considerably more attention as potential battlegrounds.

“I feel like the political data is telling a very strong story here, of this not being a fluke,” de la Fuente told The Sun.
APTOPIX Vance (6000x4000, AR: 1.50)Why Alaska has shifted politically is a subject of debate. The state’s electorate, on the surface, has not changed significantly since 2000, according to Census data.

Some political strategists point to the declining number of oil and gas jobs, which started last decade and intensified after the 2020 pandemic and proliferation of remote work. Others say Alaska’s unusual open primary system, implemented in 2022 in which the top four vote getting candidates move on to the general election, has contributed, helping Democrats nominate more moderate candidates they consider better aligned with the state.

But locally, Democrats point to two main factors: the evolution of politics in Anchorage and the priority local Democrats place on political pragmatism.

Anchorage, at a population of nearly 300,000 people, holds about 40% of the state’s total population. And at a local level, its politics have shifted left.

Mark Begich recounted that as a young Democrat running for a seat on the city assembly here in the 1980s, every level of elected office in the town’s eastern half — from governor down to local legislator — was represented by a conservative or Republican (the city’s assembly seats are nonpartisan). Now, east Anchorage is represented at every level of state government by liberals or Democrats.

Across the city, local politicos say a 12-member assembly that used to be evenly split ideologically is now almost uniformly liberal, save for one or two members.

“Anchorage growing up is part of the story,” said Eric Croft, chair of the state Democratic Party. “Anchorage is getting to be a medium-sized city that, like a lot of them, is getting more and more progressive.”

Anchorage, in other words, is following the same political path of a lot of cities across the country.

“People that are living in Anchorage want good schools for their kids and actually want parks and amenities,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, an independent political strategist. “And there's sort of been a maturation process of what we expect from our government and what we want as far as public facilities.”

To other Democrats, it’s hard to miss how the state’s leftward drift over the past 20 years corresponded with the rise of the tea party movement and, later, Trump — two ideologically driven movements they argue are at odds with the state’s pragmatic bent.

“I think Alaskans, given their druthers, would vote for a nice Chamber of Commerce Republican,” said Joelle Hall, emeritus president of the Alaska AFL-CIO. “A banker. A nice guy. A civically minded, slightly conservative guy. That's their drug of choice.”  

“That's not what's been offered to them lately,” Hall said.

In 2000, with George W. Bush on the ballot, Alaska voted 31.5 percentage points to the right of the country (Bush won Alaska by 31 points while losing the national popular vote by one-half of a point). In 2024, with Trump again leading the GOP ticket, the state voted just 11.5 percentage points to the right of the nation (Trump won Alaska by 13 points while winning the national popular vote by 1.5 points).

Democrats are emphatic that the quality of the individual candidate on the ballot is hugely important in Alaska. It’s why they don’t think that Murkowski, who has done more to separate herself from Trump than perhaps any other Senate Republican, will face a serious challenge from Democrats when she’s up for reelection in 2028.
Capitol Hill (4680x3120, AR: 1.50)It’s also why in-state Democrats are most skeptical about the party’s presidential chances in Alaska anytime soon. The party’s White House nominee usually has a different, more ideological profile than the types of candidates Democrats run in the state. Peltola’s views on energy development, for instance, would likely draw a fierce backlash from national Democrats’ progressive base.

Even progressives in the state say that Democrats run a different kind of campaign in Alaska than elsewhere.

“Those of us who are progressive have embraced bipartisanship,” said Zack Fields, a Democratic state representative who represents part of Anchorage. “And rather than talk about whatever crazy identity politics that has seized the national Democratic Party, we talk about bread-and-butter issues that affect families every single day. We talk about class size, we talk about energy security, we are just relentlessly pro-jobs.”

Fields said that if Democrats nationally embraced the approach he and his colleagues have taken in Alaska, they “would have 85% of the seats in Congress.”

But, he added, the state is often overlooked by the national party. It’s why its shift to the left this century has been largely ignored, even if it could help the party win a Senate majority this November.

“People in the Lower 48 are not aware of it,” Fields said. “If Alaska were the geographic distance to D.C. of West Virginia or another state nearby, there’d be all kinds of stories about it because it’s super interesting.”

Filipino Nightclub, Parisian Restaurant: Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s Campaign Went Traveling

Kyle Chouinard — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:34:00 GMT

Rep. Dan Crenshaw's campaign committee recently reported travel expenses across several European and Asian countries. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP)

The campaign committee of Rep. Dan Crenshaw went globe-trotting, dropping thousands of dollars on foreign travel expenses from France and Italy to Croatia and the Philippines, according to Crenshaw’s most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Crenshaw lost in a Texas Republican primary in March and will exit Congress in January.

The campaign reported spending around $1,200 on “event catering” at a Croatian Michelin star restaurant, $490 for “meeting expense[s]” between a Filipino nightclub and Parisian restaurant and nearly $320 for lodging at a boutique hotel in Rome, FEC records indicate.

From late July through September, the campaign reported spending over $9,000 on airfare. The bulk of that money funded flights with United Airlines, but the campaign additionally used two Greek airlines and Air France over the last three months.

While not international, Crenshaw’s campaign also dropped nearly $700 on “event catering” at Casa Tua’s Aspen, Colorado, restaurant and lounge in August, according to FEC records.

The purpose and exact timing of these trips is unclear. The Crenshaw campaign reported paying for them during July, August and September. A representative for Crenshaw could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.

Running in a redrawn district, Crenshaw lost to Steve Toth, a conservative member of the Texas House of Representatives, who slammed the congressman for rejecting claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

While Crenshaw couldn’t get President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Toth was backed by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Turning Point Action and the Freedom Caucus Fund.

“A large part of this election was about the power of clickbait … Memes became truth. Too many people are not discerning through the clickbait,” Crenshaw told The Texas Tribune after his loss. “The truth didn’t matter to people.”

The ‘Reach’ Seat Conundrum Facing Democrats

Paul Kane — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:31:00 GMT

Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney resisted the lure of “reach” seats in 2022, and won their key contests — except for Maloney’s. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP)

Here we go again.

It’s late in the campaign season and the party out of power feels a big jolt of momentum and starts hyping races that insiders call “reach seats,” the House or Senate races that seem safely in the hands of one party but once a generation seem to open up for the other side.

Last week House Democrats highlighted the opponent of Rep. French Hill (R-Arkansas) as “worthy of additional investment” because the political environment has broken so much against Republicans that the six-term incumbent could be defeated.

Hill, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, was one of a dozen Republicans targeted anew by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, despite his always large stockpile of campaign cash and representing a district that favored Donald Trump by double digits all three times he’s run for president.

Over the last 20 years each party can point to times that investing in “reach” seats paid off. For Democrats the 2006 and 2008 elections gave them historically large majorities that stretched from places like Boise, Idaho, through all of North Dakota and even a majority of Alabama’s House delegation. That paved the way for the passage of the Affordable Care Act and a Wall Street reform bill in 2010.

Big Republican wins in 2010 and 2014 gave them their biggest House majority since the 1920s, opening the doors to the 2017 tax cuts and a durable Senate majority that confirmed three conservative Supreme Court justices.

But recent history is filled with examples of the temptation to go bigger leading to the political equivalent of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown.

That’s what happened the last time Democrats chased after Hill, back in 2020, when their outside groups poured more than $3.5 million into a failed effort at that seat.

Hill won easily, by almost 11 percentage points, and nationwide Democratic hopes for gaining 10 to 15 seats or more crashed into an unexpected undertow. Republicans gained more than 10 seats on Election Day despite Trump losing the popular election by 7 million votes, a historic anomaly that happened only once before in the previous 14 elections.

“I do think they took their eye off the ball in some places,” Parker Poling, who was the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2020, told The Washington Sun.

Even when Hillary Clinton and Al Gore lost the Electoral College in 2016 and 2000, respectively, their popular vote margins of more than 500,000 and almost 3 million helped House Democrats win a few seats down the ballot.

Instead of a historically large majority in 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had just 222 seats, and every vote became a bit of a cliffhanger.

Two years later Republicans fell victim to their own overly ambitious ways ahead of the 2022 midterms, pouring tens of millions of dollars into districts where wins turned out to be mirages.

Their lone reach seat victory came against Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-New York), who was chairing the DCCC that cycle. Pelosi told Democrats the day after the election that Republicans spent so heavily to go after Maloney that it helped preserve other Democrats.

“Our chairman took an arrow for us,” she said.
Election 2020 Arkansas House (1572x1048, AR: 1.50)When the dust settled, Republicans gained just nine seats, leaving them at the same exact skinny majority the Democrats had — 222 seats. It set the stage for a dysfunctional House for the next four years.

Senate campaigns also often take fliers on seats that seem well out of reach in normal times, but the payoff can be much higher given the reward is a six-year term that can help sustain a majority not just in the coming election but over the next two.

Without upset wins in Louisiana in 2002 and Montana in 2006, Senate Democrats wouldn’t have had sufficient votes to pass the ACA in 2009 — which has some party operatives dreaming of pulling off upsets in November in such traditionally conservative states like Kansas or Alaska.

Now, House Democrats are feeling confident about their standing in the traditional battleground seats: Of the 21 “toss-up” races, 15 are held by Republicans, according to one independent analysis, while seven more of their seats already “lean Democratic.”

“Democrats must build a durable majority heading into the 120th Congress so that the House can deliver wins,” Julie Merz, executive director of the DCCC, wrote in a fundraising memo last week.

She is trying to raise cash fast for a handful or more of these reach seats. By siloing them into their own financial category, Democrats are hoping to avoid losing focus on their core races the way they did in 2020.

Republicans rejected these Democratic moves as either attempts to trick them into spending money in places that they don’t need to, or just the equivalent of online trolling. The math in these seats, they say, simply doesn’t add up to Democratic wins.

“These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” Mike Marinella, national press secretary for the NRCC, said.

In a reminder of the 2022 campaign, Democrats listed the seat of Rep. Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina), chair of the NRCC since early 2023, as a possible target.

Hudson won his district by almost 19 percentage points in 2024, as Trump won it by 16 points, about the same as his margin of victory in 2020.

Moreover, Merz’s memo also listed the seat of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) as a potential pickup opportunity, now that the onetime rising conservative star is retiring.

The temptation is there to try to win such a symbolic victory for Democrats after Stefanik’s midcareer transformation into a fire-breathing, MAGA-loving Trump acolyte.

Yet Democrats would be trying to win a seat that Stefanik, first elected in 2014 as a moderate, establishment-friendly Republican, won by almost 25 percentage points in 2024, when Trump carried the district by more than 20 points.

Trying for those seats almost sounds more exotic than Republicans in 2022 reaching for the Orange County, California, seat held by Katie Porter, whose progressivism irked many conservatives. Republican-aligned outside groups shoveled more than $10 million into trying to defeat her.

That’s more than double the $5 million those same Republican groups poured into trying to win a Rhode Island district that Democrats have held since 1991. Joe Biden had just won those seats by 10 points or more, just as he had done in Maloney’s seat.

Those races were close, but Democrats won. Meanwhile, Republicans lost several close races in the Midwest that were on much more friendly terrain, including three in Ohio that broke against them even as Republican Gov. Mike DeWine won reelection at the top of the ticket in a landslide.

Poling, who ran the NRCC in 2020, said she heard Democrats thought they could win a handful or more Republican seats in Texas alone.

“I just don’t see it,” she told The Sun, recalling the message she sent her staff to run their numbers again.

Democrats did not win a single close seat in Texas that year. They lost all 27 seats that The Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups in its final race ratings.

In fact, Republicans came within less than 32,000 votes of winning five other races, which would have won them the majority, a virtually unheard of concept given their candidate lost the presidential election.

Republicans got their trophy seat in 2022 by defeating Maloney, the first time a campaign committee chair had lost reelection in 30 years. His district, partially in the New York City media market, received an endless amount of ads, backed by more than $10 million from outside conservative groups trying to boost now-Rep. Mike Lawler’s upstart campaign.

In the end, Lawler won by less than 1 percentage point, less than 2,000 votes, and Maloney had the odd pleasure of being hailed for his stewardship of the DCCC and mitigating their losses but losing his own seat.

The next day he said the key to their national strategy was sticking to the plan.

“We resisted the temptation to chase shiny objects, and we were disciplined and focused, and we did the work. And I'm a big believer in doing the fundamentals,” Maloney told reporters.

The Habits of Highly Effective Basketball Families

Alex Schiffer — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:25:00 GMT

Julian and Angel Reese are one of only seven sibling duos who play in both the NBA and WNBA. (Nick Wass/AP)

Angel Webb Reese was fed up.

It was the mid-2010s, and for the past few years, her daughter, Angel, and son, Julian, would go outside their home in Randallstown, Maryland, to play one-on-one basketball in their single-car driveway.

But getting through a game became difficult.

Tempers flared between the siblings, and the games got physical. Even when kids from the neighborhood joined in and they started playing five-on-five, the games would turn into one-on-one sibling battles, with the other players turning into spectators, watching the Reeses go at it.

“We would fight a lot,” Julian says now. “Especially when people were around.”

Webb Reese ultimately took the hoop and put it in the neighborhood dumpster after years of bickering between her kids.

“I did not realize how competitive it would become with the both of them,” she said. “They would nearly kill each other out there.”

The lessons from those one-on-one matchups have been on display for the Reeses throughout the year. Julian made his NBA debut with the Wizards this past year and opens the season with the New Orleans Pelicans. Angel is a star on the Atlanta Dream, which is currently in the WNBA Finals.

The family is one of seven who have a son and a daughter playing in the NBA and WNBA, along with the Williams, Ruperts, Salaüns, Prospers, Jaquezes and Coffeys.

More professional sibling duos could be on the way. Mystics center Lauren Betts has a younger brother, Dylan, who is a top 10 recruit nationally. Atlanta Hawks rookie Kingston Flemings, a Virginia native, has a younger sister, Bella, who was one of the nation’s top recruits a year ago and is now a freshman at Duke. (Pacers guard T.J. McConnell’s sister, Megan, spent the preseason with the Indiana Fever but didn’t make their opening-night roster.)

The NBA does not officially keep track of families who have competed in both leagues. (If the league is looking for a way to feature them, Sixers wing Rayan Rupert, whose sister Iliana plays for the Golden State Valkyries, suggested that the NBA create an event at All-Star weekend where each active sibling duo competes to see who’s No. 1.)

But there have been a few significant sets over the years. Houston Rockets coach Ime Udoka and his sister, Mfon, were the first siblings to play in both leagues in 2003. Hall of Famer Candace Parker and her older brother, Anthony, now the Orlando Magic GM, are another notable pair. (Perhaps the most famous basketball sibling duo doesn’t qualify for this distinction, as Cheryl Miller was a star before the creation of the WNBA, while little brother Reggie went on to a legendary NBA career.)

What are the secrets to these families’ success? Genes are certainly a factor. Six of the seven families with kids in both leagues have at least one parent who played in college or beyond. But there are also many basketball values that these families share — and those lessons rival the bloodlines that produced professionals in both leagues.

Lesson No. 1: Hustle Matters More Than Skill

Before she became one of the DMV’s most famous basketball mothers, Webb Reese was a star at Maryland-Baltimore County, where she played beyond her frame.

A 5-foot-11 forward, she averaged 13.2 rebounds per game in her senior year at UMBC. She passed that rebounding trait on to her kids. Angel Reese led the WNBA with 12.1 rebounds per game in the regular season and recently became the fastest player in league history to grab 1,000 boards. Julian averaged nine or more rebounds in his last two seasons at Maryland and averaged 10.5 rebounds in 13 games with the Wizards this past season.

But Webb Reese never gave her children any formal lessons in rebounding. Or shooting. Instead, she harped on hustling. Julian can still hear her voice shouting at him whenever he wasn’t sprinting down the court.

“She told us if we run the floor, play as hard as we can, everything is going to come to us,” Julian said.

“I was aggressive, tenacious. I had a high motor, which I think both of my kids both have,” Webb Reese said. “I always just said ‘box out,’ because I think a lot of times rebounding has to do with your effort.”

Olivier-Maxence and Cassandre Prosper’s parents took a similar approach. Gaetan and Guylaine Prosper met playing college basketball at Concordia University in Montreal, then proceeded to coach their kids when they became parents. According to Guylaine, they stressed knowing “the why of things”: emphasizing their rationale for how something like sprinting versus jogging for a loose ball could make a difference.
Dream Mystics Basketball (2895x1930, AR: 1.50)Olivier-Maxence Prosper, now a forward with the Memphis Grizzlies, struggled to recall a game in which his parents were upset with him because of a bad shooting night or foul trouble.

“They really only got us for mistakes on effort,” Prosper said. “If we didn’t put in effort, that’s when they got mad.”

The Prosper children have become the first Canadian siblings to play in both leagues, and they still get texts full of feedback from their parents after every game. Olivier-Maxence said most of his mother’s comments will be about plays where he failed to crash the boards or didn’t hustle hard enough.

“To this day, they’re always coaching effort,” Cassandre Prosper, who now plays for the Mystics, said.

Lesson No. 2: Versatility Over Specialization

Before he was the father of two professional basketball players, Larry Parker was a small forward at Iowa in the 1970s trying to get more playing time. Parker had a good feel for the game and could pass but wasn’t an elite shooter or playmaker, which hindered his ability to regularly get on the court. His oldest son, Anthony, said his father used his reputation as a defensive stopper as a ticket to more playing time.

Larry went on to have three kids, and when they took up the game, he wanted their careers to look different from his.

“He was determined to make us versatile enough to where no matter what situation we ran into, we wouldn’t just fall back into one thing,” Anthony Parker said.

Larry trained all three kids the same way — prioritizing fundamentals and teaching them a little bit of everything, from shooting to post ups to ballhandling. The goal was to ensure they didn’t have a weakness, giving their coaches little reason to take them out. Anthony grew to be 6-foot-6, his dad’s height, and played nine years in the NBA before becoming a front office executive.

His sister, Candace, had a much different career. Considered one of the greatest women’s basketball players of all time, she won three WNBA championships with three different teams and two NCAA titles at Tennessee, excelling with a skill set rarely seen in a player of her size.

“She's 6-foot-4 and basically the height of a center in the women’s game,” Anthony said. “But you add in the fact that she can do all of the things guards and wings can do, and that’s what set her apart.”
BASKETBALL: AUG 15 Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony (3900x2610, AR: 1.49)One summer, Candace Parker recalled her dad coming up to her with a simple message: “You should get better with your left hand.”

So Candace spent her summer doing a little bit of everything with her left hand.

“I can remember eating with my left hand one summer,” Candace said. “I remember brushing my teeth with my left hand, doing [left-handed] push-ups during commercials.”

Gaetan Prosper posed a question to his kids that was similar to Larry Parker’s.

“How can you always be an asset on the court?” he would ask them.

The Prospers had their kids play every position on the court when they were growing up, even if it wasn’t a natural fit. At minimum, they would understand the roles and responsibilities each position required and know how to play off it.

At Notre Dame, Cassandre Prosper was one of the most multidimensional players Niele Ivey ever coached. In her senior year, she averaged 13.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.1 blocks per game, stuffing the stat sheet while leading the Irish to their first Elite Eight in years. Ivey said Prosper operated like a professional and understood the game at a level few college players can relate to.

“Having parents who played at the highest level, they understood what it takes to be a separator,” Ivey said.

In 1997, Angela Jaquez tried out for the upstart Los Angeles Sparks ahead of the WNBA’s maiden season. Her professional dreams ended there, but this past spring, she became the latest parent to have a kid in each league after her daughter, Gabriela, was drafted by the Chicago Sky. She joined Jamie Jr., who plays for the Bucks after starting his career with the Heat.

Both Angela and her husband, Jamie Sr., were standouts at Concordia University Irvine and coached Jamie Jr. and Gabriela as kids.

“You need to be able to pass and dribble, to be able to run a play, so that was what we focused on,” Angela Jacquez said.

She said they started having their kids watch film as early as elementary school to teach them about the flow of the game and show them ways they could move without the ball to help their teams win. They didn’t begin teaching the kids proper shooting form until they thought they were strong enough — a practice that NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson’s father, Rick, a former NBA player himself, also applied.

“Doing the little things is going to lead to big results,” Angela Jaquez said. “Everybody wants flashy plays. Those can happen, but you have to do the basics.”

Lesson No. 3: Competition Helps Everyone

When Elizabeth Williams was at Duke, she made history as the first player ever to win ACC Defensive Player of the Year four consecutive years.

But when she came home to Virginia Beach, her defensive genius within her family was waning. Elizabeth is eight years older than Mark, which put him in middle school during his older sister’s historic run. Around that time, he outgrew her 6-foot-3 frame en route to his current height of 7 feet. (He now plays center for the Phoenix Suns.) Their one-on-one games ended shortly after.

“She would play me when I wasn’t the player I am,” Mark said in a joint interview with his sister last year. “She knew she was gonna win.”

“He was probably 6-8 [when he won],” Elizabeth replied. “Let’s be real.”

That competitive dynamic prevailed across every set of siblings interviewed for this story. While parents emphasized different aspects of the game, their kids applied the teachings against each other until one sibling outgrew the other.

“It was even in the beginning,” Julian Reese, who is 6-foot-10, said. “But towards the end I was just winning.”

Lauren Betts is one of the tallest players in the WNBA at 6-foot-7. She dominated games against her brother when he was little.

“Dylan, when he was small, the girls would kind of beat him up,” Michelle Betts, Lauren’s mother, said. “And it was really upsetting for him. But as he got bigger, I feel like it was three or four years ago where they were like, ‘We can’t beat Dylan anymore.’”

The shift in competitiveness against her brother has given Betts a new perspective. Given her height, she was always used to being the tallest one on the court.

“I feel like going against my brother is crazy to see how other people feel going against me,” Betts said. “It’s kind of like karma.”
WNBA: SEP 27 Playoffs Washington Mystics at Atlanta Dream (5700x3800, AR: 1.50)But the matchups have borne fruit as the siblings' careers have advanced. Unlike Betts, Angel Reese regularly goes up against players taller than her, and her mother sees her using the same moves against opponents that she tried on Julian years earlier. That was on display in September at the FIBA World Cup when Reese was matched up against China center Zhang Ziyu, who, at 7-foot-3, is a footer taller than her.

“Going against her brother and his strength allowed her to use that to her advantage now,” Webb Reese said. “When she’s in the league now going against women who are stronger and taller than her, she uses what she learned when she was playing against her brother.”

Reese, who briefly played on the same team as her brother and his friends growing up, said that playing with him ultimately benefited her — even if it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.

“He definitely helped me get tougher,” Angel Reese said. “I was the only girl on the team, and he worked me up a lot and told me I wasn’t good. He was definitely my biggest critic but also helped me a lot.”

That help continues for many of the siblings to this day. While their parents may have provided the lessons that helped get them to the pros, the siblings now have the perfect confidante to help manage the challenges of playing pro basketball.

That is particularly true for the Williamses, who are the only NBA-WNBA family without a parent who played at a high level. Alex works as a gastroenterologist and Margaret was a nurse. When Elizabeth expressed interest in basketball as a kid, they bought her “Basketball For Dummies,” given their lack of experience with the game.

As both kids have become professionals, the parents have seen them go to each other for help, which is exactly the way they want it.

“If Mark has anything basketball related, he will talk to Elizabeth before he talks to us,” Alex Williams said. “Which is good, because we can't be that.”

With Budget Gap Looming, D.C. Council Starts Talking About Tax Increases

Martin Austermuhle — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:20:00 GMT

The D.C. Council will start debating a range of possible tax increases Friday. (Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP)

In what could be viewed as either a necessary attempt to correct D.C.’s historic economic inequalities or a foolhardy push to soak the rich amidst a downturn in the city, on Friday the D.C. Council will start debating a range of possible tax increases that could hit everything from investment income and second homes to law firms’ and lobbyists’ currently untaxed proceeds.

The hearing represents the first time in years that lawmakers have dived into the details of whether — and how — to raise more revenue and make the tax code fairer. It also comes at a time of profound change for D.C., with a new mayor set to take office in January but already facing a likely $600 million budget deficit and slowing economic growth.

“The city faces a big shortfall and we’re going to have to solve it either by cuts or revenue increases or a combination of the two,” said Ward 3 council member Matt Frumin. “The track record of the city has been to come forward with a revenue raiser at the last minute in the budget process with no deliberation around it. What this hearing is is a constructive conversation about what are our options.”

While there are differences of opinion on the wisdom of raising taxes — and how D.C. could do it — this much is uncontested: The city’s economy and the growing revenue streams it long provided lawmakers are down, in part because of a return to normality that never happened after the pandemic and also the more recent cuts to the federal workforce that have cost the city more than 36,000 jobs in the last year.

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The council has already had to deal with two difficult budget cycles that saw increasing fights over smaller pots of money for social services that have gotten more expensive — even as the need for them has remained steady.

“For the past several years we’ve said, ‘Maybe we need to wait until everyone is back in the office and DOGE is done and tourists are back.’ So we’ve been doing a lot of one-time things, and we’re coming to the end of these measures,” said Joe Bishop-Henchman, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member in Ward 5 and one of the 23 invited witnesses who will be testifying at Friday’s hearing.

“That only leaves hard decisions on spending and revenue,” he adds.

That’s especially the case now, as D.C. faces an estimated 2028 budget deficit of $600 million to $800 million that the new mayor — expected to be Ward 4 council member Janeese Lewis George — will be saddled with.

A number of tax-increase ideas have already been floated by lawmakers and hinted at by Lewis George, and those will serve as a foundation of today’s discussion. One, proposed by Ward 1 council member Brianne Nadeau, would take an existing federal tax on investment income and apply it locally to wealthy residents. The tax would produce an estimated $200 million in revenue the first year and $100 million a year after.

“The discussion around the Wealth Proceeds Tax comes down to the fact that we tax 100% of other types of income, so why aren’t we taxing these other sources of income? It’s just a matter of fairness,” Nadeau told The Sun. “People at the very top are doing very well, and it’s not an onerous tax.”

This isn’t the first time Nadeau has proposed raising taxes on wealthy households. In 2021 she led a successful charge — joined by Lewis George — to increase marginal tax rates on residents who make over $250,000 a year, with the revenue directed to cover pay increases for child care workers, more housing vouchers for homeless residents and expanded tax credits for low-income families.

But for Yesim Sayin, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center, that Nadeau’s new tax would target capital gains is risky. “This is all great when we have capital gains doing so well. But this could all go bust in a bad year. It’s very volatile,” she said. (Glen Lee, D.C.’s chief financial officer, has pointed out that one of the city’s few bright revenue spots is capital gains revenue because the stock market has been growing, though he has agreed it’s a source that is “subject to wild and sudden swings.”)

Frumin has taken a different approach, proposing his own version of New York City’s pied-à-terre tax, which targets secondary homes where the owner isn’t living on a full-time basis.

“The idea behind it is there are people who have a tax strategy which is to live in the District for one day less than six months, establish residence in a low- or no-tax state, and so they pay their property tax there and they’re here for half a year but they don’t pay income tax here. They’re employing a tax strategy, but we too have the right to employ a tax strategy to respond,” he said.

Bishop-Henchman is skeptical. “The proposal exempts members of Congress. Once you subtract those, who really is left? I would be skeptical that it would be a cash cow like NYC,” he said. Per Frumin’s office, the tax would target only 600 homeowners in D.C. and bring in an estimated $130 million over four years.

Probably the highest-profile, most lucrative and most controversial idea is a Business Activity Tax, which Lewis George has said she supports. It would take aim at law firms, consultancies and lobbying shops that are owned by nonresidents but don’t pay the city’s normal business tax because profits are treated as revenue for the owner — and Congress has prohibited D.C. from taxing nonresident income.

“The purpose of the BAT is to make sure all businesses are contributing to our shared resources, and right now there are many that are not because of the federal limitation on us,” said Erica Williams, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which favors tax increases. “A BAT helps us to broaden our tax base. That’s a good thing. That builds strength and resilience.”

Bishop-Henchman, who recently wrote an analysis of the proposed tax, questions whether it’s even legal — and notes that it would likely spur litigation. “This will be a big tax on out-of-state lawyers,” he said. In 2021, Maryland imposed a new tax on digital ads, but it was struck down this year and the state was ordered to pay refunds to those who paid the tax over the last five years.

Another challenge would be implementing a BAT. In July, the council asked the CFO to produce a report by January outlining what it would take to adopt the new tax.

Sayin believes lawmakers should focus on addressing how D.C. spends money, looking at “what drives costs, whether programs achieve their goals and which services the District can sustain.” That’s something Ward 5 council member Zachary Parker said he agrees with.

“I’ve been working to caution advocates to say that even if we were to raise taxes significantly and generated hundreds of millions of dollars, it would only keep us at pace with where we are now,” he said. “The only way we’re only going to be able to raise taxes and advance investments is by cutting our current spending. There are ways we can look at our bloated budget, look at agency spending and overspending and cut there while also making sure we fairly tax wealth.”

Still, Frumin said he appreciates the chances to broadly discuss and debate the merits and drawbacks of a number of ideas without the expectation that they will become reality soon. There’s little expectation the council would approve any tax increase this year, but it could tee something up to align with budget-writing season next spring.

Frumin also wants to proceed carefully, considering the city’s weak economy. “I will be sensitive to the possibility of different proposals driving away businesses or high-income people,” he said. “You do have to be careful of straws that break camels’ backs.”

Nebraska Went First With Its Medicaid Cuts. Now It’s Resonating in the Midterms.

Avani Kalra — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:17:00 GMT

President Donald Trump campaigns with Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, where Medicaid cuts in Trump's 2025 tax law are an issue. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

When Republicans passed their mega tax-cut bill more than a year ago, they timed most of its more than $1 trillion in health care cuts to kick in after the midterm elections, perhaps staving off possible electoral impacts.

Nebraska, however, decided to launch early, rolling out new Medicaid work requirements in May and beginning enforcement in July, well before their mandated Jan. 1, 2027 start.

The decision turned the prospect of people losing access to health care from speculative to actual for more than 1,000 Nebraskans so far. And health care leaders, Republican observers and others now think it’s a contributor to a political climate that suddenly has GOP leaders on the defensive in a state that is reliably red.

Bob Ward, a pollster with the Republican firm Fabrizio Ward, found Medicaid cuts to be one of the most “resonating negatives” in recent surveys of rural Republicans.

“One out of two Republicans either are, have been or have a family member that is or has been on Medicaid,” Ward said, adding that the number comes from polling he conducted while Republicans were negotiating the tax bill. “I mean, it touches a lot of people or has touched a lot of people. So it's not like a theoretical thing.”

All five Nebraska Republicans in Congress backed the tax-cutting “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” now generally referred to as HR 1, which will reduce projected Medicaid spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The cuts are offset only by a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund.

Ward’s polling observation about the Medicaid cuts is shared by people who deliver care in Nebraska, and it feeds into growing concerns about health care in the state generally, said Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association and a former Democratic state legislator.

“The broader public understands the cuts that were implemented in HR 1 to Medicaid and the impact that can have,” Nordquist said. “Doesn’t matter if it’s in Omaha or it’s in western Nebraska … they know what’s coming in terms of cuts to Medicaid and what that means for our rural health care system in this state.”

Nordquist said funding for rural hospitals is particularly salient in Nebraska, where many of the institutions typically receive between 60% to 80% of their funding from government payers — namely Medicare and Medicaid.

A study by his association found that 55% of Nebraska hospitals described their financial conditions as “challenging” in January.

“It used to be this program that was kind of seen as an afterthought to Medicare, but now it's much more fundamental to the financial and health care well-being of Nebraskans,” Nordquist said. “They're much more attuned to it, and they may end up voting with Medicaid more in mind than they have before.”

Such sentiments help explain why important Republican leaders have been visiting the state, where Sen. Pete Ricketts leads his challenger, independent Dan Osborn, by just a few points. The governor’s race is also closer than many Republicans expected, with recent polls showing Gov. Jim Pillen’s lead shrinking.

Both President Donald Trump and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director, visited Nebraska in recent weeks, fueling speculation that Republicans are concerned about a race where Osborn often attacks Ricketts over his vote for the tax bill.

“I wouldn't have allowed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to strip a trillion dollars away from Medicaid, and people's health care is going to be hurting,” Osborn said in a September debate with Ricketts, blaming the legislation for the closure of a dialysis clinic in Chadron, Nebraska.

Denise Powell, the Democrat favored to flip retiring Republican Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha district, has also spotlighted rural health care issues, calling on Congress to reverse last year’s Medicaid cuts.

“Cutting Medicaid, raising health insurance premiums, the tariffs, the war in Iran — Brinker Harding supports Trump on all of it,” Powell says in one TV ad attacking the Omaha City Council member running on the GOP ticket

And Democratic gubernatorial nominee Lynne Walz has similarly targeted Pillen for health care spending cuts in the state, telling the Nebraska Examiner in July that “it’s going to bring about really bad outcomes in the future.”

A Ricketts loss would be the most consequential as a possible a deciding factor in which party will control of the Senate. His campaign told The Washington Sun that the senator has worked to protect the health care system from fraud and pointed to the funding in the Rural Health Transformation Fund as a counter to the much larger cuts.

"He delivered $50 billion for rural healthcare,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Dan Osborn says he would have voted against the Working Families Tax Cut. Osborn wants higher taxes on your Social Security to pay for medicaid for illegal immigrants."

Republicans in the state have largely agreed that Democrats have successfully framed the Medicaid cuts in Nebraska, particularly as the cost of living continues to rise.

Perre Neilan, a Republican strategist, said his party has not done enough to explain the changes that were made as part of last year’s tax bill, even after Oz visited the state to discuss the rural hospital fund.

“I think Republicans have done a poor job of talking about how able-bodied men should be working,” Neilan said, referring to the new work requirements for Medicaid. “It's gotten cast as you're kicking people off health insurance and kicking people off government help.”

And Republican Ken Schilz, another former state legislator, said that although he expects health care cuts will continue to be a problem for whichever party is in power in Washington, Republicans need to find an answer on Medicaid cuts, especially while Democrats “smell blood in the water.”

“We’re seeing a lot more stress on those smaller hospitals, critical access hospitals and things like that,” Schilz said. “Rural health care was trending in this direction anyway, so something needs to change no matter what. Waiting until there’s nothing left but a crater and dust doesn’t do anything.”

How Metro Turned L’Enfant Plaza Into a ‘Laboratory’

Will Hofmann — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:15:00 GMT

At L’Enfant Plaza, signs hanging above the third rail have more negative space, an updated medium-weight Helvetica font and exits labeled by letters. (Torrie Herrington/The Washington Sun)

The Bond family had only been in D.C. for five days, but public transit had already become a reliable resource.

The stations had been simple to navigate, Kise Bond said, and her kids had enjoyed riding the Metro. At L’Enfant Plaza, they appreciated the alphabetically coded entrances and exits.

“Just the fact that you have a Metro is amazing,” said Colton Bond, who was holding on to his family’s luggage as they waited for a Silver Line train to be whisked away toward their flight back to Salem, Oregon.

But the Bonds didn’t know they were joining the 14,000 other daily entrants at L’Enfant in one big experiment.

For the last three years, L’Enfant Plaza has been the hub for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s trials and tests on the Metro system’s signage. Officials refer to it as the system’s “live laboratory.”

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Conveniently located next to Metro’s headquarters and just a short walk from the National Mall, the agency has simulated the station in virtual reality, used it to launch numerous sign iterations — ranging from bright, real-time digital station displays to minimalist Helvetica text above the third rail — and recently selected it as the first to receive updates as part of its $37.8 million wayfinding program.

After a 2023 study found that 39% of Metro passengers had used the wrong station exit and 23% had boarded a train headed in the wrong direction, testing at L’Enfant began as a process to consolidate signage across the system and improve accessibility, Brian Anderson, Metro’s acting vice president for customer experience initiatives, told The Washington Sun during a tour of the station. The agency has between 20 and 25 different sign types across its 98 active stations, Anderson said. The hope is to get that number down to just 10 to 15.

But while some of the pilot program’s sign changes were small, even incremental, the rollout of the wayfinding program has created the most customer heartburn so far.

Online, riders have expressed dismay about the new signs, describing them as “not well done” or “Metro enshitification.” The pushback to one proposed change — removing stripes around pylons outside of Metro stops — led WMATA to reverse course.

From old to new, signs on the walls of Metro stations will no longer include route endpoints indicating direction, and some signs, like those on platforms or near exits, will include points of interest like airports or the National Zoo. All signs hanging above third rails have more negative space, a minimalist design choice that has come with an updated medium-weight Helvetica font. Exits will no longer be labeled by street but by letters.
_MG_3957 copy 2.jpg (5710x3807, AR: 1.50)Importantly, no signs will include cardinal directions, a change made to increase accessibility and reflect that not all lines, like the U-shaped Red Line, follow linear directions. Within the next five years, all stations are expected to have the new signage, Metro said.

Cleaning up visual clutter — like reducing the number of names, arrows and colors on signs — will likely decrease the chance that users are confused in stations, said Jihyun Song, a wayfinding researcher who takes the Silver Line on her way to work at George Washington University.

But some changes, particularly the removal of directions from wall signs, may leave customers confused, Song said.

Laura Heatherly, who is visually impaired and uses a mobility cane to navigate, said the removal of directional indicators had actually made determining which train she’s waiting for at L’Enfant more difficult.

“I can normally look at a sign and easily find my way around, but now I can’t tell which one is going north or south. I usually have to ask around,” Heatherly, a frequent L’Enfant user, said while waiting on the Green-Yellow Line platform.

In some ways, the removal of information reflects a return to the ethos of the original design of the Metro and highlights an ongoing “special tension” between the agency’s aesthetics and the public, said Zachary Schrag, the author of “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro.”
_MG_3905 copy 2.jpg (5490x3660, AR: 1.50)With fights about signage dating back to 1976, the battle over Metro aesthetics is as old as the system itself, Schrag said. Other battles have taken place over lighting or paint along the vault walls of Metro stops.

“People do get fussy about changes. I think one of the differences with this most recent wayfinding effort is that it was more deliberate and more public,” said Schrag, a professor of U.S. history at George Mason University. Before unveiling the changes, WMATA received over 13,000 comments on Metro signage, and the final product was approved by its Accessibility Advisory Committee, its Riders’ Advisory Committee and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

“You cannot always appeal 100% to every single person,” said Anderson, who at one point stopped to offer a customer directions during the tour. “But we are very confident in what we have delivered, and we appreciate the feedback.”

Still, some riders are oblivious to the L’Enfant laboratory.

Just before a recent afternoon rush hour, Leroy Ferguson said he hadn’t noticed the new minimalist text hanging over the third rail. A D.C. resident for 15 years, Ferguson uses the Metro every day. When he sees lost tourists, he offers them simple advice.

“Always follow the signs,” he said. “Always follow the signs.”

MS Forced Him to Retire From Politics. He Found a New Voice by Painting.

Torrie Herrington — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:05:00 GMT

John Czwartacki, a longtime Republican communicator, sits next to his abstract self-portrait. (Torrie Herrington/The Washington Sun)

For decades, John Czwartacki made a career out of words.

He had worked and lived in D.C. since the ’90s, but in 2020, multiple sclerosis forced him into early retirement. The chronic disease, which affects the central nervous system, has been part of his life since his diagnosis in 1993. As it progressed, it affected his voice, making it increasingly difficult for him to communicate the way he once had.

“By 2020, I got to do so many things, so many great things. I traveled. I got jobs,” Czwartacki, better known as CZ, told The Washington Sun. “Unfortunately, I had the real reality of like, okay, well, I can't work in government. I can't work in a social office. Doctors are not really happy with me doing that.”

A longtime Republican communicator, Czwartacki served as press secretary for then-Rep. John Boehner and later as communications director for the Office of Management and Budget during President Donald Trump’s first term. His job was to shape messages, write speeches and explain the work of government.

For years following his retirement, Czwartacki struggled with what he described as a pent-up feeling, searching for a way to express an experience that spoken words could no longer fully capture.

Then, in November 2025, he bought a paintbrush and starter paints.

“Why is that? I'm not entirely sure,” he said. “I created pieces of art that I didn't expect to create, right? I didn't see that going in.”

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As multiple sclerosis changed his relationship with his body and senses, painting opened up a new way to experience and interpret the world.

“I feel like a whole new set of senses was opened up to me. So it's like, wow!” he said. “A whole new suite of tactics to articulate myself are now available.”

For someone who had spent his career communicating through language, the discovery was revelatory.

“They're not things like words but you feel them and what is going on here is so cool as someone who has loved to communicate his whole life,” he said. “I'm like it's a whole new way to do it and I'm like, this is astounding to me.”
Mick Mulvaney, John Czwartacki (5171x3447, AR: 1.50)Czwartacki began experimenting with vibrant colors, fascinated by how they interacted on the canvas.

“Putting them close to each other and they would sing to each other and talk and leave you with a feeling of anticipation,” he said.

Less than a year after picking up a paintbrush, Czwartacki held his first art show on Oct. 8. The displayed paintings offered glimpses into the physical and emotional realities of living with a disease that has altered how he moves through the world — and how he sees himself.

The show was held in partnership with Survivors for Solutions, the nonprofit Czwartacki founded in 2022 to advocate for people facing health challenges who often struggle to make their voices heard in Washington.

Czwartacki painted “Hold On” while experiencing vertigo. Against a black background, white paint smears across the canvas, while a bright orange circle sits in the upper right corner.

The result is disorienting, an attempt to translate a physical sensation into something viewers can experience for themselves.

Another painting is an abstract self-portrait, a piece Czwartacki initially dreaded making.

He worried about his ability to draw recognizable features — “a nose or an ear or an eye” — but his son asked him to try.

The skeletal outline is fractured, he said, while the green near the bottom represents grounding. The background uses the same orange found in “Hold On,” a color that stands out against the more subdued elements of the portrait.

“I saw myself as incomplete and broken — still telling the story with things like this and also the MS,” he said. “And then the orange is kind of like shouting at you — it's paradoxical.”

The work does not attempt to neatly resolve the contradictions of his experience. Instead, the paintings hold them together: brokenness and expression, frustration and discovery, the limitations imposed by illness and the possibilities that remain.
John Czwartacki's paintings (5437x3624, AR: 1.50)Tina Robinson has known Czwartacki for over five years and founded an MS support group with him. She said he and his art are “proof that MS doesn’t get the final word.”

“As a patient myself, it’s inspiring to see him use the gift of time that new treatments have given us to find a new voice through his art,” Robinson said. “I hope his story inspires others living with chronic illness like MS or any challenging disease to take on new challenges and hold on to hope.”

Czwartacki may no longer be shaping political messages from inside the government, but he has not abandoned the impulse that drove him to the profession in the first place. He is still telling stories. He is still trying to make people feel something. He has simply found a different medium.

“I felt very proud of myself for my skill with English and my ability to write things and speeches and op-eds,” he said. “But when I learned to paint like this, I felt like I was taught every language in the world.”

Trump’s Endorsement May Not Matter in the Next House Republican Leadership Race

Kadia Goba, Reese Gorman — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:04:00 GMT

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:04:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/campaigns/trump-endorsement-mike-johnson-house-republican-leadership-election

President Donald Trump's close relationship with House Speaker Mike Johnson may not be a factor in the next GOP leadership election. (Alex Brandon/AP)

There’s a big factor missing from the next race to lead House Republicans: President Donald Trump.

With House Republicans facing the prospect that they could be in the minority next year, and Trump himself entering the back end of his own lame-duck period, some believe the president’s influence won’t close the deal for Mike Johnson if he runs to remain the top elected leader.

“Not one bit,” one GOP lawmaker, given anonymity to speak freely, told The Washington Sun when asked if Trump’s endorsement matters. “Especially if we have lost, because people will blame him.”

Trump’s unique power has loomed over leadership races since Kevin McCarthy's bruising bid in 2023, when the president’s endorsement and personal phone calls helped sway some holdouts from blocking McCarthy’s path.

Trump intervened again during the next speaker’s race, after McCarthy was ousted 10 months later, when he thwarted Rep. Tom Emmer’s chances with a simple Truth Social post calling the Republican whip “totally out of touch.” And when Mike Johnson sought a full term as speaker in 2024, the president pressured some reluctant members to coalesce around Johnson to help him secure the gavel in 2025.

Heading into the next Congress, Republican lawmakers are split on Trump’s pull, with some saying it’s “not nearly as much” this round and others saying the president’s opinion would have some impact.

Johnson has made it clear he wants to lead his conference, whether or not Republicans maintain the majority. He currently has the backing of the president, who still thinks fondly of the Louisianan, according to two White House officials. But the path for Johnson won’t be easy, members say.

“He will not run unopposed,” one senior GOP member said.

Asked to comment on the speaker’s plan, a Johnson spokesperson referred The Sun to recent interviews with Johnson saying he believes Republicans will keep the majority and that he will remain the top leader.

But in an interview with Fox News recently, Johnson said he was unsure of what his next chapter would be if Democrats flip control of the House, saying that “if God moves on our hearts” he could go back to his hometown of Shreveport to start a “lawn business.”

Days later, in an interview with CBS News, he clarified his comments were "tongue in cheek” and added, “I would expect my colleagues would call upon me to continue to lead the conference in a divided government” if House Republicans lost the majority.

There are two other potential candidates laying the groundwork to lead the GOP conference next year. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is popular with many members, who view him as personable, loyal and a savvy operator. And then there’s House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who has been traveling and raising money for colleagues over the past year in what many view as building support to run for the top post.

Even if Johnson had Trump’s backing, that hasn’t always helped in the past. In 2023, following McCarthy’s ouster, Trump publicly backed Jordan for speaker over Scalise. However, on the private ballot, Scalise came out victorious.

Similarly, when Jordan did eventually get the nomination after Scalise dropped out, Trump’s endorsement didn’t translate into votes on the floor, as a bloc of members opposed him on multiple ballots.

Following the defeat, Jordan has been attempting to rebuild his image into someone who is a team player. He’s been in constant contact with the Republican conference through weekly, and at times daily, check-ins with his colleagues across the conference, multiple members told The Sun.

“Jim Jordan calls me every week, and he knows I wasn’t for him last time and not for him this time, and yet he still calls,” one lawmaker told The Sun.

Trump will have a bit more sway if Republicans retain the majority because lawmakers will have to publicly cast their ballot for speaker on the House floor. But, in the minority, members will vote via secret ballot the week after the midterms in a closed-door election, where Republican lawmakers say Trump’s power diminishes dramatically.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston, asked about Trump’s role, told The Sun, “President Trump is focused on maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”

“If we win, then POTUS runs the show, as always,” one lawmaker, given anonymity to speak candidly, told The Sun. “But if we lose, he’s got a lot less stroke.”]]>

Mary Peltola Dismisses Reports of Angry Outbursts as ‘Gossip’ During Debate

Ellie Fivas — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 05:26:07 GMT

Sen. Dan Sullivan seemed eager to make The New York Times reporting an issue, and brought up the allegations during an unrelated debate question. (Becky Bohrer/AP)

Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate in Alaska’s Senate race, directly addressed allegations of mistreatment of former staffers for the first time on Thursday, calling them “outright fabrications” and “mass exaggerations of the truth” in a debate.

Peltola, who is running against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in a close and widely watched race, has dodged questions on the campaign trail about the report by The New York Times from late September detailing mistreatment of staff. But at the hour-long Senate debate, the first time the candidates had faced off in such a setting, it came up several times.

Sullivan seemed eager to make it an issue, and brought up the allegations during an unrelated debate question.

“Take a look at how she treats Alaskans when the cameras are off. Look at that New York Times story,” he said, arguing it revealed a “character flaw.”

He alluded to some of the outlet’s reporting beyond Peltola’s behavior toward staff, including her alleged use of slurs.

The two began talking over each other, with Sullivan adding, “It’s The New York Times, read the article.”

Peltola jumped in to say the allegations were “gossip.”

The moderator threatened to shut off their microphones if necessary.

Later, a moderator asked Peltola directly about the allegations.

“I do not think that this election is about me on my worst day,” she said. “I found so many of these allegations concerning and outright fabrications or mass exaggerations of the truth.”

“I really am very concerned about making sure that we are respectful and respectful of all people, and again, this campaign is not about me on my worst day,” she added.

The Democratic candidate also suggested that the allegations likely emerged because her campaign is a threat to Sullivan. The incumbent senator once again circled back to the subject, pointing out that the report was not published by “conservative media” but rather the Times.

The Times reported that former staffers said Peltola had a history of frustration with staff throughout her campaign and as a member of the House of Representatives. It outlined an instance of her allegedly shoving a staffer, which her campaign characterized to the outlet as a bump. The report also included her alleged use of slurs, which Sullivan referenced as he attacked her over the article.

The story also described a text in which Peltola said of someone, “I hope she dies of a botched abortion.” That was also used as an attack line by Sullivan.

In a statement to the Times, her campaign spokesperson denied that she had a pattern of abusive behavior and cited a period of grief following the deaths of Peltola’s mother and husband in 2023.

The allegations shook the race in the closing stretch of the campaign, prompting an intraparty feud among Democrats about whether the staffers who shared their accounts with the Times had been too sensitive.

It was not a debate many Democrats liked taking up oxygen, given that the Alaska race has emerged as one of the most competitive in the country, with The Cook Political Report rating it a “toss-up.” Sullivan has served in his seat for two terms and Peltola was previously a U.S. House representative for Alaska’s at-large district.

It was clear how high the stakes were for both of them, as those were not the only heated exchanges.

Peltola appeared to read off notecards for much of the debate, which Sullivan noticed in real time.

"We weren't supposed to get these questions beforehand, were we?" he asked. (The moderators said no.) "I'm just watching my opponent read."

“I’m prepared,” Peltola responded.

Donald Trump’s Legal Fund Is Flirting With Insolvency

Taylor Giorno — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 03:19:53 GMT

President Donald Trump's main legal fund is in debt. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Save America PAC — President Donald Trump’s preferred vehicle for paying legal bills — spent more than $5.1 million on legal bills during the third quarter, or around $56,000 per day, according to the committees’ latest filing to the Federal Election Commission.

That kind of spending has sent the leadership PAC — which is often pushing money out the door faster than it can come in — into legal debt topping $1.9 million.

Never Surrender, another Trump leadership PAC, helped to bail out Save America PAC by transferring from its account almost all of the $4.8 million Save America took in during the third quarter.

But it wasn’t enough to cover all of Save America’s legal bills, or the other $343,000 Save America spent on media consulting, payroll and other expenses, FEC records indicate.

Trump is a convicted felon who has faced numerous criminal and civil proceedings during the past several years, including a 2023 trial during which a New York jury found him liable for sexual abuse. Trump has also gone on the legal offensive of late, personally suing media organizations.

Neither Save America nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.

Save America has collectively paid more than two-dozen firms about $20.4 million for legal services and consulting since January 2025, when Trump began his second presidential term, according to FEC records. The PAC owes money to 12 of those firms, including two based in London.

Save America owes $761,000 to Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, the legal giant that has represented Trump in several high-profile legal battles, including the president’s unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn the $83 million defamation verdict that the writer E. Jean Carroll won.

The PAC also owes $663,000 to NechelesLaw LLP. Susan Necheles was one of the defense attorneys who cross-examined the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s “hush money” trial in 2024.

Brito PLLC, a Florida-based firm that has represented the president’s cases against news media giants including ABC News and The New York Times, is also owed $239,000.

Save America is also in debt $34,000 to the Dhillon Law Group, the firm founded by Harmeet Dhillon, who now serves in the Trump administration as assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Department of Justice.

The PAC also owes thousands of dollars to firms including New York-based criminal defense firm Tacopina, Seigel & DeOreo; Houston-based patent litigation firm Taylor Dykema PLLC; and civil rights and criminal defense firm James Otis Law Group LLC, among others.

Kari Lake’s Old Senate Committee Is Still Stiffing Campaign Creditors

Kyle Chouinard — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 03:11:18 GMT

Kari Lake's old Senate campaign committee remains deep in debt. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP)

Republican Kari Lake’s 2024 Senate campaign loss to Democrat Ruben Gallego is long behind her — except for the over $1 million in debt her campaign still owes two years later, according to a new Federal Election Commission filing.

Lake’s old campaign committee owes more than $328,000 to Opn Sesame for texting and telemarketing services and almost $278,000 to TAG LLC for “digital consulting & fundraising service.” The remaining over $400,000 in debts for online advertising and fundraising, however, are marked as “disputed.”

The seven-figure debt lingers as President Donald Trump’s nomination of Lake as U.S. ambassador to Jamaica has stalled — she has not yet received Senate confirmation despite the president nominating her in May.

The Lake committee isn’t without cash; it has nearly half a million on hand as of Sept. 30, according to its latest financial statement.

It’s also still processing a stream of contributions. Since July, Lake’s committee marked about $1,500 worth of this income as “debt retirement," meaning the money would directly go to paying off the campaign’s debt.

In the last year, the Lake campaign’s total debt fell by around $6,000, according to FEC filings, or about 0.6% of its current debt. Lake did not immediately respond to The Sun’s request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a Washington Sun inquiry.

Lake, an Arizona news broadcaster before her foray into politics marked by loyalty to Trump, has remained in the president’s close political orbit.

Last year, Trump appointed Lake as the “acting CEO” of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America among other state-run foreign media outfits. In her first year, she oversaw massive downsizing.

In March, a federal judge ruled that both her chief role and cuts were illegal. Trump’s nomination of Lake for ambassador followed soon after.

Mitch McConnell Is Denying Republicans His Massive Cash Stash

Nicole Belcastro — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:54:12 GMT

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has a massive cash reserve in his candidate campaign account. (Francis Chung/Politico via AP

Sen. Mitch McConnell is hoarding his committee’s wealth during a crucial midterms cycle for the Republican Party, according to a new federal filing.

When the Kentucky senator returned to Capitol Hill in September after a three-month, health-related absence, his campaign committee had nearly $7.4 million waiting for him.

But McConnell, who no longer has use for the money since he opted not to run for an eighth term, opted not to spread his wealth to any Republican Party committee or candidate campaign. That includes the Senate Leadership Fund and Texas PAC, political committees associated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who succeeded McConnell as the Republicans’ Senate leader.

Before McConnell leaves the Senate in January, his campaign committee has a few options for its surplus money.

Most urgently, McConnell’s committee can still donate up to $2,000 a piece to other Republican candidate committees. It may also transfer unlimited amounts to national party committees, such as the Republican National Committee or National Republican Senatorial Committee.

McConnell’s committee could also donate its millions to charities or nonprofit universities.

One organization McConnell is already connected to is the nonpartisan McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. The center was established in 1991 to encourage Kentucky’s top students to pursue higher education in their home state, and McConnell raised the initial funds for scholarships.

Other legal options include refunding donors or disgorging money to the U.S. Treasury’s general fund.

Graham Platner’s Campaign Paid a $20,000 Severance to His Wife

Chase Pellegrini de Paur — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:37:57 GMT

Amy Gertner and her husband, Graham Platner, celebrate after his primary win in June. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Graham Platner announced July 8 he was dropping out of the race for Senate in Maine.

Nine days later, his campaign paid his wife, Amy Gertner, $20,246 for “severance payroll.”

That’s part of the more than $350,000 Platner’s campaign paid out in severances, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Others on the payroll received between $3,500 and $20,000 each in severance. Gertner received the most.

Gertner had a visible role on Platner’s campaign. When he came under scrutiny for sending sexually explicit texts to other women, Gertner filmed a selfie-style video defending her marriage and calling the stories “gossip.” Platner has denied the allegations, which later included a former girlfriend saying he had sexually assaulted her.

Campaign staffers, including Gertner, also received a $979 “win bonus” on July 3, a month after Platner’s primary victory.

Several staffers received severance payments of about $9,000. Some of them, per their personal LinkedIn pages, are current college students.

The campaign also paid out more than $70,000 in refunds to donors.

Platner’s team had more than $1.7 million on hand at the beginning of July. After campaign expenditures, severance and refunds, the campaign ended September with just about $99,000 remaining.

None of the leftover money went to Troy Jackson, Platner’s replacement in the race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins — perhaps due to political optics.

“That’s ‘Nazi accused rapist’ money,” a Democratic strategist told The Washington Sun in July. “The best thing he could do is give it to a women’s charity, specifically an organization supporting rape victims.”

Platner’s treasurer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sara Gideon, the Democrat who challenged Collins in 2020, still has $2 million in her campaign accounts. In recent months, she distributed $310,000 to Maine Democrats and $70,000 to other Democratic candidates across the country.

Who’s Running Roger Marshall’s Campaign? His Campaign Filings Don't Say.

Hunter Riggall — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:17:05 GMT

The Kansas Republican is facing scrutiny about whether he’s used taxpayer dollars to fund his reelection bid. (Bill Clark/AP)

Sen. Roger Marshall’s latest campaign finance filing is largely missing spending entries typical of nearly all campaign reports: Those described as wages, salaries or payroll.

The Kansas Republican, who is up for reelection in a competitive race as Democrats try to expand their Senate map, is facing scrutiny about whether he’s used taxpayer dollars to fund his reelection bid, including by using his official Senate staff as an extension of his campaign.

Marshall’s latest filing with the Federal Election Commission, covering campaign spending from mid-July through the end of September, does not appear to include any payments to full-time campaign staff.

A joint investigation published last week by MS NOW and Kansas Reflector reported that the Marshall campaign hadn’t cut a paycheck to campaign staff in the last five years, an arrangement that experts quoted in the piece called “extremely uncommon” for a Senate campaign. The article also listed a number of instances in which Marshall may have violated ethics rules by using his office’s funds for campaign purposes.

Marshall’s office and the Marshall campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Marshall’s chief of staff told MS NOW and Kansas Reflector that the campaign now has campaign staff, without providing evidence.

Congressional staffers are allowed to work for campaigns, but only under strict guidelines. The work must be done on staffers’ own time, outside of congressional offices and without congressional resources.

The FEC filing says Marshall’s campaign spent $5.3 million in the third quarter, raising about $801,000 and finishing with $922,000 cash on hand.

The FEC records also indicate the campaign spent a little more than $10,000 on outside consultants from July through September.

Marshall, who polling has found to be deadlocked with Democrat Adam Hamilton, is in need of additional support for his campaign operation. According to Axios, Chris Grant, a top Trump political adviser who has previously worked for Marshall, is part of the cavalry that’s been sent in to help Marshall’s campaign in the final stretch.

The Washington Sun previously reported that Republican PACs have moved millions of dollars of ads into Kansas to rescue Marshall’s reelection bid as some GOP operatives say the senator lacks a good ground game.

Labor's Trump-Appointed Watchdog Gets His Own Ethics Audit

Gavin J. Quinton — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:05:54 GMT

D’Esposito bristled when asked about the investigation, telling The Washington Sun it was "bullshit." (Alex Brandon/AP)

Federal ethics investigators will audit the political conduct of Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, a former Long Island congressman accused of allowing partisan loyalties to affect his responsibilities as an impartial internal watchdog.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has “accepted the matter for review,” Newsday first reported Thursday, citing a letter sent this week to the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW filed the initial complaint against D’Esposito in April.

D’Esposito bristled when asked about the investigation, calling CREW a group of “political hacks” hawking “bogus nonsense.”

“It’s bullshit,” he told The Washington Sun Thursday evening. “I’ll keep exposing fraud and fighting for American workers.”

The ethics complaint against D’Esposito, who was appointed to the position last year by President Donald Trump, stems from a series of politically slanted social media posts the inspector general published using his official Labor Department X account.

He purportedly used the account to praise the president’s immigration and economic policies and congratulate him for his war efforts in Iran. In the April complaint, CREW chief executive Donald Sherman also pointed to numerous instances when D’Esposito accepted explicit direction from Trump and other administration officials.

“During his tenure as inspector general, D’Esposito has blurred the lines between official and political activities,” Sherman wrote.

The DOL inspector general is responsible for investigating fraud, waste and misconduct within the department and is legally required to remain objective and isolated from political pressures.

If the Office of Special Counsel finds that D’Esposito has flaunted objectivity standards, he could be fined, removed from office or face criminal prosecution for violating the Hatch Act's prohibitions against partisan activity.

Sherman also implored the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency to act. D’Esposito said in a statement to Newsday that the council — another group that oversees integrity complaints against cross-agency inspectors general — is “taking no further action.”

Representatives from the council and the OSC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk Settles Lawsuits Over His $1 Million Election Giveaways

Gavin J. Quinton — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:41:12 GMT

Elon Musk hold a chainsaw as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Jose Luis Magana/AP

Elon Musk and his political action committee have agreed to settle two lawsuits that accused them of misleading voters with promises of $1 million checks before the 2024 presidential election and in a 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

Legal counsel for the parties notified a federal judge in Texas that they’d struck an agreement to end the dual class-action suits Thursday. Terms of the settlements are not public and still require court approval.

The plaintiffs in the two cases — Arizona residents Jacqueline McAferty and Joy Harvick — accused Musk and America PAC of coaxing ⁠voters in seven swing states into signing his 2024 petition to support free speech and gun rights and submitting personal information for what they were told was a chance to receive $1 million. The giveaway was part of Musk’s broader effort to return Donald Trump to the White House.

The cases’ central claim, according to court filings, is that America PAC representatives vetted potential recipients of the prize rather than simply drawing names from a hat.

Following that blueprint, the tech mogul took the tactic to the March 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election to urge voters to turn out for Brad Schimel, the state's former Republican attorney general.

“I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” Musk said in a now-deleted post on X.

Musk has already escaped a potential legal battle concerning his promises in Wisconsin: La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke declined to charge the tech mogul with election bribery in August, despite the state elections commission’s earlier ruling that he had likely broken the law. Gruenke, a Democrat, said no jury would have found Musk’s actions constituted election bribery.

America PAC, which is primarily funded by Musk himself, spent millions to support Schimel, who later lost to Susan Crawford.

The Tesla founder has denied the allegations of engaging in election bribery.

The Arizona settlements come weeks before November’s consequential elections. Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, has personally contributed over $275 million — more than any other person — to support the Republican Party’s efforts to retain its congressional majorities.

Will AOC Challenge Schumer in 2028? She Certainly Has a Cash Advantage.

Manuela Silva — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 23:46:41 GMT

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a massive campaign cash reserve as she ponders her political future. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images) Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t yet decided whether she’ll challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his seat in 2028. One thing is clear: She has a big cash advantage.

Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign committee ended September with more than double the cash that Schumer’s Senate campaign had in reserve, according to filings both lawmakers’ campaigns submitted Thursday to the Federal Election Commission.

Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign reported nearly $17.4 million in reserve as of Sept. 30, while Schumer’s committee reported more than $7.8 million.

From July 1 to Sept. 30 alone, Ocasio-Cortez’s committee raised more than $4.7 million, according to FEC records.

She is currently seeking reelection to her House seat and is expected to easily defeat her Republican challenger, Diamant Hysenaj, in November.

When asked by The New York Times in September whether she would challenge Schumer — New York’s senior senator — for his seat come 2028, Ocasio-Cortez wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” she told the Times.
Chuck Schumer (8256x5504, AR: 1.50)In recent weeks, Ocasio-Cortez traveled through upstate New York, only fueling speculation about the congresswoman’s political future.

She has also campaigned across the country — often with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — in support of progressive candidates.

Ocasio-Cortez has also declined to rule out a run for the White House in 2028. If elected, she would be the first female president and the youngest person ever to hold the office. (Ocasio-Cortez will be 39 on Inauguration Day 2029.)

Schumer, 75, has not yet revealed his 2028 plans.

Schumer, who has led the Senate Democratic Caucus since 2017, has faced increasing pressure from parts of his party in recent years.

In September, he told Politico that he would seek to retain his leadership spot regardless of the midterm outcomes.

Trump Donor Says His Guilfoyle Lawsuit Could ‘Bring Down’ the Administration

Gavin J. Quinton — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 23:13:35 GMT

Deters claims the information revealed by his lawsuit could dash the political careers of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

Republican donor Eric Deters sued Kimberly Guilfoyle and her lawyers for defamation Thursday, escalating a falling-out inside President Donald Trump’s political circle two days after the administration ousted the U.S. ambassador to Greece.

The lawsuit, filed in Kentucky, accuses Guilfoyle of attacking Deters’ reputation in an effort to cover up a $100,000 quid pro quo proposition to Deters in exchange for helping him in her capacity as an attaché.

Deters, who has contributed over $1 million to support Trump, claims the information revealed by his lawsuit could dash the political careers of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“This might just bring down the entire Trump administration, an administration which I have supported from Day 1,” Deters said in a video on his Facebook page Thursday. “President Trump and the defendants can do the right thing, or pay the price.”

Deters said that on Friday, he will release an “explosive” new phone recording from Greece, and added that he intends to subpoena records from the Trump administration.

The developing saga offers a glimpse into conversations — and expectations — baked into money exchanges within Trump’s political network.

Deters’ legal battle began when he alleged that Guilfoyle asked him to pay a $100,000 American Express bill in exchange for access to administration officials. Guilfoyle’s lawyers hit back, disputing the veracity of his text messages and claiming that Deters actually owed her money for speaking and travel fees, which he denies.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Guilfoyle sought the money from Deters days before her July 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, which took place after Deters had requested her help with tax and legal problems. Guilfoyle subsequently updated Deters on those lobbying efforts and forwarded messages documenting outreach to the IRS before she allegedly asked for the $100,000 payment, the newspaper reported.

Deters has maintained he never made the payment and says he initially contacted Guilfoyle to ask her help in extraditing an Ohio doctor from Pakistan who was facing charges of defrauding insurance companies.

“It was all quid pro quo,” he told ABC News last week. “She was so desperate for me to send that $100,000, she said, ‘If you do this for me ... I will be your ride or die in Trumpworld.”

He claims he had previously made large payments to Guilfoyle over several years to speak at his Freedom Fest events. He has also threatened to seek Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony.

Guilfoyle has repeatedly denied the allegations as false and pledges to defend her reputation.

On Wednesday, Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, again requested financial records and communications between Guilfoyle and top Trump administration officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and former IRS Commissioner Billy Long.

He requested the records by Oct. 22.

Texas Says It Has Cleared a Massive Voter-Registration Backlog

The Associated Press — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:52:45 GMT

The error failed to send a large number of records to applicants’ home counties, where the applications are processed and verified. (Gabriela Passos/AP)

By Anna Wilder

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A massive backlog of voter registration applications in Texas that frustrated counties and raised concerns among Democrats nationally has been cleared days before early voting begins, state election officials said Thursday.

The backlog, which state officials attributed to a software glitch, left counties big and small scrambling to process scores of voter registrations late in an unusually competitive midterm election season in Texas. Early voting in the state begins Monday.

State officials have not said how many applications were delayed but the number was in the hundreds of thousands, including over 75,000 in Harris County, which includes Houston and finished its backlog earlier this month.

“With our size, that was a big win for our county,” said Harris County Tax Assessor and Voter Registrar Annette Ramirez, who oversees the county's elections.

The problem, which officials in the Republican-controlled state have not publicly defined, started last October in the Texas Department of Public Safety, which among other things allows people to register to vote or update their voter registrations when they renew their driver’s license.

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

DPS had previously said certain records submitted online “were incomplete and not fully transmitted.” The department did not immediately respond to an email seeking further explanation Thursday.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State, said they were not aware of any county with pending applications. Her office has said that any person can still cast a provisional ballot if they show up to a polling place and are not on the voter rolls.

The League of Women Voters and the Texas Civic Fund, a civil rights group, filed a lawsuit that accused the state of not providing a reliable way for people to register to vote. California U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee that oversees federal elections, sent Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a letter last month seeking answers on the scope of the failure and the causes.

Election offices hired temporary workers to handle the crush. In Austin, Travis County Tax Assessor Celia Israel said the backlog for her elections office was an “enhanced stress,” especially on top of seeing more voting applications coming in the last few weeks.

Rudy Giuliani’s Legal Defense Fund Isn’t Spending on Legal Expenses

Taylor Giorno — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:42:58 GMT

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's defense fund is now mostly paying fundraising consultants. (Hiroko Masuike/Pool The New York Times via AP)

Rudy Giuliani’s legal defense fund isn't actually spending much on legal fees.

So far during the 2026 election cycle, only a fraction of Giuliani Defense spending has gone toward legal fees, according to the latest report filed this week with the Federal Election Commission. Of the more than $1.2 million Giuliani Defense has spent so far this cycle, most of the money has gone to fundraising consultants for mailing and postage.

That includes $442,000 to Texas-based fundraising service provider American Caging and $227,000 to Rockwell Solutions, a Leesburg, Virginia-based fundraising consulting firm.

Giuliani Defense also raised more than $1.2 million since the beginning of 2025, with money often coming from donors identified as retirees. Since July, almost all of the group’s donors who gave more than $200 are listed as retirees.

Neither American Caging nor Rockwell Solutions immediately responded when asked if the materials were for fundraising related to Giuliani’s legal defense fund.

Neither Andrew Giuliani, the elder Giuliani’s son and founder of Giuliani Defense, nor the political committee’s treasurer, Robert Kiger, responded to requests for comment.

Giuliani Defense did pay Gessler Blue Law $57,700 for legal fees in March 2026.

The Denver-based law firm represented Giuliani in the high-profile defamation case brought by the former executive of Dominion Voting Systems, one of several legal issues related to Giuliani’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Giuliani Defense formed in August 2023 to help cover the cost of this and other legal judgments, including another defamation suit won by two Georgia women that Giuliani settled in January 2025.

President Donald Trump hosted a fundraiser in September 2023 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to help Giuliani raise money for his legal defense, NBC News reported at the time.

Giuliani Defense raised more than $1 million during the 2024 election cycle, with more than $743,000 going toward legal fees, according to FEC data.

Groups Are Suing to Stop DHS From Compiling Voter Records

Adora Brown — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:36:00 GMT

The groups want the collection effort stopped, the information deleted and DHS prevented from using the data. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)

Voting rights and privacy groups are suing the Department of Homeland Security to stop what they say is an “unlawful and secretive effort to compile voter records” in its hunt to uncover noncitizen voters.

The lawsuit filed Thursday by groups including the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center contends that DHS has records from at least 47 states and “many of the nation’s 174 million registered voters,” citing internal government records.

The groups want the collection effort stopped, the information deleted and DHS prevented from using the data. They highlighted that the Privacy Act limits the government’s ability to gather information and that transparency requirements mean DHS should have published a notice in the Federal Register to obtain a new system of records.

“DHS has implemented the Voter Data Collection Policy in secret. Only disclosures made in other litigation have provided any meaningful visibility into how DHS is acquiring millions of Americans’ voter records or what it is doing with them,” the lawsuit states.

The groups cited a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed an internal Homeland Security Investigations report from June, which said the agency “ingested” more than 50 million voting records, prioritizing states like California, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia. The same report also said DHS’s Deputy Assistant Secretary Heather Honey obtained over 48 million records.

A news release from Democracy Forward, one of the legal groups pressing the lawsuit, said DHS has obtained and processed voter records containing highly sensitive personal information, potentially including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, voting histories and political affiliations.

The agency has also combined voter records with information purchased from commercial data brokers, creating an even more extensive collection of Americans’ personal information, the groups say.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment about whether the agency holds this voter information.

“The federal government has no business secretly collecting the sensitive personal information of millions of American voters and feeding it into immigration enforcement systems under the guise of election security,” Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, said in a statement.

A lawsuit filed by the administration provides a glimpse into how DHS may have been operating. The DOJ sued the state of California on Thursday for refusing to halt the ballots of 20,000 voters the administration identified as possible noncitizen voters.

“USCIS regularly conducts investigative processes whereby lists of registered voters or information about voters on voter rolls are analyzed to determine whether anyone registered to vote in a federal election is a noncitizen,” the DOJ lawsuit states. “California’s voter roster containing voter registration information is made available for purchase.”

Max Miller’s Campaign Is Deep in Debt — To Miller Himself

Manuela Silva, Emma Ruby — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:23:57 GMT

Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio is fighting for his political career in a tight House race. (Tom Williams/AP)

Rep. Max Miller already faces a difficult re-election bid amid allegations of domestic abuse against his daughter and ex-wife and calls from lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike — to quit the race.

Adding to the complications: The embattled Republican lawmaker from Ohio is almost $2 million deep in campaign debt, to himself.

Miller has loaned his congressional campaign a total of $1 million through two $500,000 installments made on Aug. 11 and Aug. 21, according to new documents his campaign submitted Thursday to the Federal Election Commission. The loans piled on top of the $1 million Miller loaned his campaign between September 2021 and October 2022.

Miller has begun repayment on only one loan, a $100,000 borrow from April 2022. As of the latest filings, he has paid off $35,000 of that balance, leaving his total remaining debt at $1,965,000. His most recent loan payment totaled $5,000, on July 15.

Miller’s campaign had $122,835 in cash on hand as of Sept. 30 — a relatively small reserve during the final weeks of his competitive race against Democrat Brian Poindexter in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, which stretches from the Cleveland suburbs to rural central Ohio.

Both Inside Elections and the Cook Political Report rate the race a “toss up.”

Miller also has significantly less money — and more debt — than his campaign had at the same time during his 2022 and 2024 bids, according to FEC records.

Miller’s latest loans to his campaign came as he faced increasing pressure to resign from Congress and drop out of the race in early August. The two-term congressman pledged to stay in the race and told The Wall Street Journal that his loan proved he was “invested in this election in every way.”

Miller and his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, divorced in 2024. In court filings, Moreno accused Miller of holding a gun to her head and breaking their daughter’s collarbone, accusations he has denied.

But Moreno’s father, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, told reporters the relationship had been fraught. Moreno has said his ex-son-in-law “shouldn’t serve in the House.”

The Miller campaign’s new filing also indicates some members of the House hesitated to offer him financial support in his reelection bid.

In 2024, Miller’s camp reported contributions from the campaigns of high-profile Republicans such as Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky) and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio). This cycle, Miller’s campaign reported just one contribution from a sitting member — $2,000 from the campaign committee of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Jordan has defended Miller against the allegations, calling him a “good man.”

President Donald Trump has continued to support Miller’s re-election bid. On Wednesday night, Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. dropped $37,329 in digital advertising to boost Miller’s campaign.