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There are negative ads and then there is the 60-second spot Ohio Republican Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released which features his opponent, Amy Acton’s, mother. If you haven’t seen it yet, count yourself …

There are negative ads and then there is the 60-second spot Ohio Republican Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released which features his opponent, Amy Acton’s, mother. If you haven’t seen it yet, count yourself lucky. While we have seen ads with family members speaking out against their relatives (i.e., Representative Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) six siblings and almost all of Robert F Kennedy’s extended family) this ad takes negative campaigning to a whole new and disgusting level.

In it, Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, calls her daughter a liar, saying she has “lied her entire life,” and urging Ohioans not to vote for her. Left out of the difficult-to-watch spot is the fact that Arthur’s husband and Acton’s step-father, Cledith, was charged with sexually abusing Acton when she was a child. In 1978, when she was just 12 years old, Acton was removed from the home along with her younger brother. She has not spoken with her mother since. Cledith Arthur was arrested, but never prosecuted, because before he could be brought to justice, he and his wife fled the state.

Philip Stearns, Acton’s younger brother, who was just nine when he was removed from the home along with his sister, slammed Ramaswamy for the ugly attempt to exploit their childhood trauma for political gain. As Stearns said,

“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”

Stearns is just one of many to condemn the ad. This includes Republicans such as Senator Jon Husted, who is currently in a tight race for Senate in Ohio, Dan Hauser, political strategist for Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, conservative commentator Meghan McCain, and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley who described Ramaswamy as a “a bad guy,” adding, “it’s a shame he continues to get away with it.”

Someone who was likewise offended, albeit for an entirely different reason, was the Vice President of the U.S., J.D. Vance.

Instead of condemning the ad as divisive, cruel, a disgusting effort to exploit childhood abuse for political gain, and a tactic that is beneath the office Ramaswamy is seeking, Vance, the father of four young children himself, chastised Republicans who denounced the spot. He was clearly offended, although not by the ad, but rather by those Republicans who dared to speak out against it. To them he had just one message which he delivered during a campaign stop in Ohio yesterday, stop “whining… politics is a tough business.”

“I have to admit,” Vance told reporters, “that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”

The ad can be seen as a Hail Mary, a last ditch effort from a candidate who the polls suggest is down by 7 points. It can be explained as a strategic blunder from a candidate who has never been very good on the stump and a campaign that is floundering and unable to find a message. It can be described as counter-productive, after all, any Ohioan who sees it and looks into the charges, even a little, is likely to end up feeling more empathetic towards Acton.

What the ad should not be, however, is dismissed.

Yes Mr. Vice-President, politics is a tough business. And yes, we’ve all seen negative ads, but this is not that. This is the weaponization of childhood sexual assault and trauma for political gain and that’s a whole nother level of deplorable.

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With two weeks to go until Election Day and early in person voting beginning in many states, all eyes are on those charged with ensuring the integrity of our vote, and by extension our democracy. This includes Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who during an interview on Bloomberg’s Balance of Power yesterday, expressed confidence in the state’s electoral process.

He also pushed back on claims President Trump made as recently as Friday when he stated, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “fraudulent” and Senator Jon Ossoff, “was never elected.” Trump’s comments came during a rally in Dalton, Georgia while he was stumping for Ossoff’s opponent, Representative Mike Collins and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson.

They also came the same day that the Department of Justice (DOJ) took the unprecedented step of sending a letter to the California Secretary of State and Los Angeles County Registrar threatening criminal charges against them if they “process or tabulate ballots submitted by noncitizen voters.” As the letter warns,

“If persons: knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors: to a federal crime.”

On Friday evening, Trump posted the letter on Truth Social along with the following threat:

“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”

This is not the first time the Trump administration has threatened to bring criminal charges against election workers. In July, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin warned:

“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.”

California is one of just several states the Trump administration has targeted in this effort. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, have also been subject to the unsubstantiated charge that they have thousands of non-citizens on their voter rolls. In the case of Nevada, the state reviewed a list of 185 individuals DHS claimed were non-citizens only to find that “every individual on the list was a lawful citizen.”

Perhaps no election official in the country has been more publicly subject to the president’s attempts at election intimidation and interference than Raffensperger who, after the 2020 election, was the recipient of the now infamous phone call demanding he “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to win the state. Despite the president’s efforts to cajole and then brow beat him, Raffensperger - a long time and dedicated Republican - stood firm and rejected the president’s pressure campaign.

In the six years since, Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election overall, and in Georgia specifically, has only intensified. Months ago, in a bid to salvage her job as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard took the unprecedented step of traveling to Fulton County to oversee a FBI raid and seizure of 2020 voting records.

If non-citizen voting or mail-in voting fraud were problems - even small problems - scholars, researchers, election officials, people like Raffensperger and the thousands of others across the country who manage our vote at the local and state levels, would be the first to say so; and to call for reform.

As all the research shows, however, they are not even “infinitesimal” problems.

To the contrary, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit mail-in voter fraud. Likewise, the Brookings Institution has determined mail voting fraud is so rare that it accounts for “only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast” or “about four cases out of every 10 million mail votes.”

None of this, however, has stopped the president from taking extraordinary steps to exert control over the nation’s elections. Since returning to office less than two years ago, Trump and members of his administration have:

* flirted openly with putting ICE Agents and national guardsmen and women at polling sites

* continued to make baseless claims (like those he made on Friday in Georgia) about the 2020 election and the sanctity of our elections

* pushed for mid-decade redistricting

* threatened to withhold funding to states that do not abide by his approved voting rules

* gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), dismantled the Office of the DNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center and taken other steps to cut budgets and scale back support for offices charged with securing our elections

* filed a lawsuit claiming California violated the Supremacy Clause by “knowingly sending vote-by-mail ballots to likely noncitizens and ultimately counting those ballots”

* sent the DNI to Georgia to oversee the seizure of 2020 voting records

* signed an Executive Order (E.O.) in March imposing restrictions on mail-in balloting

* Disinvited international election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from coming to the U.S. to observe our election, something they have done for over 20 years

This list is not exhaustive. And in the weeks and months ahead, it is likely to grow even longer; making it more important than ever that we give Election officials and workers our unbridled support and gratitude for their work on the frontlines of democracy.

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“We can’t eat road salt.”

This line, which is my nominee for the most effective of the midterm debates so far, came from an unlikely source.

Troy Jackson was a late addition to the Democratic ticket in Maine. He became the nominee only after Graham Platner withdrew because of a series of controversies and allegations of sexual assault. A logger by trade who has served in both the Maine House and Senate, including six years as President of the upper chamber, Jackson was no stranger to state politics. Nevertheless, there was some concern about his nomination. Not only had he finished third in the Democratic primary for Governor just months earlier, but he had never run in a statewide general election. Moreover, as even his supporters conceded Jackson lacks the “charisma” of his predecessor. Perhaps the kindest way to put it is he is at best “a bit of an uneven campaigner.”

None of this was news to Jackson, as he told a local radio station “I know I’m not a polished speaker, and I don’t pretend to be. I’m just an everyday person and I don’t put on airs like I’m some highfalutin person. I’m OK with that.”

Suffice it to say, expectations for Jackson during his first of four debates with Sen. Susan Collins (Republican of Maine) were low. Those betting on Kalshi or another one of those prediction markets might have gone so far as to bet that Jackson would not only stumble but fall flat on his feet.

To the surprise of many, however, he did not. Instead, the consensus of observers was that he did what he needed to do, passed the threshold test, surpassed expectations, and “held his own against a five-term senator.”

It wasn’t a perfect debate by any measure, but in addition to showing he could take on this titan of the Senate, Jackson also gets my vote for the best line of the debate season (and potentially the midterm overall). And this is no small trick considering we have heard from some very strong candidates, including the incumbent Senator from Georgia, Jon Osoff, whose rhetorical flourish has catapulted him to the top of many short lists of candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.

Despite Osoff’s viral, “you’ve hired half the Third Reich,” which he directed at his opponent, Representative Mike Collins (Republican), during their October 8 debate, my vote still goes to Jackson and here’s why.

Susan Collins is asking the voters of Maine to give her a sixth term in the Senate based on her seniority and her ability to ‘deliver’ for the people of the state. She consistently reminds Mainers that she cannot only ‘bring home the bacon’ but because she has the president’s ear, she can also curtail his worst impulses. When it comes to everything from ICE to tariffs, she argues not unlike Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men,” ‘you need me on that wall’ - or in her case, someone like her in the room to nudge Trump and the GOP. As proof, she has repeatedly pointed to her opposition to the president’s tariff war on Canada (a huge issue for Mainers) and how she successfully lobbied him to remove road salt from the list of tariffed items. As she said in the first debate, “I’ve also been working behind the scenes. Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp and road salt removed from the tariff list. And if you ask towns in northern Maine and eastern Maine, they get all of their road salt from Canada.”

To which Jackson responded“:

“I didn’t mock the fact that she got road salt back, I mocked the fact that: What about everything else? I mean, we can’t eat road salt.”

“We can’t eat road salt,” crystallizes the issue for Maine as it juxtaposes Collins argument that they need her in that room to cajole Trump into giving the people of the state something, even small wins versus Jackson’s message that like Marie Antoinette, all the president has given Mainers is crumbs.

Moreover, ‘we can’t eat road salt’ brings us back to a classic line, “You Can’t Eat Democracy,” which was the title of an article by David Cohn published in The Atlantic in 1946. Whether Cohn originated the phrase is not clear, but the maxim is widely used to explain why people suffering around the world from a lack of basic essentials (food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.) are not nearly as concerned about democracy or liberty as those of means. “Men are guided by their minds,” Cohn wrote, “they are moved by their bellies. You can’t eat democracy.”

The phrase was repeated more recently by the President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, in an op-ed where he argued that, “human rights may sustain the spirit, but not the body. Particularly in young democracies like mine, governments must deliver economically if they are to retain the people’s consent.”

For decades we were fortunate that this phrase did not resonate widely with most Americans. Today, however, it does; with far too many in Maine and across the country.

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The numbers are astounding.

The wealthiest person in the world and, arguably the wealthiest individual to ever walk the earth, has broken all records when it comes to spending in an election.

According to a report in the New York Times today, Elon Musk has spent $366 million on this midterm cycle, far exceeding the $290 million he spent to help Republicans and President Trump in 2024. While this is less than a drop in the bucket for Musk (.037% of his estimated $1 Trillion net worth), it makes him the single largest donor of this or any other election cycle.

This is not just a case of pay-for-play, political influence, or access-buying. It is, to Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent -Vermont) point, the clearest sign to date that we are living in the midst of an emerging oligarchy.

In late September, Sanders spoke at Riverside Church in New York arguing that “oligarchy is ascending, working families are struggling to stay alive and democracy is in retreat.”

At the time, Sanders noted that Musk was “spending some $200 million more to help Republicans keep control over the Congress” in the midterm. Little did Senator Sanders know at the time, but the actual amount of spending by Musk is nearly double that.

Nevertheless, Sanders is correct to say that what we are witnessing in the U.S. today is the very definition of an oligarchy. After all what is an oligarchy but a form of government in which a very minuscule number of extremely wealthy people, such as Musk, exert an inordinate amount of economic, political, social, governmental, and technological, power.

The Times revelation regarding Musk’s spending comes just a few days after a new poll found that “most young people” in the United States feel the “system is tilted toward Billionaires.” Among other things the researchers found that:

* In terms of who holds power in Washington D.C., young Americans rank voters dead last and Billionaires first

* The Concern about money in politics is widespread and bipartisan.

* 83% of young Americans describe money in politics as a big problem (58% say it is “very big”), and just 2% say it is not a problem at all

* most young Americans believe Congress and the states should be able to reasonably regulate and limit money in campaigns and elections.

* Many see money as a threat to elections.

Despite the focus in the Times piece on Musk, the problem is much bigger than any one individual or party. It is widespread, it permeates both parties and all aspects of our politics. It is also not enough to cast aspersions towards groups, parties, or individuals who play by the rules and follow the law. The problem is not them, but rather the law itself.

To quote Michael Kinsley, “the scandal isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what’s legal.” That is what needs to be changed, the laws, the system and rules of the game by which we conduct our political lives.

This starts with overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) (2010) which reinforced the major finding in Buckley v Valeo (1976) that money spent in campaigns to influence voters is ‘free speech.’

The result was not unlike what we saw in the heyday of the conservative court in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries when the Justices consistently struck down most efforts by states and the federal government to regulate the economy. The major difference is instead of striking down attempts to regulate the economy, they have been busy striking down attempts to regulate campaign spending.

We saw this most recently just a few months ago when by a vote of 6-3, the Court struck down federal limits on how much parties can spend in conjunction with candidates (National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026)).

There are solutions. The non-profit, American Promise, which sponsored the poll referenced previously is, for example, working to overturn these Court rulings by amending the Constitution to ensure that Congress and the States, are able to “reasonably” regulate and limit “contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.” To date they report that 25 states “have already called on Congress to propose an amendment solution.”

Amendments are, however, notoriously difficult to pass. How difficult? The last time an amendment was ratified was in 1992. That amendment, #27, was written and proposed, 200 years earlier; and its’ author was none other than James Madison. As Justice Antonin Scalia once quipped, ‘it ought to be hard, but not that hard.’

With that in mind, there are additional remedies or partial solutions that can be considered in the interim. In the short term, voters casting ballots in November should do so with the understanding that whoever they elect to the Senate will be asked to confirm new justices to the lower federal bench and potentially the Supreme Court. Whoever they choose is likely to have a say in whether efforts by Congress and state legislatures to regulate money in politics are deemed constitutional or not.

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It was not the fact that yesterday after school an ICE agent approached a car containing a 5 year old boy and shot into it seven times hitting his father under the ear that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin found shameful. Instead it was NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response that he was aggrieved by.

It is “shameful,” an outraged Mullin told reporters, “that you have a mayor that goes out there and puts criminals over law-abiding citizens.”

Mullin went on not only to defend what happened, but describe Mamdani’s comments as “dangerous” and “political theater.” It’s an interesting choice of words from a person in a position of authority, but back to shame, let’s consider what is really shameful.

* It’s shameful that on a beautiful fall afternoon, as parents in Marble Hill went to pick up their children from school and take them to after school activities, out for ice cream, play dates or the park, they, their children, teachers, neighbors, and shopkeepers were forced instead to watch in horror as a group of men with construction vests and masks (and no way to reasonably identify them as Federal agents) descended on a man trying to park his car.

* It’s shameful that with his 5 year old son sitting in the back, they proceeded to spray the car with bullets.

* It’s shameful that ICE agents would ever shoot into a moving or parked vehicle when there is not a law enforcement agency in the country that does that because it is well known that it ends up putting the community, not to mention the people in the car and the officers themselves, in more danger.

* It’s shameful that we have ICE agents on the streets who, by many accounts, have not been properly trained because the administration is in a rush to get them into the field. A recent whistle-blower who trained new ICE recruits before he resigned, described the training program as “deficient, defective and broken.”

* It’s shameful that despite using over $30m of tax payer money to purchase body cameras, we still have not seen footage of the incident in NYC yesterday.

* It’s shameful that the body camera footage ICE agents are supposed to be wearing and which we paid for, is not required to be released to the public.

* It’s shameful that Mullin has NOT used his discretion to release the body camera footage of this incident (if indeed there is any which remains unclear).

* It’s shameful that the video we have seen of the incident recorded by onlookers and the body cameras of NYPD officers who arrived after the shooting, show the victim, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, lying on the street bleeding while an ICE agent in street clothing, sporting a construction vest, is brandishing a modified AR-15-style rifle.

* It’s shameful that Mullin did not express horror over what happened, as well as care and empathy for all the victims and the community. In addition to promising to investigate the incident thoroughly, hold anyone engaged in wrong doing responsible, and assure all Americans steps will be taken to make sure this never happens again.

* It’s shameful that instead of doing any of that, Mullin chose to defend what happened yesterday on the streets of an American city.

* It’s shameful that Mullin is more concerned about the comments of the Mayor than the well being of the citizens of the country he is sworn to serve.

* It’s shameful that Mullin is more intent on bringing Belgal’s criminal record to light and describing him in the most abhorrent terms, rather than focusing on the shooting itself [For the record, Mullin described Belgal as “the worst of the worst” and “a threat to our community.”].

* It’s shameful that Mullin did not learn from the equally despicable response of his predecessor to the killings of two innocent Americans at the hands of ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis several months ago.

* It’s shameful that even after two hours of phone calls with Mamdani last night, Mullin and President Trump refused to release Belgal to the custody of NYC officials.

* It’s shameful that ICE whisked Belgal out of state quickly last night presumably to a detention center in New Jersey (although his exact location is still unclear).

* It’s shameful that a federal judge had to order the government not to deport Belgal out of the country (as they have done to so many before him) or move him from a detention facility outside of NY or NJ (as they have likewise done multiple times to others similarly situated) until he has his petition for habeas corpus is heard by a court.

* It’s shameful that despite the judges order, it is still unclear if Belgal has already been moved.

* It’s shameful that since Trump assumed office again in 2025, ICE has shot 24 resulting in at least 6 deaths (including American citizens Alex Jeffrey Pretti, Renee Good, and Ruben Ray Martinez). This is according to the New York Times as of July 2026, others have the count slightly different, for instance Reuters (October 2026) has the number at 21 shot and 7 dead.

* It’s shameful that the government has not been clear on the number of ICE related shootings and the number dead at the hands of ICE agents over the last 18 months.

* It’s shameful that the Trump administration recently issued a directive to ICE agents that they need to increase the number of daily arrests they are making from 2,000 to 3,000 per day. Quotas which have only served to incentivize the type of chaos and violence we saw play out on the streets of NYC yesterday.

* It’s shameful that as part of its “Expansion Blitz” the Trump administration plans on putting 5,000 more ICE agents on American streets by the end of the year.

* It’s shameful that as this was playing out in NYC, outrage was growing in the neighboring state of New Jersey regarding a video that captured the violent detention of man by masked federal immigration agents. The video shows a women holding a baby and a young boy trying to hold on to the handcuffed man while federal agents are pushing him in an unmarked vehicle and bystanders are calling out for them to be careful of the woman, baby, and children.

* It’s shameful that this also happened on the day that the family of Silverio Villegas González, the 38 year old, unarmed, father of two, with no criminal record who was killed by an ICE agent in Chicago last year, filed a lawsuit against DHS and the FBI. His lawyers noted: “Silverio was a loving father, brother, and son. He worked hard to raise his sons and to protect them. His life was cut short senselessly and unnecessarily by our government. His death shattered a family and has caused untold trauma that will last a lifetime.”

* It’s shameful that while the vast majority of Americans support common sense immigration reform, we instead have agents stalking the streets of our cities and towns and, in our name, roughing up some people, scaring others, killing some people, injuring others, deporting some people to authoritarian countries they never heard of and detaining others in conditions so horrendous that the reports are difficult to read.

* It’s shameful that in February of 2024 when a bipartisan immigration bill that even the Wall Street Journal backed and urged Republicans to get behind came up for a vote, Trump and many others in the GOP refused to support it because they did not want to give the Democrats a win during an election year

This is just a start, as there is undoubtedly much more that can be added to this list of shame.

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Today is 8 years to the day since Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) stood on the Senate floor and announced she was voting to confirm then Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh.

She justified her decision by praising his qualifications, noting that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual misconduct against him could not be corroborated and most importantly, explaining he had assured her that he viewed Roe v Wade (1973) as “settled law” and a “precedent” that should not be overruled.

Four years later, however, he did just that. In 2022 the Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturning Roe and decades of precedent. It was a 5-4 ruling, with Kavanaugh joining the four conservatives in the majority to cast the all-important tie breaking vote which ended the right to choose.

Tonight Collins will stand before the people of Maine for the first time since she cast that vote for Kavanaugh and defend her decision in a debate with Troy Jackson, her Democratic opponent. Jackson has been pressing her on this issue for some time and he should continue.

She should also be asked about her continuing support for the Trump administration’s broader agenda on everything from tariffs and immigration to healthcare and foreign policy; including the fact that her major breaks from this pattern seem suspiciously well timed to coincide with campaign season. As Chair of Senate Appropriations and someone who has, in her many years in office, “brought home the bacon” for Mainers, she should be asked to account for whether that “bacon” is enough to make up for her support for economic policies and legislation that has led to an increase in the cost of living, rent, mortgages, gas, groceries, etc.?

Finally, she should be asked to explain the explosive allegation made recently in ProPublica where it is alleged that in 2024, the FBI began “a sweeping pay-to-play investigation examining interactions between Sen. Susan Collins and a top donor.” Collins has denied the charges, but skirted the details contained in the story.

This is the first of four debates between the two and since it is the anniversary of her decision to confirm Kavanaugh, Jackson should lean into that as much as possible. This week also marks the start of the new Supreme Court term and just the other day, Justice Sam Alito noted he considers resigning every year. He since clarified that he has no intention of resigning in the lame duck even if the Democrats win Congress. But even the discussion of a Justice potentially resigning is a reminder as to how much is at stake as the people of Maine, and around the country, cast their votes for Senate this November.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing involving Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is a reminder as to why so many of us will miss the Senate when they leave town today. It is also why, even as Joe Mathieu was asking serious questions such as whether the Senate will pass the Ratepayer Protection Act before they leave town, I could not resist mentioning the hearing.

It wasn’t only the fact that GOP thought it was a good idea to haul Smith in front of the Committee to discuss the J6 investigations and the classified documents in the bathroom at Mara Lago just weeks before an election in which Americans are terrified about their futures, the economy, prices, jobs, inflation, AI, the war, tariffs and so much else.

If that wasn’t enough, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) decided to use the moment to audition for a spot on JD Vance’s short list of Vice Presidential contenders. Unfortunately for Schmitt, he fell flat on his face when he, with dramatic flourish, accused Smith of perjury - only to find out live on the air that he didn’t have his sports facts straight.

I will try to describe what happened, but since I know there is no way I can do the video justice, I recommend watching it as well.

Sen. Schmitt was trying to have an Elise Stefanik-raking-the-presidents-of-major universities-over-the-coals moment that he was sure would appeal to Vance’s team. So he began like a lawyer in a made for TV drama by asking Smith whether he went “to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks in Atlanta on February 3, 2024?”

Perplexed, Smith responded he “no recollection” of being at the game.

At which point Sen. Schmitt said

“Okay, is it your testimony that you were not in Atlanta on February 3rd 2024?... Let me, let me just give you a little context, the day before, Fani Willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor, you know, the Atlanta prosecutor that was also trying to get Trump the next day. Were you in Atlanta?”

Smith again said he wasn’t in Atlanta and never went to a Hawks game at which point Schmitt moved in for the kill:

“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on February 3rd 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair.”

While speaking, he put up a large poster board with text messages from Smith’s team on it that referenced a Hawks game and said:

I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process so you don’t perjure yourself….I think you’ve already perjured yourself.”

It was only when Smith recalled that while he had not been in Atlanta or attended a Hawks pro basketball game, rather a women’s college basketball game in Maryland around the same time, that Schmitt’s embarrassing error started to become clear.

It was also at that point that Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) came to the rescue, clarifying that there was a game in Maryland on the day in question between the University of Maryland and the Hawkeyes AKA the University of Iowa. Klobuchar when on to note the score of the game, who won, and the fact that the texts in question obviously refer to the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s college team, not the Atlanta Hawks pro team.

“I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag, and not get the teams wrong,” she added.

Instead of apologizing or acknowledging his error, however, Schmitt doubled down and concluded his questioning by calling Smith a “villain” and a “dirtbag.”

It was a moment to behold. And perhaps the only thing better than Klobuchar’s real time fact checking of Schmitt was the look on Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) face as she watched her colleague’s VEEP audition go up (and down) in flames.

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What came out of the White House’s much hyped Golden Age Summit on AI yesterday?

* Billionaires Luncheon: The president dined with billionaire tech executives at a ‘Super Intelligence Luncheon.” Among those in attendance, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla’s Elon Musk and many others (see the seating chart below). For a gathering this large, it was notable there was just one female tech executive at the table, AMD CEO Lisa Su.

* Re-branding: President Trump signed an EO decreeing ‘AI’ should now be known as ‘Super Intelligence’

* Morally Binding Regs: President Trump also announced that the tech leaders signed a “constitution” to police themselves. When asked about how they would be enforced, Trump noted that the principles are “morally binding.”

In short, the entire summit was a lost opportunity which amounted to not only bad politics, but terrible policy.

On the politics, it was a bad day for the GOP. Just 35 days before the midterm, as people are screaming from the rooftops that they can’t afford gas, diesel, rent, groceries, and the like, the president doesn’t focus on bringing down costs but rather hosts a lavish golden age luncheon with some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Not to mention, those at the table are the same people who developed, own and run some of the largest and most profitable AI companies in the world; a technology that Americans are increasingly wary of.

A recent CNN poll found that 3/4 of Americans are fearful about the impacted of unregulated AI. At the same time, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found than almost the same percentage of Americans believe not enough has been done to stop the technology from causing serious harm to society.

The questionable politics pale in comparison to the lack of seriousness when it comes to policy.

* Dissenting/alternative voices excluded: Instead of hosting a wide array of people who study and have interest in this issue from all walks of life, some of whom may push back on the administration’s position on this issue, the ‘summit’ was restricted to Silicon Valley types who largely agree with the president’s hands off approach

There was not, for instance, any reflection of the views of people like Pope Leo XIV who pushed back on Trump’s suggestion that the ‘dooms-day’ narrative is a hoax and who, in his May Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, warned that unregulated tech advancements present a risk to humanity.

Likewise, there was no one in attendance like Trump’s close confidant Steve Bannon who recently joined Sen. Bernie Sanders at the “pro-human” summit where he broke with the administration in calling for AI regulation, criticized the White House’s close relationship with tech titans, and accused the industry of trying to “socialize all the risk.” Nor did they make room for the voices of people like Sanders, who has expressed concern about the concentration of corporate power and lack of safeguards for American workers who may suffer job loss as a result of automation.

* All or Nothing View: The White House (and presumably those in attendance, although it is hard to tell with a closed meeting and no read out) continue to argue that any oversight of or governmental involvement in the industry will negatively impact economic growth, hamper innovation and our ability to compete with China. Nothing could be further from the truth. Historically all industries that threaten potential harm or present a risk to the public are subject to meaningful guardrails - from automobiles and airlines, to nuclear and the like. Moreover, our government has a long history of successfully regulating in these and other areas in the interest of the people and the nation. AI should be no exception.

* Losing Edge With China: On the China competition argument, see my previous post. The idea that the lack of guardrails is critical to our ‘winning the race’ with China flies in the face of both the president’s actions over the last year and logic. China, it turns out, is amongst the worlds leaders when it comes to AI regulation and they don’t see a bit concerned it will hamper their ability to compete, in fact they argue it strengthens it. As Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes “Beijing is leading the way in AI regulation, releasing groundbreaking new strategies to govern algorithms, chatbots, and more.”

* Self-Regulation in this Context is Unserious: The only thing accomplished by letting trillion-dollar companies that pose the amount of risk these do go unregulated, or free to set their own rules and check themselves, is that the public are left unprotected from potential harms and at risk to the tech-oligarchy that is increasingly running so many parts of our lives, from our jobs and education to our government and politics. On the latter point, consider the amount of money those gathered at the lunch with Trump yesterday have donated to him, his family, his party, the Democratic party, members of congress, state and local officials and the like from both sides of the aisle.

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Last night President Trump had a late night meeting with Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei. This comes after months of tension between Amodei and Trump (more on that below). It also comes just one day before the president is scheduled to host a White House Summit on the future of AI.

The Summit was organized after a recent whistleblower resignation sparked warnings from multiple tech CEOs, including Amodei, about the existential risks posed by AI and after polls began showing that an increasing number of Americans are concerned about the impact on AI, so much so the issue may play a role at the ballot box in November.

When asked about the growing chorus of ‘extinction' warnings, House Speaker Mike Johnson said it’s time for Trump to “summon everyone together… I think we need to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this out.”

Presumably that is what Trump will try to do when he meets with tech leaders tomorrow. Unfortunately, the summit is ‘closed door’ so we may not get a clear understanding of the discussion; nevertheless, here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to the issue of AI and regulation.

* Johnson has been a member of congress since 2017 and Speaker since 2023. AI has been around for almost two decades, if not longer. The idea that he is just now calling for a closed door meeting with tech insiders to ‘discuss’ the issue tells us everything we need to know about the lack of seriousness with which this meeting is being conducted. First, the leaders of tech companies cannot be relied on to regulate themselves. Second, calling a meeting, setting up a committee etc. - these are typical ‘stall tactics’ designed to help congressional leaders like Johnson say they are acting while avoiding real legislative action.

* The challenge for the government when it comes to AI regulation is no different than what it has been any time they have confronted a new technology - they need to determine how best to insure both national security and economic growth. AI is not the first technology our government has faced that presents this challenge. It is the role of government to figure out how best to do this; this is why we have government; this is what they are supposed to be doing.

* The lack of federal regulation in this area has put all Americans and America in a precarious position. For the first time in U.S. history we are facing an industry worth more than $1T that is almost completely unregulated. Moreover, it is an industry with close ties to the most powerful people in our country. Exhibit 1, the photos below depicting the ‘tech titans’ who stood shoulder to shoulder with the president during his second inauguration

* In the absence of national regulation, the job has fallen to states, which to their credit, have stepped up. According to the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL) which tracks this data in:

*2025 lawmakers in all 50 states introduced 1,208 AI-related bills, of which 145 bills were enacted into law

*2026 legislative action has accelerated with over 2,190 AI-related bills introduced. As of mid-to-late 2026, at least 84 to 145 additional bills have been passed or signed into law

* While Trump has made it clear he opposes AI regulation because he fears it will impede our ability to compete with China (see his Truth Social Post below); you know who has AI regulations in place? China! According to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Beijing is leading the way in AI regulation, releasing groundbreaking new strategies to govern algorithms, chatbots, and more.”

* It is also worth pausing to ask why tech CEO’s such as Amodei, Altman, Musk, and so many others are calling for AI regulation now? Is it because they have recently and unexpectedly seen something dangerous or is there another explanation for their surprising interest in governmental action? Trump’s close advisor David Sacks is not someone I normally quote in this debate, but on this issue he has a point. As he wrote on X recently, their ‘motivation in calling for regulation is not altruistic.’

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack… After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability.

Why then the call for guardrails? It is likely as Sacks notes, if they do not and their products cause damage they will be held liable. It is also likely a concern about competition and an attempt to slow down Open-source. Moreover, if these tech leaders are able to direct the extent, nature, and type of regulation, they can insure the guidelines are not terribly onerous for them, but enough to keep small startups and others who may challenge their hegemony going forward at bay.

Backgrounder:The tension between Trump & Aomdei

Amodei, who was lampooned on Saturday Night Live just a few hours before he met with Trump last night, has had such a rocky relationship with the administration for some time. It has been so tense that in response to his recent calls for regulation, he has been labeled a “doomer” by some of Trump’s closest allies and chastised for supporting of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Just a few days ago, Trump responded to Amodei’s call for AI guardrails by saying he is “pretending to be a perfect little angel”

The source of the tension, however, dates back well before Amodei’s most recent calls for guardrails to a battle between Anthropic and Trump’s Pentagon. Earlier this year, the Pentagon demanded that American AI companies allow it to use their frontier models for “all lawful purposes.” Amodei pushed back, arguing that AI is not reliable when it comes to fully autonomous weapons; he also rejected using it for mass domestic surveillance. When under pressure Anthropic refused to change its position and allow for full use, the Trump administration blacklisted the company and labeled it a “national security supply chain risk”; a designation usually reserved for hostile foreign actors and one which cost Anthropic millions of dollars in military and other contracts. Just a few days ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Trump administration, arguing the government had acted reasonably. Trump and Amodei’s meeting last night was the first between the two men since the fall out regarding the Pentagon.

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