Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) is not taking Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-S.C.) bait.

In her first interview after Mace’s weeklong, social media–fueled campaign—which included nearly 300 posts on X—to ban her from the women’s bathroom in the House of Representatives offices, McBride showed how a member of Congress who is actually interested in governing, not grabbing headlines, acts.

“I’m in Congress to deliver for my constituents, to make health care, housing, and child care more affordable,” McBride said in a Sunday interview on MSNBC’s The Weekend, adding that she plans to support pro-union legislation as well as bills focused on paid leave and affordable childcare. “I’m so grateful to have this opportunity. I think on November 5, Delawareans showed the country what I’ve known throughout my life: that in our state of neighbors, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities.”

Mace kicked off this past week by introducing a resolution seeking to bar transgender members and employees in the House from using the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity in the Capitol building, baselessly alleging that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms “jeopardizes the safety and dignity” of cisgender women. (In fact, research has found that there is “no link” between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and safety, and that reports of “privacy and safety violations” in bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are “exceedingly rare.”) Though Mace’s resolution did not mention McBride—the first openly transgender person elected to Congress—by name, Mace admitted it was “absolutely” meant to target her.

On Wednesday—which also happened to be the annually recognized Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day meant to memorialize trans people murdered in violent acts of bigotry—House speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) threw his support behind Mace’s effort, telling reporters he was simply formalizing what has long been an “unwritten policy”; he also noted in an emailed statement that all Members have private bathrooms in their offices and there are several unisex bathrooms throughout the Capitol. But Johnson has not clarified how the policy will be enforced or whether he will include it in the rules package the House will vote on in early January.

“I worried that the heart of this country wasn’t big enough to love someone like me, and over the last decade, I have been able to bear witness the change that once seemed so impossible to me as a kid.”

Johnson also has not addressed whether or not he condemns the threats of physical violence Mace and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) reportedly made against any trans person who violates the bathroom ban. (I’ve repeatedly asked Johnson’s spokesperson if he condemns these threats and if members would face consequences for carrying them out, but have yet to receive a direct answer.)

Getting what she wanted did not make Mace dial back her bigotry, though: She has continued to repeatedly misgender McBride and denigrate trans people on social media. But on Sunday, McBride dismissed all that as “noise”—without mentioning Mace by name—and said she is focused on honoring the weight of history in her new role.

“I have to be honest, this week was awe-inspiring, being at orientation, despite all of the noise,” McBride said. “Because as you were there, you realize you are in the body that Abraham Lincoln served in. We walked onto the House floor, and you’re in the space where they passed the 13th Amendment and the 14th Amendment, where women got the right to vote. You’re sitting in the chairs in the job where people passed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. And you feel that responsibility, but also you feel that you are part of a tradition, because every single one of your predecessors served in incredibly tumultuous, challenging times, and enough of them fulfilled their responsibilities to be stewards of our democracy and that is our calling in this moment, and I feel it very deeply.”

Sarah McBride: "I worried that the heart of this country wasn't big enough to support someone like me. And over the last decade, I have been able to bear witness to change that once seemed so impossible to me as a kid that it was almost incomprehensible … I carry that with me." pic.twitter.com/YKLnhQMeJl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 24, 2024

She also spoke about her own trailblazing role in Congress, which she said proves that anything is possible. As a college student, she said, “I worried that the heart of this country wasn’t big enough to love someone like me, and over the last decade, I have been able to bear witness the change that once seemed so impossible to me as a kid—that was almost incomprehensible—and I have seen it not only become possible, but become a reality. And I carry that with me in this moment, because I think in so many ways, this country—on both sides of the political divide—this country is facing its own crisis of hope. And I know we still have both the individual and collective capacity meet the scope and the scale of the challenges that we face. And I know, because I have seen it, that nothing is truly impossible.”

Mace, meanwhile, spent the morning posting a Bible verse about the creation of “woman” all over social media.

Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees are not the only source of controversy in his transition back to the White House.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the functioning of federal agencies, to warn that the Trump transition team has refused to sign memoranda of understanding with the Biden-Harris administration. All prior presidents-elect have signed the agreements, which outline how the administrations will work together; one of them, for example, would allow the FBI under the current administration to conduct background checks on Trump’s nominees. Another would facilitate the Trump team’s national security clearances required to receive classified intelligence briefings before he assumes office. “The Trump team’s unprecedented refusal to sign agreements with the outgoing administration threatens the American public by hamstringing incoming officials’ ability to govern responsibly,” Warren writes.

The refusal to publish the ethics code heightens “the risk of the incoming administration governing for the benefit of special interests rather than the American public.”

On top of that, Trump’s transition team has yet to publish a full ethics code on the GSA website addressing how he will deal with his conflicts of interest, as required by a law that Trump himself passed in 2020. Warren’s letter notes that while the Trump team has published its own ethics code, “it includes nothing about how President-elect Trump will manage his own extensive financial conflicts of interest—which experts anticipate will be one of the most alarming corruption challenges of the incoming administration.” The refusal to publish the ethics code, Warren says, heightens “the risk of the incoming administration governing for the benefit of special interests rather than the American public.”

As the New York Times reported Sunday, it’s possible these “special interests” could, in fact, be helping to fund the Trump transition: Because the Trump team has not signed a memorandum of understanding with the GSA that was due Sept. 1, they have been able to shield the names of donors to the transition. If the Trump transition had entered into the agreement, they would have to publicly disclose donors, each of whom would have an individual giving limit of $5,000—but the Trump team would have been able to access $7.2 million in federal funds to help with the costs of the transition.

Trump is also reportedly the first president to circumvent this agreement, which seems to suggest his team thinks he can raise more from donors without being limited to the $5,000 cap per individual donor. But as one expert told the Times, it could come at a serious ethical cost:

“When the money isn’t disclosed, it’s not clear how much everybody is giving, who is giving it and what they are getting in return for their donations,” said Heath Brown, a professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies presidential transitions. “It’s an area where the vast majority of Americans would agree that they want to know who is paying that bill.”

In her letter to the GSA, Warren asks them to respond by December 5 to questions about how the agency is engaging with the Trump transition and the impacts of the Trump team’s lack of compliance with federal law. Spokespeople for the Trump transition team and the GSA did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday morning.

What changes if more people showed up to vote?

One answer emerges by comparing Minnesota and Tennessee—two states with vastly different voter turnout rates. Minnesota leads the nation, with nearly 80 percent of eligible voters participating in the 2020 election. With that, Minnesotans have elected leaders who have advanced a popular agenda: universal school meals, free public college tuition, paid family and medical leave, and the restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. According to polling, each of these proposals is broadly popular across the entire country.

By contrast, in Tennessee, voter turnout in 2020 was only 59 percent—enabling a very unpopular Republican supermajority to ignore calls for stricter gun control, despite widespread support. Instead, they’ve focused on banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and enacting some of the country’s harshest abortion laws. Tennessee once had abortion protections, but a historically low-turnout election in 2014 paved the way for today’s restrictive policies.

In my new video, I run the numbers. Watch:

Free school meals. Childcare. Health care. The thing is, when voters show up, popular things happen. @garrison_hayes runs the numbers 👇 pic.twitter.com/whW7MLjj7l

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 3, 2024

The differences between Minnesota and Tennessee make it clear: Turnout has sweeping consequences. Go vote.

The idea that women might vote differently from their husbands made Fox News star Jesse Watters’ brain melt live on air this week.

Referring to his current wife, Watters, with his trademark smirk, told his colleagues on The Five, “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” This, from a man who admitted to his employer in 2017 that he was in a relationship with a colleague 14 years his junior—something that reportedly led to his divorce from his first wife. “What else is she keeping from me?” Jesse mused, prompting guffaws from his fellow panelists.

Beyond hypocrisy, Mother Jones creator Kat Abughazaleh argues that Watters’ reaction reveals the fierce undercurrent of sexist resentment coursing through this year’s campaign, typified by Donald Trump, who just this week ominously vowed to protect women, “whether the women like it or not.”

It’s an issue that Democrats and their anti-Trump allies have been eager to highlight, including former congresswoman and top Harris campaigner Liz Cheney, who told CBS’ Face the Nation on Wednesday, “I think you’re going to have, frankly, a lot of men and women who will go into the voting booth and will vote their conscience, will vote for Vice President Harris.”

“They may not ever say anything publicly,” she added, “but the results will speak for themselves.”

Michelle Obama also seized on this dynamic. “Just remember that your vote is a private matter,” she told a Michigan rally last weekend.

Soon, that private decision could have very public ramifications—for the entire country.

Genuine question: Do influential white people routinely tell members of the white community to not vote?

Every four years, it seems like noteworthy figures within the Black community repeat a familiar refrain: Black voters should withhold their vote to prove a point.

In 2020, it was musician Ice Cube, and in 2024, it’s activist Dr. Umar, both using their considerable platforms to push a consistent, if overused, message to Black people: Don’t vote until politicians make concrete promises to you. These calls for inaction are often mistaken for activism and overlook the fact that both major parties have made commitments to Black voters in past and present elections.

“Have you ever noticed,” I ask in a new video, “that conservative white voters are rarely, if ever, told they should withhold their vote?”

“Have you ever noticed,” @garrison_hayes asks in a new video, “that conservative white voters are rarely, if ever, told they should withhold their vote?”

His new video looks at why that is. WATCH 👇 pic.twitter.com/OLeRwYZtzW

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 29, 2024

I explain that Christian Nationalists have a long history of supporting policies aimed at reducing the voting population in order to accomplish, as my colleague Ari Berman describes it, “minority rule.” Consider Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation—the recent force behind Project 2025. In 1980, during a far-right conference in Dallas, Weyrich made his hostility toward democracy clear: “Our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.” The strategy is obvious: It fundamentally relies on Black voters staying home.

I have extensively covered the ongoing debate surrounding Black voting this election cycle. Watch my in-depth exploration of the rise of the Black MAGA movement below.

After Elon Musk unveiled a scheme to pay $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign a pro-Trump petition, Democratic officials—and legal experts—are sounding the alarm.

As my colleague Arianna Coghill reported yesterday, Musk made the announcement to his 202 million X followers on Thursday, telling them the offer was valid through midnight on Monday. On top of that, Musk also says he is giving away $1 million a day, every day until the election, to petition signers in swing states. The funds appear to come from the billionaire’s America PAC, which he founded in support of Trump—and reportedly pumped with $75 million.

While the petition does not explicitly mention Trump, its support for his ticket over Vice President Kamala Harris is clear. It tells signatories they are signaling their “support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.”

Unsurprisingly, officials have concerns.

Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, “there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race,” adding, “I think it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.” (A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said officials were aware of the concerns but could not comment on whether they were investigating.)

WATCH: Every day until Election Day, Elon Musk says he’ll give $1M to a voter who has signed his super PAC’s petition “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”@JoshShapiroPA: “That is deeply concerning. … It's something that law enforcement could take a look at." pic.twitter.com/2mZY1b5YaL

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 20, 2024

Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told the New York Post in an interview that “Musk is a concern,” adding, “not even just that he has endorsed [Trump], but the fact that now he’s becoming an active participant and showing up and doing rallies and things like that.”

Legal experts went further. Rick Hasen, professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote that Musk’s promises are “clearly illegal,” citing federal election law that prohibits paying for voting or registering to vote, including via lottery. Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told ABC News that the giveaway’s requirement that petition signers be registered voters “violates the federal ban on paying people to register to vote.” (The Department of Justice declined to comment.) Musk does not appear to have publicly replied to the critiques, and X no longer responds to journalists under his ownership.

This is far from the first time that Musk has wielded his absurd levels of wealth and power to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor: As I have reported, research has found that Musk’s sharing of election disinformation racked up billions of views on X.

Update, Oct. 21: This post was updated with a response from the Department of Justice.

Update, Oct. 22: This post was updated with a response from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

With just over two weeks until Election Day, both candidates are plunging into nonstop rallies and interviews in a bid to get in front of as many voters as possible. (Though notably, Trump has backed out of several recent high profile media appearances, including a sit-down with 60 Minutes.)

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a contentious exchange with Fox News host Bret Baier this week, and headlined rallies in the swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, sank to new lows during a suite of appearances—lobbing crude insults at his opponents and rambling incoherently. Let’s review Trump’s very weird week, which, even by Trumpian standards of shock, veered into increasingly alarming territory. Let’s go day-by-day:

Monday

At a Pennsylvania town hall Monday night, Trump ranted about Hannibal Lecter, renewed his longstanding attacks on the “fake news,” and then abandoned answering questions entirely to listen to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YMCA” for a half hour as he swayed on stage.

"Turn it up louder!" — Trump calls for Ave Maria to be played again while his favorite chart is displayed, which he says "I sleep with every night. I kiss it." pic.twitter.com/bLCOBNuCjI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 14, 2024

Tuesday

At an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait on immigration and economic policy, Trump took a question about inflation as an opportunity to bash Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an architect of the Green New Deal: “She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said—the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.” (Ocasio-Cortez studied international relations and economics at Boston University.)

That exchange was indicative of the interview at large: While Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on the specifics of his economic policies and their potential impacts—higher prices due to tariffs, the loss of immigrant labor due to his proposed mass deportation plan—the former president went on tangent after tangent. When Micklethwait asked him if Google should be broken up, for example, Trump responded with a grievance about voting in Virginia. When the host called him out for his meandering, Trump offered his now-common but unsatisfying explanation: “It’s called the weave.” Other highlights: Trump called Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) “Newscum” and claimed the insurrection represented “a peaceful transfer of power.”

Trump: New scum I call him

Micklethwait: There are CEOs out here if they said that sort of thing about a rival CEO they would be sacked.

Trump: They don't have to go through pic.twitter.com/eqbLuTwaaN

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 15, 2024

And at an all-women’s town hall hosted by Fox News host Harris Faulkner taped Tuesday, Trump called himself “the father of IVF”… despite the fact that the Dobbs decision—which he made possible by appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—has undermined IVF access and Senate Republicans twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill to protect the fertility treatment.

Trump: “I’m the father of IVF”

FACT CHECK: IVF is under threat across the country because Trump ended Roe v. Wade and his Project 2025 plan could effectively ban IVF altogether. pic.twitter.com/tEOUiufDjO

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 16, 2024

His campaign dismissed the bizarre remark as a joke. But as former President Barack Obama said at a rally for Harris in Arizona Friday night: “I do not know what that means. You do not either.”

Wednesday

At a town hall for Latino voters hosted by Univision, Trump called Jan. 6, 2021—the day he unleashed a mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election—”a day of love.” He also falsely claimed “nobody died” other than Ashli Babbitt, and “there were no guns.” January 6, as my colleague Mark Follman has covered extensively, was in fact a heavily armed insurrection.

He also doubled down on the racist lies his campaign helped spread about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating house pets, claiming without evidence they are “eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”

Question: Do you really believe that these people are eating people’s pets?

Trump: I was just saying what was reported. And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to. pic.twitter.com/GAXezwPkqe

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 16, 2024

Friday

During a sit-down with Fox and Friends, Trump took viewers’ questions… including softballs from children who asked about his favorite animal and favorite former president. We’ll just leave one of his responses here:

A six-year-old asks Donald Trump what his favorite farm animal is:

"I love cows. But if we go with Kamala you won't have any cows anymore. I don't want to ruin this kid's day. I love cows, I think they're so cute and so beautiful."pic.twitter.com/qNxVPQ2suQ

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) October 18, 2024

Saturday

To cap it all off, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called Harris a “shit vice president” and spoke about the penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer. Yes… really.

Trump: You’re a shit Vice President pic.twitter.com/cB2w7nknQM

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2024

Trump 10 minutes into his Arnold Palmer story: But when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there. They said, oh my God. That's unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/kRLKWixpT8

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2024

All this makes it no wonder, then, that Harris is drawing voters’ attention to Trump’s rambling incoherency and insults. “He has called it the weave,” she said at a rally in Detroit Saturday. “I think we here will call it nonsense.”

Correction, Oct. 20: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the former VP.

Thinking before you speak publicly is an important skill. Idaho State Sen. Dan Foreman, a conservative Republican, apparently did not get the memo.

As Boise State Public Radio, an NPR affiliate, reported on Thursday, a “meet the candidates” forum was held on Tuesday evening in Kendrick, a town with a population of about 300. Foreman attended, as did others running for District 6 state House and Senate seats. (Idaho has 35 legislative districts, each with one senator and two representatives.)

After Trish Carter-Goodheart, a Democrat running for a House seat, pointed out that discrimination and racism exist in Idaho, Foreman reportedly lost his temper and told her to “go back where you came from.”

Among the various problems with that statement, Carter-Goodheart happens to be a member of the Nez Perce tribe, which has a reservation smack in the middle of District 6. She was where she came from. Foreman, as the radio piece noted, was born in Illinois. (Foreman did not respond to Boise State Public Radio for comment.)

Foreman is not the only Western politician to make offensive remarks about Native Americans recently—Republican US Senate candidate Tim Sheehy admitted to doing the same, and his Democratic rival, incumbent Jon Tester, has made it a campaign issue.

Tester: The statement you made degrades Native Americans. You're a big guy, apologize. 

Sheehy: Do you apologize for opening the border? 

Tester: I didn't open the border. When we had a opportunity to fix the border, you said we want to play politics with this pic.twitter.com/FRbM23aD3R

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2024

Republican Rep. Lori McCann—who is running against Carter-Goodheart—told the radio station that she agrees with her opponent’s assessment of what happened, which Carter-Goodheart summarized in a statement released on Wednesday:

Last night, I entered what should have been a respectful and constructive public candidate forum. Instead, I was met with hateful, racist remarks from State Senator Dan Foreman, who screamed at me to “go back where you came from.”

The question on the floor was about a state bill addressing discrimination. One of the candidates responded, claiming that “discrimination doesn’t exist in Idaho.” When it was my turn to speak, I calmly pointed out that just because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows. I highlighted our weak hate crime laws and mentioned the presence of the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho as undeniable evidence of this reality.

That’s when Sen. Foreman lost all control. His words to me: “I’m so sick and tired of this liberal b*llsh*t! Why don’t you go back to where you came from?!”

I stayed. I stayed because I wanted to show our community that I can, and will, handle difficult, unpleasant situations. After the forum, several members of the crowd came up to me and offered their support, apologizing for Sen. Foreman’s behavior. But it’s not the people in the crowd who need to apologize.

I need to thank the women who stood with me against this hate: Representative Lori McCann, Kathy Dawes, and Moscow City Councilwoman Julia Parker. You had my back when it mattered, and I appreciate your strength and solidarity.

What happened last night was a reminder of why this election matters. I am a proud member of the Nez Perce tribe, fighting to represent the land my family has lived on for generations. People like Dan Foreman do not represent our diverse community, and I will continue to stand against the hatred and racism they spread. Our state deserves better. Our community deserves better. We deserve better.

Less than a week before Melania Trump is set to release her memoir, the former first lady appeared to break ranks.

“Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir,” read the headline. The Guardian, which had obtained an early copy, went on to include excerpts that see Melania declaring it an “imperative” to guarantee a woman’s autonomy. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” she reportedly writes. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

These views, of course, appear in direct opposition to the extreme anti-abortion record of her husband, Donald Trump, as he seeks to return to the White House. They arrive as the former president, who frequently boasted of his singular role in helping to overturn Roe v. Wade, contorts himself on an issue that has proven electorally diabolical for Republicans.

So in comes Melania—and with her, one of the most persistent storylines of the Trump era: Donald Trump may be an extremist but the women around him are supposedly a moderating force. His wife in particular, with her projected sense of mystery and speculation that she is the silent victim of an awful man, has served as a convenient vehicle for this narrative.

If people do still indeed invest in the fiction that Melania is a covert champion of progressive values, that she is the defiant, least-awful member of MAGA, then haven’t the last eight years shown how useless she is?

It was a strange thing to believe in the first place. But with nearly a decade of evidence proving otherwise, it strikes me as equal parts baffling and damning that the narrative survives. In fact, countless people have posted the Guardian‘s excerpt without context on social media, as if it’s a bombshell. (The Guardian posted another excerpt this morning in which Melania claims she tried to convince Trump to abandon his administration’s family separation policy, again without much skepticism.)

Then, a familiar news cycle: National news outlets repeated both headlines. Here’s CBS News, airing the conclusion that this is an unmistakably pro-choice message from the former first lady:

@cbsmornings

Former First Lady Melania Trump voices support for abortion rights in her new memoir, saying there is “no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom.”

♬ original sound – CBS Mornings

Now to be clear, it may very well be true that Melania harbors secret pro-choice views. But should we care? The former first lady—who eagerly pushed pernicious birther lies about Barack Obama—has always been a willing contributor to her husband’s rot, a longstanding complicity that most recently featured Melania giving air to conspiracy theories surrounding Trump’s shooting. Experts have warned such partisan exploitation could lead to retaliatory violence.

But if people do still indeed invest in the fiction that Melania is a covert champion of more progressive values, that she is somehow the defiant, least-awful member of the MAGA kingdom, then haven’t the last eight years shown how feckless she is? After all, Roe is gone; family separations occurred but “I really don’t care, do u?”; and a return to the White House is all but certain to be far worse.

Still, fiction or not, there are books to sell and cryptic videos to film. Meanwhile, the media seems perfectly fine, even happy, to keep laundering this grift. Just apparently not for $250,000.

In a debate-night surprise, climate science got near-top billing during the vice presidential face-off between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance in New York on Tuesday, as the sprawling impacts of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 160 people, were still being felt across the Southeast.

Just after an opening that addressed the escalating crisis in the Middle East, CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell noted that climate change is only making storms like Helene worse and asked Vance if he agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that climate change is a “hoax.” Vance, in a pattern that repeated across the night, couldn’t bring himself to contradict the former president.

Instead, he pointed a finger at his opponents. If Democrats “really believe that climate change is serious,” he argued, “what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America.” That’s because, he said, America is the “cleanest economy in the entire world” in terms of “carbon emissions” per “unit of economic output.” He also pushed for investing in nuclear and natural gas.

It’s unclear what Vance meant by “unit of economic output.” But by most metrics, the US is not a clean economy. The US has among the highest carbon emissions per capita, one of the highest total annual emissions, a mediocre record on carbon emissions per dollar of GDP, and was most recently ranked 34th in the world in its Environmental Performance Index, a measure of a country’s environmental stewardship, including climate change mitigation.

Walz countered that the Biden-Harris administration has made “massive investments” in green technology—the “biggest in global history“—with the Inflation Reduction Act. The law, Walz said, has created 200,000 jobs across the country. (As CNN noted in its fact-check of the debate, some of those jobs may be promised, but not yet created; it’s difficult to come up with an exact figure of jobs sparked by the IRA.)

As for Hurricane Helene, both Vance and Walz shared their condolences with the victims of the flooding. As Vance said, “It’s an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy.”

Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across the Southeast over the past several days, leaving more than 60 people dead and providing a chilling example of how climate change is worsening storms.

Since the hurricane made landfall in northern Florida on Thursday, it killed at least 64 people, including 1-month-old twins and their 27-year-old mother in Georgia, and a couple in their 70s and a 6-year-old relative who drowned in North Carolina, the Associated Press reported Sunday. North Carolina was particularly hard hit, with western parts of the state receiving more than two feet of rainfall, leading to the closure of about 300 roads, according to federal authorities.

The storm also brought more than a foot of rain to parts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, as well as massive power outages, including, at one point, in 40 percent of South Carolina, the AP reports. As of Sunday afternoon, there were more than 2.2 million power outages across the Southeast, with more than 870,000 in South Carolina and more than 600,000 in Georgia, according to PowerOutage.us.

In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden said he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation” that Helene wrought, adding, “As we turn toward recovery efforts, we will make certain that no resource is spared to ensure that families, businesses, schools, hospitals, and entire communities can quickly begin their road to rebuilding.”

Before the storm made landfall, Biden approved emergency aid requests from the governors of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and sent 1,500 federal personnel to the region, according to information the White House released Friday. On Sunday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that Biden had approved major disaster declarations for North Carolina and Florida, unlocking more aid for both states.

“Doug and I are thinking of those who tragically lost their lives and we are keeping all those who loved them in our prayers during the difficult days ahead,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement Saturday, adding that she had been briefed on the situation by FEMA officials and would continue receiving regular updates.

On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell blamed climate change for the storm’s rapid intensification—and warned that the devastation was a harbinger of what’s to come in our increasingly warming planet. “In the past, when we would look at damage from hurricanes, it was primarily wind damage, with some water damage, but now we’re seeing so much more water damage, and I think that is a result of the warm waters, which is a result of climate change,” Criswell said.

At Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), something will be missing: on-air fact-checking.

The Associated Press reports that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan of CBS will not point out the candidates’ inaccuracies during the 90-minute debate, scheduled to take place in New York City at 9 p.m. Eastern. Instead, the network says the candidates can fact-check each other and that its misinformation unit, consisting of about 20 people, will provide real-time fact-checking during the debate in an online live blog and on-air afterwards.

The network’s plan garnered extensive, immediate criticism from reporters and press watchers alike. Some journalists accused CBS of failing to live up to its mission, while others charged that they were bowing to Trump’s camp, which attacked ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir for pointing out Trump’s many lies in his debate earlier this month against Kamala Harris. Trump falsely claimed, for example, that Democrats execute babies after they’re born and that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating peoples’ house pets. Following the debate, CNN reported that Harris lied once, about the historical significance of the unemployment rate under Trump, while Trump lied more than 30 times.

There are a few questions to consider before judging the significance of CBS’s move: Can on-air, live fact-checking actually shape viewers’ opinions about a candidate’s trustworthiness, or has it indeed become part of the culture wars? Also, how many debate viewers will actually visit the CBS website or tune in to watch the post-debate fact-check?

Particularly in these times, journalists have to do more than give the candidates a pair of microphones and let them have at it.

But even without these answers, critics of CBS have a point, considering that Vance also has an extensive record of flat-out lying. Recall, for example, that Vance unleashed the lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, leading to Trump repeating it on the debate stage to tens of millions of viewers. And before Trump named Vance his running mate, the Hillbilly Elegy author was one of the many Republicans who went on television to question the 2020 election results—despite the fact that more than 60 lawsuits the Trump campaign filed questioning the integrity of the election were found to be without merit.

Particularly in these times—when the Republican candidate for the presidency is a convicted felon who tried to subvert the 2020 election and still refuses to admit his loss—journalists have to do more than give the candidates a pair of microphones and let them have at it. As Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein wrote in 2019, “Journalists can’t just dispassionately chronicle two equally valid ‘sides.’ A free press needs (and is needed by) lowercase-d democracy. We can’t exist without it.”

On Tuesday, US District Judge R. David Proctor ruled in an injunction that part of Alabama’s voter suppression law SB1—state legislation that made it a felony to assist disabled people in requesting and filling absentee ballots—was an unenforceable violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The rest of SB1, which nominally targets the practice of “ballot harvesting,” will remain intact for the time being.

SB1, which was enacted in March, prohibited “any person from ordering, requesting, collecting, prefilling, obtaining, or delivering an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot of a voter.” The law also established criminal penalties for people who assisted others with absentee voting.

In April, the Alabama NAACP, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters , Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program sued Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and other state government officials, asking for an injunction.

As their lawsuit points out, the US Code explicitly protects people’s rights to receive assistance while voting:

Any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union.

In his opinion, Proctor acknowledged that SB1 disproportionately affected disabled and low literacy voters: “SB 1 unduly burdens the rights of Section 208 voters to make a choice about who may assist them in obtaining and returning an absentee ballot,” the judge wrote.

In a statement released after Proctor’s decision, the plaintiffs celebrated the injunction as a positive step in upholding democracy.

We’re glad that the district court has sided with the rights of the voters and is committed to promoting voting accessibility. Our democracy works best when everybody can participate in it, and this ruling prevents the enforcement of a cruel law that would have suppressed the voices of blind, disabled, and low literacy voters.

Is the end in sight?

If Trump loses to Vice President Kamala Harris in November—which is a real possibility, if recent polls are accurate—he does not plan to run again in 2028, he said in an interview that aired Sunday.

“No, I don’t,” Trump told Sharyl Attkisson, host of Full Measure, when she asked if he thinks he would run again in four years if he loses the next election. “No, I don’t. I think that that will be it. I don’t see that at all. Hopefully we’re going to be successful.”

Is he serious? Time will tell… but don’t hold out hope: While Trump appeared to (finally) recently acknowledge he lost the 2020 election—as dozens of court cases affirmed—he quickly walked that back at the debate against Harris earlier this month, telling the moderators that he was being sarcastic. “I don’t acknowledge [losing] at all,” he added.

If Trump does back out of running for president again in the future, many in the GOP will be thrilled.

As I have covered, scores of onetime high-level Republican officials have been openly defecting from the party, announcing their plans to vote for Harris over Trump—including many former Reagan, Bush, and Trump staffers. On Sunday, more joined in, signing a bipartisan open letter endorsing Harris over Trump, writing, “Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.” Of the more than 700 current and former national security officials who signed on, more than 180 are Republicans or independents, which includes some who changed their affiliation after Trump took the reins of the GOP, according to one of the organizers.

Things seem to be going great for Vice President Kamala Harris when it comes to two key data points any politician obsesses over: cash and favorability ratings.

A new NBC News poll out today shows Harris with a 5-point lead over former President Donald Trump among registered voters nationally, who prefer her to him 49 to 44 percent. That’s a big jump from July, when NBC polling found Trump leading Biden 45 to 43 percent. Not only that, the new poll shows Harris’ favorability rating soared 16 points since July, with particular spikes coming from voters under 30 and Black and Hispanic voters. NBC notes that this marks the largest increase for any politician in the network’s polling since George W. Bush saw a post-9/11 surge.

NEW: Kamala Harris’ favorability has jumped 16 points since July, the largest increase for any politician in NBC News polling since George W. Bush’s standing surged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.@SteveKornacki breaks down the numbers from latest @NBCNews poll. pic.twitter.com/Zc84Q4cXkM

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 22, 2024

Harris also outraised Trump 4-to-1 in August, according to new filings from the Federal Election Commission released Friday, which show that her campaign took in $189 million, while his brought in $44 million. Harris has been a boon for Democratic fundraising since President Joe Biden dropped from the ticket in July: As my colleagues and I reported, she raised more than $80 million in her first 24 hours and $200 million in her first week campaigning; her campaign also raised $540 million during its first month and more than $80 million during the Democratic National Convention.

The Harris campaign is not sitting on its cash, having spent nearly $174 million last month, while Trump spent about $61 million. As the New York Times reported Friday, some of the campaigns’ spending gap is reflected in the money they’re putting towards digital operations, with the Harris campaign splashing out on more than $12 million on Facebook and Instagram advertising during the week of the debate, while the Trump campaign spent well under $1 million. Trump’s spokespeople told the Times that the campaign is spending less because they can reach people for free at rallies—though that’s a risky bet, given that Trump can’t be counted on to stick to a script… or facts.

After reporting by ProPublica this week revealed that two women in Georgia died as a result of abortion bans, Trump is feeling the heat.

The stories led to widespread condemnation, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, who—as my colleague Pema Levy wrote—highlighted the stories of the women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, during campaign stops in Georgia and Michigan this week. “The reality is, for every story we hear of the suffering under Trump abortion bans, there are so many of the stories we’re not hearing,” Harris said.

This is probably why Trump—who appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—had a late-night, all-caps meltdown on Truth Social on Friday, in which he implausibly promised that American women will be better off if he is reelected. “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump posted. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION,” he added, before repeating his well-worn litany of lies—including that everyone wanted Roe overruled and that Democrats are executing babies after birth (that’s a crime known as homicide… and it’s not happening).

WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS SAFE ON THE STREETS THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE MORE DEPRESSED AND UNHAPPY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) September 21, 2024

“I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE,” Trump concluded. “THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE. THEIR LIVES WILL BE HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN!”

On Saturday, Trump gave an in-person version of the rant, at a rally in North Carolina (at which Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson was not present, in the wake of his latest epic scandal).

Trump reads his bizarre Truth Social rant: So let's talk about our great women. Women have gone through a lot. Women are poorer than they were four years ago. Are less healthy than they were four years ago … You will no longer be thinking about abortion pic.twitter.com/4oryV835Lb

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 21, 2024

All this is a bit rich coming from a man who was found liable for sexual assault; caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault; found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to hide that he paid off a porn star with whom he allegedly had sex while his wife, Melania, was tending to their four-month-old son; and who has a known history of making misogynistic attacks on women he finds threatening. And as for Trump’s claim that women will “no longer be thinking about abortion” if he’s reelected? That’s unlikely, given that he could very well enact a federal abortion ban, and given that abortion bans nationwide have unleashed a health care apocalypse and put vulnerable women in even greater danger.

As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) put it on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, “That’s just ludicrous.”

“This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country,” she added.

“He's just deranged.”@GovWhitmer hits former President Donald Trump over his recent comments on abortion in an interview with CNN’s @jaketapper. “I think this guy just doesn't understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country.” pic.twitter.com/PY04FziWb2

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) September 22, 2024

“Trump thinks he can control women—he’s wrong,” Harris-Walz campaign Senior Spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “He’s terrified that women across the country will vote like our lives and freedoms depend on it, because they do. Women aren’t stupid. We see Trump’s Project 2025 agenda for what it is: an extreme plan to ban abortion nationwide and threaten access to IVF and birth control.”

Trump’s alleged conversion to feminism did not appear to last long: About 12 hours after his pledge to make women great again, he called MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle a “‘dumb as a rock’ bimbo” in another rant.

Update: At a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump backed away from another debate, saying “The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late. Voting has already started.”

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Donald Trump for a second time on October 23. Now the ball is in the former president’s court.

I will gladly accept a second presidential debate on October 23.

I hope @realDonaldTrump will join me. https://t.co/Trb8HUBsDh

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 21, 2024

After getting trounced by Harris in their first debate earlier this month, Trump initially ruled out a second face-off. “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he posted on Truth Social two days after the candidates faced off on ABC. But by that Friday, he seemed more open to the idea. “Maybe if I got in the right mood, I don’t know,” he told reporters during a news conference in California.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement that “Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate.”

Trump’s performance in the last debate was largely characterized by a series of malicious and incoherent lies. As my colleague David Corn wrote:

He tossed out—often in a hard-to-follow jumble of words that probably could only be deciphered by his true devotees—one debunked lie after another. Undocumented immigrants are stealing and eating people’s pets in Ohio. (“I see people on television talking about it,” he said as way of confirmation.) And undocumented migrants are violently taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. Doctors in Democratic states are executing babies after they are born. Crime is down throughout the world but increasing in the United States. Everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and all legal scholars—wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Harris and the Democrats are scheming to confiscate all guns. Joe Biden has pocketed money from Ukraine and China. Harris is a “Marxist” and hates Jews, Arabs, and Israel. He has had no connection to Project 2025. Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the violence on January 6. Top professors at the Wharton School have praised his tariffs plan (which many economists have said will lead to inflation and unemployment). The economy when he was president was the best ever.

Trump, apparently, saw this as a win. “In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Whether or not Harris and Trump face each other again, their running mates Tim Walz and JD Vance will take part in a debate on October 1, hosted by CBS News.

In her latest video, Mother Jones video creator Kat Abughazaleh traces the history of former President Donald Trump’s dangerous lie that some states allow parents to “execute” babies in so-called “post-birth abortions.”

“You can look at the governor of West Virginia,” Trump said during last week’s debate, prompting an incredulous head shake from Vice President Kamala Harris. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute it.”

Northam, of course, did not say that. Trump wasn’t even correct about his own right-wing smear. His reference was to a wildly out-of-context quote from former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (not West Virginia). Northam’s 2019 radio appearance, in which he explained the tragic medical emergencies that can result in late-term abortions, has since been selectively edited by Republicans and used to claim their opponents are permitting infanticide—a lie that has been repeated with relish across Fox News, again and again.

As Kat explains, “There’s no such thing as a ‘post-birth’ abortion. These procedures are extremely rare and reserved for cases where the mother’s life is in danger or when a fatally ill or deformed baby needs palliative care.” In this video, Kat shows how this wasn’t Trump’s first time exploiting these tragedies, which are “designed to demonize grieving mothers and doctors,” while clarifying the facts about late-term abortion care that are too often lost to political noise. She notes that less than one percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy.

“By limiting abortion access in the first place, whether it’s totally or at the six-week mark, or by making parents jump through hoops just to get the medical care they need,” Kat explains, “Republicans are ensuring that there will be more cases that require traumatic medical intervention than if people were allowed to have control over their bodies in the first place.”

At a somber memorial event held Wednesday at Engine Company 4/Ladder Company 15 fire station in lower Manhattan, former president Donald Trump appeared to bring a special guest: 9/11 conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.

The appearance of Loomer, a far-right social media shit-poster with a long record of bigotry, follows her travel with Trump to Tuesday’s presidential debate between the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris.

But her attendance at a 9/11 remembrance event proved especially shocking. Last year, Loomer shared a video to Twitter that claimed the infamous terrorist attack was an “inside job.” Alongside the video, Loomer shared her false belief that the plane hijackings and resulting terrors were merely a ploy to allow the US government to surveil Americans moving forward.

“These actions destabilized the Middle East and allowed for the alphabet agencies to begin their campaign of WEAPONIZED GOVERNMENT AND MASS SURVEILLANCE against the American people,” Loomer wrote in June 2023.

Nearly 3,000 people died as a direct result of the attacks in 2001, including more than 2,500 civilians and firefighters at the World Trade Center in New York City; 184 people at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; and 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93, which crashed in an empty field in western Pennsylvania. Thousands more have contracted illnesses believed to be linked to their time near the wreckage of the attacks, according to a government program that compiles data on survivors.

Further, more than 240,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan war-zone areas since the War on Terror began. Of those, more than 70,000 were civilians.

Beyond spreading lies about 9/11, Loomer has previously described herself as a “proud Islamophobe.” She has also called Islam a “cancer on humanity.” Though the purpose of her recent travel with Trump is unclear, Loomer appears to be angling for what one may call an “inside job” in a second Trump Administration, after coming close to a job in his 2024 campaign.

Two Trump campaign staffers reportedly got in a fight with an official at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday during a wreath-laying ceremony to honor soldiers who died in the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. (NPR first reported the incident on Tuesday.)

The cause? Trump’s staff allegedly wanted to ensure he’d be photographed honoring the troops, even though federal law “prohibits political campaign or election-related activities,” including photographers, at the cemetery, according to an Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson.

Nonetheless, Trump’s team did manage to turn the event into an opportunity for content, producing and posting a video to their TikTok account, set to somber music, that suggests the soldiers’ deaths were President Joe Biden’s fault. As of Wednesday afternoon, it had more than 6.6 million views. (The video was also posted on Trump’s Instagram page, which posted other footage from the event, too; Trump’s senior advisor Dan Scavino also shared videos on his X page.)

@realdonaldtrump

Should have never happened.

♬ original sound – President Donald J Trump

“We can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed,” a cemetery spokesperson said Wednesday. They declined to elaborate further on who was involved in the alleged incident or with what agency the report was filed “to protect the identity of the individual involved.” They did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the TikTok video violates the federal law in question. On Thursday, an Army spokesperson released new details about the incident, claiming a cemetery employee “was abruptly pushed aside” when trying to enforce the rules against political activity. “Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption,” the statement continued, adding that while the incident was reported to police, the employee declined to press charges; The New York Times reports the employee was worried about retaliation from Trump supporters

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” the statement said. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The Trump team tried to shut down the claims, with Communications Director Steven Cheung denying on Wednesday that a “physical altercation” occurred and claiming that the team had permission to have a photographer present. “The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung added. He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions Wednesday, nor did the Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson respond to requests for comment on Cheung’s claims.

Cheung also pointed to a post from Trump War Room—an X account run by the campaign—featuring a statement from families of the fallen soldiers expressing their “heartfelt thanks and appreciation” to the former president for his presence at the cemetery.

Trump has not always been respectful of the military. Trump reportedly called Americans who died in war “suckers” and “losers.” (Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly confirmed the statement was true last year.) Trump famously attacked the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Purple Heart recipient who served in the Navy and spent several years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said of McCain. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

After the most recent incident, Trump’s former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, could not hide how he felt in response to the former president’s latest alleged disrespect to the memory of fallen soldiers. “There is no more hallowed ground in this nation than Arlington Cemetery,” Esper told CNN. “Bottom line, the principle is that no person or party on either side should ever use Arlington National Cemetery or any of our cemeteries or battlefields for partisan political purposes.”

Trump SecDef Esper tells me he’s “anxious” to see what comes of Arlington investigation- “Bottom line: The principle is that no person or party, either side, should ever use Arlington National Cemetery – or any of our cemeteries or battlefields – for partisan political purposes.” pic.twitter.com/zazLTDGPUQ

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 28, 2024

Update, Aug. 29: This post was updated with a new statement and details provided by an Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson.