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- The Republicans Are Bolting From Trump
A few tentative displays of independence among Republicans have expanded in recent days into a stampede, as candidates furiously distance themselves from President Trump ahead of the midterm elections. “This is shaping up to be a nightmare political environment for every Republican, everywhere—period, full stop,” one Texas-based political consultant told us, speaking anonymously to provide a frank assessment. Noting that gas prices across the country are on average $4.50 a gallon, the consultant described the atmosphere as “a fucking disaster for anyone in a competitive race.”The contrast with the midterm elections of Trump’s first term is particularly stark. An October 2018 rally in Richmond, Kentucky, was a political show of force by a president whose hold on the Republican Party was as firm as bedrock. The opening speaker, Republican State Senator Ralph Alvarado, hailed Trump’s many accomplishments as “amazing to see.” Senator Rand Paul crowed that Trump “exceeds my expectations” almost every day. Representative Andy Barr, whom Trump had come to town to endorse, praised the president as “a man of action” who “gets results,” prompting the thousands of MAGA faithful in attendance to erupt in cheers.Kentucky Republicans have been fawning over Trump for the past decade. But now, as the war with Iran drags on and Trump’s approval ratings crater, even they are starting to keep the president at a distance. Barr, who is running for an open Senate seat, and Alvarado, who is running to replace him in the House, have each recently scrubbed mentions of Trump’s name from prominent portions of their campaign websites. Paul has been more vocal, repeatedly clashing with the White House over the Iran war and the ballooning national debt.The notably lukewarm embrace of Trump from Republican candidates in Kentucky, a state that he won by more than 30 points in 2024, is just one indicator of the president’s loosening grip on a party he has dominated for the past decade.Republican candidates seeking a reason to distance themselves from an unpopular president have a buffet of options to choose from. The war in Iran, which began almost seven months ago, has sent diesel prices to record highs. The United States is in an escalating trade war with Canada. The national debt, the elimination of which was once an obsession of conservatives, has ballooned to more than $40 trillion—and that’s before the $5,000 government checks Trump has promised to dole out if Republicans win.… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - ‘Pink Slime’ Is Infecting AI Chatbots Ahead of the Midterms
It’s no secret that AI has become an explosive factor in American politics. Even before the latest concerns that AI poses existential risks to humanity, many people had soured on the rapid growth of data centers used to support the technology. Meanwhile, tens of millions of AI industry dollars are sloshing around the midterm campaign in support of candidates on both sides of the aisle. But the increasing ubiquity of AI is also quietly shaping the perceptions of voters who are simply trying to educate themselves about the candidates — and are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries. Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new audit by NewsGuard, an organization focused on news reliability where we work as analysts. These “pink slime” sites have gone into overdrive ahead of the 2026 elections, actively promoting articles designed to influence which party controls Congress in the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Many of these sites, which don’t disclose their political orientation, are focused on the Senate and House races that are considered toss-ups and where small voter swings could be the deciding factor. Against this backdrop, NewsGuard prompted seven leading AI tools with queries based on recent coverage of candidates and issues by 12 pink slime sites — six left-leaning and six right-leaning. The results were stark. Collectively, the chatbots cited pink slime sites along with other sources in 48.2 percent of their responses. In 7.7 percent of responses, pink slime sites were the only sources at all that were cited in chatbot responses, although other sources appeared in the source list provided at the end of the response. None of the AI tools received results they’d probably be eager to boast about, though the percentage of chatbots’ responses that cited a pink slime site had a relatively large range: 70.8 percent for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, 54.2 percent for Microsoft’s Copilot, 54.2 percent for Perplexity, 50 percent for Anthropic’s Claude, 41.7 percent for Google’s Gemini; 37.5 percent for Meta AI and 29.2 percent for xAI’s Grok. A Microsoft spokesperson told NewsGuard: “Copilot has been designed to ground answers in high-quality search results that balance safety, authority, and access to information. The system indexes… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - Russia Said These Foreigners Wouldn’t Have to Fight. Then It Sent Them to the ...
PUCALLPA, Peru — Carlos Lenski Davila Vela cannot name the Ukrainian village that Russia sent him to capture as part of a storm assault, nor a single town nearby. But with a crumpled napkin and a glass, he easily reconstructs where he was when the drones appeared, the tree line where he sought shelter and where, just meters away, one of his companions, a 19-year-old recruit from Kazakhstan, was hit and killed. Davila Vela, a 36-year-old Peruvian recruited into the Russian army, was left with shrapnel in his foot. Recreating his call for help to Puma, a 23-year-old Colombian, he holds his phone to his mouth like a radio: “Puma, Puma,” he says, using the Colombian man’s callsign. “This is Cash. I’m alive, but I’m hurt.” He had spent just four days on the frontline.As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds on, Moscow is looking abroad to find soldiers to send into battle. With recruitment becoming harder in some countries it previously relied on, predominantly in Africa and Asia, its war machine is increasingly turning to Latin America — including Peru, a country of about 35 million people — where testimonies from recruits and their relatives indicate that hundreds traveled to Moscow in the first half of this year alone. The widening of the Kremlin’s recruitment drive suggests that as Russian President Vladimir Putin hesitates to launch another round of military mobilization at home, the war is reaching deeper into the Western Hemisphere — a region where U.S. President Donald Trump has explicitly sought to reassert American primacy — drawing it into the conflict. In Peru, relatives of missing recruits have staged repeated protests and pressed authorities to act, likening the effort to lure men to fight against Ukraine to human trafficking. “We are seeing a clear expansion of Russia’s recruitment network in Latin America,” said a Ukrainian defense official working with prisoners of war who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. “The number of Peruvian cases is clearly increasing.” This year, the official added, the number of foreign fighters is expected to reach a record high.“There are lots of Latinos,” Davila Vela confirmed during an interview in his hometown of Pucallpa, in the Peruvian Amazon, describing the three military training camps where he stayed before being sent to battle as a conveyor belt of fresh foreign recruits. “Every day, some are sent on, and new… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago - Trump’s Public Service Announcement: ‘Love Me’The campaign-style ad starts with grainy video footage of President Trump, followed by a clearer look at his red-bathed profile, as his voice promises: “Together, we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.” Then comes a strobe-style rapid display of images of the president. A pause. Then a dozen more Trumps. The pattern repeats several times. There are plugs for some of his priorities—such as cutting taxes and defending police officers—but one message stays on the screen for fully half of the 30-second commercial: AmericA will never be a communist country.Throughout, an R&B song plays in the background, with falsetto voices singing, over and over: “Love me … Love me … Love me …” At the end comes this: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”Huh?If the use of taxpayer dollars seems odd—and it should—the explanation that the White House gave me is even more bizarre. No one would speak on the record, but a White House spokesperson told me that the new ad, which began airing this week, is a public service announcement that is “educational and unapologetically patriotic.” A second White House official told me that the ad is “clearly not political,” an assertion that appears intended to provide legal cover. I also received a list of supposedly comparable PSAs from past presidents: George W. Bush spent federal dollars urging the youth of America not to do drugs. Joe Biden had a campaign to encourage the public to get their COVID vaccines. Franklin D. Roosevelt produced radio programs and posters supporting World War II. And now Trump has his own announcement of sorts: “Love me … Love me … Love me …”“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House spokesperson told me in a statement.[Read: Trump plans to buy midterm ads about his own record ]The White House would not answer my other questions, including about how much money is being spent on these “public service announcements,” which government account is being used to fund them, and who produced the spot. It is unclear how much money the government has spent on these ads and in how many places, but one advertising tracker I spoke with told me that the ad is airing in several major markets. It’s much easier to track such details for political ads,… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- The Deferential PresidentThe 747 slowly wheeled to a stop last night on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington. Portable stairs were put in position, while a red carpet was unfurled and lined by both American and Chinese soldiers in dress uniforms. After a few minutes, Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared at the aircraft door. He paused and waved. Waiting below, staring up expectantly, was President Trump.It was a remarkable act of deference. By tradition, American presidents don’t make the 12-mile trip to the base to greet a foreign leader. They instead wait at the White House, backed by the grandeur and power of the executive mansion. But not this time.Xi did not display the same level of hospitality when Trump visited Beijing in May, and the U.S. president’s gesture suggested that he will take a conciliatory role during the closely watched summit between the leaders of the world’s foremost superpowers. Trump is not expected to push Xi on core issues, including the pace of artificial-intelligence development, Taiwan’s defense, and China’s support for Iran in its war with the United States.It was not that long ago when Trump, a self-styled international bully, could credibly claim to “run the country and the world.” But he seems far smaller on the global stage now. His speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly, usually a signature moment on any president’s foreign-policy calendar, generated few headlines other than those about his threat to “annihilate” Iran. But even that bluster felt familiar and tired; Trump is stuck in a war he is desperate to leave, and leaders in Tehran seem to believe that he doesn’t have the political will—or the defensive munitions—to authorize a full-fledged return to the conflict. His trade war with traditional U.S. allies has pushed those nations away, leaving them to seek deals and make alliances that cut out Washington. His years-long campaign to commandeer Greenland for the United States ended with little to show for it. He can’t bring the war in Ukraine to an end.Trump’s foreign policy has never been all that coherent, his isolationism haphazardly mixed with spasms of military intervention. But now his erratic behavior—his threats and bluffs, his emphasis on making money over spreading democracy—has left the United States in retreat from the rest of the world. “Trump has dramatically accelerated the arrival of what can be described as a post-American world,” Richard Haass, who… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- The Supporters Urging Trump to Declare Martial Law for the MidtermsOf all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said. Trump has already tried to claim greater federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered primarily at the state and local level. In February, he said Republicans should nationalize voting in at least 15 places. In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.” Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as “foolproof.” Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.” In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming elections.[Read: Trump’s dream world in Dallas]To… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
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