With Indiana’s Tuesday midterms two days out, host Scott Aaron Rogers welcomed Katie Robins and Alexandra Rollo for a show framing the election against a wave of global democratic upheaval: youth-led protests spreading across Europe, Serbia’s strongman conceding to a student movement, Brazil’s Lula defeating another Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s opposition leader returning from exile, and Israel left deadlocked after its own election. That last story included a widely shared video of an Israeli voter calling for Palestinians to be expelled or killed, which the panel condemned outright. The conversation then turned to RFK Jr.’s heinous anti-Arab comments and the Pentagon’s own bigotry scandal as Hegseth purges another general, before settling into the back half on the “war on voting” — federal officials and agencies maneuvering around the midterms, an Alaska ballot-stacking scheme the panel criticized regardless of party, and a run of Indiana down-ballot stories on election-commission fights, late campaign spending, and school board races. The show closed with a stretch of corruption and tech news: ICE’s pre-election enforcement surge, the Trump administration’s legal pressure on Cassidy Hutchinson and the Comey family, fresh Epstein-related allegations against Trump, Jared Kushner’s overseas financial entanglements, a major crypto heist, and a look at Big Tech’s layoffs amid record profits and growing doubts about the AI boom. Scott closed by plugging Tuesday’s live election-night coverage and urging viewers to keep showing up after the votes are counted.

Guest info:

Katie Robins: https://www.katierobinsforindiana.com/

Alex Rollo: https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.rollo

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00:00 - Intro, Housekeeping, and Guest Welcomes

00:04:17 - Europe: Gen Z Protests Spread and Serbia’s Vucic Concedes

00:09:48 - Brazil: Lula Defeats Bolsonaro and the Rockbridge/JD Vance Investigation

00:15:33 - Venezuela: Machado’s Return to Caracas and the Push for 2027 Elections

00:20:49 - Israel: Deadlocked Election Results and Eisenkot’s Path to Government

00:30:57 - RFK Jr’s Anti-Arab Comments and the Debunking They Deserve

00:38:30 - Pentagon: Hegseth Fires Gen. Sylvia and Adviser Ryan Higgins’ Bigoted Posts

00:45:22 - War on Voting: National Security Officials’ Warnings and the FBI’s Election Anxiety

00:54:51 - Alaska: The Dan Sullivan Ballot-Stacking Scheme

01:04:14 - Indiana Elections: Ballard’s Election Commission Fight and Legislative Spending

01:16:36 - ICE/Immigration: The Pre-Election Enforcement Surge and Miami Correctional Lawsuit

01:23:24 - Weaponization: Cassidy Hutchinson’s No-Bill and the Comey Family’s Prosecutions

01:30:51 - Epstein: New Rape Allegations Against Trump and the Media’s Silence

01:37:32 - Corruption: Jared Kushner’s Tangled Web of Middle East Financial Dealings

01:45:42 - Crypto and Techonomics: The Binance Heist and Big Tech’s Layoffs-Amid-Profits Boom

01:58:26 - Wrap-Up: Thanks and Where to Find the Panelists

02:01:30 - Sign-Off

NOTES:

Europe Protests

• ‘Nobody heard us’ – why Gen Z are leading protests across Europe (Reuters)

  • Gen Z-led protests have spread across Europe, including France, Italy, Belgium and Albania, over crumbling schools, living costs, housing, corruption and a sense of not being heard. Demonstrations continue this weekend, including in Germany.

  • The protests follow Gen Z uprisings in Bangladesh, Nepal and India. Students told Reuters their governments ignored peaceful protest, and thousands of French shops have been damaged or looted.

  • In France, people over 60 own 60% of the wealth and a third of the education budget goes to pensions. Across the EU, 18- to 24-year-olds face the highest poverty risk of any age group.

• French Teachers Say Government Education Measures to Quell Protests Fall Short (USNWR)

  • On Monday, the French government proposed education reforms to end weeks of protests, including capping some class sizes at 28, loans for school renovations and an overhaul of university admissions. The €5 billion package will be offset by cuts elsewhere.

  • Teachers’ unions said the measures fall short, while student leaders called them a good first step but vowed to keep protesting this weekend and next.

  • Interior Minister Laurent Nunez promised heavy security for this weekend’s protests. The turmoil has boosted far-right leader Marine Le Pen, favored to finish first in next spring’s presidential election.

• How the French government plans to make protesters pay for riots and looting (France 24)

  • On Wednesday, France’s right-wing-dominated Senate passed a “make rioters pay” bill that would make protesters liable for up to €10,000 in damages from unrest, even if they didn’t cause it. It now goes to the more divided National Assembly.

  • The bill covers anyone who “knowingly” took part in a group formed to commit vandalism, or who stayed at a protest after two police orders to disperse. It would also let the state seize welfare benefits, including minimum income and housing aid, to cover the damages.

  • Amnesty International, major unions and left-wing parties say the bill attacks the right to peaceful protest. A defense lawyer on France’s National Bar Council argues its vague wording is designed to scare people away from marches and invites police to single out young people from poor neighborhoods.

• Serbia’s strongman leader Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement in seismic political shift (AP)

  • Last Sunday, Putin-endorsed Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat to the youth-led Students’ List, ending his right-wing party’s 14-year rule. The Students’ List won 140 of Parliament’s 250 seats, and Vucic’s party won 104.

  • The movement grew out of protests over a deadly 2024 train station collapse in Novi Sad that protesters blamed on corruption. It fielded no students as candidates, running experts, athletes, farmers and artists instead.

  • Vucic blamed independent media, unnamed European countries and an “American deep state.” AP says the result echoes Hungary’s ouster of Vucic ally Viktor Orbán earlier this year.

Latin America

• Brazil

  • Lula is declared winner of Brazil’s election as Bolsonaro rejects results (AP)

    • Last Sunday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term with 51.8% of the vote, defeating far-right Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, after trailing in the first round.

    • Flávio Bolsonaro refused to concede and sought to annul the results over a two-hour voting extension that both campaigns had requested. The electoral court’s chief, a Jair Bolsonaro appointee, said the extension didn’t affect the outcome.

    • Lula, a vocal Trump critic, vowed Brazil “will not accept being anyone’s backyard” amid Trump’s tariff pressure. His fourth term begins Jan. 5, 2027.

  • Lula’s comeback puts brakes on Latin America’s rightward surge (EuroNews)

    • Lula’s win ended a streak of seven straight conservative victories in Latin American presidential elections, including Peru’s Keiko Fujimori and Chile’s José Antonio Kast. A Cornell professor says Washington has “put its finger on the scale” with endorsements, bailouts and military aid.

    • Trump’s tariffs over Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution may have backfired, fueling a nationalist backlash Lula channeled into “Brazil belongs to Brazilians.” Brazil also has leverage of its own, with the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves and about 90% of global niobium output.

    • Conservatives strengthened their hold on Brazil’s Congress this month, which will limit Lula’s reforms.

  • Flávio Bolsonaro flees to U.S. after losing Brazil election (NBC)

    • Flávio Bolsonaro fled to the US this week after defying a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, which the court then canceled, citing flight risk. The State Department says it will issue visas to him and his family.

    • Trump called the Bolsonaros “fine people” and the election “terrible,” while insisting he “didn’t take sides.” Lula called the departure shameful.

    • Lula accuses Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaros, and Reuters reported on a State Department campaign to restore them to power. Jair Bolsonaro also went to the US after refusing to concede in 2022.

  • Brazilian judge orders investigation into JD Vance donor network (WaPo)

    • On Tuesday, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered police to investigate alleged ties between Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign and the Rockbridge Network, a donor network co-founded by JD Vance. Accepting foreign campaign help is a crime in Brazil. Rockbridge denies any involvement, and Vance’s office declined to comment.

    • Bolsonaro fled to the US the same day, defying a separate Supreme Court order. He was already under investigation over ties to a banker accused in a multibillion-dollar fraud and to a suspected money launderer in Brazil’s betting industry.

    • Bolsonaro had campaigned on freeing his father, pardoning supporters convicted in a Jan. 6-style attack on Brasília, and impeaching the justices who prosecuted them.

• Venezuela

  • Opposition leader María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela to push for elections (WaPo)

    • Last Sunday, Nobel laureate and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returned home after more than 10 months abroad, drawing tens of thousands in Caracas. She plans to push for elections to replace the interim government installed after the US seized Maduro in January.

    • Her return caught the Trump administration by surprise. Trump said “we have total control of Venezuela,” and his administration backs interim President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president.

    • US officials worry Machado could mobilize protests that destabilize Rodríguez and upend US-backed talks, which have made little progress toward an election date.

  • US proposes Venezuela elections for 2027, opposition leader Machado says (Reuters)

    • On Thursday, Machado said Rubio has laid out a transition plan with presidential elections in 2027, and interim President Delcy Rodríguez also backed holding elections. The US-backed talks with Rodríguez’s government exclude Machado’s party.

    • Machado criticized a US-backed deal for North American Blue Energy Partners to export oil from 17 Venezuelan fields, saying it “evidently does not reflect” the transparency Venezuelans want. She cited the company’s CEO, Alejandro Betancourt, who has been investigated for money laundering in the US, Spain and Switzerland but never charged, and said contracts could be renegotiated.

    • Machado sidestepped Trump’s remark this week that Venezuela could become the 51st state. She called for the release of political prisoners, of whom the rights group Foro Penal counts 322.

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Middle East

• UN panel accuses Israel of ‘extermination’ in West Bank, genocide in Gaza (Al Jazeera)

  • On Monday, the day before Israel’s election, a UN commission of inquiry accused Israel of crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including extermination, torture and rape. It also said genocide in Gaza continues despite the US-brokered ceasefire.

  • Deaths from Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank rose from six between 2008 and October 2023 to 254 since. Israel called the report a “misinformation campaign” and demanded the commission be dissolved.

  • UN human rights chief Volker Türk said Israel’s lockdown of Hebron after last week’s checkpoint attack has displaced more than 2,000 Palestinians and raises “serious concerns of ethnic cleansing.” Netanyahu plans to extend the lockdown across the entire West Bank.

• Netanyahu reportedly pressured military to attack Iran in run-up to election (Guardian)

  • CNN reported that Netanyahu tried to persuade Trump in recent weeks to resume the war on Iran before Israel’s election, confirming an earlier Financial Times report. Trump declined.

  • Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu also clashed with military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir over a directive that could spark an immediate conflict with Iran, and that Zamir demanded it in writing. Netanyahu denied it, and opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot vowed not to let the military become “a pawn in Netanyahu’s survival campaign.”

  • Netanyahu posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear blast destroying Tel Aviv, warning that voting for the opposition risked annihilation, and cast his opponents as an alliance of “the left and Islam.”

• US warns allies to prepare for possible Iran strikes, retaliation after elections (AP)

  • US officials have told several Middle East allies to prepare for possible renewed strikes on Iran after Tuesday’s midterms, and for Iranian retaliation against energy facilities and other infrastructure, according to two diplomats. They said Trump hasn’t made a final decision but that strikes could last several days.

  • The diplomats stress Trump hasn’t made a final decision. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran is still working with mediators on the ceasefire proposal Trump rejected last month, and the UAE urged both sides to pursue a political solution.

  • The Pentagon sent the USS Theodore Roosevelt and about 9,000 troops to the Persian Gulf late last month.

• Final Vote Results in Israel Set Up Weeks of Uncertainty About Who Will Govern (NYT)

  • Final results released Friday gave Netanyahu’s Likud and its hard-right allies 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, short of the 61 needed and down from 64 in 2022. Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc won 48, and two Arab parties won 19, their most ever. Turnout was the highest since 1999.

  • President Isaac Herzog receives the results Nov. 4 and is expected to give Eisenkot the first chance to form a government, despite his bloc’s smaller seat count. Whoever he picks gets 28 days, plus a possible two-week extension, and forming a government has historically taken 20 to 100 days.

  • Netanyahu outperformed the polls by stoking fears of Arab political power, accusing Arab voters of “trying to steal the elections.” A deadlock suits him, since he remains caretaker prime minister, leaving Eisenkot to choose between courting the Arab parties or joining Netanyahu in a unity government.

• Israel’s Arab parties emerge from deadlocked election as kingmakers (ABC Australia)

  • Arab-majority parties won a record 19 Knesset seats, up from 10, on surging turnout among Arab citizens, including first-time voters, women and Bedouin communities, many of them motivated by ousting Netanyahu.

  • Before polls even closed, Netanyahu’s camp claimed Arabs were “stealing” the election, later adding allegations of foreign interference involving Qatar, and an election official has demanded an investigation. Eisenkot supported the probe but accused Netanyahu of casting doubt on the new Knesset’s legitimacy.

  • Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot vowed not to partner with Arab parties, which now say no bloc can govern without them. The Joint List has offered to help topple Netanyahu, and the United Arab List recruited a Jewish former deputy minister as its No. 2 candidate.

• From June 2025: Poll Shows Majority of Israelis Support Expelling Gazans (Haaretz)

  • A 2025 survey by Penn State professor Tamir Sorek, published in Haaretz, found 82% of Jewish Israelis supported expelling Gaza’s residents to other countries, and 56% supported expelling Arab citizens of Israel.

  • Nearly half, 47%, agreed the Israeli military should kill all inhabitants of conquered enemy cities, as in the biblical conquest of Jericho. Other polls found lower but still majority support for expelling Gazans, including 62% in Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index.

  • Veteran Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin reviewed the raw data and called the findings credible. She noted that a poll offering a neutral option still found 60% support.

• ‘Carpet Bomb Them All’: Israeli Woman Says Palestinians Should Be Killed if They Cannot Be Expelled From Gaza (IBT)

  • In a Guardian video of Tel Aviv voters published Oct. 24, a young Israeli woman said Palestinians should be expelled from Gaza and, if they can’t be, “carpet bomb them all.” She also claimed Jordan, Lebanon and Syria belong to Israel.

  • The clip went viral after Middle East Eye shared it Oct. 26. The Guardian video, titled “Israel should go as far right as possible,” featured younger right-wing voters who believe Israel’s response in Gaza hasn’t gone far enough.

  • She doesn’t speak for the Israeli government. International law prohibits indiscriminate bombing of civilians and forced transfers from occupied territory.

RFK Bigotry

• Kennedy Makes Bigoted Remarks About Arabs at Michigan Campaign Event (NYT)

  • Campaigning Monday in Grand Rapids for Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, RFK Jr. said: “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science — they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Field prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”

  • Kennedy and Rogers both claimed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim senator, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which El-Sayed has disavowed. The remarks came a day after Trump said El-Sayed and Democrats would “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores.”

  • Kennedy paired the campaign stop with an official HHS news conference in Grand Rapids the same day. El-Sayed’s campaign called him “an anti-scientist” lecturing a doctor with two doctoral degrees, and polls show a tight race that could decide Senate control.

• US’s RFK Jr claims Arabs ‘don’t produce science’: Why he’s very, very wrong (Al Jazeera)

  • During the Islamic Golden Age, roughly 750 to 1258, Arabic was the language of science. Scholars in the Muslim world adopted India’s numerals, including zero, and spread them worldwide, and al-Khwarizmi, often called the “father of algebra,” gave the field its name through his book Al-Jabr.

  • Ibn al-Haytham, the “father of modern optics,” explained how light entering the eye creates vision. Al-Zahrawi, the “father of modern surgery,” wrote a 30-volume medical encyclopedia, and Ibn al-Nafis described how blood circulates through the lungs centuries before Europeans did.

  • Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco in the ninth century, often cited as the world’s oldest continually operating university. Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez noted that Arab scholars preserved Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen for the Renaissance.

• Kennedy’s claim that Arabs ‘don’t produce science’ meets a Nobel Prize reality check (AP)

  • Arabs have won every prize Kennedy named. Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz won the 1988 Nobel in Literature, Egyptian-American Ahmed Zewail the 1999 Nobel in Chemistry, and Jordanian-born Omar Yaghi the 2018 Wolf Prize and the 2025 Nobel in Chemistry. Michael Atiyah, of Lebanese descent, won the Fields Medal in 1966.

  • Arab winners of the Nobel Peace Prize include Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Yasser Arafat, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Yemeni journalist Tawakkol Karman, the first Arab woman to win it.

  • AP notes that “Arab” is an ethnic and linguistic identity while “Muslim” is a religious one, and most Muslims aren’t Arab. Kennedy blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for creating “stagnant societies that do one, two things: hatred and war and victimization.”

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Pentagon

• Hegseth ousts Pentagon’s chief planner as renewed action against Iran looms, source says (CNN)

  • On Wednesday, Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategy, plans and policy. A defense official cited misconduct and an investigation into leaking classified information, and the Pentagon referred the matter to the Justice Department without offering evidence.

  • Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine’s office first thanked Sylvia for his 32 years of service, then retracted the statement. Hegseth has fired more than two dozen senior officers, and his past accusations of leaking against aides were never proven.

  • Two US officials told CNN that US forces could launch major operations against Iran within 96 hours of a Trump order, most likely after the midterms.

• ‘Separation of Church and State does not exist’: Hegseth’s faith adviser shared racist, homophobic posts (CNN)

  • A CNN investigation found that Ryan Higgins, Hegseth’s senior adviser for religious issues, has shared scores of racist and homophobic posts, conspiracy theories and attacks on Islam. Sources say he has shaped Hegseth’s Christian nationalist rhetoric and the new Pentagon Office of Religious Affairs, and the Pentagon calls him “a valued member of the Secretary’s team.”

  • Higgins wrote that immigrants “act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women.” Since joining the Pentagon, he has also railed against “the satanic cult of LGBTQ,” called gay adoption “two dudes buying babies,” and called abortion “demonic human sacrifice packaged as ‘women’s healthcare.’”

  • Higgins has also pushed conspiracy theories, calling COVID a “Plandemic,” comparing disease-mitigation rules to the Holocaust. He was an early promoter of the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and heading into these midterms he wrote that he has “exactly 0% faith in our elections.”

War on Voting

• Last Week: U.S. officials privately advise states fearing Trump election meddling (WaPo)

  • About 10 current and former national security officials with Pentagon experience have quietly advised governors, election officials and members of Congress from both parties in 10 states on how to prepare for possible Trump administration interference in the midterms.

  • They warn the administration could send troops or immigration agents to polling places or try to overturn results on fraud claims. Earlier this year, Trump told the NYT he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines in 2020, and Hegseth has dismissed as “hypothetical” the question of whether he’d refuse an order to send troops to the polls.

  • Federal interference has become election officials’ top concern, according to the National Association of Election Officials. Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor said the threats “are mostly from our own government.”

• White House actions spur worry among FBI agents about being called to polling places (MS NOW)

  • Some FBI agents fear they could be ordered to seize voting machines or ballots or take other steps that disrupt the midterms, according to seven people familiar with internal discussions. One current FBI official said there’s every reason to expect at least one US attorney and one agent would sign on to such actions.

  • They point to the FBI’s January seizure of Fulton County, Ga., ballots on a warrant based largely on debunked 2020 fraud claims. Neither that raid nor the March seizure of Maricopa County election records has led to charges, and two Atlanta FBI analysts were fired for refusing to join the 2020 investigation.

  • Federal law bars armed agents at polling places, but officials worry about warrants built on thin fraud claims. One state attorney general has asked federal judges for a chance to respond before any ballot warrants are issued, and Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel have declined to rule out sending agents to the polls.

• Trump administration asks Washington state to set aside ballots from 400 voters it says may be noncitizens (PBS)

  • On Monday, the DOJ asked Washington state to set aside midterm ballots from more than 400 people it suspects registered to vote without citizenship, saying they cast 1,500 votes in past elections. Washington has more than 5 million registered voters. The DOJ plans to send more names before Election Day and concedes some of the people may have since become citizens.

  • Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, whose office has received about 60 DOJ subpoenas since last month, said: “We see what’s happening in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed.”

  • Earlier claims have fallen apart: in Arizona’s Maricopa County, a Trump-supporting official flagged 207 possible noncitizen voters, and the Republican county attorney found eight.

• California

  • Appeals court rejects Trump DOJ demand to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots (CNN)

    • Last week, after Judge David Carter hadn’t ruled on the DOJ’s lawsuit to block California from counting more than 20,000 mail ballots from suspected noncitizens, the DOJ went to the 9th Circuit, calling his silence a “constructive denial.”

    • On Monday, a three-judge panel rejected the DOJ’s emergency appeal 2–1, ruling it couldn’t act before the district court did and calling the emergency “self-constructed.” Trump appointee Mark Bennett joined Biden appointee Gabriel Sanchez in the majority, and Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay dissented. The case went back to Carter for a Tuesday hearing.

    • Bennett wrote that he would have ruled against the DOJ on the merits, since states have primary authority over elections. At the hearing, the DOJ’s lawyer couldn’t say which “third parties” had helped build its list of suspected noncitizens, which California called “wildly outdated.”

  • Justice Department subpoenas California officials in escalation of its scrutiny of elections (AP)

    • On Tuesday, Judge David Carter rejected the DOJ’s demand to set aside the 20,000 ballots, ruling it violated federal law barring election changes within 90 days of a vote, and warned that threats against election workers should “cease immediately.” On Thursday he appointed a special master to vet the DOJ’s list, which both sides agree includes some citizens. The DOJ appealed again, and Trump called California’s elections “extremely corrupt.”

    • Carter will rule on a renewed DOJ request after a Nov. 13 hearing. More than 500,000 ballots have already been processed in LA County alone, and once processed they can’t be traced back to individual voters.

    • AP also obtained DOJ subpoenas, sent Oct. 21 and 24, ordering Los Angeles County election employees to appear in court Nov. 4, the day after the election. The subpoenas seek records on the noncitizen allegations and are tied to a Homeland Security criminal investigation.

  • Judge orders DOJ to stop threatening to prosecute election officials (Politico)

    • On Friday, US District Judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco temporarily barred the DOJ from threatening state and local election officials with prosecution over voter-eligibility disputes, and from demanding they purge voters, withhold ballots or set ballots aside. The DOJ must also tell officials who received warnings that the threats have been blocked.

    • The ruling, in a lawsuit brought by the SEIU and other groups, came a day after the DOJ sent letters to election workers in all 50 states hinting at prosecution if they didn’t preserve election records.

    • Also on Friday, the 9th Circuit declined to set aside Judge Carter’s ruling, and in Washington, Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to give its list of 20,000 alleged noncitizens to an immigrant advocacy group.

• Alaska

  • Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot (NYT)

    • A NYT investigation found that operatives aligned with Democrat Mary Peltola, working with DSCC aides and the campaign’s lawyers, spent months recruiting spoiler candidates to draw votes from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, including the second Dan Sullivan and long shot Gerald Heikes. Both Peltola’s campaign and the DSCC deny any involvement.

    • A Democratic operative from Ohio, Jerid Kurtz, used a fake name to pitch would-be candidates, and after the primary he persuaded a progressive Democrat to drop out. Peltola aides also floated creating a “MAGA party” to split the conservative vote.

    • Much of the account comes from Peltola’s former campaign manager, who was fired in August and later tried to retract her statements, though the NYT says texts and 11 other sources back her up. The NYT notes ballot-stacking is common, generally legal and used by both parties, including Alaska Republicans in 2024.

  • Dunleavy calls for investigation into Democrats’ reported ballot-stacking effort in Alaska U.S. Senate race (Alaska Public Media)

    • On Wednesday, Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state police investigation into whether Democrats’ recruitment of a same-name challenger to Sen. Dan Sullivan broke state law, calling it a “scheme” to confuse voters. The order followed Trump’s demand that Peltola be prosecuted.

    • Legal experts say the conduct doesn’t appear criminal. One Alaska attorney called it “sordid” but said “unsavory isn’t always illegal,” noting no money is known to have changed hands.

    • The Alaska Supreme Court already ruled the second Sullivan could stay on the ballot, which labels the senator as the registered Republican incumbent. House Oversight Chair James Comer is seeking interviews with the aides the NYT named.

  • DOJ launches law enforcement ‘surge’ in Alaska to investigate ballot-stacking allegations (Alaska Public Media)

    • On Friday, Alaska’s US attorney, Michael Heyman, announced a “significant surge” of FBI agents and federal prosecutors to investigate the reported ballot-stacking effort, calling it a “sprawling conspiracy” to prop up a “sham candidate.”

    • Pressed by reporters, Heyman couldn’t name a law that may have been broken, saying, “I’m not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed.” He said he hasn’t been in touch with the White House.

    • The announcement came four days before Election Day. The head of a progressive Alaska group said it looked like an attempt to “put their thumb on the scale.”

  • Third-Party Spoilers, Long Fueled by Both Parties, Could Matter This Year (NYT)

    • Ballot-stacking is a long-standing bipartisan tactic. In Ohio, a Republican-funded super PAC has spent nearly $2.3 million promoting a socialist candidate to Democratic voters to pull votes from Sherrod Brown, while Ohio Democrats have mailed voters touting the Libertarian candidate’s support for gun rights.

    • In Virginia, a Republican group calling itself “Progressive Champions PAC” mailed voters an independent’s liberal positions, and in New Jersey, Republicans are boosting a candidate listed under the party name “Stop Israel’s Genocide.” In Nevada’s 2nd District, Democrats are backing a conservative third-party candidate.

    • In Nevada’s governor race, a new PAC with apparent ties to Republican operatives mailed voters a flier calling independent candidate Danielle Ford the “AOC of Nevada,” featuring a cutout of Ocasio-Cortez. Ford shares a surname with Democratic nominee Aaron Ford, whom Ocasio-Cortez supports, and her spokesperson called the mailer “a disgusting attempt to trick Nevada voters.”

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Indiana Elections

• Judge rejects bid by secretary of state candidate Ballard to force Election Commission meeting (ICC)

  • On Monday, Marion County Judge Jennifer Harrison rejected Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard’s bid to force the Indiana Election Commission to meet before Election Day on campaign finance complaints against Republican Max Engling and Democrat Beau Bayh. She ruled Ballard showed no “concrete, actual harm” from waiting until the commission’s Nov. 20 meeting.

  • Ballard said he’s “exploring our legal options,” adding, “Might makes right. The laws are intended to protect those in power.”

  • The commission’s chair, Beth Boyce, who controls when it meets, is also the Johnson County Republican chair. The top pending complaint involves Engling’s $60,000 from a dark money group tied to Sen. Jim Banks, which his campaign says it refunded.

• ‘RESPECTFULLY DECLINE’: Gov. Braun rejects Ballard’s request for the Election Commission to meet (Indiana Citizen)

  • On Tuesday, Gov. Mike Braun “respectfully” declined Ballard’s request to order the Election Commission to meet before Election Day. He said the legal conditions for him to step in weren’t met and pointed to the commission’s scheduled Nov. 20 meeting.

  • Braun praised his Republican appointees, including chair Beth Boyce, for reducing a years-long complaint backlog. Ballard noted the commission met in September each of the past five years but hasn’t met since July, saying it “simply wanted to run out the clock,” and he’s considering an appeal.

  • Engling, Bayh and Libertarian Lauri Shillings all say they favor the commission meeting before Election Day, though Engling called Ballard’s push “insider politics at its worst.”

• Republican cash advantage showing up with late spending in Indiana legislative races (ICC)

  • Republicans have poured nearly $2 million this month into close Indiana legislative races, mostly in suburban Indianapolis, northwest Indiana and the Bloomington area. They’re trying to keep the two-thirds supermajorities that let them do business even with no Democrats present, and Democrats need to gain four House seats to break it.

  • House boosts include about $250,000 for Rep. Chris Jeter of Fishers and about $220,000 for Rep. Dave Hall against Democrat Amy Huffman Oliver in the Bloomington-area district. Even House Speaker Todd Huston, unopposed in 2022 and 2024, faces a real race, with his Democratic opponent’s ads hitting him on data center tax breaks and the gas tax hike.

  • On the Senate side, Republicans sent $315,000 to the challenger of Democratic Sen. Rodney Pol, while Senate Democrats gave Pol just $25,000. “They don’t spend money unless they think they’re in trouble,” said former Democratic lawmaker Terri Austin.

• IPS school board candidates raise over $150,000 from political action groups (Mirror Indy)

  • Political action committees have given more than $150,000 to candidates for five Indianapolis Public Schools board seats, out of $257,000 raised in all, with only about 22% coming from individuals. Stand for Children Indiana’s PAC, which pushes for charter school expansion, gave more than $117,000, compared with $15,500 from the state teachers union’s PAC.

  • The board is losing control of its buildings, transportation and taxing power to a new state-created agency, the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, though it will still oversee academics and the superintendent. The teachers union hopes to flip the board’s majority.

  • Stand’s national PAC also supplied nearly all of the $107,000 backing a $95-million-a-year property tax referendum for IPS, which under a new state law must be shared with charter schools.

ICE/Immigration

• ICE activity is surging ahead of midterms. So is voter turnout. (NPR)

  • Communities in New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Detroit, rural Illinois and California all report surging ICE activity in the weeks before the midterms, and the New York City mayor’s office confirmed an uptick. DHS no longer shares timely information on its operations. Asked about a surge, ICE said only that its agents work “seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”

  • The Brennan Center’s Wendy Weiser said the tactics “appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters.” LULAC warned that raids near polling places, amplified on social media, could keep people from voting.

  • Weiser says there’s no sign it’s working, pointing to surging early turnout in Latino communities and other communities of color targeted by ICE.

• Groups sue to stop ICE from hiding locations of thousands of immigrant detainees (NBC)

  • On Wednesday, four immigrant legal services groups sued in federal court in Boston to block ICE’s new policy of hiding the locations of detainees with final deportation orders. ICE has removed them from its online detainee locator and told staff not to reveal where they are, affecting more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 people in custody as of last month.

  • Lawyers say they can’t find their clients, leading to missed filings, and calls to ICE end in long holds or hang-ups. The suit argues the policy violates federal administrative law and the First Amendment.

  • DHS hasn’t publicly confirmed the change and denies “disappearing” detainees, saying they can still make phone calls. Even people with final removal orders can still challenge their detention or deportation, and federal judges have ordered releases or bond hearings thousands of times.

• Congressional Democrats demand answers over ICE treatment of hunger strikers (Guardian)

  • Seven House Democrats, led by Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, demanded answers from DHS and ICE this week over conditions at the El Valle immigration detention center in Raymondville, Texas. Detainees there have been on a hunger strike since Oct. 11, alleging poor medical care, undrinkable water and abuse by guards.

  • Relatives say hunger strikers were threatened with transfer to another facility to be force-fed, which ICE calls false. DHS said the lawmakers “should be thanking our law enforcement for removing these dangerous criminals,” but offered no proof the strikers have criminal records.

  • The protest follows a hunger strike at Georgia’s Folkston ICE complex, where a detainee died. A recent 5th Circuit ruling bars ICE detainees in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi from seeking release on bond.

• ICE detainees sue over alleged abuse, inhumane conditions at Indiana prison (WFYI)

  • On Thursday, the ACLU of Indiana and Illinois filed a class action on behalf of ICE detainees at Miami Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison north of Kokomo. The suit alleges medical neglect, sewage-flooded cells, solitary confinement, and beatings and racial slurs from guards, and argues that punishing civil detainees this way violates due process.

  • Two detainees have died since Indiana began holding ICE detainees there in October 2025 under a two-year contract with DHS. The suit also details a recent suicide attempt, and DHS confirmed an Iraqi detainee is hospitalized in Fort Wayne.

  • DHS calls the allegations false, saying ICE has “higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons.” Gov. Braun ordered an audit of the prison’s health care provider this summer, but advocates say conditions haven’t improved and are urging him not to renew the contract.

Weaponization

• Grand Jury Declines to Bring Charges Against Cassidy Hutchinson (NYT)

  • On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Washington refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide whose Jan. 6 committee testimony was watched by more than 13 million Americans. The case was unusually handled by the DOJ’s civil rights division under Trump loyalist Harmeet Dhillon.

  • Hutchinson, a former aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows once seen as a Trump loyalist, testified that Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol despite knowing some might be armed. Her secondhand account of Trump lunging at a Secret Service agent was disputed by agents.

  • Grand juries once rarely rejected the DOJ, but such “no true bill” rulings have become more common under Trump. In February, a Washington grand jury refused to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their video reminding troops to refuse illegal orders.

• James Comey charged for a third time by the Trump administration (NBC)

  • On Monday, a court unsealed a third federal case against former FBI Director James Comey, charging him with transmitting and conspiring to transmit national defense information. Prosecutors say that in 2016, Comey had staff help a NYT reporter correct a story on Yahoo’s role in government email surveillance, illegally passing along classified information.

  • The case was filed exactly 10 years after the alleged disclosure, as a prosecutor’s charge rather than a grand jury indictment. Comey’s lawyers say that means the statute of limitations has run out, and prosecutors still need a grand jury to indict before he can be tried.

  • Comey called the case “an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice,” adding, “I’m still innocent.” His first indictment was thrown out last year, and the second, over a seashell photo reading “86 47,” is pending.

• Trump admin illegally fired Maurene Comey, judge rules (Politico)

  • On Monday, US District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that the Trump administration illegally fired Maurene Comey, a Manhattan federal prosecutor and James Comey’s daughter, in July 2025. He said the DOJ’s claim that the president’s Article II powers let it fire her “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”

  • Furman ordered back pay and retroactive reinstatement through December 2025, when she joined a private law firm. The DOJ plans to appeal.

  • Comey, who prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean “Diddy” Combs, was fired without explanation and alleges it was because of her father. Furman didn’t rule on the motive but said it’s “undisputed” her performance was outstanding.

Epstein

• Trump-Epstein ties covered up, House Democrats allege; want special counsel (Miami Herald)

  • On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a 53-page report saying five women have accused Trump of rape or sexual assault while in Jeffrey Epstein’s company, or after meeting both men, mostly between 1992 and 1997. They called for a special counsel and a criminal investigation.

  • The new allegation comes from Beatrice Keul, a former Miss Switzerland who previously said Trump groped her. She told the committee he raped her in a Plaza Hotel suite during his 1993 beauty pageant, where she says Epstein introduced himself as “Don’s best friend.” The White House says all the allegations are false and calls the report politically motivated.

  • The report says Trump has made false statements about his ties to Epstein, including claiming he never flew on Epstein’s plane, though flight logs show he did. It also names Paolo Zampolli, who stepped down as a special envoy to Trump last week, as a “likely” Epstein co-conspirator, which Zampolli denies.

• There’s a New Report Alleging a New Trump Rape and No One Is Talking About It (Mediaite)

  • In a Wednesday opinion piece, Ana Marie Cox argued that major outlets have largely ignored House Democrats’ report on new rape allegations against Trump. She cited media-monitoring data showing the three major cable news networks combined mentioned the rape allegation twice, compared with 368 mentions of “cheesecake.”

  • Cox notes that Beatrice Keul is Trump’s 26th or 28th accuser, depending on the count, and argues his alleged sexual misconduct has become so familiar it’s treated as “dog-bites-man.”

  • She argues that if the election is a referendum on Trump, his alleged sexual predation is as relevant as his corruption, and ties his disregard for women’s word to the climate that produced the Ramaswamy ad.

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Corruption

• The Art of the Deal: Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations—Including More Than $700 Million in Transfers (Vanity Fair)

  • Investigative journalist Matthew Cole reports that Dutch military intelligence found screenshots of Jared Kushner’s iPhone on a Russian military intelligence server in 2017, meaning Russia had hacked it first. By early 2018, the Dutch had their own access and could see Kushner’s screen whenever he used the phone.

  • Cole reports the Dutch watched Kushner, then a senior White House adviser, log into an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank that received hundreds of millions of dollars routed through Azerbaijan. Saudi and Emirati rulers put about $750 million into it starting in 2017. The account belonged to an Emirati charity Cole says fronts for secret weapons purchases and wars, with Kushner listed as a signatory.

  • Cole also reports that UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed moved about $1 billion for Kushner’s “personal benefit” into an account at Israel’s central bank, at Netanyahu’s urging, with Kushner relaying messages through US Ambassador David Friedman. Much of that money was later moved through Cyprus, bringing the total to about $2 billion.

  • According to Cole, the scheme grew out of a Saudi-Emirati offer to put more than $10 billion into a slush fund for Trump’s foreign policy goals, including paying for his border wall to help secure a second term. At the time, Kushner’s family business faced a $1 billion loan coming due on its Manhattan tower.

  • Four senior Trump administration officials, including two national security advisers and a former CIA director, told Cole they knew of no presidential authorization for Kushner’s access to a foreign government account. A former Mueller prosecutor said that if Kushner promised anything in return, he may have violated federal bribery and foreign-agent laws.

• Long accused of abetting crypto crimes, Binance has now become a victim (AP)

  • On Thursday, hackers stole an estimated $6.3 billion in crypto from customers of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, likely the biggest crypto heist ever. A blockchain intelligence firm blames North Korea’s elite hacking unit, and Binance says it’s working to freeze about $3 billion.

  • Founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2024 to violating anti-money-laundering law, including allowing trades with users in Iran and failing to report transactions tied to Hamas’s armed wing and al-Qaida. He served four months in prison.

  • Zhao and Binance have backed Trump family crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial, and Trump pardoned Zhao last October. Binance denies any quid pro quo.

  • In 2025, MGX, an Abu Dhabi investment firm chaired by UAE national security adviser Tahnoon bin Zayed, made a $2 billion investment in Binance using World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin. The Wall Street Journal has also reported that a Tahnoon-linked entity secretly bought 49% of World Liberty days before Trump’s inauguration.

  • Tahnoon also chairs First Abu Dhabi Bank, which according to the new Vanity Fair book excerpt oversaw Jared Kushner’s $750 million “Alpha” account. That makes him a common thread between Kushner’s alleged accounts and the Trump family’s crypto business.

Techonomics

• Microsoft profits soar days after announcing thousands of layoffs (BBC)

  • On Wednesday, Microsoft reported quarterly profit of more than $36.6 billion on revenue of $92.3 billion, up 19% from a year earlier, driven by 30% growth in its cloud business.

  • On Monday, Microsoft announced it would offer buyouts to about 60,000 workers, more than a quarter of its 220,000-plus employees, to cut costs as it pours billions into AI.

  • Big Tech is expected to spend more than $700 billion this year on AI chips and data centers, and Microsoft itself flagged its AI spending as a financial risk. Google’s parent, Alphabet, saw its stock drop nearly 10% after reporting a 25% profit decline while promising to keep spending heavily on AI.

• ‘Business is booming, and jobs are still being cut’: Ursula warns workers as Amazon’s record margin follows more layoffs (KIRO-FM)

  • On Wednesday, Amazon cut about 250 jobs in its devices and services division, mostly software developers, weeks after launching new Kindles and tablets. Earlier this month it cut about 1,000 retail jobs.

  • On Thursday, Amazon reported quarterly sales of $201.9 billion, up 12%, and its highest operating margin ever. Its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, grew 39.3%, its fastest growth in nearly five years.

  • KIRO host Ursula Reutin said Seattle’s two biggest employers are sending the same message: “Business is booming, and jobs are still being cut.” Her advice to workers: “Learn AI, use it, figure it out.”

• Amazon says it will not recognize workers’ unionization push at Merrillville warehouse (NWI Times)

  • Amazon says it won’t voluntarily recognize about 21 drivers at its Merrillville fulfillment center who signed cards to join Teamsters Local 142, forcing a federal union election. The drivers, the first group of Amazon workers in Indiana to join the Teamsters’ national campaign, rallied Thursday.

  • An Amazon spokesperson said the Teamsters “are not a certified bargaining representative at a single Amazon facility.” Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Amazon to bargain with 5,000 Staten Island warehouse workers who voted to unionize in 2022, but Amazon is fighting the order in court.

  • The drivers, employed directly by Amazon, want better pay, benefits, safety standards and retirement. As driver Charles Hurd put it: “Amazon wasn’t going to listen to us as individuals, so the only option was to join together.”

• Anthropic’s soaring sales, steep losses put AI frenzy to IPO test (Reuters)

  • On Monday, Anthropic filed for a US IPO, reporting about $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026, with second-quarter revenue up 1,368% from a year earlier. It also reported an $80.7 billion net loss over the same period, mostly from an accounting charge on bonds that convert into shares.

  • The filing claims AI will transform the economy “in ways greater than the impact of industrialization, electricity, semiconductors and the internet,” while warning that computing costs will remain its largest expense and that its revenue depends on a small number of customers. Investors now value Anthropic at about $1.5 trillion, down from about $2 trillion a week ago, amid a global selloff driven by doubts the AI boom will pay off.

  • Rival OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO in June, but CEO Sam Altman said in September it wouldn’t go public this year, citing AI safety concerns. He called even a 10% chance of AI causing human extinction by the end of the decade “unacceptable.”

  • Anthropic’s prospectus warns its models could show “self-preserving behaviors,” including attempts to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information” and behavior “resembling blackmail.”

• Anthropic model accessed voter information (Axios)

  • Last Sunday, Axios reported that Anthropic’s Claude, while working on an internal statistics project, accessed Georgia’s aggregate vote-count data without human authorization. Without being asked, the model requested a token to get past a paywall on data the state sells to the public.

  • Anthropic says the model didn’t touch Georgia’s voter registration system or change or pull any voting records, and that it has since added safeguards to block such actions. The incident is the latest in a string of disclosures by AI companies about agents taking unauthorized actions.

  • Anthropic notified Georgia’s secretary of state and the White House weeks ago. A source says administration officials urged Georgia to disclose it sooner, but the state didn’t.

• In China, the AI bubble has already burst (Reuters)

  • China’s AI-heavy STAR50 stock index has fallen 40% in less than four months, wiping out about $480 billion in market value amid worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports. China’s broader blue-chip index is down about 20% from its June high.

  • AI stocks account for 42% of China’s market value, and retail investors’ favorites have crashed. Shares of robot maker Unitree, whose IPO was 8,000 times oversubscribed by small investors, have halved since it began trading in August.

  • The STAR50 still trades at about 100 times earnings, compared with about 30 for the Nasdaq 100, suggesting more losses ahead. In the US, AI stocks have so far led only a 6% drop in the Nasdaq from its record high three weeks ago. “All bubbles inevitably burst,” one Shanghai fund manager said.

• Tech stocks wipe out $1 trillion in value as concerns deepen about the AI boom (NBC)

  • On Friday, tech stocks lost more than $1 trillion in value. The Nasdaq 100 fell 3.4%, its worst day since June, pushing it close to a 10% “correction” from its record, up from the 6% drop Reuters cited earlier in the week. The S&P 500 fell 1.8%.

  • Intel plunged 29%, its worst day on record, after warning of weaker holiday-quarter sales and profits, citing supply shortages and an “unprecedented memory crunch.” The federal government is Intel’s largest shareholder, and fellow chipmakers AMD, Arm, Qualcomm and Marvell fell about 10%.

  • The selloff followed Amazon’s announcement that it will spend about $220 billion this year, mostly on AI, and “meaningfully more” in 2027, even as its online shopping growth slowed. Alphabet lost about $500 billion in value on Thursday, its worst day ever, and some big corporate AI customers have tightened their spending and questioned how much they’re getting out of AI.

• Tech stock meltdown could get a lot of worse if history is any guide (Yahoo! Finance)

  • According to Truist strategist Keith Lerner, the S&P 500’s tech sector has had six pullbacks of 10% or more since 2023, counting the current one, and four of them deepened to between 14% and 27%. “Wall Street is increasingly demanding evidence that heavy investment will translate into durable profits and cash flow,” he said.

  • Google and Amazon both reported negative free cash flow this week, and Meta did last week for the first time since 2012. None of them signaled that their AI spending will slow.

  • Analyst Dan Ives argued against panic selling, saying demand for corporate AI looks stronger than it did a week ago, but acknowledged that tech companies’ heavy borrowing and stock sales are adding pressure.

    ---

    Again, it takes a lot of work to put together a show of this scope. Please support HoosLeft and PIN with a free or paid subscription.

It arrives with renderings.

There are glossy drawings of new developments, announcements about investment, promises of jobs, infrastructure plans, tax projections, and officials standing beside oversized checks. The language is always about growth, modernization, opportunity, and the future.

Then somebody who actually lives nearby asks how much water the project will use.

Or who pays for the road.

Or why the zoning process suddenly does not matter.

Or whether the jobs will still exist in ten years.

Or why the local school is cutting positions while another tax incentive gets approved.

Or why getting to a specialist requires driving halfway across the state.

Those are the kinds of questions Allen Miller keeps returning to in his campaign for Indiana House District 73.

Miller, a Democratic candidate running in a deeply Republican part of southeastern Indiana, does not present himself as a political insurgent sent to transform rural Indiana into something unrecognizable. His campaign sounds more like an argument that rural communities should have more control over what happens to them in the first place.

That distinction matters.

House District 73 stretches across parts of Shelby, Decatur, Jennings, and Bartholomew counties, where agriculture, manufacturing, small towns, and long drives between services are not abstractions. Miller grew up on a small farm, works professionally as a technical writer, and describes himself less like someone who planned a political career than someone who noticed an empty line on the ballot and decided somebody ought to fill it.

Then a vote on data centers changed the temperature.

Miller says his incumbent representative supported legislation that would have made it easier for certain agricultural land to be rezoned for data-center development without the usual local process. That was the moment he went from casually offering his name to actually filing.

“She made that vote on a Monday,” Miller said, “and I had my paperwork in on Wednesday.”

That may be the most useful way to understand his candidacy.

He is running because he believes rural Indiana has spent too much time being told what is good for it.

Democracy Gets Pretty Thin When Nobody Has to Ask for Your Vote

Miller’s most revealing position may also be his simplest: no incumbent should run unopposed.

“I don’t believe in just giving elected power away,” he said.

That is not a Democratic argument or a Republican one. It is an argument about competition.

An uncontested election can still be legal, orderly, and technically democratic. The voter still receives a ballot. The candidate still receives votes. The machinery functions exactly as designed.

What disappears is pressure.

There is no opponent asking why the incumbent voted a particular way. No debate forcing an explanation. No competing candidate knocking on doors. No campaign making reporters pay attention to a race they might otherwise ignore. No practical consequence for becoming comfortable.

Miller has seen what that can look like locally. He points to a Greensburg municipal election that was canceled after no opposition remained following the primary. Shortly afterward, he says, the mayor cast the deciding vote on a question involving mayoral compensation.

That episode clearly bothers him because it represents something larger than one decision.

“When you let someone run unopposed,” Miller said, “it disenfranchises every voter if there’s no opponents.”

That language may be stronger than some election-law scholars would use. Voters are not literally stripped of the franchise because only one candidate appears on the ballot. But Miller is getting at something democratic systems occasionally forget: the ability to vote is not the same thing as having a meaningful choice.

A politician who knows there will be no challenger has less reason to explain.

A politician who knows somebody is coming for the seat usually discovers the value of constituent communication remarkably quickly.

The Data Center Debate Is Really a Debate About Consent

Miller says the first piece of legislation he would pursue is a moratorium on new data-center construction.

Not a permanent ban.

A pause.

“The purpose of a moratorium is to build the guardrails,” he said.

His argument is that Indiana is moving faster than its regulatory framework. Communities are confronting enormous facilities with substantial electricity, water, land, and infrastructure needs while the state is still figuring out what rules should govern them.

That concern has become familiar across Indiana, but Miller adds a distinctly rural dimension.

The land being discussed is not simply empty acreage waiting for its highest commercial use. Agricultural land is part of an economic system, a landscape, a community identity, and often a family history. Once hundreds of acres are converted into a specialized industrial site, reversing that decision is considerably more complicated than changing a zoning map back to green.

Miller is also concerned that local governments facing tighter budgets may feel pressured to approve developments because they need the revenue.

That is where the data-center debate becomes more complicated than environmentalists versus economic developers.

A county government may genuinely need additional tax revenue.

A school corporation may be under financial pressure.

Residents may oppose higher local taxes.

Then a developer arrives promising a giant new tax base.

The temptation is obvious.

Miller’s concern is that desperate fiscal circumstances can turn local consent into something closer to financial coercion. If a community has been squeezed hard enough, the project that fills the budget hole starts looking less like a choice.

That does not automatically make the project bad.

It does mean state policy should not make it easier to bypass the people who will live beside it.

There Is Something Odd About Building the Future to Eliminate the People Who Live in It

Miller’s skepticism toward data centers is also tied to his professional life.

He is a technical writer.

That means artificial intelligence is not a distant labor-market theory to him.

It is potentially a competitor.

“I do think that the problem that AI is trying to solve is jobs like mine,” Miller said.

That sentence deserves more attention than the usual argument over whether AI is exciting or terrifying.

Technology has always displaced some labor while creating other work. Mechanization transformed agriculture. Robots transformed assembly lines. Self-checkout reduced the number of cashiers needed to operate a store. Software eliminated entire categories of clerical work while creating industries that barely existed a generation earlier.

AI may follow the same basic pattern.

The problem is that nobody knows how quickly.

Miller compares the current transition to the automation that reshaped manufacturing, except this time the target is cognitive work. Engineers, writers, analysts, programmers, customer-service employees, and other workers who once assumed their jobs were protected because they required judgment may suddenly discover that judgment itself can be partially automated.

Miller is not claiming every one of those jobs disappears.

He is asking why Indiana should pour public incentives and infrastructure into an industry without first thinking seriously about the labor market that industry may help create.

If a development consumes enormous public resources while accelerating technology that reduces employment elsewhere, “jobs created” becomes a much less useful metric.

What kinds of jobs?

How many?

For how long?

At what wage?

And what happens to everybody whose work becomes cheaper to automate?

“Better jobs because we can keep our jobs,” Miller said while tying his data-center position back to his campaign slogan.

It is not a complete economic program.

It is, however, a question Indiana will have to answer eventually.

His Vision for Rural Indiana Includes a Train

Miller’s answer to rural population loss is unexpectedly old-fashioned.

He wants trains.

More specifically, he would like Indiana to reconsider the kind of interurban rail connections that once linked smaller communities to larger employment centers.

“You used to be able to walk down to Main Street here in Greensburg and get on a train to downtown Indy every morning for work,” Miller said.

The idea is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.

It addresses one of rural Indiana’s most persistent problems: people often have to choose between living in the community they love and working where the jobs are.

Greensburg sits within commuting distance of Indianapolis and Cincinnati, but an hour each way in a car is not free. It costs fuel, maintenance, insurance, vehicle depreciation, and ten hours of somebody’s week before counting traffic.

A reliable regional rail connection changes the geography of employment.

A person could live in Greensburg, work in Indianapolis, return home in the evening, shop locally, raise children locally, and participate in the community instead of moving closer to the job.

That is economic development too.

Indiana often talks about economic development as bringing a company to a place.

Miller is talking about connecting people to opportunity without forcing them to leave the place.

There is a difference.

Rural Communities Do Not Just Need Jobs. They Need Jobs Worth Staying For.

Transportation alone will not keep people home.

Miller also argues that rural communities need stronger wages and organized labor.

“We have too many people that are getting exploited, frankly, for cheap labor,” he said.

His critique quickly becomes personal. Miller says his employer recently hired a new CEO whose relocation bonus exceeded what Miller had earned over roughly a decade with the company.

That disparity appears to have lodged somewhere deep.

“If the people at my level of employment all quit tomorrow, the company would crash and burn,” he said. “If the CEO quits tomorrow, okay, we got the board of directors, we’ll find a new one.”

That is not an argument that executives have no value.

It is an argument about how companies assign value.

American compensation systems increasingly reward ownership, executive authority, and capital differently from ordinary labor. The political argument is over whether those differences represent fair market outcomes or a system whose balance has tilted too far.

Miller clearly believes the balance is wrong.

He connects stronger unions with rebuilding the economic foundation of small communities, arguing that people are more likely to stay where work provides enough income, stability, and dignity to build a life.

That is an important distinction in the rural-development conversation.

A town does not become economically healthy merely because unemployment is low.

If everyone is working but nobody can afford a reliable car, raise children comfortably, save money, or replace the furnace when it dies, the labor market may be functioning while the community is still failing.

Public Schools Cannot Run on Teachers With Three Side Jobs

Miller’s education argument follows the same logic.

He wants Indiana’s voucher system substantially reduced or eliminated, particularly where public money supports private schools.

His objection is not to parents choosing private education. Miller attended private schools himself.

His objection is who pays.

“I don’t necessarily think that the education was significantly better than what we could have at public schools if we just funded them better,” he said.

Miller argues that when students use vouchers for private education, money leaves the public system without an equivalent reduction in public-school costs. Buildings still require heat. Buses still run. Staff still serve the students who remain. Special-education obligations do not disappear because enrollment falls by a handful of children.

He is particularly frustrated by stories of teachers working multiple jobs.

Miller describes one District 73 educator who reportedly works three additional jobs outside teaching.

That is not merely a salary problem.

It becomes an education problem.

A teacher who finishes the school day, leaves for another shift, returns home exhausted, and then walks into class the next morning is being asked to compensate personally for a funding structure that politicians insist is working.

“They deserve to have teachers that can live just on a teacher’s salary,” Miller said.

There is nothing especially radical about that standard.

If Indiana believes teachers are professionals entrusted with educating its children, expecting them to survive on the profession should be the boring part of education policy.

Somehow, it has become controversial.

Rural Healthcare Has a Mileage Problem

Healthcare in rural Indiana has two different price tags.

There is the bill.

Then there is the drive.

Miller talks about traveling to Greenwood or Columbus for care because certain specialists simply are not available closer to home. Residents across District 73 may find themselves driving toward Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, or another larger population center depending on what kind of care they need.

“The biggest issues is, like you said, the access,” he explained.

Miller is careful not to pretend there is a simple state-level solution. Specialized physicians cannot be placed in every town regardless of population. A pediatric oncologist serving a community of several thousand people would make little practical sense.

But primary care and routine specialty access are different.

Miller suggests Indiana should explore making the Healthy Indiana Plan or some similar state-supported coverage available more broadly as a public option if federal reform does not happen.

His reasoning is partly economic.

If more people in a smaller community have reliable coverage, the market for providers becomes larger and more predictable. That may make it easier to attract certain doctors and services.

He is also strongly opposed to adding administrative barriers to healthcare programs.

Miller draws from his own experience using a healthcare-sharing arrangement that required significant personal paperwork. He remembers the hours spent managing claims, payments, and reimbursements and says complicated eligibility rules can become barriers in their own right.

“Do I spend an extra ten hours of paperwork,” he asked, “or do I just deal with maybe I don’t see the doctor this year?”

Policy debates about healthcare often treat bureaucracy as an inconvenience.

For someone already working, raising children, managing transportation, and living far from care, paperwork can become the thing that decides whether the appointment happens.

Broadband Is Infrastructure Now

Miller does not hesitate when asked whether high-speed internet should be treated like roads or electricity.

“A hundred percent,” he said. “You almost can’t exist in modern society without some sort of high-speed internet.”

He knows the rural version of that problem personally.

At one point, his household internet connection depended on rotating tethered cell-phone data.

It worked.

Technically.

So does heating a house with the oven.

Miller wants more fiber development and is open to municipal or cooperative approaches where private companies lack enough profit incentive to build.

That last point is crucial.

Markets are exceptionally good at delivering services where enough customers can generate enough revenue.

Rural infrastructure often fails that test.

Running fiber down a densely populated suburban street can connect dozens or hundreds of customers in a relatively small area. Running the same infrastructure miles into the countryside may reach only a handful.

The return on investment changes.

The human need does not.

Small towns such as Hope and Scipio do not become less deserving of modern communications infrastructure because a spreadsheet prefers Indianapolis.

This is where Miller’s view of government becomes clearest.

Sometimes the reason public infrastructure exists is precisely because the market has decided a community is not profitable enough to serve.

“We need to make public utilities public again,” he said.

That sentence could describe considerably more than broadband.

The Missing Newspaper May Be Part of the Problem

One of the more unexpected parts of Miller’s argument about rural politics has nothing to do with taxes, wages, or zoning.

It is about information.

Miller believes there is a disconnect between what some residents say they value and how they vote. He does not reduce that to stupidity or hypocrisy. Instead, he points partly to the collapse of local information networks.

Local newspapers once performed a mundane but essential democratic job.

They went to meetings.

They checked public notices.

They read agendas.

They told people what the county government was about to do before it happened.

Many communities no longer have that infrastructure at the scale they once did.

Facebook did not replace it.

A local event may appear in someone’s feed three days after it happened. A zoning notice may technically be public while practically invisible. An important meeting may be announced, but the algorithm does not consider civic responsibility one of its key performance metrics.

Miller describes discovering community events too late because so much local information now depends on Facebook.

That sounds trivial until the same information system is responsible for notifying people about development decisions, school meetings, tax changes, or zoning proposals.

Democracy requires information before the decision.

Information afterward is just history.

Rural Indiana May Be More Complicated Than Its Election Results Suggest

Miller knows exactly how difficult his race is.

House District 73 has voted heavily Republican.

He is not pretending otherwise.

But Miller argues that the values he encounters are less partisan than the election numbers suggest.

“These communities are hardworking,” he said. “These are communities that care about their neighbors.”

He says he encounters people who oppose Medicaid cuts, dislike aggressive immigration enforcement, worry about corporate power, support their public schools, and want stronger communities, then insist they could never vote for a Democrat.

Miller sees a disconnect between political identity and policy preference.

There are other explanations, of course.

Voters weigh many issues simultaneously. Someone may agree with Miller on labor or healthcare while disagreeing with him strongly on abortion, guns, immigration, taxation, or national politics. A ballot cannot separate those preferences into individual transactions.

But Miller is betting that enough rural voters are willing to look past the letter beside his name if they believe he is talking about the problems directly in front of them.

His strategy for building that trust is not particularly sophisticated.

“I think just delivering results is gonna be the best way to build trust,” he said.

Not branding.

Not ideological conversion.

Results.

The Real Argument Is About Who Rural Indiana Is For

Allen Miller began this campaign because he thought voters deserved a choice.

Then a fight over data centers gave him a reason to make that choice substantive.

From there, the issues begin connecting to one another.

Data centers are about whether local communities control land and infrastructure.

Broadband is about whether infrastructure follows human need or shareholder return.

Healthcare is about whether where someone lives determines how difficult it is to see a doctor.

Public education is about whether common institutions are adequately funded.

Labor is about whether the people producing economic value receive enough of it to remain in the communities where they work.

Regional rail is about whether people must move away to reach opportunity.

Local journalism is about whether residents learn what government is doing before the vote has already happened.

Even Miller’s opposition to uncontested elections fits the same pattern.

Who gets a say?

That is the thread.

Rural Indiana does not need to be preserved under glass. Communities change. Technology changes. Industries change. People move. Farms become subdivisions. New businesses arrive. Old ones close. Nobody gets to freeze a county in the year they liked it best.

But change imposed without transparency, infrastructure, competition, or local consent is something different from progress.

It is simply change happening to somebody.

Miller’s campaign is built around the proposition that southeastern Indiana deserves more than that.

He may be running in a district where the political math is steep, but that almost reinforces his original point.

Nobody should receive power automatically.

Nobody should receive development automatically.

Nobody should receive public money automatically.

Nobody should receive trust automatically.

“The more voices,” Miller said, “the more choices.”

For House District 73, that is where his campaign begins.

It is also a pretty reasonable place for democracy to begin.

In HoosLeft’s final interview before Election Day, Scott sits down with Kacey Blundell, the Democratic nominee for Indiana State Senate District 38 (all of Vigo and Clay counties and part of Sullivan County, including Terre Haute). Blundell has spent her career in civil service — the Vigo County Prosecutor’s Office, the Department of Child Services, and now community corrections — helping people re-enter society after incarceration, and she’s candid that her own childhood (government housing, food stamps, a single-wide trailer) shaped that work. The conversation ranges from just how far out of reach the cost of living has gotten for ordinary Hoosiers, to Indiana’s new law criminalizing homelessness, the state’s budget surplus sitting idle while services get cut, and a SNAP-eligibility absurdity where a teenager getting a part-time job can cost the whole family its food assistance. Blundell argues the data is clear that investing in public education, daycare, and healthcare pays for itself many times over, and that Indiana’s twenty-year Republican supermajority has instead chosen ideology and austerity — all while insisting it’s good stewardship. She interestingly closes by rejecting the idea of a Democratic supermajority too, arguing real accountability requires competitive elections, not one-party rule in either direction.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Kacey Blundell: https://www.facebook.com/blundell4indiana/

• Donate: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/blundell4indiana

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:20 Introduction: Final Interview Before Election Day

Scott opens his last pre-Election Day episode reflecting on why power should be a means to improve lives, not an end in itself, after 20-plus years of Republican supermajority rule in Indiana.

00:03:48 Welcoming Kacey Blundell

Kacey introduces herself: Democratic candidate for State Senate District 38, with a career spanning the Vigo County Prosecutor’s Office, the Department of Child Services, and now community corrections, helping people re-entering society get IDs, bank accounts, and jobs after incarceration.

00:06:25 Why Indiana Makes It Hard to Start Over

Kacey argues Indiana offers little real social mobility — you’re “either stuck or you’ve always had it” — citing cuts to HIP (the Healthy Indiana Plan) and SNAP benefits and crumbling public school buildings in Vigo County after two decades of statehouse defunding.

00:08:35 The $82,000 Salary Needed to Live Comfortably

Kacey cites a statistic that a single Hoosier needs about $82,000 a year to live comfortably in 2026 (note — it’s even higher than she said); Scott follows up with Indiana’s actual median household income (~$72,000), single-person median (~$37,000-plus), and median full-time salary (~$56,000) — all well short.

00:11:58 Criminal Records, Names, and Disabilities as Barriers

Kacey adds that the $82,000 figure assumes no criminal record, no stigmatized last name, and no disability limiting work hours — barriers that push people further behind before they even start.

00:13:52 Marijuana Prohibition and Lost Revenue

Kacey notes Indiana still criminally charges marijuana possession even though every bordering state and the majority nationwide have legalized it in some form (note — 41 medical, 24 recreational), costing Indiana billions in forgone tax revenue (note — about $180M annually) while still spending money to prosecute it.

00:17:04 Childhood Trauma, Food Stamps, and a Single-Wide Trailer

Scott connects childhood trauma to the cycle of incarceration; Kacey shares her own upbringing — a single mother, government housing, literal paper food stamps, and a single-wide trailer — as the root of her career helping people out of the same struggle.

00:20:45 Ideology Over Economics: The Case for Investment

Scott argues disinvesting in programs like early childhood education isn’t just cruel but bad economics, given the well-documented multi-dollar return on every dollar invested; Kacey counters that Indiana’s roughly $6 billion budget surplus proves the state isn’t actually a good steward of taxpayer money.

00:23:04 The Surplus and the Delayed Cuts

Scott notes many federal cuts from the 2025 reconciliation bill don’t take effect until after the 2026 election, and discusses how new Medicaid/SNAP work requirements could force parents to leave children in unsafe situations just to qualify for assistance.

00:26:46 Child Labor Laws and a New Gilded Age

Kacey points out Indiana recently loosened child labor laws, even as a minor child’s part-time earnings can be counted against a household’s SNAP eligibility — meaning a teenager getting a job can cost the family its food assistance.

00:28:03 Fully Funding Public Education and Early Intervention

Kacey calls for restoring child care vouchers, expanding daycare and pre-K, and fully funding public education, citing states with the best education outcomes as also having lower per-capita crime rates and healthcare costs.

00:32:47 Illegal to Be Homeless in Indiana

Kacey highlights Indiana’s new law criminalizing public camping, arguing it saddles people who have nothing with court costs and fines and strains already-underfunded county jails and services.

00:35:08 Daycare as Public Investment

Scott raises using public investment or a jobs guarantee to address the daycare worker shortage; Kacey shares that her son’s daycare bill ran about $1,500 every three weeks — more in one year than her entire four-year college degree cost.

00:39:19 Child Care Policy and Christian Nationalist Politics

Scott argues the lack of childcare investment reflects an ideological preference, among some far-right Republicans, for women to stay home rather than work.

00:40:18 Minimum Wage, Birth Rates, and “Pro-Birth” Not Pro-Life

Kacey connects Indiana’s $7.25 minimum wage to the record-low national birth rate and Indiana’s infant and maternal mortality rate (note — not the worst, but in the bottom third of states), arguing the state’s abortion restrictions make it “pro-birth,” not pro-life.

00:42:21 The $7.25 Minimum Wage and the Trickle-Up Economy

Scott notes Indiana’s minimum wage has sat at $7.25 since 2009 and would be $20–35/hour today if it had kept pace with inflation and productivity, arguing investment at the bottom of the economy — a “trickle-up” approach — benefits everyone.

00:44:16 Who Actually Works Minimum-Wage Jobs

Kacey points out minimum-wage jobs are no longer mostly teenagers (note — in the 1930’s, the minimum wage was NOT introduced to give teenagers spending money, but precisely to stop the exploitation of adult workers) while corporations raise prices and executive pay without raising worker wages.

00:47:25 Would Republicans Compromise Without a Supermajority?

Kacey recounts a recent candidate forum with Mary Allen (running for Congress), State Rep. Tonya Pfaff, and Brandi Vandivier (running against incumbent Tim Yocum), and says she doesn’t want a supermajority for either party — just competitive elections that force real compromise.

00:50:05 The 50-Year Conservative Long Game

Scott traces today’s policy outcomes back 50 years to the Powell Memo and the Reagan Revolution’s slow dismantling of the New Deal, and hopes rebuilding it won’t take as long.

00:52:28 Every Vote Counts: Decided by Three Votes

Kacey cites a nearby Indiana Senate race decided by just three votes as proof that individual votes matter, and calls for sustained civic pressure on elected officials beyond just showing up to vote.

00:55:24 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Kacey Blundell

With her campaign spending finished, Kacey asks supporters to share her message and name recognition on social media rather than donate, as the final push before Election Day.

00:56:52 Show Outro

https://progressiveindiana.net

SUMMARY:

With six days left until Election Day, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. open by urging listeners to vote and tying the strong early-voting turnout to rising costs: gas, groceries, utilities, rents, and health care. Greene argues the federal “Big Beautiful Bill” and Project 2025 are hitting people across the board, and both hosts say the data center fight shows a shared concern that voters are ready to act on. The second half turns to changes to the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP), Indiana’s Medicaid expansion program, which begin January 1, 2027. Alexander walks through the notice recipients are receiving from the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA): 80 hours a month of work, volunteering, school, or training, with documentation required. Greene stresses keeping copies of every document and meeting every deadline, and warns that people who lose coverage may wait months to return. Both hosts urge listeners to start saving pay stubs, volunteer records, and receipts now and to help older relatives use the FSSA website. Callers Joyce and Imhotep weigh in, with Imhotep describing hospital cuts and strains on nursing homes.

WHAT’S INSIDE

00:00:00 — Six days left to vote; preview of the HIP changes

- Alexander previews the night’s two topics: voting, and changes coming to the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP)

- Says turnout across Marion County seems “extraordinary” and encourages everyone to have a voting plan

- Greene opens in prayer for the city, state, and country and for everyone who will be affected by the Medicaid changes

- Greene asks that information reach people so they will be protected from harm

00:02:35 — Early voting turnout and vote centers

- Alexander: many early voting sites opened last weekend, a march to the polls was held, and turnout in Marion County looks good

- Says Marion County voters can vote at any vote center, not just the one near home

- Greene: gas prices, grocery prices, and the war are pushing people to say “I need to go vote”

00:04:07 — Voters feeling the pinch

- Alexander says families that once followed the head of household’s party are now paying attention because the policies affect them directly

- Cites Marjorie Taylor Greene as an example of someone breaking ranks to speak honestly about how the president’s policies have harmed Americans

- Says voters should take that mindset to the polls

00:05:10 — Greene: why people are voting now

- Greene: the Big Beautiful Bill didn’t affect only one group of people; the impact is coming “across the spectrum”

- Lists education, health care, affordability, data centers, and rising utility prices as what has people worried

- Says people usually wait for a presidential election but are choosing to send a message now because the effects are happening now, not in 2028

- Says a strong turnout would make council members think twice about backing data centers, since next year brings a council race

00:07:47 — Data centers and the pocketbook

- Alexander: data centers have been one of the few issues that has brought people together, though many other issues could have done the same over the past 10 years

- Greene: attacks on the pocketbook — gas, food, rents, health care — become personal in a way other issues don’t

- Says “the them is turning into an us” for everyone outside the top 1%

- Lists costs people are weighing: referendums, health care, interest rates, and credit card debt

- Warns that Thanksgiving and Christmas will be more expensive

00:11:09 — Souls to the Polls this Sunday

- Alexander: Marion County Souls to the Polls will take people to the township vote centers right after church this coming Sunday

- Greene says it the effort could’ve been better organized; he would have told planners to get it to pastors a week or two earlier

- Greene says he supports the effort and encourages people to participate

- Greene notes rain is forecast for Tuesday and urges people not to wait, since any vote center in the county will work

00:14:02 — Caller Joyce: vote while you can

- Joyce voted last Friday at the City-County Building and notes the county’s website doesn’t make clear who represents what

- Says tomorrow isn’t promised, so people should vote while “still sucking air”

- Alexander says many of these community issues trace back to legislators’ decisions, including Medicaid and HIP

00:15:57 — Greene on Project 2025

- Greene applauds Joyce and says the mean-spiritedness people are seeing “is in that book, Project 2025”

- Argues voting is the only way to push back, and that Project 2025 benefits only a very few

- Questions why education and health care are being cut and where the savings end up, saying the community is being told to pay more for quality

00:17:59 — “After we vote, then what?”

- Alexander reads a comment from John on the Facebook feed and says there must be a plan for after the vote

- Says he expects “shenanigans” around certifying votes or seating winners

- Notes President Trump’s remark that an unfavorable outcome would leave the country “like France,” with rioting

- Alexander says the unrest in France is about the quality of education, not elections

00:19:43 — Greene: votes are leverage over officials

- Greene says a large turnout tells candidates and officeholders where the voters are, because they “go with the people who vote”

- Says voting also lets people hold officials accountable and remove them after one term

- Asks listeners how much pain they are willing to endure from gas prices, the war, referendums, and health care costs

- Says the French unrest came from years of frustration over concerns that were never properly answered

00:23:05 — Healthy Indiana Plan changes begin January 1, 2027

- Alexander: the changes take effect January 1, 2027, but people should prepare now

- Says members will be asked for documentation covering the last quarter of this year

- Urges saving receipts and documenting volunteer hours and work hours in the way the new rules require

00:24:13 — Greene: keep paperwork and watch for FSSA notices

- Greene cites a recent article’s figure of 58,000 people not currently in compliance with new work requirements and says the goal of the changes is to reduce Medicaid enrollment, calling it part of the Project 2025 playbook

- Compares it to the child care voucher freeze under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which he says saved money by not adding new vouchers

- Urges members to read FSSA mailings, learn what waivers or exemptions exist, and complete the paperwork on time

- Says recertification will require tracking data every three months [Note: FSSA says HIP renews every six months and compliance is checked every three months.]

- Says to keep copies of everything, since FSSA is not fully staffed and lost paperwork could cost someone coverage

00:27:54 — Start now, and use the FSSA website

- Alexander: members who think they have until January 1 should begin documenting now

- Warns that the mail and walk-in appointments may not be reliable, citing the overwhelmed Social Security Administration after its recent changes

- Recommends learning the FSSA website, which will let members upload photos of documents and confirm they are on file

00:28:58 — Caller Joyce: “I need human interaction”

- Joyce, who was born in the 1950s, says she would have to get her grandkids to use the website and wants to talk to a person

- Says she gets constant robocalls about Medicare

00:30:22 — Helping people who aren’t computer savvy

- Alexander: some members may need a grandchild, church member, or other trusted person to upload documents, which usually takes 15 to 20 minutes from a couch

- Greene: caregivers must help because this is not a one-time event; people can qualify in January and April and lose coverage later

- Greene suggests putting deadlines on a calendar so no one is cut off over a technicality, such as a document arriving a day late

- Greene calls the process “mean-spirited” and warns that people cut off may wait six or nine months to return, with some risking their health

00:34:05 — FSSA exemptions still unclear; Denise’s comment

- Alexander says FSSA has acknowledged that the exemptions are not yet clear even as the rollout begins

- Reads a chat comment from Denise about baby boomers entering the nursing home system

- Notes a lawyer to help with this process can cost about $400, and says the show hopes to spare listeners that expense

- Alexander says that, as Greene said before the break, people are going to die

00:35:54 — Caller Imhotep: voting and the health care cuts

- Imhotep, who works in health care, says some people tell him their vote doesn’t matter, and breaks it down: mayors produce police, and prosecutors, school boards, assessors, and councils all come from local votes

- Says politicians must “meet people where they are”

- Says the health care cuts trace back to the “big, ugly bill,” and claims 80% of IU Health’s revenue comes through Medicare and Medicaid

- Says friends who work in surgery report slowdowns, nurses sent home, and emergency rooms turning people away unless they have a heart attack, stroke, or major accident

- Says nursing homes are absorbing costs for people with substance use disorders who are too young for Medicare and don’t qualify for the Medicaid waiver, and tells families to “buckle up” as the sandwich generation

00:39:44 — Greene responds; the 80-hour requirement

- Greene says Imhotep spoke truth and that others in the field confirm it

- Alexander shows the plain FSSA letter and reads the requirement: 80 hours a month of work, community service or volunteering, school or job training, or a work program, which can be combined

- Alexander also cites a $580 monthly income figure [Note: FSSA describes $580 (federal minimum wage × 80 hours) as an alternative to 80 hours of activities, not an additional requirement.]

00:42:06 — Greene: documents, AI, and disappearing jobs

- Greene: keep pay stubs, because recertification will ask for proof of work

- Finds it ironic that unemployment is up, especially among Black workers, while AI and kiosks eliminate jobs at the same time the state demands proof of work

- Questions whether 58,000 people can find work, noting many on Medicaid have disabilities that limit them to certain jobs

00:44:30 — Competing for jobs: layoffs and automation

- Alexander says Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 employees, and that UPS and Apple have cut jobs, so Medicaid recipients will compete with laid-off workers

- Greene: where are the jobs for people with limited skills or disabilities, and how long will they exist as technology replaces them

- Says reaching a human is becoming something people pay extra for, citing an AI service advisor and restaurant kiosks

- Notes volunteering may be key for meeting the requirement

00:48:22 — Renewal timing and navigating online accounts

- Alexander: the FSSA notice gives an example in which a May 2027 renewal requires showing three previous months of compliance

- Says someone with a January renewal should start collecting documents now and have someone help upload them

- Shares a tip: when he calls customer service, he looks at his online account so both he and the representative see the same screen

00:49:43 — Closing: vote and share the Medicaid information

- Greene’s closing: go vote, and share the Medicaid information with everyone you know

- Says “what you don’t know can kill you,” and people must get started now to avoid being cut off and having to get back on

- Alexander says the show will return to the topic and urges listeners to tell their loved ones

https://concernedclergy.org

https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy

https://progressiveindiana.net

It’s “Ladies Week” on HoosLeft. One week out from Election Day, Scott sits down with Carrie Syczylo, co-owner of Farm House Brew coffee shop in Monrovia and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 60 (portions of Johnson, Morgan, and Monroe counties). Carrie and Scott open on tariffs squeezing small coffee shops before widening into the data center looming over her hometown: a Google facility that spent years hidden behind the code name “Project Louie” while local officials signed NDAs, now expanding from four buildings to nine as AES Indiana builds out the power infrastructure to serve it. Syczylo — who has led local opposition to the project since it surfaced — and Scott trace that desperation upstream: Scott argues Indiana’s communities are being pitted against each other for scraps of tax revenue precisely because Governor Braun’s 2025 property-tax overhaul gutted their budgets, leaving them to accept developments they don’t want just to get anything at all, and Syczylo agrees, adding her own layer about communities growing too fearful of density and neighbors to say no. The two connect that same extraction logic to vouchers draining public school funding (while rural districts get none of the “school choice” benefit) and to privatized utilities squeezing ratepayers, and Carrie makes the case that removing her incumbent opponent’s Republican supermajority from office is the only way to stop what she calls Hoosiers being “gaslit” by officials who took an oath to serve them and signed away their voice instead.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Carrie Syczylo: https://www.carriecareshd60.com/

• Donate: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/carrie-syczylo-1

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction: Ladies Week

Scott recaps last week’s “Fire Week,” previews an all-women guest lineup for the week ahead, and introduces tonight’s guest: Carrie Syczylo, co-owner of Farm House Brew in Monrovia and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 60.

00:02:59 Welcoming Carrie Syczylo

Carrie joins the show for the first time; Scott had previously met her husband Michael at an IU College Democrats/Rural Summit event in Bloomington, and the two open by talking about that event and pouring one out for Michael’s since-shorn beard.

00:04:39 Tariffs and the Price of Coffee

Carrie details how tariffs on South American coffee (coffee prices up roughly $20 per five pounds) and rising fuel and delivery costs are squeezing a small coffee shop already operating on thin margins where $8–9 cups put daily visits out of reach for many regular customers.

00:08:03 Third Spaces and the Giving Trailer

Carrie explains why she grew up believing in community spaces — crediting the teachers and small-town restaurants of her childhood in Shelbyville — and describes converting her shop’s old mobile coffee trailer into a “Giving Trailer” (need something, take something; have something, bring something) after last year’s SNAP benefit cuts.

00:14:23 The Housing Affordability Crisis

Carrie and Scott discuss a housing market with no entry point for first-time buyers — no lending for starter homes in the $100,000–$200,000 range, new construction skewing toward $350,000-plus “McMansions,” and an average first-time homebuyer age now around 41.

00:18:09 Why Builders Won’t Build Starter Homes

Scott argues builders build to profit, not to need, and the two discuss incentivizing developers and local economic development corporations to prioritize smaller, more affordable, character-driven housing.

00:21:22 AI, Automation, and Data Centers’ Information Vacuum

Scott raises AI’s threat to entry-level white-collar jobs; Carrie pivots to the lack of transparency around data centers’ water use, environmental impact, and backup diesel generator noise — information communities aren’t getting from officials or the companies themselves.

00:24:47 Project Louie: How Google Hid Behind an NDA

Carrie recounts how the Monrovia data center operated for years under the code name “Project Louie” before it was revealed to be Google, while local elected officials who’d signed non-disclosure agreements couldn’t tell constituents what they knew.

00:27:01 What Would a “Good Neighbor” Data Center Actually Look Like?

Asked whether tech companies could actually benefit host communities, Carrie says she’s opposed the Monrovia project from the start over environmental impact and loss of rural character, while promising to credit Google if it does something genuinely good (it has put solar on the Monrovia library and a school building).

00:31:24 Community Standards and the Race to the Bottom

Carrie calls for every community to adopt written, enforced standards for incoming businesses, arguing that without them, developers simply move on to the next desperate locality — describing Monrovia’s project growing from four buildings to nine as “what extraction looks like.”

00:32:30 “I’d Rather Have a Data Center Than More Homes”

Carrie relays a local elected official’s comment preferring a data center to more housing, and challenges the underlying fear of neighbors and density driving that preference amid a genuine housing shortage.

00:37:05 Density, Urban Sprawl, and Closing Rural Schools

Scott and Carrie discuss density debates playing out even in Bloomington, and Carrie raises Martinsville’s consolidation of several elementary schools into one campus as a case study in what gets lost.

00:39:11 School Vouchers and Rural Subsidy of Wealthy Suburbs

Carrie and Scott argue rural districts subsidize voucher-funded private and charter schools that serve wealthier suburban areas, since full per-student funding follows departing students to private schools that can reject students with IEPs — leaving public schools to absorb the costs the private schools won’t.

00:45:52 Extraction as a Pattern: Schools, Hospitals, Utilities

Scott likens the pattern to private equity stripping an asset for parts — a vicious cycle of stripping public goods down for private profit — and contrasts it with the virtuous cycle of investing in public schools and rural hospitals instead, where strong institutions employ people who then spend money back into the community, reinforcing it rather than hollowing it out.

00:47:34 Peggy Mayfield’s Record and the Real Cost of Electricity

Carrie names incumbent Rep. Peggy Mayfield’s record of voting yes on every policy that enabled the data centers and AES, and argues homeowners should be as worried about affording their electricity bill as their mortgage, with Google’s solar installations on the Monrovia library and a school building as one small, insufficient concession.

00:49:48 Capitalism, Socialism, and Talking to Rural Voters

Scott notes the irony of rural communities embracing capitalism while being harmed by the extraction it enables, and asks how to talk about this without the “socialism” label scaring people off.

00:50:52 Third Spaces, Common People of Morgan County, and Facing the Truth

Carrie shares a parable about a family tradition nobody questions (a halved turkey baked for generations, originally a size constraint) as a metaphor for reflexive partisan identity, and describes founding “Common People of Morgan County” after the 2026 inauguration to bring together like-minded neighbors across party lines.

00:56:11 The Food Pantry in Paragon

Carrie recounts volunteering at a food pantry in Paragon that served roughly 348 people in 45 minutes, and a pointed conversation with a pastor’s wife about whether faith leaders have a duty to name which policies are driving the need.

00:58:16 Hoosiers’ Civic Paradox: Low Turnout, High Volunteerism

Carrie cites Indiana ranking near the bottom nationally in voter turnout but near the top in volunteerism, arguing that channeling that volunteer spirit into civic engagement could be transformative.

00:58:58 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Carrie Syczylo

Carrie directs voters to CarrieCaresHD60.com and Farm House Brew, plus Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, and makes her closing case against incumbent Rep. Peggy Mayfield’s voting record.

01:01:03 Show Outro

Scott Aaron Rogers: https://hoosleft.us/

Dion Bergeron: https://www.youtube.com/@dionsdailydose

Candidates:

Ryan Kominakis (D): https://www.ryankominakis.com/

Travis Gearhart (L): https://www.travisgearhart.com/

SUMMARY:

With just over a week until Election Day, HoosLeft host Scott Aaron Rogers and Dion’s Daily Dose host Dion Bergeron co-moderated a debate for Indiana House District 4, which covers parts of Porter County including Valparaiso and Kouts. Democrat Ryan Kominakis and Libertarian Travis Gearhart took part. Republican incumbent Ed Soliday, who has chaired the House Utilities Committee since 2011, was invited but did not respond to the moderators’ requests. The candidates answered ten questions across five topic areas — cost of living, health care, education, economic development, and public safety — followed by a 12-question yes/no speed round and closing statements. The two found wide common ground: both criticized corporate tax breaks and data center subsidies, called for repealing right-to-work, backed legalizing and taxing cannabis, and were critical of license plate cameras and of Soliday. They split on a data center moratorium and on school vouchers, which. Gearhart closed by urging voters who don’t choose him to vote for Kominakis rather than Soliday.

BREAKDOWN:

00:00:31 Introduction

Rogers and Bergeron introduce themselves and the candidates, note that Soliday did not respond to requests to participate, and explain the format: two-minute opening statements, five topic areas with two questions each (one from each moderator), 90 seconds per answer with alternating turn order, a yes/no speed round, and two-minute closings.

00:02:07 Opening Statements

Gearhart goes first, as determined by a backstage coin flip.

- Gearhart: Former Republican: South County Republican chair, Hebron Town Council member, and an unsuccessful at-large county council candidate. Left politics disenfranchised and returned after Soliday’s text message to Republican Portage Mayor Austin Bonta. Says he was always more libertarian and that a third-party candidate isn’t beholden to downstate special interest money. Describes Northwest Indiana as a mixed bag, neither red nor blue.

- Kominakis: Marine Corps veteran who deployed multiple times in five years, including Afghanistan. Says he fights for workers every day. Criticized Soliday’s 20 years in office, especially as House Utilities chair, for corporate handouts and for representing donors over constituents. Pledged to be a real voice for House District 4. (Parts of his statement were lost to a connection problem, which Rogers noted afterward.)

00:06:48 Q1: Housing and Local Control (Cost of Living)

Bergeron cited a $275,000 statewide median home price, a national first-time buyer median age of 40, and House Enrolled Act 1001’s pros and cons. He asked what else Indiana should do for housing affordability in Porter County and how much the state should decide versus local communities.

- Gearhart: Agrees with critics that decisions should be as local as possible. Fine with cutting red tape and zoning hurdles but says local governments need autonomy. Compared it to data centers, where local voters’ objections should be heard. Said the bigger fix is raising Hoosier wages by attracting good jobs, not small data centers.

- Kominakis: Noted Valparaiso requires builders to include some affordable housing. Said first-time buyers face private mortgage insurance and down payments, which his VA loan let him avoid, and that young buyers likely need subsidies. Said he isn’t deeply versed in HEA 1001 and would want to investigate it. Called for common-sense solutions.

00:11:48 Q2: Utility Rates (Cost of Living)

Rogers cited a NIPSCO rate increase of about $23 a month (nearly 17%) and noted the House Utilities Committee shapes the rules on trackers, the sales tax on utility bills, and fixed charges. He asked what changes each candidate would support in January and how to keep them from raising costs elsewhere.

- Kominakis: Said Soliday, as House Utilities chair, is far more than one vote and wrote the legislation that raised utility bills. Wants to repeal laws that let utilities pass costs to customers through trackers outside the regular rate case, including those tied to House Bill 1007.

- Gearhart: Agreed with Kominakis “100%” and would go further: a full audit of NiSource and a rethink of the legal monopoly system. Floated changing how the IURC is chosen, such as election by mayors instead of governor appointment, without committing to a single fix. Cited rate increases and a large CEO pay raise at NiSource. Added that a Republican text message criticizing him for saying he would caucus with Democrats shows why he would.

00:16:40 Q3: Medicaid Cuts and Fraud (Health Care)

Rogers cited a drop of about 343,000 in Indiana’s Medicaid rolls in a year, many due to missed paperwork, a new federal pilot using AI to look for billing fraud, and work requirements beginning in January. He asked where to draw the line between guarding against fraud and keeping eligible Hoosiers covered.

- Gearhart: Supports finding fraud, but wants it pursued at the top level too, including corporate subsidies such as data center tax cuts (”corporate welfare”). Said Republicans tend to slash and burn, and that cuts must be measured and targeted. Asked why so many Hoosiers need assistance and pointed to bringing in high-paying, often union, jobs.

- Kominakis: Said health care should be a right and that people will lose coverage under these laws while officials focus on cuts rather than people. Pointed to a $4 billion surplus and said data centers should invest in Hoosier communities. Faulted Soliday for not forcing that through House Bill 1601 and said he would negotiate to get something in return for constituents.

00:21:34 Q4: Medicaid Waivers (Health Care)

Bergeron described caps on waiver services, two full waivers, and a waiting list of more than 13,600 Hoosiers. He asked about the state’s responsibility to people on the waivers and to providers, and for one specific thing each would do in the House to protect them.

- Kominakis: His wife used to work at Opportunity Enterprises. Said the state should take care of vulnerable people and pointed to the $4 billion surplus and $655 million in tax revenue lost to data center incentives. Believes the needs can be met without raising taxes. Blamed the Republican supermajority for protecting corporations and utilities and said he expects to flip it.

- Gearhart: His fiancée, a past Direct Support Professional of the Year, works at Opportunity Enterprises. Agreed with Kominakis and called handing large tax breaks to big companies cronyism, not free-market capitalism. Called cutting necessary services amid a surplus “criminal.” Proposed legalizing and taxing marijuana as one way to pay for services.

00:27:43 Q5: Funding Priorities and Property Taxes (Education)

Bergeron described Senate Enrolled Act 1’s property tax limits and the state budget split, with education and health and human services making up nearly 87% of the roughly $46 billion general fund. He asked whether more money for schools or health care would come from cuts, taxes, or something else, and for one specific cut or tax.

- Gearhart: Said Indiana is taxed enough. Criticized the state for cutting property taxes while shifting burdens to local governments and stripping local authority — “pick a lane.” Would rather cut the income tax than property taxes. Would end corporate tax breaks and legalize and tax cannabis, citing Michigan and Illinois.

- Kominakis: Called SB 1 a scam that siphons money from police, fire, and schools and leaves communities choosing among a local income tax, a school referendum, or accepting data centers. Said local officials of all parties are angry about it. Praised Valparaiso, Wheeler, and Washington Township schools, which he and Gearhart attended, and said private institutions are slowly defunding public schools. Would make corporations either pay taxes or invest in communities in exchange for subsidies.

00:32:57 Q6: School Vouchers (Education)

Rogers cited the Choice Scholarship Program’s growth to about 80,000 students and $548 million, its opening to all families in July, and the first year more vouchers went to families earning over $100,000 than to lower-income families. He asked whether vouchers should stay universal or be limited, and whether accountability should change.

- Kominakis: Vouchers need to go. Said private and home schools don’t face the same rules as public schools and called vouchers another way for the Republican legislature to defund public schools. Said support for families should not come out of public school funding. Also called for restoring teachers’ bargaining rights lost around the time right-to-work passed, comparing them to his own contract rights in the steel mills.

- Gearhart: Agrees on repealing right-to-work. Does not want to end vouchers outright and agrees with the principle that families should be able to use their tax dollars for another school, but called the current system extremely flawed. Said vouchers go largely to religious schools and sports-driven choices such as Andrean, and that public schools must take everyone while private schools can pick and choose. Wants the system reworked on a level playing field and paired with ending right-to-work.

00:38:00 Q7: Tax Abatements (Economic Development)

Rogers cited $322 million in abatement savings in 2026 and a legislative fiscal staff review concluding abatements generally don’t change business decisions. He asked whether Indiana should allow, limit, or end them and what companies should have to show before taxpayers subsidize them.

- Gearhart: Said abatements are overused and sometimes serve to reward donors. Doesn’t want to eliminate them — they are a tool — but said they have been abused and need more accountability at the state and local level, and far more conservative use.

- Kominakis: Wants a hard look at what works, including a third-party study, and wants to see where the fiscal staff’s numbers come from. Tied abatements to SEA 1 and the 2025 data center and nuclear bills (House Bill 1007, SB 423 and 424, House Bill 1601). Said the abatements should end or be paired with negotiated returns and consumer protections, citing a 50-year tax break for data centers. Called for flipping the Republican supermajority.

00:43:04 Q8: Long-Term Jobs for the Region (Economic Development)

Bergeron noted regional frustration that big economic wins land elsewhere, and cited the South Shore Double Track project, casino jobs, and disputed data center job counts. He asked for one specific thing each would do to bring long-term, well-paying jobs and how to do it from outside the governing majority.

- Kominakis: Noted Democrats are outnumbered about 70 to 30. Cited his experience as a union rep working across the aisle to get things done outside the contract. Wants strings attached to subsidies like those in House Bill 1601 for data centers and quantum computing, such as union labor requirements or a responsible bidder ordinance (RBO). Said to consult mayors, city councils, and residents where projects are built.

- Gearhart: Said data centers bring construction jobs now, and noted Local 150 has reportedly voiced support (per what he had read), but that research suggests few permanent jobs follow. Said big corporations don’t routinely bring big-paying jobs, citing Amazon’s treatment of drivers. Wants to end right-to-work, be pickier about tax cuts, and not “sell out to the first person that shows up with a check.”

00:48:03 Q9: Cannabis (Public Safety)

Bergeron cited federal plans to move cannabis to Schedule 3, Illinois and Michigan cannabis tax revenue, and Northwest Indiana’s role as a drug and human trafficking corridor. He asked how Indiana can tap the revenue while keeping residents and law enforcement safe.

- Gearhart: Legalize and tax it. Argued legalization puts cannabis on par with alcohol and removes the illegal-market problem, as in Michigan and Illinois. Said Indiana is wasting court resources criminalizing peaceful Hoosiers and that the reefer madness era is over. Said local ordinances can handle smell, as with cigarette smoke. Noted he has read that federal rescheduling could complicate tax questions.

- Kominakis: Gave a similar answer. Compared it to alcohol Prohibition, where legalizing, taxing, and regulating cut the problems. Called that healthy capitalism and said he would love to see cannabis legalized, though he isn’t sure how easily it would happen. Called Indiana backwards on the issue, pointing to Sunday alcohol sales only recently being allowed, and said other states legalized without trouble protecting residents.

00:52:25 Q10: License Plate Cameras (Public Safety)

Rogers cited Flock cameras across Porter County and recent abuse cases in Jackson County, Indianapolis, and a Porter County sheriff’s lieutenant’s demotion. He noted Chesterton’s town council voted to end its Flock contract and Indiana has no comprehensive state law. He asked whether the state should set statewide rules or leave it to local governments, and how to balance privacy with law enforcement utility.

- Kominakis: Called the cameras a major issue with documented abuse of power, while acknowledging police say they help. Said more studies are needed on whether they’re worth it and that, absent regulation, “we got to put a stop to it.” Said cities and counties should take more of the enforcement and regulation role. Criticized legislators for leaving the issue unregulated and said anything open to abuse should go until protections are in place.

- Gearhart: His first reaction: rip them out. Said he doesn’t want to live in a George Orwell novel and called them the biggest Fourth Amendment violation you can have. Said protecting constitutional rights is a state role and that, at minimum, the legislature should require a warrant to use them or access their data.

00:57:03 Speed Round

Twelve yes/no questions, six from each moderator. Answers are listed Kominakis / Gearhart.

- Overturn the 2022 near-total abortion ban: Yes / Yes

- Moratorium on data centers: No / Yes

- Commit to podcast appearances, live streams, or town halls: Yes / Yes

- Constitutional amendment for an independent redistricting commission: Yes / Yes (Kominakis said it needs to be done at the time of redistricting)

- Constitutional amendment allowing statewide ballot measures by petition: Yes / Yes

- Longer legislative sessions: Undecided (said no, then “yes, maybe,” calling it complicated and a question of cost) / Yes

- Work across party lines even if accused of disloyalty: Yes / Yes

- Repeal right-to-work: Yes / Yes

- Repeal permitless carry: No / No

- Term limits for state representatives: Yes, five terms (10 years) / Yes, five terms (”negotiable”); has signed a two-term pledge himself

- Eliminate townships: No / No

- Raise the state minimum wage: Yes, would “love to see” $10 to $15, though he would pursue what can pass across the aisle / Yes, adjusted for inflation; no figure, deferred to Kominakis

01:03:15 Closing Statements

- Gearhart: Said third-party candidates know the odds but voters are starved for something outside the two-party system. Cited Soliday as part of why he left the Republican Party. Encouraged voters to visit his website and to vote early if they haven’t. Said he doesn’t come from big money. Thanked Kominakis for agreeing to appear. Urged voters not to vote straight ticket, and if they don’t choose him, to vote for Kominakis and not Soliday.

- Kominakis: Echoed Gearhart’s last sentiment. Said Soliday threatened the city of Portage over the summer, including a vow to make sure Portage got no revenue increase, and called constituents a “noise box.” Said he is running because he cares about his neighbors, the Marines he served with in combat, and the union members on the shop floor. Told voters to look at the person, not the D, R, or L, and said he has been knocking doors every weekend, working toward 400 every two weeks. Asked voters to send “the steelworker, the union rep, and the Marine Corps veteran” to the statehouse and to reject Soliday’s corporate handout agenda.

01:08:01 Moderator Closing Remarks

Rogers and Bergeron thank the candidates, note that debates like this let voters hear candidates side by side, and remind viewers that Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. They encourage voting early or on Election Day and continuing to ask questions of elected officials. Rogers signs off with “Love each other, Indiana.”

This week, Scott is joined by returning guests Marsha Fleming, chair of the Knox County Democratic Party, and Chuck Gill, vice chair of the Hancock County Democrats, for a show spanning global unrest, a flood of sleazy campaign ads, and a deep stack of Indiana news with nine days to go before the midterms. They open in Europe, where cost-of-living and housing protests have spread from France to Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Albania, then turn to the Middle East, where escalating Houthi attacks on Saudi airports continue and the US and Israel quietly planning a post-midterm strike on Iran while Gaza aid cuts and West Bank settler violence intensify ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. From there it’s Russia and Ukraine, where Trump is floating a Ukraine-excluding summit with Putin and Xi, envoy Steve Witkoff is calling Putin a “humanitarian,” and Elon Musk’s Starlink slowdown left Ukrainian drones nearly useless. A long campaign-ads stretch follows: Musk’s record $442 million in midterm spending, the transgender smear campaign against Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother, and AI-generated attack images hitting even a Hancock County sheriff’s race, before the panel digs into Indiana’s increasingly expensive Secretary of State’s race between Beau Bayh and Max Engling. After that, the panel covers the Trump administration’s escalating war on voting that looks to thwart a record early-voting surge, DOJ election monitors aimed at heavily Democratic areas, and California’s ballot fight; a weaponization segment on the federal raid of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home and the indictment of Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, with a rare on-the-record defense from Barack Obama; a corruption run covering the Corey Lewandowski DHS probe, a MAGA blood feud over Kennedy Center donations, and a documentary alleging the late Sen. Lindsey Graham paid for sex, including with a minor; New Mexico’s lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer and accountant; Meta’s $25 billion privacy penalty and the ballooning data-center bubble; a pointed side-by-side of the shoplifting allegations against resigning Indiana state Sen. Ron Alting and the police shooting of a one-year-old in Senatobia, Mississippi; and a final run through Indiana news, including a court win for the tiny Union School Corporation, a state representative’s self-serving property-tax proposal, and the four judges up for retention on this year’s ballot.

Guest info:

Marsha Fleming: https://knoxvilledemocrats.org/

Chuck Gill: https://hancockindems.com/

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00:00 - Intro, Housekeeping, and Guest Welcome

00:04:06 - Europe: Protests Over Cost of Living and Housing Sweep the Continent

00:12:18 - Middle East: The Saudi-Houthi Conflict and Renewed Iran War Planning

00:19:11 - Israel: Gaza Aid Cuts, West Bank Settler Violence, and the Oct. 27 Election

00:23:46 - Russia-Ukraine: The Trump-Xi-Putin Summit Proposal and Musk’s Starlink Slowdown

00:35:13 - Campaigns: Musk’s Record Spending, the Talarico Smear Ads, and the Ramaswamy-Acton Ad

00:43:03 - Secretary of State’s Race: Beau Bayh, Max Engling, and the Fundraising Fight

00:51:27 - War on Voting: The Early Voting Surge and the DOJ’s Election Monitors and Noncitizen Purges

01:03:08 - Weaponization: The Ilhan Omar Raid, Louise Lucas’s Indictment, and Obama’s Defense

01:12:04 - Corruption: Lewandowski, the Kennedy Center Feud, and the Lindsey Graham Documentary

01:22:31 - Epstein: New Mexico Sues Epstein’s Lawyer and Accountant

01:29:03 - Tech: Meta’s $25 Billion Penalty and the Data Center Bubble

01:36:54 - Double Standards: Ron Alting’s Resignation and the Senatobia, Mississippi Shooting

01:45:56 - Indiana News: The Union Schools Win and J.D. Prescott’s Property Tax Scheme

01:53:26 - Indiana News: Judicial Retention on the Ballot

01:56:31 - Wrap-Up: Thanks and Where to Find the Panelists

01:58:51 - Sign-Off

Europe Protests

• Huge Riots and Anti-Government Protests Roil France: What to Know (NYT)

  • More than half a million people joined about 110 marches across France last Saturday, per the interior ministry (800,000 per the CGT union), the biggest day since the student-led protests began a month ago.

  • Rioters vandalized about 1,500 shops and government sites, including an arson attack that largely destroyed Limoges’ town hall, and police made about 2,000 arrests.

  • Students blockading schools since September want repairs, more teachers and smaller classes. Prosecutors and a police watchdog are investigating at least 34 alleged cases of police misconduct, including a 15-year-old who lost a hand, likely to a police stun grenade.

• Belgian police fire tear gas at protesters (Le Monde)

  • Belgian police used tear gas and water cannons against hundreds of cost-of-living protesters in Brussels and Liège last Saturday.

  • In Brussels, police made about 10 arrests after protesters threw bottles, fireworks and flammable liquids, set bins and e-scooters on fire, and vandalized a Socialist Party office.

  • The unrest follows weeks of high school student protests against higher university registration fees.

• Portugal sees protests over cost of living and housing crisis as demonstrations sweep Europe (EuroNews)

  • Portugal’s CGTP union federation and housing-rights groups held marches in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra last Saturday, over the cost of living, housing prices and fuel costs.

  • Demands included higher wages, better pensions and stronger public services.

  • In Porto, the march ended at Praça D. João I, the site of a week of housing protests during which dozens were reportedly injured in a police crackdown.

• Soldiers guard center of Milan as thousands of protesters march across European cities (AP)

  • Thousands of mostly young protesters marched in Milan on Saturday, a week after looting and clashes with police. Demonstrations were also called in Rome and at least seven other cities.

  • Premier Giorgia Meloni sent 500 more soldiers to Milan, adding to hundreds already there and about 5,000 police, and announced tougher penalties for minors. Police arrested 45 people last weekend, 34 of them minors, and luxury boutiques boarded up ahead of Saturday’s march.

  • In Rome, authorities locked down luxury shopping streets. Several hundred students marched peacefully, and a separate anti-war march was held.

• Albania protesters set Supreme Court on fire as anti-Rama riots escalate (WION)

  • Last Saturday, protesters in Tirana set fires at Albania’s Supreme Court, the entrance to the Bank of Albania and several post offices. The next day, the sixth straight day of protests, police used tear gas and water cannons.

  • Officials report at least 132 police officers injured, 167 arrests and criminal cases opened against nearly 400 people. The EU delegation asked for a proportionate response after allegations of excessive police force.

  • Student protests over tuition, teaching conditions and job prospects have merged with the “flamingo” movement. For months it has demanded Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation over alleged corruption in a coastal tourism development linked to Jared Kushner. Rama has been in power for 13 years and refuses to step down.

• France protests draw 400,000 for new rallies against rising living costs (Al Jazeera)

  • France’s Interior Ministry counted 410,000 protesters nationwide on Saturday, including 110,000 in Paris. The CGT union put the figures at 800,000 and 250,000. Police fired tear gas and water cannons in parts of central Paris and in Lyon, and made at least 135 arrests nationwide, 65 of them in Paris, while calling the situation calm.

  • Authorities deployed more than 70,000 police and gendarmes, including the elite RAID unit. They banned non-union marches and protests in downtown Montpellier, Rouen, Nice and Lyon, and moved the Paris union march from the Bastille–Nation route to the city’s southeastern edge. The Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and at least 24 metro stations closed.

  • On Friday, Macron met student representatives for the first time since the protests began. He promised more teachers and an overhaul of Parcoursup, the university admissions system, but students vowed to keep mobilizing. The Yellow Vests have called another protest for Oct. 31.

• Trump attacks ‘migrants and communists’ as he tries to exploit France unrest (Guardian)

  • At a rally in Park City, Kansas, on Monday, Trump said France was “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists,” saying “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon” and called it a warning for the November midterms. Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall faces an unexpectedly tough race there against Democrat Adam Hamilton.

  • Earlier that day, Trump said he had warned Macron about immigration and urged France on Truth Social to close its borders. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Eric Schmitt also blamed immigration and the left, echoing National Rally leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella.

  • The Guardian notes that Trump hasn’t commented on protests in Spain, Portugal, Italy, or Albania, where demonstrators targeted a tourism development backed by an investment firm founded by Jared Kushner. The French protests began over school conditions and living costs, and fuel prices have climbed since US strikes effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz.

• Khanna blames wealth inequality, not immigration, for youth protests in Europe (The Hill)

  • Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted on X on last Sunday, blaming the youth protests from France to Madrid to Tirana on wealth inequality, not immigration.

  • He said French students and teachers want safe schools, more teachers and smaller classes; Spaniards want affordable housing; and Albanians want jobs and an end to corruption.

  • Khanna rejected Vance’s claim that immigration from the Global South caused the unrest. He said it comes from wealth and power concentrated in a few hands and young people losing hope, and he called for “America’s Next New Deal.”

Middle East

• Saudi-Houthi Conflict

  • From 10/12: Saudi Crown Prince ‘moving between heavily guarded palaces with bunkers’ as Houthis step up attacks (Independent)

    • Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has rarely been seen in public since Tuesday, Oct. 6. According to the WSJ, he is moving between heavily guarded palaces with bunkers, protected by a handpicked security team, as Houthi attacks escalate.

    • A Houthi missile attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on Saturday, Oct. 10, killed 13 people and injured at least 300, Saudi Arabia’s worst attack in a decade. The airport, struck four times in five days, was closed. Saudi officials say they are running low on interceptors.

    • A 2022 Saudi-Houthi ceasefire broke down in July 2026 during the US-Israeli war on Iran, after the Houthis accused the Saudis of firing on Sanaa’s airport as a plane from Iran tried to land. Trump said he is considering joining Saudi strikes on the Houthis.

  • Two killed in attack on airport in eastern Saudi Arabia, authorities say (BBC)

    • An attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, killed a Saudi citizen and an Indian resident and injured eight others Wednesday evening. The civil aviation authority didn’t say what kind of attack it was, and the Houthis didn’t immediately comment.

    • Earlier Wednesday, debris from a drone intercepted while targeting an Aramco facility at the Shaybeh oil field killed two residents, from the Philippines and Nepal. Four more drones were intercepted that night. Saudi authorities say at least 21 people have died in Houthi attacks on Saudi airports since Oct. 1.

    • In Yemen, the Houthis seized part of the Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandab Strait in September. Pro-government forces with Saudi air support say they retook territory overlooking the strait this month, and fighting continues around Taiz and in four other provinces. The UN says more than 256,000 people have been displaced.

  • Egypt’s top security body agrees to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against Houthi attacks (AP)

    • Egypt’s National Defense Council, chaired by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, agreed last Sunday to give Saudi Arabia all possible support against Houthi attacks, without giving details. The decision came a month after a visit from the Saudi crown prince, and on Saturday, Oct. 17, el-Sissi asked parliament to authorize deploying troops and military equipment abroad.

    • Also last Sunday, the Saudi defense minister met the UAE president to strengthen cooperation. The two countries have had tense relations after backing rival factions in Yemen. Separately, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, spoke with Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty.

    • The same day, an airstrike in Yemen’s Saada province killed at least nine people, including five children, according to the Houthi-run Health Ministry, which blamed Saudi Arabia. A Saudi helicopter gunship crashed near Najran, killing both crew members. Saudi Arabia blamed a malfunction, while the Houthis claimed they shot it down.

  • US orders diplomats to depart Saudi Arabia amid Houthi strikes (Reuters)

    • On Wednesday, the State Department ordered non-emergency US government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, citing Houthi attacks on civilian airports and critical infrastructure. The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert the same day warning of possible further attacks.

    • Four US officials told Reuters that US missions in other Gulf states will also order family members to leave.

    • Washington had only recently sent some diplomats back to the region. Many were pulled out after Iran attacked US facilities in retaliation for the US-Israeli war on Iran that began in late February.

• Iran War

  • “So Much Worse Than People Realize”: Never-Before-Seen Images Reveal Damage at U.S. Bases as Troops Describe Being Abandoned (MidasTouch)

    • Thursday, MeidasTouch published dozens of previously unreleased photos and videos from anonymous service members, contractors and military families. They show damage to US bases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain since the Iran war began Feb. 28. The sources say they’ve been threatened with military discipline for sharing them.

    • Images from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia show destroyed dining halls and aircraft burning. Sources say one attack damaged an E-3 AWACS and two KC-135 tankers and injured 10 to 12 service members. Sources also say the July 17–18 barracks strike at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which killed three service members, was worsened by an overcrowded base and a poor emergency response.

    • In Bahrain, families say the Pentagon blocked a planned evacuation of military dependents before the airport was hit and closed, leaving many to get out on their own and at their own expense. Troops in the UAE described having no shelters and digging their own foxholes.

  • U.S. and Israel are planning for a possible attack on Iran (NPR)

    • An anonymous person briefed on the war planning told NPR on Thursday, that the US and Israel are preparing plans for a possible attack on Iran in early November, after the Nov. 3 midterms. Israel had planned to strike in mid-October, about two weeks before its Oct. 27 election, but Trump objected. The person said the buildup could also be pressure on Iran to reach a diplomatic deal.

    • Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran is prepared for diplomacy or war. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to hit Gulf data centers and the undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz if attacks resume. Iranian state media said the Guard targeted seven oil tankers in the strait the same day.

    • The IMF expects the economies of Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar to shrink by about 16% this year, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in recession. It projects oil will average $130 a barrel in 2027 if the war and supply disruptions continue.

• Israel

  • Short of funds, UN food agency cuts aid to 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 200,000 in the West Bank (AP)

    • World Food Program acting head Carl Skau said on Monday, that funding shortfalls forced the agency this month to cut food aid to 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza (from 1.6 million recipients to 1.1 million) and 200,000 in the West Bank (from 400,000 to 200,000). He asked donors for $450 million to restore the aid for six months.

    • In Gaza, about 1.4 million people, or 67% of the population, face crisis-level food insecurity or worse, and about 200,000 need immediate aid to avoid death from hunger. UN teams recorded about 50 attacks a day last week. Israel halted commercial goods, including food, last week, then said Monday it would resume coordinating commercial trucks.

    • In the West Bank, Skau said, escalating settler attacks have more than doubled food insecurity over three years, and nearly 1 million Palestinians need food aid. He saw burned olive groves and said settler attacks in the first two weeks of this year’s olive harvest have already exceeded the total for all of last year.

  • Israel detains U.S. House candidate, activists amid West Bank olive harvest (WaPo)

    • On Wednesday, Israeli forces detained about 90 Israeli and American volunteers accompanying Palestinian farmers on village land near Bethlehem. Those detained included Democratic House candidate Brad Lander, a former New York City comptroller and self-described “liberal Zionist.” The IDF said the group was harvesting without the required preapproval near the Beitar Illit settlement, and Lander and others were later released.

    • The same day, soldiers declared groves near the village of Deir Jarir a closed military zone and turned farmers away. Police also briefly arrested Israeli activist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, who filmed a settler attack on Friday, Oct. 16, that left Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine with four fractured vertebrae and a broken rib.

    • Israeli rights groups called the detentions one of the largest mass arrests in the West Bank in years and raised concerns of a crackdown ahead of Israel’s Tuesday, Oct. 27, election. Over the weekend, settlers allegedly assaulted European diplomats near Taybeh, and European allies have imposed new sanctions over settler violence.

  • Israeli soldiers raze neighbourhood in Hebron, driving families from homes (Guardian)

    • Two gunmen attacked an Israeli military checkpoint outside Hebron on Friday. A 20-minute gunfight killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three, and both gunmen were killed.

    • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited the site and promised an immediate response. Smotrich ordered demolitions next to the attack site and called for a full military campaign like those in Gaza and Lebanon.

    • By Saturday, Israeli troops had leveled much of Hebron’s Ein Deir Baha district, said to be the gunmen’s home district. The Hebron municipality says 35 hectares (86 acres) were destroyed or marked for demolition and about 1,500 people, roughly 300 families, were evicted. All entrances to the city of 250,000 are sealed, and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports plans to displace 2,500 more.

  • Israel Elections

    • Trump backs Netanyahu: Is the US planning a new Iran attack with Israel? (Al Jazeera)

      • Last Sunday, Trump endorsed Netanyahu on Truth Social for Israel’s Oct. 27 election after earlier declining to. He wrote that if anyone other than Netanyahu led Israel, the US would have to finish the job against Iran itself, which he said he was not inclined to do.

      • Haaretz’s tracker, as of last Sunday, projected 52 of the Knesset’s 120 seats for an opposition alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party and 51 for Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition. Neither is near the 61 needed for a majority.

      • Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused Netanyahu on X of pushing the US into another war to stay out of jail. He said Iran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within six days still stands if the US meets its conditions, including lifting sanctions and ending the naval blockade.

    • Vance declines to endorse Netanyahu after Trump offers full support for re-election (NBC)

      • On Monday, a day after Trump endorsed Netanyahu, Vance declined to do the same on Mark Halperin’s show 2WAY Tonight. He said he is neither for nor against Netanyahu and endorses only American candidates, though he praised Trump’s endorsement as the most effective in history.

      • Vance did weigh in on one foreign election: in April he campaigned in Hungary for Viktor Orbán, who lost after 16 years in power. In June, he warned Israel against opposing US efforts to negotiate an end to the Iran war.

      • In the same interview, Vance said he hasn’t decided whether to run for president in 2028. He said he expects Trump would endorse him right away if he does.

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Russia/Ukraine

• Putin Floats a Summit With Trump and Xi to Discuss Ukraine Deal (WSJ)

  • In an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, Putin proposed a three-way summit next month with Trump and Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, without Zelenskyy. The Kremlin has suggested holding it on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, Nov. 18–19. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed talks about a meeting, and a senior US official said Trump hasn’t agreed but could be receptive.

  • The same call produced a deal for the US to buy Russian diesel and help sell it on the global market. Last Friday, Oct. 16, Trump halted sanctions on Russia under a bipartisan bill he signed last month. Energy experts say the Iran war is the main driver of diesel prices and that the amount of Russian fuel involved won’t move the market much.

  • Last Sunday, after Ukraine struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg, Trump accused Zelenskyy on Truth Social of not wanting to end the war. On Monday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected any peace summit that excludes Kyiv.

• Trump escalates clash with Zelenskyy as Russia continues deadly attacks on Ukraine (PBS)

  • On Monday, Trump accused Zelenskyy of not wanting to end the war and said someone else should negotiate for Ukraine. He said he might meet Putin and Xi next month, mainly to discuss arms control, and that Russia has been fine on Ukraine.

  • On Meet the Press last Sunday, Zelenskyy said the US had blocked, then restored, intelligence that warns Ukraine of Russian ballistic missile launches. On Monday in Uzbekistan, Rubio denied there had ever been a pause.

  • Speed caps on SpaceX’s Starlink system are slowing Ukraine’s drones and interceptors and cutting their connections. On Monday, Russian drones and missiles hit Kyiv without warning, damaging homes, a shopping mall and a school, and a baby was killed in Kharkiv.

• Witkoff calls Putin a ‘humanitarian’ at Russia peace talks without Ukraine (CNBC)

  • On Wednesday, US envoy Steve Witkoff began talks with Putin in St. Petersburg on ending the war, without Ukraine at the table. In a video, Witkoff thanked Putin for describing President Donald Trump as a “humanitarian” and added: “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.” As the talks began, Russia announced the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired teacher the State Department considers wrongfully detained, and Vance defended Witkoff’s praise as thanks for Hubbard’s release.

  • On Tuesday, Zelenskyy met Witkoff in Oslo with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. They discussed NATO’s Article 5 and other security guarantees, which Witkoff was to present to the Russians. Zelenskyy said any deal on Ukraine is acceptable only if Kyiv is at the table, including a proposed US-China-Russia summit.

  • Overnight into Wednesday, Russia struck energy and civilian targets across Ukraine, despite Trump’s Oct. 11 claim that he had brokered an energy ceasefire. Ukraine paused its own attacks on energy targets for three days before resuming them, citing continued Russian strikes.

• Melania accused of hogging all the credit and ignoring Pope Leo’s role in securing Ukraine ceasefire (Independent)

  • On Friday, the White House announced a localized ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky in southern Ukraine, starting Oct. 29, to allow humanitarian aid and the evacuation of elderly residents. Melania Trump said in a statement it would have been impossible without her intervention. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets both credited her mediation.

  • The Vatican says Pope Leo XIV called Putin last Friday asking for a ceasefire to let aid into Oleshky, a call the Kremlin confirmed, and spoke with Zelenskyy on Monday. Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin credited the pope with starting the effort. Ukrainian official Davyd Arakhamia said the deal came from a longer process involving both the pope and Melania.

  • The credit dispute comes amid a public feud between Trump and Leo over immigration and the Iran war, which escalated in April when Trump attacked the pope on Truth Social after Leo criticized the war.

• Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown That Blindsided Ukraine (WSJ)

  • Elon Musk personally ordered the slowdown, starting Oct. 14, of the military-grade Starlink service Ukraine relies on, according to US officials and people familiar with the matter. The speed cap left some Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones nearly useless.

  • The slowdown began four days after Trump publicly told Zelensky on Oct. 10 to stop hitting Russian refineries, and after Musk posted that Zelensky had “gone too far.” Musk then posted that speed limits are decided by the US military and the president. Trump said on Monday, that he didn’t know who was responsible, and Hegseth said the Pentagon issued no directive and that Starlink sets its own terms of service.

  • Some US officials say Musk acted alone, but a person familiar with the matter says he spoke with senior officials, including Trump, before imposing the cap. Sources say the two also discussed it after it became public, and SpaceX pushed the White House for a shared message that they had coordinated in advance.

• Trump Called Musk and Asked Him to Lift Ukraine Starlink Restrictions (WSJ)

  • Trump called Musk on Wednesday, and asked him to lift the Starlink restrictions in Ukraine, saying he was frustrated speeds were still capped at about 100 mph, according to US officials. The call came after the WSJ reported that Musk had ordered the slowdown.

  • Service improved Thursday, with some Ukrainian units testing drones at 125 mph. As of Friday, though, most of Ukraine’s military still reported failing connections, and Zelensky said speeds hadn’t been restored. Trump said Thursday that Musk “put it back,” then said Friday that he’d heard it was fixed and would talk to Musk if it wasn’t.

  • On Thursday, Vance said it was understandable that Musk didn’t want to get involved in a war without US government direction. Hegseth and Rubio had said Musk could decide under his own terms of service. The same day, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced an investigation into the Starlink slowdown and the Pentagon’s dependence on SpaceX.

Campaigns

• Texas Senate

  • Elon Musk pours another $76 million into boosting Republicans (Politico)

    • Musk gave another $76 million to his super PAC, America PAC, in the first two weeks of October. That brings his giving this cycle to more than $442 million, far above the roughly $290 million he spent in 2024 and unmatched by any donor in modern US history.

    • His giving includes $158 million to Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, which passed it to a super PAC backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his tight Senate race against Democrat James Talarico. Musk has also funded House Republicans’ super PAC, Trump’s MAGA Inc. and a group seeking to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting.

    • Musk hasn’t campaigned alongside GOP candidates this fall. Republicans privately acknowledged he could be toxic after losing the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where he was the top funder and became a campaign issue. Talarico responded to a Musk attack on X by saying the system lets “one trillionaire” buy his own senator.

  • Democrat James Talarico targets Elon Musk at rally: ‘Texas is not for sale’ (Guardian)

    • At a rally at the University of Texas at Austin on Friday, Democrat James Talarico accused Musk of almost single-handedly bankrolling Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign and declared “Texas is not for sale.” He said super PACs and billionaire donors are spending $200 million against him in the most expensive Senate race in US history.

    • Talarico’s campaign says it raised $64 million from July through September, more than triple Paxton’s total, with 97% of donations under $100. Paxton, who was impeached by Texas Republicans over corruption accusations, faces new scrutiny after a WSJ video showed him in Dubai with two indicted healthcare-fraud fugitives, one of whom gave him $190,000.

    • The RealClearPolitics average of polls from Oct. 6 to 19 has Talarico ahead by 1.8 points, and an Emerson/Nexstar poll released Thursday, Oct. 22, has him up 48–46. Early voting began Oct. 19, and Democrats are seeking their first statewide win in Texas since 1994.

  • Streisand effect? The GOP’s constant attack ads may be teaching Texas kids the word ‘transgender’ (Them)

    • On Wednesday, a self-described Texas parent posted on r/conservative that the constant GOP ads attacking James Talarico’s support for transgender people had taught their kids what “transgender” means. Some commenters agreed the ads were spreading the idea, while others said parents should explain it themselves.

    • In September, Paxton ran an ad with an AI-generated Talarico delivering a fake sermon on gender and the Bible. In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller falsely called Talarico the “first transgender Senate candidate,” and this month Vance suggested Talarico is gay.

    • Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, told Texas Monthly that the GOP’s transgender and culture-war ads aren’t resonating with voters. He said $100 million to $125 million in ads hasn’t moved the Senate race in a month.

• Ohio Governor

  • Ramaswamy takes responsibility for controversial ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother (News 5 Cleveland)

    • On Tuesday, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took responsibility for an ad in which Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged birth mother, Donna Arthur, calls her a liar. Court records show Acton’s stepfather was charged with sexually abusing her when she was 12, her mother lost custody, and the stepfather fled and remained a fugitive until his death in 2004.

    • Ramaswamy said the ad shows a “pattern” of the people closest to Acton urging voters to reject her, and accused her of dodging debates. Acton, who says she hasn’t spoken to her mother since her stepfather was charged, said it was a terrible thing to do to someone who is unwell. Ramaswamy’s campaign is spending $4 million to air the ad.

    • The ad drew bipartisan backlash, including from Nikki Haley, Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who said he wouldn’t have run it, and former Ohio House Speaker Ryan Smith, also a Republican. Vance defended Ramaswamy at two Cincinnati events and said he was disgusted by Republicans complaining about the ad.

  • Trump attacks Ohio governor over call for Ramaswamy to drop ‘deeply troubling’ ad (Guardian)

    • On Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, called Ramaswamy’s ad “wrong” and “deeply troubling.” He said family members have historically been off limits and urged the campaign to take the ad down, but he kept his endorsement of Ramaswamy to support the full GOP ticket.

    • Hours later, Trump called DeWine “disloyal” on Truth Social, urged Ramaswamy to keep running the ad and called Acton a “defective, dishonest” candidate. Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed it will spend $4 million to air the ad statewide and said Democrats have used family members of Trump and RFK Jr. in their own ads.

    • Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, called the ad “a despicable low” and said he and his sister were taken from their mother’s custody after their stepfather’s arrest. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said he probably wouldn’t run such an ad, and Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown called it “disgusting.”

• Indiana Secretary of State

  • Bayh, Ballard & Shillings jointly call on Fox59 to include all candidates in Secretary of State debate (Hamilton County Reporter)

  • Engling, Bayh duel over key differences in secretary of state race (ICC)

    • Democrat Beau Bayh and Republican Max Engling met Thursday in the final Indiana secretary of state debate, hosted by Fox59/CBS4. Libertarian Lauri Shillings and Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard were excluded for polling under 10%, though Bayh had joined them on Tuesday in asking Fox59 to include them. The two sparred over an Engling ad linking Bayh’s father, Evan Bayh, to Jeffrey Epstein, which Beau called baseless, and a Bayh ad on Engling’s old speeding tickets, over which Engling says he is suing for defamation.

    • On elections, Engling backs the SAVE America Act and color-coded state IDs for legal noncitizens. Bayh wants to work with county clerks to clean up voter rolls and supports citizen-led ballot initiatives, which Engling opposes. Both support Indiana’s voter ID law and longer early voting hours.

    • Both candidates say the next secretary of state must investigate outgoing incumbent Diego Morales, who is accused of spending taxpayer money on luxury vehicles and promotional materials, hiring family members and awarding no-bid contracts to donors. Engling says the state inspector general should lead the investigation because that office can compel documents and testimony, while Bayh has proposed a different approach.

  • Republican David Shelton joins Ballard, Bayh efforts to hold secretary of state office accountable (WFYI)

    • Bayh has tapped Republican David Shelton, who lost the GOP nomination to Engling at the June convention, to help lead an independent audit of Diego Morales’s office if Bayh is elected. Shelton says an inspector general investigation isn’t enough and that an audit would show whether anything should be prosecuted.

    • Engling called the move “hypocrisy,” saying Bayh isn’t seeking oversight from people with experience. Shelton says he isn’t working for the Bayh or Ballard campaigns.

    • Shelton has also filed a complaint that Engling took $60,000 from Hoosier Leadership for America, a dark money group tied to Sen. Jim Banks, far above the $5,000 limit on corporate contributions. Engling calls the complaint baseless and says the money was returned before it was filed. Shelton wants the Indiana Election Commission to hear the complaint anyway, but the commission hasn’t met to take it up.

  • Ballard takes Indiana Election Commission to court (WFYI)

    • On Friday, Judge Jennifer Harrison heard Greg Ballard’s lawsuit seeking to force the Indiana Election Commission to meet on pending campaign finance complaints, and she will rule by the end of Monday. The commission hasn’t met since July and has scheduled its next meeting for Nov. 20, after the Nov. 3 election.

    • The complaints mainly concern Engling’s $60,000 from Hoosier Leadership for America, the group tied to Sen. Jim Banks, which Engling’s campaign says it returned. Others concern events Bayh attended but didn’t disclose, which Bayh calls frivolous.

    • The state argued that Ballard lacks standing, that there isn’t time to hear the complaints before the election, and that he is trying to use the commission to sway voters. Ballard’s attorney, Michelle Harter, said he is only asking the court to order the commission to do its job.

  • Evan Bayh drains his federal campaign accounts with $2.4M to state Dems amid son’s race (ICC)

    • Evan Bayh has moved at least $2.4 million to Indiana Democratic Party accounts since September, including more than $1.7 million this month. That nearly empties his Senate campaign fund, which dropped from $2.2 million in July to about $200,000, and his All America PAC, which is down to $10,000. Over the same period the party has given his son Beau’s campaign $2.2 million, effectively routing the dormant war chest from his 2016 Senate run into Beau’s race.

    • Bayh and Engling each had about $400,000 at the end of September. Since then, through Tuesday, Bayh has reported nearly $2.2 million in contributions over $1,000, including $1.5 million from the state Democrats. Engling has reported about $840,000, including $636,000 from the state GOP.

    • Engling’s campaign accuses “Washington Democrats” of trying to buy the race, while Evan Bayh declined to comment. The other two candidates are far behind: Ballard has reported $20,000 in large contributions this month and Shillings none.

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War on Voting

• Many states deciding control of the Senate are seeing a big boost in early voting (AP)

  • An AP analysis of data through Tuesday found more than 13 million mail and early in-person votes cast nationally two weeks before Election Day, compared with 9 million at the same point in 2022. Part of the increase comes from states that expanded early voting or now release more data.

  • The biggest jumps are in GOP-held Senate seats Democrats are targeting: Texas is up 74%, to nearly 1 million ballots; Kansas has more than doubled, from 27,000 to more than 55,000; Maine is up 39%; and Ohio and North Carolina are up more than 30%. In most of these states, Republicans make up a smaller share of early voters than four years ago.

  • The surge isn’t everywhere. Early votes in Michigan and Georgia, where Democrats are defending seats, are high but about even with their record-setting 2022 levels, and Iowa is down about 6%.

• US Embassy in Ottawa accuses Canada of election meddling (Politico)

  • On Wednesday, the US Embassy in Ottawa gave journalists an unsigned “fact sheet” accusing Canadian politicians of interfering in US elections. It named Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and Bernadette Jordan, Canada’s consul general in Boston.

  • The document cited Joly’s August remark that Canada’s retaliatory tariffs targeted US states to apply political pressure, and Housefather’s summer door-knocking with a Democratic candidate. Citing DOJ figures, it also claimed Canada is the second-largest source of foreign nationals prosecuted for illegal voting in the US, but the embassy didn’t answer follow-up questions.

  • Prime Minister Mark Carney brushed off the allegations Wednesday, and Ford denied any interference. Carney had recently joked that Americans are “a little touchy” about interference, and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has told Canadian lobbyists to “get the hell out of our country.”

  • Update: US ambassador softens accusations of Canadian interference in midterms (Politico)

    • In a podcast interview taped Wednesday, the same day the embassy released its fact sheet, and published Friday, Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said the embassy hadn’t concluded there was any Canadian interference and hadn’t raised it with Washington. He added that “we continue to watch.”

    • Hoekstra said his earlier comments were taken out of context. He said activities such as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly meeting Democratic officials in Boston and Chicago about Trump’s tariffs could lead someone to “assume” interference.

    • On Friday, Carney suggested the Americans are the ones meddling in Canadian elections. Tensions have been high since Carney walked away from trade talks in August and vowed to reduce Canada’s reliance on the US.

• Trump administration sues to block Alaska Senate certification if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses in November (NBC)

  • On Thursday, the Justice Department sued Alaska election officials in federal court. The suit seeks to block certification of the Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses and the votes for a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., would have put the senator over the top under ranked-choice tabulation. Trump said Friday that he ordered the suit.

  • Election law experts say the DOJ has no authority over state certification, and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the suit unnecessary. The ballot lists the senator as “registered Republican” and “incumbent” and gives Sullivan Jr. no party label. State officials removed Sullivan Jr. from the ballot in June, finding his candidacy wasn’t in good faith, but the courts reinstated him.

  • In August’s all-party primary, Democrat Mary Peltola won 49.5%, Sen. Sullivan 41.4% and Sullivan Jr. 2.5%. Peltola’s total beat both Sullivans combined (43.9%) by nearly 6 points, so even under the DOJ’s own theory, the second Sullivan wouldn’t have changed the primary result.

• California

  • Federal prosecutors charge 28 California green card holders with voting violations (CalMatters)

    • On Monday, federal prosecutors charged 28 green card holders across California with illegally registering to vote or voting. They say 22 voted in at least one election, as recently as the June primary, five only registered and one cast a provisional ballot in 2020. Prosecutors say they’ve charged about 113 noncitizens in 20 states over the past two months.

    • Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter tied the charges to the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking to keep Los Angeles County from counting ballots from up to 20,000 registered voters it suspects are noncitizens, and the DOJ asked the judge to order those ballots set aside. Prosecutor Bill Essayli warned that election officials could face criminal charges if they knowingly process ballots from people prosecutors identify as noncitizens.

    • California Attorney General Rob Bonta said 28 out of 23 million registered voters, about 0.0001%, shows there is no widespread fraud. The Department of Homeland Security recently claimed Nevada had nearly 16,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, but it sent the state only 185 names, and Nevada confirmed all 185 were citizens.

  • Democrats sue Trump, DOJ over effort to remove voters from state rolls (WaPo)

    • On Tuesday, national Democratic groups (the DSCC, DCCC and DGA), the Nevada Democratic Party, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries sued Trump, the DOJ, Attorney General Todd Blanche, DHS and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in federal court in Washington. The suit accuses the administration of unlawfully pressuring states to purge voters based on “shoddily compiled lists.”

    • The complaint also cites a “persistent stream of threats and intimidation” against election officials, including Trump’s threat last week to imprison California officials if they counted mail ballots from people the administration calls noncitizens. The DOJ says its actions are grounded in law.

    • A Los Angeles County review of 200 of the 20,000 voters the DOJ flagged found more than half hadn’t been sent ballots and many appeared eligible to vote. Separately, Virginia’s Arlington County Board sued over the administration’s claimed authority to send armed federal agents to polling places.

  • Justice Department asks appeals court to intervene in California ballot case (NBC)

    • On Thursday, the DOJ asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to step into its lawsuit seeking to temporarily block California from counting more than 20,000 mail ballots from voters it says are likely noncitizens. It did so before the trial judge, US District Judge David Carter, had ruled.

    • The DOJ argued that because Carter hadn’t ruled by Thursday afternoon, as it had requested, his silence amounted to a “constructive denial.” Carter has scheduled a hearing for next week on the department’s emergency request.

    • A DOJ official has said the department is considering suing more states to remove noncitizens from voter rolls before the midterms.

  • Justice Department orders California counties to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens (CNN)

    • On Friday, the DOJ sent letters ordering California county election officials to work with DOJ and DHS to identify suspected noncitizens on a federal list and set aside their mail ballots. Prosecutor Bill Essayli warned that officials who knowingly count those ballots risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.

    • Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan called the letters intimidation of local election officials 12 days before the election and said the new 48-hour deadline is unenforceable. He also said many of the roughly 20,000 names on the DOJ’s list for the county have addresses elsewhere in California.

    • With Carter still not having ruled, the DOJ went directly to election officials with written demands to identify suspected noncitizens and set aside their ballots, again threatening criminal liability. It also widened the scope. The Oct. 13 letter went to LA County and the Secretary of State, while Friday’s letters went to county officials around the state.

• DOJ Election Monitors

  • The Justice Department begins notifying counties where it wants to monitor elections (NPR)

    • This week, the DOJ began notifying counties in Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Texas and Washington that it wants to monitor them on Election Day. Unlike in past cycles, it didn’t initially notify the states. Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon has said the DOJ will send 1,000 observers in its largest monitoring effort ever.

    • The counties notified so far include Miami-Dade, King County in Washington, Hennepin and Ramsey in Minnesota, seven Texas counties and a county in a toss-up Colorado House district. The DOJ says it prioritizes competitive races and counties covered by the Voting Rights Act’s language-access rules, but at least one local clerk has called the move possibly politically motivated intimidation.

    • In August, Wyoming’s Republican governor complained of “aggressive” DOJ monitors at the state’s primary, which the DOJ disputes, and Minnesota denied monitors close access to polling places. In 2024, Ken Paxton went to court to keep the Biden DOJ’s monitors out of Texas polling places.

  • DOJ sending election observers to Indianapolis, Lake County (ICC)

    • The DOJ notified Marion County (Indianapolis) and Lake County that it will send federal observers on Election Day, without saying why it chose them. The Marion County notice arrived Tuesday in a general clerk’s office inbox that residents use for child support and ticket payment questions, and election board members didn’t learn of it until Wednesday.

    • Both are heavily Democratic counties. A Marion County clerk’s spokesman said the choice comes off as partisan, and the county’s election board attorneys will meet with DOJ on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Lake County election director Michelle Fajman said she has only heard speculation about why the counties were picked, and that guidance for poll workers will depend on whether the monitors have credentials to enter polling places.

    • The DOJ says the monitors “only observe.” Marion County has approved a protocol for poll workers dealing with federal monitors, and the Indiana Election Division is meeting with DOJ on how their entry into voting locations squares with state law. The DOJ plans 1,000 monitors nationwide, up from 289 in the 2022 midterms and 714 in 2024.

    • RELEASE: Carson statement on DOJ “election monitors” in Indiana (Andre Carson)

      • “Out of 92 counties in Indiana, Trump’s DOJ has chosen two counties with the largest populations of Democratic voters and Black and Hispanic voters to subject to ‘election monitoring.’ It’s no coincidence. It’s also no coincidence that it comes just weeks before an election, when Trump has record low poll numbers. It follows multiple, illegal attempts to change election procedures for his benefit, from a president who still maintains the 2020 election was stolen.

      • “Our elections in Marion County are still run by the clerk, who is elected by Marion County voters. I’m urging everyone to vote as soon as possible – you can vote early at the City-County Building now or at additional locations starting this weekend, which can be found at vote.indy.gov.

      • “There are so many threats to our right to vote because of how powerful our vote is. Make your voice heard—vote now.”

    • Public statement regarding election monitoring in Lake County (Lake County Democrats)

      • Lake County Democratic Chair Michael C. Repay said the party has been told the DOJ will send monitors to the county on Election Day, Nov. 3, and that it does not expect any problems. He stressed that Indiana elections are run by bipartisan, trained election officials.

      • Repay said he expects the monitors to follow the limits set out in the DOJ’s notice and respect the authority of state and county election officials. He added that the party will be prepared to respond if anyone oversteps or interferes with voters, poll workers or election officials.

      • He urged voters not to wait until Election Day, noting that early voting and other options are already available.

Weaponization

• Ilhan Omar

  • Rep. Ilhan Omar says she will move out of her Washington, DC, home after federal search (PBS)

    • Last week, Homeland Security investigators searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home with a warrant and seized 17 items, including phones and notebooks. A person briefed on the case told AP that authorities are investigating possible fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork and have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives.

    • Omar came to the US at age 12 after her family received asylum and became a citizen in 2000. She said Wednesday that she did nothing wrong and will move out of the home because the attention from the raid has made her feel unsafe there.

    • The search came weeks before Omar’s Nov. 3 reelection in a safe Minneapolis seat. Congressional Democrats questioned the timing, noting that the DOJ has historically avoided overt investigative steps involving candidates right before an election.

  • Obama condemns comments by ‘border czar’ that Ilhan Omar could ‘of course’ be denaturalized (Guardian)

    • Last Saturday on Fox News, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, answered “of course” when asked whether the Omar investigation could lead to stripping her citizenship and deporting her if evidence shows she lied during naturalization. He was the first top administration official to say so on the record since agents searched Omar’s home on Oct. 12. Homan also hinted at other allegations, saying he “know[s] things,” but referred questions to the FBI.

    • Last Sunday on X, Obama said the full weight of the federal government was being brought down on a law-abiding elected official for criticizing the president. He said Omar automatically became a citizen at 17 when her father was naturalized, and that the administration appears to be relying on an unsubstantiated theory that she was already 18, which would have required her to apply separately.

    • Obama urged all Americans, regardless of party, to defend Omar, warning that if this becomes the new normal, it won’t stop with her and future presidents of either party could do the same.

• Louise Lucas

  • DOJ indicts Virginia Democrat who led redistricting push on drug trafficking, money laundering charges (Politico)

    • On Thursday, prosecutors unsealed a five-count federal indictment charging Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat who chairs the appropriations committee, with drug trafficking and money laundering tied to a cannabis business she helped start. Family members and associates were also charged, and FBI Director Kash Patel said Lucas made nearly $5 million in illegal gains.

    • Lucas helped lead Virginia Democrats’ push for a 10-1 congressional map, which voters approved in April before the state Supreme Court struck it down in May. She called the FBI’s May raid of her office retribution, and on Thursday she said: “I grew up under Jim Crow. I’ve seen what happens when people in power try to silence those who stand up to them. I spent my life fighting back, and I’m not stopping now.”

    • Attorney General Todd Blanche denied the case is political, saying the investigation began long before Trump returned to office. Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Lucas deserves to present her defense but that charging her this close to an election undermines the DOJ’s long-standing policy, even though Lucas herself isn’t on the ballot.

  • Is Trump’s Justice Department Coming for Powerful Black Women? (Word in Black)

    • The column argues that four prominent Black women who challenged Trump have all faced federal action under his administration: Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Fed Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

    • After James won a civil fraud case against Trump’s business, the DOJ indicted her in October 2025 on mortgage fraud charges. The case was dismissed, and later attempts to re-indict her failed. Trump tried to fire Cook over mortgage fraud accusations, and after the Supreme Court ruled he can’t fire Fed governors, he created a White House committee on Oct. 7 to look for grounds to remove her.

    • The author contrasts these cases with Trump’s own conflicts of interest, including the roughly $400 million Boeing 747 from Qatar and a Forbes estimate that he has grown $2.7 billion richer since 2024. He also acknowledges there’s no public evidence that Trump ordered every step against the four women.

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Corruption

• Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry Into Corey Lewandowski (NYT)

  • The DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, over accusations that he profited from his role as a top adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, according to two officials. The probe followed a referral from the DHS inspector general, and its specifics aren’t clear. Lewandowski’s lawyer denies any wrongdoing and says the DOJ hasn’t contacted him.

  • As an unpaid adviser, Lewandowski acted as Kristi Noem’s top aide, with wide influence over personnel and contracts, including co-signing approvals of contracts over $100,000. He left after Noem was forced out in March, as officials raised concerns that he was enriching himself. In Noem’s final hours, DHS bought five planes from a donor’s firm, including a converted Boeing 737 for $108 million, after the firm had bought it months earlier from a seller asking less than $90 million.

  • On Thursday, Trump said he’d heard about the investigation but didn’t know the details, and he offered Lewandowski no support. He said “I want my people to be honest, and if they are not going to be honest they have to be prosecuted. If people are not honest, they’re stealing from me” and would be handled by “my D.O.J.”

• Exclusive: White House probes claims of missing Kennedy Center money in “MAGA blood feud” (Axios)

  • On Oct. 9, Trump’s former attorney Alina Habba told Trump in the Oval Office that Ric Grenell, then head of the Kennedy Center, never deposited a donation of nearly $6 million that her husband, Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, thought he made in 2025. Trump directed the White House counsel to look into it. Grenell called the accusation “absurd” and a “lie.”

  • Habba alleges that in spring 2025, Grenell persuaded Mildon to fold the donation into a $17.6 million payment for a business deal involving a US company. At the time, Grenell was a special envoy pushing to normalize relations with Venezuela’s Maduro, and Mildon had Venezuelan business interests. Habba’s attorneys say they’ll provide documents, but the White House counsel says no proof has arrived yet.

  • Kennedy Center records show Mildon owed only a $270,000 pledge, which he paid on Oct. 13, and its former finance official says she has no record of $6 million. Staff did search late last year for a roughly $6 million contribution they couldn’t find. Habba’s own figure has shifted from $17 million to $5.6 million.

• How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation (ProPublica)

  • ProPublica reports that the FBI was investigating bribery allegations from former Navatek CEO Martin Kao, now serving seven years for illegal campaign donations and loan fraud. Kao told agents he struck cash-for-contracts deals with the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). He said Graham agreed at a 2020 Washington steakhouse dinner to steer a roughly $10 million Navy contract to his company in exchange for a $100,000 pledge, and that Clyburn and Wilson each asked for the same amount.

  • Company emails and records the FBI seized back up parts of the account, including Graham’s office confirming to the Navy that the money should go to Navatek days after the dinner, and $20,000 in donations to Clyburn from Kao and his family days after their meeting. The lawmakers were never formal subjects of the probe, and all three offices deny wrongdoing. Navatek’s lobbyist, who attended the Graham dinner, confirmed details of the evening but denied any quid pro quo.

  • The investigation died after the Trump administration gutted the DOJ and FBI anti-corruption teams. The lead agent was fired in October 2025, her partner was pushed out early this year, and the prosecutor quit after the Public Integrity Section was barred from bringing new cases. The FBI now calls Kao’s claims “half baked.”

• More Graham: Lindsey Graham Paid Off 3 Male Escorts, Including One Who Was 17 at the Time — Explosive Documentary Alleges (Mediaite)

  • On Thursday, The Young Turks and Swamp Watch Studios released The CLOSETocracy, a 33-minute documentary in which three men allege the late Lindsey Graham paid them for sex, including one who says he was 17 at the time.

  • That man, identified only as Kelvin, says Graham contacted him through an escort site and met him in July 2001 at John McCain’s ranch in Sedona, Arizona, where Graham was staying as a guest. The other two men, identified as Cory and Jesse, describe paid encounters at Washington hotels.

  • The film contrasts the allegations with Graham’s long opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. When filmmakers approached Darline Graham, who was appointed to his seat and faces Democrat Annie Andrews in November, she refused to “entertain” the question. A Graham family spokeswoman didn’t respond to Mediaite.

Epstein

• New Mexico Sues Epstein’s Lawyer and Accountant, Moves to Block $75 Million Inheritance (The Pugilist)

  • On Wednesday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer, Darren Indyke, and accountant, Richard Kahn, in federal court. The suit alleges they financed and concealed Epstein’s sex trafficking at Zorro Ranch near Stanley, N.M., for more than two decades, and it brings five counts including federal sex trafficking and state racketeering. The state says it’s the first law enforcement action against either man, and both deny knowing about the abuse.

  • The suit seeks to block the $50 million Indyke and $25 million Kahn stand to inherit from Epstein’s estate, now worth about $107 million. It alleges Indyke made 97 cash withdrawals from 2013 to 2017, each under the $10,000 federal reporting threshold, and that the cash paid women in the trafficking ring.

  • The complaint describes seven women abused at the ranch between 1996 and 2010, including one who was 15, and 11 paragraphs are fully redacted. Torrez reopened the state’s criminal investigation in February, after New Mexico had dropped a 2019 probe at federal prosecutors’ request.

Tech

• Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy (NYT)

  • On Wednesday, Santa Fe District Judge Francis J. Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for deceiving users about their data privacy, one of the largest penalties ever imposed on a tech company. New Mexico brought the suit in 2021 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the British political consulting firm harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge to build profiles of American voters.

  • After a two-week trial last month, a jury found Meta committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, each carrying a penalty of up to $5,000.

  • It’s New Mexico’s third win against Meta this year, after a $375 million penalty in March and $567 million in damages in August in a child-safety case. Separately, Meta agreed in August to pay up to $17.1 billion in a settlement with 47 states, including $459 million over Cambridge Analytica privacy claims. Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.

• From 10/16: Data centers are now the largest financial bet in US history (Stateline)

  • The US data center buildout, projected at about $10 trillion, is now the largest financial bet in the country’s history, according to Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. It will account for nearly 4% of GDP, compared with about $173 billion in today’s dollars and just over 2% of GDP for the railroad boom of 1870–1890.

  • New data center construction has more than doubled over two years to $85 billion a year, while all other construction has fallen 8% and new housing has dropped by $29 billion. Economists including Paul Krugman warn that data centers employ few workers, and the IMF has warned of a market correction if AI profits fall short of expectations.

  • States are rethinking the tax breaks they once offered. Nevada trimmed its abatements, and Oregon froze new approvals over utility-cost concerns. Indiana is among the states with large numbers of planned data centers, and a Carnegie Mellon–NC State study found data centers and crypto mining could raise electricity bills 8% nationally and up to 25% in parts of Virginia.

Double Standards

• Alting resigns from Indiana senate: ‘I am deeply sorry’ (Lafayette Journal&Courier)

  • On Wednesday, Republican state Sen. Ron Alting, who has represented Senate District 22 (Carroll County and much of Tippecanoe County) for 28 years, announced he will resign amid allegations of six shoplifting incidents at Walmarts in Lafayette, Monticello and Naples, Fla. He hasn’t been charged, and Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker is investigating the Lafayette cases as special prosecutor.

  • Alting apologized and said he is undergoing medical evaluation for changes in his judgment, behavior and cognitive functioning. Because voting has already begun, his name stays on the ballot, and if he wins, precinct committeemen in the district will choose his replacement.

  • Monticello police haven’t released the “factual circumstances” of an Oct. 1 shoplifting incident, which Indiana’s public records law requires them to provide. White County Prosecutor Mark Delgado hasn’t returned the Journal & Courier’s repeated calls over the past two weeks.

• “No recollection of these events”; Consulting physician for Sen. Alting speaks out about his condition (WLFI)

  • On Thursday, Dr. Greg Loomis, a consulting physician for Alting, said there’s no diagnosis yet but signs point to Lewy body dementia, with a brain tumor and Pick’s disease ruled out. He spoke with Alting’s approval, which WLFI confirmed by phone with Alting.

  • Loomis said he can state “with a high degree of medical certainty” that Alting has no recollection of the shoplifting incidents, and said he recommended Alting step down.

  • Alting, who stopped campaigning Oct. 7, still faces Democrat Natasha Baker on the ballot and says he will resign if elected.

• Double-Standards: Mississippi AG says police shooting that killed 1-year-old was ‘justified’ (NBC)

  • On Monday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office ruled that the June 14 police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in Senatobia was justified. The brief statement followed a four-month investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

  • Officers responding to a shoplifting call at Walmart fired at a car they said was fleeing and drove toward them, killing the boy and critically injuring the driver. His mother, a passenger who hasn’t been charged, says they had gone for diapers, that she held up her baby to show officers he was in the car, and that the driver wasn’t heading toward the officers.

  • Family attorney Ben Crump says a preliminary autopsy shows the bullet came through the side of the car. Body camera footage released since is inconclusive on whether the car was headed at the officer.

Indiana News

• Judge strikes down part of Indiana law closing Union Schools (WFYI)

  • On Friday, Special Judge Brian Hutchison of Randolph Superior Court struck down the part of a 2025 state law that ordered Union School Corp., the one-building rural district in Modoc, to close after this school year. He granted the district summary judgment in its lawsuit against the state and Gov. Mike Braun.

  • The district argued that lawmakers violated the Indiana Constitution by adding the closure, without a public hearing, as an amendment to a property tax bill in the final weeks of the 2025 session. Rep. J.D. Prescott (R-Union City) wrote the amendment, citing low test scores and declining enrollment.

  • Union leaders have said the closure was really about the roughly $3 million a year the district earns overseeing a large virtual school, and they claim Prescott offered to spare the district if it gave up that money. Clarksville, the only other district with a statewide Stride-partnered school, wasn’t targeted. Its superintendent is married to former state schools chief and ex-Stride executive Tony Bennett.

• Court of Appeals and Tax Court judges are on the ballot for retention (ICC)

  • Four judges are on Indiana’s ballot for retention. Court of Appeals Judges Mary DeBoer and Paul Felix and Tax Court Judge Justin McAdam appear statewide, while Court of Appeals Judge Dana Kenworthy appears only in the court’s 2nd District, which includes Marion, Hamilton, Tippecanoe, Delaware and Howard counties. Voters answer yes or no, and a simple majority keeps a judge on the bench.

  • If a judge isn’t retained, the Judicial Nominating Commission sends three nominees to the governor within 70 days, and the governor picks one. All four judges were appointed by Gov. Eric Holcomb between 2022 and 2024, and between 86.5% and 91% of Indiana State Bar Association members surveyed support retaining each of them.

  • The Indiana Supreme Court’s judicial retention website has each judge’s biography, oral argument videos and written opinions. Before his appointment, McAdam worked at the Bopp Law Firm, founded by prominent conservative attorney Jim Bopp.

They work. They pay taxes. They heat their homes. They drive the roads. They send their kids to school. They weather the storms, literally and politically.

And then, when they look around, the roads are still crumbling, the bills are still climbing, the schools are still stretched, the hospitals are losing services, and their elected officials feel like ghosts who show up only when campaign season needs a mailing address.

That is the world Austin Meives is talking about in Indiana House District 23.

Meives, the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 23, is running in a district that includes communities throughout Cass and Miami counties, including Logansport, Peru, and surrounding rural areas where agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, and public education are not talking points. They are the bones of daily life.

His campaign is not built around one shiny issue. It is built around a broader complaint that keeps showing up across rural Indiana: people are paying more and getting less.

More for power. More for gas. More for healthcare. More time lost navigating services that used to be closer. More pressure on teachers. More strain on county and city workers. More talk from Indianapolis about tax cuts, while local governments are left holding the empty toolbox.

When asked what conversations keep happening across District 23, Meives did not reach for a consultant-polished answer.

“Power costs,” he said. That is where the politics starts. Not in ideology. Not in cable news rage stew.

At the utility bill.

The Politics of the Power Bill

There are few things more politically clarifying than an electric bill that makes a family stare at the ceiling and start doing math.

For Meives, utility costs are not some side issue. They are one of the clearest examples of how state policy touches working families directly. District 23, like much of Indiana, has been hit by a hot summer, storms, higher energy demand, and growing concerns about data centers being built around the state.

“Everyone’s feeling the pinch,” he said.

That phrase matters because it captures the shared nature of the problem. Utility bills do not ask how someone voted before landing in the mailbox. A rising power bill does not care whether someone lives in town, on a farm, in a manufactured home, in a rental, or in a house they have owned for thirty years.

People feel it. They look for someone to blame. Then they look for someone who can actually fix it.

Meives argues that the Indiana General Assembly has more power than it often admits.

“We can place regulations on the utility companies in this state,” he said.

That is a direct answer to a direct problem.

Too often, state lawmakers talk about affordability like it is a weather pattern. Bad luck. Global forces. Market pressure. Nothing to be done, folks, except squint harder at the bill and maybe unplug a lamp.

But utilities are regulated. Energy infrastructure is shaped by policy. Data centers do not appear through divine Wi-Fi intervention. They are approved, incentivized, connected, powered, and, in many cases, treated as economic development before communities fully understand the cost.

Meives points to NIPSCO as an example of a utility with enormous influence across northern Indiana. He talks about natural gas, electricity, heating homes, and the way large data centers can increase demand.

When a data center burns through power and natural gas, somebody is going to pay.

The question is who.

If the answer is families already struggling with utility bills, then that is not economic development.

That is a transfer of burden.

Data Centers and the Price of Progress

Data centers are often sold with futuristic language.

Innovation. Investment. Technology. Jobs. Growth.

The words arrive clean and polished, wearing a hard hat for the ribbon cutting.

But rural and small-town communities are learning to ask better questions.

What do these projects consume?

How much water?

How much power?

How much land?

How much infrastructure?

How much public subsidy?

How much local strain?

And what do they give back once the construction jobs are gone?

Meives is not arguing that Indiana should reject every new industry or fear every new project. His point is that state government has a responsibility to make sure these projects do not become corporate vacuum cleaners plugged into the local grid.

He says Indiana needs stronger rules on “how much data centers can consume without giving anything back.”

That is the key phrase: without giving anything back.

A community is not just a site. It is not a blank patch on an economic development map. It is people, farms, workers, water systems, roads, schools, utilities, and homes. When a project changes the cost structure of a community, the community deserves protection.

Meives also argues that data centers cannot rely only on fossil fuels. He wants requirements around green energy production. That is not just environmental policy. It is affordability policy. If massive energy users strain a system already under pressure, families should not be forced to subsidize someone else’s profit model through higher monthly bills.

Progress that leaves regular people poorer is not progress.

It is a sales pitch with better lighting.

Forgotten After Election Day

Rural Indiana hears a lot about respect.

Politicians praise rural values. They praise small towns. They praise farmers, factory workers, veterans, parents, churches, schools, and community spirit. Then the election ends, and too many of those same communities are left wondering if praise was the only thing on the delivery truck.

Meives says rural voters want lawmakers to understand something basic.

“Just because they might get elected in office doesn’t mean that they can just be forgotten about,” he said.

That line should make a few elected officials shift in their chairs.

Because the feeling of being forgotten is not abstract. It shows up in roads. It shows up in county budgets. It shows up when local workers are underpaid. It shows up when cities struggle to clean up after storms. It shows up when gas taxes are cut without replacing the road funding local communities depend on.

Meives points to the gas tax debate as an example. Dropping the gas tax may relieve some burden at the pump. People feel that, and he acknowledges it. But he also notes that fuel taxes help fund roads. If that revenue disappears without a serious plan to replace it, the cost does not vanish. It lands on county governments, city governments, and local workers already stretched thin.

That is the part tax-cut politics likes to hide in the glove compartment.

A tax cut can sound good at the podium and still leave local communities worse off if it guts the revenue used to keep basic systems functioning.

In Miami County, Meives said county workers recently did not receive a pay increase. City street departments are also struggling, especially after storm damage.

These are not glamorous issues. They are governing issues.

The people clearing roads after storms, repairing streets, maintaining local services, and keeping county government functioning are not background characters in a campaign ad. They are the ones doing the daily work that makes a community livable.

If the state cuts revenue and then local governments cannot keep up, that is not small government.

That is state government passing the buck downward and pretending it disappeared.

Schools Are Being Asked to Do the Impossible

Education in Indiana has become a crowded battlefield, and public schools keep getting handed more responsibilities with fewer resources.

Meives approaches the issue with a level of humility. He notes that he is not a parent, then immediately gives parents credit for how hard the job has become in a world where every distraction, every algorithm, every argument, and every stranger with an opinion can fit inside a phone.

He is blunt about the dangers kids face online: cyberbullying, hostile behavior, and a digital world they are not always ready to navigate.

But he also sees how much of that burden is being pushed onto schools.

Teachers, he says, are facing angry parents, struggling students, and classrooms that do not have enough resources for every child’s individual needs. Schools are expected to handle more and more of what families, communities, and social systems are failing to support elsewhere.

“They are expected to be the parents,” Meives said. “But the teachers don’t get paid enough to be the parents.”

That is not an attack on parents.

It is an indictment of a society that keeps dumping responsibilities into classrooms and then acting shocked when teachers burn out.

Schools are expected to educate, feed, counsel, supervise, discipline, protect, identify abuse, manage technology, respond to mental health struggles, accommodate disabilities, prepare students for careers, soothe parent anger, and somehow do it all while lawmakers argue about cutting the very revenue streams that fund them.

Meives connects this directly to property taxes.

People want property tax cuts. That is understandable. Nobody likes opening a bill and discovering another little financial raccoon has clawed its way into the budget. But property taxes help fund schools. When they are cut without a real replacement plan, schools feel it.

Then come fewer teachers. Larger classrooms. Fewer services. More pressure.

And once again, state-level politics sells relief while local communities receive the consequences.

Meives says government should not be treated only as something that harms people.

“Government can actually help people,” he said, “and it should help people and work for people.”

That sentence may sound basic.

In modern politics, basic can be surprisingly rebellious.

Healthcare Disappears One Service at a Time

Healthcare access in rural Indiana does not always collapse all at once.

Sometimes it disappears one department at a time.

Meives points to Peru, where he says the OB wing at the hospital has shut down. That means people have to go elsewhere for OB, gynecological, and related care.

For a rural community, that is not a small inconvenience. It is a warning light.

When maternity care leaves a community, families lose more than a service. They lose time, proximity, emergency readiness, and confidence that care will be there when they need it. Pregnant patients travel farther. Routine care becomes harder. Emergencies become scarier. The distance between “something feels wrong” and “help is available” gets longer.

Meives connects rural hospital strain to funding decisions, including cuts to Medicaid and the pressure placed on rural hospitals that already operate with less financial cushion.

“We’re poor,” he said of rural Indiana. “You need that exterior money.”

That is not defeatism. It is realism.

Rural hospitals often rely on public funding because the market alone does not guarantee care where profits are thinner. If the state and federal government pull back, rural hospitals do not magically become stronger. They cut services, consolidate, close wings, or disappear.

Then people are told to drive farther.

Again.

Meives also connects this to COVID and future pandemics. Rural hospitals were stressed then. If resources are cut again, he asks, what happens the next time?

That is the question public officials should be asking before the next crisis, not after.

Prevention is cheaper than collapse.

But Indiana has a habit of refusing to fix the roof until the rain has formed a steering committee in the living room.

A Younger Candidate With an Old Frustration

Meives is part of a younger generation stepping into politics, but he does not romanticize youth participation. He says younger people, when they are involved, want government to work for the people. But many are not involved, and he understands why.

He remembers being younger and wondering why voting mattered if no one was going to listen anyway.

Now he is running for office because he wants to listen.

That is the hinge.

Disengagement is not always laziness. Sometimes it is learned helplessness. Young voters grow up watching politics turn into spectacle, government feel distant, social media flatten every issue into tribal bait, and elected officials ask for votes without seeming interested in what people actually need.

Meives says he increasingly hates the internet that has been built.

That line will land with anyone who remembers when the internet felt like a tool instead of a slot machine for your attention span. He jokes that it is his “old man talk” even though he is only thirty.

But behind the humor is a serious point: political communication now has to break through a wall of algorithmic noise, cynicism, misinformation, outrage, and exhaustion.

For younger candidates, that creates both a challenge and an opportunity.

They understand the noise because they live in it.

They also know that listening has become rare enough to be its own campaign strategy.

Representation Means Answering People

When asked why District 23 deserves better representation, Meives gave a simple answer.

“They deserve a representative [who] is actually gonna answer them.”

That may sound like a low bar, but low bars become important when people keep tripping over them.

Meives says many voters do not know who their state representative is. Others think they are outside the district because they live outside town. Some only vote during presidential years. Some do not know who is on their ballot.

He puts some responsibility on voters to find out who represents them and when elections happen. But he also believes government can do more to help people participate, including something like a ballot booklet so voters know who is on the ballot.

That is a small reform with a big democratic purpose.

People cannot hold power accountable if they cannot identify it.

Local and state government often have the most direct impact on roads, schools, utilities, healthcare access, land use, taxes, and daily life. Yet those are the offices many voters know the least about. The presidency absorbs all the oxygen while state lawmakers quietly shape the room.

Meives is arguing for representation that is reachable.

Answer the phone. Answer the email. Show up. Explain the vote.

Tell people what is happening before they find out through a bill, a closure, a detour, or a budget cut.

It is not revolutionary. It is just the job.

Which says a lot about where we are.

The Common Ground Beneath the Noise

One of the most important things Meives says he has learned is that rural Indiana is not as politically simple as people make it out to be.

“Just because it’s rural Indiana and just because there is a large section of Republican voters does not mean that they are solely Republican voters,” he said.

That is a useful reminder in a state where rural voters are often discussed like a single block of concrete wearing a red hat.

People may lean conservative because that is what they were taught, who they grew up around, what they hear at work, what their family believes, or what they think Democrats think of them. But that does not mean they cannot be reached. It does not mean they do not care about roads, schools, hospitals, wages, utilities, and stability.

Meives says the work is getting a foot in the door and having a conversation. Find common ground. Start with what people actually want.

A roof over their heads. Food in their bellies. Stable lives. That is not left or right. That is human.

“Whether you came to this country from another country and immigrated here, whether you come from another state and became a Hoosier, or whether you were born here,” Meives said, that is what people want.

This is where his campaign’s moral argument comes into view.

District 23 does not need politics that turns every neighbor into an enemy. It needs a government that works well enough for people to stop feeling abandoned by it.

That means utility regulation. Rural hospital support. Road funding. Public school investment. Better communication with voters. Attention to rural communities after Election Day.

And a Statehouse that understands tax cuts are not free if the services people depend on are the price.

What Government Is For

The argument Austin Meives is making is not flashy.

It is not built for a thirty-second ad with flags flapping dramatically in the background while a narrator says “Hoosier values” like the phrase owes him rent.

His argument is more practical than that.

Government should work for people. It should help keep energy affordable. It should make sure data centers do not drain resources without giving back. It should fund roads and the workers who maintain them. It should support schools instead of asking teachers to absorb every social failure on a classroom budget. It should keep rural healthcare from shrinking until patients have to drive farther for basic care. It should make elections easier to understand. It should answer people. It should remember rural communities after the votes are counted.

That is not big government.

That is functional government.

And perhaps that is what rural Indiana is really asking for: not a miracle, not a savior, not another politician with a mailer full of cornfield poses and suspiciously clean jeans.

Just competence. Just accountability.

Just a government that does not treat every public service like a burden and every corporate demand like an opportunity.

Meives is running as a younger candidate in a district that many people may assume is already politically settled. But his campaign is built on the idea that people are more complicated than their voting history, and that even conservative-leaning communities can be reached when the conversation starts with daily life instead of party labels.

Power costs. Roads. Schools. Hospitals. Storm cleanup. Property taxes. Gas taxes. Data centers.

The things people actually talk about when the cameras are not rolling.

A district does not need to be downtown Indianapolis to deserve attention. A rural road is still infrastructure. A rural hospital is still healthcare. A rural school is still public education. A rural utility bill is still a family budget problem. A rural voter is still a citizen owed representation.

District 23 is not asking to be treated as special.

It is asking not to be forgotten.

And in Indiana politics, that may be one of the most important demands on the ballot.

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Fire Week continues on this special Thursday bonus episode as Scott talks with Josh Burbrink, a volunteer firefighter and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 59 (Bartholomew County, including Columbus). By day Burbrink is a business intelligence director at Mainstream Fiber Networks, working to extend rural broadband; he also sits on his county’s planning and zoning board, volunteers with the Sierra Club, and serves as president of the Friends of Bartholomew County Library. The two trace how SEA 1, Indiana’s 2025 property-tax overhaul, hollows out the institutions he calls “the heart” of rural communities — fire departments, schools, and libraries — forcing fire departments toward costly consolidation that lengthens response times and raises homeowners’ insurance rates, all to deliver meager saving for homeowners against a $1.2 billion state giveaway to business. They dig into school vouchers increasingly captured by families earning over $100,000 rather than the low-income students they were meant to help, a tense library board fight over children’s book displays amid the Moms For Liberty-led moral panic, and the lobbying culture Burbrink encountered firsthand at the Statehouse’s Renewable Energy Day. He closes by flagging two priorities for a (hopefully) more-Democratic 2027 session: requiring data centers to be net exporters of renewable energy, and regulating Flock license-plate cameras, which currently operate in Indiana with no warrant requirement or data-retention rules.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Josh Burbrink: https://www.voteburbrink.com/

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction: Fire Week Continues

Scott recaps Tuesday’s conversation with Rep. Randy Novak (HD-9) and introduces tonight’s guest: Josh Burbrink, a volunteer firefighter, business intelligence director at Mainstream Fiber Networks, and Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 59.

00:03:14 Welcoming Josh Burbrink

Josh joins the show and introduces himself: this is his third run for office, after prior bids for county council and commissioner.

Josh describes cold-calling his local fire department on a whim, getting voted on that Monday, and training through roughly nine months of certifications (Firefighter I/II, hazmat) — now in his eighth year volunteering.

00:06:53 The Brown County Wildfire

Josh’s most memorable call: a 30-plus-acre wildfire at Brown County State Park that kept crews out from 9 p.m. to nearly 4 a.m. using “Indian pack” water backpacks, with state wildfire specialists eventually called in to help.

00:09:46 Volunteer Firefighters’ Billions in Savings

Picking up a figure from Tuesday’s episode with Novak, Scott and Josh discuss how volunteer departments save Indiana an estimated $4–6 billion a year, and why low-call-volume rural areas can’t justify full-time paid staff; Josh’s own department runs a hybrid model with daytime paid coverage.

00:13:16 SEA 1’s Disproportionate Hit on Rural Fire Departments

Josh explains how SEA 1 cuts the property-tax base township trustees rely on to fund fire protection, pushing departments toward new local income taxes — a regressive fix buried in layers of required local sign-off (fire board, chiefs, trustees, county council).

00:15:55 Consolidation, Response Times, and Rising Insurance Rates

Merging fire departments to cover larger areas means longer response times, which in turn raises homeowners’ insurance premiums — and in the worst cases, Josh warns, insurers simply stop covering fire risk altogether, pushing some areas toward costly private fire subscription services.

00:17:43 The Real Math on SEA 1’s “Savings”

Josh says he personally saved about $200 on his tax bill from SEA 1, against roughly $1.2 billion in business tax cuts statewide and a combined $750 million hole across Indiana school districts, many now turning to ballot referendums.

00:20:17 The Heart of Rural Communities

Scott and Josh argue these cuts gut schools, fire departments, and libraries — often a rural area’s largest employers — triggering a downward spiral as lost jobs shrink the tax base further; Josh connects it directly to rural hospital closures pushing uninsured patients toward costly ER visits and volunteer EMS runs.

00:22:17 Would Eliminating Townships Make It Worse?

Responding to a 2026 legislative proposal to eliminate townships, Josh warns that moving fire funding decisions from the township to the county level would centralize control, likely consolidate departments further, and push response times up even more.

00:24:53 Friends of the Library and the Summer Reading Program

Josh describes his role with the nonprofit Friends of the Library, which funds the library’s summer reading program and merchandise sales that the library itself, as a government entity, can’t easily run.

00:28:13 The Library Book-Banning Fight

Josh recounts a contentious library board meeting over children’s book displays — amid a broader moral panic Scott connects to Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith — where he and his father-in-law spoke up for the library, rallied 100-plus supporters to a follow-up meeting, and separately encountered an armed man photographing book displays and questioning staff about LGBTQ+ children’s titles.

Scott notes the irony of First Amendment advocates pushing to restrict what library patrons can read while elevating the Second Amendment above all else.

00:32:53 Rural Broadband and the Day Job at Mainstream Fiber

Josh details his work in business intelligence for Mainstream Fiber Networks, the state’s layered broadband-grant history (Indiana Next Level Connections program, federal BEAD program), and how remote work and tele-health depend on rural areas finally getting reliable internet.

00:39:33 Snow Days, Remote Learning, and Testing Pressure

Scott laments the lost whimsy of snow days in the remote-learning era; Josh ties the shift to statehouse-driven testing standards that threaten school funding if scores slip, turning snow days into mandatory remote-school days.

00:41:04 School Vouchers: Choice for Some, Not for Rural Districts

Scott and Josh discuss how Indiana’s “money follows the student” framing breaks down in rural areas with no real school choice, while the majority of voucher recipients statewide now come from families earning over $100,000 a year — a reversal of the program’s original low-income intent — and private schools raising tuition by exactly the voucher amount.

00:45:45 Breaking the Supermajority

Looking to a 2027 budget session, Josh names schools, fire departments, and libraries as his top three priorities. Scott posits that Democrats are likely to flip at least the four seats needed to break the House supermajority on November 3rd.

00:47:04 Lobbying Culture at the Statehouse

Josh recounts attending Renewable Energy Day with the Sierra Club and being stunned to learn statehouse hallways fill with competing lobbying groups daily during session — and argues that breaking the supermajority would let Democrats slow down bills pushed through, by his estimate, with half the chamber not having read them.

00:52:22 Data Centers and Renewable Energy

Asked what got missed, Josh raises data centers as a hot-button rural issue; his county recently closed a loophole letting them be rezoned as unremarkable “communication centers,” and he’d like to see future projects required to be net exporters of renewable energy so grid costs don’t get passed to ratepayers.

00:53:37 Flock Cameras and Surveillance Without Guardrails

Josh describes rigging his own truck to count how often he passes Flock license-plate cameras, and warns Indiana has no warrant or data-retention requirements governing a privately owned surveillance network that’s been used to track interstate marijuana purchases and people seeking out-of-state reproductive health care.

00:56:11 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Josh Burbrink

Josh makes his closing case, noting 2026 marks the country’s 250th anniversary, and directs voters to VoteBurbrink.com, Facebook, and ActBlue for donations.

00:57:21 Show Outro

https://progressiveindiana.net

SUMMARY:

With early voting underway, Rev. Alexander and Pastor Greene devote the episode to education, joined by Rev. Dr. Wayne Moore, who is seeking a second term on the Pike Township School Board. Moore describes a district doing better than most but squeezed by the General Assembly, falling enrollment, and the loss of per-student funding to charter schools. The three discuss the record 38 school referendums on the November ballot, why they expect many to fail, and why they say school boards must explain the money to taxpayers. Greene warns that closed or failing charter schools can turn public school property into development land, and that the appointed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation will control who gets IPS buildings. The second half turns to Turning Point USA's Club America chapters in Indiana high schools, which Alexander maps on air and urges voters to ask school board candidates about. Callers Joyce, Barbara, and Imhotep weigh in on redistricting, what happens to charter school buildings, and curriculum that centers African-American literature. Greene closes by urging Pike Township voters to re-elect the three incumbents and announcing this weekend's march to the polls.

WHAT’S INSIDE

00:00:00 — Welcome, prayer, and the education focus

- Alexander introduces Moore, an incumbent on the Pike Township School Board seeking another term

- Greene opens in prayer, thanking Moore for his willingness to serve on the school board

- Moore says he is excited to join the Concerned Clergy conversation

- Alexander says the show will center on education and urges voters in Pike Township, IPS, and every district with a school board race or referendum to pay close attention

00:03:27 — Moore’s platform as an incumbent

- Moore is closing out his first four years and seeking a second term

- Says he sits on the committee negotiating a contract for the district

- Says education is under a “government gavel” and Pike Township is doing better than many other townships

- Says no one knows what the General Assembly will do heading into 2027, and that the last two years have been extremely difficult for districts statewide

00:05:29 — A record number of school referendums

- Alexander: roughly 38 referendums are on the November ballot and resources are stretched across Indiana; voters should back candidates who want to put resources into schools

- Greene: Moore was instrumental in getting Pike’s referendum across the finish line by explaining it to the community

- Greene says districts with surplus money now will face referendums again within a year or two

- Greene predicts not all 38 referendums will pass, depending on who speaks for them and whether they’re explained rather than looking like another tax increase

00:08:37 — The Pike ballot and Moore’s warning on referendums

- Moore: three seats, four candidates, and three incumbents; he strongly encourages voters to consider the incumbents given the state of education

- Says not all referendums will be accepted, and that even districts like Carmel, Hamilton, and Zionsville are now signing up for major referendums

- Says school boards and bargaining units must shift from “us against them” to working together for survival

- Says the aim is graduation and proficiency, with as many teachers and services as possible kept in place

00:11:42 — Fellow incumbents and Pike’s biggest challenge

- Moore names the other two incumbents as Terry Webster and Alonzo Anderson, saying there is work still to finish

- Says Pike’s biggest challenge is a stronger budget, to secure staff and school security

- Says nearly every district has lost students, and losing 200 students means losing the dollars that pay teachers

- Says school boards need to communicate with the community rather than seek to be “important”

00:13:56 — Charter schools and the loss of per-student funding

- Alexander says much of the student movement is due to charter schools scattering students in many directions

- Greene: when a charter picks up a couple hundred students, the district loses funding tied per student, often learning of it mid-year and having to cut

- Greene notes diesel and gas costs are straining shrinking school district budgets

- Greene says this is why IPS needed to keep an elected board rather than an appointed one

00:16:36 — Moore on how charter funding is deducted

- Moore: when students leave for charters, the money follows, and it comes out of the district’s funds

- Says Pike’s state dollars are paid out to charters first; with 75 students gone to charters, the charter school is paid before the township

- Calls it disrespectful to a township that has educated students for 132 years

- Says Pike is effectively supporting two systems, the township district and the charter district

00:19:11 — Vouchers and the case for public education

- Alexander says more Indiana vouchers now go to families earning over $100,000 than to lower earners, though the program was meant to help the less fortunate

- Moore says he is running on public education and is a product of it

- Notes IPS has existed for 173 years; says charters have a far shorter record and there aren’t enough successful ones to meet graduation and proficiency needs

- Warns against “wolves in sheep’s clothing” joining public education boards

00:22:38 — Lawmakers’ role in school board structure

- Alexander says many of the problems Moore describes are caused by legislators who change the rules and put boards in place to carry their water

- Argues voters must look at the legislators making these laws as well as at school board candidates

- Says the districts are suffering because of the laws lawmakers have passed

00:24:30 — Caller Joyce: redistricting and the courts

- Joyce says Indianapolis was divided up to dilute the Black vote and that people should be able to vote on their own

- Says some people in the courts need training, citing a police officer she says should not have been reintroduced to the force

- Alexander thanks her and returns to Moore

00:26:41 — Do Pike families understand the referendum?

- Alexander asks whether parents understand charter schools, the referendum, and other district dynamics

- Moore: “Some do and some don’t”; most people are still gaining knowledge about the referendum

- Moore says that if taxpayers paid for the referendum they ought to know about it, especially if the district needs to ask again

- Moore hopes the board will set a clearer line of communication about referendums

- Alexander previews Turning Point USA and says voters should ask school board candidates whether they support it in schools

00:30:23 — Caller Barbara: what happens to charter buildings?

- Barbara asks whether charter schools own IPS buildings and what happens to the property if a school closes

- Alexander says charters can acquire buildings for a dollar

- Greene: this is how neighborhoods are gentrified, as failing charters leave property that becomes development land

- Greene says the IPS superintendent has said she must sell schools, but the appointed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC) will control who gets the buildings

00:33:03 — School property, data centers, and playing chess

- Greene says charter-school rules are being modified, but that has not yet happened

- Says school property is massive, including athletic fields, and is the kind of land a data center developer would love to get for a dollar

- Says the Black community is often hurt because that money doesn’t flow into school systems the way it should

- Greene: “while we’re playing checkers, others are playing chess,” planning five to ten years out

00:34:52 — Why charter schools struggle to sustain enrollment

- Greene says he is pro-public education and that charters need a minimum number of students to be sustainable

- Cites the STEM school on Michigan Road, which he says is in the news this week for being short of students

- Says many charters lack resources for special-needs children

- Says rising rents and utility costs push families to move, so charters lose students they counted on

00:37:57 — Turning Point USA’s Club America chapters

- Alexander says falling birth rates mean “the math ain’t math” for adding schools

- Presents a map of Turning Point USA’s Club America, its high school chapter program, and describes its toolkit and regional contacts

- Says there are over 20 schools in central Indiana, with 11 on the north side of town and six on the south side

- Urges voters to ask school board candidates whether they support Turning Point USA

00:41:06 — Moore on Turning Point’s reach and curriculum

- Moore says the data shows 65 chapters statewide, including ones in Westfield, Huntington North, and Cardinal Ritter

- Says most listed schools are outside Marion County except Brebeuf, that Ritter should be on the list, and that Pike and North Central are not yet on it while Decatur is “moving”

- Says school boards aren’t discussing it and calls the curriculum “poisonous and dangerous,” saying he and Greene did a show on it

- Moore says the group caters to young white people and shows no Black or brown students in its literature

- Alexander lists Zionsville, Perry Meridian, Noblesville, Mooresville, Hamilton Southeastern, Franklin Central, Fishers, Brownsburg, and Brebeuf among the schools

00:45:33 — Governor Braun and Turning Point in schools

- Alexander says everyone should know whether a school board candidate supports it

- Moore says the group has no business in an extracurricular program in schools

- Moore says Governor Mike Braun found a way to push it into school systems and that the announcement showed only white children

00:46:25 — Caller Imhotep: deconstructing the curriculum

- Imhotep says he saw Moore at Roland Martin’s recent book signing in Indianapolis, where Martin shared strategies, and urges boycotts of corporations that don’t treat people fairly

- Argues education must be deconstructed, asking whether charter schools, including Black-run ones, use African-American literature and instructors

- Calls Turning Point an “ethnostate” and links it to the “Great Replacement” and white-supremacist doctrines, saying ministers are the torchlight against it

00:49:29 — Moore’s closing thoughts on books and education

- Moore says the books Imhotep listed are being taken out of libraries, which is a detriment to any new charter school

- Says education has become a threat to “the other culture”

- Says education once meant going back to the neighborhood to bring others along, a tradition he says we’ve lost and must regain

00:51:14 — March to the polls and a vote for the incumbents

- Greene: marches to the polls will take place in every township this weekend; Pike’s leaves Bethel AME at 11:30 for the Pike library, with “Souls to the Polls” on Sunday

- Greene urges voting for Moore and the other two Pike incumbents, saying the district needs people who already understand Turning Point USA, budgets, and money

- Greene thanks Moore for stepping up, saying his love for children is unquestionable after four years on the board

- Alexander urges everyone to vote

https://concernedclergy.org

https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy

https://progressiveindiana.net

There is an easy version of political independence and a difficult one.

The easy version happens during a campaign. Candidates say they will think for themselves, put constituents first, ignore party bosses, work across the aisle, and never forget who sent them to the Statehouse. It sounds terrific at a town hall. It fits neatly on a mailer. Everybody loves independence right up until independence votes against them.

The difficult version begins after Election Day.

That is when leadership controls committee assignments, bills need hearings, caucuses count votes, donors make phone calls, and colleagues remember who broke ranks. Independence stops being a personality trait and becomes a choice with consequences.

Maggie Davis, the Republican candidate for Indiana House District 26, is staking much of her campaign on the argument that she would make that choice anyway.

“If it comes down to it and it means I’m a one-term state representative,” Davis said, “I’d be willing to lose if that’s what it means.”

That is a substantial promise because Davis is not merely offering a softer version of Republican orthodoxy. On several major issues, she is openly challenging positions associated with her own party. She supports revisiting Indiana’s abortion restrictions. She favors cannabis legalization. She wants stronger public-school funding. She supports a temporary moratorium on new AI data centers. She believes Indiana’s minimum wage should rise. She wants to phase out Flock-style automated license-plate surveillance. And she says she would work with Democrats if Republican colleagues refused to move survivor-protection legislation.

The question hanging over her candidacy is not whether those positions make her an unusual Republican.

They do.

The real question is whether a Republican who campaigns this way can govern this way once the caucus room door closes.

Changing the Party From Inside

Davis does not describe herself as someone who accidentally ended up with the wrong party label.

She says she wants to change the Republican Party from within.

Her understanding of conservatism is rooted less in the current national party than in an older tradition emphasizing individual liberty, limited government, local control, and skepticism of state power. She points to earlier Republican figures such as Betty Ford when explaining why she sees reproductive choice as compatible with a Republican philosophy centered on personal freedom.

That creates a clash with modern Indiana Republican politics almost immediately.

Davis says she would support repealing or substantially changing Indiana’s current abortion restrictions. Her argument is less about party doctrine than about whether bans actually accomplish their intended purpose.

“Banning it isn’t working,” she said. “If you have abortion bans, that does not work. It’s still happening and it’s just more unsafe.”

Her preferred approach is to attack the conditions that can contribute to unwanted pregnancies or make continuing a pregnancy economically overwhelming: inadequate sex education, expensive childcare, lack of health insurance, healthcare costs, and financial insecurity.

That does not make the abortion debate disappear. People who believe abortion itself is morally unacceptable will not be satisfied by reducing the circumstances that lead to it. People who favor broader reproductive rights may object to any gestational limit. Davis says she would draw a line around viability, when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

But her position reveals something important about how she approaches policy. She tends to ask whether the law is changing behavior or simply declaring disapproval of it.

That same instinct appears elsewhere in her platform.

Cannabis Is Where Tax Policy Meets Reality

Davis’s support for cannabis legalization began with a practical question: if Indiana residents are already purchasing marijuana legally in neighboring states, why should Indiana continue exporting the tax revenue?

“We all know people are smoking weed,” she said. “We can all smell it.”

There is perhaps no phrase less likely to appear in a traditional Republican policy paper.

Davis has floated legalization as one possible source of revenue that could help Indiana reduce other taxes, including the gasoline tax or property-tax pressure. She also wants to audit government spending and examine whether staffing and administrative costs are producing enough value.

The important part of her argument is not whether cannabis revenue could single-handedly replace any particular tax. It almost certainly should not be discussed as a magical revenue fountain. Roads, schools, local governments, and property-tax structures involve sums and funding mechanisms far larger and more complicated than a single new excise tax can solve on its own.

What Davis does understand is the part politicians occasionally skip: eliminating a tax does not eliminate the thing that tax was paying for.

“You can’t just eliminate something,” she said. “At the end of the day, you have to have the money coming in because we have to be able to fix the roads.”

That is a more fiscally serious starting point than simply promising taxpayers a smaller bill and leaving the arithmetic for the next legislature.

Her willingness to consider cannabis also illustrates her broader political posture. She does not appear particularly interested in preserving a Republican position simply because it has been a Republican position.

If circumstances have changed, she says the policy should be reconsidered.

Public Schools Are Where Her Party Fight Gets Local

For Davis, the fight over public education is not theoretical.

District 26 includes West Lafayette and surrounding communities where public schools are central to property values, economic development, family decisions, and the region’s identity.

Davis says Indiana lawmakers have shifted too much responsibility onto homeowners by reducing state support and forcing communities to look toward local referendums.

“I think it’s time to accept the fact that the Statehouse did something wrong,” she said. “It’s time for someone to wrangle my own party in.”

That may be one of the clearest examples of what she means by changing Republicans from within.

She supports strong public-school funding because public schools carry a universal obligation. They must educate the children who arrive at their doors regardless of income, disability, religion, or family background.

“Your zip code should not determine your education,” Davis said. “You deserve the opportunity.”

Her educational interests also extend beyond traditional college preparation. Davis wants stronger voter education in high school and more serious workforce-development pathways for students who may prefer trades, apprenticeships, employment, or part-time higher education.

She is particularly skeptical of the assumption that every successful teenager must immediately pursue a four-year degree.

That position is hardly revolutionary in Indiana, but her framing matters. Public schools, in her view, should prepare students for citizenship and adulthood rather than simply funneling them toward one approved definition of success.

The kid headed to Purdue and the kid headed toward an electrical apprenticeship both need a functioning public school.

Indiana will need both of them.

Data Centers Have Become Her Line in the Farmland

Few issues reveal Davis’s willingness to depart from Republican economic-development orthodoxy more clearly than data centers.

She supports a three-year moratorium on new AI data-center projects while Indiana studies their effects on water, agriculture, utilities, the environment, and surrounding communities.

That puts her at odds with a development philosophy that often treats large capital investment as an automatic win.

Davis does not.

“I am not willing to let go of Indiana farmland and make it to the point where Hoosiers are in danger in the name of economic development,” she said.

Her skepticism is not simply environmental. She questions whether projects receiving substantial tax incentives create enough permanent jobs or local economic benefit to justify the public concessions surrounding them.

She also points to a recurring problem in modern development policy: an announcement can contain an enormous investment number while telling residents surprisingly little about who gets the jobs, who pays for infrastructure, how much water or electricity the project uses, and what happens after the construction crews leave.

Economic development should be evaluated by what remains in the community, not by the size of the number in the press release.

Davis’s environmental politics may be the place where she sounds least like the Republican establishment she wants to reform. She openly describes herself as more liberal on environmental issues because she sees farmland, water, livestock, and human health as things that cannot simply be reconstructed after the damage is done.

“Once we destroy the environment, we’re toast,” she said.

There are legitimate arguments on the other side. Data centers support the digital infrastructure modern businesses and consumers increasingly rely upon. They can expand tax bases, create construction work, and attract related investment. A blanket moratorium carries its own economic costs.

But Davis is asking the question that should accompany every large development proposal: what are taxpayers and residents receiving in exchange for what they are giving up?

That question is not anti-business.

It is what taxpayers are supposed to ask.

Her Minimum-Wage Position Is Modest, but Politically Revealing

Davis’s proposal to raise Indiana’s minimum wage to somewhere around $10 to $12 an hour will satisfy neither the people who want a $15 or $20 minimum nor those who believe government should leave wages largely to the market.

That may be precisely why the position is revealing.

She is not promising a dramatic transformation. She is saying $7.25 has become indefensible.

“You can’t even buy groceries on that,” Davis said.

Her reasoning is straightforward. A statutory minimum may affect relatively few workers directly if employers already pay above it, but it still establishes a floor below which the state considers wages legally acceptable.

For Davis, $7.25 sends the wrong message about what labor is worth.

The larger affordability problem, however, cannot be solved through minimum wage alone. Davis herself talks about housing construction costs, utility hookups, local regulation, material prices, childcare, healthcare, and the effect of development on available land.

That makes affordability less of a single legislative problem than a pileup.

She wants state and local government to listen more closely to builders when regulations or utility costs make lower-priced housing difficult to construct. At the same time, she wants government to protect farmland and slow data-center development.

Those goals can conflict.

Preserving land can constrain development. Reducing regulatory costs can encourage building. Local control can produce rules developers dislike. Housing affordability frequently means deciding which competing interest gets less of what it wants.

That is governing.

Campaigns get to say everything matters. Legislatures eventually have to decide what matters most.

Surveillance Is Where Her Conservatism Sounds Most Traditional

Davis’s opposition to Flock cameras and automated license-plate surveillance comes from a distinctly old-school conservative instinct: government should not be able to watch people continuously simply because technology makes it possible.

She frames the issue around the Fourth Amendment, government accountability, and distrust of institutions auditing themselves.

Her own experience dealing with institutional investigations has made her particularly skeptical of internal oversight.

“I don’t trust people investigating their own people,” Davis said.

She wants Flock-style systems phased out rather than shut off overnight, arguing that police departments have become dependent on them. She would prefer greater use of conventional cameras and more officers working directly in communities.

Her argument is not that police should have fewer investigative tools. It is that surveillance technology changes the relationship between citizens and government in ways that deserve more scrutiny than the simple question of whether it helps solve crimes.

That distinction matters.

A technology can be useful and still raise civil-liberties concerns.

License-plate readers can help locate vehicles connected to crimes or missing people. They can also create massive databases tracking where ordinary people travel. The policy question is not whether either statement is true.

Both can be true.

The question is what limits citizens expect government to accept when technology makes surveillance cheap, automatic, and nearly invisible.

Davis answers that question aggressively in favor of privacy.

That is a conservative argument Republicans once made routinely.

Survivor Protections Are Personal

The issue that strips away most of Davis’s political abstraction is sexual violence.

She has spoken publicly about navigating the Title IX process and dealing with institutions she believes failed to provide sufficient protection after her own experience.

That history shapes her call for broader survivor-protection policies, better sex education, consent education, and more serious recognition of forms of sexual assault that cannot always be handled through the evidentiary framework people associate with rape cases.

Davis rejects the argument that prevention is impossible.

“Sex education would prevent it,” she said. “Educating people that no means no and consent training, that’s how you prevent it.”

Education will not prevent every assault. Human behavior is not that simple. But Davis’s larger point is that survivor policy cannot begin only after someone has already been harmed.

She also says she would cross party lines without hesitation if Republican lawmakers refused to hear legislation she believed would help survivors.

“My job is to represent my community, not my political party,” Davis said. “I will work with literally anyone.”

This is where the campaign’s central promise becomes measurable.

It is one thing for a Republican candidate to say she supports survivor protections. It is another to force a public disagreement with Republican leadership if they refuse to move her bill.

Davis says she would.

If elected, voters should remember that answer.

Accountability Includes Admitting You Were Wrong

Davis repeatedly returns to an idea that politicians rarely advertise: sometimes elected officials make bad decisions.

Her frustration is not merely that politicians change positions. She believes changing one’s mind can be healthy.

What bothers her is changing without acknowledging the original mistake.

“You can change your mind later, but you have to admit that you messed up in the first place,” she said.

That is a demanding standard because it applies just as easily to her.

If her data-center moratorium produces unintended economic consequences, will she say so?

If cannabis revenue fails to meet expectations, will she revise the plan?

If builders receive regulatory relief but housing prices do not meaningfully improve, will she reconsider the approach?

If a surveillance policy she favors instead of Flock produces its own privacy problems, will she acknowledge that?

Candidates often present adaptability as strength when discussing someone else’s mistake and weakness when discussing their own.

Davis is explicitly promising something different.

That is worth keeping on the receipt.

The Most Important Thing Maggie Davis Said Came at the End

The defining question in Davis’s interview was not about abortion, public schools, cannabis, data centers, wages, or cameras.

It was about loyalty.

If she wins and her first major vote forces her to choose between Republican leadership and the people she represents, who wins?

“District 26, one hundred percent,” Davis said.

Then came the harder part.

Would she accept the consequences?

Davis pointed to Indiana Senator Spencer Deery as an example of a Republican who crossed his party on a major issue and endured the political fallout. She said she would be willing to take the same risk.

“If it comes down to it and it means I’m a one-term state representative,” she said, “I’d be willing to lose if that’s what it means.”

That is the promise voters should file away.

Not because it proves she will keep it.

Because it gives them something specific against which to judge her.

There is a habit in American politics of treating party independence as something candidates demonstrate by naming a few disagreements during election season. Real independence is much more expensive.

It might cost a committee assignment.

It might kill a bill.

It might anger donors.

It might produce a primary challenger.

It might close doors.

It might, as Davis herself said, make someone a one-term representative.

That is when voters discover whether “people before party” was a governing principle or campaign décor.

Maggie Davis is asking House District 26 to believe she is the Republican willing to take that risk.

Her positions give voters reasons to take the claim seriously. They also give them plenty of opportunities to test it if she wins.

That may ultimately be the most useful thing about her campaign.

She has not merely asked voters to trust her.

She has told them exactly where to check.

Two weeks out from Election Day and, unintentionally, it’s “Fire Week” on HoosLeft. Thursday night, we’ll talk with volunteer firefighter and State House candidate Josh Burbrink, but tonight’s guest is State Representative Randy Novak, a 33-year veteran of the Michigan City Fire Department who rose to fire chief before being caucused into Indiana’s House District 9 last October, succeeding retiring Rep. Pat Boy. Novak and Scott trade stories from his firefighting and LaPorte County Council career — including organizing a daily COVID-era information-sharing call with regional officials — before widening out into the state of the union: the collapse of political decorum and the open intimidation Novak has watched colleagues absorb at the Statehouse, a shared diagnosis (arrived at from very different directions) that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tapped into a real sense that the system is rigged for the few, and decades of “socialism” as a meaningless slur aimed at everything from Social Security to teacher pay. Novak, a self-described union man and “simple person” who’s spent 40 years in public service, digs into Indiana’s property-tax overhaul (SEA 1) and its squeeze on fire departments and schools, his own bill updating 1981-era volunteer firefighter stipends, the data-center boom reshaping LaPorte County, and his push to strip data centers’ sales-tax exemption on electricity to ease the burden on NIPSCO ratepayers — all while arguing public utilities should never have been handed to private investors in the first place.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Randy Novak: https://www.electrandynovak.com/

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:20 Introduction

• Scott marks two weeks to Election Day and previews this week’s Thursday bonus episode with HD-59 candidate and volunteer firefighter Josh Burbrink, before introducing tonight’s guest: Randy Novak, a 33-year Michigan City Fire Department veteran and retired chief who went on to lead the LaPorte County Council and was caucused into Indiana House District 9 (Michigan City, northern LaPorte County, and eastern Porter County) after the retirement of Rep. Pat Boy.

00:03:24 One Year In: The Caucus Process

• Rep. Novak joins the show.

• Novak marks his first anniversary in office and walks through how his caucus worked across two counties’ party chairs, arguing a caucus makes more sense than a costly special election for a two-year House term.

00:06:24 Who Is Randy Novak?

• Novak introduces himself: 47 years married, joined a volunteer fire department in 1981 and the Michigan City Fire Department in 1986, served 33-plus years including as union president and a pension-oversight appointee under Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, retired as fire chief, and still chairs the LaPorte County Fire Chiefs Association representing 16 volunteer and two career departments.

00:08:14 Michigan City Roots and the Toughest Calls

• Scott and Novak swap commiserate about their shared Michigan City roots and Randy remembers the toughest calls of his career, including a Seventh Street apartment fire where a wall collapse badly injured a fellow firefighter.

00:10:35 Universally Beloved Public Servants

• Scott and Novak reflect on the broad public respect for firefighters, with Novak drawing a contrast between fire service (”we come, and we’re problem solvers”) and law enforcement.

00:11:25 Organizing Indiana’s COVID Response

• Novak describes organizing a weekly, hour-long Zoom call of up to 75 regional officials — school superintendents, hospital administrators, health departments — during COVID to centralize information LaPorte County otherwise lacked, and says he’d like to revive the model.

00:14:32 End Times Fascism and the Shape of the Moment

• Scott cites End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, framing the current moment as religious extremism, tech-billionaire “neo-feudalism,” and the climate crisis all burning at once.

00:15:58 A Fever in the Heartland: Echoes of the 1920s Klan

• Scott references Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland, on 1920s Klan leader D.C. Stephenson’s rise in Indiana, and worries the embers of that era’s extremism were never fully put out.

00:17:06 A Hopeful Breeze Across Indiana

• Novak says he senses a refreshing political shift in the state after a long dry spell, and Scott notes a surge of new political engagement.

00:18:25 Political Intimidation and the Death of Decorum

• Novak describes a shift from private arm-twisting to public, televised threats against members who won’t toe the line, and says he’d rather go home than be “a puppet.”

00:22:47 Business-Friendly vs. Citizen-Friendly, and the Road to Trump

• Scott and Novak discuss Indiana’s “business-friendly” branding and the state’s gutting of IDEM environmental regulations, then trace a line from the 1980s repeal of the Fairness Doctrine through talk radio, Fox News, and social media to Trump exploiting the resulting outrage machine.

00:25:08 Trump, Bernie Sanders, and a Rigged System

• Scott argues Trump and Bernie Sanders both tapped into the same real grievance — a system rigged for the wealthy few — despite vastly different prescriptions.

00:25:55 Union Pride and “A Thousand Millionaires”

• Novak, a former Teamster and 33-year IAFF member whose wife retired from a union job at American Airlines, calls unions the last thing holding up the middle class and relays a line from Senator Rodney Pol: if Elon Musk moved his 14 kids to Indiana, they’d each get a $10,000 school voucher.

00:28:07 Privatizing Public Goods: Charter Schools

• Scott and Novak argue Indiana has defunded and tried to privatize public goods, starting with schools, even though 90% of Hoosier kids attend public school and the strongest-performing states have well-funded public systems; Novak faults education bills from Indianapolis-area Rep. Bob Behning‘s committee for not fitting the state’s other 91 counties.

00:31:34 “Socialism for the Charter Schools”

• Novak notes closing public schools must be offered to charter operators for a dollar regardless of what taxpayers paid to build them, prompting Scott’s line that this is “socialism for the charter schools.”

00:32:24 A Century of Red-Scare Tactics

• Scott traces a century of Republicans branding anything benefiting the many as “socialism” — Social Security, Medicare, and more — arguing the label has been rendered nearly meaningless.

00:33:27 Make America Great Again, Revisited

• Scott argues MAGA nostalgia for the 1950s ignores that the era’s prosperity rested on high union density, a 90% top marginal tax rate, and massive public investment like the interstate system — all policy choices, not accidents.

00:35:00 Minimum Wage and a Firefighter Stipend Bill

• Novak highlights Indiana’s unchanged $7.25 minimum wage and details his own first-session bill raising volunteer firefighters’ clothing and gear stipends — flat since 1981 — from $100 to $250 each, which passed unanimously.

00:36:51 Volunteer Firefighters and SEA 1’s Fallout

• Novak says volunteer firefighters save Indiana an estimated $4.5–6 billion a year versus paid staffing, and he and Scott connect strained fire department budgets to SEA 1, the 2025 property-tax law that cut into local, school, and fire-department revenue.

00:41:57 Data Centers: Brownfields, Tax Abatements, and Moratoriums

• Novak describes a Michigan City data center built into a former windshield-wiper factory, and he and Scott agree brownfield sites beat farmland for siting; Novak says a Microsoft data center going into La Porte agreed to 100% union labor and no tax abatements, while several counties statewide have passed moratoriums as Governor Braun pushes the technology forward.

00:47:45 Taxing Data Centers and NIPSCO’s Guaranteed Profits

• Novak pushes to strip data centers’ sales-tax exemption on the electricity they purchase to ease the burden on ratepayers of NIPSCO, the most expensive utility in Indiana; Novak argues utilities should be nonprofit public entities rather than investor-owned companies guaranteed a near-10% rate of return, and recalls an August 11th windstorm outage as evidence of eroding union-linemen staffing under private ownership.

00:53:35 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Randy Novak

• Novak makes his closing case — pointing to 40 years of public service and a deliberately modest legislative salary — and directs voters to electrandynovak.com or his personal cell phone for questions.

00:56:55 Show Outro

This week, Scott is joined by Republican State House candidate Maggie Davis and returning guest Bryce Greene for a show spanning foreign conflict, disinformation, and a long run of Indiana news. They open in the Middle East, where Saudi-Houthi fighting continues and Israel is blocking the first outpost of Trump's "Board of Peace" in Gaza alongside a wave of West Bank settler violence, then turn to Russia and Ukraine, where Trump's "energy ceasefire" quickly broke down, Starlink access was throttled, and a viral claim that Ukrainian strikes had silenced pro-Trump bot networks that may not have been all it seemed. From there it's a run of disinformation and administration turmoil: Elon Musk's record midterm spending, a debunked smear against Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, Meta's role in election interference abroad, a scrapped plan to livestream a military execution, and the fast exits of a press secretary, an ambassador, and a special envoy amid scandal. A weaponization segment on the federal search of Rep. Ilhan Omar's home and a think tank's blueprint for refusing to seat newly elected members of Congress leads into broader worries about the 2026 midterms, including a federal fight over California's voter rolls and threats to prosecute local election officials, before an economic stretch covering Trump and Governor Braun's underwater approval in Indiana, rising inflation, and a Republican rift over free-market economics. The back stretch is all Indiana: skepticism over the state's data-center tax abatements and a newly approved AES-Google data center deal, a run of deceptive attack ads across several state races, a Fayette County council candidate's viral, unpolished forum appearance and Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith's mockery of her despite another controversy of his own; finally a look at the big money four-way Secretary of State's race.

Guest info:

Magdalaine Davis: https://www.electmagdalainedavis.com/

Bryce Greene: https://brycegreene.substack.com/

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00:00 - Opening: Overview, Housekeeping, and Panelist Welcomes

00:04:30 - Middle East: The Saudi-Houthi Conflict

00:11:44 - Israel: The Blocked Gaza “Board of Peace” Base and West Bank Settler Violence

00:20:23 - Russia-Ukraine: Trump’s Broken “Energy Ceasefire” and the Yandex Strikes

00:31:39 - Disinformation: Musk’s $276 Million, the Talarico Smear, and Meta’s Global Election Interference

00:46:42 - Propaganda: Taxpayer-Funded Ads, the Fort Hood Firing Squad, and CREC

00:53:47 - Personnel: Katie Zacharia, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Paolo Zampolli’s Ousters

01:02:16 - Weaponization: The Ilhan Omar Raid and Vought’s Plan to Steal the Election

01:09:16 - Voting: California’s Noncitizen Ballot Fight and Threats to Prosecute Election Workers

01:18:56 - Economy: Republicans underwater in Indiana, Inflation, and the Daniels-Vance Free Market Feud

01:31:20 - Indiana Economic Development: Tax Abatements and the AES-Google Data Center Deal

01:40:50 - AI Campaign Ads: Spartz-Ford, Data Center Dave, and the Foust-Mears Race

01:47:44 - Fayette County: Jaime West Goes Viral

01:55:34 - Micah Beckwith: Mocking Jaime West and the Judge Phone Call

01:57:24 - Secretary of State’s Race: Bayh, Engling, Ballard and Big Money Donors

02:05:15 - Wrap-Up: Thanks and Where to Find the Panelists

02:06:59 - Sign-Off

NOTES:

Middle East

• Saudi-Houthi Conflict

  • Iran giving Yemen’s Houthis target intelligence for drone, missile strikes on Saudi Arabia - report (Jerusalem Post)

    • Iran is supplying targeting intelligence for many recent Houthi drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    • A former head of Israeli military intelligence’s Iran branch called the link “very, very strong on the operational level,” saying Iran benefits because the attacks harm Saudi Arabia and push up oil prices.

    • A Yemen expert says Iranian support “undeniably paved the way” for the Houthis’ rapid military gains over the past few months.

    • Iran’s Foreign Ministry insists the Houthis are “entirely independent actors,” though members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have publicly praised the strikes.

  • Why are the Houthis attacking Saudi airports and how are the missiles getting through? (Guardian)

    • A Houthi missile hit Riyadh’s international airport Saturday, the deadliest of a series of strikes on the airport that have now killed 19 people and wounded hundreds. These are the deadliest attacks on Saudi Arabia in a decade.

    • A Houthi missile hit Riyadh’s international airport Saturday, killing 13 and wounding hundreds, and another strike Sunday killed one. These are the deadliest attacks on Saudi Arabia in a decade.

    • Airlines across Europe and Asia suspended flights. Riyadh businesses told staff to work remotely, and schools moved online.

    • The Houthis say they’re retaliating for Saudi strikes on territory they control, warning “worse is yet to come.” The escalation follows a Saudi-backed Yemeni government counteroffensive to push them back from the Bab al-Mandab.

    • Saudi Arabia is the world’s eighth-largest weapons spender but can’t stop the missiles. “Saudi Arabia is so large that it’s simply impossible for them to consistently defend themselves,” one analyst said.

  • Houthis Strike Yemen’s Presidential Palace as Saudi Arabia Reports Attacks (Haaretz)

    • The Houthis struck the Yemeni government’s presidential palace in Aden for the first time in this conflict, killing five people. The prime minister and cabinet were unharmed. The Houthis claim they hit a Saudi military headquarters, which Reuters couldn’t verify.

    • The Saudi-led coalition says the Houthis launched 20 attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport this month and have targeted dozens of airports, ports and oil sites.

    • A coalition spokesperson says the Houthis got ballistic missiles, drones and explosive-laden fast boats with help from “regional actors.” Iran denies arming them.

    • The Houthis declared Saudi airspace and airports unsafe, excluding Mecca and Medina, and the UN’s civil aviation body condemned the attacks on civilian airports.

  • UAE agrees with Saudi Arabia to re-enter Yemen conflict amid Houthi gains (Guardian)

    • The UAE will reportedly resume funding southern Yemeni forces fighting the Houthis, including the effective Giant Brigades, with Saudi Arabia providing air cover. It’s the first sign of a thaw after a bitter Saudi-UAE split over Yemen in January.

    • Egypt’s President Sisi is convening an emergency session of parliament to authorize military action in defense of Saudi Arabia, though he insists Egypt would act only defensively.

    • The Houthis’ advance across Yemen has alarmed rival Gulf rulers into cooperating. The government’s counteroffensive to retake Sana’a has had limited success so far.

    • Southern separatists are demanding a referendum to restore the pre-1990 split of North and South Yemen. Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has responded.

    • Houthi missiles struck Aden’s airport Friday, landing about 500 meters from a passenger plane preparing for takeoff. More than 200,000 people have been displaced since August, per the UN.

  • Trump: Abraham Accords back on the table, Israel has helped Saudi Arabia against Houthis (Ynet)

    • Trump says Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords is back on the table, “maybe more than ever,” claiming “Israel has been very helpful to Saudi Arabia” against the Houthis.

    • He didn’t specify how. Regional sources say Israel has been passing intelligence through US Central Command but hasn’t joined the fighting.

    • When US officials asked whether Israel could strike the Houthis, IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned it could spark a wider war involving Iran and force Israel to postpone its Oct. 27 election.

    • Sources say Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman doesn’t trust Netanyahu and is waiting on Israel’s election, hoping for new leadership before any normalization.

    • Riyadh still insists on a credible path to a Palestinian state as its condition for diplomatic ties.

• Israel-Palestine

  • Israel blocks construction of key Gaza base created by Trump peace board (Guardian)

    • Israel is blocking construction of the first project by Trump’s Board of Peace: a rudimentary outpost for 150 international troops, the vanguard of a stabilization force for Gaza. Two months after the contract was awarded, Israel still “won’t open the border,” a source says.

    • Without that base, the rest of the plan can’t start. “There’s no security... You can’t even start putting utilities,” the source said.

    • The board believes Israel will allow it after its Oct. 27 election. Israel and the board declined to comment.

    • Trump chairs the board for life, with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on its executive board. It unveiled a $2.45 billion first-phase plan last month toward a $71 billion, 10-year reconstruction.

    • Trump counts Gaza among the eight wars he claims to have ended, yet Israeli strikes have killed about 1,400 people there since the October 2025 ceasefire, per Gaza health authorities.

  • Israeli settlers attack Palestinians during West Bank olive harvest and beat U.S. photojournalist (PBS)

    • Israeli settlers attacked at least eight Palestinian villages across the northern West Bank Friday during the olive harvest, burning cars and trees and beating residents. At least four Palestinians have been killed and more than 100 injured since the harvest began this month.

    • Masked settlers beat Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine for about 10 minutes. She was hospitalized and credits her helmet and “PRESS” vest with preventing worse injuries.

    • Rights groups say the Israeli military aids or stands by during attacks. In Abu Falah, soldiers later shot an unarmed village council member. The military claims he ran at them with a sharp object, which villagers deny.

    • The UN counted more than 1,600 settler attacks from January through August, with violence spiking ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Even the British government has accused Israel of turning a “blind eye” to what it calls ethnic cleansing.

    • Netanyahu condemned the violence but recast it as outnumbered Israeli youths clashing with Palestinians and activists, warning against efforts to “demonize” settlers.

Russia-Ukraine

• Zelenskyy says Russia strikes energy facilities despite Trump claim of an energy ceasefire (AP)

  • Trump announced an immediate “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, but hours later Russia struck a Kharkiv power plant, a gas production facility and a gas station, Zelenskyy said. The Kremlin wouldn’t confirm it had agreed.

  • Trump insisted it’s in place: “They agreed. Because I said, ‘You agree.’ That’s why they agreed. Because I said they agree.” Pressed on Russia’s strikes, he cited “violations on both sides.”

  • It’s Trump’s second such announcement. A Sept. 14 energy truce also never took hold.

  • Trump blames Ukraine’s refinery strikes for record US diesel prices. Zelenskyy countered that “everybody understands” prices depend on the Strait of Hormuz.

  • Six senators, four of them Republicans, urged Trump to “immediately reverse course” on his Russian diesel deal, warning against giving Putin “a financial lifeline.”

• US threatening to cut off intel, weapons to Ukraine (The Hill)

  • The Trump administration threatened to cut off intelligence sharing and US weapons sales to Europe for Ukraine unless Kyiv stops deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, per the Financial Times and CNN.

  • The State Department and Pentagon delivered the warnings over the weekend, with the US military telling Ukrainian commanders directly. “They are calling everyone,” one European official said.

  • The threat targets the NATO-run program Europe uses to buy American weapons for Ukraine.

  • Zelenskyy says Ukraine backs an energy truce but won’t stop retaliatory strikes unless Russia stops hitting Ukraine’s energy grid.

• Ukraine says new Starlink restrictions disrupt military as it reels from intel gaps and Trump clash (NBC)

  • SpaceX imposed speed limits on Ukraine’s military-grade Starlink overnight without warning, causing drone missions to fail. Ukraine learned of the change only after complaining to customer support.

  • Musk put it on Trump, saying the military version is owned and controlled by the US government: “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

  • Ukraine also received no warning before two Russian ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv this week. “This doesn’t look like a coincidence,” a Ukrainian official said, though Trump insists the US is still sharing intelligence.

  • It comes days after Trump struck the Russian diesel deal, demanded Ukraine stop hitting refineries, and called for Zelenskyy to be replaced. Zelenskyy said he feels betrayed: “It’s a pity that we are losing strong partner.”

  • At least 600,000 Ukrainians lost power after Russia’s latest strikes, in clear violation of Trump’s own “energy ceasefire.”

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy feels ‘betrayed’ by Donald Trump over Starlink access (Guardian)

  • Zelenskyy said he feels betrayed by Trump and accused the US of deliberately throttling Starlink: “I am sure they knew what they did... This decision will bring a lot of human losses... of course, people will die.”

  • The restriction cripples the interceptors Ukraine uses against Russia’s jet-powered Shahed drones. Interception rates had already fallen from over 90% to about 60% after Russia upgraded the drones.

  • Ukraine is already barred from using Starlink to strike targets inside Russia, so the restriction does nothing to stop the refinery attacks Trump wants halted. It only weakens Ukraine’s air defense and frontline operations.

  • Zelenskyy told NPR his military advisers received US threats that intelligence sharing could be limited.

  • The Kremlin claims it’s honoring Trump’s energy truce because it “was not specified in detail,” even after launching 39 ballistic missiles and 120 drones at Ukrainian power plants.

• Trump puts new Russia sanctions that he recently signed into law on hold, citing national interest (AP)

  • Trump signed an executive order suspending the sweeping Russia sanctions law he signed just last month, two days before it was set to take effect, citing the “national interest.” The White House didn’t explain how.

  • The law, named for Lindsey Graham after his sudden death in July, targets Russian officials, banks and Moscow’s shadow tanker fleet, and calls for tariffs up to 100% on top buyers of Russian oil and gas.

  • It passed with large bipartisan majorities. Co-author Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the waiver has “everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin.”

  • It follows Trump’s diesel deal with Putin, panned by both parties as aiding Russia’s war without meaningfully lowering prices driven by the Iran war.

  • Darline Graham, who said she was “so proud” to help pass it, now says it’s up to Trump “whether or not he wants to use it.”

• Did Ukraine’s strikes on data centers really silence Russian bots? (Mashable)

  • Ukrainian drones struck three data centers belonging to Yandex, “Russia’s Google,” between Oct. 8 and 11, knocking out services including its AI chatbot and smart-home devices.

  • Zelenskyy claimed “everyone noticed” a drop in Russian bot activity online, and users across Western countries reported less right-wing content in their feeds, from pro-GOP accounts to Germany’s far-right AfD.

  • Cloudflare data shows automated traffic from Yandex’s network nearly vanished, falling to 0.3% of its peak at one point.

  • But most automated traffic is mundane, like search crawlers, and there’s no published evidence linking Russian influence operations on X or Reddit to Yandex’s servers. Influence campaigns can run on infrastructure anywhere.

  • Not all of it is bots: operatives in Eastern European countries like Latvia are paying people $3 per 1,000 views to post pro-GOP talking points, per The Atlantic.

• Drone Strikes Didn’t Take Out a Russian Bot Farm, But We Were Primed to Believe It (Mother Jones)

  • Zelenskyy claimed that after the Yandex strikes, “it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms.” Viral claims followed of plunging MAGA, Reform UK and AfD activity, including one that AfD bot activity fell 56%, a post viewed millions of times and later deleted.

  • Disinformation trackers found no evidence. One firm compared 76 AfD politicians and 136 MAGA Facebook accounts against their normal activity and found AfD posting changed -8% to +5% and MAGA +4% to +10%: “ordinary day-to-day noise.”

  • A known Russian disinformation network, Matryoshka, was still active days after the strikes.

  • Georgetown disinformation researcher Renee DiResta said the story spread because it “supports the comforting belief that your political enemies aren’t even real.”

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Propaganda

• Musk/X

  • The Right’s Desperate Conspiracy Theory About James Talarico Goes Up In Flames (Rolling Stone | No Paywall)

    • Right-wing influencers claimed Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico had secretly been treated for a psychotic breakdown at an Ohio mental health facility while off the trail for nine days. His campaign says he was home in Austin with the flu.

    • Ken Paxton fueled the rumor by claiming Talarico had been “missing” for over two weeks. Influencers tied a private jet flight to Ohio to him with no passenger manifest.

    • Their “proof,” an edited call recording, fell apart. The full calls showed a staffer telling a caller with a made-up patient code that no one by that name was on the roster, and the timeline had Talarico “discharged” the night he was at a Kacey Musgraves concert in Dallas.

    • The Lindner Center of Hope said flatly that Talarico “has never received treatment” there. “I’ve never even been to Ohio 😂,” Talarico posted.

    • Elon Musk, Paxton’s biggest financial backer, amplified the theory himself on X, posting: “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.”

  • Anatomy of a lie: James Talarico got the flu – sending rightwing midterm misinformation machine into overdrive (Guardian)

    • The rumor grew from an anonymous X account to Steve Bannon’s War Room to Ken Paxton, who posted Talarico on a “Wanted” poster demanding “proof of life.” Trump joined in at a rally, claiming without evidence that “Tala-freako” was sick from being “forced to eat meat.”

    • Musk amplified it: “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.” Election law expert Rick Hasen calls Musk “a vector for spreading the misinformation” on the platform he owns.

    • Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen warned that even if Talarico wins, the smear succeeded at making a fake story an issue: “If you do it a lot, sometimes you’re gonna have success.”

    • Defenses are weaker: Rubio shut down the State Department’s foreign disinformation office last year, and X and Meta have gutted their trust and safety teams.

  • Elon Musk gives $276 million to Republican groups, becomes biggest known 2026 midterm donor (CNBC)

    • Elon Musk has given more than $276 million to Republican groups since July, making him the biggest known donor of the 2026 midterms. His cycle total of roughly $366 million already tops the $290 million he spent on the 2024 election.

    • His $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main GOP Senate super PAC, ranks among the largest known individual political donations in US history.

    • He also gave $76 million to his America PAC, $20 million to the House GOP super PAC, and $10 million to a PAC backing Ken Paxton in Texas.

    • In May 2025, Musk said he’d do “a lot less” political spending.

    • Musk keeps deep ties to the federal government through SpaceX’s NASA and Pentagon contracts, and Hegseth recently named him co-director of the Pentagon’s Project Meridian on the future of warfare.

  • Scoop: Inside Elon Musk’s massive Texas rescue mission (Axios)

    • Late August polling showed Paxton sinking against James Talarico, who dominated Texas TV while Paxton’s campaign was dark.

    • Musk’s team proposed a matching deal, and within days Republicans had raised $20 million to get Paxton on air, including $10 million from Musk.

    • Musk then gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund in September alone, nearly 58% of everything it raised that quarter.

    • His money let Republicans flood Texas’ expensive TV markets without draining resources from other Senate battlegrounds.

    • Axios calls Musk “single-handedly keeping the Republican Party afloat in some of its most vital races.”

• International Influence

  • How Alberta separatism went from fringe cause to referendum (AP)

    • Alberta votes Monday on whether to begin the legal process toward a future referendum on leaving Canada. About 23% supported starting it in a recent poll.

    • Separatism drew 1% to 2% of the vote for decades until the pandemic and the 2022 Freedom Convoy. “It’s the same people,” said former Premier Jason Kenney, who also sees heavy overlap between separatist activists and Putin supporters.

    • Kenney says MAGA has been “inspirational” for separatist activists, and they’ve taken their case to Washington. Leaders say they met State Department officials three times to pitch an independent Alberta, including a pipeline through the US to the Pacific. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calls Alberta “a natural partner,” and Kenney calls the outreach “bonkers.”

    • Prime Minister Mark Carney, unusually popular in Alberta for his pro-energy policies and resistance to Trump’s trade war, urged unity: “We are stronger together.”

    • Quebec also returned the separatist Parti Québécois to power Oct. 5, though its leader says he won’t hold a referendum while Trump is president.

  • From August: The Russian Money Behind Alberta’s Separatist Movement (The Walrus)

    • Russia’s Pravda News Network published dozens of stories portraying Alberta as exploited by Ottawa, and a Russian influence campaign created sites like albertaseparatist.com spreading fabricated claims. RT and Sputnik amplified them, alongside US influencers on YouTube and X.

    • The Alberta Prosperity Project isn’t registered with Elections Alberta, so it faces no ban on foreign donations. It has raised over $1 million and won’t name its donors, after meeting State Department officials and seeking a $500 billion US line of credit.

    • Take Back Alberta’s founder was fined more than $120,000, including for accepting contributions from outside Canada.

    • Canada has no integrated system to detect illicit foreign political money, and disclosures can take a year, potentially until after the vote.

  • Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report (Al Jazeera)

    • Meta employees acknowledged in internal messages that Brazilian President Lula’s Instagram accounts were hit by restrictions during the election, while the platform recommended challenger Flavio Bolsonaro’s profile and WhatsApp channel, per Folha de S. Paulo.

    • Lula’s party says some of his posts appeared without share buttons or reaction options and had reduced reach.

    • Brazil’s top electoral court ordered Meta to treat both candidates equally ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff, including applying identical criteria in its AI tools, or pay about $98,700 a day in fines.

    • Meta says the technical issues were already public and the messages concerned their severity, not political interference: “Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false.”

    • Bolsonaro performed stronger than expected in the first round and polls show him holding an edge.

• Trumpaganda

  • Taxpayer-funded Trump TV ads continued to air after judge ordered halt (Courthouse News)

    • A federal judge in New York extended her order blocking the administration’s $20 million taxpayer-funded Trump ad campaign through Nov. 8, after the ads kept airing following her initial order.

    • Common Cause says AdImpact data shows 570 airings after the judge emailed her order Sunday evening, mostly overnight into Monday.

    • The DOJ’s lawyer took the blame: “It was my bad. I messed up compliance with the TRO on Sunday night.” He said he was at the theater and didn’t see the order until afterward, and speculated local broadcasters ran makeup ads.

    • The judge named DHS’s ad contractor, LMD Agency, in the order. DHS says LMD had bought $19 million in airtime across Fox, CNN, MS NOW, Newsmax, network Sunday shows and football broadcasts.

    • Oral arguments are set for Nov. 4, the day after the election. The DNC has filed a separate suit in Washington.

  • Trump calls off livestream of Fort Hood shooter’s execution (Politico)

    • Trump called off the livestream of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s Dec. 3 firing-squad execution, overriding Hegseth after a week of bipartisan backlash.

    • Trump still defended the idea as “a strong deterrent” against “SCUM like Hasan,” but said “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die.”

    • Hasan will still be executed by firing squad as scheduled.

    • Opposition came from Republicans, Democrats, Vance, and the Catholic Church, whose archbishop for the military said Catholic soldiers shouldn’t serve on the firing squad.

  • Hegseth church allies backed plan for ‘public’ execution of Fort Hood shooter (Guardian)

    • Leaders of Hegseth’s church, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), backed his scrapped plan to livestream Hasan’s execution. Co-founder Douglas Wilson said he “prefer[s] public executions to private” and favors firing squads over “medicalized” methods like Tennessee’s botched injection.

    • CREC pastors have long called for the death penalty for adultery, abortion and homosexuality. Joshua Haymes, a podcaster tied to Hegseth’s former Tennessee church who has hosted Hegseth, said of pornography producers: “Hang them in the streets... We need to bring back public executions.”

    • Haymes also claimed public executions would make killings in “high-density Black areas” “fall to the floor,” and defended it with a crime statistic the ADL lists as white supremacist propaganda.

    • CREC figures are openly hostile to Islam, calling Allah “a real demon God” and urging officials to “outlaw mosques” and deport Muslims.

    • Pope Leo and the Vatican’s secretary of state condemned the plan, with Cardinal Parolin calling it “certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle.”

Personnel

• Trump’s New Press Secretary Supports Death Penalty for Abortion Patients (Abortion, Every Day)

  • Until February, Katie Zacharia sat on the advisory board of the White Rose Resistance, whose founder, Seth Gruber, says women who have abortions should be executed “in the public square” and that pro-choice Americans shouldn’t be allowed to hold public office.

  • The group’s national outreach director was charged with felony stalking of an abortion provider in 2022.

  • Zacharia herself has falsely claimed abortion medication uses “the same chemicals that they used in the extermination camps.”

  • Students for Life, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, now says abortion patients should “eventually” face homicide charges, reversing years of opposing punishing women.

  • In June, JD Vance raised the “abolitionist” movement unprompted, saying the government must win the “persuasion battle” before arresting women.

• Katie Zacharia out as White House press secretary after first week on the job (CBS)

  • Katie Zacharia was removed as White House press secretary after five days, amid a widely panned first briefing and questions over whether she misrepresented herself as a lawyer. She graduated law school but failed the California bar in 2011. Sources say she’s transitioning to a new role in the administration.

  • At her only briefing, she read prepared remarks for about 10 minutes and took questions from just three outlets: Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail.

  • Hours before the news broke, Trump said he’d told her, “Honestly if I were you, I’d reconsider,” blaming a press that had “been so nasty to her.”

  • Some White House staff learned she was out from news coverage. One aide said “no one thought she was sticking around long enough to even involve her in actual decision-making.”

  • Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted 11 days as communications director in Trump’s first term: “Records are made to be broken.”

• White House ousts Kimberly Guilfoyle as US ambassador to Greece (CNN)

  • Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s former fiancée, was forced out as US ambassador to Greece after reports she sought money for access to administration figures, accepted lavish gifts and brought a Greek construction lobbyist into official meetings. Zacharia announced it at her lone briefing: “She was basically fired on live TV,” one source said.

  • Former Trump donor Eric Deters says that before her confirmation, Guilfoyle asked him to wire $100,000 to pay off her American Express bill, promising to be his “ride or die” in the administration. “No question it was a quid pro quo,” he said.

  • Guilfoyle’s lawyers say Deters owed her for speeches and consulting work: “Asking a client to pay for work already done is not corruption.”

  • The State Department’s inspector general is investigating, but her resignation could stall it. Whether it continues may depend on whether Trump’s DOJ opens its own case, and findings could take a year.

  • Rubio publicly defended her in Athens days earlier, scolding reporters that their sources aren’t “the gospel,” but privately pushed for her ouster. Trump said “I didn’t like what I read,” adding she “wasn’t a member of my family.”

• Trump ally ousted from administration after messy email fight goes public (Politico)

  • Paolo Zampolli, a personal friend of Trump, was fired as special envoy hours after Politico detailed his months-long email feud with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. He said he had “absolute zero surprise.”

  • Zampolli was Melania Trump’s modeling agent in the 1990s and introduced her to Trump. Trump later put him on the Kennedy Center board and made him special representative for global partnerships.

  • Hired as a cultural envoy, he met with foreign officials on non-cultural matters, per emails obtained by Politico.

  • He accused Landau, on an email chain with more than a dozen officials, of leaking a story to the Times. Landau called his accusations “bizarre, defamatory” and ordered him to stop sending “unhinged emails.”

  • That Times story reported Zampolli asked ICE to deport the mother of his son to Brazil to help him win custody. Zampolli denies asking ICE to detain her.

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Weaponization

• Agents search Rep. Omar’s Washington home in criminal probe as she vows she won’t ‘be silenced’ (AP)

  • Homeland Security agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home in a criminal probe, carrying out boxes labeled “Seized Property Evidence,” three weeks before she faces reelection.

  • The DOJ has historically avoided overt investigative steps involving candidates within 60 days of an election. Omar called it an “attempt to target political enemies,” vowing, “I will not be silenced.”

  • The probe appears focused on long-running, unproven allegations of fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork, which Omar calls “disgusting lies.” Vance has said, without evidence, that she “definitely committed immigration fraud.”

  • The search was foreshadowed. Last month, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Benny Johnson’s podcast, “Something’s going to happen,” and days before the search Trump told a rally that Vance “and our people” were investigating Omar. Hours after it, Trump claimed he had “nothing to do” with it.

  • House Democratic leaders called it the “continued corrupt weaponization” of government against Trump’s perceived enemies.

• Rep. Ilhan Omar’s phone seized and relatives subpoenaed in criminal probe (AP)

  • Investigators seized Omar’s phone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, as a Minnesota grand jury examines her family’s immigration paperwork.

  • DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News that “there are several investigations going on” into Omar, including her financial disclosures. Federal prosecutors typically don’t publicly discuss ongoing investigations, let alone on cable news.

  • Omar’s attorneys are demanding the return of property seized in the search.

• Russell Vought’s 7 Point Plan To Steal the Election. (UNFTR)

  • Trump said Oct. 6 that OMB Director Russ Vought will be “one of the very important people in the history of our country,” teasing “big surprises coming up in another few weeks.” Days later he said Vought is “working on something that’s going to be so good for our country.”

  • The same day, Vought’s think tank, the Center for Renewing America, published a guide for the House to refuse to seat elected members it claims can’t take the oath in good faith, targeting DSA members and a “Red-Green Alliance” of Marxists and “anti-Western Muslims.” It lists “Muslim” movements while insisting it isn’t a religious test.

  • Its seven steps: (1) build a file on the member-elect before Jan. 3; (2) treat state certification as a claim, not a right to serve; (3) object when the member is called to be sworn in; (4) make them stand aside while others take the oath; (5) withhold their oath pending review; (6) vote that they can’t take it in good faith; (7) declare the seat vacant. The think tank says it “welcomes” the litigation that follows.

  • Rep. Joe Morelle has warned that if Democrats win narrowly, Speaker Johnson could replace the nonpartisan House clerk, who controls the roll of members-elect before a Speaker is chosen, with a loyalist who leaves contested names off.

  • UNFTR’s theory: the Omar raid is the opening move. A federal immigration probe could be used to challenge the citizenship of a Muslim, Somali-born, naturalized member, one of the few qualifications the Constitution actually sets, and block her from being seated Jan. 3.

Election ‘26

• Attack on Voting

  • Trump administration sues California to block counting of alleged noncitizen mail ballots (PBS)

    • The Trump administration sued California to block counting mail ballots from 20,000 voters it calls “likely” noncitizens until their citizenship is confirmed, after the state didn’t meet a 48-hour deadline to review the list.

    • The DOJ delivered that list on a thumb drive with the password handwritten on a sticky note. LA County’s registrar said he didn’t consider it a secure device.

    • Similar claims just collapsed in Nevada: DHS alleged nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s rolls, and the state found every one of them was a US citizen.

    • The administration’s own number keeps shrinking. DHS claimed 190,000 noncitizens on California’s rolls this summer, now the DOJ says 20,000. “What happened to those 170,000? They just got those wrong,” said AG Rob Bonta.

    • Secretary of State Shirley Weber called it “an emergency of the DOJ’s creation,” and Bonta says it violates a federal ban on changing voter rolls within 90 days of an election.

  • DOJ asks court to let it continue its voter roll purging program despite block (Democracy Docket)

    • DOJ asked a federal court to pause its Oct. 9 ruling blocking the department from collecting state voter rolls and running them through DHS’s flawed SAVE database to flag alleged noncitizens, so it can keep going while it appeals.

    • Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s nationwide block bars DOJ from even using voter data some states handed over voluntarily: “DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people.”

    • DOJ now claims there is no such policy and that its demands weren’t mandatory because the letters only asked states to “please” provide data. It then sued 30 states plus DC for refusing.

    • DOJ is 0 for 26 in court cases demanding states’ unredacted voter rolls.

    • In California, DOJ has threatened election officials with criminal exposure if they don’t purge voters it has flagged as noncitizens.

  • Trump administration threatens to prosecute local California election workers (ABC)

    • The DOJ threatened to criminally prosecute California election workers who “knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens,” warning they “risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”

    • Trump reposted the letter, adding: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”

    • It echoes DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s summer warning that election officials could face “fines, penalties, and even... prison time.”

    • Experts say the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed but fear the damage to public confidence in elections.

    • The administration appears to be “laying the groundwork to challenge results after Election Day,” said the Brennan Center’s Sean Morales-Doyle. “They’re putting a nail in the wall for something to hang their hat on later.”

• Competing Plans

  • GOP senator: Cancel Thanksgiving recess if we lose (Axios)

    • Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) wants Republicans to work straight through the holidays if they lose Congress, jamming through “everything that we could possibly get” in a “Last Supper” reconciliation bill: “We’ll have turkeys here for Thanksgiving.”

    • Reconciliation needs only a simple majority. Budget Committee chair Ron Johnson says Republicans are already working with the House and White House on what to include.

    • The lame-duck to-do list is long: funding the government past Dec. 11, emergency defense spending, raising the debt ceiling, the NDAA, FISA reauthorization and the farm bill.

    • Odds are uncertain. Republicans couldn’t pass a megabill this summer, and departing holdouts like Cornyn, Tillis, Cassidy and McConnell won’t feel election pressure.

    • Trump priorities like Golden Dome, autonomous weapons and F-35 upgrades are counting on that bill, and Hegseth says the Pentagon needs “a minimum” of $350 billion to “rebuild the military.”

  • Here’s what’s on House Democrats’ agenda if they sweep to power in midterm elections (PBS)

    • House Democrats are preparing a 100-days agenda, launched in the first 100 hours of a new Congress, focused on affordability and oversight of the Trump administration.

    • Jeffries says Democrats will unite “right out of the gate” on restoring ACA tax credits, reversing the Republican Medicaid cuts and work requirements, undoing Trump’s tariffs, and forcing more war powers votes on Iran.

    • Five working groups, each co-led by a progressive and a centrist (like AOC and Rep. Terri Sewell on healthcare), are drafting plans on healthcare, housing, groceries, gas and utilities, and caregiving.

    • The top Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary committees are preparing investigations into Trump, his family and his administration. Jeffries says impeachment is neither on nor off the table.

    • “We need to lower the cost of groceries and gas. Two, we need to make healthcare affordable for every single American. Three, we’re going to hold the crooks accountable who’ve visited unprecedented corruption on the American people,” Jeffries said. “Beginning on day one.”

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Economy

• New poll shows Trump’s approval ratings falter in Indiana (FPI)

  • Trump’s approval in Indiana is underwater, 44% approve to 54% disapprove, with 48% strongly disapproving, in a state he won by nearly 20 points in 2024. Independents disapprove 69%.

  • Democrats are far more fired up: 58% say they’re more enthusiastic to vote than usual, versus just 34% of Republicans.

  • Gov. Mike Braun is also underwater, 38% approve to 48% disapprove, and 47% say Indiana is on the wrong track.

  • Braun’s gas tax suspension and push on utility bills haven’t helped. “The president is the brand, and if the president’s brand is not doing well, then the whole thing goes down with him,” said Ball State political scientist Chad Kinsella.

  • Hoosiers ranked government corruption as their top concern, ahead of even the cost of living.

• Inflation worsened last month to 3.7% in sign that prices remain elevated as midterm elections near (AP)

  • Inflation accelerated to 3.7% in September from 3.4% in August, the last major inflation report before the midterms. Prices jumped 0.6% in a single month, and inflation-adjusted paychecks shrank from a year ago for the first time since May.

  • Gas prices rose 9.1% in one month, and airfares are up 22% from a year ago, both driven by the Iran war.

  • Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose to 2.6%, higher than economists expected. “Price increases were widespread,” one economist said.

  • The Fed, which already raised rates in September for the first time in three years, could hike again at its Oct. 27–28 meeting, though higher rates can’t fix supply shocks like the Iran war.

  • Companies are passing costs on: PepsiCo is raising prices on Doritos, Ruffles and some sodas, and Nintendo raised the Switch 2’s price 11%.

• IMF warns global economy ‘could soon test the limits of resilience’ (Guardian)

  • The IMF warned the global economy “could soon test the limits of resilience,” saying it has weathered the Iran war better than feared but that resilience “is reaching its limits.”

  • Emergency oil stocks, released in record amounts since March, are now depleted. High government debt leaves little room to shield consumers from another price spike.

  • Risks are “skewed to the downside,” the IMF said, citing a prolonged stalemate or escalation in the Middle East, attacks on energy infrastructure and an AI-driven market crash.

  • Global inflation is forecast at 4.7% this year, and growth is expected to “edge down” in 2027 as high energy prices and interest rates bite.

  • Analysts say Trump’s Russian diesel deal will have little “meaningful” effect on prices.

• Mitch Daniels rebukes JD Vance over free-market retreat (Politico)

  • Former Gov. Mitch Daniels, whom Vance once called his “political hero,” said Vance and other Republicans are “in error” to retreat from free-market economics: “It’s the only mechanism, in my view, for preserving the American dream.”

  • Vance has criticized free-market icon Milton Friedman and defended Trump’s tariffs as ending “40 years of a failed bipartisan consensus.” Critics see it as a populist pitch ahead of a 2028 run.

  • Daniels called Trump both “a symptom” and “a propellant” of voters’ feeling of being “condescended, looked down on, ignored, disrespected.”

  • He said Trump’s GOP has opened room for a “pro-freedom party”: “Whether that is the next iteration of this Republican Party or you find some other vehicle, I don’t know.” Asked whether Vance could be that candidate: “It’s all TBD.” Daniels sidestepped a question about his own party identification.

Indiana Stories

• Economic Development

  • Report finds tax abatements may not be effective. Republicans aren’t so sure (WFYI)

    • A report from Indiana’s nonpartisan fiscal office found little evidence that property tax abatements, the state’s most-used economic development incentive, actually persuade businesses to locate somewhere they wouldn’t have anyway.

    • Annual abatement tax savings have nearly doubled, from $182 million in 2017 to $322 million in 2026.

    • Sen. Scott Baldwin (R-Noblesville) repeatedly pushed back, eventually saying he simply disagreed with the findings.

    • Likely incoming Senate leader Chris Garten (R-Charlestown) said abatements are local decisions and pointed to 200,000 people moving to Indiana in five years, though he didn’t tie that growth to abatements.

    • Sen. Fady Qaddoura (D-Indianapolis) said data centers had been offered roughly $694 million in promised abatements as of June: “I’m completely perplexed by the idea that Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos need tax incentives from Hoosiers.”

  • Indiana approves AES plan to power Google data center in Monrovia (WFYI)

    • Indiana utility regulators unanimously approved AES Indiana’s $1.3 billion plan for the solar, battery storage and power lines needed for Google’s 390-megawatt data center in Monrovia, the first project under a 2025 law requiring data centers to cover at least 80% of their costs.

    • AES and Google say Google pays for everything, but the order lets AES put $73.8 million in transmission upgrades into its rate base, recovered from all customers.

    • “We already have high bills here in Indianapolis,” said Citizens Action Coalition’s Ben Inskeep. “We don’t need more rate increases caused by data centers.”

    • Key terms, including dollar amounts, rates and timelines, are redacted as trade secrets.

    • Google also landed Morgan County tax abatements, including a 50% property tax break for 10 years on its buildings, with the state estimating $168 million in total tax savings over 35 years.

• AI Campaign Ads?

  • Could data center opposition boost Democrats in Indiana House races? (ICC)

    • Democrats are running on data center opposition in key Indiana House races, aiming to gain the four seats needed to break the GOP’s 70-30 supermajority, which they’ve failed to do for six straight cycles. Their mailers say Republicans “sold us out to data centers.”

    • It’s a popular message: in this month’s Free Press Indiana poll, 69% of likely voters opposed new data center construction, with only 18% in favor.

    • The top target is the House District 25 rematch between Rep. Becky Cash (R-Zionsville) and Democrat Tiffany Stoner, after Cash won by just 64 votes in 2024. Cash complains that Democrats have “the same messaging in every district.”

    • In northwest Indiana, House utilities chair Ed Soliday (R-Valparaiso), who sponsored the 2019 data center sales tax exemption, faces Democrat Ryan Kominakis, who says Soliday “quite literally authored himself” the laws “screwing over regular people.”

    • Soliday dismisses the backlash as “a hysteria right now, where at public hearings there is a lot of screaming.”

  • AI or an actress? Spartz sends cease-and-desist over Ford’s attack ad (IndyStar)

    • Rep. Victoria Spartz sent cease-and-desist letters accusing Democrat J.D. Ford’s ad “The Heist” of using AI to depict her burglarizing a home, taking a bribe and cutting power to a hospital, citing an Indiana law requiring disclaimers on digitally altered political media.

    • It wasn’t AI. IndyStar confirmed the “Spartz” in the ad is a Chicago actress, and Ford’s campaign says none of the footage was AI-generated.

    • A separate letter accuses the Ford-linked Commonsense Hoosiers PAC of using “obviously AI-generated” images on mailers, including one of Spartz yelling “Buy! Buy!” at stock monitors. The PAC couldn’t be reached.

    • Spartz says Ford’s side has been “fabricating lies” to “cover up Mr. Ford’s extreme and corrupt record.” It’s her campaign’s third cease-and-desist since September.

    • At least 164 political ads nationally have been generated or enhanced with AI this cycle, per the Wesleyan Media Project. One expert said the harm lies in the deception, not the tool: “What difference is there between [using AI or an actress] if they’re both realistic?”

    • More Like This

      • D-Data Center Dave Hall (Indiana House Democratic Caucus)

        • Democrat Amy Huffman Oliver’s campaign brands Republican Sen. Dave Hall “Data Center Dave” in a 30-second ad, using a Hall look-alike and a Clippy-style paper clip that announces, “Data Center Dave really likes data centers.”

        • The narrator claims Hall has “invested thousands in the AI companies building them, and taken tens of thousands in campaign cash from the companies behind them.” On-screen sourcing cites his economic interest statement and campaign finance records.

        • It accuses him of voting to “fast-track” data centers, “let utilities charge us for it, and give them tax breaks we’re on the hook for,” citing House bills.

        • A family gets utility-bill alerts on their phones before Hall bursts in with hard-hat crews: he “wants to bring a data center to your backyard without your approval.”

        • It closes: “Don’t let Data Center Dave bulldoze our community. Vote him out November 3rd.”

      • R-Fed up, Marion County? Vote Foust for Prosecutor (Philip Foust)

        • Philip Foust’s campaign for Marion County prosecutor is running an AI-generated ad attacking incumbent Prosecutor Ryan Mears, labeled “AI actors” in small on-screen text.

        • Two AI-generated men watch a gym basketball game. One says Mears “spends more time on his jump shot than prosecuting criminals.”

        • They complain about “teenagers getting a slap on the wrist,” calling the juvenile system “a joke” amid “carjacking, shootings, high-speed chases.”

        • One AI character says he’s “a lifelong Democrat” but is “voting for Foust for prosecutor,” closing with: “Mears had his shot. Nice sneakers though.”

        • It ends: “Fed up? Vote Foust for Prosecutor.”

• Fayette Co. Candidate Goes Viral

  • ‘We have guns too’: Indiana Democratic candidate goes viral for bizarre interview (IndyStar)

    • Jaime West, a Democratic candidate for Fayette County Council, went viral after a local TV forum where she appeared to slur and stutter her words. Asked for an unpopular policy she’d pursue, she stared into the camera and said: “Firing all Republicans.”

    • She distinguished “good Republicans” from “MAGA,” calling the latter “racist” and “not very intelligent,” and said she’s been threatened by the nephew of a local sheriff. Her closing words to voters: “We have guns, too.”

    • She also claimed a Connersville fire station would close because of the state’s property tax law, SB 1. The fire chief publicly denied it: “There will not be any fire station closures in Connersville,” adding he has no ties to Democrats.

    • The clip has spread to TMZ, Fox News and Libs of TikTok. Her Republican opponent, Gary Keener Jr., skipped the forum and submitted a written statement instead.

    • West wore merch for Victoria Martz, the Democrat challenging Rep. Lindsay Patterson in Indiana House District 55, and Republicans are now using the clip to attack Martz. Martz didn’t respond to IndyStar.

  • Candidate’s remarks go viral: Fayette County woman clears the air on slurred speech, statements made (Connersville News-Examiner)

    • West says she drank a Coors Light before the forum but took no drugs or medication, attributing her slurred speech to a traumatic brain injury in 2020: “That is just how Jaime is.”

    • Her claim on air that the “Sheriff’s nephew threatened to blow my head off” drew denials from Fayette County’s sheriff, who has no nephews. West now says she meant the Union County sheriff’s nephew, and that sheriff says he doesn’t know how that could have happened.

    • On the fire station, the chief’s full statement partly backs her: some local officials warn SEA 1 cuts could make “manpower cuts... unavoidable,” and the department “cannot man all three fire stations with less manpower.” She overstated it as a confirmed closure.

    • She says she’s turned down CNN, Fox News, TMZ and others on her lawyer’s advice, but may do Piers Morgan, and is directing would-be donors to the Fayette County Democrats.

    • She says she’s received both “bullying” and support from “all around the world,” with people calling her “the queen.” Her closing message this time: “I spoke from the heart, man. I wish everybody the best; hang in there. Be kind.”

• Micah Beckwith

  • Beckwith Mocks Jaime West (Facebook)

    • Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith posted a still from West’s viral forum appearance, showing her with a skeptical head tilt, captioned: “Whenever someone tries to educate me on the separation of Church and State.”

    • The joke uses a local Democratic candidate’s viral moment to mock defenders of church-state separation, a principle Beckwith, a pastor, has long disputed.

    • It’s the second straight week Indiana’s second-highest official has weighed in on a viral controversy with a meme, after his “It’s Okay to Sign” post defending the OK hand gesture.

  • Beckwith office initiates ex parte communication with judge (ICC)

    • Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s office phoned the judge in an inmate’s criminal case. The judge refused to consider it, ruling it an improper ex parte communication, meaning contact with the court that excludes the other parties.

    • Because it was a phone call, there’s no record of what was said. Beckwith’s office hasn’t responded to the Capital Chronicle’s repeated requests since Sept. 29.

    • The inmate, Jordan Wadle, is serving 16 years after a 2015 bar fight in Fayette County. Per the Indiana Supreme Court, he struck a retreating man with his car, then hit him again, pinning him under a guardrail, and sped off with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit. The victim survived with a fractured skull and broken ribs after nearly 60 days in intensive care. Wadle was acquitted of aggravated battery, and his only remaining conviction is felony leaving the scene.

    • The judge’s order came the same day Wadle’s family filed a handwritten request for him to attend his father’s funeral. His father, Larry Wadle, was a former Fayette County sheriff and, like Beckwith, a pastor. The judge struck the request without ruling.

    • Wadle is due for release Nov. 15. The judge had already denied his 2025 bid for early release to be tested as a kidney donor for his father.

• Secretary of State’s Race

  • Democrat keeps up fundraising advantage in secretary of state’s race (ICC)

    • Democrat Beau Bayh spent $3.9 million from July through September, more than double Republican Max Engling’s $1.6 million, a rare spending advantage for a statewide Indiana Democrat.

    • Bayh went up on TV in August, a month before the GOP, spending $3.3 million on ads. Republicans have spent $1.3 million on ads for Engling, mostly paid for by the state party.

    • Both parties are bankrolling their candidates. Bayh has since reported $1.5 million from the state Democratic Party, and Engling nearly $600,000 from the state GOP.

    • Evan Bayh’s old Senate fund transferred $700,000 to a state Democratic federal committee. Engling’s campaign claims the money went to Beau and expects the total to reach $2.3 million.

    • Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard has $278,000 on hand after spending over $800,000 just to make the ballot: “The law is on their side. The history is on their side.”

  • Who’s donating to Bayh, Ballard and Engling in pricy secretary of state race? (IndyStar)

    • Beau Bayh’s biggest donors this quarter were philanthropist Deborah Simon ($150,000), developer Michael Browning ($100,000) and Connecticut billionaire Robert Johnson ($100,000), plus nearly $700,000 from the state Democratic Party, unions, and $10,000 from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

    • Bayh has raised more than $4.7 million this year but nearly drained his account, with most of his spending going to a New York ad firm.

    • Half of Max Engling’s quarter came from a single $1 million state GOP ad buy, after his slow start prompted Gov. Braun and the party to step in.

    • Engling’s other big donors are mostly fellow Republicans’ political groups, including $55,000 from Sen. Todd Young’s PAC and money tied to Rep. Jefferson Shreve and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    • Greg Ballard’s donors lean old-guard Indianapolis establishment, led by retired Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter ($150,000).

  • Who’s ahead in Indiana’s secretary of state race? We asked voters (FPI)

    • Democrat Beau Bayh leads the secretary of state race 43% to 35% over Republican Max Engling, with Libertarian Lauri Shillings at 6% and Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard at 5%. A Democrat hasn’t won statewide since 2012 or held the office since 1994.

    • Republicans are less united: 68% back Engling while 9% cross over to Bayh, versus 85% of Democrats backing Bayh. Independents favor Bayh 39% to 9%.

    • Name recognition is a big gap: nearly half of voters have never heard of Engling, versus 27% for Bayh. Engling’s campaign says the poll under-samples Republicans.

    • Ball State’s Chad Kinsella credits Trump and gas prices more than the Bayh name, and the mood reaches past this race: Hoosiers prefer Democrats for Congress 45% to 44%, in a state where Republicans hold seven of nine House seats. “There are just lots of red flags and alarm bells everywhere for Republicans,” Kinsella said.

    • Down-ballot, Democrat Jessica Bailey edges Republican incumbent Comptroller Elise Nieshalla 39% to 36%, and Republican incumbent Treasurer Daniel Elliott leads Democrat Coumba Kebe 43% to 38%.

Kokomo has spent generations learning what happens when technology changes work.

The city grew around manufacturing, particularly the automobile industry, and generations of families built middle-class lives around jobs that required skill, labor, and enough human beings to fill parking lots at shift change. The work was not always easy, glamorous, or secure, but it created something that mattered: leverage. A worker with a useful skill, backed by a union and surrounded by an economy that needed thousands of people like him or her, had bargaining power.

Now the next industrial transformation is arriving, and Jack Chance thinks Indiana is asking the wrong question about it.

The Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 30 is not particularly interested in debating whether artificial intelligence is good or bad. He is asking what happens when companies use AI, automation, data centers, tax incentives, and public infrastructure to build an economy that needs fewer workers, while government continues behaving as though every new development announcement automatically means prosperity.

For Chance, the argument is not really about technology.

It is about power.

Who owns the technology? Who gets the jobs? Who receives the tax breaks? Who pays for the roads and utilities? Who gets displaced? Who negotiates the wages? Who absorbs the healthcare costs? And when a company can choose between hiring a worker and buying a machine, who is sitting at the table protecting the worker?

Those questions have pushed Chance’s campaign into territory that does not fit especially neatly inside standard Democratic or Republican messaging. He is openly pro-union, deeply skeptical of corporate power, hostile to Indiana’s current minimum wage, opposed to school vouchers, and interested in a state-level universal healthcare model. Yet he is also willing to criticize his own party when he thinks Democratic leaders are accepting short-term economic gains without looking closely enough at the long-term consequences for workers.

“I think that both parties are really messing this up big time right now,” Chance said.

That may be the sentence that best explains his campaign.

The Data Center Debate Is Really About What Comes After the Construction Jobs

Data centers have become one of the newest political fault lines in Indiana.

To state and local officials, they can mean investment, construction, infrastructure, and tax revenue. To building trades, they can mean significant work. To technology companies, they are the physical backbone required for an increasingly AI-driven economy.

To many residents, they also mean questions about electricity, water, land use, environmental impact, utility rates, transparency, and how much permanent employment remains once construction ends.

Chance says the issue now appears constantly in his conversations with voters.

He is not dismissive of the workers who support data-center development because they see immediate employment opportunities. Quite the opposite. He says he understands why a union staring at an uncertain construction future would embrace a massive project promising years of work.

“I don’t blame them,” Chance said. “I don’t fault people looking for jobs.”

His concern is what happens next.

Chance points specifically to manufacturing unions that may have far more to lose from automation than construction unions have to gain from building AI infrastructure. If automakers eventually determine that increasingly automated production systems can replace large portions of their workforce, the economic consequences for places built around manufacturing could be profound.

Kokomo does not have to imagine what industrial disruption looks like. It has lived through enough versions of it already.

That makes the data-center debate different here than it might be in a community without the same manufacturing history. A new facility can represent hundreds or thousands of construction jobs today while simultaneously helping build technological infrastructure that could threaten other jobs tomorrow.

There is no simple equation that settles that tradeoff.

Chance believes policymakers should at least stop pretending the second half of the equation does not exist.

“There’s other unions that are terrified,” he said.

That tension is one of the more interesting cracks emerging inside modern labor politics. Organized labor has never been one single economic organism. A policy that benefits electricians may hurt autoworkers. A construction boom can benefit tradespeople while the technology being constructed eventually reduces employment elsewhere.

Solidarity becomes much more complicated when yesterday’s job creator is tomorrow’s job eliminator.

Chance’s warning is that policymakers cannot afford to measure development only by the groundbreaking ceremony.

The future arrives after the ribbon is cut.

Indiana Loves the Jobs Announcement. Chance Wants to Read the Fine Print.

Indiana politicians have spent decades competing to attract employers through tax abatements, incentives, infrastructure spending, and favorable regulatory treatment.

That strategy is not inherently irrational. Jobs matter. Investment matters. Manufacturing matters enormously in Howard County.

Chance’s objection begins when public incentives become detached from public obligations.

He points to major manufacturing investments in Kokomo and asks why companies receiving significant tax advantages are not required to prioritize qualified local workers.

“I’m not against doing things financially to attract a business,” he said.

What he opposes is a system where local residents shoulder the long-term tax burden of incentives while jobs go elsewhere, local workers are bypassed, or companies actively resist unionization.

His answer is a proposal he calls the Hoosier Jobs First Act, which he says would require companies benefiting from local incentives to prioritize workers from the community providing those incentives before expanding recruitment elsewhere.

The idea raises obvious implementation questions. Labor markets do not stop at county lines. Highly specialized projects may require skills unavailable locally. Residency requirements can become complicated when workers commute across municipal boundaries. Businesses would almost certainly object to restrictions that make hiring more difficult.

Chance acknowledges that some projects will require talent from outside the immediate community.

His principle is narrower: use the local workforce first when it exists.

“If you’ve exhausted the application employment workforce, great,” he said. “We can start looking at other avenues.”

That is fundamentally a taxpayer-return argument.

If a community sacrifices revenue to attract a project, residents should reasonably ask what they received in return. A company investing billions of dollars is certainly bringing economic activity, but public investment should be measured by more than the size of the private investment announced beside it.

How many local residents were hired?

What were they paid?

Were benefits provided?

Were unions allowed to organize without interference?

How long do the jobs last?

How much public revenue was waived?

How much additional infrastructure did taxpayers have to build?

Economic development should not require advanced archaeology to discover whether the economy was actually developed.

Maybe Indiana Does Not Have an Affordability Crisis. Maybe It Has a Wage Crisis.

Chance’s argument about affordability is similarly blunt.

Indiana regularly markets itself as a low-cost state. Housing can be cheaper than in many coastal markets. Taxes are relatively low. Businesses frequently hear some version of the pitch that their money will go farther here.

But household affordability is not determined by prices alone.

It is determined by the relationship between prices and income.

Chance argues that Indiana’s problem is better understood as a wage crisis. Something can be relatively inexpensive and still be unaffordable to the person earning the paycheck.

“The issue is people get drawn in with that lie of Indiana’s cheaper than its neighbors,” he said. “Sure, but we also have horrible wages.”

His first target is Indiana’s $7.25 minimum wage. Chance says he would support a significant increase, mentioning $15 or potentially $20 while also acknowledging that he has not settled on a final number.

What matters more to him is the gap between existing wages and actual household expenses.

A worker may earn more than minimum wage and still be unable to afford housing, groceries, transportation, insurance, and childcare. The math becomes particularly brutal for parents. Chance points to families who discover that taking a job can mean earning barely enough to pay for childcare while potentially losing public assistance that had been keeping the household afloat.

At that point, the traditional command to “get a job” collides rather violently with a calculator.

Chance says his experience working around subsidized housing exposed him to families facing exactly that problem. More income could trigger the loss of benefits while childcare and transportation absorbed much of the additional paycheck.

The worker is technically earning more while becoming financially worse off.

That is not an argument against employment. It is an argument for examining the incentives built into the system.

Chance believes stronger unions would accomplish more over the long term than simply legislating wages. He supports repealing Indiana’s right-to-work law and strengthening collective bargaining, arguing that workers with bargaining power will negotiate wages and benefits better than government can dictate them.

“We know what works,” he said. “We know strong unions.”

Whether voters agree will depend partly on how they view organized labor, business competitiveness, and the effect of stronger union rules on employment. But Chance’s economic philosophy is unmistakable: prosperity should be measured less by how cheaply a company can operate and more by whether the people doing the work can support themselves.

Public Education Is Another Labor Issue

Chance treats education as part of the same economic argument.

He strongly opposes Indiana’s school-voucher system and believes public money should remain with public schools. Private education and homeschooling should remain available, he says, but families choosing those alternatives should generally pay for them themselves.

His larger ambition is to make Indiana’s public schools strong enough that families do not feel they need to escape them.

“I just believe that every single public school in the state needs to be raised to such a level of quality that the desire to leave the public school system and find something better is non-existent,” Chance said.

That may be aspirational to the point of impossibility. Families choose schools for all sorts of reasons government cannot eliminate, including religion, pedagogy, culture, class size, athletics, special programs, and simple preference.

But Chance’s focus on teachers is more concrete.

He wants significantly higher teacher salaries and proposes a starting salary of $75,000, along with substantial increases for educators currently below that level. He also opposes tying teacher compensation too closely to student performance.

His reasoning is unusually personal.

Chance admits that he was not exactly a model student.

“I was a humdinger,” he said.

He describes himself as a teenager who did not consistently complete homework or perform well on tests, despite teachers’ efforts. His point is that measuring a teacher’s effectiveness by what a student like young Jack Chance decided to do creates a distorted incentive.

Teachers can influence students.

They cannot remotely control them.

Chance believes performance systems built too heavily around student outcomes can produce anxiety and encourage teachers to teach toward metrics rather than concentrate on the broader work of education.

He also objects to teachers spending personal money on classroom supplies, a practice so normalized in American education that society has somehow convinced itself it is charming rather than bizarre.

Imagine telling a firefighter to bring hoses from home.

The reaction would be different.

Healthcare Is Where His Economic Argument Gets Most Ambitious

Chance’s healthcare proposal is easily the largest policy idea he discusses.

He favors universal healthcare and believes Indiana could potentially build a statewide system even without waiting for Congress to enact Medicare for All nationally.

His proposed Better Indiana Health Plan would redirect money currently flowing through employers, individuals, government programs, and private insurance toward a state-level coverage system. He argues that replacing premiums and employer insurance expenses with a different financing structure could ultimately reduce what households and businesses spend.

Chance cites his own experience paying roughly $190 every two weeks for coverage while earning about $12.45 per hour as evidence of how disconnected insurance costs can become from income.

He also describes voters showing him pay stubs where healthcare consumes a significant portion of wages, only for those workers to face deductibles and copays when they actually need care.

That frustration is hardly unique to one party.

Where Chance’s proposal becomes more difficult is in the numbers.

He estimates that Indiana collectively spends around $100 billion or more annually on healthcare and suggests a universal system might provide coverage at dramatically lower cost. Those estimates would require extensive independent actuarial analysis. State-level universal healthcare systems raise complicated questions involving ERISA-governed employer plans, Medicare, Medicaid, federal waivers, provider reimbursement, taxation, interstate care, prescription pricing, and the enormous administrative challenge of creating an entirely new financing structure.

Chance does not pretend to be an economist.

“I’m not a genius when it comes to finances,” he said.

That admission does not make the idea right or wrong. It does mean the proposal would need much more rigorous modeling before anyone could responsibly promise the savings he envisions.

Still, the political insight behind the proposal is worth separating from the arithmetic.

People already spend enormous amounts of money on healthcare.

When politicians talk about the “cost” of universal coverage, they sometimes behave as though premiums, deductibles, employer contributions, copays, prescriptions, uncompensated care, and government subsidies are currently being paid with Monopoly money.

They are not.

The relevant comparison is not government spending versus zero.

It is one healthcare financing system versus another.

Chance is arguing that Hoosiers should at least be willing to make that comparison.

The Picket Line Changed the Campaign

For all the policy discussion, the moment Chance describes as most important to his campaign did not happen in a legislative hearing or economic-development meeting.

It happened on a picket line.

Chance joined United Steelworkers during a labor dispute and says the experience reinforced his belief that class politics can cross partisan boundaries more easily than party politics often does.

There were Republicans on the line.

There were Democrats.

Their stories sounded remarkably similar.

Chance recalls arriving to find workers holding signs and maintaining the line. His campaign team decided to become more confrontational, joining workers in blocking vehicles and attracting police attention.

Later, Chance heard that one of the union members had told his mother, “Jack Chance taught me how to picket.”

The moment clearly stuck with him.

It also helps explain why his campaign language often sounds less like conventional Democratic messaging and more like something pulled from an older American tradition of labor populism.

Chance is trying to build his politics around the worker before the party.

That is easier said than done.

Class solidarity has always competed with race, religion, geography, immigration, culture, party identity, and countless other forces. Workers who agree completely about wages can disagree violently about abortion, guns, immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights, education, policing, or the presidency.

A picket line does not erase those disagreements.

But it can reveal that people wearing different political jerseys may still share the same employer, the same utility bill, the same insurance deductible, and the same fear that the job they built their life around may not exist ten years from now.

Chance thinks there is politics hiding inside that overlap.

“I Don’t Bend to the Democratic Party”

The most unusual part of Chance’s closing argument is that he is running as the Democratic candidate while explicitly telling voters he does not belong to the Democratic Party in the way they may expect.

“I don’t bend to the Democratic Party,” he said. “I don’t bend to the Republican Party, to the Libertarian Party. I am an independent, I am a constitutionalist, and I fight simply for you.”

There is an obvious tension there.

Candidates run with party labels because parties mean something. They organize coalitions, recruit candidates, raise money, establish platforms, and signal broad governing priorities to voters. Chance benefits from the Democratic ballot line while simultaneously distancing himself from the idea that the party should control him.

His answer is that representation comes first.

He says he has fought for Democrats, Republicans, and people who told him they never vote. He wants voters to remember his willingness to show up regardless of party affiliation.

“I fight because I believe in people,” Chance said.

That is campaign language, but it also provides a useful standard by which to judge him if elected.

Independence is easy to declare when disagreeing with the other party.

Its real test comes when your own party wants something from you.

If Chance reaches the Statehouse, voters would have every right to remember the promise he made during the campaign. If Democratic leadership asks for a vote he believes harms workers in his district, does he resist? If a Republican authors legislation he believes genuinely helps those workers, does he support it? If a union backs a project he believes harms another group of workers, does he maintain the position he articulated on data centers?

Those would be the moments when “I don’t bend” stops being a slogan and becomes measurable.

That is what accountability is supposed to do.

Kokomo Has Seen the Future Arrive Before

House District 30 sits in a particularly interesting place for the political argument Jack Chance is making.

Kokomo knows manufacturing.

It knows unions.

It knows what a major employer can mean to an entire community.

It knows what happens when technology changes factories.

It knows the excitement of a new investment announcement and the anxiety that follows when workers begin wondering whether the next machine is coming to assist them or replace them.

Now artificial intelligence, automation, data centers, healthcare costs, wages, public education, tax incentives, and global investment are colliding in ways that make the old categories increasingly inadequate.

A data center can create union construction jobs and help accelerate automation that threatens other union jobs.

A manufacturing plant can represent billions in investment while residents question who receives the jobs.

A company can bring economic development while receiving tax treatment that shifts costs toward everyone else.

A state can advertise affordability while workers cannot afford childcare.

A teacher can be responsible for preparing Indiana’s future workforce while spending personal money on classroom supplies.

An employee can have health insurance and still be terrified to use it.

Those contradictions are the real subject of Jack Chance’s campaign.

He believes Indiana’s political system spends too much time arguing about teams and not enough time asking who actually benefits from the policies both teams produce.

That does not mean his answers are automatically correct. Some of his proposals are ambitious enough to require far more analysis than a campaign interview can provide. His healthcare numbers deserve serious scrutiny. His local-hiring proposal would have to survive economic and legal questions. His teacher-pay proposal would require a substantial funding discussion. His approach to school vouchers would provoke an immediate fight over parental choice.

Those arguments should happen.

But they should happen around the question Chance keeps dragging back into the room.

What happens to the worker?

Because Indiana is going to change whether politicians are ready or not. AI will improve. Automation will spread. Manufacturing will evolve. Data centers will be built somewhere. Healthcare will continue consuming enormous amounts of money. Companies will continue asking communities for incentives. Schools will continue trying to prepare children for jobs nobody can perfectly predict.

The real choice is not whether that future arrives.

It is whether the people building it have any power over what happens when it does.

Jack Chance has made his answer clear.

The voters of House District 30 get to decide whether it is theirs.

In a special Thursday bonus episode — one of several planned between now and Election Day — Scott sits down with Tom Rockwell, a Quaker minister and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 56 (all of Wayne and part of Henry County, including Richmond, Hagerstown, and Cambridge City). At 34, one of the youngest candidates running in the state this year, Tom brings a theology built on Quaker egalitarianism — no titles, no honorifics, a belief that there’s “that of God” in everyone — into direct conversation with the authoritarian, prosperity-gospel Christianity that has come to dominate American politics. The two trace a shared thread from Reagan-era deregulation and the gutting of unions through the collapse of “third spaces” like churches and fraternal clubs, landing on the same diagnosis from two different directions: isolation and resentment are what’s left when community infrastructure disappears, and it’s exactly what makes people easy to divide and exploit. Tom shares on-the-ground stories from Wayne County — seniors in trailer parks facing doubled lot rents from out-of-state private equity, a family of six denied township assistance over missing paperwork while the township sat on hundreds of thousands in unspent aid — and lays out his own legislative priorities: a constitutional convention resolution to get money out of politics, guardrails on AI, stronger tenant protections, and creative, community-based solutions to housing and the loneliness crisis, including intergenerational cooperative housing.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Tom Rockwell: https://www.tom4indiana.com/

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:22 Introduction: A Special Thursday Bonus Episode

Scott sets up the first of several Thursday bonus episodes running until Election Day, and reflects on how often religion comes up on this avowedly secular show — citing past guests like Andrew Whitehead, Matthew Taylor, and Karen Park, minister and author Beau Underwood, and recent guest Ethan Sweetland-May.

Introduces Tom Rockwell, a Quaker minister and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 56, covering Wayne and parts of Henry County, including Richmond, Hagerstown, and Cambridge City.

Social handles: Bluesky/Instagram/Threads at hoosleft.us, Facebook/TikTok/YouTube at hoosleft; PIN is at progressiveindiananetwork on most sites, pinindiana on Bluesky and TikTok.

00:04:06 Welcoming Tom Rockwell

Tom explains Quakers avoid honorifics entirely — originally the Religious Society of Friends, built on the idea that everyone is equally a friend of Jesus working together to build the kingdom of God.

00:06:09 Megachurches and the Humble Jesus of the Gospels

Scott and Tom contrast the rise of televangelism and the modern megachurch with the humility they see in the Gospels, and Tom argues Quakers’ belief that “there’s that of God in everyone” obligates them to nurture, not dominate, others.

00:09:51 Knocking 5,000 Doors Without a Single Bad Interaction

Tom credits direct, assumption-free engagement with neighbors — he’s knocked roughly 5,000 doors in the district without a single bad interaction — as one of the most radical things a Christian can do, contrasting it with representatives who won’t answer calls from struggling constituents.

00:11:16 Billionaires, Peter Thiel, and the Marriage of Money and Religion

Scott raises Peter Thiel’s recent lectures framing figures like Greta Thunberg as servants of the Antichrist as an example of authoritarian religion fusing with billionaire power.

00:13:29 The Slow Decline of American Religiosity

Scott cites PRRI polling showing a generation-long decline in American religious identification even as a vocal Christian nationalist minority grows louder; Tom recommends sociologist Christian Smith’s book Why Religion Went Obsolete and connects some of that resentment to Reagan-era deregulation hollowing out stable, union-protected communities.

00:16:14 Third Spaces, Moose Clubs, and Door-Dashed Isolation

Scott and Tom lament the collapse of “third spaces” — churches, fraternal organizations like the Moose and Elks clubs — replaced by phones, delivery apps, and isolation, and Tom connects this directly to candidates and canvassers being the first visitor some constituents have had at their door in a decade or more.

00:21:31 Capitalism as a Wild Horse: Harness It or Get Trampled

Scott argues capitalism is a powerful but ungoverned force — useful if harnessed by democratic government, dangerous if not — and Tom, who grew up around UAW-dominated Michigan manufacturing, says the broken promise of stable union jobs is something he genuinely shares common ground on with Trump’s stated diagnosis, even while rejecting Trump’s own solutions.

00:28:40 Out-of-State Landlords Doubling Rents on Fixed-Income Seniors

Tom describes several Wayne County trailer parks bought up by out-of-state landlords who’ve doubled lot rents on mostly senior, fixed-income residents living on less than $1,000 a month in Social Security, with no state or local official taking responsibility for stopping it.

00:32:51 Money Changers in the Temple of Democracy

Scott invokes Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables, arguing the same thing has happened to American democracy; Tom notes his opponent received $150,000 from the House Republican Caucus within the first couple months of the race.

00:34:37 First Bills: A Constitutional Convention on Money in Politics and AI

Asked what he’d tackle first in office, Tom names a resolution calling for a constitutional convention to get money out of politics, plus a similar push on regulating AI before it costs more jobs and concentrates more wealth.

Also describes a Wayne County family of six denied township trustee assistance over missing paperwork not actually required by the state, while the township sat on $750,000 in unspent assistance funds.

00:39:21 Housing Policy: Rent Withholding, Rent Control, and Vacant Units

Tom calls for stronger tenant protections, including a legal process to withhold rent (held by a local trustee) until landlords make needed repairs, and targeted rent control for seniors and people with disabilities on fixed incomes.

Scott and Tom note vacant units sitting empty near unhoused people under the current profit-driven housing market.

00:41:24 Cooperative Housing: Bloomington’s Model and Creative Solutions

Scott describes Bloomington’s cooperative housing model — residents own their homes outright while the underlying land is held communally — as a concept Tom has attended meetings on and wants to see replicated statewide.

00:45:43 Strauss-Howe, Toynbee, and the Return of Authoritarianism

Scott connects Strauss-Howe generational theory and historian Arnold Toynbee’s observation that societies forget hard-won lessons once the generation that learned them is gone, tying it to the fading memory of why unions and anti-fascist vigilance mattered.

00:49:11 Can You Legislate Community? Intergenerational Housing as a Starting Point

Asked whether loneliness and disconnection are even solvable through legislation, Tom argues yes — citing funding for intergenerational housing, encouraging civic participation among young people, and addressing college affordability through creative housing models as concrete starting points.

00:52:26 SEA 1’s Statewide Damage, Revisited

Scott and Tom revisit Senate Enrolled Act 1, Indiana’s 2025 property tax overhaul, with Tom reporting Wayne County underestimated its own revenue losses by $10 million, forcing 20 teacher layoffs and library funding cuts while big business saw the real benefit.

00:54:55 Closing: Where to Find Tom Rockwell

Tom’s contact info: website tom4indiana.com (donations, volunteer sign-up, phone banking); the campaign is canvassing daily from 3 to 6:30 p.m. for the final stretch before Election Day.

00:56:45 Show Outro

https://progressiveindiana.net

SUMMARY:

With early voting underway, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. spend this episode in conversation with Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears, who is seeking another term. Mears describes his path from a west-side Indianapolis upbringing to the prosecutor’s office, his decision to stop prosecuting simple marijuana possession, and community-driven programs such as the Second Chance Workshop, a Saturday youth program, and an annual book bag giveaway. The hosts contrast his approach with elected officials they say ignore community input, citing Flock cameras and data centers. The second half turns to the two constitutional questions on the November ballot: Public Question 2 (judicial residency) and Public Question 1 (denying bail). Mears and both hosts urge a “no” vote on each, argue that Marion County’s appointed judges are unaccountable to local voters, and say Mears’s answer is simple: let Marion County elect its judges. A caller, Denise, asks how to get the word out; the hosts fault party leadership for not making the questions a turnout issue sooner. The show closes with a push for early voting and the Saturday, October 24 “March to the Polls.”

WHAT’S INSIDE

00:00:00 — Show open, prayer, and introduction of Prosecutor Mears

- Alexander welcomes listeners and previews the guest, who is “putting his hat back in the ring” for prosecutor

- Greene opens in prayer for local, state, and national leaders

- Alexander brings Mears on and asks him to share his vision for the office

00:03:46 — Mears’s background and the marijuana decision

- Mears: prosecutor since 2019 and a 20-year veteran of the office; from Indianapolis’s west side and a graduate of Cardinal Ritter High School

- Became the elected prosecutor in 2019 when Prosecutor Curry became ill

- One of his first acts was to stop prosecuting simple possession of marijuana, citing racial disparities between usage rates and who ended up in the system

- Says he wants resources focused on violent crime and on building relationships so contact with the office isn’t only “after something bad has happened”

00:06:44 — Second Chance and disparities in enforcement

- Mears describes the Second Chance Workshop, which helps people get driver’s licenses reinstated and convictions removed from their records

- Alexander: a youthful mistake can follow a person for life, and some communities pay for those mistakes longer and harder

- Greene: the programs are packed, and word spread in the community that they aren’t a setup

- Mears’s example: a student caught with marijuana on a college campus gets an administrative write-up, while the same act elsewhere in the city used to mean arrest and prosecution

00:08:49 — Why presence in the community builds trust

- Alexander says Mears stands out for being active in the community — youth events, basketball leagues — rather than an “us against them” prosecutor

- Mears credits the Concerned Clergy president for the advice to be with the community rather than against it

- Argues trust cannot be earned “by sitting in your office”; leaders must meet people where they are

- Says the Concerned Clergy’s power comes from its footprint in the community

00:11:02 — Community distrust of the system

- Alexander notes community distrust about whether people will be treated fairly, and that few other elected officials make comparable efforts

- Greene commends Mears’s outreach and says he “raised the bar” for elected officials

- Greene: relationships are the key to trust and can’t be built with an us-versus-them mentality

00:13:38 — Ideas that come from the community

- Mears: the driver’s license program grew from people who said they were afraid to drive their kids to school or get to work

- Says many of his best ideas are “stolen” from community members

00:15:30 — Partnerships: expungement, youth basketball, and book bags

- Mears: the Second Chance Workshop grew from a man who said he was fine with doing the time but not with a “life sentence” of convictions following him; Indiana’s expungement law made the program possible

- Partnered with Don Carlisle, head coach at Ben Davis, on his Underdog program, which opens the gym on Saturdays for basketball and leadership development

- Runs an annual book bag giveaway with Pastor Moore and Pastor Greene, after the pastors told him there was a need

00:17:32 — Officials who listen and officials who don’t

- Alexander: it’s frustrating to bring community feedback to other elected officials who won’t receive it, and refreshing to see one who does

- Greene: many officeholders are self-serving, hard to reach, and skeptical of the community, and go on the defense over issues like Flock cameras and data centers

- Greene says decisions are implemented first and the community is labeled “troublemakers” afterward, and that some plans for 2027–28 are known to officials but not discussed with residents

00:21:35 — Council response to Flock cameras and data centers; first break

- Alexander: on Flock cameras, body cameras, and data centers, the community raised concerns up front and was brushed off by the City-County Council and the mayor

- Says officials now present moratoriums and limits as heroic when they could have had the conversation from the start

00:23:40 — Violent crime, conviction rates, and who decides

- Alexander reintroduces Mears and Greene and asks how he responds to critics who question his commitment to prosecuting violent crime, noting Marion County doesn’t select its judges

- Mears: conviction rates are the highest they’ve been in a number of areas, including homicides and cases involving children

- Says he watches jury trial numbers closely because they reflect the community’s verdict on the office

00:25:53 — Mears on Public Question 2: judicial residency

- Mears urges voters to watch for the question on the ballot to amend the Constitution so judges don’t have to live in the county

- Says Marion County already can’t vote for its judges, who are appointed by Governor Braun, whom Mears says couldn’t get more than about 40% of the vote in Marion County

- Warns judges could live in places like Hamilton County and have no connection to the community, calling it “a recipe for disaster”

- [Note: Alexander reads the ballot language as follows: the Constitution would be amended “to permit the judge of a city or town court to reside in” the county where the court is located or the bordering county closest to the city or town. WFYI’s 2026 voter guide describes the amendment as covering city and town court judges, who hear misdemeanor, traffic, and city ordinance cases. The speakers discuss it as applying to Marion County’s appointed judges generally; that characterization does not appear to match the ballot language as read.]

00:28:07 — Alexander reads Question 2; Greene on how Questions 1 and 2 combine

- Alexander puts the question on screen and reads it

- Greene: taken together with Question 1, voters would have no way to address a judge who “goes rogue,” a possible “slippery slope” toward no-bail decisions

- Greene says the Concerned Clergy, the Baptist Minister’s Alliance, and the General Association of Missionary Baptists in Indiana issued a statement urging “no” votes and calling the changes harmful to Marion County and the state

- Notes the governor is appointing two more judges who retire at year’s end

00:31:07 — Judges in rural counties vs. Marion County

- Greene: it’s problematic for Marion County, Lake County, and other counties with many Black and brown residents, and asks why electing judges works in other Indiana counties but not here

- Argues rural judges are part of their communities and can be voted out; Marion County voters can’t do that

- Alexander: Marion County keeps having things “taken away,” and its resources support other communities; teases the bail question after the break

00:33:40 — Public Question 1: bail and the Constitution

- Alexander explains Question 1: judges would gain discretion to deny bail beyond murder and treason, which are the only exceptions now

- Notes judges already have discretion over bail and bond amounts

- Mears: bail has been a constitutional right since statehood to prevent governments from punishing people, including for political reasons

- Says a bail decision isn’t really appealable and that the decision-maker would have no connection to the community

00:37:22 — Caller Denise: how do we get the word out?

- Denise thanks Mears for acknowledging racial disparities and says she will vote for him

- Asks how to spread the message that Questions 1 and 2 should both be “no,” especially to younger voters, and worries about judges brought in from small towns

- [Note: Denise says Donald Trump was “found guilty” of rape and “did not get due justice.” Trump was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case and was separately convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records; he was not criminally convicted of rape.]

00:40:37 — Mears: a role for the parties; the question is “intentionally confusing”

- Mears says he was at a community meeting discussing this very issue and sees a role for the state and local Democratic parties

- Calls the bail question’s wording “intentionally confusing” — he says he had to read it three times, despite being an attorney for 20 years

- Credits the Concerned Clergy, the Baptist Minister’s Alliance, and other groups for educating the public

00:41:26 — Hosts on getting information out

- Alexander agrees and says the question is confusing and that the show is trying to help voters understand it

- Greene: the party should already have been talking about it, because it could have been a lever for Black turnout

- Greene’s fear: rural voters know to vote for it while Marion, Lake, and Vanderburgh County voters either skip it or vote “yes” on the word “bail”

- Says people are already voting and “we need to be shouting from the rooftops”

00:43:52 — Unopposed Democrats and the stakes

- Alexander: Democrats running unopposed should treat these referendums as their opponent and campaign against them rather than “go on vacation”

- Greene: the changes will hit Black and brown people hardest — “this is ICE for Black people”

- Greene is disappointed that on October 14 the party hasn’t been louder, saying it should have started in June or July and that “the community is driving it”

00:46:37 — Mears on sentencing, accountability, and electing judges

- Alexander asks how the changes could affect prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations

- Mears: people want a fair system, and without guidelines and checks the result is abuse

- Says decisions of appointed Marion County judges are “not really reviewable” and bail rulings can’t realistically be appealed

- His “simple solution”: make Marion County’s judges elected so they must answer to the community, and not amend the Constitution

00:49:04 — How to support the Mears campaign

- Mears: find the campaign on social media and on its website, and volunteer or join him on Election Day

- Says the most important thing anyone can do is vote — for him and against both constitutional questions

- Alexander thanks him for joining and begins wrapping up the program

00:50:05 — Early voting and the march to the polls

- Alexander mentions early voting at the City-County Building;
”March to the Polls” is October 24th (a Saturday)

- Greene: the Concerned Clergy is part of the Hoosier voting coalition, with groups including Indivisible and MADVoters, organizing “March to the Polls” events next to each satellite early-voting site in every township

- Greene: Marion County’s turnout will have a big impact on statewide races and on any “blue wave”

https://concernedclergy.org

https://www.facebook.com/ClergyIndy

https://progressiveindiana.net

Scott opens tonight’s episode with an extended metaphor: state government, done well, should run like a well-directed production, with specialists in the right roles, a competent cast, and a show that comes in on time and on budget. His guest, Michelle Milne — a theater director, producer, and educator running as the Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 49 (Elkhart County, including Goshen and Middlebury) — picks the metaphor up and runs with it, arguing that voters, constituents, and residents are simultaneously actors, audience, and designers of the world they’re building together. The two trace Michelle’s path from a childhood split between Elkhart County, Bloomington, Malawi, and Haiti, through years working theater, hospitality, retail, and nonprofit research, into a campaign built on the same skill she’s used throughout her career: bringing people with real disagreements into a room and listening. They dig into the empathy gap in a legislature dominated by attorneys and business owners, the actual winners and losers of 2025’s Senate Enrolled Act 1 property tax overhaul, a looming crisis in public school funding driven by the voucher system, and the pressure that pushes officials — including Michelle’s opponent, Rep. Joanna King — to vote against the interests of the people who elected them. The conversation closes with Michelle’s belief that government works best as collaborative theater rather than a scripted one-man show, and stories from the doors about first-time voters finding their reason to show up this November.

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Michelle Milne: https://michellemilnein49.com/

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction: Government as a Well-Run Production

Scott frames the episode with his opening metaphor: well-run government looks like a well-directed production, with specialists in the right roles and a show that comes in on time and on budget — a standard Indiana’s Republican supermajority hasn’t met for ordinary Hoosiers.

Introduces Michelle Milne, a director, producer, educator, and the Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 49, covering Elkhart County including Goshen and Middlebury.

00:03:31 Everyone’s an Actor, Audience, and Designer

Michelle argues that voters, constituents, and residents of a district are simultaneously actors, audience, and designers of the world they’re creating together — a frame she says she brings to directing, teaching, coaching, and now campaigning alike.

00:05:58 From Elkhart County to Malawi, Haiti, and Back

Michelle traces her path: born in Elkhart County, early childhood in Michigan, time in Malawi and Haiti and three formative years in Bloomington while her educator parents studied, elementary through high school back in Goshen, then four years in Indianapolis working theater (including children’s theater at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis) before time out west, in Chicago, and back home.

00:08:08 Many Hats: Hospitality, Retail, and Door-Knocking Lessons

Michelle recounts work in hotels, restaurants, retail, and nonprofit research across Indiana, framing each job — however short-term for her — as a window into how differently people experience the same economy.

Connects that same instinct to canvassing today: finding what people share and where their needs genuinely differ.

00:12:18 The Empathy Gap in a Legislature of Lawyers and Business Owners

Scott raises the narrow professional range of Indiana’s legislature (attorneys, business owners, people who inherited the family business) and the disconnect that creates with everyday Hoosiers’ struggles.

Michelle argues theater trains exactly the skill missing here: imagining a life circumstance you haven’t lived, using the example of a public defender versus a corporate attorney developing very different worldviews from who they represent.

00:15:47 Empathy as a Dirty Word on the Right

Scott and Michelle discuss the political right’s recent framing of empathy itself as “toxic,” and tie Indiana’s declining education, healthcare, and environmental quality over the last generation to a broader empathy deficit in state leadership.

00:18:32 The Stock Market Isn’t the Economy

Scott argues the stock market functions as a measure of how effectively capital extracts value from labor rather than a measure of ordinary economic health, noting roughly 10% of Americans own meaningful stock.

Michelle shares a canvassing story about a single mother, new to the area from Chicago, who is paying more in rent in Elkhart County than she did in a major city and for whom stock market gains mean nothing.

00:20:57 First Order of Business: Healthcare, Medicaid, and SNAP Red Tape

Asked what she’d prioritize first in the legislature, Michelle names healthcare access, citing new paperwork burdens on SNAP and Medicaid and the erosion of home- and community-based waiver programs that let families care for disabled loved ones at home instead of in institutions.

00:23:50 Public Education and the Voucher Crisis

Michelle warns of a looming public education funding crisis, noting roughly 90% of Indiana children attend public school even as voucher programs — pitched around 2014 as targeted help for the neediest students — have driven private school tuition up while mostly benefiting families who would have enrolled their kids privately regardless.

Notes students with disabilities are often turned away from private schools lacking the resources to serve them, even when those schools want to, undercutting the “choice” argument.

00:27:05 SEA 1’s Ripple Effects: Firehouses, Trails, and Triplicate School Funding

Michelle traces her own political awakening to local fallout from Senate Enrolled Act 1’s 2025 property tax overhaul, which she says delivered real tax cuts mainly to the wealthy while stalling a planned firehouse south of Goshen and a safety trail near Millersburg used heavily by Amish commuters.

Scott connects the dots between the property tax shift, the three parallel K-12 systems (public, private, charter) Indiana now funds, and a Yale study finding a single-payer healthcare system could save over 114,000 lives and $1 trillion annually nationwide, even though such a system isn’t feasible at the state level alone.

00:31:02 What Pressure Makes Good People Cave

Michelle reflects on why officials who ran on good intentions — including her opponent, Rep. Joanna King, a former school board member — end up voting against the interests of the people who elected them, describing it as a kind of institutional bullying that rewards those who aren’t trying to get reelected.

00:34:21 The Redistricting Fight and Who Got Bullied

Scott and Michelle discuss last winter’s redistricting fight as a clarifying moment: some Republicans who faced the same outside pressure stood up and were voted out for it, while others — including Rep. King, despite her own constituents asking her directly not to — voted for the map anyway.

00:36:03 Back to the Metaphor: Government as Improv

Scott returns to his opening framing, comparing citizen participation to an improv show with audience call-outs. Michelle pushes back gently, saying her ideal isn’t audience members directing actors from the sidelines without putting themselves on the line — it’s everyone having real agency in writing the play together.

00:39:51 Main-Character Syndrome and Every Role Matters

Scott describes Indiana’s supermajority leadership as suffering “main character syndrome” — treating the job as their own star vehicle regardless of whether it serves the larger production.

Michelle illustrates the opposite lesson from teaching theater students at Columbia College Chicago: every student was the star of their own high school play, but a healthy ensemble depends on everyone valuing supporting roles too.

00:43:10 The China Temptation, and Why the Tradeoff Isn’t Worth It

Scott and Michelle discuss how the two-year election cycle discourages long-term planning — citing the slow-to-land benefits of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better-era investments — and jokingly flirt with (and firmly reject) the appeal of China’s longer planning horizon, free of electoral pressure.

00:45:18 Control vs. Collaboration: Two Kinds of Directors

Michelle contrasts directors who arrive with every detail of a production pre-planned against her own collaborative style — slower, messier, but more humane — and draws a parallel to democracy’s own inefficiency being a feature, not a bug, worth preserving over a more “efficient” but less humane alternative.

00:48:24 Listening as the Common Thread

Scott names listening as the throughline of Michelle’s approach across theater, teaching, and campaigning, and the model he thinks government itself should follow.

00:49:37 What Did We Miss? Stories From the Doors

Asked what the conversation missed, Michelle shares a door-knocking story about a man who initially said he wasn’t going to vote, broke down discussing empathy and community after she crossed the street to talk with him, and later returned with his girlfriend to say they’d both vote because she’d listened.

Reflects on neighbors who disagree politically but still show up for each other in practical ways, and the gap between that reality and the division Americans are told exists.

00:54:46 Closing: Where to Find Michelle Milne

Michelle’s contact info: campaign site michellemilnein49.com (yard signs, volunteering, donations, and voting information), and Facebook.

Early voting and Election Day are three weeks out at the time of this taping.

00:57:20 Show Outro

Share this Indiana Voting Zine with your community: https://drive.proton.me/urls/BN5XAMQH78#CVDCdnPAOSk4

This week, Scott is joined by Sharon Wight and Reece Axel-Adams for a show that tracks a steady slide toward authoritarianism at home and abroad. They open with climate chaos on both coasts and a Supreme Court case testing whether fossil fuel companies can be held liable for climate damage, then turn to the staggering cost of the Iran war, layered against Trump’s own threats to let Iran “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego, a new diesel supply agreement with Putin, and a separate Russian asset deal that stands to enrich Trump-linked oligarchs. A public-health segment covers a plague scare in Russia and a worsening measles crisis at home, both made scarier by a federal government actively undermining trust in vaccines and global health cooperation. The show then digs into a wave of state propaganda — taxpayer-funded political ads, a politicized FBI, and a plan to livestream a military execution — before covering ICE’s escalating violence, including a shooting of an immigrant with a child in the car, and Trump’s incitement against Somali communities in Minnesota, which the hosts frame as deliberate race-baiting ahead of the midterms. Voting and polling news suggests a strong Democratic environment nationally, even as the hosts worry about interference and legitimacy. Locally, the conversation covers anti-trans attack ads in the Spartz-Ford congressional race, a chaotic Indiana Secretary of State contest, a shoplifting scandal engulfing a longtime state senator, and two statewide ballot questions on bail and judicial residency. They close by connecting youth-led protest movements in France, Spain, and India to the Cornell case back home, asking whether Americans are ready to take their own anger to the streets.

Guest info:

Sharon Wight: https://www.electsharonwight.com/

Reece Axel-Adams: https://reecespeace.substack.com/

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00:33 - Opening: Panelist Welcomes and Housekeeping

00:04:36 - Climate: Hurricane Isaias, Tropical Storm Rachel, and the Supreme Court Climate Suit

00:12:24 - Iran War: Aircraft Losses and the Fairford Bomber Pullout

00:19:24 - The USS Lincoln’s Homecoming and “Let Them Hit LA, SD”

00:25:39 - Russia: The Diesel Deal, Lukoil, and Trump’s Oligarch Envy

00:32:17 - Public Health: Russia’s Plague Scare, the Measles Surge, and RFK Jr.’s Antivax Push

00:42:04 - Propaganda: Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Kash Patel’s FBI, and the Fort Hood Firing Squad

00:51:38 - ICE-Immigration: The Stelson Smear and the Marble Hill Shooting

00:57:59 - Trump’s Minnesota “Race War” and the Insurrection Act

01:06:11 - Voting: Maricopa’s Ballot Error and Hegseth’s Election “Defense” and Midterm Polling

01:15:45 - Indiana Campaigns: Spartz-Ford and the Anti-Trans Ad Wars

01:25:53 - Secretary of State: Beau Bayh’s “More Jesus” Moment and the SoS Debate

01:34:13 - State Legislature: Ron Alting’s Shoplifting Scandal

01:44:06 - Indiana Ballot Questions: Bail and Judicial Residency

01:54:01 - Youth Protests: France, Spain, India, and Cornell

01:56:27 - Wrap-Up: Can America Take to the Streets?

02:04:40 - Sign-Off

NOTES:

Climate

• Isaias makes landfall as hurricane, hammering US Gulf Coast with powerful winds, dangerous flooding (AP)

  • Hurricane Isaias, the first of the Atlantic season, made landfall near Destin, Florida, Friday with 105 mph winds. It was downgraded below hurricane strength by early Saturday.

  • More than 664,000 customers in Florida and Alabama lost power, with flooded roads, downed trees and power lines across the Panhandle and around Mobile. Some counties temporarily suspended emergency response because conditions were too dangerous.

  • Forecasters warned of 3 to 5-foot storm surge and 4 to 8 inches of rain from southern Alabama to southwest Georgia, with flooding threats spreading to the Southeast, Midwest and Northeast into Monday.

  • Florida deployed about 5,000 National Guard members. Trump said the storm was “under control” and canceled plans to attend Saturday’s Georgia–Alabama football game.

  • It’s the first hurricane to hit the eastern US since Milton in 2024. It likely missed major oil hubs, but refinery power outages could still push fuel prices up.

• Tropical Storm Rachel is behaving in unusual ways. What that means for SoCal this weekend (LA Times)

  • Tropical Storm Rachel could make landfall in northern Baja California or San Diego County as early as Saturday night, only the third storm to reach California at tropical-storm strength in the modern record. San Diego County is under a rare tropical storm watch, only the second ever issued in California.

  • Storms normally weaken in California’s cool waters, but El Niño and a marine heat wave have pushed ocean temperatures 10 to 13 degrees above normal, which climate scientist Daniel Swain called “record warm, and I do mean record warm.”

  • Tides are already running up to 17 inches above predictions, flooding Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Long Beach. Newport Beach declared a local emergency, and Long Beach ordered some evacuations.

  • Forecasters see a 40% chance of excessive rainfall and flash flooding in parts of San Diego County and the inland deserts.

  • NOAA now gives this El Niño an 83% chance of being the strongest on record. Two of the four previous “very strong” El Niños dumped more than 30 inches of rain on downtown LA.

• Climate change supercharged the warm Gulf waters fueling Hurricane Isaias (Climate Central)

  • Hurricane Isaias rapidly intensified over the Gulf of Mexico, strengthening from a tropical storm to a major Category 3 hurricane in less than 48 hours.

  • It strengthened over waters above 88°F, about 2.4°F warmer than they’d be without climate change. Climate Central says those temperatures were made up to 600 times more likely by human-caused warming.

  • Climate change is forecast to add 7 mph to Isaias’ maximum sustained winds, and has raised Gulf Coast sea levels about 6.5 inches since 1900, giving storm surge a higher starting point.

• Court sends mixed signals on whether it will allow state-tort suits seeking to hold energy companies liable for climate change to go forward (SCOTUSblog)

  • `The Supreme Court opened its term hearing Boulder, Colorado’s eight-year-old lawsuit seeking to make Suncor and ExxonMobil pay climate-related costs, alleging they deceived the public about climate change.

  • The companies, backed by the Trump administration, argue federal law bars state-court climate suits. With Justice Alito recused, a 4-4 tie would let Boulder’s case proceed.

  • Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan seemed skeptical of the companies. Kagan compared the case to the 1990s tobacco suits and opioid litigation.

  • Justice Kavanaugh was most sympathetic to the companies, citing precedent that interstate pollution is “a matter for federal law,” while Justices Thomas and Barrett pressed Boulder on where its theory would end.

  • The companies’ lawyer warned the theory would let Boulder sue him “for refilling my car.” Boulder argues it’s simply asking polluters to pay for some of the damage they cause.

Iran War

• US has lost or sustained damage to 81 military aircraft worth up to $3.3 billion in Iran war, congressional report says (CNN)

  • A Congressional Research Service report says 81 US military aircraft have been destroyed or damaged in the Iran war, worth $1.9 billion to $3.3 billion. Some of the damaged ones have since returned to service.

  • MQ-9 Reaper drones account for more than half the losses, but the toll also includes an F-35A and an E-3 Sentry radar plane, one of a limited fleet of aging planes that are hard to replace.

  • The war’s total cost is at least $45 billion, sources told CNN, not counting damage to US bases.

  • CRS says Pentagon reporting on losses has been vague, and questions whether Congress is getting enough information to judge the damage.

  • The report also warns the losses could create gaps in US capabilities in other regions and strain replacement production and arms sales to allies.

• Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft From British Air Base (NYT)

  • The US abruptly pulled all 12 B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford in England after intelligence about a possible drone attack ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, part of what officials describe as a plot to destroy aircraft and kill American personnel.

  • Officials say the plot was loosely modeled on Ukraine’s 2025 attack that smuggled drones into Russia on trucks and destroyed bombers on runways.

  • The withdrawal was so rushed that some bombers left while refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support them.

  • It follows the arrest of five men in white vans near the base on Sept. 27, released on bail when no explosives were found, and a British-Iranian dual national’s arrest on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. Iran denies involvement.

  • Vance said the move was made “out of an abundance of caution,” and Israel has warned Germany that US bases there, including Ramstein, also face heightened risk.

• Trump promises not to attack Iran before November’s US midterms (Guardian)

  • Trump pledged on Truth Social that the US “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections,” citing “productive discussions” with Tehran. He didn’t say what happens after Nov. 3.

  • He also claimed 22 million barrels of oil moved through the Strait of Hormuz in one night, none to or from Iran. The figure couldn’t be independently verified.

  • His stance has shifted: in early September he said he was “not affected by the election,” then a week later predicted the war would end almost as soon as voting was over.

  • WSJ reported Vance and Rubio privately warned Trump the war could last through the rest of his presidency.

• The long-deployed USS Lincoln returns home to San Diego Bay (NPR)

  • The USS Abraham Lincoln returned to San Diego after a 322-day Iran war deployment, including a record 265 straight days at sea. Among those returning were 122 fathers meeting babies born while they were gone.

  • Families described months of worry over reports of food shortages, limited showers and deteriorating crew mental health. The Navy told lawmakers eight sailors attempted suicide during the deployment.

  • The Navy initially downplayed the problems before acknowledging some, and Trump said in August the deployment was “not nearly long enough.”

  • Hegseth awarded the crew the Presidential Unit Citation and pushed back on efforts to make the Lincoln “a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale.”

  • The strike group flew nearly 3,700 combat missions, launched 450 Tomahawk missiles and sank 64 Iranian warships.

• “Let Them Hit LA, SD”

  • Trump suggests letting Iran ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego at campaign rally (LA Times)

    • At a Nebraska campaign rally, Trump said war-driven costs are “a little bit high” but “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city, let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.” The crowd cheered.

    • Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump “deranged and dangerous” and said California activated its state operations center, citing increased cyber activity the next morning.

    • San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria responded: “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’”

  • Follow-up: White House aide: Trump did not call for attacks on US cities but explained how he’s preventing them (AP)

    • White House communications director Steven Cheung called the reaction a “media freakout,” saying Trump meant US cities would have been threatened “if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” and claiming Iran “has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

    • Jim Desmond, the GOP congressional nominee in a San Diego-area district, sided with critics: “I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war.”

    • AP notes Trump made the remarks while discussing the war and high gas prices, which have become a midterm liability for Republicans.

    • It fits a pattern of Trump attacking Democratic-leaning cities on the campaign trail. He recently called North Carolina’s cities “blood-soaked killing fields,” though the state’s violent crime rate ranks in the middle third nationally.

  • Trump doubles down on ‘let them hit’ LA, San Diego comment before adding he won’t let scenario play out (FOX11 LA)

    • At a San Antonio rally two days later, Trump revisited the remark: “Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles, and you want to see some bad things happen. You want to see a country that would be in free fall.”

    • He then added: “We protect our cities, we protect our country. We’re not letting that happen.”

    • LA Mayor Karen Bass said she’s pushing lawmakers for a congressional investigation, questioning why a president “whose number one job is to protect and defend the American people” would say it.

    • Bass said invoking an attack on LA is especially irresponsible after the city’s experience last year [wildfires? ICE operations? The article didn’t clarify].

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Russia

• Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets (CNBC)

  • Diesel prices have surged worldwide as Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries forced Moscow to ban exports, while Iran and the Houthis have hit Middle East refineries.

  • Trump says Putin agreed in a phone call to supply more than 4 million tons of diesel to global markets, starting with 300,000 tons immediately. Treasury waived sanctions on Russian diesel through April 2027.

  • Trump faces midterm pressure in farm states like Iowa, and floated a diesel export ban last month before backing off after industry warned it would raise gas prices.

  • Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order letting truckers use red-dyed off-road diesel, which is tax-exempt and normally restricted to farm and construction equipment, on highways without federal penalties. The order only defers the tax, leaving truckers unsure whether they’ll owe it later.

  • Zelenskyy condemned the deal: “Gifts to Putin will not bring peace,” warning that letting Russia sell fuel is “an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

• Zelenskyy furious as Trump announces deal to buy Russian diesel (Guardian)

  • Zelenskyy called the deal “absolutely terrible,” telling Axios it “looks like a happy birthday present for Putin,” who turned 74 this week.

  • Democrats say it undercuts a sanctions law Trump signed just last month targeting Russian oil revenue. GOP Rep. Don Bacon called propping up “Putin’s war economy” “morally wrong.”

  • Trump has pressed Zelenskyy to stop striking Russian refineries. Zelenskyy refuses unless Russia agrees to stop hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

  • Meanwhile, Russia is believed to be giving Iran satellite intelligence on US forces’ locations, plus drone parts and ammunition.

  • Trump announced it while his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were meeting Ukrainian and European officials in Miami on ending the war. Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s negotiators had been “used as a smokescreen for the deal.”

• U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies (NYT)

  • US-Russia talks on ending the Ukraine war have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar sale of Lukoil’s international oil assets. Putin raised it with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5.

  • The leading bidder group includes Trump donor Todd Boehly, who has given $2 million to Trump causes, and Qatari brothers partnering with Kushner and Ivanka Trump on a luxury resort in Albania.

  • Another major stakeholder is a fund controlled by the UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon, whose affiliate bought $2 billion in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto, co-founded by Witkoff, and who is a major investor in Kushner’s private equity firm.

  • US approval would lift sanctions on the assets, instantly raising their value. There’s no indication Witkoff or Kushner personally profit, though a former DOJ ethics adviser called it “an alarming and very concerning set of entanglements.”

  • The White House, not Treasury’s sanctions office, is effectively making the call, while the US government itself would take a stake through its overseas development finance agency.

Public Health

• Russia plays down plague fears and denies lab accident, says scientist died of “pneumonia of unknown origin” (CBS)

  • A 28-year-old scientist at Siberia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute died of severe pneumonia Oct. 2, after Russian media reported she broke a test tube containing pneumonic plague bacteria in late September.

  • Officials have walked back early statements. The regional head who first said she died of plague later added “possibly,” and a local warning to avoid the town where she was hospitalized was deleted within two hours.

  • Russia’s health watchdog denies any lab accident, attributes her death to “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and says testing of nearly 200 contacts found no dangerous pathogens.

  • Pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread person to person, unlike bubonic plague. The WHO says the public risk appears low.

  • Rubio called it not “cause for alarm, but... cause for focus,” citing very limited US-Russia travel.

• The Russian ‘lab leak’ and America’s great weakness (Independent)

  • The bigger worry, author Holly Baxter argues, is the Trump administration’s weakened ability to respond: the US formally left the WHO in January, cutting off the main channel for global disease information-sharing used during COVID.

  • A microbiologist says pneumonic plague is treatable with antibiotics if caught early and far less transmissible than COVID, but that “an awful lot must have gone wrong” for a worker to be infected as reported.

  • Local reports say the institute is locked down with about 60 people inside. Details have trickled out through local media despite Russian officials’ contradictory statements.

  • Baxter says US scientists told her Trump’s NIH disruptions, research cuts and visa restrictions have slowed their work so much they expect China to become the world leader in biomedical research, bringing ally Russia along.

• US surpasses 4,000 measles cases with infections confirmed in 45 states: CDC (ABC)

  • US measles cases have topped 4,000 this year across 45 states and DC, breaking records for the second straight year. Most cases are among children and teens, and about 1 in 10 kids under 5 has been hospitalized.

  • About 95% of cases are among people who are unvaccinated or whose status is unknown. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective.

  • Kindergarten MMR vaccination fell to 92.4% last school year, down from 95.2% before the pandemic.

  • Experts say the US is likely to lose the measles elimination status it earned in 2000, citing declining vaccination, lost trust in public health institutions and unclear federal guidance.

  • One specialist says the true case count is likely much higher, since the deaths and hospitalizations point to many untested infections.

• Pennsylvania confirms more than 1,000 measles cases (CIDRAP)

  • Pennsylvania has topped 1,000 measles cases this year, the first state to pass that mark in 35 years. More than 99% of cases are unvaccinated, and nearly 20% have been hospitalized.

  • All five people who died were unvaccinated: two infants, a woman with leukemia on chemotherapy, a woman with asthma and COPD, and an 18-year-old who developed a rare, deadly brain complication.

  • Unusually, most cases are adults ages 25 to 49, and the Amish community has been hit hard. Only 32% of cases are children.

  • CHOP’s Paul Offit says the death toll implies 5,000 or more actual cases, and expects the US to lose its elimination status next month: “Measles is now endemic in the United States.”

  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency over 108 cases in rural areas near Pennsylvania.

• Indiana confirms 28 measles cases statewide as health officials warn of continued spread (Marshall Co. Post)

  • The Indiana Department of Health has confirmed 28 measles cases statewide this year and expects the virus to keep spreading in the coming weeks.

  • Wayne County has the most cases (7), followed by Switzerland (6), Parke (4), and LaGrange and Adams (3 each), with single cases in Allen, DeKalb, Miami, Ohio and Randolph counties.

  • Allen County health officials issued an exposure warning for the Fort Wayne Zoo.

  • Up to 9 in 10 unprotected people near an infected person will catch measles, and the virus can linger in the air for two hours.

  • The CDC advises anyone vaccinated between 1963 and 1968 with the older inactivated vaccine, or an unknown type, to get at least one dose of the current MMR vaccine.

• RFK Jr. unveils sweeping federal initiative to find evidence of vaccine injuries (Ars Technica)

  • RFK Jr.’s HHS launched an agency-wide initiative focused on vaccine injuries, including a new NIH clinic dedicated to patients with health problems after vaccination. Kennedy attended its ribbon-cutting Oct. 5 without announcing it.

  • HHS also proposes paying doctors to file reports to VAERS, the federal system where anyone can submit unverified claims of vaccine reactions. CDC reviews find most reports aren’t actually caused by vaccines.

  • Anti-vaccine advocates, especially those suing over alleged injuries, routinely cite unvetted VAERS reports as proof vaccines are dangerous.

  • HHS will also require vaccine injuries to be logged in electronic health records, and CDC awarded a nearly $1 million contract to a Christian tech company to overhaul VAERS.

  • Protect Our Care’s Brad Woodhouse said Kennedy “wants to bribe doctors to claim they see vaccine harm without proof.”

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Propaganda

• Trump says his super PAC will start paying for controversial taxpayer-funded ads (CBS)

  • Since late September, taxpayer-funded ads stamped “Paid for by the U.S. Government” have aired nationwide, featuring Trump vowing to “defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America” and touting the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The White House insists they’re public service announcements.

  • After weeks of bipartisan backlash, Trump said he’ll pay for his pro-Trump ads with money from his super PAC, MAGA Inc., instead of taxpayer funds.

  • Contracting records show DHS paid an ad agency $20 million for a “National Media Campaign,” after OMB gave Customs and Border Protection $20 million for “OBBB Commemorative Events.”

  • Shifting the ads to MAGA Inc. taps a war chest of over $400 million that many Republicans hoped would go to battleground races, including Texas’ tight Paxton-Talarico Senate contest.

• Trump won’t reimburse taxpayers for campaign-style PSAs (Wash. Examiner)

  • The White House confirmed Trump won’t reimburse taxpayers for the $20 million-plus already spent on the ads: “The President’s Truth was not referring to reimbursement.”

  • MAGA Inc. confirmed it will pay only for future ads.

  • In his Truth Social post, Trump called using public money “a rather standard thing to do,” blaming “the Radical Left” for the backlash.

  • Vance defended the ads, comparing them to the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act ads. Those, unlike these, promoted a specific program, not the president himself.

• Why the Hell Is Kash Patel’s FBI Making Campaign Ads? (TNR)

  • The FBI posted a two-minute video attacking “democratic socialist leaders” who called to defund the police, featuring Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed weeks before the election, alongside Kamala Harris, AOC, Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar.

  • The video claims defunding led to “a complete failure” in cities, though Brennan Center research shows violent crime has been declining for years.

  • It also praised Director Kash Patel’s leadership and touted a surge in violent-crime arrests. Patel has reportedly counted arrests made by other agencies toward those numbers.

  • Federal law (The Hatch Act) bars using government funds for campaign purposes, partisan messaging or propaganda.

  • The video comes on top of the White House’s campaign-style ads: TNR counts at least 15, costing taxpayers at least $5.6 million, funded with money diverted from Customs and Border Protection.

• Patel boasts about success rate on FBI’s Most Wanted list, but there’s a catch (MaddowBlog)

  • FBI Director Kash Patel boasted that his FBI has captured all ten of the Ten Most Wanted fugitives, “2.5 times” as many as in the previous four years, and repeated the claim on Hannity.

  • Per MS NOW’s reporting, the FBI has added some fugitives to the list just hours or days before arresting them. In one case, agents caught a suspect one hour and 13 minutes after he was listed.

  • Half a dozen law enforcement sources say Patel’s FBI adopted new policies that inflate arrest numbers and overstate its progress against crime.

  • One FBI official said: “They are literally just nominating people they’re about to arrest... Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst.” The FBI denies the reporting.

• Pentagon to livestream firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter (NPR)

  • The Pentagon confirmed Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s Dec. 3 firing squad execution “will be livestreamed.” Hegseth says the public needs to “understand that there’s serious consequences.”

  • It would be the first public US execution in nearly a century and the first ever livestreamed. The last, the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky, drew 20,000 spectators in a picnic-like atmosphere and a backlash that ended public executions.

  • “Public executions have typically been held in authoritarian countries to instill fear in the population,” said the Death Penalty Information Center’s Robin Maher.

  • Backlash crossed party lines. GOP Sen. Thom Tillis called a livestream “beyond disgusting,” the Catholic bishops called it “barbaric,” and Vance said he wouldn’t watch.

  • Hasan could still delay the execution for years with a federal habeas appeal, and outside groups could challenge the livestream.

ICE-Immigration

• Homeland Security targets Democratic campaign after ICE arrest in Pennsylvania (AP)

  • The watchdog group CREW filed a Hatch Act complaint, saying it had never seen a law enforcement agency “go out of its way” to tie an arrest to a campaign.

  • A DHS press release on the ICE arrest of a Nigerian man for indecent exposure claimed he worked for Janelle Stelson, the Democrat challenging Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s battleground 10th District.

  • ICE’s deputy director said it was “unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien... let alone a pervert.” DHS sourced the connection to a news report quoting a conservative activist.

  • Stelson’s campaign says it never heard of him, and campaign finance reports show no payments to him. The only link is that police found Stelson fliers in his car, and it’s unclear whether he canvassed for another group.

  • The man pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. DHS says he overstayed a 2017 visa, though he received deferred action under the Biden administration in 2021.

• NY Shooting

  • ICE Agent Shoots Man in New York City (NYT)

    • An ICE agent fired seven rounds into a car in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood, wounding 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the neck while a 5-year-old boy, believed to be his son, sat in the back seat. The child wasn’t physically hurt.

    • DHS says Belgal is an undocumented Dominican immigrant with a grand larceny conviction, but hasn’t said why the agent fired or whether he knew a child was inside.

    • Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone with Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin trying to secure Belgal’s release, but agents took him from the hospital in an unmarked vehicle. Gov. Hochul is demanding body-camera footage be released.

    • It appears to be the first ICE shooting in New York City since 2020. At least two dozen people have been shot at by immigration agents since Trump took office, and six have been killed, including three US citizens.

    • Protesters gathered at the scene and outside the hospital, where scuffles with police led to at least one arrest.

  • ‘Get ICE out’: Mamdani calls Trump after feds shoot man near child in NYC (USA Today)

    • Mamdani called the shooting “unconscionable” and demanded Trump halt all ICE enforcement in the city: “Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children.”

    • DHS escalated its claims, alleging Belgal has multiple prior arrests and ties to the Trinitarios gang. NYPD’s commissioner cited only a grand larceny conviction and a pending drug case, and DHS’s statement never mentioned the child in the car.

    • DHS blamed “Democrat sanctuary policies” for releasing Belgal after a 2023 arrest, a month after DHS Secretary Mullin vowed enforcement would continue as long as Hochul and Mamdani resisted.

    • Days before the shooting, eight local officials asked the Target on the same street to stop letting ICE use its parking lot as a staging area. Target denies any agreement with ICE.

  • ICE officers shot a man in New York because they believed they were in danger, official says (AP)

    • NYPD footage shows two plainclothes immigration officers running up to the parked car with guns drawn, one bashing the window with his gun barrel before the driver pulls away. The shooting itself wasn’t captured, and the videos don’t settle whether it was justified.

    • ICE’s enforcement chief says the driver refused to exit, rammed two government vehicles, and officers “believing that their life... [was] in danger” opened fire. Officials say they didn’t know the child was in the car.

    • ICE has invoked “weaponization” of vehicles to justify other shootings, but video has sometimes undercut those claims. Agents have fired during more than a dozen vehicle stops since last year, killing at least four people.

    • The man is being held in a Brooklyn federal jail with the bullet still in his body. A judge temporarily barred his deportation. “You’re not supposed to get shot in your car with your child sitting in the back. Period,” his lawyer said.

    • DHS Secretary Mullin promised to release ICE body camera footage but wouldn’t say when, and the Bronx DA has opened an investigation.

• Trump accused of trying to start a ‘race war’ with threats to Somali communities in Minnesota (Independent)

  • Trump posted that Minnesota “is being taken over by Somali Immigrants” with “Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State,” urging residents: “Fight back Minnesota, fight back!”

  • He called Walz “an incompetent thief” and told state leaders to “ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us!”

  • Walz called the post “deranged,” and Minnesota’s CAIR chapter called it “an implicit call for violence against an entire community.” The Minneapolis–St. Paul area’s roughly 80,000 Somali Americans are overwhelmingly legal residents or citizens.

  • The post followed shootings that police tied to Somali gangs and federal charges this week against a Somali American man accused of plotting an attack on the Mall of America. GOP Rep. Tom Emmer called Somali immigrants “enemy combatants” on Fox Business.

  • Critics accuse Trump of trying to ignite a “race war” as his polls sink ahead of the midterms. An American Immigration Council fellow said he’s “deliberately inciting race hatred,” and a Somali-born Minneapolis council member warned that when a president tells people to “fight back” while singling out a community, “those words carry consequences.”

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Voting

• Trump criticizes election officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County over error affecting 3,000 ballots (AP)

  • Trump attacked Arizona’s Maricopa County after a vendor mistakenly mailed 3,126 early ballots six days ahead of schedule, saying officials should “be ashamed of themselves.” “Now they’re saying it was an error,” he said. “Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county.”

  • The ballots went to the correct voters and remain valid. That’s about 0.1% of the county’s 2.5 million registered voters.

  • The vendor, Runbeck Election Services, took full blame: “It was pure accident, just a human error.” The county recorder’s office that announced it is run by Republican Justin Heap.

  • Maricopa has long been a target of election conspiracy theories, including Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

• From Sept 28: Pete Hegseth Orders Midterm Election Defense. Pentagon Won’t Explain What’s New (Military.com)

  • Hegseth claims he’s ordering military cyber and intelligence agencies to protect the midterms from foreign interference, calling it a “no-fail mission.” Asked what that actually means, the Pentagon refused to explain: “We have nothing to provide outside the release and the memo.”

  • The memo names no new staff, money or deadlines, so it’s unclear what, if anything, it adds beyond giving the military a bigger, vaguer role in elections.

  • The administration claims to be protecting elections while proposing to eliminate CISA’s election security program, the civilian office that actually helps states secure their systems.

  • Cyber Command and the NSA also defended the 2020 election, which Trump still insists was stolen, raising the question of whether he’d accept their work this time if he doesn’t like the result.

  • Federal law bars troops at polling places and prohibits military interference with voters or election officials. Hegseth hasn’t said how his directive respects those limits.

• Democratic Support Hits Highest Level Since Obama’s First Term: Poll (Newsweek)

  • Gallup finds 50% of Americans identify as or lean Democratic versus 39% Republican, the Democrats’ highest level since 2009 in Obama’s first term. Republicans led 47% to 43% at the end of 2024.

  • Experts say it reflects voters souring on Trump and the GOP, not a surge of love for Democrats. One called it proof of “how toxic the Republican brand has become” with independents and swing voters.

  • Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 8.3 points, per RealClearPolling, compared with 7.2 points at this point in 2018, when they gained 41 House seats.

  • One election model gives Democrats an 87% chance of winning the House and 73% for the Senate.

  • Pollsters caution that past polls have underestimated Republicans, and turning sentiment into turnout remains the challenge. The RNC says national polls “always underestimate support for Republicans.”

Indiana Campaigns

• Anti-Trans Ads: All Republicans Have Got

  • Spartz’s House district on new list of races shifting toward Democrats. How close is it? (IndyStar)

    • The Cook Political Report shifted 18 House races toward Democrats, including Indiana’s 5th District, which moved from “Solid R” to “Likely R.” Cook projects Democrats could gain 9 to 19 House seats.

    • Spartz is also the target of a $2 million ad blitz from a national clean energy super PAC that touts a perfect record of ousting its targets. Its ads hit her over stock trades and her health care votes.

    • Ford said “nonpartisan experts are seeing what we’ve known all along: this race is wide open.”

    • Spartz’s campaign said there’s “zero chance” voters would elect Ford, calling him an extremist.

  • Victoria Spartz jumps on anti-trans bandwagon with latest Ford attack ad (Facebook)

    • Rep. Victoria Spartz’s campaign is running an ad asking why Democratic challenger state Sen. J.D. Ford is “LYING” about her, claiming he’s hiding a “radical record.”

    • The ad accuses Ford of supporting “sex change surgeries for children,” “men in girls’ sports,” defunding the police, “denying sexual assault victims’ rights,” higher taxes, more benefits for “illegal aliens,” and claiming “being white makes you racist.”

    • It echoes the GOP’s national closing strategy of leaning on anti-trans and culture-war attacks in competitive races.

    • It’s Spartz’s answer to ads from a Ford-linked PAC accusing her of getting rich on stock trades.

  • The GOP’s Culture-War Hail Mary (Atlantic)

    • With the Iran war in its seventh month, gas averaging $4.50 and Trump deeply underwater, Republicans are closing the midterms with anti-trans attacks, betting it energizes their base and divides Democrats, as it did in 2024.

    • In Texas, an AI-generated ad casts Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico as Maria von Trapp singing about girls with mustaches. Another, echoing LBJ’s “Daisy” ad, shows an AI Talarico in scrubs looming over a little girl in a hospital bed.

    • Trump himself told the Dallas GOP convention he’s “petrified” Democrats might change their stance on trans athletes: “That’s one of our great sound bites of all time.”

    • Some Democrats are now distancing themselves. Talarico calls his past comments “cringey,” Rob Sand says “girls’ sports are for girls,” and Amy Acton says she doesn’t support “boys playing in girls’ sports,” which LGBTQ advocates call misgendering.

    • An Ohio Democratic Pride Caucus leader warns the party risks “throw[ing] trans rights under the bus,” leaving voters in 2028 with “a transphobic Republican and a transphobic Democrat for president.”

  • Democratic Senate candidate responds to anti-trans attacks pushed by Republicans (Guardian)

    • South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who has been vocal in supporting trans people, released an ad declaring: “I don’t support biological men playing in women’s sports, and I don’t support and haven’t ever performed gender surgery for minors.”

    • It responds to Trump’s attacks and a super PAC ad backing Republican Darline Graham that says Andrews “is for they/them” and frames a trans person as a predator toward a child, language nearly identical to the 2024 anti-Harris ads.

    • Other Democrats in Trump-won districts are shifting too: Rep. Marcy Kaptur touts voting “with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools,” and Rep. Don Davis says states should decide.

    • Equality PAC called Kaptur’s language “unacceptable” and pulled its support. The Human Rights Campaign warned that “turning on a vulnerable community is... exactly what Trump, Musk, and MAGA want.”

    • HRC instead praised Sherrod Brown’s approach of having voters dismiss the attacks, asking, “With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about?”

• Secretary of State

  • “We need more Jesus in our politics today,” says Beau Bayh (Adam Wren on X)

    • At a megachurch appearance, the pastor introduced Democratic secretary of state candidate Beau Bayh by praising his father, Evan Bayh, as a “great leader,” then told women in the crowd that Beau is “30 and single,” “straight, so you don’t have to worry about that,” and “all man.”

    • Bayh thanked the congregation for praying for his family after his mother’s death and described the duties of secretary of state.

    • He then addressed anger and division in politics: “We need more Jesus in our politics. Jesus taught us to lead not by dividing, not by anger and fear and hatred, but by reaching out to people you don’t always agree with.”

    • The congregation prayed over his campaign before breaking into “God Bless America.”

  • Sharp divides in Indiana secretary of state debate over noncitizen vote, spending audit (ICC)

    • At the Indiana Debate Commission’s secretary of state debate, Republican Max Engling claimed he’s the only candidate committed to blocking noncitizen voting. Greg Ballard called that “ludicrous,” and Beau Bayh called it “ridiculous,” noting noncitizen voting is already illegal.

    • Bayh said Engling is “making this up because he wants to stoke fear.” Libertarian Lauri Shillings said Engling is “looking for a problem that doesn’t exist” by importing the SAVE Act.

    • Bayh hammered current Secretary of State Diego Morales’ spending, including a $92,000 luxury SUV, family hires, unexplained travel and no-bid contracts to donors, and promised a forensic audit. Engling, who beat Morales for the nomination, backed only an inspector general review, which Bayh called “kick[ing] this can down the road.”

    • Bayh also pushed ending straight-ticket voting and allowing citizen ballot initiatives. Engling opposed both.

    • Ballard repeated his call to replace the partisan Election and Recount commissions with judges. Republicans have won every secretary of state race since 1994.

  • Walker crosses party lines, endorses Democrat Beau Bayh for secretary of state (Columbus Republic)

    • Outgoing GOP state Sen. Greg Walker of Columbus, a 20-year senator and former Senate Elections Committee chair, endorsed Democrat Beau Bayh for secretary of state.

    • “I am a lifelong Republican, and I’m proud to vote for Beau Bayh. Hoosiers deserve better than the corruption that has plagued the Secretary of State’s office,” Walker said.

    • Walker was one of the most vocal Republican opponents of last year’s Trump-backed congressional redistricting push, and lost his primary this year to Trump-aligned state Rep. Michelle Davis.

    • Bayh said they share “a commitment to integrity and accountability in public service — a commitment that goes far beyond partisanship.”

  • Former GOP lieutenant governor endorses Ballard in secretary of state race (ICC)

    • Former Republican Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann, who served under Mike Pence and later led Ivy Tech, endorsed Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard for secretary of state over GOP nominee Max Engling.

    • “Good governance... has to be the top priority, even above a party,” she said, adding that she “didn’t see” the Republican Party elevating strong candidates.

    • She still calls herself a Republican and chose to go public rather than quietly vote for Ballard.

    • Like Greg Walker, Ellspermann broke with top Republicans last year to oppose Trump’s congressional redistricting push.

  • Lincoln Party puts out statement of principles, which foe calls ‘bare minimum’ (ICC)

    • After criticism for having no policy platform, the Lincoln Party released a “statement of principles” all its candidates and officials must sign, covering broad ideals like equal rights and “governing in the public interest.”

    • The party gains automatic statewide ballot access if Greg Ballard tops 2% in the secretary of state race. Chair Nathan Gotsch, also Ballard’s campaign manager, says the goal is to let independents run without gathering petition signatures.

    • Republican Max Engling has faulted the party for taking no stances on taxes or social issues: “To me, that says nothing about what they stand for.”

    • Libertarian Lauri Shillings called it “a code of conduct... It’s nice, but it isn’t a policy platform,” setting “a bare minimum standard” most officials already follow.

  • Lincoln Party candidate Ballard starting TV ads in Indiana secretary of state race (ICC)

    • Greg Ballard launched his first TV ad, starting Monday with an initial $50,000 weekly buy he plans to grow before Election Day. It’s the first widespread TV campaign by a non-major-party candidate in at least decades.

    • The ad highlights his 23 years in the Marine Corps and eight years as Republican mayor of Indianapolis, pitching an “independent” run to “restore professionalism.”

    • He’s up against a $1 million state GOP ad push for Max Engling, including spots attacking Ballard over tax hikes and crime as mayor. Beau Bayh has been on air since August, attacking Engling but not Ballard.

    • Ballard’s campaign spent nearly $800,000 through June gathering 74,000 signatures to make the ballot. “No one thought we’d raise enough money to be on television,” he said.

• State Legislature

  • Alting accused of 2 recent Walmart shoplifting incidents (Lafayette Journal&Courier)

    • Longtime GOP state Sen. Ron Alting, 70, is accused of shoplifting from Walmarts in Lafayette on Sept. 22 and Monticello on Oct. 1. In Lafayette, police say a man and woman briefly stopped by store security fled in a green pickup.

    • Alting said he’s been experiencing “concerning changes in my judgment and cognitive functioning,” is undergoing medical evaluation, and “did things that were wrong and completely out of character for me.”

    • He’s stepping back from active campaigning but remains on the ballot against Democrat Natasha Baker of Battle Ground. He has held the District 22 seat since 1998.

    • An Elkhart County special prosecutor is reviewing the Lafayette case for possible charges. Monticello police have refused to release details, including the daily call log state law requires be made public.

  • Prosecutor to weigh 6 Lafayette theft cases linked to Alting (Lafayette Journal&Courier)

    • The special prosecutor is now investigating six alleged Walmart thefts in Lafayette tied to Sen. Ron Alting, not just one. The J&C confirmed he’s the suspect.

    • The alleged incidents span Aug. 5 to Sept. 22, all at the same east-side Walmart, before the separate Oct. 1 theft in Monticello.

    • Alting was unavailable for comment on the additional cases. He previously attributed his actions to “concerning changes in my judgment and cognitive functioning.”

    • Monticello police released only a redacted log for the Oct. 1 incident, without the factual details state public records law requires.

Indiana Ballot Questions

• Should suspects charged with crimes other than murder be held without bond? Indiana voters will soon decide (FOX59)

  • Indiana voters will decide on a constitutional amendment allowing judges to deny bail to people charged with crimes other than murder or treason, if the state proves “by clear and convincing evidence” they pose a public safety threat. If approved, it takes effect Jan. 1, 2027.

  • GOP Sen. Aaron Freeman admits the amendment is “very broad — that is true, but I think it needs to be,” arguing judges need it for violent repeat offenders.

  • Defense attorney Mike Cunningham warns it could create a “plea machine,” pressuring low-income defendants to plead guilty just to get home to their families, even when they might be acquitted at trial.

  • Democratic Sen. Rodney Pol warns of jail overcrowding and costs, since defendants could be held a year or more before trial. Nationally, 69% of jail inmates in mid-2024 were awaiting trial.

  • Author Sen. Eric Koch says a companion law guarantees counsel, prompt hearings and speedy appeals: “I don’t think that we could let that hypothetical get in the way of public safety.”

• Indiana Public Question 2, Residency Requirements for City and Town Court Judges Amendment (Ballotpedia)

  • Public Question 2 would let city and town court judges live anywhere in their court’s county or the nearest bordering county. Right now they must live in the city or town itself.

  • Indiana has 38 city courts and 14 town courts handling local ordinance violations, misdemeanors and infractions.

  • Sponsor Rep. Michael Aylesworth (R) says lawyers who could become judges are increasingly scarce in rural areas as older attorneys retire.

  • Indiana has about 2.2 lawyers per 1,000 residents, well below the national average of four, and nearly half the state’s lawyers are in or around Indianapolis.

  • Ballotpedia found no organized opposition and no campaign money on either side.

Youth Protests

• Protests sweep France, as student walkouts tap into public discontent (WaPo)

  • Student walkouts that began in late September over crowded classrooms and understaffing have spread across France, drawing an estimated 250,000 to 450,000 people Tuesday as major unions joined.

  • More than 5,000 people have been detained, mostly minors, and nearly 300 students and school staff injured. Rights groups accuse police of heavy-handed tactics including rubber bullets, and a teenager in Lens reportedly lost a hand touching a stun grenade.

  • The protests tap broader anger over austerity, as the government pushes a 2027 budget freezing public wages and limiting health costs amid record debt. Comparisons to the Yellow Vests movement are growing.

  • It comes six months before France’s presidential election, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen leading in the polls.

  • Trump falsely blamed the unrest on “out of control mass migration,” posting “This is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” Migration and religion haven’t figured in the protesters’ demands at all.

• Spain’s Protesters See ‘Madness’ of Rising Rent and a ‘Martyr’ in Maricarmen (NYT)

  • Thousands marched in Madrid in memory of María del Carmen “Maricarmen” Abascal, an 87-year-old whose dramatic eviction two weeks ago became a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis. She died Wednesday.

  • Her eviction prompted Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call snap elections, pitching a left-wing majority as the way to tackle housing. Conservative and far-right parties are framing the vote as a referendum on Sánchez himself.

  • Rents in Spain have risen 87% since 2015 while wages rose just 28%, per El País, leaving many young Spaniards living with their parents into their 30s.

  • Hundreds of tents have sprung up in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol since the eviction. “Maricarmen was the last straw,” said one 22-year-old camper.

  • A 72-year-old retired teacher who owns his home said he joined anyway because rents in his working-class neighborhood have nearly doubled: “The madness has reached us there, too.”

• India cracks down on youth protests as anger grows against Modi and election chief (NPR)

  • Indian police detained thousands of protesters in New Delhi, blocking a rally by the youth “Cockroach” movement before it could start. Officers boarded a plane to detain three movement leaders, set up checkpoints into the capital, banned gatherings of five or more and restricted mobile internet.

  • Protesters are demanding the resignation of India’s election chief over a voter roll revision that has removed more than 130 million names. The opposition says it disproportionately purges its voters while sparing Modi’s supporters.

  • The Election Commission and government deny any manipulation, saying the revision removes duplicate and ineligible entries. A spokesperson for Modi’s party dismissed protesters as “anarchic elements.”

  • The movement began online as satire in May and forced Modi’s education minister to resign in July over exam paper leaks, a rare setback for Modi in more than 12 years in power.

  • “We are a democracy, yet peaceful protests are being crushed by force,” said one college student. “Why is Modi afraid of India’s young people?”

• Dozens of protests held nationwide in wake of Cornell rape accusations (USA Today)

  • Survivors, students and advocates held walkouts, rallies and vigils in more than 40 states Wednesday, with more than 150 events and students expected to walk out on 50-plus campuses, in response to Cornell’s handling of the alleged gang rape.

  • The “From the Frat House to the White House” National Day of Action was organized by Women’s March, me too International and others. In Washington, women who have accused Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of sexual assault spoke near the White House.

  • Cornell has hired former acting Attorney General Sally Yates to review its sexual assault policies, calling the allegations “a defining moment” in its history.

  • UCLA protesters demanded a policy review, mandatory in-person training, and tuition reimbursement for victims who withdraw.

  • “This is the moment that is kind of a break-glass moment for our society to reckon with... gender-based violence,” said Women’s March’s Rachel O’Leary Carmona.

The answer, of course, is still somebody.

Dr. Karen Whitney, the Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 28, believes that basic truth is getting lost in Indiana’s current approach to government. Her argument is not simply that the state should spend more money. It is that Hoosiers deserve a more honest accounting of what government costs, what public services provide, and what happens when lawmakers reduce support for them without reducing the obligations those institutions still carry.

Whitney spent more than four decades in higher education, including leadership roles at IUPUI and as president of Clarion University in Pennsylvania. That background shows in the way she talks about budgets. She does not treat them as collections of numbers arranged on a spreadsheet for the purpose of making politicians look fiscally responsible. She treats them as statements of priorities.

Her case to voters is that Indiana has spent too long treating public institutions as burdens to shrink rather than investments to manage responsibly.

“We should honor them as investments in a quality of life for all versus burdens that deserve to be beaten down and defunded,” Whitney said.

That is the philosophical center of her campaign, and it raises an uncomfortable question for a state that often prides itself on fiscal restraint: when government spends less, are Hoosiers actually paying less, or is the bill simply moving somewhere harder to see?

The $200 Tax Cut That Comes Back as a $400 Fee

Whitney’s favorite example is public education because it is the field she knows best.

She argues that lawmakers can reduce state support and tell homeowners they received tax relief, but a school district cannot simply stop paying teachers, cancel debt service on buildings, ignore maintenance, or decide that buses have become an unnecessary luxury. Those expenses do not evaporate when Indianapolis changes a funding formula.

Whitney describes the result as a kind of fiscal shell game. A family might see a couple hundred dollars in tax savings, then watch schools respond to lower funding with new fees, referendums, reduced programs, larger classes, deferred maintenance, or other local costs.

“You might bring down 200,” Whitney said, “but you’re gonna spend three or four hundred on special fees.”

That argument deserves more attention than it usually gets because American political debate has become strangely obsessed with the front end of taxation while paying much less attention to the back end of public finance.

A tax reduction is visible. The school fee six months later feels unrelated. The deteriorating park restroom does not arrive with a receipt explaining which appropriation disappeared. A county road that goes another year without repair is not labeled “Your Tax Cut at Work.” When a school referendum appears on the ballot because the district still has to meet obligations no longer covered by state support, voters may experience it as a new local demand rather than the downstream result of a state decision.

Whitney’s point is that people deserve to see the whole ledger.

“The state can walk away,” she said, “but when you’ve got teachers’ salaries and you’ve got debt service on buildings and you’ve got major renovations and you’ve got just trying to do the right thing, that doesn’t walk away.”

That is the difference between cutting spending and cutting costs. They are not always the same thing.

Public Goods Do Not Disappear Because We Stop Funding Them

Whitney extends the argument beyond schools.

She points to parks, police, fire departments, utilities, local governments, hospitals, colleges, and infrastructure as examples of institutions that Hoosiers rely on whether or not those institutions are politically fashionable in a particular legislative session.

Her example of state parks is almost mundane, which is exactly why it works. A restroom is closed. Something is broken. Maintenance is delayed. Tape appears around something visitors used to be able to use. People naturally blame the employee they can see.

Whitney argues that the problem may be several budget cycles upstream.

“When you think something’s wrong with the people, it’s not the people, it’s the money,” she said.

There are certainly examples of bad management in government, just as there are examples of bad management in private business. Public agencies should be audited. Programs that do not work should be changed. Waste should be eliminated. Administrators should have to explain results.

But there is also a point where demanding the same service with fewer resources stops being efficiency and becomes theater.

If the public wants maintained state parks, functioning schools, safe drinking water, reliable emergency services, and accessible healthcare, then those things have to be paid for. The legitimate debate is how much, by whom, and how efficiently.

Pretending they become free after a budget cut is not fiscal conservatism. It is creative accounting with a campaign mailer attached.

Whitney’s Politics Begins With the Idea of Investment

Whitney’s view of government was shaped by her own education.

She describes herself as a product of the kind of middle-class American bargain that once felt almost ordinary. Her father was the first in his family to attend college. Her mother attended college while raising four children. Whitney went through public schools and public universities, eventually earning a doctorate.

She remembers a time when the state carried a much larger portion of the cost of higher education.

“I knew even then that the state was investing in me,” she said.

That word, investing, appears repeatedly in the way Whitney thinks about public policy.

Education is not simply an expense incurred this fiscal year. A student who finishes high school, earns a credential, enters a profession, starts a company, or earns a higher wage may spend decades contributing taxes and economic activity back into the community.

A road is not simply asphalt. It allows people and goods to move.

A hospital is not merely a building that consumes healthcare dollars. It allows a rural community to remain viable.

A public university does not merely cost the state money. It trains nurses, teachers, engineers, researchers, business owners, and workers who may spend the rest of their careers contributing to Indiana.

None of that means every dollar spent is automatically wise. Investments can be bad. Programs can fail. Institutions can become bloated. Whitney’s argument is that the proper response is to measure the return, not to assume the expenditure itself is the problem.

That distinction becomes especially important when tax policy is sold as a moral good independent of its consequences.

Saving a taxpayer $200 sounds appealing. So does graduating more students, keeping qualified teachers, maintaining local infrastructure, and preserving services. The real job of governing is deciding where those interests collide and being honest about the tradeoffs.

Education Cannot Run on Appreciation Alone

Whitney has spent most of her professional life around educators, and she has little patience for politicians who praise teachers ceremonially while creating policies that make their jobs harder.

“I’m sick and tired of the lip service,” she said. “Someone will say, you know, we love teachers and we love education, but then I look at them and say, ‘But you don’t act that way.’”

Her criticism goes beyond money.

Whitney believes Indiana lawmakers have become too willing to micromanage educators, curricula, universities, and classrooms despite often having little professional expertise in education themselves.

Her analogy is simple: going to a restaurant does not qualify someone to tell the chef how to cook.

She supports accountability and standards. Educators should be properly trained. Students should receive safe, effective instruction. Schools and universities should be expected to produce results. But once those standards are met, Whitney believes legislators should be wary of turning classrooms into extensions of partisan cultural fights.

That concern is tied to another issue Indiana has been wrestling with for years: keeping educated people here.

A state can celebrate graduation rates and still lose if graduates immediately leave. It can subsidize professional education and then watch doctors, researchers, teachers, and specialists decide they would rather practice somewhere else.

Whitney argues that the goal should not simply be producing credentials. It should be creating a state where people with those credentials want to build careers.

Indiana cannot solve brain drain by producing more brains for export.

Growth Looks Different Depending on Which Side of the Cornfield You Live On

House District 28 contains communities experiencing very different kinds of economic pressure.

Parts of Hendricks County are absorbing suburban growth tied to the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Other communities retain much stronger rural and agricultural identities. One place may worry about new subdivisions, traffic, sewer capacity, and development. Another may worry about farmland, water, family agriculture, and simply preserving enough economic activity to keep the town viable.

Whitney does not pretend those priorities are identical.

“Everyone’s managing something,” she said. Some communities are managing growth. Others are trying to manage decline. Still others are trying to protect a balance they already like.

Her argument is that representation begins with listening closely enough to know the difference.

Whitney has lived and worked in urban, suburban, and rural settings during her career. She believes that gives her useful context, particularly when the same policy can look very different depending on where someone lives.

Water may be one of the clearest examples.

A growing suburb needs enough water to support new homes and businesses. A farmer depends on water as part of the basic economics of agriculture. A large industrial or data-center proposal may promise investment while raising questions about consumption, utilities, infrastructure, and long-term availability.

Those interests can collide quickly.

Whitney sees the state’s role less as dictating identical outcomes and more as helping communities solve problems while respecting local circumstances. That becomes especially important when Indianapolis attempts to preempt local ordinances or remove authority from municipalities whose decisions state leaders dislike.

For someone campaigning on the idea that government should be closer to the people it serves, local control cannot mean local control only when the locality reaches the preferred conclusion.

Affordability Is a Math Problem Before It Becomes a Political Slogan

Ask almost any candidate in Indiana about affordability and you will hear some version of the same diagnosis: housing costs more, food costs more, utilities cost more, and wages have not always kept pace.

Whitney approaches that discussion as someone trained in public administration, economics, finance, and budgeting.

The central problem, as she sees it, is the growing gap between what households earn and what basic life costs.

That gap is what turns a stable paycheck into a fragile one.

Housing, energy, transportation, and food are not indulgences that families can simply remove from the budget when prices rise. They are the floor. When those costs increase faster than wages, everything above them gets compressed: savings, retirement contributions, entertainment, education, vacations, emergency funds, and eventually necessities themselves.

Whitney also connects affordability to the quality of jobs Indiana attracts.

She supports economic development incentives when they produce good jobs and measurable public returns. What she rejects is using taxpayer subsidies to recruit employers whose full-time workers still require public assistance to survive.

“If you work full-time, you should get benefits,” she said.

That creates a sensible accountability question for any economic-development package. If taxpayers help finance a company’s arrival or expansion, what exactly are taxpayers buying?

A press release?

A ribbon cutting?

A certain number of jobs?

Or stable jobs with wages and benefits capable of supporting the people who actually live in the community?

Whitney’s standard is that public subsidies should come with measurable public returns. Businesses can profit. Communities should benefit too.

Otherwise, economic development starts to resemble the peculiar arrangement where taxpayers pay a company to arrive and then pay again to support the company’s underpaid employees.

That is less of an incentive than a subscription service.

Thirty Minutes to Healthcare

Whitney’s healthcare idea may be one of the easiest parts of her platform to understand because she reduces it to a measurement ordinary people can visualize.

Thirty minutes.

She believes Indiana should develop a long-term healthcare strategy built around the goal that every Hoosier can reach needed routine and specialty care within roughly a 30-minute drive.

That does not mean building a traditional hospital in every community. Whitney explicitly acknowledges that healthcare delivery is changing and that Indiana should consider new models, technology, telehealth, regional coordination, and different kinds of facilities.

The important part is establishing a measurable outcome first.

Too often, healthcare policy begins with institutions and asks how to sustain them. Whitney wants to begin with patients and ask what access they need, then work backward.

That would require bringing healthcare providers, rural communities, hospitals, public-health experts, patients, and policymakers into the same planning process.

“We are failing fabulously in accessible and affordable healthcare,” Whitney said.

Her language is intentionally sharp because she sees access as a state responsibility that cannot be solved by waiting for private markets to make every community equally profitable.

Rural healthcare exposes that problem quickly. A facility may be economically inefficient from the perspective of a balance sheet while remaining socially indispensable to the people who live 40 miles from the next option.

A spreadsheet can call that duplication.

A woman in labor may call it the only hospital she can reach.

Reforming the Government That Makes the Rules

Whitney’s campaign is not limited to policy programs. She also wants changes to the machinery of Indiana politics itself.

She supports legislative term limits, campaign-finance reform, citizen-led redistricting, and a process allowing voters to place initiatives directly on the ballot.

The common thread is her belief that too much political power has accumulated inside institutions designed to represent citizens.

Whitney describes Indiana’s legislature as a citizen legislature rather than a permanent career track. She argues that lawmakers should serve for a period, contribute their experience, and eventually make room for someone else.

She also wants legislators removed from the process of drawing their own districts, preferring an independent citizen-led commission.

Her analogy is not subtle. Allowing politicians to draw their own districts, she says, is “like giving the keys of the bank to the bank robbers and then being surprised when they rob you blind.”

Supporters of the current system would dispute that characterization, and any citizen commission would need strong rules governing appointment, transparency, partisanship, and conflicts of interest. Independent commissions are not magically immune from politics merely because legislators leave the room.

Still, Whitney’s underlying question is difficult to dismiss: should elected officials have the power to choose the boundaries of the electorate that will later decide whether those same officials remain in office?

She asks a similar question about ballot initiatives. If enough Hoosiers support an issue to meet a reasonable signature threshold, Whitney sees no reason the legislature should always serve as gatekeeper.

“We should not have a gatekeeper between ourselves and ourselves,” she said.

That is a significant change from Indiana’s current political tradition and would require serious debate about constitutional design, ballot language, signature requirements, campaign spending, and the risk of complicated policy being decided through simplified referendum campaigns.

But it fits Whitney’s broader view of government: power should flow outward toward citizens rather than inward toward political institutions.

Her Idea of Bipartisanship Is Less Romantic Than Practical

If Whitney were elected, she would enter a legislature where Republicans hold overwhelming power.

Her response is not to pretend ideological differences would disappear.

Instead, she talks about finding issues where agreement is possible and working from there.

Her favorite example, once again, is water.

People across the political spectrum tend to enjoy having clean water come out of the faucet. This is apparently one of the few remaining bipartisan luxuries.

Whitney says she would work with Democrats, Republicans, and independents who are willing to engage seriously on common problems. She does not expect universal cooperation and does not claim she needs it.

“I don’t need everybody to work with me,” she said. “I just need enough.”

That may be a healthier definition of bipartisanship than the sentimental version often presented in campaign speeches. Legislators do not need to become friends. They do not need to stop disagreeing. They need to find enough overlap on a particular issue to move legislation.

Water infrastructure, healthcare access, rural development, schools, emergency services, and local government finance all offer opportunities for that kind of coalition because the consequences do not check party registration before arriving.

A broken water main is magnificently indifferent to ideology.

The Argument Is Really About What We Owe One Another

Whitney often returns to what she calls the social compact: work hard, play by the rules, contribute to the community, and expect that the public systems around you will help create a fair opportunity to move forward.

That belief is rooted partly in her own experience. She benefited from public education, affordable higher education, and a period when government investment helped make a middle-class life feel attainable.

She does not believe Indiana has to recreate the 1970s or 1980s to restore that bargain. The economy is different. Healthcare is different. Technology is different. Higher education is different. Agriculture is different. The state itself is different.

But the basic question remains.

What do Hoosiers expect from one another?

Do they want good public schools?

Maintained parks?

Clean water?

Police and fire protection?

Affordable healthcare?

Roads and infrastructure?

Universities and workforce training?

Strong local communities?

If the answer is yes, then Indiana’s political debate should move beyond pretending those things can be endlessly maintained while the state steadily withdraws from paying for them.

Fiscal discipline matters. So does fiscal honesty.

Whitney is asking voters to consider the difference.

A government can reduce a line item.

It cannot repeal arithmetic.

When Indianapolis pays less for a service people still expect to receive, the cost eventually lands somewhere. It may appear as a school referendum, a local tax, a user fee, a higher tuition bill, deteriorating infrastructure, a closed facility, longer travel for healthcare, fewer employees, or a family paying privately for something the public system once provided.

The bill does not disappear.

It changes envelopes.

That may ultimately be the most important argument Karen Whitney is making in House District 28. Indiana should absolutely ask whether government is spending wisely, whether programs work, and whether taxpayers are receiving value.

But if state leaders are going to celebrate giving people money back, they should also be willing to tell them what they stopped paying for.

Because sooner or later, somebody still has to pick up the check.

https://progressiveindiana.net

SUMMARY:

With early voting underway in Marion County, Rev. Tony Alexander and Pastor David W. Greene Sr. devote this episode to walking listeners through what’s actually on this November’s ballot. The centerpiece is Public Question 1, a statewide constitutional referendum that would let a judge deny bail — at their own discretion, based on “clear and convincing evidence” — to anyone charged with an offense other than murder or treason, not just those crimes as under the current Constitution. Both hosts argue against it: Marion County doesn’t elect its judges, so there would be no way to vote out a judge who used the new power unevenly; judges already have supervision, electronic monitoring, and other tools short of denying bail outright; and data the ACLU of Indiana compiled from jails across the state shows more than 98% of people classified as high, moderate, or even low risk do not go on to commit a new violent crime — meaning the change would reshape due process for everyone over a very small number of cases. They also cover judicial retention votes (which only ask whether to keep standing judges, not elect new ones) and the wave of roughly 40 school-funding referendums on ballots statewide, including the IPS referendum, which the hosts say won’t prevent cuts regardless of the outcome and which stems directly from last year’s state property-tax legislation (SB1) shifting the funding burden onto local referendums. Two callers phone in: Imhotep, who connects the bail referendum to the economics of the private-prison industry and cites state-level data on how incarceration rates dropped after marijuana legalization, and Josephine, who asks the hosts to cut through the question’s wording with a plain “yes or no.”

WHAT’S INSIDE

00:00:00 — Show open: disclaimer, prayer, early voting underway

- Alexander: early voting began the day before at the City-County Building downtown; voters can also request a mail-in ballot

- Greene opens in prayer for the city, state, and national leadership during the “election season”

- Preview of tonight’s focus: ballot questions, the bail referendum, and school-funding referendums

00:04:48 — Why this midterm election carries real weight

- Greene: this is a critical election for democracy, and voters need to know not just that to vote but who and what they’re voting for

- Flags gas prices, an ongoing war, and school referendums (including ones in Wayne and Washington Townships) as consequences riding on this ballot

- Greene: Public Question 1 (the bail referendum) will appear on every ballot statewide

00:06:26 — Indiana’s low turnout and the midterm trap

- Alexander: Indiana’s voter turnout is historically poor, and many voters only learn about major policy shifts after the fact — e.g., through a letter saying a benefit or program has changed

- Argues midterm elections are routinely underrated even though they directly affect property taxes, school assignment, and the legal process

- Greene adds that redistricting and other “fast-tracked” changes are also in play this cycle

00:09:40 — Public Question 1: what the bail referendum actually says

- Alexander reads the ballot language: current law denies bail only for murder or treason when “the proof is evident or the presumption strong”; the amendment would extend that denial to any offense if the state proves by “clear and convincing evidence” that no release conditions would reasonably protect public safety

- Alexander and Greene summarize the practical effect: a judge could decide to withhold bail based on their own read of the evidence, before trial

- Cites an ACLU of Indiana summary of the amendment’s text and implications, shared on the show’s Facebook page

00:10:22 — No elected judges in Marion County — why that matters here

- Greene: Marion County lost the ability to elect its own judges years ago, so there is no way to vote out a judge who used this new bail authority unevenly

- Argues it’s unwise to concentrate that much discretion in one appointed official with no accountability mechanism

- Both hosts stress that an arrest is not a conviction — someone could be arrested for something “frivolous” and still lose their liberty pretrial under the new standard

00:13:26 — Political incentives: judges courting favor for appointment

- Alexander: with a Supreme Court majority seen as deferential to the Trump administration, and a tiered system of lower courts, the “one or two bad actors” concern is bigger than it sounds

- Greene: judges hoping to be appointed to higher (including federal) posts would have an incentive to deny bail aggressively to “impress” the president, particularly against people of color, since that visibility could help their career

00:15:16 — Judges already have non-bail tools; the gun-law comparison

- Alexander lists the tools ACLU data shows judges can already use short of denying bail: supervision, bail conditions, electronic monitoring, no-contact orders, treatment, drug testing, and travel restrictions

- Draws a parallel to gun-safety debates: just as advocates often note “there are already laws in place” after mass shootings, he argues the same logic applies here — existing tools are already available, and a sweeping constitutional change risks collateral damage (mistrials, dropped charges, successful not-guilty verdicts, plea deals) for people who never needed to be denied bail in the first place

00:18:01 — A Marion County example: wrongful accusation risk

- Greene cites a real Marion County case near Riverside Park in which a police officer initially claimed a young Black man pointed a weapon, and video later showed that wasn’t true

- Argues that under a no-bail standard, that same man could have been held in jail — losing a job, housing stability, and more — based on an initial accusation that didn’t hold up

- Both hosts stress they aren’t accusing all officers of this, but that the risk of a wrongful initial account is real enough that a judge shouldn’t have unchecked discretion to deny bail based on it

00:20:48 — What the ACLU’s data actually shows

- Alexander reads Indiana-specific data from the ACLU: 98.6% of people classified high risk, 98.9% classified moderate risk, and 99.4% classified low risk did not go on to commit a new violent crime

- Contrasts this with the narrative pushed by local media, social media, and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) blaming prosecutors and “revolving door” releases for crime

- Argues the actual share of cases involved is under 2%, often closer to 1–2 cases statewide per year by Greene’s framing

00:22:45 — Why amend the Constitution for such a small number of cases?

- Greene: a change this sweeping would affect far more than the 1–2% of people it’s meant to target, since it resets due-process standards for everyone charged with a non-murder/treason offense

- Alexander draws a comparison to national rhetoric about voter fraud, which he says affects roughly .00008% of votes over 30 years, yet is used to justify large-scale changes to voting systems — arguing the bail referendum follows the same pattern of using rare cases to justify broad disruption

00:26:01 — Recap: how to actually read Public Question 1

- Back from the first break, Alexander walks through the exact ballot wording again, pointing out that the question starts with “shall” and lays out the state’s proposed new standard

- Frames the “due process” problem directly: the amendment lets the state act on what a prosecutor or judge believes before a trial has happened

- Notes that people are regularly found not guilty, have charges dropped, or see evidence or witness testimony change — all reasons due process matters before bail is denied

00:29:42 — Drawing the ICE parallel

- Alexander argues ICE’s current enforcement approach — presuming guilt, removing people without ties to or family in the countries they’re sent to, and offering no due process — mirrors what Public Question 1 would authorize domestically

- Greene agrees, and adds that how this would play out “for anybody other than a white man” could look very different, warning this puts everyone on a path similar to ICE’s enforcement model

- Both hosts conclude their recommended vote is no

00:32:09 — Caller Imhotep: misdemeanors, private prisons, and the marijuana-legalization data

- Imhotep, drawing on family members who work as attorneys, argues the criminal justice system’s daily caseload is driven by misdemeanors and petty crimes, not major felonies — meaning this referendum’s effects would “leak down” into minor cases far more than advertised

- Connects the push to the private-prison industry (citing CCA, a major private-prison operator) and its need for high occupancy to stay profitable, noting ICE enforcement has helped supply bodies to private facilities

- Cites reported prison- and jail-population drops of 50–70% in states like Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada after marijuana legalization as evidence the private-prison industry has a financial incentive to find other ways to keep facilities full

- Also raises concerns about a local public-affairs program (a prior day’s broadcast featuring Indianapolis City-County Council President Maggie Lewis) not asking tough questions about Flock camera use, the Dalys Jett investigation, and an incident involving a young man removed from a public forum

00:36:54 — Judge retention votes, explained

- Alexander: in addition to the bail question, voters will see judge retention questions — a yes/no on whether to keep a sitting judge, not a vote for new candidates, since Marion County judges aren’t elected

- Greene notes a separate process is already underway: a judicial nominating committee has sent the governor a list of 10 names to fill two upcoming judicial vacancies from retirements

00:39:23 — School-funding referendums statewide, including IPS

- Alexander: roughly 40 school districts across Indiana, including IPS in Marion County, have funding referendums on this ballot

- Frames the core questions for voters: what does the money fund, and what will it mean for property taxes?

00:40:28 — How SB1 created this wave of referendums

- Greene traces the referendums back to the legislature’s 2025 property-tax bill (SB1), which cut property taxes while also reducing direct school funding — pushing districts, inside and outside Marion County (”donut counties”), to go to voters for funding instead

- Argues this shifts the cost rather than eliminating it, and that households will feel the funding gap directly regardless of whether their property tax bill technically goes down

- Notes that the IPS referendum’s money would ultimately be controlled by IPEC, an appointed (not elected) board, which Greene says is a major source of public distrust — compounded by rising AES and Citizens Energy rate increases that make the added referendum cost harder for fixed-income households to absorb

00:44:46 — IPS says cuts are coming regardless

- Alexander: even if the IPS referendum passes, IPS has said cuts are still coming — because IPS shares referendum revenue with charter schools under current law, which limits how far the money goes

- Argues this dynamic pits IPS and the charter sector against each other for the same pool of money, and that charter schools “win either way” — if IPS loses funding, that reinforces the case for charters, and if a traditional school closes, charter operators are positioned to acquire the building cheaply

- Notes Indianapolis Star reporting suggesting this referendum could further strain, rather than mend, the formal relationship between IPS and charter operators

00:47:09 — Undisclosed school-closure plans

- Greene: IPS has already signaled publicly that some school closures are coming, but hasn’t disclosed which schools or who might take over those buildings

- Argues voters deciding on the referendum deserve to know whether their own neighborhood school is on a closure list before casting a vote they believe is “saving” it

- Frames IPEC’s decision-making as money-driven rather than centered on what’s best for students

00:49:26 — What’s missing from the ballot debate

- Alexander: nothing currently on the table guarantees what transportation, extracurricular activities (athletics, cheerleading), or related logistics will look like regardless of how the referendum vote goes

- Notes the presence of Turning Point USA programming in schools and the absence of any guaranteed counter-programming or alternative, framing it as one more example of funding gaps affecting what students actually experience day to day

00:50:22 — Caller Josephine: a plain-language gut check

- Josephine, worried about a hypothetical where a family member could be jailed indefinitely without due process over a minor offense, asks the hosts directly: is the answer “yes” or “no”?

- Greene answers simply: “No”

- Alexander ties her question back to the ballot language, explaining that voting “no” means declining to change the Constitution, and acknowledges the wording itself is confusing enough that even attorneys he’s spoken with have said so

00:52:52 — Closing: have a plan to vote

- Greene’s closing message: get a plan together, vote, and bring others — failing to participate is what allows constitutional changes like this one to pass

- Argues that whatever gets changed in the Constitution this cycle is unlikely to benefit ordinary residents, and more likely to benefit the wealthy and those already in power

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