And that’s just what you know. But this week, Zeteo has revealed much more about what’s happening inside the top echelons of the administration, in our new “Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse” project – a series of profiles cataloging the immense damage Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Huckabee have inflicted.

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Sarah Matthews, who served as White House deputy press secretary during the first Trump administration, joined Prem to unpack the series, and offer her own insight on these four horsemen.

She described her first early impressions of Stephen Miller, years ago, and why he’ll seemingly never be pushed out.

“He’s been with Trump since the very beginning. And someone like that, Trump values loyalty above all else, obviously – above qualifications, competency, morality, anything. So someone like a Stephen Miller has been able to survive and thrive in Trumpworld,” she said. She added that, while many Republicans privately don’t approve of him, “as of now, I don’t really see a universe in which he is forced out anytime soon.”

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And while she thinks Rubio has tried to be a “good influence” on the administration, Matthews conceded, “We have to remember, moving forward, that he is complicit and he doesn’t just get to distance himself from the horrors and atrocities of Trump 2.0, no matter how much he wants to try to do that.”

Matthews also shared what Republicans are saying about the rift between JD Vance and Marco Rubio; what early warning signs she saw inside Trump 1.0; and why, even months ago, Hegseth was the Trump cabinet official who terrified her the most.

Listen to the conversation above to hear it all.

Free subscribers can watch a 2-minute preview of the conversation. Become a full subscriber to watch it in full – and to have full access to all our news, live shows, and interviews.

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Read the four profiles here:

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This week’s predawn raid by federal agents of the home of a sitting U.S. lawmaker who is up for reelection just weeks before voters go to the polls sadly, though perfectly, illustrates what the United States has come to represent under Donald Trump: An America where the federal government is used to target the president’s perceived enemies. An America where the rule of law has lost its meaning, an America where fascism no longer hides in the shadows.

In this case, the target was Rep. Ilhan Omar, but we know too well it didn’t start and won’t stop with her. Because in Donald Trump’s America, racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia drive policy. Because in Donald Trump’s America, repression of those who look different or speak out against the president is the goal.

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When they weren’t raiding Omar’s home, Trump’s cronies were continuing their crackdown on a free press, planning an ICE spying program, and suing California election officials. Here’s more from ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 91’:

Saturday, Oct. 10 – DOJ Investigating Major TV Networks, Including Fox

The New York Times reported that Trump’s Justice Department launched an investigation into NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox to determine whether they broke antitrust laws by temporarily suspending pool coverage of the president.

The move comes after a Sept. 21 tweet from conspiracy theorist and Trump adviser Laura Loomer questioning why the Justice Department hadn’t filed an antitrust lawsuit against “the Fake News media outlets,” accusing them of collusion to refuse to cover the president.

Sunday, Oct. 11 – Trump Airs Taxpayer-Funded Ads Despite Court Order

After a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop airing taxpayer-funded campaign-style TV advertisements, two of the ads continued to air multiple times in the hours following the judge’s deadline, including into the early hours of Monday morning. The White House later claimed that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t receive enough notice to cancel the ads in time.

Later, NPR reported that nearly $22 million in taxpayer dollars had been spent to air Trump’s ads, nearly $10 million of which was spent after Trump’s Oct. 5 Truth Social post where he said the government would no longer pay for the ads.

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Monday, Oct. 12 – Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Home Raided By Federal Agents

Federal agents conducted a raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC, as part of a years-long criminal investigation involving immigration fraud. The probe, which the Wall Street Journal later reported is part of an effort to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, flies in the face of the Justice Department’s informal “60-day rule,” which seeks to avoid any public investigation actions involving a candidate within 60 days of an election.

On Twitter, Omar called the raid “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” and added that she “will not be silenced.”

Later, the New York Times reported that relatives of Omar have been issued subpoenas as investigators probe her family’s history for any evidence of fraud or false statements in immigration documents.

Tuesday, Oct. 13 – CFTC Ordered to Retract Referral for Oil Insider Trading

Bloomberg reported that staffers at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) analyzing oil trades for insider trading were told to retract a referral to its Division of Enforcement by an adviser to the Trump-appointed chair of the CFTC, Michael Selig.

The referral related to trades made about 15 minutes before Trump walked back a threat to strike Iranian power plants, which ended up being worth billions of dollars.

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Wednesday, Oct. 14 – A $100 Million ICE Spying Program

The American Prospect reported that the Trump administration is planning to spend $100 million on a domestic surveillance program led by ICE, that would see more than 140 intelligence contractors with top secret clearances deployed to dozens of cities across the U.S.

One expert called the program “a nightmare in the making,” with others warning the government will likely use it to spy not only on undocumented immigrants, but also U.S. citizens.

Thursday, Oct. 15 – Trump Sues California Over ‘Likely’ Noncitizens, Without Evidence

The Trump administration sued California in an effort to block the state from counting 20,000 mail-in ballots for the midterm elections until voter eligibility is confirmed. The Justice Department claimed, without evidence, the ballots were cast by “likely” noncitizens.

The lawsuit comes after Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan failed to meet a DOJ deadline to review the list of “likely” noncitizens, which was delivered on a thumb drive with the password on a sticky note, despite Logan noting he has no jurisdiction outside the county and that his office can’t withhold ballots or refuse to count them “based solely on unverified allegations.”

Friday, Oct. 16 – Katie Zacharia Out as White House Press Secretary

Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was ousted after less than a week in her position, following a humiliating press briefing on Tuesday and a pair of equally embarrassing interviews on Fox. Her dismissal came hours after Trump told reporters he encouraged Zacharia to “reconsider” the position, blaming the media for being hard on her performance.

Zacharia also stirred controversy for claiming she was an attorney when she was nothing of the sort. (Read more of Zeteo’s coverage of Zacharia here.)

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Did you miss previous weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’? Catch up here.

Plus, check out our deeply reported series, the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse,’ which profiles the officials behind some of the worst damage the Trump administration has inflicted on the U.S. and the world:

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It was 1973. Mike Huckabee, a God-fearing young man from Arkansas, had just graduated from high school, and his “very wealthy” friend wanted to go on a celebratory trip. So the pair went to Israel.

“When I was there it was like I was in a place that I felt at home even though I’d never been there before,” Huckabee said about his first trip to Israel, noting he “saw the pioneer’s spirit among the Israeli people.”

“Part of it, quite frankly, was spiritual for me because here I was in the land of the Bible for reasons that one day God will reveal, but a land that He had chosen,” he continued. “I think of all the real estate on planet earth, He picks this little spot of land about the size of New Jersey and says: This is mine, right here.”

“And if I wasn’t even a believer, I would still come to the conclusion that the only explanation for Israel is God.”

Five decades later, Huckabee, 71, is now the United States’ chief representative to Israel, tasked with negotiating and engaging with the nation, and protecting Americans if they are ever threatened there. So far, Huckabee’s critics say he’s represented Israel’s interests as much, if not more, than America’s – and he’s done so while actively denying Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its occupation of Palestine, and its project of apartheid. Meanwhile, his family’s business has continued to take people on pricey tourist trips to Israel.

The Huckabee family’s travel company has taken hundreds of people to Israel over the years in what used to be called “The Israel Experience with Governor Mike Huckabee.” Promotional materials and disclosures reviewed by Zeteo show the company, now operated by Huckabee’s son, is still taking Americans on trips to Israel, even as Huckabee serves as the U.S. ambassador to it.

The situation mirrors, in miniature, how Donald Trump, his family, and some of his top advisers have – at a historic, record-shattering rate – cashed in on his presidency, including on business in the Middle East, with little concern about ethics or the appearance of corruption.

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It remains a brutal irony that Trump was elected again in part due to depressed voter enthusiasm resulting from the Biden-Harris administration’s nearly unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Now, back in power, Trump and his overtly Christian-nationalist and warmongering administration are not only supporting Israel’s constant violence against Palestine, as well as Lebanon; his top diplomat in Jerusalem, Huckabee, is a genocide denier who has gone as far as to say there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.” Critics say he has met those words with actions, as he constantly fails Palestinians and Americans at the behest of Israel.

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The day is finally here! Our Editor-in-Chief Mehdi Hasan and Zeteo’s flagship podcast “We’re Not Kidding” are going LIVE tonight with acclaimed Palestinian-American comedian and actor Mo Amer.

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In just a few hours, Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall will be packed to the brim as Mehdi and Mo take the stage for a night of laughs, political and social commentary, and a Q&A session with the audience.

Also joining Mehdi will be Texas Rep. Greg Casar, who will also take questions from the audience with the U.S. midterms just around the corner.

Didn’t get tickets? Well there’s good news!

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can tune in to our show LIVE as it’s happening, from the comfort of your own home. The Livestream will start at 8:45pm ET; 7:45pm CT; and 5:45pm PT - Just click the button below:

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Mehdi’s first guest is Neera Tanden, a provocative figure and former senior staffer in the Obama and Biden administrations, who is now the president and CEO of the liberal thinktank, the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Watch the must-see, and at-times heated, conversation above, for free, to see how Tanden, who was a loyal aide to Hillary Clinton for many years, responds to Mehdi’s questions about the Democratic Party establishment and the coming midterms, her “obsession” with Hasan Piker, her infamous interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, her retweeting of Laura Loomer, and why AIPAC’s dark money spending seems to get a pass from her and the CAP.

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Good morning, and welcome to the end of the week. Swin here, working the Trumpworld sources once again to bring you all the news that matters.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we can confirm that yes, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles really is in trouble amid President Donald Trump’s tanking polls and with midterms disaster looming on the horizon.

We’ll also take a look at the latest developments in the appalling immigration investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar, as the White House abandons all norms in its quest for retribution. There’s a lot more news too. In we go.

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The ‘Ice Maiden’ Melteth

“She’s in some deep shit,” a top Donald Trump adviser frankly informs Zeteo, referring to the U.S. president’s White House chief of staff and 2024 campaign co-chief, Susie Wiles.

Talk to people in and out of government who are very close to Trump, and it won’t take long for you to hear that despite the president’s public bravado and projections of confidence, he knows how spectacularly in-the-toilet his poll numbers are, at this midway point of his violently authoritarian second term.

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He’s looking for people to blame, because he doesn’t want to look in the mirror in his disgusting-carpeted bathroom and blame the one man most responsible for his failures and humiliations. The 2026 midterms are around the corner, and if the polls are right, the American people are on track to deliver a mammoth repudiation.

On Thursday morning, Politico reported that Trump has been actively weighing dumping Wiles as the midterms near and as he and his party hunt for scapegoats. If disaster strikes the GOP in November, expect a ton of backbiting and anonymous score-settling in the media. For instance, we keep hearing about how numerous Republican operatives, Trumpworld figures, and conservatives on Capitol Hill absolutely despise the notably smug James Blair, a former deputy chief of staff who now has the likely impossible task of somehow salvaging the midterms for Trump, and wouldn’t mind cynically shoveling blame on him for the heavy losses, should they occur in the House and Senate.

When it comes to Wiles, Trump and his White House tried to pour cold water on the Politico story, releasing effusively supportive statements, the president accusing the outlet of – what else? – “TOTAL FAKE NEWS.”

“Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism,” Trump bleated. “It’s why I kicked them out of the White House! [Before a judge ordered they and CNN and MS NOW be let back in.] Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff – there is a reason for that. She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”

I can confirm Politico had it right.

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This article is part of our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ We believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people in this administration most responsible. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here – and please join Swin and Prem for a live conversation Friday at noon ET (9am PT) as they discuss their reporting for this series. – Mehdi

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For years, Donald Trump has fetishized deadly war crimes, and also the allure and entertainment value of public executions. On both fronts, Pete Hegseth – the former ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ co-host and current so-called “secretary of war” – has been the president’s premier errand boy.

Since January 2025, when he ascended to the top of the Pentagon despite a deluge of scandal and allegations that nearly sank his nomination, Hegseth has towered above the rest of Trump 2.0’s cabinet secretaries as the appointee most eager to quench Trump’s incessant bloodlust and desires for regional conquest and lawless, brutal domination of his enemies, foreign and domestic.

Hegseth has at times proposed actions that go too far, even for Trump, whose baying for blood is sporadically tempered by his own cowardice. Perhaps the most grisly example of Hegseth out-Trumping the sadistically maximalist president took place over the past week, after the Trump-Vance administration announced it would stage not only the first official public execution in the U.S. in nearly a century, but the first one streamed live on the internet. Hegseth argued it was necessary because “people need to understand that there’s serious consequences.”

Trump approved this vile plan, but apparently didn’t know some key details, people familiar with the matter tell Zeteo: Namely, the convicted mass murderer slated to be executed in December is partly paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. “He’s in a fucking wheelchair?” Trump privately exclaimed, telling people that Hegseth never told him that and that killing an old guy in a wheelchair might not look cool.

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Suddenly, reports trickled out that the plan to broadcast the execution was in jeopardy. Trump announced Thursday morning the livestream is off – “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch,” he said – though the execution will move forward. This shambolic episode of will-they-won’t-they, when it comes to broadcasting real-time footage of a military snuff film, is a perfect distillation of what Hegseth has done as defense secretary, under the watchful gaze and direction of the Trump White House, to the Pentagon in relatively short order.

Hegseth has operationalized the president’s core demands for gun-brandishing spite, boastful bigotry, naked imperialism, and violent spectacle – and the former Fox host is using every lever of the U.S. military and its civilian command to bring Trump’s vindictive, MAGA-branded militarism to life, abroad and at home.

When Hegseth pitched the idea for livestreaming Nidal Hasan’s execution by military firing squad, he wasn’t freelancing. He was just giving Trump what the president had been telling his team he wanted – for more than a decade, at least.

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Saudi authorities apparently turned off Saudi Arabia’s emergency mobile phone alert system last week – not because Houthi attacks had subsided – but because, amid complaints that mobile alerts were disrupting residents’ sleep, they hoped to return a sense of normalcy to the kingdom. They did not succeed. Tennis star Novak Djokovic will no longer be playing in Saudi Arabia this month; Saudi Aramco headquarters was on fire Wednesday; and flights to Riyadh have been canceled after a succession of Houthi missile attacks this week, the most shocking – at least to the visitors and investors the Saudi government hopes to attract – a strike Saturday on Riyadh’s international airport that killed 13 and wounded hundreds.

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These attacks on civilian infrastructure are the latest war crimes in a conflict replete with criminality and civilian suffering, but also a jarring demonstration of the destruction that the Houthis are willing and able to inflict on their neighbor to the north. And Riyadh’s decision to turn off air raid alerts suggests they’ll be suing for peace sooner rather than later. Here’s what you need to know:

Who Are the Houthis?

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Good morning. Andrew here, thinking yet again about how the only apparent bulwarks in this country against Donald Trump’s increasingly fascist presidency are his insistence on maintaining his failed war in Iran and wrecking the global economy, and his absolute refusal to stop bragging about how great things are.

Yes, he even needs to brag about high gas prices, rubbing it in Americans’ faces.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the president once again demonstrates he is America’s most out-of-touch billionaire, while also clarifying his willingness to discard law and convention to go after enemies and targets for his hate, in the continued hounding of Ilhan Omar. Let’s read in.

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‘Isn’t It Terrible?’

There was a wave of brutal economic news on Wednesday, the result of Donald Trump’s illegal, pointless, failed, unending war with Iran.

Inflation is surging, as gasoline and fuel prices spike. Americans’ real weekly earnings fell year-over-year, for the sixth month in a row. Home-buying has fallen to its lowest level since the aftermath of the 2009 housing crash.

Even CNBC’s Jim Cramer understands why ordinary Americans are fed up and feeling left out. Looking at the real wage data, the hyper-capitalist blowhard said: “Look, rich people are making a lot of money. God, I sound like Marx. I really don’t want to sound like Marx. It’s just, I’m looking at the data.”

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There was no such awareness from the president, of course. He responded to the news by bragging… that gas prices are so high.

“I never say this because – and watch, they’ll cut all of this stuff out,” he began, before saying the exact thing he knew he shouldn’t. “Our country is making more money than it’s ever made because of the fact that oil is so high.”

Trump was speaking to supporters at a rally in Arizona. He wasn’t done.

“Now, they’re going to say: Isn’t it terrible? He talked about the fact that he doesn’t care about the little person… I care more about the little person than I care about the big person. I care about the little person like crazy,” he lied. “But the fact is, because of the price of oil, Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota and all these places, we’re making a fortune.”

The MAGA crowd didn’t react. How didn’t they groan? That wasn’t all Trump had to say about gas prices, either.

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This article is part of our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ With several weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections, we believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people most responsible. Read Part 1 here. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. Support independent media in this new age of American authoritarianism. – Mehdi

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In the days before the 2020 election, a group of Donald Trump supporters surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas, seemingly trying to force it off the road.

“We love what they did, but here’s the thing they don’t know,” Marco Rubio said shortly after. “We do that in Florida every day.”

It was one of several moments that revealed how the Florida senator was changing.

“That was not who I thought I knew – who I always thought was really respectful of democracy, and worked well with Democrats,” a former Rubio Senate staffer tells Zeteo. “Being flippant about some of these things that either were, or were adjacent to, political violence… this crossed the line, for me anyway.”

Others saw something else.

“That’s typical Marco Rubio, trying to get something positive out of it, because he knows deep down that was wrong,” Mike Fasano, a former Florida state legislator who served alongside Rubio, says with a chuckle. “Marco Rubio has still a great future in his political life – and I can understand why he says some of the things he says, because I’ve seen firsthand how you get elected. You have to appease the primary voter.”

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One of the most successful Republicans in the modern era, Rubio has consistently meant different things to different people. He has climbed from a state legislature, to the U.S. Senate, to one of the most powerful offices in the world, leading the State Department in Trump’s second administration.

Rubio rose on the strength of his backstory, the son of Cuban exiles. He was seen as a conservative but reasonable Republican, a supporter of immigration reform, free speech, human rights, and foreign aid as soft power. That’s all changed.

It is a feature of the Trump era that most Republicans have put aside supposed morals and beliefs in order to maintain – or gain – power. Perhaps none have debased themselves as conspicuously, thoroughly, and successfully as Rubio.

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Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, our lede story is so packed with news and juicy details that we decided to devote the entire newsletter to it. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

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Inside the ‘Crazy Bonkers’ CBS London All-Hands

I’ve reported extensively on Bari Weiss’s year-long reign of terror atop CBS News. I’ve heard about newsroom clashes with Weiss and her deputies, and concerns over the David Ellison-installed leadership injecting their pro-Israel and other biases into the network’s coverage.

But what I heard on audio I obtained from yesterday’s “crazy bonkers” editorial meeting at the CBS London bureau in the aftermath of press coverage of the network’s handling of an Oct. 7 story is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. You won’t believe what she said about Benjamin Netanyahu, or what she called the Palestinian death toll in Gaza. She also had a blunt warning for staffers who cross her.

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We’re just two days away from a special LIVE taping of Zeteo’s flagship ‘We’re Not Kidding’ podcast with Mehdi Hasan and acclaimed Palestinian-American comedian and actor Mo Amer.

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The two are taking the stage this Friday at Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall for a night full of laughs and important political and social commentary. Thanks to your enthusiastic response, this event is now sold out. BUT there’s still a chance for you to stream the conversation LIVE, including an audience Q&A session with Mehdi and Mo.

PLUS, tune in for a special one-on-one conversation with Mehdi and Texas Rep. Greg Casar, who will also be taking audience questions.

Events like this are made possible by your support, so we’re thanking our paid subscribers with exclusive access to the livestream:

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Good morning. Martin and Swin here, writing up another utterly bizarre day in Donald Trump’s DC. Martin at least is old enough to have already been quite old 10 years ago, when Sean Spicer kicked off the world of weird that is Trump press secretaries, their press conferences, and their relationships with both reporters and the basic concept of truth. There have been some doozies, but it seems that under new pick Katie Zacharia, things are about to get stranger still.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we take a look at Zacharia’s terrible, no good, absolutely horrible first press briefing and the gathering fallout from it. We also consider new steps in Trump’s shamelessly political investigation of Ilhan Omar, and take in developments in the illegal Iran War and on the midterms trail. In and on we go.

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‘She’s Flopping’

Speaking to reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska, Donald Trump said he thought his new press secretary, ex-Fox talking head and ardent hate, conspiracy, and extremism monger Katie Zacharia, was “very good” in her first briefing, which concluded not long before.

Safe to say, few reporters or pundits shared the president’s confidence. In barely 15 minutes at the briefing room podium, Zacharia read extremely haltingly from notes, head down, then took very few questions, calling only on right-wing sources: Breitbart, Fox, and the Daily Mail.

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She failed to give an answer on whether the U.S. was still sharing intelligence with Ukraine. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she said. A softball about doing her job as a mother of four produced a flub, referring to “My president, excuse me, my husband. That’s a good one.” That at least raised a laugh. Another question produced hard news, Zacharia saying, “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” meaning envoy to Greece (and former Donald Trump Jr. fiancée) Kimberly Guilfoyle, who has been caught up in corruption allegations. That made an impact, but Zacharia blurted on for a bit about learning about work-life balance from predecessor Karoline Leavitt, voice shaking all the while, and then was outta there pronto.

It wasn’t just pundits who piled onto the airwaves to voice their astonishment. Swin admits he had not realized Zacharia was taking her bow, what with having been buried in projects including a lengthy profile of White House Wormtongue Stephen Miller.

Getting very annoyed at the sound of his phone constantly dinging, Swin finally took a swift look. Republican operatives, Trump advisers, and administration officials were blowing up the phone, panning Zacharia’s performance.

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This week, we are launching our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ With several weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections, we believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people most responsible. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. This is why we all need to support independent media, in this new age of American authoritarianism. – Mehdi

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The United States is now run by someone whose critics and victims routinely dub an American “psycho,” a man who revels in the pain and suffering of his enemies and his prey. Indeed, many of his allies, and his past and present colleagues, would describe him using precisely the same word.

We are, of course, talking about Stephen Miller, not his boss, Donald Trump.

Miller, who serves as Trump’s top policy architect and one of the president’s most committed loyalists, doesn’t care about human life the way you or I do, former and current Trump administration officials who’ve worked with him tell Zeteo. Several of these sources actually quite like Miller. Still, the degree to which Miller does not care about – or at least tolerates – the loss of human lives in the pursuit of his and President Trump’s policy vision has unnerved, or disturbed, some of his Republican colleagues, multiple Trump advisers and U.S. government officials recount.

Some of his associates in and close to the administration even accuse him of intentionally trying to push major U.S. cities to riot, to create a pretext for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an early 19th-century law, so that he could send thousands of active-duty and National Guard troops to fully occupy those urban areas. One source directly familiar with Miller’s private deliberations tells Zeteo: “Stephen wanted to provoke a very strong response, so that the president would deploy troops.”

It has been just under two years since Trump won the presidency for the second time, and the scale of democratic backsliding, rampant corruption, and sheer violence unleashed on this continent and others is remarkably difficult to tabulate. The administration has normalized putting troops in the streets; deploying masked, violent immigration agents to kidnap and intimidate and kill people; punishing immigrants, including many with a legal right to be here, by shipping them to dangerous countries, including places where they have no ties, simply to be cruel; murdering supposed drug smugglers with regularity in international waters; tearing apart the core constitutional right to due process at every opportunity, so that people can’t challenge the government’s claims against them before they are removed or killed; politicizing every lever of the government so that it targets their enemies, and only their enemies, as part of a swarming attack on Democrats and the left and liberal nonprofit and political infrastructure; actively ignoring the First Amendment; spewing the most blatant kinds of racism from the White House, including at Somali Americans and Haitians; plotting in broad daylight to rig elections and subvert the American democratic order; and so, so much more.

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On Trump’s behalf, Miller has overseen, or orchestrated, all of it. He has led Trump’s deportation operations and the president’s efforts to target and selectively prosecute his enemies at an intensely granular level. That includes overseeing what a Trump adviser described to Zeteo as the administration’s “Must Deport list.” When Miller has discussed behind closed doors the administration’s deportations to third-countries (where the immigrants have no ties), he has explicitly said that it is better to strike those agreements with nations with lousy human rights records – in part because those regimes often do what they’re told by the United States, sources who’ve been in the room with him say.

It is impossible to come to any other conclusion: At almost every single meaningful turn of the second Trump era, the president’s lead policy author has sought to make the government’s crackdowns more painful, and less humane, for its countless dragnet victims and their families.

Let that be his, and his boss’s, legacy – and perhaps their undoing.

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And it was a disaster of a debut. Zacharia ended the briefing after about 15 minutes, only having answered three questions and accidentally calling her husband “my president.” Yikes.

But her abysmal performance isn’t the most concerning thing about her.

And as mainstream media is already normalizing her as the newest voice of the Trump administration, Zeteo is not.

So here are seven things you need to know about Katie Zacharia, the newest insane member of this insane administration:

1. She promotes QAnon conspiracy theories about pedophilia rings

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New York City was thrust into the spotlight overnight, exposing the deep political rifts and widespread anxieties gripping the nation as a whole.

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In his latest book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Anand Giridharadas takes a deep dive into what exactly happened in that subway car and what it reveals about the greater character of American politics as we know it today.

“We have lived in a climate over the last 11 years in which there’s a tremendous amount of messaging we are all absorbing creating a permission structure for DIY violence. So I wanted to understand what we could see about ourselves if we looked more closely in that subway car,” he tells Mehdi.

While people from all walks of life were present in that subway car, Giridharadas points to a shared feeling of “abandonment,” which he calls “the defining political emotion of our time.”

But how did we get here exactly? And why has this shared feeling of abandonment divided us more than united us?

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In this 38-minute conversation, Mehdi gets to the bottom of these pressing questions and what they mean for the midterms and the 2028 presidential election looming ahead.

Paid subscribers can watch the full interview above, while free subscribers can access a five-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again!

And be sure to check out Giridharadas’s latest book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. If you’ve already read it, feel free to share your review of the book in the comments below!

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Good morning all, and welcome to Tuesday’s ‘First Draft.’ It’s our first newsletter of the week because Monday was the Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday, but it wasn’t a quiet day for news.

Before dawn, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the DC home of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, as part of a criminal investigation into her immigration status. Transparently political, utterly hypocritical, and close to high-stakes elections, it was the act of an openly fascist regime.

Elsewhere, the man at the top of that regime, Donald Trump, did his best to help Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, whose actions as a doctor who had his own patients arrested are dragging him towards a surprise midterms defeat. Trump’s illegal Iran war, of course, dragged on. Let’s read in.

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‘Promise Made, Promise Kept’

Rep. Ilhan Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee in the mid-1990s. More than 25 years ago, when she was still a child, just shy of 18, her father filed for U.S. citizenship.

Elon Musk, the SpaceX billionaire, Twitter owner, champion of the global far-right, and GOP megadonor ($276 million and counting in these midterms alone), also came to the U.S. from Africa in the mid-1990s. In 2013, in an interview at the Milken Institute, his brother Kimbal Musk said that at the start of their careers in U.S. tech the two South Africans “were illegal immigrants.” Elon Musk protested, “I’d say it was a gray area.” Kimbal Musk repeated: “Yes, we were.” Reporting by outlets including the Washington Post – headline, “Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally” – seems to have backed up Kimbal’s claim.

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On Monday, before dawn, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a home in Washington, DC. Guess the owner.

Omar has long been the target of foul racist invective from Donald Trump and MAGA, who reserve particularly disgusting animus for Somali Americans, as demonstrated just last week by the president’s clear call for racial violence ahead of the midterm elections. For years, Trump has attacked Omar in terms notably stringent even compared to attacks on other prominent progressive women of color, stoking right-wing conspiracy theories about her immigration status and threatening to deport her.

But Trump has also mused about deporting Musk. In July last year, as the two men feuded following Musk’s time leading Trump’s DOGE attack on the federal government, and Musk’s consequent threat to expose Trump’s links to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump told reporters “We’ll have to take a look” at deporting Musk, thereby sending him “home to South Africa.”

So, who got raided? Hint: It’s not the guy who was also pals with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Paid Zeteo subscribers can watch this episode in full, but to access all of Zeteo UK’s shows and essays, as well as Zeteo content, going forward, do consider upgrading to our much cheaper bundle option today.

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In just eight years since Misan Harriman took up photography, his photos have become some of the most iconic images of global protest movements from Black Lives Matter to climate change, LGBTQ+ and pro-Palestine rallies. In August 2020, he made history as the first Black male photographer to shoot a cover for British Vogue.

And in this episode of ‘Sangita Meets…’, Misan speaks to Sangita Myska about what drove him to pick up the camera. “Watching somebody that looks like me, George Floyd, lying in his own piss, asking for his mama, while still calling the men who had [a knee] on his neck, sir, as he left his mortal coil … The choice was already made for me,” he says.

In this personal and in-depth interview, Sangita also asks Misan – who has taken intimate portraits of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and their children – about how the British media has treated the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “There is a healthy dose of good old fashioned misogyny, misogynoir, racism,” he says. “It’s a combination of greed as well because…that hate sells. It feeds an algorithm that’s designed for that.”

Misan also opens up on:

• The “poison pen” of the press and its culpability in the tragic suicide death of Cambridge Professor Jason Arday, following what critics call a relentless, and often racist, media frenzy over his academic record

• The vicious online campaign against him over his support for Gaza and criticisms of Israel (“The forensic scraping of any story posts, any collabs, any shares … It means that they would have seen my advocacy with multiple Jewish groups.”)

• How he responds to criticisms that he’s part of the British elite

• What it feels like to have someone else tell his own story, in the documentary about his life, ‘Shoot the People’.

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“The original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.”

That’s how the White House lauded none other than Christopher Columbus in Donald Trump’s official proclamation last year to rename the second Monday in October ‘Columbus Day.’

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The holiday has become one of Trump’s obsessions on his anti-woke warpath, as he declared last year that he would bring it “back from the ashes.” It’s a direct attack on efforts to rename it “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” in recognition of the natives who suffered at the hands of colonists’ violence.

But while Trump attempts to sanitize the person behind this day, there is no running away from the horrible record Columbus holds. Facts, after all, don’t care about your feelings, right?

So here’s a list of seven shocking things you may not know about Christopher Columbus:

1. Columbus didn’t actually discover anything new

Surprise!

While history textbooks often credit Columbus as the first European to reach or ‘discover’ the Americas, the truth is that it was actually ‘discovered’ by Europeans about 500 years before Columbus even set sail. And that’s even if we entertain the idea that nothing existed until a European ‘discovered’ it.

Around 1,000 CE, Viking explorer Leif Erikson was blown off course en route to Greenland, instead arriving in North America. There, he established a settlement called “Vinland,” which is now recognized as Newfoundland, Canada.

But what about the United States? Well, Columbus never actually set foot on North American soil, with Oct. 12 instead marking the day Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas.

So much fuss for a guy who didn’t actually ‘discover’ North America.

2. Columbus set the transatlantic slave trade into motion

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From the numbers alone, intense public antipathy for Donald Trump’s economic record makes no sense. Our economy has not crashed.

Unemployment, which measured 4.2% in September, remains well below the 21st century average. Inflation, 3.4% year-over-year in August, exceeds the 25-year average by less than one percentage point. Overall growth, currently projected at 2.3% this year by the Federal Reserve, tracks the economy’s long-term potential.

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That scoreboard cannot explain why only 26% of Americans approved of Trump’s economic performance in an Associated Press/NORC poll last week – a number that has Republicans fearing a midterm elections catastrophe.

What can explain it: Two years after campaigning on a promise of rapid improvements, Americans see that his policies have made things worse. And if that weren’t bad enough, the billionaire president openly scorns their struggles with affordability as “a hoax.”

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