Mark Your Calendars

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Read more

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.

Subscribe now

‘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.”

Subscribe now

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.

Read more

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.

Subscribe now

‘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.

Subscribe now

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.

Read more

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.

Subscribe now

‘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.

Subscribe now

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.

Read more

Good morning. Martin here again, delighted to be bringing you the news that matters for your Friday morning. Rejoice, for a long weekend is nearly here.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we look at an outburst from Donald Trump that was vile and dangerous even by his wretched standards, a broadside against Somali immigrants in Minnesota and a call for “the people of Minnesota” to “fight back.” When calls for violence are coming from inside the (White) House, America is really in trouble. Trump also spouted vile Islamophobic abuse at Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, who duly faced similar bile from Mike Rogers, his GOP opponent, on the debate stage in Grand Rapids.

Then we’ll look at a bombshell report from the New York Times, about how a close aide to Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is co-opting embassy practice to his own, openly pro-Israel ends. There was also a Senate debate in Georgia, and the Nobel Peace Prize goes to someone who has called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Let’s read in.

Subscribe now

‘Fight Back, Minnesota’

The president of the United States is trying to start a race war in Minnesota. This is not hyperbole. This is what he posted on Thursday:

“The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue. Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Doubtless, defenders and apologists for the fascist in the White House will claim that when he writes “fight” he really means “vote,” that he is merely using typical exaggeration to encourage Minnesota voters to kick Democrats out of congressional office and reject Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for Senate and Amy Klobuchar for governor next month.

Subscribe now

If so, rubbish. Trump knows Republicans are losing and he is taking action accordingly. Remember Jan. 6, 2021? That dreadful day, speaking to his supporters outside the White House, Trump told the mob to “fight like hell” to block certification of his conclusive defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Nine deaths were linked to the riot that followed. Trump already has blood on his hands.

That concerned a presidential election. He has form when it comes to midterms too.

Read more

Good morning friends! Prem here. Today, I bring you new details about how the Trump-Vance administration is commemorating Oct. 7: by holding an anti-Zionist rabbi in detention, using similar logic to that used to keep the student protester Mahmoud Khalil and the student op-ed writer Rümeysa Öztürk in detention last year.

And so, today’s ‘First Draft’ lays out how a rabbi is being stopped from celebrating the Jewish holidays, because he protested against Israel. We’ll also take a look at trouble in Trumpland over advisers working in a pro-Russia Balkan enclave even as midterms catastrophe looms, and catch up with all the news about Trump’s illegal war with Iran.

Subscribe now

A ‘Flight Risk’ Rabbi?

Donald Trump’s administration, which is trying to deport the former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil for protesting against Israel – by smearing him as an antisemitic threat – is trying to deport an anti-Zionist rabbi for the same reason.

As the Trump-Vance administration rolls out what it calls a nationwide tour to combat hate and antisemitism, it is simultaneously denying the rabbi religious accommodations and making him pray during Jewish Holy Days next to a toilet, as he languishes in ICE detention.

It’s another awful line on the villainous résumé of this White House of Horrors.

Subscribe now

Yehnotan Ovadia is a 35-year-old Orthodox Jewish religious teacher and rabbi who came to the U.S. in 2022 on a religious worker visa. As a member of the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic community, which opposes the state of Israel on religious grounds, he participated in pro-Palestine and anti-Israel demonstrations in New York.

Now in detention arising from such protests, Ovadia alleges in new filings seen by Zeteo that ICE is subjecting him to conditions that make it impossible to observe his faith. He notes that he has been detained through Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot; has resolved to use blankets to separate himself from the cell toilet and his new cellmate while he prays; and claims he has lost 25 pounds in about a month.

This week, Ovadia messaged his counsel about the limitations he faces when he tries to pray:

Read more

Happy Wednesday! It’s Swin. Election Day in the United States is less than a month away. If the public polls (as well as the private Republican polls) are right, it looks like we’re headed for an electoral slaughterhouse for the GOP and Team Trump.

Last week, ‘First Draft’ brought you news on how Republican consultants and pollsters are waking up to the idea that their party’s big, anti-Hasan Piker midterm strategy is one giant, very expensive failure. In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll fill you in on yet another dose of pre-2026-elections panic emanating from the elite ranks of Donald Trump’s Republican Party – and boy, is this one a doozy.

Subscribe now

Blowback

“Fuck a duck,” one close Trump adviser told me this month. “It’s looking bad.”

That’s how one source summed up the mood coming from so, so, so many national and state Republican Party officials, political operatives, GOP candidates, and Trumpland bigwigs.

Subscribe now

Standard caveat: Who knows what will happen in November, but for now, what you’re hearing isn’t liberal wishcasting. The pervasive and deepening freakout on the American right is extremely real, in part because their own internal polling is telling them to be afraid of losing the House and quite possibly the Senate too. And it’s largely due to the gross unpopularity of their infallible god-king, President Donald Trump.

But this adviser wasn’t just talking about the overall doom and gloom within their party. They were specifically bemoaning the distinct possibility that their side’s election-corrupting schemes are going to fail this time around.

All the Republican Party wanted to do this year was rig the midterm elections after Trump told them to launch a mid-decade gerrymandering war, then walk away scot-free with some extra wins under their belt. Turns out, life may have other plans for them. Several prominent GOP operatives and Trump advisers I’ve spoken to lately point to their side’s own private polling, as well as public data and sentiment, that indicate that Republicans in Texas may have (in common political parlance) “dummymandered” themselves into some Democratic congressional wins this cycle. The primary reason this could conceivably (maybe even likely) occur is because conservatives, acting under President Trump’s explicit call to action, redrew the Texas congressional map in ways meant to lock in Trump’s significant gains with Latino voters in 2024. But the weight of Trump’s malaise-filled economy – as well as his party’s dedication to attacking and kidnapping as many Hispanic Texan voters’ friends and family as possible – has greatly eroded those gains, and leaves many of those voters in redrawn districts swinging towards the Dems.

Who could have foreseen that intentionally making a crucial voting bloc poorer and less safe would cause those voters to get mad?

But it’s not just Texas.

Read more

Good morning. Andrew here, having watched another interminable Donald Trump rally, because you, dear reader, absolutely shouldn’t have to. The good news is I can safely tell you why Abdul El-Sayed is begging Trump to come to Michigan, to campaign for Mike Rogers.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the president bear-hugs the candidates he’s dragging down, Susan Collins has always loved donations from federal contractors, and Trump’s illegal war with Iran drags on. Let’s read in.

Subscribe now

‘Come to Michigan’

Contrary to what Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats would have you think, leftist streamer Hasan Piker isn’t the 2026 cycle’s most toxic campaign surrogate – not even close.

Nor is Bernie Sanders, despite Elon Musk and his super PAC’s endless fearmongering about the Vermont socialist. Senate candidate Troy Jackson, locked in a tight race against incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins, will happily campaign with Sanders all over Maine this weekend. (A new Marist poll has Jackson four points up on the Republican incumbent.)

Subscribe now

The most toxic campaign surrogate in America this year, without question, is Donald J. Trump. The historically unpopular president is expected to cost his party control of the House and potentially the Senate in November – and he insists on bear-hugging and publicly campaigning with the GOP’s most vulnerable candidates regardless.

After Trump told reporters on Monday he’ll be heading to Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed publicly pleaded for him to visit the state and campaign for his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.

“Donald, please, I’m asking you, come to Michigan,” El-Sayed said, speaking on MS NOW. “I dare you to come.”

Read more

Good morning – Martin here, ready to take you through what you need to know. This Monday’s song about Mondays is by the Bangles. What can I say: I was a kid in the 80s. I too had big hair.

Today, we’re considering yet more appalling behavior and rhetoric from Donald Trump, in light of yet more appalling poll numbers for the president and his Republican Party. In particular, such numbers concern Latino voters and a run of states that were supposed to be safely red but are now very much in play; such is the mess the GOP has made of the country.

We’ll also look at efforts to pass Proposition 40 in California, which would tax billionaires to pay for healthcare, and a fascinating broadside from Rep. Ro Khanna toward Governor Gavin Newsom that seems set to echo into the presidential primary in two years’ time. There’s news about Trump’s illegal Iran war too, of course. In we go.

Subscribe now

‘He’s a Pain in the Ass’

When Donald Trump wasn’t raving like a madman this weekend, he veered instead from petulant complaint to naked bribery, whining (inaccurately) at Fox & Friends for not covering his Saturday rally in Ohio and repeating his ludicrous offer to pay every U.S. adult if Republicans win on Nov. 3.

“Our country is doing so well under Republican leadership that only I can make you this promise,” Trump said, this time in a message filmed in, and casually sullying, the Oval Office itself. “If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate, I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000.”

Subscribe now

He also spouted some nonsense about funding the bribe – sorry, “dividend” – with tariff revenues. But as observers pointed out when Trump first made his “promise,” at his absurd midterms convention in Dallas last month, giving $5,000 to every adult citizen (although on Friday he promised to pay every citizen, not just adults) simply could not work, even if it was somehow legal – and even if you didn’t take into account all the other times Trump has promised payouts for regular Americans which he has not delivered.

In the Oval Office, Trump threw in a grim warning: “If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression much like 1929.” Around the country, reporters and editors sighed and reached again for expert opinion.

Read more

Good morning. Martin here, delighted to be on deck for the final morning of another week in Trump’s America that has felt more like most of a year. Here’s hoping you have fine weekend plans lined up. You’ve earned it.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we consider a truly terrible AP-NORC poll for Donald Trump’s and his reaction to it, which was to rant about numbers, repeatedly, without the slightest concession to his deeply troubled reality. There was also a long interview with Time that may somehow have managed to be Trump’s most unhinged yet, and a report from CNN on a stunning conflict of interest involving Trump envoy Jared Kushner, the so-called Gaza peace process, and an Israeli company helping fund Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal machine.

Pause for breath. Read on.

Subscribe now

‘The Best Numbers’

With the midterms looming, Donald Trump is all in on the “numbers.” He’s also high on his own supply.

In his alarmingly yet familiarly batshit interview with Time, asked about polling that has “never been lower,” the 80-year-old said: “They’re fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They’re almost as corrupt as the writers.”

Subscribe now

Later on Thursday, landing in Texas, he said: “We have the best numbers of any president in history. The one thing we don’t do is we don’t get a fair shake from the media. They don’t report the numbers.”

The problem, of course, is that the media does report the numbers, from and about all sorts of things but particularly those produced by public polling. And those numbers have never been worse.

On Thursday, AP-NORC released a new poll. It was an absolute stinker for Trump, and the media duly reported it.

Read more

Happy Thursday. It’s Swin again. I cannot possibly pretend what I’m about to tell you isn’t immensely funny. It is also, I would argue, a meaningful sign of just how badly screwed the Republican Party and its MAGA overlords likely are, with election night just over a month away.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ you’ll discover what the GOP and Trumpworld elite REALLY think about their collective decision to make a lone California-based Twitch streamer one of the main characters of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. (Hint: The data is in and they’re not happy.) Plus, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an absurd speech, and an even more absurd book, to a captive military audience in Virginia. Let’s jump in.

Subscribe now

‘LMAO’

My job is to talk to as many Trump administration officials, well-connected Republican operatives and data dorks, GOP lawmakers and aides, and other conservative bigwigs and influence peddlers as I can. The gig is as unglamorous as it is irritating, but it puts me in a position to confidently tell you: What you’ve been hearing in the media isn’t hype or liberal wish-fulfillment.

The 2026 freakout among the top tiers of the Republican Party and conservative movement – about President Donald Trump’s catastrophic poll numbers, and the very real possibility that this year’s midterms are going to be an electoral slaughterhouse for the GOP – isn’t just real. Lately, the behind-the-scenes, party-wide sense of terror has been growing conspicuously worse, almost by the day, as we approach November. (And this is easy to forget, but: Trump-aligned pollsters started thinking he and the party were “fucked” even before he launched his disastrous Iran war in February; so imagine what they must be thinking now.)

Subscribe now

So today, I want to give you a concrete example of how “fucked” they think they are with a month left on the clock, and where they think their own people have inflicted extremely unforced errors. I could point to more obvious warning signs, such as how much of the Republican Party is blaring the alarm bells over Iowa – Iowa! – being in play. Instead, I’m going to dish on how frustrated some prominent Republican consultants and Trump advisers are about their party’s never-ending anti-Hasan Piker strategy.

Yes, that Hasan Piker, the hard-left Twitch streamer who has infuriated Democratic elites with his efforts to push the party leftward and to a more pro-Palestinian position. The anti-Piker strategy may have started with Dems and their think tanks but boy, did it end up being a uniquely hysterical and sometimes horny obsession in Republican circles and right-wing media.

And, as a variety of seasoned Republican operatives and advisers to the president quietly tell me, many of the GOP’s movers and shakers don’t think the attacks are working. At all. And they have the non-public data to back up the argument. In fact, one of Trump’s own pollsters is now throwing cold water on the Piker-hating electoral strategy, in a brief conversation with Zeteo.

Read more

Welcome to Wednesday! It’s Andrew and Swin, again. The Trump White House is embroiled in yet another blundering scandal of its own making and if you privately press a bunch of Trump officials on who’s involved, they very quickly start singing the Shaggy defense.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll dive right into Donald Trump’s Love-Me-gate, and reveal some new details about the scandal of Trump’s TV ad campaign. Plus, MAGA Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt tries to slam dunk former Special Counsel Jack Smith, only to end up badly embarrassing himself on the national stage. Let’s jump in.

Subscribe now

‘Obviously Illegal’

Team Trump privately admits it’s illegal. They’re doing it anyway, largely because the president of the United States got mad at his TV again.

Over the past week, Donald Trump and his White House have rolled out a series of campaign-style TV ads – paid for by the U.S. taxpayer and federal government – imploring viewers to, among other things, “Love Me” and reject the “communists” and “warmongers,” in a “final battle.” (Several Trump advisers concede to Zeteo that it verges on self-satire that this president would run against warmongering at this point.)

Subscribe now

One of the ads is virtually identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad, as if to collapse any notion that these ads aren’t geared toward the fast-approaching 2026 elections or openly partisan politics. While federal laws very clearly prohibit government use of taxpayer dollars to fund purely political propaganda campaigns, the second Trump administration has exhibited a profound commitment to its unique legal philosophy: “What are you gonna do about it?”

Spokespeople for the White House have insisted there’s nothing illegal about their ad campaign, claiming that the taxpayer-funded TV spots are “public service announcements” and not partisan propaganda meant to influence the 2026 midterms.

This claim is somewhat undermined by the fact that President Trump himself, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, has privately referred to them as “midterm ads.”

Read more

Good morning, friends. Prem here. Benjamin Netanyahu just came to the U.S. for the eighth time since Donald Trump took office, which is an outrage for at least 74,000 reasons – that being the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.

Now, Zeteo can reveal another reason for outrage: Netanyahu was welcomed to the U.S. while holding another American teenager in prison, because of “secret evidence.”

My report is below. Also in today’s ‘First Draft,’ we look at an alarming sign for Trump as even erstwhile ‘Front Row Joe’ super fans begin to fall out of love, and there’s more news about the president’s pointless, damaging war with Iran. Let’s read on.

Subscribe now

A Real Teen Nightmare

Israeli security forces snatched an American teenager with Texas roots from his family’s West Bank home in the middle of the night. What’s more, it’s an indication of how wanton the Israeli regime has grown that the latest victim is the now the third young American languishing in Israeli prison.

One day in late June, around 3am, Israeli officers raided the home of Abdalkareem Issa Ahmed Safi, in Jalazone, a few miles north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Subscribe now

The Israelis took Safi just days before his 18th birthday, as he was in the middle of his national final exams – a crucial time for Palestinian children and a time when Israeli forces allegedly escalate their snatching of such students.

Days after snatching Safi, Israeli authorities issued an administrative detention order against him, based on information not disclosed to his lawyer or family. Administrative detention is a mechanism under which Israel imprisons people without charge or trial, typically based on secret evidence.

Now, Safi is being held at Ofer prison, where Palestinians have been subject to regular beatings, massively overcrowded cells, humiliation, constant shackling, and severe hunger. In August, Safi was moved from the children’s section to an adult area.

His detention order expires on Oct. 28 – which would be a more than four-month stint in prison, with no allegations made public. His family fears Israel could renew the detention indefinitely, as it does for many prisoners.

Read more

Subscribe now

Good morning. Martin here, honored as ever to set out what you need to know this fine Monday morning. Here’s a song about Mondays from the great Alabama 3, who are not from Alabama and who number considerably more than three but who did write the greatest TV theme of all time.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’re looking at another ludicrous, existentially worrying weekend in Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, now lurching toward its ninth month with the U.S. president doing his best to ruin a new attempt to end it. What’s next? More talks, more nonsense from the maniac in the White House, all while Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi uses a very worrying word – twice.

Next, we’ll take a first look at encouraging numbers out of Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers are competing for a U.S. Senate seat. There’s also more on Trump’s illegal, taxpayer-funded, insane ego-fluffing ahead of the looming midterms. Let’s dive in.

Subscribe now

‘I Rejected Their Deal’

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ He conducted the interview from New York, where he and other Iranian officials traveled last week for the United Nations and where talks about stopping the eight-month U.S. war with Iran have taken place.

If you think it odd that leaders of a power with which the U.S. is at war were granted visas for UN week while Palestinian leaders were not, well, you’re not alone, but that’s U.S.-Israeli policy for you. Donald Trump was happy to have people he’s repeatedly threatened to “annihilate” (and who he says want to annihilate him) in town, but people Benjamin Netanyahu is actively annihilating? Not so much.

Subscribe now

And so, the Trump show rolled on. On Saturday, with predictable intemperance, he gave his opinion of an Iranian offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz swiftly should a peace deal be agreed.

“I rejected their deal,” Trump told reporters before leaving the White House, his treats for the weekend including a college football game in Tennessee and a golf tournament in Illinois. “They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.

“…You know why? Because they’re dying. You know why they’re dying? Because they have no money coming in because they get their money from the Hormuz Strait. They outsmarted themselves. They said, ‘Let’s close it and cause a problem for the world.’ And I came along, and we put up the greatest blockade ever in military history.”

Yadda yadda. But what Araghchi told NBC about those words from Trump was telling. And chilling.

Read more

Good morning, and welcome to Friday. Martin here, honored as ever to be bringing you the news you need to start the final day of your week.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we take a look at Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s disgraceful speech to the UN General Assembly, and how two inevitable targets of his abuse kept it simple, and very effective, in their own responses.

We’re also trying to work out what the hell that was from Donald Trump’s White House, yet again, this time in reference to the appearance of truly bizarre political ads which appear to break a bunch of laws about the uses of taxpayer money, as well as providing a rather alarming glimpse into the president’s raddled and desperately needy psyche. There’s Iran war news too, of course, and more. Let’s read in.

Subscribe now

‘Judge Me By My Enemies’

You have to hand it to Hasan Piker. For a 35-year-old leftist Twitch streamer from California, he’s got powerful right-wingers across the world so worked up they can’t stop demonizing him on the grandest stages (when they’re not staring at his budgie-smugglers selfie). On Thursday, midway through Benjamin Netanyahu’s furious, ugly, and disgraceful address to a half-empty UN in New York, a coordinated walkout having greeted his appearance at the dais, the Israeli prime minister took his turn.

In the course of spitting lies and abuse at Zohran Mamdani, duly elected mayor of his host city, Netanyahu said: “Since you were elected… many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me. They tell me. This isn’t the city we remember. It changed so quickly. It’s no wonder. You praised criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11… Some friends you have.”

Subscribe now

Piker did say that about 9/11. And he walked it back – as he discussed with Mehdi here at Zeteo.

Responding to Netanyahu, Piker kept it brief – and effective:

Read more

Good morning. Andrew here, breaking down exclusive polling on a new Senate resolution that demonstrates how sharply public opinion has shifted on Israel and its violent occupation of Palestine.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Democrats and Republicans agree the U.S. should investigate the killing of nine Americans in the occupied West Bank; Donald Trump and his administration revealed the exact level of bullshit they will put in a court filing before a federal judge; and Trump’s Iran war drags on and on. Let’s read on.

Subscribe now

‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel

New polling shared exclusively with Zeteo finds bipartisan supermajority support for an effort by Democratic senators to require the State Department to investigate the killings of Americans and increasing Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 15 Americans in the West Bank since 2003. Nine Americans have been killed since 2022.

Twenty-four Democratic senators, led by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, are pushing a privileged resolution that would require Donald Trump’s State Department to report to Congress on the killings of Americans in the West Bank since 2022, as well as on “the human rights situation concerning Palestinian children in Israeli military detention in the West Bank.”

Subscribe now

“Protecting and supporting United States citizens abroad is one of the foremost responsibilities of the United States government,” the resolution states.

It names the nine Americans killed since 2022: Omar Assad, Shireen Abu Akleh, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, Amer Rabee, Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, Khamis Ayyad, and Nasrallah Abu Siyam. It spells out how they were killed or how they were believed to have been killed, by Israeli soldiers or violent settlers.

Signatories on Van Hollen’s resolution include progressives Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey, but also moderate Democrats like Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Jeanne Shaheen, and Jack Reed. The senators can force a vote on the measure before the Senate goes on recess for the month of October, potentially as early as Friday.

A survey of likely voters from the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by Data For Progress and shared with Zeteo, finds strong support for the resolution and its goals.

Read more

Happy Wednesday – it’s Swin again. The world’s crassest, most buffoonishly violent imperialist is at it again, and he’s not just making his own nation listen. He’s forcing all the “United” ones to listen too.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll get right into why Donald Trump gave the worst United Nations speech ever delivered by a U.S. president, and that includes Trump’s past speeches in New York in September.

Plus, GOP Senator Susan Collins has a ProPublica-sized problem in Maine, after a bombshell report about a bribery probe Trump’s crooked DOJ made go away, and Trump’s forever war with Iran drags on. Let’s get to it.

Subscribe now

‘Spoils’ Brat

If you didn’t tune into Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan, the president played the hits – meaning, it was a disgusting carnival of self-aggrandizement, flailing bullyboy nonsense, and mindless bloodlust masquerading as MAGA-fried realpolitik.

He threatened the Cuban delegation, at a time when his government is brutally asphyxiating that nation. As he often does, he threatened the Iranian people with genocide, “annihilation,” and “hell,” because he can’t face the fact he’s badly losing a war he started. He bragged about his boat bombing campaign and boasted of his invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its leader, openly telling all nations, democratic and not, that the United States is now fully, openly in the business of pillaging, looting, and extra-legal killing.

Subscribe now

No more plausible deniability. No high-minded nods to “spreading democracy” or “human rights.”

The Trump doctrine is just a new version of his old remarks about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape; When you’re America, they let you do it.

“In January, at my direction, the United States military conducted a massive military operation penetrating deep into the Venezuelan capital,” Trump told the UN on Tuesday. “Last month, we signed the largest oil deal in history [with Venezuela’s leadership] … It was a war … To the victor belong the spoils, you’ve all heard that.”

Read more

Good morning, friends. Prem here, with a very timely cross-section of news. While the pro-Israel lobby’s influence has been on full display across U.S. current events (for example, in the Ellisons’ takeover of the media, in Robert Kraft censoring Macklemore, and in the NFL targeting a player for wearing the names of murdered Palestinian kids), artificial intelligence has also been commanding headlines. Today, we bring to you the latest chapter in an accelerating campaign: websites paid for by Israel, seemingly seeking to influence chatbots to give pro-Israel answers.

We’ll also check in on that Ellison takeover and aghast responses from free speech advocates as well as CNN and CBS staffers who spoke to Zeteo’s own Justin Baragona, and consider the unsavory company kept by Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers as he challenges Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a key battleground race. There’s plenty more news too, so let’s dive in.

Subscribe now

AI - Emphasis on the ‘I’

Israel is paying for a new website in its ongoing effort to apparently influence AI chatbots so they spit out pro-Israel answers.

Foreign agent filings show that as part of a $1 million effort, the Israeli government has propped up the website “IsraelFact.com.” The site is the latest in a constellation of propaganda and influence campaigns that have cropped up in recent months.

Subscribe now

Over the past month, “IsraelFact” has been churning out content sometimes multiple times per day, each article’s headline phrased as a question. The topics range from “What Does Israel’s Ceasefire Decision Say About Its Forces in Gaza?” and “How Many Moslems Live in Israel?” to “Is It Legal for Settlers to Take Palestinian Land Under Israeli Law?” and “Can Uncultivated Palestinian Farmland Be Expropriated?”

The website includes this disclaimer: “Israel pays for this site. We are registered as a foreign agent in the United States.”

The website has published at least 119 articles in a month. The articles largely frame content in such a way that could propel chatbot answers to provide either a pro-Israel narrative or minimize counter-narratives.

The site’s mission is laid out quite plainly.

Read more

Good morning. Martin and Swin here, in Martin’s case, forgoing the usual Happy Mondays link because the news this morning is rather serious, if not outright unhappy. Try this for size, instead.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ve got exclusive reporting from Trumpworld about the president’s state of mind as he appears to ponder, yet again, a major escalation in his disastrous war with Iran, even as what promise to be disastrous midterm elections loom. We also take a look at Donald Trump’s petulant decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and a predictably anodyne response from the rest of the press. Let’s get to it.

Subscribe now

‘Political Suicide’

On Saturday, without explanation to the press or public, Donald Trump cut short a visit to the presidential retreat at Camp David. Trump has never liked the place much, but presidents do tend to make unexpected trips from the Maryland hills back to the Washington swamp when something big is cooking. They don’t usually travel with two top golfers and a model, true. But Trump’s gonna Trump, as we know.

On Sunday, Trump proved that maxim again when he told Fox he was considering ordering a war crime, saying he was deciding between “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal. My question is, ‘If and when do I blow the entire nation up?’ They better behave.”

Subscribe now

As has been pointed out throughout the seven-month war, Trump has often made such dire threats and nothing so serious has resulted – a point made without wishing to lessen the parade of horrors Trump’s war has produced, not one iota. This time, speaking to Fox, Trump offered another possible get-out, saying he was open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN in New York this week.

But as the Wall Street Journal depicted ‘Veep’ levels of mania in the White House – the president off the leash and alarming aides in the absence of departed press secretary Karoline Leavitt and chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has been addressing health concerns – the State Department issued a security alert to citizens across the Middle East, a common move ahead of military action. Furthermore, amid stark reporting on the “cascade of preventable failures” that led U.S. forces to annihilate at least 123 children at a school in Iran on day one of the war – the Trump administration hasn’t owned up, but the evidence is overwhelming – multiple outlets reported regional preparations for renewed U.S. bombing.

In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard said it had information that a new attack was coming, and added that if so, “all U.S. bases and interests in the region will become targets of continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations.”

For Zeteo, Swin hit the phones, working his Washington sources, testing the strength of reports that Trump is looking for “foreign policy victories” ahead of the midterm elections.

Read more

Good morning. Martin and Andrew, delighted to bring you the news you need to start your day.

Thursday was another average day in Donald Trump’s Washington – meaning in one sense averagely batshit, the president using White House remarks to muse about banning fishing, and in others averagely alarming.

Trump’s existential threat to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is one such worrying development. On that score, in today’s ‘First Draft’ we have a scoop for you, one that reveals more about the financial shape the center is in, thanks to Trump. We also look at a remarkable political ad cut by a senior GOP congresswoman in Lafayette Square next to the White House, which shows how Trump’s grip is slipping, and there’s more Iran news too. Let’s dive in.

Subscribe now

‘It’s a Mess,’ Alright

Earlier this week, a federal judge said for a second time Donald Trump’s name could not be added to the exterior of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the “living memorial” to the murdered 35th president on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, DC, because only Congress could order such a change. In response, the Trump administration closed the building down.

The next day, Trump said of the center: “It’s a mess. The Kennedy Center for many years has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s a loser financially… For me to go and fix it, I’m the one capable of fixing it and then have to subsidize it for years to come, because you will lose with the Kennedy Center, they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars and sometimes hundreds of billions, this is before I got involved.”

Subscribe now

So Zeteo asked the Kennedy Center for its 2025 tax return, which was filed last month.

Handed over, it showed that while Trump’s claims about the center’s finances being in a perilous state may now be accurate – a slide reporting by the Washington Post has shown to have happened since the president took over the institution – he is both lying about previous losses and hiding his own deliberate financial assault.

The tax return does not show the Kennedy Center perpetually losing “hundreds of millions” or “sometimes hundreds of billions.” But it confirms issues, particularly around Trump’s takeover.

As of Sept. 30, 2025, the Kennedy Center had record net assets of $778 million. The center reported $517 million in revenue last year, and $210 million in revenue less expenses.

But if not for untapped appropriations from Congress – $257 million as part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill – the center would have been in the red. That’s because it listed a $48 million “bad debt expense” in its tax return. Program revenue declined by $16 million and pledges and grants declined by $30 million in the seven or so months after Trump began his Kennedy Center takeover. That was before he added his name to the building, a move that reportedly caused ticket sales and donations to plunge much further.

Read more