Early voting is underway, and while Trump’s people keep running from the truth, the truth keeps catching up with them.
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Talarico Faced Texas Voters. Paxton Hid.
Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico walked onto a CNN stage in Fort Worth Wednesday night and let Texas voters ask him anything for 90 minutes. Plenty of them weren’t on his side. Ken Paxton was invited too. He didn’t even respond.
Talarico turned the race on the people really dividing the country: “The only minority destroying America is the billionaires.”
Hiding is a habit for Paxton. In 2022, a process server swore under oath that Paxton ran back into his house to dodge a subpoena. Now he’s dodging the voters he wants to represent.
Talarico closed by going straight at him: “We have an opportunity in this race not just to defeat the most corrupt politician in Texas; we have an opportunity to defeat this entire corrupt system.” The choice, he said, is whether Texas sends a senator “who puts money in your pocket” or one “who puts money in their own.”
Republicans know they have a real chance to lose in Texas. That’s why Republicans in Tarrant County, where Talarico stood Wednesday night, voted to close 92 Election Day polling places. That’s nearly a third of all of them across the entire county. Early voting starts tomorrow, and Texans have the opportunity to pick the candidate who actually shows up.
One Newsletter Asked. Trump’s Fake Lawyer Is Gone.
Katie Zacharia lasted five days as White House press secretary. Trump introduced her on Truth Social as “an attorney,” and she’d called herself a lawyer on TV for months. Then Judd Legum, one of the country’s best investigative reporters, checked. His newsletter, Popular Information, searched bar records in all 50 states and DC. Nothing.
On the South Lawn, a reporter asked where she passed the bar. Trump turned and asked her, “Which state?” Her answer: “When I moved to China.” Americans can’t even take China’s bar, and nowhere in China can you take the US exam. A partner at Zhong Lun, the Chinese firm that employed her, said its foreign hires “are not practicing Chinese law at any time.”
By Thursday, Zacharia admitted she never passed the bar, calling it “inconsequential.” In California, claiming to be a lawyer without a license is a crime that carries up to a year in jail. Last year, she shared a Fox story on LinkedIn headlined “Newsom is ‘yammering on’ and not working, says attorney.” The “attorney” was her. As of Friday, that page still calls her “General Counsel” of Fix California.
WIRED uncovered what filled part of the gap in her résumé—selling Beachbody shakes for a company she now calls “sort of a pyramid scheme.” Funny how that works—she was hired to sell Trump’s scheme to deceive the American people from the White House podium. On Friday, Trump told reporters what he’d said to her: “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.” That same day, she was fired. It took one reader-funded newsletter less than a week to expose her. Good riddance.
Ohio’s Public Schools Just Beat The Voucher Racket
Trump’s people spent the week dodging questions. In Ohio, the state had to answer for its voucher program in court.
On Thursday, an Ohio appeals court ruled 3-0 that EdChoice, the program that hands tax money to private schools, violates the state constitution. Judge David Leland wrote the decision. It agreed with Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page, who ruled the program unconstitutional last year.
More than 300 public school districts joined forces as Vouchers Hurt Ohio, the coalition behind this case. One Republican lawmaker even tried to punish them for it, with a bill to cut off state money to any district that sued. They didn’t back down.
In 1999, Ohio’s Supreme Court warned that a bigger voucher program could someday damage public education. Leland said: “Today is that day.”
The facts in the filings are brutal. In one year, Ohio handed voucher schools $677 million while shorting its own public schools about $700 million under the state’s funding formula. Under oath, a state official admitted a private school could collect voucher money for a child who never showed up once all year. Voucher schools can turn away a child with a disability. Public schools in Richmond Heights can’t fix a broken boiler.
Trump’s Big Ugly Bill hands out federal tax breaks to bankroll private school tuition, and voucher backers have already vowed to take this loss to the Ohio Supreme Court. Let them. Public schools are 2-0.
The Judge Who Stopped Trump’s Forest Service Scheme
Ohio’s kids and public schools got a win in state court. The people who fight our wildfires got one in federal court.
Trump’s Agriculture Department (USDA) planned to rip the Forest Service’s headquarters out of Washington and ship it to Salt Lake City, close all nine regional offices, and shut 23 research facilities. More than 6,000 workers got letters warning of forced relocation. On Tuesday, US District Judge Vince Chhabria stopped all of it.
Congress had rejected Trump’s proposed $6.7 billion cut and written a rule into the budget: no closing offices or moving workers without its approval. The regime did it anyway. USDA “has almost certainly been violating those restrictions,” Chhabria wrote, halting its reorganization spending, “full stop.” He found no sign USDA ever studied what the plan would do to fighting wildfires.
Trump tried to do something like this in his first term, when he shipped two USDA research agencies to Kansas City. Instead of moving, more than half their staff left. That’s the whole point—make life so difficult for the experts it’s easier to just leave.
The American Federation of Government Employees—led by Everett Kelley—joined cities, counties, and nonprofits to win this ruling. “These forced moves were never about efficiency,” Kelley said. “They were about pushing experienced people out the door.”
The rule Chhabria enforced runs through December 11. Then Congress gets to decide, and our readers have already sent 33,636 letters telling them to protect the Forest Service. Every House seat is on the ballot in 16 days.
Sixteen days. That’s all that stands between Trump and a Congress that answers to you instead of him. Sixteen days of knocking on doors, making calls, bringing a friend to the polls, and refusing to let a single lie slide. Trump’s people are hiding, lying, and losing in court. We’re showing up.
We’ll keep digging into the Republicans running for Senate and push what we find to millions of people on Facebook, Bluesky, and everywhere else folks scroll, so the truth reaches them before the lies do. And we’ll keep amplifying candidates who need a louder voice in this fight.
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Go paid today and you’ll also get my morning briefing starting on October 27, where I’ll review which races are closest and where we can still make the biggest difference. On election night, you’ll be with me in our war room when I go live at 8:30 PM Eastern. Join us for the final stretch:
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Onward!
Scott
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Sunday check-in: 16 days to go, and four letters that take about a minute each. Send one before lunch:
Impeach Chief Justice John Roberts: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts/
Stop Trump’s Yosemite giveaway: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
Ban Flock’s mass surveillance cameras: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-ban-flock-mass-surveillance-cameras/
Pass the ban on AI we can’t control: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-pass-the-ban-on-ai-we-cant-control/
Tell me below which ones you sent.
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