Thanks so much for joining me. Trump and his friends lost a few fights they expected to win, and I enjoyed writing up every minute of it.
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Marshall Kept Earning From The Practice In Congress
Meischa Zimmerman was eight months pregnant and home with her two-year-old when she was arrested for missing a court date over a C-section bill from her doctor. She later told the New York Times that she asked the officer, “Can you not handcuff me in front of my daughter?” The bill was $3,596, at 18% interest—a rate her doctor set himself, according to his own lawyer. Her third arrest came the week after that doctor won his first election to Congress.
The doctor is Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas. He and his medical practice sued more than 700 patients, the Times reported, and 81 were arrested after missing court dates. His spokeswoman says “judges issue warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors.” But judges sign warrants when someone asks. His lawyers asked in dozens of court filings, the Times found.
Marshall told Fox News that once a bill went to collections, he “had nothing else to do with the process.” So I pulled the forms he filed with Congress, and here’s something the Times didn’t report and I haven’t seen anywhere else. In 2015 he listed himself as the practice’s “President, Secretary, Director, Employee” and the owner of 55% of it.
The man who says he had nothing to do with it ran the business and owned most of it. His form for 2017, his first year in Congress, still shows 55% and $15,001 to $50,000 in income from it, while, according to the Times, the collection work continued. That same year he helped lead the push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, while still getting paid by the business collecting from his old patients.
Last week his lawyer demanded that the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Adam Hamilton, pull an ad featuring Zimmerman and her story. It’s staying up. The newest poll, from YouGov, has Hamilton ahead 48 to 45, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. Kansas can fix that.
Marshall’s campaign did not respond to our request for comment.
Alito Finally Steps Off The Oil Case
In August, I reported that Justice Samuel Alito owned oil stock and was set to rule on one of the biggest oil cases in years anyway. Not anymore.
In 2018, the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, sued Exxon and Suncor to make them help cover what climate change is costing local taxpayers. Colorado’s top court let the lawsuit go forward, and the oil companies ran to the Supreme Court. If they win there, towns everywhere could lose the right to send them the bill.
Alito’s disclosure lists stock in energy and mining companies. None is Exxon or Suncor, but oil companies ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 are on the list, and he took part in February when the Court took the case. Last week, the Court’s clerk announced he would not participate. It took him seven months to remember what was in his own portfolio. Alito told Bloomberg that stepping aside “was the prudent step.” You don’t say.
The other eight justices heard the case Monday and pressed both sides hard. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, told the oil companies’ lawyer one of his answers was “a little slippery.” If the Court ties 4 to 4, Colorado’s ruling stands and Boulder’s lawsuit goes on.
Whatever the eight decide, Alito’s stock gets no vote, and Big Oil just lost what I’d bet was its safest vote on that bench. Good.
Javier Ramirez Takes Federal Agents To Court
Last week, California handed Javier Ramirez a new way to sue the federal agents who arrested him, and he didn’t wait a day to use it.
In June 2025, Ramirez was at his family’s car lot in Montebello, California, when immigration agents came through the gate. Video shows agents wrestling him to the ground and kneeling on his back. He can be heard telling them he’s a citizen, which is true. He was released from custody after more than four days, and the charges against him were later dropped.
If a local cop did that, federal law would allow Ramirez to sue, but when it comes to federal agents, the Supreme Court has all but shut the courthouse door. The regime likes it that way.
California just built a new door. On September 29, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the No Kings Act. Anyone in California can now sue any officer who violated their constitutional rights, federal agents included, going back to March 1, 2025. Hours later, it was in Ramirez’s lawsuit. At least four more states passed their own laws this year.
Ramirez teaches his kids Spanish, and he doesn’t want them being targeted for speaking it. “I want justice,” he says.
Bill Essayli, the regime’s top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, told Newsom that to regulate federal agents, “you have to win a federal election.” Fine. There’s one in 27 days. Let’s go win it.
Jack Smith Gets A Hero’s Welcome
Jack Smith is the former prosecutor who brought two criminal cases against Trump. Last week he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States.”
At that hearing, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said text messages put Smith at an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in February 2024—suggesting he’d met there with a Georgia prosecutor who also charged Trump. Then he called Smith a “total dirtbag.”
Smith did go to a game that month. It was in Maryland, where he went to see the Iowa Hawkeyes—not the Atlanta Hawks. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told Schmitt to his face that he had the wrong team, but he wouldn’t take it back. Missouri deserves better.
Four days later, Smith turned up at guitarist Tom Morello’s sold-out Power to the People music festival in a Bruce Springsteen shirt that read “No Kings.” Fans posted photos with him. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters came out in an Iowa Hawkeyes T-shirt and dedicated the song “My Hero” to “my new friend Jack.”
The next morning, Trump posted, “Deranged Jack Smith is a Crooked Prosecutor!” All Smith had to do was show up at a concert. Trump wants people afraid to be seen with Smith, but there they were, putting up pictures with him anyway. Like Smith told the senators at the hearing last week, “while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.”
There are only 27 days until the midterms, and I like our chances to flip Congress more now than I ever have. But we aren’t slowing down for anything.
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Before you go, hit the ❤️ like button and restack this edition. Jack Smith walked into a crowd of strangers on Saturday and got a hero’s welcome. Trump would rather nobody saw that, so let’s make sure everybody does.
Onward!
Scott
Marshall says that once a bill went to collections, he had nothing else to do with it. Do you buy that?
Should Supreme Court justices be allowed to own stock in companies at all?
If you bumped into Jack Smith, what would you say to him?
Eight months pregnant, a two-year-old in the house, and they put her in handcuffs over a bill from her own doctor. I cannot stop seeing that. And then he got elected and the arrests kept coming. Kansas, do not let him walk away from this.
Scott, little by little, democracy is winning!