Thanks so much for being here. Trump said he was “worried” out loud on Friday, and I’ve been smiling ever since.
Four weeks before the midterm elections, the top spending group for Senate Republicans has walked away from a seat its own party holds. Wait until you see which state it ran to instead.
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Senate Republicans’ Top Spender Just Left Trump’s Pick
In April, the Senate Leadership Fund—the top spending group for Senate Republicans—announced a $71 million plan to put Michael Whatley from North Carolina in the Senate. Whatley is Trump’s pick and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Last month, a poll showed Whatley 15 points behind the Democrat, former Gov. Roy Cooper. Whatley called it a “trash poll.”
Then the money packed up. On Friday, the New York Times reported the Senate Leadership Fund was canceling every ad it still had booked in North Carolina, including $18 million for the final month. Its own federal filings show $30.4 million spent through September. Nobody walks away from $30 million in a race they expect to win.
“I am worried about him,” Trump told reporters that day. “I hope he wins.” Give it a month and he’ll swear he barely knew the man.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the Senate, and North Carolina would be one. The fund now has more than $8 million in ads reserved in Kansas, to protect a Republican senator in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. A party spending October to hold Kansas isn’t trying to win anymore. It’s trying to survive Trump.
California Drivers Make Lyft Pay $272.5 Million
Alvaro Bolainez has driven for Lyft, the mobile app that works like a taxi service, since its early years. Lyft calls its drivers contractors, not employees. Employees are owed minimum wage, overtime, and repayment for work expenses—contractors aren’t. California says that from 2016 through 2020, that label cheated Lyft’s drivers out of all three.
“That’s not a business model, that’s exploitation,” says Rob Bonta, a Democrat and California’s attorney general.
Bolainez, vice president of Rideshare Drivers United, says: “This was rent that didn’t get paid, food that wasn’t there for hungry kids.”
More than 1,600 drivers filed wage claims with the state, and in 2020 the state and three of its big cities took Lyft to court. On October 1, California announced that Lyft had agreed to pay $272.5 million, the largest wage settlement in state history, officials say. At least $237 million goes to drivers.
A judge still has to approve it, and Lyft admits no wrongdoing. Sure. Companies hand over $272.5 million all the time for doing nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Labor Department has a rule in final White House review that’s expected to make it easier to label workers contractors. California made Lyft pay for that trick. The regime wants to make it easier to pull.
Good luck with that. Drivers like Bolainez just showed they don’t give up. “We’ve waited six years for this,” he says.
A Judge Calls Plate Cameras Mass Surveillance
You’ve probably driven past one: a camera on a pole that photographs every license plate. Members of Congress count more than 120,000 from one company, Flock Safety. Police can type in a plate number and see where that car has been.
A sheriff’s deputy in Oklahoma saw a car with a California plate. That was all he knew. He ran the plate and got back more than 50 sightings, a month’s worth.
The stop turned up about 91 pounds of methamphetamine, news reports say. That’s the part Flock wants you to remember. The part it doesn’t: he could have run that search on any of us. Nearly every court to look at this has let police do it without a warrant, Judge Sara Hill noted.
Last week, she ruled that this search needed one. She called the camera network “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” threw out the evidence, and asked, “Why is it the government’s business where everyone goes all the time?” It isn’t. The regime’s own prosecutors fought to keep that evidence in, and they lost. Flock expects an appeal.
At least 56 cities and towns have shut off, canceled, or rejected Flock this year, according to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s office. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a bill called the Ban Flock Act. It would bar federal agencies, including Trump’s immigration agents, from using these cameras and cut off federal money to cities that keep them. Trump’s regime would love a map of where all of us go. A federal judge just said that takes a warrant.
River Guide Gets Trump’s Big Bend Wall Halted
Billy Miller has guided people down the Rio Grande—the river that marks the Mexican border—through the Big Bend canyons of West Texas for more than 20 years. In April he sued Trump’s regime over its border wall there, joined by the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, and the caretakers of a 1915 adobe church.
To build it, the regime declared that dozens of laws didn’t apply, including the Endangered Species Act, and lined up more than $7 billion in contracts. All that for a region with about 1% of this century’s border arrests, an expert for Miller’s side says. That’s not border security. It’s a $7 billion monument to one man.
I tracked down Miller’s court declaration. In August, he says, he “watched bulldozers and heavy machinery tear up vegetation” near Santa Elena Canyon, inside Big Bend National Park.
At a hearing Friday, federal Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled on the spot: the regime “SHALL NOT build border barrier or related infrastructure” in the region until it follows the laws it brushed aside. Customs and Border Protection answered that it can secure the border while “preserving the unique landscape of the Big Bend region.” It said that after the ground was already torn up.
The order is temporary and can be appealed. But the regime brought bulldozers, and Billy Miller, the church’s caretakers, and a conservation group brought the law. For now, they’re ahead.
Twenty-eight days until the midterms, and we have the pedal to the metal.
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Before you close this, hit the ❤️ like button and restack this edition. A river guide in Texas and more than 1,600 rideshare drivers in California each just won big. The people they beat would be happy if you kept that to yourself. Don’t.
Onward!
Scott
Trump says he’s “worried.” What do you think he’s most worried about?
Have you driven past a license plate camera? When did you notice it went up?
Five letters today, about a minute each. Every one goes to your own members of Congress.
Ban Flock's license plate cameras. Our newest letter.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-ban-flock-mass-surveillance-cameras/
Impeach John Roberts. His new term started yesterday.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts/
Keep a Trump donor's private road out of Yosemite.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
Ban AI nobody can control.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-pass-the-ban-on-ai-we-cant-control/
Stop Trump from gutting the Forest Service.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-illegal-plan-to-destroy-the-us-forest-service/
Pick one or send all five, then tell me below how many you got through.
Also, after last night we have our Impeach Trump page back again: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-begin-drafting-articles-of-impeachment-against-trump/