So there it is, the polls did not lie.
All the money in the world, dumped into races in Texas to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the gerrymandering of the districts in Texas, Florida, California and North Carlina, all the vile personal attacks against Talarico in Texas and El-Sayed in Michigan, could not help the Republicans.
Two Senate races still have to be called and a lot of House races, but the Democrats will be firmly in control of Congress.
Trump pledged to work with the Democrats. Ri-ight.
If the election goes roughly as the polls say it will, then in some ways it would mark the end of the Trump era, I think. He’ll still be president for two more years. But the minute the election, the votes, are counted — might take a while because of Alaska and California and states like that — the 2028 election campaign begins, and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he’s a super-lame duck, right? You might draw an analogy to George W. Bush after 2006.
– Political analyst Nate Silver talking to New York Times columnist Ezra Klein
One week to go until Election Day.
Voting is underway, and 35 million Americans have already voted. (The total number of votes cast in the 2022 midterms was 122 million.)
This map shows that the early voting numbers are already well ahead of the total 2022 tally in most states. Does that portend well for the Democrats? Probably .. but Democrats are known for voting early, and there will be a surge of last day voters, as there always is. [Infographic by the Election Labs project of the University of Florida]The House is probably going to the Democrats. The Senate is also a possibility, and Democrats need a net gain of 4. Doable, but we won’t know until next week. [Infographic by Al Jazeera News]
We won’t know exactly what Nov. 3 will bring until the votes are counted, of course, but Trump’s approval ratings are in the dumpster.
He is rarely mentioned by any of the Republican candidates, because they know that he is as radioactive as a piece of plutonium.
And in the run-up to the 2026 Midterm Elections, the President of the United States is again showing— clearly— that he is a Putin ally.
From the Editorial Board of the New York Times, under the heading ‘Trump’s Betrayal of Ukraine’:
On Oct. 9, Mr. Trump announced he would lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports to the United States, a step that will help Russia’s economy and war production. On Friday, he went further, signing an executive order that waived other sanctions. He has also taken steps that do not have a clear economic rationale and instead seem designed simply to please Mr. Putin. Among them are new service restrictions for Starshield, the Elon Musk-run satellite network that Ukrainian forces use to defend against Russian airstrikes. Although the White House denies involvement, Mr. Musk said that only the U.S. military, and ultimately the president, could order service restrictions.
Let us be clear about the scope of Mr. Trump’s cynicism. He is aiding an autocratic leader and dangerous adversary of the United States who is waging a brutal war against a democratic neighbor. Mr. Trump is doing so partly in the faint hope that gas prices, which have jumped because of his reckless war in Iran, will fall over the next two weeks and help Republicans avoid big losses in the midterm elections. He is damaging America’s national interest, and likely sacrificing Ukrainian lives, for his own political interests.
Headlines like this is the crap that we have to deal with every day. Maybe the press briefing room should be closed for this administration, anyway. There is no White House Press Secretary. Karoline Leavitt resigned in August after a spectacular stint of lies, obfuscation and propaganda. Her successor (Katie Zacharia) lasted just five days: Monday to Friday last week. She held a single, brief, stumbling press conference on Tuesday, October 13, before being dismissed. [Headlines and photo from The New York Times]
I donned my woolen gloves and skull cap this morning as I went for a walk (45°F/ 7°C).
A thick fog bank obscured the Olympic Mountains.
By afternoon the mountains were out, in soft shades of blue.
I walked down to Capitol Hill’s Broadway to reach the graffitied ballot box at Seattle Central College to deposit my mail-in ballot.
We don’t have dramatic House or Senate races here in Washington State that feature on the national stage, such as the James Talarico (D) vs. Ken Paxton (R) showdown in Texas, or the Susan Collins (R) vs. Troy Jackson (D) race in Maine.
Our ballot does have an initiative (I-645) that seeks to repeal the so-called “Millionaires Tax”— a 9.9% flat state income tax on household earnings exceeding $1 million per year, which was signed into law by Governor Bob Ferguson in March.
Fogbank seen from Capitol Hill’s 13th Ave East, 9.03 am.An updated view, 4.26pm.The ballot box is in rough shape on the outside, but I like to drop it in here instead of putting it in the mail.
Colby Smith reports for the New York Times: Higher energy prices drove up inflation in the United States in September, a warning shot to President Trump ahead of midterm elections that have centered primarily on affordability concerns. The uptick in consumer prices will also keep the Federal Reserve under pressure to raise interest rates for a second time this year. The Consumer Price Index report, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday, showed that overall prices rose 0.6 percent, the largest monthly increase in five months. Compared with the same time last year, prices were 3.7 percent higher.
Also from Colby Smith’s reporting: “Average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.5 percent in September, and were down 0.7 percent from a year earlier. It was the sixth straight month of year-over-year declines in real earnings. Average hourly earnings are now back to almost where they were when Mr. Trump was sworn into office for the second time in January 2025, meaning that, on average, Americans have experienced zero wage growth, in real terms, since he returned to the White House.”
Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene* (Georgia’s 14th District) provided this summary of what Trump has done this year and last.
(Just to be clear: he has done a lot more in terms of corruption, and damage to America’s democratic norms, and its standing with its allies, that Greene does not mention).
*U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican Party) had announced her resignation from Congress in Nov. 2025—and left Congress on Jan. 5, 2026—following a severe public fallout with Trump and growing frustration with congressional leadership.
Post from Marjorie Taylor Greene on X, on Sunday Oct. 11.
Five weeks to go, to the Midterm General Elections here in the US.
If the pollsters have it right, this man is to be out of a job soon (Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson)— as are many Republican members of the House, and several in the Senate. The pundits say the election is a referendum about Trump, and that the chasm between his Very Favorable Rating (15%) and Very Unfavorable Rating (almost 50%) points to disaster for the Republicans.
There is a lot of theater going on with the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the public statements he and Trump makes.
From The New York Times’s White House reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs: President Trump said he had “never gotten along better” with President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday during a day of military flyovers, gifts of pandas and lavish ceremonies that masked significant divides over artificial intelligence and trade.
“President Xi and I both understand that we represent different systems but the ties between our people endure,” Mr. Trump said at the start of the state dinner with Mr. Xi at the White House. “Together we can continue to build a relationship that promotes prosperity and security for future generations.”
.. and David Pierson from Hong Kong: Apart from a metaphor about history being a flowing river, Xi’s dinner speech was plain spoken by his standards. He is prone to using grandiose language aimed at casting himself as akin to one of China’s ancient philosopher kings. Xi’s central message on Thursday was more direct: China and the United States are two major powers that should “get along with each other.”
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-percentage point (25 basis points) to a target range of 3.75% to 4% today.
The decision of the FOMC was unanimous and at least we know now that Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is not going to do Trump’s bidding. (Trump blasted the decision afterwards and opined on Truth Social that rates should be at 1%.)
There’s the upturn, the first in three years. We live in unprecedented financial times. The federal funds rate had never been at zero before the Great Recession. After the Covid-19 pandemic and recession, it went to zero again. We can now say (with the benefit of hindsight) that the Federal Reserve should have started to raise rates in mid-to-late 2021, when consumer demand was surging and vaccines were widely distributed. Keeping the rate at zero for too long (until Mar. 2022) helped to cause massive inflation and then the rate had to be ratcheted up rapidly to above 5%.I asked Google Gemini if critics that were against the rate hike had a case, saying the inflation is caused by the war in Iran which should end ‘soon’ (say, a few months).
London — A narrow waterway located at the mouth of the Red Sea between Yemen and Djibouti has provided an escape hatch for a sizeable chunk of the Middle East’s oil. That lifeline is now looking increasingly shaky.
For weeks, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have threatened shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb strait, attempting to open a new front in the war between Tehran and Washington, now in its seventh month.
In the past 48 hours, the Houthis have dramatically tightened their grip on the shipping route, capturing both the port city of Mocha and – according to Yemeni government sources – the strategic Perim Island in the middle of the maritime chokepoint.
– Reporting by Anna Cooban on cnn.com
And we thought (I thought) that the Strait of Hormuz was the only major shipping chokepoint, but no, not so.Not looking good .. will we see a national average of $5 per gallon again? (The average was of $5.01 in June 2022). Traders and speculators on Kalshi put the odds at: 71% for prices to surpass $4.60 a gallon, 57% that prices will top $4.80 a gallon and 40% that prices will actually cross the $5.00 national average.
Headlines from Fortune online, with photo from Kevin Dietsch/ Getty Images
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian write for Fortune magazine:
In February 1993, weeks into Bill Clinton’s presidency, James Carville famously quipped: “I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”
What Carville was referring to is the fact that the U.S. government runs massive deficits every year, which requires the U.S. government to issue bonds to fund those deficits. In turn, other people, i.e. the bond market, have to be willing to buy those bonds we issue. That is the difference between a healthy country vs. a country like Russia, where nobody wants to buy their debt and they have to resort to cannibalization to fund spending.
When the bond market stops buying the debt we issue, bond yields rise, increasing debt servicing costs; and quickly rising bond yields amounts to a flashing red light to stop spending and to stop issuing new debt.
Just as Clinton had to collapse his new spending plans when faced with a bond market revolt, President Donald Trump is now learning the same lesson as bond markets are in active revolt over what the market clearly perceives to be excessive spending plans, with 30-year bond yields reaching heights unseen since before the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.
But instead of picking up the hint, Trump only continues to throw fresh fuel on the fire, sending bond yields ever higher at the risk of sparking a self-inflicted economic crisis.
Indeed, on Wednesday night in Dallas, at the RNC “Midterm Convention,” Trump promised that if Republicans hold Congress in November, he will “issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders.”
That comparison conveniently omits the fact that companies pay dividends out of profits and generally suspend dividends when they need to pay down debt, which is the situation Washington finds itself in, running a deficit of nearly $1.8 trillion last year on top of over $40 trillion in debt.
But far more importantly, bond markets have sold off even more dramatically in the aftermath of Trump’s $5,000 announcement, with 30-year bond yields reaching a fresh 30-year high of 5.35%, up 6 basis points today alone, and 10-year bond yields up 9 basis points to 4.92% this morning.
Bond markets surely realize what Trump does not, which is that sending $5,000 to every adult citizen will likely end up costing the U.S. taxpayers far more than $5,000 per person, given the U.S. government will have to fund these payments by issuing new debt at currently elevated interest rates. Consider the back of the envelope math.
If there are roughly 245 million adult citizens, each of whom will receive $5,000 – then the U.S. government will have to issue $1.2 trillion of debt to fund those payments. If the government issues 10-year bonds at the current interest rate of 4.92%, then over 10 years, the interest plus principal will come out to approximately $8,000 – far more than $5,000 a person. Thus, not only does the “Trump Dividend” substantively amount to a payday loan in which the taxpayer is both borrower and lender; but the U.S. is plainly getting a raw deal.
And that is far from all, as the bond market has not been revolting against merely a single pledge. It is revolting against a pattern of spending promises by Trump which the market sees as excessive and reckless. Last November, it was $2,000 tariff-dividend checks, whose odds experts now put at “effectively zero.” In December it was $1,776 “warrior dividend” checks to 1.45 million service members.
Then came the war with Iran, which had cost $37.5 billion by July, for which the Pentagon floated a $200 billion request in March and came back for $67 billion more this summer, while the conflict pushed Brent crude past $100 and reignited inflation. Layer on interest on the debt that reached $1.25 trillion last year, more than the entire defense budget, and you have the reality that the bond market is behaving like a disgruntled lender that has stopped extending credit on faith.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s answer has been to try to throw money at the problem, bragging that “I am the house now,” which is flailing in plain sight. Bessent has initiated Treasury buybacks, which amount to issuing new bonds at higher interest rates to buy back older bonds issued years ago, at a lower interest rate – which is a bit paradoxical as this creates an effectively higher cash interest rate the U.S. government has to pay.
Furthermore, Bessent has accelerated a pattern he previously attacked the Biden Administration for doing, of retiring longer-term notes by issuing more short-term bills – which amounts to switching fixed low rates for floating high rates, making the U.S. government even more vulnerable to every tiny move in short-term interest rates. In short, Treasury is buying bonds with money it raises by selling more bills. Evercore’s Krishna Guha called it “a weak form Operation Twist.” It is almost akin to bailing water while the captain drills holes in the hull.
Markets have seen through the emptiness of Bessent’s remedy, as ‘bond vigilantes’ have driven bond yields even higher despite Bessent’s band-aids. That hasn’t stopped Bessent from continuing to throw more money at the problem.
In August, he doubled Treasury’s buybacks of long-dated bonds to $4 billion per operation, declaring “we have a big toolkit” and insisting that yields “don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals.” On Wednesday, the same day Trump promised $1.3 trillion, Treasury went to $6 billion. Yields rose anyway, counteracting Bessent’s move entirely. Despite Bessent’s braggadocio that “I am the house now”, the house is evidently undercapitalized, as bond traders mint fortunes calling out the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
Yes, this is a global storm. British 30-year gilts sit at 5.88%, the highest since 1998. Japan’s 10-year is near 3%, a three-decade high. German bunds are at levels unseen since 2011. But those governments are being disciplined into restraint; in London, the gilt market is effectively writing the next budget. Only Trump is responding to the highest borrowing costs in a generation by promising to borrow $1.3 trillion more to mail out checks before an election, with no signs of stopping his spending binge anytime soon.
Carville’s point was that the bond market is the ultimate failsafe, the one constituency a president cannot spin. Clinton grasped that within a week, but Trump is still refusing to learn the lesson, at the soaring cost of debt, still fast rising by the day, sparking heightened risk of a self-inflicted economic and financial crisis.
The Republican Illinois Senator Everett Dirkson, Senate Minority Leader through the 1960s, is commonly attributed with saying, “A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.” (This ad lib quip was drawn from unwritten remarks before a Senate-House Republican leadership press conference on March 8, 1962.)
Dirksen’s admonition is worth keeping in mind amidst Trump’s casual dismissal of the rapidly escalating costs of his far-fetched spending pledges. Presciently – Dirksen’s $1 billion in 1962 is worth $1.1 trillion in 2026 dollars the nominal cost of Trump’s program and the debt financing cost of this doubles the total cost to $2.3 trillion.
Paying $8K to $10K per person to receive $5K per person may help explain why President Trump as a business leader went bankrupt six times.
(The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.)
Happy Labor Day.
We should just assume we’re not going to see $3 gas for a very long time.
Bessent is US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent— the man that tried and failed to lower long-term borrowing costs by announcing on August 19 (as the US debt crossed $40 trillion) that the Treasury would double the maximum size of its long-dated bond buyback operations from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. And since it is Labor Day: Yes, the US jobs numbers for August look decent on the face of it (+162k jobs, unemployment 4.1%) but wage growth continues to lose to inflation. Fed Chair Warsh will have to raise interest rates at some point. There are many more misdeeds, such as the trade war with Canada and the tariffs on Canadian imports that are seriously harming the US auto industry, and raising prices for cars old and new. [Posted by Aaron Rupar @atrupar on X]
From the Washington Post:
The United States was the only country to vote against the United Nations resolution which encourages the use of an “Equal Earth” map. (The vote was 164-1.)
Yaryna Ferencevych, the U.S. deputy representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, described the initiative as part of a broader “radical ideological project” being pursued by the U.N. when it should be focused on “genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations.”
Ah yes.
Rich comments— from a representative of an United States administration that alienates its allies, wages a war that is upending the world’s economies, and propagates policies that destroy the environment.
Earth 1 and Earth 2.And here is 7.15 pm tonight, with sunset now at 7.41 pm
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a $70-million initiative to open five city-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—that will offer a guaranteed 30% discount on a core basket of everyday essentials.
The stores will only open in 2029, though— and this repost on X from chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov (and New Yorker) illustrates the challenges with what Mayor Mamdani efforts to help New Yorkers to better afford their groceries.
Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer
David E. Sanger writes for the New York Times:
President Trump often celebrates his unpredictability, declaring that it keeps allies and adversaries alike off balance.
By his telling, his willingness to bomb Iranian nuclear sites 13 months ago, and send Delta Force commandos in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in early January, reflected his determination to execute military operations that would have made his predecessors blanch. He told The New York Times he was limited only by “my own morality,” as he wielded the world’s biggest hammer.
But in recent weeks, he has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.
He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined as he began full combat operations on Feb. 28, when he set out goals for a swift end to Iran’s nuclear program and the overthrow of the country’s government.
“How many times do I have to end my war in Iran before I get the Nobel Peace Prize???” [Cartoon by Dr Jack in South African newspaper Die Burger (‘The Citizen’) of Fri 7/26]
There goes my ballot for the August 2026 Primary Election here in Washington State’s King County.
November with the 2026 Midterm Election is essentially three months away. Republicans have the presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
They are responsible for the war in Iran, for taking away healthcare from Americans, for ignoring the brazen corruption in the White House, and for pushing up the cost of living for all of us.
Senator Mitch McConnell was reportedly resuscitated at his Washington DC home on June 14, following a medical emergency where emergency responders performed CPR.
Not his staff, nor his family, nor John Thune (leader of the Senate) has given any details of his condition for three weeks now, other than saying he is ‘continuing his recovery’.
Then this week, several senior Republicans tells us they had 20-minute long ‘substantive’ discussions with McConnell.
Scott Jennings, perennial defender of the insanities of the Trump Administration on CNN, would have us believe he called up his ‘old friend’ (McConnell) and that they had talked about Iran, Ukraine, the unfolding situation in Maine, Scott’s visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history.
So: a coordinated effort by GOP leadership to hide a reality that is glaringly obvious— and telling us stories that are completely unbelievable.
It has arrived, the semiquincentennial— the 250th— of all the Independence Days that America has celebrated.
2026 Figures of the American Revolution Issued Apr. 10, 2026 Perf. 11 | Design: Ethell Kessler | Photolithography | No watermark FOREVER Standard Postage ($0.78) Multicolored The Figures of the American Revolution stamps each feature a different portrait of an individual whose actions were vital to achieving independence and establishing the principles that continue to guide the United States. A single image of the American flag is layered behind the 25 portraits. [Sources: stampworld.com, usps.com]
Employment figures show that the American economy continues to stride past obstacles, including the inflationary pressures of the war with Iran. Employers added 57,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent from 4.3 percent the previous month, data from the Labor Department showed on Thursday.
The unemployment rate has been at or below 4.5 percent since October 2021, the longest streak since the late 1960s.
– Talmon Joseph Smith writing for the New York Times
Yes, the official unemployment rate ‘ticked down’ but what this graph does NOT show, is that workers are leaving the U.S. job market. The U.S. labor force is shrinking and the labor force participation rate fell to 61.5% in June, its lowest level since March 2021. If you are not actively looking for a job, you are not counted as unemployed.
The Fourth of July is looming, and it looks like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is not going to be fixed by then. It is about to be drained, again.
Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold report for the New York Times: President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”
But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.
