Real Benisons

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

JUST IN: Judge Gleason in Alaska sounds deeply skeptical of DOJ's 11th hour lawsuit there to halt certification if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. She grants Dems' motion for expedited consideration and notes DOJ waited four months to sue over the ballot. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

Who do I give to to get this in front of as many Michigan voters as possible?

BREAKING: The 9th Circuit rules 2-1 to dismiss DOJ's effort to force California to remove 20,000 purported noncitizens from the voter rolls based on data CA officials view as faulty. Majority: Bennett (Trump) Sanchez (Biden) Minority: Bumatay (Trump) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: Anthropic’s filing appears to partly walk back the co-founders’ pledge to commit 80% of their personal equity holdings in the AI startup to philanthropic causes. Those acts, the filing suggests, are “voluntary, revocable expressions” that “do not constitute binding obligations.”

HUGE, GOOD NEWS: In total reversal from Friday’s stonewalling, perjury-flirting “status report,” ICE now says it has secured a one-way travel document so Ahmed Soliman can return to the US via a commercial flight. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The vile attacks on Amy Acton need to be seen in the context of a party that *needs* people to believe women fabricating sexual assaults is common as rainwater. Because it’s pretty much the only way to evade the conclusion that the president is a rapist.

Change in Headline

most vice presidents wait until after midterms to throw the president under the bus like this

how much for the PREMIUM experience of bypassing purgatory?

*BOLSONARO: FEDERAL POLICE REQUESTED I GIVE THEM MY PASSPORT

Two former Governors of South Carolina - one from each party - have endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews who is running against Sen. Darline Graham R-SC

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

After the first round elections, Congressman André Janones created a WhatsApp channel titled “Lula’s Army.” It ballooned to 10 million people following his commands on how to behave online to counteract Meta’s far-right-favouring algorithms. The right knows how to use socials. We must learn, too.

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

Judge Furman rules that Maureen Comey's firing violated separation of powers. Orders backpay. Govt's arguments violate 2 centuries of SCOTUS rulings & would "unsettle the equilibrium established by this Nation's constitutional system." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This is one good example of how appropriations hardball can work if you're willing to not blink first. Another: take your pick for demands and restrictions on funding Executive Office of the President. Yes, literally defund the White House. EOP is the central hub of the assault on the Constitution.

Is all this really feasible? Won't Trump refuse to sign anything like this? Won't he litigate it? Won't it lead to government shutdowns? Yes, yes, and yes. But it's still absolutely doable and necessary. Here's why: newrepublic.com/article/2171...

NEWS --> Dems are planning novel ways to wield power of the purse against Trump's corrupt prosecutions of critics like Ilhan Omar if they win House. Reps Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin tell me a range of aggressive tactics will be deployed. Details in my new piece: newrepublic.com/article/2171...

in ohio this is basically like being shunned

In Brazil, it appears that voters who opted for eliminated first-round candidates roughly broke even in the runoff (even if the candidates leaned right). But the big difference was: Millions of voters who cast 'null' or 'blank' ballots in the first round then voted for Lula.

The US is not about to have a free and fair election. The state has put its thumb on the scale to favor the ruling party in multiple ways. It's a mostly free, somewhat unfair election. But still one where the ruling party can be overwhelmed by numbers. Hence the term "competitive authoritarianism."

Mais uma vez, foi o povo brasileiro que me mostrou que nenhum sonho é grande demais quando a gente caminha junto. ❤️🇧🇷 Foram dias incansáveis. Cada caminhada, cada ato e cada passeata foram muito mais do que momentos de campanha.

Bluesky elders know that @lulaoficialbluesky.bsky.social was the first head of state on the platform!

🗳️ Par rapport au premier tour, le rapport de force entre Lula et Bolsonaro se retourne à l'avantage du Président sortant dans l'ensemble du pays, qu'il s'agisse des bastions de gauche du Nordeste ou des fiefs bolsonaristes du centre et du sud.

🗳️ Résultats quasi-définitifs du second tour de l'élection présidentielle au Brésil : 🔴 Lula 51,8%, +0,9 par rapport à 2022 ⚫️ Bolsonaro 48,2%

Has to be said that a great thing about Lula is he is a champion grade hater

Lula has been reelected president, Brazilian media has now called. An extraordinary comeback for the left-wing politician who trailed by 2 points in round 1 but managed to hold off Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son.

EL-SAYED: I get that the President takes personal offense to my first name. He doesn't mind as much when it's the Saudis who are funding his son-in-law's private equity. Doesn't seem to mind as much when it's the Qataris who are giving them a $400 million private jet…

Everyone thought Lula was cooked, hopeless. Then he bought a phone and started posting and now he's gonna get a 4th term. The lesson is to never stop posting.

🇧🇷🗳️L'actualisation de la projection des résultats finaux de #ElectoMaps sur désormais plus de 40% des bureaux dépouillés : ➡️Chances de gagner 🔴Lula 97 % ⚫️Flávio 3 % ➡️Résultats finaux 🔴Lula 51,5 % ⚫️Flávio 48,5 %

India’s Cockroach movement will be paying close attention.

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

Amazing. First Orban, now Vucic. The Kremlin has unexpectedly lost two of its top allies in Europe…

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat to a student-led movement in a seismic political shift.

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

Amazing how the Attorney General doesn't even pretend the job of the Justice Department is to enforce the law, it's just literally "If voters are confused and our party loses, that gives us a sad and it means the full force of the federal government must be brought to bear to undo the election"

BRENNAN: The DOJ lawsuit demands the Alaska result not be certified if voters are confused. The confusion is defined as Sen. Sullivan not winning. BLANCHE: That's not what it says BRENNAN: I'm quoting from it. You are telling them not to certify it. What right does the federal govt have?

Small-dollar donations to Republican candidates are just apocalyptic. Selected examples here. Our forecasting research found in-state individual contributions are a strong predictor of results. Way stronger than PAC spending! votehub.com/2026/10/24/2...

We don’t know if the early vote will be predictive because all Republicans could just be waiting to vote until Election Day. But what this means in practice is that to win, Trump/GOP will have to have the most successful EDay mobilization operation in modern history— and that it’s completely stealth