Read more at the link.

One more on the midterms from Jamie Bouie at the New York Times (gift link): If Democrats Win the Senate, They Cannot Mess Around.

This time last year, hardly anyone imagined that Democrats would be on the verge of winning the Senate. The map was just too stacked against them.

Not only were Democrats defending seats in states President Trump won, such as Michigan and Georgia, but to have any hope of winning a Senate majority, they also had to defeat a strong, longtime incumbent in Maine, Senator Susan Collins, and flip Republican-held seats in deep red states like Alaska, Ohio and Texas.

James Talarico, candidate for US Senate in Texas

The best-case scenario for Democrats was that they would win pickups in North Carolina and Maine. The rest would be a wash. Democrats might get lucky in Texas or Ohio, but it was nothing to count on. Republicans would begin the next Congress with their Senate majority intact, trimmed by a seat or two.

But here we are now, weeks before Election Day, and it looks more and more possible that Democrats will defy the odds and win a Senate majority.

Not only is the party on target in states that were always on the table, but Democratic candidates are also ahead in states that were thought to be significant reaches, including Alaska and Texas.

There is a set of newly competitive races — in Iowa, Kansas and even South Carolina — where Democrats are running neck and neck with their Republican opponents. And this is to say nothing of contests such as the one in Nebraska, where an independent, Dan Osborn, is in a close race with the incumbent Republican, Pete Ricketts.

Most forecasts show either a tossup or a slight to modest advantage for Democrats. But this might change in the Democratic Party’s favor if fuel prices stay high and Trump’s popularity continues to sink. There is a world in which Democrats don’t just win control of the chamber but also get their largest Senate majority since the 111th Congress began in 2009, a high-water mark for the party (and one they’re unlikely to beat now or in the near future).

I hope you’ll go read the whole thing, but here’s Bouie’s prescription for the Democrats if they do take the Senate:

With the House and Senate in hand, Democrats would have an opportunity not just to check the Trump administration but to neuter it: to halt the confirmation of new judges, to block the president’s attempts to appoint more unqualified toadies to key offices and to focus the investigative fire of both chambers on every aspect of this White House. Should Democrats find the will to do so, they could launch the kind of full-court press that no president has faced from the opposition since Barack Obama had to contend with a Republican Congress in the last two years of his administration. The difference is that Democrats will have real corruption and malfeasance to work with.

A Democratic Congress, should it materialize, will be a lifeline for American democracy. It will not save it, but it may begin to stem the bleeding — an emergency tourniquet for a patient on the verge of bleeding out.

One takeaway for Democrats is that they must not fall for the fantasy that there is a constructive relationship to have with either Trump or the Republican Party over the next two years. In the face of investigations and legislative scrutiny, Trump is quite likely to escalate his assault on the rule of law. Democrats will need to make the most of whatever majority they have, wielding the full suite of Congress’s powers to constrain the president and restore constitutional government.

Rank-and-file Democrats — and, I’d wager, a substantial portion of the voting public — do not want compromise and cooperation. They want accountability. And if we hope to confine Trumpism to the ash heap of history, then accountability is the only choice there is to make.

Read much more at the NYT link. It’s a very good opinion piece.

Did you catch the debut of Trump’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia? It was embarrassing. She looked and sounded like an unprepared eighth grader giving a class presentation.

Shawn McCreesh at The New York Times (gift link): Katie Zacharia Stepped to the Lectern for the First Time. It Was a Bumpy Ride.

President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, made her debut behind the White House lectern Tuesday morning.

It was a bumpy one.

“Good morning!” she began. “I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time.”

She spent the next eight minutes reading nervously from a script, looking up at the cameras every couple of lines. Then she said she was ready to take some questions. She called on only three reporters, dropped one wild piece of news, made a slip mixing up her husband and her president, then darted out of there after just five and a half minutes, leaving the White House press corps to scratch its collective head.

All told, Ms. Zacharia picked only a few outlets from a list she was holding: Breitbart, Fox News and The Daily Mail.

The White House press secretary gig is a tricky one that, when practiced well, involves more than reciting talking points on cable TV, which is what Ms. Zacharia was doing as a commentator on Fox News when she got picked for this job. Of the few questions she allowed on Tuesday, the most substantive one was also among the most predictable: “Has the U.S. stopped sharing intel with Ukraine?”

For days, the breakdown of U.S. negotiations with the Ukrainians has been front page news — certainly it is the dominant story line in Washington this week — and yet, Ms. Zacharia was not prepared to answer the question.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she said.

One of the few questions she took was about how she hoped to “manage” her new job with a husband and four kids at home (hard to imagine a male press secretary getting that one). There was a moment of levity in the room when she caught herself in a funny slip, and was able to laugh about it. “So, my president, excuse me, my husband,” she said, “that’s a good one.”

She did come armed with one special surprise to drop. When a reporter asked about the fate of the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Ms. Zacharia said, “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign.”

Reporters in the room lit up — News!!! — but before they could ask more about this development, the new press secretary announced that she was ready to “end it,” because it was nearly time for the president’s departure. Reporters pelted questions at her as she prepared to edge out of the room toward the little sliding door painted blue.

“Can you take a few more questions?”

“Just a few more!”

“Did the president speak with Ambassador Guilfoyle?”

“What about the Russian diesel! Will the diesel come into the States?!”

Having not yet mastered the hard exit, she replied, “He will answer those questions out at Marine One.”

When Trump did take questions on the way to Marine One, things got even more embarrassing. In announcing her hiring, Trump said that Zacharia was an attorney. But she actually isn’t one. Reporters peppered Trump with questions about this; he turned to Zacharia for an explanation, and she claimed that she somehow got her credentials when she worked in China.

Yesterday Judd Legum wrote at Popular Information: Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, claims she’s a lawyer. Is she?

When President Trump plucked Katie Zacharia from obscurity and appointed her as his new press secretary, he called her “an attorney.”

This is also how Zacharia, repeatedly and publicly, describes herself. “I’m a lawyer,” Zacharia said during an appearance on the Greg Kelly Show on October 5, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical,” Zacharia opined during the August 31, 2026, edition of Fox & Friends First. “I’m a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law,” Zacharia said on the “In Front of Us” podcast on August 14, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, there’s a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media,” Zacharia explained on CNN on February 7, 2026. There are many more examples.

Reporters question Trump and Zacharia about her claims to be an attorney.

Zacharia was also identified on screen as a lawyer during at least 18 appearances on Fox News since March 2025.

Yet, there is no evidence that Zacharia ever passed a bar exam or has been admitted to practice law in any state. She is not listed as a member of the State Bar of California, the state where she lives. According to her LinkedIn account, she worked as “General Counsel” for a nonprofit in the state called Fix California. Zacharia is also not listed as a member of the State Bar of Texas or as a member of the D.C. Bar, two other places where she worked.

Popular Information searched for evidence in all 50 states, plus D.C., that Zacharia was admitted to practice law anywhere — and found none….

A lawyer, by definition, is “an individual who is authorized to practice law.” Merely holding a J.D. degree, as Zacharia does, does not authorize her to practice law. To become a lawyer, she would need to be admitted to a bar, which in most cases involves passing a bar exam.

This is not an academic distinction. In California, where Zacharia says she was employed as “General Counsel” to a nonprofit, holding yourself out as a lawyer when you are not admitted to the state bar (or otherwise authorized to practice) is a crime. According to the law, any person “holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law… is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Here is Legum’s follow-up, again at Public Information this morning: UPDATE: Katie Zacharia’s disastrous response to Popular Information’s report.

On Tuesday morning, Popular Information reported that there was no evidence that Zacharia was ever licensed to practice law in any state.

A few hours later, Trump was confronted with Popular Information’s report on the South Lawn of the White House by the New York Times’ Shawn McCreesh. Trump motioned to Zacharia, who was standing behind him, to answer the question:

Q: You said she’s an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?

TRUMP (to Zacharia): Which state?

ZACHARIA: When I moved to China.

Q: Where did you pass the bar exam? [….]

Zacharia’s answer makes no sense. China’s bar exam is not available to U.S. citizens and U.S. states do not offer bar exams in China.

On Tuesday afternoon, Zacharia provided a somewhat different response to Politico’s Dasha Burns. “I practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials,” Zacharia said.

Zacharia did work for Zhong Lun, a Chinese law firm, from 2011 to 2013. Currently, a foreigner can only practice law at a Chinese firm if they have practiced for two years in their home jurisdiction, among other conditions. The position is called a “foreign legal consultant.”

Mark Jia, a Georgetown Law professor who specializes in China, explained that the formal rules for foreigners at Chinese law firms were put into place in 2017. But even before 2017, Jia said, he was not aware of anyone like Zacharia being hired as a foreign legal consultant. “Why would a Chinese law firm hire someone to advise on foreign law if they were not licensed to practice that law in their home countries?” Jia asked. He suggested it was more possible Zacharia was employed as a paralegal or another similar position.

Further, Jia argued that, even in the event that Zacharia was hired as a foreign legal consultant in China, it would not make her a lawyer.

So…not an auspicious debut for Katie. Trump hires “the best people…”

I’m running out of time and space, but I wanted to call attention to one more story. It appears that Elon Musk (along with Trump) is helping Russia by hobbling Ukraine’s internet access.

Andrew Roth at The Guardian: Ukrainian military’s access to Starlink satellite internet suddenly restricted.

Ukraine’s military has suddenly had its access to Starlink satellite internet terminals restricted as the Trump administration has increased pressure on Ukraine to halt long-range strikes on Russia’s oil industry immediately.

The terminals, which are produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the US government, are a key component of Ukraine’s military operations and the sudden restrictions on the terminals travelling at high speeds on Tuesday evening led to the failure of several combat missions, said an adviser on military technology to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The terminals, which are produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the US government, are a key component of Ukraine’s military operations and the sudden restrictions on the terminals travelling at high speeds on Tuesday evening led to the failure of several combat missions, said an adviser on military technology to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The terminals, which are produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the US government, are a key component of Ukraine’s military operations and the sudden restrictions on the terminals travelling at high speeds on Tuesday evening led to the failure of several combat missions, said an adviser on military technology to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine did not receive any warning before Russia launched its first barrage of ballistic missiles on Tuesday evening, according to Col Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the air force. But it did receive warnings from “foreign partners” about three subsequent barrages, leaving further confusion about whether or not the US is intentionally withholding intelligence from Ukraine.

Musk said that Starlink is not licensed to clients who are using weapons, and that the Ukrainian military was linked to a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. “This is not under SpaceX control,” Musk wrote.

Oh, really.

Terminals travelling at more than 100mph and using a version of Starlink for the military and other national security agencies suddenly lost connectivity, said Serhiy Beskrestnov, in what appeared to be a targeted outage meant to disrupt military operations.

“Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions and this led to the failure of a number of missions,” said Beskrestnov, who is also a popular military blogger. “It’s clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation.”

It appears that Trump is going all-out to help his idol Vladimir Putin.

Those are the stories that caught my attention today. What do you think? What other stories are you following?