Since assuming office last year, President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on free speech, targeting both journalists and commentators who criticize him and his administration. In theory, Democrats are standing up to Trump's anti-free speech actions — but a new report reveals that, in practice, many Democratic governors seem to be capitulating.

The New Republic's Daniel Boguslaw wrote about how Democratic governors are responding to National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, an executive order that allows Trump to pursue people who are “anti-fascism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."

The journalist pointed out that the FBI has tried to force states to work with them in pursuing these initiatives — and they have so far not fought back.

"Gavin Newsom of California shirked the question [of whether he was working with the FBI], telling The New Republic in a written statement only that 'California’s security efforts operate wholly under state law and appropriate safeguards,'" Boguslaw wrote.

He added, "New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office attempted a more acrobatic maneuver, claiming that 'New York State Police assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force focus only on genuine criminal or terrorism investigations, follow New York’s laws, and do not participate in civil immigration enforcement or the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center.' That answer is misleading. The FBI Joint Mission Center is the central hub for administering NSPM-7, but its participants are only a few dozen federal employees based in Washington, D.C."

Referring to the third most populous blue state, Boguslaw wrote that "Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also demurred on the question of how exactly local and state police are participating in the FBI’s ongoing Illinois NSPM-7 investigations, telling The New Republic, 'Regardless of any actions taken by federal officials under the direction of the Trump administration, Illinois remains committed to maintaining the integrity of its own processes and will continue to ensure law enforcement information is handled appropriately and focused on legitimate public safety purposes, not political agendas.'"

This is not the first time Democrats have been accused of quietly capitulating to Trump while pretending to stand up to him. From college presidents who work with him in squashing pro-Palestine campus protests to law firms that settled with him and abandoned liberal pro bono causes, the left has in general been accused of caving to Trump's bullying instead of fighting him.

In this context, Trump has pursued a number of his media critics, such as sending subpoenas to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Axios and The New York Times for their reporting. He has also banned outlets like Politico, MS NOW and CNN from covering him in the White House, even outright admitting that it is viewpoint discrimination.

"After MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued the Trump administration on Monday over the president banning their reporters from White House grounds, Trump’s communications team sent congressional Republicans talking points Monday night in defense of the president’s decision," MS NOW's Mychael Schnell reported in September. "According to the document obtained by MS NOW, the White House wants Republicans to argue that “no president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press” and that the First Amendment does not grant reporters access to the White House."

Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor sounded the alarm against a piece of tech he thinks his ex-boss is trying to use to block voters from the polls.

According a column on his Substack for the group DEFIANCE.org, Taylor said that an immigration-verification tool called SAVE would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections, which are traditionally run by states and local governments. SAVE stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

One of the key reasons that the American elections are so difficult to hack is how decentralized they are. Each state has its own election rules, and each county has its own process. So there are thousands of different variables. A foreign adversary that breaches one system can only impact that specific jurisdiction. But if Trump creates a centralized federal database, it would be a massive change that could be hacked all in one place. Taylor called it a kind of "Master Switch" that a foreign adversary could flip to decide that millions of people are suddenly ineligible to vote.

"Former homeland security officials like myself have watched in slow-motion horror as the administration moves to hand control of American elections to a tiny DHS office (partially run by contractors) that receives the least congressional oversight and scrutiny of almost any corner of the department," wrote Taylor.

What makes SAVE different is that it's already a program being implemented under DHS for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). That office operates independently of Congress because it is funded by immigration application fees rather than congressional appropriations.

"In my experience, offices like that behaved like fiefdoms, because functionally they were, i.e. they were self-funding, self-directing, and accustomed to minimal scrutiny. That also means they’re places where it’s especially tough to shine a light," Taylor warned.

SAVE wasn't built to handle elections, though. The aim was to stop benefits fraud.

An example he cited comes from Missouri, which used SAVE's database to make allegations about "noncitizen voters" before it ever actually verified them. Local clerks were told to flag them as temporarily unable to vote.

"In hundreds of cases the tool was simply wrong, and in one county more than half of those flagged as noncitizens proved to be U.S. citizens. In another case, Texas flagged 2,724 voters as suspicious based on SAVE data and began demanding proof of citizenship, only to discover some of those removed already had proof on file with the state, which ordered them reinstated," Taylor revealed.

He said that it's clearly disenfranchising voters. Already seven states have run roughly 35 million voters through the system and flagged 4,200 people. That's 0.01 percent of voters. Those haven't even been verified for accuracy. Now Trump wants to deploy it across the U.S. to decide whether people get to vote.

He recalled during his time at DHS that they had been doing a deep dive into what Russia did to the U.S. during the 2016 election and noted that experts are still trying to map out everything ten years later.

"In its comprehensive review, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russian actors targeted election systems in all fifty states; in one, Illinois, they evidently penetrated the voter database and were 'in a position to delete or change voter data.' So why weren’t they able to manipulate the election outcome? Well, one reason is that there wasn’t some central nervous system for them to attack. Our elections are scattered across those all of those fifty states and thousands of counties, on different systems built by different vendors. So breaking into Illinois only got them as far as Illinois," he said.

Under Trump's new system, "a savvy hacker" or a group of hacktivists like "Anonymous" could easily access whether an entire party or demographic could be blocked from the polls.

Finally, he warns that centralizing voter eligibility would also give whoever controls the White House a lot of influence at a time when Americans already don't trust the executive branch.

He championed the states refusing to turn over voter-roll data, noting that they are protecting election security, not undermining it.

The Saudi Arabian government has helped President Donald Trump and his family rake in billions of dollars — and yet, according to a recent report, Trump returned the favor by humiliating the Saudi royals when describing a recent presidential phone call.

"Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly called Trump twice after the pipeline hit, asking the United States to bomb the Houthis to slow their advancement," reported Foreign Affairs journalist Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations at the University of Illinois and editor of Arc Digital, on Thursday. "The White House declined, and when asked about Yemen at a press conference, the U.S. president said this: 'The Houthis called us. They don't want to fight with us. They let us know they don't want to fight with us. They don't want us to go after them. They would much prefer not having us involved, and they are letting most ships go through. There's just one country they're not too happy with.'"

Grossman added, "That may be Trumpian fantasy or an actual conversation where he chose to take the Houthis at their word. Either is terrible for Riyadh."

Earlier in the same piece, Grossman wrote that Saudi Arabia invested a lot — figuratively and literally — in its relationship with Trump, only to be left in the lurch.

"Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble," Grossman argued. "Its global influence primarily comes from its leading position as an oil producer and the money resulting from that role, but now the Middle East is on fire. Today, Saudi tankers are blocked in the Persian Gulf and under threat in the Red Sea, and the country’s biggest oil pipeline had to shut down after a drone attack. Yet Saudi Arabia’s biggest long-term problem may be that its longtime security guarantor, the United States, is unable to put out the fire and doesn’t seem especially interested in trying."

In September, University of Illinois — Champaign international relations professor Nicholas Grossman warned journalist Greg Sargent that Trump has "blown credibility" when it comes to the Middle East in part because of his handling of Saudi Arabia.

Grossman added, "And another — perhaps the biggest current example of Trump's blown credibility — is the way that the United States has not been providing security to its Middle Eastern allies, to all these different Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has had to deal now with the biggest attacks against it of the war so far, where an Iran-backed militia attacked its east-west pipeline, and they went and asked Trump for help. MBS (Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman) reportedly called Trump twice and asked him to get involved in this Yemen conflict and clear it up. And both times, the United States said no."

Even Trump's much-ballyhooed nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia is highly controversial, at least according to experts.

"Since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, U.S. policy has denied the ability to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium to other nations because it is a shortcut to nuclear weapons," Joseph Cirincione, a national security expert who currently serves as the vice chair of the Center for International Policy Board of Directors, told MS NOW in July. "The huge and expensive facilities can be developed openly and legally until a government takes the quick jump from making fuel rods to making the cores of bombs. With this deal, Trump has effectively just green-lit a Saudi nuclear bomb program. How did we get here?"

The Trump administration this weekend released a confounding new ad hyping up President Donald Trump, which was promptly torn to shreds online as "shameless," "maximally corrupt" and "incredibly illegal."

On Sunday, a new ad began airing, first on Fox on Saturday during a college football game featuring Illinois and Ohio State, and then again the following day during Fox News Sunday. The 30-second clip is composed of black-and-white footage of Trump walking down a hallway towards the camera, while excerpts from a speech play in which he says, "This is the final battle," promises to drive out "warmongers," "globalists" and "communists," and pledges to "liberate" the country from "villains."

At the end, a disclaimer further discloses that the ad was "paid for by the U.S. Government," prompting swift and vicious condemnation from numerous experts and pundits across social media, many of whom called out the use of tax dollars for political advertising as blatantly illegal. Others also questioned the effectiveness of touting Trump at a time when his toxic approval ratings are making the midterms a nightmare for Republicans.

"This ad is both incredibly illegal and politically asinine. Kudos to everyone involved," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior White House adviser to Barack Obama and Pod Save America co-host, wrote in a post to X reacting to the clip.

"'Demolish the deep state' - Trump has overseen the most corrupt administration in modern history making billions of dollars for him and his friends while your costs go up," Sen. Andy Kim wrote, as part of an extensive breakdown of Trump's claims in the clip. "'Expel the warmongers from our government' - Trump started a war with Iran that has cost taxpayers billions and raised your gas prices to almost $5 a gallon. 'Rout the fake news media' - Trump's order banning news outlets from the White House was just struck down by a judge because it violated the First Amendment. And how much taxpayer money did the government spend on this ad?"

"A taxpayer-funded propaganda TV spot. This is the most shameless administration of our lifetime," former Republican congressman Justin Amash wrote in his own post.

"What’s crazy is it’s not that hard to for a White House to steer donors to an outside group who can run fluffer ads like this," conservative pollster and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell wrote. "But no, Trump and this administration wants to take the maximally corrupt route just to show you they can get away with it."

“'Cast out the communists' — …except when we’re rolling out the red carpet for them even as they provide surveillance info for the Iranians to target our servicemembers?" CNN host Jake Tapper wrote, in reference to the recent visit of Chinese Leader Xi Jinping.

"Our tax dollars are being spent to indulge the fantasies and to soothe the fragile ego of a narcissistic sociopath who is falling deeper and deeper into psychosis," conservative commentator George Conway wrote, echoing his recent assertions that Trump is suffering a severe break from reality.

"It’s important we now have documentation that the Republican Party has corrupted itself to this degree," MS NOW host Joe Scarborough wrote. "Republicans now support the Centralized State stealing taxpayers’ money to run ads for their political party."

President Donald Trump is calling for his proposed "triumphal arch" near Arlington National Cemetery to be used as a "top grade military complex" that would include snipers and drone storage. But he's getting a strong pushback from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), herself a U.S. Army veteran who lost both of her legs in the Iraq War.

In a strongly worded Friday, September 25 letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Administrator Bryan Bedford, the 58-year-old Duckworth wrote, "The FAA and DoD (U.S. Department of Defense) must reject this foolhardy plan and instead focus on increasing the safety of the airspace."

CBS News' Kris Van Cleave explains, "The FAA determined, last week, that the 250-foot arch, which is being constructed near Arlington National Cemetery, poses no hazard to flights coming into and departing from Reagan Airport. The letter was exclusively obtained by CBS News. (Duckworth) called Mr. Trump's announcement, made in a Truth Social post over the weekend, 'bizarre, unhinged early morning social media rants.'"

The "triumphal arch" is among the many proposed makeover projects that Trump has been pursuing in the Washinton, DC area. Trump's other proposals range from a lavish White House ballroom to renovations on the Kennedy Center.

"In the letter sent Friday," Van Cleave reports, "Duckworth, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Subcommittee on Aviation, Space, and Innovation, took Trump administration officials to task for 'wasting time, energy and taxpayer dollars on yet another Trump vanity project.' She called it 'particularly outrageous' after what she described as the 'joint failure' of the FAA and Defense Department 'to effectively implement corrective actions that were recommended' by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) following the January 2025 midair collision near Reagan Airport that killed 67 people."

Van Cleave adds, "The NTSB made 52 safety recommendations following the collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet that was landing at Reagan Airport."

Duckworth didn't hold back in the letter, telling Hegseth and Bedford, "It is disturbing to see Federal officials devote enormous attention to an unnecessary, proposed structure while the NTSB and the public are still demanding action on recommendations intended to prevent another catastrophic collision in our skies. The American people cannot afford to stand witness to Trump's risky plan to place a 250-foot structure along a busy approach path, especially if he follows through on plans to station snipers on the arch and fly drones ... in the already congested airspace."

Democrats are keen to begin "aggressive oversight" of the Trump administration if and when they regain power in the midterms, but according to a new Politico report, the party has descended into squabbling over how to crack down on a specific issue: corporate capitulation.

As the Monday report explained, Democrats are poised to gain "broad subpoena powers over companies with ties to [President Donald] Trump and his family" if they take the House majority, as they are widely predicted to. Should they also retake the Senate, Politico noted that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential candidate for the Senate Banking Committee, "has already pressed major corporations over their contributions to Trump-linked causes."

Despite the evident desire among certain Democratic lawmakers and voters to see corporations brought to task, others in the are trying to pump the brakes on the idea, creating a new "tension" going forward.

"But some Democrats are cautioning that the party shouldn’t use investigative authority too broadly against corporate America to avoid steering into retribution," the report explained. "The divide is setting up tension over how Democrats should treat some of the largest and most powerful American companies, from technology giants like Meta and Amazon to cryptocurrency leaders like Coinbase and Ripple, if they return to power next year."

“We don’t want to turn into a banana republic where you lose an election and it’s all about retribution,” Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat and senior member of the Financial Services Committee, told Politico. “A lot of the companies did things because Trump had a gun on their head. We’re going to have to be a little bit wise about when companies simply did something they had to do to survive this unprecedented level of corruption, compared to companies that actually got on board and profited more by being a partner in his corruption.”

I don’t look at the federal government to ever be used as a weapon,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a moderate Nevada Democrat, added. “Our focus should be solving problems that we’re seeing happening. That’s where our focus should be — not weaponizing the federal government."

Others, like Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, support a bigger push to investigate these companies, citing "questions he posed at a recent Senate hearing taking aim at a donation that a leading tobacco company, Reynolds American, made to Trump’s super PAC just before the administration unveiled new e-cigarette rules."

"We should get to the bottom of the corrupt relationship that exists between corporations in this country and the Trump administration," Murphy said.

One anonymous former House Democratic aide said that leading technology giants — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft — should be specifically investigated for their donations to Trump's ballroom project, which have been criticized as thinly-veiled bribes.

"If you funded the ballroom — any of those names, I think, are on the table," the source said."

The corruption is everywhere, and it infects all parts of our government," Warren said about potential corporate oversight. “We can’t know how bad it is until we get an independent investigation."

A former supporter of President Donald Trump argued on Friday that Republicans have worked hard to hop into bed with Trump and now they’re going to have to sleep with him.

“I know, all of this could and will tighten up after Labor Day. Sure. And Republicans have God's money right now. But how funny, Trump is holding all of his money and Trump wants to make the midterms a referendum on him. So you’re gonna get all of him,” said former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a reformed MAGA lawmaker from Illinois on his Friday podcast.

“Yeah, that's the problem. When you jumped into bed with Donald Trump, you get all of Donald Trump. All of it,” agreed show co-host and Blue Amp Media host Cliff Schecter. “Most of the Republicans say … he's got money because he grifted from crypto crap and whatever and it paid off. But in the end, he's going to spend it all on him, making himself look better. And he's going to go to all these states for people who are like, ‘please don't come here.’”

And Trump’s rotten pollingpolling will be right there following in his wake, said Walsh, putting that’s that should not be up for grabs to Democrats on a November watchlist, including deep GOP territory like Iowa, Alaska and Ohio.

Schecter said Trump’s polls are collapsing across rural territories that he did not expect to see switch, mostly because of the president’s plummeting favor with farmers thanks to his tariffs and his war on Iran spiking fuel and fertilizer prices.

“It's the Farm Belt part of Ohio that's near Indiana,” said Schecter. “Once you could do that drive and not see one sign for a Democrat and see a ton of signs for Trump. I know this is anecdotal, but it matters because culturally – It wasn't acceptable to put a Democratic sign up. Like, your neighbors would come over with their shotguns. And I’m telling you, I saw, when we drove up there, multiple signs. Like ‘[screw] Trump,’ and ‘I'll never vote for him again,’ and ‘I can't believe I'm going to vote Democrat.’ I saw a half dozen or more signs like this. I think that's the canary in the coal mine, dude.”

“I'm not going to say you're wrong because right now I feel the same way,” said Walsh. “Again, I'm a broken record. Because I come from MAGA, I still engage with hundreds of these folks every day. And yes, I'm seeing fissures. I'm seeing a bit of a crack up. I'm seeing disillusionment. I'm seeing anger with him.”

“People don't understand how polling works a lot of times. If you're in this game. If you are an incumbent and you are below 45 percent — I want to say this in technical terms — you're in serious [trouble],” said Schecter, who did not use the word “trouble.”