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How can one man outspend an entire political party?
Elon Musk has now poured at least $366 million into electing Republicans since the last election. That’s the biggest contribution by any single human being in any campaign cycle in American history. The New York Times says the GOP’s outside spending advantage this year is mostly one man’s checkbook. Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center says we haven’t seen a gap like this since the Watergate election of 1972. And here’s the grubby part. Musk is a federal contractor. His companies have pulled in at least $38 billion in contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, and Pete Hegseth just handed him a Pentagon task force on the future of warfare. Not long ago, this kind of spending was flatly illegal. Then came Citizens United and a Federal Election Commission that can’t even muster a quorum. Add another $1.3 billion in dark money from donors you’ll never see. Waldman’s remedy is a real ban on political giving by federal contractors and the people who own them. His question is blunt. “Why steal an election when you can buy it?” When one man can outspend an entire political party, the rest of us aren’t citizens anymore. We’re spectators.
Trump Brags “We’re Making a Fortune” While Your Gas Costs $4.33
Hours after federal data showed inflation hit 3.7% in September, Donald Trump stood before a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, and said the quiet part out loud. Because oil is so high, he said, Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota are making a fortune. Regular gas is averaging $4.33 a gallon. Diesel is $6.32. The oil giants have posted windfall profits since Trump launched his war on Iran, and the president himself owns fossil fuel stocks that one analysis says have fattened his net worth by up to $15.5 million since January. Brown University estimates Americans have paid an extra $135 billion for fuel since the war began, about $1,030 per household, while real wages have fallen for six straight months. Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute put it plainly. “Workers are losing the race between wages and prices.” A new Harris poll finds 96% of Republicans say there’s an affordability crisis. So who is this “we” making a fortune? Not you. It’s the oil executives and the man in the White House who owns their stock.
Will a $75 Raise Save Seniors From Trump’s Inflation?
The Social Security Administration announced Wednesday that more than 72 million Americans will get a 3.6 % cost of living increase in January. That’s the biggest bump in four years, about $75 a month for the average retiree. Now do the math seniors have to do. The Medicare Part B premium is projected to jump $6.60, straight out of the check, so that raise shrinks to about $68. And the COLA formula tracks what urban wage earners buy, not retirees. Older Americans spend nearly two and a half times as much on healthcare, exactly the category that keeps outrunning the index. AARP found 80% of people drawing benefits say a raise this size won’t keep up with prices. For one in four seniors, Social Security is at least 90% of their income. Nancy Altman of Social Security Works says the raise “will not fully offset the inflation seniors are experiencing,” and blames Trump’s war and tariffs. Advocates say Social Security’s future, including the COLA formula, is on the ballot this November. Congress could fix it and make the wealthy pay in on every dollar they earn. Or it can keep handing seniors a raise that’s gone before the first grocery run. You decide with your vote.
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Feds Seize Ilhan Omar’s Phone and Even Marjorie Taylor Greene Cries Foul
On Monday, Homeland Security agents searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Washington home and walked out with her phone. Now we learn a federal grand jury in Minnesota has issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to her own family. The Times says her sister is among them. Investigators are digging into paperwork her late father filed in the 1990s, when Omar was a child fleeing Somalia’s civil war. The Wall Street Journal reports the probe asks whether her age was listed as 17 instead of 18, and that the real goal is to strip her citizenship and deport a sitting member of Congress. This came three weeks before an election she’s running in, in defiance of the Justice Department’s 60-day rule against public moves on candidates. Trump says it has nothing to do with him, then calls her a terrible person. Her answer was five words. “I will not be silenced.” Then came the surprise. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who disagrees with Omar on nearly everything, asked on X how pretending to deport her brings gas under $2.00, makes health insurance affordable, or stops another foreign war. She called the whole thing bull, followed by a word we can’t say on the radio. Seizing a lawmaker’s phone to hunt for a 30-year-old paperwork error isn’t law enforcement. It’s a warning to anyone who might speak up.
Is Trump’s New Press Secretary Lying About Being a Lawyer?
Katie Zacharia started as White House press secretary on Tuesday. By Wednesday a watchdog group had filed a complaint against her with the State Bar of California. Campaign for Accountability says Zacharia called herself a lawyer in at least 18 TV appearances since February 2025 and served as general counsel of a California nonprofit. The State Bar has no record of her under her married name or her maiden name. Neither does any other state. The Wall Street Journal reports she took the California bar after law school at Pepperdine and didn’t pass. When Trump asked her on the South Lawn which state she’d passed the bar in, she answered that it was when she moved to China. China doesn’t let foreigners sit for its bar exam. She now says she misheard the question over Marine One. Michelle Kuppersmith, who runs the watchdog group, didn’t buy it. “In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime.” This is the person who’ll stand at the podium every day and tell you what’s true. If she’ll pad her own resume on national television, what do you think she’ll do with yours?
Trump Team Plans Ad Campaign to Lure White South Africans. Why?
Donald Trump built an entire refugee policy around the claim that white Afrikaners in South Africa face a “white genocide.” He shut the door on everyone else and rolled out the red carpet for them. One problem. They aren’t coming. The Guardian obtained an August State Department proposal to spend about $335,000 figuring out why. Applications have run well below expectations since online signups opened last November, and nobody knows why. The plan has three stages. Focus groups in Pretoria, Stellenbosch, and Orania, the famous whites only town. Then a survey of 1,000 Afrikaners to test which messages might work. Then a six month ad campaign, mostly in Afrikaans, selling them on America. It isn’t approved yet, but it tells you everything. Trump slashed the refugee cap from 125,000 under Biden to 7,500, then raised it to 17,000 for Afrikaners. The U.S. admitted 16,292 refugees in the fiscal year that ended September 30, nearly all of them South African. South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, used Trump’s favorite phrase. “The story of white genocide does not exist, it’s fake news.” So your tax dollars may soon buy ads begging white people to accept what families from Sudan and Afghanistan would give anything for. That’s not a refugee program. It’s a recruiting poster.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, October 15, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
