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News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump’s Presidency Collapsing? New Poll Puts His Approval at 29%
The American Research Group’s latest monthly survey is out, and the numbers are brutal. Only 29% of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing. 68% disapprove. On the economy, it’s worse. Just 26% approve of how he’s handling it and 71% disapprove. That’s down from 28% in August and 35% in February. A year ago his overall approval sat at 37%. It’s slid almost every month since.
Here’s the part that should terrify every Republican on a ballot this November. Among independents, only 26% approve of Trump’s job performance and just 19% approve of his handling of the economy. Even among people who still approve of him, 56% expect the economy to be worse a year from now. 67% of Americans believe we’re already in a recession. 86% rate the economy as bad, very bad, or terrible. 71% say their own household finances are getting worse.
And listen to this. ARG says it has lost paying subscribers because clients worry unfavorable results “may upset the current administration.”
When a polling firm loses business because people are afraid to be seen measuring a president’s failure, that’s not a polling story. That’s a warning about where our democracy is headed.
Jury Hammers Meta With $25 Billion Penalty Over Trump Campaign Data Heist
Remember Cambridge Analytica? The British firm that worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign and harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a personality quiz? Facebook, now Meta, swore it protected your privacy. A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, decided that was a lie. 43 million lies, to be exact. That’s how many violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection law the jury found last month, one for every New Mexican exposed to a misleading statement about privacy.
Today, Judge Francis Mathew put a price on it. $25 billion. The state had asked for as much as $40 billion. Meta’s lawyers argued it shouldn’t pay more than $3.4 billion. 48 other states took an $18 billion settlement in August that released Meta from future liability. New Mexico refused and went to trial alone. Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the judgment “an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley.” Under the state constitution, every dollar goes to public education. Meta says it’ll appeal.
This is what accountability looks like when one state refuses to let a trillion dollar corporation buy its way out. Your data helped put Trump in the White House. It took a decade, but somebody finally made them pay for it.
Europe’s Far Right Seizes On Riots To Sell Authoritarian Rule. Will Voters Buy It?
Last weekend, peaceful protests over the cost of living and crumbling public services turned violent across Europe. Paris, Marseille and Lyon saw rioting and looting. Milan and Bologna burned. Brussels saw street clashes. And the far right couldn’t be happier. The Guardian reports nationalist leaders across the continent are framing the unrest as proof that liberal government and open borders have failed, and that only they can restore order. Key elections are months away in Spain, France and Italy.
In France, Marine Le Pen said the state is collapsing amid migratory, budgetary and security chaos. Éric Zemmour called the riots the warning shots of an ethnic war. In Germany, where there were no major protests at all, AfD leader Alice Weidel warned of civil war conditions. In Spain, where housing protests pushed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call a snap election next month, Vox leader Santiago Abascal branded the protesters Sánchez’s militias. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni rushed through emergency decrees creating a new crime of violent participation in a demonstration.
And Trump piled on, saying France had been “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists.”
This is the oldest play in the authoritarian handbook. Let people suffer, blame the stranger, then offer order in exchange for freedom. It’s happening in Europe. It’s happening here.
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Vance Defends Ad Exploiting Child Abuse Survivor...
Ohio’s governor’s race just hit a new low. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign released an ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. Here’s what the ad left out. Acton was sexually abused as a child by her mother’s then-husband, and authorities removed her from her mother’s care. Her brother, Phil Stearns, cut a response ad saying Amy, at 11 and 12 years old, took the worst of the abuse to protect him. Nikki Haley called Ramaswamy a bad guy. Republicans across the country backed away.
Not JD Vance. Asked by a BBC reporter in Ohio today whether the ad was appropriate, the Vice President said that wasn’t his concern. Then he said he was “a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining” about the ad instead of attacking Democrats. At a rally minutes later, he praised Ramaswamy for having the audacity to call Acton a liar on television, and told Republicans to stop whining and win the race in 13 days.
The Vice President of the United States looked at an ad weaponizing a woman’s childhood sexual abuse and said the only thing that matters is winning. That tells you everything about what this party has become.
Trump Launches Fraud Snitch Line. Did He Just Invite Americans To Report Him?
On Tuesday in the Oval Office, Trump unveiled the Justice Department’s new Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program. It offers members of the public up to $30,000 for tips about criminal fraud in federal programs, backed by $25 million the Daily Beast says comes from the Treasury. JD Vance oversees it through his fraud task force. Trump promised whistleblowers a 1% commission and claimed trillions had been stolen from the country.
It took about five minutes for the internet to figure out what to do with that. One user wrote they’d like to report Donald Trump, Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and every sitting Cabinet member. Another posted a graphic about the Trump family’s crypto and overseas business deals and wrote, “You can put the $30K on my X card.” She wasn’t joking. A Reuters investigation in June estimated the Trump family made about $2.3 billion from crypto while outside investors lost about the same amount.
A reporter asked why a 1% reward beats the False Claims Act, which pays whistleblowers far more. Trump said people would make millions, then snarled at him.
A president who fired the government’s independent watchdogs now wants ordinary Americans to snitch for pocket change, while the biggest grift in Washington sits in the Oval Office. The public noticed.
Did Scott Perry Fake An Affidavit To Smear His Opponent?
Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry is in trouble. He beat former TV news anchor Janelle Stelson by just 1.3 points in 2024, and she’s back for a rematch that looks every bit as close. So his campaign put out an ad accusing Stelson of exposing herself to a child. On screen, a document labeled affidavit. It looks like a court filing.
It isn’t. Public radio station WITF found the document is a notarized statement from a Perry supporter, not a sworn affidavit. The woman is Stelson’s next-door neighbor, Sharon Orr, who has Perry signs in her yard. She says she called police on August 14 after allegedly seeing Stelson naked outdoors. Her statement doesn’t say where. She wouldn’t talk to reporters. No charges were ever filed. Perry personally approved the ad.
Stelson’s campaign manager, Alma Baker, called it “a pathetic, desperate attempt by Scott Perry to rescue his failing campaign” with easily disproven lies.
When a sitting member of Congress dresses up a neighbor’s gossip as a legal document to accuse a woman of a sex crime, that’s not campaigning. That’s character assassination, 13 days before an election.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, October 21, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
