Something strange is happening with the website for the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas.

Upon finding the top result on Google for the expensive confab — which has been annoying Republicans who would rather be doing anything else on Sept. 9 and 10 — things get interesting once you click on it.

A representative for the convention did not return a request for comment. The official website for the convention is gopconvention.com, but that one does not show up as prominently in search results. The troll website redirects to the Department of Justice’s Epstein files landing page.

The RNC has otherwise been doing far better than the DNC when it comes to fundraising. Republicans have over $130 million in cash-on-hand in party coffers with zero debt, compared to a negative balance for Democrats — $16 million in cash-on-hand and nearly $18 million in debt stemming from the 2024 presidential campaign.

I would love to cover the convention, but so far I have not had any luck in finding a patron to cover my trip. (Yes, I even looked at Amtrak tickets to get out there — not worth it.)

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to help me get out in the field:

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Going back to the 2024 cycle when I was reporting on Elon Musk’s America PAC and their get-out-the-vote efforts, I have been interested in how the evolving technology around door knocking works and the ways in which it can be exploited. This all started with a tip I got back in 2023, when I heard the Ron DeSantis door knocking operation in New Hampshire was an absolute mess and involved paid canvassers juking the stats — essentially pretending they knocked on doors while sitting at home.

This is known as GPS spoofing, where one can trick the app into thinking a door knocker has logged certain addresses when they haven’t. Some apps let users disable the GPS function, while others do not.

Bowman is the co-founder of TouchStone, a new app that is trying to modernize a landscape that actually hasn’t changed as much as some might expect over the past decade. One of the more interesting things Bowman told me was that GPS spoofing was a greater issue than was previously known on the Biden-Harris campaign, even though most of the attention went to Elon’s efforts.

We also get into why door knocking might have more value in the age of mass spam texts and calls, and where the incentives for paid canvassing can lead operations astray.

Straight from the Hut: Could you start out by explaining to me how you got into this and what you understand to be the greatest problem or inefficiency with traditional canvassing apps?

Nathan Bowman: I started organizing about 10 years ago while I was in college at San Francisco State University. I actually canvassed before I even knew what canvassing was... collecting petition signatures to raise awareness about a variety of issues related to sustainability. After my first organizing position ended, I transitioned into electoral politics, where I began working on Biden for President as a field organizer, and I just never stopped working on campaigns.

Over time, I became chronically aware of the limitations of the tech stack within the Democratic Party and its affiliates. In 2024, I reached a breaking point when I discovered hundreds of my canvassers using GPS spoofing tools to alter their locations in MiniVAN, the primary canvassing software used within the Democratic Party.

From my perspective, one of the biggest problems with traditional canvassing applications (like MiniVAN for Democrats, i360 for Republicans, and Ecanvasser for political and commercial organizations) is that many of these platforms were designed 15+ years ago, when the technological landscape was much less sophisticated and there wasn’t nearly as much of a need for large-scale, distributed field programs.

Canvassing was a different ball game back then, too. Canvassers didn’t have the same access to technology that could allow them to fake their location or manipulate other types of data. As voter contact has evolved over the last 20 years, it’s becoming more and more apparent that legacy tools aren’t equipped to effectively monitor performance or maintain quality control at scale.

Even simple controls like restricting a canvasser’s ability to use a canvassing application during certain hours of the day aren’t possible with many of these legacy platforms. When you’re managing hundreds or even thousands of canvassers across multiple states without traditional field offices, those limitations become a much bigger problem.

SFTH: How extensive was the spoofing problem in 2024? And could there be an incentive for contractors to allow for spoofing — à la Blitz Canvassing and America PAC in 2024 — when door knockers are given quotas and bonuses for hitting higher, often borderline impossible numbers?

Bowman: The spoofing issue was very extensive in 2024. For clarity, the single program that I facilitated had several hundred canvassers who were let go as a result of GPS spoofing and data fabrication. Granted, I facilitated a program where more than 3.5 million doors were knocked, so the scale was pretty large, but every canvassing vendor I’m familiar with experienced some version of this issue.

It’s difficult to say exactly how severely each organization was impacted, but I do know that many firms began implementing additional measures to verify that doors were actually being knocked, including things like requiring canvassers to carry voice recorders. Solutions like these are creative and implemented in good faith, but every organization ends up developing its own quality control system. I don’t think it’s good for the Democratic movement if everyone has to build and maintain separate tools to ensure data integrity. That’s a big part of why we created TouchStone with Progressive Turnout Project—as a way to standardize canvassing integrity across the movement.

The Republican Party, its affiliated PACs, and its canvassing vendors faced more public scrutiny around GPS spoofing and data integrity issues in 2024. Democrats experienced similar problems, but they weren’t nearly as public. In my experience, many Democratic vendors also took significant steps to address these issues as they came up.

All canvassing vendors provide incentives in some form. Most incentives are designed to encourage canvassers to complete their packets, work a certain number of hours or shifts, refer other canvassers, or meet other program goals. There are a number of incentives that canvassers and contractors can be offered, but ultimately, the responsibility lies with the vendor to ensure that the people receiving those incentives are acting in good faith and that the work being reported actually happened.

I think a larger part of the issue is how paid canvassing programs have traditionally measured success. Field directors want to hit their door counts because, historically, that’s how paid canvassing organizations have demonstrated that their programs are successful. If the goal is simply to knock a certain number of doors, the entire operation naturally becomes focused on hitting that number.

That’s beginning to change. Funders are actively looking for better ways to measure meaningful voter contact and connect with voters beyond simply knocking on someone’s door once or twice and reading through a basic script. As the way we think about voter contact evolves, the technology and quality control systems supporting that work need to evolve with it.

SFTH: How does the average American’s aversion to spam calls and texts — as well as the ability to avoid them — affect the value of door knocking and how you approach it?

Bowman: I think people are so inundated with political texting, calling and advertising in general that it’s conditioned us to ignore the messaging, which, unfortunately, is a result of us living in a world driven by advertising... sometimes it just feels like too much (this is why you see campaigns and advocacy organizations getting creative about the ways the reach people). My entire day surrounds politics, and I even catch myself ignoring political text sometimes (cell phone carriers marking political calls as “likely spam” also doesn’t help!).

With that being said, we live in an increasingly impressionable world, which I believe increases the value of canvassing (if done correctly). There is something heart warming about canvassing because it can break through the technology barrier and give people human connection. Of course, it needs to be done correctly and canvassers should be able to facilitate quality conversations, but that is what we are looking to solve at TouchStone. Ultimately, everybody has an opinion and those people want to be heard, and at our best, we can build organizing programs that directly link those conversations into actionable policies to improve neighborhoods, cities and states.

The plan for the sabotage was to start in earnest after the midterms, according to my sources, but the shadowy opposition of GOP foreign policy hawks may have already blown there cover.

Read more about whether this is a genuine “op” to stop JD, or if this is a sign of extremely-online paranoia from Vance’s orbit:

The Bulwark

MAGA’s 2028 Civil War Is Already Here

JD VANCE’S POLITICAL OPERATION is growing increasingly annoyed by what it sees as a brewing plot to sabotage the vice president’s chances of winning the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, according to aides familiar with the situation…

Read more

7 days ago · 254 likes · 47 comments · Jake Lahut

This is a question I wish I had asked my subscribers long ago, especially because there’s such a range of when people started following my work.

The task is simple: Either via a comment on the Substack app or by email (jlahut26@gmail.com), let me know what qualities in a story you tend to find more unique to me. Put another way: what are some of the telltale signs of any stories of mine that might have resonated with you?

I am trying this out as a thought exercise while I re-up on some pitches heading into the business end of the midterms.

As a bonus, I would love to hear any input on the pricing model for paid subscriptions here.

I remain pretty adamant about not wanting to paywall my stories on here, even if they have scoops — generally the best way for a reporter like me to reel in paid subscriptions. I think this type of reporting should be free to the public. And in my case, given that the outlets I freelance for tend to be paywalled, I think offering a respite from that is something worth paying forward.

But I also want the subscriptions to be affordable enough for the committed reader without being so low that the amount of money is negligible after Substack takes its cut.

Thanks again for indulging me on this one, and let’s see if it works.

Because Graham did not earn more than 50% of the vote in the primary, she’s on the ballot again for a runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman — the only member of the Palmetto State congressional delegation to endorse Nikki Haley for president in 2024.

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The latest development is that President Donald Trump is hosting a tele-rally for Graham’s sister, Darline, on top of an IRL rally he held in South Carolina on Friday. I also learned from a Republican source that Darline Graham’s campaign went on the airwaves to hit Norman with negative ads over the weekend across the major TV markets in the state: Augusta, Charleston, Charlotte, Columbia, Myrtle Beach, and Savannah.

“The only positive thing about her is she will vote with Trump, and I do respect Trump,” Charles McCorkle, a voter from Little River who attended the Friday rally, told Myrtle Beach Online in an article about Trump voters remaining skeptical over Graham.

The major sign of trouble for Graham came in last week’s debate against Norman, where she struggled mightily to answer a basic question about Taiwan and the South China Sea. Based on my reporting the next day, Republicans in South Carolina began to worry they had a mess on their hands, but nobody was willing to go so far as to say they thought she would lose. The timeframe was too short heading into the special primary election, they said.

However, if Norman could consolidate the rest of the vote from before the runoff, they said he might have a shot.

With Graham’s campaign going negative on Norman, on top of the rest of the money they’re spending on ads — the negative ones amounted to a roughly $40,000 buy — it might be a sign they are seeing something the public polling hasn’t revealed.

Graham losing would be yet another blow to Trumpworld, with one of the president’s endorsements failing in a race where she had every advantage handed to her. Keep an eye on these results tomorrow night.

Social media detox gone awry

We now take you to a race I have been covering like white on rice: the New Hampshire Democratic primary for the first congressional district.

One of my Democratic sources in the Granite State pointed out this story from my pal Adam Sexton of WMUR, who reported back in January on third-place candidate Carleigh Beriont challenging opponents Stefany Shaheen and Maura Sullivan to get off of social media and talk to voters the old-fashioned way. She also pledged to stay off of social media herself.

Predictably, this strategy was not practical, and Beriont appears to have circumvented her self-imposed ban.

Beriont didn’t say anything at the time about her husband’s Facebook account, for example.

An August 17th post from her husband on Facebook begins with “Hey, Everyone! This is from Carleigh.” The husband has posted several vertical videos on the same Facebook page boosting Beriont’s campaign and soliciting donations.

Beriont has been appearing on podcasts and short form video programming that, also unsurprisingly, have been shared on social media. Her campaign’s Instagram page has also been active.

The Beriont campaign did not return a request for comment.

South Carolina Republicans are reaching Susan Collins levels of concerned when it comes to the special primary election to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“Do people really want Lindsey Graham’s sister?” a plugged-in South Carolina GOP operative told me.

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Republicans I spoke to said they still see Graham’s sister as favored in the runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman, but they are also increasingly worried about a highly scripted and buttoned up campaign from her. She has not done much campaigning, and in the limited press availabilities and extemporaneous speaking she’s done, they haven’t been impressed.

One of the things dominating group chats and sidebar conversations in the Palmetto State is how one of Graham’s aides has been mouthing answers while standing behind her during events and press conferences. It’s an odd detail, but it highlights the highly scripted nature of the campaign and the almost blind faith these staffers are putting in their new boss to keep it together. The bright yellow notepad at last night’s debate has also gotten attention. (Graham was briefly booed for a shoddy answer on Taiwan and the South China Sea, where she simply said she doesn’t know much about foreign policy and wants to support the troops.)

“A lot of people are looking at the notepad being like, what is that?” the same operative told me.

Other Republicans I spoke to said they’re not sure if the debate clip will come to hurt Graham in time for next week’s Election Day, but they also see Graham as a potential stand-in for nepotism and corruption attacks from Democrats. “I think a lot of the consultants and operatives, we see it, but the question is whether the people see it,” the South Carolina operative said.

My understanding of how Graham was convinced to run for the seat comes down to two things: She’s easier to control as a family member — something the first and second Trump administrations have leaned into heavily — and Trumpworld simply didn’t like the rest of their options. Rep. Russel Fry was initially considered to be the favorite for the Trump endorsement, but were he to win in November, he would have to resign from his House seat, which would remain vacant until March.

“No one thought she was gonna run again,” the operative said. “I think it was Trump and the White House team, because they were assessing all the options.”

The Graham campaign did not return a request for comment.

The question now is how much Democratic nominee Annie Andrews can capitalize on Graham not being ready for primetime, should she prevail over Norman in the runoff. Trump won South Carolina by almost 18 points in 2024, but in the right midterm climate, there’s a remote chance the state could be competitive.

Could the debate alone give Norman an opening in the closing days of the primary? “Probably not,” another Palmetto State GOP operative told me.

For now, South Carolina Republicans are hoping Graham can stick to the script — or at least get a better one.

A political powerhouse in her home state, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has built a formidable network of former aides, longtime donors, and political consultants. Functionally, they serve as a key gateway into the first-in-the-nation presidential primary and thus give Shaheen significant power outside of her duties as a three-term senator.

Yet New Hampshire Democratic operatives and donors are increasingly concerned about Shaheen’s interventions to boost the congressional campaign of her daughter, Stefany.

Senator Shaheen has trashed her daughter’s rival, Maura Sullivan, to multiple veterans groups, according to sources familiar with the conversations, including on a zoom call that was apparently so awkward word ended up reaching me. The Shaheen camp also reached out to New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s team with an opposition research document on Sullivan in an attempt to get the newly elected governor to rescind her endorsement of the candidate, a fellow veteran. New Hampshire Democratic sources who spoke with me for this story also pointed to other private gatherings where Senator Shaheen has talked up her daughter and criticized Sullivan unprompted.

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Other interventions, one source told me, have been befuddling in how granular and minor they were. “A donor called me and said Jeanne Shaheen just called me, and she asked me why I haven’t called her daughter back,” a New Hampshire fundraiser familiar with the veterans group outreach told me.

“It doesn’t sit well,” added a longtime New Hampshire power broker who’s involved with neither candidate. “It’s unseemly, I think.”

Representatives for the senator and her daughter’s campaign did not return a request for comment. Names of organizations and the locations of certain events in this story were shared with me off the record at the request of some sources, in order to avoid reprisal in a small circle of Granite State Democratic power players. Sherrill’s representatives also did not comment by the time of publication.

“It’s insidious. It’s not okay. It’s a senator putting her thumb on the scale.”

One of the hottest — and, increasingly, pettiest — Democratic primaries in the country is happening in New Hampshire’s first district on Sept. 8th. The Granite State only has two congressional districts, and this one is more competitive along the eastern half of the state. I’ve previously written about Sullivan’s background and a MAHA-coded company she was involved with, and the race is drawing in heavy hitters like Sherrill endorsing Sullivan and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) endorsing Stefany — part of what could be a tactical play for his potential 2028 presidential run.

Within the first week of my time reporting in New Hampshire in the late twenty-teens, I heard the phrase “the Shaheen machine” for the first time. This isn’t Tammany Hall, but the name is a wink-wink-nudge-nudge to that era. It’s not just Senator Shaheen, but also her husband, Billy, who has become a New Hampshire politics legend in his own right. He made an early bet on Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, launching his New Hampshire operation and serving as chairman. Carter’s victory established the foundation for the Granite State’s lore as the campaign field of dreams, where anyone could come in and run a low-budget, barnstorming campaign where direct contact with voters could win out over big money.

The Shaheen Machine is simply a network of staff, endorsements, lobbyists, and donors that gives candidates an advantage on anything from being able to raise enough money to having some of the best staff available heading into a presidential run. An irony at play here is that the Shaheen family origin story is so intimately tied to the scrappy underdog tones of the Carter ‘76 campaign, yet the family brand is now entering a transitional phase where an overlapping set of big money Shaheen donors and consultants, along with the senator herself, have been trying to ensure that it’s her daughter’s turn.

The New Hampshire fundraiser recalled a conversation with a different donor, where they appeared to suggest at the senator’s behest that it would be worth clearing the field.

“‘Stefany can be a congresswoman, Maura can be a governor, and it’ll all work out,’” the fundraiser recalled hearing from the Boston-based donor, who they declined to name. This conversation took place around a year ago, and Sullivan had already raised a million dollars for the House race that she would not be able to transfer to a state-level campaign. “It’s insidious. It’s not okay. It’s a senator putting her thumb on the scale.”

Some of these tactics are old school, such as a mailer I obtained blasting Sullivan for accepting donations from Palantir, when she got contributions from just two former employees who overlapped with her in the Obama administration. (It’s also notable that a name drop of Palantir is a strategy in-play this cycle.)

What the interventions reveal, the longtime New Hampshire power broker suggested, is part of a broader cultural problem within the Democratic Party of candidates being expected to wait their turn. Who decides whose turn it is? Usually party elites, who have the superior donor infrastructure and, sometimes, the better family name.

Because of New Hampshire’s longstanding influence on the presidential primary calendar — which could be different this year, despite a state law declaring it illegal, when Democrats will have New Hampshire vote third — this culture could be heightened across both parties. Until former Gov. John Lynch’s daughter was talked out of a run for governor, this cycle, this source said, there very well could have been the children of three former governors on the ballot: a Sununu, a Lynch, and a Shaheen.

“I’m a big believer in paying your dues, and [Stefany Shaheen] has got skills, but I don’t think she deserves to be running for that spot right now… It’s just this sense of entitlement,” the longtime power broker said, “and you can just step into a role because of your family pedigree.”

I also reported from a Haley Stevens event in Traverse City with former Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, who, as you’ll see in my story, played the role of attack dog for the more moderate candidate in the race.

I’m hoping to share some more reporting from this swing on here before the polls close tomorrow night, but I also found myself called into action on vacation for this one — so please forgive me if I dip offline for a swim and a bike ride before then.

In the meantime, enjoy the El-Sayed dispatch, and feel free to share your thoughts on whether the Democratic establishment in DC is misreading the mood of the electorate. I found that the Stevens crowd was more anxious and afraid (and also a lot older), while the El-Sayed crowd was both angry but also feeling like they were actually a part of something.

If El-Sayed clears 50% in his vote total for this primary when all is said and done — polls close at 8 p.m. in Michigan tomorrow night — it might be a shock heard ‘round the political world.

Did you know Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only has a custom tie, but a custom logo?

Neither did I, until a source familiar provided me with this image. The Health and Human Services secretary has been giving these out to men around the office, as well as the husbands of any women who might enjoy a falcon logo bearing the boss’s initials, this source tells me.

This particular tie came from a source at the Center for Medicaid Services, where some employees have already had just about enough of Dr. Oz’s crunchy granola wellness advice. (For example: Telling the employees they “don’t have to try every cookie on the holiday table.”)

It’s unclear how many of these ties have been produced, but it’s enough that they come in a wrapper and do not appear to be going to anybody particularly special. After all, how did I get my hands on one of these in the first place?

As you can see here, the custom logo is quite elaborate and very falcon-y.

Another detail I gathered in asking around on this tie is that RFK Jr. did not hold his annual party for appointees in HHS to show them his falconry skills. Apparently this thrilling event would be at a family property in the DMV area that belonged to his mother, Ethel Kennedy. This is not at all breaking news, but it’s clear Kennedy really, really likes falcons.

The word around the agency is that RFK Jr. “won’t last through the summer.”

On paper, Maura Sullivan has a stellar resume for a Democratic congressional candidate.

She’s a former Marine Corps officer and decorated Iraq War veteran. She was deployed to Fallujah for combat logistics. An Obama appointee, she served in both the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Yet one resume item she has not been putting front and center is her time working with Virta, a more than just MAHA-coded health company which touted unproven treatments to veterans. She made around $627,000 working for them over the past few years, according to her most recent financial disclosure — which had been repeatedly delayed around 5 months past the original deadline.

The 46-year-old mother of three has a real shot in a competitive primary for New Hampshire’s first district, which covers the eastern half of the state. There is no incumbent, with Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) running for an open Senate seat, where he will most likely face off against a Sununu brother (John E., technically not John Jr. because his dad is John H.) or Scott Brown.

(Speaking of New Hampshire family dynasties, the reason that seat is open is because Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is retiring, thus opening a spot for Pappas and, fortuitously enough, another opportunity in the NH-01 primary for one of her daughters: Portsmouth City Councilwoman Stefany Shaheen.)

On Sullivan’s campaign website, she does not mention Virta by name.

Following the Obama Administration, Maura worked in the private sector as a health tech executive, helping to keep children safer in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and improve access to diabetes treatment for fellow veterans.

Now, a company like Virta is not the sexiest thing to pitch to voters. This district includes a lot of people who either work at or depend upon the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard — which is technically in Maine, and which was the subject of a private threat from Donald Trump’s orbit to cut its funding if a second New Hampshire primary debate was hosted by CNN, as I previously reported — and Sullivan’s service record is her strongest selling point to that constituency.

It’s also worth noting that her main opponent, Shaheen, has worked in the diabetes space. She co-founded a company called Good Measures after dealing with her daughter’s Type-1 diabetes diagnosis. Good Measures, which was acquired by NationsBenefits in 2024, emphasizes nutrition and exercise. In another wrinkle to the emerging battle between Sullivan and Shaheen, Shaheen and another official from Good Measures spoke with Sullivan and her deputy in March 2025, at Shaheen’s request, to pitch her company for a potential partnership with Virta, according to a source familiar with the conversation. (Freebie question for anyone conducting a debate for the primary.)

Update: After publication, I learned that Shaheen also solicited a $6,000 sponsorship from Virta at a February 2025 event where she was honored for her work on diabetes.

However, Sullivan’s service record and work at the VA raises questions about a revolving door dynamic with a company looking to go public. As part of her compensation, Sullivan received equity shares that she has not purchased and would need to be sold before the IPO. Sullivan has previously emphasized that members of Congress should not sell individual stocks, and would sell her shares if she were elected, according to her campaign.

“Maura has devoted her career to serving our country, from the battlefields of Iraq to leadership roles at the VA and Pentagon under President Obama,” Sullivan’s campaign manager, Natalie Silver, told me in a statement. “In the private sector, she continued that service, working to advance care for the roughly 1.5 million fellow Veterans suffering from type 2 diabetes. She was proud to partner with physicians at the VA under both Democratic and Republican administrations to pilot new treatments and advance the medical care that fellow veterans earned while serving our country. Maura is running for Congress to continue the fight for better healthcare and quality of life for all who call New Hampshire home.”

Sullivan started at Virta in November of 2023, and worked there through April 2025. (Sullivan appeared on a speaker list for a 2021 Virta conference and was listed under her title as general manager, but she was working for another biomedical company called Ginkgo at the time, according to her LinkedIn. She also spoke at a 2024 conference for Virta, which had a different speaker lineup.)

In announcing Virta’s partnership with the Trump administration, its CEO boasted about the company’s alignment with the MAHA agenda.

“Q: What is the real Revolution -- not marginal evolution -- in chronic disease, such as T2 Diabetes and Obesity, care?” Virta CEO Sami Inkinen wrote in a lengthy LinkedIn post. “A: The Revolution is something I’ve been working on since 2014 and of course, got ridiculed for too by many. It is also at the heart of the just released ‘Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment’ by the President’s MAHA order.”

An evidence brief from the National Institute of Health on the Virta keto pilot found the company’s studies were “poorly controlled,” and that the improvement to the veterans’ health could not be pinpointed to the diet vs. other factors involved in the supervised program.

Virta was founded in 2014. The keto project started back in 2018 in the first Trump administration, not long after they snagged Former House VA Committee Chair Jeff Miller (R-FL), who registered as a lobbyist for the company. The day after he registered as a lobbyist for them, Miller sent a senior VA appointee language on the keto diabetes treatment and a potential partnership between the company and the agency.

In 2019, Virta finalized the partnership, gaining free access to the agency’s patient population.

In July 2025, a few months after Sullivan had left Virta, the Trump administration honored the company at the “Make Health Tech Great Again” event hosted by Trump, RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz.

Upon her exit, the job posting for Sullivan’s role specified “existing relationships within CMS, HHS, VA, or relevant congressional committees” as desired qualifications.

There was a line that stood out to me in President Trump’s endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor of South Carolina and the only other woman in the Republican governor’s primary.

“She never wavered, never let me down, and was the only South Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate to Endorse me as soon as I launched my 2024 Presidential Campaign,” Trump said in his post on Truth Social.

Now, the timing of Mace’s endorsement for Trump’s 2024 campaign is not actually the reason why Mace lost out on the endorsement. As I reported for the first time in my New York magazine profile of her, she had come to the realization that her vote on the Epstein files discharge petition is what ultimately cost her. Still, Mace and her remaining allies were hoping there would be no Trump endorsement for anyone in the primary. That didn’t end up happening, and she could go from running neck-and-neck with Evette to losing handily.

But the reason that Trump line stood out to me, particularly the part about the timing of Mace’s endorsement for his 2024 presidential bid, is that I was siting on a backstory of that endorsement that has never been reported.

If Trumpworld wants to deflect from the Epstein of it all and pin Mace’s loss on the timing of her endorsement, it’s worth pointing out that the timing wasn’t entirely her decision.

Let’s rewind back to the late winter of 2023. Iowa and New Hampshire are coming up in the primary calendar, and the only three viable candidates at that point were Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, had to win her home state if she had any chance of staying in the race. The Trump team was confident they’d trounce both Ron and Nikki anyway, which they did. But to stick it to Haley, the goal was to have Mace endorse Trump before the former governor could even land back on her home turf following the New Hampshire primary.

Evette had endorsed Trump almost a year earlier in January of 2023, standing with Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham at the state capitol. At that point, Mace was already close to a year into her ultra MAGA rebrand after standing in front of Trump Tower in an infamous video from 2022, where she professed her loyalty to The Donald after he endorsed her primary opponent for her House seat (a Kevin McCarthy-backed opponent whom she beat handily).

While Mace could have endorsed Trump earlier than she did on January 22nd, 2024, the day before the New Hampshire primary, the timing was extremely deliberate.

A member of the Trump campaign, according to a source familiar with the matter, “was authorized to sit down with her at a chophouse and guarantee her that the highest levels of the campaign could get her name into the mix for VP.”

Mace was already doing her darnedest to get her name into the mix as far as the press coverage goes, her former associates have told me. I even said in an appearance on Chris Hayes’ show in November 2023 that Mace was pretty much the only one throwing her name out there in the veepstakes coverage, based on my reporting at the time from in and around the Trump campaign.

But this deal to stick it to Nikki Haley in the most strategically petty way possible was meant to serve as Mace’s official forgiveness for stepping out against Trump following January 6th.

“We’re asking you to make an easy call and come back on the team,” says the same source familiar who recounted the meeting. The big picture plan, this person said, was for Mace to also get the Trump endorsement when she would eventually run for governor and be an early endorsement for his preferred successor in 2028.

Mace endorsed Trump right on cue, and he endorsed her back for her House primary in 2024.

She didn’t end up making it very deep into the veepstakes, but otherwise, everything went according to plan. Then Trump won the election, and by April 2025, Pam Bondi said on Fox News that she had the Epstein files and the client list sitting right on her desk.

That opened the whole can of worms which led to Mace sticking to her guns on the discharge petition during a 48-hour charm offensive from Trump, whose calls she did not return.

The rest, as they say, was history.

They are being reinstated before resigning and getting paid almost two years worth of backpay. And, in a move highly unusual for a company that bans letters of recommendation for former employees, they’re getting glowing letters of recommendation from management.

However, my case is proceeding to the National Labor Relations Board because I declined a low-ball offer from the company. They only offered me four months of backpay, apparently because I was a week shy of my probationary period ending at the time of my (illegal) dismissal. There’s no reason the company had to spin me off from the deal, but unlike the other three, who had a right to arbitration under the “just cause” portion of the contract, my case is only on track for the NLRB.

Here’s a Hollywood Reporter story on the deal, and you’ll be hearing more from me in an interview with one of the top writers on this platform later today (look out for a restack).

I’ll have more to share in the future. But for now, back to work.

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Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been executing a lobbying blitz across the country to push for nearly identical bills, which would set price caps on the secondary seller market. It’s a strategy that deflects the mounting public dissatisfaction against them, but it’s not working so far.

Ten state legislatures in 2026 — Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia — have abandoned various versions of price cap proposals. In a state like New York, the post-merger behemoth of Ticketmaster and Live Nation is spending $25,000 a month on lobbying services from Bolton St. Johns.

“My reaction is, that’s high,” Brian Berry, the executive director of the Ticket Policy Forum, tells me when I relayed the latest figures to him.

Berry, whose organization represents the secondary seller players of StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, and TickPick, has been astounded by the effort Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been putting forward in state legislatures amid the toughest legal scrutiny they’ve ever come under. “Anyone who would listen to me, I would say, this is incredible,” Berry says. “There should be a book written about this.”

Last month, a federal jury ruled against Live Nation and found the company is acting as a monopoly. The company also settled with the Department of Justice, but the trial proceeded.

The company will retain Ticketmaster for now, and the remedies from the federal judge are still up in the air. They could include some version of breaking them up, but that’s no guarantee. Yet as that case was making its way through the process, Ticketmaster and Live Nation reared their heads again in state legislatures and tried to garner bipartisan support while state AGs tried to hold the line against them, Berry explained.

This all comes after Democrats have tried to talk a big game about Ticketmaster, yet the monopoly’s state legislative efforts have largely gone under the radar.

“This is an enormous diversion away from the Live Nation - Ticketmaster monopoly,” says Diana Moss, the vice President and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. “Don’t look over here at the monopoly, look over there at the resale market. Let’s call the resale market a bunch of scalpers, make unsubstantiated claims about how it functions, and lay the blame at the feet of the resale market.”

Berry and those on the resale market side of the ledger have fought back, and one of the first stats he’ll bring up is that 80 percent of all tickets sold flow through… Ticketmaster.

“This has been a methodical, intentional concentration of power over an entire industry,” he says.

Another more astonishing development both Moss and Berry mentioned was the way Ticketmaster and Live Nation have bent the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) to their will.

“I cannot overstate the severity of the market intervention,” Moss says of the way Live Nation got NIVA to support these price cap bills. For Berry, the influence Ticketmaster has exerted shows “they don’t have to own the place to run the place.”

These smaller venues are in a bind, because they depend on Ticketmaster and Live Nation for the vast majority of programming, but they also need the secondary sellers to help fill up the rest of their seats, which almost never sell out on the main platform.

This will be an interesting space to monitor, with the brand baggage of Ticketmaster and its lesser known parent company Live Nation coming up against an activated base of smaller but still cash flush secondary market players.

“I don’t think they hurt for access to lawmakers,” Berry says of the ticket sales monopoly.

Whether they emerge as the behemoth they’ve been will depend on the ability of state lawmakers to withstand the pressure from both formal lobbying efforts and the squeezed venue operators in their districts. But for now, Ticketmaster and Live Nation aren’t getting their way, but with less attention on them at the state level, they might be able to call Democrats on their bluff and see if they can eek some wins out with their backs up against the wall.

The Charles J. Kirk Ballroom. The Shield of the Americas. The Arc de Trump. And a US sovereign wealth fund, maybe.

These are but a few of President Donald Trump’s favorite things.

There’s been plenty written about the president’s obsession with his legacy and the gravitational pull of posterity on his second presidency. He’s increasingly fixated on his ballroom, with allies and advisers pushing for it to be named after Charlie Kirk. A phased-out cabinet shakeup is underway (see my recent scoop about Tulsi Gabbard being told by the White House that they want her out by the midterms), with Kristi Noem paving the way for what could be a variety of demotions to freshly created institutions with nebulous goals.

But what I’ve been interested in is more of a question of political capital. Last night’s election results in Indiana showed that the Trump endorsement still reigns supreme in GOP primaries in red states — or any heavily Republican district, for that matter. Only one of the eight state senators who provoked Trump’s ire over voting against a mid-decade redistricting bill managed to survive. And the one outstanding result where a Trump-backed challenger might not win came in a district that includes Purdue University, where there are more college educated voters who tend to view Trump less favorably. That race has the Trump candidate down by only 3 votes. Not 3%, 3 votes.

I could go on for days about the broader cleavage in western democracies by education level, but not today. And who knows, there might just be something in the water out in Tippecanoe County. But Trump’s sticking power bore out in the other six races where he targeted a Republican incumbent who went against him.

On the other hand, he’s hitting historic lows in his approval rating — even more unpopular than in the aftermath of January 6th — and on key metrics such as his handling of the economy, where he’s underwater by around 40 points.

The squeeze

In this post-Epstein files, post-Iran war landscape, a new dynamic has taken hold. I’m calling it Late Stage Trump. Maybe a political scientist or someone at a think tank will come up with a better name, but I’m sticking with this one for now.

Late Stage Trump is defined by two distinct groups of actors facing shifting incentive structures: those who want a future in Republican politics after he’s gone, and those who see the next 31 months as their peak, and/or their last shot at getting what they want out of this whole arrangement. There are plenty of subgroups who are caught between the two — cross-pressured, to borrow a political science term — particularly among the tech right.

The smash and grab mentality of Trump 2.0 is still running strong. Industries from AI and crypto to the broader data center industrial complex still enjoy a window of minimal to no regulation, doling out massive capital expenditures in the hopes of being one of the few large companies to survive and, ideally, dominate the AI era.

Yet elsewhere in the MAGA coalition from 2024, there is an astonishing level of infighting among major and minor personalities, and, if you look closely, other lawmakers and ambitious future leaders are hedging their bets without fully crossing The Donald. I posted a quick thread on BlueSky yesterday about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis taking a skeptical posture against data centers. The governor noted they are unpopular on both the left and right, and he lamented the projects getting property tax abatements elsewhere in the country.

DeSantis may very well end up as Trump’s next attorney general or in another cabinet post. You are highly unlikely to hear him go full Marjorie Taylor Greene and denounce the president. However, DeSantis is a tactician with plenty of ambition, and his acknowledgment of the political headwinds facing data centers is a notable development.

Steppin’ out

For the Tucker Carlsons and Megyn Kellys of the world, they’re betting on the Iran war being perhaps the greatest strategic defeat in the history of the United States, as liberal economist Paul Krugman put it.

This confluence of factors has birthed a holding pattern heading into the 2026 midterms. There have yet to be broad defections from Trump. His approval among Republicans remains high, even if he’s tanking with independents and just about every other demographic group that helped propel him to a second term. Is there a strategy behind beefing with Pope Leo when the president has lost significant ground with Catholic Latino voters? No, probably not. Has the president followed the breathless advice delivered to him through the press after November’s off year elections about the need to focus on domestic issues instead of foreign policy? You have eyes and ears, and the Maduro capture in Venezuela only emboldened the neocon faction of Trump’s orbit.

I’m hearing a general resignation among my sources to the reality that nobody is going to be able to convince Trump to tone it down about his pet projects, particularly the ballroom. Following the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, conservative influencers immediately began banging the drum that a ballroom is needed for presidential security. Trump posted on Truth Social this morning about using the ballroom for future inaugurations. He held the press for a few extra minutes at an Oval Office this week to marvel about the new granite installed along the walkway outside.

This is what I’ve previously described as Trump being in full wartime maître d’ mode, where his comfort zone as a marketer and developer has overtaken the severity of the situation he’s brought the country into with the military incursion on Iran.

The gas over $5, approval under 30% scenario

One big question I have is how much this status quo can hold once gas reaches $5 or even $6 a gallon this summer, as I reported last week for Sherwood News. We’re now at a point where even if the war were to stop today and the Strait of Hormuz were to immediately reopen, the global economy will still be dealing with a supply shock to fuel for months to come. The price of gasoline is inextricably tied to presidential approval ratings and voters’ outlook on the incumbent party.

Trump is nearing his floor of support. Whether that translates to a one-to-one gain for Democrats is unlikely, but particularly in a midterm environment, every Trump voter who stays home is effectively a vote for the Democrats.

Once we’re past the midterms, the invisible primary for the 2028 presidential race will be kicking into high gear. There’s a slow rolling vibe shift of Marco Rubio emerging as the stronger heir to the Trump endorsement than JD Vance, even if focus groups are the only remotely public window we have into that dynamic at this point.

Trump will turn 80 on June 14. The worst economic brunt of the war has yet to arrive. And yet, Trump’s endorsement and the MAGA establishment’s ability to dump money into a state like Indiana to define state legislature primaries shows a persisting level of unmatched sway within the Republican Party.

Until November, independent voters and Democrats won’t have a say. But once they do, Trump could move from a lame duck president to something closer to a distressed political asset.

Much of the left-wing media grift of the Trump era has centered around the notion that Trump is always about to imminently collapse. That’s not what Late Stage Trump is doing, on a functional level. Instead, it’s more about a change in incentive structures that will not affect Republican interest groups equally. And the longer it persists, the harder it will be to put the MAGA coalition back together. That was going to be hard enough with Trump as a singular political figure for the GOP. It ain’t easy following that up. Just ask the Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden/Kamala Harris campaigns with regard to the Obama 2012 coalition.

With these new incentive structures, look out for more Congressional Republicans stepping out against Trump. Senate confirmations could become much harder for some nominees. Top legislative priorities for the White House, to the extent there are any beyond the crypto market structure bill and the SAVE Act, are not going to yield the wins they could have if the West Wing and Republican leadership pushed harder for them in 2025. The SAVE Act may well be dead on arrival, if for no other reason than its risk of disenfranchising rural voters and conservative married women.

For now though, there are too many spoils left on the table for the tech right and other components of the MAGA coalition to fully defect. Yet if we get to $5-$6 gas in the summer of a midterm election year and Trump’s approval falls into the high 20s, all bets are off — unless you invested in a data center.

In that case, you have no choice but for your previous bet to pay off.

This is something I’ve been struggling with. Under normal circumstances, I would not be speculating about whether any of the people I talk to around Donald Trump are engaging in insider trading, either via options or predictions markets — or both.

What I do know is more than a few of my sources gamble, as is their constitutional right (kidding, sorta). Usually it’s sports gambling. Sometimes it’s a weekend in Vegas, or an off-the-books poker game where the networking payoff can be higher than any amount of chips on the table. But the recent trend of big money pouring into oil futures and other forms of prop bets shortly before major announcements from the administration has given me pause. I do not think openly speculating about the financial side hustles of a reporter’s sources is a good idea, but that’s also not what I had in mind for tonight’s newsletter.

Instead, I’d like to peel back the curtain a bit on what it’s like to do this type of reporting.

Earlier this month, I was on the phone with a source who mentioned they recently started dabbling in Kalshi bets. Football season was over, and they were looking to see what all the fuss was about with the prediction markets. They noticed some favorable odds on whether Pam Bondi would leave her post as attorney general. After reading some headlines and recent reporting about her standing with the president, this person put a modest two-figure sum of money into the app, and made hundreds of dollars once Bondi was gone. That was just from being an informed news consumer.

Could you imagine, they wondered aloud, if top campaign and government officials were doing this type of stuff? Well, they already very well might be. I am not the only reporter who would be interested in landing this story. But it’s hard to execute for a number of reasons, putting aside the caveat of Polymarket’s blockchain system offering something closer to a paper trail.

This is something worth expounding on later, but one concern with this type of an unregulated market based on events is not the actual events themselves, but manipulating the discourse and expectations around events so that people with inside information can profit from it. The fact that we’re talking about this in the context of a war means the horse left the barn long ago.

Is insider trading the worst thing some of the people I’ve talked to have done with their power in Trump 2.0? Probably not. But part of what makes this so unsettling to me is that reporters trade in information. More often than not, the value of talking to me for the person on the other end of the line is what type of tips I’ve been getting, and whether I’m hearing anything they would not be able to learn about elsewhere. Most of these tidbits of information are shared off the record, and it’s part of the source management process that applies to a number of beats outside of politics.

At its core, there is an element of journalism that serves as a long con, as Janet Malcom brought to life in The Journalist and the Murderer. I’m getting people to speak with me against their own self-interest, often at the risk of their livelihoods. It’s why anonymous sources are necessary for many difficult stories.

Yet if, in some freak confluence of circumstances, something I said to a source over the phone made them thousands or millions of dollars…. I don’t know what I could do about that. First, it would be almost impossible to know. Second, how could I ever catch them?

Even if this problem seems so futile to try and solve, I still think it’s worth wrestling with. We haven’t even begun to fathom the ways people will try to make money off of the 2028 presidential campaign or Trump’s remaining time in office.

Maybe we should try to fathom it, because it’s here.

The literal grim reaper comes for all of us at some point in life, regardless of profession or craft. Yet over the course of a life in journalism, the layoff grim reaper is pretty likely to come knocking sooner. Maybe some of you recently experienced layoffs at places like WaPo or other outlets, and I’m writing this hoping you might feel less alone while going through something similar. That reaper from the headcount division has miraculously spared me so far, but I also wouldn’t wish any of the alternatives I’ve gone through upon even my worst enemies.

And since so many of you subscribed to this newsletter in the aftermath of a professional jettisoning — end times at the Daily Beast for maybe a quarter of you, and the Condé Nast Fired Four “unintended casualties” situation for much of the rest — I’m not opposed to writing a periodic update on what’s been going on in my actual life. I don’t want a mere parasocial relationship with all of you, in part because I think there is real value in news consumers knowing who their favorite reporters are, how they see the world, and how that informs their work when checking various biases at the door.

I’m also going to get into a sports metaphor later on involving the Detroit Red Wings and Arsenal Football Club in London, so please bear with me on that front. There are plenty of similar parables in literature, film, and reality TV, but coming off a weekend of college hockey in Las Vegas and some truly heart wrenching sports viewing on the side, I have something a little different that’s come to top of mind.

But first, let me engage in some editor brain and provide a recap, along with an update on my current work situation. (I have started a contract editing gig at Sherwood News, which will allow me to continue freelancing and should buy me some time on the jobs front. It pays the rent, and it gives me the ability to say no to things — a true blessing in this economy.)

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On the editor brain front, maybe jettisoning isn’t quite the right word. To jettison is to unload excess weight in an emergency. In the Beast case, back in the summer of 2024, they had already done that to around 70 percent of the newsroom via layoffs or buyouts. So maybe that one was more like jumping off of a pirate ship without a life boat after most of my fellow pirates were already gone. In the case of WIRED and Condé Nast, I guess we’ll find out. It’s not my place to speculate further about what kind of impulsive decision making led to the firing of my three union colleagues and I, who are now bound together for life in one of the strangest media sagas in recent memory.

“More complicated to unwind the more time is allowed to pass”

I’m fairly confident that whole thing will come to a resolution that will be fair to all of us and offer some degree of closure, but I just don’t know when. I do, however, know that I didn’t do anything wrong. A reporter asking a question — albeit a bit tongue in cheek to try and diffuse the tension in that hallway on that fateful day — is not grounds for an immediate dismissal within hours, despite no prior disciplinary records or performance issues. In legalese, but for the protected union activity on November 5th under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, I would still be writing Inner Loop and updating you here with my best WIRED scoops. If I was a good enough representative to appear on TV for the magazine right before 6 a.m. that morning, and in good enough standing to be booked for a full hour at 30 Rock later that night, I’m not sure how I became a pariah between the hours of 2 and 4 p.m. when I simply asked one question.

If you want to get another very nuanced perspective on that whole situation, I would highly recommend reading Jasper Lo’s latest essay in The Nation: “Fact Checkers Anonymous.” Save a tab on it and read it somewhere with fewer distractions. He was the senior fact checker at the magazine who remains beloved by his colleagues, many of whom I’ve met over drinks after we were both thrown out into the cold (along with Ben and Alma). He’s also a military veteran, and has an even more unusual path into this journalism racket than I do. I would like to cite a passage that particularly resonated with me:

Six years after my joining The New Yorker’s storied fact-checking department, my career was reduced to a three-sentence e-mail. It cited “gross misconduct and policy violations,” and was signed by Condé’s head of labor relations, a figure whose compulsion for passive-aggression has earned her a certain level of infamy among media unions. Thankfully, this lack of justification was quickly filled by an outpouring of support from colleagues, frustrated messages that underscored the arbitrary nature of the ouster. It was a welcome surprise to see the many writers I’ve worked with, who routinely confront power and describe it with such elegance, write in my defense. Patrick Radden Keefe illustrated it perfectly in a collective action where staff replied-all to an e-mail sent to executives and staff, demanding my reinstatement: “This feels like the sort of hasty decision that would be relatively easy to reverse in the near term—and more complicated to unwind the more time is allowed to pass.”

(Obligatory reminder: I have nothing but love and admiration for my WIRED colleagues, who have been incredibly supportive while continuing to publish top notch work. I also don’t have any ill will toward anyone at Condé Nast — just some lingering befuddlement toward the C-suite which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that big of a deal. Should I be reinstated by the National Labor Relations Board, as is the precedent in cases like mine, I’m not worried about walking on eggshells around anyone at One World Trade, nor should management be worried about me becoming a hardened rabble-rouser. I was, after all, a first time caller on this particular union action.)

The bottling

For all of the more level-headed thinking I’ve tried to stick with over these past few months, there’s been an almost unavoidable B-track playing in my mind. What if this was all my fault? What if I torched my journalism career in a three to four minute interaction in a hallway outside the C-suite? What if, to borrow a British term, I bottled it after a very strong start at WIRED? (A bit of slang that came to be known as shorthand for collapsing under pressure.) Like Jasper — who, I should note, was straight chilling at the back and didn’t say a word — the company’s rhetoric made me feel like a criminal for simply being in press gaggle mode when asking that fateful question: “What’s your definition of congregating?”

This brings me to Arsenal and the Detroit Red Wings, the two sports teams I follow the closest and maintain a genuine passion for, unaffected by any of the mobile sports gambling that tends to keep a lot of men my age engaged after the childhood wonder of supporting a favorite team fades away.

Both teams have been experiencing a bone-rattling crashout to end their respective seasons. Detroit, after having a spectacular start to the season and leading their division for a stretch, have fallen out of playoff contention for the 10th straight season. To add salt in the wound, this franchise held the NHL record for most consecutive playoff appearances through the entirety of me being a fan. Arsenal have been in first place in the Premier League pretty much the entire season, but are now wavering with several high profile losses recently. They have not won a league title for over two decades — though they did have a Red Wings-esque streak, also a league record, for the most consecutive years making the UEFA Champions League. Notably, there are no playoffs in this league, so the best record at the end of the season wins it all. After three straight years of finishing in 2nd place, they’ve gained a very online and very British nickname: The Bottlers (derogatory).

For both the Wings and the Gunners, something deeply psychological has been impacting the players, perhaps stemming from the pressure of having come so close to the prize in years prior, only to fall short repeatedly.

It’s hard not to project some of may anxieties onto these teams, which is part of the magic of sports. This is my reality TV, only the characters stick around from season to season and there are far fewer Summer House affairs or Love Is Blind chicanery.

To put my bottling anxiety into a broader context, I am constantly weighing whether my hopes and dreams in this journalism racket are simply manifestations of the sunk cost fallacy. Going back to when I left my first full-time job in journalism at the Daily Gazette in Schenectady to take a pay cut for a politics reporter gig in New Hampshire for the Keene Sentinel, I have sacrificed a lot in my life around a singular goal.

Giving a presidential campaign my all as a reporter has been my North Star. I have now tried and failed over the past two cycles. When I got hired by Business Insider right before the New Hampshire primary in 2020, I thought that was my chance. There were plans to travel the country and attend both major party conventions in an AirBnB with a team that would eventually compose some of my closest friends in the industry. However, COVID-19 had other ideas.

I regrouped heading into my next job at the Daily Beast in 2022, gearing up for a 2024 campaign where I had every intention of leaving it all out on the field. I started to get some spicy scoops and a breakout viral moment with the Ron DeSantis pudding fingers story, but the looming acquisition of the publication essentially froze the travel budget. I left New York City to set up a one man bureau in Portsmouth, NH, and that certainly paid dividends in the long term. But see the country, I did not. I managed to make it to Iowa for caucus week and then to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Weeks later, I had no choice but to resign given the unethical standards and shady practices of the new regime. Suddenly I was on the sidelines during the most exciting phase of the campaign, and I felt like my journalism career might be over.

Then Leah Feiger at WIRED came knocking, and the next thing I knew, a quick trip out to Detroit for a JD Vance rally and an examination of Elon Musk’s ground game operation catapulted me to a heater of a series on America PAC, the infamous U-Haul van, and what would eventually turn into a full-time job with WIRED. I thought it was my dream job, and somewhere I would stay for years to come. I thought 2028 with WIRED was going to be the chance I had been working this hard for all along. I had the whole White House beat to myself, sourcing at the top of many of the promising Democratic campaigns-in-waiting, and a killer team with Makena Kelly and Tori Elliott working alongside me.

Then, inevitably over the past few months, the intrusive thoughts came in. What if you were never cut out for this? What if you’re chasing a dream that has never actually been within reach? What if it’s time to give up and try to make some real money?

What if you’re chasing the dragon of a presidential campaign that you won’t even be able to cover, should you get the opportunity, in the way you’ve always wanted?

In looking back at my own evolution over whether I was still cut out for this, and in observing how Arsenal and the Red Wings react to adversity, I’ve come to the belief that I am not, in fact, bottling it. I hope Arsenal aren’t, either. Unfortunately, it’s too late for the Wings, who were eliminated from the playoffs while I was on that family trip in Vegas for the Frozen Four.

But even more so than in the dark days of late 2024, I still feel like however done with the journalism I may feel on any given day, the journalism ain’t done with me. I still get tips. My sources still call me back. I have a valuable network that I can transport with me, one that is not dependent on a prestigious masthead.

“As the old saying goes, we’ve got ourselves a game”

Yet I struggle with something else, and I assume I’m not alone here. In a quasi Tony Soprano way, I often wonder if I got into this business too late.

At dinner last night, my dad made an interesting remark that I took as a compliment. (He’s turning 70 soon, and has seen a thing or two about the way power works over his career in public service).

“You’re either way ahead of your time, or you were born too late,” he said when we were discussing the perilous state of the journalism business.

Maybe I was born too late for the heyday of magazine writing. Maybe my ideas on how to revitalize American journalism — which I largely keep to myself as a 31-year-old nobody with C-tier internet fame — are a little ahead of where the industry has landed in the mid-2020s.

But I also feel like that’s not a bad combo for what the coming years will demand of reporters and the news organizations who support them.

I’m a firm believer that we reporters are stronger together. As successful as some independent newsletter ventures have been, I think the cumulative effect of all of us striking out on our own hurts the craft in the long term. It works very well for some, but I yearn to be on a team. I love helping my colleagues and sharing contacts. I love getting their input on stories. I love the casual office conversations around how reporting is shaking out and how to solve problems in the reporting or writing process. I want to feel like I’m a part of something bigger than myself instead of being in business for myself, at least for now.

In my darkest days since November 5th last year, I feel like I’ve been left for dead on the side of a Mad Max highway, watching the big rigs racing along the road, each determined to be the strongest that shall survive.

Sometimes I think back on how the actor John Doman put it in an iconic ad for the old TV network Versus:

“Here’s the thing that makes life so interesting. The theory of evolution claims only the strong shall survive. And maybe so. Maybe so. But the theory of competition says, just because they’re the strong doesn’t mean they can’t get their asses kicked. That’s right. See, what every long-shot, come from behind underdog will tell you is this: The other guy may in fact be the favorite, the odds may be stacked against you. Fair enough. But what the odds don’t know is, this isn’t a math test. This is a completely different kind of test — one where passion has funny way of trumping logic. So before you step up to the starting line, before the whistle blows, and the clock starts ticking, just remember out here, the results don’t always add up. No matter what the stats may say, and the experts may think, and the commentators may have predicted, when the race is on, all bets are off. Don’t be surprised if somebody decides to flip the script, and take a pass on yelling uncle. And then suddenly, as the old saying goes, we’ve got ourselves a game.”

We’ve got ourselves more than a game with the 2026 midterms and the 2028 election coming up. I just need a coach — or the labor board — to put me back in the game. Whoever gets there first will be rewarded mightily.

The truth might end up being somewhere in between, but this moment is either the peak of Nvidia’s influence, or it’s just the beginning for a CEO accumulating a level of power closer to that of a nation state than a chip company.

I was very excited when Transformer reached out to me about story ideas, and one of the first two I thought of was this angle on the Trump-Jensen relationship, particularly in the aftermath of the company’s H200 chips being allowed into China. Back when I was at WIRED, I began picking up on some discontent around the CEO and the way he uses his direct line to Trump. However, I would later learn that I had no clue it was this bad.

Elon Musk was the foil for the populist wing of the GOP at the outset of Trump 2.0, but Huang has proven to be a savvy operator who, as Trump would say, has the cards. His chips are underpinning much of the AI boom and much of the US economy. The company is going gangbusters on capital expenditures and acquisitions or acuihires and continuing to impress Wall Street analysts relative to expectations.

Meanwhile, my sources have just about had it with what they see as Huang’s undercutting of the administration’s posture against China. In the piece, I mention this quote that the CEO gave on a podcast as a particularly glaring example of what is pissing these folks off so much:

“As you know, there’s a phrase, and I didn’t hear about this phrase until just a few years ago. ‘China Hawks.’ And apparently, if you’re a China Hawk, you get to wear that label with pride. It’s almost like a badge of honor. It’s a badge of shame. There’s no question. It’s a badge of shame.”

What my sources are picking up on is hubris.

And if hubris could be distilled into one data visualization, it would probably be this one from the Wall Street Journal’s latest investigation on Nvidia and its major deals.

Should there be an AI bust in store for the US economy, Nvidia will probably be fine — at the very least, in better shape than many of the other tech giants in the magnificent seven, and especially compared to the AI startups posting massive valuations. However, the political headwinds facing the AI industry are significant, and my spidey senses tell me that data centers will be a bigger issue in the midterms than we can imagine right now.

If one is judging Huang solely by how well he has been able to work the Trump administration and cement his company as central to the US economy, he couldn’t get higher marks. But what if Nvidia is a distillation of how the tech right is operating off of the assumption that, as a practical matter, it’s now or never, and they need to rack up as many policy wins as possible before the midterms and the 2028 election?

What if they believe the odds of the GOP being near-doomed are high enough to warrant whatever brazen tactics are necessary in the meantime?

That’s what I’m interested in reporting on in the coming months, among other things. (I will be down in Miami tomorrow for a very exciting story you’ll be able to read in several months, so stay tuned there.)

Now is not the time to be shy: if you are in the rooms and the group chats where these decisions are being made, message me on Signal at Leak2Lahut.26. If someone in your social network is involved with these companies or the White House, send them my way. Do they serve on a board or hang out with rich people who know things? Send those people my way too.

Anonymity guaranteed, as well as quality reporting without fear or favor.

Thank you for your continued support, especially from paid subscribers. You made this reporting possible by helping with upfront costs, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

There are few figures in that space more influential than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has made the most of a direct line to President Donald Trump.

Not everyone in the president’s orbit is happy about it.

Read more here on the tensions at play, and why nobody seems able to do anything about one of the most important relationships in global politics:

Transformer

Not everyone’s happy about Jensen Huang’s direct line to Trump

Nvidia has drastically ramped up its spending on lobbying in Washington, but the center of gravity for its influence operation lies in a much more personal relationship, the one between President Donald Trump and the chip company’s CEO, Jensen Huang…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Jake Lahut

This warrants some brief analysis.

Trump loves talking about the ballroom. While that’s nothing new, it’s worth delving into how he got here on this particular occasion. The president was mostly fielding questions from the press pool about the war in Iran. Right before he got into the ballroom, he said he was surprised the economy isn’t doing worse, lamenting how high the stock market was when deciding the US had to intervene in Iran, as much as “I hate to make this excursion.” (Trump reportedly prefers the term excursion to incursion because he believes it sounds better, per Swin & co. at Zeteo.) The president would later make a joke about Pearl Harbor, in front of the Japanese PM.

But what got Trump riffing about the ballroom, exactly?

It was a question about Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Trump cut the reporter off when noting Powell plans to stay in his post until the Department of Justice ends its probe into a renovation on the fed campus.

It was a very long tangent from Trump, but the basic implication the president made was that he is a better and more efficient builder than the chairman of the federal reserve.

Much to the frustration of some Trump advisers and aides, the president can’t stop talking about his ballroom. It serves as something between a rhetorical crutch and a happy place, made all the more jarring by the very serious backdrop of the war with Iran.

While the objective of the war may not be clear, Trump is laser focused on the mission at hand with this ballroom.

“He’s building a complex over there that’s under his jurisdiction, he started it, and it’s out of control… I could have done that building and made it beautiful for $25 million — and it would have been beautiful,” Trump said of Powell as the Japanese prime minister attempted to appear as if this was all entirely normal. “Look at what I’ve done at the White House, fixing it up. The place was in bad shape. You see the floors and every that [sic.] — it was in bad shape. I could have made that building beautiful for $25 million. They’re spending $4 billion? Alright. So there is criminality. Maybe it’s with the contractor, because I know more about contractors than maybe any human being that’s ever lived.”

It’s quite notable that Trump is talking about the efficiency of money spent during a war that quickly approached $13 billion by day six. But there’s a more fundamental dynamic going on there that has faded away since Trump’s first term.

At just shy of 80-years-old, Trump still conceives of his core competency as that of a builder. It was central to the image of his first campaign, despite the more complicated nature of the Trump family business, which became more and more about licensing deals than actual construction management over the years.

But after over a decade of this, we’ve arrived at a point where Trump’s insistence on wanting to focus on the fun parts of being president is colliding with a potentially protracted foreign conflict and global energy crisis. The result, for a man increasingly focused on his legacy, will be the indelible image of an ornate ballroom left for his successor.

The ballroom has become both a gravitational pull on Trump’s focus as well as the most way-too-on-the-nose metaphor of his second term.

We don’t know how this war is going to end, or what will come of the MAGA movement and Trump’s grip on the Republican Party once he’s out of office. But there will be a ballroom to show for it, and on days like today, it’s stark how much historical weight and symbolism this particular home makeover will hold for years to come.

For all the things I’ve seen on this beat, it was still genuinely striking to see a president preoccupied with his ballroom amid the highest of stakes, with a war on the side.

This time, however, the news peg at hand might not sit too well with the MAGA base.

It’s Team Trump, and we’re asking every SINGLE Trump supporter who stands with President Trump and our brave U.S. troops in carrying out this mission to let us know by signing the Official Trump Supporter List NOW!

Now is not the time to sit out.

In the box where supporters on the email list can sign the petition, suggested donation amounts from the PAC Never Surrender Inc. range from $26 and $47 — because of course — all the way up to $3,300.

Never Surrender had $38,538,064 in cash on hand by the end of 2025. It’s technically a leadership PAC, and effectively a rebrand of the 2024 Trump campaign. It also serves as a way for Trump to pay himself by using the PAC to rent out space at Mar-a-Lago for events.

The other major Trump PAC, MAGA Inc., is the one I reported on last year for its role in hosting the unprecedented paid dinners scheme at Mar-a-Lago: $1 million per head at a table, or $5 million for a company’s CEO or other designated leader to meet with Trump one-on-one.

Trump also had a statement included in the Iran-focused fundraising blast.

“Iran rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions and we can’t take it anymore.

For these reasons the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation, to prevent this very wicked radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

There was also some quintessential Trump 2.0 saber rattling included.

We’re doing this for the future and it is a noble mission.

We pray for every servicemember as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by nuclear armed Iran.

To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say that you must lay down all your weapons and have complete immunity or you will face certain death.

It remains unclear how this “immunity” would work, given the lack of US troops or some sort of other intermediary such as the United Nations on the ground in Iran, where the Revolutionary Guard very much remains in power.

As Jason Bateman’s character in “Dodgeball,” Pepper Brooks, would put it: “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ‘em.”