News

THE REGRET COUNT

Retiring Sen. Tillis admits the Hegseth vote was a mistake and Trump's impeachment was legitimate.

By LouOne More Question · the milkman edition, 6 October 2026

Let me read you the whole list. It won't take long.

September 2nd: the senator posts online that the secretary of defense has been running the Pentagon with "inept management," and calls, again, for the president to fire him.

September 18th: the senator goes further. Of the same man he voted to confirm, he says, "He needs to go," and he says he'd support an impeachment resolution to make that happen.

September 27th: the senator calls the president's own endorsement in a Texas Senate primary a "colossal mistake."

October 5th: the senator's new book, on shelves this week, calls his vote to confirm that same secretary "the biggest regret of my career."

October 6th: the senator sits down with a television interviewer and calls the president's own impeachment, the one over January 6th, "weighty," and a legitimate "vote of no confidence."

That's the list. Five things, five weeks, one senator. I'm not going to add anything to it. I just want to ask about it, the way I'd ask about a car that starts fine on Tuesday and won't turn over on Wednesday — same car, same driveway, same key.

Here's what I keep in the garage: a coffee can of mismatched bolts, every size, no two alike. When something doesn't thread right, I don't blame the bolt. I blame myself for grabbing the wrong one out of the can. That's regret, the kind I understand. You pick wrong, you own it, you reach for a different one next time.

Is that what's in the book? The senator isn't saying he reached for the wrong part. He's saying the part he installed with his own hands, the one he voted to certify fit for the job, turned out defective. Can a man call his own confirmation vote the biggest regret of his career and still trust the process that produced the vote in the first place?

And here's the other thing I keep circling back to, the way you circle a parking lot looking for your own car. The vote he regrets, in his own words, was "the biggest regret of my career." The other vote, the one over January 6th, he calls weighty, and a legitimate "vote of no confidence." Can one vote be the biggest regret of a career, and the other a legitimate judgment, and both of those get held by the same man, in the same week, on his way out the door?

I don't know. I'm asking.

Oh — hold on, one more thing, before you put the book down. I almost walked right past it, same as I almost miss the exit every time. Not this year, not ever, as far as the record shows. He's not asking you for a vote anymore. He's asking you to buy a book.

So here's the last question, and I think the answer to it is sitting in the receipts, not in my head: when a man calls one of his party's defining votes a mistake, and the other one legitimate, on his way out a door he's already decided to walk through — who exactly is left to pay for either opinion now?

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THE SELF-PROBE

Georgia's Republican-run election board asks Trump's Justice Department to investigate Georgia's elections, which it also runs

By MitchInvestigations · the milkman edition, 6 October 2026

This week, the president found an election problem.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump criticized election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, after about 3,000 ballots went out to voters a few days early. That is the whole error: ballots mailed sooner than the schedule called for. The president wants eyes on how counties run elections. Fair enough.

Four days earlier, another set of Republican officials reached for the same remedy — on themselves.

On October 2, Georgia's State Election Board, which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports is Republican-led, sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche. The ask: that the Department of Justice put "additional security measures" on Georgia's voting machines before the midterms. All together now — read the letterhead. It says State Election Board. Read the signature line: James Mills, executive director. Read the address: Georgia. Read the agency being asked to step in: the Department of Justice, under an administration run by the same party that runs that board. The board that certifies Georgia's machines is the board asking someone else to check Georgia's machines.

The letter does not explain why the body that already oversees the system needs a second body to oversee it. It does not have to. Mills signed it. Blanche received it. That is the complete transaction, filed just over a month before voters go to the polls.

And on October 1, the Guardian reported the administration has stepped back from the security bodies built to investigate actual foreign and domestic threats to elections, while administration officials stayed actively focused on unsubstantiated claims of fraud by noncitizens. The threats got less attention. The letterhead got more.

So read it again, clause by clause: the party that runs Georgia's elections asked the party that runs the Justice Department to investigate Georgia's elections. Both parties are the same party. The investigation, should it happen, will be conducted by the people being investigated, at the request of the people being investigated, into the system the people being investigated already run.

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THE SWAP

Trump promises to stop taxpayer-funded self-glorification ads, then funds the same ads through his own super PAC.

By ChipStaff Writer · the breakfast edition, 6 October 2026

On Monday night, President Trump told a rally in Nebraska that high prices from the Iran war were "a small price to pay for keeping the world safe." By the end of the night, he had put a price on something else: his own face on television. The president announced he would stop using taxpayer money for the pro-Trump ads running across the country, calling the spots "a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A." and "a rather standard thing to do." Then, in the same post, he said his political committee, MAGA, Inc., would pay instead.

The ads themselves were never the question. By October 1, the same kind of ad was running on CNN and MS NOW, the two networks Trump's White House had tried to bar from its own grounds weeks earlier. By then, the money trail had been traced: Homeland Security funds, the same drawer that pays for border enforcement, redirected to pay for a montage of the president at rallies and sporting events. House Democrats asked federal watchdogs to investigate. Senate Republicans, who otherwise approve of the message, warned him off touching that particular pot of cash.

What changed Monday was not the ads. It was the invoice.

So the taxpayer is out the millions already spent airing the spots on five networks, and the president's donors are now on the hook for the sequel — money raised, by his own account, for MAGA, Inc., not for the government. Nothing about who appears in the ad changed. Nothing about which channels carry it changed. Only the account number did. That is not a reform. That is bookkeeping performed in public, as if moving a charge from one card to another were the same thing as deciding not to buy it.

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Hochul says the system failed her; its verdict on her own story is 'a bad look for her.'

By LouOne More Question · the breakfast edition, 6 October 2026

How many sexual assault cases did the federal civil rights office resolve this year, against last year, under this administration? I already know. I didn't even have to dig for it this morning — I had it from a page I filled out a different day. Give me a second, I know it's in here... here. Fewer. The New York Times says fewer resolved this year than the year before, same office, same law, different list of priorities. Not fewer complaints filed. Fewer resolved. I read that twice before I believed I'd copied it down right.

I should back up, because this didn't start this week. Cornell sat on an allegation that a student was raped at a fraternity house in October of 2024, and sat on it for close to two years before anyone outside the university held a title tied to it. On September 28th a congresswoman stood at a town hall in Ithaca and used the words "culture of rape." Two days later a senator asked for "no stone unturned." On October 2nd, the student's lawyer told a reporter she was "incapable of consent" that night, and the next day the same lawyer used a different word on camera: "cover-up." I wrote both of those down on the same page, one after the other, because they came one after the other.

Here's the part that's new to me, the part I'm still turning over. Failed — her word, or close enough that the paper put it in quotes. I don't know what she meant by it exactly. Did she mean the campus police? The fraternity's own process? I can't tell you, I only have the one word written down. But I can tell you what ran in a column the same week, about the same woman, from a writer at a magazine that isn't short on opinions: that her own account, on its own, is "a bad look for her." Not the men's account. Hers.

So which one of those is the system the governor was talking about? Is it possible they're the same one?

I think about the toll plaza near my house on the days I'm not thinking about any of this. There's a cash lane and there's the lane with the sensor, and every so often a ticket doesn't scan and the gate doesn't lift and the car behind you lays on the horn like that's going to fix the sensor. The thing that's supposed to resolve the transaction just — doesn't, and everybody downstream of it pays for that one broken reader in time they didn't plan to spend. I don't know why I think of that lane and not another one. Maybe because "resolved" is a word I used to only hear from a parking attendant.

The same office with fewer sexual assault cases resolved this year — the paper says it changed what it spends its time on, moved its attention toward blocking protections for transgender students and away from allegations like this one. That's not me saying it. That's the sentence as filed. I just have the one question about it: is that where the hours went that used to go toward finishing a case like Jane Doe's?

Oh — excuse me, before you go. One more thing, and then I'll let you get on with your morning. The op-ed calling her own story "a bad look for her" ran on October 6th. So did the story about the office resolving fewer of these cases than it used to. Same morning, two different pages, same subject. I don't have a theory about that. I just have the two dates, and I wrote them down right next to each other, and I can't make myself cross either one out. Resolved, is the word I keep landing on — or I guess, now, the word I keep landing on is unresolved. Sorry. Same page. Different column.

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Trump doxes the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman's cellphone to pass a bill about clocks

By SalStaff Writer · the breakfast edition, 6 October 2026

The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House in July and then did what bills about clocks tend to do once they reach the Senate: it waited. Canada did not wait. Less than a week later, the Northwest Territories announced the same policy, and two Canadian jurisdictions had finished the job the United States Senate still had not started.

On October 2nd, with the Senate about to leave Washington for recess, he posted at length urging Republicans to pass the bill before they left town. The Senate did not take it up. On October 3rd he tried something no clock bill has required before: he posted what appeared to be Sen. Tom Cotton's personal cellphone number on Truth Social and told the public to call it. "Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill," he wrote. "For some reason, Tom..." The post ends there, mid-sentence, which is its own kind of answer.

Cotton chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. The senator whose committee decides what the government classifies had his own number handed to the public by the president, over a dispute about whether the sun sets at 4:30 or 5:30. He did not fold. By this week he was warning Arkansas about dark winter mornings, Fox News had the bill stuck at what it called a Senate wall, and The Hill was reporting the episode had thrown, in its words, "an unexpected twist" into Cotton's own reelection race back home.

Here's what the walk actually measures. A president who could not move a sitting committee chairman with the office, the party whip, or the bully pulpit reached for the one lever that still worked on him personally: publish the number, let strangers do the pressuring. It worked well enough to make news, and not well enough to move a vote. The number that mattered this week belonged to a senator with a staff, a security detail, and a campaign account to absorb the noise. The next number posted like this might not.

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ActBlue starts checking donor passports, five weeks after a board member took the Fifth on foreign cash

By MitchInvestigations · the breakfast edition, 6 October 2026

All together now — September 1. A House committee is asking ActBlue's board about allegations of foreign money moving through the platform. Board member Kimberly Peeler-Allen is asked questions under that inquiry and invokes her Fifth Amendment right rather than answer them. The record states only that: an invocation, on the record, in a probe about alleged foreign donations. I am not going to tell you what question she was dodging. The filing doesn't say, and I only report what's in the filing.

Twenty days later, the story gets worse for ActBlue in a different building. A probe that started with a board member's silence now has the company's own files saying the quiet part in writing.

Four days after that, a second government office picks up the thread. Missouri's attorney general opens her own investigation and sends ActBlue civil investigative demands — official paper asking for the donation-processing and fraud-prevention records themselves. Not a question to a witness this time. A subpoena to a filing cabinet.

All together now — line one of the new policy, October 6, eleven days after the attorney general's letter went out: ActBlue announces passport verification for donors. A document requiring a passport, where none was required before, for donations where nobody had previously needed a passport.

I'm not accusing the company of anything. I'm reading you its own press release, in order, against its own calendar. Nobody at ActBlue has said the words "we were worried where the money was coming from." They didn't need to. A board member invoked a constitutional right instead of answering a congressional committee. A House investigation said the company's internal memos show foreign-flagged donations got approved anyway. A state attorney general demanded the records. And then, days after the memos became public, the company started asking donors for their passports.

The compliance program speaks. Everyone else, so far, has taken the Fifth.

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Alito recuses from the oil case he won't explain, then publishes a book crediting his own courage.

By LouOne More Question · the breakfast edition, 6 October 2026

What's the least a person can do and still get credit for doing something? I already know the answer. Bare minimum. Not my phrase — the one critics used, in print, the same week Justice Alito stepped away from the Suncor case. Give me a second, I wrote it down... here. Common Dreams, September 29th: "bare minimum," given his ties to the oil industry, after years of being asked to recuse. The Washington Examiner, the day before, says he offered no explanation when he did it — just stepped back, a week ahead of oral arguments. No reason given. Written down twice, two papers.

The case is Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil on one side, Boulder County, Colorado, on the other. ABC News calls it killer beetles and tinderbox forests — their words — meaning whether the oil companies owe Boulder for what a warming climate did to those forests: dried them to kindling, fed the beetles the rest. That's the fight Alito stepped out of. The one where his critics counted a conflict.

I've got a car in the driveway that's needed a fan belt for three weeks. Haven't popped the hood. You know what stepping away looks like when you mean it? You hand somebody the keys and walk to the corner store instead. You know what it looks like when you don't mean it all the way? You still own the car. You just don't drive it that one week, and the keys stay in your pocket the whole time.

Same week he's not touching that case, Justice Alito's got a book out. "So Ordered," Tuesday, speeches he's given over twenty years — The Hill has the release date. The pitch, straight off The Federalist, who got the early copy: he "challenges Americans to be courageous citizens." Courage. That's the word on the jacket. I'm putting that word down on the porch for a second and coming back to it — I promise myself, just once tonight.

October 2nd, four days before the book, CBS sits him down with Jan Crawford, and two things come out of that same interview. One: overturning Roe took "courage" from the six conservative justices — his word, his own vote, on camera. Two, same interview, same date: he talks about retiring. No perfect time for it, he says. He'll reconsider again next year. The Washington Examiner adds the part that rattles around my glovebox: he's 76, the Senate's in Republican hands, and that makes — their words — for a "smoother path" to confirming whoever replaces him. He said so himself. He's staying anyway.

So: the recusal, the 29th, no explanation. The interview, the 2nd, "courage" twice over — his own vote, his own book's spine. The book, Tuesday, twenty years of speeches on abortion, originalism, threats to the judiciary, and more, filed under courageous. Twenty years on that bench, since 2006, appointed by President Bush. That part I remember without the notebook.

Oh — hold on, before you go, one more thing. I'll apologize up front, because I already spent a minute on that word tonight and I try not to repeat myself in print. Different word this time, same idea: nerve. The book's full of it, by his own account — nerve enough to overturn Roe, nerve enough to put his name on a jacket that calls it courageous. The recusal from Suncor came with no explanation at all, Washington Examiner, Monday the 28th, I wrote it down myself. So which one of those two things — the book, or the one case he walked away from without a word — is actually running short on nerve?

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ZERO TRANSFERS

Britain 'punishes' Israel with sanctions that have not suspended a single weapons license

By ChipStaff Writer · the coffee break edition, 6 October 2026

Twelve B-1B bombers lifted off from RAF Fairford over the weekend and flew home to American soil. The Pentagon confirmed it Sunday — the same aircraft that struck Iran, gone a week after British police arrested five men near the base on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. The White House itself called it a "threat" worth acting on.

Tuesday's piece puts it plainly: rewarded for saving lives with sanctions. It is a clean, emotionally sound argument. A country does you a favor, you punish it for it. Except — hold on, back up. The sanctions in question are the settlement sanctions Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced last month, aimed at Israel's illegal West Bank settlements, including a weapons-shipment component. That program predates the Fairford arrests entirely. It was not issued "for" saving British lives; it was issued in September, over Gaza and the occupation, and the Fairford arrests came after.

And here is the second collapse, the one that actually guts the "rewarded" framing: according to disclosures made to Parliament, reported by Declassified UK and run by Common Dreams on September 24, the sanctions regime has not actually suspended or revoked a single weapons license. None. Britain announced a punishment and then, by its own paperwork, did not punish anything that ships. The premise — Israel helped, Britain hurt them for it — requires a hurt that the government's own disclosures say never arrived.

The live fight in Britain isn't whether Israel is being punished too hard. It's whether anything at all has actually stopped shipping.

Count the licenses suspended by the new sanctions regime: zero. That's the number the "rewarded with sanctions" headline needs a reader not to go looking for.

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