Democrats are up in arms after a so-called polling firm that projected far-left candidates as strong contenders in several primaries admitted that it had fabricated its polling data. Wedgewood Polling, which billed itself as an election survey company, released a statement Tuesday night admitting it used "fabricated numbers" for an "experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry." The group's polls were cited by Abdul El-Sayed's campaign amid a high-profile primary race against Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich. The nonpartisan polling aggregator Political Polls also cited Wedgewood in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, showing socialist Francesca Hong having an edge over Republican candidate Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.
The US State Department is preparing to issue an ordered departure of some personnel and family members from US embassies across the Gulf region, three US officials said on Wednesday. The move was due to a possible resumption of hostilities, particularly with Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen, two of the US officials said.
President Donald Trump's approval rating has hit a record low. Democratic enthusiasm levels are off the charts. The party holds a clear edge on the generic congressional ballot question. By most measures, the polls point to something like a blue wave this November. The question, for many, is whether they can be trusted.
A widespread cybersecurity emergency unfolded across the global internet Wednesday after security researchers and the PHP Foundation disclosed two critical vulnerabilities residing in the core runtime of the PHP programming language.
President Trump on Tuesday again complimented the backside of Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), something he has done multiple times on the campaign trail as the midterms near. "I looked at his a, and then I looked at his legs, and my " I said, His a is like, it's like a pile of muscle.' Then I looked at his legs, and I said, Man, his feet are big,'" Trump said during a rally in North Carolina, talking about Husted, who is locked in a tight race with former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Trump's approval numbers are at record lows as voters are angry about the war in Iran and the resulting rise in gas prices and overall inflation. Corruption in government is also a top concern down the midterm homestretch.
A Venezuelan billionaire secured a pardon from President Donald Trump after his family gave Trump's former attorney at least $50 million, The New York Times reported on Tuesday night. Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian businessman, struck a lenient plea agreement in August 2025 after being accused of attempting to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico in 2022. Herrera ended up pleading guilty to one misdemeanor campaign finance violation. Early this year, Trump pardoned him altogether shortly after Herrera's family arranged for Habba to join a law firm that was registered in 2025. The Times said Herrera deployed his attorney, Christopher Kise, who was previously Trump's personal lawyer, to help lobby for the pardon. Herrera's daughter, a U.S. citizen, had given $3.5 million to a Trump-connected super PAC.
"These schemes siphoned millions from taxpayers and robbed struggling Americans of the benefits they depend on, so fraudsters could use them for their own selfish purposes," U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said. The latest cases bring the amount of SNAP fraud identified by Vance's anti-fraud task force to approximately $641 million, according to administration figures.
Elon Musk has said he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, his two biggest companies. "Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said during a call with financial analysts to discuss SpaceX's latest results on Tuesday. While Musk noted it could not be assumed a merger will go ahead, and it would need shareholders' support, he said special committees within both companies had been formed to examine the move. "The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there's no guarantee that they will," he said. "But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained." With Tesla valued at roughly $1.5 trillion (1.1 trillion) and SpaceX at $2 trillion, a combination of the two companies would mark one of the largest mergers in history.
Trump also tied his promise to resolve the remaining claims to the outcome of next month's midterm elections, telling the crowd that Republicans must retain control of Congress. "If we don't win, there's no money," he said. "If we do win, you're getting it. It's gonna be finally over with that nightmare that's been going on for so many years. We will never abandon the heroes who served America."
Thousands of North Carolina midterm ballots are set to be rejected over minor technical issues after a federal court upheld strict new Republican-backed rules for mail voters, according to data shared exclusively with Democracy Docket. Some Democratic strongholds are seeing rejection rates as high as 7-8%, the data show.
We now embark on an election that astounds. It will decide, in North Carolina and across the nation, whether we are to live, as our forebears prescribed, in a free nation and society. Or, instead, whether we will surrender our heritage, mission, and birthright, in favor of a government of corruption, venality, brutality, and despotism. The Declaration of Independence set forth our national aspirations, our defining charge. It also said, after listing a long set of George III's compact-breaking transgressions, that "a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." Unfit he is. This all know. All.
Trump is back in his happy place, out on the campaign trail, voicing whichever disconnected thoughts crackle and fizz through his frontal cortex. His favorite rhetorical theme lately is an unexpected one: the official presidential dreamboat rankings. In multiple rallies, Trump has gone on and on about the relative hotness of male politicians, soldiers, and even protesters. As a result, people on the internet have diagnosed him with a novel medical condition: gay dementia. After putting in a solid shift in the heterosexuality mines, has the former beauty-pageant proprietor now become so disinhibited that he can no longer repress his thirst for man-flesh? Read more
"The world should accept some bad things happening," Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, "for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency."
Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it's incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things.
Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections.
People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle.
Fasten Your Seatbelts 2026 could be the beginning of the end. Read more
