So That’s Where Those Mailers Are Coming From. The facts are true, the imagery is kinda stark for Delaware. That’s b/c the ads didn’t come from Delaware:
A progressive political action committee backing a slate of Delaware legislative candidates filed a long-delayed state campaign finance report last week that revealed nearly half a million dollars in political advocacy, but did not disclose who funded it.
An official from the WFP National PAC said it omitted its donors because Delaware regulators told the group that the disclosure was not required as long as it filed separately with the Federal Elections Commissions.
Delaware Department of Elections spokeswoman Cathleen Hartsky-Carter called that a “misunderstanding.” She also noted that the state fined the PAC for filing last week’s report late. (Seriously, Matt, the Department of Elections royally sucks.)
Despite the omitted donors, the report did outline how the WFP National PAC — an arm of the national Working Families Party — spent $455,000 during the past month to support six candidates for the Delaware legislature, five of whom are challenging incumbent Democrats.
The spending comes as Delaware’s Democratic primary has increasingly become a front in a national battle over the party’s identity. Much of the recent fight in Delaware has centered on last year’s reforms to the state’s corporate law — which sets the rules for how the 2 million companies domiciled in the state are governed.
Among the incumbents targeted by the WFP’s campaign is Rep. Kim Williams (D-Newport) who recounted in an interview how she chuckled when first hearing about ads that linked her with Musk.
Did I mention that the facts, at least in the mailers I’ve received, are true? These legislators did Musk’s bidding. That is incontrovertible.
Dark Money Permeates The System–Thanks To Citizens’ United:
All across America, the midterm elections are drowning in dark money.
A New York Times review of advertising data, campaign-finance filings and tax records revealed that about $1 billion in anonymous money is sloshing through the political landscape in 2026, a staggering sum and yet almost certainly a low-end estimate, given how difficult this money is to trace.
It is impossible to know the full scale of this spending. The Times’s tally of the $1 billion includes only what is publicly available, primarily television and digital ad purchases and donations to super PACs from nonprofit groups. These groups also fund political activity that is more difficult to track, such as direct mail, hiring influencers to boost favorable content or deploying door-knockers for causes that are not technically campaigns.
Yet the sum is more than “enough money to manipulate a lot of politicians and to put a lot of poison in the blood of the American political system,” said Nick Penniman, the chief executive of Issue One, a group that has sought to reduce the role of money in politics.
Just this month, one Wyoming group with a thin paper trail dating only to this spring, Choose Freedom Inc., sprang into action to reserve about $22 million in ads to boost Republicans in two dozen battleground House and Senate races. The next day, another Republican-linked nonprofit rolled out a $22 million campaign in 41 House districts. On Thursday, a nonprofit called Per Aspera Policy Inc. emerged from obscurity to place a $3.7 million ad buy praising the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio.
All of it involved untraceable cash.
All of it, I might add, legalized by the Supreme Court.
Freedom Isn’t Free–But Freedom Fuel Was To Those Who Stole It:
The Freedom Fuel Network made national headlines back in July when President Donald Trump praised the gas station chain for selling fuel at steeply discounted prices. A lawsuit by a Georgia-based fuel supplier alleges that some of the gas sold through the network was never paid for.
In a federal suit filed on Aug. 19, Mansfield Oil of Gainesville said that businessman Syed Kazmi and his company, KRSM, obtained more than 1.1 million gallons of fuel from a Pennsylvania supply terminal between May and July. When Mansfield sent the invoice for the fuel in July, amounting to about $4 million, the bill went unpaid, the suit claims.
The suit further alleges that KRSM sold a portion of the fuel to stations in the Freedom Fuel Network. The suit does not name Freedom Fuel Network as a defendant or accuse the company of wrongdoing.
In early July, Freedom Fuel sold gas at $3.47 a gallon in honor of President Donald Trump’s status as 47th president at 25 stations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey — a steep discount to prices at other stations in the area.
Trump touted the move as evidence that American consumers would soon be back to seeing “record low prices” at the pump, despite rising fuel prices in the wake of the U.S. war with Iran.
This is the Trump business modus operandi in a nutshell: Don’t pay for stuff, litigate the shit out of it.
Brass Tells Hegseth: ‘War Is Unsustainable’:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s top military brass has now privately warned him directly: His war in Iran is unsustainable and is draining America’s ability to defend itself from threats elsewhere—and at home.
On Sunday morning, the Washington Post published a scoop describing a classified assessment by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as top commanders from across three continents, contained in a twice-monthly report called the Secretary of Defense Orders Book.
The main point, according to the reporting, is that President Trump wants to keep all his options open, including the ability to attack Iran again—extending a large deployment of troops kept at the ready and limiting the ability to train and run missions elsewhere. That prompted the concern, formally known as a “non-concur,” from Hegseth’s commanders, according to the Post:
As President Donald Trump has pressured Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept several U.S. provisions for ending the stalemated conflict, he has been adamant that all options remain available to him — including further military action. Consequently, U.S. Central Command, the headquarters responsible for prosecuting the Iran war, has kept a force of more than 50,000 troops on alert for months in case the president orders additional attacks.
Guess it’s time for more firings of the brass by Hegseth.
A Methane Mitigator? Some progress, but not from Trump:
Turkmenistan has started plugging the mega-leaks of methane that spew from its ageing oil and gas facilities, the latest UN data shows, in a move hailed as a breakthrough.
Methane, also called natural or fossil gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and causes 25% of global heating today. Stopping leaks can be quick and cheap and, because methane breaks down in the atmosphere far quicker than CO2, this has a rapid impact, with some experts calling it the climate “emergency brake”.
The Guardian revealed in 2023 that Turkmenistan was the worst country for methane mega-leaks. Sources in Turkmenistan said this scrutiny was the “critical step” in leading the secretive and authoritarian government to engage with foreign partners.
A “super-emitter” leak, the escape of tonnes of methane per hour from a single valve or pipeline, heats the planet more than the emissions from a million SUVs or an entire coal-fired power station.
Turkmenistan had now stopped eight leaks by repairing corroded pipes, faulty wells and failing flares. The work was an “incredible first step”, said the UN, but much remained to be done.
The UN Methane Alert and Response System (Mars) sent 192 alerts of methane plumes to Turkmenistan in the last year. The country had three of the six worst leaks detected in the world by Mars in last six months, and nine of the top 50.
Turkmenistan responded to about 20% of the alerts with on-the-ground information about the leaks and potential plans to fix them. In contrast, the US was sent the second highest number of alerts – 138 – but responded to none and had fixed no leaks in the last year. Other nations that failed to respond to any alerts were Iran, Russia and China.
The previous US administration, under President Joe Biden, did engage with Mars and one small leak in New Mexico was fixed in 2024 after a pressure safety valve was repaired. But this engagement ended with the second presidency of Donald Trump. Last year, Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at the UN general assembly.
Mexico, Brazil and Argentina have 100% response rates to Mars alerts, while Libya and Azerbaijan have high response rates.
What do you want to talk about?
