Professor G Markets

2026-11-09 · open the original ↗

• He reads last Tuesday's midterms as a Democratic wave that left him hopeful. Scott calls the result a "blue tsunami" and a "political earthquake"; returning to Minneapolis the day after, to the memorials of Alex Pretti and Renée Good that he calls his "personal ground zero" for these midterms, he describes seeing changes "wrought in their memory." In March he and Kara Swisher had held an event there benefiting the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in their honor.
• He says one Texas House seat saw the country's biggest swing. He reports that Texas' 15th district, won by Representative-elect Bobby Pulido (D-TX), saw the largest red-to-blue swing in the country; no margin is given. The rest of the post is promotion: Raging Moderates livestreams with Jessica Tarlov moving to every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and a 26%-off Prof G+ offer ahead of his paid-only 2027 Predictions on December 7.

2026-11-09 · open the original ↗

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2026-11-09 · open the original ↗

• The midterms were a historic Democratic wave, still growing as counts finish. The post reports Democrats on track for the largest House victory by either party in half a century; the six red-state Senate seats they flipped went to Trump by an average of 13 points (14 if Scott Colom wins in Mississippi); three in four Americans will have a Democratic governor; 7% of Republican voters switched and Democrats won 6 in 10 independents; and there are 22 Democratic state trifectas, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Alaska. These are early, partly uncounted figures — Virginia Foxx, for one, trailed by 99 votes at writing — and likely to be revised.
• Trump himself conceded the Iran War and ICE cost Republicans. The post reports he said so on 60 Minutes the night before publication, and names him the week's biggest loser.
• Record GOP spending failed to buy statewide races. Citing AdImpact, the post puts total spending at a record $11.87 billion; Republicans outspent Democrats in nine of ten competitive Senate races, by $100 million or more in Texas, Ohio and Georgia. In Texas the GOP gap was nearly half a billion dollars, $224 million of it from Elon Musk, yet James Talarico flipped the Senate seat by 12 and Gina Hinojosa the governorship by 7; self-funders fared no better, with Vivek Ramaswamy losing by 8 after loaning his campaign $41 million and Georgia billionaire Rick Jackson losing by 8 after spending $220 million.
• Badly outspent Democrats won House and even state-legislative seats. In New York's 17th, $60 million in ad spending (the second most expensive House general ever) didn't save Rep. Mike Lawler, who had mocked Cait Conley's fifth-sized war chest; she led by 6 with 95% in. In North Carolina's 14th, LaKesha Womack — still facing felony charges over an unreturned 2019 rental car — raised $59k with no donation over $1,000 against Rep. Tim Moore's $2.1 million and led 51%-49% by 6,415 votes; in Florida's 94th, Elizabeth Holmes raised $53,000 to beat "MAGA Meg" Weinberger's $600,000-plus.
• Money matters, but buying an election doesn't work. The authors' argument is that small-dollar donations signal enthusiasm and fund turnout as well as ads, while billionaire money and a bare fundraising edge failed at every level from the Texas Senate race to a Florida House district — which they call good for democracy.

2026-11-09 · open the original ↗

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2026-11-09 · open the original ↗

• The midterms were a cost-of-living vote that blindsided AI stocks. The post reports Democrats won the House by the biggest midterm popular-vote margin since Watergate, took the Senate, and flipped five governorships in states Trump won in 2024. The Dow rose 3% on Wednesday after Trump accepted the results, its best day in more than a year. On Thursday the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4%, wiping out $2.3 trillion in its worst single-day loss on record, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 12%. The post puts the sell-off down to fears of tougher Democratic regulation and slower data-center construction.
• Voters rejected data centers, which will delay the buildout, not stop it. It reports that 40 of 41 local data-center ballot measures failed, and that over 80% of both Republicans and Democrats backed candidates who favored AI safeguards. Ohio, Georgia and Texas hold more than 40% of planned U.S. capacity, and all three elected Democratic governors who campaigned on stopping or slowing data centers. The post predicts slower, costlier projects. A free commentary passage calls data centers "the worst-managed brand in America," a stand-in for anger at tech billionaires that OpenAI's "compute campuses" rebrand won't fix. Ed's full take on the markets is behind a paywall.
• Neoclouds and the AI IPO pipeline took the hit; hyperscalers may gain. Western Digital fell 17%, SanDisk 22%, and Micron and AMD more than 17% each. CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN have lost nearly 50% in a month, and Bloomberg reported Microsoft is pulling back from some Nebius, IREN and Nscale projects. Kalshi odds of an Anthropic IPO by December 1 briefly fell to 59% from nearly 90%, and Bloomberg said prospective investors value it at $1.1–1.3 trillion rather than the $2 trillion discussed in early October. The post argues that Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, which hold 48% of global capacity, could benefit if delays make their existing data centers more valuable. All of these prices and odds are snapshots that will date quickly.
• The Iran war cost Republicans, but gridlock is the likelier outcome. Nearly three-quarters of Americans called the war a crucial or major factor in their vote, and that group backed Democrats 62% to 35%. Vice President Vance also blamed the war the day after the election. Crude fell 13% and the U.S. aerospace and defense ETF fell 1% on bets the war ends sooner. The post notes Democrats lack a veto-proof majority to defund it, and cites RBC: since 1953, a Republican president with a Democratic Congress has produced the weakest average S&P 500 returns of any party combination.
• Young voters swung Democratic over affordability and Democrats must now deliver. Democratic support rose to 59% from 51% among men under 30, and to 70% from 61% among young women, from 2024 to 2026. In Harvard's fall Youth Poll, 91% called cost of living important to their vote. The post cites inflation rising from 3.0% at Trump's inauguration to 3.7% in September, and labor's share of output at 52.8%, the lowest since 1947. Millennials and Gen Z own only 9.3% of stocks against baby boomers' 54.5%, so record market highs mean little to them. The commentary argues Democrats should tackle generational inequality, for example by equalizing tax rates on income and capital gains or means-testing Social Security, or young voters will turn on them too. Scott's full take is paywalled.

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2026-11-06 · open the original ↗

• A Democratic label alone carried candidates in this midterm. Aaron Parnas argues left and centrist Democrats won alike while independents such as Dan Osborne lost, and says Democrats should invest in the South, citing Louisiana at 1.8 points (closer than Florida) and predicting Scott Colom will flip Mississippi's Senate seat, though the race was not yet called. Jessica Tarlov counters that the brand won as the opposition rather than on its own merits, and says moderates outperformed progressives on margin.
• Aaron expects hostilities with Iran to resume. He cites reporting that Iran is handing out iodine tablets near nuclear sites and a third US aircraft carrier arriving or due in the region; Trump says he will soon choose between all-out war, economic pressure or a deal. Chris Van Hollen's call to shut down the government over the war is called reasonable, but Aaron relays Adam Smith's warning that a shutdown stops service members' pay, while Jessica says voters most loudly demanded an end to the war.
• Trump owns the market slide, not voters. The Nasdaq fell more than 5% Thursday on fears Democrats would crack down on AI and data centers, then rebounded slightly Friday; Trump took credit for Wednesday's rally and blamed voters for the drop, and October added 165,000 jobs. Of 44 ballot initiatives on data-center moratoriums all but North Dakota's passed, and Aaron backs a pause until regulation roots out bad actors, citing a report that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is setting aside federal land for data centers while profiting personally.
• Republican 2028 hopefuls are starting to distance themselves from Trump. Mike Pence's Wall Street Journal op-ed attacks Trump's spending, tariffs and Iran war handling and calls for an end to right-wing economic populism, which Jessica says the election showed animates every voter. Aaron calls the GOP field effectively a two-person race and bets on Marco Rubio.
• Democrats should pair maximal investigations with a forward-looking legislative agenda. Aaron wants Congress to subpoena Trump and Musk associates and hand the record to a future Democratic attorney general, while passing a $15 minimum wage, universal child care, expanded health coverage and a congressional stock-trading ban, possibly ending the filibuster to do it, so Trump is forced to veto or sign. Jessica adds restoring the Medicaid cuts and ACA subsidies as day-one items, and says the 2028 Senate map gives Republicans no pickup opportunities.

2026-11-06 · open the original ↗

• Young men drove the midterm rout as a protest, not loyalty. Citing exit polls, he says young men swung 36 points toward Democrats in two years, more than any cohort, in what he calls the biggest electoral rout since 1974. His argument is that the same grievance that sent them to Trump in 2024 sent them away from Republicans this week, and his warning to winners of both parties is that more such swings follow if change doesn't come. The rest of the post reprints his July 21, 2023 essay; he says some of its numbers have changed but the trend hasn't.
• America's young men are failing, and society is failing them. Per the 2023 essay, boys start school less prepared than girls and are less likely to finish high school or college; one in seven men reports having no friends; and men account for three of every four deaths of despair (suicides and overdoses). By age 27, high school dropouts are four times as likely to be arrested, fired, on government aid or addicted, and he argues that the silence on these issues left a gap filled by misogynist voices.
• The postwar middle class came from deliberate public investment. He describes 1945 fears of a new Depression as 10 million mostly male veterans came home, which instead gave way to 30 years of growth. He credits that to state support: the G.I. Bill funding college for 2 million soldiers, Truman's housing legislation, Eisenhower's highway program (over $500 billion in today's dollars) and a 91% top income tax rate. Gains reached beyond white men: 27 million women joined the workforce in 1950–1980, and Black men's middle-class share rose from 22% in 1940 to 68% in 1970.
• Boys need a later school start, male role models and non-college paths. He backs Richard Reeves's (American Institute of Boys and Men) proposal to "redshirt" boys a year, and wants more male teachers, who are fewer than 1 in 4 today against 1 in 3 in 1980. He also calls for mentoring (he cites mentored kids as twice as likely to hold school leadership roles), for fraternity-style groups, and for vocational training on the German model and Biden's $150 million Apprenticeship Building Program. He would also use taxpayer leverage to make colleges add freshman seats.
• Policy shifts money from young to old, undermining families and demography. He cites financial conflict as the strongest predictor of divorce, and 35-year-olds as having half the wealth they did in 1989 while 75-year-olds have twice as much. He blames NIMBY housing rules, child tax credit rollbacks, preferential capital gains rates, and student debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and he backs extending the child tax credit. The US spends 7% of GDP on seniors against 0.5% on children, and he calls Western population decline the biggest threat to democracy.

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2026-11-04 · open the original ↗

• Scott calls the midterm results a Democratic wave. The post is his reaction the day after election night, calling it a "tsunami" and a "political earthquake" and signing off "the water's blue." It gives no results, races or figures to back that up; the post is a celebration, not an analysis.
• The analysis is pushed to free livestreams and a paid predictions session. Jessica Tarlov and Aaron Parnas join him for free live shows: Raging Moderates on November 4 at 1:30 p.m. ET and November 5 at 2 p.m. ET, then Raging Perspective on November 6 at 12 p.m. ET. His 2027 Predictions are scheduled for December 7 for paid subscribers only, and Prof G+ is 26% off for the week as a midterms discount.

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2026-11-03 · open the original ↗

• The hosts read the data as pointing to a Democratic wave. Reported on air: about 50 million early votes, outpacing the last midterm in key Senate battlegrounds; Democrats passing their entire 2022 Florida turnout by 8:30 a.m.; Kalshi at a 77% Democratic Senate chance with leads in all seven battlegrounds; pollster Lakshya Jain's model at 53–47 Senate and 239–196 House; and the New York Times poll with Abdul El-Sayed up 11 in Michigan (16 under its old methodology). Tarlov notes that unlike the 2024 Selzer poll there are no outliers among high-quality polls; these are pre-result snapshots.
• Record gas prices hit swing voters where Republicans can least afford it. Tarlov cites a record Election Day national average of $4.12 for regular and $6.28 for diesel. Galloway argues men, the swingiest voters, drive about 30% more than women, while recent job growth went to healthcare (70–80% women) and losses hit manufacturing and transportation (70–80% men), with young male college graduates facing high unemployment.
• Democrats should pass an agenda and make Trump veto it. Galloway wants bills on a Medicare option, ACA subsidy relief (citing 40% of households carrying medical or dental debt), a corporate minimum tax, antitrust, Section 230 changes, national service, cutting defense from about $1.5 trillion toward $700–900 billion, and codifying Roe — "from the party of indignance to the party of ideas." Tarlov would lead with affordability rather than investigations, which she thinks energize Republican voters, and build the platform from winning candidates' agendas, since Democrats still poll about 10 points less popular than Republicans nationally.
• Galloway predicts a Democratic Congress will haul Musk before hearings. The likely targets are DOGE, the firing of inspectors general probing his companies, government contracts, and Starlink throttling in Ukraine that Tarlov says Wall Street Journal reporting tied to deliberate decisions. Galloway notes a Trump pardon would not cover state or UK/Canadian prosecution and might undercut his ability to plead the Fifth; Tarlov cautions against attacking the popular "Trump accounts."
• Galloway backs Trump's stated plan to end US aid to Israel. Trump said on Fox that the $4 billion annual aid is cut off at year-end by agreement with Netanyahu; Galloway, calling himself pro-Israel, argues Israel's economy grew from about $40 billion to $700 billion and the aid is effectively a US-arms subsidy not worth the controversy. Tarlov flags under-covered WSJ/AP reporting of Iranian damage to about 24 structures at US bases across seven countries, and both report a media expectation that strikes on Iran resume after the midterms.

2026-11-03 · open the original ↗

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2026-11-02 · open the original ↗

• Scott frames free election-week coverage as a civic obligation. He argues Americans deserve unfettered access to news and analysis, especially in election season, and that an independent media company has a role in providing it; the post announces five free livestreams with Jessica Tarlov and Aaron Parnas, November 2–6, 2026 (Raging Moderates Monday–Thursday, Raging Perspective Friday), plus the free Monday Rage newsletter's "Anxious Democrat's Guide to the Big 11 Races on Election Night" with hour-by-hour timing and early polling guidance.
• Anthropic's S-1 filing is public and drew heavy reader interest. Per the post, head of research Mia Silverio's Extra Credit issue unpacking the Anthropic S-1 was the series' bestselling issue to date, followed on Friday by a video debrief with markets host Ed Elson; the analysis itself is paywalled and not in the free text.
• Lula won a fourth term, which Scott calls unlikely. A paid Deep Dive released the same day has associate producer Laura Janer, reporting from Brazil, interviewing Brian Winter on how Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva clinched the term and what America can learn from Brazil's election; the post gives only this preview, not the conclusions.

2026-11-02 · open the original ↗

• Stevens' endorsement of Rogers won't change Michigan's outcome. Reported: Haley Stevens skipped a unity event and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers at a Detroit church; Rogers' Kalshi odds rose from 23% to 32% (El-Sayed still 68%), El-Sayed raised $2.4 million on Sunday, and half her staff reportedly resigned. Galloway says nothing about El-Sayed changed between Saturday and Sunday except her grievance and predicts it ends her political career; Tarlov says the Jewish-voter concerns behind it are real but cites the final New York Times/Siena poll with El-Sayed up 11 (16 under the 2024 methodology).
• The Democratic wave is widening rather than narrowing at the end. The last New York Times/Siena poll of the cycle has Democrats leading in five Senate battlegrounds including Texas and Kansas, an edge in Alaska and a virtual tie in Iowa, with Trump approval at 38% across those states and Democrats +9 on cost of living. Galloway cites young voters moving from 53–44 Democratic in 2024 to 68–23 now and a growing pool of swing voters, and predicts a "super tsunami"; Tarlov expects Republican House gerrymanders in Florida and Texas to yield one or two seats rather than the four and five planned.
• Turek's hard line on trans issues is smart Iowa politics. Josh Turek's ad opposes males in female sports and taxpayer-funded sex changes; Tarlov calls these 80-20 issues and says Democrats now hold an eight-point advantage on them because Republicans overreached. Galloway urges Democrats to stress economics and move toward the center, noting the Iowa Capital Dispatch estimate of fewer than 500 transgender girls in Iowa middle and high schools when the 2022 ban passed.
• The hosts split on whether Bass survives the LA mayoral race. A new poll has Karen Bass and Nithya Raman tied at 40%, eight of the previous nine polls showed Raman ahead, and an October LA Times/UC Berkeley IGS survey found 69% of likely voters under 30 and 74% of those 30–39 favor Raman. Tarlov predicts Bass wins as the known quantity, helped by Rick Caruso's backing; Galloway predicts Bass loses as a weak incumbent and calls the fight over Raman's past opposition to the 2028 Olympics a non-issue.
• Galloway argues Democrats, not Republicans, are the party of growth. Averaging administrations since 1980 from a USAFacts data packet, he finds Democratic administrations added about 2 million jobs a year versus 1 million, GDP growth of 4.1% versus 2%, and annual deficit additions of 2.1% of GDP versus 2.8%. He pitches this directly to young men, whom he calls the most volatile swing voters and the most focused on economics.

2026-11-02 · open the original ↗

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• A reluctant Republican incumbent puts South Carolina within reach. The New York Times/Siena poll of Oct 21-26 has Dr. Annie Andrews and Sen. Darline Graham tied at 48% in a state Trump won by 18 points in 2024; the author points to Graham telling a local Republican club she would "choke Lindsey" in heaven, and to Andrews' cost-of-living campaign and Fox News appearance, and judges it "will take a good night for Andrews to win, but not a whole lot more."
• Maine turns on how far Collins outruns her polls. CNN/SSRS (Oct 20-26) has Troy Jackson up 49%-45%, while Fox News (Oct 16-20) has a 49% tie; the author notes Collins has beaten her polling several times before, not only in 2020, but argues her votes for Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are real liabilities and that women could decide the race.
• Michigan is close because the Trump base is energized against El-Sayed. CNN/SSRS (Oct 20-27) has Abdul El-Sayed up 49%-42% over Mike Rogers, but Fox News (Sep 24-28) had it at 50%-49%, in a state Trump carried by 1.4 points. Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Rogers over the weekend, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called a "despicable betrayal."
• Texas worries Democrats for its history, not its candidate. CNN/SSRS (Oct 19-26) has James Talarico up 49%-43% over Ken Paxton, while Fox News (Oct 15-19) has a 49% tie; the author credits Talarico with setting aside the "woke" attacks early and avoiding a prolonged fight with Rep. Jasmine Crockett, but notes Texas has elected no statewide Democrat in 32 years and says "we'll wait to see the votes before we believe it."
• Alaska has tightened amid a late Republican counterattack. Democrat Peltola's lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan fell from 7 points in an October Siena poll to 48%-46% in the New York Times/Siena poll of Oct 23-Nov 1, after the Times reported operatives aligned with her campaign spent "months" recruiting a same-named candidate, now on the ballot as "undeclared." The author's counter is that Sullivan declined every chance to distance himself from Trump on tariffs and the war.

2026-11-02 · open the original ↗

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2026-11-01 · open the original ↗

• Prof G Media is answering midterm anxiety with a free livestream week. Scott frames it as "action absorbs anxiety" (he mentions refreshing Kalshi's "blue tsunami" market, giving no odds) and lists five free Substack shows with Jessica Tarlov and Aaron Parnas: Raging Moderates on November 2 and 3 (11 a.m. ET), November 4 (1:30 p.m. ET) and November 5 (2 p.m. ET), then Raging Perspective on November 6 (1 p.m. ET).
• He casts free election coverage as an independent outlet's duty. The free livestreams are presented as affirming that commitment; the rest of the post is a promotion: 26% off Prof G+ monthly and annual subscriptions that week, an unedited conversation with Heather Cox Richardson behind the paywall, and paid-only 2027 Predictions on December 7.

2026-11-01 · open the original ↗

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2026-10-30 · open the original ↗

• Rule of law is America's economic edge, and corruption erodes it. Scott leans on Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail (2012) on inclusive vs. extractive institutions, and on IMF economist Paolo Mauro's 1995 study of 67 countries, which found a modest improvement in a corruption score raised investment by 2.9% of GDP and annual growth by up to 1.3 percentage points. His warning case is Russia's reiderstvo (state-linked raiding of businesses): a 2016 World Bank/Higher School of Economics survey of nearly 2,000 manufacturers found firms in heavy-raiding regions a third less likely to make capital investments, and he dates its turn into state policy to the 2003 dismantling of Yukos.
• Trump is gutting the agencies that police white-collar crime. As reported in the post: half of Justice Department lawyers fired or pushed out; 1 in 6 SEC employees gone, with only five SEC enforcement actions this year versus 80 two years ago; CFTC staffing cut 22%, with enforcement falling to 80% of the ten-year annual average; IRS headcount down 25%, the high-net-worth audit unit cut nearly 40%, and audit rates at a historic low. He also cites Trump buying Oracle, Nvidia, Netflix, Paramount and WBD shares while holding regulatory sway over deals involving those companies.
• The scale of Trump's self-dealing outruns anyone's ability to track it. Isaac Saul of Tangle logged nearly 100 alleged instances of corruption and conflicts (May and October posts), and a New York Times investigation estimates Trump made $2.2 billion in his first year back; Scott adds $1.4 billion from crypto last year, $1.8 billion in vanity projects, and a new lawsuit against World Liberty Financial. Against an NBER finding that congressional leaders beat rank-and-file members by up to 47 percentage points, he notes Pelosi made 213 trades since 2014 while Trump made 327 in one day before pausing the Liberation Day tariffs.
• The forced TikTok sale was a Yukos-style betrayal of markets. Scott argues Trump forced the sale of TikTok's U.S. business at an estimated 94% discount on his own terms and split the spoils with political allies. His inference: American investors now learn, as Russians did after Yukos, that the president rather than markets sets valuations, deal terms and buyers.
• Trump's Russia dealings put American foreign policy up for sale. He reports Trump waived Russia sanctions to buy diesel less than a month after signing the Lindsey Graham sanctions act, and effectively endorsed Elon Musk restricting Ukraine's Starlink and Starshield access; citing Tom Nichols of the Naval War College, he argues this indirectly helps Iran and labels Trump a "traitor." His prescription: winning Congress in the November 3 election would bring subpoenas and evidence for a reconstituted DOJ, to "make America boring again" like the rule-bound sale of his company L2.

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2026-10-29 · open the original ↗

• Senate control is being fought as a national election. Galloway reports Senate races have spent $3.2 billion, nearly matching the entire 2024 presidential race, in what the hosts call the most expensive midterm cycle ever, with more than 39 million ballots already cast five days out. His argument is that Senate control is as consequential as the presidency for the next two years of governance.
• Democrats are contesting Senate seats in long-red states. A New York Times–Siena poll has South Carolina's Senate race a virtual tie between Democrat Annie Andrews and the Republican finishing Lindsey Graham's term, and Fox News moved it from lean Republican to toss-up; South Carolina has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since Fritz Hollings left in 2005, and Kansas not since 1932. CNN polling has Democrats up 6 in Texas, 7 in Michigan, 4 in Kansas and 4 in Maine. Tarlov's view is that Texas, where James Talarico faces Ken Paxton, is still the likelier red-state upset than South Carolina. These are pre-election snapshots.
• Democrats' ballot-stacking copies an old Republican trick. In Alaska, the hosts discuss a New York Times report that Democrats recruited a second "Dan Sullivan" onto the Senate ballot against incumbent Dan Sullivan, with polling favouring Mary Peltola. Galloway welcomes it as Democrats finally playing hardball and expects whoever wins to be seated; Tarlov dislikes it but cites Republican precedents (a New York prison inmate backed against Peltola, a Miami race lost by 32 votes, a same-name candidate against Summer Lee in Pennsylvania) and notes it may become illegal if money changed hands.
• A half-hearted endorsement is worse than none. Galloway argues Haley Stevens's support for Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, short of full-throated, is a non-endorsement, and that her fiancé Jason Turkish backing Republican Mike Rogers is a media-manufactured story. Tarlov agrees five days out is no time to equivocate but says concerns among Jewish voters, sharpened by an outside "can't afford eggs because of Israel" ad not from El-Sayed's campaign, are real; she still predicts El-Sayed wins and contrasts Elissa Slotkin's full campaigning for him.
• Aging incumbents are stalling Western democracies. After Netanyahu failed to secure a clear win and alleged fraud at Arab polling stations (claims police say lack evidence), Galloway says 75% of people his age support Israel versus 25% of those under 25, a long-term problem for US support. He proposes every leader over 72 resign within a year, citing France, where he says a third of the education budget goes to retired teachers and the average retiree out-earns the average worker.

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2026-10-28 · open the original ↗

• Republicans are playing defense in states that should be safe. With six days to go, Trump rallied in Corpus Christi for Ken Paxton beside a tanker of Venezuelan crude, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on stage, while also visiting South Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Aaron Parnas calls Texas a turnout game Paxton loses if Republicans stay home or skip him, and predicts James Talarico wins; if Paxton loses, he expects Trump to blame John Cornyn and then Paxton within 72 hours.
• New Senate polls look good for Democrats, possibly too good. A New York Times/Siena poll released that day has Peggy Flanagan up 14 in Minnesota and Amy Klobuchar up 18; Parnas expects margins nearer 7–8 and 15+, saying Siena has historically leaned Democratic. In South Carolina the same poll has Annie Andrews tied at 48% with Lindsey Graham's sister, winning 57% of independents, with 51% saying her opponent lacks the experience; both hosts say a Nikki Haley endorsement would seal it but Parnas doesn't expect one.
• Trump's ambassador reportedly warned Canada over Republican Senate losses. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra reportedly told Ottawa business leaders Canada could face blowback if Republicans lose Michigan and Maine; the embassy says the remarks were taken out of context. The hosts argue any loss is Trump's own doing, since he has made himself the message and stands nearly alone behind the trade war.
• The hosts call the GOP's socialism attack a stale playbook. They praise AOC's "communism to common sense" line on schools, hospitals and guaranteed health care, which Parnas says could carry her to the 2028 nomination. Tarlov notes Trump's government has taken stakes in up to 30 companies, and Parnas predicts the immigration, socialism and Islamophobia messaging won't work in 2026.
• Israel's election produced deadlock, likely forcing another vote. With over 70% counted, neither Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot was near the 61 seats needed, and Netanyahu's coalition fell from 68 to roughly 54–55 seats, with Arab parties holding 17–18. Parnas, who wanted a resounding defeat for Netanyahu, predicts neither side can build a coalition and that Israel votes again around February or March.

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• This post announces a paywalled live session, with no substance in it. Scott goes live with historian Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American) at 12 p.m. ET on 2026-10-27, exclusively for Prof G+ subscribers, covering midterm predictions, Trump's "sinking" approval ratings and 2028 presidential candidates. No forecasts or figures from the conversation appear in the free text; he notes their June session became Prof G Media's most popular Substack post.
• Netflix is losing its hit-making edge, with YouTube now its biggest rival. Scott frames this as the premise of a paywalled Prof G+ deep dive with Puck's Matt Belloni, released 2026-10-26, which also covers Netflix's layoffs and the exit of its chief content officer. The same session asks whether Paramount Skydance's takeover of Warner Bros. can survive its $80 billion in debt, and which cable networks could be sold off next. The answers sit behind the paywall.
• Prof G Media aims to be "hopeful and helpful," avoiding "doomer porn." Scott reports the outlet recently won nine Signal Awards and adopts a subscriber's "hopeful and helpful" phrase as its editorial goal heading into the midterms. This is self-description, not an argument about outside events.

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• A competitive Kentucky 6th early would signal a strong Democratic night. The district (Lexington, the University of Kentucky and central-Kentucky suburbs, polls closing 6PM) went for Trump by 15 points but backed Gov. Andy Beshear by double digits; it is open because Republican Andy Barr is running for Mitch McConnell's Senate seat. Republican Ralph Alvarado, who ran in the primary as a Trump loyalist and "MAHA doctor," now pitches himself as an "independent leader," while Democrat Zach Dembo, a Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor, runs on ending the war, stopping corruption and stopping healthcare cuts.
• Indiana's 5th is a longer reach, so a close margin matters. Democrats lean on college-educated suburbs north of Indianapolis (Carmel, Fishers) against small cities and rural areas that make up about a quarter of the vote. The incumbent, Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz, seeking a fourth term, is known for opposing Kevin McCarthy in speaker votes and for turning on Zelensky (calling his government "morons and crooks"); Democrat JD Ford runs against tariffs, health cuts and an unaccountable ICE. The post's read is that keeping it close is "another sign of a strong night."
• No Democratic win in Virginia's 2nd means no blue wave. The post calls this Virginia Beach/Chesapeake seat Democrats' best shot at a flip: a rematch between Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who took it in 2022, and former Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, who lost that race by four points. Luria is attacking Kiggans over her support for the Iran war, the "Big, Beautiful Bill" and cuts to health care and rural hospitals.
• Flipping Virginia's 1st would imply a healthy Democratic House majority. Republican Rep. Rob Wittman has held the Richmond-suburbs-and-eastern-Virginia seat for nearly two decades and Trump won it by five points, yet an October Washington Post survey had Democrat Shannon Taylor ahead 50%-46% among likely voters. The post expects a close race, with Taylor attacking Trump over the war, tariffs, immigration and spending; the poll is a pre-election snapshot.
• A Democratic showing in Virginia's 5th would mean a blue tsunami. The post treats this Trump +12 (2024) seat, with conservative rural Southside manufacturing and tobacco towns, as the stretch goal. Democrat Tom Perriello, who held an earlier version of the seat over a decade ago, runs as a moderate against Republican Rep. John McGuire, a former Navy SEAL elected on Trump loyalty and immigration; Perriello is endorsed by figures from Sen. Tim Kaine to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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• Prof G Media won nine Signal Awards this year. Reported by Scott: bronze, silver and gold across five categories including Best Daily Podcast, Best Video Podcast and Best Podcast Newsletter; The Prof G Pod took the only gold, in "Business People & Entrepreneurs Shaping Culture," and Markets, Simply Put and The Prof G Pod won fan-voted Listener's Choice awards. He credits senior producer Jennifer Sanchez and head of research Mia Silverio, whose podcast-craft livestream replay is behind the Prof G+ paywall.

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• A Tesla-SpaceX merger would join a stagnant company to a booming one. Reported for last week's quarter: Tesla revenue flat year over year, auto sales down 3%, operating margin 2.6% vs. 5.8%; SpaceX revenue up 161% with profits beating expectations. Musk confirmed special committees at both are evaluating a deal worth roughly $3.5 trillion combined (Kalshi odds of a merger before 2028: 75%); SpaceX would issue new shares equal to 92% of its outstanding, leaving Tesla holders with nearly half the combined company and of SpaceX's future earnings.
• Musk merges his companies when one starts failing. The post cites Tesla's 2016 purchase of SolarCity, which investors alleged was a bailout, and the 2025 merger of X into XAI after roughly 50% of X's ad revenue disappeared. It adds personal motives: Musk holds 80% voting control at SpaceX but 20% at Tesla, and Bloomberg estimates the deal could add $110 billion to his wealth by accelerating Tesla share vesting otherwise due in 2028.
• Scott calls the merger brand and multiple laundering. His opinion: Tesla trades at 14x sales and SpaceX at 87x, so pooling them hides declining car deliveries. What worries him most is that it backdoors SpaceX into the S&P 500 via the rule allowing an outside company that buys an index member in stock to join; JPMorgan estimates this would force passive buying of about 10% of the combined free float. The rest of his take is behind a paywall.
• Data-center bottlenecks have Amazon warehousing Nvidia chips it can't install. Business Insider reports Amazon spending billions a month on racks and GPUs under a new "Early Rack Receipt" program that pays before hardware reaches a data center. Goldman Sachs estimates only about half of planned capacity comes online in two years, citing local opposition (71% oppose a nearby data center; nearly 900 opposition groups vs. 396 at end-2025; ~$200 billion delayed or canceled), construction (permits up to 18 months, cost per square foot up 67% year over year) and power (transformers ~3 years, grid connections 4+ years, GE Vernova selling 2031 turbine slots). Microsoft quit a 50-megawatt Nscale site in Loughton, England, after the grid operator said power wouldn't come until the 2030s.
• Some debt-funded neoclouds will fail from duration mismatch, not fraud. Nebius, CoreWeave and Cipher Digital fell 33%, 36% and 56% in the past month versus Amazon's 2%, because their interest comes due whether or not chips are running. Scott credits Ed Zitron for predicting warehouses of idle chips but rejects a Jensen Huang conspiracy, likening it to 1873 railroads that built for traffic that came late and went bust on debt. In a teaser of his paywalled take, he predicts Meta will be the AI boom's biggest winner (500 million business relationships, 3 billion daily users).

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• Raising sons is purpose precisely because it returns nothing. Scott offers "negative ROI" as a test for purpose: the dividends of building his boys' physical, emotional and mental fitness accrue to their future partners, children, colleagues and country, not to him. He cites his own experience — an absent father, with the gap filled by friends' dads, a stockbroker, fraternity brothers and bosses who "never saw a return" — and evolutionary anthropologist Anna Machin (in an AIBM post) arguing fathers form a distinct attachment built on stimulation and pushing development, the "parent of mental resilience," and that "all teenagers need a father — whether biological, social, step, or adoptive."
• Fathers need to speak up, not just show up. Pew found 37% of young adults talk to their father less than they'd like, versus 20% for their mother; a Harvard Graduate School of Education survey of 2,200 people aged 18–25 found 70% wished parents had told them more about the emotional side of relationships, while Gallup finds parents 3.5x more likely to discuss school than dating. His method: ask their views, share his, keep it to minutes so the thread continues the next night.
• Boys should follow firm rules of conduct toward women. His three: never criticize a woman's appearance (only "compliments or silence"), framed as overriding instinct with discipline; be sober or nearly so with a new partner, because waiting costs a night while getting it wrong "can cost you both … a lot"; and in a room with an intoxicated woman, act as you'd want others to treat your mother or sister, even at the cost of being the killjoy.
• Porn and the manosphere are giving boys a debased version of "the talk." He cites the American Institute for Boys and Men putting average first exposure to online porn at age 12, and research (flagged as needing more work) linking adolescent exposure to earlier and more permissive sexual behavior. He tells his sons waiting is fine — he lost his virginity at 19 — to always use a condom, and that he views choking, slapping, coercive scenarios and one-woman/multiple-men encounters as violence.
• Boys must be taught to approach girls and absorb rejection. He cites 44% of Gen Z men reporting no romantic relationship experience as teens, and AEI's Daniel Cox noting parents stress dating "only in the negative." He rejects online claims that approaching women risks men's reputations, calls rejection a key input to resilience, and urges his sons to take "3-point shots" in jobs and dating rather than only digital layups.

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• Witkoff's flattery of Putin is an embarrassment, not diplomacy. In a played clip, envoy Steve Witkoff calls Putin "a humanitarian" after Russia released an elderly American prisoner (the post body says 74 and seven years held; the clip says "a 75-year-old man"). Aaron Parnas sets this against a Russian strike on a Kharkiv park two days earlier that killed a one-year-old and an 11-year-old, and argues that if reporting that Elon Musk throttled Starlink in Ukraine is accurate, the resulting civilian deaths expose him to war-crimes liability — hence the finger-pointing between Musk and Rubio.
• The midterm is a referendum on Trump, and Democrats are winning it. The New York Times/Siena poll shows Democrats +11 on the national House vote, ahead on every major issue including immigration, and seen as the party of the working class by 13 points; Trump's job ratings are 73% negative on gas prices, 69% on cost of living, 64% on the economy, 61% on tariffs and 59% overall (67% among independents). Mike Bloomberg is putting $80 million into the midterms, at least $50 million for House races, while the RNC is moving more than $50 million to its committees — all snapshots two weeks before election day.
• A fraudulent poll helped push McMorrow out, so polling needs policing. The Wedgewood poll, about a year old, put Mallory McMorrow in single digits in the Michigan Senate primary and was ingested by major aggregators before being exposed; Jessica Tarlov says a college student and an older man with a Kalshi betting account were behind it. Parnas calls it likely wire fraud and asks whether the polling industry should be regulated; Tarlov wants stricter criteria for aggregator inclusion.
• Ramaswamy's ad with Acton's estranged mother will backfire. Ramaswamy owned the ad and, per Parnas, is putting $4 million behind it; Tarlov notes the mother lost custody when Acton was 12 and that the story of neglect and abuse has been confirmed by conservative outlets. Both hosts now call Acton the clear favorite for Ohio governor, with Parnas's caveat that voters seeing the ad without context could still be swayed.
• Sununu's distancing from Trump is his best play, but Pappas wins. Sununu's ad says he opposes the war in Iran and the trade war with Canada and attacks Pappas for voting with Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time. Tarlov rates the New Hampshire Senate race lean blue; Parnas predicts Pappas wins but closer than expected.

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• Raging Moderates is launching a series on under-the-radar midterm races. This post is only a schedule announcement with early voting already open in some states: Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway interview Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, live on Substack at 10:30 a.m. ET on 2026-10-20. Tarlov then talks with Dan Osborn, the independent, Democrat-endorsed labor union leader running for Senate in Nebraska against a billionaire incumbent, at 1:30 p.m. ET the next day. Both sessions are for paid subscribers only, and the post makes no argument about either race.

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• Guilfoyle's ouster is the newest of the administration's corruption cases. Press secretary Katie Zacharia announced at her only briefing that Greece Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle had been asked to resign after about eleven months; the Wall Street Journal reported she pushed a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 credit card bill and then messaged the head of the IRS lobbying for him. Vice President Vance said on CBS he had "not seen a single shred of evidence" of Trump's own involvement in corruption.
• Any one of the post's top five cases would once have been earth-shattering. As reported elsewhere: WSJ (January) on Abu Dhabi royal lieutenants buying 49% of the Trump family crypto venture for half a billion dollars shortly before the UAE got access to restricted AI chips; Reuters finding at least 85 officials charged or convicted of corruption crimes granted clemency, overwhelmingly Republicans or MAGA allies; the Washington Post (July) on $3.2 billion in direct government business, plus $3.1 billion in options, for defense tech firms backed by Trump's sons; Qatar's roughly $400 million Boeing 747; and eight-figure ballroom donations from Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Palantir.
• Unlike in Trump's first term, voters now rank corruption first. In last week's Fox News poll, 88% were extremely or very concerned, ahead of inflation (85%), gas prices (83%) and healthcare (80%), and six in ten were "extremely" concerned; at least 85% of moderates, white men, lower-income voters and under-35s shared the concern. Voters trusted Democrats over Republicans on the issue 54% to 44%, including six in ten moderates — a pre-midterm snapshot.
• Democrats should tie corruption to voters' pocketbooks to drive turnout. The poll found 91% of voters certain to vote in November were concerned, which the authors read as a turnout lever. They cite Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek ("corruption crisis… is leading to an affordability crisis") and Ohio's Sherrod Brown, and argue the ballroom donations should be framed as companies currying favor, leaving consumers with less competition and higher prices.
• Rahm Emanuel's anti-corruption plan is the model to follow. The authors call it remarkably comprehensive for an establishment figure: ban congressional stock trading and prediction-market betting, a mandatory retirement age of 75 for federal officials, mandatory blind trusts for officials worth over $1 billion, and a ban on all foreign gifts and investments to public officials. They pair it with the frontline Democrats' agenda of banning stock trading, curbing corporate lobbying and closing revolving doors.

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• The Iran war is driving a renewed inflation surge. September CPI rose 3.7% year over year, nearly double the Fed's 2% target, and PPI rose 6.3%, the largest gain in four years; wholesale energy jumped 11% month over month and accounted for over 80% of the PPI goods increase, with gas up ~34% and diesel ~72% year over year. The post attributes this to costlier Gulf oil transport (a supertanker to Asia now ~$1.4 million a day versus ~$60,000 prewar, per Bloomberg), and cites economist Mark Zandi's estimate that the war has cost the average household $2,000 through inflation, military spending and higher rates.
• Asset owners have gained under Trump while wage earners haven't. Since his return, the S&P 500 is up 31% and S&P earnings 39% while inflation-adjusted wages are up 0%, and real earnings have fallen six straight months; a Pew study finds over 70% of lower-income Americans struggled to pay for food, housing, medical care or transportation in the past year. Ed's free line draws the lesson that people should move money from paychecks into the stock market; the rest of his and Scott's takes are paywalled.
• Inflation is hurting Republicans just ahead of the midterms. With the midterms just over two weeks out, a record 64% of registered voters disapprove of Trump's job performance and 70% of his handling of the economy; among under-30s it is three-quarters and 8 in 10. These are pre-election snapshots likely to be overtaken.
• CoreWeave's distressed debt exposed doubts about the whole AI trade. Its bonds traded below 80 cents on the dollar, signalling doubt it can repay ~$50 billion borrowed for data centers; the stock fell 15%, Micron, Nebius and SK Hynix fell 10%, 15% and 25%, Oracle and Nvidia 5% each, for nearly $1 trillion in lost value. Jefferies and Barclays analysts questioned whether LLMs will ever be profitable, Gartner estimates 80% of neoclouds will cease independent operations by 2030, and Ramp data shows top AI spenders cut per-employee spend 3% versus July; the post links this partly to open-weight models, which rose to 60% of US tokens on OpenRouter in August from 26% in September 2025, mostly Chinese. Scott predicts the Anthropic IPO won't happen this year unless the valuation is cut drastically; Ed's argument that private markets haven't repriced is paywalled.
• Bumble's take-private at a 90% discount shows dating apps' decline. Ithaca Holdings is buying it for $1.3 billion versus a $14 billion post-IPO market cap in 2021, after eight straight quarters of falling revenue and seven of shrinking paying users; Match Group has lost paying users for three quarters and its stock is down over 70% in five years. The post cites research that more profiles make users more pessimistic, subscription prices up as much as 200% in a decade, and 65% of dating apps deleted within a month, while noting one-third of 2025 marriages began online (up from 25% in 2021); the author argues energy is better spent on in-person relationships, and his "controversial take" is paywalled.

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• Homelessness shows America's social contract has been breached. Writing from Los Angeles, Scott notes that seven of the top 10 US metro areas with the greatest proportion of unsheltered homeless people are in California, and that Angelenos have voted to raise their own taxes four times in the past decade to house the homeless, which he says "hasn't worked."
• Disconnection, not just addiction or cost, is homelessness's common denominator. A 2023 UC San Francisco study found 90% of homeless people are single adults with no friends or family to ask for help, and 63% cited social issues (conflict, not wanting to be a burden, abuse) for leaving their last housing; separately, 38% of all Americans report estrangement from a family member. Journalist Anand Giridharadas frames homelessness as the most visible symptom of people feeling abandoned by failing systems, a point both left ("not spending enough") and right ("government is incompetent") dodge.
• Cooperation, not strength, is humanity's evolutionary superpower. Scott leans on Survival of the Friendliest by Duke's Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, who argue early humans selected for prosociality; Hare told the Washington Post that "survival of the fittest" is the most harmful folk theory in society.
• Relationships drive career, health and survival outcomes. He cites one study in which each step up a 0–6 loneliness scale at age 12 raised the odds of being out of work and school at 18 by 28%; people with strong community belonging are 2.6x likelier to report good physical health and 3.2x good mental health; and social isolation raises premature-mortality risk by 29%. His inference: modern exile is self-induced via Instagram, DoorDash, Netflix and, increasingly, AI companions.
• Rebuilding connection must be treated as society-wide infrastructure. He cites a recent Gallup finding that a majority of Americans feel little to no responsibility to help their community, and endorses Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's 2023 report (disconnection equals smoking 15 cigarettes a day): government should run housing, transit and paid-leave policy through a "does this bring people together?" filter, doctors screen for loneliness, and tech optimize for real connection. He pairs it with his own agenda (tax reform, cheaper healthcare, social-media accountability, mandatory national service) and the story of Mariners fan Rhenda Strub, who found a community by inviting strangers to share her season tickets.

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• This post is a schedule of paid-subscriber staff events. It announces sessions where the Prof G Media staff who work behind the scenes on the podcasts present on their own topics: analyst Dan Chiolan on winners and losers in the autonomous vehicle wars (Friday, October 16, noon ET); senior producer Jennifer Sanchez and research lead Mia Silverio on how the podcasts are made (Tuesday, October 20, 1:30 ET); analyst Kristin O'Donoghue on whether America is losing its scientific edge (November 13, 1pm ET); and senior producer and creative director for video Billy Bennett on using AI (November 20, 1pm ET). All are for paid subscribers only.
• What Washington leaves unfunded now may cost breakthroughs later. O'Donoghue's session is framed around the Golden Goose Awards, which honor federally funded research that looked obscure at first but later led to major advances. Her question is what goes unfunded today that could be changing lives 20 years from now. The post poses this as a question for the session and does not answer it.
• The author dismisses the AI job apocalypse but uses AI in-house. He restates that he has "called bullshit" on predictions of mass AI job losses, while saying AI is part of the Prof G Media workflow. He gives no evidence for either point here.

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• The September inflation report is unambiguously bad for Republicans. Reported: CPI rose 0.6% for the month, the biggest rise in five months, taking annual inflation to 3.7%, with tariffs and AI investment costs cited; Jessica Tarlov adds gas up 34.2% year on year and $1,043 in extra household fuel costs since the war began, and says it could keep the Fed on track for a December hike. The hosts argue Trump's answer in Alaska (stock market and 401(k)s at record highs, "affordability" mocked) misses voters, and Aaron Parnas notes the pardons he touted there went to people who pleaded guilty to disabling federally mandated pollution monitors under the Clean Air Act, not to "fixing an engine."
• Republicans' money advantage is buying less than expected. Tarlov says Republicans often outspend Democrats three to one but voters remember the Democratic cost-of-living message, and that Republicans have just stopped contesting Henry Cuellar's Texas seat; Parnas cites roughly $300 million from Elon Musk (Tarlov gives $276 million) and $400 million from Trump. Their inference: if Republicans must spend in Mississippi, Iowa and Texas, they have little hope of flipping Michigan or New Hampshire, and Trump is staying out of races like Mike Rogers's in Michigan.
• Parnas calls Musk and Hegseth war criminals over Ukraine. Reported: Ukraine lost partial Starlink access as Russia intensified strikes on its energy grid; Tarlov says the affected system was the Pentagon-run Starshield, whose throughput had been capped below what was needed to counter the latest Russian attack, and that Poland pays for Ukraine's Starlink. Parnas's opinion is that the outage killed civilians and left hundreds of thousands without power, but answering a viewer he concedes manslaughter would be too attenuated to prove and The Hague is out of reach because the US is not an ICC party.
• Ossoff will rout Mike Collins and carry Georgia's governor race. Parnas predicts Jon Ossoff wins by 8–10 points and pulls Keisha Lance Bottoms over the line by 1–2; Tarlov cites Ossoff hitting Collins over a son-in-law she calls a white-nationalist influencer and office staff with KKK ties. Parnas says he is more bullish on Iowa (where Ashley Hinson's post-debate ad claims she voted to release the Epstein files after working to block them) than on Maine, where Troy Jackson improved but faces an uphill race against Susan Collins.
• Talarico still leads Texas despite a Republican-heavy poll sample. Tarlov says Marist's new poll moved James Talarico's lead from 6 points to 2 but on a sample she describes as R+14, which she reads as a good sign. Both hosts argue the Wall Street Journal's report of Ken Paxton spending New Year's Eve 2024 in Dubai with two indicted fugitives and his girlfriend changes nothing, because his scandals are already priced in — a pre-election snapshot that will be overtaken.

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• Federal research cuts are dismantling America's innovation base. The author reports nearly $200 billion in federal funding cut, delayed or disrupted across 17 policy sectors and 21 agencies since Trump returned to office: NSF awarded 45% fewer grants this year than its five-year average (a four-decade low), NIH 13% fewer, and more than 400 CDC grants worth nearly $6 billion were terminated. The stakes the author cites: every FDA-approved drug from 2010 to 2016 traced to NIH-funded research, stealth, night vision, GPS and precision weapons came from government basic research, and nearly a third of U.S. patents rely on federal funding.

• Grants are being politically screened for disfavored words, not waste. NIH staff were told to prescreen applications with a "computational text tool" that staffers describe as an LLM; Nature's Max Kozlov reported a list of 235 flagged terms including "racism," "fossil fuel" and "sexual minorit." Nearly $800 million in NIH grants was cancelled for focusing on or mentioning minorities, including $15 million of Alzheimer's research at Emory and the University of Pittsburgh studying why Black Americans are twice as likely to develop the disease; Noam Ross of Grant Witness calls it banning topics without saying so.

• Restored grants don't undo the damage that delays cause. Of more than 11,000 disrupted NIH, CDC, NSF and SAMHSA grants, 65% were later restored by courts or reviewers, and renewals now take months instead of weeks. The author's illustration: 8-year-old John Paul Macri, diagnosed with DIPG (2% five-year survival) in March 2025, lost access to an mRNA trial when DOGE cut the NIH Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium five months later, and died on October 4.

• Funding is shifting toward AI and appointees' pet projects. In 2025 health research lost $1 billion while machine learning/AI gained $468 million and networking/IT $368 million; this year the White House announced redirecting $200 billion toward AI, while new NSF grant allocations fell more than 20% year over year. The author argues government should fund what private investors won't, not fields already drawing trillions; Ross flags an NIH metal-toxicity RFP with an unusually short window as cover for studying vaccine aluminum, and warns the lost trust will deter universities from whole research areas — AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh calls it "a 10-year, 20-year, 30-year problem."

• Obscure federally funded science pays off decades later. Golden Goose winner Zhen Xu discovered histotripsy in 2002 quieting an ultrasound on pig hearts; with only NIH and later DoD backing for years, it won FDA approval for liver tumors two decades on, and her company HistoSonics is valued at $4 billion. She credits the U.S. for funding young researchers on data alone, unlike China; fellow winner Sidney Nagel's tabletop work on coffee-stain rings and sand piles improved medical diagnostics and drug-capsule powder filling, and he notes his main cost is training young scientists.

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• Democratic donors are neglecting competitive governor races. Citing Politico's Jonathan Martin, the post reports small-dollar money has flowed to candidates like James Talarico and Adam Hamilton while Republicans are on track to outspend Democrats on TV roughly 6-to-1 in Florida, over 3-to-1 in Texas, 2.5-to-1 in Georgia and over 2-to-1 in Wisconsin, with narrower gaps in Ohio and Nevada; the quoted reporting says GOP strategists concede they would lose most of these races without that money. The author's stated stakes for the 36 races on November 3: who oversees certification of the 2028 presidential result, plus reproductive rights, healthcare, education and redistricting (spending ratios are a snapshot as of 22 days out).
• Arizona and Nevada put 2028 certification in election deniers' reach. In Arizona, incumbent Katie Hobbs, who has spent four years vetoing the Republican legislature's bills, faces Andy Biggs, who pushed the 2020 "Big Lie" and still has not acknowledged Biden's win; the author calls it a must-win. In Nevada, incumbent Joe Lombardo (who flipped the state in 2022 after COVID hit its hospitality economy) said in 2021 he didn't know if the 2020 results were accurate and has kept company with a "fake elector"; challenger Attorney General Aaron Ford runs on $1.2 billion in opioid settlements, cost of living, and a pledge that data centers won't raise Nevadans' costs "one penny."
• Florida's open seat is the Democrats' best opening in years. The author argues conditions are favorable: the last open race in 2018 went to Ron DeSantis by 0.4 points (about 32,000 votes), the 2026 environment is likely worse for Republicans, and Democrat David Jolly, a moderate former congressman running on affordability, health and education, faces Byron Donalds, described as struggling all year. Beyond Donalds' Trump ties, the author points to population growth of 1.7 million driving up property taxes and rents; Jolly says the race is winnable if donors pay attention.
• Oregon is unexpectedly close despite being Democratic territory. It is a rematch of Tina Kotek against Christine Drazan, whom she beat four years ago on reproductive rights, but abortion is less prominent now. Kotek is weighed down by what The Oregonian calls four simultaneous problems — housing, schools, mental health and economic sluggishness — plus Portland crime headlines, though the author notes violent crime is down.
• Wisconsin is a must-hold for the 2028 path. Democrat David Crowley, backed by outgoing Governor Tony Evers and running on apprenticeships, small-business formation and healthcare access, led Republican Tom Tiffany by just three points in the latest Marquette poll (a pre-election snapshot). The author stresses Tiffany is outspending him 2-to-1 in one of the more Republican-leaning Rust Belt swing states.

2026-10-10 · open the original ↗

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