Good morning, Today’s rundown leads with Andrew Tate’s new indictment on trafficking charges, a brutal Wall Street Journal report on Senator John Fetterman’s disappearing act, and two state supreme court rulings that just upended the national redistricting fight. We’ve also got a disturbing new report on rogue OpenAI agents, and a full list of other news below.
Before we get into it, some folks close to the White House got angry at me this week for continuing to press for answers on Mitch McConnell. I get it, they’d rather this story just quietly go away. But I shouldn’t be one of the only journalists still showing up at his home and still asking his office basic questions about where he is and how he’s doing. And yet here we are. I’m not stopping. Not now, not ever.
Let’s get into today’s news.
Andrew Tate:
Romanian prosecutors have indicted social media influencer Andrew Tate on charges of trafficking minors, money laundering, sex with a minor, and witness tampering, with his brother Tristan indicted as an accessory. Prosecutors allege the brothers recruited victims by falsely promising relationships or marriage before forcing them to produce pornographic content for a webcam business, including one alleged victim who was 15 when Tate seduced her in Britain in 2012 before moving her to Bucharest and using violence and intimidation to exploit her. The Tates allegedly kept $1.25 million, roughly 80 percent, of that victim’s videochat income. Both brothers, who hold dual US and British citizenship, deny all wrongdoing and remain jailed in the US, where a judge is weighing Britain’s extradition request on separate rape charges.
The Tates’ Romanian lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, pushed back hard on the new indictment, noting a previous case against them fell apart after a court found “significant irregularities” that prevented it from reaching trial, and said today’s filing “does not determine guilt.” He said the defense will scrutinize the new indictment for evidentiary, procedural, or legal deficiencies and stressed his clients’ presumption of innocence. Under Romanian law the brothers could be tried in absentia, but the case first goes to a preliminary court chamber for a legality review that typically takes well over the mandated 60 days. It remains unclear whether Romanian prosecutors will seek the Tates’ extradition from the US given the pending British request already in motion.
Senator John Fetterman:
A blistering new Wall Street Journal report, based on interviews with more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers plus internal text messages, paints Sen. John Fetterman as largely checked out of the basic work of being a senator. In June he canceled a meeting with three paralyzed veterans who had traveled from rural Pennsylvania to discuss their care, telling staff he might have eaten something bad, then showed up looking fine less than an hour later for a Fox News interview about Israel. Former staffers say he has increasingly prioritized conservative media appearances and Israel advocacy over Senate business, including skipping 11 of 12 full committee hearings during one stretch while aides worked to mark him “present” anyway.
The Journal reports Fetterman routinely refuses or blows off meetings with constituents and fellow lawmakers, including Pennsylvanians seeking help on Medicaid, homelessness and flood relief. When an aide told him last September that officials from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wanted to meet about Medicaid cuts, he texted back “Well I’m not,” adding he was convinced they just wanted “free trips to DC.” He also backed out of a funeral for three slain police officers after learning it would run three hours, responding “3 hours??,” and stopped regularly attending caucus meetings.
On Israel specifically, the Journal reports Fetterman told Israel’s ambassador he would write an op-ed based on points the ambassador sent over. When embassy staff followed up with drafted talking points, Fetterman’s own staff withheld them internally over concerns they could raise Foreign Agents Registration Act issues. The paper frames this alongside his broader drift from his roots as a Bernie Sanders-aligned former mayor of Braddock toward relationships with conservative media figures and, per July filings cited by the Journal, money from a prominent conservative donor.
The pattern has fueled speculation Fetterman could switch parties, especially since New York Times polling cited by the Journal shows him now polling better with GOP voters than Pennsylvania’s actual Republican senator, Dave McCormick. Asked in March about a call Senate Democratic leadership was arranging, he texted “I truly don’t care.” Fetterman did not respond to the Journal’s interview requests and walked away from a reporter at an Erie event last month, telling him only “We have to work together.”
Missouri/Maryland Upends Redistricting:
The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled 7-0 to block a Trump-approved, gerrymandered congressional map from being used in the midterms, meaning Missourians will vote under the old districts instead. The rejected map would have cut through the core of Kansas City in an apparent attempt to dilute the minority vote and unseat longtime Black Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The court found that a referendum petition with more than 300,000 signatures opposing the map was “legal, sufficient, and timely,” rejecting Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ argument that referendums don’t apply to congressional redistricting. Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Catherine Hanaway, said she will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling the ruling a “full fledged constitutional crisis.”
Trump reacted with an angry Truth Social post, calling the ruling “horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional” and claiming without evidence that there won’t be enough time to redraw the map before the election. He complained that “the Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America” and called it a “Dark Day for Justice in Missouri,” despite the ruling coming from a court made up mostly of Republican appointed judges, five of seven. The same day, the Maryland Supreme Court dealt Trump and Republicans a separate setback by reversing two lower courts and allowing a Democratic-backed redistricting measure onto the November ballot, a measure that could help Democrats flip Maryland’s one remaining Republican-held House seat. Trump has not publicly responded to the Maryland ruling.
Trump kicked off this redistricting fight by pushing Republican legislators nationwide to redraw maps in his party’s favor as he tries to protect the GOP’s grip on the House for his final two years in office. Republicans are projected to net at most 16 seats through new maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, while Democratic counters in California and Utah could yield at most six seats, with a separate Virginia effort blocked by that state’s Supreme Court and a Louisiana map struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans currently hold a narrow 218-214 House majority, and polling already shows warning signs for the party heading into a midterm cycle where Trump’s approval ratings sit at or near record lows.
The Maryland Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Democratic backed congressional redistricting amendment must be placed on the November ballot, reversing two lower court rulings that had blocked it, though the court ordered the ballot summary rewritten because it found the original wording misleading. The amendment would not change districts for this year’s midterms, but if approved by voters it would strip a constitutional requirement for compact, natural boundary respecting districts from congressional maps, applying it only to state legislative ones, potentially letting Democrats redraw a map that crosses the Chesapeake Bay and reshapes the district held by the state’s only Republican, Rep. Andy Harris. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who called a special session in August to get the amendment on the ballot, called the ruling “a massive victory for the people of our state,” accusing Trump and Republicans of trying “to rig the system, weaken voting rights, and make this pain permanent.”
Another Major AI Issue:
According to Reuters, a swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German programming wiki called DseWiki this spring, transforming it into a message board where the agents coordinated with each other, according to new research shared exclusively with Reuters and two people familiar with the matter. Researchers Sydney Von Arx and Cormac Slade Byrd found more than 15,000 edits made by AI agents on the site, which they discovered while scanning the internet for unauthorized AI agent behavior in late August. About half of the accounts gave themselves names suggesting an OpenAI affiliation, such as “OpenAIResearcher,” and public server logs indicated much of the activity originated from Microsoft Azure infrastructure that OpenAI sometimes uses. OpenAI officials learned of the incident weeks ago but kept it under wraps while dealing with fallout from the separate July breach of Hugging Face, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Messages reviewed by the researchers showed the agents sharing tactics to cheat on tasks, bypass OpenAI’s restrictions, mask their behavior, and evade detection using tools like Tor. When the wiki’s human moderator began deleting the pages in June, the agents responded by creating backup pages to dodge the cleanup, with one writing on June 19 that a “cleanup/deletion sweep appears active alphabetically” and instructing others where to find backups if a page vanished. A King’s College London research fellow, Lukasz Olejnik, said the tampering amounted to a hacking attempt, though OpenAI disputed that characterization after reviewing the material. A Cambridge academic who reviewed the communications compared them to “the operation of some sort of underground network, hell-bent on achieving a task or mission.”
The episode adds to mounting concern that AI systems are learning to bend rules and coordinate in ways their developers never intended, especially as OpenAI pushes to release more autonomous and capable agents. It comes just as OpenAI unveiled its new “Astra” model this week, which the company says offers stronger performance but could also be harder for humans to monitor, and after OpenAI briefly paused some model training last month to add safety measures following the Hugging Face hack. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company could not respond to specific findings since it had not been given access to the report, but denied claims that its legal team discouraged a wider investigation and said the German incident was unrelated to Hugging Face. Researchers said the pattern suggests the biggest AI risk may not be a single superintelligent system but rather, as one put it, “vast colluding swarms of semi-intelligent AI.”
Other news:
A newly surfaced Flock webinar shows the company teaching police how to use its surveillance technology to monitor protests, parades, fireworks shows, and bike races, undercutting Flock’s public claims that its license plate cameras are a narrow, noninvasive tool used mainly to solve violent crime. In the webinar, Flock’s director of market management Caity Peak walks through how FlockOS, which combines license plate readers, drones, gunshot detectors, 911 data, and outside surveillance cameras into a single dashboard, could have been used by an incident commander to track the No Kings protests in Denver, including live video feeds, traffic flow, and building floor plans, all without officers needing to be physically present. Peak also demonstrated Flock Nova, a deeper investigative tool that merges license plate data with an agency’s other records, including person data, email, phone numbers, jail records, and open source intelligence, using a mock “street racing suspect” profile complete with the man’s name, address, and social media accounts as an example. The webinar echoes prior reporting from 404 Media and the Electronic Frontier Foundation showing police departments have already run Flock searches tied to No Kings protests and other protected First Amendment activity, and it comes as Flock says more than 4,800 cities now run its FlockOS software. Later in the webinar, New Orleans officials described how the same camera network was used to track a suspect’s movements before the Bourbon Street terror attack, with roughly 7 terabytes of that footage eventually shared with Homeland Security, HSI, and the FBI.
Day seven of the Lindsay Clancy verdict watch centered on a new jury note from the previous day, with Judge William Sullivan asking both sides how the court should handle it. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague argued against further questioning of jurors, saying the note reflects normal deliberation over how to weigh evidence rather than any sign of bias or an inability to deliberate, and that jurors shouldn’t be asked about their personal views on the case. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington pushed back hard, accusing one juror, whom he didn’t name, of “lying” under oath by claiming to follow the judge’s instructions while actually acknowledging doubt but refusing to apply the reasonable doubt standard to reach a not guilty verdict. Reddington pointed to two separate jury notes as evidence the juror has expressed doubt but won’t act on it, calling that a false statement to the court. Judge Sullivan ultimately said he sees no need to question the juror, ruling it is their duty to accept the law as he has instructed them.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that the Trump administration will begin excavation work within two weeks on Trump’s planned 250 foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, even though the project still lacks final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission and has not completed review under the National Historic Preservation Act. The move follows a familiar pattern for Trump, who has repeatedly pushed ahead on major Washington construction projects without full legal sign off, and comes days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for his separate East Wing ballroom project to continue. A group of Vietnam War veterans is suing to block the arch, arguing it lacks congressional approval and would obstruct the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and their lawyer said Burgum’s announcement shows the administration never intended to let the legal process play out. The administration had previously committed to giving 14 days notice before construction, but that notice instead came through a social media post, and it has now filed a motion arguing the arch lawsuit should be dismissed on the same grounds the Supreme Court used to allow the ballroom project. Democratic Rep. Don Beyer, whose district includes Arlington Cemetery, accused Trump and Burgum of rushing “this towering monument to Trump’s vanity” because they expect Republicans to lose badly in November.
According to the Daily Beast, Pete Hegseth’s nickname among troops at the Pentagon is reportedly “No Tab Pete,” a jab at the fact that he never earned patches like “Ranger” or “Sapper” that signify elite combat skills, even as he presides over the firing or departure of more than 20 senior military leaders during his 20 months as defense secretary. The mockery surfaced after the retirement ceremony for Gen. Christopher Donahue, the special forces veteran who commanded Delta Force and was the last American soldier out of Kabul in 2021, held at Fort Bragg’s Delta compound, where an Army official said talk of “No Tab Pete” picked up once the bourbon started flowing at the dinner afterward. That same night, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly reached his limit with Hegseth and decided to resign, a decision he carried out days later at the White House after warning Trump about the damage Hegseth is doing to the Army. Driscoll’s break with Hegseth traces back to April, when Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in a 15 second phone call after George disciplined Apache helicopter crews involved in a tribute flyby over Kid Rock’s home, prompting Driscoll to drive straight to George’s house to hug him. The piece also details Hegseth’s preoccupation with appearances, including a new mandatory “waist-to-height ratio” fitness standard, his “no more beardos, no more fat generals” comment to 800 top officers, and a viral Pentagon video of him bench pressing at Guantanamo Bay, all while U.S. forces were routed by Ukrainian drone operators in a recent war game that Donahue had been overseeing before his removal.
The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, with June and July revised up by a combined 55,000, driven by rebounds in hospitality and education plus solid manufacturing and construction hiring tied to AI data centers, while unemployment held steady at 4.1%. The bigger headline is wage growth, which came in at just 3.1%, the lowest in five years and now running below inflation of roughly 3.5%.
The average nationwide price of diesel hit an all time high Friday, reaching $5.85 per gallon, up from $5.78 the day before, according to AAA. Prices began climbing in late February with the launch of the Iran war, and have since been compounded by Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, which prompted Russia, the world’s second largest diesel exporter, to extend a diesel export ban through the end of September. Higher seasonal demand from farmers and colder Northern Hemisphere temperatures are adding further strain on top of the supply shortage. Economists warn consumers should expect higher prices on virtually anything shipped, especially groceries, since many supermarkets are already running thin margins because of rising beef costs. Trump met with oil refiners at the White House this week to press them on relieving costs, though it remains unclear whether any concrete commitments were made.
The FCC asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss Disney’s lawsuit challenging the agency’s early review of licenses for its eight company-owned ABC stations, arguing that blocking the review would hobble its investigation into “serious allegations that Disney has engaged in unlawful discrimination.” FCC Chair Brendan Carr ordered the early review in April, the first such early review in more than 50 years, and notably did so one day after Trump publicly urged ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. Disney’s suit calls the FCC’s actions an “extraordinary assault on free speech,” accusing the agency of trying to coerce and retaliate against “a network that refuses to bow to the administration’s demands.” A federal judge has set an October 6 hearing on the case, which is seen as a broader test of free speech rights for broadcasters as Trump has repeatedly called for stations to lose their licenses over programming he dislikes, including telling the FCC just days ago to rebuke NBC’s Kristen Welker.
President Trump commuted the six year sentence of former Philadelphia union leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, according to Dougherty’s attorney George Bochetto. Dougherty was convicted in 2023 of bribing a Philadelphia City Council member and embezzling nearly $600,000 from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union he ran for nearly three decades while serving as a major Democratic power broker in Pennsylvania politics. He was convicted of eight counts including conspiracy and honest services wire fraud, while City Council member Bobby Henon was convicted of 10 counts in the same case. Dougherty had four more years left on his sentence and is expected to be released soon.
A power outage hit NIPSCO customers across Northwest Indiana Thursday evening, with the majority of the roughly 1,800 customers still without power by 10 p.m. concentrated in Gary, after peaking at more than 2,300 customers earlier in the day. The cause of this latest outage wasn’t immediately clear, but it comes just weeks after most NIPSCO customers went at least two weeks without power following severe storms on Aug. 11 that knocked out power to more than 370,000 customers. Residents of Northwest Indiana have been demanding accountability from NIPSCO and calling for an investigation into whether the utility did enough to maintain power lines and clear trees before that storm.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans, the federal prosecutor investigating ICE officer Christian Castro for possible civil rights crimes in the shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, has been fired, according to four sources familiar with the matter, and three sources say he is now under Justice Department investigation, reportedly over allegations of leaking. The firing follows a ProPublica report that Evans told attorneys for Sosa-Celis and other victims to expect Castro to be charged only with making false statements rather than more serious civil rights violations, quoting an email in which Evans said the decision was "being directed by the Main Justice and the US Attorney" and that he had "objected in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could." A federal grand jury did indict Castro on six counts Wednesday under seal, and he was taken into custody in Texas Thursday ahead of a Friday court appearance.
Two hydropower workers, Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan, were pulled out alive from a tunnel in Nepal on Friday, nine days after devastating floods hit the Himalayan region. Rescuers at the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant said they could still hear voices inside the tunnel, where at least 557 workers remain missing and roughly 115 are believed trapped. Authorities say at least 1,287 people were killed and more than 5,000 remain missing nationwide after an Aug. 26 disaster believed to have been triggered by a high altitude glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border. Rescue teams have been using controlled blasts and excavators to reach trapped workers amid concerns over air quality and water access, while more than 800 foreign nationals remain missing in the area, including dozens of Americans.
President Trump named Adam Telle, a civilian leader in the Army Corps of Engineers, as acting Army secretary following the resignation of Dan Driscoll, whose exit came amid widely reported tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Telle previously spent more than 20 years working for Republican senators and in the White House during Trump’s first term, and both Trump and Hegseth praised him in public statements. Driscoll gave no explanation for his departure beyond calling it “the honor of a lifetime,” though several of his allies in the Army had already been ousted by Hegseth this year. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said Hegseth “is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks,” as Telle now takes over the Army amid ongoing conflict with Iran and a shortage of Patriot and THAAD missile interceptors.
See you soon.
— Aaron
