by Ja'han Jones | Oct 6, 2026 | elections, News Analysis
At long last, the Palm Beach County GOP has finally pulled its support for a Florida candidate accused of sexually abusing a child.
It seems the MAGA movement may not be completely immune to shame.
Palm Beach Republicans have been under pressure over their continued association with Mike Caruso, who was serving as the county’s clerk of the circuit court and comptroller before his August arrest on charges including kidnapping, molestation and child abuse. (Caruso has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him from his position and suggested that his administration was unaware of any allegations of misconduct when it appointed Caruso.
On Monday, the Palm Beach GOP released a voter guide with Caruso as one of its preferred candidates, but his name was removed later in the day after his inclusion on the list was rebuked by DeSantis, Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly and even Evan Power, the head of the Florida Republican Party.
In a post on X, the Palm Beach GOP wrote:
For the record, our guide originally listed every Republican nominee, as Florida Statute requires. As soon as we were permitted to remove the nominee running for a constitutional office, we did.
But that justification doesn’t seem to account for why the party felt the need to put out a voter guide that included someone accused of child molestation. The most obvious question: “Why not wait?”
UPDATED: PBC REPUBLICAN VOTER GUIDEFor the record, our guide originally listed every Republican nominee, as Florida Statute requires. As soon as we were permitted to remove the nominee running for a constitutional office, we did.It is LEGAL to take this guide with you
by Joe Scarborough | Oct 6, 2026 | Morning Joe, News Analysis, Tea Spilled Morning Joe, The Tea Spilled Morning Joe, The Tea, Spilled
This is the Oct. 6, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
Hello, “Morning Joe” Family!
We love hearing from you. Here’s what was on your mind this week. As always, you can write to us any time.
Joe, the Trump administration has long reminded me of “The Lion King,” with Trump playing Scar, the disinterested tyrant driven by revenge and self-aggrandizement. The Republicans are pitch-perfect as the mindless hyenas who bend the knee to the tyrant’s every whim, and the diminished Pride Rock reflects our country’s state of decline under Trump. Can you foresee a Simba on the horizon, coming to save us?
— Gary B.
What a great reference from popular culture. My children and I have seen “The Lion King” countless times, and I am always entertained and moved.
There have been many times in my life when I have fallen short of my goals and have not been the person I wanted to be. In those moments, I imagine hearing my grandmother’s voice repeating the words of Mufasa, telling me that I am more than what I have become.
The challenge to be more than we are applies to us personally and to America.
We are members of a republic that is so much more than what it has become. That hero on the horizon will not be a political superstar coming out of the wilderness. That hero is you.
We must demand more of our leaders, of our country, and of ourselves.
My favorite Carl Sandburg quote envisions an America “in the crimson light of a rising sun, fresh
by Elise Jordan | Oct 6, 2026 | Civil Rights, elections, News, News Analysis
For the second installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” we convened four groups of Detroit-area voters in Dearborn, Michigan, to hear how they plan to vote in the state’s open Senate race between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
In Maine, the subject of our first installment, Sen. Susan Collins’ long tenure has kept the Senate race local. Michigan’s Senate race is fully nationalized. The voters we heard from were Black Democrats from Wayne County, swing voters from Macomb County, Muslim Americans from Dearborn and Jewish Democrats from Oakland County, and they talked about the race in the language of fear. They fear that worsening economic instability is eroding their long-term security. The Muslim and Jewish participants are far apart on El-Sayed, but both are also concerned about their physical safety, and they described that fear in strikingly similar terms.
“What has changed? A lot of divisiveness, a lot of violence, a lot of race baiting,” said one Wayne County voter. “I’ve been a poll worker since 2004, and what I’ve been seeing at the polls now is a lot of people coming in angrier.”
Writing off Rogers, waiting on El-Sayed
Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed dominated the deliberations, with each group expressing a distinct, unfulfilled desire for what they need to see and hear from the Democratic candidate before they vote for him. Though Rogers came within about a third of a percentage point of winning Michigan’s other Senate seat in 2024, the voters we spoke with — in theory, he only really ever stood a chance with the Macomb swing voters — overwhelmingly dismissed him. “Carpetbagger” and “Florida” were the words
by Jacob Soboroff | Oct 6, 2026 | News Analysis
This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 3 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
Right now, a group of interfaith leaders is nearing the end of a 96-mile “pilgrimage” in California. The leaders say they are embarking on the eight-day journey to “draw attention and call for an end to cruel immigration policy and a close to all detention centers.” The group spans different faiths, and its members say they want “to serve as a voice of protest for those for whom it is not safe to speak out.”
They began their epic journey last week. Their starting point was an infamous immigration detention facility in the Mojave Desert: the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which is run by the Geo Group, a controversial private prison company. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own data, about 1,800 people were being held there as of July. And according to the agency’s breakdown, about 61% of detainees at the facility have no criminal record.
In 2018, at the height of Donald Trump’s first-term family separation policy, I was actually let inside the private, for-profit prison by then-Department of Homeland Security assistant press secretary Katie Miller. That same year, an inspector general report would describe the horrific conditions inside that facility, including reports of attempted suicides.
Protest in America has become a form of bearing witness and when this country has found itself at a crossroads, mass mobilization has usually led to fundamental change.
Last September, Ismael Ayala-Uribe died after about a month inside Adelanto. He was just 39 years old. He had been a DACA recipient, having arrived in the U.S. when he was 4 years old.
by Curtis Johnson | Oct 6, 2026 | Alaska, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Conservation, Deregulation, Endangered Species, Forest Service, forests, Indigenous Peoples, logging, Mining, News Analysis, Tongass, Tongass National Forest, Trump Administration, US Forest Service, USDA, Wildfires, Wildlife
On August 18, Donald Trump’s United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officially proposed eliminating the national Roadless Rule. If finalized, the repeal would strip protections from 44.7 million acres of wild intact forest. The rule, passed in 2001, protects in total 58 million acres of forest from road building, logging, fossil fuel extraction, and other development.
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by Jesse Hagopian | Oct 3, 2026 | Book Bans, censorship, DEI, News Analysis, Teaching
Sixth-grade history teacher Sarah Inama was told by administrators in Idaho’s West Ada School District to remove a poster from her classroom that carried a simple but profound message: “Everyone Is Welcome Here.” Beneath the words were hands of many different skin tones. Although upset about the directive, Inama initially complied. But the decision weighed on her. She began asking herself…
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