by Steve Benen | Aug 14, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics, World
It’s been more than a week since MS NOW first reported on the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including moldy showers, food shortages and sailors running out of basic necessities, like soap.
The report, based on conversations with a dozen family members with loved ones serving on the ship, sounded the alarm about “excruciatingly long shifts” and potentially dangerous conditions as the aircraft carrier enters its ninth month at sea and its fifth consecutive month of combat operations against Iran. The Lincoln, MS NOW went on to note, left its home port of San Diego on Nov. 21 and has set a modern-day record for the most continuous days at sea.
President Donald Trump said effectively nothing about this until Friday afternoon, during a brief Q&A with reporters.
Q: The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS LincolnTRUMP: No they’re notQ: Has the deployment gone on too long?TRUMP: No no no. Not nearly long enough.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-14T17:16:35.974Z
When one reporter noted that family members of U.S. service members are “concerned about the conditions” on the USS Lincoln, the president started to reply before rejecting the premise of what he’d been asked. “No, they’re not,” the Republican said.
After insisting that the Lincoln would soon be “replaced” by another ship, Trump was asked whether the current deployment has gone on too long.
“No, no, no,” Trump replied. Leaning in closer to the press corps for emphasis, he quickly added, “Not nearly long enough.”
At that point, the president turned and walked away.
The suggestion that the family members of sailors and Marines aboard the USS Lincoln are not concerned
by Steve Benen | Aug 14, 2026 | Health, Maddowblog, News, Politics
As this week got underway, a variety of Republican officials continued to focus their election-season messaging on, of all things, Covid-19 vaccines. For example, Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, who serves as chair of the House GOP Conference, told Fox Business that 82% of the women “who got the vaccine in their first or second trimester had a miscarriage.”
The congresswoman, as part of the same interview, condemned Dr. Anthony Fauci for “straight-up lying to the American people,” which was, among other things, ironic given that she was peddling demonstrably false claims to a national television audience.
Unfortunately, McClain was not alone. A day later, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a deeply unfortunate track record when it comes to using social media to promote misinformation, posted five online items in less than four hours, each of which claimed that the Covid vaccine had an 82% miscarriage rate.
The senator later took down the relevant tweets, one of which equated Covid vaccines with “chemical abortion drugs,” though an untold number of his millions of online followers saw, and perhaps even believed, his initial claims.
Those claims, however, were dangerously wrong. The New York Times published a fact-check report the day after the Texas Republican’s deceptive tweets, explaining in detail that Covid vaccines are not linked to miscarriage. It specifically referred to the 82% statistic as “misinformation.” From the article:
The people who have spread this statistic calculated it from a table in a preliminary C.D.C. analysis published in April 2021. (The authors of the analysis did not make the misleading calculation.) The calculation only included women who were vaccinated in the first or
by Steve Benen | Aug 14, 2026 | 2026 election, elections, Maddowblog, News, Politics
In the current Congress, the number of House Republicans willing to break party ranks on key issues has been vanishingly small, but Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania tends to be one of them, and there’s no great mystery as to why.
The GOP congressman represents a district that supported Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, among other Democrats. He’s also one of only three House Republicans running for re-election in a district Kamala Harris won. With this in mind, Fitzpatrick understands that it’s in his electoral interest to maintain at least some distance from his party’s far-right agenda.
But away from Capitol Hill, Fitzpatrick’s tactics are anything but “moderate.”
Hoping to undermine Democrat Bob Harvie, a member of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners, Fitzpatrick’s political operation has run attack ads telling local voters that his rival is “under FBI investigation.”
The trouble is that there’s nothing to suggest Harvie is, or ever was, facing any FBI scrutiny. He testified before a grand jury as a witness five years ago — in a case that never led to charges against anyone — and according to the Democrat’s lawyers, he is not now and has never been the subject of any criminal investigation.
Given the enormous difference between testifying in a case and being the defendant in a case, Harvie’s lawyers sent Fitzpatrick’s campaign a cease-and-desist letter last month, insisting that the ads are categorically false and defamatory. The Republican congressman and his team not only ignored the letter, but Fitzpatrick practically dared Harvie to file a lawsuit.
“They said they were going to file a lawsuit. And guess what? Guess what? They didn’t file
by Steve Benen | Aug 13, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
Shortly after Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, Congress tried to pass something called the Corporate Transparency Act, which enjoyed bipartisan support. It wasn’t easy to advance the legislation — members included it in a defense package, which the lame-duck Republican president vetoed — but lawmakers ultimately overrode Trump’s objection and passed the law on their own.
Then-Sen. Marco Rubio took a victory lap at the time, boasting that the law he helped to write and champion would go after “anonymous shell corporations,” which are “often used for money laundering, sex trafficking and terror.” The Florida Republican called it the “most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.”
The assessment was entirely fair: The proposal, which Democratic members also had a hand in creating, was designed to create more transparency for shell companies, exposing more of their ownership structures to law enforcement agencies.
Nearly six years after the bipartisan reform became law, Rubio’s colleagues in the Trump administration announced that it would no longer collect relevant data about the ownership of private American companies, despite the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements. The New York Times reported:
The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back scrutiny of the shadowy shell companies that criminals use to launder money and traffic drugs. The initiative follows a yearslong campaign by lobbying groups, which contended that new financial reporting requirements were too onerous for businesses. […]
The law applied to a broad swath of private American businesses; however, there has been particular concern in the United States about shell companies. These are legal entities that do not usually have physical operations or assets and can be
by Steve Benen | Aug 13, 2026 | 2026 election, Congress, elections, Maddowblog, News, Politics
For generations, members of Congress haven’t just benefited from the power of incumbency when running for re-election, they’ve also been largely immune from bruising primary fights that end their careers.
But as is true in so many ways, this year is proving to be quite different. MS NOW reported:
Connecticut Rep. John Larson has been in the U.S. House since before the turn of the 21st century.
A lengthy career in a reliably blue district like this would normally become a safe path to continue serving in Congress. But not this year, when a growing anti-incumbent fervor seems to be gripping the country, dealing blows to Democratic House members and Republican senators alike during a bruising primary season.
Larson, who turned 78 years old last month, ended up losing to Luke Bronin, the former mayor of Hartford, who ran on a platform of generational change. It proved surprisingly effective: Bronin prevailed in a 21-point landslide.
For those keeping score, seven incumbent House Democrats — Al Green of Texas, Julie Johnson of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Diana DeGette of Colorado, Shri Thanedar of Michigan and Larson — have all come up short in primaries since March. That said, it’s not an entirely one-sided phenomenon: Three House Republicans — Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Andy Ogles of Tennessee — have also lost in recent GOP primaries.
Even two sitting U.S. senators — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas — have seen primary rivals end their career.
The explanations for the outcomes do not fall neatly along straight lines, though the sheer volume of primary losses
by Steve Benen | Aug 13, 2026 | Congress, Maddowblog, News, Politics
The Defense Department this week renamed a military base in Charleston, South Carolina, for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke at a ceremony to honor the occasion. This should not have been an especially challenging task for the Pentagon chief.
All he had to do was travel to South Carolina, say some nice things about the longtime senator and former Air Force judge advocate general, and fly home.
But Hegseth apparently felt compelled to add some unrelated thoughts, condemning “a radical leftist ideology” that he believes has “run rampant in the media, in academia and even among a few members of Congress.” At a ceremony ostensibly intended to honor Graham, the defense secretary proceeded to condemn “the hard left” for having “declared war on our own military,” then the “radical woke ideology,” all before expressing concerns about the evils of “communism.”
When describing Hegseth, all kinds of unflattering words and phrases come to mind, but at his core, the former Fox News host is relentlessly partisan — and not just at military ceremonies. Politico reported:
The Pentagon is shutting congressional Democrats out of classified briefings — and even Republicans are shocked by the brazen partisanship.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth trekked to Capitol Hill at least twice in recent weeks to make closed-door pitches for his record $1.5 trillion defense budget. But lawmakers in both parties say he followed an increasingly familiar pattern of excluding Democrats.
There were no legal, political or procedural reasons for the Pentagon chief to offer exclusive classified briefings to members of one party. Hegseth apparently simply chose to do this because he wanted to.
Part of the problem
