Trump: If we had an honest election, I would have won California. I got millions of votes, but I would have won California if that were an honest system. I would have won

Hegseth: "Today, at my direction, I'm establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. It will report straight to the top -- a direct line to the secretary ... as Psalm 33:12 extolls us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord"

Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals he built a smoking tent outside his Capitol office to bypass laws and negotiate deals with lawmakers "The law says that you have to be 20 feet away from the building." "I have an atrium where my office is, and we have measured 20 feet away from the building from each side of this atrium. And we're building a tent. We built a tent that is big enough so we can have inside meetings and everything like that, and we're going to smoke our cigars in there." "They sent me a bill to forbid smoking in a smoking tent. And so, of course, I didn't sign it. I vetoed it." "Democrats and other legislators came down and asked me, begged me, 'Can I come down and smoke?' And that's how I got most of my deals done." "They came down to smoke, and we found something in common, which is smoking. We smoked our stogies, took our jackets off, took our ties off, and we were sitting there and saying, 'What are you working on?'" "And so we started working together, and I was able to sign more of their legislation because they were not stubborn about how they wrote the legislation. We got a lot of things done because of the smoking tent."

This is a parable about how the false conspiracy racket works. @SenEricSchmitt asks former special prosecutor Jack Smith if he was in Atlanta at a Hawks-Warriors basketball game, on 2/3/24. Smith says no. Schmidt then flamboyantly flashed an email from a Smith staffer reporting that Smith would be attending the "Hawks game" that day, and accused Smith of perjury. Called him a "dirtbag." Turns out Schmidt's Perry Mason moment was a bust. When Smith finally was given a look at the email, he recalled that that he did attended the Iowa Hawkeyes at Maryland Terrapins women's game that day to see Caitlin Clark play. The Hawkeyes were the "Hawks" referenced in the email. Records show that the game in MD did take place on that day. No apology from Schmidt, a former prosecutor. nytimes.com/live/2026/09/29/… via @NYTimes

NEW: There's been a lot of talk about GOP candidates "breaking" with President Trump. But "more often times than not, a candidate or an elected official will call the White House and ask how to do it," one person familiar with the WH's thinking told me. Candidates are trying to message what they need to for their voters — but don't want to land on the president's bad side. At the same time, “[Trump] understands the whole gambit. He gets the whole concept. He gets the environment,” the person said. Our latest on how the WH is trying to help vulnerable GOP candidates navigate messaging and considering policy moves they otherwise might not as the midterms close in. w/ @AlexGangitano and @MyahWard politico.com/news/2026/09/25…