Anna Chapman, arrested in 2010 as part of a Russian “Illegals” ring that had operated in the U.S. for a decade. The FBI caught her because a counterintelligence squad spent years watching.

The Russian Spies Are Still Here. The Spy-Catchers Aren’t.

Inside the quiet gutting of America’s counterintelligence– and what Russia is doing with the opening.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,067: Tuesday, October 27th, 2026.

Somewhere in Washington tonight, a Russian intelligence officer will be sleeping better than he has in years.

Not because he got smarter. Not because his tradecraft improved. Because the man who used to sit across the street watching him... got reassigned.

Here’s a disturbing fact: in many of the FBI’s 56 field offices…the counterintelligence squads…the people whose entire job is catching foreign spies…are running at 50 to 60 percent staffing. Some offices have cut their spy-hunting squads in half.

That’s not a rumor. That’s five people familiar with the matter, on the record with NPR, three weeks ago.

Now put that next to this: the last FBI director to speak plainly about it, Christopher Wray, said the number of Russian intelligence officers (spies) inside the United States was “way too big.” He said it in 2023, before the cuts.

So do the math. Same number of spies. Half the number of spy-catchers.

What do you suppose happens next?

The quiet gutting nobody announced

Here’s what makes this story dangerous: nobody signed an order.

There was no memo from Director Kash Patel saying “stop hunting spies.” If there had been, there’d be hearings. Instead, the Bureau’s leadership made violent crime and immigration the top priorities…and the rest took care of itself.

Field offices pulled agents and analysts off counterintelligence and put them on the priority work. When those seats emptied…the special agents in charge didn’t refill them. New hires went to gangs and the border. Counterintelligence slid down the ladder…one unfilled desk at a time.

It’s the oldest trick in management: you don’t have to cancel a program. You just stop feeding it.

Stack the other blows on top:

• May 2025: FBI agents who had worked the Russia investigations were reassigned to border and immigration duties.

• More than 1,500 special agents have left the Bureau since January 2025, leaving it with over 650 fewer agents than it had when the administration took office. The ones walking out the door are disproportionately the experienced ones…the people who know what a Russian recruitment approach looks like from across a hotel bar.

• March 2026: Patel fired a dozen agents and staff who specialized in counterespionage, including the Bureau’s Iran experts. Two members of Congress wrote to ask why. They’re still waiting.

And here’s the detail that rocks many people back on their heels: In 2025, the administration unilaterally invited Russia to ramp up staffing at its embassy in Washington…the single most important base for Russian espionage in the United States.

More Russian officers coming in. Fewer American officers watching them. At the same time.

You couldn’t design it better if you were sitting in Moscow.

What they’re doing while nobody’s looking

Forget the trench coats.

Here’s the real job description of a Russian intelligence officer in America in 2026, straight from indictments and federal warnings issued this year:

They’re in your phone.

In March, the FBI and CISA warned that Russian intelligence was breaking into the messaging accounts of U.S. government officials…military personnel…and journalists… using fake “support” messages to trick people into handing over access.

Thousands of accounts compromised. In June, an update: now they’re after your backup recovery keys…so they can read your history and come back any time they like.

They’re in your router.

The GRU, Russian military intelligence, has been exploiting vulnerable home and office routers to siphon sensitive information. The Justice Department had to run a court-authorized operation just to neutralize a DNS-hijacking network a GRU unit was running inside the U.S.

They’re buying parts for the war.

In August, a Russian national living in Florida was convicted of illegally exporting aircraft parts to Russia. He’s one. How many haven’t been caught?

They’re recruiting killers.

This is the one that should end the debate. In September, the Justice Department charged five people tied to Russian intelligence with conspiring to finance terrorism and, for some, to commit murder: recruiting locals to surveil and kill Russian dissidents on American soil, one for as little as $1,000.

The Soufan Center called it “unprecedented” and “a clear escalation.” Russia has used these “disposable agents” across Europe for years. Now…they’re trying it here.

Do you think they’ve killed American citizens who speak out against Putin on U.S. soil?

The honest bottom line: Russia has a long, well-documented record of killing critics abroad (Litvinenko, Skripal, Kuzminov in Spain, the artist shot dead in Poland this summer), and until recently…it was generally assumed that Moscow avoided such operations on American soil.

The 2026 indictment ended that assumption.

Dan Rapoport was a Latvian-American investor, financial executive, and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who was found on the pavement outside an apartment building in Washington on August 14, 2022. He had publicly condemned the invasion of Ukraine and supported Navalny.

D.C. police said there were no signs of anyone else being involved, and the medical examiner listed the cause as trauma from a fall…but…recorded the manner of death as “undetermined.” That ambiguity is what highlights the whole damn story. His widow denied it was suicide.

The Russians are still doing the old job, too.

When the FBI rolled up the ten “Illegals” in 2010, Moscow’s intercepted orders told them to penetrate policymaking circles and report on nuclear weapons…arms control.. Iran,,,the CIA, Congress, and the political parties.

That shopping list hasn’t changed. Wray noted Russia now works through cut-outs, intermediaries who never touch the embassy, so the real footprint is bigger than anyone can count.

Every one of those operations has one thing in common: it gets caught by a counterintelligence squad, or it doesn’t get caught at all.

The damage you’ll never see on the news

Here’s the cruel thing about counterintelligence: its failures are invisible for years.

When a bank gets robbed, there’s a police report that afternoon. When a Russian officer recruits a defense contractor in Huntsville, nobody knows for a decade.

Aldrich Ames worked for Moscow for nine years. Robert Hanssen, twenty-two. By the time you read the headline, the damage…was done long ago.

So…nobody can show you a spreadsheet of what’s been lost since the squads were hollowed out. That’s the point. But…ask any veteran of this work what happens…when you pull half the watchers off the street…and they’ll tell you exactly what’s happening right now:

Approaches that go unobserved.

A Russian officer meets a Hill staffer for coffee. Twice. Three times. Nobody’s running surveillance…because the surveillance team is on an immigration detail.

Sources that go dormant.

Counterintelligence runs on human relationships, the retired engineer who tips off an agent, the émigré who recognizes a face. When the agent is reassigned…that relationship dies.

Dissidents who are alone.

The September murder plot was caught. The one that follows the same playbook with a squad at half strength? Yeah. Not so much.

Secrets that walk.

The messaging-app campaign specifically targets people of “high intelligence value.” Every unwatched account..is a window into a policy debate…a troop movement…a negotiation.

The FBI says it arrested more spies this year than ever. Fine. Arrests count the ones you caught. Counterintelligence is about the ones you didn’t. Experts told NPR the arrest number isn’t even the most important metric in this business.

A locked door doesn’t make the news. A missing lock doesn’t either. Until it does.

The other side, and the bottom line

In fairness, the Bureau’s answer deserves a hearing.

An FBI spokesperson called the staffing story “false” and says the Bureau runs a “robust” counterintelligence operation, with task forces expanded to more than 1,500 personnel across agencies.

Patel told the Senate that fiscal 2026 brought 72 counterintelligence arrests, up 9 percent, and 80 suspected foreign intelligence threats removed from the country, up 125 percent.

Supporters argue violent crime and the border are what voters asked for, and that task forces with partner agencies can cover what dedicated squads once did.

Maybe. But…five insiders say the squads are half-empty, Congress says the experts were fired…and the Russians have just tried to hire hitmen in Washington.

You can believe the press release. Or…you can believe the empty desks.

The spies are still here. The question is who’s still watching them.

Before You Dismiss This: Ten Questions

1. Who actually runs Russian spying in the U.S.? Is it one agency?

Three. The SVR is foreign intelligence, the rough equivalent of the CIA, and runs most classic recruitment of Americans.

The GRU is military intelligence, more aggressive, responsible for the 2016 DNC hack and the Skripal poisoning.

The FSB is the domestic security service but has increasingly operated abroad, including in the 2026 murder-for-hire indictment. They compete with each other, which is one reason Russian operations sometimes look reckless.

2. What’s the difference between a spy under “diplomatic cover” and an “illegal”?

A diplomatic-cover officer works out of the embassy or a consulate with an official title, has immunity, and if caught is simply expelled.

An “illegal” has no diplomatic protection at all: a false identity, a fake backstory, often a real job and family, built up over years. Anna Chapman and the 2010 ring were illegals. They’re far rarer, far more expensive to run…and far harder to find.

3. How does a Russian officer actually recruit an American?

Slowly. The old training acronym is MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. First contact is usually innocent, a conference, a LinkedIn message, a consulting offer. Then small favors for small payments.

By the time the target realizes what they’re part of, they’ve already crossed a line that can be used against them. The whole process can take years, which is exactly why it takes years of surveillance to see it.

4. Why does expelling diplomats matter if Russia just sends more?

Because experience doesn’t transfer. An officer who’s spent six years in Washington knows the city, has a network of contacts, and has sources in development. Expel him and his replacement starts from zero.

The 2018 expulsion of 60 officers after the Skripal attack set Russian operations back years, by the FBI’s own account. Inviting more embassy staff in does the reverse.

5. What happened to the 2010 “Illegals” after the swap?

On July 9, 2010, they were traded in Vienna for four Russians Moscow had jailed, three of them for spying for the West: Sergei Skripal, who was later poisoned in England; Igor Sutyagin; Gennady Vasilenko; and Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former SVR colonel believed to have helped expose both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

Chapman became a TV host. The others mostly vanished into Russian state employment. Two of their Toronto-born sons were stripped of Canadian citizenship and fought for nearly a decade to get it back, winning at Canada’s Supreme Court in 2019.

6. Who were the worst Russian moles in U.S. history, and how were they caught

Aldrich Ames at CIA and Robert Hanssen at FBI, whose betrayals got roughly ten U.S. sources inside Russia arrested, most of them executed, including GRU general Dmitri Polyakov, whom a former CIA director called the jewel in the crown.

Neither was caught by a clever gadget. Ames was caught because colleagues finally noticed he was living far above his salary. Hanssen was caught because the U.S. obtained his KGB file from a Russian source.

Both cases took years of dedicated counterintelligence work…and a handful of people who refused to let it go.

7. Isn’t counterterrorism the same thing as counterintelligence?

No, and conflating them is how counterintelligence gets starved. Counterterrorism is about stopping an attack…so it’s urgent, visible, and rewarded.

Counterintelligence is about stopping a slow bleed of secrets, often with no arrest at the end…because sometimes the smartest move…is to leave a known spy in place and feed him garbage. It needs patient people and a leadership that values work nobody will ever see.

8. Where does the money for these operations come from?

Russian intelligence has increasingly used oligarch wealth and shell companies rather than embassy accounts…which are easier to monitor. Sanctions have made this harder…but…also pushed more of it through third countries, cryptocurrency, and cash. One of the quietest jobs of a counterintelligence squad is following that money.

9. What has Britain’s experience taught about ignoring this?

Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium in London in 2006. The British response was muted, and Russia drew a conclusion.

Twelve years later the GRU used a nerve agent in Salisbury, poisoning Skripal, his daughter, and a police officer, and killing a local woman who found the discarded container. The lesson British officials now state openly: a weak response to the first operation is an invitation to the second.

10. What can an ordinary reader actually do about any of this?

Three things. Treat unsolicited “support” messages and odd contact requests as what they probably are…especially if you work anywhere near government or defense.

Write to your member of Congress and ask a specific question, such as what the counterintelligence staffing levels are at your state’s FBI field office. And…notice when a Russian critic dies “accidentally” in an American city, because the quieter that story is, the more useful the silence is to Moscow.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. One more thing, because somebody will write in and say the FBI has it handled.

In 2010 it took ten years of surveillance to roll up ten illegals who, by the Vice President’s own admission, “hadn’t done much.” That was counterintelligence working as designed: catch them before they do.

The question nobody in Washington wants to answer is what the next ring looks like when the squad that should have been watching them was reassigned to a border detail in year two.

You won’t read about that case for a decade. By then it’ll be a headline, a swap, and a TV show. And the damage will already be done.

If you think this is worth more people knowing, forward it. That’s the one thing the Kremlin can’t reassign.

Sources

The counterintelligence cuts

• NPR — As Trump focuses the FBI on immigration, counterintelligence is falling behind (Oct. 6, 2026)

• Latin Times — FBI counterintelligence units facing deep cuts as resources shift to immigration

• Reps. Bennie Thompson and Seth Magaziner — Letter to the FBI on the firing of counterespionage agents (March 4, 2026)

• The Steady State — America’s increasing vulnerability to Russian intelligence operations and “active measures”

• Conservative Brief — Patel tells Senate foreign spying has increased (Sept. 17, 2026)

Russian intelligence activity in the U.S., 2026

• FBI — 2026 cyber alerts: Russian intelligence targeting messaging apps, GRU router exploitation, DNS hijacking disruption

• Center for Homeland Defense and Security — 2026 federal warning on Russian targeting of messaging applications

• FBI — Counterintelligence and espionage case list (incl. Aug. 2026 Florida aircraft-parts export conviction)

• NPR — DOJ charges Russian agents with plotting attacks, including in the U.S. (Sept. 16, 2026)

• CBS News — DOJ accuses Russian intelligence agents of plotting to murder U.S.-based dissident

• Courthouse News — Feds accuse Russia of backing murder-for-hire plot on U.S. soil

• Fox News — Russian spies orchestrated $40K murder plot in nation’s capital, U.S. alleges

• The Soufan Center — Russia escalates its external operations against the United States (Sept. 18, 2026)

• UNITED24 — U.S. uncovers Russian plot to assassinate anti-Kremlin activists; Kasparov named as target

• ABC (Australia) — Poland arrests man over alleged Russian plot to kill American citizen (Aug. 14, 2026)

Suspicious deaths of Putin critics in Washington

• CBS News / 60 Minutes — Is Russia pursuing Putin foes abroad, going after critics on Western soil?

• Politico — A Putin critic fell from a building in Washington. Was it really a suicide?

• Kyiv Post — Putin critic found dead in mysterious circumstances

• The Daily Beast — Russia has a disturbing history of deadly falls

• Washington Examiner — Russia’s assassins have been here for a while (Mikhail Lesin)

Wray’s warning and the 2018 expulsions

• CNN — FBI Director Wray issues warning about number of Russian spies in the U.S. (Sept. 2023)

• The Hill — Number of Russian spies in U.S. remains “way too big,” says FBI director

The 2010 “Illegals,” the swap, and the Vavilov case

• Arizona Daily Star / AP — FBI arrests 10 in alleged Russian spy ring (2010)

• NBC News — U.S. deports 10 Russian spies in exchange

• Quartz — The real Russian spies who inspired “The Americans”

• AP — Spy swap: a look at the four Russians freed in the 2010 exchange

• NPR — U.S., Russia swap 14 spies (July 9, 2010)

• NPR/WNYC — Canada’s Supreme Court grants citizenship to son of Russian spies (Dec. 2019)

• CBC — Supreme Court to decide whether sons of Russian spies are Canadian citizens

Ames and Hanssen

• FBI — Robert Hanssen: famous cases

• CNN — Notorious CIA spy Aldrich Ames dies in federal prison (Jan. 2026)

• ClearanceJobs — Hanssen arrested 20 years ago today (Polyakov execution)

What Trump Will Do When the Returns Come In Ugly

It won’t be a surprise. It’ll be a rerun.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,066: Monday, October 26th, 2026.

Let me save you a week of cable news.

On the night of November 3rd, if the numbers come in the way most people who count these things expect them to, you’re going to watch a lot of very smart people act shocked at what the President does next.

Don’t be one of them.

I’m not going to tell you what’s in his head. Nobody can. What I’m going to tell you is what he’s done before, what he’s said he’ll do, and what forty years of behavioral science says a man does when he’s cornered and has already written his excuse.

That’s three sources. Past conduct. Stated intent. Human nature.

When all three point the same direction, you don’t need a crystal ball. You need a calendar.

Here’s the first thing you need to understand.

The loss narrative is already built. It’s not sitting in a drawer waiting for bad news. It’s been running every day.

A count published this month found that he has cast doubt on elections on more than 70 percent of the days of his second term. Not the months. The days.

He’s told audiences that Democrats will cheat in the midterms unless Congress passes the SAVE America Act. In June, he used the slow mail-ballot count in California to question a primary that nobody else had questioned.

A primary. In an off-year. That his party wasn’t even competitive in.

Behavioral psychology has a term for what you’re looking at. It’s called a pre-commitment. You make the decision before the moment arrives so the moment can’t change it.

Smokers throw out the pack. Dieters empty the fridge. And a man who cannot tolerate losing announces the fix before the game starts…so that whatever happens…he has never lost.

Which brings me to the first prediction, and it’s the one I’d bet the house on. (And you likely would, too.)

Prediction One: The election will be declared fraudulent before it’s over.

Not after. Before.

Watch the timing. Early returns in most states skew Republican because in-person votes count first. Mail ballots count later and skew Democratic. He knows this. He used it in 2020. He’s spent the year telling you mail ballots are fraudulent by nature.

So…the script writes itself. Early lead. Victory claim. Late ballots flip a few races. And every one of those flips becomes “proof.”

This isn’t a theory. It’s the pattern from 2020…with the serial numbers filed off. The only thing a bigger loss changes is the volume.

Prediction Two: He will blame Republicans. Loudly. Within 48 hours.

I know. You’d think a man would look in the mirror.

He won’t. And here’s why I’m confident: he already rehearsed this one.

After the off-year losses in 2025, his explanation wasn’t that voters were unhappy. It was that Republican candidates had failed to talk about his accomplishments. Winning, he said…is easy when you talk about the facts.

That’s the tell. When a person explains failure as other people’s failure to promote him, you’re not looking at a one-off. You’re looking at a fixed interpretive frame.

It’s called an external attribution, and it’s one of the most stable traits you can measure in a person. It doesn’t bend under pressure. It hardens.

So…expect this. Losing candidates “weren’t MAGA enough.” Governors and senators who kept their distance get named…mocked…and threatened with primaries. The result gets reframed as a loyalty test the party failed…not a referendum he lost.

The anger will be real. It will be aimed at his own side first. And…it will be the most visible emotional reaction you see from him in the first two days.

Prediction Three: He will go after the machinery.

This is the one that matters, and it’s the one I’m least certain about. Not because of him. Because of everyone else.

Here’s what the record shows. Last year he put an election-security czar in charge of re-investigating his 2020 loss. He repeated his threats…to prosecute the officials who ran that election. Days later…FBI agents seized 2020 ballots and records from Fulton County, Georgia.

That’s not rhetoric. That’s a muscle being flexed in advance.

He’s posted that Republicans fielded an “election integrity army” in every state in 2024 and that the 2026 version will be bigger.

Stephen Richer, who ran elections in Arizona’s largest county and got run out of his own party for doing it honestly…said this year that the real danger isn’t Election Day. It’s the weeks after. Sow enough doubt…and Congress starts asking whether it has to seat the people who won.

So here’s what I’d watch for. Justice Department action aimed at specific counties…the kind that start with “concerns” and end with subpoenas.

Pressure on the outgoing House…which is still Republican until January, over certification of the new one. Truth Social posts about not letting “them” get away with it…pointed at particular states.

Will it work? That depends on how many people say no. In 2020, courts said no. Secretaries of state said no. A Vice President said no. The machinery held because the people inside it held.

Which is my whole point, and the reason I’m writing this.

The reaction is the easy part.

I just told you what he’ll do, and I did it without a leak, a source, or a seat in the room.

That’s because none of it is a surprise. A man who has told you a hundred times what he thinks of elections…isn’t going to discover a new opinion on election night.

The hard part isn’t him. It’s the dozens of judges, clerks, county boards, state legislators, and Republican members of Congress who will each get a phone call in November asking them to bend just a little. Not break. Bend.

Here’s the thing about pressure. It flows to wherever the resistance is weakest. Prediction One needs nobody’s cooperation. Prediction Two needs only a microphone. Prediction Three needs lawyers, courts, and votes.

He’ll push on all three. Only the third one can actually change who governs.

So…if you take one thing from this, take this. Stop watching him. You already know the script. Start watching the people who have to say no.

Learn your county election board’s name. Know who certifies in your state and when. Know your member of Congress’s position on seating the winners, in writing, before the question gets asked. The time to find out whether a person will hold is before the phone rings, not after.

Because here’s what thirty-plus years of watching human behavior will tell you about moments like this. The man under pressure rarely surprises you. The people around him do…in both directions.

Some of them fold. You expected that.

And…some of them, people you never heard of…in offices you never thought about… turn out to be made of something harder than anyone guessed.

That’s where this gets decided. Not in the White House. In a county building you could drive to this afternoon.

Go find out who’s in it.

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Back soon

- Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. They didn’t ask a judge to throw out 20,000 ballots. They asked a judge to hold them. Holding is the move you make when you don’t want a ruling; you want a delay past Tuesday. Watch for the word. Then watch who copies it.

Sources

DOJ v. California — Ninth Circuit arguments, Sunday Oct. 25 (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/25/midterm-elections-immigration-voter-fraud-trump/c4f4db38-d0d7-11f1-9931-2a41b76fc976_story.html

DOJ appeals before the district judge rules; TRO argument set for Oct. 27 (JURIST)
https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/10/doj-appeals-to-ninth-circuit-as-california-says-judge-has-not-ruled-on-request-to-segregate-20000-mail-ballots/

Ninth Circuit orders California to respond by Saturday noon (Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-must-respond-dojs-emergency-request-over-ballots-mailed-alleged-noncitizens-court-rules

Judges question reliability of DOJ’s purchased voter list (CNN live coverage, Oct. 25)
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/25/politics/live-news/midterm-election-congress

Russian diesel tanker PVT Azura signaling Norfolk for Nov. 2 (gCaptain)
https://gcaptain.com/rare-russian-diesel-shipment-expected-to-arrive-in-norfolk-on-november-2/

Lawmakers warn ports and banks; no confirmed U.S. buyer (gCaptain)
https://gcaptain.com/lawmakers-warn-u-s-ports-and-banks-over-trump-putin-russian-diesel-deal/

Republicans who criticized the Graham Act waiver (Newsweek)
https://www.newsweek.com/list-republicans-breaking-trump-russia-sanctions-waiver-12590802

Trump’s Oct. 16 waiver order and GOP reaction (The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6155725-trump-waives-russia-sanctions/

The One Thing This Week: Watch Whether the Ballot Grab Spreads Past California

Monday, October 26th, 2026

On October 15, two weeks after California started mailing ballots, the Justice Department sued …

Read more

Blanche Said DOJ Would Never Block a Certification. Then He Filed the Suit.

That wasn’t a contradiction. That was the loyalty test, passed on camera.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,065: Saturday, October 24th, 2026.

Every time Donald Trump does something outrageous, the same chorus starts up within the hour.

“He can’t do that.”
“That’s illegal.”
“He’ll lose in court.”

And here’s the thing. They’re usually right. On the law…they’re right.

They’re also missing the entire point. Which is why they keep losing while being right.

Take the latest. Trump had his Attorney General, Todd Blanche, sue to stop Alaska from certifying its Senate race if the Democrat wins.

The stated excuse…is a second candidate with the same name as the Republican…one Alaska’s Supreme Court already ruled could stay on the ballot. Not fraud. Not evidence. And…the suit only kicks in if the Democrat wins. The trigger is simply the wrong candidate winning.

Now watch the chorus. “No standing.” “Frivolous.” “Any judge will toss it in a week.”

Probably true. And…completely irrelevant. Because the lawsuit was never the product. The lawsuit is the packaging.

Let me show you what’s actually being sold.

The Illegality Is the Feature, Not the Bug

I spent a career studying how people are moved to act.

Not how they should be moved. How they actually are. And the single most expensive mistake smart people make…is assuming their opponent is playing the same game they are.

The lawyers are playing “Will this hold up?”

Trump is playing “What happens in the heads of 330 million people between the filing and the ruling?”

Those are different games with different scoreboards. He is not trying to win yours. Stop checking yours…and announcing you’re ahead.

Here are the psychological levers being pulled, one at a time.

Lever #1: Repetition Manufactures Legitimacy

It’s called the illusory truth effect. Hear a claim enough times…and your brain starts filing it under “familiar,” and familiar gets quietly confused with “true.”

It doesn’t matter if the claim is refuted. The refutation simply does not travel as far as the claim…and it never repeats as often. It just doesn’t.

So the sentence “Alaska’s election results are in question” gets said by the President…the Attorney General…a court filing…a cable panel…and ten thousand accounts. The sentence “the court dismissed it” gets said once…on a Tuesday…by a clerk.

Which one lives in the public mind in six months? You already know.

Lever #2: Anchoring the Absurd

Drop a wild number first…and every number that follows gets judged against it.

Negotiators do this on purpose. So does Trump.

Suing to block certification of an election that hasn’t even happened is absurd. That’s the anchor. Once it’s on the table…merely “questioning” results, “pausing” for review…or demanding a “signature audit” feels moderate…by comparison.

The Overton window doesn’t shift because the extreme wins. It shifts…because the extreme makes the merely-bad…look reasonable.

Lever #3: Learned Helplessness by Exhaustion

Here’s one the “he’ll lose in court” crowd really needs to hear.

Martin Seligman put dogs through shocks they couldn’t escape. Later, when escape was easy, they didn’t even try. The lesson wasn’t about dogs.

Every unconstitutional action forces an institution…a state…a court…a journalist…a citizen to respond. Respond, respond, respond. Thirty actions a week.

You cannot sustain outrage at that frequency. Nobody can. So you triage. And “it’ll get thrown out anyway” becomes the permission slip to stop paying attention.

That’s not him losing. That’s you…being trained.

Share

Lever #4: Flooding the Zone

Steve Bannon said it out loud years ago:

The method is to overwhelm the system with so much that nothing can be processed. Volume isn’t a side effect. Volume is the strategy. A court can rule on one case at a time. A news cycle holds one story at a time. A human mind holds about three or four.

Launch fifty. Win four. Lose forty-six. The forty-six losses are forgotten by Friday. The four wins are permanent.

Lever #5: Loyalty Tests and Institutional Capture

Ask yourself why Blanche specifically. Why a personal defense lawyer in the AG’s chair.

Because the ask isn’t “find a legal theory.” The ask is “show me you’ll file it anyway.”

Watch the timeline. Thursday afternoon…Blanche stands in front of reporters in Virginia and says DOJ would never improperly interfere with a state’s certification process. Blocking a certification, he says, is a “doomsday scenario.” Unlikely.

Thursday night…his department files the Alaska suit.

Friday, Trump lands in Florida…and tells the press he’s the one who ordered it.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s the test being passed in public. The Attorney General said the right thing, got the call…and filed anyway.

Every institution Trump touches gets the same damn exam. Will you do the thing you just said you wouldn’t do, because I asked? The people who say no get replaced. The people who say yes…get promoted.

Run that filter for four years…and you don’t need to win court cases. You’ve changed who is standing in the courtroom.

Lever #6: Normalizing the Precondition

The most dangerous move in that Alaska plan isn’t the lawsuit. It’s the sentence before it. “If the Democrat wins.”

The announced position…is that one party’s victory is itself…the grounds for federal action. Not fraud. Not irregularity. The outcome.

Once a sitting administration says that out loud…and the sky doesn’t fall, the sky not falling becomes the new floor. The next guy starts there.

Now Zoom Out to 30,000 Feet

Laws are not self-enforcing.

They are enforced…by people who believe the law matters more than the man. That belief is the entire load-bearing wall of a democracy…and it is made of nothing but habit…and expectation.

Every “illegal but he’ll lose” moment is a hammer blow on that wall. Not because the blow goes through. Because…every blow teaches everyone watching…that the wall is something you hit…not something you respect.

A country doesn’t stop being a democracy on the day a court rules against it. It stops…when enough people conclude the ruling doesn’t matter. When the Attorney General files because he was told to.

When a state official hesitates to certify…because he’s not sure who’ll protect him. When voters start wondering if their vote counts…only if the right side wins. When you…the smart person with the law on your side…shrug and say “it’ll get thrown out” and go back to your day.

That’s the entire play. Not winning in court. Making the court beside the point.

So What Do You Do With This?

Stop grading him on legality. He isn’t competing for that trophy.

Grade him on what each action is designed to do to the public mind. Then respond to that. Name the lever while he’s pulling it. Repeat the truth with the same frequency he repeats the lie. Refuse the exhaustion. Keep the wall in frame.

Because “he can’t do that” has never once stopped a man whose entire strategy…is doing it anyway. And that’s ALWAYS been Trump’s strategy.

He can. He is. And whether he loses in court…is the least important thing about it.

Steel Your Mind

Here’s the discipline, and it is a discipline.

Every time you feel the pull to say “he’ll lose in court,” catch yourself and ask one question instead: what is this action supposed to make me feel, think, or stop doing?

Then refuse to feel it…think it…or stop doing it. Fatigue is the goal. Cynicism is the goal. The quiet little “whatever” that slips out when the fortieth outrage lands…is not a sign you’ve gotten wise. It’s a sign the training took.

So…decide now…before the next one hits…that you will not be anchored…you will not be exhausted…and you will not confuse familiar…with true.

Hold the line on the boring stuff: certification is certification…a vote is a vote…a loss in court is still a loss…even when nobody’s watching. Say it plainly. Say it again tomorrow.

The man is counting on you to get tired of being right. Don’t give him that. A mind that can’t be worn down…is the one thing in this whole fight that no lawsuit can touch.

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Back Soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Mark the date. The suit was filed eleven days before the election…before a single Alaska vote was counted.

There was no fraud to allege because nothing had happened yet. They didn’t wait for a problem. They filed the solution first…and left a blank where the problem goes.

If you take one thing from this article…take that: a man who sues over an outcome before the outcome exists…isn’t asking a court anything. He’s telling you what he plans to do…with the answer.

Sources

The Alaska lawsuit

• Trump says he ordered the Justice Department’s lawsuit over Alaska’s US Senate race — AP via Yahoo. Trump: “I’m the one that said do it.” Includes Blanche’s “doomsday scenario” comment and Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller saying the statute doesn’t allow DOJ to enjoin certification.

• Trump administration files lawsuit to block possible Democratic win in Alaska Senate race — PBS NewsHour.

• Trump administration sues to block Alaska’s US Senate election result if Peltola wins — Alaska Beacon. Local reporting on the complaint; notes legal experts dismissed the federal argument.

• DOJ preemptively challenges Alaska election results if Democrat wins Senate race — Democracy Docket. Details on the NVRA theory and the consequence of non-certification (empty seat).

• Trump’s administration sues to block a possible Democratic win in the Alaska U.S. Senate race — Alaska Public Media.

Blanche as Attorney General

• Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general in 50-49 Senate vote — Newsweek.

• Trump DOJ showers GOP state with settlements amid Todd Blanche confirmation battle — Raw Story, summarizing Politico’s reporting on Alaska settlements during the confirmation fight.

Lever #1: Illusory truth effect

• The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect — Hassan & Barber, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2021. Up to 27 repetitions; truth ratings keep climbing.

• Repetition increases perceived truth equally for plausible and implausible statements — Fazio, Rand & Pennycook, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2019.

• The trajectory of truth: a longitudinal study of the illusory truth effect — Henderson, Simons & Barr, Journal of Cognition, 2021. Effect persists at one day, one week, one month.

Lever #2: Anchoring

• Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases — Harvard Program on Negotiation summary of Tversky & Kahneman’s 1974 roulette-wheel experiment.

• Anchoring, Information, Expertise, and Negotiation: New Insights from Meta-Analysis — Guthrie & Orr, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 2005. Even unreasonable anchors move outcomes.

Lever #3: Learned helplessness

• Learned Helplessness — Seligman, Annual Review of Medicine, 1972. The primary-source overview of the dog experiments.

• Learned helplessness — Wikipedia, for the Seligman & Maier 1967 study and later human research.

Lever #4: Flooding the zone

• This infamous Steve Bannon quote is key to understanding America’s crazy politics — Brian Stelter, CNN, on Bannon’s 2018 remark to Michael Lewis.

• ‘Almost like surrender’: Steve Bannon on the media in Trump’s ‘Days of Thunder’ — Semafor via Yahoo. Bannon confirming the strategy is deliberate and “it’s worked.”

The Scorecard: Did the Sanctions Waiver Survive Republicans?

Friday, October 23rd, 2026: 7:50 PM CST

Monday I gave you three signals and said I’d grade them in public. Here it is.

Signal one, an overrid…

Read more

Jared Kushner.

Somebody Was Watching Jared Kushner’s Phone Screen. It Wasn’t Who You Think.

Billions, a hitman, and a flat denial. Here are the three questions that actually settle it.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,064: Friday, October 23rd, 2026.

Let me tell you the one fact in this story that should stop you cold.

It is not the money. We’ll get to the money. It is not the Russians, either. Everybody expects the Russians.

It is this: according to a new book, the people who sat and watched everything Jared Kushner did on his personal iPhone–for months, while he was shaping Middle East policy from inside the White House–were our allies.

The Dutch. Not a hostile power. A NATO partner, quietly saving screenshots to a server of their own.

I’ve been writing about threats to this republic long enough now to know the first rule of any big story: the headline everybody runs is almost never the thing that actually matters. The headline today is “Kushner, billions, Gulf money.” Loud. Easy. Shareable.

The thing that matters is quieter. A senior adviser to a sitting president carried a compromised phone, and at least two foreign intelligence services knew it before, apparently, anyone in Washington did.

If that is true, it’s a scandal regardless of whether a single dollar changed hands. If it’s not true, a journalist and a major magazine just published the most reckless story of the year. There is no third option. So let’s lay it out, piece by piece, and you decide.

What the book actually claims

The source is investigative reporter Matthew Cole…

…whose forthcoming book is titled Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. Vanity Fair ran an excerpt Thursday. Here is the chain of events as Cole tells it.

Step one:

In 2017, Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, broke into Kushner’s personal iPhone. Kushner at the time was a senior White House adviser with a portfolio that ran through Israel, the Gulf, China and Russia.

Step two:

Dutch military intelligence, the MIVD, flipped a Russian operative. That operative gave the Dutch access to a GRU server in Rostov that held images captured from Kushner’s phone.

Step three:

This is the part that separates this from every other spy story you’ve read…the Dutch didn’t just read Russia’s take.

Starting in early 2018, per the excerpt, they exploited a flaw in the phone and started watching Kushner’s screen themselves. No audio. Just a continuous feed of whatever he was looking at…saved image by image.

Think about what that means in plain English. Every text. Every email preview. Every banking app he opened. If Cole is right…there is a foreign archive of a White House adviser’s phone…and it was built by a friendly government.

Dutch public broadcaster NOS reports its Nieuwsuur program and the newspaper de Volkskrant spent years investigating the same claim…and spoke with multiple people… directly involved.

The MIVD, asked to comment…declined to discuss its methods or sources. That’s not a confirmation. But…it’s not the response you’d expect to a fantasy, either.

Now, the money

Here is where the story goes from espionage to something closer to a federal indictment, if any of it holds.

Cole alleges the Dutch watched Kushner log into a bank account in the United Arab Emirates.

According to the book, that account was co-managed by Kushner and UAE president Mohamed bin Zayed, and it had received hundreds of millions of dollars routed through a bank in Azerbaijan.

The excerpt goes further. It claims the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE together put at least $2 billion into multiple accounts linked to Kushner during Trump’s first term… including one account connected to Israel’s central bank.

The owners of these accounts, Cole writes…were often dressed up as government bodies or charities, while the real purpose was off-the-books diplomacy…including an attempt to buy a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One unnamed source told Cole that roughly $1 billion from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was earmarked for Kushner’s personal benefit. Another source claimed Kushner promised MBZ he’d push the Emirati agenda with Trump in exchange for participation in a fund.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

And then the detail that gives this story its tabloid gravity: Cole alleges that money moved from the account to a warlord, a mercenary, and a one-time hitman.

Pay attention to how that’s phrased. Not “Kushner paid a hitman.” The claim is that funds moved through an account he allegedly accessed. Those are different sentences, and the difference is where lawyers make their living.

One more thing the Dutch reporting raises: it isn’t publicly known whether Kushner ever disclosed a foreign account to U.S. authorities. If such an account existed and he didn’t…that’s where American anti-bribery law enters the room.

The denial–and it is a serious one

Kushner didn’t duck this.

Thursday night he went to X and called the allegations “completely insane and never happened.”

His legal team posted a longer response. The gist: every claim was denied on the record before publication…and the author produced nothing verifiable; no bank statements…wire transfer records…account numbers…or transaction dates.

His lawyer called the allegations false and defamatory…and…said they intend to pursue legal action, though they didn’t name against whom.

I want to be fair here, because fairness…is the only thing that makes the rest of this worth reading.

That denial has teeth.

Cole’s excerpt leans on anonymous sources and foreign intelligence material nobody outside a few agencies can inspect. CBS News noted it has not independently verified the account. “No documents” is a real criticism…not spin.

On the other side of the ledger: House Oversight Committee Democrats have already said Kushner needs to answer these questions publicly, framing it as the latest in a pattern of allegations about selling access.

That’s political…obviously. But…it means this won’t die quietly.

The three questions that actually decide this

Strip away the adjectives, and the whole thing turns on three questions. Everything else is noise.

1. Did the Dutch really have the phone?

This is the load-bearing wall. If the MIVD feed existed, then somewhere there are thousands of screenshots…and Cole’s account becomes checkable by anyone with subpoena power.

If it didn’t, every downstream claim collapses. The Dutch service’s silence is the single most interesting data point in the story. Watch it.

2. Did an account exist, and whose name was on it?

Cole says Kushner logged in. Kushner’s lawyer says he has no idea what account is being described. One of those statements will eventually be provable. Bank records don’t have opinions.

3. Was anything disclosed?

This is the question that turns a scandal into a case. A White House adviser with undisclosed foreign financial interests is not a gray area. It’s a form…and the form was either filed…or it wasn’t.

Notice what’s not on that list: whether Kushner was a good or bad Middle East envoy, whether you like his father-in-law, whether Gulf money in Washington is new (it isn’t).

None of that settles anything. The threat is never the man. It’s the mechanism…and the mechanism…here…is disclosure…the one thing that lets a citizen know who his government actually answers to.

Where this goes

Here’s my read.

Stories built on anonymous intelligence sources usually end one of two ways. Either a document surfaces…a wire record, a screenshot, a sworn statement…and the story hardens overnight.

Or no document ever surfaces…the lawsuit gets filed…discovery becomes the real battlefield, and the public forgets.

Kushner’s team has promised the lawsuit. That’s a bold move if the screenshots exist… because discovery runs both directions.

So don’t ask “is Kushner guilty.” Ask the only question that matters right now: where are the pictures? Somebody either has a hard drive full of Jared Kushner’s phone screen…or they don’t. Everything else is commentary.

And here’s your lever. The House Oversight Committee has said the questions need answering. Your representative sits in that House. Call the office. Ask one question: will you support a public accounting of foreign financial disclosures for senior White House advisers, past and present? Don’t argue. Just ask…and write down the answer.

Q&A: Ten things the article didn’t get to

1. Who is Matthew Cole, and why does his byline matter?

Cole is a veteran national-security reporter. He spent years at NBC News and The Intercept, covering special operations, the intelligence community, and the Gulf, and co-authored Code Name: Johnny Walker.

He is not a political pundit with a book deal. That doesn’t make him right. It means the denial has to answer a reporter who has worked these agencies before, not a stranger.

2. What is the MIVD, and has it done anything like this before?

The MIVD is the Dutch military intelligence service, the smaller sibling of the civilian AIVD.

The Dutch have a record here. In 2018, Nieuwsuur and de Volkskrant revealed that the AIVD had penetrated the Russian hacking group Cozy Bear in 2014…watched the hackers through their own security camera…and tipped off the Americans before the 2016 election interference.

If the Kushner claim sounds far-fetched, know that the Dutch have pulled off something nearly as strange…and the same two newsrooms broke that story too.

3. Did Washington have any reason to worry about Kushner’s phones before this

Yes, on the record. In early 2018 his interim security clearance was downgraded during a broader White House review; Trump later directed that he receive a full clearance over objections from career staff.

Around the same time, reporting surfaced that he had been communicating with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over WhatsApp…which raised records-law and security questions.

And…in 2020, after the Jeff Bezos phone hack was linked to a message from MBS, a U.N. special rapporteur publicly urged Kushner to check and replace his own phone. The warning signs were in plain view.

4. Is there a known, legal Gulf money trail to Kushner?

There is…and…it’s not disputed. After leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a private equity firm.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund committed about $2 billion to it in 2021, reportedly over the objections of the fund’s own screening panel…with the UAE and Qatar also investing.

That’s the backdrop every reader should hold in mind: the question the book raises isn’t whether Gulf money reached Kushner. It’s whether some of it reached him…while he still held a White House badge.

5. What is Kushner doing right now?

He is back in the arena. He has been working alongside envoy Steve Witkoff on Gaza, is involved with the Board of Peace that Trump launched to oversee postwar Gaza, and has been tied to Iran negotiations.

This isn’t a story about a former official. It’s a story about a current negotiator…which is why foreign governments are reading it as closely as you are.

6. Where does Benjamin Netanyahu come into it?

Newsweek’s summary of the excerpt says the book claims Kushner communicated with Netanyahu about transactions…with a then-U.S. official in the chain.

That part of the account is thin in public reporting so far…and I treat it as reported… not confirmed. If it holds, the account tied to Israel’s central bank…stops being a footnote…and becomes a second front.

7. What laws would actually be in play if the allegations were true?

Three come to mind. The Ethics in Government Act requires senior officials to disclose financial interests; an undisclosed foreign account would be a false filing.

The federal bribery statute covers a public official receiving something of value in exchange for official acts. And…the Foreign Emoluments Clause bars officials from accepting payments from foreign states….without consent of Congress. None of this applies…unless the account and the access are proven. All of it applies…if they are.

8. Why wouldn’t an ally just tell the United States?

Nobody has explained that…and it’s the question that nags me. Intelligence services protect sources and methods above almost everything; burning a flipped GRU operative to warn an American official is a real cost.

It’s also possible the Dutch did share something…and the record isn’t public. Until someone with oversight authority asks the question under oath, the honest answer is: we don’t know.

9. Can Congress do anything, or is this a Democratic press release?

The Oversight Committee Democrats are in the minority…so they can send letters…not subpoenas.

What can move: the Senate and House intelligence committees can request what U.S. agencies knew about a compromised device carried by a senior adviser…and that request doesn’t require anyone to believe Cole. It only requires caring whether a White House phone was hacked.

10. What’s the one thing to watch next week?

Two things, really. Whether the lawsuit Kushner’s team promised is actually filed…and against whom.

And…whether Vanity Fair or Cole releases a document…any document…beyond anonymous sourcing. A filed lawsuit opens discovery. A released document ends the “no evidence” defense. Either one…changes the story more than any amount of talk.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. One detail worth sitting with. If the book is right, the first people to know that a senior American official’s phone was compromised weren’t the FBI, the NSA, or the Secret Service. They were a Russian hacker…and the Dutch officer who turned him. Whatever happens to the money story…that one…ought to keep some people in Washington up at night.

Sources

The hacked-phone story (October 2026)

• Jared Kushner pushes back on report involving hacked phone, spies, billion-dollar transfer — CBS News

• Kushner rebukes “completely insane” report over hacked phone, secret talks — Newsweek

• Explosive report claims Kushner’s hacked phone showed transfers to warlord and hitman — Raw Story

• What Dutch spies found on hacked phone — The Week

• MIVD zag op gehackte iPhone hoe Trumps schoonzoon vele miljoenen ontving — NOS / Nieuwsuur (Dutch)

• GRU hacked Kushner’s iPhone, but the Dutch flipped a Russian spy and took a look themselves — Cybernews

• Jared Kushner’s statement on X

• Response to Matthew Cole’s book — Kushner legal team

Background used in the Q&A

• Dutch spies caught Russian hackers on tape (AIVD / Cozy Bear, 2014) — AP via KATV

• Dutch spies “watched as Russians hacked US Democrats” — Gulf News / AFP

• Hackers AIVD leverden cruciaal bewijs over Russische inmenging — de Volkskrant (Dutch)

• White House downgrades Kushner’s security clearance (Feb. 2018) — AP via KTVU

• Jared Kushner used WhatsApp to contact foreign leaders, Democrats say (Cummings letter, 2019) — AP via Honolulu Star-Advertiser

• Jared Kushner–Saudi crown prince WhatsApp contacts (2018) — The Intercept

• Trump adviser told to inspect phone for signs of Saudi spyware (Bezos hack, 2020) — The Daily Telegraph via PressReader

• Jared Kushner raised $2B from Saudi prince MBS (Affinity Partners / PIF) — The Real Deal

• Report: Jared Kushner’s firm received $2B Saudi investment — Straight Arrow News

• Witkoff, Kushner to meet with Netanyahu in Israel (Board of Peace, Jan. 2026) — Bloomberg

• Jared Kushner dragged into whistleblower complaint targeting Tulsi Gabbard (Feb. 2026) — OK Magazine via AOL

They Just Cancelled Your Disaster Insurance. Nobody Sent You the Letter.

What FEMA’s boss told 50 state emergency chiefs behind closed doors Tuesday–and why you’ll pay for it the next time the river comes up.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,063: Thursday, October 22st, 2026.

I’m going to tell you something that happened in a hotel conference room in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Tuesday. You weren’t invited. Your governor’s disaster chief was. And what he heard should make you pick up the phone.

The administrator of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, stood in front of the National Emergency Management Association and told every state in the room, in plain words: build your own financial reserves, build your own recovery capability, and plan to handle most disasters without federal help.

His stated goal is fewer federal disaster declarations. Not fewer disasters. Fewer declarations.

Fewer checks.

He said the changes could start within six months. He did not hold a press conference. POLITICO obtained a recording. That is how this is meant to be done: quietly…after the election…with no fingerprints.

Here’s why this matters to you…not to Washington…not to “the states,” to you, sitting in your house with a mortgage on it.

When the water comes, who pays?

Right now, when a hurricane, flood, tornado, or wildfire wrecks your county, the president signs a declaration and federal money starts flowing.

It is slow. It is bureaucratic. It is also the only reason most states can rebuild at all.

FEMA’s own report…released last Friday, by Hamilton’s own agency…says state disaster offices are typically understaffed and underfunded, and many of them run on federal money.

So the plan, in one sentence: hand the job to the people FEMA just certified cannot do the job.

Four reasons this is a bill with your name on it

1. “Financial reserves” means your money.

Your state legislature has to park hundreds of millions of dollars for a disaster that may not come for ten years.

There are exactly three ways to get that money: raise your taxes, cut your schools and roads and Medicaid, or don’t do it and rebuild slower, worse, or never.

Eric Holdeman, who ran emergency management for King County, Washington, put key words in all caps on LinkedIn…states with slim rainy-day funds have no way to replace lost federal money without raising taxes. He also called the plan impossible to implement. He’s spent a career in this. Believe him.

2. “National mutual aid” is a slogan, not a plan.

Hamilton wants states to rescue each other. That works fine for a tornado in one county. It is a joke for the kind of disaster that actually needs a federal government… a hurricane that hits Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on the same afternoon. Who’s bailing out whom?

3. “Waiving environmental reviews” means you rebuild in the floodplain.

Hamilton wants to strip the environmental and historical-preservation checks on FEMA-funded rebuilding. Yes, you’ll rebuild faster. You’ll flood again faster too…and next time…there’s no federal check.

4. The president keeps the pen.

This is the part nobody in Little Rock wanted to say out loud. A disaster declaration is a presidential decision. Hamilton can’t change that. So after every state has been told to fend for itself…but the president still decides who gets a declaration…what do you have?

Discretion. The governor who plays ball gets the money. The governor who doesn’t gets a speech about self-reliance. Both outcomes are now “policy.” Disaster aid stops being a program and becomes a favor.

Does this look familiar? It should.

You watched the same architecture get unveiled in the Oval Office this week. A federal fraud tip line. Cash rewards. And a president who says he personally decides who gets paid.

Fraud money…one man decides. Disaster money…one man decides. This is not “smaller government.” This is government where help flows to whoever the man at the top likes.

“But they haven’t changed anything yet.”

Correct. No formal announcement. Aid is still being approved for storms. Hamilton said “the next six months.”

Count the months. Six months lands you comfortably past the midterms. The memo went out October 15. The speech was October 20. The election is in less than two weeks. The rollout is after.

Ask yourself one question: if this policy were popular, wouldn’t they be running ads on it?

They know what they’re doing. They’re betting you won’t find out until the water is in your living room.

Here’s what I want you to do. Today.

Not next week. Today, while this is fresh and before the six-month clock runs out.

First:

Forward this to three people in a state that gets hit…Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, California, anywhere a river or a coast or a fault line runs. They are the ones who will pay first…and most of them have no idea this conversation happened.

Second:

Call your governor’s office and ask one question: What is this state’s disaster reserve, and what is your plan if the federal declaration doesn’t come? You will learn a lot from how long the silence lasts.

Third:

If you want this kind of reporting on the things they do in private rooms, every day, before it hits you…subscribe.

I read the memos, the leaks, and the recordings so you don’t have to, and I tell you what they mean for your wallet, your vote, and your house.

The next disaster doesn’t care who you voted for. Apparently…the federal response is about to.

10 Questions the Article Doesn’t Answer

1. Can FEMA actually do this without Congress?

Only partway. The Stafford Act gives the president discretion to grant or deny a major disaster declaration, so “fewer declarations” is achievable by executive choice alone.

But the aid programs themselves…Public Assistance, Individual Assistance, Hazard Mitigation…are written into law, with a federal cost share (normally 75% federal, 25% state/local) that Congress sets. Hamilton can’t change the formula; he can only make the trigger harder to pull.

Watch for a push to raise the per-capita damage threshold that determines whether a state “qualifies” …that’s the lever the FEMA Review Council recommended, and it’s where this gets done quietly.

2. Doesn’t “mutual aid” between states already exist?

Yes. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) has let states share crews, equipment, and personnel since the 1990s, and it’s ratified by all 50 states.

What EMAC does not do is move money for rebuilding. “National mutual aid” as Hamilton describes it is either a rebrand of EMAC or an attempt to stretch a personnel-sharing system into a financial one. The article doesn’t say which, and neither did Hamilton.

3. How much would a state actually need in reserves?

Nobody has put a number on it, which is the tell. For scale: a single major hurricane can generate billions in federal Public Assistance obligations for one state.

Most state rainy-day funds are sized for recessions, not catastrophes, and many are legally restricted to budget shortfalls…a governor can’t just raid them for debris removal. Expect states to ask for a required figure…and expect the administration not to give one.

4. What about the counties and towns, not the states?

This is the hole in the plan. FEMA’s own October study surveyed local agencies and found them typically understaffed and underfunded…the quote everyone’s citing is about local offices.

A state with a healthy reserve still has to get money down to a county with a two-person emergency office. The plan says “state-led.” It says nothing about how a rural county gets its bridges back.

5. Hasn’t the administration already been denying aid to some states?

There’s data on this. A POLITICO analysis published in March found Democratic-led states had roughly 23% of their disaster funding requests approved compared to about 89% for Republican-led states.

Sen. Gary Peters raised that figure at Hamilton’s confirmation hearing; Hamilton denied a red-state/blue-state split. The point: discretionary declarations are not a hypothetical future risk. There’s a track record.

6. Didn’t Trump try to abolish FEMA outright? What happened?

He said in January 2025 he’d recommend FEMA “go away.” Hamilton himself, then acting administrator, told Congress in May 2025 that eliminating FEMA wasn’t in the best interest of the American people... and was pushed out the next day.

He was later nominated and confirmed as the permanent administrator in 2026. The abolition plan became a “review council,” the council recommended shifting costs to states…and now…the man who once warned against gutting FEMA…is implementing the softer version. That arc is a story in itself.

7. What happens to homeowners, not just governments?

Individual Assistance…the grants that go directly to people for temporary housing and repairs…is also tied to the presidential declaration. No declaration, no IA.

Hamilton’s remarks were about state capacity; nothing in them addresses what replaces direct aid to families.

Private flood insurance is scarce…the National Flood Insurance Program is still federal…and homeowners’ policies generally exclude flooding. Fewer declarations means more uninsured households absorbing losses alone.

8. Is FEMA even staffed to “build state capacity”?

A GAO audit in August found FEMA cut its workforce through 2025–26 without assessing mission needs…roughly 17% of its workforce gone in a single year.

An agency that’s shed its experienced people is now promising to mentor 50 states.

Also worth noting: BRIC, the main pre-disaster mitigation grant program…the very thing “reducing risk” would run through…was cancelled in 2025. Some funds were later restored under court pressure..but…the pipeline was broken.

9. Who’s actually in favor of this, besides the White House?

Some Republican governors and county officials have long complained that FEMA is slow and bureaucratic…and there’s a real bipartisan constituency for faster…simpler aid. Hamilton’s speed argument isn’t invented.

The split is over who pays…not whether the process stinks. The National Association of Counties has warned that Review Council-style changes would hit small and rural counties hardest…and those are overwhelmingly red.

10. What should readers watch for in the next six months?

Four signals.

One: a Federal Register notice or policy memo raising the damage threshold for declarations.

Two: the first high-profile denial of a declaration to a state that plainly qualifies under current standards.

Three: a formal “national mutual aid” framework with no funding attached.

Four: the administration’s budget request for FY2028…due early next year…if “capacity building” is real…there’s a line item. If it isn’t…there’s a speech.

VOTE.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Trump wanted to abolish FEMA outright at the start of this term. Republican governors in hurricane states shouted him down. So FEMA isn’t being abolished.

It’s being hollowed…a grant office that preaches self-reliance while the president keeps the one power that counts: deciding who gets rescued.

You will not see that on a bumper sticker. You’ll see it the first time a Category 4 hits a state that voted the wrong way…and the declaration takes three extra weeks for reasons nobody will put in writing. Forward this now.

Sources

• POLITICO (via Yahoo News): “FEMA tells states to handle disasters on their own” — Thomas Frank, Oct. 20, 2026 — Hamilton’s Little Rock remarks, the Oct. 15 memo, the six-month timeline, and Eric Holdeman’s LinkedIn response

• FEMA press release: “First-of-its-Kind Study Provides Insights into Challenges Facing Emergency Management Agencies” — Oct. 16, 2026 — the agency’s own report finding emergency management agencies are typically understaffed and underfunded

• WKYT: “First-of-its-kind FEMA-funded study highlights funding, staffing challenges” — Oct. 20, 2026 — 73% of state EM directors report insufficient staff, 70% report lack of funding

• Yahoo News: “FEMA Chief Urges States: Build Reserves Amid WH Push for Aid Changes” — Oct. 20, 2026 — background on FEMA staffing cuts, the Argonne study’s scope, and Trump’s earlier calls to phase out FEMA

• GAO-26-108427: “FEMA Workforce: Staff Reductions and Lack of Planning May Impact Mission Readiness” — Aug. 2026 — independent audit of FEMA’s 2025–26 workforce cuts

• Denver Gazette: “Trump’s current FEMA leader says agency should not be eliminated” — May 2025 — Trump’s “FEMA go away” remark and Hamilton’s earlier testimony against abolishing the agency

• The Hill: “Trump launches $25 million whistleblower incentive program” — Oct. 20, 2026 — Trump saying he’ll be sole arbiter of fraud payouts, referenced in the “same architecture” section

• Forbes: “Trump Suggests Huge Potential Payouts For Americans Reporting Fraud” — Oct. 20, 2026 — the $30,000 vs. “no limit” discrepancy

Steve Witkoff. Dirt-Bag.

A “Humanitarian.” He Actually Said It.

Steve Witkoff saluted a war criminal. Ukraine wasn’t even in the room.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter Special Report: Thursday, October 22nd, 2026.

I’ll be direct and to the point, because there’s no time to be anything else.

Yesterday in St. Petersburg, Steve Witkoff–Donald Trump’s personal envoy–sat across from Vladimir Putin, looked him in the eye, and called him a humanitarian. Out loud. On camera.Then he said he saluted him

Putin. The man with an International Criminal Court warrant on his head for kidnapping Ukrainian children. The man whose missiles hit apartment blocks on purpose. A humanitarian.

Here’s what you need to understand. This was not a slip. This was the ninth time Witkoff has met Putin face-to-face. Nine. He’s been reported using Kremlin translators instead of our own. A transcript caught him coaching Putin’s aide on how to handle Trump. Pattern, not accident.

And the “humanitarian” gesture that earned the praise? Russia released one American– a 74-year-old retired teacher they’d held for four years.

That’s not charity. That’s a hostage trade, and Putin got paid in the only currency he values: legitimacy from the United States of America…delivered by the president’s own man.

Now ask the obvious question. Who was NOT in that room?

Ukraine.

The country whose territory…children…and future were on the table got no seat. Zelenskyy has begged to be included. The answer was a photo op in Putin’s city with Putin’s talking points.

Even Republicans acted like they couldn’t stomach it. Thom Tillis posted “WTF, Steve?” (and then I jumped down Thom’s throat in a profanity-rich reply to his post about it.)

Tillis called Witkoff’s remark embarrassing and outrageous. He’s retiring–which may be why he can say what the rest of them only think.

These cowardly little worms did NOTHING when they could have, so any “Trump is out of control!” posts I see from any of them now… are immediately met with a proverbial stiff-arm in the face from…yours truly.

John Cornyn called Putin a stone-cold killer. Don Bacon called it another embarrassment. (To be clear about Bacon’s voting record, in 2025 he voted against Trump 11% of the time, second only to Thomas Massie when it comes to voting against Trump. By no means does that let him off the hook, but…it’s not nothing.)

When the president’s own party is screaming from the sidelines, pay attention…even when you doubt their sincerity…and I always do.

So…here’s the deal. Stop waiting for the moment this administration “turns” on Russia. IT. IS. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.

Military aid has been frozen. Intelligence has been withheld. Negotiations held without the victim. And now…the moral endorsement; the one thing Putin couldn’t buy, handed over for free.

This is not incompetence. Incompetence is random. This is consistent. Every move points the same direction, and that direction is Moscow.

The only question left is what you’re going to do about it. Share this. Call your senator (YES…it still matters) especially if he’s a Republican who just found his voice. Make the word “humanitarian” the stone around this administration’s neck.

Because if they’ll say it, they’ll do anything.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. This was a special report, not today’s main article. I couldn’t sit on the Witkoff story until this afternoon, so you’re getting it now. Your full-length piece is still coming, later today, as usual. Watch your inbox.

Sources:

• CNBC – Witkoff calls Putin a ‘humanitarian’ at Russia peace talks without Ukraine

• The Hill – Witkoff faces backlash after calling Putin a ‘humanitarian’

• CBC – U.S. envoy Witkoff meets with Putin in Russia

• Roll Call – Vote Studies 2025: Republicans power Trump to record success

• Omaha World-Herald – Don Bacon votes yes on Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

• Nebraska Democratic Party – Bacon voting record release

He Stopped Hiding It. That’s the Story.

Erdoğan did it in 2019. Orbán does it every week. Mussolini did it before the war. The pattern has a name, and we’re in it.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,062: Wednesday, October 21st, 2026.

Strongmen go through two phases. In the first, they deny. In the second, they perform. Trump just crossed the line, and history is very clear about what comes next.

In this article, I’m not going to tell you Donald Trump is a Russian asset.

I don’t have to. I don’t know what’s in the files at Langley, and neither does anyone who says that word with confidence. “Asset” means recruited, directed, controlled. Nobody has proven that…at least in a courtroom…and I’m not going to pretend I have.

Here’s what I can prove.

For nine years, Trump has treated Vladimir Putin the way a man treats the one person in the room he’s afraid of.

Helsinki, 2018: standing next to Putin, asked whether he believed his own intelligence agencies or the man beside him, he picked the man beside him. On camera. In front of the world.

Back then, that moment was a scandal. His own people walked it back within forty-eight hours. There were corrections. Clarifications. Somebody got him to read a statement saying he meant “wouldn’t” instead of “would.”

Watch what’s different now.

There are no corrections anymore. No walk-backs. No aide sent out to explain what the president really meant. The deference that used to get hidden behind a door…is now the show.

And that…not the relationship itself…is the thing you should be paying attention to.

Every strongman has two phases. Learn to tell them apart.

Political scientists who study how democracies die have documented this pattern over and over.

I think of it as the shift from deniability to performance.

Phase one is deniability.

The leader has something he needs hidden: a foreign patron, a corruption pipeline, a plan for the courts. He denies it. He deflects. He fires the people who get close. Concealment costs him effort, and he pays it…because he still believes he can be made to answer.

Phase two is performance.

Same relationship, same corruption, same plan. But now…he does it in the open. He doesn’t hide the patron. He stands next to him. He doesn’t bury the deal. He brags about it.

Nothing about the underlying behavior changed. What changed is the calculation. Concealment is a cost. He stopped paying it.

Erdoğan hid his drift from NATO for years. Then in 2019 he bought Russian S-400 missiles…while still a NATO member…and dared Washington to do something about it.

Orbán spent a decade quietly courting Moscow. Now he does it on stage…with EU money in his pocket.

Putin kept the Wagner Group at arm’s length for years. Then he let the whole country watch him use it…right up until it turned on him.

Vladimir Putin tours the Concord catering factory near St. Petersburg with its owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in September 2010. Prigozhin, later the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, built his fortune on state food contracts before his 2023 mutiny and death in a plane crash.

The pattern is older than any of them. Mussolini performed independence from Berlin as long as he needed Rome to look sovereign. Once the alliance was locked…the performance flipped. He flaunted it.

Here is the rule those cases teach, and I want you to write it down:

A leader hides what he thinks he can be punished for. He flaunts what he thinks he can’t.

So when the hiding stops…he’s not being careless. He’s telling you something. He’s telling you he believes nobody will make him pay.

Three reasons a man stops hiding. Only one of them is good news for him.

Now…be careful here, because the lazy version of this argument says, “He’s flaunting it, so he must have total control.”

That’s not what the record shows. The record shows three different things that produce the exact same behavior.

One:

Real consolidation. The courts are captured, the press is cowed, the security services are his. The flaunting is a victory lap. Putin after 2012. Erdoğan after the failed coup. This is the dangerous case.

Two:

A bet on the base. He hasn’t captured everything. Courts still rule against him. Elections still happen. But…he’s concluded that his supporters will swallow any explanation he gives…and that the institutions won’t move without public pressure his supporters will never supply.

The openness isn’t proof of control. It’s a wager that the people who could stop him won’t bother.

Three:

A bluff. The position is shakier than it looks…and the display is meant to project an inevitability he doesn’t have…to keep allies from defecting. Historians read late-1930s Mussolini this way. Bravado as life insurance.

Which one is this?

Honest answer: it’s number two. Which is the only one of the three where the ending is still being written.

We have midterms in less than two weeks. We have federal judges who keep ruling against this administration…and some of them were appointed by it.

We have a press that… battered as it is…still prints things he doesn’t want printed. The constraints are real. They’re just untested at the level he’s now testing them.

That’s what the performance is. It’s not a victory lap. It’s a probe.

The flaunting always comes before the crushing. Never after.

This is the part that matters most, and it’s the part people get backwards.

They think the strongman consolidates first and then shows off. Look at the files. It runs the other way.

The open display is the test. If it draws no serious response…if the courts shrug, if the opposition sputters, if the public gets used to it…then the harder moves follow. Every time the probe goes unanswered…the next probe goes deeper.

The moment a leader stops hiding is the moment historians later circle in red. Not because the worst has happened. Because the worst has been announced…and it’s waiting to see who objects.

What this means for you. Today. Not after the next election.

A bet only pays if nobody calls it.

That’s the entire ballgame. He’s wagering that you’ll get tired. That the fourth outrage will land softer than the first. That you’ll start saying “well, that’s just how it is now,” which is the precise sentence every informant in every file I’ve ever read eventually said.

Don’t say it.

Here’s what calling the bet looks like, in order of how much it costs you:

Call your congressman’s office and ask one question: “What is the senator’s position on the president’s conduct toward Russia?” MAKE. THEM. SAY. IT. OUT. LOUD. Make a staffer write it down.

Give money to a candidate in a district that’s going to decide the House. Not a national committee. A name.

Show up. The town hall. The county party meeting. The school board. The places where the base thinks it’s unopposed.

And…share this. Not because I need the numbers…because the man who’s betting you’ll get tired needs you to keep it to yourself.

He stopped hiding. That means he’s watching to see what you do.

Do something he can see.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Somebody will write to tell me I’m being alarmist. I’d ask them one thing. Find me the case…any case, any country, any century…where a leader stopped hiding his loyalties, nobody pushed back, and it turned out fine. I’ve looked. The file is empty.

P.P.S. I write these because the moment to say it is before it’s settled history…and I’d rather it come from someone who doesn’t cash a check from either side. I have no sponsors…and I NEVER WILL; that’s not the freedom I demand as a writer. That’s only possible because readers keep the lights on.

Sources

Helsinki, 2018 — the original remark and the walk-back

• PolitiFact: Trump reverses Helsinki comments on Russian election interference — the “would / wouldn’t” correction, read from a prepared statement the day after

• Foreign Policy: Here’s What Trump and Putin Actually Said in Helsinki — full press-conference transcript, including the sentence the White House transcript omitted

• NPR: Trump Attempts to Soften Controversial Remarks He Made in Helsinki

Mueller findings — why “asset” is a claim nobody has proven

• PolitiFact: Summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s report — extensive Russian interference documented; investigation did not establish conspiracy or coordination

Erdoğan and the S-400s, 2019

• Military.com: Over US Warnings, Turkey Gets Russian-Made S-400 Missile System

• AIN: Turkey Removed from F-35 Program — White House statement, July 17, 2019

• Anadolu Agency: US defense chief hopes Turkey abandons S-400

Orbán, Moscow, and EU money

• Fortune: EU moving to cut off funding to Hungary, one of Putin’s last allies in Europe

• Ukrainska Pravda: EU plans to unlock €550 million for Hungary to secure sanctions against Russia — the ~€22 billion frozen in 2022 and the tranches released since

• WION: Orbán says he asked Putin how Russia would respond to EU use of frozen assets

Putin and Wagner, June 2023

• BusinessLIVE / Reuters: Putin vows harsh action against Wagner’s “armed mutiny” — “stab in the back” address

• BusinessDay: Wagner chief Prigozhin says he did not intend coup

Mussolini and Berlin — from performed independence to open alliance

• German History in Documents and Images: Hitler’s State Visit to Mussolini in Rome, 1938 — Mussolini’s early hostility to the Nazi regime and the turn after 1935

• Britannica: Pact of Steel — May 22, 1939

• Smithsonian / Brewminate: Why the Axis Powers Were Called the Axis Powers — Mussolini’s 1936 Milan speech announcing the Rome–Berlin Axis

The framework — how elected leaders erode democracies

• Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018) — the core argument that democracies now die slowly, through the gradual weakening of courts, press, and norms, with Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela as case studies

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