Founded in 1991, the National Legal and Policy Center promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action. We recognize that the bigger the government, the more opportunities for corruption; and the more intervention in the economy, the more reason for special interests to seek influence. We believe that the best way to promote ethics is to reduce the size of government. We do not believe that ethics are advanced through more laws or "better guidelines," even as existing ones are ignored. We don't believe the problem is with too few laws, or with too much freedom, but with men and women. We believe the missing ingredients are character, morality and common sense.
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U.S. Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) speaks during a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre on June 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Kim removed references to Trump and his “America First” agenda from her campaign site and materials.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images/TNS)
GOP candidates are rushing to rebrand before November’s midterms
Oct 03, 2026
“If you want to know what a politician is up to, watch his feet, not his mouth,” historian Marvin Meyers wrote in his magisterial “The Jacksonian Persuasion” in 1957.
It’s still good advice. In private conversations, Republicans are talking a big game about how they’re not worried about November’s midterms, according to several informed sources I’ve talked to. But it’s not just in private. “Today, I don’t think there will be a blue wave at all,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told the Free Press earlier this month. Blair is the man tasked with overseeing the midterms for President Trump’s MAGA Inc. super-PAC.
At the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s recent retreat at Sea Island, Georgia, NRSC pollster Erik Iverson insisted that every incumbent GOP senator will be reelected and that Republicans are even on track to pick up a Senate seat.
There is no public polling that agrees with this rosy GOP scenario.
Ah yes, but the polls are “fake” as Trump likes to say, even though, at the end of August he claimed in an interview that if the election were held today, he would win by “25 points.” Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings in the polls are at record or near record lows. If they were an EKG, doctors would tell the patient to get his affairs in order.
But let’s ignore the polls. Given the difficulties with polling and its occasionally spotty record in recent years, skepticism is defensible. Which brings me back to Meyer’s advice.
At the Republicans’ faux midterm convention in Dallas a few weeks ago, Trump promised to campaign aggressively for GOP candidates in competitive states and districts around the country, asking voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”
Trump said he’d barnstorm the country to help Republicans in competitive races. His feet tell a different story. Since that pledge he’s held just one rally and one tele-rally. But this week he will have two big events — in Oklahoma and Alabama, ruby-red states he won in 2024 by 34 and 30 points, respectively.
There’s not much polling in Oklahoma, but in early August, Kevin Hern, the GOP Senate candidate, was up by more than 20 points against the potential Democratic candidate. Polling in Alabama is even more sparse, but Republican Barry Moore was up 15 points in early July.
These are the only Trump rallies currently scheduled.
I doubt that Hern and Moore are in any trouble, but that’s the point. Trump likes enthusiastic crowds, and there aren’t that many states where he can find them outside of places like Oklahoma and Alabama.
At the time of the midterm “Trumpalooza,” CBS counted 60 “battleground” Republican congressional and gubernatorial candidates. Of them, only about two dozen attended the event. Since then, handicappers have expanded the list of vulnerable Republicans. But that’s based on polling, which we’re supposed to ignore.
Still, the ever-growing number of GOP candidates who’ve scrubbed or drastically downplayed their ties to Trump must be noticing something. Rep. Young Kim of California replaced her slogan “Stand with President Trump to deliver a bold America First Agenda” with “Taking on Career Politicians to Restore the American Dream.”
Byron Donalds, running for governor in bright-red Florida, has downgraded Trump on his site to a mere afterthought. Texas congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz changed his self-description from “Trump conservative” to “strong conservative.” And so on.
In Iowa, a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024, Rep. Ashley Hinton is on the ballot for the Senate. She’s started running ads about how she’s eager to work across the aisle with Democrats. She voted with her feet by refusing to appear at a rally with JD Vance, citing unspecified scheduling conflicts.
Rep. Maria Salazar’s south Florida district is 73% Latino. In 2024 she won by 11 points, and Trump carried her district by 15. Earlier this month, she released an ad directly criticizing Trump’s immigration policies. The ad invited Trump’s wrath, but he has not yet withdrawn his endorsement.
A corollary to Meyers’ “watch his feet” advice might be the Watergate era rule, “Follow the money.” So far MAGA Inc. hasn’t spent much of its $400-million war chest. But almost 95% of what it has spent — about $15 million — has been deployed in Texas, which Trump won by almost 14 points in 2024, and which hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in 32 years.
Trump endorsed the biblically corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, over the incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who virtually everyone agrees was a lock to be reelected. The GOP has spent, so far, $140 million on Paxton.
Paxton is trailing Democrat James Talarico by 5 points in the latest polling, with independents supporting him 2 to 1.
But, as we all know, the polls are fake.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Close up of white ballot box with American flag in the background during US Midterm Congressional Elections 2026.
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National Security Leaders Sound Alarm on Armed Election Deployments
Oct 02, 2026
With Election Day approaching, concerns continue to mount over the possibility that the Trump administration could deploy armed federal agents to election sites. Democratic leaders, the NAACP, and the American Civil Liberties Union have already raised alarms, filing lawsuits after senior administration officials repeatedly refused to rule out sending armed federal agents or immigration officers to polling places during the 2026 midterm elections.
A Warning from National Security Leaders
On September 14th, National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A)—a nonpartisan network of more than 1,600 senior national security professionals, including retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—issued an unusually direct call to action. They urged state attorneys general to prepare now to seek emergency injunctive relief if the federal government takes identifiable steps toward deploying uniformed military forces or massed armed federal law enforcement personnel into major American cities in connection with the November elections.
NSL4A’s message was blunt: states cannot wait until “troops and federal agents are moving down their streets” before asking courts to protect voters from unlawful interference. Their warning reflects a broad, bipartisan consensus within the national security community that coercive federal deployments at election sites would violate constitutional norms and destabilize election administration.
NSL4A’s Mission and the Legal Guardrails Already in Place
NSL4A describes itself as a nonpartisan network united in defense of American democracy. Their September statement emphasizes that federal law already provides strong protections against military or coercive interference in domestic elections, including:
- 18 U.S.C. § 592 — “Troops at polls,” restricting the presence of armed personnel at election sites.
- 18 U.S.C. § 593 — prohibiting military interference with voters or election administration.
- 18 U.S.C. § 594 — criminalizing voter intimidation, threats, and coercion.
- 18 U.S.C. § 1385 — the Posse Comitatus Act, barring use of the Armed Forces for civilian law enforcement unless expressly authorized.
These statutes form a clear legal framework: federal military or massed law‑enforcement deployments at polling places are presumptively unlawful.
Congressional Concerns and the Limits of Current Assurances
On July 28, Senator Edward Markey, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and ten other senators wrote to the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense demanding clarity on whether the administration intends to deploy troops or armed federal law enforcement personnel to polling places. Their inquiry followed repeated evasions by senior officials and the discovery of thousands of pages of federal records potentially related to election‑site deployments.
General Dan Caine’s August 31 statement—that the military has no current plans to deploy forces to polling places—offered partial reassurance. But NSL4A notes that his assurance is limited: it does not rule out future deployments ordered by the President, nor does it address actions by the Departments of Homeland Security or Justice. States, they argue, should take the statement seriously but not treat it as a guarantee.
Why States Must Prepare Now
NSL4A stresses that attorneys general cannot act on speculation. But informed anticipation is not speculation, and waiting until a deployment is already underway would leave states with little recourse. They are not urging premature or unsubstantiated lawsuits—they are urging preparation.
States should be ready to act the moment concrete evidence emerges of deployment orders, personnel notifications, staging activity, transportation arrangements, or facility reservations indicating an imminent federal deployment.
As NSL4A’s press release states, attorneys general should be prepared to seek narrowly tailored injunctive relief preventing military or massed federal law‑enforcement forces from intimidating voters, interfering with election officials, or disrupting election administration.
The Stakes, in NSL4A’s Own Words
They write:
“This is not about obstructing legitimate law enforcement or emergency assistance. It is about enforcing the Constitution’s prescribed structure for conducting elections and preventing the coercive power of the federal government’s executive branch from being brought to bear on an American election. The danger of waiting is clear. State officials must prepare now to seek immediate relief from the courts when the threat becomes imminent—not after the trucks have rolled, armed federal personnel are in the streets, and voters are already questioning whether it is safe to cast their ballots. The courts exist in part to prevent unlawful government action before irreparable damage is done. State attorneys general should be prepared to use them.”
The message is unmistakable: vigilance now is essential to prevent crisis later.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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Constitution Day gets far less fanfare than July 4, but defending the Constitution is every American's job. Here's how ordinary citizens can help.
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Defending the Constitution Is a Year-Round Responsibility
Oct 02, 2026
For 250 years and counting, Americans have celebrated Independence Day on July 4 through fireworks, concerts, parades, barbecues, and more. By contrast, Constitution Day arrives soon after, on September 17, with far less fanfare. It is not a time to hear patriotic medleys on the radio, enjoy 20% off a new air-conditioner, watch a hot-dog-eating contest, or exchange cheerful greetings with neighbors. The observance marks the anniversary of the moment when 39 delegates signed our nation’s founding document at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. Constitution Day came and went last month with little public awareness. But the observance should inspire all Americans to protect our cherished Constitution throughout the year.
Presidents of the United States recite an oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This oath, familiar to many Americans who watch Inauguration Day ceremonies, is mandated by the Constitution itself (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8). Public officials, judges, service members, and lawyers like me also swear oaths to support the Constitution as part of their public or professional roles.
While oaths may obligate certain people to defend the Constitution, it is critical that all of us play a role in its defense. You can speak out and take action to help sustain our democracy. This is something we must never take for granted.
Ratified in 1791, the Bill of Rights, along with subsequent amendments, protects such crucial rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, due process, equal protection, and more. The Bill of Rights further declares that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people. Benjamin Franklin expressed his support for such popular sovereignty at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, declaring: “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”
If you’re like most Americans and have not taken an oath to defend the Constitution, you might be hesitant to “get involved,” comparing yourself to activists or policy experts. But this is about our government, not your particular background. A résumé is not required to add your voice at a school board or town hall meeting, march in a peaceful protest, circulate a petition, or vote.
Defending the Constitution also isn’t reserved for any single political party or ideology. Throughout U.S. history, people with a range of values and beliefs have invoked the Constitution to advance their views. Doing so requires us to respect constitutional limits even when they conflict with our political opinions.
In 1770, John Adams took an enormously unpopular position by insisting that Captain Thomas Preston and the eight British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre get a fair trial and served as their attorney. Preston was acquitted, and the soldiers’ trial resulted in six acquittals and two lesser convictions of manslaughter rather than murder. This powerful story shows how one of America’s founders believed that consistent application of rights and the rule of law were essential for a healthy nation.
Defending the Constitution does not require us to think in lockstep. On the contrary, constitutional issues are often complicated, and it is the process of disagreement and debate that enables us to work through them. The Constitution itself was the product of disagreement and compromise, with Federalists and Anti-Federalists at odds throughout ratification.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned its own precedents. In 1896, the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” principle. Nearly six decades later, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka rejected that principle, holding in 1954 that racially segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that “separate but equal” has no place in public education.
The Constitution was designed to permit such change. As the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Through Article V, the Constitution established an amendment process, which has led to fundamental changes, including abolishing slavery, expanding voting rights, limiting presidential terms, and lowering the voting age to 18.
When we ignore the Constitution, or casually invoke it without understanding it, disagreements become harder to navigate because we lose our framework for resolving them. Soon after retiring as a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized the importance of constitutional education in a 2007 interview, warning “You don’t inherit that knowledge through the gene pool.” Constitution Day exists in its current form in large part because a retired medical technologist, Louise Leigh, studied the Constitution and took action to encourage constitutional awareness.
As an attorney, I have heightened responsibility because of the oaths I have taken, and I have written this piece with those oaths in mind. But my oaths do not give me greater ownership of the framework of our self-government than any other American. Helping to uphold the Constitution, whether through speaking, writing, voting, petitioning, assembling, serving, learning, or teaching, is key to sustaining our constitutional democracy.
Constitution Day may be Independence Day’s quieter sibling, but it should serve as an annual reminder of our individual and collective responsibility. Constitution Day is September 17, but every day is an opportunity to express an opinion and play a role in shaping history’s next chapter. Through greater appreciation and understanding, we the people can ensure that our Constitution remains the meaningful vehicle for sustaining our democracy, and that it grows as we do.
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AI résumé screening can filter out qualified candidates before a human ever looks. Here's why transparency and human oversight in hiring matter.
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When AI Screens the Resume, Who Gets a Fair Shot at Work?
Oct 02, 2026
A job seeker can spend hours tailoring a résumé, checking qualifications and writing a thoughtful application, believing the next step will be a person deciding whether to schedule an interview.
Increasingly, that assumption may be wrong.
Before a recruiter reads a résumé, software may sort applications, identify keywords, rank candidates, answer screening questions or determine which applicants advance. Some systems are relatively simple filtering tools. Others use machine learning or artificial intelligence to evaluate applicants across multiple data points.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using technology to manage a hiring process. Employers have legitimate reasons to use it. A company receiving hundreds or thousands of applications cannot expect recruiters to manually examine every document with unlimited time and resources.
The harder question is what happens when efficiency becomes a substitute for judgment.
When an automated system influences who receives a chance to compete for a job, it is no longer merely an administrative convenience. It becomes part of the infrastructure through which people gain access to economic opportunity.
That deserves more scrutiny.
The first decision may happen before a human sees the candidate
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has examined the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence and automated systems in employment decisions, including recruitment and hiring. The agency has emphasized that existing employment-discrimination laws continue to apply when employers use automated technologies.
That distinction matters.
An algorithm does not need to explicitly discriminate against someone to produce a problematic outcome. A screening system can rely on criteria that appear neutral but function differently for different applicants.
Consider a candidate who took several years away from paid employment to care for a parent. Consider another who built skills through military service, community work or self-employment rather than through a conventional career path. Or consider someone whose experience is highly relevant but described using terminology that differs from the language used in a job posting.
A human recruiter might recognize the connection.
A rigid screening rule might not.
In testimony before the EEOC, ReNika Moore discussed how automated screening tools can filter or rank applicants using knockout questions, keyword requirements, specific qualifications and other criteria. Her testimony also raised concerns about systems that may screen for employment gaps or narrow descriptions of experience in ways that can exclude qualified candidates.
These are not arguments against technology. They are arguments against assuming that whatever is measurable is necessarily what matters.
A résumé is not a person
This is perhaps the most important limitation of automated résumé screening.
A résumé is an imperfect representation of a human being. It contains selected facts about someone's education, work history, skills and accomplishments. It does not contain the whole person.
Years of experience do not automatically equal competence. A particular job title does not guarantee ability. A missing keyword does not prove that someone lacks a skill.
Even sophisticated systems face a fundamental problem: predicting someone's suitability for a job from indirect signals.
The EEOC's examination of automated employment systems has highlighted concerns about screening tools that can reject candidates before human review, as well as systems that rely on highly specific credentials, job-experience descriptions or other rigid criteria.
That should make employers cautious about treating an algorithmic ranking as an objective measurement of merit.
A system can be consistent and still be wrong.
It can process thousands of résumés in seconds and still miss the person who would have been the best hire.
But the human process is hardly perfect
There is an understandable temptation to frame this as a choice between biased technology and unbiased human beings.
That would be a mistake.
Human hiring decisions are not automatically fair. Recruiters and hiring managers have their own assumptions, preferences and blind spots. Humans can overlook qualified candidates because of familiarity with certain employers, conventional career paths, educational credentials or simple fatigue after reviewing hundreds of applications.
Automation can sometimes reduce certain inconsistencies. It can help recruiters handle enormous application volumes and draw attention to qualifications that might otherwise be overlooked.
That is why the debate should not be “AI versus humans.”
The more useful question is: Where should technology make decisions, and where should humans remain accountable for them?
That is a much harder question, but it is also the one employers need to answer.
Efficiency should not become an excuse for opacity
The most troubling development would be a hiring system in which nobody can clearly explain why an applicant was screened out.
Job seekers generally cannot see how a company's hiring technology weighs their experience. They may not know whether a résumé was evaluated by a keyword filter, an automated scoring system, an assessment tool or a combination of technologies.
That creates an asymmetry of power.
The employer knows how the gate works. The applicant is simply told whether the gate opened.
Some jurisdictions have already begun addressing this issue. New York City's Local Law 144 requires covered employers and employment agencies using automated employment decision tools to satisfy requirements involving bias audits, public information about those audits and notice to workers or candidates.
Whatever one thinks about the details of such rules, the underlying principle is worth considering nationally: people should not be left completely in the dark when automated systems play a significant role in determining access to employment.
Transparency does not necessarily mean publishing an algorithm's source code.
It can mean something much simpler.
Was an automated tool used? What kind of decision did it influence? Was there a meaningful opportunity for human review? What happens when the system produces an obviously questionable result? How can an applicant request an accommodation or raise a concern?
Those questions are not anti-technology.
They are basic questions of accountability.
The burden cannot fall entirely on job seekers
There is already a growing expectation that applicants must learn how to “beat the algorithm.”
That phrase reveals something important about the system.
When people are encouraged to load their résumés with keywords, mirror the wording of job descriptions or restructure their professional histories primarily to satisfy an automated filter, the hiring process risks becoming a competition in algorithmic optimization rather than an assessment of who can actually perform the job.
Job seekers should certainly present their qualifications clearly. But they should not have to become amateur software engineers merely to ensure that a qualified human gets a chance to evaluate them.
The responsibility belongs elsewhere, too.
Employers should understand what their automated tools actually measure, validate whether those measurements relate to legitimate job requirements and regularly examine outcomes for evidence of unintended exclusion.
Technology vendors should be candid about limitations and give employers meaningful ways to monitor performance.
Recruiters and hiring managers should retain enough authority to question automated recommendations rather than treating them as final judgments.
And policymakers should focus on practical protections around accountability, notice, accessibility and discrimination without assuming that every form of workplace automation requires exactly the same regulation.
Human oversight should mean more than a human somewhere in the process
There is a difference between human involvement and human judgment.
A recruiter who automatically accepts an algorithm's ranking is technically part of a human-supervised process. But that does not necessarily provide meaningful oversight.
Real oversight means people can investigate unusual outcomes, challenge automated recommendations and reconsider candidates who may have been filtered out for reasons unrelated to their ability to perform the job.
This becomes particularly important when automated systems encounter candidates whose backgrounds do not fit conventional patterns.
Career paths are becoming less linear. People change industries. They return to work after caregiving. They acquire skills outside traditional degree programs. Veterans translate military experience into civilian occupations. Workers rebuild careers after layoffs. Immigrants bring professional experience from other countries.
A hiring system designed around yesterday's career path may have difficulty recognizing tomorrow's worker.
That is a governance problem as much as a technology problem.
The goal should be better hiring, not simply faster hiring
The pressure to make hiring faster is understandable.
But speed is only one measure of a successful hiring system.
A process can be fast, inexpensive and highly automated while still producing poor matches or excluding people who should have received consideration.
The better standard is whether technology helps employers identify qualified people while preserving fairness, accountability and meaningful human judgment.
AI may make parts of recruitment better. It can reduce administrative burdens, help employers process large applicant pools and potentially help recruiters focus more of their time on candidates rather than paperwork.
But realizing that promise requires a basic principle:
An automated hiring system should assist the decision-maker without becoming an invisible decision-maker.
The stakes extend beyond individual résumés.
Employment is one of the primary ways Americans gain economic security, independence and a sense of participation in society. When access to employment is increasingly mediated by technology, the design and governance of that technology becomes a public-interest issue.
The question is therefore not whether artificial intelligence deserves a place in hiring.
It does.
The question is whether the people affected by it will have a fair shot at being seen.
A résumé should open the door to consideration, not become the reason the door never opens.
Michelle Brenier is a SaaS and technology content writer specializing in AI, recruitment technology, emerging technologies and the changing nature of work. He contributes content expertise to Jump Resume Builder, where he focuses on career technology and tools that help job seekers navigate the modern hiring process.
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