VANITY FAIR

The official X of Vanity Fair

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

"As President Donald Trump barnstorms the country to rally Republicans for the upcoming midterm elections, he’s content to play the hits," writes VF's @aidnmclaughlin. "You’d hardly know that he’s grappling with a war in the Middle East or staring down an endless stream of congressional investigations as his party braces for what could be a historic wipeout in November.

This election will ultimately serve, like every midterm before it, as a referendum on the man in the White House. Should Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, the next two years of Trump’s administration will look very different from the first two, when he operated with unprecedented power and impunity. November 3 will undoubtedly mark a turning point not just for this new flock of Democrats hoping to descend on Washington in January, but also for a White House that has sought to alter the fabric of the country and its relationship with the world."

Welcome to the midterms: https://t.co/bqDX0Yx7XO

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Is Elizabeth Holmes the biggest star of Oscar season?

'You Can See Everything' will likely make history as the first documentary nominated for best picture—and there’s potential for a few more surprise twists: https://t.co/54c7UwUYlb

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Anthony Boyle on reaching out to Sam Bankman-Fried in prison:

"Annoyingly for this interview, I promised him that I wouldn’t divulge anything. I asked him to open his heart up to me, and he really did. He was very forthcoming with over 100 questions in emails. He answered, I’d say, 98% of them. Even the ones that he didn’t answer were very telling for me, because you’re like a detective, trying to figure out how he answers them and in what way. And can you trust it?" https://t.co/vbz5Z4sonr

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Anthony Boyle on playing a character outside of period dramas:

"It’s the first time I had to act with a laptop and an iPhone, and it’s so annoying. There’s no one there that you’re looking at. You’re just looking at a green screen. And then it [causes problems]—like, Oh, we saw the camera in the reflection when you turned it that way. These things that I didn’t have to deal with before because I was, as you said, Mr. Period Man." https://t.co/vbz5Z4rQxT

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Anthony Boyle talks playing Sam Bankman-Fried in 'The Altruists,' a Netflix drama about the rise and fall of FTX: “Sam might have been the world’s first trillionaire had he not gone to jail”
https://t.co/i9rvS6p8oc

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

The next two years in the United States will be informed—heavily—by what happens in the 2026 midterm elections on Tuesday. Will Democrats take control of the House and haul an endless parade of Trump administration officials before their committees for questioning? Will they take the Senate too, and really put the brakes on Donald Trump’s presidency? Which state legislatures and governors’ mansions will change hands?

Yes, the proceedings are freighted with world-historical gravity. But the many campaigns barreling toward their conclusions across the country have also proved impressively wild and weird.

Before the results roll in after Tuesday’s big night, here’s everything you need to know—and a few things you don’t: https://t.co/L4zHpuHWRN

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

At Medieval Times, a dinner-theater kingdom faces a reckoning.

Alessandra Schade spent months reporting on the people who worked inside the popular themed restaurant, and what she found was lawsuits, allegations of sexual harassment and animal abuse, and a workplace some employees found to be as medieval as it’s namesake.

Schade investigates how a place built around a fairy tale became a nightmare for the people living it. Read the full story: https://t.co/nAv0k5Bpkv

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

It’s a bit of an ironic situation that Bass finds herself in. Before she was mayor, before she was a congresswoman, before she became Speaker of the California state assembly, she was a teenage radical who considered running for public office an act of ideological surrender. “Running for office was selling out,” she tells VF.

Has she changed? Or, like Reagan before her, has the increasingly left-leaning Democratic Party left her behind? https://t.co/hMEEyOOa6l

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

For over a year, wealthy donors have been trying to find a replacement for LA mayor Karen Bass. Billionaire developer Rick Caruso was encouraged by Ari Emanuel to consider another run for elected office. Spencer Pratt, the reality TV villain whose house burned down in the Palisades fire, transformed his personal tragedy into an insurgent mayoral campaign. But neither man became Bass’s 2026 general-election opponent.

https://t.co/hMEEyOOa6l

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Instead, the challenge came from the left, in the form of Nithya Raman, a Harvard-educated democratic socialist who even endorsed the mayor’s reelection before entering the race. Now Bass finds herself vying for Pratt supporters on the right. She’s made public safety—an issue Pratt harped on—central to her reelection campaign, and has tried to paint Raman as soft on crime. https://t.co/hMEEyOOa6l

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Karen Bass is not particularly impressed by the younger generation of progressive activists in Los Angeles:

“I don’t feel like there’s a real appreciation or thirst for history of past movements to learn past lessons." https://t.co/U8fgdngUB3

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Once a darling of the city’s liberal elite, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass is facing a challenge from a younger progressive who has friends of her own in the entertainment industry.

With her political future on the line, Bass sits down with Vanity Fair to discuss her radical past, her powerful allies, and the fight to keep her job: https://t.co/hzBF8YHRAA

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Just in time for the beginning of Halloween week, Anthropic dropped a 318-page filing for prospective investors considering joining its much-anticipated IPO in the coming days—a bone-chilling document no matter how you slice it: https://t.co/uYkjSOA76U

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Anthropic’s Pre-IPO Filing Is the Scariest Thing You’ll Read This Halloween Season https://t.co/Ife2oqjC5v

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Joshua Achiam, who resigned from his post as OpenAI’s chief futurist this summer after nine years at the company, wrote on X: “Feels like March 1, 2020 for Cyber. Not normal, something is happening. Internet lockdowns in a couple of months?”

As “Black October” comes to a close, the cybersecurity world is on edge, writes VF's @mjnblack: https://t.co/GfBP2YAKUV

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

In June 2019, Bethany Regan, a former cast member at Buena Park, filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that Franz Christian Garcia, head horse trainer at Buena Park, was “whipping the horses unnecessarily and to the point where one of the horses had large welts over its body,” in addition to causing the animals to suffer dehydration, mouth bleeding, and exhaustion.

The case settled out of court in 2020. Neither Medieval Times nor Garcia responded to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment. https://t.co/D75gHSxjjk

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

Lexie-Lynn Taylor, a former queen at the Buena Park Medieval Times castle, says she experienced constant harassment from the knights’ department—especially from one knight.

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she recalls. Taylor describes inappropriate physical touch, as well as the knight cornering her and saying vulgar things. https://t.co/D75gHSxjjk

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

“I loved my job,” says former Medieval Times employee Erin Zapcic. “But I couldn’t stand by while they mistreated us and the animals.”

At Medieval Times, a dinner-theater kingdom faces a reckoning: https://t.co/FzrE2WucWg

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

In interviews with Vanity Fair, former Medieval Times employees describe the environment as an intoxicating blend of performance adrenaline, late nights, and blurred boundaries—all charged with the undercurrents of cosplaying in what could be a romantasy novel: https://t.co/dy4CXMw2dM

[VANITY FAIR @VanityFair]

A former employee says there’s a “knights will be knights” attitude at Medieval Times, the dinner-and-a-tournament show that spans 10 castles across North America and draws 2.5M guests annually into a geeky fairy tale of feudal cosplay.

As serfs, wenches, queens, and knights on horseback bring a fantasy to life, away from the spotlight, lawsuits, allegations of sexual harassment and animal abuse, and a nine-month strike have plagued the popular themed restaurant.

Alessandra Schade reports: https://t.co/dy4CXMw2dM

[chris smith @chrissmithnymag]

“Iowa is in play, Kansas is in play, Nebraska is in play—because of @SenSusanCollins.” #SteveBannon @VanityFair https://t.co/yMRZ3GH0rE