Federal prosecutors in California have issued grand jury subpoenas to state and local election officials Thursday, according to a person with knowledge of the effort and a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office, which administers elections in the county. The person was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive investigative steps.
MS NOW has obtained three subpoenas issued last week to employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar’s office. Each subpoena demands the recipient testify on Nov. 4, the morning after Election Day, and produce documents, including any records or communications reflecting the county’s efforts to screen for noncitizen voters or prevent the counting of any noncitizens’ votes.
The move expands the Department of Justice’s controversial probe into suspected noncitizens who are registered to vote in California. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice sued California to demand officials there set aside mail ballots cast by any of the roughly 20,000 registered voters it identified as “likely noncitizens,” according to a database compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.
A district court denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have forced California to segregate any mail ballots cast by alleged noncitizens and refrain from counting or tabulating them unless and until California could verify their citizenship. The DOJ has already appealed that order, and Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has said that he expects the case will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta described the DOJ’s grand jury subpoenas as an attack.
“The Trump Administration’s escalating attacks on our hardworking elections officials in California are unacceptable,” Bonta said in a statement shared on X. “As Judge Carter said in his opinion yesterday,‘these threats must stop.’”
California and L.A. County officials have criticized the DOJ for claiming, without evidence, that thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote, especially after the county said it reviewed a sample of registered voters on DHS’s list and found information indicating that many were born in the U.S.
The subpoenas, which were first reported by Bloomberg, are signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney General Michael Wheat, a veteran federal prosecutor who first joined the Justice Department in the 1980s. Wheat has brought criminal charges in recent weeks against alleged noncitizens for election-related crimes.
Wheat has also been tied to the investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar, who, according to a search warrant issued earlier this month, is being scrutinized for potential immigration fraud.
President Donald Trump has canceled two rallies in the final days of the critical 2026 midterm elections, and instead, is now spending the weekend holding a flurry of tele-rallies – shorter virtual events – as polls show Republicans facing growing political headwinds.
The president was originally set to campaign in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday, but the Republican National Committee, which has been organizing his final campaign blitz, suddenly announced on Thursday that those rallies will no longer take place.
Over the last several weeks, the president has traveled across the country with near-daily rallies, often campaigning in Republican strongholds in an effort to turn out his base. Some Republican candidates, however appear to have distanced themselves from the president in the midst of his all-time high disapproval rating, as well as voter concerns over rising costs and the ongoing war in Iran. His rallies have occassionally been interrupted by protestors whom the president has claimed are being paid.
A Republican operative familiar with the cancellations told MS NOW that the last-minute change of schedule for the president is due to a “high demand” for him in numerous tight races in the final stretch of the election, claiming telerallies allow him to reach a wider pool of voters in more districts.
“Voters across the country want to hear from President Trump before Election Day, and this 72-hour sprint will be a huge boost in the closing days,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters wrote in a statement announcing the cancellation.
A White House official echoed that sentiment, emphasizing the telerallies still allow Trump to reach Americans ahead of Election Day.
“President Trump will continue connecting directly with Americans nationwide through more than 20 telerallies before Election Day,” the official said. “These events give him the opportunity to highlight his accomplishments and expand his reach across the country.”
Trump is now expected to spend the weekend leading up to the election participating in tele-rallies for at least 19 states, including Kansas and Iowa, according to Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. States not on the list as of now include Maine and New Hampshire, where even allies of Trump have acknowledged that voters less enthusiastic about the president could decide the results of competitive Senate races.
While returning from Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday evening after speaking at a rally to boost Sen. Darline Graham, Trump lashed out at a reporter who asked whether he canceled Saturday’s rally in Kansas because he was “sick of traveling.”
“You’re sick to ask that question. You are sick,” the president replied, berating the reporter.
“I’m not doing Kansas because he’s doing very well,” Trump said, referring to GOP incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, and later added, “I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas.” According to the latest polling average from MS NOW/Fifty Plus One, Democrat Adam Hamilton holds a two point edge over Marshall.
Since kicking off his final midterm campaign blitz in Durant, Oklahoma, 29 days ago, the president has campaigned at 25 rallies, including his latest rally in South Carolina on Thursday. He often returns to the White House after his back-to-back rallies late at night or in the early morning hours.
MS NOW was previously told by a senior White House official that the president would be holding a final campaign rally in Michigan on Monday, but now the same senior official says those plans have not been finalized.
As of now, the only remaining rally that’s been officially announced is one in Trump’s home state of Florida, in Daytona Beach, on Friday. It’s unclear whether additional rallies will be added before the election.
On Election Day, the president is expected to remain at the White House, the senior White House official said.
The Justice Department confirmed in a court filing late Wednesday that FBI and ICE agents will not be deployed as election monitors at polling places on Election Day, but that employees from other federal law enforcement agencies will serve as monitors.
“There will be no Federal Bureau of Investigation or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, much less agents, serving as monitors,” the Justice Department said in a declaration filed with the court. It added that one Customs and Border Protection employee will serve as a monitor on behalf of the Civil Rights Division “pursuant to detail and not as a representative” of the Department of Homeland Security.
The court filing came in response to a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed, in part by the NAACP, to block the Justice Department from deploying federal agents to polling places during the midterm elections.
The Justice Department also said that employees from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons “will serve as monitors.” The declaration was filed by Eric Neff, acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, who has previously promoted false claims about the 2020 election.
“It’s not normal for those types of federal officials to serve as monitors,” Justin Levitt, a former DOJ attorney who helped oversee the election monitor program during the Obama administration, told MS NOW. “But they’re still just there only to observe, and can (and will) still be tossed out of the polls if they disrupt or disturb or intimidate.”
The Justice Department’s decision to pull employees from those agencies to act as monitors comes after the department announced in August it would deploy 1,000 federal monitors for the 2026 midterms. The announcement drew concern from Democratic lawmakers in Congress, and voting rights advocates over the scope of the operation and its potential for voter intimidation.
State election officials have told MS NOW that the federal election monitors are not their top concern when it comes to federal interference from the Trump administration. Monitors can be removed from polling sites if they are disruptive, and states determine the level of access federal poll monitors have to observe voting.
Levitt said the Justice Department is likely struggling to get to the 1,000 election monitors promised by Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Civil Rights Division, and is tapping ATF and DEA employees “as an attempt to get warm bodies.”
“Someone promised the boss 1,000 people, and then couldn’t come up with 1,000 people,” he said.
DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels previously told MS NOW that no other federal officials or federal law enforcement agents would accompany the DOJ monitors in their deployment at polling places. The election monitors will be DOJ attorneys and criminal prosecutors, the Justice Department told MS NOW.
Dispatching prosecutors as monitors is unusual, as typically only civil attorneys serve in that role.
WESTBROOK, Maine – Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday finally endorsed fellow Democrat Troy Jackson in his race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, her first public show of support for the former Maine Senate president, with whom she clashed when Jackson led the chamber.
“I encourage Maine people to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot who will stand up for our values and stand up to Trump,” Mills wrote on X, indicating that she had voted for Jackson at her early voting site on Thursday.
Mills, who ran for Senate herself before dropping out this spring, had been notably silent since Jackson earned the Democratic nomination following the collapse of Graham Platner’s campaign.
Last month, Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman told MS NOW that Jackson had not contacted the governor about an endorsement but that she “would welcome a conversation” with him.
On Thursday, though, it was revealed that behind the scenes there had been a last-ditch effort between the two camps to unite Jackson and Mills.
Jackson told MS NOW at a press briefing in Westbrook Thursday morning that he had recently left a voice message for Mills but hadn’t heard back.
A person close to the governor, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that Jackson left the message seeking Mills’ endorsement shortly after his final, testy debate with Collins on Oct. 15. But Mills was about to depart on a trade mission to Ireland, which took her out of the country for several days. The day of the voicemail, aides for Mills and Jackson connected about getting them together to discuss an endorsement after Mills returned, the person close to Mills said.
But that meeting never happened.
When Mills’ team followed up this week, Jackson’s campaign “indicated an endorsement from her didn’t fit into their schedule for the final stretch,” the person said.
A Jackson spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about that version of events.
On Thursday, before Mills posted her support, Jackson argued the lack of an endorsement from the governor was not an essential factor in his race, which polls suggest is razor-thin just five days out.
“Look, this race is not about me and Janet or anything like that,” he told MS NOW. “This race is about people that don’t have health care, people that don’t know how to fill their oil tanks, people that don’t know how to get their prescription drugs.”
“I’m not really sure, like, with the governor — I don’t take it personally or anything like that. I mean, Angus King didn’t endorse me either,” Jackson added, referring to Maine’s independent senator, who has historically not endorsed Collins’ opponents.
Jackson has not been shy about his rocky relationship with Mills.
“We obviously disagreed a lot — it’s no secret,” he said in April. “I mean, the governor vetoed more than 40 of my bills.”
CORRECTION (Oct. 29, 2026, 9:15 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article inaccurately depicted a piece of the timeline of the communication between aides for Jackson and Mills. Originally, the person close to the governor said an aide for Mills attempted to make contact after the governor returned from a trade mission and got no response. The person now says aides for both Jackson and Mills spoke on the day Jackson left the message in an attempt to setup a meeting between the two.
Under the leadership of Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, is seeking to heavily restrict traditional Medicare enrollees’ use of remote monitoring devices for their health conditions. A proposed rule would eliminate coverage for these services unless the service is provided at a physician’s office. This rule would particularly hurt enrollees who have difficulty traveling to in-person appointments, such as rural seniors. And it would undercut a key Republican effort to alleviate the harms of last year’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Remote monitoring programs allow patients to collect their health data themselves (such as taking their own blood pressure, oxygen levels or blood sugar) and transmit the data to healthcare providers, who can use the information to help manage the patient’s health. These programs aren’t just convenient; they make it easier to proactively manage chronic diseases before there is an emergency. Patients and providers don’t have to rely on a single data point at a scheduled appointment or waiting until the condition worsens.
Where the HHS inspector general suggested a scalpel, CMS would use a hammer.
Consequently, reliance on remote monitoring has expanded in recent years. Almost 1 million Medicare enrollees received it in 2024 alone. Remote monitoring has proved particularly valuable to those who have chronic medical conditions but face obstacles to in-person appointments. For instance, residents in rural communities and areas with shortages of health professionals don’t need to travel long distances for appointments as frequently. Transportation is a critical social determinant of health, and if one has poor vision or limited mobility, in-person appointments are especially challenging.
To justify the new restrictions, the CMS cites a 2025 report by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general. Those findings raised concerns about suspicious billing practices and patients not receiving treatment. But the report called for a measured approach: closer monitoring of billing while preserving Medicare enrollees’ ability to benefit from this program. CMS would go much further: Because most medical practices lack the bandwidth to launch and oversee their own remote monitoring programs, requiring the service to be provided by someone at a physician’s office practically eliminates the benefit. In short, where the HHS inspector general suggested a scalpel, CMS would use a hammer.
The new CMS proposal, however, is particularly curious in light of how the “big, beautiful bill” came to be.
Since then, CMS has allowed a subsidy program for Medicare Part D prescription-drug costs to expire. And it introduced a pilot program in six states that uses artificial intelligence to review the medical necessity of prescribed care. The practice, also known as prior authorization, previously was rarely used in traditional Medicare. The pilot program has already resulted in significant delays in care.
The new CMS proposal, however, is particularly curious in light of how the “big, beautiful bill” came to be. To stanch the proverbial bleeding that rural communities are projected to face from the bill’s cuts, Republicans created a $50 billion fund for rural healthcare. Technological innovation was a central pillar of this effort, known as the Rural Health Transformation Program.
Restricting remote monitoring does anything but foster innovative technologies. And the effects will be felt increasingly in the years to come. The RHTP is a relative pittance compared to H.R. 1’s Medicaid cuts and will do little to prevent closures of rural hospitals or key hospital services. And when a rural hospital closes, the driving time to the next hospital increases by 20 to 40 miles on average, regardless of whether one is on Medicaid or Medicare — which makes the ability to monitor one’s health at home all the more important.
While remote monitoring programs are imperfect and deserve oversight, they help provide healthcare in typically underserved areas. What’s more, by facilitating earlier detection, these programs can result in better patient outcomes, which are less costly to treat. In other words, remote monitoring is good for patients and for the healthcare system itself.
Along with Social Security, Medicare is considered the “third rail” of American politics. Not only is the program popular, but seniors (roughly 90% of its enrollees) vote at high rates, and younger voters prefer to protect the program for when they age into it. The politics of Medicare retrenchment may ultimately prove to be less visible than the consequences of slashing health programs. Elected officials understand the political costs of reducing Medicare spending. Yet under Oz’s leadership, CMS is demonstrating how to weaken Medicare through a series of administrative decisions that preserve the appearance of coverage while weakening access to care. Medicare’s greatest vulnerability may not be outright cuts, but rather the quiet erosion of the benefits on which seniors have been counting.
Alaska’s Republican governor ordered an investigation into Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign Wednesday after The New York Times reported her campaign was involved with another person named Dan Sullivan ending up on the ballot alongside Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent. That report that Peltola’s campaign attempted to put a finger on the scale provoked a fresh round of outrage from President Donald Trump, and, at first glance, it may have seemed to support an unprecedented lawsuit by the Department of Justice lawsuit to pre-emptively discredit a Peltola victory. But not even Wednesday’s political bombshell justifies the DOJ’s involvement.
There’s a lot to find concerning about the Peltola campaign’s shenanigans, but the federal government has no power to force Alaska to alter its election procedures.
The Peltola campaign denies it did anything untoward, but there’s plenty to be concerned about in the Times’ reporting. According to Peltola’s former campaign manager, who spoke extensively with the Times but retracted her comments before publication, the campaign worked with Senate Democrats’ campaign arm to recruit the second Dan Sullivan to run. The DOJ’s lawsuit to intervene in Alaska’s election in case the incumbent Republican senator loses also leans heavily on the Peltola campaign’s supposedly nefarious moves to confound voters.
But even if there were attempts to confound voters, that doesn’t mean voters will be confounded. The ballot makes exceedingly clear which Dan Sullivan is which. The incumbent Dan S. Sullivan has the word “Incumbent” next to his name and the label “Registered Republican,” and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.’s name is left unadorned.
And Edward Foley, a law professor and former Ohio solicitor general, explained in an MS NOW essay why concerns of voters accidentally denying the incumbent senator re-election are “significantly mitigated” by the state’s ranked choice voting system.
That doesn’t mean we should entirely disregard the reported shady tactics and condescension from people working to get Peltola elected. At one point, some Democratic strategists seemed to delight in the idea of confusing the public:
In one exchange of text messages obtained by The Times, Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group, surmising the participants would be susceptible to being tricked into voting for a ballot spoiler.
“Do we have a scheme for you,” wrote a consultant for the Peltola campaign. A pollster on the chat wrote that one voter seemed like the perfect audience “for our ballot strategy plan :)”
Despite Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s call for an investigation, and the DOJ’s lawsuit, the Times report makes clear that “ballot-stacking tactics are common in politics and generally considered legal — and have been employed by both parties in Alaska.” But the department’s lawsuit says it has an “obligation to protect the integrity of its election” and, if Peltola wins, wants to block certification “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan,” according to their lawsuit.
The DOJ’s suit quotes an initial claim from Carol Beecher, Alaska’s director of the division of elections, that Daniel J. Sullivan wanted to be on the ballot “for the purpose of confusing or misleading voters and compromising the fairness of the ballot.” But now Beecher is firmly against the DOJ’s suit. State lawyers in a motion to dismiss filed Monday argued that the federal government “lacks authority to intervene in state elections at all, much less in support of a favored candidate.”
If anything, in its own efforts to affect the race’s outcome, the DOJ may have jumped the gun.
Nothing in the Times’ report changes that. There may be consequences for Peltola and her campaign staff at the state level. As election law expert Rick Hasen noted, if anyone lied under oath about cooperation between Democrats and Dan J. Sullivan, then there could be cause for a perjury prosecution, but no allegations on that front had arisen as of Thursday afternoon.
Any such testimony would have come from Dan J. Sullivan’s lawsuit to remain on the ballot earlier this year. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled in his favor, allowing him to remain an option for voters. Again, there’s a lot to find concerning about the Peltola campaign’s shenanigans, but the federal government has no power to force Alaska to alter its election procedures.
If anything, in its own efforts to affect the race’s outcome, the DOJ may have jumped the gun. I imagine there would be a lot more willingness to criticize Peltola outright, and a potentially less mixed bag reaction from Alaskans, without the federal intervention. As it stands, the case will still fall flat, and Alaska’s voters will still have their say in who represents them in the U.S. Senate — even if they have to take a few seconds longer to read their ballot.
* Good news on growth, bad news on inflation: “The pace of price increases stepped up in September, keeping inflation well above the Federal Reserve’s target, while the economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter, according to Commerce Department reports Thursday.”
* That we knew this was coming doesn’t make it any easier to swallow (or inhale): “President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration is ‘terminating’ a Biden-era rule that aimed to cut planet-warming emissions of methane from oil and gas drilling. Trump said during a campaign rally in Texas that the change would save companies and consumers billions of dollars and unlock 210 million barrels of oil. That’s equivalent to about 10 days of U.S. petroleum consumption.”
* The obvious call: “A federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s request for an emergency order that would have forced California to set aside mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters whom the Department of Homeland Security has identified as ‘likely’ noncitizens.”
* Another heartening ruling: “Chronically ill people on Medicaid won’t be bound by new work requirement rules that the latest Trump administration guidance requires in order to qualify for ‘medically frail’ exemptions, a federal judge ruled Thursday.”
* The White House’s pal in Pyongyang wants attention again: “North Korea launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Thursday, South Korea’s military said, days after the North threatened to resume front-line propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts and deploy new weapons along the rivals’ tense border. The launches also followed leader Kim Jong Un’s surprise weekend visit to China, the North’s main ally and economic pipeline, to push for greater cooperation.”
* Putting the government back together again is going to be a dramatic undertaking: “President Donald Trump has overseen the departure of about 1 in every 5 government workers since the start of his second term, a faster and deeper overhaul than under any recent predecessor, a Washington Post analysis found. By some metrics, Black people — who have historically made up a larger portion of government employees compared with their share of the population — were hit hardest, The Post found.”
* Trump doesn’t often surprise me, but I’ll confess I didn’t see this latest rhetorical trend coming: “Trump has long had a penchant for complimenting — or disparaging — the physical appearances of his allies and enemies alike. But a new analysis by The Washington Sun shows that Trump has referenced physical appearance almost three times as much in the past year as he did during the same period in the 2016 campaign.”
Some influencers in MAGA world are at one another’s throats over the arrest and possible deportation of one of the movement’s loudest anti-immigration cheerleaders.
Samuel Sey, a Christian blogger and Ghanaian immigrant, has gained popularity for his vocal defenses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waging Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. But as I explained in this week’s Tuesday Tech Drop, he was arrested last week after reportedly overstaying his visa.
The Department of Homeland Security told The Christian Post that Sey is “an illegal alien from Ghana” who has accepted “voluntary departure” from the country.
The MAGA movement, it seems, is torn over the ordeal.
On one hand, a Black immigrant who overstayed his visa would seem like a prime target for a movement like MAGA. On the other hand, a Black immigrant willing to celebrate Trump’s brutality toward immigrants is useful to the movement for propaganda purposes — and that seems like a big reason why some conservatives are expressing sympathy for him.
Christian nationalist influencer Joel Webbon faced some backlash over a prayer in which he thanked God for Sey’s arrest and for “shutting his mouth from spewing out more lies and slander against your servants.” Webbon, who also prayed for Sey’s deportation, is someone known for promoting bigotry and arguing that the U.S. could use even more racism.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 28 episode of “The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi.”
On Wednesday evening, just days before the midterms, we saw a split screen of the politics of the past and the politics of the present.
In Ohio, President Donald Trump once again gave an ugly and rambling speech, repeating racist remarks about Muslim politicians and calling for the prosecution of others, while stumping for and defending a candidate who refuses to apologize for an attack ad that exploited his opponent’s experience as a child rape victim.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail to deliver one of his trademark speeches, designed to energize voters and to reinforce their beliefs in small-d democratic values.
Obama’s remarks also served as a scathing rebuke of the current president and his politics of grievance, making the case that the country needs to “rediscover our North Star:”
We also need to rediscover what’s best in us, because if we don’t return to some of those mighty precious values Dr. King was talking about, we will continue to fester in anger and division. And I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being angry, and I’m tired of being divided. I want friendship and neighborliness and joy and generosity. I want everybody rolling up their sleeves in the common enterprise of rebuilding America. I want everybody handing our country and our world off to our kids a little better than they are right now. That’s what I want. That’s what you want.
Obama’s re-emergence might stir up bittersweet feelings for some of us who preferred a time when the nation was not led by an administration that had practiced deliberate cruelty and exploited Americans’ differences for personal and political gain.
For many of us, the former president is still a reminder of a more decent time in America: when the people running the federal government believed that it should serve the people; when America’s standing in the world was unrivaled; when our allies could trust us and we did not bow down to autocratic regimes or cozy up to war criminals.
Obama’s return to the campaign trail and his continued ability to galvanize voters by reminding them of the values that truly make this country great does not have to be bittersweet. It can be a reminder of who we are. It can be an incentive to fight to reset the moral compass of our nation, to rebuild the institutions that Trump and his band of billionaire oligarchs have been dismantling, and to repair the alliances that keep America safe, secure and prosperous.
The Obama era was not a century ago. Believe it or not, it ended less than 10 years ago. Obama’s still here. You’re still here.
In this moment, I’m reminded of a conversation I had a few days after the 2024 presidential election with Timothy Snyder, a distinguished history professor. At that point, the presidential race had been called for Trump, and half of the country was reckoning with the idea of his vengeful return to the White House.
But back then, Snyder had this advice for anyone who was feeling hopeless: While the circumstances around you might change, you don’t have to change with it. More than that, you have the choice to resist the changes this administration tries to impose on you, your country and your values.
“Freedom means you decide who you are,” he said. “And when things change around you, you continue to be that person.” Snyder’s words continue to resonate, and two years later, in the run-up to these crucial midterms, he has another reminder for us.
In a new piece on his Substack, “Thinking About,” the historian identified myriad things that could cause Americans to be disheartened right now but, in typical Tim Snyder fashion, he lands on six words that encapsulate all that needs to happen in the next six days: “All of this can be solved.”
We still have agency. We still have the vote. More than 42 million people have already cast a ballot in this year’s elections, surpassing the early-voter turnout for the 2018 midterms. At this rate, there’s a good chance that it will surpass the early-voter turnout for the 2022 midterms.
And that, according to Snyder, is how all of this can be solved.
“Only a government can act to resolve this problem, but it has to be a government animated by people who care about freedom,” he wrote. “Government animated by liberty can break up monopolies, government can tax centibillionaires, government can regulate media and social media platforms. All of this can be solved.”
Snyder argues that a better future is still possible, even as powerful figures attempt to push the country toward a darker one: “A better future, a far better future, can replace the dystopias for which our oligarchs now so openly long. To get there, we will have to exercise the very rights that they now so openly hate.”
A new report from The Bulwark sounds the alarm on disturbing remarks made by Ellis Boyle, a North Carolina-based U.S. attorney, during a discussion about crime with conservative influencer Cassie Clark. The outlet reported on Boyle’s comments about removing people with “bad” gene pools from society:
“What I’ve observed is, you know — it occurs to me, and this is not a new thought; I heard someone else say it. And I started looking — and if you look, you see it: 5% of the population cause 90% of the crime.”
And Boyle kept going:
“I think there’s a big component — if you took out [the] 5% of the population that’s bad and removed them from society, so they don’t create mayhem and create, you know, babies with the gene pool of more bad, then I think, in two, maybe three generations, think of how great this population would be. But that’s something that takes willpower.”
In response to the backlash against Boyle, Clark attempted to defend him from criticism, writing on X: “Removing the people who keep hurting everybody else from free society is called incarceration. … What it is not is eugenics.”
Yet Boyle advocated for removing people from society to limit their supposedly bad “gene pool” — which is absolutely a key tenet of eugenics.
Boyle’s office didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Trump’s bigoted and baseless remarks about some immigrants having “bad genes” that make them prone to criminality have echoed textbook eugenicists by suggesting that America’s woes could be addressed by altering the nation’s genetic makeup.
Late last year, I wrote about about people with ties to Musk and a bunch of other Silicon Valley tech bros appearing in the Epstein files, with emails showing that they discussed eugenics. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another prominent voice of racist pseudoscience, has been accused by critics of using the nation’s top health agency to support eugenics ideology as well. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a top infectious disease expert, said in his resignation letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that eugenics “plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated” at Kennedy’s agency.
Sir Patrick Stewart, a preeminent British actor whose career spanned theater, films and television and who achieved his greatest fame portraying Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s and Lewy Body Dementia, representatives for Stewart said in a statement Thursday. He was 86.
“His sonorous voice and singular talent will forever be synonymous with indelible performances in every genre,” the statement said.
In a career spanning more than 60 years, Stewart, who also portrayed Professor Charles Xavier in the Marvel “X-Men” film franchise, won or was nominated for multiple theater and film awards.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010.
“He explored the human condition in all its poetic complexity and brought hope not only to the far reaches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but into science fiction’s most iconic final frontier aboard the Starship Enterprise,” the statement said.
Stewart was born in the town of Mirfield in Yorkshire, England. Prior to his prolific on-screen career, Stewart got his start on stage in the 1960s as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Days before Stewart’s death, fellow Star Trek actor Walter Koenig, who starred as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original series, also died at the age of 90.
Tributes to the late great actor poured in Thursday evening. William Shatner, who played alongside Stewart as Captain Kirk in the original “Star Trek” series, called it “a heartbreaking week.”
“Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did,” Shatner said in a social media post. “Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work.”
Hugh Jackman shared a photo of himself with his “X-Men” co-star on Instagram.
“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today. And, in my book, a tremendous friend and man,” Jackman, who plays Wolverine, said. “I learned so much from him. I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.”
Marvel Studios said in a statement that it is “deeply saddened” by Stewart’s passing.
“He was a singular talent, a generous collaborator, and a true gentleman,” the statement said. “Our hearts go out to his wife Sunny, his children, his friends, and the countless fans around the world whose lives he touched with his art.”
The Trump campaign’s 2024 ad “Kamala Harris is for they/them” was devastatingly effective, and top Trump strategists credit it with winning over persuadable voters they badly needed. After that, it seemed safe to assume the attack would lose some of its punch. Democrats would have learned how to answer it.
So the estimated $58 million that state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee in Texas, and his allies have spent on ads about the issue this cycle looked like a desperate “fighting the last war” move. Paxton is an unpopular candidate without a strong economy to cushion him, and his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, has been ahead in nearly every public poll since July.
That turned out to be only half right.
We spent last week in Texas for the latest installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” talking with Hispanic voters in Harris County who backed Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats from the Houston suburbs, right-leaning voters from the Fort Worth suburbs and Trump voters in Hood County.
Among the right-leaning voters who are wavering, the issue has not lost any of its power. It probably isn’t enough to get Paxton over the finish line. But the barrage, which has included dirty tricks — like a fake transgender “resource guide” mailed to school-age kids — is working on the Republican base. It’s getting angry voters to the polls for Paxton, and it’s keeping conservatives who can’t stomach him from crossing over to Talarico.
The ads still work for many Republicans
Texas voters participate in a focus group moderated by Elise Jordan.MS NOW
Ashley, a Republican mother of four in the Fort Worth suburbs, is one of the angry ones. Both campaigns have denied sending the mailer.
“I honestly don’t care who sent it. I just don’t want the info in my house,” she said.
She would never consider voting for Talarico, who went to seminary and talks openly about his faith.
“Just because you went to seminary doesn’t mean you have Christian values,” she said. “If you’re supporting LGBTQ in any form or fashion in that regard, that’s not Christian.”
Susan is the other kind. She lives in the Fort Worth suburbs, has kids in high school and college, and almost always votes Republican. In the primary, she voted for Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton beat. She ought to be persuadable.
She feels about Paxton’s character the way she felt about Trump in 2016, when she voted third party. Trump’s first term won her over, and she voted for him in both 2020 and 2024.
“I would probably just not vote or vote libertarian as a protest,” she said. “I just cannot bring myself to vote for Paxton, and yet I know Talarico is in favor of this.”
“This” is what she sees as Talarico’s overly permissive approach to transgender issues involving minors. In 2021, during a hearing on a bill limiting students to school sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth, he argued that “there are six really common biological sexes.” He recanted last month on Fox News. But the ads have made sure those old remarks are everywhere, and Susan takes them as his real worldview.
She’s sympathetic to what she thinks is a misguided attempt at Christian compassion. But the transgender debate roiled her kids’ high school, so it’s personal, and it matters more to her than the issues where she’s closer to Democrats. She’s against the war with Iran, and she’s frustrated with how Trump has handled Immigration and Customs Enforcement, corruption and the economy.
There were eight right-leaning voters in our Fort Worth-area group. Six had voted for Cornyn in the primary, and several received mailers addressed to their children. Seven said where the candidates stand on transgender policy for kids would factor into how they vote.
A vulnerability for Democrats among Hispanic Trump voters
The issue also hits a nerve with the conservative Hispanic voters we met in Harris County. They voted for Trump in 2024, and they’re unhappy with the economy and with an immigration crackdown they consider overkill. That gives Democrats an opening on policy. Where Democrats keep losing them is on culture and shared values, and nothing matters more there than transgender rights.
“There’s certain things that are just a no-go for me, and it’s non-negotiable,” said Angelika, a mother of six. Cultural issues keep her “more towards the Republican side, because I believe Jesus should be in school,” Angelika explained. On transgender rights, she added, “I don’t want anyone teaching my kids about that kind of stuff.”
“You can’t have a kid, you know, deciding if you’re going to be a boy or girl at the age of seven, eight, or nine,” said Guillermo, who still leans toward Talarico.
Some of them didn’t buy Talarico’s walk back, which they found insincere and political.
“If you are going to say something, stand by it,” Caroline said. “On the other hand, Ken Paxton too, with all the scandals and the corruption, it’s kind of picking the lesser of two evils for me.”
Not everyone had closed the door. Adrian, a married homeowner from northern Houston, said he was open to Talarico if the Democrat would clarify where he stands.
“Talk more about religion, more about transgender,” he said. “If he focuses more on that and the cost of living, I would consider him.”
Why an undervote may not be enough
Texas voters participate in a focus group moderated by Elise Jordan.MS NOW
Four focus groups can’t tell you how a statewide race will go. But what we heard suggests the ads may get Paxton an undervote: conservatives who dislike him turning out but leaving the Senate race blank. Others, like Susan, may cast a protest vote for the libertarian. Neither group is crossing over to Talarico. But that isn’t enough for Paxton if Talarico keeps winning independents by double digits, as he has in recent polls, and Democratic voters stay this turbocharged.
The anti-transgender ads could turn out to be Republicans’ Maginot Line. After World War I, France spent a fortune on fortifications built for the last war, and in 1940, the Germans went around them. Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million nationwide on their own wall of ads. It may not hold back voter anger over the cost of living, corruption and Trump’s immigration crackdown, or the usual midterm backlash against the party in power. The fight has already moved somewhere else. Millions squandered, and more people are angry.
“I feel like it’s the Republicans that are constantly talking about this stuff, and I’m like, ‘Okay, but that doesn’t make my brisket cheaper,’” said one participant, an independent from Fort Bend County who generally votes Democratic.
President Donald Trump warned rallygoers in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that the president’s political party typically doesn’t “win” during midterm elections — apparently preparing supporters for a possibly disappointing outcome for Republicans less than a week before Election Day.
“When I’m not on the ballot the midterms … there’s something strange because, if you’re president, Republican or Democrat, for whatever reason, you don’t win the midterms,” he said.
Trump went on to say he has been working hard to rally support for Republican candidates, adding, “No president has ever worked so hard on a midterm.”
Trump was in South Carolina in a last-ditch effort to rally support for Sen. Darline Graham ahead of the high-stakes election that could determine control of the Senate. It was his third time in three months stumping for Graham in the state. Some Republican supporters who spoke to MS NOW at Trump’s earlier South Carolina rally appeared unsure or unenthusiastic about Graham’s candidacy, with some saying they supported her primarily because Trump did.
Graham was appointed to temporarily fill the Senate seat after the sudden death of her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. With Trump’s full-throated endorsement, Graham won the GOP special Senate runoff election to permanently replace him in August. Trump has prioritized maintaining Republican strongholds this election cycle, including South Carolina, amid his historically low approval ratings.
“Darlene Graham has devoted her entire life to the people of this state, and now she’s running to save you from a radical left lunatic,” Trump said, referring to Graham’s opponent, Democrat Annie Andrews. The president repeatedly used a transphobic slur to describe Andrews, a term he has continued using throughout his campaign tour.
“I didn’t come up with that name,” Trump said of the slur. “I’m good with names.”
Trump urged every member of the crowd to vote for Graham, and, as he has repeated over the last few months, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” Graham has been neck and neck with Andrews, holding a razor-thin lead of 1 percentage point, according to an MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne polling average.
“You know, she’s leading but I had to come here,” Trump said of Graham’s slight lead. “Politics, you never know, right? So you’ve got to get out and vote.”
Trump’s speech was interrupted multiple times by protesters, who were quickly ushered out of the venue. Undeterred, he then said without evidence that the protesters were “paid,” calling them “losers.”
Graham, who has never held elected office, struggled on the campaign trail. In her first debate in August, she struggled to answer a question about Taiwan and said that she was “not that informed on national security.” But on Thursday, Graham spoke fervently from the podium in defense of Trump’s agenda, opposing abortion and gun control and supporting hawkish immigration policies. Graham also touted her brief voting record in the Senate in lockstep with other Trump-aligned Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Tim Scott, R-S.C.; and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
“I am a proud conservative Christian, who will fight every single day for your family,” Graham said. “Or Democrat Annie Andrews, the most radical liberal candidate ever to run for office in the history of South Carolina — like they say in the country, ‘She’s just plain ole batshit crazy.’”
A federal judge is weighing whether the Trump administration has acted unlawfully by sending letters demanding state and local officials remove specific voters from their rolls, withhold ballots from those voters, or segregate those ballots rather than count them — all actions alleged to be efforts to interfere in the upcoming elections.
U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg heard arguments Thursday over whether the Trump administration had violated the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which grants states the responsibility to oversee elections, and the anti-commandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment by deploying coercive tactics to order state and local election officials to comply with their demands.
The plaintiffs — a coalition consisting of Democratic party organizations, Democratic congressional leaders, and an individual voter — have argued the letters sent to states with alleged non-citizens on their voter rolls pose a threat, but lawyers for the government maintain that there is “nothing in these letters that coerces action.”
Boasberg pushed back, at one point noting he took the language to be stronger than the government argued. “I would have thought, ‘wow, we better act here or we’re going to be in trouble’ as opposed to the idea that ‘it’s nice to get this letter, but there’s nothing we need to do about it.’”
Christian Dibblee, a lawyer representing the Department of Justice, noted there was nothing in the letter indicating a state would violate the law if it didn’t comply.
At times throughout the hour-long hearing, Boasberg appeared skeptical of the ability of the plaintiffs to bring this legal challenge and whether their claims were speculative. He declined to immediately rule on the plaintiffs’ request to block the Trump administration from sending any additional letters with these demands to any other states ahead of Election Day.
Instead, he ordered the Justice Department to hand over to the plaintiffs by noon on Friday a list of all the states to which the department and the Department of Homeland Security have sent letters.
That list could help the plaintiffs prove that the Trump administration has effectively coerced the actions of states, especially if there is proof that those states acquiesced to the demands of the federal government. Boasberg told the plaintiffs they could file an additional brief using this information to support their claims by the end of the day Saturday.
Boasberg further indicated he will issue his ruling on the plaintiffs’ request for a court order — which would block the Trump administration from sending similar letters to other states — by November 2, just one day ahead of the election.
He gave the government an off ramp by saying the action could go away if it affirms it does not intend to send more letters.
“But until you say that and the threat remains, I will continue to hear from the plaintiffs,” he told lawyers from the DOJ at the end of the hearing.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought last week include a California voter, who has been a naturalized citizen for 20 years but fears he could be falsely labeled as a non-citizen and “unlawfully targeted” by the DOJ’s effort to remove voters from the rolls.
The coalition had asked Boasberg to block the Trump administration from interfering with the states’ rights to oversee elections.
“None of this is lawful,” the plaintiffs wrote in a court filing ahead of the hearing. “The Executive Branch enjoys zero authority to superintend state voter list maintenance, to supplant state determinations of who is qualified to vote, or to dictate who gets a ballot or whose ballot gets tossed aside. Congress has kept that duty with the States, subject only to modest federal voter list maintenance requirements, which the administration has declined to invoke as the basis for its actions.”
The Trump administration has argued it has a legitimate interest in combating voter fraud.
“This is an extraordinary lawsuit,” the government wrote in a court filing ahead of the hearing. “Defendants have identified evidence that non-citizens may have cast, or may be imminently casting, votes in the upcoming federal election in violation of an explicit federal law that prohibits such votes.
They also allege the plaintiffs’ claims are purely hypothetical.
“Any injury depends on a speculative chain of hypotheticals: that Defendants will send a future letter’; that a locality or state will comply (as opposed to declining to do so), that a court will order relief, and that the relief will somehow injure Plaintiffs’ electoral prospects,” they wrote.
The legal challenge comes after the Department of Justice demanded California segregate the ballots of 20,000 voters that the DOJ believed to be “likely” noncitizens. When California’s Secretary of State refused to comply with the federal government’s request, the Justice Department allegedly threatened the state’s election officials for “knowingly facilitating noncitizen voting” and warned they would face “significant” legal consequences. President Donald Trump later posted on Truth Social, warning, “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”
Almost immediately after the Justice Department sued California, asking a federal judge to immediately set aside the ballots they deemed cast by likely non-citizens and to verify their citizenship status before tabulating their vote-by-mail ballot.
On Wednesday night, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter rejected the Trump administration’s demands. The Trump administration appealed that ruling and the case remains pending.
The coalition is concerned that these efforts could expand to other states beyond California. The Trump administration has already sent a similar letter with a list of alleged noncitizens registered to vote to Washington’s Secretary of State.
“The Attorney General stated just days ago that DOJ is ‘looking at’ a ‘number of States’ as additional targets, both in the run-up to election day and in the certification process that follows,” the plaintiffs wrote.
They have asked Boasberg to halt an expansion of the Trump administration’s efforts, blocking them from “exercising ungranted authority or injecting widespread chaos” into the election “before DOJ reaches the next State on its target list.”
Driven in part by the suicide of Virginia Giuffre, survivors of sexual misconduct have coalesced into a formidable force that has transformed the country’s midterm elections.
Their voices helped push the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine to drop out and a sitting Republican congressman to announce that he would not seek re-election, even though both men denied wrongdoing. One congressional candidate even came forward to say she had been raped while tending to her campaign signs.
Survivors of sexual violence have channeled their pain into marches, candidate endorsements and ads targeting Republican lawmakers over the Epstein files. On Thursday afternoon, a protester at a Trump rally in South Carolina was thrown out while yelling Giuffre’s name.
All that work generated enough momentum that survivors have started to look toward what they want from a new Congress. That list includes ensuring the release of the complete Epstein files and accountability for people implicated in them, as well as for the authorities who handled the documents. But it goes beyond Epstein to include legal protections for victims of sexual violence in general.
Those months of momentum took a jolt last week with the release of a TV ad from the campaign of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial race. The spot features Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s estranged mother saying the candidate, who has spoken publicly about having been sexually assaulted as a child, is a liar.
The ad has been broadly condemned, including by fellow Republicans, with the notable exceptions of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Epstein survivor Dani Bensky told MS NOW she watched Trump and Vance defend Ramaswamy and thought, “I can’t believe this is reality.”
Bensky said she believes that the Ramaswamy ad and the lack of investigations stemming from the Epstein files, among other developments, make the case that America is becoming desensitized to sexual violence and institutional failure to do anything about it.
Dani Bensky during a press conference to announce new legislation to establish financial relief for survivors of sexual violence on Capitol Hill on Sept. 15, 2026.Annabelle Gordon / Reuters
Still, Bensky has hope that the midterms carry the possibility of large-scale legislative change. While she and other survivors who spoke to MS NOW stressed that combating sexual violence should be a nonpartisan issue, many said November is a chance to usher in a new majority that better supports survivors.
“I can’t speak to survivors of sexual violence across the board, but I do know when we walk into Republican offices there is already generally a stigma, with the exception of a few,” said Bensky, who named Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky as two of the more receptive GOP officials.
In a new report, House Judiciary Democrats describe Trump’s connections to Epstein, call for a special counsel to further investigate Epstein’s network, and urge Congress to “use its legislative and oversight powers to pursue justice for survivors and bring an end to the Trump Administration’s shameful, bureaucratic, and political cover-up.”
MS NOW spoke to a range of survivors about the legislative agenda they would pursue with more allies in Congress and statehouses across the country, and a handful of themes emerged.
The rest of the Epstein files
3.5 million pages, 3,437 bound volumes of the Epstein files are displayed during a pop-up exhibit on May 11, 2026, in New York City.Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
In compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Department of Justice has released more than 3 million pages of documents related to investigations into the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-sponsored that legislation in the House, is not easing up before the remainder of the 6 million pages the DOJ named as “potentially responsive” are released.
“We still don’t have the FBI 302s — interviews with survivors that their attorneys have said are critical,” Khanna told MS NOW. “Meanwhile, the DOJ has excessively redacted some records while exposing survivors’ names and sensitive information in others.”
Khanna is shepherding the Epstein Files Transparency Act II through Congress. Among other things, it would bolster efforts by state attorneys general, members of Congress and victims of Epstein and his co-conspirators to challenge the Department of Justice in court for failing to disclose materials required by the initial Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“The Department complied with the EFTA, making public the nearly 3 million investigatory documents which were responsive to the Act,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “The Department also freely offered members of Congress the opportunity to view the files unredacted.”
Khanna believes the bill will eventually pass in both chambers. It has already secured the 218 signatures needed to be brought to the House floor for a vote after the midterms.
More broadly, he sees the treatment of Epstein victims as setting an example for how the United States addresses sexual violence nationally.
“There is a direct line between the alleged gang rape in Cornell and the elite impunity of the Epstein class,” Khanna said, referring to the case that has roiled the Ivy League university and brought calls for New York state to update its sexual assault laws. “The fact that for decades we allowed rich and powerful people to get away with the biggest sex trafficking scandal in American history sent a message in this country that we don’t take sexual violence or sexual assault with the seriousness that we should.”
Epstein-related prosecutions
To date, the Department of Justice has not charged anyone, politician or otherwise, who had known associations with Epstein, aside from his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Asked about additional investigations, a department spokesperson said, “While we cannot talk about the existence of any ongoing investigations, the Trump administration is the only administration to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and make any of these documents available to the public.”
Survivors and lawmakers point to the idea that if the Justice Department were to charge even one of the wealthy, well-connected men implicated in the Epstein files, more prosecutions would follow.
“The Epstein case has always been about the power structure and the power versus the vulnerable,” Bensky said, adding: “I think it’s that question of ‘Do we have the same structure in place for America’s most powerful people as we do for the average citizen?’ We can’t let them operate with impunity under another set of rules.”
Todd Blanche’s handling of the files
Bensky, left, speaks during a news conference following a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche on July 15, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Daniel Heuer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bensky told MS NOW that she and other Epstein survivors had endured not one but two abuses: the abuse perpetrated by Epstein and his co-conspirators, and the mishandling of the Epstein files by now-Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice.
In the millions of Epstein documents Congress compelled it to release, the DOJ redacted information belonging to accused predators but revealed some victims’ personal information, such as phone, Social Security and bank account numbers. The department also published dozens of nude photos of women, some of whom might have been teenagers.
The back and forth survivors have had with the government to get their information removed from the internet has made their trauma “a wound that can’t close,” Bensky said.
Pam Bondi was attorney general when the files were released, but in a May 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee after she stepped down, Bondi said she delegated oversight of the files to Blanche, her deputy.
In a social media post at the time, Bondi disputed lawmakers’ characterization of her comments, while not contradicting her statements that Blanche had overseen the files’ release. She said she had praised his handling “of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”
Survivors say Blanche’s and the DOJ’s handling of the redaction process prioritized the privacy and safety of predators over victims, prompting widespread suspicion that those involved are protecting people in the files. They note that Blanche only met with Epstein survivors when it became clear that it was a condition for getting Senate approval for his confirmation.
Additionally, just days after Blanche interviewed Maxwell in prison, she was transferred to a minimum-security facility. (Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the decision was made by the Bureau of Prisons, but that “every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent that it needs to.”)
A DOJ spokesperson rejected assertions from Democrats that Blanche’s interview with Maxwell was performative, pointing to sections of the transcript indicating that he pressed her for her recollections of wrongdoing by Epstein and others.
Regardless, in their recent report, House Judiciary Democrats wrote that the Department of Justice’s conduct constituted a “cover-up” that needs to be investigated by a special counsel.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has said Democrats are prepared to subpoena Blanche, among other administration officials, on “Day 1” if they gain control of Congress.
Lawsuit protections
In her final months in Congress, Rep. Nancy Mace has introduced the Speak Your Truth Act, which would force abusers who lose defamation suits against victims to pay their legal fees. The law aims to discourage the use of costly defamation suits as a tactic to silence survivors.
The Speak Your Truth Act has become law in five states with broad bipartisan support and has been introduced in at least 15 others. Victoria Burke, a lawyer who wrote the legislation after a man she alleges drugged and assaulted her sued her for defamation, said that even with support of lawmakers behind them, many Epstein victims were afraid to name their abusers out of fear of financially devastating lawsuits.
Burke told MS NOW that the Cornell case had prompted New York lawmakers to reach out to her about the legislation.
Burke also said she sought out Mace because of the South Carolina Republican’s leadership in fighting for Epstein victims, and because the congresswoman herself was sued for defamation after calling four men “predators” in a speech on the House floor in which she described her own sexual assault. (Three of the four were criminally charged this month.)
“Women are put in financial ruin simply for doing the right thing,” Mace told MS NOW. “And this is just one small tool in a much larger toolbox of things that survivors and victims of abuse can use when they’re trying to fight back and to stay alive from their abusers.”
Giuffre’s legacy
Amanda Roberts, sister-in-law of Virginia Giuffre, holds up a photo of Giuffre outside the Capitol on Nov. 18, 2025, during a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.Heather Diehl / Getty Images
When Dana DiFilippo learned that Virginia Giuffre had taken her own life last year, she felt as if a grim promise had been made to her and all other survivors of sexual violence: that their struggles were more likely to end in suicide than in justice.
DiFilippo, a co-founder of the Survivors’ Solidarity March, is among the countless survivors who tracked Giuffre’s fight for justice as the most well-known of Epstein’s victims.
DiFilippo says she spent 19 years “in the dark” internalizing the sexual abuse that happened to her, and by the time she was ready to act on it, she found she was too late: Colorado’s statute of limitations for prosecuting sexual assault is 20 years, but only for assaults that occurred after the Legislature updated that window beginning in 2022.
That is why survivors are pushing for the passage of Virginia’s Law, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for lawsuits over sexual abuse.
The federal version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., in February.
Housing security
Sexual violence can happen to anyone, but circumstances like housing insecurity or substance abuse can put people at greater risk. That is why Democratic congressional candidate Christina Hines of Michigan supports expanding the Fair Housing for Survivors Act.
In 2021, Hines became chief of the special victims unit in the Washtenaw County prosecutor’s office, where, she told MS NOW, she witnessed the effects of human trafficking and abuse. But she also identified gateways that could be stopped with the right policies.
Survivors may stay in dangerous situations when they do not have a place to relocate, and they often face housing discrimination if they have spent time in a domestic violence shelter.
“One of the things that we realized is, until we get more housing and shelter options for trafficking survivors, they were going to keep falling through the cracks,” Hines said.
Last March, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nicole Malliotakis introduced the Fair Housing for Survivors Act, which would make survivors of domestic abuse a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. This would ensure that they cannot be evicted or denied housing on the basis of being survivors.
Hines would support this legislation in Congress and advocate for the revitalization of the Crime Victims Fund, which Congress created by passing the Victims of Crime Act in 1984 to support victim compensation.
“Survivors see themselves in the cover-up, the corruption, the failure of the system to act in a way that protects them or gets them justice,” Hines told MS NOW. “That is true regardless of whether you’re an Epstein survivor or a survivor right here in Macomb County.”
Yet even in her own district, Hines said, not all survivors are certain that a Democratic majority in Congress will bring change. They still remember when Joe Biden was president and did not prioritize investigating the Epstein files.
Beyond the House Judiciary Committee’s report and House Oversight Democrats hammering on the Epstein files, party leadership has not been publicly prioritizing the issue, leaning instead into matters such as affordability. Top Democrats have released a laundry list of issues they would like to tackle in the first 100 days after their victory in Congress, and missing from that is any mention of the Epstein files.
Mace is a MAGA disciple who fell out of favor with Trump over his objection to releasing the Epstein files, and is leaving Congress after losing the Republican primary for governor. She is blistering on her own party’s inaction on protections for survivors, but she doesn’t have faith Democrats will be any better.
“Both parties are just mouthpieces to survivors just to win an election,” she said, calling that “ devastating” and ripping Ramaswamy for the attack ad against Acton.
“I’m not a Democrat. I’m a die-hard f—-ing raging conservative, and you have Republicans playing politics with pedophilia,” she said. “It’s disgusting what’s going on right now. It’s just disgusting.”
Mace does not know if anyone will take up the various bills she has introduced on behalf of survivors after she leaves the House. The federal version of Virginia’s Law hasn’t gone anywhere since Schumer and Leger Fernández introduced it. Ditto for the expansion of the Fair Housing Act to benefit survivors.
To be sure, survivors are not taking for granted the notion that a Democratic Congress would move such measures forward.
But they have recognized that they might have some say about that.
“Survivors are powerful,” said Elisa Batista, the campaign director of UltraViolet, a gender equity nonprofit that worked with Giuffre’s brothers to organize a vigil for her.
“We have the numbers. Please vote.”
Bensky wears a butterfly necklace, representing hope, during a field hearing by the Democrats as part of their investigation into Epstein on May 12, 2026, in West Palm Beach, Fla.Marco Bello / Reuters
Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.
__ If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at1-800-656-4673, text “HOPE” to 64673, or access online assistance atrainn.org/get-help.
Dani Bensky during a press conference to announce new legislation to establish financial relief for survivors of sexual violence on Capitol Hill on Sept. 15, 2026.
3.5 million pages, 3,437 bound volumes of the Epstein files are displayed during a pop-up exhibit on May 11, 2026, in New York City.
Bensky, left, speaks during a news conference following a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche on July 15, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Amanda Roberts, sister-in-law of Virginia Giuffre, holds up a photo of Giuffre outside the Capitol on Nov. 18, 2025, during a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Bensky wears a butterfly necklace, representing hope, during a field hearing by the Democrats as part of their investigation into Epstein on May 12, 2026, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
If you spend enough time paying attention to political messaging, you’ll inevitably hear about “dog whistle” politics. The idea is straightforward: Just as actual dog whistles can only be heard by canines, officials and candidates often use coded language to deliver subtle messages to targeted audiences in ways that are not immediately obvious to everyone else.
Donald Trump and his allies have been using these rhetorical tactics quite a bit lately.
On Wednesday afternoon, for example, the official “war room” account for the president’s political operation published an item to social media that read, “Which way Western Man?” The typical person might not have given this much thought, but it’s quite likely that fascists recognized the phrasing immediately.
Last year a Newsweek report supplied the relevant context after Trump’s Department of Homeland Security pushed a similar message:
The Trump administration has been accused of quoting a white supremacist who was backed by a Neo-Nazi group, as part of its social media campaign to recruit immigration enforcement agents.
In a post shared to X on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said “Which way, American man?”, a quote appearing to reference Which Way, Western Man, a 1978 book by the avowed white supremacist William Gayley Simpson, who argued Hitler was right and Jews must be killed.
The post from the president’s official “war room” account came three weeks after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin published an item of his own via social media that accused the left of trying to “vandalize the demographics of America.”
For some generous observers, it might be tempting to give the Republican administration the benefit of the doubt, but there’s also a track record to consider. The New York Times reported earlier this year:
The posts have referred to neo-Nazi literature, ethnic cleansing and QAnon conspiracies, mused about deporting nearly a third of the U.S. population, and promoted lyrics from an anthem bellowed by the far-right militants of the Proud Boys.
Their authors are not on society’s fringe. They are in the offices of the White House and the departments of Homeland Security and Labor, using official government accounts.
The article highlighted several messages, including one from January in which the White House and DHS jointly posted a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The message began, “WE’LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN.”
It wasn’t long before observers noted this same phrase is the name of a song, which, as the Times noted, was written by members of a self-described “pro-White fraternal order” and has been embraced by white nationalist groups.
To be sure, administration officials have repeatedly denied that they’re trying to send signals to right-wing extremists and have insisted that the rhetorical similarities are coincidental.
That said, William Braniff, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, told the Times that one or two posts might be easy to overlook. But “when you add it all together,” Braniff said, “it’s much harder to dismiss.”
When Ben Carson led the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he faced a variety of controversies, but one of the most embarrassing involved furniture he bought for his office at taxpayer expense. In one especially memorable congressional hearing, the then-secretary offered a rambling, and at times contradictory, explanation for the spending, initially saying the furniture was necessary in part for “security” reasons, before ultimately blaming his wife.
Around the same time, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt also spent more than $43,000 to install a soundproof phone booth in his office for reasons that never made any sense.
Nothing of consequence came of the incidents, even if the controversies might have served as cautionary tales for future Cabinet members: It’s best to exercise caution when it comes to public funds and office decor.
It’s a lesson Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who actually served alongside Carson in the first Trump administration, failed to learn. The New York Times reported:
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, plans to spend $43,000 on new furniture for her government office, a work space makeover that comes as she lobbies Congress to shut down her department.
Ms. McMahon’s team has informed Congress that her current furniture is worn out and “cannot be configurationally or aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space,” according to Education Department records reviewed by The New York Times that have not been publicly disclosed.
I know effectively nothing about interior design, but I suppose “cannot be … aesthetically integrated” is another way of saying “looks funny.”
The amount of money is notable in its own right, but that McMahon wants to spend money on furnishing an office she doesn’t think should exist adds an element to the story that makes it unavoidably worse.
Two Democratic senators — Patty Murray of Washington, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies — wrote to the secretary this week, pressing her to abandon her spending plans.
“It has come to our attention that as you cut off funding for students, push out staff, and do all you can to illegally dismantle the very department you lead, you plan to spend $43,278.64 on new furniture for your own office,” the senators wrote. “You vowed to put yourself out of a job; now you expect American taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurnish your own office.”
“Secretary McMahon, you have asked students, families, and teachers across the country to endure extraordinarily painful cuts in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ and you have pushed out nearly half of the staff at the Department,” they added. “This year, you have asked Congress to slash funding for important K-12 programs and to cut funding for higher education programs by nearly $5 billion. But it is clear that you do not think that you should have to abide by the same rules you want to apply to others.”
Murray and Baldwin concluded, “The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration.”
The Education Department’s press secretary told the Times the agency was “saving taxpayers millions of dollars,” in large part by moving to smaller offices as part of the broader effort to dismantle the department altogether. It’s a line McMahon is likely to repeat the next time she testifies on Capitol Hill.
This is the Oct. 29, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
“These are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years.”
— Former President Barack Obama, criticizing the Trump administration at a rally outside Atlanta yesterday
Modern political history offers few closing arguments as out of touch, self-defeating, or downright bizarre as the one President Donald Trump has made on the behalf of his fellow Republicans ahead of next week’s midterm elections.
As I write in my latest piece for The Atlantic:
Trump’s primary rationale for why voters should support the GOP, as best I can tell, is that the affordability crisis is a “hoax,”Bill Maheris a “loser,” and Sen.Jon Hustedof Ohio has a nice physique.
That easy-to-mock message has been accompanied by a staggering number of missteps. Just for starters, he’s belittled the impact of his stalled war with Iran, sided with Russia as it continues to pummel Ukrainian cities, defended an attack ad from the GOP candidate for Ohio governor that repulsed other top Republicans, downplayed high energy prices while boasting that U.S. oil and gas companies are “making a freaking fortune,” embraced AI as the nation turns against it, obsessed over White House construction projects, and spent a lot of time talking about handsome men, Husted being just one.
I took a look at some of Trump’s recent rallies, and very few of the arguments he makes are actually helpful — or even relevant — to Republican candidates.
He’s broken key promises to drive down costs, deport only “the worst of the worst,” and stay out of foreign wars.
He’s on the wrong side of many of the day’s top issues.
And he now lives, even some Republicans privately think, in a gilded bubble, palling around with billionaires, oblivious to — and, even worse, uncaring about — the problems facing so many voters.
His approval rating has slipped to the low 30s, and he’s become so politically toxic that some Republicans in tight races don’t want him anywhere near their state or congressional district, fearing his rallies will do more harm than good.
Yet the president plans to spend much of his time on the campaign trail in the coming days, largely in deep red states now suddenly in play.
Source: Gallup poll of 1,200 U.S. adults, conducted Oct. 1-19, 2026. Margin of error: ±4 percentage points
A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE APPLEBAUM
A new investigation in The Atlantic documents the suffering of civilians in Russian-occupied Oleshky, Ukraine — and warns of a Kremlin propaganda spectacle as American journalists prepare to visit under a humanitarian ceasefire credited to Melania Trump.
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic, joined “Morning Joe” today to discuss the upcoming media visit, the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, and her recent reporting from Venezuela.
JS: Your colleague Zarina Zabrisky has written about the horrors of Russian occupation in Oleshky. What happens to Ukrainians living under Russian control?
AA: When the Russians go into a piece of Ukraine and take it over, they murder the leaders. They arrest people who have Ukrainian flags or symbols. They set up concentration camps — they call them filtration camps — to interrogate people and sometimes torture them. They remove the Ukrainian language and change the school curriculums.
And they shoot dogs. Why? Because the dogs make noise and might attack soldiers, and the Russians want control. And of course, they also kidnap children.
JS: Ukraine has repeatedly sought a humanitarian ceasefire. Why is Russia agreeing now, just days before the midterms?
AA: Oleshky is a town that’s been deprived of food and outside medical supplies since December, so people have been starving. The Russians have finally agreed to a ceasefire, and they’ve credited Melania Trump. It seems to have been negotiated by her PR guy who did her documentary. They’re allowing in some reporters from Newsmax, and maybe Fox News.
JS: And what do you expect those American journalists will see?
AA: The belief is that there’s going to be a kind of propaganda show where people say, “Oh, we’ve always been well treated by the Russians.” These are all Ukrainians, and the concern is that they’ll be taken to Russia rather than allowed to cross the river to Kherson, which is under Ukrainian control.
It’s a real test of the integrity of those journalists. Will they help cover up what’s happened in places like Oleshky, or will they tell the real story?
WG: Can Ukraine survive with President Trump effectively throwing his lot in with Putin?
AA: This war is over when the Russians decide to stop fighting. What the Trump administration has done for the last year and a half is give the Russians the feeling that it’s worth continuing. In other words, the Kushner and Witkoff negotiations have prolonged the war. Having said that, the Ukrainian front line is holding. They are not about to collapse, and there’s no indication that they will stop fighting.
JS: And what about the pressure on Ukraine to give up territory?
AA: This is not a real estate deal. It’s not like, “Oh, we’ll give you this block for that block, and you can build your building.” When you give up territory, it means giving up people to this totalitarian regime. If surrender means the Russians come in, kill your leaders, kidnap your children, and destroy your culture, why would you stop fighting?
JL: You recently traveled to Venezuela. How does what you saw compare with the Trump administration’s account?
AA: What we’ve created is a coalition of two kleptocracies. You have the Trump administration doing very opaque oil deals with what was the Maduro regime. Now Venezuela is run by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president.
But opposition leader María Corina Machado has just returned, and the scenes of joy show Venezuelans’ desire for democracy. They want to make their own decisions and have their oil benefit them.
Katty Kay: And what has changed in daily life for ordinary Venezuelans since Maduro’s departure?
AA: Not much. There’s still very high inflation. I went to a market in Caracas where the prices were written on a whiteboard because they have to be changed every day. People talk about the difficulties of paying for education for their kids. Everybody still thinks about emigration. The feeling is that they’re trapped and waiting for a change.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.
One of the nation’s strangest laws is primed for reform in a new bill from Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., that would bring a dose of logic to federal drug policy.
That unusual law — Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch called it a “curious animal” — is the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act. Known as the Analogue Act for short, it’s part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was rushed into law ahead of that year’s midterm elections by a bipartisan Congress and Republican President Ronald Reagan. Passed in the shadow of high-profile deaths, including that of basketball star Len Bias, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act brought mandatory minimum sentences and a vast disparity in punishment for crack and powder cocaine offenses, respectively.
The Analogue Act separately sought to solve the problem of so-called designer drugs. The problem, as the authorities saw it, was that the law was too specific. Cocaine, heroin and other drugs were illegal because they were listed under the Nixon-era Controlled Substances Act’s drug schedules. But nothing was stopping underground chemists from tinkering with listed substances to produce new ones that the law didn’t capture. Congress could ban novel drugs as they appeared on the illicit market, but that took time and would only apply going forward. Bad actors went unpunished in the meantime, so the government thinking went.
As I laid out in my book, “Bizarro,” on the inside story of the Analogue Act and one of the most peculiar cases it spawned, law enforcement was tired of playing catchup in the cat-and-mouse game. It wanted to go on offense. The result was the Analogue Act, which expanded federal drug law to say that any substances “substantially similar” to already illegal ones like cocaine, heroin and others on the most restricted drug schedules were illegal, too.
‘Curious animal’
In solving one problem, the Analogue Act confronted another: the Constitution.
Due process means that people need notice of what’s legal, so they can live their lives accordingly. Yet the act’s substantial-similarity test outlawed a potentially infinite number of substances with a vague, unscientific standard. Whether that standard is satisfied in a given case depends on whether prosecutors can convince juries that one substance is “substantially similar” to another. The ambiguous test has led to conflicting verdicts in different cases involving the same substance.
Even the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chemists haven’t always agreed among themselves about which substances qualify as analogues. If the government’s own experts can’t agree about what’s legal, how can people subject to the law be expected to know?
Judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike have questioned the act’s constitutionality. Notable among them is Gorsuch. Before President Donald Trump appointed him to the Supreme Court in 2017, the jurist called the act a “curious animal” in a 2015 ruling when he was on the Denver-based appeals court. Gorsuch deemed the “substantially similar” test’s meaning an “open question,” as he wondered whether it gives citizens fair notice.
Judge Neil Gorsuch, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump on Jan. 31, 2017, at the White House.Carlos Barria / Reuters
But even since he joined the high court, the justices have refused to consider a petition attacking the Analogue Act. The court’s lack of interest effectively has left the matter with Congress.
Taming the animal with an ‘and’
Enter the new bill announced by Cohen, who has criticized the drug war during his nearly two decades in the House. The Democrat isn’t running for re-election this year, after Tennessee Republicans passed a congressional map, backed by recent Supreme Court rulings, that splintered his Memphis base in what was the state’s only majority-Black district.
Cohen’s “Public Health and Research Reforms in Controlled Substances Act” would, as its name suggests, shift drug law from a punitive approach to one centered on public health, with a revamped scheduling system, scientific research promotion and other measures.
Its analogue amendment wouldn’t overturn the constitutionally suspect “substantially similar” test, but it would address one of its ridiculous aspects.
To understand the fix, it’s necessary to know what the act says currently. It has three sections that define what a controlled substance analogue is, according to its 1) structure, 2) effect and 3) represented effect. It defines an analogue as a substance:
i) the chemical structure of which is substantially similar to the chemical structure of a controlled substance in schedule I or II;
ii) which has a stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system that is substantially similar to or greater than the stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system of a controlled substance in schedule I or II; or
iii) with respect to a particular person, which such person represents or intends to have a stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system that is substantially similar to or greater than the stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system of a controlled substance in schedule I or II.
Beyond the vagueness at the heart of the term “substantially similar,” a key issue is the language in between each section. There’s an “or” in between the second and third sections on effect and representation, but there’s nothing in between the first and second sections on structure and effect. A draft version of the 1986 law had an “and” in between those first two sections, which would have clearly meant that, to qualify as an analogue, at least a substantially similar chemical structure was required.
It’s unclear why the “and” didn’t make it into the final version of the Analogue Act. But its omission has prompted an outlier legal argument that prosecutors only have to prove one of the three prongs: structure, effect or representation of effect. The consequences of that reading are extreme, because if only representation is required (regardless of what the substance actually is or does), then people can serve decades in prison for selling something that isn’t similar to a scheduled drug at all.
What an appeals court called an “absurd” example of that phenomenon arose in a prosecution against people who sold a mixture of candle wax and flour under the pretense that it was crack/cocaine. “The treatment of candle wax and flour, no matter how it is marketed, as a schedule I controlled substance is an ‘absurd’ result of the kind our canons of construction instruct us to avoid,” the Philadelphia-based court said in a 2003 case, reversing a district court that ruled otherwise.
Yet the concern over that absurdity was not relegated to history. Just a few years ago, a San Francisco-based appeals court suggested that the act could still be used to achieve such an outlandish outcome. Even the government wasn’t pressing for that aggressive interpretation, so the court didn’t feel bound to embrace it in that case.
But if the Analogue Act stays on the books as is, courts could keep reaching “absurd” results in future cases.
‘Open question’
Cohen’s proposed legislation would prevent that absurdity by adding the “and.” Had it been there at the time of the wax-and-flour case, the district court would have had to side with the defense, because even if the mixture was marketed as crack, its chemical structure was not substantially similar to crack by any reasonable measure.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) speaks during a press conference on April 20, 2026, outside the U.S. Capitol.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
To be sure, the new bill’s analogue amendment wouldn’t solve the due process problem inherent in the “substantially similar” test; that could probably only be done by overturning the act entirely. Still, the bill would bring a dose of logic that has been missing for four decades.
Whether that modest measure has the votes to become law with today’s Congress and White House is, as Gorsuch put it in 2015, an “open question.” But even if this bill doesn’t pass, it’s an important question to keep asking.
Subscribe to theDeadline: Legal newsletterfor expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Judge Neil Gorsuch, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump, after President Trump nominated Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, on Jan. 31, 2017, at the White House.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) speaks during a press conference on April 20, 2026, outside the U.S. Capitol.
Like many voters, Addison Smith went to her local polling place to cast a ballot in the upcoming midterm elections.
Unlike most, she had to fly four hours to get there.
A student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Smith was eager to vote in the competitive Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton and worried she wouldn’t be able to get a mail ballot in time. So her dad offered to pay for a plane ticket to Houston.
“Kinda chic to fly home to vote in the midterms,” she wrote on TikTok, above the caption “They need me.”
“I just made a little quick TikTok about it because I was like, everyone should go vote, and I think that’s important, especially in states where the registration deadline hasn’t passed or early voting is still open,” Smith told MS NOW.
College students sometimes travel long distances to vote because they live away from home and move frequently, which can complicate voting by mail. In 2024, a University of Miami student flew from Florida to North Carolina to vote. In 2020, two American University students rented a Volkswagen Golf and drove 30 hours from Washington, D.C., to Texas after their mail ballots didn’t arrive. A Johns Hopkins medical student spent $600 on a last-minute flight from Baltimore to Florida to vote.
But those were presidential elections. Midterms typically draw fewer voters, and the president isn’t on the ballot. Still, Democrats appear more motivated this year. A Pew Research Center survey found that supporters of Democratic House candidates were 17 percentage points more likely than Republican supporters to say they were extremely motivated to vote.
Texas is a particular draw this year, with a competitive Senate race and a closely watched governor’s race.
Ella Alvarez, a 19-year-old University of Oklahoma student, drove 4 1/2 hours from campus to her home in Abilene, Texas, to vote last week. A first-time voter, Alvarez described coming home as a no-brainer. She’d been waiting for her chance to vote.
“I’m really soaking it all in, and I’m able to understand on my own for once, like what this really means now, and how lucky are we to have such amazing candidates right now?”Alvarez said. “I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to go home and vote for them, and it was too important to me to mail-in.”
Alvarez voted for Democrats “all across” the ballot, including Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for governor.
“Young Texans aren’t the future of this party, we are the present of this party,” said Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a statement to MS NOW. “Young people understand this isn’t just about one election, it’s about building a Texas Democratic Party ready to win power for the next 30 years and beyond.”
For some young voters, the motivation is opposition to President Donald Trump. In the fall Harvard Youth Poll, 63% of young people who said they would definitely vote described their congressional vote as opposition to Trump and his policies. The poll also found a 16-point gap between young Democrats and Republicans who said they would definitely vote: 50% of young Democrats, compared with 34% of young Republicans.
Jahnavi Rao, who leads the youth voter registration group New Voters, which has run more than 1,300 voter registration drives in high schools around the country, said that social media has played a role in boosting this engagement.
“The last year has been incredibly destabilizing for the country as a whole and globally,” she said. “Young people are more aware of that than anybody due to it being constantly in our faces through social media.”
Still, enthusiasm is only one measure of an election. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders drew 27,000 people to a Manhattan rally before losing the New York primary to Hillary Clinton by 16 points. And in 2022, the final Economist/YouGov poll found Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting — 59% to 48% — but Democrats held the Senate, and the much-hyped “red wave” never materialized.
TikToks like Smith’s suggest that some voters feel intensely about this election — and are eager to turn that feeling into action. But only Tuesday will reveal how many less enthusiastic voters turn out anyway.
This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.
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