Can Republicans just spend their way to success in Ohio? "Republicans have bombarded Ohioans with ads with $19 million spent on competitive races through Oct. 12, intended to sell voters on the tax law that had been called the One Big Beautiful Bill," reports The Washington Post. "But the message is struggling to connect with voters amid anxiety over tariffs and the war with Iran, which have pushed up prices for everyday products. The ad blitz, the most spent on the topic in any state with competitive races, is aimed at bolstering vulnerable GOP candidates in a state that was considered safely Republican for the better part of the last decade."

Republicans in states across the Midwest (and the country) have experimented with distancing themselves from the Trump administration and its agenda; it's hard to know if this strategy will prove successful, or if it's just too little, too late. In Ohio, though, Republican candidates are mostly staying close to Dear Leader.

Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican, is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Sherrod Brown in what looks to be an extremely tight race; ads claim Husted has "supported ending taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, plus a $200 million investment in rural hospitals," trying to tie him closely to President Donald Trump's agenda. But it's really not clear whether this type of pitch will be enough to make voters forget about tariffs and inflation, the war in the Middle East and gas prices. A New York Times/Siena poll found that 79 percent of likely Ohio voters disapproved of Trump's handling of gas prices. It's hard to sell people on a tax cut when they're paying a different tax, in the form of tariffs, every time they go to the store; Ohio voters might not be so easily swindled.

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Gun laws in Oregon: In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, where a 16-year-old killed three little kids and one teacher, some parents of elementary schoolers there are asking what laws can be changed.

But "Oregon earns high marks from gun safety advocates for its firearms laws," notes The New York Times. "Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the nation's largest gun violence prevention organizations, ranks Oregon 12th in the country for the strength of its laws, citing recent legislation tightening storage requirements, banning untraceable 'ghost guns' and prohibiting devices that can convert semiautomatic firearms into machine guns." Gifting laws are pretty lax, though, and that might be what happened here: The 16-year-old's mother seems to have been the one who purchased the Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, so it's possible she either gifted the gun to her son or that he stole it from her. "Decades ago, Oregon lawmakers made an exception to gun laws that allow parents to give rifles and shotguns to minors. In many areas of the state, as in other parts of the American West and South, it's a rite of passage for a young person to receive a weapon for hunting or target practice."

There's no law that can really prevent theft of weapons, especially when the thief is a teenager living inside the home where the gun is stored, and there's no law that can prevent parents from foolishly gifting guns to teenagers or young adults whom they've misjudged as capable of handling the responsibility. These are terribly unsatisfying realities.

Prosecutors could, of course, attempt to try the parent for the crimes of their teenager. They "could consider charges ranging from reckless endangerment to manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison," continues the Times. "But that would require evidence of more than just a parent's awareness that a child was troubled. Prosecutors would have to establish that the mother disregarded—or, in the case of criminal negligence, failed to recognize—a substantial and unjustifiable risk."

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Scenes from New York: "Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Monday that New York City will expand free child care for 2-year-olds to Staten Island and across the Bronx as the city moves to add 10,000 seats next school year," reports The New York Times. Here's why that won't work:

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QUICK HITS

• Something juicy for you, readers, since I too frequently subject you to my Catholicism. Let's switch it up: "I'd been thinking about turning down the speed on my vibrator for a long time, but I'd considered my affliction personal, not society-wide. Now it was dawning on me that the problem wasn't simply mine. Women are being sold egg-shaped suction devices in the pages of New York magazine, and BookTok influencers pair with sex-toy companies for promotional collabs. Yes, there is a bookmark that doubles as a vibrator," writes Sarah Hepola for The Atlantic. "Does this consumer game of one-upmanship amid the mainstreaming of vibrators even matter? There are too many varieties of women's razors, too, and I don't care. But what worries me is how this points in the direction in which so much of modern life has been barreling: self-pleasure, self-love, self-care, self, self, self.…Like so much of our day-to-day lives, getting off is becoming more efficient, easier, faster. But has it gotten better?"
• "Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," wrote Elon Musk on X yesterday. "This will be the first of many."
• "Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate arrested last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid campus protests, appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday in an attempt to prevent his deportation," reports The New York Times. "Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident who is married to an American, became an early and high-profile example of President Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses."
• Is California's new billionaire tax a net revenue loser?
• Play the discretionary review computer game! See how far you get as a developer in San Francisco!

The post Will Ohio Voters Buy Republicans' Pitch? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

New ads target three of those who voted in 2025 to block an amendment requiring the release of the files

With little more than two weeks to go until the midterm elections, it seems increasingly possible that the Democrats, already a big favorite to win control of the House of Representatives, will also take charge of the planet's most elite nursing home, the United States Senate, where the median age is 64 years old. RealClearPolitics' poll aggregator has moved control of "the world's greatest deliberative body" (as its members are grandiosely wont to call it) to "toss up," status and prediction markets are now breaking big toward a blue wave. As of this writing, Kalshi has its Senate odds at 63 percent for the Dems vs. 37 percent for the GOP; Polymarket is at 62 percent vs. 39 percent.

As gratifying as it might be to see unprincipled Trump enablers reduced to minority status after signing off on economy-wrecking tariffs, inhumane immigration detentions, and wars of choice, there's at least one good reason to dread a Democratic majority too: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who is spending the run-up to the midterms freaking out over possible consolidation in the condiments business and accusing private equity firms of gutting such shopping-mall favorites as Claire's and Toys R Us. There's every reason to believe that a Senate run by Warren and other economic interventionists will waste time, money, and resources trying to prevent a world in which, per the X wag Iowahawkblog, "a panopticon conglomerate owns two brands of hot sauce."

On October 13, Warren posted this dire warning to X:

Hellmann's mayo
McCormick spices
Cholula hot sauce
Frank's RedHot

What do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.

I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026

It's hard to think of a more competitive and varied market than the one for hot sauces, which is expected to more than double over the next decade. The barriers to entry are generally low, as are the key ingredients, and new entrants can easily market and sell online, avoiding the costs of buying shelf space in conventional supermarkets. Yet Warren is urging regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to halt mergers of both product makers like McCormick and Unilever and grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle.

The latter complaint is particularly picayune. Kroger is one of the country's largest supermarket chains, operating around 2,800 stores under its own name as well as Harris Teeter, Ralph's, and others. Giant Eagle operates about 170 stores. This merger is no more the stuff of nightmares than a single company producing both Cholula and Frank's RedHot. If Warren gains more clout from being in the majority, expect her to butt in more and more on such mergers.

Making it harder for businesses to adapt is not a recipe for making goods and services more affordable. But Warren is keen to blame economic creative destruction not on "new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates" (as Joseph Schumpeter would have it), but on pure greed. In a TikTok released earlier this month, she shows a poster board with corporate logos from once-thriving companies that she says have been "gutted" by "private equity" firms.

"Here's your local mall," she piously intones. "Now, private equity wants you to believe that Red Lobster went bankrupt because of their endless shrimp….They want you to believe that Claire's went bankrupt because teens stopped shopping at the mall." In Warren's telling, private equity firms magically take over thriving businesses and then strip them bare. The typical pattern is that private equity enters the picture after a business is failing.

Virtually all accounts of the decline of, for example, Red Lobster, note that the chain had been spiraling for several reasons before the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital got involved in 2014. As this CNN article notes, the chain, which started in 1968, had seen drops in sales as customer desires changed. Management compounded the difficulties with a series of bad decisions, including continuing various all-you-can-eat menu specials, before coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.

Similarly, it's true that some teens still go to malls and get their ears pierced at Claire's. But anyone who has spent time in retail America over the past few decades knows that malls are no longer the destination that they once were. As CapitalOne Shopping Research documents, "in 1986, there were 25,000 malls, large and small, nationwide." By 2023, that number had shrunk to just 1,200. While some malls are coming back, most are not, and for reasons that have nothing to do with private equity. Online retails plays a role (though a smaller one than usually imagined, with e-commerce accounting for less than 20 percent of all retail sales). But mostly, it's that people today tend to want a different sort of retail environment. Anchor stores—think Macy's and J.C. Penney—are shadows of themselves, and younger people have less unstructured time in which to prowl food courts and arcades.

For politicians like Elizabeth Warren, though, there can be no financial gains or losses that aren't the result of shadowy, conspiratorial forces. If her party takes control of the Senate, her words will carry more weight. But it will be American consumers that ultimately shoulder the burden of an even-more-regulated economy. The market for hot sauces will almost certainly stay spicy, but many other parts will surely suffer.

The post Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Rising costs and geopolitical tensions fuel frustration among Latino voters, raising fears of lower turnout in November

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates running for the House of Representatives and endorsed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani are all but guaranteed to win their general elections this November, but that does not mean the midterm drama is over in New York. In the state's 17th congressional district, which includes the lower Hudson Valley, Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a combat veteran who served on the Biden administration's National Security Council, could unseat incumbent Republican congressman Mike Lawler in one of the most consequential races of the midterms. 

The highly contested purple district voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while reelecting Lawler for his second term. Now, Lawler is attempting to win a third term as support for President Donald Trump wanes ahead of the midterms. As of Friday, The Cook Political Report lists the race, which could determine control of the House, as a toss-up. 

If elected, Conley would have far more in common with the "Badass Women" coalition of security state and military veterans than with DSA types (think more Sen. Elissa Slotkin from Michigan than Darializa Avila Chevalier). As Judge Street Journal's Timmy Facciola notes, "Conley's candidacy is testing the viability of a tactful centrism that rebukes left-wing positions like abolishing ICE or restricting weapon shipments to Israel." Lawler is also vying for moderates, pitching himself as "one of the most bipartisan members of Congress" and emphasizing his willingness to break with Trump occasionally while still welcoming Trump's support. 

While Lawler and Conley certainly are not pure MAGA acolytes or DSA members, both have leaned into a tech-critical position, much like that of more radical populists like Lina Khan or Steve Bannon, revealing how pervasive anti-tech sentiment has become in mainstream politics. 

This tech skepticism was on full display during an October 14 debate, when each candidate made the case for why they were the most equipped to regulate AI, insisting that the industry needs guardrails. 

Conley said members of Congress do not want to regulate AI because "they want to look out for their billionaire and trillionaire backers like Elon Musk, who is pouring over $260 million into this midterm election." She then added that Musk backed Lawler in his 2024 race. 

Lawler then accused Conley, who previously consulted for Primer AI, of being "the AI candidate for the AI industry."

While Lawler and Conley disagree on specific data center regulations (Conley supports Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's data center moratorium while Lawler supports local zoning control over data centers), neither wants to pitch themselves as an explicitly pro-data center candidate. During the debate, Conley claimed that, "On Mike Lawler's watch there have been five data centers built in Rockland County." Lawler has said that he had no say in the decision to build the data centers, and during the debate, he pointed out that the facilities were built for financial services. Lawler also attempted to attack Conley over data centers, slamming her in an ad for saying "we need data centers." Regardless of the candidates' specific policies on data centers, their attacks on one another demonstrate that cheerleading hyperscale data center development is a political liability. In their district, data center has presumably become a dirty term. 

The candidates' tech-skeptical rhetoric did not end with unchecked data center development. After the debate, Reason asked both candidates about their positions on age-verification laws for social media and AI, since such regulations raise significant privacy and censorship concerns by age-gating the internet. Unsurprisingly, both Lawler, who voted for the controversial KIDS Act, and Conley, who has proposed stricter age verification for AI tools, parroted platitudes about why such online safety regulations are necessary to protect children. 

"We have watched how social media is literally hurting the mental health of children," Conley told Reason. "And when you talk about the power of AI and what that power could do, we have to regulate this." 

Lawler gave a similar response, telling Reason that he respects free speech but that protecting children "is paramount." 

This bipartisan consensus over social media regulation has long been brewing in Congress. The mainstream political conversations about AI and data centers, however, are relatively new this midterm election cycle. And it appears both Lawler and Conley have figured out which way Americans' sentiment toward AI is leaning, and they have waged their campaigns accordingly. 

The post Nobody Wants To Be the Pro-Tech Candidate in This New York Race That Could Flip the House appeared first on Reason Magazine.