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.

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

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 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

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.”

Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.

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If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, text “HOPE” to 64673, or access online assistance at rainn.org/get-help.

The post As midterms near, survivors of sexual violence zero in on agenda for next Congress appeared first on MS NOW.

For the past several weeks, Republicans worried about the outcome of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race have focused on one aspect of the contest above all others: the fact that there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot.

After months of arguments, a state judge in Alaska ruled in late June that retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan could run against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, and a few months later, after the first round of balloting, state election officials finalized the top four candidates for Alaska’s unique system. Both Dan Sullivans advanced to the general election.

This has generated all kinds of allegations that the Democratic nominee, former Rep. Mary Peltola, and her allies coordinated behind the scenes to get the other Sullivan onto the ballot. The candidate and her team repeatedly said they weren’t involved, but The New York Times published a report Wednesday that called those denials into question. From the article:

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.

Not surprisingly, Republicans who were already worked up about the allegations when there was no evidence became apoplectic in response to the newspaper’s report. Donald Trump published four separate rants to his social media platform, for example, each of which alleged unidentified crimes, called for Peltola’s disqualification or both. Around the same time, the president told reporters that the Democratic nominee “should resign,” and at a Wednesday night rally in Ohio, he also called for her prosecution.

On Thursday morning, Trump hedged on whether Peltola should be allowed to serve in the Senate, even if Alaskans elect her.

Other Republicans went down a similar path. Incumbent Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation into whether Peltola’s campaign should face criminal or civil penalties; Attorney General Todd Blanche scurried to Fox News to accuse Democrats of “cheating”; House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer launched a congressional investigation; and even Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who’s generally been friendly with Peltola, complained of “a culture of deception.”

For now, it’s fair to say that there are legitimate questions about what transpired, though they don’t yet have definitive answers. That said, even if the allegations are true, it’s important not to lose sight of the relevant details.

There’s a qualitative difference between genuine electoral scandals and routine campaign mischief. Asking an official who oversees a state elections system to “find” 11,780 votes that don’t exist is disgraceful on a historic scale, but looking for candidates with names similar to an opponent is a tactic with a deep American pedigree. It’s common enough to have earned a familiar name: ballot-stacking.

That’s not to say it’s a good thing. It’s not. But both parties have utilized this strategy for generations — there’s a classic story from 1946 about John F. Kennedy’s first congressional primary, which included two men named Joseph Russo — and it’s never been the subject of hysterics, Justice Department prosecutions or federal investigations.

The same is true of campaign mischief in general. Republicans, including one of Trump’s own lawyers, tried to help Kanye West qualify for the presidential ballot in 2020, as part of a dumb trick. GOP operatives did the same thing in the 2024 race, trying to boost Cornel West’s independent presidential campaign as part of an effort to improve Trump’s chances.

Even in the Sullivan-Peltola race, the Senate Republicans’ top super PAC has invested in a Green Party candidate from Arizona — not because it supports his candidacy, but because it’s playing a cheap electoral game.

Similar tactics have been common in Alaska for a while, including in 2010, when some of Murkowski’s critics encouraged people with similar names to register as write-in candidates.

Again, if members of Team Peltola denied involvement in a scheme they were involved in, they’ll deserve to be criticized for underhanded campaign tactics. But to pretend that the latest apparent instance of ballot-stacking is some kind of hair-on-fire scandal is a mistake.

The post Eyeing Alaska, Trump and Republicans pick a fight over campaign mischief they can’t win appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Kansas’ U.S. Senate race, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee, joked Wednesday that that he considers it “a great compliment” that national Republican leaders keep campaigning in his home state.

“It tells me that they are terrified that they’re going to lose this race — and they should be,” he said.

Soon after, the latest CNN poll in Kansas showed Hamilton leading incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, 49% to 45%.

* In Texas’ U.S. Senate race, the latest CNN poll also found Democratic state Rep. James Talarico leading Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, 49% to 43%, although most other recent polling has pointed to a closer race.

* In Maine’s U.S. Senate race, the same CNN poll also found Democrat Troy Jackson ahead of incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, 49% to 45%.

* In Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, the latest CNN poll also found Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leading former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, 49% to 42%, which is also a wider margin than we’ve seen in other recent high-quality polls.

* MS NOW’s polling averages for the races above, compiled by data partner FiftyPlusOne, are broken out here.

* In Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has made another final-week investment, hoping to boost local prosecutor Scott Colom in his surprisingly competitive race against incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

* In Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, the latest Marquette Law School Poll found Democrat David Crowley leading Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, 51% to 44%.

* Though Louisiana has been generally considered one of the least competitive states in this year’s election cycle, Donald Trump announced that he will lead “a major TeleRally” on Monday night in support of Republican Rep. Julia Letlow’s Senate candidacy. With so many other competitive races on the ballot, it’s not clear why the president would spend the night before Election Day focused on helping Letlow in a race she’s all but certain to win anyway.

* In a key congressional race in Pennsylvania, No Going Back, a group affiliated with Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, recently tried to boost Republican Rep. Scott Perry with an attack ad targeting Democrat Janelle Stelson. The ad included unsubstantiated allegations that were so problematic that a Harrisburg-area television station pulled the commercial from the air. This is the first and only instance from this election cycle that a campaign ad has been pulled by a station.

* And in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, Axios reported that Republican officials are increasingly convinced that Vivek Ramaswamy’s notorious attack ad is poised to cost him the election. At a Wednesday night rally in the Buckeye State, Trump nevertheless defended the ad and said it had merit.

The post Thursday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.29.26: Poll shows Hamilton leading in Kansas appeared first on MS NOW.

A couple of months ago, Donald Trump announced plans to create a new national military academy, which he called the U.S. Space Academy. “You think of West Point, and you think of Annapolis, and you think of the Air Force Academy, and you think of the Coast Guard Academies,” the president said. “Great, they’re all great, but we’re going to have now the Space Force.”

It’s not altogether clear exactly what Space Academy graduates would do, but if the Republican’s plans are implemented, this will be the first new federal military academy opened in the United States since 1954.

The White House also hasn’t said where exactly this service academy would be. As it turns out, the president has some thoughts on the matter, which he shared at his latest campaign rally. NBC News reported:

Trump pledged to establish the new U.S. Space Force academy in Ohio, but only if Sen. Jon Husted wins re-election next week.

“And I wanted you to know that if Jon Husted wins, I am going to consider putting the Space Academy right here, if you win,” Trump said.

He added that “every state” wants the Space Force academy (itself a dubious claim), but that Ohio will be the one to get it — if Ohioans vote the way he wants them to in a Senate race.

If former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown prevails, Trump can still deliver the service academy to the Buckeye State, but by his own admission, he won’t. For the president, this is a transaction: He’s prepared to deliver a treat to Ohio, but it’s conditional on his satisfaction with a specific election, which has literally nothing to do with the Space Force or its academy.

This has become a staple of his midterm messaging:

Sept. 16: Trump told a North Carolina audience he wouldn’t approve federal disaster relief funds for the state unless they elected former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to the Senate. (He seemed to be kidding about this, though it wasn’t funny, and with him, it’s sometimes tough to tell.)

Oct. 3: The president told an Ohio audience he might look unfavorably at the state’s future emergency aid requests if they didn’t elect a Republican governor.

Oct. 17: Trump told a Kentucky audience that his administration would invest in a local economic revitalization project, but only if his preferred GOP Senate candidate won.

Oct. 19: Trump told a Kansas audience he was prepared to approve a yearlong waiver for selling fuel blended with 15% ethanol (the E15 policy), but if Kansans elected a Democratic senator, “I’m not doing it.”

Oct. 20: The president told a North Carolina audience he would settle claims related to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, but only if Republican candidates won. “If we don’t win, there’s no money,” Trump declared. “If we do win, you’re getting it.”

Almost daily: At effectively every 2026 campaign rally, Trump vows to send $5,000 checks to every American adult — but only if the election results make him happy. (Last week in North Carolina, the president explicitly said, “If we lose, you get nothing. You’re going to get nothing. If we lose, you get nothing.”)

In case this isn’t obvious, nothing about a Democratic-led Congress would prevent Trump from delivering any of these benefits to these states or constituencies. The president made the commitments conditional, not because he had to, but because he chose to.

In any normal American election, candidates tell voters about the priorities they’ll advance if elected. That’s not controversial in the slightest. What Trump is saying is qualitatively different — and vastly worse. The incumbent Republican is effectively telling voters, in state after state, that he could deliver for them, but if he’s not satisfied with the election results, he simply won’t bother.

So they better make sure he’s satisfied with the election results.

Trump has goodies to hand out, and the public will benefit from his benevolence — unless voters dare to hurt his feelings. This isn’t how elections are supposed to work in a healthy democracy.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s latest transactional pitch: Space Force academy is conditional on election outcome appeared first on MS NOW.

More than a year ago, we launched our Hungary Briefing series, a weekly roundup of news from Hungary’s election campaign. The series continues, covering developments following the historic election and the actions of the Tisza government. This week’s topics:

• The great Covid scam.
• Former minister kept €25m in cash at home.
• Closer ties with the Czech Republic.
• Mixed results for the revolution’s anniversary commemorations.
• Poll of the week: Tisza supporters lean liberal.

The Covid scam

Shortly after the Covid pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020, the Orbán government purchased almost 17,000 ventilators for 300 billion forints, equivalent to €860m at the exchange rate at the time.

The machines were imported from China through various foreign intermediary companies. Viktor Orbán later said he had consulted mathematicians about how many ventilators Hungarian hospitals would need under the worst-case scenarios.

They did not save lives

Yet most of these machines never reached hospitals — and even if they had, they would not have been able to save lives. György Velkey, a state secretary in the Tisza government, wrote on Facebook, citing a 2020 military medical report, that only around half the machines had been classified as usable. The remaining half were either recommended for hospital use “only with serious compromises” or not recommended at all.

Many of the machines are still gathering dust in warehouses.

In 2023, former opposition MP Tímea Szabó showed what 12,000 unopened ventilators looked like in a warehouse in Gödöllő. The Hungarian state was paying 80 million forints, or approximately €200,000, a month just to store them.

The middlemen cashed in

And that is not all: the companies contracted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, headed by Péter Szijjártó, made a fortune from procuring the machines. Further details emerged after a raid on Tuesday(27 Ocober) by the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV).

NAV detained three people, while an international arrest warrant was issued for the suspected leader of the criminal organisation. He is believed to be in Indonesia — and the news outlet 444 discovered that he operates a Ferris wheel in Bali.

“Acting as part of a criminal organisation, the perpetrators who sold ventilators and medical masks to state bodies during the Covid-19 pandemic laundered more than three billion forints [approximately €7.5m] in profits, then deprived the state treasury of 660 million forints [approximately €1.7m] by evading tax,” NAV said.

Footage recorded during the raid also reveals the luxury in which the suspects lived. As 444 notes, this may be only part of the story: other companies may also have been involved in the overpriced procurement deals. There is no word yet on whether the authorities are investigating any responsibility Szijjártó or Orbán may bear in the case.

Presented as a success story

The Orbán government tried to portray its pandemic response as a success story. In early 2025, it released a short film entitled How We Defeated the Covid Pandemic.

Almost 49,000 people died in the pandemic in Hungary. According to international statistics, the country had the world’s fifth-highest death toll per million inhabitants.

Former minister kept €25m in cash

Hungarian authorities accuse Miklós Seszták, who served as development minister in the Orbán government between 2014 and 2018 and was re-elected to parliament this year, of accepting at least 11 billion forints, or approximately €27.5m, in bribes. On Wednesday (28 October), a court extended his pre-trial detention until the end of January.

Its ruling revealed an important detail in the corruption case.

During a search of Seszták’s home, investigators found an empty safe in which, according to the court, he had kept nine billion forints in cash — approximately €25m at the current exchange rate. He had arranged for the money to be hidden before he was questioned.

As 444 calculated, that amount of cash would be extremely heavy: 450,000 banknotes with a face value of 20,000 forints could weigh 450kg.

They did not know where to put the cash

Commenting on the news, investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi wrote that “in principle, this is entirely consistent with what several colleagues and I have long been hearing from sources with inside knowledge of the NER” — the political and economic system built around Orbán.

According to Panyi, as early as the 2010s, one of the major problems facing people within the Orbán regime was how to store the vast amounts of cash generated by corruption. They could not deposit it in a bank without having to explain where it came from.

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As the final week before the midterm elections got underway, the political world’s focus turned to, of all things, the Cheesecake Factory.

Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail in Michigan over the weekend and took aim at his Republican successor on a variety of fronts, but the former Democratic president seemed to take a degree of pleasure in mocking Donald Trump’s misplaced priorities.

Spending a little time on the incumbent’s obsession with renovations and interior design, Obama noted Trump turning the Oval Office into a showcase for gold curios. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” the former president said to hearty laughter.

Predictably, Trump and his allies spent the ensuing days (a) whining incessantly about Obama having hurt his successor’s feelings; (b) defending the Cheesecake Factory, which obviously wasn’t the target of the joke; and (c) celebrating the Republican’s redecorating efforts, effectively proving Obama’s point about Trump fixating on renovations instead of his duties.

On Wednesday night, Obama returned to the stump, this time in Georgia, where he took some time to reflect on the truly bizarre reaction to his line from days earlier.

"The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison! But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory" — here's Obama's full riff about the "phony outrage" over his Trump/Cheesecake Factory comments and how it illustrates that "these are not serious people"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-29T00:42:53.539Z

After beginning his riff talking about how much time he and his family spent at the Cheesecake Factory, especially as his daughters were growing up, Obama noted, “Of course, the real problem is, prices have gotten so high a lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat.”

“So you would think that this administration would be spending time worrying about that,” he continued. “But that was the interesting thing about how the administration responded to the speech I gave the other day. They did not dispute what I said about them being directly responsible for rising prices; they did not argue with that. They did not deny tariffs were contributing to higher costs for families; they didn’t say anything about that. I accused this administration, based on the facts, that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption; they didn’t say anything about that.

“The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comment. He took great umbrage. He said I didn’t understand the work of the ‘artisans’ in the White House.

“It’s all crazy, but this was the really crazy part: They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke — not to inflation, but to that joke.”

After highlighting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s weird event at a Cheesecake Factory earlier this week, the former president concluded, “To everybody out there, including the press, I want you to understand this: This is what I mean when I say 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. Just keep throwing distractions out there. Attacks, fabrications, phony outrage, and hope that you won’t notice that your bills are higher and your life is tougher.”

As luck would have it, right around the same time that Obama was speaking in Atlanta, the incumbent president was delivering remarks of his own in Ohio, where he spent even more time talking about how impressed he was with himself for devoting so much attention to White House renovations.

“President Obama, who doesn’t understand cleanliness, who doesn’t understand broken, cracked stone and sidewalk, who doesn’t understand that having asphalt going to your main entrance is not the right thing,” the Republican said. “We’d like to have granites and marbles. We’d like to have it look nice. You don’t use asphalt.”

He then proceeded to share some additional thoughts on asphalt, which probably isn’t the message his political operation had in mind for the election season’s closing days, though it went a long way toward proving Obama’s point.

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Thousands of Election Day observers are expected to be dispatched by the Democratic Party to monitor potential voter intimidation at polling places around the country.

The Association of State Democratic Committees, a branch of the Democratic National Committee representing state-level parties, trained more than 4,000 volunteers to notify the party’s voter protection programs if federal law enforcement is deployed while voters are casting their ballots on Tuesday. The individuals will be wearing blue on Election Day, according to a memo shared with MS NOW.

The volunteers will “provide a peaceful, secure presence at polling locations — countering intimidation, including from ICE and other federal agents, and reinforcing public confidence in the vote,” the memo states.

President Donald Trump and his allies have floated ordering Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers, National Guard troops and Federal Bureau of Investigations agents to polling sites, fueling concerns about election interference in the midterm elections, which historically favors the political party out of power in Washington. Testifying before the Senate earlier this fall, FBI Director Kash Patel, did not rule out sending agents to the polls, saying, “Election integrity is of paramount importance. This FBI will not shy away from that effort.” Federal law prohibits armed federal agents or military personnel at polling locations.

For years, Trump has pushed unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud in the United States, and never conceded his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he would respect the results of the midterms “if they’re honest.” Ahead of the midterms the Trump administration has threatened states over alleged noncitizen voting, arguing those cases have reached “emergency” proportions in California. MS NOW has found, however, that federal prosecutions based on those allegations remain low in California and across the country.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris taped a video message, first reported by MS NOW, for volunteers from the program, known as “Democracy Protectors” who are gathering on a virtual call on Wednesday.

“Thank you so very much for the work you do every day that is about lifting up the people, lifting their spirits, lifting their voice, lifting the importance of all people having the dignity they so rightfully deserve,” Harris says in the video.

Harris has been campaigning across the country, showing up in Wisconsin earlier this week and is expected to be in Georgia Thursday to stump with Sen. Jon Ossoff.

In addition to the blue-shirted volunteers, a senior Democratic lawmaker told MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle that Democrats will have 15,000 lawyers volunteering at poll sites across the country on Election Day.

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