Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign stopped running an ad featuring Democratic rival Amy Acton’s estranged mother following a wave of bipartisan backlash and indications that it may have soured voters on the Republican nominee for Ohio governor.

Ramaswamy said at a campaign stop on Thursday that the ad had “ran to completion” and that his campaign had put up four other ads, according to The Columbus Dispatch. According to AdImpact, the campaign has spent nearly $995,000 airing this ad in the past week, about a quarter of the $4 million that it initially allocated for the video.

“Vivek Ramaswamy should never have run his despicable ad in the first place, and it’s totally unsurprising that he took it off the air in the most cowardly way possible, without even the hint of an apology to Dr. Acton, her family, or to the people of Ohio,” Acton’s campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, said in a statement Thursday.

Ramaswamy’s campaign did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

The ad began circulating online without a “paid for” disclosure early last week before Ramaswamy’s campaign took credit for it. The video features Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, accusing the Democrat of lying about her past and telling voters not to support her.

Acton has been estranged from her mother for decades. She has said her mother’s husband sexually abused her as a child; he was arrested and charged with raping Acton when she was 12, before he fled the state and later died.

Arthur has disputed Acton’s allegations about her late husband, whom she said she stood by during that time.

There appeared to be deep reservations about featuring Arthur in an attack ad even as it was conceived. According to Zeteo, which cited Republican sources and a person briefed on the matter, when people connected to Ramaswamy’s campaign located Arthur for the video, she appeared mentally unwell and “had trouble keeping a coherent narrative speaking about the past.” Multiple Republicans had privately urged Ramaswamy not to move forward with the ad, people familiar with the matter told Zeteo. (Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to Zeteo’s request for comment.)

The video has been widely condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike, though President Donald Trump publicly encouraged the campaign to continue airing it. Ramaswamy himself dismissed the criticism and said the ad “had nothing to do with childhood abuse.”

Acton has said it was “exploitative to do that to someone in her condition.”

“It’s very clear that our mother — who I have not seen since I was 12, my brother was 9 — is not well, and I do hope she gets the things she needs,” she told reporters this week.

The ad may well have backfired against Ramaswamy and moved voters away from him in the highly competitive race. Axios reported Wednesday that an internal poll commissioned by Republicans showed Acton ahead of Ramaswamy by a larger margin than the previous month, with a memo attached noting that the ad “is having a significant effect on the gubernatorial race.”

Last week, the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat,” saying Ramaswamy’s decision to air the attack ad “confirmed that the race is slipping away from him.”

Hannah Marr contributed reporting.

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Dolores Huerta, an icon of the labor movement in California who co-founded the United Farm Workers, died Wednesday at the age of 96, her family announced.

“As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” her family said in a post on social media. “We know that many of you around the world share in our mourning, and we will be following up on plans to recognize and celebrate her incredible life and legacy.”

Huerta was a fierce champion for the rights of migrant laborers, organizing strikes and boycotts against agricultural companies in California and negotiating contracts with strong benefits for workers in the 1960s. Together with César Chávez, Huerta co-founded the organization that eventually became the United Farm Workers.

The group channeled Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to nonviolent disobedience as it took on the powerful agricultural industry, rallying workers around the slogan, “Sí, se puede.” As a result of her activism, Huerta was arrested 22 times and was severely injured at least once during a protest.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered flags to fly at half staff in Huerta’s honor on Wednesday. He and his spouse, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, called Huerta an “inspiration” and “a dear friend” in a statement.

Dolores Huerta represented the best of us.

California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.

Dolores' fight for gender equity, workers'… pic.twitter.com/ef50Pu5Mb7

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) October 28, 2026

Earlier this year, Huerta revealed to The New York Times that Chávez raped her inside a car in 1966. She also said she felt pressured to have sex with him in a hotel room during a work trip in 1960. Two of her 14 children are the result of those encounters with Chávez, she told The Times.

Huerta’s accounts of sexual assault by Chávez came alongside allegations that he groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the labor rights movement. The Times investigation led to the cancellation of events and the renaming of sites in his honor, and brought renewed attention to Huerta’s struggles within the movement.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta later wrote in an essay. “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”

Huerta remained a staunch activist for social justice throughout her life, advocating for immigrant rights, gender equality and LGBTQ rights.

She was also a vocal supporter of Democratic presidential candidates. In 1968, as a volunteer on Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, Huerta was onstage with him when he was assassinated. She later described the incident as detrimentally transformative to the political landscape in the U.S.

In later decades, Huerta campaigned for Democratic presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 — and Joe Biden. She was also outspoken in her criticism of President Donald Trump, who made denigrating immigrants a centerpiece of his political platform.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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The FBI searched a mansion in Beverly Hills, California, on Tuesday connected to a major donor of former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell.

Lourdes Arocho, an FBI spokesperson based in Los Angeles, told MS NOW that the agency executed a search warrant at an address along Roxbury Drive. Court documents are sealed and there are no arrests planned, Arocho said.

Beverly Hills city records list the address as belonging to Stephen Cloobeck, a timeshare real estate businessman who backed Swalwell for California governor after dropping out of the race himself. Swalwell ultimately exited the race and resigned from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

The FBI’s national office said the agency “conducted an operation in the Los Angeles region related to an ongoing criminal investigation.” It did not provide additional details.

MS NOW has reached out to an attorney for Cloobeck and an attorney for Swalwell for comment. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

It is unclear whether the FBI search was linked to Swalwell, who is facing multiple investigations connected to allegations of sexual misconduct, including one by the Department of Justice. In August, the FBI raided Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C., and seized his phone as a part of the investigation.

Swalwell was close to Cloobeck and frequently taped media interviews at the businessman’s home.

Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Swalwell dropped his campaign for California governor and resigned from Congress in April after the accusations against him surfaced. He denied the allegations but conceded he made “mistakes in judgment” when announcing his resignation.

Cloobeck said he cut ties with Swalwell after the allegations. He has also been embroiled in controversy of his own. In May, he faced state charges for allegedly threatening witnesses in his then-fiancée’s criminal case in which she is accused of seducing and stealing from rich men. He pleaded not guilty in August.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Alex Torres contributed reporting.

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Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor whose childhood sexual abuse became fodder for an attack ad by her Republican rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, directly addressed the widely-criticized video on Saturday.

“As you’ve probably heard by now, as a young child, my brother and I experienced a lot of child abuse and neglect. We moved countless times as kids, and even wound up living in a tent in the middle of the winter,” Acton said at a rally in Cleveland, alongside former President Barack Obama and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is making a comeback bid to oust Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

“And now, my opponent has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save to save his struggling campaign, but it’s not going to work,” Acton said to cheers from the crowd. “It’s not going to work because compassion and decency still matter.”

The former president took his star power to Cleveland to help carry his party across the finish line just 10 days before Election Day. He criticized Ramaswamy by name.

“There’s a decency we should expect from our public officials where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that,” Obama said. “There’s got to be something inside you where you just say, ‘You know, no office is worth stooping that low.’ Because you know what, character matters.”

Acton and Obama’s comments referred to a 60-second video released by Ramaswamy’s campaign last week that featured her estranged mother, Donna Arthur. In the clip, Arthur calls her daughter a “liar.”

“She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,” Arthur says in the ad.

Acton has spoken about her and her brother’s difficult shared childhood even before entering politics. She said they were homeless for a time and lived in a tent one winter. She accused her mother’s husband of sexual abuse, and court records obtained by news outlets show Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her when she was 12, before he fled the state and later died.

Arthur disputed Acton’s allegations against her husband in a interview with a conservative website in 2020, but said she stood by her husband. She and Acton have separately said they have not spoken since a last encounter in court over Arthur’s husband’s charges.

Ramaswamy’s ad was met with a wave of condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans almost as soon as it began circulating on the internet. The Ohio governor’s race is very tight, according to MS NOW polling. On Friday, the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” pointing to the ad negative’s consequences of “perhaps creating some collateral damage.”

But Ramaswamy has stood by the video, saying it “had nothing to do with childhood abuse.” President Donald Trump also backed the Republican candidate and accused the media of engaging in a “well-coordinated attack” to get the ad taken down.

In her remarks Saturday, Acton said her difficult childhood experiences shaped who she is today.

“I know that I am not the only one in this room who saw a thing or two in their childhood, but our stories, Ohio’s stories, is one of resilience, of grit, of grace, and, yes, of hope,” she said.

“Hope is a very powerful thing. It’s what got me through living in a cold, dark basement when I wasn’t sure where my next meal was coming from,” Acton continued. “Hope is what got me through sexual abuse, living through cold nights, where all I could think about was how to keep my brother safe and warm.”

She called Ramaswamy “out of touch” and “a danger to my state.”

“Apparently, there is no low to which you won’t stoop,” she said. “But look, I am a scrappy kid from Youngstown. Scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight.”

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Alaska Senate Democratic nominee Mary Peltola and national Democrats have filed a legal motion to fight the Trump administration’s lawsuit over the Alaska Senate race, asking a judge to grant a motion to intervene and ultimately dismiss the case.

Marc Elias, the lawyer representing both Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Saturday that his firm “has filed to fight DOJ’s lawsuit to rig the Alaska Senate election.”

BREAKING: On behalf of Mary Peltola's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Elias Law Group has filed to fight DOJ's lawsuit to rig the Alaska Senate election.

We will win this case, Mary will win this election, she will be certified and seated.

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 24, 2026

Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Alaska, Peltola’s Senate campaign committee and the DSCC asked the court to grant their motion to intervene “to defend against the Justice Department’s extraordinary assault.”

“This case directly threatens both Proposed Intervenors’ interests by demanding that defendants refuse to certify the election if, and only if, Peltola wins,” the motion states. “It is part of a nationwide attack on free elections by the federal government, which the DSCC has fought at every turn.”

At President Donald Trump’s behest, the Justice Department on Friday filed a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate election results if Peltola narrowly beats Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. The DOJ argued that another candidate on the ballot, a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan, could confuse voters — despite the ballots clearly stating the senator’s title and his status as an incumbent.

The lawsuit was met with outrage from Democrats and some Republicans. In an exclusive interview with MS NOW’s Nicole Wallace, Peltola described it as a “desperate attempt to cling to power” on Trump’s part, as Republicans brace for a blow to their majority in Congress.

The Friday motion to intervene argued similarly.

“Alaskans, apparently, must elect Senator Dan S. Sullivan or the President will not let them elect anyone at all,” the motion states, later adding, “And the Department of Justice’s assumption that every voter who casts a vote for Daniel J. Sullivan really meant to vote for Senator Sullivan is insulting to voters and irreconcilable with Alaska’s ranked-choice voting procedures and the ballot’s clear differentiation between the two candidates.”

The Alaska Senate race is rated a toss-up. Peltola has proven herself capable of flipping a Republican-controlled seat when she won the 2022 special election for the U.S. House. Voters in Alaska appear to have soured on Trump — who won the state in 2024 by double digits — but the Republican senator has continued to align himself with the president and his unpopular policies.

Alaskan Republicans had tried to boot Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot during the primary race, accusing him of being in cahoots with Democrats to sabotage the senator’s chances. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ordered the state’s Division of Elections to include his name on the primary ballot after election officials removed him.

The retired teacher has said he is running a genuine campaign for Senate.

“My intention is not to trick people,” he told The New York Times in August. “I would hope people are informed enough to know the difference between an incumbent senator and a teacher.”

Lisa Rubin contributed to this report.

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The Department of Justice on Friday charged two former top FBI officials with lying to Congress about their involvement in the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden.

The charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who worked on the FBI’s now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, stem from a brief they gave to members of Congress about the task force’s investigation of Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.

According to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by MS NOW, prosecutors accuse Floris and Benavides of providing “materially false information about their awareness of and involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden,” including about the origins of Biden’s laptop, in an attempt to impede the congressional probe.

Floris said she was not involved in discussions about Biden while on the task force, the complaint states, while Benavides said he first learned on Wikipedia that the FBI had obtained Biden’s laptop.

“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on X.

Floris’ attorneys slammed the “nonsense charges” against her and accused the DOJ of seeking to “push a false narrative for a shot at political points.”

“Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”

A lawyer for Benavides did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

Biden’s laptop has been the subject of great speculation since The New York Post published, just weeks before the 2020 election, emails from the laptop’s hard drive that purportedly showed proof that Joe Biden was corrupt.

The Post said that it obtained a copy of the hard drive from President Donald Trump’s then-personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. But there was widespread suspicion that the emails were part of a Russian disinformation operation.

Notably, the charges against Floris and Benavides did not come from an indictment by a grand jury in Washington, where several cases brought by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro’s office have failed to result in indictments.

Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.

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Calley Means, a top aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced Thursday that he is resigning.

Means, who played a major role in pushing Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, announced his departure from the Department of Health and Human Services on X, saying he is leaving “with tremendous respect” for President Donald Trump and Kennedy.

“They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” Means wrote. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history — and I know this movement is just getting started.”

I am resigning from the White House with tremendous respect for President Trump and Bobby Kennedy.

They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick.

More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals… pic.twitter.com/8vtSjgbmKx

— Calley Means (@calleymeans) October 22, 2026

Means did not say in his statement why he resigned. Neither Means nor the White House immediately responded to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Thursday that Means was unhappy about the White House dragging its feet on some of Kennedy’s policy ideas and blamed other administration officials for allowing special interests to have too much influence. The Journal was the first to report Means’ departure.

Means, a former lobbyist and longtime alternative health and wellness proponent, played a critical role in the Trump-Kennedy alliance during the 2024 election. He was a major driving force behind Kennedy’s MAHA policies in the Trump administration. As senior adviser supporting food and nutrition policy, he had a hand in the new U.S. dietary guidelines that encouraged Americans to eat more protein.

Means has long shared Kennedy’s skepticism toward established health policy. He has denigrated mandatory Covid-19 vaccines and the presence of fluoride in water. He has said that children should drink “more raw milk and less juice,” advice that conflicts with warnings from the Food and Drug Administration of the dangers of raw milk.

A 2024 book he published with his sister, Casey Means — Trump’s second failed choice for U.S. surgeon general — argues that the pharmaceutical and food industries have a stake in keeping people sick.

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