Former President Barack Obama issued a rare statement Sunday rebuking the Trump administration for targeting the president’s political enemies, namely for launching a federal investigation into Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,” Obama said in a lengthy statement shared on social media. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”

The remarks come after federal agents raided Omar’s Washington D.C., home last week, confiscating her laptop, cellphone and passport, as well as other notebooks and documents related to her and her family’s immigration.

“To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old,” Obama said, noting that both she and her father became naturalized citizens five years after arriving from Somalia.

In diatribes against Democrats, President Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out Omar, whom Obama described as “one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics.”

Trump has called Omar “garbage” and broadly condemned Somalis. Vice President JD Vance has also joined in, at one point claiming in March, without evidence, that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America.”

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said last week that her office is investigating potential improprieties related to Omar’s financial disclosures, but the search warrant that authorized agents to seize Omar’s belongings listed potential violations related to immigration, not finances.

Lawyers for Omar have demanded the immediate return of all of her property.

Omar has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing, accusing the Trump administration of “political intimidation.”

“Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case,” Obama wrote on Sunday. “Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.”

The search came just weeks ahead of the pivotal midterm elections. Obama weighed in as he prepared to take his star power to Michigan next weekend to campaign for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson.

The former president added that “the fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”

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President Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit a record low as his party faces a reckoning with voters just 16 days before Election Day, new polls show.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos survey released Sunday shows 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s job performance, with 66% disapproving and 52% strongly disapproving. That represents a drop of four percentage points from July and eight points from this time last year — an all-time low in this polling.

As MS NOW’s Elections & Analytics team has noted, Trump’s approval rating has hovered below 40% for months in most surveys, signaling a politically perilous environment for Republicans.

Democrats’ fortunes are rising in the final stretch to the Nov. 3 midterm elections as they seek to regain control of Congress.

The poll, conducted Oct. 9-13, shows 52% of likely voters said they would vote for a Democratic candidate in their congressional district while 44% said they would choose a Republican. That’s a 5-point gain from the same poll conducted in July.

An NBC News Decision Desk poll released Sunday also puts Democrats ahead.

Among registered voters, 55% favor Democrats, with 44% preferring Republicans. MS NOW’s polling data with partner FiftyPlusOne shows Democrats with a 9-point edge on the generic ballot.

The NBC survey shows 71% of U.S. adults say the country is on the “wrong track” — a resounding rebuke of Trump and the Republican Party two weeks before the midterms as GOP candidates face stiff competition on their home red turfs.

The findings underscore widespread dissatisfaction with the president’s unilateral decision to take the U.S. to war with Iran and its costly effects on the economy, including the steep price of gasoline and diesel. The poll shows that 67% of respondents identified gas prices as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem.

“Those disapproval ratings are just a reflection of the pain people are feeling on the ground when, you know, they see this administration enter into this $50 billion war that is deeply unpopular and misguided,” South Carolina Senate Democratic candidate Annie Andrews said Sunday on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” when asked about recent polling in her state showing Trump’s unpopularity.

Andrews, who is facing Republican Sen. Darline Graham, said shrimpers and fishermen in the Low Country “are barely making ends meet because they’re being crushed by these diesel prices.”

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Pope Leo XIV resumed public appearances on Sunday, leading prayers at the Vatican just five days after undergoing lung cancer surgery and one day after leaving the hospital.

“I would like to thank all those who have prayed for me in recent days. I have truly sensed your support. Thank you!,” Leo said from a balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

The Catholic leader, 71, announced his planned surgery last week to remove a “small, localized” nodular lesion on his right lung. During the 90-minute operation, doctors confirmed he had lung cancer but said the operation to remove a lower lobe of his lung was successful, according to the Vatican.

“This experience has made me feel particularly close to all those who are living with illness or infirmity,” Leo said. “Now that I have overcome this delicate phase, as you know, I will gradually resume my activities, always with God’s help and your prayers.”

The surgery and cancer diagnosis marked Leo’s first major medical episode of his papacy. It is yet unclear whether the pope will require additional treatment.

His planned trip to Latin America next month, which includes visits to Uruguay, Peru and Argentina, remains unchanged as “there are no clinical reasons why this visit should not take place,” Professor Stefano Margaritora, the physician who operated on the pope’s lung, told Vatican News.

“The Holy Father has put his heart and soul into his recovery, as the most motivated people do after this kind of operation,” Margaritora said. “As a result, he needed very little assistance from us. His determination to recover quickly has been effective in every respect. It was truly commendable.”

Leo was elected last year following the death of his predecessor, Pope Francis. Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, is the church’s first American pope.

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PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday voiced the public’s “anger” and “shame” over rioting and looting during nationwide protests against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. At least 1,800 people have been arrested.

“Those who looted will have to pay back for the damage, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation.

He blamed “unrestrained violence” on “insurrectionist elements from radical far-left groups, joined by numerous criminals.”

Macron has earlier held an emergency meeting with senior government officials, a day after masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities. He said he had instructed prefects to work with mayors to protect public buildings and businesses in the coming weeks, including by banning protests when necessary.

Flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall in the city of Limoges, in central France, causing its roof to collapse and nearly destroying the building.

Hundreds of protesters gathered again on Sunday at the Place de la République in Paris amid a heavy police presence. Officers used tear gas as tensions flared sporadically in the neighborhood, with small groups of people trying to set bicycles and trash bins on fire.

“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X, citing the looting of hundreds of businesses in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux.

About 550,000 people took part in protests across France, according to authorities, while organizers put the figure at about 800,000. Demonstrators answered calls from a labor union, student organizations and activists hoping to revive the “yellow vest” movement, which emerged in 2018 to protest social injustice.

Mass protests in France are often marred by violence on the fringes of otherwise peaceful marches, leading to clashes with police. The arrest tally reported Sunday approached the nearly 2,000 recorded nationwide during a single day of yellow vest protests in December 2018.

One person died of a heart attack, Paris police said in a statement, without providing details. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating.

Parisians deplore shattered shops and a damaged square

Dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass littered the area around Paris’ Place de la République on Sunday. Looting and damage were also reported in other tourist and shopping districts.

Paris police said 855 people were arrested in the capital region. The city’s prosecutor’s office said 557 remained in police custody.

“I am actually stunned by the level of destruction and violence that was expressed,” said government employee Marie Peyreigne, 57, wondering what had led to the mayhem.

Parisians inspecting the damage photographed the partially dismantled base of the square’s central monument, a statue of Marianne, a symbol of France.

Jean Foissy, 74, said he had wanted to join the protest but encountered “a wall of riot police and fires everywhere” and returned home.

“I was very scared,” he said. “I’ve been a Parisian since I was born, so when I got here, it almost made me want to cry because I find it so bad, it hurts me.”

Margaux Eude, 26, said she supported the protest movement but “didn’t think it would escalate like this.”

“It’s the troublemakers who came, and it breaks my heart because it delegitimizes the movement,” she said.

Political leaders trade blame ahead of presidential election

Political leaders across the spectrum sought to parlay the fallout of Saturday’s riots into political capital, looking ahead to next spring’s presidential election.

Far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen criticized Macron’s centrist government as “exhausted, disoriented and seemingly incapable of doing anything other than commenting on its own powerlessness,” in a video posted Sunday on social media.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, accused Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of “playing with fire,” alleging that “by banking on degradation, you have only succeeded in uniting all youths and workers’ unions.”

Mélenchon, who joined the Paris march Saturday, insisted that “my message is clear: those who share our fight have no business in looting or destruction.”

U.S. President Donald Trump posted “France is burning!” on his Truth Social platform, apparently linking the unrest to “the immigration of people from an entirely different world.”

“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he wrote.

French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting and have repeatedly attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and other people who joined to loot.

Hundreds of businesses looted across the country

“The scale of the damage is considerable and unprecedented,” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire wrote in an open letter. “Paris is a city of freedoms, debate and demonstrations. It must remain so. But it must also be a city where everyone can work and run a business safely.”

Police said groups of hundreds of people formed unauthorized marches across central Paris on Saturday. “By late afternoon, a new phase began with the arrival of large numbers of people whose sole aim was to steal and loot, taking advantage of the unrest,” police said.

The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, the three largest cities, requested a meeting with the prime minister in the coming days “given the extent of the damage and the seriousness of the situation.”

In the southern port city of Marseille, some protesters briefly forced their way into the lobby of City Hall and a group of people wearing hoods and masks damaged a police station. In Lyon, a fire broke out inside a tourist office.

In Limoges, a group of “radical troublemakers” broke into City Hall while there were elected officials, employees, security personnel and members of the public inside, Maurice Barate, prefect of the Haute-Vienne region, said. “Despite the presence of so many people, they deliberately set the building on fire. It is an extremely serious and unspeakable act.”

In eastern France, the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office said an investigation has been opened after a 17-year-old girl was injured during the protests and lost an eye. On Saturday, another investigation was opened after a young protester lost a hand in Saint-Etienne.

The injuries come as police have drawn sharp scrutiny over their use of grenades and other riot-control weapons during recent demonstrations.

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The buzzy new A24 film “You Can See Everything” is a one-of-a-kind documentary. It features a psychic clash between two masters of deception with distinct skill sets. In one corner is Nathan Fielder, a comic and creator of a number of popular shows, including “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” which bizarrely blend fiction and reality and involve manipulating strangers. In the other corner is Elizabeth Holmes, the notorious once-billionaire founder of Theranos who was convicted of defrauding investors in one of the biggest business scams of the 21st century.

The premise of the film is that Holmes invites Fielder — who directed the film alongside Lance Oppenheim — to spend enormous amounts of time with her and her family 34 days in 2023 before she begins an 11-year prison sentence for committing fraud. She says her goal is to prove her innocence through transparency. “I know I didn’t commit a crime,” she tells Fielder. And she intends to prove that, somehow, by allowing a camera crew to surveil her life in a rented home in Southern California for about a month.

The entire arrangement is hilarious and absurd on its face — why would Holmes invite Fielder of all people into her life in an effort to clear her name? Why would showing her behavior in this contrived reality TV-like setup be effective at countering the stigma of her crimes? And what could Fielder unearth about Holmes that the public might not know?

The central source of tension driving the film is captured in its ultra-viral teaser showing Fielder and Holmes sizing each other up with their faces just inches apart, prompting the viewer to ask: Who is getting played here?

“You Can See Everything” is a movie about how hard it is to ascertain the truth, the limits of perception and the unknowability of other humans. It serves as a highly entertaining and at times trippy comment on the way people cynically use narrative as power in post-truth, huckster-ruled America. It’s also at times rather shallow, closer to a cheap trick than a provocation about the elusive nature of truth.

The first part of the movie is all about Fielder spending time with Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans, along with their two babies. Holmes and Evans’ bid for “radical transparency” involves extended scenes of mundane daily life — eating, childcare, walking on the beach. In what appears to be a demonstration of just how open they’re willing to be, Holmes breastfeeds in front of Fielder and the camera crew; in another scene, Evans showers in front of the camera — with nothing left to the imagination. Yet at the same time, both of them are constantly evasive when answering questions, using “I don’t know” to respond to questions that they clearly know the answers to, or asking for straightforward questions to be rephrased in order to buy time for new evasions.

Holmes’ intent isn’t that complicated a question, and she isn’t merely misunderstood.

The film further embraces the paradox of the whole “transparency” setup by letting us observe and listen in on Holmes and her (unnervingly controlling) partner’s attempts to co-direct the documentary, and to put on a show of trying to woo investors for an improbable successor company to Theranos. Altogether, it’s a compelling mix of stagecraft and manufactured reality. And it only gets weirder as the movie progresses.

The part of the movie that’s unsatisfying is Fielder’s fixation on getting Holmes to admit to understanding what she did wrong. Holmes resolutely insists that she not only doesn’t think she did anything wrong, but that she has never lied in her adult life. Equally striking is that she claims to not even understand why people believe she lied about what her infamous Theranos blood testing machine — which never fulfilled the advertising that said it could conduct hundreds of diagnostic tests with just a few drops of blood — could do.

The focal point is the ambiguity of her meaning when she says she really believed the machine was capable of doing things it had not yet demonstrated the capacity to do. Fielder seems to entertain the idea that this may be a communication problem that originates in Holmes’ mind. He shows her a video of Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on first” comedy routine to illustrate how people can talk past each other by perceiving the same words differently, and she claims to have no comprehension of it. Evans insists this is proof that she just “thinks differently.”

The implied meaning of Fielder’s inquiry appears to be that we cannot know what Holmes truly believes, and thus we cannot rule out a kind of psychological innocence surrounding her intent.

While Fielder is also hard to read, it does seem that he takes her denialism seriously — and in A24’s press notes he admits, “When I watch the footage back I see myself genuinely conflicted and struggling to make sense of these moments and what was happening.” But the only reason the question appears meaty for the audience is because the filmmakers have deliberately narrowed the information we can use to bear upon this question. Many people who watch this movie will not be familiar with the details of the Theranos fraud case, or may have forgotten them. But reportage and the legal proceedings against her demonstrate unequivocally that this isn’t all just a big misunderstanding about the meaning of a couple of words.

Trial evidence and investigative media reports showed that Holmes knew her machine was not producing accurate or reliable results and that she covertly used traditional machines to produce results her machine could not — and passed off many of those results as her own machine’s performance. To woo investors, she falsely claimed that the technology was used on the battlefield in Afghanistan. She admitted in court that she personally affixed the logos of big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer to reports that would falsely indicate that those companies had endorsed Theranos’ technology. She has admitted that her company advertised her blood diagnostics machine as being able to do more than 200 tests — while it could only do 12. Not only did Holmes rob investors of huge sums of money, she also gave tens of thousands of patients incorrect diagnostic tests that had dangerous real-life consequences for them.

In other words, Holmes’ intent isn’t that complicated a question, and she isn’t merely misunderstood. She is without question a full-on scammer.

To me, her wide-eyed denials and incomprehensible tentativeness in this movie are an obvious and ludicrously ham-fisted attempt to lie once more, to win back public opinion. In addition to sapping her arc of its suspense, it also then pushes the audience in a strange direction. The narrative of Holmes as an oddball idealist who might just be misunderstood is an essential part of the movie’s engine — which mostly points to her troublingly domineering partner as the real villain of the story.

But two things can be true at once: She’s deceptive, and her partner is also a bad guy. Yet I suspect the narrative of the movie is likely to be received as quasi-exculpatory of Holmes in the eyes of some audience members.

Some might say that Fielder deliberately allowed Holmes to work her “magic” on the public. But magic doesn’t work when you can see the mechanics of the trick.

Whether wittingly or not, the way Fielder tries to make Holmes more mysterious than she is also reminds me of a broader social problem we have in American life: our struggle to tackle how flagrant lying has become a norm in politics and our information environment. Many political observers — including me, at times — are vexed by the question of politicians’ intent when they spread false information, use language that insinuates an incitement to violence or bigotry, or defend modern day genocide. This process often involves giving bad actors the benefit of the doubt as we weigh their subsequent denials. Some of that problem simply can’t be solved, because stated intent, in the abstract, is irrefutable. But a part of the solution is often watching what people do — instead of what they say.

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Across the country, millions of Americans are already voting, midterm election ballots are in the mail, and these elections are nearing their end. Rather than address voters’ concerns about the war with Iran or high prices, though, the Trump administration continues its obsessive campaign to interfere in the voting process and undermine election results. Through threatening letters and pursuing suspect litigation, the Justice Department is harassing California officials who are busy ensuring Americans can vote.

This week the DOJ gave California officials 48 hours to review a list of 20,000 names, which the federal government claimed were registered voters and “likely noncitizens.” When state officials did not meet that deadline, the administration sued, asking a judge to prohibit California from counting mail-in ballots from those voters until their status can be verified.

The White House’s approach is rushed and based on faulty data, and already has led to gross inaccuracies.

As the former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, I can characterize the DOJ’s demand in one word: absurd. It ignores both the law and the basic processes and procedures for running elections in the United States. As the California Secretary of State noted in response, the DOJ is “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”

The real work of maintaining voter lists is already subject to specified legal provisions, not the flawed list-matching the administration keeps pushing. State list matching is part of that maintenance, but like all parts of the process takes time and resources, given that Americans are constantly moving, changing their names or otherwise affecting their voter eligibility. The White House’s approach is rushed and based on faulty data, and already has led to gross inaccuracies.

The administration’s pressure on California is the latest and most extreme in a series of efforts by the Trump administration attempting to undermine Americans’ confidence in the voting process. It has repeatedly made exaggerated claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls that are not backed up by the evidence. In so doing, the Trump administration is dusting off and federalizing an old voter suppression technique.

The playbook starts by trumpeting an eye-catching number of supposedly fraudulent voters – say, 20,000. This usually generates headlines and feeds an impression of widespread fraud to scare Americans about the integrity of elections. When these allegations are scrutinized or when the administration finally provides supposed evidence, the number quickly dwindles. What is left are a small number of exceedingly rare cases – exceptions and outliers. But the debunkings often fail to dispel the original efforts promote a narrative that our elections are not trustworthy and that reforms or actions making it harder to vote are needed.

This pattern is not new. For at least a decade, President Trump has been spreading misinformation about widespread noncitizens voters.

Earlier this summer, in a primetime address, President Trump made outrageous claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly tried to support these numbers, but as was expected, the claims were baseless. As an example, DHS claimed nearly 16,000 non-citizens were on the voter rolls in Nevada. Yet when pressed for specifics, DHS provided the Nevada Secretary of State with a list of just 185 individuals in question.  An investigation revealed that all were U.S. citizens.

This pattern is not new. For at least a decade, President Trump has been spreading misinformation about widespread noncitizens voters. In 2016, he falsely claimed that he would have won the popular vote if it were not for the alleged non-citizens voting, including in California. He tried to find evidence to support this claim by creating a “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” which was ultimately dissolved after finding no such evidence.

In the current Trump administration, the DHS, the DOJ, and even the Census Bureau are being politicized and pressured to support these baseless claims. The result is manufactured chaos and confusion meant to undermine confidence in elections.

If voters hold President Trump accountable for his administration’s failures at the ballot box in November, it is predictable this narrative will serve as the basis for additional DOJ litigation and additional conspiracy theorizing from the president and his allies. The Trump administration is weaponizing the federal government, at taxpayer expense, to undermine the will of the voters if the results are not helpful to the administration.

Rather than directing DHS and DOJ resources toward finding the “worst of the worst,” as Trump promised during his campaign, the administration is wasting taxpayer dollars on political theater—or worse. It does so at its own peril: Americans are frustrated and want leaders to address the real issues affecting their lives. We choose those leaders at the ballot box. Our democracy is stronger when every eligible American who wants to vote can make their voice heard, regardless of which candidate they support. If you have not done so yet, make your plan to vote and show up for our democracy.

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Greg Abbott has been governor of Texas for nearly 12 years. He debated Wendy Davis in 2014, Lupe Valdez in 2018 and Beto O’Rourke in 2022. He won all three elections.

But suddenly, in 2026, with public polls showing a closer race against Democratic nominee Gina Hinojosa, Abbott has decided a debate is unnecessary.

Come on now.

After Abbott declined four proposed debates, Hinojosa held an event outside the governor’s mansion Thursday. Recent polls show a close race despite Abbott outspending her more than six to one on advertising.

Abbott’s campaign is willing to spend millions telling Texans what to think about Hinojosa. But putting him on a stage where she can challenge his record? Apparently, that’s a bridge too far.

And Abbott is hardly alone.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has declined to debate Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico. On Wednesday, Talarico took questions from voters across the political spectrum in a nationally televised town hall. Paxton declined an invitation to participate in a comparable event.

In Florida, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody has declined to debate Angie Nixon. In Mississippi, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said there’s “no point” in debating Democratic nominee Scott Colom.

Why are so many Republicans making the same decision in the same election cycle?

The campaigns have offered different explanations. Abbott says he’d rather meet voters at community events. Moody says she won’t give a “self-proclaimed socialist” a stage. Hyde-Smith’s campaign says there’s “no point” debating Colom because of his positions. Paxton’s campaign said he would debate Talarico if there were neutral moderators, then objected to a proposed Fox News forum and did not respond to CNN’s town hall invitation.

I have some thoughts.

In 2014, I was deputy communications director for the Democratic nominee for governor in Nebraska. It was not a pleasant year to be a Democrat running for office.

President Barack Obama was in the White House, and Republicans had turned the Affordable Care Act into a political liability. In Nebraska, where Republicans already had a significant advantage, the national environment made an uphill campaign even harder.

It was difficult to keep the conversation focused on the issues we wanted to discuss when the national debate kept pulling it elsewhere. Healthcare was supposed to be one of the Obama administration’s signature achievements. Instead, Republicans made Obamacare a central argument against Democrats up and down the ballot.

There was no escaping it.

Republicans are being asked to defend the president’s agenda.

That is the political environment I recognize today, except Republicans are now being asked to defend the president’s agenda.

Donald Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs, raising costs for American businesses and consumers. Then came his war of choice in Iran. Gas and diesel prices climbed, raising costs for households and businesses. And Americans are still waiting for a clear explanation of how this war will end.

Where were Republicans in Congress?

Some raised objections, but many stayed silent, defended the president’s decisions or cheered him on. Now, with Trump’s approval ratings sinking, Republican candidates face an uncomfortable reality. Some are trying to distance themselves from parts of his agenda. Others are embracing him, betting his support will carry them through November.

But the decisions have already been made. The tariffs were imposed. The war began. Americans are dealing with the economic consequences.

A debate means explaining those choices — or why you didn’t challenge them — while someone a few feet away questions your answer.

I can understand why a campaign might not want that.

But refusing to face those questions is cowardly.

On a recent episode of Clock It, Eugene Daniels and I discussed the growing number of candidates declining debates. I asked what I think is a basic question: “If you want the power to represent people, why shouldn’t you have to answer questions in front of those people?”

And I meant it.

A debate isn’t the only way for candidates to face difficult questions. A town hall lets voters challenge a candidate directly, without an opponent standing next to them.

Talarico did exactly that on Wednesday.

Paxton has campaigned across Texas, including on a statewide bus tour. But he declined the CNN town hall and a debate with Talarico. Those offer sustained questioning that campaign events don’t necessarily provide.

Abbott has spent years championing a school voucher program that fundamentally changes how Texas approaches public education. Hinojosa has made opposition to it central to her campaign. Texans could hear Abbott explain why he believes his approach serves their children — and hear Hinojosa challenge him on the consequences for public schools.

There are also questions about property taxes, the cost of living, immigration enforcement and the governor’s use of state authority. These decisions affect millions of Texans.

Republicans aren’t the only candidates declining debates. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has also declined to debate her opponent. She should face scrutiny for that, too.

But the pattern among Republicans this cycle is striking, particularly because their party is exercising power in Washington.

Greg Abbott is governor of Texas. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Ashley Moody are U.S. senators. They’re asking voters to keep them in office, yet choosing whether to face public scrutiny while they still need those voters’ permission.

We spend a lot of time examining candidates’ experience, policies, temperament and judgment. We should. But we should also ask what they believe they owe the people they govern.

A politician who treats difficult questions as optional is telling us how they understand the power they hold.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about these Republicans isn’t what they might say on a debate stage. It’s what they believe they no longer have to explain.

Evan Brechtel contributed to this report.

For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Symone Sanders Townsend and Luke Russert, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MS NOW, and check out Symone’s podcast with Eugene Daniels, “Clock It.” Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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