Top Democrats and allied organizations filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against President Donald Trump and his administration over their attempts to stymie the midterm elections, including by removing voters from state rolls.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., were among the plaintiffs who filed the suit against Trump, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The 44-page complaint takes aim at recent demands from DHS — notably in Nevada and California — that states review lists compiled by federal officials of alleged noncitizen voters.

As the complaint notes, state officials have disputed the accuracy of those lists.

The lawsuit points to Trump’s Truth Social threat earlier this week threatening that election officials in LA County “will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” if they count the votes of alleged noncitizens. It cites another from U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Aaron Reitz, who said in a social media post on Monday that he would “hunt” and “prosecute” anyone who violates federal election law.

“DOJ’s recent actions confirm that Defendants have settled on a course of intimidating state election officials with threats of criminal prosecution for doing nothing more than adhering to state law and distributing ballots to registered voters,” states the complaint, filed 13 days before the midterms.

The filing alleges the administration’s efforts to wrest control of elections from the states, combined with federal officials’ threats toward local and state officials, violate the Voting Rights Act and constitutional principles that prevent the federal government from forcing states to enact, administer or enforce federal laws.

In addition to Schumer and Jeffries, the plaintiffs include the Democrats’ House and Senate campaign arms, the Democratic Governors Association, the Nevada Democratic Party and Erick Jose Jimenez, a registered California voter who the lawsuit says became a naturalized citizen 20 years ago but fears he could be falsely labeled as a noncitizen and “unlawfully targeted” as a result.

The defendants also include Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has said he would “absolutely” consider taking the issue to the Supreme Court; and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has said his department will penalize states that do not cooperate with the federal government’s demands. The plaintiffs are asking the court to find the defendants in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act and to block them from continuing those actions.

“None of this is lawful,” the complaint states. “The Executive Branch enjoys no authority to superintend state voter list maintenance, to supplant state determinations of who is qualified to vote, or to dictate who gets a ballot or whose ballot gets segregated — Congress has kept that responsibility with the States, subject only to a narrow civil enforcement power the administration has declined to invoke during its recent efforts.”

The lawsuit represents the latest challenge to the administration’s efforts to compel states to hand over their voter rolls, which federal courts have also unanimously struck down. Democrats and elections experts have said these efforts could undermine trust in the upcoming elections. But federal officials have persisted, including by filing a lawsuit against California election officials last week.

Trump administration officials slammed the allegations included in the latest lawsuit.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said “Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud,“ adding, “The Trump Administration is taking decisive lawful action to protect our elections including prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion.”

DOJ spokesperson Kirsten Pels said “election integrity is a top priority” for the administration, adding, “Every action the Department has taken to protect the integrity of this year’s elections is grounded in the law and being litigated in open court. Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote and that every lawful ballot is counted a requirement of federal law.”

A spokesperson for DHS called the lawsuit “another political stunt by Democrats.”

The case has been assigned to Chief Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg, an Obama appointee who presided over the first lawsuit challenging the deportation and imprisonment of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members. During an emergency hearing in March 2025, Boasberg ordered that no additional flights to El Salvador could take off; Trump subsequently called him a “Radical Left Lunatic.”

Boasberg was also the subject of a judicial misconduct complaint filed by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff in July 2025, based on his alleged comments during a panel conversation at the annual Judicial Conference. According to the complaint, Boasberg predicted that the administration “would ‘disregard rulings of federal courts’ and trigger ‘a constitutional crisis.’” The chief judge of the 6th Circuit, Jeffrey Sutton, dismissed that complaint earlier this year.

Lisa Rubin and Selena Kuznikov contributed to this report.

CORRECTION (Oct. 21, 2026, 10:31 p.m. ET):
A previous version of this article misrepresented a statement from White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. Bis claimed that “Democrats and the media” dismiss concerns about voter fraud, but she did not herself dismiss voter fraud concerns.

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In 2024, Husham Al-Husainy, an Iraqi American imam in Dearborn, Michigan, backed Donald Trump for president. So did many other Arab and Muslim voters in the state, in a coordinated protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. On election night, Al-Husainy recalled, Trump thanked Arab and Muslim Americans for their support.

Now, Al-Husainy said, “there’s no thanking; there’s attacking.”

This year, Al-Husainy is supporting the Senate campaign of a Democrat whom Trump has baselessly branded a “jihadist” and “a member of the Muslim Brotherhood”: Abdul El-Sayed, who would be America’s first Muslim senator if elected in November. Al-Husainy, who described El-Sayed as “peaceful,” told MS NOW that most of the local Muslim voters he knows who backed Trump in 2024 plan to vote for El-Sayed over Republican Mike Rogers.

People think “they changed,” he said of Republicans. “We didn’t.”

Trump won nearly half the vote in Michigan’s majority-Arab precincts in 2024, research suggests, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein siphoned off a sizable share from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. These voters make up a small but significant part of Michigan’s population, with most of the estimated 400,000 of them concentrated in metro Detroit.

But two years later, Arab and Muslim strategists in the state say, Republicans aren’t courting those voters in a high-stakes Senate race; they’re alienating them with Islamophobic attacks — many aimed at El-Sayed.

“They had a huge opportunity actually to cultivate a healthy relationship with the Michigan Muslim community,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, a Michigan political strategist who works to mobilize Muslim voters, said of the Republicans. “They blew it for sure.”

Trump’s “jihadist” remark came Friday at a rally in Georgia, where he also mocked El-Sayed’s name. On Truth Social, he has repeatedly referred to El-Sayed as “Mohammed” — his middle name. Rogers has falsely stated that El-Sayed “believes that America deserved 9/11” and that he failed to condemn a terrorist attack at a Michigan synagogue earlier this year.

Such broadsides are nothing new for El-Sayed, or for prominent Muslim candidates generally. But coming from a party trying to win votes in a swing state weeks before the midterms, they have puzzled some longtime observers.

“I don’t understand Republicans when they do this — it’s not expanding their base, it’s actually inflaming their existing base,” said James Zogby, a prominent Democrat who leads the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Republicans have found common ground with Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan before. In 2000, George W. Bush lost the state but won its Arab American vote. In 2022, some conservative Muslims in Dearborn joined a right-wing push to remove books with LGBTQ themes from school libraries.

“In some ways, the Republicans have seen them as a lost cause, but they are a decisive voting bloc that can swing elections,” Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, said of the state’s Arab and Muslim voters. “With the margins this thin, there was an opportunity to court the business owners and those that have historically voted Republican.”

But local leaders, including Nazarko and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, say Republicans haven’t tried to win over their communities.

“There has been no authentic outreach to the Muslim community because they do not believe that the Muslims should be at the table within the party,” said Hammoud, the city’s first Arab American and Muslim mayor.

He pointed to Trump’s first-term travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, as well as recent comments from Rep. John James, Michigan’s Republican nominee for governor. In a Newsmax interview this summer, James called Shiite Muslims in Dearborn marching to commemorate Ashura, a Muslim holy day, “extremists.” After the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the remarks, James doubled down, calling CAIR “a radical extremist group.”

“This is the language of the candidates that are arising out of this party,” said Hammoud, a Democrat. “They do not view Muslims as human beings, as equals, as folks that they wish to partner with. They love their vote from time to time, but that’s about it.”

Then there are Trump’s own recent moves, which threaten to whittle away whatever goodwill he still has among some Arab and Muslim voters. Last December he called Somali immigrants — most of whom are Muslim — “garbage” and said they should leave the country. This week, Trump endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for re-election — a move that flies in the face of the Michigan voters who backed him over Harris to protest the Biden administration’s support of Israel.

Bishara Bahbah, chairman of the group formerly known as Arab Americans for Trump, called Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu “a major betrayal of the Arab and Muslim Americans who voted for the president in 2024” in a post on X.

Bahbah, who is based in Arizona, renamed his group Arab Americans for Peace last year after Trump said he would “take over” the Gaza Strip.

“A lot of people tell us that we’ve been fooled, that we’ve been used, that we got him to the presidency and we got nothing in return,” he told MS NOW on Tuesday.

In an interview, Bahbah characterized Trump’s attacks on El-Sayed as “astounding,” “unacceptable” and “crossing red lines.” He said he expects it will affect Arab and Muslim voters both this year and in 2028.

Republicans reject the charge that their attacks on El-Sayed are Islamophobic, or that the party has abandoned Arab and Muslim voters.

“There has been a concentrated effort by our campaign to speak to every single group,” said Abby Ronson, a spokesperson for Rogers, adding that the Republican’s campaign has spoken to Muslim voters who believe El-Sayed is “too extreme for them.” Ronson also said the campaign’s position is that El-Sayed has “dismissed, not disavowed” the Muslim Brotherhood — even though he did so when asked in a viral exchange at a town hall this past weekend.

State Sen. Jim Runestad, who is also chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said Rogers specifically asked the state party not to attack El-Sayed’s faith or mock his name — a request Ronson confirmed.

“It’s very important that the Republican Party be engaged in the Muslim community,” Runestad told MS NOW, though he added that some groups representing those voters are unwilling to even meet with Republican candidates. Asked if that may be due to the rhetoric from Trump and other high-ranking Republicans, he demurred.

“Everyone who knows the president knows he says what he says when the teleprompter’s shut off,” Runestad said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has called El-Sayed “the most radical Senate candidate in America,” has spent $1.5 million on an ad that describes him as “a real threat to our national security and our values.”

“Abdul El-Sayed and his family’s ties to designated terrorist groups have raised so many red flags that even the mainstream media can no longer ignore them,” Samantha Cantrell, regional press secretary for the NRSC, told MS NOW. “El-Sayed has serious questions to answer, and it should alarm every single Michigander that he continually refuses to do so.”

El-Sayed has confronted the attacks directly. In a recent interview with ABC News, he described the focus on his name and religion as attempts to “distract us from the fact that we can’t afford our gas and we can’t afford our groceries.”

Polling suggests the race is tight. If El-Sayed wins, the question is whether Republicans will change how they engage with the voters who helped make both his victory and Trump’s possible — voters like Al-Husainy.

If Rogers wins, Nazarko said, it would be “a legitimization card for Islamophobia going forward.”

“That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to keep showing up and continuing to push our values and our voices in the electoral space,” he added, “but it’s concerning.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled Rexhinaldo Nazarko’s surname.

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The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office determined that a police officer was “justified” in the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy in June, the office announced Monday.

The brief statement from the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch said the officer was “justified” in his “use of force” when he shot the baby, Kohen Wiley, in a Walmart parking lot on June 14. The statement did not mention Kohen by name or identify the officer involved in the shooting.

Local media outlet Action News 5 identified the officer as Hunter Foster based on a records request of officer-involved shootings.

The shooting occurred in Senatobia, a city of about 8,000 people in the northern part of the state, about 40 miles south of Memphis, after police responded to a shoplifting call. According to the statement initially released by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, two adults — later identified as Kohen’s mother and a family friend — and a “juvenile child,” referring to Kohen, fled the store and then drove toward officers at the scene, at which point one of the officers fired his gun.

But an independent autopsy released by the family’s legal team and reviewed by MS NOW found that the baby was shot through the side of his body, throwing into question the authorities’ claim that the car was driving toward police. At a press conference this summer, the family’s legal team displayed a photo of the passenger-side window of the vehicle almost entirely blown out.

Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, said at a press conference earlier this year that the officer fired three to four shots — even after she held Kohen up to show them there was a baby in the car — and that one hit her son’s ribcage as she held him in the passenger seat. MS NOW could not reach Wiley for comment on Monday.

Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who represents the family, slammed the news from Fitch’s office on Monday, asking, “How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?”

“If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it,” Crump continued. “We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”

Mississippi Today and The New York Times previously reported that Foster allegedly made racist remarks toward two co-workers, one of whom is Black and the other of whom is white and has a child with a Black partner.

When MS NOW reached out to Martin Zummach, a lawyer the Times identified as representing Foster, he would not answer MS NOW’s questions about the case and hung up the phone.

Spokespeople for the attorney general’s office, the Senatobia Police Department and Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment. Graves acknowledged the community’s “tremendous pain” in a video statement a few days after the killing.

At his funeral, Kohen was remembered as “goofy,” a fan of the cartoon character Bluey and a beloved baby with a family excited for his future, NBC News reported.

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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has been placed on leave after striking a man with his vehicle in Houston on Saturday, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to MS NOW.

The unnamed agent struck 48-year-old Miguel Parra, an undocumented immigrant, shortly after 7 a.m. local time on Saturday, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Parra was hospitalized with injuries following the incident, Maj. Anthony McConnell, who leads the Special Investigations Bureau at the sheriff’s office, said at a Saturday press conference.

The DHS spokesperson told MS NOW on Friday that it is “standard practice” for an agent to be placed on leave while an internal investigation is pending, adding that it is “not any indication of wrongdoing.” The spokesperson did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.

The development was first reported by NBC News on Thursday.

In a statement provided to the outlet over the weekend, an ICE spokesperson said immigration agents were not targeting Parra, but that he fled on foot after a traffic stop. Surveillance footage obtained by NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston appears to show Parra and another passenger get out of a vehicle and run before a vehicle strikes Parra. The second person who fled remains unaccounted for, according to the sheriff’s office.

The agent’s placement on leave is the latest controversy to roil ICE as the agency faces scrutiny over seceral recent incidents and high-profile killings. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanded ICE end its operations in the city after an agent shot and wounded a Dominican man while attempting to arrest him earlier this month, while his 5-year-old child was in the backseat. On Thursday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit alleging ICE agents were unconstitutionally taking people into custody near state courthouses.

Speaking about the incident in Houston, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NBC News that he believes the ICE agent intentionally struck and ran over Parra, an allegation that, if substantiated, could lead to aggravated assault charges. But the DHS spokesperson rejected the allegation that the agent intentionally struck Parra, calling it “RECKLESS and FALSE” in a statement to MS NOW.

Teare, a Democrat, also told NBC News that the federal government was not cooperating with an independent investigation being conducted by his office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. A spokesperson for the Harris County DA’s Office referred MS NOW to Teare’s public statements.

McConnell, from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, initially said Parra’s leg was broken in the incident. But Cesar Espinosa, the co-founder of FIEL, a local immigration advocacy organization, said at a Wednesday press conference that Parra’s leg was not broken. Espinosa said, however, that Parra had sustained “multiple fractures” and was “very, very injured.”

As of Wednesday, Parra was still hospitalized, according to Espinosa.

Parra’s lawyer did not respond to questions from MS NOW on Friday.

This story has been updated with additional information provided by the sheriff’s office.

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Two years ago, voters in Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nevada approved ballot measures protecting abortion rights while also backing Donald Trump for president. This fall, the question is whether that can happen again.

In the four states voting on abortion measures this year — Virginia, Nevada, Idaho and Missouri — Democratic candidates are making sure voters know where they stand. Republicans in several marquee races have been far quieter, leaving the measures off their campaign websites, declining to say how they’ll vote or waiting until the campaign’s final weeks to take a position.

In Virginia, Republican Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans, whose races the Cook Political Report rates as toss-ups, haven’t said how they’ll vote on a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution — even though both have records opposing abortion rights. In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little, who is running for re-election, did not say how he would vote on a measure that would essentially undo the state’s abortion ban until last week, after MS NOW asked both his campaign and the Idaho GOP why he hadn’t taken a position. (Neither responded.) Missouri is the exception: There, Republicans are pushing the measure — though its most prominent champions aren’t on the ballot themselves.

Some on the right say staying quiet is a mistake. Gregg Keller, a GOP strategist, said Republicans “need to be clear about where they stand” when they’re asked about abortion ballot measures. “They should say, ‘I’m pro-life, but here’s what I’m running on.’”

Anti-abortion advocates want them to go further.

“It’s a mistake for a candidate not to be clear about their support for innocent pre-born life, their mothers and pro-life measures designed to protect both,” Kristi Hamrick, a spokesperson for the anti-abortion advocacy group Students for Life Action, told MS NOW. “Ironically, you don’t have to tell the pro-abortion lobby or their candidates to speak up.”

Gavin Oxley, spokesperson for Americans United for Life, also criticized Republicans who stay quiet.

“When abortion is treated as a political poison by politicians on the national stage, grassroots pro-lifers are forced to bear a greater burden when defending against extreme abortion ballot measures,” he said.

That tension isn’t entirely new. In 2024, Trump’s insistence that abortion be “left to the states” drew sharp criticism from some anti-abortion leaders, and the Republican platform dropped its long-standing call for a national ban on abortion. Trump stuck with his approach anyway, and won.

But the results in states with abortion on the ballot may be the strongest argument for staying quiet. In 2024, the abortion rights measures in Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nevada ran well ahead of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, by about 11 points in Missouri and nearly 20 in Montana, suggesting that many voters who backed abortion rights also backed Trump. A paper published this month on the Social Science Research Network, an open-access platform, seemed to confirm that theory: It found that in 2024, voters in states with abortion ballot measures were more likely to back Republicans for the House and the presidency, an effect the researchers attributed “entirely” to moderate voters who support abortion rights. (The paper is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed.)

While a majority of Americans support abortion rights, recent polling also shows that abortion isn’t a top issue for voters this cycle.

“It’s not going to help Republicans for voters to be thinking about this, and the best thing Republicans can do is just hope that this issue is out of the spotlight,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and an expert in abortion laws.

But this year is different. In 2024, Trump was at the top of the ticket, pledging not to enact further restrictions on abortion. This year, Republicans are running without him on the ballot and carrying the weight of his historically low approval rating, a struggling economy and the war with Iran. Ziegler said that could make moderates less willing to split their tickets.

“I think you’re seeing Republicans look at what Trump did in 2024 that worked, and try to replicate it,” Ziegler said. “But what worked for Trump may not work anymore.”

Plus, abortion rights supporters have a strong record at the ballot box. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, voters in 11 states have used ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights in their constitutions, according to KFF, a health policy research organization.

But in politics, winning rarely ends the fight. Missouri’s ballot measure is the first attempt to reverse abortion rights that voters have already approved, and in Idaho, the GOP legislature could reinstate the abortion ban even if Proposition 1 passes.

Here’s what to watch in each state.

Virginia

Virginia offers the most direct test in a pair of key congressional races. Neither Wittman nor Kiggans has clarified their stance on Question 1, the ballot measure that asks if the state constitution should enshrine a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” But their Democratic challengers — Shannon Taylor and former Rep. Elaine Luria, respectively — have come out strong in support of the measure.

Wittman has described himself as “100% pro-life” and praised the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, but his campaign website does not address the issue at all. Kiggans’ site says she supports exceptions to abortion bans for “rape, incest and life of the mother,” but does not address the ballot measure. Neither campaign responded to requests for comment from MS NOW.

The pattern holds in the state’s Senate race. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who is seeking re-election, has backed the measure, while his Republican opponent, Bert Mizusawa, has avoided staking out a position. Mizusawa’s campaign also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The measure asks if the state should also protect doctors and other medical providers “from being punished for these decisions,” and allow abortions in the third trimester if a doctor determines a patient’s health is at risk or the pregnancy is nonviable. Abortion is currently legal in the commonwealth through the second trimester, with some exceptions beyond that.

Advocates for the measure say candidates’ silence isn’t an option, given the role Virginia plays for patients across the region as the only Southern state without an abortion ban.

“We’ve seen what happens when people can’t access the reproductive healthcare that they need,” said Han Jones, the campaign manager at Virginians for Reproductive Freedom, pointing to reports of women dying in states with abortion bans.

Opponents counter that the measure is redundant and unnecessary.

“There is no threat to abortion on the horizon in Virginia, even if I might disagree with that,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the conservative Family Foundation of Virginia, the funder of the leading opposition group.

Nevada

Nevada is the closest thing to a rerun of 2024. Two years ago, Trump carried the state even as more than 60% of voters approved a measure to enshrine the state’s current abortion law in its constitution. That law allows abortion through 24 weeks of pregnancy — and beyond that to preserve the health or life of the pregnant person.

But the issue is still playing a key role in this year’s gubernatorial race: Nevada requires voters to approve an amendment twice before it can be added to the state constitution, and the measure faces voters again this year in the form of Question 6 on the ballot. Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who has positioned himself as a moderate and is seeking a second term, only recently told the Reno Gazette Journal he would vote against the abortion ballot measure.

Supporters of abortion rights have used the vote to rally around the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Aaron Ford, who has backed the measure and said he would ensure the state “remains a firewall” for access. Planned Parenthood Votes and Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom each announced $1 million ad campaigns highlighting Lombardo’s opposition to abortion. Planned Parenthood Votes’ ad explicitly urges viewers to support Ford.

Idaho

In 2020, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed one of the country’s strictest “trigger” bans, which took effect two years later, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. But this year, unlike other Idaho Republicans running for re-election, Little avoided weighing in until earlier this month on a citizen-led ballot measure that would overturn the ban if passed. After MS NOW reached out to both his campaign and the Idaho GOP to ask why the governor had not publicly addressed the ballot measure, Little said in a statement he would vote against it because it “simply goes too far.”

Proposition 1, also called the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative, would amend Idaho law to establish a right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability, with exceptions after that for medical emergencies. It would also protect access to contraception, fertility treatment and miscarriage care. Currently, Idaho bans all abortions other than to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and in cases of rape or incest reported to law enforcement during the first trimester. The ban has driven doctors, as well as women with high-risk pregnancies or severe complications, out of state.

Little’s Democratic challenger, Terri Pickens, has openly campaigned on her support for the measure, calling the state’s ban a threat to women’s health and doctors’ independence.

But Pickens faces long odds: Idaho has not had a Democratic governor since 1995. And because Prop 1 would change state law rather than the constitution, the Republican legislature could simply override it next session.

Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families, the advocacy group that led the effort to create the ballot measure, told MS NOW the organization’s campaign showed abortion access “is actually quite a cross-partisan issue.”

Of the 110,000 signatures the group’s volunteers gathered over 10 months in order to put the question on the ballot, less than 40% came from Democrats, according to the group’s data. Approximately 29% came from Republicans and 31% from unaffiliated voters.

“People of all backgrounds and all political affiliations are interested in this and think the ban is too extreme,” Folwell said.

Opponents argue that it’s Prop 1 that is too extreme. The leading PAC campaigning against the measure has run ads lambasting the measure’s out-of-state donors, who include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They also claim the measure would lead to more abortions later in pregnancy and override the state’s parental consent law for minors if passed. (It would not.)

Missouri

Two years ago, Missouri’s voters narrowly struck down an abortion ban while backing Trump by about 18 points. This fall, Amendment 3 asks voters to reinstate it.

Amendment 3 would change the state constitution to ban most abortions, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest reported in the first trimester and for “emergencies and fetal anomalies.” It would also enshrine a ban on gender-affirming care for minors into the constitution, even though former Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed one into law in 2023 that is set to expire next year.

Here, Republicans are openly campaigning for the measure. Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe and first lady Claudia Kehoe have urged voters to pass it. Claudia Kehoe serves as treasurer for Her Health Her Future PAC, the leading group supporting Amendment 3.

Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who has said “It’s really important to me that we pass Amendment 3,” also reportedly spent $167,000 in state funds on a television ad that suggested abortion clinics were dangerous. Hanaway defended the ad, insisting that it complied with state law because it did not explicitly address the ballot measure.

In Missouri’s eight House races — none of which is considered a toss-up — several Republicans have lined up to support the measure.

Keller, the GOP strategist, who is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the Republican candidates in Missouri are bucking the national trend.

“This is not a state where Republicans need or feel as if they need to walk around with trepidation,” he said. “We’re not terrified of the abortion issue.”

Opponents warn that the stakes extend well beyond Missouri. Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes and a spokesperson for Stop the Ban, the top opposition group, told MS NOW she feared that if the amendment passed, it would inspire other states to try the same thing.

“Missouri can’t go backwards,” she said. “We don’t want to set a national trend.”

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Former Rep. Matt Gaetz is facing allegations of sex trafficking by two women who filed a civil lawsuit against him and two other men in federal court Thursday.

The women, identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, are accusing Gaetz, former Florida state Rep. Chris Dorworth and Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, of “recruitment and sexual exploitation” from 2017 through January 2019 — while Gaetz was a sitting member of Congress. The lawsuit relies in part on a House Ethics Committee report that concluded Gaetz paid roughly a dozen women for sex between 2017 and 2020.

The plaintiffs’ complaint also draws from Greenberg’s plea agreement, in which he acknowledged engaging in commercial sex acts with the minor described in the complaint as “Victim A” and “introduc[ing] the Minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts with the Minor in the Middle District of Florida.” Greenberg is serving an 11-year federal prison sentence in Florida on sex trafficking and fraud convictions.

The accusers allege Gaetz and Greenberg “coordinated the recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts from young women,” and accuse Dorworth of “knowingly” participating.

According to the complaint, Greenberg met and recruited the two women through a “sugar daddy” website, through which older wealthy men meet young women who offer companionship for payment. Greenberg and Gaetz then allegedly had sex with the women, paid them, and took them on trips in Florida and other places.

The 38-page complaint, filed in the Middle District Court of Florida, describes the defendants as “men of power, wealth, and privilege who used their positions not to protect the vulnerable but to prey upon them.” The complaint states that one of the women was 20 years old when she met Gaetz, now 44, and that the other was 22 when she first met Greenberg, now 42.

In a statement provided to the Miami Herald, which first reported the news on Thursday, Gaetz called the allegations “false” and added that the lawsuit “relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”

The House Ethics Committee report Gaetz referred to makes clear that officials sought to informally interview Gaetz and subpoenaed him for testimony. He refused both.

Later Thursday, Gaetz appeared to dox at least one of the women, posting a screenshot of an Instagram post on another social media site from one of the trips referenced in the complaint, to the Bahamas.

The lawyer representing the women, Spencer Kuvin, confirmed to MS NOW that both Jane Does had spoken to the House Ethics Committee. Asked for comment on Gaetz’s social media post Thursday afternoon, Kuvin said: “It is disgusting to me that Mr. Gaetz, without even knowing whether these are my clients, is nonetheless trying to embarrass these women. We will be happy to litigate the issues in Court, and we hope that Mr. Gaetz ceases his infantile behavior in trying to blame the victims of sex crimes.”

Dorworth did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday.

The suit also names as defendants three companies allegedly owned and run by Greenberg’s family, which it says “supplied the money that funded these illicit acts,” including for drugs and travel, and money to the women directly. The plaintiffs are suing under federal laws aimed at combating sex trafficking and are demanding a jury trial.

Fritz Scheller, who has represented Joel Greenberg in both his criminal matter and related civil litigation, told MS NOW that he is not involved in this case as of now. “I was surprised and troubled to see Susan and Andrew Greenberg, as well as their associated entities, brought into this matter,” Scheller said, referring to Greenberg’s parents.

Civil lawsuits under the federal sex trafficking statute require that the plaintiffs prove, among other elements, that the defendants engaged in commercial sex acts and used fraud, force or coercion. The women who filed the lawsuit Thursday allege that the defendants defrauded and coerced them by paying them irregularly or less than promised; keeping them in a state of financial instability and dependency; supplying them with drugs; and conditioning their access to “outings and privileges” based on their performance of sexual acts for Gaetz. Each says she believed she would suffer “serious financial harm” if she stopped performing the sex acts.

Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress in November 2024, when then-President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate him for attorney general. But Gaetz withdrew from consideration for that position after facing mounting scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations, which he denied. Since then, he has worked as a host at the right-wing One America News Network.

Gaetz was also the subject of a Department of Justice investigation, but it was closed in 2023 without any charges. At the time, public reporting stated that DOJ lawyers were concerned about the credibility of several witnesses if the case went to trial.

Civil lawsuits under the federal sex trafficking statute must be filed no later than 10 years after the alleged trafficking, assuming the victim was 18 years old or older at the time. Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as family members of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s alleged victims, have advocated for “Virginia’s Law,” a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for claims like those brought by the women who filed the suit against Gaetz.

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