Pennsylvania’s 7th District, the Lehigh Valley region that includes Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, is one of the most competitive House races in the country. Democrat Bob Brooks, a firefighters union president, is challenging Republican incumbent Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, and how voters here feel could help decide who controls the House. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis spent several days in the district talking to the people who will determine the outcome.

Voters say high prices, a lack of affordable housing, and a Washington disconnected from working people are driving their vote. Two more specific issues are also shaping the race: proposed data centers, which residents say are being imposed on their communities without adequate review, and the Epstein files, which arrived in Bethlehem aboard the “Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile,” a traveling archive of the documents released to date. Underneath it all is a darker worry: that their votes won’t be counted.

Credits

Producers: Taya Graham and Stephen Janis
Writer: Stephen Janis
Editing/Post-Production: Stephen Janis

After two decades of defeats in rural America, Democrats are suddenly putting up a fight in farm country. The party is running competitive Senate races in Iowa, Kansas and other farm states, as well as House races in heavily rural districts that could help it regain control of Congress in January.

Credit (or blame, depending on your party) for this reversal of fortune lies with President Donald Trump’s tariffs and his war with Iran, which have battered farmers and pushed the rural economy into crisis. The Department of Agriculture’s analysts expect farmers’ net incomes to decline by 5.5% this year, as costs rise and receipts fall. The National Agricultural Law Center’s tally of farm bankruptcies jumped 45% last year, and is on pace to rise another 11% in 2026.

Three different impacts have simultaneously hammered farmers and the agriculture industry.

First, the Trump administration’s tariff hikes raised costs. The president slapped import taxes as high as 50% on a range of products including hoes and plows, barbed wire, screws, wood, pesticides, irrigation equipment and harvesters. As a result, just about everything farmers do — from putting up a fence to spraying for weeds and bugs to harvesting crops — costs more. That has helped dent sales of farm equipment, according to Creighton University’s September Rural Mainstreet Index, meaning less business for local John Deere and Bobcat dealers this year and lower farm productivity in the years ahead.

Higher costs for processed-food companies also have punishing consequences in rural communities more broadly. Last year, after the Commerce Department put tariffs of 50% on tin cans, Del Monte closed its cannery in Modesta, California. Opened over a century ago, the cannery had been the main buyer of California peaches and pears. Its collapse cost 600 jobs at the cannery, vaporized $500 million in annual Central Valley farm sales and forced local farmers to uproot 420,000 peach trees this summer.

Play

‘Iowa is ready for change’: Democrat Josh Turek on flipping Iowa’s GOP Senate seat October 6, 2026 / 07:02

Second, U.S. farm exports have struggled as trade partners punch back. America is the world’s top agricultural exporter — 20% of farm receipts come from sales abroad. Last year’s $176 billion in exports included 156 tons of California grapes shipped to sunny Fiji in the South Pacific, and $10,000 worth of biscuits sent to the North Atlantic’s stormy Faroe Islands. This success has helped rural America prosper, but it also makes our farmers uniquely vulnerable targets for retaliation.

Three countries — China, Canada and Mexico — buy half of America’s annual farm exports. Sales to China fell 66% in 2025, with soybean shipments alone collapsing, from $12.6 billion to $3.0 billion, and have only somewhat rebounded during this year’s tariff “truce” with Beijing. Thanks to Trump’s mystifying economic assault on Canada, fresh produce sales to our second-biggest ag market are down 10% this year, while wines, beer and liquor have fallen by two-thirds.

Third, this spring came Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran. The consequent halt to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz first spiked global fertilizer prices — up 20% from when the president was inaugurated — and then hit diesel fuel even harder. Farmers need diesel to run tractors, harvesters and irrigation equipment; the trucking firms that move their grain and produce to market use it too. Diesel now costs $6.32 per gallon, up $2.50 from a year ago. The surge in normal gasoline prices hasn’t helped either: As Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook recently noted, transport accounts for a quarter of rural household expenses.

Trump’s policies have crunched agriculture in less direct ways, too. Both the tariffs and the Iran war have pushed up inflation, forcing the Fed to keep interest rates high — a major burden on farmers who borrow heavily to finance their supplies every year.

Play

Can Dems win Iowa? Americans ‘anxious’ about economy and Iran: Art Cullen October 14, 2026 / 10:31

The administration’s response has been a series of Band-Aids, with improvised emergency aid packages culminating in $12 billion in transfers to farmers at the end of last year. But as rising bankruptcies show, these measures haven’t healed the wounds the administration’s policies have inflicted.

I don’t want to exaggerate the rural pickup opportunities for Democrats this year. Republicans control the vast majority of House districts dependent on agriculture, and will likely continue to do so after this midterm. The same goes for Senate seats for heavily rural states in the Great Plains and the South.

Still, to hazard an agriculture metaphor, some seeds of change might be sprouting. The Republican Party’s hold on politics in rural America has shaped policy, government and law for 20 years. Trump’s decision to upend the farm economy has shaken it. This doesn’t mean Democrats have yet won the affection of farm country voters. But they have their best opening in decades to win a hearing and, once in government, to act on the rural crisis. That means repealing Mr. Trump’s tariffs, stabilizing relations with Canada and Mexico, and passing the farm bill this administration has abandoned, which could have helped modernize rural infrastructure and restore nutrition programs that benefit low-income families and farmers alike. That might begin changing the political landscape for years to come.

The post Trump’s policies are hammering farmers — and putting rural America in play for Democrats appeared first on MS NOW.

A top election official in Arizona’s most populous county appears dead-set on having the federal government intervene in the upcoming midterms.

County Recorder Justin Heap’s shameless support for pro-Trump election denialism, and his encouragement of President Donald Trump’s allies to meddle with the upcoming midterms, have been well documented. Media outlet VoteBeat obtained emails to the Department of Justice in which Heap egged on a bogus probe of his own county’s elections. And his efforts to wield control over Maricopa County’s election system have drawn condemnation from local Republicans including the GOP-controlled board of supervisors and the county’s top attorney, who has accused Heap of handing over control of his office to far-right idealogues.

Last week, NBC affiliate 12 News in Arizona reported on Heap’s attempt to sic the FBI on the board of supervisors using bogus accusations of wrongdoing promoted by a known election denier.

According to the report:

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s top staffers called in the FBI to investigate an election tampering claim leveled at Heap’s partner in overseeing the midterm vote, the Maricopa County Board. The investigator’s report, obtained by 12News through a public records request, says a prominent election denier and the Republican National Committee brought the claim to Heap’s office. The social media post alleging the wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation center got 1 million views. Other feverish posts claimed there was “evidence of computer tampering.” But the investigator the FBI asked to look into the allegation concluded there was nothing to see there. There was no wrongdoing.

Right-wing influencers shared video of county officials working in an office and falsely suggested they had no authorization to be there. The Maricopa County Elections Department responded by explaining on social media that elections personnel were there working late.

The context here is that for years Trump and allies like Kari Lake have promoted baseless claims of fraud in Arizona’s ballot tabulation systems. The 12 News investigation identified far-right activist Shelby Busch as the person who joined the Republican National Committee in raising the false claims to Heap’s office. Busch talked in 2024 about how she would “lynch” Heap’s predecessor, fellow Republican Stephen Richer, who was targeted by Trump allies for his refusal to promote pro-Trump election lies. (Busch subsequently said “the statement was a joke” and was “political hyperbole and no way meant as a threat of violence,” the Washington Post reported.)

Last week’s wild goose chase is typical of how MAGA election denial works: Right-wing influencers promote a lie, then right-wing officials pass it along to federal investigators, who can use the lie as a pretext for federal intervention in elections. It’s similar to what the Trump-friendly board of elections is doing in Georgia. And it’s something voters and officials who are interested in defending democracy need to beware of and on defense against in the weeks ahead.

The president’s polling has cratered to record lows, members of his administration appear to be resorting to authoritarian tactics as their primary means of maintaining power, and far too many Trump allies in positions of power are willing to lend credence to election deniers.

On that note, late last week, Heap told Arizona radio host Mike Broomhead that his office “did exactly what we should have done” in taking the bogus claims to the FBI.

The post Maricopa County election official keeps modeling election denial playbook appeared first on MS NOW.

Two weeks before the midterm elections, Trump’s approval rating has hit a two-term low. The war with Iran has driven up the cost of a tank of gas and a cart of groceries, millennials have turned away from him faster than the rest of the country, and part of his base plans to stay home.

Donald Trump’s name is not on any ballot on Nov. 3, yet much of the U.S. electorate will head to the polls with him in mind.

A national poll released Sunday, Oct. 18, and conducted Oct. 9-13, puts his approval rating at 33%, the lowest the series has recorded in either of his terms. Two in three adults disapprove of his performance, 52% strongly, and the same survey had him at 37% in both April and July.

RELATED: Trump Approval Falls to New Low of 33% Two Weeks Before Midterms

The poll also asked whether the next Congress should act as a check on the president or support his agenda. Fifty-eight percent preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress as a check on him, compared with 39% who want a Republican Congress aligned with the White House, a gap nearly twice as wide as a year ago. Neither party is calling this election a referendum, but the answer brings it close to one.

Almost six out of ten U.S. citizens want the next Congress to counterbalance Trump, a gap that has nearly doubled in one year. Graph: teleSUR

In the race for the House of Representatives, Democrats lead Republicans 52% to 44% among likely voters. Among registered voters the gap holds at eight points; in July it was three.

Other surveys tell the same story. An earlier Ipsos poll put him at 32% in September, and the Pew Research Center had him at 30% in early October. The slide deepened after February, when the war with Iran began.

Between the first bombings on Iran and the election, gasoline soared above 4 dollars and Trump’s approval rating plummeted. Graph: teleSUR

From Hormuz to the Gas Tank

The United States and Israel began bombing Iran in February, when a gallon of regular gasoline cost an average of $2.98, according to AAA. By late March it had topped $4 for the first time since 2022, and each new round of strikes pushed it back up. On Oct. 1, the national average hit $4.41.

At those prices, filling a 15-gallon tank costs about $21 more than before the war.

With Ormuz declared closed by Iran and no oil pipelines capable of replacing it, the gallon rose 48% in the US even with record crude production. Graph: teleSUR

In February, 7 in 10 U.S. citizens considered gasoline affordable. Eight months later, the same share says the opposite.

About a fifth of the oil the world consumes passes through the Strait of Hormuz. According to the official price index for September, consumer prices rose 3.7% over the year, energy 20.4% and gasoline 34.2%, while inflation excluding food and energy stood at 2.6%. Today, 65% of U.S. citizens believe attacking Iran was a mistake.

Tehran declared the strait closed in March and has reaffirmed that stance several times since. In October, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, chief of staff of Iran’s army, told the official IRNA news agency that the waterway remains closed and that all transit must be coordinated with the armed forces, and he blamed the closure for the rise in U.S. gasoline prices.

Washington says otherwise. On Oct. 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “the Straits of Hormuz are open,” that as much oil is flowing out now “as there was before this conflict began” and that Iran has “lost complete control of the straits.” Overland routes cannot replace the strait either. Before the war, the EIA estimated that the Saudi and Emirati pipelines that bypass Hormuz had only about 2.6 million barrels a day of spare capacity to divert crude, compared with the 20 million barrels a day that moved through the strait.

Ten days later, Vice President JD Vance revealed another side of the same administration. “I recognize that gas prices are too high right now,” he said Saturday night at a televised town hall. Asked why the war had not ended in a clear victory, he said that “in some ways we have won decisively,” though “the enemy gets a vote.” And he repeated that Iran, “the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world,” cannot have a nuclear weapon.

On the campaign trail, the fix being sold in Washington points elsewhere. In a poll of 1,000 likely voters taken in early October, four in five agreed that increasing U.S. energy production “can help make everyday life more affordable,” and 67% backed a proposal whose wording already promised the result, “updating federal permitting laws to reduce delays and lower costs.” It is the same reform the oil industry pitches as the key to affordability.

The government’s own energy agency supplies the missing piece. The United States has been the world’s largest crude oil producer since 2018 and is on track for a record of about 13.7 million barrels a day this year, while 84% of the crude that crossed Hormuz was bound for Asia. With output at record highs, gasoline has risen 48% since the bombing began. Crude is priced on a global market, and this year’s price spikes followed the calendar of the war, not the permitting calendar.

The price shock reached much of the world, and Latin American economies that import refined fuels absorbed it without having had any say in the decision to go to war. For those countries, the permitting fight in Washington is a distant concern; the price of their diesel depends on what happens in Hormuz. How much room Washington has to keep waging the war without congressional oversight will also be decided on Nov. 3.

For Latin American families living in the United States, the most visible face of the second term is immigration policy. At the start, half the country approved of it; now about 60% disapprove, and 56% say deportations have gone too far, eight points more than in April 2025. At the same town hall, Vance acknowledged that his rhetoric about immigrants had been “imperfect” and took the blame. “That’s on me,” he said. His goal, he insisted, is not “to dehumanize any immigrant.” “In fact, I love a number of immigrants,” he added.

An Economy Judged by Team Colors

The president’s approval on the economy has fallen to 28%, its lowest mark across his two presidencies. Forty-eight percent feel worse off than when Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the highest share in a series dating back to 1986, and for the first time in more than a decade, registered voters trust Democrats more to handle the economy, 40% to 33%. Before the 2022 midterms, the same series gave Republicans a double-digit edge on the issue.

That year, with Joe Biden in the White House, each party’s verdict on the economy was the mirror image of today’s, almost point for point, and independents stood at 16% in both surveys.

Democrats and Republicans reversed their judgment of the economy by changing government, meanwhile only independents stayed where they were. Graph: teleSUR

Voters who wear no team colors are moved by their wallets. In the October survey of likely voters, 37% said a candidate’s stance on affordability will decide their vote for Congress, more than double the 15% who put immigration first, an issue central to Trump’s 2024 campaign. That priority is shared by 43% of Democrats, 36% of independents and 32% of Republicans.

Among those who say they are worse off than in 2025, 78% lean toward Democrats, as do 71% of independents in that group.

The Generation that Turned Away Fastest

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, are now 30 to 45 years old and make up the largest adult generation in the country. In 2024 they split almost evenly on Trump; exit polls showed voters ages 30 to 44 backing Kamala Harris over him 51% to 47%.

A YouGov poll conducted Aug. 28-31 found 27% approval and 70% disapproval in that age group, the group’s worst showing in the series. Its net rating went from minus 1 in January 2025 to minus 43 in August, a 42-point drop, compared with 30 points nationally.

The Economist makes the opposite case. It argues that millennials have turned their fortunes around and now earn more than any recent generation did at the same age, while narrowing the gap in homeownership. The magazine credits the recovery to markets rather than to a state-funded rescue. October’s polls show what that narrative leaves out.

In the House race, the Pew Research Center found voters ages 30 to 49 favoring the Democratic candidate 43% to 31%, with one in five still undecided.

October’s affordability survey, broken down by age, points in the same direction. Affordability will decide the vote of 45% of voters in their 30s and 44% of those in their 40s, above the 37% average. This is the cohort that entered the job market in the 2008 crisis, pays rent or a mortgage, raises children and fills the tank every day to get to work, and the tank is precisely where prices have climbed the most this year.

The cost of living defines the vote of almost half of voters aged 30-49, above the national average of 37%. Graph: teleSUR

The figures come from surveys with different age brackets and do not prove a single cause. Read together, though, they show the country’s largest generation turning away from Trump faster than everyone else, with the cost of living at the top of its priorities.

RELATED: U.S. Retail Sales Up in September Amid Surging Gas Prices

The Ones Who Stay Home

Among those who voted for Trump in 2024, 23% now disapprove of his performance and 38% reject his handling of inflation. Most of them still prefer Republicans for Congress, so the erosion does not take the form of a switch to the other party. What they have lost is the certainty that they will vote.

Seventy-five percent of registered Democrats say they are certain to vote, compared with 67% of Republicans. Within the Republican Party, certainty reaches 75% among supporters of the MAGA movement and falls to 57% among those who do not identify with it, and more than a quarter of the latter want Democrats to control the next Congress.

Only 39% of Republicans strongly approve of the president, down from 63% in February 2025.

How many of the 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024 will return to the polls without his name on the ballot is a question no one can answer yet. Turnout models based on 2022 and 2024 favor Republicans; votes already cast or locked in, by contrast, favor Democrats.

The risk for Republicans is at home. Their MAGA-unaffiliated voters are the least confident of going to the polls. Graph: teleSUR

What is at Stake in the Senate

With the slim House majority Republicans are defending, losing a handful of seats would be enough to hand over control, and presidential approval is among the best predictors of midterm results. Even so, 58% of likely voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Trump still prefer the Republican in their district.

The Senate is split 53-47 in Republicans’ favor, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win back the majority. Of the 35 seats on the ballot, seven are rated toss-ups, and six of them — in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas — are held by Republicans. North Carolina, a Republican seat, is already rated as likely to go Democratic.

The seven states that decided the last presidential election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — offer an early clue about 2028. Trump carried all seven in 2024, and today his net approval is negative in every one of them, between 15 and 25 points underwater among registered voters, according to the Civiqs tracker. He cannot run in 2028, and those numbers measure a president, not his successor, but they map the terrain his party will inherit.

Six of the seven open Senate races are played in Republican seats, while their approval is now negative in the seven states that gave the White House to Trump in 2024. Graph: teleSUR

On Nov. 3, Trump’s name will still be missing from the ballot. The outcome will depend less on votes that switch parties than on the votes that are never cast, among them those of a generation that split almost evenly on him two years ago and in August disapproved of him by more than two to one.

The Arch and the Gas Pump

On Wednesday, Oct. 14, 20 days before the election, the new Air Force One flew low over the airport in Bullhead City, in the Arizona desert. It is the Boeing 747 that Qatar’s royal family gave Trump, now painted red, white, blue and gold. “When they give you a 747, you say two words, thank you,” he told supporters.

Arizona is one of the swing states that change hands from one presidential election to the next. Joe Biden won it in 2020 by about 10,500 votes, Trump took it back in 2024, and today his approval there is 18 points underwater. The state has no Senate race this year, but it does elect a governor and all nine of its House members. The president chose Mohave County, where he won more than 77% of the vote two years ago, with early voting already a week underway. He went looking for his base, the voters he needs at the polls, not at home.

From the plane he moved on to people who leak military information. “In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” he said, and he called the journalists covering him “almost as bad as a leaker.” He touted the ballroom he is building at the White House and the triumphal arch he plans for the capital. On Iran, whose leaders, he said, “are gone,” he let slip a confession. “I might have gone too far. I don’t know who the hell to deal with.” And he promised that once the war ends, “your gasoline is going to go down to even lower than it was before it started.”

He was addressing a country that fills its tank at wartime prices and pays rents 2.8% higher than a year ago, according to the official price index. Three days later, his vice president admitted on television what the gas pump was already saying. Trump, in Arizona, had preferred to talk about monuments.

The planned arch would stand 76 meters (250 feet) tall, about 26 meters (85 feet) taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and would rise at the foot of the bridge leading to Arlington National Cemetery, as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

Napoleon commissioned the Paris arch in 1806, after his victory at Austerlitz, to honor his armies. Construction dragged on for three decades. When it was inaugurated in 1836, the emperor had been dead in exile for 15 years, and he passed beneath the arch only once, in 1840, inside the coffin that brought his remains back to France.

PHOENIX — Of the litany of campaign promises President Donald Trump made on the trail, few caught on with his supporters the way his promises about immigration did. But when it comes to the president’s targeting of undocumented immigrants, the Latino voters who helped catapult the president to victory in 2024 have noticed that the Department of Homeland Security is not only targeting “the worst of the worst.”

Jesús Cardiel, 73, from Surprise, Arizona, said he typically votes Republican because the party most aligns with his beliefs on abortion. Cardiel believes Trump’s immigration crackdown will cost him with Latino voters in these midterm elections.

“Instead of the promise he made to deport only those who were a threat to the people, he’s even deporting people who are completely innocent, and that’s going to affect us at the polls,” he added.

Many Latinos aren’t inclined to vote for him now that the elections are coming up.”

—Jesús Cardiel

Cardiel’s instinct that the president’s immigration crackdown is far from focused on the “worst of the worst,” as the administration likes to describe those it’s rounding up, is borne out by the numbers.

The Deportation Data Project, a joint research venture from UCLA and UC Berkeley, found that as of July 2026, 73.5% of those arrested and booked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no criminal convictions. Of the others, 24.8% had been convicted of a nonviolent crime, while only 1.6% of those arrests involved undocumented immigrants convicted of a violent crime, according to the analysis.

But talk to Trump’s MAGA base — like those who waited hours for him to speak at a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, last Wednesday — and many of them remain smitten with the way ICE raids have been going.

“They’re doing what they need to do,” said Deanne McCarter, 64, a three-time Trump voter from Lake Havasu City, who attended Trump’s rally in Arizona last week. Asked whether she believes ICE has been too aggressive after shooting undocumented immigrants in Austin, Texas, and New York City in recent months, McCarter was convinced they weren’t.

FAFO”

—Deanne McCarter

“FAFO,” said the Trump superfan, using an abbreviation with an expletive that means “[mess] around, find out.” “I mean, I’m sorry, but that’s the way that it is.”

Peggy Miller, a retired nurse and three-time Trump voter from Bullhead City, also expressed no qualms about ICE shooting people in the streets.

It is unfortunate that people are in the wrong place where they should not be.”

—Peggy Miller

“It is unfortunate that people are in the wrong place where they should not be,” said Miller, 67.

“They should not have been doing what they were doing,” she added.

Miller and McCarter’s approval of Trump’s approach to immigration reflects broader trends.

According to an August AP/NORC poll, 8 in 10 Republicans approve of how the president is handling immigration.

But that enthusiasm has disappeared when it comes to the president’s support among the Latino community, which went for the president in historic numbers in 2024.

According to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll from earlier this month, Trump has a  27% approval rate among Latino voters. And 69% of those surveyed disapprove of his handling of immigration.

Unai Cutino is a 45-year-old HVAC employee who voted for Trump in each of the last three presidential elections. Now, he’s got buyer’s remorse.

“I regret it. I had so much hope that he promised so many things, and there’s nothing to show for it,” said Cutino, who is from Phoenix. He said the immigration crackdown, which has swept through Arizona’s capital in recent months, has been “very aggressive.”

This presidency always benefits the powerful, and the poor are left behind.”

—Unai Cutino

“This presidency always benefits the powerful, and the poor are left behind,” Cutino said.

“Many Latinos aren’t inclined to vote for him now that the elections are coming up,” Cardiel warned.

And yet, when asking Trump’s MAGA whether the president is making good on his promise to deport the “worst of the worst,” the MAGA faithful are convinced.

“We see that they’re criminals. I don’t see any other innocent people getting [deported] contrary to what the media, the mainstream media, is trying to make it look like,” McCarter said.

“The left are screaming and kicking, so he must be doing something right,” she added.

The post Trump’s immigration crackdown is driving off Latino voters, as it fires up MAGA appeared first on MS NOW.

Spain’s Left has now missed its last chance to unite ahead of the country’s snap election on 29 November — a historic failure, not so much because the numbers don’t add up, but because it fails to offer an alternative.

The elections are seen as pivotal, with a real chance that the far-right Vox will enter the government for the first time since Spain’s return to democracy in 1978, in a coalition with the centre-right People’s Party (PP), which itself is expected to fall short of an absolute majority.

With that possibility on the horizon, the Spanish parties to the left of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), led by PM Pedro Sánchez, tried to agree on a nationwide joint list for the 29 November snap election.

But they failed because of a “war of egos”, as one political leader described it, and old grudges dating back to 2023. This has left many disillusioned and the left even more divided.

“These past few days have been very difficult … some people will be disappointed today, and for that I am sorry,” Ada Colau, former Barcelona mayor and leader of the Broad Front, said last week, as her alliance failed to reach an agreement on a joint electoral platform ahead of the election.

Spain’s electoral system disadvantages smaller parties, especially in less populated provinces. That means their votes are less likely to translate into seats. 

In Spain, a country where a two-party system was the norm until 2015, it is puzzling that the “new” left, born precisely to break that duopoly, has ended up too divided to even compete with the mainstream.

And that makes it harder for Sánchez to keep any leftwing coalition, which relies on these smaller forces.

So what’s the picture? On one side, the right is more aligned than ever: the PP and Vox are running separately, but the conservative party openly says it is willing to strike a deal with the far-right if needed. Liberalism is almost non-existent, even though Democracia 21 will run for the first time, but only in Madrid and Barcelona. And the left is divided. 

War of egos 

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For six years, Marina Lacerda was known publicly only as “Minor Victim 1,” the name federal prosecutors gave her in their 2019 sex-trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein. Last year, she stepped out from behind it on Capitol Hill, joining fellow survivors in demanding that the government release the Epstein files.

Now, just over a year later, Lacerda is the central figure in a new political ad against Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who once voted against forcing the files into public view. It launches online Monday and hits Kansas TV on Tuesday.

Hers is one of three new ads featuring Epstein survivors. In another, Jena-Lisa Jones takes aim at Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss. Lacerda also appears in the third, which targets Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., which is expected to air Wednesday.

The ads mark the first time Epstein survivors themselves have campaigned in a congressional race. The family of one survivor got there first: Sky and Amanda Roberts, the brother and sister-in-law of the late Virginia Giuffre, recently appeared in an ad opposing their own congressman, Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Crank, who they say refused to meet with them.

The new ads are sponsored by New Deal for All, a political action committee registered just this month and launched by Steve Pajcic, a Florida lawyer and former Democratic state legislator. Pajcic and his children “are spending at least $7 million for a blitz of ads in Florida, Kansas, Mississippi and South Carolina,” The New York Times reported last week in a profile of him.

To date, the PAC has spent roughly $4.55 million on ads and ad reservations through Election Day, according to AdImpact data reviewed by MS NOW. A Democratic strategist close to the project who was granted anonymity to discuss internal plans told MS NOW that the group had put roughly $2 million behind the Epstein-related ads targeting Marshall, Hyde-Smith and Moody, at least to start.

In the Kansas ad, Lacerda says she was 13 when she first met Epstein and was abused by him. “I expected our leaders to listen to our stories and hold our abusers accountable,” she says as a photo of Marshall appears alongside text faulting him for voting to block the release of the Epstein files.

The ad also features audio of Marshall saying, “It’s just not of much interest to me right now.” MS NOW was not able to independently verify the origin of the audio or whether he was referring to the Epstein files, but it appeared to come from footage by KSN, a Kansas NBC affiliate.

In the Mississippi spot, Jones, who says she was also in her early teens when Epstein first abused her, accuses Hyde-Smith of “voting to protect the sex trafficker who abused me.”

Looking directly into the camera, she says, “I want true change. I want our children to be safe.” Then, as a photo of Hyde-Smith appears: “If you vote for pedophiles, it’s time for Mississippi to pick a new senator.”

Both ads center on the same vote. In September 2025, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to attach the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation requiring the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein, to the annual defense policy bill. Marshall and Hyde-Smith were among 51 Republicans who voted to table the amendment, effectively killing it. Two months later, after the bill passed the House nearly unanimously, the Senate approved it by unanimous consent. That means no senator objected, but also that there was no recorded vote.

In response to a request for comment, a representative for Hyde-Smith pushed back on the ad’s depiction of the senator.

“Sen. Hyde-Smith has consistently stood with victims of human trafficking. As the lead co-sponsor of the bipartisan Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, signed into law in January 2026, she helped ensure survivors can clear nonviolent federal offenses they were forced to commit by their traffickers and have a real opportunity to rebuild their lives,” said Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager. “This ad is nothing more than partisan propaganda paid for by people aligned with George Soros and national Democrats.”

Representatives for Marshall and Moody did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Crank previously told The New York Times that “it is deeply unfortunate that Washington lobbyist Jessica Killin is preying on a grieving family with the help of the Washington Democrats.” (Killin is Crank’s opponent in the Colorado race.)

Lacerda, who became a U.S. citizen in her 20s, and Jones both told MS NOW that they are registered to vote in Florida. Both also said that until the past year, neither was particularly invested in, or knowledgeable about, national politics or Congress. Jones said she is a registered Republican.

Asked earlier this month whether they too would be getting involved in upcoming congressional races, several other Epstein survivors demurred.

One, Shauntae Smith, said that for her, “It’s not a political issue; it’s a human rights issue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It matters whether or not you agree with child rape and child trafficking, that’s the problem.”

Yet when pressed on why they decided their voices were needed in Kansas and Mississippi, Lacerda and Jones gave reasons for entering the fray that echoed Smith’s rationale for staying out of it.

“If you can’t stand with us, then you are not willing to protect us or our future kids,” Lacerda said.

Jones agreed, stating that no matter which side of the aisle a member sits on, “Anyone who isn’t behind protecting our children or future generations I want no part of.”

CORRECTION (OCt. 19, 2026 at 2:33 p.m.): An earlier version of this newsletter misidentified the state Rep. Crank is from. He represents Colorado, not Texas.

The post Two Epstein survivors enter the battle for Congress with ads against GOP senators appeared first on MS NOW.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta castigated the Trump administration for threatening local election officials, telling MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff that the federal government is “trying to bully and frighten and intimidate” public servants ahead of the midterm elections.

Late last week, the Justice Department warned Los Angeles County officials that they could face prosecution if they process or tabulate a ballot from someone the federal government suspects is a noncitizen, according to a letter obtained by MS NOW.

The warning came after the administration sued California, seeking to block the state from counting mail ballots from people it has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their citizenship can be verified. The lawsuit alleges that more than 20,000 people who may be noncitizens are registered to vote in California.

Bonta said the officials targeted by the administration are public servants working to count votes accurately and protect Californians’ right to vote.

“Here you have the federal government, with bluster and intimidation and bullying, trying to scare them into disenfranchising voters, and it’s wrong,” he said Sunday.

The attorney general called the administration’s claims about widespread voter fraud baseless, saying audits, recounts and court cases have found no evidence of it. While ineligible voting should be prosecuted, he said, the administration is using isolated cases to attack states and disenfranchise voters.

“There are one-offs, at times, when some human beings try to or have violated the election laws, like a Republican in Orange County who tried to register her dog,” he said. “And should that person get prosecuted? Yes, they should, and we do not think any ineligible voter should vote. But what is happening here is the Trump administration is attacking states, usually blue states or swing states, that they want to pick a fight with.”

Bonta said the attacks on California are part of a wider effort by the administration to sow doubt about the country’s elections before the midterms.

“They’re desperate. It’s embarrassing for them. They’re in the death throes of this election cycle, staring down a blue wave where they’re going to get thrashed, and they are planning for what they do after they get thrashed,” he told MS NOW. “This is their contingency plan.”

Bonta said California would stand firm in its “commitment to accurate, fair, reliable, secure elections” and keep fighting the administration.

“We will meet the federal government in court,” he said.

You can watch Bonta’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.

The post ‘They’re desperate’: California AG Bonta blasts DOJ threat to election officials appeared first on MS NOW.

It was about a month ago when MS NOW reported on a Russian disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. midterm elections, featuring doctored selfie videos of Hollywood celebrities. The project — one of the first documented Kremlin-backed operations of this year’s election cycle — was specifically designed to undermine support for Democrats and to boost Republicans.

With only about two weeks remaining before Election Day, the efforts are apparently intensifying. Bloomberg News reported:

Russian disinformation operators are deploying an army of bots to inflate view counts of fictitious posts about celebrities and Democratic candidates ahead of the US midterm elections.

AI-fabricated video clips of well-known actors and musicians — including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts and Cher — attacking Democrats began appearing on X in early September, some urging people to join a campaign dubbed #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. Scores of other clips have made false allegations of corruption and improprieties by Democratic candidates.

A related report in The New York Times noted that “an online influence operation backed by the Russian government has been stepping up its attempts to sow division in the United States.” The report added that the project has targeted Democrats “with negative content,” becoming “the latest effort by Russia to harm the party and support President Trump.”

It’s an important detail, not just because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime appears desperate to help Republicans, but also because of the familiarity of the circumstances.

In 2016, Russia targeted U.S. elections. There used to be a bipartisan consensus on this obvious, uncontested fact.

In 2018, Russia targeted U.S. elections. Though Trump, for reasons that have never been explained, rejected his own country’s intelligence on the matter, the United States’ top national security officials made it categorically clear that Russia took deliberate steps to interfere in the midterm cycle.

In 2020, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, intelligence officials told Congress about evidence that showed Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign for the express purpose of trying to secure a second term for Trump.

In 2022, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported a few years ago, “The Russian government and its proxies attempted to denigrate the Democratic Party and undermine voter confidence ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”

In 2024, Russia again targeted U.S. elections, specifically in the hopes of electing Republicans who would oppose American military aid to Ukraine.

And in 2026, it’s happening once again.

In each instance, Moscow wasn’t simply trying to sow chaos. As this unsubtle pattern unfolded, Russian operations specifically tried to help one party (Republicans) and hurt the other (Democrats).

Two year ago, Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and said that there’s “plenty of reason to be concerned” about Russia trying to interfere in another American election.

Sullivan added, “[T]his is not about politics. This is about national security. It is about a foreign country — a foreign adversary — seeking to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

Two years later, the current White House national security adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has invested far less time and effort into denouncing the Kremlin’s operations, and congressional Republicans tend to have effectively nothing to say about Russian intervention.

For its latest report, the Times spoke to a senior researcher at Graphika, a threat analysis company, who said the Russian tactics “give us a glimpse of what their objectives are,” adding, “They’re not targeting Republican candidates in the same way.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post As Election Day nears, Russia steps up efforts to boost Republicans appeared first on MS NOW.

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

* With just two weeks remaining in the election cycle and early voting underway in much of the country, the latest Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos survey offered Donald Trump another round of bad news: The president’s approval rating has reached a record low of 33% in this poll. But for Republicans, that’s not necessarily the worst part.

The same results included a generic congressional ballot and found Democrats with an eight-point advantage over the GOP, 52% to 44%. As recently as July, the same outlet showed Democrats with a three-point edge.

This dovetailed with the latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, which showed Democrats with a 10-point lead over Republicans on the generic ballot, 55% to 45%.

* Artificial intelligence-generated campaign advertising has become an intensifying problem in this year’s election cycle, but it’s not altogether a bipartisan problem: A New York Times analysis found that more than 80% of the ads created by AI “were produced by Republican campaigns or Republican-aligned political action committees.”

* In Ohio’s closely watched statewide races, the latest Bowling Green State University poll found former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leading incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted, 48% to 42%. A month ago, the same pollster showed Brown ahead by three points.

As for the state’s gubernatorial race, the same survey data found Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee, leading Vivek Ramaswamy by the same six-point margin, 50% to 44%.

* In Nevada, retiring Republican Rep. Mark Amodei continues to tear into his own party’s would-be successor. The outgoing congressman reiterated over the weekend that he would “absolutely not” vote for David Flippo in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, adding that, as far as Amodei is concerned, his seat is “at risk” for flipping from red to blue.

* In Massachusetts, Shawn Oliver, the Republicans’ lieutenant governor nominee, suspended his candidacy over the weekend. One day earlier, he was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence and striking five parked cars. According to local police, Oliver also allegedly flipped his own car during the incident.

* House Speaker Mike Johnson said during an interview over the weekend that independent news organizations are secretly conspiring with independent polling firms to release deceptive survey data as part of a plot to “discourage” GOP voters. The Louisiana Republican did not appear to be kidding.

* The president held a campaign rally in Georgia late last week, where he insisted that Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff was “never elected” despite his 2020 victory. Trump added that the results were fraudulent, an absurd claim for which he offered no evidence.

* Though the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi continues to look like a real reach for Democrats, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is doing his best to rally support for local prosecutor Scott Colom in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

* And in Maryland, where Republican Rep. Andy Harris threatened to have a student journalist arrested last week for recording him at a public Q&A, the far-right congressman was offered an opportunity late last week to apologize for his bizarre antics. Harris refused.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.19.26: Generic ballot polls offer Democrats more good news appeared first on MS NOW.

New probe examines financial transactions, ties to lawyer Tomaz and payments for the senator’s trips to Europe.

On Sunday, newspapers Estadao and Folha revealed for the first time that the Brazilian Federal Police had sent a new investigation to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to examine suspicions of money laundering involving presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro and lawyer Willer Tomaz.

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The investigation seeks to clarify the relationship between them and possible irregularities in financial transactions detected during another probe related to the movement of capital through betting activities.

The journalistic revelation came hours before a televised presidential debate in which Workers’ Party leader Lula da Silva challenged the far-right senator to authorize Brazilian authorities to examine his bank accounts and phone so the Brazilian people could learn the origins of his personal wealth and his family’s fortune. Flavio Bolsonaro refused to do so.

On Oct. 8, the case file for the new investigation arrived at the Supreme Court and was assigned by lottery to Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Previously, he oversaw the case that ended with a 27-year prison sentence for coup plotting against former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio’s father.

De Moraes was also the justice responsible for the proceedings in which Eduardo Bolsonaro, the far-right presidential candidate’s brother, was sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to coerce judges and orchestrate U.S. sanctions against Brazil to obstruct the case against his father.

According to investigators, an analysis of data extracted from digital files linked to lawyer Willer Tomaz revealed records indicating a close relationship between him and Flavio. Items found in the material examined by the Federal Police included references to meetings, parties and gatherings, as well as the lawmaker’s personal documents.

The investigation also indicates that a bank account linked to Willer Tomaz recorded transactions totaling about 130 million reais between March and May 2025. Investigators seek to establish the origin and destination of these funds, as well as verify possible connections to companies and financial operations related to the betting sector.

The case also includes information about payments for Flavio’s trips to Europe and an account linked to Alcazar Holding, in which the senator was identified as the “master user.” Both Flavio and Willer deny any wrongdoing and say their relationship is one of “friendship.”

teleSUR/ JF

Sources: Estadao – Folha – La Jornada

US President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on 18 October that he did not want to “drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” He also wrote: “Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want!”

Trump was referring to sanctions and tariffs under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which he waived in an executive order on 16 October, days before the measures were due to take effect. The waiver suspends additional economic penalties intended to pressure Moscow over its war against Ukraine, while leaving earlier US sanctions in place. The decision came weeks before the 3 November midterms, in which Republicans are defending slim majorities in both chambers, and analysts said the penalties could have pushed up oil prices for Americans already paying more, largely because of the US-Israeli war with Iran, Reuters reported.

Trump says Zelenskyy could have made a better deal two years ago

A week before the waiver, Trump had announced a deal for Russia to increase diesel supplies to global markets. The Treasury also issued a license, valid until 7 April 2027, permitting certain transactions in Russian-origin diesel.

In the Truth Social post, Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of targeting Russian diesel refineries, saying the strikes were “seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States.” Kyiv had paused its refinery strikes for three days at Washington’s request after Trump declared an energy ceasefire on 11 October, which Russia never confirmed, then resumed them. Since then, Russia has struck Ukraine’s energy sector 76 times, Zelenskyy said on 18 October.

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Kyiv gets no warning of the first of two Russian ballistic waves, hours after Zelenskyy said US alerts were back

Trump wrote that Zelenskyy “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” and that he “could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now.”

“His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead,” Trump added.

He also said Russia was “doing very little, if anything, to help” Iran and that he wanted to keep it that way.

A day earlier, Trump said he had not made a final decision

On 17 October, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he had not announced his final decision. “A lot of you don’t know what my decision is yet, but we’ll figure it out, and you’ll figure it out,” he said, Reuters reported.

“I think the president wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters before departing for Uzbekistan the same day.

Zelenskyy calls the waiver a pity as Republicans split

Zelenskyy called it a “pity” that Trump had waived sanctions under a law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who “really believed in Ukraine.” He said he hoped Trump would change his decisions, NBC News reported.

Discussing the diesel deal on NBC’s Meet the Press, Zelenskyy said US oil prices had risen because shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, not because of Ukraine.

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A month before the diesel waiver, Trump’s envoys had already pitched Kyiv on Russian gas, NYT says

On 17 October, Zelenskyy told journalists that “the decision to undo all of this, to block all of it, seems wrong to me” and that it “definitely helps only the Russians.” His remarks appeared in Ukrainian on his official Telegram channel.

“Sanctions relief will continue. I think the diesel deal and the move regarding the Lindsey Graham Act are not the end of it. Unfortunately,” Zelenskyy said.

On 19 October, Zelenskyy wrote that partners had again given no warning of Russia’s overnight ballistic attack and that blocking missiles for Ukraine’s air defense while Russia gets sanctions eased or postponed amounts to partners denying reality.

Republican Senator James Lankford defended Trump’s decision on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying the president was “choosing the American people first.”

Senator Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, whom Trump has endorsed for a full term, said at a campaign stop on 17 October that she would “choose to keep the pressure on Russia.”

“I don’t trust Putin and I don’t trust Russia,” Darline Graham said.

She did not directly criticize Trump but said she would not have made that choice, Reuters reported.

OTTAWA: Residents of Alberta began voting Monday in a non-binding referendum that will determine whether the western-Canadian province should pursue separation from Canada.

The vote comes at a time when the province is mourning the deaths of four soldiers, while dozens of others were injured from a fast-moving fire that burned through a military base in Alberta.

While the results of a poll involving 1,021 respondents released by Abacus Data on Saturday showed that 74% of decided voters favor Alberta remaining within the Canadian Confederation, the independence issue won’t disappear for the nearly 30% who want Alberta’s government to begin the process to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada, according to veteran separatist organizer Cory Morgan, who leads a group called Pathway to Independence.

"It will say that about one in three Albertans have had it," Morgan told Fox News Digital. "There is a big rift within Alberta and if things don’t change, it will be a growing faction in this province — so this vote is an important one."

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About 3 million Albertans are eligible to vote in the referendum.

Another recent Abacus poll found that 61% of the 1,021 eligible voters surveyed expect Albertans will vote again on separation, even if most choose to remain in Canada.

On Friday, the Angus Reid Institute released the results of its poll that found 62% of 1,010 Albertans surveyed believe "there will never be an end to the separatist movement" in the province.

Morgan, who led the short-lived Alberta Independence Party from 2000 to 2001, said that while "a vocal minority" within the separatist movement favor Alberta becoming the 51st state, most pro-independence Albertans "don’t want to become a small fish in an even bigger pond." He added that "Albertans in general are not too thrilled with President Trump right now and that makes them less inclined to leave the federation."

At a "Forever Canadian" rally on Friday in Edmonton, where he was raised, Prime Minister Mark Carney told a crowd of over 5,000 people that "this referendum comes at the worst possible time." He said that "the world is becoming more dangerous and divided [and] some outside our borders are working to break us so they can own us," making an indirect reference to Trump’s trade war against and annexation talk about Canada.

Alberta-born and raised, 55-year-old Morgan said that his home province is "politically and culturally different" than eastern Canada. "There’s a lot more focus on individual freedoms and property rights," he noted, acknowledging that those values are traditionally viewed as American.

"Most Albertans are going to feel much more comfortable sitting down for a beer with people from Great Falls, Montana, than they would in Ottawa," said Morgan. He explained that when Alberta became a Canadian province in 1905, its population grew largely from a migration of Montanans, and when oil was discovered in the 1940s, U.S. companies Chevron and Mobil helped develop what became Alberta’s biggest industry.

Also, earlier this year during an appearance on Real America’s Voice at Davos, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described Alberta as "a natural partner for the U.S." and described Albertans as "very independent people."

In response, Carney said that he "expect[ed] the U.S. administration to respect Canadian sovereignty."

Earlier this month, The Globe and Mail reported that Alberta separatist leaders met with Republican strategists in Calgary in January to look at software designed to identify and mobilize supporters. Separatist leaders also reportedly suggested exchanging water and oil for U.S. support when they met with State Department officials in Washington last year.

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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told CBC News that if most Albertans support staying in Canada, she would not hold another referendum on the matter as long as she heads the provincial government.

However, on Oct. 18, 2027, residents of the province will vote again in a general election, and Smith could be out of her job by then, warned Morgan, a founding member of the former conservative Wildrose Party, for which Smith served as leader.

That party merged with the then-Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta in 2020 to form the United Conservative Party (UCP) that Smith heads. But Morgan explained that more than half of the UCP’s nearly 55,000 members support Alberta’s independence. The premier has said that she will vote to keep the province in Canada.

Angus Reid, founder and chairman of the Angus Reid Institute, told Fox News Digital that in his firm’s recent polling, 67% of the 293 UCP voters who support a future binding referendum on separation said that they would either "definitely support" or "consider" supporting the creation of a separatist provincial political party – not unlike the Parti Québécois, which won the recent election in Quebec.

The emergence of an independence party in Alberta "would probably spell the death of the UCP since it is so badly divided between separatists and non-separatists, and it would likely end the career of Danielle Smith because of the amount of breakage in her party," said Reid, whose firm’s survey found that 60% of the respondents who support a future binding referendum are "more likely sending a message to Ottawa" about the Canadian government’s often fractious relationship with Alberta.

"Separatist types are looking at how much leverage Quebec has been able to achieve in Canada as a result of its threats of exiting, and saying ‘Hold it, we can play that game too,’" explained Reid.

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As of Saturday, more than 1.2 million Albertans had cast a ballot on the referendum, which, in addition to the question on separation, has nine others, five focusing on immigration, such as one asking voters whether their province should take more control "for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities."

The question isn’t whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is failing, since the evidence of his incompetence is overwhelming. Rather, the question is whether the Pentagon chief’s failures have affected his standing.

The answer is readily available. A CNN poll released less than a month ago found Hegseth with a 34% approval rating, suggesting that the former Fox News host was as unpopular as Donald Trump — the president who chose him for the Cabinet. The same survey found Hegseth’s support among Republicans is lower than other prominent administration officials.

These results came on the heels of a related poll from Quinnipiac University, which found only 32% of Americans approved of how the defense secretary was handling his job, while 57% disapproved. To put that in context, a month before the war with Iran got underway, Hegseth’s net approval was 9 points underwater, but by mid-September, he was 25 points underwater.

With this in mind, and as Hegseth becomes something of a national joke, some Democrats appear to be taking advantage of the secretary’s faltering public support. The New York Times reported:

In the final weeks of a midterm congressional battle in which voters’ opposition to the war with Iran has become a major issue, Democrats are increasingly making Mr. Hegseth a main character in their campaign messaging.

It is an effort to turn one of President Trump’s most recognizable cabinet officials — and one who has been an unapologetic and visible cheerleader for a war that polls show is deeply unpopular — into a liability for Republicans’ fighting to keep their seats.

This is not to say every Democrat is incorporating Hegseth into their midterm messaging, but it’s happening enough to get noticed. Indeed, just last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared at a campaign rally, “One of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town.”

The Times’ report added that Hegseth has been of particular interest to Democratic candidates who served in the military, running in districts with deep ties to the armed forces. From the article:

Leela Gray, a retired Army brigadier general challenging Representative Anna Paulina Luna in Florida, has called Mr. Hegseth an “unqualified frat boy.” Cait Conley, an Army combat veteran challenging Representative Mike Lawler in a competitive New York district, has called him a “disgrace.” And JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine running against Representative Juan Ciscomani in Arizona, has criticized his treatment of women in the military.

In South Carolina, Nancy Lacore, a retired three-star Navy admiral whom Mr. Hegseth removed as chief of the Navy Reserve last year without publicly explaining why, has made his leadership of the Pentagon an issue in her congressional campaign.

We’ll learn soon enough whether these campaign tactics are effective, but I’m struck by the historical oddity of the circumstances. Indeed, looking back at Hegseth’s recent predecessors — Lloyd Austin, Mark Esper, James Mattis, Ash Carter et al. — these secretaries, during their tenures, were not widely known to the American mainstream. There wouldn’t have been any point to including them in attack ads.

But in 2026, Hegseth’s public profile is much higher — and not in a good way.

The post As Hegseth’s public standing sinks, Democrats make him part of their midterm message appeared first on MS NOW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The annual salaries of state governors vary, with the lowest being $70,000 in Maine.
• Josh Shapiro, Kathy Hochul, and Spencer Cox are among the highest-paid US governors.
• The average annual salary for a state governor is $174,479 in 2026.

In some states, being the governor doesn't automatically make you a top earner.

With voters in 36 states heading to the polls to elect governors in November's midterm elections, the annual salaries attached to the job vary dramatically across the country — from $70,000 in Maine to over $250,000 in Pennsylvania.

Across all 50 states, governors earn an average official annual salary of $174,479 and are subject to federal and state income taxes — except in states without income tax, such as Florida and Texas.

By comparison, the top 1% of US earners each make at least $731,492 a year, placing the average governor below the ultrarich but also well above the average US wage of $69,846 in 2024, according to the Social Security Administration.

While governors across all 50 states are generally allowed to earn income beyond their state salaries through investments, book deals, and other sources, the income they may take in is closely regulated, and rules vary by state.

Some, like Florida's Ron DeSantis, have brought in yearly incomes of over $1 million thanks to book royalties, while others, like Illinois' JB Pritzker, earn eight figures due to investment gains and even gambling wins.

As such, some governors, like Pritzker and Connecticut's Ned Lamont, who are independently wealthy, have chosen to forgo their six-figure state salaries.

Beyond the salary, other financial perks of being governor may include living in the governor's mansion, receiving private transportation from the state, and having access to security and staff.

See how much your governor makes each year, based on the most recent available state records, salary commissions, legislation, and public payroll data.

50. Maine

Governor: Janet Mills (Democrat)

Salary: $70,000

With a salary of $70,000, Maine Governor Janet Mills is the lowest-paid governor in the US.

The salary for Maine's next governor is set to rise to $125,000 in 2027 under new legislation, marking the first raise in the governor's salary in the state since 1987.

After two terms, Mills is now term-limited. Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republican Bobby Charles are facing off to become the state's next governor in the November midterm election.

49. Arizona

Governor: Katie Hobbs (Democrat)

Salary: $95,000

The Arizona governor, who has the second-lowest salary among US governors, will be eligible to receive a salary of $165,000 starting in 2027, per the state legislature.

Democrat Katie Hobbs is running for a second term in the November midterm election.

48. Oregon

Governor: Tina Kotek (Democrat)

Salary: $98,600

Oregon law sets the governor's annual salary at $98,600 and provides a separate $1,000 monthly expense payment. The salary is one of the lowest for any governor in the US.

Democrat Tina Kotek is up for reelection during the November midterms, seeking a second term.

47. Nebraska

Governor: Jim Pillen (Republican)

Salary: $105,000

Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen, who earned $105,000 a year in 2025, per the state legislature, is the fourth-lowest-paid governor in the US.

Republican Jim Pillen is up for reelection, seeking a second term in the November midterm elections.

46. South Carolina

Governor: Henry McMaster (Republican)

Salary: $106,078

With a salary of $106,078 in 2025, per state records, the South Carolina governor is the fifth-lowest-paid governor in the US.

After two full terms, McMaster is now term-limited. Republican Alan Wilson and Democrat Jermaine Johnson are facing off in the race to become the state's next governor in the midterm election.

45. New Mexico

Governor: Michelle Lujan Grisham (Democrat)

Salary: $110,000

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is the sixth-lowest-paid governor in the US. New Mexico's next governor will receive a salary of $169,714 starting with the next gubernatorial term in 2027.

Lujan Grisham is term-limited after serving two terms. Democrat Deb Haaland and Republican Gregg Hull are competing to succeed her in the November midterm election.

43. (tie) Louisiana

Governor: Jeff Landry (Republican)

Salary: $130,000

Louisiana law set the governor's salary at $130,000 in 2026. The salary has remained unchanged since January 2008.

43. (tie) Iowa

Governor: Kim Reynolds (Republican)

Salary: $130,000

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds earns an annual salary of $130,000, according to the state's official employee salary records.

Reynolds is not running for reelection, leaving Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn competing for the open governor seat in the November midterms.

42. Colorado

Governor: Jared Polis (Democrat)

Salary: $134,632

The Colorado governor, previously one of the lowest-paid governors in the nation, has received a $134,632 salary since 2023, as outlined by state law.

After nearly eight years in office, Polis is now term-limited.

Democrat Phil Weiser and Republican Victor Marx are competing to become Colorado's next governor in the November midterm.

41. Alabama

Governor: Kay Ivey (Republican)

Salary: $134,780

In fiscal year 2026, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey had a salary of $134,780, per the state's Department of Finance.

After two full terms in office, Ivey is now term-limited. Republican Tommy Tuberville and Democrat Doug Jones are facing off to become the state's next governor in the upcoming midterm election.

40. Wyoming

Governor: Mark Gordon (Republican)

Salary: $140,000

Wyoming law sets the governor's salary at $140,000 in 2026.

Mark Gordon is term-limited after two terms, leaving Republican Eric Barlow and Democrat Kenneth Casner competing for governor in the November midterm election.

39. Florida

Governor: Ron DeSantis (Republican)

Salary: $141,400

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earns $141,400 per year, according to state records.

DeSantis is term-limited after two terms in office. Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly are competing for governor in the November midterms.

38. Montana

Governor: Greg Gianforte (Republican)

Salary: $141,517

Gianforte, who made his fortune in tech, donates his salary to Montana nonprofits. In 2025, his office said he had donated his entire gubernatorial salary to organizations supporting Montanans in need.

37. Missouri

Governor: Mike Kehoe (Republican)

Salary: $145,095

Missouri law sets the governor's salary at $145,095 as of 2026.

36. Oklahoma

Governor: Kevin Stitt (Republican)

Salary: $147,000

While the current Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, has a salary of $147,000 in 2026, his successor will see a raise to $185,000, per Oklahoma's Journal Record.

After nearly eight years in office, Stitt is now term-limited. Republican Mike Mazzei and Democrat Cyndi Munson are facing off to become the state's next governor in the midterm election.

35. South Dakota

Governor: Larry Rhoden (Republican)

Salary: $148,522

South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden earns $148,522 a year in 2026, per the state's pay transparency website.

Republican Larry Rhoden, who took office last year following Kristi Noem's resignation, is up for election in November, seeking a full term.

34. Idaho

Governor: Brad Little (Republican)

Salary: $151,400

Idaho Governor Brad Little makes $151,400 in 2026, per state records.

Little is seeking a third term in the midterm elections this November.

33. Texas

Governor: Greg Abbott (Republican)

Salary: $153,750

As of 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott makes $153,750 a year, per state records.

Abbott is seeking a fourth term in the midterm election this November.

32. Michigan

Governor: Gretchen Whitmer (Democrat)

Salary: $159,300

Michigan law sets the governor's salary at $159,300. Governor Gretchen Whitmer also receives a $54,000 annual expense allowance, according to the State Officers Compensation Commission.

After nearly eight years in office, Whitmer is now term-limited.

Democrat Jocelyn Benson and Republican John James are facing off to become Michigan's next governor in the November midterm election.

31. Mississippi

Governor: Tate Reeves (Republican)

Salary: $160,000

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves earns a salary of $160,000 in 2026, according to the state's personnel board.

30. Rhode Island

Governor: Daniel McKee (Democrat)

Salary: $163,295

Rhode Island's governor, Daniel McKee, earns a salary of $163,295, according to the state's pay transparency portal.

After losing the Democratic primary, incumbent Dan McKee will not be on the ballot. Democrat Helena Foulkes and Republican Aaron Guckian are facing off to become the state's next governor in the midterm election.

29. New Hampshire

Governor: Kelly Ayotte (Republican)

Salary: $165,027

New Hampshire law sets the governor's salary at $165,027.

Republican Kelly Ayotte is up for reelection this November, seeking a second two-year term in the midterm election.

28. Wisconsin

Governor: Tony Evers (Democrat)

Salary: $165,568

Wisconsin law bans salary changes for a governor during their term in office. Gov. Tony Evers has received an annual salary of $165,568 since beginning his second term in January 2023, up from $152,756 during his first term.

Evers is not seeking reelection. The state's next governor is slated to receive an annual salary of $184,684 when they take office in January 2027, according to Wisconsin's official compensation plan.

Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany are facing off in the November midterm election.

27. North Dakota

Governor: Kelly Armstrong (Republican)

Salary: $168,000

North Dakota's governor's salary is $168,000 following a July raise, per state legislation.

26. Nevada

Governor: Joe Lombardo (Republican)

Salary: $170,062

The Reno Gazette Journal reported in May that Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo makes $170,062 a year.

Lombardo is up for reelection in the November midterm elections, seeking a second term.

25. Arkansas

Governor: Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican)

Salary: $171,808

In October, an independent commission in Arkansas voted to raise Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders' salary to $171,808 annually.

Sanders is running for a second term in the November midterm election.

24. Kansas

Governor: Laura Kelly (Democrat)

Salary: $174,000

In 2023, Kansas raised the governor's annual salary starting January 1, 2025, tying the office's pay to the salary of a non-leadership member of Congress, according to state legislation.

Kelly is term-limited after two terms, leaving Democrat Cindy Holscher and Republican Ty Masterson competing for the governor's seat in the November midterm elections.

23. Virginia

Governor: Abigail Spanberger (Democrat)

Salary: $175,000

Virginia law sets the governor's salary at $175,000 in 2026.

22. Ohio

Governor: Mike DeWine (Republican)

Salary: $180,203

Ohio set the governor's salary in a 2018 law that established yearly pay increases for statewide elected officials through 2028, per state law. After the 2026 increase, Gov. Mike DeWine's salary is about $180,203.

DeWine is term-limited after two terms. Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy are competing for the governor's seat in the midterm elections.

21. Alaska

Governor: Mike Dunleavy (Republican)

Salary: $182,787

In 2025, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy had a salary of $182,787, per the state's Department of Administration.

After two terms in the governor's seat, Dunleavy is now term-limited.

Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Republicans David Bronson, Treg Taylor, and Bernadette Wilson are facing off to become the state's next governor in the November midterm election.

20. Georgia

Governor: Brian Kemp (Republican)

Salary: $185,000

In fiscal year 2025, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp earned a salary of $185,000 and also received over $56,506 in travel reimbursements during the year, according to the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts' financial transparency portal.

After two terms in office, Kemp is term-limited. Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson are running to be the state's next governor in the midterm election.

19. Delaware

Governor: Matt Meyer (Democrat)

Salary: $185,096

From July 2025 until 2029, the salary for the governor of Delaware is $185,096, per the state legislature.

18. Kentucky

Governor: Andy Beshear (Democrat)

Salary: $188,523

Kentucky's governor, Andy Beshear, has a salary of $188,523, per the state's pay transparency portal.

17. West Virginia

Governor: Patrick Morrisey (Republican)

Salary: $190,424

Since 2025, the West Virginia governor's salary has been set to match the US Office of Personnel Management's locality pay area for the rest of the US, per the state legislature. That puts current governor Patrick Morrisey's salary at $190,424.

16. Maryland

Governor: Wes Moore (Democrat)

Salary: $192,000

As of his third year as Maryland governor, per the state legislature, Wes Moore's salary was $192,000 in 2025. The governor's salary will increase during the next term, starting at $195,000 in 2027 and reaching $210,000 by the fourth year, according to Maryland's Governor's Salary Commission.

Moore is running for a second term in the November midterm elections.

15. Minnesota

Governor: Tim Walz (Democrat)

Salary: $200,000

The Minnesota governor's official salary is $200,000 after a July raise, per the Minnesota Legislature. Tim Walz previously declined salary raises while in office and accepted only a $127,629 salary. But during his last six months in office, he accepted his full salary, as reported by Minnesota Public Radio.

After two terms as governor, Walz is not running for reelection.

Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Lisa Demuth will face off in November in a race to become the state's next governor.

14. Illinois

Governor: Jay Robert "JB" Pritzker (Democrat)

Salary: $205,700 (foregone)

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a member of the Pritzker family that founded the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, has chosen to forgo his salary. The state has set the governor's salary at $205,700 as of 2023, per the Illinois General Assembly.

Pritzker is up for reelection this November, seeking a third term in the midterm elections.

13. North Carolina

Governor: Josh Stein (Democrat)

Salary: $209,165

North Carolina state law sets the governor's salary at $209,165 in 2026.

12. New Jersey

Governor: Mikie Sherrill (Democrat)

Salary: $210,000

State law sets New Jersey's governor's salary at $210,000 after a 2023 increase.

11. Indiana

Governor: Mike Braun (Republican)

Salary: $220,418

Indiana Governor Mike Braun, who earns $220,418 a year, according to the Indiana state government, is the 11th-highest-paid governor in the US.

10. Hawaii

Governor: Josh Green (Democrat)

Salary: $226,620

Hawaii's governor, Josh Green, is now the 10th-highest-paid following a July raise passed by the state legislature.

Green is running for a second term in the midterm elections

9. Connecticut

Governor: Ned Lamont (Democrat)

Salary: $226,711 (forgone)

Although the State of Connecticut sets the governor's salary at $226,711, the independently wealthy Ned Lamont has chosen to forgo the salary while in office.

Lamont made his money in telecommunications and investments. He's also the great-grandson of Thomas W. Lamont, a former chair of J. P. Morgan & Co. who built substantial wealth in banking.

Lamont is up for reelection this November, seeking a third term in the midterm elections.

8. Washington

Governor: Bob Ferguson (Democrat)

Salary: $234,275

Washington's governor earns $234,275 following a July raise, making Bob Ferguson the eighth-highest paid governor in the US.

7. Massachusetts

Governor: Maura Healey (Democrat)

Salary: $243,493

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey received a salary of $243,493 in 2025, per the Office of the Comptroller of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, making hers the seventh-highest governor's salary in the US.

Healey is seeking a second term in the November midterm elections.

6. Vermont

Governor: Phil Scott (Republican)

Salary: $243,520

Vermont law lists the governor's salary at $243,520 following a July raise, making the office the sixth-highest paid in the country.

Gov. Phil Scott is running for a sixth term in the midterm elections.

5. California

Governor: Gavin Newsom (Democrat)

Salary: $245,929

As of May 2026, the California Department of Human Resources listed the governor's salary as $245,929, making Gavin Newsom the fifth-highest-paid governor in the US.

After two terms, Newsom is now term-limited. Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton are facing off in a race to become the state's next governor in the midterm election.

4. Tennessee

Governor: Bill Lee (Republican)

Salary: $246,108

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee earns $246,108 annually as of August, based on a monthly salary of $20,509 listed in the state's public payroll database.

After two terms in office, Lee is term-limited. Republican Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Jerri Green are running for the governor's seat in the midterm election this November.

3. Utah

Governor: Spencer Cox (Republican)

Salary: $249,250

In March 2026, the Utah Legislature passed a bill setting the governor's salary equal to that of the chief justice of the state supreme court, which is $249,250.

The raise made Spencer Cox the third-highest-paid governor in the US.

2. New York

Governor: Kathy Hochul (Democrat)

Salary: $250,000

With a salary of $250,000 established by New York law, Kathy Hochul is the second-highest-paid governor in the US.

Hochul is seeking a second full term in the midterm elections.

1. Pennsylvania

Governor: Josh Shapiro (Democrat)

Salary: $253,870

Shapiro's salary rose from $245,760 in 2025 to $253,870 in 2026 after a 3.3% cost-of-living increase, according to the Pennsylvania Office of the Budget. The raise made him the highest-paid governor in the US.

Shapiro is up for reelection in the midterm elections this November, seeking a second term.