Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign allegedly collaborated with party operatives to confuse voters in midterms
The US justice department on Thursday is reported to have issued subpoenas in response to a report that the Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign collaborated with party operatives to get a challenger with the same name as the Republican senator Dan Sullivan on the midterm ballot.
ABC News and the Associated Press reported the subpoenas, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal investigation comes a day after the New York Times found that the effort to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Senate race set to be decided on Tuesday was led by Peltola’s campaign, which had for months denied involvement.
Protesters in Minnesota advocate for universal healthcare. | David Berding/Getty Images for People's Action Institute
Americans want changes to their healthcare, and the candidates in this year’s midterms are making bold promises about how they are going to improve it: Medicare-for-all, or a public health insurance option, or free primary care for everyone. If Democrats win big this year, they could build up momentum to control Congress and the White House in 2029, which could leave them well-positioned to take on the thorny problem of how to fix the US health system.
Even though a meaningful attempt at reform is still years away and universal health care in any form might seem like a progressive pipe dream, the industry is not sitting idly by.
As Democrats have started to roll out policy proposals in anticipation of winning back Congress, the industry has been there to start making its case. In some campaigns, that means backing Republicans, but it also means lobbying Democratic Party leaders to hold the line against their more progressive members who want to push for far-reaching changes.
The question now is: Will their old playbook work? Can the industry convince Democrats to scale back their policy ambitions, or is their grip on Congress loosening?
“The next two years are actually quite pivotal, for doing the groundwork and all the necessary socializing, consensus-building,” said Kim Monk, a former congressional healthcare staffer who co-founded the private-sector research firm Capital Alpha Partners. “That’s the work that gets you to a point where either party decides, okay, this will be on our platform — or not.”
That will be the tug-of-war of the next two years: a PR battle waged between health companies with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal on one side and progressive lawmakers, activists, and patient advocates on the other that will ultimately determine what’s possible in the next phase of American healthcare.
The healthcare industry doesn’t want Democrats to win too big
In the short term, the industry is hedging its bets in the face of a Democratic wave.
Private enterprise has historically backed the Republican Party, but that’s starting to shift. What the healthcare industry values above all else is balance. Democrats operating without any constraints are more likely to impose government regulations on medical companies. But full GOP control comes with its own risks, like the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has already led to clinics and hospitals laying off staff or even closing facilities altogether.
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“At least for the short term, I imagine the healthcare industry would welcome control of Congress by Democrats, creating more predictability, forestalling more cuts in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and potentially reversing or delaying some of the cuts that have already been made,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “The longer-term political calculus for the healthcare industry is more complicated. Many Democrats are pushing for a bigger role for government in health care.”
In other words, while healthcare companies might welcome a Democratic House as a check on President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, they aren’t necessarily hoping for a massive blue wave that could make significant reforms a serious possibility if Democrats were to win the White House in 2028.
The industry’s MO when it looks like a wave election is brewing is to balance the scales: I reported in 2016 how, in what was looking like a good year for Democrats, the drug industry poured money into the campaigns of Republican candidates by a 6-to-1 margin in competitive races, hoping to stifle the agenda of presumed President Hillary Clinton. (Of course they, like the rest of us, are still susceptible to being wrong.)
And that’s how the industry has been approaching the 2026 election: In many of the pivotal House and Senate races, they are backing the GOP.
As healthcare journalist Merrill Goozner reported last week, the American Hospital Association PAC and PhRMA, a drug industry trade group, have given a combined $14,500 to Republican incumbent Jon Husted and none to his Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown in the historically expensive Ohio Senate race. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins has received donations from all of the major healthcare trade groups — hospitals, pharma, insurers, and doctors — while her opponent, Democrat Troy Jackson, got none. (He also has sworn off corporate PAC money.) Even in an open race without an incumbent, like the Iowa Senate campaign, the Republican candidate has scored donations from hospitals and pharma, but the Democrat has not, Goozner reported.
If Democrats take the House but not the Senate, that would immediately put a damper on their healthcare reform plans — whereas winning a Senate majority would allow them to start drafting and debating bills in both chambers with an eye toward what could actually pass if they win in 2028 too.
“If there is actually a blue tsunami next week and Democrats get 51-plus [members] in the Senate, that’s a really big deal,” Monk said. “You can’t just say this doesn’t matter because Trump’s going to veto it, because I think it very much becomes a 2028 issue.”
And even as they work to push the next Congress more to their ideological liking, the healthcare industry is preparing for the fight that comes after.
The industry is prepping its counterattacks on ambitious healthcare proposals
Each subset of the industry has its own versions of this argument: Pharma warns that price controls could stifle innovation, insurers warn that coverage mandates will increase premiums, hospitals warn that constraints on their funding could lead to closures and job losses. (There’s a well-known saying among DC insiders that every congressional district has a hospital, making every member potentially susceptible to the industry’s message that new healthcare legislation could result in their own constituents losing their jobs.)
They’ve started by trying to discredit the more sweeping health policy proposals before new members ever arrive in Washington, DC. In Texas, for instance, Republican groups have leaned on an industry-commissioned study to attack Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico for supporting Medicare-for-all, warning that it would lead to cuts for rural hospitals — at least according to an analysis produced by the Partnership for America’s Future, a coalition of industry groups that exists explicitly to oppose Medicare-for-all or a public option. They ran a similar ad against Democrat Janelle Stelson, who’s trying to topple incumbent Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania.
The industry is trying to plant the idea in voters’ minds that these big, bold proposals may sound superficially appealing, but carry significant risks: You could lose your plan, you could lose your doctor, you could pay higher taxes. (And they often have their own studies to back those arguments, like the one cited in this year’s campaign, to counter the evidence offered by advocates in support of reform.) And it might work exactly like it has in the past. As John McDonough, a former congressional healthcare staffer and author of America’s Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era, put it to me, the history is clear: “Every comprehensive effort, defeat, and every incremental effort succeeds.” That is in part because of the healthcare industry’s influence and its success in framing the debate.
On top of trying to sway the competitive races, the industry is also trying to keep its most important allies within both parties happy ahead of the midterms. As the Center for Health and Democracy’s data shows, the health insurance industry PACs alone have given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic and Republican leaders, as well as senior members of the healthcare-focused House and Senate committees.
It’s another hedge, an attempt to keep the members who will decide what’s on the agenda next year on their side. The industry supports reversing the GOP’s massive Medicaid cuts and increasing funding for the ACA marketplaces, two top-priority items for Democrats if they win Congress in the midterms. But they are hoping the party’s leaders will steer their members away from some of their more radical ideas for overhauling healthcare. Because while individual sectors within healthcare may squabble over smaller-scale reforms, the entire industry is united against plans to fundamentally change the US health system. (They are also increasingly owned by the same parent company, as consolidation in the medical sector becomes more and more common.)
“The healthcare industry is all for more people having coverage and stable government financing,” Levitt said, “but will circle the wagons to fight Medicare-for-all.”
Already, whenever Democrats start talking about their health policy ideas, the industry is ready with a response. Last month, as some Democrats announced support for a public insurance option, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future argued it would reduce access. “A public option is not the answer to the affordability and access challenges patients and families are facing,” said the group’s executive director, Lauren Crawford Shaver.
Meanwhile, the health insurance lobbying group, AHIP, released a 40-page document in October on how to improve affordability and access, using it in part to argue against a public option because it would “stifle competition and threaten the coverage most Americans want to keep.” Centrist Democratic groups who receive industry support have said they are “preparing for war” against Medicare-for-all, according to the news outlet Sludge.
The industry is not omnipotent, however, and the debate could still change if Americans’ healthcare gets worse over the next few years. The US uninsured rate has been on the rise as pandemic protections expire and the costs of healthcare rise for millions. Unless Democrats succeed in stopping the Republican Medicaid and ACA cuts in the OBBBA, that problem is going to get worse — and that could also force Democrats to think bigger about how to fix it.
“I am not sure anyone has fully absorbed how damaging and disruptive that is going to be — including to hospitals and health systems,” Jonathan Oberlander, professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina and the former editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, told me over email. “Large coverage losses will trigger great instability in health politics and perhaps open more of a window to bolder proposals.”
So, will the industry’s arguments still have juice? After the medical industry enjoyed a brief rebound in popularity during the pandemic, 50 percent of Americans say they have a negative view of it, while 37 percent have a positive view, per Gallup. And the appetite for reform is growing: 64 percent of Americans say it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that everyone has healthcare coverage — the highest share at any time, except for the late 2000s, shortly before the ACA became law.
Even the hospital industry, which has long enjoyed more public support than pharma or insurance companies, is seeing its popularity waver: A Families USA poll from August found that an overwhelming 81 percent of Americans thought hospital prices were unreasonable.
“Hospitals have done a great job of pleading poverty on Capitol Hill. ‘We’re probably the only provider who basically has to provide care to whoever shows up. We have no reason to be efficient. Just give us more money,’” Monk said. “I think that argument is wearing a little bit thin.”
A US Senate race in one of the most Republican states in the country is now a dead heat, according to a new poll showing Annie Andrews, a Democrat, tied with Darline Graham, the Republican incumbent senator.
South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, and Donald Trump won it by nearly 18 points in 2024, but a New York Times/Siena poll this week has the two candidates neck and neck, at 48% each.
Republican Mike Dunleavy plans search after Peltola accused of recruiting Dan Sullivan to confuse voters
The Republican governor of Alaska announced plans to launch a criminal investigation after a report accused the campaign of the Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola of trying to confuse voters by recruiting a candidate with the same name as her opponent.
Michigan US Senate candidate signaled support for Egypt’s pro-democracy movement in 2012, not Islamist group
The Republican campaign to defeat Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the MichiganSenate race by casting him as an Islamic extremist is based on a false claim first made by the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer eight years ago, a Guardian review of the evidence reveals.
Loomer, an influential outside adviser to Donald Trump who calls herself “a proud Islamophobe”, has claimed since El-Sayed entered politics in 2018 that an open letter he signed in support of democracy in Egypt in 2012 was a public endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood. The text of the letter, however, does not even mention the Muslim Brotherhood, and is not, as Loomer maintains, “a pledge” of support for the Egyptian Islamist group.
In advance of the midterms, Trump is blaming Kyiv for high gas prices while making clear moves to support Russia
As the US midterms approach, Donald Trump is abandoning Ukraine’s democracy in a desperate effort to deny responsibility for worsening inflation. Yet this past weekend’s dramatic elections in Brazil and Serbia show that voters can see through such subterfuge.
There is nothing like a political party’s corruptindifference to the plight of ordinary people to galvanize voter turnout. If US voters follow in the footsteps of their Brazilian and Serbian counterparts, a Democratic landslide is likely.
Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico speaks at a campaign rally in Galveston, Texas, on October 22, 2026. | Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton could have picked any number of messages for his first Senate campaign ad of the general election back in May. Texans care a lot about cost of living, border security, healthcare, and corruption, among other issues. But Paxton’s very first ad went with something that pollsters don’t generally ask about. He accused his opponent, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, of being “Too Low-T for Texas.” Too low in testosterone. Not manly enough.
Paxton, whom Trump endorsed over incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the primary, is as closely linked to the president as any candidate on the ballot — so it’s not all that surprising to see him attempt the same strategy.
And Texas, after all, has its stereotypes: rugged individualism. Cowboy boots. Smoked meats. Texas Rangers. The list goes on.
Starting with the “Low-T” ad, the Paxton campaign has been all in on exploiting the politics of masculinity and traditional ideas about gender and gender roles to cast Talarico as not man enough to serve as senator — and the rest of the Republican ecosystem has followed suit.
Attacks are one thing, though, and an effective political strategy another. To figure out whether Paxton’s masculinity campaign is working, the Today, Explained team headed to Texas.
“People are mad about other things”
At a Paxton rally in Fort Worth, Texas, on a recent Monday night, Jacenta and Susan Sims were riling each other up, seeing who could get the best dig in at Talarico’s manhood.
Susan pointed to her own chest. “My shirt says ‘No Tala-freaking-way.’ Because he is kind of a freak,” she said. She listed some of Talarico’s past comments on gender to support her statement. “Like, how are you talking about God like he’s nonbinary and there’s six sexes?”
Talarico said God was nonbinary during a Texas legislative session in 2021, making what he later described as a “cringey” point about God being above human categorization. Also in 2021, he claimed during a debate over trans kids in sports that there were six sexes. He recently walked that statement back, saying there were only two sexes.
Jacenta Sims at the Paxton rally wasn’t having it: “If you really had to look deep, he’s probably got some lace on his panties. There’s nothing masculine about him.” Susan piped in, “He looks like a little boy. He’s not tough enough.” Back to Jacenta: “And we need masculinity back in Texas.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising that voters who are already all in on Paxton would also be all in on this line of attack. But those are not the voters Paxton needs to convince.
“I don’t care if Talarico’s gay or not. I don’t believe he is, but it wouldn’t matter to me if he is.” Jesse Sandoval said outside the Tarrant County Elections Center in Fort Worth. He’d just cast his ballot in early voting. “I just felt that they were doing that to try to deflect from the real issues.”
Another early voter, Michael, didn’t want to give his last name, and works as a cook at a local restaurant. “I just feel like this whole toxic masculinity thing is so unnecessary,” he said. “I was raised by someone who was very, very aggressive and just a very macho man. And I feel like you have to educate yourself as to why those things are not — why saying stuff like that isn’t okay, you know?”
Walt Thompson, also at the polling place, said, “Because he’s soft-spoken, they feel that he’s gay. And you know, he’s not. He’s just not this big rugged looking guy. They can’t accept that.”
Nate, a 32-year-old construction worker who also declined to share his last name, said 2026 is a whole different moment from the last presidential election. “If this was 2024, those [messages] are effective. But I think this year it’s not gonna be effective,” he said. “People are mad about other things. When people care about gas prices, they can’t run on that.”
In other words, the culture wars hit differently when you can’t afford to feed your family or drive to work.
It’s (still) the economy, stupid
Matt Angle is director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic research PAC and communications firm. He says these attacks on Talarico’s masculinity are a tell from Republicans.
“What the Republicans are worried about is people staying home,” Angle told Today, Explained. “Those people, they’re mad about the economy, they’re mad at Trump, and [Republicans] are trying to motivate them by playing to their prejudices. … They desperately need fear to be the motivator rather than anger and frustration.”
“They’re understanding that their salaries aren’t going as far as they should. And they like that somebody’s talking to them about the cost of groceries, the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare,” he said.
Who gets to own masculinity, anyway?
There’s another key factor in how the GOP’s masculinity attacks are landing: the messenger. Paxton, after all, isn’t exactly a paragon of traditionally masculine virtue. (Just ask Trump, who can’t stop needling his hand-picked candidate for the way he dresses, looks, and talks.)
According to Jill Tate, president of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, many of her members had grown skeptical of Paxton’s candidacy. That’s because his wife, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on what she described as “biblical grounds.”The actual filing listed adultery as the reason for divorce.
“I’ve been involved in Texas politics over 30 years,” Tate said, “and this is the first time I’ve truly been concerned we could lose a statewide [race] since the Republicans took over in the ’90s.”
Angela Paxton recently did her ex a solid, giving a speech to the Republican women in Tate’s group called the “elephant in the room” speech. She also cut an ad boosting “the Republican ticket,” though not Paxton by name.
“She talked about the fact that while our candidates may fall down and they may do things that are disappointing and morally wrong, it is extremely important to remember that that is the human side. And that’s not what they’re going to do in office,” Tate said of the speech, which urged the audience to vote for the team — for Republicans — rather than on the moral failings of one person.
Tate believes that the speech changed some minds and could push women in the room to vote for Ken Paxton instead of just staying home. But outside of a room of diehard Republicans, that message — vote for Ken Paxton despite Ken Paxton — may not be a compelling one, no matter how much ads try to paint his opponent as less masculine.
“Texas is a knife fight uphill every day for Democrats,” Angle, the Democratic strategist, said. But in 2026, the mix of a weak Republican candidate and anger at the economy might be enough to give Democrats a chance — and help neutralize Paxton’s efforts to turn the race into a referendum on a very specific view of masculinity.
Ryan Rusak, a veteran Texas politics writer, agrees. “I think that where Talarico can use this to his benefit is to turn it around to say, ‘Okay, well, these guys who wear the boots and eat all the brisket are the ones that got us $5 gas. They’re the ones that got us into a war in Iran. They’re the ones that have gotten it to where you can’t buy a house even in a place where we still make it fairly easy to build houses.’”
“Had we not had an environment like this,” Angle said, “I think it might have been harder for James to break through.”
With days until the midterm elections, a new poll from CNN places Democrats well in the lead in key Senate races in Texas and Michigan, while projecting tighter contests in Kansas and Maine.
In Texas, the poll found 49% of likely voters would back James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, over Republican Ken Paxton, who netted just 43%.
Legacy Church’s endorsements violate law banning tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates
A megachurch in New Mexico has endorsed two Republican candidates running in this year’s midterms, including a Donald Trump-backed candidate running in one of the blue state’s few competitive races. The church’s endorsements, which violate federal law banning tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates, come as the Trump administration is challenging that ban in federal court.
In mid-August, pastor Steve Smothermon of Legacy Church, a nondenominational church with nine locations across the state, told his congregation about one of the candidates: “Greg Cunningham has faithfully served our church for 14 years and shares our biblical values. Let’s pray for him, support his campaign, get registered, and vote to flip this seat for someone who will stand for God, our Constitution, and a better New Mexico!”
The ex-presidential candidate tells Democrats to prosecute corruption and bring real change for the working class
A corporate plutocracy. A broken healthcare system. Massive and widening inequality. Cash-soaked elections. Angry people struggling to pay their bills and disgusted with lawmakers in Washington DC.
Nearly everything that pushed famed consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader to launch the 2000 presidential run that made him a political pariah in Washington is front and center as the US gears up for the 2026 midterm elections. But this time, things are much, much worse.
Former US President Barack Obama, Democrat Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Michigan Secretary of State and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson campaign together in Detroit on October 24, 2026. | Bill Pugliano/AFP via Getty Images
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. And be sure to check your inboxes this coming Wednesday for a special post-midterms edition! Let’s get into it.
One big idea: Talk of a blue wave makes it less likely
We’re in the thick of what I’ve come to call the silly season of an election cycle. Just days out from November 3 — but weeks into early voting — this is often the time when predictions, analysis, and expectation setting from both parties gets laundered through the media; and is most disconnected from the data. Why? Reasons vary — but I mostly find it an effort to proactively explain the expected results.
For example: in expectation of Democratic Party success, we’re seeing a wave of stories that preemptively explain how that support materialized and what implications it carries. Nate Silver declared on Ezra Klein’s podcast that next Tuesday could mark the “end of the Trump era” if Republicans perform as badly as the polls suggest. Democratic factions are already trying to claim credit for populist messages on corruption and affordability or moderation on cultural issues in red states that they expect to deliver big wins.
Surely, our reporting on America, Actually also speaks to the possibility of this result: We’ve tracked President Donald Trump’s unpopularity from the beginning of the year, when MAGA radio host John Fredericks said the administration’s handling of the Epstein files was ruining its credibility. We’ve gone to Trump’s UFC event in Washington, DC, where young men told us they’d turned on the president after the Iran war. We’ve been to a Speedway in a battleground district in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s own voters said the high price of gas felt like a betrayal from a president who promised to do the opposite.
However, in this post, I wanted to consider one reason why we all could be making a familiar mistake. In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections there were similar expectations of an anti-Trump wave that never fully materialized, even as he lost that second run. And this isn’t just a criticism of the polls: Some of that overperformance, I suspect, has to do with Republicans’ electoral strategy.
Let me explain: Fear has become Republicans’ one and only source of voter motivation. GOP candidates are not engaging in debates, virtually hiding from the campaign trail, and not really offering a competing vision against their Democratic opponents. They are simply seeking to scare voters about what a Democratic congressional voters may mean, whether it’s the recent freakout about Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s relatively tame promise about accountability for Trump’s enablers, or the rank Islamophobia we’re seeing deployed against Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, or the endless ads warning candidates will pursue some radical LGBTQ agenda.
Still, just because something is unseemly (or bigoted) doesn’t mean it’s not an effective electoral strategy, and it should be noted that conjuring up fears about women and minority candidates may be the oldest (and most successful) electioneering tactic in the book. And a big part of these attacks is an explicit or implied argument that, whatever you might think of the Republican or Democrat in an individual race, a big Democratic majority would have the power — and feel emboldened by their success — to go way further than you should be comfortable with for years to come.
Here’s what I’m saying: Over the years, I’ve found the No. 1 motivator of Republican voters on Election Day to be the expectation of a Democratic wave. That is, after months of coverage that focuses on Democrats leading the polls and issues with Republican unity and enthusiasm, the exact focus causes Republicans to, eventually, come out on Election Day. It’s not that the polls missed white working-class voters (though they sometimes do) or even that Republican signs of base dissatisfaction were wrong (plenty of them really were unhappy with Trump in 2016). It’s more that, for many GOP voters, dissatisfaction with their own party will usually be overcome by their disdain for their liberal opponents and a nervousness that they might change the country in ways that can’t be reversed later on. The Democratic base is often seeking inspiration; the GOP base is largely motivated by fear.
Here’s what John Fredericks, the radio host, told me for our upcoming episode about the GOP’s “final argument”:
“These fake polls came out over the summer. Democrats are going to win. Democrats are going to win. Trump is down… It was like a fake news, fake poll, full court press that went on for months, that has now motivated MAGA voters out of fear to turn out.”
And to some degree — I believe him. To me, this is a clear reason why Republicans often outperform their low expectations. But it’s also a reason to step away from the takes of electoral silly season, especially with Election Day just around the corner. Voters can consider the issues themselves; there’s no need for constant speculation about the results that overly raises expectations for one side or panics the other.
We already have the scope of information we’ll get: Democrats are well-positioned to take back the House. They’ve expanded the map in the Senate elections and in governor’s races across the country. They’ve done so with a relentless focus on affordability and lowering prices, eschewing the talk of climate change and social issues for priorities that are more tangible to their base.
But that doesn’t mean there’s a cakewalk to a blue wave. And if anything, the expectation of its arrival may make it more hard to accomplish.
You reported on refugees and other legal immigrants losing Medicaid coverage. Who is affected, and what have you heard from families about what losing that coverage means for them?
My reporting focused on people including refugees, victims of human trafficking, and others who were granted legal asylum, pushed from Medicaid as a result of last year’s tax and spending reductions bill that Republicans often refer to as the One Big Beautiful Bill. Coverage has generally not been available to undocumented immigrants, but it’s been standard to offer legal immigrants, including those who are fleeing wars or genocide, healthcare coverage in order to support their entry into the country.
I spoke to a family who entered the US on a T-visa, which is a special visa for victims of human trafficking. Their 17-year-old son got into a car accident five years ago and requires various machines and medications in order to survive, but without Medicaid coverage they won’t be able to pay for almost any of his care. When I spoke to them, they were unsure of how long he would be able to live. His mother told me she believed the Trump administration was attempting to make it so difficult for immigrants, even legal ones, to live in the US that people will self-deport. Though she understands this, she knows her son won’t survive traveling back to Mexico either.
How are people finding out about these changes, and what options do they have when their coverage ends?
In Arizona, people received letters in the mail anywhere from about two months to just days before their coverage was cut. Additionally, if people have somehow missed these letters (perhaps they haven’t updated their addresses), it’s possible they’ll only discover they’ve been cut when they go to receive care. If the state has accurately assessed a person’s immigration status, there is no opportunity to appeal the decision once cut.
In Arizona, unlike many other states, the cuts also impacted some lawfully present children.
I spoke to a single mother whose son has autism and was frustrated because she felt abandoned by the system with no way to appeal. Medicaid pays for a speech pathologist and some additional support after school, which allows her to work in a long-term care home. She received the notification that her son’s coverage was ending in the mail about a week before the deadline. At first, she told me she felt relieved because she knows all her immigration papers are in order. She was shocked to find even though she’s working, paying taxes, and legally entered the country, there was no way to appeal this decision.
In your reporting, are people connecting these changes to decisions in Washington? How, if at all, is that showing up in conversations about the midterms?
None of the people I spoke to can vote in the federal election. However, I’ve spent the last week speaking to voters across Phoenix, and healthcare is a galvanizing topic for both Republicans and Democrats. Over the past few years, federal prosecutors in Arizona have found countless instances of people defrauding the Medicaid system, raking in millions of dollars to run addiction rehabilitation centers that either don’t exist or don’t provide the care they allege. This has really angered a lot of people and soured attitude towards the Medicaid system in general.
At the same time, the stories I’ve heard from people who rely on coverage are indicative of what future cuts could look like. In January, states will implement various work requirements that are projected to force millions of US citizens off Medicaid, requiring them to prove employment before getting coverage again. These cuts coming down the pipeline after the midterms are also a major concern for voters in Arizona, who worry emergency rooms will be overrun by people who aren’t insured.
Former US president comes to Georgia to support Jon Ossoff for US Senate and Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor
Barack Obama, speaking at a Wednesday campaign rally in suburban Atlanta, offered a closing argument for Democrats in the final week of the midterm election campaign.
“These are not serious people,” he said of Donald Trump and the Republican party. “And we’re all paying the price for their lack of seriousness.”
Justice department had demanded state segregate and not count ballots from people it claimed were non-citizens
A federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.
The ruling from US district judge David Carter, nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, comes about two weeks after the justice department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento that it said contained the names of 20,000 non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls. There are more than 23 million registered voters in California and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.
Pete Hoekstra, controversial US ambassador to Canada, has also accused Canadian officials of interfering in US elections
The US ambassador has suggested Canada could be blamed if Republicans perform poorly in next week’s midterm elections, the latest intervention from a controversial figure who has been accused of inflaming a bitter dispute that has angered and baffled residents of both countries.
On Wednesday, CTV news reported that Pete Hoekstra told business leaders at a closed door meeting that if a number of swing races – including Maine and Michigan – go to the Democrats, it could make things harder for Canada because Donald Trump might try to blame the loss on it.
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, a Democrat, speaks at a public exhibit about the Epstein files in Dallas. | Chitose Suzuki/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Eighteen years after his first conviction, and seven years after his much-debated death, the ghost of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is suddenly inescapable again.
He’s the subject of scores of midterm campaign ads, each more lurid than the last. A second bill mandating the release of the Epstein files is currently kicking around Congress. And on Monday, House Democrats released a new report alleging that the Justice Department helped cover up details of Epstein’s relationship with President Donald Trump, calling — very aspirationally! — for an independent criminal investigation.
Of course, no one really expects Trump’s attorney general to name a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration. In a statement, one White House spokesperson panned the report as “a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans.” (The timing, just one week before the midterms, does seem pretty fortuitous.)
The document, which runs to 50 pages, draws on public accounts and staff interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, including a former pageant queen who alleges that Trump raped her in 1993. The woman had previously accused Trump of groping her, which a Trump spokesperson dismissed at the time as “fake.”
When it comes to Epstein, however, Democrats don’t need a lot of new material to damage Trump. The scandal, and his administration’s handling of it, continue to cast a long, dark shadow over Republicans.
That’s surprising to me, candidly, because the decades-old dealings of even a very despicable sex offender don’t have any bearing on Americans’ day-to-day costs or experiences. And Trump has been able to brush off a lot of other unsavory behavior and associations.
Many of these young voters “resent the fact that Trump’s basically become part of the establishment” and see the Epstein files as evidence of that, the political analyst Rachel Janfaza recently told Vox. Some also feel burned by Trump’s campaign promise to release the government’s investigative files on Epstein…and his about-face once in office.
Democrats, sensing an opening, are hammering the issue. Relentlessly so. According to data from the tracker AdImpact cited by NBC News, there are currently more than 500 campaign ads airing across the country that include the words “pedophile” or “predator.”
Many of them reference Epstein or the so-called Epstein files, and three-quarters are backed by Democrats. One recent ad featuring an Epstein survivor, and targeted at Kansas Republican Roger Marshall, slams the incumbent senator’s September 2025 vote to block a procedural measure that would have released the Epstein files. (The Senate later moved to release the files by unanimous consent.)
Another ad, this one in Maine, claims that Epstein’s “business partner” funneled $3 million to Sen. Susan Collins’s super PAC. (Importantly, the connection between Epstein and this purported partner is so tenuous as to be nonexistent.)
These ads will fade after Tuesday, of course. But you haven’t heard the last word on this. Should Democrats win control of either chamber, they’ll gain the power to subpoena witnesses and documents for yet more Epstein investigations.
Some Democratic leaders in the House are already salivating over that prospect.
One link for later
➨ Ask better questions than “what do you do?” Small talk is often dominated by idle chatter about traffic, weather, or jobs. To actually get to know your conversation partner, try leading with questions that get at their interests: what a friend’s friend is reading, for example, or what a barista’s favorite beverage is. You can even draft a little list of go-to questions in advance to deploy in conversation when you need them. Just don’t treat the exercise like a checklist. The real key to better small talk is being curious.
Before you go…
Did you know…that concrete is the second-most-used material on Earth? (The first is water!) Mixing and pouring concrete is responsible for a huge share of global emissions, but there are efforts underway to make it more sustainable.
Today’s trivia: An arroyo is a stream — or at least, a streambed — found in what type of environment? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the name of the lovable yellow dog in the comic strip Garfield. That would be Odie, whose look evolved over the years as illustrator Jim Davis sought to distinguish him from his iconic canine rival Snoopy.
Republicans have condemned the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot, calling it a ploy to split votes
Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was behind an effort to recruit a challenger with almost the same name as the Republican US senator Dan Sullivan, both of whom will appear on the ballot in next week’s midterm elections, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Republicans have condemned the presence in the race of two candidates named Dan Sullivan – one the two-term US senator, the second a retiree living in south-eastern Alaska with scant political experience – calling the newcomer a ploy by Democrats to cost the incumbent re-election by splitting his supporters.
James O’Keefe and Cam Higby were trying to show vulnerabilities in allowing a voter to vouch for another
Two rightwing influencers have been charged with felonies in Minneapolis over attempts in the state’s election primary to disguise themselves in what they called “Muslim garb” and claim they were local voters.
James O’Keefe and Cam Higby went to polling places in Minnesota during the state’s August primary in an attempt to show vulnerabilities in the practice of “vouching”, where a registered voter from the same precinct can vouch for another voter’s eligibility.
Barack Obama versus Donald Trump. It is the presidential election that never happened but has come to define an era of US politics.
Obama is back on the campaign trail for the midterms, still electrifying crowds, earning shouts of “We love you!” and skewering his successor. “What’s up with the gold?” he asked a crowd in Detroit. “I mean, he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” This has, predictably, set off a mini culture war involving questions of elitism and the tastefulness of chain restaurants.
Circumstances are ripe for change in this onetime Republican stronghold given the current dissatisfaction with Trump agenda, experts say
Donald Trump has repeatedly asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot in November’s crucial midterm elections. And in the comfortable confines of Arizona’s most affluent and fiercely contested congressional district, Trump is definitely on voters’ minds.
But whether that helps or hurts the warring congressional candidates in this sun-drenched swath of suburbia, where Teslas and walled-in luxury homes dominate, depends on who you ask.
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