It’s been a particularly brutal cycle for attack ads, but voters are responding with humanity. Plus: on the campaign trail with a Democrat in Kansas

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There’s a campaign moment I can’t stop thinking about. It happened shortly after the campaign of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, released a shocking attack ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.

In the ad, as many readers will know by now, Acton’s mother accuses her daughter of lying and tells Ohioans not to vote for her. Acton, 60, says she has not spoken to her mother since she was 12, when she and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody after their stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. Acton says she last saw her mother at the courthouse, where her mother came to support her husband as her daughter testified against him.

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© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

New polls in Florida, South Carolina and Minnesota illuminate the head winds that Republicans are facing.

Trump’s culture of cruelty spreads.

© Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times

The 44th president sharply criticized Mr. Trump, who hit back later in the day. Mr. Obama also assailed Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio.

© Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Republican candidates are in a sorry state.

© Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times

The fallout from Vivek Ramaswamy’s brutal spot targeting his Democratic rival in the Ohio governor’s race showed that even in the Trump era, a political attack can be seen as going too far.

© Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Speaking at a campaign stop, Ramaswamy said the advertisement, which features Acton's mother calling her "a liar," had nothing to do with childhood abuse.

The G.O.P. nominee in Ohio has given conservatives space to reckon with the ethical degradation of Trumpism.

© Alex Wong/Getty Images

In today’s Backstory, the new Holmes film takes issue with our profile, Nikole Hannah-Jones unpacks her viral essay and a professor shares why he thinks we apply “conservative” and “liberal” labels inconsistently.