DSCC FRIDAY TAKEAWAYS: Paxton’s Disappearing Act, Collins’ Curtain Call, Water Boy Jon Husted, Sullivan’s Thin Skin, and Sunflower State Showdown

DSCC FRIDAY TAKEAWAYS: Paxton’s Disappearing Act, Collins’ Curtain Call, Water Boy Jon Husted, Sullivan’s Thin Skin, and Sunflower State Showdown

TGIF. Welcome back to Friday Takeaways from the DSCC – your weekly update from the DSCC Press Team on what you need to know across the Senate battlegrounds. There are 1️⃣1️⃣ days until the midterms. 📲 DROP US A LINE: [email protected].

🎩 PAXTON’S DISAPPEARING ACT: Senator John Cornyn is calling for Ken Paxton to stop hiding and debate James Talarico, saying the lack of debate is “disrespectful of voters.” In multiple posts on social media last week, Cornyn said he agreed that Paxton should debate – explaining that “when candidates don’t debate, an informed electorate pays the price.” 

• 🐇 NOW YOU SEE HIM… James Talarico agreed to 5 debates over 90 days ago, including on Fox News, but Paxton has stopped responding and has not agreed to a single debate, despite promising he would earlier in the year. President Trump, Fox News hosts, and even Texas Republicans have called on Paxton to debate, but each time, he has refused to answer… James Talarico even personally called Paxton, and, of course, he didn’t pick up…
• 🪄 …NOW YOU DON’T: Paxton canceled his Waco rally with President Trump this week as he continues to face intense criticism for his Epstein-style sweetheart deal he gave to an admitted child predator in Waco, letting him walk free in mere days without having to register as a sex offender. Paxton’s rally coincided with the 6-month anniversary of the sentencing of the well-connected Waco lawyer that Paxton initially offered just 1 day in jail. Paxton has been running from questions on his sweetheart deal and, in his only public comments, grotesquely defended his deal, saying: “Well, guess what? They served 60 days.” Fact check: No, he didn’t. Adam Hoffman served only 29 days.
• 📝 PLEADING THE FIFTH: This year, both the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Texas Tribune have been forced to include disclaimers that Paxton “refused to participate” or give basic responses for their voter education guides. Paxton would not even answer basic questions like “Why are you seeking this office?” or “Have you ever been arrested, charged with a crime?” To be fair, “Have you ever been arrested?” may be an off-limits topic for Ken…
• 💰 HE’LL ANSWER FOR $150,000: Paxton is silent as his campaign “keeps getting a boost from people facilitating Chinese investment” to buy Texas land, according to shocking new reporting in the Houston Chronicle detailing how Paxton’s PAC just cashed a new $150,000 check from China-linked real estate developers. 
• 📖 A NEW CHAPTER: The former Executive Director of the Texas Republican Party, Wayne Thorburn, who “literally wrote the book on how the GOP came to dominate Texas politics,” just announced that for the first time in his life he will be voting Democrat for James Talarico over Paxton. In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Thorburn said that Talarico is a “man of individual character. And he will do what he thinks is the proper and right thing for all of Texas when he’s in the Senate.”
• 🚔 NO BACKUP: But that wasn’t the only major endorsement Paxton lost this week… Charley Wilkison, the former head of CLEAT, the largest police union in Texas, wrote today in the Lubbock Avalanche Journal that he will also be voting for James Talarico – citing his “vision of unity” and “to take on the corrupt.” 
• ⚖️ EVEN HIS OWN LAWYER? This follows Paxton’s former top cop, David Maxwell, a decorated Texas Ranger who, along with Paxton’s other senior staff, reported Paxton to the FBI for bribery and abuse of office, endorsing Talarico because “Texans deserve a Senator who serves the people — not a crook who serves himself.” Even Paxton’s defense attorney Dan Cogdell has endorsed Talarico. 
  • ‼️ REMINDER: Paxton is the only candidate in this race to have a mugshot after he was indicted on felony securities fraud. 
• 🐘 THE HERD IS THINNING: Thorburn and Wilkison now join a chorus of other Republicans this week who have announced they cannot support Paxton, including the brother of former President George W. Bush, Neil Bush, former Texas Republican House Speaker Rep. Dade Phelan, former Congressman Ed Emmett, and GOP voters across Texas. Paxton is so toxic that even one of his largest donors is now declaring that they cannot support him and instead will be voting for James Talarico, saying he is “balanced, straightforward, and honest.” Have you or a loved one been injured by Ken Paxton? Call 1-800-TALARICO.

♻️ REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE: Price Hike Mike Rogers leaned on “recycled Trump talking points designed to change the subject and paper over Rogers’ true views,” “defended Trump’s immigration enforcement surge,” and shrugged off the harmful impact of the tariffs against Canada as “a mixed bag.”

• 📊 THE 18% CLUB: Then, in a CNN interview with Dana Bash, Rogers claimed that Michiganders are better off economically now than they were before Trump took office again, even as the Rogers-Trump agenda causes the cost of gas, groceries, and healthcare to skyrocket. Despite new polling showing only 18% of Americans believe they’re better off than one year ago, Rogers still claimed Michiganders’ economic prospects have improved because of Trump, pointing to the effects of his reckless tariffs, which are spiking the cost of everyday goods and destroying Michigan manufacturing jobs.
• 🍁 SORRY, NOT SORRY: Rogers is doubling down on his support for Trump’s reckless tariffs on Canada, saying he thinks they have been an “overall positive” for the state, according to new reporting from MS NOW. As a reminder, Rogers has “support[ed] President Trump’s tariff regime” from the start, calling it “masterful” and “an absolute win.” Rogers has also backed Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada, arguing it was “necessary” because “the Canadians have not been good partners,” even as it threatens to “hit Michigan manufacturing” and spike costs even higher for Michigan families and businesses.
• ✈️ JET-SET MIKE: Maybe that’s because Rogers isn’t feeling the squeeze. As Michiganders struggled with skyrocketing costs, new reporting from The Intercept reveals Rogers was spending nearly $100,000 in campaign funds on luxury travel, “accounting for the vast majority of the campaign’s travel expenses last quarter.” Rogers’ luxury travel splurge included more than $93,000 on at least five separate private jet flights, thousands of dollars spent at luxury hotels in Las Vegas and West Palm Beach, Florida, and thousands of dollars on BMW repairs and a Miami car service. 
• 🗳️ 111 VOTES: And his career in DC was built on keeping voters away from the polls. New reporting from MLive reveals that Rogers only won his congressional race in 2000 by suppressing student voters. As a Michigan state senator, Rogers helped pass legislation that “made it harder for college students to vote.” The law helped drive turnout on Michigan State University’s campus down by 12% and secured his razor-thin 111-vote margin of victory, launching his 14-year career in the U.S. House.
• 🚨 DOUBLING DOWN ON INTIMIDATION: Now, he’s at it again. In a new interview with ABC News, Rogers was asked about leaked audio in which Rogers suggested placing off-duty police officers at Detroit polling stations so they could flash their badge at voters. In response, Rogers doubled down, saying “I don’t know how having a poll watcher, which we’ve had for decades in the state, would discourage anyone from voting.” The Detroit News has previously reported that Rogers’ proposal would “revive a strategy historically used to scare or intimidate voters of color.”
• 🍎 TEACHERS SPEAK OUT: In a new column, the Michigan president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Terrence Martin, Sr., slammed Rogers for “working to disenfranchise and demean Black Detroiters for decades.” Martin writes that Rogers helped pass legislation that “allowed the takeover of Detroit schools” and led to the state installing “unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions on behalf of Detroit families’ futures.” Martin argues that Rogers “bears responsibility as an architect of [the] educational breakdown” in Detroit, pointing to how his legislation helped turn the city’s public school system’s $100 million operating surplus into a $200 million deficit. 
• 📚 THE EPSTEIN READING ROOM COMES TO DETROIT: This week, the Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room tour stopped in Detroit. While Democrats fight for the complete release of the Epstein files and for justice for the victims, Rogers “wanted Epstein plane passengers like Trump kept secret” and opposed releasing the full Epstein files.

😤 “HIT PIECE” HITS A NERVE: In a new interview that Dan Sullivan complained was a “hit piece,” he “bristled” after being questioned about rising gas costs – and about his staggering 14 votes in favor of the Iran war that has caused “economic pain” and has “hit Alaska hard.” 

• 🧊 THIN ICE, THIN SKIN: When asked about policies impacting rising gas and diesel costs, Sullivan “repeatedly denied chances” to distance himself from his price-spiking record, even though Alaska voters are now paying up to $26 a gallon for gas in some parts of the state thanks to the Sullivan-backed war – and with “nearly all goods” shipped in by plane or barge, Alaskans are paying more for everything.
• 🤷 WORTH IT? New reporting from the Alaska Beacon reveals that “Sullivan said America’s war with Iran is worth the resulting increased cost of fuel and food for Americans.”
  • Fuel prices have risen in Alaska since the war began, with heating fuel prices in rural Alaska climbing to an average of $8 per gallon by August, up from $6.49 per gallon in January.
  • Sullivan has now voted for the price-hiking war a staggering 14 times (3/4/26, 3/18/26, 3/24/26, 4/15/26, 4/22/26, 4/30/26, 5/13/26, 5/19/26, 6/16/26, 6/23/26, 6/24/26, 7/23/26, 7/30/26, 9/24/26). 
• 🚢 TRAWLING FOR (CHINESE) CASH: Sullivan is directly profiting off of his biggest single financial holding, RPM International, through their work in Chinese state-owned shipyards that produce Chinese trawlers. RPM, a multibillion-dollar chemicals company, “has spent over a decade expanding in China. That expansion includes work at shipyards owned by China State Shipbuilding Corp., the state-run conglomerate that also builds fishing trawlers.” 
  • 💭 DON’T FORGET… In addition to raking in up to half a million in earnings from his holdings in RPM International, Sullivan has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the trawl industry. 
• 🏔️ “COME ON UP”: Meanwhile, breaking new reporting revealed that Sullivan is pushing for Alaska data center development while personally profiting from his shares in RPM International, his single largest stock holding, as the company has reaped major profits from its work building data centers. In spite of Alaskans being concerned data centers will lead to a “decline in the quality of life with noise and water pollution,” Sullivan has invited data center companies to build in Alaska, saying: “We want you guys to all come up to Alaska with your data centers. We’ve got a lot of cold weather, we got gas, we got land, we got water, we got it all. Come on up.” 
• 🌊 “ALASKA’S TURNING BLUE”: It’s no wonder Alaskans are ready for a change. After landing in “the top quarter of most-absent senators” and tripling his wealth while in D.C., “mediocre,” “vulnerable” Sullivan is “tied with or trailing former Rep. Mary Peltola, ” who is “capitalizing on voters’ frustrations with the high cost of energy and goods,” and even Republicans admit they’re “not the position [they’d] love to be in,” with one lifelong Trump voter conceding he “think[s] Alaska’s turning blue.”

🧓 SOCIAL INSECURITY: A new report out this week from MeidasTouch News is exposing Senate Republicans’ flagrant lies attacking Democratic Senate candidates for opposing provisions in their toxic, price-spiking plan that cut millions of Americans off their insurance to fund a tax break for billionaires…

• 👻 HAUNTED: According to the report, “Republican PACs are falsely claiming that Democrats are trying to cut benefits, even as their own budget accelerates Social Security’s projected trust fund depletion.” This comes after a new report from POLITICO found that Republicans are being “haunted” by their support for the One Big Beautiful Bill – which an “overwhelming majority of voters” oppose. Happy Halloween, Senate Republicans!

🔥 THE ARSONIST-FIREFIGHTER: A scathing new piece in The Bulwark is exposing Susan Collins’ “bleak pitch” to Maine – that “only Susan Collins […] can reduce your suffering” from the pain “inflicted by her own party.” From health care to immigration to tariffs to energy, Collins makes the same “twisted argument” – which includes cutting “net loss” deals for Maine that make “no difference” – then “taking credit” for “supposedly getting things done.” 

• 🎭 CURTAIN CALL: Collins refuses “to do anything that endangers [her] power by exceeding [her] party’s tolerance of dissent” – but time and time again, “the play-nice approach [has] failed.” Now – with just under two weeks to go until election day, her “abdication” is in the spotlight, and her charade may just be up. 
• 🤔 NAME ONE: It showed on the debate stage. A new report in the Washington Post emphasizes how in the last Senate debate, Collins could not “cite a vote against her party that changed the outcome.” According to the report, Collins’ “difficulty finding an answer” comes as “polls show Maine voters feel Collins isn’t tough enough on the Republican president.”
• 🥶 COLD COMFORT: And Mainers are paying for it. As the winter approaches and temperatures grow colder, the high cost of heating oil in Maine is becoming a political liability for Collins, who voted to extend the Iran war five times. According to the Washington Post, “voters blame President Donald Trump and Republicans for rising prices and the war with Iran,” and Collins stood by Trump’s side in the critical early days of the war.
• 🔥 HEAT CHECK: As Mainers face heating oil prices that are up more than 80% compared to last year, Maine Democrats gathered at the Port of Portland to call out Collins for causing the heating oil crisis by voting five times to extend Trump’s war in Iran. Speakers also blasted Collins for profiting off of oil stocks that have surged during the war and for having voted with Trump 96% of the time on his agenda that has raised costs for Mainers.
  
• ✈️ PAY-TO-PLANE: Meanwhile, Collins keeps cashing in. New reporting featured in The Intercept and Portland Press Herald details that in the two months following a critical federal watchdog report on the F-35, Lockheed Martin employees and executives, including its CEO and COO, gave Maine Senator Collins $59,500. She was the company’s top recipient, and weeks later she voted to fund 83 more F-35s – despite the jets being behind schedule and well over budget.
• 🧾 CASH IN, CONTRACTS OUT: The report follows a familiar pattern for Collins: corporations and corporate PACs pour money into her campaign and linked committees, and then she steers government funding their way. ProPublica previously reported on an FBI investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving defense contractors tied to Collins, and more than 250 Mainers have asked the attorney general to investigate.
• 🙃 DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I FUNDRAISE: A new article released by Bangor Daily News unveils the “massive” dark money scheme behind Collins’ campaign, allowing out-of-state billionaires and unnamed donors to bankroll her campaign while hiding their identity from Mainers. The findings come days after Collins said at a debate in Bangor that dark money groups shouldn’t exist – despite her own campaign being supported almost entirely by a web of Republican super PACs and nonprofits shielding undisclosed donors that have booked about $126 million in ads to keep her in office.

🚌 THE WHEELS ON THE BUS: During a bus tour campaign stop, Ashley Hinson begged Iowans to help donate “a little gas money for our bus” as the price of diesel remains above $6/gallon and gas remains about $4/gallon because of her seven votes to continue the war in Iran.

• ⛽ FILL ‘ER UP: Hinson cast her seventh vote to continue the war in Iran just weeks ago as it devastated Iowa with “record diesel prices,” “surg[ing]” gas costs, fertilizer prices “near peak levels,” and inflation higher than the national average. She has repeatedly defended the war in Iran and downplayed the impact on Iowans, calling it “out of sight, out of mind” as Iowans struggle to pay their bills. She has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil, and now those companies are seeing record profits up to $14 billion from the Iran war.
• 🚨 CHECK ENGINE LIGHT: Hinson’s campaign “has grown increasingly wary of the tight race” and begun to “panic” as Iowans grow increasingly more frustrated that she has increased her net worth by up to 15x, holds as much as $5 million in insurance stock that she made as much as $1 million from last year, and lives a life of luxury paid for by special interests, taxpayer dollars, and campaign donations.
• 🛣️ ROAD TO NOWHERE: Now, she’s trying (and failing) to talk up her nonexistent bipartisanship and distract Iowans from her seven votes to continue the war in Iran, five votes to keep in place the tariffs, and her vote for the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ that has cut healthcare for 110,000 Iowans.
• 🚏 END OF THE LINE: Iowans aren’t buying it. With gas and diesel at record highs because of Hinson’s votes, Iowans are calling her an “out of touch” “millionaire,” rating her a “three or four for believability” and saying it’s “hard to know really where she stands.”

⛽ “WE’RE NOT GETTING GOUGED”? Senator Kandie Smith and North Carolinians called out DC insider and Big Oil lobbyist Michael Whatley for cheering on the Iran War as it spikes his stock portfolio and drives up gas prices for North Carolina families. As Whatley pushes to “stay the course” in Iran, his up to $1.6 million invested in the oil and gas industry is spiking – he’s “profited by up to $219,660” from his stocks. Whatley has insisted that “we are not getting gouged” at the pump.

• 🎖️ SILENT ON CAMP LEJEUNE: Whatley refused to denounce Donald Trump’s threat to withhold funding for Camp Lejeune veterans and their families who were affected by water contamination if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterms. Whatley was directly asked about Trump’s comments and refused to condemn them. This comes as Whatley profits off the Iran War while troops put their lives on the line. Whatley continuously pushed for the war, which spiked his Big Oil stocks by up to $219,660. Whatley even took advantage of the Iran War by purchasing additional stock in Park Aerospace, a defense contractor that supplies materials for Patriot missiles.
• 🖼️ PHOTOSHOPPED: New reporting from the Daily Beast is exposing Whatley for hosting a campaign event with a Confederate flag – and then trying to cover it up. A Facebook post showed a Confederate flag prominently displayed at a Whatley press conference – but the post was subsequently deleted and replaced with a version where the Confederate flag is photoshopped out of the picture. After trying to lie his way out of his history of embracing child predators, Whatley is now trying to cover up his campaign’s ties to white supremacy and bigotry.

🌻 SUNFLOWER STATE SHOWDOWN: At this week’s Kansas Senate debate, where GOP leaders have “rushed into the state in recent weeks” to bail out floundering, corrupt Roger Marshall, Adam Hamilton slammed him for “failing to support ending the Iran war, which is unpopular in Kansas and has helped turn the state into a battleground this year” and offered Kansans “an alternative to the ‘unpredictability, chaos and corruption in Washington’ that he pinned upon Marshall.”

• 🚨 ETHICS COMPLAINT INCOMING: Following bombshell reporting that Marshall’s “office seemed to function more as a campaign arm than a taxpayer-funded Senate office” – End Citizens United has filed a request with the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate this flagrant misuse of taxpayer dollars… According to the Kansas Reflector, the “22-page letter details trips Marshall took to New Orleans, where he attended the Sugar Bowl, to New York City for television appearances that coincided with boosts in fundraising, and a pattern of arranging at least one official meeting for trips to Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia so that taxpayer dollars could fund the trips.” Sounds sketchy to us…  
• ☕ A TOXIC BREW: New reporting from across the Sunflower State is highlighting the “toxic brew” confronting Marshall as his price-spiking agenda “hang[s] over Kansas in an extraordinary way,” and he faces “the most serious challenger for a Kansas Senator in over a decade.”
• 📰 THE HEADLINES WRITE THEMSELVES: For weeks, Marshall has been contending with “a series of damaging stories” that include extraordinary allegations of corruption and “headlines of suing patients that were trying to seek health care, at a time where Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill also made cuts to the social safety net.”
• 🔗 THE WEAKEST LINK: Now, the race has become “a real Republican liability,” with even members of Marshall’s own party admitting that he is “the weakest Republican incumbent candidate across the board,” and GOP operatives are conceding that it may “already [be] too late” to turn things around as he grows closer to becoming “the first person to lose a Senate contest to a Democrat in the state in nearly a century.”

❌ ANOTHER WEEK… ANOTHER SCANDAL: Just 11 days out from election day, new bombshell CNN reporting revealed that GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins has continued to allow the production of white nationalist and antisemitic content from his property… 

• ⚠️ A PATTERN OF VIOLENCE: CNN also unearthed that Collins promoted political violence in shocking and previously unreported comments where he suggested that “American military and political leaders deserved to be hanged from a helicopter.” According to CNN, the remarks are “part of a broader pattern of promoting January 6 conspiracy theories and suggesting extrajudicial killings of political opponents and perceived enemies.”
• 🎤 GOING ON OFFENSE: On Saturday, Senator Jon Ossoff held a rally with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in Cobb County, going on offense in front of a packed room of over 1,500 Georgians and emphasizing, “Georgia, when the polls close, we’ll defeat the bigot congressman, Trump puppet Mike Collins.”
• 🙏 SOULS TO THE POLLS: Then, on Sunday, the Ossoff campaign released a video celebrating Souls to the Polls, a longstanding tradition rooted in the Civil Rights Movement that fought to secure the right to vote. In the video, Sen. Ossoff addresses the ongoing threat to democracy, urges Georgians to make their voices heard, and underscores, “Their attacks only strengthen our resolve, and if all of us here do what we must do, the sound of feet marching to the polls this fall will be heard in every corner of our state, and all the way on high, where Congressman Lewis will look down and see a job well done.” 
• ⛪ “LET’S TAKE A STAND TOGETHER”: Ossoff also joined New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and Pastor Jamal Bryant on Sunday, addressing the congregation and saying, “Our moment is at hand now, New Birth, for citizens to use the power that’s invested in us through our Constitution to make a difference. And so, whether you’re for me or you’re against me, I hope that you will use that power to make a statement about what Georgia stands for. Early voting is open. There are 16 days left for the people of Georgia to take a stand. Let’s take a stand together.” 
• 🗣️ “THE PEOPLE’S ANSWER”: In a conversation with Reverend Al Sharpton, Ossoff slammed Trump’s ongoing attack on voting rights, saying, “What a mistake he made, Reverend, by launching his attack on voting rights here at the civic and spiritual center of the very Black history that the Trump administration tries so hard to erase. The people’s answer is proving massive — I hear it at every pulpit. I see it in the data demonstrating a galvanized determination on the part of Georgia voters to turn out in such record numbers and to win by such decisive margins that no dirty tricks they cook up in the Oval Office can foil the will of the people.”
• 🚩 DISBAND THE “CONVOY CAPTAINS”: Ossoff called on GOP U.S. Senate nominee Collins to disband his ‘convoy captains’ program during an event with voters in Stonecrest after shocking Daily Beast reporting unearthed that the embattled congressman promoted “campaign-appointed leaders” with criminal charges that include heinous crimes against children, specifically “cruelty to children, sexual battery, and family violence.” 
• 🚩 STILL PRAISING THEM: According to the report, “Collins has often praised his campaign captains, including at a political event in Morrow last month.” The reporting also comes on the heels of reporting that revealed ties between these campaign-appointed leaders and “a far-right group founded by […] a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader” that has been “classified as a white nationalist hate group.”
• 📈 BUILDING MOMENTUM: In Stonecrest, Sen. Ossoff met with voters for a conversation on the issues impacting Georgians, including skyrocketing health care, gas, and grocery costs. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, Representative Sara Jacobs, and Representative Lucy McBath joined Sen. Ossoff for the conversation and encouraged Georgians to vote early in person and make their voices heard at the polls. Senator Ossoff continues to build incredible momentum heading into Election Day by gaining bipartisan support across the state, as Democrats head into November unified at the top of the ticket.

💧 WATERBOY JON: New reporting in Politico Playbook detailed the dire situation of Jon Husted’s failing Senate campaign. Multiple Republican strategists blasted Husted’s campaign, with one strategist with ties to MAGA-world calling it the “worst campaign in the country.” Another Republican strategist even said that while Husted may “look like a quarterback… he acts like a waterboy.” And that’s from his own team.

• 🔌 SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM: New reporting in The New York Times shows that Ohioans across the state are rejecting “face of data centers” Husted for his record of sending utility rates soaring for Ohio families.
• 🙋 HE SAID IT: Husted led the charge to bring hundreds of data centers to Ohio while families got stuck with the bill. Instead of taking responsibility, Husted blamed Ohioans for data centers, telling listeners in a recent interview that “we are the problem.”

🔁 NO REGRETS: On WKBK’s Good Morning with Dan Mitchell, Donald Trump-endorsed Senate candidate John Sununu doubled down on his record of supporting the toxic GOP Plan and repeatedly trying to privatize Social Security. The toxic GOP plan closed a nonprofit health care center in Franconia and ripped away health care coverage from tens of thousands of Granite Staters just to give more tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy; yet, Sununu said he thinks “it was right” and has previously admitted he would’ve voted for it. 

• 🧓 “SOLVED THE PROBLEM”? Sununu — who “helped lead the charge” to privatize Social Security while in office and said he’s “willing to do it again” — also defended his record of repeatedly trying to privatize Social Security, claiming his efforts “solved the problem.”

📍 IN THE STATES: 

• AK – NBC News: Anger over rising prices could be decisive in Alaska’s unusually close Senate race
• GA – 95.5 WSB: Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff pushes back against potential FEMA funding changes
• IA – New York Times, The Athletic: After 21 surgeries and two Paralympic golds, Josh Turek is chasing a Senate upset in Iowa
• KS – The Hill: The Methodist pastor who could flip Kansas and the Senate
• ME – News Center Maine: Former colleagues recount Troy Jackson’s record in supporting Maine women
• MI – CBS News: Abdul El-Sayed visits Detroit exhibit displaying documents from Epstein files
• NH – New York Times: Chris Pappas Could Make History in New Hampshire’s Senate Race
• NC – New York Times: He Has Never Lost an Election. Can He Flip North Carolina’s Senate Seat?
• OH – The Guardian: ‘System is rigged’: Democrat Sherrod Brown puts datacenter danger at heart of populist Senate bid
• TX – Houston Public Media: Talarico presses anticorruption agenda, targeting both Paxton and Elon Musk 

🤳 TWEET OF THE WEEK:

Maeve Coyle
@maevemcoyle 

Maddy McDaniel
@maddymcdaniel14

Monica Robinson
@mo_robz

Tommy Garcia
@Tommy_D_Garcia

Joe Bush
@TheJoeBush

Jackson Buttler
@jackson_buttler

Suhani Patel
@suhaniiipatel

📲 DROP US A LINE: [email protected]