Donald Trump told Vivek Ramaswamy, Ohio’s Republican nominee for governor, to keep airing an ad in which his opponent’s mother calls her a liar.
Amy Acton was 12 when her stepfather was arrested for raping her. Her mother lost custody, stayed married to her daughter’s rapist until he died, and Acton hasn’t seen her since a courtroom in 1978. Ramaswamy is spending $4 million to put that mother on Ohio television. When Gov. Mike DeWine asked him to pull it, Trump called DeWine disloyal, and JD Vance told objecting Republicans to stop whining.
Acton’s stepfather never stood trial because he jumped bail, and he remained a fugitive until he died. Trump has a record of his own, because a federal jury found him civilly liable for sexual abuse. He called an ad branding a child rape survivor a liar “hitting pay dirt.”
🟢80|🟢68|🔴133|🟢36|🟢48
White House Counsel Scharf demands Politico retract stories on Chief of Staff Wiles and apologize to Trump by Thursday or face legal action.
Today’s GovBrief News
US Ambassador Huckabee’s cable warns Trump’s Gaza plan may lack staff as the Pentagon draws down, two weeks after he blamed only Hamas for delays, POLITICO reports.
Source: Politico
October 22, 2026Details
Trump phones Musk to lift the Starlink speed cap crippling Ukraine’s drones, The Wall Street Journal reports, after denying he knew who ordered it.
Source: The Wall Street Journal [gift link]
October 22, 2026Details
US and Israel plan renewed Iran strikes after the midterms, Israeli sources tell ABC News, as the White House vows no attack before then.
Source: ABC News
October 22, 2026Details
Kennedy adviser Calley Means, co-author of the “MAHA bible,” quits as the movement sours on Kennedy over stalled food rules and corporate sponsors.
Source: Ars Technica
October 22, 2026Details
Justice Department asks a judge who called its last voter-roll demand illegal to force California to set aside ballots from people on its suspected-noncitizen list.
Source: KABC Los Angeles
October 22, 2026Details
Justice Department will send Election Day monitors to Indianapolis and Lake County, two heavily Democratic areas among Indiana’s 92 counties, without saying why.
Source: The Indiana Capital Chronicle
October 22, 2026Details
Postal Service’s halved rural mail pickups doubled or tripled late-ballot rejections in this year’s primaries, a ProPublica analysis finds, hitting Trump-voting areas hardest.
Source: ProPublica
October 22, 2026Details
Supreme Court bars student IDs at New Hampshire polls 12 days before the midterms, lifting a three-week-old order to avoid changing rules near an election.
Source: WMUR Manchester
October 22, 2026Details
Agriculture Department reopens New Mexico ports to Mexican livestock Monday, days after screwworm cases put much of southern New Mexico in an infested zone.
Source: Source New Mexico
October 22, 2026Details
Defense Secretary Hegseth bans Pentagon personnel from using nonpublic information to bet on military operations, six months after a soldier allegedly cashed in on the Maduro raid.
Source: UPI
October 22, 2026Details
Defense Secretary Hegseth’s staff gashed an Eisenhower World War II globe it was moving to his office with its own crew, not trained curators, The Washington Post reports.
Source: Snopes
October 22, 2026Details
Justice Department examines claims former Trump campaign manager Lewandowski profited from his Homeland Security role, its first known probe of a Trump ally, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Source: The Wall Street Journal [gift link]
October 22, 2026Details
Justice Department indicts Virginia Senate Finance Chair Lucas, a Trump critic, on cannabis racketeering charges 12 days before the midterms.
Source: The Virginia Mercury
October 22, 2026Details
Federal judge orders Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion BBC suit by Dec. 11 or risk dismissal, after months of cancellations.
Source: Courthouse News Service
October 22, 2026Details
Federal appeals court rules ICE violated due process jailing an Iranian refugee in Kansas who met every condition of his release for two decades.
Source: The Kansas Reflector
October 22, 2026Details
ICE frees a 78-year-old Ugandan priest from its Colorado jail with no wheelchair after 13 months, so jailed immigrants carry him half a mile out.
Source: Colorado Newsline
October 22, 2026Details
New York City Council votes 40-7 to end horse carriage rides by June 2028, four months after a runaway carriage horse killed an 18-year-old tourist.
Source: Gothamist
October 22, 2026Details
Trump says Google CEO Pichai refused his request to rename the Atlantic Ocean “Trump Ocean,” after Google adopted Gulf of America and Lake America.
Source: Newsweek
October 22, 2026Details
Trump urges Ramaswamy to keep airing ad featuring Ohio governor rival Acton’s mother, who stayed married to the man charged with raping Acton at 12.
Source: WLWT Cincinnati
October 22, 2026Details
Trump demands NBA star LeBron James apologize for stretching during the national anthem, three months after calling him “maybe a racist.”
Source: USA Today
October 22, 2026Details
Loudoun County, Virginia, gets Amazon to drop four planned data centers, build homes instead and donate 25 acres for an arts and recreation center.
Source: The Washington Post
October 22, 2026Details
Federal judge rules the Office of Personnel Management broke privacy law giving DOGE agents personal data on millions of federal workers and applicants.
Source: Federal News Network
October 22, 2026Details