JD Vance Awfully Quiet After Report on How His Mom Got Health Care

JD Vance credited Donald Trump for his family being able to get off of Medicaid and onto private health insurance, at the vice presidential debate earlier this month. But he isn’t telling the whole story: that it was due to Obamacare.

Vance’s mother was able to buy private insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, run by Ohio, after overcoming substance abuse, becoming financially stable, and earning too much to stay on Medicaid. At the debate, Vance was also referring to a cousin in Florida who got private insurance through the state marketplace, a campaign spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Vance said that Trump fixed a lot of issues with the ACA after Republicans failed to repeal the bill early in his presidency. But this belies the fact that Vance’s family members reaped the benefits of the ACA despite Trump and the rest of the GOP repeatedly attempting to undermine, and then remove, it.

If Trump had been successful, the ACA and its marketplaces would not exist in their current form, if at all, said Andrew Sprung, an independent health analyst, to The Washington Post.

“If any Vance family members transitioned to the marketplace because they earned out of Medicaid, they should be grateful that Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the marketplace with an alternative that would have provided far less affordable coverage,” Sprung said.

Vance’s current praise of Trump also goes against what he was saying in 2017, when the then president and Republicans in Congress were trying to repeal and replace the bill. Back then, Vance said that Republicans’ proposals would hurt low-income Americans.

“The ‘full repeal’ bill is nothing of the sort—it preserves the regulatory structure of Obamacare, but withdraws its supports for the poor,” Vance wrote in a column for The New York Times seven years ago.

Vance’s health care proposals, like Trump’s,  essentially bring back health insurance companies’ ability to charge more for preexisting conditions. This would hurt the same low-income Americans Vance was supposedly concerned about in 2017, and stick older Americans with those conditions with a higher bill, and that could include Vance’s family members.

Elon Musk’s super PAC has already hit a major bump in the road in its canvassing operations for Donald Trump.

A glitchy door-knocking app means Musk’s America PAC is paying canvassers, with no way to verify that the volunteers are actually getting the word out about Trump.

America PAC is aiming to turn out at least 800,000 voters in swing states to support Trump this November. But the Campaign Sidekick app used by Trump and Musk’s canvassers is plagued by design problems and glitches.

As The Guardian reported, the app requires enough internet to be able to stream 4K video. As door knockers often do their routes in isolated rural locations, that internet speed is not available. The PAC is then forced to rely on “offline walkbooks” to make sure the volunteers are completing their routes. The only problem? Those walkbooks have no geolocation and don’t always upload properly, making it impossible to track the canvassing efforts.

“Maybe Elon Musk can give his canvassers a Starlink,” one America PAC political operative joked to The Guardian.

Uniquely in this campaign, canvassers are paid by the door. This gives people a way to hack the system. With no geolocator, canvassers can operate with little supervision, “speed-running” through their list or just playing hooky. Republicans have struggled with this in the past, with instances of volunteers falsifying data and just hanging out in a casino.

As opposed to Musk’s other functionality failures—like X’s buggy issues and Teslas bursting into flame—this particular Elon fail may actually give Democrats something to smile about. And though it may seem like a niche issue, Musk’s America PAC has essentially hijacked Trump’s door-knocking outreach operations, meaning that issues with the canvassing operation could have real implications on Trump’s outreach in swing states and on Musk’s chances to prove himself worthy to Trump.

Trump’s co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita, of course, denied there was any issue. “Our canvassing apps work fine, and we’ve invested in new technology this cycle that is unmatched in politics to supplement our efforts. This is a clear hit job from a failed vendor who we’ll be sure to name and shame as soon as we finish winning this campaign.”

MAGA Republicans have begun touting the arrest of an armed man outside Donald Trump’s rally Saturday as a “thwarted” third assassination attempt, but federal investigators said that there was no indication that the man was there to hurt the Republican presidential nominee. In fact, the man said he was a Trump fan. 

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada, resident, was arrested outside Trump’s disastrous rally in Coachella, California, after he was found to be carrying two unregistered firearms, ammunition, and several fake passports, according to the Associated Press. He was also driving an unregistered black SUV with a fake license plate, and carried fake press credentials. 

CBS’s Scott McFarlane reported Monday that authorities don’t believe Trump was in any danger from Miller. “A federal law enforcement source tells CBS News there is no indication that this was an assassination attempt,” McFarlane said. 

“In a statement to CBS News, Miller calls the allegations ‘a bunch of lies’ and said police made a mistake,” McFarlane said. “In a video he posted overnight, Miller says he’s a staunch support of the former president, has been active in helping him get reelected, and was invited to the rally.”

In a 75-minute video statement, Miller said he had received a special invitation from the Republican Party of Nevada to attend the event, and said he had been to “countless” Trump events before that. Miller claimed that he’d spoken to Don Jr. and Eric Trump, knew many people within the Trump family, and had even met Trump multiple times, according to Newsweek.  

The validity of Miller’s statements is not yet determined, but his remarks did not seem to betray any intent to harm the Republican presidential nominee. 

It seems that MAGA acolytes are running with their own story. 

“A third would-be assassin was caught yesterday with a fake VIP/press pass and loaded weapons trying to get into President Trump’s Coachella rally,” wrote Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna in a post on X Sunday. “This needs to stop. Please join me in praying for President Trump.”

She added a screenshot of a New York Post headline that described a “Third Trump assassination thwarted.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also got in on the thoughts and prayers. “Yesterday a man in possession of multiple firearms was arrested outside the Coachella rally. Pray for President Trump, his family, and the entire Trump Team. This appears to be a thwarted third assassination attempt,” Greene wrote in a post on X Sunday. 

A Michigan Republican listed the wrong election date in an ad aimed at Black voters, according to a legal complaint filed on Sunday.

Tom Barrett, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, placed an ad in the October 2 issue of the Michigan Bulletin, a Black-owned weekly publication based in Lansing. The ad boldly stated: “On November 6 VOTE FOR TOM BARRETT.” The problem is that the election is on November 5.

In response, the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus filed a legal complaint with the state attorney general, accusing Barrett’s campaign of trying to hurt Black voter turnout with the ad. The group says that such efforts are illegal in Michigan, where purposefully spreading misinformation about the election process to stop people from voting is a crime.

“At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing,” the legal filing states. “And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”

The caucus’s complaint calls for investigations not only from Michigan’s attorney general but also from a local county prosecutor. In response, Barrett’s campaign claims that the wrong date was just a “proofing error” and didn’t have any negative intent, according to spokesperson Jason Roe. He noted that the campaign sent mailers to Black voters on October 2 and 9 with the correct election date.

“Our campaign has been committed to outreach to the Black community and Black leaders because it is important to Senator Barrett that every community be heard in this election,” Roe told The Washington Post in a statement. “The goal is to earn more support from Black voters.”

But as of Monday, 12 days after the initial error, the campaign had yet to publish a correction. Roe said that the next issue of the Bulletin will contain an ad with November 5 as the date. But the caucus is not convinced.

“It strains credulity that this was a simple mistake,” said the caucus’s legal filing. “Tom Barrett and his Campaign placed two nearly identical ads in two different newspapers within a week of each other. The ad placed in the newspaper read predominantly by Black voters has the wrong election date; while the ad placed in the newspaper not read predominantly by Black voters has the correct election date.”

There’s a long history of Republicans and conservatives promoting misinformation in attempts to depress Black voter turnout. In 2020, several Facebook ads targeted Black and Latino voters with various false claims about President Biden and Black Lives Matter. Robocalls have in years past even told Black voters to stay home, claiming that a Democratic victory was assured.

A report in June from nonprofit Onyx Impact, which fights disinformation among Black Americans, said that 40 million Americans could regularly be targeted and fed disinformation within Black online spaces as the election nears. With November 5 only weeks away, bad actors could be targeting voters everywhere to cause chaos.

Donald Trump’s campaign has begun raising money for hurricane relief—but it’s not exactly clear how that money will be used.

Two weeks ago, the Trump campaign created a GoFundMe “as an official response for MAGA supporters to offer their financial assistance to their fellow Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene,” according to the fundraiser website.

A few days after the page went live, it was updated with a list of the charities that would receive the MAGA funds.

Fitting with Trump’s smears against federal relief efforts, three of the four charities listed—Samaritan’s Purse, Water Mission, and Mtn2Sea Ministries—are Christian or Evangelical NGOs. The fourth charity listed is the “Clinch Foundation,” which is likely the Clinch Memorial Hospital’s Foundation in Valdosta, Georgia.

The page did not, however, say how the campaign planned to disburse funds from the Trump campaign’s pot—more than $7.7 million as of Monday. The fundraiser has received donations of $500,000 each from Republican megadonors Steve and Andrea Wynn and former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler.

While some of these charities have already received initial funds from the Trump campaign, it’s not clear how much has already been or will be disbursed.

Only Mtn2Sea Ministries has reported just how much it received, sharing that it got $25,000 from funds raised by Trump’s GoFundMe, in a Facebook post from the organization last week. “This is the only funds we expect to [receive] from this GoFundMe account and are very grateful for it to help us serve,” the post read.

So, where exactly is the other $7.65 million going? It’s still entirely unclear.

The GoFundMe’s latest update said simply, “We have made an initial disbursement and will continue providing more funds as support continues to come in.”

Late last month, when Samaritan’s Purse delivered supplies to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump promptly took credit for providing the “truckloads” of aid. In a less publicized moment of his speech, Trump revealed that the supplies had been provided by “Franklin’s incredible organization,” referring to Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Samaritan’s Purse spokesperson Gabrielle Bouquet told the Associated Press that the organization was grateful for Trump’s “steadfast support of the work we do in Jesus’ name,” but she declined to say just how much the former president’s campaign fundraiser has contributed. Water Mission also confirmed that it had received funds but did not specify how much, according to the AP.

Trump previously used GoFundMe to raise money following his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, in June. A spokesperson for GoFundMe told the AP that the majority of those funds had already been disbursed, mostly to the families of those injured and killed at the rally.

While Trump’s use of the crowdfunding site does not violate any campaign finance laws, it is unorthodox. “It’s pretty unusual and actually quite odd,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel told the AP.

Trump’s choice of subject is also strange, according to Kappel, who said political candidates often donate campaign funds to IRS-approved nonprofits.

Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said that the Republican presidential nominee wanted to “help find a way for his supporters to give as much direct support as they can.”

Meanwhile, Trump has claimed to have donated $25 million of his own money to hurricane relief, but there is currently no actual evidence he did, according to Snopes.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board endorsed Hawley’s Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, on Sunday, calling Hawley the “worst sitting senator in America right now.” The Missouri newspaper of record said that Hawley “stands apparent for his singular role in spurring the violence” on January 6, 2021, referring to the Capitol insurrection.

The editorial pointed out that Hawley was initially the only senator to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, and raised his fist in solidarity with the mob on January 6—only to run away with his fellow members of Congress when that mob breached the Capitol building.

Hawley’s actions on January 6 alone would “merit his expulsion from the Senate,” the editorial said, if not for his other stances: his attempt to halt aid to Ukraine, his lack of accomplishments in the Senate, and his “unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The editorial went on to praise Kunce, an attorney and Marine veteran from a working-class family in Jefferson City, Missouri, noting his moderate political background and support for red-flag gun laws and universal background checks. Kunce has also worked with the Department of Defense negotiating arms control agreements involving Russia and NATO, in contrast to Hawley, who supports abandoning Ukraine in favor of Israel.

Then, on Monday, Hawley came under fire over a Missouri Independent story detailing his use of a private jet to campaign around Missouri, even though he attacked his 2018 opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, for doing the same. According to the report, he spent over $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said on Saturday at a rally in Jefferson City, pointing that he instead was campaigning in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son.

A self-described Christian nationalist, Hawley seeks to push religious values as law alongside his wife, a lawyer for the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Hawley has also mistaken a white nationalist magazine’s words for a Patrick Henry quote, scuttled bills simply to hurt President Biden, and written a bizarre book titled Manhood extolling the virtues of masculinity.

Does Kunce have a chance to unseat Hawley? Currently, the challenger is polling behind the incumbent senator, but now he has the state’s largest newspaper behind him. Kunce will need more than that if he expects to push out the national conservative firebrand in a few weeks.

Ted Cruz is hanging on by a thread in his Texas Senate race, according to internal polling from a GOP super PAC.

A memo from the Senate Leadership Fund obtained by Politico shows serious trouble for Cruz and several other Republicans in competitive Senate races this November. Indeed, the majority of the candidates listed are losing their races.

In his race against Democratic challenger Colin Allred, Cruz is up by only one point according to the super PAC. The document notes that Allred “has been heavily outspending” on television ads.

The Democratic former professional football player has run a noticeably different campaign from Beto O’Rouke’s in 2018, skipping surrogates and large barnstorms and opting for a more moderate approach. Despite running a more centrist campaign, Allred has been buoyed by Democrats’ exceptional fundraising. In the third quarter, Allred raised $30 million to Cruz’s $21 million across three different fundraising accounts. The Senate Leadership Fund noted that increasing GOP outside spending is perhaps the only way to keep Cruz’s lead for the Senate seat. The numbers are so bad that Cruz is often begging for donations in his media appearances.

The other major “trouble-spot” noted in the memo is Nebraska’s Senate seat, where incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer is being challenged by  independent candidate and former union president Dan Osborn. The polls are so inconclusive the super PAC said it needs to “assess whether intervention is necessary to protect the seat.”

The polling also shows Republicans majorly trail in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, as well as Maryland by as much as eight points, but the the super PAC still tried to delusionally spin that the “environment is ripe for a GOP win.”

Republican leaders want you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears as they rewrite their narrative about the 2020 presidential election.

In the waning days leading into Election Day 2024, some of Trump’s closest allies are refusing to yield to the truth: that Trump lost the last election—a bad omen ahead of November.

On Sunday, ABC News’s Martha Raddatz pressed Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on why he wouldn’t admit that Trump didn’t win during the last election cycle.

“I’m just going to assume that if I asked you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?” Raddatz asked.

“Martha, you ask this question, I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020, you haven’t asked about inflation—” Vance began.

“No, no, I’m sorry. Let’s stick to this. I know, I know—Why won’t you say that? Why won’t you say that?” Raddatz continued, attempting to hold Vance to the question as he bulldozed over her audio.

“Because Martha I believe that in 2020 when big tech firms were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems,” Vance responded after some time. “By the way Martha, you’re a journalist, you represent the American media. Look at the polling on this. A lot of Americans feel like they were silenced in the run-up to the 2020 election. That is such a bigger issue.”

“If you—I just want to—but I don’t understand why you won’t just say that you believe it,” Raddatz interjected.

“Just say what? That I think the 2020 election had some problems? I’ve said that repeatedly,” Vance threw back.

“Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question,” Raddatz said.

“Martha, I’ve said repeatedly that I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want,” Vance said, returning to his talking point about Facebook’s alleged censorship. “The fact that you’re so obsessed with what word I used to describe this phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself suggests something very broken in the American media.”

But Trump’s right-hand man isn’t the only MAGA ally to aggressively skirt a confession about the results of the 2020 election. Speaking with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t help but qualify his answer as to whether he would certify the results of the upcoming election, regardless of who wins.

“Regardless of who wins, you’ll certify the results?” asked Kristen Welker.

“Regardless? Of course, yes, if the election is free and fair and legal, and we pray and hope that it is, there’s a lot of work being done to make sure that’s true,” Johnson said. “I think this one’s going to be so large there’ll be no question. I think Donald J. Trump is your next president, and that can’t happen soon enough.”

When Welker pointed out that saying “if” the election is fair, as well as Trump’s continued lack of a concession over the 2020 vote, was likely to undermine voter confidence in the upcoming election, Johnson was quick to brush off her concerns.

“The point is the process works. We have the peaceful transfer of power. We did in 2020,” he said, conveniently ignoring the fact that an armed and violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to prevent that transfer of power.

Donald Trump’s baseless attacks against federal relief efforts for Hurricane Helene came to life over the weekend, when officials in North Carolina reported encountering truckloads of militia members “out hunting FEMA.”

An official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is assisting in relief efforts in North Carolina, sent several federal agencies an urgent warning Saturday afternoon, according to The Washington Post.

“FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the official said.

FEMA’s message warned that National Guard troops “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.”

The Forest Service official told the Post that responders had been relocated to a “safe area” but that the incident had paused efforts to clear roads of debris, deliver supplies, and aid in search and rescue operations.

This incident follows weeks of toxic misinformation about federal assistance amplified by Trump and other MAGA Republicans. The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly criticized federal relief efforts, and falsely claimed that $1 billion was redirected away from FEMA to help undocumented immigrants.

This incident also comes shortly after MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene boosted an antisemitic conspiracy theory positing that the government controls the weather, which then was echoed in slews of antisemitic attacks against FEMA’s Director Jaclyn Rothenberg.

On Friday, Trump took to Truth Social to claim that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and other Democratic leaders “were blocking people and money from coming into North Carolina to help people in desperate need.”

Cooper slammed Trump’s claim, calling it a “flat out lie.”

“We’re working with all partners around the clock to get help to people. Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories have hurt the morale of first responders and people who lost everything, helped scam artists and put government and rescue workers in danger,” Cooper wrote in a post on X.

It seems Trump’s words have the potential to hurt more than morale, as residents are now reportedly taking up arms against relief workers. In the end, Trump’s own conspiracies are preventing the swift recovery of the region, which, ironically, is mostly home to his own supporters.

A MAGA influencer is trying to spread a nasty rumor about Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. The issue is it reads more like fan fiction than facts.

“DocNetyoutube,” whom Washington Post media reporter Will Sommer describes as “an up-and-coming new player in the ‘making things up’ corner of online Trumpworld,” claims he has proof that Walz sexually assaulted a student during his time as a high school teacher.

In a series of “drops,” a term popular in the QAnon community, DocNetyoutube on Sunday posted several alleged screenshots of communications between himself and Walz’s anonymous victim. But the posts have several red flags about their authenticity.

The email dates are formatted in an inconsistent way, with misplaced commas and strange text alignment. Another clue is what appears to be a typing cursor that still appears on the screenshots, indicating that the internet personality most likely wrote them himself.

Much of DocNetyoutube’s conspiracy hinges on him breaking the news of a student who went to a concert with Walz and his wife while the couple were teachers at the same Nebraska school. The story isn’t new. The New York Times published this story in August, noting that after the anonymous gay student confided in them, the couple took them to an Indigo Girls concert, a rare queer-friendly event in the area.

But on Sunday, the MAGA conspiratorial account tried to claim that the media was “trying to get out in front of this story,” instead of acknowledging that he was publishing old news. The internet personality claimed to have a “statement from the victim” to prove the legitimacy of the posts. The anonymous statement noted that Walz has a Chinese symbol tattooed on his upper thigh. “I remember he explained to me what it meant, but I do not recall at this time,” the supposed student wrote in the statement. In the comments on X, MAGA users quickly spun out about whether Walz could have gotten that tattoo laser removed or could have done a skin graft procedure. Very normal stuff.

Baselessly calling Walz a groomer is nothing new. Laura Loomer has previously spread similarly vague allegations against Walz. “There’s a reason why he shakes his wife’s hand and panders to the gay community, and it’s not because he’s awkward.… It will all come out,” she wrote on X in August, citing no evidence.

Several X-verified QAnon accounts have also spread the claims far and wide, boosted by Elon Musk’s algorithm. Earlier this month, the pro-QAnon podcast “RedPill78” interviewed an anonymous man who alleged he was a former foreign exchange student at Walz’s high school who was inappropriately touched by the Democrat.

Previously, terminally online Republicans also tried to push the narrative that Walz was grooming children by being the faculty adviser of the newly formed Gay-Straight Alliance at his Minnesota school. In reality, queer students appreciated his support. “It was important to have a person who was so well-liked on campus, a football coach who had served in the military,” one former student at the school told The New York Times. “Having Tim Walz as the adviser of the Gay-Straight Alliance made me feel safe coming to school.”

Since that talking point didn’t stick, it appears they had to escalate. Of course credible assault allegations should always be taken seriously. But if Republicans don’t want to vote for someone who has touched someone inappropriately, perhaps they shouldn’t vote for the convicted rapist.