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Tag: mehmet oz

  • Trump says California is full of fraud. Bonta says the claims are ‘reckless’

    With the Trump administration reportedly in talks to create an anti-fraud task force for California, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Thursday vehemently denounced what he described as the administration’s “reckless” and “false” rhetoric about fraud plaguing the state.

    At a news conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, Bonta said the Trump administration’s claims that state programs are overrun by fraud and that its government was itself perpetrating or facilitating this fraud was “outrageous and ridiculous and without basis.”

    Bonta said most states struggle with some fraud from outside actors, saying that “anywhere there’s money flowing there’s a risk” and that the state’s Department of Justice has thrown immense resources into cracking down on illicit activities and recovering funds for taxpayers.

    As a politicized national fight over waste, fraud and abuse led by Republicans have targeted California and its Democratic leadership, Bonta and other state officials have moved swiftly to combat the claims.

    In California, Bonta said, authorities have recovered nearly $2.7 billion through criminal and civil prosecutions since 2016, including some $740 million through Medi-Cal fraud related prosecutions, about $2 billion under the state’s False Claims Act, and an additional $108 million from a task force focused on rooting out tax fraud in the underground economy.

    State authorities have frequently partnered with the federal government in the past on such investigations and welcome a good-faith partnership in the future, Bonta said.

    CBS News reported on the creation of a California-focused fraud task force earlier this week, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the plans. The outlet, whose new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, has been aligned with Trump and spearheaded a major overhaul of the news organization, reported that the president plans to soon sign an executive order naming Vice President JD Vance as head of a group that would also include the head of the Federal Trade Commission as vice chairman.

    Trump’s rhetoric fueled doubts about California programs and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership at the start of the year, when he declared that “the fraud investigation of California [had] begun.”

    On the president’s social media platform, in formal letters and in recent news conferences, officials in the Trump administration have alleged fraud in child care, hospice funding and unemployment benefits.

    Last week, the topic took center stage again when Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread hospice fraud in Los Angeles.

    That viral video received more than 4.5 million views on X.

    Oz’s video received fierce backlash from California politicians and the local Armenian community, who collectively alleged that it contained baseless and racially charged attacks on Armenians.

    The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5-billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home-care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”

    He also points to Armenian language signs, incorrectly referring to them as written in a cerulean script, and saying “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”

    Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz on Jan. 29, asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the “racially charged and false public statements” made in the video.

    On Monday, California Sen. Adam Schiff followed suit, demanding an independent review of Oz’s alleged targeting of Armenian American communities.

    “To suggest markers of Armenian culture, language, and identity are indicative of criminality underscores a discriminatory motive that could taint any investigation into fraud and incite the further demonization of the community,” Schiff said in a statement.

    Glendale City Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian said in an interview that Oz’s statements feed into the Trump administration’s playbook of using allegations of fraud to sow racial divisions.

    “This time the focus just happens to be the Armenians,” he said. “In places like Minnesota, it’s the Somali community.”

    California has been investigating healthcare fraud since a 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered widespread Medicare fraud in the state’s booming but loosely regulated hospice industry.

    From 2010 to 2020, the county’s hospices multiplied sixfold, accounting for more than half of the state’s roughly 1,200 Medicare-certified providers, according to a Times analysis of federal healthcare data.

    Scores of providers sprang up along a corridor stretching west from the San Gabriel Valley through the San Fernando Valley, which now has the highest concentration of hospices in the nation.

    The state Department of Justice has charged more than 100 people with hospice-related fraud since 2021 and shuttered around 280 hospices in the last two years, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

    But those shuttered hospices barely represent a dent in the massive hospice home healthcare industry. There are 468 hospice facilities in the Van Nuys area alone, according to the state database of medical facilities.

    There are 197 licensed medical practices, including 89 licensed hospices, in a single two-story building located at 14545 Friar St. in Van Nuys — suggesting a concentration of fraudulent businesses.

    When asked why the number of licensed medical practices in Van Nuys and at that address are so high, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said that the department is committed to fighting fraud and unable to comment on pending investigation.

    Recent turmoil in Minnesota has demonstrated the potential ripple effects of allegations levied by the Trump administration.

    Ahead of sending in thousands of immigration enforcement agents into the Midwest state, Trump had repeatedly cited a fraud case involving funds for a child nutrition program involving COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

    He used the case, which involved a nonprofit where several Somali Americans worked, to vilify the immigrant community, even though the organization was run by a white woman. After the state became a lightning rod, Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection plans.

    At Thursday’s news conference, Bonta described major cases in other states, such as $11.4 million healthcare fraud and wire fraud conspiracy involving a nursing assistant in Florida and a $88.3 million Medicaid fraud case in in Ohio involving over billing by a pharmacy benefit manager — to show abuse of state programs is not unique to California — or to blue states.

    “We know Vance hails from Ohio, so maybe he should take a look in his own backyard before leading an unnecessary political stunt focused on California,” Bonta said. “We thought we should set the record straight.”

    Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

    Suhauna Hussain, Clara Harter

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  • Complaints about gaps in Medicare Advantage networks are common. Federal enforcement is rare.

    Along with the occasional aches and pains, growing older can bring surprise setbacks and serious diseases. Longtime relationships with doctors people trust often make even bad news more tolerable. Losing that support — especially during a health crisis — can be terrifying. That’s why little-known federal requirements are supposed to protect people with privately run Medicare Advantage coverage when contract disputes lead their health care providers and insurers to part ways.

    But government documents obtained by KFF Health News show the agency overseeing Medicare Advantage does little to enforce long-standing rules intended to ensure about 35 million plan members can see doctors in the first place.

    In response to a Freedom of Information Act request covering the past decade, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services produced letters it sent to only five insurers from 2016 to 2022 after seven of their plans failed to meet provider network adequacy requirements — lapses that could, in some cases, harm patient care.

    Agency officials said some plans lacked enough primary care clinicians, specialists, or hospitals, according to the letters. And they warned that failure to meet the requirements could result in a freeze on marketing and enrollment, fines, or closure of the plan.

    CMS declined to detail why it found so few plans with network violations over the 10 years. “The number of identified violations reflects the outcomes of targeted reviews, not a comprehensive audit of all plans in all years,” said Catherine Howden, a CMS spokesperson.

    Officials in states with Advantage network violations say CMS didn’t notify them, including directors of the government-funded State Health Insurance Assistance Program, which helps people navigate Medicare.

    “It’s hard for me to believe that only seven Medicare Advantage plans violated network rules,” said David Lipschutz, a co-director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group. “We often hear from folks — particularly in more rural areas — who have to travel significant distances in order to find contracted providers.”

    Medicare Advantage is an increasingly popular alternative to the government-run Medicare program, which covers adults 65 and older and some people with disabilities. Of the 63 million Americans who were eligible to join Advantage plans instead of traditional Medicare, 54% did so for this year. The plans usually offer lower out-of-pocket costs and extra benefits, like coverage for vision, dental, and hearing care, but typically require their members to stick to select networks of doctors, hospitals, and other providers. Last year, the federal government paid Advantage plans an estimated $494 billion to care for patients.

    Traditional Medicare, by comparison, has no network and is accepted by nearly all doctors and hospitals in the nation.

    Conflicts between Medicare Advantage plans and the doctors, hospitals, and other providers that serve their members are common. Just this year, at least 38 hospital systems serving all or parts of 23 states have cut ties with at least 11 Advantage plans after failing to agree on payment and other issues, according to a review of news releases and press reports. Over the past three years, separations between Advantage plans and health systems have increased 66%, said FTI Consulting, which tracks reports of the disputes.

    After March, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are generally locked into their plans for the year until the annual open enrollment period happening now through Dec. 7, for coverage beginning Jan. 1. But hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, and other health providers can leave plans anytime.

    When providers and insurers separate, Advantage members can lose access to longtime doctors or preferred hospitals in the middle of the year. In response, CMS sometimes gives Advantage customers a little-known escape hatch called a “special enrollment period” to change plans or enroll in traditional Medicare midyear.

    How CMS decides who gets an SEP is a mystery even to well-versed state insurance regulators and U.S. senators who oversee federal health programs. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) cited previous KFF Health News reporting on Medicare Advantage in an Oct. 30 letter asking CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz for an explanation.

    “Despite the serious impacts of SEPs on enrollees and the market, the process of SEP determinations is opaque, leaving enrollees and state regulators in the dark,” they wrote.

    “Seniors deserve to know their Medicare plan isn’t going to pull the rug out from under them halfway through the year,” Wyden told KFF Health News.

    “Help us”

    Oz spoke to Medicare Advantage insurers Oct. 15 at a conference organized by the Better Medicare Alliance, a trade group, and encouraged them to help CMS police fraud in the program.

    “Be our early-warning system,” he told them. “Tell us about problems you’re witnessing. Help us figure out better ways of addressing it.”

    When he finished speaking, he took a seat in the audience next to the president and chief executive of the group, Mary Beth Donahue, and smiled for photos.

    In six letters KFF Health News obtained, CMS officials told five insurers that their network adequacy violations could affect Advantage members’ access to care. Five letters listed the number or types of medical specialists or facilities missing from the networks. In three cases, CMS noted that plans could request exceptions to the rules but didn’t. In one letter, CMS requested the plan allow members to receive out-of-network care at no additional cost. Four letters required specific steps to address deficiencies, including submitting evidence that more clinicians were added to networks.

    Three letters required a “corrective action plan,” set deadlines for fixing problems, and warned that failure to comply with the rules could result in enrollment and marketing suspensions, fines, or forced plan closure. The other three letters were a “notice of non-compliance,” which urged insurers to comply with legal requirements. 

    Although CMS regards the letters as the first step in its enforcement process, the agency did not provide information about whether these violations were resolved or if they resulted in penalties.

    The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a group created by Congress to monitor the program, said in a June 2024 report that “CMS has the authority to impose intermediate sanctions or civil monetary penalties for noncompliance with network adequacy standards, but it has never done so.”

    One of the network adequacy violation letters went to Vitality Health Plan of California in November 2020. That came after five hospitals and 13 nursing homes in one county and four hospitals in another all left the insurer’s network, according to the letter from Timothy Roe, then-director of CMS’ Division of Compliance, Surveillance, and Marketing. Two months before sending its letter, CMS granted Vitality plan members a special enrollment period.

    Beneficiaries welcomed the opportunity, said Marcelo Espiritu, program manager of the Santa Clara County office of California’s Health Insurance Counseling & Advocacy Program. But Espiritu didn’t know at the time that Vitality’s depleted network violated CMS requirements, which Roe said put “the health of Vitality’s beneficiaries at risk.”

    “By not having enough network providers, beneficiaries may not be able to receive necessary services timely, or at all,” Roe wrote.

    That’s information patients need to know, Espiritu said.

    “People would not be able to receive promised benefits and there would be delays in care and a lot of frustration in trying to find a new plan,” he said. “We would certainly warn people about the plan and remove it from our materials.”

    Representatives from Commonwealth Care Alliance, which acquired Vitality in 2022, did not respond to requests for comment.

    Network minimums

    Federal law requires Medicare Advantage plans to include in their networks a minimum of 29 types of health care providers and 14 kinds of facilities that members can access within certain distances and travel times. The rules, which vary depending on a county’s population and density, also limit how long patients should wait for appointments. The agency checks compliance every three years, or more often if it receives complaints.

    Networks can vary widely even within a county because the provider minimums apply to the insurer, not each plan it sells, according to a report from KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. The company can offer the same network to members of multiple plans in one or more counties or create a separate network for each plan.

    In Arizona’s Maricopa County, KFF researchers found, UnitedHealthcare offered 12 plans with 12 different networks in 2022. Depending on the plan, the company’s customers had access to 37% to 61% of the physicians in the area available to traditional Medicare enrollees.

    In early 2016, CMS allowed 900 people in an Advantage plan in Illinois run by Harmony, then a WellCare subsidiary, to leave after the Christie Clinic, a large medical practice, left its provider network. The WellCare plan continued to operate without the clinic. But in June 2016, CMS told the plan in one of the letters KFF Health News obtained that losing the Christie Clinic meant the remaining provider network violated federal requirements.

    It was “a significant network change with substantial enrollee impact,” the letter said.

    Claudia Lennhoff, executive director at Champaign County Health Care Consumers, a government-funded Medicare counseling service that helped the WellCare members, said her group didn’t know about the letter at the time.

    “Not disclosing such information is a violation of trust,” Lennhoff said. “It could lead someone to make a decision that will be harmful to them, or that they will deeply regret.”

    Centene Corp. bought WellCare in 2020, and representatives for the St. Louis-based company declined to comment on events that occurred before the acquisition.

    Two violation letters KFF Health News obtained from CMS went to Provider Partners Health Plan of Ohio in 2019 and 2022. The Ohio Department of Insurance was unaware of the violations, spokesperson Todd Walker said. He said CMS also did not notify the Ohio Senior Health Insurance Information Program, the state’s free counseling service.

    Rick Grindrod, CEO and president of Provider Partners Health Plans, which is based in Maryland, said that after CMS reviewed its 2019 network, “we proactively reduced our service area and deferred enrollment in the plan until 2021.”

    But Grindrod said the plan enrolled only a small number of members in one county in 2021 and decided to withdraw from the Ohio market entirely at the end of that year.

    After Provider Partners withdrew from Ohio, CMS sent it another letter in March 2022 saying its network in 2021 had gaps in four counties for four types of providers and facilities. CMS asked the plan to comply with network rules by adding more providers.

    “We believe CMS’ network adequacy standards are generally clear and appropriate for ensuring beneficiary access,” Grindrod said. “While the standards are not difficult to understand, as a provider-sponsored plan with a small footprint, we sometimes face challenges securing contracts with large systems that prioritize larger Medicare Advantage plans.”

    In 2021, CMS also sent a violation letter to North Carolina’s Liberty Advantage. CMS didn’t tell the state’s free counseling service, the Seniors’ Health Insurance Information Program, about the letter, said its director, Melinda Munden.

    Liberty representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

    CMS sent a letter in 2016 to CareSource about network deficiencies in some of its Medicare Advantage plans sold in Kentucky and Indiana. The agency asked the company to fix the problems, including by reimbursing any members billed for services from doctors who were not in the plans’ networks.

    “In response to the 2016 violations, we promptly implemented a Corrective Action Plan, which included a thorough review of our provider network to ensure adequacy standards were met,” said Vicki McDonald, a CareSource spokesperson. “CMS approved our plan, and no further action was required.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

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  • Concerns over fairness, access rise as states compete for slice of $50 billion rural health fund

    Echo Kopplin wants South Dakota’s leaders to know that money from a new $50 billion federal rural health fund should help residents with limited transportation options.

    Kopplin, a physician assistant who works with seniors, low-income people, and mental health patients in the rural Black Hills, shared her thoughts at a meeting hosted by state officials.

    South Dakota’s leaders did a “good job of diving in” and asking questions to get “deeper at the root of the problem,” she said.

    Kopplin later told KFF Health News how one of her rural patients recently missed two appointments because of a broken-down car and no access to public transportation.

    Nationwide, health care workers like Kopplin and thousands of others — from patient advocates to technology executives — flocked to town halls or online portals during the seven weeks state leaders had to craft and submit their applications for the Rural Health Transformation Program to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That deadline was Nov. 5.

    “We will give $50 billion away by the end of the year,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said Nov. 6 at a Milken Institute event in Washington. He said all 50 states had submitted applications.

    The program will “allow us to right-size the health care system,” Oz said, adding that innovations from the rural work “will spill over to suburban and urban America as well.”

    Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz (right) with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary (center) and Esther Krofah, executive vice president of Milken Institute Health, at a Milken Institute event on Nov. 6, 2025.

    Sarah Jane Tribble/KFF Health News


    Among applications and summaries publicly shared by states, themes include workforce development, telehealth, and access to healthy food. In Kansas, leaders want to build a “Food is Medicine” program. Wyoming officials propose a new program called “BearCare,” a state-sponsored health insurance plan that patients could use only after medical emergencies.

    But many health policy experts and Democrats are raising alarms that the Republican-backed program will become a “slush fund.” Critics worry it will fail to reach the small-town patients they say need it most, especially as states face nearly a trillion dollars in Medicaid spending reductions over the next decade. Medicaid, a joint federal-state program, serves nearly 1 in 4 rural Americans.

    “The status quo is tremendous distress in rural communities,” said Heather Howard, a professor of the practice at Princeton University and director of the university’s State Health and Value Strategies program, which is tracking the rural health fund. The new funding won’t be enough to offset the Medicaid losses, she said.

    Congressional Republicans added the five-year, $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program as a last-minute sweetener to President Donald Trump’s massive tax-and-spending legislation. The move helped win support for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act from conservative holdouts who worried that the Medicaid cuts in the bill would harm rural hospitals in their states.

    In Montana, which hosted an online public forum before submitting its application, a nonprofit director pitched youth peer support as a way of battling high suicide rates. A registered nurse asked state leaders to “think maybe even bigger” and consider statewide universal health care.

    And in Georgia, a technology-focused chain of primary care clinics that serves seniors proposed expanding its operations into that state in its online public comment. A rural grant writer asked for “safe and stable housing.”

    The law says half of the $50 billion will be divided equally among all states with an approved application. The rest will be doled out according to a points-based system. Of the second half, $12.5 billion will be allotted based on each state’s rurality. The remaining $12.5 billion will go to states that score well on initiatives and policies that, in part, mirror the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” objectives.

    Top Senate Democrats have raised alarms about the rural health program. They include Ron Wyden of Oregon and Tina Smith of Minnesota, who called on a federal watchdog agency to investigate the fairness and implementation of the fund. Taylor Harvey, a Wyden aide, said the Government Accountability Office has confirmed it will investigate.

    According to the federal statute, no less than a quarter of states with an approved application may share the second half of the funding each fiscal year, CMS spokesperson Catherine Howden said. The agency plans to publish summaries of approved state projects, according to CMS guidance.

    A handful of conservative-leaning states — including Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma — have already instituted regulatory and legislative initiatives, such as prohibiting “non-nutritious” foods in benefit programs, that garner additional points in the program application process.

    Michael Chameides, a county supervisor in rural New York, said he fears the money could “be used in ways that would hurt certain states or reward certain states.” Chameides is also the communications and policy director with the Rural Democracy Initiative, a national advocacy organization that released a rural action report last month.

    Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, said federal lawmakers gave Oz and his agency “really excessive discretion” when awarding the money.

    Federal administrators have added rules that aren’t within the statute that created the program, Park said. For example, its application guidelines say states cannot use more than 15% of their funding to pay providers for patient care — payments that are expected to take a hit due to the Medicaid cuts.

    Georgetown’s health policy experts and Democrats aren’t the only ones with concerns. Some Republicans and small hospitals in Ohio worry the money will go to large health systems instead of smaller, independent hospitals that serve people within their rural communities.

    CMS’ Oz repeated the idea of getting “big hospitals to adopt smaller institutions” at the Washington gathering after applications were filed. He used similar language at a rural health summit hosted by South Dakota-based Sanford Health. “How do we get big hospitals to adopt smaller hospitals? Not to take them over, but to keep them viable by giving them good telehealth services, specialty support, radiology support,” he said at the October event.

    Sanford owns or manages dozens of hospitals and hundreds of clinics and long-term care centers, as well as a health insurance company. The system reported about $81 million in operating income during the first six months of fiscal year 2025, according to a recent bond rating report.

    Last year, Sanford opened a “command center” for its systemwide telehealth initiative. It launched a telehealth expansion in 2021 and offers virtual care for 78 medical specialties, Sanford President and CEO Bill Gassen said.

    “We’ve tried to imagine, what if that number doubles?” Gassen said. The startup costs for telehealth are high, he said, and the rural fund could be a unique opportunity “for us to make virtual care available to more patients, to more communities, to more hospitals and health systems across the country.”

    Gassen, who is set to chair the American Hospital Association in 2027, said Sanford leaders have met with state and federal officials, including Oz, whom he’s known for years, and Chris Klomp, a top deputy at CMS and a senior adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    The word “telehealth” appears 36 times in the rural health program’s 124-page application guidelines. But Don Robbins Jr., chief executive of a small hospital on the Illinois-Kentucky border, chuckled at the idea of using the funding for that purpose.

    Robbins, whose 25-bed Massac Memorial Hospital averages five to seven patients in its beds each day, said his hospital does not regularly offer telehealth. Even if it did, he said, patients living more than a mile outside of town couldn’t use it because they don’t have a good internet connection.

    The small hospital reported a $31,314 loss in September, Robbins said. “I think if we get anything out of it,” Robbins said of the rural health program, “we’ll be lucky.”

    Kopplin, the physician assistant who attended the South Dakota meeting, is cautiously optimistic about the rural health fund. She views it as a wonderful chance for states to test out ideas and learn from what works and what doesn’t.

    But “in a lot of ways this bill is going to be a band-aid approach” for rural health, she said. “It’s not really going to fix the problem.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

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  • Dr. Oz says

    Dr. Mehmet Oz told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett on “The Takeout” Thursday the Trump administration is not advising pregnant women to avoid taking Tylenol under any circumstances — as President Trump’s announcement this week about an alleged link between the painkiller and fever reducer and autism draws pushback from medical experts.

    Oz — a former surgeon and television personality who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency that is under the Department of Health and Human Services — said that if a pregnant woman develops a high fever, a doctor will likely encourage her to take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, because fevers can pose health risks.  And studies show acetaminophen is the safest medication to treat fevers in pregnant women. 

    “The concern here is that I believe most women get low-grade fevers, they stub their toe, they have little aches and pains, and they think it’s perfectly safe to throw a couple paracetamol or acetaminophen or Tylenol when they’re pregnant, and I don’t think that’s the case,” Oz said.

    On Monday, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary released an open letter to physicians that said acetaminophen use during pregnancy “may be associated with” an increased risk of conditions like autism. 

    The letter noted that “while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established.”

    Makary’s letter was also more tempered than Mr. Trump’s comments during a news conference earlier this week in which the president said there’s “no downside in not taking” Tylenol. 

    “Acetaminophen is the safest over-the-counter alternative in pregnancy among all analgesics and antipyretics,” Makary wrote in his letter. 

    There is concern among the medical community that, as a result of the FDA’s announcement Monday, that some patients could turn to other pain medications that are proven to be unsafe during pregnancy. 

    “You should not, under any circumstances, avoid taking acetaminophen if you have a fever early in pregnancy, if you have a headache, if you have some other condition in pregnancy, we want you to take that medication,” Dr. Steven Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told CBS News following the FDA’s announcement. “The overwhelming evidence that we have seen over the last 20 years does not show causation for acetaminophen causing autism.”

    In a statement in response to the FDA’s announcement, Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol, said, “Independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” calling it “the safest pain reliever option for pregnant women as needed throughout their entire pregnancy.” 

    Oz also addressed Makary’s announcement that the agency will approve the prescription drug leucovorin, which is derived from folic acid, to treat autism in children. Specialists say leucovorin can be helpful in treating some autism cases, but it is not a universal remedy.

    “The key question is, if you, as a researcher on those trials, had a child, would you give that child leucovorin?” Oz said he asked of researchers studying leucovorin. “And when I asked the doctors on those trials, they said yes.”

    Autism has become more prevalent in children born in the U.S. over the past 25 years, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but there is no scientific consensus as to why.

    Oz said that when he, Makary and Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, were asked by the White House to examine the issue, they found two “clues,” not conclusions, that pointed to leucovorin as a possible treatment option for autistic children, and acetaminophen as a medication pregnant women should be cautious about taking.

    “These are things that we believe, that if you’re fully transparent about, you’ll rebuild trust with the American people,” Oz said. “Just tell people what you know.” 

    Oz argued that Mr. Trump was right in pushing for the FDA to both approve leucovorin and make its Tylenol recommendation — even though there is no consensus in the medical community and no definitive evidence supporting either move — because he believes the FDA has an obligation to be transparent. 

    But Oz was clear that patients should consult their doctors first before making a decision. 

    “The Tylenol issue is whether or not we should warn moms, who are pregnant today, about a problem that we may not know fully the answer to — ‘Is Tylenol a problem during pregnancy?’  — for another five years,” Oz said. “Well, what about the kid today? Are you going to take the Tylenol or not. Well I think the answer is, the best prudent answer, of course take it if a doctor says you need it. But don’t take it on your own without thinking twice about it.” 

    Oz also indicated that he would not advise a pregnant family member to take Tylenol without talking to their physician first. 

    “We’re guarded in saying we don’t have all the answers,” he said. “But if it’s my family, I’m not going to have my pregnant daughter take acetaminophen if she doesn’t need to be on it without certainly talking to a doctor about it.”

    Sara Moniuszko and

    Dr. Céline Gounder

    contributed to this report.

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  • Republicans Need to Stop Being Jerks

    Republicans Need to Stop Being Jerks

    Let’s say you’re a politician in a close race and your opponent suffers a stroke. What do you do?

    If you are Mehmet Oz running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, what you do is mock your opponent’s affliction. In August, the Oz campaign released a list of “concessions” it would offer to the Democrat John Fetterman in a candidates’ debate, including:

    “We will allow John to have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff, in real time.” And: “We will pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.”

    Oz’s derision of his opponent’s medical condition continued right up until Oz lost the race by more than 250,000 votes. Oz’s defeat flipped the Pennsylvania seat from Republican to Democrat, dooming GOP hopes of a Senate majority in 2023.

    A growing number of Republicans are now pointing their finger at Donald Trump for the party’s disappointments in the 2022 elections, with good reason. Trump elevated election denial as an issue and burdened his party with a lot of election-denying candidates—and voters decisively repudiated them.

    But not all of Trump’s picks were obviously bad. Oz was for years a successful TV pitchman, trusted by millions of Americans for health advice. The first Muslim nominated for a Senate run by a major party, he advanced Republican claims to represent 21st-century America. Oz got himself tangled up between competing positions on abortion, sometimes in consecutive sentences, precisely because he hoped to position himself as moderate on such issues.

    But Oz’s decision to campaign as a jerk hurt him. When his opponent got sick, Oz could have drawn on his own medical background for compassion and understanding. Before he succumbed to the allure of TV, Oz was an acclaimed doctor whose innovations transformed the treatment of heart disease. He could have reminded voters of his best human qualities rather than displaying his worst.

    The choice to do the opposite was his, not Trump’s.

    Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point

    And Oz was not unique. Many of the unsuccessful Republican candidates in 2022 offered voters weird, extreme, or obnoxious personas. Among the worst was Blake Masters, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. He released photos and campaign videos of himself playing with guns, looking like a sociopath. He lost by nearly five points. Trump endorsed Masters in the end, but Trump wasn’t the one who initially selected or funded him. That unsavory distinction belongs to the tech billionaire and Republican donor Peter Thiel, who invested big and early in the campaign of his former university student.

    Performative trolling did not always lead to failure. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis indulged in obnoxious stunts in 2022. He promoted anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists. He used the power of government to punish corporations that dissented from his culture-war policies. He spent $1.5 million of taxpayer money to send asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard.

    But DeSantis was an incumbent executive with a record of accomplishment. Antics intended to enrapture the national Fox News audience could be offset by actions to satisfy his local electorate: restoring the Everglades, raising teacher pay, and reopening public schools early despite COVID risks.

    DeSantis’s many Republican supporters must now ponder: What happens when and if the governor takes his show on the road? “Pragmatic on state concerns, divisive on national issues!” plays a little differently in a presidential race than it does at the state level. But the early indications are that he’s sticking with divisiveness: A month after his reelection, DeSantis is bidding for the anti-vax vote by promoting extremist allegations from the far fringes that modern vaccines threaten public health.

    A generation ago, politicians invested great effort in appearing agreeable: Ronald Reagan’s warm chuckle, Bill Clinton’s down-home charm, George W. Bush’s smiling affability. By contrast, Donald Trump delighted in name-calling, rudeness, and open disdain. Not even his supporters would have described Trump as an agreeable person. Yet he made it to the White House all the same—in part because of this trollish style of politics, which has encouraged others to emulate him.

    Ilana E. Strauss: How science explains why some politicians are jerks

    Has our hyper-polarized era changed the old rules of politics? James Poniewozik’s 2019 book, Audience of One, argues that Trump’s ascendancy was the product of a huge shift in media culture. The three big television networks of yore had sought to create “the least objectionable program”; they aimed to make shows that would offend the fewest viewers. As audiences fractured, however, the marketplace rewarded content that excited ever narrower segments of American society. Reagan and Clinton were replaced by Trump for much the same reason Walter Cronkite was replaced by Sean Hannity.

    It’s an ingenious theory. But, as Poniewozik acknowledges, democratic politics in a two-party system remains an inescapably broadcast business. Trump’s material sold well enough in 2016 to win (with help from FBI Director James Comey’s intervention against Hillary Clinton, Russian hackers amplified by the Trump campaign, and the mechanics of the Electoral College). But in 2020, Trump met the political incarnation of the Least Objectionable Program: Joe Biden, who is to politics what Jay Leno was to late-night entertainment.

    Trump-led Republicans have now endured four bad elections in a row. In 2018, they lost the House. In 2020, they lost the presidency. In 2021, they lost the Senate. In 2022, they won back the House—barely—but otherwise failed to score the gains one expects of the opposition party in a midterm. They suffered a net loss of one Senate seat and two governorships. They failed to flip a single chamber in any state legislature. In fact, the Democrats gained control of four: one each in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and both in Michigan.

    Plausible theories about why Republicans fared so badly in 2022 abound. The economy? Gas prices fell in the second half of 2022, while the economy continued to grow. Abortion? The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, and Republican officeholders began musing almost immediately about a national ban, while draconian restrictions began spreading through the states. Attacks on democracy? In contest after contest, Republicans expressed their contempt for free elections, and independent voters responded by rejecting them.

    All of these factors clearly played a role. But don’t under-​weight the impact of the performative obnoxiousness that now pervades Republican messaging. Conservatives have built career paths for young people that start on extremist message boards and lead to jobs on Republican campaigns, then jobs in state and federal offices, and then jobs in conservative media.

    Former top Trump-administration officials set up a well-funded dark-money group, Citizens for Sanity, that spent millions to post trolling messages on local TV in battleground states, intended to annoy viewers into voting Republican, such as “Protect pregnant men from climate discrimination.” The effect was just to make the Republicans seem juvenile.

    In 2021, then–House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy posted a video of himself reading aloud from Dr. Seuss to protest the Seuss estate’s withdrawing some works for being racially insensitive (although he took care to read Green Eggs and Ham, not one of the withdrawn books).

    Trump himself often seemed to borrow his scripts from a Borscht Belt insult comic—for instance, performing imagined dialogues making fun of his opponent’s adult children during the 2020 campaign.

    This is not a “both sides” story. Democratic candidates don’t try to energize their base by “owning the conservatives”; that’s just not a phrase you hear. The Democratic coalition is bigger and looser than the Republican coalition, and it’s not clear that Democrats even have an obvious “base” the way that Republicans do. The people who heeded Representative Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Joe Biden in South Carolina do not necessarily have much in common with those who knocked on doors for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. Trying to energize all of the Democratic Party’s many different “bases” with deliberate offensiveness against perceived cultural adversaries would likely fizzle at best, and backfire at worst. On the Republican side, however, the politics of performance can be—or seem—rewarding, at least in the short run.

    This pattern of behavior bids fair to repeat itself in 2024. As I write these words at the beginning of 2023, the conservative world is most excited not by the prospect of big legislative action from a Republican House majority, and not by Trump’s declared candidacy for president in 2024 or by DeSantis’s as-yet-undeclared one, but by the chance to repeat its 2020 attacks on the personal misconduct of President Biden’s son Hunter.

    In the summer of 2019, the Trump administration put enormous pressure on the newly elected Zelensky administration in Ukraine to announce some kind of criminal investigation of the Biden family. This first round of Trump’s project to manufacture an anti-Biden scandal exploded into Trump’s first impeachment.

    The failure of round one did not deter the Trump campaign. It tried again in 2020. This time, the scandal project was based on sexually explicit photographs and putatively compromising emails featuring Hunter Biden. The story the Trump campaign told about how it obtained these materials sounded dubious: Hunter Biden himself supposedly delivered his computer to a legally blind repairman in Delaware but never returned to retrieve it—so the repairman tracked down Rudy Giuliani and handed over a copy of the hard drive. The repairman had also previously given the laptop itself to the FBI. Far-fetched stories can sometimes prove true, and so might this one.

    Whatever the origin of the Hunter Biden materials, the authenticity of at least some of which has been confirmed by reputable media outlets, there’s no dispute about their impact on the 2020 election. They flopped.

    Pro-Trump Republicans could never accept that their go-to tactic had this time failed. Somebody or something else had to be to blame. They decided that this somebody or something was Twitter, which had briefly blocked links to the initial New York Post story on the laptop and its contents.

    So now the new Twitter—and Elon Musk allies who have been offered privileged access to the company’s internal workings—is trying again to elevate the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, and to allege a cover-up involving the press, tech companies, and the national-security establishment. It’s all very exciting to the tiny minority of Americans who closely follow political schemes. And it’s all pushing conservatives and Republicans back onto the same doomed path they followed in the Trump years: stunts and memes and insults and fabricated controversies in place of practical solutions to the real problems everyday people face. The party has lost contact with the sensibility of mainstream America, a huge country full of decent people who are offended by bullying and cruelty.

    There’s talk of some kind of review by the Republican National Committee of what went wrong in 2022. If it happens, it will likely focus on organization, fundraising, and technology. For any political operation, there is always room to improve in these areas. But if the party is to thrive in the post-Trump era, it needs to start with something more basic: at least pretend to be nice.

    * Lead image source credits: Chris Graythen / Getty; Ed Jones / AFP / Getty; Drew Angerer / Getty; Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty; Michael M. Santiago / Getty; Brandon Bell / Getty; Win McNamee / Getty; Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty; Alex Wong / Getty

    This article appears in the March 2023 print edition with the headline “Party of Trolls.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

    David Frum

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  • How Abortion Defined the 2022 Midterms

    How Abortion Defined the 2022 Midterms

    Ask anyone what Mehmet Oz said about reproductive rights during last month’s Pennsylvania Senate debate, and they’ll probably tell you that the TV doctor believes an abortion should be between “a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders.” The truth is, that dystopian Handmaid’s Tale–esque statement did not come verbatim from the Republican’s mouth. But it may have cost him the election anyway.

    Instead, that catchphrase entered Pennsylvania voters’ consciousness—and ricocheted across social media—via a tweet by Pat Dennis, a Democratic opposition researcher. Dennis’s megaviral post included a clip purporting to show Oz pitching something akin to a pregnancy tribunal. But the clip was, well, clipped: In the 10-second video, Oz does not even say the word abortion. Did it matter? Not in the least. Here was Oz’s fuller, unedited response to the question:

    There should not be involvement from the federal government in how states decide their abortion decisions. As a physician, I’ve been in the room when there’s some difficult conversations happening. I don’t want the federal government involved with that at all. I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.

    Although that by no means utterly rebuts Dennis’s three-clause summary, it is different. Of course, voters zeroed in on—and recoiled from—the pithier version. Oz failed to shake his association with the thorny abortion hypothetical, much as he failed to shake the long-running joke that he actually lives in New Jersey. Abortion decided this race, and Oz was on the wrong side of history.

    Read: Why this election is so weird

    In red and blue states alike, reproductive autonomy proved a defining issue of the 2022 midterms. Although much pre-election punditry predicted that Pennsylvania Democratic nominee John Fetterman’s post-stroke verbal disfluency was poised to “blow up” the pivotal Senate race on Election Day, the exit polls suggest that abortion seismically affected contests up and down the ballot.

    Concerns over the future of reproductive rights unequivocally drove Democratic turnout and will now lead to the rewriting of state laws around the country. In deep-red Kentucky, voters rejected an amendment that read, “Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.” In blue havens such as California and Vermont, voters approved ballot initiatives enshrining abortion rights into their state constitutions.

    In Michigan, a traditionally blue state that in recent years has turned more purple, voters likewise enshrined reproductive protections into law, with 45 percent of exit-poll respondents calling abortion the most important issue on the ballot. In the race for the Michigan statehouse, the incumbent Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, trounced her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon, who had said that she supports abortion only in instances that would save the life of the woman, and never in the case of rape or incest. Dixon lost by more than 10 percentage points and almost half a million votes.

    After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended the federal right to abortion in June, many observers wondered whether pro-abortion-rights Democrats would remain paralyzed with despair or whether their anger would become a galvanizing force going into the election season. The answer is now clear—though, in fact, it has been for some time.

    Mary Ziegler: If the Supreme Court can reverse Roe, it can reverse anything

    In August, just six weeks after Dobbs, Kansas voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution that could have ushered in a ban on abortion. That grassroots-movement defeat of the ballot initiative was a genuine shocker—and it showed voters in other states what was possible at the local level.

    Nowhere in the midterms voting did abortion seem to matter more than in Pennsylvania. Oz, like his endorser, former President Donald Trump, spent years as a Northeast cosmopolitan before he tried, and failed, to remake himself as a paint-by-numbers conservative. That meant preaching a party-line stance during the most contentious national conversation about abortion in half a century. It came back to haunt him.

    At the October debate, Fetterman was mocked for (among other things) his simplistic, repetitive invocation of supporting Roe v. Wade. Even when asked by moderators to answer an abortion question in more detail, he simply kept coming back to the phrase. Whatever it lacked in nuance, Fetterman’s allegiance to his pro-abortion-rights position was impossible to misconstrue. This was an abortion election, and voters knew exactly where he stood.

    John Hendrickson

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  • Opinion: A really bad night for some high-profile Trump-backed candidates | CNN

    Opinion: A really bad night for some high-profile Trump-backed candidates | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    CNN Opinion contributors share their thoughts on the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a clear message to every Republican voter Tuesday night: My way is the path to a national majority, and former President Donald Trump’s way is the path to future disappointments and continued suffering.

    Four years ago, DeSantis won his first gubernatorial race by less than a percentage point. His nearly 20-point win against Democratic candidate Charlie Crist on Tuesday sent the message that DeSantis, not Trump, can win over the independent voters who decide elections.

    DeSantis’ decisive victory offers a future where the Republican Party might actually win the popular vote in a presidential contest – something that hasn’t been done since George W. Bush in 2004.

    Meanwhile, many of the candidates Trump endorsed in 2022 struggled, and it was clear from CNN exit polls that the former President – with his 37% favorability rating – would be a serious underdog in the 2024 general election should he win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time.

    My friend Patrick Ruffini of Echelon Insights tweeted a key observation: DeSantis commanded huge support among Latinos in 2022 compared to Trump in 2020.

    In 2020, Biden won the heavily Latino Miami-Dade County by seven points. DeSantis flipped the county on Tuesday and ran away with an 11-point win.

    In 2020, Biden won Osceola County by nearly 14 points. This time, DeSantis secured the county by nearly seven points, marking a whopping 21-point swing.

    DeSantis combined his strength among Latinos with his support among working class Whites, suburban white-collar voters and rural Floridians. That’s a coalition that could win nationally, unlike Trump’s limited appeal among several traditional Republican voting segments.

    Last year, it was Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin of Virginia who scored an earthquake in a Biden state by keeping Trump at arm’s length and focusing on the issues. Tonight, it was DeSantis who ran as his own man (Trump rallied for Marco Rubio but not DeSantis at the end of the campaign) and showed what you can do when you combine the political instincts required to be a successful Republican these days with actual governing competence.

    DeSantis made a convincing case that he, rather than Trump, gives Republicans the best chance to defeat Biden (or some other Democrat) in 2024. With Trump plotting a reelection campaign announcement soon, DeSantis has a lot to think about and a solid springboard from which to launch a challenge to the former President.

    Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor and Republican campaign adviser, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY.

    Roxanne Jones

    Let it go. If election night confirmed anything for me it is this: We can all – voters, doomscrollers, pundits and election deniers included – stop believing every election revolves around former President Donald Trump. Instead, when asked in exit polls across the country, younger people, women and other voters in key demographics said their top concerns were inflation, abortion rights, crime and other quality of life issues.

    What a relief. It finally feels like a majority of voters want to re-center American politics away from the toxic, conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric we’ve experienced over the past several years.

    Yes, Republicans are still projected to take control of the House of Representatives, with a narrow (and narrowing) majority – but will that make much difference? Despite the advantage Democrats had in the chamber the past two years, President Joe Biden has still had to battle and compromise to get parts of his agenda passed. How the balance of power will settle in the Senate is unclear, with a few races in key states still undecided as of this afternoon. It will likely hinge, again, on Georgia, and a forthcoming runoff election between the incumbent, Democrat Raphael Warnock, and his GOP challenger, former football star Herschel Walker.

    No matter what party you claim, there were positive signs coming out of the midterms. My hometown, Philadelphia, and its surrounding suburbs, came up big in another election – rejecting the Trump-backed New Jersey transplant, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and helping to send Democratic candidate John Fetterman to the US Senate. Pennsylvania voters also rejected an election denier, Doug Mastriano, in the race for state governor, and made history by electing Democrat Summer Lee as the state’s first Black woman to serve in Congress.

    Maryland voters, meanwhile, elected Democrat Wes Moore as their state’s first Black governor. And in New England, Maura Healey became Massachusetts’ first female governor. She’s also the first out lesbian to win a state governorship anywhere in the US.

    Democracy, freedom and equality also won out on ballot issues.

    In unfinished business, voters tackled slavery, permanently abolishing “involuntary servitude” in four states – Vermont, Oregon, Alabama and Tennessee. (Louisiana held on to the slavery clause under its constitution, however.)

    Despite efforts to limit voting rights across the nation, voters in Alabama approved a measure requiring that any change to state election law goes into effect at least six months before a general election. And, in Kentucky, voters narrowly beat back an amendment that would have removed constitutional protections for abortion rights – one of several instances in which voters refused to accept restrictive reproductive rights measures.

    Still, the highlight of my midterms night was watching 25-year-old Maxwell Frost win a US congressional race in Florida – holding a Democratic seat in a state whose 2022 results skewed red, no less. More and more, we are seeing young people energized, voting and stepping up with fresh ideas to lead this democracy. I’m here for it.

    Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN The Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has been a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of “Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.” She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD.

    Michael D'Antonio

    Voters made Tuesday a bad night for former President Donald Trump. Despite his efforts, many of his favorites not only lost but denied the GOP the usual out-party wave of wins that come in midterm elections. This leaves a diminished Trump with the challenge of deciding what to do next.

    In the short term, the man who so often returns to his well-worn playbook resumed his years-long effort to ruin Americans’ confidence in any election his team loses. “Protest, protest, protest,” he told his followers, even before all the polls closed. In a sign of his declining power, no mass protests ensued.

    Nevertheless, false claims of election fraud will likely be a major theme if he follows through on his loudly voiced hints that he plans to run for the White House again in 2024.

    To run or not to run is now the main question. It’s not an easy choice. Trump could end up like other one-term presidents he has mocked, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who retreated from politics and devoted themselves to new interests. However, he has other options. He could revive his television career – Fox News? – or return to his businesses. Or, he could develop a new role as leader of an organization that can exploit his prodigious fundraising ability, and give him a platform for grabbing attention, while leaving him plenty of time for golf.

    Running could forestall the various legal problems he faces, but he has lawyers who might accomplish the same goal. Fox News is unlikely to pay enough, and his businesses are now being watched by a court-appointed overseer. This leaves him with a combination of easy work – fundraising and pontificating – combined with his favorite pastimes: fame, money and fun. What’s not to like?

    Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book “High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump.”

    Jill Filipovic

    Democrat Kathy Hochul won the New York State gubernatorial race, and thank goodness. Her opponent, Lee Zeldin, is not your typical moderate Republican who usually stands a chance in a blue state. Instead, he’s an abortion opponent who wanted voters to simply trust he wouldn’t mess with New York’s abortion laws.

    Zeldin was endorsed by the National Rifle Association when he was in Congress. He is a Trump acolyte who voted against certifying the 2020 election in Congress, after texting with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and reportedly planning to contest the outcome of the 2020 election before the results were even in.

    New Yorkers sent a definitive message: Our values matter, even in moments of profound uncertainty.

    Plus, Hochul made history as the first woman elected to the governor’s office in New York.

    This race was, in its final days, predicted to be closer than it actually was. Part of that was simply the usual electoral math: The minority party typically has an advantage in the midterms, and Republicans are a minority in Washington, DC, with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress. And polling in New York state didn’t look as good for Hochul as it should have in a solidly blue state: Voters who talked to pollsters emphasized crime fears and the economy; abortion rights were galvanizing, but didn’t seem as definitive in an election for a governor vastly unlikely to have an abortion criminalization bill delivered to her desk.

    The polls were imperfect. It turns out that New Yorkers are, in fact, New Yorkers: Not cowed by overblown claims of crime (while I think crime is indeed a problem Democrats should address, New York City remains one of the safest places in the country); determined to defend the racial, ethnic and sexual diversity that makes our state great; and committed to standing up against the tyranny of an anti-democratic party that would force women into pregnancy and childbirth.

    However, Democrats shouldn’t take this win for granted. The issues voters raised – inflation, crime – are real concerns. And the reasons many voters turned out – abortion rights, democratic norms – remain under threat.

    Hochul’s job now is to address voter concerns, while standing up for New York values: Openness, decency, freedom for all. Because that’s what New Yorkers did today: The majority of us didn’t cast our ballots from a place of fear and reaction, but from the last dregs of hope and optimism. We voted for what we want. And we now want our governor to deliver.

    Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter.

    Douglas Heye

    North Carolina’s Senate race received less attention than contests in some other states – possibly a result of the campaign having lesser-known candidates than states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

    In the waning weeks of the race, multiple polls had the candidates – Democratic former state Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley and Republican US House Rep. Ted Budd – separated by a percentage point or less.

    Perhaps more than in any other Senate campaign, the issue of crime loomed large in North Carolina, with Budd claiming in his speeches that it had become much more dangerous to walk the streets in the state. That talking point, along with his focus on inflation, appeared to help propel him to victory in Tuesday’s vote.

    Beasley, by contrast, focused much of her attention on abortion, making it a central plank of her campaign that she would stand up not just for women’s reproductive rights, but workplace protections and equal pay.

    The two candidates were vying for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Despite being seen as a red state – albeit that is less solidly Republican than neighboring southern states – North Carolina has elected Democrats as five of the last six governors and two of the last six senators.

    Former President Barack Obama won the state in 2008 but lost it in 2012 by one of the closest margins in the nation. And while Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020, he never received 50% of the vote.

    Douglas Heye is the ex-deputy chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a GOP strategist and a CNN political commentator. Follow him on Twitter @dougheye.

    Sophia A. Nelson

    Many of us suspected that Democratic Florida Congresswoman and former House impeachment manager Val Demings would have an uphill battle unseating incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, and weren’t entirely surprised when she lost the race. With 98% of the vote counted, Rubio won easily, garnering 57.8% of the vote to Demings’ 41.1%.

    As it turns out, Tuesday was a tough night all around for Black women running statewide. Beyond Demings’ loss, Judge Cheri Beasley narrowly lost her Senate bid in North Carolina.

    And in the big heartbreak of the night, Stacey Abrams lost the Georgia governor’s race to Gov. Brian Kemp – a repeat of her defeat to him four years ago, when the two tangled for what at the time was an open seat.

    Abrams shook up the 2018 race by expanding the electoral map, enlisting more women and people of color who turned out in record numbers – but she fell short of punching her ticket to Georgia’s governor’s mansion. And on Tuesday she lost to Kemp by a much wider margin than in 2018.

    Had Abrams succeeded, she would have been the first Black woman to become the governor of a US state. After her second straight electoral loss, America is still waiting for that breakthrough.

    Meanwhile, an ever bigger winner of the night was Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, who handily defeated Democrat Charlie Crist.

    DeSantis’ big night solidifies what some feel is a compelling claim to front-runner status for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, on what turned out to be a strong election night for Republicans in the state.

    It’s hard for a Democrat to win statewide in the deep South. And as Demings, Beasley and Abrams have shown, it’s particularly tough for a Black woman to win statewide in the region: In fact, it’s never been done.

    All three women were well-qualified and well-funded stars in their party. But, when we look at the final vote tallies, it tells a familiar story. Take Demings, for example, a former law enforcement officer – she was Orlando’s police chief – and yet, she did not get the big law enforcement endorsements. Rubio did, although he never wore the blue.

    That was a big red flag for me, and it showed how much gender and race still play in the minds of male voters and power brokers of my generation and older. For Black women, a double burden of both race and gender at play. It is the nagging story of our lives.

    As for Abrams, I think Kemp was helped by backing away from Trump and modulating his campaign message to appeal to suburban women and independents.

    Abrams, meanwhile, just didn’t have the same support and enthusiasm this time around for her candidacy. And that is unfortunate, but for her to lose by such a big margin says much more.

    At the end of the day however, these three women have nothing to regret. They ran great campaigns, and they created great future platforms for themselves. And they each put one more crack in the glass ceiling facing candidates for the US Senate and governors’ mansions.

    Sophia A. Nelson is a journalist and author of the new book “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.”

    David Thornburgh

    Reflections on the morning after Election Day can be a little fuzzy: Chalk it up to a late night, incomplete data and a still-forming narrative. Still, as a longtime Pennsylvania election-watcher, I see three clear takeaways:

    1) Pennsylvanians don’t take to extreme anti-establishment candidates. The GOP candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, broke the mold of just about any statewide candidate in the last few decades.

    The state that delivered wins to center-right and center-left candidates like my father Gov, Dick Thornburgh, Sen. Bob Casey and Gov, Tom Ridge gave establishment Democrat Josh Shapiro a wipeout double-digit victory.

    2) “You’re not from here and I am” and “Stick it to the man” proved to be sufficiently powerful messages for alt-Democrat John Fetterman to win his Senate race, albeit by a much smaller margin.

    Amplified by more than $300 million in campaign spending (making PA’s the most expensive Senate race in the country), those two simple themes spoke to the quirky, stubborn authenticity that is a longstanding strand of Pennsylvania’s political DNA.

    3) In the home of Independence Hall, independent voters made a significant difference. Pretty much every poll since the beginning of both marquee races showed the two party candidates with locked in lopsided mirror-image margins among members of their own party.

    Over 90% of Democrats said they’d vote for Shapiro or Fetterman and close to 90% of Republicans said the same of Mastriano or Oz. The 20 to 30% of PA voters who consider themselves independent voters may have been more decisive than most tea-leaves readers gave them credit for.

    Most polls showed Shapiro and Fetterman with whopping leads among independent voters. They may not have been the same independent voters: Shapiro’s indy supporters could be former GOP voters disaffected by Trump, and Fetterman’s indy squad could be young voters mobilized by the abortion rights issue (about half of young voters are independents nationally).

    The growing significance of this independent vote in close elections may increase pressure on both parties to repeal closed primaries so that indy voters can vote in those elections. Both parties will want to have more time and opportunity to court them in the future.

    With Florida ripening to a deeper and deeper Red, Pennsylvania may loom larger and larger as the most contested, consequential swing state in the country: well-worth watching as we move inexorably to 2024.

    David Thornburgh is a longtime Pennsylvania civic leader. The former CEO of the Committee of Seventy, he now chairs the group’s Ballot PA initiative to repeal closed primaries. He is the second son of former GOP Governor and US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

    Isabelle Schindler

    The line of students registering to vote on Election Day stretched across the University of Michigan campus, with students waiting for over four hours. There was a palpable sense of excitement and urgency around the election on campus. For many young people, especially young women, there was one motivating issue that drove their participation: abortion rights.

    One of the most important and contentious issues on the ballot in Michigan was Proposal 3 (commonly known as Prop 3), which codifies the right to abortion and other reproductive freedoms, such as birth control, into the Michigan state constitution. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many Michiganders have feared the return of a 1931 law that bans abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and contains felony criminal penalties for abortion providers.

    Though the courts have prevented that old law from taking effect, voters were eager to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Prop 3 with over 55% of voters approving the proposal. This is a major feat given the coordinated campaign against the proposal. Both pro-life groups and the Catholic Church strongly opposed it, and many ads claimed it was “too confusing and too extreme.”

    The issue of abortion was a major focal point of the gubernatorial campaign between Gov, Gretchen Whitmer and her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon. Pro-Whitmer groups consistently highlighted Dixon’s support of a near-total abortion ban and her past comments that having a rapist’s baby could help a victim heal. Whitmer’s resounding win in the purple state of Michigan is certainly due, in part, to backlash against Dixon’s extreme positions on the issue.

    After the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, so many young voters felt helpless and despondent about the future of abortion rights. However, instead of throwing in the towel, Michigan voters showed up and displayed their support for Whitmer and Prop 3, showing that Michiganders support bodily autonomy and the right to choose.

    Isabelle Schindler is a senior at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She is a field director for College Democrats on her campus and has worked as a UMICH Votes Fellow to promote voting.

    Paul Sracic

    From the beginning, the US Senate race in Ohio wasn’t expected to be close. In the end, it wasn’t – with author and political newcomer J.D. Vance defeating Rep. Tim Ryan by over six percentage points.

    Republicans also swept every statewide office in Ohio, including the elections for justices on the Ohio Supreme Court who, for the first time, had their political party listed next to their names on the ballot. This will give the Republicans a dependable majority on state’s highest court, which is significant since there is an ongoing unresolved legal battle over the drawing of state and federal legislative districts.

    It is now safe to say that Ohio, for so long the quintessential swing state, is a Republican state. What happened is simple to explain: White, working-class voters have become a solid part of the Republican coalition in the Buckeye State. In 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump convinced these voters that the Democratic Party had abandoned them to progressive and internationalist interests with values they did not share. This shift was symbolized by the movement of voters in the former manufacturing hub of Northeast Ohio, once the most Democratic part of the state, to the GOP.

    The question going into 2022 was whether the Republicans could keep these voters if Trump was not on the ballot. The Democrats recruited Rep. Tim Ryan to run for the Senate because he was from Northeast Ohio, having grown up just north of Youngstown. They hoped that he could win those working-class voters back, and Ryan designed his campaign around working-class economic interests, distancing himself from Washington, DC, Democrats and even opposing President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Once the votes were counted, however, Ryan performed only slightly better than Biden had in Northeast Ohio. In fact, he even lost Trumbull County, the place where he grew up and whose voters he represented in Washington for two decades.

    Ohio Democrats will face another test in two years, when the Democratic Senate seat held by Sherrod Brown will be on the ballot. Brown won in 2018, but given last night’s result, the Republicans will have no problem recruiting a quality candidate to run for a seat that, right now, at least leans Republican.

    Paul Sracic is a professor of politics and international relations at Youngstown State University and the coauthor of “Ohio Politics and Government” (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2015). Follow him on Twitter at @pasracic.

    Joyce M. Davis

    Pennsylvanians clearly rejected the worst of right-wing extremism on Nov. 8, sending a strong message to former President Donald Trump that his endorsement doesn’t guarantee victory in the Keystone State.

    Trump proved to be a two-time loser in the commonwealth this election cycle, despite stirring up his base with screaming rallies for Republican candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz, Doug Mastriano and Rep. Scott Perry.

    And a lot of people are breathing a long, hard sign of relief.

    Mastriano, who CNN projects will lose the race for the state’s governor to Democrat Josh Shapiro, scared many Pennsylvanians with his brash, take-no-prisoners Trump swagger. He inflamed racial tensions, embraced Christian nationalism, and once said women who violated his proposed abortion ban should be charged with murder. On top of all that, he’s an unapologetic election denier.

    Dr. Oz, meanwhile, couldn’t shake his carpetbagger baggage, and Oprah’s rejection – on November 4, she endorsed his rival and now-victorious candidate in the Senate race, John Fetterman – seems to have carried more weight than Trump’s rallies, at least in the feedback I’ve received from readers and community members.

    All of this should compel some serious soul-searching among Republican leadership in Pennsylvania. What could have they been thinking to place all their marbles on someone so outside of the mainstream as Mastriano? Did they think Pennsylvanians wouldn’t check Oz’s address? Will they rethink their hardline stance on abortion?

    In a widely-watched House race, Harrisburg City Councilwoman Shamaine Daniels made a valiant Democratic effort to unseat GOP Rep. Scott Perry, after the party’s preferred candidate pulled out of the race. But her lack of name recognition and inexperience on the state or national stage impacted her ability to establish a base of her own. So the five-term incumbent, who played a role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, will return to Washington – though perhaps with a clipped wing.

    Many Pennsylvanians may be staunch conservatives, but we proved we’re not extremists – and we won’t embrace Trump or his candidates if they threaten the very foundations of democracy.

    Joyce M. Davis is outreach and opinion editor for PennLive and The Patriot-News. She is a veteran journalist and author who has lived and worked around the globe, including for National Public Radio, Knight Ridder Newspapers in Washington, DC, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.

    Edward Lindsey

    In the last two years, President Joe Biden, Sen. Jon Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock, all Democrats, won in the Peach State. There has been a raging debate in Georgia political circles since then as to whether these races signal a long-term left turn toward the Democratic Party, caused by shifting demographics, or whether they were merely a negative reaction to former President Donald Trump. Tuesday’s results point strongly to the latter.

    Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who had rebuffed Trump’s demand to overturn the 2020 presidential result, cruised to a convincing reelection on Tuesday with a pro-growth message by defeating the Democrats’ rising star Stacey Abrams by some 300,000 votes. His coattails also propelled other Republican state candidates to victory – including the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who had also defied the former President – and helped to keep the Georgia General Assembly firmly in GOP hands.

    However, before sliding Georgia from a purple political state back into the solid red state column, we still have one more contest to look forward to: a runoff for the US Senate, echoing what happened in Georgia’s last set of Senate races.

    Georgia requires candidates to win over 50% of the vote and the presence of a Libertarian on the ticket has thrown the heated race between Warnock, the incumbent senator and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Georgia football great Herschel Walker into an overtime runoff campaign to be decided on December 6.

    Both Walker and Warnock survived November 8 to fight another day despite different strong headwinds facing each of them. For Warnock, it has been Biden’s low favorability rating – hovering around 40% nationwide, and only 38% in Georgia, according to Marist. For Walker, it has been the steady drumbeat of personal allegations rolled out over the past few months, some admitted to and others staunchly denied.

    Warnock has faced his challenge by emphasizing his willingness to work across the aisle on some issues and occasionally disagreeing with the President on others. Walker, who is backed by Trump, has pulled from the deep well of admiration many Georgians feel for the former college football star.

    Both of these strategies were strong enough to get them into a runoff, but which strategy will work in that arena? The answer could be crucial to determining which party controls the US Senate, depending on the result of other races that have yet to be called. Stay tuned while Georgians enjoy having the two candidates for Thanksgiving dinner and into the holiday season.

    Edward Lindsey is a former Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives and its majority whip. He is a lawyer in Atlanta focusing on public policy and political law.

    Brianna N. Mack

    In his bid to win a seat in the US Senate, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan tried to appeal to working class voters who felt abandoned by establishment Democrats. Those blue collar voters – many of them formerly members of his party – overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016 and again in 2020.

    Unfortunately for Ryan, his strategy failed. He lost to J.D. Vance by a decisive margin, according to election projections.

    It was, perhaps, a predictable ending for a candidate who threw away the traditional approach of rallying your base and instead courted the almost non-existent, moderate Trump voter. And it’s a shame. Had Ryan won, Ohio would have had two Democratic senators. The last time that happened was almost 30 years ago, when Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn represented our state.

    But in wooing Republicans and right-leaning moderates, Ryan abandoned many of Ohio’s left-leaning Democrats who brought him to the dance.

    That approach was perhaps most evident in his ads. In a campaign spot in which he is shown tossing a football at various computer screens showing messages he disapproves of, he hurls the ball at one emblazoned with the words “Defund the Police” and dismisses what he disdainfully calls “the culture wars.”

    Another ad showed Ryan, gun in hand, hitting his mark at target practice, as the words “Not too bad for a Democrat” appear on the screen. To imply you’re pro-gun rights when majority of Americans support gun control legislation – and when your party explicitly embraces a pro-gun control stance is bewildering. Ryan’s ads on the economy began to parrot the anti-China rhetoric taken up by Republicans. And when President Joe Biden announced his student debt plan in an effort to invigorate the Democratic bringing economic relief to millions of millennial voters, Ryan opposed the move.

    As a Black woman living in a metropolitan area, I would have liked to see him reach out to communities of color, perhaps by making an appearance with African American members of Ohio’s congressional delegation Rep. Joyce Beatty or Rep. Shontel Brown. But I would have settled for one ad addressing the economic or social concerns of people who don’t live in the Rust Belt.

    Ryan might have won if he’d gotten the kind of robust backing from his own party that Vance got from his – and if he’d courted his Democratic base.

    Brianna N. Mack is an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University whose coursework is centered on American political behavior. Her research interests are the political behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. She tweets at @Mack_Musings.

    James Wigderson

    Wisconsin remains as split as ever with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers surviving a challenge from businessman Tim Michels and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson barely holding off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

    In late February, Johnson, who Democrats hoped might be a beatable incumbent, was viewed favorably by only 33% of Wisconsin’s voters, according to the Marquette University Law School poll. He was viewed unfavorably by 45% of the electorate with 21% saying they didn’t know what to think of him or hadn’t heard enough about him. He finished the election cycle still seen unfavorably by 46% with 43% of the voters holding a favorable view of him.

    However, Democrats decided to run possibly the worst candidate if they wanted to win against Johnson. At one point in August, the relatively unknown Barnes actually led Johnson by 7%. But familiarity with Barnes didn’t help him. Crime was the third most concerning issue for Wisconsin voters this election cycle, according to the Marquette University Law School poll, and Johnson’s campaign successfully attacked Barnes for statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding and for reducing the prison population. In the end, Johnson came out victorious.

    So, with Republicans winning in the Senate, what saved Evers in the gubernatorial race? Perhaps it was women voters.

    The overturning of Roe v. Wade meant Wisconsin’s abortion ban from 1849 went back into effect. Michels supported the no-exceptions law but then flip-flopped and said he could support exceptions for rape and incest. Johnson, for his part, successfully deflected the issue by saying he wanted Wisconsin’s abortion law to go to referendum.

    Another issue that may have soured women voters on Michels was the allegation of a culture of sexual harassment within his company. Evers’ campaign unsurprisingly jumped at the opportunity to argue that “the culture comes from the top.” (In response to the allegations against his company, Michel said: “These unproven allegations do not reflect the training and culture at Michels Corporation. Harassment in the workplace should not be condoned, nor tolerated, nor was it under Michels Corporation leadership.”) Michels’ divisive primary fight against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch also didn’t help his appeal to women voters, especially in Kleefisch’s home county of Waukesha, formerly a key to a Republican victory in Wisconsin.

    If Republicans are going to win in 2024, they need to figure out how to attract the support of suburban women.

    James Wigderson is the former editor of RightWisconsin.com, a conservative-leaning news website, and the author of a twice-weekly newsletter, “Life, Under Construction.”

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  • John Fetterman will defeat Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania Senate race, CNN projects | CNN Politics

    John Fetterman will defeat Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania Senate race, CNN projects | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Democrat John Fetterman will win the Pennsylvania Senate race, CNN projects, defeating Republican Mehmet Oz, flipping the seat and boosting Democratic hopes of keeping their majority.

    Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor since 2019, and Oz, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, ran one of the most contentious and expensive Senate contests in the country – all of it while Fetterman continued his recovery from a pre-primary stroke that often limited his ability to speak on the trail.

    For Democrats trying to preserve their control of what has been a Senate split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote, Fetterman’s win could prove decisive.

    Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s retirement in a state President Joe Biden won two years ago created Democrats’ best opportunity to pick up a seat and save their narrow majority, and the Commonwealth entered Election Day as one of at least nine states holding what were expected to be competitive Senate races.

    Fetterman’s victory caps a remarkable ascent from his time as mayor of Braddock, a borough in western Pennsylvania, to the lieutenant governor’s office – which he won after unseating a fellow Democrat in a 2018 primary – to the US Senate. A longtime progressive, he is an outspoken supporter of abolishing the filibuster, raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, criminal justice reform and passing legislation to protect same-sex marriage, among other leading liberal priorities.

    His success will also provide inspiration to stroke survivors and other disabled Americans, some of whom took heart from his efforts to carry on campaigning even as he exhibited the lingering effects of his May stroke. Fetterman, though he has not released his full medical records, has said he expects to be at or near full strength by the time he takes office early next year.

    Though Oz himself largely steered clear of disparaging Fetterman over his stroke-related difficulties, his campaign was less cautious, leading the Republican to repeatedly distance himself from his own staffers’ remarks. Asked at one point late in the campaign whether he would speak to his own patients the way his campaign addressed Fetterman, Oz responded with one word: “No.”

    The White House didn’t weigh in on individual races over the course of election night. But following Fetterman’s projected win, it sent a subtle, if pointed message: “The president had a great time with the senator-elect on Saturday,” a White House official told CNN.

    While many Democrats in battleground seats sought to avoid Biden’s presence on the campaign trail, Fetterman embraced the president. Biden made several trips to Pennsylvania and each time in the closing months of the race, Fetterman would appear alongside of him, including in Philadelphia this past weekend.

    Biden’s Pennsylvania roots are an integral part of his story, his win in 2020 is central to the presidency, and now, after 20 visits to the state in his first two years in office, it marks the first Democratic pickup in the critical battle for the Senate majority.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Fetterman’s Victory Party Had A Not-So-Subtle Troll Of Dr. Oz’s Biggest Blunder

    Fetterman’s Victory Party Had A Not-So-Subtle Troll Of Dr. Oz’s Biggest Blunder

    And that continued right through Election Day, with a party platter that referenced one of Oz’s most infamous campaign flubs.

    Reporters at Fetterman’s election night event spotted a “crudité” spread:

    That’s a reference to an infamous video Oz made in a supermarket complaining about prices as he pretended he was buying ingredients his wife wanted for a “crudité.”

    Fetterman retweeted the video with a crudité correction.

    “In PA we call this a… veggie tray,” he wrote.

    But on election night, Fetterman’s campaign couldn’t help but break out the jokey C-word:

    That wasn’t Oz’s only screwup in the video, He also botched the names of two regional supermarket chains by claiming he was in a “Wegner’s,” apparently a mangling of Wegmans with Redner’s.

    He later claimed the mixup was because he was “exhausted” by his campaign effort.

    “I’ve gotten my kids’ names wrong as well,” Oz told Newsmax. “I don’t think that’s a measure of someone’s ability to lead the commonwealth.”

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  • Key Pennsylvania Senate race reaches finish line

    Key Pennsylvania Senate race reaches finish line

    Key Pennsylvania Senate race reaches finish line – CBS News


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    The country’s most closely watched and most expensive Senate race is coming down to the wire in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz are in a dead heat, with control of the Senate hanging in the balance. Jericka Duncan has more.

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  • 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race: John Fetterman vs. Mehmet Oz

    2022 Pennsylvania Senate race: John Fetterman vs. Mehmet Oz


    Pennsylvania Senate candidates make closing arguments

    01:54

    Despite the stroke he suffered in May, Fetterman, 53, handily won the Democratic nomination with the support of all 67 counties. His motto on the campaign trail has been “Every County. Every Vote.” 

    He didn’t return to the campaign trail until August, and Fetterman continues to struggle with auditory processing. He has been using closed captioning to read the questions in interviews. But Fetterman’s doctor said in October that his recovery is progressing and that overall, he is doing well. The doctor stated he has “no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.” 

    Fetterman’s health was a political target on the campaign trail, where Oz and others called on him to release his medical records. His challenges were evident during the lone Pennsylvania Senate debate on October 25, where Fetterman used closed captioning to answer questions. During the debate, he said he was running for every Pennsylvanian who had ever been knocked down but had to get back up. 

    On the campaign trail, Fetterman called for pro-union policies, raising the minimum wage, abolishing the filibuster, decriminalizing marijuana, protecting abortion rights and affordable health care. He accused Oz of being out-of-touch with Pennsylvanians, arguing he’s a celebrity doctor from New Jersey.

    He also painted Oz as an extremist on abortion. During their only debate, Oz said the federal government should not be involved in abortion decisions but left it to “women, doctors, local political leaders.”

    Fetterman was also one of the few Democrats on the trail who didn’t try to distance himself from President Biden. The two appeared together on Labor Day just outside Pittsburgh, and they were together again in late October for a fundraiser in Philadelphia. 

    Fetterman is a native of York, Pennsylvania, and he later moved to Braddock, an old steel town outside Pittsburgh, to start a GED program. He eventually ran for mayor, a post he held from January 2006 until he was elected lieutenant governor in 2018. 

    Oz, the son of Turkish immigrants, grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. If elected, he would be the country’s first Muslim senator. The 62-year-old doctor made his name appearing with Oprah Winfrey and then on “The Dr. Oz Show.” (Oprah endorsed Fetterman over Oz last week.)

    Oz was a longtime resident of New Jersey but changed his voter registration in late 2020 to Pennsylvania, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

    In November 2021 he announced his Pennsylvania Senate bid. About a month before the May primary, he was endorsed by former President Trump. He won the primary against former hedge fund CEO David McCormick by less than 1,000 votes. Oz has put about $25 million of his own money into the campaign. 

    In the closing weeks of the campaign, Oz focused on crime and accused Fetterman of wanting to release a third of inmates. He has also gone after Fetterman for some of his votes as chair of the state board of parsons, which is part of his responsibility as lieutenant governor. Oz also used his stump to talk about rising costs and energy independence. 

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  • Pennsylvanians Scurry To Fix Mail-in Ballots After Ruling

    Pennsylvanians Scurry To Fix Mail-in Ballots After Ruling

    HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Some of Pennsylvania’s largest counties scrambled Monday to help voters fix mail-in ballots that have fatal flaws such as incorrect dates or missing signatures on the envelopes used to send them in, bringing about confusion and legal challenges in the battleground state on the eve of the election.

    Elections officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, announced measures they were taking in response to state Supreme Court rulings in recent days that said mail-in ballots may not be counted if they lack accurate handwritten dates on the exterior envelopes.

    Ahead of Tuesday’s midterms, more than a million mail-in and absentee ballots have already been returned in Pennsylvania, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail. The numbers are large enough that they might matter in a close race, such as the contest between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz that could determine majority control of the U.S. Senate.

    The Department of State said it was unclear just how many ballots are at issue across the state. The agency over the weekend asked counties to provide the numbers, broken down by political party. Officials said some counties were not letting voters fix their mistakes.

    Lines formed at City Hall in downtown Philadelphia on Monday and over the weekend with voters waiting to correct their ballots. Some people on social media said the office did not get to everyone Monday.

    Voters wait in line to make corrections to their ballots for the midterm elections at City Hall in Philadelphia, on Nov. 7, 2022.

    The Pennsylvania litigation was filed by Republican groups and is among legal efforts by both political parties in multiple states to have courts sort out disputes over voting rules and procedures ahead of the midterm election.

    A new federal lawsuit over the envelope dates was filed Monday in Pittsburgh federal court by the national congressional and senatorial Democratic campaign organizations, two Democratic voters and Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign. They sued county boards of election across the state, arguing that throwing out ballots that lack proper envelope dates would violate a provision in the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act that says people can’t be kept from voting based on what the lawsuit calls “needless technical requirements.”

    A separate federal lawsuit filed Friday makes a similar argument.

    In Wisconsin, the Republican chair of the state Assembly’s elections committee, along with a veterans group and other voters, filed a lawsuit Friday seeking a court order requiring the sequestering of military absentee ballots in the battleground state. The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction requiring elections officials in Wisconsin to set aside military ballots so their authenticity can be verified.

    A judge Monday refused that order.

    Also on Monday, in Arizona, a judge blocked Cochise County’s plan to conduct a Republican effort to count all ballots by hand. The lawsuit aimed to stop the county board of supervisors from expanding what is normally a small hand tally used to verify machines’ accuracy to include all early ballots and all Election Day ballots as well.

    A challenge against voting by absentee ballot in Detroit was also thrown out Monday after a judge ruled that a Republican candidate for secretary of state “failed dramatically” to produce any evidence of violations in the majority-Black city.

    Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, Leigh Chapman, on Monday urged mail-in voters who think they may have made technical errors to contact their county elections offices. If the county won’t let them fix the problem, they should go to their local polling place on Tuesday and request a provisional ballot, she said.

    In Allentown, Lehigh County officials reached out to all the voters they could locate whose ballots have problems, election director Tim Benyo said Monday. He said there are a few hundred ballots at issue.

    “People have been very interested in curing their ballots,” Benyo said. “We’ve been busy.”

    Allegheny County elections officials posted online the names and birth years of voters who have sent in ballots in envelopes that either lack any date or are dated outside the permissible range of Sept. 19-Nov. 8 for mail-in ballots and Aug. 30-Nov. 8 for absentee ballots. Those voters can fix their ballots in person at the elections office Monday or Tuesday, or vote provisionally at their regular polling places.

    Allegheny reported that, as of Sunday, more than 600 incorrectly and nearly 400 undated ballots had arrived to be counted. Philadelphia said it has received about 2,000 undated ballots and several hundred more that appear to have been incorrectly dated.

    Philadelphia Deputy Commissioner Nick Custodio said the court decision last week and the tide of ballots rolling in ahead of Election Day has made it difficult to issue direct notifications.

    “So far we have only been able to put out a list on our website, but we are exploring whatever other options are available given the short time-period,” Custodio said.

    Dozens of voters seeking to fix their ballots showed up at City Hall over the weekend, and Custodio said more visited city offices Monday. Volunteers from several groups are contacting those voters to see if they need help getting to the elections office.

    A judge in Monroe County, a swing region in eastern Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, on Monday denied a Republican request to stop efforts by county election officials to notify voters about defective absentee and mail-in ballots and give them a chance to fix them.

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that mail-in votes do not count if they are “contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” then supplemented that with a follow-up order on Saturday that specified the allowable date range for mail-in and absentee ballots.

    Ballots without properly dated envelopes have been the topic of litigation since mail-in voting was greatly expanded in Pennsylvania under a state law passed in 2019.

    Mail-in ballots must be received by 8 p.m. Tuesday, so at this point officials are urging people who have not done so to deliver them to elections offices or drop boxes by hand.

    This story has been corrected to say mail-in ballots must be received by 8 p.m., not 8 a.m.

    ___ AP reporters Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Bob Christie in Phoenix and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this story.

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • Key Senate race down to the wire in Pennsylvania

    Key Senate race down to the wire in Pennsylvania

    Key Senate race down to the wire in Pennsylvania – CBS News


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    One of this year’s most closely watched races is for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat. Polls show that Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz are neck and neck. Jericka Duncan reports.

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  • CBS Weekend News, November 6, 2022

    CBS Weekend News, November 6, 2022

    CBS Weekend News, November 6, 2022 – CBS News


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    Obama, Trump continue campaign appearances for midterm candidates; 100 years after tomb discovery, King Tut’s legacy endures

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  • Midterms come down to the wire as candidates make final pitch

    Midterms come down to the wire as candidates make final pitch

    Midterms come down to the wire as candidates make final pitch – CBS News


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    CBS News correspondents Robert Costa, Kris Van Cleave and Nikole Killion report from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, where hotly contested match-ups could determine control of Congress.

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  • Obama, on the Pennsylvania campaign trail, tells Democrats

    Obama, on the Pennsylvania campaign trail, tells Democrats

    The Democratic Party’s most powerful voices warned Saturday that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Biden — over the final weekend of the high-stakes midterm elections.

    “Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh.

    “On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years,” Obama said. “The only way to save democracy is if we, together, fight for it.”

    Obama was the first president, but not last, to rally voters Saturday in Pennsylvania, a pivotal state as voters decide control of Congress and key statehouses. Polls across America will close on Tuesday, but more than 36 million people have already voted.

    By day’s end, voters in the Keystone State also were to have heard directly from Mr. Biden as well as former President Donald Trump. And former President Bill Clinton was campaigning in New York.

    Each was appearing with local candidates, but their words echoed across the country as the parties sent out their best to deliver a critical closing argument.

    Not everyone, it seemed, was on message, however.

    Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.

    Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology.

    “Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said.

    The White House said Mr. Biden’s words were “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense” and that he was “commenting on a fact of economics and technology.”

    Democrats are deeply concerned about their narrow majorities in the House and Senate as voters sour on Mr. Biden’s leadership amid surging inflation, crime concerns and widespread pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests that Democrats, as the party in power, will suffer significant losses in the midterms.

    Clinton, 76, addressed increasing fears about rising crime as he stumped for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose reelection is at risk even in deep-blue New York. He blamed Republicans for focusing on the issue to score political points.

    “But what are the Republicans really saying? ‘I want you to be scared and I want you to be mad. And the last thing I want you to do is think,’” Clinton said.

    In Pittsburgh, Obama accompanied Senate candidate John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor who represents his party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat. Later Saturday, they appeared in Philadelphia with Mr. Biden and Josh Shapiro, the nominee for governor.

    Trump will finish the day courting voters in a working-class region in the southwestern corner of the state with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Senate nominee, and Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor.

    Former President Trump Holds Rally In Robstown, Texas
    Former U.S President Donald Trump speaks at a ‘Save America’ rally on October 22, 2022 in Robstown, Texas. The former president, alongside other Republican nominees and leaders held a rally where they energized supporters and voters ahead of the midterm election.

    BRANDON BELL / Getty Images


    The attention on Pennsylvania underscores the stakes in 2022 and beyond for the tightly contested state. The Oz-Fetterman race could decide the Senate majority — and with it, Mr. Biden’s agenda and judicial appointments for the next two years. The governor’s contest will determine the direction of state policy and control of the state’s election infrastructure heading into the 2024 presidential contest.

    Shapiro, the state attorney general, leads in polls over Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who some Republicans believe is too extreme to win a general election in a state Mr. Biden narrowly carried two years ago.

    Polls show a closer contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey as Fetterman recovers from a stroke he suffered in May. He jumbled words and struggled to complete sentences in his lone debate against Oz last month, although medical experts say he’s recovering well from the health scare.

    Obama addressed Fetterman’s stroke directly when appearing with him in Pittsburgh.

    “John’s stroke did not change who he is. It didn’t change what he cares about,” he said.

    Fetterman railed against Oz and castigated the former New Jersey resident as an ultrawealthy carpetbagger who will say or do anything to get elected.

    “I’ll be the 51st vote to eliminate the filibuster, to raise the minimum wage,” Fetterman said. “Please send Dr. Oz back to New Jersey.”

    Oz has worked to craft a moderate image in the general election and focused his attacks on Fetterman’s progressive positions on criminal justice and drug decriminalization. Still, Oz has struggled to connect with some voters, including Republicans who think he’s too close to Trump, too liberal or inauthentic.

    Obama acknowledged that voters are anxious after suffering through “some tough times” in recent years, citing the pandemic, rising crime and surging inflation.

    “The Republicans like to talk about it, but what’s their answer, what’s their economic policy?” Obama asked. “They want to gut Social Security. They want to gut Medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts.”

    Obama and Fetterman hugged on stage after the speeches were over.

    Saturday marked Obama’s first time campaigning in Pennsylvania this year, though he has been the party’s top surrogate in the final sprint to Election Day. He campaigned in recent days in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, while Mr. Biden has spent more time in Democratic-leaning states where he’s more welcome.

    Mr. Biden opened his day in Illinois campaigning with Rep. Lauren Underwood, a two-term suburban Chicago lawmaker in a close race.

    The president ticked through his administration’s achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Action, passed in August by the Democratic-led Congress. It includes several health care provisions popular among older adults and the less well-off, including a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses and a $35 monthly cap per prescription on insulin. The new law also requires companies that raise prices faster than overall inflation to pay Medicare a rebate.

    “I wish I could say Republicans in Congress helped make it happen,” Mr. Biden said of the legislation that passed along party lines. He also vowed that Democrats would protect Social Security.

    Yet his comments from the day before about the energy industry — and Manchin’s fierce response — may have been getting more attention.

    “It’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil,” Mr. Biden said Friday in Southern California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”

    Pennsylvania has largely transitioned away from coal, but fossil fuel companies remain a major employer in the state.

    As for Trump, his late rally in Latrobe is part of a late blitz that will also take him to Florida and Ohio. He’s hoping a strong GOP showing will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he’s expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.

    Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans.

    At a rally Thursday night in Iowa, traditionally home of the first contest on the presidential nominating calendar, Trump repeatedly referenced his 2024 White House ambitions.

    After talking up his first two presidential runs, he told the crowd: “Now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again, OK? Very, very, very probably. Very, very, very probably.”

    “Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon,” he said.

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  • Fallon Sums Up Oprah’s Thumbs-Down To Oz With A Classic Meme

    Fallon Sums Up Oprah’s Thumbs-Down To Oz With A Classic Meme

    “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon on Friday used a classic online gag to sum up Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Democrat John Fetterman in the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

    Winfrey announced this week she was backing Fetterman over his GOP rival, Mehmet Oz. Winfrey, of course, helped turn the Donald Trump-backed Oz into a household name via his regular spot on her daytime show.

    Fallon imagined Oz responding to the news with the “distracted boyfriend” or “man looking at other woman” meme.

    Watch Fallon’s full monologue here:

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  • Democrats have slight lead in Pennsylvania Senate, governor’s races

    Democrats have slight lead in Pennsylvania Senate, governor’s races

    Democrats have slight lead in Pennsylvania Senate, governor’s races – CBS News


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    Several polls show Democrats have a slight lead in Pennsylvania’s Senate and gubernatorial races. Oprah gave a boost to Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, endorsing him over his Republican opponent and her former friend, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Plus, President Biden and former President Obama will campaign for Democrats in Philadelphia in a final push before Election Day. CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns joins CBS News’ Weijia Jiang to discuss.

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  • 11/4: CBS News Weekender

    11/4: CBS News Weekender

    11/4: CBS News Weekender – CBS News


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    Weijia Jiang reports on the timing for former President Trump’s possible 2024 White House announcement, Oprah’s endorsement of Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, and Twitter’s mass layoffs.

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  • CBS Evening News, November 3, 2022

    CBS Evening News, November 3, 2022

    CBS Evening News, November 3, 2022 – CBS News


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    John Fetterman defends record on crime; U.S. diplomats granted access to Brittney Griner

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