El-Sayed wants to ERASE all medical debt

A New York Times/Siena poll released this weekend has Democrat James Talarico leading Ken Paxton 51% to 45% in the Texas Senate race.

Trump’s disapproval in Texas is 57%. He won the state three times.

CNN’s Harry Enten ran the numbers. His aggregate gives Talarico a 70% chance of winning. If Talarico wins, Enten puts Democrats’ odds of taking the Senate at 78%.

“As Talarico’s chances have been going up, and they have been going up, Democrats’ chances of winning control of the Senate have also been going up—going up like a rocket.”

The ad money looks the same. Talarico has spent $31 million on ads. Paxton has spent $352,000. Outside Republican groups are trying to cover the gap with $167 million.

Last week, Paxton got caught on tape telling donors that Trump’s Dallas convention “dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped.” Then Trump went to Texas and called his own nominee “a pain in the ass.”

Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Twenty-nine days to go.

Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed headlined the National Nurses United convention in San Francisco last week, with Bernie Sanders joining by video. He made Medicare for All the centerpiece.

“When they say we can’t have guaranteed healthcare through Medicare for All, we won’t back down.”

He also went after hospitals replacing staff with software: “We’re going to take on Big Tech. Your AI shouldn’t be automating out critical care workers.”

He’s running on erasing all medical debt in America. Right now, Americans are carrying more than $225 billion in medical debt.

“I favor abolishing it for every American immediately,” he said. 

For years, party leaders called Medicare for All a general-election liability. A run of progressive primary wins has put it back on the ballot this fall, and El-Sayed is running on it in a toss-up state.

A recent Fox News poll had him up 50% to 49% over Republican Mike Rogers.

El-Sayed can win this, but not on his own. Donate to El-Sayed on ActBlue today and help take back the Senate.

Trump’s Ohio swing ended Saturday night at Butler High School in Vandalia, in a gym that holds about 5,000 people. A New York Times reporter said the upper level started emptying out about 45 minutes into the speech.

He told the crowd to “just pretend I’m running.” Then came the closing argument:

“Just get out and vote. If you do that, we’re gonna win, and we’re gonna shove it up their ass, ok?”

At one point a protester started shouting, “Liar! You’re a liar!” and “He r*ped E. Jean Carroll!” A Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse in 2023.

The 80-year-old also told the crowd he takes 325 milligrams of aspirin a day, four times the usual heart dose, even though his doctors want him to cut back. His reason: “I don’t know if it works, but psychologically I need it.”

Sunday morning he was watching Fox & Friends, and the show didn’t cover the rally. So he went after Fox on Truth Social: “Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally.”

He complained that “Fox spends more time talking to Communists, Socialists, and Dumocrats, often without rebuttal,” reminded the network its ratings had cratered before, and warned: “That can happen again!”

Both Trump and Fox have to go.

Trump fired Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary in March. She stayed on for three more weeks, and the New York Times now reports she used her last day to close a jet deal with a donor’s company.

DHS paid Daedalus Aviation $108 million for a Boeing 737 Max 8 that Daedalus had bought for $90 million months earlier.

It paid $106 million for two smaller luxury jets Daedalus had picked up for $83 million. Then $45 million apiece for two older Boeing 737s, a price aviation experts told the Times was far above market value.

Daedalus is chaired by William Walters III, a Trump donor who gave $10,000 to a super PAC backing Noem. That PAC’s affiliated nonprofit paid Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s chief adviser, more than $265,000 in consulting fees. There was, of course, no competitive bidding.

Her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, tried to cancel the deal. According to the Times, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles talked him out of it, because backing out would cost even more money.

So taxpayers keep the planes.

JD Vance wants to be the next MAGA nominee, and he’s picked his lane for 2028: RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

Last week he showed up at the MAHA summit in Washington, spent time with Kennedy, and bragged that his anti-fraud task force has found “close to $250 billion in fraud.” The administration hasn’t shown much to back that up.

The summit was sponsored by UnitedHealth, Walmart, and drug companies, some of them with business pending before the agencies Kennedy runs.

For a movement that sold itself as a fight against corporate health care, that went over badly with its own base.

Now MAHA’s grassroots activists are in open revolt, accusing their leaders of selling out. Tony Lyons, who runs the movement’s political groups, promised to raise $100 million for Republicans this cycle. His PAC has raised about $1 million.

Local MAHA candidates say they never saw any of it. One Ohio activist who lost her state House race complained that the leaders are “throwing galas, and we’ve just kind of had it.”

Kennedy’s favorability sits at 23%. That’s the movement Vance is building his campaign on.