Felon voting... That's illegal...

 Why do they let the felon vote? 32 counts. A FELON!

Bullshit. It is destroying YOUR life....

OpenAI says its AI is getting better at doing things humans do, like shopping and meal planning

By Lisa Eadicicco

People already use OpenAI’s ChatGPT for things like helping with homework and creating presentations.

Now, the tech giant claims its AI models are getting better at everyday tasks largely left up to humans — like shopping and creating a budget.

OpenAI on Monday announced a new internal tool for assessing how AI handles tasks like these, along with research on how its own models performed. OpenAI claims its GPT-6 Astra model scored 93.1% at finding the right kindergarten after moving, a 98% score at managing community volunteers preparing for a flood and a 90.4% score at creating a meal plan for a parent recently diagnosed with diabetes.

The new benchmark comes at a time when OpenAI faces fierce competition from Meta, Anthropic and Google — all of which are racing to develop AI agents that can handle real-world tasks. OpenAI and its rivals are also grappling with AI safety concerns and pressure to turn a profit from their massive investments in the technology.

But first, OpenAI had to come up with a way to figure out whether ChatGPT is actually any good at errands like putting together a grocery cart and filling out online forms.

“Because so many people are using the app, we want to capture all the different use cases and the ways that they’re using it, and really understand like how we’re improving over time,” Jenny Yang, a researcher at OpenAI, told CNN ahead of the evaluation’s release. “What are the things that we’re not so good at yet? And how do we just like make this technology better for people?”

How OpenAI created the test

Standardized evaluations are critical in AI development because AI labs use them as guidance to train and optimize their models to improve in specific areas. Last year, OpenAI released a benchmark called GDPVal to measure how AI performs in work-related skills across industries like manufacturing, government work, finance and sales, among others.

The new benchmark could be critical in OpenAI’s push to stay ahead of the competition by turning ChatGPT from a tool for generating content to an assistant that can get things done on users’ behalf.

But measuring how AI performs in everyday life presents new challenges. The steps and skills required to adequately shop for groceries or pick out the right kindergarten for a child are broad and vague. And the results can be subjective.

Even figuring out what tests to come up with can be difficult because many people use AI differently, and an AI agent’s answers can vary depending on the information it’s given.

OpenAI started by looking at broad surveys breaking down how people spend most of their time, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use survey and the United Kingdom’s Multinational Time Use Survey. The problem, however, was that some of the things that topped the list weren’t tasks that AI could help with, like sleeping or eating.

The company surveyed around 4,000 people and had a smaller group of about 100 users write down tasks they wanted AI to do for them, and what personal context they would give the AI model to get the desired result. They also asked the users to come up with a rubric for evaluating whether the AI model successfully completed the task.

OpenAI also made sure ChatGPT users had a thorough understanding of the task they were proposing. For example, a person suggesting a test related to how AI handles financial planning should have experience working with a financial advisor for multiple years.

Yang said they had a strict list of requirements.

“You had to like have evidence that you were some kind of like expert or really understood what the right answer looked like for you,” she said.

The tasks that OpenAI is testing can vary widely — from apartment hunting to caring for a loved one. So, what exactly is OpenAI measuring?

It’s evaluating the types of skills the model would need to get the right answer, like how well it can navigate websites, apply context by looking at large troves of information in a user’s chat history and make conclusions that align with a user’s needs and expectations.

OpenAI’s testing indicates its GPT-6 Astra model, which was released in September, scored 80% on general performance related to prompts involving everyday tasks. Its GPT-5.2 model from December 2025 scored just 49.3%.

“There’s just so much information, and a better model would be able to sift through that quickly and really pull out the most relevant pieces,” said Yang.

The race to create personal AI agents

OpenAI wants ChatGPT to play a more prominent role in everyday life, but it’s facing an onslaught of competitive pressure — particularly from Meta.

Meta’s Muse agent, which launched in September, amassed 10 million downloads in the United States in its first 40 days, making it one of the few apps to achieve that milestone, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. OpenAI introduced its Dots agent, which it says can work on long-running tasks in the background while users go about their day, within the same month. And Anthropic announced its new AI agent app, Claude Duet, in October.

The race to develop personal AI agents also comes as the technology has raised safety concerns following a string of incidents in which AI models broke out of testing environments and breached companies’ systems. Those incidents occurred during testing, not with consumer products, but still raised questions about whether the technology is moving too fast.

There’s also the question of whether people will rely on AI too much, and how to draw boundaries when figuring out which tasks to outsource to AI. An anecdote former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer shared with The New York Times of how she used AI to summarize what makes her daughter special for a school project drew criticism online.

To Yang, the goal is to create AI models that can help people get more time back in their day by either cutting out time-consuming errands — like returning a package or helping them learn a new skill.

“I think there’s so many cases like this where being able to use AI just empowers you to do things that you wouldn’t have been able to do, or just makes your life easier overall,” said Yang. “And I think that’s like the main use case that we’re really excited about.”

Just a little love tap........

US military conducts strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island in defensive operation, officials say

By Alayna Treene, Kevin Liptak

The US military carried out limited strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, three US officials told CNN, characterizing the action as defensive in nature and meant to protect US assets in the region.

One official said the US attack came in response to Iran firing at a US aircraft. It does not appear to be the kind of major combat operation that officials have been contemplating, and the Wall Street Journal, which first revealed the operation, reported that other such strikes have been carried out previously in secret.

“This was a defensive measure for Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against US assets,” another US official said.

But the new action, on the eve of Election Day, is a reminder that the situation in Iran is still unresolved, and combat is still very much on the table.

One person familiar with the matter said the administration deliberately kept the attack under wraps in an effort not to overstate the defensive move. The person added that the strikes were meant to protect US assets.

Iran’s state-affiliated Fars News Agency reported “several explosions” heard on Qeshm Island in the early hours of Tuesday morning local time. The blasts were also heard by residents of the nearby Hengam Island and those in the port city of Bandar Abbas, both sitting near or in the Strait of Hormuz, it reported.

Over the past week, Iran said it targeted several US drones in the region, and late Monday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it had shot down two US reconnaissance drones over Qeshm Island, though it is unclear whether the incident is related to the US strikes.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Tehran reserves the right to defend itself after the strikes on Qeshm Island, but appeared to downplay the incident, saying it is part of an “ongoing war.”

Qeshm Island, which is about 14 miles from Bandar Abbas, is key to Iran’s continued attempts to assert control over traffic through the waterway critical to global energy supplies, through which about 20 million barrels of oil passed every day before the war. The US has targeted the island previously in the war.

The attack comes as President Donald Trump on Monday suggested that diplomacy with Tehran is still at work, writing on social media that an agreement “could happen.”

Iranian and Qatari negotiators shuttled between their respective capitals over the past week to discuss a proposal to end the war. Iran says it can reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if Washington meets its seven demands. The US rejects Iran’s claimed authority over the waterway.

Iranian media and officials have said they include the US lifting the maritime blockade, releasing Iran’s frozen assets and the war ending “on all fronts.”

Qatari mediators returned to Doha Monday evening after talks in Tehran, a diplomat briefed on the talks told CNN, adding that the two sides are now separately reviewing the latest suggestions from mediators aimed at bridging the gaps.

The mediators are expecting responses from the US and Iran within two days on the latest proposal, another diplomat briefed on the matter told CNN.

Hours later, Iran’s top security official Mohsen Rezaei said a US response to Tehran’s demands was “not satisfactory.” It is unclear if Rezaei’s statement was the response Qatari mediators were waiting for.

“The Americans must fully and explicitly address all seven of Iran’s conditions and comply with them. Only then will the Strait of Hormuz be reopened,” Rezaei wrote on X.

‘A very soft war’

Trump did not specifically address the reports of new strikes in Iran in an appearance that aired on Fox News Monday night, but he said the US “might have to go after” Pickaxe Mountain, the suspected underground nuclear site where Israel believes Tehran has stored part of its enriched uranium stockpile and advanced enrichment centrifuges.

“That’s not a big deal. We can do it in literally, we can do that in one hour. Okay, as soon as we want, at any time we want,” he said.

Trump has teased the possibility of an attack multiple times since the war began, including in July, when he said the US would hit Pickaxe Mountain “probably pretty soon.”

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Iranian parliamentary speaker who is leading negotiations with the US, issued a fresh warning early Tuesday. “The Iranian nation will not surrender to the enemy’s threats and military actions,” he said, adding that its “military and strategic response to any enemy miscalculation will be unpredictable.”

On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said that a major new attack would be met with a response “without geographical limitations.” And a senior security official in Tehran told CNN that Iran would try to target infrastructure beyond oil facilities, including AI.

Earlier this month, Trump said that the US would not attack Iran before the midterms, but did not rule out or confirm if strikes would resume afterward – leaving people living in the Middle East on edge.

In the Fox interview, Trump broadly defended his decision to launch the war in Iran and suggested there had not been recent fighting.

“We’re not fighting a war. Everyone says ‘you’re at war!’ Well, when was the last time we fired anything? This isn’t a war — it’s a very soft war … But this isn’t like a war that’s going on. There’s no war raging. It could happen if they don’t make a deal, but they want to make a deal very badly and there’s a very good chance we make a deal,” Trump said.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Monday that the US and Iran have “made some progress” toward an off ramp to the war.

“The Iranians are always a little unpredictable, and as the president always says, he retains kinetic options, he retains non-kinetic options. But we’ve certainly made some progress. We’ll see if we can make some more,” the vice president said, adding that he had just spoken with the president about the war and both men felt “pretty good” about a potential deal.

Oil prices rose in early Asian trading on Tuesday after news broke of the Qeshm Island strike. Before then, oil prices had been tumbling, as the market weighed the latest developments in diplomatic talks between the US and Iran – but gasoline and diesel prices are still on track to be the most expensive of any US Election Day in history.

“Oil Prices are DROPPING LIKE A ROCK,…because people feel that there will not be a War with Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social before the Qeshm strikes, adding “Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen!”

His mental disease on full display...

Trump’s closing message hits a topic close to his heart — but not voters’ minds

By Kevin Liptak

By the time President Donald Trump had concluded his hourlong closing argument speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, the water in the basin behind him had become still, a perfect mirror of the Washington Monument and a grey November sky.

If the pool was finally operating as the administration always hoped it would, it’s not clear the president was.

His speech, billed as his final message to the electorate before a new Congress is chosen this week, was not the high-level contrast with Democrats some Republicans had hoped for. It was instead a subdued, very granular accounting of all the problems Trump said he fixed in the plumbing of the 2,000-foot-long pool, including rusty pipes, old joints, regraded rebar and “tremendous algae.”

Eight minutes in, before any mention of the midterm elections, Trump invited an aide named Greg to stand on stage holding large color photos as he recited in specific terms the fixes he’d ordered up. It took another 16 minutes before he made any mention of the elections he was ostensibly there to address.

While Trump was once relatively upbeat about Republicans’ prospects, his outlook has dimmed somewhat in the past several days, one White House official said, and his mood has soured.

The midterm talk only lasted 10 minutes or so on Monday. The rest of the time, Trump focused squarely on a topic that brings him more joy: the various repair jobs he claims to have carried out in the nation’s capital. He joked he would name the Reflecting Pool after himself. The crowd of invited guests numbered in the dozens.

As he was wrapping his remarks, the president frankly acknowledged his capacity for fixer-uppers didn’t extend much beyond the capital’s boundaries.

“We have a lot of great things planned for Washington,” he trumpeted. “I could get into the nation, but for that, you don’t have enough time.”

It was an odd way to end a campaign where voters have questioned again and again the president’s priorities. In interviews with voters across battleground states this midterm season, no one mentioned the Reflecting Pool or any other project in Washington on their list of most important issues.

But from another perspective, the speech was perhaps an apt way for the president to conclude a campaign that he orchestrated almost entirely around himself.

Many of the candidates running the tightest races now, including in Texas and South Carolina, are ones he hand-selected, often over the objections of other Republicans. An unusual midterm convention in Texas that Trump ordered up revolved around the president and his record. He has pleaded with voters to pretend he is on the ballot, making the election a referendum on his unpopular first two years back in office.

And he has insisted on amplifying the aspects of his agenda that many voters say have little or nothing to do with the things they care about most.

Many of the president’s allies have quietly worked to steer him toward more fertile ground, like his massive tax cuts or efforts to create manufacturing jobs.

But that has not worked. Trump mentions his construction projects virtually every time he speaks, often to somewhat muted reaction from the supporters he is addressing. Sometimes, like last week in Mississippi, the topic has drawn objection.

“Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” a protester screamed, very clearly, midway through Trump’s speech in rural Corinth, 830 miles by car from the site of the new White House ballroom where the East Wing once stood.

Trump has said his focus on renovations relaxes him, and does not occupy a major portion of his time.

“I can do it naturally. It’s a natural thing,” he said in Mississippi, responding to a critique from former President Barack Obama that he was spending too much time and energy making the White House look like Saddam Hussein had gilded a Cheesecake Factory.

Aides have long said Trump is at his happiest when working on the renovation projects — which, aside from the ballroom and pool, also include a proposed triumphal arch, a new helipad, paved-over Rose Garden, driveway stone, guest bathroom, colonnade decor, portico plaster work, two 100-foot flagpoles and an ongoing attempt to inject as much gold as possible into the Oval Office.

The projects have not always gone to plan. Trump, in April, promised the Reflecting Pool repairs would be finished in two weeks, with a modest budget of $1.5 million. Weeks before a July 4 deadline, the blue liner he ordered began peeling off and blooms of algae materialized. It would take several more months, and millions more dollars, for the project to be finished.

Trump on Monday blamed the delays on vandals, but both the contractor he used and the US attorney’s office in Washington have said the fault was shoddy workmanship.

A frenetic campaign schedule had taken the president away from his projects for most of the last month. As recently as last week, GOP operatives expected Trump to spend the day before the midterms in a few battleground states, trying to rally Republicans to the polls.

But as his voice grew raspier last week and as he started complaining publicly about the pace — “I’ve been doing a little too many of these,” he said during his last rally in Kansas on Sunday — the plans were put aside.

And on Monday, he appeared to be over it.

Even in a speech about a topic he likes, Trump’s pessimism shone through.

“Usually whoever the sitting president is — Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good president, great president, bad — for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” he said, glumly. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

He wrapped up a few minutes later, standing alone on stage holding a photo of the algae-clogged pool as a trumpet fanfare played.

VOTE those fuckers out......

VOTE!

Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS)

Did this meteor come from that comet? Probably not. Although many meteors do originate from comets, there are thousands of comets that have visited the inner Solar System recently, and matching meteors to them can be tricky. And to be clear, the pictured comet is far behind the streaking meteor. Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was captured from Hautacam, France in April when the giant space iceberg sported impressive ion (blue) and dust tails. Sand-sized rocky debris that enters Earth’s atmosphere typically appears as meteors, while the colorful foreground streak here may indicate a complicated composition. This month three notable meteor showers will reach their peaks. Over the next few days, the Southern Taurids will be reaching their apex, while the Northern Taurids will top out about a week later. Both originate from Comet 2P/Encke. November is most famous for the Leonids Meteor Shower, though, which originates from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle and will reach its crescendo in about two weeks.

Soap Opera

Haley Stevens Turned Michigan’s Senate Race Into a Soap Opera

“I know that Michigan is tired of the drama,” Rep. Debbie Dingell told CNN.

Alex Nguyen

The Democratic Party’s reactions to Rep. Haley Stevens’ sudden decision to walk back her endorsement of US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and back Republican Mike Rogers have been scathing, to put it mildly.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had endorsed Stevens in her primary race against El-Sayed before she was narrowly defeated in August, called the move “a despicable betrayal” on social media Sunday. 

Former House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Stevens chose to “dangerously betray Michigan families’ healthcare, freedoms and future with her horrific endorsement.” 

Chair of the Michigan Democratic party, Curtis Hertel, wrote on social media Sunday that Stevens is not a current member of the party, “nor will she be in the future.” 

In response to Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers, El-Sayed said: “I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.” 

“This is a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government,” he continued, saying he’s less focused on Stevens and Rogers and more on the other “9,999,998” Michiganders.

Predictably, Republicans could not have been happier. President Donald Trump praised Stevens at a Sunday rally in Iowa, saying her decision was “very brave.” 

“I’ve never met Haley. But Haley said what few people were willing to say,” he added. “I’d love her to join the Republican Party actually.”

Over the past couple of days, Stevens demanded that El-Sayed publicly renounce an advertisement from a group unaffiliated with his campaign that she called antisemitic because it blamed US support for Israel for expensive grocery prices. If he did not, she said, she would not attend a campaign event with him on Sunday. 

El-Sayed stated the ad was not made by his campaign, noting that he did “not agree with the contents of that ad.” He then asked Stevens to stay away from his campaign and rescinded the invitation to join him at a Detroit church on Sunday. As the New York Times reported that same day, citing more than a dozen people involved in or with knowledge of El-Sayed or Stevens’ teams, this was the last straw for Stevens in a longstanding feud with El-Sayed. Stevens had endorsed El-Sayed shortly after the primary, but kept ongoing tension out of public view. He had little communication with her and never invited her to campaign with him.

That would have changed on El-Sayed’s Sunday event, which would have demonstrated party unity publicly, but instead of making an appearance there, Stevens showed up at a different Detroit church with his Republican opponent Mike Rogers. In a Sunday evening interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Stevens refused to explain why she suddenly switched her endorsement to Rogers. 

“I’m just casting my vote this one way,” Stevens told Cooper, maintaining that she still wants Democrats to flip the Senate on election day.

“I am not trying to upset anyone,” she added, instead pointing to the “anger and lack of kindness” of El-Sayed’s campaign. “I’m just being honest with my constituents and what I’m hearing from people, and in fact, I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who said: ‘Thank you, this is how we felt. We haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful.’”

As I wrote on Sunday, Stevens suggested over the weekend that El-Sayed’s campaign stood with “hate,” linking him to Hasan Piker, a political commentator and online live-streamer. Stevens pointed to Piker’s past comments on Israel—from which El-Sayed had already distanced himself over the summer. The United Democracy Project, a super PAC backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that works to elect pro-Israel candidates, was Stevens’ biggest contributor to her campaign in the Democratic Party’s most expensive primary race.

El-Sayed’s campaign reported on Monday that they broke their single-day fundraising record on Sunday, receiving $2.4 million in donations, with more than 26,000 people contributing for the first time.

But what it means for the general outcome of the race is a different story. The latest and final New York Times/Siena poll released yesterday finds El-Sayed with a 11-percentage point lead—beyond the survey’s margin of error but nonetheless conducted before Stevens’ reversal. Only days before the election, much of the discussion has focused on the Stevens drama, which has overshadowed policy issues central to Michigan voters. 

As Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) told Anderson Cooper on CNN just after Stevens’ interview, “I know that Michigan is tired of the drama, that they’re really worried about everyday issues, which are affordability and a very broken healthcare system.” And then she added, “This has been a very difficult week to watch.”

Let's see how many stupid dumb fucks there are....

The Biggest Upset of Election Night Could Come From South Carolina

Lindsey Graham’s sister inherited his Senate seat. Plenty of Republicans aren’t buying it.

Isabela Dias

On Tuesday evening, a week before Election Day, Maggie O’Neal took her husband and two daughters—six and 10 years old—to see Dr. Annie Andrews, the pediatrician trying to flip a Senate seat in deep-red South Carolina, speak in Greenville.

O’Neal, who grew up in a Republican household but votes Democrat, was “very early on the Dr. Annie bandwagon.” For about a decade, she worked as a hospice social worker; her father is a retired physician and her husband a practicing doctor. In Andrews, she recognized the dedication to years of study—in the Democratic challenger’s case at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine—and the commitment to evidence-based research.

“The strongest, most amazing physicians I’ve ever met and watched go through medical training are women,” O’Neal, 39, said. “The amount of work they have to do to succeed and thrive, and what they have to endure says a lot about her.” At the campaign event, O’Neal’s oldest daughter carried a sign that read, “If I could vote, I’d vote for Dr. Annie.”

“She’s very inspiring,” said O’Neal, a Colombian-born adoptee who became a naturalized citizen as a child. Her parents, Republicans who have grown disenchanted with the direction of the party under President Donald Trump, also support Andrews. Some of her friends are picking Republican candidates all the way down the ballot—except for the Senate. “She has a really good head on her shoulders for straddling the line of both parties,” O’Neal continued, “which I think is what South Carolina needs right now.”

Ahead of a pivotal election night, Andrews is in an unexpectedly tight contest against Darline Graham, a political novice who inherited the seat following the death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, in July and now hopes to serve a full six-year term. The Republican candidate’s credentials—her family name and an endorsement from President Donald Trump—have voters in the Palmetto State questioning if she’s not just a “nepo senator,” especially when contrasted to Andrews’ hard-earned medical bona fides and political campaign history.

The result, a race that should be a safe GOP hold but Fox News has moved to a toss-up, has Republicans worried. In the two weeks leading up to the election, Trump rallied twice in the state he carried by almost 18 points in 2024, and the GOP top Senate PAC has pledged $5 million to prop up Graham and prevent a Democratic pickup that would be one of the biggest upsets in the country. Even the interim senator herself, who doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy campaigning, acknowledged feeling a “little nervous” about the polls.

“Democrats haven’t had much to get excited about in state politics for a long time.”

“Democrats haven’t had much to get excited about in state politics for a long time,” said Furman University professor Danielle Vinson. The last time a Democrat won a Senate seat in South Carolina was in 1998, and no Democratic candidate has come within nine points of a victory this century.

Vinson was initially skeptical of the polls showing a competitive race. The most recent New York Times/Siena poll had both candidates effectively tied, with Graham leading by less than one percentage point. In 2020, Democrats had their hopes crushed when Jaime Harrison, former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, appeared within the margin of error, but ended up losing to Lindsey Graham by 10 points. This year, Harrison has said, the “stars are aligning” for Democrats in the state and a strong Black voter turnout could help Andrews’ chances.

Trump’s multiple stops in South Carolina to try and boost one of his handpicked candidates have also persuaded Vinson that this time it might be different. “That suggests to me that their own internal polling is raising questions and concerns because there’s no really good reason that the president should have to come to South Carolina for a Senate race,” she said. That, and the fact that Andrews’ yard signs have cropped up in reliably conservative areas of Greenville, are an indication to her that some Republican voters simply “are not comfortable” voting for Graham, whose previous professional stint was as the head of South Carolina’s Commission for the Blind.

If Andrews wins, Vinson said, “Democrats will be bouncing from the ceilings.” But even if she just comes close enough to pulling it off, “it will be a reminder that if you want to see change, you have to show up.” A near-win could also re-energize the party looking ahead, with South Carolina holding the first 2028 Democratic presidential primary.

A Kentucky-born mother of three, Andrews worked as a pediatric hospitalist at the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital in Charleston for 14 years, treating kids with cancer and gunshot wounds. After the 2018 Parkland school shooting in Florida, Andrews joined the Moms Demand Action movement that fights for gun safety laws and later became an adviser for a gun violence prevention organization.

In 2022, she ran for Congress to unseat Rep. Nancy Mace, ultimately trailing her by 14 points. Andrews then launched a political group advocating for children. “That’s what drove me off the sidelines,” she said in a conversation with Harrison in October. “It’s witnessing these patterns of policy failures showing up in our hospital exam rooms and wanting to do something about it.” 

Now, momentum appears to be on Andrews’ side. On Friday, the Senate Majority PAC to elect Democrats released the first ad in a $750,000, 11th-hour push to get her over the finish line, painting Graham as “an empty suit for special interests.” Andrews’ slim path to a one-time unthinkable victory may hinge on that message resonating with Republican and independent voters who would rather not be force-fed a candidate who inspires little confidence.

“We were led to believe that she was just a placeholder for that seat and South Carolinians would have the opportunity to vote for whomever they thought would be the best,” said George Culpepper Jr., who identifies as a conservative Republican and picked US Rep. Ralph Norman in the primary. “We were kind of caught off guard because a seat shouldn’t just be given to someone.”

“We get hounded on by hardcore conservatives who believe that you need to vote for Darline Graham because she has an ‘R’ by her name. We’ve done that in the past and we’ve got screwed.”

“When a candidate is shoved down our throats, I’m sorry, but our minds are independent here in South Carolina,” he added. “We won’t bow down to being told how and who to vote for.”

A Greer resident and father of three, 52-year-old Culpepper described himself as a long-time supporter of President Trump but blamed his administration for the Iran War-fueled spike in gas prices. He’s skeptical that Graham would stand for conservative causes, saying she’s “still an unknown.” He also pointed to the primary debate in which Graham fumbled a foreign policy question about Taiwan and the South China Sea—responding that “national security is not my thing”—as a “turning point” for him. Culpepper said many conservatives are either crossing party lines to vote for Andrews or writing in Norman.

“We get hounded on by hardcore conservatives who believe that you need to vote for Darline Graham because she has an ‘R’ by her name,” he said. “We’ve done that in the past and we’ve got screwed.”

Culpepper decided to vote for the Democrat, adding his name to a “Republicans for Dr. Annie” list, after seeing a campaign ad in which she vows to “fight the swamp” of Washington, DC. “She has six years to prove herself,” Culpepper said, offering that she could “truly be an independent” like a John Fetterman or a Kyrsten Sinema. If she doesn’t, she can be voted out the next time around. “We need a fighter,” he continued. “We don’t need someone that’s going to kowtow to a certain party.”

Carl Hokanson, a Republican-turned-independent who never voted for Trump, said Graham’s candidacy “is a joke” and that “she can’t even read from a prepared speech,” referring to her questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith in a recent Senate hearing. He also criticized her political ads as “filled with lies and half-truths.”

Graham’s campaign has labeled Andrews a “radical.” At a rally in Rock Hill, the Republican said her opponent was “plain old batshit crazy.” Trump has echoed those attacks, calling Andrews a “fanatical transgender activist.” In one of her ads, which sparked backlash from LGBTQ+ rights groups, the pediatrician says she’s against “biological men” playing women’s sports and never performed “gender surgery” on minors.

Andrews, who has tried to deflect culture war flashpoints and focus on South Carolinians’ concerns about affordability and healthcare, has been courting voters just like Culpepper. She likes to say her campaign is for everyone, regardless of party affiliation, and that, if elected, she will be an “independent voice” working across the aisle. Andrews often nods to her Republican dad and has received endorsements from former GOP Governor David Beasley and State Senator Katrina Shealy. Warren Norman, son of the hardline conservative congressman, made it known that he wouldn’t be supporting Graham and was “leaning” towards Andrews.

“She’s somebody who’s taking the approach of being very pragmatic,” said Vinson, “and just wanting to address problems and not necessarily doing it from a partisan perspective.”

John Aguilar, a 35-year-old resident of Walhalla who runs a dog training business, appreciates Andrews’ attention to “real-life problems.” The son of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants who were able to obtain legal status during the Ronald Reagan presidency, Aguilar said he had voted for Trump before, but has soured on his mass deportation policies and fears Graham will just be a “complete rubber stamp” for the administration.

“I believe [Annie Andrews] can do it and I feel like the GOP also believes that she might be able to pull this one off just just based on the the amount of effort and money they’re dumping into a +18 state that shouldn’t be that way,” he said.

A retiree who lives in Horry County and asked not to be named because she believes the vote should be private said three months ago she didn’t believe Andrews stood a chance, but that “the tide is turning.” She has voted for Republican candidates in the past, but doesn’t think the “Graham lady” represents the working people of South Carolina and predicted that others will also put the person above the party on Election Day. “I don’t care how red you are and how proudly you’ve worn that hat in the last couple of years,” she told me, “you put that hat down.”

For Michael, a 48-year-old father of six and a lifelong Republican who asked to be identified by his first name only out of fear of retribution, this election is a referendum on Trump and the party. He’s furious about the war in Iran and a $40 trillion national debt. “It’s crazy-land at this point,” he said. “I’m never voting for these people again until they start looking like the Republicans I grew up with. I’m done.”

He voted for Democrats across the ballot and, despite living in a predominantly red part of the state, put a sign up for Andrews on his yard. Like others, Michael doesn’t trust Graham to stand up to the administration. “She’s not really representing South Carolina,” he said. “She’s representing Trump.” Andrews would likely be a “middle of the road” senator, he said, adding, “That’s what we need to get back to in this country: bipartisanship.” 

Renee Harvey of Charleston worked on Andrews’ unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2022 and was an early backer of her Senate run even before it drew national attention. “Annie is offering solutions,” Harvey said, noting that she has several Trump-voting relatives who are casting a ballot for Andrews. “She’s always been a problem solver. That’s what she has to do at the bedside of her patients.”

After decades of Republican rule, Harvey thinks South Carolinians are ready for a change and poised to “shock” the country. “We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” she said. “I think people are are starting to wake up.”

“If anybody is going to flip this seat,” Harvey added, “it’s going to be Annie Andrews.”

Was It immature?

“Was It immature? Yes. Was It Juvenile? Yes. Was It Perverted? Probably.”

Meet the blogger who upended the Ohio governor’s race and spent a night in jail for Shrexting.

Abby Vesoulis

The most infamous political advertisement of the 2026 election cycle was first scooped by a quirky blogger who recently went to jail for sending a lawmaker what you might call a Shrext—a sexually explicit illustration of Shrek. 

D.J. Byrnes, the man behind a lefty Ohio political news site called The Rooster, was first to report that Ohio Republicans had tracked down the estranged mother of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton and planned to feature the 82-year-old in an ad attacking her daughter.

Acton hasn’t seen her mom, Donna Arthur, since 1978. That was the year Cledith Arthur—Acton’s stepfather and Donna’s husband—was indicted by an Ohio grand jury for raping Acton when she was 12 years old. (Both Arthurs fled the state before Cledith could stand trial; he died in 2004.)

“If this is Conman’s ‘October surprise,’ then his campaign is probably headed to the bottom of Lake Erie,” Byrnes titled his October 12 blog post, referring to GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.

A week later, Byrnes was also first to post the unaired ad: the minute-long clip shows an unkempt Donna characterizing her daughter as an unfit candidate who lied about her abusive childhood.

“I’m trying to roll the boulder towards, like, respectability.”

Within 24 hours of Byrnes posting the clip, Ramaswamy not only took direct credit for the project but also announced he planned to spend $4 million flooding the airwaves with it. The billionaire biotech entrepreneur had already been trailing Acton marginally in most polls. After the ad hit televisions, his numbers eroded further: Acton now leads by four points in a recent USA TODAY survey, with some Ohio voters citing the ad as the reason they turned away from him. Meanwhile, incumbent GOP Sen. Jon Husted is lagging further behind in the polls in a state that has been a reliable stronghold for the last 10 years.

The widely condemned (and factually refuted) ad has come up in nearly every conversation I’ve had with voters as I criss-crossed Ohio over the past week. Registered Republicans and Democrats alike have called it “despicable,” “deplorable,” and “deeply, deeply troubling.” This includes outgoing Republican Governor Mike DeWine.

Byrnes’ scoops have upended not only Ramaswamy’s already tight race for governor, but also those of other Ohio Republicans on the ballot. With partisan control of both the House and Senate up for grabs, his reporting could have implications far beyond the Buckeye state.

“People do desperate things when they’re down,” Byrnes told me over dinner last week in Columbus, as we discussed the fallout from the Ramaswamy ad. 

Byrnes, 39, is not exactly known for playing by the rules. With no college degree or formal journalism training, he self-identifies as a member of the “radical left,” and often blurs the boundaries between muckraking reporting and pugnacious activism.

He’s also an elaborate prankster. In 2025, he posed as a representative of Ohio State University’s football team and tricked Ramaswamy and his team into meeting him at a Raising Cane’s fried chicken restaurant, where they thought they’d be sitting down with Ohio State’s head football coach Ryan Day and several players. Byrnes took a photo with Ramaswamy before revealing, via text, that Ramaswamy had gotten got.

Byrnes can’t talk about the story without a boyish grin, but he also says he wouldn’t pull that kind of stunt now. “I’m trying to roll the boulder towards, like, respectability,” he says.

To his credit, he beat every major news outlet to the story on Ramaswamy’s ad, which Republicans ultimately pulled from the air last week.

Byrnes walked me through how he got the story: He had first heard rumblings that an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mom was in the works from an anonymous source. He also had an inkling Acton’s campaign knew something was coming: In what seemed like a preemptive move, Acton began airing an ad featuring her younger brother talking about how Acton protected him from abuse, hunger, and neglect when they were children.

Ramaswamy’s concept wasn’t entirely new. Right-wing activists had previously used Arthur against her estranged daughter. During the onset of the Covid pandemic, Acton—then director of the Ohio Department of Health—drew conservative backlash when churches were ordered closed while abortion clinics remained open. In response, the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue recruited Arthur to attack her daughter in a 2020 online interview.

“She’s done this before. We know she’s capable of it,” Byrnes remembers thinking of Acton’s mom. Additionally, he felt, “Ramaswamy’s dumb enough to do it and Acton’s camp seems prepared.”

A week after posting his first story on the subject, Byrnes got a text from a Republican buddy in Cleveland. It was a screen-recording of the yet-to-be-aired ad, which was being surveyed via text among select GOP voters in Ohio. At that point, it wasn’t clear who actually created the television spot; since it hadn’t yet appeared on television, the FCC-required “paid for” disclosure was missing. Ramaswamy claimed ownership the next day.

“Republicans talk to me because I’m not a shill. I’m not taking dark money. I’m not taking money from the DNC.”

It’s not the first time Byrnes has scooped the mainstream media. He was also first to report that a married NFL coach received a lap dance in public; that Ohio State University planned (and subsequently cancelled) a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk during a football game; that Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, founder of the retail empire L Brands and former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was dodging subpoenas; and that Ramaswamy had acquired a new private jet, disclosing the candidate’s flight data.

Byrnes received the tip about the private jet from his “old weed dealer” in Columbus, he says. But he has sources all over the state—and the political spectrum. 

“Republicans talk to me because I’m not a shill. I’m not taking dark money. I’m not taking money from the DNC,” he says, pointing out times he’s been critical of Democrats, including Acton and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against Husted.

At the same time, Byrnes doesn’t describe himself as a journalist. Rather, he considers himself a “concerned citizen who sometimes engages in journalism.”

He says his goal is to put a spotlight on lawmakers who don’t get enough scrutiny, especially as there are fewer local journalists around to cover the politicians whose decisions negatively affect the people Byrnes cares about. 

“It’s just basically like putting psychic damage on these people. If they feel a modicum of the psychic damage that these guys have put on my friends—my transgender friends, my working-class friends—then mission accomplished.”

Hence the name of his blog, the Rooster. “It’s a dumb barnyard animal that crows at all hours of the day, but will defend its turf to the death,” he said.

Byrnes’ recent brush with the law is a pretty good example of his willingness to ruffle feathers. Earlier this year, state Senator Jerry Cirino was running for the position of state senate president. Byrnes had previously written negative coverage of Cirino, a conservative Republican, over his stances on DEI and “liberal bias” in Ohio’s public universities. When Cirino dropped out of the race for senate president, Byrnes sent Cirino a couple of texts mocking his defeat. Byrnes called Cirino “Young Mussolini” and sent an imaginative sketch of Shrek holding his genitals.

Cirino reported the messages to the police, describing the image as “harassment” and “pornographic in nature.”

In June, Byrnes was arrested over the incident while he was reporting at the Ohio statehouse. He spent nearly 24 hours in jail and subsequently pleaded not guilty to the first-degree misdemeanor of telecommunications harassment. Byrnes argued the messages were protected political speech against a public figure, though a jury found him guilty of the misdemeanor in early October. (He is appealing the decision.) 

“Was it immature? Yes. Was it juvenile? Yes. Was it perverted? Probably,” he told me. “Whatever adjective you want to put on there, pejoratively, I’ll accept. But at the end of the day, it was political speech aimed at the fourth-most-powerful politician in the state.” 

Personal antics aside, Byrnes’ latest revelation—the advertisement featuring Acton’s mother—could be part of the reason Ramaswamy doesn’t become the most powerful politician in the state.

Argument Is About Algae.....

Trump’s Closing Argument Is About Algae

As voters sweat high prices and corruption, the president talks up his fountain repairs and plans to install 500 more statues.

Dan Friedman

Will undecided voters in states such as Alaska and Michigan base their ballot decisions Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s fountain repairs in Washington, DC?

If so, Trump’s 47-minute appearance on Monday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would make sense. But polls show voters are worried about high prices, corruption, and Trump’s war with Iran, not DC algae blooms. And the president’s use of his final scheduled appearance before the midterms to talk about pipe replacements looks like the bizarre self-indulgence of a guy utterly uninterested in the problems of regular Americans.

Wearing a white USA hat and looking tired, Trump brandished photographs intended to make the case that his widely derided effort to repair the Reflecting Pool was a great success. He said, not for the first time, that the algae that have plagued the pool through several presidential administrations is at last vanquished. And he again attempted to fault vandals for damage to the pool that both the Justice Department and the firm that he hired through a no-bid $15 million contract to do the job have said was caused by contractor error.

Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a press conference with a smattering of attendees to celebrate what they tout as their transformation of Washington. Trump talked up various fountains that are working again, having financed their rehabilitation with money diverted from national parks elsewhere in the country.

The president also gave a shout-out to his “National Garden of American Heroes,” a collection of, until Monday, 250 statues of famous Americans he intends to install near the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. But on Monday, Trump announced that the number of statues has grown to 500 and informed his audience that the work has “already started.”

That may be news to the Justice Department. In federal court, where opponents of the statue garden are seeking a court order blocking the work—which Congress has not approved—Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson said in an October 29 motion that the administration has not completed decision-making on the garden, let alone begun work. “The National Park Service has not received direction to include the National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park,” Gustafson wrote last Thursday.

Trump also talked up his controversial plans to overhaul a golf course in East Potomac Park, and the 250-foot arch he plans to build in front of Arlington National Cemetery. The “triumphant arch military complex,” as the president now calls it, “will have tremendous drone capability,” he said. “I would say sniper or shooter capability.” Trump recently began invoking a national security justification for the decorative arch in an evident ploy to try to get courts to grant deference to the plan. “It will be the most beautiful arch in the world,” Trump added on Monday. “It will be more beautiful than the Arc de Triomphe.”

Eventually, Trump shifted his attention to the election. In a familiar refrain, he called Democrats communists and repeated a seemingly racist, though also incoherent, attack on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. Trump said the Senate needed “a little bit of apple pie,” not “a jihadist.”

While gas and diesel prices remain high, Trump touted a recent dip in oil prices, attributing it in part to what he said was the seizure of Venezuela’s oil wealth following the US military takeover in January 2026. While other US officials have tried to downplay US influence in that country and pushed back on accusations of colonialism, Trump on Monday pretty much went there. “When you add in our conquest of Venezuela,” he said, “we are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of oil every single day.”

Trump defended his work in office, asserting that he has “kept far more promises than I made.” But Trump, as he delivered his remarks, appeared, in a phrase he once popularized, “low energy.” He seemed ready for an electoral setback, acknowledging that the party of the president in power tends to lose seats in midterms. He noted, with uncharacteristic realism, that things were not looking good for the GOP: “We gave this a very strong shot.”