After one of the ugliest battles of the 2026 cycle, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton is projected to prevail over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in her bid to be Ohio’s first woman elected governor, according to Decision Desk HQ.

For months, the contest between Acton, a former public health director for outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, and Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and failed GOP presidential candidate, was notably personal, with ads suggesting that Acton was a “drunk” and that Ramaswamy was a fraud consuming the Buckeye State’s commercial breaks. 

Then, in the closing weeks of the race, Ramaswamy upped the ante by airing an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, suggesting that her daughter had lied about childhood sexual abuse and neglect. Court records confirm that Arthur lost custody of Acton and her younger brother in 1978 after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested, charged and indicted for raping then 12-year-old Acton. The Arthurs stayed together and fled the state.

The ad landed like a bomb in the race. Ohio Republicans largely denounced it but President Donald Trump praised it and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan, said Republican candidates needed to do whatever it took to win. DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy as his successor early in the race, called the ad “deeply troubling” and said it should be taken off the air. Trump likened it to “hitting pay dirt” and said other campaigns should use it as a model. Vance told Republicans upset about it to “stop whining.”

Paul Beck, a political scientist at The Ohio State University, predicted it would be a “turning point” in the race, telling The 19th that he “really felt, the first time I saw the ad, that Ramaswamy was digging his grave.” Beck also believed the ad could potentially have a negative impact on down-ballot Republican candidates in competitive races throughout the state.  

Though Ohio had not elected a Democrat to lead the state for 20 years, polls had for months shown Ramaswamy, who founded Roivant Sciences and initially co-led Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, trailing Acton, who led Ohio’s public health department in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Polls out the week after the ad was released showed that using Acton’s estranged mother against her likely only hurt Ramaswamy’s chances to close the gap. Though competitive statewide races often tighten in their closing days, a subsequent New York Times/Siena University poll conducted from October 26 to November 1 instead showed that Acton’s lead had grown to 6 points from 4 points the month before, with Ramaswamy losing support and more voters saying they did not know who they would back in the gubernatorial contest. 

Acton said during her final weekend of campaigning that she had received “such an incredible amount of love and support” since the ad aired, and that “many people have been coming up at the rallies, at the rope lines, sharing their stories.”

“I’ve always said that I am not the only one who has seen a thing or two in my childhood, and that’s why I do what I do,” Acton told reporters Friday. 

Acton was born and raised in Youngstown, a manufacturing area in the northeast corner of the state that fell on tough economic times after the collapse of the U.S. steel industry. She often said during campaign stops there and throughout the state that growing up, you were far more likely to know what union someone belonged to than their political party. Securing local union endorsements, particularly in the skilled trades and manufacturing areas, was a key part of Acton’s campaign strategy.

Acton graduated from Youngstown’s Liberty High School with honors and was homecoming queen her senior year. She worked her way through college, then medical school at Northeast Ohio Medical University, a joint program of three public universities in the state. She completed residencies in pediatrics and preventative medicine before earning a master’s degree in public health from Ohio State.

When DeWine named Acton his public health director in 2019, she became Ohio’s first woman in the role. A year later, in the early months of the pandemic, Acton was a fixture on Ohioans’ television screens during daily briefings alongside DeWine. The updates about reported cases and virus spread were similar to those conducted on a national level by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The name recognition that Acton earned as public health director positioned her as one of the only Democrats with the potential to win a statewide gubernatorial contest. Ohio is an intensely gerrymandered state that favors Republicans; the Democratic Party’s pipeline of talent had all but dried up, and the party itself has struggled to raise money. Acton’s campaign repeatedly noted that it was trying to win in a state where Trump prevailed in 2024 by 11 points. At times, the campaign’s tactics intended to appeal to Republican crossover voters put them at odds with the Democratic base. 

Acton approached her time in the public health department as a positive, saying it had created an enduring bond with voters. Ramaswamy saw it as a negative that would energize his Republican base. In one campaign ad, Ramaswamy featured a longtime GOP activist who said she was unable to visit her mother at a nursing home during the pandemic, and that she died alone as a result. However, the mother’s obituary showed that she’d died at a hospice facility in Kentucky, not Ohio, more than two months after Ohio lifted its stay-at-home order and after Acton had resigned as health director. Further, DeWine said repeatedly during the contest that the calls to shutter schools and postpone a primary election were ultimately his.

One reason that the Acton-Ramaswamy contest remained so intensely personal from beginning to end is that both candidates offered little in terms of detailed policy. Though they staked out different positions on everything from reproductive rights to data centers to healthcare access, neither candidate faced a competitive primary that compelled them to outline their policies in detail. Neither served previously as a legislator with a voting record to scrutinize. Acton tightly controlled media access at her events and declined to debate Ramaswamy in the general election. Neither answered newspaper editorial board questions about policies like improving childcare affordability that they spoke about generally during campaign stops. 

So the ads that blanketed the battleground state were largely personal attacks. Acton suggested Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire and a biotech fraud. Ramaswamy and others in his orbit portrayed Acton as unfit to lead Ohio. The personal attacks culminated with Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother.

James Talarico will be the first Democrat to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate since 1994, Decision Desk HQ projects — a stunning upset in a race that hinged on conversations about masculinity and anti-transgender attacks.

Talarico, a seminarian and representative in the Texas legislature, defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton, a hardline conservative endorsed by President Donald Trump who is known as one of the anti-abortion movement’s staunchest warriors.

In what became the most expensive Senate race in state history, Paxton attacked Talarico on questions of manliness, characterizing the Democrat as “low-T” — a reference to testosterone levels that influencers in the manosphere often use. 

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Trump, called Talarico the “first transgender Senate candidate.” Talarico is cisgender and in a relationship with a woman. Republicans also falsely accused Talarico of being vegan, a notion that manosphere commentators argue can make someone less of a man.

Paxton’s campaign also focused on Talarico’s previous support of transgender rights, including through an array of AI-generated ads broadcast across the state and highlighting a 2021 remark in which he said, “God is nonbinary.” 

During the campaign, Talarico walked back his previous support of trans people participating in sports,  telling Fox News he would oppose allowing transgender student-athletes to participate in girls’ sports if “it endangers safety or fairness.” He also softened his support of keeping healthcare available for trans minors, telling Fox News he would vote for a national law banning gender-affirming surgeries for kids, which are rarely performed. 

Though Talarico focused his campaign on questions of costs and corruption, the Democrat leveraged his religious background when talking about issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. 

“We’re both Christians, and the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion. It means you and I both have to look at different scriptures to try to come to a conclusion,” Talarico said at an October CNN event. “But what I think we can do is actually come together on reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and the number of abortions. Because if we treat this issue as a public health problem and not a culture war problem, then we can actually make progress together.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, Paxton’s campaign was heavily financed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent almost $200 million in an attempt to secure a Republican victory. 

This is a breaking news story. The Post will update it as we get more information and reaction. 

Rep. Sharice Davids coasted to reelection Tuesday night, securing her fifth term in Congress, according to the Associated Press.

Davids defeated Republican Eric Jenkins, a former Shawnee city councilmember, and Libertarian Steve Hohe.

“Tonight, Kansans sent a clear message that they want pragmatic leadership focused on fighting corruption, finding common ground, and lowering costs for hardworking families,” Davids said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Traveling across our district throughout this campaign reaffirmed that when we reject partisanship and extremism, we can deliver real, common-sense progress together,” she said.

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Davids was first elected to Congress in 2018, when she unseated four-term Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder by nearly 10 percentage points.

She was the first Native American woman and first openly LGBTQ person to represent Kansas in Washington, D.C. A one-time mixed martial arts fighter and White House fellow in the Obama administration, she has cast herself as a bipartisan centrist during her eight years in office.

She faced criticism from the left earlier this year for her stances on issues like immigration and Israel’s war in Gaza, and she had to overcome her first-ever primary challenge in August. She ended up defeating Sarah Preu of Fairway with more than 80% of the vote.

Jenkins, a Republican, served on the Shawnee City Council from 2015 until losing his reelection bid in 2023. He also previously ran unsuccessfully for U.S. House in 2016 and 2018.

An Army veteran with more than three decades of active duty and reserve service, Jenkins also worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He pitched himself as a veteran and not a career politician.

But the race never seemed competitive.

Before last month’s final campaign finance reports, Davids held an eye-popping fundraising advantage over Eric Jenkins: roughly $3.7 million to $19,000.

Kansas’ Third Congressional District, centered around Johnson County, has been a recurring target for Republicans.

In 2022, lawmakers overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto and approved a new map splitting up the district by moving northern Wyandotte County out and adding three rural counties, Anderson, Franklin and Miami.

Still, Davids won reelection that year over former health care executive Amanda Adkins by 12 percentage points. Davids has won each of her reelection bids by double-digit percentage points.

Last year, GOP lawmakers in Topeka pushed for a special session to draw new Congressional maps again following President Trump’s calls for mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans, but legislative leaders could not gather enough lawmakers’ signatures to call the session.

OVERLAND PARK — Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton led the Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall in early vote counts that included one of Kansas’ most populous counties.

With more than 125,000 votes counted as of 7:17 p.m. in eight counties, Hamilton led with more than 73,000 votes compared with Marshall’s 50,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. The Libertarian candidate, David Graham, trailed around 2,000 votes.

Marshall, a former OB-GYN in central Kansas and first-term U.S. senator, has faced a tough reelection bid against Hamilton, a Johnson County pastor and the co-founder of one of the largest United Methodist congregations in the country. He’s attempting to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in Kansas since 1932. 

In a race that has become the most expensive in Kansas history, Marshall and Hamilton have held nothing back, relentlessly attaching each other’s pasts and affiliations, perceived or otherwise, while trying to convince voters of which future they ought to choose.

Polls closed at 7 p.m. Central Time in most of Kansas, but four western Kansas counties are in Mountain Time. Hamilton is expected to digest the night’s results at a watch party in Overland Park, while Marshall will watch results roll in among other Republican candidates at a party in Wichita. 

Voter turnout was strong Tuesday in Kansas’ three largest counties, said Brian Caskey, the state elections director, during a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon. As of 3:30 p.m., 55% of registered voters in Johnson County had turned out to vote, along with 44% of voters in Sedgwick County and 35% of voters in Wyandotte County. The first returns released included Sedgwick County. 

After his final rally Monday night in Overland Park, Hamilton said he would be proud of his campaign regardless of the results.

“Kansans are tired of the chaos, corruption and indecency in Washington that’s making life harder and more expensive,” Hamilton said. “No matter what the results are tomorrow night, I’m proud of the campaign we’ve run, and I’m proud of how we’ve stood up for the issues that matter.”

Hamilton has campaigned on affordability, health care and ending the war in Iran. He beat out 10 other primary candidates to become the party’s nominee in April, and Marshall’s lone primary opponent endorsed Hamilton. 

In the months since, national attention has flocked to Kansas. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia changed its rating Monday in the Kansas U.S. Senate race to “leans D,” a remarkable shift from the “safe R” rating the race had back in July.

Outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said Hamilton has run a campaign that shows “what he says is what he means” in a time when voters nationwide have grown accustomed to broken promises.

“I don’t think he comes across as a Democrat or a Republican, and I think he just is sort of party-free,” Kelly told Kansas Reflector on Thursday. “I think that he’s been able to get Kansans to trust him.”

Polls ahead of Election Day put Marshall and Hamilton neck-and-neck, while Marshall has been supported by two visits each from fellow Republicans President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Marshall has accused Hamilton of being controlled by U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, while Hamilton has criticized Marshall for failing to break with Trump when his administration’s policies hurt Kansans. 

Marshall has relied on his record in the Senate and loyalty to the Trump administration to resonate with voters, often touting efforts to advocate for year-round E15, a gasoline-ethanol blend, and introducing legislation that targets large financial institutions’ partnerships with major credit card networks such as Mastercard and Visa.

Marshall, at a Trump rally in Salina on Sunday, made a final pitch that every vote matters, and that a vote sends a message in Kansas. He said every time he would see former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, he would tell Marshall: “Roger, remember where you’re from.”

“I think that’s so important,” Marshall said. “And I want to make sure that everybody — whether you’re from Salina or, like I was, raised in El Dorado and lived in Great Bend now for 25 years — let’s let Washington know where we’re from.”

Trump said Tuesday on X that Marshall “is one of the Best Senators in the United States of America.”

“He loves Kansas more than anyone, with the possible exception of me!” Trump said.

In the same post, he called Hamilton a “Radical Left LUNATIC Dumocrat, whose Values are not those of the People of Kansas!”

In a video message before Election Day, Kansas GOP Chair Danedri Herbert said this election is critical for Republicans.

“In Kansas, there are 900,000 registered Republicans and only about 500,000 registered Democrats,” she said. “We know that if we vote, we win. But we need you to do your part.”

Graham, the Libertarian candidate in the race, was barred from participating in the candidates’ two debates ahead of Election Day. He encouraged voters in a statement to Kansas Reflector to avoid voting for the lesser of two evils. 

“Vote for freedom,” he said.

He said he’ll be watching Tuesday night to see how many people cast votes for libertarian candidates, who he said are gaining ground across the country.

“Regardless of the results, I shall continue working to provide a pro-freedom alternative to voters,” Graham said. “We need to end the two-party stranglehold on our country! I am optimistic about America!”

Tim Carpenter contributed to this report.

TOPEKA — Kansas voters are poised to choose a new secretary of state and insurance commissioner while deciding whether to send incumbents back to the treasurer and attorney general’s offices.

Among the contests for statewide office, the attorney general’s race –  a rematch of 2022 between Republican incumbent Kris Kobach and Democrat Chris Mann – was the most closely watched. Four years ago,  Kobach narrowly defeated Mann by just 15,892 votes, or 50.8% to Mann’s 49.2%. 

As early votes trickled in, Mann was leading with 61% of the votes to Kobach’s 39% at about 8:15 p.m.

Kobach and Mann sit on the opposite sides of most issues.

In an October debate, Mann, who was a police officer until a drunk driver hit him during a traffic stop, believes the attorney general should enforce the law rather than get involved in partisan politics. 

“My opponent has never worn a badge,” Mann said. “He’s never stood toe-to-toe with violent criminals on the street or in a courtroom. Instead, that man has run for almost every office in the state of Kansas, and he’s done it because he wanted to push his political agenda.”

Kobach, who was secretary of state from 2011 to 2019, focused on immigration and what he called his “extremely effective” crackdown on fentanyl abuse.

Secretary of state

The race for the state’s top election official brought together three candidates with different views on election administration: Republican Pat Proctor, Democrat Jennifer Day and Scott Morgan, a candidate with Kansas United, a new alternative party in the state.

As early results began to post to the Secretary of State’s website, Day led the race with 57% of the vote about 8:20 p.m., while Proctor trailed with 39% and Morgan had 3%.

Proctor, who has represented a Leavenworth district in the Kansas House since 2021, refuses to answer questions from Kansas Reflector but is on the record speaking against an imaginary and undefined “axis of ballot harvesting.” He chaired the House Elections Committee and led the effort to put the constitutional amendment on the general election ballot to ensure only citizens can vote in Kansas, which is already in the constitution.

Day, who served in the Kansas House for one session before resigning because she moved out of district, and Morgan both said Kansas elections are secure and called the amendment redundant. 

Day told Kansas Reflector she decided to run because of Proctor’s initiatives to restrict voting rights. 

The Secretary of State’s Office should be “quiet and boring,” she said.

“The majority of Kansans really appreciate leaders that are not looking to make headlines and are really just wanting to do the job,” she said.

Morgan, a former Republican, said he believes Kansas voters want new options outside of the Republican and Democratic parties. 

“It’s just providing a choice is all it really is,” Morgan said. “We are an alternative. We’re trying to be the center-left and center-right, forming a coalition, instead of with the extremes.”

Insurance commissioner

Republican Dan Hawkins, Democrat Dinah Sykes and Libertarian Ric Koehn are vying for state insurance commissioner. 

Hawkins and Sykes are both experienced politicians. Hawkins has served in the Kansas House since 2013, and as House speaker for the past four years.

Sykes has been a Kansas senator since 2017 and served as Senate minority leader since 2021. 

“The cost of health insurance in Kansas is simply out of control,” Sykes said in announcing her campaign. “Families and consumers can’t afford to keep up with the rise in premiums — on health care, auto, property or any other kind of insurance for that matter.”

Sykes also said she wouldn’t take money from the insurance industry. 

In his campaign announcement, Hawkins, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, said he would strive to create a “competitive insurance environment.” He believes deregulation would increase consumers’ options, lower costs and make insurance issues easier to navigate.

“No Kansan should be denied coverage,” he said. “Just like President Trump has made it his mission to make life miserable for foreign cartels, it will be my job as insurance commissioner to do the same for any insurance company that does not follow the law.”

Koehn, on the Libertarian website, said his focus would be to return “the insurance industry to the free market.” He opposes taxes, subsidies like the one Kansas offered to the Kansas City Chiefs, foreign wars and public education, the website said. 

State treasurer

Republican incumbent Steven Johnson, Democrat Juan Luengo and Libertarian Eric Lund are candidates to run the state treasurer’s office. 

Johnson has been the treasurer since 2023 and formerly served in the Kansas House from 2011 to 2023. Johnson has campaigned on the work he has done in the office, including reducing investment fees, creating efficiencies that saved tax dollars and increasing financial education opportunities. 

He partnered with businesses statewide to offer financial literacy opportunities, which he said will strengthen individuals and communities economically.  

Luengo, who has a business background and is CEO of Engage Insurance Group, has focused on his leadership skills and the ability of the office to support small businesses by expanding programs that are already offered. 

“Small business powers America. They’re the largest employer, yet they don’t have a seat at the table,” Luengo said. “If we can help them grow, scale, innovate and provide job creation — looking at what Texas and Florida are doing, we can do it better.” 

Lund, who has a degree in accounting and worked in finance as an auditor throughout his career, said on the Libertarian website that the treasurer position is an administrative one and not a legislative one. 

Lund said he would work with the Legislature and governor to cut government spending and taxation. He would look at reforming the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and to eliminate all sales taxes.

A vibe-coded site that scraped Archive of Our Own (AO3) fanfiction works, reuploaded them and charged for audiobook versions is down now after the creator said they received over 2,000 takedown requests from authors in the single day it was up.

ao3.life, a website that sprung up following last week’s announced weeks-long outage of fanfiction repository AO3, scraped the internet for works to populate the site using “a swarm of AI Agents controlling 40 virtual machines were scraping the internet for all drives, scrapes, and sources,” the site’s creator, named Ganesh, wrote on a page apologizing for the entire project. AO3.life went down on Monday evening following widespread backlash from readers and authors on social media. 

Before it went down, the ao3.life homepage said, “AO3, saved before it slips away. Search every fandom, ship and trope. Read it here, keep the EPUB, or let it read to you when your eyes get tired.” 

AO3 went down on Thursday following a security incident, according to the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) which owns the repository. The site is expected to be down for as long as four weeks. OTW says no data has been lost. Readers and authors are generally distraught, unable to access the site at all for potentially a month. AO3 hosts nearly 18.5 million works.

ao3.life offered works as EPUBs for reading on e-readers, and as AI-generated audiobooks that Ganesh charged for after the first three minutes. They claimed on a page titled “Authors get paid here” that authors would get 91% of the profits, with AO3.life getting 9% to cover “narration and processing” costs. “Your earnings wait for you. You don't need an account here to earn. We hold your share indefinitely until you collect it, however long that takes,” the site said. 

On AO3, authors can “archive lock” their works, making them visible only to logged-in users, which keeps AI bots like this one from scraping them and also gives better control over how far a work spreads or whether it breaks the containment of the repository’s intended audience. Of course, authors couldn’t access AO3 while it was down to lock their works if they were publicly available before the outage.

But some authors reported the archive lock not mattering. “I had everything archive locked on ao3 and it's still all here and I as the author have 0 control over any of my fics on there,” one AO3 author posted on Bluesky.

ao3.life said at the bottom of the homepage that authors could request their works be removed from the site: ”Every work belongs to its author; if one is yours and you want it gone, email legal@ao3.life and it goes.” Proving that you’re the author of the work to ao3.life required authors “leave a note on your AO3 profile so we can confirm it's you,” the site said. But how authors could do that while AO3 was — and still is — completely down is a mystery. 

A lot of authors clearly used the legal complaints email. “In the time this site has been up, I’ve facilitated over 2,000 takedown requests. It was never my intention to hurt so many authors - and I’m truly sorry to you all. There’s no way to show my sorry [sic] better than taking this site down,” Ganesh wrote. “Why did I charge for AI Slop audiobooks? I doubt anyone knows how expensive it is to run a server like this, especially with the amount of usage this site got. It had 126,592 unique users within 24 hours of going up, and had terabytes of bandwidth in usage. In an attempt to keep the site up, I thought audiobooks were a good option. I sold like 11 audiobooks, if it’s any consolation.”

Fanfiction has become a target of AI scraping, repackaging and reselling in recent years. In 2024, I reported on how Etsy sellers turn free fanfiction into printed and bound physical books, then list them for sale for as much as $100 a book.  

With AO3 down and fans scrambling to find ways to keep consuming the works they miss, some people have started sharing links to Google Drives on Reddit and Discord of works they’d downloaded from the site previously, even if they aren’t the original authors of those works. This has alarmed and angered a lot of writers; whether authors have the right to profit from their works depends on the content and their use of existing intellectual property. Fanfic is typically considered fair use — I can write a VeggieTales Bob and Larry fic without getting sued by Universal Pictures if it’s sufficiently transformative, for example — but selling it could draw the ire of their lawyers, and a potential lawsuit even if I happened to ultimately win it. Authors on AO3 are prohibited by the platform from monetizing their works or linking to payment platforms. 

“It was never and is not my intention to hurt authors, and I hope every subequent [sic] action I’ve taken is representative of that,” Ganesh said. “From an attempt at revenue sharing, to responding to takedown requests as fast as I could, to taking down the site as a whole.” They signed the note: “Yours truly, a 17 year old from India that thought they were doing something good.”