Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters in Congress, is the president-elect’s pick for attorney general, a stunning choice that builds upon Trump’s long-held views of the Justice Department as an extension of his White House.

As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer wrote in a 2019 profile, the Florida Republican has made something of a political career trolling everyone from food stamp recipients to Michael Cohen. Gaetz’s controversial career, which he largely secured thanks to family connections, gave way to becoming a staunch Trump loyalist and all-around suck-up. “Matt Gaetz is living proof that Veep was less parody and more prophecy,” as Steve Schmidt said.

But as he now sits on the cusp of becoming the next attorney general under a White House threatening to prosecute its enemies—from Nancy Pelosi to the media—it’s also worth noting that Gaetz is a terrible lawyer. From Stephanie:

Meanwhile, after graduating from William & Mary Law School in 2007, Matt Gaetz went to work for a politically connected firm in Fort Walton Beach, near Niceville. He toiled away on pedestrian legal matters befitting a junior associate in a region whose biggest city, Pensacola, is home to barely 50,000 people. He filed a debt collection suit against an elderly woman who couldn’t pay the home care firm owned by Gaetz’s dad. Matt also represented a homeowners’ association fighting the county over the placement of a beach volleyball net. And he sued the “red fish chix,” two professional fisherwomen accused of absconding with a $50,000 boat belonging to a local restaurant that had hired them to promote it.

Less than a year into his job, he also became one of the firm’s clients. One night in October 2008, Gaetz was driving his dad’s BMW home from a nightclub on Okaloosa Island when a sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for speeding. (Gaetz’s driving record is the subject of many jokes in his district. In 2014, he rear-ended one of his constituents while talking on his cellphone.)

Gaetz’s nomination comes as the latest in a shocking series of poorly qualified picks for the next administration that includes Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, a Fox News host (Defense), and Kristi Noem (Homeland Security).

Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters in Congress, is the president-elect’s pick for attorney general, a stunning choice that builds upon Trump’s long-held views of the Justice Department as an extension of his White House.

As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer wrote in a 2019 profile, the Florida Republican has made something of a political career trolling everyone from food stamp recipients to Michael Cohen. Gaetz’s controversial career, which he largely secured thanks to family connections, gave way to becoming a staunch Trump loyalist and all-around suck-up. “Matt Gaetz is living proof that Veep was less parody and more prophecy,” as Steve Schmidt said.

But as he now sits on the cusp of becoming the next attorney general under a White House threatening to prosecute its enemies—from Nancy Pelosi to the media—it’s also worth noting that Gaetz is a terrible lawyer. From Stephanie:

Meanwhile, after graduating from William & Mary Law School in 2007, Matt Gaetz went to work for a politically connected firm in Fort Walton Beach, near Niceville. He toiled away on pedestrian legal matters befitting a junior associate in a region whose biggest city, Pensacola, is home to barely 50,000 people. He filed a debt collection suit against an elderly woman who couldn’t pay the home care firm owned by Gaetz’s dad. Matt also represented a homeowners’ association fighting the county over the placement of a beach volleyball net. And he sued the “red fish chix,” two professional fisherwomen accused of absconding with a $50,000 boat belonging to a local restaurant that had hired them to promote it.

Less than a year into his job, he also became one of the firm’s clients. One night in October 2008, Gaetz was driving his dad’s BMW home from a nightclub on Okaloosa Island when a sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for speeding. (Gaetz’s driving record is the subject of many jokes in his district. In 2014, he rear-ended one of his constituents while talking on his cellphone.)

Gaetz’s nomination comes as the latest in a shocking series of poorly qualified picks for the next administration that includes Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, a Fox News host (Defense), and Kristi Noem (Homeland Security).

In the race for Arizona’s open US Senate seat, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has defeated the state’s most vociferous election-denier, Republican Kari Lake. His win gives Democrats 47 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 53.

Gallego’s win should not come as a shock if you’ve been paying attention. He had led Lake in polls consistently for the last year, usually running well ahead of the Democratic presidential ticket over the same period. But Democrats’ fourth consecutive Senate victory in a row in Arizona wasn’t exactly preordained either. Gallego’s victory statewide, after 10 years representing the state’s safest blue congressional district, was a testament to his own ability to adapt to Arizona’s purple electorate—and the far-right conspiracy theorist’s insistence on digging in her MAGA-red heels.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema opting not to run for re-election as an Independent in the general election also helped clear the way for Gallego to build a winning coalition. Of roughly 4.4 million registered voters in Arizona, a little more than a third are Republicans; a third are not affiliated with either party; and a slightly smaller cohort, about 30 percent, are Democrats.

Gallego consolidated his base at the outset by running as the anti-Sinema—a Democrat who wouldn’t abandon the party’s economic agenda or cozy up to millionaires at Davos. As he laid the groundwork for a Senate campaign, Gallego emphasized his progressive record in the House, where he was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for many years.

His 2024 Senate campaign didn’t abandon Democrats’ meat-and-potatoes issues. Gallego was still decisively in favor of abortion rights, LGBTQ issues, passing voting rights legislation, and acknowledging climate change. But to beat Lake in the general election, in a state that has voted for the GOP candidate in the last five of six presidential elections, much of Gallego’s messaging had to evolve. So did the feelings of a small but impactful cohort of moderate and conservative Arizona voters. 

While Lake became a devotee and instigator of the Big Lie—falsely claiming she won her gubernatorial race in 2022 and that Trump won his race in 2020—Gallego was especially proactive in trying to thwart election denialism. 

A Marine veteran who saw combat in Iraq, Gallego became one of the heroes of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. As his colleagues were panicking about the rioters seeking entry to the House floor, Gallego showed them how to use gas masks. As we reported in the May-June issue of Mother Jones, he also handed Rep. Eric Swalwell a pen to use for self-defense, should the California Democrat be attacked. This imagery undoubtedly inspired Democrats, but Republicans largely wanted to forget the day’s events ever happened.

Though Democrats lost the support of some Hispanic voters in other states, Gallego’s support hovered closer to what the party has won in recent elections, and he ran particularly strong among men. He met those voters where they were; earlier in the campaign, he even rented out a boxing gym to hold a watch party for a big boxing match. And his campaign embraced Gallego’s potential to become the first Latino senator from a state with one of the largest Latino populations in the United States, kicking off the final weekend of the race with a Mexican rodeo, where volunteers handed out Lotería cards featuring Gallego as “El Senador” and Lake as “La Mentirosa,” or liar. It reminded him, he said, of the rodeos he’d gone to growing up, when visiting his father’s family in Chihuahua. But his appeal was about far more than his identity. It was rooted in aspirational working-class politics that could reach even the sorts of voters who have recently drifted to Trump.

“We’re sending people to Washington, DC, that don’t understand how hard it is to work,” he said at that rodeo. “They don’t understand what it means to put 40 hours away. They don’t understand what it means to actually struggle and still believe the next day it’s going to be better.”

Gallego was comfortable talking about border security, too. Far from the open-border policies Lake accused Gallego of promoting, he often advocated for more border patrol agents and physical structures in high-impact regions, and he highlighted how Republican senators blocked a $20 billion border security package earlier this year, at Trump’s behest. 

As the child of two immigrants, Gallego emphasized the need to reform the process of migrants coming to the US legally. Migrants are “doing all these illegal or abusive things because they want to get here and we’re not making it easier,” he told Mother Jones over the summer, “and we do need people to come work.”

But the race was as much about Gallego’s ability to adapt his messaging to a broader audience as it was Lake’s complete inability to do the same. For the former local TV news anchor, election denial was both a ticket to stardom and a trap. Lake resigned from her job at Fox 10 Phoenix not long after publicly questioning Fox News’ decision to call the state for President Joe Biden four years ago, and she rocketed to stardom on the far-right as one of the most vocal proponents of the stolen-election narrative in a state with no shortage of them. Her insistence that Trump actually won the state, and her promise to prosecute election administrators—including Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs—earned her Trump’s endorsement during her 2022 run for governor. For a time, people were even talking about her as a future running mate.

In 2022, Lake’s election denial, and her attacks on the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, may have cost her a race in which a significant number of Republicans cast their votes, instead, for Hobbs. But Lake didn’t see it that way. In fact, she wouldn’t even admit that she lost. It wasn’t just that Lake was being a sore loser—she went to court to challenge the results, and to argue that she should be installed in the governor’s mansion. She wrote in her memoir—last year—that she was the “lawful governor” of Arizona and traveled the state whipping crowds into a frenzy about the race that had been stolen from her. Her attempts to overturn that election did not wind down when she began to campaign in earnest for a different office. They are still ongoing. There’s a common refrain in politics that losing candidates tend to fight the last war. Lake turned that line into performance art.

If Gallego’s message was a reminder to Democrats of how they win in Arizona, Lake’s offered a sampler of the myriad ways in which MAGA candidates have found to lose. She spent a bizarre amount of time out-of-state, mostly at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this year, Lake forced the state Republican party chairman to resign after secretly recording a conversation in which he suggested she sit out the Senate race. She went back and forth and back again on the state’s territorial abortion ban, which—before it was repealed—outlawed all abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Lake, who is being sued by Maricopa County’s Republican recorder for defamation for her assertions that he helped rig the vote against her, had a tendency to clam up when she was asked about her election denial during the campaign. “Why are we looking backward?” she asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “I’m looking forward.”

But she couldn’t resist one last glimpse over her shoulder. On election eve, at a rally on the courthouse steps in Prescott, a heavily Republican enclave two hours north of Phoenix, Lake was joined by a who’s who of election deniers, including Wendy Rogers, who previously called for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to be thrown in prison, and Abe Hamadeh, who continued to contest his 280-vote loss in the 2022 attorney general’s race even as he ran for Congress. When it was her turn, she thanked Hamadeh for challenging the results. “When they did to us what they did to us in 2022 and everyone else ran and hid,” she complained. “Guess who stood with me and said, ‘Damn it, we’re going to fight’?” 

“We have elections that are run so horribly,” Lake complained. She wanted the crowd gathered in the chilly November night to “give the people running our elections whiplash” by making the result “too big to rig.”

Campaign season didn’t end for Lake on election day, though. On Thursday, she got one last piece of bad news: The state supreme court rejected Lake’s final appeal in her attempts to overturn her 2022 defeat. Her Senate dreams are over. Her campaign for governor finally is too.

Late Tuesday night, the Associated Press projected Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown—and with him, any sense that Ohio was still a swing state.

Brown, who served three terms, maintained an edge for most of his US Senate reelection bid against Moreno, a former luxury car dealership owner from Colombia. But in the end, a windfall of cash from national Republican groups boosted Moreno over the top. Just before midnight, Moreno lead Brown by 5 points.

It’s not surprising that a Republican would win a Senate seat in Ohio, but the fact that this particular Republican beat a well-liked incumbent suggests how much Ohio has changed in less than a decade.

As a Rust Belt state devastated by deindustrialization, automation, and in recent years, an epidemic of drug addiction, Ohio tends to gravitate toward candidates who are dutiful in their support for middle-class and working-class voters. But Moreno doesn’t have a pro-worker reputation: As we previously reported, he was found liable for withholding wages from employees and was sanctioned by a judge for disposing of documents relevant to that case. He additionally faced lawsuits from former employees who accused him of racial, gender, and age discrimination. More recently, he’s blocked voters from recording his events by using audio jammers.

Moreno also struggled to refine his message on reproductive rights, a topic 57 percent of Ohio voters said they supported in 2023 when they approved a ballot measure enshrining abortion access. “You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters,” Moreno said in a leaked video from a recent town hall. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else,'” Moreno mocked. “OK. It’s a little crazy, by the way, but—especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”

But Moreno did have something Brown could never dream of—nor desire: an endorsement from Donald Trump. That endorsement was likely pivotal for Moreno, says Paul Beck, professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University. It gave him the edge against state Sen. Matt Dolan, a more traditional Republican who was Moreno’s biggest competition in the primary race. With no political experience and, until recently, not much name recognition, “he doesn’t really have a strong track record” otherwise, Beck says.

While Brown is a political progressive—supporting LGBTQ rights and reproductive freedoms—he has maintained a healthy distance from the rest of his party in recent months. He didn’t campaign with Harris. He stayed home this summer while fellow Democrats threw their celebratory, celebrity-filled nominating convention in Chicago. Brown also garnered the endorsement of the only Republican who ever defeated him in an election: former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who bested Brown as he sought reelection as Ohio’s secretary of state in 1990.

Known for sporting union-made suits and driving union-made cars, Brown’s 2024 campaign also attracted long-standing appreciation from prominent labor union leaders. The senator often wears a canary pin on his lapel to symbolize 20th-century coal miners who were subjected to dangerous working conditions before collective bargaining advanced job safety.

His populist persona and these contradictions are the same ones that helped Brown win the Senate seat three times in 2006, 2012, and 2018. It’s not that Brown has changed. It’s that Ohio has.

Ohio used to be a political microcosm of the country. Without fail, between 1964 and 2016, Ohio’s presidential pick was also the nation’s choice of president. The consistency inspired the phrase, “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.”

In the early 2000s, the state’s population growth began lagging behind the rest of the country. Over time, Ohio became less educated, older, whiter—and, accordingly, redder. When Trump ran in 2016, his brash, America First persona appealed to Ohioans who felt they had been forgotten by elite politicians prioritizing globalism over their kitchen-table issues. In both 2016 and 2020, Trump won the state by more than 8 points. That trend has continued this cycle: As of 11:30 pm ET, Trump was nearly 12 points ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Ohio.

In the end, Brown’s legislative history and broad coalition of blue-collar devotees couldn’t propel him to a fourth term. In today’s Ohio, only Trump’s support mattered.

“I have two rules,” Bernie Moreno, Ohio’s Republican candidate for US Senate, told a crowd at a Columbus-area event earlier this year. “Rule number one is you can videotape and tape record anything I say. What I say to you here is what I’ll say to the media, is what I say privately, is what I say to my own team…Rule number two,” he continued, “is please ask difficult questions.”

Moreno, who rose to prominence as the owner of multiple luxury car dealerships, has made similar declarations at least half a dozen times on the 2024 campaign trail. But while Moreno brags about his dedication to transparency, his campaign also uses a machine at his events that renders voice recordings and videos taken by everyday voters inaudible as his race against incumbent three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown narrows to a slim margin; the winner of this close race will help determine which political party controls the US Senate.

The so-called “anti-recording devices” are available on Amazon for $399.99 and work by emitting white noise and ultrasonic waves that recording devices pick up but people present in person generally do not.

Moreno’s decision to muffle recordings with the gadget may have been prompted by criticism he’s received for leaked audio in which he discusses his thoughts about abortion: In late September, Moreno was recorded at an event saying that suburban women making abortion their top issue at the polls is “a little crazy by the way—especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”

Business Insider first reported on October 25 that Moreno’s campaign was using the anti-recording tools to thwart political trackers, who are paid to trace candidates’ every move, from recording Moreno soundbites. The campaign told the publication that the gadget was “only being used against trackers, rather than regular event attendees.”

Mother Jones, however, has learned from an Ohio voter that the device also distorted the audio she tried to record at a mid-October event hosted by Moreno in Ottawa County, Ohio. (Warning, the muffled audio isn’t pleasant on the ears.)

The voter, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had hoped to record the event in order to share it with a friend who wanted to attend but had a scheduling conflict. Instead, the recordings the woman took ended up sounding something like launching an internet dial-up connection or tuning a decades-old radio.

Mother Jones has verified this voter does not work for any political campaigns. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party confirmed the party had not sent any paid operatives or trackers to this particular Moreno event.

After the Business Insider account published, a conservative political strategist whose firm, Big Dog Strategies, has worked with Moreno’s campaign went so far as to share the Amazon listing: “For all our friends asking, here’s the link.” A spokesperson for the Moreno campaign did not respond to specific questions sent by Mother Jones.

The Spy Associates–brand product listing confirms its audio-jamming device is effective in preventing anyone within a wide radius—not just political staffers—from recording: “Our ultrasound anti-recording speech protector, with its advanced noise and ultrasonic waves,” the description says, “ensures unauthorized recordings within a range of +/- 6.5-33 feet and a 270-degree interference angle are rendered indecipherable.”

At the end of every event on Ted Cruz’s 53-stop campaign swing through Texas, the state’s junior senator invites supporters to line up and sign his bus. People scrawl their names and their hometowns. Someone wrote “End Human Trafficking” behind the driver’s side mirror. A lot of people write Bible verses; Psalm 91—“No weapon forged against me shall prosper”—is a popular one. People have plugged a plumbing company, a YouTube channel, and even Cruz’s own podcast. A “Free Palestine” message has been crossed out. A “Zodiac 2024” message has not.

The campaign’s slogan, emblazoned in big letters on the front, is “Keep Texas, Texas.” But as Cruz attempts to fend off Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in one of the year’s tightest US Senate races, one simple message written in gold marker on the door captured the essence of his path to victory: “CA Refugee 4 Ted!!”

This is the great irony of the embattled Republican’s reelection bid: For a party that complains about Democrats “importing” voters from across the border, it is Texas Republicans who are relying on migration to remain in power. The people he is seeking to protect Texas from, according to the data, are Texas-born residents (who backed his 2018 opponent, Beto O’Rourke). The people he is hoping will save him are, in no small part, transplants. The result is that the politics that Cruz pitches on the campaign trail is less about addressing the lived reality of Texas—a high-tax and low-services state with poor public health outcomes and a fragile power grid—than about preserving the image it projects to the world. It is a contest, in a sense, between Texas and Texas.

In the backyard of a brewery in the Hill Country town of Boerne on Saturday night, this sense of an imperiled legacy was palpable. It was not just the de rigueur “Don’t California My Texas” T-shirts—I kept running into voters who had moved to the state in recent years, attracted by the particular brand of freedom that people like Cruz espouse. Cheryl Grosso moved from Washington state three years ago during the pandemic. “My biggest thing is child sex trafficking,” she said. I met a former Democrat who had supported Tulsi Gabbard in the 2020 presidential primary before fleeing California and its Covid-19 restrictions. “The left went crazy,” she said, “thinking men can be women” and “shutting down businesses.” I asked her if she’d consider voting for a Democrat again.

“I left that behind,” she said. “I shed it like an old skin.”

Cruz’s remarks were a constant reminder of this Texas that was under attack. “How many of you all drove a truck here tonight?” he asked. A mass of hands went up. “This is Texas,” he said. But Democrats’ electric-vehicle mandates would threaten that frontier way of life. “Who the hell is Kamala Harris and Colin Allred to tell you what kind of car or truck you buy for your family?” 

“If there were a vacancy on the city council in San Francisco Colin Allred would be one heck of a candidate—he’d be tough to beat,” Cruz said, “But thank God this is Texas!”

A supporter shouted that Allred should be given a one-way ticket to California.

“How about we just put him on a jackass, head it north and slap its ass?” Cruz said. 

Who was this man, and why did he sound like he was in Blazing Saddles?

“This is a battle between sane and crazy. These people are nuts. Tim Walz waves like this,” Cruz said at another point, opening and closing his hand somewhat like a bird, in what I took to suggest an effeminate manner. “What the hell is that? You do that in Texas, you’ll get your ass kicked.”

I don’t think it’s true that Texans will kick your ass if you wave at them like that, although I’m pretty sure I know who I’d call nuts if they did. But that we don’t do that kind of thing around here is Cruz’s message in a nutshell. Much of his rhetoric onstage—like the message on the accompanying campaign literature, and the message in tens of millions of dollars in campaign ads—was that Allred holds outsider values that make him a threat to their idea of Texas. In particular, he is a threat to Texas women and girls.

“He has voted repeatedly in favor of boys competing in girls’ sports,” Cruz said, “in favor of men competing in women’s sports…Colin Allred has voted not only in favor of boys’ and girls’ sports, but he’s voted in favor of boys in girls’ bathrooms, boys in girls’ locker rooms, boys in girls’ changing rooms.”

Allred and Kamala Harris “are both open border radicals who are both desperately trying to cover up their record and lie to the voters,” he said a little while later. What was the difference? “Well, you might say he’s a man, she’s a woman. But do we know how he identifies?”

It is hard to overstate just how much of Cruz’s attempt to win a Senate race in the world’s eighth-largest economy is about the prospect of transgender students competing in high school sports. He talked about it a ton. Appended to the anti-trans panic was a countervailing vision of masculinity, Texas style. 

“Did anyone happen to see Trump’s speech at the Al Smith dinner?” Cruz asked. “I have to say my favorite line of it was he said, ‘Have you guys seen this White Dudes for Kamala?’ And he said, ‘You know, I’m not really worried, because all their wives and all their wives’ lovers, are voting for me.’”

“Bring back alpha males!” a woman behind me shouted. 

This riff on cuckolded men was a sort of strange reference coming from Cruz, a guy who has devoted his recent life to the man who smeared his own wife. And amid all this bravado were obvious signs of weakness. The premise of “Keep Texas, Texas,” after all is that it’s possible you might not. Historically, this sort of existential crisis seems to correlate most strongly with Cruz appearing on the ballot. He won reelection by less than 3 points in 2018, the same year Gov. Greg Abbott was reelected by 13. While some recent polls have shown Cruz and Allred within the margin of error, no one expects Donald Trump’s final margin to be so close. Cruz is still a good bet to win—perhaps especially because Trump is a good bet to win by a wider margin—but he has become a high-floor, low-ceiling kind of guy; there is only so much juice you can really have as the guy who saved bathrooms.

The surest sign that Cruz still has real work in the final weeks of the race to do was the fact that he spent a fair bit of time talking about the work he actually does. Cruz, who has sought to depict himself during the campaign as a bipartisan leader in Washington, spoke at length about his efforts to deliver a nonstop flight between Washington, DC, and San Antonio. He’d worked hand in hand with leaders from heavily Democratic Bexar County. He’d even worked with Pete Buttigieg! It was the sort of deal that the bacon-delivering legislators of Texas’ past—your LBJs, your Jims Wright—used to wrangle before breakfast. Cruz spoke of it like he’d just acquired Louisiana.

If the direct flights don’t save him, the unceasing attack on Allred’s stance on trans rights still might. The spots have hit hard enough that Allred recently responded with a direct-to-camera ad stating that he did not support “boys in girls sports.” It was one of the first things people would bring up when I asked about Allred. And it elicited some of the harshest reactions from the crowd during Cruz’s remarks.

As I waited for the event to begin, I met a voter named Erica Herbert, who was holding a “Women for Cruz” sign. She acknowledged that she had reservations about the Republican candidate. Herbert supported abortion rights and was worried about the state’s hard-right drift—fitting the profile of the kind of person Democrats are banking on to flip the seat. But after watching Cruz’s recent debate with Allred, Herbert considered Cruz “the lesser of two evils.” She wasn’t sure exactly what exactly to believe, but the high school sports issue settled the matter; she wasn’t going to vote for a candidate who could do such a thing. Cruz can be a difficult politician to love, but he is never more adept than when he’s telling voters what they have to lose.

The suburbs of North Dallas were once the headquarters of a very particular pre-MAGA version of the Republican Party: genteel, gun-toting, and churchgoing. The men wore beaver-fur cowboy hats, and the women were hairsprayed to the high heavens. As we reported in 2011, the 75205 zip code—some of which falls into the 32nd Congressional District of Texas—was the “most enthusiastically Republican enclave in the country.” But then, changing racial demographics made the district ripe for Democratic picking. In 2018, a 35-year-old Black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred ousted Pete Sessions, an 11-term Republican congressman. Allred, a stocky former NFL linebacker, has been reelected to the seat twice since, campaigning on his moderate sensibilities and willingness to reach across the aisle. 

Now, Allred is running that same play against US Sen. Ted Cruz, a hard-line Republican, in an ever-tightening race. At the Texas Tribune Festival in September, Allred seemed to be nostalgic for that fading Republican archetype who once populated the district he now represents. He described growing up with the “real conservatives,” whom Cruz, he said emphatically, is not. Allred paints Cruz as a divisive extremist and has been courting Republicans who “don’t see themselves reflected in this version of the Republican Party.” 

And that strategy seems to be working—last week, the Cook Political Report shifted the race to “lean Republican.” Most polls show Allred within single digits of Cruz, and one has Allred leading by one point. With Democrats defending incumbents in Ohio and Montana, flipping Texas could make the difference in maintaining their governing majority in the Senate. After some Democrats pushed the party to invest more in Allred’s campaign, both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic National Committee announced investments in Texas.  

But Texas Democrats have not won a statewide election since 1994. The closest they have come was former El Paso Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s freewheeling 2018 campaign against Cruz. O’Rourke famously campaigned in all 254 counties, crisscrossing the state in his maroon Dodge Caravan. He livestreamed his every move on Facebook: chatting while getting a haircut, skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot, and going on predawn jogs with supporters. O’Rourke ultimately lost by fewer than three points—which some Democrats count as a victory—and won a place as a mythic figure in the state party. He is the ghost haunting Allred’s campaign. Every dollar raised, poll conducted, and door knocked inspires comparisons to 2018’s high-water mark.

By most measures, Allred is a strong candidate and has assembled quite a war chest, having outraised Cruz this year. And the junior senator from Texas certainly appears concerned about the race—Cruz’s campaign has called the election the “fight of our lives.” And in a surprising twist, the hyperpartisan Cruz, who built his career as a culture warrior, has attempted to gain an advantage by arguing that he has a bipartisan record. 

Allred, who can come off as stiff and overly scripted, hasn’t inspired the kind of Democratic fervor that O’Rourke enjoyed. But he has been appealing to moderate Republicans and independents who may be alienated by Cruz’s MAGA approach, talking openly about Democratic failures to address the border crisis. The central question: Is running a middle-of-the-road campaign the strategy for winning a race that O’Rourke so narrowly lost? 

Campaigning for statewide office in Texas, which is slightly larger than France and has a population of 30 million, is comparable to running for president of some countries. Hispanics are now the largest population group in the state, and the numbers of Black and Asian residents are also growing. Texas contains four of the most populous cities in the US and some of the most expensive media markets. Allred’s robust campaign coffers have made it possible for him to blanket urban centers with television ads. But a more difficult challenge is what veteran journalist and editor of the website Quorum Report Scott Braddock called the “imagination gap”: Texans under the age of 30 have never seen a Democrat win a statewide election. 

The last Democrat to do so was Bob Bullock, who was reelected as lieutenant governor in 1994, the same year that former President George W. Bush first became governor. Since then, there have been a series of high-profile losses. From the “dream team” of statewide candidates in 2002 to popular Houston Mayor Bill White’s gubernatorial campaign in 2010, Democrats have routinely raised their hopes, only to be crushed by Republicans. In 2014, they thought they had a real shot at the governor’s mansion with Wendy Davis, the state senator who rose to national prominence when her marathon filibuster delayed a restrictive abortion bill. Bolstered by Battleground Texas, a new PAC launched by two Obama campaign alums, Davis ran on a compelling biography as a single mother who wound up at Harvard Law School. But her campaign struggled to stay on message and was outraised and outspent by Greg Abbott in his first gubernatorial campaign. She lost by 20 points. 

In 2018, Texas Democrats found a new standard-bearer in O’Rourke, the lanky, indefatigable 46-year-old US congressman from El Paso. He made a point of throwing out the Democratic playbook, initially pledging to go without pollsters and consultants and to refuse donations from corporations and super-PACs. O’Rourke was a kind of political Rorschach test. Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said, “O’Rourke was successfully able to be everything to everyone.” He had progressive bona fides, supporting universal health care, abortion rights, and an assault rifle ban. He capitalized on Democratic outrage around former President Donald Trump’s family separation policies, leading a Father’s Day protest outside a detention facility for immigrant children. But he could also be, as Jones put it, a “post-partisan pragmatist.” He had a centrist voting record in Congress and a long-standing friendship with Republican US Rep. Will Hurd—the two livestreamed their road trip from San Antonio to Washington, DC, in 2017. Ignored by Cruz for the first several months of the campaign, O’Rourke’s shifting and sometimes contradictory narratives went largely unchallenged. 

With an army of volunteers and record-breaking fundraising from both inside and outside the state, O’Rourke came tantalizingly close to defeating Cruz, losing by 2.6 points. As Gus Bova wrote in the Texas Observer, O’Rourke “broke the mold” in 2018, defying political gravity and reinvigorating Texas Democrats. But after disappointing showings in the 2019 Democratic presidential primary and the 2022 gubernatorial race, some have wondered whether O’Rourke’s political career is over. O’Rourke now leads a voter registration PAC and recently joined second gentleman Doug Emhoff on a fundraising turn through Texas—including a stop at his beloved Whataburger. 

When it comes to the prospect of a blue Texas, one can’t blame Democrats for feeling like Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football again, despite knowing that Lucy is going to yank it away every time. And it might be hard to rustle up enthusiasm for a candidate who is decidedly less compelling than O’Rourke. 

For the last eight years, Democrats have harbored hopes that, eventually, Trump and his allies will become so extreme that they will alienate their own base. And for many, Cruz could be the perfect example of a Republican who should have been jettisoned by the GOP long ago. When he arrived in the Senate in 2013, fueled by the insurgent tea party, he made a name for himself as a far-right obstructionist with a penchant for showmanship. That year, his long-shot attempt to undercut the Affordable Care Act—involving a 21-hour Senate speech and a reading of “Green Eggs and Ham”—led to a two-week government shutdown and was harshly criticized by other Republicans. Then there was his ill-fated and embarrassing presidential primary bid in 2016, which culminated in a surprising speech at the Republican National Convention during which he urged delegates to vote their consciences and declined to endorse Trump. But Cruz walked back his condemnation of Trump when it became apparent that it would irreparably harm his political career. And, of course, there is Democrats’ favorite Cruz gaffe of them all: jetting off to Cancun, Mexico, during a deadly winter storm in 2021. (He apologized upon his return.) These days, Cruz also makes time to record his thrice-weekly podcast.

Nonetheless, polling finds that Cruz remains popular among Texas Republicans, and he may be bolstered by Trump’s appearance on the ticket. But a June poll found that only 25 percent of self-identified independents, a key voting group, approved of him. His recent attempts to rebrand as an effective legislator and unsung bipartisan hero may speak to that concern.   

Early in the race, Allred’s campaign was so lackluster that it inspired a great deal of grumbling from within the Texas Democratic Party. “Where is Colin Allred?” a prominent West Texas lawyer and Democrat asked on X in August. Allred had done few public events and made even fewer media appearances before the final night of the Democratic National Convention, when he gave a speech shortly before Vice President Kamala Harris. For most people outside Texas (and even some within it), this was likely the first time they heard that Cruz was facing a challenger. In the weeks since then, Allred’s campaign has picked up its pace. But Allred has mostly opted for smaller meetings over large rallies and town halls, and his campaign has organized mostly identity-focused coalition groups—including women, Asian Americans, and Black Texans. Last week, his campaign announced “Republicans for Allred,” chaired by former US Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a prominent anti-Trump Republican who also endorsed Harris.

The Allred campaign declined to make the candidate available for an interview and instead suggested I speak to Olivia Julianna, a social media activist who is advising the campaign on youth voter turnout. When asked why larger rallies haven’t been a focus of his campaign, she replied, “This is a more strategic, targeted way of reaching people and bringing them in on these very issue-focused events that are about [what] they care about the most.” 

At the Texas Tribune Festival, Allred was asked about a note from O’Rourke, who said in an interview that he’d like to see more of Allred, particularly in “unscripted” moments. It’s difficult to campaign in such a large state, Allred said, a bit defensively, and pointed out that he had made 50 stops in 22 cities in the past month.

Allred’s restraint is underscored by comparisons with O’Rourke, who was endlessly available to voters. Even Cruz, perhaps relieved to know that he will not have to face O’Rourke again, has spoken with some admiration about O’Rourke and noted that he and Allred are “very different candidates.” In August, Cruz told the Texas Tribune: “Beto O’Rourke was charismatic. He was tireless. He campaigned all over the state, and he became a phenom.”

Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic political strategist in Texas, said Allred’s more traditional, buttoned-up campaign can still be successful, as having high message discipline is usually considered to be a good thing in a candidate. “Some people like the excitement of someone who is spontaneous, [and] there’s a lot to be said about leading a pep rally,” Angle told Mother Jones. “But I like candidates who are trying to figure out how to win.” 

Some Democrats have worried that Allred is taking the base for granted and focusing too much on moderates. Even though he endorsed Harris’ presidential bid, he’s largely kept her and other national Democrats at arm’s length. In fact, it sometimes seems as though Allred would rather voters not view him as a Democrat at all. In May, he told Texas Monthly that the race is “not about voting for Democrats. This race is about me versus Ted Cruz specifically.” 

Jones, the professor from Rice University, said the best strategy, which Allred seems to be employing, is relying on Harris to mobilize progressives while he targets moderate Republicans and independents. “Democrats in Texas always face this a no-win situation: The more they appeal to moderate voters, the greater the risk they run that the base doesn’t turn out for them,” Jones said. “However, the more they focus on the base, the more they alienate moderate voters and push them over to the Republicans. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Allred’s policies are generally consistent with those of the Democratic Party: He wants to expand Medicaid, codify Roe v. Wade, and reduce gun violence. But he has attempted to distance himself when it comes to immigration and border security, which have become the centerpieces of his campaign. A June poll found that 47 percent of Texans strongly disapproved of President Joe Biden’s approach to immigration and border security. Immigration has become a weak point for Democrats at large, as border crossings have risen to record levels and strained federal and local resources. To combat accusations of being weak on the border, Democrats have begun to support some immigration policies that they opposed under Trump, and, as many have pointed out, are sometimes indistinguishable from Republicans in their rhetoric of being “tough” on the border.

Allred is not an exception, and he has been willing to go further than other members of his party. In January, he voted alongside two other Texas Democrats in support of a Republican-led congressional resolution that condemned Biden’s border policies. On the campaign trail, he often cites his family connection to the Rio Grande Valley—his maternal grandfather was a customs agent at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville—and he’s said current immigration policies have placed an undue “burden” on border communities.

But Allred’s rhetoric on border security was not always so tough. In 2018, when he was running for the House of Representatives, he called Trump’s border wall “racist” and pledged to tear it down. Yet last October, he commended Biden’s decision to continue border wall construction, describing it as a “necessary step.” In a recent TV spot reminiscent of a Ford F-150 ad, Allred emerges from a white pickup truck to survey the border wall. The law enforcement officials accompanying him declare that Cruz has been “all hat, no cattle” on border security, while Allred has been “tough” and “[stood] up to extremists in both parties.” 

Allred’s campaign declined to respond to specific questions from Mother Jones on border security. His campaign website says he supports “common-sense” immigration measures and pathways to citizenship for those who are “obeying the law, working hard, [and] paying taxes.”

I asked Joaquin Castro, the Democratic congressman from San Antonio, about Allred’s position on the border. He said his congressional colleague is trying to strike a “reasonable balance,” disagreeing “with the dehumanization of people” while pushing for more funding for border security.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan border security bill failed to pass because of pressure from Trump. Described by Biden as the “strongest border deal the country has ever seen,” the measure was the result of negotiations with some of the most conservative members of Congress, including Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford. It would have increased funding for enforcement, restricted asylum applications, and expanded the government’s authority to deport migrants. The bill’s failure presented a unique opportunity for Democrats to turn the border blame game back on Republicans. Allred has campaigned widely on Cruz’s opposition to the deal, saying Cruz voted against it only because, like the former president, “he wanted to have the issue to run on in November.”

A persistent Democratic mantra is that Texas is not so much a red state as a non-voting blue one. In 2020, Manny Garcia, who was then the state Democratic Party’s executive director, told Reuters, “Texas is in play because there are more of us than there are of them.” But organizers emphasize that electoral transformation takes time and investment. Michelle Tremillo, co-executive director of the Texas Organizing Project, said her group focuses on engaging Black and Latino first-time voters and “building that cycle of participation is long-term work.” Democrats already have made progress in county and district elections—such as with Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old Colombian immigrant who defeated a popular Republican incumbent to lead the Harris County Commissioners Court in 2018. “With each election cycle, we are chipping away at a statewide gap,” Tremillo said. 

Such voter mobilization efforts are relatively new in Texas, particularly on the statewide level. A decade or so ago, political infrastructure for Democrats in Texas was like “actual infrastructure in Afghanistan,” said Braddock, the journalist. There were Democrats concentrated in large urban counties, but there was “nothing to connect them,” he said. State-level campaigns were largely left to do everything on their own: fundraising, coordinating events, and organizing volunteers for phone banks and door-knocking. Angle, the political strategist, told Mother Jones that back then, “the resources to expand and coordinate to win a statewide race weren’t available.” 

The 2018 O’Rourke campaign showed Democrats that a statewide grassroots effort was both possible and effective. There are now more progressive voter groups in Texas—some run by O’Rourke campaign alums. Katherine Fischer, who worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign and now runs Texas Majority PAC, said, “There’s now a much stronger network performing organizing work, which lessens the campaign’s burden.”

This past summer, Texas Democrats announced that Allred’s campaign would bundle its efforts with downballot Democratic candidates, coordinating volunteers and sharing data. Called the “Texas Offense,” the campaign described it as the “first statewide coordinated grassroots effort in 20 years.” A recent press release reported that the coalition had logged 600 events and 3,000 volunteer shifts. 

Democrats like to call Texas a “game-over” state—if they secure its 40 Electoral College votes, Republicans will find it very difficult to win the presidency. Although Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win in Texas in 1976, Democrats are quick to point out that the margins have progressively narrowed in the last decade. In 2012, Barack Obama lost Texas by 15.8 points. Hillary Clinton lost by nine, and Biden lost by 5.6. This year, Democrats are simply hoping to move the needle closer in the presidential race. “Success this year is not measured by who wins. It’s measured by watching how much closer they get,” said Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a Democratic advocacy group. 

However much Democrats may hope for an Allred victory, not many are expecting one. After 30 years of being proven wrong, Democrats are tempering their optimism—and their low expectations might prove to be a real liability for Allred. On a recent episode of the Bulwark Podcast, O’Rourke told journalist Tim Miller that politics is a “confidence game.” 

“Can [Allred] generate enough excitement to convince people that he can win?” O’Rourke asked. “If people believe this is possible, then they’ll act like it’s possible.” 

Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, has a tough task. As he now runs for the US Senate, he claims to be a reasonable, non-Trump Republican, hoping to win over Democrats and independents in a state Joe Biden won by 33 points in 2020. He repeatedly insists he is a “straight shooter” who eschews “performative politics” and asserts he is “fed up” with politicians who are “more interested in attacking one another than actually getting anything done.” Yet while he casts himself as a sensible moderate who rejects attack-politics-as-usual, Hogan has mounted fierce negative assaults on his Democratic opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince Georges County. Moreover, he has pulled a giant flip-flop, assailing her performance in office as disastrous, even though Hogan had, prior to this campaign, praised her as a “great” leader and a highly accomplished county executive.

This summer, Hogan’s campaign launched a spoof website with the URL angelaalsobrooks.org that looked like her official site but slammed her on multiple fronts. The site was headlined, “Meet Angela Alsobrooks: Another partisan politician who doesn’t deliver.” It claimed she has failed “to deliver on even the most basic of government functions”—quite a harsh accusation. Echoing a dominant theme of Donald Trump’s campaign, the Hogan-backed site declared that crime in Prince Georges County has “increased to out-of-control levels.” (That was an exaggeration. Overall crime in the county was down as of this summer, though violent crime had ticked up, mainly due to a rise in assaults not involving a weapon and an increase in domestic violence. Carjackings were occurring at a lower pace than the previous year.)

The site also blasted Alsobrooks for “a lack of funding for police and firefighters,” though the budget the county passed on her watch contained an additional $200,000 to help the police fill vacancies and covered the creation of another 50 firefighting positions.

When asked about the misleading or inaccurate information on the site, Hogan said, “I would say that it’s—the whole purpose of the thing was to put out factual information, and it’s facts and nothing but the facts. There’s nothing misleading about it.”

It’s not only through this site that Hogan has bashed Alsobrooks. While campaigning, he has repeatedly lambasted her on crime, declaring that ever since she became county executive “it’s skyrocketed out of control.” Resorting to a routine political attack, he has accused her of being “very soft on crime.”

Yet not so long ago, Hogan was praising Alsobrooks. In an interview in March with Axios, Hogan was asked whether, when he was governor, he had a “warm working relationship” with Alsobrooks. He replied, “I do.” Queried about running against her, he said, “I think well, hopefully, it’ll be, you know, maybe something that’s missing in politics these days, where instead of just—you know, you can passionately disagree about issues without being disagreeable, or you can talk about your positions on issues without attacking the person. But I’ve, I’ve had a good relationship with her for a long time. I think she’s been a good county executive.”

Two years earlier, Hogan was even more of a fanboy for Alsobrooks. In April 2022, as governor, Hogan signed into law a measure to fund a major commercial development project in Prince George’s County. The next day he held a joint press event with Alsobrooks to celebrate, and he gushed about her: “I want to just thank the County Executive for her incredible leadership. This really is her vision that brings us all together here today… I want to sincerely thank you, Madam County Executive, for the incredible partnership that we’ve had through the entire time that you’ve been county executive. I want to say you’re doing a great job… I want to say the County Executive, Angela Alsobrooks, is also super bad.” He hailed this project, which she had championed, for bringing “more jobs and more economic development to the neighborhoods right here where I grew up.”

At this press conference, Hogan, whose father was the Prince George’s county executive from 1978 to 1982, laid it on thick: “I shouldn’t say this, because I’ll get in trouble, but my dad is a former county executive, and one of my best friends for many years was [county executive] Wayne Curry. And I’ll say, I can’t remember a better county executive than Angela Alsobrooks. Thank you so much for your leadership.”

That was quite an endorsement: better than dad.

During his gubernatorial stint, Hogan complimented Alsobrooks on other occasions. In a television interview in December 2022, he said, “She’s a friend. She’s a great leader.” The following month, he even commended her for her handling of crime: “Some people are taking it more seriously than others. In Prince George’s County, they’ve got a crime issue, but the county executive, Angela Alsobrooks, is taking dramatic action. She’s instituting curfews. She’s keeping kids off the streets so they’re not committing crimes, and seems to be supporting police in their efforts to break up some of these criminal gang activities.”

Hogan’s current attacks on Alsobrooks are the usual stuff of politics, nothing surprising. The problem is that Hogan has been selling himself as a different kind of Republican—he says he will be a “pro-choice” senator, though as governor he vetoed a bill in 2022 that would have expanded abortion access in the state—and a different kind of politician, one who who opts out of the “polarization” of the Trump era. (He vows not to vote for Trump, who endorsed him.) Yet Hogan has no trouble firing misleading charges and harsh rhetoric at a woman he recently lauded as the best Prince Georges county executive in decades. This flip-flop shows Hogan is nothing but the sort of politician he claims to despise.

The infamous CEO of a failed hospital system is suing an entire Senate committee for being held in contempt of Congress on civil and criminal charges that were unanimously approved by the full Senate last week.

In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre claimed the senators "bulldozed over [his] constitutional rights" as they tried to "pillory and crucify him as a loathsome criminal" in a "televised circus."

The Senate committee—the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—issued a rare subpoena to de la Torre in July, compelling him to testify before the lawmakers. They sought to question the CEO on the deterioration of his hospital system, which previously included more than 30 hospitals across eight states. Steward filed for bankruptcy in May.

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The infamous CEO of a failed hospital system is suing an entire Senate committee for being held in contempt of Congress on civil and criminal charges that were unanimously approved by the full Senate last week.

In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre claimed the senators "bulldozed over [his] constitutional rights" as they tried to "pillory and crucify him as a loathsome criminal" in a "televised circus."

The Senate committee—the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—issued a rare subpoena to de la Torre in July, compelling him to testify before the lawmakers. They sought to question the CEO on the deterioration of his hospital system, which previously included more than 30 hospitals across eight states. Steward filed for bankruptcy in May.

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There appears to be a bullet lodged in Tim Sheehy’s right forearm. That is not in dispute. But how and when it got there has become the subject of an ongoing mystery that has dogged the campaign of the former Navy SEAL challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of this election cycle’s most high-stakes races.

The question of how Sheehy was shot first came up last spring in a Washington Post exposé by Liz Goodwin who reported that Sheehy had said on the campaign trail he has a “bullet stuck” in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. The problem was that Sheehy had told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that the bullet wound in his right arm came from him accidentally shooting himself with a Colt .45 revolver while in Glacier National Park.

When confronted with these incompatible stories, Sheehy told the Post that his original story was a lie designed to protect former platoon-mates who may have shot him in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2012. Sheehy said that, in reality, he’d ended up in the emergency room in 2015 after falling on a hike. A park ranger, in this version of the story, was summoned to the hospital because Sheehy told the staff there that he had a bullet in his arm.

Sheey’s account should be easy to substantiate. Medical records would presumably show whether he arrived at the hospital with a fresh bullet wound or an injury sustained from a fall. The medical professionals who treated him could potentially recall what happened. A family member who was with him that day could back up his story. But Sheehy has not released records or made available any witnesses of the 2015 incident who could backup his version of events.

Sheehy, 38, is a first-time candidate who, until recently, ran a wildfire firefighting company that is struggling financially. He has been endorsed by Donald Trump and was seen as a top recruit by Senate Republicans. His background as a millennial former SEAL, Purple Heart recipient, and wealthy businessman who was largely free of MAGA baggage was seen as perfect for taking on Tester, who was first elected in 2006. Polls now show him leading Tester in a race that is crucial for determining which party controls the Senate.

In terms of medical records, the Sheehy campaign only shared an X-ray with the Post that it provided on the condition that the image not be published. Doctors who reviewed it for the paper concluded that it does not provide strong support for Sheehy’s story that a “friendly ricochet bullet” hit him in Afghanistan:

The image probably depicts a bullet, but it is not possible to tell what type of weapon it came from nor the age of the wound, said Joseph V. Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who reviewed the X-ray at the request of The Post. Thomas J. Esposito, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria who has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, said that the X-ray looks like an injury from a low-velocity firearm, such as a handgun, and that he found it “doubtful” the bullet was the result of ricochet from an assault weapon because of the smoothness of its edges.

Sheehy’s campaign told the Post back in April that he had requested medical records from the hospital visit but had not yet been able to obtain them. Later that month, the campaign declined to comment about the status of that request and referred the paper to Sheehy’s lawyer, Daniel Watkins of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. The statement Watkins provided claimed that the “released reports corroborate the information we have provided, and they confirm Mr. Sheehy’s recollection of what took place.” The information provided—that is, the X-ray—does not confirm Sheehy’s account.

One piece of evidence in favor of Sheehy’s current story is that a weapons expert interviewed by the Post said it was “very unlikely” that the gun would have misfired after being dropped. The emergency room that Sheehy went to was about two hours away from where he initially said he shot himself. That, along with the fact that Sheehy appears to have been discharged from the hospital relatively quickly, could also support the claim that he did not arrive at the hospital with a fresh gunshot wound.

I reached out to Sheehy’s campaign on September 3 asking if they would be able to provide any more records to support the candidate’s account, or if they would make someone available to to defend Sheehy’s story on or off-the-record. The campaign did not respond to the email or a follow-up sent last week.

On Wednesday, I emailed Watkins, who, according to his official bio, is a “nationally ranked trial lawyer and reputation counselor specializing in high-stakes crisis and defamation cases.” Watkins confirmed that he is representing Sheehy, and asked to review the request I sent to the campaign. He did not respond after receiving it.

Another problem for Sheehy is the length he went to substantiate his original story in 2015. As the Post reported in its April follow-up, Sheehy hand wrote and signed a detailed statement that explains how he shot himself. “Upon finishing our hike at Logan’s Pass while reloading our vehicle, an improperly placed firearm kept in the vehicle for bear protection fell out and discharged into my right forearm,” he wrote. “We fully cooperated with Ranger [name redacted in document] after he called the ER and agreed to pay the $500.00 fine before leaving the hospital.” Sheehy (who was fined for discharging a firearm in a national park) went on to “request leniency with any charges related to this unfortunate accident” due to his “security clearance and involvement with national defense related contracts.”

Sheehy’s 2015 account fits with a statement of probable cause that the park ranger signed under penalty of perjury shortly after the incident. According to that statement, the ranger was already on the way to Logan Pass in response to the report of a gunshot when he learned that Sheehy was in the Kalispell hospital emergency room. That timeline is supported by a second statement from the park ranger that explained that he initially responded to the incident after a “park visitor called park dispatch” to report that a gun had been accidentally fired.

When interviewed by the Post on the condition of anonymity, the ranger, a Marine Corps veteran, said he was surprised to hear that Sheehy is now claiming to have lied to him in 2015. He recalled Sheehy showing him the weapon at the time and him seeing that it was fully loaded aside from one bullet. “I don’t in any way impugn the law enforcement officer,” Sheehy told the Post about the ranger’s written account. “Everything he says is true to the extent of his knowledge.”

As the Post noted, lying to a park ranger is a crime, although the statute of limitations has now expired. According to his current story, Sheehy lied out of a selfless desire to protect former platoon-mates from an investigation that experts say was highly unlikely to have been triggered by him saying he had been hit by friendly fire years before.

This doesn’t have to be this complicated. Sheehy just needs to release the medical records. He won’t. Which begs the question: Why not?

There appears to be a bullet lodged in Tim Sheehy’s right forearm. That is not in dispute. But how and when it got there has become the subject of an ongoing mystery that has dogged the campaign of the former Navy SEAL challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of this election cycle’s most high-stakes races.

The question of how Sheehy was shot first came up last spring in a Washington Post exposé by Liz Goodwin who reported that Sheehy had said on the campaign trail he has a “bullet stuck” in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. The problem was that Sheehy had told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that the bullet wound in his right arm came from him accidentally shooting himself with a Colt .45 revolver while in Glacier National Park.

When confronted with these incompatible stories, Sheehy told the Post that his original story was a lie designed to protect former platoon-mates who may have shot him in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2012. Sheehy said that, in reality, he’d ended up in the emergency room in 2015 after falling on a hike. A park ranger, in this version of the story, was summoned to the hospital because Sheehy told the staff there that he had a bullet in his arm.

Sheey’s account should be easy to substantiate. Medical records would presumably show whether he arrived at the hospital with a fresh bullet wound or an injury sustained from a fall. The medical professionals who treated him could potentially recall what happened. A family member who was with him that day could back up his story. But Sheehy has not released records or made available any witnesses of the 2015 incident who could backup his version of events.

Sheehy, 38, is a first-time candidate who, until recently, ran a wildfire firefighting company that is struggling financially. He has been endorsed by Donald Trump and was seen as a top recruit by Senate Republicans. His background as a millennial former SEAL, Purple Heart recipient, and wealthy businessman who was largely free of MAGA baggage was seen as perfect for taking on Tester, who was first elected in 2006. Polls now show him leading Tester in a race that is crucial for determining which party controls the Senate.

In terms of medical records, the Sheehy campaign only shared an X-ray with the Post that it provided on the condition that the image not be published. Doctors who reviewed it for the paper concluded that it does not provide strong support for Sheehy’s story that a “friendly ricochet bullet” hit him in Afghanistan:

The image probably depicts a bullet, but it is not possible to tell what type of weapon it came from nor the age of the wound, said Joseph V. Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who reviewed the X-ray at the request of The Post. Thomas J. Esposito, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria who has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, said that the X-ray looks like an injury from a low-velocity firearm, such as a handgun, and that he found it “doubtful” the bullet was the result of ricochet from an assault weapon because of the smoothness of its edges.

Sheehy’s campaign told the Post back in April that he had requested medical records from the hospital visit but had not yet been able to obtain them. Later that month, the campaign declined to comment about the status of that request and referred the paper to Sheehy’s lawyer, Daniel Watkins of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. The statement Watkins provided claimed that the “released reports corroborate the information we have provided, and they confirm Mr. Sheehy’s recollection of what took place.” The information provided—that is, the X-ray—does not confirm Sheehy’s account.

One piece of evidence in favor of Sheehy’s current story is that a weapons expert interviewed by the Post said it was “very unlikely” that the gun would have misfired after being dropped. The emergency room that Sheehy went to was about two hours away from where he initially said he shot himself. That, along with the fact that Sheehy appears to have been discharged from the hospital relatively quickly, could also support the claim that he did not arrive at the hospital with a fresh gunshot wound.

I reached out to Sheehy’s campaign on September 3 asking if they would be able to provide any more records to support the candidate’s account, or if they would make someone available to to defend Sheehy’s story on or off-the-record. The campaign did not respond to the email or a follow-up sent last week.

On Wednesday, I emailed Watkins, who, according to his official bio, is a “nationally ranked trial lawyer and reputation counselor specializing in high-stakes crisis and defamation cases.” Watkins confirmed that he is representing Sheehy, and asked to review the request I sent to the campaign. He did not respond after receiving it.

Another problem for Sheehy is the length he went to substantiate his original story in 2015. As the Post reported in its April follow-up, Sheehy hand wrote and signed a detailed statement that explains how he shot himself. “Upon finishing our hike at Logan’s Pass while reloading our vehicle, an improperly placed firearm kept in the vehicle for bear protection fell out and discharged into my right forearm,” he wrote. “We fully cooperated with Ranger [name redacted in document] after he called the ER and agreed to pay the $500.00 fine before leaving the hospital.” Sheehy (who was fined for discharging a firearm in a national park) went on to “request leniency with any charges related to this unfortunate accident” due to his “security clearance and involvement with national defense related contracts.”

Sheehy’s 2015 account fits with a statement of probable cause that the park ranger signed under penalty of perjury shortly after the incident. According to that statement, the ranger was already on the way to Logan Pass in response to the report of a gunshot when he learned that Sheehy was in the Kalispell hospital emergency room. That timeline is supported by a second statement from the park ranger that explained that he initially responded to the incident after a “park visitor called park dispatch” to report that a gun had been accidentally fired.

When interviewed by the Post on the condition of anonymity, the ranger, a Marine Corps veteran, said he was surprised to hear that Sheehy is now claiming to have lied to him in 2015. He recalled Sheehy showing him the weapon at the time and him seeing that it was fully loaded aside from one bullet. “I don’t in any way impugn the law enforcement officer,” Sheehy told the Post about the ranger’s written account. “Everything he says is true to the extent of his knowledge.”

As the Post noted, lying to a park ranger is a crime, although the statute of limitations has now expired. According to his current story, Sheehy lied out of a selfless desire to protect former platoon-mates from an investigation that experts say was highly unlikely to have been triggered by him saying he had been hit by friendly fire years before.

This doesn’t have to be this complicated. Sheehy just needs to release the medical records. He won’t. Which begs the question: Why not?

Enlarge / Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders speaks about Ralph De La Torre's spending habits during the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions on September 12, 2024. (credit: Getty | Kayla Bartkowski)

The Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to hold Ralph de la Torre—the wealthy CEO of a now-bankrupt Steward hospital chain—in contempt for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena.

With the vote, the case is referred to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress, which would have de la Torre facing a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to 12 months if convicted.

The subpoena de la Torre rejected was a rare one issued in July by the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). The HELP committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), aimed to compel de la Torre to testify on allegations that while he and other executives reaped millions from the hospital system, individual facilities were put under such dire financial strain that health care workers were forced to practice "third-world medicine," and outsiders described Steward leadership as "healthcare terrorists."

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Two women who died in Georgia as a result of the state’s post-Dobbs abortion ban are, apparently, not enough to make Republicans agree that all Americans should have access to abortion in emergencies.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced to guarantee abortion access to protect a pregnant person’s life, including in the nearly two dozen states that have implemented bans or restrictions since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. The move followed a pair of reports from ProPublica, published last week, that documented the 2022 deaths of two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who were unable to obtain a routine procedure—a dilation and curettage—to clear unexpelled fetal tissue from their uteruses after taking abortion pills and experiencing rare complications. While Miller died at home, having been scared to go to the hospital after taking abortion pills, ProPublica reported that Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited 20 hours to perform the necessary procedure, which state law had made a felony with few exceptions. The stories led to widespread condemnation, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, as my colleague Pema Levy covered.

“I’m not going to let any of my Republican colleagues off the hook just for saying they care about the life the mother—not if they won’t lift the finger to actually protect women and to actually make clear that emergency care can include abortion,” Murray said on the Senate floor.

The essence of the resolution—which states “that every person has the basic right to emergency health care, including abortion care,” and which 40 Democrats co-sponsored—was essentially the argument at issue in the Supreme Court case Moyle v. United States. In that case, decided in June, the justices ultimately allowed emergency abortions to continue in Idaho, where a near-total abortion ban is in effect, but did not rule on whether other state abortion bans conflict with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which mandates hospitals provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who needs it.

As Murray noted, Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths are likely not the only ones attributable to abortion bans: Maternal deaths in Texas, where a total abortion ban is in place, rose 56 percent—compared to 11 percent nationwide—after its six-week ban was implemented in 2021, NBC News reported last week. “The data in Texas paints a clear, brutal picture of the reality these abortion bans are killing women,” Murray said.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who objected to Murray’s resolution on behalf of Republicans, responded in the way the right often has to such attacks: by insisting that Democrats are the problem, and by falsely claiming that abortion pills are dangerous—despite the fact that more than 100 scientific studies have affirmed their safety and efficacy, including one published earlier this year that showed them to be just as safe when prescribed virtually and mailed as when prescribed and administered in person. (Several anti-abortion activists on the right have similarly alleged that abortion pills caused Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths, even though—as the ProPublica stories note—complications from the pills are exceptionally rare, and a routine procedure could have likely changed the tragic outcomes.)

In insisting that the resolution was unnecessary, Lankford made several other false claims, including that “no state criminalizes miscarriage” (in fact, that’s provably false, and women have been charged with homicide after miscarriages) and that it’s “political rhetoric” from abortion rights advocates like Harris that is to blame for scaring doctors about the repercussions they could face under abortion bans (in fact, it’s Republican legislation—like the Georgia law—that explicitly threatens doctors with fines and jail time if they perform abortions).

The truth is, in fact, much simpler than Lankford suggested. As Murray said in response to Lankford’s opposition: “Here in America, in the 21st century, pregnant women are suffering and dying—not because doctors don’t know how to save them, but because doctors don’t know if Republicans will let them.”

Senate Republicans on Tuesday also blocked a bill introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) that would have appropriated $350 million annually through 2028 to help with travel costs for people who have to travel out of state to access abortion; in his objection, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) derided it as an “elective abortion travel slush fund” for “radical abortion groups.” Lest you forget, Senate Republicans also twice blocked a vote on a bill that would have guaranteed IVF access nationwide from coming up for a vote, and in June blocked another bill to guarantee federal access to contraception.

All this, keep in mind, is coming from the party whose presidential nominee pledges he’ll make women great again.

Two women who died in Georgia as a result of the state’s post-Dobbs abortion ban are, apparently, not enough to make Republicans agree that all Americans should have access to abortion in emergencies.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced to guarantee abortion access to protect a pregnant person’s life, including in the nearly two dozen states that have implemented bans or restrictions since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. The move followed a pair of reports from ProPublica, published last week, that documented the 2022 deaths of two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who were unable to obtain a routine procedure—a dilation and curettage—to clear unexpelled fetal tissue from their uteruses after taking abortion pills and experiencing rare complications. While Miller died at home, having been scared to go to the hospital after taking abortion pills, ProPublica reported that Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited 20 hours to perform the necessary procedure, which state law had made a felony with few exceptions. The stories led to widespread condemnation, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, as my colleague Pema Levy covered.

“I’m not going to let any of my Republican colleagues off the hook just for saying they care about the life the mother—not if they won’t lift the finger to actually protect women and to actually make clear that emergency care can include abortion,” Murray said on the Senate floor.

The essence of the resolution—which states “that every person has the basic right to emergency health care, including abortion care,” and which 40 Democrats co-sponsored—was essentially the argument at issue in the Supreme Court case Moyle v. United States. In that case, decided in June, the justices ultimately allowed emergency abortions to continue in Idaho, where a near-total abortion ban is in effect, but did not rule on whether other state abortion bans conflict with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which mandates hospitals provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who needs it.

As Murray noted, Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths are likely not the only ones attributable to abortion bans: Maternal deaths in Texas, where a total abortion ban is in place, rose 56 percent—compared to 11 percent nationwide—after its six-week ban was implemented in 2021, NBC News reported last week. “The data in Texas paints a clear, brutal picture of the reality these abortion bans are killing women,” Murray said.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who objected to Murray’s resolution on behalf of Republicans, responded in the way the right often has to such attacks: by insisting that Democrats are the problem, and by falsely claiming that abortion pills are dangerous—despite the fact that more than 100 scientific studies have affirmed their safety and efficacy, including one published earlier this year that showed them to be just as safe when prescribed virtually and mailed as when prescribed and administered in person. (Several anti-abortion activists on the right have similarly alleged that abortion pills caused Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths, even though—as the ProPublica stories note—complications from the pills are exceptionally rare, and a routine procedure could have likely changed the tragic outcomes.)

In insisting that the resolution was unnecessary, Lankford made several other false claims, including that “no state criminalizes miscarriage” (in fact, that’s provably false, and women have been charged with homicide after miscarriages) and that it’s “political rhetoric” from abortion rights advocates like Harris that is to blame for scaring doctors about the repercussions they could face under abortion bans (in fact, it’s Republican legislation—like the Georgia law—that explicitly threatens doctors with fines and jail time if they perform abortions).

The truth is, in fact, much simpler than Lankford suggested. As Murray said in response to Lankford’s opposition: “Here in America, in the 21st century, pregnant women are suffering and dying—not because doctors don’t know how to save them, but because doctors don’t know if Republicans will let them.”

Senate Republicans on Tuesday also blocked a bill introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) that would have appropriated $350 million annually through 2028 to help with travel costs for people who have to travel out of state to access abortion; in his objection, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) derided it as an “elective abortion travel slush fund” for “radical abortion groups.” Lest you forget, Senate Republicans also twice blocked a vote on a bill that would have guaranteed IVF access nationwide from coming up for a vote, and in June blocked another bill to guarantee federal access to contraception.

All this, keep in mind, is coming from the party whose presidential nominee pledges he’ll make women great again.

Enlarge / The name placard for Dr. Ralph de la Torre, founder and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care System, in front of an empty seat during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Thursday, September 12, 2024. (credit: Getty | Ting Shen)

The CEO of a failed hospital system who was paid hundreds of millions of dollars while patients were allegedly "killed and maimed" in his resource-starved and rotting facilities, was a no-show at a Senate hearing on Thursday—despite a bipartisan subpoena compelling him to appear.

Lawyers for Ralph de la Torre—the Harvard University-trained cardiac surgeon who took over the Steward Health Care System in 2020—told senators in a letter last week that he was unable to testify at the hearing. Despite previously agreeing to the hearing, de la Torre and his lawyers argued that a federal court order stemming from Steward's bankruptcy case, filed in May, prevented him from discussing anything amid reorganization and settlement efforts.

But that argument was found to be without merit by the Senate committee that issued the subpoena in July—the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In comments to the Associated Press Wednesday, Sanders said there were plenty of topics he could have safely discussed.

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In June, Sam Brown, the GOP candidate for US Senate in Nevada and longtime abortion opponent, published an op-ed that said that if he were elected and a national abortion ban came up for the vote in the Senate, he would oppose the measure. This was obviously a move to defuse incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen’s effort to wield the abortion issue against him. Brown’s campaign released an accompanying press release that complained, “Jacky Rosen and Nevada Democrats have spent nearly a year lying about Sam Brown’s personal position on abortion.” With this editorial—in which Brown said, “It’s our duty, as a society, to let women know they have options”—Brown was trying to fuzzy up the picture and become less of a target on this front. That was nothing new. A review of his campaign website reveals that over the past year Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran, has steadily shifted how he presents his position.

In July 2023, Brown’s site offered a brief and clear message on abortion: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.” This was routine, if somewhat vague, rhetoric for a politician who calls himself “pro-life.” No mention of exceptions. No talk of respecting those who support women’s freedom on this matter.

The following month, Brown’s website expanded its statement on abortion, adding that he opposed late-term abortions and abortions without parental notification. Brown noted, “Every life is precious, I learned that firsthand when I nearly lost my own life in Afghanistan.”

By the end of February, the “Life” section on Brown’s website had changed again. He still stated his opposition. But Brown added a twist: “Nevada voters have made it clear where they stand on this issue, by enshrining protections for abortion in our state law. As a U.S. Senator, I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans—I will not support a national abortion ban.” He added, “We must come together, as a nation, to engage in honest dialogue to personalize—not politicize — this important issue and make sure all voices are heard.”

Brown had moved from stating his outright opposition to abortion to now saying that he would not challenge Nevada state law that protects reproductive freedom and that he would oppose an nationwide ban. (In Nevada, thanks to a 1990 referendum, abortion is legal through the the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and afterward to protect the health of the mother.) He also was calling for a productive national conversation about abortion—not merely advocating curtailing or outlawing it.

This was quite a step for Brown. The previous September, he had declined to say whether he backed a national abortion ban. He had also then refused to comment on his previous support for a 20-week abortion ban during his failed 2014 bid for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Touting that measure, Brown had declared at the time, “On issues of life, that is a nonnegotiable for me.” Texas law at that point included an exception for preserving the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. And during that losing campaign, Brown had even called for greater restrictions on abortion: “I think that it’s a shame that here in Texas, which is being lauded as such a conservative state with regard to the issue of life, half of Europe has stricter laws than we do here.”

Brown’s declaration of opposition to a national ban in February coincided with his wife Amy Brown revealing that she had an abortion in 2008 when she was 24 and single. She said it had caused years of anguish but had made her sympathetic to women who encounter unwanted pregnancies. Both Browns said during an emotional joint interview that they would follow the will of the people of Nevada with respect to abortion—again, a major departure from his days in Texas as a fiery anti-abortion advocate.

The current version of Brown’s website contains yet another alteration to the “Life” section. It now states, “I am pro life, with exceptions for the tragic cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Brown had added the standard exceptions (though he said for the “life” not the “health” of the mother) that he had once seemed to oppose.

Brown has been no model of consistency on abortion. In fact, he has been on something of an awkward journey regarding abortion that can be seen as driven by political calculation. In Texas, he was a full-throated anti-abortion crusader. Four years after his failed campaign there, he managed the campaign for a Texas congressional candidate who called for an abortion ban with no exceptions. Brown also served as the executive board chairman of the Nevada Freedom and Faith Coalition whose national chapter has been a champion for severely restrictive anti-abortion measures.

Now, with a referendum on the Nevada ballot this November to enshrine reproductive rights within the state constitution and Brown being barraged on the issue by Rosen, he has jettisoned his past, non-negotiable support for a highly restrictive ban, embraced exceptions, and claimed he would not vote for a national prohibition.

Still, Brown is having trouble navigating this bob-and-weave course. Ever since the Nevada initiative qualified for the ballot in late June, he has declined to say publicly how he would vote for it—a dodge that looks like another step designed to keep him from being pegged as a die-hard abortion foe in a state where abortion rights are popular during an election season in which the Republican war on reproductive rights is a top issue.

Yet this week, the Nevada Independent published audio from an August 28 campaign meet and greet in which Brown, not surprisingly, privately suggested he would not vote for the measure: “I’m not for changing our existing law. Our existing law has been in place for over 34 years. The ballot measure would change the law and essentially [create] no limit on access to abortion.”

There have long been politicians who have changed their minds on abortion. But Brown has not said he has altered his view. In this case, he seems not to be evolving but evading.

In June, Sam Brown, the GOP candidate for US Senate in Nevada and longtime abortion opponent, published an op-ed that said that if he were elected and a national abortion ban came up for the vote in the Senate, he would oppose the measure. This was obviously a move to defuse incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen’s effort to wield the abortion issue against him. Brown’s campaign released an accompanying press release that complained, “Jacky Rosen and Nevada Democrats have spent nearly a year lying about Sam Brown’s personal position on abortion.” With this editorial—in which Brown said, “It’s our duty, as a society, to let women know they have options”—Brown was trying to fuzzy up the picture and become less of a target on this front. That was nothing new. A review of his campaign website reveals that over the past year Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran, has steadily shifted how he presents his position.

In July 2023, Brown’s site offered a brief and clear message on abortion: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.” This was routine, if somewhat vague, rhetoric for a politician who calls himself “pro-life.” No mention of exceptions. No talk of respecting those who support women’s freedom on this matter.

The following month, Brown’s website expanded its statement on abortion, adding that he opposed late-term abortions and abortions without parental notification. Brown noted, “Every life is precious, I learned that firsthand when I nearly lost my own life in Afghanistan.”

By the end of February, the “Life” section on Brown’s website had changed again. He still stated his opposition. But Brown added a twist: “Nevada voters have made it clear where they stand on this issue, by enshrining protections for abortion in our state law. As a U.S. Senator, I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans—I will not support a national abortion ban.” He added, “We must come together, as a nation, to engage in honest dialogue to personalize—not politicize — this important issue and make sure all voices are heard.”

Brown had moved from stating his outright opposition to abortion to now saying that he would not challenge Nevada state law that protects reproductive freedom and that he would oppose an nationwide ban. (In Nevada, thanks to a 1990 referendum, abortion is legal through the the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and afterward to protect the health of the mother.) He also was calling for a productive national conversation about abortion—not merely advocating curtailing or outlawing it.

This was quite a step for Brown. The previous September, he had declined to say whether he backed a national abortion ban. He had also then refused to comment on his previous support for a 20-week abortion ban during his failed 2014 bid for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Touting that measure, Brown had declared at the time, “On issues of life, that is a nonnegotiable for me.” Texas law at that point included an exception for preserving the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. And during that losing campaign, Brown had even called for greater restrictions on abortion: “I think that it’s a shame that here in Texas, which is being lauded as such a conservative state with regard to the issue of life, half of Europe has stricter laws than we do here.”

Brown’s declaration of opposition to a national ban in February coincided with his wife Amy Brown revealing that she had an abortion in 2008 when she was 24 and single. She said it had caused years of anguish but had made her sympathetic to women who encounter unwanted pregnancies. Both Browns said during an emotional joint interview that they would follow the will of the people of Nevada with respect to abortion—again, a major departure from his days in Texas as a fiery anti-abortion advocate.

The current version of Brown’s website contains yet another alteration to the “Life” section. It now states, “I am pro life, with exceptions for the tragic cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Brown had added the standard exceptions (though he said for the “life” not the “health” of the mother) that he had once seemed to oppose.

Brown has been no model of consistency on abortion. In fact, he has been on something of an awkward journey regarding abortion that can be seen as driven by political calculation. In Texas, he was a full-throated anti-abortion crusader. Four years after his failed campaign there, he managed the campaign for a Texas congressional candidate who called for an abortion ban with no exceptions. Brown also served as the executive board chairman of the Nevada Freedom and Faith Coalition whose national chapter has been a champion for severely restrictive anti-abortion measures.

Now, with a referendum on the Nevada ballot this November to enshrine reproductive rights within the state constitution and Brown being barraged on the issue by Rosen, he has jettisoned his past, non-negotiable support for a highly restrictive ban, embraced exceptions, and claimed he would not vote for a national prohibition.

Still, Brown is having trouble navigating this bob-and-weave course. Ever since the Nevada initiative qualified for the ballot in late June, he has declined to say publicly how he would vote for it—a dodge that looks like another step designed to keep him from being pegged as a die-hard abortion foe in a state where abortion rights are popular during an election season in which the Republican war on reproductive rights is a top issue.

Yet this week, the Nevada Independent published audio from an August 28 campaign meet and greet in which Brown, not surprisingly, privately suggested he would not vote for the measure: “I’m not for changing our existing law. Our existing law has been in place for over 34 years. The ballot measure would change the law and essentially [create] no limit on access to abortion.”

There have long been politicians who have changed their minds on abortion. But Brown has not said he has altered his view. In this case, he seems not to be evolving but evading.