Welcome to Midterms Meltdown, a special pop-up newsletter from The Swamp—bringing you up to the minute with the secrets the politicians don’t want you to know about the race to November 3.
It is the most consequential election campaign since 2024, and the nooze will be oozing around the nation to shape D.C. for the next two years and beyond. Our Farrah Tomazin and Sarah Ewall-Wice are getting down and dirty with the inside stories from the battlefields every Monday and Friday.
Melting down in The Swamp today are: Vivek Ramaswamy, Amy Acton, Jon Husted, Mike Lawler, JD Vance, Cait Conley, Rob Wittman, Shannon Taylor, Bobby Pulido, Monica De La Cruz, John McGuire, Tom Perriello, Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed, Stacy Garrity, Josh Shapiro, Angie Nixon, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Rick Jackson, Zach Dembo, Ralph Alvarado, Lauren Boebert, John Braun, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, Steve Daines, Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mike DeWine, Jim Talent and Conrad Burns.
Billionaire Governor Candidate’s 2020 Loans Come Back to Haunt Him
JD Vance spent this week on the campaign trail talking up his latest anti-fraud mission, which even comes with a suitably Trumpian name: Operation No Doze.
The initiative is aimed at cracking down on people the administration suspects ripped off taxpayers by taking pandemic-era loans they may not have been eligible for.
“We had many, many people who took advantage of those programs,” the vice president told voters in Texas.
Which brings us to an awkward question for one of the GOP’s own candidates.
MAGA billionaire Rick Jackson is vying to be the next governor of Georgia against former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and has made his business record a central part of his campaign.
“I’ll be just like Trump but with a southern tone,” the 63-year-old health executive said earlier this year.
But as the race hits the final stretch, documents obtained by The Swamp’s Farrah Tomazin show that five entities tied to Jackson’s healthcare empire received millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the pandemic: the very loans that “Operation No Doze” is targeting.
So how did companies tied to a billion-dollar health empire end up getting money from a program designed to help small businesses during COVID?
Insiders say that under PPP rules, the companies that applied for the loans, entities of Premier Anesthesia (of which Jackson was previously president) should have been counted together with their parent company, Jackson Healthcare (of which he was CEO). But Jackson Healthcare is hardly a “small business.” Indeed, in 2020 when COVID hit, it had more than 1,500 employees and $1 billion in revenue, while Premier’s entities were operating under loan classifications with much lower staff and revenue limits.
That in itself does not itself establish that anyone deliberately fudged the application, let alone committed fraud, but the optics aren’t exactly great for a billionaire candidate whose corporate record has already come under growing scrutiny.
Last week, for instance, the Swamp revealed how one of Jackson’s other companies spent years trying to take a couple’s home in a legal battle so brutal that court filings describe a cascade of devastating health problems for both spouses—and ultimately their deaths.
Earlier, we also reported that some of Jackson Healthcare’s other subsidiaries paid $5 million to settle claims that they exploited workers and breached labor laws.
The Swamp has reached out to Jackson’s campaign in relation to $2.6 million worth of loans meant for struggling small businesses.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the campaign trail, Vance is busy promoting Operation No Doze.
MAGA ‘Christian Warrior’ Drops Astonishing Abuse Victim Slur
MAGA’s Colorado governor candidate Victor Marx has been in damage control this week, after our explosive revelations that he once laughed about slamming his wife into a door, recounted how he threw his toddler across the room, and declared that God gave him a “gift” for violence.
Now, new material adds another dimension to the MAGA-backed “Christian warrior’s” campaign.
In a 2014 video, Marx suggested that “more girls and women would not be abused by men if they were content with who they are and where God has them.”
“But the insecurity actually betrays them,” he added.
In 2020, he declared that, “I’m all for women being tough, able, capable princess warriors, but when they start seeking to fill the role of a man, what is the extreme of it? It’s all the way to the perversion of sexual desire that God has intended for man and woman.”
And in his book A Dangerous Gentleman, Marx wrote that children raised only by women can develop “effeminate qualities,” arguing boys are not getting enough of the “dose of dad” they need.
Marx, a ministry leader and Marine veteran, was a political unknown when he prevailed in Colorado’s GOP primary race this year, largely due to his devoted social media following, his own podcast and an enthusiastic grassroots campaign. He was also endorsed by MAGA Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. Colorado has trended blue (it was Harris 54-Trump 43 in 2024) and Marx appears to be a no-hoper, although there has been no public polling putting him and Democrat Phil Weiser head to head.
But while Democrats have seized on his past comments, the 61-year-old insists he’s not an abusive person.
“Everything they just said was true, because it was a quote from me,” he told The Jeff and Bill Show in relation to our reporting about his daughter, before adding that more context was needed. His wife, Eileen then provided some. Asked about revelations that her husband slammed her into a door after she told him she no longer needed martial arts training, she replied: “When I got married, I married my karate instructor… What he did is he made me realize I do need to train because we live in a time of danger. Eight years later I got my first degree black belt.”
Will Anyone Turn Up for Trump in State Republicans Fear Losing?
After campaigning in reliably red states like Oklahoma and Alabama, it will be curious to see who all actually shows up for the president’s rally on Saturday in Vandalia, just outside Dayton, Ohio.
Trump won the state three times, but there have been a series of indicators that suggest things aren’t looking so hot forMAGA in the Buckeye State.
The Swamp reached out to every Ohio GOP House member and Republican candidate running for a competitive seat in Ohio to find out if they were going to rally with the president. The silence was telling. Not one campaign responded.
Trump ally biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, who has largely been trailing Democrat Amy Acton, did not share his Saturday plans.
Only embattled Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s campaign confirmed he would be in attendance for Trump’s event telling The Swamp he plans to speak at the rally.
“We look forward to hosting President Trump in Ohio this weekend, a state he won decisively three times,” said Husted’s campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce, who touted Husted working with Trump on the “largest tax cut for working families in our state’s history.”
It remains to be seen whether Trump can stay on message touting accomplishment as Republicans would hope during his stop, but based on the 80-year-old’s track record, that’s less than likely. If Trump goes off on data centers, it could spell doom for GOP candidates there as the pushback has become a battle cry in the state.
House Blue Wave Indicators Climb
This week proved ugly for Republicans when it came to House polling, which showed Democrats likely flipping seats and cutting into GOP leads left and right. Democrats need to flip just three seats to take the House majority in November but have multiple pathways at this point even as races tighten. A new poll out of New York’s 17th congressional district showed Cait Conley up two points on GOP. Rep. Mike Lawler while a poll out of Virginia’s 1st congressional district showed Shannon Taylor up four points on Republican Rep. Rob Wittman. Meanwhile, the House Majority PAC poll of Texas’ 15th congressional district showed a massive 27 point shift from 2024 with Democrat Bobby Pulido 13 points ahead of GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz. In Kentucky’s 6th congressional district, Democrat Zach Dembo’s internal polling shows him up five points on Ralph Alvarado (the guy who scrubbed Trump from his website). Even in some races where Republican incumbents are maintaining their leads, Democrats have dramatically cut into the margins like Rep. John McGuire, who is leading Democrat Tom Perriello by five points in a district Trump won by 12 points less than two years ago. Democrat Leticia Gutierrez’s polling showed her dramatically closing the gap with Republican Alex Mealer in Texas’ 20th congressional district.
The DCCC on Friday added eight more races to its district in play, all of them ones Trump won by double digits, including in places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
It comes as Democratic House super PACs have also smashed their fundraising records: the House Majority PAC and House Majority Forward raised a combined $230 million in the third quarter of the year, their best ever as Democrats look to cut into Republicans’ money advantage.
But Republicans did see a spot of good news out of Washington state where GOP candidate John Braun had a slight edge (one point) in a new poll against Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in that toss-up district.
BIGGEST POLL LOSER: Stacy Garrity
Pennsylvania GOP candidate Stacy Garrity is trailing Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro by 27 points, according to a PennLive poll. It’s the latest poll that has the Trump-endorsed candidate down by double digits in the Keystone State—which Trump won in 2024.
WHAT TRUMP IS SAYING:
“You never know what happens, right? It’s politics. It’s like war. Look at Vladimir [Putin]. He thought he was going to have a one day war. It lasted five years.”
WHAT STEVE DAINES IS SAYING:
“There arguably could be some similarities between the 06 cycle and the 2026 cycle. That’s when Jim Talent lost in Missouri. That’s when by the way Sherrod Brown won in Ohio and beat [Mike] DeWine. That’s when in the state of Montana Jon Tester beat Conrad Burns by the narrowest margin. Those were three of the six pickup seats that the Democrats got that night. Today six in ten Americans oppose the Iran war. Gas prices? Enough said on gas prices.” Daines is quitting his Montana Senate seat.
WHAT ANGIE NIXON IS SAYING:
“Now @AshleyMoodyFL. Why would I want to abolish the police when I want you arrested and in jail for stealing $10 million from sick kids?” Angie Nixon is the Florida Democrat running for the Senate against appointed incumbent Ashley Moody (who got Marco Rubio’s seat.)
AND FINALLY…PLACE YOUR BETS:
Who will win the Michigan Senate race?
What they’re saying on Kalshi:
Abdul El-Sayed: 72%
Mike Rogers: 28%
What they’re saying on Polymarket:
Abdul El-Sayed: 73%
Mike Rogers: 28%
