H-1Bs For Me

Vance’s Must-Win MAGA Pal Busted in Brazen Double Standard

All is not well in Ohio, where Vance is at odds with a major candidate, our must-read newsletter The Swamp reveals.

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, JD Vance, Donald Trump, Bruce Blakeman, Mike Rogers, Ken Paxton, Maria Elvira Salazar, Michael Whatley, Darline Graham, Jon Husted and Mamaw.

JD and Ramaswamy’s Very Awkward Difference Revealed

Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance share a home state, Ivy League education, big money jobs, big MAGA resumes, and burning ambition. But pictures of the two Ohioans—one the vice president, the other running for governor—together recently are in very short supply.

Vance flew to Ohio on Friday, publicly said he’d voted for Ramaswamy, and addressed a rally in Lima, which was attended by the would-be governor. But the two did not pose together, on or off stage.

Why so shy, JD and Vivek? The Swamp has uncovered an intriguing back-story. Both men are on the very opposite side of a crucial issue which Vance hopes to use to gin up his presidential chances, but which Ramaswamy probably wants to keep silent: H-1B visas.

The immigrant visas have become a lightning rod, with accusations from conservatives that big companies, especially tech, have used them to import cheaper foreign labor, and force Americans out of good-paying jobs. And the day before he flew to Ohio, Vance announced a high-profile crackdown on the issuing of H-1B visas, calling the scheme “rife with fraud.”

In contrast, The Swamp reviewed documents that show companies founded by Ramaswamy, or subsidiaries of it, used H-1B visas nearly 90 times in the last decade.

Their use not only took place at his healthcare company Roivant, but were also used at nine of its subsidiaries between 2017 and 2024.

Billionaire Ramaswamy has an alphabet soup of companies he’s involved in, the most important being his former company Roivant Sciences. That had already landed him in H-1B trouble, when it was reported during his failed presidential bid that it had 29 applications approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hire employees under the H-1B visas between 2018 and 2023, the year Ramaswamky left the company to mount his 2024 campaign. (H-1B visas are approved for three years but can be extended another three years.)

But it turns out that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Swamp’s review of USCIS data found that once subsidiaries are taken into account, his companies used the foreign visa program an astonishing 59 more times.

Datavant Sciences, a healthcare data and technology company founded by Roivant Sciences in 2017, used the H-1B visa program 24 times from 2019 to 2024, including nine new employee approvals, nine change of employer approvals, two continuation approvals along, and four amended approvals, which means there was a change in the terms of the employment, like location or salary.

Lokavant Inc, which started within Roivant in 2020 before separating in 2023, also used the H-1B visa program nine times between 2020 and 2024.

VantAI, which launched as a subsidiary of Roivant in 2019, used the program eight times between 2020 and 2023 while Myovant Sciences Inc., which started as a subsidiary of Roivant, used the H-1B programs six times from 2017 to 2022, when it was sold, Oncopia Therapeutics, which was acquired by Roivant in 2020, also used the program four times from 2021 to 2024. Axovant Sciences, which Ramaswamy founded in 2014, used it three times from 2018 to 2020, Covant Therapeutics used it two times in 2023 and Immunovant Sciences and Kinevant Sciences each used it one time in 2023, and Urovant Sciences also used it once in 2021.

That makes for a total of 88 uses of the program. Phew. The Swamp asked Ramswamy’s campaign for comment, but has not heard back.

We didn’t ask Vance for comment, because he’d already provided the mot juste during his attack on H-1B “fraud,” saying, “Don’t judge a politician by what they say. Judge a politician by what they do.”

Don’t You Know Who I Am?

During his brief trip back to Ohio, those listening carefully may have been surprised to hear who the vice president said he was when he went to vote. “James David Vance,” he intoned. Err, who did you say now? It turns out that Vance’s long naming journey had just taken yet another twist.

Because his legal name is not in fact JD Vance, even though that’s what he’s used on a variety of official documents. He is legally James David Vance, which is only the latest stopping point for James Donald Bowman (yes, Donald), who became James David Hamel when his mom, Beverly, divorced his dad when he was six, remarried, and was adopted by Robert Hamel. Then he was J.D. Hamel for about 20 years, before deciding that he needed a rebrand in 2013 just before he graduated from Yale and turned himself into J.D. Vance, in honor of his Mamaw, Bonnie Blanton Vance. But in 2021 he decided periods in his name were so last decade, and ran for the Senate as JD Vance. Confused? No need to be. He’s planning that we will all address him soon as President Vance.

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It’s All AI and We Approve these Messages

Welcome to the 2026 midterms, where politicians are outsourcing their dirty work to AI. The Swamp could occupy the moral high ground here, but it’s already taken by the researchers of the nonpartisan Wesleyan Media Project. Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz and Travis N. Ridout have dug into the torrent of ads being inflicted on voters and discovered at least 164 AI-generated or AI-enhanced political ads this election cycle, backed by nearly $80 million in spending. Concerningly, nearly 70 per cent of them didn’t think to mention the little help they’d got from an AI agent. Not surprisingly for a party which is backed heavily by Elon Musk, Republicans created 80 percent of the ads and did 83 percent of the spending. But The Swamp will give some of these water-wasting AI agents a pass. Whichever one came up with the wildly improbable scene of Michigan Senate hopeful Mike Rogers, 63, posing as a buff superhero to stop a speeding car with one hand, then pick up a wrestling belt, deserves praise for a gift for satire (if only it had been used that way).

In Texas, Ken Paxton maybe needs a new AI agent. During his ugly GOP primary race, he used an AI-generated Republican Senator John Cornyn dancing with Democratic firebrand Jasmine Crockett. Lame! But Cornyn retaliated with an AI-ad featuring Paxton cruising around town with two mistresses, in a nod to his extramarital affairs and ethical scandals.

Ouch. Whoever called AI all slop isn’t watching hard enough.

Don’t Ask What I Voted for While I Ask for Your Vote

It would not be campaign season if a member of Congress wasn’t taking credit for a program they did not vote for. The Swamp hesitates to say that the worst offenders is Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, the Republican in Florida who just publicly dissed Trump, but she’s certainly among the worst. Salazar, a former longtime Miami news anchor is in the fight of her life to hold onto her Miami seat against another another former Miami news anchor, Democrat Eliott Rodriguez. The congresswoman just released a new 30-second ad, in which she touted a series of improvements for her district.

“On healthcare, I brought millions to expand care for children and improve primary care for families,” she said in it. Among the campaign’s highlights about what was to the district, it noted $2.5 million to expand Banyan Community Health Center, $1 million for pediatric mental health services at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and $450,000 for pediatric genetic testing.

But, oops, the projects were made possible through the FY23 Appropriations Package, a funding bill Salazar voted against. And this was hardly a first offense. She voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act but then took credit for the projects funded in her district. A viral video of her being interviewed by CBS News Miami’s Jim DeFede in 2024 resurfaced last month in which she was confronted for taking credit for projects she voted against. In the face of being challenged at the time, she argued she needed to “ask her staff” and insisted “I cannot really remember right now.” The Swamp is curious about what her defense will be this time, but has not yet heard back…

THE BIGGEST POLL LOSER: Michael Whatley

Trump’s handpicked North Carolina Senate candidate remains the king of poor polling numbers despite the president repeatedly going to bat for him including in a Truth Social post on Monday. Alas, the most recent Eastern Carolina University poll still has former Governor Roy Cooper up on Whatley by seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent, as Republicans have been moving their money elsewhere.

WHAT TRUMP IS SAYING:

“If we don’t win the midterms, they’re going to blame me, you know that,” Trump told Tennessee voters. “If we do win them, I will get no credit whatsoever, it’s true, I won’t get any, but I’m working my a-- off. You better get out there and vote.”

WHAT REPUBLICAN DARLINE GRAHAM IS SAYING:

“I’ve had a job representing the people of Wash, in Wash, of South Carolina in Washington D.C.,” said the nepo-sister of late Sen. Lindsey Graham who seems confused about her current job’s duties.

WHAT DEMOCRATIC SUPPORTER KACEY MUSGRAVES IS SAYING:

“I don’t think you have a dog in this fight but if you did you would have shot it,” she posted at Kristi Noem who went after xo for going to a Musgraves concert.

AND FINALLY…PLACE YOUR BETS:

Who will win the Ohio Senate race?

What they’re saying on Kalshi:

Sherrod Brown 60%

Jon Husted 40%

What they’re saying on Polymarket:

Sherrod Brown 57%

Jon Husted 45%

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