Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: The Epstein election

The Epstein election

Oct 26, 2026

By Adam Wren, Dasha Burns and Will Steakin

Presented by Kalshi

With help from Eli Okun, Ali Bianco and Irie Sentner

Good Monday morning. News you can use: Early voting kicks off in D.C. today as the countdown clock to Election Day hits eight days. Get in touch.

In today’s Playbook …

— Dems bet on the Epstein files to help flip the Senate.

— Donald Trump and JD Vance start the week with more red-state rescue missions.

— The Boldfaces: Jesse Stinebring, Scott Colom, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mary Peltola, Todd Blanche, John Cornyn, Bernie Sanders, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Nicki Minaj and more.

DRIVING THE DAY

It’s the Epstein election.

Tens of millions of dollars in Democratic ads are targeting the scandal — a move that could prove decisive in tipping the Senate for Democrats.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC has spent more than $20 million on Jeffrey Epstein-related ads in Senate races across Alaska, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas and Georgia, according to a spokesperson for the group. Between House and Senate races, Democrats have spent some $36 million on Epstein-related ads, according to an AdImpact analysis.

That’s because the Epstein imbroglio has filtered so deeply into the American voter psyche that it’s an easy shorthand for Democrats to talk about corruption — now a top issue on voters’ minds with 88% extremely or very concerned, according to a recent Fox News poll. That’s more than inflation and high prices, which clocked in at 85%.

“It’s a critical plank in a larger argument that we’re prosecuting the cycle,” said Jesse Stinebring, the co-founder and CEO of the Democratic firm Blue Rose Research, which works alongside SMP on polling used to inform the ads. “I think that Epstein has become emblematic of this larger system that Americans feel is rigged against them.”

Senior Republican pollsters and strategists agree the ads are a “good way to hit the salience of government corruption rather than trying to explain the bribery scandals.”

And the issue could provide another test of whether low-propensity Donald Trump voters become reliable Republican voters.

“It’s problematic,” one senior Republican official working on midterm elections put it to Playbook. “It’s designed at making frustrated Republican voters who are a little soft right now more frustrated and more soft. It’s like openly scratching at a sore that we already sort of have in a certain way, which is smart on their part.”

The fear: Using Epstein to drive down turnout for Republican candidates could very well create the environment to flip some deep red seats.

One of insurgent Mississippi Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom’s current ads features a man named Mark, a lifelong Republican voter who broke with incumbent GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith over her vote to block the release of the Epstein files. A spokesperson for Hyde-Smith did not respond to a request for comment.

Colom told Playbook that Mark and other voters like him saw it as a betrayal.

“What happened is once they would not release the Epstein files and they kept moving the ball and giving different explanations, that betrayal was so visceral to him, and it was such a personal thing because you talk about predators of children, and he said, ‘Well, that opened my eyes,’” Colom said. “‘They lied to me about that. They’ll lie to me about anything.’”

The ads aren’t necessarily intended to flip Republican voters to Democratic campaigns, but instead keep them from going to the polls at all.

“Republican base suppression,” as the first GOP pollster put it. “Republican pollsters have seen the Epstein issue break through down the homestretch. It seems to be having the effect of reminding voters the kind of corruption they are frustrated with in Washington.”

NEW THIS MORNING: House Democrats are making increasingly clear they have no plans to abandon their line of inquiry into whether Trump was involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, should they retake the majority, POLITICO’s Chris Marquette reports. A new report from the minority staff for the House Judiciary Committee, released today, calls for a special counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to the late convicted sex offender.

On today’s Playbook podcast: Dasha and Adam weigh in on Democrats’ expensive push to keep Epstein in the midterms conversation, plus Trump boasts about making a fortune on oil while Americans pay more at the pump and Barack Obama delivers a Cheesecake Factory-sized insult. Listen and subscribe on Apple or Spotify

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THE DOWNLOAD

ON THE TRAIL: Trump’s red-state travel takes him to Corinth, Mississippi, where he’ll rally at 7 p.m. tonight. VP JD Vance will be at big events in both Belgrade, Montana, and Topeka, Kansas. And HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a nutrition-focused announcement in Michigan. Trump will swing through Texas, Ohio and Florida through the rest of the week.

About last night: Campaigning in Michigan, Trump escalated his anti-Muslim attacks against Abdul El-Sayed, baselessly calling him a jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member and supporter of imposing sharia law. He likened a vote for Mike Rogers to the Flight 93 passengers who fought against terrorists on 9/11. El-Sayed rallied with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who decried Trump’s claims as a diversion.

THE LAST FRONTIER: Mary Peltola, the Democratic Senate nominee in Alaska, is asking a federal judge to throw out the lawsuit the Trump administration filed against the state last week seeking to block officials there from certifying a win for Peltola if it stems from confusion over the two Dan Sullivans also on the ballot, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein writes in. Lawyers for Peltola and the DSCC filed a motion yesterday with U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, asking the Obama appointee to demand that DOJ respond by 5 p.m. Alaska time Tuesday and that the judge dismiss the unusual suit by the end of the week.

As of late Sunday night, DOJ has not requested any immediate action from the court and Gleason has yet to issue any rulings or set a schedule for further proceedings. AG Todd Blanche sharply defended the lawsuit on the Sunday shows. He said DOJ’s goal was to avoid voter confusion and ensure no crimes were committed — not to “decide who the next senator from Alaska is.”

Meanwhile: Peltola is off the campaign trail for a couple of days after a car crash that left her and her family with minor injuries, per POLITICO’s Jalen Beckford.

BEST SERVED COLD: A number of prominent Republicans who either lost their primaries or saw their preferred candidates lose to Trump-backed MAGA figures aren’t too eager to help out in the final stretch, POLITICO’s Alec Hernandez and colleagues report. Some are actively opposing the nominees; others are simply focusing energy elsewhere. But from Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), the divides could cause problems for the GOP.

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THE FRONT PAGE

BERN NOTICE: If Democrats take the Senate, Bernie Sanders would become HELP chair, giving him a powerful late-career position to shape the party and the 2028 race, POLITICO’s Jordain Carney reports. But he’d have to balance competing priorities, from pursuing big-ticket legislation on health care and costs to accountability work regarding Kennedy. “If the Democratic Party thinks that they can just tinker around the edges once they take control of Congress, guess again,” he said.

BOOGIE WOOGIE WOOGIE: Democrats are divided over whether to revive electric vehicle tax credits if they win in November, POLITICO’s Pavan Acharya reports. The credits were a cornerstone of their Biden-era climate policy, but after Republicans repealed them, some moderates wonder whether it’s good politics to reinvest in a decreasingly popular idea.

DATA POINT: Arizona AG Kris Mayes is helping lead a backlash to AI data centers despite seeking to make her state a high-tech hub. She tells Zack Colman on the POLITICO Energy podcast Arizona simply doesn’t have the water for them — and if voters join in the data center backlash, Democrats have a shot at flipping statehouse control.

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5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. BATTLE FOR THE BALLOT: DOJ’s effort to force California to segregate tens of thousands of ballots by allegedly possible non-citizens may be in trouble. A federal appellate panel, with a majority of Trump appointees, sounded very skeptical of the administration’s eleventh-hour request for an immediate injunction, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and colleagues report.

2. ELECTION SEASON: It’s a tense moment for the global movement of MAGA allies. The right’s steady march across Latin America screeched to a halt last night in Brazil, where longtime left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a frequent Trump antagonist — came from behind to score an upset reelection, per POLITICO’s Eva Hartog. Right-wing populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić went down on the same day, conceding defeat to a student-led opposition protest movement, with echoes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, POLITICO’s Una Hajdari reports. (Vučić had supported a Trump Tower project in Belgrade.)

Up next: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s political life is on the line in tomorrow’s crucial election — and he has privately urged Trump to give him more public support, Axios’ Barak Ravid scooped. Netanyahu’s party denied the news of his desperate pleas, but last night, Trump did indeed reup his Bibi endorsement, casting him as an essential ally against Iran.
Meanwhile: With no election scheduled in Venezuela, opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado stepped foot back in her country yesterday for the first time this year, “returning from exile at a time when doubts about the country’s democratic future — and the role of the U.S. — are growing,” AP’s Regina Garcia Cano and colleagues report.

3. WHAT TURTLE BAY IS READING: The Trump administration is quietly mounting a push to make Orbán, the illiberal former Hungarian PM, the next U.N. secretary-general, the WSJ editorial board reports — an effort that could draw the collective support of Russia and China, and potential vetoes.

4. BILL OF HEALTH: “He resigned from CDC leadership. Now he’s fighting RFK Jr. from the outside,” by WaPo’s Lena Sun: “[Demetre] Daskalakis spent months unsure what his resignation would amount to. He uprooted his life again looking for a job. He also became one of the administration’s most outspoken public health critics. The resignation letter he wrote that night surfaced in a consequential fight over Kennedy’s vaccine policies. Whether any of it meant he had accomplished more by leaving than by staying proved harder to answer.”

5. MARKET WATCH: America’s political class is hurtling toward an election that some fear could turn into yet another public opinion polling flop. That’s where the prediction markets are hoping to play, POLITICO’s Declan Harty writes. Startups like Kalshi and Polymarket have argued voters will be more truthful with money on the line. The midterms will test whether their predictive chops hold up under the spotlight.

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TALK OF THE TOWN

THE NEXT WHITE HOUSE PRESS SEC? — Could it be Nicki Minaj? Steven Cheung floated the prospect, and MAGA insiders had fun with the buzz. Minaj campaigned with Trump in Michigan, where he praised her for having “one hell of a beautiful ass.” (Take that, Sen. Jon Husted!)

CENTER OF ATTENTION — Rep. Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) lawyers alleged in a court filing that the Kennedy Center is holding back communications that would show the extent of Trump’s close involvement with the theater, per the AP. They asked a judge not to accept a privilege claim.

SWAMP READ — NYT’s Noam Scheiber puts Washington lawyer Beth Wilkinson under the microscope to probe an existential question: “Does the Trump era mark the high point of the Washington superlawyer, by underscoring the value of Beltway actors who can toggle between MAGA acolytes and enemies? Or, in an age when each side is more fevered and less tolerant of disloyalty, is the situationally flexible Washington lawyer on the verge of extinction?”

TRANSITIONS — Kelly Ogburn is now director of media and outreach at the Financial Services Forum. She most recently worked at OneMainFinancial and is a Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service alum. … Andrew Moore is now on the product strategy team at Anthropic. He most recently worked for Eric Schmidt and is a State Department alum.

WEEKEND WEDDING — Emily Ackerman, floor director for House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Jimmy Katz, customer success manager at DomainTools, got married this weekend at Union Station. Robert Boland officiated. Pic

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) and Troy Carter (D-La.) … Hillary Clinton … Scott Jennings … WSJ’s Evan Gershkovich … WaPo’s Caren Bohan … MS NOW’s Katy Tur and Bianca Brosh … Kristin Lynch … Jef Pollock of Global Strategy Group … Rebecca Kern … Alabama AG Steve Marshall … Hazen Marshall … Seth Morrow of Targeted Victory … Jessica Church … Cami Mondeaux of the Deseret News … Perry Apelbaum … Amanda Smith … Kim Waskowsky of the House Energy and Commerce GOP … Christine Stineman … Craig Frucht of Ascend Digital Strategies … Courtney McNamara of IESC … Big Vision’s Caroline Cunningham … POLITICO’s Dani Schafle … Courtney Speigal of Merchant McIntyre Associates … NYT’s Mark Landler and Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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