President Donald Trump’s departure for Texas took an unusual turn Wednesday when an emergency slide was seen hanging from his new Air Force One.
The inflatable slide was deployed as Trump prepared to leave Joint Base Andrews for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. The president told reporters that officials were “doing a check on the slide” that would take about 15 minutes.
But the delay caught CNN host Brianna Keilar’s attention.
“It is extremely uncharacteristic for the president to show up at Andrews Air Force Base in Marine One and then not get off pretty quickly,” Keilar said as CNN carried live pictures from the base.
Trump instead remained aboard the helicopter for several minutes before walking over to the Qatari-gifted Boeing 747 and speaking with reporters.
Keilar said it wasn’t initially clear what was causing the holdup because the network could only see what was shown by the pool camera. But the CNN anchor still had questions even after the deployed slide was revealed.
“Why exactly was this deployed?” she asked. “He said they’re testing it. Was this deployed accidentally? We don’t know.”
“This was quite the unusual scene,” Keilar added.
She noted to viewers that an emergency slide was accidentally deployed aboard Air Force One in 1994 as President Bill Clinton returned from Germany.
Trump eventually boarded the plane and departed for Dallas, according to media reports.
As he runs for Senate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has faced a number of defections from moderate Republican voters over his long list of scandals and his marital infidelity. But he may also be losing a handful of MAGA voters who actually think he's too soft.
These voices came out in full force this week, as Paxton took to X to tout what was clearly meant to be an economic achievement for the MAGA movement: job creation for women.
"Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, American women are leading the way in our economic comeback," said Paxton, referencing a Trump rapid response account noting that women "account for almost all net U.S. job gains since Trump took office." "This is what happens when we put hardworking Americans first."
But a number of far-right accounts were infuriated with this statement, noted Business Insider's Grace Panetta — with many of them accusing Paxton of abandoning young men.
"Fire whoever thought crafting this abomination of a post was a good idea. Fire them now," wrote Auron MacIntyre, a commentator for the far-right outlet The Blaze.
An account named "Fugitive Caesar" replied, "This is a huge disaster and a sign of intense racial, sexual discrimination against young white men. This is also personally your fault because as the Texas Attorney General you are the specific guy who is supposed to sue companies in Texas to stop them from racially, sexually discriminating against young white Christian patriotic men."
"Women should not be 'leading the way.' Economically or otherwise," wrote Eric Conn, founder of New Christendom Press. "A nation ruled by women is a judgment from God against it."
"What. Is. He. Thinking?????" wrote Megan Basham, a reporter for the right-wing Daily Wire. "Everything wrong with the conservative establishment is encapsulated in this tweet. It’s tone deaf, it’s fails to understand the moment we’re in, and it reinforces the feminist longhouse situation that we are all trying to address. Seriously what’s the matter with Republican candidates??? Is it because they have no fixed convictions so they just try to say whatever they think is the right thing to say and because they’re so insulated they don’t know how horrifically wrong they’re getting it??"
A Republican New York City Council member told a left-wing streamer to "go back to where you came from" on Fox News, then insisted, "Don't you dare call us racist."
Council Member Vickie Paladino (R-NY) made the remarks Wednesday during a Fox News interview with host Harris Faulkner, who asked her to respond to a social media post by Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker had criticized the campaign to keep New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani away from Friday's ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Faulkner introduced Piker to viewers as an "anti-American and antisemitic influencer" before reading his post on X aloud and asking Paladino for a response.
"[H]e's the mayor of NYC. This demented racist viewpoint isn't even shared by most 9/11 victim families (many of whom voted for [New York City Mayor Zohnran Mamdani]). At a certain point, if mainstream outlets don't call this manufactured racial hysteria out by name, one must assume they welcome it, right?" Faulkner quoted Piker as saying before Paladino weighed in.
"Oh, Hasan Piker, I'd love to have you with me in a room for five minutes," Paladino said. "What's my response to that? Go back to where you came from."
"This has nothing to do about Muslim, about religion, about anything," Paladino continued. "I am sick to death because I just got a filthy, dirty voicemail, threatening voicemail, on my way here. Don't you dare call us racist just because we are citing the truth."
"Radical Islam bombed… a terrorist attack on New York City, on the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania," Paladino said. "You don't like the truth? Too bad. Stop calling it racist."
"You are anti-American. You've said it time and again that we deserved 9/11," she said of Piker. "I want him for five minutes."
Piker, a liberal broadcaster with millions of followers, was born in New Jersey to Turkish parents, grew up in Turkey, and returned to the United States for college. He told The New York Times last year that he identifies as culturally Muslim.
Piker said in 2019 that America "deserved" the Sept. 11 attacks, a remark Mamdani has denounced, TIME reported. Piker campaigned for Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, during last year's race.
In a clash earlier this year, Paladino accused Piker of telling his followers how to build suicide drones, and the City Council's Ethics Committee charged her with disorderly behavior over Islamophobic posts on X, one of them aimed at Mamdani's chief immigration officer appointee, Faiza N. Ali, QNS reported.
Piker threatened to sue her for defamation and called her a "flagrantly racist councilwoman."
The dispute deepened Friday, when Mamdani signed two executive orders ahead of the anniversary, one designating Sept. 11 a citywide Day of Remembrance and Service and the other strengthening the city's emergency preparedness.
After signing, he handed the ceremonial pen to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and quietly asked her to pass it to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, Fox News reported.
Kassem is the first Muslim to serve as the mayor's top lawyer, according to NY1. He once represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al Qaeda operative who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and whose sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers who struck the Pentagon.
The mayor's office told the Daily Caller that Kassem was there because he and his team had drafted both orders.
At a press conference Tuesday with 9/11 families, Paladino said a petition against Mamdani's attendance had gathered 101,000 signatures and that the mayor should "not show his face at that sacred ground." She told the crowd the pen handoff was "very cryptic" and "a message to each and every one of us." Mamdani still plans to attend Friday's ceremony, TIME reported.
Melania Trump’s camp is firing back over the scrutiny surrounding President Donald Trump’s ever-present aide Natalie Harp.
Marc Beckman, a senior adviser to the first lady, defended Harp during an interview with MAGA host Stella Escobedo, according to The Daily Beast. Escobedo set up the question by accusing the mainstream media of being "endlessly obsessed with garbage tabloid gossip about Natalie Harp."
“What they need to do is look in the mirror because they’re all attacking this hardworking, very talented, very intelligent person in Natalie Harp,” Beckman responded.
He also pushed back against speculation about Melania Trump’s absence from many of the president’s public appearances. The Daily Beast reported that she has been spotted in public just about 40 days in 2026, regularly skipping high-profile events.
“The liberal media is ridiculous,” Beckman said. “They don’t know anything about the first lady’s personal and private life.”
He accused journalists of focusing on the Trump family’s private lives instead of covering what he called the “incredible achievements that our first lady has accomplished.”
“It’s absolutely ridiculous, and the media doesn’t know about the first lady’s private life. Period,” Beckman said. “The media doesn’t know about the First Family’s private life. Period.”
Harp, the 35-year-old former conservative news host, has become one of the president’s closest aides. She frequently accompanies Trump to Oval Office meetings, public events, and weekend golf outings, The Daily Beast noted Wednesday.
Beckman, however, said the attention surrounding Harp had gone too far.
“What they do is they harp on these issues of gossip,” he said. “And I can tell you firsthand that it’s time for them to become journalists and stop looking at the gossip."
As Republicans tried to rally around President Donald Trump at the midterm convention in Dallas, MS NOW's Chris Jansing went across town to a food drive event hosted by Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico — and met some longtime Republicans who are crossing the aisle.
"According to James Talarico, life under Trump means that a lot of people can't afford to put food on their table," Jansing told anchor Alicia Menendez, noting that volunteers have already donated around 20,000 pounds of groceries. "They say compare and contrast that to $25,000 that people are paying to be across town and be at the midterm convention for the Republicans."
The first man Jansing spoke to was Alan Steelman, a former Republican congressman from Dallas.
"You were elected as a Republican, and I believe you're still a Republican," said Jansing.
"Well, I am," said Steelman. "It is a bridge too far for many Texas Republicans to vote for any Democrat. However, there are times when party loyalty demands too much. And this is one of those times."
Another person interviewed was Dorothy Burton, founder of Christians in Public Service.
"That's an honest word," said Burton. "He is a disgrace. He's a disgrace to my party. He's a disgrace to humanity. And he's a disgrace."
"Disgrace, corruption," Jansing relayed back to Menendez. "Those are the kinds of words that we hear often from the campaign, and we hear from the candidate himself."
President Donald Trump lashed out at an ABC News reporter outside Air Force One on Wednesday, calling the network "fake news" and "the worst of all," moments after being asked why Republicans in competitive races are skipping his party's convention in Dallas.
Asked why several Republicans in tight races weren't attending, Trump insisted the opposite.
"Everybody is coming to the convention. Everybody wants to come," he said, predicting the event would be "sold out tonight." Then he asked the reporter which outlet she worked for. Told it was ABC News, he snapped.
"ABC fake news. One of the worst. You are the worst of all in my opinion," Trump fumed.
Trump went on to explain the absences by saying, "We don't have room for 500 politicians. We have room for the ones that have a close race."
That answer sat oddly next to the question, which was specifically about Republicans in competitive races choosing to stay away, the very group he claimed to be prioritizing.
His "sold out" boast also clashes with the RNC's scramble to fill the American Airlines Center. Organizers opened a public lottery for free tickets and pressed operatives to hand them out, according to multiple reports. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has clashed with Trump, is absent from the speaker list for the first-of-its-kind midterm convention.
The testy gaggle also included a moment earlier in which Trump was pressed on why oil had climbed back above $100 a barrel despite his promises of relief. Trump admitted gas prices likely wouldn't fall below $2 a gallon until after the November midterms.
The exchange occurred outside his new Air Force One plane, a $400 million Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar, after a deal that ethics experts questioned and which has become a frequent target of the ABC coverage Trump attacks.
A misogynistic streak that a Texas Republican congressional candidate calls comedy is something an extremism researcher says voters should take far more seriously, calling it a documented warning sign tied to real-world violence.
Brandon Herrera, the GOP nominee in Texas' 23rd District and a gun-focused YouTuber known online as "The AK Guy," has for years made vulgar, degrading remarks about women's bodies and intelligence across his videos, podcasts and social media, according to a CNN review of his output. Herrera has dismissed the material as jokes.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who directs American University's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab and wrote a book on misogyny and violent extremism, reviewed CNN's findings and said the content is more than crude humor. Repeatedly likening women to animals, she said, works to dehumanize them.
"I think if we want a safer society overall, we should also be worried about candidates like this who help normalize things that we know are reliable predictors of political violence," she told CNN.
Herrera rejected that assertion, insisting the remarks were comedy, and turned his fire on his Democratic opponent.
Herrera is running to replace Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who abandoned his reelection campaign this year amid a House Ethics investigation into his relationship with a former aide, and his opponent, Katy Padilla Stout, is a woman. Party leaders have embraced Herrera anyway as they work to hold a razor-thin House majority in November, with Speaker Mike Johnson campaigning alongside him and President Donald Trump vouching that he "WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN."
Shannon Watts, a gun-safety advocate Herrera has insulted, told CNN that the prospect of him holding power over women's rights "should be terrifying to all women."
Hopeful "Trump-a-palooza" patrons stuck in an endless line in spiking heat received a telling response from GOP Convention organizers on Wednesday, according to a local reporter.
Those unwilling to pay up to $20,000 for guaranteed entry to Trump's two-day Republican rally in Dallas faced a slew of obstacles, including a heat advisory, lines to get in line, strict security measures, and limited access to hydration, according to D Magazine reporter Steven Monacelli.
"Due to bag restrictions and no press pass, I am unable to bring a water bottle, snacks, or my laptop," the Dallas-based reporter warned. "I am unsure of what the food at American Airlines will look like, so my posts may become increasingly incoherent throughout the day."
Dallas was under a heat warning Wednesday, with temperatures predicted to hit 99 degrees as up to 20,000 hopeful attendees waited to get into the American Airlines Center.
Guests seeking free entry were told to expect an entry process that would take up to five-and-a-half hours and include driving to a horse racing track for tickets, boarding shuttle buses to the convention, clearing security, and then waiting.
"I signed up for a ticket," said Texan Laney Hawes. "Then I got the instructions for ticket pick-up."
Monacelli told his X followers he was on the line because the GOP Convention had never responded to his request for credentials. He then shared what happened as the temperature started to rise.
"An organizer announced to the snaking line of people waiting for tickets that they can go inside where there are open concessions if they feel faint," Monacelli wrote. The offer came with a request: "Save that space for people who truly feel faint."
Meanwhile, Monacelli said he waited nearly an hour in line before he found someone who could sell him a bottle of Gatorade. He said it cost $7.
Critics raising concerns about President Donald Trump's potential cognitive decline have failed to contextualize it in a significant way, a political analyst argued Wednesday.
To truly understand the danger of a Trump in mental decline, David Pakman argued, Americans must pair it alongside another diagnosis the president frequently receives from his critics: his “extraordinary narcissism and egomania.”
“Put these things together — the cognitive elements and the narcissism, egomania — in a president of the United States, and you have a much bigger problem,” Pakman said in a video posted on “The David Pakman Show” YouTube page.
While Pakman emphasized to viewers that he was not diagnosing Trump, he pointed to the MAGA leader’s repeated claims that perfect scores on a cognitive screening test known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment prove his intelligence.
“Even Donald Trump framing a dementia screening as an IQ test is the dynamic that I am talking about here,” Pakman said. The screening tool tests possible cognitive impairment, not intelligence, Pakman pointed out.
He questioned whether anyone surrounding Trump could comfortably tell the president that he misunderstood information or remembered something incorrectly.
“The presidency is one of the worst possible jobs for someone who cannot tolerate being told that he is wrong,” Pakman added.
“If confusion produces a mistake, narcissism makes acknowledging that mistake intolerable psychologically,” he continued. “And that creates this insanely dangerous feedback loop.”
Pakman called the combination a “nightmare scenario” that the country is currently in.
“A president that is increasingly unable to process information, but he is still just as confident that he’s the smartest person in the room,” he concluded.
A year after the first batch of Jeffrey Epstein investigative files was released, law enforcement agencies in at least five countries say the Justice Department still has not responded to their formal requests for help.
Officials in Poland, Norway, Latvia, the United Kingdom and Germanytold the Washington Post that requests for mutual legal assistance — the formal process that allows foreign investigators to obtain evidence, information and testimony from the U.S. — have gone unanswered.
No charges have resulted from the files' release in the United States, but the documents exposed Epstein's relationships with influential figures worldwide, including President Donald Trump, and the revelations have prompted international investigations of the late sex offender's networks.
The Justice Department disputed any suggestion it is stonewalling. "The Department of Justice has not refused to assist any jurisdiction investigating potential criminal conduct related to Jeffrey Epstein," a DOJ spokesperson told the Telegraph last month, adding that the department "remains committed to cooperating with all jurisdictions pursuing potential crimes."
However, officials from those five European nations say their requests to the Trump administration have been met with silence.
Poland's National Prosecutor's Office said the Justice Department has not responded to an April request.
In Norway, state prosecutor Marianne Bender said her office remains in communication with DOJ officials but "they have not at this time approved the request."
Latvia's state police said they have sent "several requests" and "no responses have yet been received."
Britain's formal request followed informal talks that DOJ had already failed to advance, according to the Times of London, and German federal police say they remain in contact with the FBI without resolution.
The stakes are highest in Norway, where three prominent figures — former diplomats Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul, and former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland — face corruption charges connected to their relationships with Epstein. All deny wrongdoing.
Rød-Larsen's attorney said Norwegian prosecutors have specifically sought additional records from DOJ and investigative steps involving the International Peace Institute in New York, where his client previously served as president. Bender called the lack of a U.S. response "very unfortunate for the Norwegian investigation."
The Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, which processes such requests, has faced documented operational problems for years.
A 2021 inspector general report found it plagued by high staff turnover, outdated technology and oversized caseloads, and a former DOJ attorney who worked in the office said such requests are "inherently complex," particularly when they involve voluminous records or contested redactions.
Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers continue pressing DOJ for more transparency domestically, saying Epstein-related documents remain missing or unnecessarily redacted, even after Congress voted overwhelmingly last November to compel their release.
The top Democratic appropriator in the US Senate responded with alarm and outrage on Tuesday to news that the Trump administration is preparing a rule change that would siphon federal dollars away from a chronically underfunded program that helps working-class parents afford childcare.
The diverted funds would be used to finance a new federal subsidy for “married couples with one stay-at-home parent in certain income brackets,” The New York Timesreported late last week. The proposed change, a top priority of Vice President JD Vance, is “outrageous and backwards,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. Murray argued it would be illegal and immoral for the administration to shift taxpayer money away from the Child Care and Development Fund, which serves around 1 million families nationwide in a typical month.
“It’s not the 1950s in America—our government shouldn’t punish people for being single parents or choosing not to marry,” said Murray. “Nobody cares what JD Vance thinks constitutes a ‘real’ family—single parents and parents who aren’t married pay taxes, too. Raiding an underfunded program solely to score culture war points is not pro-family—it’s a wasteful grift that I will fight every step of the way.”
The Times reported that “the policy change would effectively create a government incentive for parents to stay home with their children, an idea embraced as part of a broader conservative effort to advance policies that promote more mothers staying at home.” Unmarried couples with one stay-at-home parent would not qualify for the newly proposed subsidy.
“The move could end up redirecting money away from working parents and their childcare providers, causing some to raise their rates or even close, critics said, potentially worsening what many experts say is a childcare crisis in the country,” the newspaper added. “About 80% of the 870,000 families who currently get the childcare subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to Health Department data.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), House Democrats’ top appropriator, said in a statement that “supporting stay-at-home parents should never come at the expense of working families.”
“At a time when families are already struggling to find and afford childcare, this proposal would force more parents to compete for the same inadequate pot of money, threaten childcare providers, and disproportionately hurt single working parents, most of whom are mothers,” said DeLauro, “If Republicans want to support families, they should join Democrats in passing the expanded Child Tax Credit and increasing access to affordable childcare—not rob Peter to pay Paul while imposing their preferred definition of what a family should look like.”
Childcare costs—which run many families tens of thousands of dollars per year—are a major concern of US voters. One recent survey found that more than 80% see childcare costs as part of the nation’s broader affordability crisis, and 76% view them as “a crisis or major problem” for families with young children.
But the Trump administration has so far done nothing to lower childcare costs—and has taken steps that could raise them and deny low-income families badly needed relief.
Earlier this year, roughly a month after launching his costly and destructive war on Iran, President Donald Trumpsuggested that the federal government should not provide any funding for childcare.
“We’re fighting wars,” the president said. “We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too.”
Amy Matsui, vice president for childcare and income security at the National Women’s Law Center, said it is “outrageous that the administration would propose siphoning money away from families who are struggling to afford childcare to send cash to married couples with a stay-at-home parent, when hundreds of thousands of families are on childcare waiting lists around the country.”
“If this administration really wanted to support families,” Matsui added, “it would invest more—not less—dollars in childcare, create a national paid family and medical leave program, expand access to a fully refundable Child Tax Credit, and restore health care and nutrition assistance.”
Texas Democrats welcomed President Donald Trump to his Dallas convention by recommending the city's "world-class memory care clinic" that specializes in dementia.
Kendall Scudder, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party, delivered the line at a news conference in Dallas on Wednesday morning.
Democrats scheduled the event hours before Republicans opened their first midterm convention at the American Airlines Center, and Scudder said the party had come to offer "the other side of the story" that reporters would not hear this week.
Republicans chose Dallas in part to lift Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the party's nominee for U.S. Senate, who is running roughly level with state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat, according to The Independent.
"Ken Paxton has the magnetic pull of a plastic spoon, and they have to do everything that they can to prop him up before they lose their stranglehold on Texas," Scudder said.
"First, Dallas has a world-class memory care clinic specializing in dementia, so it gives easier access and opportunities for a president who clearly has ailing health," Scudder remarked, offering what he described as another reason for the choice of city.
"Lastly, the president shares a lot of similarities to our mayor, Eric Johnson," Scudder said of the Dallas mayor. "They both have great disrespect for their own wives and bulldoze public buildings that don't belong to them against the wishes of the public."
Scudder also invoked the late Texas Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who campaigned on a promise to put the jam on the bottom shelf so ordinary people could reach it, and said Republicans had taken the opposite approach.
"Give everything we can to big businesses, billionaires and bootlicking b------- so they can buy their fealty to Donald Trump on your dime," Scudder said.
Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), who traveled to Dallas for the news conference, was asked by a reporter whether Democrats' warnings about the coming election were undermining public confidence in the vote.
"Look, I think the more that people understand that everything is at stake in this election, the more likely it is that people will show up and vote," Pritzker said. "So we're not undermining anything."
"You call it whatever you wanna call it, but what is it when the president of the United States says that he is going to determine which mail-in ballots they accept within our state, while at the same time our secretary of state is unable to provide you with a voting roster?" Scudder said.
"So if you wanna call it rigging, call it that," Scudder added. "I don't know what else you would call it, but it is frankly un-American, and it is not the way this system is supposed to work."
Trump's approval rating stood at 33% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Aug. 28-31, the lowest reading of his presidency in that survey, The Independent reported.
Several Republicans in competitive races are staying away from the convention, including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Tom Barrett (R-MI), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Zach Nunn (R-IA) and David Valadao (R-CA), CNN reported.
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), the party's nominee for Wisconsin governor, is also skipping the event, and Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) and former New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu are not on the speaking list, according to CNN.
One Republican source told the network that a request from the National Republican Congressional Committee for House members to pay at least $25,000 for a ticket contributed to some members' decision to stay home.
"I can't control what the president's going to say at the convention, but I can control where I'm at," Barrett told Politico.
The Republican National Committee has run a public lottery offering free tickets, and a text message sent to donors as recently as last week encouraged them to ask for "FREE TICKETS," while some party operatives said seats remained available, according to The Independent.
The committee has said it expects about 20,000 people at the arena, the outlet reported.
Donors willing to pay were offered a seat at a roundtable with Trump for $250,000 and a commemorative photograph for another $88,600, the outlet reported. A $20,000 contribution bought "honorary delegate" status along with a Texas shirt and a cowboy hat.
The two-day program lists 109 speakers and events. Trump is scheduled to appear on stage both evenings and will close the convention Thursday in the 8 p.m. hour, with Vice President JD Vance delivering Wednesday's keynote, the publication reported.
Just two weeks after Maine gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles drew national headlines with his comments about sending immigration agents to polling stations, the Republican’s sister publicly explained why she won’t be voting for him in November, calling out his campaign rhetoric and platform as well as his relationship with an infamous pedophile.
The campaign website for Bobby Charles, a former Washington, DC lobbyist, highlights that their mother was a public school teacher. In a Wednesday opinion piece for The Portland Press Herald, Anita Charles, a longtime educator herself, wrote that their mother taught them both “that how we treat other people matters.”
“She taught us to be compassionate, not to name-call or judge people by their race, gender, religion, country of origin, or who they love. She taught us that differences do not diminish us, and that we have a responsibility to treat others with dignity. Those lessons shaped my entire life, as well as my career,” according to Anita Charles. “They are also the reason I cannot support my brother’s campaign for governor.”
Anita Charles acknowledged that “Bobby and I have never agreed politically. For most of our adult lives, we have managed those differences with civility. But as divisive rhetoric has become central to his campaign, I can no longer remain silent. It shows up in how he talks about our schools, our vulnerable communities, and about women’s healthcare.”
She noted that “there is one issue I cannot discuss without speaking from the deepest part of my own experience: sexual assault.”
As she detailed:
Bobby was a close friend and colleague of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert from 1995 to 1999. He praised Hastert and benefited from their relationship as he built his career in Washington. Hastert later admitted to sexually abusing children and was convicted of illegally paying hush money to conceal that abuse. Bobby has never publicly renounced that association.
That is difficult for me to understand because my own childhood was marked by sexual violence. Someone who was part of our lives for more than a decade was a pedophile who repeatedly assaulted me. My brother has known what happened to me for 50 years.
Under the anti-choice positions Bobby holds today, even in cases of rape, I would not have been able to make a decision about my own body should that have become necessary. This isn’t a debate I’m observing from a distance; it’s about my childhood. And it’s about my ongoing health and well-being as a woman.
As the Bangor Daily News noted Wednesday, Bobby Charles’ current “campaign website doesn’t list any proposals about abortion,” but he has “called abortion ‘abhorrent’ and supported the 2022 US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Arguing that “Maine deserves leadership rooted in empathy, dignity, intellectual honesty, and respect for every person who calls this state home,” Bobby Charles’ sister concluded that she will be voting for Democrat Hannah Pingree for governor.
The op-ed quickly circulated on social media after its publication. Local writer Anthony Emerson said that an “atom bomb dropped in the Maine governor’s race this morning.”
Oof: I’m Bobby Charles’ sister. I’m voting for Hannah Pingree.
"The values my mother raised us with are not the values his campaign represents today. Bobby’s rhetoric and campaign platform contradict those values."https://t.co/xB8L5vQsA1 — Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) September 9, 2026
Anita Charles’ article came as her brother continues to face criticism for boasting about his ties to President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, at a Maine Young Republicans event and claiming that he would ask the federal official to send US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Marshals to the state’s voting booths.
Maine AFL-CIO president Cynthia Phinney said in a Wednesday statement that “in Maine and the United States, voters elect our leaders in free and fair elections. Calling for masked federal agents to be deployed around polling locations is a cynical attempt to intimidate voters.”
“No one should be afraid to show up and exercise their constitutional right to vote, but that’s exactly what this is trying to do,” Phinney continued. “Our union movement rejects this desperate political tactic, and we know our democracy is strongest when all of us show up to exercise our democratic rights in peaceful elections free from fear or intimidation.”
Trump’s weaponization of ICE has been a key issue in Maine politics this cycle—including the contest between Republican US Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson—particularly since an agent fatally shot Biddeford resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in July.
“Every Mainer deserves to feel safe in their own neighborhood,” Pingree said last month. “As governor, I’ll demand real, independent oversight, not empty promises. I’ll keep fighting for accountability. ICE out of Maine.”
