🚨Vice President JD Vance has sunk to a new low, praising Ohio GOP gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy for airing a disgusting attack ad that features Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a “liar.” Court records and contemporary reporting show that in 1978, Arthur’s husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and indicted for r*ping then-12-year-old Acton. He fled the state; Donna stayed married to him until his death in 2004. Cledith Arthur also faced a prior child s*xual abuse allegation. Acton and her brother were removed from the home and have been estranged from their mother ever since. Acton has long spoken about the abuse, neglect, and temporary homelessness she endured under her mother’s care. The ad omits all of this. It presents Arthur as a credible critic while Ramaswamy’s campaign plans to spend millions airing it. Vance, campaigning in Ohio, defended the move, saying Ramaswamy had the “audacity to… call Amy Acton a liar” and telling fellow Republicans to “stop whining” about the ad. Philip Stearns (Amy Acton’s brother) released a statement condemning the ad, saying “I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” and that she protected him. After massive backlash, including from some Republicans, Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed it produced the ad featuring Donna Arthur, and is now putting $4 million to boost the ad statewide. This is not “tough politics.” It is weaponizing a documented childhood s*xual abuse survivor’s trauma by elevating the parent who sided with the accused. MAGA continues to show it has no bottom when attacking opponents—especially women who survived the very predation their president has been accused of many times over. Ohio voters deserve better than candidates willing to platform an alleged abuser’s protector for electoral gain.

🚨A 44-year-old Indiana Trump supporter, Jason Slyger, has been arrested by Noblesville police in a child predator sting. Police say detectives posed as kids aged 13 to 15; five men were arrested. Slyger is charged with child solicitation and human trafficking. Slyger shared memes on Facebook to demonstrate his hostility towards child predators. One 2020 post falsely links Epstein to a “list of pedophiles” that contains only Democrat-names. Another reads “Sex with a minor → It’s R*PE! Call it R*PE!” The man who positioned himself as an anti-p*dophile activist has a lot of explaining to do.

🚨Kenyan preacher Paul Mackenzie was convicted this week of murder in the deaths of 191 people, nearly all children, after ordering followers of his Good News International Church to starve themselves and their kids so they could “meet Jesus” before the world ended. More than 400 bodies have been recovered from the Shakahola Forest compound since 2023. His apocalyptic message didn’t emerge in isolation. Court testimony and reporting trace key elements of his doctrine to American evangelical and Pentecostal sources. Investigators and former members link his end-times radicalism to mid-20th-century American healer William Branham, whose “End-Time Message” materials circulated widely. Branham, a Pentecostal evangelist who helped launch the postwar healing revival, promoted isolation from secular institutions, rejection of modern medicine, and a rigid hierarchy of spiritual purity. Those ideas echoed in Mackenzie’s ban on schools, hospitals, and government IDs. A Black American pastor named Yeshaiah Alexander, described in testimony as a friend of Mackenzie, further shaped the group’s fatal turn. Witnesses said Alexander introduced the “Kibbutz” model of communal, secluded living around 2019. That concept helped justify the move into the remote forest, where guards enforced fasting and children were isolated first. Mackenzie also invited other foreign preachers, including white pastors, to mentor the flock. Though Mackenzie publicly denounced the U.S. as part of a satanic “New World Order,” his movement drew from the same American Pentecostal ecosystem of personal revelation, end-times urgency, and rejection of worldly systems that has long exported Christianity across Africa. The Kenyan court ruled the church operated as a structured doomsday cult with a “hierarchy of death.” The case shows how American evangelical networks, through traveling preachers, recorded sermons, and informal partnerships, can seed extreme interpretations abroad. As Mackenzie awaits sentencing, Shakahola raises questions about the unexamined export of radical American Christian ideas and the body count left in their wake.

🚨The Islamophobic man who appeared in a viral clip asking Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood has been identified as Thomas Teepell. Teepell, who gave his name only as “Tommy,” asked El-Sayed the gotcha question at a town hall in Caro to raise suspicion about El-Sayed’s Muslim background. El-Sayed said the question carried an implication of dual loyalty. He compared it to the doubts once raised about John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism. He told the room he was running for the Senate and “happen[s] to be Muslim.” El-Sayed then asked whether Tommy would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law. Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the Constitution. The crowd cheered, and Tommy left the room with a somber look on his face, as if he had failed his mission. Welp, it turns out Tommy isn’t some random concerned citizen showing up to a campaign rally. Congressional staff records show Teepell joined Republican Sen. Josh Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and later rose to operations director before leaving in February. He then worked as political director for Philip Sarnecki’s campaign for governor of Kansas. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary in August. Teepell is the son of Timmy Teepell, a longtime Republican strategist who has advised Hawley and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. If Republicans are going to send in plant to try and get a gotcha moment, at least try to find someone less high profile. 🙄

🚨Richard Kantwill, a 61-year-old Tampa dentist, was sentenced to prison for a long campaign of violent threats against figures perceived to be Trump’s enemies. He pleaded guilty in November 2024 to four counts of interstate transmission of a threat. Atlanta Black Star reports he sent more than 100 threats to over 40 people on Facebook and Instagram, even after the FBI warned him to stop. The FBI called it an “almost year-long campaign of terror.” According to court documents cited by WFLA, he wrote to a cable news channel: “We will kidnap and kill his kids in captivity….every unkindly word he has said about [Presidential Candidate] will be another slash in his kids necks.” To another media personality, he threatened to make him and his wife watch as he cut out his young son’s heart while it was still beating, the outlet reports. Many of the messages were racist and homophobic. To one victim: “cannot wait to shoot your ghetto (expletive) in the street…you will die like every other [redacted] piece of s—.” To another: “You, sir, are a degenerate piece of s—. read your article about The Great Donald Trump. You are gay…I love what Trump does and where he stays…God bless the Great President Trump and his family. F— you and yours. Hire extra security…you’re gonna need it.” The FBI first met with him in October 2019 after he threatened a presidential nominee. Law&Crime reports he kept sending threats anyway. Per Law&Crime, he told a reverend “torture first, then death” and “we are going to kill you.” Atlanta Black Star reports another message said, “God bless the Great President Trump and his family.” At sentencing, Kantwill said: “I, ignorantly, jumped on the Trump train. I bit the bait hook, line and sinker, and I can’t tell you why.” He was sentenced to two years in prison with credit for time served, three years of supervised release and a $10,000 fine. Prosecutors had asked for 33 months. His lawyers blamed PTSD from Gulf War service and heavy drinking.

🚨With Brazil’s runoff election just days away, Meta’s Brazil office called Lula’s election-interference complaints “simply false.” The paper Folha de S.Paulo is now reporting internal Meta messages in which employees acknowledge that restrictions hurt the Brazilian president’s Instagram accounts. They also reportedly show the platform boosted the profile of his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro. Folha says Lula’s profile couldn’t boost feed posts for nearly 24 hours on Oct. 9, with the technical explanation being that his name was too long. His campaign says about 1.3 million people missed his ads. Meanwhile, Instagram reportedly recommended Flávio Bolsonaro’s profile and his WhatsApp channel, and searches for a pro-Lula WhatsApp channel also surfaced Flávio’s supporters’ group. Lula’s party also alleges posts lost share buttons and reach, and his campaign says he vanished from Instagram search and couldn’t post Facebook ads in September. With a runoff on Oct. 25, Brazilians deserve answers, not more gaslighting.

🚨MAGA gets embarrassing news as Trump merch is getting the clearance treatment in Arizona. Steven Slaton, who has run The Trumped Store and Coffee Shop for a decade with his wife Karen, says business is “night and day” compared to 2016 and 2024. Slaton estimates September 2026 sales fell roughly 25% from September 2024. Hats and shirts that once went for $30 are now $10. Slaton blames part of the slump on customers having less to spend as food, housing and gas get pricier. For context: a recent Fox News poll found 77% of registered voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation. The shop grew out of a volunteer campaign headquarters Slaton and Karen ran in 2016, and he once said customers called it a “Liberal-free zone.” Now he’s already talking about switching to gear for JD Vance, Marco Rubio or whoever the next nominee is. Turns out Trump merch was a luxury MAGA took for granted when the economy was run by Democrats.