Amy Acton Perfectly Caps Off Her Historic Win

Dr. Amy Acton is washing her hands of Vivek Ramaswamy and his dirty campaign tactics.

Ohio’s first female governor-elect told CBS Mornings Friday that she has “no intention” of speaking to the losing Republican after he produced a disturbing political advert featuring her estranged mother.

“It was sad, I would like to say I didn’t expect this but there was no low my opponent wouldn’t sink to,” Acton said, noting that Ramaswamy’s other attack ads were filled with “lies” and “vitriol.”

“I heard that he did leave you a congratulatory phone call,” said host Gayle King. “Have the two of you spoken since election night or at all?”

“Gayle, I think we can’t normalize behavior like this. It was so beyond the pale. So I have no intention of speaking to him. I do believe that leaders’ words matter, and we need to hold folks accountable,” Acton said.

As the days ticked down to the midterm election, Ramaswamy hatched a crackpot plan to damage Acton’s credibility by weaponizing the sexual assault she suffered during her childhood against her. Ramaswamy used Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, as part of a smear campaign to paint the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee as a liar.

He moved forward with the ad spot against the advice of his team, and while ignoring publicly available information demonstrating that Arthur abandoned her children to skip town with her husband—Cledith “Bud” Arthur—who was indicted for allegedly raping Acton when she was a young girl.

The biological daughter of that man lent credibility to Acton’s account of the abuse days after the smear campaign was leaked. Speaking through tears during an interview with the Daily Mail, the Youngstown, Ohio–based woman said that Arthur had also raped her late sister, Christine, years before he married Acton’s mother.

Acton has been very public about her broken family and childhood struggles. Over the years, she has discussed the horrific sexual abuse she endured from her stepfather (which she told The Youngstown Vindicator occurred between the ages of nine and 12), and also shared her experiences with homelessness in her youth. In a March 2020 profile by The Toledo Blade, Acton said that she spent one of her childhood winters living in a tent outside Youngstown.

Ramaswamy—a biotech billionaire that attended one of Ohio’s largest private high schools—saw those stories as potential political fodder, and attempted to utilize them for his own personal gain. But in doing so, he ultimately hurt himself.

The 41-year-old MAGA acolyte has since become a bit of a political pariah that is unwelcome on either the left or the right, as Democrats and Republicans alike condemned the low blow.

Donald Trump’s midterm bust has even his White House aides eyeing the exit.

“There is no holding back on the desire to leave now,” one former White House official told MS NOW Friday. “Some are making calls to try and jump ship.”

What happened on Tuesday has been described by some Republicans as an “extinction-level” event, as Democrats scooped up areas of the country that have been historically seen as deep-red, according to the news outlet. A White House official told MS NOW that the election results had amounted to “the worst-case scenario.”

But as Trump approaches the lame duck portion of his second term, some members of his staff are looking for an off-ramp out of MAGA world.

“In this current trajectory, there’s no shot this is salvageable,” a former White House official in touch with current staffers told MS NOW, speaking on the matter of the MAGA agenda. “What is the president’s focus these last two years? It’s probably renovations.”

Trump has obsessed over his legacy throughout his second term, a fixation easily illustrated by the long list of vanity projects he’s cooked up instead of fulfilling the difficult job of steering the nation. So far, Trump has razed the White House East Wing, started construction on a $600 million ballroom (the price of which keeps growing), proposed a 250-foot “Triumphal Arch,” gutted the Lincoln bathroom, transformed the Palm Room from a lush green foyer into a sterile lobby, and mowed down Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s famous Rose Garden.

The administration also spent more than $16 million on an unsuccessful and rushed renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, took a sledgehammer to the Harry S. Truman Bowling Alley, indiscriminately axed trees in the Washington area, and destroyed the Kennedy Center in a futile attempt to attach Trump’s name to the living memorial.

“There is no holding back on the desire to leave now,” the former official continued. “Some are making calls to try and jump ship.” Others are reportedly seeking out legal counsel as a “precaution,” the official told MS NOW.

Another former official summed up the current atmosphere succinctly: “pain.”

“Everybody’s going to start infighting,” they told MS NOW.

On the heels of assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon’s departure Thursday, two more leading officials from the Department of Justice are resigning.

Politico reports that John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general in charge of national security, and Jason Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, are both leaving the DOJ. Eisenberg oversaw cases relating to espionage, leak investigations, and terrorism, and was also involved in the prosecution of former Trump national security adviser (turned Trump critic) John Bolton earlier this year for illegally retaining classified materials.

Quiñones oversaw an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan over his statements to Congress about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Quiñones was also overseeing the prosecution of former Cuban President Raúl Castro. In a statement, Attorney General Todd Blanche said that “We are grateful for Jason’s leadership in combating violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime. Jason has served the Department multiple times over his distinguished career, and we thank him for his service to this country,” Blanche said.

Blanche also announced Eisenberg’s resignation, noting that this was his “second tour of duty serving President Trump as a national security official and advisor.”

Democrats’ resounding victory in Tuesday’s midterm elections seems to have scared officials in the DOJ, who may now be targets of investigations in a Democratic-controlled Congress next year. Subpoenas and other oversight tools are already being prepared against the DOJ.

Democrats will also be able to look into the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, President Trump’s business dealings, corruption surrounding presidential pardons, and deals with foreign governments—and those are just the tip of the iceberg. Dhillon, Eisenberg, and Quiñones are likely the first of many to jump ship, and they should probably consider lawyering up.

This story has been updated.

The era of Elon Musk’s Cybertruck is finally coming to an end: After years of persistently weak sales, the technocrat’s polarizing mini tanks are officially headed out of production.

Musk announced Friday that Tesla’s Texas plant would cease production in the middle of next year in order to build CyberCab, the company’s self-driving taxi.

Since launching Cybertruck in 2023, Tesla has consistently struggled to meet the vehicle’s sales target of 200,000 per year. In the third quarter of 2026, the company only sold 8,300 “other models,” which includes the Cybertruck. Ahead of the vehicle’s initial release, Musk fretted on an earnings call: “We dug our own grave with Cybertruck.”

Musk’s metal monstrosities became the unfortunate symbol of Donald Trump’s second term, after Musk bought the president’s way back into the White House in 2024. Musk spent twice as much to buy this week’s midterm elections for Republicans, but he’d have been just as well off if he’d lit the cash on fire.

The announcement comes as Tesla’s shares declined 11 percent Thursday, following a Democratic sweep in the midterm elections that flipped both chambers of Congress blue. Evidently, investors are concerned that Musk could face new congressional probes and harsher regulations. The aggregate market cap losses for Tesla and SpaceX came to more than $420 billion since Tuesday’s close, CNBC reported.

Musk has used his proximity to Trump to boost his many businesses, including Tesla cars, which Trump showed off at the White House like a hacky used car salesman. In some cases, the administration even pressured foreign governments into approving Musk’s products.

Democrats have signaled they plan to investigate Musk’s shady leadership of the defunct Department of Government Efficiency, his companies’ lucrative contracts with the federal government, and his alleged role in cutting Ukraine’s Starlink access, perhaps on behalf of his close friend Russian President Vladimir Putin.

President Trump is still fixated on his triumphal arch even after a federal court halted its construction on Thursday.

In a 33-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote that no construction can take place on the arch for 14 days while other legal proceedings play out, which she said were likely to succeed because, unsurprisingly, the Trump administration didn’t follow the legal processes before beginning the project.

The ruling came hours after the National Capital Planning Commission, packed with Trump allies, voted to approve the project in an 8-4 vote, ignoring eight hours of comments opposing the measure from concerned residents, veterans, and lawmakers. But there are multiple lawsuits hoping to stop the project for good: one from a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian, as well as a joint lawsuit from the District of Columbia and Virginia governments.

Meanwhile, Trump seems unphased. The official White House X account posted an AI rendering of the arch on Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C., Friday morning along with a link to triumphalarch.com, a website full of Trump’s praises and reasons for the project.

The project’s opponents have complained about how the massive building will overshadow Arlington National Cemetery and obstruct the view of the Lincoln Memorial. But Trump doesn’t care about that, or what the courts say about his project. He also seems to be disregarding the message Americans sent in Tuesday’s elections, as he pushes ahead with an unnecessary vanity project and his party is left in shambles. Meanwhile, Democrats are gearing up on how to stop him.

“I urge all officials and firms involved with this illegal project to consider the legal hazards they may be facing by advancing it, because, in case you hadn’t heard, we’ll soon have a new Congress that takes the rule of law very seriously,” Democratic Representative Jared Huffman warned at the planning commission meeting Thursday.