Transcript: Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Aug. 2, 2026

2026-08-02T12:51:02-0400 / CBS News

The following is the transcript of an interview with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Aug. 2, 2026.

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MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, who joins us from Columbus, Ohio, this morning. Good morning to you, Senator.

SENATOR MARK KELLY: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re now in the sixth month of this war we had been told would last four to five weeks. In the past week, the targets have widened. Iran hit Egypt. We saw Saudi Arabia join the U.S. in bombing Iranian-backed militias there, and then late last night, President Trump used the term that he had been considering military action on levels unseen since World War II. You sit on Intelligence, you sit on Armed Services. Has the administration shared anything in regard to its plans on Iran?

SEN. KELLY: I mean, not these latest plans, and I think what we’re seeing here is a president who has an approach to this that’s just rather erratic. He says one thing, he does another thing. It’s escalatory. At this point, he’s trying to get us back to February, and I think if he could, he would. If he had a big reset button he could hit, he would certainly take that option. Hey, we’ve got 18 dead Americans. Prices have skyrocketed across the country for the American people. I was here in Ohio- I’m here in Ohio now, but I met with some veterans the other day, and they’re struggling. I mean, these are a lot of retired service members that can’t afford to put gas in their car, can’t afford groceries. Rent is going up, and this president is not dealing with the issues that the American people need him to deal with.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you know, in our polling, we see that this is a very unpopular war, and it’s weighing on the president’s own approval ratings. But Democrats are faring slightly worse. According to CBS polling, when asked who has the better approach to Iran, 32% say Trump and the GOP. Only 30% say the Democrats. So we are in this thing. Do Democrats need to offer an affirmative vision for ending it?

SEN. KELLY: Well, I don’t think it’s the president’s vision. Here’s a guy who got us into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline. He’s got a Secretary of Defense that doesn’t know how to manage this war, who decided a good metric at the beginning was just to drop as many munitions as he could on as many targets, and now we’ve got a munitions shortage. Big surprise. So they’re flailing. They’re stuck. They’re responsible for this, and the president is the one that has to try to figure out a way out of this. I would suggest to him, though, that the solution is not to do the same thing that he’s been doing, not to have his real estate buddy and his son-in-law in charge of a negotiation, to put some people in here that know how to do this, how to talk to the Iranians, and put a coalition together, bring our allies back together. He’s alienated not only our GCC allies but our European allies as well, and it’s just making this much harder for him to figure out a way out.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the Washington Post is reporting that the top U.S. general in Europe, General Grynkewich, warned the Pentagon that he lacks resources to protect Israel from incoming ballistic missiles, and if he’s without another Navy destroyer, he will be forced to choose between defense of the homeland versus that of Israel. It sounds like for the moment Israel’s not rejoining combat operations. But what does that say to you? Have you heard these concerns from this top commander yourself?

SEN. KELLY: I haven’t heard this specifically from Grynkewich on- on this issue, but we- it’s- it’s not- Margaret, it’s not- this isn’t rocket science. It’s not hard to figure out. I mean, we- we struck over 14,000 targets with multiple munitions. That- that is- puts a lot of stress on the magazine depth. So of course, our commanders, probably not only in Europe but in other places are starting to feel some stress on can they meet the need if they need to defend the homeland or our allies. You can see why this is an issue for him, and that’s because at the beginning of this thing there was no strategic goal, and without the goal, it’s hard to figure out what to do next.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. KELLY: And I think that’s why, that you know, that’s why Hegseth went just to try to set records on the number of targets hit.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah, I should say for the record that the Pentagon says it’s media speculation, and they don’t comment on operational capabilities. We did ask them to clarify that. But on the point about restocking, Secretary Hegseth says he needs money from Congress to do that to replenish munitions. He needs money from Congress to pay salaries. He needs $67 billion. You recently were asked, and you said you were undecided on how you would vote on additional funding. How do you deny that needed funding?

SEN. KELLY: Well, Margaret, last year we passed a defense budget that was over a trillion dollars. That was the first time ever. It was sold to us as a one-time generational investment in the department, and in my view, they squandered that. Now they’re coming and they’re asking for $1.5 trillion, plus a supplemental. We’re gonna- we’re approaching the amount of money that every other country on the planet spends on defense in a year. This is irresponsible, and now they want a blank check. Hey, I’m going to make sure the troops have what they need to defend themselves and defend the United States–

MARGARET BRENNAN: — So you would vote for the 67?–

SEN. KELLY: –but they need to come to us– no, not- no, not necessarily. They need to come to us with a reasonable approach here. The $1.5 trillion, you know that has systems that I am very confident aren’t going to work. They’re still working on space-based interceptors for ICBMs. The physics on this is really very, very challenging. It’s not going to make us safer. The other systems that we don’t need. They- they need to understand that we do not have unlimited resources in this country. We’ve got 39 and a half trillion dollars in debt, and the defense budget that they’re requesting is twice what it was when I got to the United States Senate in 2021. It’s twice that budget.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you mentioned that you’re in Ohio right now, and you were campaigning for fellow Democrats there. We’re about 90 days out from the midterms. We looked at some recent Quinnipiac polling. It showed Democrats have a 23%- two, three percent- approval rating, worse than President Trump’s approval. You’ve got a lot of headwinds. Republicans have an advantage in terms of fund- over Democrats in terms of funding. There’s redistricting that I know Democrats say disadvantages them, though they’ve also gerrymandered. We see interparty fighting in Minnesota and in Michigan with no real promise to unify Democrats over a- a common candidate here. How concerned are you that- that Democrats are going to lose this thing or- or end up with this very, very tight race?

SEN. KELLY: Well, I think we have an opportunity here, despite the Republican gerrymandering that started in- in the state of Texas, to try to you know rig the- the deck, so to say here, and make it more challenging. That- that provides an advantage to them. But this president is historically unpopular for a midterm president, and he’s not meeting the needs of the American people. You know, gas is up over $4 a gallon. Half of Americans are having a hard time affording food, rent, home ownership is down. Rent is up. The American people are really struggling. So we have an opportunity to win back the House, and I am confident we will. On the Senate side, it’s challenging. I’m not gonna- I’m not gonna paint this as a rosy picture, but we’ve got 90 days to go. We have opportunities in a lot of different places, more than we thought we had six months ago. And a year and a half ago, I would say we had no opportunity to win back the Senate. But because of the horrible job that Donald Trump has done for the American people, I think we have a chance we could win back control of the Senate, and that’s why I’m here supporting Sherrod Brown. You know, he- he- he wasn’t successful in 2024. He could definitely win here in 2026, but it’s going to take some effort.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about what may happen tomorrow. Bill Pulte, who is the acting director of National Intelligence, has said that he is going to hand over the top job to the man who was just confirmed by the Senate, Jay Clayton. Democratic objection had been one of the holdups as well in getting that FISA authority passed. I’m wondering, once you see this change of command, are those Democratic objections going to melt away?

SEN. KELLY: I can’t speak for everybody, but for me they will. Bill Pulte was not qualified in any way for this job; should have never had it. He fired, according to him, about half of the director’s office. And hey, I, you know, thought there were too many people over there anyway. But this guy was not qualified. Didn’t even really understand what the Office of National Intelligence did. So I can’t imagine he did a very good job at figuring out who to let go and who to keep. And because we’re also in the middle of a war right now. So I suspect in fact, when we- when we sort this out, we’re gonna probably realize that he fired a bunch of the wrong people. So, hopefully on Monday he is out of the office and we can talk about FISA renewal.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Senator Mark Kelly, thank you for your time this morning.

CEO of AI firm Hugging Face calls last month’s hack by OpenAI model “very weird and unprecedented”

August 2, 2026 / 3:08 PM EDT / CBS News

An artificial intelligence model that was being tested by OpenAI went rogue and hacked the AI company Hugging Face on its own, in an apparent first-of-its-kind incident that has fueled discussion about the risks that powerful AI technology could pose to cybersecurity.

“It felt very weird and unprecedented to us,” Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” Sunday. “I think it’s the first instance of something quite autonomous doing something like that.”

ChatGPT maker OpenAI publicly disclosed the incident last month, saying it took place while the company was testing two AI models — one of which hadn’t been released to the public — in an isolated environment to assess their capabilities. The models figured out a way to break out and connect to the internet, and then “chained together multiple attack vectors” to target Hugging Face, figuring the AI platform could host solutions to the tests it was undergoing.

Hugging Face — which has said it doesn’t believe there was any “malicious intent” on OpenAI’s part — found in its own analysis that the attacking AI agent carried out more than 17,000 actions over multiple days. The company said it used an open artificial intelligence model to defend itself.

“When we talk about cyberattack[s], we think about nation-states, we think about hacker groups,” Delangue said. “We don’t think about a company like OpenAI, right? A very prominent, popular American company.”

Asked if AI developers have lost control of their own models, Delangue said: “It’s a technology system, but built by engineers, and engineers can make mistakes sometimes.”

“They built … an autonomous system and made some mistakes, and as a result, we’re facing this issue,” Delangue told CBS News.

He argued that autonomous incidents by AI agents “need to be contained in the legal framework in the U.S. and need to stay illegal, to prevent an explosion of them in the future.”

OpenAI isn’t the only artificial intelligence company to discover a rogue AI model. Last week, rival Anthropic disclosed that its model, Claude, had “gained unauthorized access” to outside organizations in three different incidents during testing. Anthropic said the model was able to use the internet “due to a misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner.”

The disclosures come as tech companies and policymakers grapple with AI’s ability to spot cybersecurity vulnerabilities, both to fix them and to exploit them.

More than 1,000 AI staffers across major companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta signed an open letter last month calling for the U.S. government to help put limits on the speed of AI development. They warned of “a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.”

President Trump, who has backed the AI industry, signed an executive order in June to give the federal government up to 30 days to review unreleased AI models. That framework is voluntary, but some lawmakers have proposed a mandatory “kill switch” for potentially harmful AI systems.

Meanwhile, both OpenAI and Anthropic offer some additional access to their AI models so that trusted partners can test the technology and fix vulnerabilities in their own systems.

Asked how to avoid similar incidents of AI agents autonomously carrying out cyberattacks, Delangue argued that “concentrating power capabilities behind closed doors, even preventing their releases to the public, isn’t really a solution.” He noted that the attack on Hugging Face involved an unreleased AI model that OpenAI has described as a prototype.

Instead, Delangue called for more access to “open” models that are released publicly and can be widely downloaded, like the one Hugging Face used to respond to last month’s hack — a version of a Chinese-made model from U.S.-based Nvidia.

He also said there should be “mandatory disclosures” for cyberattacks by AI agents, and transparency into the steps that led up to an incident.

“That’s how we learn, that’s how we understand the technology and that’s how we build the systems, the counterpowers, to make sure everyone is safe,” he said.

Rep. Turner says infrastructure should be “hardened” as U.S. probes if Iran is behind cyberattack on water systems

August 2, 2026 / 12:23 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said on Sunday that critical infrastructure assets “need to be hardened” as federal investigators probe whether Iranian hackers were behind malicious cyber activity that affected technology at water systems in Minnesota and several other U.S. states last week.

The FBI said last week that at least seven states have reported cyber activity, which forced some utilities to switch to manual operations and prompted investigators to look into whether the activity is the work of Iranian hackers, U.S. officials and sources familiar with the incident told CBS News.

Meanwhile, President Trump said he didn’t think the Iranians were behind the attack, claiming that Minnesota, one of the states that reported the incidents, was responsible. He called the state’s leadership “grossly incompetent” while pointing without evidence to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

Turner, who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that Congress has not been informed about the incidents. But he said Iran has “attacked our critical infrastructure previously,” in addition to reports of Chinese and Russian hacking. Iranian state-sponsored hackers have been accused of carrying out cyberattacks on U.S. companies, government agencies and infrastructure for more than a decade.

“One thing that we have to acknowledge is that our adversaries — Russia, China, North Korea, Iran — look at the critical infrastructure that support our civilian infrastructure, like water, … as valid military targets,” Turner said. “These are things that we do not do, we would not do, and Iran certainly has been doing this well before this conflict, and this is something we certainly need to be aware of.”

Turner added, “We’re certainly in a conflict where we would expect that they would continue that if they were doing to us before.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/gop-rep-mike-turner-the-administration-could-be-sharing-more-with-congress-on-iran/

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Sen Bernie Moreno calls for ex-son-in-law to resign from House, get ‘serious psychological help’

2026-08-02T12:46:51-04:00 / Fox News

Moreno: Max Miller ‘is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter’

By Eric Mack Fox News

Published August 2, 2026 12:46pm EDT

Rep. Max Miller denies abuse allegations, vows to stay in race

Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, issued a rebuke of the accusations against him, saying investigations found no evidence he harmed his daughter and accused his former wife and the media of fueling a false narrative. (Credit: @MaxMillerOH/X)

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Unmoved by his former son-in-law’s X livestream denials Sunday, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, called on Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, to resign from Congress and seek “serious psychological help.”

“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Moreno wrote in a lengthy statement on X. “He should not serve in the House of Representatives.”

It was a call repeated by Miller’s Democratic challenger in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District.

“No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power,” Brian Poindexter, the union ironworker and Brook Park city councilman, wrote in a statement Sunday.

GOP REP MAX MILLER PUSHES BACK AGAINST ABUSE ALLEGATIONS: ‘I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE’

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, rejected Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, on his denials of daughter Emily Moreno’s allegations against his former son-in-law and called for him to resign from the House and seek ‘serious psychological help.'(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Moreno delivered an even more blistering public rebuke an hour after Miller livestreamed a sweeping denial of domestic abuse allegations made by ex-wife Emily Moreno, the daughter of the senator.

“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Moreno wrote. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

The aftermath of the couple’s divorce had been “pure hell” for his family, Moreno began.

“As a father and husband, I can tell you the last two years have been pure hell for my wife Bridget, our daughter Emily, me, and our entire family in the aftermath of Emily’s divorce,” Moreno wrote.

5TH ACCUSER COMES FORWARD AGAINST REP ERIC SWALWELL AHEAD OF EXPECTED RESIGNATION

Emily Moreno and Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, have gone through a difficult divorce that continues to rock their family, the 2026 midterm elections and divide the Republican Party.(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP)

“It has been horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two-year-old girl is caught in the middle. Our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter.

“Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible.”

Miller has categorically denied abusing Emily Moreno or their daughter. In the livestream, he said no court or government agency had substantiated an allegation of abuse against him and that he had never faced a criminal charge related to the claims.

The congressman said child welfare investigations involving his daughter had been closed without findings against him. He also argued that the allegations emerged as the former couple’s custody battle intensified and accused his former wife of using them as leverage.

DEMOCRATS TARGET MORE GOP HOUSE SEATS AFTER SOCIALIST VICTORIES ROCK LEFT-WING PRIMARIES

Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, vowed to stay in the race Sunday, but the Republican Party might still pressure him to resign before Wednesday’s deadline so they can replace him before the November general election ballot deadline.(CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Emily Moreno has accused Miller of physically assaulting and threatening her during their marriage, including allegedly holding a gun to her head. Questions have also been raised about how the couple’s daughter suffered a broken collarbone. Miller denies causing the injury and said his daughter was no longer in his care when it was discovered.

Miller also denied an allegation that he threw boiling water on his former wife, saying he sprayed her with water from a kitchen sink during what he described as horseplay.

“It is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career,” Emily Moreno spokesman Stefan Mychajliw wrote in a statement Sunday.

“There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that.

“It is despicable and abhorrent that Miller lied on an unhinged and humiliating video for their daughter to watch one day.

“No loving parent would have ever used their daughter as a PR pawn to save their own political career. Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law. We are confident that justice will prevail in court.”

The extraordinary intervention from a sitting Republican senator adds pressure on Miller as a Wednesday deadline approaches for the party to replace him on the November ballot. Democrats have increasingly viewed the northeast Ohio district as a possible pickup opportunity amid the controversy.

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Miller, a former advisor in President Donald Trump’s first administration who had Trump’s endorsement, insisted Sunday that he would remain the Republican nominee.

“I’m not dropping out of this race,” Miller said. “And I’ll win in November.”

Eric Mack is a breaking news reporter and writer Sunday through Thursday, 6 a.m. ET to 2 p.m. ET, with a particular interest in stories that lead the news cycle on politics, elections, foreign affairs and government.

RFK Jr. targets Fauci and pushes medical misinformation in fiery CNN interview

2026-08-02T16:13:44.448Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/02/politics/rfk-jr-fauci-medical-misinformation

In attempting to rewrite the history of the US Covid-19 response, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday pinned the blame for pandemic lockdowns on Dr. Anthony Fauci, while simultaneously reviving a string of debunked assertions about vaccines, RSV and measles.

Kennedy’s appearance came in the wake of a congressional hearing with Fauci last week, when the infections disease expert invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 100 times, as Republicans lambasted him for his role in handling the pandemic.

Kennedy joined the chorus of criticism on CNN’s “State of the Union with Dana Bash,” saying President Donald Trump, who was in office at the beginning of the pandemic and notably downplayed the virus, was not to blame for the government’s response.

“Trump, as you recall, wanted to end the lockdowns. I think the thing that did the most damage to our country was the lockdowns,” he said.

The lockdowns were overseen by state and local leaders who were responding to ICUs being overwhelmed and hospitals asking for help to get control of the situation in the early stages of the pandemic.

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as the White House Covid-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2023, pushed back on Kennedy’s claims, saying, “accountability has to be with our political leaders,” while condemning his false claims on the inefficacy of vaccines.

“The accountability has to be with our political leaders, not with scientists who are giving advice. Second issue that i just want to quickly reflect on. There was a lot of information that Secretary Kennedy said that just isn’t true. It’s just factually not true,” Jha told Bash in an interview following Kennedy’s appearance.

Dr. Ashish Jha responds to RFK Jr. on vaccines, measles, and Covid-19
https://www.cnn.com/

The clash underscores a deepening division over public health authority at a critical juncture. As HHS secretary, Kennedy’s skepticism of mainstream science is no longer just outsider rhetoric; it now shapes official federal policy. His efforts to reframe the pandemic’s legacy come as the US battles its worst measles resurgence in more than three decades — a crisis experts warn is fueled directly by the type of vaccine misinformation and institutional distrust Kennedy amplified during the broadcast.

Kennedy pushed back on his handling of measles outbreaks in the US.

“The communities that are suffering from measles are almost all religious communities that just don’t vaccinate,” Kennedy told Bash.

A Mennonite community was one focus of an outbreak that began in West Texas last year. But the virus quickly spread among unvaccinated people outside that group, eventually reaching almost 800 cases — including the deaths of two children — before the outbreak was declared over.

There have been dozens more outbreaks in 2026, leading to the highest case count in 35 years, and more than 90% of them have been in people who aren’t vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.

South Carolina has reported more measles cases in 2026 than any other state. An outbreak started raging across Spartanburg County in October; it would become the largest the US has seen in decades, with nearly 1,000 cases, before ending in April.

Health officials recommend two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in childhood, and those two shots are 97% effective against measles infection.

But experts say the potential for measles outbreaks remains anywhere vaccination rates remain below 95%, a key immunity threshold for the highly contagious disease.

Pockets of low vaccination have been growing in recent years, which research attributes in no small part to misinformation.

Kennedy, who has frequently expressed skepticism about vaccines, told Bash that his agency’s websites recommend that “parents should get their children vaccinated for measles.”

“I’ve never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine,” he said.

But in March 2025, as the outbreak in Texas spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that measles outbreaks could be driven in part by people who have waning immunity from the vaccine.

“When you and I were kids, everybody got measles, and measles gave you … lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people, it wanes,” Kennedy told Hannity.

“Some years, we have hundreds of these outbreaks. … And, you know, part of that is that there are people who don’t vaccinate, but also the vaccine itself wanes,” he said.

Some of the criticism officials have leveled at Fauci concerns “gain-of-function research,” which involves the manipulation of a germ in a lab setting so researchers can study how it behaves as it evolves.

Kennedy claimed that gain-of-function research was responsible not just for the virus that causes Covid-19 but for other diseases, as well.

“The RSV epidemic that we have, that is the biggest killer of kids in this country today, came from these kind of experiments,” he said.

RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, was first identified in the late 1950s in lab chimpanzees as well as in human children. What became known as gain-of-function research began two decades later, when scientists first figured out how to piece together genes from different organisms.

After 2011, when two teams of scientists modified the bird flu virus so it could become more dangerous and be transmitted between mammals through the air – something the virus hadn’t been able to do before — the US Department of Health and Human Services stepped in to create guidelines and mandate oversight of such research.

Acetaminophen and autism

Kennedy told Bash that dozens of studies link exposure to Tylenol during late pregnancy and the perinatal period to autism.

A 2025 review by US researchers of 46 earlier studies did suggest a possible link between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen — the drug found in Tylenol — and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, but the researchers said the study does not prove the drug caused those conditions. They advised that pregnant women should continue to use acetaminophen ⁠as needed, at the lowest possible dose and for the shortest possible period.

Other research has found no sign of a link, including studies of millions of children followed for decades. However, there’s little research looking at autism prevalence relative to acetaminophen use during infancy or early childhood.

Major medical organizations support the use of acetaminophen to treat pain and fever during pregnancy, with recommendations reflecting that the benefits outweigh any potential risks.

Kennedy and Bash butted heads on whether Covid-19 vaccines had protected children, with the secretary asking her to cite research showing that the vaccine “did more good than harm.”

More than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the US since they became available in late 2020, according to the World Health Organization. Researchers have estimated that the vaccines helped save 2.5 million lives around the world between 2020 and 2024.

The shots have been extensively tested and continually monitored for safety, and serious side effects such as anaphylaxis or myocarditis have happened but have been generally rare.

Research has also found that the vaccines are associated with lower risks of infection, hospitalization and complications in kids. In December, a report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that children who were vaccinated against Covid-19 in the previous respiratory virus season had a “substantially lower risk” of emergency department and urgent care visits related to the virus.

Democratic socialists face a prove-it moment in battleground Wisconsin

2026-08-02T16:00:26.061Z / CNN

Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist leading Wisconsin’s Democratic field for governor, could soon test whether the progressive insurgency that notched primary victories in deep-blue districts this summer can prevail statewide in a perennial presidential battleground.

Polls show Hong, the 37-year-old state assemblywoman from Madison, at the forefront of the field of Democrats vying for the nomination in the August 11 primary to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The winner is all but certain to take on Republican US Rep. Tom Tiffany in November.

Hong was already the frontrunner entering July. But the month saw her top two Democratic rivals’ campaigns implode. Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez exited amid a campaign finance scandal, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes dropped out Thursday.

Evers and others are attempting to rally at the last minute around a more moderate alternative in David Crowley, the 40-year-old Milwaukee County executive who dropped out of the race in early July and then re-entered 10 days later. But even Crowley’s supporters acknowledge Hong is the clear frontrunner.

“Wisconsin is the quintessential swing state, but it’s also a very polarized state,” said Sheboygan Mayor Ryan Sorenson, who is supporting Crowley. “This is going to be a new chapter in a political science theory book: how do far left-wing and far right-wing candidates build a coalition and win elections.”

Tiffany isn’t waiting for the primary votes to be counted: He has already started to tee off on Hong, latching her to the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform and accusing her of supporting abolishing prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Senate and more. He has also highlighted her history of calling for the defunding of police — an issue sure to feature prominently in a slew of Republican advertisements this fall.

Hong, who worked her way up from low-level kitchen jobs to become a top chef and restaurant co-owner, has tried to distance herself from some of the more politically problematic planks of the DSA platform.

“I do not support the full platform of the national DSA and I am not endorsed by DSA National,” she said in a recent debate. Hong also said that she is “not here to govern by slogan” and that a governor cannot defund the police.

But in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Friday, Hong wouldn’t directly answer when asked repeatedly if her views on defunding the police have changed.

Hong said Republicans who control the Wisconsin legislature are the ones who have defunded police by slashing dollars directed to local governments.

“People can evolve,” Hong said. “I am going to be a sensible and practical governor that is going to make sure that public safety is a priority.”

The election comes with the Democratic Party at a critical juncture, and many within it looking to the governor’s race in Wisconsin, a Senate primary this week in Michigan and other key races as potential signs of what’s to come in 2028, with a wide-open presidential primary looming.

For much of the last year, democratic socialists have been on the march — with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s win last year serving as an inflection point.

Democratic socialist Katie Wilson was elected mayor of Seattle last year and another, Janeese Lewis George, is poised to win the mayoral contest in Washington, DC, this November. In Los Angeles, democratic socialist Nithya Raman is challenging incumbent mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat. They’ve also won a series of congressional primaries, including ousting House incumbents in New York and Colorado.

But Hong is different: A democratic socialist running not on deep-blue turf but in a true political battleground.

Her supporters say Hong’s brand of politics is a break from a Democratic Party that polls show isn’t popular among voters — even those who oppose President Donald Trump.

“She has brought a coalition into the Democratic Party that otherwise had been shut out and told, ‘You don’t belong within this.’ And they’ve been showing up continuously. They definitely look different and act different than folks who have been around for a really long time, and frankly they should, because the political system has not worked for them,” said state Sen. Chris Larson, who represents parts of Milwaukee and is supporting Hong.

Republicans, meanwhile, have made no secret of how they intend to run against her. Republican Governors Association communications director Kollin Compton called Hong “the Mamdani of the Midwest.”

Hong’s rise comes in an election year in which Democrats have their first real shot at winning full control of Wisconsin’s state government in a generation. Under Evers, the party has won a majority on the state Supreme Court and forced a redraw of state legislative districts that ended a Republican gerrymander. This fall, Democrats hope to retain the governor’s office and flip both the state Senate and Assembly.

However, as Hong climbed in the polls, the state’s jittery Democratic establishment struggled to coalesce behind a more moderate alternative.

Crowley had dropped out amid lagging poll numbers in early July. But he re-entered the Democratic primary on July 18, and received Evers’ endorsement. Barnes’ exit left Crowley as likely the only viable contender in the race aside from Hong.

Still, he’s far behind: A Marquette Law School poll conducted in late July found Hong with 38% support among Democratic primary voters to 16% for Barnes, who at the time was still in the race, 7% for Crowley, and no other candidate topping the 2% mark. The poll found Hong is strongest among young and very liberal voters; Barnes and Crowley performed better among older and more moderate voters.

In an effort to rally Democrats who are concerned about Hong, Crowley will campaign alongside Evers in the race’s closing days.

“I’m not here to protect the establishment. I’m here to deliver real results for Wisconsinites all over our state,” Crowley said in the recent Democratic debate.

Hong addressed her status as a democratic socialist — she’s a dues-paying member of the local Madison chapter — she said in a Fox News interview on Friday.

“I believe that as a democratic socialist, you know, I am less defined by just one organization, but clearly our bipartisan coalition means I’m more defined by being a good single mom, that I am a service industry worker, that I truly believe in legislation that helps everyone,” she said. “And these are the things that people want to talk about in rural and urban parts of the state.”

She walked back some of the stances she has taken, such as supporting calls to eliminate the US Senate, which she said Friday is “nonsensical and nonpractical at this time.”

But a social media post from Tiffany that followed Hong’s Fox News appearance offered a preview of what she would face in the general election.

Instead of clipping her comments, Tiffany on X posted a still image of Fox News displaying Hong’s years-old social media comments.

A 2021 post included in that image says: “Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”

“The facts speak louder than campaign spin,” Tiffany said.

Trump targets Biden-era billion-dollar Smithsonian budgets amid anti-‘woke’ push

August 2, 2026 3:34pm EDT / Fox News

A 162-page White House report recommends sweeping reforms to eliminate what it calls ‘woke’ ideology from museums

By Amanda Macias Fox News

President Donald Trump orders warning signs outside the Smithsonian, alleging politicized exhibits that emphasize activism over history. The institution faces scrutiny for promoting racial reparations and for a 2020 infographic criticizing ‘white culture.’ A congressional hearing further ignited debate over the museum’s ‘woke’ displays and their historical accuracy, highlighting the growing tension.

President Donald Trump’s effort to remake the Smithsonian is reaching the institution’s bottom line, with the administration proposing its smallest budget request in years while pushing to eliminate what it calls “woke” ideology from federally funded museums and programs.

A Fox News Digital analysis of Smithsonian budget requests found the institution submitted steadily larger funding requests during the Biden administration, with annual requests rising from $1.11 billion in fiscal year 2021 to a record $1.24 billion in fiscal year 2024.

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The fiscal year 2025 request also exceeded $1 billion before the Trump administration proposed reducing the institution’s request below that threshold in its fiscal year 2026 and 2027 budgets—the first time since fiscal year 2020 that the Smithsonian’s annual request has fallen below $1 billion.

The proposed funding reduction comes as the White House expands one of its most ambitious efforts to reshape a federally funded cultural institution, arguing the Smithsonian has promoted ideological narratives at odds with its mission and directing it to change its exhibits, programming, leadership and spending priorities.

FORMER DEMOCRATIC STAFFERS, DEI LEADERS SHAPE SMITHSONIAN LEADERSHIP AMID POLITICAL FIRESTORM

President Donald Trump launched a sweeping White House review of the Smithsonian, arguing the institution had promoted “divisive” ideological narratives.(Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

The White House’s effort to root out what it calls “woke ideology at the Smithsonian has grown into one of the most extensive reviews of the institution in decades.

Over the past 16 months, the administration has examined museum exhibits, educational programming, internal records and leadership statements, issued multiple document requests, interviewed curators and conducted on-site museum walkthroughs.

That review culminated in a 162-page White House report recommending sweeping reforms and a new round of executive actions aimed at implementing those recommendations.

The administration has ordered the Smithsonian to promote what it describes as a more accurate portrayal of American history while scrutinizing exhibits, programming and leadership across the museum complex.

INSIDE THE BEHEMOTH SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM NETWORK DRAWING FIRE FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The Smithsonian, the nation’s largest museum and research complex, is at the center of a White House campaign to overhaul its presentation of American history.(J. David Ake/Getty Images)

The Smithsonian oversees 21 museums, the National Zoo and nearly 157 million objects and specimens while receiving more than $1 billion annually in federal funding, in addition to private donations and other trust revenue.

The taxpayer-supported institution has become the latest battleground in a broader national debate over patriotism, historical interpretation and the role of federally funded cultural institutions in shaping how Americans understand the nation’s past.

TRUMP ORDERS SIGNS OUTSIDE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM AMID ROW OVER ITS DEPICTION OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Whether Congress adopts the administration’s proposed funding levels remains to be seen.

But alongside executive orders, museum reviews and a sweeping White House report, the budget proposal signals that the administration intends to use both policy and federal funding to reshape one of the nation’s largest cultural institutions.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

The Smithsonian Institute did not immediately respond to Fox New Digital’s request for comment.

Amanda Macias covers the intersection of business, economics and politics, with a focus on how policy decisions shape markets, businesses and American workers.

Rep. Jordan: Blanche ‘should not recuse himself’ from deciding criminal referral of Jack Smith

12:33 PM EDT, Sun August 2, 2026 / CNN

By Dana Bash, CNN

Rep. Jordan: Blanche “should not recuse himself” from deciding criminal referral of Jack Smith

Dana Bash presses House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on his criminal referral of former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department.

1:06 • Source: CNN

US Senator Moreno says Ohio’s Miller should not serve in Congress, citing abuse allegations

August 2, 2026 5:57 PM UTC / Reuters

By Mike Spector

Updated 2 hours ago

U.S. Representative Max Miller (R-OH) joins House Republican Study Committee members as they hold a press conference to discuss their resolution against hateful political rhetoric on the one-year anniversary of the Butler, PA, shooting of then-candidate Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 14, 2025…. Read more

• Moreno calls Miller a danger to his daughter
• Miller’s ex-wife accused him of scalding her and abusing their toddler daughter
• Miller denies the allegations and posted a video on X defending himself

NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) – U.S. Representative Max Miller of Ohio “is a danger” to his ex-wife and should ‌not serve in Congress, U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, a fellow Ohio Republican, said on Sunday while addressing abuse allegations lodged against his former son-in-law.

Moreno, whose daughter Emily was married to Miller until last year, said he owed it to ​his family to “speak the truth now” about Miller. Calling the previous two years “pure hell” for ​his family, Moreno wrote in a social media post that Miller “is a danger ⁠to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

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“If ​there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should ​not serve in the House of Representatives,” Moreno wrote. “I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue ​endangering others until he does.”

Miller has denied the allegations. His spokesperson did not immediately respond to ​a request for comment, but in a social media post of his own on Sunday, Miller disputed his ex-wife’s allegations ‌in ⁠a video recording and vowed to remain in his congressional race.

Moreno’s broadside against Miller marked a significant departure from his previous attempts to sidestep a drumbeat of abuse allegations engulfing the Republican congressman. Emily Moreno has alleged that Miller burned her with boiling hot water and physically abused her and their ​toddler daughter.

Moreno previously said he ​would “not litigate these ⁠matters in the media” and that he would prioritize the safety and well-being of his daughter and granddaughter. While the senator hoped to keep the matter ​private, Miller’s “increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible,” Moreno wrote ​on Sunday.

Miller and ⁠Moreno both owe their political rise to close associations with President Donald Trump. The allegations against Miller threaten to put what had been a safe Republican seat in play for Democrats in this November’s midterm elections.

blob:https://www.reuters.com/f27a652b-2297-4e1c-a250-d9b113f9509a

Democrats ⁠only need ​to flip a handful of seats to regain control of ​the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a 218 to 214 edge, with three seats vacant.

Reporting by Mike Spector in New ​York; Additional reporting by Tim Reid in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.