Welcome to what will be a series of brief midterm election roundups from Ruminato, home of the world’s smallest staff of writers (one, sometimes less if I’m sleeping).
Republicans hating Republicans
Yesterday, former Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin announced that he is endorsing JB Pritzker for a third term as governor.1
His words against Pritzker’s opponent, Republican Darren Bailey, sound like they were lifted out of one of my anti-Republican screeds here on Ruminato.
According to the Chicago Tribune:
“His campaign is going nowhere, and he’s on a foolish escapade,” Durkin said of Bailey, adding that the Republican governor nominee has “a delusional egomaniacal view of the world.”
Durkin remains a Republican, but it sure sounds like he would rather not.
“I’ve worked with Pritzker, and I don’t agree with JB on a lot of things. But the fact is, he and I have worked together,” Durkin said. He cited Pritzker’s investment in infrastructure, the credit upgrades to steady the state’s finances and the governor’s support for “commonsense gun reforms.”
“He can’t hide from his past and who he is,” Durkin said of Bailey. “He is a right-wing evangelist, and he is part of this MAGA fever that has gotten into the party. And this party needs to break that fever like a virus. We need to break that. He has not changed who he is.”
In Illinois, most Republicans hate Republicans and are politically homeless.
This is mostly the result of the Trumpification of the Republican Party even in places where Republicans need to at least pretend to be centrist to survive, like Illinois, which has a Democratic supermajority that is getting stronger, not on its own strengths, but on the outlandish criminality, escapades, and policy positions of the core Republican Party, positions that are rejected by people with a shred of decency.
Bailey got the nomination for governor because extremists are the ones who vote in primaries, so now all those people who voted for Adam Kinzinger to be their congress critter are stuck with a fascist.
Illinois remains a prime example of the dangers of one-party rule: The Democratic Party there has been steeped in corruption itself for decades. But at least they’re not nuts. No wonder Illinois residents sigh whenever you try to bring up politics.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert dies
As a reminder that Herr TrumpEpstein is not the first major Republican politician to chase around kids with his candy van, former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert finally gave us the courtesy of dying after 84 years.2
In 2016, he admitted to abusing teenage boys as a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois. His bio doesn’t deserve any more mention, so let that be his legacy.
Don’t forget about Gym Jordan
Hastert is not the only Republican wrestling coach with issues.
There’s also Jim Gym Jordan, who has managed to evade formal charges, despite a preponderance of accusations regarding college wrestlers under his purview.3
To be fair (which I kind of hate doing with these clowns), Jordan has not been accused of abuse himself. It’s more that he looked the other way when it happened, if the stories are true.
Sports Illustrated, back in 2023 when it wasn’t an AI machine, wrote a long report about Republican congress critter Jordan when he was in the running to be Speaker of the House instead of the much flashier and impressive Mike Johnson (sorry, no sarcasm font here on Substack):4
They came from the cities and from small towns. They spanned generations and races and body types. Some looked like they could still make weight; others not so much. It was the summer of 2021, and around 30 former Ohio State wrestlers quietly converged on a high school outside Columbus for a meeting. Others joined virtually. It had the look of a team reunion, but the mood was considerably more somber. This was akin to a family intervention, a revival meeting to attempt to repair the program’s ripped fabric.
It had been three years since one of the wrestlers, Mike DiSabato, had come forward with accounts that when he wrestled for OSU in the late ’80s and ’90s, the team doctor, Richard Strauss, had sexually assaulted him. He was, effectively, the whistleblower in what would be shorthanded “The Strauss Scandal.” It would metastasize, and soon hundreds of other former OSU athletes — disproportionately wrestlers — shared their experiences of being groomed, assaulted and in some cases raped by the serial predator who was also the team doctor.
The trauma was compounded by a sense of betrayal. Wrestler after wrestler recalled complaining about Strauss to the head coach, Russ Hellickson, and to Jim Jordan, a onetime wrestling star in Wisconsin who served as OSU’s assistant coach from 1986 to ‘94.
Jordan’s response to one of Strauss’s accusers was, according to the article: “If he did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a twig of dried balsa wood” if he were Strauss.
The article goes on to say:
In all, at least 11 former wrestlers — as well as a wrestling referee — have said the OSU coaches knew and chose to do nothing.
This should have thrown the guy out of Congress, but instead, he’s on Congressional committees directing traffic and yelling at people who don’t like fascism.
I sure wish we had a legit media, the old-fashioned kind, who would ask Mike Johnson, the current speaker, “What’s in your wallet closet?”
I’d ask him myself, but I don’t think he reads Ruminato.
The White House is directing Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s campaign
Meanwhile, Ken Paxton, whose wife is divorcing him on “Biblical grounds,” admitted last month that his Senate campaign against Democrat James Talarico is being run by the White House, according to Politico:5
“I don’t control message or what we’re doing.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Wife Reveals "Recent Discoveries"
This is the story about a very religious political couple in a very religious state named Texas, which is famous for stripping away the rights of women and urging its citizens to send each other to prison for attempting to preserve one’s bodily autonomy.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton reportedly said during a fundraiser.
Paxton also complained that the Predator-in-Chief’s bizarre Midterms Convention, which was more like a satirical vaudeville act than a political event, hurt his campaign. And that of every other Republican. The comedy show, Paxton said, “dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”6
It doesn’t help that the only people who can make sense out of the Orange Puffaroon’s word salads on behalf of Republican candidates are clinical psychiatrists with doctorates in abnormal psychology:
Time Magazine’s Interview with a Madman Will Make Your Head Spin Off Your Neck
I kind of buried the lede. In journalism parlance, the “lede” (don’t ask me why it’s not spelled “lead” because I have no idea) is the headline or lead paragraph to a story.
To illustrate the fact that no modern Republican is capable of walking without two faces, it’s worth noting that Paxton defeated incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn with the Grifter-in-Chief’s direct intervention while Paxton called Cornyn a Deep Stater:7
“His money is coming from the D.C. establishment. That’s how they always try to convince us from Washington with their money that we should select their person. Well, I’m not their person and I’m never going to be their person.”
Now, his marching orders come directly from D.C. He doesn’t really have a choice. All his money is coming from outside PAC sources, because it’s hard for crooks to raise money, even in Texas.
There’s so much outside money coming in that yesterday, the Paxton campaign ran national television ads on Fox Sports NFL football games. So if you lived in Chicago watching the Bears game, you saw an ad for a Texas U.S. Senate seat.
Talarico, who has a tiny fraction of the money his opponent has access to, is ahead in the polls by several points despite all this, partly because Paxton is a jailbird in waiting. As one Texan probably once said, “Why vote for a rat if it’s gonna be in a cage a month from now?”
The battle for the soul of Texas continues.
The Mad King and JD Vance tour the red states
Realizing that red states are the only places in the country where they won’t get booed back into their Qatari gift jet, TrumpleThinSkin and his leashed border collie, JD Vance, are touring red states, but they’re not even trying to hide their grift.
Trump announced that he’d give old farts like me a hundred or so dollars out of the Medicare Improvement Fund that was established in 2008.
In his usual broken English, he said that he…8
“…will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. This money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, a pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”
I’m so excited that I’m already planning on buying a sack of oranges with it, even though what I really need is a set of needles for injecting myself with hallucinogens until this madness is finally over. I’ll take what I can get, I guess.
This, of course, is in addition to his $5,000 bribe attempt, which he would be funding with U.S. tax dollars if it were real.
You’ve probably heard about that one. He has said numerous times that he’ll send $5,000 to everybody if they’ll just please, please vote for two more years of unimpeded madness, criminality, fraud, grift, domestic terror, insider-trading wars, Canada hate, and general everyday mayhem.
But only if Republicans win the midterms. Else, sorry, Charlie, outtaluck.
Hot tip: You ain’t gettin’ a dime, no matter what.
The grift continues: CNN found 13 ads paid for by the government to help promote Cankles and Republicans trying to buy their way into Congress during this midterm cycle.9
As I said, they’re not even trying to hide the grift any longer. Each ad ends with “Paid for by the U.S. Government” prominently displayed at the bottom of the ad.
The ads are the usual self-worship vehicles that the mad king has become famous for. You can read more about it here.
These idiots have a lot of money to spend. I, for one, am glad they’re spending it on highlighting how crazy he is. One of the ads seems to suggest he was brought to us personally by God. Most Christians will argue that we all were brought here personally by God, but of course, you and I both know that’s not what he means.
Can Vance save Alaska?
Tonight, Vance flies to that electoral hotbed, Fairbanks, Alaska (population 31,468) for a campaign event in a desperate attempt, I guess, to try to save Alaska’s Senate seat for Republicans, where Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan by as much as seven points, depending on which poll you read.10
I can imagine the one-way conversation between Herr TrumpEpstein and the AI tech bros’ lapdog:
Herr TrumpEpstein: “JD, my people are telling me we’re losing in pretty much every state. Why don’t you see if you can find a coffee shop in Fairbanks where the people won’t dive over the counter to escape when you enter the place, K?”
Prediction: When he shows up, people will scatter like they’re being chased by a stalker.
Democrats kicking some butt in current polling
The New York Times email I received a couple days ago says it all:11
Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.
Still gotta vote.
Midterms are coming.
Check your voter registration status here:
https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/
Thanks for reading!
You can now purchase a PDF of all my Substack Fiction. Only $4.99. That’s less than a Starbucks Venti Latte.
Enter SUBSCRIBER_SPECIAL to get a 20 percent discount.
It’s also now available on Amazon/Kindle in ebook, paperback, and hardcover formats (the Kindle version is free if you have Kindle Unlimited):
If you are a paid subscriber, it’s available free as a Perk. Just go to the “Perks” page via the web page menu to find it.
You can help me reach more people by subscribing (paid or free), sharing, restacking, and commenting.
Footnotes
Pearson, Rick. “Former Illinois House GOP Leader Jim Durkin Endorses Democrat JB Pritzker over Republican Darren Bailey.” Chicago Tribune, October 5, 2026.
Ruminato Gift Link 🎁: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/10/05/durkin-pritzker-endorsement/.
Hulse, Carl. “Dennis Hastert, Powerful Politician Disgraced by Child Sexual Abuse, Dies.” nytimes. The New York Times, October 5, 2026.
Ruminato Gift Link 🎁: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/obituaries/dennis-hastert-dead.html.
Wikipedia. “Ohio State University Abuse Scandal,” September 24, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ohio_State_University_abuse_scandal&oldid=1376532689.
Wertheim, Jon. “Jim Jordan Speaker Candidacy Roils Ohio State Wrestling Community.” SI. Sports Illustrated, October 13, 2023. https://www.si.com/college/2023/10/13/jim-jordan-speaker-candidacy-roils-osu-wrestling-community.
BURNS, DASHA, WILL STEAKIN, and ADAM WREN. “Campaign ‘All Coming from DC,’ Paxton Says.” POLITICO, October 5, 2026. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2026/10/05/campaign-all-coming-from-dc-paxton-says-01106543.
Schleifer, Theodore. “Ken Paxton, G.O.P. Nominee in Texas, Privately Said Trump’s Convention Hurt Him.” nytimes. The New York Times, September 30, 2026.
Ruminato Gift Link 🎁: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/us/politics/ken-paxton-trump-midterm-convention.html.
Beaumont, Thomas. “Paxton Steps up Campaign against Cornyn for US Senate in Texas.” AP News, February 16, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/texas-senate-ken-paxton-cornyn-fe2787bbac917c5cb22918ac1e34c458.
Klein, Betsy. “‘God Made Trump’ Ad and at Least 12 Others Are Part of Controversial Taxpayer-Funded Ad Campaign.” CNN, October 2, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/02/politics/trump-taxpayer-funded-ads.
Carbonaro, Giulia. “Alaska Poll Gives Mary Peltola 7-Point Lead After NYT Staffer Report.” Newsweek, October 5, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/alaska-poll-gives-mary-peltola-7-point-lead-after-nyt-staffer-report-12523514.
Mazzei, Patricia, Ruth Igielnik, and Sophia June. “Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find.” nytimes. The New York Times, October 3, 2026.
Ruminato Gift Link 🎁: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/us/senate-polls-texas-kansas-ohio-alaska-iowa.html.
My mail in ballot arrived the second week of September. I completed it and took it, with two friends, to the ballot drop box in the next town. We dropped them in the box and they were marked ‘received’ the next day. We also got postcards with “I voted by mail” stickers.