A Bombshell Blindside in Michigan

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That's AvocadoGreenMatress.com to get up to 20% off. AvocadoGreenMatress.com I knew nothing about any other candidates. A court has thrown out a legal challenge to whatever shenanigans may have happened there, but could political risks remain? And am I looking at it backwards? It does that telescope look like it's getting closer and closer. They don't stay up there forever unless you can give them a boost. Why NASA tried and failed to keep a satellite from crashing back to Earth? From ABC News, this is Start Here. I'm Brad Milky. I was at the New York City Marathon yesterday. It's my favorite day of the year. Everyone's cheering for friends and family, but even better than that are the people who just show up and cheer for strangers. You're awarding people who have put their hearts and souls into an effort for months, even years. Well, tomorrow, another marathon comes to an end. The midterm elections are almost here. They're the same as a marathon, except it's all over the country. There are less paper cups on the ground and no one is nearly as nice. In fact, take Michigan where the Senate race there has gotten nasty. He is really the most radical extreme candidate in the country. In recent weeks, Republican Mike Rogers has increased his attacks on Democrat Abdul-El-Sayed, not just for his progressive political views, but for his religion and heritage. Now, if you're going to represent the United States of America, you would think that you could stand up for Western civilization values? He's pounced on El-Sayed's family members for having expressed sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood years ago before it was labeled a terror organization by the US. El-Sayed himself has disavowed them. Rogers surrogates, including President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, have labeled El-Sayed a "jihadist." Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an appearance to Michigan Republicans, saying Muslims as a whole don't contribute science or literature to the world. "We've got a guy in one of the highest scientific posts in our country who has zero scientific credentials coming to lecture Michiganders about the possibility of electing an Arab-American with two doctoral degrees." And yet this weekend, it was not the words of a Republican that upended this race. It was a Democrat. Congresswoman Haley Stevens, El-Sayed's opponent in the Democratic primary, has endorsed his opponent, Mike Rogers, and ignited an "intraparty war." Let's take it a Michigan this morning. ABC's Diana Paulson has been tracking this race up close and personal for months now. Diana, this might be the biggest single endorsement of any race in this cycle. Can you just walk us through what just happened? What happened yesterday was the culmination of months of tension between these two candidates. El-Sayed and Stevens effectively ran against each other for almost two years. So it was one of the longest primaries. There was a third candidate in that race at Mallory McMarrow, but Stevens and El-Sayed had the most personal vitriol. They were spending all their money, all of their attacks on each other. "And look, it was offensive to hear my opponents say I can't spring together two sentences. I certainly did that on the auto rescue. I certainly have been doing that as I've been standing up to Trump's abuses of power." "Are we gonna let Trump donors, billionaires, and APAC lies steal this election?" The historic outside spending in that primary, mostly in support of Haley Stevens, $70 million or so, and El-Sayed made opposition to her and opposition to APAC support of her central to his campaign. And he made the Israel issue, the dividing line of that campaign between him and Stevens. He supports ending U.S. aid to Israel, military aid to Israel. She, much more moderate, who is taken money from the American Israel Political Action Committee, and has been supportive of Israel. They face off this summer, in an incredibly close primary that I think was closer than El-Sayed or Stevens thought it was gonna be. "As bitter and as divisive and as cynical as the campaign against us might have been, I want us to realize that there is so much more that United States now." El-Sayed wins by about a point. He and Stevens do like two appearances together in the first three days, right after. "But that's usually the thing, right, is like when you lose to somebody in your primary, you're still expected to come out and be like, of course I'll vote for the guy that just beat me or whatever." With the exception of maybe like the Texas Republican primary where that never happens, you know, they did the thing that they were supposed to do. They did the United, they did the coalesce. But Haley Stevens didn't really appear on the campaign trail, like ever, for Abdul Al-Sayed. She went back to Congress. She appeared on TMZ. She got engaged. She, you know, like lived a life she went on a trip to Italy and El-Sayed campaigned as a progressive for the rest of the summer. He didn't moderate himself. He didn't sort of try to appeal maybe to her wing of the party as much as she had hoped that he would. He continues along his path of being Abdul Al-Sayed. We start to see cracks show a couple weeks ago. Haley Stevens starts becoming like a talking head on cable and she says, you know, "I don't know about the job that Abdul is doing. Mike Rogers is doing a great job reaching out to black voters. You know, he's running a great campaign." And a lot of people go, "Why are you saying this on TV when you're not campaigning with the Democrat of your party? Why are you, you know, complimenting the Republican?" So there starts to be like, you know, some suspicion brewing that something might happen. On Wednesday, her fiance announces he is voting for Mike Rogers. And explicitly says that Abdul Al-Sayed is an anti-Samtite. And he appears at an event with Mike Rogers that night with Ted Cruz. Huh. And then Haley Stevens goes on CNN like right after this all happens. No, like like a lot of households across America were a household divided. I still very much want our Democratic nominee. His name is Abdul to win this race. You know, you can be in a relationship with someone and not agree with them politically. I'm on Team Abdul, I support him. I'm still going to vote for him. But she starts to bring up this issue that she has with Al-Sayed. She says he's run one ad and a pack supporting him is run another ad that she finds problematic and offensive to black and Jewish voters. That when people feel unsafe and when there is, you know, hateful rhetoric that's making its way into ads, you know, that doesn't build the coalition. So one of those ads is an ad that he has that's Fox News themed. That features like all these different Fox News hosts and is meant to appeal to Republican swingy voters. And it has Tucker Carlson who has said some very problematic things about black people and Jewish people in the past. And so she doesn't like that he's included Tucker Carlson. The other ad is an ad run by an outside pack. And it essentially says that high grocery prices are the result of US funding for Israel. And it's condemned as an anti-Semitic by a lot of Jewish leaders. Al-Sayed says I didn't run the ad. This was not me. It was an outside group. You guys love to play the condemned game. I've already been clear that that ad was not made by me. And I do not agree with the contents of that ad. That happens. Then they're like we're going to have this joint event together this weekend. We're going to come by, we're going to all campaign together. And Haley Stevens goes, well, actually, if you want me to campaign with you, you have to agree to denounce these ads. And Al-Sayed goes, this primary already happened. Well, like you don't get to make you don't get to make demands of me on the candidate. It's four days before the election. If you want to do coalition building, like maybe you should have done it at an earlier point in this cycle, you know, I'm not going to be a held hostage. And so there's this whole attempt to broker peace within the party. All of Debbie Dingell is calling. Top leadership is calling. Everyone is trying to get these two to play nice, make up and show up together. Abdul Al-Sayed and Jim Clyburn show up at a black church in Detroit. The event that Haley Stevens is supposed to go at. We need to go to press four. My name's Haley Stevens. More a statement about standing together against eight. Right across town, got two miles away. Haley Stevens is showing up to church with Mike Rogers. They were public in this race. Abdul said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign. And that I should stay away. And he's right. And that's why I am endorsing my Rogers for the United States Senate. Haley Stevens posts on acts that she is endorsing Mike Rogers. And this bomb drops into the political world. Wow. Okay. So then this huge reversal. We thought it, like you said, it was going to be Kumbaya. Now it's not. What has been the reaction? Because it's gone far beyond Michigan at this point already. Immediately we see every Democratic official across the country go after Stevens. At the end of the day, I actually don't think about Hailey Stevens. I think about the, like I said, the 9,999,998 people who are not those two. We see Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, who would have been her boss in the world in which she won this election and say this is a despicable betrayal. We see Nancy Pelosi say it's like an abdication of leadership. We see the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party say that she's not welcome as a member anymore. She's the most of her top staff in her DC office, quid, her comms director, and her chief of staff. And she kind of becomes a political prior, the one person who is really on board with her right now is the president. Hailey Stevens endorsing my graduate, that was a big move, I think, as nobody expected that. But it's a smart thing to do, because El Sayad would destroy our country. So again, Hailey Stevens is a person who has gone after Trump aggressively in her campaign. She would say she was going to be Trump's greatest enemy in Michigan. So this like reversal of fortune is really poignant for her. How does she describe her decision? You talk to her Diana. I did. I talked to her yesterday. I'm just a Democrat for Rogers. I'm still a Democrat. And she sort of framed this as a referendum on the future of the party. The Democratic Party that I fully represent, that I'm fully in, that I'm really fired up for, is just not going to have this socialist, far extreme, hateful division. We've seen this sort of narrative around the Michigan race from both Republicans and Democrats, right? When she was campaigning in the primary, AOC said, if El Sayad can win Michigan, then progressives can win anywhere, basically alluding to her own odds. Ted Cruz said, if El Sayad can win in Michigan, AOC will be the next Democratic nominee, right? Both of them saying the same thing, which is El Sayad is a testing ground for the power of progressives in the US. And Steven's in her own way is saying, if we don't stop him in Michigan now, then this thing, then this becomes the Democratic Party going forward. And yet to stop him in the name of the Democratic Party could also cost the Democratic Party the Senate. So I guess Diana, there's two ways of looking at this, right? One is that this is a personality thing, right? And for all the party politics, these are two politicians who just don't like each other. Like you hinted at that. The other way of looking at this is, this is a direct referendum about how divisive a candidate like Abdul El Sayad can be even among Democrats. Which of those is the real way people on the ground in Michigan see this? A lot of Michigan voters have already cast their ballot before any of this happened. A lot of Michigan voters didn't vote in the primary at all, but most of them didn't. And even though there might be these complex debates about this proxy war within the Democratic Party and the future identity of the party, our polling shows the Democrats are actually pretty united around El Sayad. CNN polling from last week showed him at about 94% support among Democrats. We've looked at polling of black voters, which is the community that Steven says that El Sayad needs to apologize to and needs to get to turn out for him. And El Sayad is about 75% of the supportive black voters. El Sayad is about 10%, that pretty much matches the margin for Senator Alyssa Slotkin when she won that election in 2024. Also against microtters, microtters got about the same percent. She got a little bit more, but they're still undecided voters at this point. So the question is, is this a real narrative of division of Democrats? Or is this people having an online fight amongst the elites of the Democratic Party about these broader ideas of the vision for the party? Which might not be what voters are actually casting their ballots on at the ballot box on Tuesday. And that is the question. But it sounds like you're giving us part of the answer there, which is voters are not necessarily like, I only vote for one of these Democrats. I never vote for the other as much as these candidates might have, you believe. All right, Diana Paulson in Michigan. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next up on start here, what you thought that was the only political scandal to deal with this weekend? Mush. We're moving on to Alaska after the break. This show is sponsored by Quince. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince is the place to find those pieces, not just for yourself, but yes, for everyone else on your list too. Quince delivers high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like 100% Mongolian cashmere, Italian leather, 14 karat gold, yeah, for real, all timeless versatile pieces that feel as great to unwrap as they do to wear. Cashmere sweaters started 60 bucks. The line that doesn't even stop there, you'll find premium down jackets will outerwear. No shortage of cashmere scarves and accessories. They have helped me out in gift giving situations, trust me. 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Now, whether that would actually confuse voters enough not to vote for the guy with the word incumbent next to his name, time will tell, but the two big questions have been, "Did the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola herself know about any alleged ploy, and will any of this result in legal action? ABC's Trevor Alt has made it to Alaska where he will be headquartered on election night. He's an anchorage now, Trevor. What is the latest there?" Okay, so what we got bred over the weekend is we first got a ruling from a judge tossing out the lawsuit that the Trump administration's Department of Justice had filed essentially where they were almost contesting the results of this election should their Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan lose, and they were trying to contest it before any ballot was cast. They were preemptively arguing that they believe that Democrats are cheating because Mary Peltola's campaign allegedly got this second Dan Sullivan to join the ballot in an effort to confuse voters. "That's a fraud. It's a fraud to the public. And they had a Dan Sullivan running against Senator Dan Sullivan. And they didn't put Senator in front of the two Dan Sullivan's, and the people are going to be able to tell." Essentially what the DOJ was arguing is they said, "If Dan Sullivan loses, and the margin is such that the second Dan Sullivan's votes, if they'd gone to him, might have helped him win, they wanted Alaska to not just save all the ballots, but also separate every ballot that had the second Dan Sullivan selected." And remember, this is rank choice voting in Alaska, so it's not just picked to win. It's selected in any ranking. And if the voter went for Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan, clearly they wanted our Dan Sullivan to win. That would have been their argument. Yeah, or at the very least what they wanted to do is they wanted any person that ranked the second Dan Sullivan. They wanted that vote to be set aside so that they could investigate it, which seemed to imply they wanted every person who ranked the second Dan Sullivan to be asked, "Hey, did you mean to vote for this one, or did you mean to vote for the other Dan Sullivan?" And the judge without even looking into whether or not it's legal to get this second Dan Sullivan on the ballot to try to confuse voters, which according to all our legal experts, it is legal. The judge is like, "Yeah, there is no legal way for us to open every ballot, look at who people voted for, and then ask them, did you mean to vote for this person and investigate their motivations?" Right. Yeah, every person has the right to a secret ballot. So the judge is like, "I'm not even going to get into the legal ease of all this. There is no way for me to legally do what you want me to do if you were to win the case." So this case is dismissed. So that's where we're at in terms of the legal standpoint. And I think a lot of people were expecting that. It was simply too late in the game for the Senate race and the ballot to be changed here in Alaska. The big question, as you mentioned, though, is what does Mary Peltola going to say about this? And she is in front of voters in these final days of a neck and neck Senate race. "I am not interested in tricking voters. I know I can be Dan Sullivan." When that article was published, her campaign, they were very specific in their language of denial and that they said they don't have anything to do with the campaign of either Dan Sullivan, either the Republican or the alleged plant, Dan Sullivan. Mary Peltola was asked directly and she said, "She has no idea if it happened." That's her. Mary Peltola is her exact words or she's not denying that her campaign may have coax this second dance elephant to get into the race, but she says, "If that did happen." And also when the her campaign says we do not, like, present tense, we do not. have anything to do with his campaign. Like, yes. Yeah, not even did not. Do not have anything to do with the campaign. And if Mary Peltola's saying, if they did, I didn't know anything about it. - I knew nothing about any other candidates on the ballot, except for me and the incumbent. - Where you're at is it's a denial that at least from the voters that I'm talking to, it's not quite landing, but whether or not this is a big issue, does remain to be seen. Well, that's my last question Trevor. Similar to what I was just asking in Michigan, is this resonating with voters? Like, are they confused by the ballot? Or are they just angry about what's happening here? Like, could it actually swing people one way or the other? I know that Alaska is very spread out in terms of its voters, but of the people you haven't able to speak to there in Anchorage, I mean, what's the vibe? - Yeah, I've talked to a lot of them. And I think everyone is united in, they don't really like the ballot stacking. They think it's pretty slimy. - I'm bothered by shenanigans on either side that it seems like it's outside of policy debate. It's just situations to confuse things or we're trying to trick people. - I haven't encountered anyone that think it's that big of a deal outside of, diehard Dan Sullivan voters who think this is a form of cheating. - I think if Alaskan voters can learn how to spell Lisa Murkowski to write her in, I think we'll be able to keep two Dan Sullivan's straight. - To most people, they simply think, you know, this is something we've known about for a long time. There were two Dan Sullivan's on the primary ballot. It didn't really cause any kind of impact there. In a long list of issues that they are weighing in a contested Senate race, people don't necessarily think it's that big of a deal, especially not compared to other issues. The main one, of course, in Alaska, being gas prices, not only is Alaska so affiliated with the concept of drilling and oil. And a lot of people are frustrated with the Trump administration bringing in Russian diesel. I mean, there are some remote locations, Brad and Alaska, where the price of gas is $22 a gallon, because it's that hard to get it there. That's what you see signs all about. That's what you hear people talking about. So this is a much smaller issue on top of the fact that it does feel like something that was already litigated and people were already aware of months before. - Really interesting, and I know that you'll be there throughout the election day and the even longer election night, a way up north in Alaska, all right. Thank you, Trevor Alt. - Thank you, Brad. - Okay, one more quick break. When we come back, even telescopes the size of pickup trucks need a helping hand once in a while. One last thing is next. - Hey everyone, listen to the All's Fair Official Podcast. I'm your host, Evan Ross Katz. We'll sit down with the cast and unravel all of the irresistible drama of season two. - People don't even know the half of what goes on. - We wanted to die. - Okay guys, let's give it to them. - Watch and listen to the All's Fair Official Podcast available on Hulu, Hulu on Disney Plus, and wherever you get your podcasts. And don't miss All's Fair season two, now streaming with Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bundle subscribers, in terms of life. - Hi, I'm Andy Richter. I might not have won the Miraball last season. - That was so fun. - But I did win the best gig ever. Hosting the Dancing with the Stars official podcast. Get ready for all the inside scoop from the cast. - All right, well, let's get to work. - Behind the scenes secrets and more from every episode. - That was mongering. It's gonna be iconic. - All my dreams are coming true. - Dancing with the Stars official podcast. New episodes every Thursday on Disney Plus and Hulu, and wherever you get your podcasts. - And one last thing, you know how when you were little, your parents would tell you to be really careful with expensive stuff. No rough housing by the TV. Don't drop those binoculars. If we had a telescope at home, we would have been told to make sure that thing doesn't fall over. Well, a roughly 3,000 pound telescope is about to plummet through Earth's atmosphere. It's not a chance it's gonna drop on my head out of nowhere. - The entire thing will not drop on your head. - Oh, good. - This is ABC's Matthew Glasser, who covers science and space. And he says for the last 22 years, a huge telescope named the Swift Observatory has been circling the globe. - It was a NASA satellite built to study gamma ray bursts. And those were the brightest and most powerful explosions in the universe. - Since then, it's only become more important. It studied black holes, it studied comets. It was a two-year mission that went 22 years. - Well, throughout this year, there's been drama unfolding around the Swift Observatory. You see, when something is a low Earth orbit, like a satellite, I imagine it just maintaining a constant distance from Earth. Matthew says if there was no such thing as friction, that is exactly what would happen. But that's just not the case for Swift. - Our atmosphere doesn't immediately drop off when you get into low Earth orbit. There's still some atmosphere. And that atmosphere has these air molecules that push up against the vehicle as it's traveling about 17,000 miles per hour. And so we call that atmospheric drag. - As the satellite slows down ever so slightly, it starts dropping in altitude back towards Earth. As it keeps getting lower, guess what? There's even more atmosphere, more drag. Slowly, you start this downward spiral. - They don't stay up there forever unless you can give them a boost. - That's right. Like a marine shoving their body up over the obstacle course wall, we are out there trying to give objects in space a boost. The ISS has its own little thrusters to do this. They get help from visiting spacecraft. This telescope doesn't get any of that, which is why last year NASA contracted a company to try. - Catalyst space says it'll use its robotic link spacecraft to raise Swift into a more stable orbit. - In record time, about nine months, they went from an idea to a final product. They created something called link. And the idea was to launch this robotic helper vehicle that would go up there, attach to Swift, use its thrusters, and push it up into a safer orbit that would keep it running for the time to come. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned. - Yeah, for all the effort, it did not work. And now it's become obvious, there's just no saving this object from falling back to Earth sometime this week, a Swift landing, if you will. Now, like Matthew said, most pieces won't make it to the Earth's surface. Much of it will be burned up in the atmosphere, but where exactly will the rest of this telescope land? Well, that's still up in the air. - The good news for all of us is that the majority of the planet is covered with ocean and water. So statistically, the likelihood is that those pieces that remain will fall into the ocean. - If that doesn't make you feel better, perhaps this will. While this method did not work this time, it is just the beginning of efforts to rescue sinking satellites in the future. In fact, NASA is now asking commercial companies for ideas on how to save an even more famous space telescope, the Hubble. So don't worry. Whatever headlines you see as the week goes on, the sky isn't falling. All right, and we asked you answered a ton of great Halloween costumes sent to us this week and via Instagram, although some of you tried to send them to me at Brad Milky, and then I don't wanna let you until I had approved the follow. I was not ready for meta to be so protective of my delicate sensibilities, I guess, thank you. Anyway, the winner of our first annual informal Halloween start here, staff pick listener costume contest is Shannon Gale Fields, whose whole family dressed up as train cars. If you haven't got working headlight, Shannon said, "I've been listening to the show for years, but now is a busy working mom of two boys. It helps me stay informed more than ever." From Percy, Henry, Thomas, Gordon, and our conductor, Chu Chu. Thank you so much, Shannon. Honorable mentions, by the way, to Delilah, and her kangaroo dog Stella, called it nicely in a little out-gen Morgan, whose family dressed up like other delicious, purchased products from Pennsylvania. I'm Brad Milky, I'll see you tomorrow. Last October's brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was shocking. Now, nearly a year out, there are still critical questions to be answered. Where did they go? And second, where did they come from? In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day, like you've never heard them before, through the eyes of the people who lived them. On the pavements, I saw something shiny. You did see the crown. Yes, exactly. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio, available now, ad-free on Amazon Music. From the producers of the Traders comes the all-new Hulu original series The Mom. Welcome to Italy. Hosted by Parker Posey, 12 celebrities will compete in the ultimate game of power. You'll be doing jobs. Let's go. The dawn decides who gets paid and who gets taken out. You do what you gotta do. Let the games begin. The all-new original series The Mom. New episodes Mondays, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers' terms apply.