Countdown to the Midterms

On October 19th, 2025, the Louvre became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie. In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day through the eyes of the people who live them. Then, I'll join the International Hunt for the Louvre Jewels. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app, or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free. It's Monday, October 26th, and welcome to the last full week of Midterms campaigning. We start here. The Great Lakes State opens to early voting and get some high-profile visitors. "We saw both the current and former president on the campaign trail there this weekend." What Michigan tells us about the midterms? Those French protests aren't just in France anymore. "It's clear that the protests in France have inspired to some extent protest movements in other European countries." The latest on the European reckoning over the high cost of living, and some clarity around a hot new drug. "There are concerns with the rise in the popularity with oral GLP medications." We've got the latest guidelines around GLP ones and pregnancy. From ABC News, this is Start Here. I'm Mike Tabasque. Hey there, Brad's out for this one, so it's a Mike episode today. It's usually around this time during election season that you start to see journalists and podcasters really start to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to finding new ways to say the midterms are approaching. Eight days and counting. A little over a week. November 3rd is just around the corner. Election Day is closer than it's ever been. And while we're busy mixing metaphors and straining the limits of the English language, candidates are making their final pitches to voters. Usually this is when they start to bring out the big guns. Legendary party figures hitting the campaign trail to stump for the young upstart to may or may not represent the future of their respective parties. Let's bring an ABC's Diana Paulson right now to give us a snapshot of where things stand right now, Diana. What are some of the key races you're watching? It feels like we're all talking about Michigan at this point. I would say Michigan is definitely the top tier race of the cycle in terms of national attention and media coverage. We saw both the current and former president on the campaign trail there this weekend. In the closing stretch, Democrats are bringing out the big guns. Obama was on the campaign trail in both Ohio and Michigan on Saturday. People are so ready for something new, so hungry for something better. So sick and tired of being sick and tired that everywhere you go, it feels like change is in the air. In Detroit, he appeared alongside Senate candidate Abdul Al-Sayed, and we saw the president on the campaign trail in Michigan for the first time this entire general election cycle with Republican microaggers. We're going to elect, I call him Apple Pie. He's like perfect this guy. He's like central testing. He's what your state is all about. It's notable that while the president has been just about everywhere from Florida to South Carolina to even he's going to be in Mississippi, he's only made one stop in Michigan and this is it. Yeah, that is really fascinating, especially since we've seen the president really hit a lot of kind of traditionally red states or states that he's won in the past. With regards to Michigan, kind of what are we hearing from voters? I know it's kind of early voting season. What are you looking at when it comes to the numbers there? Yeah, so what we're really looking for is turnout in specific areas. The reason that Obama was sort of brought out to the campaign trail in Saturday is a lot of these worries that black voters in Detroit weren't going to turn out for Abdul Al-Sayed. You lost those voters in the primary and there's been a very concerted effort by the microaggers campaign to go after traditionally democratic voters like black voters and like especially Jewish voters who are concerned about Abdul Al-Sayed's positions on Israel and the Middle East. We saw microaggers even talk about this in its speech, which was kind of weird for Trump Raleigh talking about how much he's trying to target Democrats. But despite all of these concerns, we actually saw record high turnout in Detroit on day one of early voting surpassing even 2024. And it actually seems like a lot of people are early voting dying. I really across the country, not just in Michigan. Yeah, we've already seen at least 27 million early votes cast according to the University of Florida election lab. And one thing I really want to point to is how we're seeing records broken across the country, not just in Detroit, but all the way down in Texas. We're seeing at least six of the state's largest counties breaking their first day or first week turnout records in Harris County, more than one in five of the counties registered voters have already cast a ballot in the selection, which is a record breaking 2018 and 2022. We've also seen that across the state. One thing that I just want everyone to look at is Hidalgo County, which is in the Rio Grande Valley. There are 50% compared to 2022. This is going to be one of the most closely watched region of the state, because that's where Trump was able to flip Hispanic voters in 2024. And it's a question of whether they'll flip back in 2026. Right. Diana, you've been paying attention to this for months at this point. What are some of the plot lines or themes from this midterm cycle that really stand out to you or any sort of storylines here that maybe haven't gotten as much attention that you think are really interesting? One of the things that I want to point to is an issue that emerged kind of later in our polling and has been really seized on by specifically Democratic candidates. When we've asked voters what their top issues are, number one, consistently the economy. But what we've been seeing as number two or number three in a lot of polling is the issue of corruption. Voters saying that they're mad about what they see as corruption, like billionaires benefiting from the economy. Feeling like someone who is supporting the people rather than the billionaires gets in there. And that's something that's really been seized on specifically by Democratic candidates. We saw in Ohio, Sherrod Brown devoting a lot of his speech attacking his opponent as corrupt. We saw President Obama say that what this election is about is standing up to corruption in Washington, specifically connecting that to the president's actions on cryptocurrency and his own portfolio. We saw that again in Michigan with candidates framing this as a fight against corruption. So I think that that's a narrative that we're really seeing across a lot of races in this country. And one that wasn't at the top of mind for a lot of voters maybe when this election cycle began. Certainly. Well, Diana Paulson, I know that you're going to continue to track all of this for us. I feel like we're going to hear a lot from you in the next week or so. I really appreciate you breaking it all down for us. Thanks so much. Thank you. Next up on Start Here, those massive protests in France just got even bigger. That's after the break. This show is sponsored by Zip Recruiter. The holiday season is a time when you start seeing hiring everywhere. 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Students pushing for more funding for education quickly became a nationwide movement of people demanding the government of President Emmanuel Macron do something about the rise and cost of living. Demonstration soon erupted in Paris, some of which spiraled into violent clashes with police and ludic. And while the temperature deaf definitely seemed to cool off in recent days. Protesters were still out in force. Let's bring an ABC's Tom Sufi Burridge, who's in Paris. Tom, what's the latest here? What did the protests look like this weekend? Yeah, Mike. So I think it's fair to say that we learnt two key things from the protests on this weekend. The first is that the protest movement has not run out of steam. And we had more than 400,000 people on the streets of French cities on Saturday, more than 100,000 of them were in the capital, Paris. I think secondly we also saw that the French security forces, the police, managed to retake control of the street. It was saw this as vast security operation, 70,000 police officers, 10,000 more than the previous week. But I think, you know, more heavy-handed tactics by the police, we saw these running battles once again, between a violent minority. It has to be said that the vast majority of the protests across France again on Saturday were peaceful. But what always catches the headlines and the eye and generates all the images and much of the discussion is the violence. In Paris, for example, we saw a violent minority in clashes with police, what they're called in French, they're called casser, it means kind of records, troublemakers if you like. They were, you know, again, masked, thrown projectiles at the police, fireworks, that type of thing. We also saw the police hitting back. We saw multiple incidents of police violence against protestors, the police beating protestors, kicking them. That was on full display. After all, though, what happened the previous Saturday, the lack of law and order on the streets, that was not the case this Saturday. There was some violence, but it was quite limited, but the police managed to quell that violence, but the protest movement itself, the peaceful protest movement, which is really now focused on the cost of living in particular and what they say is police violence in reaction to these protests. Well, that still has a lot of momentum and we're expecting more protests in the coming days. The French authorities have launched the security operation. Is there any sort of conversation that's happening between the government and the leaders of this movement? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, look, Mike, the government has clearly said here in France that it is willing to sit at the table with particularly the student protest movement, listen to their demands in terms of improving schools. And that is how this all began several weeks ago. And then this protest movement evolved and escalated and partly became about the higher cost of living, the fact that they say that wages in the country are just not keeping paced with inflation and other rising costs, particularly gas at the moment, like anywhere else in the world. Gas is particularly high right now, linked to the war in the Middle East. And at the moment, there's this sort of amalgamation of protest movements right across France. The backdrop to all of this is that we're just six months out from an election. What happened over the weekend also is that the far right leader, Marine Le Pen, who is leading in the polls quite clearly at the moment, ahead of the presidential election in six months' time, she officially launched her campaign. And of course, she did talk tough on policing. She said, if she were to be elected president, and if she were to be in six months' time, it would be the first ever far right president this country has ever had, a very significant moment if it happens. She said she would implement zero tolerance policing. So the far left have been accused by the government of fueling the protests and fueling the violence. The far left and the far right are both accusing the government of being responsible, and they said is government incompetence, which has led to the sense of disorder on the streets amongst the violence. But this weekend, clearly, the government rained that in a much heavier police tactics and police presence appears to have worked, and the government clearly pleased that at least this time around there was very minimal looting, very minimal vandalism, no public buildings significantly damaged across France at all. So we're talking about France right now, but we've actually seen these protests sort of take shape across Europe as well. What can you tell us about the broader movement and where it's spread to at this point? It's clear that the protests in France have inspired to some extent protest movements in other European countries, particularly Italy. We've seen in recent weeks a significant number of protests. There was some violence in Northern Italy in the city of Turin, for example, protesters clashing with police there. But generally the protests in Italy were peaceful over the weekend. The Italian government has also been implementing measures to crack down on the protests. There are other protest movements in Spain, in Belgium, in Portugal. All of them have a slightly different focus. For example, there's a crucial election coming up in Spain. A lot of the protests there are focusing on housing. Each country is different. Each political context is different, but there are common threads going through a lot of these protests. Young people seem to be at the heart of a lot of the protests in Europe right now. The sense that they believe that their future isn't looking bright, that their job opportunities don't look good. The technology AI potentially is compromising that. They don't have the benefits that previous generations potentially had, and they're worried about wages not keeping a pace with the rising cost of living. And then, of course, the rising cost of living is that other big theme, which the unions are very much involved with. And so there is a thing, it's fair to say, in certain parts of Europe right now, a growing sense of social unrest. I think we can't underestimate the role that social media is playing in all this, right? Because these protest movements can communicate online. They can also see quite clearly in real time what other protest movements in other countries are doing, and there is a sense that although they're not directly aligned and directly coordinated these protest movements, there is some element of copycat, of inspiration, and collaboration on the digital level going on to some extent. Really incredible scenes coming out of Europe in the last couple days. Tom Suvieberge, they're tracking all of it for us from Paris. Tom, thanks so much. Thanks, Mike. All right, one more quick break when we come back. Oh, baby, you're going to want to hear this. One last thing is next. Today I want to tell you about our friends at Layla Sleep. When you work night times, producing a daily morning news podcast, you come to really appreciate the value of a good night's sleep. So I'm excited to tell you about Layla, one of the best mattresses on the market, and also one of the most affordable. 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Head to abcsecretsavings.com/start here and start sleeping easier today. That's abcsecretsavings.com/start here. The new documentary film, Katzai Wild Hearts, is now available on Disney Plus and Hulu. The more we grow into Katzai, the more eyes that we have on us, we want to do everything for the fans. Our icons are what make Katzai iconic. Katzai Wild Hearts, now available on Disney Plus and Hulu. Visit DisneyPlus.com/What's Hiphonon for more information, terms applied. And one last thing. Over the course of the last few years, we've seen more and more people turn to GLP1s for weight loss. According to a recent Gallup poll between 10 and 11% of Americans use the drugs, which were originally intended to treat diabetes. And while they've only seen this renewed attention recently, GLP1s are already sparking a lot of change. Researchers are looking into whether they could potentially slow aging. And VA is running a trial about whether they can treat alcohol abuse. McDonald's even says it's considering offering smaller portion sizes for people who feel full after eating less. But all the while, some women have faced a question. What do I do if I'm on a GLP1 and I want to have a baby? Well now, for the first time since this surge in GLP1 popularity, we're actually getting some new guidelines from top OBGYNs about how these drugs affect pregnant women. The key recommendation here is that if you're using a GLP1 medication to stop using it one to two months before trying to conceive and to avoid using it all together during the pregnancy. That's ABC Medical correspondent Dr. Darian Sutton detailing this new list of recommendations that we got over the weekend. It comes from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. And it shows GLP ones can stay in the body for more than a month, and when you're pregnant or planning to be, that's when these precautions come into play. The risk that can be seen is mainly animal studies, and it's risk with changes with fetal growth and development. And the jury's still out on that. In terms of the data, there's relatively little, reliable human data on this subject. Now, once the baby is born, the ACOG says new mothers could potentially use GLP ones while breastfeeding under certain conditions. Those studies show that very little, if any, GLP actually gets into breast milk, but there are concerns with the rise in the popularity with oral GLP medications, they have an additional ingredient that affects absorption. And that's why they recommend making that decision on an individual basis with your doctor. You're gonna want to keep an eye on your baby's weight if you're taking a GLP one during that phase. Dr. Sutton also says we may not be done talking about GLP ones and pregnancy with these new guidelines out. And studies suggest a possible link between GLP one usage and improved fertility. We're not just talking about weight loss anymore, we're talking about real metabolic disease and the consequences of that, with which we are seeing that GLP medications are decreasing substantially. Now, Sutton, make sure to stress that it's important to talk to your doctor about all of this. We're still at the very early stages of understanding these drugs and what they do, but even still, baby steps. That's all for this episode of Start Here. Hey, for more on any of the stories that we talked about here today, check out ABC News Live, where ever you stream live news, and for Brad Milke, I'm Mike Deboskey. Have a great day. What is fallen in my lap is huge. ETH and Hock and Tommy Lee Jones, the conspiracy theorist, the critically acclaimed series Returns. Be normal now and again. Where is your punk rock spirit? ETH is the low down, now streaming on Hulu. The critics are raving, Wild Horse 9 is a blood thumping comic thriller. Who the hell are you? The CIA. We are the CIA. 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