Fake Polls, a Controversial Ohio Ad & an AI-Driven Security Crisis | 10.22.26

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With both parties pouring record amounts of money into races, a new scandal hits the polling industry that could have electoral implications. We have the latest on the races to watch, including surprise momentum for Republicans in Minnesota and an explosive campaign ad in Ohio. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, October 22nd, and this is Morning Wire. Websites across the globe go dark after the National Security Agency's AI program uncovers a severe security threat. And a massive illegal immigrant marriage fraud scheme is exposed in Massachusetts. It is alleged that Ms. Gonzalez got rich of selling the American dream, all the while investing her money in another country. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. October surprises continue to crop up amid, another consequential fake polling scandal. Our D.C. Bureau Chief Tim Rice joins us now to discuss. So, Tim, we want to get to this polling fiasco and also what's happening in Minnesota. But first, we've got to start with this attack ad against Democrat Amy Acton in Ohio. This features her mother urging voters not to vote for her own daughter. What's the latest on this, and how could this affect her race against Vivek Ramaswamy? Yeah, so just a quick background, John. Acton and her mother have been estranged for decades at this point. And Acton alleges that it is this estrangement is because her mother lost custody of her and her brother in part because she was married to a man who sexually abused and assaulted Acton when she was 12 years old. Now, there are police records that corroborate this story. This has been reported on. Acton's mother in the ad alludes to the fact that her daughter is a liar. So it seems that that is the claim that she's saying is a lie. Obviously, a lot of horrific family drama and history there. But at first, this ad was a little bit of a mystery because it appeared online and it didn't have any of the identifiers, you know. But it turns out it is from the Ramaswamy campaign. Vivek Ramaswamy, despite facing a lot of pushback and criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the ad, came out earlier this week and said that this is an ad for his campaign and that he is it's he essentially blamed Amy Acton. He said that she refuses to debate him on the issues, that are affecting Ohioans. So unless and until she'll engage with him on the substance, he's going to give a platform to any person who casts doubt on her trustworthiness. So a very bold strategy from the Ramaswamy campaign, whether or not this will affect anything really remains to be seen. Acton is really leading in the polls going into election day. However, this is something that she is going to have to spend a lot of time in the last two weeks on the campaign trail talking about whether criticizing Ramaswamy, distancing herself from her mother, retelling her backstory. And so whether or not this was the intention behind the ad, it could give Ramaswamy a little bit of a bump by keeping Acton very occupied in these waning days of the campaign. But whether or not that outweighs the negative press and negative sentiment that the ad has gotten for the Republican really remains to be seen. Now, there is also this new polling scandal that just dropped this week. Another polling firm has revealed that all of their polling this cycle was faked. And this is the second time that we've seen this, but this was a much bigger scheme. What do we know about this? Yeah, so the group is called Wedgwood Polling, and it said on Tuesday of this week that all of the data that it's released this cycle has been completely fabricated. Now, this is important for three reasons. One, that's a crazy thing to do. They say that it was to show vulnerabilities in the polling process and to, you know, do a social experiment about whether or not polls should be trusted. So, okay, fine, successful experiment. But the reasons this is important is, one, a lot of mainstream outlets carried these polls, including the New York Times and Nate Silver's 538. And this gets to the second point, which was Wedgwood's polls, people say former Michigan State Senator or Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, who was running and running in the Democratic primary against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Wedgwood polls showed Abdul El-Sayed up about 20% or 20 points in that midterm race. And so McMorrow and her campaign say that these polls were what Democrats and donors used to convince her to get out of the race and clear the way for El-Sayed. There's a very credible claim to be made that this fake polling helped push out more moderate Democrats and to clear the way for Abdul El-Sayed. Now, we do have some positive news for the Republican side, though it does relate to polling, so we have to be skeptical there. Michelle Tafoya in Minnesota is starting to tighten up that race. The Cook Political Report now favors her, which is a surprise. We can actually show people on our Daily Wire's election. For those watching, you can see this. The polling for her is about 43% of the vote. She's just about 3% behind her opponent now. Polymarket does favor her opponent, Peggy Flanagan. What are we to make of these numbers? Yeah, there are a couple of things, John. The first is that Minnesota is a very traditionally safe Democratic environment, right? So Peggy Flanagan was from the beginning and to a certain extent still is favored to win. So that explains the Polymarket market, right? Why is Tafoya creeping up in the polls? One, they just had a very fiery debate a few days ago in which Tafoya absolutely came out victorious. She hammered Flanagan about the Minnesota fraud scandal, stuff that our colleagues and our outlet has obviously reported on. And of course, just think about Michelle Tafoya, right? She has a career as a journalist. She's incredibly telegenic. She's incredibly dynamic in this format. So this burst of national attention, or of statewide attention, I should say, in general, letting voters really see her in her element and watch her defeat Flanagan in that way, in addition to just general groundswells of Republican support, Democrats starting to panic after saying for weeks and weeks that it was going to be a blue wave, those things all coalesce. The polls are very close. So definitely one of those sleeper races to watch that we didn't really think was going to be this close when the cycle began. But it's something that's going to capture a lot of attention between now and November 3rd. Which is very, very soon. Tim, thanks so much for joining us. Of course, guys. It's funny how we get used to things that aren't actually that comfortable. The pillow that's gone flat, the sheets that you've had forever, the blanket that's somehow too hot and not warm enough at the same time. You just live with it. But at this time of the year, when mornings get a little colder and getting into a cozy bed becomes the best part of the day, those little things start to matter a whole lot more. And that's one reason I've become such a fan of bowl and branch. When it's time to wind down for the day, I start thinking about my bowl and branch sheets and my waffle blanket that offers that best combo of warmth and breathability. Their signature sheets are made with 100% organic cotton, woven for softness and breathability. So you get that cozy, luxurious feeling without trapping in a bunch of heat. And 94% of bowl and branch customers say that the sheets actually get softer with every wash. 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The vulnerability these AI agents found is something called PHP. Most people have never heard of it, but they use it every day. 70% of websites use PHP as the programming language to run their website, and they have done so for decades. It's completely free and volunteer run, and until now, it's been borderline untouchable by hackers, at least in its raw form. Every time you click on a link on a webpage, code is sent through an interpreter to the website's host server, PHP assembles the content, and then sends the finished page to the browser. That is where the vulnerability was found. The NSA says that the flaw, quote, often provides a direct path to the server's file system or database, aka that a hacker can have full remote control of the server without any password over the internet. That gives them more or less free reign to steal data, passwords, and upload malicious software to that website. The NSA told anyone who cannot install the fix right away to take their systems offline. That's how serious they felt this threat was. One of PHP's own engineers called it the most severe problem the software has faced in more than a decade. Across the globe, in Europe, we saw Germany, France, Belgium, and Finland all pull down government websites as a precaution. caution. Wikipedia also shut down some of its systems too. So this was widespread. And as we noted, AI actually uncovered this. Is this good news or bad news? A little bit of both. It kind of depends who you ask. The good news is that friendly researchers found it and kept quiet until PHP could fix the vulnerability. So we're glad they kept quiet and didn't let folks know beforehand who could have used it for negative reasons. A researcher at a security firm called Khalif discovered the flaws in August using one of OpenAI's unreleased advanced models while doing a security review that they paid for. The faulty code had been sitting there for more than a decade. And another researcher said the flaw was likely too complex for humans to have ever found without AI. Honestly, it makes sense looking at what the vulnerability actually is. When a PHP website was particularly busy and running on low memory, there was a millisecond window where these AI agents could slip in unauthorized instructions to the server while the server was still processing requests from users. So it had to be very, very quick at the can do that. On smaller websites, hackers could take over the entire server in seconds until it was patched. So why did we get this chaotic message at the 11th hour to shut down websites if they were quietly trying to fix this behind the scenes? Yeah, that's a great question. And to that point, there's plenty of blame to go around. For about two months, a small group of researchers and engineers tried to keep this a secret, again, while they rewrote more than 10,000 lines of code for a fix that was supposed to go out today. But then rumors of this vulnerability leaked out. And the vulnerability was not going to go away. So they decided to keep it a secret. And the vulnerability was then confirmed on a popular tech forum. And folks found out. Kalief, that aforementioned company, also accidentally published a video showing the attack in action. By the time they deleted it, again, it was too late. And from there, things kind of devolved even further. And that's where the chaos came in. The PDP team says a company called Chainguard jumped the gun and published their own unofficial fix six hours before the official release was set to go out. That let any potential attacker or hacker study the potential revisions that were going to be made to vulnerable code before the attack. And then by Wednesday, sure enough, internet security company Cloudflare said it was seeing early attacks. But as of now, there are no confirmed reports of a successful break-in on a major website, at least that we know of. Sometimes with these things, they can lay in wait for a while. So we did manage to avoid disaster this time. But the question is, is this the new normal? I wish I had good news. And I could say, no, it's a one-time thing. But it does appear, based on what every expert is saying, that this is the new normal. It is looking that way. Google found the new normal. The number of software flaws reported each month doubled between January and August of this year alone. And a lot of that can be attributed to AI hunting for vulnerabilities. And as we saw earlier this year, even the companies that create these tools can't always keep them contained. We all remember back in July, the infamous Hugging Face incident where AI agents broke out of the sandbox, started wreaking havoc, hacking into other companies. So that can happen. And for everyone at home, it is worth being cautious. Not trying to scare people, but PHP holds things like your passwords, home address, payment address, and so on. And it's worth being cautious. The list goes on. And there's nothing you can really do yourself to secure that information. But if a site that you use was hit, you could receive a breach notice or even a scam email directly from the company. So keep an eye out for that. But these are new times we're living in. Very scary in many ways. Right. And a lot of very busy IT workers today. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. A massive fraud ring allegedly designed to arrange hundreds of sham marriages for immigration has been busted in Massachusetts. Here are the details as immigration reporter Jenny Teer. So, Jenny, we have a massive fraud scheme exposed in Massachusetts. What do we know so far? The Justice Department on Wednesday actually announced that they had charged six individuals, alleged fraudsters, with orchestrating allegedly a sham marriage fraud scheme to get illegal immigrants green cards or U.S. citizenship. Now, this scheme was worth about six million dollars in profits. They married hundreds of illegal immigrants over the course of 12 years. Now, the alleged ringleader, Jennifer Gonzalez, also entered into one of these alleged sham marriages with an illegal immigrants while she called the father of her children her husband. And she sent money to the Dominican Republic to buy property and invest in businesses there while calling it her home country. Even though she's a U.S. citizen and was born in the United States, she also allegedly engaged in snap fraud. Now, apparently that's not even all of her criminal activities. What else has she been involved in? Yeah, it's certainly not her first rodeo here with the law. She actually has convictions, according to the Department of Justice in Massachusetts, going back years. This includes assault and battery convictions, identity fraud, other forms of fraud, illegal entry without breaking in, possession of burglars tools, and knowingly receiving stolen property. Now, she's also charged in this case, along with her co-conspirators. That includes charges for conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens and conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. The U.S. attorney in Massachusetts also brought up an interesting aspect in this case during a press conference on Wednesday. She said that Gonzalez was captured in recordings talking about how she had to stop the alleged scheme after the Trump administration came into power because immigration policies were just too harsh. Listen to what she had to say. During one such recording, Ms. Gonzalez explained to a cooperating witness how her business became more terrible. Ms. Gonzalez explained to a cooperating witness how her business became more challenging under the new administration. She was captured on video stating that she stopped doing weddings at the end of 2024 because, quote, that's when Trump was becoming a president. Gonzalez stated she married a batch of people and made sure they had their documents. She then claimed that she suspended her business in 2025 because immigration was, quote, a little harsh. Well, with all the fraud crackdowns from the Trump administration, it's not hard to see why she might want to pull back on her activities at this point. Now, on the topic of alleged sham marriages, I think we'd be remiss to ignore the Ilhan Omar investigation. There's a lot of updates on that this week. What is the latest on that front? Yeah, this seems to be pretty fast moving. We had Tom Holman, the Borders are, saying that if there is there there, that they would denaturalize and deport Congresswoman Omar. And then Trump also weighed in, himself, saying that she could either be jailed or deported. The feds also interviewed Ilhan Omar's sister during the raid on her home. We just learned this. Her sister's allegedly linked to some of that Somali fraud in Minnesota, and she lives overseas now. The congresswoman herself also broke her silence this week in a social media video where she pleaded with supporters to help her with donations during this really tough time. Here's what she had to say. Thank you so much again. And please continue to support us. It is going to be a very expensive and challenging time. And so we appreciate whether you're able to send 5, 10, 20. Thank you. So I guess the question now is, will we see a congresswoman actually deported? We'll find out soon enough. Jenny, thank you so much for reporting. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. Plus, stick around after this for the trailer of Daily Wire's new film, Confession. Also, remember to check out the Daily Wire election hub with all the latest election news. To enjoy the show ad-free and join our mission, become a member at dailywire.com. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know. We'll be right back. And shake because you're dependent on drink. You're sick as all over you. Have you ever seen a child starve to death, professor? No. I have. But when someone uses your information, the cleanup becomes your job. Unpaid. Hours on hold with banks that won't help you without an account number you don't have. Get started at aura.com slash dailywire. That's aura.com slash dailywire.