Ohio governor race tight as Vivek Ramaswamy ad sparks GOP backlash

Early voting for the Nov. 3 midterm elections has reached 20,286,857 ballots cast, with 11.5 million mail-in and 8.8 million in-person votes. Officials distributed 56,460,649 mail-in ballots. In the Senate, Republicans hold 53 seats and Democrats hold 47, with 35 seats up for election. In the House, Republicans hold 218 seats and Democrats hold 214. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine requested that Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy withdraw a $4 million television advertisement targeting Democrat Amy Acton. Senator Jon Husted also criticized the ad, while Donald Trump praised it and JD Vance urged party members to focus on the election. Fox News polling shows Amy Acton at 50 percent and Ramaswamy at 48 percent in the Ohio governor race. The U.S. Supreme Court stayed a lower court order that prohibited the use of student ID cards for voting in New Hampshire. The Department of Justice appealed to the 9th Circuit Court to block 20,000 mail-in ballots in California, and Attorney General Todd Blanche stated the Department of Justice could block election certification if extraordinary circumstances arise. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling suspended TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft, and Adobe from the PERM green card process indefinitely. The $100,000 fee on overseas H-1B applications was extended until September 2027, though Foreign Minister Marco Rubio stated these rules were not targeting India. Indian IT companies' H-1B registrations for fiscal year 2027 dropped by 92 percent, with Cognizant filing zero applications, TCS filing 284, and Infosys filing 759. By September, 12,700 Indian tech workers had returned to India.