Election Results, Fauci's Adviser Guilty & Pumpkin Spice Season - Wednesday, August 19, 2026

**Erica Mandy** (0:00)
Today is Wednesday, August 19th. We'll explain the latest election results that bring more Democratic socialists and Trump-backed candidates into the November midterms and how one key race is poised to make history. Also a new confession from a former government health official and why it puts more scrutiny on Dr. Fauci. Plus, which top universities are at risk of losing more research funding? How a new version of ChatGPT is designed to help teenagers, and it's already that time of year, pumpkin spice season has arrived. Those stories and even more news coming up.
Welcome to The NewsWorthy, all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. Thanks so much for being here. Let's do this.
This week's primaries delivered a mixed bag for both President Trump's endorsed candidates as well as Democratic Socialists looking to upset their party's establishment. We'll start in Florida. Republican Congressman Byron Donalds won the GOP nomination for governor. He was one of the candidates who had Trump's endorsement, and now he's headed to what could be a competitive general election against former Republican Congressman David Jolly, who has since become a Democrat. If Donalds wins in November, he would become Florida's first black governor. But not every Trump-backed candidate had such a good night. Also in Florida, Republican Congressman Corey Mills lost his primary despite having Trump's endorsement. Mills has faced a series of scandals and investigations, and he was defeated by former TV news anchor Ryan Elijah. Over in Wyoming, Trump's endorsed candidate for governor also lost, though Trump did score a big win in Wyoming's US. Senate primary.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a left-wing candidate pulled off a major upset in Florida. Progressive state representative Angie Nixon easily beat former national security official Alex Vindman. Her victory was a big surprise, especially since Vindman out-raised her campaign by more than 16 to one. Nixon will now face the Republican US. Senator Ashley Moody in November in what's expected to be a much tougher test for Democrats.
Elsewhere in Florida, Progressive suffered a defeat when Democratic Socialist Oliver Larkin lost his challenge to Congressman Jared Moskowitz. One more race we want to mention, longtime Democratic Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz won her primary after a contentious campaign. She's expected to win in the fall since she's in a solid Democratic district. But that district was just redrawn, and Wasserman Schultz faced criticism for running there because it's a majority Black district with a long history of being represented by Black Democrats. Of course, that just scratches the surface of yesterday's primaries. After this, the focus shifts to the Northeast. In the next few weeks, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware will all hold their primaries. And the general election is now just 76 days away.
It turns out some polling data in a couple of recent high-profile elections were actually fake. The company behind the polls, called Median Strategies, now says it was part of a short-term social experiment, admitting to the LA Times after multiple requests for comment, that the polls were bogus. The company now says it's closing its doors. One of their fake polls showed a controversial Democratic candidate for governor in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, ahead by more than 20 points. She went on to lose by less than 1%.
Another fake poll showed Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass leading her challenger by nearly 12 points. Bass ended up leading by 5 points. The company claims the whole thing was meant to test how easily unverified polling could spread through politics and the media. And it did spread. The results were shared online, picked up by some local news outlets, and may have even moved election betting markets. That said, major poll trackers did not include them because the company wouldn't answer basic questions about its methodology.
The US government is now targeting the people who run courts solely designed to go after war crimes and crimes against humanity. And the Trump administration says it wants that court dismantled. We're talking about the International Criminal Court, aka the ICC. The Trump administration accuses the ICC of overstepping its authority by investigating and trying to prosecute people from countries that are not members of the court, like the US and Israel. So Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced yesterday that there are new sanctions against the court's president and one of its senior prosecutors. That means they're essentially cut off from the US financial system. The Trump administration has actually been going after the ICC for months and trying to persuade other countries to leave it. But this is considered a significant escalation since it's taking aim at the court's top leadership. So it could make it harder for the court itself to operate. In response, the ICC says the new sanctions from the US undermine the rule of law, and it warns that threatening judges and other court officials puts the international legal order at risk. All that said, the ICC still does have 125 other countries. So these actions from the US alone aren't likely to bring the court down anytime soon.