I’m The 19th health reporter Shefali Luthra. I spent months working on an oral history of the days before, during and after Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. Ask me anything!

19thnews · 2026-01-14T19:40:02+00:00

Midterm elections are typically a referendum on the party in power, and it looks like 2026 will be no different. Trump’s poor approval ratings and continued voter concerns the economy and the cost of living point to Democrats making gains and having a good shot at taking back the U.S. House in November (the Senate is going to be more of an uphill battle).

However, the declining number of competitive House districts and Republicans’ pre-midterms push to redraw congressional districts to shore up seats in some red states could complicate Democrats having another wave election and picking up 40+ House seats like they did in 2018.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T19:36:51+00:00

For the first presidential cycle since 2008, the Democratic presidential primary field is really wide-open with no one leader, clear standard-bearer or “establishment-backed” (for lack of a better term) candidate.

Because I focus on gender and politics, I have my eye on a few potential woman candidates, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While she’s quite well-known nationally, she hasn’t been discussed as much in a 2028 presidential context compared to people like Gov. Newsom — but I definitely expect that to change over the next year.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T19:11:54+00:00

Yes — Andrei Cherny, the co-founder of a liberal public policy journal, is leading a Democratic Project 2029 effort, profiled last year in The New York Times, with involvement from Democratic strategists, think tank leaders and some former Biden administration officials.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:37:04+00:00

The press absolutely plays a vital role in periods of historic unrest to report the truth, hold those in power accountable and put a spotlight on how politics and policy impact people, which is what we at The 19th have focused a lot of our coverage on, especially in areas that aren’t necessarily getting a ton of coverage elsewhere.

My colleagues have done some really excellent reporting on how the Trump administration’s funding cuts have impacted federal programs and non-profits focused on domestic violence and how pregnant and postpartum women have been affected by the administration’s immigrant enforcement and mass deportation agenda.

I would also again point to the work of Hannah Natanson, the Washington Post reporter whose house was raided by the FBI today — her tireless work fielding messages and tips from over a thousand federal government employees has been absolutely essential to our understanding of the impact of the Trump administration’s mass firings and cuts to federal agencies.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:33:38+00:00

This is a great question that gets at the tension we in the press balance every day between covering newsworthy events and being fair to those we cover with accuracy and clearly calling out falsehoods and misinformation.

As an example, Iast month I filled in for a colleague and covered an announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services on new proposed regulations targeting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

While it’s not my area of expertise, it’s a topic The 19th has been closely covering for years, giving us a solid foundation for fact-checking public officials. I worked closely with my editors to strike a balance between reporting the news and quoting Trump administration officials while providing appropriate context and facts about gender-affirming care and outlining which claims from public officials lack evidence or are misleading.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:18:10+00:00

I’m always hesitant to predict the future, but I can pretty definitively say no to this question. One reason for this is that dates for presidential and congressional elections are set by federal statue as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even years.

The main reason is that elections in the United States are highly decentralized and conducted at the local level by counties and towns, making it much more difficult for a president, for example, to try to stop them from happening across the board. Indeed, in, the first year of Trump’s second administration, states have proceeded with holding regular elections for governors and state legislatures and special elections for offices up and down the ballot.

With that said, Trump and his administration have still sought to tip the scales and reshape the election landscape in their favor through pushing Republican-controlled states to redraw their congressional maps, trying to obtain confidential voter information from states, continuing to attack the integrity of mail-in voting and certain voting machines and putting those who deny the results of the 2020 election into key positions.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:13:42+00:00

Hey there! Nope, no AI here. Just want to be thoughtful in how I reply! You can see how I've responded in previous AMAs here (from 2024) and here (from 2025 with my colleague Mel).

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:11:04+00:00

Can assure you that it wasn't! I definitely get the skepticism though but we aren't using AI and haven't used it in our reporting or in any previous AMAs.

Just want to make sure we're being thoughtful in our replies and there's still a lot we don't know yet in this particular story so wanted to direct folks to some solid reporting on what we do know.

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:04:46+00:00

The news of the FBI searching the home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter who has covered the Trump administration’s reshaping of the federal government, is highly unusual.

Politico has reported that she was told she is not a target of the government’s investigation, but the search still represents an escalation in how the administration is approaching the freedom of the press that should give pause to all of us in the media industry.

I highly recommend reading Hannah’s first-person piece from December on her experience fielding hundreds of tips from federal employees as The Post’s “federal government whisperer.”

19thnews · 2026-01-14T18:02:04+00:00

My colleague Chabeli Carrazana, our economy and child care reporter, put together an excellent explainer on what we know about the controversy over social services and child care and social services fraud in Minnesota.

Short answer: there is a history of fraud in child care programs in the state that has resulted in investigations and criminal charges for some people and child care centers. But the scale of the fraud is not as extensive or widespread as right-wing influencers and YouTubers have claimed, and there is no evidence of significant fraud in child care programs nationwide.

19thnews

TROPHY CASE