House Democrat accuses Rubio and Trump of ‘lying’ about Ukraine intelligence as president continues campaigning – US politics live

Reporting from Topeka

Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 – does Adam Hamilton have the courage, brain and heart to cause an extraordinary upset?

Just two years after Donald Trump won Kansas by 16 points in his fight to regain the White House, Republicans in the state are scrambling to retain their dominance. The battle for one of its two seats in the US Senate is too close to call, setting the stage for a potentially extraordinary upset.

Some recent polls even put Democrat Adam Hamilton on course for a historic victory. Kansans have not sent a representative of the party to the US Senate since 1932.

On the campaign trail, Hamilton regularly points to one of his state’s most famous residents: Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Recalling a visit he made to Liberal, Kansas, and its Oz museum, he asks the audience to recall what Dorothy’s companions on her journey need. The lion needed courage, the scarecrow a brain and the tin man a heart.

Washington needs more of all three, he says, and he can deliver it. He decided to run for office after seeing the Trump administration act in ways that were “not good or kind or compassionate or humble”, Hamilton – in the energetic cadence of the pastor he is – told a crowd of business leaders in Topeka on Friday. He was waiting for Roger Marshall, the state’s Republican incumbent senator, to stand up for his state and its people.

“I would have arguments with Roger Marshall in the shower. He was not in the shower with me,” Hamilton joked. “And I would just say, Roger, please stand up for your people. You were not hired to be a spokesperson for the White House. You were hired to fight for your people.”

Hamilton’s role as senior pastor of the country’s largest United Methodist congregation comes with name recognition and speaking skills. But Marshall’s liabilities as his opponent – namely, the fact he sued hundreds of his patients for unpaid bills, resulting in the arrests of dozens of them – have contributed greatly to Hamilton’s prospects of flipping the seat.

Electorally, he’s trying to win over independents and Republicans, calling himself an independent-minded Democrat. It would be valuable, he told the business leaders last week, for Kansas to have a Democrat like him and a Republican in Jerry Moran representing them in the US Senate – working both sides of the aisle.

Read the full dispatch here:

Mike Bloomberg is donating $80m to Democrats ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

Speaking to the New York Times on Tuesday, Bloomberg’s advisor Howard Wolfson said: “He believes in participation in our democracy. And obviously the scale of his participation, given his resources and his means, is greater than other people’s financially. But other people are participating in different ways.”

“He is of the view that resources matter in campaigns,” Wolfson said, adding that Bloomberg “expects a result.”

The outlet reports that the former New York City major, now 84-years old, is focused on securing a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, with at least $50m of his doantion to be spent on House races.

In response to Bloomberg’s donation, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said: “Mayor Bloomberg played an incredibly instrumental role in the decisive midterm election in 2018. The extraordinary support from Mayor Bloomberg will once again help Democrats flip the House,” the outlet reports.

A new survey reveals a widening “empathy gap” between Republicans and white evangelicals and the rest of the American public.

On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute released its annual American Values Survey. The survey found that white evangelical Protestants are the only religious group in which a majority does not agree that empathy is foundational moral value (42%). Instead, a majority (54%) say empathy can be dangerous when it leads people away from a society guided by God’s truth, PRRI said.

The survey also found that Republicans who view Trump favorably are divided on the role of empathy: 49% consider it a fundamental moral value, while 48% believe it can be dangerous. In contrast, 72% of Republicans who view Trump unfavorably see empathy as a core moral principle.

The vast majority of Democrats (84%) and independents (70%) agree that empathy helps build a healthy society, compared with 54% of Republicans, the survey also noted.

The man who attempted to ambush the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed with a question about his supposed allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood – which El-Sayed parlayed into a viral clip for his campaign – is the son of a political operator who recently received $250,000 for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed, the Guardian has learned.

In the now-famous exchange, a man – first identified by the Handbasket as Thomas “Tommy” Teepell – asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow” the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed said he would, but then asked: “What are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?” What followed was a five-minute exchange that has drawn over 50m views across several social media platforms, in which El-Sayed queries the man about the guarantees of religious freedom in the constitution.

Teepell is the son of Timothy “Timmy” Teepell, a longtime strategist for the Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley as well as former Republican Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Timmy Teepell’s firm, Breakthrough LLC, was paid $250,000 on 29 September by America Next, a 501(c)(4) non-profit with which it shares a Baton Rouge office suite, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Thom Tillis, the outgoing Republican senator from North Carolina, has said he expects his party to face a thrashing come November, as a the consequence of Donald Trump’s policy agenda. “I have on my countdown clock as ‘whoop ass’,” Tillis said in an interview with Politico.

“It adds up. It adds up in the American mind. The thing about the American people, I love the electorate, they’re a pretty kind and forgiving people, but they don’t like bullies … There’s an element on either end of the political spectrum that loves the bully. Most of the people in the middle don’t,” he said.

Tillis announced his decision to leave Congress at the end of his term, after Trump threatened to primary him after the senator issued a series of “no” votes on the president’s sweeping domestic policy legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.

However, speaking to Politico, Tillis said that he would still vote for Trump again.

“That’s assuming he does learn a lesson versus double down on these results,” he said.

Representative Eugene Vindman, the Democratic congressman from Virginia, has slammed Marco Rubio’s recent comments that the US is not witholding intelligence from Ukraine.

“He [Rubio] is lying and so is the president when they say that they are not restricting intelligence in violation of the law,” Vindman said in an interview with CNN. “There was a law that was passed in 2024 – the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – that said that intelligence sharing must continue, or Congress needs to be notified. They’re both lying. It’s costing lives. This is gaslighting.”

Vindman, a former US army officer whose brother – Alexander – provided key testimony that led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment, added: “It’s desperate attempt to change a narrative two weeks before an election because the president knows that it was his policies – these terrible tariffs and this war in the Middle East that have caused gas prices to spike”.

When asked how he’s certain the administration is lying, Vindman confirmed that there have been investigations into Zelenskyy’s accusations that intelligence has been disrupted.

“They’ve conducted tests and studies that clearly demonstrate that,” he told CNN. “They state very clearly that they’re not getting the early warning on ballistic missile attacks in country. It’s coming intermittent. Sometimes they get warnings, sometimes they don’t. That was not the case prior to a few days ago.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he had a “substantive conversation” with US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

“I am grateful for his readiness to help and his clear position,” the Ukrainian president said in a statement. “First, ballistic missile interceptors, which are needed to protect lives. Second, early warning of Russian ballistic missile attacks, which is vital. Third, the situation with Starlink/Starshield, which needs to be restored.”

This comes as Zelenskyy’s feud with Trump was reignited following the US president’s decision to waive sweeping sanctions and tariffs on Russia for 60 days. Both Zelenksyy and several allies have criticized the move as a boon, ultimately, for Moscow. Trump has also chided Zelenskyy for the continued attacks on Russian refineries – calling it the primary cause of the global energy crisis that actually reached fever pitch after the Iran war started in February.

Recently, Kyiv has also said that US intelligence has been disrupted, which officials say has affected Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian attacks.

Rubio told reporters in India today that “there has not been some deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine”.

“I saw somebody associated with the Ukrainian government say that people in Ukraine are dying because the U.S. is denying them information. That’s scandalous. That’s outrageous,” he added.

The secretary of state said there appeared to have been undetected airstrikes against Ukraine on 13 and 18 October. The US is reviewing those incidents, he said, but believes that, to the “extent that happened”, they were the result of a “technical matter”.

“It was not the result of any sort of U.S. directive not to provide advance warning of a strike, and we are providing the same warnings to them now that we always have,” Rubio said.

Today, we’ll also hear from the nominees in one of the midterm elections’ nail-biters: the US Senate race in Michigan.

Here, Dr Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat, will face former Republican congressman Mike Rogers.

They’ll debate at 12pm ET in Detroit, and we’ll bring you the latest lines.

It’s been a contest punctuated by several racist comments hurled at El-Sayed, including from Rogers and Donald Trump. Who have sought, baselessly, to tie the Democratic nominee’s Muslim faith to extremist groups.

A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest news out of France, following riots that saw thousands arrested over the weekend, and curfews implemented.

Donald Trump has pushed baseless claims that the riots – which began as protests against the country’s crumbling education system – are due to mass migration.

The president repeated the falsehoods, even though French authorities have given no indication that immigrants are responsible for the riots. It didn’t stop Trump from kicking off his Kansas rally by playing a Fox News report ahead of his appearance on stage, which showed looting and destruction after chaos erupted in France.

Also today, Trump will begin his day in Washington.

He and vice-president JD Vance will make an announcement in the Oval Office at 1.30pm ET, before Trump gets back on the trail.

Donald Trump has announced $8bn worth of economic aid for farmers hit by soaring diesel prices, as polling shows Republicans on course for a midterms drubbing.

The president’s announcement came 15 days before a midterm election dominated by anger over rising fuel costs caused by the US war on Iran.

Farmers in Kansas, a heavily agricultural state, have been hit hard by the consequences of the Iran war. A gallon of diesel costs nearly $6, nearly double from this time a year ago.

In August, the president upset cattle ranchers with a plan to reduce import tariffs to lower the price of beef and with aggressive immigration raids that prompted some agricultural workers to stay at home.

Trump’s announcement came during a rally in Kansas on Monday night as Republicans faced mounting anger over the cost of living and the ongoing war in Iran. As my colleague David Smith wrote last night: “The fact that Donald Trump was here at all said more about a looming electoral disaster facing his Republican party next month than anything contained in his dark and discursive 98-minute stump speech.”

Trump seemed to acknowledge there was a risk Democrats could win in the state, where no Democrat has won a US Senate seat since 1932. As he stumped for first-term senator Roger Marshall, the president told the crowd: “You’re really sort of – I hate to say it – you’re sort of tending toward the purple,” the president told about 5,000 supporters in a multipurpose arena outside Wichita, acknowledging that Kansas already has a Democratic governor in Laura Kelly. “That’s why I have to be sure that we get this guy.”

Welcome to the US politics live blog! I’m Shrai Popat and I’ll be bringing you the latest lines from Washington and beyond.

We start today with Donald Trump’s upcoming to trip to Greenville, North Carolina – where he’ll stump for Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee for US Senate, facing an uphill battle against Roy Cooper, the state’s former Democratic governor who has consistently led Whatley in the polls for the open seat.

North Carolina is the president’s second stop in a seven-day campaign blitz across a number of states that he won in 2024. It’s all to drum up support for Republican candidates on the ballot ahead of the midterms – now just two weeks away.

However, earlier this month, the Senate’s top GOP Super Pac announced it pulled a $71m ad spend in North Carolina, in order to funnel more money into the Kansas race – a sign that Republicans’ hopes to hold on to the Tar Heel state might be dwindling.

On Monday, Trump rallied in Kansas – as the Senate competition there becomes increasingly tight.