With days until the midterm elections, a new poll from CNN places Democrats well in the lead in key Senate races in Texas and Michigan, while projecting tighter contests in Kansas and Maine.
In Texas, the poll found 49% of likely voters would back James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, over Republican Ken Paxton, who netted just 43%.
In Michigan, it found Democrat Abdul El-Sayed had received support from 49% of likely voters compared with 42% for his opponent, Mike Rogers.
The poll found no clear winner in the Senate contests in either Maine or Kansas. Maine was once viewed as Democrats best chance to flip a Senate seat, as they aimed to oust Republican incumbent Susan Collins. But the race has been marred by the late replacement of the original Democratic nominee, populist Graham Platner, with Troy Jackson, after Platner dropped out following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Kansas has been a far more unexpected battleground, with Democrat Adam Hamilton mounting a stiff challenge against Republican Roger Marshall in the normally deep-red state.
Trump, speaking to a crowd in South Carolina, mused about continuing his habit of unilaterally renaming bodies of water with the Strait or Hormuz, the Hudson River, and the Atlantic Ocean.
During his second term, Trump has attempted to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to the Gulf of America and Lake America respectively. Since the outbreak of war with Iran, Trump has vowed to see the Strait of Hormuz, the vital maritime shipping route for oil and gas that Iran has strangled in retaliation, to the “Trump Strait.”
“Now I need a river and on ocean,” Trump said.
Musing on which rivers he would rename, Trump said “the only two I could think of were the Hudson River and the Mississippi.” He added: “I guarantee you, I will never be changing the name of the Mississippi.”
(No word yet on why the Potomac, Colorado, or Ohio rivers, among others, weren’t suitable candidates.)
In another side tangent, Trump said that his wife, Melania, dislikes when he dances onstage at campaign rallies.
“She hates when I dance,” Trump said, noting that she told him that it’s “not presidential.”
(He then proceeded to pantomime his usual dance move as the crowd applauded.)
Speaking to a campaign audience in South Carolina, Donald Trump reiterated his belief that Mary Peltola should be criminally prosecuted and disqualified from the Alaska Senate contest.
“This is voter fraud at the highest level,” Trump said of the Peltola campaign’s alleged scheme to recruited a man who shared the name of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, to run, all in a bid to peel away votes.
Trump added that Peltola “should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan.”
“I think it’s a criminal act, what they did,” Trump said.
Trump is now speaking onstage at a midterm rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
He’s in the state to campaign on behalf of Senator Darline Graham, the sister of late Senator Lindsey Graham who was appointed to finish his term. She finds herself in a surprisingly close race with Democratic nominee Annie Andrews.
So far, Trump has – among other remarks – defended the war in Iran and his economic record, waxed nostalgic about his debate performance against Joe Biden, and called for cognitive tests for elected officials (while touting his own record of taking such tests).
He also went on an extended tangent attacking the reliability of pollsters. This as Republicans face dismal polls that put Democrats ahead in several key Senate races (though the polls have underestimated Trump before).
Flávio Bolsonaro, the rightwing candidate who clandestinely fled Brazil for Miami after losing the Brazilian presidential election, planned his escape with the blessing of the Trump administration, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The paper, citing US officials familiar with the plan, said that Trump had ordered that Bolsonaro be welcomed into Florida on a temporary parole status, which will probably be extended to permanent residency. A White House official also arranged the private jet that shuttled Bolsonaro and his family to Miami, the Times reported.
Bolsonaro fled Brazil after his losing the election in a come-from-behind victory for the left-wing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had also unseated Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2022. Jair Bolsonaro, once one of Trump’s strongest allies in Latin America, is now serving a 27-year sentence for allegedly trying to unseat Lula in a coup.
Flávio Bolsonaro picked up his father’s torch, running on a right-wing platform to unseat Lula. After his defeat, he was ordered to surrender his passports in connection with a criminal money laundering investigation.
Instead, Bolsonaro absconded across the border with Argentina alongside his family, flight from there to Ecuador and ultimately to Florida.
Trump did not outright endorse Flávio Bolsonaro in the race. But he has an increasingly embittered relationship with Lula, and has said that the results in the Brazilian election appeared rigged.
From his new home in Florida, Flávio Bolsonaro has declared himself the true winner of the election and vowed to contest the results.
As we reported earlier, Republican officials have called for an investigation into an alleged ballot-stacking scheme in Alaska’s competitive Senate race by Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign.
For months, Donald Trump and others accused Peltola and Democrats of recruiting candidates with the same name as her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, to purposefully confuse voters when they cast their ballots in next week’s midterms.
Though Peltola’s campaign denied encouraging or soliciting a man named Dan J Sullivan to run, a recent New York Times report indicated Peltola’s campaign did recruit him.
While ballot stacking is not illegal itself, the US president and justice department have filed a lawsuit pre-emptively to block the certification of the Senate election results if the incumbent senator loses.
In this explainer, my colleague Ariana Baio takes you through what to know about the situation and ballot-stacking.
A US Senate race in one of the most Republican states in the country is now a dead heat, according to a new poll showing Democrat Annie Andrews tied with Darline Graham, the Republican incumbent senator.
The Palmetto State has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, and Donald Trump won it by nearly 18 points in 2024, but a New York Times/Siena poll this week has the two candidates neck and neck, at 48% each.
Graham was appointed to the seat after her brother, Lindsey Graham, died in July, and she entered the race at Trump’s urging, without having ever held elected office.
Her inexperience has become one of the defining aspects of the campaign, which culminated in an August debate when she admitted she was “not that informed on national security” when asked about US policy on Taiwan. In the poll, 51% of voters said she lacked the right experience to be an effective senator.
Andrews, a pediatrician from Charleston, has meanwhile built her campaign around her medical career. Her solution to better access to doctors and climbing medical bills has been to advocate for a public option and cheaper prescription drugs.
Here’s Joseph’s report:
An Obama-era federal investigation of Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar found some evidence suggesting that she entered into a sham marriage in 2009 to help a man suspected of being her brother obtain a green card, according to the New York Times (paywall).
At issue is Omar’s 2009 marriage, when she was already a US citizen, to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen whom she divorced in 2017.
Current and former officials told the paper that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security investigated the marriage in the summer of 2016, but the case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the suspected crime fell outside a five-year statute of limitations.
The Times notes that it remains unclear what evidence investigators had that suggested the marriage was fraudulent and that the person Omar married was her brother.
Marrying someone for the sole purpose of helping them obtain a green card is illegal under federal law, while marrying a sibling is illegal under state law.
Omar has denied the allegations. Spokesperson Jackie Rogers told the NYT in a statement:
Rep. Omar has repeatedly and unequivocally denied this baseless, disgusting conspiracy theory. This is a desperate political smear designed to distract from Trump’s failed presidency and two years of Republican failure in Congress.
Another aspect that remains unclear whether federal prosecutors could still pursue charges in spite of the statute of limitations for marriage-based immigration fraud.
The Trump administration has revisited the case as part of a wider investigation into Omar’s family’s immigration history to the United States.
Investigators are examining whether Omar’s late father lied or omitted information in immigration forms before becoming an American citizen, and whether Omar, who was a child when she immigrated to the United States, was too old to have qualified for citizenship through her father in 2000, the Times reported.
Trump’s homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said of the matter last month, in remarks directed at Omar:
If we can prove that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.
Officials in the Trump administration lured automakers to expand manufacturing in the US by dangling a chance at tariff relief, according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
The outlet, citing sources privy to details of the plan, reported that the Trump administration had promised Volkswagen executives that companies that invest in the US would soon benefit from a tariff relief program, before the administration unveiled a new $4bn Audi plant in Georgia. (Audi is owned by Volkswagen.)
The tariff relief program the Trump administration promised would come through the US Department of Commerce, the Journal reported. The plan, which is not yet finalized, would establish carve-outs for companies that commit to building factories in the US.
On his way to a campaign event in Texas, JD Vance backed an investigation into Mary Peltola’s alleged scheme to siphon away votes from her Senate opponent by a recruiting a candidate with the same name.
Addressing reporters on the tarmac, Vance said that Peltola had “tried to commit election fraud” in the Alaska Senate race by recruiting a man named Dan Sullivan to run against her primary opponent, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.
When asked whether he agreed with Trump’s insistence that Peltola be criminally prosecuted for the tactic (which, while underhanded, has been employed elsewhere, and is not clearly illegal) Vance backed the idea, though in not in quite so strong terms.
“I think that we should certainly look into whether she committed election fraud,” Vance said.
He continued: “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful. So whether it’s criminal or not, she certainly has committed, I think, a great moral failing.”
While Trump is campaigning in South Carolina, Vance is heading to Texas to try and win support for Ken Paxton. Paxton, a scandal-marred former Texas attorney general and Trump devotee, has trailed in the polls in recent weeks, putting the Republicans at risk of losing a Senate seat in Texas for the first time in decades.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
