The Latest: Many states deciding control of the Senate are seeing a big boost in early voting
Voter turnout is soaring compared with the last midterm election in many of the states that are expected to decide control of the U.S. Senate, according to an Associated Press analysis of early voting two weeks before Election Day.
Advocates for greater voter identification requirements are pursuing a new approach in some states: a mandate to place driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers on mail-in ballots. Variations of the voter ID proposals are being decided in the midterm elections in California, Colorado and Nevada — three states where conservative activists collected petition signatures to bypass Democratic-led legislatures and place the issue directly before voters.
Trump must sit for a deposition in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11, a federal judge said, after the broadcaster’s lawyers accused him of delaying his testimony. The judge warned that, unless the discovery period is extended, Trump could face sanctions including dismissal of his lawsuit if he fails to answer questions from the BBC’s lawyers under oath.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats, filed the lawsuit. They claim Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, is refusing to restore voting eligibility to 25 people who investigators have determined are U.S. citizens.
Heap initially suspected them of being noncitizens and revoked their eligibility.
The complaint says that unless those affected have their voter registration status restored immediately, they risk being denied the right to vote in this year’s midterm elections.
In a statement issued Thursday, Heap said his office has been “trying to restore these voters for weeks” but has been denied the proper documentation to do so by Mayes and the county attorney.
The Trump administration and some Republican officials have prioritized finding noncitizens on state voter rolls this year, but many people initially flagged in those investigations have turned out to be U.S. citizens
President Donald Trump said Thursday that Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, should keep running a controversial ad featuring the estranged mother of Democratic opponent Amy Acton, posting on social media that it was “hitting pay dirt.”
Trump also denounced Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who criticized the ad as “deeply, deeply troubling” earlier in the day. Acton previously served in DeWine’s administration as a health official. Her mother lost custody of Acton and her brother after her husband — the children’s stepfather — was indicted for raping Acton.
“He strongly suggested that Vivek should, ‘take down the Ad,’” Trump wrote. “He probably wants a Dumocrat to win, and certainly doesn’t want someone who will do a much better job than he is capable of doing. I suggested, on the other hand, that Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a rally with Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson on Thursday in which hundreds of attendees cheered her calls to expand health care and get the U.S. out of Iran.
Ocasio-Cortez is stumping for progressive candidates in the run-up to the midterm elections. Jackson is running against five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins. He and Ocasio-Cortez dedicated a lot of the event to calls for changing America’s priorities from foreign conflicts to domestic cost of living issues.
Ocasio-Cortez said the nation’s spending priorities are leaving working people behind by focusing on war.
“How are we going to afford Iran, how are we are going afford Gaza, when our people back home can’t eat, can’t afford health care, can’t afford to build a bridge to get to work,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Jackson also took a jab at Collins for appearing with retired Sen. Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who became an independent, in Lewiston on Wednesday.
The Trump administration has hit 61 current and former Bolivian and Colombian officials, judges and lawmakers and their families with travel bans for alleged corruption and narcotrafficking.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday he had taken the step to further efforts by the U.S, Colombia and Bolivia to crack down on drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere. The sanctions will revoke any current visas those targeted may hold and deny any future applications.
They apply to 40 Bolivians, including two sitting members of parliament a former attorney general and a number of judicial and police officials, and 21 Colombians, including a current mayor and several former lawmakers.
Rubio said the sanctions target foreign nationals “who, through corruption or narcotrafficking activities, undermine democratically elected governments in our hemisphere -- regardless of their political affiliation.”
The South Carolina Republican senator says that’s what it will take to express her thoughts to the president about his waiver of the bill named for her late brother, Lindsey Graham.
Trump campaigned in the state for Darline Graham on Wednesday, as she seeks a full term replacing her brother.
She rode back to Washington with the president afterward “because I was asked to” but told reporters Thursday in Columbia that she didn’t bring up the waiver because “there were other people on the plane,” adding, “That’s a private conversation.”
Graham helped ensure Senate passage of the sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, which Trump signed into law but paused last week. On Saturday, she said she intended to discuss Trump’s decision, with which she disagreed.
Calley Means, a top Make America Healthy Again advisor to the Trump administration, has resigned from his role just days ahead of the midterm elections.
Means said he “leaves with tremendous respect” for Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He did not elaborate on the reasons for his departure.
“The past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and healthcare incentives that profit from us being sick,” he said. “This movement is in the first inning and just getting started.”
Means was hired as a White House adviser early in the second Trump administration. He used that perch to attack the nation’s leading physician groups, federal agencies and government scientists, claiming they only protect their own interests in the nation’s $4.9 trillion-a-year industry.
Vice President JD Vance stopped his speech and led the audience in prayer after a person in the risers behind him appeared to collapse on Thursday.
As emergency workers responded during a rally in North Platte, Neb., Vance asked those “who are of the praying type” to join him in prayer. Vance, a Catholic, crossed himself and recited the Lord’s Prayer as some in the crowd folded their hands and joined him. Vance also asked his staff to send a doctor.
“Always in moments like this, I try to pray as the Lord taught us to pray,” Vance said.
After the prayer, Vance walked into the risers and knelt down as the person was being helped. He later returned to the podium to finish his remarks.
President Donald Trump on Thursday accused LeBron James of disrespecting the United States after the NBA star appeared to continue his warm-ups while the national anthem was performed before Philadelphia’s season opener on Tuesday.
“I said right from the beginning that he’s no good, a TOTAL DISGRACE,” Trump said of James in a social media post sharing the video. “LeBron James should apologize to all of those Great American Warriors and Heroes who died for the American Flag, and all that our Country stands for!”
James appeared to practice a golf swing and jump shot as The Star-Spangled Banner was performed at Tuesday’s game in New York. James, starting his first season with Philadelphia, was lined up alongside teammates who mostly stood still during the anthem.
Trump and James have been critical of each another for years, occasionally trading public swipes.
The order came as the BBC’s lawyers complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Attorney Charles Tobin said that, with two months left in the discovery period, “We still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff.”
He noted there was an agreed-upon date of Oct. 16, but Trump canceled it for a “matter of national importance.” Tobin said Trump was in fact campaigning in Georgia.
“He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett said Trump must sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, or face sanctions up to dismissal of his lawsuit — unless the discovery period was extended past Dec. 18.
The Trump administration has faced numerous questions about interruptions to the Elon Musk-made satellite internet system that Ukraine has relied on to counter Russian attacks.
In Cincinnati on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance was asked about Musk’s involvement in the slowdown of Starlink and Starshield in Ukraine and whether it warranted an investigation.
“I think that fundamentally, Elon Musk runs a private corporation,” Vance told reporters. “And I think it’s completely understandable that he doesn’t want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do.”
Vance continued: “So I don’t think this is about Elon. I think it’s fundamentally what is America’s policy in Ukraine and Russia going to be.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, have said this week that the U.S. didn’t order or direct any throttling of network access in Ukraine.
Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in Maine on Thursday to campaign for Democrat Troy Jackson, whose Senate bid is critical for the party to take control of the chamber.
Jackson is running against five-term incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. She campaigned with retired former Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin in the state on Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez’s event with Jackson is at a theater in Portland on Thursday and is billed as a “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall.
Ocasio-Cortez has also campaigned for Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for Senate in Michigan, another state that's key to Democrats’ efforts to flip the Senate.
Ohio’s governor has denounced a controversial ad featuring the estranged mother of Dr. Amy Acton, taking sides with the Democratic candidate for governor and former member of his Cabinet over her Republican rival, Vivek Ramaswamy.
At a gaggle with reporters at the Statehouse in Columbus, DeWine called the ad “deeply, deeply troubling.”
“It’s wrong to run this ad,” he said. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down.”
DeWine’s remarks place him at odds with Ramaswamy, whom he has endorsed. The biotech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate has taken responsibility for the 60-second video, which has drawn bipartisan rebukes, and is spending $4 million to broadcast it online and on TV.
The vice president laid out concerns about horserace polling and urged Republicans to tune them out because it could dampen enthusiasm among Trump voters.
“Obviously, you never know what the final outcome is going to be,” Vance told reporters on Thursday in Cincinnati, adding: “it’s important for everybody to remember that sometimes these polls actually have this, this demotivating effect on our voters.”
He cited some polls in the 2020 and 2024 presidential races that turned out to be highly inaccurate.
“But I talk to people, and I do think they have the effect of demotivating our voters, which is why I encourage people: ignore the polls, run like we’re down, and try to make the best case that we can,” Vance said. “Eventually, of course, the American people make the decision.”
Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.
An indictment unsealed on Thursday charged Lucas and six other defendants, including several of her relatives, the Department of Justice said in a statement ahead of a news conference scheduled for 10 a.m.
Lucas surrendered on Thursday, a Justice Department spokesperson said.
The charges came after the FBI searched Lucas’ hometown office and a cannabis shop in which she has a stake in May. At the time of the search, the 82-year-old Lucas — who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration — characterized it as an attempt to intimidate her.
“This is the circus we always expected it to be, and we will wait for further details to have a more specific response,” said Brian Woolfolk, chief counsel for the L. Louise Lucas Legal Defense Fund.
Iowa’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate is navigating a tricky political landscape. Ashley Hinson promises to support Trump when it benefits Iowa but also vows to push back when necessary.
Although many Republicans are walking a political tightrope in this year’s midterm elections, Hinson’s balancing act is more challenging than most. Iowans have been hamstrung by manufacturing job losses, healthcare clinic closures and shrunken farm profits since Trump returned to the White House, but Hinson is also relying on the president’s loyalists to show up for her.
On Thursday, Hinson will join Trump for a rally in Sioux City, which is in Iowa’s conservative northwest corner. The visit to safe territory is geared toward boosting turnout even as it ties her more tightly to an unpopular president.
Trump is expected to visit the state again Nov. 1. He is “anxious for Iowans to hear his message before they vote,” Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufmann said in announcing the president’s schedule.
The Trump administration plans to keep pressing to enforce restrictions on healthcare for transgender people in federal prison after a loss on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.
A Justice Department spokesperson expressed disappointment with the high court’s Wednesday decision but pointed out that the justices have not made a final ruling.
Lower courts have blocked enforcement of the policy, which would halt surgeries, taper off hormones and end social accommodations like makeup and wigs.
The Trump administration had filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to intervene, but the justices declined. The government can continue to appeal through lower courts.
The Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor who supported Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 loss in the battleground state said Wednesday he did it because of concerns about election funding from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“One of the reasons that I did that is ’ Zuckerbucks,’” U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said in a debate, using a term coined by opponents of the money.
Tiffany also said he opposed certifying Wisconsin’s election results because clerks in Milwaukee and Dane counties advised voters they could claim to be “indefinitely confined” due to the COVID-19 pandemic and receive absentee ballots without showing a photo ID.
More than 200 communities across Wisconsin received about $10 million in grants from the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life to help run elections during the pandemic.
The debate exchange was an example of how Trump’s false claims about election fraud and his attempt to prevent Joe Biden from taking office continue to ripple through American politics.
Republicans are broadly aligned on what they want the next Congress to do — except when it comes to Trump, the new AP-NORC poll shows.
At least half of Republicans who identify as supporters of MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans want leaders to lower costs, end the Iran war and reduce the federal budget deficit.
But while about 6 in 10 MAGA Republicans want Congress to prioritize supporting the Trump administration’s agenda, only about 2 in 10 Republicans who are not supporters of MAGA say the same.
Lisa Ostlund, a 46-year-old from Massachusetts who identifies as a MAGA supporter, wants the next Congress to prioritize Trump’s agenda. She doesn’t support everything Trump does, but she credits his policies with her recent ability to find housing after struggling with homelessness.
“You got to care about your American people,” Ostlund said. “He definitely doesn’t say it right, but you do have to put them first.”
There may be schisms awaiting the Democratic Party if they win a governing majority in November, the new AP-NORC poll finds.
About three-quarters of registered voters who identify as democratic socialists say investigating the Trump administration should be one of Congress’ top priorities, compared with slightly fewer than half of Democrats who do not align with democratic socialism.
Democratic socialists are also more likely to want to end military aid to Israel and less likely to say it’s a top priority to find common ground between the two parties.
Justin Campbell, a 31-year-old Democrat in Mississippi who identifies as a democratic socialist, wants Congress to hold the Trump administration accountable.
“It feels a little cliché to just say roll back the past two years, but honestly, mostly just roll back the stuff he’s done the past two years,” Campbell said.
Voters from both parties want the next Congress to focus on making life more affordable and ending the war in Iran, while fewer are looking for an emphasis on Trump — whether it’s investigating him or supporting his agenda.
The results from a new AP-NORC poll suggest that voters are ready for Congress to tackle core issues, despite Trump’s central role in the midterm campaign.
About 8 in 10 registered voters, including most Republicans and Democrats, say lowering the cost of living should be “one of the highest priorities.”
Most voters also want Congress to prioritize ending the war with Iran, with roughly 7 in 10 saying this should be a top focus. Substantially fewer voters — about 4 in 10 — want Congress to make investigating the Trump administration a high priority, and only about 2 in 10 want Congress to prioritize supporting Trump’s agenda.
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