The Latest: Trump pushing to keep red-state Senate seats in GOP hands
President Donald Trump told Texans they'd better accept data centers in their communities and floated making Venezuela the 51st state as he stumped for Republican Ken Paxton on Wednesday, while Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico said a “corruption crisis” plagues U.S. politics.
Social media videos believed to be produced with artificial intelligence and linked to Russia are misusing real people’s names and photographs to spread disinformation about two Democratic Senate candidates in the final stretch of midterm voting.
And Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million on television ads focused on transgender-related attacks against Democrats as Americans go to vote, betting that struggling GOP candidates can leverage the divisive cultural issue to overcome concerns about Trump’s leadership and the state of the economy.
Here's the Latest:
Zach Lahn, Iowa’s Republican candidate for governor, told hundreds of MAHA supporters that he’s fighting a “spiritual battle” that’s deeper than politics.
“I don’t believe that the ideas in this movement are radical,” he said.
Lahn said that companies for too long have had booming bottom lines at the expense of the health of American children.
Lahn has talked about how the message is unusual from a Republican candidate for governor and that he has already changed the narrative in the party following his surprise win in the June primary.
The one group that saw the promise of his campaign from the beginning, he said, was MAHA Action, which endorsed him.
The crowd also roared in applause and waved their “Make Iowa Healthy Again” signs when Lahn said he thinks pulling the COVID-19 vaccine off the market is a “pro-life issue.”
The former president seems to be asking even former Trump voters to hold the president to his own promises.
He made the now-familiar tack of acknowledging voters who “weren’t crazy about the guy’s character” but were “frustrated” by inflation and bought into his promises to curb prices immediately.
Two years later, “everything is more expensive now,” Obama said, because of Trump’s “bad decisions” to impose tariff’s and start a war in Iran.
Obama emphasized that sometimes bad outcomes are because of “factors beyond the president’s control ... but that’s not the case here. In this case, the administration’s own actions are directly responsible for rising costs.”
National politics reporter
The Georgia Democrat began the cycle viewed as his Senate caucus’ most vulnerable member since Trump won Georgia comfortably just two years ago.
But Ossoff came out of the gate this spring unloading on Trump as a corrupt figure profiting off the presidency, and he didn’t let up at his campaign’s biggest rally yet.
It’s “the most corrupt administration of all time, and everybody knows it,” he said. The senator name-checked “Prince Don” and “Prince Eric,” the president’s sons.
He blasted “a needless war” in Iran started by a “useless commander in chief.”
And then he brought the argument back to voters’ wallets.
“While the crook president and his crook family rake in billions from all over the world,” he said, U.S. consumers keep paying higher prices for gas, groceries and other necessities.
“Enough is enough,” Ossoff said. “Georgia will bow to no king.”
The president in his speech once again defended Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for a campaign ad that features the estranged mother of Dr. Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent for Ohio governor, which has drawn backlash because of the abuse she experienced as a child.
Trump said Ramaswamy was treated “very unfairly” and asked “How the hell is that his problem?” that Acton’s mother was willing to attack her daughter.
More than 40 groups have spent money on television and digital ads outside of the campaigns of Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton.
The race is considered a tossup even though Democrats haven’t won a Senate contest in Kansas since 1932. Trump planned to have a rally Saturday in Salina -- his second in Kansas stop in two weeks.
Democrats have outspent Republicans on television and digital advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. That’s largely because Marshall’s fundraising has lagged far behind Hamilton’s.
Through Wednesday, Hamilton and Democratic groups had aired ads costing more than $46 million, according to AdImpact, while Republicans had run nearly $33 million in ads. Their total cost of $79 million already represented a record for any race in Kansas.
But Democrats planned to air ads costing more than $13 million and Republicans, more than $8 million, in the final six days before the Nov. 3 election.
Obama hasn’t taken the stage yet in south suburban Atlanta but his most famous campaign chant has rung through the arena several times.
“YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!” the crowd has chanted at multiple points when encouraged to reelect Ossoff to the Senate and Bottoms to the governor’s office.
Bottoms got a chant, too, of her first name.
“KEISHA! KEISHA! KEISHA!”
And when Ossoff just went through his typical litany of Trump’s and his family’s business deals and financial gains since the start of his second presidency, the crowd turned a onetime Trump rally chant against the president.
“LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!”
Ossoff did not encourage it explicitly. But as Trump once did when the “LOCK HER UP!” chant rang out about Hillary Clinton, the senator paused and let the crowd have its say.
Republican Congressman Andy Biggs is confident he’ll become Arizona’s next governor.
“We feel good. We feel the momentum has kind of swung our way. We’re seeing a lot more Republican voters returning in ballots, early ballots, and that’s good for us,” Biggs said in an interview following a campaign event on Wednesday.
He’s running against Katie Hobbs, the Democratic incumbent.
At the campaign event, Biggs spoke to around 45 people from Phoenix’s Orthodox Jewish community about Arizona’s school voucher program, which allows parents to receive tax dollars to pay for non-public school options. Biggs has consistently defended the program despite critics pointing to evidence there have been fraudulent payments.
“We stand for school choice. We will defend school choice. And where it’s possible, we will expand school choice,” Biggs told the crowd.
The Georgia Democrat has been fighting uphill financially running against billionaire Republican nominee Rick Jackson.
The healthcare magnate has spent more than $200 million of his personal fortune to run for governor. But Bottoms is trying to turn his wealth against him by tying “Slick Rick Jackson,” as she calls him, to Trump and his billions.
“Two out-of-touch billionaires who want to keep getting rich off the backs of taxpayers,” she said.
Jackson’s healthcare employment firm has for years held lucrative government contracts.
Bottoms also mocked Jackson from initially saying he wouldn’t attend a Trump rally in Georgia last Saturday and then changing his schedule.
“I guess Trump called Slick Rick and told him to pull out his matching suit and tie,” she said.
Early in his remarks as he took the stage in Chillicothe, Ohio, Trump was interrupted by a protester shouting about Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump rarely brings up Epstein, his former friend, but remarked on it Wednesday. He repeated comments he made last year saying that he threw Epstein out of his Florida club about two decades ago.
“That was a great thing I did, I must tell you,” Trump said.
He added: “I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago.”
After he was interrupted by two more protesters, Trump returned to his remarks and pivoted immediately into praising Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s physique.
Georgia Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told a boisterous crowd that the election is about creating opportunity for “every Georgia community” and rejecting a “wannabe dictator and billionaire sidekick.”
That was her nod to Trump and her opponent, Rick Jackson, who’s said he wants to be the president’s “favorite governor.”
Bottoms, 56, promised to expand Medicaid, raise teacher pay, pause data center construction, expand affordable housing and support small businesses.
No Black woman in the U.S. has been elected governor. Bottoms didn’t mention that barrier. But she mentioned some famous Georgians from history.
She cited the civil rights icon and late Atlanta congressman John Lewis and former President Jimmy Carter and their emphasis on democracy.
And rather than note Martin Luther King Jr., she quoted his wife, Coretta Scott King, “who said there comes a time when time itself is ready for a change.”
Hundreds of Iowans gathered for a MAHA rally in Clive, Iowa, to celebrate Republican candidate for governor Zach Lahn. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will also take the stage.
Lahn made Iowa’s cancer crisis and questions about agrochemical safety a dominant part of his campaign, and he won the June GOP primary with the support of a burgeoning MAHA grassroots movement in Iowa’s small towns and rural communities.
A Steak ’n Shake eatery was outside the venue, and attendees enjoyed grass-fed steak burgers and fries. Plenty of green MAHA merchandise was stacked on tables, including hats and bumper stickers.
Signs read: “Make Iowa Healthy Again” and “Make Iowa water safe for kids again.” Lahn has explicitly linked the high levels of nitrates in Iowa’s waterways from agricultural runoff to Iowa’s high cancer rates.
The response is raising concerns among lawmakers that the military and even its independent inspector general are reluctant to confront the influence that SpaceX chief Elon Musk has over defense communications.
Ukrainian officials reported this month that their connection speeds to Starlink and its military-grade version, Starshield, were throttled, affecting their ability to intercept Russian attack drones.
A bipartisan group of senators asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate. In a response obtained by The Associated Press, the watchdog said those concerns are better answered by the Air Force.
An Inspector General’s Office spokeswoman says it determined that “the matters raised were best addressed by” the Pentagon, which referred a request for comment to the watchdog.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called it “concerning that the Inspector General has apparently decided not to investigate satellite communication disruptions that Ukraine relies on to protect its civilians.”
Former President Bill Clinton will return to the campaign trail on Friday, swinging through Mississippi to stump for Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom.
Mississippi hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1982 but both parties have started paying more attention to this year’s race, sensing that Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith may be vulnerable.
The 80-year-old Clinton has returned to campaigning in recently, appearing last week in Florida with David Jolly, the Democrat running for governor.
Other high profile Democrats who have visited Mississippi lately include former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Trump held a rally with Hyde-Smith on Monday.
Jason Turkish told The Detroit News that he believes Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is an antisemite and will back his Republican opponent in Michigan’s crucial U.S. Senate race.
Turkish is engaged to marry Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed. She has endorsed her former rival.
Turkish said El-Sayed has made life more dangerous for Jews by referring to Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide. He is Jewish and a Democrat, according to the newspaper.
“We have never seen a candidate for U.S. Senate act so recklessly toward the safety of Jews in the community as we have seen from Abdul,” Turkish told the newspaper.
El-Sayed, who would be the country’s first Muslim senator, has denounced antisemitism while fiercely criticizing Israel for its military operations in Gaza.
Asked about Turkish’s comments while campaigning in the Detroit area Wednesday, he said he is trying to build a large coalition against the Trump administration.
The Georgia senator, who doubles as the senior minister at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, is rousing the capacity crowd at a metro Atlanta arena as if it’s his Sunday morning congregation.
The election is “about the character of the country” and “spiritual wickedness in high places,” Warnock said, blasting Republicans from Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson to Georgia’s leading Republican candidates.
“They have made Jesus a victim of identity theft,” he said of Republicans who’ve backed healthcare cuts alongside tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals.
He specifically called out Johnson for his public piety.
“You can’t pray over the people” and then “prey on the people,” said Warnock, a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
He added that Trump’s second presidency “is a crime syndicate operating out of the Oval Office.”
Warnock is speaking ahead of Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms and former President Barack Obama.
The Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan told reporters after an event in a Detroit suburb that he wanted U.S. tax revenue to be spent “to build schools and opportunity here, rather than sent abroad to drop bombs on anybody.”
“I don’t think we should be funding foreign militaries generally,” El-Sayed said. “That’s Israel. It’s also Egypt. It’s also Saudi Arabia and Qatar and UAE,” referring to the United Arab Emirates.
His answer was in response to a question about a controversial ad published by Rebellion PAC, which El-Sayed disavowed, that features two people saying they can’t afford groceries because their money needs to go to Israel’s military.
“That has nothing to do with our campaign,” El-Sayed said. “It’s certainly not what I want to be talking about right now.”
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs says the Justice Department’s list of 405 supposed noncitizen voters in the state is “deeply flawed.”
The DOJ on Monday sent Hobbs a letter asking him to make sure election officials don’t count any ballots turned in by those people unless the state can confirm they’re valid voters. It followed a similar request in California and was the Trump administration’s latest attempt to sow doubts about the election.
Hobbs responded Wednesday, saying a cursory review reveals that many on the list are U.S. citizens, not registered to vote or have inactive registrations. Hobbs said that without proof of ineligibility, it would be “irresponsible and illegal” not to process ballots from registered voters.
The DOJ said the 405 suspected noncitizens had voted more than 1,500 times. Hobbs’ office noted that one person on the list last voted in 1994. The state has processed more than 113 million ballots since then.
The Federal Election Commission says access has been restored to a website for online filing of campaign finance disclosures.
The website was taken offline without explanation on Monday. The website for searching already-filed reports was unaffected by the outage.
Hecklers yelled “go home” and “you lied about your citizenship” while filming the Democratic candidate for Senate before being escorted out by security.
The crowd chanted “USA” to drown out the protesters and El-Sayed led the crowd in singing a short snippet of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam.
El-Sayed is speaking to a crowd of about 120 in a live music venue in Wyandotte, Michigan, a southwest suburb of Detroit that sits along the Detroit River.
Asked about Bolsonaro’s assertion that he won the presidential elections in Brazil, the U.S. president said he would not comment.
Instead, Trump said he has given Bolsonaro a “pass” to come into the country.
“I won’t get involved,” Trump said. “It was a very strange election, that’s for sure.”
The president made the comments in response to a New York Times report that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was involved in an effort to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to run against Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan in a bid to confuse voters.
Trump, making the comments to reporters on Wednesday as he prepared to fly to Ohio, called it “voter fraud at the highest level.”
“It turned out it was a scheme by the Democrats. That’s what they do best: They cheat,” Trump said.
Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton responded Wednesday to waves of GOP television ads that suggest he protected a predator.
Hamilton, who is in a tight race against Republican Sen. Roger Hamilton, is senior pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church. Republicans are highlighting two cases of an adult leader’s alleged sexual abuse of teenage boys at annual church camps in 2005 and 2006.
“They’re desperate and they are twisting the truth,” Hamilton said after a Topeka campaign stop.
The church investigated the 2005 incident but didn’t report it to authorities, and the man returned in 2006. After the second incident was reported, the local prosecutor did not pursue criminal charges.
The church has since required all incidents to be reported. Hamilton said the church should have gone to authorities in 2005 and he made a mistake in not personally checking to see that the man didn’t return in 2006.
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