Early voting is significantly outpacing the last midterm election, with particularly sharp increases in states hosting competitive Senate races, according to an Associated Press analysis of voting data from five days before Election Day.
President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas, opting instead to support Republican candidates with telerallies that his party said could reach more voters in nearly two dozen states
in the final days of a midterm election that could cost the GOP control of Congress.
Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola denied knowing anything about efforts to stack Alaska’s ballot with another candidate who shares the name of her Republican rival, and the Justice Department escalated its criminal investigation of voting in California with new grand jury subpoenas.
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Two legal filings overnight reveal how Trump critics are fighting back as the Justice Department deepens its scrutiny of local election administration.
A group including the League of Women Voters that’s challenging the administration’s collection and analysis of state voter data asked for temporary restraining order.
Another coalition that includes California workers filed a new lawsuit alleging that federal threats to election workers “significantly risk interfering with the lawful administration of the ongoing 2026 midterm elections and the counting of ballots in accordance with federal and state law.”
Both filings asked federal judges to stop the Justice Department from demanding that election workers remove voters or segregate ballots, and from threatening election workers with prosecution for counting ballots that the Trump administration alleges were sent to noncitizens.
The United States scrapped plans for a “family photo” with participants at the G20 foreign ministers meeting on Friday in Atlanta after several European diplomats objected to being photographed with Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, and threatened to walk out of it.
That’s according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter that has endangered prospects for the world’s largest economies to reach consensus on a number of global crises, especially the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The officials said Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided to pull down the planned photograph late Thursday after determining that controversy over the posed event would be a distraction.
Lavrov’s attendance has been a matter of concern for many European nations who are also NATO members, notably because Ukraine, which is not a G20 member but has participated as an observer at previous ministerial meetings, was not invited.
— By Matthew Lee.
The data compiled by The Associated Press offers a glimpse of early voter participation five days before an election that will determine control of Congress and other key contests across the country.
Across the country, more than 43 million Americans had voted early in person or returned mail ballots, nearly 10 million more than in 2022. The figures cover 47 states and Washington, D.C., compared with 48 states and the nation’s capital four years ago.
In states that provide information on voters’ party affiliation, about 6.8 million Democrats and 5.2 million Republicans have cast ballots early. Those figures do not account for all early voters nationwide or indicate which candidates received their votes.
Early voting is continuing to significantly outpace the last midterm election, with millions more Americans casting ballots in advance and particularly sharp increases in states hosting competitive Senate races.
An Associated Press analysis of voting data five days before Election Day shows the surge is especially pronounced in Texas, where voters are deciding closely watched Senate, House and governor’s races. More than 6.3 million Texans had voted early as of Wednesday, compared with 4.2 million at the same point four years ago, a 50% increase.
Advance voting has also increased over 30% from the same point four years ago in Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and Kansas, all states with competitive Senate races. In South Carolina, where voters are choosing a successor to the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, early voting is up 83%.
The Vatican confirmed Friday that the Chicago-born pontiff submitted a mail-in ballot in Chicago ahead of November’s midterm elections, citing his long-standing belief in civic participation.
Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, “has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen” and has done so “whenever he was eligible to do so,” the Holy See press office said. “The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes.”
The statement said he had also voted while living in Peru whenever he was eligible.
Speaking to Fox News Channel from Michigan, Sen. Tim Scott said Attorney General Todd Blanche was “acting expeditiously” to probe allegations that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting another candidate on the Alaska ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent.
Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said Peltola must be “absolutely concerned about her inability to win the election without lying, cheating, therefore stealing the results of this election.”
Peltola on Thursday denied she knew anything about the efforts, first reported by the New York Times.
Scott wasn’t asked about GOP efforts to stack ballots with candidates who could siphon votes, a long and unseemly tradition across the political spectrum in American politics.
Peltola dismisses the claims as a ‘distraction’ Peltola alluded to the controversy in a fundraising post Thursday.
“They can’t win on their record so they’re trying to intimidate me into backing down,” she said, adding later: “This is just another distraction as they avoid answering for the skyrocketing cost of living we’re facing because of their tariffs and forever wars. It won’t work.”
The situation in Alaska isn’t that unusual. Political parties often support extra candidates on ballots to try to pull votes from their rivals. If state courts allow it — as has the Alaska Supreme Court — legal experts say the federal government has no role challenging the results.
In Ohio’s Senate race, Republicans have been tied to an effort to boost a socialist on the ballot who would pull votes from the Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Jon Husted.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman told Fox News Channel on Friday he has “no doubt” that Sen. Darline Graham will win in their shared home state of South Carolina.
But Scott also said he spoke with constituents of Rep. Ralph Norman — who lost this summer’s special GOP runoff to Graham — who were upset with the congressman’s lackluster support for the nominee.
Norman has said he’s personally supporting Graham but that he wouldn’t campaign with her, and Norman’s son penned an op-ed last week saying he was voting for Democratic nominee Annie Andrews.
Trump rallied with Graham on Thursday in Rock Hill, in Norman’s district.
Asked by a Kansas radio host if he had advice for raising sons, Trump said Friday that he had repeatedly advised his now-adult children, “no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.”
But then the president offered another bit of counsel: “lowkey the tattoos.”
“I have friends that get tattoos,” Trump went on. “I don’t know. I don’t quite understand it, but that’s okay.”
Trump said his daughter Ivanka got tired of the imperative against drugs, alcohol and smoking. He didn’t offer his children’s reactions to the advice on tattoos.
Instead of a weekend rally with GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, Trump called into a Kansas City radio station Friday, calling the incumbent “fantastic” and saying he’s “in a close race.”
Talking up policy directives he says have helped farmers, like expanding the use of tax-free red-dyed diesel, Trump said the GOP incumbent is “the one that probably more than anybody else pushes us on this.”
The president also called Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, pastor of the nation's largest United Methodist Church, a “radical” who has “caused turmoil with the church because he’s so liberal.”
Blitzing states where Republicans are in close races, Trump had been scheduled to rally in Kansas on Saturday but is now doing rallies by phone instead. The Republican National Committee says the move maximizes Trump’s ability to speak to voters nationwide.
Nearly 20 experts said recent U.S. policy decisions risk putting the goal of ending Russia’s war on Ukraine further out of reach, according to a letter to the president obtained by AP.
“To restore American leverage, we urge you to enforce the sanctions law you signed,” they said, referring to the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act.
They also called on Trump to reverse his Russian diesel deal, release Patriot interceptors that Ukraine is counting on for its defense and ensure Ukraine is part of any negotiations over a peace deal.
The letter was signed by retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, retired Gen. Philip Breedlove and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, among others.
The Pentagon has accused a newly ousted three-star general of leaking sensitive information to the media just hours after officials confirmed his removal from a top military planning post.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia as head of strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a defense official said late Wednesday. Typically, the general in the position and their staff are responsible for generating and coordinating military plans for both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the president.
No reason was given for the firing, the latest in a series of ousters or departures of military leaders under Hegseth. However, a Pentagon official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, later said in a statement that Sylvia was under investigation over allegations of sharing classified information about the Iran war, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and other topics with journalists.
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The U.S. Justice Department has issued subpoenas to California officials in an escalation of its scrutiny of local election administration.
The Associated Press obtained copies of three subpoenas sent Oct. 21 and Oct. 24 to employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, ordering them to appear in court on Nov. 4, the day after the election.
The subpoenas request any documents and communications related to letters sent in July and October by federal officials to state election officials outlining allegations of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.
They also seek any information about efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted. All four U.S. attorneys in California were issuing subpoenas, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The subpoenas represent the latest salvo in a fight between the Trump administration and California over the eligibility of voters in the heavily Democratic state, amplifying pressure on local election officials to comply with exhaustive government demands and setting the stage for legal challenges.
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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed will campaign Sunday in Detroit alongside former primary rival Rep. Haley Stevens, marking their first public appearance together in months after a week in which lingering divisions spilled into public view.
The two will be joined by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of the country’s most prominent Black politicians, at a get-out-the-vote event at a Detroit church, according to two people familiar with the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. The event was first reported by The Associated Press.
The joint appearance — their first since a Democratic unity breakfast days after the Aug. 4 primary — follows weeks of Democrats struggling to unite behind El-Sayed following his razor-thin victory over Stevens. She received significant support from the Jewish and Black communities, leading to concerns about turnout in the general election.
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Ohio governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial attack ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, is off the air after the Republican spent about a quarter of what his campaign initially said it would invest to run it.
Ramaswamy said during a campaign appearance in Vandalia, Ohio, on Thursday that the ad’s planned run was over. His campaign originally said it would spend $4 million to air the ad, but data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact showed it spent roughly $1 million.
The divisive spot had provoked backlash in Ohio and among politicians of both parties across the nation. It featured Donna Arthur calling her daughter a lifelong liar. That was despite the two having not seen each other for nearly 50 years. Arthur lost custody of her children in 1978 after her husband, their stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton when she was 12.
President Donald Trump lambasted a reporter who asked about his health and whether travel fatigue prompted him to cancel a Kansas rally over the weekend. Trump called him “disgusting,” and told him to get “in shape,” and said he’d hold a tele-rally for Sen. Roger Marshall instead.
President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas, opting instead to support Republican candidates with telerallies that his party said could reach more voters in nearly two dozen states in the final days of a midterm election that could cost the GOP control of Congress.
The president traveled to South Carolina Thursday for the second time in a month, a sign of Republican anxiety about Darline Graham’s ability to fend off a robust challenge from Democrat Annie Andrews for a critical U.S. Senate seat.
Voters in South Carolina have not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly three decades. But Andrews, a pediatrician who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress, is urging voters seeking change to “try something new for once.”
That message could resonate in an election year defined by voter frustration with the economy, gas prices and the war in Iran, putting Trump’s Republican Party on defense in territory where they have rarely had to compete in recent years.
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Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola denied Thursday that she knew anything about an effort to put another candidate on the Alaska ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent as the Justice Department escalated a criminal investigation with new grand jury subpoenas.
“I just want to clear the air,” she said at the top of a speech in a downtown bar in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.”
Peltola is running against Sen. Dan Sullivan. A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony or documents, along with records preservation demands, were issued after The New York Times reported that Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan Jr. as part of an alleged effort to confuse voters.
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