President Donald Trump is closing out the final days of a turbulent midterm campaign with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, two states he has handily won in the past, underscoring the defensive posture his Republican Party is taking as the elections become a referendum on his second term.
Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s former opponent in the U.S. Senate primary, Haley Stevens, stunned party officials on Sunday by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers after
Democratic tensions boiled over days before the election that could determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill. The move came after Stevens was uninvited to a joint event the same day with El-Sayed.
A federal judge on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. Revelations came last week from The New York Times that Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting a retired teacher, Dan J. Sullivan, to join the Senate race in Alaska.
The Latest:
Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed hit on his campaign’s mainstays during an event Sunday.
He said in Southfield, Michigan, that he would work to establish universal Medicare, end corporate spending in elections and lower costs overall. He also criticized President Trump for talking about El-Sayed’s Muslim faith.
“It’s OK. We’re going to make it easy on him, all right? Because in three days we’re going to make them call me senator,” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed refrained from addressing news Sunday that his former Democratic primary rival for the Michigan Senate seat has backed his general election opponent, Republican Mike Rogers.
Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, posted the video on social media ahead of the president’s planned visit to Kansas for a rally in support of incumbent GOP Sen. Roger Marshall.
Hamilton and Marshall are locked in a tight race as Hamilton seeks to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. He needs to win over disaffected GOP and GOP-leaning independent voters to succeed.
He said in his video that he will be “a senator who listens” and noted the 25,000 members of his Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City area are split in their political affiliations.
“I’ll work across the aisle to do what’s best for the people of our state,” he said.
Republicans argue that a Hamilton victory would put liberal Democrats in charge of the Senate and that he would follow them.
President Trump was trying to boost Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall’s reelection campaign in a tight race that has become the most expensive contest in Kansas history.
The outdoor rally was planned for later Sunday at the airport in Salina, about 110 miles west of Topeka, a venue seating at least 2,000 people.
Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is bidding to become the first Democratic candidate in Kansas to win a Senate race in 94 years. Democrats have poured $62 million into television and digital ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Marshall and Republican groups have spent $43 million, bringing total ad spending to $105 million.
Among those waiting for President Donald Trump at his later rally in Kansas was Liz Wagner, a 59-year-old restaurant owner.
She traveled from Atchison, Kansas, on the state’s eastern border, to attend Trump’s planned outdoor rally later Sunday at the airport in Salina, Kansas.
“I want people to get up and go to work and stop sticking their hands out,” she said while waiting to get into the rally. “The Democrats like to hand things out.”
She plans to vote on Election Day for Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who’s running against Democrat Adam Hamilton.
Luke Aines, a roofing company operator in western Kansas, also was on hand with his three teenage daughters and spoke of voting a straight Republican ticket.
He said he supports banning transgender girls and women from female sports teams, as a Kansas law does. Two of his daughters compete in rodeo, and his third daughter is a wrestler. “They only wrestle girls, which I’m grateful for,” he said. “We wouldn’t be doing it, otherwise.”
President Donald Trump continued his commentary on the appearance of Republican candidates, this time saying Iowa’s GOP Senate candidate, Ashley Hinson, “put herself in shape” without using GLP-1 drugs.
“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier,” Trump said. “She knew what she was doing, she knew the weight that was on her. Really, literally the weight, and she knew the importance of what she was doing. And she went out — the old fashioned way too, not with ‘give me a shot.’”
After being interrupted by a protester, he continued.
“She went on a regimen, she put herself in shape,” Trump said. “She’s in perfect shape. She was great the other way. But she put herself in shape and she did that for you.”
He contrasted her weight loss with his own experience, saying, “Me, I put on a couple of pounds.”
President Donald Trump told rallygoers in Iowa that Democrat Haley Stevens “was very brave” to cross the aisle and endorse a Republican in Michigan's Senate race.
“I don’t know Haley. I’ve never met Haley. But Haley said what few people were willing to say,” Trump said Sunday. “I’d love her to join the Republican Party actually.”
Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s former opponent in the U.S. Senate primary, Stevens, stunned party officials by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers. The development came as Democratic tensions have boiled over days before the midterm election concludes Tuesday.
The president was speaking at the first of two rallies he has planned for Sunday, with another organized later in the day in Kansas.
“I love Iowa,” he said in Dubuque. He said he watched the Iowa Hawkeyes win their football game on Saturday and predicted “we’re going to have a much bigger win on Tuesday.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and congressional caucus leaders are standing with their party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, after fellow Democrat Stevens stunned colleagues with her surprise support for Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan.
“Let’s be clear about one thing,” Jeffries said in a post. “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed will always put the American people first,” he said. He called Rogers “a partisan hack who represents more of the same MAGA extremism.”
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, of Washington state, a former leader of the progressive caucus, implored Michiganders to “stay focused on the race at hand, and cast their ballots” for El-Sayed.
“Michigan’s Senate seat will help decide whether Congress finally puts a check on Donald Trump’s overreach,” said Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez of California, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ pac. She said El-Sayed has the PAC’s “full support.”
Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said he spoke to Stevens after she endorsed Rogers.
“I’ve spoken to her, encouraged her to stay safe and keep speaking the truth and I think she’s doing that very well,” Johnson said as he and President Donald Trump arrived in Iowa for a campaign rally.
"She’s always been very thoughtful,” he said of the Democrat. “She loves her state. She served it as best she could and she’s speaking the truth.”
Democrats are blistering Haley Stevens after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Stevens had “dangerously chosen to betray” Michigan families by backing Rogers over his Senate opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed defeated Stevens for the nomination in their party’s primary earlier this year.
Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild, who had been Stevens’ roommate in 2023, said she’d be a “pariah among her friends.”
Justin German, who served as Stevens’ chief of staff, said in a social media post that he and many other members of her staff have resigned over the endorsement. German also said her team still supports El-Sayed.
Messages seeking comment were left with Stevens on Sunday.
The Justice Department has filed notice it will appeal a federal judge’s ruling dismissing its challenge to Alaska’s certification of the U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.
“Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes,” a department spokesperson said in a statement.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason wrote in an order that the relief the Trump administration is seeking is “infeasible” because many voters have already cast ballots.
Sullivan is an ally of President Donald Trump and is facing Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate contests. Tuesday’s ranked-choice election also includes a candidate — a retired teacher — who shares the incumbent’s name.
The stakes are high, and the GOP worries voters will get confused and accidentally vote for the wrong Sullivan.
Alaskan voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent” on their ballots, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” will not have a party affiliation.
Tom Tiffany, a member of Congress the past six years, said after a rally Sunday in heavily Democratic Madison, Wisconsin, that he can “feel” the momentum of the race breaking for him.
“This is a turnout election,” he told supporters. “This is how we’re going to win this.”
Tiffany faces Democrat David Crowley as Election Day approaches.
“I can feel it out there,” Tiffany said. “People are going to turn out on Tuesday. Be part of the movement.”
Both Tiffany and Crowley are campaigning with surrogates across the state in the final two days before the election.
Tiffany was joined at the Madison stop by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson.
Crowley is campaigning on Sunday with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and on Monday he will be with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach says in a cease-and-desist letter to the Bluestem Fund that offering anything of value in exchange for voting violates both federal and state law.
He directed the group to preserve all records and communications related to its canvassing activities. Kobach on Saturday said a voter in Wichita alerted his office to the “brazen” offer of a gift card.
The PAC’s chair, Topeka attorney L.J. Leatherman, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Kobach is an ally of President Donald Trump and served as vice chair of Trump’s short-lived commission on election fraud in 2017.
In September, Kobach sent a similar letter to a League of Women Voters chapter in northeast Kansas after it offered $5 gift cards to students who registered to vote. The league chapter said it was cooperating with Kobach’s inquiry and is committed to complying with all laws.
Democrat Haley Stevens says she’s voting for Mike Rogers for Senate in Michigan over her former primary opponent Abdul El-Sayed.
Stevens, standing alongside Rogers, said she’d be voting for other Democrats but would not cast her ballot for El-Sayed, who defeated her in an August primary.
“It is more a statement about standing together against hate and the future of this state and this country, than it is anything else,” she said.
Rogers said he was honored to have Stevens' vote.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has denounced Haley Stevens’ endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race.
“This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens,” Schumer wrote in a social media post of the step taken by his fellow Democrat, Stevens.
Schumer, who had backed Stevens in the primary, reiterated the party’s support for Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated her in August.
Stevens announced her endorsement of Rogers earlier Sunday in the general election contest against El_Sayed. El-Sayed dismissed it, saying he’s worried about voters’ concerns, not intraparty drama.
Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed batted away news that his former primary opponent Haley Stevens said she’s backing Rogers in the Michigan contest.
“At the end of the day I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he said, standing alongside Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
He added: “Rather than focus on a distraction about who said what to whom, where they went, I’ve been consistent. I want to get money out of politics. I want to put money back in pockets. I want Medicare for all.”
His comments came shortly after his primary opponent and fellow Democrat, Haley Stevens, said she was voting for Rogers.
Stevens’ split from the party comes two days before Election Day, which will determine which party controls Congress.
A federal judge on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses.
The lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before the election and with early voting underway, called for an investigation into whether votes for retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan were intended for the senator. The state said the case lacked merit and argued there would be no way to determine that without violating voter privacy.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason wrote in the order that the relief the United States seeks is “infeasible” because many voters have already cast their ballots. She said the cast ballots have been mixed together to the point where they cannot be matched to specific voters.
“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified 'investigation' of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” she wrote.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has been hospitalized after having a stroke, his office said Sunday.
Murphy, 53, was at his son’s hockey game Saturday when he began to feel numbness in his arm. He was taken to a hospital, where doctors discovered he had had a stroke.
He was transferred to Johns Hopkins.
“The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” according to a statement from his office.
Murphy is in his third term in the Senate. He previously served in the House for three terms.
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms went to her home congregation in Atlanta before voter turnout rallies later Sunday in middle Georgia as she tries to achieve something that’s never happened: a Black woman being elected governor in the U.S.
Bottoms told her fellow members at Ben Hill United Methodist Church that her mother, a member of the church, had been “aggressive” about making sure she was back in the church before Tuesday.
Bottoms says it’s the place where she was married and had her children baptized, telling the congregation from the pulpit that the church is “always home.”
Meanwhile, Republican Rick Jackson dropped in at the north Georgia evangelical megachurch led by one of Trump’s spiritual advisers, Pastor Jentezen Franklin. Jackson did not speak at Free Chapel church in Gainesville but stood and waved as Franklin gave him an effusive welcome.
Some 2.8 million early ballots were cast in Georgia, and that’s a midterm election record.
Democrats are encouraged because almost a third of the early ballots were cast by Black voters, several percentage points more than in previous elections. Latino turnout, a small slice of Georgia’s electorate, also is higher. The early electorate is also several points less white than in 2024, when Trump carried the state, and 2022, when Republican Gov. Brian Kemp was reelected.
Georgia’s metro areas, which lean Democratic, also have posted higher early turnout compared to the 2022 midterms, while most rural counties, which skew Republican, are down.
And analyses show the early vote uptick is not strictly from usual Election Day voters shifting to early ballots.
It’s enough that Kemp has cut social media videos urging Republicans to vote Tuesday and reminding them that he first won in 2018 by less than 55,000 votes, or 1.4 percentage points.
Dubuque, Iowa, resident Jon Lutz watches videos of President Donald Trump all the time. But Sunday afternoon’s rally will be the first time Lutz sees the man in person.
The 60-year-old civil engineer plans to cast his ballot Tuesday and said he’s a straight-ticket Republican voter.
Lutz said Trump has already accomplished so much in the first two years of his second term, and he wants to see Republicans keep control of both the House and Senate to allow his agenda to continue.
“He’s done what he’s said he’s going to do,” Lutz said. “I want him to keep going.”
Veterinarian Wendy Kuenzler, a 44-year-old from Burlington, Iowa, voted on Saturday. On Sunday she was in the concessions line at a packed arena in Dubuque, Iowa, waiting for the start of Sunday’s rally and her first time seeing Trump in person.
Kuenzler said she felt like Iowa was at a crossroads in this competitive midterm election. In the race for U.S. Senate, Kuenzler said there was no question she was supporting Republican Ashley Hinson.
Kuenzler said Trump isn’t the reason gas and grocery prices are still high, adding: “He’s on the path to correcting it.”
Former President Barack Obama has endorsed Charles Booker for the Kentucky U.S. Senate seat opened up by Republican Mitch McConnell’s retirement.
The two-term Democratic president said Sunday that Booker would stand up for working families.
“I’m proud to support Charles Booker for the U.S. Senate,” Obama said in a statement. “Charles cares deeply about the people of Kentucky.”
Booker, a former state legislator, is running against Republican Rep. Andy Barr.
McConnell, the former Republican leader in the Senate, is retiring after seven terms in the Senate.
