Authorities in West Texas announced the arrest of 13 suspects, including two Mexican nationals who ran a vehicle theft ring that was being used to supply various terrorist drug cartels. Prosecutors allege the defendants would steal large SUVs and convert

The post U.S. Feds Takedown Cartel Vehicle Theft Ring in Texas – Used to Make Armored Trucks appeared first on Breitbart.

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Speaking to reporters on the tarmac before departing for a campaign event in Michigan, JD Vance responded to a question about President Trump’s remarks branding Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a “jihadist.”

Vance, who has sparred with the progressive El-Sayed repeatedly on the campaign trail, took a somewhat softer tone. But he didn’t walk away from Trump’s remarks.

President Donald Trump has long been associated with lust. The 2016 election prominently featured "the Access Hollywood tape" in which he can be heard boasting about grabbing women "by the pussy." But recently, his affections have turned to men.

"I examined his ass," Trump said of Sen. Jon Husted (R–Ohio) at an October 17 rally. "I examined his ass. And then I looked at his shoulders; I looked at his feet; I looked at his hand; I looked at his jawline." He liked what he saw.

There is one candidate, however, whose ass appears to be safe from the president's admiration. "He may not dress right. He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I've ever seen," Trump told the crowd on the first night of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. Even still, "he deserves to be your next senator."

Such was the pitch for Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general asking voters to promote him to the U.S. Senate. It has been a tough sell, much more so than is typical for a Republican fighting to represent Texas on the national stage. His opponent, state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, has often led in the polls in a place where a Democratic Senate victory would usually be relegated to liberal fever dreams. As A.G., Paxton has been dogged by an impeachment and by longstanding accusations, including from within his party, that his ethics compass is all but demagnetized.

There is another potential obstacle in his way, something Trump hinted at repeatedly in his Trumpian way over the course of that two-day convention. The main characters in the MAGA movement often have a kind of crass charisma—not necessarily a literal beauty, but certainly a talent for performance and presentation. This is a theme in populist movements for a reason: It's the people versus the elite, the outsiders versus the establishment, us versus them. So too can it serve as a helpful distraction when policies' practical results fail to match the promises made, as well as when allegations of corruption surface.

Paxton has the baggage with fewer obvious tools to combat it. And yet if one word best describes him, it may be survivor.

One Scandal After Another

Paxton had been Texas' top law enforcement officer for about six months when he became a defendant.

In July 2015, a grand jury indicted him on three felonies. The charges—two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register as an investment adviser—concerned work he had done while in the Texas House of Representatives. As state representative for part of Collin County, he convinced investors to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Servergy, a tech startup, while allegedly failing to disclose that he was paid to attract those very investments.

A state attorney general showing up for a mug shot reverses the typical arrangement. Still, there were signs that this was on the way. In 2014, while Paxton was a state senator, the Texas State Securities Board disciplined him and fined him $1,000 for not completing the required registration to solicit investors. But while the criminal investigation delving into the full scope of alleged misconduct had been announced to the public, it was put on hold until after the election so as not to potentially sway the outcome.

It did not sway the next one either. Paxton was reelected in 2018. But that run-in with the law turned out to be just the beginning.

In 2020, the scandal that would come to define his career began to take shape. Several senior officials from Paxton's office went to the FBI to report him for what they said was an inappropriate and illegal relationship with his friend Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer who was already under federal investigation.

Paxton, the officials said, had leveraged his office to help Paul in various legal disputes, such as foreclosure proceedings. They also alleged that the attorney general had deployed a special prosecutor to go after Paul's enemies. Paxton denied the accusations. He was reelected in 2022.

"These were upstanding people that Ken Paxton himself had hired because of their conservative bona fides. And yet they all left stating, 'I don't want to have anything to do with this guy,'" says one Republican official who worked alongside Paxton in the Texas government. "It's basically the story of Ken Paxton in my mind. If he doesn't cross the line and literally break the law, he constantly skirts it. And therein lies the problem.

"Now, that's not me saying that he doesn't break the law," the official continues. "I'm just saying that is kind of his MO."

The following year, the Republican-led Texas House of Representatives impeached Paxton for conduct related to the same scandal. The information aired during his trial, particularly as it related to his love life, arguably made the biggest impression on the public consciousness. Paul, it seemed, had set up a fake Uber account under the name "Dave P." It had a mysterious habit of summoning cars to pick up a passenger a block from Paxton's house so it could travel to the apartment of Laura Olson, Paxton's girlfriend.

This was complicated, because Paxton also has a wife, Angela Paxton, herself a member of the Texas state Senate. That body would go on to acquit Paxton of impeachment in September 2023. Angela announced two years later that she was filing for divorce "on biblical grounds."

As for that 2015 criminal indictment, the attorney general was set to go to trial in April 2024, after a series of protracted delays, when he cut a deal at the 11th hour. He would pay restitution and do community service, and in exchange, the prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges. Had he been convicted, he faced decades in prison, and, per his own guidance, he would likely have been precluded from running for public office in Texas again as a felon.

Paxton declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate the next year.

A Blunt Instrument

Paxton's knack for survival has long baffled onlookers. "The guy's ability to take shots and just keep moving on and stay in elected office is unlike anything I've ever seen in my career in 25 years of running campaigns," Ash Wright—previously a senior adviser to George P. Bush, who invoked the incumbent's mug shot in a 2022 bid to be attorney general—told the Associated Press in July.

How he does that is a matter of some mystery, given he does not possess the showmanship the president favors. One answer might provide a window into how the Republican Party has evolved in recent years. What Paxton may lack in stage presence, he makes up for in a willingness to use his office as a performative blunt instrument.

The attorney general's lengthy tenure has been consumed almost entirely by two categories: high-profile scandals and high-profile lawsuits. During the 2026 Senate primary, as he made his case that he should replace Republican John Cornyn, Paxton advertised his conservative credentials with a statistic: He had "sued [President Joe] Biden over 100 times."

His lawsuits covered quite a bit of ground. There was his attempt in 2020 to overturn the election results, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected. But he did not always fare poorly. Within days of Biden taking office in 2021, Paxton sued to stop the then-president's 100-day pause on certain deportations, which a federal court granted. He also secured enormous settlements against Meta and Google—$1.4 billion and $1.375 billion, respectively—for alleged privacy violations, although neither company admitted wrongdoing.

Paxton has not lost steam. In 2025, he filed a lawsuit against former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat, and his advocacy organization, Powered by People, over donations that supported Democratic lawmakers who left the state to block new Republican-drawn congressional maps. "Our Texan founding fathers—like our American founding fathers—took prior restraints on political speech out of the tool kit," a Texas appeals court later wrote, "when they enshrined the right to free speech in our Constitution." The year prior, Paxton filed suit against Annunciation House, a Catholic charity that shelters migrants in El Paso; one judge called his office's conduct in that case "outrageous and intolerable." Yet Paxton has succeeded in drawing out both cases with lengthy litigation. Even when he may lose the final battle, he often hamstrings his opponents for long periods, a different kind of victory.

Has that helped make Paxton nearly bulletproof? Maybe. But it is also a snapshot of the power of branding in this political moment and how he has leveraged it offstage. "How hard is it for anybody, any Republican, to go into the A.G.'s office and sue the president of the opposing party?" says the Republican former official. "It's just typical stuff, you know. It's nothing of this great political fighter that they think he is."

When it comes to the other category—those high-profile scandals—Paxton has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, casting his legal tribulations as politically motivated witch hunts. He is, he always insists, the victim, not the perpetrator. It may be another sign of how the political landscape has changed, particularly in the GOP, in that transgressions can become capital when marketed savvily.

In the May runoff with Cornyn, who has represented Texas in the Senate since 2002, Paxton won by 28 points.

Can the Survivor Survive?

Party conventions usually exist to formally nominate a president and vice president. Those trappings were still there in the GOP's midterm convention, though no one was being nominated. There were state delegations, their role entirely symbolic. There were balloons and sequins and Lee Greenwood, who introduced the president both nights by singing "God Bless the USA." Trump, of course, loves a good production.

You couldn't help but get the feeling sometimes that the event was largely mounted for Paxton. It took place in Dallas, after all, and his race was a constant part of the discussion.

"He is a weird-looking dude," Trump said. That time, he was referring to Talarico, whom he called "Talafreako." That comment didn't come with an endorsement. "I mean, I don't like talking about looks, but there's something missing there."

Talarico's general presentation has been a subject of fascination on the right throughout the race: his appearance, whether he likes football, accusations he's a vegan (he isn't). An ad run by Paxton deems Talarico "too low-T for Texas"—not macho enough.

How this mudslinging resonates may vary. "Policy is all that matters," Kyle Biedermann, a Republican who served with Talarico in the Texas House of Representatives, told me on the sidelines during the second night of the convention. "I don't care if he's a vegan. I don't care what he does. But his policies are horrible, terrible for our state." Those policies, he said, "are so socialist, so far, far left" that anything else is beside the point.

The night prior, when the president offered $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans won the midterms, a victory in Texas may have been at the top of Trump's mind. On closing night, during the president's second speech, Paxton was featured heavily again. Trump described how he had rehearsed for the moment with his circle. "I'll tell you what I was thinking about saying. I said, 'I don't like the way Ken dresses,'" he recounted to the audience. "And then I said, 'I don't really like the way Ken talks.' And then I said something that they really hated….I said, 'I don't really like the way he looks.'"

In the VIP section, Paxton smiled awkwardly. He is, after all, a survivor.

The post Ken Paxton Survived Indictment, Impeachment, and Scandal. Can He Survive a Senate Race? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Texas might finally turn blue, and the man poised to do it is a mask-wearing, trans rights–supporting, Gnostic Gospel–quoting liberal from Austin. In an already tough year for Republicans, voter dissatisfaction at the state's data center boom is giving the Democrat an edge.

A few weeks out from the 2026 midterm elections, the polls have been giving state Rep. James Talarico (D–Austin) a small, steady edge over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race to fill the Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. The chattering class's constantly misfiring prediction that the latest liberal challenger will beat the favored Republican has made "Texas turning blue" a mockable meme—the political equivalent of Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football.

But this year may be different. The national environment is very bad for Republicans. President Donald Trump's unpopular tariffs and unpopular war have made him, well, unpopular and given GOP candidates little to run on. Texas Republicans are also saddled with Paxton, who won a hotly contested primary despite having little natural charisma and a lot of scandals (both personal and political) to explain away.

Republicans' political headwinds have made Talarico, a 37-year-old legislator with a history that puts him solidly to the left of the median Texas voter, a surprisingly competitive candidate. Some of Talarico's edge can no doubt be chalked up to the candidate's own political skill and fundraising advantage. But he is also benefiting from a late-breaking development that few saw coming: the Lone Star's data center revolt.

For as long as Republicans have run Texas, they've been able to claim credit for the state's decades-long economic growth streak. But the grassroots groundswell of opposition to Texas' data center boom has helped to neutralize that traditional GOP advantage. In solidly red rural areas, large majorities are telling pollsters that they are opposed to the hundreds of data centers proposed in their backyard.

When Republicans thus talk about their economic stewardship today, it conjures up not positive feelings of persistent prosperity but dissatisfaction at all the ways the party has allowed an unpopular data center to be built next door. In a tight race, that might just be enough to give Talarico the last little push he needs to finally turn Texas blue.

Lab-Grown Liberals vs. the GOP Growth Machine

All the Texas Senate races of the past couple of decades have taken place within a growth machine. From 1998 through 2024, the Lone Star state posted the fourth-highest GDP growth rate, a period that roughly matches the GOP's unbroken record of statewide election wins. Not a day goes by, it seems, without a major corporation announcing a Texas megaproject or a billionaire relocating to booming Austin.

The state's frenetic growth rate has given the Texas GOP a good story to tell voters about why they should continue Republican rule: Under their low-tax, low-regulation regime, Texas has prospered. The jobs and businesses flooding into the state tend to be coming from states ruled by the Democrats trying to unseat them.

Those Texas Democrats whose bids for statewide office have managed to electrify liberals, meanwhile, have been ill-suited to convince voters that they'll keep the "Texas Miracle" going. There's an old joke that "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love." In Texas, this hopeless romanticism has led to repeated heartbreak. In 2014, Wendy Davis inspired a national media buzz with her pro-abortion messaging while running for governor against Greg Abbott. Beto O'Rourke's style-over-substance challenge to Ted Cruz in 2018 produced a similar mania. Both lost. 

You might expect Talarico to meet a similar fate. The fresh-faced lawmaker seems almost grown in a lab to leave liberals giddy while making swing voters stick with the GOP. A former teacher, he first won elected office in 2018, when he flipped an open Texas House seat in the Austin suburbs from red to blue. At 29 years old, he was then the youngest member of the Texas Legislature.

Analyses of lawmakers' voting record put Talarico squarely in the ideological middle of his fellow Democrats, and well to the left of the state's political center. His national star began to rise among Democrats when he used religious arguments to challenge Texas Republicans' culture-war battles over education.

In 2021, Texas Republicans proposed a bill requiring K-12 athletes to play on girls' or boys' sports teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificates. Two years later, they introduced a measure that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, cited his liberal brand of Protestantism to oppose both bills. "Trans children are God's children, made in God's own image. There's nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect. They are beautiful, and they are sacred," he said in a floor speech opposing the sports bill. In a debate on the Ten Commandments bill, he declared the legislation "deeply un-Christian," citing Christ's instructions in the Gospel of Matthew to pray privately. (The sports bill eventually passed. The 2023 Ten Commandments bill failed, but a near-identical bill would pass in 2025.)

Conservative Christians would quibble with Talarico's progressive readings of the Bible. For national Democrats and liberal-leaning magazine writers, however, his penchant for reframing the Annunciation as a pro-abortion parable and his citations of the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas to support trans rights all served as proof that this "deeply religious" Democrat could effectively speak to Christian swing voters in their own terms.

Talarico has also taken many secular positions that might be hard sells in Texas. In May 2020, a couple of months into the COVID-19 pandemic and weeks before George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Talarico declared that racism was the real virus. At a 2022 animal welfare fundraiser, a mask-wearing Talarico said he was running a vegan campaign. The same year, he said in a public hearing, again wearing a mask, that "fossil fuels are destroying the planet."

In a state where oil, gas, and beef are champion industries, swing voters to not swoon ordinarily for race-critical, carbon-neutral veganism. Talarico himself seems to have conceded that point. He's dispelled rumors of his veganism by eating barbecue on camera and waved away his past wokisms as "cringey" and "miss[ing] the mark." Even so, Talarico's campaign platform remains stridently progressive. He wants to tax billionaires and raise the minimum wage. If it were up to him, he'd open up Medicare to everyone, regardless of age, and would codify abortion protections into law. He's pro–marijuana legalization and fanatically anti–school choice.

So why are polls showing Talarico maintaining a consistent two- to six-point edge over Paxton?

In one sense, his continued leftward lean is an electoral boon. In a race with a clear enthusiasm gap, some 91 percent of Democrats say they'll be supporting Talarico in the general election. Only 79 percent of Republicans say the same about their candidate. Talarico has also been blessed with a national environment that's shaping up to be a bloodbath for Republicans, who have to answer for the rising prices driven by Trump's tariffs and the Iran war.

But there is one final factor putting Talarico over the edge: a statewide data center revolt that's souring Texas voters on their state's growth machine and neutralizing the pro-growth message that has carried the GOP through so many other tough election cycles. 

It's the Data Centers, Stupid

In November 2025, on the heels of Google's decision to invest $40 billion in data center development in the state, Gov. Greg Abbott proudly declared, "Texas is the epicenter of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy." Just a few months later, the governor was vowing to impose new regulations on data centers to "protect" Texans from the consequences of their rampant development.

The U.S. has experienced a rapid revolt against data centers this year, and in few places has that backlash been more sudden or more pronounced than in Texas. According to a 2025 poll by the University of Texas at Austin, nearly 60 percent of Texans were either supportive or neutral about a data center being built in their neighborhood. In August 2026, 57 percent said they would oppose a local data center project.

This backlash against data centers couldn't have come at a worse time for Texas Republicans, or, consequently, at a better time for Talarico. The policies the Texas GOP have long touted as the key to the state's economic success—loose land use and environmental regulations, no state income tax, and the cheap commercial energy prices created by its deregulated energy sector—are the same policies attracting data centers. When the most visible recent consequence of those pro-growth policies is a data center boom most Texans hate, the state's Republicans are having to run away from what were once their prime selling points.

The sudden negative turn in public opinion on data centers has "proven a catalyst for people raising questions about governance and the economy in the state," says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Making matters worse, says Henson, is the geography of the data center backlash. Opposition to these projects is concentrated in rural areas that have long been Republican strongholds and in suburban areas where the party needs to stay competitive to win statewide elections.

As Abbott's pivot demonstrates, Texas Republicans feel acutely vulnerable on this issue and are scrambling to adopt policies that ensure these developments do not lead to higher electricity prices for residential consumers. Paxton himself has called for a raft of new regulations on these facilities' water and power use and for ending a sales tax exemption on data centers, as well as some more off-the-wall conservative-coded policies, such as holding data centers criminally liable for facilitating AI chatbots that "endanger" children.

Talarico's data center proposal isn't all that different. He too would require data centers to pay for the full costs of their power and would end the sales tax exemption they can currently claim on equipment purchases. He'd also give local communities veto power over data center projects. That makes him more moderate on data centers than fellow Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who is running for governor against Abbott. She's called for a moratorium on data center construction until the state Legislature can convene to discuss "protections" for Texans.

Talarico's moderation could be partly explained by the fact that data centers are more popular, relatively speaking, in heavily Democratic urban areas. He also represents a slice of Austin, which has become a booming tech town. Why risk upsetting one's base when long-ruling Republicans already have to own the data center boom they were so recently bragging about?

'Talafreako'

The 2026 midterm environment seems almost tailor-made to neutralize Republicans' long-time advantages in Texas. Nationally, they have to own higher prices. Locally, they have to own an unpopular data center boom. Waning voter concerns about illegal immigration have caused their favored red-meat issue to turn a dull brown.

The Texas GOP's only weapon left is personal attacks on the man they call "Talafreako"—some weirdo liberal who calls trans kids "perfect" and thinks racism is the real virus. Talarico's persistent lead in the polls and on the prediction markets (which, in late  October, put the chances of him winning at nearly 70 percent) suggest that these attacks are not working.

One could sense Republicans' desperation when right-wing influencers spun up a rumor that Talarico was absent from the campaign trail in early October because he was in a mental health facility in Ohio. (The hospital publicly denied ever treating Talarico. The candidate himself said he'd been recovering from the flu and said he'd never even visited Ohio.)

When Republicans call Talarico a freak, they mean to cast him as abnormal and off-putting: a "freak of nature." But freak has multiple usages. The word can also mean an unpredicted or unusual event: a "freak occurrence." Talarico succeeding in ending Republicans' three-decade run of statewide victories in Texas would fit the latter definition.

Rather than run from the Talafreako barb, Talarico's campaign has emblazoned merch with the intended insult. They at least seem to appreciate the irony of it all.

If Talarico is a freak, that will make his likely victory all the more freaky.

The post Will a Data Center Backlash Help James Talarico Turn Texas Blue? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

L’ultimo endorsement di richiamo per lui arriva dal figlio dell’ex presidente George H.W. Bush e fratello dell’altro ex commander in chief George W.Bush. Anche Neil Bush si smarca da Donald Trump e sceglie James Talarico, astro nascente dei democratici, che corre per il Senato nello Stato di famiglia, il Texas. È da più di tre decenni che i democratici non vincono un’elezione nazionale, ma ora il seggio del Congresso è contendibile. Talarico, 37enne ex seminarista presbiteriano, ex insegnante di scuola media, è in vantaggio di 5 punti percentuali sul repubblicano Ken Paxton, attuale procuratore generale dello Stato sostenuto dal capo della Casa Bianca.

Famiglia, amore per i propri vicini e poi, ovviamente, fede: le parole d’ordine, da texano di ottava generazione, della campagna di Talarico sono spiazzanti per la retorica di Paxton e Donald Trump – che lo descrivono come un democratico estremista sotto mentite spoglie – e tutta la potente macchina finanziaria repubblicana, Elon Musk in testa, scesa in campo in queste ultime decisive settimane per scongiurare la possibilità che Talarico, che gli ultimi sondaggi danno avanti di due, tre anche 4 punti, possa far centrare il sogno, fino a pochi mesi fa impensabile, di una vittoria al Senato in uno stato come il Texas dove sono oltre 30 anni che i democratici non vincono a livello nazionale. Il candidato dem, peraltro, è spesso del mirino di Trump, che gli ha affibbiato il nomignolo di ‘Tala-freak-o‘, dandogli del vegano, negli sforzi per tracciare un profilo non in linea con lo stereotipo texano.

“In queste elezioni non c’entra il partito democratico o il partito repubblicano, è una cosa più grande, queste elezioni devono puntare alla visione di quello che il nostro stato può essere”, ha detto in uno dei suoi ultimi comizi il democratico ribadendo il messaggio bipartisan, quello che in America si chiama della ‘big tent’, con cui promette che dal Senato di Washington guiderà “la lotta contro i finanziatori mega miliardari e i politici burattini che hanno preso il controllo del Texas“, come recita il programma. Un messaggio che ha non solo galvanizzato e riunito le varie anime del partito democratico, ma sta attirando repubblicani, delusi da Trump e in generale dai repubblicani per la questione del carovita, del prezzo della benzina e, elemento molto rilevante in Texas, la costruzione dei data center per l’intelligenza artificiale. Ma forse l’elemento che ha aiutato e sta aiutando maggiormente la sorpresa Talarico nei sondaggi è il fatto che come avversario ha una delle figure politiche più controverse del Texas, l’attuale procuratore generale Paxton.

Paxton ha vinto le primarie perché sostenuto vigorosamente da Trump che ha voluto così togliere il seggio a John Cornyn, senatore al quarto mandato che il tycoon ha voluto punire perché ‘sleale’. Non ha aiutato la candidatura di Paxton il fatto che la moglie Angela, anche lei esponente repubblicana texana, abbia chiesto il divorzio nell’estate del 2025 accusandolo, con tanto di citazioni biblica, di adulterio. Salvo poi chiedere alle elettrici texane di tapparsi il naso e votare per tutti i candidati repubblicani a novembre “a prescindere dalle loro debolezze’.

E dal vecchio establishment repubblicano texano, di cui Cornyn fa parte e che ha un punto di riferimento al clan dei Bush – anche se quella che era un tempo la dinastia politica repubblicana sta perdendo progressivamente influenza nel Gop controllo dal mai amato Trump -, sono arrivati dubbi, reticenze e vere e proprie prese di distanze nei confronti di Paxton . E, sebbene George W. Bush non abbia preso una posizione ufficiale, il Nyt scrive che ha escluso Paxton da una raccolta di fondi organizzata per candidati Gop al Senato. Invece hanno preso posizioni pubbliche contro Paxton il suo ex stratega Karl Rove, e per decenni il deus ex machina della politica repubblicana texana, e ora il fratello minore dell’ex presidente, Neil, ha annunciato di aver votato in anticipo per Talarico perché “profondamente preoccupato” per la condotta di Paxton e invece “enormemente impressionati” dai principi pragmatici del democratico. Il candidato repubblicano ha però dalla sua la pioggia di milioni di dollari che stanno arrivando, in particolare da Musk, che gli permettono di spendere tre volte di più del dem in questi ultimi giorni decisivi. Tanto che si prevede che alla fine la sua campagna, tra primarie e elezioni, arriverà a spendere 380 milioni di dollari, una cifra astronomica per un’elezione al Senato in uno stato considerato una roccaforte Gop.

L'articolo James Talarico, speranza dem in Texas per vincere il seggio al Senato: chi è il 37enne che sfida il candidato sostenuto da Trump proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

US midterm elections see 23 million early votes cast, with surging turnout in key states as voters weigh the economy and congressional control.

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US Midterm Elections Draw 23 Million Early Votes

The US midterm elections have already drawn more than 23 million early votes nationwide as Americans head to the polls ahead of the November 3 election.

The total marks a sharp increase compared with the same point in the 2022 midterm cycle, when about 15 million ballots had been accepted.

The surge in early voting is concentrated in states with competitive races that could determine control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Analysts say the rise reflects growing concern among working-class voters over the high cost of living, housing, healthcare and economic insecurity.

In North Carolina, more than 1.2 million early votes had been accepted, an increase of 37 percent compared with the same period four years ago.

Early voting among registered Democrats rose by 47 percent, while participation among unaffiliated voters increased by 60 percent.

By contrast, early voting among registered Republicans increased by only 2.6 percent.

The figures do not reveal how individual voters cast their ballots, but they show a significant shift in the pace and composition of turnout.

The increase is particularly notable because North Carolina is one of the key battlegrounds in the fight for the Senate.

US Midterm Elections See Turnout Surge in Key States

US Election Assistance Commission | National Association of Secretaries of State

The rise in early voting is not limited to North Carolina. Similar trends have been reported in several states with decisive contests.

In Kansas, early voting increased by approximately 69 percent.

In Maine, turnout rose by 41 percent, while Iowa recorded a 24 percent increase.

In Texas, election officials reported record participation in the metropolitan areas of Dallas and Houston since voting centers opened.

Texas is a key state in this year’s elections because its Latino community represents at least 30 percent of the electorate.

Polling and organizing efforts suggest a shift in Latino voter mobilization, driven by economic pressures and rejection of anti-immigrant rhetoric from conservative sectors.

The midterm elections will renew all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate.

Voters will also elect governors in 36 states and three territories.

Republicans currently hold a narrow 218-seat majority in the House, the smallest possible majority, leaving dozens of districts in play.

Democrats need to gain four Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber, a difficult but not impossible task.

Key Senate races are taking place in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Michigan and New Hampshire.

The outcome will determine whether Democrats can block or advance legislation on taxation, healthcare, immigration, energy policy and judicial appointments.

Public dissatisfaction with the economy has become a central issue in the campaign.

Polling cited in the article places approval of the government’s cost-of-living policy at just 21 percent, reflecting widespread concern over inflation, wages and living conditions.

The high level of early participation suggests that voters are treating the midterms as a major political test rather than a routine election.

US Midterm Elections Face Alaska Certification Battle

US Department of Justice | Alaska Division of Elections

The US midterm elections have also been marked by an unprecedented legal dispute in Alaska.

The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on October 22 seeking to block Alaska from certifying its Senate election results if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola.

The case centers on the presence of a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher whose name closely resembles that of the incumbent senator.

The Justice Department argues that the similar names could confuse voters and affect the outcome of the race.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to prevent certification of any result that may have been affected by voter confusion.

It also seeks an investigation into whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were intended for Senator Dan S. Sullivan.

President Donald Trump publicly confirmed that he ordered the Justice Department to file the lawsuit.

The legal action came 11 days before the election, after early voting had already begun in Alaska.

The case has been strongly criticized by voting-rights groups, Democratic organizations and legal experts.

They argue that the federal government lacks authority to intervene in state-run elections and that the lawsuit represents an attempt to override the will of Alaska voters.

The campaign of Mary Peltola, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and groups including the League of Women Voters of Alaska and Common Cause have sought to intervene in the case.

They are asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit and protect the integrity of the state’s electoral process.

Alaska’s courts had previously rejected efforts to remove Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the ballot.

A federal judge and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that his candidacy was constitutionally valid.

The dispute has drawn attention because Alaska’s Senate seat could be decisive for control of the upper chamber.

Alaska is also strategically important because of its vast oil, gas and mineral reserves.

The outcome of the race could affect future decisions on energy leases, mining permits and federal policy in the Arctic region.

Geopolitical Context

The US midterm elections will have consequences beyond domestic politics because Congress plays a central role in shaping US foreign, economic and security policy.

Control of the House and Senate will determine whether the administration can advance its legislative agenda or face greater opposition.

The elections will influence decisions on government spending, taxation, immigration, climate policy and military funding.

They will also affect the confirmation of federal judges and senior government officials.

The Alaska Senate race is particularly significant because of the state’s strategic location in the Arctic and its vast energy resources.

The United States has increased its focus on Arctic security amid competition with Russia and China over shipping routes, military presence and access to natural resources.

The outcome of the election could influence future policy on oil drilling, mining and infrastructure development in Alaska.

The surge in early voting also reflects a broader debate over democratic participation in the United States.

Voting-rights groups have warned that legal challenges to election certification can undermine public confidence in democratic institutions.

The Alaska case has raised concerns that federal power could be used to influence state-run elections.

The dispute comes as political polarization continues to deepen across the country.

The high turnout suggests that many voters see the midterms as a referendum on economic conditions, democratic norms and the direction of the country.

The results will shape the final two years of the current presidential term and could redefine the balance of power in Washington.

In the 1940s and '50s, Route 66 was one of America's most popular highways, driving business to small towns from Chicago to Santa Monica. But today, the road and its people have been largely forgotten. Ghost towns, empty motels, and abandoned gas stations line its path. Chief correspondent Abby Narishkin grew up along the road. In celebration of its 100th anniversary, she drove down the old route herself to visit the people and businesses still keeping this Americana legacy alive.