Voters who backed the US president in the last election are saying they can’t vote for him today: ‘This is an abomination’
Outside the Ukrainian educational and cultural center in a quiet Pennsylvania suburb of Jenkintown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, a banner expressed unqualified gratitude: “Thank you USA for supporting Ukraine.”
Inside, however, the sentiment was altogether different. Irene Skulsky, a retired teacher in her late 70s, voiced indignation at Donald Trump’s sudden turn against her ancestral homeland, which she believed had come close to killing her son, Darko, and a desire to punish his fellow Republicans at next week’s midterm elections.
President Donald Trump’s administration filed a revised lawsuit on Thursday seeking to block Alaska’s election results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan narrowly loses and, according to a person familiar with the matter, issued more than 40 subpoenas and document requests in its probe.
The revised complaint by the US Justice Department cited a New York Times report that Democratic operatives recruited another candidate named Sullivan who could siphon votes from the incumbent. The Justice Department said the effort was intended to mislead voters and help elect Democratic candidate Mary Peltola.
The suit raises the prospect of a messy fight over a contest that could determine US Senate control in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, while Democrats need a net gain of four seats.
“They orchestrated his sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters and getting Peltola elected,” lawyers for the Justice Department wrote in their amended complaint, referring to a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., who is on the ballot without a party affiliation.
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy also called for a state investigation into the allegation and said in an interview with News Nation that any finding of illegality “may in fact impact whether someone is seated in the US Senate.”
Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to the amended complaint but has previously said it had “no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.”
Dispute over candidates sharing Sullivan surname
The Times reported on Wednesday that Peltola aides worked with campaign lawyers and staff at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit two candidates who could siphon votes from the incumbent Republican Sullivan, including Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.
Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, who was fired in August, told the Times that Peltola was aware of the effort.
The DSCC has denied involvement and accused Republicans of propping up candidates of their own in other races. Reuters was unable to independently verify the Times report.
Daniel J. Sullivan has previously denied in interviews with US news outlets that his aim is to cause confusion or divert votes from Dan S. Sullivan.
Trump presses legal challenge ahead of vote
Trump, who for years has sowed doubts about the fairness of US elections, had pushed the Justice Department to bring the Alaska case even before the Times report, seeking to preemptively block Alaska from certifying Peltola, a former congresswoman, if she were to win the election.
Trump told reporters earlier on Thursday: “It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run. Frankly, I don’t know how you can allow somebody like that to run. It’s so unfair.”
Jessica Levinson, a professor who specializes in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said that as long as Daniel J. Sullivan, the challenger to the incumbent, didn’t conceal financial support, his campaign likely didn’t break any laws and political parties are allowed to mislead the public.
Policing such behavior would open the door to the government investigating why candidates choose to run and why voters support them, she said. “To the extent that people are uncomfortable with two Sullivans, I would offer you’re probably going to be uncomfortable with a really high level of government intrusion into our elections as well.”
Justice Department also investigates California voting
The Department of Justice has also escalated another legal campaign in California, where it has been investigating alleged voting by noncitizens.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office received grand jury subpoenas as part of the probe, according to copies of subpoenas seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The subpoenas, dated last week, seek records related to the county’s response to prior letters from the Trump administration warning of evidence that noncitizens are on the state’s voter roll. They also seek documents about the county’s efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting.
California has previously said the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
Trump and Democrats intensify final campaign push
As campaigning enters its final few days, the White House has shelved plans for Trump to appear on Saturday in Kansas, the site of an unexpectedly competitive Senate campaign, a Republican campaign official said.
“I don’t feel like I have to go to Kansas,” Trump told reporters.
Instead, the president will participate in more than 20 virtual campaign appearances before Tuesday, a White House official said.
Trump held a rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday, his second visit in two weeks to a state where opinion polls show an unexpectedly close Senate race between Republican Darline Graham and Democrat Annie Andrews.
Speaking about the hotly contested Michigan Senate race, where progressive Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed holds a small lead in most polls over Republican Mike Rogers, Trump continued his identity-based attacks on El-Sayed, a Muslim, by saying at the rally that “if you’re Black or if you’re Jewish, and if you vote for Abdul, you’re crazy.”
With control of the Senate at stake, both parties are deploying their biggest names in the closing days of the campaign, with Trump stumping for Republicans and former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning for Democrats in competitive races.
Harris stumped in Macon, Georgia, at a get-out-the-vote effort. Democrats are aiming to reelect Senator Jon Ossoff, who leads in polling, and hope that Keisha Lance Bottoms, locked in a tight race, can become the first woman elected as governor in the state.
Trump’s approval rating stood at 32% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, near a record low, as Americans sour on the high cost of living and the war with Iran.
More than 44 million Americans had already voted as of Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. A total of 45.9 million voted early in the 2022 midterms.
Candidate for Ohio governor confirms campaign no longer airing ad that smeared rival and was defended by Trump
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, confirmed on Thursday that his campaign is no longer airing an attack ad that features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
The ad prompted a wave of revulsion since Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, lost custody of her daughter in 1978, when her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was charged with raping her daughter between the ages of 10 and 12.
Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign allegedly collaborated with party operatives to confuse voters in midterms
The US justice department on Thursday is reported to have issued subpoenas in response to a report that the Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign collaborated with party operatives to get a challenger with the same name as the Republican senator Dan Sullivan on the midterm ballot.
ABC News and the Associated Press reported the subpoenas, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal investigation comes a day after the New York Times found that the effort to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Senate race set to be decided on Tuesday was led by Peltola’s campaign, which had for months denied involvement.
A US Senate race in one of the most Republican states in the country is now a dead heat, according to a new poll showing Annie Andrews, a Democrat, tied with Darline Graham, the Republican incumbent senator.
South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, and Donald Trump won it by nearly 18 points in 2024, but a New York Times/Siena poll this week has the two candidates neck and neck, at 48% each.
Republican Mike Dunleavy plans search after Peltola accused of recruiting Dan Sullivan to confuse voters
The Republican governor of Alaska announced plans to launch a criminal investigation after a report accused the campaign of the Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola of trying to confuse voters by recruiting a candidate with the same name as her opponent.
Michigan US Senate candidate signaled support for Egypt’s pro-democracy movement in 2012, not Islamist group
The Republican campaign to defeat Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the MichiganSenate race by casting him as an Islamic extremist is based on a false claim first made by the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer eight years ago, a Guardian review of the evidence reveals.
Loomer, an influential outside adviser to Donald Trump who calls herself “a proud Islamophobe”, has claimed since El-Sayed entered politics in 2018 that an open letter he signed in support of democracy in Egypt in 2012 was a public endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood. The text of the letter, however, does not even mention the Muslim Brotherhood, and is not, as Loomer maintains, “a pledge” of support for the Egyptian Islamist group.
In advance of the midterms, Trump is blaming Kyiv for high gas prices while making clear moves to support Russia
As the US midterms approach, Donald Trump is abandoning Ukraine’s democracy in a desperate effort to deny responsibility for worsening inflation. Yet this past weekend’s dramatic elections in Brazil and Serbia show that voters can see through such subterfuge.
There is nothing like a political party’s corruptindifference to the plight of ordinary people to galvanize voter turnout. If US voters follow in the footsteps of their Brazilian and Serbian counterparts, a Democratic landslide is likely.
With days until the midterm elections, a new poll from CNN places Democrats well in the lead in key Senate races in Texas and Michigan, while projecting tighter contests in Kansas and Maine.
In Texas, the poll found 49% of likely voters would back James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, over Republican Ken Paxton, who netted just 43%.
Legacy Church’s endorsements violate law banning tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates
A megachurch in New Mexico has endorsed two Republican candidates running in this year’s midterms, including a Donald Trump-backed candidate running in one of the blue state’s few competitive races. The church’s endorsements, which violate federal law banning tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates, come as the Trump administration is challenging that ban in federal court.
In mid-August, pastor Steve Smothermon of Legacy Church, a nondenominational church with nine locations across the state, told his congregation about one of the candidates: “Greg Cunningham has faithfully served our church for 14 years and shares our biblical values. Let’s pray for him, support his campaign, get registered, and vote to flip this seat for someone who will stand for God, our Constitution, and a better New Mexico!”
Neither man is on the ballot but Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Barack Obama took prominent roles on the campaign trail on Wednesday, with less than a week to go before congressional races that could shift the balance of power in Washington.
While Trump has been on a weeks-long campaign blitz that has underlined Republican concerns about losing control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency, Obama had kept a relatively low public profile until the past week, during which he has delivered blistering speeches criticizing Trump.
Thirty-five of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested next Tuesday. Nonpartisan analysts generally favor Democrats’ chances of capturing a majority in the House, with the contest for the Senate seen as very close.
Obama warns American values are at stake
On Wednesday, Obama appeared in Morrow, Georgia, near Atlanta, where he urged voters to support Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who faces a challenge from Representative Mike Collins, a Republican.
While delivering the standard Democratic critique of Trump for imposing tariffs and going to war in Iran, Obama also said America’s values were on the ballot, as he recalled the vision of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who is buried in Atlanta.
“There is a moral component to the choices we face right now,” Obama said.
“We are not going to fix the system that’s broken, we’re not going to unrig our economy, so long as we’ve got a culture where anything goes, where people in the highest offices of the land think it’s OK to lie and cheat and bully, if we continue to have a culture where money is deemed the only measure of our worth,” Obama said.
Trump targets Democrats as early voting surges
Trump’s public approval rating has fallen to a near record low, with Americans increasingly sour on the high cost of living and the Iran war, but he remains an animating force in the party and has campaigned hard to increase Republican turnout.
Americans have been voting for weeks, with 40 million ballots already cast, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. A total of 45.9 million Americans voted early in the last midterm elections in 2022.
Addressing a rally inside a modest college gymnasium in the Ohio town of Chillicothe, the president appeared with Senator Jon Husted of Ohio as he faces a challenge from Democratic former Senator Sherrod Brown.
Trump attacked Brown for supporting immigration policies the president said had overwhelmed Springfield, Ohio, with Haitian migrants. “The town went to hell,” he said.
Trump spread false claims during the 2024 presidential campaign that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating cats and dogs, allegations local officials repeatedly said were untrue.
Protesters confront Trump at Ohio rally
Enthusiastic crowds have cheered Trump at rallies throughout the campaign, but hundreds of protesters lined Trump’s motorcade route in rural Chillicothe, raising banners that read, “Republican against Trump,” “Grab them by the ballot” and “GOP: Guardians of pedophiles.”
During the rally, protesters interrupted Trump several times, including at least one who shouted about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said in response.
Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump has said they later had a falling out and that he barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department releases from the Epstein files have included references to Trump, as well as many other prominent figures. The department has cautioned that some materials contain allegations that were unverified or uncorroborated.
Protesters have interrupted Trump at virtually all his recent rallies. He typically accuses them of being paid protesters as they are carted off by security.
In Cleveland on Saturday, Obama poked fun at Trump’s taste in interior decorating, saying, “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” a chain of casual dining restaurants.
Trump defended his White House decor and said Obama left the property deteriorated.
“The White House, I think, is the number one symbol of our country, and we can’t have a White House with broken windows, with broken stone that hasn’t been painted in 30 years,” Trump said in Ohio.
Tight Senate races could decide control of Congress
Democrats will need to pick up seats in traditionally Republican-leaning states such as Ohio, Iowa or Alaska to overcome the current 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate.
The New York Times reported that aides to Mary Peltola, the Senate Democratic nominee in Alaska, worked with the campaign’s lawyers and senior staff at Senate Democrats’ campaign arm to recruit two candidates who are on the ballot and could siphon votes from incumbent Republican US Senator Dan Sullivan.
Representatives for Peltola did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Mary Peltola should resign from the race. I think she should be criminally prosecuted for what she did,” Trump told reporters before departing for Ohio.
In Michigan, where Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are locked in a tight race for the Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Senator Gary Peters, both campaigns are relying on high-profile allies to energize supporters and boost turnout.
Rogers spent the day campaigning with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on a four-stop bus tour culminating in Imlay City, a small community northeast of Detroit. El-Sayed, meanwhile, was scheduled to join Peters and fellow Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin for an evening canvassing rally in Downriver, southwest of Detroit.
Former US president comes to Georgia to support Jon Ossoff for US Senate and Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor
Barack Obama, speaking at a Wednesday campaign rally in suburban Atlanta, offered a closing argument for Democrats in the final week of the midterm election campaign.
“These are not serious people,” he said of Donald Trump and the Republican party. “And we’re all paying the price for their lack of seriousness.”
Justice department had demanded state segregate and not count ballots from people it claimed were non-citizens
A federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.
The ruling from US district judge David Carter, nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, comes about two weeks after the justice department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento that it said contained the names of 20,000 non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls. There are more than 23 million registered voters in California and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.
Pete Hoekstra, controversial US ambassador to Canada, has also accused Canadian officials of interfering in US elections
The US ambassador has suggested Canada could be blamed if Republicans perform poorly in next week’s midterm elections, the latest intervention from a controversial figure who has been accused of inflaming a bitter dispute that has angered and baffled residents of both countries.
On Wednesday, CTV news reported that Pete Hoekstra told business leaders at a closed door meeting that if a number of swing races – including Maine and Michigan – go to the Democrats, it could make things harder for Canada because Donald Trump might try to blame the loss on it.
Republicans have condemned the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot, calling it a ploy to split votes
Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was behind an effort to recruit a challenger with almost the same name as the Republican US senator Dan Sullivan, both of whom will appear on the ballot in next week’s midterm elections, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Republicans have condemned the presence in the race of two candidates named Dan Sullivan – one the two-term US senator, the second a retiree living in south-eastern Alaska with scant political experience – calling the newcomer a ploy by Democrats to cost the incumbent re-election by splitting his supporters.
Circumstances are ripe for change in this onetime Republican stronghold given the current dissatisfaction with Trump agenda, experts say
Donald Trump has repeatedly asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot in November’s crucial midterm elections. And in the comfortable confines of Arizona’s most affluent and fiercely contested congressional district, Trump is definitely on voters’ minds.
But whether that helps or hurts the warring congressional candidates in this sun-drenched swath of suburbia, where Teslas and walled-in luxury homes dominate, depends on who you ask.
Barack Obama versus Donald Trump. It is the presidential election that never happened but has come to define an era of US politics.
Obama is back on the campaign trail for the midterms, still electrifying crowds, earning shouts of “We love you!” and skewering his successor. “What’s up with the gold?” he asked a crowd in Detroit. “I mean, he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” This has, predictably, set off a mini culture war involving questions of elitism and the tastefulness of chain restaurants.
US health secretary falsely claims at Mike Rogers rally that Arabs have never won major prizes in science or literature
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, faced backlash on Wednesday for a “wildly racist tirade” during a campaign stop in Michigan in which he falsely asserted that Arabs never won major awards in science or literature.
Kennedy was speaking at the Monday night event in Grand Rapids in support of Mike Rogers, the Republican US Senate candidate who is trailing his Democratic midterms opponent Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim, in polling.
For months, Mary Peltola’s campaign for Alaska’s Senate seat has denied any connection to a separate campaign launched by a man who, coincidentally, shares the exact same name as Peltola’s Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan.
New reporting from the New York Times undercuts that claim. The outlet reported, based on interviews, obtained text messages and legal filings, that the Peltola campaign had not only recruited Mr Sullivan (not the Republican), but had sought out a number of Dan Sullivans across the state for potential candidacy, as well as others who could peel votes away from Peltola’s main opponent.
In an extensive conversation with EU Today publisher Gary Cartwright, Ukrainian-American lawyer and political commentator Askold Lozynskyj delivers a sharply critical assessment of Donald Trump, examines the possibility of a geopolitical bargain with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and explains why November’s American midterm elections could determine far more than the composition of Congress.
There is something peculiarly unsettling about a world in which the leaders of three nuclear powers might gather to discuss the future of smaller nations without troubling to invite the nations concerned. It is a diplomatic arrangement with considerable historical precedent, although not necessarily the sort that ought to inspire confidence.
For Askold S. Lozynskyj, a New York lawyer, former president of the Ukrainian World Congress and regular contributor to EU Today, the prospect of Donald Trump sitting down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping raises precisely this concern.
His latest opinion piece, The Thug Summit, published on 23 October, presents an uncompromising interpretation of the proposed trilateral meeting in China. In a wide-ranging conversation with EU Today publisher Gary Cartwright, Lozynskyj expands upon that argument, moving from the peculiarities of Trump’s political personality to the constitutional foundations of American democracy, the future of Europe and the increasingly precarious standing of international law.
The resulting discussion is occasionally caustic, frequently humorous and consistently concerned with a question that extends well beyond the current occupant of the White House: how resilient are democratic institutions when confronted by leaders who regard constitutional constraints as inconveniences?
Watch the full interview with Askold S. Lozynskyj and Gary Cartwright below.
From the Oval Office to the Beverly Hillbillies
The conversation begins with Trump’s political ascent, which Lozynskyj regards as one of the more extraordinary developments in modern American history.
Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett in the American television comedy The Beverly Hillbillies. Credit: CBS Television / Wikimedia Commons (1969 publicity photograph; US public domain).
He recalls the incredulity surrounding Trump’s original presidential ambitions and questions how a politician whose personal conduct had attracted considerable controversy managed to secure such enthusiastic support among conservative Christian voters.
Cartwright introduces a lighter comparison, recalling a photograph of Trump surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office.
The only person missing, he suggests, was Jed Clampett, the fictional patriarch of the American television comedy The Beverly Hillbillies.
Lozynskyj is not inclined to defend the administration’s sophistication. Yet behind the humour lies a more serious argument about the disappearance of independent-minded advisers and the consequences of political loyalty becoming the principal qualification for high office.
“Donald Trump is not a conservative. Donald Trump is a thug,” he declares.
It is an unequivocal assessment, characteristic of Lozynskyj’s commentary, although his criticism extends beyond Trump himself to the Republican Party’s willingness to accommodate his leadership.
The elections that could change Washington
Much of the interview centres on the American midterm elections scheduled for 3 November.
Lozynskyj predicts that Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives and potentially transform the remainder of Trump’s presidency through congressional investigations, subpoenas and impeachment proceedings.
His prediction is emphatic, although the eventual balance of power remains uncertain.
Control of the House would give Democrats substantial investigative authority, although the president would retain his executive powers. Removing him from office following impeachment would still require a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Nevertheless, Lozynskyj believes the elections could fundamentally alter Washington’s political atmosphere.
“They will tie up Trump like never before,” he argues.
Cartwright raises a more disturbing possibility: could Trump manufacture an emergency to postpone an election or otherwise attempt to prolong his presidency?
“I think he could try, but I don’t believe that he will prevail,” Lozynskyj responds, expressing confidence that America’s constitutional institutions would ultimately resist such an attempt.
The exchange moves naturally towards the events of 6 January 2021, presidential immunity and the effectiveness of the checks and balances upon which the American constitutional system depends.
Ukraine, Europe and the price of great-power diplomacy
For Lozynskyj, whose public career has been closely associated with Ukrainian interests, the implications of Trump’s foreign policy are particularly troubling.
His central concern is that negotiations among Washington, Moscow and Beijing could revive the notion that major powers possess an informal entitlement to determine the political and territorial futures of their neighbours.
In his opinion piece, he raises the possibility that Ukraine and Taiwan could become bargaining instruments in a wider geopolitical settlement. These are his warnings about potential outcomes, not established agreements between the three governments.
Yet his criticism of Washington is accompanied by considerable appreciation for Europe’s role in sustaining Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion.
“Without Europe, Ukraine could never have survived as long as it has survived,” he tells Cartwright.
He also ventures into the British debate over European integration, arguing that the United Kingdom should return to the European Union.
It is an intervention likely to provoke disagreement, but it reflects his broader conviction that collective institutions provide an essential counterweight to unilateral political power.
Democracy, disorder and the limits of authority
The discussion also examines political unrest in Europe, changing national identities and the relationship between elected governments and the populations they represent.
Cartwright points to social tensions in European cities and the growing importance of regional identity, including the independence debate in Flanders.
Lozynskyj approaches these developments through the history of democratic protest, citing Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity and more recent demonstrations over the independence of anti-corruption institutions.
For him, public opposition to governments is not necessarily evidence of democracy’s failure. It can also demonstrate that political authority remains subject to popular consent.
The conversation concludes with international law, the International Criminal Court and the difficulty of enforcing common rules when powerful states refuse to accept external constraints.
Lozynskyj’s observations are deliberately provocative, and his forecasts will be tested by events. But the interview offers something more substantial than another exchange of opinions about Donald Trump.
It is a discussion about the relationship between power and restraint, the responsibilities of democratic institutions and the uncomfortable possibility that the international order may be entering another period in which military and economic strength increasingly determine political outcomes.
As the United States approaches its midterm elections and speculation continues over a possible meeting between Trump, Putin and Xi, those questions are unlikely to disappear.
The full conversation with Askold S. Lozynskyj is available in the video above.
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