Lawmakers reviewing the issue of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill say they're disturbed by what they've found.

Mississippi Republicans’ newfound objection to AI-generated ads is the latest sign that MAGA world is fretting over the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The Democratic candidate, Scott Colom, said late last week that his campaign would delete an ad created with the help of artificial intelligence tools that depicted his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, hurrying away from reporters, as she has done before. The ad has been online for weeks, but Mississippi’s Republican attorney general demanded that Colom’s campaign take it down.

According to Mississippi Today:

Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Friday that Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, likely violated state law with a digital ad that featured an artificial intelligence-generated depiction of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith running away from reporters.

Colom told Mississippi Today he would delete the post because he didn’t want Fitch to launch litigation with taxpayer money. That came after Fitch sent Colom a complaint letter demanding that he remove that ad from his social media accounts. If he did not, the complaint said, the attorney general’s office could file an injunction against him.

“As violations of this election integrity law can carry criminal penalties, Attorney General Fitch has also asked Scott Colom and his campaign to preserve all records related to this matter so as not to obstruct justice,” the statement reads.

The article quotes Colom as saying Hyde-Smith is “clearly desperate” and that her allies are attempting to “weaponize the justice system to distract from the real issues, which is that she has sold out our farmers, sold out our small businesses, and sold out our families.”

You can judge for yourself whether you believe the Mississippi GOP truly cares about the scourge of AI-generated political ads, but the party’s fierce support for President Donald Trump — whose social media feeds have become cesspools of political AI slop — raises doubt in my mind.

What seems more likely to me is that Mississippi Republicans are trying to undercut Colom’s campaign, which has already garnered laughter for another ad targeting Hyde-Smith — in a midterm race the GOP didn’t think would be competitive.

Republicans have reportedly voiced concerns that Hyde-Smith’s Senate seat appears to be in play for Democrats in next week’s election, amid backlash toward Trump and the GOP. The fact that the president scheduled a rally in Mississippi one week out from Election Day reflects such concerns, despite forecasters giving Hyde-Smith the edge in their estimates of how the race will shake out. The GOP candidate has said Trump would come campaign for her “if I get in trouble,” and it looks like that’s what’s happening.

Short of a victory, one could argue that Colom improving on Democratic Senate nominee Mike Espy’s 2020 election numbers would be a remarkable feat for liberal activists in Mississippi, which boasts the largest percentage of Black eligible voters out of any state in the country but has — with help from decades of racist voter suppression — remained almost exclusively under control of white conservatives.

Colom is looking to change that. His ads prove that his campaign has the GOP’s attention — and help support Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s argument that Democrats need to invest more heavily in Southern states.

The post In Mississippi’s Senate race, GOP targets Democratic candidate’s ad appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Ohio’s gubernatorial race, the editorial board of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland announced months ago that it would no longer make endorsements in top-of-the-ballot races. After seeing Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s notorious attack ad, the editors changed their mind and endorsed Ramaswamy’s Democratic rival, Amy Acton. From the endorsement:

There are moments when a community must decide what it stands for, when its institutions have a duty to speak and when silence itself becomes a statement. Ohio has reached such a moment.

Vivek Ramaswamy, seeking the highest office in this state, has produced a campaign advertisement that weaponizes the sexual abuse his opponent, Amy Acton, suffered as a child. People across the political spectrum have rightly condemned it.

But condemnation has to mean something. Our politics have been debased for a decade, but this we will not accept. A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party.

For his part, the GOP nominee is still airing the disgusting attack, though his campaign has switched from a 60-second version to a 30-second version.

Ramaswamy also appeared on Fox News on Monday morning and accused Acton of being “crazy” and “unstable,” which came after Donald Trump spent part of the weekend reiterating his support for the vile attack.

Also on Monday morning, Acton appeared on MS NOW and said, “I can tell you that decency is on the ballot in this election.”

* In Mississippi’s unexpectedly competitive U.S. Senate race, Democrats supporting local prosecutor Scott Colom began investing in the contest last week. And soon after, the Senate Leadership Fund, the top Senate Republican super PAC, announced that it’s spending more than $1 million in the hopes of rescuing Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

These moves precede the president’s scheduled rally in Mississippi in support of Hyde-Smith.

* In Texas’ U.S. Senate race, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico continues to pick up some GOP endorsements, including a new one from Thomas Phillips, the former Republican chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

“Paxton’s longstanding reputation will embarrass Texas in ways our state simply cannot afford,” Phillips wrote in an op-ed for The Beaumont Enterprise, referring to Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

On a related note, ProPublica reported last week that the scandal-plagued GOP nominee’s trust invested $600,000 in a convicted fraudster’s company, Paxton’s “tough on crime” claims notwithstanding.

* In South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, a new super PAC representing the data center industry is scrambling to try to help appointed Republican Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

* And in North Carolina, The New York Times reported that new mail ballot rules are opening the door to thousands of ballots not being counted.

“At issue is a requirement that voters seal not only the outer envelope of their mail ballot but also an inner envelope that contains the ballot itself,” the article explained.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.26.26: Fallout from Ramaswamy ad continues appeared first on MS NOW.

Sen. Kevin Cramer is calling on Congress to reauthorize and modernize the Export-Import Bank by Dec. 31 to prevent China from dominating global energy markets and to protect over 45,000 U.S. jobs.

When the White House rolled back tariffs on coffee, fruit, beef, and farm equipment, it was effectively an admission that the tariffs were raising prices—and that Americans, not foreigners, had been paying for them.

Now, in the closing stages of the midterm campaign, the White House is once again rolling back some of those import taxes—and once again making an awkward implicit admission.

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become politically toxic.

The administration announced late last week that it would lift the 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian imports, apparently in an attempt to help Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) survive a tough reelection campaign in which the tariffs have played a significant role.

If this is indeed an attempt to sway voters in Maine, it is not a very convincing one. The Trump administration is removing tariffs on some agricultural and mechanical goods, as well as packaging and plywood, The Wall Street Journal reports. But Trump is also imposing new 50 percent tariffs on "other Canadian goods, including carpet, certain valves, and waste products."

Collins issued a statement thanking the White House for the changes. This is what members of the U.S. Senate have been reduced to—begging the president to cast his capricious, tariff-happy eyes toward products that will hurt people in other states more than in your own. (In fairness to Collons, she has voted repeatedly to roll back Trump's tariffs, but not enough of her fellow Republicans went along with it.)

Still, it's worth asking: What exactly is the pitch to voters here? Here's a tariff cut, now vote for Republicans so the president can continue to arbitrarily tax imports whenever the mood strikes?

It's easy to see why Trump's tariffs have become so unpopular. They are a huge and broad tax increase—the Tax Foundation estimates that 54 percent of imports are subject to Trump's tariffs, which are costing the average household about $1,000 annually—that was imposed without congressional authorization or popular support. They create more losers than winners, as downstream businesses and consumers pay the price for the protectionism offered to American manufacturers. Even the supposed "winners" of the tariff policy tend also to be "losers," since so much manufacturing depends on importing raw materials and intermediate goods.

Perhaps more surprising is how unwilling Republicans are to defend the president's signature economic policy. Or to even talk about it.

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip crunched the numbers and found that House GOP candidates have not run a single ad talking about the tariffs during this election cycle.

Just such a fun chart here from @greg_ip. If only we could tease out some meaning. Ah, well, nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/1X4AWcWQMV

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 23, 2026

That silence speaks volumes. Trump says "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." But it is now "one of the most hated words in politics," writes Ip.

The only Republicans to mention trade or tariffs in a campaign ad, as far as I've seen, is former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is now running for the Senate seat in Michigan (and thus was not included in Ip's analysis). And he's calling for an end to the "tariff war."

There is a lesson here that hopefully will linger beyond the next week: If you support a policy that deliberately and unlawfully raises taxes and prices, voters will not reward you for it.

It's a lesson that the Republican Party learned long ago, but apparently forgot.

Against economists' advice, a Republican-led government in 1930 implemented a huge tariff hike intended to protect American farms and factories at the start of the Great Depression. Instead, those tariffs worsened economic conditions and triggered foreign retaliation.

When voters went to the polls in 1930, the first midterm after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, they registered their displeasure. The GOP lost 52 seats in the House that year. Two years later, an even larger landslide would sweep Democrats into power in Congress and the White House, ushering in the New Deal era that reshaped the federal government forever. The two lawmakers who lent their names to the legislation were among those who lost their seats, fittingly.

The most notable difference this time around is that Congress didn't actually pass a tariff bill. The trade barriers were instead imposed directly by the executive. Voters don't seem to care. Republicans were too cowardly to stand up to Trump's unilateral power grab, and now they seem too ashamed to try to defend that policy (and their largely complicit response) on the campaign trail.

As they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And "doomed" may be a fitting way to describe the Republican majority in Congress right now, thanks in no small part to Trump's tariffs.

The post Trump's Tariffs Are Politically Toxic appeared first on Reason Magazine.

As October got underway, Donald Trump threw an online tantrum by way of his social media platform, lashing out at Sen. Tom Cotton because the Arkansas Republican hedged on a daylight saving time proposal supported by the White House. The president, however, didn’t just throw around some juvenile names.

After making the case that Cotton was focused on his “ego” and failing to put “Arkansas first,” Trump publicly released the senator’s cellphone number and encouraged Arkansans to use it.

Nearly two weeks later, as the president expressed fears about Texas’ U.S. Senate race, he threw another online tantrum, this time targeting Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, whom Trump labeled a “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE” political hack who would deserve the blame if state Attorney General Ken Paxton loses.

On Friday, after Trump’s Justice Department filed an outlandish lawsuit targeting Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (who is not up for re-election this year) denounced the radical gambit, declaring in a statement, “Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot. The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”

Naturally, the president who demanded the lawsuit wasn’t pleased. In yet another lengthy online rant published Saturday night, Trump labeled Murkowski “the Republicans’ Worst Senator, by far,” before falsely saying that the senator “only got elected” because of the state’s system of ranked choice balloting, which he falsely described as “corrupt” and a “total Democrat [sic] scam.”

He added that Murkowski “probably wants” Democrats “to steal the Election,” before adding, “Lisa Murkowski is a DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country. You just don’t get any worse!”

Trump concluded that if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, “everything we’ve done for Alaska will come to an immediate hault.” (In context, I suspect he meant “halt.”)

For good measure, shortly before midnight, the president kept going, adding in a follow-up tirade, “They’ve been trying to get rid of Lisa Murkowski forever in Alaska, then she came up with the Ranked Choice Voting SCAM.” (Again, it’s not a scam; Murkowski isn’t the one who came up with it; and the system was not responsible for rescuing her career.)

That Trump holds the GOP senator in contempt is not exactly new, but the recent series of harangues directed at senators from his own party is a timely reminder that this guy, 11 years into his political career and nearly six years into his presidency, still has no idea how to deal with Congress.

Evidently, as the president sees it, if he can just harass his ostensible allies enough through online antics, then maybe they’ll succumb to his intimidation efforts and follow his demands.

Except, as he probably ought to know by now, his harassment efforts tend not to work. Cotton didn’t change his mind about daylight saving time; Cornyn hasn’t become a Paxton cheerleader; and Murkowski hasn’t backed off her criticisms of an indefensible lawsuit.

What we’re left with is a president who keeps picking pointless fights with intraparty allies, whose support he might yet need in the near future, in the run-up to critically important U.S. elections — which is every bit as foolish as it sounds.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post ‘A disgrace’: Trump finds yet another Republican senator to condemn ahead of the midterms appeared first on MS NOW.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and already the biggest single donor this election cycle, poured even more money into midterm campaigns on behalf of Republicans in early October. The $445 million he has allocated this cycle makes him a unique force in American politics — but he’s not the only deep-pocketed power. A slew of Republican megadonors, super PACs and other sources of outside spending are aligning to dwarf the amount that Democratic-aligned groups have on hand in the campaign’s final week.

As stunning as the amounts are, there are drawbacks to the GOP’s reliance on big donors. The ways that money is being spent and for whom — especially on contests in historically red states — speak to long-term issues for the Republican Party. These factors appear to be keeping this enormous infusion of money from fatally damaging Democrats.

Much of Musk’s spending has gone to his super PAC, which The New York Times says has built “a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters.” Musk’s America PAC is active in almost three dozen House campaigns and seven Senate battlegrounds, the Times reports. Musk has almost single-handedly helped keep Texas in play for Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton. Musk’s $158 million donation to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC that backs senatorial candidates, got passed on to Texas PAC and has helped keep Paxton afloat amid a bruising campaign against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

As many beneficiaries of these GOP funding boosts are realizing, late money is often inefficient.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC has finally begun spending its massive reserves. In federal disclosure forms published last week, the group reported $300.5 million in disbursements this election cycle. The Federal Election Commission documents include data through Oct. 14 and show that $75.5 million of MAGA Inc.’s total spending came during the first two weeks of the month. The group reported having $164.3 million on hand.

It’s a political axiom that campaigns should never have money in the bank at the end of the race. But as many beneficiaries of these GOP funding boosts are realizing, late money is often inefficient. The earlier that spending can be directed toward strategic outlays such as ad buys in larger markets, door-to-door canvassing and other field infrastructure, the more likely it is to pay off down the line. Floods of last-minute cash don’t go as far as earlier contributions would have.

Although the Supreme Court struck down limitations on coordination between national and state party committees and federal candidates, the firewall between campaigns and super PACs remains in place. The first part has helped Democrats only slightly amid lackluster fundraising by the Democratic National Committee this cycle. But some individual Democratic candidates have been drawing in buckets of cash. (It must be noted, though, that Democrats have also benefited from the largesse of billionaires including George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.)

The result is evident in 10 competitive Senate races, Politico recently noted, where “the Democratic campaigns raised more than five times as much as the Republican ones. Put another way: Talarico alone raised more than all those Republicans combined.” As it stands, many of the closest races, including the Senate contest in Texas, wouldn’t have needed pallets of cash airdropped in during most campaign cycles.

The disparity in fundraising by individual campaigns has made Republicans reliant on outside spending for broadcast ads, Politico reported last week, often one of the biggest campaign expenses:

In Ohio’s Senate race, Republican groups make up 63% of the $218 million spent. But in spite of their nearly 2-to-1 spending advantage over Democrats, they make up just over half of ads that are on the airwaves, according to data from the tracking service AdImpact. In Texas, Republicans have outspent Democrats by a 3-to-1 margin but have aired just 58% of the ads. And in Michigan, the GOP accounts for 60% of the spending but just over half of the ads.

A large part of this discrepancy comes down to the mechanics of broadcast advertising. Candidates, and now political parties thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, are entitled to significantly lower rates. That has allowed Democratic candidates — who have posted bonkers fundraising hauls — to offset much of the GOP advantage in super PACs. Republican Senate candidates, on the other hand, struggled overall with their fundraising. And some GOP outside groups bought their ad time later, when it was even more expensive.

Historically, Republican congressional candidates have relied more on big donors than Democrats have, but Trump’s fundraising operation has upended norms on multiple levels. Although the MAGA Inc. reserves mostly came from the president pressing big donors for seven-figure checks, his past campaigns were financed largely by a wide swath of loyal supporters, sometimes via questionable means, such as fine print saying that donations would be converted into recurring payments. In 2024, there was already evidence that well was running dry, and donor fatigue has since increased among GOP small-dollar supporters.

The economic fallout from Trump’s tariffs and war against Iran, including higher prices on a range of goods and services, also helps explain the decline among ordinary GOP donors. If enough Republicans continue to feel alienated from politics, that could be disastrous for the party’s long-term electoral outlook.

If enough Republicans continue to feel alienated from politics, that could be disastrous for the party’s long-term electoral outlook.

The DNC, by contrast, is reporting a late surge of small donors as the cycle finishes. The hope among Democrats is that this support translates into voter turnout and possibly also volunteers. (And while new research dims the shine on small donors as the saviors of democracy, it still beats the rich trying to buy the Congress they want to see.)

However unlikely campaign finance reforms are in the near term to stanch the flood of megadonor money into politics, there is still reason to be optimistic about what money can, and cannot, buy Republicans. In 2025, Musk poured $20 million into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race and even promised million-dollar checks to two voters — and his preferred candidate still lost. If history is any guide, Musk can try to buy his preferred outcome, but there are limits to what even his vast fortune can accomplish.

The post The bright side of the GOP’s big-spending midterm bailouts appeared first on MS NOW.

Mail-in ballots account for more than half of votes cast so far, as early turnout builds across the United States ahead of Election Day.

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More than 26.6 million U.S. citizens have already voted in the midterm elections, according to data released October 24 by the University of Florida’s Election Lab, with mail-in ballots accounting for 14 million of the votes recorded nationwide.

RELATED: U.S. Midterms: Trump’s Grip on Congress Comes Down to the Gas Pump

The latest figures show that 26,608,029 votes had been cast ahead of Election Day, including 14,006,420 ballots returned by mail and 12,601,609 votes cast in person. Election authorities have also received requests for more than 59.4 million mail-in ballots nationwide.

Early voting has increased in states including North Carolina, Kansas, Maine and Iowa, while Texas has seen a rise in mobilization among Latino voters, according to the report. The figures come amid concerns over economic conditions and the cost of living.

California has recorded 2,943,863 early votes, overwhelmingly through mail-in voting. Of those, 2,936,954 were returned by mail and 6,909 were cast in person. Voters in the state have requested more than 23.4 million mail-in ballots.

🚨 Estados Unidos se aproxima a unas elecciones legislativas decisivas, con la popularidad de Donald Trump en retroceso y creciente malestar por la economía. Los comicios del 3 de noviembre de 2026 definirán la composición del Congreso.

🗳️🇺🇸 ¿Qué opinas?… pic.twitter.com/HX9HCMb2o0

— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) August 29, 2026

Text Reads: 🚨 The United States is approaching pivotal legislative elections, with Donald Trump’s popularity on the decline and growing discontent over the economy. The November 3, 2026, elections will determine the composition of Congress.
🗳️🇺🇸 What do you think?

Democrats account for the largest share of California’s early votes, with 1,383,916 ballots, or 50.2% of the total. Republicans have cast 799,054 votes, representing 29%, while voters registered without a party preference and those affiliated with minor parties account for 575,130 votes, or 20.9%.

Los Angeles County leads California in early voting, with 539,589 ballots processed. San Diego County follows with 356,667 votes, ahead of Orange County, where 279,953 ballots have been returned.

The elections will determine all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 Senate seats and 36 governorships.

The run-up to Election Day has also been marked by a legal dispute over the certification of results in Alaska. A federal court challenge backed by former President Donald Trump seeks to block the potential certification of the state’s election results, raising questions about the electoral process as voting approaches its conclusion.

PEEKSKILL, N.Y. — When Cait Conley took the stage here Saturday, she introduced Hakeem Jeffries by a title he doesn’t yet hold: “Speaker Jeffries.”

Jeffries himself won’t go that far. He won’t talk numbers or margins, or even officially say he’s running for speaker. But just over one week out from Election Day, he’s “confident” Democrats are going to win back the House.

“We’re watching the races in Texas and Florida closely,” the House minority leader said in an interview with MS NOW when asked what races might inform if Democrats are having a good night. “The MAGA extremists gerrymandered the congressional map in Texas and gerrymandered the congressional map in Florida to try to steal from those two states, nine different seats. That ain’t happening on Election Day, and we’re going to win several of those seats that were previously thought to be out of reach.”

The polls, the pundits and, privately, even some Republicans share his read of the national map, if not of every race on it. That includes this one in New York’s Hudson Valley, where Conley is challenging Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the 17th District.

“What we’re thinking about right now is winning every single seat in front of us that’s competitive,” Jeffries told MS NOW.

Many of his members — and would-be members — already call him speaker. Jeffries won’t engage, insisting “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Yet his rise to the speakership is one of Washington’s safest predictions. Pressed on why he keeps dodging questions about his future plans, Jeffries said it’s “because we have to be focused on what’s in front of us. And what’s in front of us is November 3. Once we get through November 3, then we can focus on January 3 — which is the first day of the new Congress.”

The weeks between those two dates could prove crucial. The Trump administration has stoked fears of federal interference in the elections — be it with recent lawsuits in Alaska, or leaving the door open to deploying federal law enforcement agencies, like ICE, to polling places across the country.

Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to Jeffries and Speaker Mike Johnson urging a peaceful transfer of power. Jeffries said he hasn’t spoken to Johnson specifically about that letter. But, “generally, I’ve made clear to Speaker Johnson and to the Republicans — and we’ve said this publicly and privately — that we have to respect the will of the voters to ensure that there’s a peaceful transfer of power,” Jeffries said. “Whatever happens on November 3rd has to translate into who is in the majority on January 3rd.”

Asked how Johnson responded, Jeffries said: “Mike Johnson is not going to get into what he views as a hypothetical situation, and at the end of the day, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I think the elections are going to be decisive enough that it’s going to be clear that Democrats are going to be in control of the House of Representatives. We’re going to see Democrats win up and down the ballot, and all across the country, as we’ve seen repeatedly since the very beginning of the Trump administration.”

Affordability and accountability

Jeffries believes the electoral tides have shifted in his party’s favor because of how he has guided its pushback against the president.

Polls show Trump as unpopular as ever, though Democrats still lag in favorability themselves. Jeffries pointed to polling that gives Democrats an edge in trust on most key issues, from the economy and inflation to the ongoing war in Iran. He credits that shift less to backlash against Trump than to “the fact that we’ve successfully and aggressively pushed back against MAGA extremism.”

That pushback is central to the two-part message Democrats are pitching on the trail: affordability and accountability.

On accountability, the next target may be Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has lately drawn fire from members of both parties in Washington. On the stump Saturday, Jeffries vowed to “run Pete Hegseth out of town.”

“It means that we’re going to hold him accountable in the same way that we held Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem accountable,” Jeffries said afterward. But Trump is the one who pushed out both Bondi, as attorney general, and Noem, as homeland security secretary, after controversies mounted, many of them stoked by lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill.

“And Pete Hegseth needs to be pushed aside by the president, or we’re going to have to deal with that situation if he is not.”

That is the closest Jeffries has come to backing impeachment. His stance could be tested days after the midterms, when a resolution introduced earlier this fall to impeach Hegseth is set to reach the House floor.

“What I’m inclined to do,” Jeffries said when asked whether he would support it, “is to act consistently with what I’ve said relative to Pete Hegseth from the very beginning: I called for Pete Hegseth to be fired by Donald Trump in the spring of 2025. He is deeply unqualified.”

The fight begins at home

For Jeffries, a New Yorker himself, this suburban seat is unfinished business. That’s not only because it could help hand Democrats the House majority.

The Brooklyn native has kept a close eye on how New York’s politics have shifted since 2022, when a string of House losses in the state helped give Republicans control of the chamber. Two years later, as Democrats reeled from Trump’s re-election, New York was a bright spot for the party: It flipped three of those five seats back into the blue column.

That’s the work Jeffries came to the Hudson Valley on Saturday to finish.

“This is the MAGA extremist’s last stand,” he said of New York’s 17th. “In 2024, we flipped four seats that were previously won by Republicans that are now held by Democrats, and we’re going to hold those seats in 2026. Mike Lawler pretends to be a common sense Republican, but he’s really just a MAGA puppet. Cait Conley is an American patriot, and I’m confident she’s going to flip this seat.”

A flipped seat and a new majority would bring Jeffries one step from the speakership. That would complete a generational handoff that began three years ago, when he succeeded Nancy Pelosi, who led House Democrats for two decades. If he wins the gavel, Jeffries would be the first Black speaker of the House.

He’s reluctant to talk about that, too, and invoked the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., to explain why.

“John Lewis, who we all, many of us, had the honor to serve with … he would always say, ‘Keep your eye on the prize.’”

Nothing is done until it’s done. But for Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement, seeing a Black man hold the speaker’s gavel would surely have meant something.

“Well,” Jeffries allowed, going further than he has before, “it means a lot to me that I stand on his shoulders and the shoulders of so many incredible legends, like Shirley Chisholm, whose district I in part represent, and they would all encourage us, like Shirley Chisholm, to be ‘unbought and unbossed’ in the face of the type of extremism that’s been unleashed on the American people. We got to get through this moment. We got to win the House so we can begin the process of decisively ending this national nightmare.”

Lillie Boudreaux contributed to this article.

The post Hakeem Jeffries is on the verge of the speakership. Just don’t ask him about it. appeared first on MS NOW.

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s lawsuit — filed at President Donald Trump’s request — seeking to block Alaska from certifying its election results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.

In a contentious interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he denied the president is laying the groundwork to contest the outcome of the midterm elections in just over one week.

“President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form,” Blanche insisted.

But when pressed on what crime the administration alleges is being committed the attorney general said, “Well, it depends.”

“There could be a crime,” Blanche said. “But the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard.”

With a little over one week to go before Election Day, Trump administration officials have set their sights on the key Senate seat, where Sullivan is facing a surprisingly competitive challenge from former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. The lawsuit has heightened Democrats’ fears that Trump could try to undermine the integrity of the midterm elections.

Sullivan, the incumbent, is also being challenged by a retired elementary school teacher who shares his name.

“There is no dispute that the only reason the second Dan Sullivan is running is to pull votes away in a confusing and inappropriate manner from the Dan Sullivan incumbent,” Blanche said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Host Margaret Brennan pushed back, explaining that “Dan S. Sullivan” is clearly listed on the ballot as the incumbent while his opponent is listed without a party affiliation as “Dan J. Sullivan.” She also pointed out that early voting began in the state on Oct. 19.

The Alaska Supreme Court had already settled the issue in June, ordering that both Sullivans be placed on the August primary ballot.

Alaska’s senior Republican senator, Lisa Murkowsi, who frequently breaks with Trump, criticized his administration on Friday for filing the lawsuit. “Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot,” she said.

Peltola, who narrowly leads Sullivan, according to MS NOW polling partner FiftyPlusOne, told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace over the weekend that “this is exactly the kind of corruption that Alaskans are sick and tired of.”

The post ‘Could be a crime’: Todd Blanche doubles down on Alaska lawsuit appeared first on MS NOW.

If Democrats win the House, and possibly the Senate, a result nonpartisan analysts call plausible, they would gain the power to bring new Ukraine aid to a vote and to push back on President Donald Trump’s deals easing pressure on Russia, Reuters reports in an analysis of how US foreign policy could shift.

The stakes are concrete. Trump has largely halted direct US aid to Ukraine, which lawmakers of both parties had backed, and its current supplies run from packages passed under his predecessor.

Weeks ago, he also waived the sanctions on Russian energy that Congress had written into law and struck a deal to bring Russian diesel back to the market, angering Republicans and Democrats alike.

What a Democratic Congress could do for Ukraine

With both chambers, Democrats could put new Ukraine aid on the floor, and given the bipartisan support such aid has drawn, it could pass with the two-thirds majorities needed to override a Trump veto.

Other steps could be taken, too. Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, in line to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee if his party wins control, has already introduced bipartisan legislation to block Trump’s plan to return Russian diesel to the global market.

Democrats are also readier than Trump’s Republicans to rein in military spending. They blocked his request for an unprecedented 67% rise in the military budget, to $1.5 trillion, in the Senate, and many say they will try to restore the foreign aid he has withheld or canceled.

The limits of a slice of power

The leverage has limits. Even with both chambers, Democrats would still face a president who can veto, and overriding him would require two-thirds of each chamber. The pattern has already been visible in Iran: Trump launched that war on 28 February without congressional approval, and when a War Powers resolution passed with a handful of Republican votes, his administration ignored it.

The US midterms could restore Ukraine’s American aid and curb Trump’s Russia deals, if Democrats win Congress

He recognizes a cool thing when he sees it.

Caro is a city of about 4,000 people in central Michigan and the seat of Tuscola County, which Donald Trump won by more than 40 percentage points in 2024. On a brisk Saturday afternoon, just more than two weeks before Election Day, I drove there in a rental car to see progressive firebrand Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for U.S. Senate, hold a town hall. When I flipped on the radio en route to Caro, I immediately heard the hosts of a right-wing talk show lavishing praise on Elon Musk. After many miles of driving alongside corn fields and wind turbines, while listening queasily to admiration for the reactionary tech tycoon, I was surprised at what I saw upon my arrival: hundreds of people lined up outside a community center waiting to hear what a Bernie Sanders-backed Democrat had to say. El-Sayed, who has never held elected office, has a narrow lead in the polls against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers for a seat left open by a retiring Democrat.

El-Sayed took to the stage in his signature tightly fitting black shirt and jeans. After joking that he had come to Caro because it was one letter off from Cairo — a nod to his Egyptian ancestry — he immediately worked the crowd up by listing things that “shouldn’t be this hard” in America: buying a tank of gas, buying a second bag of groceries, seeing a doctor. When he ended the list by declaring, “Shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money’s going to be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids,” the crowd roared.

Then came a call-and-response from El-Sayed and the Caro crowd that hammered home his core campaign themes:

“Money out of?”

“Politics!” they shouted.

“Money in your?”

“Pockets!”

“Medicare for?”

“All!”

Many in the Caro crowd nodded as El-Sayed said, “Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics. He’s the worst symptom of the disease of our politics. The disease is the system that allows big corporations and billionaires and special interests to buy and sell politicians in ways that leave them rigging the system against us.” His language frequently draws attention to his training as a doctor. He never practiced medicine after finishing medical school at Columbia, but he earned a doctorate in public health from Oxford, and he has served as a health director for Wayne County, which is home to Detroit.

It was after El-Sayed said he’d answer questions that the mood darkened. In what may be the most viral moment of the 2026 midterm elections, a man in the audience who identified himself as Tommy stood up and asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,” an Islamist organization that Tommy called a “terrorist group.” El-Sayed said he’d have no problem disavowing the Muslim Brotherhood and did so. He then rejected the bigoted basis for Tommy’s question, and lectured him on the Constitution and freedom of religion.

There has been no indication that El-Sayed, or anyone else in the room, knew that Tommy was Thomas Teepell, a GOP operative who most notably worked as a former aide to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. But watching their exchange from inside the room, I was struck by El-Sayed’s antagonistic, even scornful, tone with him. Most politicians find a way to brush off the substance of what their hecklers say, if they don’t have them escorted out altogether. As Teepell began to leave, a woman yelled, “Bye, Tommy!” All of a sudden, a whole chorus of “Bye, Tommy! Bye, Tommy!” rang out as he walked out the door. “Tommy” might have thought his Islamophobic attack would do well in Caro, but El-Sayed beat him back, and he walked out being jeered, with his tail between his legs.

The Caro town hall dramatized the exhilarating possibilities of El-Sayed’s campaign — and the dark reactionary forces arrayed against him.

El-Sayed is not a socialist, but he is backed by many of them, and his demands for government-backed health insurance, hostility toward corporate power, and willingness to call Israel’s war a “genocide” represents a break from standard American liberalism. His campaign embodies a belief — contra the Democratic establishment — that the political system must change and that the left can plausibly build a base for that effort in heartland America. In that Caro town hall, that change felt like a possibility.

But “Tommy” represents the right’s counter to this vision. Not with rebuttal, but by fostering bigotry and smearing progressive politics as an alien import. Michigan State University political scientist Matt Grossmann told me Muslims are “one of the few demographics that voters are willing to express that they dislike.” Nearly 40% of voters in Michigan have admitted they’re less likely to support a Muslim candidate, and the GOP’s attacks on El-Sayed have mostly focused on him being a Muslim born to Egyptian immigrants to imply he’s a “risky” extremist.

Some politicians might react to such a political environment by affecting an air of amicability, but El-Sayed doesn’t. For some Michiganders, that makes him all the more appealing. I spoke to dozens of voters that week as I followed El-Sayed criss-crossing the state. Nearly every town hall attendee I spoke to described El-Sayed’s fierce speaking style — which routinely includes cutting down his opponents with harsh language — as a reason they were drawn to him.

“I like how he’s almost abrasive, like how honest and how raw he is, and the things that he’s honest and raw about,” Trevana, a 36-year-old customer service professional who lives in Midland, told me.

Alexus-Jo, a university financial aid office staffer who lives in rural Bay County, said she has in the past voted Republican and third party, and wasn’t planning to vote at all this time — but then she was moved by his tough persona: “I feel like establishment Democrats underestimate how volatile the general political climate is, and I feel like he’s not being stepped all over,” she said.

She added, “Seeing my Republican family members or people that aren’t Democrats say, ‘I don’t love the idea, but he’s got some things where I’m like, “OK, I’m listening,”’ that has really made me energized to get more into politics.”

My goal in Michigan was to see how a candidate aligned with the Bernie Sanders left connects with and persuades voters far from the deep-blue cities and districts where the movement has thrived — and how that candidate withstands right-wing attacks. El-Sayed is connecting with voters in a thoroughly purple state, it seems, by disregarding colors and labels.

“There’s no such thing called ‘progressive’ versus ‘conservative’ ideas, we make that up,” El- Sayed told me after a packed 500-person town hall at a theater in Bay City, a small urban center in a Trump-friendly county which, to his point, voted twice for President Barack Obama. “Red and blue are not real, those are not real things. What’s real is people are locked out of their politics by a system that allows big corporations and special interests to buy their politicians.”

The far left has long believed that appealing to people’s shared class interests can cut across cultural differences and pre-existing ideological barriers. El-Sayed’s race against Rogers will be the most consequential test of that theory in recent memory.

***

El-Sayed’s potential strength with swing voters can be placed in three buckets: his specific mode of charisma as a fighter; his focus on — and slightly misleading framing of — Medicare for All; and his ability to frame issues including foreign aid and crime in ways that can appeal to voters on the right and left.

In our era, anger at the status quo is a way to reach across the aisle. El-Sayed’s persona as a scrapper, enhanced by his conspicuously muscular physique, allows him to radiate populist energy at a time of bipartisan demand for it. A new TV ad campaign of his emphasizes his credibility going up against the “corrupt swamp” and the “elites” in Washington to highlight where MAGA Republicans might find something in common with his worldview.

When El-Sayed fired back at “Tommy,” in Caro, I agreed with his argument, but I also winced — condescension toward a town hall participant is usually gaffe territory. But that’s an old-school rhetorical norm, and it is precisely because El-Sayed responded so forcefully that he was effective. He kicked off a news cycle about Islamophobia and his campaign, brought broadly positive attention to himself in the mainstream press and on social media, and used the moment of confrontation to raise money.

Still, there are obvious potential downsides to such pugilism. El-Sayed was repeatedly panned for being patronizing toward his opponents during a primary he won by a narrow margin, and he might miss out on voters who prefer conciliatory or unity-focused orators.

When I asked El-Sayed, while riding on his campaign bus between Flint and Detroit, if he ever second-guessed his abrasive style, he answered, “I just am who I am.” He continued, “I like to build stuff. I rebuilt a health department, led another one, built programs. But too often, when you look at why we are not building for working people in America, it’s because of the insane politics from folks like Donald Trump and Mike Rogers and JD Vance. So if you’re coming to break the things that we want to build, yeah, I’m going to stand up to you.”

Virtually every voter I interviewed cited El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All as a key point of interest. KFF, a health research group, found in September that 66% of Americans, including nearly 40% of Republicans, support “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan” — the highest share since they started asking the question about a decade ago. A top pollster in Michigan found support for Medicare for All in Michigan is at 62%.

Mark Brewer, a 65-year-old independent voter and retired construction worker who lives near the village of Mayville, told me he thought El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All was a good idea. He has voted for libertarian candidates in the past, and told me he’s “financially conservative,” but was frustrated that the vast amount of money he spent on health insurance never guaranteed him care.

“I worked construction for 40 years. I paid $375,000 into health insurance during that time. The day I retired, it stopped,” he said. He said he was unhappy he had to go three years without insurance until he qualified for Medicare.

Tad Sumner, a 61-year-old Midland resident who works in banking and IT, said in 2016, he was for Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, but he has slowly moved to the left and toward El-Sayed’s healthcare views because “health care has become more and more profitized.”

People skeptical about Medicare for All are often afraid of losing the insurance they do have, as flawed as it is. How does El-Sayed put them at ease? “People are frustrated by the current system,” he told me. “I’m not interested in taking anything away. I’m interested in offering you a guarantee for health insurance, cradle to grave, without worrying about a network, or out of network, without worrying about a premium, copay or deductible.”

Unlike some advocates for Medicare for All, El-Sayed says his plan would not entail prohibiting duplicative private insurance. But as People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig has pointed out in Jacobin, that’s effectively a sleight of hand. After a public plan emerges and many employers drop coverage of health insurance, it’s unlikely that people will be able to, or inclined to, purchase expensive private policies that duplicate coverage they’re already guaranteed. Moreover, private insurance would likely look quite different, if it still existed, Bruenig notes. Whether El-Sayed’s plan would formally allow private insurance is not really the issue — but his position that he doesn’t want to take anything away must make the idea go down easier for the skeptics.

El-Sayed has garnered a lot of attention for confidently characterizing Israel’s treatment of Gazans as a “genocide” and opposing unconditional aid to Israel. But the bulk of his foreign policy messaging during town halls and press interviews hasn’t focused on Israel. In those contexts, he has more generally called out militarism and argued that the U.S. should focus on spending at home.

The remark he made in Caro — “Shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money’s going to be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids” — has cross-partisan appeal. With it, El-Sayed simultaneously connected foreign policy adventurism to depleted social services at home; issued a moral judgment by directing attention to the killing of innocents; and, because he didn’t name any countries, he condemned the U.S. backing Israel and the U.S. war with Iran simultaneously. There was something there for war-averse people across the political spectrum. That framing seemed to resonate with many voters I spoke to, some of whom approved of his position on Iran or Gaza, while many others said they approved of how El-Sayed’s foreign policy “put Michigan first.”

El-Sayed is running TV ads featuring a quote from the Detroit Free Press noting that he “Views foreign policy through an America First lens.” And he has found an unlikely supporter in right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, who has described his outlook on foreign policy as “Trumpian.”

I asked El-Sayed if he wanted to be associated with an America First position, or if he would say other values inform his foreign policy worldview. “I definitely am America first,” El-Sayed said. “But my real value is I believe in international law, and I believe we need to be the first among equals to enforce international law.”

That poses some vexing questions and contradictions. Enforcing international law would seem to cut against the idea of focusing exclusively on American affairs. And he insisted on a “responsibility to support Ukraine.” That’s not what MAGA America First advocates want. But this part of El-Sayed’s worldview doesn’t feature in his messaging and doesn’t seem to be trickling through as much to voters, based on my conversations.

When crime came up at the town halls, El-Sayed positioned himself as an advocate for both the status quo and reform. Like socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, El-Sayed has flipped on his previous support of “defund the police.” At Bay City, a voter asked about criminal justice reform in light of an unsolved murder of her peers. El-sayed emphasized “everybody should get to come home safely” — community members and police — and he spoke about funding the police in order to protect “recruitment, retention, and retirement.” He added that there should also be investment in community violence intervention and mental health response services. In other words: Fund the police and alternatives to policing.

When I asked if he took issue with “defund the police” as rhetoric or policy, he said, “It was a dumb idea and dumb rhetoric.”

While some proponents of criminal justice reform on the progressive left will take issue with El-Sayed’s turn to full-throated support for policing, his additive approach to reform has the potential to appeal to progressives and nonprogressives alike.

***

Will all of this come together for a winning ticket? El-Sayed’s calibration of progressive politics to the Rust Belt seem to be resonating enough with voters that he’s been able to maintain a lead, but his lead is narrower than the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s lead over her Republican opponent in this state. He is massively outraising his opponent, but Rogers is a former seven-term U.S. representative with Trump’s backing and significant name recognition. El-Sayed has labored to make his campaign appealing to people across the political spectrum, but that doesn’t mean that they will overlook his party affiliation or discard racial prejudice. He could easily lose.

The Democratic base is not entirely a lock for him. El-Sayed was weak with Black voters in the primary, and whether they will turn out in large numbers for him is an open question that could decide the race. Tensions between the Arab and Black community in Michigan have been cited by strategists and reporters as an issue for El-Sayed. But the main issue may have less to do with race than with ideology. “A lot of his issues with Black voters are not necessarily specific to Black voters,” Grossmann, the Michigan State political scientist, told me. “Within the Democratic Party, Black voters are actually more likely to identify as moderate or conservative, and more likely to be skeptical of the Bernie wing of the party.”

The stakes of this race are exceptionally high. The outcome will not only be crucial in determining who controls the Senate, but will also shape conversations about 2028. According to a recording obtained by The New York Times, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., who is considering a presidential run, said at a New York fundraiser in October that El-Sayed is part of a “generational project” for the progressive movement that could help “break the map.” She added, “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”

Undoubtedly, the outcome of El-Sayed’s race will be used to make the case that a democratic socialist like Ocasio-Cortez has a real chance at winning the White House — or shatter the argument. But a major confounding variable in this contest is that El-Sayed faces unique obstacles due to his identity.

Given that polls in Michigan detect real bias against Muslims and that Trump has won the state twice, I asked El-Sayed whether running as a progressive Muslim in an environment of rampant Islamophobia was asking too much. Had he been tempted to move toward the center?

“I don’t lie to people,” he said. “I tell them what I believe. I’m not willing to check my ideals at the door because of my identity. That’s what people hate about politics. I am who I am. I’ll tell you what I believe. If you agree with me, vote for me.”

He added, “Even if they might never want to vote for me because of my name, maybe by the end of my public service, they’ll think a little bit differently about what America is. Because America’s always been a place where people come together despite our differences to build together what we can’t alone. I believe in that.”

The post How Abdul El-Sayed is trying to pull off the impossible in the Rust Belt appeared first on MS NOW.

Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor whose childhood sexual abuse became fodder for an attack ad by her Republican rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, directly addressed the widely-criticized video on Saturday.

“As you’ve probably heard by now, as a young child, my brother and I experienced a lot of child abuse and neglect. We moved countless times as kids, and even wound up living in a tent in the middle of the winter,” Acton said at a rally in Cleveland, alongside former President Barack Obama and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is making a comeback bid to oust Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

“And now, my opponent has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save to save his struggling campaign, but it’s not going to work,” Acton said to cheers from the crowd. “It’s not going to work because compassion and decency still matter.”

The former president took his star power to Cleveland to help carry his party across the finish line just 10 days before Election Day. He criticized Ramaswamy by name.

“There’s a decency we should expect from our public officials where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that,” Obama said. “There’s got to be something inside you where you just say, ‘You know, no office is worth stooping that low.’ Because you know what, character matters.”

Acton and Obama’s comments referred to a 60-second video released by Ramaswamy’s campaign last week that featured her estranged mother, Donna Arthur. In the clip, Arthur calls her daughter a “liar.”

“She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,” Arthur says in the ad.

Acton has spoken about her and her brother’s difficult shared childhood even before entering politics. She said they were homeless for a time and lived in a tent one winter. She accused her mother’s husband of sexual abuse, and court records obtained by news outlets show Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her when she was 12, before he fled the state and later died.

Arthur disputed Acton’s allegations against her husband in a interview with a conservative website in 2020, but said she stood by her husband. She and Acton have separately said they have not spoken since a last encounter in court over Arthur’s husband’s charges.

Ramaswamy’s ad was met with a wave of condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans almost as soon as it began circulating on the internet. The Ohio governor’s race is very tight, according to MS NOW polling. On Friday, the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” pointing to the ad negative’s consequences of “perhaps creating some collateral damage.”

But Ramaswamy has stood by the video, saying it “had nothing to do with childhood abuse.” President Donald Trump also backed the Republican candidate and accused the media of engaging in a “well-coordinated attack” to get the ad taken down.

In her remarks Saturday, Acton said her difficult childhood experiences shaped who she is today.

“I know that I am not the only one in this room who saw a thing or two in their childhood, but our stories, Ohio’s stories, is one of resilience, of grit, of grace, and, yes, of hope,” she said.

“Hope is a very powerful thing. It’s what got me through living in a cold, dark basement when I wasn’t sure where my next meal was coming from,” Acton continued. “Hope is what got me through sexual abuse, living through cold nights, where all I could think about was how to keep my brother safe and warm.”

She called Ramaswamy “out of touch” and “a danger to my state.”

“Apparently, there is no low to which you won’t stoop,” she said. “But look, I am a scrappy kid from Youngstown. Scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight.”

The post Obama and Ohio Democrat Amy Acton slam Ramaswamy attack ad appeared first on MS NOW.

Democrats are hoping Barack Obama — their “closer in chief” — still has the magic.

The former president certainly still had his magic with words on Saturday when he rallied with the Democrats’ Senate and gubernatorial candidates in Cleveland before another in Detroit.

“There’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold?” Obama said as he eviscerated President Donald Trump on everything from the Iran war and soaring costs of living to his penchant for taxpayer-funded home remodeling.

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama said, electrifying the crowd at the Cleveland rally.

Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief, welcoming the blitz just 10 days before Election Day, with everything seemingly at stake.

“Obama’s our most potent weapon for sure,” said one House Democratic lawmaker, adding, “He remains the biggest star in our party. I think it’s a perfect time to send him on the road and activate him.”

Obama’s arrival on the campaign trail comes as Democrats make their closing messages on affordability and the economy and compete for voters in closely contested races. The Michigan and Ohio Senate races are currently rated as “toss ups” by MS NOW. Georgia’s Senate race is in the “lean Democrat” category.

“President Obama understands the stakes of this election could not be any higher, and that is why he’s doing everything he can to help Democrats up and down the ballot win on November 3,” Eric Schultz, a senior advisor to Obama, told MS NOW. “Our strategy is focused on maximizing his impact, especially where his voice can help move the needle in support of the next generation of leaders currently stepping up to lead.”

For candidates, his appeal goes beyond drawing a crowd: Democrats say Obama can deliver a closing argument that connects the high stakes of the election to voters’ everyday concerns, while drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans.

Plus, they say Obama is the closest thing Democrats have to match the magnetism Trump once had at the height of his packed MAGA rallies.

On the trail, the former president will focus on the high cost of living, including housing and energy prices. But he’s also highlighting corruption and abuse of power in Washington and the implications of artificial intelligence, according to a person familiar with Obama’s thinking.

The same person said Obama’s team worked with Democratic House, Senate and gubernatorial leadership to identify where his presence could be most beneficial in the most competitive Senate and gubernatorial races. The former Democratic president has raised over $15 million for his party, the person close to Obama said, through events, emails and mail campaigns.

His strategy has gone beyond rallies, filming more than two dozen endorsement videos to support Democratic candidates. Among those receiving the boosts are Iowa senate nominee Josh Turek and Troy Jackson, the nominee in Maine. He also made an appearance in Austin, Texas in May with the state’s Senate nominee James Talarico and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa.

For candidates on the trail, Obama brings an unmatched enthusiasm that other Democrats can’t replicate.

“He does a really good job making closing arguments: why this moment is so important, why the election is so consequential, why everyone’s vote matters as much as it does,” Rep. Greg Landsman, an Ohio Democrat, said. “There’s very few that do it better than he does.”

Obama joined Senate Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown and the state’s gubernatorial nominee, Amy Acton, at the rally in Cleveland Saturday afternoon before wooing voters for Michigan’s Senate Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson in the evening. He’s set to head south to Atlanta on Wednesday.

In an election cycle dominated by concerns about affordability and the economy, Landsman said Obama can draw a contrast between Democrats’ approach to the economy and health care and the policies Republicans have pursued over the past two years.

“He has the ability to talk about what you have to do to build a strong economy, which he did, versus what’s happened over the last two years,” Landsman said.

Trump will also campaign in the Great Lakes State this weekend, rallying voters in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday afternoon. He’s embarked on a more than 15 state campaign blitz in the month leading up to Election Day, hitting red states like Kentucky, Montana and Alabama while also hosting multiple rallies in battleground states like Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Iowa.

Obama’s role on the trail extends beyond energizing the party faithful.

Democratic Governors Association Communication Director Sam Newton said his presence can bring attention to races, including those for the governor’s mansion, that receive less national attention than contests for Congress.

His ability to reach voters who might otherwise tune out politics is another reason his appearances matter in the final stretch before Election Day, Newton said.

“Part of why President Obama is the closer in chief is because he’s always had a special and unique ability to draw attention from voters who are otherwise apathetic or not necessarily paying attention,” Newton said. “Having him on the trail at this critical time when you’re trying to reach every possible voter is really important.”

And although Obama may be their “most potent weapon,” he may have some competition.

“He’s just a rockstar,” said another House Democratic member. “The only more powerful closer we could possibly have is Michelle Obama.”

Mychael Schnell contributed to this report.

The post ‘Most potent weapon’: Obama arrives to boost Democrats in battlegrounds appeared first on MS NOW.

Arabic should not be treated differently from German, Spanish, Italian or Japanese because of contemporary politics.

Four takeaways from India’s protest movement, at a moment when democracies around the world are under pressure.

© Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Among the more amazing things about Donald Trump’s crusade against Rep. Ilhan Omar is how utterly brazen it is. The president and his team could at least try to keep up appearances, to maintain some kind of pretense that the scrutiny of the Minnesota Democrat is legitimate — but the Republican officials have largely decided not to bother.

On the contrary, Trump publicly demanded an investigation into a political opponent — which is itself an abuse — all the while making clear that he hoped to strip Omar of her citizenship and to deport a sitting congresswoman who dared to cross him. Soon after, federal departments did as they were directed to do, in pursuit of the president’s stated goal.

“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,” Barack Obama said in a statement. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”

Despite highly dubious evidence of wrongdoing, federal agents seized the laptop, cellphone and passport of a sitting member of Congress, at which point the president who demanded this probe received a highly unusual briefing from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

While there’s still no evidence that the Minnesotan has done anything wrong, Trump took some time during his Thursday night rally in Iowa to insist that Omar resign. The Republican added that “the Democrat [sic] Party has conceded her seat” and she will no longer be permitted to serve in Congress.

Trump calls for Ilhan Omar to immediately resign & says, "please inform our great Speaker, James Michael Johnson that the Democrat Party has conceded her seat … she will not be allowed to me a member of that body any longer"Trump's crowd in Iowa then starts chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-23T00:27:55.342Z

At that point, as if on cue, his followers chanted, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

After the event, the president published a statement to his social media platform, again calling on Omar to “IMMEDIATELY resign from Congress,” adding that someone should inform House leaders that the congresswoman has “openly admitted to FRAUD, and she will not be legally allowed to be a Member of this August Body.”

In reality, of course, Omar has not “openly admitted” to any wrongdoing and has repeatedly denied the White House’s allegations. No one has conceded their seat — Omar is likely to be re-elected in 11 days — and she is absolutely still permitted to serve on Capitol Hill, doing the job Americans in her district elected her to do.

I have no idea what, if anything, will come of this relentless campaign. Given that Team Trump also ordered an investigation into Omar’s records in his first term and that probe was eventually abandoned for lack of evidence, the president might want to temper his expectations.

But that this is happening at all reflects unmistakable authoritarian tactics.

“The investigation of her is a chilling example of the federal government using its immense power to silence a critic,” the editorial board of The New York Times explained. “It is an affront to free speech, the rule of law and American ideals.”

The editorial added, “In the case of Ms. Omar, the administration has gone back more than a quarter-century to investigate a prominent critic. If her naturalization can be revisited, it suggests that no naturalized citizen is safe. It also indicates that the federal government can go searching for any decades-old problem to hound somebody who has criticized the White House. Those are the tactics of authoritarian societies.”

The post Trump’s crusade against Ilhan Omar follows a familiar authoritarian playbook appeared first on MS NOW.

• The US House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a state congressional district.
• US representatives do not need to be natural-born citizens in order to take office.
• See the 26 current representatives born outside the US.

Similar to the US Senate, members of the House of Representatives do not need to be natural-born citizens in order to take office.

In fact, the only members of government who do are the president and vice president.

The House of Representatives, one of the two chambers of Congress alongside the Senate, has 435 voting members. They represent congressional districts allocated among the states based on population and serve two-year terms with no term limits.

To qualify as a US House representative, a person must be:

• At least 25 years old
• A US citizen for at least seven years.
• Live in the state they want to represent at the time of the election.

Many current House members were US citizens at birth despite being born in another country — for instance, because they were born to American parents working in government positions abroad.

Here are the 26 active House representatives born outside the US.

While many Republican candidates are keeping Donald Trump at arm’s length, Iowa’s Joe Mitchell has moved in a far more obsequious direction, despite running in one of the nation’s most competitive congressional districts.

The 29-year-old former state representative, hoping to succeed Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa’s 2nd District, joined the president during a rally Thursday night and offered the kind of gushing praise Trump likes to hear. Mitchell said Trump has “kept this country more safe than any other president, ever,” before expressing outrage that Trump hasn’t been given a Nobel Peace Prize.

It was at that point when the Iowan decided to give the president a different honor — one he had made up.

Joe Mitchell gives Trump "the man of the century" award (that he just made up)

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-23T01:40:34.634Z

Mitchell held up a framed certificate and said, “So what I came up with, Mr. President, is a new award. It’s called the ‘Man of the Century Award.’” The congressional hopeful went on to insist that Trump has “fought more for humanity and for America than any other president ever” and has become “the greatest president we’ve ever had.”

The president accepted the certificate, handed it to an aide and continued with his rally.

Time will tell whether locals in one of the nation’s true toss-up House races are impressed with such sycophancy, but the presentation got me thinking about the larger pattern: Trump has struggled to earn the kind of awards he desperately wants, but he has managed to receive all kinds of fake honors.

Earlier this year, for example, several coal industry executives and miners in hard hats presented Trump with a trophy that labeled him the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”

This was not an isolated incident. Shortly after Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020, the National Republican Senatorial Committee made up an honor for him called the Champion for Freedom Award.

More recently, after the president’s begging didn’t lead to a Nobel Peace Prize, soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, concocted its own peace prize in the hopes of making Trump feel better.

A month after Trump picked up a trophy from coal industry representatives, House Speaker Mike Johnson held an event in which he announced another made-up honor, called the America First Award. The Louisiana Republican then handed the president, the first recipient, with a giant eagle statue.

Let this be a lesson to those hoping to curry favor with the White House: If you haven’t already visited a store that makes trophies and prizes, you’re making a mistake.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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