democrats

The ad was repugnant.

You know the one I’m talking about — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack on opponent Amy Acton using her clearly troubled mother, who failed to protect Acton as a child from her rapist stepfather and instead abandoned her kids to stay with the now-deceased pedophile.

Wow. Even in 2026, that’s a lot.

The ad, released last week on the internet and set for a television blitz through the election, has sparked condemnation even from Republicans. Some anyway. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance (a close friend of Ramaswamy’s) have defended it, much to the chagrin of decent people everywhere who have labeled this a make-it-or-break-it moment for the Grand Old Party.

Trump called getting Acton’s mom on camera “hitting pay dirt.”

“Why shouldn’t somebody use that?” Trump said Friday. “To me, that’s something that’s very much fair game.”

Trump’s right, in his world anyway. His faithful may not like the ad, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

The appalled, left and right, are wrong on this one — this is not a turning point for the Republican Party or the moment it realized its soul was in the frying pan.

When Ramaswamy loses — and he’s likely going to lose, if polls are right — it won’t be because Republican voters finally believe the party has sunk too low, lost its way or lacks morals. And when the postmortem happens on the right, it won’t examine whether exploiting victims of sex abuse is a smart move. (Full disclosure: One of my relatives is an advisor of Ramaswamy.)

Instead, the ad will eventually be seen as a great gift to Donald Trump for two reasons.

First, it allows Ramaswamy — his endorsed candidate — to lose without it being the president’s fault for starting a war, tanking the economy and generally being entirely unpopular with average Americans. Get ready, because if Ramaswamy goes down, Trump will spin it that Democrats and the corrupt media misrepresented the ad and lied about Ramaswamy. Not Trump’s fault, just further proof of why his battle is righteous.

Second, it allows him to test the loyalty of his MAGA acolytes ahead of 2028, and folks, I’m sorry to say it’s a test they are likely to pass with flying colors. Vance laid this out clearly in his defense, reserving his scorn for Republicans who dared to be anything but steadfast.

“Stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days,” Vance said in response to a question about the ad. He added he was “disgusted” that his fellow Republicans were seemingly more upset about the ad “than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”

For all the angst about sexual abuse, even of minors, the forever Trumpers honestly don’t care as long as their candidates win and maintain power. Just ask Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Ask E. Jean Kelly. Ask Victim A in the Matt Gaetz allegations, or Christine Blasey Ford if you can remember that far back. The list goes on.

MAGA diehards may holler and stomp about how much they hate pedophiles, but they hate Democrats more. Trump has told these voters to ignore the ad and vote Ramaswamy. I predict more of them do it than decency permits — because we’ve seen this MAGA mental split before, where they somehow set aside all of their so-called outrage when Trump tells them to do something.

These voters are clear that the Trump regime presents a real opportunity to remake the country into a conservative bastion in ways that will be hard to undo, and they will overlook even the indecency of exploiting childhood rape.

“Vivek is Great, there is no one better for Ohio. That’s a wild story,” responded one supporter on Truth Social after Trump posted a defense of the ad.

“I love how Vivek does not hesitate to call out wrongdoings,” wrote another.

Others tried to turn the topic to their conspiracies about Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, two bogeyman of the right for their race and religion. The responses of Trumpers to his post were exactly on brand — deflecting or blaming media and disinformation for skewing the issue. (Trump and Ramaswamy are claiming that the ad isn’t about sexual abuse, but only about whether Acton is truthful.)

With that veneer of justification, it’s likely his most devout base in Ohio, led by the 20% of voters who consider themselves white evangelicals, will stick with their guy. Nearly 8 in 10 white evangelical Protestants support Trump, and they are motivated voters who have disconnected the Trump reality from the Trump promise for years.

Despite all the outrage across the country about the ad, it’s likely the final tally in Ohio will remain largely as it would have been before the kerfuffle. Ramaswamy was down in the polls before he dove into the muck of the past few days. A reliable Cook’s poll put Acton ahead 49% to 44% — one of the reasons Ramaswamy was desperate enough to try this last-ditch smear.

I’ll bet an Ohio buckeye the final count isn’t far outside that margin, with no sign of a massive drop in Republican support of Ramaswamy, despite all the posturing and hand-wringing. If he loses, it is likely more about the surging racism against Indian Americans, especially with young conservatives, than one ugly ad.

But those Republicans who denounced the ad will face the president’s punishment. The ad is not a mistake. It is an inadvertent test. By embracing the ad even as it’s disparaged nationally, the president is discovering exactly who he can, and can’t, trust as he heads into the two most difficult years of his decadelong rule — the part where he stops pretending to be anything but what he is, a corrupt and greedy man intent on maximizing power and wealth. The part where he challenges elections.

We are watching the last of the old-guard Republicans being purged thanks to the ad. Republicans who have gathered up the tattered shreds of their integrity and courage over this ad are shredding them to nothing on this moment, giving Trump insight into who might stand up to him when the protection of our democracy is on the line.

Trump has started lashing out already, making sure those potential last-round conscientious objectors are damaged.

After current Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called for Ramaswamy to stop airing the spot, labeling it “deeply troubling,” Trump attacked him — even though DeWine said he continued to support Ramaswamy as his replacement. (DeWine is facing term limits.)

“Mike DeWine, who I unfortunately helped get elected years ago, when he was losing by 16 points prior to my doing a Rally for him was, as usual, disloyal to the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on social media.

DeWine was far from alone.

Trump’s days of conning himself into a coalition are behind him — well into his second term, is now consolidating power behind his core, public opinion be damned.

The independent voters that may indeed not vote or change votes because of the ad were just as likely to switch over gas prices or wars.

The ad was never for them, but rather just for this outrage, this push to motivate the base with just the sort of grimy bullying Trump does best — I believe him when he says he wishes he could make an ad like this. Trump will rally in Ohio this week with Ramaswamy, and it’s likely most Republicans will somehow have transmuted their outrage into support by the time he appears in person.

His base understands his support of the ad is an expression of power. His base understands the trade they are making. His base doesn’t care what happened to Acton, because she will never give them the America they want.

His base likes the ad, even if they won’t admit it.

Former US president says Trump ‘chose to make a series of bad decisions’, highlighting the US-Israel war on Iran.

Former United States President Barack Obama has criticised the “cruelty and corruption” during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Obama slammed Trump’s foreign policies on Saturday during a midterm election campaign rally in Ohio to support the state’s Democratic candidates.

“The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions,” the 65-year-old Democrat said. “Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for,” he added, referring to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Obama urged Ohioans to vote against the Republican administration, saying: “After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough’.”

Heated Ohio races

The former president also addressed the recent controversy in Ohio’s gubernatorial race surrounding an attack advertisement by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy against Democrat Amy Acton.

“In recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behaviour are so low that somebody could run an ad like that.”

In the advertisement, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, disputes her daughter’s account of a childhood involving homelessness and ⁠⁠⁠⁠sexual abuse by her stepfather, urging Ohioans not to vote for her.

Acton says she has not seen her mother since 1978. Acton’s brother has supported her account of being sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a child. The stepfather, who died in 2004, was charged with rape.

Obama backed Acton, saying that she has “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced: abuse, neglect and homelessness.”

The former president shared the rally stage with Acton and Ohio’s former Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who will attempt a comeback against incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted.

Polls give Democrats a slight lead in both Ohio races, but results are expected to be close.

Two years after United States voters delivered a stunning rebuke of the country’s Democratic Party by electing Republican President Donald Trump to a second nonconsecutive term, some of the party’s midterm candidates are reassessing stances on a host of hot-button issues.

Whether they have dialled it back on issues like transgender rights or ramped up efforts to oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Democrats in some of the toughest midterm battleground races are responding to voter concerns – or even breaking outright with party leadership.

Those shifts have resonated with some voters, while others have been alienated as the party tries to find its footing in Trump’s second term and wrestle away control of both houses of Congress from Republicans.

But in the time since Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, Democratic divisions have only grown deeper. Establishment and self-described moderates within the party have struggled to hold back a rising tide of progressive populism as voters increasingly demand stronger, bolder policies.

That movement, powered by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, has forced a reckoning over what it means to be a Democrat in Trump’s second term, leading to significant differences among candidates on policies that often depend on where they are running.

Here’s how – and why – the party has shifted:

Democrats’ shifting views on Israel

The most notable shift among Democrats has, arguably, been on Israel.

Three years after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza and killed more than 74,000 Palestinians following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, polls have suggested that Americans hold increasingly negative views on Israeli military actions.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year suggested that 60 percent of US adults had an unfavourable opinion of Israel. That number is significantly higher – 80 percent – among US Democrats.

In response, some longtime Democratic supporters of Israel – including Senator Chris Coons, who is likely to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if Democrats retake control of the Senate next month – have shifted, as voters, especially younger ones, demand greater accountability from the US ally.

The moderate Delaware Democrat told Politico in an interview this month that he wants a “thorough reexamination” of the US-Israeli relationship and is even willing to impose sanctions on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is a marked change in tone after Harris rejected calls to feature a Palestinian American speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Earlier this year, 40 Democratic senators voted in support of a motion that disapproved proposed military sales to Israel. Only seven Democratic senators voted with Republicans to block it.

But as a new Congress may include even more progressive voices demanding the US rethink its relationship with Israel, those calls would likely be met with stiff resistance from some in the Democratic leadership, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The New York Democrat, who would likely become majority leader if Democrats retake the Senate, has said that the US “commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad”.

Have Democrats changed their positions on transgender rights?

Following years of attacks from Republicans, Democrats in tightly contested US House or Senate races have downplayed – or outright dismissed – support for the transgender community, mostly when it comes to the participation of transgender students in school sports.

In Ohio, Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur ran an advertisement featuring her saying, “Boys should not play in girls’ sports”. And in North Carolina, Representative Don Davis released a television commercial in which the Democrat says there “should always be a safe and fair space for women and girls in sports”.

Next door in South Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews, a doctor, said in a newly released advertisement that she opposes “biological men playing in women’s sports”.

Trump’s return to the White House was fuelled, in part, by a now-famous advertisement in the 2024 campaign that highlighted Harris’s support for transgender Americans.

“Kamala is for they/them,” a narrator said in the advertisement, referring to gender neutral pronouns used by some in the transgender and nonbinary community. “President Trump is for you.”

But the reassessment of transgender rights after the commercial’s airing is not taking place in every part of the party.

On Thursday at a “Students vs Billionaires” town hall in Portland, Maine, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressed concerns from a transgender college student who told the New York progressive that they felt “abandoned” by Democrats.

“They’re wrong”, Ocasio-Cortez said about some members of her party. “First and foremost, I want to just let you know how shameful and sorry I am that there are people out there that scare so easily after an election”.

The congresswoman added, “The moment you compromise the rights of a trans person in America, you compromise the rights of every citizen.”

What has changed on immigration and border security?

During former US President Joe Biden’s term, Democrats encountered near-daily attacks from Republicans on the country’s immigration system.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 8 million encounters at the US-Mexico border between 2021 and 2025, fuelling concerns among some voters that the Biden administration had ignored the issue.

In Texas’s closely watched Senate race, candidate James Talarico has positioned himself as a “border security Democrat”, advocating for stronger border enforcement and comprehensive immigration reform.

Third Way, a US-based organisation that pushes for moderate policies, said stances like Talarico’s resonate better with voters because they have taken a proactive, rather than a reactionary approach.

“I remember very clearly when Harris came out and spoke at the DNC in 2024; she… said we need order at the border and to have a strong immigration system”, Third Way’s senior political adviser, Lucas Holtz, told Al Jazeera.

“The problem is, after that, the Harris campaign really did not stick with that line in the sand… They stopped taking a stand on these issues, and more voters thought that she was too far to the left.”

“[Talarico] is making the case in a lot of his ads that the Biden administration failed on securing the border… It’s putting Republicans on their back foot in some of these races.”

But among progressives, Trump’s response to the nation’s immigration issue has also prompted a strong swing to the left.

After several high-profile incidents earlier this year – including federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, shooting dead US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti  – calls to abolish, or drastically overhaul, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have gained momentum.

Left-leaning political groups and politicians have united behind a message of “abolish ICE”, which would dismantle the federal agency and end its enforcement authority.

Do Democrats support Medicare for All?

As cost-of-living issues remain paramount for voters, Democrats of all stripes have coalesced behind the need for more government intervention in the country’s healthcare system.

But how exactly the party addresses rising medical costs remains up for debate.

Some progressives, including Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, have championed policies like Medicare for All, which would expand the nation’s federal health insurance programme for seniors so all US citizens would be guaranteed healthcare.

Others running in more conservative states, like Andrews, have called for the return of Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed during Trump’s second term, as well as limits on health insurance companies’ profits.

Polling released by the independent health organisation KFF suggested that 66 percent of US adults now support Medicare for All, a 13-point increase from October 2020.

“Everybody’s going to have their own approach to this, but by and large, all Democrats want to move to a universal healthcare system in the best way possible”, Holtz said.

“We’re in agreement that we need to do better than what the Trump administration has done.”

BAKERSFIELD  — Top Democratic and Republican leaders are sweeping through California as the Nov. 3 election approaches, evidence of the state’s pivotal role in deciding which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives and the fate of President Trump’s final two years in office.

Seizing on their party’s momentum nationwide, Democrats rallied crowds from Orange County to the Bay Area this past week. They blamed Trump and the Republican-led Congress for rising gas and food prices, massive cuts to healthcare funding, deceitful attacks on the elections process and the vilification of immigrants.

In the Central Valley, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday evening appeared alongside Randy Villegas, a Democrat challenging Republican incumbent David Valadao of Hanford in a Latino voter-heavy district in the state’s agricultural heartland. The population of the district is one of the youngest in the country, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd, and Gen Z and millennial voters are expected to play a pivotal role.

“We have the opportunity to take the reins,” said Ocasio-Cortez, one of the nation’s most well-known progressive leaders. “And to give direction to where our future will be headed. And I got to tell you, folks, the future is not with David Valadao.”

Recent polls show Democrats may retake control of the House in the Nov. 3 election, and they may have a chance of taking power in the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who has swung through California twice within the last month to help Republican candidates, acknowledged the challenges ahead but predicted his party would fare better than many predict.

Roughly two dozen House races across the country are expected to decide the House majority, including three competitive races in California: Those of Republican Valadao, Democratic Rep. Adam Gray in the Central Valley and the open seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in the San Diego area.

Democrats are hoping that the new congressional maps approved by California voters in 2025 will give them an edge. The reconfigured congressional districts approved by Proposition 50 were a response by California’s Democratic leadership to Trump urging Republicans, notably in Texas, to shift their boundaries to help the GOP hold onto control of Congress during his final two years in office.

The San Joaquin Valley district represented by Valadao, which already had a Democratic majority, added about 100,000 Fresno residents, turning it even bluer. Valadao has been a perpetual target of Democrats given their longtime voter registration edge in this area.

Aside from briefly losing the seat for one term nearly a decade ago, Valadao has hung onto the seat. He comes from a dairy farming family and is well-known in the area, winning by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.

This cycle, Democrats are hammering him for supporting Trump’s budget cuts that impacted healthcare programs, a critical issue since roughly two-thirds of the population in his district is covered by Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in the state, the most of any district in California, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Valadao is among a handful of GOP members in California’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest of any state in the nation, and among the Republicans targeted by Democrats in response to Trump’s efforts to keep his party in control of Congress.

“Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme is going to fail,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in Buena Park on Thursday. “It’s going to fail in Texas. It’s failing in Florida, and it’s failing in North Carolina. But I’m grateful to the people of California who decided to decisively respond and create the situation where we’ll have a fair national map.”

The party in control of the White House typically loses seats in the midterm election, and Trump and the GOP face additional headwinds because of the affordability crisis that the president promised to address when he ran for reelection in 2024. Californians face some of the highest gas and electricity prices in the country.

“The MAGA extremists are on the run because they have failed. They’ve broken every promise that they’ve made to the American people,” Jeffries said, after stumping for Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) at a carpenters’ union hall. “Life has not gotten more affordable. Life is far too expensive. Trump policies … have increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries interacts with members of the audience after he delivered a speech during representative Derek Tran’s “Take Back the House” rally for his reelection campaign in California’s 45th Congressional District, at Carpenters Local Union 714 in Buena Park on Thursday.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Tran narrowly unseated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in 2024, winning by just 653 votes. The recently redrawn district, which is located primarily in Orange County, could give him an edge this election.

“Prop. 50 did help me out of the battleground districts in California,” Tran said. “I got the least amount of help, but better, still better.”

On Wednesday, the Republican House speaker acknowledged his party’s hurdles while stumping for congressional candidate Kevin Lincoln in Stockton in the Central Valley.

“We’re gonna be very sober-minded about the challenge, and I want you all to know the odds that we are facing,” Johnson said.

Campaigning for Lincoln, a former Stockton mayor and an underdog in a congressional race against Democratic Rep. Gray of Merced, Johnson acknowledged that the congressional midterm will be a “very close election.” But he argued that public polling is flawed and fought back against the notion that GOP voters are dejected.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), center left, and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) talk to reporters after a campaign event in Bakersfield on Sept. 30.

(Jae C. Hong / AP)

“Republicans are not staying home. They are not depressed,” said Johnson, who also traveled to Bakersfield to campaign for Valadao just a few weeks ago. “They’re coming out in huge numbers, and we’re going to win because of that. You know why? Because everybody knows what’s at stake.”

Lincoln, the grandson of an immigrant and the son of a teenage mother, talked up his experiences in the military and as a pastor. He aligned himself with the “hardworking” people in the Valley, suggesting that D.C. leaders were failing the district.

“When you have a job to do, you show up, you roll up your sleeves and you get that job done, and that same standard should apply to the people that we choose to send to Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Two of California’s most powerful Democrats, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Friday appeared at a San Francisco union hall to rally support for Democratic congressional candidates and warn that basic rights will be at risk if Republicans stay in power in Washington. They urged voters to reject Proposition 39, the Republican-led voter identification measure that comes amid Trump’s baseless claims of widespread, illegal voting by undocumented immigrants.

Pelosi, who will retire early next year after a historic 40-year run in Congress and two stints as House speaker, criticized Trump’s “vicious, malicious” attempts to undermine elections through gerrymandering, fraud claims and attempts to mandate voter ID.

“They are putting up obstacles to participation to vote. As women, if you have your husband’s name in marriage, you’re going to have to go find your birth certificate in order to vote,” Pelosi warned of voter ID requirements. After “63 years in marriage, you think I could find my birth certificate?” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, warned that Republicans “are ruthless” in their attempts to roll back civil rights. The outgoing governor said the 2026 midterm fight began when he and state lawmakers put Proposition 50 on last year’s November ballot.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally, accompanied by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, right, members of the state’s Democratic Party, organized labor and other advocates in San Francisco on Friday.

(Heather Diehl / AP)

“Everything we have done to get us to this point is unbelievable,” he told union members in the Mission District. “You’re unbelievable, but it won’t mean anything unless we run through the tape.”

The Democrats were supporting state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is trying to flip one of Northern California’s redrawn congressional districts. He faces Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who won a June special election to finish the term of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa. “Prop. 50’s final chapter is almost here,” said McGuire, who has represented the rural North Coast in the Senate since 2014. “It is time to close the book on Donald Trump. It’s time to take America back.”

Seema Mehta reported from Buena Park, Nicole Nixon from San Francisco and Dakota Smith from Bakersfield.

MISSION VIEJO — Twenty years after the GOP last won a state-level election in California, few Republican voters believe this will be the year.

But they can hope.

“I’m praying, praying, praying that people will come out of the woodwork and show up and just vote for Steve,” said Annette Owens, a 65-year-old Orange County resident and longtime special education teacher.

Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host originally from the United Kingdom, faces Xavier Becerra, a longtime Democratic politician who is heavily favored to win the Nov. 3 election to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The 2026 elections are looking particularly grim for California Republicans, whose statewide influence over the past two decades has atrophied to super-minority levels. Redistricting from Proposition 50 removed some key GOP seats in Congress. And nationally, the party is struggling with high prices, fallout from the war in Iran and polls showing President Trump’s popularity at all-time lows.

While she is “doubtful” Hilton or any other Republicans running statewide will beat their Democratic opponents, Owens says “if anyone’s going to do it,” it’s Hilton.

The candidate had just spent nearly 40 minutes addressing several dozen Orange County moms in Mission Viejo, a hilly and affluent enclave speckled with golf courses and Spanish colonial architecture.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton visits patrons at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood, which hosted a watch party for the CNN debate between him and Xavier Becerra.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Sipping mimosas in a glass-walled event space overlooking the city’s verdant public course, women — and a couple of tagalong husbands — listened as Hilton and local Republicans argued for a change after 16 years of Democrats controlling California government.

“We can make this a place where people follow their dreams and build their lives, and that’s the ultimate test: That people are moving back to California after my first four years in government,” Hilton said.

Rachel Darvish drove from her home in Pacific Palisades to support the gubernatorial candidate. In the aftermath of the January 2025 fires, Darvish was captured on viral video angrily confronting Newsom as he toured the wreckage. She joined the Republican Party after the fires.

“I considered myself an independent up until the day I realized we had no choice,” Darvish, wearing a Hilton campaign T-shirt, said. “I think this is really the first election that the R or the D really does matter, and there is an obvious difference.”

Hilton and other Republicans acknowledge the math. Democrats outnumber GOP voters nearly 2-to-1 in California, and no-party-preference voters largely side with Democrats in statewide contests.

Hilton, who is endorsed by Trump, often declares to supporters that the race against Becerra, a President Biden-era U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former state attorney general, “is going to be really difficult to win, but not impossible.”

As he calculates his chances of victory, the former Fox News host considers three sets of facts. The “establishment polls,” as he calls them, conducted by widely trusted pollsters, including the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Public Policy Institute of California, have shown him more than 20 percentage points behind. His internal polls also have him losing, albeit by smaller margins.

Then there are the people who come to his events.

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks at a rally Thursday in Bakersfield.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“Every single day I get all these people saying, ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m voting for you because we got to have some balance, we got to have a change,’” he said in an interview on the golf course patio following his event. “A lot of them say, ‘But I’m not telling anyone.’”

Midterm elections are historically more difficult for the incumbent president’s party. While never popular in California, Trump’s approval rating recently fell to a record low of 27% in a Berkeley IGS poll.

Fierce headwinds for GOP in California

Political operatives expect anti-Trump sentiment to intensify the headwinds Republicans face in California. More than half of likely Democratic voters, and 37% overall, said a top motivator in this election is pushing back against the administration‘s policies.

“I’m not really anticipating Republicans winning for anything statewide,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative writer and former executive director of the California GOP. “If somebody’s anticipating that, then they don’t know how to do math.”

He doesn’t expect Republican turnout to drop, but “Democrat turnout could be enhanced over what it normally is. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Some Republicans are frustrated by the Democratic-only choices in the high-profile race for Los Angeles mayor, as well as the down-ballot contest for state insurance commissioner.

Darvish, who supported conservative Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor in the primary, described the runoff between incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman as a choice between “Satan and Lucifer.”

“I’m going to have to vote for Karen Bass,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to say that,” but she does not want Raman or any candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win.

Some Republicans say they won’t vote for insurance commissioner, the only statewide race between two Democrats: Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor, and state Sen. Ben Allen.

Fleischman described the DSA-endorsed Kim as “nuts” and Allen, who represents Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Beverly Hills and other cities, as “an extreme liberal” who “has enthusiastically supported virtually every Gavin Newsom policy I dislike.”

While Trump and Republicans will likely suffer midterm losses, many Democrats are “massively unpopular as well,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. “All politicians are underwater right now. Voters are in a pretty bad mood.”

Hilton concedes it would be easier to run a midterm race with a sitting Democratic president, but believes the Trump endorsement is not as toxic to his campaign as it might seem.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton enjoys a light moment with a woman who was happy to get gas for $3 a gallon at a gas station in Los Angeles on Oct. 8.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It doesn’t come up in really any of the meetings,” he said. “People really are asking about gas prices.”

Republican candidates and party officials are making the case that California’s longstanding homelessness and cost-of-living woes have little to do with the president.

“I can’t think of anything less relevant” than Trump, said Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles Republican Party. “We are drowning in high taxes and high costs. Anyone trying to make this election about who the president is — and who will only be president for two more years — has a screw loose and also doesn’t have much of anything to offer.”

Hilton doesn’t engage in voter fraud allegations

Federal authorities this week charged 28 people in California with illegally registering and casting ballots as part of a broader fight to exert more control over elections, which are run by states.

Having just won an election primary in June, Hilton walks a line when discussing claims of electoral fraud. He takes issue with rules like ballot harvesting and a seven-day, post-election deadline for mail ballots to arrive, but he does not believe there is systemic fraud or cheating.

“We mustn’t let ourselves believe that every time we lose an election, it’s because they cheated,” he said when a supporter made the accusation during a Modesto town hall in August. “We lose the elections [because] we don’t win enough votes, right?”

Viewers attend a watch party at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood during the debate between gubernatorial candidates Democrat Xavier Becerra, left, and Republican Steve Hilton earlier this month.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

That’s why he is trying to reach independent voters and Democrats who “can’t stand President Trump” but “are desperate for something to change in California,” he explained as applause rippled through the heavily Republican crowd.

Hilton is counting on voters like Summer Behan, a former Democrat, to not only vote for him but persuade other disenchanted voters.

“My car got broken into 14 times in a year and a half,” Behan told Hilton during the Modesto event. “Our homeowners insurance went from $180 to $860, so we had to sell our house.”

She drives more than two hours to her nonprofit job in San Francisco.

“It’s sort of an exhausting way to live,” Behan said after the town hall. Families from her children’s schools have moved to other states, but she wants to stay. “California is beautiful, and it’s just got so much to offer people, so I want to try and stick it out and see what it looks like with different leadership.”

Foes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate, are launching television and digital ads this weekend in early primary states that criticize the governor’s opposition to the proposed billionaire tax on California’s November ballot.

The ad, funded by backers of the wealth tax, castigates Newsom for opposing Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a 5% tax on California billionaires’ assets to offset federal healthcare funding cuts approved by congressional Republicans and signed by President Trump last year.

“We’re all struggling with the high cost of healthcare. In California, Democrats are championing a one-time tax on billionaires that would save coverage for millions,” a narrator says in the 30-second ad. “So why [has] presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom betrayed his own supporters by trying to sabotage the billionaire tax? Maybe it’s because the same billionaires who oppose Prop. 40 also gave millions of dollars to Newsom. Gavin Newsom turned his back on working Californians. Will he do the same to you?”

The ad specifically calls out billionaires Stewart Resnick, who owns several businesses including Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water and Justin Wines; crypto executive Chris Larsen; former Google leader Eric Schmidt; and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, all of whom have backed Newsom’s political ambitions.

Newsom has argued that, although he supports wealth taxes, they ought to be enacted at the national level, rather than a state-by-state patchwork that could drive the rich to leave California, a state with a volatile budget heavily dependent on the state’s wealthiest residents.

The primary funders of the ad are the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West, which crafted Proposition 40; Saikat Chakrabarti, a climate change warrior and political advisor who made his wealth in part as a founding engineer at Stripe; and Ross Boucher, an early engineer at Stripe.

The ad buy is six figures but could grow, according to its backers. Among the states where the ad is expected to air are South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Earlier this month, Newsom stumped for candidates in New Hampshire, his latest foray to early presidential primary states.

The ad launch comes amid a contentious, expensive battle over the proposed wealth tax, which has divided Democrats and their allies. Although Newsom is among Democrats who oppose it, the ballot measure was endorsed by the state Democratic Party and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Voters are closely divided about the measure.

In just 11 days, millions of Americans will head to the polls to vote on key local races and decide the fate of Congress.

Perhaps no voting bloc will be more crucial in swinging the balance of power than Latinos.

In 2024, after decades of reliably supporting Democrats, the electorate of roughly 36.2 million people (about 15% of all total voters) shifted massively to the right and supported Donald Trump at previously never-before-seen rates. After the election, armchair pundits and paid professionals proclaimed that Ronald Reagan had been right all along. Latinos were Republican. They just needed to realize it.

It didn’t take long for that narrative to start crumbling. A year after Trump’s reelection, Latinos in California helped pass Proposition 50, which allowed Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional map in their favor to counter a successful effort by Texas Republicans to do the same — coincidentally, the Texas gerrymander was at least partially motivated by said gains with Latino voters.

Latinos also helped Democrats pick up governorships in Virginia and New Jersey in 2025 — with two-thirds of their votes going for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, respectively.

Whatever gains Republicans made with Latino voters appear to have vanished. Recent polls show the demographic to be experiencing buyers’ remorse, citing the increased cost of living, the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics, involvement in wars abroad and a stagnating economy as reasons for the disillusionment.

President Trump’s approval rating among Latinos dipped to 27% in an early October NBC News survey. That same poll found that Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.

But don’t expect this whiplash back to the left to be permanent.

“It’s not a realignment, it’s a de-alignment,” said Mike Madrid, a former Republican political consultant and author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.”

“Latinos are completely moving away from both parties and that’s what’s created this dramatic swing of 25 points towards Trump in four years and then massive swings back.”

So how will the Latino vote shake out in two weeks? Below are five races we are keeping tabs on.

L.A. mayoral race

You don’t need to go outside the city limits to find proof that Latino voters aren’t political ideologues.

During the 2022 mayoral primary, billionaire Rick Caruso won the largest share of the Latino vote (34%). A few months later, Karen Bass became mayor, winning 51% of the Latino vote.

Bass once again won the Latino vote during the 2026 primaries, carrying 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods in the June 2 election — compared with seven for her current challenger, Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Four months, much campaigning and the botched response to a massive warehouse fire in heavily Latino Boyle Heights later, Raman — a democratic socialist — now has a 24-point lead among Latino voters, according to an October Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll.

Notably, 34% of Latinos remain undecided heading into the Nov. 3 election.

“Latinos are about a third of the voters in L.A.,” Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University, told The Times this month. “While they show preferences, they are not deeply committed to either candidate, so they are the quintessential swing voters who decide late.”

Will the embattled incumbent keep her job, or will Los Angeles become the next big city to elect a mayor backed by the Democratic Socialists of America? Latino Angelenos will decide.

California 22nd district

Will Democrats’ Proposition 50 redistricting gambit pay off? Voters of this newly reconfigured Central Valley district populated by blue-collar and agrarian Latinos will decide.

Republican David Valadao is the incumbent and is being challenged by activist and educator Randy Villegas. In 2024, voters in the district backed failed Republican Senate candidate Steve Garvey.

Political forecasts have Villegas — a progressive populist — with a narrow lead over the incumbent.

Part of his appeal, Madrid said, was his messaging.

“[His message is] the establishment’s not working and that institutions aren’t working,” Madrid said. “It’s a much more populist message. I don’t believe this is ideological one bit.”

Colorado 8th district

It doesn’t get more battleground than this congressional district located in the Denver suburbs. It is the center of Latino voting power in Colorado — Latinos account for 40% of the total electorate. .

The incumbent is Republican Gabe Evans and Trump carried the purple district by less than two percentage points.

Evans currently has a slight lead over Democratic candidate Manny Rutinel, an attorney and economist. Rutinel’s messaging has focused on the rising cost of living and the Republicans’ immigration policies.

It could get him elected. A local survey found that 56% of Latino voters in Colorado approve of Democrats in Congress, while 39% said they do not approve.

Florida 27th district

Will disassociating from Trump help this Republican incumbent keep her job?

Journalist-turned-Congress member María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American, made headlines in September after releasing a political ad calling out the president’s immigration enforcement, alleging that Trump, who carried the majority Latino district by 15 points in 2024, had betrayed her constituents.

Elvira Salazar currently holds a narrow lead over her Democratic rival Elliott Rodriguez, who is also Cuban American.

“She’s trying to show distance and trying to show an independent streak,” Madrid said of the three-term incumbent. “She’s trying to say, ‘I’m not that.’ And you can’t do that on the economy as a Republican, because that changes all the time. What you can do as a Latino in a Latino district … is say your policies have gone too far.”

Texas

Okay, I’ll admit that I’m cheating with this one. But there’s just so much going on in Texas that it deserves its own section. The Lone Star State is ground zero for this supposed great political de-alignment.

In 2025, at the behest of Trump, Texas Republicans undertook an unprecedented mid-decade congressional redistricting in hopes of gerrymandering a map that would give the party an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections. They factored in the historic gains with Latino voters.

“They drew those districts based on what they thought were the 2024 numbers,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o & Central American studies at UCLA. “And now those 2024 numbers are evaporating.”

The plan appears to be backfiring spectacularly, at least in south Texas.

Trump won Texas’ 15th congressional district in 2020 and 2024, and in 2022 the majority Latino electorate voted for Republican Monica De La Cruz. But polls now show that Democratic candidate and singer-turned-politician Bobby Pulido has a seven-point lead. Pulido, who bills himself as a moderate, has focused his messaging on affordability and the rising cost of living.

A similar situation is taking place in the Latino-dense 34th and 35th districts, where Republicans Eric Flores and Carlos De La Cruz, respectively, are hoping to take advantage of the redrawn Republican-friendly boundaries to flip those seats red. Both face uphill battles as polls show them neck-and-neck with their Democratic opponents.

“You now have these two districts, Texas 9th and 35th, that are 51% Latino, but now Latinos are telling us they have lost confidence in the Republican Party,” Barreto said. “What we’re seeing is very strong evidence that Latinos are shifting back even more so against Trump and Republicans because they did not deliver on any of their promises from 2024.”

In the statewide Senate and gubernatorial races, Democrats are feeling hopeful. Democratic challenger James Talarico currently has a slight lead on his Republican opponent Ken Paxton. Among Latinos, that lead was clocked at a whopping 30 points in an October Fox News survey.

But what has been Talarico’s key to connecting with Latino voters?

“He’s turning away from race and ethnic-based politics to class consciousness,” Madrid said. “[He’s acknowledged] that Latinos have had their futures taken away from them.”

The seminary student and educator has also been critical of his own party — calling it out for ineptitude, leaving voters behind — and arguing that anti-establishment messaging is enticing to Latinos who have been spurned by both major parties.

If Texas gets its first Democratic senator since 1993, it’ll be thanks to the Latino vote.

Texas Latinos’ faith in the ruling party is so low that even the state’s governor, Republican powerhouse Greg Abbott, finds himself in a tight race with Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa. Roughly 56% of Latinos were in favor of Hinojosa over the incumbent, an October poll found.

“Latinos are the only voters voting rationally in a broken system,” Madrid said. “We’re shifting by 25 points. If you don’t pay attention to our priority issues, we’ll vote you out, that’s how the system was designed.”

Latinos appear to be swinging back to the left, but Democrats shouldn’t take those gains for granted, Madrid said.

“The Democratic Party has done nothing to win these voters back. They’re just not Republicans,” Madrid said. “And for the moment, that’s good enough.”

(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)

Join De Los for a Día de Muertos event at Hollywood Forever

Dia de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever

(Diana Ramirez / De Los)

This Saturday, join De Los at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to celebrate Día de Muertos. We’ll have an altar set up from noon to 8 p.m. where visitors can write ofrendas that will be displayed throughout the event.

There will also be a photo booth run by Las Fotos Project on site from 2 to 6 p.m.

This is an all-ages event and will feature performances by música Mexicana act DannyLux, soul singer Trish Toledo, psychedelic cumbia group Tropa Magica and indie rock band Los Shadows.

Registration and event information can be found here.

If you’re looking for more places to partake in Día de Muertos festivities this year, check out De Los’ list of 50 ways to celebrate the holiday throughout Southern California.

Stories we read this week that we think you should read

Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.

Politics and immigration

Arts and entertainment

Southern California

TOPEKA, Kan. — At 94 years, the Kansas GOP’s streak of one-party dominance in Senate races is the nation’s longest because even in the toughest years, disaffected Republican-leaning voters have reliably drifted back to the party’s fold before Election Day.

But Republicans fear this year could be different, setting the race between Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on track to be the most expensive in state history.

Hamilton, founder and senior pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, has raised significantly more money than Marshall, who is seeking his second term. Hamilton’s candidacy — and voters’ disapproval of President Trump’s handling of the economy — have upended GOP hopes of seeing Marshall coast to victory as the GOP tries to hold its Senate majority.

Kansas, which Trump carried in three presidential races, is an unlikely Senate battleground. Republicans redirected money from the North Carolina Senate race to help Marshall, and Trump flew to Kansas this week to hold a rally for him, calling Marshall “one of the greatest senators in our country”.

Stalwart GOP voters sensed a serious threat even before Trump announced his rally.

In Topeka, 81-year-old Julie Adamson has been praying about the election, but she’s also knocked on doors for Marshall, about 200 by her count. She said if Hamilton wins and Democrats control the Senate, “We’ll see, ‘impeach, impeach Trump.’”

“And nothing will get done for our country,” she added.

A formidable candidate emerged in a tough year for the GOP

Before entering the race, Hamilton already had a public profile in vote-rich suburbs through building his Kansas City-area Church of the Resurrection into a 25,000 member congregation. Churchgoing Protestants also knew him as the author of several dozen books, and he’s honed his speaking skills through weekly sermons.

Hamilton has positioned himself as a moderate and made rising prices, particularly for fuel, a key issue. During a debate Wednesday, both he and Marshall endorsed barring transgender girls and women from female sports teams. Hamilton called for local officials to make such decisions but suggested Marshall and other Republicans have been bullying transgender people by making the issue prominent in campaigns.

Marshall, a mostly retired doctor, portrays Hamilton as too liberal — radical, even — for a state where less than 26% of the 2 million registered voters are Democrats, while more than 44% are Republicans.

During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall repeatedly said a Hamilton victory would put Democrats in charge of the Senate and that Hamilton would vote with liberal Democrats.

“We need to remind everybody that control the Senate goes through Kansas,” he said.

There are signs that voter enthusiasm is with the Democrats as advance voting has surged across the U.S. compared to the last midterm. In Kansas, it has more than doubled for the same period.

Amanda Chavez Thomson, who is part owner of a small home-restoration business, said she believes change has been needed “for quite some time.”

“I think we finally have a candidate that can give us that energy and that surge that we need from people who may be on the fence or may not have voted in the past,” she said.

Fundraising emerges as a key concern for Republicans

Since the state’s August primary, Republican groups have committed to spending more than $26 million on television and digital advertising to boost Marshall, more than what they spent in his first race in 2020, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Including Marshall’s campaign, total GOP ad spending would exceed $32 million.

But Hamilton and Democratic groups together have committed to spending more than $38 million, according to AdImpact. Total ad spending — involving more than 40 groups outside the campaigns — would be about $71 million, a record for Kansas.

One of the reasons the GOP is pushing money towards Marshall may be that the incumbent has proven a lackluster fundraiser. Between the state’s August primary and Thursday, Hamilton has collected more than 10,000 contributions from Kansas residents, while raising $8 million from across the U.S., online campaign finance reports show. Marshall has about 200 contributions from Kansans while raising $905,000 total.

“People are crying out, saying, ‘Come on, Roger Marshall, speak up for us,’” Hamilton said during Wednesday night’s debate.

Marshall talking about liberal Democrats and ‘wokeness’

Marshall’s campaign and GOP groups have tried to knock any shine off Hamilton’s public image by attacking how he’s led his church and using snippets of his own sermons to portray him as too “woke.” During Trump’s rally, Marshall called Hamilton “the most radical liberal Democrat to ever get through a Senate primary in the history of Kansas.”

But such attacks aren’t resonating with at least a few disaffected Republicans. Don Hineman, a western Kansas rancher and former GOP state House majority leader, said he’s tired of “woke” being as an insult.

Hineman, who has signed on to the Republicans for Hamilton group, added that no one “was more ‘woke’ than Jesus Christ.”

Democrats have countered with television ads over Marshall’s pursuit of unpaid patient bills from the practice as an obstetrician that he gave up a decade ago. State court records online show that from 1996 through 2016, Marshall or his practice filed at least 700 debt-collection lawsuits, occasionally 10 or more a day.

The New York Times first reported the extent of the litigation. It said that in 81 cases, patients were arrested for missing court dates and quoted two experts who called Marshall’s tactics extreme. During Wednesday’s debate, Marshall said he’s faced a “gross mischaracterization” of his actions.

History and loyalty have been key assets for the Kansas GOP

Democrats can hold out hope for a Hamilton victory because the state has sizable blocs of moderate Republican and independent voters who’ve regularly swung elections to their candidates for governor and who protected abortion rights in a statewide vote in 2022.

Yet Republicans still have two key assets: Kansas’ political history and the loyalty that even unhappy Republican-leaning voters show to the party.

Not only have Democrats lost every Senate race in Kansas since 1932, no Democrat has come within 10 points of winning since 1974. In both 2014 and 2020, races considered tossups in mid-October fizzled, and Marshall’s predecessor, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, won.

Leroy Towns, a former Roberts chief of staff, said many Republicans in 2014 who considered voting against Roberts “just couldn’t do it.” Towns — who switched parties because of Trump — is backing Hamilton.

Towns believes Hamilton will win, but added, “That Republican pull at the end of an election is really, really strong in this state.”

Hanna and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington. AP writer Nicholas Ingram in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.

LEWISTON, Maine — Maine Republican Susan Collins has promoted her reputation as one of the most independent U.S. senators and she is using the waning days of the election season to sell that message to voters by campaigning with a former colleague who has endorsed her.

Collins is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson, a onetime state Senate president, and on Wednesday she made appearances with Joe Manchin III, a West Virginian who was a Democrat then became an independent late in his career before retiring.

After stopping for breakfast at Simones’ Hot Dog Stand in Lewiston, Collins spoke of how she and Manchin were “part of every piece of bipartisan legislation that passed and became law” during their time together in office.

Manchin said to lose Collins would be “to lose the soul of the Senate.” He praised her independent streak, her willingness to buck Republican President Trump and her record of fighting for Maine’s interests.

“This is a true blue-blooded Maine person who knows exactly where she came from,” Manchin said.

They planned a stop later at a New Balance shoe facility in Norway. Jackson, 58, is scheduled to campaign Thursday in Portland with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York.

Collins, 73, is in what may be her toughest reelection fight as she seeks her sixth term.

It’s only the second time that she has sought reelection in a midterm with a sitting Republican president, and the national trends are much less favorable to the GOP than they were the last time she did so, in 2002. Trump’s approval has fallen well below where it was when he took office last year, and a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that a strong majority of voters want change in Washington.

Collins has been working to persuade voters that she is independent of Trump and willing to break with him. In Manchin, she enlisted a politician who was one of the most moderate voices in the Senate. Manchin said in 2023 that Trump would “ destroy democracy in America” if he was elected to a second term.

Among the few dozen Collins supporters at the Lewiston event was Mike Marcotte.

“I may not have always been a fan of her complete package of votes, but when I look at the vitriol that’s in the U.S. Senate right now, we need more people like Susan Collins,” he said.

Jackson got a late start on campaigning after the party’s initial nominee exited the race but trails Collins in the money race by less than $3 million after an aggressive quarter in which he raised more than $20 million. Jackson has campaigned relentlessly and his events have drawn hundreds. Collins has largely stuck to smaller appearances.

Some of Jackson’s backers demonstrated across the street from the hot dog stand. A few held signs bearing the face of Brett M. Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court justice whom Collins voted to confirm and whose vote eventually helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

“Someone needs to stand up and be a check on Donald Trump and his harmful policies,” said David Sysko.

Collins has broken with Trump and Republicans over the years. She voted to convict him at his impeachment trial in 2021. Increasingly during the campaign, she has worked to distance herself from the president as Democrats argue that she is too close to him.

Collins said in early October that she is “not exactly his favorite senator,” and that she did not expect Trump to campaign in Maine. He has steered clear of the state with the Nov. 3 election nearing.

Pinning Collins to Trump is central to the Democrats’ strategy. In one ad, a nurse says the state is in a healthcare crisis “because of Susan Collins and Donald Trump,” citing Collins’ vote for Trump’s push for Medicaid cuts. Collins did vote to advance the bill but ultimately voted against it.

Trump also was a major focus of four contentious debates between the candidates this month, where Collins sought to distance herself from the president and Jackson repeatedly accused her of doing Trump’s bidding.

Asked at the final debate to name a time in which she bucked her own party and succeeded, Collins gave the example of rallying support against Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth, who was confirmed as Defense secretary.

Democrats seized on the moment and released a statement that said the exchange “underscores a central question in the Maine Senate race: Does Collins, a Republican in a state that disapproves of President Donald Trump and has grown bluer in recent years, stand up to her party enough to earn the independent streak she has staked her career on?”

Jackson has characterized Collins as out of touch with the struggles of working-class people in Maine. He has described Collins as a “rubber stamp” for the president and criticized her votes on Kavanaugh and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s second-term Health secretary. Collins has said she does not regret either vote.

Republican ads against Jackson, a logger from northern Maine, have focused more on accusations of his having a volatile personality and behaving like a bully with female colleagues. Jackson has denied those accusations.

Collins distanced herself on Wednesday from a Republican super PAC attack ad that she said “should be taken down.”

The senator was a top target of Democrats in 2020 when she defeated challenger Sara Gideon by nearly 9 percentage points. Collins is the only Republican senator from New England, a distinction she has had since January 2013.

Whittle writes for the Associated Press.

What role will the Latino vote have in the upcoming midterm elections?

In the latest episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts and Times editors Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito welcome Times columnist Gustavo Arellano to dissect the increasingly important electorate, one that will help decide races locally and at the national level.

Long considered a reliable vote for the Democratic Party, Latinos shifted rightward in 2024.

“The Republican Party has always known — going back to the days of [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower — that there is something there in this demographic as it starts getting bigger,” Arellano said.

Arellano documented the history of Democratic support among California Latinos, highlighting the passage of 1994’s California Proposition 187 — which prohibited undocumented immigrants from using the state’s public services including non-emergency healthcare and education resources — as a turning point.

“It turned a whole generation of Latinos into voting Democrat, but it also showed the Republican Party that anti-immigrant politics work,” he said. “The problem with the Democratic Party in California for basically the next 30 years is all they would do is say, ‘You as a Latino should never vote Republican because they did 187.’”

A Pew Research Center study showed that in the 2024 presidential election, a slight majority of Latinos voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris — but they also voted for President Trump at a much higher rate than they did in 2020.

Trump garnered 48% of the Latino vote compared with Harris’ 51% share and significantly jumped past the 36% clip he received in the 2020 presidential election. The study’s results reveal that the initial 2024 exit polls actually underestimated Latinos’ Trump support, with the Republican candidate tracking at 46% of the Latino vote on election day.

Arellano contributed this shift in voting pattern to a lack of effective messaging from Democrats and widespread material hardships among Latinos.

“[You now have] an entire generation who have grown up and life has been harder for them because they are working-class folks,” he said. “And they’re saying, ‘The Republicans are racist? Well, life hasn’t improved for me as a Democrat, let me just take my chance with the racist.’”

But recent polling shows Latinos might have buyers’ remorse. The community cited increased cost of living, immigration tactics, involvement in wars across the world and a struggling economy as reasons for retreating from Republican leadership. Trump’s approval rating among Latinos dipped to 27% in an early October NBC News study. That same poll found that Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.

“The Republican Party was given this extraordinary gift of the Latino vote, and what did they do? They blew it,” Arellano said.

He spotlighted Texas as a prime of example of how Republicans squandered their grip on Latino voters. The demographic voted heavily in favor of Trump in 2024, even in the long-Democratic borderland region of the state.

“Texas [Republicans] gerrymandered their state because they thought, “We have now this permanent Latino shift to our party, so let’s make these districts even more Latino because they’re going to vote Republican,’” Arellano said. “And now Latinos are running away [from the Republican Party] hard.”

Across the country, Latinos have also soured on the Republican Party due to the public display that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have put on in recent years, Arellano noted.

“To see people dragged and beaten … that weighs on you,” he said. “On top of that, the economy sucks, we’re in a stupid war, this president is increasingly saying crazy things … and now this immigration stuff. So [people are wondering] what good is it to be with [Trump] now.”

You can watch the entire episode below.

Top Democrats in Congress have joined a California immigrant and the Nevada State Democratic Party in suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented voter fraud probes in both states and broader efforts to meddle in state-run elections nationwide — alleging they are a “pretext to seize control over elections.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., late Tuesday, accuses President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and the agencies they lead of using “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens” and “coercive threats of legal retaliation against state officials” to assert federal control over the Nov. 3 midterms.

In addition to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and several national Democratic groups, the plaintiffs include Erick Jose Jimenez, an “active California voter” and naturalized U.S. citizen since 2006 who now “fears that he will be unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse)” given the Trump administration’s track record of misidentifying naturalized citizens as noncitizens.

Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that while “Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud, the Trump Administration is taking decisive lawful action to protect our elections,” including by “prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion.”

“Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” Bis said.

A Justice Department spokesperson said “election integrity is a top priority” and that the department’s actions are “grounded in the law and being litigated in open court.” A Homeland Security spokesperson said it is “laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens.”

Officials from both agencies have asserted that California and other states have ineffective policies for ensuring noncitizens do not vote — relying in part on voters attesting to being citizens — and staunchly defended their own processes for identifying noncitizens on state rolls.

Democrats and leading elections experts say isolated voter fraud does occur and should be taken seriously, but that there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

Tuesday’s lawsuit cites Trump administration claims of thousands of potential noncitizens on Nevada voter rolls crumbling amid state scrutiny. It also cites an administration list of 20,000 “likely noncitizens” allegedly on California rolls being “proven remarkably slapdash” and inaccurate in recent litigation between the administration and California.

The lawsuit alleges a coordinated effort between Trump and other administration officials — in violation of the 10th Amendment and other federal law — to intimidate state and local elections officials nationwide into removing voters from rolls, denying ballots to legally registered voters and segregating the ballots of others “based on spurious and unreliable claims that they are not citizens.”

It says the president is pushing the above efforts not “in a vacuum,” but in the face of repeated steps by Congress and the courts to block his election agenda.

The lawsuit, backed by prominent Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, follows another filed in the same court last month by attorneys with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo.

That ongoing lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege registered California voters are not citizens, which it says risks misidentifying eligible voters and has left naturalized citizens frightened — the same argument made by Jimenez.

Jimenez, who could not be reached for comment, has “eagerly and consistently exercised his right to vote” since becoming a citizen two decades ago, and plans to vote in the Nov. 3 election but fears being misidentified as a noncitizen and targeted, Tuesday’s lawsuit says.

Administration officials have defended the accuracy of their lists, including in the lawsuit the Justice Department filed against California last week. In that case, the Trump administration has asked the court to force California to set aside the ballots of the 20,000 “likely noncitizens” it flagged until their citizenship is confirmed.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in L.A., has said that list was compiled using public California voter registration records and third-party and law enforcement data, and that federal authorities have “overwhelming evidence” that those voters are ineligible.

On Monday, federal authorities filed fraudulent registration and other election-related charges against 28 lawful permanent residents in California, which Essayli said “prove our list is accurate and that noncitizens are actually voting.”

However, other administration officials have acknowledged the lists may not be entirely accurate. Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter said Monday that “there may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens.” A Homeland Security official said in a court filing Monday that “discrepancies” have been found in about 189 of the records.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office — both named defendants in the California case — have accused the Trump administration of illegally interfering in state elections and trying to purge voters in the immediate lead up to an election in violation of federal law using inaccurate data.

Logan’s office said Tuesday that a preliminary analysis of a subset of the administration’s list found many were born in the U.S., weren’t registered or had never voted.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats’ top campaign spending group is wading into Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race for the first time this year, an aggressive move in a deep-red state that signals a party on the offensive as Republicans look to protect a slim majority.

The Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, will spend $1.2 million on a new television advertisement to boost Scott Colom, a district attorney, in his campaign against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The ad, first disclosed to the Associated Press, is set to start Wednesday and run through Election Day.

“Senate Majority PAC has been watching this race closely, and it is clear Colom is running a competitive race that has put Hyde-Smith on her heels,” group spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.

With just two weeks to go in the race, it’s unclear what impact the ad will have in a matchup that’s been set since Colom won a March primary. Still, it’s a substantial investment in a race that’s seen only about $8 million in total spending, with Colom outspending Hyde-Smith nearly $4.6 million to $3.2 million, according to AdImpact.

Hyde-Smith, first appointed and then elected in 2018, is running for reelection in a state Republicans have long dominated. In the 2024 presidential race, Republican Donald Trump won Mississippi by nearly 23 percentage points over Democrat Kamala Harris, and a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the state since 1982.

However, some Democrats believe Hyde-Smith is vulnerable, and she underperformed Trump by 6 percentage points in 2020, the year he lost his White House reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden.

The television ad touts Colom’s time as district attorney, while labeling Hyde-Smith a “do-nothing” senator.

“A decade in power, Hyde-Smith hasn’t passed one piece of legislation, but she did vote to kick people off Medicaid,” a narrator says in the ad, which will run on television stations statewide alongside a digital campaign.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Colom has raised Democratic hopes in a year when electoral winds are at their backs. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock was the latest high-profile Democrat to campaign with Colom last week, and Harris, who was Biden’s vice president, is set to rally with Colom on Thursday.

Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and were expected to face a friendlier map this year with fewer seats to defend. But high costs and gas prices amid an unpopular war in Iran under a Republican president have made Democrats optimistic, with the Senate Majority PAC spending its final weeks investing in conservative territory. It’s already announced spending in Kansas, where megachurch pastor and Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

Colom would be his state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, the 12-year period after the U.S. Civil War when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted.

Some Democrats have criticized national groups for not spending more in Southern states like Mississippi.

“I worry, to be very honest, that Democrats are missing a real opportunity to invest in a serious and sustained way in the South,” Warnock said Sunday on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander adults have become more disillusioned with President Trump and Republicans as the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach, according to a new AP-NORC/AAPI Data poll, giving Democrats a substantial edge on major issues like the economy and health care.

The survey, which was conducted from Sept. 8-15 by AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reveals that Trump’s standing on the economy has fallen among AAPI adults over the course of his second term.

About one-quarter of AAPI adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president overall. Only about 2 in 10 approve of his performance on the economy, which the vast majority of AAPI adults see as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election.

But although AAPI adults trust Democrats more than Republicans on a wide range of issues, views of the Democratic Party itself are still split.

Rebecca Larocco, a 45-year-old Korean American in Corning, Iowa, voted for Trump in 2016 and is leaning Republican in the midterm elections. She approves of his immigration policies but is unsure about Trump’s handling of the economy as the Iran war continues to compound gas prices.

“Where I’m at, it’s went up almost $1.50 (a gallon),” she said. “I didn’t expect to go into war at all, that has been definitely unexpected and I’m not sure… I’m just hoping they’ll do what they’re saying and get our economy back on track, get immigration and crime lowered.”

The economy is a top issue for AAPI adults

The economy remains top of mind for an overwhelming majority of the AAPI adult population when they consider the midterms. With the ongoing Iran war affecting gas prices and other costs staying elevated, Americans overall are deeply pessimistic about the state of the economy and see it as a high priority for the midterms. That includes AAPI adults — according to the poll, about 9 in 10 rank the economy as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election, and about 8 in 10 say this about the cost of living.

The economy, the cost of living and healthcare dwarf other issues for AAPI adults. About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say healthcare is one of the most important issues for the election, while only about half say this about foreign policy, crime, immigration, election fairness or climate change.

At the same time, Trump’s economic approval among AAPI adults has dropped about 10 percentage points over the course of the year, and there are other signs his popularity has waned with this group. In late 2024, just after the election, about 4 in 10 AAPI adults had a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump. That’s fallen to about 3 in 10 now.

“What the data show is that any gains that he made not only during the 2024 election — there was a bit of a honeymoon period that Trump enjoyed after the election before Inauguration Day — that has now largely disappeared,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and executive director of AAPI Data.

Len Takahashi, 57, of Universal City, Texas, describes himself as conservative but voted for Democrats in the last three presidential elections and for Republicans in midterm elections. For this midterm election, he is simply open to candidates who prioritize the economy.

“I would like policies that look in the best interest of the American public,” said Takahashi, who is Japanese American. “That could be bringing down spending, a balanced budget of U.S. spending, bringing down inflation, working towards a more stable economy and, lastly, just a better atmosphere between the far left and far right.”

AAPIs trust Democrats more on most issues but are not entirely sold on the party

Democrats have gained at Republicans’ expense since Trump returned to the White House when it comes to AAPI adults’ trust in handling many key issues.

In a March 2025 poll, AAPI adults were evenly divided over which political party would better handle the economy and immigration. Now, Democrats have a roughly 20-percentage-point advantage on both issues.

Meanwhile, around two-thirds of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable view of the GOP. Only about one-quarter have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view.

But while trust in the Democrats on specific issues has increased, AAPI adults are ambivalent about the party as a whole. About half, 48%, of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 44% have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable impression.

A separate AP-NORC survey of registered voters in September found, similarly, that while voters in general are deeply dissatisfied with Trump and the GOP, few think either party is capable of solving important problems.

Louise Rider, 40, is a Democrat living in Chicago. She believes Democrats are better than Republicans across all issues but says she’s unhappy with how the party has governed.

“I don’t think the Democrats are doing great, I think they need a lot of change as a party,” she said. “It’s kind of a helpless feeling, that nothing will get done with both parties unless there’s major changes.”

Some Republicans still stand behind Trump. James Finley, 74, of Lenox, Massachusetts, said Trump deserves some understanding because he cannot bring down high prices overnight. When it comes to Republicans in general, Finley is a little more critical.

“They’ve had the majority for a couple of years,” said Finley, whose ancestry includes Japanese heritage. “I think they could have done a little bit more or maybe a lot more in terms of passing certain things that I wanted to pass.”

Still, he sticks to the party line and because “all I ever hear from Democrats is to get Trump,” Finley said.

AAPIs concerned about fair midterm elections

As the election approaches, many AAPI adults are worried about problems with misinformation, legal challenges to the results, and voter suppression. About half of AAPI adults say it’s a “major problem” in U.S. elections that people who are eligible are not allowed to vote, while about two-thirds see foreign government attempts to influence results as a “major” problem.

Looking ahead to the November election, about half of AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about fake or false information about the candidates, and about half also feel this way about legal challenges to the election results.

Finley is unsure if the voting process can be tightly monitored to prevent undocumented or unregistered people from attempting to vote.

But Takahashi, the conservative from Texas, is worried that Trump will try to manipulate the election.

He’s concerned, he said, that Trump would amplify claims of “fraud in the election system” should the midterms not go in his favor. “(He’ll) make that a point to distract the American public,” he said.

Tang, Jiang and Sanders write for the Associated Press. Tang reported from Phoenix and Jiang from New York. The poll of 1,023 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander was conducted Sept. 8-15, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is ±4.7 percentage points. This poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, which are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.

ROSEVILLE, Calif. — San Diego County Republican Carl DeMaio had a warning for conservatives at a get-out-the-vote rally this month in Placer County.

“You are doomed,” DeMaio said, crooning the phrase like a foghorn. The audience chuckled.

“Doomed” is DeMaio’s description for races that lack a conservative candidate. Skip voting in those, he told the crowd, briskly walking them through the Nov. 3 ballot.

Rep. Carl DeMaio speaks to attendees during a “Beer, BBQ & Ballots” event for Proposition 39 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds.

(Fred Greaves / For The Times)

Microphone in hand, the freshman state legislator paced the floor, threw up his hands and scowled as he declared California a “communist state,” the progressive Bay Area “the gates of hell” and Hillary Clinton “the wicked witch.”

Urging volunteers to door-knock at Republican households, he instructed them to ignore Democratic homes entirely.

“I don’t need to remind them there’s an election going on,” he said, prompting more laughs.

DeMaio, 52, is emerging as a prominent voice for California Republicans, promising a path back to power and delighting audiences with his sharp takedowns of Democrats. His vehicle this election is Proposition 39 — he is coauthor of the ballot measure — which would require Californians to provide ID when voting, an initiative backed by millions of dollars from conservatives and condemned by the state’s Democratic leaders and voting rights experts.

A woman grabs a “Yes on 39” lawn sign at the Nevada County Fairgrounds.

(Fred Greaves / For The Times)

On his YouTube channel, he regularly skewers Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Sacramento “swamp” and the media with shows titled, “Thinking of California? 3 Reasons Not to!” and “Socialism on the CA Ballot in 2026!”

His advocacy group, Reform California, supports conservative candidates and helps raise money. Backed by volunteers, the group is usurping the California Republican Party’s influence, according to both his critics and allies.

DeMaio appears undaunted by his quest.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 in California, control the state Legislature and hold every statewide elected position. In Los Angeles, a democratic socialist running for mayor leads in some polls.

“Republicans are tired of what’s going on in the state of California, and they’re looking for somebody to lead them out of the minority,” said Corey Gustafson, former chair of the San Diego County Republican Party. “Many people think Carl is the answer to that.”

An alternative GOP machine

In an interview at Reform California’s Escondido office, DeMaio said his goal is to restore political balance in the state by electing more Republicans.

“I’m trying to get my party to pull its head out of its ass, be more effective at campaigning, and get its ideas across,” DeMaio said, ticking off values he believes the Republican Party should champion: socially moderate positions, environmental stewardship and challenging big corporations.

Though the GOP has a poor track record on those issues, DeMaio says: “I’m just simply tapping into something that already exists, that just needs leadership.”

Fairgoers listen to Rep. Carl DeMaio in Nevada County.

(Fred Greaves / For The Times)

Nearby, scores of volunteers sat at long tables, stuffing voter guides — approved and printed by DeMaio’s team — into envelopes. It is an immense undertaking, with every guide tailored to the voter’s local election. Volunteers hand-write the voter’s name and address on the envelope to give it a personal touch.

Matt Rexroad, a political consultant who ran an independent expenditure against DeMaio in his 2024 Assembly race, said that he doesn’t like DeMaio’s “combative side” but praised his effectiveness.

“He’s hardworking and he’s everywhere,” Rexroad said. “What the California Republican Party and the various central committees should be doing? He is basically running and setting up a system that’s totally outside of that which answers to him.”

Ahead of the June primary, the state Republican Party sent a cease-and-desist letter to DeMaio challenging his use of its trademarked elephant emblem and the phrase “Official Republican Voter Guide” on Reform California campaign materials.

Republican candidates endorsed by DeMaio ultimately beat out the party establishment-backed candidates in two significant races in the primary.

Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the state Republican Party, said that Reform California is benefiting from the strong “foundation” that the party built. “We’re stronger when we work together, and we look forward to doing just that,” Shupe said.

Clashes with business and labor

DeMaio grew up in Orange County, attended a Jesuit school in Maryland and graduated from Georgetown University.

His mother died of breast cancer when he was a teenager, essentially leaving him an orphan because his father was not in the picture, according to DeMaio.

He frequently speaks about his childhood adversity. He recalled visiting his mother in the hospital during her illness, describing how she hid her leg under a blanket and joked that doctors had mistakenly amputated it. “She had a great sense of humor,” he said. “I try to also, no matter what, to keep a sense of humor.”

After college, he founded a think tank dedicated to reforming government. He co-wrote a 2003 report with suggestions for closing California’s massive budget deficit after the dot-com bubble left the state reeling.

Former state Sen. Jim Brulte said the Senate Republican Caucus spent several days reading through DeMaio’s recommendations and ultimately adopted several. DeMaio is “wicked smart,” said Brulte, also the former state GOP party leader.

Former San Diego mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio announces a recall effort against San Diego Mayor Bob Filner in 2013 in San Diego.

(Denis Poroy / Associated Press)

Elected to the San Diego City Council in 2008, he cast himself as a fiscal watchdog, challenging labor unions and businesses’ influence.

He lost a bid for San Diego mayor in 2012, and two tries for Congress, and also twice pursued a voter ID ballot measure before aborting the efforts.

In 2018, he led the successful recall effort against state Sen. Josh Newman over the Fullerton politician’s support of a gas tax, part of what DeMaio called a “gazelle strategy” to target seemingly vulnerable Democrats.

In DeMaio’s winning 2024 state Assembly race, he heavily featured former Gov. Pete Wilson and his signature push for border control. “Gov. Pete Wilson was right,” DeMaio’s ad proclaimed, before blaming both major parties for “doing nothing” on illegal immigration for decades.

The first openly gay Republican Assembly member, he represents a suburban and rural district in northern and eastern San Diego County that covers Santee, Poway and the unincorporated communities of Julian, Ramona and Borrego Springs.

He is running for reelection on Nov. 3 against Democrat Gerald Boursiquot, an IT contractor.

Friction in Sacramento

On his first day in office, DeMaio introduced bills to require voter ID at the polls, repeal California’s “sanctuary state” law, and bar elected officials from trading stocks, among others. All died in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

His relationship with some Democrats worsened this year after he fueled outrage over a bill introduced by a Democratic Assembly member to make confidential the addresses of those providing legal and humanitarian aid to immigrants.

DeMaio dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” in reference to the conservative influencer, and said it would prevent activists from doing their jobs. MAGA loyalists flocked to Sacramento in solidarity.

The Democrats “can’t stand him,” said Roger Niello, a Republican state senator from Fair Oaks. “And I think he takes wonderful pleasure in that.”

Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat from Long Beach, called DeMaio’s views and tactics “repugnant” but said he has a friendship with the politician.

“When the camera is on, he’s antagonistic, bombastic and has the capacity to start a nuclear war,” Lowenthal said. “In private, he’s affable, thoughtful and willing to exchange ideas with anyone.”

Campaign Chair Carl DeMaio speaks during a rally at the Santa Clarita Activities Center in 2021 for
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ouster.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Now wrapping up his first term in Sacramento, DeMaio said he dislikes living part time in the state capital and avoids its political culture of nightly fundraisers. Instead, he said, he goes to bed early so he can wake up and record his daily show.

“I’m actually an introvert,” he said. “People don’t believe that. When I am not doing politics, I just want to be home with my cats, my partner and just try to disconnect from the world.”

The voter ID push

DeMaio’s Proposition 39 campaign bus pulled up to Folsom last week, part of a 71-stop tour ahead of the election.

“A lot of people, especially in the Trump era, really like someone who’s loud and fighting for them,” said Sadie Foster, a 34-year-old from Sacramento who volunteered serving potato salad at the event. “Even on the Democrat side, you see that.”

DeMaio, speaking to a large crowd, called his voter ID initiative the “most exciting thing on the ballot to get our base to turn out.”

If passed, Proposition 39 would require voters to present identification at the polls or write a government-approved PIN on the back of mail-in ballot envelopes. It would also require county officials to update voter rolls by removing individuals who have moved or passed away.

Opponents, including prominent Democrats and many voting experts, argue that the measure would make voting harder and disproportionately disenfranchise low-income citizens, rural residents and communities of color. They also point to data consistently indicating that voter fraud, including by noncitizens, is exceedingly rare.

President Trump, who remains widely unpopular in California, also supports stricter voter ID laws. Unlike Trump, DeMaio actively encourages mail-in voting.

A spot for the initiative features a woman asking rhetorically, “Can you dislike Donald Trump and still vote YES on Prop. 39 for voter ID? Yes, you can!”

In an interview, DeMaio linked the proposition to what he described as his longtime interest in election integrity. At the same time, no voter wants to see “an ineligible person casting a vote,” he said.

At an online strategy meeting with volunteers last month, DeMaio instructed them to target “low-propensity, lazy Republicans.”

One volunteer suggested tying their campaign to Trump’s offer to pay voters a $5,000 dividend if Republicans keep control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

“Please,” said DeMaio, sounding frustrated. “Stay on message. Do not get distracted by shiny objects. Because those shiny objects, according to the data, won’t help us win.”

WASHINGTON — Investments in pharmaceutical companies made on behalf of President Trump increased significantly after he returned to the White House last year, with his portfolio adding millions of dollars in stock in firms that benefited from a Republican-backed law that shields certain medications from Medicare price negotiations, according to a report from congressional Democrats.

The report, released Friday by the Joint Economic Committee’s minority arm, found that Trump’s pharmaceutical stock holdings grew from a maximum reported value of $1.7 million in 2024 to as much as $56.2 million at the end of 2025. The report said that included up to $39.1 million worth of stock held in companies that benefited from exemptions to Medicare’s drug price negotiation program, which came through a provision in the Republicans’ 2025 tax and spending law.

Additional analysis of Trump’s financial disclosures provided by committee Democrats showed that his investment portfolio bought as much as $2.55 million in shares of pharmaceutical companies benefiting from the exemptions on three dates before he signed the legislation in July 2025. That included up to $950,000 in purchases on July 1, 2025, the day the Senate passed the bill. His portfolio also bought as much as $1 million in AbbVie stock in August 2025, after the bill became law.

The Republican president’s wealth has grown since he took office last year through a web of business interests, many of which have benefited from the policy moves of his administration. The White House has repeatedly denied any ethics issues and accused Democrats of “attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest.”

The report also noted that the exemptions policy could leave some Medicare beneficiaries paying thousands of dollars more for certain cancer treatments and other medications than they would have if Medicare had been allowed to negotiate lower prices.

The findings come as Trump has made lowering prescription drug costs a central part of his healthcare policy, striking deals with pharmaceutical companies that his administration says will make medications more affordable for Americans, although drug pricing is based on a complicated set of factors.

Recent polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that most Americans think Trump is profiting off the presidency in unethical or illegal ways and is focused more on his wealth than on helping people like them.

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who leads the Joint Economic Committee’s minority arm, called the report’s findings “outrageous and yet typical from this president, who makes the American people foot the bill again and again for his own gains.”

Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions. He denied any conflict of interest.

“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” Ingle said in a statement.

A law from President Biden’s Democratic administration allowed Medicare for the first time to negotiate prices for some of the costliest prescription drugs. Republicans’ 2025 tax and spending bill expanded an existing exemption for medications developed to treat rare diseases or conditions, delaying when certain costly drugs could become eligible for negotiations or excluding them entirely, according to healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

Also known as the orphan drug exclusion, the carve out allows drug companies to continue charging lucrative prices that might otherwise have been reduced through Medicare negotiations.

Supporters of the change argued that a broader exemption would encourage drug companies to develop treatments for rare diseases. Critics say it allows makers of blockbuster medications to avoid negotiations that could lower costs for Medicare and its recipients.

The report estimated that Medicare beneficiaries receiving the cancer drugs Keytruda, manufactured by Merck, and Opdivo, by Bristol Myers Squibb, could pay roughly $5,000 more annually than they would if Medicare negotiated prices for the medications. Trump’s portfolio includes stock in both firms.

The report also said that Trump’s portfolio continued to buy and sell pharma company stocks throughout the first eight months of 2026, adding as much as $3.5 million in stock wealth in the sector.

All recent U.S. presidents have dumped their stocks before assuming office, put their money in broadly diversified funds or set up a “blind” trust so they couldn’t even know what they owned.

Trump has put his broader business interests in a trust managed by his sons. But the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani and top New York Democrats are calling on the owners of private parking lots to block federal immigration officers from using their properties as staging areas, days after immigration officers shot a man in the city.

In a Friday letter, Mamdani, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and dozens of state and local lawmakers told lot and garage owners that the city needs their “help at a critical juncture.”

“In solidarity with immigrant New Yorkers and in our shared commitment to the City we love, we ask that you do not rent, lend, or otherwise make your property available to ICE as a staging area for its enforcement operations,” the letter reads. “Make it known to ICE that it is not authorized to use your garages and lots.”

The plea came after immigration officers shot 28-year-old Dominican national Oscar Belgal during an arrest last week as he rode in a car with his young son. The shooting sparked protests and drew renewed attention to the federal government’s immigration crackdown.

The federal officers had been using a nearby private parking lot as a staging area before the shooting, according to Friday’s letter.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security slammed the letter in a statement that read: “Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won’t. Luckily, no terminated parking will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make New York safe again.”

Federal officials maintain the immigration officers believed their lives were in danger and opened fire only after Belgal smashed his car into two government vehicles and accelerated toward them.

New York City has previously barred outside law enforcement agencies such as DHS from setting up staging areas on city property unless they have a judicial warrant or qualify for certain “limited legal exceptions,” according to the letter. “But these laws govern City property, not the private lots and garages that you operate,” it adds.

Private businesses have at times found themselves in the middle of tense political fights over President) Trump’s administration’s immigration enforcement push.

In one instance, a Minnesota hotel that refused to let immigration officers stay there in January apologized after public criticism from DHS, saying the decision violated its internal policies. In another, protesters occupied the lobby of a Manhattan hotel they said was housing some immigration officers.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — President Trump says he wants voters to pretend that he’s on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections.

His rivals are doing their best to help his case.

Democratic candidates and their allies have spent more than $163 million since Sept. 1 on television advertising that mentions the Republican president, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from AdImpact, which charts media spending.

That includes airing ads that reference Trump on broadcast, cable and streaming nearly 180,000 times, the data shows. Republicans, meanwhile, have run ads that talk about the president just 16,000 times, at an estimated cost of $11 million, over the same period.

It’s a noticeable silence about the party’s dominant yet unpopular leader.

Many of the Democrats’ ads accuse Republican opponents of siding with the president over voters, particularly on issues like tariffs and the Iran war, which they blame for jacking up costs.

The ads include one from the campaign of Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is running for reelection and has spent nearly $3 million on a Trump-focused ad attacking his rival, Rep. Mike Collins, for his close relationship with the president.

“Mike Collins voted for Trump’s war in Iran, sending gas prices through the roof. He voted for Trump’s tariffs, sending grocery prices soaring. And Mike Collins voted with Trump to double health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians,” it says. “Mike Collins sides with Donald Trump and makes you pay more.”

Republican National Committee spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said Democratic messaging reflected the party’s hollowness instead of its strength.

“Democrats are lighting money on fire talking about President Trump because they have no agenda other than investigation, obstruction and impeachment,” she said. “Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t a policy platform, it’s a $160 million way of saying you have nothing to offer to the American people.”

Democrats link Trump and his allies to economic woes

Another ad from the House Majority PAC, a super PAC dedicated to electing Democrats to the House, opens with a middle-aged woman standing over her kitchen stove and talking about how her family is “barely getting by” before she expresses her disappointment in Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is one of Republicans’ vulnerable incumbents.

“He used to be independent. But now it seems like he’s in lockstep with Donald Trump. It really bothers me,” she says, adding, “Congressman Fitzpatrick is not for us anymore.”

Indeed, all the Democratic ads that have aired in Pennsylvania’s tightly contested 1st Congressional District since Sept. 1 have mentioned Trump, even though Fitzpatrick voted against Trump’s tariffs and his power to wage war against Iran without congressional approval.

All four of the ads talking about Trump have aired a combined 2,000 times in that period, the AdImpact data shows. Fitzpatrick is being challenged by Democrat Bob Harvie, a county commissioner who is a former social studies teacher.

Democratic strategists say the messaging reflects the sentiment of voters.

“Every single poll and every single focus group shows affordability to be voters’ number one issue, and they specifically point to corrupt politicians as being responsible for driving up prices,” said House Majority PAC spokesperson Katarina Flicker.

Republican ads back away from the president

Out of dozens of issue categories tracked by AdImpact, the analysis found that Trump was the fourth most common issue mentioned by Democrats in House and Senate races’ final stretch. It was topped only by healthcare, taxes and accusations about opponents being beholden to special interests.

For Republicans in the same races, Trump-themed ads clocked in at number 33, by comparison. The top issues in their ads were taxes and crime.

Idaho Republican Senator Jim Risch tells viewers he “fought alongside President Trump to pass the biggest tax cuts for working families in American history.”

Overall in the race’s final stretch since Sept. 1, Democrats have spent or plan to spend $1.8 billion in ads across all federal, state and local elections. Republicans have spent or reserved $2.2 billion nationwide.

Republican strategist Alex Conant said Democrats are banking on Trump motivating their base to vote, an approach they’ve routinely used over the last decade.

“Democrats want this election to be a referendum on Trump. They want to equate a vote for a Republican candidate to a vote for Trump,” he said.

For Conant’s party, it’s a different calculus.

“We have a ton of money and we’re throwing every kind of message on the wall to see what sticks,” he said. “There’s not a cookie-cutter Republican ad this year. Whereas the Democratic ads are pretty obvious.”

Colvin and Kessler write for the Associated Press.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, celebrated the 20-year anniversary of landmark climate legislation he signed while in office alongside Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday.

“California is the perfect example of what can be done when people work together and when we don’t look at this as a Republican or as a Democratic issue,” Schwarzenegger said at an economic conference in Long Beach, noting that Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act had significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions while creating more than a half a million clean-energy jobs.

“This is the message that is so important for the world,” he said, because the state’s policies have become a model for other states and nations.

Newsom noted that the state had met “audacious” goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, touting 39,000 megawatts of clean energy that have been installed in the last seven years, 23,000 megawatts of battery storage created, and that no flex alert has been issued in the state in four years.

“So we’re not in the goal-setting business; we’re in the how business,” he said.

He added that the clean energy transition is “the most critical national security issue in the United States of America,” with economic and supply chain leadership at stake as China surpasses the U.S. in electric vehicles, clean-energy manufacturing and the deployment of renewables.

The state already met the climate change legislation’s ambitious target — returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — four years ahead of schedule. However, recent analyses indicate California is not on track to meet its future targets of cutting emissions 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2045.

The legislation paved the way for the creation of California’s nation-leading carbon market, cap-and-invest, which launched in 2013. The Legislature extended cap-and-invest’s life to 2045 last year, and the state is now initiating the process of linking its market with Washington state.

The event as well as a luncheon the prior day in Santa Monica were rare displays of bipartisan unity at a time of heightened political polarization in the United States. Schwarzenegger and Newsom piled praise upon each other during the Wednesday afternoon discussion, hugging at the end.

At the luncheon, former Gov. Gray Davis, whom Schwarzenegger ousted from office in the 2003 recall election, as well as billionaire hedge-fund founder turned environmental warrior Tom Steyer, who unsuccessfully ran for governor this year, were among the Democrats in attendance, as well as former state Assembly Speaker Fabien Nunez and former state Sen. Fran Pavley, who were both pivotal in the passage of the climate-change legislation.

In addition to remarks highlighting the foundation of some of the nation’s bedrock environmental policies, such as former GOP President Richard Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency and signing the Endangered Species Act, there were moments of levity.

Schwarzenegger said he told fellow Republicans “f— you” when they balked at him naming Susan Kennedy, a Democrat, as his chief of staff, he said Tuesday.

During a breakout session at the Wednesday conference, he referenced his former wife, Maria Shriver, a scion of the Kennedy family, as he described his desire to hear from people on both sides of the aisle.

“So I had Democrats in my administration, and of course the Republican Party went nuts,” he said. “I didn’t care because, to me, I thought I wanted to hear what the Democrats were thinking. Plus, I was sleeping with one every night anyway.”

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is headed to New Hampshire this weekend to campaign for Democratic candidates in the November election, a continuation of his reconnaissance tour through swing states in preparation for a possible 2028 presidential run.

The trip follows voyages to other early primary voting states, including South Carolina in September and Nevada in July, that could be critical to his campaign if he officially joins the race.

“I think if your travel calendar aligns with the Democratic Party’s primary calendar, you’re probably running for president,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego.

It’s still too early for Newsom, or any other would-be presidential contender, to declare their candidacy, Kousser said, but the governor’s movements are typical of a politician who is “all in.”

“This is the clearest signal to voters, to donors, and to the chattering class that you’re willing to put in the hard yards, the years of on-the-ground campaigning, that it takes to do well in one of these primaries or caucuses,” he said.

Newsom isn’t alone.

A cadre of potential 2028 candidates, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, among others, is also deploying a similiar shadow campaign strategy and raising money for swing-state Democrats in the midterms.

The governor’s visit to New Hampshire comes after he raised a half of a million dollars for New Hampshire Democrats this election cycle. His fundraising supported a new field office for the state party in Nashua, where he’ll join gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington and Rep. Chris Pappas, who is vying against a Republican for the U.S. Senate, at a canvassing event on Saturday morning.

Newsom, Pappas and Warmington will appear at a second campaign event in Exeter together at 1 p.m. before Newsom heads to an early evening meet and greet with Stefany Shaheen, a House candidate, in Manchester.

After returning from New Hampshire, Newsom plans to participate in campaign events across California in support of Democrats in newly redistricted congressional seats.

The Harris campaign said she also plans to stump for Pappas in New Hampshire on Oct. 24. As she considers a third bid for the White House, Harris is visiting Nevada, Mississippi, Wisconsin and Georgia in the final days of the midterm election cycle.

Kousser said Harris’ schedule suggests she wants to keep her options open.

“These candidates are reaching out to the direct audience of voters, endorsers, and key leaders in those states, and they’re also trying to show the national audience that they have a fire in the belly and that they’re willing to put in the work,” he said.

While Newsom mirrors the moves of a presidential candidate, his comments have fueled speculation about whether he will ultimately run.

Newsom recently said that if Harris is in, he’s out.

The governor, who made similar statements in the past, said it would be “mutually-assured destruction” and there would be too much crossover between the two California political heavyweights, who would be vying for the same donors and supporters while offering a similar policy profile.

The governor has also said the decision lies with his family and that his four children need to be “on board.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It’s a long way from Washington, has a small population and hasn’t backed a Democrat for Senate in nearly 20 years.

Yet President Trump on Tuesday will devote a big chunk of his dwindling time ahead of crucial midterm elections to head all the way to Alaska — attempting to bolster a Republican incumbent senator in another sign of GOP fears about retaining control of Congress after Election Day on Nov. 3.

Trump is headlining a rally for Sen. Dan Sullivan in Wasilla, about 45 miles north of Anchorage — famous for being the hometown of former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and the headquarters of the Iditarod sled dog race across the state.

Trump’s stop is part of a western swing also taking him to rallies in Arizona and Montana on Wednesday.

“I’m right now going to Alaska to try and help Dan Sullivan. That’s a long way away,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for the trip on Tuesday. “I would only do it if I thought he was good. And he’s very good. And so, I’m going to Alaska to help Dan Sullivan, and then I’m stopping in numerous places.”

Democrats last won a Senate seat in Alaska in 2008, and the state hasn’t elected a governor from that party since 1998. The only time Alaska didn’t vote Republican for president was during Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide 1964 reelection.

Yet high gasoline prices from the Iran war and persistently elevated inflation have damaged Trump’s approval ratings enough to leave Democrats dreaming of Alaska upsets.

Trump and Vance have been trying to boost Sullivan repeatedly

Seeking his third Senate term, Sullivan faces Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman running to put “Alaska First,” emphasizing cost-of-living issues.

Alaska pollster Ivan Moore said he’s seen a decline in Trump’s support statewide that mirrors the president’s falling approval ratings nationally — meaning the Senate race may be decided by Trump 2024 voters who are now unsure they still back him.

“The visit is certainly appropriate. Whether the visit will be effective or not is another matter,” said Moore, who said when he first heard that Trump would visit Alaska, he didn’t believe it would actually happen.

The Trump administration has prioritized the opening of more of Alaska to oil and gas drilling. Vice President JD Vance already campaigned in Fairbanks for Sullivan.

The senator also recently joined Trump in the Oval Office where the president announced a $54 billion investment by South Korea’s government into an Alaska natural gas project. That’s despite South Korea saying the deal, and its total value, haven’t been finalized.

Still, Trump trekking four time zones west to get to Sullivan’s home turf — an unusually long trip so close to the midterms — is his strongest show of support.

Trump last campaigned in Alaska to try to defeat a fellow Republican

Alaska is home to around 740,000 people, making it slightly less populous than Denver. It ranks 48th out of 50 states in population, smaller than all but Vermont and Wyoming.

Trump nonetheless headlined a 2022 rally in Anchorage opposing Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski after she voted to convict him on a charge of incitement of insurrection during his second impeachment trial, following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, who challenged Murkowski that year, but that didn’t stop incumbent Murkowski from winning reelection.

This year, there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot

Trump has complained about Alaska’s unique elections system. The state has open primaries, in which the four top vote-getters — regardless of party affiliation — advance to the general election, which uses ranked choice voting.

That’s led to a scenario where there also will be another Dan Sullivan on the ballot on Nov. 3: retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan, whom Trump and other allies of Sen. Sullivan have called a sham candidate. Dan J. Sullivan has denied this.

At his rally, Trump also plans to stump for Republican Rep. Nick Begich. Begich is facing a competitive challenge from Bill Hill, an independent.

Alaska has a history of rewarding candidates with an independent streak — something Vance acknowledged during his trip to Fairbanks last week. “In very deep red years, Alaska is competitive. In very deep blue years, Alaska is still competitive,” Vance said. “I think it’s just a reality of the politics of the ‌state.”

Independence has been hard to find in the Republican Party where Trump for years had total control. Some Republicans facing tough elections have begun tiptoeing away from Trump on key issues like Iran and tariffs, but not Sullivan, who has been vocal in supporting both.

In a post last week, Trump questioned why three Republicans were running against a Democrat for governor. “How stupid are we to do this?” he said on social media. This comes at the same time state Republican party leaders are urging voters to rank Republicans on the ballot and leave the Democrats blank.

“We want to be clear: we do not support ranked choice voting. It is a confusing, burdensome and costly voting scheme,” party leaders, including GOP chair Carmela Warfield, said in a statement Saturday. “That said, ranked choice voting is the system Alaska will use for the 2026 General Election, and we must work within it for this election to keep Alaska’s recent momentum going strong.”

Trump’s trade war with Canada may also be a factor

Trump has also triggered a trade war with Canada, which shares a 1,500-plus-mile border with Alaska and is among the state’s most important trading partners.

The U.S. banned nearly $1 billion worth of imports from its neighbor to the north — including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles — after previously imposing 50% tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian products. Canada has responded with reciprocal bans and its own import levies, and the back-and-forth could raise prices for Alaska consumers.

Making Canada an enemy of sorts is “discomforting” for many Alaskans, said pollster Moore.

“We associate, I think, probably more closely with the Canadians — more than a lot of the Lower 48,” he said.

Weissert and Bohrer write for the Associated Press. Weissert reported from Washington. AP reporter Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Chuck Schumer has won and lost Senate majorities since becoming Democratic leader a decade ago. But this year’s midterm elections could be his most important yet, with some in the party having said he needs to step down and make way for a new generation.

Schumer, who has directly or indirectly overseen his party’s Senate campaign arm in almost every election cycle over the last 20 years, has regained trust within his caucus, for now, as Democrats are hopeful of making gains in the midterm elections despite a difficult map that favors Republicans.

Allies of the New York Democrat say it’s a significant turnaround from last year, when the party was still reeling from major election losses. A low point came in the spring of 2025, when the party’s base erupted at Schumer for voting to keep President Trump’s government open.

Interviews with more than a dozen Democratic senators in recent weeks indicate that Schumer has recovered his political standing with many in his caucus. If Democrats gain seats in the election, colleagues expect him to easily win enough support in the closed-door leadership election, likely the week after Election Day.

Should they win a majority, a feat once seen as improbable, another term as leader would be nearly assured, many said. Both parties pick their Senate leaders by secret ballot, so no senator has to reveal their vote.

Still, nothing is guaranteed. While no Democrat has stepped up to challenge Schumer, that could quickly change if his party suffers an unexpected level of losses. And several Democratic candidates around the country have said publicly that they won’t vote for Schumer or have remained noncommittal.

Interviewed by The Associated Press earlier this month, Schumer stated unequivocally that he’s running for another term as leader. He said he believes Democrats have won more favor with voters over the last year and have a shot at winning the majority after fighting Trump’s tariffs, forcing more than a dozen votes to end the war in Iran and focusing on affordability, corruption and healthcare.

“I think our caucus is strong, it’s united,” Schumer said. “A year ago, everyone said it was out of reach. Today, we have a broader map, strong candidates, a clear contrast.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said that “Senate seats in some ruby red states seem to be in play” because of candidates Schumer recruited.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who has served with Schumer for almost 30 years, said that “if you had told us in 2025 that we’d be in the home stretch with a really good shot of taking the majority, it would have been like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ You can’t argue with results.”

And if Democrats don’t win additional seats? “I’m not thinking about that,” Wyden said.

Some senators won’t commit to supporting Schumer

While Schumer appears to be in a good position at the moment, many Democratic senators won’t say publicly whether they will support him — particularly those in the most progressive wing of the party.

“It’s a little bit too early to speculate on that right now,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she is focused on November’s elections. “We’ll know a lot more after the midterms,” she said.

Freshman Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan has called for a “new generation” of leaders across the party.

“It’s not a secret that Democrats still haven’t totally found their footing after Trump,” Slotkin said in a recent interview, adding that “we have to see what the results of the election are.”

It’s unclear if anyone else wants the job

Even if there are losses in Senate races, it’s unclear if any other Democrat wants the burden of being leader. Many are instead eyeing runs for the White House in 2028.

Speculation about a challenge to Schumer has centered on Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who has already said he’s running for the No. 2 leadership spot to replace retiring Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

Asked about Schumer, Van Hollen said he doesn’t want to discuss it yet.

“Look, I think everybody wants to get through this election, and then we’ll go from there,” Van Hollen said in an interview before the Senate left Washington to campaign.

Several Senate candidates around the country have either said they won’t vote for Schumer if they are elected or remained noncommittal, including Troy Jackson in Maine, Adam Hamilton in Kansas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

At the same time, the Senate Majority PAC, which is closely aligned with Schumer, has put millions of dollars into those campaigns and others. Schumer backed El-Sayed’s primary opponent, but the two met in Washington last month.

El-Sayed said after the meeting that the party is united and “we’re having really productive conversations about what it takes to win.”

Schumer has kept his caucus close

Several of the Democratic senators who insisted on anonymity to share their views agreed that Schumer is likely to win another term as leader. There have been very few discussions about a change, said one, partially because Schumer has stayed close to almost everyone in his caucus, keeping them on speed dial in his famous flip phone. Another senator said that they aren’t aware of Schumer asking for any commitments just yet.

At the same time, some said they would like to see Schumer, who is up for reelection in 2028, announce that this is his last term as leader and commit to helping transition to a successor. A commitment like that could end the conversation, one senator said.

Another senator said that a commitment from Schumer about the future isn’t as important — what will matter is if they win in November.

All of the senators agreed that there are no obvious contenders right now to challenge him, but that could change quickly if Democrats lose Senate seats in November.

Schumer has turned the tables since 2025

Attitudes within the Democratic caucus have improved since last year, when the base revolted against Schumer for the March vote to keep the Republican president’s government open. Progressive groups like MoveOn called for him to step down, arguing that Democrats needed to fight harder against Trump and Republicans.

Schumer regained some favor with Democrats inside and outside the Capitol during a prolonged government shutdown a year ago and as he has repeatedly blocked Trump’s nominees and Republican legislation.

But while the calls to resign or step aside have waned, many are still agitating for change.

“Our priority right now is organizing and making sure we elect a new generation laser-focused on affordability and fighting corruption,” said Joel Payne, a national spokesman for MoveOn.

Referring to the 2025 calls for Schumer to step aside, Payne said the group’s members have “already rendered a judgment on Schumer’s tenure and made clear they’re eager for new leadership that energizes the party base.”

It’s unclear, though, whether calls from the progressive wing of the party will influence the secret ballot vote, in which Schumer needs only a majority to win.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., dismissed the talk about Schumer’s future.

“It’s hard to lose if no one else is challenging you,” he said.

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Steven Sloan, Seung Min Kim and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Elon Musk, the world’s only trillionaire, has quietly become the biggest known donor in this year’s midterm elections, doling out more than $276 million since July to try to save Republican majorities in Congress.

The numbers, first reported by the New York Times ahead of this week’s federal filing deadline, were confirmed by Andrew Romeo, a spokesperson for Musk’s super PAC.

The money includes $158 million given to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidates, one of the largest known political donations in American history, according to the Times.

Another $76 million went to America PAC, a Musk super PAC, which has once again built out a major turnout operation like the one it used to help elect President Trump by knocking on doors in 2024.

Musk also provided $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group that supports the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, Ken Paxton. The race has been a major focus of Musk’s efforts.

It’s a dramatic turnaround since last May, when Musk said he intended to cut back on future political spending. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said at the time.

Despite the cash infusion, Musk has generally kept a lower profile than in 2024, when he appeared on stage next to Trump at rallies, and in the early days of the president’s second term, when he led the Department of Government Efficiency.

He had a falling out with Trump while leaving his government post, but the two have since reconciled. Trump presented Musk with the National Medal of Science last week.

Musk’s net worth has fluctuated around the trillion-dollar line this year based on changes in stock prices, but he topped $1 trillion again last week according to Forbes magazine.

Republican have a gaping financial advantage over their Democratic counterparts — a disparity that has been a rare bright spot for a party that is bracing for major potential losses amid deep voter frustration over the president’s performance, stubbornly high prices and the unpopular war with Iran.

They have been using the money to blanket the airwaves in the race’s final stretch.

“These robust investments have allowed the G.O.P. apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history,” Romeo told the Times.

Democrats responded to the news by accusing Republicans of using vast amounts of cash to mask their shortcomings.

“Republicans are hoping to buy these elections, injecting tens of millions into races to try and outrun their unpopular candidates, unpopular president, and unpopular economy,” said Lauren French, a spokesperson for Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.

Colvin writes for the Associated Press.