democrats

WASHINGTON — After two years of struggling to slow down the Trump administration agenda under a Republican governing trifecta, Democrats are hoping to capture both chambers of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

All 435 House of Representatives seats are up for election, with 37 considered competitive, 21 of them toss-ups, by the Cook Political Report — a respected polling analysis site. Republicans currently hold a 218-214 edge over Democrats, with two seats vacant and one independent in the chamber.

To control the House, Democrats need a net gain of four seats.

Recent polls have shown Democrats creeping up on or surpassing their Republican opponents as President Trump’s approval rating hovers under 40%, which may offer an opening in unexpected places. But still, in a time when a more progressive wing has risen in popularity on the left, even some moderate Democrats are suffering from associations with the current administration.

Here is a look at five competitive races:

Ohio 7th: Miller vs. Poindexter

Incumbent Republican Max Miller, mired in controversy, will face union ironworker Brian Poindexter in a 7th Congressional District race that went from solidly Republican to a toss-up in the matter of weeks.

Miller, a second-term congressman, is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation after his ex-wife, Emily Moreno — daughter of Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno — accused Miller of extreme physical abuse, which he has denied.

Miller also faced accusations from former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham that Miller had abused her during their relationship. An Ohio judge recently ordered both parties to remove social media posts about each other that were considered disparaging.

Brian Poindexter, Democratic nominee for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, speaks at the Strongsville Democratic Club meeting on Aug. 5 in Strongsville, Ohio.

(Nate Manley / Associated Press)

Poindexter, a relative unknown, has surged in the meantime. According to a Co/efficient poll last month, Poindexter was leading Miller by 14 points, with 86% of respondents claiming they were aware of allegations against Miller.

Poindexter has centered his campaign on strengthening unions, retaining healthcare benefits for retirees and injured workers and raising wages.

Miller has attacked his opponent for a 1998 arrest in which Poindexter, a teenager at the time, allegedly tried to swallow a rock of crack cocaine during a traffic stop. Miller also homed in on an instance of alleged assault at a baseball game in 2013 by Poindexter.

Texas 34th: Gonzalez vs. Flores

Incumbent Democrat Vicente Gonzalez Jr. is attempting to retain his seat against challenger Eric Flores, an Army veteran endorsed by Trump.

Elected in 2016, Gonzalez held the 15th Congressional District for three terms until 2021, when a Texas redistricting shift absorbed his McAllen home into the 34th district. He is currently serving his second term under a new map, which favors Republicans and has shed many of his Latino constituents.

Flores, a political newcomer, made his first national appearance at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas, touting his commitment to border security and accusing Gonzalez of allowing migrants to make the community unsafe.

Immigration looms as an issue in the race. Gonzalez has introduced bills to prevent federal and state immigration enforcement officers from entering homes without an official warrant, and to force agents to wear clear identification. He has publicly criticized raids targeting hospitality, medical and construction workers.

Gonzalez has scored endorsements from several progressive organizations in the state, including LUPE Votes — a subsidiary of La Unión del Pueblo Entero.

In a Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center poll from August, Gonzalez was leading Flores, 45% to 42%, with 8% undecided.

North Carolina 1st: Davis vs. Buckhout

Incumbent Democrat Rep. Donald Davis will have to contend with a district that has grown more conservative to retain his seat against Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout.

North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District was the state’s only swing seat held by a Democrat before last year’s redistricting, which made the area lean Republican. This will be a rematch of the 2024 race, which Davis won by less than 2 points, or around 6,000 total votes.

Laurie Buckhout speaks as President Trump and North Carolina Rep. Jennifer Balkcom look on during a campaign rally at the Gastonia Municipal Airport on Sept. 16 in Gastonia, N.C.

(Matt Kelley / Associated Press)

Cook Political Report ranked this race as leaning Republican, calling Davis “the most vulnerable House Democrat in the country.”

It is unclear whether the gerrymandering effort will have been effective enough to make the district flip to Republican. Trump endorsed Buckhout in March and reiterated his support last week.

New York 17th: Lawler vs. Conley

New York Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler is attempting to fend off a challenge from Democrat Cait Conley, a former White House director of counterterrorism on the National Security Council.

Cook Political Report rankings showed that early this year, the 17th Congressional District race went from likely Republican to a toss-up.

Pete Buttigieg went on the campaign trail last week with Conley to promote the candidate’s bid to unseat Lawler.

“Cait is as serious as it gets about keeping our country safe,” Buttigieg said on a rally stage in Tarrytown, “just like she is serious about bringing down the cost of housing, healthcare and energy.”

Lawler has presented a bipartisan image in Congress, but has come under fire in his purple district for aligning himself with the Trump administration on several issues, including his support for the Iran war.

At the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention, Lawler focused much of his speech on lambasting “socialist” Democrats and attempting to appeal to the more “common sense” wing of the opposition party.

“Radical socialists are winning Democratic primaries,” he said. “They claim to be well-meaning, but there is nothing kind-hearted about protecting criminals at the expense of American families … nothing compassionate about prioritizing illegal immigrants.”

Conley, however, has publicly refused to campaign with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — without condemning either figure — to avoid the open conflict between establishment figures and the more progressive wing of the party.

A July poll from co/efficient showed Lawler leading Conley 50% to 45%, with a nearly 3% margin of error.

Dr. Amish Shah, shown in July, is a Democrat running in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Arizona 1st: Shah vs. Feely

A Democratic PAC plans to invest nearly $1 million to support Democrat state Rep. Amish Shah against Republican Jay Feely, a former NFL player with close ties to the president.

The 314 Action Fund — which seeks to elect Democrats with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — has made a big bet on the Democrat running in the 1st Congressional District, Arizona’s wealthiest, according to the Arizona Mirror.

Former professional football player Jay Feely, shown in April, is the Republican nominee in Arizona’s 1st District.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Subsequent ads have brought attention to Feely’s close association with Trump and his recent attendance at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas. Trump won the state by five points in 2024.

Elon Musk has also figured in this race, with his America PAC giving $24,000 to Republican candidates Feely in the 1st District and Juan Ciscomani in the 6th District, according to the Copper Courier.

The Cook Political Report called the 1st District “one of the most competitive … in the country.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s trade war with Canada could intensify the headwinds Republicans are navigating ahead of the November midterms, with its effects poised to reverberate in northern battleground states with crucial Senate races.

With the election less than six weeks away, Republicans are facing an increasingly bleak outlook, as new polls this week showed voters favoring Democrats by as much as 12 points amid widespread cost-of-living anxiety and low approval for Trump.

The escalating beef with Canada — Trump attacked the country anew on social media Wednesday — stands to heighten voters’ economic worries and add to the GOP’s political challenge in dead-heat races, analysts said.

“It doesn’t make things easier. It’s not helping,” said Rusty Hills, a University of Michigan public policy professor and onetime chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

The president’s unpopular policies on the war in Iran, the economy and data centers have already handed Republican candidates the tough task of appearing responsive to Americans’ frustration with cost-of-living issues without alienating Trump and his voter base.

The trade war, said Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican media strategist, puts “another log on the fire” of the affordability issue.

The tariffs have appeared unpopular in recent polling, including among a majority of independent voters. Though they are not expected to dramatically increase consumer prices, they could affect voters’ perception of the economy — and even small economic impacts on certain industries, such as auto manufacturing in Michigan, could have an effect in very close midterm races, experts said.

Trump’s new import bans on some Canadian goods are set to begin next week, a response to retaliatory tariffs Canada levied earlier this month. Trump argues that Canada has “been ripping off” the United States and that tariffs will help domestic manufacturers.

On Wednesday, the president inaccurately claimed on Truth Social that Canada is allowing “millions and millions” of immigrants into its country.

“It is a Liberal takeover that will end very badly. Already showing up in their numbers. Big unemployment. ‘Oh Canada!” the president wrote on social media Wednesday morning.

Five of the nine states most likely to decide Senate control border Canada — Alaska, Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire and Maine. Two more, Texas and Iowa, also do substantial trade with Canada.

Democrats must retain their Senate seats including New Hampshire and Michigan and flip four of the other states to win a majority, a tall task. As the landscape worsens for Republicans, however, some are testing how much they can distance themselves from Trump.

“It’s a tightrope, there’s no question,” Hills said. “[Candidates] are looking for some wiggle room on some of these issues like the war and prices and Canada tariffs, because they need every independent and swing voter they can get.”

A majority of Americans oppose raising tariffs on Canadian goods, including 64% of independents, an Economist/YouGov poll found. Only 14% of independents said they supported additional U.S. tariffs on Canada in a late August Ipsos poll.

And in Michigan, 68% of independent voters disapprove of the tariffs, a poll this month from the Washington Post and Schar School found.

“The more we put tariffs on stuff, the more they put tariffs on stuff … prices are just ultimately going to go up for all of us,” said one Michigan swing voter in a Sept. 9 focus group conducted by the firm Engagious, in which 11 of 13 participants said the trade war was bad for the state.

The highest costs of the tariffs will be concentrated within a few industries, including auto and other manufacturing, dairy, and alcohol and spirits, said Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation. The tariffs likely won’t create a major change for consumers, but the general impression that tariffs can contribute to higher prices might turn off voters who are already worried about inflation, he said.

Counter-tariffs imposed by Canada in response to U.S tariffs last year resulted in a 6% increase in the prices of affected goods, researchers found in paper published by the Journal of Monetary Economics.

Canadian lumber products at Gutherie Lumber in Livonia, Mich., in August.

(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

“This trade war is certainly not helping the president and his party in the midterms,” Durante said. “What’s weighing on the top of people’s minds is this general affordability crisis … and they realize that tariffs are another factor that is impacting affordability.”

The latest escalation of the trade dispute began in July, when Trump threatened new 50% tariffs on some Canadian goods, reinvigorating a conflict that began with tariffs the president imposed in 2025.

The two countries began trade talks, but the negotiations fell apart in late August, and Trump imposed tariffs on about $20-billion worth of Canadian goods. Canada retaliated with tariffs on about $20-billion worth of American goods that took effect Sept. 8. Trump then announced import bans on some Canadian goods, including certain alcohol and dairy products, which go into effect next week.

Construction and farm equipment in Illinois, aluminum and pipe products in New York, and iron and steel products in Ohio are among the goods targeted by Canada’s counter-tariffs, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported. In California, about 10.5% of the state’s Canadian imports are exposed to the counter-tariffs imposed by Canada.

Democrats have seized on the issue as another way to tie Republican candidates to Trump’s policies, something that analysts said may have varying degrees of success in different swing states.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins campaigns in August in Kittery, Maine.

(CJ Gunther / Getty Images)

In Maine and New Hampshire, where the Republican Senate nominees have criticized Trump’s move, the tariff issue may be less likely to stick. Efforts to tie Republicans to Trump have historically been less successful in the region because of its independent streak, said Jim Merrill, a veteran Republican strategist in New Hampshire.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins warned the White House against imposing tariffs and successfully pushed for the administration to exempt road salt and cement this month. She told Politico that the Trump administration had “very much underestimated” the effect of the tariffs on Maine residents.

Republican John Sununu, a former senator who is running to retake the seat in New Hampshire, has also criticized the tariffs, saying a trade war with Canada “doesn’t make any sense.” He indicated he would support legislation in Congress to restrain the president’s tariff powers.

Elsewhere, Senate nominees have walked a careful line on tariffs. In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan has largely avoided the issue, even as Democrats there have used it to ramp up attacks on his record in recent days. In Ohio, former Sen. Jon Husted told the National Review in August that the public “would like to understand the strategy behind what the president’s trying to do.”

Former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican Senate nominee, told reporters over the weekend that he was in favor of “good” tariffs that would help Michigan and opposed to “bad” tariffs that would hurt the state.

Focusing on issues other than tariffs may be the right strategy on the campaign trail, Hills said.

“He’d much rather be talking about the Republican plan for affordability,” Hills suggested. “There’s interesting things we need to be talking about in order to win this election, and this isn’t one of them.”

SACRAMENTO — As Californians prepare to elect a new governor in November, the concern they want to be his top priority is reducing the state’s entrenched high cost of living, according to a poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Not too far behind that is strong voter support for fighting the policies of the Trump administration. That may be among the many reasons 58% of likely voters surveyed support Democrat Xavier Becerra in the governor’s race compared to the 33% who back Republican Steve Hilton, whom the president endorsed.

“These results suggest that Becerra is in a commanding position heading to November,” said IGS co-director Eric Schickler. “With 2026 shaping up to be a strong Democratic year nationally, the headwinds facing Hilton in Democratic-leaning California are even stronger than usual.”

The poll found that Becerra’s lead over Hilton had increased slightly since an August IGS poll, and the Democrat now holds a 25-percentage-point advantage.

Despite an effort to reach out to Democrats and independent voters and making California’s high housing costs, top-in-the-nation gasoline prices and other increasing daily living expenses a central focus of his campaign, Hilton is struggling to gain ground in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, the poll found.

“The difficult thing is that Steve Hilton’s a Republican in California,” said Tim Rosales, a Republican strategist who previously advised GOP gubernatorial candidate John Cox in the 2018 race against Newsom. “On the scale of what’s more important to voters, the cost of living certainly is there, but those Democrats really aren’t willing to cast a vote or cross party lines to vote for a Republican.”

Asked to name one or two of their top concerns heading into the Nov. 3 election, 44% of likely voters cited the cost of living, 37% said it was important to push back against policies from the Trump administration and 30% said they wanted to help their political party win or maintain control of Congress.

“The November elections are being held at a time when the economic backdrop is worsening not only in California but across the nation, as prices are rising on most major household purchases, including groceries, gasoline, electricity and healthcare,” said IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo. “Pocketbook issues have traditionally played a big role in election politics and this year is no exception.”

Democrats, who make up nearly half of California’s 23 million registered voters, “understand the cost of living, and they feel it. They just feel like they need a new Democrat to deal with it,” Rosales said.

“Independent voters are a little bit different. They aren’t partisan but they are ideological and there is some opportunity there.” But Hilton would “need a whole lot of them in California in order to have a chance on a statewide level,” he said.

More than half of likely voters not registered with either the Democratic or Republican parties — most of whom declare themselves as “no party preference” — said they supported Becerra in the governor’s race, while 30% favored Hilton. The remaining 14% were undecided.

Hilton has made a slew of campaign promises to lower the cost of living, including $3 gasoline, no taxes on income below $150,000 and lowering energy bills by slashing climate-friendly regulations imposed by Democrats.

Both Rosales and DiCamillo agreed that while voters list affordability as a top issue, Democrats in particular are more motivated by the opportunity to push back on President Trump in the midterm elections.

“When you look at the Becerra voters on the issues or concerns that are important to them, it’s really framed by fighting Trump administration policies. I think that’s an indication of what’s happening in this election cycle,” DiCamillo said. “You’re seeing it across the country as well.”

The poll showed that 59% of Becerra supporters said fighting the Trump administration was a top priority, while 62% of Hilton supporters said reducing taxes was their main concern. More than 60% of undecided voters listed the cost of living as a top item.

Trump, who remains extremely unpopular among most Californians, endorsed Hilton for governor in April. Though the president’s backing helped the former Fox News host consolidate enough Republican support to finish second in the June primary, allowing him to advance to the November election, it may hurt his chance in the general election. A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll showed Trump with a 27% approval rating in the state, a record low across both of his terms.

Hilton has tried to court voters, especially Latinos and independents, who dislike Trump but are also dissatisfied with California’s Democratic leadership and its failure to alleviate some of California’s most incessant problems. The British-born Republican has also declined to criticize the president on issues including immigration enforcement or the Iran war.

Becerra’s wide lead is also boosted by his favorability rating — 48% of likely voters have a favorable opinion of him while 40% view him unfavorably and 11% have no opinion. Hilton’s rating is underwater; 51% of likely voters have an unfavorable opinion compared to 35% favorable and 13% with no opinion.

The Republican has criticized his opponent for doing few public events since the primary election and challenged Becerra to accept debate invitations from roughly a half-dozen news outlets around the state.

The two are scheduled to meet in a Sept. 30 nationally televised debate in Burbank hosted by CNN.

The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from Sept. 15 to 20. Responses for the governor’s race poll came from a weighted sample of 4,512 respondents considered likely to vote in the November election, from a larger group of 6,989 registered voters throughout California. It has a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction.

Sept. 23, 2026 1:44 PM PT

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine Democrats on Wednesday assailed U.S. Sen. Susan Collins over a news report that the FBI investigated how much she knew about illegal campaign contributions that sent one of her donors to prison.

The ProPublica report, published Tuesday, states that the FBI in 2024 planned to launch an investigation into Collins’ dealings with Navatek, a Hawaii defense contractor and donor to her campaign. The investigation, which focused on an alleged pay-to-play scheme, failed to commence after President Trump took office after winning the election, according to ProPublica.

The report arrived six weeks before an election in which Collins is seeking a sixth term against Democrat Troy Jackson. Democrats have targeted the seat, in a state that Trump lost in 2024, as the party tries to win control of the Senate, making it one of the most competitive races on the November ballot.

Collins on Tuesday called the entire story “absolutely outrageous” and said it is frustrating and unfair to have such claims made against her so close to the election. Her campaign manager, Steve Abbott, also said Wednesday that the allegation that “we charge people to have meetings” is categorically false and Collins accepting campaign cash for contracts “did not happen.”

Jackson called the allegation “corruption of the highest order.” He was not present Wednesday when a group of Maine Democrats held a news conference near Collins’ Portland office, calling the allegations a betrayal of trust.

“I cannot stress enough here today the seriousness of these allegations. Maine people deserve clear and real answers from Susan Collins right now,” Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson said.

FBI says allegations were already investigated

The ProPublica report stated that the head of a Collins super PAC met with executives from defense contractor Navatek in 2019 and asked them for a $500,000 campaign donation. The company’s chief executive, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 donation using a shell company, the report stated. ProPublica reported that it reviewed an internal company email from Kao in which the CEO later told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in Navy contracts.

Kao and two other Navatek executives were later indicted on charges of funneling illegal donations to Collins. Kao sought to reduce his prison sentence by revealing to the FBI the full scope of illegal contributions to Collins, ProPublica reported.

Collins said Kao is “a liar” whose story is untrustworthy.

“He has been twice convicted in separate federal court cases. He’s been convicted of money laundering. He’s been convicted of bank fraud. He has been convicted of false submissions to the FEC. He’s being convicted of a lot of crimes,” she said.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement that the allegations “had already been investigated by the FBI years ago and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.”

The ProPublica article also states that Trump’s return to the White House left the Justice Department unable to perform the investigation.

Corruption investigations have decreased in Trump’s second term

The number of FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors specializing in corruption investigations plummeted in the first months of the Trump administration. The Justice Department, for instance, decimated its elite Public Integrity Section in early 2025 and the FBI disbanded a white-collar fraud and public corruption squad based out of its Washington field office.

The administration has also fired numerous law enforcement officials who participated in investigations into Trump, including over his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election he lost and his retention of classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Justice Department on Wednesday.

Collins said she first learned of the company through the University of Maine because of the research the Navy found to be valuable, which had to do with 3D printing for production.

She said the Justice Department has already reviewed the matter.

“I’m telling you this is completely false,” Collins said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune dismissed the idea that Collins would be implicated in a pay-to-play scheme, calling the allegations “a political hit job.”

Whittle and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. Mascaro reported from Washington. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republicans are growing increasingly grim about their chances in November, with aligned groups pumping money into reliably GOP states and candidates scrambling to distance themselves from unpopular White House policies.

From Texas to Ohio and Alaska to Iowa, campaigns are grappling with a fed-up electorate that is sour on the president and angry over soaring fuel prices driven by an unpopular war. While Republicans are flush with unprecedented cash that could move the needle in some races, overall the mood is glum heading into the election’s final stretch as campaigns try to counter palpable Democratic enthusiasm to maintain their narrow lead in the House and Senate this November.

“Everybody is tired. You see the poll numbers. Everybody is cranky about gas prices,” said Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican strategist from New Jersey. “The party in power is playing defense. This is a referendum on the incumbents.”

Trump is trying to protect Republicans with cash

After mounting pressure from endangered candidates in battleground states, groups affiliated with President Trump finally began unleashing their stockpile of campaign cash earlier this month, joining with Republican committees that have amassed a record fortune that dramatically eclipses their Democratic counterparts.

“Republicans have air superiority. House Democrats are scrambling to catch up with the very limited resources they have,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

But the spending underscores the extent to which Republicans are playing defense.

Three Trump-aligned groups — MAGA Inc., No Going Back PAC and Safety and Affordability PAC — have spent more than $163 million on advertising and air time since Sept. 1. Nearly 40% of that money — more than $63 million — has been spent in states and districts where Trump won by 10 percentage points or more in the 2024 election, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from AdImpact, which tracks media spending and ad buys.

That includes 12 House districts and three states with major Senate races.

In Texas, Republicans have spent nearly $107 million on ads and reservations since the beginning of the month trying to bolster scandal-plagued attorney general Ken Paxton in his Texas Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. The spending, which is for ads through Election Day, is nearly four times as much as Democrats in a state Trump won by nearly 14 points.

Further north in Ohio, Republican spending to defend Sen. Jon Husted has exceeded $152 million, compared with $90 million on behalf of Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown, according to AdImpact.

Terry Casey, an Ohio Republican strategist, said both Republicans and Democrats are “kind of sitting on pins and needles because of the national and economic circumstances.” The outcome, he said, would depend on whether Democrats can turn out voters.

Democrats are competing in Republican stronholds

States that Trump won by wide margins — like Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska — have become some of the most competitive battlegrounds in the midterms.

The White House is even investing time in states that haven’t been considered competitive for years. Vice President JD Vance recently traveled to Kansas to campaign for Sen. Roger Marshall, who is facing a challenge from Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton.

The founder of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, Hamilton received a rousing welcome from scores of people who crammed into a Topeka coffee shop to see him Tuesday.

“In all my 50, 60 years in politics, I’ve never seen a candidate that quite has the momentum going,” said Jim Ploger, an 82-year-old longtime Democratic activist from Topeka who believes Hamilton gives the party “the best chance we’ve ever had” to win a Senate seat.

Vance has also been to Iowa, Ohio, Maine and North Carolina to bolster Republican candidates, while Trump is also hitting the road. The week after the party’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas, he traveled to North Carolina to hold a rally with Michael Whatley, his former national party chairman. Republicans are increasingly concerned that he could fall short in his Senate race against Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper.

There are more concerns about Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Although Ossoff began the cycle as Republicans’ top target, Collins has endured weeks of negative headlines about a House ethics investigation and his son-in-law’s white nationalist views.

“I don’t think anyone’s expecting Collins to win,” said Tim Waters, chairman of the Peach County Republican Party. “Do I like that? No, I don’t like that. But it’s just the facts.”

In Texas, officials are hoping a huge influx of last-minute cash will help save Paxton. Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary to Paxton after Trump turned on him earlier this year, isn’t so confident.

“I think it’s going to be very rough, lots of headwinds,” he said. “Even in places like Texas, which are pretty red, we’ve got flawed candidates who I think are going to have a hard time.”

Republican National Committee spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said the party is focused on turnout and is well aware of the historic trend in which the party in control typically loses seats in the midterm.

“We have money to spend and we’re not taking anything for granted this cycle,” she said. “This is very high stakes, and it’s unfortunate that other people feel glum and down. But we’re doing everything we can to protect and expand our majorities so we’re full steam ahead.”

Party officials are more bullish on races in Maine and New Hampshire, where Democrat Kamala Harris won in 2024, and remain optimistic about Michigan, where Trump won by less than two points and where former Rep. Mike Rogers faces progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

Some Republicans call for an end to the war

Some Republicans are taking steps to distance themselves from Trump even as he urges his supporters to vote like he is on the ballot.

Rep. Tom Tiffany and Rep. John James, the party’s nominees for governor in Wisconsin and Michigan, both joined calls for an end to the war in Iran.

“War is terrible, and no one likes war,” James told reporters.

Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, released an ad in which he also called for ending the war. Standing in a grocery store, he bemoaned high prices and said the government should suspend gas taxes and stop diesel exports.

“The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly,” Rogers said. ”Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”

In Iowa, where Republicans are trying to hold onto the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is locked in a tight race against Democrat Josh Turek, voiced the same frustrations.

“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran” she wrote on social media. “These actions to lower costs are needed ASAP, and the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end.”

Hinson, however, did not join two fellow Iowa Republicans in battleground districts — U.S. Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks — in voting with Democrats on a resolution intended to halt Trump’s ability to continue military action without lawmakers’ approval.

Perhaps the most dramatic break with Trump came from Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican defending her seat in a competitive, majority Hispanic South Florida district. Last week, she released an ad filmed in front of the White House as she criticized the president for going “too far” on immigration policy.

Others have continued to scrub references to Trump from their websites. The latest was Republican Byron Donalds, who is running for governor in Florida, who recently revamped his site so that it no longer includes a number of prominent references to Trump and his endorsement, the Miami Herald first reported.

‘It’s a very competitive environment out there’

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump “is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party” and that “the choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction.”

Some Republicans are acknowledging that voters aren’t satisfied.

“We shouldn’t say, ‘Hey everything’s perfect,’ because it’s not,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio. “But look what we’ve done in 18 months, and we need two more years to finish the job.”

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who has traveled across the country campaigning for his colleagues, said Democrats appeared to have enthusiasm on their side in the midterms, and he said his party needed to level with the country.

“You can’t look the American people in the eye and say, ‘Don’t believe your lying checkbooks,’” he said. “The cost of living increase is real.”

He also said that voters are “confused about the war” and “they don’t understand how we’re going to get out.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was measured in his assessment on Tuesday.

“Well, I’m hopeful, obviously, but also realistic,” he said. “It’s a very competitive environment out there.”

Colvin and Kessler write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. AP writers Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pa., Bill Barrow in Atlanta, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., and Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Steven Sloan and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s wife used to spend her evenings cooking a big meal for her husband and waiting for him to return home from his job as a home builder. Now, his son told members of Congress, Salgado Araujo’s wife spends those evenings visiting her husband’s grave at the cemetery.

In a packed Senate hearing room, a rapt audience of dozens listened to the sons of Salgado Araujo, the mothers of Ruben Ray Martinez and Renee Good, as well as the woman who video-recorded the death of Alex Pretti and the lawyer for the family of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.

Salgado Araujo, Martinez, Good, Pretti and Durán Guerrero were shot and killed by federal agents since the start of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Some were U.S. citizens; others were immigrants.

“We still have so many questions,” said Lorenzo Salgado, one of Salgado Araujo’s sons. “What are the names of the ICE agents who killed our dad? Why do they get to be protected behind anonymity, while my brother and I stand before cameras, showing our faces, proudly saying our first and last name?”

The forum on Tuesday was led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). It was the fifth such event that the two lawmakers have hosted since December, forums aimed at shedding light on what the lawmakers call the “lawless and abusive tactics” by immigration agents.

The forums are not official hearings because they have been organized without Republican support. Nothing has changed since the first forum, the lawmakers said, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of failing to fully investigate the deaths and prevent further ones.

Blumenthal noted that two days prior in Austin, Texas, another man was shot by ICE agents. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan who was making a DoorDash delivery when ICE agents sideswiped his car, was seriously injured and placed in ICE custody with a bullet still lodged in his back.

Garcia said that, as of this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have verified more than 1,000 instances of abuse by immigration agents under this administration.

“Every community in America should be asking itself: How long will it be until ICE is in our city?” Blumenthal said. “How long will it be until we have a grieving family, until another loss of life?”

Rachel Reyes sobbed as she recounted the moments leading up to the death of her son, Martinez. She said his death came nearly a year before Good’s and Pretti’s “yet far fewer people know his name” because the family was denied access to investigative reports and video evidence showing he had been shot by an immigration officer.

“It’s deeply distressing to know that Ruben’s final moments were consumed by confusion, fear, pain and disregard for his life,” she said. “Though the circumstances surrounding his death and these other victims are distinctly different, the pattern is the same: lives cut short by the same agency, agents without body cameras, no warnings, no attempt to de-escalate, excessive force followed by deflection, and a lack of accountability after the fact.”

Donna Ganger, the mother of Good, said her daughter should still be alive. Ganger described herself as a Republican and a Christian. While Jesus teaches forgiveness, she said, she deserves accountability too.

“I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States,” she said.

“This is madness,” Ganger added.

Stella Carlson said that when she saw Pretti, she decided to become “his backup.” Instead, she watched him die and then watched the agents who shot him flee. Two masked agents returned “and began to manipulate his dead body, ripping open his clothes as if to provide aid, but instead moving him around like a rag doll.”

Later, Carlson said, she witnessed top government officials lie about Pretti, calling him a domestic terrorist who wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”

“I am just a regular person, but I care deeply about my community, my state and my country,” she said. “I believe there is power in ordinary people speaking the truth.”

Good and Pretti were killed within weeks of each other in January during a period of increased immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.

Sean Murphy, who represents the family of Durán Guerrero, said he and Durán Guerrero’s widow recently attended a meeting with representatives of the Maine attorney general’s office to retrieve some of his property that isn’t considered evidence.

One item that wasn’t returned was his 3-year-old daughter’s car seat, which had been pierced by a bullet.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) asked each speaker what they think justice would look like.

Reyes said an independent investigation. Brent Ganger said that true justice isn’t possible because his sister can’t come back, but that accountability is possible if federal agents are held to the same accountability standards as local law enforcement.

To Carlson, justice would mean getting ICE off the streets and letting detainees return home. Murphy called for prosecution for the agent who killed Durán Guerrero.

For Lorenzo Salgado, justice would take another form: getting to see his mom heal and finally getting a full eight hours of sleep.

The forum came as congressional Democrats are seeking to edge out Republicans in the Nov. 3 election, and at times the Democrats seized it as a way to criticize the other party.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) asked members of the audience to stand up if they’ve been affected detrimentally by ICE. Ronaldo Salgado looked around the room as about a dozen people stood.

“The reality is that there are so many more stories. There are so many more names that you will never hear,” she said. Later, referring to Republicans, she added, “It’s time to vote them out.”

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) noted that Reyes voted for Trump and asked her to say anything she would want him to hear now. Reyes said that, like many Latinos, she deeply regrets her vote.

“I haven’t heard anything from any Republican whatsoever,” she said. “I’m very disappointed, and he lied.”

Good’s brother Brent Ganger said his family has waited long enough for accountability for the damage caused by ICE. As a moderate, he said, he hoped that all members of Congress — even those not in attendance — were listening.

“We will not be quiet, and we will not go away,” he said.

Sept. 22, 2026 10:20 AM PT

DETROIT — Michigan U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said Tuesday that he wants Kamala Harris’ midterm campaign stop in Detroit to unify Democrats in the key swing state where their party’s factions were on full display in a hotly contested primary earlier this year — and in Harris’ 2024 presidential defeat.

“We’re building an electoral coalition here,” El-Sayed said, speaking about the economy hours ahead of a planned appearance with the former vice president.

An unapologetic progressive, El-Sayed downplayed his differences with Harris over the Biden administration’s support for U.S. military aid to Israel. El-Sayed has called Israel’s military actions in Gaza a genocide against Palestinians. Israel rejects that position, but it aligns El-Sayed with many voters in Michigan’s large Arab American community and with progressives who withheld their votes from Harris in 2024, when the state tipped narrowly to Republican Donald Trump.

That election “ended where it did because we could not find the places of agreement to be able to bring people together or move in the direction that we need to move,” El-Sayed said, emphasizing that he and Harris both want to help voters who are struggling economically.

Harris, the first Black vice president, remains popular among Black voters who anchor the Democratic base in Detroit and who leaned in favor of El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, in the August primary. El-Sayed said Harris, who will attend a roundtable on Black maternal health with him and separately join an event hosted by the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, is a critical advocate in helping him close ranks as he tries to defeat Republican Mike Rogers.

“Her presence here speaking to communities that were really empowered by her voice throughout her political career, I think will help us to continue to bring our coalition together,” El-Sayed said.

El-Sayed vs. Rogers is a critical contest for Senate control

The Democrat’s matchup against Rogers, a former congressman, will help determine control of the Senate for the final two years of Trump’s presidency. If Democrats hold the seat, which was opened by Sen. Gary Peters’ announced retirement, they’d still need to win at least four more currently held by Republicans to flip the chamber. A Rogers victory would narrow Democrats’ path to a majority.

Rogers’ campaign framed Harris’ visit as a sign of weakness for both Democrats.

“Abdul is so desperate that he’s parachuting Kamala Harris into Michigan to save his flailing campaign,” said Alyssa Brouillet, Rogers’ spokesperson.

Rogers has been campaigning in Detroit, a predominantly Black city where his campaign is optimistic he can pick up support from voters hesitant to support El-Sayed.

Black voters could prove especially critical as El-Sayed also faces pressure among white Jewish voters who typically back Democrats.

“Jews in Michigan are currently scared” by their Senate options, said Barry Goodman, a Democratic National Committee member and major Michigan fundraiser in the party. Goodman backed Stevens in the primary.

The race is also seen as another referendum on progressives’ viability in battleground races. El-Sayed is running to the left of the Democratic Party establishment, including advocating for universal healthcare.

Goodman described himself and many other Jewish Democrats as “holding our noses and voting for Abdul” because they “believe in the Democratic ticket and they believe that one man can help win the Senate but can’t destroy the Senate.” Other moderates, Goodman said, are still deciding whether to back Rogers or sit out the Senate race.

El-Sayed has attempted to soften his approach on Israel and Gaza. He has apologized for some past controversial comments and said he is committed to Jewish safety.

Michigan will also be a key state for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary

For Harris, the trip comes as questions swirl about her intentions to run for president again. Under the Democratic National Committee’s recently revised nominating calendar, Michigan now will hold the fifth presidential preference primary in 2028.

It’s unclear whether Harris will use the trip to restate or recalibrate her past statements on Israel. But campaigning with El-Sayed is notable, nonetheless, given her past tensions with Democrats’ left flank.

“She probably figures she won’t lose her establishment folks, so maybe she makes gains to her left,” Goodman said.

Harris has said she’s in no rush to announce whether she will run in 2028. But ahead of Election Day this November, she also has campaign stops planned in Nevada and Georgia, two other important states on the political map.

Ganun and Barrow write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.

WASHINGTON — As Republicans contend with President Trump’s deep unpopularity, Democrats are attempting to seize the opening to take the U.S. Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Polls have shown Trump with an approval rating consistently below 40%, with no end in sight to the Iran war and voters expressing deep economic anxiety.

Republicans currently hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate, and 35 seats are on the November ballot.

Months of polling indicate that eight Senate seats — six of which are currently held by Republicans — are now up for grabs. Democrats will need to win at least four of them, while holding on to two contested seats currently held by their party, in order to flip the chamber.

Five key races are unexpectedly close, with some polls giving Democrats a better edge than expected, but the outcomes are still in doubt, as swaths of voters remain undecided. The Cook Political Report, a leading forecaster, rates each one a toss-up. Here’s how they are shaping up:

Michigan: El-Sayed vs. Rogers

In perhaps the highest-profile contest, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed is facing Republican Mike Rogers for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

El-Sayed, aligned with the party’s progressive wing, narrowly defeated moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in a heated Democratic primary. He is looking to rally her supporters as well as disaffected Republican voters.

Rogers is courting independents and a cohort of Jewish Democrats who view El-Sayed’s desire to reduce funding to Israel’s military as a dangerous proposition.

According to a CNN/SSRS poll of likely voters released Sept. 9, El-Sayed led Rogers 47% to 44%, a result within the margin of error. Notably, 26% of respondents said they could still be persuaded to vote for either candidate, leaving the race wide open.

The barbs in this race have become deeply personal, with anti-Muslim rhetoric taking center stage.

In a series of ads and artificial-intelligence-generated images, Republican groups — including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Front Line Action — have cast El-Sayed as a supporter of terrorism. During speeches and interviews, members of the Trump administration, including the president, have repeatedly referred to the candidate by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamad El-Sayed.

Rogers has continually drawn attention to a campaign event hosted by El-Sayed that included Hasan Piker — a Los Angeles-based online political commentator who recently drew widespread attention for a 2019 comment that “America deserved 9/11” while discussing blowback against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

El-Sayed has railed against Rogers for refusing to debate and for his endorsement by Trump.

This week, El-Sayed stood alone on the Fox 2 Detroit debate stage after Rogers declined an invitation, dubbing his opponent “Mike Dodgers” on several occasions.

Rogers later accused the moderator of bias toward the Democratic candidate. The candidates have agreed to debate on Oct. 8 and 21.

Texas: Talarico vs. Paxton

State Rep. James Talarico is seeking to become the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate since 1993.

His Republican opponent, state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, received Trump’s endorsement and defeated four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the primary.

While gaining a seat in Texas has long been a far-off dream for Democrats, Paxton’s controversies have dogged him during the race. A Mason-Dixon Research poll showed the Democrat leading Paxton 46 to 43, in a state that Trump won by nearly 14 points in 2024. Other polls, including one from Insider Advantage, had the margin at a single point.

Paxton is seen as a prominent fixture in the MAGA movement, using his position as attorney general to contest Obama-era clean energy and healthcare acts and launching lawsuits against the Biden administration for its immigration policy.

Talarico has made Paxton’s association with the president a key piece of his campaign, slamming Paxton as “the most corrupt politician in Texas” and spotlighting his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023 over allegations of bribery, breach of public trust and misuse of his office to aid a donor. (Paxton survived the impeachment vote and denied wrongdoing.)

Several attack ads on Talarico, launched by Republican political action committees, have focused on his past support for transgender youth and accused him of exaggerating his faith to garner the Christian vote.

Maine: Jackson vs. Collins

Six-term incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins is hoping to retain her seat as Democratic challenger Troy Jackson attempts to replicate the grassroots success of former nominee Graham Platner’s campaign.

Jackson, a former state lawmaker, was chosen by Maine Democratic Party delegates to run in place of Platner, who dropped out in July after sexual misconduct allegations against him. A former lumberjack, Jackson shares Platner’s working-class background and is running on Medicare for All and increased taxes for billionaires.

Collins has repeatedly demonstrated her staying power and won reelection in 2020 even as the state went blue in the presidential race. Her willingness to stand up to Trump could become a deciding factor this time around; Collins is working to highlight her votes to block Trump’s $1.8-billion Department of Justice anti-weaponization fund and against the Iran war.

She has mostly stuck to promoting her decades-long record on the campaign trail, which has recently focused on increased healthcare access for seniors, workforce development and Social Security benefit increases.

She has faced criticism from Jackson and others over her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who faced sexual assault allegations, which he denied, and later voted to strike down Roe vs. Wade, which had granted a constitutional right to choose an abortion.

Jackson has had difficulty generating the same enthusiasm among voters as his predecessor, Platner, who consistently held town halls across the state and had a viral social media presence. Over Labor Day weekend, Jackson hosted at least a dozen events up and down Maine to make his first public introductions to voters deep into the cycle.

A recent poll from YouGov shows Jackson narrowly leading the incumbent, 46% to 44%, with a crucial 9% undecided.

Alaska: Peltola vs. Sullivan

Former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan are leading a field of candidates — including another Dan Sullivan — ahead of a ranked-choice general vote.

Alaska hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1995, giving Peltola an uphill battle in a state that Trump won by 13 percentage points in 2024.

A late July poll by Change Research showed Peltola in the lead by six percentage points. A more recent poll from Alaska Survey Research had the race within 1 point in favor of Peltola.

Much of the media attention surrounding this race, however, has focused on the third-place candidate, who only received 2.5% of the primary vote — and also happens to be named Dan Sullivan.

Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher who made the top four in ranked-choice voting, has been accused by Republicans of being a Democratic plant that could potentially confuse voters. Sullivan has denied these accusations and the Alaska Supreme Court decided to keep him on the ballot.

If none of the candidates receive over 50% of first-place ranked-choice votes — which is likely in this race — the last-place candidate will be eliminated, with their vote distributed to their next choice until one candidate receives a majority of the total.

Iowa: Turek vs. Hinson

In a race that has seen the candidates trade political jabs in separate speeches on the same state fairgrounds, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek are nearly neck and neck.

According to a Suffolk University poll, Hinson is leading Turek 45% to 40%, in a state where Trump won by 13 points in 2024. A poll conducted by YouGov, however, has Turek in front by a single point.

GOP incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst elected not to run this year, leaving the seat open for a potential flip.

Turek, a two-time Paralympics gold medalist, has attacked Hinson for past campaign ads in which she said: “I don’t trade stocks, and no one else in Congress should either.” Tucker pointed to the fact that Hinson purchased and sold stocks in Amazon, Tesla and insurance firms after she was elected, according to financial disclosure forms.

In return, Hinson criticized Turek for missing over half of his state Legislature floor votes, and labeled him an “anti-ag” activist.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring standards regarding an applicant’s past experience with prostitution and bestiality, insisting that the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to be considered for employment without fear of automatic disqualification.

The subject arose during a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who participated in investigations of President Trump, a spate of media leak probes, and whether employees would be dispatched to the polls on Election Day in light of the bureau’s ongoing election-related investigations and Trump’s repeated and false claims about the existence of pervasive voter fraud.

The hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel’s appearances on Capitol Hill, with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified, criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump’s enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy during which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.

“He’s an incompetent lackey. He’s like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), his voice rising in anger.

Given a chance to respond, Patel replied: “I don’t have much to say. This guy called me a thug. It’s kind of ironic. He’s running for president of the United States. He just got his 20-second ad campaign.”

Booker ran for president in 2020. He has not announced a candidacy for 2028.

Patel was pressed on the FBI’s hiring standards

The FBI quietly issued guidance this spring lifting a categorical hiring ban on applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to past experience in bestiality as a child.

Under questioning, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to prevent victims who’d been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically disqualified.

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if were a victim of these awful, heinous acts,” Patel said. “We are not going to target victims and prevent them from serving in their capacity to serve this country.”

The questioning spanned partisan lines, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) grilling Patel about the rationale for a change that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.

“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, ‘What planet did you parachute in from?’” Kennedy asked. Patel conceded that that was his initial reaction.

The Associated Press reported last month that the FBI still intends to disqualify some applicants who are revealed to have previously engaged in prostitution, including if they’ve done so within the last 10 years.

Patel faced questions about the FBI’s role on Election Day

The hearing unfolded two months before the midterm elections in November and at a time when the FBI has opened investigations related to the 2020 contest, including by seizing voter data in Fulton County, Ga.

Trump regularly makes false claims that elections are rigged and riddled with fraud, especially in the months before an election. But there is no widespread fraud in American elections. Local election officials have detailed processes for auditing the accuracy of the vote after ballots are tallied. Even as he disputed his loss in 2020, audits, reviews and recounts in the battleground states where he challenged the outcome all affirmed President Biden’s win.

Democrats repeatedly pressed Patel on whether the FBI would be dispatching agents to polls. The director said the FBI has an election coordinator in each of its 56 field offices to respond to issues at polling places, including alleged election interference. He did not rule out the idea that agents could be dispatched to the polls if problems arose.

“Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the America people when they go to the polls in November?” asked Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) in one of the more combative exchanges.

“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies,” Patel said, later calling Welch a “total fraud.”

FBI firings were also a featured topic of the hearing

Patel repeatedly touted what he asserted was his record-breaking success at the FBI, proclaiming the “most prolific reduction in crime in U.S. history” even though murder rates in American cities had begun dropping even before Trump took office last year.

The Republican-led panel tried through its questioning to keep the focus on Patel’s crime-fighting efforts from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. But Democrats seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations of Trump, the bureau’s aggressive efforts to investigate media leaks by serving subpoenas at reporters’ home and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed Patel on the firing of national security agents with expertise in Iran shortly before the U.S. launched attacks on the country last February. He noted that the agents had participated in an FBI investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Do you think firing the president’s political opponents is more important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise monitoring intelligence threats from Iran?” Blumenthal asked.

“I think what’s most important is to not have a weaponized FBI, and I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there that is doing that,” Patel responded. He did not say why their participation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation represented “weaponized” law enforcement.

Patel later suggested that the firings had been overblown, saying many agents had retired on their own. And he defended his personal travels by pointing to numbers that he said showed that two recent predecessors, Chris Wray and James Comey, had traveled more.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

EDINBURG, Texas — Quinten Martinez, pumping gas under a hot south Texas sun, remembers a time when fueling up didn’t require difficult decisions.

“Is it going to be groceries this week?” said the 28-year-old Amazon delivery driver as he watched the numbers tick higher. “Is it gonna be getting gas in our tank to go to work?”

He shook his head when asked about President Trump’s assertion last week that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for the war with Iran.

“I don’t feel like it’s a good trade-off,” Martinez said. “I don’t feel like this is good for anyone.”

Voters across the country, and across the political spectrum, tend to agree.

Interviews with voters in several states, along with a fresh round of national polling, reveal an overwhelming sense of frustration that skyrocketing gas prices — a direct result of Trump’s war — are creating serious and sustained financial hardships for America’s working class.

The acute concerns are adding to a bad political environment that may be worsening for Trump and his Republican Party as early voting gets underway in the November midterm elections.

Historically, the party holding the White House has suffered major losses in midterms. About seven weeks before election day, Republican candidates at all levels are struggling with the additional burden of Trump’s weak approval ratings, an unpopular war and an affordability crisis that Trump and his congressional allies had promised to fix.

But when Trump campaigned in North Carolina on Wednesday, he played down the effect of surging gas prices.

“You have a little higher. It’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done,” Trump said of the war, which he describes as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Remember that. It’s a little more. Frankly, even if it was a lot more.”

‘Gas prices matter’

Despite what Trump says, there are few things that may matter more this election year than the price of a gallon of gasoline, according to political operatives in both parties.

Gas prices are moving sharply in the wrong direction at a time of year when drivers typically get some relief. The national average for a gallon of gas reached $4.48 on Friday, according to the American Automobile Assn., up roughly 17 cents over the last week, 40 cents in a month and $1.27 from a year ago.

“Gas prices matter because they’re one of the few economic indicators voters experience and see in real time,” said veteran Republican strategist Chris Wilson. “The price is literally staring them in the face several times a week. So I wouldn’t minimize the frustration we’re seeing, particularly among working- and middle-class voters.”

Interviews with voters last week found bipartisan frustration and disappointment.

Democrats and unaffiliated voters were especially motivated to punish Republicans at the ballot box for their economic hardship, while some of Trump’s working-class supporters pledged to support Republicans this fall, even if they weren’t happy with the president’s leadership on the economy.

Some Republicans say they’re disappointed

Dan Lloyd, who voted for Trump, lamented the president’s leadership as the 63-year-old carpenter paid $4.39 a gallon to fill up his pickup truck in Mesa, Ariz.

“He hurt himself stepping into this,” Lloyd said of Trump. “Where’s all this oil from Venezuela? I thought we were flush with gas and everything, but no. The American people eat it every time, whether it’s interest rates, food, gasoline.”

Still, he expects to vote Republican in the midterms.

“I think the Democratic Party has lost its way,” Lloyd said. “I just feel like the whole system’s on the verge of collapse.”

In sweltering Edinburg, Texas, 52-year-old Kristin Jimenez shrugged off the rising price of gas after filling up her Mercedes.

“We’ve paid the same price under Republican presidents, we’ve paid this price under Democrat presidents,” said Jimenez, a mother who runs a small business. She plans to vote for a Republican because they’re the “lesser of two evils.”

She said gas prices aren’t part of her calculation.

“We don’t mind paying $8 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but we have a problem paying four bucks at the pump?” she said. “Make it make sense.”

More than 1,500 miles to the north in central Michigan, 35-year-old Garth Johnson is trying to make ends meet running a deep-cleaning business with several gas-powered vehicles and one machine fueled by diesel, which was $6.79 a gallon as he filled up his SUV.

Johnson voted for Trump, but doesn’t know what he’s going to do in November. He said he doesn’t feel qualified to second-guess the president’s evaluation of the war, but he’s feeling financial pressure in his own life.

“I like a lot of the things he’s done,” Johnson said, but added, “I’m a little guy and I’ve got to live my life.”

Other voters are less forgiving

Midterm voting was already underway Friday in Virginia, where Alan Johnson said Trump seems to have “no empathy” for Americans who are struggling financially.

“With the gas prices being what they are and continuing to grow, we’ve got to do something. Hopefully the Democrats can get into office and turn the ship around,” said the 60-year-old engineer, who cast ballots in the morning for Democrats for the U.S. Senate and House.

In Raleigh, N.C., teacher Brittney Bivins sees surging gas prices as evidence that Trump and his Republican Party aren’t dealing with the issues that matter most to people like her.

“He really doesn’t care about everyday people,” the 45-year-old said. “He can afford the gas, but most of us can’t. So it feels like he’s not even connected to his own people.”

Bivins, who described herself as an independent, said she’s eager to support Democrats this fall — especially the party’s emerging democratic socialist wing.

At a gas station in Lansing, Mich., Rina Risper spent $50 on eight gallons of premium gas.

“When I rolled up I was in shock, actually, and said, well, maybe I should drink water instead of having that $4.99 bottle of whatever it was I was gonna get,” Risper said. She thinks Trump’s tariffs will make affordability even worse.

“We’re not in Miami. We’re in Lansing, Michigan,” she said. “It’s really going to impact our people.”

Polls reflect economic distress

Nationwide, more than three times as many voters say they are falling behind financially as getting ahead, according to a Fox News survey released Wednesday. By a 15-point margin, Democrats are considered the party that would better handle inflation and prices at a time when the cost of living and the economy are voters’ top concerns.

The Fox poll found that 61% of voters say gas prices are a major problem for their household, compared with 48% two years ago, while 52% say the same for healthcare costs, compared with 44% in 2024. Majorities also view housing costs and grocery prices as major problems, although neither has increased.

Overall, nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say the administration has made the economy worse, compared with 52% in September 2025, including one-quarter of Republicans. Only 46% of Republicans say the administration has improved the economy, while about one-quarter don’t see an impact.

Back in rural south Texas, an area where Trump’s GOP made gains in recent elections, Martinez, the Amazon delivery driver, could not contain his frustration.

Trump “likes to tout that we are the best economy in the world,” said Martinez, but in rural towns, “you don’t see any of the winning, you don’t see any of the ups that he’s talking about.”

“You just see struggles for day-to-day life,” he said.

Peoples, Bedayn and Cooper write for the Associated Press. Peoples reported from New York and Cooper from Mesa. AP writers Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Sarah Rankin in Richmond and Nicholas Riccardi in Mason, Mich., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — As President Trump tells supporters to vote in November as if he were on the ballot, California Republicans in tight congressional races are sending a different message to voters.

The four California Republicans running in the state’s most competitive U.S. House races, plus a fifth opposing a fellow Republican in a close contest, are appearing to keep some distance from Trump as they campaign ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

They all skipped the president’s midterm convention in Dallas this month. Two candidates in tough races removed references to Trump on their campaign websites. And most are favoring a heavy focus on local and state issues in their campaigns — a contrast to Trump’s approach, driven home in Dallas, of casting the election as a loyalty exercise.

President Trump watches as balloons fall at the Republican convention.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

“You’ve got to do me the biggest favor you’ve ever done me. You’ve got to do this for me: You have to pretend I am on the ticket,” Trump told a crowd at the GOP midterm convention. “Pretend I am on the ticket because this is going to turn out to be one of the most important elections.”

The dynamic within the GOP reflects several competing factors: the need to attract new voters in districts made more purple by California’s redistricting, the hope that Trump can rally the base while candidates focus on swing voters, and the fear among Republicans that the president’s flagging approval ratings could cost them crucial seats in the midterms.

“There is a bit of jujitsu to it,” said Rob Stutzman, a longtime California Republican consultant. “These candidates are hoping that Trump motivates these voters to vote … [while they] focus on gaining votes, particularly from independents who don’t like the president right now.”

The state’s redistricting under Proposition 50, which redrew the congressional map to be more favorable to Democrats, also handed Republican candidates the necessity of persuading more unaffiliated voters and moderate Democrats — likely a major factor in their stances toward the White House, said Pete Peterson, dean of the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

“To the degree that Republican candidates are distancing themselves, they’re understanding that they’re actually appealing to newer electorates,” Peterson said. “[The districts] have been made more moderate, more purple, and candidates may be responding accordingly as a way of trying to attract those voters.”

Facing headwinds

The party in power typically faces an uphill battle in midterm elections, and vulnerable candidates often distance themselves from the sitting president. As Republicans fight to keep control of the House and Senate in November, however, they are dealing with particularly serious challenges stemming from Trump’s low favorability rating and public frustration with the economy, the war in Iran and the escalating trade war with Canada.

Trump largely has dismissed concerns about the economy and the war, even as polling shows both are weighing heavily on voters. He also has exacerbated challenges for his party amid the growing public backlash to data centers and artificial intelligence, doubling down on his support for AI advancement in recent days even as GOP candidates in tight races look to respond to constituents’ concerns.

He also drew criticism from some within his party after promising to give a $5,000 payment to every adult citizen if Republicans win the House and Senate in November, a legally murky idea.

Still, Trump has urged Republican lawmakers in tough reelection campaigns to run on his record and earlier this month vowed to spend the last month before the election stumping for candidates in 35 battleground races, including in Alaska and Texas. He has not yet mentioned plans for California.

“All you have to do is talk about it, and you’re going to win and you’re going to win big,” Trump said of his record.

Candidates nationwide seem unconvinced. A Washington Post analysis found that Republican politicians have stopped mentioning Trump on social media, doing so about half as often as they did in January. Many in competitive races skipped his convention, and in recent weeks some have broken with him on data centers and the payout pitch.

In California, the headwinds for the GOP were captured in a survey released last week: A greater share of independents said they would vote for the Democratic candidate over the Republican in their House districts, the Public Policy Institute of California found, and a majority of likely voters polled Sept. 4-10 said they would choose the Democratic candidate if the election were held now.

Robert Rivera, left, of San José and Corky Galey of Modesto listen to gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton during a town hall in Modesto on Aug. 26.

(Sara Nevis/For The Times)

Last week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton’s campaign blasted a fundraising text to voters that began: “We get it. Maybe you don’t like Trump. Maybe you can’t stand MAGA.”

Democrats have seized on the dynamic.

“California Republicans know their loyalty to a toxic MAGA brand is a losing strategy,” said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Unlucky for them, no desperate rebrand can save them from their clear record of broken promises — from raising costs, to ripping away health care, to supporting another forever war everyone hates.”

Leaning on the local

Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) stripped her campaign website of the “America first” branding and references to Trump that defined it before the primary.

(Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via Associated Press)

In Orange County, Rep. Young Kim — in a close contest with fellow Republican Ken Calvert — has stripped her campaign website of the “America first” branding and references to Trump that defined it before the primary. And in Northern California, Rep. James Gallagher has scrubbed Trump’s endorsement from his campaign website, which months ago prominently featured his close ties to the president.

Other candidates in tight races — Rep. David Valadao, running for reelection in the Central Valley; Kevin Lincoln, challenging Democratic Rep. Adam Gray; and Jim Desmond, running to fill the seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa — have leaned on campaign optics centered around their regions rather than on sharply partisan politics.

None of the three attended Trump’s convention. Valadao rarely mentions Trump on social media and is the last House Republican still running who voted for Trump’s second impeachment. Desmond does not mention his support from Trump on his endorsements web page; Lincoln does.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party this year after his district was redrawn and after he clashed with Trump over tariffs, also is making an appeal to middle-of-the-road voters, promoting legislation around AI safeguards while taking aim at Sacramento policies. Kiley still caucuses with congressional Republicans but says he won’t if reelected.

Representatives for Gallagher, Lincoln, Desmond and Valadao did not respond to requests for comment.

Chris Pack, a spokesperson for Kim, said she was “proud of her work with President Trump to deliver results for Southern California.” But he framed her race as a choice between Kim and her opponent, saying the campaign’s messaging is focused on Calvert’s record. Pack didn’t answer a question about the removal of Trump’s name from Kim’s website.

Moves like Kim’s and Gallagher’s are angled at conveying to moderate voters that “they’re not going to be beholden to the party line, they’re simply going to run on common sense,” and may give centrist Democratic voters “permission” to consider the candidates, said one GOP operative who works in the state, granted anonymity in order to speak candidly.

In competitive districts like the ones California Republicans are trying to hold on to, Trump’s ask for voters to pretend he’s on the ballot is “probably not as helpful,” the operative said.

Instead, strategists see the local focus as the most effective strategy for California Republicans, along with a focus on statewide issues that allow them to counter policies of Gov. Gavin Newsom that they perceive as unpopular with voters.

“California Republicans know what’s best for their districts,” the operative said. “They all have their own independent records and are pretty well-known by their communities.”

Republicans are making the case that California’s long-term affordability issues, which far predate the current national economic landscape, have been exacerbated and mishandled by Democrats. The party also is leaning on an argument that Democrats are overly focused on Trump and have few substantive policy solutions.

Texas attendees hold up flags and cowboys hats at the Republican convention.

(Smiley N. Pool / Dallas Morning News via Getty Images)

Mike Madrid, a veteran California Republican political consultant, argued that a last-minute rebrand is unlikely to stick for candidates whose party has built a political identity around loyalty to the president and his policies. He said Republicans’ retreat is a sign of how Trump’s popularity is dwindling.

“I wouldn’t call that subtle in politics,” he said. “When you’re distancing yourself from the president of your own party, a man that everybody’s been championing as a political and cultural hero in those parts, I don’t think that’s subtle at all.”

When asked to make his case to midterm voters in an interview last week, Vice President JD Vance argued that Americans should give his party more time to deliver.

“Give us another chance,” Vance said on the All-In Podcast. “Give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we have been doing for the past two years.”

As President Trump tries to convince voters that Democrats have let crime run amok, he’s digging into the country’s political past to cite one of the most controversial campaign advertisements that relied heavily on racist tropes.

During a campaign stop Wednesday in Gastonia, N.C., to stump for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump resurrected a 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign ad featuring Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault after his release through a Massachusetts prison furlough program.

A grainy black-and-white prison photo of Horton was used in the ad targeting then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was ahead of Bush in the polls. On Wednesday, Trump evoked the Horton ad in an effort to convince voters Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley’s opponent in the Senate race, is soft on crime.

“Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy,” Trump said, before comparing Dukakis’s release of Horton to the pretrial release of a Black man who faces a murder charge for last year’s killing of a white Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, N.C.

But Cooper was not the governor when the man was released or when he was later charged with killing the refugee.

“Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing,” the president told the crowd in Gastonia.

It’s the second time Trump has invoked Willie Horton while campaigning for his party. Last month during a speech in Las Vegas, Trump called the Charlotte killing a “Willie Horton — modern day” tragedy.

“After the Willie Horton ad dropped, Bush established a lead in the polls and never looked back,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University outside Atlanta. “They showed the picture, and you ascribed race onto it. It wasn’t sufficiently condemned as racism.”

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which organized the Gastonia campaign rally, defended Trump’s reference to Horton.

“Roy Cooper emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters onto North Carolina streets,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The results had deadly consequences, and every Democrat who supports abolishing or defunding the police, paroling criminals, and implementing lax bail policies will have to answer for their dangerous records in November.”

Trump paints North Carolina as a ‘dangerous state’

Wednesday’s rally cited the Aug. 22, 2025, killing of white 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte.

Decarlos Brown Jr., who is Black, faces murder and other charges in Zarutska’s stabbing, which was captured on video. Court records showed that at the time of the attack, Brown had 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg County, including serving five years for robbery with a dangerous weapon. Doctors had diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

Republicans and other influential voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement claimed the attack showed how Democratic elected leaders in large cities across the U.S. failed to protect residents, while some conservative commentators suggested Democrats were ignoring an unfounded “black-on-white” crime problem.

“He should have been locked up for many, many years,” Trump said Wednesday of Brown.

“Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous,” Trump added while blaming Cooper. “It was apple pie, right? Now, it’s one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole nation.”

According to 2024 FBI crime data, North Carolina ranked 19th for statewide violent-crime rates in a 50-state comparison.

During the Gastonia rally, a mosaic of mug shots was displayed on a large screen for the crowd. Trump claimed Cooper had cut a deal with “radical activists” to release “some of the worst criminals in the nation into North Carolina.”

“He released these people. This is just a small group of them,” the president said, pointing to the mug shots that overwhelmingly featured Black people.

Although it is unclear under what circumstances the people in the mug shots were released, state corrections officials have said Brown was not released early from prison or under Cooper’s COVID-era prisoner-release settlement that Trump referenced.

Before fatally stabbing Zarutska, according to court records, Brown had been on a pretrial release over a misdemeanor offense that was ordered by a magistrate after Cooper left office.

‘Tapping into anger’

Republicans are under pressure to win over swayable voters as the November midterms approach with Democrats pushing to gain control of the House, the Senate, or both. Some political strategists say part of the ploy of adding Horton to the North Carolina Senate campaign is to rile up Trump’s base.

“He’s tapping into the anger to remind Republican voters of what he thinks their first principles are in hopes that will be successful for Republican candidates,” Gillespie said.

“He’s doing this to try and divert attention away from criticism of how he’s governing at the moment,” she added. “Democrats want to make the story of this election Trump’s low approval numbers, the war in Iran, inflation, being preoccupied with things that don’t make a whole lot of sense when there are really serious things going on in the country.”

Dewey Clayton, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Louisville, said Trump and other Republicans may be thinking that what worked before in the 2016 and 2024 elections presumably will work again in this year’s midterms.

“It was very effective,” Clayton said. “You do not necessarily have to look at it as racial, in and of itself, although [race] clearly becomes a component. In 2026, talking about ads going back in the 1980s? I’m sure he had consultants that were basically saying this is tried and true.”

The GOP may need the push in November, Gillespie warns. “I think the motivation by going back to these old strategies is there is real concern about Republican enthusiasm and you might see lower Republican turnout,” she said.

Rhetoric attempts to divert voters’ attention from rising costs

The tactic speaks to desperation by Trump and the Whatley campaign, according to Morgan Jackson, a partner with Nexus Strategies in Raleigh.

“Trump brings up Willie Horton to stoke racial division, something he’s used for the last 10 years,” said Jackson, who is chief strategist for Cooper’s campaign. “It is very clear from the president’s speech last night their only goal is to sow division and hate and lies. Michael Whatley doubles down in support of that effort.”

Jackson also said Trump and Whatley are trying to change the election’s message of “rising inflation and the cost of everything.”

“They want to use inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech and lies to sow division in a chance to win an election,” he said. “By referencing Willie Horton, they are showing their hand very clearly.”

The AP sent an email Thursday seeking comment from Whatley’s Senate campaign.

Williams writes for the Associated Press. Williams reported from Detroit. AP videojournalist Erik Verduzco in Gastonia, N.C., contributed to this report.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — In the wood-paneled basement of a union hall, retirees sat in folding chairs last week as they recalled how miles of steel mills and plentiful jobs had slowly disappeared.

“We told our children to get your education, get out, and don’t come back,” said Al Antonelli, who has been a member of Ohio Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 125 for nearly 50 years. “Because there’s no future here, especially blue collar.”

Versions of Youngstown’s story played out across the industrial Midwest, where disappearing jobs and frustration in longtime Democratic strongholds helped fuel Donald Trump’s political rise. When Trump visited as president in 2017, he promised the jobs that had left Ohio were “all coming back.”

“Don’t sell your house,” one of the retirees recalled Trump saying during his Youngstown visit.

Nearly a decade later, the old industrial economy Trump promised to revive has not returned, and Democrats hope the political tide is shifting again. Two years after Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Senate seat, he’s attempting a comeback by trying to win back some of the same voters who turned on his party. Brown wants to harness dissatisfaction with the economy, the war in Iran and the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers to dislodge Republican Sen. Jon Husted in November.

Brown’s chances of returning to Washington depend largely on whether he can win again in parts of the state that have spent years drifting away from Democrats. His race is also part of a much broader challenge for Democrats, who need to make inroads in Republican-leaning states like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas if they are to win control of the chamber in November.

Brown outlasted Democrats’ decline in Ohio — until he couldn’t

For years, Brown was able to outrun the Democratic Party’s decline in Ohio. His pro-labor populism resonated with enough swing voters to deliver decades of victories from the statehouse to Congress.

Trump carried Ohio by 8 points in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won it. Yet Brown won his third term in the Senate two years later, in part by continuing to perform well in places like Mahoning County, anchored by Youngstown.

By 2024, even Brown could no longer hold on, losing his reelection campaign to Republican Bernie Moreno by 3.5 percentage points.

Trump carried Mahoning by more than 10,000 votes, a remarkable reversal in a previously loyal Democratic county that Obama had won by nearly 30 percentage points just 12 years earlier. With Trump’s endorsement, Moreno won the county by just 220 votes.

The transformation extends across the Mahoning Valley. Neighboring Trumbull County went from backing Obama by 23 points in 2012 to Trump by nearly 17 points in 2024.

“The Mahoning Valley has struggled with deindustrialization, job loss for years, and the politicians in power have seemed to understand that, but it doesn’t seem like they were doing enough about that,” said Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a politics professor at Youngstown State University. “So at some point, 20, 30 years of supporting the candidates, people are gonna say, well, look, this has never worked for us, right?”

Trump and other Republicans offered voters something different, Leftwich said.

“Did they keep their promises? Not at all. Is the county still poor? Absolutely,” she said. “But they at least said they were going to do something different.”

Brown faces a much different environment this year

Democrats’ bid to flip the Senate requires them to net four seats, including by competing deep in Republican territory.

Two months from the end of midterm campaigns, high gas prices stemming from the war in Iran have compounded discontent with the economy.

Trump has also escalated a trade war with neighboring Canada, a fight with particular implications for Ohio. The state exported $17.5 billion in goods to Canada in 2025, or nearly a third of the state’s total exports, according to federal statistics.

Tension from the economic strain is visible in Parma, a working-class Cleveland suburb that split its ticket in 2024, backing both Trump and Brown. At a watch party for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, supporters who stayed late into the evening cheered Trump but acknowledged that other issues would most likely determine the midterms.

“The real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be economics. Gas prices, grocery prices,” said Parma City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul. “That’s really what’s going to help.”

Parma Republican Party President Doris Peters said similarly that “everyone’s concerned about the high gas prices.”

“It’s all about the economy,” she added. “People remember how much money’s in their wallet and how much is not in their wallet.”

Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) speaks at the Republican convention in Dallas.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Ap Photo/julia Demaree Nikhinson)

The limits of a Democratic rebound in Ohio

Husted presents a different opponent than the one Brown faced two years ago. His restrained demeanor contrasts with Moreno, the brash former car dealer who entered politics as an outsider. Husted spent nearly 25 years in Ohio politics, as a state lawmaker, House speaker, secretary of state and lieutenant governor, before being tapped to fill Vance’s Senate seat.

But Husted may not need to generate much enthusiasm of his own. Except for Brown and candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race for state office in Ohio since 2008.

Adam Radogna, 37, who hosted the watch party Wednesday for Parma Republicans at his Italian restaurant, has attended more than 80 Trump rallies and remains an ardent Trump supporter. But Husted is not someone he’s followed closely.

“I don’t know him at all,” Radogna said of Husted. “But I mean, I will vote for him.”

Brown faces enthusiasm problems of his own as he asks voters to return to a 73-year-old former senator whom they rejected just two years ago.

Ellen Zban, 67, a longtime Youngstown resident who said she leans Democratic but has voted for Republicans, said she won’t support Husted because she doesn’t believe he has listened enough to the community.

“I really don’t think he’s done anything for us,” she said. “We never hear from him.”

But Brown isn’t necessarily the candidate she wishes Democrats were offering either.

“He’s my best option,” Zban said. “But I’d like to see younger people running.”

The race is being flooded with money as both sides try to drum up enthusiasm and define the choice for voters. Husted and allied Republican groups have already spent more than $80 million with $86 million more reserved through Election Day, according to AdImpact. Brown and Democratic groups have spent $69 million, with $67 million reserved.

Elon Musk has also waded into the race through his America PAC, which is running online and streaming ads attacking Brown over transgender issues.

“Billionaires are lying to try and bail out their ‘Golden Boy’ because Jon Husted has always put special interests ahead of Ohio,” Brown’s campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement.

Brown has attempted to make data centers central to the race, an issue that has seen bipartisan outrage in communities across the country. Brown’s allies have called Husted the face of Ohio’s data center boom, blaming the massive facilities for contributing to rising electricity costs. Husted helped promote Ohio as a destination for data centers while serving as lieutenant governor.

The ads and backlash have generated enough concern among Republicans that an internal party memo described data centers as an “anchor” around Husted in the race.

“Thirty-two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar,” Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said in a statement. “Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn. Sen. Husted introduced legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid.”

The state’s politics could shift again

In Youngstown, the union retirees who watched the Mahoning Valley shift toward Republicans aren’t convinced the movement is permanent.

Rich Troisi, business manager of Laborers’ Local 127, said Republican candidates in recent elections could win support in the area largely by aligning themselves with Trump. This year, he said, that dynamic may not hold.

“I don’t think Donald Trump’s endorsement is going to be what it was,” he said.

Antonelli, the longtime union worker, pointed to independent voters, who he said tend to move with their economic circumstances.

“My dad used to say, it depends on how tight your shoes are. Tight meaning, how’s the money?” he said. “Right now, the shoes are pretty tight, no matter who you are.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio.

Sept. 16, 2026 9:35 AM PT

DES MOINES, Iowa — Two House Republicans in battleground Iowa districts, including one who recently campaigned alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, changed their position on an Iran war powers resolution, joining with Democrats and a few other dissident members of their party in an attempt to halt President Trump’s ability to continue military action without congressional approval.

The shift reflects the political pressure on Republicans before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. The war remains unpopular and has led to soaring fuel prices.

Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks voted for the resolution with five other Republicans on Tuesday after previously voting against it.

“With the negotiating window closed, sustained combat operations now require congressional authorization,” Nunn, an Air Force veteran, posted on social media. “I will not support another open-ended war.”

Nunn campaigned with Hegseth last month in Iowa, and the Pentagon chief had lauded Nunn as an ally who didn’t need any last-minute, late-night phone calls from Trump to persuade him to support the president’s agenda.

“Zach Nunn is not a 3 a.m. congressman,” Hegseth said at a fundraiser for Nunn during the Iowa State Fair. “He’s willing to take the tough votes to do the right thing on behalf of our war fighters.”

Nunn is up against Sarah Trone Garriott in November’s election.

Miller-Meeks, an Army veteran, said in a statement the president needs to present a plan to Congress and the public showing how the war ends so “we can focus on bringing our soldiers home and lowering prices.”

“Americans do not want another forever war,” she said. “I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump.”

She faces a reelection rematch against Christina Bohannan, whom she has defeated twice before.

Eighteen U.S. service members have died in the war with Iran. Two are from Iowa, and one used to live in Iowa.

National polling indicates that the Iran war remains unpopular with Americans overall. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of Iran in a July AP-NORC poll, and a September New York Times/Siena poll found that most likely voters, about 6 in 10, think Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was the wrong one.

Tuesday’s House vote was the third time lawmakers voted to end the war in Iran. The margin was similar to earlier efforts, with a few more Republicans joining all Democrats in voting to bring an end to the conflict.

In addition to Nunn and Miller-Meeks, retiring Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina joined Republican Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky in voting for the resolution.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, who represents northeast Iowa but is running to replace retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, voted against the resolution.

Republicans have been optimistic that Iowa will remain a red state, but the competitive races have gotten attention even from the White House. Trump visited suburbs of Des Moines in January and dispatched Vice President JD Vance in May to campaign for Nunn.

After Hegseth campaigned with Nunn, a group of over 400 former national security officials filed a complaint asking for an investigation into whether the secretary violated the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities by federal officials.

Hegseth’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Catalini and Fingerhut write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pa.

WASHINGTON — For a third time, the U.S. House has voted to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution that would halt President Trump’s ability to continue military action without congressional approval.

The roll call late Tuesday, 220-204, was similar to earlier efforts this summer, with a few more Republicans joining all Democrats voting to bring an end to the conflict. None of the resolutions have made it to the president’s desk, where Trump would almost certainly veto the measure.

“Remember when Donald Trump said that this war would last just a few weeks?” said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who served as a Marine during the Iraq War and pushed the resolution forward.

He said it’s time for Congress to “actually ask tough questions, as the Constitution directs us to do, rather than be subservient to another warmongering administration.”

Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, questioned which military resources Democrats would want to remove from the region where he said Iran remains a threat.

Mast said Trump is against “forever wars, and that is what he is ending” — the decades of hostilities from Iran.

“They are a continuous ongoing threat to the United States,” Mast said. “Enough is enough.”

Last war powers vote before the midterms

The action is likely the last House vote on the Iran war ahead of the midterm elections, where the conflict overseas is playing a substantial role in the political campaigns. The war that Trump launched Feb. 28 has dragged, with on-again, off-again deadly missile strikes being exchanged and causing havoc in the region for nearly seven months.

Lawmakers are heading home at the end of the week to campaign nearly full-time, with less than 50 days to go before the elections that will determine control of Congress as Democrats try to wrest power from Republicans.

Voters are confronting high prices, particularly for gas at the pumps, as the conflict disrupts the flow of oil resources through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the war has cost more than $38 billion, as of Aug. 1, and is projected to be costing between $2 billion and $3 billion monthly, depending on the intensity of the fighting. The budget office projected inflation will be 0.5 percentage points higher than expected heading into 2027 due to the war.

Trump himself had promised not to involve the U.S. in foreign wars when he won a second term in the White House, and his actions against Iran are weighing on the Republican Party that controls the House and Senate. Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, according to an AP-NORC poll in July.

In the previous House actions, four Republicans voted to halt the war in Iran, but that number rose to seven in Tuesday’s war powers vote, including GOP lawmakers from battleground Iowa, Rep. Zachary Nunn and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and retiring Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

They joined GOP Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky voting in favor of the war powers resolution, with all Democrats.

War powers being put to the test

Congress has tried repeatedly to alter the trajectory of the war against Iran, but efforts to limit the Trump administration’s military action remain a longshot so long as the president is able to fend off or veto the measures.

The House first approved a war powers resolution in June, and followed up with another one in July, all seeking to halt U.S. action in Iran. The Senate on its 10th try also approved a war powers resolution to end the conflict, but GOP senators quickly reversed course the next day after Trump berated them during a closed-door lunch.

While the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, it also gives the president authority as the commander in chief to engage in some military actions. The War Powers Act, created in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, sought to put a more specific time limit on the president’s power, requiring congressional approval for sustained military actions after 60 or 90 days.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged at a press conference Tuesday the need to bring gas prices down.

But the Republican speaker said he believes the Iran conflict is entering a “new phase” as allies step up to help stabilize the region. When that happens, he said, “you’re going to see, as the president said, anytime gas prices will go down again, the cost of groceries will as well.”

Johnson said Trump expects the shift after the election, and the speaker added, “I’d love it to happen today.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Fewer than half of Americans believe the upcoming midterm elections will be “free and fair,” amid a broader decline in confidence in vote counts, according to a new nationwide poll.

While 49% of respondents said they expected the elections to be free and fair, 23% said they did not expect them to be, and 28% said they didn’t know what to expect.

Americans are more confident that ballots, once cast, will be counted accurately, though their trust in that varies depending on their political affiliation — with 63% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans and 49% of independent voters saying they are either “somewhat” or “very” confident in an accurate count, the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections at UC San Diego poll found.

That is a sharp decline from after the 2024 election, when 77% of Democrats, 82% of Republicans and 73% of independents expressed such confidence, the same pollsters found then.

Lauren Prather, one of the center’s co-directors, said the latest findings reflect a decline in trust but also nuance in how respondents understand what it means to have a “free and fair” election — with an accurate count of cast ballots being a major factor, but not the only one.

Of those respondents who said they don’t know if the election will be free and fair, about a third — 31% — also said that they were “somewhat confident” that the vote would be counted accurately, Prather said.

The poll also asked an open-ended question, inviting respondents to share what a “free and fair” election means to them, she said, and trust in the count was a “central part of people’s definition” and a “dominant theme.” However, they also identified other things, she said — with about a quarter of respondents also pointing to “voter access and voter eligibility, as well as freedom from interference and intimidation and having a real choice of candidates,” Prather said.

“In other words, trust in the count is the anchor of how Americans understand what it means to be free and fair but it sits within a broader set of concerns about the integrity of the whole process,” she said.

The polling reflects an American electorate that has grown increasingly concerned about U.S. elections amid unprecedented claims of widespread voter fraud from President Trump and his administration, and increasing warnings from Democrats and independent election experts that those claims — which Trump has made without evidence and which experts deny — are part of a broader effort to interfere with the election and intimidate voters.

Thad Kousser, the center’s other co-director, said the findings are in line with a broader era of distrust in civic institutions in the U.S., but also a result of the fact that “people are following different signals from their leaders” as to the trustworthiness of U.S. elections — with vastly different messaging coming from leaders on the left and the right.

Poll respondents shared some concerns about the fairness of the November midterms, he said, but also split by wide margins on other concerns based on their political affiliation.

Voters across party lines shared concerns about gerrymandering, the poll found — with 48% of both Democrats and independents and 36% of Republicans saying they distrust that congressional district lines are drawn in a way that fairly reflects what voters want.

“Nobody has loved the redistricting wars that have been a big story throughout this year,” Kousser said.

After Trump urged Texas and other Republican-led states to launch unprecedented mid-decade efforts to redraw their congressional lines to bolster their party’s chances of retaining control of the legislature through the remainder of Trump’s term, Democrats fought back — including in California, where voters passed Proposition 50 to allow state Democrats to redraw congressional lines in their party’s favor.

On potential foreign interference, 32% of Democrats, 42% of independents and 48% of Republicans said they didn’t trust that U.S. elections are well-protected.

More than three-quarters of Americans — including 79% of Democrats, 76% of Republicans and 75% of independents — said they were “concerned that misleading audio or video ‘deepfakes’ created using AI will impact” the midterms.

But on other issues — including those most discussed by the political establishment — the political divide was much starker, the poll found.

For example, while 53% of Republicans said they distrust that ballots are counted accurately, just 19% of Democrats said so. While 52% of Republicans said they distrust that noncitizens are prevented from voting, just 12% of Democrats said so.

Meanwhile, Democrats and independents were more concerned than Republicans about eligible voters being able to cast their ballots without facing obstacles or intimidation, the poll found.

Many poll respondents said they expected to face intimidation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at or near polling locations — with such fears being particularly pronounced among voters of color, who were about four times as likely as white respondents to say they expected such intimidation, the poll found.

While 49% of Black respondents, 45% of “Hispanic” respondents and 40% of Asian American and Pacific Islander respondents said they expected to face intimidation, just 11% of white respondents said so, the poll found.

Overall, 35% of respondents said an ICE presence would make them less confident of an accurate vote count, compared with 23% who said it would make them more confident. Those responses also varied greatly by race — and partisan leaning.

White respondents were nearly split, with 29% saying it would make them less confident and 28% saying it would make them more confident. Respondents of other races were vastly more likely to say an ICE presence would make them less confident — with 38% of Black respondents saying they would be less confident and 10% saying they would be more confident; 43% of “Hispanic” respondents saying less and 18% saying more; and 57% of AAPI respondents saying less and just 6% saying more.

Nearly 60% of Democrats said an ICE presence would lower their confidence, and less than 8% said it would increase their confidence. Among Republicans, meanwhile, about 46% said it would increase their confidence, and less than 9% said it would decrease it.

Kousser said the polling gives the sense that a “free and fair” election “means something more to people than simply tallying up correctly the votes of those who were able to cast a ballot.”

“You might doubt that the election was free and fair if you are concerned that congressional districts are gerrymanders, or that some voters stayed away from the polls because of worries about intimidation, or that some people cast a ballot who were not, in fact, eligible,” he said. “These concerns, which can come from all different parts of the ideological spectrum, could lead people to be concerned that [a] ‘correctly counted’ election was not, in fact, fully free and fair.”

Kousser and Prather said what effect diminished trust in elections will have on the midterms and how Americans view the results remains unclear, but will depend in part on how close the election is and what messaging leaders — particularly Trump — share about the results once they come in. Prather said she did not expect it to diminish turnout.

The national survey of 5,016 American adults was conducted Sept. 1-9, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4%.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday forcefully rejected calls to slow the development of artificial intelligence, dismissing concerns about its risks as a “hoax” and warning the United States remains locked in a fierce technological race with China.

The president’s position has put him at odds with a growing chorus of industry leaders and bipartisan lawmakers warning that AI could soon advance beyond human control.

Top executives from three of the country’s leading AI companies — OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk — issued exceptional calls this past weekend for collaboration on a path forward that could “pace the frontier” of AI development.

Rare flashes of bipartisanship have also emerged on Capitol Hill, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, is working with Democrats on legislation aimed at guarding against AI’s most catastrophic risks, including its potential use to develop biological weapons.

And Democratic elders, including former President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have urged their party to treat the threats posed by AI as an acute national security crisis.

But Trump remained steadfast in his pushback, blaming the political backlash on a “conspiracy” perpetuated by China, the only major competitor in the field.

“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump wrote in a series of social media posts. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

The Trump administration, the president continued, “has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”

Calls for action have grown since a former researcher at Anthropic posted a dire alert on social media that AI development could lead to an extinction-level event. His message went viral, prompting Amodei, the founder of Anthropic, to issue a public letter calling for a slowdown.

Altman said he agreed with Amodei, announcing the company would delay its initial public offering until 2027 over safety concerns. In July, OpenAI discovered a swarm of rogue AI agents had secretly plotted to escape their virtual sandbox, infiltrating the open internet and hacking a private company — a spectacular omen of how quickly AI systems could become difficult to contain.

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage,” Amodei wrote over the weekend, “and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

Still, Trump and several of his Republican allies rejected the prospect of government regulation — or cast doubt on Altman and Amodei’s motives.

The Defense Department posted a graphic on X promoting “AI-First,” and stating the government would advocate “Americanism, not effective altruism.” The image appeared generated by artificial intelligence.

“If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible,” David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar now serving as co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, wrote on X. “But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability.”

“Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” Sacks added. “You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack.”

Regardless of the companies’ motives, Democrats are seizing the moment as an opportunity to pursue meaningful regulatory reforms.

At a Thursday fundraiser with Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, Obama said AI should move to the center of the Democratic agenda, both in Congress and on the campaign trail ahead of the 2028 presidential primary.

“I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Obama said. “This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous.”

The following day, Clinton said AI was becoming “too dangerous” for partisanship to paralyze Washington.

“The one good thing that Donald Trump did in his first term was Warp Speed,” Clinton said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” referring to a federal program in Trump’s first term to expedite the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. “Let’s put an AI commission on warp speed, and figure out what we’re going to do to sensibly regulate.”

AI leaders “are basically saying, ‘Stop us before something really bad happens,’” Clinton continued. “‘Help us stop.’ The president of China is coming to the White house in two weeks. There should be a concerted effort by this government to get off of the lies, get off of social media, quit worrying about ballrooms and ridiculous arches, and come up with a plan to enlist the Chinese.”

But China’s rapid progress in AI has so far pushed Trump to let U.S. industry move ahead with few constraints.

China’s spy chief issued a rare warning Monday that AI development could risk the future of Chinese Communist Party control over the country. But China’s foreign ministry responded defensively to the U.S. debate. “Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” a spokesperson said.

Leading AI companies in the United States have begun using their most advanced models to train new ones, in a process known as recursive self-improvement. Within the industry, experts and researchers believe the first AI company to master recursive self-improvement will kick off exponential development, “winning” the race by making it impossible for competitors to catch up.

But that achievement — reaching endless intelligence improvements, generated by machines — could also drive intelligence growth beyond human control.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote Monday. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In the U.S. House, strange bedfellows from the Republican and Democratic parties, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), have come together to try to tackle legislation that might contain AI’s greatest dangers. One bill, introduced by Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake), proposes embedding independent government auditors in AI labs and installing a federal “kill switch” to shut down agents in case of emergencies.

But it is far from clear whether Rep. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and a close Trump ally, would allow any such bill to come to the floor.

“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge,” Johnson said Sunday. “It’s national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe.”

“We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” Johnson added. “We have to do both things simultaneously.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom does not like being on Donald Trump’s side on any issue.

But when it comes to transgender girls and women in sports, particularly at the school level, the Democrat said he largely agrees with the Republican president. Newsom, one of his party’s leading White House prospects, believes it’s “deeply unfair” for people who are assigned male at birth to compete against girls.

“I don’t want to be on that side of it, but I’m being honest — I’d be lying to you if I said differently,” Newsom told the Associated Press as he was campaigning recently in South Carolina. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to make it fair from my perspective.”

Newsom is not alone.

While most Democratic officials remain steadfast supporters of the transgender community, an increasing number in red and blue states are distancing themselves from their party’s unflinching support for the transgender community’s policy priorities, such as allowing athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity. The shift follows years of conservative attacks against Democrats on the divisive issue, which affects a relatively small number of transgender people and their families, but has emerged as one of Republicans’ most potent political weapons in the Trump era.

Soul searching over transgender issues is one facet of a sprawling identity crisis that Democrats are confronting during the midterms and before the next presidential election. Although they risk a backlash from their progressive base, there is also a sense in some corners that the party must evolve on an issue where the overwhelming majority of voters — even many Democrats — agree with Trump.

The issue was a central theme for Trump and his Republican allies on the main stage at their midterm convention in Dallas last week, where the president said he hoped Democrats would continue to stand up for transgender girls and women who want to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.

“I’m petrified that they’ll change,” he said. “That will really hurt us.”

Republicans are already replaying some of the same political attacks that they used against Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign two years ago, when they said she’s “for they/them, not you.” On Friday, they released a new advertisement targeting James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, with the same phrase.

Democrats confront difficult political terrain

A political group backed by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk has begun running digital ads targeting Democrats in key Senate races in Texas, Ohio and Alaska, accusing them of allowing men to compete in women’s sports.

In Texas’ pivotal Senate contest, the new ad from Musk’s America PAC opens with a video clip of Talarico saying that “God is nonbinary.”

Talarico began to distance himself from those positions months ago. He went further in a Fox News interview last week, saying he would vote in favor of a national ban for gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors, which are rare.

“I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it,” Talarico said in an interview near the Republican convention site. “I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street want to talk about six sexes is because they don’t want to talk about $6 diesel.”

In Iowa, State Auditor Rob Sand, the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor, has spoken out against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports as a matter of fairness. Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton has taken a similar position, although she has drawn criticism from the left for adopting Trump’s language after saying she opposed “boys playing in girls’ sports.”

And in deep-blue Massachusetts, transgender rights became a defining campaign issue during the state’s recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary, illustrating the potential backlash that party members can face.

Sen. Ed Markey, 80, secured the nomination and later credited his win to not shying away from advocating for transgender rights. He used the issue to attack his Democratic opponent, Rep. Seth Moulton, who had said he wouldn’t want his daughters to play against transgender athletes.

Moulton apologized for his comments, which drew outrage from some progressives, but the damage was done.

While Moulton lost his primary, his position — not Markey’s — is in line with the majority of voters nationally.

A June poll from Quinnipiac University found that about 7 in 10 registered voters think that transgender women and girls should not be allowed to play on women’s and girls’ sports teams. About one-quarter think they should. Democrats are divided, with about half saying transgender women and girls should be allowed and about half saying they should not.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted last year found that just over half, 55%, of Democrats would be “not too” or “not at all” comfortable with athletes playing on teams that don’t match their sex at birth, while 21% said they were “somewhat” comfortable and only 23% said they were “extremely” or “very” comfortable with this.

There’s division among activists

Markey’s public commitment to transgender rights stood out because Democratic politicians are increasingly running away from the issue, said Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, which is dedicated to electing supporters of transgender rights to federal office.

“The reality of being a transgender person in America in 2026 is that on election nights, while other folks are talking about who had a good night and who had a bad night, sometimes you are quietly wondering, ‘Am I going to be OK?’” Hack said.

At the same time, even transgender activists are divided over supporting Democrats who have positions that are unfriendly to transgender people.

Erin Reed, an advocate and independent journalist covering transgender issues, this month put out a guide flagging Democratic candidates who she accused of taking anti-transgender positions. She highlighted 15 states that have such Democrats, saying that she would not vote for the “worst offenders” even if it means a Republican wins.

She doesn’t want Democrats to see that “throwing transgender people under the bus is a winning strategy.”

“One seat can be won back,” Reed wrote. “A party cannot.”

Meanwhile, Hack would probably vote for a Democrat even if that candidate supports some policies the Christopher Street Project opposes, in hopes that the party can take control of Congress. However, those candidates shouldn’t expect the organization’s endorsement.

“While I hope many of them win, I think they can do it without our resources and without our support,” Hack said.

Laws are changing around the country

The political debate is evolving as transgender people increasingly become the target of conservative backlash through state laws and the Trump administration.

Sports participation has become one of the main fronts in a political battle over transgender rights, although most Republican-controlled states have also implemented policies that affect a bigger slice of the population. There are bans on some gender-affirming health care for transgender young people and rules against transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity in schools and occasionally other public places.

At least 25 states are now enforcing laws or policies banning transgender women and girls from competing in at least some women’s and girls’ sports and three others have adopted laws but have enforcement blocked by the courts.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws barring transgender girls from school teams.

Transgender athletes make up a small portion of team rosters. NCAA president Charlie Baker testified in 2024 that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender college student-athletes out of more than 500,000 total.

The debate is a preview for 2028

The debate within the Democratic Party heading into the 2026 midterms offers a preview for those Democrats contemplating presidential bids in 2028.

Newsom, who is considered a frontrunner in the shadow primary, highlighted his long record of supporting LGBTQ+ priorities, including sanctioning same-sex marriage as the San Francisco mayor decades ago and later appointing the first trans judge in California history.

But in sports, he thinks it’s unfair to allow people assigned as males at birth to compete against girls.

“It’s a hard issue. I struggle with it,” Newsom said. “I think people know where my heart is, my soul is. I have a trans godson.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another likely Democratic presidential contender, has taken the opposite position.

He has consistently criticized state-level bans and restrictions on transgender athletes, calling them “bullying” and a “setback for equality.” Following the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes, Pritzker, whose cousin is transgender, reaffirmed his position on social media.

“There’s a place for you in Illinois,” he wrote.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro opposes bans on transgender athletes in school sports, which he’s called cruel and designed to discriminate. He argues that athletic participation and eligibility should not be dictated by politicians, but rather handled by local athletic organizations — a stance in line with several LGBTQ+ groups.

He’s also raised questions of fairness, however.

“Look, I think it’s a tough deal being born into the wrong body. And I don’t think these kids deserve to be persecuted and bullied by the president of the United States,” Shapiro told The Atlantic last year. “I also don’t think they deserve an unfair advantage on the playing field.” Research has been mixed on whether transgender women have advantages in sports, and it depends partly on whether they went through puberty as boys.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and a potential presidential contender, said on Fox earlier in the year that he takes people seriously on both sides of the debate “whether you’re talking about parents who are wondering what this means for fairness for their kids competing, or parents who want to make sure that their kids aren’t being discriminated against and get a chance to participate.”

“But I also have to tell you,” he added, “I would be surprised if this is a top three or even a top 10 voter issue in the midterms this year.” ___

Peoples and Mulvihill write for the Associated Press. AP writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.

Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.

The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot.

The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once stood as an example to the world.

“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.

Trump has given Democrats plenty of reasons to organize a resistance

Democrats say they have reason to plan for doomsday scenarios. During his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career officials and more establishment Republicans. Upon returning to power, Trump has stocked his administration with those who helped his 2020 efforts, has used the federal government to target his political enemies and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification of Biden’s win.

Incumbent presidents’ parties usually lose ground in the midterms, but Trump has pulled out the stops to try to keep that from happening this time. He’s demanded Republicans redraw maps to create more safe seats for themselves in the House of Representatives, held last week’s unusual midterm convention and tried to change election rules even as states begin to send out ballots.

The advice for judges asked to approve search warrants for ballots, for example, was inspired by the Trump administration’s seizure of 2020 ballots and other election records in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, based on old, disproven conspiracy theories.

Rick Hasen, a UCLA Law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, noted that Trump has expressed regret that he didn’t take more aggressive action to overturn the 2020 results, such as ordering voting machines to be seized.

“All these things take what was off the wall and put it on the wall,” Hasen said. He said that while it is important not to unduly scare voters about what might happen, it’s “hard to walk the line between alarmism and complacency.”

Trump’s actions worry Democrats. Administration calls them common sense

Last year, Democrats worried that Trump might intervene in off-year elections in California, Virginia and elsewhere, only to have voting go smoothly with no clashes with the federal government.

“The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Blis said in a statement.

Still, the stakes are far higher in the midterms, which will determine whether Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress. So far Trump has been unable to change voting procedures before the midterms.

Courts halted Trump’s first attempt to reshape election rules via executive order last year. The president backed a bill in Congress to make even more sweeping changes but it’s stalled in the Senate because of opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.

Then Trump tried to limit mail voting by executive order, but the courts again blocked it, saying the changes couldn’t happen before the midterms. That case is before the Supreme Court. Election officials warn that it would be impossible to implement Trump’s requirements in time for this election.

Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the National Bar Association last week announced an initiative to help voters of both parties understand last-minute election rule changes and to create a hotline for those who encounter trouble casting ballots.

Concerns that polling places will become targets for immigration agents

Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it’s already recruited a record number of poll watchers.

“The RNC has spent this entire cycle preparing not just to defy history in November, but to protect it,” spokeswoman Ally Triolo said. “We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our elections.”

Democrats also have expanded their operations, and the Association of State Democratic Parties is adding to that effort with its “battlefield” recruitment project. That also will include a network to share information about online threats and manipulation, said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the group and of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

“If they’re saying they’re going to put armed people outside polling places, we should put friendly people outside polling locations to film them,” Kleeb said in an interview. “There’s a whole new battlefield we have now.”

Kleeb was referring to widespread fears among Democrats that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to the polls, something that multiple administration officials for months have denied will happen. There have been scattered instances of ICE officers at polling places over the past year, usually saying they’re in pursuit of or investigating a specific person. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this month it’s possible that could happen again in November.

In an indication of the distrust of the administration’s reassurances, civil rights groups and the city of Denver last week filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to formally bar ICE from polling places. They cited a law dating to the Civil War era prohibiting armed federal agents at election sites.

“This administration is basically using the rhetoric that undocumented citizens are voting and that they’re going to have DHS and ICE at the polls to try and intimidate and suppress the Latino vote,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs.

Activists see Minneapolis immigration protests as a midterms model

A staple of the election buildup is a series of tabletop exercises in which each side runs hypothetical scenarios to practice its response. As part of that, Democrats and civil rights groups are rehearsing for the possible deployment of ICE agents or the National Guard to polling sites, although the Pentagon has said it has no plans to deploy troops to the polls.

Levin, of Indivisible, said his group has run 17 different scenarios preparing for what could happen in November. But the first priority, he said, is to boost turnout.

The No Kings network, which has spearheaded large anti-Trump protests over the president’s second term and includes Indivisible, is launching a campaign encouraging early voting that will peak with rallies Oct. 17.

Others are organizing among both left-wing and more traditional groups to push back if the administration is aggressive in November. Some look to the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis as a possible model.

Two activists were shot and killed by ICE agents during those January demonstrations, and the administration eventually backed off the aggressive crackdown the president had launched against the city.

“We recognize there might be a similar moment in November, where Trump attempts to do that again, where everyday working people and students need to band together and say, ‘Actually, no, this is our country, you don’t get to decide who gets elected or who gets to take office,’” said Kidus Girma of the left-wing Sunrise Movement.

Riccardi and Brown write for the Associated Press.

After appearing last year on a contentious political panel discussion in Washington, D.C., Jessica Tarlov, co-host of the the popular Fox News show “The Five,” was approached by a transgender woman from Alabama.

Tarlov had said that Democratic candidates in tough races might have to concede that transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas should not be competing against women assigned female at birth. But the matter never came up. Instead, the Alabama woman thanked Tarlov for making the case for Democrats against four conservatives on “The Five,” the most watched program in cable news and a favorite of family members who no longer speak to her.

“If more people talked like you, I might get my family back,” the woman said. “I’m just happy my parents can hear someone like you.”

Tarlov describes the encounter in her new book “I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends,” out Sept. 15. The part how-to book and part personal memoir is aimed at helping readers navigate the harsh political divisiveness in the culture. Her role on “The Five” has made her an advocate of going into not-so-friendly territory to debate issues rather than staying in comfort zones where views are unchallenged.

“I’m trying to show that a Democratic voice like mine can exist there, without an apology,” she writes of her Fox News position. “And that a person with strong liberal beliefs can bring that same perspective to a host of outlets and places.”

During a recent conversation at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan, Tarlov said the kind words of the fan from Alabama align with what she’s heard from children and grandchildren of the network’s loyal viewers. They are grateful their Fox News-loving families are exposed to a voice from outside the conservative media ecosystem.

Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov is the author of “I Disagree.”

(Penguin Random House)

Tarlov, 42, has been a sturdy liberal counterweight at “The Five,” which averages 3.5 million viewers daily, according to Nielsen. She comes to the panel’s table highly prepared with data-based talking points, forcing her often intractable co-hosts to engage and listen. She often does it while deflecting the mocking remarks of rambunctious colleagues Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, who try to throw off her arguments.

“Interruptions are an indication that you’re winning,” said Tarlov, evoking the pithy chapter summaries in “I Disagree.”

Tarlov games out numerous scenarios with recommendations on how to deploy statistics and when to lighten up. She also explains the necessity of allowing the other side to blow off steam as she did when “The Five” co-hosts became emotional and overwrought over the shooting of right wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Tarlov believes the key to the success of “The Five” is the camaraderie the panel has off-camera. While the co-hosts will battle it out on set over President Trump’s policies or the excesses of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, they are supportive of each other once the show is over (three of them are represented by the same CAA agent).

“We don’t talk politics outside of work,” Tarlov said.

Tarlov has been an accepted part of the Fox News family, recently signing a three-year contract despite Trump’s suggestion that “The Five” would be better off without her.

But it has taken time for Tarlov to gain credibility among like-minded pundits and thought leaders on the political left. Most are dismissive of the network as its most popular hosts are unwavering Trump loyalists. Tarlov also resists being in lockstep with every Democratic position and trend. (She voted for Andrew Cuomo over New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, citing the former governor’s experience.)

“Even in the last year I’ve been at big liberal gatherings, very clearly hosts on other big podcasts or show were not interested in talking to me,” said Tarlov, who has had many conversations that start with the question “Why are you on that network?”

But with younger news consumers getting their news and information through social media platforms, Fox News clips of Tarlov scoring points for the Democrats are gaining attention. Tarlov said she has felt more welcome in left-leaning circles since the 2024 presidential campaign when the digital accounts of Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris put her commentary in heavy rotation. (Scott Galloway, the author and social critic, partnered with Tarlov on a podcast, “Raging Moderates,” after seeing her come up repeatedly in his feeds and then meeting her on the set of “Real Time With Bill Maher”).

Tarlov didn’t start out seeking a career as a TV personality, although her family background likely helped her understand media and communication. Her parents were attorneys who met while working on the Warner Bros. lot in New York, and raised their two daughters in the hip lower Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca.

Her father, Mark Tarlov, was a onetime speechwriter for Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger who went on to produce two of John Waters’ films and direct projects of his own. Tarlov and her sister Molly, an actor who co-starred in the MTV sitcom “Awkward,” traveled the world with their father to shooting locations. (Tarlov pays tribute to her father, who died in 2021 of 9/11-related cancer, by wearing his nerd-chic Oliver Peoples eyeglass frames made of buffalo horn).

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the London School of Economics, Tarlov worked as a strategist on the London mayoral campaign of Boris Johnson. She talked Democratic pollster Doug Schoen into giving her a job. Schoen hired her and brought her to the attention of Fox News, which started using her as a guest on Sean Hannity’s program in 2016.

The ability to effectively volley with conservatives led Democratic Party leaders to approach Tarlov about running for Congress in the district representing Staten Island. (She has no desire to seek political office.)

Tarlov was named co-host on “The Five” in 2022. She and husband Brian McKenna, who works in finance, welcomed their first daughter in 2021, the other in 2024. She remains awed that the show’s viewers — most of whom don’t agree with her politics — have acknowledged her personal milestones with warm greetings and homemade gifts.

She is aware that she’s had a rarefied career. But in “I Disagree,” she goes beyond her impressive resume to reveal her insecurities — unusual in the ego driven TV news business — and tells readers how she’s tried to resolve them.

“I have a good amount of shyness to me,” she said. “I have a lot of imposter syndrome. I’m constantly in wonder that I ended up getting to do this and that hopefully, am the right person to do it.”

Long self-conscious about her raspy voice, which Trump once described as “grating and irritating,” she shares how a 2016 meeting with former Chief Executive Roger Ailes made her relax about it. He told her viewer criticisms were more aimed at her positions, at not how she sounded. “No matter what room the television is in, you want to make sure the person listening in the next room knows you’re on it,” he told her. “Don’t try to smooth your voice out. They may hate what you stand for and what you’re saying, but you want them to know it’s you on TV.”

Tarlov met with Ailes just months before he was ousted over sexual harassment allegations. While Tarlov was grateful for his advice, her book praises current Fox News Chief Executive Suzanne Scott for creating a workplace culture that is much more hospitable to women. Scott promoted Tarlov to co-host right before she was due to give birth to her first child.

“The knowledge that I’m supported allows me to take big swings and not be intimidated,” Tarlov writes. She knows that’s not the situation for all women; in her signature style, she presents the data and the narrative to back it up.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor who loves to heckle Donald Trump and talk about the “big swings” he’s taken at policy while in office, is now a lame duck.

Within a few short months, he will be termed out of office and return to being a regular citizen, if not an average one. Newsom’s presidential ambitions are stronger than ever, and there’s virtually no list of Democratic hopefuls that doesn’t include his name near the top.

But 2028 is a long way away, about a millennium in political time. Newsom has a tough road ahead to not just stay relevant, but also to forge a difficult path between keeping a national profile as a Trump-attacking defender of democracy and not getting pummeled (or worse, ignored) when he loses the safety and power of his elected office.

Our columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak take a look at what the next few months, and the next year, may have in store after the governor becomes simply Mr. Newsom.

Chabria: Newsom is making the most of his last leg in office. Recently, he went on an election jaunt through the South, visiting the Carolinas and Alabama to help campaign and raise money in those states.

It is not his first out-of-state trip to lend a hand in campaigns, but likely one of his last as governor. He wouldn’t be the first elected official to have a gap year (or years) before being elected to the Oval Office — Ronald Reagan had more than five years off between being governor of California and winning the presidency — but it’s definitely a disadvantage.

How much do you think being out of office hurts Newsom?

Barabak: Loyal readers of this column — thanks, we appreciate both of you! — know I’ve long looked askance at our gallivanting governor and his extracurricular, eyes-on-2028 activities. I understand that preening and politicking is way more fun and ego-enhancing than the minutiae of government in Sacramento. At the same time, I’m old-fashioned enough to think a person should do the job taxpayers are paying them to do.

But, as you note, that will be a moot point soon enough.

I’m not certain being out of office will be all that great a hindrance. In fact, I think it offers advantages, the main one being Newsom’s freedom to devote his full time and energies to running for president.

You mention Reagan; I don’t think it’s an accident he made two failed tries for the White House while serving in Sacramento. Pete Wilson also attempted the leap from the state Capitol to Washington, and failed badly.

It’s tough to do both.

As Dan Schnur, a former Wilson strategist, once put it, “There aren’t any direct flights from Sacramento to Manchester” — New Hampshire traditionally being home to the first primary — “and you can’t run the state from a cellphone at O’Hare” airport.

So I don’t think exiting office will necessarily hurt Newsom. But I’m highly dubious of his presidential prospects nonetheless. You?

Chabria: This is definitely a wide-open race, with, I suspect, contenders not yet on any lists. It’s way too early to know if Newsom will make it in the primary, but I do think he’s positioning himself in a way that differentiates him from some of the folks he may run against.

Socialism is the right’s boogeyman, framed as a peril to democracy full of death panels and welfare fraud. More than one presidential aspirant has shied away from the label for fear of supposedly losing middle-ground voters or being dragged through the “communist” muck that MAGA media such as Fox News love to sling.

In a recent PBS interview, though, Newsom didn’t disavow some democratic socialist ideas, such as Medicare for all, pointing out that California has long had a powerful progressive faction and many of the ideas considered radical for the right are run of the mill here — and potentially popular across the country.

Newsom seems to be embracing some of those lefty stances, especially ones about affordability and opportunity. While affordability is going to be everyone’s platform, pairing it with big-swing policy like universal health insurance might appeal to voters tired of words without action.

It’s a smart lane, embracing MAGA’s labels instead of defending against them, with policies even middle-ground voters might appreciate in these increasing desperate days when ground beef averages nearly $7 a pound and coffee costs more than booze.

Barabak: While I’m skeptical the words “socialism” and “communism” are the talisman that President Trump and other Republicans believe, warding off what could be a dreadful midterm election for the GOP, I still believe the connotation — wacky, lefty policies — has potency among a not-insignificant slice of the electorate.

November’s election is going to be a referendum on Trump, as Newsom himself frequently says. The fight for the Democratic nomination is a contest of a whole other order.

We agree that no fellow Democrat is going to cede the $7-a-pound affordability argument to Newsom. But to offer some differentiation, many will doubtless portray him as being a bit too out there, especially when they start making the electability argument.

And that’s not to mention what awaits him if Newsom were to emerge as the Democratic nominee. (Fun fact: In 1988, it was a Democratic primary opponent, Al Gore, who first criticized Michael Dukakis over Massachusetts’ prison-furlough program. Republicans then seized upon the issue and used it as a bludgeon, to Dukakis’ great detriment, in the fall campaign.)

In a way, it’s interesting we’re even having this discussion about whether Newsom is too far left. There are parts of his record — his chummy ties to Silicon Valley, his light regulatory stance toward data centers, his making nice with the likes of Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, that make some Democrats question whether he’s too far right.

Chabria: It’s true that Newsom is more centrist than progressive, and equally true that most of America misses that point.

I think there is a version of the next election, though, where the Democratic Party has its own Tea Party moment, when a populist faction wanting social change carries power.

Call it the anti-Trump swing, the search for a Democrat who seems authentic and pugilistic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker fit this mold.

Everything we know about elections and electability really is up for grabs in this new age of technology and billionaire influence, and the vein of frustration within the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party is only growing stronger because of it. If Republicans do lose out in the midterms — and I am not convinced they will — it changes the calculation on everything, including how far left the average independent voter may swing in the face of an economically crushing oligarchy.

But I would be remiss if I did not say this: Fears that Trump will interfere with the midterms or the next presidential election are justified. Even though things have calmed a bit — there is less talk of agents of some sort at polls — he is pursuing policies and pushing propaganda that could harm a fair election.

We need to safeguard elections, otherwise candidates don’t matter.

Barabak: We 100% agree on that. Candidates, and the campaigns they wage, matter only if elections are free and fairly conducted and all sides —looking at you, President Trump — acknowledge and abide by the outcome.

I wouldn’t, however, infer too much from the outcome in November. For many voters, it will be a chance to vent — about inflation, an unpopular war, Trump’s brazen money-grubbing, his blatant disinterest in the lives and livelihoods of struggling Americans and anything else that’s causing an irritating rash under their collars. That’s why it seems more likely than not Democrats will at least win control of the House.

But midterm results are notoriously unreliable barometers of the presidential election that follows. To give just a few examples, Republicans walloped Democrats in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections and yet Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each won reelection just two years later. In 2022, Democrats fared surprisingly well in the midterm election, and in 2024, well … you know what happened.

Chabria: I don’t think America has a past political moment that can be compared to this one. By nearly every independent measure, the United States is closer to an autocracy than we’ve ever been. We’ve lost the respect and trust of our allies, and a political party that has the support of only about 30% of citizens is reshaping our social and civic life under white nationalist principles.

We are in a high-stakes moment, and the next election won’t be a decision between Democrats and Republicans, but between democracy and something else. The sad truth is that in 2024, more Americans did not vote at all than voted for Trump. About 64% of eligible voters cast a ballot, and Trump received only 49.8% of those votes.

The next Democratic nominee can come with whatever message they want, but if Democrats don’t vote, their candidates don’t win. So for Newsom, or whoever the nominee is, the first victory may be the nomination — but the real test will be turning out the vote.

Barabak: It’s a long way — about a millennium, as you said — from here to November 2028. I agree, though, on the importance of not sitting out this or any election, for that matter. I recollect a button I once saw in a shop on Elm Street, the main drag through, yes, downtown Manchester! It read: “Didn’t vote? Don’t bitch.”

That pretty well sums it up.

DELANO, Calif. — The rows of candies and nuts at the Guadalajara Meat Market — tamarindo con chile, seasoned pistachios, spicy paletas — sat mostly untouched as customers filtered through this carniceria in the late afternoon heat.

“You see a lot of people consuming the minimum, what they need to get by through the week,” said owner Carina Murillo, 31, as she checked out customers on a recent weekday. “Instead of buying six items, they’re buying three items.”

While customers bypass extras, like the snacks at the front counter, Murillo’s costs have gone up. Imported goods from Mexico and Canada have become more difficult to source and sometimes carry tariffs, she said. Transportation fees have risen as diesel prices respond to the war in Iran. The market’s insurance costs have risen by about a third. All of it has forced Murillo to increase prices.

“You see a lot of people consuming the minimum,” says Carina Murillo, owner of Guadalajara Meat Market. “Instead of buying six items, they’re buying three items.”

As the area struggles, Murillo, a college graduate who years ago felt motivated enough to door-knock for political causes, is among those who have become disillusioned. Those in Washington, she said, don’t understand the lives of the working people who keep the country running.

There have been “years where I feel completely overpowered to the point where I’m not motivated to take part,” said Murillo, who didn’t vote in 2024 but plans to do so in November. “That’s what happens when you feel discouraged or like nothing’s going to change.”

The economic strife plaguing Americans is clear in this rural, majority-Latino Central Valley congressional district, home to the state’s most competitive House race, the closely watched contest between Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democrat Randy Villegas.

Democrats hope the national economic angst will translate into big turnout in the midterm elections, but some in this region worry that years of financial struggle may depress voters’ desire to participate rather than motivate them.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) presides over a congressional hearing in March. The Republican is in a race against Democrat Randy Villegas that is considered a toss-up.

(Allison Robbert / Associated Press)

And Republicans, who rely on their party turnout beating that of Democrats in rural areas, also face the risk that frustration with the current political climate could dampen enthusiasm.

“Before they can think about Valadao, before Trump or Gavin Newsom or who’s going to run, families are concerned with the immediate: paying the rent, having the food on the table,” said Eliseo Gamiño, who heads the Central Valley Leadership Round Table, a coalition of Latino community leaders and elected officials. “You can’t be thinking about voting when your kids are hungry.”

Few voters who spoke to The Times in this swing district were decided on which party to support in November — or whether to vote at all. Such undecided voters will likely decide the election outcome, and persuading them is the key challenge for both parties as November nears.

Alexa Lopez sweeps up at closing time on a slower than usual Friday that saw one dress sold at Christina’s Fashion in Delano.

In a district that is the third-youngest in population in the country, the simmering uncertainty among Gen Z and millennial voters in particular could affect turnout or results.

Thirty-one percent of its voting-age population is 29 or younger, according to the Tufts University research center CIRCLE, which tracks youth civic engagement, making it among the top swath of House races in which young people could swing the outcome.

California’s swingiest district

The 22nd District, carved from the state’s agricultural epicenter, is one of fewer than two dozen toss-up races nationwide that will likely determine which party controls the U.S. House in the second half of President Trump’s current term. It is also among several high-stakes races nationwide that will test progressive candidates.

Valadao’s seat has long been considered a vulnerable one; Democrats added about 100,000 Fresno residents to the district under Proposition 50’s new map in a bid to help their chances. The boundaries include swaths of Kern, Kings and Tulare counties, along with a very small piece of Madera County.

“It’s going to be crucial in an area that is more purple, more bipartisan, where it’s very clear it can go either way … that these candidates make an effort to get those voters on their team,” said Brittany Martinez, a California-based Republican strategist.

Valadao, 49, who comes from a dairy farming family, is well known in the district and has repeatedly secured victory in close races, retaking the seat in 2020 after losing it in 2018’s blue wave. He saw a close race in 2022, then won by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.

His biggest vulnerability this time around may be his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included steep cuts to Medicaid. Local hospitals are bracing for funding cuts, though a carve-out may keep many valley residents from losing coverage. The district has the highest proportion of Medi-Cal recipients of any in the state, with 67% of residents enrolled as of 2025, according to the California Health Care Foundation.

Valadao spent part of the August recess touring the Central Valley for private meetings with local entities including a hospital, a housing program, a sawmill and a school district, and held a telephone town hall last week. Democrats have criticized him for not holding face-to-face voter events, including public town halls.

Democratic candidate Randy Villegas chats with residents during an August town hall in Hanford.

Villegas, 31, a professor and school board member who was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and is aligned with the Working Families Party, bested a Democrat backed by the party’s House campaign arm to win the nomination.

Villegas has banked on a more public-facing approach to win over swing voters — recently handing out popsicles from a pushcart he wheeled around a Labor Day event in Bakersfield, for instance — a strategy his campaign calls “going everywhere.” Republicans have criticized his record as too far left for the moderate district.

Both candidates have attempted to lean away from partisan narratives. Valadao rarely mentions Trump on social media and did not attend the president’s Republican convention in Dallas last week; Villegas has worked to frame the progressive issues he champions as an effort to help Central Valley voters rather than an ideology.

Trump carried the district as drawn now by less than 2 percentage points in 2024. Since then, residents say they have felt squeezed by housing, gas and grocery prices. The war in Iran has pinched Central Valley farmers — already struggling with water supply and other issues — by driving up fertilizer prices.

Ailyn Flores, center, picks up balloons for a party at Big Delano Discount store.

Tyler Stidham, 28, and her husband recently moved back to Lemoore from San José with their 1-year-old in order to live with family because they could no longer afford their own place.

“Rent got too high and having a family is expensive,” she said as the couple waited for their order from a food truck at the Hanford farmers market on a recent Thursday evening. They have cut out family trips and started meal-planning and budgeting to save money.

Stidham said she is planning to vote and hoping government leaders can make life more affordable. Her husband recalled a favorable impression of Valadao after once meeting him. Stidham isn’t sure who she’ll be casting her vote for.

“I haven’t done my research [yet],” she said.

Young voters said they felt frustrated waiting for a better economy that has yet to materialize.

“I feel like the government is playing in our face. I feel like everything is a show,” said Emma Woodward, 23, of Hanford.

The Sierra movie theater has closed down in Delano, Calif.

(Gary Kazanjian / For The Times)

A store manager at a coffee chain, Woodward bought a house last year to avoid throwing money at increasingly high rent payments, but it has been “hard to survive.” She got a roommate to help with costs, but the two of them sometimes find themselves using food drives for groceries. She has cut out “fun spending,” including concerts and travel.

Woodward said she wanted to vote in order to send the message to Congress that the economy needs improvement. She, too, wanted to research the candidates further; she leaned toward Villegas but was not yet convinced.

‘Whatever happens happens’

Valadao and Villegas must also battle to reach apathetic voters — those who may sit the election out or who are fed up with both parties. In one indication of voter fatigue, local organizers have found it a challenge to register new voters this year.

Dresses on display at Christina’s Fashion store after closing time on a quiet Friday night in Delano, Calif.

People who are unregistered often express mistrust in the government and the feeling that “nothing’s going to change,” said Biviana Camacho, 23, civic engagement program manager for Loud for Tomorrow, a youth organizing group based in Delano that runs voter registration events.

“A lot of folks have been in survival mode for such a long time,” she added, as the group worked on planning a fall event series on a recent afternoon. Their goal: 20 to 25 new registrations per event.

The group’s head of membership, Rosanai Paniagua, 28, agreed. “Here, there’s not a lot of hope because people haven’t seen what good policy could do for them,” she said. “A lot of apathy, for sure, because change hasn’t really happened here.”

Marco Estrada, 20, taking a break outside the Main Street barbershop where he works in Delano, said he wasn’t sure he could imagine anything Congress could do for him. He’s never voted and doesn’t plan to in November. His two co-workers said the same.

“Whatever happens happens,” Estrada said.

Valeria Valdez, a College of the Sequoias freshman, said she was planning to vote in her first election and said the government should help lower gas prices. The 18-year-old wasn’t sure, though, whether she would make a decision in the House race.

“It feels pretty far away from me, to be honest,” she said. “I just want to do what I can for our community and not focus on how corrupt the government is.”

That sentiment is part of what Villegas is aiming to target as he meets voters.

“It’s easy to feel cynical and apathetic in a moment where so many things seem stacked against us,” Villegas said in an interview. “But I tell people that … their vote and their voices do matter, otherwise we wouldn’t have billionaires and corporations spending millions of dollars trying to influence these election outcomes.”

A spokesperson for Valadao did not respond to a request for comment. Valadao said on a Washington Sun podcast in January that he “absolutely” worries about Republican voter enthusiasm, but noted it was a problem on both sides of the aisle. Earlier this month, he conveyed confidence about his race.

“I’ve won in these types of races. I can win again,” he told the Associated Press. “I think we should be fine.”

Inside Murillo’s market, business picked up as 5 o’clock neared. Murillo rang up tortillas, cuts of meat, and three-liter Mexican soda bottles. She advised a customer about treating a bug bite, helped a man wire money and cajoled a city worker about getting a sidewalk repair.

Congress should “definitely” be helping communities like hers, she said. She plans to research her voting options so she can participate in November. But trusting political candidates, she mused, can feel like a risk for voters.

“Whether they execute what they promise or not,” she said, “that’s shown with time.”