Government

Polls suggest the governing party could fall below 40 percent as voters weigh failing services.

South Africans are voting in local elections widely seen as a verdict on the African National Congress (ANC), the party that led the country out of white minority rule in 1994 but has steadily lost support over the past decade.

Polls opened at 7am (05:00 GMT) on Wednesday and close at 9pm (19:00 GMT). A record 29.2 million people are registered to vote at 23,696 voting stations, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). More than 1.4 million special votes were cast on Monday and Tuesday.

Voters are electing councils for the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district councils and 205 local councils. Those councils then choose mayors.

The ANC fell below 50 percent in municipal polls for the first time in 2021. In the 2024 national election, it lost its parliamentary majority and was forced into a coalition government with the Democratic Alliance (DA) and other parties. Polls suggest the ANC’s support could drop below 40 percent this time.

“Municipal failures have contributed to declining public trust and confidence in democratic governance,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter, “From the Desk of the President”.

Ramaphosa is due to vote at Hyde Park High School in Johannesburg, the presidency said.

Johannesburg is the biggest prize in this election. The country’s financial capital has had five mayors in four years.

The DA has fielded its 75-year-old former leader, Helen Zille, for the city’s top job. Her campaign stunts included snorkelling in a mud-filled trench that was flooded by a burst municipal water pipe.

A News24 poll put Zille at 36 percent, meaning she would need coalition partners, particularly the ANC, to govern. Zille told the Associated Press news agency that the ANC was “in free fall”.

This is the first local vote for former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which is mounting a strong challenge in the coastal city of Durban.

“We are going to start by taking back our country here,” Zuma told supporters in the city on Sunday, the AFP news agency reported. Durban has become a centre of anti-migrant sentiment, a prominent theme in the campaign.

Turnout may be a concern. Only 46 percent of registered voters took part in the 2021 municipal elections.

Coalition government is already widespread: 74 of the country’s 257 municipalities were run by coalitions or minority administrations as of February, according to the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.

Security has also been tightened. Police said 21 election-related cases have been recorded since Sunday. KwaZulu-Natal has 165 voting stations classed as high risk, the most of any province.

Final results are expected on Sunday. They are expected to shape the race to succeed Ramaphosa as ANC leader at the party’s conference in December 2027.

Kim Yo Jong refuses dialogue with US after denying responsibility for theft of more than $6bn in crypto assets from Binance.

North Korea has fired several missiles into the Sea of Japan, according to South Korea’s military, hours after Pyongyang denied allegations that it was behind the theft ⁠of more than $6bn in crypto assets from Binance.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday that it had detected the launch of several missiles from the Sondok area on North Korea’s eastern coast towards the Sea of Japan.

It said authorities in South Korea and the United States were analysing the details of the launches.

The tests marked Pyongyang’s fourth such weapons launch in a month. They came a day after North Korea denied involvement in the Binance hack, dismissing an FBI announcement that North Korean hackers were responsible as “a trite provocation”.

Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Friday that hackers stole more than $6bn in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record.

The FBI later said North Korean hackers had orchestrated the theft, attributing it to a hacking group known as TraderTraitor, which was also behind a $1.5bn hack of the Bybit exchange last year.

Early on Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said Pyongyang viewed the FBI announcement as “an extension of Washington’s invariable hostile policy toward” North Korea.

She ruled out dialogue with Washington until the US abandoned that policy.

“It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons,” she said. “The choice for peace includes dialogue, of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us.”

US President Donald Trump said in August that he plans to meet Kim Jong Un later this year, seeking to revive the bond he claims to have forged with the North Korean leader during his first term.

Trump said it was important to “get along” with Kim, adding that Pyongyang had 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons.

Previous rounds of talks between Kim and Trump in 2019 abruptly ended amid disagreements over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. In October, the US, South Korea and Japan again reiterated their call for the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula.

The call came as North Korea has accelerated its weapons testing this year, in what analysts say is likely a bid to increase its leverage in any future diplomacy with the US.

Its recent tests have included a submarine-launched ballistic missile, hypersonic missiles, attack drones, and cluster bombs designed to be carried by ballistic missiles.

On Tuesday, Pyongyang said it had tested a new cluster warhead for strategic cruise missiles the previous day, claiming it could destroy an area of 5 to 6 hectares (12 to 15 acres) with “high-density power”.

The latest launches followed a North Korean state media report that Kim had visited a naval shipyard building a destroyer and stressed the importance of a powerful navy.

Nearly two-thirds of California voters are worried that the Trump administration may try to halt the vote count early, stoking disquieting levels of election anxiety on the eve of the midterms, a new poll shows.

Those fears arise as the Justice Department continues its aggressive efforts to challenge or wrest control over state voting processes, including threatening to prosecute uncooperative elections officials in California, after years of baseless claims of widespread election fraud by the Republican president.

Among California voters, 63% worry that the federal government may attempt to stop the counting of votes in California and other states in the days following Tuesday’s election, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Around half of voters — 49% — are not confident that the state’s election will be free of federal interference, the survey found.

“Both of the items, together, I think should raise alarms for threats against democracy in California,” said Matt Barreto, director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

California voters also have grievances with the state’s ballot propositions, a slate of 14 measures that include new taxes on billionaires and funding for cancer research. More than 8 in 10 of the state’s likely voters said that this year’s propositions were worded in a way that made them hard to understand and that special interests groups have too much influence over which propositions appear on the ballot.

Those concerns were shared across partisan lines, unlike how Californians felt about the threats posed to integrity of elections by the Trump administration. The high level of fear in the state reflects the fact that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California.

While 58% of Democrats are not confident the election will be free of federal interference, 27% of Republicans feel the same way, according to the poll. Similarly, 85% of Democrats are worried about the vote count being halted, compared with 22% of Republicans. A majority of California voters not affiliated with either party also expressed fears of interference by the Trump administration.

“I think voters are reflecting the reality,” Barreto said. “For the past month, the president and the Department of Justice have been attempting to directly interfere and take over California elections and voters are aware of that.”

The Department of Justice has sued California requesting the state set aside some 20,000 ballots the federal government has flagged as being potentially from noncitizens. Federal prosecutors have threatened criminal actions against election officials who refuse to comply. On Monday, the Trump administration escalated its effort to discount the flagged California ballots to the Supreme Court, which rejected its request to set aside the ballots.

Over the weekend, Newsom sent a letter to U.S. District Court judges across California sharing his “grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified” and urging judges not to comply.

Newsom wrote that President Trump’s history of weaponizing the Department of Justice to carry out his partisan agenda supports “legitimate concerns about further attempts to disenfranchise voters and undermine election integrity.” Newsom said this could include an attempt to prevent the certification of California’s election.

Concerns have also been raised about the presence of immigration agents around voting centers and performing door knocks and street stops to try to identify voter fraud.

Court rulings have recently dealt a series of blows to the Trump administrations efforts to intervene in the state’s voting process. Nonetheless, distress over election integrity remains extremely high, according to the poll.

Fears of federal meddling in the election are slightly higher among voters of color; 64% of Black voters and 54% of Latino voters said they are not confident the election will be free of interference, compared with 44% of white non-Hispanic voters, according to the poll.

Voters of color tend to lean more liberal, but the historic and ongoing efforts to disenfranchise minorities probably also contribute to this disparity, Barreto said.

Black voters have been a target of voter suppression efforts from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era through the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said. More recently, the Trump administration has singled out Latino Californians, accusing them of being noncitizens and voting illegally.

Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, described the level of alarm over election integrity in California and across the nation as without precedent.

He noted that both parties are distrustful about different things, with Republicans focused on allegations of fraudulent voting and Democrats fearful that the federal government may attempt to overturn results.

The last time America saw extreme political polarization paired with widespread claims of illegitimacy over election outcomes was during the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, when there were widespread accusations of voter suppression in the South and of people voting illegally in the North, he said.

“That hasn’t happened really in the United States for well over a century now,” Schickler said, “so what we’re seeing now is really unusual, especially for a modern and long-lived democracy.”

Schickler said his highest level of concern with possible federal efforts to halt California’s vote count would be with congressional races. A handful of California races could play a pivotal role in deciding which party takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, he said current polling data do not indicate that a Democratic path to victory in the lower house will rely on Golden State voters.

Trump in the past has criticized California for being one of the slowest states in the nation to finish tabulating its election results due to its large population and high number of voters who mail in their ballots. He’s also complained about late arriving ballots. Votes processed after election day in California typically contain a higher proportion of Democratic ballots than those processed on election night.

In addition, to highlight the unprecedented anxiety many California voters are feeling, the poll also shines a light on frustrations voters have with the state’s ballot propositions. Among likely voters, 82% agree that the wording of this year’s propositions made them hard to understand and 82% also agree that special interest groups have largely taken over which initiatives qualify.

In addition, 62% of likely voters feel that there are too many propositions on this year’s ballot. There are 14 statewide propositions, with many voters also seeing additional initiatives at a county and city level.

“The initiative is meant to be an outlet for voters when special interest groups lead legislators to fail to respond to their concerns,” Schickler said. “But now most voters believe the initiative process is itself too beholden to special interests.”

In the last 20 years, California’s ballot initiative campaigns have become increasingly controlled by large corporations or union groups. Part of this is due to the fact that it takes at least $50 million to run an effective campaign capable of reaching the state’s 23 million registered voters, making it challenging, but not impossible, to run a grassroots campaign, Barreto said.

The poll surveyed 2,787 registered voters in California from Oct. 19 to 25 in English and Spanish and has an overall estimated margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Among likely voters, the estimated margin of error is about 3 percentage points in either direction.

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

Oakland, California – Protesters dressed as cardboard robots chanted and danced to a drumbeat as they protested against new data centres outside Oakland City Hall last month.

Their concerns largely focused on how the centres — which process large amounts of digital information — might strain the energy grid.

The result, they argued, would not only be environmental harm but also sky-high electricity bills for local households.

“Power prices have gone up so much in Oakland that some people are thinking of shutting off their power,” said Carlos Gutierrez, an activist for Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice group.

“And the city is planning to provide power to a data centre instead.”

Opposition to data centres is growing across the United States, as residents express concern about their rapid expansion.

More than 3,000 data centres already operate in the country, with more than 1,500 others in development, according to the Pew Research Center.

But the backlash is perhaps most striking in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, a region considered to be the heart of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

Major AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta are based in the Bay Area, and the industry’s growth has been credited with fuelling a local economic renaissance.

Data centres house the advanced computer chips and servers needed to run AI-powered services such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

But they also require 24-hour power and a large supply of water to cool their processors.

Even with such cooling technology, data centres are notorious for emitting heat, leading to an increase in land surface temperatures as high as 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit).

A midterm election issue

Concerns about the cost of rapid data centre growth, both environmentally and financially, have catapulted the issue into the discourse around Tuesday’s midterm elections.

In the final two months before the vote, at least seven Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Richmond, have passed temporary moratoriums on data centre construction.

They include Oakland, which passed a data centre moratorium on October 6, after days of protest.

Local politicians competing in Tuesday’s midterms have also used the topic as a wedge issue, to rally support among certain pockets of voters.

One of the most closely watched races in the Bay Area is for the seat left vacant by longtime Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. After 39 years in the House of Representatives, Pelosi is retiring at the end of the year.

Two Democrats are competing in Tuesday’s election to fill her position in Congress: San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Senator Scott Wiener.

Each one has staked out a different position on AI data centres. Wiener, for instance, opposes any ban on data centres.

“A blanket data centre moratorium could undermine AI regulation,” he told the publication Mission Local.

Chan, meanwhile, has pledged to seek a nationwide moratorium on data centres, at least until responsible AI regulation is put in place.

“Let’s start with a moratorium on data centres. Allow us to have that moment to regulate artificial intelligence,” she said at a debate in October.

Chan played a leading role in passing San Francisco’s moratorium in early October.

A poll from the University of Southern California showed Wiener leading Chan 47 percent to 41, as of mid-October.

Navigating public backlash

“Right now, data centre opposition is an issue that unifies the US public like no other,” said Shum Preston, a political analyst based in San Francisco.

So far, there has been relatively little opposition to the data centre moratoriums in local hearings. But he speculates that there may be several reasons for the lack of pushback to the bans.

Among them are the surveys indicating widespread public backlash to data centre creation.

An October CNBC poll found that 63 percent of registered US voters oppose building data centres within 16 kilometres, or 10 miles, of their homes.

“Data centres poll very poorly, and developers probably don’t want to put their supervisor friends in trouble ahead of elections. So they probably let this pass,” Preston said.

He also signalled that the short-term nature of the moratoriums may be a factor.

Certain Bay Area cities like San Francisco, Brisbane and Oakland paused construction on data centres for 45 days, with the option to extend the ban later.

Opponents of the moratoriums “will be more vocal when” the 45 days end, Preston said. By that time, the heat of the midterm election season will also have settled, he added.

“That’s when the hearings will get more contentious,” he said.

Not long enough?

Another hurdle facing the moratoriums is the lack of transparency surrounding data centre construction.

Supervisor Shamann Walton, who sponsored San Francisco’s moratorium ordinance, has argued that the city’s definition of “data centres” is outdated.

Created in 2001 — long before the AI boom — the city planning code defines data centres as “internet service exchanges”, a definition that may not accurately characterise the technology today.

Walton said the outdated language has made it hard for authorities to count how many data centres exist in the city.

Not being able to identify data centres can also prevent city officials from monitoring their power and water usage.

“We cannot use 2001 rules to regulate 2026 technology,” he said in a September 14 statement.

Another issue is the time it takes to carry out the necessary environmental assessments. The moratoriums may not offer enough time for a comprehensive review.

“Forty-five days is hardly enough time to document and study the impacts and then frame regulations,” said Roger Lin, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US environmental nonprofit.

He added that legal barriers limit access to such information from the data centres themselves.

“Data centres often have nondisclosure agreements, so even local air quality boards may not know the impact of data centres on air quality,” said Lin.

Supporters tout economic benefits

Still, AI industry supporters have touted the growth of the data centres as evidence of a flourishing industry, with positive downstream effects for US communities.

Anthropic, for instance, is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) that is likely to raise billions of dollars.

But critics warn that the company’s growth may not translate into an economic boom for the San Francisco Bay Area overall.

Instead, residents fear unequal economic growth that primarily benefits the wealthy. Already, San Francisco faces some of the highest and fastest-growing home rental prices in the country.

At a hearing at San Francisco City Hall, a resident vented their frustrations about the data centres to the supervisors.

“This city is less for humans and more for robots and billionaires,” the resident said.

In June, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood before a packed house of voters, rallying support for a new wave of candidates hoping to build on his progressive momentum by winning seats in Congress.

Inside Brooklyn’s historic Kings Theatre, the crowd answered chants of “Abolish ICE”, “Tax the rich” and “Free Palestine” with roaring applause, leaving little if any room for doubt about what the audience wanted from its politicians.

Within days, all three congressional hopefuls endorsed by Mamdani – Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier – had won their Democratic primaries, becoming the party’s candidates in the midterm election.

Lander, the former New York City comptroller, defeated Congressman Dan Goldman in a race in which Israel was the defining issue.

Avila Chevalier, a community organiser, unseated longtime Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Valdez, a lawmaker in the New York State Assembly and member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the contest to succeed retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.

Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier had the backing of New York City’s DSA chapter.

The candidates’ heavily Democratic districts mean they are likely to win congressional seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The June Democratic Party primaries effectively served as the main event for voters.

In the final hours before Tuesday’s midterm election, New York City – a place colloquially dubbed the city that never sleeps – is more politically sleepy, with canvassers a bit harder to find than they were in the final stretch before the primaries.

For the three progressive candidates, the past few months have been a test of how to turn bold campaign promises into policy they can actually deliver. The often slow minutiae of daily governance stand in stark contrast to buzzword-laden campaign slogans on the posters and signs galvanising their base of voters.

Unique paths to politics

The three congressional candidates’ platforms overlap on issues like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ending US military aid to Israel and establishing a public healthcare system dubbed Medicare for All. But their paths into progressive politics differ.

Lander spent years in the New York City government, most recently as comptroller overseeing the city’s finances. After losing to Mamdani in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, he backed Mamdani in the election.

But Lander’s congressional campaign against incumbent Goldman brought him national attention, with Israel and Palestine emerging as the defining issue in the race to lead a district with one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.

Lander has described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide and its occupation of Palestinian territory as apartheid. He also identifies as a Zionist who embraces pro-Palestinian activism, arguing that the positions are not mutually exclusive. Lander has long supported a two-state solution.

“It’s straightforward that some approach to more shared safety for Israelis and Palestinians and for Jews and Muslims and everybody else here makes more sense,” Lander said. “I also want to be able to listen across those divides and have thoughtful policy debates.”

Two weeks before Tuesday’s election, Israeli forces detained Lander in the occupied West Bank while he was volunteering to help with the olive harvest. Israeli authorities have since revoked his travel documents for a planned return visit.

“The main story I come home with is not the story of my detention or the revocation of my travel authorisation,” Lander said. “The main story that I come with is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank, which I just saw with my own eyes.”

Lander has also long called for ICE to be abolished, including during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Pro-Palestinian activism 

Avila Chevalier’s political rise was similarly shaped by immigration and Palestinian rights, though she has taken a more uncompromising approach.

After interning at a youth organisation in Nablus in the occupied West Bank in 2014, she returned to the US and became an advocate for Palestinian communities.

Her “Babies Not Bombs” platform calls for redirecting military spending, including aid to Israel, towards domestic priorities such as childcare and healthcare.

“It’s important for us to see our budgets as moral documents,” Avila Chevalier told Al Jazeera. “Our resources should be going towards the things that make our lives dignified and make our communities thrive – not towards war, not towards ICE or things that are harming our communities.”

Valdez, meanwhile, came to progressive politics through the labour movement. A former union-organiser-turned-state-assemblymember, she supports stronger labour protections, including federal legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to make union organising easier.

Valdez also backs national rent control and a government-run healthcare system to provide wider healthcare access than the country’s private-sector insurance model.

“Public programmes and entitlements have been under attack by the right,” Valdez told Al Jazeera as she exited a polling location in her district on the first day of early voting. “I think not just clawing those back but really advancing a vision for what those things should be will be top priorities.”

Abolishing ICE and ending military aid to Israel are lofty, ambitious goals, and neither is likely to be achieved without navigating competing interests in Congress and the White House. With the balance of congressional power potentially shifting towards Democrats in the midterms, the newcomers will have to decide which priorities to pursue first.

That means looking for more immediate wins comparable to Mamdani’s move to fill 200,000 potholes when he took office as mayor, according to progressive political strategist Nomiki Konst.

“[Get] on the same page about an issue that we all agree on and leverage that in the Democratic Congress because there’s no better time than the beginning,” Konst told Al Jazeera.

For Lander, one such measure is banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

“Maybe that restores a little bit of trust,” Lander said. “People say that’s gross that members of Congress trade stocks. At least this new Congress is doing something, you know, to show me they’re not just all in it for themselves.”

Lander also sees an opportunity to restore enhanced government subsidies that expired at the end of 2025, raising premiums for many people who buy their private-sector insurance plans individually.

“We can say we’re not going to pass a budget that doesn’t do that and force Republicans to vote one way or the other and see what Trump does,” Lander said.

For Avila Chevalier, an early priority would be her “Babies Not Bombs” agenda, redirecting funding towards domestic needs. Valdez wants to pass the PRO Act.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sets a precedent

The three would not be the first progressive New Yorkers to enter Congress promising major change.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her legislative seat in 2018 by defeating longtime incumbent Joe Crowley. Since then, she has occasionally worked with Republicans on shared priorities.

In 2025, Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation with Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, echoing a proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

The question, Konst says, is whether Mamdani’s endorsed candidates can turn ideological commitments into legislative results. Doing so will require compromise, including setting aside some priorities to advance others.

Avila Chevalier is under the microscope after calling for New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to resign over a man being shot in his car by ICE while his child was in the backseat. Avila Chevalier said she was later shoved to the ground by New York City police officers during protests following the shooting.

Mamdani reportedly appointed Tisch on the recommendation of Governor Kathy Hochul, whose support was important to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. An Atlantic magazine report suggested that her endorsement of Mamdani, whose more progressive platform included universal childcare and government-operated grocery stores, hinged on Tisch’s appointment.

“Everybody wants to have their agenda passed, right? I think being really thoughtful about when to hold fire, when to fire, when to be bold, when to hold back, and when to say what you feel so you’ll get the most support,” Konst said.

But Avila Chevalier said she is willing to work with anyone to advance her priorities.

“There is always something that two people can agree on. And that’s where I plan on starting because I think organising is about meeting people where they’re at,” Avila Chevalier said.

“There are so many folks who really want to see healthcare transformed in this country, who really want to see a moratorium on data [centres]. That is a bipartisan issue for so many.”

Al-Jawf has become a new focal point in the conflict between forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the Houthis, highlighting the strategic importance of the northern governorate.

A major counteroffensive has been launched by the Yemeni government army and forces loyal to it to capture the strategic heights east of the provincial capital, al-Hazm, from the Houthis.

The operations are part of Operation Dawn of Yemen, launched by the government last month to reverse Houthi territorial gains and restore state control in the country.

Al-Hazm has become a central part of this operation, with the city a potential launchpad for government forces against the Houthis. They have controlled the capital Sanaa and most of northern Yemen since the war broke out in September 2014.

Strategic defence lines

During the 12 years of war in Yemen, control over al-Hazm has shifted several times, with the Houthis seizing the city in March 2020.

The governorate remains highly coveted due to its expansive border with Saudi Arabia and its direct geographic links to five pivotal governorates: Hadramout, Saada, Sanaa, Amran and oil-rich Marib and close to the capital, Sanaa.

Al-Jawf also acts as a vital defensive shield for Marib, controlled by government forces, preventing the Houthis from advancing into the eastern regions. It is also a gateway to major Houthi strongholds in northern Yemen.

Field Commander Colonel Rabie Al-Qurashi said government forces have been able to win complete control over the strategic Huwaishan mountain range, east of al-Hazm city. He said it is the first line of defence for the Houthis in the eastern axis and control over the rugged region would give government forces the ability to disrupt rebel supply routes.

“Government forces succeeded in breaking that defensive format with partial control over the Al-Alam front road,” Al-Qurashi said. “The government advance represents a beginning to tighten the noose on the Houthis in the upper al-Labanat camp,” which is regarded as a vital eastern gateway to Sanaa.

Ali Al-Dahab, a military and strategic affairs researcher, said there are immense tactical benefits from holding this elevated terrain.

“The recent advances of government forces in Al-Jawf are a military transformation that serves the course of future operations for their arrival to al-Hazm city,” Al-Dahab told Al Jazeera.

“The government forces’ recovery of a number of heights there provides a military and psychological morale advantage and confuses the Houthis’ decisions, in addition to granting government forces monitoring, movement, and observation of Houthi supply lines and securing their own lines.”

Military spokesman Majed Abdullah Al-Nuzaili said on X that recent military operations against Houthi positions in al-Jawf were “inflicting losses on the militia’s capabilities”.

Desert battleground dynamics

The government dominates the vast eastern desert district of Khabb wa ash Sha’af, representing 82 percent of the governorate’s total area. The Houthis control the provincial capital, al-Hazm, and 10 other districts.

Security and political affairs researcher Brigadier General Ahmed Al-Awadhi stressed the importance of “continuous but not rapid” government advances in the area.

“The advances of government forces in Al-Jawf cannot be ignored or their importance underestimated,” Al-Awadhi told Al Jazeera.

“Control over heights or mountain ranges in the desert Al-Jawf governorate represents points of military strength regardless of their proximity to or distance from the governorate capital.”

The government forces advances in al-Jawf highlight a historical vulnerability for the Houthis, having suffered repeated defeats in battles in desert and open areas, he added.

The developments coincide with the Presidential Council’s appointment of Major General Amin Ali Al-Akimi as governor and military commander of al-Jawf.

“[His] reappointment… comes within the context of restructuring the theatre of operations and unifying the front,” Ibrahim Jalal, a Yemen-focused analyst told Al Jazeera.

“Hailing from Dhu Hussein, a branch of the Daham Bakil tribe, Al-Akimi possesses tribal and military influence that could help mobilise tribes, overcome divisions and bolster momentum on the ground. However, translating this influence into sustainable gains remains contingent upon unifying command and control, coordinating operations across all battlefronts, securing military and logistical support and strengthening anti-corruption efforts to improve the efficient management of military resources.”

The Houthis say they have thwarted advances by government forces in al-Jawf and Marib.

Escalating nationwide hostilities

Fighting has continued in other parts of Yemen as Houthi-affiliated media reported air strikes on an oil company facility in the Bajil district of Hodeidah, which coincide with fierce fighting further south.

Government forces repelled Houthi attacks in al-Aqroudh and on the Tur al-Baha front in Lahij governorate. Intense fighting continues in Taiz governorate.

The siege of Taiz City continues to strain medical infrastructure, with deliveries of food and fuel severely restricted. Civilians remain at risk from sniper fire from surrounding hillsides, authorities have warned.

Governor Nabil Shamsan said that hospitals are working at only 20 percent capacity, with 120 health centres entirely shut due to the siege.

“We urge the international community to secure at least one safe route between Taiz and Aden to enable citizen movement and the smooth entry of services, essential materials and goods,” Shamsan appealed to Al Jazeera.

More than 300,000 people have fled their homes in western Yemen due to the escalating fighting, leaving civilians highly vulnerable.

As Americans head to the polls on Tuesday in the much-anticipated midterms, the record number of voters identifying as independent could prove decisive for control of the US Congress and state legislatures.

Nearly half of US voters – as many as 117 million adults – now identify as politically independent, with the two major parties, Democrats and Republicans, jockeying for their votes.

At the same time, independent or third-party candidates win few federal or state seats. The Democratic and Republican parties have dominated US politics, from state legislatures to the US Congress and the presidency, for generations.

“The whole [electoral] system is built to frustrate the independence of voters,” says Rick Bennett, the former Republican Party chair in Maine, where he is running to become only the third independent governor in the state’s history.

Bennett’s candidacy runs headlong into one of the most stubborn contradictions in US politics: While millions of eligible voters reject Republican and Democratic labels, far fewer will cast their ballots for independent candidates.

“For decades, candidates outside the Democratic and Republican parties have struggled to achieve [a high] level of support,” political scientist AJ Simmons said. “[But] 2026 is shaping up to be one of the strongest election cycles for independent candidates in recent memory.”

Who are independents and how will they vote?

According to the Pew Research Center’s annual National Public Opinion Reference Survey, 44 percent of US adults identify as politically independent. This is in contrast to 29 percent who identify as Democrat and 28 percent as Republican.

But there is a caveat: Most self-described independents still gravitate towards one of the major parties. Independents who express absolutely no partisan leaning make up only about 7-10 percent of the total electorate.

These “true” independents are sought after by candidates because they are persuadable, the core of the coveted so-called swing vote in a deeply divided and partisan electorate and political system.

In the 2026 midterm elections, 52 percent of likely independent voters are supporting Democrats, while 39 percent back Republicans, polling firm Marist suggests.

Frustration with President Donald Trump is permeating the midterm electoral landscape, with independent respondents more than three times as likely to say their vote is mainly against the president, and 28 percent saying they are voting for “change”.

Why does the US have a two-party system?

The US does not legally restrict elections to two parties, and many local officials are not party-affiliated.

But for more powerful federal and statewide seats like Tuesday’s House of Representatives and Senate races, the winner-take-all electoral system and single-member congressional districts work against outsiders and can discourage voters from backing them.

Even substantial support for a minor party is rarely concentrated enough in one district to win a congressional seat.

Voters, too, can unknowingly reinforce the system.

Polling trends and data further suggest that voters who identify as or prefer an independent will often instead back a Republican or Democrat they see as more politically viable. Voters are also reluctant to support “spoilers”, who may peel away votes from one of the two major-party candidates.

Why do third parties struggle to win US elections?

Bernard Tamas, a political scientist at Valdosta State University who studies third parties, said that although laws are often blamed for keeping third-party candidates off the ballot, “there is very little evidence that legal barriers are undermining these candidates”.

The real barrier, he says, is money.

A total of $14.8bn was spent on federal elections during the 2024 presidential cycle, and the 2026 midterms are projected to surpass that, reaching up to $11.6bn in political advertisement spending alone.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), which heads the Democratic Party, raised nearly $252.3m during the 2026 midterm campaign cycle while the Republican National Committee (RNC) took in about $341m.

Unlike other democracies, the US “offers virtually no public support” or funding to political parties and does not set limits on campaign spending”, Tamas said. Independent candidates “raise very little money” and are less well known by voters.

Why don’t more Americans vote independent?

Lesley Shedd, a Republican strategist, told Al Jazeera that the surge in voters identifying as independents obscures their support for one of the two major parties.

“When somebody says they are independent, they really are a Republican or Democrat but they maybe don’t agree with the party on absolutely every issue,” Shedd said. “Or they [just] don’t want to feel as though they are part of the culture of the swamp of [Washington] DC.”

The real test for independent candidates is persuading Americans to vote for them, not just a “protest vote” against the system. And voters are reluctant to cast a “wasted” ballot, Simmons said, given the most competitive candidates are Democrats or Republicans.

There are efforts to support independent candidates. The Independent Leadership Council, launched in July by former Democrat-turned-independent Senator Joe Manchin, provides donors and campaign resources for independent congressional candidates. The project has raised more than $10m.

But the longer-term test, analysts maintain, is whether independent candidates can be viable across multiple races and election cycles.

Will third-party candidates influence the 2026 midterms?

There is currently one independent in the US House and two in the US Senate. None holds a state governor seat.

Bennett, the independent Maine candidate, is one of just 11 independent or third-party candidates vying for gubernatorial or US Senate seats whom Simmons expects to surpass the 5 percent vote threshold often used to gauge electoral viability.

Additionally, Simmons sees several ways independent congressional hopefuls could throw the midterm map into disarray, mainly in two key states: Nebraska and Montana.

He identified Nebraska’s independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn, a 51-year-old Navy veteran, as the “most likely alternative candidate to win” across the country, given the race has been deemed a toss-up by RealClearPolling, an election analysis website.

The Nebraska Democratic Party chose not to field a replacement nominee after its candidate withdrew, leaving Osborn as the principal challenger to Republican Pete Ricketts.

In Montana, Simmons sees another opening for an independent, though the race is complicated by the possibility of an unpredictable “spoiler” effect.

Seth Bodnar, a former University of Montana president and Army veteran, is running against Republican Kurt Alme for the US Senate seat. He is being backed by the Independent Leadership Council, which is also supporting California Congressman Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party to seek re-election as an independent.

Democratic US Senate candidate Alani Bankhead could siphon off support from the same centre-left and anti-Republican pool of voters that Bodnar draws from, risking a three-way vote and potentially leaving the Republican to collect the spoils.

“Montana is the second most likely,” Simmons said, adding that “if that were to happen, the Republican Party would be having an extraordinarily bad night”.

In Idaho and South Dakota, independent candidates are not forecast to win, but they are expected to make Republicans pay for treating those seats as safe, diverting money, campaign time and attention to races Republicans may have otherwise taken for granted.

The greatest impact of independents may be the pressure they have historically brought to bear on the major parties to “implement a new policy or govern more effectively”, Simmons said.

Election body says deadlocked result won’t be undermined even if foreign interference claims are found to be true.

The head of Israel’s elections commission has said the results of the country’s general election would still stand even if claims of foreign interference were substantiated.

“Our position is that even if the suspicions are substantiated, this would not undermine the integrity of the electoral process or the election results as a whole,” Central Elections Committee head Noam Sohlberg said in a video on Sunday, in which he appeared with the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, and the attorney general.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party had questioned the results after saying, without providing evidence, that Arab-led parties, which made significant gains in Tuesday’s elections, “stole” the vote and accepted funding from Qatar to do it.

Qatar has rejected the allegations, calling it a disinformation campaign.

Also on Sunday, Israeli police released two out of three political activists arrested before Tuesday’s polls opened. They were carrying envelopes of cash, allegedly to bribe voters, police said.

One was released on unspecified conditions, while another was ordered to remain on house arrest.

Police said the suspects were connected to the Arab-led Ra’am party, which won eight seats.

Its leader, Mansour Abbas, denounced the arrests as undemocratic and “an attempt to influence the election results”.

‘Orchestrated and organised campaign’

Main opposition leader Eisenkot on Sunday accused Netanyahu of launching an “orchestrated and organised campaign to delegitimise the results”.

Eisenkot has previously ruled out forming a coalition with Arab parties, but a deadlock in Tuesday’s elections means siding with the parties could help him form a government.

Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in Tuesday’s elections, while the opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, won 48, meaning neither side can form a government in Israel’s 120-seat parliament alone.

Israel’s three Arab-led parties, including the Ra’am party, won a record 19 seats.

A coalition of Arab parties with Eisenkot would provide a comfortable majority of 67 in parliament. However, for many in Israel, the idea of siding with Arab parties is politically unpalatable.

The results are due to be officially certified this week, after which President Isaac Herzog must nominate a candidate to form a new government.

Senator Chris Murphy, a fierce Trump critic who is not up for re-election in the midterms, is ‘alert’ after a stroke.

United States Senator Chris Murphy, a high-ranking Democratic legislator, has suffered a stroke but is “awake and alert”, his senior aide said.

Murphy remained hospitalised on Sunday after seeking medical care for numbness in his arm the day before, his chief-of-staff, Allison Herwitt, said in a statement.

She said he was “responding well to treatment” at John Hopkins, one of the country’s top hospitals.

“The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” Herwitt said.

Murphy is not up for re-election in Tuesday’s midterms that will decide which party controls Congress, but is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028.

A 20-year senator from the state of Connecticut, Murphy serves as a top Democrat on two powerful Senate committees: appropriations, which decides how US government funds are allocated, and foreign relations.

Murphy toured the Middle East in October, the first regional trip by a US Democrat since the US-Israel war on Iran began in February.

He has been a fierce critic of US President Donald Trump and the Iran war, pledging that Democrats will withhold funding for the war if they win the Senate on Tuesday.

He accused the US Defense Department of denying him access to a US military base in Qatar during his trip last month and has pledged to investigate Trump and his family for alleged corruption if Democrats win the Senate.

Trump said he was “really surprised” to learn about Murphy’s stroke, adding that “nobody wants to have that”.

The Trump administration’s online accounts are circulating images of a pumpkin carved with a sombrero design and a fake Halloween-themed background around a Black man apparently accused of food assistance fraud, in social media posts slammed by critics as racially inflammatory rhetoric.

Only days before the midterm elections, the posts coincide with the government’s sweeping campaign to show its aggressive immigration enforcement, and highlight efforts it says are needed to crack down on fraud to save taxpayers money — as rising healthcare costs and other economic stressors have made affordability a top voter concern.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted Saturday on X a photo of the Black man standing in front of stacks of what appear to be U.S. currency with the headline SNAP FRAUDSTER, an apparent reference to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. He is holding aloft what appears to be a bill set aflame.

“Some costumes come with a price tag. This one comes with a prison sentence,” it says against the backdrop of fake Spirit Halloween costume packaging.

Another photo posted by the White House on X on Thursday showed a pumpkin with the shape of a sombrero carved across it and the words “Spooky szn is here.”

The post by Rollins appears to be taken from an Instagram post from September 2025 by an account under the name Shawty Dred.

Earlier this month, Mercedes Reshard New, identified by the Justice Department as a social media personality also known as “Shawty Dred,” was arrested on federal charges for fraudulently obtaining more than $4 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in Georgia.

It’s not the first time the White House has been accused of posting inflammatory images on official government social media accounts.

Just over a year ago during the government shutdown, the White House revived a deepfake video posted by Trump of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a fake mustache and sombrero to accuse the Democrats of acting on behalf of illegal immigrants instead of U.S. citizens. Jeffries described the meme as bigoted. Administration officials played it on repeat in the White House briefing room, and Vice President JD Vance promised that the “sombrero memes will stop” when Democrats agreed to end the shutdown.

The NAACP did not respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the White House or Rollins.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has ratcheted up its anti-immigrant rhetoric and accusations of fraud, including against U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whose Washington, D.C., home was searched by federal agents earlier this month. Federal authorities are investigating potential fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork. Omar, who was born in Somalia, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

It also has taken a series of punitive steps linked to allegations of fraud in mostly Democratic-led states, including California and Minnesota, whose governors accused the federal government of targeting their states for political reasons.

Federal prosecutors said in a news release Oct. 21 that the influencer New controlled more than 350 fraudulent SNAP accounts under stolen identities between January 2020 and July 2026. He allegedly applied for his company, Shawty Dred LLC, to become an authorized SNAP retailer and used EBT debit cards to extract about $4 million from the accounts.

New’s Instagram account, which has more than 2 million followers, has flaunted his extravagant lifestyle, federal prosecutors said. Posts depict him flying on private jets, posing with Rolls-Royce vehicles in front of his “super mansion” and handling massive stacks of cash.

“Instead of this money feeding families in need, New, the social media personality known as ‘Shawty Dred,’ allegedly used the cash to bankroll a life of luxury,” Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta Marlo Graham said in the release.

New was indicted by a federal grand jury Oct. 7 on dozens of counts of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft, and one count each of SNAP fraud and illegal transactions with access devices. He was arrested Oct. 13 and remains in federal custody.

According to Fulton County, Ga., jail records, New has been arrested multiple times on suspicion of crimes including identity theft, insurance fraud, financial transaction card fraud, forgery and simple assault.

A federal defender listed in court records as representing New, Joseph Austin, did not return a phone message.

A new court filing has cast further doubt on the accuracy of a list of “likely non-citizen” voters that the administration of United States President Donald Trump sent to the state of California ahead of the midterm elections.

On Saturday, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), an advocacy group, submitted an analysis to the court conducted by two data scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

It found that more than four in every 10 names on the list were not on California’s voter rolls.

It also found that thousands of potentially eligible US citizens were incorrectly identified as ineligible to vote.

The Trump administration’s list, delivered to California in early October, had suggested that as many as 20,930 “likely non-citizens” were registered on the state’s voter rolls.

That list has formed the basis of a lawsuit, filed on October 15, that calls on California to sequester any ballots sent to those “likely non-citizens”, preventing them from being tallied as part of voting results.

The lawsuit is unfolding in the final days before Tuesday’s pivotal midterm elections, which will decide which party controls the US Congress, as well as key state and local offices.

Trump has expressed fear that, if his Republican Party loses its majorities in the two chambers of Congress, he could be impeached.

The Republican leader also has a track record of spreading false information about elections, including that his defeat in the 2020 presidential race was the result of a “rigged” vote.

He has often targeted California in his criticism. The state – the most populous in the country – is considered a longtime left-wing stronghold. It will elect 52 seats to the 435-member House of Representatives in Tuesday’s elections.

Already, Trump has accused California of “cheating” in its June 2 primary elections, after several Republican candidates underperformed, including Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt.

Under the US Constitution’s Elections Clause, election administration falls solely to the states, though Congress may pass regulations governing voting.

Critics, including California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, have cited that fact in their rebuttal to Trump’s lawsuit.

All 50 states already prohibit non-citizen voting in federal elections and undertake measures to prevent voter fraud, which is considered exceedingly rare.

Other states that have received similar lists of “likely non-citizen” voters have also found significant errors in the Trump administration’s accounting. Nevada, for example, found that none of the names included on that list were non-citizen voters.

Such errors have raised concerns that eligible citizens would see their votes denied if the Trump administration wins its California lawsuit.

Still, the Trump administration has threatened state officials with prosecution over the potential for non-citizen voting.

It has also vigorously pursued its lawsuit through federal court. On Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the complaint a second time, determining it unconstitutional.

“We decline the United States’s invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution’s plain text,” the court majority wrote in its ruling.

In Saturday’s court filing, the data scientists from UCLA’s Voting Rights Project found that 8,880 names on the list were not listed anywhere in California’s current voter files, a proportion of 42 percent.

Many other names on the list were either confirmed as US citizens or may correspond to US citizens.

“This review proves, at least as a preponderance of the evidence, that demands of election officials under criminal and civil threats, endangers the voting rights of plaintiff CHIRLA’s members and clients,” the filing said.

It was co-signed by the Democratic candidate to succeed Newsom as governor, Xavier Becerra.

The District of Columbia (DC) and the state of Virginia have filed a joint lawsuit to halt the construction of a large triumphal arch sought by United States President Donald Trump.

Filed on Saturday, the lawsuit denounces the project as “flagrantly unlawful” and “legally indefensible”.

It calls on the federal court system to bar construction before it starts.

Otherwise, the lawsuit warns, Trump could claim that pausing construction already under way would pose a national security risk, as he has done with other controversial projects in the past.

“This is not the first time that Defendants have rushed to dramatically remake the District too quickly for courts to intervene,” the lawsuit reads. “This Court should not allow this effort to escape judicial scrutiny.”

Saturday’s complaint brings the total number of lawsuits against the arch to three.

Trump has championed the prospect of building a triumphal arch, similar to the Arc de Triomphe built in Paris during Napoleonic times.

Trump’s arch, however, is designed to stand 30 metres (100 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. It would tower from the Memorial Circle in Washington, DC, at 76 metres (250ft).

That colossal scale has prompted outrage, particularly from veterans’ groups who fear the arch would block views of Arlington National Cemetery, a hallowed military grave site.

White House officials maintain that ground could be broken as early as next week, on or around November 5.

On Friday, the administration unveiled a 106-page proposal for the arch to be a 12-storey megastructure, featuring a winged bronze statue of Lady Liberty lifting an eternal flame.

The arch would include two mezzanines and an observation deck with panoramic east-west views, as well as programme spaces, offices and a “fire command centre”.

Trump has previously said the arch would double as a military hub with snipers and drone capabilities.

Construction on the arch would also result in significant traffic changes in the area, including rerouting traffic to nearby roads.

In Saturday’s lawsuit, Attorneys General Brian Schwalb of Washington, DC, and Jay Jones of Virginia pointed to the project’s disruptive footprint as a major concern.

“As soon as defendants break ground on this project, they will inflict irreparable harm on both the District and Virginia,” the lawsuit said.

It warns that the anticipated three-year construction project will stymie commuter traffic, slow down emergency vehicles and generate significant pollution, including “stormwater runoff into the Potomac”.

The lawsuit calls on the court to force the Trump administration to get congressional authorisation before any construction can begin.

The new legal challenge comes on the heels of an October 8 filing by Arlington County, which was the first governmental body to mount a legal action against Trump’s planned monument.

In that lawsuit, the county’s governing board argued that the project would cause “significant harm” to its residents and likely require changes to nearby flight paths.

The first complaint came in February, when a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian launched an effort to stop the arch.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing that case, and she is weighing whether to issue a preliminary injunction to temporarily freeze any construction plans while the court hears arguments.

At a hearing on Friday, Chutkan deferred an immediate ruling but signalled that she would be issuing a decision expeditiously.

She previously ordered the administration to give the court 48 hours’ notice before undertaking any activities related to the construction of the arch.

The monument has already received early approval from the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump.

WASHINGTON — Next week’s elections are widely seen as a referendum on President Trump, his team and his party, with most voters telling pollsters they seek a check on his power. But the midterms will also serve as a reckoning for one of the least productive sessions of Congress in a century.

A stunningly low 10% of Americans approve of the job performance of Congress, which has passed fewer bills and conducted less oversight than any of its predecessors in modern history, according to scholars of the legislative branch.

The biggest achievement of unified Republican control has also become one of its biggest liabilities. Deeply unpopular when signed, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has only grown more controversial, with most Americans still unclear on what’s in it — and those who do know largely disapproving of the law, which cut taxes for businesses and billionaires while adding trillions to the national debt.

A summer Politico poll found that just 8% of Americans believe the law has improved their bottom line. The bill cut billions of dollars for food stamps and over a trillion in health programs and Medicaid.

Two other significant bills passed by this Congress — the Epstein Files Transparency Act and a housing reform package targeting corporate purchases of single-family homes — ultimately became law over Trump’s opposition, leaving Republicans little credit for bipartisan wins.

“It’s not a partisan statement to say that the current Congress will go down in history as one of the most ineffective in history,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the Election Data and Science Lab at MIT. “It may not be the most ineffective, but it’s down there.”

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that congressional performance can be measured by several criteria, including the quantity and quality of legislation, its oversight of the executive branch, investigations of government and private-sector failures, and its defense of congressional powers and ethical standards.

By all accounts, he said, “the 119th Congress is an abysmal failure, perhaps the worst I have seen in well over five decades of immersion in the legislative branch.”

Senate pages walk through the halls outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol on Oct. 1, 2026. The Senate had completed its last votes in the middle of the night before going on recess through Nov. 9.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

A recent Fox News poll found that government corruption is voters’ top concern this year, surpassing even the economy. Yet the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to deliver meaningful oversight. The enrichment of Trump, his family, allies and aides has gone uninvestigated, while Senate Republicans continue to block legislation targeting insider trading by members of Congress.

It has been a running theme from Democrats working to unseat Republican incumbents, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York — slated to become speaker of the House if Democrats win control of the chamber — repeatedly characterizing the current session as a “do-nothing” Congress.

Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola speaks at a campaign event Oct. 29, 2026, in Juneau, Alaska.

(Chloe Anderson / Associated Press)

In Alaska, Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, accused her GOP opponent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, of doing nothing to stop Trump’s tariff policies or his war with Iran. Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio has attacked the Republican incumbent Jon Husted for his procedural attempts to end debate over legislation on the Epstein files. And Democrat Adam Hamilton has targeted Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas for voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that jeopardized funding to rural hospitals.

Defending the record of his majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has highlighted a decline in prescription drug prices, the elimination of “wasteful spending” on various federal programs and bipartisan housing reform. Only so much can be accomplished with a razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson has said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) listens as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lends his support at a campaign rally on Oct. 29, 2026, in Platteville, Wis. Van Orden is in a rematch from 2024 with Democrat Rebecca Cooke for the state’s 3rd District seat.

(John Moore / Getty Images)

Trump has vowed on the campaign trail that, if kept in power, a Republican Congress would pass a $5,000 dividend to each American, despite its thin record to date.

Critics of the speaker say Johnson’s deference to Trump — and relinquishing of congressional authority to the executive branch — has unilaterally ceded power, souring voters on unified government.

But Stewart, who also co-directs a voting technology project with Caltech, said Congress’ problems run deeper than its current record.

Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) speaks during a campaign stop at the Palmetto State Armory on Oct. 30, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. Graham is running about even in the polls against her opponent, South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

“Not only is Congress not pushing back against the administration, or even innovating in policy, but its members also don’t seem especially interested in serving their constituents on the small-ball aspects of representation,” Stewart said.

“It’s hard to say members of this Congress are connecting with their constituents as they did in decades past,” he added. “We’ll see if that lack of constituency connection will have an impact on the results.”

Democrats need a net gain of at least four seats in November’s midterm elections to take control of the United States Senate from Republicans, as voter discontent with President Donald Trump, the Iran war, and rising prices heighten the races in once-safe Republican states.

Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority, and a Democratic takeover seemed highly unlikely at the start of the year – before the US launched its war on Iran.

Here are the key races that could decide the control of the Senate:

Alaska

Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is seeking re-election against Democratic former US Representative Mary Peltola and an independent candidate who shares Sullivan’s name.

Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Four candidates are on the ballot, including Sullivan, Peltola and another Dan Sullivan, a candidate Republicans accuse Democrats of recruiting deliberately to confuse voters.

“It was a scheme. It was election fraud. Total election fraud,” Trump said. Peltola has rejected the accusations, saying the dispute is distracting from voters’ concerns.

“I feel like this is yet another diversion from the issue that Alaskans want to talk about, which is affordability,” she explained.

Peltola has raised $33m in October, compared with nearly $14m for Sullivan. Republicans have also spent more on the race, $42m compared with $38m by Democrats.

Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024, but recent opinion polls suggest Peltola narrowly leading over Sullivan.

Iowa

Iowa has been a Republican stronghold in recent elections, with Trump winning the state by 13 points in 2024. But his declining popularity, trade tariffs and the Iran war have put Republicans on the defence in Iowa.

The state’s agricultural economy has been hit hard by trade tariffs as well as rising fuel and fertiliser costs as a result of the strained oil supplies amid the Iran war.

Republican US Senator Joni Ernst’s decision not to seek re-election has left an open-seat contest between Republican US Representative Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Representative Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist.

Republican Hinson has called for an “immediate end” to the Iran war and said Iowans should not have to pay higher fuel or grocery prices as a result of it. However, according to Politifact, Hinson has voted against six resolutions seeking to end US involvement in the Iran war.

Turek has outraised Hinson $20m to $14m, but recent polls show Hinson with a narrow lead.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming costs, opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown and discontent over the Iran war have made this year’s race unexpectedly competitive.

Trump won the state by 16 percentage points in 2024.

Republican Senator Roger Marshall is facing Democrat Adam Hamilton, the founding pastor of a Methodist megachurch.

The race has drawn attention from Republican leaders, with both Trump and Vice President JD Vance campaigning in the state.

Agriculture is central to Kansas’s economy, and farmers have struggled with rising diesel and fertiliser prices as a result of the Iran war. Many have also expressed frustration with Trump’s tariffs.

Immigration has become another major issue. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in southwest Kansas have disrupted businesses. Even Republican Marshall has criticised aspects of the agency’s operations in his state.

Democrat Hamilton has outraised Marshall, $14m to $6m. Democratic groups have also outspent Republicans in Kansas, $28m to $22m.

Recent polls show Hamilton narrowly ahead.

Maine

Maine is one of the Democrats’ biggest opportunities to gain a Senate seat, as Republican Senator Susan Collins faces a close re-election battle in a state which voted against Donald Trump in 2024.

Collins faces Democrat Troy Jackson, a former Maine Senate president who entered the race in July after the party’s original nominee, Graham Platner, withdrew following sexual assault allegations, which he denied.

Collins has sought to distance herself from Trump, acknowledging during a debate earlier this month that she was not the president’s favourite senator and that he would not be campaigning in Maine.

She was among the Republicans who voted to convict Trump following his impeachment over the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Democrats say Collins only votes against Trump when it doesn’t matter, however. Democrats also hope voters will hold her accountable for helping confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, which led to the overturning of a federal right to abortion.

Jackson has faced criticism over his treatment of women, including his refusal to apologise for telling Collins to “shut up” during a debate.

Jackson has outraised Collins, bringing in about $26.9m compared with $25.2m through mid-October. Republican groups have also outspent Democrats, $76m to $40m.

Recent polls show a close race.

North Carolina

Republicans appear to have conceded North Carolina, where even Trump has suggested the Democrats will win. At a campaign rally last week in Greenville, Trump told supporters it was “crazy” that former Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was going to be their next senator.

Trump won North Carolina by 3 points in 2024, but Republican Senator Thom Tillis’ retirement made this year’s Senate race an open contest.

Trump recruited former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to succeed Tillis, but he has been unable to compete with Cooper’s fundraising, and Republican allies who invested heavily in holding North Carolina ‌have begun shifting their focus ⁠to other states.

Affordability has dominated the campaign as farmers struggle with rising diesel and energy costs amid the Iran war.

In eastern North Carolina, Kelly Spivey, who runs a community food pantry, told Al Jazeera that rising prices are forcing families to make difficult choices.

“They’re trying to decide if they’re going to pay for their medicine or they’re going to buy food or they’re going to pay for day care so they can actually go to work,” she said.

Whatley, meanwhile, has closely aligned himself with Trump, who told supporters at a campaign rally: “I just want you to go out and pretend I’m on the ticket because essentially I am.”

Cooper has raised $50m and has $9m in the bank. Whatley has raised $14m and has just $900,000 on hand through mid-October. Recent polls have Cooper leading by double digits.

Ohio

Democrat Sherrod Brown, who has longstanding ties to labour unions and working-class communities, is seeking to win back voters in the industrial Rust Belt state.

Brown faces US Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed to the Senate to replace US Vice President JD Vance when Vance left the Senate for the White House.

The cost of living has become a major campaign issue.

The winner of the special election will be on the ballot again in 2028 for a full six-year term.

Republican and Democratic outside groups have each spent nine figures on the race, with Republicans investing $232m and Democrats pouring in $118m.

Brown has more than tripled Husted’s fundraising through October 14, bringing in $68m to Husted’s nearly $20m. Recent polls show Brown leading by three to five points.

Texas

No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since 1994.

James Talarico, a state representative, could break the streak.

Talarico faces Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Trump won Texas by nearly 14 points in 2024. Yet Republican outside groups have already spent $300m to hold the seat after run-off voters nominated the scandal-plagued Paxton over ⁠incumbent Republican US Senator John Cornyn.

Trump endorsed Paxton even though Cornyn was widely believed to have an easier path to victory.

Leaked audio has exposed daylight between Trump and Paxton, who privately told donors that the president’s midterm convention hurt his campaign.

Democratic groups have spent $76m on this race. But Talarico’s campaign has outraised Paxton’s by $110m and reported $9.6m more in its campaign coffers as of September 30.

Musk has given $158m to a Republican super PAC to invest in Paxton’s race. Recent polls show Talarico narrowly leading or tied.

Georgia

Georgia was initially seen as one of the Republicans’ main opportunities to gain a Senate seat after Trump won the state by 2 percentage points in 2024. But Republican US Representative Mike Collins has struggled to gain traction against Democratic US Senator Jon Ossoff, a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Ossoff has ⁠outraised Collins by nearly $126m up to October 14 and began mid-October with $15.1m in his war chest, compared with Collins’ $1.1m.

Polls have consistently shown Ossoff leading, and Democrats narrowly lead Republicans in outside spending, $19m to $17.9m.

Michigan

Republicans are more hopeful about flipping an open seat in Michigan, especially after the Democratic establishment failed to get its pick nominated.

Progressive outsider Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated centrist US Representative Haley Stevens during the primary, putting him on a collision course with Republican Mike Rogers, a former US representative, in what could be the tightest race for a Democratic-held Senate seat this year.

Michigan, a key battleground state which Trump won in 2024, has been hit by tariffs affecting trade with neighbouring Canada and rising living costs, making the economy a central issue in the campaign.

The race has also attracted heavy spending from outside groups. A pro-Israel super PAC has spent at least $493,000 opposing El-Sayed, after spending $30m in an unsuccessful effort to prevent him from winning the Democratic nomination. The group could spend as much as $9m more during the general election.

El-Sayed raised $45m up to September, more than double Rogers’s nearly $21m.

Republican groups have spent $136m on the race, compared with about $70m by Democrats.

Most recent polls show El-Sayed narrowly ahead.

New Hampshire

Democrats are defending an open Senate seat in New Hampshire after Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement, giving Republicans an opportunity to compete in a state Kamala Harris won by nearly three percentage points in 2024.

Democratic US Representative Chris Pappas faces former Republican Senator John Sununu, who is seeking a return to Washington nearly two decades after losing his seat to Shaheen in 2008.

Sununu comes from one of New Hampshire’s best-known political families. His brother, Chris Sununu, served as governor until 2025.

Pappas has a substantial fundraising advantage, raising $24m compared with Sununu’s $6m.

Republican outside groups have also outspent Democrats, $37m to $20m, as both parties compete for the open seat.

Recent polls have consistently shown Pappas leading Sununu by five to eight percentage points.

Fabricated political polling has forced its way into the spotlight during the midterm election period in the United States.

Revelations that a small number of fraudulent firms have released fictitious results – some of which were picked up by news outlets and polling trackers – have raised concerns about how easily false information can acquire credibility.

Those datasets can be used to cast doubt on the electoral process. And when bad actors are unmasked, their existence can be leveraged to undermine voter confidence in election information overall.

The latest example occurred earlier this month, when Wedgewood Polls released a statement on social media admitting its statistics about a bevy of battleground states – like Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and Maine – were fake.

Wedgewood described its work as “an experimental project” designed to highlight the “vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry” in the US polling industry.

“Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology,” the firm said in a statement posted to its social media account, which has now been deleted.

It justified its false data as a test to see how easy it would be for fabricated polling to gain traction among voters and the media.

“The short answer: Far too easy,” Wedgewood said.

But Wedgewood’s admission came after its surveys had already circulated through the political information ecosystem, reaching prominent media outlets like The New York Times.

The incident was the second such scandal in the 2026 election cycle, following the exposure of another operation, Median Strategies, which acknowledged in August it had also faked results as a “short-term social experiment”.

In an increasingly polarised US political environment, the incidents have roiled a polling industry – and a public – struggling to adapt to an ever-changing information landscape.

How fake polls gained credibility

Wedgewood, which launched in June, published surveys covering competitive races across several states. Its results attracted attention from political campaigns, commentators and organisations that compile polling data.

The New York Times said its polling tracker had listed 15 Wedgewood surveys between June and October. The newspaper subsequently removed them.

In the wake of the scandal, it explained that the firm had answered questions about its personnel, methodology and funding before its results were included.

While the Times said Wedgewood’s surveys were not incorporated into the newspaper’s own presidential approval or national congressional polling averages, the case revealed a vulnerability in the process by which polling information becomes established as credible.

Polling aggregators help journalists and voters make sense of a crowded field of surveys by collecting results from multiple research organisations. Their value depends partly on their ability to distinguish reliable research from poorly conducted or fraudulent work.

Wedgewood’s success in passing some of those checks suggests that transparency on paper is not necessarily proof that research has been conducted as claimed.

According to FiftyPlusOne, a polling and forecasting website that investigated the firm, inconsistencies in the raw data and the technical identifiers associated with survey responses helped raise suspicions about its authenticity.

The investigation prompted Wedgewood to acknowledge that most of its results were fabricated.

Though Wedgewood has denied trying to mislead the public, some pollsters are not convinced, suggesting the group could was up to something more nefarious.

“We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data,” said data journalist G Elliott Morris, who was involved in FiftyPlusOne’s probe. “They are trying to cover up for their fraud with the ‘we were doing a social experiment’ excuse.”

How fake polling has impacted elections

The consequences of fake polling extend far beyond the polling industry.

Mallory McMorrow, who ran unsuccessfully in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, has argued that a Wedgewood survey showing her support in the single digits damaged her campaign.

McMorrow said the poll left her volunteers demoralised, and journalists repeatedly contacted her to ask whether she should abandon the race.

Donations, she added, also evaporated, with Democratic supporters looking to other campaigns to invest.

In a social media post, McMorrow described the poll from Wedgewood – and another from the firm Mitchell Research and Communications – as a “one-two punch” that “killed her campaign”. She suspended her Senate bid in July.

“By that point, we took a risk and we spend our money. We put our ads up. They were working. But the damage was done. And I was drowned out by outside spending and the narrative that we had completely collapsed,” she wrote.

Experts say McMorrow’s account illustrates a broader problem: Even when a poll does not accurately measure public opinion, its findings can still influence the decisions of people who believe it does.

Why it matters

The Wedgewood controversy demonstrates how fraudulent data can become ammunition in an already polarised political environment.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public tracked how discussion of Wedgewood’s admission spread across social media.

Initially, much of the conversation was concentrated among polling experts and people who followed election data. But the story subsequently gained traction among influential political commentators and partisan accounts.

Some posts focused on the fact that prominent outlets and polling aggregators had listed Wedgewood’s results. Others used the revelation to question polling more broadly, particularly surveys suggesting that Democrats were competitive in closely contested races.

The researchers found the controversy became intertwined with claims that polling was systematically misleading voters or understating support for particular political parties.

“Within 24 hours, the right-wing media ecosystem had succeeded in drawing attention to the story and setting some of the most salient frames: that poll numbers around the midterms, especially poll numbers favoring Democrats, cannot be trusted,” the Center for an Informed Public wrote in its analysis.

President Donald Trump, who has regularly made false claims about US election integrity, seized on the revelations to criticise the Times for including Wedgewood’s surveys in its polling tracker.

“The New York Times got caught,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Everything about The Failing New York Times is ‘ARTIFICIAL’.”

He also suggested the Wedgewood case would help his $15bn defamation suit against the Times.

“Our powerful Lawsuit against them is getting stronger and stronger everyday,” he added.

What can be done?

No laws exist in the US that criminalise fake polls outright.

Some advocacy groups and law scholars have argued that the publication of fake polls constitute commodities and wire fraud, warranting federal prosecution.

“Deterring this sort of fraud before it can happen – and raising awareness of it – is vital,” Tyler Yeargain wrote for the Missouri Law Review in 2020.

He argued that enforcement of election-related laws against fake pollsters has “not been fully utilized”.

“Prosecution would serve a strong federal interest,” he wrote. “The interest at stake is weightier than concerns over how fake polls can shade the accuracy of an academic endeavor in prediction markets. It is instead to deter other wrongdoers, the sort who would weaponize fake polls to manipulate elections.”

Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcasts in the US, said there has been “a significant surge” in fake polls during the 2026 midterms, urging networks not to amplify them. Otherwise, Carr said, they could lose their licence to operate.

“Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes,” Carr wrote on social media. “It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations.”

But the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, disagreed with Carr’s assessment.

“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong,” she wrote on X. “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”

Without a clear legal remedy against fake polls, experts argue the onus is placed on media outlets and voters themselves to evaluate the quality of the election data they see.

Mark Baldassare, the survey director of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), said there are ways to quickly spot which surveys are real – and which are not.

“Look for transparency,” Baldassare told PPIC’s Stephanie Barton in an interview. “A credible survey will list its mission, the purpose of its polling, and its sponsors or funders.”

“A poll guided by partisan groups or campaigns that is publicly released may have a message to relay to the public.”

Brazil has summoned Argentina’s top diplomat in the country to answer questions about right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, who fled first to Argentina, then to the United States, after losing Sunday’s presidential election.

On Thursday, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry called in Argentina’s charge d’affaires, Maria Emilia Cortes, sources inside the government told the news agency Reuters.

Argentina’s Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, however, has denied on social media that his government received a formal request for explanations regarding Bolsonaro’s decision to flee into Argentina late on Tuesday.

The circumstances surrounding Bolsonaro’s departure threaten to further strain relations between Brazil’s recently re-elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Argentinian counterpart, libertarian Javier Milei.

After Sunday’s election, Bolsonaro was given a deadline to surrender his passports. Officials ordered him to remain in the country as part of an ongoing legal case.

He is part of an ongoing investigation into a money-laundering scheme, known as the Banco Master scandal.

Investigators are probing a multimillion-dollar payment Bolsonaro received from Banco Master’s former head, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly to finance a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

The younger Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and called the case politically motivated.

A senator since 2019, Bolsonaro ran this year as the right-wing presidential candidate for his father’s political movement, the Liberal Party.

But after advancing to the run-off, the senator fell short by more than 4 million votes. Lula won Sunday’s race with 51.8 percent of the vote, securing a historic fourth non-consecutive term.

Bolsonaro, however, has refused to concede, though the Liberal Party has acknowledged Lula’s victory.

Instead, he made an unsubstantiated allegation of electoral malfeasance, pointing to a Supreme Court decision to extend voting hours on Sunday.

Both candidates’ campaigns had requested extensions, though for different reasons: Bolsonaro’s camp pointed to inclement weather delaying voters in parts of Brazil, while Lula’s party raised concerns about efforts to restrict public transport on election day.

But Bolsonaro argued that the last-minute extension had disadvantaged voters in regions considered right-wing strongholds.

After arriving in Miami on Wednesday, he declared himself the “legitimate president-elect” of Brazil.

He, his wife and two daughters had travelled from Brazil through northern Argentina, before boarding a chartered aircraft that passed through Ecuador to reach the US.

US President Donald Trump and Milei, both right-wing leaders, have been openly supportive of the Bolsonaro family.

The Brazilian senator later thanked Milei for his assistance, although he did not provide details about the nature of the help. A spokesperson for the Argentinian president described the journey as a rescue.

Bolsonaro, the spokesperson said, had escaped “from the claws of communism, which seeks to imprison all opposition figures”.

Trump, too, has suggested that Sunday’s election was “rigged”, though he declined to “take sides” after the result was announced.

The US president has previously issued sanctions and tariffs in response to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former Brazilian president denied his defeat in the 2022 election. He was convicted in 2024 of plotting a coup to prevent Lula from taking power and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Relations between Lula and Milei have been strained since the Argentinian leader took office in 2023. Milei has repeatedly criticised Lula.

The diplomatic dispute follows an earlier deterioration in relations, with the South American countries each recalling their ambassadors in August after a series of public disagreements.