united states

The small-market World Series in Major League Baseball wrapped up this week, with the Milwaukee Brewers winning their first title in franchise history.

The title triumph came 44 years after Milwaukee’s only other trip to the Fall Classic, when they lost to the St Louis Cardinals in seven games in 1982.

But beyond the memorable victory, the series’ television ratings made for underwhelming reading, raising questions about baseball’s reach and relevance in a United States sports market dominated by American football and basketball.

Al Jazeera breaks down the numbers and more:

Who played in the 2026 MLB World Series?

The World Series, the championship series of the 2026 MLB season, saw the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays and the National League champion Milwaukee Brewers compete in a best-of-seven playoff series.

At the end of the October 23-28 playoff series, Milwaukee were crowned winners, as they clinched their first World Series title.

Milwaukee’s 57-year wait for a championship ended on Wednesday after defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 to wrap up the Fall Classic in five games.

Why didn’t the 2026 World Series capture TV audiences?

While the final Nielsen ratings report is still pending, estimates show an average of 11.82 million viewers tuned in for the 2026 World Series across the Fox network.

Milwaukee’s 10-1 win at Tampa in Game 3 attracted the lowest audience, 8.33 million, while Game 5, in which Milwaukee sealed the championship, drew the highest with 14.22 million viewers.

The overall average is much lower than the 2025 and 2024 World Series, which drew 15.49 million and 15.1 million viewers, respectively, as the Los Angeles Dodgers won the title both times.

This year’s World Series’ underwhelming viewership could be linked to the two teams’ relatively low payrolls and markets – the Brewers’ payroll ranks 19th in MLB ($146m), and the Rays are 28th ($95m).

The Brewers also rank as the smallest market team in MLB, generating the lowest local commercial and TV revenue, while the Rays rank squarely in the league’s middle.

Hence, when the Brewers and Rays met this year on MLB’s biggest stage, it marked the first World Series clash between two of baseball’s smallest spenders in 35 ⁠years.

On the other hand, nine-time World Series winners Dodgers, who competed in the last two World Series, boast a star-studded lineup on a hefty payroll, featuring marquee star Shohei Ohtani, former MVP Mookie Betts, 10-time All-Star Freddie Freeman and others.

Those factors keep them in the tier 1 market size category – one that represents the biggest media and population footprints in the sport.

How does the World Series compare with other US sports?

The 2026 World Series’ viewership figures also pale in comparison to those of other major US sports leagues.

Basketball’s 2026 NBA Finals, in which the New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs 4-1 to end a 53-year drought, attracted a series average of 20.58 million viewers. Game 5 was the most-watched NBA Finals game 5 since 1998, averaging 24.54 million viewers and peaking at 33 million.

Elsewhere in international football, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, held in North America, also produced record numbers. Spain’s 1-0 extra-time win over Argentina delivered a combined average audience of 62.8 million across Fox and Telemundo, making it the most-watched football match ever in the United States.

American football, by far, is the most-watched sport in the US.

A Nielsen report found that an estimated 125.6 million viewers watched the National Football League’s Super Bowl LX, as the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 29-13.

NBC’s presentation of Super Bowl LX ranked as the second most-watched Super Bowl in history, behind the 127.7 million viewers who watched Super Bowl LIX in 2025.

The only major American sports league that performs weakly against MLB is the National Hockey League (NHL), a professional ice hockey league in North America.

An average of 5.2 million viewers tuned in for the 2026 Stanley Cup, won by the Carolina Hurricanes, who defeated the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2.

Why was the 2026 MLB London series cancelled?

MLB initially scheduled to host two games in London in mid-2026, with the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays pencilled in to play on June 13 and 14 at London Stadium, the home ground of English football team West Ham United.

But the plan was cancelled due to scheduling issues with the venue and baseball’s television partner.

West Ham played their 2025-26 Premier League season’s final match against Leeds United at the ground on May 24, leaving very little time to convert the field to baseball, which can take up to three weeks.

Furthermore, MLB was unable to schedule games at the same venue later in June because Fox lacked available broadcast slots as that period clashed with the FIFA World Cup.

MLB games have been played abroad on several occasions, from Japan to Australia, since it was first played in Mexico in 2000.

MLB is also working on grassroots initiatives in India, known for its affinity for cricket, and last week hosted MLBx, a fast-paced 3-on-3 baseball competition that brought together baseball and softball stars.

Are other US sports leagues also held abroad?

Yes, major US sports leagues have made strides in expanding their international footprints, regularly hosting regular-season games, exhibition matches and special events abroad.

The NFL hosts regular-season games abroad in locations including London, Munich, Madrid, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

Last month, the league expanded its presence with games in Melbourne, and the NFL’s first game Down Under drew 100,021 fans, making it the seventh most-attended regular-season game in NFL history.

With a large portion of the league’s player base and revenue coming from outside the US, the NBA also plays regular-season and preseason games in international cities like Paris, Abu Dhabi and Mexico City.

Over the past week, Washington and Tehran have sent mixed signals about whether their eight-month war is heading back to full-scale strikes or towards a peace deal.

On Thursday, the head of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, briefed US President Donald Trump on options for renewed attacks on Iran, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The US and Israel have drawn up joint plans to attack Iran after the November 3 US midterm elections, The New York Times (NYT) reported last week.

Yet on the same day, The Washington Post reported that Vice President JD Vance had offered to meet Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in person to negotiate an end to the war.

On Friday, Qatari mediators returned to Tehran for talks coordinated with the US, an official told Reuters.

So is Washington heading back to war, or towards a deal? Here’s what we know:

Why are there conflicting reports?

Essentially, Washington is preparing for war while keeping a diplomatic channel open.

The WSJ reported that the US has boosted air defences and munitions in the region and moved some troops away from bases vulnerable to Iranian retaliation.

Ten US military cargo planes landed at the Ovda and Nevatim air bases in Israel’s Negev region on Thursday, with more sent to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who said he had been briefed on the plans, called them “insane” and warned of a devastating escalation.

Can diplomatic efforts hold off a return to strikes?

Diplomacy has not stopped.

Vance’s letter, delivered to Rezaei through Qatari mediators on Sunday, proposed direct talks led by Vance, with Iran’s nuclear programme on the table from the start, according to the NYT, in a bid to prevent a renewal of strikes.

Whether it might have any influence over what happens next is a matter for debate. Rouzbeh Parsi, an Iran analyst who is an affiliated researcher at Lund University’s Department of History and Human Rights Studies in Sweden, described Vance as the “voice of reason” on Iran within the Trump administration, saying his signals have been “the least volatile and unpredictable”.

But he also told Al Jazeera that Vance’s position has “never proven to be sturdy enough to actually sway Trump”.

“Thus, while the optics with Vance look better than anyone else in the Trump administration, I doubt that they [Iranian officials] give the outreach much credence until Vance proves able to actually deliver something on his own,” he said.

Furthermore, Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that “Rezaei is just one voice among many” adding that the “reality is that decisions are made collectively inside the Islamic republic”.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security and defence analyst and Austria’s former defence attache to Libya, has a different view, however, telling Al Jazeera, “There is no doubt that the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] currently calls the shots in Iran.”

In February, Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the initial attacks by Israel and the United States, and his son became the new supreme leader, but Pusztai says he “simply does not have the influence his father did”.

“Without the IRGC’s approval, there will be no agreement with Iran,” Pusztai said, adding it is safe to assume that when Rezaei makes a statement or endorses a proposal, “it reflects the position of the IRGC leadership” and that the US was “absolutely right to negotiate with him”.

Pusztai said it is unclear whether Rezaei is indeed ready to make a serious compromise, but under sustained US pressure, Rezaei, who holds a doctorate in economics, could come to see that “Iran’s interests and the regime’s survival can be better secured without nuclear weapons and through a less aggressive foreign policy”.

“He certainly knows that peak oil is approaching and that time is running out for Iran’s economic recovery through the use of its oil revenues,” he said.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said progress depends on Iran’s seven conditions being met – including the lifting of sanctions, ending the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, guarantees to an end to US-Israeli strikes, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets – adding that the “carrot-and-stick approach has no effect on Iran”, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Vance, meanwhile, told Fox News on Thursday that Trump would “never” let the conflict become “a forever war”.

Which of all these signals matter most?

The diplomacy may say more than the threats.

Andreas Krieg, an associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Vance’s offer of direct talks “suggests that the Americans do have second thoughts” and that they are less ready to strike than they publicly suggest.

But he warned that Cooper, whom he called “quite hawkish”, could give Trump false confidence “that there is a military way out of it, when in reality there isn’t a military way out of it”.

“This idea that there is a short and crisp military operation to solve this issue is obviously an illusion,” he said.

Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the White House could be sending signals to coerce Tehran, but that “the better interpretation is the simplest one”.

He believes “the United States is getting ready to carry out substantial attacks relatively soon”. He said he does not expect Washington to accept what he called the unfavourable deal Tehran is offering “without another round of attacks”.

Pusztai said Trump’s main focus is now the midterms, making it “very unlikely that he will order another large-scale attack on Iran before the elections”.

“Starting in mid to late November, there could be a major wave of attacks aimed at advancing the American agenda,” he said, adding that the aim would be to weaken the IRGC enough to push it towards a deal on US terms.

Whatever the vote’s result, “in the short term it will not change much”, Musgrave said.

A strong Republican showing could encourage more aggressive tactics, while a Democratic win could push Trump to show his unilateral powers, including by attacking, he said.

Hasn’t this all happened before?

It has. Iran was attacked by Israel or the US while talks were under way in both 2025 and 2026.

“We’ve seen this pattern of behaviour before from the United States,” Hashemi said, describing it as “talking diplomacy while preparing for war”.

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched major strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, two days before a sixth round of US-Iran talks was due in Oman. The US joined on June 22, bombing Iran’s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear sites.

This year, the US and Israel attacked on February 28, two days after talks in Geneva that mediator Oman said had made “significant progress”.

A day before the strikes, Oman’s foreign minister said Iran had agreed to reduce its nuclear stockpiles to “the lowest level possible”.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera in September that Iran no longer trusts negotiations with Washington because attacks had come during previous rounds of talks.

Hashemi said he suspects “the same pattern is repeating itself”, with the US preparing “a massive bombing campaign in Iran, replete with war crimes like we haven’t seen before”, citing his reading of Murphy’s comments.

What is blocking a deal?

“The issue is mostly around sequencing and the lack of trust on the Iranian side that the Americans will actually follow through with their commitments,” Krieg said.

Tehran wants sanctions and the US naval blockade lifted quickly, fearing that a slow process gives Trump room to backtrack, he said.

Some IRGC hardliners do not necessarily see war as a bad thing if it tightens their grip on the Hormuz strait, he added, and “the Iranians have been prepping for this war for the last three weeks, so they are ready to fight”.

Krieg said he expects “nothing is going to happen until the 3rd of November [the date of the US midterm elections]”. After that, he said, the likelihood of war will “increase exponentially”.

Any new escalation would be worse than in February and March, he said, with Iran readier to strike critical infrastructure in Gulf countries.

He said the threat to the Gulf “will be unprecedented”.

With four days to go before the United States midterm elections, Democrats are leading in national polls as both parties make their final push for votes.

Meanwhile, a legal dispute threatens to delay the Senate result in Alaska, and President Donald Trump has cancelled two weekend rallies in favour of campaigning by phone.

Here’s what you need to know.

What do the latest US midterm polls say?

Democrats lead Republicans by 51.4 percent to 43.2 percent, according to RealClearPolling, with a difference of 8.2 percentage points.

Charles Franklin, professor of law and public policy and director of the Marquette Law School Poll in the US, said Trump’s declining approval ratings and economic concerns are alarming Republicans.

The latest Marquette Law School poll, conducted in Wisconsin from October 14 to October 22 and released on October 28, put Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent and disapproval at 61 percent.

Only 16 percent of respondents said they were better off financially than a year ago, while 42 percent said they were worse off and another 42 percent said things were about the same.

“Democrats are more enthusiastic and more certain they will vote,” Franklin told Al Jazeera.

“That is giving Democrats an important edge, and reflects Republican disappointment in current national conditions,” he added.

In Arizona, where voters are experiencing increasing living expenses, a retiree told Al Jazeera that the cost of groceries had become a major concern.

“We’re retired, and every time we go to the grocery store, it makes me wonder what the heck is going on,” the voter said.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico is polling at 49 percent against Republican Ken Paxton’s 43 percent, according to a CNN survey released on Thursday. In Michigan, the same pollster found Democrat Abdul El-Sayed ahead of Republican Mike Rogers, 49 percent to 42 percent.

However, Franklin warned: “Polls are not perfect predictions of outcomes.

“We could see those close races go either way, either due to polling errors or due to voters moving just a little more in one direction or the other.”

In Alaska, however, there is also a complication: a legal dispute that could delay the result of a Senate race.

What is happening in Alaska’s Senate race?

The battle for Alaska’s seat could continue in court after ballots close on November 3. The dispute centres on two candidates named Dan Sullivan: the incumbent Republican senator and an independent candidate with the same name, who is also registered as a Republican.

Trump has accused Democrats of recruiting an independent candidate to confuse voters and take support away from the Republican senator.

“It was a scheme. It was an election fraud. Total election fraud,” Trump said.

The Justice Department has taken legal action over the dispute, while Democrat Mary Peltola denied the accusations.

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

Al Jazeera’s US correspondent Alan Fisher said the dispute could have consequences beyond Alaska if the Senate’s control depends on the result.

“If this becomes the key seat in the battle for the Senate, we might not actually know who has control there for several days, maybe even weeks after November 3,” Fisher said.

What has happened on the campaign trail in the past 24 hours?

Trump travelled to South Carolina to campaign for Republican senator Darline Graham – sister of the late Lindsey Graham – who is running against Annie Andrews in a closely contested race.

In Rock Hill, Trump encouraged voters to cast their ballots and cautioned his supporters not to take the election outcome for granted. About Graham, Trump said that she was in the lead but that he still had to campaign there. “In politics you never know, right? So you got to get out and vote.”

He also addressed his supporters directly and asked the crowd to pretend that he was on the ballot.

“And I am on the ballot because all of these things that we’ve done, all of these incredible successes that we have,” he added.

In Texas, Vice President JD Vance attended a rally in Weatherford, near Dallas, alongside Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, as Republicans called on supporters to vote.

“Texas ain’t surrendering. Texas is not becoming California. It’s going to stay Texas, ain’t that right?” Vance told supporters.

Well-known Democrats have also joined the campaign trail.

On Wednesday, former President Barack Obama gave a speech in Georgia supporting Senator Jon Ossoff, criticising Trump’s management of the economy and his approach to the war with Iran.

When Al Jazeera asked about Obama’s visit, Ossoff’s Republican opponent, Mike Collins, said it showed “the desperation of Jon Ossoff because he knows he’s losing”.

“If he was winning so big, he wouldn’t have brought anybody in,” Collins said.

Democrats also campaigned in Texas and Georgia on Thursday.

In Dallas, Senate candidate James Talarico held a rally as part of his final campaign tour, while former Vice President Kamala Harris joined Ossoff at Clark Atlanta University, urging young people to vote.

Harris also campaigned in Macon, Georgia, where she criticised the Trump administration over rising living costs.

“We have a moment now to turn pain into purpose,” Harris told Democratic volunteers. Harris also urged supporters to participate in local and statewide contests.

Later, at Clark Atlanta University, she asked students to stay engaged.

“Don’t overlook those races, because those are the folks who make decisions about your life every day,” she said.

What happens next on the US midterms campaign trail?

Trump has cancelled weekend scheduled appearances in Kansas and Iowa, replacing them with telephone rallies across nearly 20 states in the final days before Tuesday’s elections.

Trump had been set to appear in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters said the change would allow Trump to reach more voters than he could with in-person appearances.

“Voters across the country want to hear from President Trump before Election Day, and this 72-hour sprint will be a huge boost in the closing days,” Gruters said.

Asked about the cancellations on Thursday, Trump questioned the need to travel to Kansas, where Republican Senator Roger Marshall is facing Democrat Adam Hamilton.

“I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” Trump said.

When a Reuters reporter asked whether the decision had anything to do with fatigue from travelling, Trump rejected the suggestion. “I feel perfect,” he said, before insulting the reporter.

Trump is still scheduled to hold a rally at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday at 23:00 GMT.

At the same time, Harris is due to address the Fulton County Democratic Party’s Fulton Forward dinner in Atlanta, Georgia.

Vance had also planned a news conference with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in St Cloud, Minnesota, on Friday, but the visit was cancelled on Thursday. No reason was immediately given.

US District Judge Richard Stearns sided with 25 states and the District of Columbia which sued the administration.

A federal judge has ruled against enforcing a new rule by the administration of US President Donald Trump that would require chronically ill people on Medicaid, a public health insurance programme for low-income individuals, to prove themselves “medically frail” to qualify for work exemptions.

US District Judge Richard Stearns blocked the rule on Thursday, siding with 25 states and the District of Columbia, which had sued the Trump administration in June over the change, arguing that it unlawfully limits exemptions for people with serious medical conditions.

The law says the definition of medically frail must include people who are blind or disabled, have substance use disorders or disabling mental disorders, have certain disabilities that significantly impair daily activities, or have serious or complex medical conditions.

‘Significantly impair’ abilities

But the administration’s rule went further, requiring people in those categories to show that their conditions also “significantly impair” their ability to comply with the law’s work requirements.

The plaintiffs argued that the stricter rule would prevent eligible Americans from accessing the care they need, and that it oversteps the law’s text.

“The states have met their burden of showing irreparable harm for which monetary damages would provide inadequate compensation – they face the burden of costly and intensive alterations to their eligibility verification systems,” Stearns said in his 16-page ruling.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that adopted the rule, declined to comment.

Medicaid is a public health insurance programme for low-income people, funded by state and federal governments.

Two restrictions upheld

Starting January 1, 2027, Medicaid expansion enrollees aged 19 to 64 must show that they work or do community service at least 80 hours a month, or are in school at least half the time. There are exceptions for those considered medically frail or in addiction treatment programmes, among others.

Notably, while the ruling will make it easier for some Medicaid recipients with qualifying medical conditions to obtain an exemption from the new work requirements, Stearns’s decision does not strike down the work requirements as unlawful.

Stearns serves in the District of Massachusetts and was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

His ruling upheld two other federal restrictions on how states can verify medical frailty that the states and the District of Columbia had also contested.

The updated lawsuit cites a new report that Democratic operatives recruited a competitor to confuse voters and unseat a Republican incumbent.

The United States Department of Justice has filed a revised lawsuit seeking to decertify the results of a Senate race in the state of Alaska if Republican incumbent Dan S Sullivan loses narrowly.

The updated lawsuit on Thursday comes just days before the November 3 midterm election, which will determine control of Congress.

The complaint accuses Democrats of trying to confuse voters by placing a candidate with the same name as Sullivan on the ballot.

Alaska’s Senate race is one of seven key toss-ups that will likely decide whether Republicans keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.

Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is seeking to unseat Sullivan, a Republican ally of US President Donald Trump.

But a New York Times report on Wednesday alleged that members of Peltola’s campaign helped recruit a retired teacher, Dan J Sullivan Jr, to run for the Senate seat as a spoiler candidate, designed to draw votes away from the incumbent.

The Times report prompted a renewed legal push under the Trump administration to bar Alaska from certifying its election results, should Senator Sullivan lose.

The Department of Justice issued 40 subpoenas and document preservation requests as part of the revised complaint, the Reuters news agency reported.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy also ordered a criminal investigation into the allegations. Peltola’s campaign has denied involvement in Dan J Sullivan Jr’s bid for the Senate.

Prosecutors, however, have accused the Democrat and her allies of playing partisan tricks – and undermining voters as a result.

“They orchestrated his sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters and getting Peltola elected,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in their amended complaint.

But the Justice Department’s lawsuit has raised concerns about election integrity and federal meddling.

Under the US Constitution, election administration falls to the states, not the presidency.

In June, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that Dan J Sullivan Jr could compete in the midterms, and the state’s election office has already taken steps to reduce confusion between the two Sullivans.

Recruiting candidates to split an opponent’s vote – a practice known as ballot stacking – is also generally considered to be legal and has been used by both parties in Alaska.

Critics have been sceptical of the Justice Department’s bid to pause the certification of Alaska’s Senate results if Senator Sullivan does not win re-election, noting it would be impossible to divine voter intent based on the final tally alone.

Justin Levitt, a former Department of Justice official under President Joe Biden, also questioned what legal authority the federal government had to get involved in the case.

“I don’t know what they’re putting out subpoenas to investigate because I don’t know what federal violations are implicated that DOJ would have jurisdiction over,” Levitt told the Associated Press news agency.

“Sure makes it seem like the point of the investigation is to become the story.”

Democrats and Republicans are locked in tight races nationwide that will determine which party holds a majority in the US Senate for the remainder of Trump’s second term in office.

Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the legislature’s upper chamber, with 53 out of 100 seats.

Democratic candidates are hoping to win seats by capitalising on Trump’s deep unpopularity and frustration over the cost-of-living crisis.

Trump has suggested he may not accept the midterm results if his party loses its majorities in Congress, and he has pushed false claims of widespread voter fraud.

The Justice Department has also attempted to challenge the voting process in several states, including California.

With only days left until the 2026 midterm elections, United States President Donald Trump has announced he will scale back his packed rally schedule, cancelling scheduled appearances in Iowa and Kansas.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) confirmed the cancellations in a statement on Thursday, unveiling a slate of “tele-rallies” to replace the cancelled events.

RNC Chairman Joe Gruters argued that the virtual appearances will be more efficient, reaching more voters than Trump otherwise could with on-the-ground stops.

“Voters across the country want to hear from President Trump before Election Day, and this 72-hour sprint will be a huge boost in the closing days,” Gruters said.

The tele-rallies will be broadcast to nearly 20 states, including battlegrounds like Michigan, Alaska, Texas and Iowa, where competitive races are unfolding for the US Senate.

The RNC statement added that further events may be announced in the coming days.

Trump’s rally on Friday in Daytona Beach, Florida – some 320 kilometres (200 miles) up the coast from his Mar-a-Lago resort – will proceed as planned.

Less than five days remain until the midterm elections on November 3, which will decide the composition of Congress, as well as key state and local offices.

Whichever party controls Congress will shape Trump’s legislative agenda during the final two years of his second term.

Trump has also expressed concern that the Democratic Party might push to impeach him for a third time if it wins majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Currently, the Republican Party holds narrow majorities in both chambers. In the Senate, the party holds 53 seats out of 100. In the House, it has 218 seats, with all 435 offices up for grabs this election cycle.

The Senate, meanwhile, will see only about a third of its offices on the midterm ballot. Unlike in the House, where terms only last two years, senators are elected to six-year time spans, and their elections are staggered across different election years, to allow for greater stability.

Political forecasters have predicted Democrats have an advantage this midterm election cycle, citing Trump’s slumping poll numbers and voter blowback over cost-of-living issues, foreign policy and other concerns.

Harvard University’s ElectIt election forecasting model, for instance, has estimated that Democrats have a 94 percent chance of taking control of the House.

The race for the Senate, however, will be more difficult, with fewer seats available to win.

Trump has placed himself at the centre of the Republican strategy to defend the party’s congressional majorities. To motivate his base of support, he has repeatedly encouraged voters with the phrase, “Pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Midterm elections occur halfway through a president’s term, and they are often considered a reflection of a president’s popularity.

At 80 years old, however, Trump will be the oldest president by the time his term concludes, and his health has been a concern.

Since starting his second term, the Republican leader has been photographed with bruising on his hands, sparking speculation about any undisclosed medical conditions he may have.

After concluding a rally in South Carolina on Thursday, reporters inquired about his health.

“Mr President, you’ve been doing a lot of travel. We’ve been doing a lot of travel with you. How are you feeling? How’s your health?” a reporter from the news agency Reuters asked on the tarmac.

Trump, at first, dodged the question, focusing instead on his optimism about the Republican Party’s prospects in the election.

“We’re going to have a strong Tuesday night,” Trump said.

But the reporter continued with his line of questioning: “So you’re not going to Kansas has nothing to do with you being sick of travelling?” That prompted an irate reply from Trump, who lashed out.

“Oh, you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick,” Trump said, as he proceeded to insult the reporter’s weight.

“You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.”

During his remarks to the reporter, Trump also questioned the need to visit Salina, Kansas, as he had planned to do on Saturday. “I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” the president said.

Kansas, normally a Republican stronghold, has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

But this election cycle, Republican Senator Roger Marshall is facing a tight race with Democrat Adam Hamilton, the pastor of a megachurch.

On Thursday, the news outlet CNN released a poll showing Hamilton up by four percentage points, leading with 49 percent support to Marshall’s 45 percent.

An Icelandic web company, FlokiNET, has defended the data’s publication as satisfying a ‘legitimate’ public interest.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has asked an Icelandic web hosting company to take down a site with information about tens of thousands of its employees.

On Thursday, the Icelandic company FlokiNET posted a letter it received from the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox, on behalf of DHS.

The letter accused FlokiNET of violating its terms of service by publishing a “stolen” employee dataset and asked it to “remove or disable” the information.

“The content is live and places more than 40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking, and physical harm,” the letter said.

FlokiNET said the letter concerned one domain, icepi.cx, which has compiled information about employees from a range of DHS agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Those agencies have come under intense scrutiny since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign in 2025.

But the Trump administration has often refused to identify DHS agents involved in specific operations, citing safety risks.

Though FlokiNET said it refused to comply with DHS’s request, it noted that the website’s registrar ultimately suspended the domain. The employee information has since moved to a different domain.

In a statement posted online, FlokiNET defended its decision not to remove the site.

“Federal officers carrying out an enforcement programme are not private individuals while they are carrying it out,” the company said. “The public has a legitimate interest in knowing who is doing that work, under whose authority, and in which office.”

The database was first posted online on Wednesday by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a group that showcases leaked government data.

In the past, DDoSecrets has released emails from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as information from the Israeli Ministry of Justice and police departments in the US.

A hacker group calling itself the “Department of Peace” has claimed responsibility for obtaining and sharing the DHS data.

Since the database was first published, other groups have spread the information elsewhere, including on sites like icepi.cx. As a result, the information is unlikely to be entirely scrubbed from the internet.

The Trump administration, however, has taken an aggressive approach to online platforms purporting to contain information about ICE employees and other agents involved in immigration operations.

Last year, for instance, the US Department of Justice pressured tech giants like Apple to remove apps that track ICE agents, including one called ICEBlock.

The move sparked backlash from Democrats and free-speech advocates, who argued that the public has a right to report on ICE’s movements.

“Blocking access to these apps at the request of the federal government raises the distinct possibility that Apple is working with government to violate its customers’ First Amendment right to record and report on the activities of their government,” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter last year, asking Apple to review its decision.

Immigration agents, meanwhile, have taken several steps to conceal their identities during operations, including wearing face masks or street clothes.

That lack of transparency has spurred criticism from human rights groups and immigration advocates, who argue that they have little recourse to pursue allegations of excessive force or impropriety during ICE raids.

Since Trump was sworn in for a second term, at least 25 people have faced gunfire from immigration agents. Six of the shootings have resulted in deaths.

Other cases have involved alleged violations of civil liberties – including unlawful arrests and racial profiling – as well as controversial tactics like car ramming and tackling.

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek” and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.

Stewart died on Wednesday in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said in a statement on Thursday.

Although best known for his film and television roles, Stewart spent much of his career onstage, performing Shakespeare and other classics.

His career included performances as Claudius and Macbeth, a one-man adaptation of “A Christmas Carol”, and West End and Broadway productions of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” alongside longtime friend Ian McKellen.

Stewart earned some of the best reviews of his career for his 2007 portrayal of Macbeth, including his only Tony Award nomination. The Times of London described his Macbeth performance as “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humour”.

“Nearly 50 years I’ve waited,” Stewart told the Associated Press news agency in 2008. “I learned it when I was 14. I memorized all the soliloquies just because I thought they were great. And they stuck, so I didn’t have to learn those bits of the play, which is a blessing, because learning lines has now become the one curse of this job.”

From working-class Yorkshire to Shakespeare

Raised in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, a working-class corner of northern England, the future 24th-century commander of a starship grew up without a bathroom in his house.

He joined an amateur drama group at 12 and, as a teenager, memorised Shakespeare for fun. A scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School helped launch his acting career.

Stewart, who developed alopecia at a young age, had been bald since he was 19.

His childhood was also marked by domestic violence. His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, was prone to outbursts of “repeated violence against my mother,” as Stewart wrote in a newspaper piece. “Violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”

Stewart later became a patron of Refuge, a charity supporting survivors of domestic abuse.

From Shakespeare to Captain Picard

Stewart spent 14 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing everyone from Mark Antony and Henry IV to Shylock and Oberon.

“People who were not in the company would say to me, ‘Give it a break. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?’” he told the AP. “Telly?”

He eventually left and appeared in the 1981 film “Excalibur”. In 1987, shortly after performing in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, he was offered a role in a science fiction series.

“I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail,” he said.

But “Star Trek: The Next Generation” ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes. Stewart became known worldwide as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, whose command, “Make it so”, became one of the show’s best-known lines.

Stewart also played Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men, beginning with the 2000 film “X-Men”. He returned to the role in several sequels, including 2017’s “Logan”, alongside Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

Stewart died just days after Walter Koenig, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original “Star Trek” series, which aired from 1966 to 1969.

Queen Elizabeth II knighted Stewart in June 2010. He also served as an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.

Faculty vote will continue until next Friday and could send message that school’s president has lost their confidence.

Cornell University has begun a no-confidence vote for the school’s leadership after an alleged gang rape prompted public outcry over sexual assault on college campuses and scrutiny over the university’s handling of the case.

Faculty members started the no-confidence vote on Thursday that is expected to continue until November 6. The initiative is non-binding, but could send a message that president Michael Kotlikoff has lost the confidence of the school’s faculty.

“Hundreds of students, staff, faculty and alumni approached the sponsors of this resolution to emphasize to us that the Jane Doe case is but a tip of the iceberg,” said Paul Ortiz, the lead faculty sponsor of the resolution.

A lawsuit filed last month alleges that a female student, identified as Jane Doe, was drugged and gang raped by seven male students at a fraternity house in 2024.

The case has raised questions about whether the university acted with sufficient urgency or downplayed the alleged abuse in order to protect its reputation. The university initially shut down the fraternity and suspended the male students, two of whom were later expelled.

Faculty considered on Wednesday whether to postpone a vote of no confidence, with some urging patience and others arguing that the vote was a necessary response to institutional reluctance to take the issue seriously.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the debate took place after a group of 20 female science and engineering faculty members called on Kotlikoff to resign in a letter to trustees.

“What our community needed was clear leadership; instead, it faced a leadership vacuum,” the letter stated.

Kotlikoff sought to address the fallout in a statement earlier this month in which he listed a number of preliminary responses.

“I am deeply sorry for the harm Jane Doe suffered in 2024, and appalled that this act of sexual violence occurred within our Cornell community,” he said.

Two of the men accused of taking part in the alleged rape of Jane Doe have asked for New York Attorney General Letitia James to be removed from her role overseeing the renewed criminal probe into the case over social media posts from the attorney general expressing support for the accuser prior to her appointment.

A judge on Thursday appeared sceptical of one of the challenges, which James’ office has said are “without merit”.

Dearborn, Michigan – Jake Lang, a far-right provocateur in a bulletproof vest, shouts anti-Muslim obscenities on a bullhorn outside a rally featuring former US President Barack Obama in Detroit.

His associates, wearing crusader-themed accessories – including a tin shield featuring a black cross – hold campaign signs for Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, who is in a close race with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

If it weren’t for the bigoted slogans, the people lining up around them to attend the campaign event for El-Sayed and other Democrats could have mistakenly thought the protesters were in Halloween costumes.

“Get the f*** out, Muslims,” Lang shouted. “The crusade is coming. Self-deport.”

Lang may appear like a fringe agitator. But Muslim American activists say the bigotry he is spreading is going mainstream, especially in the context of the Senate race in Michigan.

Anti-Muslim attacks against El-Sayed have been perpetuated at the highest level of the US government, including by President Donald Trump and his cabinet members.

Suehaila Amen, a prominent Arab and Muslim advocate in the Detroit area, said bigotry against her community is reaching an all-time high.

“They make immediately post 9/11 look like a walk in the park for us. This has been absolutely disgusting to witness,” Amen told Al Jazeera.

One of Lang’s allies, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, is an official faith adviser to the Rogers campaign.

Sewell helped Lang organise an anti-Muslim march in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn – home to a large Arab and Muslim community – in August.

Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, said the city – which has long been a target for anti-Muslim provocateurs – has been receiving an increased number of threats in recent months.

“The general public is unaware of how many threats are aimed towards the city of Dearborn on a daily basis, via social [media], via our dispatch when they’re calling 911 or calling our call centre, and lobbing these threats against the residents of the city each and every single day,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.

“That does worry me.”

Escalating attacks

While the Rogers campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment about the Republican candidate’s links to Sewell, Rogers defended his focus on El-Sayed’s background, saying it was for national security.

“This is not about the way you pray; it’s the way you think,” Rogers told reporters after his debate with El-Sayed earlier this month.

Local leaders say their community is not cowering in the face of such threats and Trump’s near-daily attacks, and is pushing back through civic engagement and rallying around the El-Sayed campaign.

“Trump is a fascist,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera. “I think the best thing we can do, the best response, is to send Abdul to the US Senate, somebody who’s got two doctorates, someone who is a son of this country, a son of the state, someone who is the captain of his high school team … I think that that’s the best response that we can give fascism.”

Trump has repeatedly mocked El-Sayed’s name, misrepresenting it as Mohammed, and called the Democratic candidate a “jihadist”.

Amen said Arab and Muslim Americans are used to being targeted for their names, but when the president does it, it legitimises bigotry and racism.

“It’s not just some loser that lives around the block who may call you a racist expletive; it’s the loser who lives in the White House,” she said.

Amen added that Arab and Muslim communities are going about their daily lives and organising politically despite the escalating attacks, stressing that they reject attempts to cast them as foreigners or outsiders.

“We are an integral part of the fabric of this nation, whether people like it or not,” she told Al Jazeera.

Republicans across US target El-Sayed

As the Senate race intensifies, Rogers has been baselessly accusing El-Sayed of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Last month, Rogers went as far as agreeing with a social media post calling El-Sayed, a doctor and former public health official, a “terrorist”.

Trump has suggested that El-Sayed would be a physical threat to the Capitol, saying that he would want him to go through a metal detector.

At an event in western Michigan earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr incorrectly claimed that Arabs do not produce literature or science and “don’t win Nobel Prizes”. He argued that the Muslim Brotherhood – which only briefly held power in Egypt between 2012 and 2013 – has destroyed Arab civilisation.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined in on such attacks, describing El-Sayed as a “jihadist leprechaun”.

Cruz warned that El-Sayed, a Michigan-born and raised father of two with a medical degree and a doctorate in public health, could end up on the Senate Intelligence Committee and endanger national security.

“If I am correct that he is a passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result,” he said.

On Wednesday, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy invoked Dearborn – one of the safest and fastest-growing cities in Michigan – to drum up fear of immigration.

“Look at what’s happening in Dearborn, Michigan, for God’s sake. We’re not going to let that come to our state of Ohio,” he said.

Trump supporters weigh in

El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, has avoided focusing on the attacks, calling them “deflections and deceptions”.

It’s not clear how attacks linked to El-Sayed’s Muslim faith and Arab heritage will affect the race.

About 38 percent of respondents in a survey of potential voters conducted by Michigan State University said a candidate being a Muslim would make them less likely to offer support to their campaign.

After a Trump rally for Rogers in Port Huron, northeast of Detroit, where the president spent most of his nearly two-hour speech attacking El-Sayed, some attendees appeared to agree that El-Sayed may be a threat to national security.

As the US president spoke, shouts of “traitor”, referring to El-Sayed, erupted from the crowd.

Trump supporter David Beamer, whose son died in the 9/11 attacks in 2001, spoke at the event and questioned El-Sayed’s American identity.

“Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. You know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American,” Beamer said.

Al Jazeera asked Duane Crempa, a 72-year-old Republican in a Batman mask who attended the Trump speech on Sunday, whether he believes that El-Sayed is a “jihadist” as Trump claims.

Crempa said he is a good judge of character. “Yeah, there is something not right with him. That’s all I’ll say; there’s definitely something not right,” he added.

Jermaine Miller, who also was at the rally, told Al Jazeera he hopes El-Sayed is not a “terrorist”.

“But I mean, it sounds convincing, but it is believable,” he said of Trump’s allegations that the Democratic candidate is a “jihadist”.

‘It’s awful to live this way’

In the Detroit area, Arab and Muslim advocates say the issue is bigger than a Senate seat, arguing that such rhetoric endangers their communities and risks ripping the social fabric of the state.

“We’ve seen the increase in hate marches and hate speech and people being very comfortable sharing their hateful views online and coming into our city and harassing people for no reason – people who are just trying to live and function in this country,” Amen said.

“It’s been tremendously heartbreaking to watch our community constantly have to question why people are maliciously maligning them in public.”

Earlier this year, two gunmen killed three people outside a mosque complex in San Diego in southern California in what authorities said was a hate crime.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who represents Dearborn and parts of Detroit, said she fears for her two Muslim boys, Adam and Yousif, amid the rise of hate with the election campaign.

“Yesterday, we were all watching the football game, and we literally had to turn off the ads every time in between [plays] because we didn’t want our babies to see these awful, racist ads,” Tlaib told Al Jazeera.

“It’s awful to live this way right now.”

With petrol in Michigan nearing record highs, Arab and Muslim advocates say their communities are being scapegoated to cover up the shortcomings of the Trump administration, including the war in Iran.

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman, communication director for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), said the attacks against El-Sayed amount to “disgusting Islamophobia” that serves as a distraction.

“Abdul El-Sayed’s name is a visibly Muslim name, and it’s being treated as inherently suspicious, as if a Muslim American cannot willfully execute their duties as an active member of Congress to protect the American people,” Abdelrahman told Al Jazeera.

At the Trump rally in Port Huron, one of Trump’s allies appeared to weigh El-Sayed’s candidacy against petrol prices.

Brian Pannebecker, a retiree from an auto manufacturing company Trump invited to the stage on Sunday, stressed that Michiganders need to vote for the Republican ticket.

“I don’t care if they’re paying a buck and a half more a gallon for gasoline. That is no excuse to vote for a socialist Islamist for the US Senate,” Pannebecker said.

American Jake Paul to headline Christmas Eve boxing event in Dubai, with his opponent yet to be announced.

YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul will return to the ring on December 24 in Dubai just over a year after suffering a broken jaw in his knockout loss to Anthony Joshua, he said.

American Paul, 29, will headline the Christmas Eve card, with his opponent yet to be announced.

The bout will be Paul’s first since his sixth-round knockout loss to former heavyweight champion Joshua in Miami on December 19 last year, when his jaw was fractured in two places, injuries that required multiple surgeries in December and February.

“I have spent years proving people wrong, taking risks and pushing myself against opponents nobody thought I would face,” Paul said in a statement.

“Nothing that’s happened has changed my belief in myself or what I’m working toward. I am hungrier than ever and on December 24 I’m returning to the ring in Dubai to start the next chapter of my journey.

“We’ve got plenty of names on the list; let’s see who signs the contract,” he added.

Paul has a 12-2 professional record, with his only defeats coming against Britain’s Tommy Fury and Joshua.

He also fought Mike Tyson in an exhibition fight in which he beat the former heavyweight champion in a unanimous points decision, although the bout drew criticism as a sham event.

When Paul McKinney, a farmer in northeast Arkansas, thinks of his son’s childhood, he remembers a small boy playing in vast fields.

To a child, a flooded rice field is “like a giant, 40-acre swimming pool”, he said.

Rice has been a staple on McKinney’s farm for four generations. Next year, however, the family plans to plant much less. Instead, they will focus on soya, a crop that is cheaper to produce.

Like farmers across the United States, McKinney is making tough decisions this year in response to higher fuel and fertiliser costs, which have skyrocketed since the start of the war on Iran.

This week, farmers also face tough choices at the polls. Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterm elections, as voters react to high prices economy-wide by switching parties or staying home.

Observers are watching farm country closely. Texas and Kansas could send Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. In the House of Representatives, two majority-rural districts, Wisconsin’s Third and North Carolina First, could become tipping points for Democratic control.

Still, many of the country’s most rural areas, like Arkansas, are also its most safely Republican.

That leaves an uphill battle for Democrat Hallie Shoffner, who quit farming last year to challenge Republican Senator Tom Cotton in a campaign squarely focused on rising costs.

How high costs hurt farmers

Even before the US-Israel war on Iran, high input costs were straining farmers, said Ryan Loy, an extension economist for the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture.

Loy pointed to a trade war with China that began in 2018, the ongoing war in Ukraine and disruptions related to the 2025 tariffs as factors driving up input costs and disrupting markets. A drought across the US heartland, made worse by climate change, has added to the strain.

Farmers across the country are working to adapt. In Arkansas, many farmers skipped rice in favour of soya. Soya is “the least input-intensive crop, and perhaps can break even or have the shallowest loss”, Loy said.

Now Arkansas, usually the country’s top rice producer, has its lowest rice acreage since the 1970s. Many farmers hoped 2026 would bring economic recovery so they could return to rice.

Then, the war on Iran hit. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, fertiliser costs jumped just as farmers were fertilising during the spring planting season.

Loy tracked the increase in a sample budget that he maintains for Arkansas row crop farmers. “Urea fertiliser specifically peaked about 39 percent over our budgeted amount,” Loy said. Diesel costs came in about 72 percent more than budget averaged across the planting, growing and harvesting seasons, Loy found.

Those changes represent a significant economic hit. “For our state alone, it’s an additional cost of about $343m,” Loy said.

Last week, US President Donald Trump announced an $8bn fuel relief programme for farmers, following $12bn in tariff-related aid in 2025. If the fuel relief payment were divided equally between the 50 states, it would cover less than half of the extra costs that Loy estimates Arkansas’ farmers paid this year.

McKinney, a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said the announcement was welcome. Still, he hoped for longer-term solutions that would prevent “this constant battle for survival”.

For many farms, survival is indeed getting harder. Farm bankruptcies for the first three quarters of 2026 were up 19 percent compared to this time last year, according to a recent analysis by the University of Arkansas’ National Agricultural Law Center. They were up 73 percent compared to 2024.

‘We can’t keep doing this’

McKinney’s son, who grew up playing in muddy rice fields, now helps his dad farm their 24,000 acres. So does McKinney’s nephew, who this year is driving a combine.

“As has been done for us, we would love to be able to hand that down to the next generation,” said McKinney. “But you also have to think about what is going to be best for them.”

McKinney questions how long farming will provide a sustainable living. “It’s some heavy things to think about,” McKinney said.

For Shoffner, a sixth-generation Arkansas farmer, that reckoning came last year.

Higher costs, lower crop prices and the uncertainty of trade wars and tariffs “made the numbers stop working” for their 2,000-acre farm operation, Shoffner told Al Jazeera.

“I know what it feels like to work hard, make every adjustment you can, and still have to sit down with your family and say, ‘We can’t keep doing this,’” Shoffner said.

To protect her parents’ land and retirement, Shoffner closed the family’s farm. That “heartbreaking” decision helped spur her Senate run.

“I decided that if I can’t farm, I will fight,” Shoffner said.

If elected, Shoffner wants to end the war on Iran, build trade policies farmers “can actually plan around”, invest in local processing and distribution, and pass a robust Farm Bill — strategies she hopes will help farmers and rural economies more broadly.

“If we want rural communities to have a future, the people producing our food have to be able to make a living doing it.”

Cotton did not respond to a request for comment.

How will farmers vote?

Economic pain may not change farmers’ votes, however, in Arkansas or nationwide. Michael Shepherd, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said many farmers, like many rural voters, are committed Republicans.

Committed voters tend to view the economy through a partisan lens, according to Shepherd. “Their political behaviours, their voting choices, things like that, are not particularly responsive to changes in the agricultural economy,” he said.

Some polling this year, however, did suggest the potential for movement. A poll by the Farm Journal in April found that 35 percent of farmers who “usually” vote Republican and 15 percent who “always” vote Republican were still considering how they would vote.

And September polling from Purdue showed that, for the first time this term, a majority of farmers surveyed think the country is “on the wrong track”.

Even if farmers are swayable, of course, Shoffner still may not be the one to sway them: her campaign has been far outspent by Cotton’s, an established lawmaker who has received funding from interest groups like AIPAC and leaders at companies like Anthropic and Palantir.

“If one side has a massive war chest, and the other side has very limited resources, then that game of tug of war can be won much easier than it should be,” Shepherd said.

And even if farmers do change their votes, they may not decide elections.

McKinney, who is now farming one of the Shoffner family’s former fields, said farmers represent a shrinking percentage of rural voters — their strength now is in organising, not numbers.

Still, even where candidates like Shoffner don’t win, their campaigns might signal to funders that similar races may be competitive in the future or help Democrats win down-ballot seats.

In Arkansas’ second congressional district, for example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is betting on Democrat Chris Jones. It’s a long-shot campaign, but across the country, at least some long-shot candidates are expected to win.

“All indications are that this is gonna be one of the biggest shifts away from the president’s party that we’ve observed,” Shepherd said.

A New York Times investigation links Democratic operatives to a namesake candidate in Alaska’s Senate race.

US President Donald Trump has called for the removal and prosecution of two candidates in Alaska’s Senate race, accusing Democrats of orchestrating a scheme to mislead voters.

Trump’s demand on Wednesday followed a New York Times investigation into efforts by people linked to Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign to recruit candidates who could draw support from Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, including a retired teacher with the same name.

The November 3 vote could help determine control of the US Senate, Congress’s upper chamber.

In Truth Social posts on Wednesday, Trump accused Peltola and Daniel J Sullivan Jr of election fraud and called for both to be removed from the ballot and prosecuted.

He described the alleged operation as “Voter Fraud at the Highest Level” and accused Democrats of lying under oath.

The Times noted that recruiting candidates to split an opponent’s vote – a practice known as ballot stacking – is generally legal and has been used by both parties in Alaska.

The two Sullivans are among four candidates in Alaska’s ranked-choice election.

Voters rank candidates by preference, with votes transferred if a first choice is eliminated. The ballot identifies the sitting senator as an incumbent Republican.

His namesake says he entered the race independently.

The Times reported that the effort began in 2025, when a Peltola aide was asked to identify Alaskans named Dan Sullivan.

Citing interviews and messages, it said Peltola advisers and officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which supports Democratic Senate candidates, discussed ways to reshape the ballot.

The newspaper identified Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz as a recruiter who approached potential candidates, sometimes under an assumed name.

It also reported that another Democrat withdrew after an approach from Kurtz, opening a place for Republican Gerald Heikes, who said he too had been encouraged to run.

Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, told the Times that Peltola knew about the operation but did not participate directly.

Rios later sought to withdraw her statements and the newspaper said other evidence supported its reporting.

Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic campaign committee denied recruiting candidates. Her campaign said political threats from Washington would not stop her candidacy.

Senator Sullivan accused Peltola of deceiving voters on Fox News on Wednesday.

Recruiting candidates to divide an opponent’s support is generally legal, the Times noted, and both major parties have used such tactics in Alaska.

The state’s Supreme Court upheld the retired teacher’s right to stand in June.

Trump’s Justice Department, the federal government’s legal arm, sued Alaska last week, seeking to delay certification if Senator Sullivan loses and votes for his namesake could have affected the outcome.

Alaska has asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that it lacks legal grounds.

Stephen Curry scored 44 points and grabbed eight rebounds, and the Golden State Warriors escaped with a 119-114 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis.

Yaxel Lendeborg added 26 points in Wednesday night’s match for Golden State, which won its second straight game after losing its first three contests of the season. Brandon Williams chipped in 11 points off the bench.

Jonathan Kuminga scored 20 points against his former team to lead Minnesota, which dropped its second game in a row after a 3-0 start. Jaden McDaniels and Terrence Shannon Jr each finished with 19 points, and Ayo Dosunmu contributed 17.

The Timberwolves outscored the Warriors 66-55 in the second half but could not complete the comeback attempt. Bones Hyland made a bank shot to trim the deficit to three points in the final seconds, but Curry ended the scoring with two free throws.

The Warriors led 93-81 at the end of the third quarter.

Golden State increased its lead to as many as 24 points midway through the second half. Curry converted a three-point play to give the Warriors a 78-54 lead.

Minnesota closed the third quarter on a 27-15 run to cut the deficit to 12. Hyland came off the bench and made a pair of 3-pointers to help the Timberwolves draw closer.

Golden State led 64-48 at the half.

The Warriors closed the first quarter on a 21-9 run to grab a 30-23 advantage. De’Anthony Melton knocked down a pair of 3-pointers during the run, and Lendeborg added a driving layup and a 3-pointer.

Another layup by Lendeborg gave Golden State its first double-digit lead of the game at 48-38 with 6:29 left in the half.

Golden State scored seven of the final nine points of the first half to go ahead by 16. Lendeborg made a 3-pointer and Will Richard and Curry made two free throws apiece.

Simons fuels fourth-quarter flurry as 76ers power past Pacers

Tyrese Maxey led a balanced attack with 27 points, and Anfernee Simons ignited a deficit-erasing, fourth-quarter run, as the Philadelphia 76ers overtook the Indiana Pacers for a 114-109 victory in Indianapolis.

Simons finished with 20 points off the bench, while Joel Embiid had 21 points and 11 rebounds, Jaylen Brown 20 points and 10 rebounds and LeBron James had 13 points and 10 assists for the 76ers.

Pascal Siakam totalled 26 points to complement 11 rebounds and Andrew Nembhard chipped in with an 18-point, 14-assist double-double for the Pacers.

In a game that featured a 37-point explosion by the 76ers in the second quarter and two Pacers bursts during a 36-point response in the third period, Philadelphia found itself down 88-75 before dominating the final 12 minutes.

Simons buried a 3-pointer 18 seconds into the fourth quarter and the 76ers didn’t slow down until they had run off 26 of the period’s first 34 points to go up 101-96 with 4:24 to go. He had another 3-pointer in the run, James added one and Embiid contributed a three-point play.

Consecutive hoops by Siakam and Nembhard got the hosts within one with 3:07 to play, and it remained a one-score game into the final 90 seconds until Maxey secured Philadelphia’s fourth win in five games with a pair of 3-pointers in the final 1:10.

The 76ers outscored the Pacers 39-21 in the final period.

Indiana had taken its second-half lead with 17-0 and 13-2 third-quarter flurries, the latter helping put the 76ers in a 13-point hole entering the final 12 minutes.

Aaron Nesmith had 18 points, Kelly Oubre Jr had 15 and Obi Toppin had 13 for the Pacers, who lost their second straight.

Cavaliers spoil AJ Dybantsa’s Wizards debut

Evan Mobley scored 24 points and Peyton Watson had a season-high 22 points as the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the visiting Washington Wizards 121-111, spoiling the NBA debut of top overall draft pick AJ Dybantsa.

Dybantsa had a team-high 19 points in 27 minutes, making 8 of 12 field goal attempts with two rebounds and two assists.

Mobley, who scored 10 points in the fourth quarter, also grabbed 12 rebounds as Cleveland rallied from a 13-point deficit. Donovan Mitchell posted 19 points and seven assists, and Jarrett Allen had eight points, 12 rebounds and three blocks.

Anthony Davis and Alex Sarr each scored 18 points for the Wizards, while Kyshawn George had eight points and a career-high 11 assists. Trae Young added 14 points and eight assists, and Bilal Coulibaly made 8 of 9 shots and scored 17 off the bench.

The Cavaliers went in front for the first time since the first quarter at 94-92 on Mobley’s slam to begin the fourth. Dybantsa put Washington back ahead 105-104, but Cleveland scored the next nine points in completing a perfect three-game homestand.

Dybantsa drove the lane two minutes into the third to extend the Wizards’ lead to 76-63, but Cleveland ended the period on a 29-16 run. Mitchell made two free throws to tie it at 92-92 going into the fourth.

Coulibaly scored 14 points without a miss in the first half as Washington carried a 69-59 advantage into the break. Dybantsa had 11 points in 14 minutes and Young had seven points and six assists, while Watson had 16 for the Cavaliers.

Sarr scored 13 points in the first, his season high for a game, as the Wizards built a 42-34 lead. Dybantsa, Mitchell and Mobley all had nine points apiece as the teams combined to make 9 of 13 3-point attempts and go 15 of 16 at the foul line.

Dybantsa attacked the basket on the opening possession, drawing a foul and making two free throws 16 seconds in.

The United States midterm elections appear stacked against the ruling Republicans, with polls suggesting the Democrats average an eight-point lead in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But if Democrats take one or both houses, could they affect upcoming elections in Europe?

Not fundamentally, analysts and observers have told Al Jazeera, but besides a welcome improvement in transatlantic relations, they point to two potentially adverse effects.

First, a Democratic Congress might produce complacency among Europeans regarding their own far-right movements.

Second, it might spur US President Donald Trump to raise pressure on Ukraine to make a deal it doesn’t want to make with Russia.

“If the Democrats win the House, let alone both houses, it will be read as, ‘you see democracies bounce back,’” said Catherine Fieschi, a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe, specialising in European far-right politics. It would introduce “the idea that these things don’t mean the advent of a fascist regime”, she said.

From her vantage point in Paris, Fieschi said she imagines a Democratic win leading to “a whole discussion about whether we should fear a Marine Le Pen election as much as some people say we should, or whether, in fact, it’s swings and roundabouts and, at some point, if people are really bad and really incompetent, then elections right the way,” she said.

French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen is currently leading the field in polling for presidential elections scheduled for April 18, with surveys indicating she has about 34 percent of the popular vote.

There is a precedent for the complacency Fieschi alludes to. In June 2025, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank, polled Europeans following Trump’s first six months in office. Clear majorities in Western Europe said the US political system was broken. In Eastern Europe, majorities said it was working well – though they were weighted towards right-wing voters.

Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris warned against giving too much credit to the US for what Europeans think and do, however.

He said he believes European public opinion hardened against asylum and economic migration independently, but the US marked the shift by expressing it more violently, with military deportation flights and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sweeping American cities.

“I think there was a European about-turn on migration. We saw this in Germany, which had a welcoming attitude [to refugees] for many years, and they went to a more controlled policy. All northern European governments saw societies change,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But the US provided a change in tone, from induction and integration and benefaction to deterrence, border protection, increased returns and consequences if asylum is denied. I do think that pivot played a role in Europe,” Plevris added.

The fallout for Ukraine

Should French voters decide that the only way out is through electing Le Pen – “like some kind of strong medicine that would wake us up to what we might lose”, as Fieschi put it – they would have to contend with three controversial propositions – cutting French financial contributions to the European Union’s federal budget to pay for earlier retirement, cutting military aid to Ukraine and possibly leaving the single currency, the euro, in favour of a devalued franc.

Any one of those policy moves would be a major setback for the European project, which has coalesced around trade, money and now security. A cut in assistance to Ukraine would remove 3.5 percent of its foreign military aid, according to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker, which other allies would have to make up.

At the same time, “we could end up in a situation where Trump is basically clinching deals with Putin as fast as he can,” said Fieschi, referring to the US-Russian strategy to coerce Ukraine into a peace agreement that involves sacrificing its eastern Donbas region – something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said would be a strategic error leading to renewed war, and which a majority of Ukrainians are against.

Trump has already leveraged US early warning on incoming ballistics and Starlink satellite navigation against Ukraine. He has twice echoed Russian calls for Zelenskyy to be replaced.

Compounding this renewed pressure from a beleaguered White House, Russia could intensify its “all-domain war”, which many European governments believe it is already waging against them, said Victoria Vdovychenko, a Ukraine expert at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics.

“Cognitive warfare never stopped on the European continent, and Russians are already using existing vulnerabilities to the utmost,” she told Al Jazeera. “I hope that the European partners will be staying very strong.”

What Europeans think

Trump’s abandonment of the world order the US and Europe established after World War II, his disregard for democracy and human rights, and his betrayal of Ukraine have already transformed European public opinion, observers say.

Only 31 percent of Europeans see the US as Europe’s “most trustworthy ally”, down from 51 percent in 2024, when Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was in office, according to a poll for the German think tank Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Seventy-three percent of Europeans across all age groups say Europe should “go its own way” rather than continue a close cooperation with the US, up from 63 percent in 2024, and that figure includes a clear majority among those on the centre-right and right.

In this year’s Spring Eurobarometer, a regular pulse-taking conducted by the European Commission, 68 percent of respondents wanted the EU’s role in protecting Europeans from global crises and security risks to increase, while 39 percent wanted it to be a top priority.

In a June poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations, the description of the US as an “ally” fell from 22 percent in November 2024 to 11 percent across all territories polled in Eastern and Western Europe.

In a June poll for the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based think tank, 76 percent of people polled in 36 countries, of which nine were EU members, expressed no confidence in Trump, and 57 percent expressed unfavourable views of the US.

It would appear that such shifts against the US and especially Republicans, formed over two Trump terms, would be difficult to reverse in a single congressional election, especially with a Russian war ongoing in Europe.

Trump administration issues more than 100 subpoenas across 13 states as search for alleged noncitizen voters ramps up.

A United States judge has rejected a Department of Justice request to temporarily halt California from counting mail ballots from a list of 20,000 alleged noncitizens just six days before the country’s midterm elections.

US District Judge David Carter’s ruling on Wednesday came as US President Donald Trump expands efforts to search for alleged noncitizen voters, with subpoenas issued in at least 13 states.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote on Wednesday.

The judge, a 1998 appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the Justice Department’s last-minute request to exclude more than 20,000 ballots ran afoul of “longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections”.

The Justice Department swiftly appealed the decision to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals and did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Reuters news agency.

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit on October 15, a rare intervention in the voting process weeks before Tuesday’s election, when voters will choose which party controls Congress as well as their state and local representatives.

Escalating efforts from Trump

The decision marks the latest setback in Trump’s effort to expand the federal government’s role in elections ahead of the legislative midterms, as his Republican Party fights to retain control of both houses of Congress.

The Trump administration issued more than 100 subpoenas demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least 13 states, both Republican- and Democratic-leaning.

Most of the subpoenas Reuters documented were issued to state and local election officials in the past three months, though some date to the start of the year. Many were previously unreported, revealing a federal effort to identify potential noncitizen voters that is broader than publicly known.

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections. Legal experts say the records could be used to contest close midterm results, despite scant evidence that noncitizen voting is widespread.

‘Deeply flawed process’

Also on Wednesday, Democracy Docket, a US media platform that tracks election litigation, reported that the Department of Justice list of alleged noncitizen voters “appears to have been created using a deeply flawed process” that could disenfranchise US citizen voters beyond California.

In a court filing, a government whistleblower revealed that voters were being scrutinised nationwide, not just in California, as part of the federal government’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative” investigation, the group reported. The whistleblower warned that “the current process is knowingly sweeping known US citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters’”.

California has said the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust. It said the Justice Department’s assertions relied on “suspect data” and that complying with its demands would risk disenfranchising eligible voters. Democracy Docket reported that in Los Angeles County, one in four voters on the “noncitizen” list were born in the US.

Government says Salim Said ‘hit the jackpot’ in a scheme claiming to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 37-year-old man who played a key role in defrauding a United States food programme in the state of Minnesota during the COVID-19 pandemic has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, in a case that has drawn intense national scrutiny and political pressure from President Donald Trump.

The widespread scheme in Minnesota, which resulted in dozens of convictions, has repeatedly drawn attacks from Trump, who ridiculed the Democratic governor for failing to stop the scheme and cited it as grounds for an immigration crackdown in the state’s largest cities.

Salim Said, who operated Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, was accused of vastly overstating the number of meals when seeking payment for providing food to needy children. The government said he was responsible for $44 million in fraud, some of which was committed by others he recruited.

“You took more than taxpayers’ dollars to enrich yourself. You took the reputation of our state down with you,” US District Judge Nancy Brasel said.

Said was claiming a “ridiculous daily distribution of 6,000 meals” while FBI cameras showed 40 people a day collecting food, prosecutors said in a court filing.

“The defendant and his sites did not serve thousands of children; he served a calculated, lucrative lie,” prosecutors said.

Said, who was born in Somalia, denied the allegations while testifying at his 2025 trial, saying many meals were delivered off site. But he changed course and expressed remorse at his sentencing on Wednesday.

Defence lawyer Barry Zone, who had asked for a 12-year prison sentence, disputed the government’s claim that Said was the “architect”.

COVID-19 brought changes to a federal programme that typically fed children through schools. Restaurants could participate, and food distribution was extended to places outside schools.

“For 21 consecutive months, Said made thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims,” prosecutors said. “Each submission represented meals purportedly provided to underprivileged children, yet the listed children themselves were entirely fictitious.”

The government said Said hit the jackpot, using the stolen funds to buy a $1.2 million home, commercial real estate and an $87,000 pickup truck.

Said was convicted in 2025 alongside Aimee Bock, leader of the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future, who is serving a 42-year prison sentence for devising the scheme and was ordered to repay $242 million.

State auditors found that Minnesota’s education department received numerous complaints about Feeding Our Future but often told the group to police itself. Following relentless criticism from Trump over theft in federally funded programmes, Governor Tim Walz announced in January that he would not run for re-election.

“The Daily Show” writer Kevin Bleyer died in a car crash on Sunday. He was 54.

The death was confirmed via his wife, Nella Vera, who shared the tragic news on her Instagram account on Tuesday. Multiple news outlets report that the Oct. 25 crash occurred in Millrift, Pa., a rural town near Bleyer’s country home.

“The last eleven years have had their ups and downs, as life does, but above all, they have been filled with immense love, laughter, dogs, and travel,” Vera wrote in her Instagram caption. “I was in awe of his intellect, dazzled by his wit, amazed by his fearlessness and spirit of adventure, besotted by his loving heart, and smitten by his beautiful blue eyes.”

The two met in 2010 at a production of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” at the NYC Public Theater and shared a love for political comedy. Bleyer was an esteemed staff writer on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for nine years, during which he won four Emmys for writing for a variety, music or comedy program.

The couple began dating in 2015 and married in June 2025.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have shared the past decade with such a brilliant, complicated, funny, stubborn, and wonderful man,” Vera added in her caption. “He had many public accomplishments and awards throughout his long and successful career, but to me, he was my soulmate, my partner in crime, and the one who made life so much more fun.”

Prior to “The Daily Show,” Bleyer also wrote on the satire show “Politically Incorrect” led by comic commentator Bill Maher, the improv comedy show “Significant Others” and late-night talk show “Dennis Miller.”

In 2010, Bleyer co-wrote the book “Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race,” a comedic travel guide for aliens that details the history of humanity, alongside Stewart and dozens of other comics. He was also the solo author of 2012‘s “Me the People: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America,” which poked fun at the way in which Americans choose to interpret the historic document.

In 2013, he moved to Kyrgyzstan, where he was the executive producer of “Studio 7,” the first political satire news show in Central Asia, according to his website. When he returned to the States, he co-founded Pilot Media Initiatives, which launched civics-minded media programs in democratically-challenged countries, including North Macedonia, Nigeria, Moldova, Kenya, Jordan and Estonia.

Bleyer also served as a writer and producer for NBC News’ “Today” show, as a supervising producer for MSNBC’s “Ronan Farrow Daily” and as a writer and producer for a CNN talk show pilot starring Kal Penn.

The humorist was also a gifted speechwriter for various NASA astronauts, political diplomats — once serving as deputy chief speechwriter for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — and Colombian pop star Shakira.

Bleyer also contributed to the funnier speeches made by President Obama, including all of his White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner addresses. In a 2017 TED Talk, Bleyer pointed out Obama’s famous 2011 monologue, which aimed multiple shots at Donald Trump and his ability to lead the country; various political analysts believe the humiliating moment set the groundwork for Trump’s 2016 presidential run.

“Before I go any further, I feel like I should offer an apology. The rumors are true, Donald Trump is president of the United States of America, and there’s a good chance it’s my fault,” joked Bleyer in his 2017 TED Talk. “I’m told he ran for president, in part because he couldn’t take a joke, a few jokes actually.”

In her Instagram tribute, Vera described him as a “private person,” although some of his own political commentary aired as a guest on National Public Radio, “CBS Sunday Morning,” CNN and MSNBC.

Bleyer was born in Maryland but grew up in Washington state. He later attended Stanford University, where he switched his engineering major for communications.

He began his career as a dramaturge and assistant to actor-playwright Anna Deavere Smith at the New York Public Theater and Broadway’s Cort Theater. He later moved to London, where he worked for journalist David Brancaccio at the London bureau of the public radio business affairs program “Marketplace.”

There will be a private gathering in a few months to honor Bleyer’s life, Vera said. Individuals are welcome to donate funds to the Alzheimer’s Assn. New York City Chapter, where he volunteered, or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Bleyer is survived by Vera, his father, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew.