“With just nine days until the midterms, the Trump administration is escalating its assault on two of the Department of Justice’s most sacred guardrails: Independence from the White House and restraint before elections,” Axios reports. “President Trump’s DOJ has shattered the traditional calm of a pre-election period with a barrage of politically sensitive investigations, prosecutions […]

A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds Democrats leading Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, 53% to 45%. Generic Congressional Ballot Democrats 53%   Republicans 45%   CBS News/YouGov poll · likely voters · ±3%

Washington Sun: “Two years into a Trump administration that social conservatives hoped would bring significant victories on abortion and other evangelical Christian voters’ priorities, some are unimpressed by what the president has delivered. The lack of enthusiasm has been exacerbated by a national campaign outreach strategy that seems to be targeting everybody but them.” “The […]

“What are they doing? They’re flipping blue districts to blue. Wow, really impressive, okay? Now, you tell me: If you flip a district from blue to cobalt blue, and you don’t flip Omaha, how much of a minimum wage increase that the middle class, the working class, is relying on are you getting passed? I’m […]

Sean Trende: “While I can come up with stories about why polls this year might be underestimating Republicans on balance, I can also come up with theories about why polls are now underestimating Democrats on balance.” “One obvious explanation is that pollsters are overly sensitive about misses in 2016, 2020, and 2024 and have overcorrected […]

David Hopkins: “Citizens under 30 dependably have the lowest turnout rates of any age range, and they are especially likely to sit out non-presidential elections. In 2022, only 26 percent of eligible citizens aged 18-29 showed up to vote, compared to 64 percent of those over the age of 60. Even a dramatic surge in […]

“Republicans began the 2026 midterm election cycle with the Senate map as one of their biggest advantages. It hasn’t turned out that way,” Bloomberg reports. “With less than two weeks until Election Day, President Donald Trump is defensively campaigning in GOP strongholds including South Carolina and Mississippi. Groups are pouring money into deep red states […]

New Yorker: “It was not always this unnerving to be an election official. But persistent lies about voter fraud, a centerpiece of Trump’s political narrative, have set loose torrents of hostility toward the men and women who oversee balloting nationwide. There are more than ten thousand voting jurisdictions in the United States, ranging from townships […]

“Like it or not, we’re stuck with two more years of this, but we’re not stuck with a spineless Congress.” — Former President Barack Obama, quoted by Bloomberg, urging voters to throw out Republicans in the midterms.

“Audi will build its first-ever U.S. factory in Macon, Ga., President Trump announced Saturday, marking the latest move by a global automaker to focus on American buyers as sales fall off elsewhere in the world,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Bloomberg: Trump defends tariffs at rally as he says Audi to build U.S. plant.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells: “Things were going poorly even before Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ran the most offensive ad of the year.”

“If California Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the 2028 presidential race, as many Democrats expect, he’ll walk in with an asset other White House hopefuls will inarguably envy: A small-dollar fundraising and organizing machine powered by a massive and ever-growing contact list of potential supporters across the country,” The Hill reports. “Even before last year’s successful […]

“Republicans tend to run better among voters without a college degree than those with one, which has battered Democrats in recent presidential elections. But that same pattern could give Democrats a potentially decisive boost in next month’s midterms,” CNN reports. “Even as President Donald Trump’s approval rating craters among Americans with a college degree, history […]

Washington Post: “The formula for Colom to win is deceptively simple: He needs a huge turnout from Black voters and about a quarter of the White vote. Doesn’t sound that hard, yet no Democrat has solved the problem in Mississippi in more than 40 years, and no African American has won statewide since Reconstruction.” ”This […]

“The midterm campaign is being fought in areas President Donald Trump carried in the last election, and largely among voters who have supported him in the past but have soured on his presidency,” the Washington Post reports.

“Democrats trying to unseat Republicans in four battleground Pennsylvania House districts are ahead in two of them, hold a narrow edge in a third and are tied in a fourth,” the New York Times reports. “The four seats in Pennsylvania are seen as critical examples of some of the fights playing out nationwide. The districts […]

CNN: “A decade after the Trump era began, when he first turned Midwestern political battlegrounds into reliably Republican states, the fallout from policies of his second term have rippled through the agriculture sector and broader economies across the Great Plains and the Rust Belt.” “Iowa and Ohio, which have not been competitive since former President […]

NPR: “Osborn is one of four independents running for Senate in states President Trump won handily, including Idaho, South Dakota and Montana. Buoyed by the president’s sinking approval ratings and public frustration over affordability, independent candidates argue they bring a winning case to voters.” “It is an argument that some Democrats hope will resonate with […]

Nate Cohn: “When the dust settles on election night, the story won’t simply be about who won, but who decided the outcome: Which demographic groups shifted the most, stayed home or delivered the decisive votes to the winners?” “This year, we’re going to tell the demographic story of the election as we never have before. […]

“If there is one thing that Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa, definitely does not want to talk about, it’s his connection to the Koch family,” the New York Times reports. “To hear Mr. Lahn tell it, he is a self-made businessman, a father of seven and a farmer running against powerful […]

“In the 1990s, politicians fought for the support of soccer moms. In the 2010s, they competed for votes from white working-class voters. Now it is clear: Latinos are the most important swing voters of the 2020s,” the New York Times reports. “Democrats have made gains with Latinos over the past two years, winning back trust […]

“Former president Barack Obama said Saturday that Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy showed desperation for the spotlight and a lack of decency by airing a campaign ad that featured the long-estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton,” the Washington Post reports. Said Obama: “We’ve seen there’s no line he won’t cross, no low he won’t […]

“After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough.'” — Former President Barack Obama, quoted by Agence France-Presse.

“Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Trump and Republicans in an Ohio rally Saturday, his first appearance at a midterm rally with less than two weeks until Election Day,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “He appeared alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, both of whom are in neck-and-neck races. […]

Wall Street Journal: “In the eight years since, Ocasio-Cortez has been the one to shift tactics—in ways that would have once seemed unthinkable for the firebrand leftist. The result is a political transformation reflecting real-world lessons about how to win in Washington.” “The 37-year-old lawmaker has tempered her combative style, cozied up to establishment Democrats […]

“The Trump administration is targeting testosterone deficiency as a potential threat to military readiness, rolling out new screening guidelines for male service members amid growing concerns about the health of American men and the shrinking pool of young people qualified to serve,” the New York Post reports.

“Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were statistically tied in a poll released on the eve of Brazil’s runoff election,” Bloomberg reports. “Bolsonaro had 50.5% support to Lula’s 49.5%, according to the BTG Pactual/Nexus poll, a gap within the 2 percentage-point margin of error and little changed from Monday when the right-wing […]

“Inside the Trump administration, officials are expressing fears that Iran is in the ‘advanced stages’ of planning attacks against U.S. officials,” the New York Times reports. “More than 6,000 miles away, the Iranians appear convinced that Israel and the United States are preparing to unleash their third major attack in 16 months, a final push […]

“Democratic groups and voting-rights advocates are seeking to join a federal lawsuit to stop the Justice Department’s effort to prevent Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate election results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses,” CNBC reports. “Together, the groups argue that the executive branch lacks legal authority to intervene in state-run elections and is attempting […]

Washington Post: “Republicans are going all in on AI-generated ads. Democrats, meanwhile, are shunning them and trying to turn the tables on the GOP, suggesting the ad campaigns are emblematic of a party that doesn’t care about the truth and can’t be trusted.”