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Haley Stevens officially endorses Mike Rogers in Michigan Senate race
Haley Stevens, the erstwhile primary challenger of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, has officially broken with her party and endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in the pivotal race.
Stevens, who made a surprise appearance this afternoon alongside Rogers at a Detroit church, posted a video to social media making the endorsement.
“You may have seen our Democratic nominee for US Senate, Abdul, said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and I should stay away,” Stevens said, appearing to speak directly into a phone camera while seated inside a vehicle. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”
Just days ago, Stevens and El-Sayed, bitter foes during the Michigan Senate primary, had planned to participate in a joint event at a different Detroit church from where she ultimately appeared with Rogers. Top Democrats had brokered her appearance as a way to mend ties and demonstrate party solidarity in the final days of a closely-run Senate contest.
But those plans disintegrated after Stevens demanded El-Sayed condemn in explicit terms a third-party ad related to one of the issues that most fiercely divided them during their primary: US support for Israel.
El-Sayed, a progressive, has been an outspoken critic of Israel and its war in Gaza, and supports cutting off military aid to the country. Stevens, on the other hand, is moderate and fiercely pro-Israel.
In response to the demand that he condemn the ad, El-Sayed accused Stevens of reopening a settled primary election, and his campaign disinvited her from his remaining campaign events. (The ad in question linked US support for Israel to rising living costs in the US, a claim Stevens labeled offensive.)
This afternoon, Stevens appeared to have retaliated with her surprise appearance alongside Rogers, dropping her endorsement video soon after.
In the video, Stevens said she was still “a very proud Democrat,” but that she did not feel El-Sayed’s campaign represent the ideals she believes Michigan should stand for in the Senate.
“Who we are as Michiganders is not hate, and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now,” Stevens said.
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Judge throws out Trump administration lawsuit over Alaska Senate race
A federal judge in Alaska has rejected a Trump administration lawsuit to block certification of the state’s Senate race if a candidate with the same name as the Republican incumbent garners enough votes to shift the outcome, Reuters has reported.
Haley Stevens officially endorses Mike Rogers in Michigan Senate race
Haley Stevens, the erstwhile primary challenger of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, has officially broken with her party and endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in the pivotal race.
Stevens, who made a surprise appearance this afternoon alongside Rogers at a Detroit church, posted a video to social media making the endorsement.
“You may have seen our Democratic nominee for US Senate, Abdul, said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and I should stay away,” Stevens said, appearing to speak directly into a phone camera while seated inside a vehicle. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”
Just days ago, Stevens and El-Sayed, bitter foes during the Michigan Senate primary, had planned to participate in a joint event at a different Detroit church from where she ultimately appeared with Rogers. Top Democrats had brokered her appearance as a way to mend ties and demonstrate party solidarity in the final days of a closely-run Senate contest.
But those plans disintegrated after Stevens demanded El-Sayed condemn in explicit terms a third-party ad related to one of the issues that most fiercely divided them during their primary: US support for Israel.
El-Sayed, a progressive, has been an outspoken critic of Israel and its war in Gaza, and supports cutting off military aid to the country. Stevens, on the other hand, is moderate and fiercely pro-Israel.
In response to the demand that he condemn the ad, El-Sayed accused Stevens of reopening a settled primary election, and his campaign disinvited her from his remaining campaign events. (The ad in question linked US support for Israel to rising living costs in the US, a claim Stevens labeled offensive.)
This afternoon, Stevens appeared to have retaliated with her surprise appearance alongside Rogers, dropping her endorsement video soon after.
In the video, Stevens said she was still “a very proud Democrat,” but that she did not feel El-Sayed’s campaign represent the ideals she believes Michigan should stand for in the Senate.
“Who we are as Michiganders is not hate, and is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now,” Stevens said.
Is it too late for Karen Bass to hold on to LA’s mayorship?
Charles Blow
At the end of 2022, the four largest US cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston – all had Black mayors. It was a historic alignment made possible by the aftereffects of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement and the unprecedented wave of protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Six years on, only one of those mayors remains: the embattled Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who is facing a strong challenge from a younger, even more progressive challenger. Bass’s opponent is Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, although the group is considering rescinding its endorsement over her refusal to explicitly embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
As the sociopolitical zeitgeist has shifted away from Black lives to the death of democracy, and people now fixate on affordability the way they once did social justice, Black mayors have had to adjust to a new reality, one in which their presence alone isn’t palliative, where they are having to defend their positions against challengers from their own left, some of a younger generation less content with mainline Democratic principles.
Bass attributes part of the challenge Black mayors have faced to the country’s on-again, off-again relationship with Black people. “Every now and then we’re popular, but we go out of popularity very quickly,” Bass said on a recent Friday in Watts at Nickerson Gardens, a large housing development. “So those same people that had BLM flags in their yard and DEI and ‘Oh my God, I just discovered institutional racism and mass incarceration. How did that happen?’ are now like, ‘I’m done with it.’”
Read the full story from Charles M. Blow:
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump said that he would become “Mr. Veto” if Democrats were to win control of Congress.
“If that happens, I guess I’ll become Mr. Veto,” Trump said, when presented with a hypothetical Democratic victory scenario by Fox News host Miranda Devine. “And at some point, we’ll probably make deals.”
Trump seemed blithely confident that he would be able to work with Democrats if they win control of the legislative branch, exhausting them through vetoes until they would be willing to negotiate on legislation.
Stevens appears alongside El-Sayed opponent Mike Rogers, escalating intraparty rift in Michigan
Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed’s erstwhile challenger in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, is appearing alongside El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, at an event at a Detroit church, the Associated Press reported.
Just days ago, El-Sayed and Stevens were set to appear together at a different Detroit church for an event this afternoon, meant as a sign of party unity after their contentious primary battle.
That quickly unraveled after Stevens conditioned her appearance on El-Sayed denouncing a third-party campaign ad, linking US cost of living concerns to the country’s support for Israel. El-Sayed refused, and his campaign disinvited Stevens from his campaign events in the final days before the midterm elections.
Instead, Stevens has joined Rogers, appearing to abandon her party and throw her support behind the Republican in the last days of one of the country’s most crucial Senate races.
This afternoon, a Detroit church will play host to a campaign event that Democrats hoped would mend intra-party discord in the crucial Michigan Senate race – but that has instead only managed to reignite it.
Top Democrats had brokered the truce between Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s progressive Senate nominee in Michigan, and Haley Stevens, his more moderate primary challenger. The two had sparred viciously in the primary campaign before Stevens, upon her defeat, extended him a tepid endorsement, and this weekend was scheduled to join El-Sayed at a predominantly Black church in Detroit’s North End.
Those plans have quickly unraveled over an issue that divided Stevens and El-Sayed perhaps more than any other: Israel.
Later last week, Stevens, an incredibly strong supporter of Israel, made clear that her appearance alongside El-Sayed was preconditioned on his denouncing of an outside group’s campaign ad that had blamed US support of Israel from the rising cost of living. El-Sayed declined the request, accusing Stevens of needlessly reopening debates from a settled primary.
As the feud escalated, El-Sayed’s campaign went further, formally disinviting Stevens from his campaign events in the closing days of the campaign.
Can this moderate New York congressman outrun his ties to Trump?
Ariana Baio
The Republican congressman Mike Lawler is in danger of losing his seat next week. Again.
In the last two elections, Lawler, 40, has defeated Democratic opponents in New York’s 17th congressional district – one of the closest-run battlegrounds in this year’s midterms – with moderate policies.
But with polls pointing to a tight race, and Donald Trump’s declining approval ratings piling pressure on Republicans nationwide, Lawler is not banking on re-election.
“Everybody who thinks they know what’s going to happen in November I think is fooling themselves,” the congressman told the Associated Press recently. “This is not like any normal midterm.”
Lawler’s tough-on-crime and affordability messaging helped him defeat a powerful Democrat in 2022 and flip the district, an area in the lower Hudson valley that leans more favorably for Democrats than Republicans, for the first time since the mid-1980s.
His reputation as a Republican willing to work across the aisle earned him key labor unions’ support in 2024 and convinced voters to keep him in office. Even Joe Biden, the former Democratic president, praised Lawler in 2023 for being “the kind of Republican I was used to dealing with” and “not one of these Maga Republicans”.
“What does it take for a Republican to win in NY-17?” an unnamed former Republican party leader was quoted asking in City & State New York, a local news outlet, in October. “You need to be Mike Lawler.”
The Guardian’s Ariana Baio has the full story:
In other news on Alaska’s Senate race, Alaska has asked a federal judge to turn down a Department of Justice request to halt certification of the state’s election should a challenger with the same name as the Republican incumbent net enough votes to change the outcome.
According to the Washington Post, the state asserted that it had designed its ballots intentionally to avoid voter confusion over the two candidates with the shared name: Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, and Dan J. Sullivan, his challenger.
The second Dan Sullivan was allegedly recruited by the campaign of Mary Peltola, the Democratic Senate nominee, to peel away votes from her main election opponent.
That move, and the recent revelation of the Peltola campaign’s alleged involvement by the New York Times, has sparked Republican furor and prompted cries for Peltola’s disqualification and criminal investigation.
Even before her alleged connection to the scheme was known, the Trump administration Justice Department had pushed for the court to block the race’s certification if Dan J. Sullivan won enough votes to sway the result. Now, Alaska is asking that same court to pump the breaks.
It’s a strange position for the state to be in, defending the integrity of its elections even as its governor pushes a probe in Mary Peltola over the alleged plan.
Dan Sullivan tells CNN that he’ll accept the results of Alaska’s Senate race
Senator Dan Sullivan – the Alaska Republican allegedly targeted in a ballot-stacking ploy by his Democratic opponent, Mary Peltola – told CNN this morning that he would accept the results of his upcoming election.
Asked by the network’s Jake Tapper if he would only accept the election results if he won, Sullivan responded: “No, I’m going to accept the election results.”
According to a recent New York Times investigation, Peltola’s campaign recruited another man who shared Sullivan’s name to join the race in a ploy to peel away votes from the Republican incumbent.
Since those revelations, Republicans, including President Trump, have called for Peltola to be disqualified from the race and criminally prosecuted. Alaska’s Republican governor has ordered a probe into the matter, and suggested that certification of the election might be uncertain if Peltola wins. The Justice Department has also moved to block the election results if the second (not incumbent) Dan Sullivan peels away enough votes to shift the outcome.
The tactic Peltola’s campaign allegedly employed, while deceptive, is far from unknown in politics, and is not necessarily illegal.
Peltola has continued to deny any knowledge of such a scheme on the part of her campaign, recently telling a reporter at a campaign event that she had “no idea” if any of her staff were involved.
Earlier in his interview with Tapper, Sullivan said he wasn’t focused on how Peltola’s campaign might be legally challenged. He was focused instead on winning the race outright.
He nonetheless expressed doubt that Peltola had lacked any knowledge of the effort to put a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
“She’s continually lying to the Alaskan people,” Sullivan said. “And I guarantee you, she’s lying right now.”
‘There’s a lot of hate’: rightwing racism stirs south Asian mobilization in Texas
Last winter, while Pooja Sethi was canvassing to become the Democratic candidate for the Texas house of representatives, she received a text from a staff member alerting her to a post on X. The Turning Point USA influencer Savanah Hernandez – a Trump supporter known for creating videos that target immigrants – had posted a photo of Sethi’s campaign banner with the caption: “Welcome to politics in Texas.”
The post went viral.
The responses were so vile, Sethi said, “that I called my team and I said I’m going to go home because I need to be with my son. I’m a little scared about what’s happening right now.” The far right even turned her name into a racist slogan: “Don’t Pooja my Texas.”
If elected, Sethi will become the first Asian Democratic woman and south Asian woman in the Texas legislature. “I didn’t run to have to sit here and combat anti-Indian hate. I didn’t know that this was going to be a thing,” said Sethi to a room of about 50 south Asians gathered at a private community listening session on anti-south Asian hate in Austin at the height of election season in October.
The event, which included Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, was hosted by Indian American Impact, a nonpartisan group that supports south Asian candidates and voter engagement.
Across the country, anti-south Asian hate has spiked since Trump took office. According to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), online rhetoric against south Asians surged by 240% between January 2024 and June 2026. In addition to citing xenophobia and racism, the report finds that economic resentment casting south Asians as “invaders” and “job thieves”, increased visibility in politics, and anti-migrant policies that include Trump’s prohibitive annual fee on H1-B visa applications, have contributed to the sharp rise in hate against south Asian communities of all faiths and nationalities.
My colleague Prachi Gupta has the full story
Obama’s late entry into the midterm campaign rattles Trump, and may help bridge Democratic divides
David Smith
It could have been an awkward moment. Barack Obama, campaigning for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, acknowledged that his fellow Democrat has criticised some aspects of the Obama presidency.
“Yeah, Abdul didn’t agree with some things we wanted to do – that our administration was doing – when I was president,” he told a rally in Detroit. “You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do? Michelle Obama.” The crowd erupted in laughter. “I’d say about five times a day, she says, ‘You knucklehead. Why you do that?’”
It was an elegant attempt to bridge the gap between the old Democratic party and the new. The US midterm elections have brought anti-incumbent sentiment to the fore. Some candidates have actively shrugged off their party labels, eager to cast themselves as outsiders running against the Washington establishment.
Against that backdrop, who wants a 65-year-old former president who left office nearly a decade ago with his promise of hope and change still only partly realised? It seems that Democrats do.
With days to go before midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, Democrats have turned to their most formidable orator for a series of blistering speeches in the campaign’s closing days.
America’s first Black president has mercilessly mocked Trump’s autocratic pretensions and derided his foreign policy misadventures in the Middle East.
“This election is our last, best chance of at least reining him in, reining in some of the foolishness of this administration,” he said in Georgia. “It’s the circuit-breaker in the system, and we need to flip it.”
My colleague David Smith has the full story:
Trump to appear at rallies in battlegrounds Iowa and Kansas two days before midterms
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump is making stops in Iowa and Kansas to throw support behind Republicans in competitive Senate races with just two days remaining before the midterm elections. He had originally canceled the in-person appearances in favor of tele-rallies, only to reverse course on Friday.
He likely will emphasize the $15b his administration has promised to farmers in the past few weeks, the Associated Press reported. The spending is intended to offset higher costs farmers have endured largely due to Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, which have driven up diesel prices and raised the cost of farm inputs such as fertilizer.
Trump, who spent Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of campaigning across multiple states, won Iowa by double digits in 2024, Reuters reported. But polls show Democrats tied with or leading Republicans in many of the state’s races, and Trump’s approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45% in October, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Kansas, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, is also facing an unexpectedly close race.
Early voting has surged, with more than 53 million votes cast as of Sunday morning, according to an analysis by the University of Florida. Voter enthusiasm for Tuesday’s elections appears to be strongest among Democrats, with 11.1 million registered Democrats having voted so far, according to the states that collate such information, compared with 8.2 million registered Republicans.
The Trump administration has spent months preparing for a possible Democratic takeover of Congress, developing plans to keep advancing major parts of his agenda through executive power while bracing for investigations of his administration, the Associated Press reported, citing a White House official and two people familiar with the plans.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate to overturn Republicans’ narrow 218-214 and 53-47 majorities. Opinion polls favor Democrats to win the House, while the Senate remains too close to call.
In other developments:
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Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s tightly fought Senate race, wants Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens to stay away from his campaign events. The two had planned to appear together Sunday at a church service in Detroit, but Representative Debbie Dingell later told CNN she had spoken to Stevens and told her, “This isn’t working.”
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A US judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal with prejudice on Saturday, according to a court filing, bringing an end to his legal challenge over the newspaper’s reporting on his alleged birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
Stick with us for more live coverage throughout the day.
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