Abdul El-Sayed formally disinvites Haley Stevens from campaign event: report
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Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign has requested that Haley Stevens, El-Sayed’s former opponent in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, not attend a campaign event alongside him on Sunday, Politico reported Friday night, citing two people familiar with the decision.
Stevens and El-Sayed were bitter opponents in the primary race, and were perhaps most fiercely divided over US support for Israel. Still, upon losing the primary, Stevens extended El-Sayed her endorsement, and most recently appeared beside him at an event in August.
But tensions flared up again when Stevens made it clear that her planned appearance at Sunday’s event at a Detroit church had a precondition: El-Sayed would denounce an ad from an outside group, attributing rising costs to US support of Israel. El-Sayed refused, accusing Stevens of reopening a settled primary race. Relations soured from there.
By Saturday morning, it wasn’t clear if Stevens would attend the event, even if invited.
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Voter enthusiasm for Tuesday’s midterm election continues to grow. More than 50.5m early votes have already been cast across the US as of Saturday morning, according to an analysis by the University of Florida. This is already nearly 5m more votes than the total number of early votes made in the 2022 midterm elections.
Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign requested that Haley Stevens, El-Sayed’s former opponent in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, not attend a campaign event alongside him on Sunday, according to reports. The disinvitation follows El-Sayed’s refusal to denounce an ad from an outside group that attributed rising costs to US support of Israel.
A federal judge barred the justice department from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots. The order came the day after the justice department sent letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening to prosecute and jail any who failed to preserve ballot records.
Alaskan senate candidate Mary Peltola has continued to deny knowing about her campaign’s alleged ballot-stacking scheme. Speaking at a campaign event, Peltola denied knowledge of any effort by her campaign to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to join the race against the Republican incumbent of the same name.
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal with prejudice, bringing an end to his legal challenge over the newspaper’s reporting on his alleged birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
Washington DC and the state of Virginia jointly filed a lawsuit on Saturday to prevent the Trump administration from moving ahead with plans for a 250ft arch the president envisions in the nation’s capital.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said Saturday that the Trump administration did not facilitate defeated far-right Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure to the US after he left Brazil following his election defeat to president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro arrived in Miami on Wednesday, a day after the State Department said that Bolsonaro and his family will be granted US visas following his loss in the Brazilian presidential election.
“We didn’t facilitate anything,” Rubio told reporters in Atlanta, where top diplomats are gathered at the G20 Leaders’ Summit.
“We had word that he had arrived in the United States. He had previously held a visa, and the president made a decision to allow him to enter the country,” Rubio said, adding that the US government was not “involved directly in any of the moves that were made.”
Bolsonaro and his family arrived on a private jet in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday morning. Shortly after, he published a letter claiming himself as the “true president” of Brazil, even as his own party had recognized the legitimate victory of Lula.
A federal immigration officer charged with aggravated assault after he ran over a Mexican man with his car in Houston will turn himself in on Monday, his attorney has told the Associated Press.
Mario Alberto Morales, 33, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), deliberately veered his SUV into Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, causing multiple leg fractures and a hip injury, journalists at a news conference in Houston were told Friday.
A grand jury indicted Morales on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Morales is planning to turn himself in at a courthouse sometime on Monday, David Lindenmuth, his attorney, told the AP. Lindenmuth previously told the AP that the incident was “clearly just an accident” and that local officials had “invented a crime out of thin air.”
Surveillance footage showed the officer chase Parra-Hernandez and then hit him with his car. Parra-Hernandez suffered a broken leg and was taken to a hospital, the Harris county sheriff’s office said.
The National Weather Service is forecasting that a line of storms could hit several Great Plains states on election day, including some that play host to major Senate races.
Texas and Kansas, two states where Democrats are gunning to flip seats that were once seen as safely Republican, could catch the brunt of the storms. The inclement weather could impact turnout, as voters will have to decide to whether to brave the conditions to make it to the polls.
We’re three days away from the midterm election. Here’s what you should know.
After rekindling their feud, Abdul El-Sayed formally disinvited Haley Stevens from a campaign event. El-Sayed’s campaign revoked his erstwhile primary opponent’s invitation to an event at a predominantly Black church in Detroit after Stevens demanded he denounce an earlier campaign ad.
Mary Peltola denied knowing about her campaign’s alleged ballot-stacking scheme. Speaking at a campaign event, Peltola denied knowledge of any effort by her campaign to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to join the race against the Republican incumbent of the same name.
Donald Trump is participating in a series of tele-rallies for candidates across the country. The president is taking part in a slate of remote events to stump for GOP contenders in more than a dozen different states. Tomorrow, he’ll head to Kansas and Iowa for a pair of in-person events.
More than 50 million ballots have been cast in early voting, far outpacing 2022. At the same time in the lead-up to the 2022 election, five million fewer votes had been cast. So far, voter enthusiasm is trending higher among Democrats, according to an analysis by the University of Florida.
A federal judge shot down Trump’s lawsuit The Wall Street Journal. Trump had accused the outlet of defamation over an article indicating that he’d written a racy and cryptic birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender. The judge on the case – who shot down Trump’s lawsuit once before, but allowed to refile an amended version – determined he had still failed to demonstrate the paper had violated acceptable reporting standards.
Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday letter
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal with prejudice, Reuters has reported.
The lawsuit accused the paper of defaming Trump in a July 2025 article that concluded Trump had signed a birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein, writing for the disgraced financier and sex offender a cryptic note accompanied by a drawing of a nude woman.
It’s not Trump’s first loss in this case, either. Back in April, the same judge, Darrin P. Gayles of the Southern District of Florida, dismissed an initial lawsuit, finding that the president had failed to sufficiently plead actual malice – the standard for proving defamation of a public figure like the president. Trump refiled the suit in May.
Marina Dunbar has the full story here:
As candidates around the country participate in a final weekend of campaigning ahead of the midterms, Donald Trump is in Mar-a-Lago, doing the exact same thing – just at a distance.
The president is in the middle of a battery of tele-rallies, calling into remote campaign events to support GOP candidates. The Hill reports that he’ll be participating in events for 19 different states.
Trump will also be traveling tomorrow to campaign (in person) for candidates in Iowa and Kansas.
Federal judge bars DoJ from threatening election workers to stop processing ballots
Roque Planas
A federal judge has barred the justice department from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots.
The temporary restraining order issued by the US district judge Trina Thompson in the northern district of California late Friday also bars the justice department from demanding local election officials segregate or not count ballots that the federal government deems may have been illegally cast by immigrants, something that is exceedingly rare.
The order came the day after the justice department sent letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening to prosecute and jail any who failed to preserve ballot records.
The justice department’s “intimidation, threats, and attempts at coercion force election workers daily to choose between acceding to defendants’ unlawful demands or adhering to their duties and thereby subjecting themselves to a serious risk of criminal investigation and prosecution”. Thompson wrote.
The order in the lawsuit filed by labor unions and civil rights groups marks another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to assert control over local elections.
My colleague Roque Planas has the full story:
The social media platform X briefly suspended an official campaign account associated with Dan S Sullivan, the Republican incumbent senator from Alaska, citing policy violations related to inauthentic profiles and impersonation.
The suspension of the handle, @DanSullivan_AK, was first reported by the Alaska Landmine. Sullivan’s campaign confirmed the action, saying it received a notification stating the account had been reported for impersonation before access was restored on Saturday afternoon, according to the Washington Post.
Tensions have been surrounding the identical names following a report by the New York Times alleging that Mary Peltola’s campaign played a behind-the-scenes role in recruiting Dan J Sullivan, a retired teacher running as an independent, to split the incumbent’s vote share.
Dan J Sullivan has publicly rejected claims of coordination with the Democratic party, and Peltola’s campaign has denied involvement in the candidacy of either Dan Sullivan.
Amid a tempestuous election cycle, public skepticism toward political polling is reaching new highs, with just one in four Americans now believing surveys accurately predict election outcomes.
According to a new Politico poll conducted by PF Global, only 25% of Americans say political surveys reliably estimate vote counts, highlighting a deep erosion of faith in the polling industry, which continues to face skepticism over its ability to accurately sample Republican voters.
A combined 41% of Americans across both parties believe polling systematically misses the mark in one direction or the other, arguing surveys either consistently underestimate Democratic turnout or fail to capture the full breadth of Republican support.
The poll comes during an intensely scrutinized midterm cycle marked by razor-thin margins. Both public forecasts and internal campaign tracking show critical battleground races – along with several historically safe Republican districts – locked firmly within the statistical margin of error just days before voters head to the polls.
If Mary Peltola’s campaign did, as the New York Times reported, recruit a candidate with same name as her Republican opponent, she insists she didn’t know about it.
When asked by a reporter with local news station KTUU whether she was aware of any such scheme, Peltolta again denied any knowledge.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I honestly I have no idea.”
But she said that she took offense to the allegation all the same, because “this is Alaska. We’re not in the business of tricking each other up here.”
Peltola also had scathing words for former staffers of hers who have supplied information to the Times about the alleged plan, as well as claims of dysfunction within Peltola’s campaign.
“These folks are gone,” Peltola said. “They’re gone for a good reason. If I could fire them again, I would be happy to fire them again.”
Abdul El-Sayed formally disinvites Haley Stevens from campaign event: report
Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign has requested that Haley Stevens, El-Sayed’s former opponent in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, not attend a campaign event alongside him on Sunday, Politico reported Friday night, citing two people familiar with the decision.
Stevens and El-Sayed were bitter opponents in the primary race, and were perhaps most fiercely divided over US support for Israel. Still, upon losing the primary, Stevens extended El-Sayed her endorsement, and most recently appeared beside him at an event in August.
But tensions flared up again when Stevens made it clear that her planned appearance at Sunday’s event at a Detroit church had a precondition: El-Sayed would denounce an ad from an outside group, attributing rising costs to US support of Israel. El-Sayed refused, accusing Stevens of reopening a settled primary race. Relations soured from there.
By Saturday morning, it wasn’t clear if Stevens would attend the event, even if invited.
