Trump to Rally in Mississippi as GOP Midterm Worries Grow: Election Updates

President Trump has taken the stage at a rally in Corinth, Mississippi, the latest appearance in a deep-red state amid lagging enthusiasm for Republicans ahead of the midterms. Last week, Trump visited Florida, South Carolina, Iowa and Kansas — all states that the party did not view as competitive just a few months ago.

But unlike in those states, Mississippi’s Senate race is still not considered competitive, even with a significant Democratic advantage this cycle. Trump has previously acknowledged that he is rallying in states that are not in play. “I’m really here because I love you people,” he said earlier this month while campaigning in Oklahoma.

Image Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times I’m in Corinth, Miss., where the Democratic nominee Scott Colom is offering a preemptive rebuttal to President Trump’s rally later today with Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent. Colom says he’s going to go to the Trump rally and plans to talk with voters there before it begins.

“I’m going to show up and I’m going to listen,” he said. Here’s what to know about Trump’s trip to Mississippi, an unexpected battleground. Image President Trump will travel to Mississippi on Monday to campaign for Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Credit... Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times President Trump’s tour of Republican strongholds this fall takes him on Monday to an unexpected battleground: Mississippi. There, he will campaign for Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican defending her seat in a race that has tightened over the last few months amid a barrage of late spending and visits from prominent Democrats.

Ms. Hyde-Smith, who has held the seat since 2018, is still favored to win. But her challenger, Scott Colom, a Democratic district attorney focused on improving health care access, lowering inflation and fighting corruption, has narrowed her lead, polls show .

He is backed by a coalition of working-class Black and white voters. Here’s what to know about the Senate race. The race is tighter than anticipated.

A Democrat has not won a Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and Mr. Trump won the state by about 23 points in 2024. The race still tilts toward Republicans, but the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster, shifted its rating last week to “likely Republican” from “solid Republican.” Democrats face a steep challenge to regain control of the Senate — they must flip four Republican-held seats, including some in states Mr.

Trump won by double digits — but have put Republicans on defense even in deep-red areas of the country. Image Ms. Hyde-Smith is favored to hold her Senate seat in the midterm election.

Credit... Eric Lee/Reuters Super PACs connected to both parties have invested in the Senate contest, and former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for Mr. Colom in Mississippi last week.

Mr. Colom also recently went viral for a 30-second campaign ad mocking Ms. Hyde-Smith’s tone-deaf response to a local television anchor’s comment on the rising price of beef: “You have so many proteins to choose from,” she says in a clip.

The video cuts to a man grilling. “Pick another protein?” he says. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.” The senator faces a strong challenger.

Mr. Colom, a district attorney, has used charisma and charm on the trail to turn a difficult seat for Democrats into a potential target. High-profile Democrats like Ms.

Harris and Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia have campaigned with him, and former President Barack Obama filmed an endorsement ad for him. If he wins, Mr. Colom would be Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.

Though he has played down that potential milestone, he has appealed to Mississippi’s Black community, a crucial group that counts for about 37 percent of all residents, the largest share of any state . Image Scott Colom is challenging Ms. Hyde-Smith for her Senate seat in Mississippi.

Credit... Sarah Warnock/Associated Press Mr. Colom cast Mr.

Trump’s visit as a sign of concerns that Ms. Hyde-Smith might lose. “Cindy High Prices is scared and that’s why she’s sending Donald Trump down here,” Mr.

Colom wrote on social media last week. “She’s scared to answer why she voted to cut healthcare, why she betrayed our farmers and why she blocked the release of the Epstein files.” Republicans are still projecting confidence. Mr.

Trump, asked last week how worried he was about Ms. Hyde-Smith’s chances, told reporters that she was “very popular” and that he had won the state “in a landslide.” He said: “If I need to get her over the top, I would go there.” On Friday, he told reporters that he was traveling to Mississippi because he had been asked to go.

“She’s up in the polls,” he said. “She’s not losing.” Jake Monssen, Ms. Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, said on Monday that “Mississippians aren’t too keen” on Mr.

Colom because of his liberal policies. “I think we’re in a good spot,” he added. Battle for the Senate Vice President JD Vance opened his remarks in Topeka, Kansas with a populist, anti-establishment message, saying “places like this have felt, and in fact have often been, left behind.” Then, he said America is being “built back better than ever before” under the Trump administration.

Vance is rallying in the solidly Republican state for Senator Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican who polls indicate is neck-and-neck with the Rev. Adam Hamilton, his Democratic challenger. He is also hoping to boost Ty Masterson, the Republican nominee for governor.

Polls indicate Masterson has a narrow lead over the Democratic nominee, Cindy Holscher. Image Credit... Pool photo by Finn Gomez The other Dan Sullivan fires back at Trump’s lawsuit in Alaska.

Image Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the retired teacher running for Senate, called the experience “unending stress” in an email exchange with The Alaska Beacon. Credit...

Christopher Miller for The New York Times The other Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s Senate race, who has said relatively little despite being at the center of a legal and political maelstrom, defended his position on the ballot in rare public comments on Monday. The long-shot candidacy of Mr.

Sullivan, a retired elementary schoolteacher who lives in a small Alaskan fishing village called Petersburg, has attracted outsized national attention because he has the same name as the state’s incumbent Republican senator. Republicans have accused Mr. Sullivan of Petersburg of being a spoiler aimed at confusing voters to help Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee.

He was briefly removed from the ballot until a state court reinstated him. The Justice Department, on President Trump’s order, filed a lawsuit last week seeking to block the certification of the race if votes for the former schoolteacher prevent the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, from winning.

Election law specialists have been skeptical of the litigation’s merits . On Monday, the lesser-known Mr. Sullivan told a reporter for The Alaska Beacon that the lawsuit was “a gross misuse of the Justice Department for a situation that has already been litigated and resolved by the Alaska Supreme Court.” “I think the Division of Elections did a notable job of differentiating two candidates on the ballot with similar names and the primary showed there was little if any confusion,” Mr.

Sullivan wrote to the reporter, who interviewed him over email on behalf of a wider group of interested news outlets. “Alaskan voters are smart and I have faith in their ability to make an informed decision on their ballots.” Throughout it all, Mr. Sullivan, the former teacher, has maintained that he is not part of a Democratic plot.

He has not campaigned and has done few interviews. His motivations have been the subject of intense scrutiny. He told The New York Times in August that he had previously voted for Democratic candidates for president and for Ms.

Peltola during her previous runs for statewide office. Although he registered with the Republican Party at the same time as announcing his Senate run, he said he was a moderate Republican running in good faith, unhappy with the senator’s tenure and with Mr. Trump.

On Monday, the state elections division confirmed that Mr. Sullivan had changed his party registration from Republican to “undeclared” when filling out an absentee ballot form in the primary. He at first told the Alaska Beacon reporter that he had not changed his registration.

But when the switch was describd to him, he replied via email, “holy cow.. I did! - I can only guess I was thinking that since they didn’t affiliate me on the ballot, i should go with that but to be honest with you, I am frazzled by all of this.” He said that he was a bit overwhelmed by all of the attention, and planned to have a quiet election night with a handful of close supporters and friends.

“To say that it has now become overwhelming and intimidating is an understatement,” Mr. Sullivan wrote. “It is unending stress, at times paralyzing and I am looking forward to it being over.” A spokesman for the incumbent Mr.

Sullivan said after the lawsuit was filed that “Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan’s strong record of delivering for Alaska.” Mary Beth Gahan Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, stopped in the dining room of McBride’s Steakhouse in Wichita Falls for an event aimed at driving G.O.P. turnout, particularly in rural areas.

“I wish every place was like this,” he said, as he pointed to the dozen saddles hanging overhead and a ten-point buck on the wall. The event, which was headlined by Gov. Greg Abbott, drew ardent supporters of the party and was intended not to convince the undecided.

Abbott did not mention Paxton or the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, in his remarks, but did ask if those in attendance planned to vote Republican “from the top of the ballot all the way all to the bottom of the ballot to keep Texas, Texas.” Image Credit... Shelby Tauber for The New York Times During a rally at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, Vice President JD Vance said that there were “not one, but two Democrats” on the ballot for the Senate race in Montana against Kurt Alme, the Republican nominee.

The vice president appeared to be alluding to Alani Bankhead, a Democratic Air Force veteran, and Seth Bodnar, a former university administrator running without party affiliation. While Bankhead won the primary nomination, some Democrats have backed Bodnar’s independent bid instead, believing that he was more electable.

Alme, the Republican, has polled ahead of both his opponents in the majority of recent surveys. Image Credit... Pool photo by Finn Gomez Dan J.

Sullivan, the long-shot Alaska Senate candidate who shares a name with Senator Dan S. Sullivan and is accused of being a spoiler planted to help the campaign of the Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, responded publicly for the first time to the Justice Department lawsuit filed last week seeking to block the certification of the race.

“It seems a gross misuse of the Justice Department for a situation that has already been litigated and resolved by the Alaska Supreme Court,” he said in a statement to a local reporter and shared with a wider group of journalists. “Alaskan voters are smart and I have faith in their ability to make an informed decision on their ballots,” he said.

The Trump administration suit seeks to stop certification if it appears that Senator Dan Sullivan would have won had he received the votes that go to the long-shot Dan Sullivan, a retired teacher from a small fishing village. In his statement, the challenger called the experience of running for office “unending stress, at times paralyzing and I am looking forward to it being over.” Image Credit...

Christopher Miller for The New York Times My colleague Lauren McGaughy and I analyzed data from the state of Texas on Ken Paxton’s travel while he has served as the Republican attorney general. We found that since his 2015 swearing-in, Paxton has taken 350 trips outside the state with a taxpayer-funded security detail, including 25 to foreign countries.

The cost of that security detail: more than $3.1 million. We also examined gifts that Paxton accepted while in office. Read the full article here.

Early Voting Election Day is next week. What can early voting tell us so far? Image Voters waited in line to participate in early voting at the Marty Robbins Recreation Center in El Paso last week.

Credit... Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots in the 2026 elections, and while polling has pointed to a good night for Democrats, there are plenty of pressing questions that won’t be answered until election night, or beyond. It can be tempting to turn to the early vote for answers to these questions.

But in most cases, early voting data is limited in how much insight it can offer . The data tells us which voters have turned out, not for whom they have been persuaded to vote — to say nothing of how voters’ behaviors have shifted since the last election cycle. And it offers no insight into what turnout will be like on Election Day.

Nonetheless, there are some early voting takeaways worth monitoring. In Texas, there are encouraging signs for Democrats. Around 80 percent of Texans cast their ballots ahead of Election Day in 2024, making the early vote a more useful assessment of the political environment there than in many other states.

And Texas has drawn a great deal of attention in these midterms, with polls in the state’s Senate race showing James Talarico, the Democrat, tied with or narrowly leading Ken Paxton. Voters in Texas do not register with a political party, but the state does record voters’ participation in a partisan primary.

By that metric, Democrats are faring well in the advance vote: In votes cast through Saturday, Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republican primary voters by around two percentage points, based on New York Times estimates. But that wouldn’t be entirely unexpected. More voters cast ballots in the state’s Democratic primary in March than did so in the concurrent Republican primary, a striking feat .

Among the largest caveats with early voting data, though, is that participation in a party’s primary is no guarantee of a vote for that party in a general election — and around one in four voters have no history of primary participation. Turnout is high in Senate battlegrounds. More than four million ballots have been cast in Texas thus far, a strong turnout showing that more closely resembles a presidential election than a midterm.

Turnout in the state’s Hispanic areas has been particularly high — through the end of Saturday, majority-Hispanic counties were running at around 90 percent of their 2024 pace, compared to 82 percent statewide. (Midterms often see a much starker decrease in turnout.) While few swing states have seen numbers as robust as Texas, turnout is generally higher across the board than it was in the 2022 midterms, with the largest increases in less populous states that are more competitive than usual this cycle, like Iowa, Kansas and Maine. (Maine, like Texas, is running at around 80 percent of its 2024 pace.) The increase is particularly notable in Kansas, which had highly competitive races for governor and attorney general in 2022.

With a competitive Senate race this year, turnout is up by around 50 percent, and registered Democrats make up a greater share of the electorate than at this point in 2022 or 2024. The results may not necessarily be representative: Johnson County, which leans Democratic and is the most populous county in the state, typically constitutes around 25 percent of the statewide vote, but makes up nearly half of the advance votes thus far.

Black voters are showing up early. Image Early voting was conducted at the Cobb County Elections and Voter Registration office in Marietta, Ga., this month. Credit...

Nicole Craine for The New York Times Georgia and North Carolina, where polls have shown Democratic Senate candidates with wider advantages, are among a handful of states that include race in their voter files, and a large majority of ballots in each are cast before Election Day. That makes them particularly useful for examining how Black voters are turning out relative to past cycles.

The racial composition of the electorate doesn’t neatly correlate with election results, but even a small increase in Black vote share would be a strong sign for Democrats — Times Voter Trends estimates that Kamala Harris won around 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia and North Carolina in 2024.

In both states, the share of Black voters casting their ballots ahead of Election Day has paced ahead of 2022 and 2024 totals, and has largely remained consistent throughout the early voting period. Supplemental Graphic Supplemental Promo Election Analysis By Ben Casselman, Nour Idriss, Stephanie Swart and Edward Vega By Lisa Lerer, Gilad Thaler, Chris Whitworth, Stephanie Swart, June Kim and Matthew DeFeo By Theodore Schleifer, Jon Miller, Paul Abowd, Nikolay Nikolov, Stephanie Swart and Jillian Vordick By Lisa Lerer, Chris Whitworth, Stephanie Swart, Edward Vega and Matt Zdun By Shane Goldmacher, Paul Abowd, Jon Miller, Nikolay Nikolov, Edward Vega and Gabriel Blanco More Election News Trump dangles $1 million reward for reporting voter fraud.

Image President Trump heading to a rally in Mississippi on Monday. He promised $1 million to anyone reporting voter fraud “upon the arrest and conviction” of the fraudsters. Credit...

Doug Mills/The New York Times As President Trump has implored voters to support Republicans in next week’s elections, he has frequently dangled financial incentives and issued unfounded warnings about voter fraud. On Monday, he married those two passions. “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” Mr.

Trump wrote on social media. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about where the money would come from for the ostensible rewards or how Americans are supposed to report fraud accusations. The announcement reflected another step in Mr.

Trump’s gathering campaign to use the powers of his office to influence the outcome of the midterms. For years, the president has attacked the integrity of U.S. elections , and in his second term, his administration has tried to assert more control over the voting process, which is overseen by states.

Last week, Mr. Trump moved to pre-emptively challenge the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican candidate loses. The president and his Justice Department have also leaned on expansive but unsupported claims of voter fraud in trying to force states like California to set aside thousands of mail ballots they claim were sent to noncitizens.

At the same time, Mr. Trump has stepped up the financial incentives for voters as Republicans face increasingly steep odds of keeping control of Congress. A national poll from The New York Times and Siena University found Mr.

Trump’s approval rating hit a new low this month, with just 36 percent of likely voters saying they approved of his job performance. Likely voters said they preferred Democratic candidates over Republicans by 11 percentage points in their congressional districts. Over the past two months, Mr.

Trump has signed pardons at campaign rallies , sent $500 Obamacare “refund” checks” and issued $90 direct deposits to seniors to offset Medicare premiums. The central reward, though, is the so-called “Trump Dividend,” which Mr. Trump announced at the Republican gathering he insisted his party throw last month in Dallas.

Mr. Trump has promised $5,000 for every American adult if Republicans retain control of Congress, a proposal that has drawn bipartisan criticism and would cost more than $1 trillion . It would also likely require congressional approval.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump announced a new $25 million whistle-blower incentive program to provide information to combat fraud. There are already multiple avenues for reporting fraud to the federal government, and the new program raised concerns because Mr.

Trump said he would personally determine who received the money. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, deflected questions from reporters in South Carolina when asked if he had any issues with an ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, that featured the estranged mother of the Democratic nominee Amy Acton.

Jordan, who was attending a fundraising event in South Carolina, did not respond when asked if the ad should be pulled. Instead he said, “I think this is all the Democrats saying, ‘We’ve got to say anything, do anything, talk about anything other than Amy Acton’s record.’” President Trump on Monday announced a $1 million reward for anyone who reports voter fraud from past elections or in the 2026 midterm that results in an arrest and conviction.

The president, who made the announcement on Truth Social, did not provide any additional details about the reward, including where the money would come from, but Trump has long been consumed by the false idea that American elections are rife with fraud. Vice President JD Vance criticized the Democrats running for the House and Senate in Montana during a rally at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, saying they would be “servants” of senior Democrats like Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer.

The event was in the state’s closely-watched First Congressional District, which President Trump won by 12 points in 2024 but includes the liberal cities of Bozeman and Missoula. Vance spoke about his time in the U.S. Marine Corps and the military service of Aaron Flint, a Republican Army veteran running for the House against Sam Forstag, a Democratic U.S.

Forest Service smokejumper who has run on a blue-collar, pro-labor message. Vance picked at a highly specific social policy from Forstag’s platform, his opposition to banning gender-transition surgeries for children, that Republicans have sought to make an issue in several races. Forstag has argued that such choices should remain private medical and familial decisions, and has defended trans rights.

Image Credit... Pool photo by Finn Gomez I’m in Wisconsin with Representative Tom Tiffany, a Republican candidate for governor who is crisscrossing the state in the final days of a neck-and-neck race with David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive. Standing in the parking lot of the Brat Stop in Kenosha, Tiffany called his Democratic opponent’s campaign “desperate” for bringing former Vice President Kamala Harris to appear with him in Milwaukee on Monday.

Asked if President Trump would come to Wisconsin to campaign with him, Tiffany said he had not discussed it with the president. “He’s got more important fish to fry with the Senate and the House of Representatives races,” he said. “He’s staying focused on that.

I’m staying focused on running for governor.” Image Credit... Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times Elon Musk has made another donation to support a Republican in a battleground-state race. Musk gave $835,000 last week to a committee called Michigan Victory 2026 that was set up to boost the Republican gubernatorial candidate John James, according to a new campaign-finance filing.

Last week, The Times calculated that Musk’s political giving in the 2025-26 midterms cycle was at about $469 million so far. Image Credit... Evan Vucci/Reuters Democrats call for a special counsel to scrutinize Trump’s ties to Epstein.

Image President Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. Credit... Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times A group of House Democrats on Monday called for an independent special counsel to investigate President Trump’s ties with the disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, thrusting the issue back into the news in the final week of their party’s push to win control of Congress.

A new report written by Democratic staff aides on the Judiciary Committee accuses Mr. Trump of being “an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women,” though it largely cites allegations that have already been public. Mr.

Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has acknowledged having once been friendly with Mr.

Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, but has said that they had a significant falling out. The report — which is separate from the House investigation into Mr. Epstein being conducted by the Oversight Committee — landed just eight days before Election Day, as candidates across the country were making their closing pitches.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Democrats have sought to make the case that Republican corruption in Washington is costing Americans money and vowed to use their power to investigate the president should they win control of Congress. On the campaign trail and in television ads, Democrats have been trying to tie congressional Republicans to Mr.

Epstein, noting that party leaders initially opposed the release of investigative material in his case compiled by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors. They have seized on the fallout over the government’s handling of the Epstein inquiry and the Trump administration’s decision to relocate Ghislaine Maxwell , a longtime associate of Mr.

Epstein serving a 20-year prison sentence, to a minimum-security prison. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the Justice Department had “deliberately withheld evidence” and “appears to be covering up these crimes to protect the president.” House Majority PAC, the main super PAC for House Democrats, is spending $2.1 million in the final week of the campaign in Minnesota’s First Congressional District, which covers the rural southern part of the state and where President Trump won by 12 points in 2024.

Republicans have held the seat since Tim Walz vacated it to run for governor in 2018. Representative Brad Finstad, the incumbent, faces Jake Johnson, a high school teacher. The PAC is also spending $380,000 on advertising in Indiana’s Fifth Congressional District, where Democrats are hoping to oust Representative Victoria Spartz.