2026 midterm elections live updates: Latest news, results, and analysis

A federal judge on Wednesday denied the Department of Justice’s bid to force California to set aside mail ballots associated with more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens, rejecting an emergency intervention less than a week before the midterm elections.

U.S. District Judge David Carter, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, rejected the department’s request to require election officials to hold the flagged voters’ ballots until their citizenship could be verified. His decision leaves California’s existing ballot-processing procedures in place ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

“California and its people are sovereign, too,” Carter wrote, warning that the administration’s proposed intervention threatened state authority over elections.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is deploying 134 election-law attorneys and nearly 1,000 trained volunteers to five key congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections to guard against potential interference by the Trump administration.

“We just made it a FELONY to illegally seize ballots,” Newsom said in a statement, warning that “a federal badge is not a license to intimidate voters or interfere with an election.”

The announcement, teased on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! show and formally made on Thursday, comes as California has enacted new laws targeting the unauthorized seizure of ballots and election records before results are certified.

The outgoing governor, who is widely expected to launch a 2028 presidential bid, has emerged as one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent Democratic adversaries. He has also joined the fight against Trump’s efforts to reshape congressional districts, framing the deployment of attorneys as part of a broader effort to protect California’s elections from federal interference.

The legal teams will cover California’s 6th, 13th, 22nd, 45th, and 48th congressional districts.

More than 800 poll observers and 54 hotline operators will also be on hand to flag and report suspicious activity in real time.

“Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide which votes count, which ballots get counted, or who wins an election,” California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks said. “California voters do.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who chaired the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said the state was preparing for potential efforts to overturn election results.

“I know exactly how far Donald Trump will go to overturn an election he doesn’t like,” Lofgren said. “California will not be caught flat-footed.”

Last month, Newsom signed legislation making it a felony to seize ballots, election records, or voting technology illegally while votes are being counted. The laws also strengthen protections against unauthorized federal interference and criminalize direct interference with mail-ballot delivery.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Thursday named Ohio, Alaska, Maine, and Iowa as races where he believes Republican Senate candidates face the toughest path to victory on Tuesday.

“I think there’s a firewall of states … but, I mean, there’s probably no more example of ground zero in this campaign than Ohio,” Thune said during a Fox News interview, referencing Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) battle for reelection against Democrat Sherrod Brown.

Thune did not mention the Texas Senate race, where polls appear to indicate Republican Ken Paxton is in an unexpectedly tight race against Democrat James Talarico.

Ohio and Maine, where Husted and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) are running for reelection, are traditionally known as battleground states that favor a mix of Democrats and Republicans. Iowa and Alaska’s close elections this cycle have been a bit more surprising.

In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has accused his rival, Democrat Mary Peltola, of seeking to confuse voters and siphon support in the tight race by recruiting another man named Dan Sullivan to run as a Republican.

The Senate race in Iowa, the fourth place Thune named as a firewall state, features Republican congresswoman Ashley Hinson against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, as the pair vies to succeed Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

Former Democratic congressional candidate Jordan Wood on Thursday launched a website he said is designed to expose Republicans running as “fake independents” in races across Maine.

Maine is known as a deeply purple state, making voters more likely to embrace more independent-minded candidates and messaging. Wood this week said that over a dozen people running in the state’s midterm elections frame themselves as independents but are actually Republican-leaning. He did not list independents campaigning who could be leaning Democratic.

Wood was floated as a possible replacement for former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner earlier this year, before Democrat Troy Jackson secured the spot. Wood previously ran in the Democratic primary in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District this year, but lost in the second round of voting.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will stump for Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Wednesday, his second trip to the Palmetto State in as many weeks.

Trump’s trip comes as Graham’s race against Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews is now considered to lean Republican by the Cook Political Report after the senator’s late brother, Lindsey Graham, won reelection in 2020 by 10 percentage points.

With less than a week before Election Day, the incumbent, who was appointed in July after her brother’s death from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, is in a margin-of-error race with Andrews, averaging a 2-point polling lead, according to RealClearPolitics.

The Washington Examiner will be on Air Force One with Trump. Follow along!

Trump revealed Wednesday evening he will spend the last hours before Election Day campaigning for the Louisiana Republican running to succeed outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

GOP candidate Julia Letlow is facing Democrat Jamie Davis in the general election. She holds a lead in polling and is expected to win, but appears to be in a closer-than-expected race against Davis ahead of Nov. 3.

Trump praised Letlow in a post on Truth Social, announcing he and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will hold a tele-rally for her Monday night.

“I know Julia well, have seen her tested at the highest and most difficult levels, and she is a TOTAL WINNER!” the president said. “As your next Senator, Julia will work tirelessly to Grow our Economy, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Support our Amazing Farmers and Fishermen, Champion Louisiana Oil & Gas, Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., Keep our Border SECURE, Stop Migrant Crime, Ensure LAW AND ORDER, Strengthen our Military/Veterans, and Protect our always under siege Second Amendment.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on Wednesday called for the Justice Department to investigate Alaska Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola, after her former campaign manager said the candidate’s team plotted to confuse the voters about her rival in one of the closest congressional races nationwide.

Scott, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee responsible for backing Sen. Dan Sullivan’s (R-AK) bid for reelection against Peltola, said during a NewsNation interview that there’s “no doubt” Peltola’s campaign colluded with Democratic operatives in a “coordinated effort to deceive the voters.”

The NRSC’s chairman demand for a inquiry into the accusations comes after Peltola’s ex-campaign manager told the New York Times that she and other staffers on her former boss’s team coordinated with Democratic operatives to find another man named Dan Sullivan in Alaska, successfully recruiting him to run as a Republican in the race to confuse voters, siphon on precious support in the tight race, and defeat the senator’s bid for reelection.

A source familiar previously told the Washington Examiner that the DOJ has been investigating the accusations since at least August. The Justice Department had filed a lawsuit last week seeking to block the results of the Alaska Senate election come November if it was found to be tainted by “voter confusion.”

Influential figures in the Make America Healthy Again movement turned out for Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn on Wednesday evening in an effort to propel him to victory in the midterm election next week.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other key players in the MAHA movement appeared at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, organized by the MAHA Action PAC to build support for Lahn.

Kennedy, the headlining speaker for the event other than Lahn himself, praised the gubernatorial hopeful as a champion for MAHA values in the state.

“Every child in the state has a right to drink water without the fear that they’re going to get cancer, to breathe air without getting asthma, and Zach embodies this,” Kennedy said.

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Pulling COVID-19 vaccines off the market, decreasing medications for children, cleaning up water, and putting fresh food in schools are all “pro-life issues,” according to Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn.

Lahn listed a variety of topics aligned with the Make America Healthy Again movement as anti-abortion issues during a MAHA Action rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday evening.

He said he was “very proud” of the six-week gestational age limit the Republican-led state legislature passed in Iowa, but “the fight for life doesn’t end at birth.”

Lahn said MAHA is “a fight to make sure people can live long, healthy lives.”

“The fight to protect the unborn is all about protecting human potential,” Lahn said. “An unborn child could be anything, do anything, solve anything, love anyone. But on the other end of this, when we’re protecting the lives and make sure people can live long, healthy lives, we’re protecting human wisdom. That’s what we’re protecting.”

Republican House candidate Joe Mitchell said at the MAHA Action rally in Des Moines, Iowa, that he intends to seek committee placement to investigate former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in pushing COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.

Mitchell, who is running in northeastern Iowa to replace current Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), said his 93-year-old grandmother, who was otherwise healthy, died in a nursing home after being required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in 2022.

“She went from a perfectly healthy 93-year-old to dead within two weeks,” Mitchell said. “So this is where this story of MAHA is personal to me.”

Mitchell said he is “not a big fan” of Fauci and recounted a conversation he had with House leadership about which committees he would like to be on should he win on Nov. 3.

“I want to be on oversight because I want to investigate the hell out of Anthony Fauci and what he did to this country,” Mitchell said.

The crowd subsequently broke out into chants of “lock him up,” referring to Fauci.

Multiple protesters interrupted President Donald Trump‘s rally for Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) almost as soon as the president took the stage, accusing the president of appearing in the Epstein list.

Trump opened Wednesday night by recounting how he first came to notice the physique of Husted, a former college football star.

But as Trump took a short pause, a protester wearing a MAGA hat shouted, “Trump was on the Jeffrey Epstein list,” drawing loud boos from the rest of the crowd.

The president proceeded to downplay the incident before getting interrupted two additional times by protesters spaced through the crowd.

“It’s a crazy thing. A crazy thing,” he continued. “So I was about to tell you a story, and they always hit me right in the middle of the punch line.”

President Donald Trump rallied in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday night for Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) special election, a critical race for determining control of the Senate.

Trump rallied for Husted earlier this month, claiming that his appearance — and frequent comments on Husted’s physique — have given the Republican candidate a 12-point lead. Still, Husted trailed former Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee, by 3.3 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average on Wednesday.

Upon his entrance onstage at the Shoemaker Center, the president began tossing out red, white, and black MAGA hats to the crowd.

“I’m thrilled to be back in this beautiful state, which I won all three times with the most votes ever got,” Trump told the crowd. “Jon Husted is going to beat me, and [Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee] Vivek [Ramaswamy] beats me too.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed a new nickname on Wednesday, calling him a “jihadist leprechaun.”

“My nickname for the guy is the jihadist leprechaun,” Cruz said while stumping for el Sayed’s opponent, Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers.

The GOP has continually aligned el Sayed with radical Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, allegations which he denied.

Cruz’s new branding for el Sayed reflects that of President Donald Trump, who called el Sayed “Ramadan” during a rally Tuesday night. Trump also frequently calls the Democrat by his middle name, Mohamad.

President Donald Trump demanded last-minute changes to the ballot for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat after a bombshell report that Democrats recruited candidates with the same name as the Republican incumbent.

“It has just been determined that the Democrats in Alaska illegally searched for, and recruited, a man named Dan Sullivan to run against our distinguished Republican Senator, Dan Sullivan, in order to defraud, confuse, and obfuscate the Election, thereby taking votes away from the REAL Senator, Dan Sullivan,” Trump wrote on Wednesday. “The New York Times reports that, ‘Democrats have insisted they have nothing to do with the other Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s Senate ballot. But aides with the Mary Peltola campaign and DSCC were part of a monthslong secret plan to recruit him to run — as well as other candidates.'”

In a lengthy social media post, Trump contended that the Democrats’ “false statements were made under oath in Federal Court.”

“Therefore, they perjured themselves, and should be liable for very serious consequences,” he wrote. “Mary Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done, A FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, and Dan Sullivan should be allowed to run without either Mary Peltola or FAKE Dan Sullivan on the Ballot.”

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YouTuber Ms. Rachel, or Rachel Griffin Accurso, whose content is oriented toward children, posted a video on Wednesday voicing her support for Maine Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson.

The content creator praised Jackson’s opposition to sending aid to Israel. Accurso has been highly critical of Israel’s role in the war in Gaza and has advocated Palestinian children.

“Troy doesn’t want us sending billions of dollars for weapons that kill and hurt children in Gaza,” she said. “He cares about using our tax dollars to help people in Maine thrive. Maine, I love you so much. I love Mainers; they’re so awesome. Let’s join together and elect Troy.”

Accurso, who is from Maine, also framed Jackson as a champion for children and families while dragging incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for putting financial interests before Mainers.

“He got kids free lunch at school. He got paid family leave. He’s for affordable childcare,” Accurso said. “Susan Collins cares about billionaires. Troy cares about people.”