Trump tries to rally support for Republican candidates as top Super Pac for Senate Democrats pours millions into key races – as it happened

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments: Donald Trump traveled to Bullhead City, Arizona and Kalispell, Montana for campaign rallies today. In Arizona, Trump urged voters to elect Andy Biggs, a GOP congressman who’s running to unseat the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs.

In Montana, Trump rallied for Kurt Alme, a Republican and the former US attorney for Montana, who is facing Alani Bankhead, a Democrat and a retired air force officer, as well as Seth Bodnar, an independent and US army veteran former president of the University of Montana.

The president traveled to campaign rallies today onboard the new Air Force One, a luxury Boeing 747-8 aircraft gifted by the Qatari government. Speaking about the plane during his appearance in Arizona, Trump said, “When you’re giving gifts, you take them, right?” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he feels personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite squeezed, raising doubts about long-term US support for Kyiv.

The Ukrainian president, on a visit to London, accused Trump of picking the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the US agreeing to buy diesel from Moscow. The top Super Pac for Senate Democrats will pour more than $7m into two marquee races this cycle: Michigan and Maine.

The Senate Majority Pac has reserved $3.7m for its campaign in Michigan, to support Democratic Senate nominee Dr Abdul El-Sayed. The group is also investing $3m in Maine, to boost Democrat Troy Jackson’s chances against Susan Collins. Federal authorities investigating the Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar seized the Democratic lawmaker’s phone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.

The justice department has threatened California over alleged noncitizen voters. In a letter addressed to the California secretary of state, Shirley Weber, on Tuesday, the acting deputy attorney general, Trent McCotter, said the justice department gave Los Angeles county officials a “password-protected thumb drive” with names of people that the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens”.

US price increases reached an annual rate of 3.7% in September, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.4% in August. This final inflation report before the pivotal midterm elections comes amid polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration over the cost of living.

A record number of Georgians cast ballots in the first day of early voting this midterm cycle. According to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, there were 188,600 votes cast on Tuesday – an increase of more than 53,000 voters over the 2022 midterm election, which saw 134,962 early in-person votes.

Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 presidential nominee, will travel across the country in support of several Democrats facing competitive races in the final two weeks ahead of the November midterms, according to her office. During a podcast appearance yesterday, Harris said ‘I haven’t decided’ about a 2028 presidential run.

Before his rally speech, Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden for provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine in remarks to a reporter back stage. “I have to make deals with people, so I don’t go around calling them names,” the president said. “I don’t go around mocking people.

Part of the reason you have that war in the first place is Biden went around mocking Russia.” Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, told the New York Times on Wednesday that she misheard reporters who asked her on Tuesday where she had passed the bar exam.

When reporters asked Zacharia, as she left the White House with Donald Trump on Tuesday, where she had passed the bar exam, since she has described herself as a lawyer, she replied, oddly: “I moved to China”. In a brief phone interview with the Times, she said: “I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’ “That’s all I could hear over the sound of Marine One,” she said, of the helicopter that was about to bring her and the president to the airport for his flight to Alaska.

“And, wanting to respect protocol, the distance behind the president, kept me from moving closer to hear the question.” According to the Times, she added that when she first began appearing on television as a pro-Trump commentator, the president of Pepperdine law school, where she obtained her law degree in 2011, warned her not to call herself “attorney” or “esquire,” but said that using the term “lawyer” was allowed.

That answer suggests that Zacharia simply did not pass the bar exam in any US state, before or after moving to China to work in a Chinese law firm. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday night that Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after graduating from law school at Pepperdine in 2011, but failed to pass, according to a source it did not name.

Donald Trump began his remarks in Montana tonight focused largely on gun rights. Kurt Alme, the Republican candidate for US Senate that Trump is campaigning for, has an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which endorsed him last month. Donald Trump has arrived in Montana an hour after he was slated to appear.

We’ll bring you newsworthy lines from his second campaign appearance of the day. James Talarico downplayed a past remark about God being non-binary, after being questioned about his social stances. In 2021, Talarico, a state legislator, came out against a bill restricting transgender athletes, saying then “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between.

God is nonbinary.” His comments have since surfaced as fuel for his opponent Ken Paxton’s attack ads. “When I said that, I was being provocative and I want to admit that and come clean about that,” Talarico said during the CNN town hall. “What I was saying is actually not controversial theologically: the idea that we can’t define God using human categories.

Not only did I say that, but the late Charlie Kirk said that – the late Pope Benedict said that. “Preachers often will say something shocking in a sermon to get your attention and that’s something I’m still learning how to do in a responsible way.” Bill Clinton will join Democrats campaigning for the November elections when he joins David Jolly, who’s running for governor in Florida, next week.

Clinton will join Jolly, a former Republican congressman who’s now running on the Democratic ticket, at an interfaith event. James Talarico, the Texas Democratic candidate for Senate, once again debunked rumors in the conservative media that he had a clandestine stint at a mental health facility.

Before his CNN town hall kicked off on Wednesday evening, Talarico said, as he has before, that he took a hiatus from in-person campaign appearances after coming down with the flu. “My decision to stay home for a week sent my opponent and his conspiracy theorists spiraling.

I opened up social media and learned I had apparently dropped out of the race, had flown to a mental hospital in Ohio – that I had died,” Talarico said. “False claims got millions of views online and this is an example of what I call the ‘rage economy.’ Billionaires who own these platforms get rich.

We all get angry and nobody’s life gets any better. Conspiracy theories don’t put food on the table, put gas in the tank, or improve our communities.” Speaking to reporters in Arizona on Wednesday, Donald Trump was asked about the allegation that Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s relatives in Egypt once supported the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition movement.

The president responded by lying that El-Sayed had called himself “a member of the Muslim Brotherhood”. “Abdul, or as I call him, Mohammed El-Sayed, he’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Trump said in a false statement posted on social media by the White House.

“He said that years ago, he was a proud member,” the president continued, also falsely. “And you can’t have a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Congress, being on one of our security committees.” Despite Trump’s blatant lie, there is no evidence that El-Sayed is or ever has been a member of the group.

The allegation he was being asked to respond to, which has become a centerpiece of the Republican campaign against El-Sayed, is that his mother and members of her family in Egypt might have once had sympathy for the group, based on three tweets posted in 2012 and 2013 by the candidate’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, in response to political developments in Egypt after the revolution there.

The social media posts from El-Sayed’s half-sister were reported this week by the Washington Free Beacon, a partisan, rightwing news site funded by a major Republican donor. The rightwing site was invited to accompany Trump on his trip to Arizona on Wednesday by the White House.

On 24 June 2012, the day that a former Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi, was elected Egypt’s president, with the support of secular pro-democracy activists who celebrated in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Abdelhadi posted criticism of the Islamist group while saying that her family had supported it during its long years of opposition to the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The same day, as secular supporters of the revolution that deposed Mubarak expressed relief that Morsi had defeated a military-backed candidate, Abdelhadi also posted: “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college.” On 3 July 2013, when Morsi was deposed in a military coup by Gen Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, starting a bloody crackdown on Islamists and secular activists that lasts to this day, El-Sayed’s half-sister posted that she was praying for family members in Egypt who supported the Muslim Brotherhood.

El-Sayed, who was raised by his father and stepmother – and grandparents – told NBC News on Wednesday that his half-sister’s tweets did not contradict his repeated statement that he has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. “I wasn’t raised by my mother,” El-Sayed said, adding that he has never talked to her about her days as a student activist in Egypt a decade before his birth in the US.

Donald Trump is scheduled to begin speaking soon at a rally in Montana. Here, Kurt Alme, a Republican and the former US attorney for Montana, is facing Alani Bankhead, a Democrat and a retired air force officer, as well as Seth Bodnar, an independent and US army veteran former president of the University of Montana.

A Trump administration raid on Ilhan Omar’s home this week is part of an investigation intended to build a case to strip her of her US citizenship and deport her, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing US officials and other people familiar with the investigation.

During his second term, Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively pursued work to denaturalize US citizens. Since returning to office, the president’s administration has filed more than 200 lawsuits against people it is seeking to denaturalize. Previously, the government filed denaturalization cases fewer than a dozen times a year, the Journal reports, citing the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Kamala Harris said she has not decided whether she will run for president in 2028, the former vice-president told Keke Palmer during an interview on the actor’s podcast Tuesday. At the end of the interview – which covered the midterm elections, the Trump administration and Black voters – Palmer asked whether Harris was considering a 2028 presidential run.

“I haven’t decided. I haven’t decided yet. I will, I promise,” Harris said. JD Vance offered his best wishes to Pope Leo, following the news that the pontiff is recovering from lung cancer surgery. “Our family continues to pray for the good health and full recovery of Pope Leo XIV.

May God grant him strength as he works to get better. I hope he knows that millions of American Christians are thinking about him,” Vance wrote in a social media post. The Catholic vice-president and the pope have not always seen eye-to-eye. In April, Vance effectively told Leo to stay in his lane after the head of the Catholic church criticized the White House over the Iran war.

Anthropic will add official US voting information to its Claude chatbot this month, the AI company said. It will source the information from the nonpartisan non-profit Democracy Works. Claude will also show live results on election night, Anthrophic said. Federal authorities investigating the Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar seized the Democratic lawmaker’s phone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.

The subpoenas were issued for a grand jury collecting evidence in Minnesota as federal authorities probe potential fraud in Omar’s immigration paperwork, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The investigation led to federal agents searching Omar’s Washington DC home on Monday just weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is seeking re-election. The scope of the investigation into Omar is unclear, though the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has suggested that authorities were examining potential crimes related to her family’s immigration paperwork.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he feels personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite squeezed, raising doubts about long-term US support for Kyiv. The Ukrainian president, on a visit to London, accused Trump of picking the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the US agreeing to buy diesel from Moscow.

Ahead of a meeting with the UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, in 10 Downing Street, Zelenskyy appeared in a TV interview where he was asked whether the sudden restriction of Starlink was deliberate and if he felt betrayed by Trump. “Really, yes … but it’s a little bit more complicated ⁠than just my emotions or my feelings,” the Ukrainian president replied, adding: “It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner.” Here’s the full story from my colleagues Dan Sabbagh, Jessica Elgot and Andrew Roth: After a tight one-hour-and-40-minute set, Donald Trump has wrapped up his remarks to supporters in Arizona.

He is en route to Montana where he will speak again this evening. In his ongoing remarks in Arizona, which have now blown past the 90-minute mark, Donald Trump claimed that Democrats had refused to stand for a 104-year-old veteran awarded the Medal of Honor during his State of the Union address in February.

Here is video of Democrats standing and applauding at that moment. Trump was misremembering a stunt at another point in the same speech, when he said: “I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” When Democratic lawmakers did not stand, Trump scolded them: “You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up.” Andy Biggs briefly joined Donald Trump on stage near the end of the president’s hour-and-20-minute address.

“Vote Republican top to bottom. Let’s turn Arizona red,” Biggs said before stepping off stage. Donald Trump claimed that he has secured $21.2tn in foreign investments in his first 15 months in office. The White House website itself disputes that number, claiming instead that “the US has seen a surge of private and foreign investment” totalling $11.3tn.

That figure includes not only foreign funding, but also domestic deals that have not yet been finalized, such as a $608bn investment from Nvidia, a $600bn investment from Meta and a $500bn deal with Stargate partners Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle. According to its own website, about half of the White House’s $11.3tn figure comes from domestic projects.

Some of the largest deals touted on the White House website, including a $1.2tn “investment” from Qatar have previously been described by the White House itself as an “economic exchange”, and others are still being negotiated, such as an alleged $1tn deal with Japan that is still in the framework stage.

Trump has boasted of false investment numbers during his campaign tour ahead of the midterm elections. Speaking in Alaska yesterday, Trump repeated his claim that South Korea has agreed to spend $50bn to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska, just days after Alaska Public Media reported that Korean officials told state lawmakers in Anchorage that the country had not agreed to invest in the pipeline and would consider investing in the project if it’s commercially reasonable.

At his campaign rally in Arizona, Donald Trump said “incomes for hard-working Americans have soared” and said inflation was record high during Joe Biden’s administration. The president’s statement came as inflation accelerated to 3.7% last month amid the Iran war.

Today, US stocks dropped to their worst day since July. Speaking in Arizona, Donald Trump just repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because Iran was “two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”. In fact, two months into Trump’s second term, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.

Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. Eight months later, in February 2026, Trump announced that a full-scale war on Iran was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Following the news that a federal appeals court will today hear arguments over whether national guard members should patrol the streets of Washington DC, Donald Trump lauded their work at his rally in Arizona. “Washington DC was a very dangerous place,” he said.

“It was a terrible place.” He added that the US capital “is now one of the safest cities in America”. The president deployed the guard in August 2025 as part of what he said was a crime-fighting mission in Washington DC. The force, which rose to a peak of about 5,000 troops over the summer, has supported arrest operations and patrolled city streets.

The deployment came around the same time that Trump moved to deploy troops in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to combat what he described as lawlessness and violent unrest over his immigration crackdown. The Trump administration says the Washington DC deployment has contributed to a decrease in crime in the city, where crime was already on the decline before the national guard arrived.

Arriving in Arizona after a campaign appearance in Alaska, Donald Trump criticized the state’s ranked-choice voting policy, calling it “a test tube”. “I just left Alaska where we have a real bad thing. They have the, you know, the ranked-choice voting, where they, you go into, I guess, some kind of a test tube or something, and they pick whoever the hell they want,” he said.

Speaking in Arizona, Donald Trump praised Republican gubernatorial Andy Biggs before repeating a common refrain of his campaign talk points, including denying the results of past elections. “I’ve known Andy Biggs from the time I started in politics, which wasn’t that long ago,” he said.

He also vaguely alleged that broken voting machines in the state swayed a past election in favor of Democrats. Trump was perhaps speaking about Republican candidate Kari Lake’s loss to current governor Katie Hobbs in 2022. After losing to Hobbs, Lake formally challenged her loss, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county.

Arizona has long been a focus of Trump’s. As my colleague Mary Jo Pitzl reported this summer, in 2020 “Republican officials in Maricopa county – Arizona’s largest county and one of the most competitive election battlegrounds in the country – resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state, enduring threats, harassment and enormous pressure from the defeated president.” After arriving in Arizona aboard the new Air Force One, a luxury Boeing 747-8 aircraft gifted by the Qatari government, Donald Trump said, “When you’re giving gifts, you take them, right?” Trump took his first flight aboard the $400m aircraft this summer, replacing the military-grade 747-2 that has transported US presidents for more than three decades.

The emergence of the controversial gift last year sparked a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, and intensified conflict-of-interest fears. The constitution forbids public officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State”.

Donald Trump’s plane has arrived in Bullhead City, Arizona, where he is scheduled to deliver a midterm campaign rally shortly. We’ll bring you any newsworthy lines from the event. The state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, is hoping for a second term, but will have to beat Andy Biggs, a current GOP congressman, who won Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary.

Following Katie Zacharia’s debut press briefing on Tuesday, we’ve been spending more time digging into her background. Zacharia was relatively unknown when Trump announced her selection to be his next press secretary last week, after the departure of Karoline Leavitt earlier this year.

In the days since, several outlets have uncovered a series of since-deleted social media posts that promote debunked or baseless conspiracies. In a series of now-scrubbed posts on X, reviewed by the Guardian, Zacharia fawned over the Tesla and Space X founder, Elon Musk.

On 22 May 2022, the new press secretary described Musk, a tech billionaire and Trump ally, as “based”. She went on to explain the term was applied “when you want to recognize someone for being themselves” and “courageous and unique or not caring what others think”.

In another post from the same year, Zacharia also responded to one user sharing a widely circulated picture of Musk and Ghislaine Maxwell, the co-conspirator of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2014, where Zacharia wrote “oh please, he already responded to this post.

#oldnews”. Musk has not been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and has denied knowing Maxwell, claiming the photo which pictures her standing close to him is because she “photobombed” him. In other now-deleted posts, also from the same period, Zacharia directed various complimentary messages at Musk.

“#IstandwithElon,” she wrote in one. In another she praised him for renouncing his support for the Democratic party and saying he would now support Republicans. “Smartest and richest man in the world right here is saying out loud what everyone else is thinking,” Zacharia wrote.

However, last year Zacharia questioned whether Musk could have been trusted “from the beginning” while appearing as a guest on conservative commentator Buck Sexton’s podcast. “He’s heavily invested in China. A lot of people were questioning his allegiance to begin with.

Where is his allegiance completely?” she asked on the show. In late 2025, Musk and Trump had a public falling out of the president’s sweeping domestic policy legislation. They have since reconciled and Musk, according to the New York Times, is spending record sums to help Republicans retain control of the midterm elections this cycle.

The Bulwark previously reported on Zacharia’s since-deleted posts where she called on the administration to “suspend habeas corpus” – the constitutional right to challenge detention before a judge. Meanwhile, CNN also found now-deleted social media posts where Zacharia wrote and re-shared comments that accused prominent political figures and Hollywood elites of pedophilia.

This includes longtime Democratic operative John Podesta – who was the notable target of the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy – which alleged that several prominent Democrats were part of a child sex-trafficking ring. The top Super Pac for Senate Democrats will pour more than $7m into two marquee races this cycle: Michigan and Maine.

The Senate Majority Pac has reserved $3.7m for its campaign in Michigan, to support the Democratic nominee in the Senate race, Dr Abdul El-Sayed, against the Trump-backed Republican, Mike Rogers. The group is also investing $3m in Maine, to boost Democrat Troy Jackson’s chances against Susan Collins.

Meanwhile, Trump will travel to Bullhead City, Arizona, for a midterms rally, and will continue his campaigning blitz in Kalispell, Montana, later today. The justice department has threatened California over alleged noncitizen voters. In a letter addressed to the California secretary of state, Shirley Weber, on Tuesday, the acting deputy attorney general, Trent McCotter, said the justice department gave Los Angeles county officials a “password-protected thumb drive” with names of people that the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens”.

The justice department’s latest threat comes as the Trump administration seeks evidence to support unverified claims of voter fraud ahead of next month’s midterm elections. US price increases reached an annual rate of 3.7% in September, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.4% in August.

This final inflation report before the pivotal midterm elections comes amid polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration over the cost of living. Overall, consumer prices went up 0.6% from August. Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, also ticked up by 0.3% in September, to 2.6% annually.

A record number of Georgians cast ballots in the first day of early voting this midterm cycle. According to the Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, there were 188,600 votes cast on Tuesday – an increase of more than 53,000 voters over the 2022 midterm election, which saw 134,962 early in-person votes.

Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 presidential nominee, will travel across the country in support of several Democrats facing competitive races in the final two weeks ahead of the November midterms, according to her office. Harris will kick off her campaigning sprint on 21 October, when she heads to Nevada, before traveling to New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and then capping her sprint off in Georgia with a campaign event with Senator Jon Ossoff at the end of the month.

The top Super Pac for Senate Democrats will pour more than $7m into two marquee races this cycle: Michigan and Maine. The Senate Majority Pac has reserved $3.7m for its campaign in Michigan, to support the Democratic nominee , Dr Abdul El-Sayed, against the Trump-backed Republican, Mike Rogers.

The group is also investing $3m in Maine, to boost Democrat Troy Jackson’s chances against Susan Collins – the five-term moderate GOP incumbent, who Democrats see as increasingly vulnerable in a cycle where anti-Trump sentiment has colored much of the election.

This comes after reports that the Senate Majority Pac has also paused ad spending in North Carolina and Georgia. Semafor was first to report on the updated spend. In leaked audio obtained by Rolling Stone, Ken Paxton – the Republican nominee for US Senate in Texas – said that Greg Abbott – the incumbent GOP governor – was “struggling” in his re-election bid against Democratic state legislator Gina Hinojosa.

“Yes, Abbott is struggling, but he has a lot of money. [Hinojosa] has none,” Paxton told attenders at a private donor event in Washington DC, according to Rolling Stone. Paxton said that even though Hinojosa has “no name ID” the race is “still close”. He added: “[Abbott] didn’t have any primary, like I did, that was brutal with all the negative ads.” This is the latest audio leak from the 24 September event, where Paxton appears to have justified his extremely competitive race, in which he’s trailing in the polls against his Democratic opponent, James Talarico.

Earlier this month, Axios reported Paxton admitted privately that rising fuel prices as a result of Donald Trump’s Iran war were hurting Republicans ahead of the midterms, in a recording from the same fundraiser. A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing sanctions on two US-based human rights groups for working to help the international criminal court’s (ICC) investigations into war crimes in Gaza.

In a 30-page order issued on Tuesday, Jesse M Furman, a judge at the US district court for the southern district of New York, granted a preliminary injunction to the two groups, Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (Taag).

The two organizations sued the Trump administration this summer, challenging an executive order issued in February 2025 that imposed sanctions against the ICC. The order warned the US government would “impose tangible and significant consequences” on people involved in investigations that Washington said threatened the national security of the US or its allies, including Israel.

The order came after the ICC issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Both men have rejected accusations against them, and the US government also opposed the court’s decision to issue the warrants.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that it is “painful” for Donald Trump to choose a different side, following Trump’s comments that Zelenskyy should be replaced. Speaking to Piers Morgan on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president said: “It’s painful when President Trump chooses one side, ‌not our side.” He went on to add: “If you are in the ‌middle, you have to stay in the middle.” Over the weekend, Trump called for Zelenskyy to be replaced after announcing a new deal with Russia to buy large amounts of Russian diesel – which Zelenskyy sharply criticized.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said. The justice department has threatened California over alleged noncitizen voters. In a letter addressed to the California secretary of state, Shirley Weber, on Tuesday, the acting deputy attorney general, Trent McCotter, said the justice department gave Los Angeles county officials a “password-protected thumb drive” with names of people that the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens”, Reuters first reported.

The letter, which gives state officials 48 hours to review the list, demands California withhold mail-in ballots from the listed people until their citizenship is confirmed, adding that ballots mailed back should be “segregated” and that those already returned should not be counted “until citizenship has been determined”.

The justice department added that if California officials do not comply, it “will have no choice but to seek emergency relief”. “Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” McCotter wrote in the letter. The justice department’s latest threat comes as the Trump administration seeks evidence to support unverified claims of voter fraud ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Several of Donald Trump’s second-term policies will be tested at the supreme court in the coming months: it is being asked to rule on challenges to the administration’s harsh immigration and deportation policies, along with a climate change lawsuit against energy companies and an attempt to loosen restrictions on assault-style rifles.

The Roberts court is often split in favor of conservative issues 6-3, but it has also diverged from Trump on some key cases, leading the president at times to rage against some of the justices he nominated for the bench. Decisions are expected in or before June 2027.

Here are some of the major supreme court cases in the 2026-27 term: Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and the Republican candidate for the US Senate, is aligning himself with the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement by investigating pediatricians for giving vaccines – actions that could further restrict access to vaccines as deadly outbreaks unfold.

Paxton announced he would investigate an alleged conspiracy between pediatricians, vaccine makers and insurance companies in January, and at least one Texas pediatrician now says she is under investigation. Paxton linked his efforts to a campaign against vaccines from Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and directly referenced the Maha movement in his announcement.

The president endorsed Paxton’s Senate run in May. Pointing to a sweeping collusion that “illegally incentivized” doctors to administer vaccines, Paxton alleges that the pharmaceutical and insurance industries were attempting to “bribe” medical providers. He also launched an investigation into the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), accusing them in August of potentially recommending vaccines for financial gain – referencing a lawsuit the AAP filed earlier this year to halt sweeping changes to the childhood immunization schedule and once again invoking Trump and Kennedy’s moves on vaccines.

A new law in Taxes makes it easier for parents to request school vaccine exemptions, as the rate of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination falls in the state. Only 93.3% of kindergarteners in Texas are now fully vaccinated against measles. Pediatricians are one of the lowest-paid medical specialties and “barely break even” on vaccines, said Marjan Linnell, a pediatrician and president-elect of the Texas Pediatric Society.

But Kennedy has made millions suing vaccine makers. He has made at least $2.5m in referrals for lawsuits related to vaccine side-effects to the law firm Wisner Baum. He had a 10% contingency stake in a Gardasil vaccine lawsuit that reportedly settled for about $50m in June.

Now that there are fewer than three weeks until the midterm elections, my colleagues have put together a video explainer about the four key issues driving voters to the polls ahead of November. Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 presidential nominee, will travel across the country in support of several Democrats facing competitive races in the final two weeks ahead of the November midterms, according to her office.

Harris will kick off her campaigning sprint on 21 October, when she heads to Nevada to campaign with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford. She’ll then spend the rest of the week making stops in Mississippi to stump with Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee facing an uphill battle in the US Senate race; New Hampshire to campaign with congressman Chris Pappas – who is vying for the open Senate seat in the state; and Wisconsin to drum support for gubernatorial candidate David Crowley.

Harris will cap off her tour with a campaign event with Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia at the end of the month. A record number of Georgians cast ballots in the first day of early voting this midterm cycle. According to the Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, there were 188,600 votes cast on Tuesday – an increase of more than 53,000 voters over the 2022 midterm election, which saw 134,962 early in-person votes.

“This record-breaking turnout proves that voters have confidence in the integrity of our elections,” said Raffensperger. In response to the latest inflation numbers, Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, said that the “data confirms that households paid more for gas and housing in September, core inflation increased, and wages still aren’t keeping up,” and slammed Trump’s promise to “lower costs on ‘day one’”.

“Real wages have now failed to keep pace with inflation for six straight months, and are down 1.3% since Trump’s war began,” she added in a statement. US price increases reached an annual rate of 3.7% in September, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.4% in August.

This final inflation report before the pivotal midterm elections comes amid polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration over the cost of living. Price increases are the highest they have been since the annual inflation rate reached a three-year peak of 4.2% in May.

Gasoline accounted for over half of overall price increases, up 34% from last year. Fuel oil, which is used to heat homes, increased by 74% from last year, a worrying sign for households heading into the winter. Air travel, which many Americans rely on during the holidays, also increased by 22.4%.

Overall, consumer prices went up 0.6% from August. Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, also ticked up by 0.3% in September to 2.6% annually. Price increases this year have largely driven by the US-Israel war with Iran, which has caused energy prices to soar.

Average gas prices remain over a dollar per gallon more than last year, according to data from AAA. Meanwhile diesel, which powers domestic supply chains, reached a record-high last month. Here’s the full report: Also today, while Trump traverses the sun belt, vice-president JD Vance will head to Atlanta, Georgia to rally for both Mike Collins, the Republican nominee facing Jon Ossoff in the US Senate race, and Rick Jackson – the GOP contender in the gubernatorial race – who is up against Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Democratic mayor of Atlanta.

Donald Trump has yet to weigh in on the late night ruling from a federal judge that blocks him from barring CNN, MS Now and Politico access to the White House grounds. Previously, the president had blasted Judge Timothy Kelly – a Trump appointee – for issuing a temporary pause on his media ban.

That expired on Tuesday, and Kelly handed down a preliminary injunction that stops the administration from blocking the outlets while the litigation plays out. Later, Trump will continue his midterm campaigning blitz in Kalispell, Montana, where he’ll hold another rally.

The Senate race in the state has, increasingly, become one to watch. Here, Kurt Alme, a Republican and the former US attorney for Montana, is facing Alani Bankhead, the Democrat and a retired air force officer, as well as Seth Bodnar, an independent and US army veteran former president of the University of Montana.

Many leading Democrats in the state have coalesced around Bodnar, who is still trailing Alme in most polls, but leading Bankhead. This week, Shannon O’Brien, the chair of Montana Democrats, resigned and endorsed Bodnar. On MS Now, O’Brien said that that the party is “more divided than ever not because of our values but because of the race for the US Senate”.

She noted that there are “serious questions” around Bankhead’s candidacy, which follows concerns from a number of state Democrats about the nominee’s past — including reporting tying her to right-wing groups, and questioning the fact she only moved to the state in 2022.

“Bankhead does not have the momentum, resources or will to win this race,” O’Brien wrote in her op-ed. “She has also benefited from Republican spending designed to split the opposition and clear a path for Alme. Democrats should ask themselves why Republicans so badly wanted her on the ballot.” Bankhead, however, has been resolute.

In a statement, her campaign slammed O’Brien’s decision to endorse Bodnar, adding that O’Brien has been “against the Democratic nominee since the summer”. Donald Trump begins the day in Las Vegas, following his rally in Wasilla, Alaska on Tuesday. He’ll then travel to Bullhead City, Arizona for a midterms rally, where he’ll take the stage at 3pm ET.

A reminder that there are several competitive races in the state, notably the contest for the sixth congressional district, where the incumbent Republican congressman Juan Ciscomani is facing a challenge from Democrat JoAnna Mendoza, a former US marine who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The gubernatorial race in Arizona is also one we’re watching. Here, Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor, is hoping for a second term, but will have to beat Andy Biggs, a current GOP congressman, who won Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary. Over in Greece, diplomatic sources say the country’s foreign ministry has yet to receive official notice of US ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle’s enforced resignation.

Nearly 24 hours have passed since the newly installed White House press secretary Katie Zacharia announced that Kimberly Guilfoyle had been “asked” to leave the post in the wake of multiple ethics allegations. The 57-year-old former fiancé of president Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr, presented her credentials to the Greek president less than a year ago.

Protocol now demands that Greece’s foreign ministry is officially informed of the decision to replace Guilfoyle – in this case with the embassy’s deputy chief of mission Josh Huck, a respected career diplomat. But, on Wednesday, diplomatic sources told the Guardian they were still waiting to be informed.

“We need to be officially notified, which has not yet happened” said a senior diplomatic source at the ministry. “There is a formal procedure of which of course the United States is aware.” Local media reports have suggested that Guilfoyle wants to stay on “for a while” in Greece – with some analysts privately surmising she would prefer to be out of view at least until after the 3 November midterms.

The erstwhile envoy, who hosted visiting US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Athens barely a week ago, has denied allegations of misconduct, both in the run up to her confirmation hearing last July and in the eleven months since she flew into Athens to take up the post.

How she leaves Greece will be key to her retaining “a semblance of dignity” according to other diplomats based in the country. Guilfoyle, who has not been seen for days, is believed to be “holed up” in Jefferson House, the US ambassador’s residence. “The issue is she is now perceived to be so radioactive that no official wishes to be photographed with her,” said one.

“Last week the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different with both countries signing strategic defence, energy and other bilateral agreements during Rubio’s visit. “It was clear that with her reputation so tarnished, she couldn’t go on representing US interests but all this has also put a cloud over all the good work achieved last week.” More than 14 months after National Guard members began patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital, a federal appeals court on Wednesday will hear arguments over whether they should be sent home.

Oral arguments are scheduled at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The hearing comes months after the court paused a lower court’s ruling that the deployment was illegal. Donald Trump deployed the guard in August 2025 as part of what he said was a crime-fighting mission in Washington DC.

The force, which rose to a peak of about 5,000 troops over the summer, has supported arrest operations, patrolled city streets and neighborhoods and participated in cleanup efforts. Trump’s Republican administration says the deployment has contributed to a decrease in crime in the city, where crime was already on the decline before the National Guard arrived.

Officials and activists in the overwhelmingly Democratic city say the deployment is a waste of taxpayer money and has normalized the militarization of a major American city. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has said that president Donald Trump’s deal to buy Russian diesel was “very risky”, arguing that it could end up “legitimising Moscow”.

Once a key ally for Trump in Europe, Meloni has increasingly distanced herself after the US and Israel launched a war against Iran and has received scathing criticism from the US leader. “We all understand, and share, the need to contain energy prices that are weighing on families and businesses, including in Italy.

“But we must be aware that the surge in fuel prices is mainly due to the war in Iran, and not to the conflict in Ukraine,” she said in a speech to parliament ahead of this week’s EU summit. “The outcome of this decision is uncertain, while the risks are clear: legitimising Moscow while its bombs continue to rain down on Ukrainian cities, providing new revenue to finance the war, and implicitly weakening the leverage of sanctions.

“These are factors we cannot ignore and that contradict everything Western states, including the United States, have done so far to push Vladimir Putin to sit down at the negotiating table,” she said. “I consider this choice very risky,” she added, referring to Trump’s deal.

The United States has “not changed” its policy on sharing intelligence with Ukraine, a US official said Wednesday, after Kyiv accused Washington of not warning it about incoming strikes. “The US has not changed its policy on intel-sharing with allies and partners, such as Ukraine,” the US official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Russian strikes hit multiple regions across Ukraine overnight after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had received no advance warning from Western allies before a strike on a power plant in the capital. Ukraine relies heavily on Western intelligence to detect incoming Russian attacks and help identify targets of its own, but renewed strain with US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on those arrangements.

A senior Ukrainian official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity Wednesday, said the United States was essentially “helping Russia” by not warning Kyiv about incoming strikes and slowing Starlink. A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to continue allowing journalists from CNN, MS Now and Politico to access the building as the media coalition’s lawsuit against the Trump administration plays out.

Timothy Kelly, a district court judge, had on 24 September granted a 14-day reprieve for the news organizations, which six days earlier had been banned by the president in an extraordinary move from entering the White House grounds “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS”.

“Defendants (except for President Trump) and their agents, representatives, and all persons or entities acting in concert with them, shall not execute, implement, or enforce the September 18, 2026, decision to revoke the White House ‘hard pass’ press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, thereby maintaining the status quo since the Court’s entry of a temporary restraining order on September 24, 2026,” the judge wrote in granting a preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs.

The organizations filed a lawsuit on 21 September seeking to overturn the ban as a violation of their rights under the US constitution. But that temporary restraining order expired on Tuesday, bringing the media companies into court late last week to ask for a preliminary injunction that would lift the ban during the duration of the lawsuit, which could take months.

During arguments at the E Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, Kelly seemed inclined to lift the ban indefinitely, telling a lawyer for the federal government that his side had “a notice problem” that was “probably the biggest hurdle” they had to overcome.

The family of a British man who was killed by a tiger at a wildlife park have spoken of their “severe distress” after Donald Trump shared a video of the incident on social media. The president posted footage of William Chapman, 23, being fatally attacked by a tiger at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park to 13m followers on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday evening.

Trump accompanied the short clip – which showed the animal biting and clawing Chapman as he sat in the enclosure, but not him being killed – with the signed message: “Don’t ever mess with nature!” On Wednesday morning Trump followed this up with another post – this time an AI-generated video of him grappling with a tiger, which appears to mimic the original.

The clip, which is accompanied by the song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, features the president copying the pointing gesture made by Chapman and ends with him hugging the animal. Chapman’s family said in a statement that “deeply offensive media content is causing them severe distress”.

They also posted a tribute describing him as a “bright, warm and engaging young man” and questioning what part his “significant mental illness over a number of years” and prescribed strong medication played in the incident. Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump will attend campaign rallies in Arizona and Montana later today, having spent the past 24 hours in Alaska – a sign of his party’s recent polling woes. Conservative Alaska is one of several states where the Democrats have a chance of flipping a Senate seat amid voter dissatisfaction with the cost of living and the Iran war.

Polling has shown Democratic candidate Mary Peltola tied ⁠or slightly ahead of incumbent Republican senator Dan ⁠Sullivan in a state the president carried by 14 percentage points in 2024. Here, as in much of the United States, the president’s approval rating is flopping, hit by rising diesel and gasoline prices and a conflict in the Middle East that has proven deeply unpopular with voters.

Opening for Trump, Sullivan acknowledged that Alaskans face “challenges” when it comes to energy costs. But “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary”, he said. “The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas ⁠and our jobs.” The president has taken to campaigning in conservative-leaning parts of competitive states, rather than in more politically diverse areas with more votes potentially up for grabs.

At one point, Trump pardoned two local repair shop owners who were convicted of violating the federal Clean Air Act for removing pollution controls on diesel engines. He also encouraged Republicans to vote by mail – a process he has repeatedly sought to curtail and discredit.

Trump will spend Wednesday campaigning in Arizona and Montana. In other developments: In Alaska, Trump repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because “they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”. In fact, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.

Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. Eight months after that, he launched a full-scale war on Iran, justified, he now says, by Iran being just weeks away from getting the bomb.

Onboard Air Force One on his way to Alaska for a campaign rally, the president of the United States posted video of a British man who was fatally mauled by a tiger last week on his social media platform with the mocking caption: “Don’t ever mess with nature!” The new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, passed on an opportunity to set the record straight on whether she is licensed to practice law anywhere in the United States.

Asked “Where did you pass the bar exam?” Zacharia just said: “I moved to China.”