Trump slams Zelenskyy amid Russia sanctions rift and says ‘somebody else’ should negotiate for Ukraine - live

Donald Trump made anti-Muslim racism a focus of his attacks on Democrats in remarks in Kansas on Monday, with attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and gratuitous mentions of Barack Obama’s middle name. “Democrats are the party of Abdul Mohammad El-Sayed,” Trump said of the Michigan Senate candidate.

The president then repeated his riff about what a brilliant move it was for him to stop using El-Sayed’s first name and instead call him “Mohammed El-Sayed”, to better stoke Islamophobia. “You know, he got very upset because I called him Mohammad. I just felt like it.

Somebody said, ‘How did you do that?’ I said, ‘I’m the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want’”, Trump said. “And actually his middle name is Mohammad,” the president added, before adding: “One good thing if you call somebody from that part of the world Mohammad, you’re about 65% sure to get it right.

So if you have any problem with names, just call the guy Mohammad.” El-Sayed responded to Trump mocking his name at a previous rally by writing on social media: “He says the name just fine when he’s begging the Qataris for a personal jet or the Saudis for funding for his son-in-law’s private equity firm.” Despite being in Kansas to campaign for Republican senator Roger Marshall, Trump returned again and again to attacks on El-Sayed, and brought up two Muslim congresswoman, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are also not from Kansas.

He also lied that both El-Sayed and his sister are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition group in Egypt, a wild claim that is not supported by any evidence at all but is repeated almost daily by the president. Donald Trump’s ongoing speech to supporters in Kansas is filled with false claims he has made previously at rally after rally.

Among the whoppers the president told are that inflation, which is up since he took office and started a war with Iran that has driven global oil prices sky-high, is down. “We’ve got it cooked, the inflation,” Trump said. “Once that oil comes down, that’ll be the final straw.

Democrats, the president claimed in another wildly false tale that he tells day after day, are in favor of “transgender for everybody - the absolute mutilation of your children, where your son Timmy comes home five days later as Sarah and you don’t even know about it.” “The worst thing they did to us is allowing 25 million people into our country totally unchecked, totally unfettered,” the president also said, wildly inflating the total number of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Speaking in Kansas on Monday, Donald Trump repeated his entirely imaginary theory that the wave of protests and rioting in France is being led by immigrants. In fact, as the Guardian’s Jon Henley reports from Paris, a month-long student protest by over crumbling and crowded classrooms “converged with broader frustrations over soaring living costs, rapidly widening inequality and falling public spending, bringing together students, teachers, trade unionists and a resurrected gilets jaunes movement.” Those largely peaceful protests were hijacked by masked groups who torched vehicles, ransacked businesses and set fire to Limoges’ city hall.

Despite on-the-ground reporting on the protests from news organizations across the political spectrum, Trump and Republicans, including Fox News hosts, have insisted that the rioters in France are immigrants. “If you want to see what is at stake in this election, just look at what’s happening in France, a once great nation that is being conquered, looted and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity,” Trump said, desperate to return to his obsession with nativist resentment and racism.

“They hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself,” the president went on. “And as we’re seeing in Europe, globalists, left-wing politicians have treasonously imported millions and millions of Third World migrants who are totally incompatible with West, and they are incompatible with Western values.

They despise everything about France, and they’re destroying that country. And we’re not going to let that happen to this country.” Protesters disrupted the first minutes of Donald Trump’s speech to a Republican midterm campaign rally in Kansas, where his party is concerned that his deeply unpopular policies could cost incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall his seat, in the face of a strong challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, a mega-church pastor.

Protesters quickly disrupted the event, before being led out. Amid concerns that the Trump administration could use the power of the federal government to intimidate voters from casting ballots against Republicans in the midterm elections, the senior federal prosecutor in south Texas released a menacing social-media video on Monday, promising to hunt down “crooked local election administrators”.

The prosecutor, Aaron Reitz, is a former chief of staff to senator Ted Cruz, who was appointed US attorney for the southern district of Texas by a panel of federal judges, bypassing the usual Senate confirmation process. Far from presenting himself as a non-partisan official, Reitz ran unsuccessfully for Texas attorney general this year, finishing fourth in the Republican primary despite promising voters he would use that office “to destroy the left”.

In the video statement released on Monday, Reitz warns that he is on the look out for “crooked local election administrators.” “They have a duty to prevent illegal voting, and I’m here to make sure they do their job,” Reitz says. “And it means no fraud, accurate voter roles, honest paperwork, secure ballots, and lawful procedures are essential to a fraud-free election.” “So, let me be clear: if you violate federal election law, I will hunt you down and prosecute you,” Reitz warns.

“Election day is Tuesday, November 3rd,” he concludes. “We’ll see you out at the polls.” Our colleague David Smith reports from Park City, Kansas, where Donald Trump is scheduled to address a Republican campaign rally, that the president’s false claim that rioting in France is driven by immigrants preceded him.

Donald Trump’s latest campaign rally has kicked off with something unusual: riots in France. With supporters still filing into a 5,000-seat multi-purpose arena in Park City, Kansas, giant TV screens played about 10 minutes’ of Fox News coverage of the unrest that has gripped Paris and other cities.

It included commentary blaming the trouble on the French government’s immigration policies. That matches current Republican talking points, which seized on the unruly protests to demonise multiculturalism and defend “America first” nationalism ahead of the midterm elections.

As he set off for Kansas, Trump told reporters at the White House that he had warned French president Emmanuel Macron he was “making a big mistake”. Trump said: “The whole world was coming in, and as you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal … We closed our borders.

He didn’t.” The official White House X account posted on Monday. “If you import the third world, you become the third world.” Vice-president JD Vance and an array of Republican politicians have lined up to make the same argument. House Speaker Mike Johnson posted: “France is descending into chaos because they wanted OPEN BORDERS – just like the socialist Democrats in America.

What we are witnessing is a chilling warning for all Americans of what happens if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets their way.” Senator Eric Schmitt added: “The anti-civilization Left is devouring France. It will devour America if we let it.” Trump is in Kansas to rally for Republican Roger Marshall, facing a surprisingly tough challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, who has outraised him by a big margin.

No Democrat has won a US Senate seat in Kansas since 1932. As our colleague Jon Henley reports from Paris, the rioting in France is unrelated to immigration. A month-long protest by high school pupils over crumbling and crowded classrooms converged with broader frustrations over soaring living costs, rapidly widening inequality and falling public spending, bringing together students, teachers, trade unionists and a resurrected gilets jaunes movement.

Those largely peaceful protests were swiftly hijacked by masked groups who torched vehicles, ransacked businesses and severely damaged public infrastructure, including setting fire to Limoges’ city hall and invading that of Marseille. Before we move on from Donald Trump’s latest attempt to blame Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the death of “a million” Ukrainians since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, it is worth pausing for a moment to explain that this number, which Trump has been repeating for two years, is false.

While the exact death toll is not known, a study published in July by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, estimated that “Ukrainian forces have suffered somewhere between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) and between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities between February 2022 and June 2026.” The same study concluded that the Russian military “has suffered 1.4 million battlefield casualties and as many as 450,000 deaths since its February 2022 full-scale invasion”.

Despite the evidence, Trump has been wildly inflating the Ukrainian death toll in public comments for two years. On the campaign trail in October 2024, Trump claimed that there were “millions of dead people” as a result of the war in Ukraine at that time. Four months later, after he returned to the Oval Office, Trump told a national prayer breakfast in Washington that there were “probably 800,000 Russians; 600,000 – 700,000 Ukrainians, young people, just laying on a battlefield dead”.

Two months after that, when Trump was asked to comment on Russia’s Palm Sunday attack on Ukraine, Trump said “This country would’ve never allowed that war to have started if I were president. That war is a shame. Millions of people are dead”. Last week, Trump attacked Zelenskyy for resisting the Russian invasion, saying: “You’ve lost 30% of your country and you’ve had over a million people killed.” In August of this year, the United Nations reported that more civilians were killed or injured in Ukraine in July than in any month since March 2022.

Overall, since 24 February 2022, the UN said it has verified that at least 16,874 civilians killed have been killed in Ukraine, including 820 children, and 51,273 injured, including 3,126 children.” A protester disrupted a speech by JD Vance, the US vice-president, in North Carolina on Monday, shouting “Release the Epstein files!

God bless our children!” before being led away. The protester, who was positioned directly behind Vance during a midterm campaign rally in support of Republican candidates, was seen on a live video stream standing up and shouting about 10 minutes into the vice-president’s speech.

As the man was led away the crowd booed the interruption, and chanted “U!S!A!” Vance then attempted to joke that the man, a person of color who spoke with an American accent, must be an undocumented immigrant. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have to amend something I said earlier.

I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States of America,” Vance said to laughter from the crowd. “But one isn’t bad, right?” As he was dragged out of the rally, the man shouted that he was an American citizen. A new poll by Reuters shows that only 31% of Americans approve of Donald Trump’s performance in office, a percentage point lower than the survey from two weeks ago and a record low for the president.

It comes as Trump embarks on another campaign sprint to help beleaguered Republicans in competitive midterm races. When asked which party they would vote for if the elections were held today, 47% of registered ‌voters in the nationwide poll picked Democrats, while 35% chose Republicans.

Trump again rebuked the idea that his move to waive sanctions for Russia last week was ultimately to hand Moscow a win. “I’m supporting stopping the war between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump told reporters. “Frankly, Zelenskyy is not helping matters much. I think he doesn’t want to stop it, but I want to see people not die.” In response to Zelenskyy saying that the US president is on the “wrong side of history”, Trump snapped back.

“If he would have listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago, and he’d have a million people living from his side,” Trump said. “I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine …. Very little land has moved, but a million people, a tremendous number of people, are dead.” Ahead of leaving for a campaign rally in Wichita, Kansas, Donald Trump again claimed – without evidence – that the riots throughout France were due to mass migration.

“I told Emmanuel [Macron], you should close up your borders,” the US president said. “I’ve known him for probably eight or nine years. I told him as soon as I met him, I said, ‘you’re making a big mistake’. We closed our borders. He didn’t.” Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who has become the symbol of the Trump administration’s crusade against pro-Palestinian speech, have petitioned the US supreme court to review his case – the final chapter in a months-long legal saga that could determine countless foreign citizens’ ability to challenge their detention by US immigration authorities in federal court.

Khalil, a US permanent resident who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was arrested in his Columbia housing in March 2025, the first of several foreign students and scholars the Trump administration targeted over their advocacy for Palestinian rights.

He was detained for more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana before a federal judge in New Jersey, where he had been briefly held before ICE moved him, ordered him released while his immigration process proceeds.

“This fight is not only about whether I get to stay in this country, it’s really about whether anyone in this country can speak out for Palestinians without being punished for it,” Khalil said during a press conference on Monday. The US departments of state, justice and homeland security did not respond to requests for comment.

The government has cited an obscure McCarthy-era law to argue that Khalil and the other scholars’ pro-Palestinian expression posed a threat to US foreign policy objectives. So far, no court has fully weighed in on the constitutionality of the law, with legal arguments instead focused on whether district courts have the authority to order people released from immigration detention while their immigration cases are under way.

Khalil’s attorneys and immigrants rights advocates warn that if the supreme court rules the district courts lack such authority, that would effectively result in people the government has detained unconstitutionally to languish in immigration detention with no recourse, potentially for months or years.

The justice department announced the arrest of 28 legal permanent residents in California “who are charged in criminal complaints with federal crimes, including that they fraudulently registered to vote in US elections, electoral contests in which most of them cast illegal and fraudulently obtained ballots”.

Non-citizen voting is extremely rare, and the 28 who have allegedly committed crimes, would be an exceptionally small fraction of the 174 million people who were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election. The arrests come just days after the administration sued the Golden state, to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has allegedly identified as “likely” noncitizens.

New polling also shows that a majority (66%) of Americans believe Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. Looking at that data from the Washington Post and ABC even further, 34% of Republicans believe Trump is enriching himself – a 12-point jump from last September.

More here Meanwhile, Trump heads to Kansas today to kick off a seven-state campaign blitz this week in parts of the country he carried in 2024, as unexpectedly tight races in GOP strongholds stoke fears of sweeping Democratic gains in next month’s midterms. With 15 days until the 3 November vote, Trump’s rally on the outskirts of Wichita aims to shore up the incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall, who is locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton.

He’ll follow up with rallies in the Carolinas, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan over the next six days. More US representatives reported today that their offices had been sent suspicious letters, after the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service said they were investigating letters sent to state officials and election offices across the country containing an “unknown substance” last week.

On Monday, congressman Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat, said his office in Leesburg received an envelope “containing a suspicious substance” and staff were “promptly evacuated”. Similarly, in Maine, Democratic representative Chellie Pingree said that her office also received “a suspicious letter consistent with those received by many other congressional and election offices in recent days”.

In a bipartisan call with GOP Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite services “remain degraded” and “disruptions to US intelligence sharing” persist, when it comes to the “early warning of Russian ballistic missile launches”.

Last week, the two lawmakers called on the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate Ukraine’s disruptions accessing Starshield – the military version of Starlink’s satellite network built for governments and defense agencies – and in a statement today they said that Zelenskyy reiterated his “willingness to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities as President Trump has proposed, but only if [Vladimir] Putin agrees to the same”.

A man who heckled the Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley, according to congressional staff records. At the event on Saturday, an attender who gave his name only as “Tommy” shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the movement.

El-Sayed answered: “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” then turned the question around, asking whether the man assumed he wouldn’t. Tommy said he had simply not heard El-Sayed reject the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.

Under Trump the US has moved to designate certain chapters of the group as foreign terrorist organizations. Over nearly five minutes at the town hall, El-Sayed pointed to how the question shouted by Tommy carried an implication of “dual loyalty”, comparing it with the doubts once raised about John F Kennedy’s Catholicism, and told the room he was running for the Senate and “happen[s] to be Muslim”.

He then asked Tommy whether he would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law. Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the constitution, drawing cheers, and the man left the room. The questioner has since been identified as Thomas Teepell, whose staff records show he joined Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and rose to operations director before leaving in February.

He then became political director for Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on 4 August. Teepell is the son of the Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

The Handbasket first reported the identification. The question echoes a line of attack that Republicans have tried to push against El-Sayed for weeks, including when Rogers raised alleged Brotherhood ties during one of their debates. In a bipartisan call with GOP Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite services “remain degraded” and “disruptions to US intelligence sharing” persist, when it comes to the “early warning of Russian ballistic missile launches”.

Last week, the two lawmakers called on the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate Ukraine’s disruptions accessing Starshield – the military version of Starlink’s satellite network built for governments and defense agencies – and in a statement today they said that Zelenskyy reiterated his “willingness to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities as President Trump has proposed, but only if [Vladimir] Putin agrees to the same”.

Zelenskyy’s call with Washington lawmakers comes after he said that Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, as my colleague Andrew Roth reports from Kyiv. On Friday, Trump waived a sweeping package of sanctions on Russia – a move he claimed was to prevent driving Russia “away from the bargaining table”.

We’re getting word from more US representatives that their offices have been sent suspicious letters. Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat, said his office in Leesburg received an envelope “containing a suspicious substance” and staff were “promptly evacuated”.

Similarly, in Maine, Democratic congresswoman Chellie Pingree said that her office also received “a suspicious letter consistent with those received by many other congressional and election offices in recent days”. A reminder that last week the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service were investigating letters sent to state officials and election offices across the country containing an “unknown substance”.

On Thursday, the office of Arizona’s secretary of state received a similar envelope that was opened by staff, prompting a hazmat and law enforcement response as well as evacuations at the state capitol. In Oklahoma, state troopers determined the substance mailed to the Oklahoma state capitol complex was non-hazardous.

In Cook county, Illinois, an envelope containing only white powder was sent to Maria Pappas, the treasurer, on Thursday morning, prompting a response from local emergency responders and law enforcement. The powder turned out to be baking powder, Pappas’s office confirmed to the Guardian.

The Department of Justice has announced the arrest of 28 legal permanent residents or green card holders in California “who are charged in criminal complaints with federal crimes, including that they fraudulently registered to vote in US elections, electoral contests in which most of them cast illegal and fraudulently obtained ballots”.

(A reminder that, as the DoJ press release says, these are allegations, and not yet proven.) Ahead of next month’s midterms, the Trump administration has escalated its fight with the Golden state, warning on Friday that local officials who process and tabulate ballots submitted by suspected noncitizen voters are putting themselves at risk of criminal investigation and potential prosecution.

That threat came just a day after the administration sued California to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has allegedly identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed. As my colleague Sam Levine reported on Thursday, the suit came two days after the DoJ made a specious demand to the state.

On Tuesday, the department sent election officials in Los Angeles county a thumb drive with a handwritten password purporting to contain the names of non-citizens registered to vote. The department asked officials to confirm the citizenship of anyone on the list and set aside ballots from those whose status could not be confirmed.

It gave the state 48 hours – an extremely narrow window – to take action. It did not provide details on how it came up with the names on the list. In its lawsuit, filed in federal court in the central district of California, the justice department said it had provided the state with more than 20,000 names of likely noncitizens.

A reminder that noncitizen voting is extremely rare and the effort to investigate noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections has only turned up a handful of cases so far. Today’s DoJ press release, incidentally, reaffirms this, with 28 an absolutely minuscule number compared with the 174 million people who were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election.

In Sam’s piece last week, he also highlighted that the Trump administration’s methodology for identifying non-citizens has come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said there could be as many as 278,000 noncitizens on the rolls in four states, including more than 190,000 in California and about 16,000 in Nevada.

Officials at the DHS refused to share their methodology with Nevada election officials and later turned over just 185 names of people it had a strong belief were noncitizens. When Nevada officials investigated, they found every one of those people was a citizen.

As we mentioned earlier, Donald Trump is heading to Kansas today to open a seven-state campaign blitz through territory he carried in 2024, as dismal polls and unexpectedly tight races in GOP strongholds stoke fears of sweeping Democratic gains in next month’s midterms.

With 15 days until the 3 November vote, Trump’s rally on the outskirts of Wichita aims to shore up the incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall, who is locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton. Trump won Kansas by 16 percentage points just two years ago, and the state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

Yet analysts now rate it a “toss-up” and a key fundraising group for Republican senators has diverted money from North Carolina to defend a seat it once took for granted. The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics told AFP it hesitated before moving deeply conservative Kansas into “toss-up” category – its most competitive – but was swayed by signs that a “full-on Republican rescue operation appears underway for Marshall”.

Control of Congress may hinge on such races, with Republicans holding slender majorities in both chambers, and Democrats needing a net gain of just four seats to capture the Senate. Over the coming six days, Trump will follow Kansas with rallies in the Carolinas, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

All seven states backed him in 2024, though his margins in Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina were narrow. The schedule suggests the aim is less to win over undecided voters than to fire up loyal supporters, many of whom stay at home when he’s not on the ballot.

Two stops, North Carolina and Iowa, are damage control in GOP-held seats, and many national party officials have all but written off North Carolina. Elsewhere the party is on the offensive, targeting a Democratic-held seat in Michigan, though it has struggled to make headway in Georgia.

Vice-President JD Vance is campaigning separately in North Carolina, Ohio and Nebraska. In North Carolina, sitting Republican representative, Jennifer Balkcom, is fending off a strong challenge from Democrat Jamie Ager. At the White House today, Trump announced a new taskforce focused on women’s health.

However, it’s worth remembering that under Joe Biden – first lady Jill Biden set up the first White House initiative of this kind in 2023. Trump on Monday said that Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, would head up his administration’s taskforce. “Susie recently won her battle against a very tough opponent, breast cancer,” the president said.

“It wasn’t easy. We went through it. We got her through it, and she got through it.” And as another reminder, since Trump returned to office, his administration has gutted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for maternal health and fertility.

The cuts to Medicaid through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Trump’s sweeping domestic policy legislation – will also affect pre- and perinatal care for pregnant people, according to experts. Today’s new polling suggests Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the economy ahead of the midterms, with 75% rating conditions as either “not so good” or “poor”.

The findings also highlight the challenge facing Republicans in November: 37% of respondents said they trust Democrats more on the economy, compared with 28% who said they trust Republicans. This comes as Trump continues his midterms campaign blitz this week. He’ll head to Kansas on Monday to stump on behalf of embattled GOP incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, before back-to-back events in North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

Today’s announcement comes as billions of dollars have been scrapped from NIH research budgets. Almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at the institute and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired since Trump returned to office in 2025.

Earlier this year, my colleague Ed Pilkington, reported on the brain drain that was affecting the key agency that conducts biomedical and public health research. A quick note that Donald Trump’s executive order signing at 11am ET will be to create a new Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House Women’s Health taskforce, according to a White House official.

A reminder that Melania Trump, the first lady, will also be at the event. The boss of a New York-based sticker company, whose staunch support for Donald Trump prompted him to record a Maga-themed rap album and call for an extension of Mount Rushmore to add the president’s face, is running for Congress.

Anthony Constantino, who began a brief pro boxing career at age 40, is the Republican candidate for GOP congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s seat in New York’s 21st district. While Trump won the district by 21 points in 2024, and it has been represented by a Republican in the US House of Representatives since 2015, the party’s lead appears to have dwindled significantly as Constantino, 43, campaigns for voters to send him to Washington.

His lead in recent polls has fallen to single digits; one survey earlier this month put him four points behind. In September, the Cook Partisan Voting Index shifted the race from solid Republican to likely Republican. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the district to its Red to Blue program in early October.

“I’m running for Congress. I built a company with over 1,000 people. Not an easy thing to do,” Constantino said, referring to his company, Sticker Mule. “I went pro in boxing at the age of 40. Not an easy thing to do.” Mike Tyson “decided to endorse me”, he added in an interview, claiming the former boxing world champion had only endorsed four candidates.

“It’s not easy to get endorsed by Mike Tyson.” Most political candidates lay out their agenda in lengthy publications, or campaign speeches. In December 2025, Constantino released a 20-track album – titled Thank You President Trump – which praised the president’s alleged golfing prowess and described how the world purportedly loves him.

It took two weeks to complete, according to a press release. “I just realize it’s good to be different, first of all,” Constantino said of the album. “Secondly, some people like listening to speeches. Other people like listening to music. Not everybody in this country wants to listen to political speeches.” Also on Truth Social today, Donald Trump has repeated his baseless claims that the riots sweeping France – which initially began as protests against deteriorating school infrastructure and an overstretched education system – are due to mass migration.

“The migrants have taken over France. They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!” Trump wrote on social media. A reminder that French authorities have not linked the riots to immigrants. Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands demonstrated throughout the country. However, chaos erupted at a number of protests, which saw buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested.

French president Emmanuel Macron and the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, have blamed the violence on “factious” ultra-leftwing groups. Within the new polling from the Washington Post and ABC, 48% of respondents said they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office in 2025.

According to the Post, that represents the highest percentage saying this about any president in this series of polls since 1986. A majority of those surveyed – 67% – also said that Trump is not committed to protecting freedom of the press. This comes after a protracted battle to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House grounds.

A federal judge has subsequently issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing the ban. Meanwhile, 61 % people also said that Trump is not committed to free and fair elections, according to the poll. A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low – 33%.

This comes, just over two weeks away from the November midterms, as the president continues crisscrossing the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans. Notably, the new polling also shows that a majority (66%) of Americans believe Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself.

Looking at that data even further – 34% of Republicans believe Trump is enriching himself. This is a 12-point jump from last September. Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington. We’ll hear from him, and the first lady, Melania Trump, when they sign an executive order in the Rose Garden at 11am ET.

The president will then travel to Wichita, Kansas, where he’ll hold a midterms rally at 7pm ET to stump for Senator Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent, who we noted earlier is facing a increasingly competitive re-election race against his Democratic opponent, Adam Hamilton.

Hamilton, a pastor, is hoping to be the first Democratic senator that Kansans send to Washington in almost a century. We’ll bring you the latest as that gets under way. US disaster survivors still await at least $10bn in federal aid: ‘It’s devastating’ Survivors of extreme weather disasters across the US are facing long waits for government assistance funds to rebuild their lives, with the last long-term recovery funds allocated for Hurricane Milton that hit Florida two years ago.

Government officials estimate more than $10bn is needed in long-term disaster recovery funding to rebuild affected communities in Los Angeles county and St Louis, Missouri, alone. Since 1993, more than $111bn have been appropriated and allocated for CDBG-DR. But the long-term recovery program has no standing fund, meaning that Congress must appropriate the money disaster-by-disaster.

This has caused long lag times in recovery funding before. Survivors of the 2020 earthquakes in Puerto Rico waited 655 days after the disaster was declared for CDBG-DR funding to be allocated, according to a Bipartisan Policy Center report. In July 2026, CDBG-DR was written into law for the first time, authorizing the program for three years.

While advocates hoped the legislation would create a reliable framework to disseminate disaster relief funds more quickly, no more money has been appropriated for the CDBG-DR program. It’s been 21 months since the LA wildfires were declared a disaster and survivors are still waiting The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has denounced the settler attack that left the Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine badly beaten and needing surgery as a “despicable act of terror” and called for the arrest and prosecution of those responsible.

Levine, 63, an award-winning journalist who lives in Israel, was set upon last Friday by masked Israeli settlers who used clubs and other weapons to attack Palestinian people attempting to harvest their olives in occupied West Bank towns. The photographer, who is in a hospital in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv recovering from hand surgery, broken ribs and other injuries she sustained in the attack, said she was beaten for more than 10 minutes by the settlers, who also stole her camera, passport and phone.

Huckabee, a rightwing ally of Donald Trump with a track record of hardline, pro-Israel rhetoric, was notably blunt in his condemnation of what he called the “vicious and cowardly attack” on Levine. “We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this,” Huckabee added.

“Attacking a female photographer is despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards. Dishonorable act of senseless violence.” Donald Trump has attacked US district judge Ana Reyes over her interventions to slow his plan to ‘restore’ the East Potomac golf course in Washington DC.

Citing environmental and historic preservation concerns, Reyes had ruled earlier this year that the federal government must give notice before any substantive construction work on the East Potomac golf course could proceed, and last week issued an order halting the removal of trees at the site, which she called “inexcusable”.

The renovation is among a number of projects Trump was pursuing to reshape ‌the White House and ‌other Washington landmarks. Many of his projects, including plans for a huge ballroom at the White House, the installation of his own name on the Kennedy Center and construction of a massive arch, have been challenged in courts.

In a post on Truth Social, the US president said: “The United States Department of Interior wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course. They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that!

The judge on the case is a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane? The tapes have been blocked from usage by the judge. “The random golfer bringing the ridiculous lawsuit has ZERO STANDING! The experts at “Interior” are allowed to do this First Class renovation “as of right.” They do not need an approval.

Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY! The finished product will be World Class, and bring income and great prestige back to D.C. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT.” The renovation is among a number of projects Trump was pursuing to reshape ‌the White House and ‌other Washington landmarks.

Many of his projects, including plans for a huge ballroom at the White House, the installation of his own name on the Kennedy Center and construction of a massive arch, have been challenged in courts. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state denied on Monday that the United ⁠States had paused some intelligence sharing with Ukraine, contradicting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Rubio, speaking to reporters during a visit to Uzbekistan on Monday morning, said ⁠intelligence was in fact never interrupted in the first place. “I don’t know where he’s getting these things ‌or why he’s saying these ‌things to the press. You should go back and ask him.

There’s ‌been no pause. “What he should be focused on, and what we want to be focused on, is bringing an end to this war. That’s what he should be focused on.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy had thanked the Trump administration on Sunday for resuming intelligence sharing between the two countries, but maintained the US had intentionally throttled its Starlink satellite internet access so that Donald Trump could send a “message” in his ongoing feud with the Ukrainian president.

In an interview on NBC, Zelenskyy said the US had “unblocked” intelligence on impending Russian ballistic missile strikes, which have pounded the country’s energy infrastructure as winter draws in. “It was blocked for some period of time. And then it was deblocked by the American side.

We are very thankful for this. Now it works,” Zelenskyy told NBC’s Meet the Press. “Only [the] United States has this unique intelligence to tell our side when Russia uses ballistic missiles. And we didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days.” Zelenskyy also said that Elon Musk’s SpaceX was responsible for suddenly limiting the speed at which Starlink terminals worked in Ukraine, hampering drone operations on the frontlines as well as some air defence missions.

“It was a message from [the] American government to limit the speed,” he said. “And technically, SpaceX did it.” Vice-president JD Vance expected to hold rally in North Carolina The US vice-president JD Vance is expected to hold rally in North Carolina on Monday as the Trump administration continues ramping up rallies to support candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.

Vance’s visit comes as Republicans look to gain ground in North Carolina’s Senate race, as well as in two key US House races. Republican Michael Whatley, whom Trump endorsed, is running against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper for the seat vacated by Republican US Senator Thom Tillis, who is not seeking reelection.

Henderson, in the heart of the state’s 11th congressional district, and Greenville, just outside the 1st congressional district are where voters strongly supported Trump in 2024 but now, as voters face rising gas and grocery prices, are in play. Democratic victories there could help them flip control of Congress.

Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence in order to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow. Yuri Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said on television on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv at around 11pm.

Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike. Ukraine did receive a warning before a successive strike, at 3am, Ihnat added. “Once again, Russia launched a ballistic missile attack in multiple waves throughout the night, and once again, there was no warning from our partners,” Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post on Monday morning.

“When the supply of missiles for Ukrainian air defence is blocked, and Russia receives sanctions relief or delays, it is, unfortunately, a denial of reality on the part of our partners,” the president added. Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. Donald Trump will attend a campaign rally in Kansas later today, where incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall is in an unexpectedly close race with Democrat Adam Hamilton.

Marshall’s medical billing scandal is threatening to erode his support, though he is still favored to win. Hamilton, the founder of the largest Methodist congregation in the US, won in a crowded Democratic primary earlier this year. Hamilton won 35% of the vote in the 11-candidate Democratic primary.

His campaign announced he had broken a quarterly fundraising record in the state, and two major election forecasters say the Senate race has grown more competitive since Hamilton won his party’s primary. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, and more than half a century has passed since one of their nominees even came close.

In other developments: Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that “restoration work will begin” next month to a historic public golf course in Washington DC despite a federal judge’s court order to pause his plans over environmental and historic preservation concerns.

He wrote that the facility would be transformed into “one of the Best and Most Spectacular Golf Courses anywhere in the World”. Ilhan Omar’s attorneys have asked the US Department of Justice to return property that federal agents removed days earlier from her home during a search.

The lawyers for the Minnesota Democrat contended that the seizure as “neither justified nor lawful”, according to a letter published on Friday. The federal investigation into Omar was launched just weeks ahead of the 3 November midterms, in which Omar is on the ballot.

Former US president Barack Obama condemned comments by Trump’s “border czar” that the Republican presidential administration could “of course” strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her. Obama wrote Sunday morning, on X, that “the full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.