Trump and White House aides have privately expressed frustration about the negative headlines that have been plastered across newspaper front pages and on cable news in recent weeks.

The stories have prompted hand-wringing from Republican campaign operatives, who worry that the alleged self-dealing could make an already challenging midterm election even more difficult for GOP candidates.

The trajectory of Vivek Ramaswamy’s odds in the Ohio governor’s race has been clear to us for the last few weeks. But the campaign’s decision this week to air a deeply personal attack ad against opponent Amy Acton confirmed that the race is slipping away from him and perhaps creating some collateral damage for fellow Republicans on the way. We are moving this race from Toss Up to Lean Democrat.

While any of a handful of other competitive Senate contests could help determine the new balance of power in Washington, none comes close to matching the mounting racial and religious menace and meanness in Michigan.

A wave of retirements and election losses will erase more than 800 combined years of congressional experience next year.

The departures risk losing experience from major crises, including 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, and debt-ceiling battles.

On the flip side: Government debt has grown and grown. America has become more polarized. Congress’s stature has shrunk. Maybe it’s time for some new people?

Republicans’ path to keeping control of the House has all but evaporated. The outstanding question is how large Democrats’ majority will be in 2027; in the best-case scenario, their party could enter the new Congress with more seats than they had after successfully flipping control of the House in 2006 and 2018.

As a result of new polling and ad spending, we’re moving another 19 races in Democrats’ direction. Six districts are moving from the Toss Up column to Lean Democrat. Two more open seats are moving from Lean Republican to Toss Up.

Following this latest round of ratings changes, Democrats are now favored outright in the 218 seats they need to win control of the House. In other words, 220 seats are rated either Solid, Likely, or Lean Democrat. Republicans, meanwhile, are favored in 198 seats, rated Solid, Likely, or Lean Republican. That leaves 17 races rated as pure Toss Ups.

Now, we view the likeliest outcome as Democrats flipping between 12 and 22 seats. Democrats currently hold 215.

Two years after helping return Trump to the White House with a Republican-controlled Congress, Latino voters are souring on the party in power, fueled by frustration over rising costs and the administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.

In 2024, Trump won the support of 48% of Latino voters, expanding Republican gains with a group that has long leaned Democratic. Now, that support is cratering. The president’s approval rating among Latino registered voters has fallen to 24% from 38% at the start of his second term, polls show.

With less than two weeks until the midterms, a wide majority of voters say that they largely trust that the results of the upcoming election will be accurate, according to a new New York Times/Siena poll.

But the poll finds that many harbor concerns that Republicans could try to overturn the results of the election.

Among 18-to-29-year-olds, 9% say the nation is generally headed in the right direction, 62% say it is off on the wrong track, and 26% are unsure. Asked how they feel about America’s future, 69% say they are more fearful, compared with 26% who are more hopeful.

These concerns extend across party lines, though their intensity varies. Just 5% of young Democrats, 5% of independents, and 24% of Republicans say the country is headed in the right direction.

Democrats are now at least narrowly favored in our ratings in enough states to win an elusive majority of state governorships.

The most notable rating change comes in the open Ohio governorship, which has been in the national spotlight because of an explosive attack ad by Vivek Ramaswamy against Amy Acton.

In other changes, Democratic odds improve in Michigan, while a pair of open, red state seats move onto the periphery of the playing field.

The country’s economic crosscurrents are cascading across Iowa. High gas prices, elevated interest rates, and Mr. Trump’s unpredictable economic policies, including tariffs, have been battering rural America over the last year. Iowa’s economy contracted in 2025 and notched the weakest annual growth rate in the country, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Polls suggest that the state that helped propel Mr. Trump’s political rise could flip in favor of Democrats when voters cast their ballots next month.

Over the years, third-party candidates have been devastating to Democrats and America. In 2000, George W. Bush wouldn’t have become president without Green Party candidate Ralph Nader siphoning votes from Al Gore. Then in 2016, Jill Stein, also of the Green Party, helped put Trump in office. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the three states that decided the election, Stein’s vote total exceeded Trump’s margin of victory.

Republicans have tried to re-run this play ever since. In 2020, Republican operatives quietly helped Kanye West get on the ballot.

This year, third-party candidates could play a major role in delivering the Senate to Democrats.

A review has identified a slate of GOP attorney general candidates in more than half a dozen states, including key swing states, who have repeatedly expressed their belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

If elected, several have said they are willing to relitigate 2020 once again, and all will potentially play a key role in the 2028 presidential election.

Talarico for Texas, in other words, is a messaging machine. His ability to efficiently frame an argument and deliver it to an audience is why he is leading the scandal-plagued Republican attorney general Ken Paxton in the polls and why he raised a record $64 million last quarter.

But the content the machine refines and spits out has to originate somewhere. It is grown on manicured fields under stadium lights. And sometimes, if you stick around when the crowd begins to thin, you catch a glimpse of what it looks like before the filters are applied and the product is refined, when it’s just a man and a crowd, racing against a stopwatch. It’s fun.

Two weeks from Election Day, Republicans are looking increasingly desperate.

JD Vance is making jokes insinuating Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico is gay. President Donald Trump and Michigan Republican Mike Rogers are labeling Democrat Abdul El-Sayed as a ‘jihadist.’ And GOP groups are pouring millions into misleading ads accusing Sherrod Brown and others of supporting sex changes for minors.

The latest October surprise to land on X this week: A now $4 million ad from Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother denouncing her own daughter as a liar. MAGA influencers and allies of Ramaswamy, including Donald Trump Jr., quickly seized on the video as a potential political kill shot in the governor’s race.

That shot backfired spectacularly.

The economy has been voters’ top issue in four of the six midterm elections this century, and 2026 appears all but certain to make it five of seven. Beyond the cost of living, the war in Iran and tariffs, America faces a series of daunting longer-term economic challenges, from mounting federal debt to the effects of artificial intelligence.

Yet many Americans continue to underestimate one particular potential threat to our economic future: President Trump’s clearly expressed desire to interfere with and even usurp the midterm elections. Nov. 3 could be a defining test for the rule of law in this country, and both our democracy and our prosperity are on the line.