President Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail as he seeks to shore up lagging enthusiasm in the Republican Party ahead of next month’s midterm elections on Nov. 3. On Friday, he’ll attend a rally in Alabama, then travel to Ohio on Saturday. He could have his work cut out for him: Just 26% of U.S. adults approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The Group of Seven industrial nations said Friday that they plan to release 100 million barrels of oil and fuel products in the coming weeks, starting with “substantial” amounts of diesel after the fuel recently hit record high prices in the United States. President Trump and the GOP face pressure to address surging prices ahead of the elections.
Meanwhile, Trump’s immigration policies are finding renewed attention in the Supreme Court, which agreed Thursday to review his administration’s denial of bond hearings for immigrants during its sweeping crackdown. The justices will consider whether immigrants who've been living in the U.S. have a right to a hearing to determine if they should remain detained while challenging their possible deportation.
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Senate Republicans’ top spending group is pouring more than $8 million into Kansas while pulling back from North Carolina, once expected to be one of the most competitive races this cycle.
The Senate Leadership Fund now plans to spend more than $8 million in Kansas over the next month, according to AdImpact. President Donald Trump won the state by nearly 16 percentage points in 2024.
The spending shift is a stark sign of how dramatically the Senate map has changed just a month before the midterm elections. Republicans entered the cycle expecting more opportunities to flip Democratic-held seats than races where they would be forced to defend their own.
Sen. Mark Kelly has harsh words for Pete Hegseth and the changes he’s looking to bring to the Pentagon.
Asked about the defense secretary’s “ state of the force speech,” in which Hegseth rolled out a number of major shifts for the department he leads, the military veteran and former astronaut said Hegseth was “focused on giving speeches about killing people in lethality and insulting some service members” instead of “professionalism and training and improving our combat capability.”
Kelly is stumping for midterm Democrats this week in South Carolina, which holds the party’s first presidential primary, as he mulls a potential 2028 White House bid. He spoke to reporters Friday after an event in Mauldin.
This year’s Kennedy Center Honors will be held at Washington’s Capital One Arena, not the riverfront building that’s been at the center of a legal fight over adding President Trump’s name to the building.
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given.
The center’s board voted last month to close the iconic performing arts venue along the Potomac River waterfront after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning Trump’s name to the building.
Hegseth made the announcement in a video in which he said the move was “apolitical.” It’s his latest effort to encourage Republican-leaning military members to cast ballots ahead of what’s shaping up to be a challenging election for the party.
Earlier this week, Hegseth said that if every member of the military cast ballots, they could out-vote heavily Democratic cities like Boston and Detroit. His department was also sued Thursday by Democrats over a quiet change that makes it harder for Democratic-leaning overseas civilians to cast ballots. Earlier this year, the Army reduced the number of its voting assistance officers.
Hegseth has also announced that the Defense Department will provide cybersecurity for November’s election, a function previously done by a civilian agency that’s been gutted by Trump’s budget cuts after its prior leaders challenged Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Iowa lawmakers returned to the Statehouse on Friday to consider expanding the ceiling on state tax incentives in an effort to secure a $15 billion steel plant project for the state.
President Trump announced the plant Monday alongside Iowa elected officials, heralding the project as a major economic and national security investment.
Five weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans seized on the promise of good-paying jobs and a central role for the heartland in the push for American steel manufacturing. It’s celebrated as an opportunity for southeast Iowa, an area along the Mississippi River that once thrived as a hub for industry but has since suffered from shuttered facilities and dwindled populations. Still, the deal and the tax abatements it could carry have also been met with some skepticism in rural Iowa and Des Moines alike.
U.S. businesses and other employers added just 29,000 job in September, down from a revised 133,000 in August and far fewer than economists had expected. The unemployment rate rose to a still-low 4.2% from 4.1%, the Labor Department said.
Job gains in July were revised lower to show employers shed 10,000 jobs that month. Average wages rose 3% in August from a year earlier, the slowest pace in five years. Americans’ paychecks are trailing inflation.
The jobs report underscores the political challenge for Trump and congressional Republicans: Unemployment is low and layoffs are rare, but stubbornly high inflation is eroding consumers’ ability to afford things like gas, food, and housing. A recent AP-NORC poll found just 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living.
President Trump said Friday that Europe has agreed to release some of its diesel reserves “immediately,” as the president and his Republican Party face pressure to address surging prices ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump announced the action on social media without offering details on which countries were releasing reserves or at what volumes. Trump writes, “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil.” Trump says, “The process will begin immediately.”
The president faces lagging approval ratings as the Iran war and his trade battles have increased U.S. prices for oil and other goods.
Households in the contiguous United States will pay thousands of dollars more for energy through 2040 because of federal policy changes since Trump returned to office, according to modeling released Friday by a nonpartisan think tank.
The Energy Innovation analysis found that households will pay an average of $6,500 more for energy, cumulatively through 2040. In five states, households will pay roughly $9,000 more: Oregon, Mississippi, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming.
The California-based think tank says there’ll be more demand for natural gas for electricity because the administration is canceling new clean energy projects and there’ll be more demand for gasoline for transportation because Trump and Congress are revoking policies that encouraged or created incentives for more efficient and lower-emissions vehicles. Higher demand drives prices up.
With early voting already underway, a question worrying some voters is what role — if any — immigration enforcement officers might have at polling places through Election Day.
Department of Homeland Security officials say they don’t plan to send immigration enforcement officers en masse to patrol the polls and dismissed concerns that they plan to do so as “fearmongering.” Election legal experts say federal law clearly prevents the government from deploying any armed troops, agents or officers to election sites except to “repel armed enemies of the United States,” a high bar to clear.
But organizations who represent Latino, Black and Asian American voters say the rhetoric and ICE’s own activity make them worried at a time the number of immigration arrests is soaring as President Trump carries out his mass deportation agenda.
John Evich, a commercial fisherman in Washington and Alaska, has voted for President Donald Trump three times, viewing him as someone who would fight for his industry.
But these days, Evich is weary of the high cost of doing business at sea, with fuel prices rising and trade hostilities with Canada jeopardizing markets for the crabs that he pulls off the ocean floor.
“If somebody came along that was going to do a better job, I would vote for them in a heartbeat,” he said.
Evich’s sentiment, echoed throughout the U.S. seafood industry, is another piece of a political puzzle that’s working against Trump in the midterm elections. Dissatisfaction among commercial fishermen could cause collateral damage for Republicans in competitive races in Washington, Alaska and Maine.
President Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail as he seeks to shore up lagging enthusiasm in his party ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
He could have their work cut out for him, though.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.
Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election, which will determine control of Congress, as the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as his unpopular war in Iran drags on.
According to Trump, his party has merely done a poor job of public relations in promoting his administration’s accomplishments.
“Maybe we’re doing a bad job selling it,” Trump said while campaigning in Texas.
