By the same time in 2022, 10 million fewer ballots had been cast. The president is pressing on with his campaign blitz in key Republican states, including Florida this evening

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James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in Texas, attacked his Republican opponent Ken Paxton for cancelling some of his final rallies before the midterm election.

“No one’s going to Ken Paxton’s rallies, so he’s canceling them and hoping Elon Musk will buy his seat for him,” Talarico wrote, referencing the donations Paxton has received from the world’s richest man.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

The Trump administration plans to fly the Afghan immigrants from Louisiana to Pakistan, where they are expected to be expelled over the border to Afghanistan.

© Tomas Munita for The New York Times

US citizen Leo, who has clashed with Donald Trump over several issues, submits his vote by post in Chicago

Pope Leo has voted in the US midterm elections – the first time a sitting pontiff is known to have cast a ballot in any political election at any time in history.

Leo, who has clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over several issues, submitted his vote by post in Chicago, where he was born, the Vatican said on Friday. Leo became the first American leader of the Catholic church last year after the death of Pope Francis.

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© Photograph: Maria Grazia Picciarella/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Maria Grazia Picciarella/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Maria Grazia Picciarella/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Independent candidate Bill Hill is threatening to unseat Trump ally Nick Begich with a message of affordability

As Republicans fight to maintain their narrow majority in Congress, they face a unique challenge in Alaska – not from a Democrat, but from an independent commercial fisher and first-time candidate running to flip the state’s lone House seat.

Bill Hill, who is an Alaska Native and has worked in education and construction, has positioned himself as a working-class candidate who will fight to make life more affordable for people like himself and his family.

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© Photograph: Becky Bohrer/AP

© Photograph: Becky Bohrer/AP

© Photograph: Becky Bohrer/AP

Federal prosecutors have targeted President Trump’s political opponents and sued states over election administration just before the midterms. Devlin Barrett, a reporter for The New York Times, explains how this activity is compared with the Justice Department’s usual election-year behavior.

The president cancelled the events in favor of tele-rallies, as Republicans face a fight to retain control of Congress

Donald Trump cancelled, and then promptly uncancelled, two in-person rallies in Kansas and Iowa this weekend as polls suggest US midterm election races in the previous Republican strongholds could go down to the wire.

On Thursday, just five days before election day, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the president would no longer host the Kansas and Iowa rallies and instead participate in “a large number of tele-rallies”. The RNC claimed it felt it was in a “strong position” in Kansas and Iowa.

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© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

© Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

A humanitarian mission entered the devastated city of Oleshky on Friday, officials said, as Russia and Ukraine observed the most significant truce of the 4½-year war that began with Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Changpeng Zhao, jailed in the United States for a financial crime and pardoned by President Trump, is now living a gilded life in the United Arab Emirates.

© Laura Boushnak for The New York Times

That was almost three times as much as what businesses producing and refining oil in the United States made in the same period in 2025.

© The New York Times

It’s been a particularly brutal cycle for attack ads, but voters are responding with humanity. Plus: on the campaign trail with a Democrat in Kansas

• This was originally published in the Stakes 2026, a newsletter about the midterm elections. Sign up to get it in your inbox

There’s a campaign moment I can’t stop thinking about. It happened shortly after the campaign of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, released a shocking attack ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.

In the ad, as many readers will know by now, Acton’s mother accuses her daughter of lying and tells Ohioans not to vote for her. Acton, 60, says she has not spoken to her mother since she was 12, when she and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody after their stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. Acton says she last saw her mother at the courthouse, where her mother came to support her husband as her daughter testified against him.

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© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Plus, the Friday news quiz.

© Sean Rayford for The New York Times

A backlash over high prices helped Republicans capture a majority in 2024. Now, it may be the source of the party’s own undoing.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

Polls show the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham in a virtual tie with her Democratic opponent, Dr. Annie Andrews. An upset was unthinkable just a few months ago.

© Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Forget California’s billionaire wealth tax. The economist Natasha Sarin believes there are better ways to make billionaires pay up.

© The New York Times

Voters who backed the US president in the last election are saying they can’t vote for him today: ‘This is an abomination’

Outside the Ukrainian educational and cultural center in a quiet Pennsylvania suburb of Jenkintown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, a banner expressed unqualified gratitude: “Thank you USA for supporting Ukraine.”

Inside, however, the sentiment was altogether different. Irene Skulsky, a retired teacher in her late 70s, voiced indignation at Donald Trump’s sudden turn against her ancestral homeland, which she believed had come close to killing her son, Darko, and a desire to punish his fellow Republicans at next week’s midterm elections.

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© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

President Trump has been holding hours-long rallies for G.O.P. candidates nearly every day for weeks.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

American capitalism may never be the same again.

The Justice Department issued subpoenas, a House oversight committee sought interviews and the state opened its own inquiry into a Democratic plan to recruit a spoiler into a Senate race.

© Kerry Tasker/Reuters

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump handed out candy to hundreds of costumed kids outside the White House residence at Thursday's annual Halloween celebration.

Angry about the scale of a contract signed by one of his former lawyers with the family of a wealthy pardon seeker, the president told allies he wanted some of the money to go to his future presidential library.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times