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Tag: 2026-midterms ✕

Sep 28, 2026· Updated

DHS Told Four States It Found 250,000 Noncitizens on Their Voter Rolls — On a Recorded Call, Its Own Staff Called the Nevada Number "the Ceiling," and the Confirmed Count Nevada Got Was 185

In July 2026, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to the secretaries of state of California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania saying DHS had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens on their voter rolls, and warned officials who did not act that they faced loss of federal election aid, fines and possible prison time. In August, on a call with Nevada election officials that was recorded and later obtained by CNN, DHS staff conceded the state-level figures had not been individually vetted — a USCIS fraud-division official called Nevada's 15,903 "the ceiling" — and a day later the department handed Nevada a list of just 185 registrants it said it was confident were noncitizens, with more than 14,000 cases unresolved. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said his office "will not risk disenfranchising eligible voters" and called the federal effort unsophisticated and dangerous. DHS election-integrity lead Heather Honey told the state the department was "an open book." The reporting lands 10 weeks before the midterms, with DHS pressing states to purge voters on data it has not shown them.

“We write to warn you against continued activities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that seek to undermine the Constitutional authority of both Congress and states to administer elections and defy the directions of federal courts. … The 2026 midterm elections are already underway. [From the letter to Mullin that Fetterman signed with 33 other senators.]”
John Fetterman (D-PA) · Sep 28, 2026

Sep 27, 2026· Updated

The Missouri Supreme Court Unanimously Pulls the Trump-Backed Congressional Map Out of the November Election and Hands It to the Voters — After It Had Already Been Used in the August Primary, and Nine Weeks Before the Midterms

On September 3, 2026 the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the congressional map Republicans passed in a 2025 special session at President Trump's urging cannot be used in the November midterms, and that Missourians will instead vote on whether to keep or reject it. Writing for the court, Judge Ginger K. Gooch held that "the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise," and that the map "did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters." The 2022 map drawn after the 2020 census stays in force for the general election. The map was drawn to break up Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's 5th District — splitting Kansas City across three districts — and was expected to net Republicans one House seat. Opponents organized by People Not Politicians gathered more than 300,000 signatures for a veto referendum in December. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until primary election day in August to reject the petition, on the theory that the referendum process does not reach congressional redistricting. The court rejected that reading. The ruling is, on the Republican side's own account, without precedent: no court had previously pulled a congressional map after a primary had already been run under it and before the general election. Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said she would seek immediate relief from the U.S. Supreme Court and called the decision a constitutional crisis; Gov. Mike Kehoe and Hoskins issued statements attacking the court; state Sen. Rick Brattin called the majority "liberal activist." Trump posted that it was a "Dark Day for 'Justice' in Missouri." Cleaver and Rep. Wesley Bell called it a win for voters.

“The Supreme Court of the United States will just not let Missouri have an Election Victory. They continuously, three times now, overrule Judges who came to the correct decisions. Thank you to the Governor, and all of the Great People of Missouri, who are fighting so hard for Fairness and Election Security. Such tremendous Spirit and Love of our Country. I won Missouri BIG, all three times, and I couldn't be more proud of doing so. A great place — I love you all!”
Donald Trump (R-FL) · Sep 27, 2026

Sep 27, 2026· Updated

Eleven Weeks Out, Republicans Start Saying Out Loud That the Iran War Is Going to Cost Them the Midterms — "You People Are Living in a Cave"

With the November 2026 midterms about eleven weeks away, Republicans who have spent months declining to criticize President Trump's Iran war began describing it publicly as a political emergency for their party. Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), one of Trump's closest Senate allies, told reporters in Washington on Monday, August 17, 2026, that the war has become a "mess," that "this situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can't imagine," and that Republicans were "scared to death about the midterms." Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), a frontline member in a competitive district, pressed for the war to be wrapped up. Speaker Mike Johnson, campaigning in Virginia Beach with Rep. Jen Kiggans on the same day, volunteered the connection between the war and pump prices — "The Iran conflict has been the cause, of course, of gas prices going up" — while promising a "new phase" that would bring them back down. The anxiety is not new inside the conference. Days earlier, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of Senate Republican leadership, described a "fatigue factor," and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he wished the president "were more clear about what his objectives are." Democrats are pressing the advantage: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), on the ballot in November, told an Atlanta rally that there is "something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war." Polling has been consistently bad for the war — a late-July Quinnipiac survey found 60 percent of voters opposed U.S. military action against Iran — and gas prices and oil have climbed as the Strait of Hormuz blockade has dragged on. What has changed is that Republicans in cycle are now saying so on the record.

“I would like to see him give a nationwide address. Or let Rubio and General Caine do it and explain why we went into Iran, why we're winning, and how we're going to get out.”
John Kennedy (R-LA) · Sep 27, 2026

Sep 24, 2026· Updated

The Justice Department Says It Will Send a Record ~1,000 Monitors to the Midterm Polls — and a Senator Asks the Pentagon to Put in Writing That It Will Not Send Troops or Seize Ballots

Two announcements eleven weeks before the November 2026 midterms put the question of federal presence at American polling places back in front of Congress. On Monday, August 17, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told Bloomberg Law that the department would deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors in November — "probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration." Dhillon said the monitors would observe rather than intervene, would be trained on the same materials used by previous administrations, and would watch for language-access and disability-access barriers as well as suspected fraud. The number is many times what the department has typically fielded, and it lands as President Trump repeatedly predicts Democrats will "cheat" to retake Congress and after his call for Republicans to "nationalize" elections. The next day, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine asking them to confirm in writing that the Defense Department "will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind." She pointed to Trump's 2020-era consideration of using the military to seize voting machines, his National Guard deployments to cities over Democratic governors' objections, and the 2025 deployment of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles. The Pentagon said it would respond through normal congressional correspondence channels; the Joint Chiefs did not comment. Hegseth, asked a version of the same question at an April 2026 hearing, called it a "gotcha hypothetical" but said he had never been ordered to do anything illegal and would not follow such an order. Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee had earlier blocked a Democratic amendment to strengthen the existing statutory bar on federal troops at polling places. Democrats had already gone to the department about the monitors: on August 3, 2026, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine led a ten-senator letter pressing DOJ to confirm the program would stay within its statutory limits and would not target jurisdictions on partisan lines. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, whose state saw monitors during the summer primary, has filed public records requests seeking the factual basis for the deployments.

“We are taking strong, joint legal action to block Donald Trump's threats to deploy federal agents, including ICE and FBI agents, to polling places this November. Sending armed federal agents into American neighborhoods to intimidate voters is not only wrong – it's illegal and would mark a new and extremely dangerous escalation of this administration's disregard for the rule of law and repeated attempts to rig the midterms. … Federal law explicitly forbids voter intimidation and stationing armed federal agents at polling places. Our case is clear, and we're confident we'll defeat Trump in court yet again.”
Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) · Sep 24, 2026

Sep 15, 2026· Updated

A Streamer Tells His Audience That American Jews Are Inviting Violence on Themselves — and Ten Weeks Before the Midterms the Democrat He Campaigned For, Michigan's Senate Nominee, Ends Up Apologizing for a Synagogue Attack He Called "Context"

On August 20, 2026, the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker told his audience that "if Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews." Within a week at least thirteen elected Democrats — including the House Democratic leader, three sitting senators and the DNC chair — had condemned the remark. The condemnations landed hardest on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's open Senate seat, who had campaigned with Piker after beating Rep. Haley Stevens in a primary in which AIPAC-aligned groups spent at record levels against him. Rep. Hillary Scholten, who had already broken with El-Sayed over the appearances, singled out Piker's naming of Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss — the Democratic nominee for Stevens's House seat, who is Jewish and openly gay — and called Piker "a hack who thrives on hate, shock and awe because he lacks substance." Moss answered that he would not "be lectured by a California podcaster." Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish, said crimes against Jews for being Jews are "antisemitism plain and simple." Hakeem Jeffries called the claim dangerous and antisemitic. Rep. Josh Gottheimer went further and said anyone campaigning with Piker is "part of the problem." Sens. Cory Booker, Jacky Rosen and Jon Ossoff and Reps. Ritchie Torres, Jared Moskowitz, Brad Schneider, Greg Stanton, Jake Auchincloss and Haley Stevens also condemned the remarks. El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker without disavowing him, saying "nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople." Then, on Saturday, August 29, at the Michigan Democratic Party's nominating convention in Lansing, he went to the state party's Jewish Democratic Caucus and apologized for something older: his response to the March 2026 attack on Temple Israel, a suburban Detroit synagogue, where a man crashed a vehicle into the building and opened fire, wounding a security guard before being killed. El-Sayed had condemned the attack but added "hurt people hurt people," noting the attacker had lost relatives in an Israeli airstrike days earlier. "I made a mistake," he told the caucus. "What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn't the time for context." Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish and had criticized El-Sayed for making excuses for domestic terrorism, did not attend the convention, citing antisemitic harassment directed at her.

“Even if you didn't vote for Abdul, you need to support up and down the ticket this November.”
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) · Sep 15, 2026

Sep 10, 2026· Updated

Trump Convenes the First Midterm Convention in Modern History and at Least 45 House Republicans Say They Are Not Coming — the Ticket Is $25,000, the Nickname Is "Trumpapalooza," and the Vice President's Answer Is "We Don't Need a Congressman in a Tight Race to Be There"

The Republican National Committee has scheduled a two-day midterm convention in Dallas for September 9 and 10, 2026 — an event with no real precedent in modern American politics, informally called "Trumpapalooza" inside the party. In the first days of September, Politico surveyed more than 70 House Republicans and at least 45 said they would not attend; NOTUS separately found swing-state members skipping it. Dozens more were undecided. The stated reasons vary: House members are being asked to contribute $25,000 apiece, and many said they had district events, fundraisers, or 25th-anniversary September 11 commemorations already on the calendar. The unstated one is the calendar itself — the convention lands eight weeks before a midterm in which the president's approval rating hit record lows in August, and members in competitive seats have to decide whether standing next to him on a Dallas stage helps. Speaker Mike Johnson said some members simply need to be in their districts. Vice President JD Vance told reporters the ticket does not need marginal members in the room. Sen. Mike Rounds, up for reelection in South Dakota, said he would be home talking to constituents. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who is going, said the party's record "is just not getting out." Rep. Tim Burchett said he had just gotten the bill.

“If you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there. I'll buy you the plane ticket.”
JD Vance (R-OH) · Sep 10, 2026

The House Votes 212-206 to Write Nine Justices Into the Constitution — Nowhere Near the Two-Thirds It Needed, With Exactly One Democrat Voting Yes and Jim Clyburn Answering That "a Baker's Dozen Would Be a Good Number"

On September 2, 2026 the House voted 212-206 on H.J. Res. — the "Keep Nine Amendment" offered by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — a proposed constitutional amendment reading that "The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices." A constitutional amendment needs two-thirds of the chamber, so a six-vote margin was not close; the resolution failed. The vote was the second of two messaging votes House Republican leaders scheduled in the run-up to the November midterms, paired with the resolution condemning socialism that passed 220-192 the day before. The premise of both was the same: force Democrats onto the record and use the answer in ads. On this one it worked in the narrow sense — every Republican voted yes and all but one Democrat voted no. Rep. Don Davis (D-NC), who represents a competitive eastern North Carolina district, was the lone Democratic yes. What the vote also documented is how far court expansion has traveled inside the Democratic Party since 2020. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the former majority whip and about as institutional a Democrat as the House has, said on the record that Congress "ought to expand" the Court and that thirteen justices would be "a pretty good number." Democratic leaders framed their opposition in structural terms instead — House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) argued the amendment would strip Congress of an authority the Constitution assigns it — while Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, said plainly that the point was to lock in "the political court that MAGA built."

“They want to sacralize and constitutionalize nine because Donald Trump likes the fact that they overturned abortion rights.”
Jamie Raskin (D-MD) · Sep 6, 2026

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Sep 6, 2026· Updated

The Supreme Court Lets Trump's Mail-Voting Order Move Forward 71 Days Before the Midterms — "A Giant Leap Forward" or "A Dagger Into the Heart of Our Democracy"

On Monday, August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration an interim victory on its effort to restrict who receives a mail-in ballot before the November midterms. In an unsigned emergency-docket order that divided the justices along ideological lines, the Court lifted the injunction U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani entered in June, which had blocked key provisions of President Trump's March 2026 executive order from taking effect in the 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued — a group that includes Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed adult U.S. citizens in each state, requires states that use mail balloting to hand the federal government lists of every registered voter receiving a mail or absentee ballot in a federal election, and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to decline to deliver mail ballots from states that do not comply. The Postal Service issued its final rules on August 22, adding new ballot design standards and serialized barcodes on outgoing and return envelopes. The majority wrote that its "disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning the decision creates a "Kafkaesque nightmare" that "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote that the order "merely postpones adjudication" of whether the president may direct the administration of a state-run election at all. The ruling does not end the litigation. A second injunction Talwani issued on August 11 in a suit brought by the League of Women Voters and Democratic Party committees blocks the order nationwide and remains in force, and the states have said they will challenge the Postal Service's new rules. Democratic senators, governors and attorneys general cast the decision as sanctioning voter suppression weeks before ballots go out; Republicans who have long pushed to curb mail voting called it a win for election security and renewed their push for the SAVE America Act.

“We'll use every tool in our toolbox to ensure they know the truth about our elections. We'll follow the law. We'll protect the right to vote.”
Jocelyn Benson (D-MI) · Sep 6, 2026

Speaker Johnson Cancels the Last Two Weeks of September Votes, Leaving the House Four Legislative Days Before the Midterms — "This Congress Has Done Phenomenal Work," He Says, While Raskin Calls It Republicans "Scrambling to Catch Up With Their Constituents"

On September 3, 2026 House Republican leadership scrapped the weeks of September 21 and September 28 from the legislative calendar — eight scheduled voting days — in a reversal of what Speaker Mike Johnson had told reporters earlier in the same week. Under the revised schedule the House returns the evening of Monday, September 14, works through Thursday, September 17, and then leaves Washington for roughly six weeks of campaigning ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The move follows the September 1 passage of the continuing resolution funding the government through December 11, which Trump signed on September 2 and which removed the last must-pass item from the pre-election calendar. It comes 60 days out from an election in which public polling has shown Democrats positioned to take the House. Johnson framed the change as members balancing competing demands and noted that members can be called back into session. Minority Whip Katherine Clark's office flagged it as a departure from the announced schedule, and House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin cast it as a party fleeing its own record. Rank-and-file Republicans split: Tim Burchett and Rich McCormick argued there was nothing left to do in Washington, while Diana Harshbarger and Michael Cloud said there was unfinished legislative business.

“This Congress has done phenomenal work, and the members are jostling a lot of different priorities right now.”
Mike Johnson (R-LA) · Sep 3, 2026

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Sep 1, 2026

Texas's Third-Largest County Cuts 92 Election Day Polling Places Nine Weeks Before the Midterms — Three Republicans Outvote Two Democrats After Eight Hours and More Than 100 Speakers, and a Commissioner Calls It a "Modern Day Poll Tax"

On September 1, 2026 the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to run the November midterms with 224 Election Day polling places — 92 fewer than the 316 the county used in the 2022 midterms. County Judge Tim O'Hare and Commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez, all Republicans, voted yes. Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr., both Democrats, voted no. Tarrant County is the third-largest county in Texas and the largest urban county in the state that Republicans still control. It is also the county Democrats have spent a decade trying to flip. The vote came at the end of a meeting that ran more than eight hours and heard from more than 100 speakers, most of them opposed, with voting-rights advocates and representatives of some 30 civic groups rallying outside the courthouse that morning. Fort Worth's City Council had unanimously asked the county in August to reconsider the reductions and to distribute whatever sites remained fairly across the county. The Republican majority defended the consolidation as an efficiency and staffing decision — O'Hare said no Tarrant County voter should ever feel short of time to vote, and Krause called the demand for a specific number of sites arbitrary. Democrats on the court and James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, cast it as a deliberate narrowing of access: Miles told the majority they were creating "modern day poll taxes," and Simmons said the decision was "not about cost" but "about power."

“The last thing I want to see is anybody removed from the chambers. The last thing I want to see is anybody arrested. The last thing I want to see is a circus.”
Tim O'Hare (R-TX) · Sep 1, 2026

A "Meet the Press" Host Says Trump's Endorsements Have Had "Mixed Results" — and He Answers That She Will Be "Reported to the FCC for Rebuke or Punishment," Prompting the Commission's Lone Democrat to Reply That It Has No Such Power

On Sunday, August 30, 2026, "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker said on the air that President Trump's primary endorsements this cycle had produced "mixed results" — a routine piece of election-season analysis nine weeks before the November 3 midterms. Trump answered on Truth Social by asking a federal regulator to act against her. Calling her "the Unpopular 'Hostess' of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press," he disputed the characterization — citing what he said were win rates of 100 percent for his endorsed Senate candidates and 98 percent for House candidates, and pointing to primary victories by Senate candidate Darline Graham and House candidate Mike Mazzei — and wrote: "Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment." He added that he hoped FCC Chairman Brendan Carr "and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously," and in a separate post wrote that "THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE!" The FCC has no such authority. Its own rules state that the Commission "cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view," and it does not license individual journalists — it licenses stations. Anna Gomez, the Commission's only Democratic member and its most vocal internal critic of Carr's handling of broadcasters, said so directly within hours: "As I've said many times, the FCC has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn't like. These threats to press freedom are dangerous. They undermine the foundation of our democracy, and they have no place in it." Carr, a Trump appointee, did not respond to CNN's request for comment. NBC News said Welker is "one of the best in the business" and that it stands behind her. The episode lands in the middle of a running fight over the FCC's posture toward broadcasters: Carr had already forced early license renewals on Disney's eight ABC stations after Trump publicly demanded ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel, a move ABC and Disney are now suing over on First Amendment grounds.

“Kristen Welker, the Unpopular 'Hostess' of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has 'mixed results' on his Endorsements of Candidates. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
Donald Trump (R-FL) · Aug 30, 2026

Ten Weeks Before the Midterms, a Second Person in Mike Collins’s Orbit Surfaces With Nazi and Klan Imagery — a Former Staffer Who Calls Himself a "Twink Fascist," and Jon Ossoff Says It Is "Disqualifying"

On Thursday, August 27, 2026, The Washington Post reported that Preston Parra, 24, who interned for Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) in 2024 and then worked as a contractor for the congressman's political action committee into 2025, had posted a swastika to his X account in June and July and shared an image of himself in Ku Klux Klan robes. Parra, who describes himself online as a "twink fascist," defended the posts to the Post as satirical and provocative, and said the Klan image was generated with X's Grok AI tool. Collins is the Republican nominee challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in what is expected to be one of the most expensive Senate races of the 2026 midterms. A spokesman said Parra has no affiliation with Collins's office or campaign and that Collins "unequivocally condemns" the posts. The report landed on top of an earlier and unresolved controversy. In July 2026, CNN's KFile reported that Collins's son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II — who is registered to vote at a Collins-owned property, has appeared in Collins campaign photos, and attended Collins's June primary victory party — had shared content from the white nationalist group Patriot Front along with antisemitic conspiracy material and calls to deport Muslims. Collins abruptly ended a press conference at Monroe County Hospital on July 30 after reporters repeatedly pressed him on the relationship, saying only that he had "fully addressed" it before pivoting to attacks on Ossoff. On August 11, more than 50 Black Georgia state legislators signed a statement condemning Collins and demanding answers; Collins responded that "no one speaks for me" and condemned antisemitism generally without disavowing his son-in-law by name. The Washington Post framed the Parra posts as part of a pattern that some Republicans have begun to notice, coming as Republicans defend a Senate majority and Georgia sits near the center of the map.

“This time, it's swastikas and the costume of the Ku Klux Klan, unacceptable and disqualifying.”
Jon Ossoff (D-GA) · Aug 27, 2026

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