Republican and Democratic ex-governors issue rare joint endorsement for South Carolina Senate candidate – US politics live

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Trump makes baseless claim Lula's victory in Brazil 'looked like another rigged election'

Speaking to reporters as he left for a campaign rally in Mississippi on Monday, Donald Trump said that the comeback victory of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, over his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, “looked like another rigged election, frankly.”

“It was a terrible look, for the world,” Trump said, apparently referring to the court-ordered extension in voting hours after widespread reports that supporters of the president had been hindered in getting to the polls by public transportation outages.

“You know, elections have to be indisputable — and it looked very bad to me,” the US president added. “It looked so corrupt.”

None of the reporters in the limited press pool, after reporters from CNN and Politico were again blocked from taking part, pointed out to Trump that Brazil’s supreme court only extended voting hours across the nation by two hours after requests from both candidates.

The correspondent who was questioning Trump was Cara Castronuova a former reality TV fitness trainer now covering the White House for LindellTV, the streaming platform created by Mike Lindell, the election conspiracy theorist pillow salesman.

Asked if he intended to intervene in any way, Trump said: “Well, I’m not running Brazil. I’m running the USA. And I just thought that the election was – I like Lula. I get along with him very well. I just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated. The extension given was very strange.”

Trump promises $1m reward for voter fraud tips the result in conviction

In a post to his personal social media platform on Monday afternoon, President Trump promised to pay $1m to anybody who submits a report of voter fraud resulting in an arrest and conviction.

“Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” Trump wrote.

Trump has alleged for years, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud by noncitizens has tipped the scales in US elections, including in his 2020 re-election defeat. He’s made the issue a centerpiece of his domestic agenda in his second term, aggressively pushing legislation and executive orders that he says would root out illegal votes, but that critics (and the courts, in some cases) have argued would disenfranchise eligible voters and overstep federal authority.

While Trump is heading down south to stump for Republicans in Mississippi, JD Vance, his vice-president and one of his top surrogates on the midterm campaign trail, is heading west.

After a campaign stop in Montana earlier today, Vance will head to straight to Kansas, advocating for Republicans in both deep-red states as Republicans look to shore up their margins in races typically seen as safe.

In Belgrade, Montana, Vance was campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme, among others. He also laughed off comments Trump made in recent days commenting on the figures (butts, in particular) of both Jon Husted, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, and rapper Nikki Minaj.

“We’re self-confident men in the Trump-Vance administration,” Vance quipped. “The President’s been noticing a lot about the physiques of everyone lately.”

Israeli voters go to the polls in election overshadowed by war with Iran

Tomorrow, Israel will hold its first election since the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – an incursion that killed 1,200 people and kickstarted an ever-escalating regional conflict in the Middle East.

Since then, Israel has launched a series of wars against Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, while settlers have escalated state-backed efforts to displace Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, the longtime prime minister, Israel has also found itself increasingly isolated on the world stage due to the scale of its civilian killings in Gaza and elsewhere, even as the Trump administration has stood by it.

Domestically, the coalition formed by Netanyahu has taken aim at democratic institutions, including the supreme court. Many Israelis have described this election as the most consequential in their country’s history.

It’s also consequential for Donald Trump, who launched the war with Iran alongside Netanyahu and has backed him for reelection.

My colleague Emma Graham-Harrison breaks down the Israeli election, and what’s at stake, here.

Lawsuit from news consumers targets Trump's restrictions on White House press

A new lawsuit filed in federal court on Monday against the Trump administration sought to end the president’s practice of banning or restricting White House access to news outlets whose coverage he finds unfavorable.

But instead of from one of the spurned media outlets, the suit originated with a different kind of plaintiffs: news consumers, who claim that Trump’s actions deprive them of their rights to “receive news coverage that is not limited by the president’s unlawful expulsions or distorted by the president’s unconstitutional threats”.

The five plaintiffs – who describe themselves in the complaint as a human rights advocate, a media watchdog, a historian, a civics teacher, a legal journalist and a student journalist – alleged that the harms to news consumers go beyond the loss of reporting from directly banned outlets. They said it also extends to other outlets that are pressured to soften their reporting, lest they face a similar ban.

“Some of the news organizations targeted by the Policy have sued, arguing, correctly, that the First Amendment requires that their access be restored,” the plaintiffs wrote. The ultimate injury here, however, is to the democratic public.”

They continued: “Defendants’ Policy of restricting the access of disfavored news organizations deprives the public of the reporting of those organizations, and it inevitably deprives them of the independent reporting of other news organizations as well, since every journalist who reports from the White House must now account for the possibility that a critical or ill-advised word about the president may result in their access being summarily restricted or revoked.”

In his most recent and most sweeping attack on the White House press since the start of his second term, Trump banned three outlets – CNN, MS Now and Politico – from the White House, accusing them of peddling “fake news”. After a brief standoff with the wider White House press corp, a judge stepped in to restore the three outlets’ access while the case winds its way through the courts.

Judge rules Maurene Comey's firing from the Department of Justice was illegal

A federal judge found on Monday that the Trump administration has overstepped in firing Maurene Comey, the daughter of the former FBI director and Trump opponent James Comey, the Associated Press reported.

Comey, who was fired from her job as a federal prosecutor last year, alleged in a lawsuit against the justice department that the move was unconstitutional retaliation against her for her relationship to her father and her perceived political alignment.

Judge Jesse Furman, ruling on Monday, sided with the younger Comey, ordering that she be reinstated in her role and given back pay.

Read the full story here.

Former South Carolina Republican and Democratic governors unite behind Democrat's bid for US Senate

South Carolina’s former governors David Beasley and Jim Hodges, a Republican and Democrat respectively, have come together for a rare joint endorsement for Democrat Annie Andrews’s US Senate bid.

“This country is too divided, and the political rhetoric has gotten way, way out of hand,” says Beasley in their joint endorsement video. “That’s why we’re coming together to support Annie Andrews,” adds Hodges.

The two former governors, who once faced off against each other, acknowledged that while they don’t agree on everything, they agree on Andrews as the best candidate to put South Carolina first.

“Annie understands that leadership isn’t about making people angrier. Well, it’s about making things better,” says Beasley. “She’s willing to put people ahead of politics,” adds Hodges.

Beasley adds:

We may have served as your governor from different political parties. But we agree South Carolina deserves better than more of the same political fighting.

Andrews, a paediatrician, is looking to flip the seat, currently held by Darline Graham, sister of the late senator Lindsey Graham.

Trump heads to unexpected battleground Mississippi as Democrats try for shock Senate flip

Donald Trump is heading to Corinth, Mississippi today for a rally at 7pm ET, as he continues a closing midterm campaign blitz that has seen him dispatch to even some of the nation’s most reliably red states, which have turned into unexpected battlegrounds.

The Magnolia state, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1982, is probably not where the GOP envisioned needing a late-October stop from the president. But Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing a stiff challenge from Scott Colom, one of many Democratic underdogs that have managed to expand the House and Senate battleground maps amid widespread voter discontent over inflation, the war against Iran and other aspects of Trump’s second presidency.

Hyde-Smith, who is vying for her second full term, remains the favorite in a state that Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 percentage points. But Colom, a local prosecutor who would make history Mississippi’s first Black senator since the post-civil war Reconstruction era, is looking to parlay inflation, Trump’s lagging popularity and Hyde-Smith’s mistakes into an upset.

Colom has outpaced Hyde-Smith in fundraising since he launched his campaign last year, and he caught national attention this month with a viral ad that mocked Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner, dismissing rising beef prices, driven higher by Trump’s tariffs and fuel spikes resulting from the war on Iran. The ad features Hyde-Smith saying that consumers “have so many other proteins to choose from” - followed by several characters declaring: “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.”

Colom’s campaign followed with a social media video that featured an AI-generated Hyde-Smith dodging questions about that controversy and other issues. The Democrat took down the video after the Mississippi attorney general said it could violate state law barring the use of deepfakes so close to election day.

Senate Democrats’ Super Pac, meanwhile, has been a late entry in the contest, with a $1.2m investment – a paltry sum compared to Senate contests in more populous states like Texas or Georgia but an amount that can go farther in Mississippi’s smaller television markets.

Trump calls Bill Maher a ‘total loser’ in 1,300-word Truth Social rant

Donald Trump launched a 1,300-word social media rant against late-night US TV host Bill Maher yesterday evening, calling him a “TOTAL LOSER” in a fresh assault on the media.

“Let’s talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher,” the US president wrote. “He’s got a Low Rated Show on equally Low Rated HBO, which was once, long ago, a Network of Quality and Excitement – But that’s all gone.”

Trump’s lengthy and detailed post about Maher came after the host interviewed Karoline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary, on his program Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maher asked Leavitt about Trump’s “lame duck” presidency and whether the president would act on “vengeance” if Republicans largely lose to Democrats in next week’s midterms.

“I worry that if this election goes as badly as it looks like it’s going to go for him and the Republicans, we’re going to have a guy who doesn’t have as much power as he did … and we know he likes vengeance,” Maher told Leavitt.

Leavitt remained steadfast in her support for Trump and expressed confidence that Republicans could still outperform expectations.

Trump called Maher a “coward who is afraid to tell the truth about how well our Country is running”, claiming that Maher praised him behind the scenes but on television insults him with jokes.

“Also, turn your Laugh Machine off, it’s a joke when they laugh uncontrollably, even when you say nothing funny, and I’m going to have the Republicans not cover you anymore, because they try to talk about you as a guy who is transformative,” Trump wrote.

Trump has previously insulted late-night hosts and comedians on his platform and taken personal offense at those who make him the punchline. Earlier this year, Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel’s show to be terminated after the ABC late-night host joked about Melania Trump. Last year, the US president also called for Seth Meyers to be fired.

But Trump’s lengthy attack on Maher is notable, coming just about a week until the US midterm elections, where Republicans are trying to fend off challenges from Democratic opponents.

My colleague Ariana Baio has the story:

Catholic bishops say they regret joining Trump in Oval Office prayer

Joseph Gedeon

Two Catholic bishops who bowed their heads with Donald Trump in the Oval Office now say they regret it, accusing the White House of turning a private prayer into a campaign photo opportunity before next week’s US elections.

Archbishop Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee and Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines, who were among the 12 bishops who met administration officials last Thursday, issued separate statements of regret over the weekend.

The fallout stems from the White House quickly posting video and photos of the prayer on social media, captioned as Catholic archbishops and bishops praying with the US president, less than two weeks before the midterm elections on 3 November.

Archbishop Grob issued a statement headlined A Public Apology, in which he said he felt “a heavy sadness” over the pain the images had caused, and that he had heard from people alarmed that he had unwittingly joined a political event on the eve of a national vote.

Others, he said, were hurt because of the effect of Trump’s policies on their families. “We should never have been put in that position by the White House,” wrote Grob, adding that he had harbored reservations and “wish I had heeded them”.

Bishop Joensen wrote that “many things tied to this present Administration” were “blatantly at odds with our Catholic faith”.

He said none of the bishops was unaware the meeting fell close to an election, but insisted that none had intended to endorse a party or candidate. “I wish I had been more shrewd and less simple, like those who exploited our meeting for partisan political purposes.”

Grob said the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank behind the Project 2025 rightwing blueprint for the second Trump administration, arranged the meeting. The bishops, he said, were told it would be a private discussion of immigration enforcement, religious-worker visas and human dignity, with a possible chance to pray privately with the president.

After 90 minutes with domestic policy staff, they were ushered into the Oval Office, handed commemorative tokens and, Grob detailed, directed to stand behind Trump’s desk and pray. Nobody told them a video was being recorded, he said, and they never agreed to its release.

“I will be Senator Muhammad to you, bro”: Abdul El-Sayed to Trump at campaign event

Abdul El-Sayed responded on Monday after Donald Trump’s Islamophobia-laced rant against the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate during a campaign event in the state over the weekend.

During that speech, Trump referred to Abdul El-Sayed as “Muhammad”, playing up a Muslim stereotype, and accused him of being a jihadist with designs of instating sharia law in the US.

“I don’t even care that he remembers my whole name,” El-Sayed shot back on Monday, addressing a campaign crowd in Grand Rapids. “Because he can just go on and call me ‘senator’ after November.”

He added: “I will be Senator Muhammad to you, bro.”

Earlier, El-Sayed also accused the president of attacking him for his faith while engaging in self-dealing with allies in the Islamic world.

“I get that the president of the United States takes personal offense to my first name,” El-Sayed said. “He doesn’t mind as much when it’s a shared name from the Saudis who are funding his son-in-law’s private equity, doesn’t seem to mind as much when it’s the Qataris who are giving him a $400m private jet.”