Donna Arthur, the mother of Amy Acton, a Democrat running to become Ohio’s next governor, appears in a campaign ad urging voters not to vote for her own daughter.
The post Nolte: Amy Acton’s Mother Films Ad Against ‘Liar’ Amy Acton — Acton Responds appeared first on Breitbart.
Farmers across the United States will soon get relief from the cost of diesel, President Donald Trump said during his rally near Wichita, Kansas, on Monday evening, CBS News reported.
The post WATCH: President Trump Announces $8 Billion in Relief to Help Farmers with Diesel Costs appeared first on Breitbart.
Early voting began Monday in Texas and most Florida counties, setting the stage for closely watched midterm contests in two Republican strongholds where Latino voters’ concerns over inflation, immigration and public safety could shape the electoral landscape.
RELATED: Cuba Accuses United States of Pressuring UN Votes on Blockade
With Latinos accounting for 40% of Texas’ population and 28.7% of Florida’s, both states offer a key test of the parties’ ability to attract Hispanic voters. Economic pressures, rising living costs, immigration policy and public safety are among the issues shaping voters’ priorities.
In Florida, voters turned out early in heavily Hispanic areas, including Miami-Dade County and Doral. Their concerns varied: some pointed to rising food and fuel prices and the strain on households and small businesses, while others emphasized public safety, education and support for the Trump administration.
Foreign policy and immigration have also exposed divisions within the community. In Doral, home to a significant Venezuelan population, tensions over the conflict with Iran and its potential impact on oil prices have added to debate over the administration’s tougher immigration policies.
🗳️ EE. UU.: comenzó la votación anticipada en Texas, que se suma a Georgia y Arizona. Las elecciones del 3 de noviembre definirán el control del Congreso. #teleSUR #19oct pic.twitter.com/EHFa1yUbOU
— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) October 19, 2026
Text Reads: 🗳️ U.S.: Early voting has begun in Texas, joining Georgia and Arizona. The November 3 elections will determine control of Congress.
The early voting period coincides with a decline in Trump’s approval among Hispanic voters, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. His approval rating stood at 24% in October, down from 38% in February 2025, at the beginning of his term.
The figures come as both parties compete in high-profile state and congressional races. In Florida, Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly are vying for the governorship in a contest that has proved closer than expected. Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar is seeking re-election in the state’s 27th Congressional District against Democratic challenger Eliott Rodríguez.
In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton faces Democrat James Talarico in the Senate race, while Republican Governor Greg Abbott is challenged by state legislator Gina Hinojosa.
Democrats are hoping that declining support for Trump among Hispanic voters, combined with greater participation in early and mail-in voting, will help them contest key seats in the House of Representatives and Senate. Republicans, meanwhile, are seeking to maintain their dominance in both states through the end of the voting period.
Democrats on the US Senate Armed Services Committee called on the Pentagon on Monday to reveal how much President Donald Trump’s Iran war is costing American taxpayers, citing “ongoing efforts to hide the true cost.” US Central Command (CENTCOM) told Congress that the war had cost $43.6 billion as of September 3. But in Monday’s […]
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Donald Trump loves to put his name on things, and when it comes to the recent burst of inflation, it’s totally deserved. Trump and Republican politicians are doing their best to try to make a simple story complicated. But there is no doubt that Trump is the lead and almost sole author of the inflation […]
The post Trumpflation is here and it’s all Trump’s doing appeared first on Asia Times.
Donald Trump’s name is not on any ballot on Nov. 3, yet much of the U.S. electorate will head to the polls with him in mind.
A national poll released Sunday, Oct. 18, and conducted Oct. 9-13, puts his approval rating at 33%, the lowest the series has recorded in either of his terms. Two in three adults disapprove of his performance, 52% strongly, and the same survey had him at 37% in both April and July.
RELATED: Trump Approval Falls to New Low of 33% Two Weeks Before Midterms
The poll also asked whether the next Congress should act as a check on the president or support his agenda. Fifty-eight percent preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress as a check on him, compared with 39% who want a Republican Congress aligned with the White House, a gap nearly twice as wide as a year ago. Neither party is calling this election a referendum, but the answer brings it close to one.
Almost six out of ten U.S. citizens want the next Congress to counterbalance Trump, a gap that has nearly doubled in one year. Graph: teleSUR
In the race for the House of Representatives, Democrats lead Republicans 52% to 44% among likely voters. Among registered voters the gap holds at eight points; in July it was three.
Other surveys tell the same story. An earlier Ipsos poll put him at 32% in September, and the Pew Research Center had him at 30% in early October. The slide deepened after February, when the war with Iran began.
Between the first bombings on Iran and the election, gasoline soared above 4 dollars and Trump’s approval rating plummeted. Graph: teleSUR
The United States and Israel began bombing Iran in February, when a gallon of regular gasoline cost an average of $2.98, according to AAA. By late March it had topped $4 for the first time since 2022, and each new round of strikes pushed it back up. On Oct. 1, the national average hit $4.41.
At those prices, filling a 15-gallon tank costs about $21 more than before the war.
With Ormuz declared closed by Iran and no oil pipelines capable of replacing it, the gallon rose 48% in the US even with record crude production. Graph: teleSUR
In February, 7 in 10 U.S. citizens considered gasoline affordable. Eight months later, the same share says the opposite.
About a fifth of the oil the world consumes passes through the Strait of Hormuz. According to the official price index for September, consumer prices rose 3.7% over the year, energy 20.4% and gasoline 34.2%, while inflation excluding food and energy stood at 2.6%. Today, 65% of U.S. citizens believe attacking Iran was a mistake.
Tehran declared the strait closed in March and has reaffirmed that stance several times since. In October, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, chief of staff of Iran’s army, told the official IRNA news agency that the waterway remains closed and that all transit must be coordinated with the armed forces, and he blamed the closure for the rise in U.S. gasoline prices.
Washington says otherwise. On Oct. 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “the Straits of Hormuz are open,” that as much oil is flowing out now “as there was before this conflict began” and that Iran has “lost complete control of the straits.” Overland routes cannot replace the strait either. Before the war, the EIA estimated that the Saudi and Emirati pipelines that bypass Hormuz had only about 2.6 million barrels a day of spare capacity to divert crude, compared with the 20 million barrels a day that moved through the strait.
Ten days later, Vice President JD Vance revealed another side of the same administration. “I recognize that gas prices are too high right now,” he said Saturday night at a televised town hall. Asked why the war had not ended in a clear victory, he said that “in some ways we have won decisively,” though “the enemy gets a vote.” And he repeated that Iran, “the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world,” cannot have a nuclear weapon.
On the campaign trail, the fix being sold in Washington points elsewhere. In a poll of 1,000 likely voters taken in early October, four in five agreed that increasing U.S. energy production “can help make everyday life more affordable,” and 67% backed a proposal whose wording already promised the result, “updating federal permitting laws to reduce delays and lower costs.” It is the same reform the oil industry pitches as the key to affordability.
The government’s own energy agency supplies the missing piece. The United States has been the world’s largest crude oil producer since 2018 and is on track for a record of about 13.7 million barrels a day this year, while 84% of the crude that crossed Hormuz was bound for Asia. With output at record highs, gasoline has risen 48% since the bombing began. Crude is priced on a global market, and this year’s price spikes followed the calendar of the war, not the permitting calendar.
The price shock reached much of the world, and Latin American economies that import refined fuels absorbed it without having had any say in the decision to go to war. For those countries, the permitting fight in Washington is a distant concern; the price of their diesel depends on what happens in Hormuz. How much room Washington has to keep waging the war without congressional oversight will also be decided on Nov. 3.
For Latin American families living in the United States, the most visible face of the second term is immigration policy. At the start, half the country approved of it; now about 60% disapprove, and 56% say deportations have gone too far, eight points more than in April 2025. At the same town hall, Vance acknowledged that his rhetoric about immigrants had been “imperfect” and took the blame. “That’s on me,” he said. His goal, he insisted, is not “to dehumanize any immigrant.” “In fact, I love a number of immigrants,” he added.
The president’s approval on the economy has fallen to 28%, its lowest mark across his two presidencies. Forty-eight percent feel worse off than when Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the highest share in a series dating back to 1986, and for the first time in more than a decade, registered voters trust Democrats more to handle the economy, 40% to 33%. Before the 2022 midterms, the same series gave Republicans a double-digit edge on the issue.
That year, with Joe Biden in the White House, each party’s verdict on the economy was the mirror image of today’s, almost point for point, and independents stood at 16% in both surveys.
Democrats and Republicans reversed their judgment of the economy by changing government, meanwhile only independents stayed where they were. Graph: teleSUR
Voters who wear no team colors are moved by their wallets. In the October survey of likely voters, 37% said a candidate’s stance on affordability will decide their vote for Congress, more than double the 15% who put immigration first, an issue central to Trump’s 2024 campaign. That priority is shared by 43% of Democrats, 36% of independents and 32% of Republicans.
Among those who say they are worse off than in 2025, 78% lean toward Democrats, as do 71% of independents in that group.
Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, are now 30 to 45 years old and make up the largest adult generation in the country. In 2024 they split almost evenly on Trump; exit polls showed voters ages 30 to 44 backing Kamala Harris over him 51% to 47%.
A YouGov poll conducted Aug. 28-31 found 27% approval and 70% disapproval in that age group, the group’s worst showing in the series. Its net rating went from minus 1 in January 2025 to minus 43 in August, a 42-point drop, compared with 30 points nationally.
The Economist makes the opposite case. It argues that millennials have turned their fortunes around and now earn more than any recent generation did at the same age, while narrowing the gap in homeownership. The magazine credits the recovery to markets rather than to a state-funded rescue. October’s polls show what that narrative leaves out.
In the House race, the Pew Research Center found voters ages 30 to 49 favoring the Democratic candidate 43% to 31%, with one in five still undecided.
October’s affordability survey, broken down by age, points in the same direction. Affordability will decide the vote of 45% of voters in their 30s and 44% of those in their 40s, above the 37% average. This is the cohort that entered the job market in the 2008 crisis, pays rent or a mortgage, raises children and fills the tank every day to get to work, and the tank is precisely where prices have climbed the most this year.
The cost of living defines the vote of almost half of voters aged 30-49, above the national average of 37%. Graph: teleSUR
The figures come from surveys with different age brackets and do not prove a single cause. Read together, though, they show the country’s largest generation turning away from Trump faster than everyone else, with the cost of living at the top of its priorities.
RELATED: U.S. Retail Sales Up in September Amid Surging Gas Prices
Among those who voted for Trump in 2024, 23% now disapprove of his performance and 38% reject his handling of inflation. Most of them still prefer Republicans for Congress, so the erosion does not take the form of a switch to the other party. What they have lost is the certainty that they will vote.
Seventy-five percent of registered Democrats say they are certain to vote, compared with 67% of Republicans. Within the Republican Party, certainty reaches 75% among supporters of the MAGA movement and falls to 57% among those who do not identify with it, and more than a quarter of the latter want Democrats to control the next Congress.
Only 39% of Republicans strongly approve of the president, down from 63% in February 2025.
How many of the 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024 will return to the polls without his name on the ballot is a question no one can answer yet. Turnout models based on 2022 and 2024 favor Republicans; votes already cast or locked in, by contrast, favor Democrats.
The risk for Republicans is at home. Their MAGA-unaffiliated voters are the least confident of going to the polls. Graph: teleSUR
With the slim House majority Republicans are defending, losing a handful of seats would be enough to hand over control, and presidential approval is among the best predictors of midterm results. Even so, 58% of likely voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Trump still prefer the Republican in their district.
The Senate is split 53-47 in Republicans’ favor, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win back the majority. Of the 35 seats on the ballot, seven are rated toss-ups, and six of them — in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas — are held by Republicans. North Carolina, a Republican seat, is already rated as likely to go Democratic.
The seven states that decided the last presidential election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — offer an early clue about 2028. Trump carried all seven in 2024, and today his net approval is negative in every one of them, between 15 and 25 points underwater among registered voters, according to the Civiqs tracker. He cannot run in 2028, and those numbers measure a president, not his successor, but they map the terrain his party will inherit.
Six of the seven open Senate races are played in Republican seats, while their approval is now negative in the seven states that gave the White House to Trump in 2024. Graph: teleSUR
On Nov. 3, Trump’s name will still be missing from the ballot. The outcome will depend less on votes that switch parties than on the votes that are never cast, among them those of a generation that split almost evenly on him two years ago and in August disapproved of him by more than two to one.
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, 20 days before the election, the new Air Force One flew low over the airport in Bullhead City, in the Arizona desert. It is the Boeing 747 that Qatar’s royal family gave Trump, now painted red, white, blue and gold. “When they give you a 747, you say two words, thank you,” he told supporters.
Arizona is one of the swing states that change hands from one presidential election to the next. Joe Biden won it in 2020 by about 10,500 votes, Trump took it back in 2024, and today his approval there is 18 points underwater. The state has no Senate race this year, but it does elect a governor and all nine of its House members. The president chose Mohave County, where he won more than 77% of the vote two years ago, with early voting already a week underway. He went looking for his base, the voters he needs at the polls, not at home.
From the plane he moved on to people who leak military information. “In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” he said, and he called the journalists covering him “almost as bad as a leaker.” He touted the ballroom he is building at the White House and the triumphal arch he plans for the capital. On Iran, whose leaders, he said, “are gone,” he let slip a confession. “I might have gone too far. I don’t know who the hell to deal with.” And he promised that once the war ends, “your gasoline is going to go down to even lower than it was before it started.”
He was addressing a country that fills its tank at wartime prices and pays rents 2.8% higher than a year ago, according to the official price index. Three days later, his vice president admitted on television what the gas pump was already saying. Trump, in Arizona, had preferred to talk about monuments.
The planned arch would stand 76 meters (250 feet) tall, about 26 meters (85 feet) taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and would rise at the foot of the bridge leading to Arlington National Cemetery, as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.
Napoleon commissioned the Paris arch in 1806, after his victory at Austerlitz, to honor his armies. Construction dragged on for three decades. When it was inaugurated in 1836, the emperor had been dead in exile for 15 years, and he passed beneath the arch only once, in 1840, inside the coffin that brought his remains back to France.
US President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on 18 October that he did not want to “drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” He also wrote: “Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want!”
Trump was referring to sanctions and tariffs under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which he waived in an executive order on 16 October, days before the measures were due to take effect. The waiver suspends additional economic penalties intended to pressure Moscow over its war against Ukraine, while leaving earlier US sanctions in place. The decision came weeks before the 3 November midterms, in which Republicans are defending slim majorities in both chambers, and analysts said the penalties could have pushed up oil prices for Americans already paying more, largely because of the US-Israeli war with Iran, Reuters reported.
A week before the waiver, Trump had announced a deal for Russia to increase diesel supplies to global markets. The Treasury also issued a license, valid until 7 April 2027, permitting certain transactions in Russian-origin diesel.
In the Truth Social post, Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of targeting Russian diesel refineries, saying the strikes were “seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States.” Kyiv had paused its refinery strikes for three days at Washington’s request after Trump declared an energy ceasefire on 11 October, which Russia never confirmed, then resumed them. Since then, Russia has struck Ukraine’s energy sector 76 times, Zelenskyy said on 18 October.
Trump wrote that Zelenskyy “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” and that he “could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now.”
“His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead,” Trump added.
He also said Russia was “doing very little, if anything, to help” Iran and that he wanted to keep it that way.
On 17 October, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he had not announced his final decision. “A lot of you don’t know what my decision is yet, but we’ll figure it out, and you’ll figure it out,” he said, Reuters reported.
“I think the president wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters before departing for Uzbekistan the same day.
Zelenskyy called it a “pity” that Trump had waived sanctions under a law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who “really believed in Ukraine.” He said he hoped Trump would change his decisions, NBC News reported.
Discussing the diesel deal on NBC’s Meet the Press, Zelenskyy said US oil prices had risen because shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, not because of Ukraine.
On 17 October, Zelenskyy told journalists that “the decision to undo all of this, to block all of it, seems wrong to me” and that it “definitely helps only the Russians.” His remarks appeared in Ukrainian on his official Telegram channel.
“Sanctions relief will continue. I think the diesel deal and the move regarding the Lindsey Graham Act are not the end of it. Unfortunately,” Zelenskyy said.
On 19 October, Zelenskyy wrote that partners had again given no warning of Russia’s overnight ballistic attack and that blocking missiles for Ukraine’s air defense while Russia gets sanctions eased or postponed amounts to partners denying reality.
Republican Senator James Lankford defended Trump’s decision on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying the president was “choosing the American people first.”
Senator Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, whom Trump has endorsed for a full term, said at a campaign stop on 17 October that she would “choose to keep the pressure on Russia.”
“I don’t trust Putin and I don’t trust Russia,” Darline Graham said.
She did not directly criticize Trump but said she would not have made that choice, Reuters reported.
The No Kings movement held nearly 3,000 rallies and marches across the United States on Saturday, urging voters to cast their ballots early in the November 3 midterm elections, as the Trump administration intensified its efforts to challenge mail-in voting and scrutinize ballots cast by suspected noncitizens.
RELATED: Trump’s Attack on Mail-In Voting Seeks to Create an Advantage for Republicans
The nationwide mobilization, held under the slogan “No Kings: Vote Early,” drew millions of participants, according to USA Today, with events in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The demonstrations came two weeks before elections that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.
Organizers said the campaign aimed to turn mass mobilization into electoral participation by encouraging voters to make voting plans, cast their ballots early and help protect every eligible vote. They argued that historically high turnout would make it harder for the Trump administration to challenge the results by alleging fraud.
“Across thousands of events in all 50 states and DC today, we are turning enormous people power into direct voter power,” the No Kings Coalition said in a social media statement. It described the initiative as a nationwide effort to encourage early voting and build a network of Americans prepared to defend eligible ballots.
Text Reads: Demonstrations in Washington, U.S., under the slogan “No Kings: Vote Early,” seek to channel political protest into electoral participation. They call for placing limits on President Trump and protecting the Constitution ahead of the elections.
The coalition also pointed to the rising cost of groceries, gasoline, electricity and other daily necessities, arguing that decisions made by political leaders directly shape families’ lives and economic prospects. It presented the early-voting campaign as the next step in reclaiming political influence after a year of mass demonstrations.
In Atlanta, city council member Michael Julian Bond urged rally participants to encourage others to vote before Election Day rather than wait until the last minute.
“The Constitution gives you a power. That is the power of the vote,” Bond told the crowd.
In Phoenix, Arizona, Democratic Senator Rubén Gallego linked the campaign to opposition to the Trump administration’s policies, accusing the president and congressional Republicans of worsening economic conditions for ordinary Americans while enriching their allies.
“Today, we voted early to send a message loud and clear: no to separating our families, no to corruption, no to no oligarchs, no to stupid forever wars, and no kings.,” Gallego wrote on X.
Today, we voted early to send a message loud and clear: no to separating our families, no to corruption, no to no oligarchs, no to stupid forever wars, and no kings. https://t.co/qtT9Gp7Lwf
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) October 17, 2026
Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari, who also attended the Phoenix rally, called the upcoming election “the most important election of our lives.” She cited the administration’s deportation policies, the war in Iran, cuts to health care and food assistance, and widespread corruption allegations as central issues facing voters.
Ansari questioned whether Americans would accept immigration enforcement practices that frighten communities and separate families, policies that leave millions without health care, or what she described as a transfer of wealth from working people to billionaires.
The protests unfolded amid heightened political tensions over Trump’s deployment of military personnel to several cities governed by Democrats. The administration has justified the deployments as a way to combat crime and support immigration enforcement operations.
The demonstrations were backed by a broad coalition of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Federation of Teachers, Black Voters Matter Fund, Indivisible, MoveOn, Public Citizen, State Voices and Voto Latino.
The push for early voting also came as the Trump administration pursued legal action against mail-in ballots. Trump has repeatedly attacked mail voting and continued to claim, without evidence, that electoral fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.
On Thursday, the administration sued California election officials, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots in the midterm elections cast by people the federal government considers likely to be noncitizens until their immigration status can be verified.
On Friday, the Justice Department warned local election officials that processing and counting ballots submitted by suspected noncitizens could expose them to criminal investigations and prosecution.
Also on Friday, Democratic Senators Alex Padilla of California, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche, demanding assurances that the Justice Department would not seize ballots or other election materials before the midterm results were certified.
The single most predictable action of the Trump second presidency happened just a few hours ago. Trump signed an executive order that exempted Russia from all of the key possible sanctions that could have been placed on it by the Graham-Blumenthal bill. Here is a link to the order and here is how it opens. The […]
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