“Audi will build its first-ever U.S. factory in Macon, Ga., President Trump announced Saturday, marking the latest move by a global automaker to focus on American buyers as sales fall off elsewhere in the world,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Bloomberg: Trump defends tariffs at rally as he says Audi to build U.S. plant.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: “Things were going poorly even before Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ran the most offensive ad of the year.”
“If California Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the 2028 presidential race, as many Democrats expect, he’ll walk in with an asset other White House hopefuls will inarguably envy: A small-dollar fundraising and organizing machine powered by a massive and ever-growing contact list of potential supporters across the country,” The Hill reports.
“Even before last year’s successful Proposition 50 redistricting effort in his state, Newsom had amassed more than 17 million email addresses, and his advisers say it’s only multiplied exponentially since then as Democrats feverishly donated in large numbers to redraw California’s electoral maps.”
“That list — advisers declined to provide its current size — has already helped Newsom raise more than $6.8 million during the midterm election cycle.”
“Republicans tend to run better among voters without a college degree than those with one, which has battered Democrats in recent presidential elections. But that same pattern could give Democrats a potentially decisive boost in next month’s midterms,” CNN reports.
“Even as President Donald Trump’s approval rating craters among Americans with a college degree, history suggests those well-educated voters are virtually certain to constitute a slightly larger share of the electorate this year than in 2024. It’s the political equivalent of what economists call the ‘college premium’ in wages.”
Washington Post: “The formula for Colom to win is deceptively simple: He needs a huge turnout from Black voters and about a quarter of the White vote. Doesn’t sound that hard, yet no Democrat has solved the problem in Mississippi in more than 40 years, and no African American has won statewide since Reconstruction.”
”This year the stakes are especially high, with control of the Senate in the balance and President Donald Trump’s agenda riding on it. Across the nation, deep red states have shifted in recent weeks and become unexpectedly competitive battlegrounds — nowhere more remarkably than in Mississippi.”
For members: Could Mississippi Deliver a November Surprise?
“The midterm campaign is being fought in areas President Donald Trump carried in the last election, and largely among voters who have supported him in the past but have soured on his presidency,” the Washington Post reports.
A new New York Times/Siena College poll in Pennsylvania’s 8th District finds Paige Cognetti (D) leading Rob Bresnahan (R) in the U.S. House race, 51% to 46%.
The same poll in Pennsylvania’s 7th District finds Bob Brooks (D) leading Ryan Mackenzie (R) in the U.S. House race, 49% to 44%.
The same poll in Pennsylvania’s 10th District finds Scott Perry (R) and Janelle Stelson (D) tied in the U.S. House race, 48% to 48%.
The same poll in Pennsylvania’s 1st District finds Bob Harvie (D) leading Brian Fitzpatrick (R) in the U.S. House race, 48% to 46%.
New York Times: “The four seats in Pennsylvania are seen as critical examples of some of the fights playing out nationwide. The districts include working-class communities in the state’s northeastern corner, growing towns with large Hispanic populations, a swing Philadelphia suburb and some more conservative parts of the center of the state.”
CNN: “A decade after the Trump era began, when he first turned Midwestern political battlegrounds into reliably Republican states, the fallout from policies of his second term have rippled through the agriculture sector and broader economies across the Great Plains and the Rust Belt.”
“Iowa and Ohio, which have not been competitive since former President Barack Obama was on the ballot, are in play. And ruby-red states like Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana are not exempt. The shift is happening up and down the ballot, with tight contests for the House, Senate and governor blanketing the middle of the country.”
NPR: “Osborn is one of four independents running for Senate in states President Trump won handily, including Idaho, South Dakota and Montana. Buoyed by the president’s sinking approval ratings and public frustration over affordability, independent candidates argue they bring a winning case to voters.”
“It is an argument that some Democrats hope will resonate with voters as the party looks to retake control of Congress, betting that these candidates can help topple Republicans in parts of the country where their own brand is hurting.”
“If there is one thing that Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa, definitely does not want to talk about, it’s his connection to the Koch family,” the New York Times reports.
“To hear Mr. Lahn tell it, he is a self-made businessman, a father of seven and a farmer running against powerful corporate interests. He has campaigned on his financial independence, pointing to the $2.5 million he lent himself during the primary.”
“He rode that cash and a right-leaning brand of prairie populism to the nomination, defeating President Trump’s preferred pick in the primary. Now he is facing Rob Sand, the Democratic state auditor, in a race that Democrats view as one of their best shots to flip a governorship.”
“But there is a more complicated tale of Mr. Lahn’s rise that is interwoven with the Kochs, one of America’s richest and most influential political dynasties.”
“In the 1990s, politicians fought for the support of soccer moms. In the 2010s, they competed for votes from white working-class voters. Now it is clear: Latinos are the most important swing voters of the 2020s,” the New York Times reports.
“Democrats have made gains with Latinos over the past two years, winning back trust with a crucial group of voters who helped fuel President Trump’s return to the White House in 2024. Latino voters now favor Democrats over Republicans by 30 percentage points, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll.”
Nate Cohn: “When the dust settles on election night, the story won’t simply be about who won, but who decided the outcome: Which demographic groups shifted the most, stayed home or delivered the decisive votes to the winners?”
“This year, we’re going to tell the demographic story of the election as we never have before. We will publish a new comprehensive portrait of how each of the key demographic groups in the country voted, called Times Voter Trends. It will break down estimates for the results of U.S. House and Senate elections by age, race, education and gender in every state in the country.”
“Former president Barack Obama said Saturday that Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy showed desperation for the spotlight and a lack of decency by airing a campaign ad that featured the long-estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Obama: “We’ve seen there’s no line he won’t cross, no low he won’t sink to, to try to get in the limelight.”
He added: “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that someone can run an ad like that. There’s got to be something inside you where you say no office is worth stooping that low.”
Mediaite: Joe Manchin slams “vile” Vivek Ramaswamy ad in feisty video.
“After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough.'”
— Former President Barack Obama, quoted by Agence France-Presse.
“Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Trump and Republicans in an Ohio rally Saturday, his first appearance at a midterm rally with less than two weeks until Election Day,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“He appeared alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, both of whom are in neck-and-neck races. Brown’s face-off against incumbent Jon Husted, a Republican, could decide the balance of power in the Senate.”
“In a roughly 40-minute appearance, Obama cast Trump as responsible for high prices given his decision to wage war in Iran.”