The Fed Decides Today. Here Is What to Read at 2 O’Clock.
At 2 this afternoon the Federal Reserve announces its last interest rate decision before the election, and the outcome is barely in question. Markets price the chance of a hike at under 10 percent, which would leave the benchmark rate where September's increase put...
Trump Said Why He Sued Alaska. If the Republican Loses.
The admission came on an airport tarmac in Florida on Friday. Asked about the Justice Department's new lawsuit seeking to block Alaska from certifying its Senate election, the president answered, I'm the one that said do it. The suit itself, filed late Thursday in...
Obama Asked Detroit for One Thing. Send El-Sayed to the Senate.
The gym at Cass Technical High School filled Saturday night with news crews broadcasting in multiple languages, which tells you what the country thinks is happening in Michigan. Barack Obama stood with Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee, and Jocelyn Benson,...
Student IDs Won’t Work at New Hampshire’s Polls. Here Is What Will.
The order came down Thursday evening, unsigned and brief. The Supreme Court granted New Hampshire Republicans' emergency request and cleared the way for the state to fully bar student IDs as voter identification in next month's election, in the state carrying a Senate...
The DOJ Sued a State Over Its Voters. Now Congress Is Suing Back.
The answer arrived in the same building. One week after the Justice Department sued California to set aside 20,000 ballots, the story this newsletter covered Monday, the top Democrats in Congress filed their own 44 page lawsuit in federal court in Washington against...
A Third of the House Map Was Redrawn for This Election. It Moved 1.4 Points.
Start with the scale, then the result, because the gap between them is the story. Going into this election, roughly one third of the country's congressional districts were redrawn, the product of a mid decade redistricting fight President Trump started by pressing...
Harris County Just Broke Its Early Vote Record. It Had Company.
Early voting opened Monday in seven more states, and the records started falling before the first day ended. Harris County, Texas, home to Houston and nearly five million people, counted 104,660 in person voters, shattering its previous midterm first day record of...
The DOJ Sued California Over 20,000 Voters. In July It Said 190,000.
The lawsuit landed in federal court last Thursday, and its central request is simple to state. The Justice Department wants a judge to make California set aside the mail ballots of roughly 20,000 people the government calls likely noncitizens, leaving those votes...
Karl Rove Is Voting for a Democrat. He Is Not Alone.
The man who built the modern Republican machine says he is voting for a Democrat. Karl Rove, the strategist behind George W. Bush's presidency, announced he will back Democrat Jon Rosenthal for Texas railroad commissioner over Republican Bo French, after French posted...
The Last Inflation Report Before the Vote Is In. Prices Won.
The number is 3.7 percent. That is how much consumer prices rose over the year through September, up from 3.4 percent in August, hotter than the 3.6 economists expected, with a 0.6 percent jump in the month alone, the fastest of the year. CNN's label for the release...
Top Republicans Think the House Is Gone. The Money Already Knew.
The private line and the public line split wide open this week. Politico reports that five senior Republican lawmakers, granted anonymity to speak plainly, have concluded the House has all but slipped away, and that the party's focus is now limiting the size of the...
Musk Put 276 Million Dollars Into the Midterms. Here Is the Math.
The number surfaced Monday, days ahead of the quarterly filing deadline that would have surfaced it anyway. Elon Musk has given more than 276 million dollars to Republican groups since July, a figure first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by the spokesman...
He Keeps Promising Big Checks. Here Is the Ledger of What Arrived.
Twice in four days, President Trump posted a video promising 5,000 dollars to every adult citizen in America if Republicans keep the House and Senate. Only he could make the promise, the first video said. The second said it would be easy, because tariff money and a...
Trump Just Blessed the Mail Ballot. Here Is How to Use Yours.
The permission arrived in two parts. Saturday, in a video posted to his social media account, President Trump told Republicans to use every tool available, vote early, vote absentee, vote by mail, or vote in person on November 3. Monday, on the South Lawn, he said it...
The Last Jobs Report Before the Election Is In. It Missed.
The number is 29,000. That is how many jobs the economy added in September, against a forecast of 84,000 and an August that had been reported at 162,000. The unemployment rate moved up to 4.2 percent after sitting at 4.1 for three straight months. And the calendar...
Washington Is Mailing 500 Dollar Checks. Here Is Who Gets One.
The envelope is real, and it started moving Wednesday. The Treasury Department is mailing 500 dollar checks to more than 950,000 people who bought health insurance through HealthCare.gov, with a letter from President Trump folded inside. The administration calls it a...
Trump Banned a Billion in Canadian Goods. Nobody Collects a Dime.
At one minute past midnight Tuesday, the United States switched on a trade weapon it has never used in the modern era. Nearly a billion dollars a year in Canadian goods are now barred from entering the country outright. Most Canadian liquor. A slice of the dairy...
Trump’s Press Ban Got Blocked. The White House Enforced It Anyway.
The request landed on the docket late Monday night, 42 pages asking Judge Timothy Kelly for the thing his restraining order already does, but for longer. CNN, MS NOW and Politico want a preliminary injunction, a court order keeping their White House access alive until...
Trump Ran This Ad in 2024. Now the Fine Print Bills You.
The video is the same one. Black and white, President Trump walking down a hallway, his voice promising that this is the final battle, that we will demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers, cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists, rout the fake news media...
The Policy Said Don’t Ask If They’re Afraid. Trump Wants It Back.
The instruction is written into the government's own deportation policy, and a federal appeals court quoted it in full last week. Before removing someone to a country not named in their removal order, DHS's guidance says, "Immigration officers will not affirmatively...
He Screamed That He Was a Citizen. The Ambulance Came Anyway.
On a Sunday morning in Evanston, Illinois, a man walked to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Five federal vehicles were in the neighborhood hunting a fugitive with a Chicago address, and the agents decided this man, a Black U.S. citizen out on foot just before...
You Paid for This Ad. It Says So in the Fine Print.
The ad looks like every Republican campaign spot you will see between now and November. Images of President Trump fill the screen for 30 seconds while singers croon the words love me in the background. "America will never be a communist country," it declares, and...
The Ban on the Free Press Lasted Six Days
Early this morning, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the White House press passes of CNN, MS NOW and Politico, immediately. Six days after three reporters' badges died at the security gates, the badges come back on. And...
ICE Quietly Unlisted Thousands of Detainees. Their Lawyers Cannot Find Them.
On September 15, with no announcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement switched off part of its public detainee locator: everyone in its custody who has a final order of removal simply stopped appearing. Lawyers discovered it the way you would expect, by searching...
Even Fox Said No. And the Judge Is the One From the Acosta Case.
On Monday afternoon, President Trump cut the ribbon on his new White House helipad, and almost nobody heard a word of it. There was no audio feed, because there were no pool cameras, because the network assigned to film the president had been banned from the grounds...
He Called It a Ban on the Free Press. His Words, Not Ours.
On Saturday morning, MS NOW correspondent Akayla Gardner passed through two security gates at the White House before her badge stopped working. An officer asked her to hand it over and told her the decision came from, in his words, above him. CNN's Betsy Klein found...
Europe Offered Canada a Seat. Trump Called It Hostile.
On Wednesday, in her State of the Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed something that has never existed: associate membership in the European Union, and she named the country she wants to hold it first. Canada. By Thursday,...
Four Seats Decide the Senate. Here Is the Whole Board.
Thirty five Senate seats are on ballots this fall, counting the special elections in Florida and Ohio. Republicans are defending 22 of them, Democrats 13. For control of the chamber to change hands, Democrats need a net gain of four. Every argument about this election...
Voting Started This Morning, and the Rules Held
This morning, somewhere in Idaho, Minnesota, South Dakota or Virginia, a voter walked into an election office and cast the first early in person ballot of the 2026 midterms. Those four states opened early voting today, the earliest in the nation. North Carolina has...
The Calls Did Not Work. The Fed Hiked, 12 to 0.
At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point, to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent. It is the first increase since July 2023. The vote was unanimous, 12 to 0, and the twelve included Kevin Warsh, the chairman President...