Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Midterm Ballot With Another Dan Sullivan

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Vice-president tries to link El-Sayed to Paris protests and claims he would lead rioters in ‘burning down’ Detroit
JD Vance has escalated his inflammatory attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan who has faced an onslaught of Islamophobia, claiming he would lead rioters in “burning down” Detroit.
El-Sayed, who would become the country’s first Muslim senator if he wins next week’s election, has been branded a “jihadist” by Donald Trump, the US president.
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We want to hear from gen Z voters about the issues that will decide your vote in the midterm elections
The US midterm elections that will decide control of the House of Representatives and Senate, as well as the governorships in 36 states, are just one week away. The results could have a huge impact on Donald Trump’s final two years in office.
Nearly 50 million people aged 18 to 29 are eligible to vote in the midterms but nearly half are either not registered or civically engaged, according to US Census Bureau data.
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Republican and Democrat come together for a rare joint endorsement of candidate in unexpected competitive race
Two South Carolina 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 Senate bid.
Andrews, a pediatrician, is looking to flip the seat, currently held by Darline Graham, the Trump-endorsed sister of the late senator Lindsey Graham, in what has become an unexpectedly competitive race for the usually reliably red state.
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Democrats in the midterms are finally backing Medicare for All as a campaign issue amid a rising tide of voter support
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic US Senate candidate, starts this day on the campaign trail in Escanaba, Michigan, where nearby Wisconsin dairy country spills into dense forests and the sandy shores of Green Bay.
This is the upper peninsula – the “UP” – a rural slash of land north of Michigan’s mitt. Electorally, it’s crimson. Donald Trump won some districts near Escanaba by more than 41%. But at the county fairgrounds, past sheds labeled “Beef” and “Swine”, hundreds of locals on the political left have gathered in the hangar-size 4H Club meeting hall to hear El-Sayed speak.
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US voters will decide whether Republicans will retain control of Congress or whether Democrats will rise up to stymie Trump’s agenda
Donald Trump will still be US president on the morning of 4 November. But he could be facing a very different political landscape, depending on the results of the US midterm elections held the previous day.
As the name implies, midterm elections fall nearly halfway through a president’s term. They are often a telling referendum on the sitting president’s performance, something Trump is actively encouraging by telling voters “pretend I’m on the ballot”. In this case, voters will decide whether Trump’s Republican party can retain its grip on Congress.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans are defending a narrow majority, with Democrats needing a net gain of four seats to take control.
35 seats in the Senate. Thirty-three seats are up in regular elections, along with two special elections in Florida and Ohio to fill the remainder of terms that were vacated early. Republicans currently hold 53 seats, against 47 held by Democrats and independents who caucus with them. Democrats need to gain four seats to secure a majority.
39 governorships. Voters will choose governors in 36 states and three US territories.
Thousands of state legislative seats, as well as local offices, judicial contests and ballot measures on issues including taxes, abortion rights and voting rules.
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Trump again congratulated Ohio senator’s rear end before his cheeky comment about rapper being ‘hard to miss’
Donald Trump reiterated his apparent love for ample backsides during a rally in Michigan on Sunday where he encouraged the crowd to compliment rapper Nicki Minaj’s behind.
Trump’s cheeky comments about Minaj’s derriere came as he explained his recent observation on the Republican Ohio senator Jon Husted’s rear end. Earlier in October, Trump said of the former college football player: “I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole – and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these, like, claws.
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Peltola and her family sustained minor injuries after a driver struck the car transporting group to campaign stop
Mary Peltola, a Democrat who is running for US Senate in Alaska, and her family suffered minor injuries in a car crash while driving to a campaign stop on Saturday, her campaign said.
The family was on its way to the Alaska Federation of Natives annual banquet when another vehicle crashed into the one transporting Peltola and her family, her campaign said in a statement on Sunday. Peltola required medical attention after the collision.
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US attorney general calls CNN ‘crazy’ for suggesting Trump’s attempt to overturn election could lead to January 6 repeat
Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s attorney general, lashed out during an interview on Sunday while defending the justice department’s pre-emptive lawsuit to block certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the GOP incumbent loses, calling a TV host’s question “crazy”.
The testy repartee unfolded on CNN’s State of the Union over the DoJ’s unprecedented legal action, which alleges that there could be “voter confusion” due to two candidates named Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s ballot. Trump told reporters, “I’m the one that said do it” when asked about the suit.
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Democratic and independent candidates stump the US midwest and prairie states, hoping to win over Republican strongholds
In this final stretch of the US midterm elections, Democrats and independents could win back communities and towns across America’s rural heartlands through a combination of resurgent “prairie populism”, local despair over the impact of Donald Trump’s agenda and an old-fashioned tenet of shoe-leather politics: showing up everywhere.
When Dan Osborn rolled into one of the most rural counties in Nebraska earlier this month, he started walking into businesses in the tiny main drag of Arthur, ready to meet whomever he could in the town of about 100.
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Ukraine's military satellite links work at full speed again after a cap that hobbled its drones, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on 24 October. Hours later, SpaceX owner Elon Musk, who earlier pointed at Washington, said his company had enforced its own rules. A Ukrainian presidential adviser and a drone volunteer replied that civilian Starlink could not fly such missions.
Ukraine holds off Russia with American tools it doesn't control, so any pause decided abroad, like stalled Patriot deliveries or the Starlink cap, opens gaps in its defense. With no stated rule on what Ukraine's forces may do, the next cutoff could again come unannounced and unexplained.
The ministry recorded stable connections above 400 km/h (250 mph). Before, Kyiv said, links on Starlink and its military version, Starshield, cut out above 161 km/h (100 mph).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the restoration began overnight. "The speeds are now where they need to be," he said, citing defense against jet-powered Shahed drones. He thanked US lawmakers, the media, the State Department, and the US President, but not Musk or SpaceX.

Musk replied "Correct" to an X user who called Starlink "not a weapons system." "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," he wrote.
Correct.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2026
Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.
Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.
Ukraine military violated… https://t.co/ZXBB8bYfPn
He called Starshield "a different system" the US government controls, and warned: "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."
Musk named no evidence, cases, or time frames. Overnight, he answered a headline on the US financial blog ZeroHedge saying he "admits" SpaceX throttled Starlink.
"We simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed. There has been no change to our terms of service," Musk wrote.
When the cap hit on 14 October, Musk wrote that the US government owns and controls Starshield and that the US military and "ultimately POTUS" decide any limits. US President Donald Trump, who credited Musk with the fix while Kyiv still saw the cap, said on 24 October he had spoken to Musk about Ukraine but gave no details.

Ukrainian presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov, known by the callsign Flash, wrote:
"It is very strange that Elon Musk doesn't know about the restrictions on Starlink operations in Ukraine."
Since winter 2026, every Starlink terminal over Ukraine, occupied areas included, has been limited to 70–90 km/h (43–56 mph), he said, and over Russia, Starlink does not work. "So we PHYSICALLY CANNOT USE COMMERCIAL STARLINK for deep strikes and mid-range strikes," Beskrestnov wrote. Deep strikes hit targets far inside Russia, mid-range ones targets closer to the front.
Ukrainian activist and drone fundraiser Serhii Sternenko called Musk's claim untrue. He said Ukraine introduced whitelists of terminals in February, and any terminal used on the move had to be listed and connected to Starshield.
"So using civilian Starlink for drone missions was technically impossible. All drone missions that needed satellite communication could be carried out only with Starshield," Sternenko added.
European governments help pay for Ukraine's Starlink service. Germany funds it under a contract that runs until April 2027. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, whose country pays around $50 million a year for the service, said on 23 October: "Mixing business with politics usually ends badly, especially when we talk about Elon Musk."


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This live blog is now closed. For more on the rally, read our full report:
Donald Trump voted in West Palm Beach, Florida today, telling reporters at the polls that he voted straight Republican on his ballot. Trump has historically mailed-in his ballot rather than voting in-person.
Speaking from the polling site, Trump defended an ad from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, his administration’s lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Alaska Senate race if Repubican senator Dan Sullivan loses his race and the war in Iran.
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Republican senator faces critical re-election battle in state where president’s trade war has outraged voters
Donald Trump dropped some of the US’s tariffs on Canada on Friday to “better serve the public interest” the White House said, handing a win to Susan Collins, the embattled Republican senator for Maine, as she faces a tight re-election campaign that will help determine whether Democrats can flip control of Congress.
Collins announced that the exemptions would apply to nine agricultural products, including blueberries, potatoes, apples and seaweed. She added that many of the state’s farmers rely on specialized equipment and materials from across the border that are “unavailable from American suppliers or cannot be replaced without incurring significant expense”.
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Trump justice department claims there could be ‘confusion’ about two Republicans on the ballot named Dan Sullivan
Donald Trump said he ordered the justice department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent loses, a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.
“I’m the one that said do it,” the president told reporters as he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday.
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