NYTimes just turned on The Needle, which gives us some additional perspectives:

In KY-6, despite the Democrat Dembo being behind 43-53, NYTimes thinks Dembo is stil a narrow favorite to pull it out.

Conversely, even though Ford is ahead 56-44 in IN-5, NYTimes thinks Spartz will win by 2 or 3 in the end.

NYTimes thinks Moody will win Florida by 3 points in the end. They don’t have a forecast for the Florida Governor race, where at this moment Jolly is still narrowly ahead, 49.5% to 49.2%, with nine-tenths of the vote in. They also don’t have a forecast for the Georgia Governor race, with Bottoms is up 59-41 with more than half the vote in.

Intriguingly, the NYTimes now has Andrews as a 72% favorite to beat Graham in South Carolina. With about one-quarter of the vote in, Andrews is currently ahead 51-48.

Some, but not all, outlets have already called the Georgia Senate race for Ossoff, less than an hour after the polls have closed there. Keisha Lance Bottoms is running about 4% behind Ossoff as the Democratic candidate for Governor, but that may be enough to get her over the finish line against Republican billionaire Rick Jackson.

Anna Paulina Luna is the Republican incumbent in the Florida 13th, in the suburbs of Tampa (including Dunedin, spring training home of my Blue Jays). Under its new boundaries, this district would have gone 56-43 for Trump in 2024. Silver’s model had Luna at 67% to win re-election. With more than 95% of the vote in, Luna is leading very narrowly, 49.4% to 48.7%. That would seem to portend a good, but not amazing, night for the Democrats.

Indiana 5th is still looking good for the Democratic challenger, J.D. Ford; he is now ahead of Spartz 57-43 with three-fifths of the vote in. Another early Midwest harbinger district is the Kentucky 6th, which Silver’s model had as a toss-up. Here the Republican candidate is up 53-43 but with only one-quarter of the vote in, but that is not necessarily bad for the Democrats given where the reported vote has come from.

With 84% of the Florida Senate vote now in, Moody has taken a 49.7% to 49.2% lead over Nixon.

The vote in Florida is now about two-thirds complete, and in the Senate race Nixon has a narrow lead over Moody, 49.9% to 49.0%. With polls still open in the panhandle, public models are not yet showing estimates of what the final result will be, but the prediction markets have not moved in Nixon’s direction on this news. In the Governor’s race, where former Republican Congressman David Jolly is running for the Democrats against Black Republican Congressman Byron Donalds, Jolly is up 50.6% to 48.3%.

And we are here at last. The TV coverage has been on for an hour, but the only polls that closed an hour ago were in certain parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Things will start to get more interesting going forward.

One House race of note so far is the Indiana 5th, where the incumbent is controversial Republican Victoria Spartz. Silver’s model had Spartz at 81% to win re-election. With 36% of the vote in, Spartz is behind, 38-62. However the vote that has reported so far is largely from the suburban portion of this district rather than its rural portion, and includes a lot of early vote. Will be interesting to watch this one evolve.

Things continue to look promising for the Democrats on the eve of the 2026 elections. The final patch of NYTimes polls coming out yesterday were almost unbelievably good for the blue team: El-Sayed winning 53-42, Talarico winning 50-43, Hamilton winning 49-44. Jackson winning 51-45, Brown winning 49-44. If those polls are on target, a blue tsunami is coming.

Silver’s model’s likelihood that the Democrats get to 51 Senate seats cracked 80% for the first time yesterday and continued to tick up slightly today. He now sees 54 seats as being only slightly less likely than 53.

Over in the House, I noted recently that every single one of the 17 seats in my former state of Illinois is, per Silver’s model, at least a 99.5% favorite for either the Democrats (14) or the Republicans (3). I suppose that’s modern gerrymandering at its finest. Speaking of modern gerrymandering, North Carolina had adopted a new map last year that was intended to change the partisan balance of its delegation from 10-4 Republican to 11-3. However the district that was supposed to flip, the Democratic-held 1st, has become the most expensive House race in U.S. history with over $50 million in spending from both sides combined, and per Silver’s model is seen as an 88% favorite to remain in Democratic hands.

Shifting gears, I wanted to mention two recently filed lawsuits related to actions taken by the administration.

First, a U.S. company that imports Canadian cheeses recently filed a lawsuit in the Court of International Trade regarding Trump’s new 50% tariffs against Canada under Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Act. The lawsuit articulates 5 separate independent grounds as to why the tariffs are invalid, each of which is quite possibly correct, and any of which would suffice for plaintiffs to win.

Second, Virginia and D.C. filed suit this weekend to block Trump’s plans to start building a controversial 250-foot tall Triumphal Arch, for which construction could start as soon as Thursday. The case has ended up in the courtroom of Judge Chutkan, best known for presiding over Special Counsel Smith’s election interference case against Trump.

Shocking news out of Michigan this morning where Haley Stevens, the losing candidate in the Senate Democratic primary, has suddenly endorsed Republican candidate Mike Rogers.

Stevens, whose primary campaign against U.S.-born Egyptian-American Abdul El-Sayed was heavily funded by the pro-Israel AIPAC, had previously pledged to support El-Sayed. Earlier this week her Jewish fiance endorsed Rogers, leading to attempts among the Democratic establishment to hold a unity rally today. However tensions between the El-Sayed and Stevens camps continued to escalate this week. As recently as yesterday, Stevens was reportedly continuing to tell Democratic party figures that she would continue to support El-Sayed. Now, this. Stevens is currently the Representative for the Michigan 11th, a safe Democratic seat, but is not running for re-election in light of her Senate bid; reportedly her entire senior staff have resigned this morning in light of her endorsement.

Polling in recent weeks has consistently shown El-Sayed ahead of Rogers; the current polling average as shown on Nate Silver’s site has El-Sayed at 49.6%, versus 45.5% for Rogers. How much impact will Stevens’ late endorsement have? I’m not sure there is much relevant precedent to consider here. I should mention that the vitriol against El-Sayed by his political opponents has gotten very extreme in recent days, including but not limited to Trump having referred to him as a “Jihadist”. While I don’t agree with El-Sayed across his entire platform of ideas, every time I listen to him I am more impressed with his political talent. As far as I’m concerned, he’s far, far closer to being a “great American” than is our President.

In other news this morning, Senator Murphy (D-CT) has suffered a stroke, at the age of 53. A potential Presidential candidate in 2028, in recent months he has been an increasingly visible Democratic figure on foreign affairs and military issues.

Finally, as I was writing this a federal judge released an opinion dismissing a recent DOJ lawsuit, U.S. v. Alaska, which attempted to preemptively prevent Alaska from certifying the results of the upcoming Senate election, on the grounds of potential voter confusion regarding the presence of the two Dan Sullivans on the four-person ranked choice ballot. There was reporting this week connecting the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, to the presence of the non-incumbent Dan Sullivan on the ballot; she denies involvement. Honestly, this all feels like much ado about nothing, particularly in a ranked choice state. But there has been a lot of noise about it in recent weeks and it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, that noise has on the results of the election.

I can’t count, apparently; but I know today is 3 weeks out from the election, so we must be at Day -21, even if three days ago I had thought we were at Day -20…

This morning the Trump administration requested the resignation of Ambassador Guilfoyle–the former fiancee of the President’s son–due to the burgeoning corruption scandal discussed in my last post. Some say the lesson here is that Trump can’t tolerate people who are inept at their corruption; others say the lesson is that only the female Trump administration figures are ever made to pay for their sins (following in the footsteps of Bondi, Noem. Gabbard, and former Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer).

Speaking of “female Trump administration officials who may not be long for their jobs,” today marked the White House Briefing Room debut of Trump’s brand new Press Secretary, former TMTG executive Katie Zacharia; and it did not go well. Besides her poorly received debut at the podium, things got worse for her with new reporting today questioning whether she has been lying for years about being a lawyer, as opposed to merely possessing a law degree. There is apparently no record of her having passed the bar in any U.S. state (or the District of Columbia). I saw a tweet today of a picture of Zacharia next to a head of lettuce.

The President has come under fire for a number of actions and comments in recent days relating to the Russo-Ukrainian War. As Ukrainian tactics in recent months have included offensive strikes on various Russian targets including oil refineries, Trump has grown increasingly critical of Zelensky, claiming (very dubiously) that it is Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities, not the woes around the Strait of Hormuz, that bears primary responsibility for the current high price of diesel. Last week Trump announced a deal to allow modest amounts of Russian diesel to be sold in global markets, even though that would violate a law that Trump signed just last month, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. He then claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed upon a mutual “energy ceasefire” and, when both parties denied it, basically asserted that the ceasefire was real because he said so.

Trump has been doing a series of rallies lately, all in red states; today he is flying to Alaska (actually, to Palin’s home town of Wasilla) in an effort to shore up Senator Sullivan there. It’s hard for me to believe that a Republican President would ever feel the need to travel to Alaska three weeks before an election, but these are the times we live in. It is also hard to believe that the Republicans have pulled ad money out of a Senate race for a seat they currently hold in North Carolina in order to re-allocate it to defending their seat in Kansas, but again, these are our times.

There has been reporting recently that Musk, despite last year’s apparent break with Trump, has been spending somewhere in the range of $275 to $350 million on Republican campaigns in this election. There does appear to be vast amounts of money in play this cycle, based on the volume and nature of TV ads I’m seeing here in Minnesota. It has been commonplace in recent weeks to see TV ads about a state-wide race (in a non-adjacent state) during college football broadcasts, in situations where one of the teams involved is from said state. I don’t remember seeing that in prior cycles. There was even an NFL broadcast involving the Vikings and Dolphins in which we were shown ads for races in Texas; apparently the national ad buy was more efficient than trying to do 20 different local ad buys within Texas markets.

To close today, I wanted to run through the Senate races from the standpoint of which seats are most likely to flip to each party, per Silver’s model. I’ll ignore states for which the odds of a flip are less than 3%. Starting with the Democrats, the punch list goes:

1. North Carolina (95% to flip)
2. Texas (74%)
3. Ohio (72%)
4. Maine (72%)
5. Alaska (62%)
6. Iowa (59%)
7. Kansas (47%)
8. Nebraska (27%)
9. South Carolina (23%)
10. Florida (10%)

Whereas for the Republicans, the flip punchlist goes:

1. Michigan (19%)
2. Minnesota (11%)
3. New Hampshire (8%)
4. Georgia (3%)

The map is a far cry from what it looked like 18 months ago, when it was hard to imagine what Republican-held seat the Democrats could reasonably pick up this year, apart from Maine. The fact that Republicans are seen as having almost no chance to defeat Senator Ossoff in Georgia is one of the reasons why Ossoff’s stock is rapidly rising as a Democratic Presidential candidate in 2028.

This week people have started receiving not only the $500 rebate checks going to about 1 million ACA individual market participants who fully fund their premiums, as I had discussed previously, but also $90 rebate checks going to about 20 million Americans enrolled in traditional Medicare (as opposed to Medicare Advantage). These $90 checks are being funded via the administration’s depletion of a $2 billion Medicare Improvement Fund, which was established by statute in 2008 but which has never been tapped for its intended purpose. Both actions are of debatable legality, but when did that ever stop this administration from doing anything?

There was an interesting story out of the Wall Street Journal this week about the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle. She was previously the fiancee of Donald Trump Jr., but they split in 2024 (and he got remarried earlier this year); there is speculation that Trump gave her an ambassadorship in an effort to keep her in the family fold, given how close she had previously been to the family. (Guilfoyle was also previously married to California Governor Newsom, oddly enough.) Per the WSJ, Guilfoyle recently implored a Republican donor to directly pay off $100,000 of debt Guilfoyle had incurred with American Express, offering the donor access to IRS officials as a quid pro quo. You’d think Congress would be interested in exploring such brazen corruption; of course they’re not currently in session.

Trump bowed to pressure and announced this week that the federal government would no longer directly fund the controversial TV ads mentioned in my last post, but he has no intention at this point of having his super PAC reimburse the government for the millions already spent. The DNC is suing Trump, asking for a declaration that the actions were unlawful and an injunction against further such federal spending.

There is reporting today that the DOJ is opening an antitrust investigation into the five news networks that discontinued White House pool TV coverage in solidarity with the administration’s removal of White House press passes from one of those networks plus two other news outlets. Sigh.

National gas prices have come off their highs, but remain elevated: $4.37 a gallon for regular gasoline, and $6.28 a gallon for diesel. The national average 30-year mortgage rate has kept climbing in recent weeks and now sits at 7.40%, about 75 bps higher than three months ago. That largely reflects the fact that 30-year Treasury yields have been climbing; at one point this week the yield hit 5.73%, the highest level since 2002.

Silver’s odds of Democratic control have reached new highs of 75% in the Senate (with the median result still 52-48) and 94% in the House (with the median result now 239-196). The Kansas Senate race is increasingly looking like a tossup, with Silver’s assessment of the Democratic challenger Hamilton’s odds now up to 49%. And some even longer shots are starting to come into view in the Senate. In Nebraska, where second-time independent candidate Dan Osgood is challenging incumbent Senator Ricketts, Silver has Osgood’s odds up to 29%. In South Carolina, Democratic challenger Annie Andrews is now up to 23% against recently appointed incumbent Senator Darline Graham. Even Florida is not safe for the Republicans, as incumbent Senator Ashley Moody is running a lackluster campaign against Angie Nixon; Silver has Nixon at an 11% chance to pull the upset.

Things have been fairly quiet in recent days.

A new controversy arose last week, when Trump started airing ads praising his presidency that were funded not by his super PAC, but directly by the U.S. government. Trump argues that these are not political ads since he is not a candidate for any office, but instead represent public service announcements reminding Americans to love their country. His argument might be stronger if not for the fact that one of the ads is a repurposed version of an ad he used in his 2024 campaign. Indeed, many Democrats believe the ads are clearly illegal.

It’s all gotten so tiring, trying to maintain the outrage when this President does things that no predecessor would have considered doing, that no President should be allowed to get away with. In his first term there was public outcry when he wanted to use his Doral golf resort to host a government summit, and as a result it didn’t happen. This time around it’s actually happening–the G20 in December will be held at Doral–but so much other similarly corrupt stuff has happened and keeps happening that it gets lost in the noise. As the NYTimes put it this week: “The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.”

There was action taken by SCOTUS this week on the third-country removals case, D.V.D. vs. DHS, mentioned in my last post; they lifted the administrative stay (over the objections of the 3 liberals), thus allowing deportations to resume for now, but they also scheduled the case to be heard on the merits in accelerated fashion, in December.

Things continue to look good for Democrats in states where we’re not used to things looking good for Democrats. The NYTimes released a number of new polls this weekend in key red states:

Alaska. Peltola is leading Sullivan 50-43, and Silver has upped Peltola’s chances of unseating the Republican incumbent to 63%, which still strikes me as rather too low given the results from this summer’s jungle primary. The Democratic candidate is also ahead 52-48 in an open gubernatorial race, with here Silver rating the Democrat as an 87% favorite.

Iowa. In an open Governor’s race currently held by the Republicans, the Democrat Sand is ahead, 52-41; Silver has Sand as a 92% favorite. In the open Senate race currently held by the Republicans, the Democrat Turek is behind 47-48 in this poll, but Silver has Turek as a 59% favorite.

Kansas. Incumbent Republican Senator Marshall is tied 45-45 in this poll with a moderate Democrat, Hamilton; Silver has taken Hamilton’s chances up to 42%. However here the Republicans may reclaim the Governor’s seat, an open seat currently held by the Democrats; the new poll is 49-44 for the Republican, who Silver has as a 70% favorite.

Ohio. Former Democratic Senator Brown is ahead of current Republican Senator Husted, 49-46, and is now seen by Silver as a 74% favorite. Meanwhile, in an open gubernatorial race that a Republican incumbent had won handily 4 years ago (defeating someone I know slightly, former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley), the Democratic candidate Acton is polling ahead of 2024 Presidential primary contender Ramaswamy, 49-45, and is viewed as a 77% favorite by Silver.

Texas. Talarico remains ahead of Paxton in the latest poll, 51-45, and is seen by Silver as a 74% favorite. Interestingly, Republican Governor Abbott may be in some trouble: the NYTimes poll has him behind the Democrat Hinojosa, 49-46. although Silver still sees Abbott as a 73% favorite.

Putting all the pieces together, Silver has the Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate (assuming no Fetterman defection) up to 73%, with an average outcome of 52-48.

He also has the Democrats’ chances of retaking the House up to 93%, with an average outcome of 238-197. I wanted to close today by talking about a few House seats that I’ve focused on in past election cycles.

My own seat, the Minnesota 2nd, no longer seems to be competitive in the current climate, even with the retirement (thanks to her failed Senate primary challenge) of incumbent Angie Craig: Silver has this race at 98.5% for the Democratic candidate, former state Senator Matt Little. Instead, an adjacent district may be coming back into play for the Democrats, the Minnesota 1st; this was the seat once held by Governor Walz, but in 2024 it went 58.5-41.4 to the Republican incumbent, Brad Finstad. However, right now Silver has Finstad as only a 68% favorite against a new Democratic challenger, high school math teacher Jake Johnson.

To my east lies the Wisconsin 3rd, which the Democrats had hoped to flip in 2024 but lost, 51.3-48.6. This race is a rematch of 2024, and Silver has second-time candidate Cooke at 73% to defeat the Republican incumbent, Van Orden. Another Wisconsin district of interest will be the 1st, which is Paul Ryan’s old seat down by the Illinois border; this went 54-44 to the Republicans in 2024, but Silver has the Republican incumbent as only 58% to retain his seat.

Finally, while the Nebraska 2nd has gone Democratic in recent Presidential races (the so-called “Blue Dot” of Omaha within the red prairie sea), moderate Republican Don Bacon has kept the seat red in the House, winning 51-49 in 2024. Bacon is retiring, and without him Silver has the Republicans’ chances of retaining the seat at only 4%. Having said that, I was in Omaha recently on business and I certainly saw a lot more signs for the Republican (Brinker) than I did for the Democrat (Powell), but that likely reflected the parts of town I was driving through. Silver even has the Democrats with a puncher’s chance, 13%, of picking up the Nebraska 1st (centered around Lincoln), which the Republican incumbent (Flood) won 60-40 in 2024.

Many of the top stories of recent days are actually continuations of things that I hadn’t got around to mentioning in my previous post.

Starting with: Last Friday, President Trump announced out of the blue that, effective immediately, three major news outlets–CNN, MS NOW (the former MSNBC), and POLITICO were being banned from the White House. There was widespread agreement that this action was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, in addition to a violation of due process.

Importantly, the other major news networks jumped to the defense of CNN et al, in a way that was almost surely of real interest to Trump. CNN had been one of five networks who shared rotational responsibility for the pool of TV cameras and microphones that cover the President at the White House. The other four pool members announced that they would suspend that television pool, in solidarity with their fellow journalists. As a result, over the course of this week as Trump has given press availabilities at the White House–including one for inauguration of the new White House helipad, something of which Trump seems inordinately proud–it has not been possible for the public at large to hear whatever Trump was saying.

Of course, there is a lawsuit, captioned CNN v. Trump. In the middle of night last night, the Trump-appointed judge who caught the case issued a temporary restraining order against the administration, which from what I read seems clearcut in light of existing case law about White House press access. However, this morning the White House did not immediately restore access to the impacted networks and individuals, raising speculation as to whether the administration was trying to foment a Constitutional crisis by refusing to obey a court order. By this afternoon, however, that crisis had passed as the networks’ access had been restored.

After banning the networks, the administration also announced the launch of what it is calling Trump TV, which appears to be a stream on YouTube carrying (for now) recordings of Trump speeches and appearances. Combined with Trump’s praise today for the Chinese press corps accompanying visiting Premier Xi Jinping, all this has created speculation that Trump’s ultimate objective is to nationalize the press coverage of his Presidency. Which sounds very American, doesn’t it?

Nine days ago, outgoing Rep. Massie (R-KY) stealthily filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Hegseth, and did so in a procedural posture that would have required a House vote within two days. In response, Speaker Johnson adjourned the House for the midterms earlier than originally scheduled, thus avoiding the vote until after the election. Speaking of lame duck Kentucky Republicans, Sen. McConnell made his return to the Senate recently after three months of being hospitalized, although his appearance raised concerns as to whether he’s completely competent to complete the remainder of his term.

Last week there were additional actions taken by Judge Cooper in the ongoing saga over the Kennedy Center, Beatty v. Trump. First, he enjoined the Kennedy Center Board from renaming the campus on which the Center sits to “President Donald J. Trump Plaza”, or from inscribing the words “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” on the face of the Center. In response, Trump threatened to demolish the Center. That led Representative Beatty to return to the courts, in response to which Judge Cooper ordered that 30 days notice be given before any action is taken to demolish the Center.

Now for some more recent news:

The U.N. General Assembly is taking place in New York City this week. Trump gave a 45-minute speech which, per the NYTimes’ sub-head, “amounted to a rejection of the founding concept of the United Nations.” Ted Widmer, writing for The Guardian, noted that “the saddest aspect of this speech was its utter lack of American idealism – the very force that led to the UN’s creation…. [i]t was just raw power; and a power that is likely to diminish in the years ahead.” Per a new CNN poll, Americans’ support for Trump’s handling of foreign policy has declined from 42% at the start of his term to 29% now.

Nate Silver’s estimate of a Democratic Senate after the midterms reached a new high today, at 69%. He now has Kansas up to 32% for the Democrats, with a few other long-shot targets moving into “maybe” range such as Nebraska (22% for the independent, Dan Osgood), South Carolina (15%), and even Florida (15%). More generally, Silver notes the oddity that the signs of a blue tsunami are stronger in red states than in blue states; he has the Republicans at 11% to flip Minnesota, for instance, and he has Collins at 28% to retain her seat in Maine. Speaking of Senator Collins, ProPublica has an interesting story this week entitled “The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins–Until Trump Got In the Way.”

Finally, the long-brewing litigation on third-country removals of deportable aliens, D.V.D. vs. DHS, has just today again reached the SCOTUS emergency docket, as last week the 1st Circuit upheld much of the original lower court injunction that SCOTUS had stayed in June 2025 (pending appeal to the 1st Circuit) over the liberals’ dissent.