Today’s notice: The latest from the electoral map. An exclusive on Republican campaign spending after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of unlimited coordinated spending.
THE MAP
One day more: Donald Trump plans to deliver his closing message at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool today, after a long night rallying in Iowa and Kansas. Democrats’ closing argument seems to be reminding voters they are very good at disarray.
Michigan: Rep. Haley Stevens’ chaos agent turn. The Washington Sun’s Christa Dutton was in Detroit yesterday when the loser of the Democratic Senate primary formally endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. Stevens, who was initially going to appear at a rally yesterday with El-Sayed, had spent the previous few days accusing the Democrat of antisemitism for, as she put it, failing to adequately condemn an ad from an outside group. (El-Sayed’s campaign did condemn the ad.) Stevens supporters are apoplectic: Her official congressional staff resigned en masse, many of her Democratic colleagues want to kick her out of the caucus and allies are attacking her out of pure bewilderment. El-Sayed called it a “distraction.”
Trending
“Whole thing was really fucking bizarre,” a source familiar with Stevensworld told The Sun of Stevens and her fiancé, Jason Turkish, who endorsed Rogers days before Stevens did. “It is still unclear to me how he went from donor to fiancé.”
Stevens addressed the critics on CNN. “This is just a weight off my shoulders. Abdul has been getting angrier and angrier. I was trying to help, and I endorsed him. That ad was very painful.” Rep. Debbie Dingell, appearing on CNN right after, called that interview “painful.”
What we have here is a primary that never ended: The El-Sayed/Stevens race largely hinged on Stevens’ backing from AIPAC and her opponent’s strong support for Palestinians. It was a chasm Democrats remain for the most part unable to bridge. Democrats are used to being mad at lefties for refusing to get on the unity train (as recently as 2024 in Michigan, actually), and now they get to be mad at centrists.
That said, will it matter? The final New York Times/Sienna poll finds Democrats up in every Senate battleground race.
What’s next: For Democrats, a mad dash to use this as a unifying moment and get out the Election Day voter — even those living in Canada; Rebecca Ritzel reports for The Sun on a party effort to get hundreds of Americans living over the border to vote in Michigan. For Republicans, it’s a mad dash to take advantage of one of the more In Disarray moments Democrats have had in a long time.
More surprises across the map:
Alaska: DOJ Sullivan-gate lawsuit dismissed. A federal judge yesterday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. The DOJ immediately appealed to the 9th Circuit, which hasn’t been friendly so far to Trump administration efforts. “Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes,” the DOJ posted on X.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) called the Democratic ballot confusion scheme “a stupid thing to do.”
Iowa: The skinny on Hinson getting skinny. In the first few minutes of Trump’s two-hour-long speech in Iowa yesterday, the president — who is quite vocal about what he thinks of others’ bodies — congratulated Rep. Ashley Hinson on her weight loss and claimed she did it “the old-fashioned way too, not with you know, give me a shot.”
“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier,” Trump said — adding that the Republican Senate candidate “knew the weight that was on her, really, literally the weight, and she knew the importance of what she was doing.”
Maine: Union split in final weekend. The Bangor Daily News reports on a familiar divide in the Senate race: The state council of the International Association of Machinists has endorsed Troy Jackson, while its Local S6 of Bath Iron Works has very publicly endorsed no one.
South Carolina: Regrets? Republicans have a few. “Privately, some Senate Republican campaign strategists and Trump advisers have grown alarmed about” Sen. Darline Graham, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Several said they believed they could have found a better candidate, but the president wanted Graham.”
Kansas: Roger Marshall goes off-script. The Republican senator posted a video responding to The New York Times’ story about lawsuits he filed against patients unable to pay medical debts owed to his OB-GYN practice, but Politico reports that his campaign “was not involved in creating” nor spent any money to promote it.
Ohio: The climate change election? “People don’t like paying more for energy,” Jed Ober, political director of NRDC Action Fund, told The Sun recently. It’s one of the reasons the spending arms of the Natural Resources Defense Council poured more than $20 million on ads against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
Pennsylvania: Josh Shapiro’s 2028 audition. The Sun’s Alex Roarty spent time with the governor near the end of his foregone reelection campaign, in which he is also campaigning with Democratic House candidates. Shapiro is also using his pull to create the first Democratic trifecta in the state government since 1993. What does that add up to?
“There are a lot of people who are showing up because they’re scared about the direction our country’s heading in,” Shapiro told Alex, presidential-y, even as he brushed off speculation. “They’re angry about it. They want to do something to channel that anger, that fear, that concern, into action.”
Bonus: Shapiro on NBA GOATs: Alex asked the governor (and former basketball player) Shapiro who’s better, Michael Jordan or LeBron James, the latter of whom recently signed with the governor’s hometown 76ers?
“LeBron’s still playing. And so I think you’ve got to wait till his career is over,” the governor told Alex. “He has clearly surpassed Michael Jordan in terms of longevity. He is an incredible coach on the floor. Something I’ve been really impressed by, just watching him when he was on the floor or on the bench. I don’t recall MJ having that similar type of approach on the floor. He was more kicking people’s butts around.”
More: California Is Testing the Appetite for a Wealth Tax • Abortion Opponents Warn Republicans That Ignoring the Issue Will Cost Them the Election • Justice Department Urges Sanctions for Analysis Critical of Its Noncitizen Voting Claims • A Super PAC Army Is Spending Millions on ‘Spoiler’ Candidates
NEW ON THE WASHINGTON SUN
First on The Sun: The NRCC’s nine-figure spending surge hit 60 House districts across the country this cycle after the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited coordinated spending. The Sun’s Alex Roarty got a first look at the NRCC’s final tally: $100 million to help Republicans hold onto their slim majority, even as most forecasters predict Democratic gains in the lower chamber Tuesday.
The Republican campaign arm fought all the way up to the high court in a yearslong legal battle to make this massive cash infusion possible, and Ryan Dollar, NRCC’s legal counsel, told Roarty they were ready to “put that victory to work immediately.”
More: Sen. Chris Murphy Hospitalized After a Stroke • Judge Throws Out Trump’s Suit Against the Wall Street Journal Over Epstein Letter • FBI Blames North Korea for Stolen Billions From Binance in Biggest Hack in History • Troops ‘Can’t Feel Genuinely Safe’ as Trump Weighs Iran Escalation
NOT US
- An Arizona county was unprepared for the 2024 election. Navajo voters paid the price. By Sasha Hupka and Adriana Navarro for VoteBeat
- Inside the Plan to Send 1,000 DOJ Monitors to the Polls, by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Madeleine Carlisle and Marie-Rose Sheinerman for The Atlantic
- This Republican Wants Voters to Consider a Post-Trump World, by Jess Bidgood for The New York Times
- Hegseth digs in as confident Democrats plan to go on offense after midterms, by Noah Robertson and Dan Lamothe for The Washington Post
Thank you for reading! If you liked this edition of The Washington Sun Newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was shared with you, please sign up — it’s free! Have a tip? Email us at tips@washsun.com. And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts at newsletters@washsun.com.
The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr and Gaby Morera Di Núbila.
Authors
