Stance signals vice-president seeks to distance himself from the unpopular conflict ahead of possible 2028 run

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JD Vance said on Wednesday that the war against Iran doomed the Republican party in the US midterm elections, which are widely seen as a sweeping rebuke of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The intervention signals that the vice-president, once the face of the Trump administration’s deal-making efforts with Tehran, seeks to distance himself from the unpopular conflict before a possible 2028 White House run.

Reported move from Republican speaker of House comes in light of party’s disastrous midterms defeat

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Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, has said he is not planning to pursue the role of minority leader once his party loses its majority in the chamber, according to multiple reports.

Coming in light of Republicans’ disastrous midterm defeat, Johnson’s decision effectively yields the position of highest-ranking Republican in the House to whichever member of his party can claim it.

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Wall Street surged at the open, after Democrats scored historic victories in midterm elections and secured control of US Congress.

The Dow Jones rose 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the benchmark S&P 500 both gained more than 1%. That’s quite a reversal: Overnight, stock futures fell sharply as investors worried about the prospect of tougher regulation of the AI sector and the impact on economic growth.

Democrats flip Senate seats in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio; voters reject Trump’s agenda in ‘blue wave’

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As we bring you the latest from around the country, Donald Trump is certainly paying attention. From the White House, the president said that he was tuning into coverage on Fox News.

“I can’t stand Jessica Tarlov’s voice,” Trump said of the Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor in a post on Truth Social. The president called Tarlov “DUMB AS A ROCK”.

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It has just gone past 06:30 in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia where polls have now opened.

Here are some of the key voter issues shaping the US midterm elections:

The economy: Despite Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge to tackle affordability issues, the economy consistently ranks as voters’ top concern.

Iran: Trump’s decision to go to war with the Tehran regime has exacerbated economic worries. Iran’s retaliatory decision to close the strait of Hormuz has driven up gasoline prices for US motorists. It also represents a breach of his pledge to end the US’s supposed addiction to “forever wars”.

Immigration: Enforcement and closing the border remains a signature issue for Trump. He repeatedly boasts of the impact of his closure of the southern border as one of his biggest achievements, making comparisons with the performance of Joe Biden.

AI and datacenters: AI has emerged as a key campaign issue, with surveys showing a majority of voters holding negative views on it, even as Trump champions its development and attempts to rename it “super intelligence”.

Endorsement was met with backlash from the party, condemning Stevens for her ‘betrayal’

Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, in an extraordinary rebuke of her party’s nominee on the eve of the midterm elections.

Her endorsement came in a video posted to X after she attended an event with Rogers at the predominantly Black Perfecting church in Detroit on Sunday. Stevens’ endorsement was the culmination of an escalating feud between the former primary rivals – primarily over support for Israel – that has roiled one of the most fiercely contested Senate contests of the cycle.

Incumbent Dan Sullivan says he will accept election results after ‘unprecedented intervention’ by Trump’s DoJ

A judge has dismissed the Donald Trump-backed lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s US Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses.

Trump said on 23 October that he had ordered the justice department to file the lawsuit in a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.

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• Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Abdul El-Sayed’s Republican rival

• Trump launches racist diatribe against Abdul El-Sayed at Iowa rally

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At the end of 2022, the four largest US cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston – all had Black mayors. It was a historic alignment made possible by the aftereffects of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement and the unprecedented wave of protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Six years on, only one of those mayors remains: the embattled Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who is facing a strong challenge from a younger, even more progressive challenger. Bass’s opponent is Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, although the group is considering rescinding its endorsement over her refusal to explicitly embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Tensions had flared after Stevens gave a precondition for her appearance: El-Sayed must denounce an ad attributing rising costs to US support of Israel

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Located further west than the Hawaiian islands, Unalaska is closer to Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul than Washington DC. Most visitors arrive on flights from Anchorage, which cost at least $1,600 round trip and are prone to cancellation, due to the region’s unpredictable storms and fog.

But Unalaska is by no means a backwater. It has been the country’s most productive seafood port by volume for more than two and a half decades, and when its crab and pollock seasons are open, thousands of deckhands and processors arrive from elsewhere to work tough but well-paying jobs on boats offshore and in seafood plants crowded in the city.

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James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in Texas, attacked his Republican opponent Ken Paxton for cancelling some of his final rallies before the midterm election.

“No one’s going to Ken Paxton’s rallies, so he’s canceling them and hoping Elon Musk will buy his seat for him,” Talarico wrote, referencing the donations Paxton has received from the world’s richest man.

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• Alaska governor orders investigation into Peltola’s Senate campaign

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With days until the midterm elections, a new poll from CNN places Democrats well in the lead in key Senate races in Texas and Michigan, while projecting tighter contests in Kansas and Maine.

In Texas, the poll found 49% of likely voters would back James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, over Republican Ken Paxton, who netted just 43%.

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For months, Mary Peltola’s campaign for Alaska’s Senate seat has denied any connection to a separate campaign launched by a man who, coincidentally, shares the exact same name as Peltola’s Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan.

New reporting from the New York Times undercuts that claim. The outlet reported, based on interviews, obtained text messages and legal filings, that the Peltola campaign had not only recruited Mr Sullivan (not the Republican), but had sought out a number of Dan Sullivans across the state for potential candidacy, as well as others who could peel votes away from Peltola’s main opponent.