Elections 2022 updates: Midterms loom as candidates ready final push

The House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol gave former President Donald Trump an extra week to provide requested documents after lawmakers said Friday that they did not receive any records from a subpoena issued last month in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.

The initial subpoena deadline was 10 a.m. ET Friday for any communications Trump may have had regarding extremist groups involved in the riot and any attempts in the past year to contact witnesses testifying before the Jan. 6 committee.

The Oct. 21 subpoena also called for Trump to provide testimony at the Capitol or by videoconference on Nov. 14.

In a joint statement Friday, the committee’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said that while they were allowing additional time for the documents, they were not changing the date for Trump’s deposition.

Read the full story here.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has been busy campaigning for Republicans in key districts, including stops in the Chicago suburbs Friday on behalf of challengers Esther Joy King and Keith Pekau.

McCarthy's schedule over the weekend before Election Day includes stumping for Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and appearing at several campaign events in Texas border districts, where Republicans are hoping to capitalize on gains made with Latino voters in 2020 by picking up more seats.

The House GOP leader's final campaign before the midterm elections will take place Monday night in Virginia, where he will attend a rally for Jen Kiggans in her effort to unseat Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a member of the Jan. 6 committee.

McCarthy's campaign stops come as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is largely sidelined following last week's brutal attack on her husband in their San Francisco home.

PHOENIX — Sen. Mark Kelly and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs enlisted some star power at a joint campaign rally here on Friday, as the two Democrats are looking to boost voter turnout in their close races.

"This state is so crucial," actor Kerry Washington told voters outside the South Phoenix Missionary Baptist Church. "These races are tight, but we can win."

Kelly and Hobbs both blasted their GOP opponents, with Kelly saying that Blake Masters was "wrong for Arizona" and Hobbs, who is running for governor, saying this election is about defending democracy.

"Democracy is going to send Kari Lake back to whatever dark corner of the internet she came from," Hobbs said, referring to her Republican rival who has repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The crowd of several dozen erupted into cheers chanting "we will win" as Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter Camila Cabello took the stage. Speaking in Spanish, Cabello encouraged Latino voters to make their voices heard in this election.

"Immigrants and Latinos are a huge part of what makes this country what it is. It is important that we recognize that power," she said. “Latinos can influence this election."

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Nashville voters who cast ballots in the wrong congressional race will be able to submit a provisional ballot on Election Day, officials announced Friday as part of an agreement sparked by a lawsuit earlier that day.

The decision comes as election officials have scrambled for days to correct Davidson County’s voting system after The Associated Press reported first that nearly 200 Tennesseans had voted in the incorrect congressional races.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers split up multiple precincts throughout Davidson County while redrawing Nashville’s congressional maps in hopes of flipping a Democratic seat. As a result, voters now live in splintered precincts and some have been incorrectly grouped in the wrong district. But according to the county, no issues surrounding ballots being cast in the wrong race were raised during the primary, which took place in August.

Jeff Roberts, Nashville’s election administrator, had originally stated that the problem had been fixed Wednesday morning after working throughout the night, combing through the complex county voting system and getting the voting machines up to date.

Read the full story here.

CASTLETON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — Lee Zeldin’s bid for New York governor was considered a longshot, but days before the election he pitched tightening polls and a nearly two-decade old upset as proof that he has a fighting chance. 

“I think New York is ready to party like it’s 1994,” he said Thursday, alluding to the Prince song “1999.” Zeldin, who is running for governor, repeated the line again about an hour later to a large crowd that gathered by a stage built in front of his campaign bus in a golf course parking lot. He arrived at the rally via helicopter. 

In 1994, Republican George Pataki astonished the state by unexpectedly defeating three-term governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat. Pataki became the first GOP candidate to win the office since Nelson Rockefeller in 1970. 

Zeldin hopes to end a two-decade drought for Republicans seeking statewide office in New York. His optimism is driven by recent polls that appear to show him closing the gap with Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. But winning would still require him to overcome a sizable deficit and would be a shock to the nation.

Read the full story here.

PITTSBURGH — Republican Mehmet Oz sought to portray himself as a pragmatist who would bring “a sense of balance” to Congress during a campaign event in the Pittsburgh suburbs on Friday.

Speaking briefly before a crowd of a few hundred, the GOP nominee for an open Senate seat said he wanted to curtail spending, improve public safety, provide an “all of the above energy solution” and both enhance border security while improving the legal immigration system.

The crowd booed loudly at mentions of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Oz was joined at the rally by Republican Jeremy Shaffer, who is seeking a Pittsburgh-area House seat that is one of the most hotly contested nationally. Shaffer also sought to play up a bipartisan outlook and noted that his campaign slogan is “Better Together,” akin to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together.”

When Shaffer said his Democratic rival, Chris DeLuzio, wants President Joe Biden to move more to the left, one audience member shouted: “It’s not possible!”

PHOENIX — Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on Friday promoted her education plan in a governor's race that's become a virtual dead heat with GOP nominee Kari Lake.

Speaking at an invitation-only event for educators Friday afternoon, Hobbs said she is committed to raising teacher pay, creating new funding opportunities for special education and improving access to education.

Her remarks came the same day a Marist poll showed her deadlocked with Lake in the final stretch of a closely watched race. Among voters who said they were definitely voting, 49% said they favored Hobbs, compared to 48% for Lake. The poll has a 4 percentage point margin of error. In a September poll by Marist, Lake had a 3 point edge over Hobbs.

At Friday's event, Danny Hernandez, 35, told NBC News he cast his ballot on Thursday and felt reaffirmed by Hobbs' commitment to education.

"Arizona is at the bottom of so many lists," he said. "It wasn't a difficult decision."

Hernandez said gun control and LGBTQ rights were also top of mind for both him and his husband this election cycle.

"I've lived my whole life navigating safety," he said. "Future generations shouldn't have to do that."

President Joe Biden on Friday said he thinks Democrats will pick up a seat in the evenly divided Senate in Tuesday's midterm elections.

Speaking briefly with reporters before flying from California to Illinois, Biden said he feels "really good about our chances," when asked about his mood four days before Election Day.

"I haven’t been in all the House races but I think we're going to keep the Senate and pick up a seat," Biden said. He added that he also thinks Democrats have a chance to keep their majority in the House.

"I’m optimistic. I really am,” Biden said.

Biden's optimism, however, is far rosier than that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report's projections, which suggest Republicans are in a strong position to win the House and and could have more than 50 seats in the Senate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a video released Friday that her husband's recovery from a brutal attack in their San Francisco home last week would be a “long haul.”

Virtually addressing a group of supporters for the first time since Paul Pelosi was struck in the head with a hammer a week ago, Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she was grateful for the support extended to her husband, who underwent surgery for his injuries and was discharged from the hospital on Thursday.

“It’s going to be a long haul, but he will be well, and it’s just so tragic how it happened," Pelosi said in remarks posted to Twitter by her office. "But nonetheless, we have to be optimistic. He’s surrounded by family, so that’s a wonderful thing.”

In remarks about the midterms, Pelosi predicted that many of the House races would be "very, very close" but said that she believed Democrats could still emerge victorious.

“The Republicans have put in tons of money against our candidates and cut our lead in some cases, but they have not taken this. These are races, in many cases, too close to call, in margin of error. But in every case winnable because of the grassroots. And so I think that what we are doing is not only to win an election but to strengthen our democracy."

Pelosi, like many other Democrats including President Joe Biden, made the case that "democracy is on the ballot," while pushing back on GOP efforts to go after Biden and Democrats on inflation.

Inflation, she said, is a “global phenomenon." She argued that Democrats have done a lot to combat price increases while contending that the GOP’s only plan is to give “tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country.”

Mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday battered the teams primarily responsible for keeping the platform free of misinformation, potentially hobbling the company’s capabilities four days before the end of voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections, one current and six former Twitter employees familiar with the cuts told NBC News, five of whom were recently laid off.

Two former Twitter employees and one current employee warned that could bring chaos around the elections, as the layoffs hit especially hard on teams responsible for the curation of trending topics and for the engineering side of “user health,” which works on content moderation and site integrity. The seven people asked to withhold their names out of concerns about professional retribution and because they weren’t authorized to speak for the company.

CEO Elon Musk, who’s facing sizable future debt payments and declining revenue at Twitter, said the cuts were needed to ensure the health of the company’s long-term finances a week after he bought it for $44 billion.

The cuts appeared to affect many people whose jobs were to keep Twitter from being overwhelmed by prohibited content such as hateful conduct and targeted harassment, the seven sources said.

Read the full story here.

President Joe Biden touted his administration’s major legislative accomplishments — including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure law — at an official White House event in San Diego on Friday, just days before voting ends in the midterm elections.

Although Biden spent much of his 30-minute speech celebrating wins he's accomplished with Democrats in Congress, the president said he still recognized it had been a “rough four or five years” and that “folks are still struggling.” But Biden said that he remained encouraged by the “bright spots where America is reasserting itself.”

“Our best days are ahead of us, they’re not behind this. Just remember who the hell we are — we’re the United States of America,” Biden said. “We’re the only nation in the world that has come out of every crisis stronger than when we went in, and we’re going to do it again.”

Biden was in California in part to campaign for vulnerable Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, who also attended Friday’s speech.

Biden is expected to travel to Chicago later Friday for a political reception.

The early and absentee vote in 2022 skews significantly older than it did in 2020 across the country, including in several battleground states with key swing races.

NBC News compared numbers from Tuesday, exactly one week prior to Election Day, with early vote numbers from one week prior to the 2020 election. In Arizona, for instance, just 21.5% of the early vote was cast by voters under 49, a drop off of nearly 12 points from 2020. By contrast, the share of the vote cast by those over 65 increased from 40.5% to 53.4%.

The trend was echoed elsewhere. In Florida, the share of voters under 49 who cast early ballots dropped by more than 13 points while voters over 65 saw their share increase by more than 16 points. In Georgia, the former group saw a drop in its share of more than 10 points while the latter age bracket's share rose by more than 9 points. And in Michigan, the younger voters contributed about 13 percentage points less than they had in 2020 while older voters increased their share by nearly 16 points.

Those numbers were similar in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin too.

Observers looking to see any shift in the gender makeup of early voters may be disappointed. Across the swing-state landscape, the breakdown between men and women is virtually identical to 2020's early vote, with some states seeing a slightly higher number of men casting early ballots than women.

As far as party breakdown, the early/absentee vote skewed slightly more Democratic in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in comparison to 2020 and significantly more so in Michigan, Ohio and Georgia. On the flip side, the votes returned one week ahead of the election skewed more Republican in Nevada, Florida and Arizona than they had in 2020 and significantly more so in New Hampshire than they were last cycle.

Of course, it’s difficult to compare the early voting habits of a presidential cycle with a midterm, and there has been a substantial drop-off in early and absentee voting across the country in comparison to the contest between President Joe Bide and former President Donald Trump, which was also held during a heightened stretch of the Covid-19 pandemic. 2020 was also the first year for some states that such voting options were greatly expanded.

Voter file data, collected by TargetSmart, contains information on most voters’ turnout history and selected demographic information. Party registration is state-sourced in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Arizona and New Hampshire. TargetSmart uses a modeled partisanship measure for states where state-sourced party registration is not available: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia. 

SPARKS, Nev. — For more than a year, Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt has pitched Nevada voters on sending him to Washington with a simple message: He has little interest in working with Democrats when he gets there.

The left should be put “in the ash bin of history,” and Republicans “can’t negotiate with” Democrats, he said in separate June media appearances. In March he declared, “The left must be defeated. We must destroy their radical ideology.” 

And in the closing weeks of one of the tightest swing-state races in the country, Laxalt at a Reno event in October showed no interest in working with “the radical, leftist Democrat Party.”

His pitch defies conventional wisdom, which traditionally sees candidates trying to broaden their appeal in the twilight of a general campaign that could hinge on swing voters.

By contrast, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent, on the trail has boasted of Republican endorsements and highlighted her work with Republicans like Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Read more here.

Latino voters in battleground states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona can move the needle in tight races that will determine what party controls Congress and top state offices.

Results of the eighth week of a Latino tracking poll commissioned by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) have consistently shown that the economy ranks as the top concern of Latino voters — at 47% — and that abortion and reproductive rights, once hardly mentioned, vaulted to the No. 2 concern this midterm election season, at 30%.

This week, the final week of polling before the Nov. 8 election, shows Latinos backing Democratic candidates for Congress nationally.

Despite those poll results, Republican candidates in tight races may only need a small margin of Latino votes to win, as both parties make last-minute appeals to Hispanics amid early voting and ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. NALEO projects about 11.6 million Latinos will vote on Nov. 8 — about the same as in 2018.

Read more here.

The election is days away, but we already know the outcome of the 2022 midterms in one key respect: Regardless of which party comes out on top, there will be no resolution of the larger cultural fights raging in the U.S. 

This standoff will shift the terrain only by inches, even if it does help change which party has technical control of Congress. As for resolving the larger argument, that’s still a decision that the country makes during presidential elections, not midterms.

But what these elections will decide is which of the two major parties is going be on the defensive and most in need of reform.

Read the Meet the Press blog.

Even though he’s no longer in office, former President Donald Trump has still had an impact on the midterm elections, fueling Democratic hopes that they could make this election a choice between former President Joe Biden and Trump’s GOP.

The former president has played an outsized role in helping pick his party’s nominees in major battlegrounds, wielded his political power in 77 primaries considered competitive by the NBC News Political Unit. Sixty of them won their primaries. 

Trump has backed many candidates who echo his false claims about the 2020 election, with more than 70% of his preferred candidates denying or questioning the 2020 results. And though his endorsement is still powerful in GOP primaries, Trump has remained unpopular since leaving office. In October’s NBC News poll, 34% of voters said they had positive feelings about Trump, while 55% said they viewed Trump negatively.

Read more here.

President Joe Biden will travel Sunday to Westchester County, N.Y., the suburbs just north of New York City, to participate in a political event, the White House said.

Biden plans to host a "Get Out the Vote" event with Gov. Kathy Hochul in Yonkers, according to a statement from the governor's office. Hochul is in a competitive re-election race against GOP challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin, who has served in the House since 2015.

Westchester County is a heavily Democratic-leaning area. Biden carried the county with 68% support in the 2020 presidential election compared to 31% who went for Donald Trump.

The Milwaukee County district attorney filed a criminal complaint Friday against Kimberly Zapata, who had worked as deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, after she was accused of fraudulently requesting absentee ballots to be sent to a state representative.

The complaint said that an investigation found that Zapata “created three fictitious names and used them to apply for three military absentee ballots."

"She applied for those ballots using the false names and falsely representing they were military voters," the filing said. “She then used her governmental access to the WisVote database to obtain the address of JB and have the absentee ballots sent to JB. All of this behavior was in excess of her authority."

In a news release Monday, state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, the person referred to in the filing as JB, said that she was surprised to find the military ballots sent to her home last month from clerks in Menomonee Falls, South Milwaukee and Shorewood.

“I believe someone was trying to point out how easy it is to get military ballots in Wisconsin. Registration for military ballots is not requested, so a fictitious name and birthdate is all that is required to obtain a military ballot online,” Brandtjen said.

In an interview with investigators, Zapata said she “wanted to make a point that there is fraud in existence,” the complaint said. 

“She stated that it is not the conspiracy theories out there, but she wanted to bring the actual true fraud out,” the filing said. “Zapata stated that she felt overwhelmed due to the threats of violence the Election Commission was receiving, in addition to the constant daily harassment and accusations of lying and hiding things."

The district attorney charged Zapata with one count of misconduct in public office and three counts of making a false statement to obtain or vote via absentee ballot. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said Thursday that Zapata had been fired over the incident.

Amid the flurry of retirements and primary defeats this cycle, Congressional turnover will continue in November.

When the dust settles after Election Day, between 36 and 40 members of the House will be left who took office in the 20th Century (four incumbents are in races rated competitive by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter). In the Senate, eight incumbents elected to their posts in the 20th Century are slated to return, with an additional two in competitive races.

Read the Meet the Press blog.

Former President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and former fundraiser, Tom Barrack, was found not guilty Friday of charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration and then lied to the FBI about those contacts.

The jury deliberated for about two days in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, before voting to acquit Barrack, who prosecutors alleged had traded on his decades-long friendship with Trump to “illegally provide” UAE officials with access to — and inside information on —the Trump White House and his 2016 presidential campaign.

Barrack, who served as the chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, was charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Justice Department, a violation that carries up to 10 years in prison. In addition, he was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI about his UAE contacts during a 2019 interview with federal agents.

Read the story.

President Joe Biden on Friday used a better-than-expected jobs report to attack Republicans just days before polls close in the midterm elections.

In a written statement, Biden said “one thing is clear: While comments by Republican leadership sure seem to indicate they are rooting for a recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow and add jobs even as gas prices continue to come down.”

Biden said that while inflation is still a major problem, he had a plan to “bring costs down, especially for health care, energy and other everyday expenses.”

“The Republican plan is very different. They want to increase prescription drug costs, health insurance costs, and energy costs, while giving more tax breaks to big corporations and the very wealthy,” Biden said. “Here’s the deal: Cutting corporate taxes and allowing big pharma to raise prices again is the Republican inflation plan and it’s a disaster.”

Employers added 261,000 jobs in October — more than what many analyst had predicted — despite Federal Reserve interest rate increases.

Former President Donald Trump will likely announce a 2024 presidential bid this month, although the date could slide, two sources familiar with his thinking told NBC News.

The sources noted that Trump has already all but announced his plans at his various rallies, including in Iowa last night, when he said: “I ran twice, I won twice, and did much better the second time than I did the first,” Trump said, again repeating his baseless claim that he won the 2020 election. “And now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again.”

Axios reported Friday that the former president’s inner circle is “discussing” a potential launch on Nov. 14, possibly followed by a multi-day series of political events. The sources said it's fair to expect that any announcement would be accompanied by a broader rollout.

Multiple sources cautioned that Trump’s inner circle has not yet nailed down an official date or what an announcement would look like, which means any announcement could be later than expected. 

When asked about the timing of a potential announcement, Trump’s spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, told NBC: “Not commenting on the never-ending media speculation and rumors. As President Trump has said, Americans should go vote up and down the ballot for Republicans, and he will continue that message tomorrow night in Pennsylvania.” 

The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers organization is set to testify in his own defense at his seditious conspiracy trial Friday.

Stewart Rhodes is on trial along with Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell in connection with their actions surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

The government rested its case Thursday without calling cooperating witnesses who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. Jurors did hear from two other Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to other charges: One testified that he had prepared to say goodbye to his family and oppose the transfer of power “by any means necessary,” and another who testified that he thought he was “acting like a traitor” against his own government.

Rhodes is beginning his testimony Friday morning and will likely continue Monday, as jurors will only hear a half-day of testimony Friday.

Read more here.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and other Democrats are scheduled to campaign for Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., this weekend.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, along with Angus King, the Maine independent, are also planning to hit the trail for Hassan at various events around New Hampshire.

Hassan, who has served in the Senate since 2017, is in a competitive race against Republican challenger Don Bolduc, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who previously ran an unsuccessful campaign for the GOP primary for Senate in 2020.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as "lean Democrat."

Spanish-speaking communities are being targeted with anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender messages ahead of the midterm elections.

A double-sided postcard is being sent to homes in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in western Colorado. “Joe Biden and his political allies are indoctrinating your children,” the flyer, which NBC News reviewed, says in bold red letters translated from Spanish.

“Radical and irreversible gender experiments on children,” the other side says in bold pink text, falsely claiming the Biden administration is “pushing” for the treatments by blocking puberty and removing genitalia.

An image of the highest-ranking openly transgender government official, Rachel Levine, the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for health, is also featured on the postcard with Sam Brinton, an Energy Department official who is the first openly gender-fluid official in the federal government. A caption says Levine is promoting the “castration of boys and girls.”

Read the full story here.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,050-page document Friday lashing out at the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The document, which largely repeats letters the lawmakers have already sent to the administration, attacked the FBI as "broken" because of its "politicized bureaucracy." The lawmakers specifically mention the Justice Department's investigations of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the current probe into documents found at the former president's Mar-a-Lago home.

Released days before the midterm elections, the document is a strong indicator of the Republicans' plans should they win control of the House.

President Joe Biden on Friday is set to tour a southern California communications company that is expected to benefit from his legislative push to bolster American semiconductor manufacturing — and he’s taking a vulnerable Democratic congressman with him.

Biden will be joined by Rep. Mike Levin for the visit to Carlsbad-headquartered Viasat as he looks to highlight the CHIPS and Science Act, a $280 billion legislative package, ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. The bill is one of the Biden administration’s most significant legislative achievements.

Levin, a two-term congressman representing a San Diego-area district that was once a GOP stronghold, is locked in a tight race with former San Juan Capistrano Mayor Brian Maryott. Biden headlined a rally Thursday night in Oceanside, California, for Levin.

On a cold and blustery airport tarmac in deep red Sioux City, Iowa, former President Donald Trump on Thursday night spent just over an hour repeating false claims about the 2020 election, talking about the various investigations into him and his business, promoting the work of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. He also teased a 2024 run for president.

“I ran twice, I won twice, and did much better the second time than I did the first,” Trump said, repeating the lie that he rightfully won the 2020 election. “And now in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again.”

Trump said he wanted to visit Iowa five days before the 2022 midterms, “just in case.” “We don’t want to take any chances,” he said. 

A joint survey of election officials from the nonprofit Democracy Fund and Reed College found that 1 in 4 election officials said they had experienced threats of violence, abuse or harassment.

More than 60% of those threats were politically based, the survey found. The results also revealed that 28% of respondents who are not close to retirement age cited plans to leave elections work over “concerns about my health or personal safety, aside from COVID concerns.”

The findings stem from a self-administered survey of local elections officials conducted from June to September.

Just catching up? Here’s what you missed on Thursday:

• Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is up for re-election, cast doubt over the legitimacy of next week’s election and suggested he may not accept election results, saying: “I sure hope I can, but I can’t predict what the Democrats might have planned.”
• Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said she will continue to fulfill her duties overseeing elections even as some have called for her to step aside while she runs for governor.
• Oprah Winfrey snubbed onetime protege Mehmet Oz by endorsing John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
• President Joe Biden argued that his administration has boosted the economy and cut costs, telling voters at a rally in Albuquerque to help re-elect Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that his leadership had contributed to a lower unemployment rate, a drop in gas prices since this summer, and cheaper prescription drugs.