On the campaign stage in South Carolina, Trump again calls for prosecution of Mary Peltola
Speaking to a campaign audience in South Carolina, Donald Trump reiterated his belief that Mary Peltola should be criminally prosecuted and disqualified from the Alaska Senate contest.
“This is voter fraud at the highest level,” Trump said of the Peltola campaign’s alleged scheme to recruited a man who shared the name of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, to run, all in a bid to peel away votes.
Trump added that Peltola “should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan”.
“I think it’s a criminal act, what they did,” Trump said.
Key events
Man who compared Trump supporters to cult members live on Fox News says he was ejected from rally by Secret Service
Tom Hoyle, who achieved instant viral fame on Thursday by comparing Donald Trump supporters to a cult in a live interview with Fox News before the president’s rally in South Carolina, told the Guardian that he was quickly removed from the venue by three Secret Service agents.
Hoyle, 57, explained in a phone interview that he was offended to have received an invitation to what he called the president’s “Nazi rally” in a text sent to his screen-printing business’s phone earlier this week.
He accepted the invitation, he said, with the intention of “screaming vulgarities” at Trump during his speech.
As he was waiting inside the relatively small venue in Rock Hill, South Carolina, however, he was approached by the Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson.
Hoyle said he agreed, and then had just a few seconds to “come up with something not vulgar” to say on air and express his point that most Americans do not support Trump. (“It’s all a charade,” he told the Guardian later, calling Maga Republicans a minority of voters, but a very loud one.)
When Tomlinson then asked Hoyle “why are you here this morning?” he responded by comparing the assembled Trump supporters to members of a cult who committed mass suicide in 1978 by following their leader’s order to drink cyanide-laced fruit punch in Jonestown, Guyana (giving rise to the phrase that true believers “drink the Kool-Aid”).
“Well, the late 70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown massacre, but this is as close as I’ll ever get, so that’s why I’m here,” Hoyle said.
“Wait, the Jonestown massacre?” Tomlinson asked.
“That’s right,” Hoyle replied. “There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man.”
“All right, so maybe this is not a Trump supporter,” Tomlinson told the studio before stepping away to find someone else to interview.
Before the camera moved, Hoyle took the opportunity to point to his cap and plug his business, MadPark Designs in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaking to the Guardian later, Hoyle pointed out that his business is in the same office park as a Customs and Border Protection office in Charlotte, adding that he has regularly told officers involved in Trump’s immigration crackdown what he thinks of them to their faces.
Trump lashes out at Reuters reporter who asked why he canceled rally in Kansas
After his return from South Carolina, Donald Trump lashed out at a Reuters reporter who asked him why he just canceled a planned appearance at a rally in Kansas on Saturday in support of a embattled Republican senator, Dr Roger Marshall.
After the reporter inquired about Trump’s health, and Trump said he was well, the reporter asked: “So you not going to Kansas has nothing to do with you being sick of travel?”
With a look of disgust, Trump responded: “Oh, you’re sick to ask that question.
“You are a sick guy. Reuters is terrible,” the president added.
Then, stepping away to address other reporters, Trump said: “Can you imagine? Look at this dope. Look at this guy, he’s way out of shape.”
“He comes to me, ‘Sir, you’re not going to go to Kansas.’ I’m not going to Kansas because he’s doing very well. I’m going to do a tele-rally,” Trump continued, imitating the reporter and suggesting that Marshall no longer needs his help to win his Senate race.
“He said, ‘what’s the reason’, after doing what, 28? He says ‘what’s the reason for this, sir, that you’re not going to Kansas?’” the president continued, recapping the exchange for journalists who had just witnessed it for themselves.
“You know what the reason is? I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” Trump went on. “I’m going to Florida tomorrow, and I’ll do- if something else comes up – but he said, ‘You’re not going to Kansas, sir, are you feeling well?’ You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect,” the president said, with indignation.
“You are disgusting,” Trump said, turning back to the Reuters reporter. “Put yourself in shape – you look like hell.”
He then ended the discussion and walked away from the press corps.
Trump administration subpoenas local election officials in California – report
The New York Times reports that the Trump administration has issued federal grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in California, opening a criminal investigation as part of a White House campaign to pre-emptively cast the results of the midterm elections in the nation’s largest state as fraudulent.
According to copies of the subpoenas obtained by the Times, the investigation is an effort to promote the unsubstantiated claim that thousands of noncitizens are on California’s voter rolls, and that elections in states run by Democrats are rigged against Republicans.
JD Vance writes to top Iranian security official in sign Washington has not abandoned diplomacy
Patrick Wintour
Hopes of averting a major new conflagration between Iran and the US soon after Tuesday’s midterm elections could rest on Iran’s response to a personal letter from the US vice-president, JD Vance, offering to restart diplomacy.
The letter, written after predominantly Qatari mediation, was sent to the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei, on Sunday. It requires Tehran to agree to make commitments on its nuclear programme at the start of a process that would lead to the opening of the strait of Hormuz within seven days in return for US sanctions relief.
A reply is imminent, but Iran is reluctant to give upfront and irreversible commitments on its nuclear programme, such as exporting its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a third country, if the compensatory US steps, such as lifting sanctions on Iranian oil exports, are reversible.
Here’s what you missed earlier today:
-
Republicans escalated calls to investigate Mary Peltola’s alleged ballot-stacking scheme. Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans echoed the president’s calls to criminally investigate Peltola for recruiting a man with the same name as her opponent to join the Alaska Senate race.
-
Alaska’s governor went one step further, ordering an investigation into Peltola. “Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Mike Dunleavy, the governor, said in a post on X. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
-
A new CNN poll found that Democrats are leading Senate races in Texas and Michigan. The poll found that James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed led by a significant margin over their Republican opponents. But it turned up no clear leader in Maine, once thought a likely Democratic pickup, or Kansas, a deep red state where the race has turned unexpectedly competitive.
-
New reporting indicates Trump aided Flávio Bolsonaro’s flight from Brazil to the US. According to the New York Times, the president ordered Bolsonaro, the defeated right-wing candidate for Brazil’s presidential election, to be allowed into the US on temporary status. A White House official also arranged the flight that brought Bolsonaro to Miami.
-
Trump, campaigning today in South Carolina, canceled another planned rally in Kansas. The president opted not to appear in-person at a rally in Kansas on Saturday, instead opting to focus on participating in remote tele-rallies. Other slated campaign appearances in Florida and Iowa are set to continue as planned.
Trump ditches plan to attend Kansas rally in Saturday
President Trump has canceled one of his last scheduled campaign stops before the midterm elections next week, axing his plans to appear at a rally in Kansas.
The planned stop in Salina, Kansas, would’ve come as Republicans seek to fend off a surprise challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, who polls have found could flip the normally deep-red seat currently held by incumbent Roger Marshall.
Instead of appearing in Kansas, Trump will instead partake in a remote tele-rally for Marshall.
Trump’s other slated appearances through the weekend – including one in Florida and another in Iowa – are still expected to go ahead as planned.
New Mexico’s Deb Haaland poised to be first female Native American governor
With a comfortable lead in the polls, Deb Haaland, a former congresswoman and interior secretary under Joe Biden, is set to become the first Native American woman to serve as governor in US history.
Her campaign has energized New Mexico’s Indigenous communities. But while the historic nature of her potential victory isn’t lost on her, Haaland says the hectic final stretch of her campaign has pushed it to the back of her mind.
“Sometimes I forget about the fact that I would be the first Native woman,” Haaland said in a recent interview. “We’re in the throes of this statewide campaign and it’s so busy and we’re trying to be everywhere all at once.”
My colleague Cecilia Nowell has the story in New Mexico:
Trump, speaking to a crowd in South Carolina, mused about continuing his habit of unilaterally renaming bodies of water with the strait of Hormuz, the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean.
During his second term, Trump has attempted to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario as the Gulf of America and Lake America, respectively. Since the outbreak of war with Iran, Trump has vowed to see the strait of Hormuz, the vital maritime shipping route for oil and gas that Iran has strangled in retaliation, renamed the “Trump Strait”.
“Now I need a river and an ocean,” Trump said.
Musing on which rivers he would rename, Trump said: “The only two I could think of were the Hudson River and the Mississippi.” He added: “I guarantee you, I will never be changing the name of the Mississippi.”
(No word yet on why the Potomac, Colorado or Ohio rivers, among others, weren’t suitable candidates.)
In another side tangent, Trump said that his wife, Melania, dislikes when he dances onstage at campaign rallies.
“She hates when I dance,” Trump said, noting that she told him that it was “not presidential”.
(He then proceeded to pantomime his usual dance move as the crowd applauded.)
On the campaign stage in South Carolina, Trump again calls for prosecution of Mary Peltola
Speaking to a campaign audience in South Carolina, Donald Trump reiterated his belief that Mary Peltola should be criminally prosecuted and disqualified from the Alaska Senate contest.
“This is voter fraud at the highest level,” Trump said of the Peltola campaign’s alleged scheme to recruited a man who shared the name of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, to run, all in a bid to peel away votes.
Trump added that Peltola “should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan”.
“I think it’s a criminal act, what they did,” Trump said.
Trump is now speaking onstage at a midterm rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina
He’s in the state to campaign on behalf of Senator Darline Graham, the sister of late Senator Lindsey Graham who was appointed to finish his term. She finds herself in a surprisingly close race with Democratic nominee Annie Andrews.
So far, Trump has – among other remarks – defended the war in Iran and his economic record, waxed nostalgic about his debate performance against Joe Biden, and called for cognitive tests for elected officials (while touting his own record of taking such tests).
He also went on an extended tangent attacking the reliability of pollsters. This as Republicans face dismal polls that put Democrats ahead in several key Senate races (though the polls have underestimated Trump before).
Trump aided Bolsonaro’s flight from Brazil to US, New York Times reports
Flávio Bolsonaro, the rightwing candidate who clandestinely fled Brazil for Miami after losing the Brazilian presidential election, planned his escape with the blessing of the Trump administration, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The paper, citing US officials familiar with the plan, said that Trump had ordered that Bolsonaro be welcomed into Florida on a temporary parole status, which will probably be extended to permanent residency. A White House official also arranged the private jet that shuttled Bolsonaro and his family to Miami, the Times reported.
Bolsonaro fled Brazil after his losing the election in a come-from-behind victory for the left-wing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had also unseated Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2022. Jair Bolsonaro, once one of Trump’s strongest allies in Latin America, is now serving a 27-year sentence for allegedly trying to unseat Lula in a coup.
Flávio Bolsonaro picked up his father’s torch, running on a right-wing platform to unseat Lula. After his defeat, he was ordered to surrender his passports in connection with a criminal money laundering investigation.
Instead, Bolsonaro absconded across the border with Argentina alongside his family, flight from there to Ecuador and ultimately to Florida.
Trump did not outright endorse Flávio Bolsonaro in the race. But he has an increasingly embittered relationship with Lula, and has said that the results in the Brazilian election appeared rigged.
From his new home in Florida, Flávio Bolsonaro has declared himself the true winner of the election and vowed to contest the results.
Alaska Senate race: what to know about Democrats’ alleged ballot-stacking effort – explainer
Ariana Baio
As we reported earlier, Republican officials have called for an investigation into an alleged ballot-stacking scheme in Alaska’s competitive Senate race by Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign.
For months, Donald Trump and others accused Peltola and Democrats of recruiting candidates with the same name as her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, to purposefully confuse voters when they cast their ballots in next week’s midterms.
Though Peltola’s campaign denied encouraging or soliciting a man named Dan J Sullivan to run, a recent New York Times report indicated Peltola’s campaign did recruit him.
While ballot stacking is not illegal itself, the US president and justice department have filed a lawsuit pre-emptively to block the certification of the Senate election results if the incumbent senator loses.
In this explainer, my colleague Ariana Baio takes you through what to know about the situation and ballot-stacking.
Senate race in once reliably Republican South Carolina tied in final stretch – poll
Joseph Gedeon
A US Senate race in one of the most Republican states in the country is now a dead heat, according to a new poll showing Democrat Annie Andrews tied with Darline Graham, the Republican incumbent senator.
The Palmetto State has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, and Donald Trump won it by nearly 18 points in 2024, but a New York Times/Siena poll this week has the two candidates neck and neck, at 48% each.
Graham was appointed to the seat after her brother, Lindsey Graham, died in July, and she entered the race at Trump’s urging, without having ever held elected office.
Her inexperience has become one of the defining aspects of the campaign, which culminated in an August debate when she admitted she was “not that informed on national security” when asked about US policy on Taiwan. In the poll, 51% of voters said she lacked the right experience to be an effective senator.
Andrews, a pediatrician from Charleston, has meanwhile built her campaign around her medical career. Her solution to better access to doctors and climbing medical bills has been to advocate for a public option and cheaper prescription drugs.
Here’s Joseph’s report:
Obama-era investigation reportedly found some evidence against Ilhan Omar’s marriage
An Obama-era federal investigation of Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar found some evidence suggesting that she entered into a sham marriage in 2009 to help a man suspected of being her brother obtain a green card, according to the New York Times (paywall).
At issue is Omar’s 2009 marriage, when she was already a US citizen, to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen whom she divorced in 2017.
Current and former officials told the paper that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security investigated the marriage in the summer of 2016, but the case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the suspected crime fell outside a five-year statute of limitations.
The Times notes that it remains unclear what evidence investigators had that suggested the marriage was fraudulent and that the person Omar married was her brother.
Marrying someone for the sole purpose of helping them obtain a green card is illegal under federal law, while marrying a sibling is illegal under state law.
Omar has denied the allegations. Spokesperson Jackie Rogers told the NYT in a statement:
Rep. Omar has repeatedly and unequivocally denied this baseless, disgusting conspiracy theory. This is a desperate political smear designed to distract from Trump’s failed presidency and two years of Republican failure in Congress.
Another aspect that remains unclear whether federal prosecutors could still pursue charges in spite of the statute of limitations for marriage-based immigration fraud.
The Trump administration has revisited the case as part of a wider investigation into Omar’s family’s immigration history to the United States.
Investigators are examining whether Omar’s late father lied or omitted information in immigration forms before becoming an American citizen, and whether Omar, who was a child when she immigrated to the United States, was too old to have qualified for citizenship through her father in 2000, the Times reported.
Trump’s homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said of the matter last month, in remarks directed at Omar:
If we can prove that you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.
Officials in the Trump administration lured automakers to expand manufacturing in the US by dangling a chance at tariff relief, according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
The outlet, citing sources privy to details of the plan, reported that the Trump administration had promised Volkswagen executives that companies that invest in the US would soon benefit from a tariff relief program, before the administration unveiled a new $4bn Audi plant in Georgia. (Audi is owned by Volkswagen.)
The tariff relief program the Trump administration promised would come through the US Department of Commerce, the Journal reported. The plan, which is not yet finalized, would establish carve-outs for companies that commit to building factories in the US.
En route to Texas campaign event, Vance calls for fraud investigation into Peltola
On his way to a campaign event in Texas, JD Vance backed an investigation into Mary Peltola’s alleged scheme to siphon away votes from her Senate opponent by a recruiting a candidate with the same name.
Addressing reporters on the tarmac, Vance said that Peltola had “tried to commit election fraud” in the Alaska Senate race by recruiting a man named Dan Sullivan to run against her primary opponent, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.
When asked whether he agreed with Trump’s insistence that Peltola be criminally prosecuted for the tactic (which, while underhanded, has been employed elsewhere, and is not clearly illegal) Vance backed the idea, though in not in quite so strong terms.
“I think that we should certainly look into whether she committed election fraud,” Vance said.
He continued: “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful. So whether it’s criminal or not, she certainly has committed, I think, a great moral failing.”
While Trump is campaigning in South Carolina, Vance is heading to Texas to try and win support for Ken Paxton. Paxton, a scandal-marred former Texas attorney general and Trump devotee, has trailed in the polls in recent weeks, putting the Republicans at risk of losing a Senate seat in Texas for the first time in decades.
