The 18-page Venezuela oil agreement sets a 15-year board term designed to keep future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the venture. Some partners in the Barbados-registered parent company could stay anonymous, and the text doesn't explicitly require NABEP to pay the $200 billion in royalties and taxes the White House promised Venezuela.
— via ProPublica, Cate Brown
Los Angeles County election officials say their preliminary analysis of the federal government's list of 20,000 "likely" noncitizens registered to vote in California found it "unreliable." The list covers voters across the state.
— via NPR, Miles Parks
Senate Democrats' top campaign group is putting $1.2 million into a TV ad for Scott Colom in Mississippi, a state where no Democrat has won a Senate race since 1982. The buy is large against about $8 million in total spending so far, and it arrives two weeks before Election Day.
— via PBS NewsHour, Joey Cappelletti, Associated Press
Ninety percent of Democratic House backers are confident noncitizens who try to vote will be stopped, versus 45% of Republican backers. The gap flips on whether every eligible voter can cast a ballot: 90% of Republicans are confident, against 72% of Democrats.
— via Pew Research, Reem Nadeem
A Hawaiian naval contractor's CEO told the FBI his business model was bribing officials for contracts, and that the research Navatek delivered was often worthless. He said Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed to steer a $10 million contract his way after Kao pledged $100,000 to Graham's reelection, an account that agents found lined up with seized company records.
— via ProPublica, Molly Redden
Karl Rove and David Axelrod agree on only a few 2026 Senate races: both say Democrats will flip North Carolina, and both see Texas going to Democrat James Talarico in a close race if the vote were held now. Beyond that they split, with Rove "worried" for Republicans in Alaska and Ohio and Axelrod calling Alaska and Iowa coin-flips.
— via PBS NewsHour, Lisa Desjardins
Meta says it has complied with a Brazilian electoral court order to treat Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro equally on its platforms ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff. Any automatic block on a presidential campaign's ad account now has to get a manual review within two hours, and the company again denies political bias.
— via PBS NewsHour, Mauricio Savarese, Associated Press
Asked in the Oval Office whether he'd endorse JD Vance for 2028, with Vance standing right behind him, Trump said the two have never discussed it. "It's early, very early right now," he said, adding that the party has to get through the midterms first.
— via PBS NewsHour, Associated Press
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that "it's time" for Ukraine to agree to a deal with Russia, saying the U.S. has "gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss." He warned that if no deal comes, "I think it's going to be a very bad thing," and claimed Europe is growing weary of the war.
— via PBS NewsHour, Associated Press
Early voting is already underway in Illinois as Democratic Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy face off Tuesday night in a forum for the Senate seat Dick Durbin has held for nearly three decades. Cook Political Report rates the race Solid Democratic.
— via PBS NewsHour, Steff Staples
Trump is in Greenville, North Carolina, on Tuesday as part of his push to shore up Republicans before the midterms, with early voting already open in a state Democrats see as key to retaking Congress. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat there since Kay Hagan in 2008.
— via PBS NewsHour, Associated Press
More than 65,000 Philadelphians have already voted, and the city's two Democratic commissioners and one Republican say party plays no role in running the vote. Their city has drawn Trump's attacks since 2016, and both commissioners say they've received death threats and harassment.
— via PBS NewsHour, Lisa Desjardins
Zelenskyy says U.S. intelligence sharing has been restored after days of near-breakdown with Trump, but former Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer says he can't tell whether the reset will last. He argues the disruptions, including to Starlink and Starshield, cost Ukrainian lives while Russia kept striking civilian targets.
— via PBS NewsHour, Geoff Bennett
Zelenskyy flew to Norway to patch things up with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff after Trump spent a week criticizing Ukraine's efforts to inflict heavy losses on Russia. Witkoff meets Putin in Russia today, and Ukrainian and European officials fear the administration increasingly treats Putin as a partner.
— via PBS NewsHour, Nick Schifrin
Republican House supporters who vote by mail are far more confident that mail ballots will be counted as intended (67%) than Republican supporters who vote in person (36%). Democratic supporters show the same split, 78% among mail voters against 58% among in-person voters, in a Pew survey of 3,917 registered voters.
— via Pew Research, Reem Nadeem
Seven in 10 people in an online community say they see little to no political content in the one they visit most, and 54% say politics doesn't belong there at all. About three in ten report at least some political talk, including 7% who say it makes up all or most of the discussion.
— via Pew Research, Beshay Sakla
Trump's pitch of $5,000 checks, payable only if Republicans keep both chambers, would cost more than $1 trillion by his own admission. Even some fans at his rallies doubt it will arrive, and two earlier check promises, $2,000 tariff dividends and DOGE refunds, never materialized.
— via PBS NewsHour, Josh Boak, Associated Press
Federal prosecutors have charged 28 people in California with voting crimes as Election Day approaches. Separately, court records show TikTok employees warned executives about child safety problems on the platform, and the executives did not act.
— via NPR, Brittney Melton
Ken Paxton defended a Texas abortion ban built to dodge conventional court challenges, and the Supreme Court let it take effect in 2021 while Roe was still law. A close look at his record shows the pattern behind his wins: he keeps testing the limits of the law with novel legal strategies, and a Senate seat would end his ability to act largely on his own authority.
— via ProPublica, Cassandra Jaramillo
Fundraising in this year's midterm elections has topped $15 billion. In France, the president is condemning the violent protests that have erupted across the country.
— via NPR, Brittney Melton
