– The arithmetic – Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the upper chamber of Congress, as a 50-50 tie would leave Republicans in charge through Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are contested. It is currently made up of 218 Republicans and one Republican-aligned independent, 214 Democrats, and two vacancies. Democrats need at least 218 seats in the lower chamber to clinch a majority in the new session.

– Senate: eight battlegrounds – North Carolina: The state’s Democratic ex-governor Roy Cooper faces Republican operative Michael Whatley in a bid to flip the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Thom Tillis, a vocal Republican Trump critic. Strong polling for Cooper has prompted both parties to shift some spending elsewhere, but the contest remains key for Democrats. Texas: Democrat James Talarico, a Christian progressive, faces Trump-backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose controversies have helped turn a longtime Republican stronghold into a closely watched contest. Paxton retains a loyal conservative following and enormous outside financial support.

Ohio: Former Democratic senator Sherrod Brown seeks a comeback against Republican Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace Vance when he became vice president. Among the country’s most expensive races, it’s also a test of whether economic discontent can shift a state that has moved sharply rightward. Maine: Republican Susan Collins faces former state Senate leader Troy Jackson. She has repeatedly survived difficult elections in a state that votes Democratic for president. Alaska: Former Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola challenges Republican Daniel Sullivan. Her strong standing among voters has made another Trump-voting state unexpectedly competitive.

Iowa: Republican congresswoman Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek compete for retiring Republican Senator Joni Ernst’s seat, while soaring agricultural and energy costs are prominent issues. Kansas: Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton is challenging Republican Roger Marshall in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932. Tight polling has prompted Trump to campaign for Marshall. Michigan: An important Republican pickup opportunity pits former congressman Mike Rogers against progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

– House: watch the suburbs – New York’s 17th district: Republican Mike Lawler faces Democrat Cait Conley in a Hudson Valley seat won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Nebraska’s 2nd: Republican Don Bacon’s retirement leaves a competitive Omaha-area seat contested by Republican Brinker Harding and Democrat Denise Powell. Pennsylvania: Republican incumbents Ryan Mackenzie, Rob Bresnahan, and Scott Perry face closely watched Democratic challenges. Nearby New Jersey’s 7th district, where Rebecca Bennett challenges Republican Tom Kean Jr, is also in play. Virginia’s 2nd: Democrat Elaine Luria seeks to reclaim the coastal seat she lost to Republican Jennifer Kiggans in 2022. Iowa: Three Republican-held districts in the state’s east and center could provide an early indication of whether Democrats are making broad gains.

– Signs of a wave? – For an indication of the scale of any Democratic advance, watch two Republican-held House districts in Virginia: the 1st, where Shannon Taylor challenges Robert Wittman, and the 5th, where former congressman Tom Perriello wants to unseat John McGuire. A Democratic gain in Kentucky’s Republican-leaning 6th district, or unexpected defeats for Republicans in Florida’s 13th and Wisconsin’s 1st, would likewise signal a particularly broad electoral swing. Conversely, Democrats face dangers of their own in redrawn districts, including Alabama’s 2nd, where Shomari Figures is defending his seat, and Texas’s 34th, where Vicente Gonzalez faces Republican Eric Flores. – Frankie TAGGART

© 2024 AFP

The post US midterms: the races to watch appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

Claude accessed aggregate voter counts in Georgia, where more than one million voters have already cast early ballots, Axios reported, citing an Anthropic spokesperson. According to the spokesperson, the model, which was being trained as part of an internal statistics project, accessed the information behind a paywall by bypassing the system “without being asked to.”

It did not access the state’s voter registration system or change or download any voting records, the spokesperson said, adding that the company has since taken measures to prevent these kinds of actions. The disclosure adds to mounting unease over how well leading labs can control increasingly autonomous systems.

In July, a group of OpenAI agents broke out of their test environments and launched a cyberattack on AI firm Hugging Face, causing international alarm. Other companies have since reported similar incidents. The incidents have fueled calls in the United States and abroad for tighter oversight of AI development.

American tech executives signed in September what President Donald Trump described as a “morally binding” commitment to build adequate safeguards around AI models.

© 2024 AFP

The post Anthropic’s AI model accessed US voter data: Axios appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

“It’s a day of nonpartisan voter participation: we are bringing our community together to make a plan to vote early and ensuring every eligible voter understands their options for how to vote and has the opportunity to make their voice heard,” organizers said in a statement. Saturday’s itinerary varies widely depending on the location, from a music festival in Los Angeles and a march to the Supreme Court in Washington, to family-friendly workshops in Chicago and election observer training in Atlanta.

“No Kings: Early Vote will be thousands of joyful celebrations of our right to vote across the country,” said Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the partner organizations behind Saturday’s events.

– Protecting the vote –

Although Tuesday, November 3 is election day, most areas of the United States allow voters to cast their ballots ahead of time, sometimes weeks in advance. Alma Couverthie, who oversees grassroots organizing efforts for democracy watchdog organization Common Cause, said the point of the upcoming “No Kings” rallies is “reclaiming voting for what it truly is: an act of power, an act of service, and an act of joy.”

“This Saturday, October 17, will be a celebration of our collective power. Walk together to the polls. Organize rides. Bring your neighbors, friends, and family,” she urged participants. Trump has openly criticized the practice of mail-in voting, and opponents have expressed concern that the administration will attempt to undermine the results — especially if Republicans end up losing, as opinion polls show is quite likely.

By advocating for voting early, the “No Kings” organizers hope to cut off the potential for any malfeasance once election day rolls around. “The best way to prevent any funny business from this administration after election day is to make sure that our turnout is massive, so clear and so overwhelming that our victory for democracy is impossible to question,” Couverthie said.

– Elodie SOINARD

© 2024 AFP

The post ‘No Kings’ movement seeks to boost early voting appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

Here is a look at the 2026 showdown by the numbers:

– **House of Representatives**

– **435**: Every seat in the House, the lower chamber of Congress, is contested every two years.

– **218**: The magic number for a majority in the 435-seat chamber.

– **3**: The net number of seats Democrats need to gain from the 2024 election result to take control. Republicans won a 220-215 majority then, although deaths, resignations and a party switch mean the current House stands at 218 Republicans, 214 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies. For Republicans, that means a net loss of two seats is survivable. Three is not.

– **Senate and the states**

– **35**: Senate seats being contested — 33 in the normal six-year rotation plus special elections in Florida and Ohio.

– Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage in the 100-seat chamber, counting two independents who vote with the Democrats. Democrats therefore need a net gain of four seats to reach the 51 required for control; a 50-50 tie would be broken by Republican Vice President JD Vance.

– **36**: States electing governors, nearly three-quarters of the total.

– **6,139**: State legislative seats being regularly contested, across 88 of the country’s 99 state legislative chambers.

– **What the polls say**

– **53-41 percent**: The Democratic advantage over Republicans among registered voters asked which party’s congressional candidate they would support, in a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll conducted September 14-15. The same survey found Democrats ahead among independent voters by 57 percent to 32 percent.

– **32-41 percent**: The range of Trump’s approval rating in several major September surveys. Reuters/Ipsos put him at 32 percent among US adults, the lowest of his political career, while Marist recorded 39 percent and NBC News 41 percent among registered voters. The surveys use different methodologies and populations, so the figures are not directly comparable — but none suggests an abundance of presidential coattails.

– **55 percent**: Registered voters who told NBC News that Trump’s policies had hurt the economy, against 26 percent who said they had helped it.

– **Money, money, money**

– **About $12 billion**: The amount expected to be spent advertising on the 2025-26 election cycle. Ad-tracking company AdImpact forecasts $11.6 billion, exceeding both the previous midterm record of $8.9 billion in 2022 and even the 2024 presidential cycle. Kinetiq Political Insights’ latest estimate is slightly higher at $11.96 billion, with a projected range of $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion.

– **$330 million**: Advertising spending in the California governor’s primary alone, according to AdImpact — making the preliminary contest to choose November’s candidates the most expensive gubernatorial race on record. And that was merely the warm-up.

– **For the trivia file**

– **2,497**: Candidates who ran in US congressional primaries this year, the most in any election cycle since at least 2014. An extraordinary 2,232 of them were chasing House seats.

– **44**: House races on November 3 that are rematches between the same major-party candidates who fought for the seat in 2024. Broaden the search to state and local contests and there are 474 electoral rematches nationwide — proving that in American politics, as in Hollywood, there is rarely any objection to a sequel.

– Frankie TAGGART

© 2024 AFP

The post US midterms: 470 seats, $12 billion and one absent president appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

Brazil will join Trump’s Shield of the Americas security initiative if Bolsonaro wins, the 45-year-old senator has said. While Trump and Lula are political opposites, both favor a personal approach to international relations — a dynamic highlighted by their brief encounter at the UN last year that led to reactivating trade talks. Trump hailed their “excellent chemistry” after the meeting and eventually invited Lula to the White House in May. Those closed-door trade talks went “very well,” Trump said, while calling Lula “very dynamic.” He hosted Bolsonaro for an Oval Office meeting weeks later, also behind closed doors, describing him as “a smart young man who loves his Country, Brazil, very much!”

As campaigning in Brazil has ramped up, Lula has increasingly cast himself as a defender of Brazilian sovereignty. “We will not allow the enemies of democracy, whether domestic or foreign, to undermine the popular will,” Lula told the United Nations last week, without naming names.

**- Ambassador without a visa -** Tensions flared again in August as Brazil withheld its approval of Trump’s pick to be US ambassador, Daniel Perez. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio then decided to revoke the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, leaving her in a delicate position: unable to leave the United States without risking being barred from returning. “They wanted to put pressure (so) that Brazil would accept that person (Perez) at that moment, and what Brazil said was, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not how the game is played,'” a Brazilian diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity. The spat will likely not be resolved until after Brazil’s October elections, the source said, “because we don’t want to risk having the American ambassador meddling in our elections.” A senior US State Department official told reporters: “We’ve taken reciprocal action with respect to a Brazilian diplomat here to make the point that it can’t always be one-sided.” That said, that’s not the situation we’re interested in,” the official added. Lula let the diplomatic storm pass and once again revived trade negotiations with a phone call to Trump. That may not matter much in the election, said Bruna Santos, director of the Brazil Program at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. “Brazilian voters are concerned with other issues, not with Lula’s moderating ability in this standoff with the US,” she told AFP.

**- The Moraes case -** Another thorny issue in bilateral relations is a lawsuit filed in February 2025 by Trump Media, the parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform, and another Florida-based company, Rumble, against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Moraes barred Trump Media and Rumble from disseminating messages deemed to be false allegations in Brazil. He had previously ordered Elon Musk’s platform X to remove certain accounts. Trump Media and Rumble sued Moraes in federal court in Florida, and the case is still working its way through the courts. Moraes was briefly subjected to US sanctions and is now embroiled in another alleged corruption scandal in Brazil that has rocked the Supreme Court.

– Jordi ZAMORA

© 2024 AFP

The post Trump-Lula: a relationship of dramatic ups and downs appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

“Trump’s presidency, as we know it, ends in November,” said the 58-year-old outgoing Democratic leader of the nation’s most populous state, widely seen as a leading contender for his party’s 2028 presidential nomination. Newsom, who spoke Wednesday, did not give details on how he thinks a Democratic win would in essence end the Trump presidency. But if Trump’s Republicans lose control of one or both houses of Congress, Democrats can in fact curb the president’s expansive agenda — though the executive still wields considerable power.

Newsom also insisted climate was winning politics — if framed not as a “green” issue but as one tied to everything from grocery prices to home insurance to national security. “People say ‘why the hell are you talking about that, you should be talking about the kitchen table,’ I said ‘I am!'” He pointed to the price of beef and coffee, and the challenges of insuring a home or getting a mortgage amid growing climate risks from more extreme wildfires to coastal erosion supercharged by El Nino.

Other politicians shy away from the subject, he said, “because they don’t know how to talk about it, and those that have talked about it in the past have been accused of being soft, weak, effete, green, hyperbolic.” He conceded that “some of our language did get a little apocalyptic.” The key, he said, is hammering home that “it’s not about electric power; it’s about economic power. It’s about statecraft.”

At the summit, he pitched California as proof that climate action and growth go hand in hand, saying the state — the world’s fourth-largest economy, whose GDP has grown 40 percent since 2019 — had run on 100 percent clean energy for at least part of the day on 90 percent of days this year. His administration has battled Trump and congressional Republicans over efforts to undo California’s green rules — from scrapping its planned phase-out of gasoline cars to paying companies to abandon offshore wind projects. “Donald Trump wants to recreate the 19th century,” said Newsom. “He’s doubling down on stupid. He’s putting America in reverse.”

“Whoever the nominee is of the Democratic Party is going to be the next president of the United States,” he said. Any of the Democratic hopefuls, he added, would be “exponentially better than a Rubio or Vance that have countenanced this corruption, this grift, this graft, this destruction of truth and trust and institutions,” referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance. They are seen as the likely Republican front-runners, though neither has declared.

Left-wing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made waves this week when she told The New York Times she was weighing a run, musing about whether a Latina could win in a country that rejected female nominees in 2016 and 2024. AOC, Newsom and Jon Ossoff, a charismatic Jewish senator from Georgia, are among the favorites on betting markets.

“She absolutely could become the nominee of the party. That’s my assessment of electability. This notion that a woman can’t win is insulting,” Newsom said, blaming “punditry” for perpetuating the trope. “I’m done with people talking like that. Or that if you’re from California or you’re Jewish or you’re old or you’re too young — give me a damn break. Our politics is completely scrambled post-Trump. The old rules, they do not apply.”

Though he called Ocasio-Cortez a “generational talent,” he pointedly did not rule out running against her — having told CNN emphatically last week that he would not challenge Kamala Harris, the 2024 nominee, with whom he shares a history in California that predates politics. “It’s a different framework,” he said. “I don’t have a relationship that goes back to before we were both in politics. I don’t have a relationship in the context of our base overlaying in remarkable ways. Whether Newsom runs, he said, depends on whether he can “look them and you in the eye and say I have something unique they don’t… voice, experience, perspective, capacity that is unique and distinctive.”

– Issam AHMED

© 2024 AFP

The post Newsom says Trump presidency ‘as we know it’ ends in November appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

Earlier this month, Republican Senate nominee in Texas, Ken Paxton, posted an AI-generated ad on X depicting his Democratic rival James Talarico saying: “Look, I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.” The lifelike clip shows Talarico writing “let there be six genders” in a Bible with multicolored crayons. Overlaid text reads: “James Talarico wrong for Texas” and “wrong for America,” while a QR code seeks donations for Paxton. Talarico condemned the ad, saying “they are lying about a candidate in this race” and that he favored a ban on deepfakes in political campaigns. “These AI deepfake ads don’t add anything to our civic discourse,” he told NBC News. “They don’t do anything to elucidate the choice that’s in front of voters.”

The ad came a few weeks after a conservative nonprofit aligned with President Donald Trump released another AI clip depicting Talarico parodying Julie Andrews’s character in the hit classic Sound of Music, dressed in a jumper-style bodice and skirt and singing “My favorite things.”

– ‘Erodes trust’ –

The proliferation of AI ads in US federal, state and local elections comes against the backdrop of declining trust in the technology. “The concern might be not that people believe the ads but the ads and general AI slop content risk people doubting everything,” Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, told AFP. “People might just dismiss real content as another deepfake, which erodes trust, causing voters to tune out rather than dig deeper for authenticity.”

The Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks election ad spending, has identified at least 164 political ads nationwide so far this year that were “generated or enhanced through the use of AI.” It estimates that the ads cost just under $80 million. That tally of ads — sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats and splashed across airwaves and social media — was an undercount. The group said it was difficult to definitively know whether AI tools had been used in some ads, especially as there were no federal mandates that political ads carry an AI disclaimer. “Just the knowledge that the tech has become good enough to deceive the average viewer combined with the fact that it is being used in election communication is enough to undermine voters’ trust in the broader election communication ecosystem,” Ilana Beller, from the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen, told AFP.

– ‘Modern political cartoon’ –

However, cheap and widely available AI tools help save on the often exorbitant costs of producing ads. “There’s no need to pay for a camera crew or hire actors to create good-looking content on a short timeline. They also open the door to creativity — no special effects editors required,” Isabel Linzer, from the nonpartisan Center for Democracy & Technology, told AFP. In many cases, Linzer said, satirical or humorous AI ads serve as “the modern political cartoon.” “A worthy question is whether using AI in political ads is a stunt that will boost a candidate through generating substantial free media attention,” she added.

The AI-generated ads could help candidates with goals such as fundraising and mobilizing supporters, but there is scant evidence that they influence how people vote, said Scott Babwah Brennen, director of the Center on Technology Policy at New York University. “Much of this does seem to be effective in gaining attention, though it is unclear if that will translate into electoral success,” Babwah Brennen told AFP. “As public sentiment grows against AI, it is possible that AI-generated negative attack ads could backfire — that is decreasing assessments of the producer of the ad.”

– Anuj CHOPRA

© 2024 AFP

The post AI political ads warp reality ahead of US midterms appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

“I’m going to the UN meeting to have a conversation with Trump and tell him: don’t meddle in the elections in Brazil,” Lula said during a campaign stop in Ceilandia, a working-class neighborhood in the capital Brasilia.

Brazilian foreign ministry official Carlos Bicalho Cozendey said Wednesday that “no specific bilateral meeting” is planned for Lula and Trump, but they “will probably cross paths at the Assembly” like they did last year.

The United States imposed two fresh rounds of tariffs on Brazilian products in July, which Lula denounced as an attempt to influence the elections with economic pressure.

Tensions with the Trump administration began in 2025, when Washington implemented its first wave of tariffs against Brazil in retaliation over the trial of former far-right president and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro — Flavio’s father, who was convicted of attempting a coup d’etat.

© 2024 AFP

The post Lula says he will go to UN to tell Trump to ‘stay out’ of Brazil’s elections appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

In South Carolina, Senator Darline Graham defeated veteran congressman Ralph Norman, according to projections from CNN and NBC. Trump had thrown himself into the race, campaigning for Graham in the state and urging supporters to vote as though his own name were on the ballot.

Trump-backed Mike Mazzei won Oklahoma’s Republican gubernatorial runoff against state attorney general Gentner Drummond, whom the president had attacked as a “fake Republican.” The sweep interrupts a bruising run for Trump, whose endorsed candidates had lost 10 Republican contests this cycle, including six in the previous two weeks, as his own approval ratings fell sharply.

The results are also a personal vindication for Trump, who had insisted days earlier that his endorsements were “stronger than ever” and dismissed recent losses as acts of loyalty to candidates he knew faced difficult races.

– ‘I’m on the ballot’ –

Trump traveled to South Carolina to campaign for Graham and held a telephone rally on the eve of the vote. “So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Trump told supporters at a rally Friday.

The Trump-supporting MAGA Inc. political organization also spent more than $827,000 on voter calls and text messages — a rare deployment of its reserves in this year’s primaries.

In Oklahoma, more than $9 million has been spent on the runoff since Drummond narrowly finished ahead of Mazzei in the first round of voting in June, US media reported. Trump has repeatedly attacked Drummond in part because he opposed a proposed $4 billion aluminum smelter backed by the president, arguing that the project could damage local land and communities.

Mazzei, a wealthy former state senator, publicly embraced the project shortly before Trump endorsed him.

– Frankie TAGGART

© 2024 AFP

The post Trump scores double primary victory in South Carolina, Oklahoma appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.

But Democrats need a net gain of only three seats nationally to retake the House of Representatives in November, making Florida unexpectedly important to Republican hopes of preserving their narrow majority. A mid-decade redistricting pushed through by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has created four clear opportunities for the party to flip Democratic-held House seats. “The task shouldn’t be too hard given how favorable the political climate has become for them,” NBC elections analyst Steve Kornacki wrote of Democrats’ nationwide prospects. “But Republicans can alter that math if their gerrymander in Florida bears fruit,” he added. “Simply put, they need every additional seat they can get — badly.”

The new boundaries have forced several Democratic incumbents into significantly more Republican territory and triggered a scramble for safer seats. Two are seeking reelection in districts Trump carried comfortably in 2024. Another — running in a newly configured conservative district — is being challenged by a democratic socialist from the party’s insurgent left, which has claimed primary victories elsewhere this year. One early upset came in the Democratic Senate primary, where left-wing state legislator Angie Nixon beat retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman to go up against Republican Ashley Moody for the seat. Trump called Vindman, who was a central witness in the president’s first impeachment, a “SleazeBag” in a Truth Social post celebrating his electoral loss.

Florida Democrats are also looking for evidence that they can again compete statewide. Former Republican congressman David Jolly, now a Democrat and prominent Trump critic, is favored for his party’s gubernatorial nomination. “I am confident in the sixth year of the presidency, there are enough Republicans who are saying we’ve had enough of this direction,” he said in a video message before voting.

Republicans are widely expected to choose Trump-backed congressman Byron Donalds to succeed term-limited DeSantis, making him a strong favorite to become Florida’s first Black governor. He faces a challenge from businessman James Fishback, a white candidate who has been criticized for racially tinged remarks such as referring to Donalds as a “slave” to donors and a “DEI Republican.”

Republicans also face several contentious House primaries. Their candidates include a lawmaker who denies allegations of assault and revenge porn threats, an Israel supporter criticized for anti-Muslim rhetoric, and a social media personality who has run an openly anti-Semitic campaign.

Florida is not the only state voting Tuesday. Alaska is holding primaries for Senate and House, while Wyoming Republicans are choosing nominees for governor, Senate, and an open House seat. California voters are also deciding, via a special congressional election, between two Democrats vying to replace Eric Swalwell, who quit the House in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct that he denies. The race has pulled in millions of dollars in outside spending from groups linked to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, despite repeatedly denouncing the practice as corrupt and pushing to restrict its use. The White House said there was no contradiction because Trump was away from his home state.

– Frankie TAGGART

© 2024 AFP

The post US primaries test Democrat comeback hopes in Trump stronghold appeared first on MagnifyPost.com.