Donald Trump’s popularity has plummeted this year, as the repercussions of his war with Iran drag on, hitting his Republican Party’s chances of holding on to power in next month’s crucial midterm elections.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen in every US state, but the most dramatic declines have been in parts of the country that backed him in the 2024 presidential election. As a result, Republican strategists are panicking as they try to manage the fallout and win crucial races for the House and Senate.
In every key battleground state, Trump’s abysmal approval ratings seem to be harming Republican candidates, while boosting their Democrat rivals.
Why everyone seems to be sick right now
In the past few weeks, more and more people have reported coming down with a bug – complaining of a streaming nose, cough, or temperature. I wasn’t imagining it: the flu season has started earlier this year.
Early flu season
- Rates of flu infections in the UK are still relatively low, but they are rising, the UK Health Security Agency said – even though it is only October.
It means GPs – on top of the usual surge
in coughs and colds that happens when children go back to school – have seen
a broader rise in consultations for
respiratory viruses.
Why is there a winter peak?
Scientists still debate why respiratory viruses peak every winter. There are several possible reasons:
- Viruses survive for longer in colder air
- Human nasal cells may function less well in the cold
- Our tendency to mix socially indoors rather than outdoors
- Drier winter air may cause virus-laden moisture droplets to evaporate, shrink into tiny particles and float further
Global influence
Peak flu season is usually in December or January, but what’s going on in other parts
of the world can change that. Temperate countries in the Southern Hemisphere experience the same cycle in reverse,
with a flu peak in their winter – June, July
and August.
This is important because the circulating flu viruses accumulate small mutations all the time, called . The mix that predominates in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter predicts to some extent the mix that arrives in the UK a few months later.
Possible reasons
- 1One reason for flu starting early this year could be that there has been a , one of the three main circulating flu strains, said Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, a UKHSA epidemiologist.
- 2Another explanation could be that Southern Hemisphere countries had a relatively late flu season in 2026, resulting in more people carrying the flu into the UK.
Keep an eye on it
An early start doesn’t mean the UK is necessarily headed for a worse flu season overall. The same happened last winter, yet the country ended up with a lower number of flu deaths than average.
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What to know as four dead in Oregon school shooting
A teacher and three children were killed in a shooting at a primary school in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday.
What happened?
Here’s what we know so far about the incident outside Bend’s Silver Rail Elementary School in central Oregon.
- The shooting took place at around 1pm, local time (9pm BST) on Thursday.
- Authorities initially responded to reports at 12.59pm of multiple gunshots fired at
a car. - They later received calls the shooter had entered the school grounds.
- Police subsequently directed the school to go into lockdown at 1.01pm.
- The suspected shooter reportedly forced his way into the school by shooting through locked doors.
- Upon arriving, officers found five people who “had succumbed to their injuries”, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said.
Victims as young as five
This included a teacher and three children aged five, eight and 11. A and a 54-year-old teacher were for treatment in . The police did not initially identify any of the victims and did not provide an age for the teacher who was killed.
Around 400 children are enrolled in Silver Rail, from kindergarten through fifth grade. About 40 people work at the school.
What else do we know?
- The suspected shooter, a 16-year-old boy from Bend, was found dead inside the school when police arrived.
- Authorities believe he was shot by “a community member” who saw him enter “and ”.
- It is not yet clear whether the suspect, who has not been named, knew anyone at the school.
- The armed bystander, also yet to be identified, was called a hero by Oregon Governor Tina Kotek.
Police response
Authorities cordoned off the school and have begun investigating the shooting, with an update expected on Friday. FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency would “make every resource they need available” in support of the investigation.
A vigil was held by local leaders on Thursday evening with other “opportunities to gather” planned for the coming days.
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‘We will stay with you’
We are horrified. This is the kind of things you hear about in other places and pray that it never happens here. To the families that have had loss tonight, we are with you and we will stay with you.
Steven cook, administrator of the local school district
EX-DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson sentenced to 15 years – what you need to know
Former Democratic Unionist Party leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for child sex abuse and rape.
What you need to know
The former DUP leader, who was an MP for 27 years until 2024, was convicted of 18 counts of sex abuse earlier this year, which he committed against two women when they were children.
- Complainant A said Donaldson had touched her breasts and kissed her, and in one incident, had used a light to examine her crotch.
- Complainant A said Donaldson’s wife, Eleanor, had witnessed an incident where he touched her under her clothing but did not intervene.
- Donaldson was found guilty of eight offences between 1999 and 2008.
- Eleanor Donaldson was found to have aided and abetted his crimes after a trial of the facts but cannot be given a prison sentence on mental health grounds.
The second victim
Complainant B is the elder of the two women who was abused by Donaldson.
- Complainant B described an incident where Donaldson “lifted her top up and her bra and started to touch her exposed breasts”.
- She added that Donaldson would frequently put his hand down her underwear.
- Complainant B also said Eleanor Donaldson had witnessed an incident where her husband had “played” with her breasts.
- The offences were committed between 1985 and 1991.
Victim’s statements
Victim A said the abuse had conditioned her experiences in adult life. She said she still suffers debilitating nightmares and has been medicated since her twenties.
Victim B said the abuse has affected every relationship she has ever had.
“I wonder what it is like not to be afraid at night,” she says.
The recruitment scam warning catching out 47% of Gen Z
Nearly half of adults aged 18-24 have been sent a message offering a job they had not applied for, a survey by Virgin Media O2 has found.
What people should watch out for
The company warned that recruitment scams can appear convincing, with victims tricked into paying fees, sending money, clicking links or downloading software.
- O2 identified scams on its network that promised hundreds of pounds for an hour or so of work per day, whilst others just looked like a regular message from a recruitment agency.
Worries over finding work exacerbates the problem
Half of the 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed said they are concerned about missing a genuine opportunity if they ignore unexpected recruitment messages.
Of those, 35 per cent said they would be tempted to respond to an attractive offer, even if they thought it might not be genuine.
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How to check for a scam
“Before responding to an unexpected job message, check the opportunity directly with the company using contact details you’ve found yourself.”
Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud prevention at Virgin Media O2
Watch more from The i Paper
Trump is campaigning in Tennessee, Ohio and Montana this week – all states he won comfortably in 2024 but where voters are now blaming him for the spiralling cost of living and high energy costs.
In Ohio, 55 per cent of voters opted for Trump in 2024. Now, the latest polling shows 55 per cent of people in the Midwestern state disapprove of the President’s performance. His unpopularity appears to be damaging his party’s candidate in a closely fought Senate race, with the Democrat challenger, Sherrod Brown, now odds on to win and flip a seat previously held by Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance.
It is the same story across much of the country with ordinary families struggling to cope with rising prices at the petrol pump and the supermarket, and many putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the President and his policies.
In Texas, Trump has dropped 27 per cent from a net positive approval rating at the start of his term to a net negative of 21 per cent, raising the possibility of a Democrat winning a state-wide election there for the first time since 1994. James Talarico is now up significantly in the polls against Ken Paxton.
The extent of Trump’s desperation can be seen in his announcement of a deal with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, last week to buy Russian diesel. The agreement, which experts say will make no difference to rising US fuel prices, is being seen as a paltry attempt to reduce economic pressures in the US at the expense of Ukraine, and to shift the blame from Trump’s war in Iran.
Some Republican lawmakers have expressed their concern, referring to an explicit ban in 2022 by Congress on importing Russian energy, to prevent the US from financing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With postal voting now open in almost a third of states, and more opening this week, Republicans are beginning to worry that in addition to swing voters, their core voters will either stay home or vote for a Democrat. One Republican staffer told that the polling outlook has “a lot of people scared to death”.
Thirty-five of 100 seats in the Senate are being contested this year, with Democrats needing to make a net gain of four to take control of the upper chamber. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs. Trump’s Republican Party currently holds a majority in both chambers.
Most analysts say that the Democrats are likely to gain control of the House. But they are now being increasingly forecast to take control of the Senate too, which the Republicans were previously expected to hold.
Trump’s “number one priority now is to give Republican candidates some red meat, some positive stories to tell on the doorstep”, Christopher Pich, an associate professor in marketing at Nottingham University and expert in political branding and communications, told The i Paper.
“The diesel deal is very toxic for Republicans who are divided on the issue of Ukraine, but it’s a classic out of Trump’s playbook really pushing America first,” he added.
But the cost of living crisis is getting so bad in the US that changing voters’ minds about who they blame is increasingly difficult, Pich said. “When people have made up their mind to turn away from Trump, it’s very hard to win them over again.”
Max Yoeli, a senior research fellow on the US and North America programme at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said that Trump’s tactics might be too little, too late.
“For most voters, the economic frame going into the elections is already set,” he said. “The majority of voters would not be more likely to vote Republican even if gas prices dropped suddenly or if inflation fell dramatically.”
Instead, Republican candidates need to demonstrate that they understand voters’ pain and will fight for them, even if that means taking a stand against Trump and his policies, Yoeli added. “A good example is in Ohio, where Republican Senator Jon Husted has said that the war in Iran needs to come to an end as quickly as possible so we can lower gas prices.”
Husted currently trails his Democrat opponent by an average of three percentage points across polls, having been appointed to fill the seat when Vance entered the White House in January 2025.
Polls can change, and Yoeli points out that Republicans still have advantages over their rivals, including more money to spend on campaign advertising. There is also the difficulty of Democrats winning in states with a long tradition of voting Republican.
But the anger that Trump has successfully whipped up in his supporters throughout his political career could now be turning back on him, said Pich. “With the cost of living issues and the other problems in the US at the moment, that could be a driving force for people to rise up and make their voices heard to send a message to the President.”