Haley Stevens, the Democratic congresswoman who said she would now back the Republican nominee for US Senate in Michigan, defended her decision in an interview with conservative commentator Scott Jennings today.

"I gave him an opportunity to the Senate nominee here in in Michigan to unite around something that everyone can agree on, and then I got disinvited instead," Stevens said, referring to her comments last week where she said any appearance alongside Abdul El-Sayed was preconditioned on his denouncing an outside group's campaign ad that had blamed US support of Israel for the rising cost of living.

El-Sayed declined the request, accusing Stevens of needlessly reopening debates from a settled primary. His campaign subsequently disinvited Stevens from a campaign event scheduled for this past weekend. El-Sayed also condemned the ad, saying that he did "not agree with its contents".

"This is what happens to women," Stevens said in the interview. "Any notion that I was forced into my decision is all more of the same."

She added:

I made a decision, and you know what? I'm hearing from a ton of people, and maybe they don't want to come forward, but I'm hearing from a ton of people all over who are agreeing and are thanking me for just saying what I feel.

After Stevens lost the August Senate primary by a close margin in this year's primary, she offered El-Sayed a lukewarm endorsement, but refused to openly campaign for El-Sayed for months.

Trump noted that he'd spent the last two weeks crisscossing the country, holding rallies on behalf of several embattled Republicans.

"America is ready to go. They're ready to vote. I hope they're ready to do the right thing," he said, while downplaying the effects of the ongoing Iran war in a final plea to voters.

"I don't know if you even call it a war because we haven't been doing any fighting for months," Trump said. "Oil prices are plunging now. They're plunging a record. Nobody's ever seen a plunge like this, and they'll be down. I hope people realize that when they go into the voting booth, because we had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon."

On the eve of the midterms, national average fuel prices have surged to $4.10 per gallon for gasoline – a $1.00 increase over last year – while diesel has climbed to $6.20 per gallon, nearly double its price a year ago.

Trump has now mentioned the upcoming elections, running through his greatest hits of talking points, and repeating several falsehoods in the process.

"These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up. There's never been anything like what we're seeing: jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members," he said, baselessly claiming (again) that , the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan, is a member of the Islamist group.

Trump added that Democratic candidates are "all committed to the same radical agenda: open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilation of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy costs skyrocketing and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world, hoping to get them to be able to vote".

Donald Trump has been speaking for nearly 20 minutes, and he's yet to actually make any substantial reference to the midterm elections which will take place tomorrow – and will decide the makeup of Congress in his final two years in office.

Instead, the president is using the opportunity to talk about his construction and makeover projects throughout Washington DC, including on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

"It's really a beautiful thing. It's a work of art in many ways, but it was a work of art that never worked, but now it will work," Trump said, while joking that the pool should be renamed after him.

Now, Republican , a Trump-backed congresswoman who beat the incumbent in her primary, will face , a Democrat and third-generation farmer.

Sabato's Crystal Ball has moved the Senate race in the Pelican state from "likely Republican" to "leans Republican" – a sign that the Davis might be diluting Letlow's strength.

One of the country's leading election forecasters, Crystal Ball also moved several of their "toss up" races to "leans Democratic". This includes the key Senate races in Maine, Kansas, Texas and Ohio.

Meanwhile, the forecaster also moved the competitive Iowa Senate race from "toss up" to "leans Republican". Here, Democrat is attempting to beat Republican congresswoman to win the open seat in the Hawkeye state.

As I noted earlier, we're due to hear from shortly, as he delivers a speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington DC – just a day before voters head to the polls in the midterm elections.

According to the press pool, the president is set to leave the White House shortly. We'll bring you the latest as it gets started.

Vice-president is rallying in Swanton, Ohio, ahead of tomorrow's critical midterm elections.

Opening his remarks just now, he told a joke about his daughter wanting to donate two of her brother's favorite toys to a Christmas toy drive.

"I realized, ladies and gentlemen, that I've got a little work to do, because a little girl who's taking from her brothers … maybe she's a Democrat."

There was a mix of groans, boos and some laughs from the audience. Vance then merged into more bullish Republican territory, talking about his own humble beginnings and how great it is to be American.

A federal judge has dismissed criminal charges against two former FBI officials who were accused of lying about their involvement in the investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of former president Joe Biden.

Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said prosecutors failed to show probable cause that the two former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, had knowingly made false statements.

Faruqui also suggested prosecutors purposefully brought the charges at a sensitive time, just 10 days before the midterm elections.

The judge said during the hearing:

What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization. I will ​not bury ​my head in the sand and pretend I cannot read a calendar.

The judge criticized federal prosecutors for rushing the prosecution and making "critical mistakes". Faruqui said that some of the former officials' ​statements were not actually false and others could be attributed to "honest mistakes of memory".

My colleague Ariana Baio has the story:

in Wever, Iowa

On a Monday afternoon in late September, Donald Trump gathered Iowa Republicans in the Oval Office to make a big announcement: the firm Mesabi Metallics would invest $15bn to make the midwestern state the site of the largest steel mill in the country.

One month later, and just days before the midterm election, word has spread in the small town of Wever, population 142, that the mill will be built somewhere nearby. And that's been about it – no shovels in the dirt, workers on a job site or machinery on the dirt roads leading down towards the Mississippi River.

Ask about the project in town, and the reaction isn't enthusiasm, but skepticism.

"More jobs," Missy Pollpeter, 52, said of the project's potential as she dined at the Green Bay Bar and Grill, Wever's only restaurant. "If they bring it here," her husband, Mike Pollpeter, 60, said as he finished a burger.

On paper, a steel mill seems like a great development for a corner of Iowa that has a long history both of manufacturing and the disinvestment that has struck so much of the industrial midwest. According to the White House, the project would create 6,000 jobs during its construction and then 1,750 when it is complete, and generate $95bn in economic activity.

What people can't get over is how the project was debuted, and who was announced it. The president made the plan public just over a month before tomorrow's midterm elections, when Iowa will play a major role in determining if Democrats regain control of Congress amid Trump's downbeat approval ratings. Wever itself lies in a congressional district that is viewed as the most competitive in the state.

And then there's the fact that Trump has a history of making proclamations that don't quite pan out.

You can read Chris's dispatch here:

A day before the midterm elections, the justice department has asked the supreme court to force Califronia election officials to set aside 20,000 mail ballots, that the administration claims were submitted by noncitizens.

This is the government's latest attempt to block the Golden state from processing the votes, after the justice department gave California officials just 48 hours to review the list and said it would sue the state if officials did not sequester ballots from those whose citizenship it could not confirm.

Last week, a federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.

A reminder that there are more than 23 million registered voters in California and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.

As I noted earlier, the latest polling from the New York Times/Siena College shows Democrats leading in key Senate races ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections. One of the major battlegrounds is the competition in Texas, where Democratic state representative James Talarico has a seven-point lead against Republican challenger Ken Paxton, the scandal-ridden attorney general who has Donald Trump's endorsement.

My colleague David Smith reports from Austin on Talarico's meteoric rise, and how he stands a chance of winning a Senate seat that has eluded Democrats for almost 40 years.

Read his full dispatch here:

In an interview with CNN, the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, addressed the anger directed at Haley Stevens, her colleague, after the representative announced she would endorse Republican Mike Rogers in the state's bitter US Senate race.

"I have been worried about her because I know it's really hard to be in these kinds of circumstances. I talked to her multiple times last week," Dingell said. "And I was shocked. I can't lie about that."

Various reports noted that just hours before Stevens made her announcement pulling her support for Abdul El-Sayed, she spoke to Dingell on the phone and assured her that she would still be backing the Democratic nominee in the upcoming election.

"I was very shocked at what she [Stevens] did, but the hate and the anger in this country right now is very scary and it's coming from all sides," Dingell added in the interview.

When asked specifically what was worrying Dingell about Stevens' decision, the congresswoman said that it was clear "she has had some hurt feelings".

Dingell added: "It's very difficult to lose an election. There are many people that respect her. She was feeling torn. She has a very significant Jewish community that itself was torn on this issue. She's had a lot of people saying many things to her."

While Dingell said that she wouldn't "speculate" about what changed for Stevens and why she ended up backing Rogers, she noted just how hard it has been to quiet the vocal frustration from within her party towards Stevens.

"I tried to get many of my colleagues to focus on tomorrow's election because this is a distraction. It's been a distraction for 10 days and focus on what the real issues are," Dingell said. "But there are a lot of people that don't understand what she did and are very, very angry and you've heard those words and seen those statements."

She noted that the way the four-term congresswoman went out "has probably permanently hurt her" and her future within the Democratic party.

While Donald Trump will rally in Washington DC today, his vice-president, , will be in Rome, New York, to stump for Republican House candidates in competitive races in the state.

This includes, , the sticker company exec and rapper trying to keep Elise Stefanik's seat in Congress red, and who served as a senior official at the agriculture department and is trying to flip her district.

Vance will be joined by the president's son, , on the trail today, and the pair will head to Ohio later for another set of campaign events.

Chris Pappas is stopping himself from getting too excited ahead of Tuesday's midterm election.

"I take nothing for granted," said the four-term US representative and Democratic nominee for New Hampshire's open Senate seat. "This is a very purple, competitive state. Elections are never in the bag here."

The race to replace the retiring Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen has emerged as a source of 11th hour anxiety for the party.

In their attempt to gain four seats and reclaim control of the Senate, Democrats can't afford to lose one they already hold. But September polling showing Pappas virtually tied with his Republican opponent, former senator John Sununu, rattled party strategists and raised the prospect that New Hampshire could become an unexpected battleground.

The warning signs were striking in a state Donald Trump has lost in each of his three presidential bids.

While Pappas has regained a narrow advantage in most polls, and the Cook Political Report moved the race in early October from "toss-up" to "lean Democrat", his closing message has focused heavily on tying Sununu to an unpopular president.

Trump's approval rating sits at just 32% in the state, according to a recent University of New Hampshire poll, giving Democrats hope that voter frustration with the administration will ultimately benefit Pappas's run.

"Sununu has spent most of the last year on team Trump, and now that we're getting within range of the election, he's recognizing how unpopular the president is," Pappas said as he traveled the state in the final days on the trail, often joined by party heavyweights, like Arizona senator Mark Kelly and former vice-president Kamala Harris.

Sununu, however, has spent much of the campaign arguing that independence, not loyalty, defines his political record.

The former senator's anti-Trump bona fides do have some roots. In 2024, he voiced his support or Nikki Haley in an op-ed during Republican primary campaign, and also branded Trump a "loser".

Read my full dispatch from New Hampshire here:

Abdul El-Sayed's Senate campaign announced that it received $2.4m in donations on Sunday, the day that Haley Stevens announced she would now pull her support from the Democratic nominee and back Republican Mike Rogers.

El-Sayed's campaign said that the amount is a single-day fundraising record for his Senate bid. His staff also noted that more than 26,000 people contributed for the first time on Sunday.

In the four hours after Stevens defected on Sunday, Politico reported that El-Sayed's campaign raised $1.2m, which was already its second-highest day of donations.