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    Discontent with Trump buoys Democrats in Ohio: ‘People are disgusted by the corruption’

    In a reliably red state, candidates say dissatisfied voters tell them they’re planning to vote Democratic for the first timeDemocrat Kim McCarthy is canvassing in a middle-class Ohio neighborhood of four-bedroom, three-bathroom homes. There are $70,000 trucks in the driveways and robot lawnmowers at work.“This is a neighborhood of two incomes and young families; people working hard,” says McCarthy, who is running against a three-time Republican incumbent for a seat in Ohio’s house of representatives. Continue reading… More

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    If Democrats win big, will they learn the right lessons from their victory? | Jan-Werner Mueller

    No election outcome ever interprets itself. So how will Democrats interpret these results once they are known?Whichever metaphor one prefers – landslide, earthquake, wave – it seems increasingly like the Democrats can expect a significant victory in the midterms.As the joke goes, every gas station display of prices has become an ad for Democrats; what’s more, some of them have managed to connect the relatively abstract issue of corruption to the daily misery of many Americans. Continue reading… More

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    Trump rallies for Mike Rogers – and Nicki Minaj’s derriere – in Michigan

    Trump again congratulated Ohio senator’s rear end before his cheeky comment about rapper being ‘hard to miss’Donald Trump reiterated his apparent love for buxom bums during a rally in Michigan on Sunday where he encouraged the crowd to compliment rapper Nicki Minaj’s behind.Trump’s cheeky comments about Minaj’s derriere came as he explained his recent observation on the Republican Ohio senator Jon Husted’s rear end. Earlier in October, Trump said of the former college football player: “I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole – and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these, like, claws. Continue reading… More

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    Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola delays campaign stops after car crash

    Peltola and her family sustained minor injuries after a driver struck the car transporting group to campaign stopMary Peltola, a Democrat who is running for Alaska’s lone US Senate seat, and her family suffered minor injuries in a car crash while driving to a campaign stop on Saturday, her campaign said.The family was on its way to the Alaska Federation of Natives annual banquet when another vehicle crashed into the one transporting Peltola and her family, her campaign said in a statement on Sunday. Peltola required medical attention after the collision. Continue reading… More

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    Blanche defends DoJ’s pre-emptive suit to block Alaska Senate results certification

    US attorney general calls CNN ‘crazy’ for suggesting Trump’s attempt to overturn election could lead to January 6 repeatSign up for The Stakes 2026: your weekly guide to the US midtermsTodd Blanche, Donald Trump’s attorney general, lashed out during an interview on Sunday while defending the justice department’s pre-emptive lawsuit to block certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the GOP incumbent loses, calling a TV host’s question “crazy”.The testy repartee unfolded on CNN’s State of the Union over the DoJ’s unprecedented legal action, which alleges that there could be “voter confusion” due to two candidates named Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s ballot. Trump told reporters, “I’m the one that said do it” when asked about the suit. Continue reading… More

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    ‘Prairie Populists’ fight to win back rural voters long ceded to Republicans

    Democratic and independent candidates stump the US midwest and prairie states, hoping to win over Republican strongholdsIn this final stretch of the US midterm elections, Democrats and independents could win back communities and towns across America’s rural heartlands through a combination of resurgent “prairie populism”, local despair over the impact of Donald Trump’s agenda and an old-fashioned tenet of shoe-leather politics: showing up everywhere.When Dan Osborn rolled into one of the most rural counties in Nebraska earlier this month, he started walking into businesses in the tiny main drag of Arthur, ready to meet whomever he could in the town of about 100. Continue reading… More

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    A child of Japanese incarceration’s call to arms: ‘The lessons of Manzanar have never been more urgent’

    How a rebuilt, historic California baseball diamond embodies ‘the contradictions in America’s legacy’When Dan Kwong first dreamed of staging baseball games at the Japanese American concentration camp where his family was held captive during the second world war, he thought of it as an exercise in living history, an eye-catching way to convey the trauma of 120,000 men, women and children who were locked up in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Baseball was a passion for Kwong, a 71-year-old performance artist from Los Angeles. He knew that the wartime internees had played the game not just as a distraction from their predicament, but as a quiet expression of their loyalty to the United States. He wanted to stage an event that would cast the game as an act of resistance, and teach new generations about the damage governments do when they strip a whole segment of the population of their constitutional rights. Continue reading… More