A day after President Donald Trump said he would start paying for controversial taxpayer-funded ads with a campaign account, there’s no sign he plans to refund the millions of federal dollars already spent on them. A White House official insisting on anonymity said Trump's promises don't mean there's any reimbursement coming for the $12 million worth of ads that have already aired as part of a $20 million campaign using money Congress appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.
The White House also sought to clarify Trump’s comments that the U.S. should let Iran attack Los Angeles and San Diego, saying that the president wants to protect the US from nuclear war. Democrats and military veterans say no president should suggest that it's OK to consider Americans collateral damage.
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And Trump on Tuesday said he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible case of plague at a Siberian research institute. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he would be talking with Putin about the case “very soon.”
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The Federal Communications Commission is considering loosening rules on political robocalls, including those with artificial intelligence-generated voices, ahead of November’s midterms.
Federal law currently bans most robocalls to cellphones unless the caller gets consent beforehand. The conservative Club for Growth is asking the Republican-led FCC to allow political groups to use artificial or prerecorded voices in unsolicited wireless calls.
The FCC advanced the request for public comment and could rule on it as soon as late October.
Consumer advocacy groups warn the proposed change could trigger a surge of unwanted, partisan and potentially misleading automated calls as voters cast their ballots. The potential perils became evident two years ago when AI robocalls imitating then-President Joe Biden targeted thousands of primary voters in New Hampshire.
The FCC didn’t respond to a request for comment. Ana Gomez, the sole Democratic commissioner, said she opposes the move.
“Some very tough political choices stare us in the face,” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech Wednesday in Singapore, ahead of autumn IMF-World Bank meetings to be held in Bangkok next week.
“My message to the world’s economic policymakers next week will be this: we cannot keep delaying necessary policy action — you have the tools, now have the wisdom to use them.”
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U.S. stocks are pulling back from Tuesday’s record highs, reflecting pressure as yields climbed in the bond market.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 5.35% from 5.27% late Tuesday, near its highest level since 2002. Higher yields put downward pressure on stocks and other investments and can slow economies by making it more expensive for everyone to borrow money.
Bond yields are being pushed up by rising oil prices amid uncertainty about the Iran war, to $102.10 for a barrel of Brent crude, and by worries about how much debt the U.S. and other governments are taking on each day.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there should be no confusion over the Trump administration’s ultimate goal with respect to the Iran war — and that is to prevent the country from ever developing a nuclear weapon.
Rubio made the comments on Wednesday at a news conference in Athens with the Greek foreign minister after Vice President JD Vance told Reuters that the administration might be able to accept an agreement that calls for Iran to make a “meaningful” decrease in its capacity for nuclear enrichment.
President Donald Trump has previously said Iran should not be allowed the capability to enrich.
“I don’t understand where the confusion is about the nuclear program,” Rubio said. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Simple, period, end of story. I’m not going to go into the details about what would be acceptable or not. I can tell you this: that they’re not going to ever have a nuclear program.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins argued during the first of four debates with Democrat Troy Jackson that she’s the most independent senator in Congress, repeatedly voting against Trump’s agenda. “I’m not exactly his favorite senator,” she said.
Jackson, a former state Senate president and logger, pointed to Collins’ critical vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee who eventually helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion. “Would you trust her to pick the next Supreme Court justice?” he asked.
Collins argued that her seniority and experience in the Senate have resulted in money and resources for Maine. She touted her ability to remove certain items from Trump’s trade war with Canada, including pulp, concrete and road salt.
Jackson’s response: “We can’t eat road salt.”
Zohran Mamdani commemorated the anniversary of the October 7 attacks with a statement that denounces Hamas for committing “horrific war crimes” and characterizes Israel’s military response as a “devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The mayor has long been a vocal supporter of Palestinian civil rights and has fiercely opposed Israel’s military actions in Gaza. His statement calls October 7 “profoundly painful,” noting “Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others.” But it also condemns the Israeli government, saying “it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children” in response.
“We must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue,” said Mamdani, a Democrat and the city’s first Muslim mayor. He’s set to attend an October 7 vigil later Wednesday and then meet with Palestinian New Yorkers at night, according to his schedule.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told The Associated Press in a rare interview that rhetoric about the court from Trump and his administration doesn’t sit well with him.
“I personally am not pleased with that,” he said. “Everybody in this country has the right to criticize what we do. The substance of their criticism can be quite harsh. If we deserve it, then that’s fine. But rhetoric is a different story.”
Alito also criticized the escalating volume of emergency appeals before the court, but said there’s little the justices can do to change the trajectory. Such petitions have skyrocketed during Trump’s second administration, putting the court at the center of hotly debated issues such as the Republican president’s new ballroom construction and his proposed restrictions on mail ballots in the midterm elections.
Alito spoke in connection with his first book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of The Constitution, The Court and Our Country.”
Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, trying to stop a comeback attempt from Democratic former Rep. Elaine Luria in a battleground Virginia district, has hammered Luria for stock trades and her previous opposition to a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. Luria has since reversed herself and said lawmakers can “set an example by not owning or trading individual stocks.”
“People are tired of that type of corruption in Washington,” Kiggans said.
Republican Rep. Rob Wittman may have spent nearly two decades in Congress, but his campaign is emphasizing the humbler parts of his resume. His Democratic opponent, prosecutor Shannon Taylor, is telling voters in the red-leaning district that Wittman is “too busy getting rich” by trading stocks in companies he’s supposed to regulate, a characterization he says is false.
Taylor’s campaign is one of many embracing anti-corruption messages in an election otherwise defined by high gas prices, persistent inflation and sinking confidence in the economy. With so much frustration over the cost of living, Democrats are accusing incumbents of enriching themselves or donors rather than looking out for constituents, and reminding voters of controversies surrounding Trump’s family business interests.
Taylor pledges to support a stock trading ban, term limits — something Wittman argued isn’t necessary — and a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists. “Politicians in both parties are cheating the system, getting rich by trading stock while getting information only they have. Personally profiting when corporations rip us off,” Taylor said in one television advertisement.
“Anyone who is stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people, or screwing over the American people, you are now on notice,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
An AP-NORC poll in September found registered voters nationally are more likely to describe Republicans than Democrats as corrupt.
Democratic candidate Jamie Ager, a farmer running for an open North Carolina U.S. House seat where Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards dropped his reelection bid after an ethics investigation into improper conduct with female staff, has been campaigning on that sentiment. “I’ve had enough of self-serving politicians who keep getting richer at our expense,” Ager said.
Rebecca Bennett, a Democratic congressional candidate in New Jersey, has criticized Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. over stock trading disclosures during a four-month absence from Congress. Kean didn’t disclose his hospitalization for depression until he returned to Washington, and he said it was financial advisers, not him, trading the stocks.
Democrat Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of the 2024 campaign with significantly more money than Trump only to lose every critical swing state and the White House. Elon Musk’s $25 million didn’t lift his preferred candidate to a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. And Tom Steyer didn’t advance in the California governor’s race despite spending $216 million of his own money.
The $1 billion that Republicans have amassed compares with roughly $579 million held by a comparable collection of major Democratic groups.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said his party is facing an “obscene” amount of spending that could swamp them in the midterms.
“We’re never going to have as much money as them,” Schumer told the AP. “I sum up the election in this sentence: Can a massive Republican advantage in money beat a massive Democratic advantage in better candidates and political climate? I bet it can’t.”
The challenge is acute in places like Texas, where Trump will travel on Wednesday for the second time in a week to stump for Republican Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign. The state hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, yet MAGA Inc. has spent more than $22 million in the past month, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Texas PAC, which is aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has spent more than $83 million on advertising in the past month, an extraordinary amount to protect what’s normally a safe Republican seat. But while Texas PAC was charged $450,000 to air a single spot in the Austin market during a football game, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s campaign paid $50,000 for a spot during the same game in the same market, according to AdImpact.
Republicans are increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping midterm election losses as the party reckons with Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran.
The cash advantage, spread out across a half-dozen groups, is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc., which had nearly $416 million on hand at the end of August and increased its spending on critical races in September.
But that money may have come too late, forcing the president’s group to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of air time. Four Republican Senate campaign officials said groups that reserved advertising time last spring paid much lower rates than MAGA Inc. and its affiliated groups. Now, the Trump-connected organizations are sometimes paying more than five times what they would have spent if they had acted earlier.
Relatives of some soldiers killed in the Iran war joined dozens of Gold Star families from prior U.S. conflicts Tuesday at the White House, where Trump offered words of comfort and candles were lit for the fallen service members, according to one of the widows who attended.
Not all families of the six soldiers killed March 1 in the deadliest attack of the Iran war opted to attend. Troops who survived the attack have raised questions about why they were stationed at a site that didn’t have sufficient air protection and was viewed as a likely target.
Michelle Tietjens and other relatives have said they are angry the Army still hasn’t answered questions over whether enough was done to protect their loved ones. But Tietjens and her teenage son traveled from Bellevue, Nebraska, to attend the event to honor her husband, Master Sgt. Noah Tietjens, who was killed along with five other Army Reserve soldiers by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait.
Tietjens said the reception “didn’t change my feelings on them giving me answers,” and added that she spoke with someone at the White House who offered to try to help.
Trump on Tuesday said he has a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible case of plague at a Siberian research institute.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he would be talking with Putin about the case “very soon.” Health authorities are investigating after the death of an employee at an anti-plague institute, which authorities attributed to pneumonia with an unknown cause.
Asked what the U.S. intelligence community was saying about the case, Trump said the U.S. is in “very deep discussions” on the topic. “We’ll be able to report about it, probably tomorrow,” Trump said.
The World Health Organization on Tuesday said the case presents a “very low” risk outside Russia. The United Nations agency said it was in contact with Russian authorities following reports of the death last week of a woman who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.
The White House clarified Donald Trump’s comments at a Monday night rally, explaining that the president was not insinuating that he wanted Iran to attack U.S. cities but instead wanted to prevent Tehran from having that capability.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on social media Tuesday that the president’s comments have been misunderstood and misrepresented in a “media freakout” that is “not rooted in reality.”
Trump was discussing the Iran war and the resulting high gas prices that have become a midterm liability for Republicans during his remarks in Nebraska when he mentioned the possibility of an Iranian attack on U.S. soil.
“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” he said of the war and its economic fallout. “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
The commentary was delivered in the familiar meandering style that he uses at campaign rallies, when he speaks for extended periods — often an hour or more — and is only occasionally following prepared remarks on a teleprompter.
A day after President Donald Trump said he would start paying for controversial taxpayer-funded ads with a campaign account, there’s no sign he plans to refund the millions of federal dollars already spent on them.
Nearly $12 million worth of ads have already aired, according to AdImpact, as part of the $20 million the Department of Homeland Security tapped for the contract.
But Trump’s plan to pay for the ads with MAGA Inc. doesn’t mean there’s any reimbursement coming, said a White House official who was not authorized to talk publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said the ads were “really good” and “promotion for the country, done by many presidents before.” Asked whether he’d repay the funds already spent, he said, “We’ll decide.”
The ads, which began airing in late September, glorify Trump and echo his political messaging going into the midterms. Republicans and Democrats alike have said the ads aren’t an appropriate use of U.S. government money.
