Trump tells Iowa rally crowd he encouraged Ramaswamy to keep running widely criticized campaign ad – as it happened

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments: Donald Trump told supporters in Iowa he had encouraged Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, to keep running an attack ad featuring the mother of his Democratic rival, Dr Amy Acton, who had lost custody of her daughter at age 12 because her husband was charged with raping the young girl. “I said, ‘You’ve got to ride with it’”, the president said. Iowa Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson broke with the president by denouncing the attack ad, saying: “I think it’s absolutely terrible, and I think they should take the ad down.” Attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out a scenario in which the justice department would try to block states from certifying midterm election results. … or at least the stage, exiting to the live-blogger’s favorite tune, YMCA. The president just wrapped up 90 minutes of remarks, saying very little that he has not said before, but he did devote an extended portion of the speech to defending the attack ad his ally, Vivek Ramaswamy, is running in Ohio, to the dismay of many Republicans, including Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson – the person Trump was there to promote. “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m running… pretend I’m on the ballot,” Donald Trump told supporters in Iowa on Thursday, as he has at each stop on his “midterm blitz”. “Remember, I’m on the ballot,” he said later in the speech. “Because I am on the ballot. Really, it’s our stuff, it’s going to be taken away. If we if we don’t win, it’s going to be taken away. So I am, really, on the ballot.” Of course, if the president really wanted to make the midterms a referendum on himself, he could take a page from the leaders of parliamentary democracies and pledge to resign from office should Republicans lose the House and Senate, something he has not done. Speaking in Iowa on Thursday, Donald Trump told supporters that he had personally encouraged Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, to keep running an attack ad featuring the mother of his Democratic rival, Dr Amy Acton, who had lost custody of her daughter at age 12 because her husband was charged with raping the young girl. “They did an ad of the mother saying the daughter is incompetent, a liar and disgusting unreliable person,” Trump said, adding some claims that were not, in fact, in the ad. “My mom would not say that about me - even if she believed it,” the president added, making light of the testimony of a woman who sided with the man charged with raping her own 12-year-old daughter. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘Wow, that means Vivek easily will win the race’. And then I got a call from Vivek,” Trump said. “He said, ‘What would you recommend? Because I’m getting killed in the press.’ Why? He said, ‘Because they think I should immediately take the ad off.’” “The mother said horrible things about your opponent,” Trump said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to ride with it’”. The president made no mention of the fact that the Republican Senate candidate he was there to support, Ashley Hinson, denounced the ad earlier on Thursday. “I think it’s absolutely terrible, and I think they should take the ad down,” Hinson told ABC News ahead of Trump’s appearance. As he frequently does at campaign rallies, Donald Trump boasted to supporters in Iowa on Thursday that he “aced” what he called “an aptitude test” that is, in fact, a screening for mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. While the test does include a short test of basic mathematical ability, in which patients are asked to perform serial subtraction by 7 starting at 60, Trump claimed on Thursday that the mathematical test was much more complicated. “The first question easy. The second question is easy. And by the time you get up to number 30, there are many people that can answer those questions. I’ll tell you,” the president said. “They’ll say like: ‘Take a number, any number’. Say, 49, ‘triple it’, and they go pretty much in this speed, ‘triple it and divide by four; add 2,019; subtract 87; divide by three; multiply by nine. What is the number?’” As supporters shouted out numbers, Trump just asserted that he solved the problem without saying what the answer is. “Not a lot of people are going to be able to do that,” Trump said. “Not a lot. I did it. I did it three times,” the president said. The president has given similarly detailed descriptions of mathematical problems he says were on the test, and claims to have solved, in previous speeches, but never once provided an answer. “These are tough questions, you know,” Trump told elderly supporters at The Villages in Florida in May. “They say, ‘Take a number, any number.’ Okay, I’ll take 99. ‘Multiply times nine.’ Okay. ‘Divide it by three.’ Good. ‘Add 4,293.’ That’s good. ‘Divide by two; subtract 93; divide by nine. What is your answer?’ Now they go a little slower than that, but not much. I don’t want to waste a lot of time, but there aren’t a lot of people that get it right. I got it right.” Despite the fact that he is in Iowa, ostensibly to support Republican candidates, Donald Trump quickly turned to attacks on two candidates running in other states, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, repeating false claims he has made before about two prominent Muslim Americans. Making no effort to conceal the anti-Muslim racism and fear-mongering he has put at the center of his pitch to Republican voters, Trump claimed that El-Sayed is “a jihadist”. He then recited multiple falsehoods about Omar, including the false claims that she married her brother and that she told an interviewer this week that she did not, “as far as I know”, which she did not. Donald Trump started speaking, about 40 minutes late, to supporters in Sioux City, Iowa on Thursday by boasting about how well he had done in the state in his own three runs for office. Unusually, the president acknowledged that his term in office is drawing (slowly) to a close. “You know, we only have a little more than two years left. Can you believe it?” Trump said, before adding: “But I’m going to have a lot of power when I leave.” He then turned to reciting a litany of lies about Josh Turek, the Democrat running against Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, casting him as a supporter of “taxpayer-funded transgender brutalization surgeries and in favor of men in girls bathrooms.” Lebron James mimed a golf swing and took an imaginary jump shot, as the national anthem was performed during Tuesday’s Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks match-up. His gestures provoked the ire of Donald Trump, who berated him as “no good” and a “TOTAL DISGRACE” on social media. “LeBron James should apologize to all of those Great American Warriors and Heroes who died for the American Flag, and all that our Country stands for!” Trump wrote in a Wednesday Truth Social post. The NBA star and Trump have been at odds for several years. In 2017, Trump rescinded a White House invitation to the Golden State Warriors, after Stephen Curry indicated he would not want to go. James famously called Trump a “bum,” saying his presidency took away from the customary honor. The feud appeared to rekindle this summer, when in July, Trump suggested James was a “racist,” without much further explanation, after being asked to compare his career to that of Michael Jordan’s. “I only like people that like me,” Trump said. Donald Trump is expected to speak soon at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa in support of Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, who broke with the president on Thursday by denouncing an attack ad he has supported in the Ohio governor race. As Trump defended the ad, from Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, in which the estranged mother of the Democratic candidate, Dr Amy Acton, calls her daughter “a liar”, Hinson joined the bipartisan backlash against the ad triggered by the fact that Acton was removed from her mother’s custody at age 12, after her stepfather was charged with raping her. In an interview ahead of today’s rally, Hinson was asked by Jonathan Karl of ABC News about the ad from Ramaswamy’s campaign. “It’s terrible,” Hinson said. “I think about it as a mom, and you think about kid surviving childhood sexual abuse and having to relive that trauma on TV again. I think it’s absolutely terrible, and I think they should take the ad down.” Hinson also called the comment from vice-president JD Vance, that he was disgusted by Republican criticism of the ad, “ridiculous”. “Again, I think it’s wrong and should come down.” Hinson, who currently represents Iowa in the House, is campaigning to replace Republican senator Joni Ernst, who revealed in 2019 that she was a survivor of sexual assault who had been raped in college. Hinson spoke at the rally on Thursday about 90 minutes before Trump’s schedule arrival time. The US supreme court ruled on Thursday that New Hampshire students cannot use their school-issued ID cards as proof of identity to vote, handing a victory to the state’s Republicans. The high court cited a previous ruling, “lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” in its decision to keep intact an April state law that struck high school and college IDs from a list of acceptable voter documents. House Bill 323, signed by New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Kelly Ayotte, requires government-issued IDs, such as a passport or driver license. The Coalition for Open Democracy, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit, had sued to block the legislation, arguing that it raised unconstitutional barriers for the state’s young voting bloc. Republican legislators nationwide have embraced stricter voter ID laws, framing them as a safeguard against alleged voter fraud. Voting rights groups have argued that the narrow range of acceptable forms of identification disenfranchises millions of voters. According to the Brennan Center, “more than 49 million American adults don’t possess an unexpired driver’s license with their current name and address. Seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students are especially likely to lack such documents.” At the White House on Thursday, Donald Trump blamed the media for, in his eyes, unfairly attacking the estranged mother of Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, after the candidate’s mother recorded a campaign ad for Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee, in which she called the daughter she has not seen since she was 12 “a liar”. The ad has been widely denounced this week by Republicans and Democrats because Acton’s mother lost custody of her children in 1978 after her husband, Acton’s stepfather, was charged with sexually assaulting his stepdaughter, who was 12 at the time. Trump, who was informed on Wednesday by Karen Travers of ABC News that Acton had “suffered sexual abuse by her mother’s husband” as a child, offered his full support for the ad earlier on Thursday, without acknowledging that Acton’s mother was estranged because she had stayed with the man charged with assaulting her daughter. The president was confronted with that fact by Kaitlan Collins of CNN as he left the White House on Thursday for a campaign rally in Iowa. “Why did you make no mention of the sexual abuse allegations that Amy Acton made against her stepfather who stayed married to her mother?” the CNN correspondent asked. Trump again professed total ignorance of the sexual assault allegation and attacked the questioner instead. “What happened is the the press has ganged up on a woman making a horrible statement about her daughter. And I don’t know why she should be shielded, or the daughter should be-” Trump said. “She accused her stepfather of child rape,” Collins explained. “Wait a minute,” the president continued. “The mother made a horrible statement about the daughter. Said she was a dirty liar.” Trump then complained to Collins that if his late mother had said made statements like that about him, “you’d be the first one to be broadcasting and you would have found nothing wrong with them”. The president ignored Collins when she said “but the child abuse allegation is different”. “The press has ganged up because you hate it, because that one ad should really win,” Trump went on. “Look, if what the mother said about the daughter is half right, she has no right even running for the governor of Ohio,” the president, who has a long record of documented lies, said – suddenly claiming that making false statement should be disqualifying for a public official. “What about what the daughter said about her mother?” Collins asked. “I don’t know what the daughter said,” Trump replied, clinging to his ignorance like a life preserver. “I don’t know.” “Her mother remained married her stepfather who sexually abused her when she was 12 years old,” Collins repeated. “Well, when did she make that statement? Was it just recently?” Trump replied, apparently trying to cast doubt on the allegation that was, in fact, made in 1978. After Collins and another reporter said Acton made the allegation a sa child in the 1970s, Trump said. “You know, I have no idea. All I know is Amy Acton’s mother said horrible things about Amy Acton, calling her a liar and other things,” the president said. “And I say that she’s fair game.” “You’re trying to help Amy Acton get elected – the press has teamed up to help Amy Acton get elected,” Trump repeated. “And that’s all it is.” The Department of Justice has reportedly opened a criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, over allegations that he illegally profited from his role as an adviser to the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The investigation was triggered by a referral from the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unnamed officials told both newspapers. Lewandowski’s lawyer, Adam Trigg, denied the allegatinos in a statement to the Times. “Mr. Lewandowski has not been contacted by the Justice Department regarding any investigation, and he denies any wrongdoing when he was proudly serving his country in a voluntary capacity,” Trigg said. Noem, who was fired by Trump in March, subsequently filed for divorce from her husband, citing “irreconcilable differences”, amid speculation that she was in a relationship with Lewandowski. At a congressional hearing in March, a Democratic member of Congress asked Noem whether she had had sexual relations with Lewandowski. Answering under oath, Noem – who was accompanied to the hearing by her then-husband – dismissed the question as “tabloid garbage” but did not say no. The state department asked foreign service officials who are up whether they voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, according to a report by the Washington Sun. Citing several former and current state department officials familiar with the matter, the Washington sun reports that top brass at the state department made clear that only those who voted for Trump would be eligible for the mid-to-upper level foreign service roles. They also reportedly told employees that their donation history would be examined and any donation to Democrats would be disqualifying. However, politicized personnel decisions are prohibited under federal law when it comes to career civil servants. The report notes that senior Democrats have been aware of allegations about political affiliations being a factor in career development decisions. “These are critical national security positions and individuals should be chosen for their experience and ability, not their political loyalty. We are working with the House and other relevant committees to thoroughly investigate all such claims,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the outgoing Democrat from New Hampshire, told the Washington Sun in a statement. A spokesperson for the state department declined to comment on the voting history questions from the Sun, but emphasized the importance of “fidelity” in a statement to the outlet. “Fidelity means upholding the Constitution and the law and executing policy with loyalty to the American people and their interests,” the spokesperson said. “It emphasizes the critical importance of service, integrity, and policy alignment across the Foreign Service. It is not about partisan behavior but rather about executing the president’s vision for foreign policy.” Donald Trump has defended Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial gubernatorial campaign ad that features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, and has been widely condemned by Republicans. “Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. A reminder, Donna Arthur hasn’t seen her daughter since she was removed from her custody when she was 12 – after her husband was arrested, charged and indicted for raping Acton, his stepdaughter. Arthur then fled the state of Ohio with her husband and remained married to him until his death in 2004. Earlier, Mike DeWine, the outgoing Republican governor of Ohio, called on Ramaswamy’s campaign to take down the recent ad. DeWine called the spot “deeply, deeply troubling” and said it was “wrong” to have run it. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down,” he added. Meanwhile, a key election forecaster has subsequently shifted the Ohio gubernatorial race from “toss up” to “leans Democratic” as a result of the ad controversy. Attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out a scenario in which the justice department would weigh in on states’ certifying process or try to block states from certifying the election. “Of course there’s scenarios we could all come up with,” Blanche said when asked by a reporter earlier today. “It is not DoJ’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that – of course I’m not going to say that.” Calley ⁠Means, a ⁠senior ⁠adviser to US health secretary ⁠Robert F Kennedy ⁠Jr who ‌has also ‌worked ‌in the White House to further his “Make America ‌Healthy Again” policies, quit his role today. He said he was doing so with “tremendous respect” for Trump and Kennedy. “They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” he wrote on social media. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history – and I know this movement is just getting started.” A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states – California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – into whether noncitizens are registered to vote. US district court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it is leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on election day (3 November). Donald Trump has defended Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial gubernatorial campaign ad, that has been widely derided by Republicans, and features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. Donna Arthur hasn’t seen her daughter since she was removed from her custody when she was 12 – after her husband was arrested, charged and indicted for raping Acton, his stepdaughter. Arthur fled the state of Ohio with her husband and remained married to him until his death in 2004. Trump said the backlash, including from the state’s GOP governor Mike DeWine, is “a concerted and well coordinated attack” to convince Ramaswamy to take down the advertisement. “Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. “The ‘Artificial’ News has teamed up against him in order to damage, demean, and embarrass a Republican who is leading in the Polls.” Trump also denigrated DeWine, the outgoing governor who has endorsed Ramaswamy but clashed with Trump and Vance during the 2024 campaign, and accused him of being “disloyal to the Republican Party”. The president insisted that DeWine “probably wants a Dumocrat to win, and certainly doesn’t want someone who will do a much better job than he is capable of doing”. Trump added: “Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!” The president said that taking part in the ad “took a lot of courage” for Arthur to do. “What she was really doing was saving Ohio from making a truly horrible choice!” Trump wrote. “The Press is trying to convince everyone that this Ad is bad, because it’s so good! Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt’.” Susan Collins’ deciding vote to confirm conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh has become a flashpoint in the Senate race in Maine. This midterm election is the first time Collins is on the ballot since the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. “I want to say, for every woman in Maine, if we want to be able to deliver our children safely … the most important thing that we can do for women in Maine is to vote for Troy Jackson for the United States Senate,” said representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman stumping with Jackson in Portland today. The Guardian was the first to report that the one of the country’s oldest abortion rights groups, Reproductive Freedom for All, would endorse Jackson in this year’s Senate race. Speaking to the crowd in Portland, Troy Jackson said that – if elected – his “day one agenda” in the Senate would involve repealing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Donald Trump’s domestic policy legislation that was signed into law last year. “I know will be a big uphill deal. So we can get some semblance of our healthcare back,” Jackson said. “I mean, our healthcare wasn’t good before, but you know, trying to get that back so that we can work on Medicare for all. I believe strongly in that, and that’s my top priority.” Discussing the immigration crackdown in Maine that saw a 26-year-old man in Biddeford killed at the hands of a federal immigration agent, Ocasio-Cortez noted how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in Maine has been disproportionate. “They are sending ICE out in droves to intimidate not just the Somali community, not just the immigrant community, but to intimidate all of us,” the Democratic congresswoman said. She added that tech companies which have substantial contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are “going out to lunch” on the $70bn funding bill for federal immigration enforcement that Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent, “helped rubber stamp”. “Whenever this administration is targeting an individual community, it is their way of trying to wedge open the door to compromise all of our rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now campaigning in Portland, Maine, alongside Troy Jackson, the Democratic hopeful for US Senate. “We’ve got a logger that we are hoping to send to the United States Senate, that’s for working people and higher wages, on healthcare and so much more,” she said, describing Jackson on stage. And following up from our last post, Calley Means has officially announced his resignation on social media. He said he was doing so with “tremendous respect” for Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary. “They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” he wrote. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history – and I know this movement is just getting started.” Calley ⁠Means, a ⁠senior ⁠adviser to US health secretary ⁠Robert F Kennedy ⁠Jr who ‌has also ‌worked ‌in the White House to further his “Make America ‌Healthy Again” policies, has quit his role today, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports. According to reports, Means departed his role over frustrations that the White House had stalled progress on Kennedy’s Maha agenda, but said he would continue working to further the movement. In a statement to Politico, Means said: “I leave with tremendous respect for President Trump and RFK – two historic figures who are committed to confronting a corrupt DC bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo. “The past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and healthcare incentives that profit from us being sick. This movement is in the first inning and just getting started.” The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately ‌respond to a Reuters request for comment. Two administration officials have told Politico that Means’s breaking point came this week after a meeting between Kennedy and White House officials to discuss defining ultra-processed foods (a key Maha priority) was postponed. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one of the officials. “Calley’s been pushing very, very hard for this, but it’s been a very opaque process and has been just continuously stonewalled.” Asked by a reporter earlier whether there was any scenario in which the Department of Justice would weigh in on states’ certifying process or try to block states from certifying the election, attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out. Blanche replied: “Is there any scenario? Yes, of course there’s scenarios we could all come up with.” He added: “It is not DoJ’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that – of course I’m not going to say that.” Here’s the clip. Maine Republican senator Susan Collins has distanced herself from a new radio ad attacking her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson as a “freak” and a “creep” because “he has two kids with his cousin”, saying yesterday that the ad should be taken down. The spot, airing on Maine radio in the form of a country song, is from the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans. Among the lyrics in the jingle: “If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours too.” Collins told reporters during a campaign appearance in Lewiston that she “had nothing to do with that ad”. She added that federal law bans her from coordinating with the super PAC, but she has publicly called for it to be removed. Previously, in a Politico story last month, Collins referenced Jackson’s relationship with a second cousin. “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin,” Collins said. “I don’t know whether people know that or not.” In an op-ed published yesterday, Lana Pelletier, Jackson’s partner, criticized the radio ad and other attacks on her family by Collins and her supporters, saying she never thought they “would stoop this low”. “Senator Collins has been quick to demand respect and decency for herself. My family deserved the same,” Pelletier said. “I am not a helpless woman who needs politicians to tell the world what happened in my own life. And I am not a punchline or a caricature of where I come from.” Jackson, a former state lawmaker and lumberjack, and Pelletier are longtime partners who have two sons together. Jackson’s deputy campaign manager, Dan Gottlieb, said yesterday that Collins owes Jackson’s family an apology. “Susan Collins herself spread these disgusting personal attacks on Troy’s family,” he told the Associated Press. “Now she wants Mainers to believe she’s above the very attacks she helped spread.” Democrats are hoping for a win by Jackson over the incumbent Collins as the party tries to retake the Senate. “This race is unique in Maine history in the number of personal attacks,” Collins said yesterday. A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states – California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – into whether noncitizens are registered to vote. US district court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it is leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on election day (3 November). She put her ruling, which was made on Wednesday, on hold until tomorrow to give the administration a chance to appeal. It comes as the administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in the months leading into the midterm elections. The administration has signaled that it’s a major problem, when in fact it’s extremely rare, as even its own investigations have shown. In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued an email statement to the Associated Press, saying it’s focused on “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens”, while adding: “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be US citizens.” Pete Hegseth reportedly signed a memo last month permitting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test a non-lethal “heat ray” for potential use at the US southern border. The “heat ray”, known as the Active Denial System, is a military-grade weapon that shoots an energy beam causing “a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin”, according to a 2009 National Defense University case study on the weapon. The sensation “creates an intolerable sensation and reflexive movement” such as ducking or running. In a memo, first obtained by CNN, the US defense secretary authorized a “temporary loan” of the Active Denial System to the DHS for seven months beginning in September. The DHS can request further use of the Pentagon system if needed. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement it was “continually evaluating new technology, especially technology that can save lives while simultaneously enhancing national security effectiveness”. It is unclear what the DHS plans to use the Active Denial System for exactly, but the memo permits the department to use it for potential operations at the US-Mexico border. When used, the Active Denial System can produce an invisible beam of 95 gigahertz that penetrates about 1/64th of an inch into the skin, causing a burning sensation. (The system is technically not a “heat ray” because it uses millimeter waves, not infrared, Forbes reported in 2020.) Pentagon officials have compared the feeling to a blast of heat when opening a hot oven, according to CNN. The feeling is temporary, lasting between 10 and 15 minutes. Here’s the full story: Reporting from Miami Donald Trump has been ordered by a US judge to cooperate with the discovery process mandated for his lawsuit against the BBC and to sit for a deposition by 11 December – or else he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit. The lawsuit stems from a Panorama documentary aired by the BBC that spliced together comments made by Trump during a rally on 6 January 2021, before the US Capitol riot. While the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, Trump’s team has argued that he was personally damaged by the broadcast under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. During a lengthy hearing dealing with a variety of discovery issues, federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett on Thursday also rejected a request by Trump’s legal team to prevent the seven-hour deposition from being videotaped, though it will only be accessible to attorneys in the case. Lett agreed with contentions from the BBC’s lawyers that Trump’s team had not been sufficiently forthcoming in handing over internal documents relevant to the case ahead of an 18 December deadline for discovery. “We still have a completely lopsided [situation] here on discovery. They have produced absolutely nothing of any substance,” attorney Charles Tobin, on behalf of the BBC, argued in a Miami courtroom. The documents that Trump’s team have turned over have primarily been either pulled from the internet or provided by the BBC itself. “It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done in order to determine that all of these requests have been responded to,” Lett told Alejandro Brito, Trump’s Florida-based attorney. “The court is not satisfied that anyone is doing a thorough job.” Before traveling to Nebraska, JD Vance fielded questions from reporters and expressed confidence in possible negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, following Steve Witkoff’s meetings with leadership of both countries in recent days. “The reason why we haven’t struck a peace deal is because they’ve just been too apart on some of the details of that negotiation,” Vance said. “So, I think Steve re-engaged the process … He feels optimistic. I mean, the nature of these things is you take a swing at it, you see how much progress you can make, and then you go back at it, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.” While Witkoff said that trilateral talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv “at the technical level” would follow his discussions this week, Russia still carried out a massive “demonstrative” attack on Ukraine overnight, bombarding Kyiv with ballistic missiles just hours after Putin’s meeting with Witkoff wrapped up. The latest strikes killed at least two people and wounded 22, including four children. Democrats lead Republicans 63% to 26% among likely voters aged 18-29, according to a new poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics. However, 33% of young Americans say they will definitely vote in the upcoming midterms, down from 40% who said the same ahead of both the 2018 and 2022 cycles. In 2024, 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so. Harvard’s new poll shows that while women still favor Democrats, 66% to 21%, that number is also robust among young men: 58% to 32%. Another key takeaway from the survey, the last before the November midterms: only 9% of 18- to 29-year-olds say the nation is generally headed in the right direction, while 62% say it is off on the wrong track and 26% say they are unsure. Following the recent controversy around Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ad that features Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics – a key election forecaster – has shifted the Ohio gubernatorial race from “toss up” to “leans Democratic”. As I noted earlier, a number of Republicans, including the outgoing governor Mike DeWine, have criticized the ad, which includes Acton’s mother – who she hasn’t seen since she was removed from her care at age 12 – calling her daughter a “liar”. Mike DeWine, the outgoing Republican governor of Ohio, has called on Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign to take down the recent ad that includes the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. DeWine called the campaign spot “deeply, deeply troubling” and said it was “wrong” to have run it. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down,” he added. The governor, however, told reporters today that he would not rescind his endorsement of Ramaswamy in the bitter gubernatorial race against Acton – who served as the health director in DeWine’s administration and guided the state through its Covid-19 pandemic response. On Wednesday, Acton responded to the recent controversy and told a group of voters said Ramaswamy shouldn’t have “exploited” her mother. A reminder that Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care when Acton was 12, after their stepfather was arrested and charged for raping her. However Arthur remained married to her husband, and they fled the state. Meanwhile, at an event stumping for Ramaswamy in Cincinnati on Wednesday, JD Vance chided Republicans for their outrage over the ad. The vice-president said he wasn’t going to weigh in on whether the spot was “appropriate or not”. Instead his “message” for fellow elected Republicans was to “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days”. Reporting from Anchorage, Alaska Mary Peltola’s campaign to represent Alaska in the US Senate has taken her to parts of the massive state’s interior that are inaccessible by road and on the frontlines of the cost-of-living crisis she hopes will make her the first Democrat to win the seat in nearly two decades. She has been to towns where paper towels retail for $40, half a gallon of oat milk goes for $21 and the cost of a new freezer can be quadruple what it is in the state’s largest city, Anchorage, simply because it’s so complicated to get there. Along the Arctic Ocean, she’s heard of communities where power bills have climbed to $1,500 a month because they rely on generators for power and the Iran war has pushed the cost of diesel to new heights. “Nobody can afford that,” Peltola said in an interview. Alaska, a right-leaning state that is about twice the size of Texas but the third-least populous in the country, has always been among the more expensive places to live, and the price increases in the state’s rural areas haven’t necessarily been felt to the same degree in the more populous cities and towns. Yet the state’s Democrats believe circumstances have aligned for them to win a slew of competitive elections in the 3 November midterms. The Senate seat currently held by two-term Republican Dan Sullivan is a top prize. “In 23 short days, we’re going to be voting both [Republican congressman] Nick Begich and Dan Sullivan out of office, and they richly deserve it,” the chair of the state Democratic party, Eric Croft, said at a press conference last week. “They are self-serving, self-dealing DC politicians who repeatedly voted to make life harder and more expensive for Alaskans.” All signs indicate that Republicans are taking seriously the threat posed by Peltola, an Alaska native and former US House lawmaker who supports oil and gas and gun rights. Outside groups have poured in tens of millions of dollars into supporting both candidates, and last week Donald Trump made the long journey from Washington DC to the conservative Matanuska-Susitna valley to rally voters behind Sullivan, who has trailed in some recent polls. Read the full dispatch here: Today, we’ll also bring you the latest from other states where nominees are getting some help from big names in the final weeks of campaigning. In Maine, Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee for US Senate, will get support from progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortzez, the congresswoman from New York. The two will hold a rally in Portland as Jackson attempts to oust Susan Collins, the moderate Republican, from the Senate seat she’s held on to for almost 30 years. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Vice-President JD Vance will stump for Pete Ricketts, the GOP senator who is facing a re-election battle against the independent contender Dan Osborn. A reminder that the Democratic nominee, Cindy Burbank, withdrew after the primary earlier this year, in an attempt to shore up more support for Osborn. Meanwhile, my colleagues Sam Levine and George Chidi, who have spent years covering voting rights, joined the Guardian’s Stateside with Kai and Carter for an episode all about the Trump administration’s persistent efforts to interfere with the midterm elections – including the justice department charging 28 green card holders in California over alleged voter fraud earlier this week. As the president attempts to crackdown on non-citizen voting, which experts insist is an extremely rare phenomenon, Sam and George explain how this is part of a wider tactic push to throw the results of the midterms into doubt. Also today, my colleagues Maanvi Singh, José Olivares and Sam Levin will take your questions about how Trump’s mass deportation agenda will shape the upcoming midterm elections. During the second Trump administration, ICE arrests have reached record levels, operations have become deadly, and immigration raids have hit politicians’ homes. Our reporting has documented the experiences of those directly affected by the harsh conditions in detention centers and resistance to ICE agents on the ground. Send your questions or join them at 12pm ET to see how this will play out for voters in fewer than two weeks. We’re also tracking the fallout over a controversial ad from Vivek Ramaswamy – the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Ohio – which featured the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. In the campaign spot her mother, Donna Arthur, was critical of Acton and called her a “liar”. On Wednesday, Acton responded to the controversy and told a group of voters said Ramaswamy shouldn’t have “exploited” her mother. A reminder that Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care when Acton was 12, after their stepfather was arrested and charged for raping her. However Arthur remained married to her husband, and they fled the state. Acton went on to describe the recent advert as “another sign of this time, where enough is enough … do anything, say anything just to get ahead. And I think Ohioans are smarter than that.” Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington before traveling to Sioux City, Iowa, for another campaign rally, as part of his week-long midterm blitz. He’ll stump for Ashley Hinson, the Republican congresswoman and nominee for the state’s open US Senate, who is trailing in the polls against her opponent, the Democratic state legislator Josh Turek. The president will also campaign on behalf of Zach Lahn, a businessman and the GOP nominee for governor, who is facing a tough competition against the Democratic state auditor Rob Sand in November. Iowa has become an unexpected battleground this midterm cycle, with voters particularly frustrated about the impact on the war in Iran – namely the high cost of fuel and fertiliser. Democrats are hoping for an upset in a state where they haven’t won a US Senate set since 2008. Trump will take the stage at 7pm ET, and we’ll bring you the latest lines. New polls shows the super-tight race in Texas where Democratic candidate James Talarico is challenging Republican Ken Paxton in the US Senate race. Earlier this week, Talarico also won the endorsement of George W Bush’s brother. New polling from Emerson College shows Talarico at 48%, just in front of Paxton at 46% – with about 5% undecided. Neil Bush, a son of former president George HW Bush and a lifelong Republican, announced on Tuesday that he crossed party lines to vote for Talarico. In a Facebook post, Neil Bush said he chose to vote early for Talarico over Ken Paxton, the current Texas attorney general, because he was “deeply troubled” by Paxton’s conduct and was “enormously impressed” by Talarico’s principles. As a moderate Republican, Neil Bush’s statement on the competitive Senate race in Texas reflects views from a faction of the party that often disagrees with Donald Trump while holding traditional conservative views. I have been deeply troubled by Paxton’s conduct as Texas attorney general, particularly his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in other states in an effort to help Donald Trump remain in power. The former president’s son and brother of George W Bush expressed concern about Paxton’s past controversies, including Paxton’s 2023 Texas state legislature impeachment and acquittal, as well as Paxton’s loyalty to Trump. I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles. But character matters more than party affiliation. Our democracy depends on leaders who respect our institutions, tell the truth, accept accountability, and seek to unite rather than divide. Multiple protesters were removed from Donald Trump’s rally at South Carolina’s Clemson University on Wednesday, including one who was apparently punched by a rally attender – to the US president’s delight. “That was great, man. Wow. Man, I loved that. I watched that,” Trump said. “That was incredible. Wow. That was unbelievable. Is everybody OK? “Who’s the guy that threw that punch?” he continued. “You know, you reminded me of Evander, the real deal, Holyfield,” referring to the former heavyweight champion, who was also in attendance at the rally. “You gotta give them credit. It takes courage to do that at a Trump rally,” he said. “He got whacked.” The president was interrupted at least nine times by hecklers. One protester who was removed by security was followed by a rally attendee, who appeared to slap the demonstrator on the head. Trump was in South Carolina to support Darline Graham, the sister of late senator Lindsey Graham who died suddenly in July from a heart condition. Graham, appointed to serve the remainder of her brother’s term, is facing Democratic challenger Annie Andrews in her bid for a full six-year term. Responding to the ad on Wednesday, Amy Acton told a group of voters that her mother was not well and Ramaswamy shouldn’t have “exploited her”. Earlier in the week, her brother had called Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad a “despicable low” in a statement released by Acton’s campaign: It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point. After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died. This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core – a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.” The ad, which had circulated among conservatives on social media, featured Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, urging Ohioans to not vote for her daughter. The Ohio gubernatorial campaign between Acton and Ramaswamy is regarded as one of the uglier contests in the 3 November midterm elections. Acton has refused to debate Ramaswamy, who she has called a “chronic liar” and has also criticized him for airing an ad that features a woman married to a registered sex offender. Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics. We’re less than two weeks out from the midterm vote and the campaigns are getting even more nasty. Condemnation continues of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign in the Ohio governor race after his team put out an attack ad, featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton criticising her daughter and calling her a liar. Acton’s campaign has called it a despicable ad after putting out the clarification that Acton was sexually abused by her stepfather and removed from her mother’s custody at age 12. Ramaswamy’s team, however, has dug in behind the ad, and were backed by JD Vance on Wednesday, who condemned Republican criticism. He said Ramaswamy “had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is”. However, the South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace joined the chorus of Republican critics, saying: This ad is going to go down as the most shameful, disgusting, offensive ad this election season. She said she was stunned, adding: I just can’t believe that this is what passes for decency in this election. Stay with us for more developments.