The U.S. Interior Department’s watchdog agency has said in a report that sending a security detail to protect Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife on a vacation to Turkey and Greece had cost taxpayers more than $25,000, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

The report published by the Post also said Zinke allowed his wife to travel with him in government vehicles in violation of department policy.

Others investigated

The report follows ethics investigations into several Trump administration officials, including Scott Pruitt, who stepped down as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in July, and Tom Price, who resigned as health and human services secretary in September 2017.

Zinke said he did not ask his security detail to travel with him during the August 2017 vacation to Turkey and Greece, and the decision was made by the U.S. Park Police supervisor, the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General said in the report.

The report said other officials in the department approved Zinke’s wife, Lolita, riding with him in government vehicles. It said that when Zinke was asked whether he knew the practice violated department policy, the secretary said it was consistent with government travel regulations.

The report listed several instances of official travel in which Zinke was accompanied by his wife and he reimbursed the government for her expenses.

Making wife a volunteer

It said Zinke had asked department employees to research whether his wife could be made an official Interior Department volunteer. He denied his intention in making the request was to enable his wife to travel with him in an official capacity.

“Ultimately, the employees advised him that making her a volunteer could be perceived negatively, and she did not become one,” the report said.

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The department’s Office of Inspector General has also said it was investigating Zinke over the use of chartered flights and a Montana real estate deal.
…

President Donald Trump suggested without evidence Thursday that Democrats or their allies are supporting a “caravan” of Central American migrants who are traveling north aiming to enter the United States.

Addressing thousands of supporters at a campaign rally in Montana, Trump said immigration is now one of the leading issues in the 2018 midterms, and he accused Democrats of supporting the migrants because they “figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat.”

The comments mark the injection of one of Trump’s signature 2016 campaign themes back into national conversation as he looks to boost Republican turnout to maintain their congressional majorities in 2018.

Perhaps no issue was more identifiable with Trump’s last campaign than immigration, particularly his much-vaunted — and still-unfulfilled — promise to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. For Trump, those pledges are still rallying cries for his supporters, who cheered his call for construction of a wall and booed mentions of Democratic opposition to his hard-line policies.

Unfounded allegation

“A lot of money’s been passing through people to come up and try to get to the border by Election Day because they think that’s a negative for us,” Trump said. “No. 1, they’re being stopped, and No. 2, regardless, that’s our issue.”

He added: “They wanted that caravan and there are those that say that caravan didn’t just happen. It didn’t just happen.”

Trump appeared to be referring to an unfounded allegation promoted by ally Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. The Republican lawmaker tweeted a video Wednesday of men handing out money to people standing in line. He claimed the video showed people being paid in Honduras to join a caravan and “storm the border (at) election time.” Trump on Thursday tweeted the same video, writing, “Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?”

Correction issued

After questions about the video’s origin, Gaetz posted a correction later Thursday on Twitter, saying, “This video was provided to me by a Honduran government official. Thus, I believed it to be from Honduras.”

Neither Republican provided evidence of his claim that the people were being paid to join a caravan.

About 3,000 Hondurans are in a migrant caravan passing through Guatemala trying to reach the United States. Mexico’s government says migrants with proper documents can enter Mexico and those who don’t either have to apply for refugee status or face deportation.

On Thursday, Trump threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border if authorities there fail to stop them.

Trump criticizes Tester

Trump was in Montana to boost GOP Senate candidate Matt Rosendale, who is running against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, whom the president said has been a “disaster for Montana.”

The president blames Tester for the backlash against former White House doctor Adm. Ronny Jackson, whom the president had tapped to serve as Veterans Affairs secretary. Jackson was forced to withdraw after facing ethics allegations, including claims that he “got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle” at a Secret Service going-away party. Tester had released a list of allegations against Jackson that was compiled by the Democratic staff of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

“He was attacked so viciously, so violently by Jon Tester,” Trump said. “That’s really why I’m here.”

He also criticized Tester’s opposition to the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of decades-old sexual assault. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.

Praise for body slam candidate

Trump also praised Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault last year after attacking a reporter in 2017.

“Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of guy,” Trump said. “He’s a great guy, tough cookie.”

Trump accused Democrats of engaging in a “heartless” campaign to sink Kavanaugh’s confirmation, saying voters will “remember” how he was treated at the polls.

“This will be an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense,” Trump said.
…

Two of President Donald Trump’s top advisers got into a heated exchange outside the Oval Office on Thursday as passions boiled over about how to handle illegal immigration, two sources familiar with the incident said.

The altercation occurred between White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who is a former homeland security secretary, and Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, the sources said.

One source described the argument as a “tense exchange” but said that it had blown over, and that it involved the job performance of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, a former deputy to Kelly. Another source said it was “not a big deal.”

Trump, asked about the incident, told reporters: “That, I have not heard about.”

A senior White House official said later that Nielsen and Bolton had a nice conversation in Bolton’s office after the exchange and agreed the goal was to protect borders.

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Nielsen was close to resigning after being criticized by Trump at a Cabinet meeting for what he said was her failure to secure U.S. borders.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement: “While we are passionate about solving the issue of illegal immigration, we are not angry at one another. However, we are furious at the failure of congressional Democrats to help us address this growing crisis.”

Trump threatened on Thursday to deploy the military and close the southern U.S. border as Hondurans and Salvadorans joined thousands of migrants in Guatemala hoping to travel north.

“I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught — and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!’ Trump said in a tweet.
…

If Republican Marsha Blackburn were to win in November, the congresswoman would become the first female U.S. senator in Tennessee history. And yet women have been slow to embrace her campaign.

A Vanderbilt University poll conducted Oct. 8-13 showed Blackburn trailing former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, 49 percent to 37 percent among women likely to vote. The same poll found that men likely to vote favored Blackburn 50-37 percent, even as the broader poll showed the race is a tossup.

The stark gender divide, which has persisted in polling throughout the campaign, stands out in what has been described as the year of the female voter. Aware of the stakes as Democrats try to take control of the Senate, both candidates have intensified efforts to win over women as Election Day nears — vividly demonstrating that those voters are pivotal even in a deeply red state.

“Women are increasingly more liberal, and men are increasingly more conservative,” said Amanda Clayton, an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “That trend is becoming more pronounced and is likely to become more pronounced as it gets closer to the election.”

Blackburn’s tea party roots can appeal to conservative men who oppose traditionally liberal feminist candidates, Clayton said.

The push to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she added, may have given those men reason to look for women they could support, perhaps in response to more liberal women running for office.

Blackburn, the first female major-party Senate nominee from Tennessee, has previously demurred when talking about the groundbreaking aspects of her campaign. She said she isn’t running on gender and has declined to answer questions about sexism she’s encountered. When she was elected to Congress in 2002, she asked to be called “congressman” rather than “congresswoman.”

But Blackburn’s campaign has been willing to play the gender card.

In February, when some Republicans worried about losing a Senate seat encouraged retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Corker to reconsider, Blackburn’s spokesman said anyone who thought she couldn’t win the general election was a “plain sexist pig.”

More recently, Blackburn herself has suggested a liberal bias on gender matters.

“Republican women are never going to get the attention that Democratic women are going to get,” she said in a recent AP interview. “And you just expect that. I fully understand that Republican women do not fit the narrative that many in the media would like to construct. But I will tell you this: Most women, and you mentioned suburban moms, are very much like me.”

Her campaign has emphasized her attempts to break the glass ceiling: the first woman hired by the Southwestern Company — a marketing business that sells educational materials — and the only Republican woman in the Tennessee Senate in 1998.

“Fighting against all odds is the story of her life,” the narrator of one ad says.

Blackburn’s team also has targeted Bredesen’s handling of sexual harassment claims when he was governor.

In 2005, The Associated Press reviewed more than 600 workplace harassment investigation files collected when Bredesen was elected in 2002. The AP found that sexual and workplace harassment reports in 2005 were on pace to almost double from the previous year. Bredesen argued that reporting was up rather than the actual number of incidents.

Blackburn accused Bredesen of shredding records to cover up poor performance, but Bredesen called that a “total mischaracterization” and said he was trying to protect the privacy of those who complained.

And Bredesen’s decision to support Kavanaugh has raised new questions about his support among women. The move appalled some Democrats, but others saw it as a way to win over Republicans in a state where he needs them.

In September, his campaign unveiled “Women United for Bredesen” — a group it says has roughly 50,000 Tennesseans aimed at providing a “space for women” to focus on their top issues.

Recently, pop superstar Taylor Swift broke her long silence on politics to endorse the Democrat. Swift said in an Instagram post that she wanted to back female candidates but could not support Blackburn because of her voting history on LGBTQ issues, opposition to the Violence Against Women Act and an equal pay law — saying bluntly that the congresswoman’s voting record “appalls and terrifies me.”

On the ground, Blackburn’s core supporters say party loyalty will outweigh gender at the end of the day — though they don’t always disconnect the two.

“She has set an amazing example, and in return, we are seeing more women running for office across the state,” said Barbara Trautman, president of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women. “We are very loyal to her.”

Yet Bredesen is a looming threat, Trautman added, warning that voter turnout — particularly women — will be key.

“At this point, I’m not putting a lot of stock into polls,” she said. “She’s one of us, and we have high hopes.”

 
…

Former U.S. vice president Joe Biden says President Donald Trump may not “know what he’s doing” and coddles dictators.  

The potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate told CBS “This Morning” Thursday he’s concerned Trump “seems to have a love affair with autocrats” and “coddles” dictators, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Saudi ruling family.

Biden says Trump either “doesn’t know what he’s doing or he has an absolutely convoluted notion” of America’s leadership in the world.

White House aides suggest that while Trump doesn’t criticize certain world leaders publicly, he’s willing to deliver tough messages behind closed doors.

Biden said he hopes Democrats don’t pursue Trump’s impeachment if the party takes over the House, saying, “I don’t think there’s a basis for doing that right now.”

 
…

Don McGahn has returned to civilian life. 

A White House official confirms that Wednesday was McGahn’s last day as White House counsel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

President Donald Trump announced in August that McGahn would leave after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. 

McGahn is a top election lawyer who served as general counsel in Trump’s election campaign. He played a pivotal role in the president’s remaking of the federal judiciary with young, conservative judges, like Kavanaugh. He was also the main point of contact inside the White House for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Trump said Washington lawyer Pat Cipollone would replace McGahn
…

More than 2,000 Honduran migrants traveling en masse through Guatemala resumed their journey toward the United States on Wednesday as U.S. President Donald Trump sought to turn the caravan into a political issue three weeks before midterm elections. 

A day after warning Central American governments they risked losing U.S. aid if they didn’t do something and saying that anyone entering the country illegally would be arrested and deported, Trump turned his sights on Democrats and urged Republican allies to campaign on border security.

“Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the form of large Caravans, that the Democrats won’t approve legislation that will allow laws for the protection of our country. Great Midterm issue for Republicans!” Trump said in a Wednesday morning tweet.

“Republicans must make the horrendous, weak and outdated immigration laws, and the Border, a part of the Midterms!” he continued.

In Guatemala, the migrants rose early and many left without eating breakfast, bound for Zacapa, the next city on their route. Overcast skies and a light drizzle took the edge off the sweltering heat and humidity, making the trek more bearable. 

‘It is God who decides’

Migrant Luis Navarreto, 32, said he had read about Trump’s threats regarding aid to his country but was undeterred.

“We are going to continue,” Navarreto said. “It is God who decides here. We have no other option but to move ahead.” 

The migrants are fleeing widespread poverty and gang violence in one of the world’s most murderous countries, and many blamed Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez for what they called unlivable conditions back home. 

“We are here because of Juan Orlando,” said migrant Nelson Zavala, 36, adding that the last three days had essentially been sleepless ones.

The previous day, the migrants advanced about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Honduras-Guatemala border to arrive at the city of Chiquimula.

That’s a tiny portion of the almost 1,350 miles (2,170 kilometers) they’d have to travel to reach the closest U.S. border.

Some were able to hitch rides, and hundreds advanced farther and faster than the main group to reach the Guatemalan capital, according to the Casa del Migrante shelter there.

Late Tuesday, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico to respect the rights and ensure the safety of the migrants traveling in the caravan.

The caravan has snowballed since about 160 migrants departed Friday from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, with many people joining spontaneously while carrying just a few belongings. Estimates of their numbers ranged up to 3,000. 

Three weeks before the U.S. elections, the caravan was bound to draw Trump’s ire. But he did not follow through on a similar threat to cut aid to Honduras in April over an earlier caravan, which eventually petered out in Mexico.

‘Political groups’ blamed

On Tuesday, Honduras’ president accused unnamed “political groups” of  organizing the caravan based on lies in order to cause problems in Honduras.

“There are sectors that want to destabilize the country, but we will be decisive and we will not allow it,” Hernandez told reporters.

Earlier, the Foreign Ministry alleged that people had been lured to join the migration with “false promises” of a transit visa through Mexico and the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States.

In a joint statement Wednesday, Mexico’s Foreign Relations and Interior departments said that anyone in the caravan with travel documents and a proper visa would be allowed to enter, and that anyone who wanted to apply for refugee status could do so.

But the statement said all cases must be processed individually, suggesting that authorities have no intention of letting the migrants simply cross the border en masse without going through standard immigration procedures.

The statement warned that anyone who entered Mexico in an “irregular manner” faced detention and deportation.
…

President Donald Trump mischaracterized the plight of children who were taken from parents at the Mexico border and what’s known about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election investigation in his wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press.

A look at his comments on those subjects Tuesday:

Immigration

Trump: “We have the worst laws in the history of the world on immigration and we’re getting them changed one by one. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks even, but we’re getting them changed one by one.”

The facts: He’s actually failed to achieve changes in immigration laws. All of the immigration-related changes pushed by his administration were done by executive order, not legislation, or through policy shifts like the zero-tolerance policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally and gave rise to family separations. The administration has also used regulations to tighten the rules on how immigrants can receive public benefits. Immigration legislation has failed despite Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Trump, on the separation of children from their parents at the border: “Now President Obama had the same law. He did the same thing.”

The facts: Obama did not do the same thing as a matter of policy. It’s true the underlying laws were the same. But the Trump administration mandated anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted. The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings, and their children were separated and sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department, which is tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children. The so-called zero-tolerance policy remains in effect, but Trump signed an executive order June 20 that stopped separations.

Jeh Johnson, Obama’s homeland security secretary, told NPR there may have been unusual or emergency circumstances when children were taken from parents but there was no such policy.

​Trump: “And in fact the picture of children living in cages that was taken in 2014 was a picture of President Obama’s administration and the way they handled children. They had the kids living in cages. They thought it was our administration and they used it, and then unbeknownst to them and the fake news they found out, ‘Oh my God, this is a terrible situation.’ This was during the Obama administration.”

The facts: He’s right. Images that circulated online during the height of Trump’s family separations controversy were actually from 2014 under the Obama administration. But circumstances for some children have not changed. In June, an Associated Press reporter was part of a group that visited a U.S. Border Patrol holding facility, where hundreds of children were waiting in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside, scattered around were bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. The cages in each wing opened out into common areas to use portable restrooms.

The children both in 2014 and 2018 were separated temporarily from their parents in the facilities, placed in areas by age and sex for safety reasons.

Russia investigation

Trump, about Mueller’s Russia investigation: “It’s a tremendous waste of time for the president of the United States. To think that I would be even thinking about using Russia to help me win Idaho, we’re using Russia to help me win the great state of Iowa or anywhere else is the most preposterous, embarrassing thing.”

​The facts: Trump may be right that he did not need a boost in Idaho and Iowa, states he won in 2016 with comfortable margins of 31 points and 9 points, respectively. But the notion of Russia-backed activities on his behalf “anywhere else” in the U.S. is not far-fetched, according to an indictment in February by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The indictment accuses 13 Russians and three Russian entities of seeking to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by running a hidden social media trolling campaign and seeking to mobilize Trump supporters at rallies while posing as American political activists in “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.” According to the indictment, the surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm financed by companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The indictment says the defendants commonly referred to targeting more closely divided “purple states” after being advised by a Texas-based grass-roots organization in June 2016 to focus efforts there.

The indictment details contacts targeting three unidentified officials in the Trump campaign’s Florida operation. In each instance, the Russians used false U.S. personas to contact the officials. The indictment doesn’t say if any of them responded.

Trump lost by nearly 2.9 million votes in the popular vote to Clinton, but captured the needed Electoral College votes to win the presidency after prevailing in politically divided states including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump: “This was an excuse made by the Democrats for the reason they lost the Electoral College, which gives them a big advantage — a big advantage. Very different than the popular vote. The popular vote would be much easier to win if you were campaigning on it. … But winning the Electoral College is a tremendous advantage for the Democrats.”

The facts: Trump is falsely asserting, as he has before, that Democrats have a “big advantage” in the Electoral College. Its unique system of electing presidents is actually a big reason why Trump won the presidency. Four candidates in history have won a majority of the popular vote only to be denied the presidency by the Electoral College. All were Democrats.

In the 2016 election, Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump after racking up lopsided victories in big states such as New York and California, according to election data compiled by The Associated Press. But she lost the presidency due to Trump’s winning margin in the Electoral College, which came after he narrowly won less populous Midwestern states including Michigan and Wisconsin.

Unlike the popular vote, Electoral College votes are set equal to the number of U.S. representatives in each state plus its two senators. That means more weight is given to a single vote in a small state than the vote of someone in a large state.
…

A Treasury Department employee was accused Wednesday of leaking confidential banking reports of suspects charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and an unidentified high-ranking colleague was cited in court papers as a co-conspirator but was not charged.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, is accused of leaking several confidential suspicious-activity reports to a journalist, whose name was not disclosed in court papers. But they list about a dozen stories published by BuzzFeed News over the past year and a half. A spokesman for the news organization declined to comment.

According to the government, the material included reports on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, political consultant Richard Gates and Maria Butina, who is accused of trying to infiltrate U.S. political organizations as a covert Russian agent. 

Edwards is currently on administrative leave, FinCen spokesman Steve Hudak said.

Questionable transactions

Banks must file the suspicious-activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that raise questions about possible financial misconduct such as money laundering.

When federal agents confronted Edwards this week, she described herself as a whistle-blower and said she had provided the reports to the reporter for “record-keeping,” the court papers said.

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, where the criminal complaint was filed, said Edwards “betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information.”

Edwards is alleged to have taken photographs of the confidential documents and sent them to a reporter using an encrypted messaging app, according to court documents. Edwards also sent the reporter internal Treasury Department emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments, prosecutors allege.

When she was arrested, Edwards was in possession of a flash drive containing the confidential reports, prosecutors said.

Edwards was to make an initial court appearance later Wednesday in Virginia. It was not immediately clear whether she had a lawyer.

Co-conspirator

Court papers also list another FinCEN employee as a co-conspirator, noting that this person exchanged more than 300 messages with the reporter via an encrypted messaging application. This person has not been charged and was not named in the court papers, and was identified only as an associate director at FinCEN to whom Edwards reported.

According to court papers, federal investigators obtained a court order to monitor the calls to and from the associate director’s personal cellphone, and that monitoring captured the frequency of contacts with the reporter via the encrypted messaging application. Court papers do not detail the contents of those messages.

“Protecting sensitive information is one of our most critical responsibilities, and it is a role that we take very seriously,” said Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
…

Fundraising records are falling in this year’s U.S. congressional campaign season, driven in part by unprecedented hauls by at least five candidates from both major parties, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

Candidates for the House of Representatives have collectively raised $1.2 billion from January 2017 through the end of September, more than the inflation-adjusted $1 billion record set at this point in the 2010 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Senate candidates — who have six years to raise funds because of their longer terms — have raised more than $950 million, surpassing the $844 million raised during the same period ahead of the 2010 election.

Intense battle

The records are a sign of the intense fight by the Democratic and Republican parties ahead of the Nov. 6 elections. Democrats are aiming to pick up 23 seats in the House and two in the Senate in an effort to take control of Congress and block Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Republicans are eager to retain control of both chambers, which has allowed them to pass an extensive tax cut package and confirm two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Democrats collectively raised more than Republicans. Senate Democrats raised at least $551 million, while Republicans raised at least $368 million. House Democratic candidates raised at least $680 million while Republicans raised at least $540 million.

The apparent Democratic edge may have been exaggerated by large numbers of candidates contesting primaries, said Michael Malbin, director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. “I’m not seeing an overwhelming advantage for the Democrats,” Malbin said.

Individual marks

A handful of candidates broke individual records.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who is challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, was the only Senate candidate who broke an individual fundraising record. He brought in nearly $63 million, besting former Sen. Hillary Clinton’s record inflation-adjusted haul of nearly $61 million in 2006.

O’Rourke’s total included a record-setting $38 million in the third quarter.

Four House candidates broke that chamber’s previous record, which was set in 2008 when Colorado Republican Jared Polis raised about $8 million. Republicans Devin Nunes of California, Greg Gianforte of Montana, Karen Handel of Georgia and Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb all exceeded that mark.

Nunes raised $10.6 million, the highest total for a House Republican running for re-election who did not chip in personal wealth to his or her campaign.

Factoring in people who funded their own races, Democrat and liquor entrepreneur David Trone of Maryland raised the most of any House candidate, with his campaign taking in $16.5 million. 
…

Projecting confidence about her party’s chances, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi outlined five of the top 10 agenda items Democrats will pursue if they retake the House in next month’s election.

Lowering health care costs, rebuilding infrastructure, and running the House chamber with more transparency and openness are near the top of the Democratic agenda, Pelosi said during a talk Tuesday at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Democrats would also prioritize giving legal status to young immigrants, known informally as Dreamers, and strengthening background checks on gun purchases, she said.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats to take control of the House from Republicans, something surveys suggest is within reach.

“If the election were today, we would win the majority,” Pelosi said.

The California Democrat said she couldn’t predict whether the election would be a “wave” or “tsunami” for her party, but said she expected it to triumph, putting her in line to regain the speaker’s gavel.

“I’ve never seen anything like the mobilization that is out there, the grass roots,” she said.

One item not on Pelosi’s top 10 list: impeaching President Donald Trump.

“I think impeachment, to use that word, is very divisive,” she said.

Instead, she said House committees under Democrats would conduct oversight of the administration and help special counsel Robert Mueller conclude his Russia investigation, preserving all the documents from his probe for congressional follow-up.

“Getting the documents and the truth — and where they lead us — that’s what we have to do,” she said.

Looking ahead to a possible lame-duck session after the election, Pelosi indicated Democrats wouldn’t relent in their opposition to funding Trump’s proposed border wall. She said it would not be the best or most cost-effective way to protect the border.

“It happens to be like a manhood issue for the president and I’m not interested in that,” she said.

Pelosi has been the leader of House Democrats since 2003, an extraordinary stretch that includes becoming the first woman elected speaker in 2007. But some Democrats running for office this year have called for a new face at the top, echoing the complaints of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers who say generational change is needed.

She brushed off those challenges to her leadership, chalking up the debate to the “vitality of the party.”

“None of that frightens me,” she said. “I feel pretty good about it.”

One item she’s personally hoping to add to the House agenda in the early days is the Equality Act, which would add protections for women and LGBT people to the existing Civil Rights Act.

As Republicans fight to preserve their majority, some GOP leaders believe they have touched a nerve by linking Democrats to protests against Trump’s agenda. They point to activists confronting senators in the Capitol hallways during the hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has berated the “mob” mentality as Republicans campaign to retain their majority.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California summed up his election pitch during an interview on Fox News: “This is about results vs. Democrats’ resistance.”

Democrats have distanced themselves from some of the more fiery rhetoric from their side of the aisle, including former Attorney General Eric Holder’s suggestion that Democrats should “kick” back.

Pelosi in a letter earlier this week to her colleagues encouraged them to stay laser-focused on the agenda they’re bringing to voters. She said Republicans have “intensified their climate of negativity” because they don’t have a record to run on.

“In this final stretch, it is imperative that we remain positively focused on communicating our powerful message,” Pelosi told them.
…

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he won’t accept the blame if Republicans lose the House in November.

Trump said he believes he is “helping” Republican candidates as he campaigns ahead of crucial midterm elections next month. With Republicans facing headwinds, Trump said he thinks the GOP is “going to do well,” arguing that “it feels to me very much like” 2016.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Trump also accused his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen of “lying” under oath, defended his use of the derisive nickname “Horseface” for porn actress Stormy Daniels and argued that the widespread condemnation of the Saudis in the disappearance of a Washington Post columnist was a rush to judgment.

Of his efforts on the campaign trail, Trump said: “I don’t believe anybody has ever had this kind of impact.” He resisted comparisons to President Barack Obama, who took responsibility for the Democrats’ defeat in 2010 by acknowledging that his party got “shellacked.”

Democrats are hopeful about their chances to recapture the House, while Republicans are increasingly confident they can hold the Senate. If Democrats take the House and pursue impeachment or investigations — including seeking his long-hidden tax returns — Trump claimed he will “handle it very well.”

Trump also declared that Cohen’s testimony was “totally false” in his August plea deal to campaign finance violations alleging he coordinated with Trump on a hush-money scheme to buy the silence of Daniels and a Playboy model who alleged affairs. But in entering the deal with Cohen, prosecutors signaled that they accepted his recitation of facts and account of what occurred.

He derided Cohen, who worked for Trump for a decade, as “a PR person who did small legal work,” and said it was “very sad” that Cohen had struck a deal to “achieve a lighter sentence.”

And Trump did not back down from derisively nicknaming Daniels “Horseface” in a tweet hours earlier.

Asked by the AP if it was appropriate to insult a woman’s appearance, Trump responded, “You can take it any way you want.”
…

For many immigrants, U.S. midterm elections traditionally draw minimal interest. But this election cycle, the reaction is different as a Democratic victory for control of the House or Senate or both would have huge repercussions for immigrant communities.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial policies on trade, immigration, taxes and a host of other issues that impact immigrants could be challenged or reversed with the Democrats back in control of Congress.

In the 2016 presidential election, foreign language media was a fundamental source of information for immigrants, as mainstream outlets aimed to connect with broader audiences.

In the 2018 midterm elections, a “news-you-can-use” component is a key part of how these outlets continue to serve their audiences.

Cameroon native Pamela Anchang is managing editor of The Immigrant Magazine and host of “Impact,” a new radio talk show for the immigrant community based in Los Angeles. 

“Given the climate that we’re in, everybody is paying attention,” she told VOA. “Now, immigrants are aware that elections have consequences, and when you don’t vote for whatever reason, it comes back to either serve you or hurt you.” 

In the past, the midterm elections were also of little concern for La Opinion, a Spanish language daily newspaper in Los Angeles. However, the midterms of 2018 are “completely different” because of Trump, said Gabriel Lerner, La Opinion’s editor-in-chief. 

“This has been like an earthquake, a political earthquake for many of the Latinos, so people are really interested in what is going on,” Lerner said.

The homepages of Spanish language media websites in the U.S. are packed with news about deportations, raids and arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Trump’s latest plan for building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

​”In the case of Latinos, Trump positioned himself as a foe since the beginning of his campaign when he defined that Mexican immigrants are criminals, are rapists — this created a lot of strong reaction against Trump and Trumpism in the community,” said Lerner.

Anchang said Trump’s tough stance on immigration does not only create strong reaction in the Latino community, but many other immigrant communities, including the African diaspora. 

“Because issues are what drive us,” Anchang said.” If you just talk about elections in general, nobody cares. But if you talk about how it affects you personally, they pay attention. What is really important to Africans — health care [and] being legal. We have a lot of Africans who are undocumented.” 

“It is very possible that the results of these midterm elections will be a vote of confidence for President Trump,” said Vincent Chang, chief content officer and executive editor of World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper. The outcome of the midterms will show how much trust the electorate puts in Trump and his policies, he said. Within the Chinese community, those who are U.S. citizens tend to support Trump’s policies on immigration, he added. 

Chang said the issues the Chinese language readership is concerned with include core administration policies regarding tax reform, the economy and immigration. Chang said his paper will be closely watching potential changes throughout Congress after the midterms.

Local races get a lot of attention

During every election cycle, news organizations tailored to the immigrant communities also have in-depth coverage of local races of candidates from their own ethnic groups.

​”We’ll follow closely how the Chinese-American candidates perform in the different districts, regardless of whether they win or lose,” said Chang.

That also rings true in Southern California’s Little Saigon where political billboards with the names of Vietnamese-American candidates can be seen everywhere. They are running for local and state level races, from mayor to the state senate and every position in between. 

Unlike the mainstream media and many other immigrant communities, the Vietnamese community is excited about the midterms almost exclusively because of the local races. 

“We don’t pay much attention to the federal level [races]. But mostly [we focus on races at the] local level,” said Dzung Do, staff writer for Nguoi Viet Daily News, a California-based Vietnamese language paper that printed its first edition 40 years ago. Do said many Vietnamese Americans will vote for a Vietnamese name, regardless of a candidate’s position on the issues. 

The topics they want to read in the press and hear from the candidates include U.S. relations with Vietnam, education and security, according to Do. Since many Vietnamese Americans arrived in the U.S. as refugees, immigration is not as much of a priority as other immigrant groups. 

Immigration is a passionate topic for the guests on Anchang’s “Impact” radio talk show. They included a Korean-American, a Filipino-American and a Latino-American. Some of the guests said that Trump’s immigration policies are highly discriminatory and create widespread fear. Some would like amnesty for those who are already living in the U.S., while others argued that immigrants must follow U.S. law and wait their turn in line to gain legal entry to the U.S. 

Anchang said her message to her readers and listeners is that only by voting can they keep the status quo or create change. 
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The press that serves the U.S. immigrant population typically shows little interest in midterm elections. But the outcome of this year’s fight for control of Congress could either blunt much of President Donald Trump’s agenda or advance his policies. That’s why the immigrant community may be more interested in this year’s midterms than ever before. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details from Los Angeles.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is suggesting Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis could be one of his next key officials to leave the government.

The Republican Trump, in an interview airing Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” news show, said he has no indication that Mattis is leaving, but added, “It could be that he is. I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth.”

The U.S. leader described the retired Marine Corps general as “a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

Trump, during his 21-month administration, has fired or pushed out dozens of key officials, or watched as others he liked have resigned, including United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who last week said she would be leaving her post at the end of the year.

Mattis, while leading the U.S. military, has occasionally been at odds with Trump and more hawkish Trump administration officials, including national security adviser John Bolton.

Mattis, in mid-2017, pushed for more diplomatic overtures to North Korea in dealing with Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, a stance Trump eventually came around to, leading to his June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump said there are still “some people” in his administration that he is “not thrilled with.” He has often assailed Attorney General Jeff Sessions but declined to fire him for removing himself from oversight of the lengthy investigation of whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia and whether Trump as president obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

But Trump rebuffed reports of chaos in the White House as “fake news,” adding, “I’m changing things around. And I’m entitled to. I have people now on standby that will be phenomenal. They’ll come into the administration, they’ll be phenomenal.”

 
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President Donald Trump heaped praise Saturday on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, crediting the veteran Kentucky lawmaker’s political toughness and acumen during the ugly battle that concluded with Brett Kavanaugh becoming a Supreme Court justice.

“He’s Kentucky tough,” Trump declared.

Kavanaugh took his seat on the high court this week after overcoming allegations of sexual misconduct dating to his high school and college years. He forcefully denied the charges, and Trump and McConnell firmly backed Kavanaugh as part of their combined quest to populate the judiciary with conservative judges. Kavanaugh could tilt the political balance of the high court in the conservative direction for generations.

“We stuck with him all the way because we knew the facts,” Trump said, speaking of himself and McConnell, Kentucky’s senior U.S. senator.

“There’s nobody tougher. There’s nobody smarter. He refused to cave to the radical Democrats’ shameful campaign of personal and political destruction,” Trump said at a political rally at Eastern Kentucky University before he called McConnell to the microphone.

McConnell returned the compliment and told the president to continue nominating judges and “we’ll keep confirming them.”

​Fierce Democrat opposition

Democrats fiercely and vocally opposed Kavanaugh, opposition that hardened after Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. Other women accused him of other sexually inappropriate behavior.

Protesters swarmed Senate office buildings and hundreds were arrested in a futile attempt to intimidate a handful of holdout senators into voting against confirming Kavanaugh. Trump has taken to referring to Democrats who opposed Kavanaugh as an “angry mob.”

Rally in Kentucky

The president flew to Kentucky to campaign for three-term Republican Rep. Andy Barr, who is facing a strong challenge from Democrat Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot, in one of the country’s most-watched House races.

Democrats are focusing on the seat in their drive to regain control of the House. Former Vice President Joe Biden became the highest-profile Democrat to campaign for McGrath when he came to Kentucky on Friday night.

Trump told the rally that a vote for Barr “could make the difference between unbelievable continued success” or failure, and pleaded with his supporters to vote on Nov. 6 to send more Republicans to Congress.

“The only reason to vote Democrat is if you’re tired of winning,” he said. “I need you to get your friends, get your family, get your neighbors, get your co-workers and get out and vote for Andy Barr,” Trump said.

Familiar Trump themes

The president sounded familiar themes during the hour-plus rally, touting the economy’s performance, a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and his plan for a new military branch devoted to outer space, among a host of other issues that led the crowd to cheer him.

He again panned journalists as the “fake news media” and suggested he could live without their attention.

“I’d like to walk into a place one night and not have any of these guys,” Trump said.

With just over three weeks before Election Day, Saturday’s rally was part of an aggressive fall campaign push by Trump to energize Republicans and encourage them to help keep his legislative agenda moving forward by voting to keep the GOP in control of both houses of Congress.

In fact, even before Trump left the stage Saturday night, his campaign announced a three-state Western swing through Missoula, Montana; Mesa, Arizona; and Elko, Nevada, next Thursday through Saturday.
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Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, likely paid little or no federal income taxes between 2009 and 2016, The New York Times reported Saturday, citing confidential financial documents.

The documents were created with Kushner’s cooperation as part of a review of his finances by an institution that was considering lending him money, the Times reported. The Times said that Kushner’s tax bills reflected the use of a tax benefit known as depreciation that lets real estate investors deduct part of the cost of their properties from their taxable income.

The Times report said that nothing in the documents reviewed “suggests Mr. Kushner or his company broke the law.”

Paid all taxes due under law

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell, told Reuters Saturday that he would not respond to the newspaper’s assumptions, which he said were “taken from incomplete documents obtained in violation of the law and standard business confidentiality agreements.”

He added, “Always following the advice of numerous attorneys and accountants, Mr. Kushner properly filed and paid all taxes due under the law and regulations.”

The records reviewed by The New York Times did not expressly state how much Kushner paid in taxes, but included estimates for how much he owed called “income taxes payable” and how much Kushner paid in expectation of forecasted taxes known as “prepaid taxes.” The paper said that for most of the years covered, both were listed as zero, but in 2013 Kushner reported income taxes payable of $1.1 million.

Kushner Cos, the family company for which Kushner previously served as chief executive, has been profitable in recent years, the Times said, citing the analysis. Kushner sold his interests in the company to a family trust last year.

The White House and Kushner Cos did not immediately comment Saturday.

Trump tax break

The newspaper noted that the 2017 tax rewrite signed by Trump includes provisions that benefit real estate investors.

Mirijanian said that on tax reform efforts, Kushner “followed his approved ethics agreement and has avoided work that would pose any conflict of interest.”

In December, a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote to Kushner, asking whether in his talks with foreign officials he had ever discussed financing for a deeply indebted property in midtown Manhattan, citing concern he was using his position for financial gain.

Kushner Cos said previously it had more than $2.5 billion in transactions 2017 and has 12 million square feet under development in New York and New Jersey.

Documents released by the White House in June showed Kushner held assets worth at least $181 million, the Associated Press reported. The disclosures also show that Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, received at least $82 million in outside income in 2017.
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The Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania threatened to stomp on the face of his Democratic opponent in a social media video Friday and then walked back his comments, saying he made a mistake in his choice of words.

Republican Scott Wagner is trailing well behind incumbent Democrat Tom Wolf in the polls ahead of the Nov. 6 election, and the video posted on Wagner’s campaign Facebook page was part of an acrimonious battle in one of the most populous U.S. states.

“Governor Wolf, let me tell you what, between now and Nov. 6, you’d better put a catcher’s mask on your face because I’m going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes,” Wolf said in the video.

A few hours later, the video was taken down. Wagner explained: “I may have chosen a poor metaphor. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

On his Facebook page, Wolf encouraged people to share the original video if they agreed that “Scott Wagner should not be the governor of Pennsylvania.”

The video with Wagner’s threat set off a social media storm and attracted the attention of a few prominent Republicans, including Steve Scalise, the No. 3 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“These comments are totally unacceptable. As I’ve said many times before, there is absolutely no place in our politics for this kind of rhetoric, said Scalise, who battled for his life after he was shot by a gunman who opened fire on Republican lawmakers during baseball practice in 2017.
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President Donald Trump declared Friday the U.S. will uncover the truth about what happened to journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, whose possible murder at Saudi hands after disappearing in Istanbul has captured worldwide attention. Trump promised to personally call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman soon about “the terrible situation in Turkey.”

“We’re going to find out what happened,” Trump pledged when questioned by reporters in Cincinnati where he was headlining a political rally.

Khashoggi, a forceful critic of the Saudi government, went missing more than a week ago after entering a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and Turkish officials have said they believe he was murdered there. U.S. officials say they are seeking answers from the Saudi government and are not yet accepting the Turkish government’s conclusions.

The Saudis have called accusations that they are responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance “baseless.” Widely broadcast video shows the 59-year-old writer and Washington Post contributor entering the consulate on Tuesday of last week, but there is none showing him leaving.

Separately, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, the State Department said Friday. No details of the conversation were released. 

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Cengiz said Khashoggi was not nervous when he entered the Saudi consulate to obtain paperwork required for their marriage.

“He said, ‘See you later my darling,’ and went in,” she told the AP.

Citing anonymous sources, the Post reported Friday that Turkey’s government has told U.S. officials it has audio and video proof that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered. The AP has not been able to confirm that report.

In written responses to questions by the AP, Cengiz said Turkish authorities had not told her about any recordings and Khashoggi was officially “still missing.”

She said investigators were examining his cellphones, which he had left with her.

Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi left the consulate. He hasn’t been seen since, though his fiancee was waiting outside.

Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are important U.S. allies in the region. Trump said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will evaluate whether to attend a Saudi investor conference later this month. 

On Thursday, Trump had said U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia were “excellent” and he was reluctant to scuttle highly lucrative U.S. weapons deals with Riyadh. A number of members of Congress have pressed the Trump administration to impose sanctions on the country in response to the Khashoggi affair.

A delegation from Saudi Arabia arrived in Turkey on Friday as part of an investigation into the writer’s disappearance. In a statement posted on Twitter, the Saudis welcomed the joint effort and said the kingdom was keen “to sustain the security and safety of its citizenry, wherever they might happen to be.”

Cengiz said she and the journalist would have been married this week and had planned a life together split between Istanbul and the United States, where Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile since last year.

She had appealed for help to Trump, who earlier this week said he would invite her to the White House.

Cengiz didn’t respond to a question about that, but earlier on Friday she urged Trump on Twitter to use his clout to find out what happened.

“What about Jamal Khashoggi?” she wrote in response to a tweet by Trump in which he said he said he had been “working very hard” to free an American evangelical pastor who has been held for two years in Turkey. Andrew Brunson was released late Friday.

Amid growing concern over Khashoggi’s fate, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country wanted to know “the whole truth” about the writer’s disappearance, calling the early details about the case “very worrying.”

Macron said “I’m waiting for the truth and complete clarity to be made” since the matter is “very serious.” He spoke Friday in Yerevan, Armenia, to French broadcasters RFI and France 24.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Berlin was also “very concerned” about the writer’s disappearance and called on Saudi Arabia to “participate fully” in clearing up reports that he had been killed.

Global business leaders began reassessing their ties with Saudi Arabia, stoking pressure on the Gulf kingdom to explain what happened to Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, who was considered close to the Saudi royal family, had become a critic of the current government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old heir apparent who has introduced reforms but has shown little tolerance for criticism.

As a contributor to The Washington Post, Khashoggi has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, including criticism of its war in Yemen, its recent diplomatic spat with Canada and its arrest of women’s rights activists after the lifting of a ban on women driving.

Those policies are all seen as initiatives of the crown prince, who has also presided over a roundup of activists and businessmen.

 
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If history is any guide, Democrats should make gains in the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 6. The president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterm elections, with the average loss of House seats ranging between 20 and 30. Many analysts expect a Democratic takeover of the House, but the Senate appears to be different story. Kyle Kondik, managing editor of “Crystal Ball,” a political newsletter produced by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, explains why.
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VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviews Stuart Eizenstat, who was an aide to former President Jimmy Carter during his administration and is the author of “President Carter: The White House Years.” Eizenstat, offering an insider’s perspective, says his objective was to give a complete assessment of the mistakes and the failures of the Carter administration (1977-81), but also the successes that he says have not been appreciated.
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U.S. national security adviser John Bolton has vowed to further intensify the Trump administration’s tough approach to China, saying Beijing’s “behavior needs to be adjusted in the trade area, in the international, military and political areas.”

Speaking in a radio interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show recorded Thursday and aired Friday, Bolton said President Donald Trump believed China had taken advantage of the international order for far too long and not enough Americans had stood up to it.

“Now’s the time to do it” he said.

Bolton said Trump’s tough approach toward China, a country the administration saw as the “major issue this century,” had left Beijing “confused.”

“They’ve never seen an American president this tough before. I think their behavior needs to be adjusted in the trade area, in the international, military and political areas, in a whole range of areas,” he said.

“Perhaps we’ll see at the G-20 meeting in Argentina next month Xi Jinping willing to come to talk turkey on some of these issues,” he added.

Bolton’s remarks came amid a series of administration broadsides against China that goes beyond a trade war. These have included accusing Beijing of trying to undermine Trump ahead of next month’s congressional elections and of taking reckless military actions in the South China Sea.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday that Trump would go through with plans to meet Xi at the G-20 summit if it looked possible to chart “a positive direction.” But he said re-launching trade talks with China would require Beijing to commit to taking action on structural reforms to its economy.

Bolton called recent Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, where a U.S. warship had a near collision with a Chinese vessel last month, “dangerous” and said the United States was determined to keep international sea lanes open.

“This is something the Chinese need to understand,” he said, adding that allies including Britain and Australia were also sailing through the South China Sea to make this point.

“We’re going to do a lot more on that,” he said. “I think we could see more exploitation of mineral resources in the South China Sea with or without Chinese cooperation. They need to know they have not achieved a fait accompli here. This is not a Chinese province and will not be.”

Bolton did not elaborate on his remark about mineral exploitation in the strategic waterway, which China claims almost in its entirety in spite of several rival claimants.

Bolton said China’s violation of international norms in trade and business had allowed it to gain substantial economic and military strength.

“If they’re put back in the proper place they would be if they weren’t allowed to steal our technology, their military capabilities would be substantially reduced. And a lot of the tensions we see caused by China would be reduced,” Bolton said.

He indicated that Washington was prepared to take more action to restrict sensitive high-tech exports to China.

“We did this and continue to do it in terms of dual-use technology that could affect nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or ballistic-missile development,” he said. “I think in cyberspace, we’re entitled to do the same thing. … We want to do it in ways that protect our open economy, but deny others the ability to take advantage of it.”

Bolton said he expected a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “sometime in the next couple of months,” but said it remained to be seen if the diplomatic effort to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons would be successful.

“The president has held the door open for North Korea,” he said. “They need to denuclearize completely and irreversibly. And if they do that and walk through the door, the future could be very different for the North Korean people.

“The future remains uncertain on the president’s diplomacy. He’s optimistic. He presses hard. He does not have stars in his eyes about this. Neither does Mike Pompeo, neither does Jim Mattis, neither do I,” Bolton said, referring to the U.S. secretaries of defense and state.
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In one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate contests this year, Democrat Beto O’Rourke raised a record $38.1 million during the third quarter in a bid to oust Ted Cruz, a prominent Texas Republican who made an unsuccessful run for the White House in 2016. 

O’Rourke announced on Friday his eye-popping financial haul over the last three months. It was more than three times the amount raised by Cruz and set a new quarterly fundraising record in a Senate race.

The funding was the most a Senate candidate has raised in a quarter since Rick Lazio, a onetime Republican member of Congress who hauled in $22 million in the third quarter of 2000 in a failed contest against Hillary Clinton for a Senate seat in New York, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Last week, Cruz said his campaign had raised more than $12 million during the third quarter and predicted, correctly, that his rival’s take for the period would top $30 million. During a rally in Texas where he announced his own fundraising success, Cruz said of O’Rourke: “If you wanna raise money from Hollywood liberals, there ain’t nothing better. But that’s not Texas.”

O’Rourke’s unprecedented fundraising caused a stir on social media, with many commentators noting that it outpaced what high-profile presidential candidates have raised in a quarter in the past. One noted that Republican Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign had raised $35.5 million in a quarter. Another pointed out that former President Barack Obama had raised $23.5 in the final quarter before the 2008 primary season kicked off.

Progressive push

The contest between O’Rourke, a three-term liberal member of the House of Representatives, and Cruz, a conservative senator, has fired up progressives around the country, drawing in large amounts of small donations from out-of-district and out-of-state donors as Democrats seek to wrest control of Congress.

O’Rourke, who has rejected receiving money from political action committees, said the latest funding came from 800,000 contributors, although he did not say how many were from outside El Paso, which is the heart of the congressional district he represents.

The Center for Responsive Politics said more than $25 million of the funds raised by O’Rourke during the latest quarter came through ActBlue, the Democratic online fundraising juggernaut. ActBlue said earlier this week that it had raised more than $385 million for 9,300 campaigns and organizations during the third quarter.

In a statement released Friday, O’Rourke said, “The people of Texas in all 254 counties are proving that when we reject PACs and come together not as Republicans or Democrats but as Texans and Americans, there’s no stopping us.”

The O’Rourke-Cruz race currently stands as the second most expensive Senate contest, with each candidate raising more than $23 million through the second quarter. The latest quarterly fundraising puts O’Rourke well ahead of his rival. 

The most expensive Senate race is being waged in Florida between Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott; more than $50 million had been raised through the second quarter. Congressional candidates must report their third-quarter fundraising and spending to the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

Despite his sizable fundraising advantage,O’Rourke lags behind Cruz in most polls. In a poll conducted on Thursday by The New York Times’ Upshot newsletter and Siena College, Cruz was ahead of O’Rourke 51 percent to 43 percent.

It’s a ‘serious race’

Nevertheless, with O’Rourke emerging as a competitive challenger in Texas, Republicans are “understanding now that this is a serious race beginning to rally to Cruz’s side,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at University of Texas at Austin.

Spending on presidential, congressional and local election campaigns has been steadily rising in the United States in recent years, partly as a result of unlimited spending by outside groups.The Center for Responsive Politics expects this election cycle to set a new fundraising and spending record.

But outraising and outspending your rival doesn’t always ensure victory. In one of the most expensive and closely fought races this election cycle, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost in a special election for a House seat in Georgia last year to Republican Karen Handel despite a $20 million fundraising advantage.

Nevertheless, money does make a difference. 

To be competitive, “you need to be able to both outspend or keep up with your opponent but also have at bay, ready to deploy, a huge amount of money in case a super PAC comes in and makes a huge ad buy in your district,” said Sarah Bryner, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics.
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