Trump says he will have spent $400m to support Republicans in midterms – US politics live

• Donald Trump said that he will have spent $400m supporting Republican candidates in midterm races by the time election day rolls around on 3 November. The staggering amount will have been spent through his political operation and aligned Super Pac, Maga Inc. The president will continue his campaign blitz with a rally in Greenville, North Carolina on Tuesday.

• Beyond Washington, Trump’s special envoys – Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – wrapped up a meeting with Nordic leaders and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Oslo. The Ukrainian president said that the talks covered security guarantees, among others, and he hopes to hear Russia’s response tomorrow. Witkoff is set to head to St Petersburg on Wednesday to relay to the new peace proposals discussed with Ukraine to Moscow.

• Zelenskyy also said that US intelligence sharing with Ukraine is working again, after sustained disruptions. Earlier, the Ukrainian president said he had a “substantive conversation” with US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

• Meanwhile, Rubio told reporters in India today that “there has not been some deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine”. He called the assertion that people in Ukraine are dying because the US is denying them information “scandalous” and “outrageous”. However, in an interview with CNN, representative Eugene Vindman, the Democratic congressman from Virginia, slammed the secretary of state’s comments. “He [Rubio] is lying and so is the president when they say that they are not restricting intelligence in violation of the law,” Vindman said.

• And Trump continued to blame the riots in France on mass migration, without providing any evidence. “It’s an immigration problem. You have people that poured into France, and they were also unchecked, unvetted, like with Biden when he was doing. We don’t do that,” Trump said. Even though French authorities have not tied the upheaval to immigrants, that hasn’t deterred the president from insisting that similar chaos would be the US’ fate if Democrats win control of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

Also in the Oval Office today, Mehmet Oz – the director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that the health department would be deferring $1.2bn more to California.

This comes after the Trump administration already paused almost $1bn in Medicaid funding to the Golden state in July.

“They just got the note, and we’re doing that because the growth of personal care services in California,” Oz told reporters on Tuesday. “That one little area where you’re paying someone to carry groceries upstairs for your mom, which many of you would carry groceries upstairs for your mom for free, I would think. But in California, they’ll pay you a lot of money for it, and it’s actually run by the counties. But California has been growing that program 24% in the last three years.”

Once again, Trump launched into a racist attack against Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and the Somali-American community.

This comes after the justice department launched a raid on the Minnesota representative’s Washington DC home. Reports citing sources familar with the probe said the search earlier this month was related to a criminal fraud investigation concerning Omar’s immigration paperwork. Omar’s father filled out that paperwork when she was a child. The raid has been met with widespread condemnation, particularly so close to the midterm elections.

However, Trump today doubled down.

“I think she’s a sick, a very dishonest person, but who hates our country. And she comes from a country that is essentially not even a country, Somalia. It’s a real shit house,” he said.

“Somalians vote for her … Most of them shouldn’t be here. You know, they have like a 98 % unemployment rate. They don’t work,” the president added, an incredible statistic given the fact that the census doesn’t actually track the unemployment rate for Somali-Americans specifically.

Donald Trump was not optimistic about whether peace talks appear to be back on the table ahead of Steve Witkoff’s meeting in St Petersburg, Russia tomorrow (following his summit with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Nordic leaders in Oslo).

“Russia is a big machine. They just keep grinding forward, and that’s what they’ve done. They’ve taken a very large piece of land, and you know you can say that Ukraine is doing well or poorly, but the land gets bigger and bigger all the time, week by week,” Trump said, before repeating his insistence for Zelenskyy to cut a deal.

“We have given tremendous amounts to Ukraine. We’ve got nothing back, other than high diesel,” Trump said, without acknowledging that the price of diesel and gasoline jumped at the beginning of the Iran war in February. “We want Zelenskyy to make a deal. He can make a deal … In my opinion, it’s just really just going to get worse.”

On France, the president once again said –without providing any evidence –that the riots are due to mass migration.

“It’s an immigration problem. You have people that poured into France, and they were also unchecked, unvetted, like with Biden when he was doing. We don’t do that,” Trump said.

However, the French authorities have not tied the upheaval to immigrants, but that hasn’t deterred the president for insisting that the chaos would be a fate the US is destined for if Democrats win control of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

In the Oval Office, Trump announced an incentive program for people to report fraud, in honor of conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley –who, you may remember, posted a video last year alleging fraud by daycare centers servicing Minneapolis’s Somali American community.

The video, initially posted in December, resulted in a deluge of anti-immigrant and anti-Somali content across social media, including in Truth Social posts by Donald Trump.

More than 90 people in Minnesota have been charged since 2022 in a $250m Covid-19 relief fraud scheme involving a non-profit that falsely claimed to provide meals to children, and a federal prosecutor estimated that $9bn or more in federal funds across 14 state programs may have been stolen since 2018.

In July, Fahima Egeh Mahamud, the CEO of the daycare center that appeared in Shirley’s video, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the US.

Under the administration’s proposed program, people who submit information through that results in a fraud conviction could receive up to $30,000.

In the Oval Office today, Trump presented Shirley, 24, with a check for $10,000 for his work.

Meanwhile, in Oslo, Trump’s special envoys –Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner –wrapped up a meeting with Nordic leaders and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president said that the talks covered security guarantees, among others, and he hopes to hear Russia’s response tomorrow.

Witkoff is set to head to St Petersburg on Wednesday to relay to the new peace proposals discussed with Ukraine to Moscow.

Zelenskyy also said that intelligence sharing with Ukraine is working again, after sustained disruptions.

Donald Trump said that he will have spent $400m supporting Republican candidates in midterm races by the time election day rolls around on 3 November.

The staggering amount will be spent through his political operation and aligned Super Pac, Maga Inc.

“More than 300 Million Dollars has already been spent on Advertising, Direct and Indirect Voter Contact, Rallies, Rally Arenas, Telerallies, Get Out the Vote Programs, Election Integrity, and more. It is my Great Honor to do so on behalf of the Republican Party, which has done so much to bring our Country back from the Edge of Oblivion,” he wrote on Truth Social.

He cited his belief in the Republican party, but also the riots that have swept through France, as his reasons behind the spend. A reminder, Trump has repeated baseless claims that the demonstrations, which have descended into chaos and seen thousands arrested, are the result of mass migration.

Reporting from Topeka

Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 – does Adam Hamilton have the courage, brain and heart to cause an extraordinary upset?

Just two years after Donald Trump won Kansas by 16 points in his fight to regain the White House, Republicans in the state are scrambling to retain their dominance. The battle for one of its two seats in the US Senate is too close to call, setting the stage for a potentially extraordinary upset.

Some recent polls even put Democrat Adam Hamilton on course for a historic victory. Kansans have not sent a representative of the party to the US Senate since 1932.

On the campaign trail, Hamilton regularly points to one of his state’s most famous residents: Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Recalling a visit he made to Liberal, Kansas, and its Oz museum, he asks the audience to recall what Dorothy’s companions on her journey need. The lion needed courage, the scarecrow a brain and the tin man a heart.

Washington needs more of all three, he says, and he can deliver it. He decided to run for office after seeing the Trump administration act in ways that were “not good or kind or compassionate or humble”, Hamilton – in the energetic cadence of the pastor he is – told a crowd of business leaders in Topeka on Friday. He was waiting for Roger Marshall, the state’s Republican incumbent senator, to stand up for his state and its people.

“I would have arguments with Roger Marshall in the shower. He was not in the shower with me,” Hamilton joked. “And I would just say, Roger, please stand up for your people. You were not hired to be a spokesperson for the White House. You were hired to fight for your people.”

Hamilton’s role as senior pastor of the country’s largest United Methodist congregation comes with name recognition and speaking skills. But Marshall’s liabilities as his opponent – namely, the fact he sued hundreds of his patients for unpaid bills, resulting in the arrests of dozens of them – have contributed greatly to Hamilton’s prospects of flipping the seat.

Electorally, he’s trying to win over independents and Republicans, calling himself an independent-minded Democrat. It would be valuable, he told the business leaders last week, for Kansas to have a Democrat like him and a Republican in Jerry Moran representing them in the US Senate – working both sides of the aisle.

Read the full dispatch here:

Mike Bloomberg is donating $80m to Democrats ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

Speaking to the New York Times on Tuesday, Bloomberg’s advisor Howard Wolfson said: “He believes in participation in our democracy. And obviously the scale of his participation, given his resources and his means, is greater than other people’s financially. But other people are participating in different ways.”

“He is of the view that resources matter in campaigns,” Wolfson said, adding that Bloomberg “expects a result.”

The outlet reports that the former New York City major, now 84-years old, is focused on securing a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, with at least $50m of his doantion to be spent on House races.

In response to Bloomberg’s donation, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said: “Mayor Bloomberg played an incredibly instrumental role in the decisive midterm election in 2018. The extraordinary support from Mayor Bloomberg will once again help Democrats flip the House,” the outlet reports.