Trump to appear at rallies in battlegrounds Iowa and Kansas two days before midterms – live

It could have been an awkward moment. Barack Obama, campaigning for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, acknowledged that his fellow Democrat has criticised some aspects of the Obama presidency.

“Yeah, Abdul didn’t agree with some things we wanted to do – that our administration was doing – when I was president,” he told a rally in Detroit. “You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do? Michelle Obama.” The crowd erupted in laughter. “I’d say about five times a day, she says, ‘You knucklehead. Why you do that?’”

It was an elegant attempt to bridge the gap between the old Democratic party and the new. The US midterm elections have brought anti-incumbent sentiment to the fore. Some candidates have actively shrugged off their party labels, eager to cast themselves as outsiders running against the Washington establishment.

Against that backdrop, who wants a 65-year-old former president who left office nearly a decade ago with his promise of hope and change still only partly realised? It seems that Democrats do.

With days to go before midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, Democrats have turned to their most formidable orator for a series of blistering speeches in the campaign’s closing days.

America’s first Black president has mercilessly mocked Trump’s autocratic pretensions and derided his foreign policy misadventures in the Middle East.

“This election is our last, best chance of at least reining him in, reining in some of the foolishness of this administration,” he said in Georgia. “It’s the circuit-breaker in the system, and we need to flip it.”

My colleague David Smith has the full story:

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump is making stops in Iowa and Kansas to throw support behind Republicans in competitive Senate races with just two days remaining before the midterm elections. He had originally canceled the in-person appearances in favor of tele-rallies, only to reverse course on Friday.

He likely will emphasize the $15b his administration has promised to farmers in the past few weeks, the Associated Press reported. The spending is intended to offset higher costs farmers have endured largely due to Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, which have driven up diesel prices and raised the cost of farm inputs such as fertilizer.

Trump, who spent Saturday at his ⁠Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of ​campaigning across multiple states, won Iowa by double digits in 2024, Reuters reported. But polls show Democrats tied with or leading Republicans in many of the state’s races, and Trump’s approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45% in October, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Kansas, ⁠which last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, is also facing an unexpectedly close race.

Early voting has surged, with more than 53 million votes cast as of Sunday morning, according to an analysis by the University of Florida. Voter enthusiasm for Tuesday’s elections appears to be strongest among Democrats, with 11.1 million registered Democrats having voted so far, according to the states that collate such information, compared with 8.2 million registered Republicans.

The Trump administration has spent months ⁠preparing for a possible Democratic takeover of Congress, developing plans to keep advancing major parts of his agenda through executive power while bracing for investigations of his administration, the Associated Press reported, citing a White House official and two people familiar with the plans.

Democrats need a net gain of four seats in ⁠the House of Representatives as well as the Senate to overturn Republicans’ narrow 218-214 and 53-47 majorities. Opinion polls favor Democrats to win the House, while the Senate remains too close to call.

In other developments:

• Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s tightly fought Senate race, wants Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens to stay away from his campaign events. The two had planned to appear together Sunday at a church service in Detroit, but Representative Debbie Dingell later told CNN she had spoken to Stevens and told her, “This isn’t working.”

• A US judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal with prejudice on Saturday, according to a court filing, bringing an end to his legal challenge over the newspaper’s reporting on his alleged birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

Stick with us for more live coverage throughout the day.