Battle to replace McConnell remains wide-open as top candidates quietly woo key senators — and Trump
CNN
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s potential successors have been crisscrossing the country, cozying up to former President Donald Trump and barnstorming key battleground states in the final days of the election to help their party win back the Senate — and help themselves, too.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s potential successors have been crisscrossing the country, cozying up to former President Donald Trump and barnstorming key battleground states in the final days of the election to help their party win back the Senate — and help themselves, too. Sen. John Cornyn and Senate GOP Whip John Thune, the two top candidates to succeed McConnell, have been pouring millions into GOP candidates’ campaign accounts and stumping for them on the trail — part of an effort to lock up support when the secret-ballot leadership election takes place on November 13. GOP senators and top aides say the race could go either way. A major wild card hanging over the race: The fallout from the presidential election that takes place the week before and the role that Trump will play in trying to anoint a leader if he wins. Yet if Trump loses, Thune and Cornyn will have to make their case on how the GOP can dig out of the political wilderness, arguments that senators say could carry great weight as they cast their secret ballots. Nevertheless, both Cornyn and Thune recognize Trump’s potential sway, especially with a faction of the GOP conference, and have been zeroing in on bolstering their ties with the former president over the last several months. When Trump stumped in Reno, Nevada last month, Cornyn was pictured next to the former president, both flashing a grin and a thumbs up. And when Trump taped a podcast interview in October with Joe Rogan in Austin, Texas, Cornyn was on the tarmac. “Glad to welcome President Trump to Texas,” Cornyn posted on X, with a picture aboard Trump’s plane.
The deep mistrust between conservatives and Republican election officials in Georgia is hampering efforts to slow the tide of election misinformation swirling in this pivotal battleground.
Georgia police have arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with a shooting at Albany State University after the school’s homecoming game last month that left one person dead and multiple others injured, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
First lady Jill Biden stood at a church roughly 10 miles from the Philadelphia suburb where she grew up Sunday morning, making an urgent plea before several hundred churchgoers, many holding fans with a picture of the woman at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Two police officers in Canton, Ohio, were indicted on charges of reckless homicide in the death of Frank Tyson, a Black man who was restrained by police in April, Stark County prosecutor Kyle L. Stone said on Saturday.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday expressed tentative support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to order the removal of fluoride from water supplies during a potential second Trump term, saying that it “sounds OK to me.”
Donald Trump, who said in Pennsylvania on Sunday that he regrets leaving the White House in 2021, is ending the 2024 campaign the way he began it – dishing out a stew of violent, disparaging rhetoric and repeated warnings that he will not accept defeat if it comes.
Here’s when the last polls will close in key states on election night, and what to expect from vote reporting.
CNN’s 5 Things brings you all the news you need to start your week smart.
In the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, much of the most discussed news around former President Donald Trump revolved around fascism and french fries, according to The Breakthrough, a CNN polling project that tracks what average Americans are actually hearing, reading and seeing about the presidential nominees. Conversations around Vice President Kamala Harris, by contrast, continued to focus largely around broader and more conventional stories about her campaign.
Educators paid to have someone else take the state certification exam and now are scattered in classrooms across Texas, prosecutors say.
Voters in eight states, most of them heavily Republican, are deciding on ballot measures this year that aim to require US citizenship to vote – even though it is already illegal for noncitizens to cast ballots in federal elections.