WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump has warned that he will “veto everything” if the Democratic Party wins back control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, as fresh polling suggests Democrats are within reach of taking the Senate.
Speaking on the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast on the eve of the vote, Trump said: “I think we’re going to do great, but if we didn’t win, I veto everything. I’ll be vetoing, vetoing, then they’ll come along and we’ll probably make some deals along the way, but it wouldn’t be as good.”
The president described himself as “Mr. Veto” and predicted that after a month or two of Democratic bills going nowhere, the opposition would “come over, and you make a deal.” Democrats, for their part, have drawn up detailed plans for what they intend to do should they take the House of Representatives or the Senate.
Trump is closing his midterm campaign with telerallies and a speech on Monday at the renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington.
Polls point to a tight Senate fight
A series of New York Times/Siena polls released ahead of the vote show Democrats leading in five of seven key battleground states that could decide who controls the Senate. In Michigan, Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed leads Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers by 11 points. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico is ahead of Attorney General Ken Paxton by seven points.
In Maine, a CNN Poll of Polls average shows Democrat Troy Jackson leading long serving Republican Senator Susan Collins by four points, 50 percent to 46 percent.
Divided government and its limits
Under the American system, national elections every two years often leave one party in the White House and another in control of one or both chambers of Congress. That arrangement is designed to push both sides towards compromise.
However, CNN analyst Stephen Collinson argues that reinventing himself as a dealmaker may prove harder for Trump than he suggests. A new Democratic majority would be elected as a rejection of the president, and his political base has little appetite for compromise. Trump also has a record of striking deals and then walking away from them, which makes opponents wary of trusting him. Any Democratic majority is also expected to open wide ranging investigations into his administration and his financial dealings.
Still, Democrats have reason to show moderate voters that they can ease the cost of living crisis, while Trump would not want to leave office with the economy in trouble, which may force both sides to find some common ground eventually.
Pardons for Musk and officials
In the same interview with Miranda Devine, Trump said he was prepared to issue preemptive pardons to protect Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who formerly led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and other members of his administration.
“It’s talk, but if it is talk, we’ll protect them,” Trump said. Asked about the possibility of Democrats going after Musk or former DOGE employee Edward Coristine, known as “Big Balls,” he replied: “If they do it, we’ll just have to protect those people.”
Referring to pardons granted by former President Joe Biden before he left office, Trump was pressed on whether he would do the same for his own staff. “I would if I needed to, sure,” he said.
When Devine asked, “Everybody who worked for you?” Trump answered: “I would not even think about it; I’d do it. I did it for J6,” a reference to the mass pardons and sentence commutations he granted to those charged over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Last month, Trump told TIME Magazine he would consider pardoning members of his administration towards the end of his term. “Yeah, sure I’d do that,” he said at the time.
Supreme Court bid over California ballots
Also on Monday, Trump asked the Supreme Court to order California to set aside potentially thousands of ballots that the Justice Department claims may have been cast by noncitizens. Several lower courts have already rejected the request, and legal observers regard it as a long shot.
The emergency filing came days after a federal appeals court in California barred the administration from interfering in the state’s counting of mail in ballots, ruling that Washington has no power to dictate to states how they run elections.
“If the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts,” the court wrote in a two to one ruling. The majority was made up of US Circuit Judges Mark Bennett, a Trump nominee, and Gabriel Sanchez, who was appointed by Biden.
White House previews closing message
A White House official told CNN that Trump’s Reflecting Pool speech is meant to draw a sharp line between the two parties.
“The President’s remarks will highlight this Administration’s achievements to make the country safer and wealthier while drawing a clear contrast between Republicans’ commonsense America First agenda and the Democrats’ radical, America last agenda,” the official said.
Trump told reporters on Sunday that he chose the venue, one of his many renovation projects around Washington, to “just show how beautiful is.” He had pledged to restore the Reflecting Pool under an executive order to make the capital “safe and beautiful,” but the project ran into problems from the outset, and several of his advisers have urged him to stop focusing on his Washington construction projects in the run up to the midterms.
Shock endorsement rocks Michigan race
In Michigan, Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens stunned her party by switching her Senate endorsement from El-Sayed to Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed’s campaign responded with its biggest single day of fundraising.
Stevens struggled to explain her decision during a roughly 15 minute interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Sunday night. By the count of CNN analyst Aaron Blake, Cooper gave her 12 chances to explain the switch. She repeatedly described El-Sayed as “angry,” spoke in general terms and said the move had lifted a “weight” off her shoulders.
Cooper pointed out that El-Sayed had recently condemned a controversial advertisement from an outside group, something Stevens had asked him to do and had praised him for. He also cited Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who said Stevens had told her the night before that she would not endorse Rogers.
The only apparent change was that El-Sayed’s campaign had said Stevens was no longer welcome at his events, but she would not confirm that this was her breaking point.
“Look, I appreciate all the introspection and how I make decisions and how I reach this moment,” she said.
Stevens noted that “I haven’t cast my vote yet,” but denied she was hinting at another switch. She also raised concerns about El-Sayed campaigning during the primary with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, though Cooper noted she had kept backing him long after that was public knowledge.
Given a chance to dispute Dingell’s account directly, Stevens said: “That is, you know, nice editorializing.” When Cooper stressed that he was offering her the chance to respond, she again declined. “You don’t want to say whether you had a conversation with Debbie Dingell? Okay,” Cooper concluded.
Vance backs candidate who attacked Mamdani
Vice President JD Vance spent the eve of the election campaigning in Rome, New York, for Republican congressional candidate Anthony Constantino, who has recorded an album praising Trump and a song that calls New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a terrorist and a demon.
Constantino is running for the seat being vacated by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik against Democrat Blake Gendebien, a second generation dairy farmer. The Cook Political Report rates the district “lean Republican,” although it is seen as more competitive than in 2024.
“I happen to remember a man that we sent to Washington in 2016 because he wasn’t owned by his donors. That was President Donald J. Trump, and Anthony is cut from the same cloth,” Vance told the rally. Donald Trump Jr., who also attended, called Constantino “one of the original (Trump) supporters.”
Constantino, chief executive of custom printing company Sticker Mule, has an album on Spotify titled “Thank you President Trump,” with tracks including “Fight,” “Trump,” “MAGA Again” and “Art of the Deal.” He has defended that album as “G-rated.”
His music video “You Funny,” posted on YouTube in October 2025 shortly before Mamdani was elected, is far cruder. Wearing a black leather jacket bearing the American flag, Constantino raps: “Terrorists aren’t flying planes into buildings anymore. They’re coming at us different, trying to install politicians who aren’t even from our country and our government to hurt our citizens. One is Zohran Mamdani. First off, f*** you b****. I see through your game. You ain’t from here. You from Uganda and your friends kill gays.”
He also says: “Your mother raised a demon. But since you a demon back to hell’s where you going.”
Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, was born in Kampala, Uganda, and moved to New York with his family at the age of seven.
Trump gave Constantino his “complete and total endorsement” last week, calling him a “very good friend of mine.” In April 2025, Constantino gave Trump a bronze statue of the president raising his fist, a gift valued at $250,000 in Trump’s financial disclosure, as first reported by the New York Post.
Manchin stands by Collins
Former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a longtime Democrat who became an independent, defended his support for Collins in Maine, saying she gets things done and works across party lines.
“I think when you lose Susan Collins, you lose really the heart of the Senate, the soul of the Senate,” Manchin told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Monday. “She knows how it works and how it’s supposed to work. It’s not working now. And she’s fighting like heck to fix it.”
He said Collins holds Trump to account and can encourage fellow Republicans to speak up when they disagree with the administration. “She’s out there fighting. She’s on the inside,” he said.
Her challenger, Troy Jackson, attacked Trump’s tariffs as he launched a canvassing event in Yarmouth, southern Maine, on Monday morning.
“There has to be a better way for everyday people to be able to live their lives out here. And I know there is. And if we quit wasting money on foreign wars, if we quit giving money to, to billionaires, if we quit doing these dumbass tariffs and things like that, you know, we can make people’s lives better by prioritizing what we want to do in this country to help regular everyday people,” Jackson said.
“I’m tired of watching elected officials cater to people like Elon Musk. I’m tired of watching people I know, love and care about struggle and look at me with you know dismay and frustration. We can do better,” he added. “We can do a lot damn better in this country. I know it, and that’s what this race is about.”
Jackson is spending the final day in southern Maine, where his campaign hopes to boost Democratic turnout. After the event, he climbed into the front seat of his minivan, loaded with yard signs and spare shirts, and drove himself to his next stop.
Record fuel prices at the polls
American voters will head to the polls on Tuesday facing the most expensive Election Day petrol prices on record, a constant reminder of inflation and the war in Iran.
The AAA national average for regular petrol stood at $4.17 a gallon on Monday. Prices have eased in recent weeks but remain on course to break the Election Day record of $3.80 set in 2022 under Biden, according to a CNN analysis of AAA data. During the 2024 presidential election, the average was just $3.10.
Diesel is near all time highs at $6.29 a gallon, well above the previous Election Day record of $5.35 in 2022. Michigan, a key battleground, has seen the steepest 12 month rise in petrol prices of any US state.
Although Trump promised during his 2024 campaign to bring back $2 petrol, his war in Iran has helped drive prices the other way. Petrol has averaged $3.48 a gallon so far in his second term, slightly above the $3.471 average under Biden. Adjusted for inflation, this year’s prices look less extreme; real prices were $5.07 a gallon on Election Day 2012 under former President Barack Obama. But voters rarely think in inflation adjusted terms at the pump, and polls show Trump deeply unpopular on fuel prices. Diesel will be at a record even after adjusting for inflation.
Closing ads in key Senate races
The most aired advertisements of the final week show what each campaign wanted voters to remember.
In Texas, Talarico ran one ad more than 6,000 times, according to AdImpact data, making a populist case against Paxton. “We can’t afford gas or groceries or health care because the system has been rigged by billionaires and corrupt politicians like Ken Paxton,” he says. Texas PAC, a super PAC funded by national Republicans and Musk, spent nearly $10 million airing an ad more than 5,000 times that accuses Talarico of associating with “radicals” and attacks his stance on criminal justice reform.
In Ohio, the second most expensive Senate race of the cycle after Texas, Republican Senator Jon Husted faces former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Husted’s top ad, aired about 5,000 times, urges voters to “turn off all that noise” and dismisses Brown’s comeback as “the same old tired plays that have set us back.” Brown’s leading ad, shown nearly 4,000 times, features a woman who voted for Trump in 2024 explaining why she now backs the Democrat. She complains about rising prices and says Husted is “the reason we have so many data centers,” which has become a flashpoint in the race and across the country.
In Michigan, the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican super PAC for Senate contests, has spent more than $3.75 million running an ad around 1,500 times suggesting El-Sayed supports “Sharia law,” one of several charged attacks on his Muslim faith. El-Sayed’s main closing ad features his grandparents answering the accusations.
“There’s lots of ads making our grandson Abdul seem different, and he is different, different about how he takes on the powerful. Stop listening to those lying ads,” they say.
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