Tuesday morning news: November 3, 2026

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Trump makes closing pitch at Reflecting Pool » Across the United States, it’s midterm election day as Republicans hope to defy the polls and hang on to their slim House and Senate majorities.

President Trump made his closing pitch Monday afternoon in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He warned Americans against voting for Democrats, accusing the party of supporting:

TRUMP: Open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilization of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas.

But Trump focused much of his speech on the Reflecting Pool itself, newly reopened after several setbacks during renovations earlier this year.

TRUMP: The pipes now are totally renovated. They’re brand new pipes put in, and the pipes being very important in terms of the algae and other things. And it’s a complete job, and we’re very proud of it.

According to reports from the Associated Press and Wall Street Journal, the president’s remarks left a number of Republicans puzzled and frustrated. They wished he would’ve spent more of his speech focused on the midterms and talking up core GOP accomplishments of the past two years.

The president did spend a good portion of the rest of the day taking part in tele-rallies for Republican candidates across the country.

Vance stumps in Ohio » Meantime, Vice President J.D. Vance was out blazing the campaign trail Monday, stumping in New York and his home state of Ohio.

The vice president urged a crowd in Swanton, Ohio to keep GOP Senator Jon Husted in office and reject Democratic challenger and former senator Sherrod Brown.

VANCE: Every single time that Sherrod Brown has had an opportunity to fight against the Far Left and stand up for you, he has bent the knee to Chuck Schumer. He bent the knee to Joe Biden.

Brown is running on fixing affordability issues and taxing data centers in the state.

Vance was also trying to rally last-minute support for GOP governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in his race with Democrat Amy Acton. The latest polling averages show both Husted and Ramaswamy trailing, but within striking distance.

Senate battle: Polls show Democrats ahead in most key races » While control of the U.S. House is widely expected to flip to the Democrats, the Senate looks like more of a toss-up. Democrats would need a net gain of four seats in today’s elections to take over the upper chamber.

Polls show Democratic candidates with narrow leads in most of the eight hotly-contested battleground states. One seat that could flip is in Iowa, where Democrat Josh Turek says he’ll work with President Trump if elected.

TUREK: I don’t believe that any party has a monopoly on good ideas. And I’ve said openly that I agree with President Trump that we should have no tax on tips, overtime, social security.

Turek is in a tight race against Republican Ashley Hinson for the seat GOP Senator Joni Ernst is vacating.

And while Republicans are playing defense in Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Maine, and Kansas, Democrats are trying to protect open seats in Minnesota and Michigan.

SCOTUS rejects White House’s California ballot set-aside push » The Supreme Court has rejected an effort to set aside 20-thousand ballots in California that the Trump Administration considered questionable.

The White House wanted the votes held to have time to verify the citizenship of the voters who cast them. The Justice Department’s Bill Essayli:

ESSAYLI: There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of suspected non-citizens on California’s voter rolls. We think the number’s actually much higher. But the 20,000 list that we provided are the people that have been manually verified.

The High Court didn’t explain why it denied the appeal.

California’s attorney general called the effort to hold the ballots ‘an act of desperation’ by the Trump Administration. State leaders there say the federal government’s list of suspected non-citizens is highly inaccurate.

Netanyahu pushing Trump to renew attacks on Iran » Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging President Trump to carry out fresh strikes on Iran once the midterms are over. That’s according to officials who’ve received classified briefings on the matter.

They say Netanyahu pressed for the strikes during a call with Trump over the weekend, but the president would not commit to military action. Vice President Vance Monday expressed optimism about reaching a diplomatic solution instead.

VANCE: The president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We’re going to keep on working at it.

Iran said Monday it has a two-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume nuclear talks with the U.S.. Several of Washington’s Middle East allies have warned against new strikes, saying they would destabilize the region.

There’s been no official comment from Israel or the White House about Trump and Netanyahu’s discussion.

Learjet crash: Plane likely started breaking apart mid-air » That Learjet that took a nosedive into the ground in South Florida Sunday, killing all nine people aboard, probably started breaking apart in mid-air.

That’s the word from the National Transportation Safety Board- NTSB, for short. NTSB investigator Tom Chapman.

CHAPMAN: We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact, and so some of this is yet to be determined. We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site.

The NTSB says it will not speculate on a cause right now, but investigators are focusing on the weather. The plane was on its way from Austin, Texas to the Bahamas when it went out of control and ended in a massive fireball in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Among the confirmed victims of the crash: Adam Robinson, a tech entrepreneur in his mid-40s, his wife Helen, and their two- and four-year-old children.

I’m Mark Mellinger.

Coming up: regulating prescription drug middlemen. Plus, the changing landscape of homeschooling.

This is The World and Everything in It.

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