Trump campaigns in Mississippi, highlighting Republicans' challenges

CORINTH, Miss. — President Donald Trump campaigned Monday in Mississippi, as he continued a closing midterm rally blitz that has highlighted Republicans' challenges ahead of an election that could drastically shift power in Washington and statehouses across the country.

"I'm here because Cindy's doing great, but I just got to make sure. I can't take a chance," Trump told the crowd, his voice audibly hoarse, as he worked to boost Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is facing a surprisingly stiff challenge from Democrat Scott Colom.

Colom was spotted at the rally site, too, creating the rare spectacle of Trump's staunchest supporters interacting directly with a figure the president would soon go on to denigrate as a "Marxist radical" and "fake" and "shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate" from the stage.

Mississippi, among the nation's most reliably Republican states, is not where the Republicans envisioned needing a late-October stop from the president. But Colom is one of many Democratic underdogs who have managed to expand the House and Senate battleground maps because of widespread voter discontent over inflation, the Iran war and other aspects of Trump's second presidency.

He said he had planned to go to the rally site to listen to what was on Trump supporters' minds.

"They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they're going through," Colom said ahead of the president's arrival.

Trump's event kicks off a week of aggressive campaigning that will include more stops in states he won comfortably in 2024, including Texas, South Carolina and Iowa. Trump also plans to hold a rally Saturday in Salina, Kansas, officials announced late Monday, marking his second visit to the state in less than two weeks.

Democrats, including progressives, are expanding their efforts

Top Democratic candidates and their surrogates were also greeting voters — more than 30 million of whom have already cast ballots, according to data collected by The Associated Press from election administrators across the country — as they try to end Republicans' threadbare majority in the House, reclaim control of the Senate and claw back power in state capitals.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats' 2024 presidential candidate, campaigned in Wisconsin with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who faces Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Trump ally, in the governor's race. If elected, Crowley would be the first Black governor to lead the battleground state.

"This is a tight race because the stakes are so high," Harris said at an event billed as a "Women for Crowley" rally.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed distanced himself from an ad created by a group called Rebellion PAC that blames high grocery prices on U.S. support for Israel.

"This ad is not affiliated in any way with the Abdul for Senate campaign," a spokesperson for El-Sayed, Roxie Richner, said in a statement about the spot, which features a couple discussing U.S. support for Israel as they shop for groceries.

"Apparently it's costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza," the woman says.

The ad had been condemned by U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary.

The way to win Michigan "is not by blaming the high costs of our goods on the only Jewish homeland in the world," Stevens wrote on X.

El-Sayed, who would be the country's first Muslim senator, has denounced antisemitism while fiercely criticizing Israel for its military operations in Gaza — a position that has been a frequent point of attack for both Republicans and supporters of Israel in his party.

Vance campaigning in other Republican states

Vice President JD Vance returned to Kansas to stump for Sen. Roger Marshall, who finds himself in a tight contest with Democratic nominee and pastor Adam Hamilton. Hundreds of people were gathered inside the warehouse of a steel-fabricating company in north Topeka in a state where Democrats haven't won a Senate race since 1932.

Marshall, who has raised far less money than Hamilton, told the crowd that Trump is on the ballot, even if his name doesn't appear, because of how Democrats will thwart his agenda if they win control of Congress.

"Democrats are coming out like it's a presidential year," he said, calling on the GOP to match Democrats' energy.

Jace Sullivan, a 50-year-old electrician from Topeka who describes himself as "85% Republican," said Trump supporters need to "circle the wagons" and get out to vote.

Wearing a red "JD Vance for President 2028" shirt, he said he thinks Trump is rightly working to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

"Gas prices are high and it does suck, but it's a means to an end," Sullivan said.

Trump, at the Mississippi rally, said he had, in fact, expected gas prices to rise even higher than they had.

"It worked out fine and it'll be over soon," he said of the war with Iran.

Earlier, Vance was in Belgrade, Montana, to campaign with Republican Aaron Flint, who is facing Democrat Sam Forstag in the race for the state's 1st Congressional District, and Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme.

Despite the visits to ruby red states, Sen. Tim Scott, who serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Associated Press Monday that GOP candidates are "closing very strongly" in races across the country, including South Carolina, which Trump is set to visit for the second time in as many weeks to stump for GOP Sen. Darline Graham.

"One of the reasons why we will be in the majority is because he has invested the time and the energy on the campaign trail," Scott said on the sidelines of U.S. Rep. Russell Fry's 3rd Annual Freedom Fry event.

Trump to rally in another reliably Republican state

But it's Trump's visit to Mississippi that perhaps brings the midterm landscape into the sharpest relief with just a week of campaigning left.

To be sure, Hyde-Smith, who is vying for her second full term, remains the favorite in a state Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 percentage points.

But Colom, a local prosecutor who would make history as Mississippi's first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction, is looking to parlay inflation, Trump's lagging popularity and Hyde-Smith's mistakes into an upset.

Senate Democrats' super PAC has been a late entry in the contest, with a $1.2 million investment. Mississippians have not chosen a new Democratic senator since 1947, and Democrats last won a Senate race there when that senator, the onetime segregationist John Stennis, won his last reelection in 1982.

In New York, meanwhile, one of the party's most vulnerable House members pulled from Trump's campaign playbook. Rep. Mike Lawler, who is in a tight race with Democrat Cait Conley in New York City's northern suburbs, manned a McDonald's drive-thru — mimicking something Trump did two years ago, even as Lawler has tried to emphasize his independence from the president.