Democratic Dust-up Puts Must-Win Seat at Risk

President Trump urges Republicans to the polls in Iowa and Kansas, where Senate races are neck-and-neck, plus Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Abdel al-Sayed's Republican opponent, dashing hopes of a public show of unity in the battleground state. It's hard to really overstate just how extraordinary the last 24 hours in Michigan have been. I did speak with former advisors to Haley Stevens. They knew that she had misgivings with Abdel al-Sayed, but they never expected that she would join the Republican ticket and risk-costing Democrats a must-win seat. And the rest of the day's news has financed races to recover losses after the biggest cyber-heist in history. It's Monday. November 2nd. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, Top Headlines and Business Stories, Moving Our World Today. President Trump is planning to close out his mid-terms campaign push with a speech in Washington tonight. The venue, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, teeing up remarks that a senior White House official said will promote the president's restoration projects across the nation's capital. Trump last night rallied voters in deep red Kansas, a state that he won by 16 points in 2024, as he tries to lend a final boost to incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, whose reelection battle with Democrat Adam Hilton is ready to toss up. Here he was, courtesy of KCTV 5 News. Trump tried to sell the crowd on his policies to boost the state's agricultural industry, which has been hit hard by high fuel and fertilizer prices, but he also jokingly called them to increase beef production. The president waxed poetic at times that his rallies were coming to an end, saying the quote, "I don't think that this will ever happen again." Well, in another closely watched Senate race in Michigan, Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens has crossed the aisle and endorsed former GOP representative Mike Rogers over Democrat Abdul Al-Sayed, a shocking announcement she delivered on social media. As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign, and that I should stay away. And he's right, and that's why I am endorsing my Rogers for the United States Senate. According to Stevens, it all changed in the past week, and she was pointing to this ad that an outside group put out that she said was anti-Semitic, the ad blamed higher prices here at home on U.S. aid to Israel, and Stevens called on Al-Sayed to disavow the ad. Al-Sayed in response, distanced himself from the ad, he said he disagreed with the contents, and had nothing to do with it. But you also saw some of his frustration spill into public view. He accused Stevens of distracting from the core issues of the campaign. He said the campaign is about affordability, it's about day-to-day cost of living, and his campaign effectively told Stevens to stay away in the final days going into the election. That seemed to be the tipping point for Stevens. But it still is very baffling to Democrats that this seems to be more about personal grievances than it has anything to do with policy or beliefs. He said that Democratic leaders though are struggling to brush things off quite so easily. Democrats have effectively disowned her and said she no longer has a future within the party. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer referred to the decision by Stevens and Doris Mike Rodgers as a quote-unquote despicable betrayal. So that just gives you a sense of how important Democrats see this opportunity to regain control of one if not both chambers of Congress from Republicans. And the closing stretch of the campaign is weaving through the courts as well. A federal judge yesterday dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit seeking to block state officials in Alaska from certifying election results there should Republican candidate for Senate Dan S. Sullivan lose his re-election bid. General Legal Affairs reporter Luis Freddowski has more. General Judge Sharon Gleason threw out the lawsuit on the basis that the government hadn't submitted a workable plan she said for pulling out and investigating ballots cast by Alaskan voters for the challenger down Sullivan. Alaskan election officials said that what the Trump administration was asking them to do was inappropriate and not even possible. In Gleason it seems agreed. She also said that the court lacked the authority to order this. The Justice Department had argued that Alaskan results might be invalidated by voter confusion and set it plans to appeal yesterday's ruling. State and federal authorities are also investigating whether anyone broke the law in their attempt to get the second Sullivan on the ballot. Dan J. Sullivan Jr. told the journal that nobody put him up to running and Democratic candidate Mary Peltola has denied knowing about an effort reported on by the New York Times to recruit him as a spoiler candidate. And for more updates, as last full day of campaigning continues, check out the election live blog we've got running on WSJ.com and make sure to tune into the PM edition of What's News at 5 PM Eastern. We are exclusively reporting that the U.S. is backing a quick resumption of Russian natural gas sales to Europe through Ukrainian pipelines in order to help secure an energy ceasefire ahead of winter. Our chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Yaroslav Tronfumov has the story. The American voice Jared Kushner and Steve Woodkov are thinking that one way of convincing President Putin to agree at least to a limited energy ceasefire, meaning a stop on attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure and a stop of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and oil experts terminals will be to resume the shipments of Russian gas to Europe, which will create a huge financial rainfall for Russia. The downside of that is also renew European dependence on Russian gas. And so it will generate backlash in Europe because it's a matter of European security and let's not forget that the Trump administration, in the first time President Trump was in office, was very actively campaigning against European purchases of Russian gas. With that in mind, I asked Jarro how likely it was that European leaders would agree to this. Well, European officials are adamant that it's not going to happen, but Europe is also in dire straits because of President Trump's war on Iran, energy prices have skyrocketed worldwide. And the European Union's energy bill is about 100 billion euros, so it's around 12 billion dollars more expensive already this year, just because of the war in Iran. And so there is this easy solution because Russia does have abundant natural gas. And there is a rating network of pipelines that goes through Ukraine. Practically, however, it will be a complete about a face of a European policy and would also, let's be frank, fund the Russian war machine that is patent on extinguishing the Ukrainian independence and then maybe moving on to other countries in Europe. Meanwhile, overnight, cyber attacks struck mobile emergency apps in both Ukraine and Russia, triggering false warnings of nuclear and chemical threats in Ukraine and drone strikes in Russia. Ukrainian officials quickly dismissed the alerts as false, and Russian officials reassured the public that the alert system was working normally. It remains unclear whether unauthorized hackers were responsible for the incidents or if the breaches mark a new tactic by both countries. In markets news, crypto exchange Binance says that customers have pulled more than 2% of the total assets under its management after hackers plundered more than $6.3 billion from digital wallets in the biggest cyber-heist in history last week. Binance says it's since replaced roughly 95% of stolen assets using a combination of crypto assets it already holds, as well as new purchases, and it has ended a temporary block on fun withdrawals implemented last week as it conducted security checks. And a number of US tech stocks are posting gains in pre-market trading, setting up a more positive trading session following Friday's slide. Intel, Nvidia and SpaceX are among those moving higher ahead of earnings from Apple and Palantir due out after the market closed, and helping provide a boost to stocks today crude oil prices, which are down, after Axios reported the President Trump had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wanted to give diplomacy with Iran another shot. Coming up, we'll head back to the campaign trail, but not to the big money races that you're likely hearing about on cable news. As our Joshua Chaffin profiles candidates who are quite literally pawning off their possessions to stay on the race, stick around. This year's midterms are shaping up to be the most expensive in history. Candidates and their backers are forecast to spend some $12 billion on swing state advertising alone, with TV spots, social ads, and flyers all hammering home the message that this election carries existential stakes. But as the journals Joshua Chaffin and Anthony DeBarros report not every race is being dominated by big money. And together, Josh says they looked at races where there's a huge disparity between the incumbents and their congressional underdogs who could barely catch a dime of this year's flood of campaign cash. Well, a lot of these people have very low profiles or sort of barely heard of in the national discussion about this race, but some of them I was really charmed by and impressed at how hard they were working running legitimate campaigns, albeit without a lot of money, but with a lot of hustle. Among the candidates, Josh focused on were a Democrat and Kentucky who pondered her power tools to make ends meet and a Republican in New Jersey who could only afford a single billboard, costing him a little over two grand. Hey, Osmegan Wingfield here running for Congress at Kentucky Second District. One person that I spent a good amount of time with was Megan Wingfield and she is the first time candidate. She is a openly gay woman running in a rural district in Kentucky. She has this great irrepressible personality. And let's take this seat back for the people of Kentucky. I love y'all big, all powered of the people, baby. And she is hugely outmatched running against an incumbent, but she has been driving up and down I 65. And here's the thing, right, Ballinger? We don't want data centers in our community. We all have collectively agreed on that. I think the fact that she herself has very little money and can sort of barely afford gas money makes her maybe more relatable to people in the district that has a lot of people who are dependent on food stamps and federal aid and so forth. And that's what we have to do. We have to lower the cost for people in New Jersey because New Jersey is a little bit different. He is somebody who this is his third time running. He's running against Donald Norcross, famous powerful political family in South Jersey. I would say that that is seemingly kind of a hopeless errand, but he has put a lot into it. A vote for Donald Norcross is a vote for this cardboard cutout right here. That's what it would be. And Norcross refused to debate him or even really pay attention to him. So he ended up staging a kind of online debate with this cardboard cutout of Donald Norcross and live streamed that. Congressman, your thoughts? Bueller. Take your time, Donald. You only had 12 years to come up and answer for that one. While Josh says that social media has a way of democratizing reach and can be incredibly effective as in the case of Zoran Mamdani in New York. Running an effective campaign online still requires a lot of money and resources. Still, there could be an upside to all the effort those long shot candidates are putting in. One thing that is optimistic for some of these candidates, if they do reasonably well in one of these races, there's the chance that they can then go to the party. They can go to donors. They can go to outside groups and say you've completely written this race off, but I've just done better than anyone's ever done. And next time around, those people might be more inclined to open up their wallets. You know, Megan Wingfield, she discovered in the course of the race that it's actually very hard to raise money when you don't have money. So she was not deterred by that. She ended up winning her primary and that resulted in a $5,000 donation from the United Auto Workers. And I think she's aware that if she does well enough this time around that it might set her up to run again in a couple of years and she might be able to convince all these different groups that she is a little bit more viable and get them to write checks themselves. I was journal senior writer Joshua Chatton. And that's it for what's news for this Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Hattie Moyer, our supervising producer and his son are Killhoff and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.