Politalking US 
This briefing reflects reporting and polling available as of September 26, 2026. Candidates, endorsements and polling can change before Election Day on November 3, 2026. Why This Race Matters North Carolina’s 11th District covers much of the state’s mountainous west and has usually favored Republicans in recent federal elections. The 2026 race changed abruptly when … Read more
This briefing reflects reporting and polling available as of September 26, 2026. Candidates, endorsements and polling can change before Election Day on November 3, 2026. Why This Race Matters Florida’s 22nd Congressional District is an open-seat contest created by the state’s 2026 congressional map. It links parts of Broward, Palm Beach, Hendry and Collier counties, … Read more
The Trump administration has canceled about 315,000 Affordable Care Act Marketplace enrollments covering more than 760,000 people, saying investigators determined that the enrollments were unauthorized. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says ending the associated federal premium subsidies should return about $2.2 billion in taxpayer funding. The administration is also reviewing hundreds of thousands … Read more
The Senate battlefield has drawn most of the midterm attention, but control of the House, and a wave of open governor’s races, are being shaped by the same underlying dynamics: crowded primaries that left lasting bruises, redistricting fights actively redrawing the map, and, in Florida, an unusually public rivalry within the president’s own party. This … Read more
With about six weeks left before Election Day, national polling has moved further toward Democrats and forecasters have shifted several once-safe Republican Senate seats into toss-up territory. But the topline ratings only tell part of the story. Behind the numbers in the closest races are messy primary hangovers, party establishments that took weeks to fall … Read more
On September 18, 2026, President Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would lose access to the White House. Within two days, Secret Service officers had confiscated three reporters’ credentials at the gate. The outlets sued, arguing the ban breaks both the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. Their case revives a question the … Read more
This briefing reflects reporting and candidate positions available as of September 21, 2026. Candidates, endorsements and polling can change before Election Day on November 3, 2026. Why This Race Matters Indiana’s 2026 secretary of state election is unusual for several reasons. Republican incumbent Diego Morales lost his party’s nomination, leaving an open general-election contest. Former … Read more
A federal appeals court has ruled that the government must give immigrants a meaningful opportunity to raise safety concerns before deporting them to a country that was not named in their original removal proceedings. The September 18 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit largely upheld a lower-court ruling challenging the … Read more
According to Reuters, Trump directed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to prepare an executive order creating a board that would review NIH grants. The proposal has not yet been issued as an executive order, and important details could still change. Background NIH distributes federal money to universities, hospitals and other research institutions … Read more
Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman said September 18 that the central bank expects to finalize changes to its bank stress-testing framework within weeks. The plan would disclose more about the models and scenarios used in the tests and would change how some large banks’ capital requirements are calculated. The proposal is part … Read more
The Trump administration has extended by another year its effort to impose a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B visa petitions. The proposed fee would be far higher than the fees historically associated with the program, but its legality remains unresolved. The extension does not apply to current H-1B holders changing from student status or … Read more
Security researchers and election transparency advocates are pressing Georgia to fix a known flaw in its voting machines that could let someone match a cast ballot back to the specific voter who cast it, warning that advances in artificial intelligence have made the flaw far easier to exploit than when it was first identified. The … Read more
