Ken Paxton makes closing pitch to anxious Republicans — and even some opponents

🔮 North of $405 million will be spent on advertising in the final week of the midterm elections for the top 15 races in the House and Senate, an eye-popping figure that will only continue to climb ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.

🔮 Trump will rally voters Monday in the Magnolia State to reelect Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) just as Democrats and election watchers are paying closer attention to what was once an unthinkable seat to flip for Democrat Scott Colom.

🔮 Lucky for Talarico and Paxton, their actions may wind up canceling each other out.

🔮 Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) is considering a return to the governor’s mansion in a political gamble that could oust a fellow Republican, open his Senate seat, and set off a domino effect across West Virginia politics.

🔮 The exchanges occurred during the second debate of the Maine Senate race, a battleground contest that could determine control of the Senate.

🔮 Whether Moore can again eclipse Cox by as wide a margin as before, as well as convince voters to green-light a high-profile redistricting ballot measure, could affect his role in the approaching 2028 presidential election as a candidate or a bystander.

🔮 ICE Deputy Director Charles Wall said it was “unbelievable” that Igbojekwe would have been employed by a congressional campaign.

🔮 “They won’t,” el Sayed said on Fox News, responding to host Martha MacCallum that the special interests and corporations who fund such political action committees could seek to collect on their investment once he’s elected.

🔮 He’s also picked up endorsements from party holdouts and maintained a nominal lead in the polls over Republican rival Mike Rogers, even after months of negative headlines from his association with controversial streamer Hasan Piker. El Sayed’s current election prospects are undoubtedly up from where they were just a month ago, when he couldn’t shake his ties with Piker, a far-left Twitch streamer, and was lobbying skeptical Senate Democrats in Washington to get behind him. “When you’re in a circumstance where there’s a large constituency of people who feel very uncomfortable with your ascension into higher office where they don’t feel safe, you’ve got to put those concerns at the core of your campaign,” Mike Nellis, an ex-senior adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris, said of Jewish Democrats’ unease with el Sayed.

🔮 Washington has left itself no shortage of work for when it returns after the Nov. 3 midterm elections with a lengthy to-do list that includes averting a government shutdown, which could be exponentially complicated by the election results.