SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And late last night, a federal judge in California slapped back at the Justice Department with an order that it may not threaten, intimidate or coerce any state or local elections officials or workers over counting ballots. Some confusion this week with President Trump's schedule. He originally planned to wrap up his midterm election campaigning with rallies this weekend in Kansas and Iowa. On Thursday, he announced he wasn't going - instead would do tele-rallies. But now Kansas and Iowa are back on the president's schedule. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Do we know why these weekend rallies were initially scrapped?
ELVING: No, not for certain. President Trump said Friday night that his phone blew up after the Iowa, Kansas cancellations. People were very disappointed, and Trump said he did not want to let them down. We do know a lot of the scheduling is being driven by data analysis, but was there something else? One theory is that the cancellations had generated some kind of a buzz that Trump didn't like, suggestions that he was throwing in the towel in those races in those states. And these are two Senate seats now in Republican hands that the party badly needs to hold, especially Kansas, where no Democrat has been elected to the Senate since 1932.
SIMON: President spent last month going from one battleground state to another. But he has been campaigning since early September, in that first-ever Republican National Midterm Convention. Has his message changed at all?
ELVING: Only here and there at the margins. Mostly it's about the securing of the southern border and various claims about the economy that are at odds with most voters with what most voters, at least, say they are seeing themselves. That includes the tariffs and inflation and surging gas prices and other things Trump says will just go away right after the election. Lately, he's been stressing his case on Democrats cheating. That includes his accusations of noncitizens voting with no evidence beyond a handful of cases.
He's seized on a New York Times report we just heard about. Alaska Democrats had been looking for people named Dan Sullivan to get on the ballot against incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. But the printed ballot clearly differentiates between the two Sullivans, makes clear that one of them is the incumbent senator. And the Alaska Supreme Court has already taken a look at this case, and the Alaska ranked-choice system simply allows more than one candidate from a single party.
SIMON: Look, we've both learned to be cautious about polls. Right now, it does seem that candidate quality still matters.
ELVING: The Democrats have been outspent. They're battling almost limitless resources from Republican donors such as Elon Musk. Multiple sources say that he has spent over $350 million on this cycle overall. So the Democrats hope that voters will still be able to get information and that that information will be about people who could have run for Congress on their lives outside of politics. Many of them did. Those candidates defy the stereotypes of Democrats as being coastal elites. So, for example, in Kansas, where Trump's arriving this weekend, the Democrats' nominee, Adam Hamilton, is an ordained Methodist minister. And in Texas, the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, has been studying for a divinity degree at a Presbyterian seminary and is the grandson of a Baptist minister.
SIMON: Ron, what are you going to be watching for Tuesday night?
ELVING: All the usual things - turn out, of course, who jumps out to an early lead, which races get called early, which look likely to be undecided. And by the way, those undecided may be undecided for days to come. But this year, with all of Trump's threats, I think we'll be watching as well for interference in various forms, both on Election Day and night and in the days to come. And it's not likely to be over on election night or even the next day.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: And for more of NPR's sharp political analysis, you can check out the 2026 election tab on the NPR app. It's at npr.org/2026election. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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