U.S. Vice President JD Vance says he is in Hungary to support Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's reelection bid. Vance's visit to Budapest on Tuesday marks a clear endorsement from President Donald Trump's administration for Orbán, who is trailing in the polls ahead of Sunday's election. Orbán, a close Trump ally, is running for his fifth term against a strong center-right challenger. Despite Vance's support, he criticized the EU for interfering in Hungary's election. Orbán has been a controversial figure, known for his nationalist policies and opposition to immigration.

As a Kennedy scion, Jack Schlossberg had a lot of hype behind him when he launched his congressional campaign in New York City late last year. He was already a big social media star, in part through his relentless attacks on his cousin, Trump administration heath secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And he's been bouncing around the national Democratic scene a bit. Now, among a crowded field hoping to take over a prized House seat in Manhattan, Schlossberg appears to have another advantage no other candidate could dream for: a hit TV show about his family that’s renewed Kennedy clan fervor and could boost his campaign even further.

Donald Trump won the presidency by promising to lower costs and end wars. A year and a half later, he is a wartime president contemplating whether to send U.S. ground troops into an expanding conflict in Iran. Gas prices are spiking and Trump is urging Americans to be patient. Everything adds up to a perilous situation for Republicans in the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president did little to sell the war to skeptical voters before it started, and he defended his leadership on Wednesday night in his first major presidential address on the conflict.

A Colorado appeals court has ruled that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that attempted to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced. Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals said Thursday that a judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024. The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance are both seen as the Republican Party’s strongest potential candidates in the next presidential election, but the Iran war could prove to be a political millstone for them. Rubio’s full-throated support for the war could come back to haunt him depending on how the war turns out. Vance risks accusations of disloyalty if he were to stray too far from President Donald Trump's messaging, but an appearance of support for the war could be seen as an about-face given his longtime skepticism of foreign military interventions. The White House says the Republican president has full confidence in Vance and Rubio.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting. The move Tuesday swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials as the president demands further limitations on voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Trump's order calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.