James Comey says he is still innocent, drawing a 'dirty cop' response from Donald Trump, in a stretch of US politics focused on the races that will settle the Senate and the House.

Trump campaigns in Texas for Paxton

The president is set to headline back-to-back events in Texas on Tuesday to bolster Senate candidate Ken Paxton against Democrat James Talarico. Trump will rally in Corpus Christi on Tuesday afternoon, then head to Lubbock for an evening event.

• •Secretary of State Marco Rubio is joining Trump on the trail – a highly unusual move for the nation's top diplomat.
• •Trump and Rubio plan to showcase an oil tanker filled with Venezuelan crude bound for Texas refineries, according to officials familiar with the plans.
• •A congressional aide and two US officials said the newly arrived tanker will be shown off at Port Arthur, Texas, as AP reported.

Trump has touted an oil deal struck with the new US-backed Venezuelan leadership after deposing Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. The oil pitch comes as surging prices, an aftershock of the war in Iran, have hurt Republicans going into the midterms and countered Trump's 2024 promises to bring down prices.

Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in decades, yet recent polling has found a closely contested race between Paxton and Talarico.

A Republican ex-justice backs Talarico

Tom Phillips, a longtime chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court and a staunch Republican, endorsed Talarico on Monday in an op-ed published in the Austin American-Statesman. Phillips served as the state's chief justice from 1988 to 2004.

Phillips wrote that Paxton's longstanding reputation would embarrass Texas in ways the state simply cannot afford. He said he supports statewide Republican judicial candidates, and that while he does not agree with all of Talarico's statements, he is confident he would serve the state with dignity and honor. His verdict in the op-ed: 'my choice for United States Senator must be James Talarico'.

Vance defends Trump's 'jihadist' remark

Further north, Trump branded Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a 'jihadist', and JD Vance was asked about the remarks before his own campaign event in Howell, Michigan, part of a blitz that took him to Montana and Kansas the previous day. In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton is mounting a strong challenge against the Republican incumbent Roger Marshall.

Vance defended the president's language, saying El-Sayed identifies himself with Democrats 'who seem to align with people who justify violence against the United States of America.' He added: "I don't know what's in the guy's heart. I just know he has a lot of weird friends."

In Michigan, El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in one of the fiercest Senate races of the season. Vance has called El-Sayed 'very evil', and El-Sayed has accused Vance of Islamophobia.

What the midterms will decide

On 3 November, millions of Americans will cast ballots in midterm elections to decide control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as governorships in 36 states.

Experts warn that social media feeds are awash with an unprecedented flood of AI-driven disinformation ahead of the vote, after platforms scaled back trust and safety teams and Elon Musk's takeover of X intensified the shift. Frances Haugen, the former Facebook data engineer turned whistleblower, said: "You can run an information operation now with quality that was impossible in 2016 for super, super cheap." Operatives, she said, evade moderation by repeatedly tweaking posts.

The next step is the 3 November contest itself, when voters settle who holds the House, the Senate and 36 governorships.