Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic has resigned the post to pursue a bid to become the prime minister in an upcoming early parliamentary election. Vucic’s second presidential term would otherwise end in May next year. He is banned by the Serbian Constitution from seeking a third term and said he was resigning to lead his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party in the Oct. 25 ballot. The governing populists face a major challenge at the ballot from a youth-backed movement that led the protests triggered by the Nov. 1, 2024, train station canopy collapse that killed 16 people in the northern city of Novi Sad.

As Maine Republican Susan Collins seeks a sixth Senate term, some voters are bringing up her 2018 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice. He was part of the court's conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. This election year, Democrat Troy Jackson is hoping there are enough voters upset at Collins' approval of President Donald Trump's nominee to help oust the veteran lawmaker. Despite Collins' moderate stance and past endorsements from Planned Parenthood, the Kavanaugh vote remains controversial. But on the campaign issues, many Maine voters say the economy is their top concern.

President Donald Trump has vowed to campaign in 35 of the most competitive battleground races in the final sprint to November’s midterm elections. Instead, he will begin October by stumping in Alabama and Oklahoma, two of the most Republican states in the nation. Trump is sure to draw crowds to the venues. But the rallies are another sign of the uphill fight that his party faces as they pour cash into red states once considered safe, trying to shore up candidates facing an unhappy electorate that has soured on Trump and his policies.

The Supreme Court has turned away an attempt to use a new Missouri congressional map backed by President Donald Trump. Friday's decision puts an end to a long-running legal dispute as absentee voting is underway in the midterm elections. The justices halted a last-minute revival of the Republican-friendly map by lower-court judges. The decision leaves in place a Missouri Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to hold the November election using a map adopted in 2022. A new map passed last year was aimed at helping Republicans gain an additional U.S. House seat. It was used in the August primary. But Missouri’s top court later ruled that it can’t take effect unless approved in a statewide referendum.

The Supreme Court has turned away an attempt to use a new Missouri congressional map backed by President Donald Trump. That potentially puts an end to a long-running legal dispute as absentee voting is underway in the midterm elections. Earlier Friday the high court lifted restrictions on a controversial federal voter database, granting Trump a temporary win in his aggressive campaign against noncitizen voting. Meanwhile Trump took Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the National Archives. There he showed off the sacred texts of U.S. democracy to the leader of the world’s most powerful communist country.

The Supreme Court is allowing states to resume using a controversial federal tool to check voter eligibility before the November elections. The emergency ruling lifts a lower court’s restrictions for now on the Trump administration's revamped version of the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The Department of Homeland Security tool has been a central pillar of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on noncitizen voting, although its use remains voluntary. A federal judge had blocked its use, saying SAVE violates voter privacy and can lead to wrongful voter purges. Voting law experts advise that a 90-day rule barring systematic voter purges near an election will likely limit the ruling's impact on the midterms.