Live updates: Trump to campaign for Senate candidate Ken Paxton in San Antonio

The Republican candidates for governor and Senate in Florida are leading the Democratic nominees in the races, a new NBC South Florida/Telemundo Station Group poll has found.

The president will travel to San Antonio today for a midterm election rally. Kent Nishmura / AFP via Getty

The State Department has officially requested more information from the Russian government after a Russian anti-plague lab staff member died of what is suspected to be pneumonic plague, a State Department spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the U.S. is also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.

The U.S. has been in contact with the Russian government since as early as last Friday, including the engagement of State Department health experts with the Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a state department official said.

Russia informed the World Health Organization yesterday that no case of plague has been recorded in Irkutsk, which is near the Russian lab, the World Health Organization said in a news release. According to the authorities, “the woman’s illness initially presented as a typical acute respiratory viral infection.” The WHO has also requested additional information from the Russian government.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that it was incumbent on Russia to “share more information with the world,” but also urged caution in jumping to conclusions.

“Maybe you know, there’s nothing there. Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” Rubio told reporters during a news conference in Iceland. “But I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have, to speculate about what this might or might not be or what this is or what this isn’t.”

Iowa’s Senate candidates, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, will face off tonight in a debate.

Democrats view the seat as a potential flip opportunity after Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, announced last year that she would not seek re-election.

Tonight’s debate, which will be livestreamed by Iowa PBS, marks the first of two debates. The second debate will be held Oct. 13 and hosted by Nexstar.

Ashley Hinson; Joshua Turek. Getty; Imagn via Reuters

Debates are ramping up this week for candidates in battleground races across the country. Yesterday, Republican Sen. Susan Collins faced off against Democrat Troy Jackson in a debate for the Maine Senate seat, a top battleground race.

The Pennsylvania governor debate between incumbent Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican, will also be held tonight.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson debated for the first time last night, trading attacks over Trump, the cost of living and abortion in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

Maine is central to Democrats’ path to the Senate majority as they try to capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity. Jackson tried to do just that yesterday by tying Collins to Trump, name-checking him at least 20 times in one hour of debating on WGME-TV.

Republican Byron Donalds holds a 7-percentage-point advantage over Democrat David Jolly in the Florida governor’s race, according to a new NBC South Florida/Telemundo Station Group poll, while Republican Sen. Ashley Moody is up by 10 points in her matchup against Democratic challenger Angie Nixon.

Donalds, a congressman from the southwest corner of the state, is at 48% in the poll, compared with Jolly’s 41%, in a race in which Donalds has had a commanding financial advantage. (That advantage is just inside the poll’s margin of error, but Donalds has the edge in most of the range of possibilities.)

Moody is at 50% in the Senate race, compared with 40% for Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidate who got into the general election after a surprise primary victory over Democrat Alexander Vindman in August.

The results come amid broad Democratic optimism about the 2026 elections, with public polling showing the party making races in some typically red states into competitive contests this year. This poll suggests limits to that apparent momentum in other places.

Trump heads to San Antonio today to campaign for Republicans in critical midterm races. He will be joined by Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, who’s currently serving as the state’s attorney general.

Paxton is locked in a tight race for the Senate seat against Democrat James Talarico. Democrats are eyeing Texas as a potential seat in play as they aim to flip the Senate. NBC News has classified the race as a toss-up.

Republican congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz also indicated on X that he would attend the rally. He is running against Democrat Johnny Garcia in the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District, where the rally is taking place.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said yesterday that he would not attend the Trump rally. He cited a scheduling conflict. Abbott is running for re-election against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, and NBC News has classified the race as “likely GOP.”

Trump traveled to Denton, Texas, just last week. Today’s trip is part of a series of events leading up to the midterm elections. NBC News previously reported that the president will travel to at least 17 states in the month ahead of the election, including battlegrounds Alaska, Ohio and Texas, as well as solid red states such as Alabama, Kentucky and Montana.