The Latest: Trump talks up the economy at a Las Vegas casino

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Ahead of November’s midterm elections, President Donald Trump is making a rare appearance in Nevada on Wednesday to sell voters on his handling of the economy against a backdrop of high interest rates, a national housing shortage and gasoline made more expensive by the Iran war.

He is seeking to shore up support for Republicans ahead of the November elections, which will determine which party controls Congress.

Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, defeating U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in a massive victory for the party’s progressive wing in a battleground state. The real test will now come in a November matchup against Republican Mike Rogers for the seat, which is pivotal to Democrats’ chances of flipping the Senate.

The AP declared El-Sayed the winner after confirming Wednesday morning that there were simply not enough votes left to count that would allow Stevens to catch up. El-Sayed’s victory was so narrow that his victory wasn’t assured until almost all statewide ballots were counted. At the time AP declared him the winner, El-Sayed led Stevens by 14,893 votes — a margin of just under 1 percentage point — out of more than 1.5 million ballots counted. See full results.

Here is the latest:

Vice President JD Vance said in an interview that aired Wednesday on Fox News Channel that Trump called him last month the day his newest son was born and suggested he take some time off.

“And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, I’ve got a meeting with you tomorrow.’ And he said, ’Yeah, take some time off. Like today,” Vance said with a laugh.

Retired boxing champ Mike Tyson made an appearance at Trump’s speech, sitting with Rick Harrison of television show “Pawn Stars” and Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Trump gave a shout out to Tyson from the stage, saying he saw his Broadway show called “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.”

“I’ve seen a lot of Broadway shows, and he was fantastic,” Trump said.

The president toward the end of his remarks in Las Vegas said that with the help of a Republican-controlled Congress, “We will pass the Great Healthcare Plan. It’s called the Great Healthcare Plan.”

Trump announced the outlines of the plan in January, but he has spent little time speaking about it since then.

The centerpiece of his proposal is to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts to pay for insurance and health costs.

As he often does, the president predicted that oil prices will fall once the war in Iran is over – something he has been saying for weeks, but which has yet to fully come to fruition.

Trump, however, added a new wrinkle in his Las Vegas speech. He noted that the price of oil has stabilized somewhat recently, “And we may have to send it up again.”

“We may have to — you know what happens when we send it up. But we hope we don’t have to,” the president said.

He didn’t clarify what he meant by that. But oil prices have typically risen as the war in Iran continues — despite Trump’s repeated assurances that the conflict will soon be over.

The president invited up a Las Vegas couple who work as a police officer and casino waitress, along with their two very young children, to talk about the tax breaks on overtime and tips in Trump’s sweeping legislation signed last year.

As Trump stepped aside to let them speak, their young toddler began quickly wandering off toward the edge of the stage.

Trump quickly moved to intercept the youngster, and then cracked a joke about his predecessor Joe Biden that was not quite audible.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he’s spoken with Abdul El-Sayed after the Democrat won his party’s nomination for Senate in Michigan.

El-Sayed defeated Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who Schumer had backed, and ran on an anti-establishment platform.

In an interview after the call, Schumer said that El-Sayed “is a very good candidate” and that Michigan is a “very important path” to winning the Senate.

“He’s brought in some real strengths” and new voters, Schumer said.

“We’re going to work together and our mission is of course to win Michigan and take back the Senate,” Schumer said.

The president complained that the high court’s “Republican judges, or justices, don’t stick together.”

He said that the court’s three liberal judges “never veer” and that “I respect that.”

But Trump added, “It’s too bad they’re on” the court, and that “a couple of them just don’t belong.”

“I’d like to fire them,” Trump said, before suggesting that he was simply responding to Democratic calls to add justices to the court as a way of offsetting the three conservative judges Trump himself appointed.

The president called Abdul El-Sayed a communist and predicted that the Democrat would lose to Republican nominee Mike Rogers, a former congressman, in November’s general election.

Trump made particularly charged comments about El-Sayed’s views on Israel. The Democrat has called for ending U.S. military aid to Israel.

“He doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them,” Trump said. “He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart and there’s not a fricking thing he can do about it.”

El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim senator, has rejected accusations of antisemitism.

“My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment to the safety of my own daughters,” he said Wednesday morning.

The president told the Las Vegas crowd, “I’m building this big military complex” and that it includes “a lot of different things, and some of the things I can’t even talk about.”

Later, though, he said the project will still be a ballroom.

Trump originally said the ballroom that he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build would be paid for himself and some friendly donors. But costs have ballooned and Senate Republicans eventually tried to advance $1 billion in funding for White House security and military improvements as part of the new complex.

That proposal has since stalled. But Trump continues to say the ballroom will have strategic value, saying it will include things like drone ports.

Trump in his speech brought up the development of one of the world’s largest lithium mines in northern America, the Thacker Pass project.

The U.S. government last year announced it was taking a minority stake in Vancouver-based Lithium Americas, which is jointly developing the mine with General Motors. The U.S. also took a 5% stake in the mine itself.

Trump told the crowd in Las Vegas, more than 500 miles away on the other end of the state, that “Many people in this audience are going to be working there, and you are working there.”

He didn’t mention that the U.S. government was taking a stake in the project, but shortly after that in his speech, he began warning about the dangers of communism.

The president is trying to convince Americans that his policies have led the rest of the world to buy American goods, but his claims lack context.

“Just yesterday, it was announced that American exports are totally on fire in a positive way,” Trump said. “They’ve skyrocketed exports to the highest level in American history.”

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Tuesday that American exports in June fell 0.9% to $314.7 billion. On a three-month moving average, exports are also down.

However, exports have increased 11.7% so far this year, largely because of increased exports of gold, oil and other energy products. Energy prices have increased this year because of the Iran war.

Officer Austin Abdelnabi, 30, a U.S. Marine veteran, was killed in the line of duty on Tuesday while responding to a report of a person with a gun acting erratically and waving a firearm in the air at a business, according to police.

“Austin died a hero, and he will never be forgotten, never going to be forgotten,” Trump said. “So to every law enforcement officer here today, we thank you for your service. And we say, God bless the men and women of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And frankly, all of law enforcement.”

Trump’s comments came after a man in the crowd loudly booed Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo when he referenced Abdelnabi before the president took the stage.

“No. We’re not booing him. He’s the officer that passed away here recently,” Lombardo replied.

Trump was expounding on the tariffs he’s imposed that’s touched off a contentious trade war with Canada and told the crowd that, “Canada’s nasty. They are. They’re nasty.”

“I love the people, but they’re nasty,” Trump added.

Las Vegas’ tourism-dependent economy has been hit by a slump in visits from tourists and the city’s mayor has said visits from Canada — Nevada’s largest international market — has dried up in the wake of Trump’s trade policies and insults to its northern neighbor.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo faces Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford in what is considered one of the most competitive governor’s races in the country.

“You have a choice to get up off the couch,” he told a crowd of hundreds waiting to hear Trump speak. “You have a choice to walk to the ballot and cast your vote.”

Nevada residents also have an opportunity to vote for a state ballot initiative on voter ID in November, he said. It passed by a significant margin in 2024 but needs a second vote to take effect.

Lombardo highlighted his partnership with Trump, the first Republican presidential candidate to win the Silver State in 20 years. He said a federal decision had threatened Nevada’s solar industry, so he spoke to Trump about it and Trump fixed it.

“He’s always taken my phone call,” the governor said.

Hundreds of people waited in a long line wrapped around slot machines at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa to get in to see the president.

Tom Port, a professional driver, said he is saving money with Trump’s move to cut tax from tips.

“That’s about the best thing he could have possibly done for me, considering a large portion of my income comes directly from tips,” said Port, 36.

Terilyn Taylor, 60, a teacher in Las Vegas, said she likes Trump, but also thinks home prices, interest rates and gas prices are too high.

“I don’t think it’s all Trump’s fault,” she said. But she would like to see the Iran war end.

“I thought the gas prices would be temporary, so I’m really ready for the Iran thing to be resolved,” she said.

U.S. District judge Ana Reyes on Wednesday was forced to lift her stay that had blocked the Trump administration from terminate Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Haitians who had been living and working legally in the United States since 2010.

She issued the order after a Supreme Court ruling on June 25 that sided with the administration’s decision to end the program.

As part of its crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration terminated TPS for about 1 million people from more than a dozen countries, including Haitians.

“As a result of today’s order implementing the Supreme Court’s decision, Haitian TPS holders — all of them noncriminals — can no longer legally work, and many are subject to removal to Haiti,” Geoff Pipoly, the lead counsel for the Haitians, said.

The United States’ decision followed Brazil’s denial of visas last month for two American diplomats who sought to visit ahead of upcoming elections as well as what the U.S. said was Brazil’s stalling on approving Trump’s nominee to be ambassador in Brasilia.

While Brazil’s ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti is not being expelled from the United States, if she leaves she would have to reapply for a visa, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview Wednesday.

“I think it’s an irresponsible, ill-considered course of action for a country with 203 years of diplomacy and diplomatic relations,” Lula said.

The FAA is investigating because it appears to be a violation of safety procedures put in place after last year’s midair collision between an airliner and an Army helicopter near Reagan National Airport.

A commercial jet took off Tuesday from the busy Washington, D.C., airport at the same time that Marine One left the White House for Andrews Air Force Base with the president aboard. The jet was climbing above Marine One as the helicopter approached, so the two aircraft were not on a collision course.

After a January 2025 collision that killed 67 people, the FAA decided all takeoffs and landings at Reagan would be halted anytime a helicopter passes by the airport.

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“Abdul’s victory was, in my opinion, the most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics,” said Vermont independent Sen. Sanders during a call with reporters.

Sanders also congratulated two progressive candidates who won U.S. House primaries in the state and commended Rep. Haley Stevens for conceding a “tough” race.

Sanders said El-Sayed “took on” the Democratic establishment and outside spending from groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He said the result was a sign of further change.

“The new Democratic Party is going to be broad-based. It’s going to be open and encouraging the participation of working-class people, of young people, of lower-income people. Democracy is messy, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that everything is going to go 100% smoothly and there’s not going to be differences of opinion. That’s called democracy. I happen to believe in that. But that is the direction in which we are heading, and I think that is unstoppable.”

Asked about progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s ability to turn out core Democratic constituencies including Black and Jewish voters, Sanders said that El-Sayed’s economic message had broad appeal.

“I think his economic message will resonate across Democratic constituencies, and I think there’ll be working-class Republicans who will support that,” Sanders told reporters.

He argued that El-Sayed “has the capability of expanding the voter turnout universe, and much many of those new voters will be voting for him.”

Sanders dismissed concerns that El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza will alienate Jewish voters.

“To be critical of the right-wing extremist government of Netanyahu and his horrific policies in Gaza does not make you antisemitic,” said Sanders, who is Jewish.

The Democratic U.S. Senate contest in Michigan has surpassed turnout for previous Senate and gubernatorial primaries and almost every presidential primary going back to at least 1978, according to Michigan Secretary of State records.

As of noon ET Wednesday, a total of 1,528,280 votes had been counted. The total could end up being higher as ballots continue to be processed.

But it already surpasses the roughly 1,181,000 votes counted in the 2020 U.S. Senate Democratic primary, and the approximately 1,131,000 votes counted in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

The 2026 turnout total so far trails the nearly 1,588,000 votes counted in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. About 1,117,000 votes were counted in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

The House Ethics Committee recommended the Republican be censured for unprofessional and inappropriate conduct toward two young female aides in his office. Edwards denied intending any of his conduct to be a sexual or romantic advance, but the committee said his behavior would “lead a reasonable observer to interpret it as such.”

State law requires Edwards to submit his Wednesday withdrawal in writing to the state Board of Elections before ballots are mailed to overseas voters and the military. Since the primaries were months ago, the Republican executive committee in his district will name a replacement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is already juggling other disruptions as he tries to retain the GOP House majority, including in Ohio where Rep. Max Miller is under pressure to resign over his own ethics investigation.

The seat Edwards will be vacating includes progressive Asheville, and farmer Jamie Ager, the Democratic nominee, is hoping to flip it.

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