Midterm elections live updates: Federal appeals court rejects DOJ appeal in California ballots case

According to a new report from Wesleyan Media Project, a project run by academic professionals that monitors political advertising, political ad spending has exceeded $7.1 billion across House, Senate, and gubernatorial races in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

Spending on ads made with the help of artificial intelligence accounts for over $187 million this cycle with over 90% of AI ad spending coming from Republican candidates or organizations, according to Wesleyan Media Project.

Roughly $1.4 billion of the $7.1 billion in ad spending -- approximately 20% -- has been spent in the past two weeks, from Oct. 12 to 25, the report said.

The spending is driven in part by outside groups, which have spent around $3 billion on ads for House and Senate races. Outside spending groups have spent three times as much on ads as Senate candidates, according to the report.

-ABC News' Will Lennon

With his Kansas and Iowa rallies canceled, President Donald Trump's last in-person midterm rally before Election Day on Tuesday will take place Friday in Daytona, Florida, his home state, which he won comfortably by about 13 percentage points.

The Republican National Committee confirmed on Thursday night that planned midterm election rallies in Kansas, set for Saturday, and Iowa, set for Sunday, with Trump will no longer be happening, with the president instead "expected to participate" in a large number of tele-rallies by phone.

Eight years ago, during his first presidential term, Trump held his final midterm rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the day before Election Day 2018.

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul EL Sayed and his onetime primary rival Rep. Haley Stevens will make a joint campaign appearance alongside Rep. Jim Clyburn at a church in Detroit on Sunday, according to his campaign.

The two have not appeared together since the initial days after the primary.

This comes as Stevens' fiancé announced earlier this week that he would be voting for Republican Mike Rogers based on what he saw as EL-Sayed's antisemitism.

Stevens has criticized EL-Sayed as doing an insufficient job of winning over Black and Jewish members of her coalition but has maintained that she supports him.

-ABC News' Diana Paulsen

Democratic Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola is reacting to the New York Times story that reported alleged efforts by some members of her campaign to recruit a candidate with the same name as Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.

"This is just another distraction. It's another diversion. Every day, it's some new, you know, 'look over here' moment," Peltola said at a campaign event on Wednesday.

"This is all stuff to get subscriptions. Nobody at the New York Times cares about affordability in Alaska," Peltola added later.

The Times report said it relied on 12 sources, text messages and documents that allegedly showed members of Peltola's campaign, lawyers for Peltola, and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) pushing to find a spoiler candidate who could potentially siphon votes from Sen. Sullivan and benefit Peltola.

Peltola's campaign said it "has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign."

-ABC News' Emily Chang