U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not pause its activities in New York after ICE agents in the Bronx shot and wounded a man while he was in a car with a five-year-old child, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday.

The shooting Thursday afternoon prompted furious rebukes of ICE from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said she asked Mullin and President Donald Trump to immediately halt operations in her state.

“We’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” Mullin said at a press conference Friday morning, which was intended to push back on the growing criticism over the latest ICE shooting.

“I’m sorry, we’re not,” Mullin said. “In fact, I’m not sorry. Our job is to enforce the nation’s laws and go after the worst of the worst, and our men and women do a dang good job at it every single day, and we will not stop doing our job.”

A man identified as Oscar Belgal, 28, was shot in the neck after two plainclothes ICE officers approached his vehicle as it backed into a parking spot in the Marble Hill neighborhood, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference Thursday evening.

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The biggest donors in the 2026 midterm election are breaking decisively toward Republican candidates and causes, a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission records found.

Fourteen of the 20 largest donors and donor groups this election cycle have exclusively or nearly exclusively backed GOP candidates or aligned groups, according to a CNBC analysis of federal campaign-finance records. Together, the 20 account for $1.2 billion, or about an eighth of the roughly $9.8 billion raised this election cycle through Sept. 25 across the campaigns and super PACs CNBC examined.

CNBC analyzed FEC records for contributions reported during the 2026 election cycle, covering Jan. 1, 2025, through the latest filings available, combining spouses and closely affiliated donor entities where appropriate and removing duplicate or superseded transactions. The analysis of disclosed federal political committee contributions provides the most up-to-date snapshot of who is financing the 2026 midterms and shows a stark divide in where the biggest donors are putting their money.

Democratic megadonors, meanwhile, are increasingly bypassing the national party, though in some cases they’re giving directly to candidates instead.

With less than four weeks until Election Day, some of the biggest six-figure checks that once routinely flowed to the Democratic National Committee haven’t materialized. Fundraisers told CNBC the hesitation reflects lingering 2024 election “trauma” from Kamala Harris’ defeat, fears of democratic socialism and disillusionment with the DNC’s leadership in Washington.

“We don’t have the kind of donors they’ve got,” said Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. “The advantages that the Republicans have are enormous, and no amount of donor enthusiasm on our side is going to close that gap.”

The Republican Party is scrambling to defend its congressional majorities as more House and Senate races once considered safe for the GOP have become competitive. From Labor Day through Sept. 25, conservative super PACs have outspent their Democratic counterparts $310 million to $174 million, a magnitude approaching 2 to 1, according to CNBC’s analysis of FEC records.

“No one ever agrees with anyone on 100% of the issues, but we are doing really well fundraising,” said Republican fundraiser Eric Levine, founder and managing member of ERL Federal Consultants. “My understanding is that a lot of this money is going to candidates that may have a little trouble raising their own money. One name that comes to mind is [Ken] Paxton in Texas.”

Less than six weeks before Election Day, the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted 15 House races toward Democrats and said the GOP was on track to lose its House majority. The race for control of the Senate is closer but has also moved toward Democrats: Cook now rates control a “true Toss Up,” with Democrats needing four seats.

Democrats “are starting to see this real opportunity in a bunch of these races,” said

MINNEAPOLIS — Operation Metro Surge has been over for months. The same can’t be said for the crisis facing Daniel Hernandez’s Colonial Market grocery stores.

After Hernandez’s parking lot became a well-known hangout spot for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the lines that Hernandez grew accustomed to seeing each morning at his stores disappeared. The rebound in traffic Hernandez hoped to see after the end of the surge never materialized.

“We’re barely — literally barely — surviving,” Hernandez told CNBC in an interview inside one of his stores, where Spanish-language music played through speakers and piñatas dangled from the ceiling. “The damage has been done.”

This summer, Hernandez shuttered Colonial Market’s location on Lake Street, the heart of Minneapolis‘ Hispanic business community. Hernandez had spent savings and borrowed money against his house to open the store two years prior. He said sales at his stores have declined by roughly 60%.

The financial turmoil facing Hernandez and others in Minneapolis is being experienced, to varying degrees, in communities across the country. As President Donald Trump has directed federal immigration officers to carry out mass deportations in major U.S. cities during his second term, a growing body of research shows that a monthslong economic chill followed.

Cities where immigration raids took place in 2025 experienced a nearly 3% decline in weekly foot traffic and a more than 6% drawdown in spending, according to an analysis from University of Pennsylvania professor Zeke Hernandez. (No one with the surname Hernandez mentioned in this article is related to one another.)

Collectively, he found that resulted in around 8 billion fewer visits and billions of dollars worth of lost spending in those places that year.

“You are creating recession-like conditions in targeted neighborhoods,” Zeke Hernandez said. “It’s like a localized recession.”

Operation Metro Surge, which was billed as the largest-ever immigration enforcement action by the Department of Homeland Security, ran from early December to mid-February in Minneapolis. Months after its official conclusion, local businesses were still trying to get back on steady ground while community leaders calculate the economic effects.

The Lake Street Council said immigrant-owned businesses in the commercial district cumulatively lost $46 million in December and January. Council members went door to door in the months after the surge to help small business owners — several of whom do not speak English as their first language, if at all — complete paperwork for emergency relief funds.

At bars and eateries in the ZIP codes containing the Lake Street corridor, year-over-year foot…

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Mortgage rates are climbing sharply, home prices continue to gain and inflation in the broader economy is hitting consumers, leading housing affordability to weigh heavily on both renters and potential homebuyers.

In Pennsylvania — a swing state where House races could help decide control of the next U.S. Congress — renting or owning a home is cheaper than the national average, but the share of income needed to do either has also risen along with the rest of the country. In 2019, it took 20% of the median income to rent a home and 18% to own. Today it’s 22% and 24%, respectively, according to Cotality.

“For that person trying to get an apartment, person moving from an apartment to a starter home, starter home to a larger home, each and every one of those cohorts is reporting that it’s a challenge right now, and it’s something that is weighing on them in a very important political place,” Lehigh University political science professor Christopher Borick said.

Americans, especially renters, feel financially stretched by housing costs, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey Quarterly Money Survey, released Oct. 5. It found one in five Americans who rent or have a mortgage spend at least half of their pre-tax income on housing, while 49% spend between 25% and 49%. Standard guidelines from banks and lenders say consumers should spend 28% to 30% of their income on housing.

The cost of housing is now the top political issue — even higher than the cost of food or protecting democracy — among U.S. voters aged 18 to 34, according to the most recent CNBC All-America Economic survey.

Going into the midterm election, the average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped well over 7.5%, according to Mortgage News Daily. It hit a low of 5.99% days before the war with Iran started. For buyers of a median-priced home of around $450,000, that means an increase of roughly $300 in the monthly payment since earlier this year.

Home prices, while cooling from their big gains in the first years of the Covid pandemic, were still up 1.8% in August year over year, according to the latest read from Cotality. Home prices are up close to 60% since the start of the pandemic. Combined with sharply higher mortgage rates, potential buyers are increasingly sidelined. Sales of existing homes in August were down from the year before, coming in at an annualized rate below 4 million.

“This figure of 4 million is about as low as we can go. It tells you there is an extreme affordability problem,” said Norm Miller, a real estate economist and professor emeritus at the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business.

The share of median income needed to rent or buy a home has increased nationwide, with homeownership seeing the biggest leap. In 2019, it took a national average of 24% of the median income to rent and 21% to own, according to Cotality. Today, it takes 26% of the median income to rent…

In a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall suddenly finds himself in a competitive race with weeks to go until the 2026 midterm elections.

Stubborn inflation, blowback from White House trade policies, and a formidable Democratic challenger in megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton have combined to turn ruby-red Kansas into an unexpected Senate battleground.

The tightening contest has forced Marshall into a balancing act confronting a growing number of vulnerable Republicans: creating space from President Donald Trump on issues that pose risks at home without alienating his base.

“When a sitting Republican senator in Kansas starts running away from their leader in the White House, the five-alarm bell is ringing for the entire party,” said Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University. “Loyalty to Washington is becoming a liability when voters are feeling the squeeze at home.”

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted the race from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican” on Sept. 23.

A September Emerson College/Nexstar survey of 750 Kansas likely voters put Hamilton at 45% and Marshall at 43%, a dead heat within the poll’s 3.6% margin of error. In the same poll, Trump’s approval in Kansas stood at 40%, with 53% disapproving and nearly half of likely voters naming the economy their top issue.

National Republican groups have taken note. Outside groups are now pouring millions into Kansas to defend the seat that once sat safely outside the Senate battlefield. At stake is the GOP’s Senate majority.

In September, Trump threatened to ban U.S. sales of aircraft built by Canadian manufacturer Bombardier, potentially putting the future of many of the company’s roughly 1,500 Wichita-based jobs in limbo. While Marshall offered little resistance to the broader trade dispute that spurred the threat, he insisted he had taken the fight for local aerospace jobs “inside the Oval Office.”

Meanwhile, farmers are being squeezed from both ends. Trade disputes and retaliatory tariffs have weighed on grain and soybean markets just as the Iran war has driven up fuel costs. Diesel — essential for combines, tractors and transport trucks — jumped nearly a dollar a gallon during one 30-day stretch this harvest season, according to AAA.

Ranchers have been hit, too. In a bid to tamp down ground beef prices, Trump in August moved to lower tariffs on an additional…

President Donald Trump said Monday evening that he and his political action committee will pay for controversial television ads that praised him, and which reportedly were funded from up to $20 million set aside by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Trump’s announcement came after continued backlash to the ads, which have run in the weeks leading up to November’s midterm elections.

Those contests will determine whether Trump’s fellow Republicans will maintain their majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Critics say the ads mirror Republican campaign talking points. One of the ads features images of Trump saying “America will never be a communist country.”

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.

“This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.,” Trump said.

AdImpact has tracked roughly $9.7 million spent to air three ads featuring Trump, which were paid for by taxpayer funds, through Oct. 5.

CNBC has asked the White House whether Trump’s statement means that he and his Super PAC MAGA Inc. will only pay for the costs of airing the ads going forward, or if they will reimburse the U.S. government for the taxpayer funds already spent on the ads.

Trump’s announcement came three days after The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that “Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency.”

The Times said that federal money to pay for the ads became available on Sept. 19, “when the Office of Management and Budget shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection funds to a budget category called One Big Beautiful Bill Commemorative Events.” Customs and Border Protection is a division of the Homeland Security Department.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., in a Sept. 24 letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, wrote, “The advertisement does not have a clear official government purpose and appears to run afoul of federal prohibitions against the use of appropriated funds as part of ‘a general propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidates.'”

Last week, the advocacy group Public Citizen filed a complaint urging the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and TV broadcasters to stop airing the ads. Public Citizen previously asked the Government Accountability Office and Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether the ads violated federal propaganda restrictions and the Hatch Act. That law restricts…

With Election Day less than a month away, President Donald Trump is touting two federal cash-payment programs already underway while renewing a much larger $5,000 check promise contingent on Republicans retaining Congress.

On Friday, Trump announced one-time $90 payments to 20.8 million Medicare beneficiaries. A day later, he revived an earlier promise to give every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 — but only if Republicans retain control of Congress in November.

“If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2026 Midterm Elections, I’m going to give all Adult Citizens in the United States of America, $5,000,” Trump said in a Truth Social video post Saturday. The president made a similar pledge at the Republican National Committee’s first midterm convention in Dallas last month.

Trump hasn’t provided any details on who would authorize the payments and where the money would come from.

Those claims came on the heels of $500 Obamacare “refund” checks that began going out last week to roughly 950,000 people who bought unsubsidized coverage through the federal marketplace.

The $90 payments to certain eligible Medicare Part B enrollees are scheduled to arrive this month, funded through the Medicare Improvement Fund. The $500 Obamacare payments are already being distributed to certain full-price HealthCare.gov customers.

A Reuters analysis found 71% of the Obamacare money — $339 million — is going to residents of 13 states with some of the country’s most competitive Senate and gubernatorial races, though eligibility is based on insurance status, not voting status.

Together, the flurry of offers of direct cash payments comes as Republicans head into the final stretch of a midterm campaign dominated by concerns about prices and the economy.

But the $5,000 “Trump dividend” remains just a promise and Trump has been extremely light on details, particularly on where the money would come from and who would need to authorize it. Sending $5,000 to every adult citizen would cost roughly $1.2 trillion and require congressional approval.

Some Republicans have also raised concerns about its effect on the deficit and inflation.

Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., told Reuters last month he would “throw everything of my heart and soul” into stopping the proposal, warning it could push interest rates higher. And Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called the plan a “political bribe” in a Sept. 10 interview with CNN, and said Congress controls federal spending.

The White House and offices of Reps. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Polling suggests the idea isn’t a sure-fire…

Brazil will hold a knife-edge vote on Sunday as its presidential race kicks off — but the election’s outcome is likely to be felt far beyond the country’s borders.

Voters will head to the polls to decide whether incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — known colloquially as Lula — should remain in office or be replaced by one of 12 alternative candidates.

If no ​candidate wins more than 50% of votes ​in Sunday’s first round, the two candidates with the most support ⁠will progress to a final runoff vote on Oct. 25.

Polls point to a tight race, with frontrunners Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro effectively tied for support among voters.

A win for left-leaning Lula would mark his fourth presidential term, while victory for Bolsonaro is expected to mark a shift back to his father’s right-wing movement.

Lula, meanwhile, has put Brazilian sovereignty at the center of his campaign. He has also pledged to reduce Brazil’s traditional six-day work week, cut income tax for low-earners and enact policing reforms.

The president has endured a rocky relationship with the Trump administration, which treated Jair Bolsonaro – dubbed colloquially the “Trump of the Tropics” – as a close ally. U.S. President Donald Trump announced 50% tariffs on Brazil in July 2025 in response to what he labeled a “witch-hunt” trial against Jair Bolsonaro.