Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume talks on its nuclear programme in seven days if the United States lifts its naval blockade, waives sanctions on Iranian oil sales and observes a ceasefire that would include Lebanon.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi detailed the proposal in a private gathering on Thursday (September 24, 2026) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, according to one attendee.

Trita Parsi, Executive Vice-President of the Quincy Institute think tank, who attended, said Mr. Araghchi suggested that a speedy agreement would help U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections.

There was no immediate comment from Iran’s UN mission or other Iranian officials.

The proposal strongly resembles the so-called Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached in June, but with an accelerated timetable. The earlier agreement, which had called for a 60-day interim period, quickly collapsed as Iran resumed attacks on shipping in the strait.

Mr. Trump has said he is in no rush to reach a deal, even as high oil prices fuel inflation and exacerbate cost of living concerns. On the Iranian side, there are questions as to whether the hard-liners who dominate the security forces will accept compromises championed by relative moderates, like President Masoud Pezeshkian.

“If Trump calculates this arrangement is worthwhile and can bring political benefit before the midterms and reduce gas prices, perhaps we’ll see flexibility not seen in previous weeks,” Mr. Parsi said. But he noted “deep suspicion,” especially around the prospect of Iran merely buying time to get out more of its oil and ease its economic pain.

In the latest sign of diplomatic movement, Mr. Pezeshkian hosted the Prime Minister of Qatar early Friday (September 25, 2026). Qatar has served as a key mediator, including during hours of indirect Iranian-US talks at the UN this week.

It was not clear how long Mr. Pezeshkian and Mr. Araghchi would stay in the U.S. after Mr. Pezeshkian addressed the annual UN gathering of world leaders on Wednesday (September 23, 2026).

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “if there’s an opportunity to exchange ideas and messages, we will.”

In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections begins on Friday (September 18, 2026), ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide who they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran, and other pressing issues.

Election administrators say they’re prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump has continued with efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how U.S. elections are run, through court challenges, an expansive federal hunt for non-citizen voters and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

Friday (September 18, 2026) marks the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a handful of other states, including Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, are able to cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting centre. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

The November 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether the U.S. House and Senate maintain their Republican majorities.

If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Mr. Trump’s term, likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence technology, and Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

It also follows an unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House that began when Mr. Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas to redraw its congressional map to help the party. California and other states followed.

The changes affect millions of people: Research shows 1 in 10 Americans this fall are residents of a different congressional district than in 2024.

Those partisan efforts are expected to continue ahead of the 2028 elections after a landmark ruling earlier this year from the Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory redistricting.

As the start of early voting approached, Mr. Trump was focused on efforts to assert federal control over election administration, even as the Constitution bestows the power to run elections on the states and, in some cases, Congress.

The Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots this week, but several of his administration’s other efforts to influence the voting process and mine state voter lists for illegitimate voters are ongoing.

Mr. Trump for years has raised the spectre of widespread non-citizen voting in U.S. elections, and this year is no exception. But despite his administration’s insistence that hundreds of thousands of people are illegally on voting rolls across the country, research continues to show noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the president continues “his disinformation campaign and his attack on election officials”. But he said he thinks despite that and other challenges, “ultimately the process will hold as it has in past years”. Voting rights advocates have encouraged voters this year to cast mail ballots early, in part because of concerns about recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations that could delay the application of postmarks to ballots.

“Voting early, whether in person or by mail, is good for all of our communities because it gives voters options, eases lines on Election Day and can even mean faster results,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local.

In a press briefing on Thursday (September 17, 2026), Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon urged people not to be swayed by stories they might have seen or read that cast doubt on election operations. They would be able to vote “just like they always have”, he said.

“I just want to reaffirm that Minnesota’s elections are fundamentally free, fair, accurate, honest and secure,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday (September 14, 2026) to let the U.S. Postal Service enforce a rule targeting mail-in ballots, ‌dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict voting by mail ahead of November’s ​midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

The Justices denied the Justice Department’s request to lift a ruling ⁠by Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that blocked the Postal Service from enforcing the measure while legal challenges by states and voting-rights groups proceed. The agency adopted the measure after Trump issued a March executive order aimed at tightening rules governing mail voting.

“The government is unlikely ‌to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the court said in its brief, one-paragraph order.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented from Monday’s decision, comparing some ‌of the challengers’ claims to a “Hail Mary pass” that is “unlikely to be successfully completed,” using a football analogy.

“The ‌Postal ⁠Service has broad authority to regulate the mail,” Justice Alito added.

No other Justice dissented publicly. The court has ⁠a 6-3 conservative majority.

Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans are locked in a tight battle to retain control of Congress in the midterms. Restricting mail-in ballots would stand to benefit Republicans given that Democratic voters disproportionately use mail-in ballots, according to various surveys.

Another federal judge, Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, also ruled against the ​new rule on Sunday (September 13, 2026).

Under the new rule, States ‌would have to provide lists of mail ballot recipients to the Postal Service and use agency-approved outbound and return ballot mail envelopes outfitted with unique barcodes. The Postal Service could then refuse to send out ballots that do not comply with the new standards or are associated with voters who do not appear on the lists.

Critics have said the plan could ‌disrupt the delivery of thousands of legitimate ballots as the November 3 vote approaches and cause chaos given ​imminent plans by many states to send out mail ballots to eligible voters. The administration has said the new rule will prevent voter fraud, though evidence of such fraud is rare.

Mr. Trump signed his executive ⁠order targeting mail-in ballots after years of casting doubt on their security, though he often votes by mail himself. Trump has made false claims of widespread fraud in U.S. elections including his 2020 loss to former Democratic President Joe Biden.

The administration in a September ‌6 emergency request urged the Supreme Court to allow it to implement an “important federal policy to protect the mails from being used to commit voter fraud.”

States challenged the rule

A coalition of States, most of them Democratic-governed, and Washington, D.C., as well as a number of voting-rights groups, challenged the new USPS rule.

Judge Talwani imposed an injunction on September 4 blocking the rule, finding that it likely violated the U.S. Constitution, under which states administer elections. She also said it would be impossible for the States to comply given the rapidly approaching midterms.

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused last Thursday to put Judge Talwani’s order on hold. ‌The 1st Circuit said that the rule “will likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters across the country while providing minimal — if any — gains ​in combating voter fraud.”

Judge Nichols granted a request from the Democratic Party and groups including the NAACP for a preliminary injunction blocking the rule. He wrote that the rule could make it harder for some people ⁠to vote by mail and that it exceeded the Postal Service’s authority.

“No statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key ⁠parts of the rule,” Judge Nichols wrote.

All 50 States allow for some form of mail-in voting. Of those, 29 states allow voters to ask to cast ballots by mail without providing a reason, and eight conduct their ‌elections entirely by mail.

The battle over mail ballots is one in a series of efforts by the administration to boost federal involvement in voting ahead of the midterms. On August 24, the Supreme Court lifted an earlier injunction imposed by Judge ​Talwani in June blocking Mr. Trump’s executive order, including the USPS rule before it had been finalised.

U.S. President Donald Trump ​reiterated on Sunday ‌(September 13, 2026) that he expected the ​Iran war to ⁠end this year, possibly just after midterm elections ‌due in the United States in November, ‌resulting in a ‌drop ⁠in oil prices.

“Iran ⁠will end right after – maybe before – but it’ll end right ​after the ‌midterms. Gasoline’s going to drop like a rock,” Mr. Trump told reporters ‌at the Irish ​Open golf championship.

“I will tell you ⁠this: Iran wants to make a deal ‌so bad. They are calling constantly. They want to make a deal. They’ve got to make the ‌right deal. I’m not going ​to make a deal that’s no good,” ⁠he said.

President Donald Trump said he did not regret going to ​war against Iran despite the impact the conflict may have ‌on the November U.S. midterm elections.

“I don’t ​believe in the word ‘regret.’ You can ⁠always question yourself a little bit,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham when asked ‌if he regretted the Iran war due to the impact it may have on ‌the elections.

“If I had it do again, ‌I ⁠would do exactly as I did,” Mr. ⁠Trump said in the interview broadcast on Thursday (September 10, 2026) on The Ingraham Angle show.

Mr. Trump dismissed suggestions that some of his supporters were upset ​and demoralised about the ‌war.

“I don’t think they’re demoralised. I think they’re very proud of the fact that I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump ‌reiterated his thinking that the war ​will end immediately after the midterm election.

“It ends right after the election,” Mr. Trump said ⁠in the interview. He made similar comments on Wednesday (September 9, 2026), alleging Tehran was trying to influence the elections ‌that will determine whether Trump’s Republican Party retains control of Congress.

The rise in oil and gas prices due to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has become a major issue for Republicans in the lead-up to the elections.

The U.S. and Israel attacked ‌Iran on February 28 and Iran responded with its own ​strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host U.S. bases. U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran ⁠and Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed thousands and ⁠displaced millions.

Mr. Trump has cited weakening Iran’s nuclear capabilities as one of his war objectives. ‌Iran does not have nuclear weapons and says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful ​purposes. The U.S. is nuclear-armed.

Key senators unveiled a short-term spending bill on Sunday (August 2, 2026) that would keep federal agencies funded past the midterm elections and into early December as they look to avoid a government shutdown during the middle of campaign season.

The Senate is likely to vote on the measure before leaving Washington at week’s end for its traditional August recess, a period that many lawmakers want to spend shoring up their re-election prospects rather than working in the nation’s capital.

The bill generally funds the federal government at current levels through December 11. The House has passed a similar measure, but it did not include various exceptions sought by the White House. Senators have been spending recent days negotiating which of those exceptions to include.

One exception that did not make it into the bill, Democrats noted, was the administration’s request to include $1 billion to build “Trump-class” battleships.

In another major difference with the House bill, Democrats say they also were able to include language that will ensure the administration cannot transfer funds from other programmes to the Border Patrol.

The late-summer action on a funding fix is unusual. Normally, Congress waits until the final days or hours of a funding deadline to pass short-term funding extensions, but this time, senators are acting two months before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said passing the measure was his top priority going into the August recess. He noted that the American people have already experienced two record-breaking government shutdowns in the past 10 months.

“We need to ensure that they do not face a third,” Mr. Thune said.

Both parties want to avoid another shutdown

A short-term funding extension is needed because Congress has struggled to get the dozen annual appropriations bills negotiated and approved before the September 30 deadline. By extending government funding now, lawmakers can use the ensuing months to work out their differences on full-year funding.

It will not be an easy lift as Republicans seek a dramatic increase in defence spending while cutting non-defence spending. Mr. Trump proposed a 10% cut in non-defence programmes overall. Meanwhile, he called for boosting defence spending by some 44%.

A potential shutdown before voters go to the polls is a scenario that both parties are looking to avoid, as polling indicated that neither party evaded blame for last fall’s record 43-day shutdown. Democrats sought to extend an expiring health insurance tax credit and refused to go along with a short-term spending bill that did not include that priority. But Republicans said that was a separate policy fight to be held at another time.

A second spending battle over funding for the Department of Homeland Security took 76 days to resolve when Democrats refused to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol without changes to those operations.

Bill delays controversial policy on grants

Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, along with Democratic senators, are seeking to block a proposed rule from President Donald Trump’s administration related to grants. The rule would require a senior political appointee at each agency to review grant proposals through criteria that include “ensuring that discretionary awards advance the President’s policy priorities”.

Ms. Collins and Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the rule would not take effect during the course of the stopgap spending bill. Ms. Collins said she advocated for significant changes to the rule, “citing its potential to politicise grants and harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research”.

Democrats want to kill the administration’s effort altogether. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said it was a “disgraceful” effort that would “further politicise all federal grants”.

“While Republicans rejected killing the proposed rule outright, I am going to keep fighting to put a stop to it once and for all, and I will keep pressing my Republican colleagues to do exactly that,” Ms. Murray said.

Democrats fear Mr. Trump would turn federal grants into a cudgel to punish perceived political foes and reward allies, while also undermining Congress’s constitutional power of the purse. The White House Office of Management and Budget says its effort is about improving accountability to ensure taxpayer dollars are not wasted or misused.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday (July 16, 2026) revived sweeping and unsupported claims of voter fraud and Chinese meddling — firing a clear warning shot ahead of midterm elections that many expect him to dispute.

In a primetime White House address, Mr. Trump portrayed the U.S. electoral system as dangerously exposed and urged lawmakers to adopt new restrictions on voting, despite scant appetite for the measures even within his own Republican Party.

“We can never watch a stolen election again,” Mr. Trump said, referring to his 2020 defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump said he was declassifying intelligence that showed, among other things, that China had illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files.

“Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,” he said from the White House.

Mr. Trump also claimed that more than 250,000 non-US citizens were registered to vote in four states.

He then attacked U.S. broadcasters that refused to interrupt programming to carry his speech live, naming ABC and NBC and baselessly implying they were involved in election-rigging attempts.

“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” Mr. Trump said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

Mr. Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” has never been substantiated. More than 60 lawsuits produced no ruling establishing fraud capable of changing the outcome, while recounts, audits and his own Justice Department found none.

‘Unsupported’ claims

Mr. Trump had promised “big news” on election security, but analysts said much of the address repackaged old or unsupported material.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA in California, called it the “same old unsupported, and surprisingly weak, claims of American election vulnerabilities.”

“It was a tired speech with recycled and debunked claims,” Mr. Hasen said. “I don’t think it changes anything with how American elections will be run.”

Mr. Trump devoted little time to issues voters appear more focused on, including the Iran war and the economy.

Democrats accused Mr. Trump of trying to undermine confidence ahead of November’s midterms, in which Republicans fear his unpopularity could cost them control of Congress.

Senate Democrat Dick Durbin called the speech “a dangerous attempt to resurrect disproven lies to undermine future elections before a single vote is cast.”

Former Mr. Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb said the speech appeared intended to build a case for declaring an election emergency.

“I think tonight’s speech is intended to add to the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency at or about the time of the elections,” Mr. Cobb told PBS, adding that he believed immigration officers at polling places were a “virtual certainty.”

Mr. Trump has been pushing lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act ahead of the midterms, but the measure has little appetite even in his own party.

The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote — already required under existing law in federal and state elections — and photo identification at polling places, while imposing new limits on mail-in ballots.

He has never accepted his 2020 defeat. Months after the election, he urged supporters to Washington before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump could face a third impeachment trial if Democrats seize control of the House of Representatives. He was impeached twice in his first term, including for alleged incitement of the January 6 attack.

His last major televised address to the nation came on April 1, when he gave his first full public justification of the Iran war more than a month after the U.S.-Israeli military campaign began.