CHILLICOTHE, Ohio / MORROW, Georgia — Neither man is on the ballot, but President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama dominated the American campaign trail on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, appearing at rival rallies in Ohio and Georgia less than a week before the November 3 midterm elections that will decide which party controls the United States Congress for the next two years, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.
Trump addressed a rally inside a college gymnasium in Chillicothe, Ohio, south of the state capital Columbus, appearing with Republican Senator Jon Husted. At almost the same time, Obama rallied Georgia Democrats in Morrow, near Atlanta, alongside Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. It was the latest split-screen night of a closing week in which both parties are using their biggest names to turn out voters — following Obama's earlier rallies in Cleveland and Detroit, which Awaaz Punjab reported last week.
Source: Reuters
What is at stake on November 3
Thirty-five of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats are being contested next Tuesday. Nonpartisan analysts generally favour Democrats' chances of capturing a majority in the House, while the contest for the Senate is seen as very close, Reuters reported. Democrats would need to pick up seats in traditionally Republican-leaning states such as Ohio, Iowa or Alaska to overcome the Republicans' current 53-47 Senate majority.
Americans have been voting for weeks. About 40 million ballots had already been cast by Wednesday, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab — already closing in on the 45.9 million early votes cast in the last midterm elections in 2022. For the large Punjabi and South Asian diaspora in states such as California, New York, New Jersey, Texas and Georgia itself, the result will decide the congressional majority that handles immigration, trade and cost-of-living policy for the final two years of Trump's presidency.
Trump in Ohio: turnout, and a defensive map
Trump has been on a weeks-long campaign blitz — more than 20 rallies this month alone, according to AP — but his closing stops are in states he won handily two years ago: Mississippi on Monday, Texas on Tuesday, Ohio on Wednesday, with South Carolina, Florida, Kansas and Iowa planned in the coming days. AP described the itinerary as a defensive posture, taken as Americans confront record fuel prices, rising costs and an unpopular war in Iran, and as Trump's public approval rating sits near a record low.
“If you can get out to vote, we're going to have a tremendous victory,” Trump told the crowd in Chillicothe, appearing for Husted, who is being challenged by Democratic former Senator Sherrod Brown in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country. Trump attacked Brown over immigration policies he said had overwhelmed Springfield, Ohio, with Haitian migrants — repeating claims about Springfield that local officials repeatedly said were untrue during the 2024 campaign, Reuters noted. Hundreds of protesters lined Trump's motorcade route in Chillicothe, and protesters interrupted the rally several times, including one who shouted about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago,” Trump responded.
Source: Associated Press, via BusinessMirror
Obama in Georgia: 'a moral component'
Obama, who kept a relatively low public profile until the past week, appeared in Morrow with Ossoff, who faces a challenge from Republican Representative Mike Collins, and with Bottoms, who could become the first Black woman elected governor in the United States. Georgia's three most recent Senate matchups all went to runoffs, though analysts this time view Ossoff as being in a strong position to hold his seat.
“There is a moral component to the choices we face right now,” Obama said, recalling the vision of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who is buried in Atlanta. “We are not going to fix the system that's broken, we're not going to unrig our economy, so long as we've got a culture where anything goes, where people in the highest offices of the land think it's OK to lie and cheat and bully, if we continue to have a culture where money is deemed the only measure of our worth.” He also mocked Trump's White House renovations — “spending time supergluing gold medallions to the mantel in the Oval Office” — and said of Trump and top Republicans: “These are not serious people. They don't have solutions to actual problems.” Ossoff, for his part, accused Trump of using his office as a profit source for his family business, an allegation the White House has answered by saying Trump has ceded control to his sons.
Source: Reuters
Trump also told reporters, as he boarded Air Force One for Ohio, that Alaska Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola should drop out and could face prosecution, after a New York Times report about a second candidate sharing Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan's name. Peltola's campaign said it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign,” and AP reported the Justice Department has already filed a lawsuit preemptively contesting the Alaska result should Peltola win. The prosecution remark is Trump's allegation, reported here as such — no charge against Peltola has been announced.
What happens next
Vice President JD Vance was campaigning in North Carolina, where Democrat Roy Cooper, a former governor, faces Republican Michael Whatley for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis, and in Michigan Republican Mike Rogers campaigned with Texas Senator Ted Cruz against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. Both presidential headliners are expected to keep rallying through the weekend. Polls close on Tuesday, November 3, and control of both chambers — and with it the direction of immigration enforcement, tariffs and federal spending that diaspora families and Punjabi trucking businesses follow closely — will be decided by a handful of races like Ohio's and Georgia's.