Leaders of France and Greece say the EU's defense splurge is no alternative to the NATO alliance

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The European Union’s ongoing push to bolster its own defensive capabilities isn’t intended to spawn an alternative to the NATO alliance but to answer a long-standing U.S. call for the continent to take charge of its own security, the French president said Saturday.

Emmanuel Macron said Europe mustn’t act to weaken NATO, which connects the continent with its American ally. Instead, Europeans are now stepping up to meet Washington’s demand made over the past decade “sometimes nicely, sometimes less nicely” to take care of their own security.

“The lesson we must draw is, let us no longer be dependent,” Macron said after talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “We Europeans must strengthen this European pillar of NATO, we must strengthen this Europe of defense — not against anyone, not as an alternative to anything.”

Mitsotakis echoed the French president, saying the U.S. should be pleased that the EU is taking its own self-reliance seriously and investing more in its own defense, calling the American demand to spend more “justified.”

After traveling to Cyprus for an informal European Union leaders’ summit, Macron visited the Greek capital to renew a 2021 defense partnership between France and Greece that includes a mutual assistance clause in case of an armed attack against either.

“This mutual assurance and assistance clause is inviolable, and it is not up for debate between us,” Macron said. “So there are no question marks, no doubts to be entertained — and all our potential, or real, enemies need to be very clear about that.”

The 3-billion-euro agreement included the purchase of 24 Rafale fighter jets and four state-of-the-art frigates including the Kimon, which Macron and Mitsotakis visited Saturday.

Greece, which has long had troubled relations with its eastern neighbor Turkey, has been overhauling its military capabilities, and much of its defense procurement has come from France. Among those is the French MICA anti-air-missile system that can be used by aircraft, land forces and warships.

Both leaders hailed the agreement as an example for other EU partners to follow and boost the 27-member bloc’s competitiveness. Mitsotakis encouraged EU leaders to drop “national egotism” that pulls a protective curtain over their domestic industry and move forward with more mergers to produce economies of scale.

Macron underscored the need for European industry to innovate and win back consumers with better, more desirable products that will finance the EU’s defense goals.

“All of us Europeans — the Franco-Greek relationship is a prime example — need to buy more European products, produce more European goods, and innovate more within Europe," he said.

Both leaders referred to Article 42.7, the EU’s own mutual defense clause, that Macron said wasn’t “just empty words.” The French president pointed to both countries’ rush to assist fellow EU member Cyprus by dispatching warships there in early March after a Shahed drone struck a British base on the island nation during the Iran war.

The French president warned against instigating panic with talk about fuel shortages as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz from which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes. He said the fuel supply remains “under control” and that he doesn’t foresee any shortages.

He said Europe remains focused on helping to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, although he acknowledged that it will take some time for the situation to return to normal.

Mitsotakis said Greece, as a global shipping power, wants any diplomatic solution to include a “non-negotiable” clause for the complete and unimpeded freedom of navigation through the strait without exacting tolls from ships, as was the case prior to the start of the Iran war.

Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, right, shakes hands with France's President Emmanuel Macron after a media conference at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, right, shakes hands with France's President Emmanuel Macron after a media conference at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

France's President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a media conference with Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

France's President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a media conference with Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, right, and France's President Emmanuel Macron participate in a media conference at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, Saturday, April 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

CORINTH, Miss. (AP) — President Donald Trump heads Monday to Mississippi, as he continues a closing midterm campaign blitz that highlights Republicans' challenges ahead of an election that could drastically shift power in Washington and statehouses across the country.

Mississippi, among the nation's most reliably Republican states, is not where the party envisioned needing a late-October stop from the president. But GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith faces a stiff challenge from Scott Colom, one of many Democratic underdogs that have managed to expand the House and Senate battleground maps because of widespread voter discontent over inflation, the Iran war and other aspects of Trump’s second presidency.

The evening rally with Hyde-Smith will kick off a week that continues to pit Trump against former President Barack Obama, the Democrat he first succeeded in 2017, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat he defeated in 2024 to return to power. Trump's itinerary has been taking him to many states that he won comfortably in 2024.

Other top nominees and surrogates are greeting voters — almost 30 million of whom have already cast ballots — as Republicans scramble to protect their threadbare majority in the House, shore up a Senate majority that was once thought secure and maintain the GOP's national advantage in state capitals.

Minnesota was the center of the progressive movement’s effort to leverage many Americans’ economic struggles, as Democratic Senate nominee Peggy Flanagan, the current lieutenant governor, welcomed House Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., to advocate for a national health insurance plan to achieve universal coverage.

“Everywhere I go on this tour I meet Minnesotans who are working hard and doing everything right and still can’t afford to take care of themselves or the people they love,” said Flanagan, who is backed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Flanagan is running against former sportscaster Michele Tafoya for the open seat.

If passed, the healthcare bill, which would include added benefits such as dental, vision, and hearing coverage, could save up to $1 trillion in healthcare spending, Jayapal said at the conference.

“We desperately need to build a completely different system and stop tinkering around the edges of a sick care system,” said Jayapal, who is the lead author and sponsor of the bill.

Harris was to campaign in neighboring Wisconsin with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who faces Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Trump ally, for governor. Crowley would be the state’s first Black governor if elected to lead the battleground state.

In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms are getting an assist from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association and a likely 2028 presidential candidate, two days after Trump made his second October visit to the state.

Vice President JD Vance was headed to Kansas on behalf of Sen. Roger Marshall, who finds himself locked in a tight contest with Democratic nominee and United Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

House Democrats also continue to expand their spending footprint, with the House Majority PAC announcing almost $2.5 million in new spending in Minnesota and Indiana districts that had been considered solid GOP territory earlier in the cycle.

The Minnesota seat has been reliably Republican for generations, other than a recent stretch when Tim Walz, the state's two-term governor and Democrats' 2024 vice presidential nominee, represented the sprawling, heavily rural district.

But it's Trump's visit to Mississippi that perhaps brings the midterm landscape into the sharpest relief with just a week of campaigning left before votes are tallied.

To be sure, Hyde-Smith, who is vying for her second full term, remains the favorite in a state Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 percentage points.

But Colom, a local prosecutor who would make history as Mississippi's first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction, is looking to parlay inflation, Trump's lagging popularity and Hyde-Smith's mistakes into an upset.

Colom has outpaced Hyde-Smith in fundraising since he launched his campaign last year, and he caught national attention this month with an ad that played off Hyde-Smith dismissing beef prices — driven higher by Trump's tariffs and fuel spikes resulting from the Iran war. The ad features Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner, saying that consumers “have so many other proteins to choose from,” followed by several characters, and then Colom, saying Mississippi should “pick another senator instead.”

Colom's campaign followed with a social media video that featured an AI-generated Hyde-Smith dodging questions about that controversy and other issues. The Democrat took down the video after the Mississippi attorney general said it could violate state law barring the use of deepfakes so close to Election Day.

Senate Democrats’ super PAC, meanwhile, has been a late entry in the contest, with a $1.2 million investment — a paltry sum compared with Senate contests in more populous states like Texas or Georgia but an amount that can go farther in Mississippi’s smaller television markets.

Mississippians have not chosen a new Democratic senator since 1947, and Democrats last won a Senate race there when that senator, the onetime segregationist John Stennis, won his last reelection in 1982.

South Carolina has emerged as another unexpectedly competitive Senate race where a Democratic victory by Dr. Annie Andrews over Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to succeed her late brother, would rank as a seismic upset.

Trump announced Monday that he'd be returning to the state on Thursday for his second general election visit on Graham's behalf. Andrews, meanwhile, touted a bipartisan endorsement Monday from two former South Carolina governors, Republican David Beasley and Democrat Jim Hodges. Andrews’ campaign says more than 100 Republicans have joined her “Republicans for Annie” coalition.

Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority, meaning Democrats must flip at least four seats for a change in control. The GOP began the cycle with a 220-215 advantage in the House, but a national gerrymandering fight made nine Democrats-held seats friendlier to Republicans based on 2024 presidential outcomes in those districts.

Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporters John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Laura Turbay in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed.

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, left, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, receives an embrace from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at a campaign rally Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, at Lincoln Park Middle School in Duluth, Minn. (AP Photo/Erica Dischino)

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a campaign rally at McMorran Place Sports and Entertainment Center, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, in Port Huron, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)