Democrats are pouring money into long-shot races in red states in a Hail Mary effort to keep their Senate majority, Axios' Noah Bressner writes.

• Why it matters: Dems are doomed if they don't win every single one of the closest races in the country (mapped above) or make up for losses with a shock win elsewhere.

💰 Senate Democrats' campaign arm said yesterday it's planning to spend millions advertising in Texas and Florida — two solidly red states with incumbent GOP senators.

• In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz is ahead of congressman and former NFL player Colin Allred by 3 points, according to a FiveThirtyEight average. That's closer than many strategists had expected.
• In Florida, Sen. Rick Scott has just a two-point lead over former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the latest public poll.
• Then there's Nebraska, where an independent candidate, Dan Osborn, is running neck-and-neck with GOP Sen. Deb Fischer.

The Cook Political Report says Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is the incumbent most likely to lose. That alone would be enough to give Republicans a one-seat majority. Democrats are also defending seats in Ohio and Michigan — both rates as toss-ups.

• Even if Democrats perform exceptionally well — if they win every toss-up and either keep Montana or offset its loss with a pickup in Texas or Florida — that's still only enough for a 50-50 Senate, with a Vice President Walz as a tie-breaker. If he's not the vice president, Dems are out of luck.

🥊 Reality check: Once it becomes clear in the next few days that GOP committees and super PACS are going to pour money into Michigan and Pennsylvania, Dems likely will have to reallocate cash away from Texas and Florida.

• In what has been an unusually close race in bright-blue Maryland, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks pulled ahead of Republican Larry Hogan, with an 11-point lead among likely voters in a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. But she'll require more party money, cross-pressuring Dem funders.

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Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm last night, before moving into Georgia with "catastrophic winds" as a still-dangerous high-end Category 2 hurricane early Friday, Axios' Rebecca Falconer and Andrew Freedman report.

• The deadly hurricane weakened to a tropical storm by 5 a.m. ET. But "life-threatening storm surge," winds and heavy rains continued amid multiple water rescues across Florida.

Threat level: The huge storm was forecast to bring an unprecedented 15- to 20-foot storm surge to Florida's sparsely-populated Big Bend area, home to vacation hideaways where the Panhandle and peninsula meet.

• High winds threatened all of Florida, as the storm plowed inland with hurricane-force wind gusts hitting north Georgia. Hurricane warnings were in effect for parts of metro Atlanta.

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People who bought homes at the height of the Fed's rate-hiking campaign are already rushing to refinance, Axios Macro co-author Courtenay Brown reports.

• Mortgage refinance applications spiked 20% last week, following a 24% surge the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
• "Folks who are up for a refinance are paying close attention — they are ready to jump," Chen Zhao, head of economic research at Redfin, tells Axios.

🏦 Where it stands: The rate for a 30-year mortgage is about 6%, according to Freddie Mac — down from a high of almost 8% last year.

The other side: Most homeowners are sitting on interest rates below 5%, and sometimes even less than 3%. Selling now can still seem like a bad deal for them, even as rates have started to tick down.

Nearly half of Americans report feeling lonely at least sometimes, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes from new census data.

• Alaska (45.9%), Oregon (44.7%) and Virginia (43.3%) had the highest rates of loneliness.
• Iowa (35.9%), Delaware (36.5%) and Wisconsin (37%) had the lowest.

🌘 Between the lines: Feelings of loneliness may be at least partially tied to weather. People up north start feeling more isolated in the slog of winter.

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Vice President Harris will call for tougher border security measures in a major speech during her visit to the U.S.-Mexico border this afternoon, a senior campaign official tells reporters.

• "The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games," Harris plans to say in Douglas, Ariz.

Why it matters: Immigration is a top voter concern, and one of Harris' biggest vulnerabilities. Arizona is one of the top battleground states.

Harris will argue that American sovereignty requires setting and enforcing border rules — something she takes very seriously as a former border-state attorney general. She'll note that as California A.G., she took on transnational gangs and criminal organizations smuggling drugs and trafficking humans and guns across the border.

• She plans to say that border patrol agents, who she'll visit with today, need more resources, and criticize former President Trump for helping tank a bipartisan border bill — which she'd reintroduce as president — that included more overtime pay.
• She says a "top priority" for her presidency would be combating the cross-border flow of fentanyl. She'll vow to press the Chinese government to do more to crack down on companies that make chemicals used to make fentanyl.

The other side: No. 1 of Trump's 20 "core promises" for a second term is: "Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion."

👀 Starting today, Harris is running an ad called "Never Backed Down" in Arizona and other battlegrounds. (YouTube)

• Go deeper: Read Harris' 82-page economic plan, out this week, "A New Way Forward for the Middle Class: A Plan to Lower Costs and Create an Opportunity Economy."

Image: Meta

Meta's will generate synthetic content tailored to individual users — a test that attracted little notice this week amid a slew of product announcements, Axios' Ina Fried writes.

• Why it matters: Generative AI has largely been used to create content at the behest of individual users. But now Facebook's parent company says it will proactively surface AI-generated posts based on users' interests.

As part of a slew of announcements Wednesday at its annual Connect developers conference, Meta says it's "starting to test content imagined for you by Meta AI that will appear in your Facebook and Instagram Feeds."

• Meta says it will generate some images based on a user's interests, and others that feature their likeness, "So you can be the star of your own story and share your favorites with friends."

Users will have the option, Meta says, "to take that content in a new direction or swipe to see more content imagined for you in real time."

• People will also be able to opt out of such auto-generated "imagined for you" content, a Meta representative told Axios.

🦾 P.S. At an OpenAI all-hands meeting yesterday, the CFO told workers that investor interest in the company's massive funding round was "incredibly high." The meeting was part of an effort to reassure workers after a wave of high-profile departures, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

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Some Democrats, haunted by memories of 2016, fear Green Party candidate Jill Stein could spoil their hopes of electing a woman president yet again, Axios' Erin Doherty reports.

• Stein's share of the 2024 vote is likely to be tiny. But so is the likely margin of victory for whoever wins.

⚡️ Flashback: Stein typically has pulled more support from Democratic-leaning voters. In 2016, her vote totals in the Blue Wall swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan were greater than the margins by which Clinton lost to Trump in those states.

• Stein is back on the ballot in those battlegrounds this year, and is polling between 1% and 2%.

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Former President Trump is promoting a new watch collection, with a diamond-encrusted model selling for $100,000 each, Axios' Kelly Tyko reports.

• Trump has promoted everything from $59.99 Bibles, $299 sneakers and $99 "Victory47" cologne in recent months.

The Trump Victory Tourbillon watch is priced at $100,000, with only 147 available. The watch comes in three colors and includes 122 diamonds.

• The watch company licensed Trump's name, and says no proceeds go to his campaign.

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