The numbers show where the money has gone. About $29 billion is for replacing munitions, $6.1 billion for lost equipment and $11.9 billion in support costs. Three months ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put the total at $37.5 billion. The Congressional Budget Office has warned that each further month could cost $2 billion to $3 billion more. These are not rounding errors, and they are arriving while the administration’s request for tens of billions in supplemental funding sits unpassed.

The bill is not only the Pentagon’s. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi estimates the war has cost the average American family about $2,000, mostly through higher energy and borrowing costs. This week the Federal Reserve held rates at 3.75% to 4% with inflation at 3.7%, and chairman Kevin Warsh pointed to energy prices as a driver. Families who pay for gasoline, diesel and groceries are paying for this war whether or not Congress ever voted on it.

There is a readiness question, too. The Pentagon’s inspector general has warned of “strategic inventory shortfalls” from the munitions spent. The president says the country has “virtually unlimited” ammunition. Both cannot be right, and lawmakers should not have to choose between them on faith. They should get the inventory numbers, in classified session if need be, and they should get them before a vote rather than after one.

Now comes the harder part. The president says the war ends “whenever I want it to end,” and has floated “another little Epic Fury” if Iran does not agree to a deal. Reporting by The New York Times, relayed by CNBC, says American and Israeli forces have planned a short, intensive round of strikes for after the midterms. A government that has quietly drawn up plans for the day after Election Day is a government that does not want voters to weigh them first.

The best argument on the other side deserves a fair hearing. Preventing a nuclear-armed Iran is a legitimate national interest, and no price tag settles whether a particular strike is justified. Deterrence sometimes costs more than anyone wants to say out loud. But that argument is an argument for a debate, not a substitute for one. If the goal is worth $47 billion and more, the administration should be able to say so to Congress and to the public, with the full accounting beside it.

So we ask for the modest things. Publish the complete cost, including base damage. Brief the armed services committees on munitions stocks. Bring any new campaign of strikes to Congress for a vote, and attach the price to the request. Constitutional government is supposed to be slower and noisier than a rally promise. In this case, slower is how the country finds out what it is buying.

“As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” the family said. ABC7 in San Francisco reported that plans for a celebration of life are in the works.

Huerta was among the country’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights figures and feminist activists. She is credited with the rallying cry “Sí, se puede,” Spanish for “Yes, it can be done.” She told CBS News earlier this year that she came up with it during a campaign in Arizona, where a state law threatened farmworkers with jail for striking or calling for a boycott. When Latino leaders there told her “in Arizona no se puede,” she said, “my responsibility to them was si se puede in Arizona.” It was, she said, “a spontaneous response.” Presenting her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, President Barack Obama joked that he had borrowed her slogan for his 2008 campaign, CBS reported.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called her a close friend, ordered flags at the State Capitol flown at half-staff. “Dolores represented the best of us,” he said. “California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said her legacy was “proof of what ordinary people can accomplish when they organize.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called her a dear friend who led with courage and determination and said, “We all responded to her rallying cry.”

Huerta kept working into her 90s, marching in protests and speaking across the country through her foundation about race, poverty and women’s rights, CBS reported. Los Angeles Mayor Bass said the intensity of her fight never faded. Assemblymember Diane Papan, who knew her, told ABC7 that Huerta was “a trailblazer to the end” who showed compassion “to every single person she met.”

Her final months were clouded by a painful public reckoning over the movement she helped build. Fox News described her in its obituary headline as a co-founder “who accused César Chavez of sex abuse,” and Newsom told ABC7 he could not imagine what she went through “in those last few months, with the revelations around Cesar and how hard that must have been for her.” The accusations concern Chávez, who died in 1993; this obituary does not rehearse them and relies on those two outlets’ descriptions.

Newsom, who said Huerta had “the kind of energy that was just jaw-dropping” and that it felt “like she was never gonna pass,” told ABC7 the state would have to “absorb her contributions, her energy, her passions.” The group she and Chávez built remains the best-known farmworkers’ union in the country, and her foundation, based in Bakersfield, continues her work on civic organizing.

Oil & Gas Journal reported that the proposal is a second round of revisions to the 2024 rules and would eliminate the “super-emitter” program, which lets EPA-certified third parties use satellites, aircraft and other remote sensing to flag large methane releases that operators must then investigate. The agency said it has legal concerns about the program and does not consider it necessary to meet the Clean Air Act’s requirements.

The plan also eases requirements for marginal or low-producing wells, with two alternative approaches for creating separate categories of well sites, and revisits limits on flaring associated natural gas, to give producers “more flexibility,” the journal said. Other changes affect covers, closed-vent systems and control-device monitoring. The EPA estimates the changes would save industry $45 billion, though OGJ noted the agency had not released the proposed rule or the analysis behind the figure. In April, the EPA finalized a narrower set of revisions it estimated would save $2.5 billion.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin previewed the plan on Oct. 7 at an oil and gas association meeting in New Mexico, saying producers found the 2024 rules costly and unworkable. Grist quoted Zeldin: “The Trump EPA is committed to fixing this so the [United States] can reach its full energy potential.” The agency has called the rules a “monumental threat” to the economy and an “undue burden” on the industry, Grist reported.

The central dispute is over the low-producing wells, often called stripper wells. The EPA itself cited research indicating that marginal wells produced about 7% of American oil and gas output in 2021 but were responsible for 60% of methane emissions tied to gas production and 40% of those tied to oil production, OGJ reported. Grist put the shares at about 5% of output and more than half of the industry’s emissions.

Trump framed the change as relief for small operators. Experts told Grist that picture is incomplete: Darin Schroeder of the Clean Air Task Force said more than half of such wells are owned by large companies operating over a thousand wells, adding, “Just because they’re a marginal producer doesn’t mean they’re a marginal polluter.” Environmental groups warned about climate and health effects. Methane makes up about 12% of American greenhouse gas emissions and is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years, Grist said. Tsion Amare of the Environmental Defense Fund called cutting oil and gas methane “the fastest way to fight climate change.” Grist also noted that pollutants released with methane, including benzene, can worsen ozone and health risks near wells; nearly 1 in 10 Americans live in a county with more than 1,000 stripper wells.

Industry and the administration argue the 2024 requirements are too costly, especially for small producers, and that easing them lowers energy costs for consumers. The proposal is not final. OGJ said it could face legal challenges, and it would need to go through public comment before taking effect. Congress and the administration have already eliminated the Biden-era methane waste emissions charge, OGJ reported.

The hold came with two dissents. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack both wanted another quarter-point increase, CNBC reported. It was the first dissent of Cook’s tenure, which began in 2022. Cook is also at the center of a separate fight: President Donald Trump has tried to remove her over allegations about information on her home loan applications. CNBC reported that the Supreme Court stopped his earlier attempts, that the administration has restarted the effort, and that a hearing is scheduled for early November.

The vote came as inflation picked up. Consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 3.7% in September, up from 3.4% in August, NBC News reported. The Fed’s preferred gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, is due Thursday and is expected to show about 3.7%. NBC attributed much of the increase to the soaring cost of gasoline, diesel and crude oil, and said many economists see the effects spreading into the broader economy.

“Inflation remains elevated,” the Fed’s statement said. It added that “the accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the Committee’s 2 percent goal.” The statement described economic activity as expanding at a strong pace, a step up from the word “solid” used in September, CNBC noted.

At his news conference, Warsh said real activity “is clearly pointing in the right direction,” but added: “That’s good news, but inflation is too high.” He said energy and related prices “have moved higher again in recent weeks” and that the Fed’s job is to keep those relative price changes from broadening across the economy, according to NBC News.

Markets had priced in less than a 10% chance of a hike, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, so the decision was widely expected. Futures pricing now points to a strong chance of another increase at the December meeting and perhaps one or two more in 2027, CNBC reported. Morgan Stanley economists told clients the outcome suggests the Fed “might not be done tightening.”

Warsh also announced a change to the calendar. The Fed will cut the number of meetings at which it votes on rates from eight to seven next year, with a further reduction in 2028, NBC reported. He said the change would improve the quality of its decisions.

The central bank is under pressure from both directions. Trump, who nominated Warsh, has argued for years that rates should be much lower, CNBC noted. Hawks on the committee argue that inflation, above the 2% target for more than five years, calls for faster action. Fed officials treat political independence as a cornerstone of the institution, though CNBC said some observers speculate they would not want to raise rates this close to an election. Vice Chair Philip Jefferson and New York Fed President John Williams have both said current conditions give policymakers time to judge their next move.

The United States provided visas to him and his family after Brazil cancelled his passports as part of a criminal investigation, the BBC said. NPR reported on Tuesday that the State Department would issue the visas while Bolsonaro’s whereabouts were still unclear. President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday: “We gave him a pass to come into the country.” Asked about the fraud claims in Bolsonaro’s letter, Trump said, “I won’t get involved. It was a very strange election, that’s for sure,” and added that he thought Bolsonaro and his family had been “treated very unfairly.”

Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in the investigations. In a lengthy letter he called himself a victim of a coup d’état and political persecution and said he traveled to protect his family. “I know exactly where this is heading,” he said, adding that he had left “a regime of exception so that I could become the leader my people deserve.” He repeated unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud and said a “mathematical impossibility” had occurred in the vote. The BBC described those allegations as unsubstantiated.

The results do not support the claim. The BBC reported that Bolsonaro won the first round, but that Lula won the runoff by more than four million votes, which it attributed to higher turnout and to swaying undecided voters. The result was confirmed by the president of Brazil’s top electoral court, who was appointed by Bolsonaro’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula, newly re-elected, criticized the secretive exit. “Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear,” he said, according to the BBC.

Speculation about the senator’s movements began with a report on an Argentine news site claiming he had crossed the land border and boarded a private plane bound for the United States. Brazilian police took the rumors seriously and checked border crossings early Tuesday but found no evidence he had left; Argentine officials said they had no reports of him crossing. Video from Miami showed reporters swarming Bolsonaro as he left the airport while aides shielded him with umbrellas. His brother Eduardo posted a photo of their reunion, writing, “Even here outside, we will not give up on Brazil.”

The Bolsonaro family has a history here. Jair Bolsonaro flew to Florida in December 2022, before Lula’s inauguration, and was still in the United States when his supporters stormed Brazil’s government buildings and Supreme Court on Jan. 8, 2023, the BBC recalled. Jair was later convicted in a coup trial and sentenced to 27 years. Eduardo Bolsonaro has lived in Texas and lobbied American officials over his father’s trial, which led to American tariffs on Brazil and sanctions on key officials; Brazil’s highest court convicted him in absentia earlier this year.

Flávio Bolsonaro faces two pending investigations before Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court: one over possible irregularities in the transfer of nearly $70 million from the private bank Banco Master to a biopic about his father, and one over alleged money laundering. He denies both. His eight-year Senate term ends on Jan. 31, when he loses his parliamentary immunity. The BBC said it is unclear where he will ultimately settle or how long he plans to stay.

Replacing munitions that have been used makes up the largest share, about $29 billion, CBS reported. The military also counted $6.1 billion to replace lost equipment and about $11.9 billion in incremental costs such as support for service members. CNBC, citing a report by The Hill, said the new figure is roughly $3 billion above the previous one.

The total does not include damage to American bases in the Middle East, many of which were targeted by Iranian drones and missiles, CBS said. Three months ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers the war had cost about $37.5 billion, also without counting base damage. The Congressional Budget Office said last month the conflict could cost $2 billion to $3 billion more for each month it continues, in part because of the need to replace interceptor missiles. CBS noted that exchanges of fire between the United States and Iran, common over the summer, have been quiet in recent weeks.

The war enters its ninth month this week, and its future is unclear. President Donald Trump said at a rally in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday night that the war will end “whenever I want it to end,” CNBC reported, adding that it “would be very quick, but we have to have an end properly,” with a “total statement” that Iran would never have a nuclear weapon. At a rally in Florida last week he said, “We may do another little Epic Fury, or they’ll agree,” according to CBS. CNBC cited a New York Times report that American and Israeli militaries have drawn up plans for a short but intensive round of strikes after the midterm elections.

The spending has become a question of military readiness as well as budgets. The Pentagon’s inspector general said last month the United States faces “strategic inventory shortfalls” because of the munitions expended in the war, and the Defense Department is working to speed up production, CBS reported. The administration has argued the military is not short of ammunition; Trump said in early September that the country has “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition.”

Congress has not yet acted on the money. The administration asked for tens of billions of dollars in supplemental military funding earlier this year, partly for the Iran war, and that request has not passed, CBS reported. Democrats have pressed Hegseth for a more detailed accounting of the war’s cost.

The costs also reach households. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated on Oct. 12 that the war had cost American families an average of about $2,000 so far, CNBC reported: roughly $1,100 from higher energy costs, $540 from higher interest costs and $360 from increased military spending. Those are one economist’s estimates, not official figures.

Supporters of the administration’s approach argue that weakening Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon is worth a high price. Critics, including Democrats seeking a fuller accounting, say Congress and the public should see the whole bill before the fighting resumes.

“JKT is a young Alaskan with a view and a perspective that I think Alaska needs right now,” Murkowski told Alaska’s News Source, the NBC affiliate KTUU in Anchorage. In an interview quoted by NBC, she called him “a commonsense guy who has a known ability to be working together.” She said she considers the three Republicans on the ballot too partisan. “We need a governor who’s going to work with the Legislature,” she said. “That has got to happen for the delegation to be successful back in Washington, D.C.”

Murkowski also criticized the administration of outgoing Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who is term-limited. “I have found fault with the Dunleavy administration,” she told KTUU, saying the state had left federal money on the table and pointing specifically to the Alaska Marine Highway System.

Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state lawmaker from Sitka, told KTUU he was grateful for her support. “I have a lot of respect for Lisa, her integrity,” he said, adding that the two had “had a few conversations” during the campaign and that she became confident in his ticket and “our ability to solve problems for Alaska.”

The race to succeed Dunleavy includes former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and Wilson, whom Trump endorsed on Oct. 13, hours before a rally in Wasilla, according to Alaska’s News Source. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, which lets voters rank candidates and can send a close race to later rounds of counting. NBC’s Decision Desk rates the governor’s race as leaning Democratic, though Trump carried Alaska in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

The endorsement fits a long pattern. Murkowski has repeatedly broken with her party; Alaska’s News Source noted she previously endorsed Democrat Mary Peltola for the House, a race Peltola lost to Rep. Nick Begich in 2024, and that she did not vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. She has been a frequent target of Trump since his first term, and the outlet reported that his criticism has sharpened as Election Day nears. Trump has called her the Republicans’ “Worst Senator, by far” and a “DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country” on Truth Social, and has attacked ranked-choice voting as a “DEMOCRAT SCAM.”

Murkowski has defended her independence. She acknowledged she has “not always been on the Alaska Republican Party’s good list” but said, “My directive is to serve the people of the state of Alaska,” which she described as including Republicans, Democrats, independents and people with no party.

Republicans can fairly argue that a sitting GOP senator backing a Democrat over a Trump-endorsed Republican splits their vote in a state the party has carried in every recent presidential race. With ranked-choice counting, how the three Republican candidates’ supporters rank their choices could decide the outcome.

Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide. The rule made companies fix big leaks and limited burning off extra gas.

Trump said it saves forty-five billion dollars and unlocks two hundred ten million barrels of oil, about ten days of American use.

Supporters say less red tape means more drilling and lower fuel prices. Critics call it a free pass for polluters. It is still a proposal, so details could change.

Will a rule meant to cut waste let more gas escape? We keep following it, sourced and unhyped.

Hutchinson worked for Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, and told the committee what she said she saw and heard inside the White House on January 6, 2021, including an account, relayed to her by others, of the president grabbing for the steering wheel of his limousine. Secret Service officials disputed that account. Hutchinson has said throughout that she testified truthfully.

The effort to charge her was run by officials in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump appointee. The grand jury heard evidence in early October, NBC News reported, citing a person familiar with the case, and her name was not spoken in open court when the no bill was returned. NBC News and CBS News reported no comment from the department or from Hutchinson’s lawyers.

The president has called Hutchinson a scam artist who lied under oath and has said more than once that she should be prosecuted. In March, House Republicans referred her to the Justice Department, and the president shared news of the referral. Supporters of the prosecution argue that lying to Congress is a crime regardless of who the witness is, and that a referral from the House deserves a serious look.

A no bill does not end the matter. Prosecutors can bring the same case to another grand jury, and this department has done so before: its attempts to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James failed three times. Other people the president has described as political enemies, including Senator Adam Schiff, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, have been investigated or charged during this term.

The string of failed cases has drawn the attention of the federal bench. The chief judge in Washington now requires the department to tell a magistrate judge whenever a grand jury rejects an indictment, a step that makes the pattern visible on the record. Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the failed prosecutions show the department is working hard.

The larger question is what a grand jury’s refusal means when the department keeps returning. Grand juries are meant to be a check on prosecutors, and in Washington they have now exercised it repeatedly in cases involving the president’s critics. Whether the department tries again with Hutchinson will say a good deal about how much weight that check still carries.

Justice Department prosecutors wanted charges over her twenty twenty-two testimony. House Republicans had urged it.

The jury returned what is called a no bill. Hutchinson has said her testimony was truthful. Secret Service officials have disputed one part of her account, and the department can still try again.

It is part of a pattern. Grand juries have also turned down three attempts to indict New York’s attorney general, and one against six Democratic lawmakers.

Will prosecutors try again? We follow it, sourced and unhyped.

The announcements came a day after Apple introduced a new iPad mini and a day before a product event the company has billed as “Pro and Tell,” according to TechCrunch and Engadget.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and comes in space black and silver. Its M6 chip has a 12-core processor and a 12-core graphics unit, and the laptop comes with 16 gigabytes of memory, expandable to 32. Apple says it delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics and up to 25 percent faster AI work than the previous model with the M5 chip, and rates its battery for up to 24 hours. It adds Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and keeps a familiar set of ports, including HDMI, an SD card slot, a headphone jack, MagSafe charging and three Thunderbolt 4 ports, both outlets reported.

The larger 16-inch MacBook Pro was not updated and continues with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Engadget reported.

The iMac starts at $1,499, keeps its 24-inch 4.5K display and comes in seven colors. Apple claims on-device AI tasks run up to five times faster than on the M4 iMac it replaces. It offers up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports and runs macOS 27.

Pre-orders for both machines begin Wednesday, and they go on sale Nov. 6, according to both outlets.

The emphasis on AI runs through both announcements. Apple’s headline claims for each machine are about how quickly it handles AI tasks on the device itself, rather than on general speed alone, a sign of how central those features have become to the company’s pitch.

There are reasons to wait for independent testing. Every performance figure in the announcement comes from Apple, most are phrased as “up to,” and they compare against different earlier chips, which makes them hard to weigh against one another. Engadget called the decision to leave the 16-inch model on the older chip a downside, and noted that the iMac’s display is unchanged and that it does not adopt the faster Thunderbolt 5 standard. Buyers who have waited for a larger iMac will keep waiting.

For owners of recent Macs, the upgrade may be modest. For people still using machines several years old, Apple is betting that faster AI features, longer battery life and newer wireless standards will be reason enough to buy.

Her last day will be Nov. 12, according to ABC News and NBC News. Dr. Satish Pillai will serve as acting deputy director and chief medical officer. The Washington Post first reported her departure on Monday night.

Dr. Shuford was appointed in April 2026. NBC News reported that she began work in June, meaning she served less than five months.

In a statement, she said she was leaving to spend more time with her family and thanked President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the chance to help lead the agency, according to ABC News, NBC News and KFF Health News, which summarized the Post’s report. CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz said she was deeply grateful for Dr. Shuford’s leadership and commitment to public health.

Before joining the CDC, Dr. Shuford was Texas’s chief state epidemiologist and later commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. In that role she led the state’s response to the 2025 measles outbreak in West Texas, according to ABC News and NBC News. She has publicly supported vaccination.

ABC News noted one moment from that outbreak that drew attention. While Mr. Kennedy described such outbreaks as not unusual, Dr. Shuford called it unusual for Texas, saying the state had not seen an outbreak like it since the early 1990s.

Nothing in the public record so far indicates a dispute behind her decision. Her statement cites family and expresses gratitude to administration leaders, and the CDC’s director praised her work. Senior officials leave government for personal reasons often enough that a short tenure, on its own, proves little.

Still, her exit adds to a pattern of rapid change in the agency’s leadership, according to NBC News, which listed several earlier departures, including the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez in August 2025.

Dr. Pillai, who NBC News reported is leading the CDC’s Ebola response, will take on her duties in an acting capacity. The change comes as the agency has just released its updated report on drug-resistant infections, which ABC News and NBC News covered the same day.

Correction (October 28, 2026): An earlier version said KFF Health News had highlighted turnover in CDC leadership; only NBC News reported that pattern, and the sentence now credits NBC News alone.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index rose to 91.7 in October from 84.2 in September, according to the Associated Press and The Hill. The September reading, revised up from an initial 81.9, was the lowest in more than a decade; the AP said it was the weakest since April 2014.

Fergus McCormick, the Conference Board’s senior economist, tied the rebound to the pump. In comments reported by both outlets, he said the recovery was in line with retail gasoline prices easing from September to October.

Gas remains expensive by recent standards. The national average was about $4.27 a gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA figures cited by the AP and The Hill, down roughly 21 to 22 cents from a month earlier. A year ago, the AP noted, a gallon cost about $3.05. Prices climbed sharply after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, disrupting oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Other pressures have not gone away. Consumer inflation accelerated in September, both outlets reported. The Hill reported that annual inflation rose to 3.7 percent from 3.4 percent in August. In written answers collected for the survey, the AP reported, respondents continued to cite high costs as a top worry.

Mr. McCormick was careful not to oversell the rebound. Confidence, he said, remains on the long-term downward trend that has persisted over the past few years.

The report gives some support to those who argue the worst of the energy shock may be passing: if gas keeps falling, household budgets will get some relief heading into the holidays. Skeptics note that a one-month bounce from a decade low is a modest gain, that prices remain well above last year’s level and that inflation was moving the wrong way as of September.

The figures also carry political weight. The midterm elections are on Nov. 3, and the AP noted that public frustration with the economy poses a risk for Republicans.

Economists watch confidence surveys for clues about whether households will keep spending or start to pull back, and the next few months of gas prices may matter more than any single reading.

Election fraud is a crime, and people who commit it should be prosecuted. Nobody disputes that. But this offer is not a law enforcement program. It has no stated funding, no stated rules and no stated process. Last week, the president announced a separate fraud whistleblower program and said he would personally decide who deserves a reward. A bounty whose terms are set by one politician, about elections in which his own party is on the ballot, invites exactly the kind of abuse it claims to fight.

Consider what such an offer encourages. Neighbors filing reports on neighbors. Poll watchers treating a language barrier or a clerical error as evidence of a crime. Election workers, already threatened and harassed in recent years, facing a new wave of accusations from people who stand to profit. The most likely effect is not more convictions but more fear, especially among eligible citizens who are new to voting, recently naturalized or simply worried about making an honest mistake.

The underlying premise is also wrong. As NBC News and ABC News both noted, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections. Individual cases happen and are usually caught. The administration’s own most aggressive effort makes the point. The Justice Department demanded that California set aside the ballots of about 20,000 people it called likely noncitizens. Of those, officials have said, 28 have been charged.

That effort just ran into a wall. On Monday, a federal appeals panel dismissed the department’s emergency appeal, with a majority that included a Trump appointee. The court said the government’s claimed emergency was, at least in part, of its own making, having waited until weeks before the election to sue. Last week, at the president’s request, the department also sued Alaska to delay certifying its Senate race if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses.

The strongest argument for the president’s approach deserves a fair statement: confidence in elections matters, a sizable share of Americans doubt the system, and visible enforcement could reassure them. That concern is real. But confidence is built by transparent procedures, paper records, audits and courts that weigh evidence, not by cash prizes and lawsuits filed on the eve of the vote. Those tools already exist, and they have repeatedly shown that American elections are counted accurately.

Voters have a role here too. The best answer to an effort to make voting feel risky is to vote, and to help neighbors know their rights. Election officials should be ready to protect workers and voters from harassment, and prosecutors should remember that a false accusation is not a public service.

Protecting elections means making sure every eligible citizen can cast a ballot and that every lawful ballot is counted. A bounty aimed at voters does neither.

Three of Israel’s major television networks, Kan 11, Channel 12 and Channel 13, each projected about 50 seats for Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc and about 52 for Mr. Eisenkot’s, with roughly 18 seats going to Arab parties aligned with neither side, according to NBC News. Channel 14, a strongly pro-Netanyahu network, projected 60 seats for his bloc. A government needs the support of at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 members.

CBS News reported that the exit polls indicated a majority of voters opposed Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, although his Likud party appeared set to remain the largest single party. Mr. Eisenkot leads the centrist Yashar party and is the leading figure in the opposition camp.

Turnout was high. NBC News, citing the Central Elections Committee, reported turnout of 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999. Both outlets reported an unusually strong showing among Arab citizens, who make up about a fifth of the population; CBS News said the two Arab parties appeared on course to win more seats than ever before.

The campaign unfolded against the backdrop of the war in Gaza that followed the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, fighting in Lebanon, and the United States-Israeli war with Iran that began in February. President Trump endorsed Mr. Netanyahu and suggested on social media that the United States might have to handle the Iran campaign on its own if Israelis did not return him to office, both outlets reported.

Mr. Netanyahu told supporters that Israel must form a strong right-wing government, while Mr. Eisenkot said that if the results held, they would represent a victory for the country’s mainstream majority. Accountability for the security failures of Oct. 7 was a central issue for the opposition, while Mr. Netanyahu has argued that the campaigns against Iran, in Gaza and in Lebanon are not finished and that he needs more time to complete them.

The arithmetic is complicated. Both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Eisenkot have ruled out governing with Arab-led parties, which could leave neither bloc able to form a majority. CBS News noted that the opposition could try to form a minority government if it wins more seats, and that a deadlock could send Israelis back to the polls; the country held five elections between 2019 and 2022.

Exit polls are not final results, which are due within about eight days. After that, President Isaac Herzog will ask a member of parliament, usually the leader of the largest party, to try to assemble a coalition, a process that can take several weeks.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that it lacked jurisdiction and dismissed the department’s appeal, according to CBS News and NBC News. The majority said the government had not given the trial judge in Los Angeles an adequate opportunity to consider its request before running to the appeals court.

The panel was pointed about the timing. CBS News reported that the court described the government’s claimed emergency as, at least in part, self-constructed, noting that the department filed suit less than three weeks before the election and sought emergency relief only the week before.

Judge Mark Bennett, an appointee of President Trump, and Judge Gabriel Sanchez, an appointee of President Biden, formed the majority, and each wrote a separate concurring opinion. Bennett wrote that he would have rejected the request on its merits anyway, according to CBS News. Sanchez wrote that the government was asking a federal court to dictate to a state legislature on a matter traditionally left to the states, NBC News reported.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, dissented. He argued that the federal government has a sovereign interest in protecting federal elections from votes cast by noncitizens, and that it can act to defend that interest. That is the strongest version of the administration’s case: if ineligible ballots are counted, there is no way to remove them afterward.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 15, asks that California separate ballots from people on the department’s list and not count them until their citizenship is confirmed. California officials have called the list unverified and say it includes lawful voters, and Los Angeles County officials said in an Oct. 15 letter that the department had not explained how the list was compiled. Justice Department officials have said 28 people on the list have been criminally charged with illegal voting.

California officials welcomed the ruling as “a positive development and a welcome speed bump to Trump’s disgusting attacks on the Constitution.” CBS News attributed that remark to Gov. Gavin Newsom, while NBC News attributed it to Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The case now returns to District Judge David O. Carter, who had scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. CBS News reported that the government could also ask the full appeals court to reconsider. Federal prosecutors sent similar letters last week to at least 18 other California county registrars demanding that ballots from suspected noncitizens be set aside.

The broader effort is continuing. The administration has devoted significant resources to searching state voter rolls for noncitizens, and the president on Monday offered a $1 million reward for tips leading to voter fraud convictions, according to NBC News and ABC News.

Correction (October 28, 2026): Replaced the invented Newsom “attacks on democracy” remark with the actual “welcome speed bump” quote, noting that CBS attributes it to Newsom and NBC to Bonta, changed the Los Angeles County point to its Oct. 15 letter, and dropped the unconfirmed no-comment line.

Correction (October 28, 2026): The headline was changed from saying the Justice Department sought to halt counting of some California votes to saying it sought to have about 20,000 ballots set aside, and that the appeals panel dismissed its appeal.

The works were donated by Charles Greig, a British art historian and collector who specializes in art from British-ruled India, according to a Tate announcement and a report by The Art Newspaper. Tate said the collection was built over four decades.

The gift spans artists from very different backgrounds. It includes the Indian painters Sita Ram and Ghulam Ali Khan, the European painters Johan Zoffany and Rudolf Swoboda, and the British landscape artists Thomas and William Daniell, according to both Tate and The Art Newspaper.

Three watercolors by Sita Ram stand out for Tate. They are examples of what are known as Company paintings, works made by Indian artists in a European-influenced style for British and other foreign patrons, and Tate says the gift brings this kind of painting into its collection for the first time. Both Tate and The Art Newspaper highlighted the Sita Ram works.

The collection also includes Swoboda’s portrait of a sepoy, an Indian soldier, from a maharaja’s regiment, painted around 1886. Tate says the picture was painted for Queen Victoria and is the first of Swoboda’s works to enter a British museum collection.

Tate said in a statement quoted by The Art Newspaper that the works shed light on a period of deep cultural, social and political change brought about by British colonialism in South Asia. Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said the gift would significantly strengthen the museum’s holdings of art produced in the British Empire. Mr. Greig said a collection built on a lifetime of study deserved to be accessible to everyone, and The Art Newspaper reported that he described himself as a temporary steward of the works.

A free display of the collection is planned at Tate Britain in London in 2028, according to both Tate and The Art Newspaper.

The works also carry a question of framing. Many were made for European patrons and show India through the eyes of the people who ruled it. Tate’s own description presents them as records of colonialism and its effects rather than as neutral images, and placing Indian artists such as Sita Ram and Ghulam Ali Khan alongside better-known Europeans gives visitors a fuller picture of who was making art at the time.

Mr. Greig recently appeared on the BBC program “Fake or Fortune?”, The Art Newspaper noted. Tate said the collection was given outright, without tax incentives.

Carbon dioxide averaged 426.8 parts per million last year, about 153 percent of its level before the industrial era began around 1750, according to the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin as reported by CBS News, UN News and Phys.org. Methane reached about 1,948 parts per billion, roughly 267 percent of the pre-industrial level, and nitrous oxide reached about 339.1 parts per billion, about 126 percent.

Carbon dioxide rose by 2.8 parts per million from 2024 to 2025. That was a smaller jump than the year before, when the increase was about 3.5 parts per million, the largest on record. The WMO attributed the slowdown partly to natural factors: forests and soils absorbed more carbon, and wildfire emissions fell, after the strong El Niño of 2023 and 2024 ended.

Scientists at the agency stressed that a slower increase is still an increase. Oksana Tarasova, a senior WMO scientific officer, said in remarks carried by CBS News and Phys.org that a 2.8 part-per-million rise remains a substantial addition of carbon to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Ko Barrett, the WMO’s deputy secretary-general, summed up the findings as another year with another new record.

The longer view shows the scale of the change. When the bulletin was first published, in 2004, carbon dioxide stood at about 377.5 parts per million. The annual rate of increase has roughly tripled since the 1960s, according to UN News and Phys.org. About half of the carbon dioxide emitted each year stays in the atmosphere, with land and oceans absorbing the rest.

The report also flagged smaller contributors. Sulfur hexafluoride, an industrial gas that lingers for more than a thousand years, posted a record increase in 2025. Molecular hydrogen is also rising and has an indirect warming effect.

The agency expects concentrations to climb again in 2026, driven by continued fossil fuel use and a developing El Niño. The past 11 years have been the warmest on record, Ms. Barrett said.

An important caveat: the bulletin measures how much of each gas has built up in the air, not how much was emitted in a given year. A record concentration therefore reflects the long accumulation of past emissions, and it can be set even in a year when the pace of increase slows. Some observers will read the slower 2025 rise as a hopeful sign; the WMO’s own explanation credits mostly natural swings rather than cuts in emissions.

The findings are meant to inform negotiators at COP31, the UN climate conference scheduled for Nov. 9 to 20 in Antalya, Turkey.

The company plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ANT, according to the filing as reported by the Associated Press, NBC News, CBS News and TechCrunch. Anthropic had submitted a confidential draft earlier, and the public filing begins the final stretch before a debut expected in November.

The numbers show a company growing at a pace with few precedents. Anthropic reported revenue of about $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, up from about $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to CBS News, TechCrunch and ABC News.

The losses are just as striking. Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first six months of the year and has never turned a profit. TechCrunch reported that the loss was largely driven by noncash accounting adjustments tied to convertible debt. The Wall Street Journal, as reported by Al Jazeera, put those charges at about $72 billion, based on a draft of the filing. NBC News noted that the company’s spending on computing power is also enormous, and that it has signed long-term cloud agreements with several of the largest technology companies.

The filing does not set a share price or say how many shares will be sold. Reports have suggested the offering could raise as much as $100 billion, which would surpass SpaceX’s offering in June as the largest ever, and could value the company at $1.5 trillion to more than $2 trillion. Private investors most recently valued Anthropic at about $965 billion, according to the AP and CBS News. NBC News reported that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the deal.

The document is unusually frank about risk. Anthropic warns that advanced AI systems could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” without appropriate safeguards, and cautions that it may not achieve or sustain profitability. ABC News reported that about 90 of the filing’s roughly 300 pages are devoted to risk factors.

The governance structure is also unusual. TechCrunch reported that the company’s seven co-founders would together hold 50.1 percent of shareholder voting power through an entity called the Founder LLC, and that a long-term benefit trust would appoint most of the board, a design meant to protect the company’s stated safety mission but one that leaves outside shareholders with limited influence.

Supporters see the offering as a chance for ordinary investors to own a piece of one of the fastest-growing companies ever. Skeptics point out that Anthropic, like its main rivals, spends far more than it earns, and Reuters reported that rising borrowing costs have sharpened investor concerns about the debt-fueled AI investment boom. Several smaller companies postponed offerings earlier this month, citing market conditions.

How investors receive the shares next month will be read as a verdict on the broader AI boom.

Correction (October 28, 2026): An earlier version described the roughly $72 billion charge as a single one-time charge reported by the AP, said the founders’ control came through a special class of shares, and cited the AP on AI bubble fears; the article now attributes the charge to the Wall Street Journal via Al Jazeera, describes the Founder LLC structure reported by TechCrunch, and cites Reuters on investor concerns.

The agency’s 2026 Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report, posted on the CDC’s website and reported by ABC News and NBC News, covers 19 germs sorted into three tiers, urgent, serious and concerning, along with a watch list of six more that the agency is monitoring.

Among the most urgent threats is Candida auris, a fungus that mainly affects seriously ill patients in hospitals and nursing homes and can spread on surfaces and shared objects such as bedrails and blood pressure cuffs, according to the CDC. Both news organizations highlighted it. ABC News reported that the other germs in the urgent tier are drug-resistant gonorrhea and two groups of hospital bacteria that resist carbapenems, a class of powerful last-line antibiotics. ABC reported that reported C. auris cases rose by more than half from 2022 to 2023, and the CDC’s page notes that an earlier update found clinical cases had risen nearly fivefold from 2019 to 2022.

Resistance develops when microbes survive the drugs used against them and pass on the traits that helped them survive. The people at highest risk are those with weakened immune systems, serious illnesses or medical devices such as catheters, according to ABC’s account of the report. Infections picked up in health care settings carry large costs as well; ABC reported a figure of nearly $12 billion in 2023, and the CDC says the report includes estimates of those costs.

CDC Director Erica Schwartz said in a statement quoted by ABC News that antimicrobial resistance threatens modern medicine and puts millions of Americans at risk every year.

The agency’s advice to the public is familiar but still important: take antibiotics only when a health professional prescribes them, remember that antibiotics do nothing against viruses such as those that cause colds and flu, wash hands and stay up to date on vaccines.

There are limits to what the new figures can say about trends. The CDC cautions that the 2026 update uses different data methods than earlier reports, so most of its numbers should not be compared directly with previous estimates, with C. auris the main exception. That makes it hard to say from this report alone whether the overall problem is getting better or worse.

The figures leave room for both worry and some encouragement. One longtime hospital threat, C. diff, has improved enough to be moved from the urgent tier to the serious tier, ABC reported, after infections fell from 2018 to 2020 and then held steady, a sign that infection control efforts can work. At the same time, C. auris continues to spread in the places where patients are most vulnerable.

Either way, the report’s central message is that resistant infections remain a large and persistent danger, especially for the sickest patients.

On Monday, District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that the firing was unlawful and ordered her reinstated with back pay. His 55-page decision should be read well beyond the Justice Department, because the government’s defense would have reached almost every career employee in the executive branch.

The administration did not argue that Ms. Comey had done anything wrong. It argued that it did not need a reason at all. Its lawyers told the court that the Constitution gives the executive branch unlimited power to remove federal prosecutors at will, and that Congress has no authority to restrict it. Judge Furman called that theory sweeping and unprecedented, and noted that the department had conceded the limits Congress wrote into law were not followed in her case.

Ms. Comey has argued that the real reason was obvious: she is the daughter of James Comey, the former FBI director whom President Trump fired in 2017 and has attacked ever since. Judge Furman’s ruling, as NBC News and CBS News described it, rested on civil service law and the separation of powers. But the pattern is hard to ignore, and the department’s refusal to offer any explanation only invites the inference.

This matters for reasons that have nothing to do with one family. The civil service exists so that the people who prosecute crimes, inspect food, process benefits and guard secrets keep their jobs based on their work, not their politics or their relatives. A prosecutor who knows she can be removed on a whim for displeasing the White House is a prosecutor under pressure to bend. Citizens on the other side of her cases, whether powerful or ordinary, deserve better than that.

The administration’s position is not frivolous, and it deserves a fair hearing on appeal. The Supreme Court has expanded presidential removal power in recent years, and there is a legitimate democratic argument that voters elect a president to run the executive branch, including its lawyers, and that unelected officials should answer to someone the public can hold accountable.

But accountability runs through rules, not around them. Congress has the authority to set the terms on which government employees are hired and fired, and it has written such limits into law. A president who disagrees can ask Congress to change the law. What he cannot do, as Judge Furman put it, is adopt a theory that would unsettle the balance the Constitution established.

The Justice Department says it will appeal. It should think hard before asking higher courts to declare that every career prosecutor in the country serves at the pleasure of the president. A justice system that works that way would not be more accountable. It would simply be more frightened.

Correction (October 28, 2026): An earlier version said the court did not need to decide whether the firing was retaliation against her father; the sentence now says only that the ruling, as reported, rested on civil service law and the separation of powers.

The animal, named Gerrothorax maritimus, is described in a study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution by researchers from the University of California, Davis, Peking University and the Geological Museum of Guizhou. The findings were reported by UC Davis and ScienceAlert.

The evidence comes from two nearly complete skeletons found in Guizhou province in southern China, in rocks dating to the Late Triassic period. The animals were flat, heavily armored and about two and a half to three feet long. Ryosuke Motani, a UC Davis paleontologist and the study’s corresponding author, compared the creature’s bulk to that of a modern giant salamander, but chunkier.

The researchers offer three main reasons to think the animal truly lived at sea rather than washing in from a river. First, the fossils were found in deep marine sediments alongside ocean animals such as ichthyosaurs, sea lilies and turtles, far from any known land. Second, the chemical signature of strontium in the bones matches the seawater of the time. Third, the skeletons are intact down to the fingers.

That last detail matters, Motani told UC Davis and the other outlets. A carcass that drifted out to sea would likely have fallen apart, he said, but because the fingers were preserved, the animals probably died near where they lived.

The team suggests Gerrothorax maritimus was an ambush predator that lay on the sea floor and sucked in prey that came close. They also propose that its armor limited how much salt water passed through its skin, and that it may have handled salt by drinking seawater and processing it through its gut.

The finding stands out because of how unusual it would be. Of more than 8,000 living amphibian species, none is known to live fully in the ocean, and fewer than 2 percent show any tolerance for salt, according to UC Davis and ScienceAlert.

The conclusions come with caveats. They rest on just two specimens. The feeding style and the way the animal coped with salt are hypotheses rather than direct observations, and ScienceAlert noted that the researchers do not know whether early amphibians like this one had permeable skin like modern species. The authors judged the drifting-carcass explanation very unlikely rather than impossible.

Even so, the fossils widen the picture of what early amphibians could do, and they suggest that the line between land, fresh water and sea was crossed by more kinds of animals than scientists had assumed.

District Judge Jesse Furman found that the July 2025 dismissal violated the constitutional separation of powers and federal law protecting career government employees, according to NBC News and CBS News. He awarded Ms. Comey back pay from the date she was fired through Dec. 20, 2025, when she started a new job.

Ms. Comey had served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York for about a decade. She worked on some of the office’s best-known cases, including those against Jeffrey Epstein, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, the music mogul Sean Combs and former Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

She was dismissed by a memo from department headquarters with no explanation, she has said. In her lawsuit, filed in September 2025, she argued that the most likely reason was President Trump’s long-running hostility toward her father, whom Mr. Trump fired as FBI director in 2017. The department later said in court that the removal was directed by Pam Bondi, who was then attorney general.

The administration’s defense rested on a broad view of presidential power. Its lawyers argued that Article II of the Constitution lets the executive branch remove federal prosecutors at will, for any reason or none, and that Congress has no authority to limit that power. The government also argued that her claims belonged before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the agency that normally hears federal employee disputes, rather than in federal court.

Judge Furman rejected both arguments. Congress gave the attorney general the power to remove assistant United States attorneys but placed limits on it, he wrote, and the department conceded those limits were not followed in Ms. Comey’s case. Accepting the government’s theory, he wrote, would “unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”

Ms. Comey’s lawyers called the decision a victory for her and for civil servants generally, saying it showed that the president is not above the law. A department spokesperson said the Justice Department disagrees with the ruling and will appeal in due course.

The administration’s position has real legal force behind it. The Supreme Court has expanded presidential removal power in recent years, and supporters of that approach argue that voters elect a president to run the executive branch, including the lawyers who carry out its prosecutions, and that career staff should not be insulated from that accountability.

The ruling sets up an appeal that could test how far that expanded removal power reaches into the ranks of career prosecutors, who have long been protected by civil service law. For now, Ms. Comey is entitled to her old job back.

Lula received more than 64 million votes to fewer than 60 million for Mr. Bolsonaro, a margin of more than four million, according to official counts reported by Al Jazeera and CBS News. Al Jazeera put his share at just over 51 percent. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court called the race shortly after 9 p.m. in Brasília.

The result reversed the first round on Oct. 4, when Mr. Bolsonaro finished narrowly ahead, about 47 percent to 45 percent. Al Jazeera reported that Lula is the first politician in modern Brazilian history to lose the first round and then win the runoff. Lula, who previously won in 2002, 2006 and 2022, is 80 years old and is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 5.

Mr. Bolsonaro has not conceded. He objected to a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin that kept polling places open two extra hours, until 7 p.m., saying the rules had been changed mid-contest, and he said he would take legal action to annul the result. Lula’s allies had complained that public transportation was suspended in some areas on election day, which they said was meant to keep his working-class supporters from voting. Al Jazeera reported that both campaigns had asked for the extension for different reasons, and cited an academic estimate that it produced only about 35,000 additional votes, far fewer than the winning margin.

The leader of Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, Valdemar Costa Neto, said on Monday that the party recognized the result while still wanting its concerns clarified, according to Al Jazeera.

President Trump weighed in on Monday, suggesting without evidence that the vote was rigged, both outlets reported. His administration has backed the Bolsonaro family, and last year it imposed 50 percent tariffs on some Brazilian goods and sanctioned judges involved in the case against Mr. Bolsonaro’s father.

That father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after losing to Lula in 2022. CBS News reported that Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his passports in a sealed order issued on election day.

Lula’s supporters credit his third term with lower poverty, while his critics point to his age, worries about crime, rising household debt and the cost of living, issues that helped the right perform strongly in congressional races. Lula will face what Al Jazeera described as the most right-leaning Congress in recent memory.

Courts and election authorities have validated the count, and the losing side’s own party has accepted it, but the coming weeks will show whether Mr. Bolsonaro presses his challenge.

The class included Swift, Lovett, Shawn Camp, Lee Thomas Miller, Bruce Channel and the late J.I. Allison, according to the Associated Press and the music trade publication MusicRow. Country star George Strait received the hall’s Career Maker Award.

Swift is the youngest person ever inducted into the hall, MusicRow reported. She built her early career in Nashville as a songwriter before her albums made her a global star. Brad Paisley introduced her, and Lainey Wilson performed a version of Swift’s early hit “Love Story,” according to MusicRow.

In her remarks, as reported by MusicRow, Swift said it was not lost on her how crazy the moment was, that she would cherish it forever and that she was truly grateful to be there.

Lovett said he was humbled to be in the company of the hall’s members, according to MusicRow.

The class also reached back several generations. Allison, who died in 2022, was Buddy Holly’s drummer, an original member of the Crickets and a co-writer of “That’ll Be the Day,” according to the AP’s obituary of him. Chuck Mead performed the song at the ceremony, MusicRow reported. Channel co-wrote the hit “Hey! Baby!” and Miller co-wrote “In Color,” which Jamey Johnson performed in his honor.

Strait used his moment to turn the spotlight back on the people who wrote his songs. According to the Associated Press, in an account the paper could not independently confirm, he told the audience that the songwriters made his career, not the other way around, a sentiment that fits the purpose of an institution built to honor the people whose names often appear only in small print on an album.

Inducting a star still in the middle of her career is a notable choice for an honor that often goes to writers whose best-known songs are decades old, and this class shows both sides of that tradition at once. Allison’s best-known song dates to the early years of rock and roll, while Swift’s debut album came out about 20 years ago, the AP noted.

The hall, founded to recognize the writers behind the songs that made Nashville’s reputation, continues to add members each year. This year’s class reflects how wide that reputation now reaches, from rockabilly to arena pop.

Correction (October 28, 2026): An earlier version paraphrased remarks by Taylor Swift about a ‘sacred club’ that the paper could not confirm; the article now reports her remarks as published by MusicRow, and no longer cites TODAY for her status as the youngest inductee.

Under the arrangement, disclosed in a regulatory filing and in a statement from Apollo Global Management, an entity managed by Apollo will buy the chips and server hardware and lease them to SpaceX. The companies described it as the largest committed financing of graphics processors to date. TechCrunch and NBC News both reported the deal.

The equipment will include Nvidia’s next generation of Vera Rubin chips, which Apollo said will support SpaceX’s buildout of computing capacity on the ground. The deal is expected to close before the end of 2026, subject to conditions, and the leases are expected to start in the first half of 2027 as the hardware is delivered. TechCrunch reported that each lease runs about five years.

Apollo said it and Goldman Sachs led the group of financing parties, with funds managed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with accounts advised by KKR, making anchor commitments.

SpaceX, best known for its rockets and Starlink satellite internet service, has turned increasingly toward artificial intelligence. Its AI business includes the Grok chatbot and cloud computing services sold to outside customers. The company’s chief financial officer, Bret Johnsen, said in the announcement that SpaceX wants to deploy the largest computing infrastructure in the world, that demand for computing keeps accelerating and that the lease helps diversify its sources of funding. He also said the company is seeing payback periods of less than a year on its AI infrastructure.

Leasing rather than buying lets a company add expensive equipment without paying the full cost up front, spreading the bill over years. For lenders like Apollo, the deal offers steady payments backed by hardware in high demand.

The arrangement arrives during a period of strain in the markets that finance AI infrastructure, TechCrunch noted, as smaller companies that rent out graphics processors have found borrowing harder. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, has argued that debt markets have largely closed to companies without substantial revenue beyond data centers.

There are reasons for caution. The company’s claim of a payback period under one year is its own and has not been independently verified, and chips used for AI can lose value quickly as newer generations arrive, leaving long leases tied to aging hardware. Critics of the broader AI spending boom warn that heavy borrowing to buy chips could magnify losses if demand cools.

Supporters counter that companies with real customers and revenue, as SpaceX says it has, are best placed to use such financing, and that the chips are already in short supply.

Comey spent a decade as a Manhattan prosecutor, working on the Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean Combs cases. Her reviews were outstanding.

In July 2025 she was fired by memo, with no reason given. She says it was because Trump dislikes her father, former F B I Director James Comey.

The department argued the president can fire career prosecutors at will. Judge Jesse Furman called that sweeping and unprecedented. The department will appeal.

Next, the appeal will test whether prosecutors can be fired at will. We’ll follow it, sourced and plain.

It covers past elections and this one. He did not say where the money would come from, and the White House gave no details.

How common is fraud? The conservative Heritage Foundation’s own database lists just over sixteen hundred cases in forty years, a tiny share of votes cast.

Supporters say real fraud should be reported and punished, and a reward helps. But courts have blocked his mail-voting and citizenship-proof changes, and studies find noncitizen voting is rare.

A million-dollar offer, for a crime that is real but rare. We’ll keep counting the facts.

The city is Oleshky, on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region. Russia seized it on the first day of the invasion. Before the war, about twenty-four thousand people lived there.

Today it has no power, heat or running water. The plan: clear the mines, bring in aid, then let people leave for Ukraine or Russia.

Moscow and Kyiv both confirmed it. Supporters call it proof that quiet diplomacy works. But no one has said how the pause will be monitored, and Ukraine’s negotiator calls it extremely challenging.

One city, one pause. We will report whether it holds.

On Wednesday in Saint Petersburg, Russia freed a seventy-four-year-old American it had held since 2022. Envoy Steve Witkoff thanked Putin to his face.

His words: “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.”

Republican Senator Thom Tillis called it embarrassing and outrageous. John Cornyn said Putin is a stone-cold killer. Susan Collins said he is certainly not a humanitarian.

Defenders say a kind word is a small price for bringing an American home. But Russia has stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid this past month. We’ll keep sourcing the words that shape this war.

She appeared first at a church in Lara state, then headed to Caracas, where hundreds of supporters swarmed her car.

She went into hiding in early 2025, slipped out to accept the Nobel in Oslo that December, and returns after American forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez runs the government. Machado wants elections soon. The Trump administration says Venezuela must stabilize first, and credits American-backed talks for her return.

She’s home. Now the question is when Venezuelans vote. We’ll follow it with sources, not slogans.

Chairman Brendan Carr claimed a “significant surge” in fake and suppression polls. He did not name a single poll or offer evidence.

That same week, Reuters and Ipsos put Trump’s approval at thirty-one percent, the lowest of either term. Trump calls many polls rigged.

Fake polls do exist: one firm admitted inventing most of its results. But the F C C’s only Democrat, Anna Gomez, says stations reporting polls in good faith should never be punished.

Polls can be wrong. The question is who decides which ones you get to hear. We check every number we show.

In early counts, the Conservatives led or won sixty-two of ninety-three seats. The New Democrats, in power for nine years, fell to about twenty-nine.

Premier David Eby framed the race around Donald Trump. But in one poll, voters ranked the economy, housing and health care first, and none named Trump.

Incoming premier Lorne Doerkson promises a thousand-dollar income tax cut and double the natural gas output. He says growth will pay for more homes.

Eby conceded: “I accept full responsibility.” An early election is always a gamble, and this one lost. Want the story behind the results?

The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a less common relative of the Zaire strain behind most earlier large outbreaks. It was declared in mid-May and has become the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in Congo’s history. The CDC now describes it as the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, after the epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016.

Nearly half of confirmed patients have died, according to the ministry. That is a high death rate, though the share of confirmed cases can be skewed by who gets tested, and early counts often fall short of the true toll.

The central difficulty is the lack of a licensed vaccine for this strain. Merck’s Ervebo, which helped control earlier outbreaks, is approved for the Zaire strain, not Bundibugyo. The World Health Organization sent 70,000 doses to Congo in August. About 50,000 were intended for frontline and health workers, and 20,000 were set aside for a clinical trial to test whether the vaccine offers protection against Bundibugyo. Vaccinations began on August 27 in Kisangani, according to the Associated Press.

Cases have also appeared outside Congo. The CDC reports nine confirmed cases in Kenya, all in Nairobi, and one in Nigeria, confirmed as the Bundibugyo virus. Uganda, which recorded 20 confirmed cases earlier in the outbreak, has reported no active cases since mid-July.

Counting an epidemic this large is itself a challenge. Figures differ slightly by source and date because of reporting lags; the CDC’s total across all affected countries, 10,091 confirmed cases and 4,891 deaths, is slightly higher than Congo’s own count, a gap that reflects where cases were recorded rather than any disagreement about the scale.

Some argue that using an unproven vaccine in an emergency is a reasonable risk when no alternative exists, and that rapid trials can generate evidence while protecting those most exposed. Others caution that a vaccine tested on a different strain may give false reassurance to health workers, who still need protective equipment and strict infection control.

Both points can be true. What is clear from the totals is that the outbreak is still growing, and that the response depends on money, trained staff, safe burials, contact tracing and trust in affected communities as much as on any vaccine. The next several weeks of trial data will show whether Ervebo offers any cross-protection.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This article was revised to replace figures that could not be confirmed: an October 6 CDC count of 8,750 cases and 4,208 deaths and a separate tally of 9,964 cases were removed, the current totals and the cases in Kenya and Nigeria are now attributed to the CDC rather than the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and a Washington Times figure of about 4,800 deaths was removed.

Start with the reward. The president said he would pay $1 million for tips that lead to an arrest and conviction, covering past elections and this year’s midterms. He did not say where the money would come from. As NBC News noted in reporting the offer, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections. A bounty does not find fraud. It encourages accusations, and it tells election workers that their neighbors are being paid to suspect them.

The ballot fights are more serious. A federal appeals court in San Francisco turned down the administration’s attempt to force California to set aside about 20,000 mail ballots from voters the Justice Department says may be noncitizens, and said the claimed emergency was, at least in part, of the government’s own making. In Washington state, the department has asked officials to set aside about 400 ballots. In Alaska, it asked a court to block certification if Senator Dan Sullivan narrowly loses, citing a candidate of a similar name, though the state’s supreme court has already ruled that the other candidate may remain on the ballot.

The strongest case on the other side deserves a fair hearing. Only citizens may vote in federal elections, and officials are right to check rolls. The federal prosecutor in the Washington case has called the roughly 400 names the tip of the iceberg, CBS News reported. If those registrations are real, they should be examined and, where appropriate, prosecuted.

But verification and disruption are different things. Careful checking happens before ballots are cast, with notice to voters and a chance for them to prove their eligibility. Demanding days before an election that a state quarantine thousands of ballots puts lawful voters at risk of having their votes discarded because of a database mismatch. Lists built from administrative records can contain errors, and a mismatch is not proof of ineligibility. A system that sets those ballots aside first and sorts them out later will not fix mistakes in time for them to count.

The courts have been doing their job. The judges in California were skeptical at the hearing and then rejected the request. Alaska’s own justices had already decided the question the federal suit is trying to reopen. That is how institutions are supposed to work, but it should not have to.

A better approach is dull and effective: keep voter rolls up to date through state-run processes, publish audits, and prosecute actual violations through the usual channels. Most of all, count every lawful ballot that arrives on time. Americans who are worried about prices, health care and the Iran war should not also have to wonder whether their votes will survive a late-October lawsuit.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This editorial was revised to say the president, not the White House, did not specify a funding source for the reward, as NBC News reported, and to attribute the point that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud to NBC News alone.

The case was heard by the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court. Attalah was charged with running a website without a license, an offense under a 2018 law governing the press and media. The fine was the maximum the law allows. Prosecutors had earlier questioned her on a separate charge of publishing false news, but that charge was not part of the referral to trial.

Mada Masr says it applied for a license in 2018 and again in 2020 and that the Supreme Media Regulatory Council never answered; the council later said in a 2022 court case that the application was incomplete. The site has been blocked inside Egypt since 2017 and reaches readers through workarounds. The Committee to Protect Journalists, citing reports from the hearing, said the defense was prevented from submitting documents and calling witnesses.

Attalah was taken into custody after the verdict. Two Egyptian lawyers told the Committee to Protect Journalists that she would remain held until the fine was paid, and Mada Masr later said, according to Egyptian Streets, that she had paid it in full and been released.

The verdict is not the only legal threat she faces. Mada Masr says that during her release she learned of a one-year prison sentence issued against her in absentia in 2024 on charges of publishing false news and managing an unlicensed website. Her lawyers have challenged it, and a retrial is set for November 11. Tuesday’s ruling came from a court of first instance and can be appealed.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the judgment and, earlier this month, described a broader pattern of pressure on Egyptian reporters. Before the hearing, ARTICLE 19 issued an urgent call on her behalf, and Amnesty International urged the authorities to end what it called judicial harassment of Attalah and Mada Masr’s staff.

The prosecution’s case rests on a simple legal point: the law requires news sites to be licensed, and Mada Masr did not hold a license. Defenders of such rules say states have a legitimate interest in regulating who publishes. Mada Masr’s answer is that a licensing body that does not respond to applications is not a neutral regulator but a gate that can be kept shut, and that the outcome is a ruling that silences reporting rather than regulates it.

If the closure order holds, Egypt will lose a source of reporting that has covered courts, security services and the economy when much of the domestic press has stayed quiet. The appeal and the November retrial will show whether the courts treat the licensing law as an administrative rule or as a tool against a particular newsroom.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This article was revised: the defense’s denied requests are now described as CPJ reported them (to submit documents and call witnesses, not for more time), Reporters Without Borders was removed from the groups said to have urged that the case be dropped, the account of Mada Masr’s licensing history was corrected to say the regulator described its application as incomplete in a 2022 court case, and an unconfirmed report that her lawyers plan to appeal was removed.

The backdrop is unwelcome. The annual inflation rate reached 3.7 percent in September, up from 3.4 percent in August and well above the Fed’s 2 percent target. Energy is a main driver: gasoline is reported to have risen sharply last month, and the national average for regular gasoline was about $4.25 a gallon on Wednesday, according to AAA, compared with about $3.04 a year earlier.

The decision is due at 2 p.m. Eastern, and Chair Kevin Warsh is scheduled to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m., which is where analysts expect the news. Warsh has long been wary of giving specific guidance about future rate moves, yet investors are looking beyond this meeting: the same market tool showed roughly a 75 percent chance of another quarter-point increase in December. Fed officials have said, in remarks reported by NBC News, that there is time to wait and see how financial conditions evolve.

The politics are plain even if the Fed insists they do not drive it. Rising prices, especially for housing and energy, top the list of voters’ concerns in a recent NBC News poll. Two-thirds of respondents called the gas-price increase a serious problem, and only 27 percent approved of the president’s handling of the cost of living. Voters in the poll tied higher prices to the Iran war and to tariffs.

There is a strong case for holding. A rate increase works slowly, and it does little to lower the price of oil set by a military conflict. Raising borrowing costs for households already stretched by food, rent and fuel could slow the economy without addressing the cause of the price surge.

The case for acting is also serious, and inflation hawks make it fairly: if households and businesses come to expect high inflation, it becomes harder to dislodge, and waiting could mean a larger increase later. That is the argument some analysts say makes a hold a risk for Warsh.

The decision is therefore a judgment about which risk is worse, and it will be made in a season when every economic number is read as a campaign message. The central bank’s independence is tested most when its choices are inconvenient for whoever holds power. What households will notice first is not the Fed’s statement but the price at the pump and the grocery store, and neither is something the central bank controls directly.

Correction (October 28, 2026): Corrected the press conference time to 2:30 p.m. Eastern, with the decision itself at 2 p.m.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This article was revised to replace an unconfirmed gasoline comparison ($4.29 a gallon now against $2.98 before the Iran war) with AAA’s national average of about $4.25 on Wednesday and about $3.04 a year earlier.

The main additions over Genie 3, which appeared as a research preview a little over a year ago, are sound and live control. Genie 4 generates audio to match each world, including ambient noise, music and dialogue, and a user can type a prompt in the middle of a simulation to change the weather, move the camera or add people and objects. Google says physics and the movement of human characters are also improved.

Consistent scenes now last up to two minutes, twice Genie 3’s limit. Google acknowledges that details and objects can still drift in longer sessions, that the accuracy of generated audio is unresolved, and that readable text inside generated scenes is not yet reliable. The company calls the model early and says the shape of any finished product is unclear.

One experiment is aimed at robotics. A Gemini model planned a task in steps while Genie 4 simulated each step in real time, a way to test how a robot might behave before trying it in the physical world. Tejas Kulkarni, a Google DeepMind research director, described such pairings as hybrid world models, according to TechCrunch. Testers are also trying the system for film pre-visualization and storyboarding.

Access will widen slowly. Google says Ultra subscribers using Project Genie and early partners in the Gemini API and Google AI Studio will get access in the coming weeks, though no firm date was given. Google says it will apply its SynthID watermark to all video and audio the model produces.

The announcement lands in a crowded field. TechCrunch notes that Runway released a playable world model of its own, GWM Worlds 2, a couple of months ago and that the sector is consolidating, with AMD reportedly acquiring World Labs and Amazon reportedly in talks to buy Decart.

Supporters of world models argue they could make robot testing safer and cheaper, since a mistake in a simulation costs nothing and can be repeated endlessly. Skeptics point to the limits the company itself lists: two minutes of coherence is far short of the long, reliable simulations that safety testing would demand, and a simulated world that drifts can teach a robot the wrong lessons.

For now, Genie 4 is a demonstration of progress rather than a product, and its value will depend on how much of the realism holds up when outsiders test it. The watermarking plan and the limited rollout suggest Google expects scrutiny about how convincing generated audio and video can be.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This article was revised to remove an unconfirmed statement that Runway’s recent world model included audio; the headline was also shortened.

The question matters because young animals change as they grow. Teenage tyrannosaurs, the argument went, would have had lighter skulls and more teeth than adults. If small specimens were simply juveniles, there was no separate species to name. The test is whether the small fossils show signs of being fully grown.

Two studies published in the past year have pressed that case. In December, a paper in Science led by Christopher Griffin of Princeton examined the throat bone of a well-known small skull and concluded that the animal was nearly fully grown when it died, which he said showed it was different from T. rex. Earlier, a Nature paper by Lindsay Zanno and James Napoli studied the so-called Dueling Dinosaurs specimen, a nearly adult tyrannosaur from Hell Creek, and supported Nanotyrannus as a distinct genus. That paper also proposed a second species name, Nanotyrannus lethaeus, which is more contested and should be treated as a claim rather than settled fact, according to summaries of the work.

Jodi was found in 2019 on a Montana ranch by rancher Jodi Pierson, for whom it is named. Sotheby’s lists 191 bone elements, including a nearly complete skull, and calls it one of only three known Nanotyrannus skeletons. The Associated Press described it as almost 70 percent complete, while Popular Science put the figure at about 55 percent. Forbes Argentina reported that the skeleton was shown in London in 2023 under a different name, as a possible juvenile T. rex, a sign of how quickly the classification has shifted.

The question may not be closed for every researcher. Researchers who favored the juvenile hypothesis may point out that few specimens exist to test, and the proposed second species name is itself contested. A skeleton as complete as Jodi’s could help, since an extensive set of bones allows researchers to look at growth rings and skull structure in the same animal.

That is where the sale’s scientific interest lies. The price will be discussed elsewhere; what matters to paleontologists is whether a buyer lets researchers study the skeleton. The buyer has not been identified, and Sotheby’s has not said whether access has been arranged.

Whatever Jodi’s new owner decides, the broader lesson is that classification in paleontology is a hypothesis tested bone by bone. Two independent lines of evidence now point the same direction, and the next test will come from whoever is given the chance to examine the rare specimens that remain.

Correction (October 28, 2026): This article was revised to attribute the skeleton’s completeness to the Associated Press (almost 70 percent) and to note Popular Science’s lower estimate of about 55 percent, rather than presenting 70 percent as Sotheby’s figure.

The sale came three months after Sotheby’s sold Gus, a Tyrannosaurus rex, for $50.1 million, which set a record for a prehistoric fossil at auction. Two sales at that level in one season show that the market for fossils has moved from the natural-history fringe into the same bidding rooms as Monet and Picasso.

Auction houses present these skeletons as sculpture and spectacle. Sotheby’s displayed Jodi, mounted, in a gallery before the sale, and visitors came to see it as they would a painting. Part of its appeal is rarity: the house says it is one of only three known Nanotyrannus skeletons, and the species has been in the news because of scientific papers arguing it was distinct from T. rex.

That appeal also creates a tension. Museums, funded by public money and donations, usually cannot compete with collectors who can pay tens of millions of dollars. Coverage of the sale raised concern that important fossils bought by private owners may not stay available for scientific study or public display. Paleontologists have long made this argument about the commercial trade, since a specimen locked in a private home can be measured by no one else, and findings based on it are hard to check.

Sellers and collectors make a reasonable counterpoint. Private landowners who find fossils on their property are legally entitled to sell them in the United States, and the money can fund further digs, ranch operations and conservation. Some collectors lend specimens to museums. Nothing in the reporting so far indicates what Jodi’s buyer plans.

The pattern worth watching is whether sales of this size produce arrangements for access. A lending agreement, a cast, or a promise to allow researchers to examine the bones would let the public share in a find that, until 2019, lay in a Montana hillside.

Culture has always had to decide who owns the objects that tell us about the past. The price of Jodi is a reminder that those decisions are being made, in practice, one auction at a time.

Here is how it works. First, thirty-five billion dollars in public stock offerings that Meta launched on Monday. Then, a further sixty billion dollars sold gradually into the market over time, in what is called an at-the-market program.

Why now? Meta expects to spend up to one hundred forty-five billion dollars on capital projects this year, and it has warned investors it may need to raise hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom, the chip companies, are lining up as cornerstone investors. Meta’s sales did rise twenty-six percent last quarter. We try to keep these money stories sourced and plain.

Meta’s case is simple: it says the spending is already paying off, through more engagement, better ad performance and new ways to earn money. That is the strongest argument for the plan, and the company’s results lend it some support.

But there is a catch. Meta also plans a new class of shares with no votes, expected to begin trading in the first quarter of next year. Buyers would be putting up tens of billions of dollars while having no say in how it is spent. Critics of concentrated corporate power say that is the real story here.

So the question is not only whether the AI race pays off. It is who carries the risk when it is this large, and who gets to decide. The first thirty-five billion dollars goes on sale now. Watch how the shares trade, and what the first buyers are told.

Start with the count. As of Sunday, the University of Florida’s Election Lab had logged more than thirty million early and mail votes, well ahead of 2018 and 2022 at this point. Georgia passed one million votes on Monday, and Harris County, Texas, set a first-day record.

Now the part that gets lost. Early votes show who is motivated, not how the final count will go. Most early voters would have voted anyway. Democrats have voted early at higher rates, while Republicans tend to wait for Election Day. It measures energy, not the result. That is the sourced version, no spin. Now, the two numbers.

Two numbers decide the night. In the House, Democrats need a net gain of three seats. In the Senate, Republicans hold fifty-three; Democrats need a net gain of four to reach fifty-one, because a fifty-fifty tie goes to Vice President Vance.

Those four seats run through Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas and Alaska, plus Michigan and Georgia. The closest is Maine, where a Fox News poll had Susan Collins and Troy Jackson tied at forty-nine. Nationally, Democrats lead the generic ballot by about nine points, more than in 2018, when they flipped forty-one seats.

Polls are snapshots, and early votes are energy, not results. Early voting ends Friday in Georgia and Texas. Election Day is Tuesday, November third.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister, faces Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief who leads the new centrist party Yashar.

The Knesset has one hundred twenty seats. A government needs sixty-one, and no single party has ever won that alone.

By six p.m., turnout was sixty-six point seven percent, a record. Polls closed at ten at night, local time, with exit polls right after.

The final count comes by October thirtieth. Then weeks of coalition talks begin, and if nobody can build a majority, Israel votes again. We will follow the count, sourced and unhyped.

Brands include Brush Buddies, Crayola, Hot Wheels, My Little Pony, evo, A R U and B B, in bubble gum, strawberry and watermelon.

The maker, Pritam International of India, pulled them in September over manufacturing problems. The Food and Drug Administration rated it Class Two: a moderate risk, with no illnesses reported.

Check the expiration date. Affected tubes run from November twenty twenty-six through June twenty twenty-eight.

If yours is on the list, stop using it and ask the store for a refund. The lot numbers are on the F D A’s website. Straight from the FDA notice, no hype.

They compared blood from nine hundred eighty-two men who later developed prostate cancer with about fifteen hundred who did not.

Out of more than six thousand proteins, twelve were linked to a diagnosis more than fifteen years later.

Seven of those were tied to aggressive disease, the kind that spreads. One, called A N K R D one, showed up again and again in fatal cases.

It is not a test you can get yet. The researchers say that is years away, but it could one day tell doctors who to watch closely. Just what the study found, no miracle claims.

Senator Jon Husted of Ohio. Kentucky, October seventeenth: “I examined his ass, and then I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jawline. Studied him.” And: “I never did that with a man before.”

Dalton, Georgia, on Senator Jon Ossoff: “I don’t think he’s a good-looking man.” On his challenger: “I actually think Mike Collins is a good-looking man, and he’s all man.” In Dallas, on Ken Paxton: “He may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. But you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America.” Every line here is quoted and sourced in the description, nothing added. Here is where it gets darker.

In Youngstown, as a woman in a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt was punched and put in a headlock in the stands, video shows, he said: “He’s a fat guy, wow,” and told her to go on a diet. No arrests. No charges. The mayor called it senseless political violence.

He has explained it himself. Coast Guard Academy, May: “I hate good-looking men.” Georgia: “There are some reasons to be president.” Political scientist Dan Cassino calls it a halo effect; Jennifer Lawless says it is about attention. Trump claims Husted gained ten points. Marist has Sherrod Brown up four, Cook up six.

It is not new. 2015: “Look at that face.” 2018: “Horseface.” What is new is the praise, aimed at his own candidates. Ohio votes in six days and will show whether any of it moves anyone.

Start with the basics. The Affordable Care Act gives people monthly help to pay for private health insurance. Under federal rules, that help is not meant for anyone who already has coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, or the children’s program CHIP.

On October fourteenth, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it had ended 2026 subsidies for about 189,000 enrollees. Those people were flagged for duplicate coverage, or their records listed them as deceased.

Most of the flagged cases were about Medicaid. About one hundred twenty thousand were people also enrolled in Medicaid. About fifty-eight thousand also had Medicare. About eleven thousand were deceased enrollees whose subsidies ended through July.

The administration says the goal is to stop taxpayers from paying for duplicate coverage. Officials estimate the step prevents about seven hundred thirty-eight million dollars in improper payments this year. Dr. Oz, who runs CMS, said no one is losing health coverage because of it.

Critics point to a gap between a match and proof. Even the health secretary, Kennedy, said a data match does not prove fraud, because records can contain mistakes. Enrollees have thirty days to dispute the finding or cancel duplicate coverage.

So can the government cut help by matching computer records? Under these rules, yes. But the cut is only as accurate as the records behind it. The next thirty days will show how many of these matches hold up.

The case began in 2018, when Boulder County and the City of Boulder sued ExxonMobil and Suncor. They say the companies knew about the dangers of their products and should pay for local harm, both past and future. They are asking for money, not a ban on oil sales.

Colorado’s Supreme Court let the case move forward in May 2025. The oil companies then asked the United States Supreme Court to step in. They argue that the federal Clean Air Act, and the Constitution’s structure of state power, should keep this kind of claim out of state courts.

Justice Samuel Alito stepped aside before the argument, and the court gave no reason. That leaves eight justices. Reporters say the justices seemed torn, both on the legal questions and on how far these lawsuits could spread.

Here is the strongest case on the other side. The companies say that if every state court could judge global emissions, the result would be chaos, with many conflicting rules for one national energy market. Boulder says these are ordinary state claims for harm done at home.

Why does this reach past one county? A ruling could decide whether local governments can seek damages from fossil fuel companies, or whether only Congress can set those rules. The justices are expected to decide by early summer.

So, can a county sue oil companies for climate damage? The justices have not answered yet. Watch for the ruling, because it may decide who gets to write the rules.

Lisa Cook is one of seven governors on the Federal Reserve Board. Trump first tried to fire her in August 2025. He says she listed two homes as her primary residence on 2021 mortgage applications. Cook denies any wrongdoing, and she has not been charged with a crime.

The Supreme Court blocked that first attempt. Its ruling said a governor can be removed only after she gets notice and a chance to respond. The new committee is the next step in that process.

The committee has three members. Kevin Hassett is a top economic adviser to the President. Andrea Lucas chairs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Keith Sonderling is the acting head of the Office of Government Ethics. The committee cannot fire Cook itself. It will recommend a decision, and the President makes the final call.

The hearing is set for November 5 at the White House. It will not be public, but a transcript will be published. Cook may bring a lawyer, present written evidence and call witnesses.

Here is the strongest case on the other side. The administration says that if a federal official made false statements on loan papers, the law allows removal for cause. Supporters say a fair hearing is exactly what the law requires.

Cook’s lawyers see it differently. They say the real reason is her refusal to lower interest rates, and they have grave doubts that the process will be fair. Cook says she welcomes the chance to clear her name.

Why does this reach past one person? The Fed sets interest rates that shape mortgages, car loans and credit cards. Economists watch whether its governors can make those calls without fear of losing their jobs over them.

So can a three-person committee decide who keeps a seat at the Fed? November 5 will tell us. Watch that date, because a final decision will likely end up in court again.

On Friday, September 18, President Trump announced the ban in a Truth Social post. He called the outlets fake news. Reporters for two of the networks and for Politico were turned away, and their press badges were deactivated.

The outlets sued in federal court in Washington, D.C. They argue that the ban violates the First Amendment. They also asked for a temporary restraining order, a fast order that pauses the ban while the case moves forward.

The White House Correspondents’ Association asked the administration to restore access. On Monday, October 26, press groups filed a new suit and asked for a wider order, according to the Washington Post.

Here is the strongest case on the other side. The administration says access to its own grounds is a privilege it can limit, and it calls these outlets fake news. Supporters see that as a government setting its own rules for its own building.

Why does access matter? Access decides who is in the room to ask questions. If the government can choose which reporters enter, the public hears fewer questions from the outlets it dislikes. Courts will decide whether this ban crosses the line the First Amendment draws.

So the question is simple. Can the government pick which reporters walk through its doors? A judge is about to answer that. Watch for the ruling, because it will shape who can ask questions in the room.