NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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We need as many people there as possible to carry our message - no more of our tax dollars for endless wars. Can we count you in? Sign up here:
https://www.codepink.org/novdc26
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 ‘Freedom Zone’ launches important human rights event October 30 Global Festival in Support of Russian Political Prisoners _________________________________________________________ THE LOCATIONS: Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, New York, Minnesota, Budva, Melbourne, Helsinki, Haifa, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vilnius, São Paulo, Florianópolis, Batumi, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Riga, Paris, Yerevan, Milan, Vienna, London, Madrid THE AUDIENCE: Anyone concerned about political prisoners in Russia
Lectures, auctions, letter evenings, film screenings and other events will take place in more than 20 countries, including the US, Brazil and Australia, demonstrating worldwide solidarity with the prisoners of the Russian regime. Speakers in different cities will include such well-known opponents of the Putin regime as Daria Serenko, Mikhail Lobanov, Sasha and Nadezhda Skochilenko, Ivan Philippov, Alexey Ponomaryov and other prominent Russian exiles. Funds raised will go towards supporting political prisoners, covering the costs of legal representation, visits from loved ones and other needs. It is also possible to join the international campaign by making an online donation. This global festival will be a tangible expression of opposition to lawlessness in Russia and support for its victims. Let’s show that we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have been unjustly convicted! ______________________________________________ ‘Freedom Zone’ was founded by Kseniia Kagarlitskaia, daughter of political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky. Since 2024, the organisation has been holding charity events (festivals) abroad to raise funds for political prisoners in Russia, raising awareness of the unlawful persecution and inhumane prison conditions faced by people in the Russian Federation, as well as campaigning for the release of political prisoners. Website: https://freedom-zone.com/festival Contact: Kseniia Kagarlitskaiazona.svobody@gmail.com +38268347993 Telegram @pruesha ___________________________________________________________________ Donation link: https://buymeacoffee.com/zonasvobodk Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Inside the Billionaires’ War Against California’s Proposed Wealth Tax
The latest Silicon Valley billionaire club is a $333 million political ad machine that is heavily engaged in next week’s elections.
By Theodore Schleifer and Erin Griffith, Oct. 27, 2026
Theodore Schleifer writes about billionaires. Erin Griffith covers venture capital.
Every Tuesday for the last few months, two dozen of the world’s richest people or their advisers hop onto a conference call and plan for war.
The war is against a proposed tax, but not just any tax. It is against a “wealth tax” on California billionaires, one that Silicon Valley’s most affluent see as an existential threat that and usher in a new way of attacking them. So in confidential memos, WhatsApp and Signal chats and conference calls, they are banding together to battle back.
The calls are organized by Building a Better California, a nonprofit started this year to fight Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires if voters approve it next week. Each week, the nonprofit’s operatives brief donors or their advisers on polling, advertising and opposition research. Often, the calls include an ask: Would you consider giving a little more?
Eighty or so donors have provided more than $333 million to Building a Better California, state records show, making it among the best-funded political efforts in California history. The donor list is a who’s who of tech celebrities: the Google co-founder Sergey Brin; the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; the Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison; the legendary investor John Doerr.
“The effort to beat it is nothing short of an Avenger-level effort,” said Trevor Traina, a Silicon Valley investor who knows many of the billionaires socially but is not involved with the group. “Like the Avengers, this is not a homogenous group of people, but rather heroes of different stripes who share the same goal of protecting California. I, for one, pray they prevail.”
Many are aware of how it looks. Fighting a billionaire tax as populist outrage grows over inequality requires finesse. In a recent memo circulated among donors and viewed by The New York Times, organizers stressed that other supporters — not the billionaires — must be “the ‘face’ of campaigns.”
This account of Building a Better California’s efforts is based on conversations with about two dozen of the group’s donors, people solicited by it, or others close to it, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because the group’s mechanics are secretive. The Times also reviewed California campaign-finance documents and some of the nonprofit’s confidential presentations and internal documents.
“Our supporters have created companies, entirely new industries, and hundreds of thousands of jobs here in California, and they want our state to remain the place where the future is built and where people can still afford to live, dream big and succeed,” said Abby Lunardini, a group spokeswoman. She said the wealth tax would “permanently damage the state’s budget, tax base and economy.”
The effort to fight Proposition 40 began with Mr. Brin and has swelled to include a wide cross-section of Silicon Valley power brokers. Donors have pressed business peers to consider giving to the organization and joining the Tuesday calls. Sometimes, the ask is for billionaires to consider donating a percentage of their net worth, a cheap commitment if it helps kill a 5 percent tax.
Mr. Doerr and Mr. Collison, or people who work on their political operations, have made many of the fund-raising calls. They are Building a Better California’s third and fourth largest donors, shelling out $40 million and $33 million, respectively. Each declined to comment.
Mr. Doerr, 75, is famous for having invested in Google and Amazon and leading the venture firm Kleiner Perkins before becoming its chairman in 2016. A longtime Democratic fund-raiser, he has a history of political engagement in California, including squashing propositions he viewed as damaging to Silicon Valley’s ecosystem.
Mr. Collison, by contrast, is still learning the ropes. The 38-year-old Irish citizen prides himself on a bookish disposition, and has invested money and time into arcane policy topics like housing reform and science funding streams.
The wealth-tax fight is Mr. Collison’s most serious campaign engagement to date. The tax could be particularly disruptive to him because most of his net worth consists of stock in Stripe, his privately held payments company valued at $159 billion, which is harder to sell. Mr. Collison has occasionally talked of his frustrations with the tax and tried to game out the politics of the ballot measure in private conversations, people who have spoken to him said.
Those dialing-for-dollars are presenting tech entrepreneurs with the option to donate stock that has appreciated in value, according to a donation form seen by The Times. That is appealing because the stockholder can avoid paying a capital-gains tax on donated shares. The strategy has borne fruit: Over two-thirds of the money received by the group over the last six weeks has been in stock.
Backers have included venture capitalists from top firms like Sequoia Capital, Coatue, General Catalyst and Benchmark, as well as founders of tech companies including Robinhood, Rippling, DoorDash, Reddit, Figma and Coinbase.
A spokeswoman for Kleiner Perkins, which has donated $1 million to the group, said its donation reflected its belief that “California should be the place where the most ambitious people in the world choose to start and grow their companies.”
A half-dozen other donors said they gave out of frustration and believe the proposition is poorly written, is illegal, and will not, despite promises from its architects, be a “one-time” tax. Some donors are not even billionaires who would be affected by the tax, but oppose the measure on principle.
Others, such as the Rippling chief Parker Conrad, argued on social media that the tax would unfairly hurt “unicorn” founders of valuable companies that have not yet sold or gone public, because it applies to illiquid assets like private start-up stock.
Several said they heard about the nonprofit through word of mouth. One said he went looking for an effort to support after California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who opposes Proposition 40 and said he could strike a deal with the labor union behind it to remove it from the ballot, failed to do so in June. The union pushed the tax to fund health care in the state.
Mr. Brin kicked off the Silicon Valley backlash in late 2025 when he moved his residence and businesses to Nevada to avoid the proposed tax. This year, he began working with the head of his family office, George Pavlov, and two political hands, the lawyer Kurt Oneto and the ballot expert Ned Wigglesworth, to beat the measure.
Competing efforts against the wealth tax sprouted, but quickly petered out partly because of Mr. Brin’s credibility. Mr. Brin’s team canvassed policy experts and other wealthy Silicon Valley individuals. Another group, organized by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, joined forces with Mr. Brin’s.
Over the group’s first six months, Mr. Brin, whose political activity was previously minimal, donated $102 million of his roughly $260 billion net worth. He told The Times in April that he worried about socialism taking root, as it had in his home country of the Soviet Union, which he fled when he was a child.
“I don’t want California to end up in the same place,” Mr. Brin said.
He has written seven checks to Building a Better California, but none since July. His advisers have made clear that Mr. Brin wanted others to shoulder more of the financial burden this fall. And so his allies have aggressively tried to broaden the fund-raising base recently.
“Brin giving $100 million is like a middle-class family splurging on a big night out at Olive Garden. It’s nothing to him,” said Eric Jaye, a San Francisco political consultant close with some tech leaders. “The amount of wealth being created is an order of magnitude above norms. This is what late-stage democracy looks like.”
The group told donors this month that it was about $25 million under its targeted budget, with an unnamed donor willing to give $13 million more if others stepped up with a matching amount.
The group has sought to use its billionaires as validators. Professional fund-raisers for Building a Better California have told potential donors that they “have a number of principal supporters who are seriously engaged in the effort who may also be available for a briefing,” according to pitch seen by The Times.
Not that the group is highlighting these billionaires publicly.
Building a Better California’s polling showed “billionaires are seen as having a net negative impact across issues,” according to a donor presentation obtained by The Times. The tax’s opponents said they have an “understandable deficit on grass roots engagement” compared with its proponents.
The nonprofit has hired a social media agency that specializes in influencer programs to create content that “appears more ‘newsy’ and left-leaning than campaign branding, allowing the content to breakthrough Democratic audiences more easily,” according to the presentation.
Most of its money, though, has gone toward political ads.
This summer, the group bought as much as $97 million of advertising time in California. Over half of that early buy has been transferred to the effort opposing Proposition 40, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.
Another third of the airtime has gone toward an effort supporting Proposition 42, a “countermeasure” on the ballot that the group stood up to effectively ban future wealth taxes. (Another ballot measure allied with the group, Proposition 41, has been de-prioritized.) Even if Proposition 40 passes, the tax can be nullified if Proposition 42 passes with a higher percentage of the vote.
This complicated, multi-measure strategy has not been universally appreciated in the Silicon Valley coalition. Mr. Schmidt told others this summer that he wished the group had stuck more narrowly to trying to defeat the billionaires tax, rather than trying to pass Proposition 42, a person close to him said. He has since donated more, totaling more than $40 million, and is the group’s second-largest backer.
Building a Better California’s leaders are hoping their efforts defeat Proposition 40 so “decisively” that it will “chill wealth-tax efforts nationally,” according to one internal document. If Proposition 42 passes, it “would provide more lasting constitutional protection from wealth taxes,” the document said.
The goal? Win on both, a second internal document said, and send “a dissuasion signal by defeating 40 convincingly.”
Conor Dougherty and Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.
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2) Alex Pretti’s Parents Say Federal Government Is Silent on Investigation
The parents of the Minneapolis nurse who was fatally shot by federal agents in January were scheduled to speak to reporters on Tuesday.
By Ernesto Londoño and Jack Healy, Reporting from Minneapolis, Oct. 27, 2026
A makeshift memorial for Alex Pretti in January at the site where he was killed. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The family of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis nurse fatally shot by immigration agents in January, accused the federal government on Tuesday of keeping them in the dark about the investigation into their son’s killing.
Steven L. Schleicher, a lawyer representing Mr. Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan, said the Justice Department’s refusal to share basic information with the family amounted to a violation of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
“It is impossible to convey how the government’s refusal to engage in transparent communication with the Pretti family has compounded their heartbreak,” Mr. Schleicher wrote in a letter he sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.
Mr. Schleicher provided a copy of the letter, which was first reported by CNN, on Tuesday morning before a news conference in Minneapolis during which Mr. Pretti’s parents are expected to speak about the case.
Federal officials have yet to disclose information as basic as the identity of the agents who fired at least 10 bullets into Mr. Pretti’s back the morning of Jan. 24, Mr. Schleicher said. The Department of Homeland Security has not retracted a statement issued shortly after the shooting in which it claimed Mr. Pretti had intended to “do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” he noted.
“The government’s steadfast protection of the identities of Alex’s killers is particularly cruel given the apparent campaign to publicly disparage Alex after his death by falsely accusing him of domestic terrorism,” the letter said.
Hoang Bui, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Pretti’s parents have made few public appearances since their son’s death. They have given two emotional interviews detailing their grief and telling Mr. Pretti’s story: an avid cyclist and intensive-care nurse who joined protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
Beyond that, the family has largely maintained its privacy as the federal government — as well as state and local investigators — pursue parallel investigations into the deaths of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good, whom immigration agents gunned down on Jan. 7.
Their killings within two and a half weeks of each other touched off a nationwide outcry and ultimately forced President Trump to withdraw hundreds of immigration agents from Minnesota.
But the investigations into the killings of Mr. Pretti, 37, and Ms. Good, 37, have produced little visible action. Officials in Minnesota have blamed the federal government for obstructing access to the scene of Mr. Pretti’s shooting, and have said federal officials dragged their feet for months by refusing to cooperate with local authorities or share evidence.
In March, Minnesota’s attorney general and the local prosecutor’s office sued the Department of Justice, accusing federal officials of refusing to share key evidence about Mr. Pretti’s case and two other shootings by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January.
Then in July, Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said that the federal government had begun to share evidence into the killings of Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good. It was a breakthrough that would enable her office to decide whether the federal agents should be charged with state crimes.
Ms. Moriarity has already filed state assault charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer accused of shooting and wounding a Venezuelan man at the height of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
But this month, Ms. Moriarty said that the cooperation in all three cases had been “short-lived,” and that the federal government was continuing to withhold evidence.
Prominent in that evidence is the statement that one of the agents who shot Mr. Pretti provided to federal investigators after the killing. Her office has statements from other federal officers at the scene.
Ms. Moriarty said federal officials had handed over hard drives that contained body-camera footage and officer statements.
She also said she had repeatedly asked the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Daniel N. Rosen, for an explanation, and to restart the sharing of information. She said she received neither answers nor cooperation from the federal prosecutor, who was nominated by President Trump in 2025.
“He did not provide a reason why the sharing stopped, and stated he needed more time to navigate the situation,” Ms. Moriarty said in a legal filing.
Mr. Pretti was killed after he intervened to help a protester who was shoved to the ground by a federal agent on a snowy Minneapolis street at about 9 a.m. last January. Several immigration agents grabbed Mr. Pretti and wrestled him to ground, pepper spraying him and other protesters.
Video of the killing shows a federal agent found a pistol that Mr. Pretti had been legally licensed to carry, and then disarmed him moments before one immigration agent, then another, fired 10 shots at Mr. Pretti in the span of five seconds.
Mr. Pretti’s parents, who live in Colorado, have called his death a murder and said they are desperate for answers and accountability.
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3)British Man Charged With Helping Iran in U.K. Air Base Incident
A second British man was also charged on Tuesday in connection with the events at R.A.F. Fairford, a base used by the United States in its war against Iran.
By Megan Specia, Reporting from London, Oct. 27, 2026
Police officers outside the perimeter of the R.A.F. Fairford air base in Gloucestershire, England, last month. Credit...Toby Shepheard/Reuters
A British man was charged on Tuesday with assisting Iran’s intelligence service in connection with a major security incident last month at an air base in England used by the United States in its war with Iran.
The British police said in a statement that the man, Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim, a 24-year-old British national from Westminster, London, had been charged under the National Security Act, which makes it an offense to assist a foreign intelligence service.
“In this case, we believe that country to be Iran,” said Laurence Taylor, the head of British counterterrorism policing.
A second British man, Nouman Essghir, 24, was also charged on Tuesday morning under the National Security Act, with entering, accessing, inspecting or approaching a “prohibited place” for reasons “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom,” the police said.
They added that Mr. Essghir was first arrested outside R.A.F. Fairford, the air base in Gloucestershire, England, in the early hours of Sept. 27. On that morning, five men were taken into custody after traveling toward the perimeter of the base in three white vans.
The men were initially arrested on suspicion of explosives offenses and of preparing to commit a terrorist act, although they were later found to have only a container of gasoline in the car. All five were released on bail.
Mr. Essghir was rearrested on Oct. 20, and he has been charged in connection with activity he is accused of carrying out on Aug. 22, more than a month before the events at the base prompted a major security alert and evacuations.
Mr. Abdulkarim was arrested as part of the broader investigation into the incident at R.A.F. Fairford, though further details about his potential involvement have not yet been released. Eight men in total have been arrested in connection with the investigation, and six have been released on bail.
The military air base, R.A.F. Fairford, is operated by the United States and has been used by the U.S. Air Force to deploy some of its largest bombers in the American-Israeli war against Iran.
Iran has denied being involved in the events at the air base.
“We have seen a range of incidents in recent months that we believe have been directed by the Iranian state,” Mr. Taylor said in his statement. “And as the director general of MI5 said just the other week, we are working together to intervene, identify and respond to that threat,” he added, referring to the British domestic security agency.
The two men are set to appear in a London courtroom on Tuesday.
In the wake of the incident at R.A.F. Fairford, a number of questions were raised about what, exactly, the men arrested outside the base on Sept. 27 were doing, and bigger security questions have persisted.
The United States abruptly pulled all of its bombers out of the base earlier this month after officials said that its military had received new information about a possible Iran-backed plot against the installation. At the time, a spokesman for Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain said the air base was safe. He referred to a statement made by the British defense secretary, Wes Streeting, who described “tried and tested approaches to defend our bases around the country and throughout the world.”
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4) Trump Cannot Be the End of the Story
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Oct. 28, 2026
Writing under the pseudonym Publicola in support of the new Constitution, the North Carolina attorney and legislator Archibald Maclaine rebuffed critics who charged that the president was little more than a king.
“It is a maxim in the British government that the king can do no wrong; that is, he is not amenable to the courts of justice, as the law has not provided any punishment for his misconduct.” But, Maclaine wrote, “the president of the United States will be liable to be impeached by the representatives of the people, and to be tried for his crimes.”
Even more emphatic, on this point, was the Federalist writer Americanus. Should the president “at any time be impelled by ambition, or blinded by passion, and boldly attempt to pass the bounds prescribed to his power, he is liable to be impeached and removed from office; and afterwards he is subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to the law.”
For all the power the president held, supporters of the Constitution in each of the 13 states argued, he was still bound by law. And his job, fundamentally, was to faithfully execute the laws. He was not subordinate to Congress, but he wasn’t its master, either.
When it comes to the actual operation of government, however, practice matters more than theory. It was George Washington’s service as the nation’s first president that, as much as anything else, structured the relationship between the two branches. Washington imbued the office with his stature. He commanded respect and so, too, would the presidency, even when held by men without his bearing or accomplishments. And as the United States democratized and the office became something like a vessel for the national mood, individual presidents also took on the respect accorded the popular will in a democratic society.
All the while, the office was bounded by law. When presidents exceeded their given authority, they worked to justify their actions in terms of law, whether ordinary statutes or the higher law of the Constitution. “Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” Abraham Lincoln asked when confronted over his use of war powers in the opening months of the slaveholders’ rebellion. His point was that however much he exceeded his authority, he did so in defense of the Constitution, in accordance with his oath.
Donald Trump is not the first president to break the law. He is not the first president to disregard the law. He is not even the first president to insist that his actions cannot, on some deep ontological level, be illegal. But he may be the first president to abandon the pretense that the law matters at all.
The canonical example of presidential lawbreaking, Watergate, was a cover-up because Richard Nixon believed himself obligated to give lip service to the law. He hid his actions from the public out of fealty to the idea that he was bound by law, even if he didn’t agree. His hypocrisy, as the saying goes, was his tribute to virtue.
Trump has no use for pretense, and he’s not interested in playing along. He thinks he is a law unto himself; that he holds sovereign authority over the entire country; that he can rule by decree and punish those who resist. As one would expect, his administration has been an exercise in breaking the law, exceeding its bounds and violating its spirit. His lawyers may dutifully argue that their client is acting within his lawful authority, but the character of his actions betrays contempt for the law itself.
His basic approach, in fact, is to ignore or break the law and hope that the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court will use his lawbreaking to advance its pet ideological projects. Chief Justice John Roberts, to use just one example, is preoccupied with the expansion of executive power at the expense of Congress. And it seems that in his view, an erratic, lawless president is a small price to pay for summoning the unitary executive into existence.
One important result of this interplay was the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States, which shielded presidents from criminal prosecution as long as their actions related to core duties and official acts. As you might imagine, a clever teenager could find the many ways this might apply to virtually anything, legal or illegal, the president wants to do. Under this standard, even Watergate may well have been perfectly cromulent.
Trump has let it be known that he is considering a set of blanket pardons for subordinates in his administration. We don’t know for certain the extent of the lawbreaking in the Trump administration, but we know it’s there. If they win Congress next week, Democrats will investigate and perhaps, in the future, issue criminal referrals. Blanket pardons would preclude federal criminal accountability for anyone who broke the law at Trump’s behest. Worse, they would give subordinates an incentive to continue breaking the law — or enabling the president’s lawless behavior — secure in the knowledge that they, too, will walk away unscathed.
It has never been outside the realm of possibility that a president would order his officers to engage in illegal behavior and then issue pardons to shield them and himself. George Mason warned of it at Virginia’s ratification convention. “Now, I conceive that the president ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself,” Mason said. “It may happen at some future day that he will establish a monarchy and destroy the Republic. If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?”
Similar observations were made by skeptics of the Constitution at Maryland’s ratifying convention, as attested to by Luther Martin of Maryland, a leading anti-Federalist who had left the Philadelphia convention in protest. “It was said that no treason was so likely to take place as that in which the president himself might be engaged — the attempt to assume to himself powers not given by the Constitution, and establish himself in regal authority — in which attempt a provision is made for him to secure from punishment the creatures of his ambition, the associates and abettors of his treasonable practices, by granting them pardons should they be defeated in their attempts to subvert the Constitution.”
If this loaded gun hasn’t been fired, a major reason is that most presidents understood themselves to be stewards of a democratic republic. This kind of lawless pardon has never really been on the table, as egotistic and power-hungry as many of them have been.
It matters a great deal then that Trump does not see himself as a steward of a democracy. The country, to him, is little more than a large and lucrative piece of real estate. And his obligations appear to extend only as far as his pecuniary interests. His ideological obsession with whitening the United States can be seen in terms of his fundamentally aesthetic preoccupations. What else is mass deportation than the effort of a lifelong landlord to remove the people he thinks degrade the value of the property?
Which is just to say that of course Trump would be the first president to contemplate blanket pardons for his subordinates. The only real surprise is that he hasn’t done it already.
It is worth placing all of this in relation to the Supreme Court’s efforts to shield the president from the law. To grant the president criminal immunity on top of his plenary power to pardon is, in effect, to extend the zone of lawlessness to the entire executive branch. The part of government meant to execute and enforce the law is now — or is at least potentially — free from it altogether.
There is a word for a system where the chief executive is outside the law and can use the force of the state against his enemies without any real obstacle, a word that was very much on the minds of the framers of the Constitution: tyranny.
As dire as this is, the opposition is not without options. There are things Democrats can do to begin to deal with the crisis of a lawless president and administration. They can create a civil cause of action against executive branch officers, allowing victims of abuse to sue federal officials in court for damages. You may not be able to hold a Stephen Miller criminally accountable, but you could drain his bank account, knowing full well that Trump will not come to the rescue.
A more ambitious move would be to introduce a constitutional amendment limiting the scope of the pardon power. This would not work retroactively, but it would restrain future presidents.
Even in the absence of an amendment, Democrats should begin to think creatively about Trump’s pardons and potential pardons, from those issued to the Jan. 6 rioters to the corrupt pardons given to those with the president’s ear and a little cash to spend.
Here, it is useful to think about the Constitution not just as a collection of clauses, but as a holistic document written to establish republican government under the rule of law. The text of the document may state an unlimited pardon power, but to judge that text against the ethos of the document is to see a more nuanced picture. A Constitution that would allow the president to break the law and then pardon the perpetrators is one that becomes the author of its own demise. And because we know the Constitution was not written to facilitate its own destruction, we should treat that outcome as absurd.
If, having investigated the administration, Democrats find evidence of criminal behavior — and if they find that a pardon was issued to preclude criminal prosecution — Democrats should treat those pardons as null, void and illegitimate on their face in light of what the Constitution implies about the limits of the pardon power — and of president power itself.
We may well be less than a week away from a Democratic sweep of Congress. There are prominent voices within the larger Democratic coalition who think it is counterproductive, even foolish, to pivot to hearings, investigations and political accountability. In their telling, most Americans are tired of the noise. The only thing they want from Congress is good government.
I want good government, too. But good government, now or in the future, is impossible without accountability. To set that aside is to condemn the United States to another national exercise in corruption and authoritarian rule. And I would hazard that after nearly two years of abject lawlessness — including summary killings by agents of the state — there are many tens of millions of Americans who also want to hold the administration and its allies responsible for their actions.
Our nation’s experiment in executive aggrandizement has gone too far. If accountability means anything, it must mean binding both the president and the presidency with law. It is the essential task of the next Democratic majority, and the next Democratic presidency for that matter, to begin the reconstruction of American democracy with the rule of law in mind.
That Trump is something like the apotheosis of the dysfunction of the American system does not mean that he is the end of the story. He may well be the beginning of something much worse. Our job is to make him a blip in the history of American democracy and not the opening act of its demise.
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5) Flávio Bolsonaro Lands in Miami After Fleeing Brazil
Mr. Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday’s presidential election, fled Brazil for the United States via Argentina after the police canceled his passport in relation to an investigation.
By Ana Ionova, Edward Wong and Alice Maciel, Oct. 28, 2026
Ana Ionova and Alice Maciel reported from Brasília and Edward Wong from Washington.
Flávio Bolsonaro, the presidential candidate defeated in Brazil’s elections, landed in Miami on Wednesday, according to a U.S. official, fleeing his country after Brazilian authorities canceled his passports as part of a money-laundering investigation.
Mr. Bolsonaro arrived in the United States after apparently vanishing for a whirlwind 24 hours during which it was largely unclear where he was and how, or if, he would reach the United States.
The State Department plans to issue visas allowing him and his family to enter the country, a senior department official said on Tuesday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.
Just after 9:30 a.m., Mr. Bolsonaro could be seen leaving a plane at a private airport outside Miami along with his family, according to news media video footage. The group was ushered into an S.U.V. shortly after exiting the airport, hidden under umbrellas.
The U.S. government’s assistance to Mr. Bolsonaro could escalate tensions between the Trump administration and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has accused President Trump of interfering in his country’s internal affairs.
Mr. Bolsonaro, a right-wing senator and the son of a former president serving a lengthy sentence for attempting a coup, lost Sunday’s presidential vote to Mr. Lula. After initially contesting the result, he conceded but claimed Mr. Lula had won through unfair tactics.
Mr. Trump has also criticized the election, saying it appeared to have been “rigged.”
Following his loss, Mr. Bolsonaro seized on a change in the voting hours on Sunday to demand the election be annulled because of foul play. But the change affected only 0.03 percent of the vote and Brazil’s electoral authorities said it did not make any difference to the result, which saw Mr. Lula win by a margin of 4.4 million votes over Mr. Bolsonaro.
Mr. Bolsonaro eventually dropped those complaints, but still insisted Mr. Lula had unfairly used government funds to win, citing the leftist president’s move to raise a welfare stipend in the last stretch of the campaign. (Mr. Lula’s government claimed the increase was an overdue inflation adjustment.)
Mr. Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil to Argentina by land on Tuesday night with his wife and two daughters, Argentina’s National Directorate of Migration said Wednesday. It said that he then boarded a private fight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. He then took another flight to the United States.
Earlier on Tuesday, Brazilian authorities had canceled Mr. Bolsonaro’s passports because he is being investigated over his links to a Brazilian lawyer accused of laundering more than $1 billion through a scheme involving online gambling.
Separately, Mr. Bolsonaro is also the subject of a police inquiry over millions of dollars he raised from a disgraced banker at the center of a huge corruption scheme to finance a biopic of his father, Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Mr. Bolsonaro was convicted of attempting a coup after losing the presidential election in 2022 to Mr. Lula.
Besides canceling his passports, Brazilian authorities also issued an alert to immigration authorities barring Mr. Bolsonaro’s exit from the country. It was not immediately clear how he was able to cross the border into Argentina.
Reporting was contributed by David C. Adams Emma Bubola Lucía Cholakian Herrera Thayz Guimarães and Karla Adam.
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6) A Punishing Housing Market Is Squeezing Renters
Higher mortgage rates and slowing residential construction are again giving landlords the upper hand.
By Sydney Ember, Oct. 28, 2026
Higher mortgage rates are pushing aspiring homeowners to keep renting, intensifying competition in the rental market. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times
Karla Guity and her family pay just $1,800 a month for a three-bedroom house with a yard in Shoreline, Wash., just north of Seattle. The modest rent meant she did not have to work when her two daughters were young. She loves the neighborhood and the local schools.
She also worries she will never be able to leave.
Although Ms. Guity, 33, and her husband want to own their own home in the area, buying would be too much of a financial stretch as long as mortgage rates remained high. The possibility that a monthly mortgage payment would exceed $6,000 was enough to convince her that her family would stay renters for much longer than she had once thought.
“We’re depending on the graces of the landlord,” she said.
Higher mortgage rates are compelling aspiring homeowners across the country to continue renting, tightening competition for rentals and putting upward pressure on rents for the first time in years. According to private-sector data from real estate sites including Zillow and Apartment List, rents have steadied in recent months after a prolonged softening driven by a glut in new apartment buildings that sprouted up after the pandemic. Government data also show sturdier rent growth.
Annual change in prices for “rent of primary residence”
The upswing in rents could pose a challenge for the Federal Reserve in its fight against persistent price increases. Though the Fed is expected to hold rates steady at its meeting on Wednesday, investors anticipate the central bank will raise borrowing costs once more before year-end, which would keep mortgage rates elevated.
“We’re not in deceleration world anymore, probably not going to get a lot of disinflationary pressures from rents,” said Jonathan Millar, senior U.S. economist at Barclays. “If anything, the risks are that we may be going the other direction.”
The emerging signs of strength in the rental market follow a roller coaster of a period. During the depths of the pandemic, housing demand soared, fueled by a desire for more space, the ability to work from home and swelling savings. Without the supply to match, both home prices and rents skyrocketed in much of the country.
That demand for housing, coupled with rock-bottom interest rates, encouraged residential builders to flood growing cities, especially in the Sun Belt, with new rental properties. The mushrooming housing stock, along with generous incentives to attract renters, decreased landlords’ pricing power and compelled them to slash rents rapidly in many big cities nationwide. Rents in cities including Austin, Texas, and Phoenix plummeted in the years after the pandemic.
Then rising interest rates starting in 2022 made it more expensive to finance large construction projects, which slowed the building frenzy. Tariffs and supply chain troubles have pushed up material costs, and a labor shortage, exacerbated by President Trump’s immigration policy, has also weighed on construction. Higher mortgage rates and lofty home prices are making home buying increasingly inaccessible for a vast number of people. Homeowners who secured ultralow rates during the depths of the pandemic are reluctant to sell, further slowing the housing market.
At the same time, the labor market, which has been characterized by relatively few layoffs and a low unemployment rate, is allowing many workers to continue spending.
The result is that fewer new rental units are becoming available just as more people are clamoring for them. National rents rose 2.7 percent in September, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, compared with 2 percent a year earlier.
“Higher mortgage rates put pressure on the rental market not only from renters who are kind of stuck in there creating that demand,” said Molly Boesel, senior principal economist at Cotality, a housing market data provider. “But you also have that making it more difficult for builders to finance new apartments, so you could see a drastic slowdown in supply on the multifamily side.”
Most private rent indexes track new leases, which tend to adjust more quickly to market conditions. The rush of new apartment buildings in recent years, many of which reduced rents to lure tenants, caused rents in a number of cities to drop. Renters who renewed their leases continued to see their rents go up.
Lance Swank, the chief executive of the Sterling Group, a multifamily builder in Mishawaka, Ind., said his company had taken advantage of low interest rates to ramp up construction. When it became clear that a wave of new rental developments was about to inundate the market, his company decided to scale back.
“We became much more selective,” he said.
Mr. Swank, whose company builds and owns rental communities in the Midwest and Southeast, said he had also noticed the effects of rising mortgage rates on certain tenants. While renters in luxury apartments seemed less influenced by higher rates, fewer renters were moving out of his company’s lower-tier housing, he said.
“It’s just a math equation for people,” he said. “It’s what they can afford.”
It is not clear how much momentum the rental market is gaining. Yet the fact that it appears to be on slightly stronger footing at all has defied some economic projections.
Most notably, Stephen Miran, who served briefly as a Fed governor, said in a speech last year that he expected that the Labor Department’s measure of rent inflation would fall below 1.5 percent in 2027, from its level at the time of about 3.5 percent. One reason he cited was stricter immigration policy, which he believed would reduce the demand pressure on rents.
“One might characterize this view on rental inflation as optimistic,” he said in the speech. “However, I believe forecasters have underappreciated the significant impact of immigration policy on rent inflation — both on the way up and, now, on the way down.”
Complicating the picture for the Fed is a lag between moves in rental market data and government data. Typically, the Consumer Price Index, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, takes time to catch up to market rents, partly because the government surveys any given rental property only once every six months. That means that if rent goes up the month after a survey, it will take another five months for it to show up in the data.
At the moment, however, rent inflation appears to be moving in step with market rents. One possibility for the alignment is that landlords are eager to raise rents, said Mark Franceski, the chief strategist at Middleburg, a developer of rental housing.
“Whether growth is flattening or accelerating, they seem to be moving in the same direction,” he said. “This is becoming less of a renters’ market and more of a landlords’ market.”
Forecasters broadly believe that the factors pressuring rents upward are not going away in the near term. The slowdown in residential building will limit housing availability. Mortgage rates, which are unlikely to fall substantially any time soon barring a recession, will keep pushing more people into the rental market.
“In theory, higher rates make it more restrictive: You slow growth, that lowers inflation,” said Chris Salviati, the chief economist at Apartment List.
“There is the counterargument that because you’ve got higher rates, you’re going to have less building, and then you’re going to have less supply,” he added. “And that will increase the pressure on shelter rents and make inflation worse.”
Siri Kahn, 32, pays $2,325 a month for a one-bedroom apartment on the North Side of Chicago. Though she and her husband have been saving money for 10 years to buy a home with enough room to start a family, they still can’t afford the down payment on a two-bedroom house in the city, she said. Moving to the suburbs would mean they would have to pay for gas to drive to their jobs instead of using public transportation.
While their most recent rent increase was manageable, they are bracing themselves for their rent to eventually rise above what they can bear.
“It’s only a matter of time until we are forced out of renting,” she said.
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7) Inflation Accelerated in September, Fed’s Preferred Measure Shows
The Personal Consumption Expenditures index picked up in September, according to data released a day after the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates steady.
By Aruni Soni, Oct. 29, 2026
Consumer prices accelerated in September, which could bolster the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in December after forgoing an increase this week.
Prices, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, increased 0.5 percent in September from a month earlier and 3.6 percent compared with the same time last year, according to a report released on Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The pickup in prices provided further confirmation that inflation is running hotter than Fed officials would like. Their target, as measured by P.C.E., is to keep the annual increase near 2 percent over time.
“Core” prices, which exclude more volatile categories like food and energy, jumped 3.1 percent in September annually and rose 0.3 percent from a month earlier. That month-over-month increase was also 0.3 percent in August.
The numbers come a day after Fed officials voted 10 to 2 to keep interest rates steady, after raising them last month. Two Fed officials dissented and voted to raise rates on Wednesday, including Lisa D. Cook, a Fed governor. Investors expect that officials are likely to raise rates again at their last meeting of the year, in December, and possibly several times next year.
A big factor pushing up prices this year has been a severe energy crunch created by the war with Iran. Choked-off energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices soaring, which have rippled across the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, Kevin M. Warsh, the Fed’s chairman, said the U.S. economy was strong but acknowledged that inflation remained elevated. The meeting underscored that the board felt it had more flexibility to gather more data on the state of the economy before raising borrowing costs again.
The data also showed that Americans’ personal income grew more slowly last month. Thursday’s release showed personal income increased 0.2 percent, less than the 0.3 percent increase reported in August.
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8) Europe Is Aflame, and It’s Not Going to Stop
By Anton Jäger, Oct. 29, 2026
Mr. Jäger is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “Hyperpolitics.” He wrote from Brussels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/opinion/europe-protests-youth-france.html
Cristina Daura
A decade and a half ago, Time magazine chose “The Protester” as its person of the year. From California to Cairo, the weekly profiled more than 100 participants in public demonstrations throughout 2011: One was pictured wearing a black-and-orange gas mask, while from another, who spoke Arabic, the magazine “understood the words Facebook and Twitter.” Together they made up the aggregate that became the year’s hero.
Today, Time’s choice appears both timely and distant. As a fresh wave of protest roils the West, little of the magazine’s romanticism about public rebellion survives. Despair rather than celebration now is the dominant mood in which Western commentators approach the protests, as younger citizens take to the streets across Europe.
Although geographically spread out, the current surges display a remarkable synchronicity. In France, student protests have given way to more violent insurrections, while young people have occupied squares in Madrid and Lisbon. In Albania, the country’s Supreme Court was set aflame by antigovernment protesters, while in Italian cities the police geared up for clashes with demonstrators.
In contrast to the indignant citizens portrayed by Time in 2011, today’s protesters resist easy political identification. On the left, organizers have distanced themselves from those who hijacked their protest marches with indiscriminate looting. On the right, commentators have cast protesters as extremists or youngsters with migrant backgrounds supposedly bent on toppling the West one luxury outlet at a time.
These interpretations strain credulity. Instead, the protests appear as a wholly contemporary genre of unofficial politics, typical of our hyperpolitical age. Resistant to political recuperation by either left or right, they express feelings of generational futility. The protests have put Europe on edge. Yet given the circumstances underlying them, they appear destined to recur.
Some months after Time nominated its person of the year, the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck delivered a lecture in Frankfurt on what he termed “the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism.” In the talk, he described a malaise of Europe’s fiscal state that had been building since the end of the 20th century. Against a backdrop of declining growth rates, Mr. Streeck argued, governments were caught between the barricade and the bond market, with no effective remedy in sight.
Mr. Streeck’s diagnosis has lost little of its pertinence in 2026. If anything, the crisis he detected appears only to have deepened. After freer monetary policy in the 2010s, interest rates are again rising across the West, pushing up borrowing costs for governments. Europeans hungry for increased public spending and better services are likely to be disappointed. Austerity, never fully terminated, is instead set to return in full force.
In fact, additional stresses have now been added to Mr. Streeck’s stack. In 2011, European states were not yet under pressure to raise money for rearmament, and hostilities in Ukraine were three years away. The Israeli-American war on Iran, with all its inflationary effects, appeared a grim speculation. Climate crises and Chinese competition seemed more inchoate than immediate. What the historian Adam Tooze has called the “polycrisis” — or the set of overlapping crises that stalk European polities today — was not fully installed.
The repertoire of protest has shifted, too. In 2011, enthusiasts for new social media platforms were quick to call the revolts in Europe and North Africa “Facebook revolutions,” seeing them as predominantly digital uprisings. The label seemed cheap at the time, more a marketing ploy on behalf of tech companies eager to advertise their democratic credentials than a faithful description. Most of all, it obscured that unions and neighborhood networks had played as important a role in gathering people as the platforms.
The label appears less cheap today. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftist party, France Unbowed, was able to mobilize tens of thousands of students and teachers to shut down the nation’s high school system. Yet much of the protest activity was launched outside of the left’s official circuits — instigated through TikTok or chat apps. The same is true in Brussels, where union officials have had difficulty keeping up with online calls to assemble. Crucially, the current generation of protesters are natives, not novices, to these platforms, having grown up in the social internet.
As a result, many of the protesters operate outside the purview of traditional organizations such as unions and parties. This undoubtedly grants the demonstrations their liveliness and scale, yet it also lends itself to a lack of discipline. To outsiders, participants and nonparticipants are more difficult to parse, befitting more thoroughly decentralized movements. Even more formal groups like the Yellow Vests in France, who joined in protests last weekend, are prey to operational looseness.
The move to rioting and looting, what’s more, suggests aims that have less to do with social rights or public provision. To analysts such as Ivan Krastev, the background for these uprisings is a wider sense of futurelessness, also palpable in continental anxieties about migration and demographic decline. In this dire setting, riots express a zero-sum mentality in which participants feel that the building of durable collective power is improbable and direct action is more promising.
Such hopelessness is deepened by a labor market in which degrees seem meaningless, as artificial intelligence is set to dissever the structure of Europe’s working lives. Whereas the mass mobilizations of the 20th century took place in a hopeful future conditional, the time horizon of contemporary protest has shrunk to more immediate aims: increased funding, the seizure of goods. “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,” as the French say. Yet a certain youthful nihilism, in the face of such somber prospects, is hard to qualify as irrational.
Political prediction always exudes a whiff of astrology. Even if a Serbia-style scenario is hard to envision, Europe’s current upheavals will undoubtedly have short-term effects, perhaps jerking French public opinion to the right or swaying Spanish voters to the left. Yet whatever the protests’ consequences on the level of formal politics, their root conditions — fiscal retrenchment, digital entropy, grief over a future annulled — are unlikely to recede. It is hard to believe the protesters will either.
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9) With No Clear Winner, How Could Israel Get a Prime Minister?
Deadlock is possible, as neither the bloc of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main challenger appear likely to win a majority. But there are still paths to a new government.
By Johnatan Reiss, Adina Renner and Pablo Robles, Oct. 29, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacts to exit polls during a speech at his party headquarters in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Israel’s high-stakes parliamentary election on Tuesday produced no clear winner after most of the votes were counted.
That in itself was not unexpected — but there were nevertheless some surprises.
Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing, populist party, Likud, outperformed many pre-election polls to become the largest party in Parliament, preliminary results show. It won fewer seats than in 2022, though, when the last national election was held.
More noteworthy was the turnout by supporters of Israel’s Arab parties, which ended Election Day with a historic boost.
Israel’s parliamentary system as a rule requires parties to find enough common ground to assemble a 61-seat majority bloc in Israel’s 120-seat Parliament. Over the years, that has produced some unlikely alliances — but also shaky, short-lived governments.
In less than four years, from 2019 to 2022, Israelis were sent to the polls five times as parties failed to hold a majority together, or to form one in the first place.
In the coming days, party leaders will be back at it again. With the provisional election results showing no bloc with a straightforward path to a coalition, it could mean bitter negotiations — or deadlock, with the very real possibility of another election.
A historic Jewish-Arab alliance
For Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents, securing a majority increasingly appears to depend on support from at least some Arab lawmakers.
If the opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s coalition were to include both Arab parties — the Joint List, an ideologically diverse alliance, and Raam, a pragmatic Islamist party — he would have a significant majority in Parliament.
Such a coalition would carry political risks.
Mr. Eisenkot has rejected alliances with parties that do not support Israel’s Jewish character or the defeat of militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Many of his voters could see an alliance with Arab parties as a broken campaign promise, a liability for Mr. Eisenkot in a political landscape in which another election could be imminent.
Another possibility for the Eisenkot bloc is to leave Arab lawmakers out of the coalition but secure their agreement to support a minority government. Such a government can take office as long as more lawmakers vote for it than against it, even if the parties that make it up hold fewer than 61 seats.
For the Jewish anti-Netanyahu bloc, based on provisional results, that would mean support from at least six lawmakers from the Arab parties in the initial confidence vote. But it is unclear whether those parties would agree to support a government from which they would be excluded, or how sustainable such an arrangement would be.
A unity government
A unity government led by Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Eisenkot could offer a different path to a clear majority.
But such an alliance could prove uneasy for both leaders.
Mr. Eisenkot’s entire campaign focused on the urgent need to unseat Mr. Netanyahu, whom he called unfit to serve as prime minister. Mr. Netanyahu may not be keen to share power, or delegate significant authority, to his fierce rivals, potentially at the expense of longtime allies.
One possible unity government could bring together Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party; Mr. Eisenkot’s Yashar party; Together, an alliance between the right-wing Naftali Bennett and the centrist Yair Lapid; and Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing party whose leader, Avigdor Liberman, broke with Mr. Netanyahu and has long been his rival on the right.
Preliminary results give such a bloc 66 seats, a clear governing majority, if a shaky one.
Defections
The coming weeks of political wrangling could open other paths to a government. Defections — not uncommon in Israeli politics — could allow one bloc to prevail at the expense of the other, a risk that exists in both political camps.
Parties that allied with Mr. Eisenkot during the campaign, or even individual lawmakers, could be coaxed into supporting a government led by Mr. Netanyahu.
For his part, Mr. Eisenkot could seek the support of the two ultra-Orthodox parties, which are longtime allies of Mr. Netanyahu but not without grievances against him. That might prove difficult, given that the opposition has long opposed military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.
Only one thing appears clear: However much Israelis may have regarded this election as a turning point for their country, neither Mr. Netanyahu nor his chief rival got the mandate they sought.
Now, any path to power will require ideological compromises, uncomfortable alliances or both. Otherwise, it’s back to the voting booth.
Additional work by Josh Holder.
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10) She Was Arrested After Leaving Her Kids for Days. It Sparked a Debate.
A Florida sheriff’s office arrested a mother who had left her children home alone for days to go on a work trip, reigniting the debate over when parents act irresponsibly.
By Vivian Yee, Vivian Yee writes about women in America, Published Oct. 28, 2026, Updated Oct. 29, 2026
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office released body-cam footage of officers escorting Irene Miller, in the tan suit, off a plane at Orlando International Airport. Credit...Osceola County Sheriff’s Office
Irene Miller, a professional photographer based just outside Disney World in Florida, went to Las Vegas for work this month, leaving her four children at home. The oldest is 14, the youngest 9.
She was divorcing their father, who did not live with them at their home in Kissimmee, Fla., so she hired a babysitter to get the children ready for school in the mornings and to check on them after school. Otherwise, they were by themselves for several days.
Three days after she left, one of her older children called 911: A dumbbell had fallen on the 9-year-old boy’s head, according to an account by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
When Ms. Miller, 50, got off her plane in Florida last Friday, sheriff’s deputies were there to meet her.
The sheriff’s office released the body-cam footage with the tabloid-worthy headline, “4 CHILDREN. 4 DAYS. LEFT HOME ALONE.” The video showed Ms. Miller, in a tan suit and a white scarf, pulling her suitcase down the tunnel, escorted by at least four officers. Deputies charged her with four counts of child neglect and booked her into a county jail, according to the sheriff’s office. (She posted bond on Saturday, according to a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.)
By then, the office said, her son was out of the hospital and the children were with their father. Ms. Miller, her divorce lawyer and her husband’s lawyer did not respond to messages requesting comment.
The case has ricocheted around the internet and reignited an ongoing, often cantankerous, debate over modern parenting methods. What, exactly, constitutes neglect? When parents let their children play outside alone or walk by themselves to the store?
Or in this case, when a parent leaves her four children at home for several days, somewhat unsupervised?
In recent years, several such cases have made headlines after parents who said they merely wanted to give their children more independence were investigated or prosecuted.
But the growing pushback against the ultra-watchful standard that governs modern American child rearing, and the embrace of “free-range parenting” movement, has led 13 states — including Florida — to pass so-called childhood independence laws since 2018.
There is no indication that Ms. Miller was acting in the name of free-range parenting; the circumstances behind her decision to leave her children at home alone were not clear.
But if comments on social media were any guide, her arrest was not destined to end any arguments about when a parent has crossed the threshold into irresponsibility.
Some of the comments: “MOM OF THE YEAR — NOT!”
“This is why people don’t want to have kids any more.”
“Do we really need to add to this family’s problem by criminalizing Mom?”
Many people pointed out that what constituted grounds for arrest in 2026 would have seemed more or less normal a few decades ago. “Back in the old days my parents left my sister and I alone when we were 12 and 13 years old to watch my two younger sisters,” one woman commented below the sheriff’s office video, which was posted on Facebook. “My parents didn’t go to jail.”
Others countered that their parents may have left them alone for a few hours, but never for days. In Florida, like in most states, there is no minimum legal age for when a child can be left at home alone, leaving law enforcement to decide when a line has been crossed. The decisions are inherently subjective, based on the child’s maturity, the circumstances and whether there was any harm or risk of harm.
Florida’s definition of neglect is more lenient than it was even a few years ago. In 2025, Florida became the 10th state to pass a childhood independence law, which explicitly allows parents to leave their children unattended in some circumstances. Parents who are not supervising their children, the law says, have legally neglected them only if their conduct “endangers the health and safety of the child.”
Some of Ms. Miller’s defenders did not see neglect, instead pointing to a single working mother who probably had few child care options.
Others pointed out that a dumbbell could have fallen on her child’s head by accident even if she was home.
“Whatever happened to the one child, it could’ve happened if the mom was home or gone for 15 minutes or in the back tending to her vegetable garden,” said David DeLugas, the founder and executive director of Parents USA, a nonprofit that advocates for parents’ rights.
His group has helped defend several parents prosecuted for leaving their children unsupervised, including Brittany Patterson, a Georgia mother of four who was arrested and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct for allowing her 10-year-old son to walk alone to a nearby dollar store.
There are no national statistics about how often parents are arrested or investigated for leaving their children unsupervised, but Parents USA receives far more inquiries from parents than it has the funding to help, Mr. DeLugas said.
As of late August, Ms. Miller and the children lived in the same house with their father, Mark Miller. But the couple, who had been married for about 15 years, were in the process of divorcing, according to an Aug. 21 police report, which was filed when Mr. Miller was charged with battery for smacking Ms. Miller’s hand as she recorded an argument on her phone.
Ms. Miller filed for divorce on Sept. 17, according to court records.
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11) U.S. Hits Rwanda With New Sanctions Over a Conflict Trump Declared ‘Ended’
The Treasury Department accused Rwanda of undermining a U.S.-brokered peace agreement by supporting a rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
By Lynsey Chutel, Oct. 29, 2026
Soldiers from the M23 rebel group in Goma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in January. The United States has accused Rwanda of continuing to support the group. Guerchom Ndebo for The New York Times
The United States imposed new sanctions on Rwanda on Wednesday, accusing it of further support for a rebel militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly a year after President Trump hailed a U.S.-brokered peace between the countries.
Top Rwandan and Congolese diplomats signed the peace agreement, called the Washington Accords, last June. In December, Mr. Trump said the deal had “ended” the bloody war between Rwanda, Congo and each side’s allies.
The Treasury Department, though, said on Wednesday that Rwanda was still supporting the rebel group, M23, and thus undermining the peace. As a consequence, the department said, it imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s Ministry of Defense and a Rwandan financial institution for supporting the powerful militia.
“Today, the United States makes good on President Trump’s promise to hold Rwanda accountable for its commitments under the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Rwanda must halt its support for M23 and withdraw its troops from eastern D.R.C.”
In response, Rwanda said the United States had failed to punish Congo’s government for its support of a rebel group that has ties to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The two countries have accused each other of supporting adversarial militia groups in eastern Congo, where the conflict has roots in that genocide.
Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in the current fighting. M23 and Rwanda’s armed forces are aligned on one side, against the Congolese army and its allies, including South African and Burundian soldiers, and mercenaries employed by the American military contractor Erik Prince and others.
A spokeswoman for the Rwandan government, which has long had close ties to the United States, said it still wanted to abide by the U.S.-brokered pact.
“Rwanda remains ready to fully implement the Washington Accords, concurrently with the willingness of the D.R.C. to fulfill those commitments, and with the mediator holding all parties accountable,” Yolande Makolo, the spokeswoman, said in text message.
The new U.S. sanctions, though, widen a rift that began not long after the peace deal was signed and threatened the close relations built by the United States and Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide. In the decades that followed, U.S. administrations praised Rwanda’s efforts to rebuild and play a role in peacekeeping operations in Africa.
The United States said on Wednesday that it was punishing Rwanda after M23 launched a new political arm and appeared to strengthen its hold over the eastern Congo. This month, the militia and its affiliates founded what they called the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, led by Joseph Kabila, Congo’s former president.
The group is a replacement for the Congo River Alliance, a political arm of the rebel movement that has called for the overthrow of Congo’s government, U.S. officials said.
The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on the Zigama Credit and Savings Society, a savings cooperative in Rwanda, which U.S. officials accused of facilitating payments for weapons, ammunition and military equipment for the Rwanda Defense Force in its support of M23. The United States put sanctions on the defense force in March, saying it had violated Mr. Trump’s peace deal.
That was followed in June by sanctions on a gold refining company associated with Rwandan government officials and M23 rebels, which was accused of funding the rebel group.
The M23 rebel group has seized large parts of eastern Congo, a mineral-rich region plagued by decades of instability and violent conflict. After a bloody offensive in 2025, the rebel group took control over the major city of Goma, and with Rwanda’s support has advanced in the region despite signing the peace accord, U.S. officials said.
M23 was founded in 2012, its name a reference to its claim that the Congolese government failed to honor an earlier peace agreement, signed on March 23, 2009.
For years, Congolese officials have accused Rwanda of backing M23, which invaded Congo in 2021. Rwandan officials said that people of the Hutu ethnic group living in eastern Congo who had been responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsi people were still operating in Congo. Like Rwanda’s leaders, M23 is mostly made up of people from the Tutsi ethnic group.
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12) Suspect in France Shootings Said He Targeted Muslims and Africans, Prosecutor Says
The suspect, identified only as Kévin T., admitted to planning the attacks near Paris last week, the prosecutor said. One person was killed and seven wounded.
By Ségolène Le Stradic, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 29, 2026
A silent march in Paris on Sunday to honor Pengo Bossio Wangi. He was killed on Friday in Trappes, France, by a gunman who wounded seven other people, the authorities said. Credit...Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A man accused of killing one person and wounding seven in a shooting spree near Paris last week admitted that he had targeted people “of a Muslim, African or North African type,” France’s antiterrorism prosecutor said at a news conference on Thursday.
The suspect is 39 and has been identified only as Kévin T. by French officials. He acknowledged planning the attack in advance, telling investigators he had chosen the area because it was a “den of Islamists,” according to the prosecutor, Olivier Christen. The shootings took place last Friday in Trappes, a working-class city with a large Muslim and immigrant population, and the neighboring town of La Verrière, both southwest of Paris.
Kévin T., who initially denied having been motivated by race, rejected the authorities’ characterization of the attack as terrorist, saying his conduct was legitimate, Mr. Christen said. He said he had not intentionally gone after children — an 11-year-old was among the wounded — but felt no regret, according to the prosecutor.
The suspect’s lawyer, whose identity has not been made public, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kévin T. has not been formally charged with a crime. Mr. Christen said he would be investigated on charges including murder and attempted murder “in connection with a terrorist enterprise,” with his apparent racial or ethnic motivation an aggravating circumstance. He was taken into police custody after the shooting, and prosecutors asked on Thursday that he be placed in pretrial detention.
The shootings came at a tense time for France, which was recently rocked by protests and riots, and they have become a political issue as next spring’s presidential election draws nearer. In a YouTube interview on Wednesday night, President Emmanuel Macron said the attack should be a “wake-up call” for the country.
“There’s a kind of disinhibition in what people say, an atmosphere of racism,” Mr. Macron said, accusing France’s main far-right party, the National Rally, and its affiliates of letting racism permeate the public debate.
The gunman fired 128 rounds from a nine-millimeter Sten submachine gun at eight locations along a route of about seven miles, often from his car, according to the authorities.
He shot and killed Pengo Bossio Wangi, 26, in a park in Trappes. He fired at several people at a Trappes gas station, leaving one seriously wounded. He severely wounded three other people, including the 11-year-old, at two locations in La Verrière. At four other sites, he fired at eight people, including a 12-year-old, but missed them, according to Mr. Christen.
Three of the seven people wounded were still hospitalized on Thursday, including one whose life was still in danger, Mr. Christen said. He said earlier this week that the 11-year-old would survive.
After being taken into custody, Mr. Christen said, Kévin T. carried out acts of self-harm, made incoherent statements and was taken to a hospital and given a psychiatric examination. The exam concluded that he did not show signs of an “incapacitating psychiatric disorder that could justify involuntary hospitalization,” Mr. Christen said.
He said the suspect had been taking antipsychotic medication daily and claimed to be schizophrenic but that the psychiatrist who examined him questioned that assertion, saying that his medication was mild. Toxicology tests found traces of the medication in his blood, the prosecutor said.
Kévin T. told investigators that he had started using drugs at 13 — traces of cocaine and cannabis were found in his blood, Mr. Christen said — and that he suffered from psychological problems, for which he was briefly hospitalized at 25 and was still being treated.
The investigation showed that Kévin T. had extensively planned the attack, the prosecutor said. He bought the gun last month, and he had paid family debts and put other personal affairs in order, according to Mr. Christen. Two days before the shootings, he deleted all his social media accounts and sold his laptop. His phone “required extensive investigative work to locate,” Mr. Christen said.
His home was booby-trapped with an explosive device, which the police defused, Mr. Christen said. They found weapons there, including “brass knuckles, a steel bayonet and a silencer,” and books including a Quran, a Bible and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” the prosecutor said.
The police also found more than 200 stickers expressing support for law enforcement and pride in being French, 30 of which bore the acronym of the National Rally. Kévin T. said he was not affiliated with any political party but had once “infiltrated” left-wing groups, according to Mr. Christen. He told investigators he was single and had a full-time job.
Since the shootings, public gatherings have been held in La Verrière, in Paris and elsewhere to protest racism and honor the memory of Mr. Bossio Wangi, the man who was killed. The government has said that Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu would preside over a national tribute to Mr. Bossio Wangi at a date to be announced after discussions with his family.
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13) A Sailor Jumped From the U.S.S. Lincoln. The Navy Punished Him.
The case offers a rare look at the military’s handling of mental health issues during extended deployments.
By Jan Ransom, Oct. 29, 2026
Jan Ransom is investigating issues affecting military service members and welcomes tips at nytimes.com/tips. For this article, she conducted interviews and reviewed official records, text messages and emails.
Operation Epic Fury began a month after the Lincoln arrived in the Middle East to enforce a strict naval blockade of Iranian ports and shipping. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
Nicholas McKelvey had been aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln for 255 grueling days.
As the war with Iran raged, the 19-year-old Navy airman — an aviation mechanic in a helicopter squadron — was working 12-hour shifts in the blazing sun, checking and guiding helicopters on the flight deck. He had missed the birth of his daughter. His in-laws were battling cancer. Food on the aircraft carrier was in short supply.
Then he reached his breaking point.
At about 10 a.m. on a Monday in early August, he sprinted along the flight deck then leaped from the ship’s edge and plunged 67 feet into the Arabian Sea, according to Navy records reviewed by The New York Times. He was rescued by a helicopter crew and returned to the ship 50 minutes later.
“I didn’t want to be there anymore,” Mr. McKelvey said in an interview, speaking publicly for the first time. “If I was going to die because of it, then that’s just how it is.”
On Thursday, the Navy effectively fired him — moving to discharge Mr. McKelvey after accusing him of “malingering,” or faking a mental health crisis to end his deployment, according to Mr. McKelvey’s wife, Samantha Larry. Under the terms of his removal — a general discharge under honorable conditions — he will become ineligible for education assistance under the G.I. Bill, cutting off a pathway to college that his family was counting on, Ms. Larry said.
The case offers a rare glimpse into how the Navy has handled mental health issues aboard ships under pressure from sustained deployments during the war with Iran. And it raises questions about whether officers treated Mr. McKelvey’s jump overboard as misconduct without sufficiently examining what led a sailor to take such an extreme, life-threatening step.
The Lincoln, which returned to San Diego this month after a near-record 322-day deployment, became a symbol of the food shortages and mental health challenges facing Navy ship crews after Iran destroyed a key supply hub in the region.
There were eight suicide attempts during the long deployment among sailors in the Lincoln strike group, according to a letter the Navy sent to lawmakers last month. The letter did not name Mr. McKelvey, but the description of a sailor who “went overboard from the ship” matches his story.
Aspects of the case were earlier reported by MS NOW, which did not identify Mr. McKelvey by name. Mr. McKelvey and his wife said they wanted to come forward publicly now to shed light on what they believed was inadequate mental health care before and after his jump and an unfair punishment.
“They don’t want to take accountability for what happened to him, and to what happened to multiple sailors on the boat,” said Ms. Larry, 19. “I don’t think that they care. They care more about how they’re pictured, how they’re viewed. They don’t want anyone to see the bad stuff.”
The Navy did not respond directly to specific questions about Mr. McKelvey. But a Navy spokesman said that aircraft carriers have “a multidisciplinary team of mental health resources” and that specialists “coordinate and provide care tailored to a wide range of conditions.”
Several former military lawyers and other experts interviewed by The Times agreed that Mr. McKelvey’s case presented complicated issues for the Navy. Some said the disciplinary response was legally justified and relatively lenient because malingering is sometimes treated as a criminal offense.
Others questioned whether the Navy’s response adequately addressed the distress that may have driven him to jump. The Navy, they said, could have focused on treating him, or seeking a medical discharge that would allow him to retain key benefits, rather than accusing him of wrongdoing.
“You’re going to have commanders that are willing to punish people who undertake action that risks their own lives in a moment of extreme mental trauma,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and a professor at Southwestern Law School. “But there’s so much more underneath it, and fundamentally you don’t need to punish it. You need to treat it.”
For Mr. McKelvey, the future beyond the Navy is uncertain.
He and his wife have been staying in Airbnb rentals and with relatives in San Diego as they prepare to return to their hometown, Jacksonville, Fla., with their two children, a 3-year-old boy and an 8-month-old girl.
After moving, they will try to figure out what Mr. McKelvey will do for work. They will help care for Ms. Larry’s mother, who was recently treated for lymphoma. And they will see if, without the education benefits lost due to his discharge, they can afford for him to one day go to college.
“We’re going to have to pull out student loans,” Ms. Larry said. “It is essentially setting us up for just putting us in debt.”
A Better Way of Life
Mr. McKelvey joined the Navy in 2024 as a path to a stable, good-paying job to support his family.
He and Ms. Larry met in middle school and had their first child when she was 15 and he was 16. They had dropped out of high school. The couple married last year.
In late November 2025, a week before Mr. McKelvey’s 19th birthday, the Lincoln departed from its home port in San Diego for a routine Pacific deployment.
The ship made a brief overnight stop in Guam for supplies roughly three weeks later — the last port of call for several months. By mid-January, the crew was told they would be redirected to the Middle East.
Mr. McKelvey was not alarmed by the change in course, he said. He welcomed the extra pay that would come with potentially heading to a war zone.
As the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran began in February, Mr. McKelvey spent his shifts on the ship’s flight deck helping to secure helicopters while also cleaning and inspecting aircraft for cracks and other damage, he said.
Clad in a long-sleeved cotton turtleneck, heavyweight flame-resistant trousers, a helmet, thick leather gloves and steel-toed leather boots, he worked in extreme heat. The conditions were intensified by the exhaust from fighter jets and the constant hunger he felt as meal portions shrank from dwindling food supplies.
His mind was back home, he said. His wife had given birth to their daughter four days before combat operations began.
Staying connected was a challenge as the ship’s Wi-Fi was disconnected for a month for security reasons at the beginning of the war, according to Ms. Larry. Wi-Fi service eventually returned, but calls would not always go through, and text messages took hours to send if they were sent at all.
In late June, Mr. McKelvey visited the ship’s medical unit seeking mental health care and was directed to speak with a chaplain, he said. But he declined, he said, because the chaplain was not a mental health professional.
The Lincoln, with more than 5,000 service members aboard, had five chaplains and six mental health specialists, including a psychologist and a clinical social worker, according to the letter the Navy sent lawmakers.
The Navy increased funding for mental health care after a spate of suicides in 2022. Nonetheless, a report last year by the Defense Department’s inspector general flagged continued issues, such as some commanders failing to have a proper response plan for sailors who appear at risk of suicide.
Mr. McKelvey said one of his commanders had told him the Navy would try to fly him off the ship. It never happened. Instead, the Lincoln’s deployment was repeatedly extended, deepening Mr. McKelvey’s hopelessness, he said.
“I think the boat is finally getting to me,” he wrote to Ms. Larry in a July text message, adding that he was unsure he could “finish this deployment.”
Man Overboard
A report filed by the officer of the deck — the person responsible for running the Lincoln’s operations from the ship’s pilothouse — described in detail the elaborate response that consumed the ship and its crew for nearly an hour after Mr. McKelvey’s Aug. 3 jump.
As the current carried Mr. McKelvey away, the captain ordered the massive vessel to be turned around. The ship’s navigator kept his eyes on the sailor. An officer initiated a procedure known as “River City,” in which Wi-Fi and other external communications were shut off.
A Navy helicopter flying nearby dropped a floating smoke flare into the water to mark his location.
Mr. McKelvey was about a mile away when a swimmer for the rescue helicopter jumped into the ocean, and 10 minutes later, they were hoisted back up into the aircraft.
In the report, the officer struck a note of skepticism about what might have led Mr. McKelvey to jump. While his “motives are undetermined,” the officer wrote, “the conditions in which he jumped appear suspect.”
He jumped in broad daylight when the ship was moving slowly for maintenance, the report noted. With five-foot waves, and a water temperature of 76 degrees, the ocean was relatively calm. He wore his “float coat,” a special vest used by crew members on the carrier deck that can function as a flotation device.
The officer also wrote that the sailor “almost immediately waved for help” — a point that Mr. McKelvey disputes. He said that he was not waving, but swimming away from the ship.
In the report, the officer acknowledged that the stresses of life on the Lincoln might have played a role. “This has been a difficult deployment,” the report said, “and it is unsurprising that we might have a jumper.”
Mr. McKelvey was immediately taken to the medical unit, Ms. Larry said. He was given Tylenol for back pain.
He met briefly with a psychiatrist, who asked him why he had jumped from the ship, Ms. Larry said. Mr. McKelvey said simply, “I wanted to get home,” Ms. Larry said her husband told her.
He was placed on suicide watch and held in an open room that included several small beds, Ms. Larry said. The next day he was ordered to clean and sweep floors, Ms. Larry said.
Mr. McKelvey was flown off the Lincoln on a cargo plane to Djibouti in East Africa on Aug. 10, where he stayed overnight in a bunker due to bombing in the area, Ms. Larry said. He was flown to Ethiopia the next day and then to Washington State before returning to San Diego on Aug. 13.
He saw his wife and children briefly at the airport before he was taken to the hospital where he was kept for four days, Ms. Larry said.
The day after Mr. McKelvey was discharged from the hospital, he reported to work at the naval base at 8 a.m., Ms. Larry said. He was tasked with sweeping, painting and cleaning before the Lincoln returned to San Diego.
He had his first follow-up appointment several days later, and a doctor prescribed anxiety medication. He declined it, saying he did not want to be on medication.
On Aug. 25, Mr. McKelvey learned that the Navy was charging him with malingering as well as “absence without leave” for abandoning his post when he jumped, according to charging papers reviewed by The Times. As an administrative charge, the process would be handled by a commander who also determines guilt. Such charges are typically less severe than those that trigger a court-martial and potential jail time.
The next day, Mr. McKelvey met with a Navy therapist. Mr. McKelvey said he was ready to provide a fuller explanation for his actions.
“Obviously, I was trying to get home,” he told The Times, describing what he intended to tell the therapist. “I kept my float coat on because if I wasn’t supposed to die then I was going to get saved, but it didn’t matter, and if I was supposed to die then I would have just been dead. It’s that simple.”
But before he could say that, he said, the therapist cut him off and pointed to a record showing what he had told the ship psychiatrist — that he had just wanted to go home.
“‘Don’t try to change anything now,’” Mr. McKelvey recalled the therapist saying.
The Navy soon replaced the absence charge with a new charge — jumping from a vessel, according to Ms. Larry.
During a hearing last month, his commanding officer announced the charges against him, noting that when he jumped he endangered the entire ship, Ms. Larry said.
The officer found him guilty.
Ms. Larry said the Navy punished her husband for having a mental break.
“What they did was wrong,” she said. “They’d rather blame the victim.”
John Ismay contributed reporting.
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14) As Voters Worry About Prices, Many Senate Candidates Are Millionaires
The wealthy are well represented in the ranks of major candidates for the chamber, according to a New York Times review of financial disclosure forms.
By Jess Bidgood and Matt Zdun, Graphics by Malika Khurana, Oct. 30, 2026
Voters’ worries about the cost of groceries and other basic goods have dominated the midterm elections. Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images
The midterms have become the affordability election, as voters incensed about rising prices and yawning inequality threaten to take out their frustrations at the ballot box.
Most of the top Senate candidates who want to represent them, though, have financial portfolios that put them out of touch with those concerns.
At least half of the 63 major Senate candidates who have filed financial disclosure forms so far have a household net worth of at least $1 million, according to a New York Times review of the forms. (Seven candidates haven’t yet filed.)
That is far more than the median American household net worth, which was $215,900 as of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve.
At least two candidates have a reported household net worth of over $100 million.
At least seven other candidates have a reported household net worth of over $10 million.
At least 23 other candidates have a reported household net worth of over $1 million.
Candidates are required to provide only a limited and vague picture of their wealth, so the true number of millionaires running for the Senate could well be significantly higher. More than two-thirds of the Senate hopefuls who have filed forms appear to have a household net worth above the average American’s.
What is clear is that running for Senate is largely a rich person’s game.
And, a decade after President Trump first wove an image of wealth and business success into a pitch for the presidency, some candidates who have less are trying to attack opponents who have more.
Hotel Investments and Student Loans
A plane. Cows. Mineral rights.
A lot of different assets have built candidates’ wealth.
It is impossible to precisely ascertain the worth of a candidate’s household finances, both because they are reported in broad ranges and because the value of at least one key aspect of wealth — homes that don’t generate income — does not have to be reported. (In its household net worth calculations, The Times included assets and liabilities attributed both to the candidates and to their spouses.)
Financial disclosure forms reveal the lowest bound of a candidate’s household wealth. They also reveal the sources of that wealth.
They can also offer insights into other aspects of a candidate’s finances, such as whether they pay mortgages or have student loans.
44 candidates or their spouses reported business interests.
26 candidates or their spouses reported owning real estate that generates income.
And just two candidates reported student loans.
Forty-four Senate candidates reported holding business interests, and 26 disclosed real estate assets that generated income.
Among the richest candidates on the ballot are Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, a Republican, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, who have nine-figure household net worths.
Some candidates’ minimum net worths put them just shy of known millionaire status, including Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, a Democrat, whose household was worth at least $990,000. Some candidates, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Republican, reported a negative household net worth — although it is impossible to know if that is really the case, since any candidate could own a home that didn’t have to be reported.
Some have unusual assets, like mineral rights (Mike Rogers of Michigan, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming and Ken Paxton of Texas). Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota is an investor in hotels. The wife of Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, who is running for the Senate, owns at least one airplane, and a hangar to go with it.
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi owns a farm in her state and sells cows.
And just two candidates themselves have the financial baggage weighing down many Americans: student loans. They are Charles Booker, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Kentucky, and Justin Murphy, the Republican nominee for the Senate in New Jersey.
‘I Was a Kid Wearing Goodwill Hand-Me-Downs’
Wealth has come up time and again on the campaign trail this year, with some Democrats seeking to turn the very existence of personal wealth into a political liability.
This has happened most notably in Nebraska, where Mr. Ricketts is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with a household fortune that could be at least $128 million. He has repeatedly faced attacks from his independent opponent, a mechanic named Dan Osborn, who reported an income of about $108,000 last year.
But candidates don’t have to be as wealthy as Mr. Ricketts is for their assets to become a target.
For example, an ad from James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, highlights the vast real estate portfolio of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state attorney general. (Mr. Paxton does not appear on The Times’s list of millionaires because his assets and liabilities are reported in wide ranges that could put his wealth anywhere between $103,000 at the low end and roughly $22 million at the high end.)
“Vote for James Talarico,” the ad says. “He has one house.”
In Alaska, former Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, has sought to link the wealth of her Republican opponent, Senator Dan Sullivan, to broad — if vague — allegations about corruption in Washington.
“Dan’s part of a rigged system, where politicians get wealthy, and you get hurt,” Ms. Peltola says in an ad. “They make cash while our diesel prices go up.”
And in Iowa, a talking point for the Democratic Senate nominee is that he’s not a millionaire.
“I was a kid wearing Goodwill hand-me-downs, with the wrong color lunch ticket,” the nominee, Josh Turek, says in an ad, adding, “It’s families like mine who pay the price for Trump’s health care cuts.” (His Republican opponent, Representative Ashley Hinson, has a household net worth of at least $2.2 million, according to her financial disclosure forms.)
There appears to be a partisan tilt when it comes to wealth: Of the 32 candidates whose disclosures establish them as millionaires, nearly three-quarters are Republicans.
When Harvard Men Fight
The issue of wealth also came up on the Senate debate stage in New Hampshire on Wednesday night.
Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee, brought up a key attack his party has levied against the Republican candidate, former Senator John E. Sununu: The money he has made in the 18 years since he lost re-election to the Senate.
“He voted with Big Oil throughout his time in Congress and then cashed in working for one of the biggest lobbying firms in Washington, D.C., and his net worth surged to an estimated $35 million,” Mr. Pappas said.
Mr. Sununu bristled and accused Mr. Pappas of being unable to read a financial disclosure form, which reports assets in ranges. Mr. Pappas had cited the upper bound of his range. “Goodness knows, I’m not worth $35 million,” Mr. Sununu said. “He can’t read a financial disclosure. Now I blame that on the time he spent at Harvard.”
(Neither man scrapped through state schools, exactly: Mr. Pappas earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, while Mr. Sununu went to M.I.T. and has a business degree from Harvard.)
Mr. Pappas’s household net worth could be anywhere from negative — in large part because of mortgages — to several million, according to his financial disclosure documents.
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15) ‘My Body Hurts’: Christa Pike Describes Pain and Isolation After Botched Execution
Convicted of a 1995 murder, Ms. Pike released her first statement since the failed attempt to execute her last month.
By Emily Cochrane, Reporting from Nashville, Oct. 30, 2026
It took about 30 minutes to verify the authenticity of the call for an ambulance from the prison. Christa Pike was in a private Nashville hospital for more than a week. Credit...Denny Simmons / The Tennessean/USA TODAY NETWORK, via Reuters
In her first comments since Tennessee botched her execution last month, Christa Pike said that she was in constant pain and that she had been kept largely in isolation.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said, according to a statement released Friday. “My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak.”
Ms. Pike, 50, received the death penalty for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate in Knoxville, Tenn. Ms. Pike, then 18, was one of three students who lured Ms. Slemmer into the woods, slashed at her with a box cutter and beat her.
In the statement, which she dictated to her legal team, Ms. Pike said she had been prepared to die the morning of Sept. 30. She had said her goodbyes to her loved ones and supporters. She told the people in the death chamber she was leaving them “in loving kindness.”
But then she woke up alone, confused and in pain, according to the statement. She was the first person to survive after receiving a lethal dose of the drug pentobarbital.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night,” Ms. Pike said, “and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.”
She added, “I am searching for meaning in what happened to me.”
The mother of Ms. Slemmer, May Martinez, was in favor of the execution and has rejected Ms. Pike’s expressions of remorse in the years since the crime. Ms. Pike said she was thinking about Ms. Slemmer’s family and “the terrible pain and loss they have endured.”
The execution, initially delayed in a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering, went ahead the evening of Sept. 30. In court documents this month, Randy Spivey, one of Ms. Pike’s lawyers who witnessed the execution, described nearly an hour in which members of the team responsible for placing the IV struggled to do so.
At one point, Mr. Spivey said, one team member said that a vein “might be blowing,” acknowledging that a vein might have been damaged in the process. In excerpts from a 2025 deposition released in court this week, Kenneth Nelson, the warden at the prison where executions take place, said the team contracted for the execution did not practice what to do if they had a hard time inserting an IV.
It took about 30 minutes to verify the authenticity of the first 911 call for an ambulance from the prison. Ms. Pike was in a private Nashville hospital for more than a week, where staff “treated me with compassion, dignity and respect,” she said.
The botched handling of the execution has drawn scrutiny as the state’s second failed attempt at capital punishment this year. After Ms. Pike’s execution attempt, Frank Strada, the embattled head of the Tennessee Department of Correction, said he would step down.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who is term-limited, paused all executions for the remainder of his term and ordered an independent investigation into the practice. Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate for governor, has said she believes Ms. Pike should face execution a second time, calling for the use of the electric chair instead of lethal injection.
Ms. Pike’s legal team has asked Mr. Lee to consider granting her clemency, allowing her to spend the remainder of her life in prison. On Wednesday, Mr. Lee told reporters, “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”
Ms. Pike spent most of her three decades in prison in isolation, until a 2024 settlement allowed her some physical interaction with other women in the prison. In her statement Friday, she said being alone in the infirmary was a painful repeat of that treatment, even as her recovery continued.
“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger,” she said. Her long-term prognosis, her legal team said, remains unclear.
“I don’t know why I survived that night — I don’t know what comes next,” Ms. Pike said. She added, “For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time.”
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16) Another Toll of the Violent Unrest in France: The Political Center
Support for Édouard Philippe, the leading candidate from the centrist bloc, has eroded, while his far-right and far-left rivals benefit.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 30, 2026
Édouard Philippe, the leading centrist candidate in France’s presidential race, has struggled in the polls since widespread protests broke out across the country last month. Sebastien Salom-Gomis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Soon after President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke to a traumatized country, in the aftermath of riots that set cities aflame on Oct. 17, Mr. Macron’s former prime minister and aspiring successor, Édouard Philippe, responded to his old boss.
“Our country needs to be commanded,” Mr. Philippe wrote, scolding Mr. Macron for what he called a failure to restore order, protect shopkeepers from looters and engage protesting high-school students in dialogue.
For Mr. Philippe, the leading presidential candidate from France’s shrinking political center, it was not the first break with Mr. Macron. But his tempered tone suggested he was speaking more in sorrow than in anger. It was all but lost in an angry cacophony, underscoring how the upheaval is reshaping France’s politics: More extreme figures are sidelining centrists.
No major candidate has lost more support in the polls than Mr. Philippe since the protests erupted last month: roughly two percentage points, leaving him between 13 percent and 15 percent. He now trails the far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and remains well behind the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, who claims the backing of about a third of those surveyed in most polls.
As things stand, Mr. Philippe, 55, would not make it into the second round of France’s two-round election system that starts in April. That would leave voters choosing between Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Mélenchon — a race she would likely win.
“Politics are getting more polarized, with the student movement and allegations of police brutality,” said Philippe Marlière, an expert on French politics at University College London. “The two extremes have their own repertoire for that. The moderate right is being squeezed between these two forces,” he continued. “They are being suffocated. There is no space for them to be heard.”
Mr. Philippe joins a beleaguered band of centrist politicians across Europe. Anger over rising prices, stagnant economies and declining prospects for young people has propelled populist parties on the far right and far left. That has flummoxed centrists like Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany; Keir Starmer, the ousted prime minister of Britain; and Mr. Macron himself.
A day after the riots, Ms. Le Pen warned about a “profound crisis of confidence and authority.” She spoke at a desk in front of a French flag, in a video that seemed designed to present her as a president in waiting. Mr. Mélenchon lashed out at the government for its handling of the protests, accusing it of “blind violence.”
Mr. Philippe, the mayor of the port city of Le Havre, sought to strike a law-and-order message, but less stridently. He met with shopkeepers in Paris whose properties were looted and vandalized. He patrolled with the police in the eastern French city of Charleville-Mézières.
Speaking to Le Point, a conservative French magazine, this week, Mr. Philippe also tried to highlight his right-wing credentials. Young people from immigrant backgrounds were overrepresented among those who rioted, he said, a claim the government has not backed up. He called it a “failure of integration in our country” and promised to cut in half the number of immigrants to France over the next five years.
Mr. Philippe’s representatives acknowledge that France’s fraught mood does not favor a sensible, center-right politician, one best known for serving Mr. Macron during the first three years of his presidency, most visibly during the Covid pandemic.
“There is a before and after Oct. 17,” said Arnaud Péricard, a spokesman for Mr. Philippe’s party, Horizons. “It’s a very complicated moment, where a lot of electors are losing their boundaries.”
Mr. Philippe had also come under scrutiny in an investigation of embezzlement of public funds involving the city hall in Le Havre. On Thursday, his lawyer confirmed a report in Agence France-Presse that Mr. Philippe had been designated as an “assisted witness” in the case. That legal status does not clear him but indicates that, for now, there is not enough evidence to charge him.
Mr. Péricard said Mr. Philippe’s campaign viewed the development as “very positive,” adding, “This matter is now behind him.”
Mr. Philippe’s strategy, he said, was to increase his public visibility in the coming days, but otherwise to ride out the current upheaval without losing his status as the leading centrist candidate. Front-runners in French presidential elections often stumble, Mr. Péricard noted, referring to Ms. Le Pen, and the campaign won’t shift into high gear until January.
“Édouard always describes himself as a diesel,” he said. “He’s slow to accelerate, but once he gets up to pace, he keeps it.”
For the moment, Mr. Philippe’s position seems secure, if only because the center is so fractured. His most direct rival on the center right, Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister, has also seen his poll numbers sag since the unrest broke out. Bruno Retailleau, a more hard-line figure, has faced competition from the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, an upstart hard-liner with a savvy social-media profile.
On Wednesday, Mr. Attal called for a primary vote to determine which centrist candidate should go on to face the far right and far left.
On the center left, Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, has also recently enjoyed a modest bounce in polls, though analysts question his staying power. They are waiting to see if François Hollande, the former Socialist president, will enter the race early next year.
Some in France yearn for a fresh face to shake up the race, much as Mr. Macron did in 2017, when he ran as a 39-year-old agent of reform. France’s economics minister, Roland Lescure, said this week that he believed a majority of people would vote for a moderate candidate if the right one emerged.
“We’ll see by the time January or February comes if someone can emerge or maybe some two can emerge” as a unifying figure, Mr. Lescure said to reporters. “There’s a bit of a silent majority that is still out there, that I think requires or demands an incarnation, which we haven’t been able to provide yet.”
Political analysts, however, said they were skeptical that any “white knight” would emerge, in part because of the challenges of building a viable campaign on short notice. Even before the recent unrest, the polarization of French politics would make a centrist coalition of the kind Mr. Macron assembled far-fetched today.
“His strength lies in having succeeded in consolidating an electoral base and in having created an electoral base that didn’t exist before him,” said Raphaël LLorca, an analyst at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a left-leaning research group in Paris. “Isn’t this, deep down, the end of Macronism, in the sense that each of his voters is returning to their own homes?”
Mr. Macron has never been more unpopular than he is now, which poses another hurdle for Mr. Philippe. Although he left the government in 2020, and even called on Mr. Macron to resign last October amid chaos over passing a budget, Mr. Philippe is identified as a veteran of his movement.
“Whatever credibility the government had evaporated on Oct. 17,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an expert on France at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “That context is damaging to Philippe by association.”
Ségolène Le Stradic and Giulia Imbert contributed reporting.
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17) Unions Sue Justice Department Over Attempt to Intervene in California’s Vote
The complaint was filed a day after the Trump administration issued a flurry of threats and subpoenas to local officials, claiming it was part of an effort to stop voting by undocumented immigrants.
By Glenn Thrush, Oct. 30, 2026
An election worker sorts ballot envelopes at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, CA on Wednesday. Credit...Apu Gomes/Getty Images
Unions representing election workers in California sued the Justice Department on Friday over its efforts to intervene in the state’s administration of the midterm elections, following a flurry of Trump administration threats and subpoenas to officials a day earlier.
The lawsuit is a legal counterattack against Trump political appointees at the department who, in recent days, have intensified their campaign to stop voting by undocumented immigrants, even though studies show such instances are exceedingly rare.
The unions — including the Service Employees International Union, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — are asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to block the department from pressuring local officials to stop counting ballots and turn over election data, and to drop its threats to criminally prosecute officials who do not comply with their demands.
“This case involves unprecedented and unlawful threats by federal government officials to state and local election workers, which significantly risk interfering with the lawful administration of the ongoing 2026 midterm elections and the counting of ballots,” wrote the two lead attorneys in the case Stacey Leyton and Norman Eisen.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The department’s leaders have repeatedly said their efforts were not motivated by politics or Mr. Trump’s demands, but rather a good-faith effort to ensure that every ballot cast in the midterms was lawful.
The pressure exerted by the department is the most aggressive intervention by federal law enforcement in elections in recent history. It comes at the direction of President Trump, who has spread falsehoods about undocumented immigrants voting in large numbers and has tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost.
The lawsuit accuses Attorney General Todd Blanche and other top Trump appointees at the department of engaging “in a coordinated campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees.”
On Thursday, the department widened a criminal investigation of California officials, issuing federal grand jury subpoenas to local election officials, after their efforts to prove thousands of noncitizens were on California’s voter rolls foundered in court.
A day earlier, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block the state from counting the votes of some 20,000 people it claimed are likely to be noncitizens, even though studies have found such fraud is very rare.
The lawsuit accuses the department of relying on flawed or false information on voters provided by the Department of Homeland Security. The claim that the D.H.S. “obtained data from obscure and insecure sources” and augmented it through “commercially available AI of questionable reliability.”
Department officials have privately conceded that all their recent efforts in California — a Democrat-dominated state that has been the target of frequent White House attacks — are unlikely to block the issuance and counting of ballots. And they have not committed to continuing their legal campaign after Election Day, a senior official involved in the effort said on Thursday.
The plaintiffs, part of a broader coalition of progressive groups that also includes the NAACP, have long been preparing for the possibility that the department would seek to exert legal pressure on state and local officials.
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18) Houston Grand Jury Indicts ICE Agent on Charges of Ramming Man in Chase
The agent is facing charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, officials said Friday.
By Edgar Sandoval, Oct. 30, 2026
Rodolfo Parra, brother of Miguel Parra Hernandez, speaking to reporters near the site where Mr. Parra Hernandez was struck by an ICE agent’s SUV. Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle, via Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle
A grand jury in Texas on Friday indicted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who struck and injured a Mexican construction worker with a vehicle in Houston this month, the authorities said.
The agent, Mario Alberto Morales, 33, is facing state charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, said Sean Teare, the district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He added that Mr. Morales has not turned himself in. It was unclear whether the defendant had legal representation.
The worker, Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, an undocumented immigrant, was driving to his job on the morning of Oct. 10 when federal immigration authorities tried to pull him over in unmarked vehicles, according to Houston immigration advocates.
When Mr. Parra Hernandez stopped the car, he and a passenger tried to flee. ICE has said that Mr. Parra Hernandez had run in front of one of the agency’s vehicles and was struck. But surveillance video from a nearby business appeared to show Mr. Parra Hernandez and another man running away as an ICE vehicle veered around the corner and appeared to hit Mr. Parra Hernandez from behind.
Mr. Parra Hernandez remains in ICE custody, at a rehabilitation center recovering from his injuries, the authorities said at a news conference on Friday announcing the charges.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Criminal cases against federal agents have proved challenging. Prosecutors in other districts have acknowledged that they face formidable practical and legal challenges in holding federal agents accountable for on-duty conduct.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution gives federal officials broad immunity from state prosecution, but Texas officials said they believe that what took place is clearly misconduct, shown by video evidence and 911 calls.
“The evidence that we have in this case is as clear as any that I’ve ever prosecuted or investigated,” Mr. Teare said. “I hope that it also sends a loud and clear message to every ICE officer who feels that they have a free pass to terrorize our streets.”
Mr. Teare has said that his investigators believe that the vehicle that struck Mr. Parra Hernandez was carrying people detained earlier, and that the driver should not have been pursuing the construction worker. Federal agents took the ICE vehicle away, contrary to standard investigation protocol and over the objections of local investigators, Mr. Teare said.
Although he has not reviewed Mr. Morales’s training record, Mr. Teare said that Mr. Morales was one of the agents hired for a surge in President Trump’s deportation campaign in August 2025.
During the media briefing, Mr. Teare played two videos, one of which showed Mr. Parra Hernandez lying on the ground and yelling that the agent had hurt his leg. The agent then is heard in a 911 call telling an operator that Mr. Parra Hernandez had run into his vehicle.
ICE has faced scrutiny from state and local officials over traffic stops. The tactic has been a key part to the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration arrests this summer, but many of them have turned violent or deadly.
Susan Beachy contributed research.
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