Candidates are scattered across the battlegrounds with control of Congress on the line Tuesday. President Trump ran six virtual tele-rallies today across Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan and Florida, with in-person stops in Iowa and Kansas set for Sunday, and he rallied Daytona Beach for gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody. Ohio has already shattered its midterm early-voting record with nearly 1.5 million ballots cast.
Alaska election officials asked a federal judge today to toss the Justice Department's lawsuit seeking to intervene in the state's Senate race, calling the federal challenge meritless. At issue are allegations that a candidate with a name similar to Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan was recruited to confuse GOP voters. Democrat Mary Peltola continues to deny any involvement.
The Senate failed to advance the House-passed Homeland Security spending measure, triggering a partial shutdown at the department that oversees ICE, TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard. Democrats rejected a GOP compromise while demanding limits on deportation operations. ICE says enforcement posture is unchanged and deportation arrests "will continue."
Third-quarter GDP expanded at a 3.4 percent annualized clip, up from 2.2 percent and beating forecasts, though core PCE inflation ticked up to 3.1 percent. Markets had a rougher week: Alphabet shed roughly 500 billion dollars in market value Thursday after shares fell nearly 13 percent, the second-largest single-day loss in market history. Investors are rattled by the company's AI spending and softening search ad growth.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today that the president has not decided whether to resume military action against Iran, and that Trump still prefers a diplomatic resolution. Trump has said Iran wants to talk and predicted the conflict ends "very soon," while warning of "consequences." Military options have been prepared and staged for a decision.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared today that any threat will be met with an unrestricted response, even as Tehran's reformist wing pushes for renewed negotiations. Saudi Arabia's vice minister of foreign affairs said the region's message is a return to peace and that efforts are underway to prevent escalation. Crude remains above 100 dollars a barrel with Brent pushing toward 120 overseas.
The US Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert today warning of a credible threat of a mass casualty event at the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve, a popular tourist site. Americans were told to avoid the area entirely. No further detail on the nature of the threat was released.
Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery and James Spicer emerged today at 3 p.m. Eastern from a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They spent more than a year in isolation running simulated spacewalks and resource-management experiments. The data feeds NASA's planning for genuine long-duration missions as Artemis targets a crewed lunar landing by 2028.
Newly released records from the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office detail FBI agents watching a black triangular object with a 9-to-15-foot wingspan and no visible engines. It climbed 200 to 300 feet above a ridgeline, hovered about 20 seconds, then vanished. Thermal imaging showed a uniform heat signature with none of the hot spots you would expect from conventional aircraft, and neither agency identified the object.
A viral video showed a prankster mocking a worker named Walt while he stocked frozen pizzas at a Meijer in White Lake, Michigan. The internet responded by opening a GoFundMe that has pulled in more than 679,000 dollars from over 19,000 donors as of today. Red Baron, whose pizzas he was stocking, publicly backed him.
