"This deal won't lower costs for the American people, who are already paying for Trump's failed war of choice in Iran. It will hand Putin millions of dollars to continue slaughtering Ukrainian civilians with impunity."

The Yisrael Beytenu chairman has ruled out a minority coalition dependent on Arab parties. He is banking on Likud defectors, but is actually erecting a roadblock for the center-left

This year’s midterm elections are a test of whether a party can be a success and a failure at the same time.

The Cockroach Janta Party has accused the government of violating protesters’ rights.

New Delhi police arrested Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the youth movement Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), popularly known as the “Cockroaches,” on Friday just as a new protest began demanding the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, head of the Election Commission.

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The arrest took place as the leader was heading to the protest, where hundreds of demonstrators had already gathered. In a video shared by the organization on its social media accounts, several officers can be seen forcibly putting Dipke into a police vehicle and taking him away.

“This government is very afraid of young people waving the national flag! Dictatorship!” the CJP said, describing the arrest of its leader as “a serious violation of his rights.”

Police also arrested student activist Neha Bora, another prominent figure in the protest movement. She was detained in front of the Nepalese Embassy in New Delhi while leading a march toward Connaught Place.

Abhijeet Dipke was quietly leaving for protest march. Within 24 seconds, Delhi Police detained him. pic.twitter.com/dtQgBRrclG

— News Algebra (@NewsAlgebraIND) October 16, 2026

“How many people will Modi-Shah arrest? For every arrest this government makes, more young people will take to the streets!” the Cockroach Janta Party said.

To try to circumvent the heavy security deployment in the capital’s central commercial district and avoid arrests for unlawful assembly, the movement had issued instructions to its supporters hours earlier.

The instructions were to arrive in groups of fewer than five people, unfurl the Indian tricolor flag (Tiranga), take a photograph and leave peacefully to demonstrate that waving the flag “is not a crime.”

We will not be silenced, we will build Jantar Mantars everywhere ✊🔥 See you in London tomorrow, bring your tiranga bring your voice 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/gez9ucwoJD

— Students' Federation of India – United Kingdom (@sfi_uk) October 15, 2026

On Friday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued a statement accusing the demonstrators of seeking an “anti-national revolution” and sowing “anarchy” in the country.

The arrests have left the organization almost entirely without its leadership, adding to the detention of two other spokespeople who remain in judicial custody at Tihar Jail after taking part in a protest Tuesday at Jantar Mantar, a traditional protest site from which authorities recently withdrew that designation.

The “Cockroaches,” which emerged in May as a satirical youth movement protesting unemployment and irregularities in university examinations, have expanded their demonstrations to include a review of the electoral rolls. They are demanding the resignation of Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar, whom they hold responsible for alleged irregularities.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

The state has passed restrictive measures popular among gun safety activists. The Silver Rail Elementary School shooting seemed poised to set off conversations about gun control.

© Joe Kline/Associated Press

Musk is the big Paxton funder: According to campaign filings released yesterday, Elon Musk sent $158 million in September to a super PAC that immediately gave that amount of money to a group backing Texas Republican Ken Paxton's Senate bid against Democrat James Talarico.

"On Sept. 9, the first day of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Musk gave $75 million to SLF," reports The Texas Tribune. "The next day, SLF put $75 million into a new entity called Texas PAC. By the weekend after the convention, the new super PAC was up on the air with a positive spot about Paxton's work on sex trafficking and a negative ad attacking Talarico as being for 'they/them, not you.'"

Then, two weeks later, "Musk gave an additional $83 million to SLF, according to the group's filing. Sure enough, SLF deposited $83 million into Texas PAC's coffers the following day."

It would be wild if Paxton still loses. Paxton has been embroiled in rolling scandals for years, and some current polls have him underwater by 13 points. A New York Times/Siena survey found only 38 percent of likely Texas voters believe he has "good character," versus 56 percent for Talarico.

Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, and that case dragged on for most of a decade before ending in a pretrial agreement. Then the Texas House, led by Republicans, accused him of bribery and abuse of public trust and successfully impeached him in 2023. The charges centered on allegations that he used his office to help donor Nate Paul—so you can imagine why Musk might want to curry favor with Paxton. Though Paxton was later acquitted by the state Senate, scandal keeps chasing him: Last year, his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on "biblical" grounds, citing adultery as one of the reasons.

Of course, many Republican voters at the state level saw the impeachment as nothing more than a political hit job, one echoing what's happened to President Donald Trump at the national level. But what far-right, already-convinced Republicans believe about Paxton is sort of beside the point: He needs turnout, and he needs to win over more moderate Republicans and maybe even some fence-sitters if he hopes to beat Talarico. It's possible Musk's cash infusion will help, but it's also possible a cash infusion of many millions of dollars won't be enough to rehabilitate Paxton's shitty image.

A poll from the University of Texas and Texas Politics Project conducted in August "contained four major warning signs for Paxton: a drop in his support from June, lagging GOP motivation to vote, worse favorability numbers than Talarico and Trump's approval being underwater in the state."

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Scenes from New York: "When Gov. Kathy Hochul first ran for re-election, Republicans in New York tried to prey on fears over crime, rising inflation and illegal immigration to boost the chances of their ticket statewide in the critical 2022 midterms," reports The New York Times. "The strategy seemed to work. Republicans flipped four House seats in New York, while putting a scare into Ms. Hochul, who eked out a six-point victory over Lee Zeldin, then a Long Island congressman who now leads the E.P.A." This year, Republicans have picked Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, as the guy with the best odds of beating Hochul, and they're running on crime fears again. But it's not working so well.

The crime and public disorder is, to my mind, still a problem, but it's not as rampant as it once was during the peak pandemic years. And it's certainly not perceived as very bad right now.

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QUICK HITS

• "Three children and a teacher were killed, and two others were critically wounded, in a shooting Thursday at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, authorities said," reports CBS News. "The suspect, a 16-year-old male, was shot and killed by a bystander, Bend police said.…Officials would not say exactly what type of weapon was used in the attack or how many rounds were fired. Multiple law enforcement sources told CBS News the suspect used a shotgun, and The Associated Press cited a law enforcement official briefed on the incident as saying it was a pump-action shotgun purchased by his mother."
• "A climate of radical paranoia around AI seems like it will be a feature of our world for the foreseeable future," writes Ross Douthat in The Free Press, "because human beings are really good at being paranoid about mysterious new things. With, of course, the AI doomers themselves being a prime example: As Mike Solana of Pirate Wires notes in his own recent reading of the doom canon, the prophecies of Yudkowsky and Co. are already moderately less credible insofar as they don't account for their own cultural success."
• "Taiwan is preparing to tighten export controls on AI chips to further align with US restrictions, according to a senior official in Taipei, joining a Trump administration clampdown on the smuggling of cutting-edge semiconductors to China," reports Bloomberg. "Taipei plans to add artificial intelligence servers and cutting-edge semiconductors to a list of controlled items, Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg News. After the measures take effect, he said, shipping restricted AI hardware to China will become a criminal offense under the Foreign Trade Act."
• I'll leave you with a quote from Kennedy (not John or Robert) to start your weekend off right: "Kimberly [Guilfoyle] talked about sex so cavalierly that she made Samantha from Sex and the City seem like Greta Thunberg."

The post Musk's Meddling appeared first on Reason Magazine.

This is more than just another persecution of one of the president’s political enemies.

© Brian Snyder/Reuters

Republican Senate and House candidates are being out-raised by their Democratic rivals, but the party has received a huge boost from groups tied to Elon Musk and President Trump.

© Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

With control of the Senate at stake, Mara Gay traveled to this Texas border region to hear from voters.

Republicans have used A.I.-generated content more often than Democrats, ranging from subtle enhancements to convincing deepfakes.

© The New York Times

The Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, and his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola, veered from serious discussion of high prices and economic challenges to blistering personal attacks.

© Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media

The world’s richest person, who has become the biggest known midterm donor, gave $158 million to a group that quickly spent that much to help Mr. Paxton’s Senate bid in Texas.

© Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in a swath of Michigan including areas won by President Trump, making a progressive pitch in a key Senate race.

© Zbigniew Bzdak for The New York Times

Netanyahu says portfolios sought by far-right politician must stay with Likud; Ben Gvir says premier planning a coalition with Eisenkot: 'The cat's out of the bag'

'Very short and very sharp' call came shortly after Israel bombed government targets with stated aim of protecting Syrian Druze, PM tells Druze supporters

The president’s arrangement to import Russian diesel fuel is one more example of how he has sold out American democracy.

© Photo illustration by Kim Hoeckele for The New York Times

Joint List chief decries 'racist campaign' after PM's party and Religious Zionism cite unsubstantiated fraud claims; Eisenkot vows to end Hamas rule in Gaza in 18 months if elected

While the 2026 election largely ignores gender equality, structural changes in centrist parties and a grassroots ultra-Orthodox movement might be quietly shifting the political map

Endless illegal immigration, unaffordable energy, draconian speech policing – we're being conditioned to accept outrageous things as normal, says Nick Rendell. Now add to that economic crashes.

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A recent ISEAS Fulcrum commentary by Hoang Thi Ha and Pham Thi Phuong Thao offers a useful mapping of how Chinese culture and economic opportunity are drawing in young Vietnamese. The authors are right that this bottom-up attraction is unfolding alongside renewed official promotion of people-to-people ties, and that long-standing sensitivities about China have not […]

The post Why Chinese culture lands so fluently and freely in Vietnam appeared first on Asia Times.