Democratic US Senate nominee and vocal Israel critic compares Jewish state to a friend who pits one against their other friends

A changing of the congressional guard in January could leave room for meddling, though most legal scholars doubt it would happen.

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United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby backed national wealth and inheritance taxes in an interview published Sunday, arguing they would help level the playing field for Americans. Kirby told The New York Times that wealth inequality “has become a danger to our society,” adding the federal government must “address” it. “We should have a national wealth…

The FBI investigated whether South Carolina’s late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) and Rep. James Clyburn (D) were involved in a bribery scheme in connection to Hawaiian naval defense contractor Navatek acquiring federal contracts in their home state, according to a report published by ProPublica on Tuesday. The report states that Graham met with two executives…

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing President Trump “like a fiddle” by shifting U.S. support away from Ukraine and warned that “history” won’t judge Trump well if he abandons Ukraine. Tillis said Putin’s claim that he invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country is a lie and that Trump’s dealings with…

Ukraine got no early warning from its partners of the first wave of Russian ballistic missiles on the night of 18–19 October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told US senators on 19 October. He also said Starlink and Starshield terminals still stop working above certain speeds on parts of the front, and that Washington has explained neither problem. In the same video call, according to a transcript obtained by Axios, he said US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not signing off on deliveries of Patriot interceptors and AIM-9X missiles for NASAMS that NATO countries have already paid for.

This comes as the US presses Kyiv to stop its strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump has blamed for high fuel prices at home. Washington supplies both the early launch warnings and the Patriot interceptors Ukraine needs against Russian ballistic missiles, and Zelenskyy says both are now failing at once, as Russia keeps firing ballistic missiles at Ukraine’s grid ahead of winter. If neither the warnings nor the interceptors come through, Ukrainian cities would face winter strikes with less notice and fewer means to stop them.

On the morning of 20 October, Zelenskyy wrote that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about interceptors against ballistic missiles, early warning of Russian ballistic attacks, and restoring Starlink and Starshield. He thanked Rubio for his readiness to help and his clear position, and said they had agreed to speak again soon. He did not say whether anything had been resolved.

Patriots paid for, not signed

“We have almost no Patriot interceptors left from the US partners,” Zelenskyy told the senators.

Hegseth “has the contracts for Patriot missiles on his desk,” a Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent, adding that allies had already paid for them. Another senior official called the batch “significant.” One of the main channels for Ukraine’s Patriot supply is NATO’s PURL mechanism, under which allies fund purchases of US weapons for Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian military official told the outlet.

On 19 October, Zelenskyy wrote that some types of vital supplies were being delayed at the US Department of War, as the Trump administration also calls the Pentagon. He added that some political agreements had not been carried out at the working level.

A NATO official told the Kyiv Independent that PURL deliveries, including air defense, were continuing. Another said some shipments could face delays, but that political reasons were unlikely to explain them. A US government official called Ukraine’s claims “not true.” The Pentagon did not respond to the outlet.

No warning for Kyiv hours after Zelenskyy said US alerts were back

On 18 October, Zelenskyy said on NBC that US warnings of ballistic launches had resumed after three days without them. That night, Russia launched two ballistic waves at Ukraine, and information from partners did not arrive before the first, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said. Zelenskyy told the senators Ukraine had not received US warnings on three occasions in the past week. “We have received no clear explanation from Washington,” he said.

“All of this suggests that some political decision has been made to slow down support for us,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy offered a 30-day pause on refinery strikes for Patriots

Zelenskyy told the senators he had offered US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner a 30-day halt on strikes against Russian refineries. In return, the US would supply Patriot interceptors to cover that period. He said the envoys had shown no openness to the idea.

On 20 October, Norway announced talks in Oslo that day between Zelenskyy, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, with Witkoff attending in person and Kushner by video.

Senators back Kyiv. Trump says intelligence still flows

Senator Thom Tillis said he and his colleagues remain committed to standing with Ukraine and its European allies, while Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote that bipartisan support was “clear and unequivocal” and would be expressed “in upcoming action.”

US President Donald Trump told reporters on 19 October that Washington is still sharing intelligence with Ukraine and that he did not know who ordered the throttling of Starlink, Axios reported.

“Zelensky doesn’t know what he is talking about,” Trump said.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is climbing the ranks of potential 2028 Democratic White House hopefuls as he travels extensively around the country this year to meet voters and raise millions of dollars for Democratic candidates in key battleground states. Kelly will have campaigned for Democratic candidates in nearly 20 states by the end of the…

Our interview with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.

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The president came out in support of Senator Roger Marshall, who is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton

The fact that Donald Trump was here at all said more about a looming electoral disaster facing his Republican party next month than anything contained in his dark and discursive 98-minute stump speech.

On Monday, amid raucous chants of “USA! USA!”, the president held his first campaign rally in Kansas for eight years. No Democrat has won a US Senate seat in this ruby-red state since 1932, the year Herbert Hoover was president, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the Nazis became the biggest party in the German Reichstag.

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© Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) accused Mike Davis, a close legal ally of the president, of “mobilizing death threats” against her and her staff.  Slotkin wrote on social media Monday that Davis had originally been in the mix to be President Trump’s next attorney general after former Attorney General Pam Bondi left her post but “is…

Michigan's closely contested Senate race has become deeply personal for some voters.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) says former President Reagan and the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would be “ashamed” of President Trump’s action Friday to waive sanctions against Russia, less than a month after Trump signed a tough Russia sanctions package into law. Cassidy vented his disappointment with Trump over his decision to set aside sanctions…

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told senators Ukraine still does not have full access to the critical satellite-based Starshield network or U.S. intelligence sharing amid growing tensions with President Trump. Zelensky provided the update to a bipartisan group of senators on a call hosted by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “Joined Senator…

Congress' wealthiest members, according to the most recently published live net worth estimates tracked by Quiver Quantitative.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject a petition from a conservative political group to ease restrictions on AI-generated robocalls ahead of November’s midterm elections. “Under this change, campaigns could use their opponents’ voice to send out a message that is, at best, disingenuous and,…

With little more than two weeks to go until the midterm elections, it seems increasingly possible that the Democrats, already a big favorite to win control of the House of Representatives, will also take charge of the planet's most elite nursing home, the United States Senate, where the median age is 64 years old. RealClearPolitics' poll aggregator has moved control of "the world's greatest deliberative body" (as its members are grandiosely wont to call it) to "toss up," status and prediction markets are now breaking big toward a blue wave. As of this writing, Kalshi has its Senate odds at 63 percent for the Dems vs. 37 percent for the GOP; Polymarket is at 62 percent vs. 39 percent.

As gratifying as it might be to see unprincipled Trump enablers reduced to minority status after signing off on economy-wrecking tariffs, inhumane immigration detentions, and wars of choice, there's at least one good reason to dread a Democratic majority too: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who is spending the run-up to the midterms freaking out over possible consolidation in the condiments business and accusing private equity firms of gutting such shopping-mall favorites as Claire's and Toys R Us. There's every reason to believe that a Senate run by Warren and other economic interventionists will waste time, money, and resources trying to prevent a world in which, per the X wag Iowahawkblog, "a panopticon conglomerate owns two brands of hot sauce."

On October 13, Warren posted this dire warning to X:

Hellmann's mayo
McCormick spices
Cholula hot sauce
Frank's RedHot

What do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.

I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026

It's hard to think of a more competitive and varied market than the one for hot sauces, which is expected to more than double over the next decade. The barriers to entry are generally low, as are the key ingredients, and new entrants can easily market and sell online, avoiding the costs of buying shelf space in conventional supermarkets. Yet Warren is urging regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to halt mergers of both product makers like McCormick and Unilever and grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle.

The latter complaint is particularly picayune. Kroger is one of the country's largest supermarket chains, operating around 2,800 stores under its own name as well as Harris Teeter, Ralph's, and others. Giant Eagle operates about 170 stores. This merger is no more the stuff of nightmares than a single company producing both Cholula and Frank's RedHot. If Warren gains more clout from being in the majority, expect her to butt in more and more on such mergers.

Making it harder for businesses to adapt is not a recipe for making goods and services more affordable. But Warren is keen to blame economic creative destruction not on "new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates" (as Joseph Schumpeter would have it), but on pure greed. In a TikTok released earlier this month, she shows a poster board with corporate logos from once-thriving companies that she says have been "gutted" by "private equity" firms.

"Here's your local mall," she piously intones. "Now, private equity wants you to believe that Red Lobster went bankrupt because of their endless shrimp….They want you to believe that Claire's went bankrupt because teens stopped shopping at the mall." In Warren's telling, private equity firms magically take over thriving businesses and then strip them bare. The typical pattern is that private equity enters the picture after a business is failing.

Virtually all accounts of the decline of, for example, Red Lobster, note that the chain had been spiraling for several reasons before the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital got involved in 2014. As this CNN article notes, the chain, which started in 1968, had seen drops in sales as customer desires changed. Management compounded the difficulties with a series of bad decisions, including continuing various all-you-can-eat menu specials, before coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.

Similarly, it's true that some teens still go to malls and get their ears pierced at Claire's. But anyone who has spent time in retail America over the past few decades knows that malls are no longer the destination that they once were. As CapitalOne Shopping Research documents, "in 1986, there were 25,000 malls, large and small, nationwide." By 2023, that number had shrunk to just 1,200. While some malls are coming back, most are not, and for reasons that have nothing to do with private equity. Online retails plays a role (though a smaller one than usually imagined, with e-commerce accounting for less than 20 percent of all retail sales). But mostly, it's that people today tend to want a different sort of retail environment. Anchor stores—think Macy's and J.C. Penney—are shadows of themselves, and younger people have less unstructured time in which to prowl food courts and arcades.

For politicians like Elizabeth Warren, though, there can be no financial gains or losses that aren't the result of shadowy, conspiratorial forces. If her party takes control of the Senate, her words will carry more weight. But it will be American consumers that ultimately shoulder the burden of an even-more-regulated economy. The market for hot sauces will almost certainly stay spicy, but many other parts will surely suffer.

The post Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low – 33%.

This comes, just over two weeks away from the November midterms, as the president continues crisscrossing the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans.

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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

• Some US colleges have numerous alums who went on to prolific political careers in the Senate.
• Many of the colleges listed are Ivy League or have extremely low acceptance rates.
• Harvard University tops the list, with 13 current senators among its alums.

US senators come from all sorts of different educational backgrounds.

Some graduated from the US Naval Academy or smaller private schools, but 42 of the 100 US senators came from 10 prominent universities, according to biographies on the US Senate website.

Harvard University, the oldest college in the country and one of the hardest to get into, boasts the largest number of current senators among its alums.

The senators on this list are alums of the schools' undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, law, or medical programs, and some have graduated from multiple of the listed universities. Honorary degrees and schools a senator attended without graduating were excluded.

Here's a look at which US colleges have produced the most current senators.

"She said that it was a Troy supporter. She accused me of setting that up. I had no idea who it was," Jackson said.

Alaska could play a pivotal role in Democrats' efforts to reclaim control of the Senate. In a debate, Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan faced questions about rising fuel costs driven by the war with Iran and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola pushed back against allegations that she mistreated staff members. Geoff Bennett discussed the race with Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Media.