Saturday, October 3, 2026 · Morning Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. Tennessee carried out a botched execution, a reminder that capital punishment, on the wane nationally, survives wherever a shrinking number of places still keep the machinery running. State power is being consolidated elsewhere too: the FBI has circulated a classified Patel Report cataloguing where it fell short under the leaders Director Kash Patel replaced, and an FBI official has stepped down.

On Monday the Supreme Court opens a new term stacked with test cases on religion, guns and climate change, much of it routed through an emergency docket that keeps popping — the fast track by which the right's judicial project now advances with little argument and less explanation.

The administration is governing as though it expects no check. It has pumped out taxpayer-funded ads branded 'obviously illegal' and told a court it can bar MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House. Against that, New Times/Siena polling shows Democrats running strong in states Trump won easily in 2024, enough that the party may have found a recipe for flipping red-state Senate seats — though pollsters' inability to reach Trump voters could again leave them disappointed. ProPublica also uncovered bribery allegations involving Susan Collins.

The squeeze on labor runs on one logic in two hemispheres: another interest-rate rise in Australia deepens the cost-of-living crisis for working-class households and intensifies market pressure on the Albanese government to gut social spending — the familiar pattern in which the fight against inflation targets labor, from wage controls to rate hikes. One check did land: a federal judge halted border-wall construction through Big Bend.

Three years after October 7, the ground under the US relationship with Israel has shifted — diplomats streamed for the exits when Netanyahu addressed the UN last month. British police charged two Iranian men with plotting an attack on Manchester's Jewish community, and in Latvia the leader is poised for re-election in a vote shadowed by Putin.