Saturday, October 10, 2026 · Morning Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. One year after Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages and President Trump promised an end to the war, Palestinians say the past twelve months have been a ceasefire in name only. Mirjana Spoljaric, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross — who has been to Gaza and met with the Iranians — warns that our warring world is spiraling out of control. The peace the administration claimed credit for was never delivered to the people living under the bombs, and the same administration is now easing sanctions on Moscow through a diesel agreement with Putin that Ukraine's Zelenskyy says "plays into Russia's hands."

At home, the machinery of the state is dropping the pretense of neutrality. The Justice Department has loosened its guidelines so that Blanche and other senior political appointees can take part in political campaigns. The same prosecutorial power is aimed at the ballot: this past January the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records from a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, which County Commissioner Dana Barrett read less as a criminal investigation than as political theater. The courts are the only brake: on Friday a federal judge struck down the DOJ's nationwide effort to collect voter registration records and flag suspected non-citizens, even in states that volunteered to cooperate.

Public health is paying the price of neglect. As measles kills a fifth Pennsylvanian — a 20-year-old leukemia patient who could not be vaccinated — New York has declared a disaster emergency, even as the CDC still acknowledges only two deaths nationally.

And the storms keep coming: more than 800,000 customers across Florida, Alabama and Georgia remained without power after Hurricane Isaias, while Simon strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane, its winds reaching 140 mph as it approached Mexico's coast. In Kansas, former Republican governors are backing Democrat Adam Hamilton, a centrist who needs Republican votes to win.