Friday, October 23, 2026 · Evening Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. Trump's Justice Department filed suit Thursday against Alaska, preemptively attempting to decertify the state's Senate race unless Republicans win. The target is Democrat Mary Peltola, who served as Alaska's House representative from 2022 to 2025 and is running against GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan; the department moved to stop certification only if Sullivan loses. Legal experts call the suit dead on arrival, one flagging it as “one of the worst” DOJ claims ever made. It is not the only lever being pulled for endangered Republicans: the [White House is lifting tariffs on some Canadian goods, and Susan Collins, in a tight race to keep her Senate seat, said she had been working with the administration on the relief](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c60qk573yzz8o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss).

Abroad, retired Gen. Ben Hodges says [restrictions on Starlink have dealt a significant blow to Ukraine's counter-drone capabilities and disrupted an early-warning system for incoming ballistic missiles](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-10-23/gen-hodges-ret-says-trump-actions-help-russia-s-war-video), calling it bizarre for Trump to defend Elon Musk as a “good person.” The White House meanwhile claims Melania Trump brokered a localized ceasefire in the Ukrainian city of Oleshky, as Romania's president blamed Russia for a drone strike that sank a cargo ship in the Black Sea.

At home, CDC figures show the US has officially doubled the number of measles cases it recorded in 2025. The same department straining to reverse an Alaska result has opened an inquiry into Corey Lewandowski, and Trump has not jumped to his defense.

The state's violence runs on the same asymmetry. Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital during an attempted execution at Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Sept. 30. In Mississippi, investigators called the police shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley “justified,” even as body-camera footage shows the cop firing into the passenger's side as the car passed by him. In Ohio, [Rodney Hinton was found guilty of murder for running over a deputy hours after watching bodycam footage of Cincinnati police killing his son Ryan](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/23/ohio-rodney-hinton-murder-conviction-police) — the grieving father convicted, the officers not. And in Durham, the housing authority is moving tenants from aging public housing to Section 8 vouchers as maintenance problems elsewhere persist.