Saturday, October 24, 2026 · Evening Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. An immigrant held at the Folkston detention complex in Georgia died on Friday, local and federal officials confirmed, as a hunger strike at the facility continued and officials allegedly threatened strikers with force-feeding. The death lands at a site already under national scrutiny — this is what the administration's immigration machine does to the people it cages, out of sight of the election it coincides with.

Abroad, Israel has launched a major escalation in the West Bank targeting Hebron, following a Palestinian resistance attack on an illegal military checkpoint — part of a campaign of collective punishment that this week saw settlers destroy the memorial to Shireen Abu Akleh. The regional war widens: Iran's army has unveiled a new drone carrying a warhead twice the weight of the previous generation and threatened a war without limits in retaliation for US-Israeli operations as casualties mount.

At home, a Democratic lawmaker sounded the alarm Friday over at least 18 rural Alaska polling places advertised online that never opened — villages the New York Times called key to Democratic hopes — insisting there is no legal excuse for the failure to open them. The closures are no accident: the Justice Department sued Thursday in a move Mary Peltola and a voters' rights group say is meant to block a Democratic Senate victory, on the theory that voters could confuse candidates with similar names — authority legal experts question. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Saturday the suit is not trying to stop certification.

Trump cast an early in-person ballot in Palm Beach on Saturday after years of attacking mail voting, as more than 26 million Americans have already voted. Obama hit the trail, calling Trump an agent of "chaos and cruelty" and the administration a government of "incompetence the likes of which we have not seen in modern times". The pitch writes itself: small businesses say tariffs and inflation are grinding them down, restaurants hit hardest.