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🇻🇪 Rubio warns Venezuela A supporter of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado waves a Venezuelan flag on top of a truck after her arrival in Caracas on Sunday. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images A day after Venezuela's exiled opposition leader returned to Caracas with great fanfare, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a veiled warning against interfering with the country's fragile democratic transition pushed by the Trump administration, Axios' Marc Caputo writes. "You're not going to street-protest your way into a democracy," Rubio told reporters without explicitly mentioning Maria Corina Machado. Why it matters: Machado's demands for elections next year — and her criticism of a massive U.S. oil deal struck with the current Caracas regime — have put administration officials on edge after her surprise return. "Rubio is on a political edge," said a White House source familiar with his thinking. "Venezuela is the top foreign policy achievement of this administration, and if the progress we made gets undone and Machado is a spoiler, nobody wins." Keep reading.

🏈 Scoop: Trump enlists Texas football stars Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images President Trump will campaign with three football stars in Texas on Tuesday, leaning into America's favorite sport as Republicans scramble to turn out voters in the final week before the midterms, Axios' Alex Isenstadt has learned. Former college football stars Johnny Manziel and Colt McCoy, along with two-time Super Bowl champion Danny Amendola, will join Trump for campaign appearances in Lubbock and Corpus Christi. Amendola starred at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Manziel won the Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M, and McCoy was a standout quarterback at the University of Texas. 🎨 The big picture: Trump has made football a recurring feature of his campaign stops in recent weeks. Trump attended the Texas-Tennessee game in September and planned to attend the Georgia-Alabama showdown earlier this month before canceling because of a hurricane. Former NFL coach Jon Gruden joined Trump at an Ohio rally this month, while former Georgia and NFL star Todd Gurley accompanied the president on a stop in Georgia. Marc Caputo contributed reporting.

AI money tsunami Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios Anthropic filed yesterday for what could be the biggest IPO ever, capping a massive day of AI dealmaking that nearly equals 1% of U.S. GDP, Axios' Dan Primack writes. Why it matters: Few industries have ever become so central to the American economy so quickly — and we're watching Wall Street finance the buildout in real time. Anthropic's long-awaited IPO may seek to raise a record $100 billion. Also yesterday, SpaceX secured $40 billion in debt financing to lease GPUs — the chips that power modern AI — and Meta said it would seek up to $95 billion in financing for its AI buildout. Together, that's roughly $235 billion in a single day — more than the entire U.S. airline industry adds to the economy in a year. 🖼️ The big picture: AI's appetite for capital has outgrown what any one part of the financial system can supply. Anthropic alone has committed roughly $750 billion to computing power in the coming years — about seven times what its record-setting IPO may raise. Even private investors are struggling to keep up: OpenAI's record $120 billion funding round took months to close. Zoom in: Most Americans will be financially exposed to these deals, even if they never buy a share. SpaceX and Meta are already major holdings in the top stock indices that fill pensions, 401(k)s and other retirement plans. Anthropic will soon join them. Between the lines: Anthropic's filing spells out how big the stakes are, devoting more than a quarter of the document to risks. The company warns that AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" and that models may try to manipulate the people using them. 🔭 Zoom out: Each of these three deals is a bet that AI use keeps compounding fast enough to justify the industry's trillions in spending. The flip side: Declining use could crack the foundation of America's entire economy. The bottom line: Everyone is on the AI train, whether we want to be or not.

> Israelis vote in their first election since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and war in Gaza; polls suggest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or main opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot will need to woo coalition parties to govern (More) > Federal judge orders the Justice Department to reinstate prosecutor Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey (More) | DOJ charges Comey for third time over allegations he shared classified information (More) > Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee kicks off its four-day, closed-door plenum, with agenda covering party discipline and corruption (More)

> Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to about 27% of its workforce, as it shifts more spending to AI infrastructure buildout (More) | Dollar General sued by Federal Trade Commission and 20 states over alleged deceptive pricing (More) > Brazilian markets plunge following the reelection of left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; benchmark stock index posts 14% single-day loss, the worst since the COVID-19 pandemic (More) > NBA partners with Kalshi and Polymarket, becoming the latest major US sports league to collaborate with the prediction market industry (More) | How prediction markets compare to the stock market (More)

> High-resolution simulation reveals detailed view of how stars and galaxies formed in the first 2 billion years of the universe, shedding light on the cosmic dark ages (More, w/videos) | What were the dark ages? (More) > Clinical trial suggests obscure psychedelic compound based on toad venom could help patients with difficult-to-treat depression (More) > AI-powered mosquito trap identifies species with 98% accuracy in lab tests, potentially helping curb mosquito-borne diseases | Florida is experiencing its largest dengue outbreak in decades, with over 700 cases (More)

> Singer Chris Brown avoids prison, receives eight-month suspended sentence for 2023 London club attack in which he hit a music producer in the head with a liquor bottle (More) | Watch footage (More) > Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 10-1 to take a 3-0 lead in the World Series; Game 4 tonight (8 pm ET, FOX) | Harry Kane wins the Ballon d'Or, awarded to the world's best soccer player each year (More) > Actor Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original "Star Trek" and seven "Star Trek" movies, passes away at age 90 (More) | Watch top Chekov moments (More)

How much are candidates spending for the 2026 midterm? Based on FEC data downloaded October 21, 2026, Senate and House candidates have spent around $2.86 billion on races for the 2026 November midterm election. That's about 84.6% of campaign funds raised this election cycle. https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-are-candidates-spending-for-the-midterm/country/united-states/? One last fact A senatorial snapshot ahead of the midterms: 25 states currently have a pair of Republican senators, 21 states have a pair of Democratic senators, and four have some combination of Republican, Democrat, and independent senators. This data is from before Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s passing. However, he was replaced by his sister, Darlene Graham, a fellow Republican.

A New Low View in browser They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but President Trump and his allies have found a new low: open bigotry against Muslims. The bar for what can shock has been raised steadily over the past decade, but even by Trump-era standards, remarks that the president made yesterday at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, are astonishing: a straightforward assertion that a Muslim candidate for office is a terrorist by virtue of his faith. Trump was campaigning for Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, when he attacked Rogers’s opponent, the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. “I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,” Trump said. “If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.” Trump also said that “anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane.” He added that if elected, El-Sayed “would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.” (In fact, the only time that members of Congress have had to pass through metal detectors in the Capitol was on the House side, as a security precaution after Trump supporters sacked it on January 6, 2021.) To be clear: El-Sayed has disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, and no one has produced any evidence that he has ties to the group. Neither has anyone produced any evidence that El-Sayed has ties to any jihadists or is one himself. If he did, the Justice Department would presumably be prosecuting him—it certainly hasn’t shied away from politicized cases under Trump. The president and anyone else are free to critique El-Sayed’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or any other policy matter, but that’s not what this is. Asking a candidate to disavow a foreign political group that has no American arm is a nonsensical and prejudiced thing to do, but Republicans have been trying hard in the past couple of weeks to draw some connection between El-Sayed and the group, despite a lack of evidence. (They have been assisted by allies in the press, including Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, whose staffers complained to Semafor that she is disproportionately focused on candidates such as El-Sayed because of her own views on Israel. CBS News called the report “baseless.”) Perhaps this is because they believe “Muslim Brotherhood” sounds shadowy and scary to voters. The new tack is also silly because the GOP previously spent months trying to connect El-Sayed to the Democratic Socialists of America, another group that he says he is not a member of. Historically, the Brotherhood, an Islamist organization, has typically clashed with socialists in the Muslim world. Trump’s idea of what a senator should be is an older white man. That’s not a guess—it’s what he said about Rogers, the Republican candidate. “I call him apple pie,” Trump said. “He’s like, perfect, this guy. He’s like central casting. He’s what your state is all about.” As I’ve written in the past, it’s not a dog whistle if everyone can hear it. Trump has also made light of El-Sayed’s full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, mocking the prevalence of Muhammad in Muslim names. (The president’s own middle name is John.) “Donald Trump and J. D. Vance, their whole campaign, Mike Rogers’s whole campaign, is to point at me and my name and my faith,” El-Sayed said in response at a rally yesterday evening. “But my name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas. My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your groceries. My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t see a doctor.” Trump’s latest remarks about El-Sayed are of a piece with a series of racist and Islamophobic remarks. Two frequent targets of late are Representative Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, and the Somali community in Minnesota. He has called Omar “garbage” and said that Somalia is “filthy, dirty, disgusting, dirty.” He has labeled Somalis “low-IQ” but also complained that they are highly effective grifters. Politicians allied with Trump are also getting in on the hate. Earlier this year, I wrote about a spree of bigoted remarks by GOP members of Congress. More recently, Representative Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, said that Somali Americans should assimilate or “go the hell back.” (He added that he wasn’t afraid of being called an Islamophobe.) And Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is in a tough reelection race, falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa, “supports Sharia law” because she received an endorsement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. You don’t have to think too hard to guess why CAIR opted to back someone running against Abbott. With this kind of talk, it’s no wonder that Muslim voters who backed Trump in 2024, largely out of frustration with the Biden administration’s policies toward Israel, are now angry and disillusioned, as The New York Times reports. (Anyone is entitled to cast a protest vote, but given Trump’s long record of anti-Muslim bigotry, those who lined up behind Trump shouldn’t be surprised.) Islamophobic rhetoric deserves condemnation on its own terms, but the attacks don’t just affect El-Sayed, Omar, or even Muslim communities in the United States. During the same speech, Trump—who has previously said that Jewish Democrats are “disloyal to Jewish people”—called for ostracizing any Jewish Michiganders who vote for El-Sayed. “Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” he said. “You should never speak to them again.” Once bigotry against one community enters the mainstream, it tends to spread quickly to other groups. Related: The firebrand A horrible throwback to the early 2000s

⁉️ Senate guessing game Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios Senate leaders could be guessing who will control the chamber well into November, thanks to a slew of tight races and state-specific voting rules. Why it matters: A GOP majority would ease the pressure on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to move quickly on nominations, while a Democratic majority would give Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer more leverage in the lame-duck session. If the chamber splits 50/50, leaders will have to start negotiating their power-sharing agreement. Zoom in: Four states could leave the majority in limbo. Alaska: Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) is trying to fend off former Rep. Mary Peltola (D). Alaska election results have taken weeks to finalize because of the vast state's transportation challenges, mail ballots and ranked-choice tabulation. The Trump Justice Department is preemptively trying to block results from being finalized if Sullivan narrowly loses. Maine's ranked-choice voting could lengthen the vote tallying if neither Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) nor Democratic nominee Troy Jackson gets more than 50% in the first round. Kansas' three-day grace period for mail-in ballots could delay results in the race between Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). It is far closer than expected. In Texas, a dragged-out recount could be coming. A candidate can request one if the margin is less than 10% of the winner's vote total — which is likely to happen between state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and state Rep. James Talarico (D). The candidate who requests it has to pay. The clock: Congress currently plans to leave for the holidays on Dec. 18. But if Republicans lose both the House and Senate, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) wants senators to stay in town through the holidays (yes, Thanksgiving and Christmas) to work on a massive GOP reconciliation package they can pass without Democratic support. The big picture: Congress has a long to-do list either way, including funding the government past Dec. 11, passing emergency defense spending and potentially raising the debt ceiling. It needs to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, Farm Bill and permitting reform, reauthorize the warrantless wiretap authority under FISA Section 702 and confirm nominations before they expire at the end of the year. The bottom line: "I'm guessing that's a possibility this year," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told reporters today about working in D.C. through the holiday recess. — Stef Kight

Suriname’s Saamaka tribe turns to mapping and documenting in effort to protect the Amazon rainforest Deep in Suriname’s Amazon rainforest, Navaldo Vola hacked through thick vegetation with a machete, leading a group of Saamaka men up a forested mountain in sweltering heat and swarms of horseflies. Read More.

Dollar General is sued by the FTC and 20 states for what's being described as deceptive pricing The Federal Trade Commission has sued the bargain chain Dollar General for what it characterized as “long-running deceptive pricing practices” by charging customers more once they reach the register than the prices that are displayed on shelves and in advertisements. Read More.

Microsoft offers a quarter of its global workforce voluntary buyouts as AI spending accelerates Microsoft has offered 60,000 employees, or about 27% of its global workforce, voluntary buyouts as the software giant spends heavily on artificial intelligence. Read More.

Trump failed to stop inflation. Now Republicans may pay the price in the midterm elections President Donald Trump would prefer that voters not worry about inflation. But it's hard for them to ignore. Read More. Trump administration asks Washington to set aside ballots from 400 voters it says may be noncitizens The Trump administration on Monday asked Washington state to set aside any ballots received from more than 400 people it suspects registered to vote without U.S. citizenship. Read More. US told Venezuelan authorities that opposition leader Machado should be allowed to return Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the Trump administration told Venezuela’s interim authorities “weeks and weeks ago” that opposition leader María Corina Machado should be allowed to return as the country moves ahead with preparing for elections next year. Read More. Trump heads to Mississippi for a midterm rally, and the Democrat he wants defeated is going, too President Donald Trump heads Monday to Mississippi, as he continues a closing midterm campaign blitz that highlights Republicans' challenges ahead of an election that could drastically shift power in Washington and statehouses across the country. Read More.

🏟️ 1 for the road: Happy "sports equinox" Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Happy equinox, sports fans. It's the one time a year when several major leagues — the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and WNBA — all have games on the same day. ⚾️ Highlights include: Game 3 of the World Series, with the Milwaukee Brewers holding a 2-0 series lead over the Tampa Bay Rays (8 p.m. ET, Fox). In the WNBA finals, the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries are tied 2-2 heading into Game 5 (8 p.m., USA/CNBC/Peacock). How to watch.

📺 Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza are teaming up with elections website Decision Desk HQ to host a live election night broadcast. More from Sara Fischer. Early Voting Shifts More than 30 million Americans have voted in this year's midterms so far, with Election Day one week away. In Texas, over 4 million ballots have been cast, exceeding half of the state's 2022 turnout. The figures are from the University of Florida's Election Lab; see how your state compares here. Voting methods are also shifting, particularly in parts of the South. In Georgia, roughly 95% of early votes have been cast in person, while mail ballot requests have fallen more than 45% from 2022. North Carolina has seen a similar split, recording 1.5 million in-person votes and about 60,000 mail ballots returned. Nationally, early votes are roughly even between in-person (15.4 million) and mail (15.1 million) as of this writing. Experts say the shift may reflect concerns about mail ballots arriving on time or being counted, as well as a return to prepandemic voting habits. A Postal Service rule in effect since December largely postmarks mail when it's processed rather than dropped off, potentially pushing some ballots past deadlines. See the 52 races that could flip Congress here.

🇮🇱 Israelis head to the polls tomorrow in an election that could upend Israeli politics and reset the country's strained relationships abroad. More from Barak Ravid. 🇮🇱 Netanyahu's moment of truth Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photos: Ilia Yefimovich/pool/AFP via Getty Images and Erik Marmor/Getty Images Axios' Barak Ravid writes from Tel Aviv: Israeli polls opened at 1 a.m. ET for one of the most consequential elections in the country's history — with rival camps warning that victory for the other would put Israel's future in jeopardy. Why it matters: The election is yet another referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership and the path he's taken the country down over the past four years. It's Israeli voters' first chance to hold Netanyahu accountable for the security failures that led to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks — or to reward him for what he claims were unprecedented military successes in the three years of war since. If Netanyahu and his far-right coalition win, they're likely to renew the war with Iran in an effort to topple its regime, intensify their crackdown on Israel's democratic institutions and move to end Netanyahu's corruption trial. 👀 Behind the scenes: Netanyahu spent weeks trying to persuade President Trump to give him a green light to strike Iran ahead of the elections. Trump did not go along. In the 72 hours before the elections, Netanyahu tried to order the Israel Defense Forces to take steps to lay the ground for a potential new military strike or take actions short of an overt attack, Israeli officials say. IDF chief of staff General Eyal Zamir refused to comply. He warned that such a strike could lead to a miscalculation that quickly escalated hostilities and potentially forced the elections to be called off, the officials said. The other side: Netanyahu's main opponent, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, ran on holding Netanyahu accountable for the Oct. 7 failure, forming a national commission of inquiry and drafting ultra-Orthodox men to strengthen the IDF after three years of war. How Israel's elections work.

🇧🇷 Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro is challenging the results of yesterday's presidential runoff election, setting the stage for a possible showdown with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro's legal pathway following Lula's decisive victory is unclear. Get the latest. ps:Of course he is! Just like his criminal friend will very shortly!!!!!

📕 Word of the year Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Dictionary.com named "maxxing" its 2026 Word of the Year, Axios' Josephine Walker reports. The word's explosive popularity reflects society's relentless drive to optimize everything. Dictionary Media Group director of lexicography Steve Johnson tells Axios that maxxing was an ideal pick because it's endlessly adaptable. Fitness enthusiasts are "proteinmaxxing," AI superfans are "tokenmaxxing" and the Trump administration says it's "deportationmaxxing." Read the announcement.

All Roads Lead to Byzantium? Have you ever thought deeply about maps? They depict real geographic places and thus appear objective, but they are ultimately representations, often embedded with the interests, values, and biases of the times in which they were created. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-rome/all-roads-lead-to-byzantium/?

A way out of Nazi Germany came with a catch: work on the Sabbath. A rabbi approved, on one condition, sealed with a handshake my grandfather would never forget. https://aish.com/the-handshake-that-built-generations/?

October 27, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Israelis are voting today in a national election that many see as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Follow our live coverage here. There’s more below. We also have six takeaways from a new memoir by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. But first, let’s take a look at next week’s midterm elections in the United States. Campaign signs outside an early voting site in North Carolina this week. Allison Joyce/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The final stretch Polling suggests Republicans may have a tough Tuesday next week as Americans vote in the midterm elections. That’s in part what brought President Trump to Mississippi, a state he won by about 23 points in 2024, to campaign last night for the incumbent G.O.P. senator. It also fueled Vice President JD Vance’s travels yesterday, first to ruby-red Montana to help a House candidate and then to the reliable Republican stronghold of Kansas to stump for Senator Roger Marshall. What’s going to happen next Tuesday? “This is as good a political environment as Democrats could ever wish,” the editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report told The Times, “and as bad as Republicans could ever imagine.” But a so-called blue wave is by no measure assured. Some competitive Senate races could swing toward the Republicans as they rally their most loyal voters to the polls. Democrats could eke out wins in red states but fail to do so in bluer ones. Everyone’s on edge. We’ll get the outcome the people who fill out the ballots provide. Polling ain’t voting. Map quest In some ways, it’s surprising to see so many races rated as tossups. Congressional districts are already often configured to make incumbents safe. At Trump’s insistence, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana again redrew their maps to help Republicans in recent years. That effort — countered by a gerrymander in California to help Democrats — was meant to prevent the heavy midterm losses that a sitting president’s party historically experiences. How odd are the new maps? My colleagues at The Upshot, journalists who specialize in analyzing data, used thousands of computer simulations to draw congressional maps in all 44 states with more than one district, this time without any consideration of partisanship or race. They were looking for fairness: maps that resemble the simulations. Wisconsin’s map is pretty fair, for instance. It favors Republicans 6 to 2 over Democrats because, while half of Wisconsinites may vote for Democrats, they’re clustered in just two regions in the state. The map in Texas, on the other hand, is far more brazenly drawn. You don’t even need the simulations to see how much the new map helps Republican chances. “On the north side of Austin, you can drive through five congressional districts in about 10 minutes,” my colleagues write. “In the suburbs of Dallas, there are voters drawn into districts that stretch hundreds of miles, including one to the New Mexico border.” These overwhelmingly benefit the right. Our party-blind simulations might have delivered a dozen additional competitive or Democratic-leaning districts in the state. The New York Times Tennessee provides a similar story. Republican lawmakers there cut up the Memphis and Nashville areas among multiple congressional districts and all but assured themselves a 9-to-0 map. That’s maybe no surprise in a vibrantly red state that Trump won by 30 points in 2024. But the “fair” map the simulations came up with drew separate districts for the two cities, both of which lean toward the Democrats. The New York Times And Illinois provides a terrific example of how redrawing a map may not provide as big of an advantage as desired. In 2021, state Democrats adopted a gerrymander with some truly awkward shapes — the 13th District there runs snakelike from East St. Louis through Springfield to Champaign, home of the University of Illinois. But The Times’s simulations suggest that the gains were modest. The neutral map the simulations created, for example, might replace the 13th with a more compact Republican-leaning district. But the simulations also show that Democrats might still be competitive in it. Explore the creative cartography here. Along with all of the rest of our election coverage, it’s free to read in The Times app for a limited time. Download the app today. More on the midterms The New York Times More than 100 candidates under the age of 29 filed to run for Congress this election cycle. The Times asked five of them why they’re running. Click above to watch. Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas, has taken about 350 trips outside the state, 25 of them abroad, with a taxpayer-funded security detail. A federal appeals court declined to set aside about 20,000 mail-in ballots in California that the Trump administration claimed had been given to noncitizens. Two former South Carolina governors, one Democrat and one Republican, endorsed Annie Andrews, the Democrat in an unexpectedly close Senate race there. Ask The Morning: Do you have questions about congressional maps? The latest polling? Other candidates or their campaigns? Send them to us. BRIDGE OUT In North Carolina. Allison Joyce for The New York Times Creeks and rivers carve through the mountains of western North Carolina, where hundreds of families rely on private bridges to get to their homes. Two years after flooding from Hurricane Helene swept many of those bridges away, hundreds of households are still missing a replacement, despite a $175 million program to rebuild them. As Eduardo Medina reports, broken bridges make life in that part of the state lonely and dangerous. No ambulance or fire truck can provide a rescue in the event of an emergency. Friends rarely visit. And walking across a steel beam set over a running river is difficult enough. Now imagine you’re 76. Meet the folks Eduardo met there — and see photographs of the crossings they make to get home. FREE TO READ An Apache helicopter during a training operation in Germany. Lena Mucha for The New York Times Big vs small: The U.S. military is training Apache helicopter pilots to shoot down drones. Celebrity whisperer: Jonathan Van Meter has gotten Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga to confide in him. How does he do it? Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday — for the second day in a row! — was about people who live on the world’s most remote inhabited island. U.S.S. Enterprise: Walter Koenig played Pavel Chekov, the baby-faced Russian navigator, in the original “Star Trek.” He died at 90. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Federal prosecutors brought new charges against James Comey, the Trump critic and former F.B.I. director, accusing him of leaking national security information to The New York Times a decade ago. A Manhattan judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully fired Comey’s daughter Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said he is pushing out all transgender troops. But in secret proceedings, Navy and Marine Corps boards have been voting to let them stay. Around the World The New York Times Benjamin Netanyahu has pitched himself in the pivotal election in Israel as the best person to manage relations with the United States. Is he? In the video above, the national security reporter Mark Mazzetti explains his complex recent history with Washington. Click to watch. Netanyahu pushed for an attack on Iran before the election, but the military’s chief of staff resisted, according to officials. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan made a rare joint visit to Iran’s capital to try to stave off the next wave of the conflict. Stocks in Brazil plummeted after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election. A convicted murderer in Australia lost a lawsuit for the right to eat Vegemite, the country’s polarizing salty spread, in prison. Artificial Intelligence The A.I. company Anthropic pulled back the curtain on its business in paperwork filed before its initial public stock offering. Its debut could be Wall Street’s biggest ever. The company has grown extremely fast. And it has committed up to $807 billion in contracts for data centers, chips and computing power, many of which cannot be canceled. (See six more eye-popping numbers that explain Anthropic’s business.) Its competitors are trying to raise big money, too. Meta announced it could raise up to $95 billion from selling stock. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, said it had borrowed $40 billion for data center chips. Other Big Stories Scientists now know that Neanderthals shared many of the sophisticated abilities of Homo sapiens. So why are we the only humans left? Jay-Z, who was in charge of picking the headliner for the Super Bowl halftime show next February, chose himself. OPINIONS Americans can defy Trump in next week’s midterms by voting in candidates who will check his overreach, the editorial board writes. Israel’s international “standing” is not at stake in the country’s elections today, Bret Stephens argues. What is on the line, he writes, is Israelis’ bond with one another. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now TODAY’S NUMBER Laura Lewis 61 — That is the percentage of time chimpanzees who are friends steal slices of pineapple from one another, according to new research. With mere acquaintances, it’s 70 percent. The study is the first to find that primates can prioritize friendships over treats. Check it out. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Milwaukee Brewers are one win from their first World Series championship after bludgeoning the Tampa Bay Rays, 10-1, in Game 3. W.N.B.A.: The Golden State Valkyries are also one win from a championship after a 64-55 home win over the Atlanta Dream in Game 5 of the league finals. Game 6 is midday Thursday. RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Here’s a classic Melissa Clark stir-fry: sesame chicken with cashews, dates and scallions. It’s the dates that Clarkify it: a touch of earthy sweetness against the savory sesame sauce. Five stars. BACK ON CAMPUS Chad Harbach’s new novel, “The Brightness,” is a sequel, 15 years in the making, to his 2011 best seller “The Art of Fielding.” Dwight Garner has our review: Fifteen years is a long time. Fifteen years ago, Taylor Swift was a country singer and Prince William still had hair. Yet “The Brightness” is so full of life, surprises, close observation, spiraling and interlocking plots, sharp new characters wheeling into view, striking set pieces, overlapping literary allusions and neo-Updikean craftsmanship that one can feel, on nearly every page, where every month of that time went. More on culture Jake Gyllenhaal, Seth Rogen and many others spoke to The Times for our oral history of “Donnie Darko,” the Richard Kelly cult classic that has its 25th anniversary this week. There’s a new Kacey Musgraves track, “Weekend in Texas.” Here’s a playlist with that and nine other new songs we’re hyped about. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS NYT Wirecutter Stop your television from listening to you. Unless you want it to. The privacy experts at Wirecutter explain your options. Live a longer, more active life. Start surfing. Play analog Connections with our new Connections book, curated by the digital game’s editor, Wyna Liu. You get (or can gift, if you’re starting your holiday shopping) more than 100 puzzles, along with tips from Wyna to improve your strategy. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was nightly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson

THIS DAY IN HISTORY October 27 1904 New York City subway opens On the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City’s new rapid transit system opens for business: the subway. Today, the New York City subway is the largest rapid transit system in the world by number of stations. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 1990s 1994 Justice Department announces U.S. prison population exceeds 1 million Arts & Entertainment 1932 Poet Sylvia Plath is born 1966 ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ debuts Cold War 1962 The United States and Soviet Union step back from brink of nuclear war Crime 1940 Mafia boss John Gotti is born 1961 Appeals court upholds Chuck Berry’s conviction Inventions & Science 1873 Joseph Glidden applies for a patent on his barbed wire design 2006 Chick-fil-A founder takes last Ford Taurus Religion 1659 Quakers executed for religious beliefs Sports 2004 Red Sox win first championship since 1918 U.S. Presidents 1858 Theodore Roosevelt is born

Judge: Trump DOJ illegally fired ex-FBI director’s daughter, Maurene Comey, as a federal prosecutor NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of ex-FBI Director and Trump critic James Comey, as a Justice Department prosecutor, a judge ruled Monday in a sharp rebuke of the administration’s authority to terminate career federal employees it dislikes. https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-maurene-comey-trump-be7de14f705def3bb6eeadafa7e60805? Trump administration attempting to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey again WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is attempting to prosecute James Comey for what it calls a decade-old leak of classified information, an effort the former FBI director’s lawyers immediately dismissed as legally invalid and outside the legal time limit for when the Justice Department can file a criminal indictment. https://apnews.com/article/comey-trump-fbi-director-prosecution-8479bdbf1bcdeeae313b453a3cd0c544?