“Mary Peltola, Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate, has paused campaigning ahead of the US midterm elections after sustaining ‘minor injuries’ in a car crash. Peltola, 53, and her family were travelling to an event on Saturday when the vehicle they were in was hit by another driver, her campaign said in a statement. She is running in one of the most closely watched races in the elections, which take place on 3 November – one that could help decide the balance of power in government. Peltola has rescheduled campaign events ‘as she takes time to recover’ on the advice of medical professionals, her campaign manager, Cheryl Bruce, said in a statement. ‘Mary and her family sustained minor injuries but are in good spirits,’ Bruce said.” (10/26/26)
“The Michigan Senate race between the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, and his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, is this year’s most important election. It’s significant, on a number of levels, not the least of which is that El-Sayed is an Arab American Muslim of Egyptian descent. Prior to this, we’ve had four Arab Americans elected to the US Senate (former Majority Leader George Mitchell [D-ME], James Abourezk [D-SD], James Abdnor [R-SD], and John Sununu [R-NH]), none of them Muslim. If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim in the Senate. This is a breakthrough that hasn’t been lost on Republicans and President Trump, who have made a determined effort to exploit it at every turn. They’ve done TV ads alleging that El-Sayed’s mother was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s.” [editor’s note: The headline is likely correct, but maybe not for the reasons given here – SAT] (10/26/26)
“Pope Leo XIV will proceed with his planned Nov. 6-17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, after doctors determined there are no medical reasons preventing him from traveling three weeks after lung cancer surgery, the Vatican confirmed Monday. The Vatican press office said the pope’s recovery continues to progress in line with favorable assessments from his medical team. It also confirmed the pope is keeping the already ambitious trip program with no announced changes. Surgeons on Oct. 13 removed a lobe where the nodule later diagnosed as malignant was located, in the first major health event of Leo’s 17-month pontificate. The surgery confirmed he had adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer. Since returning to the Vatican, Leo has gradually resumed his activities while adjusting his schedule to prioritize recovery and periods of rest, the statement said.” (10/26/26)
“Rep. Ilhan Omar [sic] [D-MN] is set to share the stage with far-left streamer Hasan Piker on Monday night despite mounting opposition from fellow Minnesota Democrats, some of whom have publicly urged the congresswoman to cancel the appearance just eight days before the midterm elections. Rep. Angie Craig [D-MN] has called Piker’s rhetoric ‘polarizing and dangerous’ and said embracing him is ‘a mistake’, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s gubernatorial campaign called a number of his past statements ‘reckless and unacceptable’. Other Democratic officials and party groups have gone further, calling on Omar and state Sen. Omar Fateh, who is hosting the sold-out Minneapolis event, to cancel the appearance. The controversy is exposing a divide among Minnesota Democrats in the closing stretch of the midterms over whether Piker’s enormous following among younger progressives outweighs the political liability of his past rhetoric.” (10/26/26)
“US singer Chris Brown has avoided jail after striking a man twice in the head with a glass tequila bottle in a London nightclub. The R&B star was given an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, over the attack at private members’ club Tape in Mayfair, in the early hours of 19 February 2023. Brown’s vocal coach, rapper Omololu Akinlolu, who joined the attack, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. Both men, who had pleaded guilty to affray, were also ordered to pay £1,500 costs. Judge Tony Baumgartner said Brown’s use of the glass bottle to hit the victim twice over the head ‘was plainly dangerous’, adding that the violence of the attack was ‘intense’. The sentence means Brown will not be imprisoned unless he commits another offence during the 12-month period of suspension.” (10/26/26)
“Philadelphia parents noticed troubling signs in their children’s social studies curriculum and asked to see all the materials. They couldn’t get them. Now those materials have been brought to light in a congressional investigation. A new majority staff report from the House Education and Workforce Committee documents how a small group of school personnel turned Philadelphia’s social studies curriculum into a political platform for extremist causes. When those parents approached my organization, the North American Values Institute (NAVI), asking for help, we tried to find out what the district was teaching but we also hit a wall. Eventually, a teacher shared the curriculum with us with considerable trepidation. She asked that we protect her anonymity. That alone should give us pause: A teacher feared sharing public school instructional materials with people seeking to understand what children were learning.” (10/26/26)
“President Donald Trump on Friday said he told his administration to file its lawsuit to block certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, kicking off what many fear could become a lengthy battle between the government and states over certifying an election where the president’s party is struggling. ‘I’m the one that said do it,’ Trump told reporters as he landed for a campaign rally in Florida. The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, centers on one of the president’s longstanding complaints in the Senate race — the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan …. The second Sullivan, who is Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he is a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.” (10/26/26)
“The media coverage of the contest between incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, is in one respect surprising. That a mayoral contest, which may result in Bass’s ouster, in America’s second-largest metropolis has drawn widespread coverage is no surprise, particularly since Raman’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America appears to make the election one more test of the extent of socialism’s rise, particularly in urban America. But that the coverage has often focused on the internal divisions within DSA between those locals that prioritize the kinds of mass outreach inherent in electoral politics, and other locals and the organization’s national committee, which have a more sectarian focus on ideological purity, is indeed surprising, at least in publications that hardly qualify as ‘left’. ” (10/26/26)
“Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed recently tried to shut down questions about his family’s documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and his own reluctance to draw clear lines on radical Islamist networks by invoking John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. Kennedy faced suspicion that, as a Catholic, he might answer to the Vatican rather than the Constitution. El-Sayed’s comparison does not hold. He is not being targeted simply for being Muslim. He is facing legitimate questions about national security, ideology, and fitness for the Senate that any candidate with this record would face. His refusal to answer them directly is the problem.” (10/23/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“There are Polymarket ads in fortune cookies. / And pop-ups in our prayers. / There are paywalls on the monasteries, / and the monks are millionaires. / Well little Johnny’s gone to war. / He joined the McMarines. / The Iranians must be liberated / and blown to smithereens. / Light a candle in the chapel, John, / and pray to Western God, / and listen to the homily / the preacher wrote with Claude: / ‘Oh Western God, please guide our drones,’ the pious Johnny prayed. / ‘That we may safely bomb their schools / and turn their children gray.’ / The candle disappeared from sight / a minute into Johnny’s prayer, / and was replaced with hologram ads / for DraftKings and Wayfair.” (10/25/26)
