President Donald Trump announced a major development in the Russo-Ukraine war Sunday morning, one he said was “effective immediately.”
“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”
Despite the celebratory nature of Trump’s announcement, the president had made similar claims in the past, only to be rebuked on the world stage. In September, Trump claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to avoid striking energy infrastructure targets only for Ukraine to strike “one of Russia’s key oil industry facilities” days later.
The strike, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proudly boasted about on social media, was the largest drone attack on the Moscow region since Russia’s 2022 invasion and killed at least two people and injured 20 others, BBC reported.
Critics have accused Trump of making similar announcements to “manipulate markets,” which have proven responsive to the president’s various claims regarding global conflicts.
The estranged brother of top Trump aide Natalie Harp says their family fell apart after their father’s 2020 suicide. He says a dispute over how to talk about the death drove the rupture, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
Preston Harp, 38, told the Post’s Terrence McCoy that their father, Bob Harp, died by suicide at their Irvine, California, home on July 17, 2020. He provided an autopsy report to the Post. Preston said Natalie called him that morning about “an emergency with their dad.”
Preston said his mother, Jill, and Natalie preferred to keep the cause of death private and tell people Bob had died in his sleep.
“I just said, ‘I’m going to say what the police said,’” Preston told the Post.
According to Preston, that disagreement was the moment the family “finally broke apart.” It had already been strained by political differences. The siblings have not spoken since, he said.
Natalie Harp's father, Bob Harp, a 61-year-old business professor at the Christian Biola University, reportedly had political differences with Natalie. A family friend further told the Post that the pandemic isolation weighed on Bob, an extrovert. The family had locked down strictly to protect Natalie, who had been treated for bone cancer.
Days before Bob’s death, Preston stopped by the house to repay a loan. “Listen, I’m not doing okay,” he recalled his father saying.
Preston said some relatives have accused him of lying, and he has lost touch with most of the extended family.
Natalie and Jill Harp didn’t respond to the Post’s requests for comment. The White House didn’t contest Preston’s account but didn’t make Natalie available or provide a statement.
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.
President Donald Trump delivered his rally speech in Tennessee Saturday to entire sections of empty seats at the F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville, new video and photos of the rally revealed.
“President Trump’s crowd on a Saturday afternoon in Clarksville, Tennessee, near the Kentucky border, deep in the heart of Trump country,” wrote New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh in a social media post on X, alongside a video showing entire seating sections devoid of attendees.
Reuters photographer Seth Herald also captured a photo featuring “a section of empty seats” at the arena while Trump delivered his rally speech, which was disrupted within minutes by a heckler.
Trump’s rally in Clarksville comes just weeks ahead of the midterms. Republicans have injected an “unprecedented flood of late ad spending” in “longtime Republican states and districts,” with Republicans increasingly distancing themselves from the president as his approval ratings continue to plummet to career lows amid his deeply unpopular war against Iran.
Near the beginning of the rally, Trump complained about what he argued was inadequate press coverage of his rally sizes, an increasingly frequent grievance. An analysis by The Daily Beast’s investigative unit PunchUp found that Trump’s latest rallies have been held in venues much smaller than those he filled during his first presidential campaign, and with crowds as much as 75% smaller.
Trump lashed out Monday at reports of thin crowds, insisting on Truth Social that one of his recent arenas was “totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections.” The New York Times had reported “swaths of empty seats” at his rally in Mobile, Alabama, where he drew about 8,000 people to a 10,000-seat basketball arena. In 2015, he packed more than 30,000 into a football stadium in the same city.
President Trump’s crowd on a Saturday afternoon in Clarksville, Tennessee, near the Kentucky border, deep in the heart of Trump country. https://t.co/aAU4dXXf7V — Shawn McCreesh (@ShawnMcCreesh) October 10, 2026
The Trump administration pushed a key U.S. ally to carry out strikes on Iran in a bid to “avoid political fallout” before the midterms, according to an explosive report from The Jerusalem Post published on Saturday — a report that two U.S. officials denied within hours of its publication.
Citing a report from the Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper Maariv, The Jerusalem Post details a supposed pressure campaign from the Trump administration to urge Israel into carrying out strikes on Iran “over the past two weeks.”
“Washington wanted Israel to assume the political risks of a military operation ahead of the US midterm elections, rather than US President Donald Trump,” The Jerusalem Post’s report reads, citing Maariv’s report.
“American officials reportedly believed Israel would be interested in striking Iran before its own elections, while a US operation ahead of the midterms could have negative political consequences for Trump.”
Trump’s approval among Americans has plummeted to career lows in large part due to his deeply unpopular war against Iran, which continues to keep fuel prices elevated. On Saturday, the average cost of diesel fuel was $6.28, around 25 cents lower than the all-time high reached late last month. The average cost of regular fuel was $4.37 on Saturday, far above the $3.10 recorded a year ago.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the Trump administration had since “backed down from its demand, at least for now,” citing Maariv’s reporting. Two U.S. officials and an Israeli official denied the report, according to Axios’ Barak Ravid.
Trump has ramped up threats to resume strikes on Iran in recent weeks, including as recently as Friday during a rally in New York, warning that he may opt to “finish it off” if Iran refused to accept a deal.
Two U.S. officials and one Israeli official denied this report and told me the U.S. didn't ask Israel to initiate a strike against Iran before the elections — Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 10, 2026
Even Trafalgar Group, a pollster known for its Republican-friendly results, now has Democrat James Talarico leading Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race.
Trafalgar’s chief pollster, Robert Cahaly, released the survey on Saturday. Talarico leads Paxton 47.1 percent to 43.6 percent, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 1.8 percent and 7.6 percent undecided. The poll surveyed 1,086 likely voters from Oct. 6 to 8 and has a 2.9-point margin of error.
Election watchers were stunned.
“THERE AINT NO WAY. TRAFALGAR?” wrote elections researcher Joe, who posts as @electionsjoe.
“Wait! TRAFALGAR has Talarico up?” wrote Democratic strategist Eric Michael Garcia.
“Oh wow,” wrote columnist Molly Jong-Fast.
Armin Thomas, a co-founder of the election analysis site Split Ticket, suggested that Trafalgar might be “trying to engineer a comeback narrative for Paxton in the last week.”
“If they can’t get Paxton to beat a guy who was dead for two weeks, maybe he really is done!” he wrote.
That was a jab at Talarico’s recent absence from the campaign trail. Donald Trump tried to turn it into a “MISSING IN ACTION” attack. The Washington Post reported Friday that Talarico has since returned after being sick.
According to one tracker, Talarico’s lead has grown 2.3 points since Trafalgar’s September poll. Former Biden adviser Neera Tanden noted that the gain came even as GOP super PACs flooded the airwaves.
“If this poll is accurate (and who knows with Trafalgar) it would mean that the Talarico’s lead is expanding as the Senate GOP superpacs have unloaded like $100 million in ads on the air,” Tanden wrote. “Perhaps their donors realize they are burning their cash.”
The poll is the latest bad news for Paxton. A CNN analysis this week found him trailing by as much as 6 points in three separate polls.
Donald Trump was still talking at his rally in Syracuse, New York, when some of his supporters started walking out, according to a new video report.
MeidasTouch posted video from inside the venue. It shows a steady stream of attendees heading toward the exits while Trump spoke from the stage.
“THEY’VE SEEN ENOUGH: Trump rallygoers in Syracuse start leaving early while he’s still speaking,” the outlet wrote. The clip has drawn more than 128,000 views.
Journalist Luke Radel, who was at the rally, had his own complaint.
“They just charged me $6 for a standard Aquafina bottle of water at the Trump rally in Syracuse, by the way,” Radel wrote. “Some of the attendees are holding signs that say ‘LOWER PRICES’ and I’m ready to pick one up myself.”
The rally comes as Republicans struggle with voter anger over high prices three weeks before the midterms.
Adam Cochran, a policy consultant with more than 300,000 followers, offered a darker theory for the early exits. He didn’t provide evidence for it.
“They are paying people, seniors and low income families,” Cochran wrote late Friday. “They pay a hourly rate to a cap starting at waiting time, but Trump is often late. They don’t extend the pay and so these people walk out.”
“Months ago they walked out because they were done with Trump,” he added. “Now it’s because they aren’t even real supporters to begin with.”
On Saturday morning, a few hours after a late-night Truth Social rant about losing the Peace Prize, the president posted about it again. This time he misspelled it.
“I settled 8 WARS, am close to ending or settling 2 more, got all of the Israeli hostages back, including the final 28, both living and dead, had hundreds of hostages, from countries all over the World, released and sent back home, won a war in Venezuela, and captured the violent dictator who so viciously ran that country,” Trump wrote at 8:04 a.m. Eastern.
He added that he had stopped Iran “from obtaining a Nuclear Weapon — AND MUCH MORE!”
“Yet, with all of that I, or the United States of America, did not get the Noble Peace Prize. WOW!”
His first post went up Friday at 11:39 p.m. Eastern. That one ran nearly 600 words, called the committee’s choice “an indelible stain on Norway,” and dismissed the winner, former International Criminal Court judge Navi Pillay, as someone “who nobody has ever heard of.”
He’s getting little sympathy. CNN reported Friday that Trump’s quest for the prize “is now the butt of the joke.”
The Nobel committee praised Pillay “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.” Last month, Trump urged countries to quit the ICC.
Hours after the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2026 Peace Prize to former International Criminal Court judge Navi Pillay, the president posted a nearly 600-word rant on Truth Social at 11:39 p.m. Eastern on Friday. He called the decision “an indelible stain on Norway, one that will never be forgotten.”
“This is the woman who received the Nobel Peace Prize over the Great United States of America, whose Representative, ME, settled eight Wars, and many other things,” Trump wrote. “I know nothing about this woman, and neither does anyone else!”
He then argued he’d been shortchanged several times over.
“In actuality, I should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1,” he wrote, before listing the eight conflicts he claims to have ended. “Egypt and Ethiopia” made the list, even though the two countries haven’t been at war. So did “Israel and Iran,” with his own administration still fighting Iran.
Trump also said last year’s winner, María Corina Machado, had “stated to the Media when she gave me her Nobel Prize of last year” that he “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than any person that has ever received it.”
Pillay is an 85-year-old South African jurist. Before serving on the ICC, she defended Nelson Mandela and other opponents of apartheid, according to Reuters. Trump dismissed her as “a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of.”
He finished with a shot at the committee.
“The Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of Radical Ideologues who are Anti-Democracy, and Enemies of Civilization!”
The Nobel committee called international law “under tremendous pressure” in its citation. Last month, Trump urged countries to leave the ICC, Reuters reported.
Ex-prosecutor Ron Filipkowski responded to the long-winded post, writing, "Donnie having a late night cry."
The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children came out swinging at Donald Trump’s Cabinet Thursday.
Ashley St. Clair skewered Trump's Defense Secretary's latest announcement, along with the actions of the rest of his administration, during a question-and-answer session after one of the first screenings of a new, highly critical documentary about the world's richest man that's simply titled “Musk.”
“Absurd and ridiculous,” St. Clair declared. “It’s trailer park behavior, honestly.”
St. Clair made this claim to audiences at the Angelika Theater in New York City on the movie’s opening night.
Eager New Yorkers leaned in as St. Clair, a reformed MAGA influencer, shared her scathing views on Trump’s administration — and their dependence on Musk.
St. Clair was flanked by bodyguards as she spoke to an audience that had been scanned and searched before being allowed to enter.
But she let herself erupt when moderator Molly Jong-Fast asked for comment on Musk's "blatant and strange" decision last week to block Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of his children, on X — apparently after dumping her.
“Simultaneously, Pete Hegseth is announcing Elon is going to lead the future of war — as your baby mamas are hitting the timeline," fumed St. Clair. "It is just so absurd and ridiculous — and the fact that the party of family values has embraced this?"
The crowd erupted in applause.
They'd spent the past four hours making quite different sounds as they watched the movie's premiere.
There were horrified gasps, sad sighs and groaning laughter as viewers heard about a Russian who spat on Musk’s shoe, a petty revenge moment targeting former President Joe Biden and the living trans daughter of Musk's that he declared to be dead.
Alex Gibney, the film’s Oscar-winning director, spent four years on the movie, digging through video, legal documents and interviews with Musk’s closest associates.
He summed up the movie in a few words Thursday night.
“It’s a comedy that turns to farce and ends in horror,” he said.
The movie also showed viewers images of a woman's dead body after she was fatally struck by a Tesla on "autopilot," and of a few of the 14 million children predicted to die of starvation and HIV because of cuts the world’s richest man made to USAID.
St. Clair, who is currently engaged in fraught legal battles with Musk involving their two-year-old son, Romulus, revealed whom in the trillionaire's orbit she hates most, what caused her to turn her back on Musk — and what gives her hope for the future.
Her most hated was Musk’s mormon "fixer" Jared Birchall, whom she said tried to bully her into signing away her rights just after having given birth.
“I described him as a demon," St. Clair said. “I hold more contempt for him than many other people because of the role he plays in harassing not only me, but the other mothers.”
St. Clair then shared that her ultimate break from Musk stemmed from the way she saw him treat another mother of his children on X — a mother who has publicly begged to have her child back: musician Claire Boucher, known as Grimes.
"He just said, 'I'm blocking you,' and blocked her," St. Clair said. “I could feel her pain as a mother, just deeply, instinctively."
As for hope, St. Clair argued Musk’s greatest investment has been made in the pursuit of praise for himself. She argued that gave the public a valuable tool to fight him — scorn.
“The through line here is how much Elon tries to control the narrative and manipulate the public perception, she said. "When he is investing so heavily in the populace, that means the populace holds an immense amount of power."
Virginia's Arlington County is suing the Trump administration to stop President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch. According to the county’s lawsuit, the structure wouldn’t just be a monument.
“Using the Arch to store large stockpiles of ammunition and as a staging point for drones and snipers, so close to commuters and tourists, will dramatically worsen these public-safety harms and the risk of accidents,” county attorneys wrote in the complaint filed on Thursday, according to the Hill's reporting.
The arch would stand at Memorial Circle, between Arlington Memorial Bridge and Arlington National Cemetery. That’s more than twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial, according to a Thursday press release from Democracy Forward, which is representing the county along with the county attorney’s office.
The suit says the National Park Service skipped the “hard look” at environmental impacts that federal law requires. It asks a court to halt “the agency’s feverish pace toward construction,” The New York Times reported. The Park Service has already acknowledged that the arch would “adversely affect” the view between the cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, including from John F. Kennedy’s grave, according to the Times.
“Enough is enough,” Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in the press release.
“At a time when millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet, we don’t need vanity projects,” added Democracy Forward CEO Skye Perryman.
The National Capital Planning Commission is set to take a final vote Nov. 5, two days after the midterms, the Times reported.
President Donald Trump was advised by Tina Peters, a convicted former Colorado election clerk, to seize ballots nationwide, according to her attorney, who says Trump won't "relinquish control again."
Kyle Clark, an anchor at Denver's 9NEWS, reported Thursday that Peters met with Trump at the White House on Monday, citing former Justice Department official Ed Martin.
Clark said Peters' attorney, Peter Ticktin, "hinted at the potential for civil war" in an interview last week with Colorado podcaster Joe Oltmann.
"The plan that Peters is pitching, according to her attorney Peter Ticktin, is to have the Trump administration seize ballots across America and conduct a hand recount," Clark told viewers.
"It's a good plan, and I do think that something like that is probably gonna happen," Ticktin told Oltmann.
"In the event that we have this kind of a disaster and everything goes wrong and the vote is crazy and the senatorial races put enough there to remove the president and the vice president, if that nightmare should come true, Donald Trump is not going to relinquish control again," Ticktin said.
"So he's got nothing to lose. The nation has nothing to lose. It's better, if we're going to have a civil war of any sort, that it'd be marching off with our side and all of the armaments," Ticktin added.
Oltmann, who has called for the execution of Colorado's top Democrats, then said he is not afraid to die, Clark reported. Clark also cited Oltmann's past statements that "violence is going to be necessary" and "there are targets."
Martin, who left the Justice Department this year to do legal work on upcoming elections, disclosed Peters' Oval Office visit Monday on the conservative network Real America's Voice, Colorado Newsline reported.
"And so when Tina Peters, you know, famous Colorado clerk, was in the Oval Office today, just two hours ago, talking about this question, the president's taking it seriously," Martin told the network. "If the Congress won't pass the SAVE America Act, and they won't, then the president's gonna have to do what he's gonna do."
"And it is not a local issue when it's national security, and it's clearly national security," Martin added.
The SAVE America Act would require voters nationwide to show documents proving their citizenship, according to Newsline.
An unnamed source confirmed the Monday meeting to ABC News, Newsline reported. The White House does "not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened," spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Adrienne Mazzone, a publicist for Ticktin, told Newsline that he cannot discuss or confirm matters he must keep private between himself and his client.
Peters, a Republican and former Mesa County clerk, was convicted in 2024 of multiple felonies for her role in a security breach of her office's election equipment, Newsline reported. Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) cut her prison sentence earlier this year, and the Colorado Department of Corrections released her in June.
Clark said "anyone could have seen this coming a mile away" when Polis shortened her sentence. Clark added that Polis left out a standard line in the letter granting the shorter sentence, which says the inmate had taken accountability, shown remorse and would be successful upon release.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in a statement to Newsline that Peters and Trump "are election deniers who have repeatedly lied to the American people."
"Coloradans can rest assured knowing that we've so far defeated Trump's unlawful attempts to influence election administration, and we will fight any attempt to interfere with Colorado elections," Griswold said.
A massively untapped voting bloc made up of millions of Americans — and which skews blue — is being mobilized in a frantic effort to deliver a decisive blow against Republicans next month.
Historically, of an estimated six-and-a-half million voting-age Americans living outside the country, only a tiny portion vote. In the United Kingdom, for example, the U.S. government’s Federal Voting Assistance Program shows only 3.8 percent of nearly 300,000 eligible voters cast ballots in the last midterms.
This year, however, promises to be different. According to a wing of the Democratic Party dedicated to organizing the overseas electorate, those living outside the States won't stay silent about what's happening back home this year.
“We are absolutely seeing engagement like we’ve never seen before in a midterm election year,” Netherlands resident Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the international chair of Democrats Abroad, told Raw Story.
And Jasper Lee, who heads the Australian branch of the group, said, “We hear a lot of anger about the things that Trump is doing."
“Americans who live here, like Australians who live here, are mad. … I expect, quite frankly, to do twice as well as in 2018, and 2018 was already pretty fantastic for us. We had a blue wave. I’m seeing people who aren’t normally interested in [voting], and there is a lot of energy.”
In the 2024 presidential election, there were 806,173 Americans registered to vote from overseas, not including 541,871 uniformed service members and their families, according to the Election Assistance Commission.
Indicators show that number is expected to be much higher this year. And, according to Democrats Abroad's Global Fundraising Director Julia Bryan, "We are the bluest voting constituency."
Lee said the number of voters his group helped in Australia last year doubled compared to the equivalent election year four years earlier.
He said Democrats Abroad Australia is on track to bring out a much greater increase this year compared to four years ago.
“We have these solid groups of people who we see every year who are always voting, but the group of people we’re seeing the change in is the people who have been away from the U.S. for a really long time, for who voting was an extra thing for them to do and they couldn’t justify it to themselves in the past," he said.
“Now they're seeing what’s going on and they’re saying they actually do want to make the effort, for the first time sometimes in many decades.”
“It’s becoming increasingly blatantly obvious that Trump is unable to govern,” said Freya Proudman, secretary of the Democrats Abroad committee in the United Kingdom.
She said expats living in that country have been bombarded by international news about Trump’s latest antics — and also have interactions with Brits, many of whom are appalled by what the U.S. president was doing.
“Americans abroad are really plugged in,” she said. "They want to make a difference. … I think sometimes living outside of your country makes you feel even more proud to be from your country.”
She added, “I think people also make comparisons between their country and then what they see back home. So, for example, the cost of eggs, right? We know what the cost of eggs in the UK is, and we look back in the U.S. and we think, ‘Oh my goodness, this is the affordability crisis. This is out of control.’
“ … So when you’re able to make those direct comparisons and see, wow, how out of control it is in America, like how badly managed the country is, how corrupt things are, that does make more Americans abroad aware of the situation. And people are driven more than ever.”
With more than 1,000 volunteers worldwide, Democrats Abroad has been seeking out Americans by any means necessary — with stands at universities, American bookshops, farmers markets and anywhere else they might find an expat community. In Austria, movie theaters featured an Odyssey-themed ad specifically aimed at Americans.
Eligible voters are given advice on their rights, how to ensure they register and receive ballots, and how best to return them.
That has been badly needed this year as Trump’s antics have instilled confusion — and uncertainty — into the system, said McDevitt-Pugh.
Among them were his push to disqualify mail-in ballots that were postmarked by election day but received later — a move that was shot down by the Supreme Court. The SAVE Act would also make overseas voting extremely difficult because it requires voters to register in person — a major obstacle for those not in the U.S. That act has stalled in the Senate.
There are also several executive orders targeting mail-in voting that are still being challenged in court.
“There’s been a lot of concern for our voters this year, and actually even starting in 2024 when Trump was running as a candidate,” McDevitt-Pugh said.
“Obviously we have to use the mail service, so it was very concerning and intimidating for our voters to realize that there were all these unknown things going on with the mail service, that the postal service might be doing things that would impede them from voting, that the courts were involved.
“That is part of the aim of this kind of activity. Whether or not it works, it really causes people to be very confused. We had a lot of people asking, are they going to be able to vote?”
The impact of overseas vote on American democracy has been demonstrated to be massive. In 2020, the Democrats' margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes. There were 18,435 overseas votes, though the party breakdown is not known. Similarly, in Georgia the same year, the state swung blue by a margin of victory of just 11,779 votes, with 5 million cast. Americans abroad mailed in 18,475 ballots.
“Those four or five days from election day until they called the election, everybody was watching the votes ticking up in Georgia,” said McDevitt-Pugh.
Donald Trump went after Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico late Wednesday night. He claimed, without evidence, that the state representative had gone "MISSING IN ACTION."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, upon information and belief, James TalaFREAKo, who is running for the United States Senate in Texas, is MISSING IN ACTION!" Trump wrote on Truth Social at 11:22 p.m. Eastern. "No one has seen him for an extended period of time. Where is he? What is wrong with him? Bad rumors are coming out."
Trump didn't say what the rumors were or where they came from.
He then demanded that Talarico "immediately report to a Debate Stage" against Republican nominee Ken Paxton. Trump called Paxton "ready, willing, and able, one of the best Attorney Generals in the Country," and said he "will soon be, hopefully, a United States Senator representing the Great People of Texas!"
The "hopefully" is notable. Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than three decades, but polling suggests it is possible this time around.
The post landed the same day Axios published leaked audio of Paxton privately lamenting the Iran war and gas prices to donors and lobbyists. "I don't make the decisions," Paxton said in the September meeting, according to the outlet. Axios called it "a candid admission from a close Trump ally about the challenging environment Republicans face this cycle."
Trump signed off the post the way he often does: "Thank you for your attention to this matter."
