President Donald Trumpreturns to the campaign trail on Sunday with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, Republican-leaning Farm Belt states where his party is fighting to hold US Senate seats, two days before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
Trump, who spent Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of campaigning across multiple states, won Iowa by double digits in 2024. But polls show Democrats tied with or leading Republicans in many of the state’s races, and Trump’s approval among rural Americans fell to a new low of 45% in October, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Kansas, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, is also facing an unexpectedly close race.
Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are on the ballot on Tuesday. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and a narrow edge in the House. Losing either chamber would let Democrats block Trump’s agenda for his final two years in office and launch investigations of an administration that has so far faced largely compliant Republican majorities.
More than 52 million Americans have already voted in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, a record for a midterm and up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in 2022.
LEGAL FIGHTS
As Trump campaigns, his administration is pressing a criminal investigation in Alaska’s pivotal Senate race and said on Saturday it would likely take its fight over thousands of California mail ballots to the Supreme Court.
“I hesitate to give a final answer, but I think probably the Supreme Court’s next on this one,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told Fox News, adding that any request would come before Tuesday’s election.
A federal judge earlier this week rejected the Justice Department’s request to block California from counting mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it alleges are likely noncitizens, after a federal appeals court denied an earlier emergency request. California has said the state's safeguards against noncitizen voting, which is illegal, are robust.
In Alaska, federal prosecutors are investigating whether aides to Democratic challenger Mary Peltola helped recruit a retired schoolteacher, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., to run because he shares a name with the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Peltola aides worked with staff at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on the effort.
Peltola and the campaign committee have denied involvement, and Sullivan Jr. has denied coordinating with Peltola’s campaign.
The US Justice Department has asked a federal court to prevent the certification of Alaska's vote if the incumbent senator loses narrowly.
Voters who spoke to Reuters on Saturday in Anchorage, Alaska, had mixed views on the investigation and legal fights.
“I am concerned that the longer it takes for those votes to be counted, the more shenanigans will happen, especially with our current president making comments about wanting to invalidate the current election and the current votes that are coming in," said Ames Tonneson, 24.
Art Paul, 52, took the potential upheaval in stride.
"In this case, if there’s a close race or investigation, I understand. … It’s part of the process," Paul said. "And you gotta be patient. So I’d like it to be faster, but I understand why it’s not."
MICHIGAN RIFT
In Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in another closely watched Senate race, it was unclear whether US Representative Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat and the rival El-Sayed beat in the primary, would attend a Detroit event with him on Sunday that had been billed as a show of party unity.
El-Sayed has previously accused Stevens of "relitigating" the Democratic primary. On Saturday, he again alluded to the outcome of the primary.
“I understand that some folks are upset about that,” El-Sayed told reporters at a rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan, that took place on his 42nd birthday. “But I'm here trying to beat Mike Rogers.”
El-Sayed’s campaign asked Stevens to skip his events through Election Day so as “not to distract from the central issues of the campaign,” a person familiar with the matter said. Stevens has demanded he condemn an outside group’s ad that she says blames Israel for high grocery prices.
“It’s certainly unhelpful to the El-Sayed campaign to have continued visible division within the party just before Election Day,” said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University. Polls show El-Sayed has largely consolidated Democratic support.
Credit: Andrew Goudsward and David Morgan and Nathan Frandino
Voting in the 2026 elections is already underway in much of the U.S., and polls have been bouncing back and forth — as are our expectations as to the accuracy of those polls. While it's true that the only poll that matters is the one that happens on Election Day, polls can nevertheless have an encouraging or a chilling effect, depending on which side one is on. Recently, many pollsters have been predicting a Democrat sweep of the House of Representatives and the Senate, even though in the last few cycles, the polls have badly underestimated Republican turnout.
John McLaughlin, the founder of the McLaughlin Group polling organization, isn't so sure about the Democrats' prospects.
Pollster John McLaughlin told Newsmax on Saturday that Republicans will outperform what he called "phony polls" in Tuesday's midterm elections, singling out New York House races where he said GOP candidates are running strong.
Appearing on "America Right Now", the co-founder of McLaughlin & Associates urged Republicans to keep voting through Election Day. "Republicans are coming out, but they got to keep coming out because the election is on Tuesday," he said.
"You can't believe the phony polls," McLaughlin said. "Remember that at this time two years ago, Kamala Harris was going to be president?"
He took aim at the Siena Research Institute, whose Oct. 19-22 survey of 807 likely voters put New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, ahead of Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman 54% to 40%, with an 11-percentage-point lead among independents.
Mr. McLaughlin doesn't just rely on American polls to make his case.
McLaughlin, who said he has worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Israel's Oct. 27 election as a warning about polling.
He said surveys there had projected Gadi Eisenkot's party would finish first, "and instead Likud's leading party with Netanyahu."
Likud won 27 seats, the most of any party, compared with 21 for Eisenkot's Yashar party. Netanyahu's bloc holds 53 seats to 48 for the Eisenkot-led opposition bloc.
Bear in mind that the McLaughlin Group has been accused (by Democrats) of favoring Republican candidates. In the 2020 elections, his predictions were within a point; in 2022, the average error was around 4 points in favor of Republicans. That's about the same margin that some pollsters are claiming that Democrats are overestimated by.
Mind you, while this is all very interesting, and while it would be lovely for John McLaughlin to be calling this one spot-on, at this point it won't influence much. In fact, if anything, we should be glad if polls in general are badly overestimating support for Democrat candidates. It may, on the margins, flatten Democrat turnout and boost Republican turnout, and if there's one thing Democrats have historically been good at, it's getting out their voters. And in the era of Trump, the Trump Derangement Syndrome-riddled Left is fired up to vote. The battle lines by now are mostly drawn. And, let's be honest: If someone hasn't yet made up their mind who to support at this late stage of the game, they likely shouldn't be voting at all.
Polls or no polls, we'll just have to see their enthusiasm and raise them a few thousand, or a few million votes.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
“Seditious Six” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is no longer in contrition mode after exposing herself to scrutiny for openly plotting a post-election coup against the duly elected president and his supporters.
Rather, she is doubling down, and even offering a sneak preview of what’s to come by acknowledging her recent pow-wows in European countries that are likewise attempting to meddle in or overturn elections with help from oligarchs like the Soros family.
As exposed by our colleagues at Townhall, Slotkin recently boasted about a visit to Budapest, which succeeded in ousting Trump-allied President Viktor Orbán in April, in an election of deep personal interest to George Soros, as it is his home country.
“I just went to Hungary. I went over to Budapest because they just got rid of their authoritarian leader after 16 years. And I'm like, 'How did you handle 16 years of corruption?'” Slotkin admitted on camera.
Slotkin went on to list beautification projects like the White House ballroom and Reflecting Pool cleanup efforts as some of the petty lawfare targets leftists will use in their future efforts to impeach Trump and his allies, should Democrats reclaim the House majority.
The smear attacks on Orbán, with so-called think tanks calling him a threat to “democracy” and a pawn of Putin, should ring familiar to anyone over the age of, say, 10.
The role of Ukraine operatives in the Russiagate conspiracy during President Donald Trump’s first term has been largely underreported after congressional Republicans failed to hold the perpetrators accountable. However, Ukraine’s role in the first impeachment attempt against Trump — over his now-vindicated demands that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky investigate the Biden family’s Burisma scandal — was self-evident from the start.
Those plots to undermine Trump’s authority fed directly into the successful efforts to install Joe Biden as president in the 2020 election by orchestrating an unprecedented election-meddling operation (for America, at least).
It involved the use of mass mail-in voting (ostensibly due to the pandemic, although it already was being implemented well beforehand) with no possibility of voter verification, as well as vulnerable voting machines that were linked to easily hacked networks where subtle algorithmic tweaks may have shaved off Republican votes in the red-dominated districts of battleground states.
More alarming yet, however, was the deep-state cabal’s success in shortwiring the system of checks and balances that, theoretically, would have deterred such efforts — often through sheer intimidation tactics, such as waging relentless lawfare against those seeking, in good faith, to expose them.
Although Dominion Voting Systems succeeded in bullying some outlets into settling SLAPP lawsuits, thereby chilling any serious scrutiny of the voting machines, a judge in one of the adjudicated cases recently determined that the company’s defamation claims were baseless.
But astoundingly, having gotten away with little-to-no accountability the first time around, leftists seem to be hoping that the public’s goldfish-like memory will allow them to use a similar playbook in upcoming elections.
Because nobody was ever held accountable for Russiagate, the original lawfare operation, the whole machinery has only grown more brazen and sophisticated.
Marc Elias used the fake Steele dossier to push Russia collusion smears. In Alaska, his firm has taken the same playbook a step further, engineering a dirty trick and then turning to the courts to protect the result of that scheme.
Imagine Elias commissioning the Steele dossier and then marching straight into court, waving it around as evidence and demanding that a judge give legal force to the lies he had manufactured (back then, he used the FBI for that purpose, but now he simply cuts out the middleman and does it himself).
That's what happens when nobody is ever held accountable. They learn that there is no price to pay, so they keep escalating, growing bolder and more ruthless with every operation. And why wouldn't they? They've been taught that they can get away with anything.
AS THE WORLD TURNS
Hungary’s potentially coopted election elicited little global outrage, perhaps due to suppression polls that claimed Orbán had become deeply unpopular with voters (sound familiar?). Yet, Brazil’s dubious election and the recent unrest in western Europe are likely linked to the same loosely affiliated network of globalist non-governmental organizations, which may still be privately funded even if their prior USAID subsidies have largely been revoked.
More alarming still, however, was Friday’s apparent coup attempt in Poland, the one remaining major European country that was refusing to admit droves of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.
Understand the stakes
Poland is one of the only EU countries that refused to take Muslim migrants for the last 10 years and rejected the agenda of the globalists to transform their nation
The globalists are now using state force to open the doors of Poland to mass Islamificafion like Paris and London
In a nutshell, Poland’s pro-European Union Prime Minister Donald Tusk attempted to use brute force to oust judges who were loyal to the country’s nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, while Nawrocki was on a state visit to Senegal.
For a more elaborate explanation that analogizes it to U.S. politics, we turn to X influencer Matt Van Swol, who posted on Oct. 30:
For those confused as to what’s happening in Poland right now…
Imagine if Democrats won Congress, declared the Supreme Court didn't count anymore, ignored its rulings for 3 years, and then, a year before the next election, picked 8 new justices of their own, including a man their leader called his "right-hand man," and when the Republican president refused to swear them in, they swore themselves in and mailed him the paperwork, and when the Chief Justice said that wasn't legal and wouldn't seat them, they waited for a Friday night when the president was on a plane to Africa and had federal security officers who answer to a Democratic cabinet member walk 7 of them into the court through a back gate connected to the Democratic leader's own offices, where one of them announced she had "suspended" the Chief Justice, a move that even a law professor who openly can't stand him said had no legal basis, and then riot police blocked the Chief Justice from entering his own court, the court's website was taken over, the Attorney General moved that same night to strip his immunity so he could be prosecuted, the president had to turn his plane around mid-flight to come home, and the same people who spent years lecturing everyone about respecting the courts went online to say this was the rule of law, that it was painful, and that there was "no other way," which is roughly where Poland is tonight.
Orbán, himself, also weighed in, calling Tusk’s attempted insurrection a “blatant violation of Poland’s constitution.”
SEDITIONIST SNEAK PREVIEW
Although the Polish coup attempt appears (for now) to have fizzled, it may tip the hand as to how U.S. leftists will sow disarray and confusion in the aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm election — as well as the 2028 presidential election, if left unchecked.
Indeed, Slotkin admitted that on the same trip to Hungary in which she “brought home the playbook” for how to wage a successful domestic color revolution, she also met with Polish officials including Deputy Foreign Minister RadosÅ‚aw Sikorski, a Tusk ally.
Investigative journalists including Jennica “DataRepublican” Pounds and Natalie Winters have done yeoman’s work to expose the war-gaming sessions where would-be seditionists have outlined in advance the tactics they intend to use.
Those already include a DARVO strategy ripped straight from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” to accuse those exposing them of being the true coup-plotters.
"DARVO (an acronym for "Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender") is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
DARVO is a tactic used by a perpetrator to avoid accountability for their actions. As the acronym suggests, DARVO commonly involves these steps:
1. The perpetrator denies the harm or abuse ever took place.
2. When confronted with evidence, the perpetrator then attacks the person that they had harmed, or are still harming. The attacker may also attack the victim's family or friends.
3. Finally, the perpetrator claims that they were or are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender. It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming."
(SOURCE: Wikipedia entry on DARVO)
RED FLAGS FOR THE RED MENACE
On X, conservatives don’t seem to be buying it, with Slotkin and her media allies receiving massive ratios over their attempts to play the UNO reverse card.
But if one thing can be gleaned from the situations abroad, it is that leftists will expend endless resources and shamelessly push any claim, over and over again, in their effort to gaslight voters into letting Marxist wolves into the henhouse. And if that fails, they won’t shy away from using whatever institutional power or brute force they have at their disposal.
Trump voters who may be rightfully jaded by GOP ineptitude on matters such as passage of the SAVE Act, or the belief that the current administration may have squandered its 2024 mandate to right the foundering ship, still cannot afford to be lulled into a false sense of complacency or ennui that causes them to sit out Tuesday’s election.
Voting against a leftist takeover is not so much a seal of approval for current elected officials as it is a recognition that the alternative path, which we already have been down during the Biden administration, will not necessarily be so easy to vote ourselves out of the next time around.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
Confidence is an important factor in any election – candidates need to project it, and supporters need to feel it for morale purposes to help them get across the finish line. Democrats had all the confidence in the world a month ago…but it’s not a month ago anymore. In the closing two weeks of the 2026 midterms, Democrats have begun to act like people concerned that they’re going to lose.
In Alaska, Democrats were always worried about losing – it’s Alaska, after all. That’s why they cooked up this stupid “Find another Dan Sullivan” scam to confuse just enough voters to get into the second round of ranked-choice voting.
Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign sought out another Sullivan – seeking a “white man” to help save a “woman of color” to win a Senate seat. When the Bible of the left, the New York Times, broke the story that the Peltola campaign was not only involved, but conceived of the idea, it undercut the last six months when they’d vocally and actively denied having anything to do with it.
Rather than cut bait, admit the unquestioned and obvious truth, and try to move past it as quickly as possible, they’re still denying it and hoping it fades. But hope isn’t a strategy.
They probably couldn’t admit it, since in court filings they’ve denied any involvement (perjury) and if any money was spent on the scheme, it likely wasn’t reported properly, perhaps even laundered, and could be a violation of federal law. They’re stuck with the lie, at least through the election.
In Michigan, you can tell Abdul El-Sayed is worried about the election results by how, despite the polls his campaign has been touting, he’s given up hope of attracting black and Jewish voters. He is trying to make up the difference by driving up the turnout of his fellow Muslims and wealthy white suburban women.
Prior to the primary, where he barely squeaked by, all of Abdul’s fundraising emails were about how AIPAC (code for Jews) was buying his opponent, Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11). After the primary, the “Jews are trying to buy everything” storyline went away – antisemitism plays when it’s just Democrats voting, not everyone.
Now it’s back. After months of trying to appeal to Jewish Democrats and black voters, Abdul is back to blaming Jews for everything. Panic is not what a confident campaign does.
Democrats in Minnesota are pointing fingers at each other over who is more responsible for the corruption and fraud up there. The Democrat running for Governor in Ohio was supposed to benefit from a Republican campaign ad featuring her estranged mother, but that has materialized, and now she’s showing up to campaign events seemingly hammered. Troy Jackson in Maine seems as nervous as a guest on Maury Povich about to find out he’s the father of kids with his cousin, doesn’t know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, and has resorted to telling Susan Collins to “shut up.”
But the biggest indication that Democrats are worried, seriously worried, is how so many politicians, pundits and journalists are harping on the idea that President Trump is preparing to “steal” or “interfere” with the election. They don’t say how; they just say either he could, or he’s planning to.
People confident in their victory don’t preemptively make excuses for their loss.
But Democrats aren’t only making early excuses for the humiliation in case they lose; they’re laying the groundwork to claim illegitimacy of the entire government over the next two years if they don’t hold on to at least some power.
Turn on any left-wing network or read any “progressive” news outlet and you’ll find stories suggesting the President might send the military somewhere or might have some Democrat officials arrested, or something even more paranoid and insane, depending on who is spewing it.
Where is this stuff coming from? What kind of mind thinks so little of their fellow Americans to claim they could be rounded up in a massive abuse of power? The people inclined to do it- that’s who.
It’s called projection – imposing on your opponent what you would do in a heartbeat to justify your own hatred or vile thoughts and actions. If Democrats do not win, and we all hope that is how it works out, they will not accept the results, ever. And they will do anything to challenge the results, damage the winners, and undermine the democratically elected government of the United States. They’ve done it before; they will do it again.
Note the irony of the people who scream “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE” doing everything, even preemptively, to undermine the will of the people should it not go their way. This is not how confident people act. Let’s hope their paranoia and fear are well founded, and voters end up siding with sanity on Tuesday.
Credit:
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and is the author of the book Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
Kid Rock, aka Robert Ritchie, was a guest on Bill Maher’s show, and it didn’t disappoint. Rock recently dined with President Trump, Maher, and Stephen A. Smith in a four-hour event marked by good but frank discussions of the issues. Everyone had a great time, though Rock had to leave early to catch a flight to Teterboro for his Fox and Friends morning hit the following day.
The Left has become so extreme that Maher’s show, notably anti-GOP, is more level-headed and rational. I’ve watched this show since I was in high school, mainly to get the other side’s take on the issues, but the Democrats’ embrace of antisemitism and communism has this comedian focusing most of his fire on the left.
Yet, Rock’s line about the decline of American discourse struck a nerve with the unabashedly liberal Maher audience:
ROCK: “A Democrat’s never scared me being in office until just recently when all this crazy stuff has popped up.”
“I think Bill Clinton loves the country. I believed Obama loved our country.”
“Now these whack jobs are coming in here and I’m like, wait a minute… even if they don’t hate the country as a whole they hate a big portion of it, and they’re spewing this.”
“And I believe our teachers have been a big problem, you know indoctrinating these kids for a long time now.”
“We’re starting to see the fruition, they’re starting to raise up, I’m a victim and everything’s bad and America is just a big racist piece of sh*t country.”
“Bad, bad America and we’re not celebrating what makes us great, which all of us being different and being together.”
“Being the greatest country in the world!”
During the Overtime segment, Rock shared a hilarious story involving Trump, himself, and French President Emmanuel Macron. He was golfing with Trump when Macron called. Trump introduced Rock to the French head of state and handed him the phone. Rock later said Trump left him with the French president, hopping into his golf cart and driving off.
MAHER: “Bob, you’ve gotten to know Trump personally over the years. What’s something about him that people would be surprised to learn? Oh, you want to tell the Macron story?”
KID ROCK: “The what?”
MAHER: “The Macron, the golf cart story.”
KID ROCK: “Oh yeah, that was funny. Yeah, we’re out golfing, and I hate speaking out of school, but this is just a fun one. And I mean, the guy’s taking calls all day. He’s working while you’re golfing. The guy does not stop working. I think we can all agree on that. He works. He sleeps like maybe four or five hours a night, right?”
“So we’re out there. Macron calls. He’s like, blah, blah, blah. He’s talking. We’re on the golf cart, right? I’m standing next to his golf cart. He’s like, ‘Hey, I’m here with the great Kid Rock,’ like Macron knows who I am. And he’s like, ‘Bob, say hello.’ So he gives me the phone.”
Maher also took shots at El-Sayed, even making him a joke for his opening monologue Friday night. He also read Trump's 1,300-word post ripping into him.
An Arab-Israeli woman casts her ballot during Israel’s general elections on October 27, 2026 in Umm El Fahem, Israel. Israeli voters are heading to the polls to elect 120 members of the Knesset, which will determine the make-up of the government that succeeds incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition. The legislative elections are the first to be held since the Hamas-led attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)
The explosive revelations that Qatar may have paid Israeli-Arabs to vote through terror financing channels in yesterday’s election is tantamount to an “Electoral October 7 “event. Journalist Amit Segal and Ari Tatarka titled their article this morning “The Stolen Election?”
Did Qatar “invade” Israel through the ballot box?
Indeed, this may be absolutely correct. The Israeli Central Election Committee Chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg has ordered an investigation by Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, of “serious suspicions of improper influence through foreign funding.” This is an explosive turn of events for Israel’s October 27 national election.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the Shin Bet is pointing the finger at Qatar. The funds were to boost Israeli-Arab voting, previously through channels used to move terror funds. If true, this is a major foreign election interference scandal.
The news comes as Israeli-Arab voting exploded to 80% participation as opposed to about 40% in previous elections. Instead of the current 10 Arab Knesset members, estimates that Ra’am and the Joint List, the two major Israeli-Arab parties, will get 19 seats, an all-time high.
Was this a diabolical scheme by Qatar and other nefarious Muslim actors to cause internal political disarray inside Israel by using the Israeli-Arabs as a Fifth column? I believe it is.
The tip of the iceberg came when Southern District Israeli detectives arrested four Ra’am Arab party activists on suspicion of election bribery. Detectives found in their homes, tens of thousands of shekels with ballots and an inscription on envelopes that said, “Gifts from the Islamic movement.” Did those “gifts” come from Qatar?
Election observers and polling station officials in numerous Arab communities also reported seeing voters carrying fuel vouchers and gift cards allegedly distributed to them as they went to vote.
The reports noted that some voters acknowledged receiving the cards in exchange for voting for Ra’am. Likud party officials have charged there was widespread electoral fraud, bribery and ballot manipulation as part of a coordinated nationwide operation from those associated with the Islamic movement.
Ra’am is the political wing of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel—a movement historically inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Ra’am head MK Mansour Abbas hinted about an explosive Arab outpouring saying in August that the Israeli-Arab parties will “put Israeli democracy to a test.” Abbas also has called Hamas a charity, not a terror group.
Some takeaways:
– Both the Likud coalition and the opposing “Change Bloc” appealed to arguments, passion and issues. The motivation of the Israeli-Arabs to vote? Cold cash, fuel cards and gift cards.
– The existence of Israel-Arab parties and Israeli-Arab Knesset members is in contrast to virtually all Muslim countries where there are no legal Jewish political parties in existence. Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East that grants full voting rights to its Muslim citizens as well as to other minorities.
The intense campaigns inside Israel are in sharp contrast to the cancellation last month of the Palestinian Authority elections, once scheduled for next month by Mahmoud Abbas. Since he became the head of the PA in 2005, Abbas has served continuously and dictatorially and without any elections even though the Oslo Accords demanded elections ever four years. During that same time, there have been five Israeli Prime Ministers of all political stripes: Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid.
– Qatar of course denies funneling money into Israeli-Arab hands. But Qatar, which was a major financier of Hamas, is a economic powerhouse rivaling the Mullahs in Iran. It is an enemy state determined to see the extinction of Israel.
– The charges of foreign influence will not cancel the overall election results in which Netanyahu has the biggest electoral vote. However, it could nullify part or all of the Israeli-Arab vote, especially of Ra’am which appears to be one of the main parties behind the election bribery campaign. Netanyahu’s party is calling the scandal “The Ra’amgate affair” and an “earthquake.”
There are more revelations to come. The Shin Bet is required to submit their report in one week.
It should be a tumultuous time for Israel, which has weathered many tumultuous times throughout its history. It will survive and thrive.
President Donald Trump has welcomed Stephen Hubbard to the White House after securing his release from Russian prison, where the Michigan native had been held captive for four years on charges of fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in their ongoing war.
In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump called Hubbard, 74, a “very special man” who “suffered greatly.”
Trump amended that he did not believe Hubbard was treated as badly as the hostages that had been released from Hamas under a U.S.-brokered peace deal, but said he was treated “very well” once on board a United States plane.
“I wouldn’t have lasted another year,” Hubbard said of his time in Russian custody.
Hubbard’s son joined him in the president’s office, standing below the Declaration of Independence, and said he had lost some hope about his father’s return to America in 2025, when other prisoners were returned. He said he feared his father would die in Russia, but reported he is now eating more protein and “bulking up” to regain his strength.
Trump announced nine days prior that he had phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin directly about the matter of Hubbard’s imprisonment. Putin agreed to release him, asking for nothing in return from the U.S.
He also clarified at the time that his decision to waive sanctions he had imposed on Russia — which he suffered pushback for — was in preparation for negotiating Hubbard’s release.
Hubbard agreed with Trump that sanctioning Russia would have hindered the negotiations to remove him from Russian prison.
Trump mused about how it would have gone over if, while speaking to President Putin, he said, “I’d like to get Stephen Hubbard back, Mr. President, and by the way, we’re putting sanctions on you right now.”
“Oh, they would all laugh,” Hubbard remarked.
Hubbard said he had heard before that he would be leaving prison and had stopped believing it, thinking, “Actions speak louder than words.”
“Only when they started giving me new clothes and leading me to the exit of the prison and I went out and I saw the car and I was accompanied by some of the Russians … then I believed, finally believed, on the drive from Moscow to St. Petersburg, ‘I’m really going somewhere,’” He recounted.
Hubbard had been detained by Russia during former President Joe Biden’s time in office on accusations that he had agreed to accept money from Ukraine, where he had been living, to fight against Russia — claims the U.S. said were fabricated.
A photograph taken on October 22, 2017, shows the Tsaritsyno Palace Museum and Reserve in the South of Moscow. (Photo by MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The United States Embassy in Moscow, Russia, has warned of a possible terror attack plot at a tourist attraction in Russia’s capital city.
On Saturday, the day of Halloween, the U.S. Department of State issued a security alert over a threat to the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve, a palace built as the summer residence of Empress Catherine II in the 1770s at Dolskaya Ulitsa 1, Moscow, Russia 11569.
The embassy said it “is aware of a credible threat of a mass casualty event TODAY.”
“The U.S. government is coordinating with appropriate Russian authorities on a response,” it said.
Citizens in the area are encouraged to avoid the location, as well as crowds, and stay alert and aware of their surroundings. They should also keep cell phones charged in case of emergency, carry identification and monitor media for any new information about the situation.
Russian Telegram channel Baza, which reportedly has links to law enforcement, said the park was “open only for exits”.
“Law enforcement officers are on the premises,” it reported.
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) — the country’s principal domestic security agency and a successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB — also said it had received word from the U.S. “regarding the preparation of a terrorist attack.”
“Appropriate work is underway,” it confirmed, according to Russian news agencies.
The alert came as fighting is ongoing between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine has penetrated deep into Russia’s territory several times before amid the over four-year war, having previously launched strikes on major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The U.S. State Department did not give details about the expected attack, nor its alleged perpetrators.
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