November 3, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Manufacturing sector marks 10 straight months of growth ahead of midterms

U.S. manufacturing activity expanded slightly in October, marking 10 straight months of growth leading into the midterms. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) was 55.5 percent last month, up from 54.5 percent in September, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reported Monday. Four of the five subindexes that make up the PMI increased from September, as new orders, production, supplier deliveries and inventories rose last month. Employment growth, meanwhile, slowed by 0.3 percentage points in October. General sentiment also declined for the third straight month, as 66 percent of comments the ISM received were negative. Persistent inflation stemming from the Iran war and President Trump’s tariffs has hampered the manufacturing industry. Energy prices rose by 5.2 percent from August to September and were up 20.4 percent year over year, according to the consumer price index.

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Energy commodity prices in September were up 9.3 percent from August and 35.3 percent from September 2025. Trump has long pledged to revive the American manufacturing sector, arguing his tariffs will compel companies to reshore jobs in the U.S. But the sector has shrunk slightly from roughly 12.67 million employees at the start of the president’s second term to about 12.65 million in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The president recently announced Audi will construct a new factory in Georgia, the company’s first U.S. production facility. Through the $4 billion investment, the automaker will create 4,500 jobs, Audi said in an Oct. 25 release. Multiple Senate races in manufacturing-heavy states, including Michigan, Ohio and Texas, will be crucial in determining the balance of power in the upper chamber. Democrats need to flip a net of four seats to take control of the Senate.

Democrats show strength in final days of race for the Senate, new polls find

Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the Senate, according to the final set of polls from The New York Times and Siena University before the midterm elections. The surveys found that Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932. To win a Senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats that are currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds. But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.

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In Michigan, the lone top Senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending. Dissatisfaction with President Trump and frustration over his management of the economy are dragging down Republicans, according to the polls. Just 38 percent of likely voters approved of the president’s job performance in the seven states in the poll, a strikingly low figure given that Mr. Trump had won five of the states by double digits just two years ago. The newfound Democratic strength was powered by growing trust in the party to handle the economy — the key motivating issue for voters this year. Democrats hold a nine-point advantage on the cost of living across the battlegrounds, and they led on this crucial measure in every single state. If the polls are accurate and these trends hold, Democrats would win control of the Senate.

Texas urban counties prepare for legal fights ahead of Election Day

Ahead of Election Day, two of Texas' largest counties are gearing up for potential intervention from the state or federal government. The preparation comes as President Donald Trump's administration is already seeking to intervene in California and Alaska's elections, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office challenges get-out-the-vote efforts in Harris County. Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin, whose office serves as legal counsel for county government, has set up an election protection legal taskforce of over 30 attorneys. In an interview with Houston Public Media, she said the team includes former employees of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), whom she recruited for their expertise in civil rights and voting rights.

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Kamin also tapped prominent voting rights attorney Chad Dunn as outside counsel, along with additional subject matter experts whom she declined to name but said would be focused on threats from the federal government. She pointed to a recent video statement from U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz as an example of a threat. "If you violate federal election law, I will hunt you down and prosecute you," Reitz said in the statement, "Whether it’s the president’s playbook of desperation, a corrupt state attorney general that may also get very desperate, or a governor that has failed Texans and made it very clear that he has bent the knee to the president regardless of the legality of a matter, we’re not going to allow any agency at any level to trample on the rights of eligible voters," said Kamin, a Democrat who is running for re-election against Republican opponent Jacqueline Smith. Gov. Greg Abbott's office declined to respond to Kamin's comments and deferred questions about election-related preparations to the Texas Secretary of State's office, which did not respond. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office also did not respond to questions.

Entrepreneur Adam Robinson and former PR chief Helen Sharp among 7 jet crash victims ID'd

Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp and their two young children, ages 2 and 4, were among the nine people who died Sunday afternoon when a private jet crashed in Florida, according to Sharp's father, Dudley Sharp. A joint statement released Monday afternoon identified the other deceased passengers as Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina. “With broken hearts, our families share that Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, their children Emma and Charlie, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and Anita Maria Cetina were among those lost,” the joint statement from the deceased passengers' families said.

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“We are deeply grateful to the first responders, investigators, and the Palm Beach County community for their care, and to everyone who has reached out with love. Our hearts are also with the families of the pilots, who are grieving alongside us. We ask for privacy as we grieve.” Cetina was a nanny for Robinson and Sharp's two children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2. Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr were a couple who were friends of the family. Robinson's father told the American-Statesman the couple was from Austin. He also said Cetina resided in Colorado. The Learjet 60 was flying from Austin to the Bahamas when it crashed in a residential area near Cresthaven, Fla. Robinson, 45, founded and self-funded several e-commerce and marketing software companies, including Austin-based Retention.com. He had a large following on LinkedIn, where he posted frequently about business strategy, and a growing YouTube channel, where he frequently advocated for growing startups without venture capital. According to his LinkedIn profile, Robinson attended Rice University, where he played varsity basketball and graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in economics and Spanish literature. At the time of his death, he served as CEO of Retention.com, RB2B and MoltSets, a startup he founded in June.

State Stories

Greg Abbott hired an election denier to protect Texas elections. He’s using the job to attack Muslims.

One evening in early September, Nate Schatzline stood onstage before a group of right-wing activists, eager to tell them about all he was doing to save America. Speaking in his new role as a top adviser to Governor Greg Abbott on election-security issues, he outlined how he planned to combat widespread voter fraud. He described how as a young father and pastor, he was “radicalized” by COVID-19 church closures and compulsory sex education in schools. And he vowed to continue battling “demonic forces” and the “globalist agenda.” But his primary focus was an existential menace: “The greatest threat to our Western society right now is the rise in Islam in the state of Texas,” Schatzline told the members of Texas First Conservative Alliance, a grassroots GOP group based in Lampasas County. “And by the way, I want you to notice something, because the governor agrees on this: I didn’t say ‘radical Islam.’ I said ‘Islam,’ because all Islam is radical.” Texas Monthly obtained a video of Schatzline’s speech, which has since been made public, as well as other documents from his first months as a top aide to the governor. Taken together, they show that the former Texas House member and 2020 election denier has already begun working to bring his hard-line Christian nationalist views into state policy.

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Among his goals for the coming year: preventing mosques from serving as polling places; cracking down on what he claimed is a Muslim practice of casting votes on behalf of long-dead relatives; and working with Abbott and right-wing Texas House members to reclassify Islam as a political ideology—a move that the far right has long sought so that it can legally target Muslims without running afoul of religious-liberty protections. In the meantime, Schatzline suggested, mosques could be invalidated as polling places if they were provoked into discriminating against non-Muslims. “I might just have to start eating bacon every time I vote,” he said to laughter. As for election issues, Schatzline said he was already assisting the Secretary of State’s ongoing cleanup of voter rolls and that he expects lawmakers will use the 2027 legislative session to drastically increase their ability to intervene in local elections. Neither Schatzline nor Abbott’s office agreed to interview requests for this story. Nor did the governor’s office respond to a list of questions from Texas Monthly. The revelations come amid a major uptick in anti-Muslim bigotry that has been fomented by GOP leaders. In recent years, Republican lawmakers and officials have accused Muslims, who make up just 2 percent of the state population, of secretly moving to take over Texas and institute sharia—a wide-ranging set of Quranic legal and moral principles not dissimilar to those found in many other religious texts.

Tarrant County Libertarians allege political discrimination in court filing

The Tarrant County Libertarian Party is pursuing legal action against the board that oversees mail-in ballots, alleging political discrimination by Republicans with less than 24 hours before polls open on Election Day. On Monday, Nov. 2, the Tarrant County Libertarian Party asked the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth to limit the number of people from the Republican Party who can serve on Tarrant County’s early voting ballot board. The party alleges that the Tarrant County Early Voting Ballot Board has appointed a lopsided number of Republicans to handle primarily mail-in ballots.

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The ballot board is charged by state election code to oversee mail-in and overseas ballots as well as watch the election judges bring drive of ballots from each polling location on Election Day. Amie Super, the Republican ballot board judge, is in charge of scheduling individuals from the Democratic, Libertarian and Republican parties to count ballots. The appeals court, in a ruling Monday afternoon, asked the Election Board to respond by noon on Nov. 3. The members of the early voting ballot board are appointed by the Tarrant County Election Board, which consists of county judge, elections administrator, the sheriff and the Republican and Democratic party chairs. Super did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. This “scheduling” means that people are brought into the Tarrant County Elections Administration building at 2700 Premier St. to sort through the mail ballots. The process is livestreamed. According to an email from a Secretary of State attorney shared with the Star-Telegram, Super has been in violation of the Texas Election Code for scheduling ballot board members in a lopsided manner.

Could Texas Democrats withstand another loss, especially in such a favorable year?

When Beto O'Rourke came within a whisker of knocking off incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, Texas Democrats were like fans of a baseball team that had finally made it into the postseason after years — even decades — of finishing in or near the cellar of the standings. The Democrats could console themselves that they had shown in that Senate race, and in a couple of others down the ballot, that at least they belonged on a big-league ballfield. But this cycle, with the wind lifting their sails blowing even stronger in their direction than it was eight years ago, coming close simply will not cut it for Texas Democrats.

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Not for their psyche. Not for their ability to recruit quality candidates, generous donors and grassroots volunteers in the future. And, perhaps most importantly, not if they want to stop the Republicans from rolling over them yet again on every issue they hold dear when the Legislature convenes in January. The 2026 midterm cycle started more than a year ago with most pundits, and probably most voters, believing that Texas Democrats were cooked before the kitchen had even opened. Republicans had redrawn the state's congressional districts in a way that, on paper, would put five more seats in their column. Gov. Greg Abbott was seeking a record fourth term, sitting on more than $100 million and promising to spend whatever it took to crush Democrats in one of their few strongholds: heavily populated Harris County. The state's best-known Democrats took a pass on challenging him. They also passed on challenging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who, over his own three terms in office, had done more to marginalize legislative Democrats than perhaps anyone in Texas history.

Six things we learned from Victor Wembanyama's "60 Minutes" interview

Victor Wembanyama isn’t afraid to chart his own path, whether in his NBA career, his training or his pursuit of a championship with the San Antonio Spurs. The 22-year-old French superstar offered a glimpse into his life on and off the court during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Wembanyama reflected on his NBA Finals heartbreak, a health scare, his training habits and his vision for a new era of Spurs basketball. He also shared candid thoughts about living in the United States, the responsibility that comes with being an NBA superstar and why he refuses to wait patiently for a championship. Here are some of the biggest revelations from the interview.

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Wembanyama reflected on his aggressive play during last season’s playoff run, when the Spurs reached the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks. “It showed my limits more than anything else,” Wembanyama told Wertheim. “Going out there, you need to play basketball. You don’t need to beat the (expletive) out of people if you want to win, at least.” His comments followed several controversial playoff encounters, including an ejection for elbowing then-Timberwolves forward Naz Reid in the neck and an incident in which Wembanyama shoved Knicks guard Jalen Brunson in the face while setting a screen. At 7-foot-4, Wembanyama combines size, athleticism and skill in a way rarely seen in NBA history. That combination presents challenges. Unlike many NBA stars, he said, he has no established blueprint to follow in his career or training. “I am comfortable not knowing my answers,” Wembanyama said. “I am comfortable walking through the fog.” A blood clot in Wembanyama’s shoulder, which prematurely ended his second NBA season in 2025, changed his perspective on life. “After that it’s like, life is so short, I don’t even wanna waste it being somebody else,” he said.

Chevron keeps Microsoft data center plan despite Texas pause

Chevron Corp. expects to power up a Microsoft Corp. data center project in West Texas on schedule despite Governor Greg Abbott’s suspension of digital infrastructure permits. The energy company is working on permitting, engineering work and financing, Chevron Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner said during an interview. “And we don’t see any of those things impacting the overall schedule of first power in 2028” and ramp up by 2031, she added. Chevron and Joulent LLC agreed to a deal with Microsoft to supply natural gas to power a large-scale data center in the Permian Basin earlier this year. But the development, known as Project Kilby, has been held up by Abbott’s decision to pause data center developments due to local opposition. Critics have said the pause is only temporary as Abbott is campaigning for a fourth term in Tuesday’s elections. Project Kilby would supply its own power, meaning it wouldn’t raise prices for consumers, Bonner said. It also will rely on non-potable water for cooling, eliminating any impact on drinking water supplies. “That is why on August 6th, Governor Abbott announced that the Kilby project complies with his standards,” Bonner said.

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Produced water could fill increasing Texas water needs

As the competition for water across Texas grows, some state leaders are pointing toward the Permian Basin. Produced water comes up during oil production. For every barrel of oil produced, an average of six barrels of water come up. Lubbock State Senator Charles Perry says that equates to about 26 million barrels of water a day. The water contains contaminants like metals, minerals, traces of oil, and other material that make it unusable if untreated.

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Perry said water quality is measured in total dissolved solids, in parts per million. He said people can drink water with about 500 parts, and up to 1,000 parts “probably.” Produced water has as much as 100,000 to 200,000 parts, he said. “I get a call from Exxon, one of our biggest producers in the Permian Basin, in the world, saying ‘we have too much water here and we need to get rid of it,’” Wayne Christian, a Texas Railroad Commissioner, said. Traditionally, disposal of produced water has consisted of injecting it back into reservoirs underground. “What we’ve discovered is that forced injection has created seismicity,” Perry said. “So when you hear about an earthquake, they’re tracing it back to oil and gas production and formation activity.” Besides the seismic activity, Perry says the other issue with forced injection is the lack of space left underground. “Within a year or two, they can no longer find places that are adequately built and naturally made for those injections,” Perry said. “So we’re running out of places to put the water.” Senator Perry is the chairman of the Agriculture, Water & Rural Affairs Committee. He’s worked on water supply issues for several years, and said he knew the technology existed to clean that produced water for reuse.

New restrictions at Texas Tech are changing what professors can teach

Outside the library at Texas Tech University on a recent Wednesday morning, a small group gathered behind a folding table in a spot known to students as the "free speech area." Spread across the table flyers referenced names of familiar works. Homer's The Odyssey. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Students streamed past on their way to and from class. Most kept walking. Every so often, someone lingered long enough to ask what the list was about. The people behind the table were Texas Tech professors. And the works printed on those flyers were examples of texts that professors say could run afoul of new rules governing what they can teach. Texas Tech is among the state's 45 public universities navigating a wave of higher education policy changes. That shift began with Senate Bill 17, the 2023 law banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs at public universities, while explicitly exempting classroom instruction and academic research.

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More changes followed in 2025, including new state oversight of university curriculum. Texas Tech has since adopted some of the state's most sweeping restrictions on how professors can teach about race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. The rules have led to changes in course materials, prompted accusations of censorship and fueled pushback from faculty and students. Deena Varner, an assistant professor of practice in English who's taught at Texas Tech for five years, was among the professors who stood in the Texas heat talking with students about how the new rules could affect the courses they take. Varner said she and her colleagues have spoken with hundreds of students since they began tabling nine months ago, continuing even after university administrators instructed faculty not to discuss the new policies with students. Inside the classroom, professors face the uncertainty of what's allowed to be taught.

Why some Texas Democrats are forecasting a "Hispanic hurricane" in midterms

Two years ago, President Trump made historic gains with Hispanic voters nationwide and won a majority of Texas Hispanics, upending conventional wisdom and setting back the Democratic Party's hopes of making the state competitive. But now, Hispanics may be coming back. They're frustrated with the state of the economy and concerned about the Trump administration's immigration policies. These factors and Mr. Trump's sagging approval ratings are giving Democrats hope in Texas' competitive Senate, House and governor's races. "There's a Hispanic hurricane coming," said Democratic strategist and CBS News political contributor Chuck Rocha, who advises the Democratic Senate and gubernatorial candidates in Texas. "We just don't know quite yet if it's going to be Category 2 or Category 5, but it's washing ashore right in front of the GOP, and they don't know what to do about it."

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But Republicans say enthusiasm for Democrats is still muted. An estimated 39 million Hispanic Americans are eligible to vote, an increase of about 5.2 million since 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. Democrats once viewed Latinos as a built-in advantage, predicting that they'd give the party an edge and make some states competitive. But in 2024, Mr. Trump won about 48% of the group, up 12 points from 2020 and 20 points from 2016, according to Pew's analysis of validated voters, largely for the same reasons Republicans are losing them now — the economy and immigration policy. Mr. Trump won Hispanic men by two points, despite losing them by 17 points in 2020. The gains were even more pronounced in Texas, where Mr. Trump won approximately 55% of Hispanic voters in 2024, according to exit polling, turning blue counties in the state's Rio Grande Valley region light red. But now, Mr. Trump's approval rating among Latinos stands at 24%, as of early October, with just 57% of Latinos who voted for the president in 2024 approving of his job performance — down from 93% in February 2025. And 51% of Latino voters said they planned to vote for a Democratic House candidate, compared to 24% who planned to vote for a Republican.

Dallas Fed’s Logan says 2 more rate hikes needed

At least two more interest rate hikes will be needed to effectively curb inflation, Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan says. The comments from Logan, one of 12 voting members on the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, the influential body charged with setting national monetary policy, amounted to a forceful display of future public policy guidance two days after the group voted to hold rates steady. Logan’s comments also came as millions of Americans are already voting in a high-stakes midterm election that’s revolved largely around affordability. On Wednesday, while acknowledging elevated inflation, the FOMC voted 10-2 to hold rates steady, with Logan voting for the majority.

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But going forward, maintaining interest rates at their current level won’t be enough to tamp down rising prices, Logan told an audience of students at Davidson College in North Carolina on Friday. “It remains clear to me, given the current outlook, that the FOMC needs to implement at least two more 25-basis-point rate increases,” Logan said, according to a transcript published by the Dallas Fed. “After that, it would make sense in my view to pause and examine economic and financial developments to determine what further action may be appropriate.” Logan, a Federal Reserve veteran who has served as the Dallas Fed’s president since 2022, is known as a relative policy hawk and has previously stressed the need for higher interest rates — in contrast to President Donald Trump’s demands to lower them — as an antidote to the persistently high prices impacting Americans. “More than five years after the post-pandemic surge, prices have continued to rise too rapidly,” Logan wrote in July, after she was one of three FOMC members who voted to raise rates at the time. “Every month of above-target inflation compounds the strain on the budgets of American families and businesses.”

Indicted ICE agent surrenders himself in Harris County court

Mario Alberto Morales, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer indicted by a grand jury last week, surrendered himself in a Harris County District Court Monday. In Harris County 488th District Court, Morales entered in a gray suit and purple tie alongside his legal team David Lindenmuth and newly added co-counsel former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg. In one-word answers, Morales acknowledged he understood the charge against him. Lawyers for the district attorney’s office requested a $75,000 bond due to the "violent nature" of the incident and some "admissions of prior drug use" they uncovered in their investigation.

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Morales' lawyer David Lindenmuth countered and requested a $25,000 bond, arguing his client posed no flight risk and that there is no on-going threat to the community. Judge Matthew Peneguy, who presided over the hearing, ordered a $30,000 bond and said Morales is to have no contact with any of the victims or witnesses in the case. Morales was indicted for a second-degree felony offense of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The agent is accused of striking Miguel Parra-Hernandez with his vehicle, breaking his leg and ankle, on Oct. 10. An ICE spokesperson claimed Parra-Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle while fleeing from the scene of an attempted traffic stop. In a press conference after the hearing, Michael Wynne, the lead defense attorney for Morales, called the indictment politically motivated. Wynne is also part of the legal team representing ICE agent Christian Castro, who was indicted in September by Minnesota prosecutors in connection with the shooting of a Venezuelan man in January. He said the team anticipates filing to move Morales’ case to federal court. Wynne has already requested Castro’s case to be moved to federal court, but said that request is still pending.

Ted Cruz jokes that Democrats won’t show up to vote if someone gives them pot brownies

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz considers himself a wit. Whether anyone else finds the Texas Republican funny is another matter entirely. Cruz, who’s been frank about predicting sweeping Democratic victories in the midterms, jokingly advised a Republican audience on Friday that they could hold off that big bad blue wave by offering progressive relatives and neighbors pot brownies. “Your crazy Uncle Louis, who has a tattoo of Chairman Mao on his left buttocks, call him and say, ‘Louis, be sure to vote next Wednesday,’” Cruz said at a rally supporting U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas. “And all day Tuesday, they have free marijuana brownies at the YMCA.” Get it? Democrats are commies, and they’re so dumb, all it takes is one brownie baked with the devil’s lettuce to convince them the election is taking place Wednesday! I tell ya, kid, when a bit works, it works! Cruz’s remarks, first reported on by Marijuana Moment, suggest that as the senator ramps up for a predicted 2028 presidential run, we’re in for a punishing two years of dad jokes, partisan barbs and you-kids-get-off-my-lawn social commentary that have aged as well as a Three’s Company rerun.

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Texas candidates still may not be connecting with Latino voters, data suggests

Despite the growing influence of Texas’ Latino voters, early polling by Spanish-language media group TelevisaUnivision suggests candidates still may be failing to connect with them. TelevisaUnivision CEO Daniel Alegre told the Current the poll results suggest campaign messages have failed to resonate with many Latino voters, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars candidates and parties poured into political ads this cycle. “When you have a broad-based message that is supposed to appeal to everyone watching, you’re not narrowing down on the specific issues and the specific nuances that matter to the Hispanic vote,” Alegre said. A survey of 1,000 registered Hispanic voters, conducted by the Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision, found that two-thirds of potential voters want to see candidate outreach in Spanish.

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Meanwhile, the report found that around 69% of Hispanic voters said they recognized candidates’ Spanish-language media as reflecting a desire to win over the viewer’s vote. While Republicans have spent nearly $240 million on political advertising in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, just $3.5 million, or 1.5% of the total, has gone to Spanish-language ad buys, the Texas Tribune reports. Democrats have spent $5.3 million of their $98 million in advertising in that race on Spanish-language buys. The TelevisaUnivision poll also showed a consistent picture of Hispanic voters remaining issue-driven, with affordability repeatedly emerging as a top concern. After historically moving toward Republican candidates in 2024, the group’s renewed support for Democrats has solidified Latino voters as a competitive electorate for both parties, Alegre said. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa has done Spanish-language outreach through both community events and Spanish-language ad buys. Her latest Spanish-language buy is a 30-second spot titled “No Te Dejes.” For his part, incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has released Spanish-language ads criticizing the policies of Hinojosa, an Austin-area state rep.?

National Stories

‘Pop-up’ super PACs pour $637 million into 2026 midterm races

A super PAC called Our Heritage Matters registered with the Federal Election Commission on Oct. 15. Five days later, it began spending to boost third-party candidates and attack Republicans. By Oct. 29, the group had spent about $1.2 million across 10 House and Senate races, according to a CNBC analysis of FEC filings. What voters still cannot see is who supplied the money. Because Our Heritage Matters formed after a key campaign finance reporting deadline on Oct. 15, its first regular report identifying its donors is not due until Dec. 3, a month after Election Day. The group is an extreme example of a broader surge reshaping the midterm election: late-forming super PACs, including the latest-forming “pop-up PACs,” pouring money into races before voters know where it came from.

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Federal law requires super PACs and political committees to report large independent expenditures within 24 or 48 hours depending on how close to Election Day the spending occurs, showing how much they spent and which candidates they supported or opposed. Their donors, however, are disclosed less frequently through periodic campaign finance reports. And in 2026, the practice of creating new, last-minute PACs has exploded. Both parties are using the tactic, with Republican-linked PACs spending about twice what those connected with Democrats have disbursed. Twenty-two super PACs that registered with the FEC during the final 10 weeks before Election Day have each spent at least $1 million on congressional races, according to CNBC’s analysis. Together, they had reported roughly $637 million in independent expenditures by Oct. 29 — about one-sixth of all independent spending reported in House and Senate races this election cycle. The number of million-dollar late-forming super PACs has more than quadrupled since 2022, while their spending has grown nearly 35-fold.

Supreme Court rejects Trump’s attempt to segregate ballots in California

The Supreme Court on Monday quickly shut down President Donald Trump’s effort to force California to sideline potentially thousands of ballots that the Justice Department claims may have been cast by noncitizens, rejecting the administration’s emergency request hours after it was filed. The unusually fast decision underscored that the administration’s case, which was based on an uncertain methodology, was a reach that has been rejected by every court to consider it. The appeal also came to the high court on an exceedingly tight timeline — on the eve of the midterm election — with an unknown number of mail ballots in question likely already counted. The court did not explain its reasoning and instead handed down only a one-sentence order. There were no noted dissents.

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Tens of millions of voters have already cast early ballots nationwide. “This office has been informed that the United States has identified more than 20,000 individuals who appear to be registered to vote in California based on publicly available information at the time that information was received, but who, in the United States’ view, are likely not U.S. citizens,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court earlier Monday. In another sign that the Supreme Court didn’t take the appeal especially seriously, the justices did not ask to see a response brief from California or other parties before ruling – as is their usual practice in high-profile cases. “After repeatedly losing in the lower courts, the highest court in the land firmly slapped down the Trump DOJ’s baseless attack on California’s electoral process — not even entertaining it,” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. The rapid decision marked another major loss for Trump on election cases at the high court. In September, the justices rejected the president’s controversial plan to change how mail ballots are sent to voters across the country, rebuffing a proposal that election officials warned would have had catastrophic consequences if allowed to take effect for this year’s midterms.

‘He would wind her up’: Democratic anger at Haley Stevens’ fiancé boils over after her endorsement reversal

Late last fall, Haley Stevens decided to get off social media. The Michigan congresswoman told staffers working on her Democratic Senate campaign to send her important news — but she didn’t need to be distracted by mean-spirited comments about her appearance or mannerisms. But Jason Turkish, a lawyer and donor who staffers at the time thought was an overly involved friend, didn’t get the message. According to three people who worked on her campaign, Turkish — who became Stevens’ fiancé this spring — frequently sent Stevens comments about her that he’d found on social media. Posts mocking her looks, her speaking cadence, her positions on issues, including her support for Israel — all of it ended up in Stevens’ text messages, those people said.

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“He would wind her up, and then we’d have to wind her down,” one top campaign aide said. It was one of a number of examples of Turkish’s influence in Stevens’ run for the Senate — a race that ended with her losing the Democratic primary in August by less than a percentage point to progressive Abdul El-Sayed. Tensions often emerge over political strategy between a candidate’s staff and family members. Those who worked on Stevens’ campaign and in her congressional office largely kept their frustrations with Turkish private. But Stevens’ decision Sunday to drop her post-primary endorsement of El-Sayed and endorse Republican nominee Mike Rogers — after appearing at a Detroit church with Rogers and Turkish — uncorked simmering Democratic anger at her fiancé, who told reporters he was voting for Rogers days before Stevens did so. In a tense Sunday night interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) refused to say directly why she withdrew her support from Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed and backed GOP candidate Mike Rogers in the high-stakes race.

What caused the ratings decline at Fox News?

Fox News Channel is heading into Tuesday's midterm elections with an unusual problem: Its television audience is shrinking, even as its recent financial results remain strong. America's most-watched cable news network lost 27% of its total day viewers in October compared with a year earlier, while CNN and MS NOW gained ground. Among adults 25–54, Fox's total day audience fell 32% to an average of 98,000 viewers, its lowest monthly level in 25 years, according to Nielsen data. So where did Fox's viewers go? And is October a temporary dip in political news viewing or the beginning of a more lasting shift? Those questions extend beyond Fox. Cable news has spent years trying to hold on to audiences as viewers migrate to streaming and digital platforms. Fox has weathered those changes better than most, but even the industry's dominant player isn't immune.

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The October numbers illustrate that tension. Fox News averaged 1.1 million total day viewers, compared with 588,000 for MS NOW and 402,000 for CNN. It captured 53% of the three networks' combined audience and accounted for 99 of October's 100 most-watched cable news telecasts. Fox News also says it's on pace for its highest-rated midterm year in total day viewers. In a statement to TheWrap, Fox emphasized its ratings leadership and digital reach. And Lachlan Murdoch shrugged off the decline on Monday's earnings call, chalking it up to fatigue. "What we are seeing is some viewer fatigue, where our viewers have gone through an incredible news cycle last year with the inauguration, the Charlie Kirk tragedy, DOGE, flooding, it was an incredible news cycle last year," Murdoch said. "Those viewers are not switching to another news channel, they are just fatigued and watching slightly less television overall. We have seen this playbook, and we know how to move through it." Its business has shown resilience, too. Ad revenue across parent Fox Corp.'s cable programming segment, which includes sports networks, rose 10% in fiscal 2026, while distribution revenue increased 5%, according to its annual filing. Higher advertising prices and distribution fees helped offset pressure from lower ratings and declining cable subscriptions. But those results predate October and don't establish how Fox performed financially during the month. Nor do they explain what happened to its television audience. One possibility is that some of Fox News' conservative viewers are simply growing tired of political news rather than turning against the network itself, according to a former Nielsen executive.

Flouting consumer law, insurers refuse to pay medical bills for emergency care

Over the past two years, Flight for Life has airlifted car crash victims, premature babies and adults struggling to breathe to hospitals across southeastern Wisconsin. Anthem, the major health insurer, covered dozens of those patients, but it has refused to pay $2.1 million it owes the company for their helicopter rides. The amounts due for each emergency medical flight range from $9,382 to $62,373. Anthem has historically paid its bills, but late last year it suddenly stopped. “It was like a faucet they just shut off,” said Flight for Life’s executive director, Leif Erickson. The insurer’s willful nonpayment is the latest in a cascade of unintended consequences brought about by a widely supported law that was intended to protect patients from surprise medical bills. The law, which took effect in 2022, calls for arbitrators to decide appropriate levels of reimbursement, and it has already triggered millions of disputes between medical care providers and insurers. Doctors have prevailed overwhelmingly, winning arbitration settlements that sometimes far exceeded the usual insurer rates.

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Now, fed up with what they consider unfair outcomes, insurers are fighting back by refusing to pay. The law, the No Surprises Act, was enacted with a large bipartisan majority to ensure patients never got excessive bills in situations, like emergencies, where they could not pick their doctors. The arbitration system set up by the law was supposed to resolve billing disputes when health care providers and insurers could not agree on a price: An arbitrator reviews a proposed dollar amount from each side and decides which one is most reasonable. Insurers are required to pay that amount within 30 days, and billing patients for anything beyond that is prohibited. Lawmakers expected the system to be used rarely and to produce reasonable payments. Instead, doctors and other health care providers have been swamping arbitrators with millions of claims, often for amounts that far exceed what is customarily paid for a service. And they have won the vast majority of their cases — sometimes receiving sums such as $440,000 for a breast reduction, $73,000 for an ankle X-ray, or $125,000 for assisting on prostate surgery. Insurers have sued doctors and lobbied Congress to change the law, contending that the large awards and lopsided results are driving up health insurance premiums.

Trump focuses on Reflecting Pool in final public speech before midterms

President Donald Trump began his final scheduled in-person speech before Tuesday’s Election Day with a lengthy disquisition about his efforts to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and other sites in Washington. “Today I’m thrilled to announce the official opening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” Trump said Monday afternoon in front of the water feature, which was fenced off for months amid a problem-plagued renovation the president had ordered. The speech, which lasted nearly an hour, was expected to serve as Trump’s “closing argument” on the midterms before millions of voters head to the polls to determine which party will control the House and Senate in the next Congress.

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But Trump kicked off his remarks with more than 20 minutes of commentary that focused largely on the Reflecting Pool, along with his administration’s work on refurbishing other Washington-area monuments and cracking down on crime in the nation’s capital. “The pool is now better and more beautiful than it’s ever been before, and we’re very proud of it,” Trump said, before repeating unfounded claims that vandals were responsible for damaging the pool and delaying repairs. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro told a court July 31 that the damage was caused by a contractor’s botched installation. Trump lashed out at Pirro over the admission and has continued to claim vandals were to blame. Trump’s first explicit reference to the midterms came around the 23-minute mark. “As you know, this is the last day before the midterm elections, the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime,” Trump said.

Midterm polls open as Democrats push to check Trump

Polls have opened in Maine, North Carolina and Ohio, three states with Senate races that could determine control of the chamber. In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins — the only Senate Republican representing a state Trump lost in 2024 — is seeking a sixth term in the Senate in a tight race against Democrat Troy Jackson. In Ohio, Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed in 2025 after Vice President JD Vance vacated his seat, is locked in a close race against Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown. And in North Carolina, Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper is facing former RNC chairman Michael Whatley for a seat that opened after GOP Sen. Thom Tillis said he would retire.

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Flash flooding, heavy rainfall and tornadoes have forced election officials in three different regions across the United States to move polling locations, scrambling Election Day plans in hot-button races. At least seventeen polling locations were moved in five Florida counties — including Brevard County, Indian River County, St. Lucie County, Martin County and Palm Beach County — after intense rainfall caused flash floods yesterday and into this morning. Roads were impassable in several parts of the state’s Atlantic coast after a storm dumped as much as 22 inches of rain in 24 hours in a storm that “exceeded everyone’s expectations,” as one forecaster put it. Severe storms were moving across Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas overnight. Forecasters issued a tornado watch that lasted until about 2:45 a.m. local time this morning. Forecasters were also predicting possible flash flooding in parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi on Tuesday, as that storm system continued to travel east.

Copyright November 03, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved