🚨 HAPPENING RIGHT NOW 🚨
A 16-year-old armed with a shotgun shot his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, Thursday afternoon, killing three children and a teacher before a bystander with a concealed-carry permit shot him dead. Police said officers reached the school within three minutes of the first 911 call, but the suspect was already down by the time they arrived. A 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher remain in critical condition, and all Bend-La Pine schools were canceled Friday as the FBI assists investigators who have not yet determined a motive.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16th, 2026
Before we get to today’s news, here’s what happened on this date in history.
Chinese Communist forces broke through Nationalist lines encircling their base in Jiangxi province on October 16, 1934, beginning what became known as the Long March, a 368-day, roughly 6,000-mile retreat under Mao Zedong that is still considered the longest continuous march in the history of warfare. Of the roughly 86,000 troops who set out, only about 4,000 completed the full year-long trek across 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges before reaching Shaanxi province, but the ordeal cemented Mao's undisputed leadership of the Chinese Communists and drew thousands of new recruits to his Red Army.
President John F. Kennedy received word on October 16, 1962, that U-2 reconnaissance flights had photographed Soviet missile installations under construction just 90 miles from Florida, touching off the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point in the Cold War. The standoff ended less than two weeks later when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba, a resolution historians still credit with helping avert a direct superpower conflict.
🕵️ Grassley: Jack Smith's Biden-DOJ Probe Scooped Up Data on 639,000 Republican Donors and Voters
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley revealed Wednesday that former special counsel Jack Smith's “Arctic Frost” investigation and the Biden Justice Department obtained personal data on at least 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters — far beyond the probe's stated mandate to investigate 2020 election-related conduct.
The trove includes names, birth dates, addresses, emails, employers, donation amounts, credit card information and even records of who bought red MAGA hats, down to individual buyers' shipping addresses, with data stretching back to 2005 — 16 years before Smith's probe began.
About 148,000 of the entries are identified as small-dollar donors; Grassley said the investigators' reach went well beyond anything relevant to the 2020 election conduct Smith was appointed to examine.
Grassley said the material shows Smith's team “aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus” and renewed his call for Democrats on the committee to join the oversight effort rather than defend Smith.
⚖️ Maduro and Wife Plead Not Guilty to New Torture Charges Alleging Years of Abuse Against Americans
Former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty Thursday in a New York federal courtroom to a superseding indictment accusing them of running a violent system of repression that tortured Venezuelans and American citizens alike between 1999 and 2025.
The indictment details specific cases, including a U.S. citizen allegedly electrocuted and beaten in custody for 8.5 months and another allegedly beaten so severely he suffered a permanent eye injury; Maduro and Flores are accused of directing the system, not personally carrying out the abuse.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein entered Maduro's plea; Maduro called the new charges false, and Flores said she was “completely innocent.” The trial was pushed back from June 1 to June 14, and a Dec. 17 hearing will address whether Maduro can claim sovereign immunity as a former head of state.
The torture charges stack on top of earlier narcoterrorism, cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges filed after the U.S. captured Maduro and Flores in a January 2026 military operation; conviction on all charges carries a minimum 50-year sentence.
🗳️ DOJ Sues California After State Refuses to Pull 20,000 Suspected Noncitizens' Ballots From the Count
The Justice Department sued California on Thursday after Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County's registrar refused to review a list of more than 20,000 voters federal officials believe are noncitizens who were automatically mailed ballots for the Nov. 3 midterms.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said California was given 48 hours to review the list and segregate the ballots pending verification, and that the state's refusal “intends to facilitate noncitizens in voting, which is a violation of federal law.”
LA County Registrar Dean Logan rejected an encrypted thumb drive containing the names, citing data-security and privacy protocols, while Weber said federal officials never provided enough evidence to question the voters' eligibility.
The suit doesn't ask for the names to be purged from the rolls — only for those ballots to be set aside and the voters' citizenship verified before they're counted, with mail voting already underway in California.
🚀 Houthis Acting Independently of Iran, Sourcing Chinese Missile Parts, Former U.S. Envoy Warns
Former U.S. special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking warned this week that Yemen's Houthi rebels have built enough “homegrown indigenous capability” that they no longer need Iran's backing, even as a Wall Street Journal report found Chinese-made components are now the top source of smuggled parts seized en route to the group.
Lenderking called the Houthis “a clear and very present danger” and said their growing precision — demonstrated by a strike Saudi officials say killed 17 people and injured 333 at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport between Oct. 7 and 11 — makes them “an international problem now,” not just a regional one.
Analysts say the Chinese parts are aimed at building a medium-range ballistic missile with a reported 1,200-mile range, enough to reach Israel or anywhere in Saudi Arabia; China has denied supplying military components to Iran or its allies.
Asked whether the U.S. would help defend Saudi Arabia from further strikes — including this week's missile hit on Saudi Aramco's Dhahran headquarters — President Trump said only, “You'll find out soon.”
🔥 Georgia Senate Debate Turns Ugly as Ossoff and Collins Trade Neo-Nazi and Epstein-Tied Donor Accusations
Georgia Senate rivals Jon Ossoff and Mike Collins used their final debate before Nov. 3 to accuse each other of being compromised by extremism, with Ossoff demanding Collins disavow Nazi content shared by his own son-in-law and Collins firing back over an Ossoff donor's past Jeffrey Epstein ties.
Ossoff said Collins allowed “neo-Nazi propaganda” to spread from his own household, citing reports that Collins' son-in-law shared Nazi imagery and polled followers on a video about “why Gen-Z doesn't hate Hitler”; Collins said he condemns antisemitism and has fired staffers over past controversies.
Collins said Ossoff should return more than $1 million in donations tied to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, citing a 2014 message in which Hoffman reportedly sent Jeffrey Epstein ice cream referencing “the girls”; Hoffman has acknowledged meeting Epstein after his 2008 conviction and apologized, without being accused of wrongdoing himself.
Collins also criticized Ossoff over his ties to Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed and streamer Hasan Piker, while Ossoff separately told debate moderators he has “zero interest” in running for president in 2028.
— Fox News