🚨 HAPPENING RIGHT NOW 🚨
Israelis are voting today in their first national election since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, a contest many see as a referendum on whether Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, deserves another term to finish his war aims against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. President Trump has endorsed Netanyahu’s reelection, calling him a “great warrior,” and Netanyahu vowed, “we will never let Iran’s regime get nuclear weapons.” Most Hebrew-language polls show neither his bloc nor the opposition, led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, with a clear path to the 61 Knesset seats needed to form a government.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27th, 2026
Before we get to today's news, here's what happened on this date in history… New York City’s subway opened to the public on October 27, 1904, when more than 100,000 riders paid a nickel apiece to board the Interborough Rapid Transit Company’s new line after Mayor George McClellan personally ran the inaugural train from City Hall as far as 103rd Street that afternoon. The original 9.1-mile, 28-station route ran from City Hall to Grand Central, west to Times Square, and north into Harlem, decades before service expanded into the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. The system now spans 36 lines and 472 stations and, apart from a handful of exceptions elsewhere, remains the only rapid transit network in the world that runs 24 hours a day.
A future president entered the world on October 27, 1858, when Theodore Roosevelt was born into a wealthy New York City family, home-schooled through a childhood plagued by asthma before graduating Harvard in 1880. He went on to lead the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, serve as New York’s police commissioner and governor, and become the youngest person ever to hold the presidency at 42 after William McKinley’s assassination — a path to the White House he once summed up as wanting, if it ever came to it, “to die with my boots on.”
🗳️ DOJ Defends Alaska Senate Lawsuit as Peltola Seeks Dismissal Before Election Day
The Justice Department pushed back in court against Democrat Mary Peltola’s bid to toss its lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that an unaffiliated candidate who shares his name on the ballot could confuse voters.
State courts have allowed the unaffiliated candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., to remain on the ballot listed as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” against the incumbent’s “Dan S. Sullivan”; he denies being a Democratic plant, while the DOJ argues the similarity could mislead voters.
Sen. Adam Schiff said “it’s not the federal government’s business to run Alaskan elections,” while Iowa’s Democratic governor nominee Rob Sand broke with his own party to call the alleged vote-siphoning effort “manipulating the political system.”
Peltola has called the lawsuit “flagrant corruption” and asked a federal judge to dismiss it before Election Day, arguing voters can easily tell the two candidates apart; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the suit “an outrage.”
🥚 ‘Case Study in Antisemitism’: Pro-El-Sayed PAC Ad Blaming Israel for Grocery Prices Sparks Bipartisan Backlash
A 90-second ad from Rebellion PAC, produced with Cenk Uygur’s media company in support of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, blames high U.S. grocery prices on American aid to Israel, drawing condemnation from Democrats and Jewish groups alike eight days before the midterms.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the ad “a case study in antisemitism,” and Rebellion PAC’s own co-founder, Brianna Wu, called it “awful,” saying she would have quit as executive director rather than produce it.
Uygur is the uncle of streamer Hasan Piker, an El-Sayed campaign surrogate; egg prices have actually fallen from $4.95 to $2.27 a dozen since January 2025 as flocks recovered from avian flu, not because of aid to Israel.
El-Sayed’s campaign told Jewish Insider the ad “is not affiliated in any way” with it but stopped short of disavowing it; former Obama ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said it’s possible to oppose aid to Israel “without blaming Israel for U.S. grocery prices.”
⚖️ DOJ Charges 48 Noncitizens With Illegal Voting and Election Fraud Across Five States
The Justice Department announced federal charges against 48 noncitizens across 10 districts spanning Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New York and Nevada, accusing most of them — lawful permanent residents, not illegal immigrants — of voting in federal elections or lying about their citizenship to register.
The charges include voting by an alien in a federal election, false claims of U.S. citizenship, false statements in naturalization proceedings, and unlawful attempts to procure naturalization; California accounted for the largest share, with 28 cases spread across its three federal districts.
The sweep follows a separate case charging five noncitizens with illegally voting in Florida announced the same week, part of a broader pre-midterm push by DHS and the DOJ to flag suspected noncitizen voters nationwide.
All 48 defendants are presumed innocent, and the charging documents are accusations only; most are lawful permanent residents rather than illegal immigrants, according to the DOJ’s own release.
📜 James Comey Indicted a Third Time, Now Under the Espionage Act Over an Alleged 2016 Leak
Federal prosecutors unsealed a two-count charging document Monday accusing former FBI Director James Comey — now facing his third criminal case in just over a year — of violating the Espionage Act and conspiracy, alleging he directed someone else to leak national defense information to a reporter in October 2016.
The case, assigned to Trump-appointed Judge Trevor McFadden, revives a 2016 New York Times story that two separate Trump-era prosecution teams previously investigated and declined to charge.
Comey’s attorney, Pat Fitzgerald, said the filing was an “Information” rather than a grand jury indictment, called it the third attempt in about a year to charge his client, and said Comey “will fight these charges vigorously and in the open.”
Comey said in a video posted to Instagram that the case is “an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice” and insisted, “Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent”; the charges were unsealed hours after a federal judge ruled the administration had unlawfully fired his daughter, former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey.
📁 House Judiciary Democrats Release 50-Page Report Alleging Trump Was ‘Active Participant’ in Epstein Abuse
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a 53-page minority-staff report eight days before the midterms calling for an independent special counsel to investigate President Trump’s alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, citing testimony from 11 women who allege Trump took part in abuse in the mid-to-late 1990s.
The report includes new claims from a woman who says Trump raped her in 1993, but by its own sourcing offers no direct evidence beyond her conversations with committee staff, and otherwise repeats long-standing allegations that remain unsubstantiated.
Ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin said “the women who survived Epstein deserve to be heard” and renewed Democrats’ call for the complete Epstein files to be released alongside a special counsel probe.
White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed the report as “complete bullshit,” accusing Democrats and the media of leveling pre-election accusations for political gain.