🚨 HAPPENING RIGHT NOW 🚨
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is being pushed out after barely a week on the job, with Trump telling reporters Friday he urged her to reconsider the role, saying “maybe it's not for her.” Her tenure unraveled after a panned 14-minute debut briefing in which she called on just three reporters and stumbled over her words, then worsened when she admitted on Fox's “Hannity” that she never passed the bar exam despite Trump calling her an attorney at the hire's announcement. A senior official said she is “transitioning out,” with no successor named, as reporters called her collapse “brutal.”
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17th, 2026
Before we get to today's news, here's what happened on this date in history.
Chicago mobster Al Capone was convicted of federal income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, a verdict that ended the bootlegging empire he had built during Prohibition and that the St. Valentine's Day Massacre two years earlier had made notorious nationwide. Agent Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” had spent years disrupting Capone's smuggling operations, but it was the tax charge that finally stuck; he was sentenced to 11 years and ultimately served much of it at Alcatraz before his 1939 release and death in 1947.
Physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany on October 17, 1933, after renouncing his German citizenship and accepting a research position at the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Already a Nobel laureate and world-famous for his theory of relativity, Einstein never returned to Germany and became a U.S. citizen in 1940, spending the rest of his career in Princeton until his death in 1955.
⚖️ 10 Noncitizens Indicted for Illegal Voting in Key North Carolina Senate Battleground
U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle announced Thursday that a federal grand jury indicted 10 noncitizens — nine lawful permanent residents and one illegal alien — for illegally voting in North Carolina, a crucial Senate battleground, with several accused of casting ballots repeatedly over two decades in the 2024 election and earlier races.
One defendant, 71-year-old Ramona Abreu-Exia, allegedly voted in eight elections dating back to 2004; another, 69-year-old Robert Harold Corbett, allegedly voted in six elections from 1998 to 2024.
Boyle said “there is no more important right a citizen possesses above the right to vote” and warned that noncitizen voting “is not a victimless crime.”
Sen. Dick Durbin accused DOJ and DHS of overreaching into state election control; Attorney General Todd Blanche countered on X that Durbin should instead help the administration clean up voter rolls.
🛢️ Trump Waives Most Russia Sanctions Under the Late Sen. Graham's Own Law
Trump signed an executive order Friday waiving most of the sanctions and tariffs that were set to take effect under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, citing the “national interests of the United States” as diesel prices climb amid the ongoing Iran and Ukraine wars.
The law, named for the late South Carolina senator who died suddenly in July, would have imposed tariffs of up to 100% on countries that knowingly buy Russian oil, starting 30 days after taking effect.
The waiver follows a deal in which Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to eventually release millions of tons of diesel into the global market to help ease prices before the midterms.
Trump separately renewed pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, after saying last week it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
🛂 Ilhan Omar's Sister Skips Book Event as 'Week of Chaos' Follows Raid on Her DC Home
Rep. Ilhan Omar's older sister, Sahra Noor, failed to show for a Thursday night book-tour stop at the University of Minnesota Rochester after reportedly being subpoenaed in the citizenship probe into her sister, capping a week in which federal agents raided Omar's Washington home and seized her phone, passport and computers.
Homeland Security Investigations agents are examining whether Omar or her late father fraudulently completed her citizenship paperwork decades ago, with two sources saying it could lead to denaturalization proceedings.
Omar called the raid an “outrageous abuse of power” and hasn't been seen publicly since, fueling unconfirmed rumors she left the country; her husband, Tim Mynett, reacted sharply when reporters asked him about it.
Noor, who came to the U.S. as a refugee alongside Omar in the 1990s, is touring to promote her own memoir and is next scheduled to appear in Seattle on Oct. 23.
🧠 Deadly Brain-Infecting Fungus Cases Have Quadrupled in the US, CDC Finds
A CDC report finds that cases of Cladophialophora bantiana, a black mold that causes brain abscesses with a 60-to-70% fatality rate, have roughly quadrupled since 2023, rising to 14 confirmed U.S. cases in 2025 from just one to five a year through most of the prior decade.
Researchers identified 48 confirmed cases and one probable case across 21 states and Washington, D.C. since 2009, with California, Florida and Texas each logging five or six.
About half of patients had healthy immune systems, which University of Washington researcher Joshua Lieberman called “alarming,” since most fungal brain infections strike the immunocompromised.
The fungus is hard to detect with standard tests like spinal taps and often requires a surgical tissue sample; the CDC says there's no national surveillance system and doesn't know why cases are rising.
🎤 Trump Rallies in Georgia for Mike Collins, Rips Ossoff's 'Weak, Arrogant' Campaign
Trump landed in Dalton, Georgia, Friday to campaign for Senate candidate Mike Collins and gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson, using the rally to mock Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff as “your weak, arrogant, hate filled, radical left senator” over his campaign spending just over two weeks before Election Day.
The rally marked the first joint public appearance by Collins and Jackson ahead of the Nov. 3 election in the pivotal Senate battleground.
Trump's attack cited a report that Ossoff's campaign paid roughly $2,887 to a makeup artist, a detail Republicans have seized on in the race's final stretch.
The visit comes as Georgia becomes one of several states hosting dueling star power this week, with Bernie Sanders, AOC and the Clintons campaigning elsewhere for other Senate hopefuls.