Peace will come someday, but not from cutting support for Ukraine. The war will end when Putin gives up his dream of absorbing Ukraine into Russia, when he understands that he cannot win.
This week's featured post is "Your 2026 election-watching guide".
Ongoing stories
- Trump's assault on American democracy. Trump has tried to interfere in the midterms in a variety of ways, most of which the courts have beaten back. His outrageous lawsuit to prevent Alaska from certifying its Senate race if Trump's candidate loses got thrown out, though it may reappear after the election. The attempt to get states to put aside ballots from people Trump claims (on flimsy grounds) are not citizens has also not succeeded. Expect shenanigans to continue, and hope the courts are up to the challenge.
- Climate change. Natural gas is often touted as being better for the environment than other fossil fuels like coal. But that's only if methane doesn't leak during the drilling and transportation process. The Biden administration increased controls on methane, but Trump is rolling those rules back.
- Gaza. The Gaza genocide seems not to have had much traction as an issue in Israel's recent election.
- Ukraine. Over the last few weeks, Trump has largely dropped the pretense that his administration is either an ally of Ukraine or a neutral arbiter seeking peace. The "deal" he keeps pushing Ukraine to accept is to surrender territory to its invader. More below.
This week's developments
This week's biggest story is tomorrow's election
The featured post is a watch guide if you plan to spend Tuesday night in front of a television, as I do. Apparently most of my friends consider this a form of torture, so my envisioned watch party isn't happening. Maybe you'll have more luck.
Trump has been holding rallies in all the red states that threaten to defect from his coalition, and he is getting increasingly unhinged. The American public is like the frog that doesn't realize it's slowly being boiled: We've watched Trump's mental deterioration happen gradually, so it doesn't shock us the way it should. He tells the story of a simple dementia test where he repeated back five words they gave him, and claims doctors were wowed that he could do it. "Almost no one can do it. But I can because I'm a freaking genius."
But if you watch any significant chunk of his speeches, read the increasingly bizarre rants he posts on Truth Social, or listen to his ridiculous self-aggrandizing fantasies ("I would have won the Vietnam War in a week." He would have won the Afghan War in three weeks -- ignoring the fact that he had troops in Afghanistan for his entire first term and didn't win.), it's obvious that this man is insane. J. D. Vance should be asked every day why he doesn't invoke the 25th Amendment.
In his blog The Farce, Jason Sattler offers a message for any of his fellow Jews who happen to live in Michigan: Religious bigotry, even if it takes the form of Islamophobia, will eventually hurt Jews. He asks them to reject Mike Rogers' campaign of hate and vote for Abdul El-Sayed.
We know that Islamophobia feeds the same beast as Jew hatred for the same cruel, senseless aims. We know this even as our community struggles to come to terms with even how to discuss the horrors of October 7 and the war crimes that followed. And we know this tidal wave of hate is only coming because Mike Rogers can’t run on anything else.
Corruption is a big issue in this campaign, but it should be bigger. Trump's net worth has more than doubled since he started his second term, and that doesn't count how much his sons and son-in-law have made.
Elon Musk has spent over $440 million this year trying to buy a Republican Congress, nearly $35 million on Ken Paxton alone. He is clearly afraid of being subpoenaed by Democrat-led congressional committees to explain things like temporarily cutting off Ukraine's access to Starlink for its high-speed drones, or being called to account for the deaths his destruction of USAID is causing, or whatever happened to all the sensitive government data DOGE sucked up.
Musk responded to these possibilities with threats:
Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets.
One look at that tweet tells me everything I need to know: Musk has too much power. Concentrating that much power in one unelected individual is a threat to the Republic.
and Ukraine/Russia
You can't say you weren't warned. Back in the 2016 presidential debates, Hillary Clinton predicted that Trump would be "Putin's puppet" and spelled out what that meant.
It’s pretty clear you won’t admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
In his first administration, Trump tried repeatedly to undo the sanctions that the Obama administration had placed against Russia after its annexation of Crimea. But his administration and the Republican caucuses in Congress were full of people who respected the Russia threat and stood in his way. He also sided with Putin's claims against the conclusions of the US intelligence agencies.
By the time Trump took office for the second time, in January 2025, Putin's invasion of the rest of Ukraine was nearly three years old. During the 2024 campaign, Trump often said he could end the war in 24 hours; once in power, it was clear how he thought the war should end: Ukraine should surrender and give Putin all the territory he had demanded. ("Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian".) That is still his position.
The Biden administration had provided something like $200 billion in military aid to Ukraine -- one of its few actions that had bipartisan support in Congress. Trump began scaling that back soon after he took office, and by August of 2025 had cut US support to zero, though the US would continue to sell weapons to its NATO allies, which they would pass on to Kiev. Republicans in Congress, like the late Senator Lindsey Graham, continued to understand that Putin was the bad guy in this situation, so in August they passed the Graham Act giving Trump the power to sanction countries that buy Russia oil.
Trump signed that act, and then -- surprise! -- made a deal for the US to buy Russian diesel itself. Just before the Graham Act was scheduled to take effect, Trump waived all its anti-Russia sanctions.
Although the deal is unlikely to lower diesel prices, it will benefit Putin and Russia. Diesel sales will generate revenue that could be used to prolong the war in Ukraine. Since announcing the deal, Trump has also told Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries.
And Trump became more explicit about blaming Ukraine for its failure to surrender to Russia.
I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because [Zelensky] could have made many deals and for some reason he never does.
At around this same time, Ukraine's high-speed drones lost access to Elon Musk's Starlink/Starshield system, crippling its battlefield operations. Though access was eventually restored, this may have been a shot-across-the-bow warning Ukraine that it had better surrender to Russia.
Support for Ukraine continues to be popular in both parties. But after the midterms are over, Trump may decide he no longer cares what voters think. The master will pull his strings, and even a new Democratic Congress may not be able to interfere.
Phillips O'Brien notes:
This Summer and Fall have seen a noticeable and continuing increase in the number of Ukrainian civilians being deliberately targeted and killed by Russian bombing. It is becoming more and more common to have mass casualty events on a weekly basis, and Russian ranged systems are being used to hunt out trains, buses, apartment buildings, etc. ... While we await the grim figure for Ukrainian civilian casualties for October 2026 as a whole, it is clear that 2026 is shaping up to be the worst year for Ukrainian civilian deaths caused by the Russian military since 2022, the year of Russian full-scale invasion. ... This slaughter is a result of Russia’s strategic decision. It is an attempt to break Ukrainian will by killing non-combatants. It is also a primal scream of rage at the Ukrainian people for not bowing down in front of the Russian military and Vladimir Putin.
He further points out how Trump continues to placate the pro-Ukraine Congress and American people by making phony announcements of support. On October 30, for the benefit of the midterm electorate, the State Department announced that 500 of the most advanced Patriot missiles would be sold (not given) to Ukraine -- for delivery in 2030 at the earliest.
and demonstrations in Europe
I was in Paris on my honeymoon when the demonstrations started there. I got emails from home asking if we were OK.
If you've ever been in a city where "riots" are going on, you probably understand how localized such disturbances can be. In the vast majority of the city life goes on normally. That certainly was our experience of Paris, though I gather that things got worse after we left. (Fortunately, we were able to visit the Louvre twice before it temporarily shut down.)
On the way back to our hotel one evening, we happened on a demonstration outside some public building. Neither of us speaks or reads French in any but the most rudimentary way, so the slogans being chanted were hard to make out. The signs seemed to be about children and perhaps homelessness. Later we read that there had been demonstrations against sexual abuse in the schools, so maybe that was one of them. There was no violence and we walked through the center of the demonstration with no sense of danger. The demonstrators we saw were trying to communicate with the larger public, not terrorize it. Later we figured out that on a previous day in a different neighborhood we had walked past one of the shops that burned
Trump and various online provocateurs tried to convince their American audience that this had something to do with immigration.
“The migrants have taken over France,” the president posted on Truth Social. “They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!”
This appears to be pure opportunism on Trump's part. French President Macron denounced "stupid" comments by foreign leaders, presumably meaning Trump and Israel's Netanyahu.
By most accounts, the demonstrations began with a student movement protesting against poor funding for schools, especially high schools. They then spread to a general sense of pessimism about young people's prospects in France, and then to a larger movement of citizens concerned about the high cost of living, largely spurred by the increased fuel prices caused by Trump's war.
None of these concerns should seem foreign to Americans. We just don't have the same mass protest traditions the French do.
Another factor that Americans should be able to identify with: There's no money to satisfy the demonstrators' demands. France is running persistently high budget deficits, and the country faces increased needs in many areas. For example, the sudden unreliability of America's commitment to NATO puts pressure on all European countries to increase their defense spending. And the nation's difficult fiscal situation pushes investors to seek higher interest rates, making the fiscal situation even worse.
The main difference here is that the US runs its deficit in dollars, which its Federal Reserve can create at will. France owes euros, which are controlled by the European Central Bank. That gives the US more short-term flexibility, but it's not clear that our long term situation is any better. For example, in the recently concluded FY 2026, we ran a $2 trillion deficit. We got essentially nothing for that money: We didn't make some major national investment, spend our way out of recession, fight a major war, or deal with some external challenge like the Covid pandemic. Subtract the estimated $47 billion spent on attacking Iran, and it's still a huge deficit. And that's just business as usual.
and elections in Brazil, Israel, and Serbia
Brazil's election was a very pleasant surprise. Jair Bolsonaro was Brazil's Trump. When he lost his reelection bid in 2022, he reacted as Trump had in 2021:
On 8 January 2023, his supporters attacked the buildings of the Supreme Court of Brazil, the National Congress, and the Planalto Presidential Palace to instigate a military coup d'état and reinstate Bolsonaro as president.
Because the Brazilian justice system is less corrupt than ours, Bolsonaro was tried and convicted. He is currently in prison. His sone Flavio ran for president in Brazil's recent election and led after the first round, in which neither he nor incumbent president Lula got a majority. It was widely expected Bolsonaro would win, and would pardon his father just as Trump pardoned all the January 6 criminals in the US.
But instead, Lula won the runoff in a surprise victory. Flavio was ordered to surrender his passport, pending an investigation into a money-laundering scheme. The Trump administration then conspired to spirit him to Florida, where he is expected to set up a government-in-exile.
Remember how upset Trump usually gets about South American countries sending their criminals here?
Serbia's strong-man Aleksandar Vučić also fell after 12 years in power. He appears to be accepting his defeat. His enablers are backing down.
Serbia's public broadcaster RTV Vojvodina has publicly apologized to viewers for years of one-sided coverage. The statement came after Aleksandar Vucic, who ran for prime minister, lost Sunday's election in Serbia to the student movement. “Public broadcasting has failed to do its job for many years. A lot was left unsaid, a lot was overlooked, information was presented one-sidedly, reporting was uncritical, and the right questions were not asked, or no questions at all. And for that we must apologize to our viewers,” said Eror, as quoted by the TV channel N1.
It's hard to know what to make of Israel's elections held last Tuesday. These were the first elections held since the October 7, 2023. Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud Party lost seats in the Knesset, but remains the largest party. AP reports:
Netanyahu’s coalition, made up of ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties, supported strengthening Israel’s Jewish character. It pushed for more settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and allowed for military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews. It also attempted to push through an overhaul of the country’s judiciary in 2023 that drew mass protests.
Eisenkot’s camp promoted a vision where Israel’s Jewish character lives in harmony with its liberal democratic ideals. It promised honest leadership and accountability for Israel’s Oct. 7 failures, vowed to bolster the judiciary and end the military draft exemptions. They also promised to fix Israel’s international standing, which has deteriorated because of the Gaza war and settler violence in the West Bank.
Neither party seems likely to put together a 61-seat Knesset majority without making deal with the Arab parties, which hold 19 seats. The Arabs would never partner with Netanyahu, but Eisenkot has also pledged not to deal with them.
If no one can form a majority, they'll have to hold the elections again.
and you also might be interested in ...
Chances are, you've eaten more than your usual quota of chocolate this last week. And maybe you got nostalgic about how good chocolate used to taste back when you were the trick-or-treater collecting candy rather than the homebody handing it out.
Well, apparently it's not just your imagination. New York magazine writer Rachel Handler did a deep dive into how chocolate is made, who makes it, and why it (like just about everything else at this stage of capitalism) is getting enshittified.
It was a sad week for Star Trek fans. Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original series, died at the age of 90. And then Wednesday, Patrick Stewart died.
Stewart's Captain Picard wasn't just a beloved character, he represented a new direction, emphasizing exploration and negotiation rather than the more warlike virtues of Captain Kirk. It took a great actor to pull that off, and Stewart was one.
Under Trump, the US is getting a reputation as a country hostile to foreigners, and it's killing our tourism industry.
The Justice Department's latest attempt to keep the Hunter Biden case going just failed: The case against two FBI agents that DoJ said lied to Congress about Hunter's laptop was dismissed.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, saying the investigation that produced the charges was rushed, overtly political and dogged by “critical mistakes.”
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a scathing ruling from the bench that dismissed the case against former officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.
and let's close with something scary
The Onion has become one of the most accurate sources of journalism in the country: "ICE Agent, 7-Year-Old Both Wearing Same ‘Military Commando’ Halloween Costume".
