A newly released excerpt from investigative journalist Matthew Cole’s upcoming explosive book, published by Vanity Fair on a recent Thursday, has laid out a series of incendiary claims targeting Jared Kushner, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and current senior foreign policy adviser in Trump’s second administration. Titled *Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East*, the book asserts that at the outset of Trump’s first presidential term, United Arab Emirates leader Mohamed bin Zayed and then-future Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman funneled a combined sum of roughly $2 billion into at least two undisclosed foreign bank accounts to which Kushner held access. The first account, codenamed “Alpha” and established at First Abu Dhabi Bank, operated as an informal off-the-books foreign policy fund that Kushner and bin Zayed partially co-managed to advance shared geopolitical priorities. The second, codenamed “Beta,” was structured to route funds from an Azerbaijani financial institution to an apparent Israeli government-linked account held at the Central Bank of Israel, with one anonymous source close to Cole’s investigation confirming this account was explicitly set up for Kushner’s personal financial benefit. Neither account was ever publicly or confidentially disclosed by Kushner during his tenure as a White House senior adviser, a position that required mandatory public and classified financial disclosure filings under U.S. federal ethics rules. As a government official with regular access to top-tier classified intelligence, Kushner was legally obligated to report any account where he held signatory authority or beneficiary rights. Cole’s reporting also draws on a 2020 tip from a reliable intelligence source that confirmed Dutch authorities had hacked Kushner’s personal mobile device and monitored him accessing a Dubai-based account holding hundreds of millions in Azerbaijani-origin funds, with records showing he transferred large sums to third parties including a regional warlord, private mercenary, and former contract killer. A former prosecutor who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2016 Russian election interference investigation told Cole that if Kushner exchanged favorable U.S. government treatment for the Gulf state funding, he could face felony federal bribery charges, even if the only action he took was relaying a request to his father-in-law, then-President Trump. The former Mueller team official also noted that even if the accounts had been disclosed properly, Kushner would likely have been required to register as a foreign agent for acting on behalf of UAE and Saudi interests to secure influence within the White House. Within hours of the Vanity Fair excerpt’s publication, Kushner issued a fiery public rebuke via social media, dismissing all allegations as “completely insane, categorically false, and never happened.” He accused Cole of publishing unsubstantiated fiction, noting the journalist had failed to produce a single verifiable piece of evidence including bank statements, wire transfer receipts, account numbers, or transaction dates to back up the claims, and described the work as a deliberate blend of fantasy, partisan advocacy, and malicious fabrication. The allegations emerge at a critical juncture, as Kushner currently serves as the Trump administration’s special peace envoy, with formal mandates to lead high-stakes negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war and resolve the ongoing military conflict with Iran that the Trump administration launched in February of this year. Adding to the ongoing scrutiny, government ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to block Kushner from serving in a senior foreign policy role without the required U.S. Senate confirmation.
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Millions removed from India’s draft voter rolls viewed as targeting of Muslims
For years, 44-year-old Old Delhi businessman Sameen Ud Din has cast his ballot at his longstanding Nizam Ud Din residence, including in the 2025 Delhi state elections. But when the Election Commission of India (ECI) released the draft voter list for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, he discovered his name had been erased from the rolls entirely, with no prior official notification explaining the removal. “It is a bitter irony that I, a regular voter, was never contacted by the ECI before my name was struck off,” Din shared with Middle East Eye. “Now I am being pressured to submit Form 6 to re-register as a new voter, which requires me to make a false declaration that I have never been enrolled before – a move that carries serious legal penalties.” Din is far from an isolated case. Thousands of Muslim and Dalit voters across India have reported identical, unprompted removals from the draft SIR lists, as official data shows roughly 133 million names have been flagged for elimination from national electoral rolls.
Critics argue the deletions are not neutral administrative housekeeping, but a targeted campaign that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. A 2025 investigation by Indian news outlet The Wire found that in West Bengal, 1.8 million of the 2.75 million names marked for removal – nearly 70% of the total – belonged to Muslim residents, even though Muslims make up only 25% of the state’s total electorate. In some local districts, Muslim names accounted for more than 90% of all proposed deletions, a staggering statistical gap that has sparked widespread public anger and mass street demonstrations across the country.
Leading the charge against the SIR process is the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a grassroots movement that originated as a satirical online campaign in May 2026, initially formed to demand the resignation of BJP Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following a massive leak of India’s national medical entrance exam, the NEET. What began as a digital protest has rapidly evolved into a formidable street mobilization force, organizing nationwide demonstrations under the slogan “Lehra Do Tiranga” (Wave the Tricolour). At a mid-October rally in central Delhi, the Congress Party estimated turnout reached 250,000 people, with tens of thousands more participating in parallel protests in cities across India. Demonstrators waving Indian national flags marched from Connaught Place through central Delhi, chanting slogans demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, condemning heavy-handed police tactics, and accusing the ruling Modi administration of attempting to rig electoral demographics.
Authorities led by the BJP-controlled Delhi government attempted to quash the unrest by imposing prohibitory orders banning gatherings of four or more people in large swathes of the capital, just days after Delhi Police removed the iconic, decades-old protest site at Jantar Mantar from its list of approved demonstration locations, re-routing permitted events to far-flung, underused grounds on the city’s outskirts. Despite these restrictions, thousands of demonstrators defied the bans, leading to widespread detentions. “We are out on the streets to defend Indian democracy, and we are not engaging in any violence – yet the police are still arbitrarily arresting people,” protester Vishnu told Middle East Eye from a police transport vehicle holding detained demonstrators. “These illegal detentions are the hallmark of a fascist state. Our demand is non-negotiable: scrap the SIR entirely, because it is nothing more than a state tool to reengineer this country’s voting demographics. They have already successfully pulled this trick in dozens of locations, and we are calling on every citizen to join us to fight this oppressive government.”
Among those detained during the marches were CJP founder and digital strategist Abhijeet Dipke, and All India Students Association president Neha Bora. Bora was released without charges on Saturday morning, while Dipke was released after appearing before a Special Executive Magistrate and signing a personal bond. Delhi Police has filed at least two formal cases against the movement for violating public assembly restrictions.
The ECI and ruling BJP have defended the SIR process, framing the roughly 130 million proposed deletions as a routine, good-faith administrative effort to purge dead, duplicate, and otherwise ineligible voters from the rolls to clean up electoral integrity. But a September 23 investigation by *The Indian Express* uncovered deep internal rifts within the Election Commission, revealing that two sitting Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had filed formal written objections at least 14 times over a 10-month period to major decisions that were enacted without their knowledge, consultation, or approval. Their documented concerns included unvetted mass additions and deletions of voters, unauthorized changes to Form 6 protocols, unrestricted access to the central national voter database, and unregulated modifications to the commission’s core electoral technology systems. The ECI has publicly dismissed the reports of internal dissent, claiming the documents cited were merely informal suggestions, and that every decision related to the SIR process was reached with full, unanimous agreement among all commissioners.
Political analysts argue the stakes of the SIR process extend far beyond administrative procedure, posing a fundamental threat to the fairness of India’s upcoming 2029 general national elections. Ajay Gudavarthy, an associate professor of political studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, explains that the disproportionate removal of Muslim and Dalit voters appears to be a deliberate, calculated political strategy by the BJP to consolidate electoral support among upper-caste and Other Backward Class (OBC) communities. “The overwhelming majority of deleted names belong to Muslim voters, and that deliberate targeting is why there has been no broader cross-caste mass outrage against the SIR,” Gudavarthy noted. “The BJP’s larger design is not just to erase Muslim votes, but to socially polarize the entire electorate along religious lines through these deletions. Removing large numbers of Dalit voters alongside Muslim voters serves to trigger reverse consolidation of upper-caste and OBC voters behind the BJP, entrenching their hold on power.”
In Odisha’s Cuttack district, the experience of Sayed Rashad Ikmal’s family illustrates how the flawed SIR system operates at the grassroots level. The names of Ikmal’s aunt and uncle – a retired Indian Railways finance department employee – were both struck from the draft voter list, even though they had been registered voters for decades. The family later discovered an unauthorized Form 7 petition (the official document used to request a name’s removal from voter rolls) had been filed against their names, with no knowledge or consent from the couple. Only after they appealed directly to their local Block Development Officer (BDO) was the fraudulent deletion request cancelled, and their names restored to the rolls. Ikmal notes that local communities across his district are increasingly reporting that Muslim residents are being disproportionately targeted for deletion, a trend that has coincided with the spread of the Hindu right-wing “Go to Bangladesh” narrative that frames Indian Muslim citizens as illegal foreign infiltrators. “This repeated threat of being labelled an illegal Bangladeshi migrant is one of the most terrifying narratives being weaponized against Muslim communities,” Ikmal said. “It has been used repeatedly to divide voters along religious lines ahead of state elections, and to galvanize support for the BJP.”
Gudavarthy warns that the ongoing SIR controversy exposes a dangerous erosion of institutional autonomy in the world’s largest democracy. “The only way to restore accountability to our electoral system is through sustained mass public protest and greater decentralization of electoral governance away from unaccountable central authorities,” he said. “This crisis is a critical lesson for Indian democracy: even longstanding, supposedly independent institutions can be easily subverted when the executive branch is allowed to overreach its authority without pushback.”
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Father who killed Oregon school shooter describes anguish over children he couldn’t save
In a raw, candid interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting aired Friday, 36-year-old carpenter Kaylub Giamanco — the father of two daughters enrolled at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon — opened up about the harrowing moments he intervened to neutralize a 16-year-old former student gunman earlier this month, an act that has earned him widespread public acclaim but left him grappling with crippling guilt over the lives he could not spare.
The deadly rampage unfolded on what was meant to be a cheerful school picture day: Giamanco had planned to eat his pre-packed lunch at his job site, but a last-minute decision to return home to share the meal with his wife placed him in the immediate vicinity of the campus just as the violence erupted. At first, he assumed the individual carrying a long gun near the property was pulling a tasteless prank, but that illusion shattered the second he witnessed the teen fire at a passing pickup truck and advance toward the school entrance.
Giamanco grabbed a handgun from his vehicle, dialed emergency services, and told dispatchers he could not wait for law enforcement to arrive, as bystanders would surely lose their lives if he delayed. He crawled toward the building past the sound of children screaming and begging for their lives, later recalling he fully expected the encounter to be the final act of his life. He slipped through a broken, bullet-shattered window to reach the classroom where the attacker had already opened fire, and found 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert — who held the position she had long dreamed of, and whose family remembered her as a fierce advocate for marginalized and special needs students — physically grappling with the teen to seize his shotgun. Giamanco fired at the gunman, neutralizing him before he could harm more people, then laid his own weapon on the ground and raised his hands the moment a responding police officer arrived to avoid being misidentified as a threat.
The attack claimed the lives of three young male students — 5-year-old Rhoam Summer, and two other boys whose identities have been withheld at their families’ request — alongside Lambert. Two additional people, including 54-year-old teacher Becky Drury, sustained gunshot wounds; Drury shared that she was shot while attempting to lock her classroom door to shield her students. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz confirmed that Lambert’s brave, split-second decision to throw her phone at the gunman, tackle him, and fight for control of his weapon almost certainly prevented a far higher casualty count, a reality Giamanco echoed in his interview as he insisted the slain educator was the “real true hero” of the incident.
While communities across the state and beyond have hailed Giamanco as a lifesaver, the carpenter has been unable to shake overwhelming remorse. “I want to apologise for not saving their babies,” he said, referencing the families of the four victims, adding that he hopes to meet every grieving household soon to sit with them, cry alongside them, and offer physical comfort in their grief. He also shared that he struggles with relentless post-incident flashbacks, often staying awake long after his wife and daughters have fallen asleep, replaying the sounds of screams and the faces of the children he could not rescue. He noted he still struggles to process that he took the life of what may have been a minor, after witnessing the teen storm into his daughters’ school armed for violence.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has publicly recognized Giamanco’s life-saving intervention while acknowledging the immense, long-term emotional toll the experience will leave on him. Law enforcement is still investigating the motive behind the 16-year-old former special education student’s attack, and Giamanco’s family has previously issued a statement noting he does not seek public fame, and requesting that the public respect the privacy of all affected families as they navigate their healing process. -
Antisemitism reviewer David Bell said Muslim schools could threaten UK’s ‘coherence’
Newly unearthed archival remarks have cast a cloud of public scrutiny over Sir David Bell, the lead author of the landmark UK government-commissioned antisemitism in schools review published this week. Long before he led the 2025 probe, Bell, who served as chief of Britain’s national education regulator Ofsted back in 2005, drew widespread backlash for singling out Muslim faith schools in a citizenship education lecture, claiming that inadequate curricula at those institutions could erode Britain’s broader national social cohesion.
During that 2005 address, Bell argued that the rapidly expanding network of faith-based schools required careful, sensitive government oversight to ensure all students learned not only the tenets of their own religion, but also gained meaningful exposure to other belief systems and core civic values of British democratic society. He specifically noted that at a subset of Muslim schools, this cross-cultural and civic education was not being delivered to a sufficient standard, warning that unaddressed religious segregation in education could put the country’s shared social fabric at risk. His comments drew immediate public pushback from multiple senior education sector stakeholders, including his own colleagues at Ofsted.
Christopher Schenk, a then-senior independent faith school inspector, pushed back against Bell’s framing, stating that his own on-site visits to Muslim schools showed institutional leaders actively framed tolerance and intercultural harmony as core Islamic virtues, and worked intentionally to prepare their students to be fully engaged, contributing members of British public life. Iqbal Sacranie, then Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, noted that only 3% of all Muslim children in the UK attended dedicated Muslim faith schools, and that many of those institutions were already outperforming the mainstream state school sector academically, describing Bell’s focus on the community as irresponsible and unfounded. Dr Mohamed Mukadam, then chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, went further to label the comments a clear example of Islamophobia, pointing out that Muslim school graduates posted far higher rates of progression to further and higher education than the national state school average. Subsequent 2005 Ofsted inspection data later confirmed that 18 out of 50 reviewed Muslim schools failed to meet basic tolerance education standards, a lower failure rate than the 17 out of 40 evangelical Christian schools that fell short of the same requirements.
Additional controversies have since surfaced around Bell’s newly released antisemitism review, which the current Labour government has pledged to implement in full, including a mandate for all schools to adopt the widely contested International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Critics have noted that Bell previously held a position on the National Council of the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, a body that publicly opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel, though Bell has since stated he never attended any of the group’s meetings, performed no work on its behalf, and was never consulted on any of its policy positions, emphasizing his antisemitism review was focused exclusively on tackling hate against Jewish communities, not Middle East geopolitics.
Further analysis of the review’s underlying data has revealed significant limitations in widely circulated media claims that “three in five Jewish pupils experience antisemitism at school.” The statistic is drawn from a small, unrepresentative survey of 16 to 18-year-olds, with a total sample of only 92 Jewish respondents. Of that group, just 70 answered the question about experiencing or witnessing antisemitism, with 29 reporting such incidents – equal to 41% of respondents, not the 60% implied in headline coverage. The review’s own annex explicitly notes the dataset is not representative of the full UK school population, as it only sampled students applying for further or higher education, and that results from the tiny Jewish subgroup should be interpreted with extreme caution.
Critics of the government’s planned adoption of the IHRA definition have also raised substantive concerns: the National Education Union’s General Secretary Daniel Kebede warned the contested framework would further stifle legitimate classroom discussion of the ongoing Gaza conflict, rather than delivering practical, targeted support to schools to address antisemitism. The IHRA definition, drafted in 2004 as a non-binding monitoring tool, includes illustrative examples that critics argue blur critical distinction between legitimate political criticism of Israeli state policy and antisemitic hate, a concern even the definition’s lead author Kenneth Stern has publicly echoed, warning against its use as a punitive disciplinary or legal tool that could unjustly restrict free expression. Representatives from Middle East Eye state the organization has reached out to Sir David Bell to request formal comment on all outstanding points of contention. -
Israel election 2026: Netanyahu may be weak but the right wing remains as strong as ever
As Israel prepares for its upcoming Tuesday parliamentary vote, the race has once again orbited almost entirely around the polarizing figure of long-time premier Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than the widespread societal reckoning many anticipated would follow the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led incursion and the subsequent 18 months of devastating military operations in Gaza. While the two landmark events have undeniably shaped the electoral landscape, their influence is filtered almost exclusively through public scrutiny of Netanyahu’s decision-making: questions over what advance warnings of the October 7 attack he received, his handling of the subsequent conflict, and the fates of remaining Israeli captives still held in Gaza. Observers note that most Israeli voters appear to have already locked in their positions weeks ahead of polling day, with Netanyahu’s base rallying to his side either in spite of the October 7 security failures and Gaza campaign, or explicitly because of his hardline response to the attacks. This pre-determined partisan alignment has created an unusually subdued electoral environment, a stark contrast to the mass street mobilizations that swept the country less than two years prior, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested Netanyahu’s highly contested judicial overhaul that threatened to weaken the country’s supreme court. Further widespread demonstrations erupted in the early months of the Gaza war, as families of hostages and their supporters criticized Netanyahu for prioritizing military objectives over negotiated efforts to secure captive releases. Against that backdrop, many political analysts initially predicted Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc would face a crushing defeat at the polls, and that public tensions would reach a boiling point in the lead-up to voting. Instead, no large-scale protest movements have emerged in recent months, even as Netanyahu’s personal political standing has weakened significantly: projections show his long-ruling Likud party is on track to lose 10 to 15 Knesset seats, roughly one-third of its current parliamentary representation. For all his individual vulnerabilities, however, the broader right-wing ideological current among Israeli voters remains deeply entrenched. Three distinct far-right parties running explicit platforms that call for the mass deportation of Palestinian residents are projected to win a combined 20 seats, equivalent to one-sixth of the total 120-seat Knesset. The country’s fragmented opposition, by contrast, lacks a unified, cohesive governing platform, with the only shared priorities across disparate opposition factions being two narrow demands: that Netanyahu be removed from office, and that the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish population be required to serve mandatory military service, a longstanding point of public controversy. Many of the parties running in the nominal opposition camp hold firmly right-wing policy positions themselves, including former Netanyahu allies Naftali Bennett, head of the Together party, and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Israel Is Our Home faction, both of whom previously served as defence ministers under Netanyahu’s premiership. Even Gabi Eisenkot, the former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff widely framed in international media as the centrist, moderate challenger who can unseat Netanyahu, has run on a noticeably hardline domestic platform: he has publicly pledged to expand existing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and his electoral list includes multiple current and former settlers who openly supported Netanyahu’s 2023 judicial reform push. While Eisenkot previously floated the possibility of including Arab-Israeli political parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel in a future governing coalition, he has since walked back that position after facing fierce backlash from key political allies. The dual-faced messaging strategy he has deployed, projecting a relatively liberal, moderate persona for international audiences while positioning himself as a tough security-focused leader for domestic Israeli voters, has left many constituents unclear on his actual governing priorities. Bennett and Lieberman, meanwhile, have sought to court centrist and even left-leaning voters despite their long records of openly anti-Palestinian rhetoric, unwavering support for settlement expansion, and aggressive foreign policy stances. Most strikingly, almost no candidates across the entire electoral spectrum have held substantive public debates about Israel’s long-term strategic trajectory, or proposed clear policies to address the overlapping crises unfolding in Gaza, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank, and with Iran. No major opposition party has laid out a roadmap for a long-term political settlement in Gaza, or outlined plans to advance the second phase of the 2024 temporary ceasefire agreement. None have put forward concrete frameworks to curb the surge of violent settler attacks against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, or to rebuild functional working relations with the Palestinian Authority. Some analysts warn that a narrow Eisenkot election victory could even embolden extremist settler factions, who have spent years building up heavily armed local militias with deep ties to rank-and-file IDF personnel deployed across the West Bank. While Eisenkot has pledged to roll back the controversial annexation-adjacent policies implemented by current far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, and reassert formal military control over settlement zones, even long-time conservative Israeli political commentators have acknowledged that the Israeli army has already effectively lost operational control over large swathes of the West Bank to settler groups. Many security experts fear that settler factions will launch widespread, coordinated acts of civil disobedience and targeted violence against Palestinian communities to undermine any incoming Eisenkot government that attempts to restrict their autonomy, in a scenario widely described as a looming settler rebellion. One potential, though deeply controversial, compromise path for Eisenkot to defuse this far-right pressure would be to form a national unity power-sharing government with Netanyahu, similar to the disastrous 2020 rotating premiership deal Netanyahu struck with former rival Benny Gantz. Such an arrangement would be deeply unpopular with Eisenkot’s core anti-Netanyahu voter base, and Netanyahu would almost certainly refuse any power-sharing deal that did not grant him full governing primacy. Even so, the unusual arrangement could neutralize the most radical elements of the far-right bloc, and exclude hardline leaders like Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir from senior ministerial positions. The final shape of the next Israeli government will ultimately hinge on how close Netanyahu’s existing current coalition can come to the 61-seat Knesset majority threshold. Current aggregate public opinion polls show Netanyahu’s existing allied factions sitting at roughly 51 seats, but if he can narrow that gap to near the 61-seat mark, political analysts warn he stands a strong chance of poaching enough right-wing lawmakers from rival opposition parties to retain the premiership for another term.
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Argentina drops investigation into President Milei over crypto fraud
A high-profile criminal probe targeting Argentine President Javier Milei and his sister, Karina Milei, over their alleged ties to a controversial cryptocurrency collapse has been formally terminated, per official court filings. Federal judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi issued the dismissal order following a formal request from federal prosecutors to drop all charges linked to the $Libra crypto scandal that roiled local markets in February 2025.
The controversy erupted after Milei published a post on X (formerly Twitter) endorsing the newly launched $Libra token, claiming the asset would channel funding to underresourced small businesses and early-stage startups across Argentina. Moments after the president shared a direct purchase link for the cryptocurrency, its market value surged dramatically, drawing thousands of retail investors. However, Milei deleted the post within hours, triggering a catastrophic price crash that left the vast majority of token holders facing crippling financial losses. The rapid, unannounced collapse prompted widespread public accusations of a “rug pull” — a common crypto scam where project operators lure investors before abandoning the asset and siphoning off raised funds — while opposition legislators in Argentina’s Congress immediately drafted formal impeachment proceedings against Milei.
From the earliest stages of the investigation, Milei repeatedly rejected all fraud allegations, emphasizing he had acted entirely in good faith throughout the incident. In multiple local media appearances, including an interview with major outlet Todo Noticias, the president clarified, “I didn’t promote it, I merely shared it,” adding that he had deleted the post as soon as he uncovered undisclosed operational details of the $Libra project that led him to distance himself from the asset. He further noted that all investors had participated voluntarily with full awareness of the inherent risks of unregulated digital assets. The presidential administration also previously confirmed that the national Anti-Corruption Office would conduct a separate administrative review to assess whether any improper official conduct had occurred, and stressed that neither Milei nor his inner circle had any involvement in developing or launching the $Libra token.
In his formal ruling dismissing the entire case, Judge Martinez de Giorgi stated that the sequence of events described in the original fraud complaint did not meet the statutory definition of a criminal offense under Argentine law, and that no admissible evidence had been presented to prove the existence of criminally relevant deception targeting investors. As of press time, President Milei has not issued a public statement responding to the news that all criminal charges against him and his sister have been dropped.
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Big Tech has become the ‘ubiquitous villain’ of US 2026 midterms
A Thursday analysis published by The Guardian confirms that widespread public resentment toward large technology corporations has solidified as a core campaign talking point across the 2026 U.S. midterm election landscape, cutting across traditional partisan lines. Over the past 60 days, hundreds of campaign broadcast ads targeting AI data center expansion have aired nationwide, with both Republican and Democratic candidates regularly accusing their opponents of acting as loyal proxies for the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry. The Guardian’s reporting further notes that public frustration extends far beyond data infrastructure alone: widespread grassroots anxiety about unregulated AI development, widespread public disdain for the ultra-wealthy tech billionaires leading the sector, and growing backlash against pervasive surveillance tools deployed by tech firms have collectively transformed the entire tech industry into a universal electoral villain this cycle. This dynamic has turned Silicon Valley into a frequent political punching bag for candidates on both sides of the aisle, even as leading Big Tech executives pour record-breaking sums of money into efforts to elect political leaders who will prioritize their regulatory and business interests. Super PACs funded directly by tech billionaires rank among the top spending groups of the 2026 election cycle. One of the most prominent, Leading the Future, was co-founded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and high-profile venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and has raised more than $75 million to support candidates who favor light-touch tech regulation. Separately, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has directed a staggering $366 million toward Republican-aligned causes this cycle, a sum far larger than the total he spent supporting candidates during the 2024 presidential election. Notably, a large share of this record tech industry spending is flowing to Republican candidates, marking a sharp shift from the sector’s longstanding history of close collaborative ties with Democratic elected officials. In Texas, Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico has worked to turn the flood of Big Tech money supporting his rival into a core campaign advantage, specifically highlighting the outsized influence Musk has had on funding the re-election bid of his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. When Musk used his X platform on Wednesday to post that “there is something deeply wrong with Talarico,” the Democratic candidate fired back immediately, writing that “There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal US senator.” A Monday investigative report from The Atlantic traces how the tech industry’s close alignment with former President Donald Trump during his second term in office has given Democratic operatives clear incentive to ramp up their criticism of Big Tech, a strategy that polling data confirms resonates with voters across party lines. Democratic strategists told The Atlantic that data center regulation has emerged as an unusually powerful wedge issue, one that can push even reliably loyal Republican voters to reconsider their support for GOP candidates. “Trump and his hands-off, anti-AI regulation stance is dragging the Republican Party toward a politically suicidal position,” veteran Democratic strategist Rob Flaherty noted. “They have picked the losing side of an 80-20 voter issue at exactly the worst possible moment.” The report adds that party strategists began pushing for a more populist, critical stance toward the tech sector after internal polling revealed unexpectedly high levels of voter concern about unregulated AI, even in deeply conservative rural districts that have historically voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates. Rishi Bharwani, U.S. director of tech regulation advocacy group Reset Tech, emphasized how dramatically the political landscape has shifted since the Barack Obama administration, when Democratic leaders largely framed the tech sector as an unalloyed positive force driving widespread social and economic progress. “We have seen explosive growth in the tech sector since then, the rise of dozens of new billionaires, and even the world’s first trillionaire,” Bharwani explained. “But millions of working families have realized they are not seeing any of those benefits. These large tech companies are actively eroding their economic stability and public safety, and voters are fed up.”
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Freed US citizen was tortured in Russian jail, former Ukrainian prisoners say
Two former Ukrainian prisoners who shared detention facilities with recently repatriated 74-year-old U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard have come forward with firsthand accounts of systematic physical and psychological abuse they say was inflicted on the retired American English teacher by Russian correctional staff over his nearly five years of detention.
Hubbard was first seized by Russian forces in April 2022, shortly after occupying the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum, where he had been residing with his local partner. Russian authorities alleged he served in Ukraine’s armed forces, convicted him following a trial in Moscow, and handed down a 82-month prison sentence before he was flown back to the United States earlier this week, released on the very day U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff held closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg to discuss ongoing negotiations around the Ukraine conflict.
The two Ukrainian men who witnessed Hubbard’s mistreatment, former Ukrainian service member Ihor Shyshko and Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, first met the American detainee at the Novozybkov penal colony in Russia’s Bryansk region, near the Ukrainian border, in September 2022. Both confirmed Hubbard’s nationality immediately marked him as a specific target for guard harassment from the moment he arrived. Shyshko, who was present for years of Hubbard’s detention, described repeated unprovoked assaults: guards beat the 74-year-old on his back, legs and arms, subjected him to electric shocks from stun guns, deliberately denied him adequate food and urgent medical care, and held him in unheated cells through frigid Russian winters. He added that guards singled Hubbard out for extra cruelty because they labeled him a foreign mercenary, and orchestrated deliberate sexual humiliation and abuse staged for the entertainment of on-duty prison staff.
Detention conditions at the facilities were universally brutal, according to both men: rations were limited to thin porridge, stale bread and small portions of potatoes, cells had shattered windows that left detainees exposed to subzero temperatures, and guards regularly forced prisoners to hold painful stress positions or run for extended periods, even unleashing attack dogs to bite detainees’ limbs, leaving festering, untreated wounds. Shyshko recalled that Hubbard’s skin on his knees and feet became completely covered in rotting, infected lesions, and that he personally bandaged the frail, nearly immobile American after the prison’s medical staff refused to provide care. Both men also contracted scabies during their confinement.
Khyliuk, who was captured in the early weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion as troops advanced on Kyiv, stated that prison administrators moved Hubbard to a hidden, unmarked section of the Pakino correctional facility shortly after the group was transferred there, specifically to hide his rapidly deteriorating health from a visiting delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He criticized the global humanitarian body for only accessing pre-vetted parts of the facility and failing to push for full access to all detainees. In response, the ICRC issued an official statement noting that whenever it is granted access to conflict detention sites, its teams explicitly request to evaluate every single detainee, and that it continues active negotiations with all parties to the Ukraine conflict to expand full, unimpeded access to all prisoners of war and civilian detainees.
Khyliuk, who was repatriated to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange in August 2025, compared the entire Russian prison system for Ukrainian and foreign detainees to the brutal repressive apparatus of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, describing the network as a purpose-built “torture machine” designed to break detainees through every form of physical and psychological abuse, from beatings and starvation to total isolation and complete bans on communicating with fellow prisoners.
The firsthand accounts from Shyshko and Khyliuk directly corroborate longstanding statements from Hubbard’s family that he had been subjected to sustained torture during his detention. The circumstances of his release have already sparked widespread debate: U.S. special envoy Witkoff publicly praised Putin as a “humanitarian” following the St. Petersburg meeting, a remark that drew widespread condemnation given Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine and near-daily aerial and ground attacks on civilian infrastructure across the country. U.S. President Donald Trump later stated he had personally requested Hubbard’s release from Putin during a direct phone call one week prior to the prisoner’s return. Khyliuk criticized the timing of the release as “shameful PR” for the Trump administration, which he argued was leveraging the American’s freedom to boost flagging support in upcoming U.S. congressional elections. Shyshko, meanwhile, expressed cautious optimism that one day all guards and officials responsible for the abuse he witnessed will face formal legal accountability, stating firmly that “Evil must be punished, and so it will be.” -
Worshippers killed in shooting at church in Jordan
A shocking act of gun violence unfolded on Friday inside a church in Jordan’s Karak governorate, where two armed assailants opened fire and fatally shot no fewer than seven people, per verified reports from multiple local Jordanian media outlets. Al-Mamlaka, Jordan’s official public broadcaster, cited an on-the-record source confirming the attack unfolded amid a crowded funeral procession taking place at the Hammoud Church, a gathering that drew a large number of local community members in attendance to mourn a deceased loved one. A civilian eyewitness who was present at the scene recounted to Al-Mamlaka that the two suspects arrived at the church premises via a private vehicle before storming the site and discharging their weapons nonstop for approximately five minutes, before fleeing the location immediately after the rampage. The witness further estimated that between 150 and 200 people were gathered both inside the church building and in its surrounding outdoor areas at the moment the shooting broke out, noting that the vast majority of the deceased victims fell within the 50 to 70 age demographic. In addition to the seven confirmed fatalities, at least 10 other attendees sustained gunshot wounds, with several of those injured listed in critical, life-threatening condition as of initial medical updates. Jordanian national security agencies have formally launched a full-scale investigation into the unprecedented attack, and officials confirmed in an official public statement that they have not yet successfully identified the two gunmen who carried out the assault, as an active manhunt across the Karak region is underway to apprehend the suspects. The incident marks a rare outbreak of targeted violent extremism targeting a religious gathering in the traditionally stable Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which has long maintained tight security protocols to prevent such public mass casualty events.
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White House says the US is lifting tariffs on some Canadian goods
The White House confirmed on Friday that it will roll back a subset of the sweeping 50% tariffs imposed on Canadian imports, framing the move as a measure to safeguard the economic well-being and national security of the American public. The announcement, which is set to take effect on 30 October, will remove a targeted list of Canadian products from the tariff roster, including plywood panels, specialty paper goods, specific industrial machinery, refrigeration components, and custom packing crates, while a separate set of Canadian imports – such as industrial valves, carpets, and assorted waste materials – will be added to the tariff schedule to offset the duty reductions. The partial tariff reprieve was first unveiled by moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is locked in a fiercely competitive re-election battle in Maine as she vies for her sixth Senate term. Collins emphasized that the carve-outs were the result of months of advocacy with senior White House trade officials, and are specifically tailored to support Maine’s signature agricultural sectors, including wild blueberry, potato, apple, and seaweed producers. She noted that many of these operations depend on specialized equipment and packaging supplies that are either not manufactured domestically in the US, or would carry prohibitive cost markups if sourced from alternative domestic suppliers. The tariff adjustment comes in the immediate run-up to the 3 November US midterm elections, where surveys show that cost-of-living pressures and household affordability rank as the top priority for a large share of American voters. Multiple outlets including the Wall Street Journal have reported that the narrow set of exemptions, heavily focused on Canadian agricultural and forestry imports, is structured to provide targeted electoral support to vulnerable Republican candidates in border states whose local economies have been upended by the cross-border trade dispute. The tit-for-tat tariff escalation between the US and Canada ignited after high-level trade negotiations collapsed earlier this summer, sending ripple effects through tightly integrated cross-border supply chains that have sustained communities on both sides of the shared border for decades. Michigan Republican Representative Mike Rogers, who previously defended the tariff policy in campaign advertisements, has also recently called for a full resolution to the trade impasse, as his state’s trade-reliant manufacturing and agricultural sectors have absorbed steep financial losses from the standoff. During public remarks on the same Friday the exemptions were announced, former US President Donald Trump stated that Canadian negotiators were “working very hard” to finalize a broader bilateral trade deal with the US. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by noting that Ottawa remains open to a mutually advantageous agreement, but would not rush to sign a subpar deal. He added that Canada would be willing to extend negotiations for months, or even wait for a future US administration, if the terms of a fair, balanced agreement cannot be reached immediately. As of press time, the BBC has not received additional on-the-record comment from the White House, US Department of Commerce, or Office of the US Trade Representative regarding the timeline for full trade deal negotiations.