Week of October 23-29, 2026
Published in conjunction with The Nation magazine, TRACKING THE CRISIS is a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Persian Gulf prepares for a third round of war as Israeli elections fail to produce majority; Mecca Alliance goes to Tehran. Governments around the world this week began advising their citizens to begin stockpiling emergency supplies such as food, water, and medicine as global authorities began to formally recognize a range of threats that may be activated when the United States and Israel execute planned attacks on Iranian energy production and civilian infrastructure in the coming days. Warnings were issued in at least 32 countries this week, and former Trump FBI Director Dan Bongino advised the American people on his podcast Monday to have at least 72 hours of emergency supplies on hand to be prepared for any emergency.
On Sunday, October 25, FOX News reported that the Pentagon had activated Operation Fortress, a plan to ensure that every U.S. military base throughout the world will be able to run independently of external support for power, food, water, and other necessities for at least 90 days. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox that “We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defence. We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk.” The report also outlines how the Pentagon is developing a plan to rapidly convert domestic manufacturing facilities to defense production during a potential crisis.
Without disclosing any specific information underpinning the preparations, Parnell described Operation Fortress as an “insurance” policy that would ensure the U.S. military would continue even if there were major disruptions to civilian energy infrastructure and supply chains. “You don’t want to be making these decisions in the middle of a global multi-front conflict,” he said. “We have to have a plan.” On Thursday, it was also reported that the U.S. Army, for the first time since the Korean War, has initiated training exercises to dig mass battlefield graves for U.S. soldiers, in anticipation of a potential ground war and/or mass casualty events in the Middle East theater.
The preparations come as it appears that the Pentagon is finalizing plans for an attack of “short duration” on Iran’s energy production facilities and civilian infrastructure soon after the midterm elections on November 3, with a recognition of Iranian plans to respond forcefully to such a potential attack by widening the scope and depth of retaliatory escalation throughout and possibly beyond the Middle East region. Oil prices rose to nearly $118 on the news last Friday, its highest since the war began and nearly matching the multi-year highs hit by oil in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump, Hegseth and Vance have downplayed the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the immediate term, acting on assumptions articulated by Treasury Secretary Bessent and other Administration figures that Iran is ‘close’ to collapsing and that further military strikes would force them into making favorable concessions to the United States. Iran denied it was close to economic collapse, as data showed it continued to easily earn money through intermediaries and fund its allies in the Axis of Resistance; Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf mocked the U.S. logic in its approach, telling Tasnim news agency that: “Americans think that with a few levers of media pressure or military threats, they can make this great nation surrender to them… Unaware that today’s Iran is not the Iran of the Pahlavi era of humiliation, but rather an impregnable fortress of self-confidence, defensive strength and iron will.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi published an op-ed in the Financial Times over the weekend to reiterate Iran’s position vis-à-vis renewed negotiations with the United States, emphasizing that Iran’s demands of the United States have remained practically unchanged from those that were formally agreed to by the United States in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding in June. Iran’s message remains consistent, he said, in that it “seeks a just and honourable deal with the US” and that “To achieve that outcome, the White House must demonstrate seriousness and a genuine will to permanently end its aggression.” There is a way forward, Araghchi insisted, “but it can only materialise once the US administration genuinely accepts that it has no military options.”
Meanwhile, other countries in the region – especially Gulf countries abandoned by the U.S. security apparatus and facing existential threats in the immediate line of fire of any escalation – have been working furiously behind the scenes to stave off a renewed round of active hostilities. On Monday, October 26, high-ranking representatives from the Mecca Defense Pact, including Prince Khalid bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Pakistani Army chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin. arrived in Tehran for high-level talks with Iranian officials led by senior Khamenei adviser Mohsen Rezaei.
The talks were reportedly aimed at de-escalating the situation and putting mediated negotiations between the United States and Iran back on the table, as well as discussions regarding a new regionally-led security architecture for the Middle East after the U.S. leaves or is kicked out of the region. The ultimate aim of these talks, to construct a U.S.-free future for the Middle East, was echoed by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi on Tuesday, where he called for the six Gulf countries, as well as Iraq and Iran, to “unite” under a regional non-aggression pact. Speaking at Cambridge University, al-Busaidi told the audience that “the nuclear issue and the Hormuz issue are both impossible to resolve because external powers continue to define the terms of engagement”; the most damaging of which, he continued, was “the requirement that Iran be excluded. Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organised.”
On Tuesday in Moscow, Russian president Putin held high-level talks with Iranian president Pezeshkian and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on the sidelines of a gas exporters’ conference. Putin reiterated Russia’s commitment to Iran in multiple sectors, including nuclear security, while Pezeshkian announced new bilateral cooperation agreements between the three countries in agriculture, oil, and other sectors, including military cooperation. In discussing the war, Pezeshkian also assured Putin that Iran had full confidence that regional issues can be resolved without the involvement of the United States; “US actions in the region,” he said, “make it easier for us to move towards greater multilateralism and strengthen our cooperation with you and other countries subject to unilateral US sanctions.”
Tuesday also saw the Israeli elections take place, which was seen by many as a referendum on Netanyahu’s conduct on the war against Iran so far. The New York Times reported this week that Netanyahu had been pushing “for weeks” for a major attack on Iran ahead of the Israeli election, but that IDF chief Eyal Zamir refused to carry out Netanyahu’s orders in an “unprecedented confrontation” with the Israeli leader. Zamir reportedly refused to carry out the order knowing that such a strike and renewed war would have prompted heavy retaliation from Iran and possibly postpone the election ‘indefinitely,’ and thus insisted that public discussion and orders in writing were to be produced and signed by all of the top Israeli leadership before he could proceed.
Neither Netanyahu nor the opposition party led by Gadi Eisenkot won an outright majority in Tuesday’s election, which saw Netanyahu’s Likud party take 53 seats and Eisenkot’s Yashar party take 48 seats, well short of the 61 needed to form a government outright. The remaining 19 seats were all won by Arab Israeli and Palestinian parties in a historic first, making it necessary for either non-majority party to form a Jewish-Arab coalition in order to govern. Netanyahu decried the result, claiming election fraud and Qatari interference (which Qatar vehemently denied); Yashar has accused Netanyahu of trying to delegitimize the election. While technically out of power, Netanyahu still retains national security authorities in this interim period, which heightens the danger of war as the government remains in limbo. Hundreds of Israeli citizens demonstrated in the streets this week urging the Yashar bloc to form a government with the Arab parties and knock Netanyahu out of power.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that JD Vance had reached out to Mohsen Rezaei with a new letter in a last-ditch effort to avoid confrontation and resume peace negotiations. The letter, according to the WSJ, aimed to “see whether Tehran and Washington could find enough common ground to persuade Trump not to give a final order for a short, intense attack on Iran in the coming weeks.” According to other reports, the letter also contained offers of humanitarian aid, as well as a new framework for negotiations that put the nuclear issue front and center in negotiations from the outset.
While Western media reported that the letter was “received well” by Iranian officials, Iranian media reported Thursday that Vance’s offer has already been rejected by top leadership and that no humanitarian aid was discussed. Iranian sources told Al-Mayhadeen and Fars news agencies that Iran “will take no new steps until the United States implements its seven conditions ‘all at once’,” which include “ending all military actions, releasing frozen assets, lifting the naval blockade, and withdrawing U.S. forces from areas near Iran.” While no official response has been issued, the source told Iranian media: “The red line remains. Washington can keep writing. Iran is not moving."
Trump has vowed publicly not to resume major strikes on Iran until just after next Tuesday’s midterm elections, but military tensions rose on Thursday after Iran’s supposed rejection of Vance’s offer. Four more tankers in the Strait of Hormuz caught fire Thursday after hitting naval mines in the ‘unauthorized’ southern route near the coast of Oman, and explosions were heard near Qeshm Island and the southern port city of Jask Thursday night as reports emerged of limited strikes on IRGC missile launchers in the area. The UK Foreign Office ordered its diplomatic personnel in multiple Gulf countries to evacuate the region on the “high risk of sudden escalation,” as the United States moved more Patriot batteries to protect energy sites in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy appeared at the Middle East Institute on Wednesday, saying he and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were briefed on the coming attack plans on Iran, which have been described to allies as a “short but intense” military campaign. “I’ll just say this,” Murphy said: “Their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law."
‘Black October’: AI bubble begins to burst as huge stock sell-off wipes trillions of dollars of value from Big Tech companies as investors doubt payoff from AI hyperscaling boom will ever materialize. Google’s parent company Alphabet suffered the worst stock crash in its history on Thursday, October 29, closing down almost 12% in a stock price bloodbath that wiped nearly $500 billion off the company’s market value in a single session. It is the second worst single-company stock crash in history, dwarfed only by last year’s $593 billion Nvidia crash after the debut of China’s Deepseek AI model brought fears that the United States would lose the AI race.
Alphabet’s meltdown, however, was just the largest in a protracted global sell-off of AI-related tech stocks that has rocked the sector over the past month, triggering speculation that the giant AI bubble – now the largest speculative financial bubble in history – is finally on its way to bursting, with untold consequences for the global financial system.
The proximate cause of the crash was Alphabet’s disappointing 3Q earnings report; while still showing a healthy profit in its cloud business, its search engine revenue fell short of projections, showing that the company’s massive investments into AI hyperscaling and AI enhancement of its signature Google search engine had failed to translate into profits, triggering fears that Google – or any of the Magnificent Seven tech companies – may ever see a return on the massive trillion-dollar investments in AI infrastructure.
Earlier this week, a report from Reuters indicated that China’s AI stock bubble had already burst, reporting that its STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor-related companies had lost 40% of its value, or over $480 billion, over the last four months. Shares in China’s top robotics companies have also halved over the past year. Despite robust capital controls and interventions from China’s top state-backed investors to dampen volatility in its stock market, the top worry spooking investors in China’s market has been the relatively quiet demand for AI products in general – while still substantial, not quite enough to justify the massive infrastructure investments that have gone into it, a problem that sees itself echoed across the ocean in the U.S. market.
On Monday, Anthropic filed its S-1 prospectus report ahead of its initial public offering in mid-November, already touted to be the largest IPO in history. While the company posted $16.3 billion in revenues for the first half of 2026, it also posted over $80 billion in losses over the same time period, making investors extremely nervous about its potential long-term performance given the nearly $1 trillion already invested in its data center buildout.
Cloud compute services on which the AI buildout relies, such as AI bastion CoreWeave, have already begun to go bust, with CoreWeave’s market cap down to $31 billion after having peaked at $90 billion just after its own IPO last March. CoreWeave’s stock finishes October down 36% after having plunged 10% just on Thursday alone, and yields on its credit default swaps hit 15% as fears around the wider risk in the entire credit system as the massive debt pyramid undergirding the whole AI hyperscaler buildout begins to teeter and crack.
Chipmakers led the sell-off in stocks Thursday, with Intel shares plunging more than 23% on disappointing 3Q earnings results, followed by AMD, Micron, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and others posting declines of 4-6%. Energy companies heavily involved in the AI hyperscaling boom, such as Bloom Energy and Comfort Systems, were down 9-11% in Thursday trading even after having posted revenue gains of over 138%. Even the more diversified and conventionally-sound companies in the Magnificent Seven suffered a total of nearly $4 trillion in losses this week; Meta reported going cash flow negative for the first time since it went public, causing its stock to tumble more than 7% on Thursday. Nvidia, the largest company on Wall Street by total value, fell around 4.4%, dragging the entire Nasdaq index down by 2.6% by close of trading on Thursday. Amazon fell 4.6%, while Tesla dropped by 3.1%.
Microsoft was also down 2.2% on disappointing earnings, and on Monday had sent buyout offers to over 60,000 of its employees, nearly 27% of its workforce. Part of the problem, noted one Microsoft executive, is that tech companies are now finding out that most of its AI-enhanced workflows are not adding actual value to the companies’ output, but merely fueling a low-value ‘doom loop’ in which “AI‑generated material is summarised by another AI tool without adding meaningful new ideas,” generating tons of error-ridden ‘work slop’ that still needs substantial amounts of human work hours in order to check and correct, erasing whatever productivity gains the AI tools were meant to add in the first place.
One big indicator of a bubble ‘bursting’ in the current tech sell-off is that despite some companies posting record sales and revenue, their stocks are continuing to suffer, indicating an overall pattern of capital flight from the sector as a whole. A report from Yahoo Finance finds that non-AI stocks in the S&P 500 were performing nearly 4% better than AI-related stocks in October, an almost 180-degree swing from having trailed AI stocks by about 4% in September, as investors go back to putting their money into companies manufacturing other types of consumer goods such as hot tubs, RVs and office supplies rather than pouring their money into semiconductors and other AI-related tech. Observers note that this corresponding rally in what they call “defensive sectors” (healthcare, materials, consumer staples) was also seen immediately preceding the dot-com crash in 1999.
Crypto was briefly a beneficiary this week from investor flight from AI, with Bitcoin posting gains of almost 27% before a massive cyberattack on Thursday – the largest crypto hack in history, thought to have originated from North Korea – stole about $6.3 billion from individual wallets on the crypto trading platform Binance, forcing Binance to shut down trading altogether. The company said it was able to freeze about $3 billion in funds that it may eventually be able to recover for investors.
Minnesota 15 case reveals largest domestic spying operation since COINTELPRO. According to a bombshell article published by Wired magazine this week, attorneys for the ‘Minnesota 15’ anti-ICE protestors currently facing federal conspiracy charges have uncovered evidence of a “sweeping, possibly unconstitutional” spying operation carried out by the Department of Homeland Security against left-leaning movements in Minnesota and beyond.
In an examination of court filings pertaining to the Minnesota 15 case, Wired reporter Ali Winston uncovered at least two large-scale probes of anti-ICE movements by DHS investigators in Minnesota, named ‘Operation Puppet Master’ and ‘Operation Whipple Shield’, respectively. The surveillance operations were launched after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and targeted activist groups and unions in the state in an effort to identify a conspiracy “aiding violent opportunists and agitators.” According to a filing by Homeland Security Investigations, the operation planned to place undercover agents in neighborhood community groups and local unions that were flagged as “posing a threat” to federal agents.
The filings show that over 120 HSI agents were involved in the operations, with at least eleven undercover agents being assigned to infiltrate activist meetings, marches, training sessions, and encrypted Signal chats. Defense attorneys for the Minnesota 15 claim that the prosecution stems from a broader nationwide surveillance operation aimed at opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Experts say nothing of this scale has been implemented by the federal government against activist groups since the COINTELPRO operations conducted by the FBI against New Left groups in the 1960s and 1970s were found to have violated citizens’ Constitutional rights.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Brazil’s Lula pulls off runoff election upset over Bolsonaro with unprecedented mass mobilization. After narrowly trailing behind Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of Brazilian elections on October 4, Brazilian Workers’ Party president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was once again elected to the country’s top office for a historic fourth term in the second round runoff elections on Sunday, October 25. Lula is the first Brazilian presidential candidate in history to have come from behind in the first round to win in the runoff election, after three weeks of mass mobilization from the Brazilian left brought out an additional 10 million voters for Lula. The win is also a historic milestone for the left in Latin America and a critical bulwark against an internationally funded wave of victories for right-wing governments in the South American cone.
Three weeks ago, Lula faced off against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of jailed coup plotter and former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, in a contested election in which abstention – the casting of so-called “blank” ballots by voters in Brazil’s compulsory elections – was at its highest level since 1998. General malaise among the population in the face of global economic woes, as well as lackluster campaigning from the Workers’ Party and an online right-wing disinformation machine (allegedly funded by a shadowy donor organization founded by JD Vance) all contributed to Lula’s first-round woes, which found him trailing at 45%, about two million votes behind Bolsonaro’s plurality of 47% at the beginning of October. The Lula campaign also accused Meta of putting its thumb on the scale by throttling Lula’s online reach in the days before the first round election, to the point of having suspended Lula’s account for several days due to an unspecified “error.”
Shortly after the first-round rout, The Guardian notes, students at universities in Rio de Janeiro began to hold demonstrations against the return of the right-wing Bolsonaro regime, which in its first incarnation had celebrated, referenced and employed notorious figures from Brazil’s military dictatorship era from 1964-1985. The demonstrations began spreading across the country, in an initially spontaneous mobilization of Gen Z voters that broadened and deepened throughout the electorate over the next three weeks.
Key to Lula’s victory was the online campaign created by Andre Janones, a 42-year-old PT congressman from Minas Gerais who organized a WhatsApp group called “Lula’s Army,” which grew from a few hundred to over 10.8 million members in just two weeks. According to The Nation’s Benjamin Fogel, “Lula’s Army” beat the decentralized online tactics of Bolsonaro’s Militant Digital Party by centralizing its communications and messaging, creating a welcoming online space for many who had felt alienated and disconnected from politics in the first round.
The campaign reclaimed many of the memes that had become symbols of the far right, including the iconic Brazil green-and-yellow soccer jersey that in recent years became associated with the right-wing “tucanos” allied with Bolsonaro. Lula’s Army repurposed the soccer jersey, this time featuring the number 13, Lula’s ballot line number, and encouraged citizens everywhere to post selfies with the jersey and the hand symbol “L,” symbolizing their support for Lula.
The campaign also created space for other leftist causes espoused by many young PT ministers, including Movimento Sem Tetos (Homeless Workers’ Movement) leader Guilherme Boulos, who now serves in Lula’s Cabinet; federal deputy for Pernambuco and leftist firebrand Jones Manoel; and 21-year-old Minas Gerais deputy Ana Elisa Silva. The grassroots mobilization was also bolstered by policies enacted by the PT government to enhance its highly popular social welfare programs as well as enact a temporary ban on online betting, a major engine of Bolsonaro’s disinformation campaign.
The unprecedented mass mobilization culminated in two giant rallies on the eve of the election, which analysts say may be the biggest mass demonstrations in Brazilian history: one in Rio de Janeiro in which nearly a million people joined Lula on Copacabana beach, and another in which over a million people flooded the streets of Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. Numerous other demonstrations on the same day also filled the streets of medium-sized cities and even small towns throughout Brazil.
On Election Day, Lula supporters mobilized in droves to transport voters from far-flung areas in Brazil’s interior to voting precincts, using cars, buses, trains, boats and even carrying elders in their arms to convey supporters to the polls. Voting was extended by approximately two hours on Election Day after the Lula campaign complained to federal authorities that bus service had been shut down in several cities, hindering access to the polls for many voters who came from poorer districts. The Bolsonaro campaign also requested an extension after flooding in parts of Brazil’s south also impeded access to the polls. All in all, Lula won by a margin of over 4 million votes on October 25, eclipsing his previous 2022 win over Jair Bolsonaro and having garnered an extra 10.4 million votes to retain the presidency.
Flávio Bolsonaro refused to accept the election results even after his party conceded defeat, calling the election ‘rigged’ without producing evidence, a claim that was echoed by Trump. Shortly after the election, the Brazilian Supreme Court banned Bolsonaro from leaving the country and ordered him to surrender his passport pending an active money-laundering investigation. Bolsonaro was “missing” for several hours until reports emerged that he had been spirited out of the country through northern Argentina, then flown to Ecuador and on to Miami, where he was given protected status by the Trump Administration. He joins his brother Eduardo, who is also wanted in Brazil over charges of attempting to interfere in his father’s coup trial.
Lula, who celebrated his 81st birthday in Brasilia this week, noted that “This is what the family Bolsonaro are like. Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as he’s become accustomed to doing.”
Hacktivists leak data of 41,000 DHS employees. A hacktivist group calling themselves “Department of Peace” carried out an unprecedented leak of Department of Homeland Security data this week, exposing the identities of more than 41,000 DHS workers, over a fifth of the Department’s workforce, and providing significant insight into how DHS operates and is organized. A searchable archive of the leaked information was published on Wednesday by transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets in connection with Swiss journalist and hacker maia arson crimew; in a note within the files, the hackers wrote, “They have our information, so it’s only fair that we have theirs.” In a press release, the hackers stated, “On July 17, Markwayne Mullin said he was ‘turning up the heat.’ This is what happens to ICE when you do that.”
The hack reportedly exploited DHS’s single sign-on login system managed by IT services company Okta, which Distributed Denial of Secrets founder Emma Best stated revolved around “a configuration error in DHS’s Okta service, and I’m fairly certain that error would be on DHS’s end and not Okta’s[.]” The leaked data includes names, phone numbers, emails, and working locations of employees across various agencies including ICE, CBP, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, including undercover ICE agents and one of the agents named in high-profile ICE killings such as that of Alex Pretti. Associated data in the leaks such as user groups offer insights into DHS activity and priorities, with data ranging from groups for congratulating ICE agents on deportations to international agent locations like the dozens of CBP agents listed in major airports in Canada.
Alaska Senate race rocked by ballot stacking scandal. The Alaska senate race has been thrown into chaos after a bombshell New York Times investigation released Wednesday reported evidence that Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and her campaign conspired to introduce Dan J. Sullivan as a “spoiler candidate” to peel votes from Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan. The Peltola campaign and Democratic party have repeatedly denied involvement, but the Times report states that interviews, text messages, and documents from a lawsuit against the Peltola campaign show evidence of efforts to recruit Dan J. Sullivan to run as a Republican specifically on the basis of his name, alongside broader efforts to coax more spoilers into the race and undermine the incumbent’s support.
Although ballot-stacking is not illegal and occurs regularly in U.S. politics, the federal government filed a lawsuit last week seeking to block the election’s results if Trump-backed Dan S. Sullivan lost. The State of Alaska moved to block the lawsuit immediately, arguing that “Delaying certification of Alaska’s election results – but only if a particular candidate does not win – would interfere with state election administration and threaten election integrity.” Since the Times report’s publication, the DOJ has issued a wave of subpoenas as part of a criminal investigation into the campaigns. President Trump has accused the Democrats of “voter fraud” and called for Peltola to be “removed from the Ballot and prosecuted,” and Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that the situation amounts to “cheating” and “fraud” and “certainly should be” considered illegal. Both Peltola and the second Dan Sullivan have so far said they will not drop out of the race.
Serbia anti-corruption student protest movement wins snap election upset. A two year long student-led mass protest movement in Serbia claimed a historic political victory this week when they resoundingly defeated authoritarian president Aleksandar Vučić in a snap election declared by the president himself in response to growing political unrest. The protest movement began in November 2024 when a railway station canopy collapse killed sixteen people, prompting outrage over government corruption. Vučić conceded defeat after his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) candidate list pulled in 40% of the national vote, while the protest movement’s “Student List-Students Win” roster secured 53%, ending the SNS’s 14-year hold on power in an election with the greatest voter turnout rate since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992.
The student slate, with the straightforward slogan, “Serbia or mafia,” is heavily populated by academics, alongside farmers and even famous athletes, and is led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, but the movement has emphasized its decentralized nature. Serbia’s protests have mirrored many shaking Europe, Asia, and South America in recent months: predominantly Gen Z-led, government corruption-focused, met and even defiantly stoked by harsh police crackdowns; and featuring controversy over a Jared Kushner-backed real estate project like Albania’s Flamingo Revolution, as Vučić, like Hungary’s recently deposed Viktor Orbán, holds a friendly relationship with the Trump family.
Local anti-ICE protests continue nationwide in response to pre-election enforcement push; Boston Dynamics workers call on execs to cancel ICE ‘robot dog’ contract. As the Trump administration continues its pre-midterm surge in ICE enforcement actions, communities across the country are rallying in protest. Several high schools in California have seen student walkouts against ICE in recent days, and a group of nuns and activists held an interfaith vigil this week calling for the closure of the state’s deadly Adelanto detention facility. Protests in Woodland and Sacramento are ongoing after ICE agents struck a Woodland man with their vehicle as he was cycling last week. Protests erupted in central and southern California after ICE agents assaulted a disabled Santa Maria area high school student, breaking his wrist. Protests outside the Monterey County Jail in central California were tense enough to prompt a temporary lockdown of the facility on Tuesday as protesters clashed with officers outside. The city of Palo Alto joined a number of other California municipalities in passing a one year moratorium on construction of any ICE detention facilities in the city. Elsewhere on the west coast, SeaTac International Airport saw protests in relation to increased ICE enforcement and connections to Palantir.
In New York City, protests in response to ICE’s shooting of 28-year-old New York resident Oscar Belgal have continued into their second week. 14 were arrested Wednesday in connection to a midday protest that blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge as a group of activists sat with a large sign reading “Stop Shooting Us” along with chants of “fire [New York City Police Commissioner] Jessica Tisch now!” To the south in New Jersey, a group of senior citizens rallied outside Newark’s Delaney Hall on Saturday to protest inhumane conditions at the facility. A number of communities have erupted into protest over ICE abductions of local small business owners and young parents in Utah, Missouri, and upstate New York, while protesters gathered outside detention facilities and marched through city centers in Arizona, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Vermont, Michigan, and Minnesota. In Philadelphia, a group of activists were evicted from a courthouse for protesting against immigration arrests.
In the tech world, robotics company Boston Dynamics are facing large-scale employee protests in response to a planned deal to sell robotic “dogs” to ICE. More than 300 employees of the company, which is wholly owned by Korean automotive manufacturer Hyundai, signed a petition calling for executives to stop a $1.3 million contract between ICE and third party defense company RADeCO for modified versions of Boston Dynamics quadrupedal robots RADeCO sells under the product name “Cerberus.”
The employee letter, which refers to the model of robot dog in question under the friendlier name of “Spot,” states, “We cannot be proud of working at [Boston Dynamics] when that work is being used by a government agency that brutalizes civilians, including some of our own colleagues at Hyundai. [...] Many of us have gotten messages from friends and family, asking us in disbelief and horror if this news is true, and how we can live with ourselves if it is. The risk for BD is simply too great to go forward with this deal.” Boston Dynamics executives have so far refused to block the contract, saying that ICE will be held to the terms and services of the devices that require they not be weaponized. The move has drawn broader outcry from the public, and activists from the De-ICE Action Network have organized protests outside Boston Dynamics headquarters in response.
Progressive candidates hold strong against personal attacks as Trump continues attempts to call midterms into doubt; Haaland poised to take New Mexico as nation’s first female Native American governor. Amidst ICE enforcement, early voting pushes, Alaska’s senate disaster and a string of chaotic campaign rallies, President Trump has continued to attempt to cast doubt on the midterm elections, telling reporters on Tuesday he’d respect next week’s results “if they’re honest elections.” In contradiction of previous statements from the President, the Department of Justice issued a ruling on Wednesday that employees from ICE and the FBI will not serve as poll monitors in the midterms; instead, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will serve as election monitors, with the DOJ saying agents will be barred from carrying firearms or wearing identifying federal attire. The move comes in response to an NAACP lawsuit aiming to block prosecutors and other law enforcement from serving as election monitors.
Abdul El-Sayed and Angie Nixon, two progressive candidates who overcame highly funded party favorites with grassroots campaigns to secure their nominations, are now weathering more pointed attacks as election day draws near. El-Sayed has been the subject of a number of Islamophobic jibes from President Trump, who called the former public health official a “jihadist” and said he would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.” Nixon, whose grassroots progressive campaign for Florida’s Democratic party senate nomination involved sleeping on friends’ couches while she knocked on doors across the state, took a hit this week when CBS posted and then deleted a social media post that it later said “did not accurately portray” Nixon’s position on Cuba, a key issue in Florida. The New Republic reports that Meta also briefly suspended a Latino outreach Instagram account without explanation just days before the election, stoking allegations that the social media giant, which has donated $5 million to President Trump’s ballroom fund, could be meddling in elections. Late polling shows El-Sayed with a lead over Rodgers, while Nixon trails close behind GOP incumbent Ashley Moody, who was appointed to her position by Florida Governor Ron De Santis after it was vacated by Marco Rubio.
In New Mexico, former Democratic congresswoman and Biden cabinet member Deb Haaland is polling with a comfortable lead over Republican opponent Gregg Hull in the state’s gubernatorial race, positioning her to soon become the first Native American woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state. Haaland, who is a member of Laguna Pueblo, has campaigned on promises of a strengthened social safety net in the state, improved rural health care access, and protection of natural resources and sacred lands. According to Advance Native Political Leadership, a record-setting 358 Indigenous candidates have or are running for office in local, state and federal elections across the country this year.
