Letters with white powder were mailed to election offices in three states and to three Democratic senators, and early tests found nothing harmful.
Election offices in Louisiana and Oklahoma were evacuated after workers opened the letters, and postal inspectors stopped Ohio’s before it arrived. The FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Capitol Police are investigating, about three weeks before Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Tests found the powder non-hazardous in Oklahoma and harmless in Louisiana. The FBI says it is still working to identify who sent the letters.
October 16, 2026 · Seven stories, illustrated
State election offices
- ToLouisianaState election office
Opened by workers; the office was evacuated
Test: harmless
- ToOklahomaState election office
Opened by workers; the office was evacuated
Test: non-hazardous
- ToOhioSecretary of state, the official who runs elections
Stopped by postal inspectors before it arrived
Offices in Congress
- ToChuck SchumerSenate minority leader · Democrat · New York
What became of it is not stated in the reporting
- ToChris MurphySenator · Democrat · Connecticut
Stopped in the mail; no one was in immediate danger
- ToAlex PadillaSenator · Democrat · California
What became of it is not stated in the reporting
A House notice said no House members had been identified as recipients.
Not identified. The FBI says it is still working to identify who sent the letters.
“Any threat or attack on an election official is unacceptable.”Brendan Donahue, a deputy chief inspector at the Postal Inspection Service
- 2023
Election offices in six states received letters with white powder, some of it laced with fentanyl, an opioid that can be deadly in tiny amounts.
- Before the 2024 election
Election offices in 17 states received suspicious packages.
- This year
Letters to election offices in three states, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Ohio, and to three senators’ offices. Early tests found nothing harmful.
Still open: who sent the letters.
Read the reporting
The Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County to keep the mail ballots of about 20,000 people it calls likely noncitizens from being counted.
The suit was filed on Thursday, Oct. 15, 19 days before the Nov. 3 election, after a 48-hour DOJ deadline to review the list passed at noon. The complaint’s “high confidence” label describes a name match, not proof that anyone lacks citizenship.
Filed by the Justice DepartmentThursday, Oct. 15
Against California and Los Angeles County election officials, in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
The ask
A judge’s order that mail ballots sent to roughly 20,000 people on its list be set aside, not counted, until their citizenship is verified.
The list
- Who is on it
- People DOJ calls likely noncitizens
- Its “high confidence” label
- A name match, not proof that anyone lacks citizenship
- How DOJ built it
- Not stated in the letters
Filed 19 days before the Nov. 3 election
“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America.”Attorney General Todd Blanche
California officials call the demand baseless and say DOJ has never explained how it built the list. This summer, the Department of Homeland Security claimed 190,000 noncitizens were on California’s voter rolls, without saying how it counted them.
- Tuesday, Oct. 13
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sends California and Los Angeles County letters and a password-protected thumb drive: check the citizenship of the mail voters on it and hold their ballots by noon Thursday, Oct. 15. Los Angeles County did not open the drive, which its registrar called not “a secure medium.”
- noon Thursday, Oct. 15
The 48-hour deadline to review the list passes.
- Thursday, Oct. 15
The Justice Department sues.
- Tuesday, Nov. 3
Election Day, 19 days after the suit.
Federal law bars systematic voter-roll removal programs in the 90 days before a federal election, to keep false matches from knocking eligible voters out late.
It is only holding ballots, not removing anyone, and the Supremacy Clause lets a federal notice override state counting rules.
The plan is exactly what the 90-day rule exists to prevent.
The Supremacy Clause is the part of the Constitution that makes federal law win over conflicting state law.
Still open: how DOJ built the list, and whether a judge orders the ballots set aside.
Read the reporting
Two U.S. officials and a Western official say the order to cap Ukraine’s Starshield terminals came from the White House.
Ukrainian terminals lost service whenever the drone or aircraft carrying them flew faster than 100 mph (160 km/h). A Ukrainian official told Axios that service came back to full capacity after more than a day.
Any limits on Starshield’s speed or use are “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” the president.
The administration had nothing to do with it.
Trump himself did not restrict Ukraine’s access.
The order came from inside the White House. They did not name who gave it or who carried it out.
No directive or named official has surfaced
Starshield is the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet, bought by the U.S. government for Ukraine’s forces. It is owned and controlled by the U.S. government, not by SpaceX.
- Above the cap
- Interceptor drones chasing Russia’s jet-powered Geran-4 drones, which fly 300–400 km/h (186–249 mph), lost their link.
- Below it, too
- The 7th Rapid Reaction Corps reported 10–20-second dropouts at just 110–120 km/h (68–75 mph) and canceled several missions.
- Not affected
- Long-range refinery raids. Per The Guardian, those drones do not use Starlink.
No equipment loss or death has yet been tied to this week’s cap.
“At best... an unacceptable error or lapse.”Sen. Thom Tillis · Republican · North Carolina, who asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate. At worst, he said, it was a deliberate choice to “clear the field for a Russian attack.”
Britain’s defense secretary plans to raise the outage with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
- Autumn 2022
At least 100 terminals near Kherson went dark.
- February 2023
SpaceX said it had curbed Ukrainian drone use.
- January and February 2026
Controls meant to block Russian drones also hit Ukrainian attack drones until approved users got exemptions.
Still open: who in the White House gave the order, and under what authority.
Read the reporting
A gunman killed three children and one adult at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. Police have not said who killed him.
The shooting was at Silver Rail Elementary, a K-5 school, on Thursday, Oct. 15. The shooter was also killed. CNN and Fox News report he was a 16-year-old boy.
The first 911 call reports a shot fired into a car outside the school.
Officers arrive, three minutes later.
The shooter is down.
The three minutes run from the first 911 call to the officers’ arrival.
Police have not said. Several outlets report he may have been shot by an armed bystander; police have not confirmed it.
The FBI is assisting Bend police. “This is the kind of thing we never want to see happen in Bend. It’s devastating,” police spokesperson Sheila Miller said, per PBS NewsHour.
From 2000 to 2025, four shootings killed at least four victims at a U.S. elementary school: the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania (2006, five killed), Sandy Hook in Connecticut (2012, 26), Robb Elementary in Texas (2022, 21) and Nashville’s Covenant School (2023, six). Education Week’s 2025 tracker recorded none at that scale. With four killed, Bend joins that list.
Silver Rail enrolls about 459 students, per PBS NewsHour; Fox News puts it at 400 to 450.
Still open: who fired the shots that killed the 16-year-old shooter, and how he got his weapon.
Read the reporting
Trump canceled the livestream of Nidal Hasan’s Dec. 3 firing-squad execution but kept the execution.
Trump said on Truth Social that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will still be shot by an Army firing squad on Thursday, Dec. 3, but the event will not be streamed. That reverses a plan Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week, after backlash from both parties.
The livestream- Canceled.
- The execution
- Still set for Thursday, Dec. 3, by an Army firing squad.
- In person
- Victims’ immediate families may attend.
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”Donald Trump, on Truth Social
In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 80% of Americans said it should not be streamed, and 64% of Republicans agreed.
signed a letter urging the stream be canceled.
“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do.”
“It’s not a spectacle. It’s not a pay-per-view event or a WWE wrestling match.”
Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. On Oct. 6, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle ordered a firing squad. The U.S. military has not executed anyone since 1961, so the execution would be its first in 65 years.
Read the reporting
Producer prices rose 6.3% in the year to September, the most since December 2022, and fuel made up half the increase.
The producer price index, a monthly Labor Department survey of what businesses charge that tends to reach store shelves later, rose 1.3% from August alone. Forecasters had expected 0.6%.
Fuel made up half the increase, and diesel-driven shipping costs are starting to push up food.
Three price surveys, upstream to the shelf
One step from final salegoods and services; a non-pandemic record, per economist Ernie Tedeschi
8%Producer priceswhat businesses charge; up from 5.6% in August
6.3%Consumer priceswhat shoppers pay; reported Oct. 14
3.7%
Inside producer prices
Transportation and warehousingup 3.4% in September alone
16%Core producer pricesleaves out food and energy; per NBC News
5%Wholesale foodunchanged on the year, though up 1.2% in September alone
Unchanged
Each bar is the rise over the same year, drawn from 0% to scale. The top three are separate price surveys, not one basket moving down a pipe, and the drawing does not forecast what reaches shelves. The bottom three are parts of producer prices, not added to them.
“This is how increases in energy prices ‘bleed through’ to prices of core goods.”Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics
The only bigger monthly producer-price jump since January 2010 was March 2022’s 1.7%, per BLS’s revised table.
- +0.7%
- core producer prices from August; up 5% on the year, per NBC News.
- +3.4%
- transportation and warehousing prices from August, a monthly jump.
- +1.2%
- wholesale food prices from August, though unchanged from a year earlier.
- $6.32
- a gallon of diesel on Thursday, Oct. 15, against $3.66 a year earlier, per AAA.
- 12% below
- their five-year seasonal average, diesel stocks in the week ended Oct. 9, per EIA. Its average retail diesel price was $6.18 a gallon on Oct. 12, 2026.
- +0.8%
- September retail sales, against 0.4% expected, per Axios.
The Fed’s September forecast already put 2026 PCE inflation, its preferred gauge, at 3.7% against a 2% target, with no return to 2% until 2029.
Still open: whether the Federal Reserve raises rates again when it meets Oct. 27–28.
Read the reporting
The CDC is sending one outbreak investigator to Pennsylvania, where confirmed measles cases have reached at least 1,222 this year.
It is the CDC’s first in-person help to the state since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s August feud with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The investigator is one Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, one of the CDC’s trained outbreak investigators.
- 1,222
- confirmed cases, at least
- 225
- hospitalizations
The sources do not say why the two counts differ
Pennsylvania reported its sixth measles death in under two months as its outbreak, the nation’s worst, reached 1,136 cases. It was the first U.S. outbreak to pass 1,000 cases since 1991.
- 87.6%
- of Lancaster County kindergartners have two MMR doses, leaving 632 without documented protection.
- 89.0%
- of Mifflin County kindergartners, and 77.6% of its seventh graders.
- 93.2%
- of kindergartners statewide, down from 93.7% the year before.
Lancaster’s figures are from the 2025-26 state school survey.
Still open: how long the officer will stay, and why the two death counts differ. The sources do not say.