Photo illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, The7Dew via iStock.

We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J. Trump and his cronies madly trying to convince voters to believe in their false world rather than the real one.

Palestinians search the rubble of buildings amid widespread destruction due to Israeli bombardment in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 12, 2025. OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP via Getty Images

A civil society group in Gaza on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip.

Yesterday I wrote that President Donald J. Trump’s celebration of his new marble bathroom in the White House was so tone deaf at a time when federal employees are working without pay, furloughed workers are taking out bank loans to pay their bills, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are at risk, that it seemed likely to make the history books as a symbol of this administration.

Donald Trump’s federal security forces confront a protest outside of an ICE facility, where Kat Abughazaleh is alleged to have “impeded” ICE agents, on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview, Ill. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Hoosiers likely will not receive food assistance on Nov. 1 due to the federal government shutdown. (Photo by Getty Images)

Republicans on Indiana’s State Budget Committee rejected an effort to direct state surplus funding to low-income Hoosiers and food banks as federal SNAP benefits expire next month amid a federal shutdown.

Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, urged Indiana leaders to step up, arguing that hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers are at risk of losing the food aid they receive through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Adam Alson, director of Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning for Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, speaks with Hoosier child care providers after a quarterly fiscal meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Indiana will not issue new child care vouchers to impoverished families until at least 2027, Family and Social Services Administration leaders said at a quarterly fiscal meeting Wednesday, in the agency’s latest strategy to contain enrollment — and cut expenses.

Dear Senator Alting,

As voters in several states prepare to cast ballots next week in statewide elections that could serve as a referendum on President Donald Trump, he’s renewing his push to insert himself into how elections are run.

Over the past few months, Trump suggested the federal government should play a bigger role in running elections, including banning mail voting and handling the counting of ballots to — this week — banning early voting.

I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first, you must know three things about Venezuela to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government.

• 1. Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

• 2. Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

• 3. Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

The current Shutdown

When Emmett Till’s mother lifted the veil from her son’s mutilated body in 1955, she forced America to face itself. She knew that if the nation could see what had been done to her child, it could no longer pretend innocence. That open casket was a moral explosion: it turned private grief into a public reckoning.

The same courage is needed now.

Amy Wallace, the co-writer of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, has said she knows the names of the men who raped and trafficked children with Jeffrey Epstein.

AI chatbots are surging in popularity. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, more than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week.

For the Trump regime, the brutality is the point. It’s the means to the end of a violent, single-party state that they’re openly proclaiming, even though our media insists on turning away from it.

Back in the 1980s, I lived with my family and worked in Germany for a bit short of two years. The international relief agency I worked for (and lived at the HQ of) jumped through all the necessary hoops to get me a work permit, but if I’d overstayed my permit/visa nobody would have kicked in my front door or invaded my home with flash-bangs and automatic weapons drawn.

Three U.S. journalists have been abducted from aid flotillas bound for Gaza and detained by Israel. All three reported experiencing or witnessing abuse and even torture.

On July 1, 2025, the Indiana General Assembly effected the House Enrolled Act 101, a new Indiana budget bill that brings major changes to higher education. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education reported that six universities across the state have been affected, with 74 programs eliminated, 101 suspended, and 229 pending mergers.

At IU Indianapolis, several programs face suspension, including those of students like Rianna Vanhook, Laura Riley, and Phillip Wozniewski.

On Sept. 12, the U.S. Department of Education unexpectedly canceled a $35 million grant that Purdue had been awarded in 2024 as a result of the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs statewide. The grant was intended to prepare low-income Indiana students for college through a program called GEAR UP.