NEWS DESK's Podcast

Two hours after both houses were called for Democrats, the president posted that he wasn’t on the ballot. Two hours after that, the Senate Democratic leader gave the country five words: “Relief is on the way.” Both of them are telling you the truth. One table says this is what happens to every president in a midterm. The same table says nothing this big has happened since 2010. And neither man mentioned the one number that decides whether “relief” ever reaches you. It’s inside. ABOUT INTELLIGENC

Twenty thousand names arrived in California on a thumb drive. The password came on a handwritten note. The letter gave the state 48 hours. Two weeks later the federal government was at the Supreme Court, the day before Election Day, asking to have those voters’ ballots held uncounted. By dinner the Court had answered in one line. That made three courts in six days, and none of them decided whether a single person on the list is a citizen. What two of them did find is the part that changes how yo

On the night of October 13th, a setting changed on the satellite dishes Ukraine’s drones fly on. Crews in the southeast lost their connections mid-mission. Nobody warned them. The company that holds the setting said nothing for ten days. The public found out from a Telegram post. It has happened before, and the last time, the world learned about it from a biography a year later. Who pays for the dish, who can change it, and who finds out first are three different answers, and the gap between the

There are two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s Senate ballot. The New York Times says the second one was recruited. The Justice Department sued to quarantine his ballots. On Sunday a federal judge threw the suit out. And the people who know this area of law best say nothing illegal happened. The line has always sat in exactly one place, and once you see where, you will see why the FBI is visiting a retired teacher’s donors in a fishing town while the recruiting the Times describes is, by every expert’s

Serbia’s students spent two years in the street after a station roof killed 16 people. On Sunday they threw out the party that had run the country for 14 years. Nearly 70 percent of Serbia showed up to do it. The headlines called it a loss for Russia. Serbia is still buying Russian gas at less than half the market price, and the students said so a month before anyone voted. Hungary did the same thing in April. Brazil did the opposite. Israel just tried. There is one question that explains all fo

On a Tuesday morning, a reporter asked the White House whether the U.S. had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. The answer was “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” That night in Kyiv, Russian missiles hit a nine-story apartment building before the sirens sounded. Three women died. It was the second night in a row the first warning didn’t come. Washington says it is still sharing. Kyiv says the same. A week earlier, Ukraine’s generals had reportedly been told that support could be cut.