A Week of Courts, Counts and Breaches Ends Where It Began: at the Ballot Box

The Road to Tuesday

The week's threads all ran toward the same destination: Tuesday's midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. By Friday, more than 43 million Americans had cast early ballots. President Donald Trump canceled two in-person rallies in Kansas and Iowa in the campaign's final days — events The Hill reported were in states with competitive Senate races — and pivoted to tele-rallies across 19 states. The Senate map expanded considerably in the closing stretch, with control of the chamber in play across a half-dozen states.

The courts kept pace with the campaign. On Friday, a federal judge in California issued an emergency order blocking the Justice Department from threatening election workers with criminal prosecution over counting ballots from registered voters the administration claims are ineligible. The judge separately ordered the department to share a disputed list of California voters — people the DOJ claims may not be U.S. citizens — with two outside groups. Both rulings landed days before Election Day.

The Justice Department made news on other fronts as well. On Monday, it filed a two-count criminal information against former FBI Director James Comey, accusing him of communicating national defense information and conspiracy tied to an alleged 2016 leak to The New York Times. It was the third time the Trump administration has charged him; Comey called the case an 'appalling abuse' of the department, and his lawyers argued it is legally invalid and untimely. The same day, a federal judge ruled the administration illegally fired his daughter, Maurene Comey, from her role as a federal prosecutor. By Sunday, a different federal judge had dismissed Trump's $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal with prejudice, ruling the president failed to show actual malice over the paper's reporting on an alleged 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Federal Reserve added its own pre-election marker Wednesday, with officials widely expected to hold rates steady amid 3.7% annual inflation. Treasury yields ticked higher ahead of the announcement, which arrived six days before the vote — a politically charged moment for the central bank, whatever the outcome.

Contested Counts Abroad

Two of the world's most closely watched democracies voted this week, and neither produced a tidy result. In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, won Sunday's presidential runoff over far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, securing a fourth term and becoming the first candidate since 1989 to win the final round after trailing in the opening vote. The AP reported the result is seen as a setback to widening U.S. influence in Latin America, given Lula's vocal criticism of President Trump.

Bolsonaro refused to accept the outcome and called for the election to be annulled. By Thursday, he had fled to Miami via Argentina and Ecuador, calling himself Brazil's 'true president' and repeating unsubstantiated fraud claims — leaving a stable transition in Latin America's largest democracy in doubt.

In Israel, polls opened Tuesday for the first national election since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition and an opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot entered the day in a dead heat, with tens of thousands of Israelis flying home to vote and both camps warning that a loss would imperil the country's future. The BBC reported neither bloc may secure a clear majority, which could mean weeks of coalition negotiations. Elsewhere in the region's politics, Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela after nearly a year in exile, greeted by thousands of supporters in Caracas.

Breaches, a Record Heist, an AI Reckoning

Digital security dominated the week's second tier. On Wednesday, a group calling itself the Department of Peace published personal data of more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents — names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses and office locations, The Verge reported. The leak followed earlier breaches at the FBI and the Defense Department, the latest in a string of intrusions targeting federal security agencies. Separately, researchers disclosed a code-execution flaw in widely used EDK2 UEFI firmware that lets attackers run code during boot, putting most of the world's servers at risk.

Then came the largest crypto theft on record. Investigators said Friday that TraderTraitor, a hacker group tied to North Korea, is the prime suspect in Thursday's $6.3 billion theft from Binance, executed in roughly 20 minutes after a Binance employee's laptop was compromised. A race is on to recover the funds before they can be laundered, with multiple crypto-tracing firms saying billions are likely gone for good.

Markets had their own turbulence. Alphabet shares fell 10% in premarket trading Thursday — on course for the stock's biggest-ever post-earnings decline — after the company spent $51 billion on AI infrastructure in the quarter, undershot sales and profit expectations, and acknowledged its 'AI mode' has hurt traditional search. The drop dragged tech futures lower even as Microsoft beat expectations. The AI spending race continued regardless: Nvidia announced a $3 billion investment in Meta, which plans to raise $95 billion for its own AI infrastructure buildout, and Meta- and Google-backed Jio Platforms rose 21% in its market debut after India's largest-ever IPO.

Grief, a Title, and What's Next

The week opened in grief. A shooting near Florida A&M University's Bragg Memorial Stadium during homecoming weekend wounded at least 12 people, six of them children, according to the Associated Press; USA Today counted 11 wounded. The investigation is ongoing, and the Tallahassee community spent the week mourning an attack on one of the university's signature gatherings.

There were losses and milestones elsewhere. Labor leader Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers and coined 'Sí, se puede,' died at 96. A landmark analysis found that roughly three-quarters of NFL players who died between 2008 and 2023 had CTE, the degenerative brain disease tied to repeated head impacts. And in Milwaukee, the Brewers beat Tampa Bay 4-1 in Game 5 to win the franchise's first World Series title, with catcher William Contreras named Series MVP.

The week ahead has two fixed points. Election Day arrives Tuesday, with turnout, key races and ballot measures to watch as the midterm campaign closes. And in Hull, England, Karl Bushby arrives home, completing a 28-year walk around the world that crossed jungles, deserts and bureaucratic red tape. As Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon, once put it: 'If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.'