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By MortThe Records Bureau

School funding, the stated cause of the French student protests, died on 18 October at the age of twelve days. It is survived by a Kansas rally, by French protest footage shown at American midterm rallies, and by a ballot on 3 November.

It was born in difficult circumstances, as these things usually are. Democracy Now! reported on 6 October that nearly 2,000 French high schools were blockaded or closed, and that the movement had begun in September at a single school in the economically deprived suburbs of Paris, where students protested teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings beset by rats and falling debris. That is the shit the children were marching about, and it is the part that did not travel.

It was preceded in death by the schools themselves. Morning Star counted around 400 of them closed on 2 October. The same paper reported on 8 October that students had dragged rubbish bins into position outside the Helene Boucher Lycee in north-eastern Paris the previous morning, erecting barricades before police moved in with tear gas, and that police had made more than 6,600 arrests since late September, when the protests began. The arrested were most of them under 18.

For a while the cause outgrew the schools without losing its name. Common Dreams reported on 8 October that students had led more than 250,000 people in protests demanding education funding, with Clémence Guetté, a deputy of the French National Assembly, saying "we are going to sweep away the old world." On 17 October the same outlet counted demonstrations in 140 cities over inequality, the cost of living and school conditions. A protester identified as Agnes told Agence France-Presse: "For years we've had climate, economy, and equality problems, but the government is not doing anything about it."

The replacement cause was already in print. On 10 October the New York Post ran a column arguing the protests were "really about a growing radical Muslim population that wants to get rid of democracy."

On 18 October the Washington Examiner reported President Trump urging France to secure its borders to "people with hatred in their hearts," and posting "France is burning!" on Truth Social, with police arresting approximately 1,800 people.

The arrest count is the one mourner that kept changing its story. CBS News had more than 1,800 on 19 October, after masked groups set fires and attacked city halls. On 24 October Fox News reported Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez saying 135 people were arrested with 70,000 police deployed; the same day, the same outlet reported the same minister saying nearly 1,000, with the same 70,000. CBS, filing on 25 October, had more than 1,000 and demonstrations that were largely peaceful, with clashes Saturday evening.

The networks' own pictures were the problem and also the evidence. Fox News reported on 19 October that the BBC had called the protests "mostly peaceful" as its own footage showed burning cars, looted shops and nearly 1,000 officers injured nationwide. On 24 October Fox ran the story again under the heading BROADCAST BIAS. On that same Saturday NBC News reported more than 100,000 people marching in Paris over school funding and soaring living costs, police firing tear gas and water cannons near the end.

CBS News reported on 20 October that French officials had implemented local curfews Monday and said an "ultra-left movement" was behind the violence and vandalism. On 21 October Le Monde reported that the US president and his inner circle repeatedly used the violence of October 17 to denounce immigration and Muslims, warning that a Democratic victory in the midterm elections on November 3 would expose the United States to the same dangers. The same day, the Washington Examiner reported that Macron, speaking to the press in Doha, called the comments "stupid" and "unacceptable" and said there was no evidence of foreign actors instigating the protests.

The Hill reported on 24 October that his former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, told CNN's Abby Phillip the midterm picture was "It's ugly." The deceased got one last mention that week in a Washington Examiner opinion piece, which wondered whether the only way the French could get more pens, pencils and the rest was to riot. A penny-ante eulogy, but it did name the thing.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that before 3 November you find out what your own district spends on its school buildings, and who is telling you the children asking for it are something else.

By LouOne More Question

I'm asking a favor, because this is your field and it is nowhere near mine. You people do satellites and contracts every day of the week. I've got one week of it in my coat and I cannot make it sit flat — four readings in the car, and the car needs a fan belt, so believe me there was time. Straighten me out and I'll get out of your way.

I wrote this down. Just a second. Ah, here it is.

The Guardian, Wednesday the fourteenth: Ukrainian soldiers in combat "have suddenly had their access to Starlink satellite internet terminals restricted." Tuesday evening, the paper says. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Zelensky, wrote on Telegram that the limits came without warning, and the Washington Examiner printed his account: the restrictions applied to Starshield, and to terminals moving above 100 mph. The Examiner also reported some drone operations were cancelled.

Here's my first snag. Same day — Wednesday, I've got it circled twice — the Examiner carries the owner of SpaceX on who did it. "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government." The Hill, the same Wednesday: decisions to restrict the speed or usage of Starshield are made by the U.S. military and, ultimately, the president. France 24 ran it. The Post said he pointed to Trump. So on Wednesday the switch is Washington's. Am I reading that the way you'd read it?

Thursday, the BBC: "Musk says US government may be behind slowdown of Ukraine drone speeds." May be. The BBC reports Ukraine says access has improved but it is still facing speed limits which are disrupting its battlefield "missions." The Times that Thursday called it a Pentagon-funded satellite internet program that "appeared to be curbed without warning," and the attack it was reporting cut power to 600,000 people in Kyiv. CBS had Ukrainian officials saying the usual warning never came. That's four desks reading off one page — the Guardian, Common Dreams, CBS, the Times — and Common Dreams had already asked on the Wednesday what a country pays for running its war on a network it doesn't own.

Now, my qualifications. There's a light in my garage on a switch by the side door and a breaker in the panel behind the water heater. Two weeks this fall I hit that switch and got nothing, and I told my wife the power company was doing something to the street. The power company did not know I was alive. I'd thrown the breaker myself with the end of a ladder. Two weeks of blaming the utility for my own elbow — and the whole two weeks, I was the only man in the county who could walk back there and push it up. Is that the same shape as this, or does it change when it's satellites?

Because on the third, the Times reported the founder of SpaceX joining a Pentagon advisory board, billions of dollars in military contracts to his name; this month a report put his midterm spending at $276 million, the largest of the cycle. Senator Tillis asked him that Wednesday to explain the overnight disruptions, and said he hoped it was an error and not a deliberate decision. Zelensky said, "It's a pity that we are losing a strong partner," and by the seventeenth said Starshield was still restricted and called it a "planned operation" to target Kyiv.

The Times reported the president asked him to reverse the limits. Friday, the BBC had the soldiers still restricted. The president was in Sioux City that week with $150 million for gas and diesel, and he'd blamed Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries for the price — but that's not my page. The twentieth: the Wall Street Journal reported, and The Hill confirmed, that he had ordered the slowdown himself.

Excuse me — before you go. I'm sorry. There was one more page and I've been hunting it since I sat down. Glovebox, probably. No — here. Saturday: he said SpaceX throttled the speeds itself, over the drone strikes, and the cap came off that same day. So Wednesday's page says the U.S. military and, ultimately, the president. Saturday's page says SpaceX. You do this every day: which of the two took the limit off on a Saturday, and whose hand was that on the switch?

By ChipStaff Writer

Let me start with the number, because the number is the part the critics keep walking past. In one month this White House has produced three ceasefires in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Three. Three is more ceasefires than two. Two is more than one. I am not going to stand here and apologize for a surplus.

The record starts in September. On September 5, AAA priced a gallon of diesel at $5.88, a record, and Axios reported that Republican incumbents' own polling put the blame on the President. On September 14, the President posted that Ukraine had agreed not to hit Russian energy targets and that Russia had agreed to do likewise. On September 19, he signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, named for the South Carolina senator who championed it before he died in July, authorizing tariffs of up to 100 percent.

Was that September agreement honored? It was honored in the relevant sense — the sense in which it existed, and we said it existed, and the strikes that kept landing afterward were outside the scope of the — all right. The strikes were the scope. The strikes were the thing it covered. What I am telling you is that the framework was already in place, which is how we were able to replace it so quickly.

On October 11 the President posted: "Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine." Zelensky learned of it from that post and called it "news to me." The Guardian reported the announcement went up as Russian drones hit Kyiv. That same day the President said Ukraine needed a new president and blamed Zelensky for diesel prices; the criticism came after Russian strikes that killed at least 20 people, three of them children.

On October 16 the President called Ukraine's refinery strikes a disgrace. On Friday evening he signed an executive order waiving the sanctions and tariffs in the Graham Act, calling it "in the national interests of the United States" and, afterward, "a very good decision." Senator Thom Tillis called it "Beyond irresponsible." Darline Graham, appointed to her late brother's seat, gently disagreed. Senator Chuck Schumer said, "Trump just gave Putin the best birthday gift he'll get this year." Zelensky said the Act "could have helped enormously," and reported over 320 drones, missiles and munitions aimed at his energy sector.

Here is the mechanism, and I want to be precise about it. The sanctions produced the talks. They produced them because they were signed and then held — an unfired tool is still a tool, Moscow could see the tool, and Moscow came to the table knowing that at any moment we might — knowing we had already put it down, indefinitely, in writing, and told Congress so. Let me restate that. The leverage is the restraint.

On the American's release, the President said enforcing those sanctions would have stopped it, and praised the Russian president as a humanitarian. I know how that plays in Brussels, where Zelensky on Friday called the decision a betrayal and asked allies for another €70 billion for 2027. CBS reported the President is tapping Russian energy to ease prices. The Times reported the waiver came amid fears that high energy prices would cost Republicans in next month's elections, and that the administration is floating more Russian gas sales to Europe. That is responsiveness, priced by the gallon.

Talks resumed Thursday. The Czech president said the diesel deal was "so close." Hours later, missiles landed on Kyiv. Earlier this month a Russian missile hit a housing complex in Pryluky, a Ukrainian city of no strategic value: thirty apartments destroyed, twenty-two people killed, five of them children. A city there is eating weeds to survive.

So: one signed law, in reserve. Three ceasefires inside thirteen days, each one announced on time. We have more.

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk

You will want to know which ballots the Department of Justice has a quarrel with. It is a fair question, and the filing that came out of Washington on Friday declines to answer it. The number of Alaska ballots challenged is zero. Zero — no precinct named in the complaint, and no stack of absentee envelopes in it either. What is pleaded instead is confusion: two men named Dan Sullivan, one sitting above the other on the Senate line, one of them the sitting senator and the other a retired schoolteacher, and a voter at a booth with a pen and two identical names under it.

And the relief sought? That a court stop Alaska from certifying its Senate race if Senator Dan Sullivan loses. If he loses. The drafting puts a condition precedent on the remedy — the event that must occur before the obligation arises — and the event is a defeat. Should the senator finish ahead, the two names trouble nobody and the certificate goes out on time. The quarrel is not with a ballot, you see. It is with a result.

This did not arrive on Friday out of nothing. On September 2nd the Department of Homeland Security opened what it calls, internally, the Unlawful Voter Initiative: hundreds of agents going through state voter rolls for names that should not be there. That same day the president stood at the White House microphones and went at the retired schoolteacher whose name the senator shares. Do note the order of those two.

By October 13th, a Tuesday, the Department had sent Los Angeles County a thumb drive with a handwritten password on it, and had asked a federal court to set aside twenty thousand ballots in that county before anyone finished counting them. Twenty thousand — uncounted and contested at once, which is quite a trick of sequencing. Then came this week's letter to counties across California, vowing that the Department will not "improperly" block any election. Improperly. Attorney General Blanche chose the adverb, and it is a handsome one, because it concedes the category while reserving the judgment: there are proper ways to block an election, and the Department will say which ones they are.

There is supposed to be a custom about the timing. The New York Times observed on the 13th that the search of Representative Ilhan Omar's home fell inside the sixty-day window before a midterm, in which the Department has historically avoided investigative steps related to political candidates. Historically. A custom is not a statute; it binds whoever elects to be bound by it, and this October nobody elected to be.

So what has been traded, and for what? Alaska's certificate is the instrument that makes a count final — final being the whole point of a count, the moment after which the thing stops being an argument. In the Department's pleading, that finality now hangs on which man is ahead when the counting stops ... and what it buys is one Senate seat. One. The election is ten days away.

By MitchInvestigations

The ceiling on what one person may put into one party came off this week, and nobody had to touch it.

On Monday the Times reported that Elon Musk is the largest known midterm donor in American political history, at $276 million. On September 22 the reported plan had been at least one hundred million; three weeks on the figure was nearly triple that, and not one rule on the books stood in the road. The money moves through America PAC, an outside group that disclosed its first spending of the cycle on September 3 — mail advertising. The party it funds goes into November with a $400 million edge.

That is the first half of the week. The second half ran on a much smaller number.

On Monday in Warsaw, Zelensky said he had been surprised by Trump's "energy ceasefire" announcement, which went up as Russian drones hit Kyiv, and vowed to retaliate if strikes on Ukraine's power grid continued. ABC News put the arrangement plainly on Thursday: Trump declared a ceasefire, but both sides are still shooting.

Tuesday evening, Ukraine's access to Starlink was throttled without warning. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelensky on defense technology, wrote on Telegram that the restrictions apply to Starshield, SpaceX's military service, and limit terminals moving at speeds above 100 mph. Military missions were disrupted. Some drone operations were cancelled. Ukrainian officials told CBS News that the Starlink missile tracker failed that night, during a new wave of Russian strikes.

All together now, the operative clause: the limit applies to terminals moving at speeds above 100 mph. Not terminals in the wrong country. Not terminals put to the wrong use. Terminals above a posted speed. That is not weather and it is not a fault; it is a setting, and a setting is something a person enters. The remainder of the week was spent on which person.

On Wednesday Musk answered in public: "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government." Limits on speed or usage, he said, are decided by the US military and, ultimately, the president. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina had asked Musk to explain the overnight disruptions, expressing hope that the restriction was an error and not a deliberate decision. So a senator asked the contractor, and the contractor named the Pentagon, which funds the program. By Thursday the BBC had it in the same posture: Musk says the US government may be behind the slowdown of Ukraine's drone speeds. Three days, one direction, no name.

The question had a second half, and CBS News reported it that Wednesday: the administration may have withheld intelligence warnings to Ukraine about Russian strikes that killed 6 and cut power to 600,000 people. The Times reported the same Wednesday that officials say the United States continues to provide intelligence to Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials suspected the orders restricting their access "had come from Washington." Zelensky, on Wednesday: "It's a pity that we are losing a strong partner." By Thursday he said he felt "betrayed."

There is a stated reason for the pressure. Trump blames Ukraine's strikes on Russian energy targets for driving up diesel prices, and has pressed Kyiv to stop them ahead of the midterms. The diesel is real: on October 3 the Guardian found Joe Hamilton, who farms 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans in Indiana's Delaware county, facing a record bill for about 9,000 gallons as his soybean harvest began, with the Iran war stoking record prices. That is the sum of the arithmetic on offer — an Indiana fuel bill on one side, a speed threshold over Kyiv on the other, and $276 million moving through the mail in between.

Also on October 3, the administration's AI accord was described as establishing "Real Oversight – Without Creating A Regulatory Capture Regime."

Two ceilings were in the news this week. The one on money came off without a vote. The one that held was 100 mph.

By The Wrecking CrewThe Remedy Desk

Start with the gap in the table. Since 1 September the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly outbreak update has gone out with two measles deaths in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, missing from it, the agency saying it was still investigating the cause. The county coroner had already confirmed one of the two. The United States certified measles eliminated in 2000 by counting — a year with sustained transmission stopped — so the certificate and the blank line are the same instrument, one of them filled in.

That is the assignment, and it is a small one: a public count with a line withheld. The parts are sitting in other people's dockets.

The planner's part is the emergency filing, and it was fitted twice. On 24 September, opponents of Paramount's purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery asked Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín for "an opportunity to be heard" before she ruled on a settlement Paramount had reached with a coalition of state attorneys general. Common Dreams reported on 10 October that a coalition of nonprofit groups and labor unions had filed, on Friday, an emergency petition against the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of the rule limiting consolidation among television broadcasters, stating that the 2-1 party-line decision was "plainly contrary to law and violates core administrative law principles." Administrative law principles are the hinge. A weekly surveillance report is an agency product too.

The muscle takes down the frame first. On 24 September Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by President Trump, ordered the president to immediately restore access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, finding the outlets had shown "a likelihood of success" on their due process claim. One day between the privilege theory and an order against it. Whatever a pending death count is, that week's record says a court can be asked to call it something other than a favor.

The tinkerer's part is a letter. On 22 September Senator John Curtis of Utah wrote the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee asking them to investigate business dealings and to subpoena two witnesses. The letter is the entire mechanism: one member, one standing committee, one compulsion power that exists whether or not it is used. That power does not run out when the subject is a county death certificate instead of a contract.

Why the agency's own line matters shows up in the same stretch of October. On 7 October ABC News estimated that companies backed financially by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had taken more than $6 billion in Pentagon contracts. By 10 October the story had been deleted and republished in a gutted version with an editor's note admitting errors; the Daily Caller's item carried the line "ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it's false." A count kept by a news organization can come down inside a day. A count kept by the government is the one the public owns.

The pilot's part is delivery on a schedule, and the speed is available. The Washington Examiner reported on 29 September that Texas and Georgia had announced emergency measures on Monday against record diesel prices — the prices that had an Indiana corn and soybean farmer looking at a record bill for about 9,000 gallons the following week, when his harvest started. On 20 October preliminary results in Alberta showed more than two-thirds of voters choosing to remain in Canada, and the next day Prime Minister Mark Carney called it a "Great result for Canada." The number was published the day it existed and was answered the day after.

Assembled: an emergency petition into the right docket, the 24 September due-process ruling behind it, a standing committee's subpoena power available on one letter, and a count published the week it is known. A coroner in Lancaster County has done the county's share of the paperwork.

By GusThe Sports Desk

Hot Mic Moment

He says he wants real news, not fake news, like you, and the institutions behind him are busy making the distinction official.