News

Trump preemptively blames Cornyn for Paxton's Senate loss, two weeks before Texans vote.

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the afternoon edition, 18 October 2026

Today we are making a shoo-in, which is an American word from the racetrack for a horse so far out front the other runners barely matter. You will need one open Texas Senate seat, a nominee the president picked himself, and the early voting that opened on Monday, with election day two weeks off.

The nominee is Ken Paxton, 63, the state's attorney general, whom Donald Trump endorsed by telling a crowd he "may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I've ever seen." Running against him is James Talarico, the Democrat, and CBS News has called the race a toss-up, with turnout the only thing left to measure.

CLIVE: Best-looking. I have been told the same thing about my verse, more or less, and I notice nobody endorsed me off the back of it.

GARY: Nobody's endorsed your verse because nobody's read past the first line. I can at least finish a job. Ask the shed door.

Turn him over and look underneath, the way you would a chicken, and the Guardian has done the looking this week: getaway cars, affairs, a 2025 New Year's party in Dubai with two American fugitives who never came home, the whole file filed under one phrase, "uniquely ill-chosen."

You will be looking for the part where the party pulls him from the ticket. There is no such part: a nominee this damaged, two weeks out, is simply blamed instead, which is cheaper than a ballot reprint.

ROB: Ill-chosen. Who among us was chosen at all, is what I want to know, and nobody's asked whose turn it is on the rota either.

KEITH: Nobody's answering that, so I'll say it: a party that can't pick a candidate is a party that needs a consultant, and I know a man who does flags.

Now we come to the money, and a toss-up this close does not wait for seconds. On the 3rd of September Karl Rove warned that time was running out and that Paxton needed Trump "tossing a lot of money" his way for ads against Talarico; those ads, so far as the record shows, never made it into the pan. On the 15th of October, with that gap still open, Trump posted that Senator John Cornyn and Rove "are doing everything possible" to hurt Paxton, blame assigned two weeks before anyone has lost anything. Paxton had already told donors otherwise: in a recording leaked on the 7th, he named the president's own war with Iran, gas prices, and diesel over six dollars a gallon as what was "dragging" his campaign.

This one serves whoever is holding the seat when the toss-up settles, Talarico or Paxton. Cornyn pays for it either way, in blame, whether or not he ever sent the money Rove asked for.

CLIVE: Paying in blame with no money changing hands — that's just how the kitty works in this house, and I for one have never once seen a receipt.

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Trump and Putin call French protests 'migrant chaos'; France's own right-wing paper calls it Macron's 'indelible stain.'

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the evening edition, 19 October 2026

Today we are making something that has stuck fast to the bottom of the pan, which two men on the far side of an ocean have each scraped at and called by a different name. On Saturday, half a million people marched across France over school funding and the cost of living. Masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls.

CLIVE: Scraped at and renamed. That's practically my method with a stanza, and nobody's called it craft to my face yet.

Emmanuel Macron called it "unrestrained violence" by "insurrectionist elements from radical far-left groups, joined by numerous criminals"; on Sunday he had voiced the public's "anger" and "shame." The arrests that Sunday stood at around 2,000; by Monday the count had settled at more than 1,800.

GARY: Craft. You glued craft to the kitchen door yourself, and it still won't shut, which is more than your stanza manages.

Begin further back, in September, at a single school in a deprived suburb of Paris, where students protested teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and buildings beset by rats and falling debris. By 6 October nearly 2,000 French high schools were blockaded or closed, and French authorities had made arrests of their own.

KEITH: A door that won't shut is a feature nobody's priced. Card reader, charge for entry -- I could have it listed by Thursday.

Two days later, on 8 October, the unrest reached Belgium, where a government minister called the spillover "a real, serious, and imminent risk" and set the blame on antifa.

ROB: Card reader on a kitchen door. That's the landlord's dream, and the rent's still due Friday whichever side you're stood.

Take the migration claim by both ends and turn it over: the causes named -- school funding, cost of living, the arson itself -- mention migration nowhere.

On the Sunday, Le Figaro, the conservative daily there, has it as an "indelible stain," aimed at Macron, at the justice system and at immigration policy. Fox News, carrying the same critique at home, printed the events as "riots."

Le Monde, on the Monday, has the claim the other way round: the MAGA movement and the Kremlin, with European far-right groups, called the same weekend "migrant chaos" and "Europe's decline," while other observers saw in it a sign of "the Macron era's twilight." The words quoted from Macron on the same riot run to anger, shame, insurrectionist elements and numerous criminals; migrant is not among them. You will be looking for a resignation; the receipts carry none, only two verdicts, pulling apart.

CLIVE: Twilight, is it. Rob's had us in that since the boiler went, and the rent still finds us before the dark does.

This serves the governments that did not have to answer for a school in a Paris suburb: the claim travels from Washington and Moscow by Monday, and the bill for the rats and the falling debris stays behind in France.

ROB: Stays behind. Imagine a bill staying where it's run up -- I'll believe that when ours does.

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THE WAIVER

Treasury insists Russia got no sanctions relief, just a waiver pausing the sanctions.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 19 October 2026

I had two pages open on the counter this morning, not comparing them on purpose, just squaring the corners the way you do, and that's when I saw it — the same word sitting in two different stories about two different things. I circled it once before I noticed I'd need to circle it twice.

The first page is Treasury Secretary Bessent, speaking Sunday, saying flatly that the president gave Russia no sanctions relief. The second is the New York Post's own description, same Sunday, of what he was defending — a pause meant to bring fuel price relief for the US. That's the paper's word, not his. Same word. Different owner.

I don't know what to do with a thing like that except write down how we got here.

On the 9th, the Guardian reported a deal to buy Russian diesel, and that Zelensky was furious about it. By the 10th the president was telling reporters Zelensky could have settled the war "many times" and chosen not to. On the 11th he announced an energy ceasefire; Zelensky, that same day, criticized the diesel arrangement on American television. By the 12th, members of Congress from both parties were calling the deal possibly illegal. By the 13th Zelensky was criticizing him again, and the president's own allies had started lining up behind Zelensky instead. On the 15th he put a sweeping package of sanctions and tariffs on Russian energy revenues on hold — his people called it the national interest.

That's the six days it took to get to the two pages on my counter. Sunday, the Daily Caller has Zelensky calling the diesel deal "very dangerous." Sunday also, NBC has him saying a formal American tilt toward Putin would be a "historic mistake" — this with the midterms fourteen days out and a new poll putting seven in ten Americans on the wrong track, sourest of all on gas prices. Sunday, Bessent goes on Meet the Press and says plainly that nothing of the kind took place, despite a sanctions law the president signed last month that's due to take effect any day now. Sunday, he writes on Truth Social that waiving those sanctions keeps Moscow at the table. Sunday afternoon, specifically, he tells reporters Zelensky doesn't want to end this war. And today, Monday, in Uzbekistan, the Secretary of State tells reporters there's a real risk this war spreads into another country, and that both sides ought to be focused on ending it.

I drive the same toll plaza twice a week, the one with the E-ZPass lane and the cash lane side by side. The transponder in the glovebox gets forty cents knocked off before I've even slowed the lousy car down — no form, no call, it just happens, because somebody decided that lane gets it. The cash lane pays the sticker price. What do you call the lane that already knows it's getting the break, and what do you call the one that finds out at the window?

I was going to leave it there. But excuse me — before you go — I found the page I'd set aside earlier. It's France 24, the 15th, describing plainly what the president's order did: put a sweeping package of sanctions on Russian energy revenues on hold. Not a quote from him. Just a description of the thing itself. Here's the Treasury Secretary, Sunday, on the record, saying none of it happened. Here's the wire service, three days before that, on the record, describing a law taken off hold the night before it was due to start. Same notebook, different pages, and I still can't get them to sit together. I'll leave both open on the counter, side by side, to the same question: a law taken off hold, the night before it starts — what would you call that, if not relief?

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THE TILT

Rubio tells Zelensky to end the war Putin is settling with Trump and Xi without him.

By LouOne More Question · the afternoon edition, 19 October 2026

I got stuck at the toll plaza on Route 1 Sunday, the one with the orange light that's supposed to flash before the arm comes down. I've driven through that plaza more mornings than I can count, and for some reason I decided to actually watch the light this time instead of just gunning it through. The arm dropped and the light came on at the same instant. Not before. The same instant. I asked the attendant about it — nice kid, works the far booth — and he told me the light and the arm run off the same signal, so there's no way for one to warn you ahead of the other. They're not two systems. They're one system wearing two coats of paint, and only one of those coats does anything.

I wrote that down. I didn't know why at the time.

Here's the page I've got from the same stretch of days. A few back, it says the president signed a waiver pausing his own Russia sanctions law the night before that law was set to take effect — not the morning after, the night before. The next line on the same page, same week: Russia answered that pause with 320 drones aimed at Ukraine's power grid.

That was last week's strike. This week's is a different one. Sunday night, close to eleven, a missile barrage — not drones, a barrage — hit power plants in Kyiv, and by Monday morning Ukraine's Air Force was telling the press the warning never arrived before that one either. President Zelensky used a phrase on this I had to read twice: "denial of reality." Not my phrase. His, about Washington. Question for the page, not for me: did a call come through to Kyiv before the missiles did, on this barrage, the one the Air Force is talking about this week? The page I've got says no.

I went back a month in the same drawer, out of habit more than anything. Last month, same man, same accusation, same ships: "We can't have that happening," he said then. A month apart, almost word for word.

I want to be careful here, because the page keeps those two statements, from two different people, on two separate lines, so I will too.

Then there's the call Putin made on October 9th, the one proposing a sit-down — himself, the president, and President Xi. The page lists three names for that room. Question I keep coming back to, because the page lets me: whose name isn't on it?

And running under all of it is a question the record hasn't closed yet. October 16th, a bipartisan group of senators — some from the president's own party — pressed the Pentagon for answers about why Starlink access over the battlefield had been restricted. The lawmakers say American personnel were endangered by it.

Oh — before I let you go, one more thing. That request went out on the 16th. Today's the 19th. Three days, and as of today's page the senators are still the ones doing the asking, not the Pentagon the answering — "want answers," it says, word for word. My toll plaza doesn't warn me about anything; the light and the arm move together. But a question isn't a toll arm. It's supposed to get an answer before the next strike does. Has it?

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THE BACKLASH

Obama calls Omar probe appalling; backlash reads his own IRS's Tea Party file back to him.

By LouOne More Question · the afternoon edition, 19 October 2026

I want to tell you about Frank's fence, and I promise it gets to the point.

Frank moved a fence post two feet onto what is, by the deed, my side of the property line. When I asked him, he said the county's old survey had the boundary wrong, and he was correcting it. That was true. I checked the survey myself at the recorder's office. What I didn't understand until the next spring, when the shed went up, is that the post wasn't about the boundary at all. It was angled to block my oak tree's shade off his solar panels. The survey correction was real. It also wasn't the reason.

I've been turning Frank's fence over all week because of the dates on this. The next day, the 13th, The Hill reported that Omar's campaign was fundraising off the same raid, agents inside her house while a fundraising email went out calling the investigation baseless and partisan.

Two days after that, on the 15th, the Wall Street Journal and, separately, the Washington Examiner both reported what the "very carefully" turned out to be for: officials confirmed the investigation is aimed at stripping Omar of the citizenship she obtained in 2000 — five years after she arrived in this country — and deporting her. The reason given on the 12th and the reason confirmed on the 15th were not the same reason.

On the 18th, border czar Tom Homan talked to the Guardian about where that citizenship question goes next. The same week, Barack Obama called the whole investigation "appalling" — that's NBC's word for his word, and the quote holds up.

Today, the 19th — a Monday — Fox News reports that Obama's defense of Omar triggered instant conservative backlash, people citing his own administration's IRS targeting of Tea Party nonprofit groups back at him. The Daily Caller ran the identical news under a different headline: "Future presidents, in either party, won't do the same." I've read that line a few times now. Which future presidents is it asking me to picture, and which thing is it asking me to picture them not doing? The headline doesn't say. It just lands next to the IRS line and lets the reader do the rest.

That's Frank's fence again, if you think about it. Two true things sitting next to each other, daring you to assume they're the same true thing. The investigation into Representative Omar was, on the 12th, "very carefully." On the 15th, it was denaturalization and deportation. Both descriptions came from the same investigation. Neither one was false when it was said.

Excuse me — before you go, one more thing. The Justice Department that searched a sitting congresswoman's home over a case it wouldn't name is the same department that has promised the midterms will see "no interruption," the same week it sued California's election officials over noncitizen voting claims. Does the record say whether "no interruption" describes what happens to the vote — or just describes what the department does to everything around it?

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THE WAIVER

Trump administration denies any pause in intelligence sharing with Ukraine for the second time in six days.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 19 October 2026

My neighbor and I have been arguing about the fence between our yards for something like six years, and I want to say up front that I don't think either one of us is lying about it.

He says the line hasn't moved since his father set the posts, back before either of us owned the houses. I say the post nearest my tomatoes sits a good eight inches into what the survey calls mine. We've each had somebody out to check it — a surveyor for him, a man from the title company for me — and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to see the actual problem. We were both right, depending on where you stood to measure. He measures from his porch. I measure from the hose bib. The fence didn't move. What moved was whose yard you were standing in when you looked at it.

I think about that fence because of what the Secretary of State said on Monday: there has been no pause in intelligence sharing with Ukraine. I wrote it down so I'd have it exact — no pause. That same Monday, Ukraine's president said he still can't get a straight answer on whether the sharing ever resumed, and that Russia hit the power grid overnight with no warning reaching Kyiv — the kind of warning the sharing is supposed to produce. Who's that warning supposed to reach, if not Kyiv?

The denial isn't the only place the record runs ahead of the statement. On October 13th, after a report that the administration had threatened to cut off intelligence sharing over Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, the President told reporters the sharing had not stopped. On Monday, it was the Secretary of State's turn to say the same thing, about the same sharing. That's two dates, six days apart, for one sentence. How many times has the sharing been declared unpaused since the 13th?

A month earlier, in September, the President had signed a new Russia sanctions law — Congress named it for the late Senator Graham — authorizing tariffs up to 100 percent on Russian energy. Friday night, hours before that law would have taken full effect, he waived it. The next night, Russia sent more than 320 drones at Ukraine's power grid. Senator Cassidy, a Republican I wouldn't call hostile to this President, said Monday that Graham and Ronald Reagan would be ashamed of the waiver. Congressman Max Miller said he opposes it outright. How many members of the President's own party went on record against that waiver in one week?

On a call hosted by Senator Tillis, Senator Blumenthal says Ukraine's president told a bipartisan group of senators his country still doesn't have full access to the Starshield satellite network — the one that's supposed to carry exactly the kind of warning that didn't reach Kyiv overnight. I don't have a fence analogy for a satellite. I tried. Does Ukraine have full access to Starshield yet?

Monday, on his way to a campaign rally in Kansas, the President said it's time for "somebody else" to negotiate on Ukraine's behalf. The same day, he said he'd be open to a three-way summit with President Putin and President Xi. "I would do it," he told reporters.

One more thing, and then I'll get out of your way. That summit — three men arranging terms for a war happening in a fourth man's country. I went back through what's actually on the guest list the Russian president proposed. Trump. Xi. Putin. I checked it twice. Whose name isn't on it?

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French officials blame the riots on the ultra-left, then admit their own intelligence failed to see them coming.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 19 October 2026

I spent twenty minutes stuck at the toll plaza on the turnpike this week, the kind where five lanes pinch down to two right past the booths, and I had nothing to do but listen. The driver in the Civic ahead of me was sure it was the E-ZPass lane, backed up because somebody's transponder had died. The woman in the minivan behind me, I could hear her through two rolled-up windows, blamed the cash lane, said they should have closed it years ago. My own wife, who was riding with me, guessed it was the construction two exits back. Three drivers, one jam, three different explanations, and when I finally cleared the booths there was a sign from the turnpike authority that didn't match any of them: a booth had gone unstaffed for forty minutes during a shift change. None of the three drivers was foolish to be annoyed. They were just answering a different question than the one that actually explained the delay.

I bring this up because I've been reading about Paris, and I wrote some of it down, though I'll admit I had to go looking for the page before I could read it back to you.

Here's what I found. There are five separate explanations going around right now for what happened in the riots in France, and I want to walk through all five the way I walked through the Civic, the minivan, and my wife's construction theory, one at a time, because that seems like the only fair way to treat five explanations that don't agree with each other.

One: a magazine called the Federalist reports a network of fifty-four organizations — communists, union activists, and Muslim student and pro-Palestinian groups among them — working together to fuel the protests. Two and three both come from the Washington Examiner, and I want to be careful here, because I had this backwards once already: one Examiner piece says a French parliamentary investigation flagged a Muslim student group as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood; a separate Examiner piece quotes President Trump saying Paris will become a "Muslim city" unless France closes its borders, and it notes hundreds of thousands of people are protesting right now. Four is Speaker Mike Johnson, who told the New York Post that open borders caused the riots and that Democrats could bring the same thing to this country. Five is the French government itself, which told CBS News the trouble came from an "ultra-left movement," and asked for local curfews.

I counted them twice. Communists and Muslims. A Muslim Brotherhood front. A Muslim city. Open borders. An ultra-left movement. Five explanations for one set of riots, and I went looking for two of the five that pointed to the same cause. I found zero.

My car doesn't turn over some mornings without a little coaxing, and when it won't start, I don't guess five things at once — I open the hood and look at the one thing in front of me. France, by its own account, did something closer to that, separately from all five of the explanations above: Fox News reported that Macron ordered a security review after intelligence services underestimated the protests badly enough that sixty thousand police officers were overwhelmed. Not communists. Not Muslims. Not open borders. Not the ultra-left. A security review, into what the services themselves missed.

Oh — before I let this go, one more thing, and I almost didn't write it down twice. It isn't on the Federalist's list, or either Examiner story, or the Speaker's, or even the French government's own curfew announcement. Officers got overwhelmed by something the services themselves didn't see coming until it was already in the street. Which of the five explanations I just read you told you that part first?

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France arrests hundreds over riots its own intelligence missed, and positions the far right to cash in.

By LouOne More Question · the morning edition, 20 October 2026

I didn't put money in the Buick this week. Forty-one dollars for a fan belt at the parts place on Route 9, and Ray wants ninety more to put it on, so that's a hundred and thirty-one dollars sitting on a piece of paper on the shelf by the door until Friday, when I get paid. That's not me complaining. That's just the number.

I bring up numbers because France has been collecting a few of its own this month, and I've been writing them down in the same notebook, on different pages. On October 8th, high school students marched over the state of their own schools — 71,500 of them, the Interior Ministry's own count, as Common Dreams had it. Nine days later, on the 17th, a different march drew about 110,000 people, and out of that one the Paris police arrested 855 people — their own Sunday report's number. How many of those arrested, according to that same report, belonged to any group with a name?

Three days after that, on the 20th, French officials told CBS News they now had the name: an "ultra-left movement." That same week, Fox News had the same officials saying their own intelligence service hadn't seen any of it coming, and offering their resignations over it. I keep that page open next to the other one, on the workbench in the garage. If the movement was identifiable enough to put in a government statement on Monday, was it identifiable enough for the service whose entire job is knowing such things three days earlier?

By Monday the government had also put curfews on two districts of Paris. The New York Post had the arrest count by then at 2,400 across the whole country — a different number than the one Paris alone had given three days before — and 3,000 businesses damaged. The McDonald's on one of those boulevards got ransacked in that same stretch, Fox News reported, looters inside trying to cook fries on the equipment. And on the 20th, the same day as the curfews, the Washington Examiner ran a news story — not an editorial, a news story — saying Marine Le Pen "stands to be the greatest beneficiary when the dust eventually settles." Of everyone named this month — the ultra-left movement, the students, the looters in the McDonald's, Marine Le Pen — which one does any receipt say organized a single day of the nine between October 8th and the 17th?

I called Ray back while I was going through all this. He doesn't bill me for a part until he's had the hood open and looked at what's actually loose — he told me that himself, years ago, standing in the garage with the toolbox open on the bench between us. Has anything in what these officials said this week told us what they found when they opened their own file on the movement they named?

One more thing, before you let me go. I know I already used this number once, and I told myself I wasn't going to come back to it, so I'm sorry. On the 17th, the Paris police had a certain number of people in custody. On the 20th, the government had a name to put next to them. Three days between the count and the name. Which one came first on the page that matters, the number or the name — eight hundred fifty-five?

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