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Asked to drop Russia from the G20 photo, the hosts dropped the photo instead.

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the afternoon edition, 30 October 2026

Today we are making a family photograph, which is not a dish you can get over here, so I shall go slowly. You will need twenty foreign ministers, a camera that has done this every G20 for years, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, standing where the other nineteen were due to stand.

CLIVE: Standing where you're not wanted, I know well. I stood at an open mic in Totnes for forty minutes; three people clapped, and none of them were you.

Begin in Atlanta, on Friday, at the two-day G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting hosted by the United States. Several of the ministers objected to being pictured beside him, and the hosts did what a kitchen does when a dish will not come together: they put the camera away and carried on without it.

GARY: Forty minutes for three claps. I took the shed door off in nine, and that's a smaller room than Totnes.

This is not the first course Russia has sat out this year. In September, at the G20 finance meeting in Asheville, European officials pushed back on the invitation given to Russia's finance minister, Anton Siluanov, saying his presence risked normalising ties with Moscow amid its full-scale war. The one in Atlanta did not.

KEITH: Nine minutes and nothing sold. A door's worth money broken properly — get a flag on it and call it heritage stock.

You will be looking for the vote to remove his seat, or the resolution suspending him from the table. There is no such paper. Refusing to stand in a photograph is what Europe has instead of one.

The BBC, which is what they have here, has the photograph "cancelled after protests over presence of Russian minister," and says plainly that "European foreign ministers refused to be pictured with Sergei Lavrov" in Atlanta. The Hill, filing from the same two days, has it as Lavrov having "crashed" the party.

It serves the nineteen ministers who did not stand beside him, and it costs the Americans hosting the meeting, who now have a two-day G20 with no family photograph to show for it.

ROB: Four years since anyone's photographed this house. Even the landlord keeps his distance.

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The Michigan Democrat AIPAC, Cruz and RFK Jr. spent October attacking is the one asked to apologize

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 31 October 2026

LOU: Forgive me, I'm in the wrong building again. I went down to the health window, the one with the pamphlets by the door, because I had a question about something a health secretary wrote, and the gentleman there said sir, this is immunizations. I said that's exactly what I thought it was. He sent me upstairs to the people who take complaints about advertisements, and the woman up there said the ads aren't hers, she only takes forms, and the forms for this kind of thing are federal, and the federal ones are across town, and by then it was raining and my car needs a fan belt and I had four rooms' worth of notes and no room that wanted them. So let me just read you what the wrong rooms told me. I wrote it all down. Just a second. Ah — here it is.

The campaign-finance people gave me this one. A report filed the tenth of October: AIPAC's super PAC, the United Democracy Project, resumed spending in the Michigan Senate race, $95,000 on mailers opposing the Democratic nominee, Dr. El-Sayed, to help the Republican, Mike Rogers. The report came a day after Rogers and El-Sayed had gone at each other on a debate stage about healthcare and drug prices. So the mailer has a payer, and the payer has a date. Does a voter who opens one of those mailers see that date on it, or does the voter have to find the window I couldn't find?

Here's the page I keep going back to, and I apologize, because I had it out twice already in the elevator. The twentieth of October, the Guardian. The man who tried to ambush the nominee with a question about his supposed allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood — the clip the campaign then turned around and ran with — is the son of a political operator whose firm was recently paid $250,000 by a group called America Next, for canvassing and influencer marketing. The paper says the group has been trying to gin up opposition it calls organic. Organic. That's their word, off their own paperwork, I didn't bring it with me.

Which is a word I know from the yard. I've got a tomato plant coming up out of the gravel by the downspout, where the dog sleeps. Nobody planted it. The ones in the bed along the fence, I planted those, and the slip from the nursery is in my glovebox with the registration, because my wife makes me keep slips. Now if a fella leans over the fence and asks which plants are which, I don't have to argue with him. I go to the glovebox. The difference between the volunteer and the planted one is a piece of paper with a dollar amount and a date on it, and either the paper exists or it doesn't. So: in this story, does the paper exist? And how much is on it?

Then the twenty-eighth. Senator Cruz of Texas said that Americans could die if El-Sayed wins next week, and talked about who might end up on the Intelligence Committee. People called that incitement. I've only got the date and the sentence.

And then today. The health secretary posts more than 3,700 words denouncing radical Islam and calling on the nominee to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, after outlets and the campaign had rebuked him. The same Friday, Representative Stevens demands the nominee condemn an outside group's ad about aid to Israel and apologize for his comments. He says she's intent on relitigating their primary. His campaign asks her to stay away from the rally the two of them were supposed to hold together. Other Democrats say the blowup is imperiling the seat. Three days.

Oh — excuse me, one more, before you get in the elevator. Of everybody in this notebook — the super PAC, the senator, the secretary, the adviser whose firm took the $250,000 — which one has been asked this week for an apology? And which one did the paperwork call organic?

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Bolsonaro threatens to annul the election he lost, flees instead, declares himself leader anyway.

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the afternoon edition, 31 October 2026

Today we are making a non-concession, which is not a dish you can get over here, so I will go slowly. You will need a presidential runoff held on a Sunday, a candidate who refuses to accept he lost it, a flight to Miami, and a president in Washington who has not yet said who won; there is no quick substitute for an actual concession.

CLIVE: Won. I am, if we are keeping score, the only person in this house who has ever actually won an argument, and I believe Gary will confirm it was Tuesday.

GARY: Confirm nothing. The only thing settled on a Tuesday in this house is the boiler going off, and Clive conceding that was not a win, it was a draught.

Begin with the forty-eight hours. Flavio Bolsonaro, who lost a dramatic runoff Sunday to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, spent them refusing to concede, then threatening to annul the result outright; that part went back in the pan before it was finished, and by Wednesday he was on a plane to Miami instead.

ROB: Plane. Of course it's a plane. Does nobody else wonder who's left doing the washing up when the person who caused the mess just leaves?

He landed in Miami on Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of October; the Morning Star reported that same day that Trump had rejected Brazil's election result outright. Washington has still not said who actually won.

KEITH: Won. There's money in won. If nobody's saying who won, somebody should be selling tickets to the wait, and I know a man with a lanyard printer.

France 24, reporting the arrival, called it the start of a 'self-imposed exile,' and said his defiance 'signaled continued upheaval for Brazil.' On Friday he posted his own video from that exile and gave it a different name: 'persecution,' he said, without saying how he had actually left the country.

GARY: Self-imposed. That's a laugh. The exile I'd self-impose is upstairs, away from Keith's lanyard scheme, and I wouldn't need a passport, just a lock.

None of this is new. In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro, his father, lost to the same Lula da Silva and also fled to Florida, before he eventually returned to Brazil. France 24, previewing this October's vote, had already noted that the father was in prison over what it called 'the Brazilian version of the January 6th storming of the US Capitol.' You will be looking for the court that settles who actually leads a country; there is no court here, only a telephone call from Washington that has not yet come.

Brazilian voters elected Lula da Silva on Sunday. Flavio Bolsonaro is in Miami calling himself the country's leader anyway, and the head of state in Washington has not said he is wrong.

KEITH: Leader anyway. I like that. If nobody's checking, I'm landlord anyway, and the rent's gone up accordingly.

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The outlet that carried the push to remove Omar reports only Congress may do it.

By MitchInvestigations · the evening edition, 31 October 2026

The file on Rep. Ilhan Omar keeps growing by the attachment, so take it in the order it was stapled. On 16 October, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CBS News the investigation was a "strong case," headed toward a grand jury. On 17 October, the New York Post reported federal agents had searched Omar's Washington home and that officials were building toward deportation. On 18 October, Barack Obama called the search "so appalling." On 21 October, the Washington Examiner reported the deportation case was complicated by procedural factors, the kind of sentence that means more paperwork, not less. On 31 October, the adjective moved: Mullin told the Post the case was now "large" and named more than one target. The docket moved with it — the matter sits with Judge Boasberg, who is already overseeing the administration's deportation flights and California's voter rolls. The same day, Fox News reported the push to expel Omar is now aimed at a Supreme Court test of a precedent fifty years untested.

That is the file as it stood before the two newest pages. Both are dated 31 October. Both are from Fox News. Both are about the same congresswoman, and both move the story forward.

The first page is a roster. Omar has hired Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz — the attorneys who represented Joe Biden, who represented House Democrats through the Trump impeachment, and who represented E. Jean Carroll. All together now — follow the roster: this is not a first-time retainer. It is the team assembled when the opposing party is the federal government itself.

The second page is a concession, and it comes from the outlet that has carried every adjective in this file since the secretary's first one. Fox News's own explainer, filed the same day as the roster, states plainly that the power to expel a sitting member of Congress belongs to the Constitution and to the House it created — not to the president who keeps saying she must resign. Nineteen days after agents searched her home, the publication that has carried the administration's case has also carried, under its own byline, the sentence the case cannot get around.

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Ukrainians escape 'hell' in Oleshky through Russia and Belarus, Guardian seeks Melania Trump a peace prize for it.

By ChipStaff Writer · the evening edition, 31 October 2026

The evacuees came home this weekend, and the record should say how. The ceasefire that let them leave did not start Saturday. It started October 11, when the White House announced an 'energy ceasefire' between Russia and Ukraine by social media post. The next day, Zelenskyy said the deal was 'news to me,' and the Washington Examiner reported Russia was still hitting Ukrainian energy sites despite it. By October 23, the New York Post was crediting a narrower, local version of the same ceasefire — this one covering Oleshky specifically — to the first lady, and the Hill and CBS both reported she had secured it directly. Two days after that, this page reported the White House crediting the whole arrangement to Russia sanctions it had itself waived the week before — the same White House that called enforcing those sanctions the thing that would have prevented an American's release, and that praised Vladimir Putin, the man it had just un-sanctioned, as a humanitarian. I want to be fair to the mechanism here, because it is almost — it is not elegant, I will just say it is not elegant. A government waives the penalty, calls the resulting calm a win, and keeps the penalty waived. That is the diplomacy. Which brings us to Saturday and the twenty-four hours it took people to get out alive. The Guardian marked the day by proposing Norway award Melania Trump the Nobel Peace Prize denied to her husband in October, running the pitch the same day as the evacuee homecomings it praises. It is a genuinely argued piece. It also runs through Trump's FIFA peace prize, his self-described Michigan 'Man of the Year' award, a prize that does not exist, for a state he has not lived in, and his line trashing Norway as an 'outhouse country,' the one the Norwegian tourism board answered by advertising its public restrooms. I defend the nomination. I do. The ceasefire worked, people got out, and someone should get the credit. I just cannot find the paragraph where this page explains why the penalty had to be lifted first.

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THE SCORECARD

Super PAC for the senator who delivers to every corner of Maine buys attack ads in Oregon

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the evening edition, 31 October 2026

Every corner of Maine, the profile says. Every corner — mind the word, because a corner is a thing a state has and a constituency is a thing a senator keeps. The millions are real. They are congressionally directed spending, the Senate's own phrase for money a member names, delivers, and is thanked for by name, which is rather the point of naming it. Nothing was broken here. You are thinking of the super PAC. On the twelfth of October, Defending Main Street, long associated with Collins, spent thousands attacking Troy Jackson in Portland ... Oregon. Wrong Portland. Not wrong rules — wrong Portland. The money went out, the invoice cleared, and the committee that spent it owes nothing to any voter in Maine. And what does Maine get for the arrangement? On the seventh of October Jackson called her "an arsonist who helped set the fire, and then she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out." She had touted her role in securing fifty billion dollars. Jackson priced the delivery at a cup.

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Two months after a senator asked Trump to fire Hegseth over "inept management" of the military, Hegseth fired the Pentagon's top military planner.

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the evening edition, 1 November 2026

You will want to know who may remove whom, and the answer was written down long before September, and it has not shifted an inch since. A general sits at the Secretary's pleasure. The Secretary sits at the President's. A senator sits at nobody's pleasure and may remove no one at all, which is the thing to keep in your hand while you consider what Thom Tillis did on September 2.

He went to the cameras. Republican of North Carolina, a former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — a man thoroughly acquainted with the instrument he does not hold — and he called on President Trump to fire Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over what he called Hegseth's "inept management" of the military. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll had announced his resignation after repeatedly clashing with Hegseth. Tillis made a request. Not a motion, not a vote, not a referral. A request, mind you.

October supplied the demonstration. On October 13 Speaker Mike Johnson nudged the President in public: "I wouldn't be watching." The daughter of a Fort Hood victim said livestreaming "isn't closure for any of us." On October 15 seventy-two former officers wrote that the broadcast "will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it," and YouGov found 71 percent of respondents opposed "having executions broadcast live to the public," 18 favored it. The same day Trump wrote: "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed." Seventy-two officers. Seventy-one percent. You will have noticed what moved, and it was the camera.

On October 22 the Washington Post reported that Hegseth had wanted Eisenhower's thirty-inch wartime globe delivered to his office because he found its historical significance "attractive," that such a move is normally "a deliberate process overseen by trained curators," and that his staff attempted it themselves. The globe broke.

On October 29 Hegseth fired Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the Pentagon's top military planner, director for strategy, plans and policy, the J-5, on the Joint Staff — removed, a Pentagon official told CBS News, for apparent misconduct with classified information on the Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars. The New York Post notes Sylvia is the second general ousted from that same chair under this Secretary. The Washington Examiner sets the dismissal beside the President contemplating additional strikes on Iran following next week's elections.

So count the two columns, because nobody at the department will count them for you. Tillis spent a request, on camera, in September, and a request of that kind is spent precisely once ... Sylvia spent the chair that holds the plan for the war now under contemplation. The Secretary is staying.

Nothing here was broken except the globe. The power of removal is plenary — whole, unshared, lodged in one office — and it runs downward only: it attaches to the office above, never to the office beside. The Senate's part is advice, and advice arrives without an instrument. A general who loses the Secretary's confidence loses the chair. A Secretary who loses a senator's confidence loses a morning of coverage.

Strikes on Iran are contemplated for after the elections. The planner is gone. The man who removed the planner is not.

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