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The dying sun

The dying sun could tear the solar system apart sooner than thought

by Paul Arnold

The fate of our solar system is written in the stars—well, one star to be precise: the sun. Estimates of what the end will look like once the sun sheds much of its mass and ultimately dies vary widely. New research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests that the final curtain for some of the outer planets will arrive much sooner than previously thought, shrinking the timeline from a quintillion years down to roughly 1 billion years.

The rock we live on will probably be long gone by then, but Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune might not make it either.

Traditional models assumed that the outer solar system would survive for billions of years before a passing star might disturb it. However, recent modeling by theoretical astrophysicists Konstantin Batygin and Jim Fuller at the California Institute of Technology and Fred Adams of the University of Michigan shows that the dying sun could trigger a relatively rapid and chaotic upheaval.

Simulating the death of the sun

The research team combined a detailed model of solar evolution with computer programs that track changes in the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as the sun sheds mass in discrete bursts of stellar material. "Everything changes when the envelope departs in pieces," the study authors wrote.

They tested 672 of these burst-driven scenarios, varying the burst sizes across the simulations. The researchers also examined whether the mass loss happened throughout the sun's evolution into a giant star or only during the later stages.

The team also modeled scenarios in which the sun shed its mass smoothly to compare the results. They then tracked the planetary systems for 3 billion years to see whether they remained stable.

Planets thrown into orbital turmoil

For the vast majority of simulations involving larger bursts, the outcome was grim.

Up to 96% of the planetary systems became unstable within 3 billion years of the sun becoming a white dwarf. Around 40% experienced disruption or violent scattering even earlier, before it had finished shedding its mass.

Some simulations expelled planets from the solar system, while in others, Uranus and Neptune swapped orbits.

Gentler bursts of mass loss sometimes pushed pairs of planets into synchronized orbits, some of which remained stable for 3 billion years. "Not every architectural rearrangement is destructive, and the random walk exhibits a subtler side effect: occasional capture into mean-motion resonances, unattainable in the adiabatic limit."

That the fate of the solar system is tied to the sun is no surprise. But if these predictions are correct, its ending will be much more violent and faster.

That's Life....

NASA may already have proof life once existed on another planet. Scientists might never get to find out

By Ashley Strickland

A leopard-spotted rock that could prove whether life ever existed beyond Earth is sitting in a tube on Mars.

NASA’s Perseverance rover grabbed up the sample, called Sapphire Canyon, from rocky outcrops on the edges of the Neretva Vallis, a valley sculpted by rivers that once flowed into an ancient lake in Jezero Crater more than 3 billion years ago. The rover landed at the dried lakebed in February 2021 for expressly this purpose, hunting for rocks created or modified by water in the past, which would have had the best chance of preserving evidence of life.

Members of the Perseverance science team have said the Sapphire Canyon sample, about the size of a chalk stick, is exactly the type of rock they hoped the rover would discover.

“This is the first time I think we’ve found something that qualifies as a ‘potential biosignature’” on Mars, said Adrian Broz, a member of Perseverance’s science team and a postdoctoral researcher in the Planetary Surface Processes Lab at Purdue University in Indiana. “It’s currently sealed inside of Perseverance rover’s chassis, and it sits there quietly and awaits return to Earth.”

But the sample might not make it to our planet, at least not anytime soon.

The Mars Sample Return program, a joint venture by NASA and the European Space Agency to ferry the promising cache back to Earth, attracted intense scrutiny for its high price tag and complex design. After sinking billions of dollars into the endeavor, NASA paused and began reassessing the program in 2024 before canceling it entirely — with no clear alternative in sight.

“While Perseverance’s samples remain safely stored on Mars, NASA is exploring a range of potential return options that could offer simpler and more affordable approaches than the original Mars Sample Return plan, including possible commercial or international contributions,” the agency said in a statement shared with CNN in July. NASA’s leaders still haven’t revealed a path forward.

And while the discovery of the Sapphire Canyon sample is building a strong case for the existence of ancient microbial life on Mars, there’s only so much scientists can learn from afar, said Dr. Briony Horgan, professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue University.

The rover, which cost NASA about $2.4 billion to build and launch, doesn’t have the instrument suite to answer such lofty questions by itself on the red planet.

“We can keep doing these studies and coming up with these hints, but we’re never going to know for sure until we get those samples back,” said Horgan, also a coinvestigator and planner on the Perseverance team. “These samples are our best current chance for really understanding is life abundant and common, or is Earth truly unique?”

Now, it’s possible one of NASA’s biggest competitors in the new space race will be the first to achieve Mars sample retrieval: China is looking to pick up its own souvenir from the red planet in 2031, and it has taken steps to ensure success by designing a mission that’s similar to one it pulled off two years ago. But the rocks returned by the country’s Tianwen-3 mission, expected to launch in 2028, could look very different — and perhaps offer different insights — from Perseverance’s samples, depending on how plans evolve.

‘Scientific holy grail’

Scientists consider Sapphire Canyon such a promising find because of its spotted appearance. On Earth, the tiny dots, called reaction fronts or reduction spots, form in soils and sediments due to the presence of microbial activity.

“When there’s organic matter that’s lodged in sediment or soil that’s buried and microbes start to digest some of that organic matter, they form these bleached halos and spots that are quite resemblant to the ones that Perseverance found in this ancient river valley,” said Broz, coauthor of a study about the rock sample published in September 2025.

Perseverance drilled the Sapphire Canyon sample from an arrowhead-shaped rock called Cheyava Falls in July 2024. The mudstones surrounding the rock were also covered in hundreds of thousands of promising reduction spots potentially made by ancient microscopic life.

Still, returning the samples to Earth is the only way to determine whether these distinctive features were formed by the presence of life, or abiotically — through chemical or geological processes that did not require life, Broz said.

It’s a lesson planetary scientists learned from studying the famed Allan Hills 84001 Martian meteorite, uncovered in the Antarctic in 1984 and originally thought to contain the remnants of ancient life. Multiple groups of scientists analyzed samples from the meteorite, discovering that nonbiological, geological processes left behind signatures that could be misinterpreted as organic carbon compounds attributed to life.

“Even when you have all the labs all over the world looking at a rock that has putative evidence of ancient life, it is a really difficult thing to do, and so you want to just be able to apply every technique you can think of in all the best labs,” said Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for the Curiosity rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The rover’s onboard tools can offer some data, but they weren’t designed to do the kind of analysis necessary to make definitive answers because that wasn’t part of the original plan.

“The science instruments had been selected with the assumption that they would be doing reconnaissance for sample selection and providing the geologic context on Mars for samples that were always expected to be returned to Earth,” said Dr. Melissa Rice, a professor of planetary science at Western Washington University who has worked on NASA rover missions for over two decades.

The first entry in NASA’s budget request to Congress for initial studies of a Mars sample return program occurred in the fiscal year 1978, according to Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society. The request was made on the heels of the agency’s Viking missions to Mars, considered NASA’s first attempt to search for evidence of life on the red planet.

“It tells you how long it has remained this kind of scientific holy grail for Mars,” Dreier said.

A 2003 survey identifying top scientific objectives for future space missions — and several subsequent reports — highlighted retrieving red planet samples as a key priority, which led to Mars Sample Return becoming intertwined with the Perseverance rover’s mission. The two projects were developed hand in hand.

A complicated path

The original concept for Mars Sample Return, shared in 2020, included a succession of multiple missions launching from Earth to Mars: a lander containing a Mars fetch rover to collect the samples and an ascent vehicle to return the samples to Earth by 2031 at the earliest.

The ascent vehicle was intended to shoot out a football-size container holding the samples that would be captured by a separately launched ESA spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Then, the ESA orbiter would head back to Earth, transferring the sample container into yet another vehicle that could deploy from the orbiter and safely land the samples on our planet.

By 2022, the plan shifted: Perseverance would deliver the sample suite to the Mars Ascent Vehicle that would launch on a return journey. The lander would carry two small recovery helicopters, which could grab samples from the rover if Perseverance wasn’t in good enough condition to make the drive to a landing site. This nudged the return date to 2033.

As things progressed, assessments from independent review boards pointed out how unwieldy and complex the retrieval process had become. The program’s budget ballooned to an eye-popping maximum of $11 billion and the estimated return date for the samples pushed to 2040. NASA also faced budget cuts for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, and the excessive costs of the mission led to waning political support for the program.

The agency put out a call for cheaper, quicker and less complex proposals and, in January 2025, identified two strategies that relied on commercial partnerships or leaned on previously used Mars landing technology so as to not reinvent the wheel. That assessment came out just weeks before President Donald Trump took office and began the search for a new NASA administrator.

The next sample return update, revealed with NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, was an abrupt blow: “NASA plans to terminate the Mars Sample Return Program given that current architecture options remain unaffordable. It is anticipated that future missions to Mars will return samples for study on Earth.”

The agency’s 2027 budget request didn’t mention the program at all. NASA spent about $2.5 billion on the Mars Sample Return through its cancellation, Dreier said.

However, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has mentioned that he’s interested in getting Perseverance’s samples delivered to Earth.

“As I’ve said many times, I think retrieving the samples from Mars can lead to the most significant scientific breakthrough in human history,” Isaacman said at a news conference on August 30 after the successful launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. “There’s no question we’re going to go get samples, whether it’s robotic or whether it’s astronauts picking it up will be the question, and certainly the time frame associated with it.”

Speaking at the All-In Summit in September, Isaacman blamed his predecessors for the program’s failures, noting “the prior administration canceled the Mars Sample Return mission that was on track to cost more than an aircraft carrier.”

While the finger-pointing about the fate of the original program appears to continue, no additional details about next steps have emerged.

China’s challenge

China’s plan to fetch Mars samples is also complex, though arguably less so than NASA’s original design. Called Tianwen-3, the approach China is using draws on the success of Chang’e-6, a 2024 mission that retrieved the first samples from the moon’s far side.

Tianwen-3 will include two launches: one for a lander, ascent vehicle and helicopter, and another for an orbiter and return vehicle to shuttle the samples to Earth, according to a study published by the mission team in 2025. The lander is equipped with a drill that can reach 2 meters (6.5 feet) beneath the Martian surface, the ideal place to search for signs of past or present life. The helicopter can also gather rock samples.

Mission scientists plan for the lander to operate on Mars’ surface for about 70 days during sample collection, according to Yiliang Li, a core member of Tianwen-3’s science team who is aiding in the selection of landing sites.

The Tianwen-3 team is narrowing down a list of 86 potential landing sites to identify regions where liquid water once existed on Mars, mineral-enriched regions and areas where ancient microbial activity could still be preserved, according to a 2024 study. Jezero Crater does not appear to be on the list.

Ideally, the mission will retrieve two types of samples from ancient lake beds, said Li, a coauthor on both studies.

The team is aiming to find one sample with iron oxides, which might have preserved cell shapes for billions of years, and a second sample that contains thick aquatic clays because they could contain ancient organic molecules created by living organisms, said Li, who is also a professor of astrobiology in the department of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of Hong Kong.

Zengqian Hou, Tianwen-3’s chief scientist and economic geologist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced in September at the International Deep Space Exploration Conference that engineers are currently building a prototype of Tianwen-3. China also plans to build a planetary protection laboratory to house the samples, Hou said during the announcement.

In recent years, NASA has focused increasingly on America-first messaging to position the US as leading the charge on marking milestones in space, including of beating China at being the first to land humans on Mars. A sample return win for China would certainly undermine that message.

Administrator Isaacman said while testifying on the 2027 NASA budget proposal in April. “To win, we cannot establish programs designed to be ‘too big to fail,’ but at the same time ‘too costly to succeed.’ Nor should it be throwing more money at the problem, but rather fixing the problems, concentrating resources on the mission and delivering outcomes.”

Even as it ramps up the “space race” rhetoric in its efforts to return humans to the moon, the agency has made no mention of the fact that China may be the first to retrieve Martian samples — despite NASA already having a leg up with collected samples that just need to hitch a ride to Earth.

“It’s remarkable that the US has advocated its leadership in this area of space exploration and just handed China the win in that one sector of the space race,” Rice said.

Glimmer of hope

Scientists remain hopeful that the Perseverance samples will be returned in some way, Horgan said. The ongoing work of industry partners is part of what’s keeping researchers optimistic.

Lockheed Martin, for example, has worked with NASA on Mars missions and other sample return efforts in the past, which enabled the company to develop a streamlined concept to pick up the abandoned Perseverance samples, said Whitley Poyser, director of Lockheed Martin’s exploration mission area.

The proposal included a fixed-price mission under $3 billion to return 30 of the rover’s samples to Earth no later than 2037. The concept revolved around using a lightweight Mars Ascent Vehicle, a small lander inspired by Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the InSight mission to Mars, and a compact Earth delivery system derived from lessons the company learned by assisting with the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid sample return mission, Poyser said.

The company remains committed to their plan for retrieving samples from Mars and is prepared if the opportunity comes their way, she said.

“The big area from a technical perspective that needs to mature is Mars ascent, especially if we are going to send someone there and send them back,” Poyser said. “We want to know how it’s going to work. All of those technologies are critical and they can be demonstrated through Mars Sample Return.”

Even if the samples don’t contain signs of life, scientists say that knowledge could present intriguing possibilities, including the idea the spots may have been the work of prebiotic chemistry — the soup of elements, metals and organic carbon that could have formed a cell or living entity but didn’t reach its full potential.

And if it turns out that life never existed on Mars, one of our planet’s closest neighbors, then why did it arise on Earth and not a world with similar conditions during the same time frame?

Martian samples could tell the tale in a way that Earth’s rocks, shaped and lost over time due to erosion and other processes, can’t — and it’s up to the scientific community to share that message, Rice said.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of advocacy for years to come, making sure that the general public is aware of how close we are to answering those big questions,” she said. “The rocks are there, they’re in their tubes, they’re ready. All we got to do is go get them.”

ICE shooting in New York City

What we know about the ICE shooting in New York City

By Eduardo Cuevas and Mark Morales

New York City has found itself mired in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after officials said federal agents shot a driver while his 5-year-old was in the back seat.

The Department of Homeland Security and city officials remain at odds over immigration agents’ tactics that led to them opening fire on 28-year-old Oscar Belgal. Federal officials accuse Belgal of trying to drive his Honda CRV into agents in the city’s Marble Hill neighborhood in the Bronx during a targeted enforcement operation.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents acted appropriately, in part because New York refuses to honor the agency’s requests to detain undocumented people accused of crimes. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said there is no active warrant for Belgal’s arrest, and plainclothes ICE officers’ actions like those during Thursday’s daylight shooting on a busy street make New Yorkers less safe.

With this latest shooting, New York City finds itself in a familiar place as other American cities, such as Minneapolis, Houston and Chicago, that have seen ICE operations result in federal agents shooting people, often while in vehicles.

Some surveillance and police body camera footage has been released by the New York City Police Department, and Mullin says he expects video from ICE officers’ body cameras to be released.

As the shooting remains under investigation, here’s what to know.

What we know about Oscar Belgal

Belgal, a Dominican national who officials say entered the US at an unknown date, has ties to the Trinitarios gang, according to DHS.

Mullin said he was part of an investigation into a shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer last year and had previously fled from officers in September.

Belgal was arrested for robbery in 2023. He ultimately pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years of probation, according to New York court records.

He was also arrested last year on drug charges and has pleaded not guilty, court records show.

DHS has said Belgal had an immigration detainer, which allows ICE to take custody of immigrants in criminal custody, but Belgal was released after that earlier arrest.

Mamdani told MS NOW on Sunday there is no active warrant for Belgal’s arrest.

Now that Belgal’s in custody, ICE plans to quickly remove him from the country, according to Marcos Charles, executive associate director of the agency.

Belgal’s attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court Friday, arguing he was arrested “without a valid warrant and without any consideration of his individual circumstances.”

US District Judge J. Paul Oetken then ordered Belgal to remain in the country for now.

In an update about his condition on Sunday, Belgal’s lawyers said he is in solitary confinement. With the bullet still lodged in his neck, the left side of his face is numb and he has difficulty hearing out of his left ear, according to a joint statement from the Legal Aid Society and Make the Road New York, two nonprofit advocacy organizations representing Belgal. He also has a shoulder wound from shattered glass during the shooting.

He urgently needs surgery but has yet to receive it, the statement said.

NYC, Trump’s DHS starkly divided on immigration enforcement

The shooting of Belgal highlights stark divides between deep-blue New York City and the Trump administration, even as Mamdani and President Donald Trump have formed an unlikely cordial relationship.

Mamdani has repeatedly called on ICE to be dismantled, calling the agency “rotten to its core.”

“Today’s shooting is only further devastating confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity, that they sow chaos and terror across our country, that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save,” he said. “We will not normalize ICE’s viciousness. We will not accept its cruelty.”

New York lawmakers also expressed outrage at ICE opening fire on a car with a child inside.

“No child should ever have to experience the terror of gunfire, let alone wonder if they’ll make it home alive,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement after the shooting. “As a mother and grandmother, I cannot imagine how frightening those moments must have been.”

Citing Belgal’s criminal history, Mullin has called him the “worst of the worst” and said he intentionally put his child at risk. Mullin blamed New York’s so-called sanctuary policies that limit local officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.

“We asked the city to give them to us, and they released them back on the streets,” Mullin told CNN. “If anybody should be in outrage, it should be the public to the sanctuary states and the sanctuary politicians that continue to release these murderers and thugs back on the streets and put the American people in danger.”

What videos do and don’t show

The New York City Police Department has released surveillance footage of the incident, as well as video from police officers’ body-worn cameras when they responded to 911 calls after the shooting.

Surveillance footage released by the NYPD appears to show plainclothes ICE officers approach Belgal’s parked vehicle with their guns drawn. As he tries to move the car forward, an agent starts to punch the driver’s side window of the car, video shows.

The surveillance video then changes to another angle, which appears to show the aftermath of the shots being fired offscreen, as bystanders are seen ducking. Soon thereafter, an agent wearing plainclothes is seen holding a child, presumably Belgal’s 5-year-old, who was in the back seat of the vehicle at the time of the shooting.

Officers’ body cameras showed tense scenes of a man who appeared to be an ICE agent, wearing a construction vest holding up a rifle. Nearby, bystanders were yelling while a handcuffed man sat on the street receiving treatment to his neck.

While witnesses told NYPD that a 5-year-old had been in the car, a law enforcement source said the child wasn’t on scene when police arrived. Police went on a frantic hunt to find the child, resulting in detectives going door-to-door on the street, reviewing video footage and contacting Belgal’s family. It wasn’t until about 7 p.m. that police found the child, who wasn’t injured, with an aunt at a Yonkers beauty salon, the source said.

What isn’t directly shown on publicly released videos is the moment the shots were fired, prompting many to call on ICE to release footage from the agents’ body cameras. Mullin said Sunday he was sure footage would be released, though he didn’t provide a timeline. FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of ICE, are handling the investigation, Mullin said.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said her office would also investigate the shooting, which was supported by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Meanwhile, Mamdani said the city would be doing its own full investigation of the entire 24-hour period. He said this included the actual shooting, but also the NYPD response and ensuing protests outside a nearby hospital where Belgal was transported after being shot.

In the aftermath of Thursday’s shooting, NYPD clashed with demonstrators protesting ICE. During the scuffle, Mamdani ally Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and frontrunner to be the next congressperson representing the area where the incident took place, was knocked to the ground by NYPD. Mamdani said it was unacceptable to throw any New Yorker to the ground, regardless of whether she’s going to be in Congress.

Warning of more pain for you.... Not the rich...

Fed officials are warning of more pain. Many Americans are already feeling it

By Elisabeth Buchwald

Four years ago, with inflation at multi-decade highs, then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a blunt message to Americans: Getting inflation under control would come at a cost.

The Fed needed to act “forcefully,” Powell told attendees at a key central banker conference that August. Doing so, he cautioned, would bring “some pain” for consumers.

Now, with the Fed back to raising interest rates for the first time in three years, a familiar warning about the economic fallout is resurfacing.

Inflation across the country is being driven primarily by fuel prices, which have skyrocketed since the war with Iran broke out in February. The Fed has little control over oil production, but by raising interest rates, it is seeking to prevent higher energy costs from spilling over into other parts of the economy and fueling broader inflation.

While this type of supply-driven inflation may be easier to bring under control than the post-pandemic demand-driven inflation, “it won’t be painless either,” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said last month.

For central bankers, the challenge is balancing two competing priorities: keeping inflation in check and preserving a healthy labor market. When price increases become too rapid, the Fed typically raises interest rates, making borrowing more expensive for consumers and businesses. That, in turn, can curb spending and cool demand, easing pressure on prices.

But that slowdown can come at a cost to workers, often leading to weaker hiring, fewer job openings, and, in some cases, job losses, as businesses struggle with higher borrowing costs.

“Inflation is the disease. And now the Fed comes with a cure: higher interest rates,” Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at US Bank, said. “I don’t know which is more painful because they both hurt.”

Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of US economic activity, making it a key driver of growth. If Americans pull back — either because prices are eating up more of their budgets or because higher borrowing costs force them to set aside more money for expenses such as a home purchase — the economy could slow. In a worst-case scenario, that pullback could help tip the economy into a recession, Bovino told CNN.

For now, though, economic pain isn’t being felt equally. Americans with substantial investments in the stock market, which is hovering near record highs, may be doing just fine. Those who rely more heavily on their paychecks to cover everyday expenses have less of a cushion against rising prices.

“Those are the people being hurt,” she said.

Patience is a virtue — until it isn’t

With the risks of higher interest rates in mind, a growing chorus of Fed officials have recently been advocating for a more patient approach as they tackle the issue of inflation. Rather than trying to get a head start at fighting the potential for more or broader-based inflation, several central bankers have said they’d like more time to observe how economic conditions evolve to get a better idea of how many more rate hikes, if any, are needed.

“There is no need for urgency,” New York Fed President John Williams said last month.

Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson echoed that sentiment. “Any future adjustments in policy should be determined by carefully examining trends in the data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks,” he said earlier this month.

But waiting to act carries risks of its own. With the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge more than a percentage point above its 2% annual target, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack warned that delaying action could make the fight against inflation even more painful.

“The longer inflation stays above our objective, the harder it will be for us to bring it back down, and the more pain that individuals and businesses are going to be experiencing,” Hammack said in an August CNBC interview.

For the Fed, the challenge is figuring out how much pain the economy can withstand — and which risk is worse: acting too soon or waiting too long. Either way, consumers are likely to pay the price.

The September Consumer Price Index report due Wednesday may give officials some valuable clues.

Dragging the party down........

‘Trump is dragging the party down’: GOP scrambles to stop steep midterm losses

By Adam Cancryn, Lauren Fox, Patrick Svitek

The Republican Party’s midterm campaign has turned into a triage operation just three weeks out from November, as officials race to avert losses in a string of once-safe seats that they increasingly fear could cost them total control of Congress.

The worsening landscape has alarmed GOP operatives across several battleground states, forcing the party to pour resources into traditionally red districts and states at the expense of their once-expansive ambitions in Democratic areas.

And after months of pressing President Donald Trump to ramp up his travel on behalf of key candidates, some Republicans now worry he’s grown so unpopular that his presence on the campaign trail may in some cases be doing more harm than good.

One House Republican running for re-election said of the president’s numbers: “Trump is dragging the party down.”

The grim outlook gripping the GOP follows weeks of polling showing Republicans on track to lose the House amid intense voter anger over the Iran war and rising cost of living — and at grave risk of losing their once-solid majority in the Senate as well.

The widening number of competitive races has complicated Republican leaders’ plans to make up ground by unleashing hundreds of millions of dollars down the stretch. Despite a massive cash advantage fueled in part by pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., the spending so far has failed to significantly shift Republicans’ fortunes as more money gets diverted toward races once counted on as comfortable wins.

Already, the Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP super PAC in Senate races, has suspended its ad reservations in North Carolina and plowed at least $10 million into Kansas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. It also recently invested $5 million in South Carolina to boost incumbent Sen. Darline Graham amid concerns among some Republicans she’s losing ground to Democrat Annie Andrews in the deep red state.

That’s on top of the more than $100 million that the Senate Leadership Fund has spent in Texas to boost Ken Paxton, who is scrambling to shore up GOP support in his race with Democrat James Talarico after a bruising primary campaign. Trump himself has now traveled to Texas three times in one month to rally voters on Paxton’s behalf.

“We were all hoping the war was going to be over now, but it’s not,” said one Trump adviser. “We shouldn’t have a fight in a place like Texas, but obviously we do.”

‘You don’t work, you don’t eat’: How voters feel about today’s high prices

Top Republicans steering spending on the House side are also expected to narrow their focus in the coming days, doubling down on races they see as winnable while slashing their investment in candidates whose fortunes are fading, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

That winnowing will mark the latest acknowledgment of the challenge facing Republicans — and an effort to concentrate resources on the select candidates capable of defending their seats, or flipping blue districts, and limiting Democrats’ encroachment overall.

The Cook Political Report dealt the latest blow on Friday, moving 18 House races toward Democrats. Those contests include five toss-up seats across Iowa, Pennsylvania and Washington that the closely watched analysis projects the Democratic candidates are now more likely to win.

The Senate map has also provided little reassurance for the GOP. Paxton is suffering a drip-drip of damaging audio leaks from a private fundraiser, further frustrating Republican officials who already believe he’s running a poor campaign. Democrats hold polling leads in swing states like Georgia and North Carolina, while making insurgent runs in solidly red states like Alaska and even Kansas.

“I don’t know that the environment could possibly get worse than it is,” said Jason Roe, a Michigan GOP strategist advising Rep. Tom Barrett, who is in a neck-and-neck race against Democratic challenger Will Lawrence. “If we lose this, it couldn’t have been won.”

Inside the White House, Trump and his top advisers are clear-eyed about the difficult odds of keeping the House and the rising threat to the Senate majority, people familiar with the matter said.

But there is still optimism that Republicans can limit their losses and turn the prospect of a blue wave into little more than a ripple. Trump advisers expect the polls to tighten in swing races in the campaign’s final days, especially as more ads hit the airwaves and less-engaged Republican voters begin to tune in.

“I’m not saying we are going to f***ing win, it is going to be so great. No, I am not saying that. But do we get wiped out? No, we aren’t gonna get wiped out,” said another House Republican running for re-election.

Some strong GOP candidates are likely to outperform the generic ballot polling that shows Democrats favored by a healthy margin, the people familiar argued. At the same time, they’re counting on a handful of far-left Democratic candidates to underperform. And even at the current margins, they note, the difference between Republicans losing the House or expanding their majority is only a matter of a few percentage points across a handful of races.

“This election is going to come down to one side saying Republicans have not cleaned their mess up fast enough, and what we are saying is, ‘We know you are struggling, but these are the things we are doing to make your life better and, by the way, they are crazy,” another Republican told CNN.

For his part, Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to do everything he can to hold the majority and is campaigning in more than 40 districts and 20 states leading up to the election.

“Speaker Johnson is not slowing down and helping to get resources to every district that will decide the majority,” Johnson’s political communications director, Greg Steele, said in a statement to CNN.

While Trump has largely steered clear of swing districts of late, he has shown newfound enthusiasm for the campaign trail that his advisers have rushed to take advantage of, sending him to favorable areas across the country where they believe he can help GOP turnout. They’ve shrugged off any talk of Trump needing to lay low given his sagging approval ratings, arguing that the midterms are going to be a referendum on his presidency no matter what.

“The panic is unwarranted and it’s unfounded,” one White House official said of the GOP’s midterm trajectory. “It’s all going to come down to who has the ability to turn out their low-propensity voters. … That’s why we’re going where we’re going: To jazz up the base.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Trump “the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.”

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement, “House Republicans have a more favorable map, a stronger ground game, historic fundraising and spending advantages and battle-tested incumbents while Democrats are stuck dragging their unelectable socialist nominees across the finish line.”

A senior Republican National Committee official argued that pollsters and strategists are writing off the GOP’s chances in the midterms too soon.

“The first ones to rush and get on the phone with you all in these times are not the ones in the fight,” the official told CNN. “They would rather just say nobody knows what they are doing and everything is doomed than take an objective look at what is happening.”

Trump’s rallies — which included a stop in Texas on Thursday and a trip to upstate New York on Friday to stump for gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman — have bolstered Trump’s mood and view of Republicans’ chances, the White House official and others familiar with his comments said.

Nevertheless, Trump has tacitly acknowledged that his presence may not be helpful everywhere at a time when large majorities are frustrated with his economic policies and oppose the Iran war.

The president has declined to rebuke GOP candidates who have broken with him on the war and tariffs out of an understanding that they “need to run a campaign,” the White House official said — though those Republicans have still typically cleared the move with the White House ahead of time.

Trump has also stayed away from some races where vulnerable Republicans have tried to carve out an identity separate from him, such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins. The president isn’t currently expected to travel to Maine ahead of the midterms, people familiar with the matter said, though they cautioned his schedule fluctuates and that could change.

Still, there’s little expectation that any GOP candidate can fully escape the gravitational pull that Trump has exerted on the political landscape since returning to the White House.

And after nearly two years of demands for GOP unity, Trump advisers have counseled Republicans that their best hope in the final weeks is to make their own pitches for why they should get another term in Congress — and crucially, what they plan to do once they’re there to assuage voters’ frustrations.

“We’re fighting it out individually now,” the Trump adviser said. “It’s ugly out there for both sides, and it’s going to be hand-to-hand combat.”

Trees the Bears Called Home

Logging Took Trees the Bears Called Home, so the Haida Nation Built Them New Dens

“it’s got to be just right, just like the Goldilocks.”

Sonal Gupta

Elijah Washington pushes through wet ferns and branches left by logging, crossing the mossy forest floor on Haida Gwaii. He kneels beside a massive western red cedar stump.

The cedar was felled decades ago during the industrial logging boom that cleared swaths of old growth across the archipelago off British Columbia’s north coast, leaving a hollow, decaying stump.

Its top has since been trimmed with a chainsaw to fit a plywood sheet, capped with weather-resistant roofing material and covered with thick green moss collected from the surrounding woods. Near the base, an opening roughly the width of Washington’s safety helmet leads into a sheltered hollow lined with moss.

“You just want it to be small enough for a mother bear to move in,” said Washington, a stewardship technician with the Haida Nation. “So it’s got to be just right, just like the Goldilocks, [the entrance] can’t be too big, can’t be too wide.”

The retrofitted stump is one of seven the Council of the Haida Nation had modified this summer to provide winter shelter for the coastal black bear, known in the Haida language as taan. Found nowhere else in the world, this subspecies of black bear is among the largest in North America. 

A bear’s winter den may bring to mind a rocky cave, but coastal black bears in BC rely heavily on large old-growth trees and the hollow logs and stumps they leave behind. Decades of logging have removed many of those shelters, however—and the younger trees growing in their place have yet to develop hollows large enough for bears, said Helen Davis, a wildlife biologist working with the Haida Nation to identify and restore bear dens.

Cubs are born weighing about a pound, with their eyes still closed. They need a dry, protected place where their mothers can nurse them through the winter, and they stay there for up to 100 days. “The only place where bears can have babies is in a den,” Davis said. “And so these dens are critical to population sustainability.”

The old trees bears need for shelter are also sought-after by the logging industry. BC has expanded protections and temporary logging pauses, but old-growth harvesting continues. In August, BC Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said stopping it altogether would shut down the sector.

Davis has heard that argument for years. People repeatedly suggested making shelters from melted tires or culverts instead of leaving old-growth trees for bears.

“People would just sort of throw that out somewhat frequently and since nobody seems to want to conserve old growth for them, I was like, ‘Well, fine, then let’s see if we can build them,’” Davis said.

Now, the first-of-its kind program could set a model for bear conservation worldwide. But in providing an alternative to simply protecting old-growth, some worry building dens gives an easy excuse for logging to continue without pause.

Lisa White, a councillor with the Old Massett Village Council, said the sight of plywood laid over old-growth stumps was difficult to bear. “I actually cried,” she said. The plywood roofs, she said, showed how deeply the land had been damaged: bears now needed people to help provide their shelter. 

White said Haida people had needed wood long before commercial logging. Thousands used it for homes, canoes, clothing and heat, yet the forests appeared virtually untouched to the first newcomers, she said. People selected individual trees, used them fully and left the surrounding forest standing, so animals could continue living there, including northern goshawks, which are at risk of disappearing from the islands. The Haida also were known to pull entire planks from trees without felling them, leaving the tree standing.

White worries about how well the second-growth forests surrounding the modified dens will hold up through winter. She has seen extensive blowdown in those stands and is concerned about placing shelters among trees vulnerable to the islands’ storms.

“It’s also the forest around them that needs to be strong,” she said. 

Sometimes, loggers discover a bear den only after cutting into it.

Davis, who has been studying coastal black bear dens since the early 1990s, recalled stories from loggers: “They cut into trees and a bear popped out—or worse, they cut into a bear.” 

Those accounts led to a three-year provincial government study with forestry company Canfor to investigate whether black bears needed large trees for dens.

Davis tracked radio-collared bears to roughly 65 dens; her field research confirmed that bears were almost entirely dependent on large, hollow old-growth trees and that second-growth forests left them with virtually no options.

At the time, despite the rate of loss of old-growth forest in the province, the research didn’t set off alarm bells. “I don’t think they thought they’d run out of old growth,” she said.

But building a den meant manually crafting what a living cedar takes centuries to create. As a cedar grows, fungi can slowly rot the wood at its centre, creating a hollow large enough for a bear while the tree remains alive. Forests managed for timber are often logged again before those chambers develop, so the new trees do not replace the dens lost when old growth is cut.

Davis began working with Taan Forest, the Haida-owned forestry company in 2019, teaching staff to identify natural bear dens and convert suitable stumps into new ones. The company was already restoring streamside forests damaged by earlier logging and adding den restoration became a natural extension of that work, said Jeff Mosher, its chief forester.

“Protecting bears is a priority, even if it means a lower dividend,” Mosher said. 

Taan Forest has since created six dens across the Mamin River, Survey Creek and Ghost Creek watersheds on Graham Island, in northern Haida Gwaii, Mosher said.

Mosher said bears usually took about a year to start using the shelters, though they checked out one new den almost immediately. Signs of use at other modified stumps encouraged Taan to build more. Bears used one of the dens through the winter and spring of 2023 and have returned annually since. 

Those results also encouraged the nation to expand the effort, Washington said. His crew spent the summer searching previously logged forests for stumps with a hollow large enough for a bear and an entrance leading inside. Davis helped the council secure funding from the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and spent a week in July teaching the crew to scout stumps, assess their suitability and turn them into dens using chainsaws, plywood and moss.

The crew is also trying to make the new shelters smell familiar. When the Haida crew comes across a bear that has died, they respectfully collect some of its hair to place in some of the modified dens, a trick Davis has tested elsewhere in the field with encouraging results. 

By the end of October, the team plans to complete three more dens, bringing the total to 10 modified sites across Haida Gwaii ready for winter monitoring. The exact locations of the sites are being withheld to prevent exposing denning bears to hunters. 

Haida members remain concerned about black bears killed for their gallbladders, which contain bile sought for use in some traditional Asian medicines. BC bans possession of bear gallbladders or bile and prohibits their trade.

Washington said that while the nation’s presence on the land has helped protect bears from such hunting, the killings still occur. Haida members have reported seeing bears left dead on the side of the road with the paws cut off and gallbladder removed. 

Tracing his hand over a living western red cedar in a different part of the forest, Washington points to the distinct tool marks left by a traditional adze. Sometime in the early 1900s, he estimates, Haida ancestors cut into the tree to see if it could be used for a house pole. Finding rot at the core, they left it standing. Bears later widened the opening with their teeth and claws, turning the hollow into a natural den, its floor already lined with soft cedar bedding and green branches still growing above.

This den sits high in the tree, which is among the safest places for a female bear to raise cubs, Washington said. But his crew cannot recreate one at that height.

The modified dens also provide only temporary shelter. “They’re dead stumps and so they’re rotting and they won’t be there forever,” Davis said.

But shelter is only part of what a bear needs. Noel Bellis, an Old Massett member of the Haida Nation and a carver, grew up in a logging family and later worked in cedar forests. After visiting modified dens and attending workshops, he believes bears would move in but questions whether they would find enough food nearby. When bears come out in spring, they feed on green vegetation, including horsetail, fireweed shoots, salmonberry shoots, and grasses.

But in the second-growth forests he has visited, deer have eaten much of the low-growing vegetation, leaving little for bears to forage. “It’s a moss lawn between trees,” he said.

Nearby salmon streams provide a seasonal source of food, but Bellis worries about what bears will find once those runs end each year. He wants den-building accompanied by efforts to restore food plants, using cages to protect young growth from deer until it grows beyond their reach. “It will cost money, but that’s what the costs of clear-cutting are going to be,” he said.

Davis agrees bears need both shelter and feeding areas within their home ranges, where they generally remain to den. “They don’t just pick up and march off to some far-flung patch of remaining old growth and all den there together,” Davis said. 

Taan Forest is opening gaps in the canopy to encourage shrubs to grow, with at least two modified dens in or beside those restoration areas, Davis added. 

When Barney Edgars worked along Haida Gwaii’s creeks as a fisheries guardian, his crew carried air horns and flares but rarely needed them. The Elders who raised him had taught him to respect bears and speak to them when their paths crossed: “You go your way, I’ll go my way.”

“We were taught that everything we grew up with had a spirit,” said Edgars, a Haida Elder.

He recalled an older woman fishing for sockeye salmon when a bear and its cub approached her net. She threw the bear a fish and told it to leave the net alone. It never returned, he said.

Earlier generations ate bears and used the whole animal. His grandmother asked him to hunt one for her, though he never did. Travellers also followed bear trails through northern Haida Gwaii, finding routes between waterways on the journey from Massett toward Naden Harbour.

Neither Edgars nor his grandparents had heard of a bear attack on the islands, he said. But he worries that losing forests and feeding grounds will push bears into communities to rummage through garbage, increasing the possibility of conflict. 

Fears about conflict with bears are new to the Haida. “They used to sleep under the trees and there was never any fear of that… I never learned any fear from my grandfather about bears,” White said.

Washington said Haida people want to know whether bears are healthy, have enough food and have places to live. Monitoring the new dens will help answer part of that question.

Cameras facing the den entrances will record activity year-round while their crew stay away from roughly October to April to avoid disturbing bears. After winter, the crew will review the footage to see which shelters bears explored and which they used as dens.

Hair naturally caught at den entrances can be tested for DNA to help show whether the same bears return year after year or others move in.

Even if bears take to the shelters, the crew does not plan to turn every suitable stump into a den. Once one is finished, workers move to another area, leaving space between shelters to limit competition for food and places to raise cubs.

“We don’t want to create a whole community out here,” he said. “We want to have like one bear that’s safe enough to come out here.”

Obtain their diesel.........

Trump Blames Ukraine—Not His Iran War—For Our Skyrocketing Fuel Prices

While lifting sanctions against Russia and striking deals to obtain their diesel.

Alex Nguyen

President Donald Trump keeps pointing the finger at everyone for surging fuel prices but himself. Over the weekend, he once again blamed Ukraine, asserting that the country’s retaliatory airstrikes on Russia’s oil refineries were causing prices to spike. Now Trump is urging Ukraine to scrap its leader.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said on Saturday, suggesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to broker a peace deal with Russia.

For weeks, Trump has called on Zelenskyy to stop striking Russia’s energy infrastructure, claiming that the attacks are “hurting the world,” while saying virtually nothing about Russia’s strikes against Ukraine.

Responding to Trump’s escalatory remarks, Zelenskyy on Sunday criticized Trump’s framing, telling ABC News that it is near universally understood that the closing of the Strait of Hormuz has led to higher prices—not Ukraine’s strikes against Russia. But according to Zelenskyy, it’s easier for Trump to blame Ukraine instead of acknowledging the United States’ overwhelming role in surging prices around the world.

“People have to hear reality,” the Ukrainian president said. “Don’t play games with people.” 

Later on Sunday, Trump claimed on Truth Social that there is now an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” in the war between Russia and Ukraine. But he gave little detail about what that entailed.

The head-spinning war of words follows Trump’s deal on Friday to allow Russia to supply diesel to other countries, an apparent bid to bring down prices ahead of the midterm elections. But just last month, Trump had signed a bill granting him power to impose up to 100 percent tariffs on top countries that buy Russian oil or gas, namely China and India. 

Even GOP lawmakers have voiced rare opposition to the deal. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) wrote on X that he was “concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said that Trump should use his new sanctioning authority against Russia instead of allowing the country to “rake in revenues, and continue its catastrophic war in Ukraine.”

On Saturday, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) announced plans for a bipartisan bill that he said would prevent the president from lifting sanctions. “[Ukrainian] President Volodymyr Zelensky has the overwhelming support of the United States Congress, he has the overwhelming support of the American people, and he has the overwhelming support of the Ukrainian people,” Fitzpatrick wrote on social media.

Bitch you are stupid.....

Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Grifting Scandal Keeps Getting Worse

Trump’s ice-cold response to the “honey” packed corruption allegations is pretty telling.

Inae Oh

Are Kimberly Guilfoyle’s days as the US ambassador to Greece numbered?

Amid multiple reports alleging outright corruption, on-the-record quotes from Greek officials who seem to detest her grifting behavior, and my personal favorite, the criminal use of “honey” in casual conversation, it appears that Guilfoyle’s ambassadorship could be in peril.

The increasingly precarious standing follows two explosive Wall Street Journal reports alleging Guilfoyle, whose personal finances seemed to be in the gutter even before her ambassadorship, repeatedly pleaded for money from Eric Deters, a Republican donor and failed congressional candidate, in return for political favors. Those favors reportedly included face time with various Trump administration officials, an introduction to Kid Rock, and help with some “personal tax and legal issues.” But according to Deters, Guilfoyle never delivered.

That’s when the apparent begging went off the rails.

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she allegedly texted Deters, referring to her request for him to wire $100,000 to settle some hefty credit card debt. Deters, who said that he had paid her $300,000 over the years, refused the entreaty because it would end his marriage.

All of which sounds like a far cry from Guilfoyle’s days as Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée and a prominent member of President Trump’s inner circle. But it gets even worse for Guilfoyle. According to a follow-up story, the ambassador couldn’t even manage an invite to a Greek House Davos dinner organized for Eric Trump. “You don’t have the f—ing US, you know, ambassador to Greece not come. She should be kissing my f—ing ass,” the Wall Street Journal reports Guilfoyle said of Greek House Davos’ organizer.

Guilfoyle ultimately strong-armed her way into an invite. But the incident apparently did not give her pause about bragging about her connections to wealthy Greek businessmen. A sample: “He loves me. Honey, I spent Christmas with him. New Years. OK? Gstaad. Like, everywhere.”

So what does the president have to say about all of this? “I just heard about it. Too bad,” he told reporters on Friday. “I don’t know too much, but she was always very nice.”

Ouch. Referring to your ambassador and almost-daughter-in-law in the past tense, like she’s already a goner? Seems pretty ice-cold to me, honey.