Racist tweets quickly surfaced after Musk closed Twitter deal  —  A wide range of anonymous Twitter accounts celebrated Musk's takeover and argued it meant the old rules against bigotry no longer applied  —  An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter …

Pelosi Spokesperson Statement on Violent Assault on Paul Pelosi  —  Washington, D.C. — Drew Hammill, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, issued this statement:  —  “Early this morning, an assailant broke into the Pelosi residence in San Francisco and violently assaulted Mr. Pelosi.

The 2022 Race for the House, in Four Districts, and Four Polls  —  Swing-district polls by The New York Times and Siena College show how the midterm races are being shaped by larger, surprising forces, beyond the traditional red and blue divide.  —  President Biden is unpopular everywhere.

Russia's elite begins to ponder a Putinless future  —  Once unthinkable, the president's removal can at least be contemplated  —  “What is next?  Is there life after Putin?  How does he go and who replaces him?”  Such are the questions that weigh heavily these days on the minds of the Russian elite …

‘Innuendos and baseless allegations’: Milwaukee claps back after Ron Johnson sows doubts about early voting in the city  —  As voters have already begun streaming to the polls, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson this week raised doubts about early in-person absentee voting in Milwaukee and suggested …

Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines  —  How rural Coffee County, Ga., became an early target in the multistate search for purported evidence of fraud after the 2020 election  —  A week after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump raged over what he claimed was rampant fraud …

James Bennet was right  —  Controversy over an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) consumed the New York Times in June 2020 and claimed the job of then-editorial page editor James Bennet.  Two-and-a-half years later, Bennet has shared some thoughts about the episode — and, in particular, the role of Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger.

Why St. Louis hero teacher Jean Kuczka did what 376 Uvalde cops couldn't  —  There were two stories out of the American heartland this week that mostly got lost in a frenetic autumn of political anxiety and baseball joy (or sorrow), but demand a few moments of our attention …

More Americans than ever think crime is up in their neighborhood  —  Benjy is Semafor's Washington Bureau Chief, joining us from NBC News.  Sign up for the daily Principals newsletter to get our insider's guide to American power.  —  Dave is a Political Reporter for Semafor, joining us from the Washington Post.

What It Means to Be a Republican Today  —  Evan McMullin's lesson on what his former party now stands for—and what it can't stand.  —  The most interesting political race of 2022 isn't between a Democrat and a Republican.  It's in Utah, where incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Lee faces independent challenger Evan McMullin.

Russia's security service works to subvert Moldova's pro-Western government  —  A trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian intelligence and reviewed by The Washington Post illustrates how Moscow continues to try to manipulate countries in Eastern Europe

Many Military U.F.O. Reports Are Just Foreign Spying or Airborne Trash  —  Forget space aliens or hypersonic technology; classified assessments show that many episodes have ordinary explanations.  —  WASHINGTON — Government officials believe that surveillance operations by foreign powers …

Fetterman Fades in Post-Debate Poll  —  Republican Mehmet Oz has pulled ahead of John Fetterman in the first Pennsylvania Senate poll released after this week's highly anticipated debate.  —  According to a survey of 1,000 likely voters from Wick Insights, 47.6 percent of respondents …

So far, this flu season is more severe than it has been in 13 years  —  Influenza is hitting the United States unusually early and hard, already hospitalizing a record number of people at this point in the season in more than a decade and underscoring the potential for a perilous winter …