It’s Wednesday, October 28. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Haviv Rettig Gur and Maya Sulkin make sense of Israel’s election results, live. Ani Chkhikvadze reports from the riots in Rome. Josh Kaplan attends rapper Macklemore’s “Free Palestine” tour. And much more.
But first: Do Americans think the country is headed in the right direction? Can a Democratic pastor win in deep-red Kansas? And why won’t Abdul El-Sayed denounce an absurd, offensive new ad?
The midterm elections are just six days away, and the vote is set to be a referendum on Donald Trump and the state of the country under his leadership. So, how do Americans really think things are going? That’s the question we set out to answer with the latest installment of our polling series, The Honesty Project, a partnership between The Free Press and opinion-research think tank Populace. We asked Americans a simple question: Where is the country headed? Read today’s first offering on the looming election to find out how Americans answered that question—and what new divides are emerging as the midterms approach.
Up next, River Page reports from Kansas. He was there to cover a peculiar trend that has emerged this cycle: current and former Christian clergy running as Democrats. One is, of course, James Talarico, who is running for Senate in Texas. But maybe the most interesting is megachurch pastor turned Kansas Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. Republicans have long campaigned on their Christian faith, but they’re also eager to discredit Democrats who do the same. River went to the Sunflower State to report not just on Hamilton’s surprisingly competitive Senate bid but also on a bigger question: Can openly professing Christian faith help Democrats win back red-state voters?
The contest for the worst campaign ad this cycle is a competitive one. There was Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad last week featuring his opponent’s estranged mother. Then, over the weekend, an independent PAC supporting Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed depicted a couple lamenting that they couldn’t afford bananas and eggs because they had to set aside money for U.S. aid to Israel—or, as they put it, “for killing Palestinians.” Prominent Democrats have denounced the ad, but El-Sayed’s campaign has not. Why not? Eli Lake examines the campaign’s silence—and what it reveals about the man at its helm.
—The Editors
Decoding Israel’s Election Results
Polls are closed in Israel’s first national elections since before the October 7 attacks. Now, the question on everyone’s minds in Israel is this: In the race between Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, who can actually put together the 61 seats required to wield power in the Knesset?
The negotiations are complicated, and could take weeks. In the meantime, with 70% of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s bloc at approximately 54 seats, Eisenkot’s bloc at 47, and the Arab parties at 19.
What will happen next, and what does this all mean for Israel? Maya Sulkin and Free Press Middle East analyst Haviv Rettig Gur will offer some answers today at 10 a.m. ET, live on X and Substack.
Watch the livestream here, and if you have burning questions for Haviv, post them in the Free Press Forum.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
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Brazilian politician Flávio Bolsonaro has fled to the United States after he lost Sunday’s presidential election and his country’s Supreme Court ordered the seizure of his passport. The White House has granted asylum to Bolsonaro and his family, likely on the grounds of risk of judicial persecution, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
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The U.S. Federal Election Commission’s website has been hacked, causing disruptions to its electronic filings system, Reuters reported yesterday. The FEC, which collects data on spending by candidates and political action committees, said its IT staff were “actively working to restore service” as of Tuesday evening.
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Three luxury real estate mogul brothers were convicted on Tuesday of drugging and raping dozens of women and sentenced to 30 years in prison each. “Your conduct was monstrous,” U.S. District judge Valerie E. Caproni said during sentencing. The defendants’ insistence that getting married and having children has led to changes in behavior “rings hollow,” Caproni said.
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DNA evidence has linked serial killer Ted Bundy to the death of another Utah teenager, authorities said on Tuesday—52 years after her body was first discovered. Though Bundy has been dead since 1989, his confirmed victim count—now at least 30—continues to rise thanks to advances in DNA testing.
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Crime victims have lost out on at least $119 million in restitution as a direct result of Trump’s pardons, a CBS News investigation found on Tuesday. Pardons during the Biden administration erased $14,000, according to Justice Department records.
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The Justice Department asked Washington State’s top election official on Monday to set aside 400 ballots they believe were filled by noncitizens, CBS News reported yesterday. Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle, estimated that the total number of illegally cast ballots in the state was over 1,500. “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Floyd said.
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The share of Asian Americans in Harvard’s freshman class of 2030 skyrocketed to 43.2 percent this year, more than double the figure when Students for Fair Admissions sued the school in 2014, alleging racial discrimination in admissions. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard unlawfully considered race a factor in admissions. The respective shares of black and Hispanic students in the Ivy League school’s incoming classes have dipped since the decision.
