Trump briefly stepped away from the microphone after one protester appeared to approach the stage

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Donald Trump’s latest campaign rally was rocked by repeated protests on Wednesday as the US president urged Texas voters to back the embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton.

At least half a dozen demonstrators interrupted the US president during his remarks in San Antonio, with some led away by police. One was physically assaulted by an older Trump supporter as he tried to leave the arena.

• Rays sweep Yankees 3-0 after fan interference call

• Dodgers eliminate Braves to keep three-peat bid alive

• Ramírez leads Guardians past Sox to avoid sweep

Anthony Volpe rounded the bases, touched home plate and then waited out the uncertainty like everyone else.

“Just hoping for the best,” the New York Yankees infielder said. “Crazy.”

A warning for this episode - it covers details of a murder and an execution that some might find distressing.

In this episode of Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast, co-hosts Jonathan Yerushalmy and Reged Ahmad examine what happened when the state of Tennessee tried to execute prisoner Christa Pike. They also look at the controversy over taxpayer-funded ads promoting US president Donald Trump, midterm AI attack ads and the Elon Musk-Trump bromance that appears to be back on.

The 78-year-old has spent nearly six decades in prison and California governor has overturned last two parole grants

Patricia Krenwinkel, a former Charles Manson follower, was granted parole on Tuesday after nearly six decades in prison for her role in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.

This is the third time that Krenwinkel, 78, has been approved for release by California’s board of parole hearings. After both of her last two parole grants, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, reversed the parole board’s decisions and denied her freedom, and Krenwinkel’s attorneys are now urging the Democrat to allow this latest ruling to stand.

Jamie Raskin says ‘startling’ email asked whether young woman was ‘for me, or are you keeping her for yourself’

A powerful Democratic lawmaker has called for a criminal investigation into former Bard College president Leon Botstein after congressional investigators uncovered an email from Botstein to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in which he says Botstein asked if a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself”.

The latest development appears to have triggered the immediate resignation of Botstein from all Bard-affiliated positions, including his professorship and roles in Bard’s music programs. Botstein had led the college for 50 years and only recently stepped down as president.

Ads promoting the president have cost more than $12m and his Super Pac has refused to reimburse taxpayers

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The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, asking a judge in Washington DC to stop the president from using taxpayer funds to air a series of ads promoting himself, arguing that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda.

The ads promoting Donald Trump, including one recycled from his 2024 presidential campaign, have cost taxpayers more than $12m so far, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

In the shadow of the Parthenon, the secretary of state gave a selective reading of history as he urged Europe to ‘awaken from its slumber’

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, delivered a classically inspired apologia for Donald Trump’s “America first” foreign policy on Wednesday, giving a sweeping speech to the backdrop of the Parthenon in Athens that appeared tailor-made for campaign ads if he runs for president in 2028.

In the speech, the top US diplomat drew historical parallels from the founders, philosophers and conquerers of antiquity to the modern American spirit – as well as his family’s own journey to the United States – as he called on Europe to “awaken from its long slumber” and reject a “future of atrophy and servitude and decline”.

Jamaal Howard, 46, executed by fatal dose of pentobarbital after lawyers’ bid for stay had been denied

A Texas man was put to death Wednesday in the first US execution since the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee last week.

Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8.03pm after receiving a fatal dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, at the state prison in Huntsville.

President floats firing Chris LaCivita and James Blair over any ‘conflict’ after reports of work in Republika Srpska

Donald Trump distanced himself from two top advisers on Wednesday, claiming he did not have “any idea who else they work for”, after it was reported they spent the weekend assisting a pro-Russia government in the Balkans.

On Truth Social, Trump wrote that Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of his 2024 presidential campaign, and James Blair, a campaign adviser and White House deputy chief of staff on leave of absence, “are outside consultants” and “do not work for me other than as outside consultants”.

Authorities say they arrested an 18-year-old who was planning a shooting attack at the Mall of America

FBI officials stopped a potential terrorist attack on the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, authorities announced Wednesday. An 18-year-old was arrested on one count of obtaining a firearm to carry out an act of terrorism.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud had been investigated over the last nearly two years by the FBI. He was arrested Tuesday in a public park after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of the Islamic State for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.

Lawyers for Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injections, gave updates on her condition, saying she is severely unwell, and ‘angry and confused about everything right now’. Following a court hearing on Wednesday, a judge ordered Tennessee officials to preserve all evidence from the botched execution

Bernadette Greene-Placentia says she is sharing her story in order to fight for victims of sexual assault

This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.

A congressional candidate in Arizona says she was attacked and raped in August while trying to repair one of her damaged campaign signs.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Lithuania and Canada were also pressured to withdraw, and days before #Disinfo2026, logos were wiped off website

The Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU’s diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands.

The conference, #Disinfo2026, taking place Wednesday and Thursday, is the annual meetup of Europe’s counter-disinformation community and has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is run by an independent Brussels non-profit, EU Disinfo Lab.

Pentagon chief tries to play down problems onboard carrier as it returns to dock after 260 days at sea without port call

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told service members on the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday that their deployment “wasn’t easy” as the carrier prepares to dock after spending over 260 consecutive days at sea without a port call, setting a navy record.

For months, there have been widespread concerns since reports first emerged of supply shortages and deteriorating mental health onboard. In his remarks on Wednesday, however, Hegseth again sought to play down the issues.

Attorneys say Pike was set to be taken off life support before she woke up, as judge orders officials to preserve evidence

Christa Pike awoke “angry and confused” after surviving two lethal injections, her attorneys said on Wednesday, as a judge ordered Tennessee state officials to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution.

Pike, 50, was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber last Wednesday after two supposedly lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the economic struggles of voters have boosted Democrats. But with less than a month to go, there is no complacency

For once, Democrats and Donald Trump might be in agreement: “Pretend I’m on the ticket,” the historically unpopular president has instructed supporters. Midterms are in large part a referendum on the incumbent, and Trump’s war on Iran and its impact on the cost of living have boosted support for Democrats. With less than a month to go, they have reason to be upbeat. The party has a mountain to climb after the devastating defeats of 2024, and the gerrymandering of Republicans, but surveys give it a lead of about nine points on the generic ballot, which measures preference for parties rather than specific candidates.

Attention has turned from the prospects of seizing the House, where Democrats are forecast a clear majority, to what once seemed like the highly optimistic possibility of taking the Senate too. That would require flipping four seats, with 35 in play. Remarkably, Democrats are prospering in red states from Texas to Alaska. In Kansas – which Mr Trump carried by 16 points, and which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932 – the race is neck and neck.

Christa Pike, a death row inmate who survived the state of Tennessee’s attempt to execute her last week, is conscious and speaking. The 50-year-old is recovering in hospital after surviving two lethal injections in a case that has shocked many in the US and prompted a debate about the death penalty. She was due to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Michael Safi speaks to the chief reporter for Guardian US, Ed Pilkington – watch on YouTube

Listening to the president at a rally these days is a mix of deja vu and word salad, but his decade-long project of division remains abnormal and dangerous

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Donald Trump’s campaign rallies can be repetitive. Very repetitive. He calls himself the “greatest” president leading the “greatest” movement inside the “greatest” economy. He rails against “Dumocrats” for the “transgender mutilization” of children. He lambasts the “fake news” and reheats election lies. He describes illegal immigration as an “invasion” and recites the poem The Snake.

If we were all frogs being slowly boiled alive, we’ve now reached the stage of blackened toad. After a decade of this, presidential utterances that would once have caused outrage are met with a shrug. We are no longer shockable. Or so we thought.

Jorge Messi wanted his country to fall in love with his son. That ambition was fulfilled during a brilliant international career that ended this week

“What Argentina is doing in this World Cup is of a sacred order,” Brazilian writer Milly Lacombe posted at the height of the tide of anti-Argentinian sentiment during this year’s tournament. She was exploring the contradiction she felt around her support of Lionel Messi: “a player who is a God and a man who shakes Trump’s hand”.

Lacombe highlighted the importance of acknowledging the complexities around Messi and the Argentinian team. How is it possible that Messi was not speaking out against the racist incidents we all saw around the Argentina team, she asked. “That’s why it hurts so much to see someone with Messi’s power choosing to make himself small,” she wrote.

Texas attorney general acknowledged affordability was his party’s ‘biggest problem’ heading into the midterms

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Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general running as the Republican candidate in a competitive Senate race, admitted privately that rising fuel prices as a result of Donald Trump’s Iran war were hurting his party before the midterms in the latest leaked audio recording.

Asked what issues were “dragging” his campaign at a closed-door fundraising event, Paxton replied, “It’s not tariffs … it’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel,” according to an audio recording shared with Axios.

Four people and a dog may have been exposed to rabies from the animal, Los Angeles public health officials say

Los Angeles county recently documented its first rabid raccoon in more than 50 years, and health officials are urging residents to never touch wild animals.

The county’s department of public health announced in a statement this week that four people and a dog may have been exposed to the animal at a backyard work site in the city of Westlake Village. The raccoon appeared in ill health but was not aggressive.

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• Judge orders officials to preserve all evidence tied to Christa Pike’s botched execution

Christa Pike’s lawyers said that Pike remains shackled to her hospital bed.

“Based on our understanding, medical staff have asked that the shackles be removed and have been denied that request by [the Tennessee corrections department],” they said, adding: “We would also amend our request and ask for that relief.”

Sir James Goldsmith’s links to Hilton Head, South Carolina, add to mystery of Jane Doe 4, who claimed she was abused by Epstein in the 1980s

For Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Goldsmith family was a gateway to elite society and he wanted to be in their circle.

The disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 facing sex-trafficking charges, longed for a billionaire’s lifestyle and cultivated the family’s friends, bankers, business associates and advisers.

We appear to be entering a new era, in which political desperation at home leads to increasingly unhinged threats abroad

Donald Trump was in Nebraska on Monday, and though his long rally speech had elements of a performance, this was no Bruce Springsteen album. He offered another dark meditation on a world spiraling out of control, one in which the destruction of American cities is increasingly a possibility, unless Americans trust him to use the vast powers of the presidency to annihilate his foes.

The president drew fury when he suggested that Iran could launch a nuclear attack and “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego. California leaders reacted with scorn at Trump’s alarmism.

Ted Widmer, a former White House speechwriter, is the editor of American Speeches, and the recently published The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text, both published by the Library of America

NAACP files lawsuit after head of DoJ’s civil rights division says she hopes to send election monitors to polls

The Trump administration has been sued over its plans to deploy “a historic number” of election monitors to polling stations during next month’s midterm elections.

The bid “stands to jeopardize” the elections and could “interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation”, according to the NAACP, which filed a lawsuit against Harmeet Dhillon, head of the justice department’s civil rights division, who has said she hopes to send 1,000 monitors to midterm polling sites in November.

A mix of natural disasters could all befall the state at once as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the climate phenomenon

On a cloudless autumn afternoon, sunlight sparkled on the water that had quietly swallowed a busy intersection to the north of San Francisco, as the surrounding rush-hour traffic slowed to a painful crawl.

There were no crashing waves or storm surges to blame for the flood. Marin county was one of many areas up and down the California coast affected by high tides last week, as parts of the Pacific swelled with excess warmth.

The US midterms may not be as much of a spectacle as the presidential elections, but they are just as important and can completely change not just the course of a presidential term, but federal legislation for years to come. The Guardian unpacks how these elections work, what the results mean and how they affect American life

Immigration enforcement agency has signed $16.7m deal for devices that induced ‘excessive’ fear in military subjects

The electric-shock gloves immigration agents could soon use to control detainees and protesters worked so powerfully during a military exercise that participants felt intense pain, stopped fighting immediately and feared additional exposures, according to a previously unreleased army study.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leaders were aware of the findings before signing a $16.7m contract in August to purchase 6,000 pairs of shock gloves, according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with the Associated Press.

The United States winning four of four benefits many that were involved, and may hurt those who were left behind

Cavan Sullivan

At least 73 people estimated to have joined protest against prolonged detention and Folkston facility’s ‘violations’

A group of people detained inside a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Georgia have launched a mass hunger strike this week to protest against their prolonged detention and the facility’s conditions, according to advocates and family members.

Advocates estimate at least 73 detained immigrants are participating in the hunger strike inside the Folkston D Ray James ICE processing center in south-east Georgia. The Folkston facility, a former state prison, is run by the private prison company GEO Group under a contract with ICE.

There’s an unsung reason for the organization’s success even as other leftwing groups face a bumpy road

A lot has been written recently in an effort to understand the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and how we’ve risen to such prominence in a short time.

It is clear that we reflect a growing disillusionment with the Democratic party, and a further radicalization of the American population. But many leftwing social movement organizations, such as Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, have risen in the last decade or so, and many groups, from MoveOn to the Sunrise Movement, have attempted to absorb large numbers of people, influence the Democratic party and enter the public consciousness with lower levels of success.

Site of the Nova music festival near Re’im one of the locations where grieving relatives have gathered. Plus, the unlikely legal tussle over a ‘brain rot’ meme

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Good morning. Israel is holding ceremonies and gatherings to mark the third anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken captive to Gaza. Israeli communities shattered by the massacres, torn between rebuilding their lives and remembering lost friends and relatives, have spoken to Emma Graham-Harrison about their experiences of that day and the days since. The Guardian is marking the day with a live blog, featuring the latest images of events taking place in Israel and around the world.

Israel’s government responded to the attack by launching a devastating war on Gaza, during which at least 74,243 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

What is happening with the flydubai attack investigation? New Zealand authorities have launched their own investigation into the flydubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to hijack an Israel-bound plane, after police confirmed he underwent flight training there about a year after he abandoned a degree in Australia. Disaster was narrowly averted on 30 September when passengers and crew intervened to stop the alleged attempt to take control of a flight to Tel Aviv with 182 people onboard.

What it is the latest settler violence? Armed Israeli settlers beat a photographer in the presence of Israeli soldiers, hospitalising him, as he covered worsening settler violence against olive farmers in the occupied West Bank. Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse in Palestine, was beaten with the butts of rifles, despite him being marked as press, in view of about a dozen armed Israeli soldiers.

Who is the latest person taking legal action against the administration’s immigration enforcement? Marimar Martinez, a US citizen who was shot one year ago by a Customs and Border Protection agent during a sweeping immigration crackdown in Chicago, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging the agent lied about the shooting and fired into her vehicle from behind.

What has a whistleblower said about FBI investigations into LA anti-ICE protesters? Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator who represents California and serves on the Senate judiciary committee, said his office had received a copy of a complaint from a whistleblower that makes sweeping allegations about the Trump administration’s response to protests in LA in early 2025, claiming the president himself ordered the FBI to investigate protesters.

• American involved in disputed point during tournament

• Gauff called out ‘insane’ amount of abuse online

Coco Gauff said she had been left drained by the racist abuse she experienced during the China Open after losing in the last 16 to Elise Mertens.

The American was dismayed earlier this week after an incident during her match against Chinese teenager Sun Xinran. The 16-year-old thought she had hit a winner late in the first set but Gauff had raised her hand to stop the point because she was distracted by flickering lights on the stadium’s advertising hoardings. The move prompted some boos from the crowd. The umpire agreed to have the point replayed, and Gauff went on to win 7-5, 6-1.

An initiative on November’s ballot aims to overturn the 9.9% tax on earnings above $1m – who’s winning the fight?

Voters in Washington state will soon decide the fate of the state’s so-called “millionaire tax” – a 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1m that was signed into law in March and is now facing a conservative-backed effort to repeal it.

An initiative on November’s ballot aims to overturn the tax, claiming that the tax represents a slippery slope, and would eventually result in taxes for more than just millionaires. A coalition of advocacy groups and unions opposing the initiative say taxing the state’s 20,000 highest-earning households could raise approximately $3.5bn in necessary annual revenue to fund core priorities like education and healthcare, and expand tax credits and sales tax exemptions.

Suit says AI tool allows independently owned franchises to exchange nonpublic price and sales information

McDonald’s is facing a lawsuit in federal court over its alleged use of an AI tool to determine pricing across independent franchises, which prosecutors say violates antitrust laws and has unfairly inflated menu prices for Americans.

The vast majority of McDonald’s US stores are independently owned and are said to individually decide on prices under company policy. Antitrust laws require businesses to set prices independently from their competitors, as coordinating prices can stifle market competition and push up costs for consumers.

Stanford University has shared a video of Karl Deisseroth telling his two daughters and one of his sons he has won a Nobel prize in medicine.

Deisseroth spent hours fielding congratulatory calls on Monday after learning he had won the prize for helping to open a field of brain science called optogenetics. But it wasn't long before the California scientist asked for a break for a more ordinary task: he needed to make school lunches for his children who were asleep in the family home in Stanford where he had been speaking to journalists and wellwishers in the middle of the night.

Deisseroth, 54, shares the prize with two researchers in Germany for their work in optogenetics, a field that combines light with genes to switch neurons on and off in living brains

• Nobel prize in medicine 2026 awarded for research into mysteries of brain

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Tonight, we’ll have another set of midterm debates. In Iowa, we’ll see the Republican nominee for US Senate, Ashley Hinson, face off against Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative and Paralympian at 8pm ET.

The race has become one of the most competitive of this cycle, despite the fact a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate election in the Hawkeye state since 2008. Turek, however, trails by just a point in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. And Hinson, who currently serves as a congresswoman, has pushed back on Donald Trump’s agenda of late, as the president’s approval rating sinks to a new low. Hinson has called for an end on the war in Iran, despite consistently voting against House war powers resolutions that would curb military action, and criticizing the president’s recent pause on tariffs for foreign beef imports, which, Hinson argues, will affect the bottom line for the many cattle ranchers in Iowa.

The project has sparked doubts over whether the plant will be built and delivered as promised, given Trump’s record

Donald Trump has long sought to portray himself as a man of steel, from the White House photoshopping Trump to look like Superman, to enacting tariffs on steel and approving the sale of US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel with a ”golden” share given to the US government.

Most recently, the Trump administration announced plans to construct the largest steel plant in the US, a $15bn plant in Lee county, Iowa, to be built by India-based Mesabi Metallics.

The White Sox were one of the worst teams in MLB history. Now they are just five wins from a place in the World Series

The postgame celebration songs pounded through the Bluetooth speakers in the Chicago White Sox clubhouse on Monday night, minutes after the team’s playoff victory over the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field.

The White Sox, who lost 121 games two seasons ago, have made a remarkable turnaround. A team who were once so abject that they stopped tweeting out their results are now just five wins from the World Series. They can seal their progress to the American League Championship Series on Wednesday if they beat the Guardians in Chicago.