Good morning, happy Monday! Here are today’s top stories:
• The battle between Ken Paxton and James Talarico for the Texas U.S. Senate seat has now become the most expensive non-presidential race ever tracked. Epoch Times senior reporter Nathan Worcester, reporting from Dallas, spoke to pollsters, analysts, and Texas voters on what to watch in the hotly contested race.
• The Chinese regime last month tightened exit restrictions on those travelling abroad. Analysts say the rules are targeting the people that China can least afford to lose: entrepreneurs with savings in the bank; families with homes, investments, or children abroad; and those with skills sought by foreign companies.
• Brazil’s electoral authority declared left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reelected in Sunday’s presidential runoff. Right-wing Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro refused to concede, citing unprecedented last-minute rule changes that left some polling sites open and others closed.
Paxton, Talarico Battle in Competitive Texas Senate Race
DALLAS—A Democrat has not won a Texas Senate race in decades. In these midterms, some feel that that could change.
Early in-person voting is already underway in the contest between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat.
The Lone Star State has long been seen as a conservative bulwark—but Paxton, who defeated Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the GOP primary runoff, is far from guaranteed a victory against the Democrat from Austin. Conversations on the ground revealed support for, and opposition to, both candidates.
Most polling shows the Democrat with a slight lead. VoteHub, a political media organization that tracks early voting across the country, estimates that early votes and mail votes so far tilt toward Talarico. The group sees him narrowly on track to victory, an outcome that would make him the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988.
Not everyone is so sure.
Daron R. Shaw, a pollster and political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Epoch Times. “It’s a toss-up,”
Shaw’s judgement aligns with assessments from the Cook Political Report, the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and other analysts who have monitored the race as it has tightened over the past several months.
High energy prices, the Iran war, and other concerns have dampened enthusiasm for Republicans and President Donald Trump, jeopardizing the GOP’s control of the Senate.
Republicans and their allies have sought to highlight Talarico’s statements on gender ideology and other hot-button cultural issues along with his alleged violation of residency rules during his 2022 campaign for the statehouse.
Democrats have zeroed in on Paxton’s record, too, including a 2023 impeachment in the Texas House for alleged abuse of his office to help a donor. The Texas Senate ultimately acquitted him.
In counties across Texas—including Harris County, home to Houston—the first day of early voting broke midterm election records, reflecting an increase in voter participation over 2022.
Paxton’s conservative bona fides on the Second Amendment, immigration, and other issues earned him early support from such Make America Great Again (MAGA) stalwarts as Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) and Turning Point USA’s political arm, Turning Point Action.
Yet, alongside his impeachment and other issues, including a federal bribery investigation that did not lead to criminal charges, that record may cost Paxton support from non-MAGA Republicans and boost enthusiasm for Talarico in the state.
In David Schultz’s view, a political scientist and legal scholar at Hamline University view, Paxton’s candidacy has “opened up room for the Democrat to be a moderate running in Texas.”
Outside a Paxton rally in Killeen, near Fort Hood, on Oct. 17, Glenn Vallejo linked his support for the state attorney general to his disgust with Talarico’s past comment that there are six sexes.
he told The Epoch Times. “Nobody’s wife, nobody’s daughter should be exposed to that,”
Larry Sturm, who was in line for the event with his son, Joel, spoke of the GOP as a whole he told The Epoch Times.
“It’s not just about one man, but about the party,”
Outside a Talarico rally in San Marcos on Oct. 15, Allyson Marin, a student at nearby Texas State University, said she supports the state representative because of his efforts to cap insulin prices.
“My mom’s a diabetic,” she told The Epoch Times. “It helps a lot if the prices are lower.”
Pamela Hemphill-Gordon, also outside the event, said Talarico has won her over through his statements on social media and TV.
she said. “He seems like he’s really genuine and that he really cares for the people,”
Roy, a Gen Z voter who declined to share his last name, sounded distrustful of both candidates. He told The Epoch Times that he does not plan on voting this cycle.
Roy described himself as a disaffected conservative voter upset with Trump over the Iran war and other issues, saying that rising gas prices have hurt his small business.
Schultz said he attributes the race’s competitiveness to shifting demographics: Texas is becoming more Hispanic, and its urban areas are growing rapidly. Those factors could tilt the state toward the Democrats.
Shaw spoke of tracking the vote in rural parts of the state—West Texas, portions of East Texas, and the Texas panhandle—to see whether Republicans are driving the turnout and vote split that Democrats need to win.
If Republican support in those places falls from roughly two-to-one to the mid- or high 50s, “That’s a warning sign,” Shaw said.
• The DOJ sent letters to county election officials in California warning them they could face federal scrutiny if they refuse to help identify suspected noncitizens on voter rolls and set aside those individuals’ mail ballots so they can be verified.
The letters were dated Friday, and the election officials were given 48 hours to cooperate and help identify the citizenship status of individuals on federal government lists.
the DOJ said in an email to The Epoch Times.
“We are asking each county election official to commit to working with us by providing the necessary information for DHS to quickly verify citizenship status,”
“With their help, we can ensure the most secure election in California history.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the DOJ for its actions.
Newsom posted a New York Times story that reported that the Inyo County clerk’s office had two people on its list of suspected noncitizen voters and neither had been issued ballots. The article also stated the Mendocino County clerk’s office received a list of voters from another county.
Newsom posted Saturday on X.
“Trump’s DOJ is so desperate to invent ‘widespread voter fraud,’ it sent California counties lists of people who NEVER voted.
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and participating states announced a $275 million initiative to recruit and retain nurses in rural nursing homes and other areas with labor shortages.
The Nurses for Nursing Homes initiative offers eligible nurses up to $40,000 in student loan repayment and a $10,000 stipend in exchange for a three-year service commitment, according to CMS.
The initiative targets staffing gaps that can limit access to nursing home care.
In a February summary of research published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the American Health Care Association (AHCA) said counties with more frequent staffing shortages experienced larger declines in the number of skilled nursing beds facilities could operate. Counties with the largest declines were more likely to be rural.
AHCA President and CEO Clif Porter said.
“When nursing homes can’t find caregivers, residents and families must wait longer or look farther for the care they need,”
Porter said.
“The rippling effect on families, hospitals, and rural communities is real. This should be a signal to policymakers that when nursing homes say they need help with workforce challenges, believe them.”
In announcing the new initiative, CMS said recruiting nurses is often harder in rural areas, so it made all rural nursing facilities eligible for the incentive program. Additional facilities in areas with greater labor shortages also qualify. All 50 states and the District of Columbia are participating.
Officials said the program is funded entirely through civil monetary penalties already collected from nursing homes, with no new taxpayer money involved. CMS has committed $100 million, while states have pledged at least another $175 million.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement.
“Without taking a dime from taxpayers, CMS is empowering the next generation of nurses to pursue their dreams and helping residents form deep bonds with caregivers so they can live happier, healthier lives,”
Eligible participants must hold an active registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, or vocational nurse license when they begin employment. They must work at least 30 hours per week at a qualifying facility on average and commit to three years of service.
• Ten noncitizens have been arrested and charged for allegedly casting votes illegally in various elections in North Carolina.
Three people were from Germany, two from Jamaica, and one each from El Salvador, Haiti, Canada, Panama, and Montenegro, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an Oct. 23 statement. Nine are lawful permanent residents, and one is an illegal immigrant, the agency stated. They were apprehended on Oct. 14 and Oct. 15.
The illegal immigrant from El Salvador, Edduard Omar Majano-Sosa, allegedly entered the United States in 2022 and was released into the country by the Biden administration. He is accused of voting illegally in the 2024 general election. He is also being charged with possessing a pistol that was found in his vehicle at the time of arrest.
Among lawful permanent residents, Karl Paul Fout, from Germany, is alleged to have illegally voted in seven general elections between 2008 and 2024, according to the Department of Justice. Fout has prior convictions related to possessing marijuana and cocaine, the department stated. He entered the United States in 1960.
Another lawful permanent resident, Lawton Caswell Broomfield E McKenzie from Jamaica, is accused of voting illegally in three general elections from 2012 to 2024, federal agencies stated. He has a criminal history of manufacturing and distributing controlled substances, battery, and assault.
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated All 10 individuals face various charges, including falsely claiming citizenship for registering to vote and voting by an immigrant,
• Trump said he might support a bill capping federal student loan interest at 2.5 percent. Interest rates for newer federal student loans range from 6.52 percent to 9.07 percent, depending on the loan type.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
This has been an issue that I’ve long championed in Congress,”
In June, Luna introduced a resolution asking the House to consider legislation to lower the interest rate on federal student loans to 2 percent.
The issue has been circulating in Congress for a while. Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) introduced the Affordable Loans for Students bill in March 2025, which would lower the interest rate on student loans to 2 percent. It sits in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Democrats introduced legislation in 2026 to eliminate interest on federal student loans.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) reintroduced the Student Loan Interest Elimination Act on March 24 to eliminate interest on federal student loans, offering another approach to reducing borrowing costs.
According to a statement from Courtney’s office.
The act would let borrowers refinance current and future federal student loans at zero percent interest,
In June, the Department of Education announced that 42.6 million people had federal student loans totaling $1.7 trillion. As of March 2026, about 9 million borrowers had $220 billion in outstanding federal student loans in default.
• According to new data posted by the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
As of Oct. 25, 27.7 million have voted early across the United States in 47 states, the figures show. The only states not to report data are New York, New Hampshire, and Alabama.
Of that figure, 13.5 million in-person early votes have been cast, and more than 14.2 million mail-in ballots have been returned. So far, 59.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested.
In places where party affiliation is reported, 6.17 million early voters were registered as Democratic, 4.19 million were registered as Republican, and 3.2 million had no or a minor party affiliation, the figures show.
A slim majority, or 50.8 percent, of those who voted early or returned a mail-in ballot were aged 65 or older, according to the lab. About 34.7 percent were between ages 41 and 65, 10.1 percent were between 26 and 40, and 4.4 percent were between 18 and 25. Those figures encompass states and jurisdictions where age was reported.
Around 53.9 percent of early voters are women, and 44.4 percent are men, the data show, with the sex of about 1.7 percent marked as unknown.
More than half of the people who have already cast ballots are white, at 59.6 percent, according to the lab. Another 28.3 percent are black, 2.7 percent are Hispanic, 1.9 percent are Asian, 0.5 percent are Native American, and 7 percent are other, multiple, or unknown.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT parent company OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and affiliated entities, he’s accusing the company of supplying incorrect or dangerous information that has led to fatal consequences.
The Oct. 23 lawsuit, filed with the District Court of Collin County, Texas, alleges that ChatGPT’s advice on health-related issues have had deadly consequences, and that the chatbot’s answers have aided mass shooters in deadly rampages, along with encouraging people to make suicide attempts.
The lawsuit cited the death of a Texas teen last year after ChatGPT allegedly advised it was safe to take kratom, a psychoactive herbal substance, together with Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. When the teen asked about mixing the drugs, the chatbot allegedly never suggested that such a combination could be fatal, the complaint said.
The Epoch Times reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
The lawsuit also cited the 2025 school shooting incident at Florida State University that resulted in the deaths of two individuals and injuries to six others. ChatGPT allegedly explained to the suspected shooter how to operate a Glock handgun, which was later used in the shooting, the complaint said.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI in April this year over the shooting incident. At the time, an OpenAI spokesperson said in an email to The Epoch Times that the company was not responsible for the incident.
The shooting incident “was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible,” the spokesperson said. “After learning of the incident, we identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement.”
Paxton’s lawsuit also highlighted a 16-year-old boy’s suicide following extensive conversations with ChatGPT. When discussing his suicidal thoughts, the chatbot responded that it wouldn’t “try to talk you out of your feelings” and even wrote a suicide note for the boy, the complaint alleged. In addition, ChatGPT also allegedly volunteered information that would assist the teenager in committing suicide.
The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT is “not reliable or trustworthy.” It cited a review of 47,000 ChatGPT conversations, conducted by The Washington Post, that found the AI made unsupported claims including that school shootings were a tool of the deep state and that child adoption systems were being used by those in power to experiment with and breed future generations.
• More than 1,300 people were arrested in another day of protests and riots, after a mass march in Paris a day earlier, according to authorities in France.
the AFP news agency reported .The French Interior Ministry said officials responded to 75 fires during Saturday’s riots, and added that 24 shops were looted,
According to the report
“Several investigations have been opened,” the ministry said, adding that clashes had died down later on Saturday,
AFP reported that Overall, 1,314 arrests were made in the weekend protests, the ministry said,
In a statement on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he wanted to “salute the exceptional commitment and professionalism of all the regional prefects, prefects, police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters mobilized across France to ensure the safety of our fellow citizens and allow the processions to proceed smoothly.”
he continued.
“But notably in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Grenoble, Nantes, Angers, Lille, and many other cities, individuals from the ultra-left and radical far-left have once again sought to sow disorder, particularly during the dispersal of the processions,” “These acts are unacceptable.”
The minister added that he backs police officers and other French security officials who were injured Saturday, but didn’t provide specifics.
“The violence inflicted on the internal security forces, once again, is intolerable,” he said, according to a translation. “They are deliberately targeted because of their uniforms and, above all, because they are the bulwarks of our Republic that these radical militants seek to bring down.”
• The Chinese regime last month tightened exit restrictions on those travelling abroad. Analysts say the rules are targeting the people that China can least afford to lose: entrepreneurs with savings in the bank; families with homes, investments, or children abroad; and those with skills sought by foreign companies.
The regulations require travelers to provide “true and lawful” reasons for leaving, allow officers to bar anyone deemed to have made a false statement, and allow commerce officials to halt travelers whose export control violations “may” endanger industrial or technological security.
Analysts say the vague wording gives immigration officers broad authority to stop travelers at the gate and withhold explanations under the banner of national security.
Cai Shenkun, a U.S.-based veteran commentator on China’s economy and politics with access to sources within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), told The Epoch Times that such authority has spread so far down the system that even the lowest level of city government can now restrict travel.
Some of the screening now spreading across the country was tested years ago in the Xinjiang region. A 2017 instructed authorities to review an applicant’s family bank accounts before granting a passport and required travelers to surrender their passports to local police within seven days of returning. It also ordered relatives of those living abroad to cut ties and stop sending money.
The handbook is part of the Xinjiang Police Files, published by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the foundation, told The Epoch Times that the Xinjiang region “clearly has been a testing ground for repression, but it goes both ways,” with methods brought in from other provinces and refined there.
he said. “There has been mutual learning,”
In the Xinjiang region, the targets were ethnic minorities with ties abroad. Now, Frank Xie, a business professor said, the target is money.
Davy J. Wong, a U.S.-based independent political economist said
“In the past the system mainly raised the cost of getting assets out; now it’s raising the cost of getting people and capital out.”
Holding on to money is not the rules’ only aim, he told The Epoch Times, but with capital flight, a shrinking tax base, and fiscal pressure all rising at once, the goal is to tighten the state’s grip on people, money, and ties abroad.
Cai said an acquaintance cashed out more than 900 million yuan (about $126 million) in stocks in the first half of this year, only for the local government to take over the account and tell him that he needed official approval to touch a single cent.
Cai said.
“Anyone who may have deposits of 10 million yuan [about $1.4 million] or more in their name could be placed under border control at any time, anywhere, and barred from leaving,” “You may have deposits in China on paper, but I’m afraid they no longer belong to you.”
• Brazil’s electoral authority declared left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reelected in Sunday’s presidential runoff. Right-wing Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro refused to concede, citing unprecedented last-minute rule changes that left some polling sites open and others closed.
With 100 percent of the vote counted, Brazil’s electoral court announced that Lula won 51.8 percent of the total vote, with a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over rival Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro said he would challenge the result and seek to have it annulled. He said Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin’s decision to extend voting by two hours nationwide was unacceptable and that the rules had been changed late in the election process.
Lula had requested an extension after reports of issues with buses transporting voters to polling stations in Sao Paulo and Salvador, two cities that tend to favor the incumbent. Bolsonaro’s team also sought a local extension due to heavy rains in some regions that hindered voters from reaching polling stations.
In Brasilia, volunteers who oversaw the vote count at a school debated whether they needed to stay after the announcement to extend voting, but most left 15 to 20 minutes after polls closed and they had given count information to electoral authorities. At a polling station in Rio de Janeiro, the voting machines had already been switched off minutes after polls were set to close and couldn’t be turned back on.
The decision delayed tallying the votes by two hours. It was unclear how many polling stations stayed open after the scheduled closing time, with Bolonsaro saying there was unequal treatment of polling stations.
he said.
“There was a complete breakdown of equal treatment among Brazilians in different cities and states,” he said. “I will never know how many votes I might have received in cities where the polling stations were not reopened. What occurred is inexplicable.”
Bolsonaro ally Nikolas Ferreira noted that Zanin, who made the decision, is Lula’s former lawyer.
Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, led the first round of elections three weeks ago with 47 percent of the vote to Lula’s 45 percent. Polls showed the candidates essentially tied heading into the runoff, with Lula seeking a fourth term.
And before we leave, here are some words of wisdom to start the day…Today’s quote is by Margot Fonteyn,
She said
“Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.”
—Margot Fonteyn
