To paraphrase the old-school comedian Rodney Dangerfield, a pickpocket in 2020s New York gets no respect. Almost no one carries much cash anymore, and credit cards are useless unless you’re willing to commit fraud. What’s a poor guy with crackerjack observational skills and exceedingly dexterous fingers supposed to do when he can’t even pay for his diner breakfast with his morning’s earnings?

That’s where John Turturro’s Harry Lehman finds himself in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, writer-director Noah Segan’s charming, nimble, and affecting drama about a guy who has seen his city, and his world, change drastically during his lifetime. For Harry, a typical workday involves boarding the subway and identifying the easy targets. In his soft, elegant tweed coat—a garment he might have bought 20 or 30 years ago, maybe at Barneys, when the dough was really flowing—he swirls through New York, his vision attuned to checked-out, earbud-wearing Wall Street dudes, or women who allow their purses to dangle precariously. He sees what others miss, though he’s living in a world where no one pays any attention to their environment. It’s a lonely life.

But there’s a bright spot in Harry’s world: Though his wife, Rosie (Karina Arroyave), has been stricken with an unnamed ailment and can neither move nor speak, his days revolve around her. He cares for her tenderly, as best he can, talking to her, laughing with her. At one point he puts Odyssey’s 1977 sequins-and-stardust disco hit “Native New Yorker” on the stereo and dances for both of them, in a kind of disco-salsa shuffle, his arms whirling as if the breeze itself were his dance partner.

Rosie’s care costs money, which means Harry needs to hustle harder than ever. Watches can still bring in the bucks, as long as they’re not fake. And to unload those, Harry has a close pal and longtime co-conspirator, the wily, wisecracking pawnshop owner Ben (Steve Buscemi). Ben will also take stolen phones, though they’re troublesome: they need to go to a guy in Chinatown, Kelvin Han Yee’s Frank, who knows how to scrub them, after which they’re packed into a container and shipped off to god knows where. When Harry boosts a USB crypto wallet from a brazen young criminal and spoiled rich kid, Dylan (Will Price), Ben has no idea what to do with it—plugging it into his circa-1995 desktop personal computer sends the machine into a tailspin. So he sends Harry downtown to see Frank—whose front is a herb shop, though it seems less like a front than a side hustle—and that’s where Harry’s troubles really begin.

The Only Living Pickpocket is part drama, part comedy, part thriller. It’s also a movie about a man reckoning with his past: We may warm to the sight of Harry caring so lovingly for Rosie, but there’s much more to his story, as we learn. And you can’t always tell where the movie is headed; its beats are wriggly, unpredictable. Until recently, writer-director Segan has worked mostly as an actor, often with director Rian Johnson (he appeared in Brick, Looper, and the Knives Out movies), and he has directed one previous feature, the 2022 horror movie Blood Relatives. The pickpocketty lightness of touch he shows is remarkable for a fledgling director.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s got Turturro as a star. In the early part of his career, as a favorite of Spike Lee and the Coen Brothers, Turturro, with his tightly coiled, jack-in-the-box energy, always looked like he might blow at any moment. But he’s become much subtler, and sexier, over the years. in the underappreciated 2013 comedy Fading Gigolo, which he also wrote and directed, he played a foxy florist who becomes a classy male escort, servicing sultry hotties (Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara) before falling for a lonely Hasidic widow (Vanessa Paradis). Suddenly, he was a leading man, and a hot one.

Turturro still has some of his old combustibility; you occasionally catch an air of menace behind that snaggle-tooth smile. But he now has more softness, more range, and the performance he gives in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is one of his finest, as well as one of the best of the year. In the first section of the film, you believe Harry is just a guy whose glory days have passed: He belongs to a dream New York, that of the 1970s and ‘80s, of strobe-lit dance clubs and independent cinemas seemingly on every block. (Cinematographer Sam Levy, who also shot Frances Ha and Lady Bird, is in tune with the old New York nestled within the current one; he captures the city, from the Bronx to Chinatown, in all its shabby-shiny glory.) At one point, Harry suggests to Rosie that the two hunker down for the evening and watch an old movie, maybe something with Barbara Stanwyck; he comes from a generation that was used to looking toward its past as well as its future.

The city wasn’t a safe place in Harry’s younger days—but we’re talking about something other than physical safety, a kind of creative vitality that, if you were attuned to it, could rub off on you like glitter. Harry still has some of that sparkle, but it’s tempered by melancholy, the aftermath of little mistakes and big ones he’s made along the way. Turturro captures all of it—and shows how Harry intends to do right by those he’s harmed—with the kind of lived-in ease you earn, if you’re lucky, over the course of a career. Whirling through the city in that tweed coat, he’s like Fred Astaire breezing through an obviously fake white-cardboard Venice or descending a staircase from nowhere. The grit of the city is his glamour, its noise his music. It’s all his for a song, or a watch deftly separated from its owner’s wrist. His city is a tough place and, as Odyssey sang, he should know the score by now. But at least he knows the dance steps, because as much as New York may change, those never do.

Tributes have poured in following the death of British actor Patrick Stewart, known for his decades of Shakespearean stage performances and his leading roles in the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” franchises.

Stewart, 86, died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday in the company of his wife, Sunny, after a “brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer's and dementia, according to a statement posted Stewart's official Instagram account announcing his death on Thursday. 

“His sonorous voice and singular talent will forever be synonymous with indelible performances in every genre,” the statement read. “He explored the human condition in all its poetic complexity and brought hope not only to the far reaches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but into science fiction’s most iconic final frontier aboard the Starship Enterprise.”

Stewart's long and celebrated career spanned mediums and genres over more than six decades—from his first roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company to a variety of performances in television and film. He is set to make his final on-screen appearance in “Avengers: Doomsday,” which premiers in December, reprising his role as the X-Men’s Professor Charles Xavier.

In an interview with TV Insider in June, Stewart said that he couldn’t “imagine ever officially ‘retiring.’”

“I’ll always and forever be an actor,” he said at the time.

Patrick Stewart’s career took him from Shakespeare to ‘Star Trek,’ and beyond 

Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in the West Yorkshire town of Mirfield in England’s coal-mining country, where he later recalled growing up in poverty and a home marked by domestic violence. He described acting as a “safe space” and a “refuge from real life” that he discovered after a teacher first introduced him to Shakespeare.

Years before he made his big-screen debut, Stewart trained in classical theater and took on his first professional roles on the British stage in the 1950s and 1960s. He joined the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, going from smaller supporting roles to storied leading parts over the course of more than 15 years as a regular member of the company.

Beginning in the 1970s, Stewart appeared in television series including “Fall of Eagles” (1974), “I, Claudius” (1976), and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

He reached a new level of international stardom with his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series, which he played from 1987 to1994. In 2000, Stewart took on another career-defining part, that of Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” movies. 

Throughout his career, Stewart received various accolades, including two Laurence Olivier Awards, recognized as the highest honor in British theater, and a Grammy for his recording of “Peter and the Wolf,”; as well as garnering nominations for the Golden Globes, Emmys, and a Tony. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to drama in 2010. 

Outpourings of praise and remembrance 

The news of Stewart’s death quickly drew tributes from many within the “Star Trek” and Marvel worlds where he inhabited two of his most recognizable roles.

“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today. And, in my book, a tremendous friend and man. I learned so much from him. I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days,” wrote the actor Hugh Jackman, who starred as Wolverine in the “X-Men” films alongside Stewart. 

Marvel Studios also paid tribute to Stewart on Thursday. 

“Sir Patrick brought Professor Charles Xavier to life with extraordinary grace, intelligence, and humanity, defining the character for generations of fans, from ‘X-Men’ to ‘Logan’ to ‘Avengers: Doomsday.’ He was a singular talent, a generous collaborator, and a true gentleman,” Marvel wrote in a statement shared on social media.

The studio's president, Kevin Feige, said in a statement to Variety that “after years of knowing him as the inimitable Captain Picard, I was in awe — and he turned out to be everything I had seen on screen and more: brilliant, charming, warm, generous, with a quiet strength and gravitas.”  

Feige added that “away from the cameras, he was even more remarkable, with a wonderfully sharp sense of humor.”

The “Star Trek” franchise remembered Stewart in a post on its official Instagram page as “a voice. A presence. A captain unlike any other.”

“Sir Patrick Stewart gave generations of fans an icon who inspired us to look toward the stars,” the post read. “Today, we celebrate an extraordinary life and an enduring legacy. Thank you, Sir Patrick.”

William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” franchise, said in a post on X that Stewart was “a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did. Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work.”

George Takei, who played Lt. Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” series, called Stewart on threads “a true and irreplaceable legend.” 

“He inspired a whole next generation of star-gazers who looked longingly ahead to a brighter future for all humanity,” Takei said.

Stewart’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” co-stars Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on the series, and Jonathan Scott Frakes, who played William Riker, also shared tributes to the late actor. 

“Godspeed, Captain,” Wheaton wrote in a message on Instagram, alongside a photo of himself with Stewart.

“Rest in peace, my friend,” Frakes wrote.

Rebecca Romijn, who like Stewart has played roles in both the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” franchises said in a video posted on social media: “I feel so grateful to have known him for the last 25 years, and to have been in his orbit … both as a fellow mutant and as a fellow member of Starfleet.”

“He was positively delicious, hilarious, naughty, incredible sense of humor, and that booming voice of his that always spoke to the very back of the room, as every classically trained Shakespearean great needs to master, has always been an inspiration,” she said. “I send my condolences to his family, and I’ll miss my friend dearly. Rest in peace, Patrick.”

Cary Elwes, who starred alongside Stewart in “Lady Jane” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” recalled that he “first met Patrick on the set of Lady Jane back in 1984 and fell in love with him immediately.”

"Not only was amiable and kind with a great sense of humor, he was incredible to work with. His command of the screen with his sheer presence and that unmistakable voice was a sight to behold," Elwes wrote in a post on Instagram.

In June, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire when SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq. Now, the U.S. midterms are here, and wealth taxation is on the ballot. 

Californians are set to vote on Proposition 40, which would take 5% of fortunes above $1 billion, once, and send nine-tenths of the revenue to fund California’s Medicaid program. A swarm of Silicon Valley billionaires, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has spent more than $333 million campaigning against the potential tax, warning it will backfire and push the wealthy to flee the sunshine state. 

Such reactions are not new. Even the income tax once looked like an assault on property. The Supreme Court struck one down as unconstitutional in 1895, and it took the 16th Amendment in 1913 to make it ordinary. Taxes on great fortunes may travel the same road and become unremarkable within a decade. Plus, research indicates that the wealthiest households often pay lower effective tax rates than the people who work for them. 

I support Proposition 40. But it is not sufficient in addressing the underlying economic issues at hand. 

A wealth tax like Proposition 40 tries to recover a share of value long after that value has been created, compounded, and defended. By then, the money has lawyers. Which is why the origins of this extreme wealth matter, now that the prospect of redistribution has so agitated the people holding it.

To understand how these systems work, think of the iPhone. As I argued in my book The Entrepreneurial State, the iPhone's foundational technologies came from public research: the internet, GPS, the touchscreen, and the voice recognition behind Siri. Speech understanding research at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford Research Institute was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the 1970s. Researchers then spent two more decades on language and learning systems no company would finance, because the payoff lay thirty years out. 

Or think of Google. The search algorithm that made Brin's fortune grew out of a National Science Foundation project at Stanford.

And then there’s SpaceX, whose listing made Musk a trillionaire, took $396 million from NASA to develop the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule, then $1.6 billion to fly cargo to the space station and $2.6 billion to fly astronauts. The world’s richest man was also the biggest political donor this election cycle, spending $366 million supporting Republican causes. 

Other people see them as tech bros. I see them as a brologarchy. They surfed off publicly financed research to earn enormous rents, and continue to profit off of them through what I call “algorithmic rents”: returns from owning the platforms, data, and models the rest of us must pass through, and manipulating what our “attention” sees. 

None of this takes anything away from the entrepreneurs. Turning a research program into a reusable rocket is hard. The public carried the risk in the years when these technologies had no market and no buyer. The state carries the blame: for not setting out, in the contracts, the terms of that initial investment and a fair share of the rewards for the risk the public took.

The Department of Energy made the asymmetry explicit in 2009, issuing two near-identical loan guarantees to two of Musk’s companies: $465 million to Tesla and $500 million to Solyndra. Solyndra, a now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, collapsed two years later, and the taxpayer absorbed the loss and the political damage. Tesla, by contrast, succeeded. Under its loan agreement, the government held warrants it could exercise only if Tesla failed to repay on schedule; Tesla repaid nine years early and the warrants lapsed. The public took the downside on one deal and wrote itself out of the upside on the other.

Economists call this socializing risk and privatizing reward. It describes a contract drafted without the confidence to ask for anything.

NASA once had that confidence. In the early 1960s, it moved Apollo contracts from cost-plus-fixed-fee to incentive contracts tying a contractor's fee to cost, schedule, and performance, setting terms rather than writing blank checks. More recently, the CHIPS and Science Act attached conditions to $52.7 billion of semiconductor funding, covering where plants get built and what jobs they create. 

I believe those conditions did not go far enough. Wage standards covered laborers and mechanics rather than every worker, and affected communities got no formal seat in the decisions. But the principle is American, recent, and bipartisan. Public money can come with terms.

This is called “pre-distribution,” shaping how value is created and shared at the outset, rather than waiting for the tax code to repair the damage, and it is a crucial principle for making capitalism work for us all. 

But establishing this kind of capitalism requires that we commit to another principle: access for all and reward sharing. If the public carries the risk, it should hold a claim on the reward. In practice, that means equity stakes in companies built on public loans, royalties on patents from publicly funded research, and a public fund that recycles the returns into the next round of risk. The United States has started to embrace this philosophy in its semiconductor infrastructure funding. It could do the same for our public investments in artificial intelligence, and those contracts are still being written.

These principles address our broader capitalist system and create a different framing from universal basic income, which many tech billionaires are quite fond of. A basic income leaves the origins of their fortunes untouched, treats wealth as given, and asks only for a transfer, which is why it can be endorsed without conceding anything. A citizens' dividend changes the logic, because it pays out on the grounds that the public helped create the value in the first place. That is a debt owed directly, not only through the tax code. And we know it is possible. Alaska has paid its residents a dividend from oil revenue since 1982.

None of this is an argument for voting against Proposition 40. California's billionaires should pay, and the state's health system needs the money. But a one-time levy collected decades after the fact is a costly way to claim a return that could have been written into the contract at the start. Redistribution settles old accounts. Pre-distribution can redesign an economy from the outset for more inclusive, sustainable growth. 

It matters that we act now. The next fortune is being built right now, on public research, with public money; we should make sure it serves the common good.

An economy is not weather, a natural phenomenon that cannot be designed differently or more fairly. It is a set of contracts, and we are the ones who write them. We can write them for an economy designed with people and for them, one that shares the knowledge and the rewards along the way. The common good economy provides the principles through which to achieve this.

Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation into Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign following a report that her team helped recruit candidates to draw votes from her Republican opponent, including a man with the same name.

The announcement, posted on social media overnight, followed President Donald Trump’s call for Peltola’s prosecution and escalated Republican efforts to challenge her candidacy just days before an election that could help determine control of the Senate.

Read More: Republican Panic Sets In Over Prospects of a Massive Blue Wave

On Thursday, Trump declined to say whether Peltola should be seated if she won. “Well, you’re going to have to see what happens,” he told reporters before leaving for a rally in South Carolina. “It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run.”

Peltola is challenging Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan in the Nov. 3 election. Another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, has denied running at Democrats’ behest. Alaska’s Supreme Court upheld his eligibility for the ballot earlier this year.

The dispute intensified Wednesday after a New York Times report found that Peltola's team worked with people to recruit men named Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, as well as other candidates who could draw votes away from the incumbent.

Dunleavy said the reporting provided new evidence of an effort to mislead voters and supported state election officials’ earlier findings about Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy.

“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” the governor wrote.

Peltola, a former congresswoman, dismissed the report, arguing that it diverted attention from issues including the incumbent Sullivan’s support for the war in Iran.

“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion,” she said during a campaign stop in Soldotna on Wednesday. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”

A spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign, Alaskans for Mary, said in an email to TIME that it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” The campaign also said it had made no assertions in federal court about how Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy came about or who was involved in his decision to run. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which was also reportedly involved in the plan, told TIME in a statement that it was “not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.”

Vice President JD Vance also backed an investigation Thursday, accusing Peltola of trying to mislead voters about her campaign’s involvement. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful,” he told reporters before a campaign trip to Texas.

Trump had accused Peltola and her campaign of voter fraud in a series of Truth Social posts Wednesday, calling for her removal from the ballot and prosecution.

“It was just determined that the Dumocrats in Alaska, despite their sworn statements to the contrary, put a man named Dan Sullivan on the Ballot in order to confuse the Public with respect to Highly Esteemed Senator Dan Sullivan,” Trump posted. “This is Voter Fraud at the Highest Level, and the Dumocrat Candidate, who was involved in the scheme, Mary Peltola, should be removed from the Ballot and prosecuted—So should the FAKE Dan Sullivan. Nothing else will do!”

The Times noted that ballot-stacking tactics are generally considered legal and have been used by both parties.

At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department had already filed a lawsuit seeking to block certification of the election results under specific conditions if Senator Sullivan loses, citing the potential for “voter confusion.” The department wants the results recalculated as though votes for Daniel J. Sullivan had gone to the incumbent, and certification blocked if that would change the outcome.

TIME reached out to the Justice Department for comment on how the report affects its case. Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Wednesday that he expected to “hear more” from the department this week as officials receive new information.

“They are cheating,” Blanche said. “They are trying to take votes away from the incumbent, not by running an election, not by running on issues, but by putting up a person with the same name, so that confuses Alaskans.”

What Peltola’s campaign reportedly did

According to the Times’ report, which was based on interviews, text messages, and documents prepared for a possible lawsuit, the Peltola campaign pursued a project known internally as “ballot composition,” which involved campaign lawyers and senior aides at the DSCC, which directs Democratic campaign strategy for Senate races nationwide.

One of the Times’ sources, Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager who was fired during an August staff shake-up, said the operation to recruit potential spoiler candidates for the Alaska ballot began in the summer of 2025. The Times reported that Peltola’s campaign worked with a “veteran Democratic operative” named Jerid Kurtz, whom it described as having expertise in ballot maneuvering.

The Times reported that a Peltola staffer received instructions to “find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska” as possible. Kurtz reportedly found a man in Petersburg named Dan Sullivan who was open to running for Senate.

Rios said Peltola wasn’t directly involved in the project but was “definitely aware.” The Times also reported that Rios later wanted to recant her statements but did not explain why.

Alaska has a nonpartisan primary system, in which voters may choose a candidate regardless of party affiliation, and the top four advance to the general election. Voters then rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins an initial majority, the lowest-ranking candidates are eliminated in successive rounds and their ballots transfer to voters’ next remaining choices.

The spoiler candidate tactic isn’t new

Alaska’s other Senator, Lisa Murkowski, who endorsed Sullivan but supported Peltola years ago, issued a statement Wednesday demanding that Peltola tell the “honest truth” about the apparent ballot-stacking effort.

“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process,” Murkowski wrote. “Run and win on your merits: your views, your policy ideas, and your accomplishments. By contrast, recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong.”

Nate Adams, a spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign, also said in a statement that “not one player in this operation has acted in good faith with Alaska voters.”

Republicans have also used similar ballot-stacking tactics. In this year’s Alaska primary, a GOP-aligned political action committee reportedly spent money to boost left-leaning fringe candidates in an attempt to pull votes from Peltola.

When Peltola ran for re-election to the House in 2024, Alaska’s Republican Party supported an effort to help a federally imprisoned Democrat who had never lived in Alaska stay on the ballot.

A GOP-linked political action committee also spent over $1 million this election cycle to boost a third-party candidate in Ohio in a bid to undermine former Senator Sherrod Brown’s comeback bid.

In Minnesota in 2020, Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks told a close friend before his death that he was recruited by unnamed Republicans to pull votes away from Democrats.

As the Trump Administration forges ahead with its campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC) “brick by brick,” Europe is publicly showing a steady stream of support for the institution.

The E.U. last week awarded the court and its officials the Sakharov human rights prize, commending “the important work ​of the court in upholding international law and justice.” The prestigious recognition came after former ICC judge Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay on Oct. 9 was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize—an honor long coveted by President Donald Trump. Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, acknowledged the award was intended to send a “message to those who are attacking, undermin[ing]... the international rules-based system.” Hours after Pillay’s win, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sweeping new sanctions against the ICC. While previous U.S. sanctions had targeted the institution's prosecutors and judges, the new measures were aimed at “cutting off [the court’s] resources” by severing U.S. transactions with the court.

Experts warn that the sanctions could have “extremely disruptive” implications for the court, especially in regards to financial support for case work, travel to the U.S. for judges, and the core functions of the institution itself. “Leaving the political dimension to one side, the rule of law and the just resolution of disputes depends, to a large extent, on the body in question having all available evidence,” says Nabil Khabirpour, an affiliated lecturer in E.U. law and jurisprudence at Cambridge University. “Organizations that are involved in working with witnesses, both on the ground and within the legal infrastructure, are likely to be affected.”

The latest sanctions, which were announced with a six-month initial grace period, are part of a broader push by the Trump Administration to dismantle the institution it accuses of unfairly targeting the U.S. and Israel. The Trump Administration has staunchly criticized the ICC over arrest warrants issued for Israeli leaders, including ​Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former investigations into the actions of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The ICC is recognized as the world’s highest criminal court. It draws its jurisdiction from the Rome Statute, a treaty that went into effect in 2002 and is ratified by 125 countries. Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a state party to the Rome Statute, and therefore they do not recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

Trump has long complained that the ICC oversteps its authority and should not claim jurisdiction over U.S. citizens. He amplified his campaign against the organization at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, taking time out of his 45-minute speech to publicly call on “all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution, immediately.” He said the U.S. is “opposed to the out-of-control institution known as the ICC” and “will never allow U.S. service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us.”

His call to action was swiftly rejected by European leaders.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, shortly after the speech, said: "We will, of course, not be doing that." In an interview with Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio station, he described the court as "an important institution” and said the issue is "one of the areas where we do indeed have to acknowledge a regrettable difference in policy from the U.S. Administration."

Netherlands Prime Minister Rob Jetten also defended the ICC, asking how can anyone “possibly be opposed to prosecuting the very worst crimes?”

“​I ⁠believe there can be only one response,” he continued, in his own U.N. address. “To say: 'hands off' the ICC, and all those other institutions that protect the international legal order.” The remarks drew loud applause from attending delegates.

Similarly, European Council president Antonio Costa stressed that the E.U. stands “firmly behind” the ICC and argued it’s “unacceptable to threaten or attack the International Criminal Court, its officials, and its staff.”

The European Union as an organization has since strongly criticized the U.S. sanctions against the ICC. In a speech on Oct. 20, E.U. policy chief Kaja Kallas said the most recent “misguided” measures were “against” European interests. 

“The U.S. has already adopted individual sanctions, including against nine judges and the chief prosecutor of the ICC. The latest U.S. announcement [on Oct. 9] to impose institutional sanctions puts the entire court at risk,” she argued, adding that Brussels will use the next six months "to open dialogue and look for solutions.” 

European lawmakers call for “concrete” action against U.S. sanctions

The European Commission’s choice to take time to consider how to counter the U.S. sanctions has fallen short of what many European lawmakers have called for.

Several leading MEPs, including Germany's David McAllister, chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and France's Mounir Satouri, chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights, issued a public statement on Oct. 9 calling for the Commission to activate a legislative shield referred to as the “blocking statute,” which would essentially prevent E.U. firms from complying with U.S. sanctions.

“The European Union must now demonstrate unwavering solidarity with the ICC and its personnel—not only with words, but also with concrete acts,” the leading Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) said in a joint statement. “The European Commission must immediately trigger the E.U. blocking statute, shielding the court and European actors from the extraterritorial reach of these sanctions. Europe must stand firm in defence of international law and the rule of law."

This request was bolstered as 58 MEPs reportedly sent a letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for the Commission to activate the measure.

According to the Commission, the purpose of the European Union’s blocking statute is to “protect E.U. operators from the extra-territorial application of third country laws.” The blocking statute came into force in 1996 in direct response to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba. The aim of the measure was to protect economic operators within the E.U. from the effects of such extraterritorial sanctions, according to the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm. As such, the blocking statute shields European economic operators from the application of the U.S. legislation and sanctions specified in the Annex to the E.U. blocking statute. More recently, the E.U.'s updated blocking statute entered into force in response to U.S. sanctions on Iran after the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. 

Kallas has expressed an openness to the measure, but also advised caution when delivering her statement on European support for the ICC. “We should keep all options on the table. If we use the blocking statute, we have one shot and we should do it well. So, it should be well prepared," Kallas said, urging companies “not to over comply” with the sanctions, as they are not yet in effect.

ICC prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told the Guardian last week that some ICC staff are already facing "banking difficulties," despite the grace period before the sanctions come into effect. Khan said the banks were “over complying” to minimize risk amid uncertainty over the scope of the measures. She said the court's work has not been hindered.

TIME has reached out to the ICC for comment.

If the E.U. were to activate the blocking statute, it would be a “very important gesture” that could show the Trump Administration how “Europe is serious about protecting the court and that it is prepared to take real steps in that direction,” says Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at Open University Netherlands. But he warns that some may view it as a “very extreme or radical measure, that could perhaps anger the Trump Administration even more” at a time where U.S.-Europe relations are already strained.

Meanwhile, some ICC officials have suggested alternative measures in an effort to mitigate the expected impact of the U.S. sanctions. Osvaldo Zavala Giler, the court's registrar, told Politico that “comfort letters” could be sent out, reassuring firms that they needn’t comply with the U.S. measures.

But Vasiliev argues that this “will not necessarily solve the problem, because businesses are expecting clear assurances of protection… the only such assurance can be provided by the actual triggering of the blocking statute.”

Could the ICC row further escalate U.S.-Europe tensions?

Relations between Europe and the U.S. have been under increasing strain since Trump returned to office in January 2025.

Trump has introduced various waves of tariffs on international trading partners, and has threatened further levies on the E.U. and member states in response to divisive issues.

When Trump’s pursuit of acquiring Greenland as a U.S. territory reached a critical point in January, Trump threatened to tariff European countries that opposed his campaign—a move that earned him strong rebuke from within his own party.

Last month, when von der Leyen invited Canada to work toward becoming the European Union’s first “associate member,” in what she described as an “urgent” reimagining of partnerships, Trump again threatened economic pressure. He called the proposal “laughable” and threatened to “put very serious ​tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things” if such an idea were to go ahead.

The Trump Administration has also clashed with its NATO allies. Earlier this year, Trump refused to rule out leaving the alliance over Greenland disputes, and since the start of the Iran war, the President has hit out at NATO countries for refusing to get actively involved in the conflict.

Should Brussels and Washington continue to clash on the ICC sanctions, “this could risk accelerating certain destabilizations, such as what we've seen with the trade wars,” says Khabirpour. International organizations will ultimately stand to suffer if the two remain at odds, he adds.

Patty Spillman and Jen Belt drive through the outskirts of Grove City, Ohio, mapping the battle lines of a war they’ve waged for months. Pointing out the window of Belt’s blue Chrysler mini-van, Spillman notes the precise borders of a proposed 310-acre data-center campus. She singles out the electrical substation and towering power lines, and recounts the personal histories of neighbors who got offers to sell their land to Headwaters Site Development, the Texas-based company proposing to construct a cloud-computing storage facility on this patch of rural farmland about 10 miles outside Columbus. In between fields of drying corn-stalks and short rows of soybeans, some farmers have planted “no data center” signs on their lawns.

Spillman’s 165-year-old farm sits across the street from the proposed complex. A soft-spoken retired bus driver, Spillman, 63, is a Republican who voted for President Donald Trump three times. Belt, a 51-year-old artist and marketing contractor, is a Democrat. For months, they’ve co-led a group called Protect Grove City, which mobilized a community effort to thwart the proposed data center. The residents’ concerns are legion: water usage, noise and environmental concerns, energy costs, the cloak of secrecy hanging over the project. “This is our community. What if we don’t want you here?” says Spillman, whose mother-in-law turned down an above-market offer from Headwaters of around $1.5 million for 30 acres of land.

Community pushback prompted the Grove City council to pass a yearlong moratorium on data-center construction. In November, Grove City residents will vote on a proposal to go even further, making all large developments subject to voter approval. The issue has upended the intimate politics of this conservative community of 45,180. Community Facebook groups are filled with bickering, angry residents have filled council meetings, and activists filed freedom-of-information requests seeking answers about city officials’ communications about the referendum. Grove City’s longtime mayor, Richard “Ike” Stage, and other local leaders have fought against their efforts, saying the ballot initiative to restrict development would hurt economic growth.

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The fervor against data centers is spreading across the state. Ohio has some 200 data centers, making it one of the biggest hubs in the country. In a former swing state that went red in the Trump era, Republicans admit the groundswell of political opposition to data centers has created a political opening for Ohio Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

“I’m as Republican as they get, but it’s going to be a tough year for Republicans in the state of Ohio,” says Nick Owens, a former county GOP chair and Trump delegate at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Owens is now working with the anti-data-center group Conserve Ohio. “I can get on my phone right now and text or call 10 or 12 people from 10 different corners of the state, from all different political backgrounds, from all different socio-economic backgrounds,” Owens says, “because we’re all united about this.”

A national Gallup poll published in May found that more than 70% of voters oppose building an AI data center in their area. In Ohio, where the average household’s electric bill climbed some 15% in the past year and more than 66% over the past decade, the sentiment is even more negative. A September survey by Bowling Green State University found that nearly 80% of Ohioans support a moratorium on data centers. More than 100 local governments in Ohio have reportedly enacted data-center moratoriums; in November, at least 10 will vote on adding a data-center ban to their charters, while two others will decide whether to recall mayors who cut data-center deals. In the eyes of opponents, the facilities—and the powerful AI industry that backs them—have come to represent an attack on their safety, jobs, pocketbooks, and quality of life.

It’s not clear just how potent the issue will be at the polls in November. By themselves, data centers don’t rank as a top-tier national campaign issue, according to voters—in a recent Pew Research Center survey, the economy, the future of democracy, health care, education, and immigration made up the top five. But Democratic candidates have sought to connect data centers to many of those themes. They’re promising to ease affordability concerns by cracking down on high electricity bills through data-center restrictions, pledging to strengthen democracy by fighting Silicon Valley’s opaque deals to get facilities built, casting AI companies as puppet masters in an unequal economy, and painting their political rivals as corrupt leaders seeking to curry favor from powerful companies. This election cycle, $137.6 million has been spent on broadcast ads about data centers, with Democrats making up 77% of that estimated spending, according to the analytics firm AdImpact.

Some Democrats believe data centers could be a decisive issue in tight races, especially in red states like Texas, Iowa, and Ohio. In those states and others, voters have told pollsters they trust Democrats more on the issue. President Donald Trump has positioned himself as one of the industry’s biggest champions, deriding opponents of data centers as “backwards and poor.” The wave of populist anger has “become the one thing that unites Americans right now,” says Megan Mullin, a UCLA political-science professor. “They connect to bigger themes that are becoming really important in American politics—around affordability, around energy affordability, around suspicion and discomfort about AI, about populist resistance to the accumulation of wealth and tech titans.”

In early October, Don Leonard, the Democratic candidate in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District, arrives at the Schmidlapp Free School Library in Piqua. The space is decorated for fall with artificial flowers, and filled with activists and community leaders ready to detail the latest data-center controversy.

Meta, which has been rapidly building out its data-center infrastructure to fuel its AI push, made plans to erect a $1 billion campus in the area. The company hashed out the deal in secret last year, according to city documents and news reports, using a private LLC and nondisclosure agreements with local officials. After Meta was outed as the company behind the data center, the social media giant and Piqua government officials said the project would bring economic investment to the region. In a statement, Meta told TIME the company is reviewing its use of nondisclosure agreements.

Leonard heard from Alisha Lange, 42, who worried about contamination of her well water. Lange, a registered Republican, was among those angered by the secrecy surrounding the project and revelations that several city officials had been awarded $3,000 bonuses by the city after winning Meta’s business. In response, outraged residents successfully petitioned to add a measure to the November ballot designed to recall Piqua’s mayor and other elected officials.

A former city and regional planning professor at The Ohio State University, Leonard, 48, sports a stubbly beard and speaks with a deliberate unpretentiousness. Normally, a progressive candidate wouldn’t stand much of a shot in a congressional district that’s been represented by Republicans for the past 15 years. The incumbent, former coal-industry lobbyist Mike Carey, won by 13 points two years ago. But by the time Leonard won the primary in May, residents in the district, which includes Grove City, were aflame over data centers. Leonard pushed his team to add a data-center question to their polling. They found more than 70% of likely voters in the 15th District wanted greater say over where data centers are located and how they operate. “If we were going to message on it, we had to confirm quantitatively what we knew from listening to the constituents,” Leonard explains in an interview at a modern co-working space in Columbus. “Which is that data centers are one of the most bipartisan issues in Central Ohio right now.”

Leonard sees data centers as “the mascot for predatory capitalism,” forcing communities to absorb increased electricity costs and environmental threats as their local landscapes are remade by huge companies based far away. He says the developments have exacerbated the anxieties of residents who watched neighbors lose solid factory jobs to outsourcing and suspect they’ll once again be the losers in an AI-driven economy. “There’s a feeling like we didn’t even govern the last revolution—globalization—and now they’re hoisting another one on us,” Leonard says. “They’re doing it in our backyard. They’re attacking our way of life.”

It’s not clear whether the backlash will be enough to catapult Leonard into contention in a solidly Republican district. There has been no non-partisan polling in the race, nor any public debates, and Carey holds a clear fundraising advantage, raking in $4 million to Leonard’s $1.2 million, according to campaign filings, though a recent influx of spending against Leonard is a sign Republicans may be a little nervous.

But in other races in Ohio, Democrats spy a clear opportunity. 

On a crisp fall day, Sherrod Brown takes the microphone during a small rally outside a Franklin County strip mall. He begins with talking points about economic inequality that he could have fed this crowd of Democratic organizers and voters at any point during his 18 years representing the state in the Senate. But then Brown pivots to an attack line that might have landed with a thud even a year ago. “These data centers are in Ohio now thanks to Jon Husted,” Brown says of his Republican opponent. “They come into communities. They gulp up the land. They swallow the water. Then they get these huge tax breaks.”

After three terms in Washington, Brown was defeated in 2024, when Trump won Ohio for the third straight time. The cornerstone of his comeback bid this year has been the data-center issue. In stump speeches, social media posts, and advertisements blaring across television, Brown blames Husted for the role he played as lieutenant governor in fostering data-center growth in the state, which gave data centers an estimated $2.5 billion in incentives, including breaks on sales and property taxes, from 2017 to 2024, according to a report by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. (The report also estimates that the centers brought in twice as much in revenue to the state’s coffers.)

Back then, Husted, like other political leaders in both parties, often celebrated tech companies like Google and Amazon, which built the sprawling campuses, as a boost to Ohio’s economy. Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce called Brown’s critiques hypocritical, noting that in 2015 the former Senator himself praised an Amazon Web Services data-center project in Ohio, calling it “great news.”

Now Husted is playing defense on the issue, sponsoring a Senate bill designed to get data centers to pay for electrical-system upgrades that was ultimately blocked by Democrats. Data centers should be a local decision, he says. Polls show the race as a toss-up. But a recent New York Times/Siena poll found that Ohio was one of five right-leaning states—Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas are the others—where Democrats are outperforming expectations in Senate races, in part because voters said they thought the Democratic candidate would do a better job on data centers.

The party is eager to press that advantage. Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, has called for a conditional moratorium on data centers until they meet certain requirements, such as covering the cost of their own electricity, meeting environmental standards, and participating in community-benefit agreements. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee, wants to force hyperscale data centers to cover electricity costs and abide by air- and water-quality standards. Acton has assailed Ramaswamy for not committing to selling off his investments in tech and AI stocks, calling these holdings a conflict of interest.

A similar pattern is playing out in other states. In Texas, both Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico and his Republican opponent Ken Paxton have proposed tighter restrictions on data centers and accused each other of being supported by tech-aligned donors. The state’s Republican governor Greg Abbott, who is locked in a surprisingly tight race of his own, has imposed a temporary moratorium on new data centers until an audit is complete. In Iowa, data centers have been a flash point in the race between Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek and Republican nominee Ashley Hinson, with Turek proposing restrictions and Hinson emphasizing the need for local control.

Ike Stage first became the mayor of Grove City in 1988. A retired banker who helped set up the local chamber of commerce, he credits cheapish land, a convenient location, and a business-friendly climate for the steady stream of calls he’s fielded from developers over the years. Companies like medical manufacturer American Nitrile have moved in, along with three hospitals and two scientific-research facilities. “Not many cities can say that,” Stage says in an interview at city hall, where brightly colored maps of the area adorn the walls.

Stage has aspirations for Grove City to grow further. In 2018, it adopted a vision that included better transportation options, more parks, and mixed-use developments. Officials also eyed more than 9,000 acres of agricultural and vacant land they thought could be turned into “light industrial-style development.”

Seven years later, Headwaters Site Development, founded by former Google data-center infrastructure leader Michael Lebow, had a similar thought. It contacted property owners in a rural area just south of Grove City’s limits. One of the homesteads belonged to Patty Spillman’s family, which rejected the deal. “Most of us turned them down,” Spillman says. But not all. By this spring, Headwaters had found enough homeowners willing to sell to cobble together the necessary land.

During two information sessions at a local food bank in April, Headwaters representatives pitched locals on what they called Project Maple. Headwaters says it plans to sell the $6.9 billion project to an unidentified tech company, and pledged to support community-friendly zoning requirements that would be assumed by the buyer, such as a 100-ft. height limit, concealing landscaping, and noise levels that aren’t louder than a dishwasher. Headwaters says the project would bring 250 permanent jobs, pay for its own energy costs, and take precautions to keep water usage low. But according to advocates, Head-waters’ refusal to say which tech company would ultimately buy the facility was unnerving. “They just skirted around giving us straight answers about anything,” Jen Belt recalls. “A lot of people left mad.” 

The anger emboldened the activists. Belt circulated a petition calling for the city council to reject any upcoming data-center applications. The group posted negative information about the facilities on their personal social media pages, as well as in popular Facebook groups, and put up no data centers signs near the proposed site.

The following month, Grove City councilman Mohamed Omar, 26, announced he was working on legislation to impose a 12-month moratorium on local data centers. Headwaters responded by sending a letter to city council members, arguing that such a moratorium could violate its due process rights. (Lebow says the company has no plans to sue.)

Yet the implied legal threat intensified the community pushback against the project on the eve of the moratorium vote. In June, the moratorium passed 6-1. Emboldened, the anti-data-center advocates with Protect Grove City decided the one-year moratorium wasn’t enough, and wrote a proposed amendment to the city’s charter, which functions like a governing constitution. It would prohibit the city from approving zoning applications for developments that occupy at least 50 acres, use more than 20 megawatts of power at peak capacity, or consume more than 500,000 gallons of water per day unless a majority of voters have backed the project in a public referendum. To drum up support, they canvassed local farmers’ markets, parks, and sporting events to ask people to sign a petition to put the measure on the ballot in November. Within a few weeks, they secured enough signatures.

City officials nervously tracked news coverage of the data-center backlash across Ohio and beyond, according to emails obtained by TIME. The charter amendment wouldn’t just inhibit the Headwaters project, they warned. It would fundamentally change how any future development deals are approved, and perhaps inhibit existing organizations, including churches, a hospital, and schools, from expanding by imposing overly burdensome processes. Critics contend residents already have opportunities to weigh in on upcoming developments through the normal city approval process. “It’s going to affect business. It’s going to affect our schools. It’s going to affect our taxes,” says Steve Funk, 70, who runs a car dealership in Grove City.

The city has been sending mailers to residents explaining the amendment’s potential effects. Residents have gotten into bitter personal disputes over the amendment in Facebook groups. “It’s bad,” says Omar. “It almost feels like the city is torn.”

To Stage, tech companies have done a poor job trumpeting the benefits the facilities bring to local communities, allowing residents’ anxieties about the industry to flourish. He likens the backlash to the fears Americans had about railroad expansion during the 19th century, when rural farmers worried about the effect the technology might have on their livestock. Americans eventually got used to trains. But Stage also recognizes that he’s on the short side of public opinion. Stage is up for re-election next year. “I’ve won most elections pretty handily, and I’ve been through 11 of them,” he says. “But you never, never make that assumption.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein

With the pivotal November elections looming, President Donald Trump’s approval rating earlier this month dropped to the lowest point of his second term—and the lowest level any President’s has reached heading into the midterms in decades.

Trump’s approval rating fell to 30% in early October, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. The last time an American President’s approval rating was at a comparable low this close to the midterms was Harry Truman in 1946.

“This is historically low approval ratings for a President,” says Peter Enns, a professor in the department of government at Cornell University and co-founder of the survey research company Verasight.

Data indicates that much of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the Trump Administration is being driven by the economy; according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released earlier this month, only 26% of U.S. adults express support for how Trump is tackling it.

Similarly, just 17% of adults in the country say they approve of how the President is addressing the cost of living, according to the AP-NORC poll. Many adults also disagree with the Trump Administration’s war in Iran: the same AP-NORC poll found that only 28% expressed support for how Trump is handling the issue.

Read More: The 7 Key Governor Races to Watch in the Midterm Elections

“Part of the reason Trump’s approval ratings are so low is he’s pushing policies and pushing positions that are very unpopular, and so the conflict in Iran is a great example; the public understands that this was Trump’s decision, and they understand this connects to extremely high gas prices,” Enns says. “It’s very unusual for a President to position himself on the side of so many unpopular positions.”

Those issues could be critical ones for voters as they go to the polls. The Pew Research Center found that the vast majority of registered voters—84%—say that the economy is a “very important issue” for them heading into the midterms. A smaller majority of 57% also deemed foreign policy “very important” to their vote in the upcoming elections.

Even without a historically low approval rating, midterm elections are a challenging environment for the sitting President’s party. And political experts say that this year’s election looks like a difficult one for Republicans.

How does the President’s party typically fare in midterm elections?

Typically, the party in the White House loses congressional seats in the midterms. Enns says this is a “well-known phenomenon” that is likely a result of frustration from both a President’s supporters, who may feel that there hasn’t been enough progress on the policies they wanted to see coming out of the Administration, and those who didn’t vote for the President, who may be even more frustrated because they disagree with the Administration’s actions.

“That doesn’t mean everybody’s changing their vote,” Enns points out. “It just means the backlash, the tides, are working against the incumbent President.”

Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, says that a possible explanation for this historical trend is that voters may be seeking “partisan balance in Washington.” When voters aren’t satisfied by policies coming out of the Administration, they may try supporting the opposition party in the midterms—particularly when one party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, as is the case with Republicans right now, Panagopoulos says.

“There’s simply nobody else to blame for government actions and current policies if voters are unhappy with those besides the Republican Party [right now],” he continues. “It’s very easy for [voters] to point the finger to the Republicans if they’re not happy with what they’re seeing.”

There are, though, exceptions to this trend. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush’s Republican Party actually gained seats in both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.

“It bucked the historical trend,” Panagopoulos says. “It’s one of the rare examples [of that].”

Political experts like Panagopoulos largely attribute the GOP’s success in the 2002 midterms to Bush’s high approval rating—63% heading into the midterms, according to Gallup data—in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

There have also been some instances when the opposition party was expected to win big in the midterms but fell short of those predictions. Going into the 2022 midterms, for instance, then-President Joe Biden’s approval rating sat at 40%, according to Gallup polling, and Republicans were widely expected to see major victories in the election. And while the GOP gained nine seats in the House, that wasn’t as substantial a win as many had predicted—and Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate.

Panagopoulos suggests that part of the reason for that could be because Biden’s approval rating wasn’t at a historic low. He also points out that 2022 was the first election cycle with newly drawn district lines, which also could have affected the results. 

Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University, puts forth another explanation: the 2022 midterms took place just a few months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which may have harmed Republicans' advantage in the election.

“Sometimes, the political environment can intervene,” Swers says.

How can a President’s approval rating affect the midterm elections?

Swers likens the midterm elections to “a referendum on how things are going with the presidency.”

“The President is the one figure that everybody in the nation knows,” she says. While the President himself isn’t on the ballot in the midterms, “in general, the President loses seats because people are angry with the President, and they take that out on the President’s party because the President is also the leader of their party.”

Panagopoulos says that a President’s approval rating is “among the best predictors of outcomes in midterm election cycles” because it encapsulates “a wide range of sentiments about how voters perceive the performance of the incumbent party or president.” And Panagopoulos adds that the lower the President’s approval rating is, the greater the likelihood that his party will lose more congressional seats in the midterms.

Read More: What Early Voting Data Is Showing About the Midterm Elections

What does Trump’s low approval rating mean for Republicans’ chances in the midterms?

Political experts agree that Republicans are grappling with a difficult political climate right now.

The vast majority of generic ballot polls—surveys that ask respondents which party they would back in the midterms or which party they would like to hold the majority in Congress after Election Day—show that Democrats are outpacing Republicans. Polling also indicates that Democratic voters are more enthusiastic about this midterm election than Republicans are; about 91% of Democrats compared to 86% of Republicans, according to a recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.

Republicans are even struggling to maintain their usual advantage in staunchly red states, including in Texas, where Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico holds a small lead in the polls over his Republican opponent Ken Paxton. 

“I think we can expect Republicans to be facing an uphill battle at the polls,” Panagopoulos says. “We can expect that they will likely lose seats in the House and also the Senate. And the question is will they lose enough seats to lose the majority in either or both those chambers. That is entirely within the realm of possibility. And that has to do both with Trump’s relatively low approval rating, historically speaking, but also the constellation of candidates in the mix.”

Panagopoulos points out that, while the party in the White House typically loses seats in the midterms, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the opposition party gains enough seats to win the majority in the House or the Senate; flipping the majority in both chambers can be challenging to do.

Enns also notes that polling—both presidential approval ratings and vote intentions—is “a snapshot in time” and is “a representative sample” of likely or registered voters.

“We don’t know until Election Day who is for sure going to vote,” Enns says. “The election outcome may not map onto exactly what we’d expect from the polls because who votes, we don’t know until Election Day.”

Whether you’re watching a scary movie or tiptoeing through a haunted house, Halloween can stir up spooky feelings. A gory scene may force you to cover your eyes or jump out of your seat. What drives these reactions is fear, a powerful core emotion.

Being afraid can feel like getting stuck in your own horror show—your heart pounds, your pupils dilate, and you may gasp or scream. These reactions are not under conscious control; they’re rooted in biology. Like all emotions, fear plays an important role. It helps you survive and bolt for safety. 

Halloween gives you a chance to experiment with fear. It’s a time when the fright is real, but the threat is not. 

As psychotherapists who specialize in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), we know that being able to name and work with fear is good for health. Acknowledging your emotions makes you less likely to suppress or avoid them, drink too much, or become numb to what you’re feeling. 

While these behaviors take the edge off temporarily, research shows that stuffing down your emotions can lead to mental-health concerns, such as depression and anxiety, which have become more common among U.S. children and adults in recent years.

If you’d like to safely explore your relationship with fear this Halloween season, here are five exercises we recommend. 

Recognize fear in your body

Have you ever tried to outsmart fear? Perhaps you scolded yourself for being a scaredy-cat or tried to stop the feeling with logic. Messages from society and our families often promote a mind-over-matter approach, reinforcing the belief that we can think our way out of an emotion. 

A healthier approach is to get out of your head and tune into your body. During a frightening moment, notice the telltale signs of alarm, like trembling hands, a racing heart, or feeling cold. These physical sensations are important messengers that clue you into what core emotions you’re experiencing. 

Once you identify and name them, their intensity will likely diminish. It may sound like a small act, but research shows that putting language on your emotions can help regulate and tame distress. 

Watch fear come and go

Gripping, painful emotions can seem permanent. But watching them come and go can remind your brain that even the most frightening experiences are temporary. 

During a spooky scene, you may want to cover your face or turn away. Rather than immediately distracting yourself, approach the emotion with curiosity. Observe how fear builds, peaks, and eventually subsides. 

Curiosity helps us embrace a sense of wonder. Research shows that a curious mindset can cultivate positive emotions and reduce worry. 

Calm the scary feeling

When fright takes hold, breathing techniques like 4-7-8 breathing or box breathing can soothe your nervous system. Taking long breaths instead of shallow ones sends oxygen to your muscles, which can help relieve tension. 

You can also practice what eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapists call “dual attention.” Keep your eyes glued to the frightening scene and stay with the sensations in your body as you take deep belly breaths. Research shows that belly breathing increases parasympathetic regulation of the heart through vagal pathways, helping the body settle into a calmer state. 

Discover how fear makes you want to move

When a ghoul jumps out or a frightening sound catches you off guard, pay attention to what your body wants to do. Do you feel an urge to flee, freeze, duck, or reach for someone’s hand? 

In AEDP, we call these “adaptive actions,” and they offer clues about how your nervous system responds to perceived danger. 

All core emotions, including fear, have impulses—energy in the body that makes us want to take action. When someone responds to our emotions with shame instead of empathy, we learn to block these impulses, creating a pressure-cooker effect. This can lead to symptoms like insomnia, muscular tension, and rumination that can hurt your health.

Noticing fear’s impulses expands your emotional awareness and sets the stage for you to work through other core emotions with greater wisdom. 

Notice how connection changes fear

Sharing a scary moment with another person can make it easier to tolerate. That’s because having someone by your side doesn’t just provide reassurance; it calms the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, and helps you heal past wounds and traumas. 

We recommend this experiment: Watch a horror movie alone, and then with someone you trust. Or visit a haunted house with a trusted friend or partner. Notice what happens when you share the experience. 

A little emotions education goes a long way towards nurturing your well-being. By learning to stay with fear, you teach your brain that you can handle challenging emotions. 

And when we know emotions aren’t something to fear, we’re better equipped to handle life’s challenges with authenticity, flexibility, and courage.

Spain's Transport Ministry has increased the provisional death toll from Wednesday's high-speed train collision to 69. The number of people injured is pending confirmation.

Police have appealed to family members of the crash victims to provide DNA sampling to help with the identification process. The Transport Ministry's website briefly raised the provisional death toll again to 74 late Thursday afternoon, before revising it back to 69.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that authorities are "working day and night, not only to provide a response to the victims and their families, but to clarify every last detail of this tragedy and to strengthen security so that it never happens again."

As the country's top institutions continue investigating the cause behind the collision, Transport Minister Óscar Puente has suggested that a combination of “inexplicable” human error and a computer failure was likely behind the tragedy, which occurred near Urda, Toledo, more than 80 miles south of Madrid.

Puente said in a press conference that the state-operated Renfe train slamming into the rear of a stationary private train operated by Iryo was due to an “inexplicable” order from a command center for Spain’s trains. Puente noted that the center had a computer malfunction before the order.

“It was the control center, through its operators, that made the decision to resume traffic, under circumstances that, from our point of view, are inexplicable,” Puente said. He added later: “Clearly, it was a wrong decision.”

Puente said that they have identified the person who decided to let the Renfe train continue moving even though the Iryo one had already stopped, but he has not spoken to the control center operator. “This person is subject to whatever the investigation determines,” Puente said in the press conference.

Renfe said train services between Madrid, Ciudad Real, and Andalusia have been suspended.

The Wednesday collision is now the deadliest train crash in the country since a 2013 incident in Santiago de Compostela that killed 80 people. But the latest collision follows a similarly deadly train crash in January, which involved high-speed trains operated by the same two companies. In that crash, which occurred in Adamuz, Córdoba, 46 people died and 122 sustained injuries. 

Sánchez, who visited the crash site, said his government would declare three days of mourning in response.

Despite the accident, Puente insisted that the Spanish rail system is “safe and comparable to that of other countries in our region.” However, while there are “very clear” regulations and protocols in place, he admitted, “failures can obviously occur.”

What happened?

The crashes involved a Renfe high-speed train bound for Seville with 393 people on board, and an Iryo train carrying 151 passengers. The Renfe train departed Madrid at 8:00 a.m. local time, while the Iryo train left a little earlier at 7:54 a.m., plying the same route.

Spain’s rail infrastructure uses the German LZB (Linienzugbeeinflussung) system, a railway safety technology that monitors train speeds and sends traffic instructions to the driver’s cab. Operations are meant to revert to manual control when the automated safety system fails.

Puente, in the press conference, said that at around 8:30 a.m., three computers on the railway network experienced a communication failure, taking the LZB control system offline along a 63 km (39 mi) stretch of the track. This automatically stopped about six trains traveling on that section, Puente said. The central command center would assume manual management of rail traffic.

By 8:36 a.m., the command center authorized the Renfe train to continue its journey “normally,” even though Puente says internal protocols dictate otherwise and that a “red signal” should have prevented the journey from resuming. The Renfe train had 25 km (15.5 mi) to travel before it struck the Iryo train, roughly 17 minutes later, at 8:53 a.m. The speed it reached before the impact is still unknown, but it could reach up to 200 km/h (124 mph) for that stretch of track.

What to know about Spanish high-speed rail

Spain is among the world leaders in investing in domestic high-speed rail infrastructure—defined as rails for trains that can travel 250 km/h (155 mph) and over, according to the European Commission’s Ninth Rail Market Monitoring report last year. The report shows that of European Union countries, Spain allocated the most to high-speed rail between 2018 and 2022, averaging €1.5 billion (around $1.67 billion) per year.

Latest data from the International Union of Railways shows that Spain has laid nearly 4,000 km (2,400 mi) of high-speed track, second only to China, which has laid more than 47,000 km (28,000 mi).

The European country only legally opened its domestic commercial high-speed passenger rail market to private competitors in December 2020, and Iryo became one of the commercial high-speed operators in Spain in 2022.

Spanish news outlet El Debate reported, citing data from the State Railway Safety Agency, that the number of “significant accidents” on the country’s rail network has increased over the years.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will not take action against licensed pharmacists who dispense certain unapproved peptides to consumers, according to a new policy published Oct. 28 in the Federal Register.  

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that people inject into their bodies. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said in the past that he is a “big fan” of the unapproved drugs, whose benefits are largely scientifically unproven. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) essentially banned peptides in 2023 because of safety concerns. But an FDA committee met in July to review the evidence on peptides and recommend whether or not to take the highly unusual step of allowing pharmacies to dispense them absent scientific review. The committee was made up of new appointees who consulted with or were employed by companies that were interested in promoting or dispensing peptides; it recommended allowing specialty pharmacies to dispense six peptides, despite FDA staff advising against the move. 

The new policy—which was signed by Kennedy—says that after the July meetings, HHS believed there was “significant interest” in the use of obtaining these peptides from compounding pharmacies. “Therefore, to expand and improve patient access, HHS does not intend to take enforcement action against a State-licensed pharmacy, Federal facility, or licensed physician compounding a drug product using a peptide bulk drug substance found in Appendix A,” the notice said. The policy said that it was going to be published in the Federal Register on Oct. 30. The peptides listed in Appendix A were BPC-157, Epitalon, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax, and TB-500—the same ones the committee recommended allowing this summer.

A separate document posted on the HHS website says that after reviewing the recommendations of the committee that met in July, “the Secretary has determined that the policy advances patient choice and freedom while appropriately protecting patient safety.” 

The decision to allow the compounding of peptides is a boon for companies like Hims & Hers, which had reportedly been preparing to offer peptides in 2026. Analysts have said the market for peptides could be as high as $3.3 billion. Hims stock shot up 5% after the Oct. 28 announcement.

The move “represents a vital step toward eliminating the unsafe gray and black markets, restoring safe patient access through legitimate, physician-supervised care,” said Lee Rosebush, chair of the American Academy of Peptide Medicine, a new advocacy group, in a statement. 

Other public-health professionals raised alarm about the decision, which they say allows compounding pharmacies to dispense these medications absent scientific evidence. “American consumers should not be treated like guinea pigs,” said Fred Mills, chief policy officer for Americans for Safe and Effective Medicines, in a statement. “It is possible to advance both patient safety and access to legitimate medicines, but this is not it.”  

At the July hearings, consumer advocacy groups including the Center for Science in the Public Interest had argued that allowing peptides to skip a rigorous evidence-based FDA approval process would be unprecedented and dangerous to consumers.

Many physicians have spoken up against allowing peptides to be compounded. “The peptides under consideration here are untested and poorly characterized experimental drugs that should not be allowed in compounded products,” said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center, at the public comment portion of the July meeting, reminding the committee that two women had required emergency treatment after receiving peptides at a Las Vegas festival. 

Critics also expressed concern that people were turning to compounding pharmacies for untested drugs. Compounding pharmacies are often used to fill specific prescriptions from a doctor, but in recent years, they have mass-produced drugs like GLP-1s for patients looking to save money. The peptide boom will put even more pressure on compounding pharmacies to quickly make drugs for telehealth sites, said Annie Lambert, a pharmacist and clinical program manager for compliance solutions at Wolters Kluwer Health.

"Compounding can and should play a legitimate clinical role, from hospitals to home infusion to filling gaps during drug shortages. But it is not a substitute for FDA-approved manufacturing, and that distinction is where a lot of today's risk sits,” she said in a statement. “My concern is that pharmacies rushing into this space will move to make a dollar faster rather than make sure they meet every requirement, from ingredient sourcing and facilities to staff training and sterility testing.”

Shortly after the new notice was published, a number of telehealth websites were already marketing the six peptides, each for a price of anywhere from $199 to $249 a month. 

Dolores Huerta, an internationally renowned activist, community organizer, and political force who co-founded what is now known as the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) alongside Cesar Chavez, died Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California. She was 96.

Read More: Dolores Huerta, Labor Leader and Civil Rights Icon, Dies at 96

News of Huerta’s death was shared by family members through her Instagram account, though the post did not disclose a cause of death. The New York Times reported that the cause of death was cancer, citing a spokesperson for Huerta.

"We know that many of you around the world share in our mourning, and we will be following up on plans to recognize and celebrate her incredible life and legacy," the post said.

Huerta dedicated her career to fighting a variety of causes, including labor rights, women's rights and immigrants’ rights. She is also credited with coining the phrase "Yes we can"—"Sí se puede"—which was later adopted by Barack Obama.

Read More: TIME100's Most Influential People of 2026: Dolores Huerta

In March 2026, Huerta publicly accused Chavez of sexually abusing her decades earlier, breaking a silence she said she had maintained to protect the farmworker movement. Her disclosure accompanied a New York Times investigation into allegations that Chavez sexually abused women and girls.

"I think she kind of radiates empowerment not only for herself, but for others," Mario Garcia, a professor of Chicano Studies and History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told TIME in an interview before Huerta's death. "She's really quite an electrifying person."

Indeed, when Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, Obama noted that she "does not play."

"Without any negotiating experience, Dolores helped lead a worldwide grape boycott that forced growers to agree to some of the country's first farmworker contracts," Obama said during the ceremony. "And ever since she has fought to give more people a seat at the table. 'Don't wait to be invited,' she says. 'Step in there.'"

"On a personal note, Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan, Sí se puede, Yes we can," Obama added. "Knowing her, I'm pleased that she let me off easy."

How Huerta's early life shaped her activism

Huerta was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, to Alicia Chávez and Juan Fernández, who both played a major role in her views on justice.

Her father was a miner and farmworker who went on to join the New Mexico state legislature. After her parents' divorce, her mother opened up her own hotel in Stockton, California, and often offered affordable or free rooms to low-wage workers, according to a biography by the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF). Huerta often said she became a feminist because of her mother. As a girl, Huerta was a high-achieving student, an active member of several school clubs, and a member of the Girl Scouts. Huerta now has a Scouts patch dedicated to her.

In 1945, one of her two brothers was beaten for wearing a zoot suit, an ensemble then popular with Black and Mexican-American men who were often unfairly labeled as delinquents. She has said that her brother's beating further influenced her activism.

After Huerta graduated from high school, she obtained a provisional teaching credential at the University of the Pacific’s Stockton College, which later became San Joaquin Delta College, and began teaching at an area elementary school. She also got married and had two children with her husband at the time, Ralph Head. She has repeatedly said that her students, many of whom were children of farmworkers, inspired her activism.

"I think the one thing that really kind of hooked me for life was going to the homes of some workers who did not have linoleum or wood on their floor, only dirt," Huerta told MAKERS, a documentary project featuring influential women, in 2012. "And yet, these are people who are working, they're working very hard and you know that this is wrong."

Huerta decided to pursue a career in community organizing in 1955 when she met Fred Ross Sr., founder of the Community Service Organization (CSO) and a nationally influential community organizer who began his career fighting for the rights of Dust Bowl-era farmworkers.

Finding her voice

At a November 2018 TED Talk, Huerta told an audience she found her voice while volunteering at the Stockton chapter of CSO, which she co-founded. 

She described a day she was volunteering there when she was 25 years old and a disabled farmworker walked in asking if someone could help him apply for disability benefits. She went to a welfare office with the man, but she was not allowed to submit an application on his behalf. Defeated, she returned to CSO, where Ross told her to go back and demand that a supervisor allow the man to submit an application.

"I kind of overcame my anxieties and my fears. I went down to the welfare office and I demanded to see the supervisor," Huerta said. "That taught me a lesson. That taught me that I had a voice."

Ross taught Huerta to make demands of people, she said, especially public officials. He also instilled the importance of voting.

While at CSO, Huerta founded the Agricultural Workers Association, led voter registration drives and met Cesar Chavez in 1955, while he was an organizer with CSO. Chavez would later become CSO's executive director in 1959.

Ross died in 1992, but Huerta described Ross as her "spiritual father" for the rest of her life, and the first person to teach her and Chavez community-organizing techniques.

Founding the United Farm Workers

In 1962, Huerta and Chavez left CSO to found the National Farm Workers Association, which would later become UFW, a union that continues to advocate for the rights of agricultural workers.

They were motivated to found the association after hearing from scores of California farmworkers working under harsh conditions: no benefits, low wages, and no access to bathrooms or water while in the fields. The Bracero Program, established through a 1942 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, recruited Mexican workers to address wartime agricultural labor shortages and continued until 1964.

Chavez and Huerta believed the Bracero Program allowed for farmworker abuses and lobbied to end it. They lobbied against the program, which ended in 1964.

Huerta and Chavez continued their fight for workers' rights, including leading protests, worker strikes, hunger strikes, and arguably their most famous tactic, national boycotts. Huerta helped organize the nationwide grape boycott that supported the Delano grape strike of 1965-1970. The strike began with Filipino farmworkers affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee; Huerta and Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association subsequently joined them. The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott convinced grocery store chains to stop selling the fruit until industry labor standards were set. 

Huerta’s boycotts were effective in forcing industries to guarantee better working conditions for their employees.

"I think one of the things about when people are oppressed is that they start accepting their condition and they often kind of blame themselves," Huerta said during a 2015 Q&A with the National Portrait Gallery. "Our job was to convince them again that they could make a difference and that they had the power to do it."

In 1975, California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave farmworkers the right to unionize. The state credited Huerta as instrumental in establishing those rights. Though Chavez often receives national accolades for the achievements of the farmworker movement, historians say Huerta played an equally essential role through every success—but historically received far less credit.

"[Chavez] didn't win you over with his rhetoric, [Chavez] was always soft spoken, but he also radiated strong internal leadership qualities," Garcia said. "[Huerta], by contrast, was always much more verbal, a much better speaker than [Chavez]."

In a 2018 interview with TIME, Huerta said she didn't expect recognition. 

"I think that’s very typical of women," she said. "I had been acculturated to be supportive, to be accommodating, to support men in the work they do. We never think of getting credit or recognition or even taking the power. We didn’t think in those terms."

She added that she believed times were changing. "That could make an incredible amount of difference in our world,” she said. “We will never have peace in the world until feminists take power."

In March 2026, Huerta disclosed that Chavez had sexually abused her in the 1960s. She alleged that he pressured her into sex on one occasion and raped her on another. Both encounters resulted in pregnancies, she said, and she arranged for the children to be raised by other families. She said she later developed close relationships with them.

Huerta said she had remained silent for decades because she feared damaging the movement to which she had devoted her life. Coming forward after a New York Times investigation into allegations that Chavez abused other women and girls, she emphasized that the movement’s achievements belonged to thousands of people.

Balancing activism and motherhood

Huerta was a change-maker while also raising 11 children, which gave her kids a front-row seat to her activism.

During the five-year Delano grape boycott, Huerta said she and her family encountered violence. 

"There were times when my home was terrorized in the middle of the night, my windows broken when I'm there alone with my children," she told MAKERS. "We had shotguns and rifles aimed at us."

In order to start the farmworkers union, Huerta had to move most of her family—by then she had seven children—to Delano, while leaving two of her children behind in Stockton, California. Huerta credited the women of the movement, including Cesar Chavez's wife, Helen Chavez, and his sisters-in-law, for organizing childcare in Delano.

"I had a lot of criticism from family and friends for years until huelga [the strike] became famous and now they all like me," Huerta jokingly said during the 2015 National Portrait Gallery Q&A. "But it was difficult. We were pretty much living like the farmworkers." 

Huerta's family and Chavez's family relied on assistance from a food bank and were organizing the union without a steady source of income of their own.

"In the strike, women were always on the picket lines with the children," Huerta said.

It was also not lost on Huerta that Chavez and other male activists were not asked about how they managed their important work with their parental duties. 

"The thing about that is that every single mother in every single working family has that question every single day. Who am I going to leave my children with? Are they going to be safe? Are they going to be protected? That’s something women have to deal with all the time," she told TIME in 2018.

Huerta had 14 children, 24 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren, a spokesperson tells TIME.

“Dolores was a deeply private person when it came to her family, and while all 14 of her children were part of her life, some parts of that story were never shared publicly,” according to the spokesperson.

Her lasting legacy

Over the course of her career, Huerta was arrested more than 20 times. In 1988, she was severely beaten by a police officer in San Francisco at a rally against presidential candidate George H. W. Bush. She was 58 years old at the time, and suffered broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

Despite those types of encounters, Huerta continued to mobilize and fight for causes through her Dolores Huerta Foundation. She established her foundation in 2003 after receiving a $100,000 prize from the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship in 2002. Her youngest daughter, Camila Chávez, helped run the foundation as the executive director.

In the course of her career, Huerta was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, and the Mexican Government's Ohtli Award. She also received at least nine honorary doctorates from universities across the country. In 2026, TIME named Huerta one of the world’s 100 most influential people, with a tribute by Gloria Steinem recognizing her decades of organizing and her courage in speaking publicly about Chavez. She received the TIME100 Impact Award at the TIME100 Gala in New York City on April 23, 2026.

Huerta endorsed presidential candidates, including speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of Hillary Clinton. She was also the subject of a PBS documentary, Dolores, which won a Peabody Award in 2018.

"She was not afraid to speak truth to power," Clinton said of her in the Dolores documentary.

In July 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill declaring April 10 Dolores Huerta Day. "Dolores Huerta deserves proper recognition for her numerous sacrifices in the name of justice and the amelioration of severely inadequate working conditions," the bill’s text said.

"Change comes from the bottom," Huerta said during a May 2012 interview. "But you've got to be able to organize those folks at the bottom to be able to get out there and make the changes that they need. And of course, if you don't have organization, then you don't have a democracy."

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded what became known as the United Farm Workers union to help secure better pay for laborers, has died at age 96.

Huerta’s team, in a statement shared through her foundation, said she passed away on Wednesday at home in Bakersfield, California, “surrounded by her close family.”

In a separate statement, Huerta's family remarked on the "incredible loss" and said they will "share plans to recognize and celebrate" her legacy at a future date. While a cause of death was not shared, the New York Times, citing family spokesperson Erik Olvera, said cancer was behind her passing.

Huerta, who campaigned for the rights of migrant laborers throughout the 1960s and '70s, is credited with coining the rallying cry “Sí, se puede”—“Yes, we can.” The phrase inspired generations and was famously adopted by former President Barack Obama, who presented Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Upon receiving the award, Huerta credited the advice her mother had once given her: "If you see people that need help, you have an obligation to help them, and you shouldn't wait for people to ask." Huerta said that once she had acquired the necessary skills, she honored that obligation by teaching people "how to come together and be able to fight" for their rights.

Read More: What To Know About Dolores Huerta's Trailblazing Life

“One of the few women lobbyists of her era, [Dolores] became a formidable advocate for people who could not afford one,” reads the obituary shared by Huerta’s foundation. “Her legislative victories included a California measure allowing driver’s license examinations in Spanish, the extension of Aid to Families with Dependent Children to California farmworker families, and disability insurance protections for agricultural workers.”

Huerta founded United Farm workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962 and served as its vice president for almost four decades. She worked closely with Chavez until his death in 1993. Earlier this year, Huerta came forward with allegations against Chavez, accusing him of having sexually abused her in the 1960s. “I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” said Huerta in a statement in March.

The abuse led to two pregnancies, Huerta said, explaining that she "chose to keep [the] pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives."

Huerta said she was driven to share her experiences after an investigation released by the New York Times revealed accusations that Chavez, a long-celebrated icon of the labor movement, groomed and sexually abused multiple girls and women who worked in the movement.

Huerta said she had "carried this secret" for so long because she feared speaking out would compromise her life’s work and risk all the progress made for laborers.

“The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights," she explained.

In April, Huerta was named on TIME's list of the "100 Most Influential People of 2026." Her long-time friend and fellow activist, Gloria Steinem, who died in September, wrote a tribute acknowledging the recognition.

Celebrating Huerta for stepping forward, Steinem said: "We can all learn from the courage and conscience Dolores and others have modeled. The truth about Chavez reminds us to look honestly at the behavior of everyone, including our leaders, and to lend support to those who may be hurt by misused power... Dolores’ impact, like that of many other activists, will continue to guide us, regardless of the hurtful behavior of any one individual."

Family, activism, and legacy

Dolores Clara Huerta (née Fernández) was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico. She was the only daughter of Juan Fernández and Alicia Chávez. Her parents divorced when she was 3 and she later moved to Stockton, California, with her mother. She went on to study at the University of Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton, now known as San Joaquin Delta College.

Huerta married Ralph Head when she was in college. The marriage, out of which came two children, ended in divorce. She had five children with her second husband Ventura Huerta, whose surname she kept after they divorced. When Huerta was in her early 40s, she embarked upon a relationship with Richard Chavez, a brother of Cesar Chavez’s, and they were "life partners" until his passing in 2011. They had four children together, according to the New York Times.

Huerta had 14 children, 24 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren, a spokesperson told TIME. “Dolores was a deeply private person when it came to her family, and while all 14 of her children were part of her life, some parts of that story were never shared publicly,” according to the spokesperson.

In her decades spent campaigning on behalf of laborers, as well as her work supporting the rights of immigrants and women, Huerta was arrested more than 25 times for participating in, what her foundation describes as, "non-violent civil disobedience activities and strikes."

In 1988, when she was 58 years old, Huerta suffered broken ribs and a damaged spleen after being beaten by baton-wielding members of the San Francisco police force during a protest against the policies of presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. Huerta and others filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco after they were injured.

Huerta's activism continued, and her foundation notes that "even in her 90s, Dolores could still be found at rallies, walking precincts, speaking to young organizers, and urging people to vote."

She has been honored numerous times over the years on account of her contributions to marginalized communities. In 1993, Huerta was the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In the late '90s, former President Bill Clinton presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights. In 2022, she won the Clinton Global Citizen Award, in recognition of her "trailblazing lifetime of public service advocating for the dignity and fundamental human rights of women, children, and working class people worldwide."

Huerta is survived by her family and also the foundation that bears her name. In 2003, Huerta returned to California’s Central Valley and started the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which cites its mission as "inspiring and organizing communities to build volunteer organizations empowered to pursue social justice.”

The foundation has said it plans to open the "Dolores Huerta Peace and Justice Cultural Center in the Central Valley" in 2027.

Tributes pour in for civil rights icon

In a moving statement, former President Obama remembered Huerta as one of his heroes.

Dolores spent "her life fighting for marginalized communities, even as she herself faced sexism and abuse—including, as she revealed earlier this year, from Cesar Chavez and others within her own movement," Obama said. "She also came up with a pretty good slogan, 'sí, se puede'—yes, we can—that I too often get credit for. But as usual, Dolores got there first."

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus remembered Huerta as someone who "defied definition." Referring to her as a "national and international icon," the group said: "Her legacy is woven into the fabric of our history. Her fight for justice will continue to inspire generations. Rest in power, hermana."

María Teresa Kumar, the co-founder and president of Voto Latino, an advocacy organization that aims to empower the next generation of Latino voters, celebrated Huerta's influence. “Dolores always saw the value and spirit in young people before the rest of the world was ready to," she said. "Because of her, our community has been empowered to be our own advocates.”

Fellow co-founder Rosario Dawson said that Huerta had "centered her life around doing good in this world and around the deep-rooted belief in leaving it better than we found it. It is now up to us to carry her legacy forward."

Championing Huerta's community work, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom said: "California—and the United States—would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten."

He recognized Huerta as having "represented the best of us" and said her "fight for gender equity, workers' rights, and civil rights paved the way for generations to come."

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to Huerta as a "dear friend" and noted how her rallying cry had inspired "generations of Americans to believe in the power of collective action."

Former President Joe Biden extended condolences on behalf of himself and his wife, Jill. "For more than seventy years, Dolores fought for working people. She organized in the fields, she walked the picket lines, and she sat across the table from people who never expected to have to negotiate with her," he said. "America is fairer and more decent because of Dolores Huerta."

Alongside pictures of herself and Huerta, former Vice President Kamala Harris posted a personal tribute to social media.

"I was blessed to know Dolores for many years and proud to organize alongside my dear friend to champion working families and immigrant rights. I will always be grateful for her support and friendship," said Harris. "We will honor her legacy by continuing the fight for the dignity of every person."

Have you ever had a disturbing thought pop into your head out of nowhere—something you'd never consider actually doing?

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that can feel upsetting, confusing, or wildly out of character. They're more common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but can happen to anyone, and they can involve everything from violence and sex to religion, relationships, and the fear of having done something wrong.

Many people are able to brush off the occasional intrusive thought and move on quickly. People with OCD, on the other hand, can get stuck trying to figure out what the thought means—and whether they might act on it. “We stop and we treat that thought as super important and meaningful,” says Alissa Jerud, a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Intrusive thoughts can feel especially disturbing because they often involve someone or something the person cherishes. “We tend to have intrusive thoughts about the things we care most about,” Jerud says.

Some of Jerud’s patients have kept their intrusive thoughts to themselves for 20 years before telling her. They might be thinking: “Why am I having these thoughts? What does it say about me? Maybe I’m a monster,” she says.

A calm, compassionate response can make it easier to keep talking. “It can help them feel like there’s hope,” Jerud says. “Maybe I don’t have to beat myself up for having these thoughts in the first place.”

Here’s what to say if a loved one tells you they’re having intrusive thoughts. 

Start with, “I’m so glad you shared this with me”

Start by thanking your friend for trusting you. Skip responses like “How could you think that?” or “Don’t say that,” which can reinforce the shame they’re already feeling.

It’s helpful, too, to make it clear that what they told you won’t affect your relationship: “This doesn’t change how I think about you,” suggests Madeline Thompson Smith, an Atlanta-based licensed professional counselor who specializes in OCD. Then acknowledge how upsetting the thoughts sound: “That sounds really scary to have stuck in your head.”

Pay attention to how you sound and look, too. A warm invitation to explain more can feel like judgment if you’re staring intensely or using a sharp tone. If you look startled, acknowledge it instead of hoping they didn’t notice. Kimberly Leonte, a psychologist in Boston who specializes in OCD, suggests wording it like this: “I guess I wasn’t expecting that, but I want to hear more.”

Offer support without repeatedly reassuring them

When someone you love is distressed by an intrusive thought, reassuring them can feel like the kindest thing to do. But if they keep coming back with the same question, answering it again and again can become part of the OCD cycle.

Say your partner keeps asking whether an unwanted thought means they’re dangerous. You reassure them, they feel better, and you both get back to your evening. Until another question arrives: But what if you’re wrong? What if they didn’t explain the thought accurately enough? Next thing you know, they’re asking for reassurance again.

A single reassuring response isn’t necessarily a problem, Thompson Smith says. The concern is when seeking reassurance becomes a compulsion—a behavior someone feels driven to repeat to relieve their distress. Each answer briefly helps them feel better, but it leaves them needing another answer when the doubt returns.

Instead of debating what the thought means, acknowledge how they’re feeling and express confidence in their ability to get through the discomfort. Thompson Smith suggests: “I know this feels really uncomfortable right now. I’m not going to help you go down the rabbit hole, but I’m happy to sit with you while it’s hard.”

If reassurance has become a routine between you, talk about changing it together, ideally with guidance from their therapist. Abruptly refusing to answer can leave your loved one wondering what happened. “It’s tough if the person’s used to getting reassurance, and you just stop giving it and they don’t know why,” Leonte says. Instead, discuss how you’ll respond the next time they ask—and make sure you both understand why you’re trying something different.

Meanwhile, aim to avoid suggestions like “Just stop thinking about it” or “Replace it with a happy thought.” Besides being considerably easier said than done, trying to force an intrusive thought away can keep someone preoccupied with whether it’s gone yet.

Ask whether they want you to listen or help

Find out what your loved one wants from the conversation. They might be seeking support in taking a step toward getting mental-health help, or they may simply want you to know what they’ve been going through.

“Do you want me to just listen, or do you want help figuring out what to do next?” Thompson Smith suggests asking. If this is the first time they’ve said their intrusive thoughts out loud, they might not be ready to discuss next steps.

If they’re already in therapy, ask how you can support what they’re learning: “What would your therapist recommend trying right now?” Leonte suggests asking. If they’re interested in learning more about intrusive thoughts but feel overwhelmed, you could offer to read about them together.

Sometimes, they simply want someone to listen. Your loved one might be telling you because “they just don’t want to be alone in this, and you can help them hold it,” Thompson Smith says. Or they may need to know “you’re not gonna judge me or people aren’t gonna run away if I start trying to be open and get help.”

Know when intrusive thoughts call for professional help

If unwanted thoughts are causing significant distress or interfering with daily life, offer to help your loved one find a therapist. Keep it low-pressure: “If you ever want me to help you find a therapist, I’d be happy to do so,” Jerud suggests saying.

For OCD, look for a therapist trained in exposure and response prevention, or ERP, Jerud suggests. It helps people learn to tolerate intrusive thoughts without turning to rituals like repeated reassurance. The International OCD Foundation maintains a directory to help people find one.

There’s also an important distinction between an unwanted thought about harm and wanting or intending to act. Don’t assume that every disturbing thought is benign, Thompson Smith says. If you’re unsure what someone means, ask calmly and directly: “Is this a thought that scares you, or something you want to do?” If they describe wanting to act, ask about plans and help them get professional support right away.

Keep being the friend you’ve always been

After someone opens up about their intrusive thoughts, keep treating them like you always have. Send the ridiculous meme, ask whether they’re still coming to dinner, and keep including them in the things you usually do together.

People often fear that sharing their intrusive thoughts will change how others see them, Thompson Smith says. Pulling away—or asking about their mental health every time you talk—can leave them wishing they’d kept quiet.

You might get frustrated or struggle to find the right words, Leonte says. If you react in a way you regret, apologize and let them know you’re still there for them. “No one’s perfect,” she says. “The goal isn’t to be perfect, it’s just to be supportive.”

The last time the folks at NASA tested a crewed lunar lander in low-Earth orbit, here’s how they did it. First, a Saturn 5 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida carrying three astronauts, an Apollo spacecraft, and a lunar module. Then they got to orbit and the astronauts flew both ships. Then they came home. That straightforward mission was accomplished 57 years ago, during the flight of Apollo 9.

The next time NASA attempts something of the kind—during the planned flight of Artemis III in the summer of 2027—things will be a lot more complicated. First an uncrewed Blue Origin New Glenn rocket will launch from KSC carrying the company’s Blue Moon lander into orbit. Then NASA will launch its prosaically named Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket, carrying the four Artemis III astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft. Then the crew will rendezvous with the Blue Moon, dock with it and enter it, checking out its systems before returning to the Orion. Then SpaceX will launch a Starship rocket carrying its own Starship lander, which will also be uncrewed. The astronauts will rendezvous and dock with that ship too, but not enter it since it will not yet be equipped with a life support system. Then they will separate and the crew will spend a few more days running tests on the Orion. All of that work will take up to 17 days from first liftoff to splashdown. And only if everything goes just right with that mission can NASA achieve its goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface during the 2028 flight of Artemis IV—and in the process, win a new space race with China.

On Oct. 23, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman—along with Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons—conducted a marathon two-hour press conference at KSC, detailing plans for Artemis III and IV, conceding that the hurdles are considerable, but insisting the goals are within reach. The current NASA, with its tight funding and long timelines, may not be the old NASA that used its generous budgets and garage full of rockets to pop off nine crewed Apollo lunar missions just from 1968 to 1972, but it will be no less successful.

“In that remarkably short span of time, the ambitions of generations once confined to the pages of science fiction became humanity's greatest achievement, and for the first time in billions of years, life born on Earth would set foot on another world,” said Isaacman. “Now, in this incredibly demanding and dangerous business of putting astronauts [back] on the moon, NASA must own the near impossible…That is how we give Artemis IV the greatest possible chance of safely and successfully returning Americans to the lunar surface in 2028.”

The extreme complexity of Artemis III is owing in part to a pair of decisions NASA made in 2021 and 2023 and in part to the simple limits of known rocket technology. If the engineering physics were perfect—and engineering physics are never perfect—a lunar crew could use just one spacecraft to get to the moon, land, blast back off, and return home. But a spacecraft that could do all of those jobs and remain robust enough to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere would simply be too heavy for a lunar landing and subsequent liftoff. Instead, as in the Apollo days, the job will be divided between two ships—one lightweight one to perform the landing and liftoff and one orbiting mothership to bring the crew home when the lunar exploration is done. During Apollo, the space agency selected Grumman Aircraft Engineering to build its squat, four-legged 23-ft. tall, lunar module (LM). It was a simple ship with a low center of gravity, ensuring a stable foothold on the lunar surface. Grumman inked the contract in 1962 and delivered the goods in time for Apollo 9 and the missions that followed. In 2021, NASA similarly awarded a contract for a crewed lunar spacecraft—this time to SpaceX and its Starship lander. The decision was a headscratcher.

Starship is a silo-like cylinder with a tapered nose cone, measuring 165 ft. tall, calling to mind less an actual spacecraft than the 1953 illustrated book about Tintin’s adventures on the moon. Apollo astronauts used a nine-rung ladder to get down to the lunar surface. Artemis astronauts aboard Starship will use an elevator. Critics and competitors pounced on the plan—not least because of the risk that the giant machine could tip over on the moon—and in 2023, NASA issued a second contract, this time to Blue Origin, which promised to build a lander more in keeping with the low-slung Apollo lunar module. Both companies have continued to produce their landers and both will get a shot to fly on the historic Artemis IV mission—with the winner to be determined by the performance of the ships during Artemis III. 

But neither company has had an easy go of things. SpaceX has launched 14 Starships since 2023, only achieving Earth orbit for the first time in September 2026. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, meanwhile, launched three times from January 2025 to April 2026, before a massive explosion on the launch pad during a test of its first stage engines occurred in May 2026. The disaster marked a major setback for Blue Origin, not least because the pad infrastructure itself was partially destroyed in the blast. The company has been working feverishly since to rebound, and at the Oct. 23 press conference, the NASA brass praised its efforts.

“Blue Origin's New Glenn team has amazed the world with their progress for return to flight after the incident in May,” said Parsons. “We're working closely with them. We have over 100 NASA team [members] engaged throughout return to flight…and I have seen Blue Origin mobilize an absolute army working around the clock.”

Assuming the company can maintain that pace, it stands a good chance of being the winner in the Artemis III sweepstakes. That’s partly because its rival, SpaceX, will not fly a full-up version of its Starship lander during the mission, but rather what amounts to a boilerplate ship equipped with a docking port that will test only whether the Orion and the Starship can meet and link up in orbit. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander won’t be a fully operational vehicle either, but it will have a functioning crew compartment that will allow the Artemis III astronauts to enter and run tests.

“They're going to open up the hatch. They're going to enter the lander. They're going to evaluate the environmental controls, the life support systems,” says Parsons. “We'll confirm that the spacecraft can maintain the right atmospheric pressure, and we're also going to test emergency scenarios, dual vehicle control, and we're going to put our Mission Control teams through their paces." 

For all of the confidence expressed at the press conference, no one at NASA pretends that the Artemis III mission doesn’t have a lot of moving parts and a lot of things that could go badly wrong before the space agency can tee up the 2028 Artemis IV landing. And even if the mission does completely succeed, NASA will still require both competing spacecraft to execute an uncrewed lunar landing and liftoff to prove their mettle further. Only then will the landers be certified to carry crew. 

Whether the two companies can perfect the engineering and fly the uncrewed missions in the maximum 18 months that will elapse between the launch of Artemis III and the flight of Artemis IV at the end of 2028 is uncertain. Isaacman, for one, expresses confidence that the target date can be met without slipping into 2029 or later. But he acknowledges that NASA’s years of uncertainty since the Apollo program—with priorities shifting from Skylab to the shuttle to the International Space Station, and with start-stop programs to return to the moon that burned through money but never got anywhere—have set the agency back, especially as it concerns the ongoing competition with China.

“Here we are today, very much in a new space race, and despite decades of accumulated knowledge and extraordinary advancements in technology, this race will be much closer than it ever needed to be,” he says. “That brings us to the moment we find ourselves in today, because the appetite for tolerating and defending the status quo has reached its conclusion. We are here for the mission, and to deliver the outcomes the world expects of the most accomplished space agency in history.”

The night before an airline lost my wheelchair was among the most dazzling of my life. I sat at a long table in the back of an L.A. movie theater as talented writers, actors, and creatives read aloud the draft of a movie script I’d co-written with Oscar-winning filmmaker Siân Heder. I felt the thrill of people laughing at just the right moments. I clocked cheeks shiny with tears. But more than anything, I marveled over the possibility that this movie might actually get made. When I was a newly paralyzed kid in the ’90s, with freshly fitted leg braces, I watched Forrest Gump overcome his disability by running so hard his own braces literally fell off. Months after I started college, I watched a recently disabled boxer ask her coach to end her life in Million Dollar Baby. In my formative years, the stories of disability I saw were scarce, unrecognizable, and often harmful.

Our script, Being Heumann, tells the real-life David and Goliath story of a standoff between the U.S. government and a group of scrappy disabled protesters that changed the course of American history. The fight revolved around Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a tiny bit of legislation that reframed how we think about disability in our communities. Instead of positioning its embodiment as a personal tragedy that inevitably excludes people from society, the language of 504 suggested that our exclusion had been largely created and should be corrected. The law passed in 1973, but after years without any moves to implement it, Judy Heumann led over 100 disabled people and nondisabled allies in a sit-in at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco. They lived in those halls for almost a month as the government tried to push them out, cutting off their water supply and phone lines. When it became clear that they weren’t going to buckle, the government relented, agreeing to implement 504. The very group that had been deemed expendable took on the most powerful and won. It still holds the place as the longest peaceful occupation of a federal building in U.S. history.

Section 504 paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the first civil rights law for disabled people in the world. Thanks in large part to disabled WW II vet and my Kansas Senator, Bob Dole, it passed in 1990 with nearly unanimous bipartisan support and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush when I was 4 years old. Even if they’re not consistently or completely fulfilled, these laws changed our world in their insistence that physical and mental impairment alone should not and would not preclude us from participating in our communities—going to school; voting; receiving care in a hospital; being considered for a job for which we’re qualified; and accessing our libraries, post offices, public transit, housing, and more. In other words, Section 504 and the ADA protect every American citizen; if there is one thread that binds us together, it is that every single one of us will acquire a disability if we live long enough. Still, I, like most Americans, never heard a whisper of this history growing up.

It wasn’t until I worked on this script that my perspective considerably expanded. It was like putting on a pair of night-vision goggles: the curb cuts, accessible bathroom stalls, and ramps radiated a new story. Someone had fought for me to be here. It didn’t wipe out the inaccessibility and stigma that still exist in my life, but it enriched my understanding of the bigger story I was living inside. 

When I first joined the Being Heumann project, I was nervous about earning Judy’s trust. I remember sitting in my car, phone pressed against my sweaty ear, as she asked me questions about my life. “So you went to school with your siblings?” My attendance at the school down the street from my house was never a question, while Judy’s mother battled for years to get her daughter a spot in even a basement classroom. “And what was it like for you applying for teaching positions?” My wheelchair was never mentioned in job interviews, while Judy was denied a teaching license because her wheelchair was deemed a fire hazard. Recapping my life to The Judy Heumann, I saw more clearly than ever before how she and other activists had shaped it. Even as I’d sat on the edges of inaccessible playgrounds or been pushed out of unsustainable work cultures, the full life I live today would not exist if someone hadn’t fought hard for my inclusion before I was born. I wanted Judy to know that my outrage over the exclusion disabled people still face didn’t diminish my appreciation for the gifts she had granted us. I think I convinced her I could hold both stories as true.

While it didn’t make the final cut, one of the scenes performed at our table read told the story of the time Judy was forcibly removed from a plane when the airline insisted she needed a care attendant or a note from a doctor to fly. Someone expressed appreciation that airlines are now more accommodating to wheelchair travelers. Siân looked at me knowingly. “Well, they’re still not great,” she said.

And so when I flew home from the reading, I can’t say I was surprised to find upon landing that my wheelchair, which cost more than my car and is fully customized to prevent pain and pressure sores, was missing. In its absence, I was placed in an airport wheelchair—although, given that it was not self-propelling, it feels more apt to call it a cart. Because airplanes don’t have accessible bathrooms, I hadn’t peed in eight hours, but without wheels that I could push myself, I couldn’t get to a toilet without help. I almost always fly alone, but out of sheer luck, my husband had accompanied me on this trip. We watched the people from the last flights pour out the doors until the floor was empty. Over an hour later, the airline informed us they had no idea where the wheelchair was. I felt like I was being sent home with body parts missing.

The next day, as I sat at my kitchen table, calling the same customer-service numbers again and again, a -familiar feeling thumped in my chest. While we worked on the script, I wanted to capture the frantic helplessness that can come when your basic rights are not in your control. You can hold up a protest sign, put your body on the line, hurl your voice to the sky, write yet another email to legislators, and still, it often feels like you are entirely at the mercy of a few people at the top who aren’t even listening.

Two days later, my husband found the frame of my wheelchair dropped off on our doorstep, scratches across the front, two parts dangling. They never found the wheels. A replacement pair arrived three weeks later. 

While I recounted the ordeal to Siân, we marveled at the irony. Here we were, telling the story of a woman who took on the airlines for disabled passengers to have equal access to travel, and 50 years later disabled travelers still take the very real risk of our lives being upended every time we fly. We have come so far. We have so far to go. I saw the dichotomy everywhere. It was my generation’s job, I thought, to build on the progress Judy’s had fought for. What I didn’t realize at the time, however, is that we wouldn’t just be advancing it—we’d be defending it as well.

Almost a year to the date of that hopeful, disastrous flight home, I found out that Apple Studios had greenlighted the making of Being Heumann. I texted Siân gleeful curse words in disbelief. In the coming months, I saw a big film studio prioritize authentic disability casting for more roles than I could count on my hands and ask good questions about how to make the filming process accessible for them. I think I stopped breathing while I watched Ruth Madeley channel Judy’s chutzpah on her audition tape. Every time I thought of my younger self getting the chance to watch this story with these characters, my eyes welled. There is no way to quantify what it would have meant to see bodies like mine do something as ordinary as get dressed, go to work, or receive care, let alone hook up, party, fight, cry and win together. To see the world reflected back to me as I experienced it—pushed out by stairs and curbs, racing wheelchairs down hallways, sitting eye level with butts.

It was right in the middle of this dreamy bubble that I first learned about a new lawsuit, Texas v. Becerra, filed by the attorneys general in 17 states, seeking to make Section 504 unconstitutional or dismantle all of the detailed protections that it lays out. I scoured the internet for any reporting from mainstream news outlets. The silence stunned me. I went directly to the lawsuit itself, and as I squinted into the legalese, I recognized arguments that sounded identical to the ones posed in the 1970s. We’d written these sentiments into the mouths of our most skeptical characters: disabled people are a burden on the rest of us; we shouldn’t be forced to integrate them into our communities. 

Over the course of two years, the lawsuit evolved; it was updated as Texas v. Kennedy, the people made noise, and many states dropped out. Then in June, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo asserting that Section 504 and the ADA don’t actually mandate that states support disabled people to remain integrated in their communities. Instead, this memo claims, sending people to live in institutions—away from their families, friends, and beds—is an acceptable option. This position is in direct conflict with the way disability-rights law has been interpreted by courts for decades. And, in addition to the human cost, it doesn’t make fiscal sense. For example, according to the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services and the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, sending one person with an intellectual or developmental disability (I/DD) to live in an institution can easily cost well over $310,000 a year. Providing home- and community-based services with an I/DD waiver for this same person would cost, on average, $70,000 a year. The discrepancy is similarly steep for someone with a physical disability. So at least in this case, it costs less to include us. 

Even so, that memo set the foundation for a joint proposal from the Department of Justice and the five remaining states that ultimately ended the case. They asked the court to vacate critical language about integration, and in September the judge agreed. Now the law remains on the books—only Congress can change the legislation itself—but it’s been utterly gutted, despite the loud outcry from disability advocates across the country and the way it had been applied since the protesters won their fight in 1977. It’s hard not to interpret this move as anything other than a profound disregard for the value of disabled life.

And yet, even as the lawsuit and memo wound their way through the government, the Toronto International Film Festival welcomed Being Heumann as its opening-night film. I rolled across the red carpet in my black sequined dress and scratched-up wheelchair frame, taking in the wide expanse of our embodied disabilities, each of us glammed out and feted for our talents. It felt like living inside two timelines: one where my government undercuts the foundations of laws that have long protected all of us, the other where the hubs of culture celebrate the incredible story behind the passing of those same laws. As Judy’s life’s work is threatened, audiences around the world are learning her name. The past is asserting itself into the present, the future is teetering toward the past, all inside one surreal moment. I’m trying to hold onto the contradiction, never allowing the significance of one reality to eclipse the other. 

I wish Judy were here to give us our marching orders—to make the monster lurking around the corner feel a little smaller with the force of her voice. I wish she could take in the wild power of her own story moving across a screen and witness this outpouring of recognition, gratitude, and celebration. She died unexpectedly while we were working on the film. In fact, many of the 504 leaders have passed away—Brad Lomax, Ed Roberts, Kitty Cone, Ron Washington, Hale Zukas. Their generation came of age in a world where doctors routinely told parents they should send their disabled children away to live out their lives in institutions, but their activism fundamentally changed the lives of all of us coming up behind them. Now that we are the adults in the room, what legacy will we leave behind?

I find myself thinking a lot about the work culture can do where legislation drops off. As we continue to fight for the laws Judy and her peers helped make real, I wonder about the ripples of an entertaining movie that isn’t here to force a lesson but bring to life a vivid story of disability as a dynamic, nuanced, deeply human experience. I wonder if one film might beget more. Perhaps this kind of authentic representation of disabled life could be a fixture that younger generations will one day take for granted. Maybe storytelling can insist on our shared humanity in the ways legislation can’t.

Because, even as I see now more than ever how essential laws can be, I don’t want just laws; I also want a society that values disabled people enough to implement them meaningfully and fully. I want whole communities invested in the great, ongoing project of building a world for all of us. I think Judy would co-sign my enormous appetite. I no longer believe human evolution inevitably bends toward including more of us, but if she taught us anything, it’s that we don’t show up because the outcome is guaranteed; we show up because it isn’t. 

The ranking "America's Best Brands, According to Each Generation" is based on surveys of more than 33,000 Americans, featuring Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. The analysis was primarily based on user experience, customer service, reputation for quality, and likelihood of recommendation.

Methodology

The America’s Best Brands According to Each Generation 2026 rankings were identified from the results of an independent survey of participants who have either made purchases, used services, or looked for further information about a brand within the past three years either in person or online.  Customers evaluated several brands: in total over 220,000 cross-demographic evaluations were collected.

The survey was conducted on brands and service providers from 112 categories, providing results for a broad spectrum of customer experiences across demographic groups via a national online panel. For each category, the most relevant brands were included in the scope of the survey according to user experience, customer service, and reputation for quality.

For most categories, brands must be available to U.S. consumers. Categories involving location-dependent services must be present in at least two census regions. In total, the survey took an average of 10 minutes to complete, and the field period ran from March to May 2026.

The final assessment and rankings were based on the Likelihood of Recommendation (50% of the final score) and three equally weighted evaluation criteria (also 50% of the final score):

1. User Experience: measures the end-to-end journey, including easy access, clear information, meaningful personalization and intuitive technology.

2. Customer Service: measures the speed of responses, the knowledge and relevance of the support provided, and the accessibility of priority options.

3. Reputation for Quality: measures consistent and reliable performance that foster trust and safety, alongside transparent communication regarding return policies and warranties where applicable.

The top 3 to 5 brands based on category size receiving the highest scores in each category and generation were awarded as America's Best Brands According to Each Generation 2026. See the full list here.

Disclaimer:
The rankings are comprised exclusively of brands that are eligible regarding the scope described in this document. A mention in the ranking is a positive recognition based on customers’ evaluations and the data sources available at the time. The ranking is the result of an elaborate process which, due to the interval of data-collection and analysis, is a reflection of the last three calendar years. Furthermore, events following August 31st, 2026, and/or pertaining to individual persons affiliated/associated to the brands were not included in the metrics. As such, the results of this ranking should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations. The information provided in this ranking should be considered in conjunction with other available information about the brands or, if possible, accompanied by a visit to the brand's stores or websites. The quality of brands that are not included in the rankings is not disputed.

A new consumer survey of more than 33,000 Americans of all ages by TIME and its data partner Statista shows how each generation—from Gen Z to Baby Boomers—is currently shopping. And while there are slight deviations between Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennial shopping habits, Gen Z appears to be changing the game altogether. 

The 10-minute online questionnaire asked respondents to select categories in which they had made a purchase or researched within the past three years and to list up to three brands within those categories. Then they were asked to evaluate the brands based on customer service, user experience, and quality on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being terrible and 5 being excellent. The final question asked them how likely they are to recommend the selected brands to friends and family around the same age on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 meaning they would definitely not recommend it and 10 meaning they would definitely recommend it. 

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America's Best Brands, According to Each Generation

The brands listed in each category are the ones that each generation typed in the most and rated most highly. Baby Boomers sprint to Brooks for running sneakers, which comes in at number 1 on the list of the top 10 brands selected by that generation. Designer Kate Spade got it in the bag, leading Gen X’s top 10 list. No matter how you slice and dice it, kitchen appliance brand Ninja topped millennials’ list. And bottled water Ice Mountain, popularized by TikTok, summits the Gen Z section. 

But some categories were left entirely blank by Gen Z, offering a glimpse into how different their lifestyle habits are from older generations. Three examples include department stores, women’s clothing brands, and ovens. 

In department stores, Nordstrom was ranked by Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials—but no meaningful number of Gen Z participants listed a single department store, suggesting they may be less relevant to that generation. 

It’s been well-documented that Baby Boomers frequent department stores more than Gen Z. Historically, if Americans wanted to shop Prada, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton all in one place, they’d go to a department store like Neiman Marcus. Neil Saunders, Managing Director and Retail Analyst at GlobalData Retail, points out that over the last decade, those couture brands are opening their own stores elsewhere. “Every year, the segment has seen its market share, share of retail sales, decline,” says Saunders. 

In addition, a lot of department stores are in malls, and as millennials and Gen Z are doing more online shopping or buying second-hand, most malls are seeing declining foot traffic. In the U.S., an average of 40 malls closed every year between 2017 and 2022, according to Capital One Shopping Research. 

Rather than buying everything in one store like a department store, Gen Z tends to hit up a mix of high-end and budget stores to buy different brands only sold at those places, such as shopping directly at Michael Kors, Coach, or Zara—“the ultimate day-traders,” as Jeff Fromm, author of Marketing to Gen Z and Marketing to Millennials, puts it. They are also less loyal to a particular designer brand than previous generations, says Fromm, and more interested in whatever clothes are worn by people they follow on social media. He adds that Gen Z and millennials tend to spend more on experiences than things—especially travel, sporting events, concerts, and Instagrammable foods.

And those foods are store-or restaurant-bought; zero brands of ovens appear in the Gen Z section of the survey. While it’s true that Gen Z devours viral TikTok videos of recipes made in countertop appliances like air fryers and Instant Pot, Saunders points out Gen Z is spending more time eating takeout from fast-casual restaurants than cooking meals in an oven. They have access to DoorDash, Uber Eats, and a whole menu of fast delivery apps that older generations didn’t have when they were younger. 

But Jack Curran, Senior Analyst and Team Lead at IBISWorld–which published a 2026 report on household appliance manufacturing in the U.S.—wrote to TIME in an email that any gap might have more to do with homeownership rates: “Only about 25% of Gen Z owns their own homes, so about 75% of the generation isn’t responsible for purchasing their own ovens and other large appliances. For the most part, if you rent an apartment, you just use whatever appliances are already there.”

But Gen Z isn’t the only generation that appreciates fast food, and all the generations agreed on their appreciation of one brand: Chick-fil-A. 

See all of the survey results below:

With less than a week until Election Day, the Trump administration is ramping up efforts to shape the outcomes, prompting concerns that the midterm elections could face unprecedented interference by federal authorities.

In recent days, Trump officials have sued to potentially block the certification of a Senate race in Alaska, threatened election officials in California with jail time, and implied that the outcome in a Senate race in Minnesota couldn’t be trusted if the Republican didn’t win. Trump’s allies have also been urging the President to potentially take drastic measures, including declaring martial law to seize ballots.

Election officials in dozens of states are preparing for a wide range of possible interference on Tuesday when millions of voters will cast ballots, as well as in the days that follow as the votes are counted, the final batches of mail-in ballots come in and the election outcomes are certified.

The prospect of so many challenges has led to intense efforts by voting rights groups, election officials and teams of lawyers to be ready to respond to election meddling anywhere in the country.

Here’s how the Trump Administration could potentially interfere in each step of the election process—and how state and local officials, and various outside groups, are preparing for each scenario:

Polls open for in-person voting

Election workers are preparing for possible federal interference both inside and outside polling places on Tuesday.

Over the past few months, officials from the Trump Administration have given vague answers when asked if the Administration might try to deploy federal agents to the polls. Federal laws explicitly prohibit military or federal officials from stationing troops or armed men where elections are held in an attempt to interfere with a federal election. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine assured a Democratic senator in late August that the military had “no plan” to be deployed to polling locations during the midterm elections. Yet Trump has declined to rule out measures such as declaring a federal emergency on Election Day or sending ICE agents to the polls, telling TIME in an interview in September that he didn’t “rule anything out” at this point. 

At least three lawsuits have been filed to preemptively block ICE agents from being deployed to polling sites on Election Day. According to one of the lawsuits, at least one county sheriffs’ office in Colorado has already been cooperating with ICE and conducted “warrant checks at polling locations” this year. 

Along with the prospect of ICE agents conducting immigration enforcement, election officials have also expressed concern that the federal government might try other ways to disrupt polling places, citing voter fraud allegations as a premise. For months, the Administration has been involved in a legal fight with dozens of states over allegations that noncitizens are on their voter rolls. Election experts say voter fraud is incredibly rare. 

In some local communities, there are indications that federal agents showing up at polling locations could sow chaos at the polls. Virginia’s Arlington County stated in its preemptive legal filing against federal agents at the polls that the county had developed plans regarding “whether and how to make arrests, and any prosecutorial response or civil legal actions that might be necessary.”

“Arlington has never before needed to prepare for these threat scenarios,” the filing adds. When reached for a statement, the Arlington County government says the local police department remains in contact with election officials and is prepared to respond to any reported incidents.

Polls close and ballot counting begins

As polling stations close Tuesday evening, local election officials and voting rights groups are bracing for the prospect of federal officials possibly seizing election materials and voting machines. In January, the FBI raided the Fulton County election office in Georgia and seized election materials in connection with the 2020 election. In May, a federal judge ruled that the federal government could continue to retain the ballots. The FBI has not announced any wrongdoing stemming from the investigation.

“The lesson of Fulton County was that you have to be ready to be in court literally in minutes,” Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action, tells TIME. Eisen has been working closely with voting rights groups as well as local and state election officials in multiple states to prepare for any federal interference in next week’s elections. That includes being ready to immediately file lawsuits as soon as any federal officials try to seize any ballots or voting machines.

Other legal scholars are also encouraging judges to consider alternative solutions if federal authorities seek to retain election materials. Rick Hasen, a law professor and director of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, published a white paper urging judges who might see warrant applications for ballot seizure to consider ordering copies of the ballot to allow the election certification process to continue. 

Waiting for the last batches of mail-in ballots

Many mail-in votes won’t arrive until days after Election Day. Some will be from members of the military stationed overseas. The fight over who can receive mail-in ballots, and which mail-in ballots should be counted, has been underway for most of Trump’s second term.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order requiring states to work with the United States Postal Services to establish lists of verified voters and asking USPS to withhold mail ballots from anyone not on the lists. The executive order was quickly met with a flurry of lawsuits, which resulted in a preliminary injunction blocking the USPS from enforcing any new rules in response to Trump’s order. 

But election officials are still preparing for the possibility that some federal officials may try to get in the way of mail-in ballots being counted. On Monday, the DOJ asked the state of Washington to not count ballots from more than 400 voters whom it suspects to be noncitizens, as more than 1 million ballots have already been cast. 

Even with the federal effort on hold, state governments have pressed ahead with new rules that are already pushing ballot rejection rates higher. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections implemented a new rule that requires voters to use at least three different envelopes to deliver their ballots and copies of their ID. Failure to seal any of the three envelopes would result in the ballot being rejected. So far, the state is already seeing an uptick in the ballot rejection rate compared to the previous election cycle, from 2.6% to 3.1% statewide, according to local media outlets.

Certifying the election results

After all the votes are tabulated, county officials will begin certifying the election results. Although each state has its own rules on raising and resolving a challenge from county officials, certifying the election results is a mandatory duty. According to the Campaign Legal Center, if an official delays or refuses to certify results, state officials and courts can step in to compel certification. State officials can also pursue criminal or civil penalties to hold local officials accountable. 

On Thursday, the Justice Department preemptively sued the state government of Alaska to block the certification of its closely-watched Senate race if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The department accused the state of failing to “protect the integrity of the election” by allowing independent candidate Dan J. Sullivan on the ballot. 

“The DOJ attempting to intervene at this late stage is entirely against department policy, as there is no legitimate enforcement of federal law here, and it raises serious concerns about political interference,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “I cannot recall an administration ever attempting to stop the certification of an election — and certainly not 11 days before polls close.” 

Various election officials expect that Alaska won’t be the only state that says a certification challenge. During the 2020 election, President Trump sought to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to undo the state’s certification of Joe Biden’s win and “find 11,780 votes”—the number needed to overturn his loss in Georgia. Trump’s allies also led a pressure campaign, meeting with lawmakers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona in an attempt to overturn the election results, according to the investigation by the bipartisan January 6 committee.

Correction, Oct. 28

The original version of this story misstated Norm Eisen's title. He is the co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action, not its executive director.

Endurance sports are having a moment. Run clubs, marathons, and ultramarathons have never been more popular. In North America, ultramarathon finishes have roughly tripled since 2010, exceeding 150,000 runners last year, according to UltraRunning magazine. 

I understand the appeal. I spent years competing in some of the world’s most difficult endurance races, finding satisfaction and eventually a professional career in seeing how far I could push myself. But as more runners test their limits, I hope they’ll also ask themselves what they need those achievements to prove. For me, winning became a way to feel worthy of love. Every finish line offered reassurance that lasted only until I started worrying about the next race. 

It took losing my professional running career to understand why I needed that reassurance so badly. The story began long before I laced up a pair of shoes and entered a race. 

Divorce and my parents’ own troubled upbringings made my childhood difficult. As an adult, I can now see that my parents were unable to provide the safe, nurturing, and stable environment a kid deserves. 

My young mind came to a conclusion that many children do: I must not be good enough the way that I am. Love, attention, and care, I believed, were all things that you had to earn. 

As a teenager, I was desperate for the attention I rarely received at home. My grades were good, but not scholarship level; I was on the cross-country team and acted in school plays, but was never the standout star in either. 

Despite my best efforts, nothing worked. That is, until I found success in ultrarunning. 

At 15 years old, I watched my mother train and complete her first marathon. I was mesmerized. Maybe I could win her affection by doing what I’d seen her do. 

Later that year, I crossed the finish line of the San Diego Rock n’ Roll Marathon. I loved the challenge, but I wanted more. Within a few years, I was running my first 50-mile ultramarathon. As part of my senior project, I pledged to run 100 miles around my high school track while fundraising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in honor of a friend who was battling cancer. 

The ensuing media coverage was much more than I expected. To be honest, I loved the attention. Suddenly I felt seen by my mom. Again, I wanted more. 

At 19, I finished Badwater, a 135-mile race across Death Valley in July. A year later, I flew out to Minnesota and completed the Arrowhead 135, in which I pulled a sled across the frozen landscape for nearly 54 hours. By age 20, I had attempted the Barkley Marathons for the first time, a race so difficult that in its 40-year history, only 20 people had ever officially finished. It would take me two more attempts navigating heinous trails through the hillsides of Tennessee to ultimately finish the race in 2013, becoming finisher 13.

Soon I was flying across the world, competing in 200-mile races, and living the life of a professional trail runner. It was everything I could have hoped for: the attention, the praise, the pre-race interviews, and the post-race adulation. And yet a part of me knew that if I didn’t win every race I entered, the worthlessness that I’d kept at bay for so long would drown me. 

In 2018, that tidal wave finally came crashing over me. I had been diagnosed with a congenital bicuspid valve in my heart, and the resulting aortic aneurysm meant open-heart surgery. 

Just like that, my professional running career was over, and with it went my path to validation. I had lived my whole life up to that point working for my worth; it was never inherent. If I couldn’t achieve results, who was I? Did I even exist? How could I be loved without having earned anything? 

I spent the next five years dismantling my own self-worth from sport through therapy. The first and most pressing thing I had to face was the threat of suicide and self-harm. Running, it turns out, was protective of the deep-seated worthlessness I had developed from childhood. 

Through intensive dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), medication, and an inpatient program, I curbed the more life-threatening aspects. DBT taught me awareness and the skills of emotional regulation. Later, lifespan integration and internal family systems therapy helped bring the roots of my childhood trauma to light and ultimately helped me place the hurt and shame back to their origin with my parents. 

Slowly, I began to develop the understanding that I could be enough without having to achieve.

This lesson was never screamed at me. I was never explicitly told that I wasn’t enough. Instead, this anxiety whispered, quietly and convincingly, within me. It was the shaking hands of my 15-year-old self racing his heart out for the love of an absent parent. It was my 19-year-old self, slapping himself to keep going and push harder up the climb because some nebulous time or position would merit the love I never felt. 

Through therapy, I came to realize I’d been fighting the wrong fight all along, and my relationship with running changed. After a full recovery from my heart surgery, I was able to begin running again, though not at the same level as I’d done before. In spite of the slower times, I was still able to get out into nature and, more importantly, spend time with my wife, whose running career was taking off. 

I could hear my internal voices more clearly than ever and separate myself from it all a bit more. Eventually, I hired a running coach who, in addition to my wife, helped support me entering into shorter distance events that I’d eschewed early in my career. Not being a short-distance specialist, I’d been afraid to enter races I probably couldn’t win. Now I tried them anyway, and I had fun. 

I realized I didn’t have to win a race to enjoy it or find value in it. I was finally enjoying running without needing it to be directly tied to my success. 

Looking back on my career and with the perspective of both age and a tremendous amount of work, I’ve asked myself if I could have reached the same heights without that feeling that I need to win to be worthy of love. 

Perhaps, and perhaps not; I’m less interested in that answer. 

What I’d like to do is go back to my younger self and be there for every track meet, every race, no matter how well I performed. I’d tell myself, “I love you no matter what happens here today. There is nothing to prove. This is just a race.” 

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988.

French soccer captain and Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé has apologized to China for calling Mao Zedong a “dictator,” a comment that prompted fierce criticism and institutional reprisals.

“My comment was ill-judged,” Mbappé said in a statement in three languages. “I apologize to everyone my words have upset.”

In a video clip from the French talk show “The Bridge” posted on Monday, Mbappé had referred to Mao as “some guy—I think he’s a Chinese dictator” as he described a meme in which his face was photoshopped onto a picture of the late founder and chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. The clip was behind-the-scenes footage from a podcast filmed in March, the podcast said. It has since been removed from the show’s social media accounts. “The Bridge” also apologized to Chinese fans, as well as to Mbappé.

The meme is part of an internet trend where soccer fans have superimposed Mbappé’s face onto pictures of military and political leaders as a play on Mbappé’s nickname “the dictator,” referring to the Real Madrid player’s perceived authority and influence over football clubs and the media. Even Mbappé’s French teammate Ousmane Dembélé made a joke about the moniker during the 2026 World Cup, referring to Mbappé as Mobut after Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who ruled the Democratic Republic of Congo for three decades.

Mbappé told French magazine L’Equipe last month that he found some of the memes funny, but that others demonstrated “a lack of political and human awareness.”

“To be compared to people who murder others, or who have made millions and millions of people miserable … I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that in my life,” he said.

In the clip shared by The Bridge, Mbappé was asked which meme he finds funniest, and he pointed to the one featuring Mao.

Mbappé’s “dictator” label, however, triggered sharp rebuke in China. Several Chinese broadcasters suspended coverage related to Mbappé and Spanish soccer league LaLiga, while some brands pulled ads that featured the sports star. A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, before Mbappé’s apology, that “words and deeds that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be met with opposition from all sectors of Chinese society.”

Parody of Chinese leaders is politically sensitive in China, not least mockery of Mao, who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and ruled the country till his death in 1976.

Many international scholars have described Mao as an authoritarian leader, pointing to his centralized rule, political purges, and aggressive state campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Historians estimate that tens of millions of people died during Mao’s rule as a result of famine and violence. But within China, many view him as a revolutionary figure who unified the country and transformed a largely agrarian society into an independent nation. While official accounts have condemned the Cultural Revolution as a “grave blunder,” those same accounts argue that Mao’s lifetime contributions to the Chinese revolution outweighed his mistakes. The Chinese Constitution describes the state as the “people’s democratic dictatorship,” defined as a proletarian dictatorship.

“During a recent interview, I reacted to an image of myself,” Mbappé said in his apology. “I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world. … This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”

Past sensitivity

Parodies of political figures have incurred anger and sanctions before. In April 2015, CCTV suspended TV presenter Bi Fujian after a private dinner video that showed him mocking Mao while singing a revolutionary opera was leaked online. In July 2017, Chinese social media platforms also restricted references to Winnie-the-Pooh after internet users compared the character to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In August, artist Gao Zhen was sentenced to three years in prison for “infringing upon the reputation of heroes” because he had made satirical sculptures of Mao, including a 2009 statue called Mao’s Guilt that depicts the late leader kneeling in repentance. Gao, who was based in the U.S., was arrested in August 2024 while visiting family in China.

International sports brands and associations have also come under fire in China over remarks deemed politically offensive.

In October 2019, China paused sponsorship deals with the National Basketball Association after Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey posted online in support of protests in Hong Kong, which Beijing characterizes as separatist and seditious. CCTV suspended broadcasts of NBA games for a year.

Canceled contracts

Mbappé’s comments may already have cost him.

China’s largest dairy producer, Mengniu, said it would cease its partnerships with Mbappé, as did cheesemaker Shanghai Milkground Food Tech and beverage giant Eastroc Beverage, also known as Dongpeng. The companies said they had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards words or behavior that offend the feelings of the Chinese public.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, Mbappé’s Dongpeng and Mengniu contracts were worth approximately 50 million yuan (€6.7 million) combined. Dongpeng had run adverts featuring AI-generated images of Mbappé drinking its sports drink during the 2026 World Cup and sold bottles of its Bushuila electrolyte drink with Mbappé on its packaging. After Mbappé’s comments and prior to their statements, the two consumer brands saw their stock fall.

Global brands including Dior, Rimowa, Nike, Hublot, and On Running also removed promotional content featuring Mbappé from their accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Chinese media reported.

China’s state television CCTV suspended broadcasts of all matches and events involving Mbappé and LaLiga, and pulled advertisements featuring Mbappé, Chinese media reported on Tuesday. The state broadcaster said in a statement after Mbappé’s apology that it hoped he “will genuinely learn a lesson from this” and “thoroughly correct” his mistake.

LaLiga President Javier Tebas said on Tuesday that he met with the Chinese Ambassador in Spain to “seek solutions that ​allow us to overcome this episode.”

“Our commitment is to keep working together so that an individual episode does not harm the important advances achieved nor affect the millions of ⁠Chinese fans who follow our competitions,” Tebas said in a post on X. “A relationship built over so many years cannot be damaged by a ​single incident,” he added in another post.

Online backlash

Mbappé, once a fan favorite in China where he is affectionately nicknamed “Guigui” after a perceived resemblance to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, now faces a firestorm online.

Calls for brands to terminate partnerships with Mbappé and boycott the player were among the top trending topics on Weibo. Some users accused Mbappé of profiting off the lucrative Chinese sports markets and his millions of fans in the country while disrespecting their national sentiments.

Weibo and Rednote, also known as Xiaohongshu, also appeared to have restricted Mbappé on their platforms, with notices that said his accounts were “banned” or “muted” for violating community guidelines.

In an article titled “Mbappé scores an own goal in China,” state media outlet China Daily reported that the backlash from Chinese fans has “threatened his lucrative commercial relationships and offered a sharp reminder of the limits of celebrity influence.”

Several Chinese news outlets condemned Mbappé’s remarks without restating them. Soccer news outlet Dongqiudi said in a statement, “Kylian Mbappé made inappropriate remarks about China in an interview. As these remarks are likely to hurt China and its people, we cannot translate them.”

“What did he say? Many Chinese would rather not repeat it,” state-linked Global Times said in a video commentary. “The message from Chinese consumers is clear: Respect is not optional; one doesn't get to profit from China while disrespecting it. Not a chance.”

Another article from state-linked newspaper Guangming Daily read, “Insulting China’s late great leader is unacceptable! Eating Chinese food and then smashing the Chinese pot? Mbappe is not worthy!”

“However good your football skills are, you cannot trample on fundamental limits,” it said.

Censorship concerns

Outside of China, some have pushed back against the backlash.

French social media users criticized Mbappé for retreating on his comments. Marc Julienne, director of the Asia Centre at French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told Le Parisien that describing Mao as a “dictator” reflects a consensus among Western historians, though it is a characterization that remains taboo in China—which, Julienne added, Mbappé may not have realized.

The U.S. House Select Committee on China posted on Tuesday that Mbappé “should not apologize for calling Mao Zedong a dictator. Mao was a dictator, and by orders of magnitude, he did more harm to the Chinese people than a comment from a soccer player ever could.”

“The real disgrace,” the committee said, “is the companies rushing to apologize so they can continue to do business in China.”