California voters approved Proposition 50, according to the Associated Press.
Prop. 50 asked voters to approve a temporary redistricting plan that would redraw the state’s congressional map to make it more favorable for Democrats. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the proposition, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, is a way to counter Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw their congressional map, targeting seats held by Democrats.
In San Diego, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa represents the 48th Congressional District, which covers much of East and North County. Issa has represented parts of the region through multiple redistricting cycles, but the balance of registered voters in his district will change a lot in favor of Democrats since Prop. 50 passed.
Four other Republican-held districts in the state — in Tahoe, the Central Valley, Riverside County and the Bay Area — are targeted by Prop 50.
Live election results: California approved Proposition 50
Israel hands over bodies of 45 Palestinians after Hamas returns the remains of 3 soldiers
Israel handed over the bodies of 45 Palestinians on Monday, the Red Cross said, a day after militants returned the remains of three hostages. Israeli officials identified the three as soldiers who were killed in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza.
The exchange marked another step forward for the tenuous, U.S.-brokered ceasefire intended to end the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas.
Since the truce took effect on Oct. 10, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 20 hostages, with eight now remaining in Gaza.
For each Israeli hostage returned, Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians. With Monday’s return, the bodies of 270 Palestinians have been handed back since the start of the ceasefire.
The Red Cross said it had facilitated the transfer of 45 Palestinian bodies to Gaza on Monday morning. Zaher al-Wahidi, a spokesperson at the Gaza Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that Nasser Hospital received the bodies around noon.
Only 78 of the bodies returned so far have been identified, the ministry said. Forensic work is complicated by a lack of DNA testing kits in Gaza, it added. The ministry posts photos of the remains online, in the hope that families will recognize them.
Ukrainian drones reach deep inside Russia as battle for key city rages on
Ukrainian long-range drones attacked an industrial plant around 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) inside Russia, local officials said Tuesday, while Ukraine’s army remained locked in an intense battle to hold back a Russian push on the key city of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Two drones targeted an industrial facility in Sterlitamak, a city in Russia’s Bashkortostan region, regional Gov. Radiy Habirov said in an online statement. He didn’t specify what facility was targeted but he said that both drones were shot down. There were no casualties, and the facility was operating normally, he said.
Meanwhile, the city administration reported an explosion at the Sterlitamak Petrochemical Plant caused the plant’s water treatment facility to partially collapse, adding that the cause of the explosion was not known. The plant, which makes rubber and aviation fuel, is not known to have been attacked before.
Ukraine’s daring strikes deep inside Russia using domestically produced drones have embarrassed Moscow, with officials being unforthcoming about any damage, and unnerved Russians. Ukraine has taken aim at manufacturing plants, oil refineries and military logistics hubs in a bid to disrupt Russia’s war effort almost four years after Moscow launched an all-out invasion.
Federal judges order Trump admin to continue SNAP benefits.
Regular funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits was due to run out on Saturday, Nov. 1. “The well has run dry,” the Agriculture Department said.
But rulings by judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, issued within minutes of each other on Oct. 31, ordered the department to use $5.25 billion in contingency funds to continue SNAP.
Israel plans to approve nearly 2,000 new illegal settlement units in occupied West Bank
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.
He did not specify when the council will meet, Israeli Channel 12 reported.
The announcement came a day after Israel approved the building of 1,300 settler homes in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of occupied East Jerusalem.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.
Smotrich said Israeli authorities have approved nearly 30,000 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank this year, describing it as an "unprecedented achievement" for his government.
The Palestinian group Hamas denounced the Israeli move as a "dangerous escalation in the policy of Judaisation and settlement expansion targeting Palestinian land deep inside the West Bank."
"These settlement plans constitute a blatant violation of international law and United Nations resolutions that criminalise settlement construction," it said in a statement.
Texas judges can now refuse to perform same-sex marriages
The Texas Supreme Court added the one-sentence comment to the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct on Oct. 24, potentially creating hurdles for LGBTQ+ people seeking to marry, especially in rural areas.
Further, the comment could play a role in a federal lawsuit vying to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage in 2015, according to a report by Dallas NPR station KERA.
The high court’s alteration to the rules appears to come out of a legal dispute that arose when the State Commission on Judicial Conduct sanctioned a Waco judge who refused to marry LGBTQ+ couples while continuing to officiate ceremonies for straight ones, KERA reports.
A county judge in North Texas subsequently sued to challenge the sanction, setting up the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to ask the Texas Supreme Court whether it could create an exemption in the Code of Judicial Conduct.
Jason Mazzone, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign law professor who’s analyzed the North Texas case, told KERA the high court’s action may resolve the individual judge’s claim. However, he said LGBTQ+ couples turned away by judges still could sue to challenge their action.
Democrats Fume After GOP Shuts Them Out Of Briefing On Trump's Military Strikes
Senate Democrats are furious that the Trump administration held a briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday about U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and only invited Republican senators to attend.
“What the administration did in the last 24 hours is corrosive not only to our democracy but downright dangerous for our national security,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Thursday, warning that the move set a “troubling precedent” that had trampled on the longheld bipartisan tradition of bipartisan briefings of Congress on U.S. military activities abroad.
“They know they screwed up,” Warner added of Trump’s White House. “And where in the hell were my Republican senators, whom we have worked on everything [with] in a bipartisan fashion? Why didn’t they say, ‘Isn’t this a little bit weird they don’t have any Democrats in the room?’”
The U.S. military killed 14 people in missile strikes against alleged drug cartel boats in the Eastern Pacific earlier this week, part of nearly a dozen attacks on vessels off the coast of Venezuela in recent months. Critics have called the use of force unconstitutional since it lacks congressional authorization. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pressed for more information about the strikes, including their legal justification.
Trump’s Shutdown Layoffs Hit Blind Workers Who Help The Blind
Christine Faltz Grassman was stunned when she received a layoff notice from the Department of Education on Oct. 11, 10 days after being furloughed due to the government shutdown.
Grassman, who is blind, helps oversee a federal program that offers government contracting opportunities to blind vendors. She wondered how she would cover her mortgage and bills — and who would make sure the government is following a New Deal-era law meant to boost employment among blind Americans.
Her shock quickly turned to anger as she thought about the Trump administration’s treatment of workers with disabilities.
“The mentality of these people is if we have a disability and we have a job, we’re taking it away from an able-bodied person,” said Grassman, 56. “It’s not enough that I went to an Ivy League school, that I went to law school and can run circles around half the Cabinet… It doesn’t matter, because we’re blind.”
White House fires entire commission that reviews designs for federal buildings
The White House has fired six members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on design plans for monuments, memorials, coins and federal buildings. The seven member commission is made up of experts in architecture, art, urban and landscape design. Since its creation in 1910, the commission has reviewed plans for everything from Arlington National Cemetery to Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
As first reported by The Washington Post, the commissioners who were terminated are Bruce Redman Becker, Peter D. Cook, Lisa E. Delplace, William J. Lenihan, Justin Garrett Moore and vice chair Hazel Ruth Edwards. The chair position, now vacant, was held by Billie Tsien, one of the architects working on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Lenihan confirmed in an email to NPR the six were terminated "effective immediately."
In an email to NPR, the White House said it is "preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump's America First Policies."
The commissioners would have advised President Trump on his anticipated White House ballroom and his plans for a monument similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which he says will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. In an email to NPR, architect Bruce Redman Becker, one of the commissioners who was fired, wrote that "Neither project has been submitted for review yet."
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