Good morning! We’re down to single digits now. This whole mess will be over in just eight days and more than 41 million votes have already been cast. President Biden will add his name to that list today when he votes early in his home state of Delaware.

If you’d like to get a head start on celebrating next week’s result (or crying over it), we’ve got some good news. McDonald’s ice cream machines can legally be fixed now.

WORLD

🌪️ Russia goes hog wild with anti-Western plans

Running the world’s 11th-largest economy while dodging fart jokes thrown at you by English-speaking children can’t be easy, but Russian President Vladimir Putin takes it all in stride.

Russia hosted the annual BRICS summit last week. The 36-member geopolitical and economic group was designed to counter Western influence. It's dominated by Russia, China, and India (a sort-of U.S. ally) but welcomed four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (or UAE, home to Dubai).

• (The Glorious Nation of) Kazakhstan refused Putin's invitation to join. Russia, not one to take it lying down, banned fruit and veggie imports from its southern neighbor.

• U.N. chief Antonio Guterres's presence at Putin's meeting drew some fire.

Owing to America's dominance of the global financial system, sending money around the world often involves U.S. banks. That's not ideal for a guy like Putin. So he wants the BRICS nations to build their own system free from U.S. control.

Meanwhile, Western leaders in the G7 group (the U.S. Canada, Japan, and the biggies of Europe) finalized a deal to loan Ukraine the $50 billion in interest earned on $250 billion of frozen Russian cash.

• How do things like this work? The Washington Post offers an interactive look at how the U.S. seized a $90 million Russian megayacht.

Elsewhere, North Korean soldiers have arrived in Ukraine to throw Russia the assist. South Korea might start shipping weapons to Ukraine in response. And Lithuania thinks it might be time for E.U. countries to send in the troops.

U.S. officials said Friday that viral videos of mail-in ballots being destroyed were Russian fakes.

• A Wall Street Journal story claimed Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin since 2022. Musk called the story "incredibly misleading."

GOVERNMENT

📱 Chinese hackers are upping their game. The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Friday that a Chinese espionage operation targeted cell phones used by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and associates of the Harris campaign. Officials aren’t sure about the damage but believe these "Salt Typhoon" hackers got away with call audio from a Trump staffer. In response, the Chinese embassy in D.C. said China toootally hates hacking and would never support such depravity.

⚓️ The totally-not-made-up-for-TV Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is assisting the FBI in its search for where recently leaked U.S. intel docs were printed. With leaks like this becoming more common, the government has tightened the reigns on printing classified info. As a result, investigators are getting close to identifying the source of the leak. So somebody's probably about to have a very bad week.

⚠️ Israel on Saturday launched its retaliation for an October 1 Iranian missile attack. The strike, Israel's largest-ever on Iran, hit Iran's missile production abilities and radar facilities. White House officials confirmed that the U.S. had no involvement and President Biden said he hopes this will mark “the end” of the back-and-forth. Next move: Iran.

POLITICS

🩹 Campaign photo op goes about as wrong as it could possibly go

Oops! U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce (D-MO) came out as an idiot last week when he accidentally shot a reporter in the arm via ricocheted shrapnel at a poorly set up campaign shooting event. Going to be tough for Luke to come back from that one…

Thankfully things haven't gotten quite that bad at the presidential level yet… well, at least not from the candidates themselves. But they are getting more negative as Election Day draws near.

• Trump said Harris is “guaranteed” to “Get us into a World War III,” while Harris said she wants to move past all this hate and division… days after calling Trump a fascist.

• On that note, extra security fences are up at the White House and the Capitol until sometime after the inauguration on January 20th.

The odds on political betting site Polymarket have swung in Donald Trump's favor. They give him a 65% chance of victory. But that swing was driven in part by one single gambler: some French dude who's casually got $28 million bet on Trump to win.

• The actual polls have also been kind to Trump. CNBC has him leading by 2% nationally and by 1% in the battleground states. The New York Times has him leading by 1%.

• Two pollsters, Emerson and TIPP, show a tie game nationally because you can’t pick the wrong candidate if you just say they’re tied.

• On the other hand, ABC News has Harris leading nationally by a solid 4%.

Kamala Harris will deliver her "closing argument" in a speech on Tuesday. She’ll do it on the same spot near the National Mall from which then-President Trump spoke on January 6, 2021. We’re sure that’s a total coincidence.

• President Biden, who's currently sporting a 39% approval rating, wants to campaign for Harris this week. The response from the VP's campaign? "We'll get back to you on that."

• Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz and firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) played Madden on Twitch yesterday.

• Michelle Obama gave an abortion-focused speech in Michigan on Saturday and urged men to consider women when they cast their vote next week.

Donald Trump took a break from the swing state grind to campaign in the city in which he spent the first 70 years of his life. His New York rally at Madison Square Garden featured full-time surrogate Elon Musk and a rare speech by former First Lady Melania Trump. Because this is 2024, Hulk Hogan, Dr. Phil, and RFK Jr. also spoke.

• Musk is putting his money where his mouth is, too. The outside organization he’s funding is reportedly knocking on over 100,000 doors every day via its 2,500 canvassers.

• Meanwhile, Republican VP nominee JD Vance is taking heat from gamers for his childhood choice of Magic: The Gathering deck.

Endorsements: Reporters at the LA Times and the Washington Post are furious that their newspapers’ respective owners broke with tradition and refused to allow official endorsements of Kamala Harris. Times editorial staffers keep quitting over the move and Post staffers are in open revolt. In related news, the Post lost $77 million in 2023. Much like newspapers themselves, these endorsements have faded from relevance in recent years.

• But Harris did win support from the New York Times and the Boston Globe, along with 1,000 “faith leaders” and, of course, Bad Bunny.

• Donald Trump received the support of several Muslim leaders in Michigan — a small but possibly critical demographic in the swing state. He’ll also appear on Wednesday at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin with legendary ex-Packers QB Brett Favre.

Over in the fight for Congress, The Economist's statistical model gives Democrats a 54% chance of winning back the House. That's down from 61% last week.

TRIVIA

The Trump and Harris campaigns are fighting for every hypothetically persuadable voter they can dig up in swing states right now. So the sizeable Native American populations in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina are getting some extra attention. But that hasn’t always been an option. In what year did Native Americans earn the right to vote?

Hint: Calvin Coolidge was president at the time.

BRIEFS

● It’s election season in more than just the United States. In Japan, the ruling conservative party held on -- though its majority in parliament took a big haircut. In the Republic of Georgia (northeast of Turkey), the pro-Russian ruling party won with 54% of the vote. But the pro-Europe opposition says the results were rigged and beset by violence.

● The U.K.'s King Charles III waited 73 years to become king before taking the throne aaand promptly getting cancer. But treatments are going well and he's set to return to a "normal" royal schedule (a breezy 300 events annually) early next year.

● Delta sued Crowdstrike for more than $500 million on Friday. The airline wants damages for the tech security provider's buggy software update that tanked millions of systems worldwide back in July.

QUOTE

ANSWER

Native Americans won the right to vote when President Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. At the time, tribal members were largely governed by their tribes (not paying income tax was probably nice). So courts ruled that they didn't fit the Constitution’s definition of citizens as people “subject to” U.S. laws. Not a citizen? Not a voter.

Some tribes opposed the move and saw it as an attack on tribal sovereignty. And it didn’t solve everything — the tribal fight for voting rights with more exclusionary states went on for decades. But, 100 years later, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are fighting for those votes