Monday Morning News Roundup 11/02/2026

• Election 2026: The Final Stretch
• What the Polls Say Heading Into Tuesday
• Halloween Weekend Violence
• Falling Back, Possibly for the Last Time (Probably Not)
• North Korea Blamed for the Largest Crypto Heist in History
• Germany: Gen Z Protests Turn Violent
• Russia and Ukraine: Bracing for the Worst Day
• U.S. Warns Russia of a Planned Attack in Moscow
• Science: An AI-Designed Virus Goes Into a Human. What Could Go Wrong?
• The Bottom Line

Good morning, and welcome to this week’s Monday Morning News Roundup.

Election Day is tomorrow, and the final weekend of the campaign delivered one of the strangest twists of the cycle: a Democratic congresswoman endorsing the Republican in one of the most important Senate races in the country.

Elsewhere, Halloween weekend was marred by gun violence, the clocks fell back while a bill to stop them from ever changing again ran out of time, North Korea was blamed for the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, and young Germans took to the streets.

§Election 2026: The Final Stretch

Michigan Democrats planned to spend the Sunday before the election showing unity. Instead, they spent it watching their former Senate candidate campaign for the other side.

According to the Associated Press, Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the August Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers after attending a Detroit church service with him. The two sat together in the pews at Perfecting Church while El-Sayed campaigned a few miles away at a different church alongside South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

Stevens had been scheduled to appear with El-Sayed that same day. That changed after a public fight over Israel and an outside group’s ad escalated in the final days of the race. Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel, had demanded that El-Sayed condemn an ad by an independent left-wing group linking U.S. support for Israel to high grocery prices. El-Sayed said the ad wasn’t his and that he did not agree with it, but accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.” Dingell, who organized the joint appearance, said she pulled Stevens from the event because it “had become way too distracting.”

Stevens explained her decision bluntly. “Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” she said in her announcement video. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”

Standing beside Rogers, she insisted, “I’m not turning my back on Democrats. It is this one vote.”

The fallout was immediate. Her longtime chief of staff resigned, and more staff members were expected to follow. “We are shocked and heartbroken,” the aide said. State party chair Curtis Hertel said the endorsement “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about.”

What makes the endorsement surprising is not just the timing. Only days earlier, Stevens had publicly reaffirmed that she would vote for the Democratic nominee. Her fiancé had already told The Detroit News that he planned to vote for Rogers, but Stevens herself had gone on CNN to restate her support for El-Sayed.

Whether it matters is the real question. Stevens beat El-Sayed in the primary in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, and neighboring Oakland County, drawing support from Black and Jewish voters, two groups Democrats are counting on to turn out. Early voting has been underway since October 24, so many ballots were cast before this weekend’s blowup. And the seat, held by retiring Democrat Gary Peters, is one Democrats almost certainly need to keep if they want control of the Senate.

An endorsement from a losing primary candidate rarely moves an election by itself. But in a race decided at the margins, a split-screen of the party’s former candidate swaying to gospel music beside the Republican nominee is not the closing image Democrats wanted.

§What the Polls Say Heading Into Tuesday

On paper, the Michigan race looked like it was moving in El-Sayed’s direction. In Yahoo News’ final look at the polls, 11 of 12 October polls showed El-Sayed ahead by 1 to 7 points, with new CBS Detroit and CNN surveys both giving him a 7-point lead. Every one of those polls, however, was taken before Stevens crossed party lines.

Nationally, Democrats hold a lead of nearly 9 points on the generic congressional ballot, a margin that has held steady for a month. For comparison, Democrats led by 7.2 points at this stage in 2018 and went on to gain 41 House seats. This time, they need to gain just three to win the House, although newly redrawn congressional maps across the South could limit how many seats a large polling lead translates into.

The Senate is tighter. Democrats hold 47 seats and need 51 for control, since a 50-50 split would give Vice President JD Vance the tie-breaking vote. Polls show Democrats competitive or leading in several Republican-held seats, including Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kansas, while their own seats in Georgia and New Hampshire appear increasingly secure.

Overshadowing it all is President Trump’s approval rating. According to the Silver Bulletin polling average, about 60% of Americans disapprove of his job performance, compared with about 37% who approve. On the cost of living, which voters rank as their top issue, 70% disapprove.

The usual caution applies: polls are snapshots, not predictions, and they have been wrong before. We’ll know a lot more by Wednesday morning.

§Halloween Weekend Violence

On the night before Halloween, a Spirit Halloween store at the Solano Town Center mall in Fairfield, California, was packed with last-minute shoppers when gunfire broke out around 8:30 p.m.

According to a report on Yahoo News, one person was killed and six others were taken to the hospital, three of them in critical condition. One witness said his wife heard roughly seven shots before people fled into the parking lots and deeper into the mall. As of the report, police had not released a description of the shooter, who remained at large, or confirmed whether more than one person was involved. No motive had been identified.

SWAT teams searched the mall, including a theater where about a dozen people were watching, of all things, “Halloween.” One moviegoer said an officer in full tactical gear stormed in with a flashlight, asking whether anyone with a gun had come inside. Her partner said his mind went straight to the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. “I told her I don’t know what’s going to happen when we walk out of here, just remember ‘run, hide, fight’ and I love you just in case.”

The FBI sent its Evidence Response Team to help Fairfield police.

The next night, gunfire erupted outside the Magic City Classic in Birmingham, Alabama, the annual rivalry game between Alabama A&M and Alabama State and the country’s largest HBCU football game.

CNN reported that one person was killed and eight others were wounded when shots rang out around 7:50 p.m. on Graymont Avenue near Legion Field, where vendors had set up along the street. Police recovered multiple firearms and detained one person for questioning. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin later said the violence involved two separate shootings, and Police Chief Michael Pickett called them “two senseless acts of violence.” Nearly 70,000 fans attended the game, which Alabama A&M won 31-28.

It was the second straight weekend of gunfire outside a college football game. Yahoo Sports noted that 11 people were shot on October 24 after a fight broke out following Florida A&M’s homecoming game in Tallahassee.

Fairfield and Birmingham were not isolated incidents. The Associated Press counted at least six people dead and dozens injured in mass shootings across the country over the holiday weekend. Two different cities, two different settings, one shopping mall and one football celebration, and the same outcome: families who went out for a night of fun and came home to tragedy, or didn’t come home at all.

§Falling Back, Possibly for the Last Time (Probably Not)

If you woke up feeling a little more rested yesterday, you can thank the end of daylight saving time. Clocks fell back an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, and CBS News explains that sunrise and sunset both moved an hour earlier. In Boston, for example, sunset went from 5:39 p.m. on Saturday to 4:37 p.m. on Sunday. Daylight saving time returns on March 14, 2027.

The more interesting story is what’s happening in Washington. The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent while letting states opt out entirely, passed the House in July. It has been stuck in the Senate ever since. President Trump, who supports the bill, accused Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton of holding it up and even posted what he said was Cotton’s cellphone number, urging people to call him. Cotton responded by pointing out that the country has tried permanent daylight saving time before, only to reverse course “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter.”

That leads us back to tomorrow’s election. Any bill that hasn’t passed by early January expires when the newly elected Congress takes office. If the Senate doesn’t act, the effort starts over from scratch. So the clock is running out on the bill to stop changing the clocks.

§North Korea Blamed for the Largest Crypto Heist in History

On Thursday, hackers drained about $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, much of it in about 20 minutes. On Saturday, the FBI formally attributed the theft to North Korea, identifying the state-sponsored hacking unit it calls “TraderTraitor.”

According to BleepingComputer, Binance traced the breach to a compromised laptop belonging to one of its DevOps engineers, which gave the attackers access to internal systems and let them submit unauthorized withdrawals across ten blockchains. The FBI says the hackers are converting the stolen funds primarily into Ethereum and expects further laundering through decentralized finance platforms and instant swap services. The bureau published a list of 628 cryptocurrency addresses linked to the theft and asked exchanges and other platforms to block transactions tied to them.

The group is believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, the same North Korean operation blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025 and, going back further, the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. Binance told NBC News that it has already replaced 90% of the stolen assets using company funds and has promised to make customers whole. Withdrawals began reopening Sunday.

Binance customers may get their money back. The bigger concern is where the stolen money ends up. For a heavily sanctioned government, a single laptop compromise just produced billions of dollars, and researchers have long warned that crypto theft helps fund North Korea’s government and weapons programs.

§Germany: Gen Z Protests Turn Violent

The wave of youth-led protests sweeping Europe this year reached Germany on Saturday. According to Reuters, the campaign group “Gen Z regelt,” or “Gen Z takes charge,” organized demonstrations in 34 cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg.

The group’s demands center on young people’s futures: more investment in schools and healthcare, relief from rising living costs, and opposition to compulsory military service. “We are here today to fight for peace and freedom, rather than for war and coercion,” spokesperson Lina Friedrich said in Berlin. An 18-year-old scheduled to speak in Munich addressed Chancellor Friedrich Merz directly: “We will continue to exercise our fundamental right to assemble until you stop ignoring us.”

Turnout fell well short of the 182,000 participants organizers had expected, and authorities described most of the demonstrations as peaceful. But late Saturday in Frankfurt, hooded rioters looted at least two stores, smashed shop windows, and threw Molotov cocktails at emergency services. In Hamburg, barricades were set on fire. Germany’s federal interior ministry had warned beforehand that parts of the far-left extremist scene and groups linked to foreign extremist movements were trying to exploit the protests. Some businesses, including shops along Berlin’s luxury Kurfürstendamm boulevard, boarded up their windows ahead of time.

The frustration behind the movement is real. Germany has struggled to restart economic growth, and its pensions and public services are under growing strain as baby boomers retire. But as in France, where similar protests have descended into rioting, the images of looted stores risk drowning out the message organizers came to deliver.

§Russia and Ukraine: Bracing for the Worst Day

In his nightly video address Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s intelligence services had information that Russia was preparing new ballistic missile strikes. “We need the means to take out all this Russian evil,” he said, according to Reuters. “We are expecting relevant decisions.”

Zelenskyy again pressed Western allies for more air defense, specifically missiles for the U.S. Patriot system. He also praised Ukrainian long-range strikes that day that destroyed two Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers at a base in the Volgograd region, along with a launch site for Russian Iskander missiles.

The scale of what Ukraine faces is shaping how the U.S. Army prepares for future wars. Business Insider reports that Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, head of Multi-Domain Command Europe, has said American forces must be ready to process more than 1,500 potential targets a day while defending against as many as 1,200 incoming missiles and drones. Those estimates, he said, reflect “what we think Ukraine’s worst day is.”

That volume could overwhelm human analysts, which is why the Army is turning to artificial intelligence to sort battlefield data and recommend responses. Carpenter stressed that people will still make the final decisions. “The human is making the decision, the final call,” he said, adding that the goal “isn’t to replace those analysts” but to free them up for the hardest calls.

The phrase “humans in the loop” is reassuring. The harder question is how meaningful that loop remains when a system is generating recommendations faster than anyone could check them by hand, during the worst day of a war.

§U.S. Warns Russia of a Planned Attack in Moscow

In a reminder that some lines of communication remain open, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow warned Saturday of “a credible threat of a mass casualty event” that day at the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve, a popular imperial palace and park complex in southern Moscow. According to AFP, the embassy said it was coordinating with Russian authorities. Russia’s FSB security service confirmed it had received information from the United States about the preparation of a terrorist attack and said “appropriate work is underway.” The park was closed except to people leaving.

The embassy did not say who was behind the alleged plot. Washington has passed along similar warnings before, including in March 2024, weeks before an ISIS-K attack on a Moscow concert hall killed more than 100 people. This time, Moscow moved quickly to act on it.

§Science: An AI-Designed Virus Goes Into a Human. What Could Go Wrong?

Here is a sentence that sounds like the setup for a horror franchise: an artificial intelligence designed a virus, and a company injected it into a sick person.

That’s essentially what happened. According to TechRadar, San Francisco AI lab Radical Numerics announced in October that bacteriophages designed by its genome model, Omnii-1, were given to a patient with an antibiotic-resistant E. coli infection. The treatment was administered through a physician-led compassionate-use pathway authorized by the FDA. If the claim holds, it is the first time an AI-designed organism of any kind has been given to a person as medicine.

To be fair, the science behind it is not as reckless as it sounds. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and ignore human cells. Doctors have used them as therapy for more than a century, and the World Health Organization considers phage therapy broadly safe. Radical Numerics didn’t invent a virus from scratch, either. It used its model to rewrite the tail fiber of T7, a well-studied phage, which is the part the virus uses to latch onto bacteria. The patient’s infection had reportedly resisted not only antibiotics, but every available phage. Antimicrobial resistance was associated with roughly 4.7 million deaths in 2021, so the need for new options is real.

But a lot about this should make people uneasy.

Nobody outside the company knows whether the treatment worked. Radical Numerics has declined to describe the patient’s condition, outcome, hospital, or doctors, citing patient privacy. Its technical report is self-published and has not been peer-reviewed. The company has also said the treatment is proprietary and that it hopes to commercialize it. Harvard microbiologist Michael Baym, who wasn’t involved, said the result would be incredible if it works, but that his instinct is skepticism until the treatment is finished and the viruses can be properly examined.

Then there’s the problem nobody can engineer away. As TechRadar puts it, a model that can design viruses to order is, structurally, a model that can design viruses to order. The company says it is committed to biosafety, containment, and data-sharing measures. That’s the right thing to say. It is also exactly what you’d expect any company to say.

The patient was out of options, and nobody should begrudge a doctor for trying something new when nothing else has worked. But announcing a “world first” while withholding the results asks the public to trust a private company on faith. When the technology in question is AI writing the genetic code of living things, that trust should be earned through transparent, peer-reviewed results, not a press release.

§The Bottom Line

This week’s stories are about what happens when the stakes are high and the timing is unforgiving.

A congresswoman’s last-minute endorsement could shape control of the Senate. A bill to end the clock change is running out of time. Billions of dollars disappeared in 20 minutes. American soldiers are preparing for a flood of threats that could outpace human judgment. And a company is asking us to trust that the first AI-designed virus put into a human being was a good idea, without showing us how it turned out.

Tomorrow, voters get their say. Whatever your politics, make sure you’re one of them.

See you next Monday.