Texas shatters record for ballots cast during early voting in a midterm election

AUSTIN, Texas — Texans didn’t wait until Election Day to vote. More than 6.4 million ballots were cast through the end of the day Thursday, far outpacing the state’s previous record for early voting in a non-presidential election year. In 2018, 5.5 million Texans voted early in person.

The data are not broken down by party and does not include mail-in ballots. Friday is the last day of the early-voting period before Tuesday’s Election Day.

The heavy turnout comes as Texans decide on a closely watched Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, along with contests for governor and other statewide offices. Texas has seen an increase of 3 million registered voters since 2018, and now has more than 19 million registered voters.

But it’s clear that the main driver of this year’s turnout has been the Talarico-Paxton battle, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. More than $560 million has been spent on combined ad spending and reservations across the primary, runoff and general elections, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. It's now the most expensive Senate race in history.

—The Dallas Morning News

A Halloween display of a lynching in Brooklyn sparks an arrest, but was it harassment or art?

NEW YORK — An artist’s Halloween display showing a lynching in a tree outside his Brooklyn home was designed to symbolize how minorities are being abused in the U.S. — but the work outraged neighbors, and investigating cops charged Aaron Mealy with aggravated harassment, the Daily News has learned.

Mealy, a Black artist, explained his depiction of a hanging was meant to evoke anger about how Blacks were still treated in the U.S. The display, which included a noose, was found hanging from a tree on the sidewalk outside his home on Herkimer St. near Buffalo Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“Hey, still lynching n—-s in 2026,” the 35-year-old Mealy wrote on a paper sign posted on the tree the body was hanging from, according to police. “Happy Halloween.”

“This is art,” he added. His neighbors disagreed and called police, who arrested Mealy for aggravated harassment on Sunday. Mealy violated city law, which says a noose, “commonly exhibited as a symbol of racism and intimidation,” cannot be placed on property without the owner’s consent. The city owned the tree Mealy’s display was hanging from.

—New York Daily News

Man accused of engineering border tunnel found in Otay Mesa indicted in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — A man is facing federal charges in San Diego for allegedly designing and building a sophisticated cross-border tunnel found in Otay Mesa for the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, U.S. officials said.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted Luis Manuel Hernández, 60, on charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to construct or finance a cross-border tunnel, conspiring to use a cross-border tunnel to import controlled substances and conspiring to import controlled substances.

Mexico’s Security Cabinet reported the Oct. 15 arrest of Hernández in the Mexican state of Jalisco. He is also known as “El Ingeniero,” which translates to “The Engineer” in Spanish. Mexican authorities seized weapons, drugs and a vehicle during the operation.

“Hernandez engineered his own downfall,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement Thursday. The indictment alleges that Hernández was involved in building a 1,933-foot-long cross-border tunnel that was discovered inside a supposed discount store near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in late May.

—The San Diego Union-Tribune

Europe braces for more protests as cost-of-living anger grows

Thousands of people are expected to take to the streets in France, Germany and Italy on Friday and Saturday to protest high living costs, as frustration with governments expands across Europe. Police are also on alert in Spain for possible protests in central Madrid following a high-speed rail crash that killed 69 people on Wednesday.

The weekend will bring “a very high risk of public disorder, which will begin with protests during the day and continue well into the evening,” French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said at a press conference on Thursday. Some far-left groups are calling for gatherings to begin at 8 p.m. in many cities, he added, “with particularly violent messages calling for insurrection.”

Halloween, which falls on Saturday, could create cover for groups wanting to instigate violence, other officials cautioned.

Demonstrations have exploded across Europe in recent weeks, from Belgium and Portugal in the west to Serbia and Albania in the east. They are youth driven, and although grievances are slightly different in each country, the prevailing sentiment is one of anger over affordability, crumbling infrastructure and inequality.

—Bloomberg News