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Trump veers into profanity and stereotyping in rally speeches. Contact information of more than 40,000 DHS employees exposed in a hack. And why some consumers are hunting their dinner amid concerns over meat quality.
Here’s what to know today.
President Donald Trump has traveled 22 of 28 days in October, appearing in a total of 19 states. His remarks have averaged 1½ hours. At 80 years old, this frenzied pace is testing his stamina and his ability to deliver a compelling rationale for preserving the Republicans’ slim majority in Congress.
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But between messages about the economy — during which he has touted numbers without substantiation — viewers are getting profanity, physical objectification and ethnic stereotyping.
For example, he emphasized Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s middle name, Mohamed, at a rally in Michigan. Upset that he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump called Norway a “s—house country.” He’s commented on Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s muscular “a–” and said rapper Nicki Minaj’s is “hard to miss.” At a South Carolina event, after punches were thrown at a protester, Trump said, “That was incredible!”
White House communication director, Steven Cheung, insists Trump is “making a significant impact on races.”
While Ronald Reagan popularized “Morning in America,” Trump rallies tell of a gathering darkness. His closing message before the elections leans into the notion that jihadists and communists are hiding in plain sight — and on the ballot.
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Anti-fascist activists opposed to the Trump administration said they hacked the Department of Homeland Security and created a database of names and contact information for over 40,000 agency employees. The searchable database is hosted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency nonprofit that often makes hacked government files available to the public, similar to WikiLeaks.
The group behind the attack calls itself the Department of Peace, and the alleged hackers and DDoSecrets said the release was to protest DHS and its deportation operations.
The 40,000 agency employees whose personal information was shared represent roughly 15% of the more than 260,000 people directly employed by DHS. The data includes work contact information, which can be sensitive because DHS keeps many employees’ identities secret, including those of ICE officers.
What else to know about the hack.
An estimated 75% of football players who died from 2008 to 2023 had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a new study found, marking the highest estimate to date. “I had to double-check the numbers,” said study leader Yorghos Tripodis, the director of statistics and data management at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease and CTE Center, expressing shock at the results.
One huge hurdle in studying CTE, which affects parts of the brain involved with regulating behavior and emotions, is that the condition can only be diagnosed after a person has died. Plus, 99% of the brains donated to research by NFL players had signs of CTE, according to a previous study.
To estimate how many players had CTE more accurately, Tripodis and his team combined data from Boston University’s UNITE Brain Bank with national death records for other former NFL players.
A closer look at the calculations.
After a 57-season wait, the Milwaukee Brewers are champions. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 of the World Series, then poured onto Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg, Florida, after closer Trevor Megill induced a soft grounder for the final out.
“This is one of the greatest moments of my life,” Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt said on Fox after the game. “Oh my gosh. It doesn’t even feel real. This is surreal.”
Milwaukee is the MLB’s smallest market, and its payroll ranked only 19th out of 30 teams. But the Brewers still completed one of the most dominant postseason runs in MLB history. The team’s 12-2 postseason record is among the best since 1995, when the league expanded the playoffs to include wild-card teams.
Recap the Brewers’ path to their World Series triumph.
Ground beef prices are near record highs, and concerns about meat quality are mounting. For a growing number of consumers, the solution is to hunt their own dinner.
The National Deer Association, a hunting and conservation advocacy group, says demand for its introductory online hunting course is soaring, particularly among urban and suburban residents in the Northeast corridor.
Meanwhile, local butchers say they are seeing a growing demand from consumers who want beef caught or processed close to their homes.
“There’s a mood in the nation that commercial meat is becoming less and less attractive,” said Kyle Peterson, the owner of Whitleyville Station, a meat and game processing store in Jackson County, Tennessee. “It’s, ‘Where’d this beef come from, where did this pig come from, what’s it been fed?’”
— Rob Wile, business reporter
Over 1 million pounds of bacon and other meat were just recalled. Here’s what you need to know to stay safe. Plus, how to clean wooden utensils and avoid getting splinters in your food, according to cleaning experts.
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Elizabeth Robinson is a newsletter editor for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.
Josephine Murphy is an NBC News platforms intern based in Los Angeles.
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