Three years after October 7, Israel marked the anniversary with memorials and new strikes on Gaza. The Palestinian death toll has crossed 74,000.
Three years after October 7, memorials were held in Israel as the Palestinian death toll crossed 74,000. A former CIA officer admitted to 300 gold bars and selling a source's identity. The FBI stopped a Mall of America plot. DHS proposed a $70,000 fee for foreign students. Wednesday had range.
Three years after October 7. A former CIA officer pleaded guilty to stashing 300 gold bars and selling a human source’s identity. The FBI stopped a plot at Mall of America. October 7 fell on a Wednesday. Here is Wednesday.
Three years after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the day is marked with memorials in Israel and with the fact that more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since.
Israel marked the third anniversary of the Hamas-led surprise attack on October 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 Israelis and resulted in 251 people being taken hostage. Vigils were held in Kfar Aza and thousands gathered at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv for a civilian-led memorial ceremony. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 74,000 since Israel’s military response began. Several governments, human rights organizations, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have accused Israel of committing genocide. Israel disputes that characterization. Three years on, Israel has not established a state commission of inquiry into the failures that allowed the attack to occur.
The hostages taken that day are now all accounted for: the last living hostages were released in October 2025 as part of a US-brokered ceasefire, and the remains of the last Israeli hostage were recovered in January 2026. The attack on October 7, 2023 was the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. The response to it has been the deadliest sustained military campaign in Gaza’s history. Three years later, both of those facts are true simultaneously, and the country that experienced the first has produced the second without conducting a formal government inquiry into how October 7 happened or how the response was authorized. The absence of a commission is not an accident. It is a political decision about what reckoning the Israeli government is willing to undertake. That decision is three years old today.
A former CIA officer pleaded guilty to stashing 300 gold bars in his home, running a $193 million fraud scheme, and selling the identity of a human intelligence source to a foreign government.
Former CIA officer David J. Rush, 49, admitted in court Tuesday to a far larger scheme than previously known, including a $145 million scam involving luxury real estate and providing sensitive intelligence to a foreign government official. In total, his fraud schemes exceeded $193 million. Federal investigators found approximately 300 gold bars worth more than $40 million stashed in the basement of his Virginia home. Rush admitted he created a fake classified program that allowed him to accumulate the gold bars, and that he exposed the identity of a human intelligence source to a foreign government. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Rush had “abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable.”
A human intelligence source is a person inside a foreign government or organization who secretly provides information to a US intelligence agency. Exposing that person’s identity to a foreign government typically results in their imprisonment or death. Rush’s admission that he sold a source’s identity is not a financial crime. It is a betrayal of a person who trusted the CIA to protect them. The gold bars, the $193 million in fraud, the fake classified program, and the Rolexes federal investigators also seized describe a specific kind of corruption: a person with a security clearance and operational authority who turned the instruments of intelligence work into a personal enrichment scheme. Rush pleaded guilty. He is 49 years old. The source whose identity he sold has not been publicly identified. Their fate is unknown from today’s reporting.
The FBI arrested a suspected ISIS-inspired plotter planning an attack at Mall of America in Minnesota. Senator Amy Klobuchar called for major anti-terrorism investments.
The FBI announced Wednesday the arrest of a suspected ISIS inspired attacker who had been plotting an attack at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Senator Amy Klobuchar called for major anti-terrorism investments in the wake of the arrest.
The Mall of America is the largest shopping mall in the United States by total area and one of the most visited tourist destinations in the country, drawing more than 40 million visitors per year. A plot targeting it would be a plot targeting a highly symbolic and densely populated civilian space. ISIS, the Islamic State group, has consistently encouraged its followers in Western countries to conduct attacks on soft civilian targets, a strategy that does not require organizational support from the group’s core leadership. The arrest of a Minnesota-based suspected plotter fits the pattern of FBI disruption of these types of plots, which have been stopped in various stages of planning across the country over the past decade. The suspect’s name, specific planning stage, and operational details had not been fully established in Wednesday’s reporting. Senator Klobuchar’s call for anti-terrorism investments reflects the political reality that a disrupted plot is both a law enforcement success and a political prompt.
DHS just proposed a $70,000 fee for foreign students seeking work authorization in the United States. International students spent $40 billion in the US economy last year.
The Department of Homeland Security proposed a $70,000 fee for foreign students seeking work authorization in the United States, a proposal that would affect international students on F-1 visas seeking Optional Practical Training, which allows them to work in their field of study after graduation.
Optional Practical Training, commonly known as OPT, allows international students who graduate from US universities to work in the United States for one to three years in a job related to their degree. It is one of the most common pathways for international graduates to remain in the US workforce. The current application fee is under $500. The proposed $70,000 fee represents an increase of more than 14,000 percent. International students paid more than $40 billion to US colleges and universities last year and contributed an equivalent amount to local economies through housing, food, transportation, and services. The proposed fee would effectively make post-graduation work authorization financially inaccessible for most international students, who cannot legally work during their studies to save the amount required. The proposal has not been finalized. Its impact, if implemented, would be felt first by the universities that recruit international students, then by the industries that hire them, and then by the local economies that depend on both.
Senator Chris Murphy was denied access to a US military base in Qatar during a Middle East trip. The Pentagon denied the sitting senator access to a facility his committee oversees.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the Pentagon denied him access to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar during a visit to the Middle East, preventing him from visiting the largest US military installation in the region, which houses approximately 10,000 US personnel and serves as a command hub for US operations across the Middle East.
A sitting US senator being denied access to a military facility is a specific constitutional friction point. Congress funds the military through appropriations. Senate committees oversee military operations and deployments. A senator conducting oversight of a military facility he helps fund being denied access to that facility describes an executive branch asserting that congressional oversight does not extend to operational military sites. The press ban, the Pentagon’s prior refusal to release its secret boat strike legal memo, and now the denial of a senator’s access to a military base are three data points in the same pattern: an executive branch deciding who gets to see what the military is doing and when. Murphy has not said which specific committee he sits on, but his presence on Senate oversight committees is documented. He was denied access anyway. That is the story, regardless of what he would have found if he had been let in.
Immigrants at Folkston ICE detention in Georgia began a hunger strike. The facility holds people indefinitely. Some have been there for months.
Immigrants detained at the Folkston ICE Processing Center in Georgia began a hunger strike Wednesday, according to Democracy Now, citing the conditions inside the facility and indefinite detention periods.
The Folkston ICE Processing Center is a private prison operated under contract with ICE in rural southern Georgia. Hunger strikes at immigration detention facilities are a recurring form of protest by people who have no other mechanism to draw attention to their conditions or detention length. A detained person cannot organize publicly, cannot vote, cannot call a press conference, and may have limited access to legal counsel. Refusing food is among the few unilateral actions available. This brief has documented the expansion and conditions of immigration detention since August: Alligator Alcatraz and its IG report, the 50,000 July detentions at 47% above capacity, the Equatorial Guinea deportations, the hospital raids. Folkston is one facility in a nationwide system that has been expanding at a pace the infrastructure was not designed to handle. The people inside it are hunger striking because they have run out of other ways to communicate that something is wrong.
Lithuania offered to pay the entire cost of a permanent US military base on its territory. It would be the first permanent US base in the Baltics.
Lithuania says it is prepared to pay the entire cost of establishing a permanent US military base on its territory if President Trump agrees to permanently station American forces in the country.
Lithuania is one of three small Baltic states, alongside Latvia and Estonia, that border Russia and have been among the most vocal advocates for a strong NATO deterrence posture since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US forces have been rotating through the Baltic states since 2014, but no permanent base has been established. Lithuania’s offer to pay the entire cost is a specific financial concession designed to address the Trump administration’s stated preference that NATO allies pay more for their own defense. The offer is also a strategic signal: Lithuania is willing to spend whatever it takes to have a permanent US garrison on its soil, because it calculates that a permanent base makes a Russian military incursion less likely than a rotational presence. The distinction between rotational and permanent matters enormously under international law and treaty arrangements. A permanent base would trigger specific Article 5 commitments, the NATO clause under which an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all, in a way that a temporary deployment does not with the same clarity. Lithuania is offering to buy that clarity.
US soldiers stationed in Okinawa, Japan are under a month-long curfew and alcohol ban. A disciplinary incident prompted the order. Japan has been asking for this for years.
The US has maintained a large military presence in Okinawa since World War II. There are approximately 26,000 US troops stationed in Japan, with roughly half in Okinawa, a small island at Japan’s southern tip. The presence has been a source of tension between the US military and the local Okinawan population for decades: incidents involving US soldiers, including crimes against local civilians, have generated periodic crises in the bilateral relationship. Japan has repeatedly requested stronger behavioral restrictions on US forces in Okinawa, particularly around alcohol, which has been involved in a disproportionate number of incidents. An order from a lieutenant general imposing a month-long alcohol ban and curfew for all US soldiers in Okinawa is exactly the kind of command-level response Japan has been requesting for years, triggered by a specific incident that the order does not describe publicly. The military relationship between the US and Japan is one of the most important in the Indo-Pacific. It rests on a combination of treaty obligations and political goodwill from the Japanese public. The goodwill is rebuilt one command order at a time.
The thread underneath Wednesday
Three years after October 7, Israel marked the anniversary with memorials while the Palestinian death toll in Gaza crossed 74,000, Israel has not established a state commission of inquiry into the failures that allowed the attack, and all hostages are now accounted for. Former CIA officer David J. Rush pleaded guilty to a $193 million fraud scheme including 300 gold bars stashed in his Virginia home, a fake classified program, and selling a human intelligence source’s identity to a foreign government. The FBI arrested an ISIS inspired suspect planning an attack at Mall of America in Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar calling for anti-terrorism investments. DHS proposed a $70,000 work authorization fee for foreign students, a 14,000% increase from the current fee, that would effectively eliminate post-graduation work for most international students. Senator Chris Murphy was denied access to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar during a Middle East trip, a sitting senator prevented from visiting a facility his committee helps fund. Immigrants at Folkston ICE detention in Georgia began a hunger strike, running out of other ways to communicate that something is wrong. Lithuania offered to pay the entire cost of a permanent US military base on its territory, buying the Article 5 clarity that a rotational presence does not provide. US soldiers in Okinawa were placed under a month-long curfew and alcohol ban following a disciplinary incident, Japan having requested exactly this kind of order for years. More than 250,000 students marched across France in the largest student protests in decades, escalating from the 500 schools closed last week. SpaceX is in talks to borrow $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips. Trump is reportedly weighing a pre-midterm strike on Iran. GLP-1 drugs show emerging evidence of reducing drug and alcohol addiction cravings. Christa Pike’s lawyer says she is “angry and confused” following the botched execution.
Eight sections, 42 days until the midterms. Three years of October 7 behind us. See you tomorrow.
What to watch tomorrow: Watch whether the DHS $70,000 work authorization fee proposal produces formal opposition from university presidents or trade associations, because a 14,000% fee increase affecting a $40 billion economic sector will mobilize institutional responses quickly. Watch whether Senator Murphy’s Qatar base denial produces any Senate Armed Services Committee response, because a sitting senator being turned away from a US military base is the kind of institutional friction that committees exist to address. Watch whether Lithuania’s permanent base offer produces any formal US response, because the distinction between a financial offer accepted and a political commitment made is the question the alliance is waiting to answer. And watch the Okinawa situation for any detail about the specific incident that triggered the curfew, because the order’s scope suggests the incident was significant enough to prompt a command-level response affecting the entire Okinawa garrison. See you tomorrow.
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