Indiana carried out execution this morning, Florida and Alabama on deck today

The 33rd Execution of 2026

An Indiana man who admitted killing his girlfriend’s two children was executed early Thursday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled for the same day in the U.S., reported The Associated Press.

Jeffrey Weisheit killed the children, ages 8 and 5, by setting fire to his girlfriend’s house in the Evansville area in 2010.

Weisheit died at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The lethal injection started just after midnight and he was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m., according to Noelle Russell, Indiana Department of Correction chief communications officer.

She said Weisheit’s final meal was barbecue ribs and he had no final words.

Florida and Alabama were also set to carry out executions Thursday, which would mark the second time this year that three people in the U.S. would be put to death on the same day.

It will be Florida’s 19th execution this year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — matching a record set by the state in 2025 — but the first this year in Indiana.

The death penalty has faced renewed scrutiny following the September failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, although courts have rejected efforts to halt other executions since she survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Lawyers had asked for a life sentence for Weisheit

Lawyers wanted Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun to allow Weisheit, 50, to undergo brain scans in an effort to reinforce their argument that he has a history of head injuries and mental health problems. Braun declined, and he also turned down a request to reduce the sentence to life in prison.

Weisheit’s latest objection centered on the state’s planned use of lethal drugs purchased from a pharmacy that is facing a disciplinary hearing next week at the Indiana Pharmacy Board. The Indiana Department of Correction said that it’s confident “in our ability to humanely carry out” the execution.

Following the execution, Braun issued a brief statement noting Weisheit’s case was reviewed many times by state and federal courts.

“These reviews have never resulted in an overturned sentence,” he said. “Today, Weisheit’s sentence has been carried out as ordered by the court.”

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said that the execution provided “long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty.”

Florida on the verge of tying last year’s execution record

In Florida, Jesse Guardado confessed and quickly pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to support his drug habit. She had helped him get a job and housing.

A federal appeals court in 2024 said that Guardado, now 64, had received a “full and fair” hearing during the death penalty phase of his case.

Florida has carried out more than half the 32 total executions in the U.S. so far this year. DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said that his goal is to bring justice to families who have waited decades for the death sentences to be carried out.

Alabama man convicted of killings when he was 19

Michael Taylor, 54, faces execution in Alabama, 35 years after fatally beating an older couple with a metal bar during a robbery in their Gadsden home. Police arrested the 19-year-old Taylor with the victims’ Cadillac, an hour away in Birmingham. The execution would be the state’s third this year.

Death penalty opponents had urged Republican Gov. Kay Ivey to reduce Taylor’s sentence to life in prison, noting his age and immaturity at the time of the killings. She declined.

“If the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life who it kills. But the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today,” said Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The state plans to execute Taylor by lethal injection after a judge declared a nitrogen gas method unconstitutional. His attorneys objected to the last-minute switch to lethal injection since he selected nitrogen gas as his method several years ago, but a judge ruled against Taylor.

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The great rebuke!

  "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"
                                                    -Donald Trump, 11/3/26

As of early Wednesday morning, Democrats were projected to win at least 250 House seats, with Republicans winning a minimum of 160 seats, according to the CNBC Election Desk.

A number of Democratic candidates won in House districts that were redesigned by Republican-controlled state legislatures with the intention of easing the way for GOP candidates to win.

Democrats were on track to hold at least 54 seats in the Senate, with Republicans likely to hold at least 42 seats. The big Democratic winners on Tuesday night include James Talarico in the Texas Senate election. He overcame an unprecedented flurry of $224 million in spending by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to boost the candidacy of Republican nominee Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general.

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Today day is Election Day, if you haven't voted get to the polls

 According to Ballotpedia:

All 435 districts in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 seats in the U.S. Senate are up for election. Five of the House's six non-voting members are also up for election.

There are 36 gubernatorial offices up for election in 2026. Heading into the 2026 elections, there are 26 Republican and 24 Democratic governors.

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Trump attacks the integrity of elections in build-up to midterms

Ahead of the midterm elections, President Donald Trump has systematically demolished institutional guardrails that prevented him from overturning the 2020 presidential election, ProPublica’s reporting has shown.

Trump has empowered his loyalists to try to transform the voting process. He launched an unprecedented — and largely unsuccessful — effort to find noncitizen voters. And he tried to restrict mail-in voting.

The reporters at ProPublica have spent much of this year covering Trump’s efforts to exert more federal control over elections. Here are five takeaways from their reporting.

1. The Trump administration has sought greater federal control over elections.

In April, Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield reported on Trump’s efforts to “take over” the midterm elections, detailing how the administration has discarded or diminished endeavors across the federal government to protect the voting process or block foreign interference. Those efforts have included cutting staff on election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies and finding ways to exert greater federal control over voting. 

Our reporting led by Peter Elkind revealed that the Trump administration harnessed Homeland Security Investigations’ personnel, technology and legal authority to try to back up Trump’s unproven claim that illegal voting by noncitizens is tilting elections toward Democrats. Administration officials insisted the effort spearheaded by HSI was producing meaningful results. Our analysis of Justice Department data found, as of May, 41 alleged noncitizens were charged with voting illegally or other election-related crimes. Earlier this month, CBS reported 156 people have been charged since the beginning of the second Trump administration.

2. Trump has pushed out career officials — and is coordinating with a conservative grassroots organization to transform elections.

At least 75 nonpartisan career officials who’d held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety have been fired or left the government.

Two dozen Trump appointees — including many from the election-denial movement — have been hired. Ahead of the midterms, current and former government officials and election security experts have expressed concerns that once-fringe actors who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about elections are now in positions to control the narrative around the voting process. (A DHS spokesperson said it hires “experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”)

3. Trump officials asked a cybersecurity agency to secretly acquire a voting machine — and hack it.

A few months into Trump’s second term, political appointees at DHS asked its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure a voting machine, hack it and report the findings so they could be given to the White House, two former administration officials with knowledge of the request told Clark and Andy Mannix.

4. The White House floated an idea that would’ve shut down virtually all mail-in voting.

The White House initially proposed a change for the Postal Service that would’ve been even more disruptive than the rule the Supreme Court rejected in September.

As Fifield and Elkind reported, the Trump administration suggested all ballots be delivered through certified mail, meaning voters would need to be home to sign for delivery of their ballots. The Trump administration dropped this plan after the USPS said it would be too difficult to execute. It instead proceeded with the executive order that would’ve forced postal workers to serve as gatekeepers, deciding which ballots would be delivered and which wouldn’t.

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Voters in Virginia will decide if former felons right to vote will be restored automatically

More than 200,000 Virginians who regained their voting rights after a court ruled earlier this year they never should have lost them based on a Reconstruction-era law. 

In addition to that case, Gov. Abigail Spanberger restored about 60,000 others’ rights over the summer, reported The Virginia Mercury.  

But the third in a slate of constitutional amendments on Election Day ballots will determine if voting restoration will become automatic after incarceration, or remain a petition-based system. 

Proposed Constitutional Amendment Question 3

Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended (i) to provide for the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, (ii) to revise the qualifications of voters so that a person convicted of a felony is not entitled to vote during his period of incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release from incarceration, and (iii) to update the existing prohibition on voting by persons found to be mentally incompetent to instead apply to persons who have been found to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting?

Virginia’s constitution permanently disenfranchises people with felonies unless a governor pardons them or they successfully petition a governor to restore their voting rights. That process is subjective and not always transparent.

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ICE agent indicted in Houston for aggravated assault

 A grand jury in Texas on Friday indicted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who struck and injured a Mexican construction worker with a vehicle in Houston this month, reported The New York Times.

The agent, Mario Alberto Morales, 33, is facing state charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, said Sean Teare, the district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He added that Mr. Morales has not turned himself in. It was unclear whether the defendant had legal representation.

The worker, Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, an undocumented immigrant, was driving to his job on the morning of Oct. 10 when federal immigration authorities tried to pull him over in unmarked vehicles, according to Houston immigration advocates.

When Mr. Parra Hernandez stopped the car, he and a passenger tried to flee. ICE has said that Mr. Parra Hernandez had run in front of one of the agency’s vehicles and was struck. But surveillance video from a nearby business appeared to show Mr. Parra Hernandez and another man running away as an ICE vehicle veered around the corner and appeared to hit Mr. Parra Hernandez from behind.

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Trump's cabinet hits the campaign trial violating the law at every stop

This summer, Attorney General Todd Blanche boasted about the drop in federal crime while stumping for the Republican candidate for New York governor at a rally headlined by President Trump.

In Michigan, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, personally endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate, arguing that Mr. Rogers would help advance his department’s work.

And in Alaska this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stood with the president at a rally in which he noted the role of Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, in securing a natural gas pipeline.

Such appearances have become commonplace as nearly all of Mr. Trump’s top deputies fanned out to promote Republican candidates facing difficult election odds. But they have alarmed government ethics experts who say administration officials are running afoul of the Hatch Act, an 87-year-old law that limits how executive branch employees can participate in political activity, reported The New York Times.

In the past few months, at least nine of 15 cabinet secretaries and several other senior Trump deputies have been formally accused of Hatch Act violations, such as using official government titles while engaging in campaign activities and using taxpayer funds to pay for political advertisements.

“We have not seen this level of violations in recent times,” said Kedric Payne, the head of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group that recently filed a Hatch Act complaint against several White House and homeland security officials over three taxpayer-funded commercials promoting Mr. Trump. Its affiliated litigation arm, Campaign Legal Center Action, is one of the groups that is also suing the Trump administration over the ad campaign.

“Officials should not be using their titles or taxpayer resources to be involved in political campaigns, yet the Trump administration continues to increase activity that goes against the letter and the spirit of this principle,” Mr. Payne said. “Now it seems as though the administration can flood the zone with potential Hatch Act violations and not suffer any consequences until after the election.” 

Representatives for the White House and government agencies contend that the complaints are politically motivated to hurt Republicans and that officials’ activities comply with the law.

The Hatch Act was intended to be a buffer against partisan politics influencing government operations. While the president and the vice president are exempt, all other civil employees of the executive branch are subject to its restrictions. Over the years, both Republicans and Democrats have been accused and found guilty of breaching the Hatch Act.

But government watchdogs contend Trump officials have been lax about observing that firewall during the 2026 midterm elections.

At the Alaska rally, Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Lutnick and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, by their official titles. Using those titles violates the Hatch Act, two nonprofit advocacy groups charged in a recent complaint. One of them, the Democracy Defenders Fund, was founded by a former Obama administration ethics official and Trump impeachment lawyer. The other is Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy group. They stressed that the law forbids campaigning in an official capacity.

They also accused Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, of violating the law by telling the same rally crowd how Mr. Sullivan would continue to advance the agency’s work, even though he began his remarks by saying he was speaking in a personal capacity.

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