Oklahoma and Texas carry out executions on the same day

The 36th and 37th Executions of 2026

Texas and Oklahoma each have executed death row inmates on November 12, 2026 for merciless murders they committed decades ago, reported the USA Today.

Oklahoma executed James Dwight Pavatt, 72, for the 2001 murder of his lover's estranged husband, Rob Andrew. Pavatt, a 22-year Air Force veteran, became lovers with Brenda Andrew after meeting her at church, and both were convicted of shooting Rob Andrew dead. Brenda Andrew, a former Sunday school teacher, is the only woman on Oklahoma's death row and has always maintained her innocence, as has Pavatt.

Pavatt, who was executed by lethal injection, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. local time on Thursday, Nov. 12.

About eight hours later, Texas executed John Allen Rubio, 46, for the 2003 beheadings of his common-law wife's three children: 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 1-year-old John Stephan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio. Mary Jane was the only biological child of Rubio's. Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. CT.

Pavatt and Rubio became the 36th and 37th inmates put to death this year in the U.S., which is seeing an uptick in the death penalty that began in 2025. Double executions − in which two separate states execute inmates on the same day − are purely coincidental timing.

For its lethal injections, Texas uses pentobarbital, the same drug used in the botched execution of Christa Pike in September. Oklahoma uses a three-drug combination that doesn't include pentobarbital.

Texas executes John Allen Rubio, who claimed he was 'chosen one'

On March 11, 2003, 23-year-old John Allen Rubio began talking about the anti-Christ and told his common-law wife, 23-year-old Angela Camacho, that her three children were possessed.

Rubio first attacked his only biological child, 2-month-old Mary Jane, decapitating her, before getting Camacho to hold down 3-year-old Julissa while he decapitated her, according to court records and the couple's own admissions. Rubio also decapitated 1-year-old John when the baby woke up crying, court records say.

Rubio, who was known to sniff paint, later told police that he was "the chosen one" and that he had been selected "to help the world" and "help give their life to Jesus," according to archived news reports.

The unthinkable crime shocked the Texas border city of Brownsville at the time and remains infamous today.

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A jury rejected Rubio's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and he was sentenced to death. Camacho was sentenced to life in prison.

Over the years during a lengthy appeals process, judges repeatedly found Rubio competent enough to stand trial and be executed, including during a hearing last month. As the hearing was underway, a woman began screaming at Rubio that he killed her niece and that her family would be there to watch him die on Nov. 12, according to local news media outlets Valley Central and myRGV.com.

"You’re going to meet your father the devil that day," she said, though she declined to share her name, according to the outlets.

Outside the courtroom, she told reporters that Rubio was a hypocrite and a coward, saying that he only cried during the hearing for himself.

“He’s crying because he’s scared that he’s going to die," she said, according to Valley Central. "He didn’t even look me in the eye and say he was sorry."

Oklahoma executes James Dwight Pavatt

On Nov. 20, 2001, Rob Andrew was picking up his 7-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter for Thanksgiving at the home they shared with their mother, Brenda Andrew. But Brenda Andrew told Rob Andrew that the pilot light on the furnace was out, so he went to the garage to take a look.

Once there, prosecutors say James Dwight Pavatt used Rob Andrew's own 16-gauge shotgun to shoot him once. Then, they say, Brenda Andrew shot him. Pavatt also shot Brenda Andrew in the arm with a .22-caliber pistol to make it look like she was a victim, too, prosecutors say.

Brenda Andrew told police that two masked men had attacked and shot her husband. Police later found evidence that Pavatt hid afterward in the attic of the home of the Andrews' next-door neighbors, who were away.

As police suspicions about her story grew, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her children. After running out of money, the couple returned to the U.S. in February 2002 and were arrested at the border.

A jury convicted Pavatt of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in 2003. In a separate trial in 2004, a jury convicted Andrew of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death.

Brenda Andrew's conviction has come under scrutiny and gained national attention in recent years over concerns that she didn't receive a fair trial because of the way prosecutors portrayed her to jurors. At one point, a prosecutor held up a pair of her thong underwear and asked jurors if they thought a grieving widow really wear such a sexy undergarment.

The jurors also heard from five witnesses who told them about how Andrew dressed sexy in low-cut shirts and short skirts.

Andrew was unfairly portrayed as "a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel ... plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events," wrote 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bacharach in 2023.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ordered a lower court to review Andrew's claim of an unfair trial, saying that prosecutors came to acknowledge that Andrew's sex life and failings as a mother and wife were largely irrelevant to whether she killed her husband. The lower court upheld Andrew's conviction and death sentence earlier this year.

As for Pavatt, he had always maintained his innocence and reiterated that before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Oct. 14: "I am not guilty of shooting anyone," he told the board.

Pavatt also apologized to Rob Andrew's family for their heartbreak and said he wished he had answers for them.

"I fell in love with Brenda. We had an affair," he told the board. "I was so infatuated with her that I lost sight of what was really happening. I had tunnel vision, and I believed everything that she told me. ... I had no reason to believe that anything she had said to me was not true, including what she told the police had happened that night."

He said he left for Mexico because Brenda Andrew had said she would kill herself and her children rather than go to jail.

"I knew this made us look guilty but I believed that whoever killed Rob would be arrested and ... once that had happened, we could come back," he said. "It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda. I can see why the jury ... believed that we were both involved in Rob's murder."

He did not address evidence that he cut the brake lines to Rob Andrew's vehicle a month before the shooting.

Pavatt also sought mercy because of his nearly 22 years of service in the U.S. Air Force, both overseas and at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. He finished his military career as a master sergeant.

The parole board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency for Pavatt.

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Richard Glossip will not be tried a third time for murder

Less than a month before he was scheduled to stand trial a third time, accused of a murder he has always sworn he did not commit, Richard Glossip agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, a final step toward bringing his three-decade legal saga to an end, reported The Intercept.

Glossip, 63, was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his boss Barry Van Treese inside Room 102 of the rundown motel the Van Treese family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but he insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.

During a brief hearing that was originally scheduled to address pretrial matters, Oklahoma County Court Judge Natalie Mai instead accepted a plea from Glossip to accessory after the fact and dismissed the murder charge against him. With members of Van Treese’s family looking on from their seats in the jury box, Glossip stood to answer a series of routine questions to confirm that his plea was voluntary. Mai did not ask any specific questions about the crime itself.

Glossip, 63, was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his boss Barry Van Treese inside Room 102 of the rundown motel the Van Treese family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but he insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.

Following Glossip’s second trip to the U.S. Supreme Court his conviction was overturned in 2025, finding that it was rooted in false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Drummond, who by then was running for governor, did an abrupt about-face, announcing he would once again prosecute Glossip for first degree murder.

“For 30 years, Richard Glossip has maintained his innocence,” Knight said in a statement after the hearing. “After nearly executing him 9 times, the State of Oklahoma has now dismissed the murder charge against him. This morning, to finally put this matter to rest, Rich pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact. We believe Rich has more than paid his debt to society.”

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Intellectually disabled death row inmate will not likely get another bite of the apple from SCOTUS

The Supreme Court appears likely to shut down a Texas death row inmate’s efforts to use updated medical guidelines to secure another chance at challenging his conviction, reported Courthouse News Service.

Dexter Johnson didn’t initially argue that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment. But the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-5, adopted new guidelines that classified Johnson as intellectually disabled.

By the time Johnson was convicted of murdering Maria Aparece in 2007, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which held it was unconstitutional to execute a person who is intellectually disabled, had been on the books for five years. But Johnson didn’t meet the criteria for such a claim until six years after his conviction.

During his trial, experts testified that Johnson had the intellectual functioning equivalent to a 10-year-old, and his lawyers say he has severe language deficits that place him “well below the lowest one percentile’” of the population. But his IQ scores of 79 and 88 precluded an intellectual disability diagnosis during his trial and initial appeals.

The DSM-5 moved away from solely focusing on IQ scores, taking into consideration other deficits. And the updated guidelines recognized that individuals with IQ scores over 70 may still qualify as intellectually disabled.

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act only permits individuals to file one habeas application unless they can show their claim relies on “a new rule of constitutional law made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court that was previously unavailable.”

The Fifth Circuit found Johnson qualified for the exception, allowing him to proceed with a successive federal habeas application. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court appeared to disagree.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, questioned if Johnson’s case would set a precedent for “eternal Atkins claims and zero finality” because medical standards around intellectual disability are constantly evolving.

And his conservative colleagues were generally skeptical that claims under the two-decade-old precedent could be considered new.

“Does Atkins ever stop being a new rule?” Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, asked.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee, compared Johnson’s definition of new to the invention of the telephone.

“I mean when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, that was new,” Barrett said. “I don’t think anybody would describe the telephone as new today.”

The liberal wing of the court seemed to side with Johnson, however, stating the Supreme Court in Atkins indicated that who qualifies as intellectually disabled is keyed to medical standards, which can vary and evolve.

As such, Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said it was apt to think of Atkins as having multiple rules as those standards have evolved over the last two decades.

“It would be wrong to think of Atkins as a single rule that we decided exactly when we decided the Atkins case given that Atkins was very cognizant that the substantive standard for the rule was going to be supplied principally by diagnostic criteria,” Kagan said. “So, if the diagnostic criteria fundamentally changes…you basically get an Atkins II rule, and then the question with respect to that defendant would be whether that is new.”

Instead of considering whether the claims were generally “new,” Justice Ketani Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, said the court should consider whether the claim is new to a particular individual.

Despite support from the three Democratic appointees, it did not appear Johnson had enough support from the Republican appointees to reach a majority.

To read more CLICK HERE 

Support for the death penalty falls below 50 percent

Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers, and 45% are opposed, according to Gallup. While statistically similar to last year’s 52%, the latest update marks the first time support has been below the majority level since 1971, when it was also at 49%. The last time support was lower than now was in 1966, when a record-low 42% favored the death penalty. The high point for support was 80% in 1994.

Laura Porter, Executive Director, U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty said, “This is the second poll in a row to show that we are at a pivotal turning point in public opinion on the death penalty, as Americans have been horrified by the recent botched executions, as well as the proposal to livestream an execution. At the same time, both Republican and Democratic governors have been granting clemencies at an increasing pace. The death penalty is being seen for what it is, an utter failure.”

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The arbitrary nature of the death penalty--geography dictates state sponsored death

California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the sentences of every prisoner on the state’s death row—548 people in all. With this action, Newsom is responsible for the largest-ever reduction of America’s death-row population, dropping the national total by about 27 percent. (California’s supreme court must approve some of the clemency requests.), reported The Atlantic.

California last executed a prisoner in 2006, and in 2019 Newsom instituted a moratorium against the death penalty via executive order. But in both 2012 and 2016, Californians narrowly voted against ballot measures that would have repealed the state’s death penalty, meaning many in the state would still prefer to see it in use. Newsom’s commutation order could foreclose that possibility in at least the near future.

Newsom’s commutations underscore how polarized the country has become on the death penalty. Although several states have rejected capital punishment in recent years, a handful of red states are pushing back against that trend, taking ever more extreme measures to hand down death sentences and carry out executions.

America’s death-penalty landscape is defined by dueling philosophies, which means that prisoners convicted of capital crimes face radically different outcomes depending on minor changes in geography: The fate of the same person committing the same murder on either side of the border between Texas, where executions are relatively common, and New Mexico, which does not permit capital punishment, would come down to only a few miles.

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Mangino discusses Netflix series "Taken" on Sidebar with Jesse Weber

Watch my interview on Law &Crime's Sidebar with Jesse Weber discussing the Netflix series "Taken" about the disappearance and murder of Natalee Holloway.

To watch the segment CLICK HERE

Florida, Alabama and Indiana carry out three executions in a single day

 The 34th and 35th Executions of 2026

Florida, Alabama and Indiana all carried out executions on November 5, 2026, putting to death three people on a day when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office, reported The Associated Press. I wrote about the 33rd execution in Indiana here.           

The unusual trio of executions on a single day in the U.S., and Newsom’s plans that experts say would represent the largest mass clemency in American history, underscored national divisions over capital punishment. They also come at a time of renewed attention over the death penalty following Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike in September.

In Florida, the state tied a record with its 19th execution this year and is on track to set a new mark in the coming weeks. Indiana executed a man for killing two children by setting a house fire in 2010, and in Alabama, a man was put to death by lethal injection over killing an older man and woman in a home robbery.

“California may let their criminals escape justice, but not Alabama,” Republican Gov. Kay Ivey said. “Here, we enforce the law and always will.”

It marked the second time since August that three states had conducted executions on a single day, although it remains unusual. Previously, the last time it happened was 2010.

Florida inmate apologized to victims

Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a lethal injection at a state prison in Starke. He had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing Jackie Malone, 75, inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had helped him get a job and housing.

Florida has carried out more than half of the nation’s 35 executions so far this year under outgoing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Guardado, 64, was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the death chamber curtain went up promptly at 6 p.m. Asked if he had a last statement, he replied, “I would like to once again apologize for the pain and suffering I’ve caused to the victim’s family and my own family as well.”

The drugs began flowing immediately afterward. Guardado began breathing heavily, followed by some sputtering and twitching. Soon after, a warden shook Guardado and shouted his name but got no response and a medic then pronounced him dead.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said he wants to bring justice to victims’ families who have often waited decades for death sentences to be carried out. He signed the death warrants that led to a state record of 19 executions in 2025. The state is planning two more executions later this year.

Patrick Malone, the victim’s son, told reporters that he questioned those who oppose the death penalty.

“Do such people ever think about what happened to the victim or consider the unending aftermath the victim’s family endures and relives every time that terrible event comes up?” Malone said.

Alabama man was condemned for a double killing

In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. local time after a lethal injection. The execution got underway shortly before 6 p.m. as Taylor replied “no, sir” when asked if he had any final words.

He appeared to mouth “thank you” toward his attorneys seated in the witness room. Taylor’s spiritual adviser approached and prayed with him, and he closed his eyes, never opening them again.

In 1991, Taylor, then 19, fatally beat Ivan Moore, 83, and his wife Lucille, 79, with a metal bar during a robbery in their Gadsden, Alabama, home. Police arrested him in their Cadillac an hour away in Birmingham.

Death penalty opponents had urged Ivey to commute Taylor’s sentence to life in prison, noting his age and immaturity then. She declined.

The victims’ family thanked the state attorney general’s office for bringing closure, but they lamented having to wait 35 years for the death sentence to be imposed.

“We know that a person has the right to appeal, but there should come a time when the jury’s decision is final. For all these years, our family has had to live with the waiting, the delays, and the uncertainty,” the family said in a statement. “We have never forgotten our loved ones or what was taken from us.”

The state switched Taylor’s execution method after a judge declared a nitrogen gas method unconstitutional. His attorneys objected since he selected nitrogen gas as his method years ago, but a judge ruled against Taylor.

Attorneys for Taylor said in a statement that he knew the harm he had caused and that “Michael’s life was proof that God isn’t finished with any of us.”

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A time of reckoning for Trump's attorney general

David French of The New York Times writes:

October was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month for the Department of Justice.

The worst moment happened on Oct. 5, when the department made a third attempt to prosecute James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The first attempt, an indictment for lying to Congress, failed when a federal court dismissed the case because the prosecutor was appointed illegally. The second, an indictment for threatening the president by posting a photo online of a collection of seashells on a beach that were arranged to say “86 47,” is still pending.

Comey, however, has filed two motions to dismiss — one based on his free speech rights and the other claiming that the government has engaged in vindictive prosecution.

The case is absurd on its face. In a 1969 case, Watts v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a far more explicit threat — the defendant had said that he would resist the draft, but “if they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” — was nothing more than “political hyperbole” and protected by the First Amendment.

The third attempt is, if anything, even more specious. The Department of Justice filed what is called a criminal information (not an indictment), claiming that Comey leaked classified information that ended up in The New York Times in October 2016.

This is not the first time that the Trump administration has considered bringing this charge. Trump administration prosecutors looked into this incident in 2017 and 2019 and declined to bring charges both times.

But there’s now a new sheriff in town — Todd Blanche, the attorney general of the United States and President Trump’s former personal lawyer — and Todd Blanche does what Trump says.

To be clear, an information isn’t an indictment. It can’t actually start Comey’s case. The Fifth Amendment says, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.”

Instead, it’s a unilateral filing by prosecutors that has the effect of sometimes tolling (that is to say, stopping) the statute of limitations. It can only actually start a federal felony prosecution if the defendant waives his right to indictment by grand jury, which Comey has not done.

In fact, the Department of Justice admits that it filed the information for the purpose of tolling the statute of limitations. It was filed on the very day that the 10-year statute of limitations was set to expire. In effect, they’re hoping it can serve as a place holder that keeps the case alive until a grand jury finally indicts.

But there’s a problem — a big problem. While some federal criminal statutes allow the department to toll the statute of limitations with an information, this one does not. As Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in National Review, the relevant statute requires an indictment within 10 years. It makes no reference to an information.

In other words, this legal filing is a bad joke. The lawyers who brought it should be ashamed of themselves, and they should be sanctioned by the court.

But that’s not the only legal embarrassment from the last month. On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the Department of Justice acted illegally in 2025 when it fired Maurene Comey, James Comey’s daughter, a highly respected prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson for perjury. Hutchinson was a key witness in the House of Representatives’ investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Hutchinson joins a long line of political opponents that Trump has tried — and failed — to indict, including Attorney General Letitia James of New York and six Democratic lawmakers who had posted a video saying that members of the military had a duty to disobey illegal orders.

It is extremely rare for federal grand juries to refuse to indict. I’ve known prosecutors who’ve gone their entire careers without seeing a “no true bill” (the technical term for the refusal to indict). Under Trump, it’s a regular occurrence.

It gets worse. Also on Tuesday, Zia Faruqui, a federal magistrate judge, eviscerated Trump administration prosecutors after they tried to add a new charge against two former F.B.I. officials charged with lying to Congress without seeking court approval.

The judge ordered the new complaint struck from the record. “It is inappropriate,” he said. “I am surprised that a complaint unsigned by a judge was filed on a docket where I am unaware of that ever happening in this court.”

“Everything you are doing is just giving me more and more concern,” he said.

I’m going to stop there, but even as I do, I feel as if I’m misleading you. I’m stopping because of space, not because that’s the end of the outrages. In case after case after case, the Department of Justice is targeting Trump opponents, making frivolous arguments and engaging in vindictive, meritless prosecutions.

I blame Trump, but I also blame Blanche. He doesn’t understand his own job.

We all know that Trump has an extreme view of executive power that renders him a virtual elected monarch. His administration’s actions extend well beyond conventional unitary executive theory, which puts a premium on presidential control over the executive branch. He treats the law as his plaything, deciding on his own whim which laws will be enforced and which ones will not.

It is true that the president is the boss of every cabinet official. He can fire them at will. But it is also true that the attorney general is different from every other member of the cabinet.

Unlike, say, Pete Hegseth, Blanche has three masters, not one. The attorney general and all the lawyers working for him also answer to the judiciary, which not only decides the cases he brings; it also governs the conduct of D.O.J. officials in court. And he also answers to the bar — rules of ethics are binding on every attorney, including government attorneys.

In addition, Trump may be Blanche’s boss, but he is not Blanche’s client. Blanche’s client is the government of the United States, including its various agencies. Blanche owes his fiduciary duty to the government (and, ultimately, the Constitution), not to the president.

In the criminal context, these additional obligations have profound meaning. In a 1935 case, Berger v. United States, the Supreme Court said, “The United States attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all, and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

Read those words, and then ask yourself: Does that sound like Todd Blanche to you?

The attorney general is no ordinary lawyer, and neither are the attorneys who work for the Department of Justice. Trump is their boss, but the Constitution is their true master, and no president can compel them to violate ethics rules or court orders.

Last month, I wrote a newsletter urging a Democratic House and Senate (should the Democrats win control on Tuesday) to follow Senator Elissa Slotkin’s advice and hold the administration’s most malevolent actors accountable for their worst misdeeds. It’s time to resurrect impeachment. I mentioned Pete Hegseth. I should have mentioned Todd Blanche too.

His “high crime” is corrupting the Department of Justice, and only a decisive act of political hygiene can cleanse the D.O.J. of MAGA’s terrible stain.

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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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Tough-on-immigration replaces tough-on-crime on ballots across the country

Next week, America votes in the midterms. And as Election Day approaches, a new rhetoric of crime and illegality has emerged with familiar implications, reported Slate.

While the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1980s and 1990s may have passed, similar dialogue today is anchored in “tough-on-immigration” policies. For example, Republicans and allied groups spent $53 million on immigration ads across 27 states from January to June. And even old tough-on-crime era rhetoric has reemerged as campaign strategy, with “soft on crime” being a lead attack of the Republicans, and President Donald Trump invoking the notorious 1988 Willie Horton ad at a campaign rally against Democrats. The enforcement behind this rhetoric has also grown: The Department of Homeland Security says Immigration and Customs Enforcement hired 12,000 new officers and agents last year, ICE arrests have more than doubled in 15 states and D.C. this year, and many sheriffs are partnering with ICE to perform functions of federal immigration agents through the 287(g) Program.

It is worth noting that when the public supports such rhetoric in elected officials, that rhetoric becomes real—it affects lives. My new study of elected prosecutors, published in the Journal of Public Economics, provides evidence of exactly that.

District attorneys are among the most influential actors in the criminal legal system, with nearly unfettered authority over whether to charge people with crimes and which charges to file, and in the vast majority of districts they are elected. I set out to understand whether DAs were influenced by the desire to be viewed as tough on crime. My study suggests they were, finding that across nearly 40 states during the era of rising incarceration (from 1986 to 2006), the admissions rate to state prisons increased by 3 percent during election years for district attorneys. Over those two decades, this translates to 63,000 additional prison admissions, more than a sold-out Soldier Field. But this figure only measures the election year bump; it does not capture how political incentives may have affected criminal sentencing throughout the entire election cycle.

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