10 things you need to know today: November 3, 2018

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1. Florida yoga studio attack leaves 3 dead, including shooter
2. Trump to reimpose Iran sanctions
3. North Korea threatens to resume nuclear development over U.S. sanctions
4. Judge orders Georgia to pause controversial voting restrictions
5. Judge denies Trump request to stay evidence collection in emoluments case
6. Trump and Obama hold dueling rallies
7. Michael Cohen says Trump frequently made racist comments in private
8. Caravan migrants sue Trump over border policies
9. Economy adds 250,000 jobs in October
10. Alec Baldwin arrested, charged with assault

last updated 3 November 2018

1. Florida yoga studio attack leaves 3 dead, including shooter

Two people were killed and five more injured when a shooter identified as Scott Paul Beierle, 40, opened fire in a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio Friday evening. Beierle also killed himself. The two women killed have been named as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, and Maura Binkley, 21. Van Vessem was the chief medical director for Capital Health Plan and a faculty member at Florida State University, where Binkley was a student. Beierle is believed to have acted alone for reasons presently unknown. "We're all very saddened and shocked by the events that occurred," said Michael DeLeo, Tallahassee's police chief.

The Trump administration announced Friday sanctions against Iran lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal will be reinstated Monday. The aim is to deprive Iran of "the revenues it uses to spread death and destruction around the world," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, calling the sanctions "necessary to spur changes we seek on the part of the regime." President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May. Iran on Friday reached out to several European countries to seek their continued support, and the European signatories of the Iran deal released a statement condemning the sanctions decision.

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North Korea on Friday threatened to resume development of nuclear weapons if the United States does not lift economic sanctions. "The U.S. thinks that its oft-repeated 'sanctions and pressure' leads to 'denuclearization,'" said a statement from Pyongyang. "We cannot help laughing at such a foolish idea." Also Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated sanctions will continue. "A lot of work remains," he said, "but I'm confident that we will keep the economic pressure in place until such time as [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] fulfills the commitment he made to President Trump back in June in Singapore."

A federal judge ruled against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's controversial voting policy on Friday, allowing 3,000 more Georgians to vote in Tuesday's midterm elections. In October, advocates sued Kemp, who's also the state's Republican candidate for governor, over Georgia's "exact match" policy, which required voter registrations to precisely match official documents on file with the state. Kemp had purged 1.4 million voters' registrations since 2012, and the exact match policy prevented 53,000 of them from re-registering. The purge disproportionately affected the state's black and Hispanic voters.

A federal judge on Friday denied a request from the Justice Department to prevent collection of evidence in a lawsuit alleging President Trump has violated the Constitution's emoluments clause by maintaining a financial interest in his Washington, D.C., hotel. The provision bans the president from accepting gifts from foreign heads of state absent congressional consent. Judge Peter J. Messitte directed the plaintiffs, the attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia, to create a schedule for evidence collection within 20 days. A separate emoluments suit brought by about 200 Democratic members of Congress is also pending in federal court.

President Trump and former President Barack Obama both hit the campaign trail Friday night, holding dueling rallies for the second time this week. Trump spoke in Indiana, revisiting familiar themes like his argument that electing Democrats will increase crime. He also falsely claimed to have won the women's vote in 2016. Rallying in Florida, Obama pushed back on Trump's immigration policy and slammed Republicans for taking credit for economic trends that began during his presidency. "America's at a crossroads," he said of the election, and "the character of our country is on the ballot."

President Trump frequently made racist remarks about black people in private conversations before he was elected, Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, told Vanity Fair in an article Friday. Trump once explained his rallies are mostly white, Cohen said, because "black people are too stupid to vote for me." He also alleges Trump once said while in a "rougher" neighborhood that "only the blacks could live like this," and that contestant Kwame Jackson came in second during The Apprentice's first season because he couldn't "let this black f-g win."

Six Honduran migrants in the caravan slowly making its way through Mexico have filed a class action lawsuit against President Trump's stated plans for their reception at the U.S. border. The suit alleges Trump "continues to abuse the law, including constitutional rights, to deter Central Americans from exercising their lawful right to seek asylum in the United States." It argues his intent to refuse asylum to those who enter the U.S. illegally violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process, as current law allows asylum applications regardless of entry point.

U.S. non-farm employers added 250,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department reported Friday, besting an average of 208,000 new jobs forecast by economists surveyed by MarketWatch. The gains were enough to keep the unemployment rate at 3.7 percent, a 48-year low. Take-home pay for employees is also up, with average hourly earnings rising by 0.2 percent to $27.30 an hour. The wage increase over the past 12 months rose to 3.1 percent from 2.8 percent, marking the first time that number has reached 3 percent since the Great Recession ended in mid-2009.

Actor Alec Baldwin was arrested Friday and charged with assault and harassment after allegedly punching a man in New York's East Village. A 49-year-old man apparently stole a parking spot Baldwin was waiting for, witnesses say, and Baldwin punched him. The victim was hospitalized but is stable. Unsigned tweets posted Friday evening on the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation account seemed to be a statement from Baldwin himself. "[T]he assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false," the tweets said. "I wanted to go on the record stating as much."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.