With polls looking dire for Republicans ahead of next month’s highly anticipated midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly wasting little time on the most pressing question of this election cycle: Who will take the blame for the likely, if still theoretical, electoral drubbing? Cue the MAGA infighting, as various White House operators and GOP power brokers jockey to avoid, and in some cases direct, the president’s guaranteed post-midterm scapegoating.

‘Knives are now fully out’
Although Trump has “proven largely incapable of getting out of his own way,” he’s “keenly aware of the grumbling” in his party over its midterm prospects and has “begun looking for someone else to take the fall,” said Puck. “Currently at the top of the list” is former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who “crafted the party’s midterm strategy.” Days away from a potentially “dire midterm reckoning,” Republicans are “turning their cannons” toward Blair and consulting partner Chris LaCivita, the two men tasked with the “herculean job of maintaining control of Congress,” said Politico.

The hostility toward Blair and LaCivita follows their recent trip to the Balkans to “advise a Russia-friendly regime’s reelection effort” even as GOP prospects “dwindle back home,” said Politico. That excursion “opened the floodgates,” said one source to the outlet. The “knives are now fully out for these two.”

‘Ice maiden is melting’
“These days,” Trump has also been looking to place blame on Susie Wiles (pictured above), his “once-unassailable” White House chief of staff, for the midterms, said Politico. The president is “musing about replacements for his top aide” while getting “plenty of encouragement from rivals to Wiles” and those settling scores.

Trump’s “ice maiden is melting,” said The New Republic of Wiles. She’s in “some deep sh-t,” said one Trump adviser to Zeteo. At the same time, the president has “tried to pour cold water” on rumors of her fate by “releasing effusively supportive statements” and characteristically condemning the media as “fake news.”

Israeli police arrested 10 suspects this week in the occupied West Bank following attacks by masked Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages: one on Friday of Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine as she covered an olive harvest in Abu Falah and another on Saturday of Belgian, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic Church representatives in Taybeh. The assaults underscore how picking the crop has become connected to larger questions about territory and identity. For many olive-growing Palestinian communities, the harvest represents not just livelihoods but also culture, family heritage and attachment to the land.

How big is the harvest?
Between 80,000 and 100,000 Palestinian families depend on the olive harvest for at least part of their income, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Every autumn, thousands of families handpick olives as part of an industry that has sustained communities for generations. 

Palestine’s Ministry of Agriculture estimates that olive oil production in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip will reach approximately 21,000 tonnes this year. About a quarter of that would be surplus to domestic need and could be exported. But that yield projection is based on farmers being able to access and harvest their groves.

Settler attacks during the current olive harvest season have already surpassed the total for 2025. The U.N. has documented 199 such attacks in the West Bank so far this year, with one death, 124 injuries and damage to more than 2,500 trees and saplings.

What are the attackers’ motives?
These attacks in the West Bank are “not new,” said Al Jazeera. Every year, “Israeli settlers and hardline groups use the olive harvest period to assert control over valuable agricultural lands,” including by “stealing crops or building illegal settlement outposts and roads on private Palestinian property.”

This annual ritual of “assaulting farmers, burning or uprooting trees and stealing crops” is “making it increasingly dangerous for Palestinians to reach and remain on their own land,” said Ahmed Najar, a Palestinian political analyst and playwright, to Al Jazeera. The attacks are also designed to “deter international campaigners from accompanying Palestinian farmers, standing with them against settler violence and documenting the atrocities being committed.” The “objective is not only to dispossess Palestinians” but also to “ensure that their dispossession happens without witnesses.”

Visitors explore the “Spinning Ghost Colors” exhibition, including an installation of hundreds of colorful hula hoops suspended in the air, at the Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Hanoi, Vietnam. Japanese artist Kengo Kito is known for “transforming familiar, everyday materials into immersive spatial experiences,” said the center.
Luong Thai Linh / EPA / Shutterstock

A film doesn’t have to be set on Halloween to be scary, but it doesn’t hurt. The holiday atmosphere can provide an extra element of suspense when done right, as in these four notable films.

‘Halloween’ (1978)
Horror legend John Carpenter’s lean franchise-launching slasher deftly adds a supernatural aspect to his unkillable knife-wielding mental institution escapee, Michael Myers (pictured above). The classic puts viewers through a “troubled nightmare of suspense and uncertain dread,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (AMC+)

‘Ginger Snaps’ (2000)
In this Canadian cult classic that doubles as a coming-of-age story, a sardonic goth transforms into a werewolf in the days leading up to Halloween and terrifies her younger sister. Through character-building and atmosphere, the movie “has fun with its own premises without turning into an empty camp exercise,” said Dave Kehr at The New York Times. (Peacock)

‘Trick ’r Treat’ (2007)
Arguably the best horror anthology ever, the film features four intersecting segments centered around a demonic pumpkin-headed trick-or-treater seeking to avenge the sins of the town’s past. It’s a movie that “feels less like it was merely set on the holiday and more like it was built out of everything people love about it,” said Arleigh at Through the Shattered Lens. (HBO Max)

‘Hell House LLC’ (2015)
In this found-footage gem, a documentary team seeks the truth about a massacre in a haunted house by tracking down its sole survivor who has tapes. With a slow-burn buildup, this “genuinely suspenseful” movie “carefully sets up its scares in a way that actually contributes to the story,” said Luiz H.C. at Bloody Disgusting. (AMC+)