Tuesday's midterms will decide control of Congress ¹, and the hour's dominant thread was Republican anxiety. Party figures are privately blaming Trump for anticipated losses tied to tariffs and the Iran war ², and some are leaking that his rallies hurt more than help in swing areas ³. National Republicans have also spent tens of millions defending normally safe Senate seats in Kansas, South Carolina and Mississippi ⁴. Polls suggest Democratic hopes for a landslide may be overstated ⁵, and control could take days or weeks to settle in states like Maine and Alaska ⁶. Household energy costs are directly on the ballot: utility regulator seats are contested in nine states, and projected average winter heating costs have reached $1,030, up $82 ⁷. Data-center backlash is also being tested in multiple races ⁸. Campaign spending is projected at a record $12 billion, with Elon Musk alone near half a billion dollars ^9,10. The second thread not to miss is a cluster of cyberattacks hitting financial and physical systems. Binance customers withdrew $3.4 billion after trading resumed following an attack that compromised over $6 billion in assets ¹¹. Another report put the heist at $6.3 billion, with net outflows of $3.6 billion in the first nine hours of reopened withdrawals ¹². Supermarkets in Sweden and Belgium reported freezers overheating to as much as 55 degrees Celsius following recent cyber attacks, weeks after a French attack ¹³, and affected chains are probing it as a suspected cyberattack ¹⁴. Hacked emergency alert apps in both Ukraine and Russia also pushed out false radiation warnings ^15,16. On Russia, signs of fiscal strain stood out. For the first time, the Defense Ministry plans to roll December wages into January, while the government expects a steep widening of the budget deficit ¹⁷. Separately, October grain exports are projected at roughly half the usual autumn level as Black Sea transport problems persist ¹⁸. Russia launched over 4,000 jet-powered drones and about 150 ballistic missiles against Ukraine in October ¹⁹. Emergency power outages hit oblasts including Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk, whose energy infrastructure sustained massive damage from Russian strikes ²⁰. Diplomatically, Xi Jinping showed no interest in a three-way summit with the U.S. and Russia on Ukraine, insisting European nations be involved ^21,22. Elsewhere, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever is set to submit his resignation after budget talks collapsed ²³. Outside the wire, more than 5,000 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an Ebola outbreak surpassed 10,000 cases .