Election Day dominated the hour, with voting under way to decide control of Congress and the future of Trump's agenda ^1,2. The friction is procedural as much as political. Ballot-scanner malfunctions in New York's Westchester County drew assurances from officials that every vote would be counted, even as Katie Miller spread conspiracy claims ³. Glitches elsewhere fed unverified theories that officials called routine ⁴, and tornadoes and flash floods interrupted voting in several states ⁵. In the courts, the Ninth Circuit vacated a ruling that had let the Justice Department demand ballot segregation in California and Washington, after the Supreme Court separately rejected the DOJ's emergency request ⁶. Judges at all levels have rejected the administration's voter-fraud claims ⁷. The DOJ also sent target letters to Democrats amid Alaska's tight Sullivan–Peltola Senate race ⁸, and an Oklahoma man was charged with mailing more than 700 white-powder letters to officials and media ⁹. Maine's election chief says turnout could hit a record 70% ¹⁰. Democrats are expected to outspend Republicans $2.2 billion to $1.4 billion ¹¹, while Trump predicted Republicans will fare better than expected ¹². Energy costs are the economic backdrop: GasBuddy put the national average at a record Election Day $4.11 a gallon ¹³, and another tally cited $4.14 for gasoline and $6.28 for diesel ¹⁴. Trump said oil prices have been coming down ¹², and Brent fell 1.05% to $103.67 by early afternoon . Energy Secretary Wright pointed to efforts to restart closed refineries ¹⁵. Separately, the IEA warned that Hormuz disruptions are straining the Mideast ¹⁶. Trump also used Election Day morning to pledge an end to roughly $4 billion in annual Israel aid. Skeptics note that a 2016 agreement runs through September 2028 ¹⁷, and one critic called the move a rebranding into joint defense partnerships ¹⁸. The standout non-election story is Binance's $6.3 billion heist. Binance says suspected North Korean operatives used a bogus job interview and AI tools ^19,20, and Pyongyang called the FBI's attribution a provocation ²¹. GitBook separately urged token resets after an AI-driven attack ²². On AI economics, Musk called Grok's serving costs unsustainably high relative to revenue, with SpaceX spending $16.4 billion on AI capex in Q3 ²³. The New York Times and other publishers sued Brave, naming Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as recipients of its content ²⁴. Abroad, Russia targeted a substation critical to the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant within a barrage of 289 drones and 76 missiles ^25,26. Bomb threats hit at least 10 European airlines and briefly closed a Warsaw airport ²⁷. New York reported the seventh US measles death this year as the CDC reportedly holds up a health alert ²⁸.