Front Page Podcast: Ukraine has launched one of its largest-ever aerial assaults against Russia

Ukraine has launched one of its largest-ever aerial assaults against Russia.

The attack, which involved more than 1,000 drones, hit a key oil export terminal in St. Petersburg and targeted a major data center in the Leningrad region. Russian authorities said one person was killed and five others were wounded in the St. Petersburg attack, which sparked fires at an oil terminal and the city’s oil depot.

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the Ukrainian attacks, launched amid growing tension between Kyiv and the Trump administration, were direct retaliation for Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure over the past week.

The attacks come as a mysterious Russian satellite came within less than 100 feet of a key U.S.-Finnish radar satellite over the weekend.

According to publicly available tracking data, The Russian satellite Cosmos 2612 came remarkably close to a U.S.-registered satellite made by Finland-based ICEYE that is believed to provide high-resolution space intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

The close encounter has stoked fears that Moscow may be preparing to launch attacks in orbit and kick off an era of kinetic space warfare.

President Trump’s first full year back in the White House ended with a $2 trillion deficit.

The final tally saw the government collect $5.4 trillion in revenue — up about 3% from the previous year. But it spent $7.4 trillion, or 6% more than in fiscal year 2025.

Spending on social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all grew faster than revenue. So did spending on veterans, with both the number of veterans needing care and the cost per person seeing increases.

What’s on the ballot this election day? Most states will have questions or initiatives for voters involving taxes, abortion, traffic cameras and more.

Thirty-nine states will put at least one ballot question before voters, and voters in many of these states will weigh multiple measures, according the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

They include a California “wealth tax” on billionaires, a repeal of a guaranteed right to abortion in Missouri, and new curbs on traffic photo enforcement, including Flock cameras, in Arizona.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing attacks over alleged ties to Islamic extremist groups.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan’s Republican Senate nominee, repeatedly invoked the Muslim Brotherhood during his first debate with El-Sayed.

Republican super PAC the Senate Leadership Fund is airing an ad that says “six radical extremist groups” have spent more than $1 million to boost his campaign. 

El-Sayed said he has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamist groups. He said Republicans are relying on dog-whistle politics to stoke suspicion about his faith and are deliberately conflating criticism of Israeli government policies with support for extremism.

And finally … Key equipment linking Greenland’s undersea cables to North America and Europe was supplied and managed by a company linked to China’s Huawei until last summer.

Amid security concerns, Greenland’s government telecom provider announced in August that the terminals were replaced with more secure European-made equipment.

Despite Huawei’s exit, security experts warn that risks remain. For at least a decade, Huawei operated within Greenland’s communications backbone via submarine line terminal equipment, potentially leaving behind vulnerabilities.

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