Trump’s speeches take on darker tone and DHS hack exposes 40,000 workers: Morning Rundown

Trump veers into profanity and stereotyping in rally speeches. Contact information of more than 40,000 DHS employees exposed in a hack. And why some consumers are hunting their dinner amid concerns over meat quality.

Here’s what to know today.

Trump’s final campaign swing is taking on a darker tone

President Donald Trump has traveled 22 of 28 days in October, appearing in a total of 19 states. His remarks have averaged 1½ hours. At 80 years old, this frenzied pace is testing his stamina and his ability to deliver a compelling rationale for preserving the Republicans’ slim majority in Congress.

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But between messages about the economy — during which he has touted numbers without substantiation — viewers are getting profanity, physical objectification and ethnic stereotyping.

For example, he emphasized Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s middle name, Mohamed, at a rally in Michigan. Upset that he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump called Norway a “s---house country.” He’s commented on Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s muscular “a--” and said rapper Nicki Minaj’s is “hard to miss.” At a South Carolina event, after punches were thrown at a protester, Trump said, “That was incredible!”

White House communication director, Steven Cheung, insists Trump is “making a significant impact on races.”

While Ronald Reagan popularized “Morning in America,” Trump rallies tell of a gathering darkness. His closing message before the elections leans into the notion that jihadists and communists are hiding in plain sight — and on the ballot.

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Dive deeper into the 2026 election:

• See the latest polling and the battleground states in play.

• Track early voting tallies by age, gender and more.

• Find out how candidates are polling in competitive Senate races.

• The races to watch in Ohio?See who’s running and how Republicans and Democrats fared in past elections. Then, scroll to the end of the page to explore data in other states.

• Senate What If: Explore different paths to a Republican or Democratic Senate majority, mapped out by NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki and “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Then, create your own scenarios.

More politics news:

• Trump is calling for criminal charges against Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate in Alaska’s Senate race, after the New York Times reported that she and other Democrats worked to recruit a candidate with the same name as GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. But finding another Dan Sullivan to run doesn’t necessarily run afoul of election laws, legal experts said.

• A federal judge refused the Trump administration’s request to segregate 20,000 mail-in ballots in California from alleged noncitizens.

• For subscribers: Election prediction markets became less accurate as primaries neared, a new analysis found, challenging the notion that they can predict the likely outcome of a race.

• For subscribers: Newly obtained court records reveal Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s estranged mother, who was featured in GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad, showed signs of instability in recent years.

40,000 DHS employee names exposed in hack

Anti-fascist activists opposed to the Trump administration said they hacked the Department of Homeland Security and created a database of names and contact information for over 40,000 agency employees. The searchable database is hosted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency nonprofit that often makes hacked government files available to the public, similar to WikiLeaks.

The group behind the attack calls itself the Department of Peace, and the alleged hackers and DDoSecrets said the release was to protest DHS and its deportation operations.

The 40,000 agency employees whose personal information was shared represent roughly 15% of the more than 260,000 people directly employed by DHS. The data includes work contact information, which can be sensitive because DHS keeps many employees’ identities secret, including those of ICE officers.

What else to know about the hack.

Study estimates three-fourths of NFL players who died in 15-year span had CTE

An estimated 75% of football players who died from 2008 to 2023 had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a new study found, marking the highest estimate to date. “I had to double-check the numbers,” said study leader Yorghos Tripodis, the director of statistics and data management at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease and CTE Center, expressing shock at the results.

One huge hurdle in studying CTE, which affects parts of the brain involved with regulating behavior and emotions, is that the condition can only be diagnosed after a person has died. Plus, 99% of the brains donated to research by NFL players had signs of CTE, according to a previous study.

To estimate how many players had CTE more accurately, Tripodis and his team combined data from Boston University’s UNITE Brain Bank with national death records for other former NFL players.

A closer look at the calculations.

Milwaukee Brewers claim their first World Series title

After a 57-season wait, the Milwaukee Brewers are champions. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 of the World Series, then poured onto Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg, Florida, after closer Trevor Megill induced a soft grounder for the final out.

“This is one of the greatest moments of my life,” Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt said on Fox after the game. “Oh my gosh. It doesn’t even feel real. This is surreal.”

Milwaukee is the MLB’s smallest market, and its payroll ranked only 19th out of 30 teams. But the Brewers still completed one of the most dominant postseason runs in MLB history. The team’s 12-2 postseason record is among the best since 1995, when the league expanded the playoffs to include wild-card teams.

Recap the Brewers’ path to their World Series triumph.

Staff Pick: Want cheap, high-quality meat? Hunt your own game

Ground beef prices are near record highs, and concerns about meat quality are mounting. For a growing number of consumers, the solution is to hunt their own dinner.

The National Deer Association, a hunting and conservation advocacy group, says demand for its introductory online hunting course is soaring, particularly among urban and suburban residents in the Northeast corridor.

Meanwhile, local butchers say they are seeing a growing demand from consumers who want beef caught or processed close to their homes.

“There’s a mood in the nation that commercial meat is becoming less and less attractive,” said Kyle Peterson, the owner of Whitleyville Station, a meat and game processing store in Jackson County, Tennessee. “It’s, ‘Where’d this beef come from, where did this pig come from, what’s it been fed?’”

— Rob Wile, business reporter

Read All About It 

• Actor Hayden Panettiere’s death has been ruled an accident and the case is now closed, police said. The 36-year-old was found unresponsive on Aug. 16 in a South Carolina apartment complex where she was staying.

• Labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers and was dubbed “the most famous Latina that has ever been in the labor movement,” has died at age 96.

• The Federal Reserve’s chairman said yesterday that the central bank will devote fewer meetings to voting on interest rates and more to broader questions about the economy.

• Progressive pundit Hasan Piker has sued conservative commentator Scott Jennings for $72.5 million, claiming Jennings falsely portrayed him as someone who supports the lynching of Black people.

NBC Selected: Online Shopping, Simplified

Over 1 million pounds of bacon and other meat were just recalled. Here’s what you need to know to stay safe. Plus, how to clean wooden utensils and avoid getting splinters in your food, according to cleaning experts.

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