Morning Brief, Monday 2 November

Americans vote on Tuesday in elections that will decide the whole House of Representatives, 35 Senate seats, 36 governorships and 145 ballot measures across 40 states. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats to Democrats’ 47, and 220 House seats to 215, so even a small national swing could change who can pass laws in Donald Trump’s final two years.

The latest NBC News poll gives Democrats a 52-45 lead among registered voters who prefer Democratic control of Congress, with 3% undecided. Donald Trump’s approval stands at 40%, and 70% of respondents say the country is moving in the wrong direction, which is not usually the soundtrack a governing party chooses for closing weekend.

Two Senate races showed the strain. In Michigan, Democratic representative Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers after losing the primary to Abdul El-Sayed, blowing up a planned unity event in Detroit two days before the vote. In Alaska, a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s bid to block certification if Republican Dan S. Sullivan lost by fewer votes than those won by another candidate with the same name.

Trump campaigned in Iowa and Kansas, promised $5,000 payments to adult citizens if Republicans keep both chambers and said he would become a veto president if Democrats win Congress. Polls close first in parts of Kentucky and Indiana at midnight Italian time, with Hawaii and Alaska last at 6.00 on Wednesday.

Binance began reopening withdrawals on Sunday after halting them following a $6.3bn theft of bitcoin and other digital currencies, described in the reports as the largest crypto heist in history. The FBI said North Korean hackers it calls TraderTraitor carried out the attack, and linked the same group to the $1.5bn Bybit hack in February 2025.

The exchange reopened in phases. Bitcoin came first, followed by 15 networks and assets, including ethereum, USDT and USDC on the ethereum blockchain, and some BNB Smart Chain tokens. Binance said it prioritised networks by user demand over the previous week so that each could be restored carefully.

The company said it had set aside matching digital assets to cover 90% of the missing funds and promised that customers would be fully reimbursed. Co-chief executive Richard Teng said users would not bear the financial impact, while the remaining 10% involved less liquid tokens that could take longer to buy.

Withdrawals jumped after the reopening, then stabilised. By Sunday afternoon Binance said it had processed $4.6bn in withdrawals and $1bn in deposits, a net outflow of about $3.6bn, equal to 2.1% of its $171bn in assets under management. The exchange said it was still testing other networks and assets, while the criminal investigation continued.

The local ceasefire around Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town in Ukraine’s Kherson region, expired at 22.59 on Sunday after six days. A senior Ukrainian official told AFP that Kyiv had offered to extend the pause, but that Russia did not want an extension.

The truce opened a narrow civilian route in a town that once had 24,000 residents and had about 2,000 people inside when the pause began. Ukraine’s General Staff said 167 civilians were moved to safer points in the Kherson region, including 22 children and 21 people with limited mobility.

The White House said Melania Trump helped broker the arrangement, and she cast it as a starting point for something larger.

Moscow and Kyiv kept striking outside the Kherson zone during the pause. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian overnight attacks left hundreds of thousands of households without power, while Russian authorities reported damage to an industrial site in Nizhny Novgorod region after Ukrainian drone attacks.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human-rights commissioner, said he was working with his Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, on further humanitarian initiatives. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow viewed the Oleshky operation positively, including the coordination between the two commissioners.

Marek Boron, Poland’s police commander, defended the deployment at the Constitutional Tribunal on Sunday after Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended tribunal president Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, for one month. Boron told officers the intervention met legal and ethical standards and said police were protecting both the people inside and the thousands gathered outside.

Korwin-Piotrowska relied on article 12(4) of the 2016 law on the tribunal’s organisation, declared herself head of the court and asked police to keep the suspended officials out. Warsaw police said officers secured the perimeter without entering the building, citing possible threats to judges and staff and a risk of public disorder.

Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s president, cut short a flight to Senegal and returned to Warsaw. Around 1 a.m. he pushed into the court and told judges present to leave the building, while opponents described the episode in the language of coups and counter-coups.

The deeper fight concerns appointments. The Sejm elected judges in March 2026, but Nawrocki has taken the oath from only two of them, while the European Court of Human Rights has told Polish authorities not to obstruct those judges from taking office. The European Commission said the tribunal must be able to function under Poland’s constitution and EU court case law.

Police detained 54 people in Frankfurt after a largely peaceful youth protest broke up and violence spread through the city centre on Saturday night. Hesse’s interior minister Roman Poseck said more than 100 officers were hurt, one seriously after a stone knocked out several teeth.

The Gen Z regelt demonstrations drew tens of thousands of young people in more than 30 German cities, with demands for better education, cheaper living costs and more social justice. Authorities in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin estimated crowds of up to 18,000, roughly half the number organisers had predicted online.

Frankfurt police deployed up to 1,300 officers, filed 87 criminal complaints, carried out 366 identity checks and issued 1,225 orders to leave public spaces. Seventeen establishments were damaged and five were looted, while Poseck said there was no sign that violent participants had travelled from abroad.

Federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said people involved would be identified and punished after looting appeared on live camera.

Poseck questioned whether youth protests planned for 20 November could go ahead in their announced form. The organisers said their protests would continue, including participation in Europe-wide action that day and an international youth strike called by a separate alliance.

Spanish forensic teams have identified 66 of the 69 people who died in the high-speed train crash outside Urda in Toledo province. Families have been notified in 60 cases, while six more notifications are due as quickly as possible.

That moves the investigation on from the 56 identifications reported in the previous edition.

The Guardian reported that an automatic safety-system failure had stopped trains on a 63km stretch, yet a control centre allowed a Renfe service to resume while an Iryo train was still stationary ahead of it. Guardia Civil kept work going at the crash site on Sunday evening and began moving wrecked coaches to a safe zone to support the search for remains.

Of the identified foreign nationals, four are US citizens, with one each from Argentina, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Japan, Mexico, Portugal and Tunisia. The last three unidentified people are also foreign nationals, and reports for missing people remain open for two Australians and one Japanese citizen.

The Partido Popular said it would join the judicial case so responsibilities could be clarified. Rail unions attacked Transport Minister Óscar Puente after reports that the government’s preliminary hypothesis pointed toward staff at the Atocha control centre, though the investigation is still at an early stage.