WASHINGTON — The Democratic flip of the Senate is expected to put two Democrats who support “Medicare for All” in charge of key committees.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is expected to lead the Finance Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the presumptive next chair of the health committee.
The wins that Democrats amassed on Tuesday night could breathe life into efforts to create some type of a single-payer system. While Sanders has long been a vocal advocate of Medicare for All, Wyden has only recently voiced support for the policy.
Canada has committed to diversifying away from Starlink, but a federal contract with SpaceX could still run until 2029. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
The federal government has a contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for Starlink satellite internet which has increased by more than 10 times since it was first awarded two and a half years ago. And it's sticking with it.
The multi-year contract — which is posted on the federal government's procurement website and shared on the IJF’s Paper Trail database — buys satellite connectivity for federal organizations through Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service. It was initially for around $2.3 million when it was awarded in Feb. 2024, but with amendments it has increased to nearly $29 million.
These results are from about five AM. They will change, but the overall results are firm.
The first thing to watch for, though it’s a way out, will be what the Senate rules are, in particular, the filibuster rules. If the filibuster is kept, Democrats aren’t serious about challenging Trump or changing anything.
Folks, it’s my annual fundraiser. This fundraiser keeps the lights on. Everything here is free, there’s no ads, I don’t take sponsored posts and I don’t write pro-Israeli propaganda, even though I’ve been offered money (which I could really use) to sell my soul and betray my readers. If you can give, if it won’t cause you hardship, & you value this site and the writing here, please Subscribe or Donate. So far we’ve raised $9,110 from 71 people, meaning we’re a bit over half way to our goal.
The second question is whether “designated villain” where just enough Dems vote with Republicans to stall anything popular but against the elite consensus is used. I’d be very surprised if it isn’t, but I’d be happy to be wrong.
The election result is primarily about cost of living and the Iran war, which are mostly the same thing to Americans. I have a hard time imaging Democrats actually Congressional power over war making or the purse to stop Trump’s war. They certainly won’t do a damn thing about Israel and its genocide.
I don’t actually think this election matters very much. Most of what Trump does that is objectionable is based on Presidential powers, either innate or which were delegated to the Presidency by various Congresses. Again, if Democrats start taking back the powers that were delegated, you’ll know they’re serious, if not, they aren’t. It’s that simple.
I’ve seen some people suggest that if the Dems don’t do anything significant, it might lead to a third party. I doubt it: Americans have been sheep for generations. Again, happy to be wrong, and hope I am.
We can expect a fair bit of screaming at Trump and meaningless votes. He might get impeached in the House, but I doubt the Senate will actually remove him even if so.
America is determined to go down, to lose what remains of its hegemony, except over Latin America (that’ll take another 20 years or so), and to continue impoverishing the mass of citizens so it can mint more billionaires.
Everything else is, sadly, noise, which is why I don’t cover US politics much these days.
Researchers have amassed a trove of more than 25,000 calls to a support hotline for people during and after psychedelic trips, making it “the largest dataset of psychedelic support interactions ever assembled—exceeding the combined sample sizes of all published psychedelic clinical trials by an order of magnitude,” according to a study published on Friday in Science Advances.
Despite the popularity of psychedelics as recreational drugs, and increasing interest in them as medically-prescribed therapeutic treatments, there is very little research about the effects of these substances outside of clinical settings with carefully-selected patients. That, scientists say, is limiting what we can learn about the effects of these drugs, because the vast majority of psychedelics are consumed by all kinds of people in homes, festivals, ceremonial gatherings, or other uncontrolled environments.
The Fireside Project, a nonprofit founded in 2020, has filled this knowledge gap with its Psychedelic Support Line, which connects callers who are on bad trips, or who are seeking more information about psychedelics, with trained volunteers who offer confidential peer support.
🌘
Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.
The team has now published a compendium of 25,419 anonymized interactions with 220 hotline volunteers that took place between April 2021 and February 2026. The database opens an unprecedented window into the experiences of people on psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA, LSD, ayahuasca, and even cannabis, which is not generally considered a psychedelic but can trigger similar effects, such as mild hallucinations.
It’s a “treasure trove,” said Félix Schoeller, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, a California-based nonprofit, who led the study, in a call with 404 Media. “In general, we're really lacking any evidence and data beyond what exists in the underground world, if you will, for psychedelic therapy.”
“There's different types of knowledge,” continued Schoeller, who is CEO of ReWire Neurotechnologies, a startup focused on novel experiential treatments for depression. “Some cultures and communities have been doing that for thousands of years. But there's a question about how to do this in a way that follows the principles of biomedical science.”
The interactions included phone calls and text exchanges with hotline volunteers who provided support by talking through the experience or connecting callers with emergency services in the most urgent cases. About 40.2 percent of callers (10,208 interactions) were actively tripping, while 32.1 percent of callers reached out after they had tripped, a period known as “integration.”
The rest of the calls fell into smaller categories, such as informational inquiries about certain substances, requests to prepare or buy drugs, or calls from “trip-sitters” assisting a person on psychedelics.
Psilocybin was the most commonly reported substance (9,348 callers), followed by LSD (2,247callers), cannabis (2,004 callers), and ketamine (1,194 callers), and MDMA (682 callers), with ayahuasca and other drugs logging much smaller numbers.
Surprisingly, callers who had used cannabis reported the highest distress rate—47.2 percent had bad experiences with the drug. Though cannabis has a reputation as a low-stakes substance, the study confirms that it can induce real distress in some cases that warrant consideration for harm reduction. The distress rates for the rest of the commonly used psychedelics were only slightly lower than cannabis, ranging between 40 to 42 percent.
The study also revealed 43 rare but disturbing instances of “facilitator abuse,” including at remote retreats or ceremonial gatherings involving ayahuasca. In these cases, callers reported abuse from the people providing psychedelics, such as reports they had deliberately been given extra doses without consent.
Those reports “provide the first quantitative documentation of this phenomenon in a community help-seeking sample,” according to the study. “The pattern of these reports—clustering in ceremonial settings involving plant medicines, presenting primarily as trauma-processing calls, and involving callers with elevated rates of prior PTSD diagnoses—suggests that even modest surveillance through existing peer support infrastructure can detect harm occurring in unregulated psychedelic settings.”
Some calls also came from people who said they suffered from schizophrenia, or had taken multiple psychedelics, offering a rare glimpse of situations that could not be observed in clinical settings.
“This kind of data can inform us on these topics in the context of legalizing these drugs and making them accessible,” said Schoeller. “I'm glad that there's this data that exists that people can look into to support or contradict the claims that they make as to how these things should be done.”
The study also outlines several limitations, including its sample bias of people who are inclined to call a hotline in the first place—which is not representative of psychedelic consumers at large—as well as self-reported accounts of doses, among other factors that are impossible to verify.
Despite the noisiness of the data, however, it contains helpful clues about avenues for future research. In Schoeller’s view, one of the most important revelations was that the success of a call was strongly linked to the perception that the hotline volunteer showed genuine care and empathy toward the caller. Using 2,777 postinteraction satisfaction surveys, the team found that the few negative experiences with the hotline tended to stem from feelings that the volunteer was dismissive, or didn’t seem to care about the caller.
“My takeaway is that the number one thing that predicts whether a support call will not work” is “the volunteer being perceived as genuine,” Schoeller said. “That's something that, in many ways, poses a problem to the biomedical system of centralized hospitals. I'm not trying to be ideological in any way, but when you create a centralized institution where you throw everybody to a single place to get care” then “clinicians become burned out.”
For this reason, Schoeller and his colleagues plan to follow up on the role of perceived care and empathy in treatment, and to emphasize this factor in guidance for community-based peer support for people in crisis due to psychedelics. It also reinforces the value of the Fireside Project’s hotline, which provides a safe and confidential service for people who might be reluctant to contact emergency services because of the criminalization of these substances or fear of incurring medical debt.
“For many people, they have experiences with psychedelics, and they may not be required to go to the ER, but they still need someone to help them navigate the difficult experience,” Schoeller concluded. “The hotline can truly be a lifeline for them.”
Sign up here to receive Bellingcat’s biggest investigations by email as soon as they are published. Become a member and support our work here.
Imagery captured by the European Space Agency’s freely available Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellites appears to be delayed over Gaza and parts of the West Bank, a Bellingcat analysis has found.
While the delay remains relatively short at just 24 hours, this can still impact the speed at which analysts and researchers can observe what is happening in the region.
For example, the Israeli Defence Forces demolished homes in the West Bank Palestinian city of Hebron in recent days. New imagery captured on October 26, which included Hebron, would allow open source researchers to quickly confirm the demolitions, assess the impacted area and observe any unreported IDF activity. But imagery for the western half of Hebron was not available until October 27 due to the Sentinel-2 delay, inhibiting real-time fact-checking and reporting on this evolving situation.
A spokesperson for the European Union told Bellingcat that the delay was not related to events in Gaza but to “mitigate possible threats” due to the war in the Middle East “including Iran’s attacks on its neighbours and possible threats to European interests”. The delayed region of Sentinel tiles that cover Gaza as well as parts of Israel and the West Bank also extends over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The European Union ordered a 24-hour delay on Sentinel satellite imagery over the Gulf of Oman earlier this year during US and Israeli strikes on Iran. However the delay impacting Gaza and parts of the West Bank has not been announced or previously reported.
“Such decisions are taken unanimously by all EU Member states and will stay in place as long as necessary,” the spokesperson said. They also said that while the Copernicus program, which includes the Sentinel satellites, operated a free and open data policy there were limitations to this for security.
When asked if the delay, which began in late March, was related to the presence of US vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean or if there were other areas of delay, the spokesperson said they had no further comment.
However, in July, the European Union published Council Decision 2026/1716, which ordered a 24-hour delay on Sentinel imagery over the Gulf of Oman, after a request from the US government which was involved in strikes on Iran at that time.
Just two weeks later, the European Union issued a corrigendum that unpublished decision 2026/1716 and removed it from the Council of the European Union record, although satellite data shows the delay has remained.
This decision, while it was available, was reportedly the first public notification of delayed Sentinel imagery. Yet it was not the first time that Sentinel imagery has been restricted, analysis shows. Bellingcat found four distinct regions of delayed satellite imagery during 2025 and 2026: the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden/western Arabian Sea, the Red Sea as well as the previously unreported delay in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and parts of Israel, the West Bank and the entirety of Gaza.
Bellingcat’s analysis shows the regions where Sentinel-2 imagery is subject to a 24-hour delay, and when the delay was imposed. Only the July 15, 2026 delay over the Gulf of Oman was referenced by European Commission directives and the region referenced in 2026/1716 encompasses only a portion of the delayed tiles.
Bellingcat’s analysis shows that these delays have been implemented in stages. Twenty-four hour delays of Sentinel-2 imagery were first observed by open source researchers in March and April 2025 after the US launched a naval and air strike campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The previously unreported imagery delay in the Eastern Mediterranean began on March 28, 2026, the same month that commercial American space imaging company Planet Labs also restricted imagery across the Middle East. The Gulf of Oman delay began on July 15, 2026, two days after the publication of Council Decision 2026/1716.
Decision 2026/1716 also specified that the delay be implemented for both Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 radar imagery. Bellingcat’s analysis of Sentinel-1 image availability shows that this is the case for both the Gulf of Oman region and the unreported region over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. However, the 2025 restrictions on Sentinel-2 imagery in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are not implemented in Sentinel-1.
Sentinel-1 imagery uses “synthetic aperture radar” to capture lower resolution radar images that can collect data at night and on cloudy days. This differs from Sentinel-2, which captures optical satellite imagery at higher resolution.
Bellingcat’s analysis shows the regions where Sentinel-1 satellite imagery is subject to a 24-hour delay and when that delay was imposed.
A Tale of Two Tiles
Sentinel satellite imagery is most commonly accessed by open source researchers through Copernicus Browser, a free online platform, but it is also distributed as large tiled files in the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem. These tiles are numbered using the Military Grid Reference System, and can be listed using APIs that provide information on each tile, including the capture and publication time. By comparing the capture and publication time, the publication delay can be computed.
For example, the catalog information for the tile T36RXV, which includes Gaza and portions of the West Bank, Negev and Egypt, provides the following metadata for the October 21, 2026 capture.
Metadata from tile T36RXV, which includes Gaza and portions of the West Bank, Negev and Egypt.
This shows that while the image was captured at 08:20 UTC on October 21, it was not published until 10:09 UTC on October 22 — almost 26 hours later. This is in contrast to the neighboring tile T36RYV, which includes parts of the West Bank, Israel, and Jordan. API data for this tile shows that the image was published at 12:10 UTC on October 21, just under four hours after the capture time.
Metadata from tile T36RYV, which includes parts of the West Bank, Israel, and Jordan.
This difference is not unique to this date either. Bellingcat’s analysis shows that this tile has been consistently delayed by one day since March 28, 2026.
Graphing the publication delay for two adjacent Sentinel-2 tiles shows a clear difference beginning March 28, 2026.
This method can be extended further, and by analysing every tile with valid publication date timestamps, Bellingcat identified all global Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 delays since 2023. The only consistent delays visible were those identified in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden/western Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean in 2025 and 2026.
Impact on open source investigations
While the 24-hour delay on certain Sentinel imagery is a less severe restriction than other satellite providers have imposed, it can still impact the open source research process in fast moving situations. This is especially so in recent months as the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite data has emerged as a refuge as other satellite data is censored.
The image below shows how imagery for the eastern half of Hebron was visible on October 26, but not the western half where demolitions took place earlier this week.
The city of Hebron, Palestine, seen in Copernicus Browser on October 26, 2026. While imagery is available for the eastern half of the city, there is no recent imagery of the western half.
The shape of the missing tiles can be seen by zooming out within the Copernicus browser, demonstrating how imagery of Gaza and other parts of Israel and the West Bank are also delayed.
The missing tiles also include Gaza, parts of Israel, Egypt, and Cyprus, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Sentinel imagery covering western Hebron after the demolitions took place was published on October 27. However, the delay prevented local reports from being verified with satellite imagery while the situation was still ongoing.
Some Sentinel-2 users have previously described the challenges of covering fast-moving issues in the Gulf of Oman when the Sentinel delay was announced in March.
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here, Instagram here, Reddit here and YouTube here.
If you haven't, you should. I think everyoneneeds to. Wealth inequality on a scale this extreme is almost impossible to explain. You have to experience it to understand.
Where is the top of this graph? Good question. Keep scrolling up. Last time I did this it took me 12 minutes and 51 seconds, but the whole time I had a way out.
We get a button on the screen that lets us punch out any time we want: I quit. But do other Americans get an easy way out of the most extreme wealth concentration in history, piled up together all the way down there at the bottom of this graph?
No. They don't.
That's why we built this website. That's why I supported the updated 2026 wealth inequality video series, because 14 years ago, the original video changed how I thought about the world. I watched it again and again, year after year, because it shows something we feel, but rarely see so clearly — the obscene concentration of wealth and power in this country.
People deserve to see the facts plainly, visually, with sources and methodology attached. Politizane, The Onion and Garbage Day retained full control over their work. I did not tell anyone what to make, what to say, or how to say it. I told everyone involved the same thing I'm telling you right now – this is not for me, or any organization. It is for the public. It is for We, The People.
I used to be very dismissive of so-called "walking simulators", games where no real choice is offered, it's just an experience. But this graph isn't a game – these are people's actual lives. No one is forcing you to visit this website, no one is making you scroll up endlessly. The experience, then, is about endurance in the face of the relentless task of simply living your daily life with almost nothing, surviving as long as you can without reaching for the "I Quit" button. That's the experience so many Americans are having. It is harrowing.
As we built the website (Geoff Dalgas, my friend who helped me build Stack Overflow, did all the technical work) and tested it, as I obsessively scrolled upwards so many times, I slowly realized the whole thing is supposed to be inconvenient. The further you climb on this vast scale, the longer this seemingly endless scrolling goes on, the more the reality sinks in... how obscene all of it is. In order to understand the suffering of others, you must be willing to endure and suffer a little bit yourself. In this case, suffering is a feature.
Early iterations of the website had automatic scrolling, or rapid jumps, but I felt that wasn't right and should not be allowed. You need to do the work, make a physical action to scroll the entire way. We even stop you from scrolling at certain milestones.
This is a forced stop because no one should blindly scroll past 36 million Americans living in poverty, while at the same time we could eliminate all poverty in this country for $177 billion.
But we, for some reason, choose not to. We choose to let people suffer in desperate poverty. That's also suffering as a feature. In an era of unprecedented wealth, why shouldn't that money be out there doing something, somewhere, for someone?
I've spent my whole career talking about software usability, and I never thought I would design software that chooses to actively punish the user, but the data itself is the pain. Representing the massive numbers of wealth inequality with a linear scale is the only honest way to present this data. Do you have any idea how many pages it would take to print this graph in its entirety, representing both the richest American at the top, and the poorest American at the bottom?
What you should print out is this is 8 page foldable version of the graph, designed to be a relatable 6 feet, 6 inches, the average NBA player height. Show everyone what the most obscene centerfold of all time looks like. Let them see.
I challenge everyone to climb the graph on dreamagainusa.org as far as you want to.
If you do reach the so-called "top", I have a question.
Log in
