Former Vice President Kamala Harris declared packing the U.S. Supreme Court and reworking the Electoral College “first priorities” during a New Hampshire campaign swing for U.S. Senate nominee Chris Pappas and other Granite State Democrats Saturday.

Harris, who sits atop the national polls for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, made a three-city campaign swing through the state. She pumped up volunteers at a Portsmouth phone bank and poured beers at Feathered Friend Brewing in Concord.

Then she joined Pappas on stage for a taping of an episode of the “My Body. My Pod.” podcast with Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All in Manchester. (Editor’s note: NHJournal reporter Leonard Robinson was turned away from the event by Democratic operatives and was not allowed to participate in the press coverage. More here.)

During that podcast, Harris laid out her vision for what she called “structural change” in America’s political system.

Acknowledging that her proposals would be “controversial coming from me,” Harris didn’t hold back.

“We have to expand the Supreme Court. Let’s expand it to 13 because we have 13 circuit courts.” (Harris misspoke about the lower courts: There are 13 federal circuit courts and 94 district courts.)

“We also need to take a critical look at the Electoral College, fight for statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. We need to overturn Citizens United,” Harris added. “These have to be first priorities.”

And to achieve them, “We have to be ruthless.”

“And so, when I talk about ruthless, I mean simply that we have the backbone to actually act on accountability and consequence, because a harshly worded letter ain’t gonna get it,” Harris said.

And electing Pappas will help, too, she said.

“Chris Pappas will be the kind of senator who will hold accountable the system to the people, and fight,” Harris said.

Perhaps. But Pappas’ record on these issues is far less clear.

On packing the court, Pappas told NHPR earlier this month that he was a “no.”

“I don’t support that. I think that would be a never-ending tug-of-war between both political parties.” Instead, he suggested term limits or age limits for justices, saying turnover would benefit the federal judiciary.

However, a month earlier Pappas voted “no” on a constitutional amendment to set the number of judges at nine.

Pappas has also wobbled on eliminating the Electoral College, a move many political experts say would be disastrous for small states like New Hampshire.

During an Oct. 7, 2020, NHPR debate, he said, “I believe in one person, one vote. I think (eliminating the Electoral College) is something we should take a look at.”

He called the system an “antiquated compromise” and said he was concerned about presidents winning without a national popular-vote majority.

Eight days later, WMUR reported that Pappas opposed both expanding the court and abolishing the Electoral College.

The John Sununu campaign says Pappas’ campaigning with Kamala Harris reflects the sort of U.S. senator he would be.

“Again and again, ‘California Chris’ has shown that he is more interested in catering to the Far Left than serving the people of New Hampshire,” said Sununu spokesman Mike Schrimpf. “If Chris Pappas is this partisan during an election, just imagine what he’d be like during a six-year term.”

Harris also campaigned with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington and congressional candidates Rep. Maggie Goodlander and Stefany Shaheen.

The court has had nine justices since 1869. Congress sets its size through legislation, according to the Supreme Court’s explanation of its structure.

Since the Supreme Court achieved a 6-3 originalist/conservative majority, Harris has repeatedly called for changing the rules.

At the National Urban League conference in Nashville on July 31, she said, “We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts.”

She also urged reconsidering the Electoral College at that event.

In a June interview with Don Lemon, Harris agreed that a 13-member court is worth considering. When asked specifically about getting rid of the Electoral College, she said, “I don’t think we should eliminate that as a point of discussion for potential action.”

On Keke Palmer’s podcast, released Oct. 13, Harris again endorsed expansion. “I believe that we need to expand the Supreme Court.” Advocating changes to the Electoral College, she said, “The popular vote has to matter.”

Harris has a double-digit lead over the nearest contender, fellow Californian Gov. Gavin Newsom, in the national RealClearPolling average. However, in the new St. Anselm College Survey Center poll released last week, she’s well back in the pack with just five percent support.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg finished in first place with 28 percent support.

Michael Graham, NH Journal

Craig Bannister

October 28th, 2026 4:36 PM

This could snowball quickly as staffers seek safe harbor,” renowned George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley explained Wednesday in his analysis of a New York Times report that Alaska Democrats schemed to deceive voters in the midterm elections.

Democrat Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign sought out and convinced a retired teacher with the same name as her Republican opponent to put his name on the ballot in an apparent effort to dupe voters, The The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing its review of communications and interviews.

“If true, the report raises concerns over filings by Peltola in seeking to dismiss an action by the Justice Department to address the obvious effort to confuse voters. The Peltola campaign did not state that they were actively informed in such efforts to cause vote errors,” Prof. Turley noted in a series of X.com posts.

In light of the Justice Department’s federal lawsuit seeking to block certification of the election results, if votes for the other Mr. Sullivan cost Senator Sullivan the win, Peltola’s staff could be exposed to legal liability, Prof. Turley explained:

“Since the Justice Department has already filed and has raised concerns over the legality of this effort, campaign officials can be at risk if there were efforts to conceal this conduct in pressuring potential witnesses or destroying possible evidence.”

“This could snowball quickly as staffers seek safe harbor given the federal filing,” Turley predicted, noting that “The NY Times is citing not just this campaign worker but others associated previously with the campaign.”

Turley called it “striking” that The New York Times article refers to multiple sources attesting to the Peltola campaign’s effort.

“It is even more problematic when Peltola recently filed to prevent efforts to address the confusion by calling the allegations “baseless,” Prof. Turley added:

In her recent federal filing, Mary Peltola’s counsel insisted, ‘DOJ’s complaint is wholly baseless.’ Now the NY Times is reporting that her campaign was actively involved in seeking to confuse Alaskan voters by running decoy ‘Dan Sullivans.’ A staffer now says that Peltola knew about the effort to force voter confusion.”

Prof. Turley did, however, cast doubt on the allegation that Peltola’s lawyers played a role in the scheme, because “few would be willing to put themselves at such risk,” legally and professionally.

As CNSNews has reported, interviews, text messages, and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit obtained by The New York Times suggest that Peltola’s campaign:

• Instructed a staffer to find as many people in Alaska named Dan Sullivan (the Republican candidate) as possible.
• Compiled a list of Alaskan Dan Sullivans, based on voter records.
• Employed an operative using a fake name to travel to, and meet with, each Dan Sullivan to convince him to declare himself a Senate candidate.
• Persuaded a retired teacher named Dan Sullivan living in a tiny fishing village accessible only by air and sea to announce his candidacy for the state’s Senate.
• Involved the Peltola campaign’s lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).
• Dubbed the scheme “the ballot composition project.”

MRC News Busters

After losing Brazil’s election, Flávio Bolsonaro fled to Miami in an elaborate operation aided by Trump’s inner circle and Argentina’s president

Less than 24 hours after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro appeared to vanish into a convoy of four dark cars.

After pulling away from his home in Brasília on Monday evening, the vehicles split in different directions, leaving journalists and authorities scrambling to determine which one carried Bolsonaro. By the next afternoon, the former presidential candidate’s allies were telling reporters he had already reached Florida.

As Brazilian and international outlets reported that Bolsonaro had left the country, he was still in Brazil, while a private jet waited for him across the border in Argentina. At 12:21 a.m. Wednesday, the Gulfstream G400 took off from Puerto Iguazú and whisked him to Ecuador and then Miami, where his entry was facilitated by Trump allies his family spent years cultivating. 

The getaway—which relied heavily on deception and decoys—sparked a global guessing game that left even some of Bolsonaro’s closest allies in Washington and Brazil in the dark about his whereabouts.

After Bolsonaro stepped off the plane in Miami on Wednesday morning wearing a navy polo shirt and a backpack, uniformed officers used umbrellas to shield him and his family from cameras. Their arrival followed an extraordinary effort by a small circle of influential Trump allies, senior U.S. officials and Argentine President Javier Milei to help him fly to the U.S. and secure entry, despite a Brazilian court order barring Bolsonaro from leaving the country. 

Referring to himself as the “leader of Brazil,” Bolsonaro thanked President Trump for welcoming him to a “land of freedoms” and Milei for his “courage” and “sense of justice” in a statement from Miami Wednesday.

Trump personally approved admitting Bolsonaro.

Vera Bergengruen, Samantha Pearson, Ryan Dubé and Philip Wegmann

The Wall Street Journal

Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Dmitry Polyansky highlighted that the alliance “continues to rely on hybrid warfare, in which a bleeding Ukraine fights on everyone’s behalf”

VIENNA, October 29. /TASS/. Russia and NATO are moving closer to a direct military clash with each passing day, said Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“A direct military clash between Russia and NATO has not yet occurred, although we are moving closer to that point every day,” he told a regular meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council. TASS has obtained the text of his remarks.

Polyansky said the alliance “continues to rely on hybrid warfare, in which a bleeding Ukraine fights on everyone’s behalf.” He also described the Ukrainian authorities’ actions against the Russian language, Russian speakers, canonical Orthodoxy and Orthodox Christians as manifestations of that warfare.

TASS

It is not misinformation, disinformation, or a crime to echo Democrats’ longheld view that election machines are vulnerable to manipulation.

The Democrats’ leading practitioner of weaponizing the government to attack political opponents, Marc Elias, recently called for my prosecution because I wrote on X that President Trump should exercise existing federal authority to make sure that electronic voting machines are not hacked or compromised in the midterm elections.

I argued on X that those who are demanding that President Trump declare a national emergency regarding the voting machines are asking him to do something he’s already done. On May 15, 2019, he invoked the National Emergencies Act of 1976 as the basis for issuing Executive Order 13873. That order authorizes the commerce secretary, after consultation with other federal officials, to restrict certain information and communications technology and services (ICTS) transactions involving foreign adversaries, including China, when they pose specified national security risks. It aimed to eliminate or mitigate vulnerabilities in various categories of technology and U.S. critical infrastructure, which includes elections.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Commerce developed and promulgated regulations implementing the order, which became effective in February 2024.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has authority under ICTS regulations to require mitigation of threats to critical infrastructure. Elections are “critical infrastructure” thanks to President Obama and his secretary of Homeland Security in 2017. Because all electronic voting systems used in America’s elections are made in whole or in part in China, the ICTS regulations most certainly apply to voting machines.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, in an Aug. 24 letter to the White House, specifically noted the urgent need to mitigate threats to America’s elections infrastructure. That action, along with statements from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and President Trump’s primetime speech on election security in July 2026, provide all the necessary conditions for Commerce Secretary Lutnick to take action.

Democrats’ Reaction to My Post

So what was the reaction of the pro-corrupt election crowd to my post on X? Democracy Docket and its principal, Elias, screamed that I had called for Lutnick to “seize the voting machines.” The next day, Elias and Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s former chief strategist, publicly declared that I should be indicted on RICO charges because of my X post on this topic.

Media Matters included my comments in its article headlined “Election Denial Movement Sets Stage for Chaos on Election Day and its Aftermath.”

What is wrong with these people?

Why are they opposed to taking steps to protect against potential manipulation or exploitation of electronic voting machines? I have never said, nor do I believe, that anyone should “seize” the voting machines — or inspect any parts. I merely reiterated the mitigation plan that DHS outlined earlier this year.

DHS has tied mitigation of vulnerable voting machines to its 2027 FEMA grants. The grants require inclusion of a plan for how the state will mitigate the vulnerabilities of the electronic voting systems. “[S]tates must conduct a manual audit of at least 5% of all ballots cast [in federal races in randomly selected precincts]. This common-sense process involves physically reviewing a random selection of ballots to confirm that the machine reported results match results on the paper ballots. This will ensure accuracy and detect any machine errors or manipulation.”

Secretary Lutnick has legal authority to require the implementation of such a mitigation program on a nationwide basis. Requiring a hand count of a percentage of the voting precincts’ federal races to compare to the machine results and confirm their accuracy is not difficult and it is not “extreme.” Nor is it some wild-eyed Trumpian policy.

Democrats Before Trump Derangement Syndrome

In fact, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., delivered a speech on the Senate floor on July 15, 2019, warning that the nation’s voting infrastructure is woefully outdated and is vulnerable to hacking and external manipulation.

Back in 2019, before Trump Derangement Syndrome resulted in collective Democrat amnesia on the topic of voting machine vulnerabilities, Wyden and 14 Senate Democrats introduced the “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act of 2019” (the PAVE Act) “to protect American elections from foreign interference by mandating hand-marked paper ballots and setting new cybersecurity standards for all federal elections.”

“I have been pushing hard for hand-marked paper ballots and risk-limiting audits as key defenses against the hackers,” said Wyden in 2019, citing the National Academies of Science and its proposed protocols to ensure the accuracy of the results of electronic voting machines: hand counting a percentage of paper ballots in randomly selected voting precincts.

It is not misinformation or disinformation, nor is it a crime, for me to echo Democrats’ long-held view that the election machines are vulnerable to manipulation and require mitigation of those vulnerabilities.

As Wyden said in 2019, “I don’t think this has anything to do with Democrats or Republicans. I believe [failing to act to secure elections] is an out-and-out scandal … that does a disservice to our country and particularly the sacred right to make sure that all Americans can vote and have their vote counted.”

Restoring the trust and confidence every American ought to be able to have in our elections — including the electronic voting systems — requires proactive leadership.

It shouldn’t be a trigger for demanding that I be prosecuted for suggesting a reasonable and heretofore Democratic proposal for addressing the very real concerns about voting machines.

Cleta Mitchell, The Federalist

After practicing psychotherapy professionally for over 40 years, one can’t help but notice patterns. Problems may take different forms, but the core issues often fall into just a few categories. Life doesn’t need to be as hard as some people make it, so I’ve come up with a Top Ten List of things people do to bring problems onto themselves:

1. Having kids without thinking. Some people have kids because it’s the thing to do, or because they feel it’s what they should do. Surprisingly few have carefully thought it out in terms of whatever else they might want to do with their lives.
2. Waiting for things to happen automatically. We live in an age where a lot of things get done quickly. This has created a sense that competence and achievement are to be expected. That’s OK, but it must be matched with the resolve to create your own achievements. Good things don’t just happen; we have to make them happen.
3. Expecting (or needing) to please others. It’s impossible to please everyone. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Most of the time others are too busy caring about their own lives to worry about what you’re doing.

Sometimes the need to please others starts in childhood. Most kids aim to please, and some parents make themselves hard to please. This is fine for kids, but once you’re an adult it makes no sense. In your job or business there are standards to meet, but it’s not your duty to please people other than to do what your customer or your boss pays you to do. If you like what you’re doing, then you’ll like yourself. And when you like yourself, it’s easy to make others happy.

4. Trying to change others. This should really be #1! People insist that they don’t want to change others, but then they behave as if they can. This is particularly true with loved ones and co-workers. You can try to persuade, but only if you have first earned attention and respect. Use or abuse of power will never force anyone into lasting behavioral change.
5. Acting on impulse. In other words, acting without thought. If/when things turn out badly, you have only yourself to blame. “I had a bad day” doesn’t cut it.
6. Overestimating what thought can do. Some of us expect that thinking gives us certainty. You can be certain that one plus one equals two, but there are other things that require experimentation. You might think you’ll enjoy a certain thing, but you won’t know until you try. Thinking is great, but you also have to take action.
7. Expecting things to stay the same. Change depends in part on other people. Just because something works well for you doesn’t mean it will work well for others. One man’s comfort is another’s impediment. Always have a back-up plan in case something changes.
8. Expecting things to change. This is the reverse of #7 and is similar to #2. Imagine just passively waiting for something to happen. Sometimes waiting makes sense, but you need a back-up plan. Life goes on, and your “ship won’t come in” unless you make it come in.
9. Thinking that kindness and reasonable behavior will lead to the same from others. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life that people do what they choose. Kindness on your part may bring it out in those who are already kind, but if somebody is not reasonable, your behavior will make little difference. This expectation can make people resentful and angry. Save yourself the hurt by avoiding unrealistic expectations.
10. Don’t fall for the myth of “intrinsic value.” There is nothing wrong with you that corrected thinking can’t change. Your thinking might be flawed, but fundamentally you are not. We are all subject to error, but the good thing about errors is that they’re almost always correctable. And we live a better life by learning from them.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins. 

Luis Gonzalez | October 29, 2026

Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.

Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.

This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.

On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.

Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.

For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.

The final bill is more limited than earlier versions, but its scope does not erase its significance. The government has established a special process that gives selected organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire privately owned property. That changes the relationship between ownership and control, even when the owner retains the deed.

COPA’s history also illustrates how incremental change works. An earlier version passed the City Council in December 2025 but was vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. The Council failed to override the veto. Advocates revised the proposal, reduced the number of potentially covered buildings from roughly 10,000 to approximately 2,100, and returned with a narrower bill that passed in October 2026. The campaign was led by the NYC Community Land Initiative, alongside a coalition of more than 200 community, tenant, and affordable housing groups. The coalition included the Democratic Socialists of America’s Queens Housing Working Group.

The political connection matters. Mamdani championed COPA, and his administration includes Democratic Socialists of America members in influential positions, including Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church and Cea Weaver, whom he appointed to lead the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. COPA will be administered by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under this administration. The connection is clear. A mayor who openly identifies with democratic socialism is advancing a housing policy that gives government-certified organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire private property, consistent with the broader direction of the socialist housing agenda.

The issue is not whether every nonprofit involved in COPA shares the same ideology. The issue is whether the policy advances a broader movement whose stated goals deserve to be taken seriously. The DSA’s own Housing Justice Commission advocates moving housing away from treatment as a market commodity and toward social housing, community control, and the redistribution of land. Its stated program discusses expropriation from capitalists and presents incremental reforms as steps toward a broader transformation.

COPA does not abolish private property. It establishes a statutory preference for selected organizations to acquire certain privately owned buildings. That is a meaningful connection between a specific law and an ideological project that seeks to transform how property is owned and controlled.

The relevant comparison is not to a revolutionary seizure of property, but to the gradual expansion of administrative control over private transactions. COPA does not confiscate buildings, and New York City is not a revolutionary state. But the law does establish a new principle: the government may give selected organizations priority in deciding who can purchase certain private property and when a sale may proceed. Each restriction can be defended as a limited response to a particular problem. Once accepted, it becomes the foundation on which the next restriction can be built.

That is how socialist and communists ideas can become embedded in ordinary administration. A law creates a new preference. Agencies write the procedures. Organizations learn to operate within the new system. Future officials inherit the authority and can argue that expanding it is simply the logical next step.

COPA’s immediate scope is limited, and future expansion is not inevitable. But the precedent is real. Government can influence who gets to buy, when a sale can proceed, and which organizations receive privileged access to private property. The definitions of eligibility, the administration of deadlines, and the use of hardship exemptions will help determine how much power the law places in the hands of city officials and favored organizations.

The question is not whether every nonprofit will abuse the system. It is whether government should create special rights for selected organizations in transactions involving property that belongs to someone else. A worthy objective does not settle that question, and a limited law today does not guarantee a limited law tomorrow.

And once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins, and reversing it may require the very bullets and revolution its advocates never needed to achieve it.

Luis Gonzalez, American Thinker

A new European pilot fatigue report says more than three out of four pilots experienced a microsleep in the cockpit over the previous month. Read the survey device, though, and it also counts pilots who were fighting to keep their eyes open. That’s not good! But it’s not actually the same thing.

What’s useful is that it helps us understand when flying becomes fatiguing, why a legal schedule can still be a bad schedule, and where American pilot rules still fall short.

What The Survey Actually Asked

The original is A fatigue survey of European Pilots – 2026, prepared by aviation consultancy Baines Simmons for the European Cockpit Association, which represents pilot associations. In other words, this is meant to bolster pilots who want stricter work rules (both for their quality of life, but also to increase demand for pilots and drive up wages).

About 7,200 pilots across 32 countries responded. Participation was voluntary, through a survey promoted by ECA from August 4 through September 7. That may not be a representative sample. The association’s announcement reports:

38.8% usually or always lacked enough recovery time to prevent cumulative fatigue.

24.2% said their usual response when unfit due to fatigue was to skip reporting it and fly anyway.

38.3% had used the captain’s discretion to extend a duty at least once in the previous four weeks.

69.1% expressed at least some concern about consequences if they refused an extension.

The promoted headline 76.8% comes from a question combining microsleeps with “head nodding, or fought to keep your eyes open.” And these are self-reported recollections, not any kind of independent sleep measurements or a per-flight exposure rate.

Inflight Cockpit Naps Are Actually Allowed In Europe

European rules also permit controlled cockpit rest under procedures, while the U.S. doesn’t authorize the same in-seat naps. When adopting Part 117, the FAA said it needed more evidence before allowing controlled rest. A 2024 field study found better reaction time performance before descent among pilots who took controlled rest.

The Problems Aren’t Evenly Distributed

Five or more occurrences of the combined sleep/sleepiness symptoms were reported by 34.1% of low cost pilots, 30.7% of charter pilots, and 19.6% of network airline pilots. Malta was at 39.3%, Ireland 36.2%, and Spain 33.1%.

The reporting figures also suggest an incentive problem. If calling in fatigued means losing money, getting a reputation as unreliable, or facing management scrutiny, some pilots will keep flying. The airline then sees their practices entail little fatigue.

A Short Flight Can Come At The Worst Possible Time A European field study published in 2020 followed 392 aircrew members from 24 airlines, using sleep diaries, wrist activity monitors and sleepiness ratings. At the start of descent, the estimated probability of high fatigue was:

15% on daytime duties.

19% on early-start duties.

31% on late finishes.

34% on night duties.

Duties spanning the full 2 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. low point in the body clock reached 42%. Prior sleep and working through that low point were major predictors. That can be not good, but it isn’t nearly the 76.8% actually falling asleep that the pilot union group reports.

A subsequent EASA-commissioned assessment found that both duty length and the number of flight segments independently contributed to fatigue. Repeated takeoffs and landings matter, along with extended duties and overnight returns from the Americas to Europe.

Short and long haul aren’t enough of a distinction here, but short hops that return to base, allowing a pilot to sleep at home and not adjust their body clock, is certainly going to entail less fatigue and risk than long haul flying.

Two aircraft crew-rest bunks separated by a privacy curtain

Is It Too Much Flying, Too Little Rest, Or Pilots Wasting Their Layovers? Long workdays, repeated sectors and badly timed schedules can leave less opportunity for sleep. Required ‘time behind the door’ can still include eating, showering and winding down in front of the TV. The new European survey doesn’t tell us what share of the problem comes from personal choices or even just not being able to sleep. Just telling someone to sleep doesn’t make their body clock cooperate.

There is evidence that personal choices sometimes matter. In the 2013 UPS flight 1354 crash in Birmingham, the NTSB identified the first officer’s fatigue as a contributing factor, tracing it to acute sleep loss from poor management of time off and circadian factors.

NASA researchers described a U.S. field study this year involving 159 pilots at four airlines. They collected sleep information and thousands of reaction-time tests, comparing trips with and without overnight flying or shifts between early starts and late finishes. The pilots averaged roughly 17 hours off between duties.

Pilots on disrupted trips slept about half an hour less and showed small but statistically significant increases in fatigue and sleepiness, along with worse reaction time performance. Performance was poorest around 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. on their home clock.

Did U.S. Changes After Colgan Air Actually Reduce Fatigue?

The U.S. implemented Part 117 in January 2014. The reform increased minimum rest from eight hours to ten, required an eight hour uninterrupted sleep opportunity, and increased recurring time off from 24 hours to 30. It also made duty limits more sensitive to the body clock, while allowing nine hours of flying instead of eight for favorable reporting times.

An early survey of 92 self-identified pilots, conducted months after implementation, found 35% thought the rule improved their fatigue situation and 33% thought it worsened it. That was a small voluntary survey. And I’ve never seen a real national estimate of the reduction in fatigue caused by Part 117.

“One Level Of Safety” Doesn’t Answer Which Rules A Flight Needs I’ve argued before that safety requirements should match the operation. A daytime regional trip and a flight across the Pacific pose different demands. The fatigue evidence supports that.

An equal commitment to passenger safety can require different staffing, schedules, rest facilities and training. ALPA’s “one level of safety” slogan doesn’t establish that identical requirements produce identical outcomes. In fact, ALPA itself asked for longer rest when pilots enter a new time zone during the Part 117 rulemaking. Even the union’s proposals recognize that different circumstances call for different protections.

JSX regional jet parked on the ramp

ALPA does have a reasonable argument for extending commercial fatigue rules to cargo pilots. It protects far fewer people on board, but people on the ground are at risk too

Gary Leff, View from the Wing

I have read, over the past two weeks, the following things about the election:

There will be a massive blue wave.
There will be a huge red wave.

Jews favor Republicans two to one (unprecedented).
Jews are still Democrats.

More urban voters are Republican than before. More blacks are Republican.
Democrats are ahead in every group.

Record numbers of Hispanics like Trump.
Hispanics are going two to one for Democrats.

California will go Republican. California will sweep Democratic.

Unprecedented numbers of Democrats are abandoning Democrats because of the explicit socialism and antisemitic views.

Unprecedented numbers of Republicans are abandoning Republicans and voting straight blue for the first time in their lives.

I have never seen such a contradictory and convoluted mess of desperate propaganda and impossible to objectively critique information. Frankly, on both sides.

Survivors of dictatorships (like the former Soviet Union, Maoist China) have told me that you could never believe what you read — ever — in those societies.
It seems that America has become the same.

It’s deeper than politics. It’s what the death of reason looks like. No intellectual honesty, no objectivity.

No truth.

When reason goes, liberty is not far behind because liberty depends upon truth and integrity.

We have to find a way to get reason back.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who is now running as a Democrat against U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds to replace Ron DeSantis as Florida governor, is raising eyebrows in the Sunshine State with his suggestion that boys have a constitutional right to play on girls’ sports teams.

His comments came during the “To the Contrary” podcast Charlie Sykes last year, and were unearthed Wednesday by Libs of TikTok.

Florida Gov candidate David Jolly (D) suggests boys have a constitutional right to play on girl’s sports teams:

“Their constitutional rights… It’s pretty disgusting what we’ve seen from Republicans on this..”

“Be supportive of them and allow them to play in youth sports.”… pic.twitter.com/77xDjCUy3j

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 28, 2026

Sykes had asked Jolly outright: “How do you navigate that issue?”

“I fundamentally think it’s an issue for the courts,” the Democrat replied. “And I don’t think one rule should apply to everything.”

“I think some latitude among the sports leagues to make decisions, but ultimately, it’s a constitutional question that the courts are gonna have to decide.”

Jolly continued: “I think where I fundamentally diverge from Republicans on this issue is you can immediately see where leaders and voters are either working in good faith towards equity or in bad faith against it. This is a new and novel moment for us as a country.

“It’s OK to wrestle with it. But you’re either wrestling to resolve it on behalf of all Americans, their fundamental and constitutional rights, their respect and their dignity, or you’re working to humiliate them. And I think it’s pretty disgusting what we’ve seen from Republicans in the past several years on this.

“I don’t think we need to knock down that youth soccer player who is working with their family and their doctor on whatever their current crisis is personally. I think it can be supportive of them to allow them to play in youth sports.

“If it’s a question of Olympic trials, obviously I think you get too far down the road there saying, Maybe it’s a bridge too far to let trains athletes in certain sports, but let’s leave it to the sports leagues.”

Donalds is a staunch opponent of biological males competing in girls’ or women’s sports, and his campaign posted video Wednesday of the Republican blasting Jolly’s stance.

“My opponent’s somebody who says it’s OK for boys to be in girls’ sports. It’s just him and the WNBA,” Donalds said.

“They’re the only two that think this is OK. Everybody else has said, ‘No, that’s actually quite stupid.’ Even the Europeans are realizing that’s dumb. But this is where the radical Democrats have gone in America today, and it’s sad to see.”

🤣🤣 “Only David Jolly and the WNBA think it’s okay for men to participate in girls’ sports.

Everyone else has said, ‘No, that’s actually quite stupid.’” –@ByronDonalds pic.twitter.com/tG4LpkffY2

— Byron War Room (@ByronWarRoom) October 28, 2026

Joe Kovacs, The Liberty Daily