Since the Senate is in Republican hands, as are its constituent committees, there was little Democrats could do but abstain from the vote in a show of protest.

Here are the details you’ll need to vote in four states with deadlines coming up Friday, Oct. 23, and Saturday, Oct. 24.

One thing is for sure: Thursday night's presidential debate was a far more civil and — dare we say — normal event than the first. Moderated by NBC's Kristen Welker, the candidates stayed more or less on topic, something the first debate's moderator, Fox News' Chris Wallace, didn't fail to notice.Asked for his response to the second and final debate, Wallace said: "First of all, I'm jealous. I would've liked to have been able to moderate that debate and get a real exchange of views instead of hundreds of interruptions."> Chris Wallace: "I'm jealous. I would've liked to have been able to moderate that debate" pic.twitter.com/DDNKZBVstk> > — Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) October 23, 2020"I thought it was a good debate," Wallace went on. "A good, substantive debate. Two very competing visions for the country."More stories from theweek.com Trump loses on the merits Who won the final 2020 debate? Call it a draw. Get ready for Trump TV, America

Allow me, please, a point of personal privilege.

“At this point in time, we are on track to retry" the death penalty case, a prosecutor told a judge in California on Friday.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Danish aid workers stationed in the Balkans say dozens of migrants have alleged they were brutalized by Croatian law-enforcement officers when they tried to cross into the European Union nation, before being summarily expelled back to Bosnia. Nicola Bay, the head of the Danish Refugee Council in Bosnia, told The Associated Press Friday that 149 migrants of varying nationalities, independently interviewed by his staff in the country over the past 10 days, reported being exposed to “extremely abusive” treatment by Croatian police. The testimonies include allegations of brutal and prolonged beatings, of people being stripped naked and being forced to lie like logs stacked on top of each other, Bay said, adding: “In two cases, we have reports of severe sexual abuse.”

MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin vowed on Thursday he would not be swayed by Western pressure over the poisoning of his most prominent domestic critic, Alexei Navalny.Nonetheless, a reported mysterious shakeup in a Russian intelligence agency, and other comments by Putin, suggest the Kremlin has been forced to at least try to demonstrate distance between the president and those who might be behind Navalny’s poisoning with the military nerve agent Novichok.Speaking in front of Russian businessmen, Putin declared he had personally allowed Navalny to leave Siberia for Berlin for medical treatment, which saved the opposition leader’s life. A few hours later, Putin fired the deputy director of Federal Security Service (FSB), General Sergei Smirnov, according to a report in a respected business newspaper, RBK. General Smirnov oversaw an FSB department that has been linked in British media reports to the poisoning.Navalny, a 44-year-old anti-corruption activist and opposition leader, collapsed on a plane from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was in coma while his wife, Yulia, and members of his anti-corruption organization struggled to even visit his sickbed at the hospital, as he was surrounded by FSB and police officers. According to a report in The Guardian, one of the departments managed by General Smirnov, the so-called FSB’s Second Service, was behind Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok.The shakeup in the FSB became a big day for Kremlin-watchers, who in the best of times struggle to figure out the centers of power behind the Kremlin and FSB doors. To be sure, the firing of the general could have other explanations than the poisoning.Navalny Had Many Enemies in the Kremlin—but Who Wanted Him Dead?Still, Russia’s media wondered about a link between Smirnov and Navalny. Pavel Lobkov, a news presenter, was on live Rain TV on Thursday for the president’s speech. “First we heard Putin babbling away his usual drill about the evil West and how we relaxed. But then after 6 p.m. he began to talk about Navalny and then we saw the biggest news of the day: Putin removed General Smirnov,” Lobkov told The Daily Beast. “The official reason was age—Smirnov turned 70—but considering what his Second Service was famous for, it could be the punishment for not doing a clean poisoning job. Since FSB is a completely closed and secret service, we did not manage to find anybody competent to comment on Smirnov’s case.”Smirnov had worked in the KGB and FSB since 1974, first in Putin’s hometown of Leningrad —now St Petersburg—where Putin has also served in the Soviet KGB, then at the central FSB apparatus in Moscow.News agencies published bits of Putin’s address to the Russian elite and his comments about Navalny. He was reading a text from a piece of paper, quite unusual for Putin, who typically speaks for hours without looking at his notes. His announcement of his personal role in evacuating Navalny was mixed with defiance. “Looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to tell those who are still waiting for Russia to gradually fade away: We are worried about only one thing—how not to catch a cold at your funerals.”Navalny, who is still undergoing medical treatment in Germany after being in a coma for nearly three weeks, said Putin was personally behind his poisoning. In his first interview, with Der Spiegel magazine, Navalny said only the most influential people in the secret services, the FSB director Alexander Bortnikov and the head of foreign intelligence office, Sergei Naryshkin, could order the Novichok attack without an approval by Russia’s commander-in-chief. Navalny also blamed Putin for ordering the attack in his interview with Russia’s most popular blogger, Yuriy Dud, viewed by more than 21 million people.“Putin is afraid of Navalny, the only real opposition leader, who will definitely come back to Russia, fight to get registered for the presidential elections in three years and win the election to be Russia’s next president,” a close Navalny ally, Lyubov Sobol, told The Daily Beast in a recent interview.An investigative reporter at The Bell, Anastasia Stognei, said that General Smirnov was in charge of several key FSB departments, including department K, which is dealing with economic crimes. The department was famous for several high-profile arrests with links to domestic politics, including the cases of ex-minister of economic development, Aleksey Ulyukayev, and the owner of Summa group, Ziyavudin Magomedov.Putin Is Facing the Toughest Fight of His Presidency as Former USSR Goes up in FlamesLast April, the FSB arrested three of its own officials in Smirnov’s K Department, on suspicion they took multi-million dollar bribes from Russian bankers. “Smirnov was directly involved with the banking sector. Our sources explained the high-profile arrests with ‘insider fighting’ inside the FSB between Smirnov’s clan and Sergei Korolev, the head of economic security service, who they say is going to replace Smirnov as the deputy head of FSB,” Stognei said.Intrigues in Russia’s secret services have far-reaching consequences, said Sergei Parkhomenko, a commentator on Russia’s politics. Parkhomenko said that Smirnov was a lost chess piece in the fight of Russian secret services. “There are several ‘cleaners’ around Putin, who do dirty jobs in the most dirty ways; Putin might make comments about some personalities, his services fulfil what they believe were the boss’ wishes, then we hear of Anna Politkovskaya’s or Boris Nemtsov’s assassinations, poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko or a less successful poisoning attempt of Sergei Skripal or Navalny,” Parkhomenko told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “But we don’t have any clue. Maybe there were more than 100 successful poisoning attempts, when young and healthy people died a quiet death.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

"The idea would be to create a pan-Turkic region, and essentially eliminate Armenians from that region period," Mariam Khaloyan said.

Ghislaine Maxwell could not hide her frustration during an increasingly heated and bad tempered legal deposition that was unsealed in New York. Several times during the seven-hour exchange, which took place over two days, her anger boiled over as she was forced to answer repeated questions about allegations made by a woman she insisted was a serial liar. At one point, unable to contain her emotions, Miss Maxwell “very inappropriately and very harshly” pounded the desk, forcing them to take a break. She was being quizzed about Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s claim that she was just 15 when she was first introduced to Jeffrey Epstein at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, which she furiously insisted had been fabricated to make the story “more exciting.” “Can we agree she was not the age she said… that is obviously, manifestly, absolutely, totally a lie,” Miss Maxwell said. Sigfrid McCawley, for Ms Roberts Giuffre, interjected, stating for the record that Miss Maxwell had banged the desk “in an inappropriate manner.” “I ask she take a deep breath and calm down,” she said. “I know this is a difficult position but physical assault or threats is not appropriate so no pounding, no stomping, no.”

The message is meant to deter any similar attack against US infrastructure.

Social distancing hasn't led to an increase in suicide rates, despite the president’s claims. But a prolonged pandemic might.

Catch up on the most important updates from this week.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wanted to make a movie that didn't romanticize the past.

Plus: Facebook’s attempt at a search engine, China’s handling of Covid-19, and a slippery situation for the president.

The sequel to the 10-year-old horror classic is a psychological journey to hell and back.

This week, for no legitimate reason, the internet decided to bring up the Hemsworth, Pratt, Evans, and Pine debate once again.

The carnivorous plant is believed to have something akin to a short-term "memory." A team of scientists has uncovered new details on how it works.

"Permission to jump in an X-wing and blow something up?" "Permission granted."

A secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair—with a file no bigger than a gif.