Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

Former President John F. Kennedy threatened to “splinter [the CIA] into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” before he was assassinated in 1963. JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wants something perhaps less dramatic.

In a Trump campaign event with Tulsi Gabbard on Saturday, RFK explained his idea for reforming the CIA. According to him, reforming the CIA is as simple as splintering the “espionage” and “plans” divisions, which handle matters of intelligence and paramilitary operations, respectively. Those divisions are referred to today as the Directorate of Intelligence and Directorate of Operations.

RFK said the two divisions need to be reorganized so the intelligence/espionage area has oversight of the paramilitary operations. He said his father had a similar plan when he was Attorney General.

“My father had a reform plan … Break up espionage division from the plans division, which is paramilitary division that fixes elections, buys newspapers, assassinates foreign leaders and so on,” he said.

“I would break up those divisions and … put espionage division oversight of plans division.”

RFK Jr. explained his plan for reforming the CIA at a campaign event we attended Saturday.
He also revealed that he recently had dinner with former CIA director Mike Pompeo — saying he doesn’t like Pompeo but admires him. pic.twitter.com/N2I89JLJea

— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) October 29, 2024

Such a plan may seem tepid for a man who’s accused the CIA of being involved in the murder of his uncle. But RFK’s been surprisingly cordial with the agency. His daughter-in-law and campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, was a CIA officer for 10 years.

RFK also revealed at Saturday’s campaign event in North Carolina that he had dinner with former Trump-era CIA Director Mike Pompeo. RFK called Pompeo a “neocon” and said he disagreed with him on many policies, but also said he admired him, calling the former agency director brilliant.

RFK said Pompeo told him that “The worst mistake of my public lie was not fixing CIA. I could have but I didn’t do it.”

“The entire upper echelon of that agency is made of individuals who don’t believe in the institutions of the United States of America,” RFK said.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Axios is reporting Thursday that Iran is still preparing a major retaliation in response to the Israeli aerial attack of the overnight and early morning hours of last Saturday. Israel’s strikes on missile and military facilities was itself a much anticipated response to the Oct.1st ballistic missile attack.

While most regional observers believe the tit-for-tat has cooled down, reflected in declining oil prices this week, the Axios report cites a pair of Israeli officials to say “Israeli intelligence suggests Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the US presidential election.”

This would involve large numbers of drones and ballistic missiles, they say. Throughout the Gaza war, there have been sporadic drones launched by Iran-backed paramilitary units in Iraq, but nothing on a major scale.

Israeli sources on Thursday have suggested Iran is actually moving ballistic missiles to prepare for such an attack.

Also, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami has been cited as saying that Iran’s response will be “different from any scenario” Israel might expect.

CNN too has been reporting the fresh threats, on Wednesday writing the following based on Iranian military sources:

Israel’s recent attacks on Iran will be met with a “definitive and painful” response that will likely come before the US presidential vote, a high-ranking source told CNN on Wednesday.

The remarks signal a departure from Iran’s initial attempts to downplay the severity of the strikes carried out by Israel on October 25, which marked the first time Israel has openly acknowledged striking Iranian targets.

“The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the aggression of the Zionist regime will be definitive and painful,” the source, who is familiar with Iran’s deliberations, said.

Although the source did not provide an exact date for the attack, they said it “will probably take place before the day of the US presidential election.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is seething over Israeli warplanes violating its airspace during last weekend’s attack. It has lodged an official protest note with the United Nations about the illegal breach.

It appears the some one hundred Israeli jets reportedly used in the attack fired on Iran from over neighboring Iraqi airspace. Such a tactic has long been utilized by the Israeli Air Force in attacking Syria, as it typically fires from over undefended Lebanese airspace.

Currently US and Israeli negotiators say they are getting close to achieving a ceasefire with Hezbollah, but any new large-scale attack from the ‘Iranian axis’ would surely jeopardize such a potential deal.

As we noted in our preview earlier, Hedge Funds are getting picky into the quarter. While most were short as given a perceived miss below Street for Q4 EBIT, some have covered as downside (if any) would be short-lived with investors having messaged a “buy-the-dip” mentality. Investors are starting to understand the variability of operating income and there is a general agreement that this is the best capital allocator in the space, so would rather Amazon invest than harvest profit dollars. The bull case continues to center around

1. prospects for faster gross merchandise value growth and share gains on higher level of service amidst ongoing fulfillment regionalization efforts in the US and eventual global rollout;
2. ongoing margin expansion in Amazon’s ecommerce franchise due to improving unit economics;
3. new high margin revenue stream from Prime Video with ads – although still in its early innings it should become a meaningful contributor over time, especially as content costs are already incorporated in the model.

Investors are also focused on the payouts through the investment cycle with AWS penciled in for next year; ecommerce a constant; NBA cash doesn’t go out the door until 2025 so should see return on investment after that; Kuiper spending money on R&D now, but equipment and launch capitalization and depreciation are on the other side, which doesn’t come in until 2H25. The most important things will be:

1. directional commentary around AWS growth/optimization;
2. signals of retail margin improvement as suggested by management commentary on “cost to serve”;
3. progress with fulfillment regionalization and broader cost containment efforts;
4. directional commentary on fiscal year capex for ecommerce (up with business) and ongoing AWS investments;
5. commentary on adoption of Prime Video with ads and ad industry broadly and;
6. positioning around GenAI investments.

The AWS bogey is 21% and reaching AWS growth of 21% in 3Q24 implies sequential revenue growth of $1.62 bn, well above the 3Q23 (depressed) level of $920 mn and the second-best quarter ever, apart from the 4Q21 (boom period) sequential revenue growth level of $1.67 bn. While doable, this isn’t a slam dunk.

With that in mind, this is what AMZN reported for Q3:

• EPS $1.43 vs. $1.26 q/q, beating estimate $1.16
• Net sales $158.88 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimates $157.29 billion
  • Online stores net sales $61.41 billion, +7.2% y/y, beating estimate $59.64 billion
  • Physical Stores net sales $5.23 billion, +5.4% y/y, beating estimate $5.17 billion
  • Subscription Services net sales $11.28 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimate $11.17 billion
    • Subscription services net sales excluding F/X +11% vs. +13% y/y, beating estimate +9.86%
  • North America net sales $95.54 billion, +8.7% y/y, beating estimate $95.22 billion
  • International net sales $35.89 billion, +12% y/y, beating estimate $34.55 billion
  • Third-Party Seller Services net sales $37.86 billion, +10% y/y, missing estimate $38.22 billion
    • Third-party seller services net sales excluding F/X +10% vs. +18% y/y, missing estimate +11.8%
• Amazon Web Services net sales $27.45 billion, +19% y/y, missing estimate $27.49 billion
• Amazon Web Services net sales excluding F/X +19% vs. +12% y/y, missing estimate +19.2%

Turning to operating results we find the following:

• AWS operating profit $10.4BN, beating estimates of $9.12BN
• North America operating margin +5.9% vs. +4.9% y/y, beating estimate +5.58%
• International operating margin 3.6% vs. -0.3% y/y, beating estimate 1.23%
• Operating income $17.41 billion, +56% y/y, beating estimates $14.75 billion
• Operating margin 11% vs. 7.8% y/y, beating estimates 9.34%, and an all time high

As for expenses, these were slightly above estimates suggesting the company can use some more cost optimizations:

• Fulfillment expense $24.66 billion, +11% y/y, higher than estimates of $24.35 billion
• Seller unit mix 60% vs. 60% y/y,

Of the above, the most notable highlight – as per our preview – was AWS which grew revenue by a whopping 19% to $27.45BN, which however was just below the sellside estimate of $27.49BN. Furthermore, ex FX, the growth was also 19.0%, below the 19.2% bogey. So maybe a little weakness here similar to Microsoft.

But if revenue growth for AWS was a bit light, the margin more than offset it, rising from 35.5% to 38.1%, a record for the segment. This was thanks to AWS operating income of $10.4 billion, exceeding analysts’ average projection of $9.12 billion. The fact that international margins also surged to 3.63%, the highest since Covid, certainly helped.

As a result of the surge in international and AWS profits, Amazon’s consolidated operating margin rebounded strongly, and after dipping modestly in Q2 from the Q1 record of 10.7%, rose to a new all time high of 11.0% in Q3!

Looking ahead, the company projected profit and revenue in the current quarter that exceeded analysts’ estimates on optimism for a strong holiday shopping season:

• Revenues for Q4 are expected to be between $181.5 billion and $188.5 billion, or to grow between 7% and 11% compared with fourth quarter 2023, with the midline of 185 billion just below consensus estimate of $186.36 billion.
• Operating income for Q4 is expected to be between $16 billion and $20 billion, compared with $13.2 billion in fourth quarter 2023. and in line with the median estimate of $17.5 billion.

If accurate, that would mean Q4 revenue will grow at the slowest pace sine Dec 2022.

“As we get into the holiday season, we’re excited about what we have in store for customers,” Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said in the statement.

In response to the solid results, which saw revenues beat and guidance in line, despite a mixed report from AWS, the stock surged, and was last trading around $195, up about 4% on the day, and basically where it was to close Wednesday.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the last two weeks, Kamala Harris has been trying to revive her stagnant campaign by smearing Trump as being Hitlerian and a fascist. She claims Trump is planning to put his enemies in encampments.

Yet in the modern era, it was not Trump who put large numbers of U.S. residents and citizens into “relocation camps,” but liberal Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt who sent Japanese-American citizens and residents into them.

If Harris refers to Trump’s supposed fascist policies during his prior four-year tenure, there is no such evidence.

Nonetheless, the once “joyful” Harris is ending her campaign by trafficking in lies and smears reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy era.

Recall that fascists hijack law enforcement and the military to suspend constitutional rights and punish enemies. But Trump did neither.

Instead, in 2016, a corrupt FBI went after Trump himself during the Obama administration with the bogus Steele dossier.

The FBI, which in 2016 had hired the faker Steele, in 2020, fused with social media to suppress accurate news reporting of the embarrassing Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

A number of FBI directors and intelligence officials—John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe—who openly sought to destroy Trump had a long history of either lying or feigning amnesia under oath.

Fascists try to warp the legal system. But Trump’s own Justice Department selected an independent special counsel to investigate the invented Russian collusion accusations against him.

In vast contrast, the Biden Justice Department coordinated with Georgia prosecutors Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James to prosecute Trump, bankrupt him, and keep off the campaign trail.

Fascists use their governments to destroy their enemies.

During Trump’s term, for the first time in history, the House of Representatives impeached a first-term president twice. And in another first, the Senate tried Trump as a private citizen.

A self-styled “anonymous” federal official bragged openly of deliberately, and likely unlawfully, leading a bureaucratic cabal to sabotage Trump’s lawful executive orders.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, in collusion with other bureaucrats, deliberately leaked a classified presidential phone call in an effort to ensure that Trump was impeached.

Fascists seek to change existing laws to destroy opponents and illegally consolidate power.

Currently, it is only the Democrats who seek to pack the court, destroy the Electoral College, end the Senate filibuster, and create two new states and thus gain four left-wing senators.

In key states, they radically changed voting laws.

As a result, roughly 70 percent of voters in 2020 did not cast their ballots in person on Election Day—even as the traditional rejection rates for fraudulent ballots mysteriously dived amid the influx.

Fascists arbitrarily nullify any laws they feel do not aid their agendas. Biden-Harris destroyed immigration law in order to bring in more than 12 million illegal aliens and gain new constituencies.

They also protected sanctuary cities, as some 600 such jurisdictions illegally and with impunity nullified federal immigration laws in neo-Confederate fashion.

Fascists seek to politicize the military.

But in Trump’s case, his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, brazenly violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice by libeling Trump as a fascist.

Worse still, Milley sabotaged the chain of command by ordering theater commanders to report directly to him in times of serious crises.

And in near-treasonous fashion, Milley contacted his Chinese communist counterpart in the People’s Liberation Army to assure him that he would warn the Chinese military before carrying out any Trump order he felt existentially dangerous.

Some of the most prominent retired four-star military officers—again in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—publicly smeared Trump as a coward, liar, fascist, Hitler-like, a Mussolini, a creator of Auschwitz-like death camps, and worthy of being removed “the sooner the better.”

Fascists seek to control and weaponize the media. So, Facebook and Twitter both conspired with the FBI to censure news accounts favorable to Trump. The major newspapers, social media corporations, television networks, and public broadcasting systematically and continually attacked Trump, censured his supporters, and fused with his opponents.

Why then the charges of Trump the fascist and Hitler reincarnation?

Simple. Harris’s personal negatives are rising, her polls inert.

She has abandoned her prior run-out-the-clock avoidance of the media, her smiley “joy” campaign, and instead now embraces the big lie, while Joe Biden writes off Trump supporters as “garbage”.

Harris is now confirming to voters that she really can neither think nor speak well and has no consistent agenda that appeals to the middle class.

So, in final desperation, Harris is smearing Trump as a fascist, even though ironically, he has been the target of fascist machinations from her own party and supporters for nearly a decade.

Intel shares are surging after-hours on the back of what can only really be described as “not as bad it could have been” earnings and guidance.

Three months after a painful earnings report that collapsed its share price, the not-quite-so-giant tech company booked nearly $19 billion in restructuring charges but said business trends are now improving.

For the third quarter, Intel reported an adjusted earnings per share loss of 46 cents, compared with Wall Street’s consensus estimate for a 2 cents loss, according to FactSet.

The results may not be comparable to analysts’ estimates as it includes a 63 cents negative impact from impairment charges.

Revenue came in at $13.3 billion, which was above analysts’ expectations of $13.02 billion.

Guidance was increased too…

• Fourth-quarter revenue will be $13.3 billion to $14.3 billion, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement. That compares with the $13.6 billion analysts estimated on average.

• The company is projecting a profit of 12 cents a share compared with the 6 cents Wall Street projected.

INTC shares up 10-12% after hours, but in context, there’s a lot of work to be done…

“This was a critical period of time for the company,” CEO Pat Gelsinger said in the interview. “We got a lot done.”

Additionally, Intel said its audit & finance committee approved a series of cost and capital reduction initiatives, including reducing headcount by 16,500 employees.

The market drifted lower on a combination of 1) disappointing tech prints (MSFT -6% & META -4%), 2) Poor liquidity (according to Goldman Sachs trading desk), and 3) Core PCE posting its biggest monthly gain since April.

Not exactly ‘goldilocks’!!

Inflation surprises are picking up post rate-cut…

Source: Bloomberg

…bolstering the case for a slower pace of rate cuts…

Source: Bloomberg

Goldman’s trading desk noted that market volumes continue to be strong, +14% vs the 20dma, although S&P top of book poor compared to the start of the week.

We are better to buy as a floor (~1B net demand) led by HFs buying pockets of Tech & Industrials (net to buy across almost all sectors) + LOs buying Comms Svcs. LOs stand out as sellers of Macro Products.

A very ugly end to the month for Nasdaq smashed it into the red for October along all the other majors…

Source: Bloomberg

Should we really be surprised by the decline given that EPS expectations have been guided lower for the last six months?

Source: Bloomberg

Hedge funds had a fun day with losses on their VIP Longs offset by gains on their biggest shorts…

Source: Bloomberg

All the MAG7 stocks were lower today led by MSFT, META, and NVDA…

Source: Bloomberg

The basket of MAG7 stocks erased most of the month’s gains today…

Source: Bloomberg

…and Most Shorted stocks shit the bed…

Source: Bloomberg

While the major indices ended red, buying “Trump” and selling “Kamala” was a huge winner in October…

Source: Bloomberg

The weakness in stocks should not come as a huge shock given the massive surge in Treasury yields we have seen this month. The belly is up almost 60bps on the month and almost 70bps since The Fed cut by 50bps…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve flattened significantly in October and has been flattening sicne The Fed cut, suggesting for anyone who wants to listen that fears of a policy error are very real…

Source: Bloomberg

And in the mean time, mortgage rates have soared back above 7.00% in October since The Fed cut…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar also soared in October (its biggest monthly rise since Sept 2022) having touched unchanged on the year at the end of Sept (after the rate cut)…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite the dollar strength , gold also exploded higher in October (up for the 8th month of the last 9 ) to a new record high (albeit with some weakness today). Since The fed cut rates, gold has been off to the races…

Source: Bloomberg

Quite a decoupling between the dollar and gold this year…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite a puke today, Bitcoin had a huge month (best month since May), rallying up to record highs yesterday near $74,000…

Source: Bloomberg

BTC ETF inflows have been huge in October…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rebounded on Israel-Iran retaliation headlines once again and that lifted WTI into the green for the month…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, bigger picture, since The Fed cut rates, USA Sovereign risk has exploded higher…

Source: Bloomberg

Not exactly resounding support from the market.

…and brace for a structurally higher VIX…

Source: Bloomberg

…not just past next week.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Recently, I spoke at an event about my book, “The Indispensable Right,” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Appearing on the panel with me was a New York University professor and one of the Facebook board members directing “content moderation.” We had a sharp disagreement over the record of Meta/Facebook on censorship, which I described as partisan and anti-free speech.

Now, Congress has released the internal communications at Facebook, showing an express effort to appease Biden officials by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.

In a new report released by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, Facebook executives are shown following the lead of the FBI, which gave them prior warnings to prepare to spike such stories before the election.

The FBI knew that the laptop was authentic. They had possession of the laptop, and American intelligence concluded that it was not Russian disinformation.

One Microsoft employee wrote, “FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge,”

However, these communications also show a knowing effort to appease Biden and Harris and effectively assist them in their election efforts. Facebook’s then-Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg reportedly wrote to Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan, “[o]bviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else.”

One of the most interesting communications came from a Facebook employee who recognized that they would be accused of seeking to influence the election:

“When we get hauled up to [Capitol] [H]ill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. government] to plan for it.”

The Facebook files go beyond influencing the election.

 At one point, Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, asked, “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made.”

The Vice President in charge of content policy responded, “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.”

Notably, Democrats opposed every effort to seek this information, and Facebook only recently relented in turning over its files years after Elon Musk ordered the release of the “Twitter files.” I raised this issue during the NCC event to counter the glowing self-appraisal of Meta over its record. Despite its claims of transparency, it refused calls from many of us for years to release these files.

When finally forced by the House to do so,  CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a perfunctory apology and moved on.

As shown at the NCC event, it is now spinning its record as a defense of free speech.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

We will provide a more detailed jobs report preview tonight, but following a catastrophic JOLTS report yesterday and a stellar weekly jobs report today, there appears to be a crescendo of confusion over what to expect tomorrow, with some saying a blowout number is coming while others are bracing for a negative print. So here is a quick take on what may be coming.

October’s US non-farm payrolls will hit the wires tomorrow morning, just 4 days days ahead of the US presidential election. As SocGen’s Albert Edwards notes, amid scepticism about the recent strength of the data, a shockingly weak ‘payback’ month will make news headlines and likely affect the election outcome.

It all started with Fed Governor Waller who two weeks ago first warned of a huge one-time drop in this month’s jobs report:

I will be looking for more evidence to support this outlook in the weeks and months to come. But, unfortunately, it won’t be easy to interpret the October jobs report to be released just before the next FOMC meeting. This report will most likely show a significant but temporary loss of jobs from the two recent hurricanes and the strike at Boeing. I expect these factors may reduce employment growth by more than 100,000 this month, and there may be a small effect on the unemployment rate, but I’m not sure it will be that visible. Since the jobs report will come during the usual blackout period for policymakers commenting on the economy, you won’t have any of us trying to put this low reading into perspective, though I hope others will.

The baton of a payroll plunge preannouncement was then handed over to the Biden admin’s favorite house economist Claudia Sahm – who is invoke to call “Sahm Rule” (which she stole from fromer Goldman economist Ed McKelvey) recessions when a Republican is in the White House… just not a Democrat –  thinks an outright decline in October payrolls is plausible because of the impact of recent hurricanes and the Boeing strike.This is how she explains it:

Let’s start by assuming that the underlying pace of payroll gains is back to its 2017-19 average of 183,000 per month. (The dark blue bar on the left below). Setting aside the hurricanes and Boeing strike, the initial estimates are always imprecise. The 90% confidence interval based on survey sampling error is +/- 130,000. (The light blue bars.) So, even if payrolls were on trend, the estimate range could be large.

The orange bars to the right subtract 100,000 off the trend for Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the Boeing strike. When the confidence interval is added, the 90% lower bound is almost -50,000. A negative print would ruffle some feathers, but at least in this example, it could be consistent with a solidly growing labor market.

And then there is the White House itself: yesterday, Biden’s top economic adviser Lael Brainard, explicitly warned that the White House is expecting a lower US non-farm payroll reading on Friday, covering October, because of disruptive strikes and hurricane impact (consensus expects only a 110k gain after September’s unexpectedly high 254k).

To be sure, there is a reason to preannounce a negative print: that way when it does hit, regime and establishment economists can say “we told you so”, and “just ignore it” because it is all one time (they will also tell you to ignore the sudden, 6-sigma collapse in job openings and quits, but that’s another story).

The problem with this is that it may not work. As Edwards writes, “readers with long, baby-boomer memories might recall the 1970 UK general election when the then Labour PM Harold Wilson was expected to win by a landslide, but had the rug pulled out from under him by shockingly poor trade data (which used to matter) – see article here.

The bottom line is that very poor economic data – and in the case of a negative jobs print it would truly be a shock as the last time we got that was back in 2020 – released just ahead of an election can really hurt the incumbent. Indeed, the surprisingly weak September JOLTS data suggests that a very weak payroll report on Friday morning is entirely plausible, even if that probability was somewhat diluted by today’s unexpectedly strong initial jobless claims report.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“Something wicked this way comes.” Those words from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” capture the approach of Halloween.

Traced to the Celtic festival of Samhain to mark the end of the harvest, pagans would often summon the dead. Halloween today more often summons contingency lawyers by the gross. If there is a holy holiday for personal injury lawyers it is Halloween with its mix of slip-and-falls, food liability, and costume defects.

After all, what can go wrong with a holiday celebrated at night with millions in ill-fitting costumes handing out tons of foodstuffs to strangers?

This year, it is already producing its share of spooky torts.

In Queens, a haunted house was shut down after various people filed lawsuits over being injured. “A Haunting in Hollis” was called “a death trap” by the Fire Department, but not the fun kind. The converted two-family home was accused of such attractions as the ankle shatterer.

Solainne Mancero-Tannis of Jamaica, Queens, says she was at the house with her family when she went down “Satan’s Slope.” The slide in a pitch-black space allegedly hurled her into a concrete wall at the bottom, shattering her ankles.

The FDNY has since allowed the house to re-open with improvements.

Sometimes, Haunted Houses are a bit too haunted, even for the trained eye.

Take the case of Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, who went to a haunted house called the House of Screams when he was confronted by a character dressed as Leatherface with a chainsaw. Janik pulled out his service weapon and pointed it at the man, who dropped character and fled the house.

This year, an employee, Anora Jenkins, was working at a haunted attraction in Tennessee when she jumped up to scare a group, and a frightened man slugged her, sending her to the hospital. AMS Haunted Attractions said that spooked customers assaulted several of its actors.

Some haunted homes can be a tad too improvisational. In Dickson v. Hustonville Haunted House and Greg Walker,  Glenda Dickson, 51, broke four vertebrae in her back when she fell out of the second-story window left open at the Hustonville Haunted House. She was in a room called “The Crying Lady in the Bed” when one of the actors came up behind the group and started screaming. Dickson jumped back through an open window covered with only a sheet.

Halloween can bring out the best and worst of people, even neighbors.

A few years ago in Florida, a woman filed a defamation and emotional distress lawsuit after her neighbor set up decorations that included a fake tombstone that read, “At 48 she had no mate no date/ It’s no debate she looks 88.”

This year, another woman in Ohio took a more direct approach in Toledo. On Oct. 7, the woman went on a rampage in the front yard of the home of the Zeller family with their extensive Halloween decorations.

Over half an hour, she caused roughly $1,000 in damages, including destroying cherished family items. Police arrested 48-year-old Christina Horvath, who is also accused of stealing some items.  Yet, the Zellers are not literally giving up the ghost. They put up a sign reading “She Came in Like A Wreckin’ Ball” next to a skeleton riding a wrecking ball.

Each year, costumes produce a slew of jump scare lawsuits from demon eye contact lenses that can actually blind you to this year’s witch hats that can turn into flaming headwear. In New York a few years ago, Sherri Perper, 56, of Queens, New York, filed a personal injury lawsuit due to defective shoes allegedly acquired from Forum Novelties. The shoes were over-sized clown shoes that she said made her trip and fall because they were . . . well … oversized.

I admit that my house is one of those over-the-top Halloween houses. As a torts professor, I try to walk the line between a fun attraction and an attractive nuisance.

Indeed, I have contemplated the ultimate jump scare of meeting children with a notary, and a waiver form covering everything from slips to nut allergies.  There are simply some scenes that are too scary for the young and old alike.

So welcome to the most hallowed holiday for lawyers. Have fun but it is strictly BYOC, bring your own counsel.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Michigan officials have charged a Chinese national for illegally voting in the 2024 US election at an early voting site in Ann Arbor on Oct. 27.

A clerk alerted officials to the voter, a Chinese student, leading to an investigation. They were charged with one count of “unauthorized elector attempting to vote” and one count of perjury for “making a false affidavit for the purpose of securing voter registration.”

“Only U.S. citizens can register and vote in our elections. It is illegal to lie on any registration forms or voting applications about one’s citizenship status. Doing so is a felony,” said the office of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit on Oct. 30.

This past May, Michigan Secretary of State @JocelynBenson went on camera to tell us that ONLY U.S. Citizens vote in U.S. elections.

In unrelated news, the Detroit News JUST reported TODAY that a Chinese citizen voted in the U.S. election. https://t.co/v6KAjyM3bQ

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) October 30, 2024

Officials insisted that non-citizen voting was “an extremely isolated and rare event.”

“Investigations in multiple states and nationwide have found no evidence of large numbers of noncitizens registering to vote. Even less common is a noncitizen actually casting a ballot. When it does happen, we take it extremely seriously. Our elections are secure and Michigan’s state and local election officials carefully follow the law,” said officials, who noted that voting records are public – and attempts by noncitizens to vote fraudulently will be exposed, and said fraudulent voters prosecuted. (What about mail-in ballots? Eh?)

The Chinese national, 19, had registered to vote on Sunday – using his student ID and other documentation to establish residency. He also signed a document attesting to being a US citizen. The student later contacted the city clerk’s office and attempted to retract the illegal vote, according to Benson’s office – however his ballot had already been processed through the tabulator.

Michigan AG Dana Nessel has also opened an investigation into the matter.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) called on Benson’s office to announce a plan to “prevent similar election fraud in the next week” and “secure our elections against CCP interference,” the Epoch Times notes. “The University of Michigan should expel this student for violating our laws and our state’s leaders need to take serious action against the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to influence our state.”