Left Out of the Trials

Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled.MISSOURI’S MAP IS DEAD, FOR NOWThe Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the state’s Republican-drawn congressional map cannot be used in this year’s midterm elections. The map, redrawn in 2025 at President Trump’s urging, was designed to eliminate one of Missouri’s two Democratic House seats. It did this by carving up the Kansas City area. The court ordered that a referendum on the map appear on the November ballot. That means the state’s general election will run under its old 2022 district lines instead.The ruling capped a chaotic year of litigation. A coalition called People Not Politicians Missouri gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force the referendum, well above what state law requires. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to certify it anyway, arguing it was unconstitutional. A circuit judge sided with Hoskins, ruling that the US Constitution’s Elections Clause gives state legislatures sole authority over congressional redistricting. The state Supreme Court reversed that decision Thursday, with Chief Judge Ginger Gooch writing the opinion.The timing created a genuinely strange situation. Missouri already held its August primary under the new, Republican-drawn map. Now the general election will use the old one instead, meaning the same election cycle will have run under two different sets of district lines. Attorney General Catherine Hanaway called the outcome unprecedented and said her office would seek immediate relief from the US Supreme Court. She said no court had ever overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. Hanaway called it a “full-fledged constitutional crisis.”THE WARNING The Missouri fight is unfolding alongside a separate, quieter alarm about the infrastructure meant to protect the whole country’s elections. Senator Alex Padilla and Rep. Joseph Morelle sent a letter this week to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and the acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The letter demanded restoration of more than $39.6 million in election security funding that Congress had already approved in April. NPR obtained the letter first.The lawmakers wrote that time is running out to help state and local officials protect elections from cyber and disinformation threats. They argued the need is especially urgent given the ongoing war with Iran. Iran, they said, has engaged in sophisticated cyberattacks on US water infrastructure and UK nuclear facilities. Russia and China, they added, have their own significant election interference capabilities, and advancing artificial intelligence is making those capabilities sharper. Neither DHS nor CISA responded to NPR’s request for comment. The lawmakers concluded that the administration is unlikely to repair trust with election officials before November regardless of what happens with the funding.🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A court just blocked one attempt to redraw the electoral map in Republicans’ favor. At the same time, the systems meant to protect the vote itself are being underfunded two months before the election, according to two legislators who reviewed it directly. Foreign adversaries’ hacking capabilities are growing in the meantime. Both stories are about the same underlying question: whether the machinery of the midterms will be trustworthy when the votes are actually counted. Sources: NBC News (US — ruling details, redistricting background); Missouri Independent (US — Hanaway quote, circuit court reversal, Gooch opinion); The Washington Times via AP (US — signature count, primary/general election mismatch); NPR (US — Padilla/Morelle letter, funding figures, Iran cyberattack claim)LEFT OUT OF THE TRIALSThe Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has grown to 6,250 confirmed cases and 3,039 deaths as of the latest count. It added 64 new cases and 32 new deaths in just the most recent reporting week. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rarer relative of the more familiar Zaire strain of Ebola. Unlike Zaire, Bundibugyo has no approved vaccine and no approved treatment. That has left doctors relying on supportive care alone since the outbreak began in May.That gap is now producing a specific, avoidable injustice, according to Doctors Without Borders. In a commentary published Tuesday in The Lancet, the organization said children in the outbreak zone are being left out of the trials for the most promising treatment currently being tested. That treatment is obeldesivir, an oral antiviral pill made by the American company Gilead Sciences. It is currently in trials as a post-exposure preventive measure. MSF’s argument is that pediatric formulations and dosing data need to be built into these trials now, while the outbreak is active. Waiting until later, MSF argues, means children who could have been protected already were not.The outbreak has spread across six provinces in the DRC and into Uganda, including the capital, Kampala. It is complicating an already difficult environment. Ongoing armed conflict in the region has hindered surveillance and treatment access. Healthcare workers in some areas have gone on strike over unpaid salaries, according to Dutch public health officials tracking the response. Nearly 1,439 patients have recovered so far, and 869 remain hospitalized in isolation. This is the seventeenth Ebola outbreak recorded in the DRC since 1976.🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A drug made by an American company is one of the only real hopes against a disease with no approved vaccine or treatment. The children most exposed to that disease are not currently guaranteed access to it. This is not a resource problem in the way outbreak response usually is. It is a research design choice, being made right now, about who gets included in the trial that could save them.Sources: ECDC (Europe, EU public health agency — current case and death figures, provincial breakdown, recovery and hospitalization numbers); Doctors Without Borders (US/international — Lancet commentary, obeldesivir trial concerns, response operations); RIVM (Netherlands, public health institute — healthcare worker strikes, regional conflict context); WHO (outbreak history, Bundibugyo virus background)THE CUBA PRESSURE CAMPAIGNThe State Department announced a new round of sanctions against Cuba on Thursday. The new measures target several Cuban companies and, notably, 31-year-old Fidel Ernesto Castro, grandson of 95-year-old former leader Raúl Castro. Also sanctioned were two companies in Cuba’s nickel mining industry. Two firms in its energy sector, including an oil importer, were hit as well, along with Banco Exterior de Cuba, a state-owned bank. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the move as accountability. “Cuba’s Communist regime elites preside over a failed state where ordinary Cubans go hungry,” he said. He separately accused the Cuban government of trying to export its ideology to the US and the rest of the hemisphere.Critics of the sanctions point to their human cost. Washington declared a national emergency in January and disrupted fuel shipments to the island. Since then, infant mortality in Cuba has doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births, according to the UN human rights office. Childhood cancer survival rates have fallen from 85 percent to 65 percent over the same period. Essential medicines are available at only about 30 percent of required supply. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on Washington to reverse course in June. “Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”Cuba announced its own reforms the same day as Thursday’s sanctions: 34 pages of new rules loosening state control over tourism and private business. It follows the country’s largest free-market reforms in decades, passed in June, and a round of prisoner releases Cuba called a humanitarian gesture. None of it has slowed Washington’s campaign. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez rejected Thursday’s sanctions in the state newspaper Granma. He said the terrorism allegations showed Washington was not being serious.🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Your government sanctioned a 31-year-old grandson of a former Cuban president this week. It’s part of a pressure campaign that, by the UN’s own numbers, has already doubled infant deaths and cut childhood cancer survival by 20 points on an island 90 miles away.Sources: Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Thursday’s sanctions, Rubio quote, Rodríguez response, Cuba’s reforms); UN News (UN primary source — Türk quote, OHCHR health statistics)ALSO DEVELOPING:Gloria Steinem, the journalist and organizer who became the most visible face of American feminism for six decades, died Wednesday at her New York home. She was 92. Steinem helped legalize abortion, co-founded Ms. magazine, and spent her final years still active in the movement she helped build. Her final memoir is expected to publish later this month.Sources: Axios, CNN, The Washington Post.FEMA: Former FEMA administrator David Richardson says in a new book that the Trump administration has quietly abandoned its stated goal of eliminating the federal disaster relief agency. He says his own efforts to dramatically shrink it fell short. Richardson led FEMA in 2025.Source: NPR.NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION🇮🇷 Iran: 3,654 killed 🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,346 killed, 12,301 wounded 🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded (includes 472 killed, 3,004 wounded in Gaza) 🇺🇸 US military: 18 killed, 687 wounded 🇵🇸 Gaza: 1,320 killed, 4,385 wounded since the October 10, 2025 “ceasefire” 🇵🇸 West Bank: 316 killed (incl. 73 children), 5,641 wounded (incl. 915 children), since January 2025 🛢️ Brent crude: $95.20/barrel (OilPrice.com) ⛽ US gas: $4.15/gallon (AAA)Sources: HRANA (Iran), Lebanon MOPH, INSS (Israel), DCAS (US, disputed), OCHA and UN Secretary-General’s office (Gaza), OCHA (West Bank), OilPrice.com, AAA. All figures carried forward from last night’s edition except Brent and gas, updated to reflect today’s prices.“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789 Get full access to The Rest of the World Report at www.restoftheworldreport.com/subscribe