NEW: A Catholic nun pressed Vice President JD Vance on Saturday to justify ICE’s conduct to people of faith at a CBS News town hall in Michigan. Sister Nancy Sylvester asked how the behavior of ICE agents “can constantly be justified in terms of the kind of values we want to live by.” Vance never answered. She is the latest Catholic sister to challenge him on immigration. Last fall, ICE turned away Sister JoAnn Persch, 91, when she tried to bring the Eucharist to detainees outside Chicago. She died two weeks later. thelettersfromleo.com/p/cath…

BREAKING: The Dallas Morning News just announced they are endorsing James Talarico over Ken Paxton. The Dallas Morning News had previously endorsed Senator John Cornyn in every race he ever ran. This is amazing.

New Talarico ad running statewide: "Ken Paxton says, I don't have his experience, and he's right. "I've never been indicted for fraud. I've never been reported to the FBI for bribery. I've never been impeached by my own party, and I've never given a sweetheart deal to a pedophile. "I have a different kind of experience. I've worked with both parties to cap the cost of insulin and pass the largest property tax cut in Texas history. I'm James Tallarico and I approve this message because we need a different kind of experience in Washington."

THE HORROR OF BEING LONELY AT SEVENTY. by Michael Whelan The cruelest part of growing old isn't knowing that life is getting shorter. It's wondering how much of it you'll have to spend without being loved the way you once were. At seventy, loneliness is not simply an empty house. It is a body that still remembers what it feels like to be loved. God, how I miss being held. I miss holding Rebecca's hand. The beautiful simplicity of our fingers finding each other without either of us giving it a thought. I miss cuddling in bed after a long day, feeling her warmth against me, knowing that whatever horrors the world had waiting, for that one precious moment, we were safe. I miss someone telling me I look handsome. I miss hearing those three ordinary, extraordinary words: "I love you." And perhaps most heartbreaking of all, I miss saying them to someone who could whisper them back. These are the little things we take for granted until death comes along and steals them. For years, I cared for Rebecca as Parkinson's and dementia slowly took possession of the woman I adored. Cancer had already ravaged my own body. I was exhausted, frightened, and sometimes so overwhelmed that I prayed for one afternoon when nobody needed me. Now I have more afternoons than I know what to do with. What a cruel joke. People think loneliness is about having nobody to talk to. They're wrong. I can talk to friends. I can laugh. I can attend a gathering and appear perfectly happy. Then I return home. Nobody asks how my day went. Nobody reaches across the couch to touch my arm. Nobody notices that I've put on a nice shirt or that I'm unusually quiet. And the bed. Dear God, the bed. There is something almost unbearable about having an entire side of a mattress available when you'd surrender everything you own to feel someone breathing beside you again. At seventy, society seems to assume our need for tenderness has somehow expired. It hasn't. My heart is seventy. My need to be loved is ageless. I still want affection, companionship, laughter, romance, and the glorious comfort of knowing someone is genuinely happy that I walked through the door. I don't want to spend my remaining years merely remembering what love felt like. I want to feel it again. And perhaps that is what makes loneliness at seventy so terrifying. I am not finished loving. I am simply living in a world where the person who knew how to love me best is gone. But love does not vanish just because the person who awakened it is gone. It remains in the hand that still reaches across the sheets, in the words that rise to my lips with nowhere to land, in the part of me that still believes tenderness is worth wanting. So every night, when I turn out the light, my hand finds the place where hers used to be. I always tell her how my day went. And for one aching moment, in the darkness, I am not only remembering what I lost. I am remembering that I am still capable of love. And perhaps that is not the loneliest truth of all. Perhaps it is a promise. The heart that can grieve this deeply has not gone empty. It is still open. It is still reaching. Somewhere beyond the silence of this house, there may be another hand waiting to find mine—not to replace Rebecca, because no one could, but to meet the love that remains. Until then, I will keep getting up. I will put on the nice shirt. I will answer the phone, accept the invitation, sit beside someone who needs company, help other caregivers how to get through another day and let the world surprise me when it can. I have lost the life I knew. But I have not lost my capacity to live. And as long as I can still love, still hope, still reach toward another human being, my story is not over. The bed may be empty tonight. But I am still here. And here, even at seventy, is not the end.

Christiane Amanpour is the gold standard of foreign correspondents. She is one of a kind - admired worldwide for piercing intellect, courage and integrity. Whatever she does next will be consequential

Actress Christina Applegate says she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a neurological and autoimmune disorder. "It's hard to say that [my doctor] came into my room and she said, 'Congratulations! You don't have MS,'" she said. Read more: abcnews.link/eJ5c8NW

If you follow me, you know I strongly support women’s health and greater funding investment in science. So a few thoughts on yesterday’s White House announcement. icymi, Trump unveiled a new women’s health division at NIH as though the federal government had never prioritized this work before. In fact NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health has existed since 1990. His executive order also revokes President Biden’s 2023 women’s health research initiative and his 2024 order advancing it. I was serving in the White House when those efforts began and can say that there was - and remains - an enormous amount to do. Biden called on Congress to invest $12 billion in women’s health research and made concrete funding announcements: in October 2024, ARPA-H announced more than $110 million for 23 teams tackling neglected conditions affecting women. Let’s not forget that this same administration has done incredible damage to the scientific systems over the past year and a half which has included terminating grants supporting women’s health research, including work on uterine fibroids and pregnancy risks. But most notably this announcement comes without specifying any NEW research funding commitment, which is what women’s health so desperately needs. I am absolutely supportive of a spotlight on women’s health but not another rebrand 😭

BREAKING NYT: Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was fired Friday, after less than a week on the job, according to three people familiar with the matter. nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/po…

New filings with the Federal Election Commission are shedding light on tech billionaire Elon Musk's heavy influence on the 2026 midterm elections, especially the blockbuster Senate race in Texas. cnn.it/4juHdfP

Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass at noon on Friday in the room set up on the 10th floor of Gemelli Hospital, according to the Holy See Press Office. Several members of Gemelli's medical and nursing staff attended the Mass, along with members of the Vatican City State Gendarmerie Corps. "In his homily, the Pope thanked all the staff—doctors, nurses, and orderlies—for the work they do every day caring for patients in their frailty, and especially for what they have done and continue to do for him," read the statement.

"My take on the Jameis Winston experience is that I am called to be the light of the world and salt of Earth." The man’s a poet the way he paints with words

I would go out and vote for bro for president right now if I could.