The 2026 midterms — a month from today! — will be the most intensely observed, recorded and dissected election in American history, Axios' Brittany Gibson writes.

• Why it matters: An army of partisan and nonpartisan observers will join a surge of Justice Department monitors, organizers looking for ICE, and citizen journalists broadcasting their search for illegal voting in real time.

Nonpartisan observation can bolster confidence in elections, studies show. But officials worry that activists expecting to find wrongdoing could misread routine events.

• After the 2020 election, claims from observers and activist sleuths helped fuel challenges.
• Those claims led to numerous lawsuits by the Trump campaign. The cases were almost all dismissed or denied relief.

🔎 Zoom in: DOJ plans to train 1,000 election monitors to deploy across the country, one of the largest-ever efforts from the agency. It builds on a significant increase in observers in 2024.

• Senate Democrats will use office staff to monitor the polls. That's in addition to a new 50-state recruitment program by a coalition of Democratic state parties, aiming to enlist at least 10,000 election watchers.
• The Republican National Committee is building on its election watch network set up in 2020 to counter perceived voter fraud. GOP partisans have signed up in record numbers to be poll workers, and the party is hosting virtual and in-person training for observers and challengers.
• A network of anti-ICE activists is transitioning ICE-watch training into poll-watch training, responding in part to the Trump administration saying ICE could make arrests at the polls. When asked about deploying agents, Trump told TIME he hadn't thought of it.

🔭 Zoom out: These efforts will coexist with a slew of nonpartisan observing efforts, from voter protection groups to international election observers.

• State party and campaign staffers regularly monitor polls for mundane issues like accurate opening and closing times.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said: "Despite extreme Democrats and the media claiming it never happens, the evidence of voter fraud continues to pile up. Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable."

• More than two dozen federal charges have been brought this year against people for voting when they're not eligible, according to the Justice Department. A review by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research says instances of illegal voting are "extremely small."

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The Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing GOP Senate candidates, will inject $5 million into South Carolina as an "insurance policy" for GOP nominee Darline Graham, Axios' Marc Caputo and Alex Isenstadt write.

• Why it matters: Republicans' worry about a Senate seat in blood-red South Carolina shows just how bad the political environment is for the party.

🧮 By the numbers: Closer-than-expected polling from two firms that typically survey for Republicans sparked concern last week in GOP circles.

• A survey from Trafalgar showed Graham pulling 43% and Andrews 42%, a statistical tie.
• InsiderAdvantage produced a poll showing a 1-point race that's essentially tied, with Graham at 46% and Andrews at 45%.
• Keep reading ... Hans Nichols contributed reporting.

💰 Scoop: Everytown for Gun Safety, a group pushing stricter gun laws, is teaming up with House Democrats on a $10 million ad campaign to boost gun safety advocates running for Congress, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.

LOS ANGELES — Bryan Johnson — the face of the longevity movement, who believes he may never die — announced recently that he had an incurable autoimmune disease. Critics cheered, he said in a new episode of "The Axios Show," out later this week.

• "I mean, I think people really want me to die. Now I get it. It's funny. It's ironic. I push a lot of buttons that people don't like," he told Axios' Madison Mills at his L.A. home, which doubles as a lifespan lab.
• The founder of the "Don't Die" movement sees his diagnosis as rocket fuel for his mission to promote longevity, rather than a setback.

💡 Catch up quick: Johnson, 49, has autoimmune gastritis (AIG), a chronic condition in which the immune system attacks healthy cells in the stomach lining.

• Johnson said "there was joy all around the world" after he announced his diagnosis in July.
• He spends millions of dollars a year on extreme health interventions, documenting the experiments for an online following of 8 million.

🥊 Johnson views the diagnosis as just another test of his campaign against aging: "I like the challenge. I'm up for it. I think it's good timing. I'm going to get diagnosed with something at some point. Why not this?"

• Watch the first clip.

Wall Street profits are blowing past expectations this year and are on track for an all-time record, Axios' Emily Peck writes from a new report by the New York State Comptroller's office.

• In the first half of this year, Wall Street firms raked in $45.9 billion — 51.3% more than the same period last year.

Keep reading ... Get Axios Markets.

President Trump's new "Super Intelligence" task force faces a daunting mandate: reconcile fiercely divided Cabinet factions to forge a tech policy that keeps pace with the blistering AI race, Axios' Maria Curi writes.

• Why it matters: The task force brings the administration's scattered AI work under one roof. But it makes it likely that any new rules will be forged in the crossfire of competing internal camps.

In an interview with Axios, task force co-chair Scott Kupor rejected the claim that the administration is asleep at the wheel on AI policy, arguing that rigid legislation could become obsolete overnight.

• "The worst thing for us to do would be to assume a static set of knowledge that allows us to put a regulatory schema in place that then has unintended consequences," said Kupor, a Silicon Valley veteran who is director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Between the lines: The group's makeup highlights the competing fiefdoms driving Trump's AI strategy.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles have worked behind the scenes to encourage some oversight.
• On the other end of the spectrum, David Sacks and the Pentagon's Emil Michael are wary of slowing model development.
• Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence and the new AI czar, is expected to bring cohesion to the group's collective work.

More from the interview.

Two big unknowns stand in the way of determining how serious the plague threat in Russia is and whether travel advisories, restrictions at U.S. ports of entry or other precautions are warranted.

• We still don't know which pathogen killed a Russian researcher, or how well contained it is, Axios' Caitlin Owens and Adriel Bettelheim write.

State of play: A worker at the Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia recently died after contracting pneumonia.

• There are conflicting accounts of how she got sick and whether she was infected with pneumonic plague, which is almost always deadly without prompt treatment with antibiotics.

👀 The intrigue: Experts say that if the Russian worker did die from pneumonic plague, there's a possibility it was a genetically altered version that behaves differently than the treatable strain.

• That's just speculation at this point. But the prevalence of "gain-of-function" research that enhances pathogens to study them, and Russia's known development of biological weapons, make it impossible to rule out.

Keep reading.

Axios' Nathan Bomey will be out April 27 with "Big Labor's Big Shift," chronicling the American union movement's resurgence and dramatic move to the right — a massive political realignment.

• Why it matters: The backdrop, Nathan tells me, is "an ongoing battle for the soul of the American working class over issues like immigration, trade and culture."

Based on original reporting and interviews, Bomey traces how the shift happened, including:

• Teamsters president Sean O'Brien, who has cozied up to Trump and delivered his message at the Republican National Convention.
• UAW president Shawn Fain, who has aligned with the White House on tariffs while blasting Democrats over their push for EVs.

Preorder.

The NBA is experimenting with two pieces of technology in the lead-up to the new season, which tips off Tuesday, Oct. 20:

1. Some preseason games will include a smart basketball with a Bluetooth sensor that can collect data for future use in real-time officiating decisions.
2. Some officials will also use wrist wearables to communicate with the replay center in designated situations, including replay reviews, scoring changes and clock malfunctions.

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