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It’s been an unseasonably warm start to November across the East, but that’s about to change.
From Thursday into Friday, a cold air mass from Canada will clash with the still-warm waters of the Atlantic, helping to spawn a potential nor’easter.
While this storm currently looks unlikely to be as intense as the one that drenched the region in late September, it’s expected to produce the season’s first snow across some mountainous areas of the Northeast — especially as colder air wraps into the storm on Friday.
That includes the Adirondacks and Catskills in New York; Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains; Vermont’s Green Mountains; New Hampshire’s White Mountains; and perhaps elevated stretches of western Massachusetts and Connecticut, near the Taconic Mountains — though some of these places have already experienced snow this season.
Minor accumulations are also forecast to stretch southward into the Appalachians, including across West Virginia.
Chilly rain and blustery winds will make for unpleasant conditions in the stretch from Massachusetts to New Jersey later Thursday through Friday, with showers expected across the Mid-Atlantic. It’s possible that wet snow mixes with the rain outside the mountains, but little or no snow accumulation is forecast at this point.
In the wake of the storm, unusually cold air will spill southward this weekend, with early morning temperatures predicted to dip into the upper 30s in northern Florida and freezing temperatures forecast in a corridor from Mississippi to Georgia.
Weekend high temperatures will probably top out near 50 degrees in D.C., making for the coolest conditions there since March.
The Food and Drug Administration issued updated rules on GLP-1 medications Monday and will now require manufacturers to warn on labels that the drugs can potentially increase the risk of vision loss.
But that doesn’t mean people taking or considering taking GLP-1s should immediately be discouraged, said Manjot Gill, a professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“I don’t want people walking away thinking like, ‘Well, I’ve got to stop taking this drug now,’” Gill said. “They need to know the context that the risk is very, very low to begin with.”
The eye condition potentially associated with GLP-1s — non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), often referred to as “eye stroke” — is very rare. In people over the age of 50, it affects between 2 to 10 people out of every 100,000 every year, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Studies have reached conflicting conclusions about whether GLP-1 drugs raise the risk of NAION. Other known risk factors for the condition include age, diabetes and smoking.
Gill said more research is needed to determine whether GLP-1s are definitely linked to NAION. For now, patients should discuss the risks with their doctors and immediately report any symptoms of vision loss, she said.
For most patients, though, she believes the benefits of weight-loss medication outweighs the risk of a rare eye complication.
“Their health benefits that they’re going to derive from lowering their blood sugar, lowering their blood pressure, their cholesterol … the benefits of these drugs is far, far greater,” Gill said.
The Massachusetts State Police has agreed to pay $100,000 to Karen Read to settle a lawsuit alleging that the officer who investigated her boyfriend’s death was improperly vetted and trained.
Read alleged that Michael Proctor, a former member of the Massachusetts State Police, had sent racist and misogynistic text messages for years, revealing what her lawsuit called a “culture of bigotry” at the agency.
Read was found not guilty of murdering her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in her second trial last year (the first ended with a deadlocked jury).
Proctor, the lead investigator in the case, was fired from the state police in 2025 over alleged misconduct that included sexist text messages about Read.
The state police said in a statement that this month’s settlement would “avoid prolonged litigation and the significant costs to taxpayers of continuing the case.”
Under the Massachusetts law cited in Read’s suit, damages are capped at $100,000.
Read’s lawsuit quoted dozens of alleged messages between Proctor and a Canton Police Department officer in which they repeatedly referred to Black people using the n-word and women using the c-word, among other racist and antisemitic comments.
The state police agency “unequivocally condemns the racist, sexist and abhorrent messages quoted in the complaint,” it said in a court filing.
House Democrats now have won at least 254 seats, and while some race results are still being counted, they estimate they’ll end up with a majority close to 260.
“This is the largest majority that any party has had this century,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said on X. “News of our demise was greatly exaggerated.”
Just over a dozen races have yet to be called, and Democrats are leading in about half of the outstanding contests.
New members are in the Capitol for freshman orientation, including some (from both parties) whose races haven’t been called, and over the last two days, Democrats have been walking around elated. Republicans, meanwhile, have struck a more somber tone.
“The results were not what we hoped for and worked for,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told reporters Monday night.
The best recent comparison for Democrats’ sweep is perhaps the 2008 election when, riding Barack Obama’s coattails, Democrats came into the 111th Congress with 257 seats.
If, after all votes are finalized, Democrats do end up with 258 seats — or more — as Jeffries has predicted, this would be the largest Democratic majority of the 21st century. The last time Democrats had a majority that big was after the 1992 election, when they won 258 seats.
This majority, however, falls short of historically massive majorities — particularly the one that came after the 1936 election, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the Democrats in a landslide that saw them win 334 seats in the 75th Congress.
Support for capital punishment in the United States has reached its lowest level in more than 50 years, with 49 percent of adults saying in a Gallup poll released Tuesday that they are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers.
It’s the first time support has fallen below 50 percent since 1971, the year before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled many death penalty laws nationwide were unconstitutional.
Americans were surveyed in early October, in the weeks following Tennessee’s botched execution of convicted killer Christa Pike, who was administered two doses of pentobarbital and became the first known person in U.S. history to survive a complete lethal injection protocol.
Outgoing Gov. Bill Lee (R), who denied Pike’s clemency application, has paused all executions in Tennessee through the end of the year and launched an investigation into the botched execution.
The decline in support is most pronounced among Democrats, 28 percent of whom favor of the death penalty, and younger Americans, at 39 percent. While Republican support is much higher overall, it has also waned, with 73 percent of those polled saying they favor capital punishment — one of the lowest rates Gallup has measured for conservatives.
The District of Columbia and 23 states have abolished the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, but it remains on the books in 27 states and the federal system. Seven states have carried out executions this year, and more than half of those happened under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in Florida — which has executed 19 people.
Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a forthcoming book, “Next,” on Tuesday, immediately stoking more anticipation for a possible 2028 presidential run.
Buttigieg said on X he spent the last 18 months writing his thoughts on the country’s path and what it could build moving forward, a discussion with greater opportunity now that Democrats will control Congress.
“Americans sent a powerful message, a rejection of the status quo, and a demand for something better. Democrats won in places where we haven’t in a generation, or in some cases, ever,” Buttigieg said.
“That’s not the same thing as a durable governing majority, and we have a chance to create one — if we understand the big picture. And that’s what I’ve been writing about.”
A campaign-season book is a prototypical element of a presidential bid, and Buttigieg has said he’s “more inclined than not” to run again.
The book announcement follows Buttigieg’s aggressive schedule as a high-demand surrogate during the midterms as he traveled to roughly three dozen states to stump for Democrats and try to help the party win control of Congress. He’s been promoting campaign finance overhauls and staying focused on cost-of living issues.
Buttigieg suspended his 2020 bid for president after finishing fourth in South Carolina and went on to serve in President Joe Biden’s administration. His book will be released Jan. 26.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused Senate Republicans of seeking to block his agenda by threatening to oppose certain nominees as he sought to rally supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement.
“Every time I tried to do something robust, I would get calls saying, ‘If you do that, we’re not going to confirm your appointees,’” Kennedy said at a MAHA Action event Monday. He did not specify which Senate Republicans he was referring to.
Democrats, who pulled off a long-shot bid to win the Senate, are unlikely to support President Donald Trump’s health nominees, Kennedy recalled telling his senior staff the day after the midterm elections.
Because of the dynamic, “the Senate no longer has any leverage over me. And that’s a big deal. And we have Steve Miller in, who’s a friend of our movement,” Kennedy said, referring to Trump’s new chief of staff, Stephen Miller. “And I don’t think anything is going to get in our way now.”
Congressional Democrats are certain to launch investigations into the Health and Human Services Department, with some saying Kennedy should resign or be fired.
At Monday’s event, Kennedy also offered support for Susie Wiles, who stepped down last week as Trump’s chief of staff. Kennedy said she helped broker his relationship with Trump, and he listed policies his department has put in place over the past two years.
“We got those things done because we had support in the White House,” Kennedy said. “And Susie was the author of that support, and I’m very grateful to her for her leadership.”
Last week, Calley Means, an ally of Kennedy and former White House adviser, accused top administration aides, including Wiles, and strategists of catering to powerful industries and prioritizing money for the midterms.
The White House said last week that “the MAHA coalition has found a champion in President Trump, who has made incredible strides to Make America Healthy Again.” Some aides have defended themselves against the allegations.
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