Dems on track to throw Trump from office

This week, The Cook Political Report moved 18 House races, all in Democrats' direction. With these new moves, we’re also adjusting our range: the most likely outcome is now that Democrats will pick up nine to 19 seats. Read more from @ercovey: https://t.co/TMLkq0my06

— Cook Political Report (@CookPolitical) October 10, 2026

The Cook Political Report's current possible outcome in the House is that Democrats pick up nine to 19 seats. That would give them 224 seats on the lower end and 234 on the upper end. https://t.co/vcbhZHRcGc

— Cook Political Report (@CookPolitical) October 9, 2026

This week, we shifted three Senate races in the direction of Democrats. Here's where's our current ratings stand. https://t.co/mp6csHTCad

— Cook Political Report (@CookPolitical) October 7, 2026

We are revising our estimate of potential Senate pickups to two to six seats for Democrats — squarely within the range of the four seats they need to net for a majority. https://t.co/L2odYCDth4

— Cook Political Report (@CookPolitical) October 6, 2026

Senate Polling - Politix+ Average 🔵 KS - Hamilton +1.2 🔵 IA - Turek +0.1 🔵 AK - Peltola +2.1 🔵 ME - Jackson +1.3 🔵 OH - Brown +3.1 🔵 NH - Pappas +5.2 🔵 MI - El-Sayed +3.1 🔵 MN - Flanagan +3.3 🔵 TX - Talarico +2.6 🔵 NC - Cooper +8.7 🔵 GA - Ossoff +7.5

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) October 9, 2026

Red counties under red flag warnings again

URGENT - FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Rapid City SD 1212 AM MDT Fri Oct 9 2026 ...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM THIS MORNING TO 8 PM MDT THIS EVENING DUE TO GUSTY WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR CENTRAL BLACK HILLS, SOUTHERN BLACK HILLS, FALL RIVER COUNTY AREA, NORTHERN FOOT HILLS, EASTERN FOOT HILLS, CUSTER COUNTY PLAINS, PINE RIDGE AREA, BUTTE COUNTY AREA, WEST CENTRAL PLAINS, BADLANDS AREA, NORTHERN CAMPBELL, SOUTHERN CAMPBELL, CROOK COUNTY PLAINS, WESTON COUNTY PLAINS, AND WYOMING BLACK HILLS...

Two more Republican-owned sawmills to close

Koch Industries owns Georgia-Pacific LLC, one of the largest forest products ravagers in the United States. 

Interfor is another huge timber multi-national that sold a sawmill to Neiman Enterprises who then shipped salvage logs from California to Wyoming. In 2018 after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Neiman closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Neiman purchased Colorado's Montrose Forest Products in 2012 but recently announced it will close, too.

Bearlodge Forest Products will close its sawmill and pallet operations, ending a nearly five-decade run in a community with deep ties to Wyoming’s timber industry. The company cited a number of factors in a Facebook post about the closure, including high input costs, a limited labor pool, scarce housing, and sustained downward pricing trends. Wyoming’s timber industry has also been struggling for years. The business is connected to the Neiman family, which has long played a role in Hulett’s forest-products history. [Cowboy State Daily]

Sawmills in Montana that rely on ponderosa pine are closing in part because of low lumber prices driven by salvage sales after record wildfire seasons caused by human influences on global climate patterns.

“This has been a really hard decision,” 67-year-old Steve Marks, a fourth-generation Clancy rancher, third-generation logger and the founder of Marks Lumber, said last week during an interview in his office, referring to his plan to end operations in early 2027. “These environmentalists are killing us,” Marks said, recalling his company’s planned purchase of nearly a year’s worth of logs, a million board feet, from the USFS in Larabee Hat early this summer. [Jefferson County Monitor]

Unaffiliated candidate Bengs gaining on incumbent Earth hater

NPR also reported this on Wednesday. "Major super PACs and investment-backed groups have injected close to $1 million into South Dakota’s 2026 U.S. Senate race, significantly outspending the contributions from local residents. According to a report by WIRED, Rounds has received roughly $600,000 in outside backing. The majority of this funding originated from Defend American Jobs, a super PAC that receives financial backing from a separate super PAC funded by the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz."

Only four individuals funded Mike Rounds’ Super PAC this cycle. One of them appears in the Epstein files hundreds of times, years after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. https://t.co/Q8P4cRDm5w

— Brian Bengs (@BrianBengs) October 7, 2026

VoteHub ratings change US Senate South Dakota Safe R—>Likely R https://t.co/dek82LMCxW

— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) October 4, 2026

Warming climate unleashing waves of pine beetles in Colorado

Global warming has been accelerating since humans began setting fires to clear habitat, as a weapon or just for amusement. Evidence that we humans have eaten or burned ourselves out of habitats creating catastrophes behind us is strewn throughout the North American continent. 

The 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire was Colorado's costliest at nearly half a billion dollars until the Black Forest Fire the next year surpassed that. In October, 2020 the East Troublesome Fire incinerated nearly 200,000 acres of mixed timber and grass becoming the second largest wildfire ever recorded in Colorado. It was believed early that downed power lines caused the Marshall Fire in Boulder County, today the state's most destructive blaze, with claims for damage north of two billion dollars. That firestorm forced the evacuation of tens of thousands and evaporated over a thousand homes. 

Today, extracting oil and gas from public lands releases about 20 percent of energy-related US greenhouse gas emissions.

William R. Cotton is Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at Colorado State University. He says cloud seeding can produce minimal results in winter and the practice during summertime is probably fruitless but now there are eight state-permitted cloud seeding generators across Colorado.

The Aspen Acres Fire is a human-caused wildfire in southern Colorado that has burned 102,007 acres and some 850 structures have been damaged or destroyed, including 319 confirmed homes. Investigators of the seventh largest fire in Colorado history identified two distinct ignition sites directly under San Isabel power lines near Highway 165 leading to allegations of negligence and trespassing. 

Ponderosa pine contains a much higher level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than many other cone-bearing trees and tends to be more explosive in wildfire conditions especially when under drought stress. Beetle-affected trees are pockmarked with ‘pitchouts’ that burst into flames during wildfires and torch more readily.

Across the country, climate change is ravaging ecosystems, bringing more robust storms, rising sea levels, record-setting conflagrations and fatal heat waves. In Colorado, the staggering die-off of the majestic pines is difficult to stomach. [Capital & Main]

In 2018 after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises closed their Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch. Neiman purchased Colorado's Montrose Forest Products in 2012 but will likely cease operations there, too.