What Voters Concern Most As Midterms Approach and Jack Smith Takes on Senate GOP Over Jan. 6 Trump Investigation: Morning Rundown

In today’s newsletter: Three NBC News journalists hit the road for a six-day trip to find out what’s on voters’ minds. The attorney for a former Cornell University student says law enforcement and the school failed to protect her after she raised sexual assault allegations. And Jack Smith is facing questions over his handling of the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Here’s what you need to know today.

Americans are frustrated with the direction the country is heading as the midterm elections approach — an atmosphere that usually explodes on the party in power. They are angry about rising prices, skyrocketing interest rates and foreign wars. They fear that AI will automate many jobs while driving up utility prices.

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So NBC News took a road trip: Over six days and eight stops, three reporters visited some of the most competitive congressional districts to find out what’s motivating people’s votes heading into November. This “Drive to Decision Day” covered a third of the nation’s most hotly contested House races and two key Senate races.

Read the full story from our August road trip and watch the NBC News Reports documentary.

More election news:

• Diving into data: Steve Kornacki explains what’s at stake in a crucial Iowa Senate race.

• Barely five weeks later Georgia gubernatorial race closely watchedKeisha Lance Bottoms’ on-air campaign has waned.

Cornell rape accuser’s lawyer says school, law enforcement failed young woman

The attorney representing a former Cornell University student who said she was raped in 2024 and pressured to take ketamine has accused law enforcement and the school of failing his client.

The former student alleges that Chi Phi fraternity brothers sexually assaulted her and that one of them sent a message encouraging other members to participate in the attack. The fraternity chapter was later banned from campus, but no one was criminally charged.

Thomas P. Giuffra says his client went to the University Police Department after the alleged attack, but did not speak to anyone other than the first person who took her report. Officers failed to act on key evidence, including the group chat.

Cornell pushed back on the notion that those involved in the incident faced few consequences at the time, saying the Title IX process resulted in a range of sanctions, including expulsions and suspensions.

The civil suit prompted Tompkins County Prosecutor Matthew Van Houten to reopen the case and consider whether to file charges related to the allegations. He promised to “zealously” pursue any new evidence.

Read the full story here.

Senate GOP to pressure Jack Smith over Jan. 6 Trump probe as DOJ targets investigators

Former special counsel Jack Smith will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today about his handling of the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results that led to the January 6 attacks.

Smith said he believed a jury would have found Trump guilty in the election case if he had gone to trial and rejected the idea that he was “influenced or directed by the Biden administration.”

Smith, along with other FBI and Justice Department officials, have been criticized by the president’s allies in the Senate for their involvement in Trump’s past investigations.

Last year, the administration launched a so-called grand conspiracy investigation to examine actions taken by federal law enforcement dating back to 2016 that would fall outside the usual five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes.

Read the full story here.

Before rare execution, lone woman on Tennessee death row says, ‘I am at peace’

Tennessee is set to execute 50-year-old Christa Pike by lethal injection on Wednesday — the first time in more than 200 years that a state will put a woman to death, according to historical records.

Knoxville police say that in 1995, Pike, then 18, and others lured a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, to an abandoned steam plant, attacked her and beat her to death. The case gained momentum after investigators said it was linked to the occult because of a pentagram discovered carved into Slemmer’s chest.

Pike’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution, saying she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from sexual abuse during her childhood.

Tennessee corrections officials said they would try to accommodate some requests made by Pike, including using female guards to transfer her and using an all-female execution team.

Pike, who has been on death row for more than three decades, does not dispute his role in the murder. In a letter to NBC News, she said she was at peace if her pardon was granted, saying, “I’m just nervous about the process.”

Read the full story here.

Staff choice: Why lawmakers are scrambling to save National Archives facilities

A family friend in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up, asked me if I had heard about the plan to close the National Archives and move thousands of historical documents important to the Asian American community out of California.

It wasn’t on my radar. So on a recent trip, I met with Rep. Kevin Mullin, a Democrat who is leading the fight against this decision, and a local genealogist who frequently researches it.

They told me the facility housed old immigration records, court and otherwise, dating to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1898, the Angel Island immigration station, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. There are even documents from the Supreme Court’s landmark Wong Kim Ark ruling, which established that a child born to foreign parents on American soil is an American citizen.

The National Archives and Records Administration said closing this and other facilities would reduce the agency’s real estate footprint and save money as it digitizes records. But opponents argue that it is essential that descendants of people in these records have access to them, and that many of these AAPI families still live nearby in the Bay Area or California.

This is a fascinating question and one I intend to continue monitoring.

-Scott Wong, senior congressional reporter

Read all about it

• From Buffalo to Brazil, one nail-biting finale after another defined the slate of NFL action on Sunday. Here’s a look at the dozen plays that turned Week 3 into one of the craziest in NFL history.
• Three counties along Florida’s Gulf Coast have declared a locally acquired state of emergency dengue cases reach unprecedented levels. It was only a matter of time before the Tampa Bay area experienced a dengue outbreak of this magnitude, experts say.

• Trump will hold a summit with main leaders in artificial intelligence in Washington today to discuss the rapid evolution of technology.

• Justice Samuel Alito will remain absent from the first major climate case after facing calls to recuse himself because of his stakes in oil companies.

• Andrew Bailey, who joined the FBI as its new “co-deputy director” in September 2025, is leave the office after just one year.

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