- When scaling down a ReplicaSet, delete doubled up replicas first, where a "doubled up replica" is defined as one that is on the same node as an active replica belonging to a related ReplicaSet.  ReplicaSets are considered "related" if they have a common controller (typically a Deployment). ([#80004](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/80004), [@Miciah](https://github.com/Miciah))...

- Give terminal phase correctly to all pods that will not be restarted. 

  In particular, assign Failed phase to pods which are deleted while pending. Also, assign a terminal 
  phase (Succeeded or Failed, depending on the exit statuses of the pod containers) to pods which
  are deleted while running.
  
  This fixes the issue for jobs using pod failure policy (with JobPodFailurePolicy and PodDisruptionConditions 

## Changelog since v1.18.14

## Changes by Kind

### Bug or Regression

- Fix Azure file share not deleted issue when the namespace is deleted ([#97417](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97417), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Storage]

### CVE-2025-5187: Nodes can delete themselves by adding an OwnerReference

### Garbage Collector

- For vSphere Cloud Provider, If VM of worker node is deleted, the node will also be deleted by node controller ([#92608](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92608), [@lubronzhan](https://github.com/lubronzhan)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

- `kube-proxy` will...

 and is deleted after 24 hours by default to limit the exposure of the
 valuable credential. You can create a new Bootstrap Token with
 `kubeadm token create` or make the default token permanently valid by specifying
 `--token-ttl 0` to `kubeadm init`. The default token can later be deleted with
 `kubeadm token delete`.

  - The `Node` authorization mode no longer allows kubelets to delete their Node API objects (prior to 1.11, in rare circumstances related to cloudprovider node ID changes, kubelets would attempt to delete/recreate their Node object at startup) ([#71021](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71021), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

- To avoid soft-deleted pods incorrectly affecting scale up replica count calculations, the HPA controller will stop counting soft-deleted pods for scaling purposes. ([#67067](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67067), [@moonek](https://github.com/moonek))