Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, his top lieutenant, proved this week that there are no Republican heroes. While they might have fought Trump’s Big Lie (perhaps largely because they were the ones getting death threats) when it comes to holding free and fair elections in which a Democrat has a very good chance of winning, they are cheating Republicans to the core.

The two officials reversed course this weekend, after having assured voters in at least “some counties” they would “likely have Saturday voting following Thanksgiving.” The next day, once it was assured that Democrats would have the Senate majority regardless of the outcome of the Georgia runoff between Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Hershel Walker, they reneged, sending out an advisory memo to local officials telling them that voting won’t be allowed that Saturday because it’s the day after a holiday. That state holiday used to be known as Robert E. Lee’s Birthday, now it’s just a state day off. This is after Republicans cut the runoff campaign period in half to help the GOP win. Now they’re trying to take a critical day of voting away.

Democrats, who have a pretty good record of beating this kind of cheating in the courts, are suing. Warnock’s campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) filed suit in the Superior Court of Fulton County of Georgia to secure that day of early voting, and they’ve got some good evidence on their side.

Like this:

If the Saturday after Christmas wasn’t sacrosanct to GOP officials, while all of a sudden is the Saturday after Thanksgiving?

“It’s not our choice. It’s literally in black-letter law that the Saturday following a state holiday cannot be used for early voting,” said Sterling. “We all thought there was going to be Saturday voting until we looked at the law really closely.” It’s the same law as in 2020-21.

It’s cherry-picking, the Democrats say, because the provisions they are citing to block the vote don’t apply to runoffs. In writing the statute, the Georgia legislature “expressly distinguished between three different categories of elections”, they point out: a primary election; a general election; and a runoff. And the ban on early Saturday voting after a holiday “applies only to primary and general elections, not runoffs.”

If Raffensperger is going to conflate runoffs with primary and general elections, they say, then he should be instructing the counties to have voting available on November 19, because state law requires that the polls have to be open on the second and third Saturdays before primary and general elections. If runoffs are supposed to be treated just the same as other elections, then there should be that extra day as well.

“That is not how the statute operates: if the sentence’s prohibition on holding advance voting on a Saturday after a holiday applies to runoffs, so too must its command that advance voting be held on the second and third Saturday in the first place,” they write. “To read the statute otherwise is nonsensical.”

Yes, it’s nonsensical. It’s also cheating. Republicans—and particularly Georgia Republicans—will do anything to keep Democrats down. Their new law slashed ballot box access for absentee ballots. They cut the time for runoff voting in half after Democrats Jon Ossoff and Warnock won in 2020-21, and now they’re twisting the law to cut out key early voting days.

The only answer is to fight in the courts and on the ground, by making sure that the Warnock campaign has the money and the volunteers to get out his vote. The DSCC and party are making sure the court battle is covered. We can help with the rest.

There are plenty of opportunities to help get out the vote in Georgia, and we’ve made it easy for you to find them. Just go here, scroll down to learn more, and sign up!

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Democrats enjoyed yet another welcome burst of news when NBC called the Arizona governor's race for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who will be the first Democrat in 14 years to lead what’s become a crucial swing state. Hobbs leads her far-right opponent, former local TV anchor Kari Lake, 50.4-49.6 with 98% of the likely total vote reporting for the contest to succeed termed-out Gov. Doug Ducey. Republicans hoped that later-counted ballot would allow Lake to overcome the edge that Hobbs has enjoyed since election night, but those batches of votes weren’t quite red enough to deny Hobbs the win.

Lake, who began spreading conspiracy theories and cultivating ties with the extremist right well before she went off the air last year as a news anchor for Phoenix's Fox 10, was part of Trump’s nationwide primary slate of Big Lie spreaders, and she rode that support to beat out a Ducey-backed foe for the nomination in August. Lake quickly became a national MAGA star, and some over-eager observers speculated that she could be Trump’s running mate―or even a future presidential nominee―even though she hadn’t even won her own race yet. Lake herself even recorded videos imploring voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania to elect like-minded Trumpists, Tudor Dixon and Doug Mastriano, to lead their respective states.

What Lake didn’t do in the general election, though, was abandon her conspiracy mongering. The Republican nominee spent the week before the election making light of the assassination attempt on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” Lake also continued to push the Big Lie, saying of Trump’s 2020 loss in Arizona, “We had 740,000 ballots with no chain of custody. Those ballots shouldn’t have been counted.”

Hobbs, for her part, launched her campaign last year highlighting how she performed her job as the Grand Canyon State’s chief election administrator in the face of death threats. Hobbs ran a considerably more low-key campaign than Lake, who aired several ads hitting the Democrat for refusing to debate her. Hobbs and her allies, though, stuck with their strategy of highlighting Lake’s extremism, which included an ad hitting her for appearing to flirt with secession in response to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago.

Hobbs’ victory will make her Arizona’s first Democratic governor since early 2009, when Janet Napolitano resigned to become Barack Obama’s first secretary of homeland security. Team Blue knew that Napolitano’s departure would hand the governor’s office to Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer, who was next in line for the top job in a state that lacks a lieutenant governor’s post, but they hoped the GOP would hand back control the next year.

That was a huge miscalculation. Brewer was in place to sign the infamous anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 into law months before she rode the 2010 red wave to a full term, and Ducey won the following two elections. Hobbs, though, finally returns this office to Democratic control over a decade after they forfeited it.

P.S. It looks like Arizona will, starting in 2026, elect a lieutenant governor for the first time, since voters are on the verge of passing a ballot measure to establish the post. Hobbs would be able to name her own running mate, who would assume the governorship should Hobbs win a second term but be unable to complete it, ensuring that the debacle of 2009 can never be repeated. Until then, though, the person next in line to succeed her will be Secretary of State-elect Adrian Fontes, a fellow Democrat who won the race to succeed Hobbs by defeating election denier Mark Finchem.

When the new Congress comes into session in January, there will be more Black Republicans serving together on Capitol Hill than at any point since 1877.

The number? Five.³⁶

For years, Republicans have struggled to recruit and elect Black candidates. But heading into this year’s primary election season, national Republicans boasted that more than 80 Black Republicans — a historical feat for the party — were running on the GOP ticket. After the primaries, only 31 Black Republicans actually made it onto the ballot, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of primary race winners. Almost all of those candidates lost.

This result isn’t a huge surprise. In July, I took a look at the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 election forecast and predicted that Republicans Wesley Hunt of Texas and John James of Michigan were the most likely congressional hopefuls to join current Reps. Burgess Owens of Utah and Byron Donalds of Florida in Washington come next year. Georgia is, once again, headed to a runoff election and while it’s too soon to know whether Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock or Republican Herschel Walker will win, there will be two Black Republicans³⁷ serving in the upper chamber concurrently if Walker is successful — the highest number ever.

It’s notable, too, that a handful of Black Republicans were in tough races that took multiple days to call. Tamika Hamilton, who ran against Democrat Rep. Ami Bera in California’s 6th District, is projected to lose by just 12 percentage points, according to ABC News.³⁸ Meanwhile, in Connecticut’s 5th District, Republican George Logan lost to Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes by roughly 2,000 votes. A win for Logan would have been an upset, as our Deluxe forecast, frozen early on Nov. 8, only gave the challenger a 39-in-100 chance of winning. Hamilton, meanwhile, only had a 1-in-100 chance of victory.

In fact, our forecast predicted uphill battles for the vast majority of the Black Republicans running this year: Out of all primary winners, only two — Hunt and James — had a more than 50-in-100 chance of winning. Of course, Black Republicans might always have trouble seeking acceptance within a party that has historically downplayed racism and has leaned on white grievance politics as a way to attract voters. But many of these candidates simply had tough races in reliably blue districts and no real shot at winning, despite the party trumpeting how many nominees they had. That wasn’t the case for the two who won, however. Hunt, for his part, ran in a newly drawn Houston-based district that had a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean³⁹ of R+27. Our forecast also gave him a more than 99-in-100 chance of beating Democrat Duncan Klussmann. James, for his part, was also the favored candidate in Michigan’s open 10th District — which has a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean of R+6 — against Democrat Carl Marlinga.

Even with slightly more Black GOP members in Congress, though, the Republican Party still has a ways to go before they catch up with Democrats in terms of representation (there are nearly 60 Black Democrats in the House currently). That’s in part because Black Republicans often face challenges in proving their conservative bona fides to white voters and Black voters still remain heavily Democratic, though we don’t have enough evidence beyond imperfect exit polling data to say for certain yet how much either group shifted in this year’s election.

The fact that electing five or six Black Republicans to Congress is a feat worth discussing is reflective of how the party continues to struggle with Black voters. After all, there wasn’t always a dearth of Black Republicans in Congress. In fact, seven Black politicians served in the U.S. House together during the 43rd (1873-75) and 44th (1875-77) congresses, thanks to the newfound political power of emancipated men in the South, who got the right to vote in 1870.⁴⁰ That changed, though, following the end of the Reconstruction era, and beginning in 1877, Black representation significantly declined. In fact, throughout the 20th century, many congresses had no Black Republicans at all. That trend didn’t begin to reverse until 1995, when two Black Republicans served together in the House again — in part, due to the GOP’s pursuit of disillusioned Black voters at the time. But the House only saw between one to two Black members in the lower chamber at once from then until now.

But the Republican Party has a lot more trouble appealing to Black voters now than it did in the 1800s. Back then, Black people were overwhelmingly aligned with the GOP because it was known as the party of President Abraham Lincoln, who was credited with fighting to end slavery. In fact, the current dynamics of the two major parties didn’t really start to take shape until around the 1930s, when programs intended to help communities of color — such as those in Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal — prompted some Black voters to switch their party loyalty to Democrats. 

Overtures by the Republican Party to court Black voters and candidates have increased particularly in states and districts where Black voters could decide election outcomes. Some experts told me previously that the GOP’s decision to back Walker in Georgia, despite his flaws as a candidate, is a sign that the party is trying to find ways to appeal to more Black voters. Even before Tuesday’s election, a number of Republican-affiliated groups spent gobs of money attempting to buoy Black Republicans running in competitive primary races, like former Army captain Jeremy Hunt of Georgia, who ultimately lost his June primary. Many other candidates, however, were substantially outraised by their opponents — especially those who were running in solidly blue seats. Take South Carolina Republican Duke Buckner, who challenged House Majority Whip James Clyburn in the state’s 6th District and raised only a tiny fraction of his opponent’s war chest, or New Jersey Republican Darius Mayfield, who challenged Rep. Bonnie Coleman in the 12th District and was similarly dramatically outraised.

So it’s too soon to say whether efforts to recruit and elect more Black candidates are really paying off for the GOP. Sure, Walker is headed into what’s expected to be a competitive runoff election in Georgia and he held a slight 64-in-100 chance edge in our final forecast, but current returns show that he earned fewer votes than Warnock during the general election and is running considerably behind Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. And since the vast majority of Black GOP general election candidates (83 percent) lost to their Democratic opponent in the House and Senate midterm races this cycle — not including Walker — it’s hard to know if electing Black candidates will continue to be a priority for Republicans going forward.

Rep. Karen Bass is now more than four points ahead of billionaire Rick Caruso in the race for Los Angeles mayor, her widest lead yet as ballots continue to be counted in a contest that was the city's most expensive ever.

Bass is now about 30,000 votes ahead of Caruso, according to the latest vote drop from LA County released Monday evening, which extended the congressmember's previous lead by more than 20,000 votes.

Election officials say the updated figures represent an additional 191,312 ballots counted countywide, for a cumulative total of 1,799,951 ballots counted. An estimated 655,300 ballots remain to be counted. The race has yet to be called, and the next update from elections officials is expected to come Tuesday.

California mails every voter a ballot and allows those postmarked by election day a week to arrive at election offices. As a result, the final count can take a week or longer.

The LA mayor's race has been the most expensive contest the city has ever seen, and among the most contentious. Bass, who got her start organizing in South LA before moving onto the state Legislature and later Congress, has the backing of the party establishment, including the White House and former President Barack Obama. Caruso, known for his luxury retail centers like the Grove, is a former Republican who only registered as a Democrat shortly before entering the race.

Caruso spent his way into contention this year, dropping $100 million of his personal fortune to bombard LA airwaves with promises to “clean up” the city's increasingly severe homelessness problem and crack down on crime and corruption in city government. He initially showed strong returns on election night, but that lead quickly dwindled in the following days as more mail-in ballots were counted.

Two new U.S. studies show that automatic emergency braking can cut the number of rear-end automobile crashes in half, and reduce pickup truck crashes by more than 40%. From a report: The studies released Tuesday, one by a government-auto industry partnership and the other by the insurance industry, each used crash data to make the calculations. Automatic emergency braking can stop vehicles if a crash is imminent, or slow them to reduce the severity. Some automakers are moving toward a voluntary commitment by 20 companies to make the braking technology standard equipment on 95% of their light-duty models during the current model year that ends next August. A study by The Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety compared data on auto equipment with 12 million police-reported crashes from 13 states that was collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the partnership said in a statement Tuesday. The group studied forward collision warning as well as emergency braking. The group found front-to-rear crashes were cut 49% when the striking vehicle had forward collision alert plus automatic braking, when compared with vehicles that didn't have either system. Rear crashes with injuries were cut by 53%, the study found. Vehicles with forward collision warning systems only reduced rear-end crashes by 16%, and cut rear crashes with injuries by 19%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Late last week we wrote about the election of Massachusetts Democrat Donna Buckley, who as candidate vowed to end a discriminatory agreement held with federal immigration officials should she win her race for Barnstable County sheriff. Her Republican challenger, state lawmaker Timothy Whelan, said he would continue the racist and flawed 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But as Daily Kos community member millegrazie and others kindly noted to me, Whelan wasn’t the only anti-immigrant sheriff’s candidate to go down in the region. “In neighboring Bristol County, voters ousted, a far-right sheriff with a history of draconian anti-immigrant policies,” Bolts reported Nov. 11. Thomas Hodgson was so reprehensible, he was compared to disgraced racist Joe Arpaio. He was also a frequent White House guest under the insurrectionist president, promoted antisemitic tropes, was a hate group board member, and an honorary chair of his failed 2020 reelection effort.

“Hodgson routinely boasted about his deliberate efforts to make jail so unwelcoming that no one would want to come back,” Bolts had initially reported following his defeat by Democratic candidate Paul Heroux, a former state legislator. “At various points over his 25 years in office, he reinstituted chain gangs and deprived people in his custody of any fresh fruits or vegetables. He also offered to send Bristol County incarcerees to help build Trump’s wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

RELATED STORY: In Massachusetts, Democratic candidate who vowed to end racist ICE agreement wins sheriff's race

So much of that was trademark Arpaio, who brought back chain gangs and forced detained men to wear pink underwear in order to humiliate them. Joe knew his roasting hot tent city was such a hellish, inhumane torture device, that he admitted it was a “concentration camp.” Arpaio faced his own electoral defeat earlier this year, when he lost the race for mayor of Fountain Hills, Arizona. One day a powerful, corrupt sheriff, and the next can’t even get elected mayor of his own town. How the mighty have fallen.

But back to Hodgson’s defeat. Bolts reports that Heroux “performed particularly well in New Bedford, home of one of the oldest and most notorious jails in the nation. It has been the subject of lawsuits, protests and calls for a permanent shutdown by advocates.” Hodgson’s jails have seen abhorrent suicide rates, and loved ones of detained people who have lost their lives in them have accused Hodgson’s department of basically just letting it happen, the report said.

At least 22 have died since 2006, including Mark Trafton. A former cellmate told Bolts last month that Trafton had been expressing suicidal ideations so alarming that no fewer than three guards were alerted to his behavior. But following his death, the jail made it seem like it “came out of nowhere,” Bolts reported. 

Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts Executive Director Elizabeth Matos told Bolts last month that she didn’t know why Hodgson was “not as famous as Arpaio. But he should be.” And while Hodgson’s defeat represents a major win, activists who helped ouster him still have work ahead of them. Heroux said he’d maybe work with ICE again, nor has he committed to shutting down the New Bedford jail. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ordered ICE to end its 287(g) agreement with the county last year.

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In nearby Barnstable County, Buckley campaigned on ending the flawed 287(g) agreement, which allows local law enforcement to cosplay as mass deportation agents. Barnstable County is the final locality in the commonwealth to still hold such an agreement. In a Q&A with The Enterprise earlier this month, Buckley said that helping enforce federal immigration law “is not the role of the Barnstable County sheriff,” and said the agreement “does not make Barnstable County safer.” 

The commonwealth also defeated anti-immigrant Republican gubernatorial nominee Geoff Diehl, and rejected the GOP-led measure seeking to repeal state law opening driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. In states where other sheriffs have also campaigned and won on ending their ICE agreements, immigrant communities have described relief. Heroux should not be afraid of pursuing humane, pro-immigrant policy within his department. As Buckley and others have shown, it’s a winning issue.

We must get out the Democratic vote for Sen. Raphael Warnock in the December runoff. Write heartfelt, personalized letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward to turn them out again.

We beat back the so-called Red Wave, but our job is not done. Daily Kos is determined to help us win Georgia, and is pouring resources. Please donate $5 today.

RELATED STORIES:

'Barnstable’s 287(g) should be discontinued': Massachusetts residents sue over flawed ICE policy

Immigrant communities describe 'relief' after Georgia sheriffs terminate ICE agreements

ICE pledged review of flawed 287(g) agreements more than a year ago, but still no decision

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Meta employees are taking aim at Mark Zuckerberg in employee reviews on Blind, the anonymous forum. From a report: Some reviews, posted on Wednesday -- the day Meta laid off 13% of its workforce -- are negative, although others are more positive. One user likened the layoffs to the "hunger games" and another said the Facebook owner had an "uncertain future." Insider surveyed the workplace community app, where staff can air their grievances in posts and reviews, to see what was being said about Meta and its CEO. Some 44 employee reviews of Meta were posted on Blind on Wednesday and Thursday this week. "The Metaverse will be our slow death," one user, who called themselves a senior software developer, posted on Wednesday. They added: "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the meta-verse." Zuckerberg apologized to staff for the need to cut 11,000 jobs, admitting that he "got this wrong". Blind users must provide their work email email address, job title and employer when joining the platform so the company can "gauge the professional status" of posters, according to its website. A user's employment is not officially verified, however. Blind said it occasionally sent prompts to users to "re-verify" their accounts. Rick Chen, head of public relations at Blind, told Insider: "Nearly all of the reviews posted have been written by current employees of the respective companies at the time of writing, as people generally cannot access Blind after they are laid off or resign."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo's latest car sensor arrays are "creating real-time weather maps to improve ride hailing services in Phoenix and San Francisco," reports Engadget. "The vehicles measure the raindrops on windows to detect the intensity of conditions like fog or rain." From the report: The technology gives Waymo a much finer-grained view of conditions than it gets from airport weather stations, radar and satellites. It can track the coastal fog as it rolls inland, or drizzle that radar would normally miss. While that's not as important in a dry locale like Phoenix, it can be vital in San Francisco and other cities where the weather can vary wildly between neighborhoods. There are a number of practical advantages to gathering this data, as you might guess. Waymo is using the info to improve its Driver AI's ability to handle rough weather, including more realistic simulations. The company also believes it can better understand the limits of its cars and set higher requirements for new self-driving systems. The tech also helps Waymo One better serve ride hailing passengers at a given time and place, and gives Waymo Via trucking customers more accurate delivery updates. The current weather maps have their limitations. They may help in a warm city like San Francisco, where condensation and puddles are usually the greatest problems, but they won't be as useful for navigating snowy climates where merely seeing the lanes can be a challenge. There's also the question of whether or not it's ideal to have cars measure the very conditions that hamper their driving. This isn't necessarily the safest approach. Waymo describes the research in a blog post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader kid_wonder writes: BlockFi, a crypto exchange, had suspended withdrawals on Friday and now appears to be having serious issues directly related to the FTX meltdown. In an email to customers this morning they said: "The rumors that a majority of BlockFi assets are custodied at FTX are false. That said, we do have significant exposure to FTX and associated corporate entities that encompasses obligations owed to us by Alameda, assets held at FTX.com, and undrawn amounts from our credit line with FTX US. While we will continue to work on recovering all obligations owed to BlockFi, we expect that the recovery of the obligations owed to us by FTX will be delayed as FTX works through the bankruptcy process. At this time, withdrawals from BlockFi continue to be paused. We also continue to ask clients not to submit any deposits to BlockFi Wallet or Interest Accounts." Reuters has a list of some firms who have given information about their exposure to FTX.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina took on the role of acting chief two years ago, his appointment was clouded in controversy. Over the course of his career, Medina was responsible for the shooting death of a teenager, involved in yet another shooting that led to a multi-million dollar settlement, and was one of the decision-makers who did little during a protest that turned violent in 2020. Medina came in at a fraught time for the APD, as the agency had been under a consent decree for quite some time. None of this explains Medina’s latest shady actions following the midterms, though.

The day after election day, Medina took to Twitter to “clear up the claims about Albuquerque’s crime stats.”

“Over five years, overall, property and violent crime are down,” Medina tweeted. It was seemingly the first time the police chief bucked conservative talking points claiming violent crime was on the rise. In fact, crime was such a hot-button issue that New Mexico’s gubernatorial debate on Sept. 30th began with a question on just that, and GOP candidate Mark Ronchetti released a controversial ad about his opponent’s handling of crime. Medina and his department had plenty of opportunities to clear the air, but instead chose to withhold statistics that would better inform the public they claim to serve and stayed silent until they could pat themselves on the back.

In truth, “the officers, detectives, and professionals throughout APD” probably did little to impact property and violent crime stats.

Extraneous factors unrelated to how many officers serve a community are one of the most reliable ways to tell why certain areas may be experiencing spikes or drops in crime. According to analysis from the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), those factors include “social and economic instability and heightened inequalities.” Recent studies have found that increased police funding is an ineffective solution to addressing crime, and that other “tough-on-crime” policies, like offering few or no alternatives to incarceration, only make crime worse.

Clearly, Medina and the APD aren’t helping matters. This should only serve as yet another reminder that defunding the police is crucial. If cities like Albuquerque want to truly put a stop to crime, then they should instead allocate funds toward community solutions that empower residents. One Los Angeles candidate used the city’s own bloated police budget to snag a win and be elected city controller, illustrating just how much further the government could go in addressing inequalities that frequently lead to upticks in crime. Redirecting those funds to allow marginalized folks to thrive could ideally make the issue of crime itself obsolete.

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Chuck Schumer has called the vote a top priority during the lame-duck session.

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A split Congress is likely, but a Warnock win would still benefit Democrats.

While Democrats in the Senate may be breathing a collective sigh of relief after Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s win in Nevada, their slim majority would get an important boost from a Sen. Raphael Warnock win in the Georgia runoff race December 6. The ability to pass key legislation in the next two years and fill court vacancies may depend on it.

Typically, the midterm elections serve as a referendum on the party that holds the White House, with the president’s party losing seats in Congress if not necessarily ceding full control. In 2018, for example, Democrats swept the House of Representatives, picking up 40 seats in the House for the majority while Republicans gained two seats in the Senate to maintain their majority.

The typical result is that the president’s party loses Senate seats, which has happened in 13 of the last 19 midterm elections, as FiveThirtyEight reported Friday. But Democrats, if Warnock wins reelection in December, will have picked up a seat and flipped one as well, in Pennsylvania with John Fetterman replacing Sen. Pat Toomey (R), following his win over Mehmet Oz.

Although it’s not likely that Democrats will be able to push through aggressive, landmark legislation with such a slim majority — particularly if they end up losing the House, which looks likely as of this reporting — there will be some critical advantages to keeping it.

As Vox’s Li Zhou wrote Saturday, the split Congress does have its disadvantages but with a majority in the Senate, Democrats will be able to confirm federal court judges with a simple majority. That will provide an important counterweight to the raft of federal judges appointed by former President Donald Trump and confirmed by a Republican Senate. Supreme Court, federal district court, and circuit court judges enjoy lifetime appointments, and they have the ability to shape legal interpretation and policy for decades to come. With 116 vacancies — and 62 lacking nominations, Zhou wrote — Democrats can make plenty of impact over the next two years.

A Democratic majority in the Senate will also retain power over which bills come to the floor for discussion — meaning they can reject approved bills from a Republican-led House, Zhou wrote.

However, a GOP House can also do a fair bit of damage if it decide to conduct the investigations House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has threatened or impeach Biden and other top officials. A split Congress also probably means bitter battles over issues like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling, Vox’s Rachel M. Cohen, Dylan Scott, and Li Zhou wrote earlier this month. Should Republicans win the House, as they seem poised to do,

House Republicans are prepared to hold any increase to the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for cuts to other programs like clean energy investments and Social Security. In that case, the House and Senate could face an interminable standoff that could put the United States on the verge of defaulting on its debt, a scenario that could have devastating consequences for the economy.

Here’s why Georgia is still important to win

Those advantages will be amplified should Warnock win the runoff in December.

If Warnock keeps his seat, Democrats won’t have to depend on Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote, and they would have more leverage over Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), the more conservative members of the party, in order to get legislation passed.

Manchin and Sinema both put up guardrails to Biden’s signature legislation, the Build Back Better Act. That legislation, in a greatly reduced form, passed as the Inflation Reduction Act, with both senators’ vote; however, monumental parts of the legislation, like free universal pre-kindergarten, had to be abandoned.

There’s also more breathing room for Democrats if Warnock wins his race, should there be any vacancies or absences, as there were in January when Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke ahead of the crucial vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Democrats won’t be able to do everything they want — that means the filibuster will probably remain in place, and Biden’s promise to enshrine abortion protections into law probably won’t come to fruition in a divided Congress.

As Vox’s Andrew Prokop wrote, Democrats do have a path to a slim majority in the House, but it’s far from assured. As of this writing, Democrats have secured 204 seats in the House, while Republicans have secured 211; 218 seats are needed to win the majority.

But the likelier outcome is that Republicans take the House with a slim majority.

Here’s what Dems are doing to push Warnock over the edge, and here’s what the GOP is doing for Walker

Warnock, who took office in 2021, has already won a runoff for his Senate seat, as did Sen. Jon Ossoff, another Georgia Democrat. In his first runoff, against incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler, Warnock won by two points.

The end result of Tuesday’s contest showed Warnock slightly ahead of Walker, with 49.42 percent of the vote to Walker’s 48.52 percent. A Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, racked up 2.1 percent, ultimately preventing either major party candidate from getting the majority.

Still, neither candidate won a majority in Tuesday’s contest; unlike many other states, Georgia requires a candidate to win 50 percent of the vote or face a runoff, a vestige of the South’s racist, segregationist past during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. As Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, explained to CNN in a Friday interview:

In several Southern states after the end of slavery and after Black men were allowed to vote, Black people were a majority of the electorate. There were some states where Black people were 40% or so of the electorate.

So, the White people who were in control of the legislatures used the runoff to ensure that if there were multiple candidates in the first election and a Black person ran first or even second, the White vote could consolidate in the runoff and defeat that Black candidate.

Now, two Black candidates will face off for the first time in a Georgia Senate runoff, and money is pouring into the runoff. The website Open Secrets, which tracks political fundraising and spending, noted that the Georgia Senate race was the second-most expensive federal race this cycle, second only to the Pennsylvania race between Fetterman and Oz.

Now, headed into a runoff in just four short weeks — as opposed to the nine weeks candidates had to fundraise, strategize, and get out the vote before Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law last year limiting the time period before a runoff election — funds are already pouring into the campaigns.

Warnock’s campaign is receiving funding and logistical support from grassroots efforts like the New Georgia Project, as well as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which has already committed $7 million to fund ground operations, according to Politico.

“We know talking directly to voters through a strong, well-funded ground-game is critical to winning in Georgia, and we’re wasting no time in kick-starting these programs in the runoff,” DSCC head Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told Politico in a statement.

Organizing for Walker are conservative groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its affiliated PAC Women Speak Out, which will spend at least $1 million on Walker’s runoff campaign, in addition to the $1.1 million already spent. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, will support Walker’s ground operations, to which Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will contribute his data and canvassing infrastructure, according to the Washington Post.

In the midterm contest, Warnock benefited from split ticket voting, in which some voters chose popular Republican governor Kemp but declined to vote for Walker. Those votes were concentrated in metro areas, particularly Atlanta. Now that Kemp is no longer on the ballot, it remains to be seen whether his popularity will give Walker a boost.

Georgians can begin early voting on or before November 28, depending on when the general election results are certified.

Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez narrowly defeated far-right candidate Joe Kent in Washington state's 3rd Congressional District — a stinging loss for Republicans and Donald Trump, who endorsed Kent after he embraced the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.

Gluesenkamp Perez, an unknown before the primary, ran as a moderate, rural Democrat and small business owner. The district has been held by Republicans since 2011.

"The people in my district are looking for representation that focuses on finding common ground and delivering results, not the extreme hyperpartisanship and clickbait politics offered by my opponent," Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement Saturday.

Kent, meanwhile, told supporters on Twitter on Saturday night that he is not conceding, and urged voters to check the status of their mail-in ballots online. There are approximately 12,000 votes yet to to be counted in the district, but the Associated Press determined that they are not enough to change the outcome for Kent.

Gluesenkamp Perez will replace Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R), whose vote to impeach the former president drew a litany of pro-Trump challengers in the state's open primary — including Kent, who edged out Herrera Beutler. In the general election, the central question was how Herrera Beutler's more moderate GOP supporters would vote: further right toward Kent, or slightly left for Gluesenkamp Perez, who holds moderate positions on issues like gun control.

Gluesenkamp Perez attracted some of Herrera Beutler's supporters to her side, while Kent clinched an endorsement from former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who recently left the Democratic Party.

Gluesenkamp Perez walked a tightrope on policy in the right-leaning district, campaigning in favor of abortion rights but also promising to protect Second Amendment rights and to create more logging jobs.

Inflation and crime were top issues in the race, and both candidates argued they were better positioned to represent the geographically and politically diverse district's economic interests in Congress. Gluesenkamp Perez said she could relate to voters' fears about crime, reminding them that her own auto shop had been broken into multiple times this year.

The Florida Board of Education voted unanimously on new guidelines designed to threaten school districts and teachers that support LGBTQIA+-inclusive policies.

This article was originally published at Prism

On Oct. 19, the Florida Board of Education passed a new set of rules to implement and expand upon controversial laws like the “Don’t Say Gay” and “Stop WOKE” acts, which aim to further censor and punish teachers who instruct on sexual orientation and gender identity. Advocates say the rules are dangerous and still do little to clarify the persistent ambiguity about what constitutes “instruction” on sexual orientation and gender identity, or what burden of proof is necessary to determine when a teacher “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students to believe certain prohibited concepts.

“This is a recipe for chilling speech in public education, using the threat of punishment to pressure teachers into giving any potentially controversial topic a wide berth,” said Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s director of free expression and education programs.

The new rules require schools that offer gender-inclusive bathrooms and locker rooms to notify parents and outline their supervision procedures for these facilities. Though these guidelines don’t outright ban schools from designating their bathrooms in any way different from biological sex, they undermine the U.S. Department of Education’s recent guidance aimed at preventing discrimination against students based on things such as gender identity.

“[The rule] essentially puts a target on the backs of trans kids, by notifying all of their parents about this,” said Maxx Fenning, the founder and president of PRISM, an organization that works to expand access to LGBTQIA+-inclusive education and sexual health resources for youth in south Florida.

The issue of gender identity and bathrooms has been a longstanding and contentious one in Florida. In 2020, the 11th Circuit Court ruled that a Florida school board’s refusal to allow a transgender boy to use the bathroom matching his gender identity was unconstitutional. In 2021, the school board asked a federal appeals court to again consider whether the student should have been allowed to use boys’ bathrooms. Oral arguments were heard in early 2022, and a decision is still pending. While the latest rules concerning bathrooms do not ban transgender students from using the facility that corresponds with their gender identity, advocates say it will only discriminate against transgender students and put them in harm’s way.

“Unfortunately, the rule forces these school districts to put out these memos to parents letting them know, just an FYI, trans kids are going to be using the bathrooms that your kids are in,” said Fenning. “So it puts an uncomfortable target on the back of trans kids and singles them out in a way that is potentially really damaging.”

A second rule includes an expansion of the “Stop WOKE Act,” also known as House Bill 7, by barring “subjecting [students and employees] to training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels any of the concepts” related to their administration’s definition of critical race theory.

A third rule offers specifications on House Bill 1467, which mandates that elementary school libraries post their educational and reading materials online and make them accessible for parents to search through. Friedman says this will force librarians to reconsider including books with LGBTQIA+ content—eliminating representation that has been crucial for LGBTQIA+ students.

“These new rules continue an alarming pattern of censorship by intimidation in Florida schools,” said Friedman. “The new rules go beyond the provisions and language of what was passed into law this year, subjecting teachers and students to an all-encompassing regime of prohibitions and punishments. There seems to be little concern about how these provisions will stymie the work of teaching basic literacy, or in effect suppress information and ideas that many families and students want available in their public schools.”

Any teacher who “intentionally provide[s] classroom instruction” to kindergarten through third-grade students on gender identity or sexual orientation will face “revocation or suspension of the individual educator’s certificate, or the other penalties as provided by law.” As it stands, the law gives parents the right to sue a school district if they suspect that the law has been violated. However, it is unclear how the laws will be enforced and what will constitute classroom instruction. Friedman posits that a teacher answering a student’s question related to the two topics would technically be considered a violation.

“Each of the laws alone is problematic when you think about the purpose of education and open inquiry and freedom to learn,” said Friedman. “But in tandem, it’s especially pernicious, and the fact that violating the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill can result in teachers explicitly having their licenses revoked and suspended—if they weren’t already wary of running afoul of these laws, that will make them more so.”

The vague, punitive, and extreme nature of the law, Friedman says, is what is driving teachers away from the classroom. As of 2021, Florida Education Association said there were nearly 9,000 teaching and staff vacancies. At the beginning of 2022, FEA said that the number had grown to nearly 10,800 total openings.

“Schools ought to be welcoming places for students,” Friedman said. “It is my hope that teachers will not be bullied into never mentioning LGBTQIA+ people. It’s my hope that teachers can continue to be there for their students and be supportive of them, and particularly at the high school level, be able to teach the truth about people’s identities and American history, but all of that appears to be at risk.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. Our in-depth and thought-provoking journalism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. We tell stories from the ground up to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Sign up for our newsletter to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: The swift collapse of the FTX crypto exchange has sparked an industry push among big rivals to publish proof of their reserves as a means to provide transparency into the assets on their platforms. With those efforts just getting underway, one firm, Crypto.com, has taken the proactive step of providing a preliminary set of disclosures -- sharing wallet addresses with the blockchain analysis firm Nansen to create a dashboard of nearly $3 billion of reserves and other assets. What that shows is just how heavily the mix of assets is skewed toward a meme-y token called shiba inu (SHIB), a digital asset built atop the Ethereum blockchain that was largely inspired by the joke token dogecoin (DOGE). Like DOGE -- a key staple of billionaire Elon Musk's crypto schtick on Twitter -- the SHIB token is a highly volatile cryptocurrency whose primary use case is often considered to be speculation itself; it's traded for fast profits and yuks. Of the $2.88 billion in total assets in the wallets, roughly $558 million, or about 20%, are in SHIB. The holding ranks second only to the $872 million of bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market value, which represents 31%. The amount exceeds the $487 million in ether (ETH), the second-biggest cryptocurrency, and dwarfs the $1.5 million in dogecoin (DOGE), Nansen data suggests. Crypto.com's large holding of SHIB is a "reflection of user interest/activity," Nansen data journalist Martin Lee told CoinDesk. "In an ideal world, we'd want the best assets to be worth the most, but SHIB and DOGE both have extremely high market caps," he said. So it's "not super surprising that retail-heavy exchanges will have a higher concentration of such tokens. And regardless, as an exchange, your main source of revenue would likely be trading fees, so whether it's meme coins or more fundamentally sound assets, your business model is intact." Further reading: Binance's CZ Slams Reports Binance's Reserves Are Full of Its Own Tokens

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To be fair to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, he didn't exactly hype the red wave, even lamenting at one point that "candidate quality" might hamstring their takeover bid. The remark was a jab at Donald Trump, who handpicked every battleground state Senate GOP nominee.

It's also fair to note, however, that McConnell is only in the vise grip we are about to discuss because of his failed leadership on impeaching Trump after his violent Jan. 6 coup attempt.

With that said, let the festivities begin!

"The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed," newly reelected Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted Friday morning. "First, we need to make sure that those who want to lead us are genuinely committed to fighting for the priorities & values of the working Americans (of every background) who gave us big wins in states like #Florida."

Ruh-roh, Mitch, trouble brewing.

Then came the letter.

“We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not. ... We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024," wrote Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, and Rick Scott of Florida.

Yep, that Rick Scott! The guy who headed up the campaign to retake the upper chamber as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He wants to take a "serious" look for who else he can scapegoat after he ran the NRSC into the ground, forcing the group to cancel tens of millions of dollars in pre-booked advertising.

So Scott, Lee, and Johnson are currently circulating that dagger of a letter within the GOP conference, according to Politico, which first reported on it.

Now, what could Scott, Lee, Johnson, and Rubio possibly have in common? They have all appropriately surrendered to Donald Trump—yeah, the guy who almost singlehandedly wrecked the Republicans' midterm 'wave'—and are now stalling a leadership vote on the guy whose super PAC plowed some $230 million into trying to save the GOP's sinking ship.

Naturally, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, given one more chance to throw his wife and father under the bus for Trump, jumped on the dump-McConnell train too.

”Critically, we need to hear a specific plan for the next 2 yrs from any candidate for leadership,” tweeted the guy who is perhaps best known for shutting down the government in 2013 so he could read “Green Eggs and Ham” to the country from the Senate floor.

Who might they have in mind for the post? Scott, of course. After practically laying an egg for the GOP, time to promote!

It just so happens that Trump recently endorsed Scott as leader because what does Trump care about GOP wins and losses when he's not on the ticket. All Trump cares about is his underlings being sufficiently sycophantic suck-ups. Plus, sidelining Scott would count as one less person Trump has to slay on his way to reclaiming the 2024 GOP mantle.

Speaking to Fox News on his plane, Trump promised to oust McConnell as leader if he were reelected president, hailing Scott as a "very talented" replacement.

Coincidentally, Scott also dodged a question on Meet The Press over the weekend on whether he's weighing a run for the leadership post, declining to say either way.

Trump and McConnell have sparred for the past two years over who deserved blame for Republicans losing the Senate in 2020, with each of them eagerly pointing their finger at the other.

McConnell and Scott have also clashed throughout the midterm cycle over the GOP agenda, which McConnell hoped to keep under wraps even as Scott committed it to writing.

Notably, Scott's 11-point plan called for raising taxes of tens of millions of working- and middle-class Americans while sunsetting Medicare and Social Security. The plan wreaked of a party still trying to suck 99% of Americans dry while passing tax cuts that continue to pad the pockets of the 1%.

Now, in the name of finding a leader who is "genuinely committed to fighting for the priorities & values of the working Americans (of every background)," Trump allies have their eyes on trading in McConnell for Scott.

Same, same. Except one of them actively ran the Senate GOP midterm campaign into the ground while the other tried to salvage it. Of course, no salvaging would have been necessary if Senate Republicans had neutered Trump in the aftermath of the insurrection to begin with.

Let’s kick both Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott to the curb! Give $3 right now to help Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeat no-good liar Herschel Walker in Georgia’s December runoff. 

Related articles:

McConnell was sure the GOP would reclaim the Senate. Too bad he miscalculated every step of the way

Trump has his eye on a replacement for McConnell

McCarthy tries to paper over his election disaster by dictating House policy

Rick Scott kicks off final push to midterms by escalating his war with Mitch McConnell

So much for McConnell's tight messaging ahead of 2022

Senate Republicans' 2022 plan to raise taxes on 100 million working-class Americans bombs in polling

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Carvana, the used car dealer that trusts robotic algorithms to buy your car practically sight unseen, was the third-fastest company to ever make it onto the Fortune 500 -- only Amazon and Google did it faster. But for the third day in a row, its stock is trading for just around $7 a share, plummeting 98 percent from its all-time high of over $360 last August. From a report: My first thought on reading the news: maybe the company shouldn't let robots pay people more than their cars cost brand-new? This February, I sold a seven-year-old car to Carvana for more than I paid out the door and wrote a story about the perfect storm of factors that led to that outcome. (Stimulus checks! Chip shortages! Covid fears! Unheard-of demand for vehicles! Blind trust in algorithms!) But after reading through the past six quarters of the company's financial results and shareholder letters, it seems much simpler than algorithms running amok. Carvana's humans bet badly by buying too many cars. Throughout 2021, as Carvana saw its first and only quarterly profit, the company kept telling investors how it planned to scale up production (read: get more used cars ready to sell) to meet the pandemic's unprecedented demand.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adam Frisch, the Democrat running to unseat outspoken Republican Lauren Boebert, said Wednesday he always felt it was going to be a tight race for the House seat in Colorado.

"It is a lesson to everybody that every single vote matters," Frisch told host Joy Reid on MSNBC's "The ReidOut."

Frisch took a surprising lead Tuesday, but as more votes were tallied Wednesday, the race got closer and closer.

Before Tuesday, the race was forecast as likely favoring Boebert, in a far-flung district that became more red after recent redistricting. The congresswoman and gun rights activist is one of the most far-right members of her party, an ardent backer of former President Donald Trump and gun rights.

Asked whether he expected Boebert to concede if she lost, Frisch said she would "probably battle."

"That generates money, and that’s all part of the anger-tainment industry," Frisch said.

While Frisch said he felt good about the places where votes are still outstanding, he used a Colorado-ism to describe his outlook: "I don't want to get over my skis."

Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., according to a company statement posted on Twitter. From a report: Bankman-Fried has also stepped down as CEO and has been replaced by John J. Ray III, though the outgoing chief will stay on to assist with the transition. Approximately 130 additional affiliated companies are part of the proceedings, including Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's crypto trading firm, and FTX.us, the company's U.S. subsidiary. In the 23-page bankruptcy filing obtained by CNBC, FTX indicates that it has more than 100,000 creditors, assets in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion, as well as liabilities in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion. Bankman-Fried also indicated that he wishes to appoint Stephen Neal as the firm's new chairman of the board. "The immediate relief of Chapter 11 is appropriate to provide the FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation and develop a process to maximize recoveries for stakeholders," said the new FTX chief, Ray. "The FTX Group has valuable assets that can only be effectively administered in an organized, joint process. I want to ensure every employee, customer, creditor, contract party, stockholder, investor, governmental authority and other stakeholder that we are going to conduct this effort with diligence, thoroughness and transparency," continued Ray.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They were candidates who publicly supported Donald Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election. And their denial of Joe Biden’s victory may have contributed to their own defeat.

Dozens of Republican candidates who publicly claimed Trump was robbed of the presidency won their midterm election. But as of Wednesday, dozens of others lost — in races for Congress, governor or other offices. Some also may have directly questioned the counting of Biden’s Electoral College votes, expressed support for a review of ballots post-election or signed onto a lawsuit to overturn the result. And some attended or expressed support for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Their losses in some cases validated a decision by Democratic-aligned groups to spend millions to help them win their GOP primaries, figuring that their far-right status would make them easier to defeat in the general election. Some gubernatorial candidates in this category included Dan Cox in Maryland, Darren Bailey in Illinois and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania.

Cox chartered buses to bring supporters to the Jan. 6 insurrection and tweeted “Mike Pence is a traitor” during the riot, while Mastriano, as a state senator, led efforts to overturn the 2020 result. And Bailey called it “appalling” that some GOP leaders wanted Trump to concede the presidency.

Among the biggest election-denying candidates who lost their Senate races were Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. Oz recently shifted his stance to say he would have affirmed Biden’s victory after previously declaring “we cannot move on from the 2020 election,” while Bolduc said the election was stolen from Trump — before backtracking in the general election.

The GOP candidates in the three Senate races that hadn’t been called as of Wednesday, and which would determine control of that chamber, have all denied or questioned the 2020 election: Blake Masters in Arizona, Adam Laxalt in Nevada and Herschel Walker in Georgia. Walker is headed to a runoff next month against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Further down the ticket, GOP secretary of state candidates who claimed Trump won were defeated in some key states where Biden won in 2020, including Kristina Karamo in Michigan, Kim Crockett in Minnesota and Audrey Mendonca-Trujillo in New Mexico.

These once-obscure offices have been on the front lines of politics for two years, after Trump tried to sway state election officers to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

Some of the candidates most vocal about the 2020 race remain in unsettled races, including Arizona’s gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and its secretary of state nominee, Mark Finchem.

Lake has said she wouldn’t have certified the 2020 election results and has called for her opponent, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, to go to jail for doing so. Finchem wants to give his state’s Republican-led Legislature the authority to reject election results. Also still up for grabs is Nevada’s closely watched secretary of state race, where Republican Jim Marchant has promised to decertify the 2020 result there.

Overall, the results suggest that Democrats’ strategy of portraying Republicans as threats to democracy has paid off, as the issue competed for voters’ attention with sky-high inflation, rising crime and abortion access.

Biden touted that success Wednesday during a news conference.

“The American people have spoken and proven once again democracy is who we are,” he said.

The following is a list of other election deniers who lost, as of Wednesday, in Senate, House and governors races.

Governors races lost:

Tudor Dixon, Michigan

Paul LePage, Maine

Tim Michels, Wisconsin

Heidi Ganahl, Colorado

Geoff Diehl, Massachusetts

Scott Jensen, Minnesota

Lee Zeldin, New York

Competitive House races lost:

Regan Deering, IL-13

John Gibbs, MI-03

Tyler Kistner, MN-02

Karoline Leavitt, NH-01

Bo Hines, NC-13

Steve Chabot, OH-01

J.R. Majewski, OH-09

Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, OH-13

Yesli Vega, VA-07

Mayra Flores, TX-34

Unfavored House candidates who lost:

Beatrice Nichols, AL-07

Jeffrey Zink, AZ-03

Luis Pozzolo, AZ-07

Rudy Recile, CA-08

John Dennis, CA-11

Alison Hayden, CA-14

Jeff Gorman, CA-19

Lucie Lapointe Volotzky, CA-32

Joe Collins, CA-36

John Briscoe, CA-42

Omar Navarro, CA-43

Tyler Geffeney, CA-52

Jennifer Qualteri, CO-01

Erik Aadland, CO-07

Lee Murphy, DE-At Large

Scotty Moore, FL-09

Calvin Wimbish, FL-10

Drew-Montez Clark, FL-20

Dan Franzese, FL-22

Jesus Navarro, FL-24

Carla Spalding, FL-25

Mark Gonsalves, GA-07

Caesar Gonzales, GA-13

Joe Akana, HI-02

Catalina Lauf, IL-11

Nicolee Ambrose, MD-02

Chris Palombi, MD-05

Scott M. Collier, MD-07

Jeffrey Sossa-Paquette, MA-02

Caroline Colarusso, MA-05

Donnie Palmer, MA-07

Brian Flowers, MS-02

Jacob Turk, MO-05

Billy Prempeh, NJ-09

Michelle Garcia Holmes, NM-01

Darius Mayfield, NJ-12

Thomas Zmich, NY-06

Yuri Dashevsky, NY-08

Benine Hamdan, NY-10

Elizabeth Joy, NY-20

Courtney Geels, NC-04

Tyler Lee, NC-12

Joanna Harbour, OR-03

Charlotte Bergmann, TN-09

Irene Armendariz-Jackson, TX-16

Carmen Maria Montiel, TX-18

Kyle Sinclair, TX-20

Jenny Garcia Sharon, TX-37

Leon Benjamin, VA-04

Hung Cao, VA-10

Elizabeth Kreiselmaier, WA-06

Doug Basler, WA-09

Unfavored Senate candidates who lost:

Chris Chaffee, Maryland

Jo Rae Perkins, Oregon

In a resignation letter sent to all Twitter staff Thursday morning, company chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, chief information security officer Lea Kissner, and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty warned their fellow employees that while Musk himself may be "willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users," the company's new plans to "shift the burden" of FTC compliance "to engineers" will "put a huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk" onto company engineers.

"All of this is extremely dangerous for our users. Also, given that the FTC can (and will!) fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars pursuant to the FTC Consent Order, extremely detrimental to Twitter's longevity as a platform."

The Twitter executives who up until this morning were responsible for making sure Twitter wouldn't face multi-billion-dollar fines for violating the trust and security of their users have now quit, rather than being put on the hook for those violations—and they're warning the rest of Twitter's staff that they, too, had better watch their legal backs. The message ends by directing employees to both Twitter and FTC whistleblower hotlines.

In a Twitter thread, Riana Pfefferkorn describes the severe danger Musk has put Twitter into. "I totally believe [Elon] doesn't care about any FTC order," writes Pfefferkorn. "But regular mortals *do* worry about jail and lawsuits." And "nobody in their right mind" would take on the legal risks involved with "self-certify"-ing their work to the FTC.

What's the big risk, for Twitter? At present, it's that the company appears to have chosen a path that allows them to monetize fraud. With the launch of Musk's new $8-for-verification scheme, the company is allowing credible impersonations of Twitter users famous and not. It's already turned into chaos; there are many people willing to throw $8 into a burner Twitter account that impersonates international companies, sports figures, or anyone else they don't happen to like. Meet the new “verified” Twitter, everyone:

The more imminent danger to Twitter, however, is that Elon Musk has been taking multiple steps that make the impersonation problem worse. Musk killed the company's plan to differentiate between "verified" and pay-for "verified" accounts, eliminating the primary means by which Twitter users could differentiate between verified and fraudulent accounts. After a Chrome browser extension was released that would mark pay-for accounts and "verified" accounts as separate entities, mirroring Twitter's already-canceled feature, Musk took steps that would thwart that, too: he tweeted on Thursday that "Far too many corrupt legacy Blue “verification” checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months."

Want to know whether the charity organization, celebrity, political figure, reporter, or corporation you're following on Twitter is the real one or an imitation identity meant to deceive you? There won't be one. It appears there won't be a way for Twitter itself to differentiate between the real and fraudulent accounts, either.

There's little chance that's a salvageable situation, when it comes to the FTC consent agreement Twitter is required to follow. What turns this into a potential multi-billion dollar catastrophe is the strong suggestion, from Musk, that his own actions are intended to allow Twitter to financially profit from fraudulent user behavior.

And Elon's not being shy about providing plenty of evidence for that. Lawyers, grab your tweets:

Twitter is also measurably profiting from a proliferation of hate accounts:

Current Twitter advertisers and companies that rely on Twitter are not taking it well. It's evident to all of them that brand safety has been wiped out overnight, on Twitter. Companies are now setting new guidelines distancing themselves from Twitter.

And advertisers? Even the ones unbothered by potential impersonations aren't going to want to pay money for their ads to be seen amidst a sea of trolls and hucksters.

There's no longer a question that Musk is perhaps-intentionally putting Twitter into a financial spiral that it will be unable to recover from. That's bad news for those around the world who currently rely on it, but a copycat system—or, rather, many—will arise in Twitter's absence.

Musk isn't going to get his $44B back. At this point, he's going to have to start worrying about whether the FTC will bury him in additional billions for intentionally creating a platform aimed at enabling identity theft and fraud. It doesn't matter if he blusters about it or not; he's going to have to start reaching very deep to find employees willing to share in the sort of legal liabilities he's laughing off.

And if he can’t, then Twitter’s going to collapse under its own weight simply because there won’t be anyone left to run its systems.

Holy crap, what an amazing night! Where do we even begin this week's episode of The Downballot? Well, we know exactly where: abortion. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recap Tuesday's extraordinary results, starting with a clear-eyed examination of the issue that animated Democrats as never before—and that pundits got so badly wrong. They also discuss candidate quality (still really important!), Democratic meddling in GOP primaries (good for democracy, actually), and "soft" Biden disapprovers (lots of them voted for Democrats).

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