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Happy Tuesday! On Wednesday, November 5, SCOTUSblog will be live blogging the oral arguments in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET. Head over to SCOTUSblog tomorrow and follow along with the best legal minds in the business!
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Voters across the U.S. will head to the polls today to vote in state and local elections: notably, the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, and the New York City mayoral race. In New Jersey, polling shows Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill with a slight edge, up 3.3 percent against her opponent, former state Rep. Jack Ciattarelli—a lead that is still within the margin of error. In Virginia, former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger leads GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears by a 10.2 percent average margin. In New York, Democratic state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has consistently held a lead over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with a new Atlas Intel poll—which surveyed respondents between Friday and Sunday—showing him with 43.9 percent of the vote, ahead of Cuomo’s 39.4 percent, and GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa’s 15.5 percent. To learn more about the races, read TMD’s November elections preview.
- Voters in Texas’ 18th Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold, will also elect a new House member on Tuesday to replace Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in March. Sixteen candidates are on the ballot in the special election, and the top two finishers will proceed to a runoff if no candidate eclipses 50 percent. In Pennsylvania, voters will decide whether to retain three Democratic state Supreme Court justices—Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht—for another 10-year term. Voters in Maine will decide whether to introduce a red flag gun law. Meanwhile, California voters will vote on Proposition 50, a Democratic congressional redistricting bill intended to counter the GOP-led redistricting in Texas. If passed, Proposition 50 would create a new map to benefit Democrats in five new seats and suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission until 2030.
- Dick Cheney, the 46th vice president who served under George W. Bush for two terms, died last night at 84 of complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. Before serving as one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history, Cheney served as chief of staff for President Gerald Ford, the U.S. representative for Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, and as secretary of defense under George H.W. Bush. Before returning to the White House in 2001, Cheney also was chairman of the board and CEO of the energy services company Halliburton.
- The Trump administration stated in court documents filed on Monday that it will send out partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits amid the government shutdown. The Department of Agriculture had initially stated that it would not use SNAP contingency funds to distribute benefits in November, but a federal judge ruled on Friday that the congressionally appropriated dollars must be partially or fully disbursed. According to the Monday court filing, administration officials plan to allocate $4.6 billion for SNAP distribution, which will cover half of recipients’ regular benefit amount.
- The Israeli parliament’s National Security Committee advanced a bill on Monday to permit death sentences for convicted murderers motivated by “racism or hostility toward the public” against Israel or Israeli citizens. The bill was passed shortly after retired Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, the government’s coordinator for the hostages taken by Hamas, told the legislators that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the bill. In late September, Netanyahu had requested that legislators delay the bill, fearing it could interfere with the country’s attempts to return the remaining Israeli hostages.
- Amid nationwide disruption, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in for her second term yesterday, having been declared the winner on Saturday, with a reported 97 percent of the vote in last week’s election. The Southern African Development Community (SADC)—of which Tanzania is a member—issued a preliminary report on the election yesterday, which claimed the election fell short of democratic principles and that “in most areas, voters could not express their democratic will.” Opposition candidates were arrested or barred from running, there was “heavy censorship” of the internet ahead of the vote, including restricted internet access on election day, and SADC observers reported voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing on election day. In the aftermath, police have aggressively cracked down on protesters, with the Tanzanian opposition claiming that more than 1,000 people have died—numbers that the Hassan administration claims are exaggerated but reports find credible. Much of the country is still without internet.
Virginia’s Off-Year Test
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia—Last week, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger visited a Tex-Mex restaurant to address Latino supporters in the Democratic stronghold of Northern Virginia. There, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate made her pitch to an enthusiastic crowd that packed the restaurant, speaking at length in both English and Spanish.
“We are going to win on Tuesday,” she said to raucous applause. “We are going to win on Tuesday because it is what we must do to ensure that communities across Virginia understand that we will be relentless in working to lower the costs in housing and energy and in health care, that amid all of the chaos coming out of Washington and all of the unsteadiness that is hurting so many of our communities, that we are going to elect a governor who will stand up for Virginia.”
Judging by the polling, she’s probably right about the outcome of the election. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Spanberger leading her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by more than 7 points, and not a single poll in the list compiled by the New York Times shows Earle-Sears leading the race to become Virginia’s first female governor.
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At her own rally last week, Earle-Sears insisted that she had a path to victory due to higher turnout from Republican voters. “The polls are showing that when it comes to Republican-leaning polls, where it really matters that people come, well, we are showing up—60, 70, 80 percent,” she told supporters at a farmers market and brewery an hour away from Washington, D.C. “[Democrats are] showing up much less to their polls.”
Still, the odds are in Spanberger’s favor, and Earle-Sears has faced criticism for the way she has run her campaign. The latest data shows that Spanberger, a former CIA officer who served three terms in Congress, has outraised her opponent by about $30 million. Earle-Sears’ campaign has been dogged by reports that as of July she had not contacted reliable Virginia GOP donors and a scandal related to the Republicans’ lieutenant governor nominee, John Reid. Earlier in the year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (who is not running because Virginia governors cannot serve consecutive terms) asked Reid, who is openly gay, to drop out of the race after Youngkin learned that a Tumblr account with the same handle as Reid’s profiles on other platforms had posted lewd photos of men. Reid denied that the account belonged to him and refused to exit the race.
Even apart from fundraising and strategy problems and scandal, it was always going to be an uphill battle for the GOP this year. “Without question, the No. 1 factor in the race is the Virginia curse,” Chris Saxman, a former Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, told TMD. He cited a pattern in Virginia politics in which the party that wins the presidential election in one year almost always loses the Virginia gubernatorial race the following year. “Donald Trump is in the White House, and Republicans are at a disadvantage as a result, just as the Democrats were at a disadvantage in 2021 with Joe Biden in the White House,” Saxman said.
Earle-Sears has tried to recapture the magic that drove Youngkin and her to victory in 2021. Bolstered by Biden’s victory and pandemic school closures, Republicans that year made cultural issues—such as biological males who identify as transgender competing in women’s sports and using girls’ bathrooms—a centerpiece of their campaign. This year, Earle-Sears has continued that line of attack, cutting ads attacking Spanberger for her position on such issues. One ad from her campaign alleges that “Spanberger is for they/them, not for us,” alluding to a Trump campaign ad from last year.
For her part, Spanberger has been evasive about what she would do in office on that front, facing questions on the topic repeatedly but not answering them directly. During her lone debate with Earle-Sears on October 9, she was asked multiple times whether she would rescind a Youngkin administration order that requires students to use bathrooms consistent with their biological sex. She refused to provide a definitive yes or a no. “My answer is that in each local community, decisions should be made between parents and educators and teachers in each community. It shouldn’t be dictated by politicians,” Spanberger said. However, Spanberger’s equivocations haven’t helped Earle-Sears gain traction with voters.
Then, in early October, National Review broke the news that Jay Jones—the Democratic nominee for attorney general—had sent text messages in 2022 using violent rhetoric toward then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. In one exchange, Jones said that if he had two bullets to use among Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.” He also reportedly said he hoped that Gilbert’s children would die in his wife’s arms so that he would become more in favor of gun control; “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
That wasn’t Jones’ only scandal. Also in 2022, he was convicted of reckless driving for going 116 mph in a 70 mph zone. Jones was fined and ordered to complete 1,000 hours of community service—and listed working at his own political action committee as making up half of the community service time. A special prosecutor is actively investigating that discrepancy.
The Earle-Sears campaign has tried to tie Jones to Spanberger, who condemned Jones’ texts but stopped short of calling for him to drop out of the race. With Spanberger holding a comfortable polling lead, she and Jones appeared together at a rally Saturday with former President Barack Obama.
But the Jones scandal has helped his opponent, Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is running for a second term. Before the news about the texts broke, no polls showed Miyares ahead of Jones. Since then, some polls have shown Miyares in the lead. And Miyares has used the scandal to hammer his opponent.
“We have never had anybody that has run for attorney general that’s advocated for violence against the innocent,” Miyares said at the same rally where Earle-Sears spoke last week. “We have never had anybody run for attorney general who literally has said that he wanted to see children die in their mother’s arms.”
At the same time, the Republican has not attempted to use Jones’ problems to disparage the rest of the political left. Instead, he has appealed to shared values. “This is our moment because Virginians, we don’t follow, we lead,” he said at his debate with Jones. “We could set an example for the entire country that we expect a minimum of decency in our leaders. That is what’s on the ballot today, and I’m asking you to join me.”
With Earle-Sears down and Reid also trailing (though not completely out), Miyares is Republicans’ best hope at winning a statewide race. What’s more, Virginia Republicans are not exactly surrendering the top of the ticket now, but they are keeping an eye on whom they want to be their candidate for the governor’s mansion four years from now.
“There is some element of people looking forward to 2029 and not funding certain candidates this year and hopefully supporting Jason Miyares going to ’29,” Saxman told TMD. “That I know is an active conversation.”
Today’s Must-Read
With renewed political pressure mounting on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, Joshua Rowley, a Gibbs Scholar and Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, examines the central bank’s surprisingly checkered history and the inherent tensions in its current mission. “Managing macroeconomic conditions wasn’t originally part of the Fed’s mission,” Rowley writes. “In fact, the Fed now plays a much larger role in the economy than intended when it was first created. One of those expanded roles is as a financial regulator, which was greatly influenced by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act enacted as a result of the financial crisis. Dodd-Frank required the Fed to implement plans for how large financial institutions will respond during financial distress or failure and conduct stress tests on banks.”
Toeing the Company Line
Champagne Wishes, Caviar Dreams
Do ‘optics’ still matter?
The Antisemitism Grift
How Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and their enablers turn hatred into a business model.
Georgia Is Slipping Away
Its citizens want to join NATO and the EU, but its fraudulently elected government is aligned with Russia and welcoming to China.
When They Go Low, We Go Low
To combat Trumpism, Democrats play the imitation game.
Cash Alone Won’t End Poverty
Raising national standards of living requires investing in people.
In Other News
Today in America:
- Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he’s “optimistic” the Senate could end the government shutdown this week, ahead of today’s scheduled vote on a House-passed, GOP-supported continuing resolution bill.
- Two Republican house members and two Democrats shared a compromise proposal to end the federal shutdown by temporarily extending health care tax credits for two years.
- Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would withhold federal funding to New York City if Mamdani is elected mayor. The president urged residents to vote for Cuomo.
- Attorneys general from 21 states, plus Washington, D.C., sued the Trump administration for a recent rule requiring loan forgiveness recipients to refrain from activities including “supporting terrorism and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.”
- In court filings, Justice Department lawyers said the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, was also designated as a “special attorney” last week by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Around the World:
- Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine received additional U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems from Germany.
- Overnight, Ukrainian drones struck multiple industrial and energy sites deep inside Russia.
- At least 40 people died in landslides last week in Kenya and Uganda.
- Peru’s government cut diplomatic ties with Mexico after its Lima embassy granted asylum to former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chávez, who is under investigation for attempting to commit a coup.
- The Trump administration announced that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will visit the White House on November 18.
On the Money:
- E-commerce platform Shein has removed sex dolls from sale after a French consumer watchdog found “sex dolls with a childlike appearance” on the site, and the French government warned they could ban and prosecute the company.
- OpenAI signed a $38 billion deal with Amazon Web Services to use its cloud infrastructure.
- Microsoft signed a $9.7 billion deal with the Australian-based data center operator IREN to use its AI computing power.
- A firm representing Japanese brands such as Studio Ghibli sued OpenAI on Monday for using their content to train its AI tools.
- Kimberly-Clark—manufacturer of Huggies, Kleenex, and Scott—announced that it agreed to buy Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol, for about $40 billion.
- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the first major investor to say it will vote against Elon Musk’s proposed $1 trillion pay package.
Worth Your Time:
- Podcaster Galen Druke breaks down what results will come in, and when, from today’s elections. (GD Politics)
- Guy Chazan on “the meaning of Zohran Mamdani.” (Financial Times)
- David Uberti on what happened to a small Oregon town when AI data centers moved in. (Wall Street Journal)
- Lauren Larson meets the family of Austin’s Glen Powell. (Texas Monthly)
- Nate Silver on the case for bringing the NFL, NBA, and MLB to Mexico City. (Silver Bulletin)
Presented Without Comment
The Local France: Cement Maker Lafarge on Trial in France on Charges of Funding Jihadists
Also Presented Without Comment
Mainichi: Realistic Beetle Larva Jellies Become Surprise Hit for Japanese Candy Maker Meito
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