The day after Donald Trump, a former president and the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called for the “termination” of provisions of the US Constitution governing elections and essentially demanded that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post ran a front-page story reporting Trump’s call for ripping up portions of the nation’s founding document. No mention of this even appeared in the Times that day. Trump’s unprecedented and dangerous statement was not deemed a big deal. This raised a question: Have major media players still not figured out how to cover Trump’s extremism?

In recent weeks, Trump has dined with a Hitler fanboy and an antisemitic rapper, embraced the bonkers QAnon conspiracy theory (the world is run by an evil cabal of Democrats and elites who are baby-eating pedophiles and sex-traffickers!), and vowed he would, if returned to the White House, pardon the January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted the US Capitol. All of these developments have been reported on by the top news organizations. Yet the coverage does not seem to capture fully the danger posed by a wannabe-tyrant validating forces of hatred and irrationality. He won the GOP nomination and presidency once; he could do so again.

The first story each paper published on Trump’s “termination” comment focused on the reaction to Trump’s outlandish remark. The Times cooked up an odd formulation, telling readers that Trump’s “extraordinary antidemocratic statement…drew a degree of bipartisan condemnation over the weekend, with a flood from Democrats and a trickle from Republicans.” The only GOP “condemnation” cited in the piece came from a newly elected GOP House member who said, “Well, obviously I don’t support that.” This hardly amounted to even a trickle of Republican denouncement. More significant was that most Republicans had said nothing. And this was a rather conventional approach to a rather unconventional event, emphasizing the political angle not the remark itself and its implications.

The Washington Post’s initial coverage similarly was a report on the White House blasting Trump for this statement. It was headlined, “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election.” (Perhaps it’s a quibble, but “termination” seems to go even beyond “suspend.”) Politico did the same. (“White House to Trump: ‘You cannot only love America when you win.’”) Axios also zeroed in on the reaction. (“Lawmakers condemn Trump’s call to suspend Constitution.”)

There was nothing wrong with these articles. But they followed the same-old/same-old formula: Trump does outrageous thing X; friends and foes say Y. Rinse. Repeat. The issue was not whether Republicans would find a way to distance themselves from this remark but whether they would disavow Trump for suggesting the Constitution be terminated. The party’s allegiance to a fellow who had just espoused a dictatorial sentiment was a key element of this story.

On Thursday, the Reverend Robert Schenck testified before Congress about the anti-abortion influence campaign he ran targeting the Supreme Court, recounting the bombshell revelations that have clouded the highest court in scandal first reported in November by the New York Times. While speaking to the lawmakers, Schenck shared a new detail: that at least one justice knew about his efforts—and approved of them. 

“Justice Thomas commended me,” Schenck recalled of one interaction, “saying something like: ‘Keep up what you’re doing. It’s making a difference.'”

For two decades, Schenck ran a secret operation designed to embolden conservative Supreme Court justices in their resolve to overturn Roe v. Wade. When he began in the late 1990s, Schenck believed that the conservative justices felt alone and disfavored in the media and needed “shoring up.” So he got an office across the street from the court, bought access to the justices by joining the court’s nonprofit Supreme Court Historical Society, and recruited wealthy donors, whom he called “missionaries,” to befriend the conservative justices. “We wanted to create a circle of people around them that would encourage them, applaud them, literally thank God for them and assure them of prayerful support,” he explained Thursday, “and by being present, indicate to them that there were many, many people—Americans—who were behind them and hoped that they would render strong, unapologetic, opinions that would support the positions important to us.” One couple recruited by Schenck to do this work successfully became friends with Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia and their wives, even vacationing with them at their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Schenck’s revelations have further punctured the illusion that the justices are above the political fray, deciding cases only according to their view of the law. The trips, meals, and friendships Schenck helped orchestrate show how the lack of ethics rules at the court makes the justices vulnerable to pressure campaigns that could sway their rulings. Schenck told the Times that he instructed his “missionaries” not to mention him or his group, Faith and Action, to keep his affiliation hidden. But the allegation that Justice Thomas knew what Schenck was doing raises new possibilities: not only were justices subjected to stealth lobbying by wealthy friends, at least one of them may have approved of the operation.

Toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) asked a clarifying follow-up about Thomas’ alleged comments. He wanted to know what Thomas meant when he said them.

In a vote Thursday morning, the House passed a bill that would enshrine same-sex and interracial marriage in federal law. All Democrats voted for the bill, as did 39 Republicans. Democrats pushed the legislation after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned the constitutionality of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision granting the right to same-sex marriage, in his concurring opinion in the decision striking down Roe v. Wade.

The bill, called the Respect for Marriage Act, already passed in the Senate, and it now heads to the desk of President Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.

Biden has come a long way since voting for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, in 1996. In 2012, as vice president, Biden became the first Obama administration official to endorse same-sex marriage.

A different version of the bill passed in the House in July, before the midterms. Since then, seven Republicans switched their votes from “yes” to “no,” while two—Reps. Mike Gallagher (Wisc.) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.)—flipped in the opposite direction.

NOW: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the honor of presiding over the debate on the Respect for Marriage Act.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have a rich and powerful supporter in his expected presidential campaign: Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Or, he might not.

Despite reports that Musk would back DeSantis in 2024, the delivery of the message gives pause: Musk announced (if you can call it that) his DeSantis support vaguely with a one-word tweet. Asked by a user if he would support DeSantis for president, Musk responded: “Yes.” 

That’s it.

This is not the same thing as Musk announcing his preferred candidate—as the New York Post quickly interpreted the tweet. I suppose it is an indication of where Musk is headed politically. But we’ve had ample evidence of that for some time.

Voters in about two dozen Georgia counties began voting today in the Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Trump-backed challenger Herschel Walker, despite attempts by the Georgia Republicans to block Saturday voting.

The election will determine whether the Senate remains split 50-50 with Democrats in control, or whether Democrats will take a 51-49 majority that will ease their ability to confirm judges and move legislation through committees. 

Originally, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had allowed voting the Saturday after Thanksgiving, then changed his mind and issued guidance prohibiting it. But the Warnock campaign sued, arguing the prohibition was contrary to Georgia law. On Wednesday, the Georgia Supreme Court allowed voting to begin Saturday. Their effort was opposed by state and national Republicans.

Voting began Saturday with long lines across the state as voters decided to take advantage of the extra day of voting. “We had to take them to court just so you could vote today,” Warnock said at a campaign stop Saturday morning.

Early voting opportunities are especially important in a runoff election because there’s little time to vote by mail. Mail ballots must be received by the time the polls close on the date of the runoff election—December 6—making it difficult to request and return a mail ballot in time. Election officials and voting rights groups are therefore urging Georgians to vote in person.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, now a candidate for president, had dinner with the white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to wide condemnation.

Fuentes first gained notoriety for attending the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He was one of “very fine people on both sides,” as Trump said at the time. As my colleague Ali Breland cataloged last year, Fuentes has a sizable track record. He has denied the Holocaust, opposes interracial marriage, and wishes for a return to Jim Crow segregation, among other racist beliefs. Fuentes recently said he’d prefer a Catholic monarchy to a democracy.

"Fuck democracy," Fuentes says. "Divorce, abortion, ghettos, crime, political correctness, diversity… track record of democracy, not so good. Catholic autocracy? Pretty strong… Catholic monarchy, just war, inquisitions and crusades: pretty good, pretty good stuff" pic.twitter.com/zsZktiZVt6

— Sam Hoadley-Brill READ CHARLES MILLS. RIP (@deonteleologist) November 25, 2022

Despite all this, Fuentes has been partially accepted by the Trump wing of the Republican Party. Earlier this year, he hosted Reps. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) at his America First Political Action Conference. (He drew press attention to the event by comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler—before adding that he meant this as a “good thing.”)

Among the most-discussed aspects of Herschel Walker’s campaign for the US Senate seat in Georgia are the allegations he had episodes of violence and threatening to commit violence—allegations he later dismissed as the side effects of a mental illness known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, from which he now claims he is “healed.” 

Walker’s ex-wife Cindy Grossman, for example, said in 2008 that Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to “blow [her] brains out.” This allegation resurfaced during Walker’s campaign against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, which will now conclude in a runoff on December 6. Voters have also learned that on a separate occasion, Grossman’s sister claimed in an affidavit that Walker told her he was going to shoot Grossman and her new boyfriend.

Christian Walker, Walker and Grossman’s only son, condemned the trend of athletes inflicting or threatening violence—a trend in which his father has allegedly participated. He called it America’s “pandemic of professional athletes abusing women, children, and animals” in a 2021 tweet.

We have a pandemic of professional athletes abusing women, children, and animals, but their employers would rather gaslight fans into thinking the athletes are victims of a “racist society.”

— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) November 18, 2021

Things looked scary at first for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the GOP senator at the top of Donald Trump’s enemies list. After crushing her opponent in the primary, Murkowski found herself behind Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka for days after  polls closed on November 8th. But by Wednesday night, as the state’s ranked choice voting tabulation concluded, Murkowski soared to a 54–46 win.

Alaska was never going to be a Senate seat that flipped blue—at least not in this election, where the state’s new ranked-choice voting system puts the competition between two Republicans: Kelly Tshibaka (pronounced “Chewbacca,” or pretty close) and incumbent Trump-impeacher Murkowski. Pat Chesbro, a Democrat, trailed far behind with just over 10 percent of first-choice votes. Despite Murkowski’s vaunted independent streak, that’s still about 86 percent of Alaskan voters picking a Republican as their first choice. For now, that puts a hold on the wishes of anyone hoping to see the far north go purple.

But Murkowski’s win should still come as a huge relief for Americans who care about preserving democracy—she’s the only surviving Republican senator in this general election who voted to impeach Trump. 

Let’s consider who we almost had: Tshibaka, the Trump and Alaska GOP–endorsed candidate. In her campaign ad, she stands silhouetted against a mountain range, ice floes crashing behind her, looking like the Alaska version of a Gilead housewife as she talks about her parents being temporarily homeless and how she’s the first in her family to get a college degree—both claims that have been debunked by Alaska journalist Dermot Cole. Then we cut to Kelly in what we assume is her home kitchen, where she declares, “I’m a conservative: Pro-life, pro–Second Amendment, and America First.”

Tshibaka’s tried to position herself as a Washington outsider, despite spending nearly 20 years inside the Beltway, working for various federal inspectors general, before her return to Alaska in 2019 (just enough time to establish residency for a Senate run). While she acknowledges that President Biden is, well, president, she also thinks there are still “unanswered questions.” Although Tshibaka was smart enough to scrub her social media before announcing her Senate candidacy, CNN reported that she’d used it to spread baseless conspiracies about voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

For decades, it’s been unthinkable that Alaska could let a Democrat occupy its only seat in the House of Representatives, which had been held by the late GOP Rep. Don Young since 1972. But in the background, as Americans in the lower 48 were captivated by races in Georgia or Arizona, that’s exactly what’s happened: Alaskans voted 55-45 in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola, a former state legislator who just won her first full term over celebrity ex-Gov. Sarah Palin.

Peltola’s had just enough time to drop off her suitcase in Washington after winning the seat in an August special election. Palin was also her main opponent then, and in the months since, Peltola only grew her lead. She was helped in part by ranked-choice voting in its Alaska general-election debut. The system, which transfers votes to second-choice candidates when a voter’s first pick is eliminated, has drawn national attention and sometimes controversy.

Elections are a long affair in the 49th state, where challenges like distance, isolation, and tough weather abound, and mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day have up until ten days to arrive for counting. The Alaska Division of Elections doesn’t count absentee, mail-in, and questioned ballots—many of which come from rural, predominantly Alaska Native regions—until after election day.

It’s not a system that benefits election-denying extremists like Palin, and Palin is not a good loser.  The ex-governor has been hinting since polls closed that she’ll challenge the results of the race. She was sowing doubt and misinformation about ranked-choice voting as early as August, as I reported at the time: 

“It’s bizarre, it’s convoluted, it’s confusing and it results in voter suppression,” Palin told the CPAC crowd. “It results in a lack of voter enthusiasm because it’s so weird.” None of that is true. Maine has been doing ranked-choice voting since 2016, and several cities and municipalities around the country have also adopted the system. “There isn’t a higher rate of incomplete or spoiled ballots in ranked choice races compared to ballots in elections using plurality voting,” Amy Fried, a professor of political science at the University of Maine, told Mother Jones. “Nor is turnout lower.” Rick Pildes, a constitutional law professor at the New York University School of Law, noted, “There’s no evidence voters have been confused or don’t understand how to rank candidates one, two, three.”

In less than 10 days, two mass shootings in two different cities have taken place in Virginia. On November 13, three students at the University of Virginia were killed after a classmate allegedly gunned them down following a field trip. Then on Tuesday, a suspected gunman opened fire inside a Walmart break room, killing at least six people and injuring four, before allegedly killing himself. 

But does Glenn Youngkin know any of this? 

In several statements responding to the shootings, the state’s Republican governor condemned the acts of violence. He also expressed heartbreak and extended prayers. In one interview with Fox News, Youngkin appeared to blame the scourge of mass shootings on a “mental health crisis,” recycling the familiar Republican talking point.

But as many have pointed out, Youngkin appears to have avoided the words gun and gunman entirely when describing both shootings. In fact, a quick search of his tweets revealed that Youngkin has never referred to the words “gun, guns, or gunman,” at least from his official social media account.

But here’s a collection of what he has said since the November shootings:

The United States will block shipments of raw sugar from a top Dominican producer with close ties to two wealthy Florida businessmen after finding indications of forced labor at its sprawling Caribbean plantation. Sugar from the Central Romana Corp.’s cane fields feeds into the supply chains of major U.S. brands, including Domino and the Hershey Co. 

The ban on all imports from Central Romana went into effect today.

“Manufacturers like Central Romana, who fail to abide by our laws, will face consequences as we root out these inhumane practices from U.S. supply chains,” said AnnMarie R. Highsmith, executive assistant commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade in a press release. 

The company is owned in part by the Florida-based Fanjul Corp., a global sugar and real estate conglomerate. 

The federal investigation found five indications of labor abuse among cane cutters employed and housed by Central Romana: abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime. Central Romana’s plantation shipped more than 295 million pounds of raw sugar from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. last year.  

For years, former president Donald Trump has been able to push off a lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll, a writer and advice columnist who says he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. When Carroll decided to come forward—describing the alleged assault in a book excerpt in 2019—Trump had been president for two years, and the statute of limitations to bring criminal charges or a lawsuit against him had long since passed. Carroll sued Trump for defamation instead, arguing that he’d smeared her in statements to reporters in which he denied he knew her, accused her of fabricating her story to sell books, and insulted her appearance—and has spent years tied up in court, fending off interference from the Justice Department and endless bids for delay. 

Now, Carroll and thousands of other sexual assault survivors in New York state are getting a new chance to seek legal accountability against people who harmed them years or decades ago. Under the Adult Survivors Act, New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as adults but who have run out of time to seek accountability in court will have a one-year “lookback window” to sue their abusers, as well as institutions that were negligent in responding to the assault. While many states have experimented with lookback windows to allow child sexual abuse victim to bring civil claims, the New York law marks only the second time such a grace period has been extended to people who were adults at the time of the assault. (New Jersey was the first.) In a way, the new law is an acknowledgement of the many barriers—ongoing trauma, shame, and fear of retaliation, not to mention ineffective policing—that have prevented survivors from pursuing justice in court. “The fight against sexual assault requires us to recognize the impact of trauma within our justice system,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said when signing the bill.  

Until 2019, survivors of second- and third-degree rape in New York State had just five years to get a prosecutor to file criminal charges against their assailant, and typically, even less time to pursue a civil lawsuit. The statute of limitations was extended that year, but it didn’t apply retroactively, meaning that many survivors never had a chance at a court verdict or settlement. “The Adult Survivors Act is the latest step in the state legislature’s reckoning with outdated and ineffective statute limitations for survivors of sexual violence,” Michael Polenberg, vice president of government affairs at New York City victim-support organization Safe Horizon, in a recent webinar. Survivors will have one year to file their suits. 

In 2019, New York opened a similar look-back window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. By the time the window closed in 2021, nearly 11,000 lawsuits had been filed under the Child Victims Act, including 3,336 cases involving the Catholic Church. And while many are still ongoing, some have reached settlements: Prince Andrew, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, settled a Child Victims Act claim by Virginia Giuffre in February, weeks before he would have been required to sit for a deposition about her abuse allegation. While most lawsuits were filed against relatively deep-pocketed institutions that had allegedly covered up or enabled abuse, some survivors filed against individuals: a former a Lutheran pastor, an elementary school teacher, and others. One plaintiff, who won a $25 million jury verdict against a now-80 year old Boy Scout leader, told a Buffalo News reporter in March that the verdict was meaningful not for the money because jury had believed him and validated experiences. “I probably won’t get a penny out of this, but putting a dollar amount on it makes people know how horrendous it was,” he said. 

As the Child Victims Act lookback period came to a close in 2021, survivor advocates undertook a massive effort to pass a similar bill for adult victims. One obstacle: intransigence in the state Assembly, as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo still clung to power amid a torrent of sexual assault and harassment allegations. It took until May 24 of this year—months after Cuomo ceded the governorship—for the act to pass and be signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. (Cuomo continues to deny the allegations against him. Whether he might face a lawsuit under the new law is still unclear; Charlotte Bennett, a former aide who was one of the first to come forward against the governor, didn’t need it for her lawsuit against Cuomo and his top staffers, since the statute of limitations had not yet expired.)

The doctor strides through Greenwich Village at rush hour on a December afternoon as if leaning into the wind. He is tall, lean, young—34—with longish wavy dark hair, charcoal eyebrows, a Roman nose. Carrying a raincoat and backpack, he appears vigilant. If violence were to erupt, he would be more likely to sprint towards a car crash or gunshots than away, in order to render first aid. Deferential and polite, a fellow who cherished and was cherished by his mother, who led the funeral prayers at her town mosque and hated to place great distance between himself and her final resting place by leaving Syria for America. Salim (a family name he is using to protect his privacy) refrains from bringing up his personal history unless asked.

Few Americans ask.

If someone does ask, he gives them time to reconsider and wander off, perhaps under the pretense of seeking a coffee refill. He understands that, for most Americans, the complexity and the preposterous cruelty of the narrative will feel overwhelming.

While a medical student, Salim served as a paramedic treating commonplace cases like heat stroke and ankle sprains until, in 2011, the country exploded with demonstrations and state repression. In time, he made it to the US and began a public health graduate program. Now a doctoral candidate, he focuses on health systems and population health in conflict and post-conflict settings.

On this early evening in mid-December, Salim has accepted an invitation to a small holiday party on a tree-lined street near Union Square. His host, Arien Mack, is the Alfred J. & Monette C. Marrow Professor of Psychology Emeritus at The New School, which is down the block and where she has taught since 1970. Barely five feet tall, she’s described by many as “formidable” and for the last half-century has had an up-close view of the tribulations and griefs of imperiled intellectuals. She has invited Salim and a dozen other endangered scholars to her home this evening in her capacity as founding director of the New University in Exile Consortium. It’s to be their first in-person gathering since the onset of Covid. Mack launched the Consortium in 2018 as an in-person and virtual meeting place for members of the intelligentsia peeling away from repressive countries. All her guests tonight fled their homelands to avoid imprisonment, assassination, or (in Salim’s case) orders to join the perpetrators.

Last month, I published an investigation showing that Nevada Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant was deceiving voters by wildly misrepresenting his business history. After the story came out, Marchant told fellow election denier Steve Bannon, “Mother Jones did some sort of colonoscopy on me and they came up with everything.” He contested nothing.

“Everything,” in this case, included a former employee who said he “would not want Jim to be secretary of a preschool,” overwhelming evidence that Marchant’s most prominent company quickly imploded, and previously unpublished divorce records that revealed that his career ended in financial ruin. Marchant was betting that it wouldn’t matter—having a R next to his name would be enough in 2022. He was wrong.

Marchant narrowly lost his race for secretary of state to Democrat Cisco Aguilar, a lawyer and former aide to the late Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. Marchant was one of the most extreme candidates running for statewide office this year. He claimed that all Nevada elections since 2006 had been rigged and that the winners had been “installed by the deep-state cabal.” Nevertheless, he nearly found himself in charge of all elections in the state. (Marchant didn’t answer when I called him on Friday evening to see if he was conceding.)

The origin story for Marchant’s campaign would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. In 2020, Marchant lost his race for Congress by more than 16,000 votes. Instead of accepting defeat, he claimed that he and Donald Trump had been victims of voter fraud. The day after the election, he checked himself into the Venetian so that he could work with Trump’s team to try to overturn the results of both contests.

His lawsuit to try to force Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, to hold a new election was quickly thrown out. But while on the Strip, he’s said he received a visit from Wayne Willott, a fringe QAnon influencer who goes by the alias Juan O. Savin. Willott told Marchant to run for secretary of state in 2022 so that he could control Nevada elections. He also pushed Marchant to build a coalition of like-minded candidates in other states. Marchant followed Willott’s advice. 

For months leading up to Election Day, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was widely perceived as one of the most—if not the most—vulnerable Democratic incumbents and her seat as one of the best pick-up opportunities for Republicans to take control of the upper chamber of Congress. The contested and costly race between Cortez Masto and GOP challenger Adam Laxalt, which was critical in determining the balance of power in the split Senate, remained a toss-up until pretty much the last minute. But with a slim margin of votes—half a percentage point—the majority of voters in the swing state of Nevada have decided to keep the first-ever Latina senator and reject an election denialist. Her victory secured 50 seats in the Senate for the Democrats, with only the Georgia run-off remaining to determine the final breakdown. 

A Nevada native and two-term attorney general, Cortez Masto was first elected to the Senate in 2016 following a tight race to fill the seat of her mentor, the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who built the Democratic machine in the state and picked her as his successor. Throughout her campaign this election cycle, Cortez Masto repeatedly called out her Trump loyalist opponent for peddling the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen and leading efforts in the state to overturn the results. She also made abortion rights a central tenet of her candidacy, vowing to block any attempts to pass a nationwide ban and decrying Laxalt for saying he would support a referendum to ban abortions after 13 weeks of pregnancy. Laxalt, who Trump called a “MAGA all the way” candidate, has described the US Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade as a “historic victory.” 

“There’s a stark difference between the two of us,” Cortez Masto told MSNBC. “To me this is about a race for Nevadans, fighting for Nevadans…It’s clear my opponent is about his own political agenda which is very extreme and is in opposition to even what Nevadans want.” The victorious Democratic senator also emphasized her background as the granddaughter of an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, and her local roots, reminding voters that improving their lives is personal to her. Her ads often emphasize her efforts to secure relief for small businesses hit hard by the pandemic. “It’s about Nevadans that I know. It’s about my family. My mother still lives in this community, grocery shops…I hear it, I see it when I go fill up my gas tank.” 

I grew up hearing our family stories from my cousins and tias around my grandparents' dinner table – everything I am is thanks to them.

I'll never forget where I come from – it's what drives me to fight for our families every day. pic.twitter.com/MMeWFDiDqp

What’s been likely for days is now official: Democrats will hold the US Senate. Media outlets on Saturday night projected that Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto had narrowly won her race, giving Democrats at least 50 Senate seats—enough to control the chamber.

The party has many people to thank. Their own candidates for staying on message, avoiding gaffes, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and generally coming across as the kind of people who don’t laugh at octogenarians who get assaulted in home invasions. The other party for nominating candidates who had no business making it to general elections. The Supreme Court for overturning women’s right to have an abortion five months before Election Day. And finally the voters—particularly in Arizona and Nevada—who decided by the slimmest of margins that they preferred people who accepted the results of the last election. 

It all combined to create an exceptionally good week for Senate Democrats, who could now actually gain a seat if Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) prevails in his December runoff against Herschel Walker. If Warnock wins, Dems will hold a 51-49 majority instead of the 50-50 split that’s required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes. As a result, the party would no longer have to get both Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to sign off on everything.

The House, on the other hand, still appears more likely than not to flip to the Republicans. The odds that a divided Congress will pass major pieces of President Joe Biden’s agenda in the next two years are slim. But Democratic control of the Senate means that they will remain able to confirm judges to federal courts, fill positions in the executive branch, and determine what legislation makes it to the Senate floor. It will also prevent at least one-half of the Benghazi-style hearings Republicans are expected to launch on Capitol Hill.

On a fundamentals level, Democrats had no business doing as well as they did. Biden’s approval rating is stuck in the low 40s, inflation is running at the highest level in decades, and off-year elections are almost always bad for the party in power. Democrats responded by focusing on the threats to abortion and democracy posed by their opponents. Republicans were plagued by what (at least for now) Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called his “candidate quality” problem. Four of the five nominees in the closest Senate races—Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—were exceptionally weak.

FiveThirtyEight’s final election forecast projected that Washington Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent would win by more than 12 points. Instead, in the biggest upset of the midterms, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has carried the Republican-leaning district in southwestern Washington.

Gluesenkamp Perez is the kind of relatable candidate Democrats have often struggled to nominate in recent years. At 34, she is more than two decades younger than the average House member. After Reed College, she started running a Portland, Oregon, auto shop along with her husband. They live across the state line in rural Skamania County, Washington, in a home they built themselves. She’d run for office once before in 2016. Gluesenkamp Perez lost that race for county commission, but managed to run ahead of Hillary Clinton by 6 points.

In her first debate with Kent, Gluesenkamp Perez introduced herself as a practical small business owner who was struggling with the costs of health care, child care, and government regulations. Her opponent, she argued, was an extreme figure who lived in a social-media-warped reality while she ran her auto shop.

Kent had gotten into the race after Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, the Republican who currently represents the district, voted to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of January 6. In August, Kent and Gluesenkamp Perez advanced to the general election after prevailing over Herrera Beutler in an open primary. Kent’s main consultant was Matt Braynard, a prominent election denier, and his people were the ones who thought Trump won.

Still, Kent, 42, had the kind of personal story and charisma that should have assured victory in an off-year election. After enlisting in the Army as a teenager in the late 1990s, he became a Green Beret and served 11 combat deployments—mostly in Iraq. In 2019, his wife Sharon, a Navy cryptologist, was killed in Syria by a suicide bomber. He was comfortable in front of the camera and gave hours-long interviews in which he tried to make sense of his service and his wife’s death. “He’s got a very clean-cut, square-jawed sort of marketing,” Gluesenkamp Perez told the New York Times, “and if you’re not really paying attention, you’re going to get distracted by the hair.”

For nearly nine months, the people of Kherson, Ukraine, had been living under Russian occupation, with countless families forced to live without basic means including food, running water, and electricity. But after Russian troops suddenly announced a retreat from the city on Friday, scenes of joy have brought a reprieve from the brutality of the war.

Videos and images quickly began flooding social media, showing Ukrainians taking to the streets to celebrate a rare moment of peace in southern Ukraine, where the fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces has been especially intense. The liberation of Kherson comes as a critical blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who just last month had declared Kherson among four Ukrainian regions to have been annexed into Russia “forever.”

One especially poignant video clip shared online by Myroslava Petsa, a Ukrainian journalist working for BBC News, showed a grandmother weeping with joy at the sight of her grandson, a Ukrainian solder:

The moment a grandmother kneels before her grandson soldier who’d been fighting for Kherson liberation. pic.twitter.com/f6JkBiPmMD

— Myroslava Petsa (@myroslavapetsa) November 12, 2022

Tiffany Trump is so often forgotten among Donald Trump’s adult children. But for one brief Saturday, the former president’s 27-year-old daughter will be the focus of media and family attention as the Trumps gather in Mar-a-Lago for Tiffany’s wedding to her fiancé, a Lebanese billionaire heir named Michael Boulos. Or at least that’s what one might reasonably expect.

But after a gaggle of Trump-endorsed Republican candidates lost in the midterm elections, the GOP knives are out and dad is in the midst of a vintage meltdown. Who knows what chaos could erupt at Mar-a-Lago, as many in the GOP blame Trump for backing extremist, lying candidates and setting the stage for what proved to be a red dribble. 

Control of Congress has yet to be determined—but watch out wedding guests. Ketchup may fly during the traditional father of the bride speech. An early warning sign: Look how sullen Trump appeared to be while practicing the walk down the aisle on Friday night:

Donald Trump walks daughter Tiffany down the aisle at wedding rehearsals https://t.co/ugmERTRx7m pic.twitter.com/QHKDRY2xSt

— Page Six (@PageSix) November 11, 2022

Of all the far-right extremists on the ballot Tuesday, perhaps none had the bona fides of Ammon Bundy.

In 2014, he took part in an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management at his father Cliven’s Nevada ranch after agents tried to impound Cliven’s cows for his failure to pay 20 years worth of grazing fees. In 2016, he led a 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to protest the arrest of two ranchers. Bundy spent more than 600 days in jail, half in solitary confinement, awaiting trial on federal charges related to the standoffs. When he was acquitted by a jury in Oregon and freed after a mistrial in Nevada, it only contributed to his mythical outlaw status.

But then, a year and a half ago, in an unusual career twist, Bundy announced a run for governor of Idaho. He began as a Republican, then he switched to an independent when it became clear he’d lose the primary. On Tuesday, Bundy’s divinely inspired campaign came to an end. He finished in third-place.

Bundy’s campaign platform was extreme. It included criminalizing abortion, eliminating most “immoral” taxes, cutting welfare programs, seizing control of federal public lands in the state and turning much of it over to affordable housing development and extractive industries. His message was a motto: “Keep Idaho Idaho.” He proposed paying liberals to move back to California—an idea that resonated with a significant number of voters who have seen a huge influx of new residents push up housing prices. Bundy jumped on the hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric of the far right, calling trans people “groomers” and promising to put drag queens in prison if elected. In one of the weirder ads of the election season, he took on the “woke cult.”

But the outlaw candidate also ran a remarkably energetic, old-fashioned retail campaign of the sort rarely seen in the US these days. For more than a year, he has hosted an endless stream of town halls and in-person events across the state, gladhanding with the public, showing off his beautiful family, and relying on his personal magnetism rather than TV ads. On the trail, the former Virgin River Valley high school class president has seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.