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November 5, 2025
The Election
Laura Barrón-López & Jake Traylor, MSNBC - President Donald Trump’s name may not have been on the ballot Tuesday, but he suffered a resounding defeat anyway as voters rejected Republican candidates and registered their strong disapproval of the way the president is doing his job.
From gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, to the mayoral race in Trump’s hometown, to a redistricting measure in California, Americans opposed Trump’s endorsed candidates and expressed deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the country while signaling their dismay with the cost of living and their personal financial situations.
In that sense, Tuesday’s results — a Democratic rout — served as a warning sign for the president and Republicans headed into the 2026 midterms when the party out of power historically makes significant gains.
NBC News - Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey governor’s race, NBC News projects, defeating Republican Jack Ciattarelli after a hard-fought contest in which President Donald Trump loomed over voters’ choice. Sherrill worked to make the race a referendum on the president, casting Ciattarelli as a Trump acolyte who will not stand up to the president. “He’ll do whatever Trump tells him to do, and I will fight anybody to work for you,” Sherrill said in their first debate in October. NPR - Here are five takeaways from the 2025 off-year elections:
1️⃣ It’s still the cost of living, stupid. Prices, prices,
prices. Affordability was a through line in most of the races Tuesday.
President Trump’s lack of focus on it likely hurt his party, as voters
overwhelmingly sided with Democrats on the economy.
Roll Call - Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger won Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, ending four years of Republican control of the governor’s mansion. Spanberger was leading GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears 55 percent to 45 percent, when The Associated Press called the race roughly an hour after polls closed. She will be Virginia’s first female governor. “Tonight we sent a message,” Spanberger said in her victory speech in Richmond, flanked by her husband and three daughters. “We chose our commonwealth over chaos. You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.” Spanberger will succeed term-limited Republican incumbent Glenn Youngkin, who in 2021 capitalized on parental frustrations over education policy to score an upset victory. Virginia governors are not eligible to run for a second consecutive term. Her victory comes on the same night that Democrats retained the governorship in New Jersey, with Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s victory. Democracy Docket - Maine voters rejected a Republican-backed ballot initiative Tuesday that would have imposed new photo ID rules and severely limited mail-in voting — a decisive win for voting rights advocates who said the measure threatened to upend the state’s long-standing tradition of accessible elections. The measure, appearing on the ballot as Question 1, would have created a new photo ID requirement for both in-person and mail-in voting and eliminated programs that expanded access to absentee ballots. It also would have ended Maine’s permanent absentee voter list — requiring voters to apply for a mail ballot each election — banned ballot requests on behalf of family members and limited every town to a single drop box. |
Why Mamdani won - “He brought the working, middle and upper-middle classes together in what I called back in July an ‘emergent coalition of the precariat’ — united in part by a growing affordability crisis and in part by simple rage about income inequality, corruption and the entitlement and impunity of the very rich.” — David Wallace-Wells, Opinion writer, NY Times
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NY Times - More than 2 million New Yorkers had voted even before the polls closed at 9 p.m., the first time that total had been surpassed since 1969, when John V. Lindsay won re-election.
Can Mamdani fulfill his promises?
Time - New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani built his platform around a simple premise: The city is far too expensive, and he’s going to make it more affordable.
From freezing rents and making buses free to boosting the minimum wage and increasing taxes for New York’s wealthiest residents, nearly all of the major actions Mamdani has pledged to take as mayor are aimed at lowering costs for New Yorkers and shrinking the wealth gap in the country’s biggest city.
“I think that the Democratic Party must always remember what made so many proud to be Democrats, which is a focus on the struggles of working-class Americans across this country,” he said in an interview on ABC.
Those ambitious, affordability-focused proposals have been key to Mamdani’s unlikely rise from a lesser-known Queens assemblymember who came into the crowded Democratic primary as a heavy underdog to New York City’s next mayor. Now, as he leaves the campaign trail and turns toward governing the city, the question looms large: Will he be able to make his plans work in practice? Dealing with the issues he boosted
NY Times - Mr. Mamdani’s political rise may be remembered for what came first: the buoyant, flamboyant, rule-breaking primary run that united a new coalition of Brooklyn gentrifiers and Queens cabbies around the city’s growing affordability crisis and the birth of a megawatt talent.
But his election on Tuesday as the 111th mayor of New York owes as much to the equally improbable backroom campaign that followed. In Midtown C-suites and intimate phone calls, a left-wing populist who had built his brand on taxing the rich wooed, charmed and delicately disarmed some of the most powerful people in America.
The arc of his success is nothing short of staggering. At the start of the year, Mr. Mamdani was polling at 1 percent, tied, as he likes to say, with the candidate known as “someone else.” Few New Yorkers recognized his name, and his own political team put the odds of winning as low as 3 percent.
Now, at age 34, he will be New York City’s youngest leader in more than a century, amid a pile of historic firsts: the first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian and arguably the most influential democratic socialist in the country.
California’s congressional maps will be redrawn to create more blue-leaning districts after voters approved a measure to amend the state’s constitution on Tuesday, delivering a victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats in a contentious redistricting battle that has broken out around the country. will be redrawn to create more blue-leaning districts after voters approved a measure to amend the state’s constitution on Tuesday, delivering a victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats in a contentious redistricting battle that has broken out around the country.
Time - Democrats will hold onto the governorship of New Jersey as Rep. Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the most closely watched gubernatorial race of the year, offering her party a much-needed boost after months of political uncertainty under the Trump Administration. The Associated Press called the race for Sherrill shortly after the polls closed on Tuesday night.
Sherrill, 53, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who was elected to Congress in the Democratic wave of 2018, emerged victorious after a bruising campaign that tested her reputation as a moderate in a state that has shifted towards Republicans in recent years. Her win extends Democratic control of the governor’s mansion to a third consecutive term and cements her status as one of the party’s rising national figures.
NBC - Texas voters approved two state constitutional amendments in statewide votes, NBC News projected. The ballot measures amend the state's constitution to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote and to enshrine parental rights.
NBC - Virginia state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim-American woman elected to statewide office in the U.S. with her victory in the state's lieutenant governor's race, NBC News projected.
NBC - Pennsylvania voters are projected to approve the retention of three state Supreme Court justices, preserving Democrats' 5-2 majority on the battleground state's high court.
The Associated Press - Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students.
Half Of Young Adults Admit To Faking Wealth
- Half of Gen Z and millennials admit to lying about their wealth or financial success, with 37% willing to overdraft their accounts or go into debt just to impress a date
- Credit scores have become dating credentials: Over 50% say a high credit score makes someone more attractive, and 1 in 5 want dating apps to display credit scores upfront
- Men take bigger financial risks for romance: 46% of men would overdraft to impress a date compared to 28% of women, and men are nearly twice as likely to overlook a partner’s bad credit
- Money talk remains taboo among friends: 70% of women and 60% of men almost never discuss finances with friend groups, despite widespread financial anxiety
... A new Credit One Bank survey of 1,000 young adults reveals that 51% admit to faking their wealth or exaggerating their financial success. Gen Z leads the pack at 54%, compared to 48% of millennials. And it gets worse. A staggering 37% say they’d be willing to overdraft their account or plunge into debt just to impress someone on a date.
Voting Behavior Has ‘Strong’ Link To Risk of Death
Newsweek - Voting behavior in elections and an individual’s future risk of death have a "strong association." In fact, it’s a stronger determinant of mortality than education, according to researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland.
While voting in national and local elections has already been recognized as a social determinant of health—with voters generally thought to have better health profiles than non-voters—the link between electoral participation and death has not been established.
With this in mind, the researchers analysed data on participation in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections and associated registers by Statistics Finland containing sociodemographic and mortality information....
The study included more than 3,185,500 people (with voter turnout of 71.5 percent among men and 72.5 percent among women), tracking their survival from election day on March 21, 1999 to the day of death or the end of 2020, whichever came first.
In total, 1,053,483 people died; 95,350 deaths from external causes (accidents, violent and alcohol-attributable causes), and 955,723 from other underlying causes. 2,410 people whose cause of death was not known were excluded from the final analysis.
Not voting was consistently associated with a 73 percent heightened risk of death from any cause among men and a 63 percent heightened risk of death among women, the researchers discovered.
After adjusting for their education level, this was reduced to a 64 percent heightened risk among men and a 59 percent heightened risk among women.
The difference in mortality between non-voters and voters was stronger than between those with basic and higher education. These differences were strongest for external causes of death and for younger age groups.
When adjusting for age, the risk of death was twice as high among both men and women who did not vote than it was among those who did.
Utah building forced labor camp for homeless
Common Dreams - In an effort to fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order on homelessness, Utah is building a massive facility that housing advocates warn will function as an “internment camp” where the unhoused will be subject to forced labor.
Last month, Utah’s homeless services agencies came to an agreement for the state to acquire a nearly 16-acre parcel of rural land in the Northpoint area of northwest Salt Lake City to construct the first-of-its-kind facility, which is slated to have 1,300 beds.
The genesis of the project began in July, following Trump’s “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order, which threatened to withhold funding from states and cities unless they criminalized homeless people camping on streets and ordered the attorney general to expand the use of involuntary civil commitment for adults experiencing homelessness.
More corporate funding of Trump
Axios - President Trump has raised about $1.9 billion from an array of corporate donors to help finance his political committees, White House construction projects and celebrations of the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary....
- No president has raised so much money, so quickly, for so many different reasons. And there's more to come, aides say.
"The midterms are paid for," a source briefed on Trump's fundraising operations told Axios. MORE
Credit card delinquency
WalletHub - With the rate of credit card delinquency increasing in all 50 states
over the first two quarters of 2025, the personal-finance company
WalletHub today released its updated report on the States Where Credit Card Delinquency Is Increasing the Most, to identify where people’s credit scores are most in danger.
| Increasing the Most | Increasing the Least |
| 1. Minnesota | 41. Illinois |
| 2. Iowa | 42. South Carolina |
| 3. Kansas | 43. Utah |
| 4. South Dakota | 44. Hawaii |
| 5. Ohio | 45. North Dakota |
| 6. Colorado | 46. California |
| 7. Mississippi | 47. Alaska |
| 8. New Hampshire | 48. Wyoming |
| 9. Arkansas | 49. Vermont |
| 10. Michigan | 50. Florida |
For the full report and to see where your state ranks
November 4, 2025
Just a thought
Sam Smith - Donald Trump is very good evidence of the danger of only relying on white leaders in America, which he would like us to do. Few black or latino officials ever acted as badly as he has. And those that did lacked his power. Skin color and language don't tell us much.
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Weather
Newsweek - A map shared by storm chaser Stephen Jones on Monday suggested a broad swath of the Eastern U.S. could see notable departures from average temperatures next week. "Big-time cold front next week," wrote Jones. "Across the Eastern Half of the U.S. This may allow for snow as far south as the Southern Appalachian Mountains with temperatures being 15-25 degrees below average."
Americans Now Buying First Home at Record Average Age of 40
Newsweek - The average age of first-time homebuyers in the U.S. has now reached the all-time high of 40. This is according to a new report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), confirming that homeownership has gotten out of reach for many young Americans over the past several years.
Historically, first-time homebuyers in the U.S. have been in their 20s and 30s. In the 1980s, for example, they were usually in their late 20s. Now a few decades later, buying a home has become a near-insurmountable challenge for many young people in the country carrying the burden of high student debt while facing higher housing costs.
DC now has two conservative daily papers
Michael Tomasky, New Republic - It is The Washington Post’s right, of course, to stand for whatever it and its owner wish it to stand for. If the owner of this magazine woke up tomorrow and decided that Murray Rothbard was right about everything and The New Republic was henceforth going to follow the Cato Institute line on all matters, that would be his right, and I’d ungrudgingly go look for new employment. That’s how this business works.
So this is not a liberal whine that the Post “ought” to be liberal, although it is worth pointing out that (a) this shift effectively defenestrates 50 or 60 years of proud history, (b) a conservative stance puts the paper in a very bad odor indeed with respect to the city it purports to serve, and (c) the paper has bled enormous polemical talent over the last couple of years: Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank (still at the paper but no longer a columnist), and not least Greg Sargent and Perry Bacon, about whom I’m delighted to say that the Post’s loss is TNR’s gain. (Here’s a bonus fun fact: No matter how hard the Post swings in this reactionary rightward direction, The Wall Street Journal got there first, and they do it better.)
My point rather is that liberals, especially those of the multimillionaire and billionaire variety, need to pay close attention to this phenomenon. The nation’s capital is now served by two editorially conservative newspapers: the Post and the Unification Church’s Washington Times, still going … well, one can’t quite say “strong.” I never hear anyone talk about it or see someone link to one of its stories or columns on social media. Never. I realize they’re not exactly my crowd, but this wasn’t always the case—it seemed to me that during the Reagan and Bush 43 eras, the Times mattered more than it does now. There’s also arguably a third, The Washington Examiner. It’s now online only, but it’s a tabloid newspaper in its DNA, and very conservative.
So, chew on that: The nation’s capital, a city that is the seat of the federal government and home to many thousands of public servants, and a city that Democratic presidential candidates generally carry with around 90 percent of the vote, has three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper
How Americans feel about their finances
USA Facts More than a quarter of US adults say they’re struggling financially: 73% reported “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” 19% said they were “just getting by,” and 8% said they were “finding it difficult to get by.”
Inflation topped the list of financial challenges, followed by the costs of basic living expenses and housing.
Financial confidence tracks with education: 87% of people with at least a bachelor's degree said they're doing at least okay, compared to 68% of people with some college or a technical or associate's degree, and 47% of people without a high school diploma.
It’s harder for parents with children at home, too: in 2024, 65% of parents thought they were doing at least okay, compared to 76% of all other adults.
Can we do enough to lessen climate change?
Axios - Fresh UN analysis finds that nations' updated emissions pledges to date will barely lower previously projected warming. And that's if they're implemented — a gigantic "if."
Countries' "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs) would bring warming of 2.3°C to 2.5°C above preindustrial levels, the annual "emissions gap" report finds. Meanwhile, current policies yield 2.8°C of warming. That's under last year's projection, but still a really harmful amount...
"Alignment with [the Paris Agreement's] 1.5°C and 2°C goals would require rapid and unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions far above what has been pledged," a summary states....
Back when Paris was adopted, nations' current policies were on track to bring catastrophic warming of roughly 4°C, the UN claims.
A new Rhodium Group study sees a likely warming range of 2.3°C to 3.4°C by 2100, and a mean of 2.8°C — well below pre-Paris estimates, but still a "dire climate future."....
Bloomberg reports that "this year's COP30 summit in Brazil will be conspicuously free of top-level Wall Street bankers discussing how to cut their financed emissions," citing climate focus giving way to meeting demand and security.
- ING analysts, in a note about COP30, see "little cause for optimism at this stage."
- However, "corporate climate action remains resilient, but more discreet."
"Victory on the big issues in Belém might merely mean establishing a process that could facilitate braver, science-based political decisions in the future — a sad consolation prize," Nigel Purvis, a former U.S. climate diplomat, writes in Foreign Policy.
Meanwhile. . .
At least 25 million people tuned into the final game of the World Series on Saturday — raising the average rating for the entire seven-game series to more than 14 million viewers, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes... It was the highest-rated World Series finale since 2017.
Most overweight and obese states
With November being National Diabetes Awareness Month and obesity costing the healthcare system around $173 billion each year, the personal-finance company WalletHub today released its report on 2025's Most Overweight & Obese States in America.
Trump's military takeover of America
NPR - For years, President Trump and several high-ranking officials in his second administration have discussed using the National Guard to assist with mass deportations and immigration raids. This consideration arises despite U.S. laws that generally prohibit the military from being used for domestic law enforcement. During Trump’s second term, he and Stephen Miller, his right-hand man on immigration, have considered invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow the president to deploy the military within the U.S. under specific circumstances. Legal experts, activists, and watchdog groups are now concerned that the Trump administration could fundamentally change how the military operates on U.S. soil.
➡️ The idea is part of Project 2025, a conservative action plan.
➡️ Miller has promoted the concept publicly for years, including in 2023 on the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's podcast.
➡️ Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, says she is worried about what the presence of troops might mean for voters as they cast their ballots in the upcoming 2026 elections.
➡️ Miller has promoted the concept publicly for years, including in 2023 on the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's podcast.
➡️ Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, says she is worried about what the presence of troops might mean for voters as they cast their ballots in the upcoming 2026 elections.
Read more about why Trump’s deployment of troops isn’t random here.
November 3, 2025
Trump planning attack on Mexico - another illegal war
Newsweek - President Donald Trump's administration is creating detailed plans to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to combat drug cartels, NBC News reported Monday, citing two U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials.
"The Trump administration is committed to utilizing an all-of-government approach to address the threats cartels pose to American citizens," a senior Trump administration official told NBC in response to the report....
The report comes after weeks of escalating attacks on alleged drug smugglers out of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing multiple suspects the Trump administration has said are known cartel and criminal gang members. Members of Congress have raised concerns about a potential move to land-based operations, which could be seen as the White House carrying out an act of war.
Polls
Washington Post - A majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump is not committed to protecting freedom of speech, ensuring a fair criminal justice system or preserving free and fair elections, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The Democratic Party, however, has only a modest edge on these same issues, the poll found. That finding points to a potential problem for Democratic efforts to make an issue of Trump’s attacks on long-standing norms in the justice system.
The Guardian - Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to one of its lowest points, with only 37% of Americans expressing approval of his performance as president. The new CNN/SSRS survey released on Monday shows a sharp decline in Trump’s approval ratings compared with the early days after he began his second term in January, when his approval stood at 47% by mid-February.
Newsweek - A new poll by The Economist/YouGov found Trump’s approval rating at its lowest level since he returned to office in January, with 39 percent of people saying they approved of the job he is doing, while 58 percent disapproved, resulting in a net approval rating of -19 points.
NY Times - More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s mayoral election, marking the highest early in-person turnout ever for a nonpresidential election in New York.
Sunday, the final day of early voting, saw about 151,000 early voters, the most of any day since the polls opened, and more voters under 35 than in the first weekend combined, according to data from the city’s Board of Elections. That brought the median age of early in-person voters down to 50.
Turnout among younger age groups lagged early in the week, with about 80,000 people under 35 voting from Sunday to Thursday. That number jumped from Friday to Sunday, with over 100,000 voters under the age of 35 casting ballots, including more than 45,000 on Sunday.
NBC News - Voters say President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are more to blame for the ongoing government shutdown, according to a new NBC News poll. But their verdict on the spending stalemate includes more blame for Democrats than some past shutdowns, part of a growing collection of data outlining negative views of both parties.
The survey, conducted Oct. 24-28, finds a combined 52% of voters blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the stalemate, while 42% blame Democrats in Congress and 4% blame all of the players.
The share of voters who blame Democrats is the highest for the party when compared to other shutdowns or potential shutdowns measured in NBC News polling over the last 30 years.
Jack Smith moves from defense to counterattack
NY Times - President Trump’s unrelenting fast-track drive to humiliate, investigate and prosecute the people he hates has gained momentum, in part, because his targets have not been in a position to inflict serious retributive pain on him.
Jack Smith is different.
Mr. Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted Mr. Trump, appears unintimidated by the president’s demand that Republican lawmakers investigate him and that the Justice Department put him in prison for as-yet unproved and unspecified crimes.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Mr. Smith, who spent more than two years aggressively collecting evidence to prove Mr. Trump mishandled classified documents and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, appears eager to publicly challenge a foundational pillar of MAGA canon: that the president was a sinned-upon innocent who did nothing to deserve scrutiny, much less two prosecutions.
Mr. Smith has told people in his orbit that he welcomes the opportunity to present the public case against Mr. Trump denied to him by the Supreme Court decision asserting broad presidential immunity from prosecution and adverse rulings from a Trump-appointed judge on the federal bench in Florida.
Climate change
Washington Post - The Post’s analysis, based on state-of-the-art weather data and computer models of the climate system, reveals how rising global temperatures have made the atmosphere more waterlogged — providing fuel for wetter and more dangerous storms. In the past 85 years, The Post found, the amount of water vapor moving through Earth’s atmosphere has increased 12 percent. That increase is equivalent to 35 Mississippi Rivers flowing through the air every second.
But this moisture is not distributed equally around the planet. Nor are its effects evenly felt.
SNAP to get only partial payments in response to judge's ruling
NY Times - Tens of millions of Americans will get only partial payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for this month, the Trump administration told a federal judge on Monday, and it was not clear when even those reduced benefits would be distributed. The administration said it would not tap additional money to fund full payments in November, the second month of the government shutdown. The food aid program for low-income women and children, commonly known as WIC, received more temporary funding.
Lindsey Graham
Republicans against Trump - Lindsey Graham: “I feel good about the Republican Party and where we're going as a nation. We're killing all the right people and we're cutting your taxes. Trump is my favorite president. We've run out of bombs. We didn't run out of bombs in WWII”
Word
Robert Reich - The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.
The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion. ... When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.
North American box office records lowest monthly total since 1997
The Guardian - Box office earnings in October have crashed to levels not seen since the late 1990s, with Halloween weekend becoming the worst of the year so far.
According to a report in Variety, cinema takings for October in North America totalled $425m (£323m), the lowest figure since October 1997, when it was $385m – not counting October 2020, when North American cinemas only took $63m as moviegoing was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
A number of factors have been blamed for the poor results. Notably, there was a paucity of putative blockbusters, with the only large-scale effects movie on release being Tron: Ares, which took $67m in North America, as part of a disappointing $133m worldwide gross against its $180m reported budget.
Also disappointing was the performance of so-called “awards season” films, with Dwayne Johnson wrestling movie The Smashing Machine, Julia Roberts #MeToo drama After the Hunt, and music biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere all grossing less than expected.
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