-Curtis Sliwa fighting poll workers who made him leave his cat outside

Tuesday was Election Day, and you know what that means: Democrats have cunningly rigged yet another election, unless it turns out Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia, in which case, they simply tried their best.
 

• Here’s what we know about voter turnout so far: It’s high! By Tuesday afternoon, Virginia was on track to surpass more than three million total votes, breaking the gubernatorial record of 2.6 million set in 2017. Here’s what we don’t know yet: Whose voters those are!  Early results suggest we're in for a tight race.  Meanwhile, while the governor’s race has sucked up all the attention, the Virginia House of Delegates is also up for grabs, with both parties contesting a record number of seats. 
   
• Like clockwork, Youngkin’s right-wing allies spent the final days of the Virginia gubernatorial race pushing their latest iteration of the Big Lie, baselessly claiming that Democrats were preparing to cheat their way to victory. That includes Donald Trump, who released a Monday statement urging GOP voters to help Youngkin “win bigger than the margin of fraud,” hours before calling into a tele-rally to endorse him one more time for the road. Youngkin has denounced none of it.
   
• Youngin and Terry McAuliffe were still neck-and-neck in the polls heading into Tuesday, in a state President Biden carried by 10 points in 2020, and where no Republican has won a statewide election since 2009. Regardless of the final outcome, Youngkin’s climb highlights a problematic communications imbalance: Youngkin was able to both position himself as a boring moderate and fire up the GOP because the right-wing media was standing by with a well-aimed firehose of ugly culture-war propaganda. Even when McAuliffe engaged in that culture war, he had no equivalent megaphone to reach the Democratic base directly.

All eyes are on Virginia, but there a several other interesting elections to keep on your radar:
 

• In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NY) looks poised to become the first Democratic governor to win reelection in the state since 1977. New York City will decide which absolute weirdo it wants as its next mayor, and Buffalo, NY, voters will choose between democratic socialist mayoral candidate India Walton, who defeated four-term incumbent Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, and Brown, who refused to concede and is running as a write-in candidate. 
   
• In Minneapolis, where the murder of George Floyd touched off last summer’s reinvigorated racial justice movement, police reform itself is on the ballot. Voters will decide whether to approve a ballot measure that would replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety under the oversight of the City Council, which could include both police officers and alternative responders, like mental health professionals and social workers.
   

No matter how the Virginia races shake out, there will be no shortage of Brilliant Takes on what it all means for Democrats in next year’s midterms. The one conclusion we can confidently draw in the meantime is that the GOP’s war on democracy continues apace, and we can’t wait until next year to start fighting back: votesaveamerica.com/noffyears.

The cost of higher education has grown exponentially in our country, placing it out of reach for most students and families unless they agree to take on huge amounts of debt. Over 44 million Americans carry more than $1.7 trillion of student debt. This crushing burden is preventing millions from buying homes, starting businesses, saving for retirement, or even starting families: And that reality falls heaviest on communities of color – particularly Black people and especially Black women – as a direct result of systemic racism.

That's why we’re urging the Biden Administration to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower by the end of 2021 – and we need as many people with us as possible. Add your name to our petition to join us in action today.

Centuries of structural inequities and racism have created large barriers in access to education for Black communities. For instance, Black families have far less generational wealth to draw on to pay for college than white families – and as a result, are more likely to take on student loans and struggle with repayment, which is exacerbated by job discrimination and pay disparities. Two decades after taking out student loans, the median Black borrower still owes 95 percent of debt, whereas the median white borrower has paid off 94 percent of debt.

But canceling student debt can help close the racial wealth gap by over 20 percent – securing financial stability and economic mobility for Black, Latinx, and other people of color who are disproportionately burdened by loans, while addressing the debt crisis for millions.

It’s a common-sense solution and there is no reason to wait: Sign our petition telling the Biden administration to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per eligible borrower now.

Thanks for taking action, 
The ACLU Team

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday that Democrats had reached a compromise on a prescription drug pricing provision to include in the Build Back Better Act, and for once in a blue moon, “Democrats” includes Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). The deal would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of the 10 most expensive drugs starting in 2023. It would also cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors at $2,000 annually, ensure that seniors don’t pay more than $35 for a dose of insulin, and apply inflation caps to drugs in both the Medicare and commercial markets. It’s not as strong as Democrats’ original proposal, but it would lower drug prices for millions of Americans. Meanwhile, the Gottheimer Gang has torpedoed leaders’ hopes for House votes on both infrastructure bills this week, insisting they’ll first need the CBO score for the reconciliation bill to see how much it would add to the deficit, which could take weeks.

• Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) wrote a letter to the state association of school boards warning against “pornographic” library books. Abbott offered no examples, but his letter came days after GOP state Rep. Jeff Cason demanded an investigation into “sexually explicit” materials in schools and singled out the book Gender Queer: A Memoir, by nonbinary author Maia Kobabe.
   
• Ethiopia declared a state of emergency and called on citizens to go defend the capital after Tigrayan forces captured two nearby towns.
   
• Opening arguments began Tuesday in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, during which the defense argued that Rittenhouse, who killed two unarmed men with a gun, was protecting himself from people who “attacked him in the street like an animal.”
   
• A total of 89 unvaccinated New York City police officers have been put on unpaid leave since the vaccine mandate for city workers went into effect, after police unions warned that the city would lose some 10,000 officers. (Some 6,000 have applied for a religious exemption.)
   
• Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system, which contained the face scan data of more than one billion users. A chilling reminder that as bad as Facebook has been, it’s had a bunch of opportunities to be way, way worse.
   
• The Justice Department has sued to stop Penguin Random House from purchasing Simon & Schuster, a merger that it said would let Penguin Random House “exert outsized influence over which books are published in the United States and how much authors are paid for their work."
   
• UC Santa Barbara plans to build a mostly windowless nightmare prison-dorm to appease the billionaire donor who designed it, like in the first five minutes of a horror movie. A consulting architect on the university’s design review committee has resigned in protest, like in the sixth minute of the horror movie.

The second day of COP26 in Glasgow brought some significant, if not entirely sufficient, new climate promises: President Biden unveiled new EPA regulations to curb methane emissions from oil and gas drilling in the U.S., and over 90 countries joined a pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. At least 105 countries have also pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, in an agreement that encompasses 85 percent of the world’s forests. That pledge includes Brazil, though there’s not a ton of reason to trust that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will actually follow through on it without an enforcement mechanism, and climate experts noted that leaders have made and broken similar promises before. Tuesday marked the end of Biden’s European trip; on his way out, he said he felt confident that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) would ultimately vote to pass the Build Back Better Act.

Figuring out a plan to get your health back on track is difficult enough, but maintaining it is even harder. Noom gives you the keys to success. With their unique psychology-based approach, Noom focuses on you and why you make the decisions you do, so it’s not a temporary fix. You’ll be partnered with a personal goal specialist to help hold you accountable, so you can stay on track and create a sustainable health routine.

A CDC panel unanimously voted to recommend authorization of small doses of the Pfizer vaccine for kids ages five to 11, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to give her final approval any minute.

Pittsburgh has become the latest city to issue a vaccine mandate for all city workers.

Vaccine immunity is more consistent than immunity from a coronavirus infection, according to the CDC. 

More same-sex couples will be able for Social Security survivors’ benefits, after the Justice Department and the Social Security Administration dropped their appeals to a lawsuit to overturn a nine-month duration-of-marriage requirement.