- Lara Trump, apparently seeing different results than the rest of us

With a few days of perspective and results still coming in, we can officially say that this midterm was a weird one. 
 

• The story of the 2022 elections is best summed up by the question: “Huh?” It’s staggering how much damage Republicans were able to inflict on themselves considering they did not hold the presidency or majorities in either chamber of Congress. The Dobbs decision absolutely pushed independents to break for Democrats in huge numbers, that much was evident early on. Voters knew that state governments dominated by Republicans would roll back rights on abortion, because they saw it play out in real-time over the summer. In the case of Pennsylvania, many of their Republican state legislators explicitly vowed to do just that with a majority. But many women voters who ended up voting for Democrats also saw an explicit tie between the elimination of abortion rights and larger concerns about the fate of democracy. 
   

• In the same vein, Republicans also paid a political price for the Big Lie. In four battleground states, Democratic secretary-of-state nominees outperformed gubernatorial nominees at the top of the ticket. I would venture to guess that 20, or even 10 years ago, the average voter couldn’t have told you what a state secretary of state even does, but thanks to nonstop GOP voter suppression campaigns and disgraced former president Trump and his sycophants attacking secretaries of state for certifying the results of the 2020 election, they’ve become marquee races. Increased awareness about their role is ultimately a good thing, because they oversee election administration and certification of statewide and federal elections. In Arizona, a Big Lie hotbed, Democratic secretary-of-state nominee Adrian Fontes has received over 33,000 more votes than Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs. 
   

• So where are we in the Arizona of it all? Well, it’s still officially “too close to call”, but Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) lead over Republican candidate and Big Liar Blake Masters only continues to grow, and the outlook is good for Fontes and Hobbs as well. As much as these midterms were indicative of certain voting patterns for the left, they were equally so on the right. Evangelical Christians across the country doubled down on their allegiance to right-wing candidates and extremist conservative policy measures. Interestingly, Catholic voters split between the two ends of the ideological spectrum, even on abortion. In deep red Kentucky, voters rejected a GOP ballot measure to deny constitutional protections for abortion, including 60 percent of Catholic voters. Peace be with you, pro-choice Catholics!!

Morale is cautiously high about the Senate, but it looks like Republicans are more likely than not to pull out an ultra-slim majority in the House. 
 

• In the run-up to this election, Republicans ran around telling everyone they were going to pick up tons of seats in the House. That…didn’t happen, but they have picked up 10 so far, and with vote tallies still coming in, we should know soon whether control of the House will change hands, even if juuuust barely. It’s hard to know exactly what it would look like, but one thing is clear: everyone already hates current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The ultra right-wing Freedom Caucus, which represents over 40 members, has made its disdain for McCarthy apparent, and if they band together and vote as a bloc they could either deny him the speakership or demand so many concessions that he’d be speaker-in-name-only. Wouldn’t that be funny? 
   

• In the upper chamber, all is not well in the GOP, either. One of our least favorite Florida  Republicans (and that’s really saying something) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called for the Senate GOP leadership vote slated for next week to be delayed, “to make sure” that the next leaders are “genuinely committed to fighting for the priorities and values” of the Republican Party. Obviously, this could not be a bigger dig at current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (I will never get tired of identifying him as such!) who got in hot water with the MAGA set for a derisive statement about GOP “candidate quality” in Senate races. In fairness to McConnell, they were, in fact, extraordinarily bad candidates. Leadership elections are set for Wednesday, and no one has announced the possibility of running against McConnell thus far. I have to say, it’s nice to see Republicans grappling internally with a candidate quality problem for a change. 

There’s a very real likelihood that Democrats will hold the Senate, and their losses in the House (thanks, New York State Democratic Party) are not insurmountable. We should learn from their losses, and hold our elected officials accountable to make the most out of Biden’s next two years.

Federal investigators at the Department of Labor have accused Packer Sanitation Services, one of the country’s largest providers of food-safety sanitation, of employing at least 31 children, ages 13 to 17, to clean kill floors and other areas where animals are slaughtered. Several of those minors, including one of the 13-year-old workers, suffered chemical burns and other injuries. According to the investigation, a 14-year-old worker also suffered burns, and cleaned meat-cutting machines for 18 hours per week on 11pm-5am shifts, regularly falling asleep in class thereafter or not attending at all. According to court documents, all of the children spoke Spanish and investigations were conducted in Spanish. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 prohibits children under the age of 14 from working, and children between the ages of 14-15 from working after 9 p.m.from June 1 through labor day, and past 7 p.m. during the school year. It also prevents them from working more than three hours on school days and more than 18 hours per week, and prevents all minors from operating hazardous equipment. Child labor: it’s bad!

Twitter’s premium service which grants “verification” to anyone willing to pay $8 per month was suspended today after the company approved thousands of imposter accounts, which gave us some pretty fun moments. These too. 

Relatedly, drug manufacturer Eli Lily’s stock plummeted after a “verified” imposter account tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” Again, extremely funny. Tremendous work to all involved. 

Arizona election officials, most of whom are Republicans, are calling on Arizona GOP candidates to tone down their election-denying, anti-democratic rhetoric. 

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chris Magnus will be fired as the number of illegal crossings rose to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, part of a larger shakeup expected at Homeland Security. 

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas struck down President Biden’s student-debt relief program, after which the Department of Justice immediately filed an appeal.

In a video address hours after the Kremlin declared it had withdrawn troops from the strategically key city of Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that special military units have already entered the city. In the days since the Russian withdrawal, videos and photos on social media depicted Kherson residents taking to the streets in celebration, waving Ukrainian flags. Zelenskyy said that Russian forces placed mines in the city and that after troops enter, they will be followed by sappers, rescue workers, and energy personnel. The final Russian withdrawal came six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Kherson province and three other Ukrainian regions, pledging that they would remain Russian (and under their nuclear umbrella) forever. This is just like when a guy says he wants to be with you forever and then it turns out he’s a totalitarian dictator.

The Last Archive is a podcast about the history of truth -- or the lack thereof.

Harvard historian Jill Lepore tells stories about common knowledge, from high school juries ruling on the truthfulness of political ads, to the revolutionary cloud scientist who predicted the future of weather. The Last Archive is about how we know what we know, and why it seems as if we can't agree on anything at all.

Listen wherever you get podcasts.

A new case study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine gives new hope for being able to treat rare genetic diseases in utero. 

The 2022 midterms have solidified the nation’s love of early voting, and it looks like it’s here to stay. 

An official dedication ceremony of the National Native American Veterans Memorial took place today on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which first opened in 2020. More than 1,500 Native American veterans from about 125 tribes were expected to participate in the procession for the first-ever tribute to Native veterans on a national scale.