Blow-Out.
A Special "Day After" Edition of News Items.
“If I could only open one thing each morning it would be John Ellis’s News Items newsletter.” — Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.
1. It was defeat in every direction for the GOP. Democrats won in Virginia (by 15 percentage points), in New Jersey (by 13 percentage points), and in California (by 27 percentage points, with 70% of the precincts reporting). The Blues racked up win after win in contested local races. Liberal news media were elated. (Sources: washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com, politico.com, msnbc.com)
2. Republicans had touted the New Jersey gubernatorial election as one they might win. In the event, GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli garnered 43% of the vote against an often inept and unfocused Democratic nominee. In his first run for governor (in 2021), Mr. Ciattarelli received 48% of the vote and was tipped as a rising star. In all likelihood, his political career ended last night. (Sources: washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com, politico.com)
3. Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears to become the first woman elected governor of Virginia, winning with a pragmatic focus on the economy on a night when her party swept all three statewide offices and made gains in the House of Delegates, amid promises to defend the state against policies of the Trump White House. A former CIA operative and federal postal inspector, Spanberger, 46, charted a centrist path through three terms in Congress to emerge as a Democratic star. Her experience as both a spy and a mother of three girls, and her political record of winning in a conservative congressional district and brokering bipartisan deals in Washington, positioned Spanberger for a landmark win in this purple state. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
4. California voters approved Gavin Newsom’s plan to oust Republican incumbents with a new congressional map that could give Democrats up to five more seats in next year’s midterm elections, buoying their prospects of retaking the House, according to the Associated Press. The victory gives Democrats a jolt of momentum amid a national redistricting war while delivering a blow to President Donald Trump. It also bolsters Newsom’s presidential prospects by handing the California governor a win in the nationalized campaign he led. (Source: politico.com)
5. State Assemblyman Zorhan Mamdani (D) won the New York City mayoral race, impressively:
An extraordinary number of voters turned out for both Mamdani and Cuomo. All told, more than two million New Yorkers cast their ballots, close to double the turnout of recent races and the most since 1969. Mamdani was propelled to victory by the votes of more than one million New Yorkers—more than any winning candidate in at least the past 20 years. (Source: wsj.com)
6. Three Democratic justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held their seats on Tuesday, fending off bigger-than-usual opposition in the state’s judicial retention elections. Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht’s victories leave the court in Democratic hands through 2028, when it could hear election-related challenges in the key swing state. It also locks in a liberal majority ahead of the 2032 redistricting cycle, something Republicans warned of in their campaign to oust the justices. Each and every justice “won” with more than 60% of the vote.
7. The Washington Post:
An encouraging sign for Democrats: They appeared to fare far better with voters of color than they did in last year’s presidential election, when Trump won close to half of Latino voters and roughly doubled his support among Black voters to 15 percent. Sherrill on Tuesday won more than 90 percent of Black voters and led by more than 30 points with Latino voters in preliminary CNN exit polling. Spanberger posted similar numbers. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
8. As you might imagine, President Trump was none too happy with the election results:
President Donald Trump railed against the results of several elections before they were officially called for the Democrats on Tuesday, previewing a slew of losses for the president’s party in the first major elections since he started his second term.
In social media posts Tuesday, Trump claimed without evidence that there was widespread fraud surrounding California’s Proposition 50 ballot measure, a Democratic-led effort to change the state’s congressional map in response to Republican-led redistricting in Texas. He also insulted Jewish voters who supported Zohran Mamdani in New York City, and alleged that energy costs and crime would spike if Democratic gubernatorial candidates won in New Jersey and Virginia.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote about Proposition 50, alleging the system is under “very serious legal and criminal review.”
The four elections that Trump targeted on social media broke handily for the Democrats, the first major political blow to the president since he reclaimed the Oval Office last year. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
9. Editor’s Note:
Generally speaking, on the morning after the party in power in the White House suffers defeats across the board in state and local elections, elected officials of the president’s party seek to “distance” themselves from the president or make plain their “disagreements” with parts of the president’s “agenda.” We will see some of this.
What is different about this particular set of circumstances is the Trump White House expects and demands total loyalty to and compliance with Mr. Trump’s “agenda.” The Trump White House (meaning Mr. Trump himself) will threaten to punish those who waver. He will be eager to do so immediately, to intimidate others who might be (or are) wavering.
This will cause significant stress for the Republican leadership in Congress and GOP officer-holders across the country. They may think distance is necessary for survival (especially in purple-ish states and Congressional districts). They fear retribution. At some point, they will have to choose.
10. President Trump’s Truth Social demands to end the filibuster are just a hint of his coming rampage if Senate Republicans hold out against him, advisers tell Axios. Most Senate Republicans have no interest in nuking the filibuster. But Trump’s frustration is the first clear sign that the shutdown, which became a record today, is getting to him. “He will make their lives a living hell,” one Trump adviser told Axios. “He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he’s going to make their lives just hell,” the source continued. Another adviser emphasized: “He’s really mad about this.” (Source: axios.com. Italics mine.)
11. It’s the Fed’s fault. The Trump administration is wielding the possibility that parts of the economy are in a recession as it raises pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, hoping to ensure that the central bank will bear the blame for any economic weakness. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Stephen Miran, President Trump’s appointee to the Fed’s Board of Governors who is on a temporary leave from his job leading the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, this week struck a downbeat tone about the health of the world’s largest economy. Mr. Bessent went so far as to say some sectors were already contracting. He did not specify which sectors, but high mortgage rates have put housing and adjacent industries such as construction under pressure. “I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession,” Mr. Bessent said on CNN on Sunday. He described the economy as being in a “period of transition” because of a pullback in government spending to reduce the deficit. He called on the Fed to support the economy by cutting interest rates. (Source: nytimes.com)
12. The US government has reached a major milestone of dysfunction as Congress has allowed a federal shutdown to drag into its 36th day — the longest in history — amid a stalemate over health-care and spending priorities. As the standoff continues, the economic pain is deepening. Budget maneuvers to pay active-duty troops and partially fund food aid will likely run out before the end of November. Air traffic controllers working without pay are calling out at higher rates as one of the busiest travel periods of the year approaches. And policymakers could be working with flawed or missing data for months to come after the Labor Department stopped collecting crucial data on employment and prices. Economists say the shutdown is beginning to leave a permanent scar. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown will cut fourth-quarter growth by as much as 2 percentage points if it continues for eight weeks, followed by a short-term rebound early next year. Even then, the economy would lose billions in output. (Source: wsj.com)
13. Republican and Democratic senators signaled optimism about reaching a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown, while striking cautionary notes about how quickly lawmakers could resolve the impasse. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) yesterday outlined a pathway forward, pointing to the possibility of combining a new short-term bill to reopen the government with some of the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies. He said that the off-ramp was focused on giving Democrats a vote on an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies along with plans for the spending bills. (Source: wsj.com)
China’s share of the global economy is shrinking for the fourth year in a row. Few are aware of this astonishing development, and even fewer predicted it.
Chinese GDP equaled three-quarters of American GDP in 2021: it has fallen to just two-thirds today, when measured at market exchange rates, the relevant metric for the projection of world power across the full strategic spectrum.
“The era in which China’s share of global output was surging has ended,” says Mark Williams, head of Asia at Capital Economics. The yuan may rise again, but woe betide Chinese deflation if it does.
Productivity growth has collapsed and has even been negative by some measures. It has underperformed the US and other advanced economies since Xi Jinping took power in 2012 and turned away from China’s Great Reopening.
“Economic growth is being powered almost entirely by investment, despite diminishing returns and escalating debt,” says Williams.
The malaise has spread even to Chinese manufacturing, long thought immune. “There is mounting evidence that industrial policy is itself partly to blame,” he says. (Source: telegraph.co.uk)
15. China has demonstrated it can weaponize its control over global supply chains by constricting the flow of critical rare-earth minerals. President Trump went to the negotiating table when the lack of Chinese materials threatened American production, and he reached a truce last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that both sides say will ease the flow of rare earths. But Beijing’s tools go beyond these critical minerals. Three other industries where China has a chokehold—lithium-ion batteries, mature chips and pharmaceutical ingredients—give an idea of what the U.S. would need to do to free itself fully from vulnerability. Behind China’s supply-chain dominance lie decades-long industrial policies. (Source: wsj.com)
16. Carlos Manzo, a mayor in western Mexico, gained national fame this year with a simple but aggressive demand: that the Mexican authorities should summarily kill the armed cartel members who terrorize the country. That militant stance made him extremely popular with voters in his city, Uruapan, and beyond. It also led the 40-year-old mayor to start wearing a bulletproof vest with his trademark cowboy hat, and Mexico’s federal government to assign military personnel to protect him. In June, he recalled receiving a chilling phone call from a man who threatened to kill his toddler son. “I responded as any father would,” he said. “I told them, ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’” On Saturday night, Mr. Manzo held his son as he gave a speech at a crowded Day of the Dead celebration in his city of 350,000. Moments later, just after Mr. Manzo handed off his child, a hooded gunman shot the mayor seven times, killing him. Even by Mexico’s standards, it was a strikingly brazen assassination. Given its target and public nature, it also served as a warning shot of sorts for President Claudia Sheinbaum. (Source: nytimes.com)
17. Great Swami on last night’s elections and the electorate’s “roiling discontent.” (Source: politicalitems.substack.com)
Quick Links: Biggest black-hole outburst ever seen records death throes of a star. How a little Chinese island rose to global chemical dominance. The mystery of China’s slumping investment. News Items will still be delivered: How preppers plan to save us if the whole internet collapses. First class click bait: Tom Brady cloned his dog.
Political Links: How President Trump can dodge a Supreme Court tariff block. Inside the DSA’s hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. Conservative MP joins Canada’s Liberal government, moving Carney closer to majority government.
Science/Technology Links: China tests inflatable ‘space factory’ module for in-orbit mass production. Google’s Project Suncatcher aims to build orbital AI data centers powered by sunlight. Ugh: Covid-19 is spreading again — how serious is it and what are the symptoms? Nitazenes, a class of synthetic drugs 40 times more potent than fentanyl, are steadily becoming more common on both sides of the Atlantic. A new patch could help to heal the heart. A new way to understand and predict gene splicing. Toyota stuns the world with robot chair that walks, climbs, and folds itself. IBM to lay off thousands of employees before end of year.
War: Pentagon pushes ahead with plan to overhaul weapons buying. China’s top general vows to crack down on ‘fake loyalty’ and ‘two-faced men’. Recent Russian advances through Pokrovsk are the culmination of a 21-month campaign to seize the town. Russia says Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk and Kupiansk should surrender to save themselves.
Anyone else picking up the stench of fear and desperation emanating from the Oval Office?