The Map Moved

Wow. I hear tsumani but the Democrats performed very strongly in a number of races from Governor to US Senate to US House. It appears they will take control of Congress for two years. There were a few surprising results from these midterms.

Created by A.I.

I had my A.I. assistant list the results that are key:

• Texas: James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for Senate; Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott for governor. No Democrat had won statewide there since 1994.
• South Carolina: Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham for Senate. Democrats had not won a Senate race in the state since 1998.
• Maine: Troy Jackson beat Susan Collins for Senate.
• Kansas: Adam Hamilton beat Roger Marshall for Senate. First Democratic Senate win there since 1932.
• Iowa: Josh Turek beat Ashley Hinson for Senate; Rob Sand flipped the governor’s race.
• Ohio: Sherrod Brown beat Jon Husted for Senate; Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy for governor. Democrats had not held the governorship since 2006.
• Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms won the open governor’s race. Democrats swept the major statewide offices.
• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers for Senate (Democratic hold). Jocelyn Benson beat John James for governor (Democratic hold).
• House: Kentucky’s 6th District flipped (Zach Dembo over Ralph Alvarado; Trump carried it by about 15 points in 2024). Multiple Pennsylvania seats flipped, including Brian Fitzpatrick’s district and the ones held by Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan. Democrats also held or won seats in Florida that Republicans had redrawn earlier in the year to favor themselves.

Texas is the one that still does not sit right. Both the Senate and the governorship went Democratic in the same cycle. Paxton carried baggage. Talarico moderated enough to win. That is the result. Whether he fits the state is a different question, and the election already answered the only one that mattered on Tuesday.

It's About Trump

Bill O’Reilly was on NewsNation last night, the day before the votes are counted. Leland Vittert asked why Republicans would win the midterms. O’Reilly’s answer was short.

They are not going to.

He said the House goes to the Democrats, the way Obama’s House went in 2014. The Senate is still open. That is the same call he put out yesterday on his own site: Democrats take the House on the economy, Republicans keep the Senate.

Here is the clip: [VIDEO]

O’Reilly’s reason is not the usual one. He does not say the polls are fixed or that the candidates are weak. He says the trouble started with Iran.

The plan was never really confronted. Once the war began, inflation and oil prices rose. Americans watched the numbers move and remembered what they had been told. O’Reilly’s line: “They’re not voting on macroeconomics. They’re voting on Trump promised this and it never happened.”

He added that Trump’s emotional responses have not helped. The election, in his view, is not about affordability as a policy problem. “Today it’s about Donald Trump. Tomorrow it’s about Donald Trump.”

That is the whole case he made. The rest of the segment wanders into Alaska and Talarico and tax talk, but the prediction sits on those two sentences: the Iran operation was left unfinished, and voters are measuring the result against the promise.

Whether that reading holds after the counts come in is a different question. O’Reilly has been consistent on this point for weeks. The House loss, if it arrives, will be read as a judgment on the president’s unfinished work, not on a list of economic charts.

Have you voted today?

Midterms: Michigan, Maine, Texas, and the Rest

I didn’t have a lot of strong predictions going into tomorrow’s midterms. I early voted already, and my clearest read is on Illinois. Beyond that, control of Congress looks tighter than the conventional wisdom has suggested.

Democrats probably have an edge in the House. Republicans should hold the Senate, though that depends on a handful of races I’m not fully confident about. I don’t expect a blue wave either way.

Credit: (JDawnInk/Getty Images)

Stevens Breaks with El-Sayed

In the latest episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, Ben Shapiro walks through a striking development in the Michigan Senate race just days before the midterms: Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed, has endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. The bulk of the episode is devoted to that story — the endorsement, the furious Democratic reaction, El-Sayed’s record, and the broader implications for the party. Shapiro also analyzes the state of the Senate polls, speaks with Mike Rogers, and covers a constitutional crisis in Poland.

You may watch this episode here: [VIDEO]

Haley Stevens did not make the endorsement quietly. After appearing with Rogers at a Detroit church, she released a video stating that El-Sayed had made clear she was no longer welcome in his campaign. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate,” she said, “and it is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.” She specifically cited El-Sayed’s past campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker and his handling of an outside ad that blamed high grocery prices on U.S. aid to Israel (which she and others characterized as antisemitic). “We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”

The Supersite Was Easy

I went to the early voting supersite in downtown Chicago for the 2026 midterms. My goal was to get it out of the way.

It was an easy experience, like going to my usual polling place on election day.

There was no option for a paper ballot. Voters at the supersite get a quick education on the electronic machines. Simple enough. I prefer a paper ballot. Maybe you only get that on election day.

They didn't check IDs. In my experience as a Chicago voter, precinct workers never do. They make sure you're registered. At the supersite they had to determine my actual precinct so I could vote. They probably got the information to confirm I was legitimate.

Given that they didn't check IDs, perhaps I could have presented myself as my late father. Would they have accepted that? Who knows.

I can talk about who I voted for, though only for select people.

Start with judges. In Illinois we elect our judges. There are articles in Chicago media about the electioneering for candidates who aspire to the bench. Just like for other offices, if the Democratic machine slates a candidate, that's an endorsement. It goes a long way, though not a guarantee.

The problem with electing judges is that you don't know who many of them are. If I didn't know the judges, I didn't vote for them. I voted no on retention for all of them. Some bad judges were in the news for one application of the Safe-T Act.

Some of the judges who made the news did so because of electronic monitoring under the Safe-T Act. The law ended cash bail and left judges to decide between detention and release with conditions. Monitoring is the main condition they use when they do not detain. It is not the same as jail. People cut the ankle monitor, leave the house, or go missing, and under the rules they are not treated as escapees until they have been gone for 48 hours. The people who track the monitors often cannot arrest anyone. They report the violation and hope a judge will act. When someone charged with a serious crime is later charged with a new one while on that monitoring, the original decision is what ends up in the papers.

I wish we could do better on choosing our judges. There probably isn't a huge movement to change how judges get seated on the bench in this state.

I was surprised to see Libertarians running for county offices such as County Board President and Sheriff. No Republicans at all. In fact there weren't too many Republicans running statewide in the 2026 primaries aside from Governor. The Republican candidate for state treasurer actually ran in the primary as a write-in.

We need an opposition party in this state. Cook County needs an opposition party too. And so be it if it's the Libertarians. If only members of the Libertarian Party just joined the Cook County Republican Party.

I voted for Alexi Giannoulias for Secretary of State. He's running for Mayor of Chicago next year. I'm a long way from predicting next year's mayoral race. He's my favorite to win the mayor's office. There are a number of serious candidates running. Judging by how he's run the secretary of state's office, he could probably handle being mayor of Chicago.

It's amazing that I'm saying this. Giannoulias served one term as state treasurer, tried to run for Barack Obama's old Senate seat, and narrowly lost to Republican Mark Kirk in 2010. He spent a little time in the wilderness until running for IL Secretary of State.

Everyday Illinoisans have to go to the Secretary of State to renew driver's licenses and vehicle license plates. There are other functions, but we go to them for our driver's licenses especially.

My prediction for Illinois: Pritzker gets his third term and all the executive offices will be swept by Democrats. Alexi will get another term as Secretary of State and will immediately go into campaign mode again for Mayor of Chicago. We need someone capable and competent in office there for sure.

The main thing is the opposition party of this state will continue to struggle. They have another four years to get it together.

Not a Joke to Him.

The Free Press ran a piece on a Michigan man who got filmed while he was stocking frozen pizzas. The clip is the kind of thing that usually dies as content. This one did not.

Walt Z works direct-store delivery for Red Baron. He was in a grocery store in the White Lake area, restocking the freezer, when someone asked him the time. He pulled out his phone. The person filming played an Apple Pay sound and told him $10 had just been taken. Then $20. The account was @thea.ctiveworld. It is gone now.

Walt did not treat it as a bit. He said he was already an hour late getting home. Four kids. Mortgage. Up at 5 a.m. for ten more stores. “It’s not a joke to me.” “My life is hard enough as it is.” The company later said the incident itself happened in August. The video is what went around this week.

People watched it and started a GoFundMe. Luke Oakenshield set it up. As of early Saturday it had reached $655,521 from more than 18,000 donations, with the goal at $700,000. GoFundMe itself noted the campaign nearing $600,000 on Friday. Walt posted that he is blown away and that his family is doing well. He is keeping the full name private. His wife has already turned down media requests. He is thinking about talking later, only with people who will treat the family carefully.

Red Baron posted on X that employee-of-the-month nominations are closed. “He’s still here. He’s got a fan club. Including us.” The parent company confirmed they checked on him after the August incident and that he remains employed.

Glenn Beck watched the same clip and got emotional. The general idea is that the person filming was nothing more than a parasite treating other people as content. Walt was already spending long hours doing the job. This time the prankster picked the wrong man. [VIDEO]

The original clip is gone. Copies are still circulating. The man who was late getting home is still working. The people who filmed him are not.

Multiculturalism Says No Rank

A short clip from John Anderson’s conversation with Melanie Phillips draws a line between ordinary respect for other people and the doctrine that treats every culture as interchangeable. Phillips is a British journalist and commentator who has written for The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times, and now contributes to The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle. She has long argued that the West has lost confidence in its own principles.

The full interview, on antisemitism and the West’s self-doubt, is here: [VIDEO]

Phillips argues that multiculturalism is commonly mistaken for simple courtesy toward difference. What the doctrine actually asserts, she says, is that no culture is morally or intellectually superior to any other. Once that claim is accepted, Western principles—democracy, one law for all, free expression, equality for women—cannot be defended as preferable. The result is not enrichment through food or custom but a society that has ruled its own standards out of bounds. That, in her telling, is how a culture stops being able to protect itself.

The arguments keep coming anyway. Diversity is our strength. In Minnesota, politicians describe the Somali community as part of the fabric. The same phrase gets applied to immigrants from other cultures in general. Those lines treat difference as automatic proof of strength. They leave little room to ask what the difference actually requires of the place that receives it.

The Age Is the Question

Bill O’Reilly had immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi on No Spin News to walk through the legal path for denaturalizing Ilhan Omar. The conversation stays on one narrow point: whether Omar was under 18 and unmarried when she derived citizenship through her father.

Watch that segment here: [VIDEO]

Berardi’s reading is straightforward. Derivative citizenship requires the child to be under 18 and unmarried at the moment the parent naturalizes. If Omar was already 18 or older when her father became a citizen in 2000, the derivative status never attached. Criminal charges for false statements would run into the statute of limitations. Civil denaturalization would not. It needs clear and convincing evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is the argument the October 12 search was built to test. Agents took phones, a laptop, notebooks, and a passport. Family members, including a sister, have been subpoenaed. The warrant remains sealed.

The older claim that Omar married her brother is still part of the discussion. Sources have told reporters that DNA is being used to test it. An earlier private collection of discarded items produced a lab report claiming a sibling match; that effort came from a consultant later convicted on unrelated charges. No public result from the current investigation has been released, and Omar continues to say she has no knowledge of any relationship. The age question is the one Berardi treats as decisive for the denaturalization path.

The Brazil Extension

On Sunday, incumbent President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva turned a first-round deficit into a runoff win and became the first Brazilian elected president four times. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, had finished ahead in early October. Three weeks later he was behind by roughly 4.4 million votes. The numbers themselves are not the part that stands out.

Ben Shapiro’s clip, “Brazil Is a Warning for American Elections,” treats the day as a practical lesson in what happens when the people who write the rules also play in the game. He walks through the first-round split, the runoff swing, and the intervention that arrived as the clocks hit five.

Watch Shapiro's clip here: [VIDEO]

The Unions Run This Place

The clip that stopped me was not the tax plan. It was the line about the unions.

Dave Rubin had Steve Hilton on today. Hilton is the Republican nominee for California governor, running against Xavier Becerra. Hilton is the former Fox host and, before that, the man who helped shape David Cameron’s early years in Downing Street. He has lived in California since 2012.

Watch the interview here: [VIDEO]

Hilton said he tried to put a housing initiative on the ballot. He needed roughly ten million dollars and never raised it. When he asked a Democratic legislator for support, the answer he got was that the unions run the place. That, Hilton says, is the moment he decided to run for governor instead of trying to work around the legislature.

The Glass Wall

The only piece of the Root interview I had seen was the short one where El-Sayed tries to explain that Mike Rogers is an NPC.

He says the term, then has to define it. Non-playing character. Someone who just goes along with the program. The clip is brief. The explanation takes longer than the insult. That was the only part I had watched.

The rest of the interview is longer. In it he talks about Black voters in Detroit.

He tells Ashley Allison that too many Black Detroiters have had bad experiences with “somebody who looks like me.” Then he describes the glass wall: the party store, the gas station, the distance that is already set before he speaks.

Here's a short clip of the exchange here: [VIDEO]

In the primary he carried the state. He did not carry Detroit. He was outspent. He says the money was aimed at the connection. The connection still needed work.

Current polls put Black support for him in the mid-to-high 60s. Democratic Senate preference in the same surveys sits closer to the low 80s. The gap is the softness. Soft enough that a Republican opening a field office in Detroit is worth noting. Soft enough that he is still explaining the wall in October.

Stratton v. Tracy: It Went as Expected

They met once. It went the way I expected.

Watch the full forum here: [VIDEO]

Brandis Friedman moderated the only joint appearance of the general election. One hour from the WTTW studios. Early voting was already underway. This was the last scheduled chance for voters to see Juliana Stratton and Don Tracy answer the same questions in the same room.