Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 🗳️ Breaking down the blue wave
• 📉 Stocks tank, Nasdaq loses record $2.5T
• 🤸‍♀️ The Pilates bros have arrived

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.63-minute read (1,232 words).

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“A person sees in the world what they carry in their heart.”

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Democrats emerged from Tuesday's midterm elections with firm control of both the House and Senate after flipping Republican-held seats across the country, representing a marked shift in voting patterns nationwide.

By the numbers

Democrats are on track for the second-biggest House popular vote edge in the last 50 years, leading the national vote 55.3%–43.3% over Republicans with some votes left to count, per an NBC News analysis. That 12-point victory would mark the largest midterm margin for one party since the post-Watergate election in 1974.

In the Senate, several states elected a Democrat to the chamber for the first time in decades, including Kansas (first since 1932), Texas (1988), South Carolina (1998), and Iowa (2008).

Who drove the change?...The AP Voter Poll, a nationwide survey of 100,000+ voters conducted around the election, found several notable shifts since the 2024 presidential vote:

• Nearly 70% of voters under 30 years old backed Democratic House candidates, compared with a roughly 50-50 split in 2024.
• Republican support among Hispanic voters fell from ~40% to ~33% between 2024 and this year.
• Roughly 80% of Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, up from ~66% who supported Harris in 2024.
• Moderate voters also showed a smaller shift, with 67% backing Democrats compared to 60% in 2024.

What issues motivated voters?...The economy was the most commonly selected top issue, named by roughly four in ten voters. Nearly 90% said the cost of living was a major or crucial factor in their congressional vote, while close to two-thirds said inflation had increased because of Trump's policies.

• Dissatisfaction with the administration also played a role, with more than 40% saying their House vote was partly intended to express opposition to Trump.
• Roughly 70% voters also said Congress wasn't doing enough to check presidential power, while ~90% said government corruption was a crucial or major factor in deciding their House vote.

Still, frustration extended to both parties: both Republicans (~60%) and Democrats (~53%) are viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans.

GOP redistricting efforts also fell short

Republicans in eight states redrew congressional maps hoping to gain US House seats for their party, often relying on voting patterns from 2024. But the strategy largely failed to deliver the anticipated results.

• In Texas, Republicans hoped to gain up to five additional seats, but early results showed them holding the same number they controlled before the election.
• In Florida, several races remained too close to call, leaving Republicans' hoped-for gains uncertain.
• Meanwhile, California's Democratic-backed redistricting effort helped Democrats flip Republican-held seats.

Looking ahead…Democrats will control both chambers of Congress and their committees starting January 3, giving them the power to issue subpoenas and lead investigations into the Trump admin. However, passing legislation will still require navigating the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most non-budget-related bills, as well as President Trump’s veto power.

📊 Flash poll (long-form): What are your thoughts on the Democratic Party’s historic sweep of Congress in the 2026 midterms? The most insightful responses will be featured in tomorrow’s newsletter.

• Leave a response

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Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

🏥📈 Health insurance costs for US employers have risen more than twice as fast as wages over the last year (+6.4% vs. +3.1%, respectively), with health insurance costs increasing at their fastest rate since the mid-2000s.

⛪🗳️ Pope Leo XIV cast a mail-in ballot in the Illinois midterms, becoming the 1st sitting Pope in history to vote in a US election.

🇺🇦 Nearly one-third of Ukrainian civilians meet criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), per a recent study published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology.

👎 More US voters say they're dissatisfied with their personal financial situation (51%) than satisfied (49%) for the first time in 30+ years of NBC News polling on the question.

🏃 The New York City Marathon drew 61,529 runners from 153 countries, setting a new world record for the largest marathon ever for the third straight year.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉 US stocks fall sharply across the board, with all three major indexes posting their worst one-day performances since April 2025 (S&P: -4.4% | Nasdaq: -5.5% | Dow: -3.4%); Nasdaq loses a collective ~$2.5 trillion in market cap—including $1+ trillion from the ‘Magnificent 7’ alone—for its worst daily mark in history, as the index enters correction territory.
• 🧾 IRS announces new higher federal income tax brackets for 2027 to account for inflation; next year’s standard deduction is raised to $16,600 for singles and $33,200 for married couples filing together.
• 🍔 Wendy’s rejects unsolicited $1.4 billion take-private offer led by activist investor ​Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management, and also adopts “poison-pill” plan to prevent a takeover by one of its largest shareholders.

SPORTS, MEDIA, & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚖️ Russell Brand found guilty in a London court of raping a woman and sexually assaulting three more between 2004-09; the 51-y.o. comedian/actor was also acquitted of two additional rape charges and attempted indecent assault; Brand faces potential jail time, with sentencing set for Monday.
• 🚫🏌️ LIV Golf to officially wind down operations after PE firm BC Partners abandons plans to revive the upstart golf league; LIV’s initial backers, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, spent $5+ billion over five years before pulling funding this year.
• 🏀 Victor Wembanyama drops 52 points, 24 rebounds, and 8 blocks in San Antonio Spurs’ 111-110 win over Dallas Mavericks; the Spurs superstar is the third NBA player to reach the 50-20-5 threshold, joining Wilt Chamberlain and Bob McAdoo.

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SCIENCE, SPACE, & EMERGING TECH

• ⚛️ Physicists pick up signals from the ‘zeptoverse’—the smallest scale of nature ever explored, at 100 billion times smaller than an atom—using the Large Hadron Collider.
• 🪐🌋 European Mars orbiter detects signs that the red planet may still have spots of volcanic activity deep beneath its surface
• 🔭 Particle-detecting telescope confirms a core principle of Einstein's relativity after scientists sunk the telescope more than a mile beneath the sea off the coast of France.

US, WORLD, & POLITICS

• ⚖️ California Gov. Gavin Newsom to commute the sentences of all 548 people sentenced to death in California, declaring that “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values”; the state hasn’t put a prisoner to death since 2006.
• 🗳️ Nithya Raman, an LA City Council member and democratic socialist, will become the next mayor of Los Angeles after defeating incumbent Democrat Karen Bass.
• 🇵🇾 Paraguayan President Santiago Peña ‌resigns following the collapse of digital bank ueno, which triggered a political and financial crisis that left ~3 million customers unable to access their bank accounts (in a country of ~6.5 million); Peña has faced intense scrutiny over past ties to ueno’s former owner.

☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 2026 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest, which drew 26,000+ submissions from 46 countries. The top prize went to Imre Potyó for his photo of an electric-blue pin mold growing on bat guano as a colony hibernates behind it (top left).

🤔 Did you know? The Alaska Permanent Fund, a sovereign wealth fund established in 1976, pays every single resident in the state an annual amount ranging from ~$800 to ~$3,300, with funds coming from local oil and mining revenues.

📰 Worth a read: Is flying private less safe? How the rules differ from commercial airlines.

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• The Pilates bros have arrived
• A hidden switch that could calm your anxiety
• Happiest couples do 1 thing differently after time apart

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How well did you pay attention this week? Find out here.

1. A football team has won 8 of its 12 games. What is its winning percentage?
2. A movie theater sells adult tickets for $14 and kid tickets for $9. If a family buys 6 tickets for a total of $69, how many adult tickets did they purchase?
3. A bacteria population doubles every 3 hours. If there are 200 bacteria cells at noon, how many will there be at 9:00 PM?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

🥰 The Kindness Mob is a movement with 500,000+ members aimed at making the internet a little nicer, one kind comment at a time. The “mob” combats online hate by turning negative comment sections into places of positivity and support.

1. 66.7%, or 0.667
2. 3 adult, 3 kid
3. 1,600 bacteria cells

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