Good morning. Want to know the biggest thing we learned yesterday? That the Indonesian (🇮🇩) and Polish (🇵🇱) flags are almost the exact same – the colored stripes are just flip-flopped. See for yourself.

In today’s edition:

• 📢 Trump is running for president again
• 🪧 California’s university workers are taking to the picket line
• 🚀 NASA’s first Artemis mission is finally underway

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.77 minutes to read.

“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

–Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

In a speech from his Mar-a-Lago estate last night, former President Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president in 2024, aiming to become the second person to ever win non-consecutive presidential terms.

This announcement also makes him the first former president to run again since 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt did it. And it comes on the heels of a midterm election where Republicans turned in the weakest performance for an out-of-power party against a first-term president since 2002.

🗳️ How did a Trump endorsement perform this cycle?… While he wasn’t officially on the ballot, the former president endorsed a total of 187 Republican congressional candidates in this month’s midterm elections. The vast majority were located in GOP strongholds.

• Of the 28 Trump-endorsed candidates in competitive races – rated by the Cook Political Report – 15 won, 11 lost, and two are still undecided.

🤔 What do the polls say?... Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by a 47-33 margin in a hypothetical Republican primary matchup, per a new poll from Morning Consult published yesterday. Before the midterms, that margin was 48-26.

• The former president trails in a hypothetical matchup versus President Biden by a margin of 48-42, per the most recent polling from YouGov (taken pre-midterms).

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with Trump’s decision to run in the 2024 presidential election?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇵🇱 A missile struck a Polish town three miles from the Ukrainian border yesterday, killing two people. The strike was confirmed by senior officials from Poland and Hungary, two members of the NATO military alliance (a group including the US and most Western nations). It wasn’t immediately clear whether the missile was Russian, though it came on the same day Moscow launched 80+ missiles across Ukraine – one of the largest single-day strikes since the war started in February. As of early this morning, preliminary reports suggest the explosion may have been linked to Ukrainian defenses attempting to knock down incoming Russian missiles.

🇮🇩 Indonesia will receive $20 billion from international lenders and major nations to help reduce its coal dependency. The agreement, reached at the ongoing G20 Summit in Bali, is the largest single climate finance transaction ever, US officials said. Half of the funding will come from Japan and several Western governments – including the US – while the other half will come from private investors like Bank of America and Citibank. As part of the deal, Indonesia agreed to generate 34% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, up from 11% currently, and pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

🇬🇧 London is no longer Europe’s largest stock market for the first time since records began in 2003. The combined market cap of companies listed on the Paris stock exchange officially overtook that of London this week, per an index compiled by Bloomberg. The gap between the two markets has been narrowing ever since the UK’s Brexit vote in 2016, and closed completely when shares of French luxury brands surged in recent days after China started easing Covid restrictions.

🤦‍♀️ It’s not hard to drop the ball when staying current with sports – there’s a lot to keep tabs on!

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Subscribe for free in one click, and stay looped-in to the world of sports with The GIST.

Some 48,000 teaching assistants, researchers, graders, and other student employees in the University of California system walked off the job this week, in America’s biggest strike of the year. It’s also the largest strike of higher-ed academic workers in US history, per union leaders – and there’s no end in sight.

🪧 A deeper dive… The UC student workers are striking for expanded health and childcare benefits, as well as a minimum salary of $54,000. Which is more than double their current average of ~$24,000.

But school officials say these demands aren’t workable. They countered with a new contract containing salary increases of 7% in the first year, and 3% in subsequent years.

• While this back-and-forth plays out, UC campuses are still open to all ~300,000 students. Some classes are already experiencing disruptions less than a month before final exams.

📈 Zoom out: If America was an umpire, we’d be hearing strike calls left and right. More and more workers across a wide range of industries are taking to the picket lines, seeking pay raises to keep up with inflation while America’s tight job market reduces their risk of being replaced, per the WSJ.

There were 180 strikes involving ~78,000 workers in the first six months of this year, up from 102 with 26,500 workers over the same period a year ago, per a strike tracker from Cornell University.

At 1:48am ET this morning, NASA successfully launched the first mission of its Artemis program, an initiative that eventually plans to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in 50 years. It's also the first test of the world's most powerful rocket, which NASA has been developing since 2011.

🚀🌕 The mission, should you choose to accept it… Artemis I’s initial aim was to launch said rocket, carrying the solar-powered spacecraft Orion, into orbit.

The two will then separate, with Orion – the craft most likely to carry live astronauts on future missions – planning to orbit around the Moon to test its systems before being remotely guided back to Earth. 

• The roughly 42-day Artemis I mission will travel ~1.3 million-miles round-trip. And if successful, it'd set the stage for a surface landing as early as 2025. Astronauts haven't set foot on the Moon since 1972.

✋ Yes, but: Though Artemis I has been launched, it's not out of the woods yet. Experts say a failed mission would imperil the entire program “because a failing, over-budget program is far harder to garner political support for,” per Axios. Artemis I's launch was initially scheduled for August, but was delayed three times due to technical issues and weather.

👩‍🚀 The big picture: At some point, things will need to get more efficient for the ten-step Artemis program – or else. The cost to launch the first mission was an estimated $4.1 billion, a figure Paul Martin, NASA’s inspector general, said “strikes us as unsustainable.”

+Bonus: Watch a livestream of this morning’s launch here.

💬 Quoted…​​ “We have a serious problem on our hands that, if not mitigated, could threaten mankind’s survival.”

• Average sperm counts have more than halved over the past five decades (-51.6%), with the pace of decline more than doubling since 2000, per new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Reproduction Update. The authors warn that sperm counts are now dangerously close to the threshold that makes conception more difficult without medical assistance.

🏘️📈 Stat of the Day: US household debt rose by $351 billion last quarter, the largest such increase since 2007. Overall, US households owe a record $16.5 trillion in debt, up 8.8% from last year.

🤯 Did You Know?... In the late ‘60s, NASA was worried that astronauts on the Apollo 10 mission – the last rehearsal before the first-ever Moon mission – might attempt an unauthorized landing. So they deliberately didn't give the lunar module enough fuel to leave the Moon’s surface, just in case.

📖 Worth a Read: What if you could diagnose diseases with a tampon? → (MIT Tech Review)

• ☝️ UK artist Banksy confirmed he created seven new murals in various locations across Ukraine in recent weeks, including the places hardest hit by Russian missile strikes.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🐦 Twitter’s $7.99/month Blue subscription service will officially relaunch on November 29, CEO Elon Musk said yesterday.
• 💊 Walmart agreed to pay $3.1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits filed against the company for its role in the opioid crisis.
• 🪙 Crypto lender BlockFi is preparing for potential bankruptcy after halting withdrawals of customer deposits and acknowledging it has “significant exposure” to bankrupt exchange FTX, sources told the WSJ; separately, the Journal also reported disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried still thinks he can raise enough money to make users whole.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏆 The 2022 Grammy nominations were announced yesterday; Beyoncé led the way with nine nods, meaning she’s now tied with husband Jay-Z for the most nominations in Grammy history (88); Queen 🐝 needs four Grammy wins to break the all-time record of 31.
• 🏈 The NFL and Skydance Media (which produced Top Gun: Maverick, Jack Ryan, Reacher, and more) are teaming up to create a new sports-related co-venture.
• ⚾ Former MLB player Yasiel Puig pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about bets he made with an illegal bookie.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🦘 Vow, an Australian cultivated meat company specializing in less common meats like kangaroo, alpaca, and quail, closed a $49.2 million Series A round.
• 🧑‍🚀 NASA astronauts completed a 7-plus-hour spacewalk yesterday to prepare the ISS for an upcoming solar array installation.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⚖️ A federal judge in Washington struck down a pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42, used by the Trump and Biden administrations to expel migrants crossing the border illegally. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🏛️🗳️ House Republicans voted to nominate Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House yesterday, though he’ll still have to be confirmed by the full chamber; the GOP remained one seat away from a guaranteed House majority as of late last night, with 12 races still uncalled. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Kason Johnson was distraught when he tragically lost grip of his special balloons on the way to his eighth birthday celebration.

Drifting quickly off into the wind, the balloons were never seen again... that is, until they landed on Todd Huyler's fence 500 miles away. 

❤️ Random act of kindness... Todd investigated the balloons wrapped around his fence, discovering a business card tied to the strings that lead him to the shop where they were purchased. 

• After some impressive digging that involved calling the shop and tracking down the order, Todd found out the balloons belonged to Kason. 
• He proceeded to send hand-made gifts created in his woodshop to Kason and his teacher, as well as $100 for his birthday🥳.

❓ Trivia: How many hearts does a typical octopus have?

🐦 True or False?... A flock of ravens is called a 'murder.’

🤔 Riddle Me This… With pointed fangs I sit and wait; with piercing force I crunch out fate; grabbing victims, proclaiming might; physically joining with a single bite. What am I?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

Start referring.👇

❓ Trivia: Three

🐦 T/F: False. A group of crows is called a murder, while a group of ravens is called an unkindness

🤔 Riddle: A stapler