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News for the public, not the powerful.
Charlie Cook Drops a Bomb. Is the GOP Headed for Its Worst Night Since Watergate?
Charlie Cook founded the Cook Political Report and has been calling elections since Reagan’s 1984 landslide. He’s covered 11 midterms and says he’s never seen one like this. He told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that Republicans are about to take “a hell of a beating,” the worst environment for the GOP in a generation, maybe since Watergate. His numbers are brutal. He now expects Democrats to pick up five Senate seats and land at 52, enough to hold the majority even if John Fetterman walks away. He says 53 or 54 is possible. In the House, he calls 230 Democratic seats the realistic floor. Deep red Kansas, South Carolina, Mississippi and Nebraska are in play. He says Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall and Lindsey Graham are all in trouble. In Texas, he has James Talarico up five to seven points on Ken Paxton. What’s driving it? Rural and small-town Republicans are furious about the Iran war, the tariffs, and the price of diesel and fertilizer. They expected a Republican president not to hurt them. Now they feel betrayed. But Cook warns this isn’t a blue wave. He calls it a red undertow. Voters aren’t rewarding Democrats tonight. They’re punishing the people who broke their promises. That’s a warning to both parties.
Why Did the DOJ Hide 1,000 Election Monitors Until the Polls Opened?
This morning the Justice Department announced it’s sending roughly 1,000 election monitors into all 50 states. That’s more than triple the last midterm. In 2022 it was 289. In 2024 it was 714. Harmeet Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division calls it the biggest monitoring operation in the department’s history. And the list of where they’re going wasn’t released until Election Day morning, leaving almost no time to challenge it in court. The NAACP tried anyway. Kristen Clarke warned that federal agents at the polls intimidate voters, especially Black voters. In court Monday, a DOJ official admitted some monitors would come from agencies like the DEA. Judge Reggie Walton let it go forward, but ordered that monitors carry no guns, make no arrests, and wear no uniforms or federal insignia. He warned the DOJ lawyer that if she’d misled him about who these people are, there’d be “hell to pay for that.” Pennsylvania told its counties that monitors can’t inspect equipment or demand records, and must stay 10 feet from the door. Dhillon says this is about stopping people who “shouldn’t be voting.” Federal monitors used to protect voters from the government. Now the government’s using them to watch the voters. That’s the difference between a democracy and something else.
Voting Machines Crash Across Westchester. Can Mike Lawler’s Toss-Up Race Survive the Night?
Polls opened at six this morning in Westchester County, New York, and the ballot scanners stopped working at most polling sites. The Board of Elections says the paper ballots were printed too thick for the machines. There’s still no timeline for a fix. Poll workers are running emergency procedures. Voters fill out their paper ballots, and the ballots go into orange bags to be hand-counted tonight. Some voters at Ridgeway Elementary in White Plains told News 12 they were uneasy leaving their ballots in a bag. This matters because Westchester sits inside New York’s 17th District, where MAGA Republican Mike Lawler is fighting for his political life against Democrat Cait Conley. Emerson has Conley up 48 to 46. Westchester went for Harris over Trump 63 to 37. Attorney General Letitia James says every vote will count. Lawler and Conley both told people to stay and vote. But Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney went on X and accused Democrats of cheating, with no evidence at all. City and State’s Jeff Coltin says the paper trail is intact, so it’s serious but not catastrophic. The danger is what comes next. If Lawler loses by a point, you already know what the excuse will be. Guard those paper ballots, and count every one.
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Governor Sherrill Puts New Jersey Ports on Notice. Will Anyone Dare Unload Putin’s Diesel?
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill sent letters Monday to a dozen port and terminal operators, including Kinder Morgan, IMTT and Phillips 66, warning them to turn away any tanker carrying Russian diesel. Here’s the background. On October 9, the Trump administration cut a deal with Putin and had the Treasury issue a license suspending sanctions on Russian diesel through April 2027. Trump sold it as a way to bring down fuel prices before the election. But Congress banned Russian energy imports in 2022, and Sherrill says a Treasury license can’t override an act of Congress. Her letter warns that anyone who buys or unloads this fuel could face penalties equal to the full value of the cargo, and with a five-year statute of limitations, those penalties could land long after Trump is gone. She wrote that Trump is buying oil from a nation that bankrolls Iran, which has killed American soldiers. At least one tanker is still at sea heading for the East Coast. Democratic lawmakers have already told the big Wall Street banks and the Texas ports to preserve their records. A sitting president made a side deal with Vladimir Putin, and a governor is the one enforcing federal law. That’s what checks and balances look like when Congress won’t do its job.
Poland Rushes Forces to the Russian Border. Is Putin Testing NATO Again?
Just after midnight, Polish border guards spotted what Prime Minister Donald Tusk called troubling movement along the frontier with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. People with flashlights, moving in the dark toward the Polish line. Poland immediately sent significant forces to the area. This wasn’t out of nowhere. Last week Polish military intelligence and allied spy agencies warned that Russia might stage sabotage or even armed incursions across that border in the first half of November. Polish police were already on full readiness through November 8, with counterterrorism units sent to the provinces along that border. Tusk told his cabinet this was a Russian “provocation.” It fits a pattern. In July, a Russian cruise missile flew into Polish airspace and landed in a field. In September, a Russian military helicopter crossed over from Kaliningrad. Nineteen Russian drones breached Polish airspace last year, and Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4. Now it’s men on foot in the dark. Poland is a NATO ally. An attack on Poland is an attack on the United States. And it’s happening while the president of the United States is importing Putin’s diesel. Putin is probing for weakness. The question is whether anyone in Washington is still watching.
Crazy Alert! Trump Reveals His Escape Plan. Prime Minister of Israel?
Donald Trump called into Fox News today, on Election Day, and announced what he’ll do if Americans get sick of him. He said he’s at “99% approval rating in Israel,” and that if people ever got tired of him here, he’d move to Israel and become prime minister. He also claimed the highest approval rating of anybody in history. Let’s check that. A Reuters Ipsos poll finished Monday puts Trump’s approval at 32%, near the lowest of his entire career. And that 99% in Israel? The Jewish People Policy Institute found that just 10% of Israelis have a great deal of confidence in him on US-Israeli relations. Most Israelis do call him the friendliest president they’ve had, but that’s a long way from 99%. So on the day millions of Americans are lining up to render a verdict on his presidency, the president is floating a backup country. It’s a joke, sure. But it tells you what he thinks of the job. He’s not worried about serving you. He’s worried about where he lands.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, November 3, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
