◼ President Donald Trump and the Republican Party suffered a catastrophic defeat in the midterm elections. Democrats handily took control of both chambers of Congress and won victories in deep-red states. Republicans lost not only in Maine and Michigan, which are tough even in good years for the GOP, but also in Kansas, South Carolina, and Texas: states that Trump won by 16, 18, and 24 points, respectively, just two years ago. After eleven years of Trump’s dominating the political conversation, public exhaustion has set in. Trump’s approval was at just 38 percent among the electorate that voted in the midterms, according to the Fox News voter poll. That poll also found that just 16 percent voted in part to express support for Trump, while 43 percent said that they voted to express opposition. Democrats won a sufficiently sizable majority to block the president’s judicial nominees for the next two years. If they are able to build on this in 2028 by establishing unified control of Washington, they will have free rein to implement a radical agenda. The next presidential race will soon begin, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

◼ Trump did himself and his party no favors. Though he closed the border and expanded the signature tax cuts from his first term, he mitigated these wins with unforced errors. Having been elected to a second term in large part because of frustration with the cost of living, he decided to pursue an erratic and unconstitutional tariff policy that made consumer goods more expensive. After “Liberation Day,” the president’s approval rating dropped and never recovered. His decision to launch the war in Iran without seeking congressional approval or making a sustained case to the American people compounded the damage: Unpopular in itself, it also drove up the price of fuel and fertilizer. Nearly three-quarters of the electorate said that the Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their vote, and Democrats won those voters by 27 points. Disgust at corruption was nearly unanimous: 90 percent called it a crucial or major factor, and they opted for Democrats by 16 points. Still, Democrats did not enjoy an ideological victory. Voters said they trusted Republicans slightly more on taxes and immigration. Just 25 percent of the electorate defined themselves as liberal, while 34 percent identified as conservative and 41 percent described themselves as moderate. Meanwhile, less than a third of the electorate said they had a favorable view of socialism, with just 9 percent having a strongly favorable view. If Republicans hope to rehabilitate their reputation for sound economic stewardship, they should recommit to the free-market principles that deliver prosperity.

◼ “Candidate quality matters,” said one White House official after the disaster, “and President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.” That’s half-right. Trump and his movement drove several entrenched incumbents out of office, especially in the Senate, replacing them with candidates who ranged from the lackluster (Michael Whatley and Mike Collins) to the scandal-tarred (Ken Paxton). The president recruited novice candidate Darline Graham, who lost South Carolina. The blue wave exposed incumbents unable to handle a contested race, such as Roger Marshall and Cindy Hyde-Smith. State-level candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Bo French made disastrous unforced errors. Across the map, such candidates experienced worse losses than those who were hardworking, likeable, honest, and competent. In a year as bad as this, even battle-tested veterans such as Greg Abbott and Susan Collins went down—but terrible candidates running terrible campaigns amplified the carnage.

◼ Down the ballot, citizens of several states voted directly on measures affecting their pocketbooks and broader prosperity. This produced several conservative wins. Californians rejected a confiscatory wealth tax pushed by a hungry labor union that had already encouraged many billionaires to flee the state. The proposition’s defeat should mitigate the damage. (At the same time, however, a measure for permitting reform—which California desperately needs to construct more housing and infrastructure—is on track to fail.) Voters in Iowa and North Carolina opted for constitutional limits on income taxes. Residents also revolted over rising property taxes in five Southern states, though some of the approved restrictions were better than others. North Carolina adopted a levy limit on total revenue, while Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia expanded carve-outs for certain homeowners and industries. That may ultimately shift the burden of local government onto others. Altogether, voters appear less favorable toward costly government than jubilant Democrats may believe.

◼ Voters in Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia decided abortion-related ballot measures, and unborn children lost in three of those contests. The good news is that Idaho voters rejected a proposal to establish a right to an abortion until fetal viability in the state’s constitution. But voters in Nevada and Virginia approved ballot initiatives that enshrined the right to abortion in their states’ constitutions. In both states, deceptive language concealed a lack of effective restrictions on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. And pro-lifers in Missouri failed to pass Amendment 3, which would have reversed the state constitutional right to an abortion passed just two years ago. Dobbs opened the door to pro-life democratic action. But it is going to be a long, hard slog.

Learn more and volunteer at PeopleofHope.us. 

◼ On Election Day, Trump suddenly announced that the U.S. will wind down the aid it provides to Israel. So did Vice President JD Vance, who said after the election results that America must “change” its relationship with Israel. That will be a hard sell among Republicans: A pre-election poll from ABC News found that nearly two-thirds of them think that the U.S.-Israel relationship is either “about right” or “not strong enough.” After the Camp David Accords, the U.S. began giving Israel aid—now running at roughly $3.8 billion annually—that it spends buying arms from the U.S. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed commended Trump’s announcement. The aid may no longer be necessary. Anyone who hoped that ending it will calm the debate over U.S. policy toward Israel is likely to be disappointed.

◼ The Federal Reserve voted to leave interest rates alone after increasing them by a quarter-point in September. There is no good reason for this pause. The Fed acknowledged that elevated inflation remains pervasive, extending far beyond energy prices. On the other side of the ledger, unemployment is low, and employment is rising in line with the labor force. The Fed’s governing committee seems to agree that additional rate hikes are necessary to bring inflation below target and that they can happen without harming economic growth. Why skip a month and allow prices to rise more than necessary? Chairman Kevin Warsh insists that the central bank is responsible for restoring price stability. He and his colleagues should act accordingly—and swiftly.

◼ A Halloween fright ran through the crypto industry when hackers linked to North Korea stole $6.3 billion from Binance, the world’s largest digital asset exchange. It is the greatest theft in history by asset value. The heist seemed to expose the risk of holding money in digital tokens: The hackers broke into the company’s digital wallets and transferred most of the funds elsewhere within 20 minutes. After the infamous failure of FTX, a crypto exchange run by the now-incarcerated Sam Bankman-Fried, it looked as if Binance could be next to crumble. Yet the company shielded users from losses with its own capital. Binance has also successfully frozen roughly $3 billion in stolen coins, though it has not yet recovered them, and is working with investigators to track down the rest. If crypto firms want to avoid harsh regulation under new Democratic congressional majorities, they had better get their house in order before the next break-in.

◼ In the wake of the recent federal raid on the Washington, D.C., home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, new facts have emerged about her dubious marital history and the murky circumstances of her arrival in the United States. The New York Times reported that, during the Obama administration, federal agents found evidence that Omar’s first husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was her brother. After eight years of marriage to Elmi, Omar divorced him and legally married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi. Even if Omar did indeed marry her brother, the statute of limitations long expired on any fraud related to the sham: Federal investigators stood down in the Obama years in part because this presented an insuperable obstacle to a prosecution. The real significance of the alleged marriage to the brother would be the implication that Omar’s true name is Elmi; a recent DOJ filing referred to her as “Congresswoman Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” One theory about her family history has been that they were Elmis, but her father and Ilhan took on the name Omar to get into the United States. This would mean the basis of their status in the United States was a falsehood. There is much still to learn, and we are skeptical that the passage of time has left readily prosecutable offenses. But everyone should want to know the truth of this matter.

◼ Colorado’s hostility to orthodox Christianity is once again an issue before the Supreme Court, this time in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. The case involves a Colorado “universal pre-K” system that gives parents vouchers to use at public, private, and religious schools. To participate, schools must be open to enrolling all students. Catholic schools have been excluded because they treat four-year-olds by their biological sex and ask parents to affirm that they follow the church’s teachings on sex. The state says this violates nondiscrimination laws concerning same-sex couples. At argument, the justices were skeptical not only of Colorado’s motives in provoking the confrontation but also of the survival of its own 36-year-old precedent in Employment Division v. Smith, under which the government can impinge on religiously motivated behavior so long as its rules are facially neutral. The Smith decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, has long been controversial. It provoked once-bipartisan federal and state laws expanding religious liberty. If the Court doesn’t overturn it, it seems likely to be further restricted in its reach.

◼ King Charles III spoke this week at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda. He spoke about Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, which, he said, filled him with “horror” and “profound personal sorrow.” Charles did not offer a direct apology for past evils, and instead praised the Royal Navy’s pioneering, vital, and sometimes dangerous role in the long fight against the international slave trade after Britain prohibited it in 1807. The owning of chattel slaves, long barred from Britain itself, was banned throughout its empire in a process that began in 1833. For Britain to formally apologize for slavery, or to offer some form of payment, as its Labour government seems set to do, would be self-indulgent and legally nonsensical.

◼ Beloved star of stage and screen Patrick Stewart died after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. Born in West Yorkshire, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966. Like so many other talented British stage actors with receding hairlines, he might have spent his career in obscurity had he not caught the eye of the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1986. He stepped into the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise with such Shakespearean command, warmth, and intelligence that he became an emblem of the exploratory optimism of the late Eighties and early Nineties. A second franchise-anchoring performance came later, with his role as Professor X in the X-Men movies. But Stewart will be warmly remembered by an entire generation of science-fiction lovers for representing, as Picard, the best and most eloquent of humanity in the 24th century. Dead at 86. R.I.P.