The Washington Post - 04.11.2026 — 2026-11-05

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[Voters swing to Democrats] Party is poised to take power on Capitol Hill with an eagerness to thwart Trump's agenda

Democrats

51 34 not up for election

SENATE

50

As of Nov. 4, 12:00 AM

Two sitting independent senators caucus with Democrats.

Republicans

31 not up for election 39

Democrats

181

As of Nov. 4, 12:00 AM

U.S. HOUSE

Previous balance

Republicans

108

Janeese Lewis George wins D.C. mayor's race

BY MEAGAN FLYNN

Janeese Lewis George, the D.C. Council member and democratic socialist who rallied voters around pledges to bring down soaring costs of living, solidified her expected victory Tuesday in D.C.'s mayoral race, the Associated Press projected.

Lewis George will become the District's eighth elected mayor of the home rule era, succeeding Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who opted not to seek reelection after nearly 12 years in office.

At an election night party in Ward 8, Lewis George described her victory as a “declaration that working people deserve a government that works as hard as they do.”

“Thank you for trusting this daughter of the District to lead us,” the native Washingtonian, clad in her signature purple, told the crowd. “It’s a new day for D.C.”

With her victory, the nation's capital is joining major cities like New York and Seattle in electing a democratic socialist as mayor for the first time, fueling momentum for the movement as its candidates, including Lewis George, seize on affordability issues.

Lewis George, 38, is expected to chart a more liberal course compared to Bowser, a centrist, as she aims to deliver major campaign promises such as universal affordable child care and the construction of 72,000 housing units. But Lewis George will take office in early January with a massive budget deficit, and, unlike mayors in Seattle or New York, must contend with a president blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue who can wield unique power over the District.

She has promised a more aggressive approach toward President Donald Trump compared to Bowser, including pledging to sever any coordination between local police and federal immigration authorities on her first day. Her ability to defend against potential federal intervention in city affairs could also depend on who wins control of Congress in the midterm elections; a Republican majority for the past two years has emboldened Trump, SEE MAYOR ON A8

Janeese Lewis George, shown Tuesday, will become D.C.'s first democratic socialist leader.

PETE KIEHART/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

White powder: Man charged in mailings threatened the DSA. A5

Georgia Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms hugs a family member Tuesday in Atlanta.

MEGAN VARNER/GETTY IMAGES

Photos: Scenes from Election day around the nation. A10

Prediction markets: Nearly \$1.9 billion traded on election. A9

Leftward lurch extends across demographics and geographies

BY ISAAC ARNSDORF

The American voter dealt President Donald Trump a resounding rebuke in Tuesday's midterms as Republican support cratered and Democrats won in places they hadn't carried in decades.

Democrats were on track to take back control of the House. They won both the Senate and governor's elections in Texas — their first statewide victories there since 1994 — as well as Senate elections in both North and South Carolina and Ohio, the Georgia governorship for the first time since 1998 and the Ohio governorship for the first time since 2010.

Among their early House victories were a Kentucky district that voted for Trump by 15 points and two Florida seats that Republicans redrew to shift right.

The head of the House GOP's campaign arm trailed in his own race with 95 percent of the vote counted.

The leftward swing extended across demographics and geographies. Compared with 2024, the exit poll conducted for the Associated Press and the major television networks showed double-digit swings toward the Democrats among Latinos, Catholic voters and voters younger than 30.

Republicans also suffered from a collapse in turnout as fewer of their supporters showed up on Election Day than four years ago, according to preliminary data.

More than 4 out of 10 voters called their family situation worse than two years ago, versus 2 in 10 who said it was better, according to the TV networks' preliminary exit poll. About three-quarters of voters said they were dissatisfied with the direction of the country, including almost 4 in 10 who called themselves angry.

Democrats were poised to take power on Capitol Hill eager to thwart Trump's agenda and investigate scandals throughout his administration.

“Democrats are on the verge of getting this thing done, taking back control of the House of Representatives and delivering the

SEE MIDTERMS ON AS

Bottoms wins Ga. governor's race, ending decades of GOP dominance

BY LIZ GOODWIN

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Democratic mayor of Atlanta, defeated billionaire Rick Jackson, a Republican, in the governor's race in Georgia in a historic upset that ends a GOP trifecta in the state.

She is the first Democrat to win a governor's race in the formerly ruby-red state in nearly 30 years and will be the first Black person to serve in the role. She will also become the first Black female governor of any state.

“Georgia, we sent a message loud and clear: that we want a leader who will put Georgia first and will stand up to all the chaos coming out of Washington D.C.,” she said at her Atlanta victory night party.

Bottoms triumphed despite the stunning financial edge held by Jackson, who poured more than \$100 million of his fortune into his campaign. Jackson's campaign had spent or reserved more than \$200 million in advertising in the general election, compared with the Bottoms campaign's roughly \$1 million commitment, according to October data from the ad-tracking platform AdImpact.

But Bottoms tied Jackson to President Donald Trump, who carried Georgia in 2024 by more than two percentage points but whose popularity among voters has since sharply declined. Jackson said during his primary campaign that he would be Trump's "favorite governor" if elected and was heard on a recording published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution saying he believed the National Guard would be at the polls in November. But as the race moved toward the general election, Jackson said he would model himself after outgoing governor Brian Kemp (R), who has clashed with Trump,

SEE GEORGIA ON A8

DOJ issues target letters in Alaska inquiry

BY PERRY STEIN,

PATRICK MARLEY

AND JEREMY ROEBUCK

The Justice Department has issued more than 20 target and preservation letters in connection with the fast-moving probe into how Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan Jr. came to run against the similarly named Republican incumbent in Alaska, according to a person familiar with the probe, who, like some others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Among the recipients of the target letters: Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic voting rights and election lawyer, and another attorney at his firm, the person familiar with the probe said. The firm, the Elias Law Group, represents the campaign of Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Peltola.

In a statement, Elias did not confirm or deny receiving a target letter.

"No one should be surprised that President Trump's Department of Justice is targeting me and my law firm on Election

Day. This administration has repeatedly weaponized the DOJ against the President's political enemies despite zero evidence of wrongdoing, and we are the latest targets," Elias said in the statement.

Federal prosecutors are exploring the possibility of civil rights charges alleging that Democrats recruited Dan J. Sullivan, who appears on the ballot without a party affiliation, to purposely confuse voters and siphon votes away from Sen. Dan Sullivan, tipping the election to

SEE ALASKA ON A18

In D.C., the biggest fight is over duck livers

BY LIAM SCOTT

AND DANA HEDGPETH supporting the ban.

As voters across the United States decided the fate of Congress on Tuesday, voters in the District faced a decision on duck livers.

Instead of high-stakes votes that could determine the trajectory of the country, D.C. residents weighed a citywide ban on foie gras, the French delicacy with a fancy name and a recipe some argue amounts to bird torture. Early election results Tuesday night showed voters overwhelmingly

The group Pro-Animal DC and other backers of the ban say it's cruel to force-feed ducks and geese with a tube down the esophagus to enlarge their livers before slaughter. Foie gras fans say the dish is delicious and no more fraught than other meats people put on their plates.

On Tuesday morning in the Wesley Heights neighborhood, where houses sell for millions of dollars, several residents said they opposed the ban, known as Initiative 86. The number is restaurant slang for when an item is out of stock.

“I love to eat foie gras,” said attorney Nick Schandlbauer. “I don’t like initiatives that interfere with hundreds of years of history and artisanal food-making.”

Outside Horace Mann Elementary School, Todd Boulanger, a 55-year-old consultant, said he also voted against the initiative. "I don't think you should restrict restaurants," he said. "It's a delicacy."

Boulanger said he thought it was "weird" that foie gras was on SEE FOIE GRAS ON A4

New York reports first measles death in years

A measles alert sign hangs outside the entrance to the Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York, in 2025.

SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS

BY RACHEL ROUBEIN

AND LENA H. SUN

A child in New York's Lewis County has died after contracting measles, the first such death in the state in more than 30 years, local health officials reported Monday.

"We are deeply saddened by the death of a child in Lewis County associated with the ongoing measles outbreak," New York and Lewis County health officials said in a joint statement. "We extend our heartfelt condolences to the child's family and loved ones and ask that their privacy be respected during this difficult time."

The statement did not provide additional details of the case, including the child's age or vaccination status. The health department does not plan to release any additional details, according to state health department spokeswoman Marissa Crary, citing an effort to protect the privacy of the family.

"Our hearts go out to the family mourning this tragic loss," said Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Sciences. She said New York had formally requested assistance from the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention, and CDC has deployed epidemiologists and other experts to work alongside state health officials on the ground, providing surveillance, data analysis, strategic planning, and other outbreak response support. She said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CDC Director Erica Schwartz "continue to make clear that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles."

Last month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared a state disaster emergency in response to the growing number of measles cases across rural areas as well as in neighboring states. As of Oct. 24, there have been 178 total cases in the state this year, including eight in New York City, according to the state health department.

The reporting of the measles-associated death in a rural county in the northern part of New York comes as the United States has reported the most measles cases in any year since 1991, surpassing last year's total and reaching the highest level in 35 years with months of 2026 left to go.

In late August, Pennsylvania state health officials reported the first measles-associated deaths in the United States this year. Since then, they have recorded five such deaths. Pennsylvania has reported 1,433 confirmed cases, according to the latest figures reported Monday.

The deaths in Pennsylvania sparked a bitter political feud between Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Kennedy.

Shapiro accused Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, of sowing confusion about immunizations and contributing to the spread of a highly contagious disease the United States eliminated more than 25 years ago. Kennedy argued that the governor, who is widely expected to run for president, was capitalizing on the moment for political gain.

The New York death adds to an unresolved discrepancy over the national death toll. The CDC currently lists three measles deaths in 2026, while Pennsylvania has confirmed five. The agency says it is working with state epidemiologists to develop a standardized definition for reporting deaths caused by measles.

After Pennsylvania announced its first deaths, the CDC excluded those deaths from its weekly measles dashboard, a decision that came from the new director, Erica Schwartz, The Washington Post previously reported. The highly unusual decision departed from the agency's typical practices of including such data after state health departments make a determination.

The outbreaks come as falling vaccination rates have left growing pockets of children and adults susceptible to a disease that was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97 percent effective at preventing measles.

The virus is among the world's most contagious pathogens and can linger in the air for as long as two hours after an infected person has left a room.

Pardoned Jan. 6 defendant accused of threatening D.C. judges

A pro-Trump mob breaches the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

JOHN MINCHILLO/AP

Man previously charged with threatening former House speaker

BY PERRY STEIN

A Georgia man who brought firearms to Washington and threatened former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was arrested again in recent days and accused of threatening federal judges, according to court documents.

Cleveland Grover Meredith, Jr. — one of more than a thousand Jan. 6 defendants who received a pardon from President Donald Trump last year — allegedly wrote on Facebook in April “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!”

The message was an apparent reference to the D.C. federal judges who oversaw the cases of the people who participated in the attack.

Meredith, who is in his 50s, was arrested on Monday, according to court records filed in the Northern District of Georgia. A public defender assigned to represent Meredith did not immediately return a request for comment.

Meredith is the latest Jan. 6 defendant accused of committing a crime since being pardoned. A December 2025 report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, an advocacy group, found that at least a dozen Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with crimes since Trump pardoned them in January 2025. More faced criminal accusations in the year following the pardon, according to an update from the

group.

The latest accusations against Meredith were laid out in an affidavit signed by an FBI agent. The court documents were first reported by the online news site Court Watch.

While much threatening language is protected by the First

Amendment, federal officials contend Meredith's alleged Facebook post constitutes what is known as a true threat, in part because he understood how such language would be received because he had previously been charged with threatening Pelosi.

Meredith's "history of violent online rhetoric indicates that he knowingly sent the message on April 23, 2026, and did so for either: (i) the purpose of issuing a threat, (ii) with knowledge that his post would be viewed as a threat, or (iii) while consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his post would be viewed as a threat," the affidavit reads.

Meredith, who was a devoted follower of the radical QA-non ideology, drove toward the nation's capital from Colorado on Jan. 6, 2021, with a cache of guns, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines. On that drive, court records show, he repeatedly texted his family and friends ominous sentiments. One message said he was “gonna collect a ... ton of Traitors heads.”

When a family member responded that Trump wanted him to go home, Meredith strongly disagreed and said: "he wants HEADS and I'm gonna deliver." Meredith didn't arrive in Washington until late that night, but the next day he informed his family that he was considering shooting Pelosi, twice texting that he was considering "putting a bullet in her noggin on live TV," according to court documents.

He pleaded guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi and was sentenced to 28 months in prison.

Cleveland was since the subject of a New Yorker profile that examined how, since being pardoned, he sought reparations from the “deep state” and his family.

Parts of Florida see half a year's worth of rain in 36 hours

BEN NOLL/THE WASHINGTON POST; NOAA/PRISM/OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Months' worth of rain fell in just 36 hours across parts of Florida from Sunday into Monday.

State officials scramble to move polling sites affected by the extreme weather

BY BEN NOLL AND MATTHEW CAPPUCCI

About half a year's worth of rain — up to 28 inches — fell along portions of Florida's Space Coast in just a day and a half, from Sunday afternoon to Monday evening, according to radar estimates.

"I've NEVER seen anything like this," wrote Tampa-based meteorologist Jeff Berardelli about the event, which was so rare that it had a recurrence interval of more than 1-in-1,000 years in some areas — and it could be a sign of what's to come as the state braces for an unusually active winter thanks to El Niño.

Florida officials also scrambled Tuesday morning to move more than 20 polling places that had been impacted by the extreme weather, with the Florida secretary of state's office publishing a list of locations it said would be moved to “ensure that residents in those areas in affected counties still have the ability to vote.”

The moved sites are spread across Brevard, Broward, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.

On Monday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared a state of emergency for seven counties in the eastern and central part of the state that were hit hardest by the multiday deluge.

These counties, including Brevard, DeSoto, Hardee, Highlands, Indian River, Martin and St. Lucie, received around 20 to 50 percent of their annual average rainfall from Sunday afternoon to Monday evening.

The heaviest rain occurred in a stretch from Palm Bay to Grant-Valkaria in Brevard County, where homes, vehicles and roads were flooded.

A weather station in Sebastian, Florida, tallied 7.13 inches in just three hours' time Monday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Valkaria, east of Palm Bay and southeast of Melbourne, logged 11.32 inches between 6 and 10 a.m.

The historic deluge was triggered by a relatively weak atmospheric disturbance that stretched and stalled over the region from Sunday into Monday.

To the north of this system, wind flows around a strong area of high pressure — the same one responsible for the Mid-Atlantic's lengthy dry stretch — helped to steer tropical moisture toward Florida from record-warm ocean waters east of the Bahamas.

Weak winds through the middle atmosphere caused the storms to move slowly, in many cases moving repeatedly over the same areas.

The fully saturated atmosphere also lead to higher precipitation efficiency — and therefore higher rainfall rates. Generally, part of a raindrop evaporates as it falls. But when the atmosphere is particularly humid, there's no dry air to erode the drop, and more of the water makes it to the ground.

Rainfall rates exceeded 4 inches per hour at times.

Forecasts initially outlined a marginal or slight risk of flash flooding and excessive rainfall — but the idea of feet of rain falling came without warning.

Even just 15 miles away, barely 2 inches of rain fell. The National Weather Service had issued a flash flood emergency for near/east of Bogalusa, Mississippi.

In both episodes, storms also harnessed higher levels of atmospheric moisture that have been boosted by a record El Niño and a warming climate.

Earth's atmosphere recently had its most waterlogged month on record during August, followed by another monthly record in September.

"It's going to be a long winter in Florida," wrote Paul Roundy, an atmospheric science professor at the State University of New York at Albany.

Florida's dry season runs from October through May, but amid a particularly potent El Niño, midrange forecast scenarios show around two feet of total rainfall from this year into next, and the most extreme scenarios indicate up to around three feet

— about as much precipitation as D.C. receives in a typical year.

During El Niño winters, both tornado and flash flood activity increase in the Southeast, and especially Florida. El Niño, which begins as a warming of water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific, reshuffles the positions of key weather systems across North America. That slings the subtropical jet stream across the southern U.S.; like a conveyor belt of winds and moisture, it pumps humidity into Florida, while simultaneously providing wind shear (changing winds with height) to help generate rotating thunderstorms.

The closest modern El Niño precedent is the winter of 1997-98, when Florida's deadliest tornado outbreak struck the Orlando area in February 1998. From November 1997 to March 1998, almost 40 inches of rain fell in Tampa.

According to data from the Florida Department of Health, the state's population has grown from about 15 million to over 23 million between 1998 and 2024 — an increase of about 50 percent.

That means more people may be exposed to potentially hazardous weather in the months ahead, including snowbirds who head south for Florida's typically pleasant winter climate.

[THE NATION] Supreme Court seems poised to side with Catholic preschools

A prayer corner in a preschool classroom of St. Mary Catholic Parish on Oct. 28, 2026, in Littleton, Colorado. The school denies enrollment to children of same-sex parents.

PHOTOS BY CHET STRANGE/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

CHET STRANGE/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that religious rights can exempt people from nondiscrimination mandates.

Case tackles clash of religious rights and antidiscrimination rules

BY JULIAN MARK

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed inclined to rule in favor of a Catholic school that says it has been unfairly excluded from Colorado's universal pre-K program because it denies enrollment to children of same-sex parents — a policy it argues is protected by the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.

The case is the latest clash involving the question of whether the Constitution allows Catholic institutions to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people because of church teachings.

Some of the court's conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, appeared receptive to the argument that the state's antidiscrimination requirements unfairly exclude families with children at St. Mary Catholic Parish and other preschools in the Denver Archdiocese. The program reimburses parents the cost of 15 hours per week of preschool for all 4-year-olds. As of December, that adds up to about \$6,300 per child.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh noted that same-sex parents have plenty of options outside of the archdiocese's preschools, which require parents to sign a statement of “community beliefs” declaring that same-sex marriage is immoral. He suggested Colorado could avoid a “clash of rights” by exempting archdiocese schools from state antidiscrimination requirements.

"Why not seek the win-win?" he asked Colorado's attorney. "There's a clash of rights, obviously — the free-exercise right on the one hand, and same-sex marriage right … on the other, but there are 2,000 schools. There are only 34 Catholic schools."

Much of the skepticism toward St. Mary's argument came from the court's liberals, who questioned whether the school should get special treatment in the face of antidiscrimination laws that apply to every other school that receives the funding.

Justice Elena Kagan said St. Mary's attorneys were asking the justices to go “far beyond” the Supreme Court's recent precedents that say the state cannot deny generally available funding to religious schools.

"It's a case where you're saying ... because of religious faith, we need a special exemption — an accommodation, a way of being treated differently with respect to that neutral antidiscrimination principle," Kagan said.

St. Mary is among the 34 preschools in the Denver archdiocese that cannot participate in the state's universal pre-K program because they require that parents sign a statement of "Community Beliefs and Commitments," in which they agree to accept church teachings "increasingly at odds with" secular culture. That includes agreeing that abortion and same-sex marriage are immoral.

The agreements are meant to ensure families who attend are aligned with the preschool's Catholic teachings. But it also means the children of gay parents are effectively not allowed to attend. That goes against the state's mandate that schools cannot discriminate on the basis of race, income level and other protected characteristics such as sexual orientation and gender identity.

The state says schools in the archdiocese would otherwise be able to participate because the program does not exclude schools based on religious affiliation.

“Colorado welcomes religious preschools,” said Helen Norton, a deputy solicitor general for Colorado. “The only thing Colorado asks is that they comply with the same conditions that every publicly funded preschool must meet, religious and secular

alike."

But attorneys for St. Mary say that the nondiscrimination mandate is a burden on its right to free exercise of religion and that it should receive an exception. The case was filed by the school and a couple who say they want to use the benefit at St. Mary.

"This is not a zero-sum game," said Nicholas Reaves, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious legal nonprofit representing St. Mary.

He argued that granting the exception would not deprive any parent of the opportunity to send their child to preschool. Instead, he argued, that would add pre-K seats.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that religious rights can exempt individuals from nondiscrimination mandates.

In 2018, the court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Five years later, the justices found that a web designer could refuse to make wedding sites for gay couples on religious and free-expression grounds.

And in decisions over the past decade, the court has also permitted public funds to flow to religious schools. Most recently, in 2022, the court found unconstitutional Maine's exclusion of religious schools from a tuition assistance program. Because the program allowed parents to use the benefit for secular private schools, it had discriminated against religious schools, the court reasoned in the 6-3 ruling along ideological lines.

Those rulings are part of a winning streak by religious organizations at the Supreme Court. Since 2020, the court has not ruled against a religious group on constitutional free-exercise grounds, according to an analysis that a group of scholars conducted for The Washington Post.

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said St. Mary is asking the court to do something “new and different” from those past cases. She worried that allowing St. Mary to receive an exemption could open the door to other forms of discrimination.

She added: “There’s no principled basis, I think, to distinguish between an entity that says my religious faith says my children can’t go to school with the children of gay people from a religious entity that says my religion says my children can’t go to school with the children of Black people.”

How El Niño could threaten your favorite seafood dish for years to come

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/HEARST NEWSPAPERS/GETTY IMAGES

A Dungeness crab harvest at docks in San Francisco in 2021.

Fishermen are scrambling as concern grows about the impact on marine life

BY ERIC NIILER

Squid are shifting to cooler water, young salmon are struggling to find food sources, and concern is growing for Oregon's \$100 million Dungeness crab harvest as a powerful El Niño weather pattern heats up coastal ocean temperatures from California to the Pacific Northwest. Scientists expect the phenomenon to last for several months, leaving fishermen such as Phil Fogle scrambling.

Fogle, who owns two squid fishing boats based in the port of Anacortes, in Washington state, normally would keep fishing until foul weather sets in — his boats operate from Eureka, California, to Kodiak, Alaska. Instead, Fogle tied up his boats last week and furloughed his seven employees. The squid that normally inhabit coastal water have fled offshore for colder, deeper water that are harder to reach for smaller boats.

“Those little buggers are really affected by water temperature,” Fogle said about the squid. “It has been devastating to us.”

He said he's losing about \$50,000 a month.

Fogle said he's waiting for the El Niño conditions to pass and hoping to get on the water again early next year.

This year's El Niño, the strongest on record, has led temperatures off the Pacific Northwest coast to jump 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from 1991 to 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño's warmth has arrived on top of an existing marine heat wave in the Gulf of Alaska, according to Steven

Bograd, senior climatologist at NOAA.

And that has had ripple effects for marine life. A warmer ocean contains fewer nutrients essential for plankton, copepods and microscopic marine life that support the marine ecosystem, according to Jessica Miller, professor of fisheries, and wildlife, and conservation sciences at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

In addition to driving squid elsewhere, young salmon that migrate from their birthplaces in upstream coastal rivers to the Pacific Ocean also are at risk during a big El Niño event such as this one.

“Salmon coming in out of the Columbia [River] don’t survive as well,” Miller said. “There’s not as much high-quality, high-lipid food for them, which then subsequently leads to reduced returns two and three years later.”

Commercial fishermen have experienced sudden shifts in ocean water temperature before, most recently the 2014 "warm blob" that developed in the northern Pacific that drove temperatures up by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit for two years. That occurred at the same time as a weak El Niño arrived further south. The two events created a massive algal bloom that led to die-offs of seabirds, marine mammals and commercial fish species.

The warm ocean temperatures along the West Coast are being driven by a shift in wind patterns, rather than warm water being pushed up from the equator, according to Kristopher Karnauskas, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Diners hoping for succulent crab legs may be surprised this season, according to Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, based in Astoria, Oregon.

“Everybody wants crab for Christmas,” Steele said. “We want the season to open on December 1, but that’s quite challenging during El Niño years, and it can be a huge impact to not get that season open before the holidays.”

Another concern is how the record El Niño may affect recruitment, or the number of larval fish and crustaceans that survive from one year to the next and grow into adults.

Gary Ripka, a fisherman from Newport, Oregon, is worried the warm water will hurt the Dunge-ness crab harvest for years to come.

"The larvae are suspended in the water, but if that water's too warm, the larvae don't survive," said Ripka, who owns two crab boats. "We can see really bad recruitment in the next two or three years."

Investigators examine the site where a Lear jet crashed Sunday in Greenacres, Florida. All nine people aboard were killed.

GREG LOVETT/USA TODAY/REUTERS

Parts of jet's tail found miles from Florida crash site

Wreckage indicates the plane began to break apart in flight

BY ALEX DELUCA

Pieces of a private plane that went down in a South Florida neighborhood on Sunday, killing all nine people aboard, were found miles from the crash site — indicating that the jet began breaking apart in flight, federal investigators said Tuesday.

At a news conference in West Palm Beach, National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said investigators recovered most of the Learjet 60's left elevator — the part on the tail that controls whether the nose points up or down — in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the crash site on Monday.

Chapman did not specify where the pieces were found but said their distance from the crash site indicated the part had separated in flight.

“Finding that piece is a very, very significant bit of evidence,” Chapman said. “Knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence in terms of pointing us towards other things to investigate.”

Still, he emphasized that the investigation remained in the early stages. Investigators have not determined whether the part's separation contributed to the aircraft's loss of control or resulted from forces acting on the plane, Chapman said.

"We don't know yet, so it's going to take some more analysis,"

he said.

The business jet left Austin on Sunday around 10:37 a.m. for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas. Shortly before the crash, a pilot reported rain, ice and moderate turbulence and then declared an emergency, according to archived radio communications. The plane crashed nose-first at the entrance of a mobile home park in Palm Beach County around 12:50 p.m., leaving a large crater in the roadway.

Federal investigators are examining whether weather played a role in the crash, which occurred as storms were scattered across the region.

On Monday, families of the seven passengers identified those killed in the crash, including Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, ceramicist Helen Sharp; and their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2.

The other passengers were Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina, the families said. Cetina was Emma and Charlie's nanny, and Reed and Fehr were a couple and friends of the family, Robinson's father told the Austin American-Statesman.

The pilot was identified as Jeff Gregory by his former employer, East Coast Jets, a Pennsylvania-based private jet charter company. The company told The Washington Post that he worked there in 2016 and 2017. Gregory, 55, was from Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, Fox 29 Philadelphia reported.

Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, of Boca Raton, Florida, was identified as the co-pilot by her mother in an interview with the New York Times.

Backers of ban say it's cruel to force-feed ducks and geese to enlarge livers

FOIE GRAS FROM A1

An order of lamb tartare, topped with onion rings and foie gras, at Butterworth's in D.C. in 2024.

PHOTOS BY ALLISON ROBBERT/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

the ballot at all.

In the same neighborhood, 67-year-old Rebecca Ellertson voted in favor of the ban.

"It's inhumane, and foie gras isn't good for your cholesterol. Who buys it anyway?" the retired teacher said. "Rich, wealthy people eat it. I vote for the working class."

Pro-Animal DC has spent more than \$470,000 throughout its effort to kill foie gras in the District, according to campaign finance filings. The crusade has a mascot: a duck named Olivia who waddles around the city with her presumably healthy liver and her owner, Meghan Abrego.

Abrego and Olivia spent Tuesday morning at Eastern Market. “Everyone recognized her,” Abrego said. She planned to bring Olivia to Tuesday evening’s watch party for Oye Owolewa, the Democratic nominee for an at-large D.C. Council seat, Abrego said.

Those who enjoy foie gras — or don't think it should be singled out — have said a ban would be an intrusive and ridiculous use of government power. Celebrity chef José Andrés has come out in opposition to a ban. "So we are banning all meats? If Duck goes all goes next?" he wrote on social media.

Peter Cole doesn't like foie gras, but he still voted against the ban. “I think it's an overreach,” said Cole, who owns a company that runs private social clubs.

Besides determining a major shift in who controls Congress, voters across the U.S. are also deciding on a range of ballot initiatives. In California, a wealth tax is on the table. Idaho residents are voting on abortion access — and an official state gun. Transgender rights are on the line in several states.

Denver is also considering a foie gras ban. But in the nation's capital — where the race for mayor was essentially decided in June's Democratic primary and where residents are not represented by a voting member of Congress — the issue provided the only serving of political drama on the ballot.

The debate has spawned Halloween costumes and a tasting menu at the conservative haunt Butterworth's; it has become a sort of litmus test for morality.

With the lack of drama in the mayor's race, Allison Hanna said, the foie gras initiative “felt like a reason to go to the polls today.”

“I don’t care for foie gras. I also don’t care for the mistreatment of animals,” she said.

Her husband Matt Hanna also

Olivia and her owner, Meghan Abrego, pose for a portrait on the National Mall in October.

voted for the ban, but he said, "It does seem a little silly that it's on

the ballot."

The ban would take effect in July, with fines ranging from \$1,000 to \$5,000. D.C.'s chief financial officer said earlier this year that the city doesn't have room in its budget for enforcement.

At the Palisades Recreation Center in Northwest Washington, some voters smiled politely but shuffled past Liesel Wolff, a volunteer for the Initiative 86 campaign, as she held a poster of a duck being force-fed. Others ignored Wolff as she chirped: "Good morning. Do you know how you're going to vote on Initiative 86?"

Joe McHugh, 68, said he thought there were more important issues to deal with, such as

"I don't like initiatives that interfere with hundreds of years of history and artisanal food-making."

Nick Schandlbauer, attorney

gun violence, education and the region's high cost of living.

"I'm not sure it rises to the level to be a ballot initiative," he said. He left the question blank on his ballot.

Todd Stein, 59, a vegan who works on Capitol Hill, voted for the ban. “We should be a state, so we can vote on senators, but until we get that,” he said, “we vote on things like whether to be cruel to animals.”

But Frank Vogl, 80, who lives in Palisades and works as an adjunct government professor at Georgetown University, disagreed.

"It's almost making a mockery of the system," he said after voting against the ban. "We have an affordability issue in this country. How many people are going to go out and order foie gras?"

Some people flip-flopped.

Lauren Briggerman said she signed the petition to get the foie gras ban on the ballot. But the attorney actually likes foie gras, she said, and after reading an op-ed by Butterworth's chef Bart Hutchins in The Washington Post, she decided she couldn't support the ban anymore.

She left that question blank on her ballot, unable to square the ethical dilemma.

“Hopefully,” she said, “no one’s going to come egg my house.”

FBI says powder-letter suspect threatened democratic socialists with arrest

BY OLIVIA GEORGE

AND AARON SCHAFFER

Envelopes for mail-in ballots at the Wake County Board of Elections are seen on Sept. 3, 2026, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

MATT RAMEY/AP

An Oklahoma City man has been charged with mailing hundreds of hoax letters, many containing white powder, to election offices, members of Congress and news organizations last month, according to an FBI affidavit made public Tuesday as voters went to the polls.

Investigators say the man also warned members of the Democratic Socialists of America that they would be targeted for arrest if they tried to vote on Election Day.

Robin Patrick Martin is charged with conveying false information and hoaxes, and with mailing threatening communications. The FBI also alleges that Martin sent similar letters before the 2024 election.

The 2026 envelopes bore an outdated return address for the DSA. In an Oct. 11 message to a mailing list of DSA chapters — sent from an email account the FBI tied to Martin — the writer claimed to be an undercover agent and wrote: “We will be concentrating mainly on DSA members that attempt to vote, for arrest on November 3rd. THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WARNING!”

Letters to members of Congress and election officials warned: "CIVIL WAR IS COMING ON NOVEMBER 3RD!!"

The letters set off weapons-of-mass-destruction responses by FBI field offices across the country. On Oct. 13, at the Oklahoma State Election Board, an employee opened an envelope and found powder. Investigators linked more than 700 mailings to one sender through a shared return address and allege Martin was that sender. Lab tests so far have found only yeast or flour, the affidavit says, though not every letter has been recovered or tested.

Investigators tied Martin to the letters through fingerprints on a letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel; a prepaid phone bought with cash at an Oklahoma City Walmart; and video and license plate records placing him near mail facilities in Oklahoma City, Dallas and San Antonio as the letters were mailed, the affidavit says.

An arrest warrant said he was arrested Monday. Court records did not list an attorney for him as of Tuesday afternoon. There was no response at a phone number linked to Martin in public records Tuesday afternoon, and efforts to reach family members were unsuccessful.

Weeks before the 2024 election, he sowed doubt that the Postal Service would interfere, posting on Facebook: "Our own USPS is swaying out [sic] elections," according to a profile that listed a cellphone included for him in court records.

Martin has donated small sums to Republican committees and candidates in recent months, according to a Washington Post review of federal campaign finance records. This summer, he gave \$1.50 to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and \$13.50 to the Republican National Committee, and he has given \$1 a month to the National Republican Congressional Committee since July, according to Federal Election Commission filings that list the same address included in court records for Martin.

The DSA voluntarily turned over records to postal inspectors

Oct. 26. Those records show that a man calling himself “George Livingston” first contacted DSA by email around Aug. 20. In September, DSA chapters found their email addresses added without their consent to a mailing list called “DSALaugh,” where “George” posted at least 11 messages that appeared to be attempts at humor. In an Oct. 11 message, the writer said George Livingston “is deceased” and “died earlier this year.”

Investigators traced that email account to Martin through a chain of records, the affidavit says. The account was created Aug. 2 with a recovery number for a prepaid phone bought with cash that day at a Walmart about 1.3 miles from Martin's home. Store video showed an older White man in what appeared to be a silver Hyundai Sonata — the same model Martin owns. An FBI image examiner later named him a “possible candidate” for the man in the footage.

The email account was registered from a Metropolitan Library System network on a day Martin's cellphone was at a branch. Some later log-ins and visits to DSA's website came from an Oklahoma City University network when his phone was at or near the campus.

Phone records, license plate readers and Postal Service video tracked Martin's movements as the 2026 letters entered the mail, the affidavit says. On the night of Oct. 9, for instance, video showed a car with taillights like his Sonata's stopped for about 43 seconds at the blue collection boxes outside Oklahoma City's main mail processing center, and Martin's phone was in the area, according to the affidavit.

The envelope sender also left messages that could be read only under ultraviolet light, the affidavit says. Envelopes sent in 2026 bore a stamped message using invisible ink: "52 USC SEC 20511 / FBI SAVE THE USA / S OP: GEORGE." The FBI believes the first line refers to a federal law that criminalizes voter intimidation. Walmart records cited in the affidavit show Martin bought ground turmeric in May and distilled white vinegar and povidone-iodine in July, and the FBI agent wrote that those items can be used to make invisible ink, including ink visible under UV light.

The 2024 envelopes carried hidden messages, too. On the back of the envelope sent to the Oklahoma State Election Board, glowing handwriting read: "Stay on the right side of history / Your life might depend on it!"

At the election board in 2026, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol called in a city fire department hazmat unit and the FBI. The FBI took the letter and a powder sample to a lab in Dallas to rule out a biological threat.

The letters went to state election boards; Republican, Democratic and independent members of Congress; pollsters; news organizations; and the FBI. One was addressed to Patel by his full name and was intercepted Oct. 21 at a mail facility in Maryland.

The contents of the letters mailed this year varied by recipient, but all concerned the midterm elections. Letters to Republicans, pollsters and news organizations invoked “USTEA,” an acronym also included in the 2024 correspondence and claiming to be the “United States Traitor Elimination Army.” The letters some warned recipients: "YOU WILL BE ARRESTED FOR TREASON!! OR WORSE!!"

An FBI handwriting examiner made a preliminary finding that the 2026 Oklahoma envelope and the initial 2024 mailings appeared to be addressed by the same person; a formal forensic comparison is pending.

During the 2024 mailings, election officials in several states reported receiving envelopes holding white powder and a three-page letter, according to the affidavit. Each manila envelope was hand-addressed and bore three Purple Heart stamps.

The letter — titled “DECLARATION OF WAR” — falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and warned that “it won’t be flour next time in the envelopes,” according to the affidavit. Listing five demands, the letter closed, “YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED — TAKE IT SERIOUSLY.”

The return address was listed as Takoma Park, Maryland, a building of rented office suites once listed as the Green Party's headquarters. (The FBI said it had found no connection between the sender and that address.)

Investigators later identified similar mailings addressed to election officials in all 50 states. The same sender also wrote to a postmaster and Postal Service district managers. Testing later found the powder was not toxic.

Martin became a registered nurse in Texas in 1989, according to public records, and his license remains active. His LinkedIn profile says he began working at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Oklahoma City in April 2024.

VA did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request to confirm his employment.

This summer, Martin posted on Facebook that he was “facing multiple battles,” mentioning both a workers compensation claim and trouble with his foot that left him spending his time working at VA driving patients around in a golf cart.

"I feel like a colossal failure," he wrote.

Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.

James Talarico (D), left, defeated Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), right, on Tuesday.

Talarico wins in Texas, a key victory for Democrats

lems that affect everyone."

MICHAEL GONZALEZ/AP; BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES

His victory was part of a massive blue wave in the state

BY MATTHEW CHOI

AND MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE

DALLAS — State Rep. James Talarico (D) has managed to break his party's long drought in Texas, defeating the state's Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Talarico's victory gives Democrats one of the four seats they needed to flip to clinch a Senate majority.

Talarico's victory was part of a massive blue wave in Texas, with Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeating incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R). It was the most expensive Senate race in the country, with more than half a billion dollars spent in the state, including the primaries.

Talarico was a prodigious fundraiser, bringing in more than \$146 million, a record for the state. Democrats were also able to ride a historically bad political landscape for Republicans, including discontent over President Donald Trump's handling of the economy and immigration enforcement.

Paxton was a uniquely vulnerable candidate, owing to his past legal and personal scandals.

Still, Democrats had to contend with deep skepticism that they could win a Senate seat in the Lone Star state. To many Democrats outside of the state, Texas was just too big, too Republican and too expensive to pull off. The state contains two of the country's most expensive media markets in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, sucking away tens of millions of dollars for TV ads.

Numerous high-profile Senate losses, from Beto O'Rourke's failed 2018 challenge against Sen. Ted Cruz to Colin Allred's defeat in 2024, seemed to prove the point. O'Rourke came the closest, losing to Cruz by less than three percentage points.

This year's ticket featured Democrats running in every state and federal office in a coo-

dinated fashion for the first time

since 1982. Even the most solidly

Republican parts of the state had

Democrats for downballot races

who helped campaign for Talarico.

“We made history tonight due to a relentless effort to maintain hope, continue the infrastructure work and with some extraordinary candidates up and down the ballot that contributed to the overall win,” said former state senator Wendy Davis, who made a highly watched but unsuccessful bid for governor in 2014. “I am beside myself with happiness.”

Paxton and Talarico were competing to succeed Sen. John Cornyn (R), a four-term incumbent who was once the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate. Paxton defeated Cornyn in a bitterly fought primary in which Cornyn's allies spent heavily to cast Paxton as unfit for office.

The primary was the most expensive in American history, and the state's GOP old guard and Senate Republican leadership stood firmly behind Cornyn. Cornyn and Paxton went to a runoff after neither secured more than 50 percent of the vote in the March primary.

Cornyn's fate was sealed when Trump endorsed Paxton shortly ahead of the May runoff, securing Paxton's support among the state's GOP base.

Paxton is a longtime Trump backer, leading the unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election. He has also been a frequent antagonist of Democratic presidents, suing the Obama and Biden administrations more than 100 times as Texas attorney general.

During the general election campaign, Paxton struggled from the start. He failed to raise competitive sums of money early in the campaign and was often ridiculed on the trail for his lackluster stage presence. Even Trump, who traveled frequently to Texas to salvage Paxton's campaign, often mocked his appearance.

“You may not like the way he looks,” Trump said during a San Antonio rally for Paxton last month. “He could be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll be honest.”

A steady drip of revelations throughout the race didn't help. Leaked audio from a fundraiser revealed Paxton blaming Trump for depressing poll numbers by hosting a party convention in Dallas, bemoaning a campaign run by Washington political consultants, and fretting that the Iran war and high gas prices were turning voters away.

Meanwhile, Republicans repeatedly attacked Talarico as too soft and too socially left for the Bible Belt's biggest state. They brought up Talarico's past comments, such as a claim that God was nonbinary and that he was a

Christian who hated Christianity. Talarico later explained the comments as intentionally provocative to challenge assumptions about Christianity, though he called them “cringey.”

But the attacks on Talarico's gender-related comments didn't stick, said Chloe Wilkinson, an assistant campaign manager for local Democrats, who celebrated with a crowd of hundreds at the Talarico victory party in Austin late Monday.

“Republicans were running these anti-trans ads because they didn't have anything economic to run on. Some Democrats were scared of that. But this showed that didn't work,” said Wilkinson, who is transgender.

Now, she said, Democrats need to “focus on the fundamentals: making sure we have a growing economy, affordable groceries and gas. If we’re winning this big across the state and country, Republicans will have to moderate and negotiate. Let’s fix the prob-

Cornyn, one of the most prolific fundraisers in the history of the Senate Republican Conference, never endorsed either of the candidates by name or raised money for Paxton. He said he would back the Republican ticket but focused his efforts on raising money for the party in other races.

The race became a test of candidate quality, with many Republicans casting doubt on Paxton's electability given the legal and personal scandals throughout his time in office.

Paxton spent the race weathering attacks over his securities fraud felony indictment, an impeachment by the Republican-controlled state House over allegations of bribery and abuse of office, a federal criminal investigation into the same allegations, two alleged affairs, and an acrimonious divorce from his wife, a state senator.

"Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America," Talarico would often bellow at campaign stops.

The contest became a test of just how much money can affect a contest's outcome. Senate Republicans' main super PAC invested more than \$180 million, and Trump's super PAC spent a further \$40 million. Still, the GOP spending had scant impact on polling, which consistently showed the race either tied or slightly in Talarico's favor.

Talarico, a boyish seminarian who centered his faith and outreach to moderate voters in his message, will be the first Democratic senator in Texas since 1993.

Talarico focused his campaign on his personal character in contrast to Paxton's — a novel tack for Democrats, who had previously campaigned on Texas's restrictive abortion laws or the mere possibility of Democrats ending their long drought in the state.

Speaking at his election night party, Paxton congratulated Talarico on his win and said that he “will be praying for him that he will do good.”

Hennessy-Fiske reported from Austin.

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The unlikely player in contentious Michigan Senate race: Stevens's fiancé

Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, left, sits with his wife, Kristi Rogers, and Jason Turkish, the fiancé of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) during a church event in Detroit on Sunday.

JOSE JUAREZ/AP

Jason Turkish took on a role in campaign that rankled staff, sources say

BY DAN MERICA,

ERIN COX

AND KAREN TUMULTY

Months before the high-stakes Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, Jason Turkish took such a hands-on role in Rep. Haley Stevens's campaign that her senior staff called a meeting without her to devise how to restrict his role, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting.

Turkish was seen as relatively new to Stevens's orbit. Most of the congresswoman's senior staff knew him as a top donor some had met earlier in the campaign, which launched in 2025.

By early June, Stevens and Turkish were said to be secretly engaged, according to multiple former campaign staffers who said the onetime donor had become Stevens's most important adviser. Stevens soon added him to private campaign text chains, one of the reasons staff called a meeting to figure out how to curtail his interactions with the team, according to one of the people familiar with the meeting.

Tensions between staffers and a candidate's spouse or significant other are not uncommon in a campaign's intense atmosphere. They tend to erupt in crisis moments, and Stevens was facing tough polling in her race with Abdul El-Sayed.

Now questions about Turkish's role in Stevens's primary campaign have been revived in the general election's closing hours, after the Democratic congresswoman's 11th-hour reversal of support for El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat who won the primary. This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen former Stevens campaign aides and other people familiar with the campaign.

Stevens, 43, said that “any campaign staff being directly quoted in this article, I was made miserable by working with them."

Asked whether she felt her campaign staff was trying to push out Turkish or limit his influence in any way, Stevens said, "I have nothing else to say about the campaign at this time."

Turkish, a 39-year-old disability lawyer and political fundraiser, would not comment on whether staff sought to curtail his role, but he provided to The Washington Post emails from June and July showing that staff continued to reach out and consult him on campaign matters. He declined to address specific claims by former campaign staff on the record.

"I was Haley Stevens's energetic and passionate supporter from the very launch of this campaign," he said. "And while the campaign ended in defeat, it also ended in our marriage. And along the path of that campaign, we spent thousands of hours together and around a campaign. And there were good days and bad days, but we lived it together, and we wouldn't trade it for anything."

Turkish lives in Huntington Woods, a suburb north of Detroit, and works in Southfield as a managing partner at Nyman Turkish, a litigation and disability law firm. The Detroit News reported that the two met after Stevens's 2022 reelection campaign through David Kramer, a mutual friend.

Stevens initially backed El-Sayed after their bruising primary, even telling people he was a “great candidate,” but over the course of the general election, her public support for the candidate grew more strained, particularly as it related to El-Sayed’s stance on Israel’s war with Hamas, where he has become a leading voice denouncing U.S. support in what he labels a “genocide.”

Turkish endorsed El-Sayed's opponent in the key Senate race, Republican Mike Rogers, days before Stevens shocked the political world by backing Rogers and appearing with him at church on Sunday with Turkish. In an interview revealing his choice, he told the Detroit News that he saw an “escalation” in the Democratic nominee's rhetoric around Israel.

Stevens's endorsement has led some close to her to express concern about Turkish's influence on her decision, including longtime friends, one who spoke with her as recently as Saturday night, mere hours before she backed Rogers on Sunday. The endorsement has effectively led Stevens to be excommunicated from her state's party, with the head of the Michigan Democratic Party writing that she was “not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”

Stevens said “any suppositions that Jason Turkish influenced me on Israel or campaign positions is absurd.”

Late Monday night, Stevens posted a lengthy explanation for her decision on X that lamented how “some critics have also dragged my fiancé into this, suggesting he or others must have made my decision for me.”

“Think about what that says. A woman can serve in Congress, run statewide, and fight for her convictions, and still be told that when she makes a choice people dislike, someone else must be pulling the strings,” she wrote. “That is sexism dressed up as political analysis.”

One friend who spoke with Stevens said the congresswoman reassured her Saturday night that she would “never” rescind her endorsement of El-Sayed.

“That primary was particularly brutal. For all involved,” the friend said. “I feel that there is like an allegiance to him because he was there for her during a particularly dark and stressful time.”

But one aide said Stevens trusted Turkish and often valued his insight, particularly on Israel, because she agreed with him more than with her advisers, who were pushing her to be less supportive of Israel. After her endorsement of Rogers, many Israel supporters have applauded both Stevens and Turkish for what they view as a tough, gutsy stance.

“By the time I got to the place where I was ready to do it, I would have been living a lie to a lot of people and in community.

... There was no way to circle the square," Stevens told the Detroit News on Monday.

Stevens's senior staff first grew troubled by Turkish's campaign influence around June, people familiar with the campaign said.

According to multiple people familiar with the exchanges, Turkish started berating staff for their work, particularly perplexed that he, a Stevens supporter, was being served digital ads about the campaign. He wanted more spent on digital fundraising, and he summoned a senior digital campaign staffer to his law office and yelled at her over the kind of digital content and fundraising emails the campaign was creating, the people said. He told a press aide that she was “not serving Haley well,” two people familiar with the conversation recalled.

Turkish would also send the congresswoman a list of hurtful tweets people were writing about her, four people familiar with Turkish's influence on Stevens said. Campaign staff also worried that when Turkish was the last person to speak with Stevens before an interview or event, she would stray from the campaign's talking points, the people said.

"He was not a calming presence, in a way that in hindsight should have been more alarming," said Caitlin Legacki, a former top adviser to Stevens's campaign. "It was very strange. I have never seen anything like it."

One former Stevens aide said campaign staff worked to prevent Turkish from showing up to events because of how he undermined staff. If he arrived, the person said, they would redirect cameras or reposition Stevens so that he could not draw the attention of the press. Before events, they said he often suggested rewriting talking points and insisted on joining Stevens's briefings before media appearances.

The team tried to control his influence with two guardrails, multiple people said: Making sure he was not the last person to speak with Stevens before a public-facing event, and outlining how he was only allowed to go directly through the campaign's manager, Sam Barrett, not directly to lower-level staff, according to multiple sources familiar with the guardrails.

“It did not work in the sense that he had any less influence on Haley,” said Legacki, who left the campaign after it became public she was also working for the tech company Palantir while advising the campaign.

Stevens said in an interview for this article that Legacki “was fired” because “of undisclosed conflicts.”

The changes meant Stevens's schedule was sometimes altered to ensure she spoke with a campaign staffer, and no one else, before certain events or calls, the people said.

“We would organize the schedule to make sure there was a staff member who would be the last person talking to her because she did an interview or a donor call,” said a person familiar with the campaign.

Longtime friends say the couple grew even closer after her defeat.

The morning after Stevens's primary loss to El-Sayed — a closer result than the polls anticipated — former Michigan governor James Blanchard (D) called her, thinking she would need some consoling, he said. Instead, she sounded ebullient.

"I'm getting married!" she told Blanchard.

U.S. voters punish Trump with a dramatic swing to Democrats

James Talarico (D) arrives at a get-out-the-vote event on Tuesday in Round Rock, Texas.

MATT MCCLAIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

MIDTERMS FROM A1

type of dramatic change that the American people are demanding," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said at a watch party Tuesday. "The early vote numbers were strong, and today's vote numbers all across the country are strong in blue states, in swing states and in red states."

As the results came in, Trump vowed to wield his veto pen to force Democrats to compromise.

“Historically, you veto for a couple of months and then they come and say, ‘We’ve got to make a deal,’” he said in a Tuesday night phone call with CBS News, calling himself “Mr. Veto.”

Throughout the fall campaign, Trump and Democrats agreed on wanting to make the election about him. The president held near-daily rallies, mostly in red states, for the past month, urging his supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot.

But in the closing stretch of the campaign, Republicans in tough races increasingly broke with him on tariffs and the Iran war as voters felt the pinch of higher prices.

On Tuesday the White House moved to point the finger at other Republicans.

“President Trump was not on the ballot,” said one White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.”

The official said Trump's resolve to fight the left would only grow, adding, "Buckle up."

Democrats countered with their own saber-rattling to welcome the next two years of divided government. Rep. Robert Garcia (California), the ranking

Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, previewed investigations into the Trump family, immigration enforcement and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Lawyer up,” he said in a statement.

The president's party typically loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Unlike many past elections in which presidents have suffered from events over which they had little control — a recession, for example — Trump's steady drop in polls over the past year and a half followed directly from his own policy decisions, including his tariffs, the decision to launch a war against Iran and his opposition to the release of the Justice Department's files on the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The early results were consistent with pre-election polls showing Democrats favored to win both chambers of Congress. Trump's approval sank to a record low of 33 percent in October, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. For the first time in more than a decade, more voters trusted Democrats to deal with the economy, as about three-quarters of Americans disapproved of Trump's handling of inflation and the cost of living in the United States. Seventy-two percent said the country was heading in the wrong direction.

That public dissatisfaction overpowered the GOP's advantage in campaign spending. Trump's super PACs pumped at least \$380 million into midterm races, with another more than \$400 million from Elon Musk, the world's richest man, according to federal disclosures.

The midterms were the most expensive election ever, topping past cycles that included presidential campaigns, according to media tracker AdImpact. Republicans spent \$5.45 billion on advertising across TV, radio and digital, and Democrats spent \$5.02 billion.

Texas's Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico became the most expensive non-presidential race ever, costing more than \$500 million, according to AdImpact.

Democrats picked up a Senate seat in North Carolina, where former governor Roy Cooper beat former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley. The Republican incumbent, Thom Tillis, did not seek reelection after crossing Trump last year.

They also led in key Senate races in Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Iowa and Kansas.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) cruised to reelection, and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became the nation's first Black woman to be elected governor. Rep. Chris Pappas (D) easily won a Senate seat in New Hampshire.

In Ohio's gubernatorial contest, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy trailed Democrat Amy Acton after bipartisan backlash to an attack ad featuring her estranged mother.

The election mostly ran smoothly despite concerns from Democrats and some election officials that Trump officials might try to use federal power to favor Republicans.

Top election officials in Michigan and New Mexico complained to the Justice Department on Tuesday about what they described as unusual behavior by federal election monitors deployed to polling sites in their states. The Department of Homeland Security did not deploy immigration officers to voting locations.

In Alaska, Trump has demanded the disqualification of the Democratic Senate nominee, Mary Peltola, after the New York Times reported that operatives aligned with her helped recruit an independent candidate with the same name as the incumbent Republican senator, Dan Sullivan.

"I've heard from people who think they've voted for the wrong guy and have apologized to me," Sullivan told a Fox News reporter on Tuesday. "The scheme is working."

In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump's closing message insisted that the economy was booming — contrary to most Americans' experience. As in his past campaigns, he attacked Democrats, calling them “communists,” “freaks” and “jihadists.”

"These are the couple of points where I just leave because they're so good," he said, citing positive economic statistics when he spoke in Lubbock, Texas, a week before the election. "The rest is just — we're wasting frickin' time," he said — a recurring bit that he reprised at numerous rallies.

He called Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, who is Muslim, a “jihadist” and said Black and Jewish Americans would be “crazy” to vote for him; demanded the ouster of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and the prosecution of Peltola; used an offensive nickname for Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews of South Carolina; mimed an imaginary incident of Talarico vomiting after eating meat; and joked that a \$5,000 stimulus he promised citizens if Republicans won would barely cover a hamburger and “maybe a small dessert” at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.

Interruptions from protesters frequently punctuated his rallies. Often, they cited the investigation into Epstein, who had been a friend of Trump's years ago.

Trump spent election night watching the results with Cabinet officials and advisers in the East Room of the White House. He repeatedly posted critiques of Fox News's coverage.

As the Democratic wins piled up, the president, who, over the past two months told supporters more than 40 times to “pretend I’m on the ballot” posted a statement on his Truth Social site:

"I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"

U.S. voters punish Trump with a dramatic swing to Democrats

James Talarico (D) arrives at a get-out-the-vote event on Tuesday in Round Rock, Texas.

MATT MCCLAIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

MIDTERMS FROM A1

type of dramatic change that the American people are demanding," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said at a watch party Tuesday. "The early vote numbers were strong, and today's vote numbers all across the country are strong in blue states, in swing states and in red states."

As the results came in, Trump vowed to wield his veto pen to force Democrats to compromise.

“Historically, you veto for a couple of months and then they come and say, ‘We’ve got to make a deal,’” he said in a Tuesday night phone call with CBS News, calling himself “Mr. Veto.”

Throughout the fall campaign, Trump and Democrats agreed on wanting to make the election about him. The president held near-daily rallies, mostly in red states, for the past month, urging his supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot.

But in the closing stretch of the campaign, Republicans in tough races increasingly broke with him on tariffs and the Iran war as voters felt the pinch of higher prices.

On Tuesday the White House moved to point the finger at other Republicans.

“President Trump was not on the ballot,” said one White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.”

The official said Trump's resolve to fight the left would only grow, adding, "Buckle up."

Democrats countered with their own saber-rattling to welcome the next two years of divided government. Rep. Robert Garcia (California), the ranking

Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, previewed investigations into the Trump family, immigration enforcement and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Lawyer up,” he said in a statement.

The president's party typically loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Unlike many past elections in which presidents have suffered from events over which they had little control — a recession, for example — Trump's steady drop in polls over the past year and a half followed directly from his own policy decisions, including his tariffs, the decision to launch a war against Iran and his opposition to the release of the Justice Department's files on the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The early results were consistent with pre-election polls showing Democrats favored to win both chambers of Congress. Trump's approval sank to a record low of 33 percent in October, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. For the first time in more than a decade, more voters trusted Democrats to deal with the economy, as about three-quarters of Americans disapproved of Trump's handling of inflation and the cost of living in the United States. Seventy-two percent said the country was heading in the wrong direction.

That public dissatisfaction overpowered the GOP's advantage in campaign spending. Trump's super PACs pumped at least \$380 million into midterm races, with another more than \$400 million from Elon Musk, the world's richest man, according to federal disclosures.

The midterms were the most expensive election ever, topping past cycles that included presidential campaigns, according to media tracker AdImpact. Republicans spent \$5.45 billion on advertising across TV, radio and digital, and Democrats spent \$5.02 billion.

Texas's Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico became the most expensive non-presidential race ever, costing more than \$500 million, according to AdImpact.

Democrats picked up a Senate seat in North Carolina, where former governor Roy Cooper beat former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley. The Republican incumbent, Thom Tillis, did not seek reelection after crossing Trump last year.

They also led in key Senate races in Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Iowa and Kansas.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) cruised to reelection, and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became the nation's first Black woman to be elected governor. Rep. Chris Pappas (D) easily won a Senate seat in New Hampshire.

In Ohio's gubernatorial contest, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy trailed Democrat Amy Acton after bipartisan backlash to an attack ad featuring her estranged mother.

The election mostly ran smoothly despite concerns from Democrats and some election officials that Trump officials might try to use federal power to favor Republicans.

Top election officials in Michigan and New Mexico complained to the Justice Department on Tuesday about what they described as unusual behavior by federal election monitors deployed to polling sites in their states. The Department of Homeland Security did not deploy immigration officers to voting locations.

In Alaska, Trump has demanded the disqualification of the Democratic Senate nominee, Mary Peltola, after the New York Times reported that operatives aligned with her helped recruit an independent candidate with the same name as the incumbent Republican senator, Dan Sullivan.

"I've heard from people who think they've voted for the wrong guy and have apologized to me," Sullivan told a Fox News reporter on Tuesday. "The scheme is working."

In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump's closing message insisted that the economy was booming — contrary to most Americans' experience. As in his past campaigns, he attacked Democrats, calling them “communists,” “freaks” and “jihadists.”

"These are the couple of points where I just leave because they're so good," he said, citing positive economic statistics when he spoke in Lubbock, Texas, a week before the election. "The rest is just — we're wasting frickin' time," he said — a recurring bit that he reprised at numerous rallies.

He called Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, who is Muslim, a “jihadist” and said Black and Jewish Americans would be “crazy” to vote for him; demanded the ouster of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and the prosecution of Peltola; used an offensive nickname for Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews of South Carolina; mimed an imaginary incident of Talarico vomiting after eating meat; and joked that a \$5,000 stimulus he promised citizens if Republicans won would barely cover a hamburger and “maybe a small dessert” at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.

Interruptions from protesters frequently punctuated his rallies. Often, they cited the investigation into Epstein, who had been a friend of Trump's years ago.

Trump spent election night watching the results with Cabinet officials and advisers in the East Room of the White House. He repeatedly posted critiques of Fox News's coverage.

As the Democratic wins piled up, the president, who, over the past two months told supporters more than 40 times to “pretend I’m on the ballot” posted a statement on his Truth Social site:

"I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"

Democratic socialist Lewis George will succeed Mayor Muriel E. Bowser

VALERIE PLESCH/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Janeese Lewis George after casting her ballot Tuesday.

MAYOR FROM A1

causing the Bowser administration to move more cautiously. Democrats are widely expected to fare well.

Lewis George's victory completes her rise from a little-known prosecutor elected to the D.C. Council six years ago — with socialist bona fides making her its most progressive member — to the leader of the nation's capital.

On the council, Lewis George became known for her advocacy for tenants' and workers' rights, which were also central pillars of her mayoral campaign.

Her campaign was fueled by firm union backing, both financially and in the form of a high-energy grassroots door knockers. Those alliances are likely to be watched closely by both supporters and critics as Lewis George stakes positions on key issues affecting workers and businesses.

Some in the business community have expressed concerns that her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America and some of her positions — such as broaching a new business activity tax to pay for universal child care, or her opposition to legislation allowing robotaxis in D.C.

— would hurt efforts to attract investment in the city.

But in an election in which affordability challenges animated voters, many saw in Lewis George the change in status quo they were looking for.

Yael Fitzpatrick, a 56-year-old voter in Ward 4, said she felt emotional as she cast her ballot for Lewis George. She said she saw her as D.C.'s version of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) – “or maybe Mamdani is New York’s version of her.”

“She gives me hope,” Fitzpatrick said. “I feel like our city’s in a bad place right now because of the federal government. She’s made me feel hope in a way that nobody has in a while.”

Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of 32BJ SEIU, said he'd be looking to the new mayor to protect workers' health care, take executive action to protect immigrants — many of whom are in his union — and avoid hasty decisions on robotaxis to protect drivers. The debate over that legislation could be an early test for Lewis George in balancing different interests as mayor.

“Janeese Lewis George understands that people don’t make enough money in this city to be able to make ends meet,” Contreras said.

Speaking to reporters, Lewis George said she believed voters gave her a “very clear” mandate.

"The people have asked me to make this city more affordable, and in three areas in particular: affordable homes, affordable utilities and affordable childcare," she said, adding that she would also launch efforts to improve basic government services, such as the 911 and 311 systems.

Lewis George is one of three democratic socialists who are expected to win in D.C.'s local elections on Tuesday, giving the DSA more traction and allies on the D.C. Council as the movement gains national visibility.

DSA member Aparna Raj, a tenant organizer, was projected to win the Ward 1 council race representing some of D.C's most diverse and densely populated neighborhoods. And Oye Owolewa, a pharmacist who since 2021 has served as a House shadow representative advocating for D.C. statehood, is expected to snag an at-large council seat.

Kurtis Hagans, chair of D.C.'s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, said that for the last five years, the organization saw Lewis George as its “lone voice” on the council, taking a stand against proposals such as expanded pretrial detention for juveniles or a rollback of a tenants' rights law.

He said the 2025 election of Mamdani in New York led to an explosion in interest in the party that only accelerated after Lewis George's decisive victory in June's primary. Membership has doubled in the last year alone, to about 4,000 members, he said.

"When I personally think of what the role of a socialist mayor might be, one of the first phrases that jumps to mind is 'organizer-in-chief,'" Hagans said. "She'll have a bully pulpit. And I'm looking forward to seeing how and where she can use that power to help direct the working class, to resistance against Trumpism, a resistance against slumlords, and towards a better future for those of us in D.C."

Lewis George will take office at a time of economic duress in Washington, driven by Trump's federal jobs cuts and shaky commercial real estate and rental housing markets. The city also faces a budget shortfall of up to \$837 million.

Among her first actions in office, Lewis George said in a recent interview, will be unveiling a comprehensive housing plan that addresses concerns ranging from those of tenants fighting poor conditions to those of developers and landlords, who say chronic problems with unpaid rent threaten to foreclose properties.

She will also appoint a rat czar after complaints about the rodents frequently came up at a citywide “listening tour” this summer — so much so that she joked it should have been a main campaign plank. “Let me say that rats went up on the priority list,” she said. “It should have been: Affordability. Trump. Rats.”

Lewis George's approach to Trump, who last year declared an emergency to temporarily take over D.C. police, will likely be an area of significant contrasts with the current mayor. Bowser has avoided confrontations with Trump and created a structure for city police to coordinate with federal officers, steps she has said were designed to protect the city's limited autonomy and prevent more drastic incursions.

Given Democrats' anticipated gains in the midterms, "I think the next administration will go into a very different political environment than the one that we have had over the last couple of years," Bowser told reporters Monday. She noted she would be supporting Lewis George in the election.

Lewis George, who has had several meetings with Bowser and sought her advice on handling crises, may have to contend early with multiple ongoing investigations from the Trump administration examining conditions at the D.C. jail as well as a slate of youth issues, including chronic absenteeism and whether the child welfare system adequately protects children.

On Tuesday, Lewis George said in her speech she was “not naive” to the possibility to D.C. facing future threats to its autonomy, but never mentioned Trump by name. The president has called her a “communist” and floated a “take over” last summer if she were to win the election.

Lewis George told reporters she was still planning to set up a meeting with the president and was “looking forward to working with the administration for the benefit of D.C. residents.”

“But as I’ve always said, I’m also willing to stand up for D.C. residents,” she said.

Many voters Tuesday said Lewis George's promise to be more outspoken in opposing Trump drew them to her campaign.

Nate Green, a 28-year-old police officer and former teacher, said he wanted to see her follow through on promises to sever coordination with immigration authorities.

"I strongly disagree with federal officers' working with us. I think it causes unnecessary tension that we didn't have before," Green said after casting his vote for her. Overall, he said, "

Her victory Tuesday triggers a formal transition process, and Lewis George is expected to announce more plans on Wednesday.

Rounding out D.C.'s elections, a slate of council incumbents were also expected to be reelected to their seats. Council member Elissa Silverman, who won a special election in June to fill the seat of Kenyan R. McDuffie, was expected to win Tuesday to retain the seat.

Joining Lewis George in marking a new era for D.C. government, Robert C. White Jr. (D) — who resigned Monday from the D.C. Council — was also expected to win the race for House delegate to succeed retiring Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), 89. It is the first time in more than three decades that the position has had new leadership.

Bottoms will also become the first Black female governor of any state

GEORGIA FROM A1

and denied saying he wanted the National Guard at polling places.

“He’s running to be Trump’s favorite governor. I’m running to be yours,” Bottoms said at a rally with former president Barack Obama.

Jackson highlighted his rise from teen in foster care to billionaire and his philanthropic work to support foster families. He attacked Bottoms for rising crime rates in Atlanta during the pandemic, when she was mayor.

On the campaign trail, Bottoms argued that Jackson's business interests will create conflicts for him as governor, especially on data centers. She pledged to pause their construc-

KEVIN D. LILES/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Keisha Lance Bottoms is the first Democrat to be elected governor of Georgia in nearly 30 years.

Bottoms's win allows her to shape the state budget with the governor's line-item veto.

THE WASHINGTON POST

tion if elected.

Bottoms's win underscores Georgia's political transformation in the era of Trump. His attempted interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, when he urged the Republican secretary of state to "find" votes, sparked an electoral backlash that propelled two Democrats to the Senate.

One of those Democrats, Sen. Jon Ossoff, easily cruised to re-election Tuesday.

Bottoms's win allows her to shape the state budget with the governor's line-item veto and create a check on Republican power in the legislature overall, should it stay under GOP control. It also gives her a veto over any GOP-led attempt to redistrict the state.

Prediction markets see nearly \$1.9 billion in midterms trades

Source: Washington Post analysis of data from Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US

As of 8 p.m. ET on Nov. 2.

CHRIS HACKER / THE WASHINGTON POST | TITLE | VOLUME | Who will control the House? | $105,037,049 | Congress Balance of Power? | $103,551,270 | Texas Senate winner? | $76,698,729 | Los Angeles Mayor winner? | $46,130,561 | Who will control the Senate? | $30,738,360 | People attend an event hosted by the Polymarket prediction market in Washington in March.

ALEX KENT/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

As of 8 p.m. ET on Nov. 2.

Top midterms prediction markets on Kalshi

Exchanges have quickly

embedded themselves

into American life

BY MATTHEW CHOI,

CHRIS HACKER

AND JEREMY B. MERRILL

Americans had wagered nearly \$1.9 billion on the midterm elections as of late Monday, risking money on over 7,000 different outcomes ranging from what a candidate will say in a specific campaign speech to the broad balance of power in Congress, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Most of the staggering sum, about \$1.3 billion, was traded on Kalshi, The Post found, while Kalshi's main competitor, Polymarket, has recorded about \$600 million in trades, according to the analysis.

The acceleration of these largely unregulated markets into elections — taking bets on the literal mechanics of democracy — shows how deeply they have embedded themselves into American life since they burst onto the scene about four years ago.

In prediction markets, traders make bets on the outcomes of real-world events, such as which candidate will win an election. The bets pay \$1 if the outcome happens, and nothing if it doesn't. Traders can place multiple bets on the same event in the hopes of securing a larger payout. The price is set by supply and demand — not by a bookie, as in traditional gambling. A bet on an outcome seen as unlikely might cost 10 cents, while a likelier one might cost 90 cents.

Both markets tend to have similar odds on most questions. Kalshi cautiously predicts the Democrats to win both the House (93 percent chance) and the Senate (74 percent chance).

The total sum bet so far in the midterms is less than the 2024 election, when more than \$3.6 billion was wagered on Polymarket alone on whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would win the presidency.

Because there are multiple trading platforms and users are anonymized, it's impossible to know exactly how many people — or, often, who — has bet on the midterms.

That has led to a host of questions and concerns about who can and should be allowed to bet. Prediction markets are already subjected to Commodities Future Trading Commission regulation. Kalshi has been pushing for greater federal regulation to further prevent insider trading.

This year, Kalshi has banned several candidates for betting on their own races, including one House candidate in North Carolina; NPR has reported that many campaign consultants have said they bet on races, including ones they're working on. Congress has also implemented its own internal rules to bar conflicts of interest. The Senate implemented a ban on members and staff from prediction markets in April.

Several lawmakers have introduced legislative proposals to regulate, or ban, elements of prediction markets. Most aim to curb insider trading or bets on military action. But a few would also do away with trades related to election outcomes.

"People are clearly going to take advantage of this. People with an ability to influence elections, consulting firms, polling agencies, candidates' staff — all of this — they are going to know what to do," said Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), who has introduced bipartisan legislation to ban trades related to terrorism, assassination, war or elections. "We are allowing such nefarious opportunities to exist, and it's time to put some clamps on."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) have also introduced a bill to ban contracts related to election results. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) has also called for banning election-related trades.

Alex Keeney, founder of Eventual, a prediction-markets focused media company and a frequent trader on political markets, said bettors are often a mix of professional traders and armchair pundits.

"There are traders who do this for a living," he said. "And there are hobbyists who make some money on the side or just enjoy the hunt for better info." Many choose how to bet by evaluating political polls, news and campaign fundraising totals — turning those traditional sources into a single prediction, he said.

Most traders are casual users making relatively small bets that aren't profitable, said Ross Dahlke, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies political prediction markets. "When surveys ask, about four in ten say they're looking to make money, and about half say they do it for fun," he said.

Prediction markets, meanwhile, have said they offer a service in allowing more insight into what really may happen on election night.

“By shifting the focus from what people want to happen to what they think will happen, backed by their own research and their own money, these markets filter out social media noise and pundit bias to deliver a level of clarity and predictive power that's hard to match," Dani Lever, a spokesperson for Kalshi, said in a statement.

A Post analysis from June found that prediction markets on the primaries were reasonably accurate in determining the chances of whether a candidate would win.

But it can be tempting to misinterpret those probabilities as certainties, because unlikely things happen all the time. The Republicans still have a 24 percent chance of retaining the Senate — not far from the odds of flipping a coin twice and getting two heads — hardly a surprise when it happens.

Methodology

The Post used a common measure of prediction market activity called notional volume, where each contract traded is counted at its \$1 payout. Because the same contract can be bought and sold multiple times, this is a measure of overall trading activity, not of how much money traders put into the market.

The Post identified election-related markets through a series of keyword filters on the markets' titles and descriptions. The analysis includes House and Senate races, including primaries and general elections, along with Governors' races, high-profile mayoral races and elections down-ballot state legislatures.

Data for betting activity on both platforms was pulled at 8 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 2.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana)

Sean Cairncross

White House National

Cyber Director

Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Virginia)

Ryan Tseng

Co-founder & President,

Shield AI

Fabrizio Cariani

Professor & Chair,

Department of Philosophy,

University of Maryland

Cecilia Elena Rouse

President, Brookings

Institution

Jake Loosararian Co-founder & CEO, Gecko Robotics

Balaji Padmanabhan

Director,

Center for AI in Business,

University of Maryland

Sponsor segment presented by University of Maryland

Misha Laskin

Co-founder & CEO,

Reflection

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Sen.-elect Annie Andrews (D-South Carolina) celebrates during an election night watch party in Charleston. She faced incumbent Darline Graham (R) in a closely contested race.

Supporters of Sen.-elect James Talarico (D) react to the race being called for their candidate at the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin.

MATT MCCLAIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

SHURAN HUANG/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) celebrates with supporters during an election night watch party in Washington.

KEVIN D. LILES/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) takes the stage at a watch party in Atlanta after defeating Rep. Mike Collins (R) to win reelection.

NIC ANTAYA/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

People attend a rally for Michigan Democrats, including Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, in Detroit on election night.

[THE WORLD] Black man's killing in France inflames tensions over race, identity

Macron says the racially motivated rampage near Paris should be a ‘wake-up call’ about escalating toxic rhetoric ahead of a national election

Demonstrators rally last week in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. The shooting last month killed Pengo Bossio Wangi, a 26-year-old French national.

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY ELLEN FRANCIS

SAINT-DENIS, FRANCE — Tensions were already running high in France when a gunman opened fire from a car in the town of Trappes, killing a young Black man and severely injuring a schoolgirl on her way back from the local swimming pool.

In the shooter's booby-trapped apartment, investigators found a copy of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and stickers that read "100% French," according to counterterrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen. He said the gunman admitted to "specifically targeting people, and I quote, of a Muslim, African or North African type."

The shooting last month, which President Emmanuel Macron decried as a “racist terrorist attack,” killed Pengo Bossio Wangi, a 26-year-old French national whom friends and family described as an aspiring mixed martial arts fighter and a Christian.

The attacker wounded seven others, launching over 100 rounds from a submachine gun, hitting a gas station and a playground.

The investigation has captured national attention at a time of polarization ahead of a spring election that could reshape European politics. It is seeping into a presidential race that is already consumed by acrimonious debate over France's welfare system and its national identity.

For the mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, some things are not up for debate. “This construction of a perceived enemy from within, through the image of Black people, Arabs and Muslims, is harming our society,” he said after the rampage.

"We now find these words coming from the mouth of a murderer."

Rising rhetoric

The attack is fueling uncomfortable conversations about race and religion in France, where mass shootings are rare and where the state prides itself on the promise of secularism and equality. It is also inflaming a political blame game that started as protests over the rising cost of living swept the country in recent weeks, and spiraled into rioting one chaotic Saturday night.

As thousands gathered Friday to stand with the victims, Rabeh said he knew the harm of having “your identity denied.”

"I want to address ... those who have been French since time immemorial but have black skin, those with minority religious beliefs, Jews and Muslims, who can no longer bear being scapegoats of a country in turmoil," he said. "This is your home."

“You are far more French than those who, through their words and actions, betray every day the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity,” the mayor said to applause.

The 39-year-old suspect, whom authorities identified only as Kevin T., is accused of rampaging through a suburb west of Paris that is home to many low-income households and communities of immigrant origin. Its residents have described the attack as the physical manifestation of hateful vitriol permeating the public debate.

Macron, in Trappes the night of the Oct. 23 shooting, issued an impassioned defense of the

French republic, and appealed to the nation to reject “the ideas taking hold that justify this type of behavior.” His message to the community was: “Do not lower your head. You are French ... And do not be afraid, because the republic will hold.”

In a wide-ranging YouTube interview, Macron later said the attack should be a “wake-up call” and that the hard-right National Rally helped foster an “atmosphere of racism.” He warned of a growing “disinhibition of violence.”

Politicians on the left also accused supporters of the anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic party and its leader, Marine Le Pen, of normalizing such rhetoric.

Le Pen's party has rebuffed the accusations and rejected any links to the suspect, and she condemned the Trappes attack as a crime “of terrorist nature, aggravated by the abject motive of racism.”

Le Pen has tempered her messaging to bring the National Rally into the halls of power, away from its roots on the extremist fringes. The party was founded by her father — a man convicted of Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred who once described the gas chambers as a mere “detail” of World War II.

Le Pen's rebranding, along with shifting European political winds, has led her to claim a front-runner spot in polls ahead of the April presidential vote. She is followed by far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has joined the protests that have swept France.

Government officials have accused Mélenchon's La France In-soumise (LFI) of stoking public outrage, a charge he rejects.

Le Pen has focused blame for the unrest on her political rivals, even as others including President Donald Trump made unsubstantiated declarations of an immigrant invasion.

Still, some party officials and politicians further to her right heaped blame on migration policy or on the French-born children and grandchildren of

"This construction of a perceived enemy from within, through the image of Black people, Arabs and Muslims, is harming our society."

Ali Rabeh, mayor of Trappes

immigrants. The ongoing protests have drawn students, trade unions and others from across France, a country with a history of vibrant and at times violent civil action.

The scenes of disorder helped Le Pen cast herself as the candidate of order in between a radicalized left and a feckless leadership. She has also acknowledged a shared sense of economic discontent riling people across the country, while blaming Macron's centrist administration for “migratory chaos, security chaos and budgetary chaos.”

While her party denounced the Trappes shooting, members have doubled down on depictions of the town as a hotbed of Islamism.

Prosecutors revealed the suspect made similar characterizations, saying he chose his target because it is “a haven for Islamists.” They said that while he was not a member of a political party, he had made stickers with the acronym of Le Pen’s party, RN.

Politicians and activists have drawn parallels with the charged rhetoric on the riots of Oct. 17, which left streets from Paris to Marseille littered with torched cars and smashed-up stores.

Le Pen's prime minister-in-waiting, Jordan Bardella, pointed the finger at "wreckers of the ultraleft" and "predators from the suburbs." The second refers to suburbs closer to the capital, such as Saint-Denis in the north, which are home to low-income communities and generations of French nationals with immigrant roots.

Students of the suburbs

What started as student protests has turned into a sweeping display of discontent. France is seeking to curb public spending and record debt as it faces a widening gap between rich and poor.

French leaders have recently met with student activists, who clamored for weeks to amplify their demands, including more funding for schools and more teacher positions. The walkouts began last month in the suburbs of Paris, where students lamented that some buildings were so rundown that they had leaking roofs and rats.

Bally Bagayoko, mayor of Saint-Denis, attributes this to a French state that he said long “fell short” by providing less to schools in “these working-class neighborhoods than the nicer neighborhoods of Paris.”

“We want the republic to keep its promise, that is, on the question of education, to ensure that all the children of France have the same rights,” he told The Washington Post.

The word for suburbs — “banlieues” — evokes neighborhoods on the city’s outer edges where, in the decades after World War II, the government built public housing blocks that housed working-class families and immigrants who fueled France’s industrial expansion.

For some, banlieues became derogatory shorthand for poorer districts or breeding grounds for radicalization. But residents have long decried underfunded public services, discrimination and a sense of social exclusion at the literal and figurative margins of the capital.

As Europe hardens on migration, the subject is increasingly a rallying cry for the resurgent right in elections, leveraging voter fatigue and hostility since the 2015 refugee crisis.

Much of France's immigrant population, however, traces roots back to North African countries that were under French colonial rule, such as Algeria and Morocco.

Bagayoko said the latest rhetoric showed that swaths of society do not really treat them as citizens.

“France is in difficulty with its own children. Because these are its children,” he said. “They are Black, or they are of Arab descent, but they are French.”

Saint-Denis's first Black mayor and an LFI member, Bagayoko grew up in this sprawling suburb to parents from Mali. “We're to blame for everything ... but often they forget there's more in the suburbs, too,” he said, noting the national stadium and the 2024 Olympic Village. “We welcome the world here.”

Officials have said the protesters and rioters represented a cross-section of society. Of those detained, “there was a bit of everything,” according to Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, mostly men.

The government has ascribed the violence to groups it calls “black blocs” — typically associated with “ultra-left” anarchist or anti-capitalist movements — along with opportunistic looters.

For Valentino Beretta, who runs a toy store in Saint-Denis, some were trying to pin France's wider challenges on the suburbs. He noted the mayor faced a torrent of racist punditry after being elected this year, such as TV debates about him invoking apes and tribalism.

“In their minds, someone has to be blamed. It’s the classic method of the far right,” Beretta said.

"Just the fact that we have a Black mayor sent some people into a tailspin."

BRITAIN

Adventurer returns home after 28 years

A British man has returned home after a 31,000-mile walk around the world that lasted 28 years.

Karl Bushby, a former paratrooper, was greeted by crowds his hometown of Hull in northern England on Monday, before arriving at his final destination: the home of his mother, Angela.

The idea for the journey was born in a bar, when Bushby, then in his 20s, made a bet that he could walk from the southern end of South America back to England. “Suddenly, it became a challenge,” he told The Washington Post last year.

His only rules: He would not use transport to propel himself forward, and he wouldn't go home until he got there by foot.

Bushby set off from Chile in 1998 and walked across the Americas, Asia and Europe

— navigating the perils of the Darién Gap and the frozen Bering Strait. He swam across the Caspian Sea and the English Channel.

On the penultimate day of his journey, he reunited with family members — including his son Adam, 36 — and met his granddaughter, 12, for the first time, according to the BBC.

A documentary is under production, and Bushby says he plans to write a book.

But, for now, he told a news conference Monday: “I think I’m hanging my boots up.”

— Victoria Bisset

NORTH KOREA Government denies involvement in heist

North Korea rejected allegations that it was involved in a \$6.3 billion heist on the cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance, saying it was “absurd rhetoric.”

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a statement Tuesday accused the United States of “blindly linking” the country with international cybercrime incidents.

Binance, which allows users to trade cryptocurrencies and other assets, said Thursday that \$6.3 billion in user funds had been stolen in the attack, in what appeared to be the largest crypto hack on record. The company has since said it obtained assets to cover about 95 percent of the digital currencies stolen.

The FBI and third-party analysts attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state hacker group that has been linked to other record-breaking crypto hacks. Pyongyang has been linked to several cyber-

DIGEST

attacks in recent years but has repeatedly denied involvement.

Kim Yo Jong called the FBI's announcement “a trite provocation” and said it was evidence of “Washington's hostile attitude toward the DPRK,” using the abbreviation for North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

“We have issues to reconsider in diverse aspects as regards the very unpleasant U.S. hostile attitude,” she said.

The FBI declined to comment, and Binance did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment.

— Aoife Walsh

BRITAIN Jury deliberations begin in Brand trial

Jurors began considering their verdicts on Tuesday in the trial of Russell Brand on charges of rape and sexual assault.

After three weeks of argument and evidence, judge Joel Bennathan told the jury at London's Southwark Crown Court that they must reach a unanimous decision.

After about an hour of deliberations, the jurors were sent home for the night with a warning not to discuss the case with anyone else. Brand, who is free on bail, has attended court every day, accompanied by his wife, Laura Gallacher.

Six women, who don't know one another, accuse the actor-comedian of sexual misconduct between 1999 and 2009, a decade when Brand went from rising stand-up comedian to major celebrity in the U.K.

Prosecutors argued that during that time Brand was “a sexual predator” who attacked the women in a hotel room, the London offices of MTV, the toilet of a London bar, a radio station, a recording studio and his home.

Brand, 51, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault. The entertainer acknowledged during the trial that he was obsessed with sex as a younger man but said his encounters were consensual.

— Associated Press

Greenland's parliament ratified the Arctic island's security agreement struck this year with President Donald Trump, although some opposition party members questioned the deal's economic value. The deal expands the U.S. military's role in Greenland, paving the way for two new military bases and Trump's missile defense system, while reaffirming Danish sovereignty and Greenlanders' right to self-determination.

— From news services

Beijing steps up diplomacy amid U.S.-Iran tensions

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Oman's Sultan Haitham bin Tariq attend a ceremony Monday during the sultan's state visit to China.

TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS

China is vying for a seat at the table as Gulf officials intensify peace efforts

BY CATE CADELL AND JOSHUA YANG

As the prospect loomed of renewed attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel following Tuesday's U.S. midterm elections, Beijing scrambled to mount a flurry of Middle East diplomacy.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted separate, high-level talks with Oman, Iran and Saudi Arabia in Beijing on Monday. Xi's meeting with Oman's Sultan Haitham bin Tariq was the first visit to Beijing by an Omani head of state since the countries established diplomatic ties 48 years ago.

The same day, China's Foreign Ministry announced details of a Middle East diplomatic blitz in the coming days and weeks, with three senior envoys set to fan out across seven countries spanning the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa.

The meetings came within hours of a new round of U.S. airstrikes Monday, which officials said were the latest in a series of assaults carried out without public disclosure in the run-up to the midterms. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operations, officials said Monday's strikes targeted Iran's Qeshm Island. They came despite President Donald Trump's earlier pledge not to attack Iran before the midterms.

“China always believes that military means will solve no question, but only escalate tensions, and serves no party's interests,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a Tuesday news conference, though she did not directly address the recent U.S. strikes.

The diplomatic push is one of Beijing's most intensive public efforts since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, as China's leaders seek to carve out a role in setting the fate of the region as it braces for a potentially dangerous new phase.

Readouts from Xi and Wang's visits emphasized a push by Beijing for immediate de-escalation, negotiations and a larger Chinese role in shaping the regional security environment.

The Middle East “should not become an arena for great-power rivalry and geopolitical conflict,” Xi said according to the Foreign Ministry.

"Beijing has good reasons to lean in now. Trump is again threatening Iran, Gulf governments are worried about renewed escalation, and Riyadh has already asked China to use its relationship with Tehran to rein it in," said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that has argued for an aggressive stance toward Iran.

The U.S. military had been preparing for possible additional attacks, though Trump had publicly ruled out resuming strikes before the vote.

The threat has Gulf states scrambling to break the U.S.-Iran deadlock, concerned that another round of fighting could once again bring Iranian retaliation to their doorstep. Mediators from Qatar arrived in Tehran on Friday as part of the ongoing efforts to end the war.

The White House has sent mixed signals about prospects for a diplomatic off-ramp from a war that U.S. military officials estimate has already cost the U.S. more than \$47 billion — not including damage to U.S. bases in the region.

Some in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and envoy, have pushed for a deal, while others, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have appeared to oppose it, The Washington Post reported last week.

Despite deepening ties across the Middle East and repeated attempts to cast itself as a peacemaker, Beijing has struggled to translate its diplomatic ambitions into results so far. The intensive diplomacy does, however, reflect Beijing's growing ability to bring key players into dialogue.

"If the region starts moving toward some kind of diplomatic endgame, Beijing will want a seat at the table, or at least to be seen trying to shape one," Singleton said.

As Xi hosted the sultan of Oman, a longtime mediator between Washington and Tehran, Wang Yi, the foreign minister, met separately with senior Iranian and Saudi security officials.

“Dialogue and negotiation are the way out,” Wang said in an official readout of his meeting with Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, calling on all sides to pursue a political solution “rather than once again resorting to armed conflict.”

The timing of the first visit by an Omani head of state coincides with the Gulf nation's growing role mediating the conflict. Earlier this year, Beijing mounted a similar diplomatic push with Pakistan, then seen as the best intermediary between Washington and Tehran.

“Oman has been playing the quiet role of mediator. China identifies with that approach and Oman has more to offer in terms of credibility and relationships as a mediator,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

China's Foreign Ministry said that in the coming days Middle East envoy Zhai Jun would travel to Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia; Africa envoy Liu Xianfa to Ethiopia, Djibouti and Egypt; and Horn of Africa envoy Hu Changchun to Eritrea. The trips come amid fears that the Iran war could worsen intersecting conflicts and sources of instability across Africa and the Middle East.

Beijing has considerable stakes in heading off another escalation. China depends heavily on energy flowing through the Strait of Hormuz and has billions of dollars invested across the region, while prolonged conflict risks disrupting shipping and supply chains and hurting demand for Chinese exports. At the same time, Beijing appears intent on seizing diplomatic opportunities resulting from the conflict to present itself as a force for stability.

"There is a little of Ukraine playbook here: Stay engaged, send envoys, and make sure China cannot be written out of whatever comes next," said Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Singleton.

U.S. conducts airstrikes on Iran, escalating the conflict before elections

BY DAN LAMOTHE

U.S. forces on Monday launched a new round of air-strikes on Iran, the latest in a series of American assaults carried out without public disclosure in the run-up to the midterm elections, officials said.

The most recent strikes targeted Qeshm Island, Iranian territory at the northern entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation.

One U.S. official described Monday's military action as a "defensive measure" intended to protect U.S. troops from Iranian forces using surface-to-air missiles. Another said the strikes hit Iranian missile launchers.

It was the latest instance of U.S. forces conducting airstrikes in recent weeks without disclosing them publicly, officials said, a notable break with what had been routine practice earlier in the Iran war. It's also the latest example of the Pentagon under

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth withholding information that could be politically damaging to him, President Donald Trump or the Republican Party.

Speaking Tuesday to reporters about the Qeshm Island attack, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi accused the U.S. of ongoing aggression but expressed commitment to diplomatic negotiations continuing through Qatari mediators. He said Tehran retains the right to self-defense and “is prepared for any scenario,” the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency reported.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, last disclosed having carried out airstrikes in September, after U.S. forces attacked five Iranian tanker ships in response to Iranian attacks on a U.S. military vessel. Iran responded a day later by launching a wave of missiles at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where U.S. troops are based.

U.S. forces continued to secretly carry out airstrikes over the past few weeks, officials said, a revelation reported earlier Monday by the Wall Street Journal. The strikes have been defensive in nature and generally focused on targeting Iran's ability to launch attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf region, the officials said.

Spokespeople at the Pentagon referred questions to Central Command, which declined to respond to questions Monday night.

The secrecy underscores the balancing act for U.S. officials as the Trump administration pursues a negotiated end to the conflict with Tuesday's midterm elections looming.

Trump had said in a post on social media last month that the United States would “not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections” while keeping in place a U.S. naval blockade meant to stymie Iran’s oil-based economy.

For months, Trump and his senior advisers have vacillated between declaring the war over and threatening to dramatically escalate hostilities. The mixed messaging has occurred as the conflict, which the Trump administration initiated along with Israel in late February, has become deeply unpopular with American voters, polling shows.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll last month found that the president's approval rating had fallen to a new low, 33 percent, with 65 percent of respondents saying it was a mistake for Trump to take military action against Iran. The poll raised several issues related to the war as political problems for the president, including the price of gasoline — an average of \$4.17 on Monday, according to AAA Fuel Prices — and inflation.

Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to launch no new wars, claimed initially that fighting with Iran would be over within weeks. The conflict has instead lasted more than eight months, with the president insisting it was necessary to ensure that Iran never builds a nuclear weapon.

Trump, speaking Monday, raised questions about whether he'll launch renewed military action against Iran after the midterms. He described the war in the past tense, saying the U.S. has “done very little fighting” recently after significant fighting in the spring.

Later in the day, in a phone interview with Fox News, the president said it “was time for us to stop them” when he launched the war and called the conflict a “detour.”

He left open the possibility of more significant action, saying that the U.S. may still “have to go after Pickaxe,” a reference to the Pickaxe Mountain facility at which Iran has some nuclear facilities.

“It’s not a big deal,” Trump said. “We can do that in literally one hour, as soon as we want, at any time that we want.”

Despite continued attacks by Iranian forces, Trump told Fox News that Iran's military is "gone."

He has accused Iranian offi-

Melania Trump to host Ukrainian, Russian representatives at White House

BY MICHAEL BIRNBAUM AND SERHIY MORGUNOV

First lady Melania Trump will host Ukrainian and Russian representatives at the White House on Thursday, her office said, days after a humanitarian exchange she brokered to relieve pressure on trapped residents of a Russian-held town in southern Ukraine.

Nearly 800 people were evacuated from Oleshky last week after being trapped for months under dire circumstances, with little access to food or water. Melania Trump helped broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to facilitate the residents' escape.

The White House event will take place a week ahead of more formal talks between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10-11. Those negotiations will be brokered by the U.S. The first lady's announcement didn't specify who from Ukraine and Russia would come to the White House event or whether any formal negotiations would take place between the two sides.

American and European officials are also expected to meet Wednesday in Brussels to discuss Ukraine's security guarantees and postwar reconstruction.

Melania Trump worked with Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament's commissioner for human rights, and Yana Lantratova, his Russian counterpart, to facilitate the exchange. Those officials are focused on humanitarian issues, rather than broader efforts to end the war.

The first lady “will personally bring representatives of Russia and Ukraine, two nations actively at war, together at the White House,” the White House said in a statement Tuesday.

“Mrs. Trump independently initiated engagement between the two warring nations and successfully secured a ceasefire in Oleshky and the surrounding Kherson region,” the statement read.

The broader war has continued despite the ceasefire. At least 33 people were killed in a Russian airstrike on a school where humanitarian aid was

Two men help evacuate a woman from a village in southern Ukraine on Saturday, during a ceasefire linked to a humanitarian aid mission.

EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP

Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana)

Sean Cairncross

White House National

Cyber Director