Week of October 30- November 5, 2026
Published in conjunction with The Nation magazine, TRACKING THE CRISIS is a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
MAGA movement in disarray after midterm election results; top Trump Administration officials rumored to resign. Tuesday’s midterm elections resulted in a historic rebuke of the GOP and Trump Administration and saw Democrats seize control of both the House and Senate by sweeping margins. Subsequently, the Trump coalition has started to turn on itself as various figures in the Administration have begun jockeying for leadership of the MAGA movement ahead of the 2028 presidential race.
Democrats flipped Senate seats not only in battleground states, but also in several traditional Republican strongholds. The most dramatic of which was in Texas, where Democrats took control of the governorship and House for the first time in decades. Moreover, overt efforts to influence the outcome of the election ahead of time failed. Republicans suffered losses even in states where GOP legislatures had gerrymandered districts to gain seats, and Elon Musk’s nearly $500 million gamble on Republican candidates amounted to nothing. The rout was so decisive that the Administration’s repeated threats to contest key elections and sow doubt on the electoral process failed to materialize as it became clear that any attempts to do so would not make a difference.
Insiders report that a ‘civil war’ has erupted within the Republican Party as various factions and figures point the finger of blame at each other. Even before the final results were confirmed, senior old-guard Republicans who had hitherto been reluctant to critique the Trump Administration began voicing their anger at Trump for the electoral ‘bloodbath’ that many pundits are saying is a generational setback for the GOP.
Many Republican pundits placed blame squarely on Trump and his war of choice against Iran, which has sent gas, food, and consumer prices soaring; and led many key segments of MAGA voters, even young right-wing zealots such as Nick Fuentes, to punish Trump for his broken promises in a historic protest vote. Other Republican lawmakers and allies cited Trump’s tariff policies, with some lamenting that MAGA and Trump had diverted the party from their core “free-market” values. Many focused their ire on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for his mishandling of the Iran war, with some possibly indicating that they could join Democrats in a push to impeach Hegseth once the new Congress is seated in January.
Most notably, Vice President JD Vance broke ranks with Trump, placing blame squarely on the war and Trump’s relationship with Israel in a bombshell tweet analyzing the historic loss.
Trump, for his part, variously placed blame on his lack of presence on the ballot, Fox News pundits, the lack of quality candidates, and oil prices, even as he reasserted that going to war with Iran was still worth it. He also tried unsuccessfully to intervene in Alaska’s tight Senate race by demanding that all votes that did not go for the top two contenders, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan and Democrat challenger Mary Peltola, in the ranked choice system be assigned to the incumbent. The Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi remain too close to call, but are leaning towards more Democrat victories.
Ultimately, media observers and pollsters cited several factors, including the war, the rising cost of living, corruption, opposition to AI datacenters, and Trump’s cratering approval rating as well as several missteps made by the Republican Party in their campaigns, as reasons for the midterm drubbing. In a brief interview with the New York Times shortly after most results came in, Trump conceded that he will accept the midterm results, and would be willing to work with Democrats through the next two years of his now lame-duck presidency. However, the day before the election, Reuters reported that Stephen Miller and Russell Vought had apparently spent months formulating a plan for Trump to continue bypassing Congress and ruling as a unitary executive in the event of a Democrat win.The Washington Post also reports that there is growing bipartisan support for ending military and financial support to Israel in the wake of the failed war on Iran, rampant state-backed settler terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and the disastrous and destructive occupations of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. This comes as the outcome of the recent Israeli election remains unresolved. In that election, parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel made huge gains. Subsequently, they have made overtures towards the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, making the ouster of Netanyahu’s far-right government more likely.
Trump’s first public comments after the election concerned the ongoing construction of his White House ballroom, as well as a pledge to “keep fighting” for permanent Daylight Savings Time. Since then, several insider accounts have been leaked to the media about what transpired inside the White House after the results, and Trump’s possible next moves. One account described how Trump shut himself inside his residence and went dark on the night of the election, while others described Trump’s increasingly irate rants to staff leading up to election night.
Still others described the mood amongst Trump Administration officials who are reportedly “seeking pre-emptive pardons” in anticipation of potential Trump purges or Democrat-led investigations. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he would no longer be in GOP leadership once he steps down as Speaker in January. Thursday saw the resignation of Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division and architect of the federal government’s failed scheme to obtain state voter rolls. According to several sources, Secretary of State/National Security Adviser/U.S. Archivist/USAID chair Marco Rubio and/or White House chief of staff Susie Wiles are rumored to be next on “resignation watch.”Black Thursday: Stock markets in meltdown as panic sell-off of Big Tech and AI stocks wipe $2.5 trillion from major indices. Just one day after a $700 billion rally on Wall Street, as oil prices and tensions eased on the promise of more stability after Trump accepted the midterm election results, U.S. stock markets erased those gains and went into meltdown mode. On Thursday, over $2.5 trillion dollars in value was wiped from the New York Stock Exchange, becoming Wall Street’s worst second-day post-election trading performance since 1896. Global markets were also affected, tripping the circuit breakers on South Korea’s KOSPI exchange which halted trade for approximately 20 minutes as the index fell into bear territory.
Driven by panic selling of stocks in big tech corporations and other companies involved in the AI hyperscaling boom, the Dow Jones shed over 1,800 points in a single trading session. Similarly, the Nasdaq fell over 1,400 points, the S&P 500 fell over 334 points, and the PHLX semiconductor / chipmaker index fell over 12% on Thursday. Many major AI stocks fell well into ‘correction’ territory, including leading chipmakers such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor, and Micron (all down around 9-11%), data center cloud companies such as CoreWeave and Nebius (down over 10%), and digital storage companies such as SanDisk and Western Digital (also down over 10%). ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft posted collective losses of about $1 trillion, while SpaceX and Tesla fell 9% and 11% respectively. Intel stock dropped over 10% on Thursday, mirroring its freefall in the wake of the dot-com bust of 1999-2000.
The proximate cause of the market meltdown on Thursday appeared, on the surface, to be the midterm election results. Around 56% of voters in an NBC exit poll said that opposition to AI data centers was a “crucial or major factor” in deciding their vote, with around 66% of voters opposing new data centers in their communities. On the heels of such sentiments, leading Democrats announced that part of their Day 1 agenda in January would be to place curbs on AI hyperscaling, with Sen. Bernie Sanders continuing to push his nationwide AI datacenter moratorium. The political toxicity of data centers evidenced by the midterm results appeared, in some financial press narratives, to be an indicator of a longer-term slowdown in the data center buildout.
Overnight on Friday, Trump blamed U.S. voters for the stock market crash, claiming on Truth Social that: “The Stock Market crashed today because the Dumocrats had a big Tuesday – So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!”
However, midterm election results alone fail to explain the wider AI rout, which actually began approximately two weeks ago, with a total of $5 trillion in value having been wiped from markets even before this week’s rollercoaster ride. The meltdown was also not limited to the tech sector, as all 11 sectors represented in the S&P 500 suffered heavy losses on Thursday. Wall Street’s VIX volatility index jumped a staggering 23% on Thursday as investors balked and markets officially priced in the risks associated with the “bursting” of the AI bubble.
Although AI anxiety has indisputably been at the core of the global sell-off, especially given its load-bearing influence on the U.S. economy, the confluence of several concurrent pressures on global markets, including the energy shock, the crisis in private credit affecting Americans’ retirement accounts, and bond market turmoil, has contributed to the contraction. Rising costs of borrowing have effectively killed the housing market, with contract cancellations at multi-year highs. Additionally, the protracted run of ever-higher energy prices has had a chilling effect on nearly all discretionary consumer spending, with remaining consumer confidence and growth increasingly tied to higher-income individuals and companies directly related to the AI hyperscaling boom.
The over $3 trillion in corporate debt related to the increasingly profligate capital expenditures in the AI hyperscaler sector is just one aspect of a larger problem. Specifically, there are now record levels of margin debt in the wider investment space, putting pressure on credit markets and allowing for very little room for error when it comes to investor confidence that companies will continue to meet their intended revenue targets and deliver a return on investment.
Concurrent with the stock market crash has been a correspondingly abrupt reversal of the upward trend in U.S. Treasury yields, with both the 2-year and 10-year yields dropping over 50 basis points back under the 5% level, indicating that investors are fleeing to the standard safe havens given the current volatility in speculative markets.
Sectors carrying any hint of recent risks, including Bitcoin, have all seen sharp declines as commercial banks have tightened their lending standards. This includes halting bond issuance for AI companies using chips as collateral, thus disrupting the “circular financing” cycle that has driven the sector’s appearance of stability and growth. Central banks across the world, including the People’s Bank of China, are re-evaluating their exposure to the instability of U.S. dollar-denominated assets and securities, and even bank stocks such as Goldman Sachs tumbled at least 7.2% on Thursday, indicating that investors are re-evaluating the fundamentals of the economy as a whole.
JD Vance blames midterm defeat on Iran war, reaches out to Iranian leadership to restart negotiations. While U.S. media focused on the midterm elections, negotiations have been taking place behind the scenes between the U.S., Iran, and several third-party mediator nations. This comes despite the world remaining on high alert in anticipation of Trump’s telegraphed threat of renewing U.S. strikes on Iran immediately after the midterm elections.
Over the weekend, the Pentagon reportedly presented Trump with a plan for a swift, intense series of attacks on Iran in conjunction with Israel; while on the same day, the Washington Post reported that Vice President JD Vance sent a letter to Iran security chief Mohsen Rezaei in an 11th hour attempt to restart negotiations before the midterms, after which the attacks were scheduled to take place.
Trump told reporters on Friday that “Iran wants to talk” while describing the conflict he and Netanyahu started as “not a typical war.” Meanwhile, UKMTO reported that an unknown projectile had struck a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and a fire of unknown origin broke out aboard a vessel just south of Iran’s Lavan Island.
Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi confirmed to Al Jazeera that Tehran had received a letter from JD Vance through Qatari mediators, which was under review; calling it a “positive step,” he also noted that an Iranian delegation had arrived in Doha to confer with the mediators. While the contents of the letter was not released to the media, Rezaei noted that U.S. negotiators had “changed their tone completely” from previous overtures, and that Tehran was waiting for a response from Washington.
On the same day, Marco Rubio indicated that despite the overt preparations for renewed warfare with Iran, Trump had not yet made a decision on a potential attack, and that Washington remained open to diplomacy and dialogue toward ending the conflict.
However – and consistent with the pattern of contradictory signals coming from the Trump Administration for weeks – comments from Trump seemed to take the U.S. a step back from the negotiating table once again, as he said to reporters that the war in Iran will end “very soon, one way or the other,” while warning that Tehran must reach a deal, or Washington would “just end it.”
Also on Sunday, Iranian state media reported on a message sent to IRGC commanders from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei instructing commanders to deliver an “immediate, effective response without geographical limitations” in the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack.
On Monday, the Iranian IRNA news agency reported that at least five major explosions were recorded on or near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz; residents of Qeshm reported seeing two aircraft flying over the island around the time the explosions took place. At the same time, an “unknown projectile” struck a ship about 9 miles off the coast of Lima, Oman, creating a hole in its starboard side and suggesting that the two sides were returning to “tit for tat” strikes before negotiations resumed.
Also on Monday, a mysterious series of cyberattacks swept several countries in Europe, targeting supermarket refrigerators and freezers. The hack raised the temperature inside the freezers to as high as 50 degrees Celsius, resulting in the spoilage of several tons of food. European officials suspected Russia rather than Iran to be behind the attacks, although no individual, organization, or government had yet claimed responsibility for the attacks as of this writing.
As Election Day arrived, another oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, navigating the Western-sanctioned Omani route, was hit by at least two unknown projectiles. At the same time, Iran indicated that it had formulated a plan for “maximum deterrence” against targets in Israel and the United States should the U.S. continue pursuing kinetic action. Tehran indicated it had received a reply from the U.S. to its proposal to reopen the Strait if the U.S. met its seven conditions, calling the reply from Washington “unconvincing,” while Trump confirmed that U.S. forces had conducted a “defensive” strike on an anti-aircraft facility on Qeshm Island at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
After the historic mid-term failure for the Republican Party on Tuesday, oil prices eased on hopes that a Democrat-controlled legislature would hasten a resolution to the conflict. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer pledged that a Democrat-controlled Congress would bring a halt to the war on Iran, indicating that the effort already had the support of several Republicans willing to cross the aisle to bring the conflict to a resolution.
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei released a statement commenting on the results of the midterm election, saying that: “Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken.” He also reasserted that though the political equation within the U.S. had changed, Iran did not have “even the slightest inclination towards submission” to the US. He also cryptically called for an “ever stronger” Iran to reach a “point of absolute deterrence.”
On Thursday, rhetoric and reality took yet another U-turn as the pendulum appeared to swing back towards a renewal of active hostilities. With the USS Theodore Roosevelt being spotted heading closer to the Persian Gulf, the New York Times reported receiving information from Pentagon sources that U.S. forces had been instructed to get ready to resume major combat operations against Iran on Trump’s orders.
Araghchi held high-level discussions with his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar in heightened anticipation of an imminent U.S. attack. Meanwhile, the IRGC claimed to have intercepted and captured at least two intact U.S. drones and five more ships caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz while traversing the unauthorized Oman route. Oil prices once more rose over $2 a barrel on heightened threats to shipping in the Strait after Trump commented to the press that he may have to “destroy” Iran, saying cryptically to reporters that “you’ll know soon enough.”
Reuters reported late Thursday that Tehran had sent a proposal to Qatar that, unlike previous proposals, appeared to concede to U.S. requests to reopen negotiations on the nuclear issue, provided that the U.S. comply with Iran’s seven conditions for peace talks as outlined in the June MOU. At the same time, a top adviser to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that any state that helps the United States in renewed attacks on Iran will be a “legitimate target” for retaliatory action.
Also on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported that an Iranian delegation led by Mohsen Rezaei arrived in Moscow to meet Putin face to face for the first time, and that Rezaei carried a message for Putin from the Supreme Leader himself. While he did not comment on what the message contained, Rezaei commented to the media after the meeting that he and Putin discussed regional security arrangements, including the development of energy pipelines between the two countries, as well as securing Russia’s support for “ending the U.S. aggression” against Iran. Former Iranian parliament member Ali al-Sari confirmed that the meeting was intended to send “a deterrent message from a strong, important and strategic ally to Washington.”
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Historic number of incoming Black governors; Black women turn Georgia blue. Tuesday saw a number of historic political victories for Black candidates at both the state and federal level, and in both political parties. For the first time in US history, five Black governors will serve concurrently, in Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Maryland. Prior to this election, only three Black Americans had ever served as governor of a US state – none of whom did so concurrently.
Republican US Rep. Byron Donalds avoided the blue wave to become Florida’s first Black governor, promising to continue De Santis’s policies on education and deregulation. Democrats Aaron Ford of Nevada and David Crowley of Wisconsin both became the first Black governors of their respective states on platforms prioritizing affordability. Finally, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms put an end to the GOP’s 24-year gubernatorial reign in Georgia by becoming the state’s first Black and first woman governor, as well as the first Black woman governor in US history.
Alongside Lance Bottoms’s historic win in Georgia came a larger wave of victories for Black women across the state, spearheading an unprecedented Democratic sweep of Georgia’s executive branch. Of the ten Democrat victors, eight were Black women: Governor Lance Bottoms will be joined by Secretary of State Penny Brown Reynolds, Attorney General Tanya Miller, Agriculture Commissioner Katherine Juhan-Arnold, Insurance Commissioner Keisha Waites, Labor Commissioner Nikki Porcher, Public Service Commissioner Sheila Edwards, and School Superintendent Lydia Powell. In her victory speech, Brown Reynolds said: “Georgia chose competence.”Native women breaking ground in Congress; governorship. Former interior secretary Deb Haaland swept New Mexico’s gubernatorial race on election day, making history as the country’s first elected Native woman governor. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, was initially elected to Congress in 2018, before becoming the first Indigenous cabinet secretary under Joe Biden in 2020. New Mexico also made history in 2023 by becoming the first and only US state to implement an updated Native American Voting Rights Act, which gave tribes greater input in polling locations and redistricting. Haaland invoked her experience as a single mother navigating Medicaid and WIC before attending law school in her 30s throughout her campaign, which prioritized education, affordability, healthcare, and public safety.
Haaland was joined in the winner’s circle by Minnesota’s Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who won her race to become the nation’s first Native woman senator. Flanagan, who is Anishinaabe of the White Earth Nation, previously made history by being temporarily seated as her state’s governor while Tim Walz served as Kamala Harris’s Vice Presidential nominee during the 2024 elections. Flanagan addressed Native youth in Minnesota in her victory speech, saying: “People will underestimate you. Do not let them. You know who you are, you know where you come from and you know what you can do. There is no stopping you from achieving your dreams, and there is no stopping Minnesota.” Flanagan may share the historic win for Native women with Alaska’s Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik, once the final results of that race are announced.
Democratic candidate Claire Valdez, a member of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation, became the first Native woman to represent New York in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, winning an impressive 83% of her district’s vote as part of the state’s slate of DSA-associated candidates. Valdez will be joined in the House by Kansas’s Rep. Sharice Davids, who won re-election for her fifth term in the state’s 3rd Congressional District. Davids joined Deb Haaland in 2018 in becoming one of the first two Native women elected to the House; Davids, who is a lesbian, is also the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent Kansas in Congress, and the first openly LGBTQ+ Native American to serve in Congress.Abdul El-Sayed withstands Islamophobic attacks to become first Muslim Senator, Ilhan Omar wins re-election despite Trump onslaught. After a barrage of Islamophobic jibes from the President and other figures, Abdul El-Sayed beat out opponent Mike Rogers to win Michigan’s senate race, becoming the first Muslim to serve in the US Senate. In defiance of the election season attacks, which El-Sayed denounced unequivocally as “racist,” the Egyptian-American Senator-elect took a playful tone in his victory speech, where he addressed the Vice President with the Arabic term of endearment “habibi,” saying, “J.D., habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.” El-Sayed overcame a historically well-funded opponent to win his primary before toppling the Trump-favored Rogers on a campaign emphasizing affordability, universal healthcare, transgender rights, and regulations on AI and data centers.
Minnesota House Representative Ilhan Omar’s popularity in her district appears to be undamaged by the attacks she has faced from the Trump administration, as she saw her biggest electoral win since 2018 on Tuesday, taking 76.5% of the vote compared to her Republican opponent’s 16.2%. Omar’s Washington, D.C. home was raided by federal agents under a supposed investigation into “potential immigration offenses,” allegations which Omar has dismissed as targeted “political intimidation.” Omar congratulated El-Sayed on X by noting that there are now 8 Muslim Americans serving in the US Congress.Transgender lawmakers, first openly gay male Senator join in night of historic firsts. Tuesday’s blue wave also carried a rainbow streak, as LGBTQ+ Americans saw some historic election day wins of their own. New Hampshire Representative Chris Pappas won the state’s Senate race to become the first openly gay male Senator in US history. Alison Montgomery overcame the ongoing onslaught of anti-transgender rhetoric from the Trump administration to become Alabama’s first transgender State legislator, flipping a district that voted for Trump twice in the process. Delaware US House Rep. Sarah McBride won a 64-36% re-election, continuing her role as the country’s highest-ranking openly transgender official and first transgender member of Congress.
Longtime Democratic organizer Bentley Hudgins won by an overwhelming 94% in their race for the Georgia General Assembly to become the state’s first out transgender and nonbinary lawmaker. Hospital chaplain, former megachurch pastor and “conversion therapy” survivor Joanna Whaley took a handy 63% win over her Republican opponent to become the first transgender person elected to Michigan’s state assembly, representing House District 2. Former food service worker, comedian, and small business owner Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford cleared a 90% victory in a deep-blue district to become Wisconsin’s first trans legislator on an affordability-centered campaign.
Washington’s first trans state lawmaker is DSA member Jaelynn Scott, executive director of Seattle’s Lavender Rights Project, who will also be the country’s first out Black transgender lawmaker in any state. Finally, Quinnie Perez broke barriers in Florida by winning a seat on the humble Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District, making her the first openly transgender person elected to any office in the state. A number of previously elected transgender lawmakers also won re-elections on Tuesday, including Minnesota’s Leigh Finke, Kansas’s Abi Boatman, Delaware’s DeShanna Neal, and Chicago’s Precious Brady-Davis.Surge in Gen Z, Millennial electoral power indicates youth vote increasingly saying ‘yes’ to democratic socialism and affordability, ‘no’ to Israel, data centers, and AI. Underpinning the midterms are some key themes around changing political sentiments in the US on both sides of the aisle, particularly among Gen Z and millennial voters. Future Caucus reports at least 97 members of the 120th US Congress will be Gen Z or millennial, with 90 House Members, five Senators, and two delegates aged 45 and under. Melat Kiros and Michael Alfonso tripled the Gen Z representation in the House, joining re-elected first Gen Z Rep. Maxwell Frost; 27-year-old Alfonso is the first Gen Z Republican elected to congress.
Early data indicates that this election cycle saw a near 30-year-high in youth midterm voter turnout, and that it appears to have pulled overwhelmingly blue, with 66% of those under 30 voting for a Democrat in the House of Representatives. Prior to the election, YouGov polling tracked "Inflation/Prices” as overwhelmingly the top concern for youth voters, far above even civil liberties, leading some to declare that Gen Z “can’t afford the culture war.”
Many of these younger candidates and voters are part of another wave: the sweep of progressive and DSA-affiliated victors who made Tuesday a historic night for democratic socialists in the US. The DSA itself boasted 50-plus wins in state and federal elections this year, including six House Representatives: Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Angela Gonzales-Torres in California, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania. All of these candidates cleared significant margins in their victories; at time of reporting, Avila Chevalier won 87% of her district’s vote, Valdez 83%, Kiros 78%, Gonzales-Torres 60%, McKinney 76%, and Chris Rabb secured re-election with an overwhelming 93% in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District. Los Angeles, California, Providence, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. all elected young democratic socialist mayors this year: 45-year-old Nithya Raman, 28-year-old David Morales, and 38-year-old Janeese Lewis George, respectively.
Amidst the rising power for younger voters, one theme seems to approaching apogee: many analysts are declaring this election a resounding rebuke of the US’ largely uncritical historical relationship with Israel, driving some Israeli politicians to decry Netanyahu as “toxic in Washington.” This comes despite AIPAC congratulating “hundreds of pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who won their elections” on Tuesday. The House and Senate will see a number of openly pro-Palestine electeds this year: El-Sayed’s primary campaign took pride in overcoming $40 million in AIPAC funding for opponent Haley Stevens (and millions more for Rogers in the general election); New Jersey Representative-elect Adam Hamawy is an Army doctor who served a medical aid mission in Gaza in 2024; New York progressive Brad Lander was recently detained by Israeli forces while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the occupied West Bank; Kiros moved into politics after she was fired from a law firm for a 2022 blog post she wrote rejecting accusations that law students who protested against Israel’s counterattack after 7 October were antisemitic; Avila Chevalier attended a number of pro-Palestine protests and was among those arrested in the mass civil disobedience action protesting Netanyahu’s UNGA speech in New York in September.
Another significant issue some say has been indirectly adjudicated by this election season is that of public approval for data centers; and much like uncritical support for Israel, the verdict appears to be resoundingly negative. Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown will return to the Senate by performing better than 2022 (when he lost) in nearly every county on a campaign that focused heavily on his Republican opponent’s support for data centers. El Sayed, Georgia incumbent Jon Ossoff, and South Carolina’s Annie Andrews all featured regulations and moratoria on data centers in their respective winning Senate campaigns. Democrat Gina Hinojosa appears to have won her gubernatorial upset in Texas in part through her stance on data centers, as she promised a construction moratorium and greater community input on data centers; incumbent opponent Greg Abbott appeared to backpedal his previously data center-friendly disposition late into the election by demanding an end to electricity subsidies for them. Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms and Ohio Governor-elect Amy Acton have also pledged to impose moratoria on hyperscale data centers. In a discussion on the matter, Brookings Institute fellow Darrell West told Politico: “There are large majorities opposed to data centers in both parties. So I think political leaders in both parties are going to be under enormous pressure to do something.”International protests show youth in revolt: Germany joins Gen Z protests, France sees mass strike, Italy cracks down. Many of the sentiments expressed in the ballot box by America’s younger generations appear to echo those of Gen Z-ers around the world. Europe’s various youth uprisings are ongoing, with new protests springing up in Germany as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across the country last weekend in protests organized by a group called "GenZ regelt!" (GenZ has got this). Protesters carried signs with slogans like “Eat the rich!” “Time for resistance,” and “Merz must go” at demonstrations that in some cities progressed into riotous confrontations with police. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across France on Thursday for the general strike declared by unions in support of the country’s student movement, demanding a ten percent minimum wage increase and €10bn in extra education funding.
Last Friday, hundreds of cities around the Mediterranean and worldwide saw dockworkers go on strike as part of an international campaign against arms shipments and to improve labor conditions. The action was initially organized by dockworker unions in Italy, France, Greece, Spain’s Basque Country, Türkiye, and Morocco, but later expanded with support from unions in northern Europe, India, Mexico, the United States and Australia to include 113 total participating ports. A joint statement from the organizing unions called for an end to wars in the Middle East and the genocide in Gaza, and “an end to the militarization of ports.” “Ports must not be used for the transport of weapons, ammunition, military equipment and troops,” the statement said. “Dockworkers do not work for war!” In Italy, the port strikes occurred as part of a broader mass mobilization protesting cost of living and high military spending; much like in other European nations, Italy’s protests were met with significant police backlash, prompting a number of Italian trade unions to call on workers in both the public and private sectors to strike in protest.