Election Day: Congress, Abortion and a Billionaire Tax on the Ballot

Read the episode (Narration script)

Greetings once again and welcome to Political Science. It's Tuesday, November 3rd. Let's see what the hell's been going on.

Americans are choosing who controls Congress for the last two years of Donald Trump's presidency. Five days before Election Day, more than forty-three million people had already voted, according to an Associated Press analysis.

All four hundred thirty-five House seats are up, along with thirty-five Senate seats and thirty-six governorships. Republicans hold the House by a narrow margin and the Senate fifty-three to forty-seven. With the vice president breaking ties, Republicans can lose three Senate seats and keep control. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats.

The practical stakes come down to a few powers. A House majority chooses committee chairs, and chairs decide what gets investigated, who gets subpoenaed and which spending bills reach the floor. The Senate confirms judges and cabinet officials. A House run by the other party can spend two years summoning administration officials to testify. A Senate run by the other party decides which nominees get a vote.

History leans one direction: the party holding the White House hasn't gained House seats in a midterm since 2002. Forecasters favor Democrats in the House and call the Senate close.

It's also the most expensive midterm on record, near twelve billion dollars by OpenSecrets' projection. The Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton alone has drawn more than half a billion.

Voters are also writing some laws directly today.

In Missouri, two years after voters narrowly added abortion rights to the state constitution, the Republican legislature has asked them to take it back out. The new measure would ban most abortions, with exceptions including medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, and rape or incest up to twelve weeks. It would also put the state's ban on gender-affirming care for minors into the constitution. Both the old measure and the new one are called Amendment Three, which is a tidy way to make a ballot more confusing.

Idaho and Virginia are voting on abortion protections of their own.

Alaska is deciding whether to scrap its open primaries and ranked-choice general elections. The last repeal attempt failed in 2024 by about seven hundred votes. This version would also roll back campaign-finance disclosure rules adopted in 2020. The Senate race on the same ballot is being counted under the system voters may abolish.

And California has the biggest money question: Proposition Forty, a one-time five percent tax on residents worth more than a billion dollars, with most of the revenue going to health care. Governor Gavin Newsom opposes it, and two competing measures backed by opponents could cancel it even if it passes. The state's nonpartisan analyst says it could bring in a lot of money for a few years, then cost revenue if wealthy residents leave.

The Supreme Court has ended the Justice Department's attempt to keep about twenty thousand California mail ballots out of the count.

Monday's order was one sentence long, with no explanation and no noted dissents, issued without asking California to respond. The department had argued that once ballots from people it suspects are noncitizens are mixed with the rest, they can't be separated. A trial judge said no, and an appeals court agreed, citing a material risk of disenfranchising lawful voters. In an earlier hearing, a department lawyer had conceded the lists had a high error rate.

A federal judge has put conditions on the Justice Department's election monitors without blocking them. The department plans to send around nine hundred, including employees of the Bureau of Prisons, the DEA and the ATF. The NAACP asked Judge Reggie Walton to keep law enforcement personnel out of polling places, arguing they would intimidate voters.

Walton turned down that request Monday, based on the department's assurances, and ordered it to stick to them. The monitors must be administrative or clerical staff rather than law enforcement officers, without firearms, uniforms or agency insignia, and without the power to make arrests. He also ordered a report by seven this morning on how the department confirmed that none of them are law enforcement officials.

On the eve of the vote, the United States struck Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz.

A US official told the Associated Press the strikes were defensive, aimed at Iranian forces firing surface-to-air missiles at American assets. Iranian state television reported explosions on Qeshm Island. The strikes appeared limited. President Trump had said there would be no new strikes before the midterms.

Diplomacy continues through Qatar, without a deal. Regional officials say Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump over the weekend for a new round of strikes after the election, and that Trump hasn't decided.

And in Ukraine, Russian bombs hit a school compound in the frontline village of Komyshuvakha on Monday. The school was closed to students; it served as a shelter and a weekly aid distribution point. Ukrainian officials say at least twenty-six people were killed, including rescue workers and police, with more missing. A second strike hit the shelter after the first.

Hours later, US envoy Steve Witkoff announced that Russian and Ukrainian delegations will meet in Abu Dhabi on November tenth and eleventh. The agenda includes de-escalation and humanitarian measures. Moscow gave no immediate comment on the attack.

That should do it for today. And remember, if you keep your expectations low, you'll never be disappointed. Thanks for listening, see you next time.