The trillionaire has given more than $445 million to Republican political groups this election cycle, as Democrats vow to investigate him.

President Donald Trump criticized James for appearing to stretch during the national anthem ahead of his 76ers debut.

When millions of voters fill out their ballots in November, they won’t just be choosing elected representatives. Many states are offering the chance to impact conservation and wildlife as well, through ballot measures focused on things like dedicating more money to habitat protection or mitigating the impacts of climate change. One could even reshape wildlife management in one of the country’s most picturesque mountain states — and also lead to the indiscriminate deaths of all kinds of wild animals. 

And while ballot measures might seem like small potatoes in the grand scheme of electoral politics, they could have an outsized impact this year. The Trump administration has been systematically rolling back protections for endangered species, taking a hammer to longstanding pillars of climate regulation, and cutting funding to agencies like the National Park Service and National Forest Service, both of which oversee vast stretches of wildlife habitats. In many cases, states have had to step up, putting more resources into conserving the habitats and species within their borders, and ballot measures can help shape those decisions. 

Here are the seven ballot measures that could transform ecosystems across the country this election: 

California — Proposition 45: Cutting pesky environmental reviews, also maybe cutting habitats  

This ballot measure would shorten environmental review periods for “essential projects” like housing, water systems, clean energy, and medical facilities, among others. In a state that’s been struggling to build what it needs fast enough, this could help speed essential clean energy projects that could help slow climate change. On the other hand, reducing California Environmental Quality Act review time, as this proposition would do, could also lead to increased habitat destruction, leading advocacy organizations like the Sierra Club to oppose it. 

Georgia — Amendment 1: Tax breaks for conservation land (maybe)

This amendment might seem a little in the weeds — and mostly in the interest of farmers and ranchers looking for tax breaks. But it would double (from 2,000 acres to 4,000 acres) the amount of land an owner can get tax breaks from if they protect it under the state’s Conservation Use Valuation Assessment program. As Yanshu Li, an Associate Professor of Forest Economics at the University of Georgia, told me, the amendment could incentivize landowners to set aside larger tracts of their property for wildlife habitat conservation, which would benefit species like the nine-banded armadillo and the northern bobwhite quail that call these habitats home. 

Massachusetts — Question 6: A fund for nature

Question 6 would create a “Nature for All Fund,” routing existing taxes on sporting goods, recreational vehicles, and money spent at golf courses to conservation. That fund could then be used on natural resource conservation, making it the first time the state has a dedicated funding source for conservation projects.

Colorado — Proposition 137: More money for restoration and wildfire prevention

This proposition, similar to Massachusetts’, would direct existing sales taxes on sporting goods to a state fund dedicated to conservation and wildfire prevention. In a state where wildfires have torn through more than 2 million acres in the past decade, dozens of conservation groups are supporting this measure to protect habitats and species.

Arkansas — Issue 4: Waterworks and waterways 

Here, voters are being asked to approve up to $500 million in bonds that can be used to fund water-related infrastructure projects like water treatment, waste disposal, and wetlands infrastructure. A boost to wetlands under the Arkansas proposal could help animals that live in those habitats, which are often overlooked in this region. 

Rhode Island — Question 5: New money for climate resilience and habitat protection

This measure would allow for $55 million in bonds to fund environmental and recreational projects. The largest chunk of this change — $25 million — would go to helping to protect the state from the impacts of climate change. Another $7 would be devoted to protecting Narragansett Bay and its watersheds, which would include funding to “restore natural habitats and control invasive aquatic plants,” according to the Rhode Island Current. 

These ballot measures are all relatively straightforward so far, but there’s one question up to voters this fall that puts wild animals front-and-center — and is splitting hunters and anglers down an ethical centerline. Which takes us back to Colorado: 

Colorado — Amendment 83: A constitutional right to hunt…traditionally

On its surface, this amendment seems fairly innocuous. It asks voters to enshrine “the right to hunt, fish, and harvest fish and wildlife by traditional methods” in the state’s constitution. Hunting and fishing are already big in Colorado, and they’re protected by statute, so this may not seem like a major change. But, as Rebecca Niemiec, co-director of Colorado State University’s Animal-Human Policy Center and a Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioner, speaking for herself, told me, neither the text of the bill nor its proponents define what “traditional methods” of hunting and fishing would be allowed under this amendment.

“Read plainly, traditional methods could be interpreted to include practices like poisoning, leg hold traps, gill nets, or baiting and hounding,” Niemiec said. Many of these practices injure or maim animals, including ones that aren’t targeted: Steel-jawed traps and poisons don’t discriminate between, say, a deer, a wolf, and a lynx. All of these practices have been outlawed in Colorado over the years, either through other ballot measures or regulatory changes; in 1992, for example, Coloradans voted to ban hunting bears using bait and hounds, and four years later they banned leg-hold traps and snares. 

The new amendment also continues on to propose: “establishing hunting and fishing as the preferred means of managing fish and wildlife populations.” This would leave far less room for wildlife agencies like CPW to make nuanced decisions or roll out alternative programs, like birth control or animal relocation. It also reduces their ability to take into account the preferences of people who value wildlife for reasons other than hunting. 

“Biological science can inform decisions about how many animals can be killed without threatening a population,” Niemiec said. “But it can’t tell us what hunting practices are ethical, or how to balance hunting opportunities with the public’s desire to see wildlife alive — and protected from unnecessary suffering.” 

The push for these constitutional protections, Niemiec told me, is part of a larger backlash against conservation groups. But in this case, it’s not as simple as hunter vs. non-hunter: Plenty of hunters and anglers support taking ethical considerations into account when making decisions about how to manage wildlife, and some hunting groups in Colorado have publicly spoken out against the amendment. 

“If we’re going to enshrine anything in the Constitution, it should say we should be balancing the diversity of public interest in wildlife in all of our management decisions,” Niemiec said. “We need innovative methods, not traditional methods, if we’re going to deal with the complex challenges that our wildlife is facing moving forward in the state and throughout the country.”

American elections aren’t what they used to be: Thanks to relentless, politically driven gerrymandering, fewer and fewer congressional seats are truly competitive. Millions of Americans are locked into districts where their vote will never elect the party of their choice.

But gerrymandering is also notoriously hard to fix. Many sitting lawmakers owe their seats to districts that have been wildly contorted to create secure seats. So asking legislators to ban gerrymandering often means asking them to endanger their own jobs.

Nevertheless, the stars may soon align for opponents of partisan electoral maps. Last time Democrats controlled the US House, they passed a bill that sought to eliminate gerrymandering. That bill died in the Senate. But, if the polls are correct, Democrats are poised to take both houses of Congress in November. If President Donald Trump remains an albatross around Republicans’ necks through 2028, Democrats could soon control both elected branches of government.

That’s good news for opponents of gerrymandered maps, because, as recent developments show, any viable solution to congressional gerrymandering will have to come from Congress and not the states. Some blue states, such as California and Virginia, had previously enacted constitutional amendments intended to halt gerrymandering in those states. But Democrats are now trying to bypass those bans because they prevent blue states from countering Republican gerrymanders in red states.

Still, even if Democrats win the next two federal elections in historic landslides, they then must overcome the final boss monster standing between the United States and fair elections: the Supreme Court.

And unless the Court’s membership changes dramatically, that will be no easy task. Until fairly recently, the Supreme Court often blocked racial gerrymanders — those intended to lock voters of a particular race out of power — and it at least held open the possibility that a state’s maps could be struck down because of excessive partisanship.

Now, by contrast, many of the Court’s redistricting decisions read like a love letter to partisan maps. The Court’s Republican majority held in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that federal courts are forbidden from hearing cases alleging that a particular legislative map was drawn to benefit one political party. More recently, in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court’s Republicans abolished longstanding safeguards against racial gerrymandering, ushering in a new wave of maps that favor white Republicans in the South. 

There’s no way to guarantee that a Republican Supreme Court won’t simply make up a reason to toss out a Democratic voting rights law, no matter what that law says. Still, there are strategic ways to mitigate that risk. Opponents of gerrymandering can maximize the likelihood that redistricting reforms will survive judicial review by paying close attention to what the Supreme Court has already said about race, election law, and other related topics. Many of the Court’s recent cases suggest that Democrats may want to tweak their approach to a federal redistricting law — and the Court’s opinions give clues into how.

Don’t even think about passing a law that mentions race

The most obvious trap that Democrats could fall into when drafting an anti-gerrymandering bill is to mention race, or otherwise draw racial distinctions of any kind.

Until just a few months ago, the federal Voting Rights Act offered some of America’s strongest protections against gerrymandering. A 1982 amendment to that law prevented many racially polarized states — often states where white people vote Republican and Black people vote for Democrats — from drawing maps that maximized white power. This had the side effect of limiting partisan gerrymandering in that space, because requiring these red states to draw more Black-majority districts meant electing more Democrats.

But the Republican justices effectively repealed this amendment, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, in Callais. That’s because all six of the Court’s Republicans swear fealty to an idea known as “colorblindness” — the idea that any law that draws racial distinctions, no matter the purpose, is equally repugnant. Under this theory, laws that aim to lift up historically disadvantaged racial groups are legally indistinguishable from the laws that codified Jim Crow. So, if a new act of Congress requires states to consider race when they draw legislative maps, that new law will almost certainly be struck down by this Court.

Congress takes an extraordinary risk, moreover, if it inserts a race-based provision into a broader law governing redistricting, even if the vast bulk of that law does not concern race at all. NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) is one big example of how that could go wrong: In that case, four of the Republican justices claimed that the entire Affordable Care Act must be struck down because those four concluded that just two provisions of the law are unconstitutional. 

The current Court is both much more conservative and much more Republican than the one that heard NFIB — and probably will be just as motivated on the issue of gerrymandering as they were on Obamacare —  so a majority of its members could potentially order an entire act of Congress repealed if they deem one provision in that law unconstitutional. And, even if they do not go that far, they still might carve giant holes in a law because of one provision that mentions race.

Democrats seem to understand these limitations: The last time Democrats controlled the House, it passed two significant voting rights bills (both of which died in the Senate). The For the People Act is an omnibus bill that includes many of the Democratic Party’s ideas to improve elections, including several provisions targeting gerrymandering. Meanwhile, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act seeks to undo many of the Supreme Court’s attacks on the Voting Rights Act, the landmark law barring race discrimination in voting, while also enhancing some of the VRA’s protections.

Democrats’ decision to, well, segregate racial reforms from their other voting rights proposals shows that they understand many of the tactical decisions they need to make because of this Court. By placing race-related reforms in the John Lewis Act, while passing non-race-related ideas in the separate For the People Act, Democrats reduce the likelihood that the later bill will fall. It would be extraordinary, even for this Supreme Court, to strike down one law because five or more justices deem an entirely separate law unconstitutional.

But let’s say the Democrats decide the best way to get gerrymandering reform through early next year is by reviving the For the People Act. That bill’s anti-gerrymandering provisions do still contain some references to race which Democrats may want to strip out in an abundance of caution. The bill, for example, would require states to draw their congressional districts using a commission made up of Democrats, Republicans, and people affiliated with neither party. One provision of this bill provides that the pool of potential members of these commissions should be screened to ensure that it is “representative of the demographic groups (including racial, ethnic, economic, and gender) and geographic regions of the State.” 

Because this provision requires the government to consider race, this Court would very likely strike it down. If that happens, the Court might simply excise the reference to race from the broader statute and leave the rest of it intact, but there’s a danger that this Court could strike down all of the For the People Act’s provision calling for congressional maps to be drawn by independent commissions — or even possibly the entire Act. 

So If Democrats decide the best way to enact gerrymandering reform early next year is by reviving that bill and finally getting it passed, they may want to strip out any mentions of race in an abundance of caution.

Relying on independent redistricting commissions to draw congressional districts is a dicey proposition with this Supreme Court

At least eight states currently use independent commissions to draw legislative maps, and several other states involve commissions in their mapmaking process. It’s a promising model because empirical research does suggest that these commissions are effective in reducing partisanship in legislative maps. One recent study, for example, found that moving from legislatively drawn maps to commissions “would increase the share of competitive seats within a state from 25 percent to 38 percent on average.”

The idea behind an independent commission is to take the task of drawing maps away from a partisan state legislature, and give it to a multipartisan body tasked with drawing maps that favor neither major political party. The For the People Act adopts this model. It proposes that each state should have a 15-member commission consisting of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five people affiliated with neither major party. Elected officials and their immediate family, candidates for office, significant political donors, and lobbyists are all barred from commission membership.

But there’s a constitutional problem with this approach, which arises out of a surprisingly banal question: Who, exactly, would employ these commissioners?

One possibility is to make them federal officials. But if these commissioners are employed by the federal government, the Constitution would probably classify them as “principal officers,” which would mean that they would have to be chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And, in any event, the Court’s “unitary executive” cases establish that, if these commissioners count as federal officials, either the president or one of the president’s subordinates would have to have the power to fire them at-will.

Classifying the mapmaking commissioners as federal officials, in other words, would defeat the purpose of creating the redistricting commissions in the first place — because the commissioners would be partisan officials and not independent actors.

The For the People Act attempts to get around this problem by calling for state-run commissions. It requires each state to “establish a nonpartisan agency,” which will appoint commissioners to draw the state’s maps. But under the Supreme Court’s “anti-commandeering” doctrine, a doctrine that precedes the Roberts Court, the federal government is typically forbidden from ”issu[ing] direct orders to the governments of the States.” So that suggests that Congress may neither order a state to appoint these commissioners, nor control how a state’s commissioners draw the state’s maps.

In fairness, there is a plausible argument that the anti-commandeering doctrine does not apply to federal laws governing congressional elections. The Constitution allows states to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” for holding such elections, but it also permits Congress to “make or alter such Regulations.” So that suggests that, when Congress writes laws governing congressional elections, it may effectively rewrite a state’s laws to conform to the federal government’s wishes.

Still, this argument is untested. And the question of whether Congress can require states to set up redistricting commissions would ultimately be decided by a Supreme Court with a 6-3 Republican majority that is often hostile toward voting rights legislation. The fate of a federal law requiring states to set up their own commissions would depend on six Republican political appointees who were confronted with a law whose very purpose is to take the Republican Party’s gerrymandering tactics off the table. 

Maybe these justices would set partisanship aside and allow a law calling for mandatory state-run commissions to exist. But Congress takes an enormous risk if it bets the future of redistricting on an untested legal theory that, at least, plausibly violates the anti-commandeering doctrine. If the Republican justices want to strike such a law down, they won’t have to work hard to come up with an argument for doing so.

Democrats may want to reconsider whether to rely on independent commissions as their primary solution to gerrymandering. At the very least, they should insert language into the For the People Act stating that, if the commissions are struck down, some alternative mechanism to restrict partisan gerrymandering will immediately spring into effect.

So what can Congress do?

Though independent commissions and race-conscious attempts to combat gerrymandering may be vulnerable to constitutional challenges, Congress’s power to “make or alter” the rules governing congressional elections is in the Constitution, and it is quite broad. That should permit Congress to order the states to draw maps using congressionally determined criteria.

Indeed, Congress has long exercised this power to dictate how states must draw their congressional districts. In 1842, for example, Congress required every state to elect members of the US using single-member districts. This law lapsed in 1929, but a similar law was put back into place in 1967. That law, which provides that no congressional district may “elect more than one Representative,” remains on the books today. 

Right now, this law prevents states from enacting many promising reforms, such as proportional representation, but the fact that this law has existed for so long suggests that Congress does, in fact, have broad power to dictate how states draw congressional districts.

Some of the Court’s older precedents, moreover, also suggest that Congress’s power over congressional elections is expansive.  Recall that the Constitution itself gives both state lawmakers and Congress authority to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” for holding these elections. States typically get the first crack at determining their own election laws, but Congress can “make or alter such Regulations.” In Smiley v. Holm (1932), the Court said that the power to determine the times, places, and manner for holding these elections includes the power “to provide a complete code for congressional elections.” 

So that suggests that Congress may lay out a “complete code” governing how congressional districts should be drawn — assuming, of course, that Congress does not violate some other provision of the Constitution, such as the rules against race discrimination.

An act of Congress governing redistricting could take many forms. Congress might, for example, repeal the ban on multi-member districts established by the 1967 law, and implement proportional representation. Such a system could be set up in different ways, but in the simplest version, voters would cast a ballot for the party they want to control Congress, rather than voting for an individual candidate. Seats would then be allocated to parties based on the percentage of votes that party received. So if the Republican Party received 40 percent of the vote in a state with 10 House members, the GOP would get to pick four of those members of Congress.

Alternatively, Congress could retain the one-member-per-district rule, but implement rules governing how those districts must be drawn. The For the People Act, for example, lays out several criteria that the Act’s independent commissions must use when drawing congressional maps. Among other things, districts must “respect communities of interest, neighborhoods, and political subdivisions to the extent practicable.” The act would also prohibit states from redrawing their maps outside of the 10-year cycle established by the US census.

The bill also proposes several mathematical methods, which have names such as the “efficiency gap,” or the “Seats-Votes Curve,” that may be used to evaluate whether a particular map gives an unfair advantage to one political party.

As I’ve already explained, it is unclear whether Congress could actually create independent redistricting commissions. But a law mandating that congressional districts must be drawn in a particular way could still be enforced by a different body — the federal judiciary. If a state drew a map that violated Congress’s new rules, voters or political candidates in that state could file a lawsuit, and a court could order the state to come into compliance with federal law.

That said, one problem with this solution is that litigation often takes a long time. Historically, states that drew illegal maps that were eventually struck down by the courts often got to run one or more elections under the deficient maps before a court could determine that they were unlawful and must be replaced. 

Another potential solution is that Congress could require states to “preclear” new maps with federal officials — borrowing from a method the original Voting Rights Act of 1965 used to prevent states from implementing racist maps before those maps could be challenged in litigation. Under that law, some states had to preclear new election rules with either the Justice Department or a DC-based federal court.

Though the Supreme Court effectively neutralized the VRA’s preclearance provision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), much of the Shelby County decision criticized the VRA for applying preclearance only to some states and not others. So it is possible that this Court might uphold a new preclearance regime that applies to all 50 states. And even if it will not, Congress could adopt a belt-and-suspenders approach — requiring states to preclear their maps and permitting individual citizens to sue in order to challenge those maps. That way, if preclearance is struck down, lawsuits could still move forward.

There is no telling how this Supreme Court, which often makes up new legal rules that cannot be found in the Constitution’s text, would approach a federal law governing how states must draw their congressional maps. But existing precedents suggest that Congress would have broad discretion to design these rules how its members see fit. Outside of the racial context, the Court’s precedents largely limit which institutions may be placed in charge of redistricting or how members of those institutions are selected or removed. They place far fewer restrictions on the substance of federal election law.

Could judges be given the task of drawing maps?

Another way to potentially insulate the mapmaking process from partisan politics is for Congress to pass a law requiring maps to be drawn by judges, who are at least nominally nonpartisan. Virginia’s constitution, for example, provides that its districts shall be drawn by the state supreme court if the state legislature and a redistricting commission are unable to agree on legislative maps. 

Similarly, the For the People Act would require a panel of three federal judges to draw a state’s maps if that state either fails to set up a redistricting commission, or the state’s commission does not come up with maps on its own.

Unfortunately, the For the People Act’s proposed process for creating these judge-drawn maps may be unconstitutional. That’s because the Constitution only permits federal courts to decide matters arising out of “cases” or “controversies” — meaning that the matter is presented to the court in a proper lawsuit where a plaintiff, who was actually injured in some way by a defendant, sues that defendant.

The For the People Act seems to contemplate a kind of public hearing, presided over by three judges, where any “interested members of the public may appear and be heard and present testimony” on what a state’s maps should look like. This process, in other words, does not really resemble a lawsuit, where a plaintiff and a defendant both make adversarial arguments and a judge determines which one of them is correct.

Although the bill does indicate that an individual plaintiff may trigger a hearing by filing a formal request with an appropriate court, this individual doesn’t really resemble a party to a lawsuit, in part because they do not appear to have any greater ability to present evidence to the three-judge panel than any other member of the public.

That said, these deficiencies in the For the People Act could probably be fixed with fairly minor tweaks. Instead of allowing any random member of the public to call for a hearing, the bill should identify specific classes of individuals — be they voters within a state, candidates, or political parties — who have standing to sue the state. The ensuing hearing should be conducted like a lawsuit, with both the plaintiff and the state presenting their own arguments for how to design the state’s maps. If Congress also wants the court to consider arguments from the public at large, those arguments could be submitted in amicus briefs.

And, of course, the bill should also lay out a legal criteria that judges can use to determine if a particular map is legal.

The biggest challenge for lawmakers probably won’t be the Constitution. It will be coming up with a solution that actually prevents partisans from drawing biased maps.

At least under current law, Congress has broad discretion to lay out nationwide rules governing congressional mapmaking. A federal law mandating proportional representation, or requiring states to draw compact districts, or mandating that states must use a particular mathematical model to construct maps that are free from partisan bias, or potentially even a law allowing  judges to draw maps, would all likely be constitutional — even according to this Supreme Court.

But the fact that a particular law is constitutional does not mean that it will be effective in increasing the number of competitive districts and reducing the role that partisans play in the mapdrawing process.

The most challenging task facing Congress — or, at least, a future Congress that actually wants to do something about gerrymandering — is coming up with rules that actually force states to draw fair maps. It would be a tragedy if Congress enacts a law requiring states to use a particular method to design its districts, only to discover that this method does not actually prevent states from drawing partisan gerrymanders.

In a 2016 speech, for example, former Attorney General Eric Holder mocked states that draw districts that are “only contiguous at low tide” or that are “shaped like a contorted snake.” And he suggested that states should be required to draw maps which ensure that “people who live near each other, and who have similar interests” vote in the same district. Holder, in other words, seemed to suggest that compact districts are superior to ones that spread out throughout much of a state.

But this proposal could actually make some states’ maps more biased. That’s because Democrats tend to cluster together in cities, while Republicans tend to spread out more in rural and suburban areas of a state. So, if a state’s mapmaking process fetishizes drawing nearby voters together into the same district, Democrats may all be packed into urban districts that are so overwhelmingly Democratic that many of the votes cast in these districts will be wasted. Republicans, meanwhile, could be spread out across multiple districts to ensure that their votes are counted more efficiently.

These challenges don’t mean that federal lawmakers should abandon the project of halting partisan gerrymandering. But it does mean that they should proceed with some caution. The worst outcome would be if Congress required states to use a particular method when they draw their maps, and then that method did not achieve what Congress intended it to achieve. 

Avoiding this outcome, moreover, will be more difficult because Congress may need to choose second-best solutions to reduce the likelihood that the Supreme Court strikes the entire law down. 

It would be better if Congress could address partisan redistricting without an increasingly partisan Court breathing down its members’ necks. But Democrats cannot choose which justices sit on the Supreme Court at the moment they gain a congressional majority large enough to actually legislate. Absent extraordinary events, they will need to do their best to draft a law that this Court will not sabotage.

This story was produced in partnership with Protect Democracy and Journalism Funding Partners.

Both Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Iowa Republican Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson said his campaign should cease airing the ad.

Lewandowski, a longtime Trump ally, served as ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's top aide

Pete Buttigieg is endorsing independent Montana U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar.

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for New Hampshire to fully ban student IDs for voting during the midterm elections

In a push to close deals, Trump has pivoted toward Putin.

The Justice Department said Wednesday construction will begin on Nov. 5.

Iowa GOP Senate candidate Ashley Hinson strongly condemned Ohio GOP governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for his ad featuring opponent Amy Acton's estranged mother.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Israel felt inescapable in the midterm primaries, especially for Democrats, where centrists and progressives clashed — memorably! — over military aid, Gaza, and (of course) AIPAC.

But with the Election Day almost upon us, the subject seems less prominent. When I Googled “Israel US elections” this morning, all the top results concerned next week’s Israeli parliamentary elections.

In less than two weeks, however, Americans will also head to the polls. They’ll decide which party controls Congress, along with a slew of state and local offices. The stakes are arguably unusually high: Voters will choose whether to check the power of a president who has bulldozed over historical norms and limits. 

As we count down to that momentous and potentially messy day, I’m partnering with my colleague Astead Herndon and Vox’s The Midterms, Actually team for weekly editions on the biggest issues shaping the midterms. We’re breaking down one issue each week and suggesting further reading and races to watch in November.

Previously, we dug into how both parties are changing, the bipartisan backlash to AI and data centers, and the politics of high costs. This week, we’re tackling Americans’ growing disillusionment with Israel — and how that will (or won’t) show up at the midterm ballot box.

Go a little deeper

You know the first part of this story already, because we’ve discussed it quite a lot: Americans’ views of Israel have nosedived over the past 18 months. 

That shift helped shape the Democratic primaries and will likely figure prominently in the coming presidential contest. But how much Israel matters in a general midterm election, to people outside the political left…well, November will really test that.

Voters rarely rank Israel policy among their top priorities. In a poll that the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted earlier this month, about 80 percent of registered voters said Congress should highly prioritize the cost of living during its next term, and roughly 70 percent said the same about ending the Iran war. By comparison, less than a third of voters said they prioritized cutting off aid to Israel. 

There’s another way that Israel factors into US elections, of course — and that’s in fundraising. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has become one of the biggest spenders in US elections and a repeat flash point in this year’s Democratic primaries. 

But in the general election, even AIPAC has been overshadowed by the GOP’s big-business donors, many of them in tech, who have given Republicans a historic spending advantage in this year’s contests. On Wednesday, the lobbying group actually announced it would no longer endorse political candidates or make direct campaign contributions.

In either case, whatever happens in the midterms won’t likely transform US policy toward Israel. President Donald Trump is still in charge of foreign policy, after all, and even if Democrats take back the House, they’ll have little ability to reverse his agenda. 

But a Democratic majority would gain “new congressional tools to act on Israel-Palestine issues,” Hady Amr, the former US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, wrote in a new analysis for Chatham House. Those tools aren’t flashy (think: hearings, funding restrictions, and reporting requirements), but they could certainly set the stage for a broader policy shift under a Democratic president.

Races to watch:

• Florida’s Senate race, where Democrat Angie Nixon has criticized her party’s ties to the pro-Israel lobby;
• Michigan’s Senate race, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign grew out of pro-Palestinian activism; 
• Michigan’s (deeply purple) Seventh District, where progressive William Lawrence has vocally criticized US support for Israel. 

More from Vox: 

• The left is winning the argument on aid to Israel. The next step will be harder.
• The first true swing-state test for the Bernie left
• What American Jews want from the midterms

One link for later

➨ Gather ye roast spuds while ye may. Vegan restaurants appear to be experiencing a downturn of sorts: According to one online directory, the number of establishments fell from 1,717 last October to 1,509 now. But the news isn’t entirely or unambiguously bad. One added pressure on plant-based restauranters, for instance, is growing competition from mainstream restaurants that have started offering vegan dishes. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that North America’s largest wind farm has more than 900 turbines, each as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and encompasses an area roughly the size of Chicago? It just came online in June. 
• Today’s trivia: What’s the plural of Prius, as in Toyota’s hybrid hatchback car? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked after the definition of the word “cartomancy.” That’s the practice of fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Witchy!

President Donald Trump has been attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) since she first entered Congress in 2019. At various points, he’s called for Omar — a progressive lawmaker who came to the United States as a child refugee from Somalia and who is one of Trump’s most vociferous critics — to be investigated, arrested, and deported. 

Now, Trump’s Justice Department is seemingly trying to make good on his threats. Last week, Omar’s Washington, DC, home was raided by federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the raid was part of an investigation into her immigration paperwork with the explicit goal of denaturalizing and deporting her.

The timing alone would make the raid unusual — it’s rare for the Justice Department to take action in political cases so close to an election — and as Washington Post immigration reporter Ted Hesson explains, it also feels uncomfortably pretextual. “It’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off,” he told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. 

Hesson joined Sean to talk about the long history of Trump’s attacks on Omar, what the agents might have been looking for, and whether the administration could actually undermine Omar’s citizenship or even deport her. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What do we know about what federal agents were looking for in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, DC, residence?

What we’ve learned through our reporting is that the investigation has looked at both her birth date and whether [Omar or her father] may have lied about it on the naturalization application. 

A second piece is whether, looking at her father’s military service, she was born in Somalia and was there during the civil war and fled with her family as a young child to a refugee camp in Kenya and was there for years before they eventually came to the US as refugees.

This is the president of the United States and his administration entering a sitting representative’s home to figure out what her original birthday is. What is the motivation here, to the best of our knowledge?

For years, President Trump has criticized Rep. Omar and made unsubstantiated accusations related to immigration fraud. 

There have been theories circulating on the far right — again, unsubstantiated — that she had married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme. President Trump himself has repeated that. And several top Trump administration officials in the last few months have said that they believe that there is fraud in her background. They’re making these statements prior to there being an investigation, prior to there being evidence put forward. And it’s almost as if the outcome of the investigation has been stated before anything has taken off. 

One thing I should say is that while it does appear that they’re looking at her birthdate, when refugees come into the US, it’s extremely common that their birth records are unreliable because people are fleeing countries that are often in disarray, whether it’s due to civil war or other reasons. 

Often, nations like Somalia don’t maintain accurate birth records. So it’s common that refugees who’ve left their country as children, spent time in refugee camps, and then come to the US don’t have a solid understanding of when exactly they were born. I don’t know for sure that that’s the case here, but I know that generally when you’re dealing with refugees, that is true.

I know there’s a lot we don’t know here, but investigators enter Rep. Omar’s home. Potentially they’re looking for some documents that may list her birthday. If they find some information that’s maybe contrary to official government records, what could that mean, in theory?

It’s unclear what sort of charges could be brought from this. And part of the question is, was she 17 and a child at the time of that application or was she 18? 

Even if it was determined that she was not a child, I don’t believe they would be able to, say, launch a denaturalization process based on that fact alone. And even if they did attempt to do something like that, these things are not taken lightly and it’s a long involved legal process and very uncommon to pursue something like this over something as simple as this sort of paperwork discrepancy.

The president has a long history of hating on Somalia and Somali immigrants to this country. 

How does this investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar fit into the president and his administration’s broader efforts to take away American citizenship?

In the past year especially, we’ve seen President Trump use really inflammatory and derogatory language to refer to Somali Americans and Somali immigrants in the US. Even for someone who frequently employs anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the president has in his past, some of the things he said went beyond even that. He does seem to have particularly targeted Somalis in the US and Somali Americans, and Rep. Omar has been part of that. 

I think what’s interesting here or what could be interesting is that this case wades into different territory of taking somebody who’s a naturalized citizen, who’s been in the US for decades as a citizen, and saying, “We’re potentially going to reopen that and go back and look at your file and see, do we find anything that might be out of line?”

The idea that you could do that with someone who’s a sitting lawmaker could mean that you could potentially do that to any other person who may have applied.

Now, one thing we’ve learned is that in the case of Rep. Omar, the administration has looked at the idea, in the event that criminal charges can’t be brought, of potentially canceling her citizenship certificate. It’s almost like a fast-track way to disrupt someone’s citizenship. 

It doesn’t remove it. You remain a citizen, but you lose the document that is the underlying proof of that, which could then cause problems with federal government documents, and it could even lead to immigration proceedings where the government tries to make the case that you should be deported.

How has Rep. Omar responded?

Her camp has vociferously pushed back against the allegations. 

In regard to the search, they’ve actually said that there was a court-ordered guideline that should have been followed, and that involved consulting the counsel for the House of Representatives before the search happened. They said that never happened, and if it had, it would’ve given Rep. Omar perhaps time to prepare for this or some sort of legal recourse. 

They’re saying that not only is this continuation of President Trump’s attack on her politically motivated, but also that the actual legal guidelines that were outlined in that search warrant were not followed.

Are other Democrats speaking up on her behalf?

Former President Barack Obama in particular is one extremely prominent person who came out and made a social media post elevating her case. 

The interesting part is that President Obama does not often weigh in on public debates like this or is at least measured in the opportunities when he does. So it comes with more gravity to hear him stepping in and raising concerns about this. 

I think it speaks to the fact that he thought this was very significant. And if you remember, President Trump’s political career was built on the narrative that Barack Obama was not born in the US.

I do remember, Ted.

And the hunt for his birth certificate. You can imagine that former President Obama saw a parallel here and realizes that this mirrors the sort of attacks that were made on him when he was in office.

We’ve talked about President Trump a bunch in this conversation, and he’s made no secret of his disdain for Rep. Omar and the country from which she comes. What has he explicitly said about this investigation?

He’s saying that the Justice Department is acting independently. That said, he has been extremely critical of Rep. Omar in his public statements and continues to be. And the president himself and other top officials have said that it should be investigated. 

We’ve had, for months now, a sort of public encouragement of top officials and saying that they should be looking into this. So whether he’s directly liaising with them or whether they’re just reading his social posts, it may be kind of a nuanced distinction. He’s publicly saying he wants this to be pursued.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

There are low blows, and then there are rock-bottom blows. The latest attack ad in the Ohio governor’s race is undoubtedly the latter.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is spending $4 million to air a 60-second spot, which features the long-estranged mother of his opponent, Amy Acton, repeatedly calling her daughter a liar as somber instrumental music plays in the background.

The accusation is pretty dark, given the circumstances of Acton and her mother’s estrangement. Acton has disclosed in interviews that she was sexually abused by her stepfather between the ages of 10 and 12 — an allegation backed up by actual, contemporaneous evidence.

Police and court documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged with her rape in July 1978, when she was 12 years old; he left the state after posting bond and died in Pennsylvania in 2004 without facing trial. 

According to both Acton and her mother, who remained married to Acton’s stepfather until his death, the two haven’t spoken in the almost 50 years. But that rift didn’t deter Acton’s mother from insisting, in the new Ramaswamy ad, that Acton had “lied her entire life” and was unfit to serve as governor. And it certainly hasn’t prevented Ramaswamy’s campaign from trumpeting the ad as proof that Acton is a “serial fabulist.”

Go a little deeper

This may be the ugliest ad in what has arguably become the country’s ugliest midterm election. Even before this latest attack, Ohio Republicans had branded Acton “violent” and “unstable,” sometimes portraying her as a drunk or a horror-movie character. One longtime political observer in the state called the tenor of the campaign “alarming,” noting that Ohio is no stranger to negative ads — but that this cycle’s ads were markedly more personal. 

That’s not just an Ohio phenomenon, either. In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has faced nonstop attacks on his religion, including accusations that he belongs to an Islamic terrorist group. In Texas, Republicans have variously suggested that Senate candidate James Talarico is effeminate, gay, transgender…and/or pedophilic. 

Broader studies of how politicians communicate also suggest that political rhetoric in the US has grown measurably more negative over time. One new paper, published last month in the journal American Political Science Review, analyzed 4.7 million tweets, 2.4 million Facebook posts, and 184,000 email newsletters written by members of Congress between 2009 and 2022. Across three channels, the researchers found, the vibes grew increasingly partisan and negative. 

That isn’t to suggest that US political rhetoric is the worst it’s ever been. (We had a Civil War in this country, after all.) But it’s certainly the worst it’s been since I’ve been old enough to vote, and there’s no reason to hope that it’ll slow down. 

President Donald Trump is part of the problem: When he first began campaigning for the White House more than 10 years ago, he adopted a bare-knuckled tone that helped shift rhetorical norms in US politics. It would appear they never shifted back. 

But social media also bears some blame, the research suggests. Across platforms, political posts that skew partisan and negative tend to attract the most engagement — a powerful currency in modern politics. In one study published in 2022 that analyzed posts to X, formerly Twitter, between 2009 and 2019, researchers found not only that “uncivil” tweets earned the most engagement, but that politicians who got lots of likes and retweets on their nasty posts went on to make more of them. 

That might help explain, in part, why many Republican officials seem undaunted — even emboldened — by the blowback to this new Ramaswamy ad. The ad might be “dastardly” and “pretty damn low,” as critics have put it. But for some politicians, the outrage may be well worth the attention. 

One link for later

➨ Notice the change you want to see in the world. The hostility in our politics can feel overwhelming. Depressing. Utterly insolvable. But you can advance the cause of civility by not only modeling respect and consideration in your own interactions, but also noting those behaviors in other people. “Looking for the good moments of behavior that you see out in the world, starts to remind you that they’re there,” one etiquette expert told Vox. Think of it as a small antidote to hopelessness. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that elephants are one of the few animals to show interest in their dead? They frequently linger, and sometimes become agitated, around the remains of other elephants.
• Today’s trivia: Cartomancy is a form of what seasonally relevant practice? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the currency of Poland. That would be the złoty, which — as of this writing — is worth about 26 cents.