Recently, Dr. Alan Schroeder was walking on the street in New York City when he felt a breeze out of nowhere. “I literally was about four inches away from someone on an e-bike, probably going 30 miles an hour, that I didn't see,” he recalls.

If he’d been hit, the injuries could have been severe, as Schroeder, who is a pediatrician and research scientist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, well knows. More children are getting hurt or even dying in crashes involving electric devices like e-bikes and e-scooters. 

On Nov. 2, Schroeder and his colleagues published a paper in JAMA looking at kids who ended up in a subset of emergency rooms, hospitals, and urgent care centers across the U.S. after accidents on e-bikes, e-scooters, skateboards, and traditional, non-motorized bicycles and scooters. They drew on data from 2023 to 2026. 

Injuries from e-bikes showed a roughly 400% relative increase during the study period, and e-scooter injuries rose almost 200%. The team also found that severe injuries—the kind that need surgery or time in the intensive care unit—were about twice as likely when a powered vehicle like an e-bike or e-scooter was involved, compared to regular bikes and scooters. 

The numbers are only growing. “This is just an exponential rise in the frequency of these injuries,” says Dr. Stephanie Chao, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and an author of the new paper, who says she’s worked on “some pretty devastating operations” in children after e-device accidents. The researchers hope their study can provide evidence for policies to rein in e-device usage by children—for instance, by making certain types illegal for kids to use, with charges to be filed against both children and their parents if kids are caught operating them.  

What are e-scooters and e-bikes?

Similar to a kick scooter, e-scooters are stand-up, two-wheeled devices that have a powered front wheel operated by a throttle. E-bikes in the U.S. are classified as bicycles with working pedals that have a battery-powered assist, enabling riders to go up hills and achieve greater speeds with less effort. Some have hand-operated throttles so that a rider doesn’t even need to use the pedals. Laws about e-bikes vary by state, with some mandating that the fastest class of e-bikes, which top out at 28 m.p.h., can only be operated by those 16 years old and up, but you don’t need a license or training. In some states, wearing a helmet is legally required, but not in others. 

What many people don’t realize, however, is that what people often call “e-bikes” are in fact e-motos, says Dr. Preeti Panda, a pediatric emergency room doctor at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford who was not involved in the study but has seen firsthand the rise in cases. She says she sees at least one e-device injury every shift she works. 

E-motos, also called electric motorcycles or electric dirt bikes, may be capable of speeds exceeding 60 m.p.h. Regulation is patchy so far, but in California, if these are intended for use on public roads and not just private property, these are classed as motorcycles—meaning that they must be registered and equipped with a license plate, riders must be licensed to drive them and purchase motor vehicle insurance, and people under 16 are not able to get licenses. 

When Panda asks her young patients in the emergency room how fast their e-bikes go, though, she gets answers like 35-45 m.p.h., and even higher. “So—that's not an e-bike. In California and in many states now, e-motos are actually illegal to ride on the street” for children who don’t meet the above criteria, she says. “If a child injures someone else or destroys property accidentally on one of these devices that are illegal, both the child and the parents can be held liable and charged criminally. So it's a big deal.”

As part of her own research to understand exactly what electric devices kids are using these days, Panda tours local high school parking lots on what she calls “bicycle counts,” marking down what’s on the bike racks. E-motos tend to “have that banana seat that motorcycles have,” Panda says, while e-bikes usually do not. 

“I was out at a few bicycle counts last week,” she continues, “and 80-90% of the e-devices were all e-motos…I saw very few e-bikes.” Legislation and enforcement that takes these vehicles off public roads and out of the hands of younger children, she suggests, could be a substantial public-health boon.

Why are e-bikes and e-scooters so dangerous for kids?

E-bikes and scooters are particularly dangerous for this age group because often, children lack the strength and coordination to pilot these vehicles safely, and sometimes they don’t wear helmets. And it’s not just teens who are using them. “A significant proportion of these injuries are actually in kids younger than the age of 12,” says Chao—a detail from the new study that surprised even the researchers. “A lot of times we think, ‘Oh, this is an older, teenage-type thing,’ but it's not. You're talking about really young middle-school children who really don't have frontal lobe development to be on these really fast motorized vehicles.”

The amount of time required to stop an e-bike, e-scooter, or e-moto is much longer than what’s required to bring a regular bike or scooter to a halt, so any experience children have on traditional devices—like regular bikes and scooters—is unlikely to translate to the electric versions. 

The injuries doctors are seeing are largely a result of that speed. “You're not just falling off a bike and maybe breaking an arm. What we're talking about is potentially serious life-threatening injuries now, serious brain injuries” says Chao. “We're talking about middle-school kids whose parents have bought them these bikes.”

What should be done? 

Banning e-bikes and e-scooters outright is likely unrealistic, but there’s plenty of room for common-sense limits, the researchers say. 

First, consistent, well-enforced age limits might be an effective option. “I don't think that children under 12 should be riding electronic devices,” says Schroeder. “That to me is pretty low-hanging fruit from a policy perspective.” Wearing a helmet designed for high speeds—something more protective than a standard bike helmet—is also a good choice, says Schroeder. Motorbike helmets with facial protection are a better fit for the speeds of these devices. 

Schroeder and Chao both stress the importance of not giving children access to these devices without a serious conversation. Some health care groups have begun to release guidance sheets to help steer these chats. “Before we allow our children to be on these bikes or e-scooters, families really need to sit down together,” says Chao, and discuss safety and responsibility that need to come with using these devices. 

India faces a host of development challenges: education and health, manufacturing and jobs, urbanization and pollution. In the world’s most populous country, sheer scale makes addressing each of these daunting, and their convergence even more so. Climate change and artificial intelligence add more uncertainty, making many of these problems more acute in the next two decades. Yet none can be adequately addressed unless the principal actor shaping India’s development—the Indian state—becomes more competent.

The meta development challenge for India will face over the next few decades is the quality, competence and integrity of the state, without which progress elsewhere will remain elusive. Despite its multiple political and social divisions, India’s default ideology is statist: the governing Bharatiya Janata Party on the right, the communists on the left, and nearly everyone in between share a belief that the state should have a central role in controlling the economy and directing social change.

Why, then, is there so little effort devoted to improving how the state functions, even as challenges mount?

The trouble with an ineffectual state

In India’s vast federal system, responsibility for development is divided among different levels of government, each of which struggles to fulfil its obligations. Over the past decade, more than 1.5 million people, mostly of working age, have been killed in road accidents in India, at a fatality rate much higher than the global average (per distance traveled). Roughly one-third of the victims have been pedestrians, often killed because Indian cities fail to construct and maintain something as elementary as sidewalks.

The decrepit state of sidewalks exemplifies the depressing state of urban India. It reveals the extreme weakness of urban governance and the determination of state governments to retain control over lucrative urban land.

The private sector is the engine of economic development, but it runs on foundations supplied by the state ranging from law and order to health and education. While India has established a considerable degree of order, it flails on establishing the rule of law.

Violence has declined, but the police remain as much predators as protectors. Tens of millions of cases languish in overwhelmed courts, turning the legal process into principal punishment for all involved. If businesses cannot uphold contracts, women cannot walk safely after dark and minorities live with pernicious insecurity, the foundations of development will remain dangerously fragile.

India may not possess vast natural riches, but it has a cornucopia of people. Turning their potential into human capital would be an invaluable national asset, but the failures of the Indian state, especially its state governments, are nowhere more evident.

Indians live longer than they once did, but not necessarily healthier lives. High levels of malnutrition and stunting diminish the prospects of tens of millions of children. More children attend school but learning outcomes in public schools remain disheartening. Children do not vote; teachers do, and hiring teachers is  a lucrative source of rent and political patronage.

The middle class, let alone the wealthy, would rarely consider sending its children to public schools, depriving the system of an influential constituency for reform. In higher education, where the federal government plays a larger role, ideological control and partisan appointments often take precedence over preparing young people for work, leaving millions with degrees that confer neither skills nor opportunity.

A checkered development odyssey

India’s checkered development odyssey has much to do with the ailments of the Indian state. Contrary to its overbearing image, the Indian state is relatively small when measured by the number of public employees per capita. And these public employees are frequently moved through the “transfer raj,” which has become another a source of rent for bureaucrats and politicians. Training is usually reserved for elite civil servants. In a generalist civil service overseen by politicians who prize loyalty over competence, expertise becomes an orphan.

These pathologies of the Indian state—a dense thicket of rules and procedures, extreme centralization and rigid hierarchy—are rooted in mistrust and an intensely status-conscious society. The result is an Indian state with the engine of a bullock cart and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. In recent years, as India’s politics has grown more autocratic, centralization has become more acute within the federal government and in its relations with the states. Yet even as the federal government in New Delhi lords over the provinces, they do the same to local governments.

Unlike China and the United States, which employ many more people at the federal and local levels and fewer at the province level, India concentrates public employment in its states. This concentration of public employment and administrative control in the hands of state governments rather than local governments and municipal bodies has deprived India’s cities and towns of authority and agency.

All of this is widely known. Official reports have documented these failings for six decades. These pathologies persist because while everyone believes in the state and blames it the country’s afflictions, there is no impetus to build a stronger, more competent state.

The state provides immense rents to the political class and bureaucracy, while public employees form a powerful constituency against reform. Administrative reforms excite neither politicians nor intellectuals, and their rewards lie beyond the electoral cycle. A weak state is also easier to capture: politicians can use it to browbeat opponents and the ruling and business elites exploit it to extract rents.

This central development problem of weak state capacity is very unlikely to disappear by 2050. But India can augment capacity even without major administrative reforms. Technology offers the obvious opportunity. India has built a world class digital public infrastructure, which has improved taxation, public procurement and welfare payments.

But the very strengths of that system have also made transferring money to voters remarkably easy, encouraging competitive populism, even as efforts to strengthen core public goods have faltered. To invert the familiar adage, the Indian state prefers to offer citizens fish rather than teach them to fish, preserving their dependence on its largesse and, with it, their pliability as voters.

States can also improve their capabilities by drawing more effectively on civil society and business. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics, observed that many public goods are “co-produced” by state and society. But such cooperation requires the state to trust civil society instead of seeking to control and muzzle it for political reasons, as is the case in India now. Contracting infrastructure construction or sanitation services to private companies can also help, though its benefits are limited by the persistent danger of rent extraction.

The condition of the Indian State offers little confidence that it recognizes the magnitude of the coming challenges and is gearing itself up to meet them. From the bureaucracy’s ability to formulate and implement policy predictably to the ability of courts, regulators and the Election Commission to enforce rules impartially, the core institutions of the Indian state are weakening.

This “strategic weakness” is not merely an accidental outcome of imperatives of electoral competition crowding out important long-term reforms. It is a deliberate choice by India's political class. Unless that choice changes, it is difficult to imagine India meeting its development goals in the next few decades.  

For the first time, TIME and data firm Statista have presented Asia-Pacific's Best Employers 2027. In a region shaped by rapid economic transformation, evolving workforce expectations, and intensifying competition for talent, it is essential to recognize employers that create outstanding workplaces. By featuring these leading organizations, the ranking sets a benchmark for employers across APAC and encourages businesses to place employee wellbeing, development, and inclusion at the core of their people strategies.

Methodology

The ranking drew from an initial pool of over 7,000 of the Asia-Pacific's largest and most influential companies. A rigorous three-step methodology was applied to identify the Top 500.

Eligibility criteria

Companies were eligible for consideration if they had a significant operational presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Headquarters did not need to be located in APAC; however, companies were required to employ at least 1,000 people in the region and maintain operational sites in at least two of the following APAC markets: Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, China, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Data collection

The survey was conducted using several online access panels to guarantee a representative sample of employees across the region. Participants were asked, through an open-ended question with an auto-complete function, to name their current employer. This method ensures neutrality and prevents companies from influencing the selection of respondents. The survey gathered a representative sample of over 80,000 employees, including both part-time and full-time employees in the region.

Scoring model

The final score combines two types of evaluations: employees’ willingness to recommend their current employer and, where applicable, their previous employer (direct score), as well as their willingness to recommend other employers within the same industry (indirect perception score). The score is based on data collected in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Direct score: Respondents were asked to rate their willingness to recommend their current employer and, where applicable, their previous employer to friends and family. Responses were recorded on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means “I wouldn’t recommend my employer under any circumstances” and 10 means “I would definitely recommend my employer.”

Indirect score: Employees were also asked about their willingness to recommend other employers within their industry. Respondents were shown a list of employers in their industry and asked to give an opinion on those that stood out, either positively or negatively (response options: "would recommend," "would not recommend," "no opinion"). Additionally, an open-ended question allowed respondents to name other employers they would recommend.

Greater weight was given to direct recommendations, as they provide the strongest reflection of employee satisfaction. 

An overall score was calculated for each company, with a maximum achievable score of 100. 

Ranking

The top 500 companies with the highest scores were awarded the title of Asia-Pacific's Best Employers 2027. 

This ranking reflects not only how employees view their own workplace but also how companies are perceived across their sector, creating a balanced and independent assessment of the region's top employers. The final list recognizes organizations that have demonstrated a genuine commitment to their people and serves as a trusted guide for job seekers and industry stakeholders across the Asia-Pacific.

See the full list here.

The Asia-Pacific region has been the world’s fastest-growing region in recent years, with banking and financial services, IT software and services, and the semiconductor industry driving the region’s economic growth. So it’s no surprise that these industries lead the Asia-Pacific Best Employers of 2027, a list curated by TIME and global data firm Statista that ranks the top 500 companies based on employee satisfaction surveys from 2024 to 2026. 

American semiconductor-equipment company KLA tops this year’s list. Of its approximately 17,000 regular full-time employees across 18 regions, 50% are in Asia. Based on its Securities and Exchange Commission filing, KLA’s employee voluntary turnover rate was under 3.4%. In the past year, the company reported investing in manpower training and development: its full-time-equivalent employees took 38.3 hours of training on average in 2025, and its internal promotion rate at the vice-president level reached 78%.

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined Asia-Pacific's Best Employers of 2027

Pei Ying Chua, LinkedIn’s head economist for Asia-Pacific, tells TIME that the booming semiconductor industry appeals to employees as “people working within that space will probably have more opportunities to advance,” adding that skills in that industry will remain in demand.

In second place is U.S. banking firm JPMorganChase, whose regional corporate banking revenue has grown well above 20% as of August. Its leaders told Reuters that it is close to completing a 15% increase in regional staff this year, after a 20% expansion in 2025, and that it’s eyeing a similar manpower increase in the region for 2027. Taking the third spot is Australian design startup Canva, which indicated a hiring slowdown, followed by Microsoft in fourth.

Conglomerates also had a strong showing in this year’s list: their 57 entries had an industry average score of 78.81 out of 100. From Japan, Sony Corporation ranked fifth, and Toyota Group ranked 7th. Toymaker LEGO and video-game company Nintendo take the 6th and 8th spots respectively, while Google’s American parent company Alphabet ranked 9th. Estonian-British financial technology company Wise rounded out the top 10.

Of the top 50, 16 are Japanese brands, representing one of the largest contingents near the list’s high rankers, followed by American multinationals, who dominate the list of 500. Trevor Yu, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Nanyang Business School, tells TIME these companies rely on decades of reputation-building, including on career opportunities, innovation, and competitive rewards for their workers.

But the region’s not insulated from global headwinds. While Asia’s export-led, manufacturing-based model has historically helped keep regional unemployment low, the rapid adoption of AI has changed the job landscape. An October report from the International Monetary Fund shows that, since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, employer demand in the region fell nearly 10% in more exposed occupations, like coding, relative to less exposed jobs that require more human output.

“Employers increasingly need to renew their employment value proposition,” Yu says. “They need to communicate transparently about how work is changing, acknowledge employees' concerns about job transformation and retrenchment, and demonstrate that they will invest in helping people adapt.” Yu adds that employers who build trust by involving employees in the transformation will emerge the strongest. 

See the full list of Asia-Pacific’s Best Employers of 2027 below:

Most election forecasters broadly agree on the direction of this year’s 435 U.S. House elections. But a TIME analysis of race ratings from 10 reputable forecasters found 12 contests where some favor the Democratic candidate while others favor the Republican.

Those 12 conflicting forecasts are in the races for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district, Colorado’s 5th, Kentucky’s 6th, Michigan’s 10th, New York’s 17th, Ohio’s 7th, Pennsylvania’s 1st, Texas’ 15th and 35th, Virginia’s 1st and 5th, and Wisconsin’s 1st.

The analysis examined ratings from Cook Political Report (CPR), Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), FiftyPlusOne (FPO), Fox News Power Rankings (FNPR), Inside Elections (IE), Race to the WH (RWH), Sabato’s Crystal Ball (SCB), Silver Bulletin’s FLIPR Deluxe model (SB), Split Ticket (ST), and The Economist (TE).

Read More: 8 Senate Races the Forecasters Can’t Agree On

In Alabama’s 2nd congressional district, SCB says the race leans toward Democratic incumbent Rep. Shomari Figures, ST calls it a toss-up, and all eight other forecasters favor Republican Rhett Marques.

In Colorado’s 5th district, SCB also says the race leans toward the Democratic candidate, Jessica Killin, while FNPR and ST say it leans toward Republican incumbent Rep. Jeff Crank, and DDHQ and TE rate the race as Likely Republican. The remaining five forecasters call the race a toss-up.

In Kentucky’s 6th district, FPO and SCB say the race leans toward Republican Ralph Alvarado, while ST says it leans toward Democrat Zach Dembo. The other seven forecasters call it a toss-up. (TE uses the term “uncertain,” which this analysis treats as the equivalent of a toss-up rating.)

In Michigan’s 10th district, IE says the race tilts toward Republican Michael Bouchard, whereas DDHQ, FPO, SCB, SB, and ST all say it leans toward Democrat Christina Hines. The remaining four forecasters call it a toss-up.

In New York’s 17th district, CPR and IE rate the race between Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley as a toss-up. SCB says the race leans toward Lawler, while the other seven forecasters all favor Conley.

In Ohio’s 7th district, RWH rates the contest between Republican incumbent Rep. Max Miller and Democrat Brian Poindexter as Tilt Republican. IE rates it as Tilt Democratic, SCB and ST as Lean Democratic, and SB as Likely Democratic. The other five forecasters call it a toss-up.

Read More: Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms

In Pennsylvania’s 1st district, TE rates the race between Republican incumbent Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Democrat Bob Harvie as Likely Republican, while SCB and SB say it leans Democratic, and FPO rates it Likely Democratic. The other six forecasters call the race a toss-up.

In Texas’ 15th district, FPO says the race leans toward Republican incumbent Rep. Monica De La Cruz. IE says the race tilts toward Democrat Bobby Pulido, while SCB, SB, and ST say it leans Democratic. The remaining five forecasters call it a toss-up.

In Texas’ 35th district, SCB and ST say the race leans toward Democrat Johnny Garcia over Republican Carlos De La Cruz. TE rates the race as Likely Republican. All seven other forecasters call it a toss-up.

In Virginia’s 1st district, three forecasters—FPO, SCB, and SB—say the race leans toward Democrat Shannon Taylor over Republican incumbent Rep. Rob Wittman. IE, DDHQ, and TE rate the race as Tilt, Lean, and Likely Republican, respectively. And the other four forecasters call it a toss-up.

In Virginia’s 5th district, SCB says the race leans toward Democrat Tom Perriello. All nine other forecasters favor Republican incumbent Rep. John McGuire III—including SB and TE, which rate the race as Likely and Very Likely Republican, respectively, while the others say it leans Republican.

In Wisconsin’s 1st district, FPO says the race leans toward Democrat Mitchell Berman, while CPR, DDHQ, IE, RWH, and SCB say it leans toward Republican incumbent Rep. Bryan Steil, and TE rates it Likely Republican. The remaining three forecasters call it a toss-up.

Read More: Polls Point to a Blue Wave. Here’s Why Republicans Say They’re Wrong

Of the remaining 423 House races, 182 are unanimously rated Safe or Solid Democratic, and another 31 are unanimously rated in favor of Democrats, though not all as Safe or Solid. On the Republican side, 108 are unanimously rated Safe or Solid Republican, and another 72 are unanimously rated in favor of Republicans, though not all as Safe or Solid. Thirty races have at least one toss-up rating but no disagreement among forecasters who favor a party: 17 for Democrats and 13 for Republicans.

TIME’s analysis reflects the forecasters’ ratings as of 7 a.m. ET, Nov. 3. Ratings describe the forecasters’ assessments of each race based on polling and fundamental assumptions, but they are not guaranteed outcomes.

Amid projections of a Democratic blue wave, as voters head to the polls, several pivotal races are too close for all the experts to comfortably predict.

A TIME analysis of race ratings by 10 reputable election forecasters found that of the 35 U.S. Senate seats up for election on Nov. 3, eight are not rated unanimously in favor of one party. Those eight races are in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. And Democrats would have to win at least four of them, assuming other results go as expected, to take control of the upper chamber of Congress.

The analysis examined ratings from Cook Political Report (CPR), Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), FiftyPlusOne (FPO), Fox News Power Rankings (FNPR), Inside Elections (IE), Race to the WH (RWH), Sabato’s Crystal Ball (SCB), Silver Bulletin’s FLIPR Deluxe model (SB), Split Ticket (ST), and The Economist (TE).

Read More: 12 House Races That Forecasters See Going Different Ways

In Alaska, four forecasters—DDHQ, FPO, SCB, and ST—rate the race between Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan as leaning Democratic, while the remaining six call it a toss-up. (TE uses the term “uncertain,” which this analysis treats as the equivalent of a toss-up rating.)

In Iowa, different forecasters can see the race between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek going different directions. RWH rates it as Tilt Democratic, while SCB says it leans Republican, and TE rates it Likely Republican. The other seven forecasters call the race a toss-up.

In Kansas, where Democrat Adam Hamilton is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, four forecasters—FPO, SCB, SB, and ST, say the race leans Democratic. The other six forecasters call it a toss-up.

In Maine, seven forecasters favor Democrat Troy Jackson over Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, rating the race either Lean or Likely Democratic. CPR, IE, and FNPR call it a toss-up.

Read More: 10 Candidates Who Could Make History in the Midterms

In Michigan, only FNPR rates the race between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers as a toss-up. IE says it tilts Democratic; CPR and SCB say it leans Democratic; and the rest all rate it Likely Democratic.

In Ohio, where Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Jon Husted, seven forecasters favor Brown—rating the race either Tilt or Lean Democratic— while CPR, DDHQ, and TE call it a toss-up.

In South Carolina, FNPR and RWH say the race between Republican Sen. Darline Graham and Democrat Annie Andrews is a toss-up, while eight forecasters favor Graham keeping the seat she filled after her brother’s passing. IE says it tilts Republican, TE rates the race Likely Republican, and the other six all say it leans Republican.

In Texas, seven forecasters favor Democrat James Talarico over Republican Ken Paxton. IE rates the race as Tilt Democratic; DDHQ, FPO, RWH, and SCB say it leans Democratic; and SB and ST rate the race Likely Democratic. CPR, FNPR, and TE call it a toss-up.

Read More: The 7 Key Governor Races to Watch in the Midterm Elections

Of the remaining 27 Senate races, 13 are unanimously rated in favor of Democrats. Nine of those are rated safely or solidly Democratic by all 10 forecasters: John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Chris Coons in Delaware, Juliana Stratton in Illinois, Ed Markey in Massachusetts, Cory Booker in New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján in New Mexico, Jeff Merkley in Oregon, Jack Reed in Rhode Island, and Mark Warner in Virginia. Another four Democrats—Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, and Roy Cooper in North Carolina—are unanimously favored, although not every forecaster rates their races as safe or solid.

The other 14 races are unanimously rated in favor of Republicans. Seven are rated safely or solidly Republican by all 10 forecasters: Barry Moore in Alabama, Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Jim Risch in Idaho, Kevin Hern in Oklahoma, Bill Hagerty in Tennessee, Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia, and Harriet Hageman in Wyoming. In seven more, all 10 forecasters favor the Republican candidate—Ashley Moody in Florida, Andy Barr in Kentucky, Julia Letlow in Louisiana, Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, Kurt Alme in Montana, Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, and Mike Rounds in South Dakota—though not all rate the contests as safe or solid.

TIME’s analysis reflects the forecasters’ ratings as of 7 a.m. ET, Nov. 3. Ratings describe the forecasters’ assessments of each race based on polling and fundamental assumptions, but they are not guaranteed outcomes.

Shortly after they'd both won Academy Awards at the 2024 Oscars, Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki got a chance to speak with Christopher Nolan when Oppenheimer premiered in Japan. "As part of our conversation I told him, 'One day I think I would like to make a response to your movie,'" Yamazaki recalls. "In my mind I was thinking I'd develop a film that looks directly at Hiroshima. But then I began thinking, 'Wait—Godzilla is itself a metaphor for nuclear war. Maybe I can combine the two and make a Godzilla movie that is also an answer to Oppenheimer.'"

It wasn't a crazy idea; the King of the Monsters has indeed been a walking, building-smashing allegory for the atomic bomb ever since the very first film in 1954. But audiences may be shocked by the degree to which Godzilla Minus Zero, the follow-up to 2023’s Minus One, is a full-throated response to Oppenheimer. No movie in this franchise that's three-quarters of a century old has ever been as explicit about the bomb as Godzilla Minus Zero—including the original. Minus Zero is an intense, often gruesome film that tackles big themes, and it does this while also giving the big guy another kaiju to fight in an action-packed spectacle. 

Set in 1949, four years after the end of World War II and two years after Godzilla was seemingly vanquished in Minus One, the sequel has a new monster attack a still-rebuilding Japan. Ghidorah, a dragon who arrived from outer space, destroys a city in the opening set piece and only gets more dangerous from there. Yamazaki, who wrote Minus Zero in addition to directing it and helming the visual effects, admits that the classic kaiju's alien background is a bit goofier than the more grounded world he'd created for Minus One. Ghidorah speaks to a challenge that all Godzilla sequels have faced: movies where Godzilla is the only monster can be serious metaphors, but as soon as you start adding other kaiju for him to fight, the franchise seems doomed to turn dumb. Yamazaki was mindful of avoiding this with Minus Zero. The entertainment spectacle would be there, of course, but especially considering the previous film reached a much wider audience than anyone expected—making north of $114 million globally against a budget between $10 million and $15 million—Yamazaki thought the sequel had an obligation to "really dig deeper and even explore some uncomfortable subjects."

As the characters, including Ryunosuke Kamiki's returning protagonist Kōichi Shikishima, try and fail to stop Ghidorah on their own, a professor, Murakami, unveils an invention that could lure Godzilla (who it turns out is still alive) to Ghidroah's location. The plan is for the two kaiju to fight so the humans might have an easier time doing a coup de grâce on the weakened victor. On paper, this is the sort of plot that you might expect from the sillier Showa era of the franchise, in the '60s and '70s. But Professor Murakami's past trauma and hidden agenda push Minus Zero into more provocative territory.

Murakami survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but as the audience sees in a flashback to the immediate aftermath of the event, his daughter and grandson did not. While the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been key parts of Godzilla's backstory and significance, they've never been part of the plot in the way they are in Minus Zero. Godzilla's atomic breath in Minus One evoked a mushroom cloud and the resulting mass destruction, but in Minus Zero we see what nuclear death actually does to humans. The charred bodies of Murakami's family are a much more graphic and human-scale sort of violence than is normal for the franchise.

But Minus Zero goes even further. In a sequence where Murakami imagines Godzilla getting revenge on the United States by attacking New York City, the monster unleashes atomic breath on Manhattan, and the action suddenly switches to slow motion. Unsuspecting Americans look up in shock and horror as a massive inferno erupts and engulfs them. We see the flesh peel off their faces. Oppenheimer drew criticism for not showing the effects of the bomb its subject created. Godzilla Minus Zero does so in horrifying detail, and Yamazaki says he was inspired by a different American blockbuster director in his depiction of nuclear death. 

"It was important to show as many people as possible what the effects of an atomic bomb would really look like. With the violence we see in New York City, I think back to Terminator 2, where James Cameron shows audiences what nuclear war does to us," Yamazaki explains. "I wanted to evoke something similar because it's very important for it to feel relatable—to jog our imaginations in a way that says, 'Wow. This is real. It is a very violent act.'"

While the Big Apple's destruction is only a terrifying dream sequence, the United States doesn't come off especially well in other parts of Godzilla Minus Zero. The American forces occupying postwar Japan have ulterior motives as they offer "help" in the fight against Ghidorah. They’re invested in controlling this Godzilla-luring device so they can add the kaiju to their nuclear arsenal, rendering the US of A as a secondary antagonist by the end of the film. 

Other movies, like 2016's Shin Godzilla and 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, have been critical of the United States. (The latter, which features flashbacks to a pre-mutated Godzilla stomping American GIs in WWII, is about an American who travels back in time to destroy Japan because it's too economically successful in the future.) But Minus Zero's unflattering depiction feels different—though considering that Minus Zero had its world premiere in New York City, there doesn't appear to be any real animosity towards the U.S. Yamazaki says he intentionally avoided making the American military too prominent in Minus One, instead having the army be "an almost unseen threat" throughout the film, but the 1940s setting meant that it was inevitable that the Yankees would take on a more explicit role. "As time passes, it was important to really take a look at what that relationship between the U.S. and Japan was," Yamazaki explains. "I went down the rabbit hole and did a lot of research about U.S. and Japan's military forces and tension, ultimately leading up to the story we see."

There's a lot going on in Godzilla Minus Zero, but Yamazaki thinks the monster is up to the task. "Godzilla was the only creature, kaiju, or entity that could handle all that weight on its shoulders," he says. Yamazaki found a way to make an exciting Godzilla sequel and respond to Oppenheimer. If he ever makes a third Godzilla movie, though, he'll face a different challenge: What to call it. 

"We've gone from Minus One to Minus Zero so we're now neutral," Yamazaki says somewhat sheepishly. "That might be the biggest problem we have to solve if there is a sequel."

After weeks of rallies across the country, President Trump is set to spend Election Day at the White House, as polls suggest his party may be in for a tough night.

Trump gave a final speech ahead of Election Day on Monday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the source of a recent troubled renovation, in which his Administration’s achievements while calling Democrats “extreme and dangerous.”

“For whatever reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, and we gave this a very strong shot,” he said. 
The President’s schedule on Monday also had him attending at least nine virtual tele-rallies to stump for Republican candidates across the country. It was the capstone to weeks of campaigning by Trump. Just in October, he attended and spoke at 27 campaign rallies.

On Tuesday, the President is set to remain at the White House into the evening as states from coast to coast tabulate the election results, according to a White House official. Election night is expected to to stretch into the early hours, with the first polls closing at 6 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and the last in Alaska at 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

The president, along with First Lady Melania Trump, cast their ballots early in person in West Palm Beach, Florida, two weeks ago, before Trump spoke at a rally in Georgia that same day. Trump said he voted for all Republicans. 

Republicans Hope to Defy the Polls

The President has been encouraging his supporters to vote as if his name is on the ballot, as Republicans fear a lower turnout from their supporters than those of Democrats. The latest New York Times/Siena poll on Monday showed Democrats leading in key Senate battlegrounds including Michigan, Texas, Ohio, and Kansas. 

Read more: The Key Congressional Races to Watch on Election Night

“Democrats are showing up, they're energized. They hate, hate, hate Donald Trump,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said Friday on his podcast.

“If the election were over today, if just the early votes that have been cast so far were counted, Republicans would lose massively,” Cruz warned.

Key election results could be delayed by the Trump administration’s ongoing investigations into how states administer elections. The Department of Justice on Sunday asked a federal appeals Court to overturn a ruling that dismissed the department’s bid to potentially block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election over the candidacy of Daniel J Sullivan, who is appearing on the same ballot as incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan. 

Read more: How Trump Could Interfere With the Midterms on Election Day, and the Days After

The Department has also asked the Supreme Court on Monday to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claims have been provided to noncitizens. Federal judges in the lower courts have all rejected the DOJ’s request to do so. 

For months, Trump has appeared to lay the groundwork to claim that voter fraud took place if Republicans perform poorly in the midterms, despite the fact that instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare. Last week, he claimed in a Truth Social post that the federal government is closely watching for any sign of voter fraud in Minnesota, and that the only way that the Republican candidate for the Senate will lose is through “playing games with the [B]allots.” 

Asked if he will respect the midterm election results, Trump told reporters last Tuesday that he will “if they are honest elections.”

If you had to describe the result of your company’s AI program on your next earnings call—one sentence, of the kind a shareholder would care about—what would that sentence be?

Most chief executives I meet cannot name it. They can produce activity: pilots run, licenses purchased, employees trained, a partnership announced. None of that is a result. Survey after survey finds that most corporate AI programs deliver disappointing measurable returns.

In my view, this is not because of the models, the data, or the talent. It is because of where companies are pointing the AI itself. Today’s systems can reason across an entire business, and we have assigned them to handling tickets and summarizing meetings. This is like hiring a business operations genius and putting him to work as an assistant. The place where AI can move the most money is not the call center. It is the corner office.

In fairness to CEOs, the cards are often stacked against them. A company is an information system, and the quality of information degrades at every level it passes through. Going up the chain, uncomfortable findings and early warning signs get discarded; what often arrives is a clean, but incomplete, summary. Going downwards, management directives  are often diluted, re-interpreted, re-purposed, or quietly “pocket-vetoed”—nodded through in the meeting and left to die. The result? A company of 10,000 ends up knowing less than a company of 10.

A good chief of staff can help compensate for these challenges. But none can read every document the company produces, sit in every meeting, and hear every customer call.

Now, AI can expose and accelerate radical visibility in organizations at a depth and speed that far surpass any human capacity and any business intelligence system. Every company keeps two sets of records. One is official: quarterly reports, project updates, performance reviews, polished at each level until it is clean and coherent. The other is what actually happened: meeting transcripts, chat threads, edit trails, sales notes, code check-ins. Managers have always worked from the first, because the second was too numerous and scattered to read. No longer. Every company writes down the most critical issues, the hottest debates, and the truth about itself every day. Almost none of them read it. A CEO-level agentic system can wake up that “dormant data.” 

So at my company I asked my team to build management agents for me: to sit in meetings, track commitments, and read the data underneath what I was being told. The more I used them, the more we added. People called it “Kai-Fu’s Boss AI,” and the name stuck. We eventually turned it into a product.

What did my boss AI find in its first weeks? A priority project reported on track every week, with no code committed in five. A customer marked highly likely to renew, while the account manager had not called in two months. A draft contract nobody could have made profitable, as reading relevant sales notes, the signed terms, and product requirement documents together showed free customization promised in a room but never written down.

Those are not minor administrative matters. They are a delivery slip caught early, a renewal saved, a margin leak stopped before it had to be honored. That is the connection to the bottom line every AI pilot has missed: not a productivity percentage, but a number that moved because AI caught it in time. 

AI’s second contribution is to surface hidden good news that might have been under the radar. Chief among these is talent and identifying star performers.

Last year I ran our performance review differently: no resumes, no KPI decks, no department heads recommending their own. We agreed first on what “engineering excellence” means when a machine can now write most of the code, then scored a year of repository history against it.  Several of the strongest names were people I could not have picked out of a meeting. One vice president wrote close to 300,000 lines with AI in a month, against his own ceiling of 30,000 20 years ago, when he was the most prolific coder I knew. He is not typing faster; he is directing AI. And the reverse: once the machine does the status-collecting and information-passing, the employees whose only output was status-collecting and information-passing are obsolete.

This is what an AI-native chief executive is: not someone who just signs off on an AI budget, but someone who puts his own meetings, calendar, and blind spots under the machine’s scrutiny first. I regularly ask my agent what I got wrong in a meeting, whether my time went where I said my priorities were, and what people are afraid to tell me. Subordinates answer those questions politely. The machine can tell me the blunt truth.

This is how a company can be truly transformed by AI. The chief executive asks sharper questions, and everyone in the room tends to follow. Often, middle managers resist AI because they fear it will put their teams at risk. In fact, I would argue that employees resist AI not because they doubt it works but because they suspect it does.

So: no more cosmetics. We should use AI to address businesses’ hardest problems in the building: the ones on the CEO’s desk. Then, the words the CEO proudly proclaims on the next earnings call will have three parts: a business number that moved, the person who moved it, and the compute that did the work.

Less than 24 hours before Election Day, President Donald Trump railed against the Democratic Party and contended that if his supporters show up to the polls, Republicans “will win in a landslide.”

Speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday afternoon, Trump said that this year’s midterm election is “the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime.” He levied a number of attacks against Democrats, including claiming that the party has “nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history.” He accused Democrats of having a “radical agenda” and criticized their stances on policies ranging from transgender rights to immigration.

“We have to keep our Congress strong, free, a little bit of apple pie,” he said.

Trump went on to say that he “won many states” in the 2024 election and urged his base to vote on Election Day. He said that “America is ready to go. They’re ready to vote. I hope they’re ready to do the right thing.”

“Because if the people that voted for me and voted in the last election, where we had such a great victory, if they go out and vote, just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide,” the President said. “Now, that doesn’t happen because usually, whoever the sitting President is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good President, great President, bad, for some reason, the sitting President doesn’t win the midterms. But we gave this a very strong shot.”

It’s true that the political party in control of the White House typically loses seats in Congress in the midterms. In a previous interview with TIME, Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University, compared a midterm election to “a referendum on how things are going with the presidency,” saying that voters tend to take their dissatisfaction with the President out on his party during the midterms.

Read More: Trump’s Approval Is at a New Low. Here’s Where Other Presidents’ Stood Before the Midterms—and How Their Parties Fared

This year, Republicans are facing a particularly challenging political climate on that front. Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a historic low ahead of Election Day; the last time the leader in the Oval Office saw their approval rating drop to a comparable level ahead of a midterm election was in 1946, during Harry Truman’s first term.

Polling has also offered promising signs for Democrats as they seek to regain control of Congress in the midterms. Most generic ballot polls show that the majority of voters plan to back Democrats over Republicans in the coming elections. Even in states long led by Republicans—such as in Texas and South Carolina—polls in recent weeks have indicated that GOP candidates are struggling to keep their usual edge.

The final set of New York Times/Siena polls released before Election Day shows Democratic Senate candidates outpacing their Republican opponents in several critical states, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, James Talarico in Texas, Troy Jackson in Maine, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Adam Hamilton in Kansas.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 57.5 million Americans had already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Registered Democrats made up a notably greater share of early voters in states with party registration, at just under 43%, than their Republican counterparts, at 31.7%. Another 25.3% of early voters were not registered with either party. 

With millions more voters expected to turn out on Tuesday, however, Republicans—who have been more likely to vote in person on Election Day in recent years—are expected to narrow that gap. The outcome of the pivotal elections in several states may only be known days after the polls close Tuesday evening.

Now that clocks have fallen back, many Americans face a dreary daily reality: finishing the workday after the sun has set. That could be problematic for health, since sunlight benefits us in many ways. It helps regulate our internal clocks, boosts mood, and supports the production of vitamin D, which is essential for bone and overall health. Emerging research offers yet another reason to soak up the sunshine while you can, linking more sunlight exposure to improved metabolism and lower blood sugar. 

“Light is an underestimated lifestyle factor when it comes to metabolism,” says Patrick Schrauwen, a senior scientist at the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf who has been studying this relationship. “We focus on diet and exercise, but I think exposure to natural light also plays a role.”

Schrauwen was a co-author of a small study, published in the January issue of Cell Metabolism, in which 13 people with Type 2 diabetes spent several days during working hours in one of two environments. They were either exposed to natural daylight through windows or only artificial lighting from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Continuous glucose monitoring showed that people spent more time in the normal blood sugar range when they had access to daylight.

“It was one of the first experimental studies to show that natural light has this effect,” Schrauwen says.

An August study of more than 420,000 people in the U.K. linked greater sunlight exposure to lower blood sugar. The same study found that people who use tanning beds—which, like the sun, emit UV radiation—had significantly lower likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes. 

The researchers used blood-glucose test results from the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database, combined with satellite estimates of sunlight where participants lived, to examine whether sunlight exposure in the days before a blood test influenced glucose levels. 

“The main overall finding is that blood glucose was lower if you'd just been through a period of sunnier weather, relative to the time of year, in the two days or seven days before the test,” says study co-author Chris Dibben, a health geographer at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

The finding was most pronounced in the winter months, says Dibben. “It makes sense that in the most sunlight-starved time of the year, the effect may be biggest,” he says.

In a separate analysis using the same medical records, Dibben and his colleagues found that people who used tanning beds were less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes compared to people who didn’t.

The researchers chose to study people who frequently use tanning beds as a sort of proxy for people who spend more time in the sun, Dibben says. In addition to getting sun-like light from the devices themselves, past research has shown that people who use tanning beds also get more sun exposure compared to non-users. “They enjoy sun-bathing too,” Dibben says. The researchers found that people who regularly used tanning beds had a roughly 20% reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to non-users over the course of their lifetime, Dibben says: “This was quite a large effect.”

There are known downsides to sun and UV exposure. People who use tanning beds are more likely than non-users to develop skin cancer, for one. But Dibben says he was initially drawn to this area of research after seeing research indicating that even though people exposed to more sun had a higher risk of skin cancer, they also had an overall lower risk of dying and disease.

These results are largely drawn from correlational studies, not causative ones. But a growing number of studies have linked more sunlight exposure with improved cardiovascular health and a lower risk for obesity.

“The combination of these studies support the notion that light is important for metabolic and cardiovascular health,” says Frank A.J.L. Scheer, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School who studies how the body’s internal rhythms affect health.

Scientists are still working out how light affects metabolism, but the circadian system, which helps regulate blood sugar, body weight, and cardiovascular function, is thought to be a leading factor, Scheer says.

“If we zoom out a little bit, we know that light is the most important signal for our body clock, our circadian system,” says Scheer, who also heads the Medical Chronobiology Program at Mass General Brigham. “The evidence from these recent studies is supporting the idea that daytime light is a signal that can strengthen the circadian system.” 

By contrast, too much light during the night can “disturb this carefully coordinated system,” Scheer says, pointing to research that shows how exposure to light during night hours can cause blood sugar levels to increase. 

“In the modern world, we live in a weird lighting environment where we are typically indoors during the day,” a much dimmer environment compared to the outdoors, Scheer says. “During the night, we are introducing light where before there was none. We spend an enormous amount of time in front of screens—the TV, phones, computers—close to bedtime.” 

Researchers think that light at night could activate the sympathetic nervous system—involved in the “fight or flight” response—which is “mismatched with what we should do at night” and could cause dysregulation of glucose metabolism, Scheer says. 

Other biological pathways are also likely involved in how light affects metabolism, Dibben says. In laboratory experiments, for example, researchers have found that exposure to UVA, a type of ultraviolet light from the sun, triggers stores of nitrite in the skin to turn into nitric oxide. Nitric oxide widens blood vessels, which could potentially lower blood pressure and increase blood flow in ways that could improve glucose regulation, Dibben says.

As winter approaches and evenings darken earlier, Dibben says accumulating research supports the idea that people should get outside when they can.

Scheer agrees. “Go outdoors more during the day. If you cannot go outdoors, position yourself near a window, and cut down on artificial light in the few hours before and during sleep," he says.

Just remember to use sun protection when you venture outside.

South Carolinians have elected Republican senators in every election cycle in the 21st century. But recent polls indicate that GOP Sen. Darline Graham is facing a tough fight against her Democratic challenger in the race for the seat long held her late brother, Lindsey Graham.

Polling by the New York Times/Siena, released last week, found that likely voters in South Carolina are essentially evenly split over whether they would vote for the Republican nominee, who was appointed by the state governor to finish the remainder of her late brother’s term after he died in July and later announced that she would run for the seat in the midterms, and Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who won the Democratic primary in June.

In August, the Cook Political Report rated the South Carolina race as “Solid Republican,” indicating that the GOP was widely expected to retain control of the Senate seat. But the election forecaster later shifted the race slightly in Democrats’ favor to “Likely Republican;” then, on Oct. 20, it changed its rating again to “Lean Republican.”

The race is just one example of how Republicans are apparently struggling to maintain voter support in this election cycle. Most generic ballot polls show that voters are more likely to back Democrats than Republicans in this midterm election. Other polling suggests that GOP candidates are even having trouble keeping leads in states that are typically considered strongholds for the party, such as in Texas, where most surveys have found that the Democratic candidate James Talarico is ahead—by a narrow margin—of Republican Ken Paxton in a heated and expensive Senate race heading into Election Day on Tuesday.

This trend is also visible in gubernatorial races, such as the one in Ohio, where Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has launched an aggressive and controversial campaign against his Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton. The last time Ohioans elected a Democrat to be their governor was in 2006, but the Cook Political Report recently shifted its rating of the race from “Toss Up” to “Lean Democrat.”

Political experts say the battle for South Carolina’s Senate seat is in line with this national trend. They also say, though, that there are local circumstances that have contributed to how tight the race has become.

Why is the race for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's seat so close?

According to political experts, part of the reason the race in South Carolina has become so close is because the current national political environment is challenging for Republicans. 

Historically speaking, the sitting President’s party tends to lose seats in Congress during midterm elections. And right now, the pressure on Republicans is being compounded by the fact that President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped to a new low; the last time a President’s approval rating fell to a comparable level heading into the midterms was in 1946, when Harry Truman was in the Oval Office.

Read More: Trump’s Approval Is at a New Low. Here’s Where Other Presidents’ Stood Before the Midterms—and How Their Parties Fared

Polling shows that the economy and the war in Iran are significant contributors to the public’s dissatisfaction with the President and his Administration.

“That’s hurting Republicans everywhere across the country,” says Joseph Ura, a professor of political science at Clemson University. “You see tight races in places that aren’t usually tight for Republicans, like Texas and in Ohio … so that’s everywhere, including South Carolina.”

On top of that, there are local circumstances at play that were set in motion by Lindsey Graham’s death in July. Before his death, Lindsey Graham, who had held his seat in the upper chamber since 2003 and served in the House before that, was running for re-election and won the Republican primary in June by a nearly 28-point margin. He was widely expected to win the general election in November. But his death “fundamentally changed the race,” says Shannon Bridgmon, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina.

Although Darline Graham is technically running as an incumbent, she has been in the upper chamber for only a few months, so “the race is functioning as an open race within the state,” Bridgmon says. “That—I don’t want to say never happens here, but it’s certainly rare.”

Over the summer, a crowded field of Republican candidates sought the party’s nomination to vie for Lindsey Graham’s seat. But no candidate was able to secure a majority of the vote in the August primary, so the race advanced to a runoff election later that month between Darline Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman. Darline Graham ultimately emerged victorious by a less than 5-point margin.

The primary, Bridgmon says, “created this significant fracture” within the Republican party, as voters were split between Darline Graham and Norman. The divisions within the GOP have become even more apparent as Norman has said that he has no plans to join the Senator’s campaign. He has said, however, that he intends to vote for her.

“There seems to be some sort of dissatisfaction within the party that [Darline Graham] is the nominee,” Bridgmon says. “There were questions about ‘Should she just gracefully finish out the late Sen. Graham’s term and step aside?’ There were some resentments there in some of those camps, and there have even been whispers and, well, rumblings, I would say, about a write-in campaign for Norman among his most ardent supporters.”

Scott Huffmon, a professor of political science at Winthrop University and director of the Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research, says that some Republicans seem to feel that Darline Graham was “ordained” as the party’s candidate. In July, Trump publicly praised her, urging her to run in November even before she had announced her intention to vie for a full term.

Huffmon adds that some of the more conservative members of the Republican Party had not been big supporters of Lindsey Graham because they thought he was “too liberal.”

“Now you have a situation where the most conservative people within the party feel that their voice has been ignored, they’ve had a candidate foisted on them, and that candidate happens to be the sister of the person they had a problem with before,” Huffmon says. “Their internal fight has sort of made this a race that Darline Graham is kind of fighting to win instead of coasting.”

Before she was appointed to finish out the remainder of her brother’s term, Darline Graham had never held an elected office. And her minimal political experience has generated criticism in recent months. She received blowback, including from members of her own party, after a debate against Norman before the runoff in August, in which she said “I’m not that informed on national security” upon being asked a question about Taiwan and the South China Sea.

“She does not have the same public standing in the state as her brother did and does not have the same kind of relationship with the voters in the state that [the late] Sen. Graham had,” Ura says.

Darline Graham is also up against a strong Democratic candidate, according to Huffmon. Andrews is “a great fundraiser” who has been able to spread strong campaign messaging in the state and “gins up excitement wherever she goes,” Huffmon says. Bridgmon points out that Andrews has even been able to secure bipartisan endorsements; two former South Carolina governors—Republican David Beasley and Democrat Jim Hodges—appeared in an Andrews campaign video in which they both endorsed Andrews in the race.

“Democrats are motivated to go against Trump anyway, but they are excited by Annie Andrews, so there’s a whole lot of excitement on that side,” Huffmon says. “Darline Graham is not an experienced campaigner. She’s not generating the excitement among her base that she needs to, and … the Republicans need it doubly so because of the lack of popularity of Trump, so her inability to generate enthusiasm among the people who should be her base is helping this go down to the wire.”

Could South Carolinians elect a Democratic senator?

Bridgmon says that Andrews “still has an uphill climb” to win the Senate seat. A critical question, Bridgmon says, is who will turn out to vote on Election Day: Will Norman’s supporters, for instance, show up to the polls, and if so, will they cast their ballots for Darline Graham, or for someone else?

Ura says that South Carolina is a state that “still leans Republican,” so he would be a little “surprised” if Andrews did end up on top after Election Day. But he notes that this race has taken an unexpected turn, and “will have effects for how Republicans and Democrats both campaign going forward.”

“This race is almost certain to be much, much closer and a much better performance for the Democratic nominee than anybody could have reasonably expected in 2024,” Ura says. “I still think the Republican is more likely than not to win this election, but it’s going to be probably the best performance by a Democrat in a statewide race in South Carolina in a very long time.”

One is a former mayor, White House hopeful, and Transportation Secretary. The other preaches from the pulpit once claimed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he isn’t casting votes in the Senate.

Neither Pete Buttigieg nor Sen. Rafael Warnock of Georgia are on the ballot this year, but both have been all over the campaign trail, stumping for candidates across the country ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. 

Democratic operatives say they are two of the most in-demand boosters this cycle. While the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are surefire base pleasers and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are draws for legacy Democrats, Warnock and Buttigieg offer an efficient and plain-spoken manner that admirers say cuts across ideologies and generations. 

It’s the kind of positive feedback that is sure to gain notice as handicapping for the 2028 presidential race begins in earnest after Tuesday.

And, coincidentally, both men’s stump schedules have sent them to places that may prove crucial to anyone with White House ambitions. Just last month, Warnock made stops in South Carolina, which is due to kick off the Democratic nominating calendar, as well as Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He also dipped into Mississippi as Democrats are hopeful that a Blue Wave might just be big enough to flip a Senate seat there. 

Read more: The Key Congressional Races to Watch on Election Night

Meanwhile, Buttigieg has campaigned in 38 states this year—18 of them more than once. His final week of campaign travel alone had him in Michigan and Wisconsin—both recent swing states—as well as Colorado and Minnesota. All told, Buttigieg has campaigned for more than 70 candidates in person this cycle—including 24 House hopefuls in Republican districts marked by national Democrats as top contenders for flipping.

Both itineraries suggest the hustle of someone already running for President.

Democratic strategists say each figure brings a unique constituency to the table. But they share an overlapping ability to inspire activists’ imaginations while also appealing to middle-of-the-road voters who just want to skip past the partisan screaming that seems to dominate the discourse this late in the campaign.

“No one confuses these guys for socialists,” says one Democratic strategist who has pushed for the party to move back to the center.

Adds a second: “These guys aren’t hacks.”

Buttigieg, a Harvard-educated veteran who is a technocrat at his core, has become, along with his husband Chasten, favored advocates for the Democratic brand. Buttigieg has proven an able sparring partner with Fox News personalities, showing how Democrats can go into unfriendly territory and hold their own. It’s why the former Mayor of South Bend, Ind., who ran the Department of Transportation in the Biden Administration, is a frequent mention when Democrats mull their bench for 2028. In August, Buttigieg said he’s “more inclined than not” to launch another White House run.

“One of the things the voters have seen is the loud-mouth guy at the end of the bar is a source of noise but not a source of strength,” Buttigieg said during a swing through New Hampshire for the Senate campaign of Rep. Chris Pappas. “Right now, voters are looking for the strength that comes with discipline and not chaos. People have had enough of the chaos. They want people to get things done.”

Warnock, meanwhile, has made inroads with a different slice of the Democratic Party. Representing a swing state that was not too long ago viewed as deep-red, he is a clear-eyed pragmatist in the Senate, where he has managed to work with Republicans like Ted Cruz on infrastructure programs and has privately counseled colleagues on showing restraint during heated moments. Warnock has maintained his role as the senior pastor at the Atlanta church once led by King, and is known among colleagues as the Reverend Senator. His stump speeches are often regarded by attendees more as sermons than straight politicking. 

“We lose elections by the margins of our disengagement,” Warnock said during a visit to another deep-red state last month. “Mississippi is a blue state. It just doesn’t know it yet.” 

When asked in September if he planned to launch a presidential bid, Warnock responded, “We’ll see what happens.”

The two men are among a long list of aspiring Presidents showing up for fellow Democrats on the trail. Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Mark Kelly of Arizona have all been popular draws from the savvy and curious members of their party eager to start building for a post-Donald Trump era. Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland are certainly in the mix. And a pair of Michiganders, Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, are also discussed.

But it’s Warnock and Buttigieg who are proving to be the most dynamic surrogates for swing-state candidates given their communications skills.

Warnock’s connection with Black voters in particular has drawn the attention of grateful candidates looking to shore up that crucial voting bloc. Last month, he dashed to Detroit to lend his credibility to Abdul El-Sayed, who is locked in a tense and pivotal Senate race in Michigan against Rep. Mike Rogers. “This is not just for our U.S. Senate seat,” El-Sayed said on Oct. 20. “It is for control of the entire United States Senate. There's a reason that the Reverend is here. It's because he really wants to make sure that he's not in the minority for the next two years.”

True. But that’s only part of it.

When the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee was asked by TIME in May about the prospect of impeaching President Donald Trump, he declined to commit, warning that every impeachment he had witnessed during his decades in Congress had left its target politically stronger. Five months later, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington is prepared to take that risk.

With Democrats hoping to reclaim control of the House in Tuesday's midterm elections, Smith says that he now supports impeaching Trump and is inclined to also back proceedings against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, making him one of the most senior Democrats to endorse such a course.

"Trump has become beyond dangerous. He is just completely out of control in what he says and how he is governing," Smith told TIME in an interview a week before the election. "I think we have to try, even if it doesn't succeed."

Smith's endorsement is particularly significant because he would be in line to chair the Armed Services Committee if Democrats win the House, putting him at the center of investigations into the Pentagon's handling of the war with Iran, its approach to Ukraine, and military operations in Latin America.

His position comes as Democrats prepare for the possibility of reclaiming congressional power with little agreement over how aggressively to confront the President. Interviews with more than two dozen Democrats reveal a party broadly convinced that Trump has engaged in conduct warranting impeachment, but deeply divided over whether another attempt to remove him would be an effective use of its authority. Trump's two previous impeachments ended in Senate acquittals, and even a Democratic victory this week is unlikely to produce anything approaching the two-thirds majority required for conviction.

Read more: Calls to Impeach Trump Collide With Reluctant Democratic Leadership

Smith, who has served in the House since 1996, noted previously that he was one of the few House members to have sat through three impeachments. "Every single time the person impeached got stronger after they were impeached than before," Smith told TIME in May, arguing that Democrats needed to consider what another impeachment could realistically achieve rather than pursue it simply to demonstrate their willingness to confront Trump. "I want to make sure that if we're going down that road it's going to help defeat Trump and his poisonous ideology," he said at the time.

Since then, he says, Trump's increasingly conciliatory posture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, his decisions involving American support for Ukraine, and his public rhetoric have convinced him that the President's continued tenure presents an extraordinary danger. "The Ukraine stuff definitely had a profound impact," Smith says. "When I saw how close he was getting to Putin and shutting off support for Ukraine, being more pro-Putin. I mean, that's a big part of it." He also cites Trump's increasingly "unhinged speeches," including remarks about rising gasoline prices amid the war in the Middle East.

Smith’s willingness to embrace impeachment puts him at odds with more cautious Democrats who want the party to prioritize addressing the economic concerns that have dominated the campaign, while establishing an investigative record that might ultimately lead to impeachment. He acknowledges the formidable obstacles to removing Trump but argues that the political environment has changed since the President's first term. "I don't think it will be viewed as negatively or as partisan as in the previous two efforts, just because the public is waking up to the con game that Trump put on," he says now. "The impeachable offenses have been obvious for a long time.”

Other senior House Democrats are less certain that pursuing impeachment would accomplish much, even if they share Smith's assessment of Trump's conduct. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who led the House managers during Trump's second impeachment trial in 2021, says he has "little doubt that the president has committed multiple impeachable offenses," citing what he describes as unconstitutional military action and abuses of congressional spending authority. But he draws a distinction between establishing grounds for impeachment and deciding whether another trial would be the best use of Congress's time and political capital.

"The question of whether he committed impeachable offenses and whether we are going to pursue impeachment are two different issues," Raskin tells TIME.

Trump was impeached in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine and again in 2021 over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Both proceedings ended in acquittal, although seven Republican senators voted to convict him in the second trial. While some Democrats regarded those efforts as necessary to establish a historical and constitutional record, another impeachment could consume months of congressional attention, galvanize Trump's supporters, and leave voters questioning what the party had accomplished with its new majority.

Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who led the prosecution during Trump's first impeachment trial, says Democrats should avoid reaching conclusions before knowing the composition of the next Congress and what investigations might uncover. "There's no question he's been engaging in conduct that is very likely impeachable," Schiff told TIME. "The question is, is it viable?"

Schiff disputes the notion that the earlier impeachment efforts strengthened Trump politically, but argues that Democrats should concentrate initially on investigating corruption that has affected Americans' finances. "Our primary focus ought to be on corruption that has raised the cost of living for people," he says.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has similarly declined to commit to impeachment, saying Democrats "haven't ruled anything in, and we haven't ruled anything out." He has indicated that investigations should help determine whether the House pursues that course.

Some Democrats are looking toward members of Trump's Cabinet, particularly Hegseth, as potentially more viable targets, reasoning that Republicans who would never vote to remove the President might be more willing to turn against a defense secretary whose leadership has drawn criticism from within their own party. "There are Republicans who would support impeaching Hegseth who might not support doing it to Trump," Smith says.

The Defense Secretary has faced mounting scrutiny over his handling of the Iran war, the removal of senior military officers, and the Pentagon's relationship with Congress. Some Republicans have publicly expressed frustration with his leadership and the department's failure to provide adequate information about the war's objectives, costs, and duration. A push to impeach him has already taken shape in the Republican-controlled House, although Trump has defended Hegseth, calling him a "great warrior" and dismissing Democratic efforts to remove him.

Raskin says that impeaching a Cabinet secretary would be less likely to consume Congress's agenda or raise the same concerns about overturning the result of a presidential election. "The question of cabinet officers is a little bit easier because it doesn't necessarily consume all of the policy oxygen in Congress," he says.

However, impeaching Hegseth would require a majority in the House, and removing him would still require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Republicans who have criticized his performance have not necessarily indicated any willingness to support impeachment. But the growing unease over the administration's military decisions, particularly the conduct and costs of the war with Iran, could offer Democrats an opening that does not exist with Trump.

Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a member of the Armed Services Committee who served as a House manager during Trump's first impeachment trial, says lawmakers have been preparing for extensive investigations into the Pentagon regardless of the election's outcome. He cites the removal of senior military officers, alleged misuse of defense funds, threats against NATO, possible troop withdrawals from Europe, and the administration's handling of the Iran war as areas demanding scrutiny. But Crow stops short of endorsing impeachment as the preferred course. "Impeachment is only one tool that Congress has," he told TIME.

"If the goal is to get Pete Hegseth out of the Department of Defense to stop corruption, to erect some guardrails against this runaway, reckless administration, and to protect the country against the increased erratic and dangerous behavior of Donald Trump, then we have to look post-November what the Congress looks like," Crow says. "Maybe impeachment is part of that. I wouldn't hesitate to use that if that's the right one."

The Nov. 3 midterm elections are already groundbreaking. 

It’s the most expensive election cycle in U.S. history in terms of political ad spending, with more than $11 billion expected to be spent, according to analysis firm AdImpact. States have redrawn congressional maps between censuses at a rate the National Conference of State Legislatures says has not been seen since the 1800s, as parties try to secure victories. And Donald Trump has an historically low approval rating for a President heading into the midterms. 

This election is also set to see massive turnover on Capitol Hill, with dozens of members of Congress resigning, retiring, or seeking other office.

Read More: Republican Panic Sets In Over Prospects of a Massive Blue Wave

Depending on the results, it could see a number of identity barriers broken, too. A record 26 women are vying for Governor posts across the country, according to Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics. A handful of candidates for Congress could also become national historic firsts if they win.

Here’s who to watch out for.

First Black Speaker of the House?

Rep. Joseph Rainey of South Carolina is believed to be the first Black American elected to the U.S. House in 1870. He also was the first Black American to preside over the House of Representatives—albeit temporarily—during a debate on an appropriations bill providing for the management of Native American reservations in 1874.

But no Black person has served as Speaker of the House. That could change if an anticipated blue wave in November gives Democrats the majority. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has broad support in the New York congressional district he represents and is on track for re-election in a race against Republican opponent Lewis Mizrahi that is widely considered uncompetitive. Jeffries, who served in Congress for nearly 14 years, was elected unopposed in 2022 as House Democratic Leader, succeeding Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and making him the first Black leader of a major political party in Congress. But the path to the speakership isn’t guaranteed, as the center-left Jeffries may have to unite an ideologically fractious Democratic caucus.

First Muslim Senator?

Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a former local public health director and podcaster who has never held elected public office, could become the first Muslim U.S. Senator if he beats Republican candidate Mike Rogers. El-Sayed leads, according to public opinion polling, though Michigan electoral results can be unpredictable. 

El-Sayed has run on a progressive platform, including advocating for Medicare for All and ending U.S. military funding to Israel, which has ruffled some moderate and Jewish Democrats. His identity has also become a campaign target for Republicans: Rogers and Donald Trump have tried to link El-Sayed and his family to the transnational extremist group Muslim Brotherhood, and El-Sayed has been pressured to reaffirm his commitment to the Constitution over his faith, which defenders have said reflects the Islamophobia he faces. 

“I'm not running to be the first Muslim anything,” El-Sayed told CNN in August. “I just want to be a really, really great senator for my state.”

Read More: 'We're Proving It Works': Inside the DSA’s Push to Remake the Democratic Party

First openly gay male Senator?

The first openly LGBT person elected to the U.S. Senate was Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D, Wis.), who was elected in 2012, but Chris Pappas, a Democratic House member who has represented New Hampshire's 1st congressional district since 2019, could become the first out gay man serving in the U.S. Senate. Pappas, 46, married his partner, lawyer Vann Bentley, in 2023. He is also a vocal LGBT rights advocate in Congress. “I’m not thinking much about history right now,” Pappas told the New York Times in an interview. “I’m really thinking every day about the struggles of New Hampshire.”

Pappas is running against Republican nominee John E. Sununu, a former U.S. Senator seeking to reclaim his seat from retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas leads in public opinion polling. While Republicans have largely not made Pappas’ sexuality a focus of their political campaigns, the GOP has alleged that Pappas failed to disclose a relationship with a corporate lobbyist.

First Korean-American governor?

Cyndi Munson, a Democrat, was the first Asian-American woman elected to Oklahoma’s state legislature and currently serves as the lower chamber’s minority leader. She now aims to replace the term-limited Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and become the first Korean-American governor in the U.S., though a recent poll shows her Trump-backed opponent, Republican former state senator Mike Mazzei, leading.

Read More: The 7 Key Governor Races to Watch in the Midterm Elections

First Black female governors?

Keisha Lance Bottoms is the Democratic nominee running against Republican billionaire Rick Jackson to replace the term-limited Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Polls have been mixed and most forecasters have rated the race a toss-up.

If Bottoms wins, she would not only become the state’s first Black and first female governor; she could also become one of the U.S.’s first Black female governors, an honor she might share with Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth. Bottoms told ABC News in October that the potential milestone is “much more personal” for her. “My family goes back at least five generations in Georgia,” she said. “I’m a descendant of slaves on both sides.” Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of Georgia’s state House, previously tried to become the first Black female governor, but fell short in the 2018 and 2022 elections.

Bottoms was the mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, presiding during the COVID-19 pandemic, and shocked the state’s political establishment when she said she would not seek re-election. She has faced criticism from Jackson and others for walking away from the job. She since served in the Biden Administration in various roles, including as a senior adviser and leading the White House Office of Public Engagement.

In Minnesota, whoever wins the race for governor will break the state’s glass ceiling, as no woman has ever been elected to lead the state. Senator Amy Klobuchar is the Democratic nominee, while Republicans nominated Demuth, a state representative since 2018 and speaker of the state House since 2025.

“I look forward to serving—if given the opportunity, your trust in me—as the first female governor here in the state of Minnesota and the first Black woman to serve as governor of any state in the United States,” Demuth said in her mid-October debate with Klobuchar. Polls, however, show voters leaning toward Klobuchar, as Demuth faces stiff political headwinds from being associated with Trump, who has frequently attacked Minnesota.

First Native American female governors?

In 2018, Deb Haaland made history as one of the first Native American women, alongside Sharice Davids, to be elected to Congress. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo, a federally recognized tribe in New Mexico that has existed longer than the U.S. has. As a congresswoman, she focused on environmental justice, climate change, and missing and murdered indigenous women. In 2021, Haaland became the Biden Administration’s Interior Secretary. Haaland is now running to become governor of New Mexico, and she could potentially make history again, this time as one of the first Native American women to lead any state.

But to do so, Haaland, a Democrat, must defeat her Republican opponent Gregg Hull, who was formerly the mayor of Rio Rancho. So far, polls show Haaland leading.

In Alaska, Bernadette Wilson, who is of Aleut heritage, is a Republican candidate for governor. Wilson, a conservative activist and former radio host, has the backing of President Trump, but veteran Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Alaska Republican, and her father, former Gov. Frank Murkowski, both endorsed Wilson’s Democratic opponent, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, whom Wilson trails in the polls. Forecasters, however, rate the race as a toss-up.

First Native American female Senators?

At least four Native American men have served in the U.S. Senate, but no Native American woman ever has—yet.

When Yup'ik Alaska Native Mary Peltola was first elected to the U.S. House in an August 2022 special election to replace the late Representative Don Young, she became the first Alaska Native member of Congress and the first woman to represent Alaska in the chamber. If she beats incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan—and polls show her slightly leading—she could become the first Alaska Native Senator as well as one of the first Native American women in the Senate.

Read More: Alaska Governor Orders Probe Into Peltola Campaign Over Alleged Spoiler Scheme

In Minnesota, Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is running for the Senate and could also become one of the first Native American women in the chamber. That is, if Flanagan—a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, the largest federally recognized tribe in Minnesota—beats GOP nominee and political newcomer Michele Tafoya. Polls show Flanagan leading.

“I’m not running to make history, but it’s about damn time there was a Native American woman serving in the United States Senate,” Flanagan said on the campaign trail in October. “And she might as well be from White Earth.”

President Donald Trump invited outgoing congresswoman Haley Stevens, a longtime Michigan Democrat, to join the Republican Party after she surprisingly endorsed her state’s GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, Mike Rogers, in a last-minute move her partymates have called a “betrayal.”

“I don’t know Haley, I’ve never met Haley,” Trump said at a rally in Iowa on Sunday, the final weekend before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. “But Haley said what few people are willing to say. I think I’d probably—I’d love her to join the Republican Party actually.”

Stevens ran for the U.S. Senate seat herself but lost the Democratic primary to progressive Abdul El-Sayed in August. While she initially congratulated and offered her support to El-Sayed for the general election, the two have been at odds, primarily over concerns about antisemitism, which Stevens has accused El-Sayed, who is Muslim, of not denouncing strongly enough.

On Friday, Stevens demanded that El-Sayed denounce a controversial ad that blamed Michigan’s cost-of-living issues on U.S. aid to Israel. El-Sayed, whose campaign was not behind the ad though it supported his candidacy, responded with a statement that the focus of his campaign is on the “challenges Michiganders are facing” and defeating Rogers, while Stevens “seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.” He told reporters that he did not agree with the ad’s contents but did not want to “play the condemn game” about an unaffiliated ad.

Stevens was supposed to appear with El-Sayed at a planned Democratic campaign event on Sunday, but Rep. Debbie Dingell (D, Mich.) said in an interview that before the event, she disinvited Stevens on account of her strained relationship with El-Sayed. “There’s nothing to be gained by the two of them being in the same place,” Dingell said Saturday.

On Sunday, Stevens appeared instead at an event at Perfecting Church in Detroit with Rogers. “Our Democratic nominee for Senate, Abdul, said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video posted on social media later that morning. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”

On CNN on Sunday night, Stevens attempted to explain her move, saying it was because of El-Sayed’s “anger and lack of kindness.” She cited his past associations with controversial political influencer Hasan Piker and Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose Rebellion PAC was behind the recent anti-Israel ad. She insisted that she is “trying to help” the Democratic Party by turning on El-Sayed, whom she compared to Graham Platner, the former scandal-plagued Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Maine who withdrew from that race in July.

Stevens said she remains a “really proud Democrat” who “absolutely” wants Democrats to win control of the Senate, but her shock announcement of an endorsement for the GOP candidate just days before Election Day could upend a tight race that may decide the fate of the upper chamber.

Democrats denounce, Republicans pounce

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed what he called Stevens’ “despicable betrayal,” posting on social media that Senate Democrats were “united” in their support for El-Sayed.

Other Democrats have also shared their dismay and disappointment.

House Speaker Emerita and veteran California Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi said on social media that Stevens “has chosen to dangerously betray Michigan families’ healthcare, freedoms and future with her horrific endorsement of Mike Rogers.”

Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s Democratic Senator elected in 2024 and a former House colleague of Stevens from the same 2018 blue wave that saw a record number of women elected to Congress, posted on social media: “Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good.”

Ex-Rep. Susan Wild (D, Pa.), also elected in 2018 and formerly a roommate with Stevens in Washington, said in an emotional post about the Rogers endorsement that “the fallout for Haley won’t just be in Dem politics; she will be a pariah among her friends in the Democratic caucus in Congress.”

Ex-Rep. Andy Levin, a Michigan Democrat who was elected alongside Stevens in 2018 but after redistricting lost to her in a 2022 primary, posted that Haley’s endorsement of Rogers was “unconscionable, beyond the pale.”

Stevens’ chief of staff and multiple other staffers resigned on Sunday. “I speak on behalf of our team in wholeheartedly supporting Abdul El-Sayed for Senate,” Justin German, Stevens’ former chief of staff of eight years wrote in a statement. “This election is too important to sow division or stand on the sidelines.”

Stevens’ communications director Logan Basch, appears to have also left his post: his email sent back an auto-reply to TIME that read, “Hello, as of November 1st I am no longer with the Office of Congresswoman Haley Stevens.”

The Michigan Democratic Party also appeared to have distanced from Stevens, with state party chair Curtis Hertel posting on social media Sunday: “Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”

Republicans immediately jumped on the opportunity, which could offer a late boost amid an election year where retaining the majority in either chamber of Congress has looked unlikely. Rogers touted Stevens’ endorsement on social media, adding that she “showed courage and bravery in putting Michigan first” and that he’s “grateful for her support.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Sunday as he flanked Trump upon his arrival in Iowa that he sent Stevens a note commending “how courageous she was, how much we appreciate that she’s standing for truth.”

For his part, El-Sayed, who leads Rogers in public opinion polling, has appeared unfazed by Stevens’ actions, telling reporters: “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.”

—Rebecca Schneid contributed reporting.

Top Trump Administration officials have taken to the campaign trail to boost Republican candidates ahead of the pivotal midterm elections as the party battles to retain control of Congress. 

Last month alone, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared alongside President Donald Trump to support Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in his tight reelection fight against Democrat Mary Peltola at a rally in Wasilla, Alaska, on Oct. 13. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared in Wisconsin alongside GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden on Oct. 20 to speak to manufacturing workers during a Pentagon tour highlighting U.S. defense production. Last Monday, Vice President JD Vance and Burgum spoke at a rally in Topeka, Kansas. And on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefly joined Trump on stage, at the President’s urging, during a rally in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Cabinet members and other leading Trump officials have been wading into the midterms in these and other ways for months. In August, for instance, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers in Michigan.

Legal experts and advocacy groups contend that in making such moves, members of the Administration have violated a decades-old law: the Hatch Act, passed by Congress in 1939, which places restrictions on certain political activities for federal executive branch employees.

The Administration has argued that the officials have participated in political events in a strictly personal capacity, which is permitted under the Hatch Act, and that their actions have been cleared by lawyers and ethics officials.

But several top Trump aides—including at least nine of his 15 Cabinet secretaries—have been hit with formal complaints that their actions have violated the law.

“The number of Hatch Act violation complaints is extreme and abnormal for election time, especially for complaints against senior officials,” Kedric Payne, the head of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a legal non-profit that has filed a complaint against the Trump Administration for using taxpayer money to fund political ads, tells TIME. 

“We are seeing with the Trump Administration why the Hatch Act is so important,” Payne says, “because when it is not enforced quickly, it can be abused.”

Read more: How Trump Could Interfere With the Midterms on Election Day, and the Days After

Here’s what to know about the Hatch Act, and the accusations that Trump officials have violated it.

What is the Hatch Act?

The Hatch Act is an 87-year-old federal law that prohibits certain government employees from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election,” among other limits it imposes on officials’ political activity. It states that such interference applies to “an activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party” or candidate. 

The law was established to ensure that “federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation,” according to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which enforces it. 

Read more: The Key Congressional Races to Watch on Election Night

Many of the Hatch Act complaints against Trump officials on the campaign trail have centered around one specific aspect of the law that says federal employees cannot use or identify with their official title while engaging in political activity. In a handful of such complaints against members of the Administration, legal and press advocacy groups have pointed out that they were introduced at rallies by their Cabinet positions.  

“Political activity must be conducted purely in your personal capacity, without using your official title, without implying endorsement of the United States government. In your personal time at your own personal expense,” Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and a professor at the University of Minnesota law school, tells TIME. 

The Trump Administration has pushed back on the accusations, saying that its members were acting in a personal capacity at the times in question.

How Trump Administration officials have been accused of violating the Hatch Act on the campaign trail

A number of complaints have been filed against the Trump Administration for violating the Hatch Act in recent months.

Two advocacy non-profits, The Democracy Defenders Fund and Reporters Without Borders, filed a complaint in October over the rally in Alaska that featured Trump, Lutnick, Burgum, and Carr. The groups claimed that Carr “impermissibly mixed his official work into his personal remarks” and requested that the OSC open an investigation into each Trump official’s conduct at the rally. 

In September, the two advocacy groups also filed a complaint against Duffy for his appearance in Michigan and his endorsement of Rogers. 

Chief Counsel at the Democracy Defenders Fund said in a statement that Duffy’s conduct “crossed the legal and ethical line” and more broadly stated that it was “part of a broader pattern of this administration playing fast and loose with the law.”

Spokespeople for the Interior and Transportation departments have denied wrongdoing on the part of their respective leaders to media outlets. The FCC and Commerce Department did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment. 

Read more: The 7 Key Governor Races to Watch in the Midterm Elections

These complaints are among many more that have been filed over Administration officials’ participation in campaign activities. 

“We haven't seen since the first Trump Administration this number of complaints against officials, and I've lost track, but I do think it's well over 20 complaints just in recent weeks,” Payne says. 

In addition to complaints over officials’ appearances at campaign rallies, others have similarly alleged that Trump officials used their official titles in efforts to influence the midterms through social media and television network appearances.

CREW, a nonprofit government watchdog organization, has made several such claims. In one complaint from earlier this month, it argued that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller violated the Hatch Act during an interview on Fox News in which he spoke against specific Democratic candidates running for office and urged voters to support a “pro-American Trump agenda.” The group has also filed complaints against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel for comments made while speaking to Fox.

“These accusations are baseless and amount to a manufactured political attack," the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. "Secretary Kennedy takes his ethical obligations seriously, follows federal ethics laws, and consults HHS career ethics officials to ensure his activities comply with the standards governing public service.”

The Department of Department of Justice, which houses the FBI, did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment regarding the accusations against Patel. 

When asked about the various Hatch Act complaints against Administration officials, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis tells TIME that “it has long been established that senior administration officials are allowed to discuss current events, policies, and the candidates involved with those policies in order to advance the agenda of the administration.”

Complaints allege further Hatch Act violations

Top Trump officials have additionally been accused of violating the Hatch Act through other means than direct statements and appearances in support of—or opposition to—midterm candidates that complaints allege may also affect the outcome of upcoming elections.

Payne and his colleagues filed a complaint accusing several Administration officials of using taxpayer money for political ads which the complaint describes as “touting partisan and political rhetoric” to influence the outcome of the midterms. The complaint cites three ads: one that promotes Trump’s actions in Iran, another that decries socialism, and a third that features Trump speaking at Mount Rushmore. The Campaign Legal Center in its complaint quotes parameters set by the OSC that say the Hatch Act is designed “to prevent the use of federal power and taxpayer resources to shape electoral outcomes and to preserve public confidence in the nonpartisan administration of the law.”

“Voters deserve to know that elected officials are campaigning using their own money and not taxpayer dollars,” Payne says. “Clearly these advertisements that were paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars were intended to promote the Republican Party and influence the upcoming election.”

Read More: Trump's Taxpayer-Funded Ads Draw Bipartisan Criticism

The complaint specifically requests an investigation into Trump officials including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and White House Appointments Secretary Natalie Harp for their involvement in putting together the ads.

“There’s a statute that prohibits use of government funds for publicity or propaganda, unless expressly permitted by Congress,” Painter says. “Those ads that Trump was paying for with taxpayer dollars that said ‘paid for by the White House,’ that was propaganda. That violated that statute.”

Trump has defended the ads by saying he was “only promoting the country,” rather than specific candidates. “That’s an ad for the spirit of our country,” he said when asked about the ads in the Oval Office in September.

A Hatch Act complaint was also filed against the Administration by the Democracy Defenders Fund over the raid federal agents conducted at Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Minnesota in October. The raid was reportedly part of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into potential immigration fraud. Omar has denied all wrongdoing. 

“The timing of this outrageous action against a long-time target of Trump’s evinces illegal political intent,” Norm Eisen, the co-founder of Democracy Defenders Fund, said in a statement. “Staging a public raid on the home of a sitting member of Congress weeks before a consequential election is an abuse of power.”

Trump has maintained that he has “nothing to do” with the investigation, but has continued to levy public attacks against Omar, including calling her “crooked.”

The flurry of recent complaints against the Trump Administration are far from the first instances in which the President and his aides have come under fire for alleged Hatch Act violations.

An OSC report from 2021, for instance, found that in 2020, at least 13 senior Trump Administration officials violated the Hatch Act. 

What is the penalty for a Hatch Act violation?

Following an investigation by the OSC, disciplinary measures for Hatch Act violations are determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent judicial agency within the Executive branch. For Cabinet or senior officials, OSC refers its findings to the President, who determines disciplinary action.

“The potential of those consequences happening under this President are small because it is up to the President usually to hold members of the administration accountable when they violate the Hatch Act,” Payne says, noting that in some cases, officials may be required to only issue a public apology for their violation, or face no consequence at all.

Federal officials who have previously been found to have violated the Hatch Act under Trump largely have not faced repercussions because the President either declined to punish them or because the OSC reported the violations after Trump and the officials in question left office. 

Read more: How Trump’s Approval Compares to Other Presidents Just Before the Midterms

After one OSC report from 2018 found Kellyanne Conway, a former counselor to Trump, had violated the Hatch Act, for example, Trump declined to fire her, telling Fox & Friends at the time that “it looks to me like they’re trying to take away her right of free speech and that’s just not fair.” 

The OSC itself has meanwhile acknowledged that it was reporting other violations at a point when disciplinary action could not be taken. “Though discipline is no longer possible once subjects leave government service, OSC is issuing this report to fully document the violations, highlight the enforcement challenges that OSC confronted in investigating the violations, and to deter similar violations in the future,” one OSC report from 2021 reads.

Federal employees can face several civil penalties if they are found to have violated the Hatch Act, however, including a fine, a suspension, or a letter of reprimand. For a criminal violation, up to three years in prison may be imposed as a penalty if an official is found to have “intimidate[ed], threaten[ed], command[ed], or coerce[ed] … any employee of the Federal Government … to engage in, or not to engage in, any political activity.” 

“If President Trump or anyone overreaches the point of trying to coerce someone in the government to engage in partisan conduct, that's a violation of the criminal provision of the act, but all the rest of it's civil,” Painter explains. 

The illicit drug supply has changed rapidly over the last few months, with nitazenes, medetomidine, cychlorphine, and other novel synthetic substances appearing in rapid succession. Rapid tests for emerging substances are being developed and marketed with impressive speed, and these can return results within minutes. Law enforcement, medical examiners, employers, community organizations and even the general public can use them, if their states have decriminalized them. Physicians treating overdoses cannot.

The contrast is hard to ignore: A test can be used to fire someone or support a criminal case, yet it  remains unavailable to the physician in an emergency room trying to save that person’s life, when minutes are essential.

The divide is largely regulatory. Many tests for emerging drugs are labeled for forensic use only, and clinical tests for living patients require approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a diagnostic tool. As such, they cannot legally be used by medical clinics that adhere to federal law and funding policies. 

Tests used in patient care must meet FDA requirements for clinical diagnostics. Point-of-care testing—testing performed at or near the bedside—also requires an additional determination that the test is simple and low-risk enough to qualify for waived status under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). There is a legitimate reason for that regulatory distinction. Tests used to make medical decisions should be accurate, reliable, and interpreted appropriately. A rapid screen is not definitive toxicology, and it should not be treated as such.

Fentanyl shows why speed matters. In early 2023, we pointed out that rapid fentanyl tests already existed outside clinical medicine, yet hospitals relied on expensive spectrometry testing that could take an hour or longer, if the equipment was available onsite at all. By the time FDA-cleared and CLIA-waived rapid fentanyl tests arrived, the illicit market had already changed again.

Starting in 2020, xylazine spread through the fentanyl supply, introducing a new clinical hurdle: naloxone reverses opioids, but not xylazine. Patients can remain dangerously sedated or unstable even after naloxone is given. Further, xylazine is associated with necrotic skin wounds that increase risk of sepsis, and withdrawal syndromes that are more complex to treat than opioids alone. 

Not long after, medetomidine overtook xylazine supplies. It, too, does not react to naloxone, causes profound sedation and cardiovascular instability, and its withdrawal syndrome—which can come on just hours after someone stops using it—can trigger extreme hypertension and tachycardia that has been connected to heart attacks in younger people. Knowing these facts could significantly alter a patient’s treatment or discharge plan. 

There are no point-of-care tests for either of these drugs or other alarming and novel chemicals like cychlorphine, an opioid that does not show up on fentanyl tests. Because of that, clinicians have to follow information from law-enforcement seizures, public-health alerts, and months-old fatality data rather than from tests at the bedside. These data are in siloes and not easy to access or combine. 

The result is a system that can identify emerging drugs in seized samples and autopsies before clinicians can identify them in living patients. There is a better approach.

The FDA should establish an expedited pathway for clinical tests targeting emerging drug threats, triggered when agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the Office of National Drug Control Policy identify a substance of significant and growing public-health concern. The agency already has a dual pathway through which manufacturers can seek a special clearance and a CLIA waiver together. That framework could be prioritized and adapted for emerging drugs rather than forcing each new threat through the ordinary timeline.

Federal agencies could also help fund independent validation. The economics of emerging drugs are unusual: a substance can appear quickly, spread unevenly, and be replaced by something else before a manufacturer can justify the cost of extensive clinical studies. Federal and state agencies could make up this gap if the threat of the new drug is significant. A small market does not mean a small public health or public safety need.

None of this requires pretending a test strip is mass spectrometry. Point-of-care testing should be explicitly treated as presumptive. Positive results can be confirmed when necessary. Clinical care rarely rests on a single perfect source of information, anyway. 

Physicians already make decisions by combining an imperfect history, physical examination, vital signs, laboratory results, and response to treatment. A rapid drug screen would simply be another tool in that toolbox that helps dispel the fog of drug supply changes.

Further, the value extends beyond the individual patient. Better hospital data could become an early-warning system rather than a retrospective record of a crisis already underway. Emergency departments are on the front lines of the overdose crisis; they should have access to the most innovative testing tools at the bedside, when minutes can make a difference.

Washington, D.C., and Virginia sued the National Park Service and Interior Department on Saturday in a last-minute bid to stop construction on President Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch. The Trump Administration has said that construction could begin as early as next week.

The new challenge joins two existing lawsuits against the arch, adding to a series of legal battles testing the limits of Trump’s authority to remake Washington.

Calling the project “flagrantly unlawful,” the lawsuit points to the Commemorative Works Act, which requires Congressional authorization for memorials on federal land in Washington and its environs. The lawsuit also alleges violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act, arguing that the Administration failed to adequately assess the project’s effects and consult as required.

Read More: How National Security Became Central to Trump’s D.C. Construction Projects

“In their rush to break ground on the Arch, Defendants have made only half-hearted gestures at complying with these requirements,” the lawsuit filed Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones and D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb, claims. “Perhaps recognizing that the project is legally indefensible, Defendants have made clear that they will attempt to outrun judicial review.”

“The Commonwealth has a solemn duty and a profound interest in preserving the dignity of this sacred place,” Jones said in a statement to the Washington Post. “We will vigorously litigate to protect its sanctity and honor the legacy of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.”

The Administration argued in a June 17 filing for Lemmon v. Trump—a separate suit filed in February—that Congress already authorized construction at the site in 1925, when it approved plans for Arlington Memorial Bridge that included two monumental columns. Those columns were never built.

In Lemmon, three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian argue that the arch would “block historically significant reciprocal views between” the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The plaintiffs have also argued that the plan requires congressional authorization.

The Arlington County Board then filed its own suit Oct. 8 arguing that the construction would disrupt roads important to emergency services and “significantly and detrimentally” affect Arlington National Cemetery.

In response to those suits, and defending the urgency of the project, Trump announced last month that he had agreed, at the Defense Department’s request, to incorporate a military complex into the planned arch, including facilities for drones and snipers.

In sworn declarations filed Oct. 28, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reiterated the claim that the arch is central to national security.

“The arch is a generational national defense opportunity to mitigate these evolving threats,” Hegseth wrote in his declaration. 

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), a federal review panel, is scheduled to consider final approval of the arch’s site and building plans on Nov. 5. The commission includes several Trump appointees, and its chairman has said he plans to support the project, according to the Washington Post.

Interior must also issue its final authorization and publish the required notice. The Administration has told the court that those steps could be completed on Nov. 5, as well, allowing construction to begin that same day.

The Justice Department told the court on Friday that construction could begin immediately once those steps were complete.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, however, seemed skeptical of the rush.

“What’s the harm to the government to wait 3 or 4 months? What’s the rush to put this arch up?” the judge asked at the hearing for Lemmon v. Trump on Friday. 

Chutkan observed that the issue was complex. She said that she would consider the plaintiffs' standing over the weekend and rule expeditiously.

TIME has reached out to the White House about the new lawsuit.

What Could These Lawsuits Mean for Trump's Other Renovation Projects?

The triumphal arch is just one of several projects that Trump has introduced in his second term to remake Washington in his image, including the demolition of the White House East Wing and construction of a White House ballroom, the planned 15-month closure and massive overhaul of the historic East Potomac golf course, and plans to restore and rename the Kennedy Center.

In Friday’s hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Stander cited the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in August allowing ballroom construction to continue while litigation proceeded. The majority said the Administration was likely to prevail in arguing that the preservation group had not demonstrated the concrete harm needed to sue.

“It’s the same thing,” Stander said.

Chutkan, however, said that the two legal battles remain distinct in nature.

“The ballroom case differs in significant respects,” she said, pointing to traffic and public safety concerns from plaintiffs in the case.

Chutkan also raised skepticism around the Administration’s justification of national security and pointed out how when Trump announced the arch, its purpose was initially posited as celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary. “This is the first time the government has proffered a national security aspect to this case,” she said.

The arch dispute adds to a broader debate over the Administration’s frequent use of national security to justify its policies.

Beyond defending the White House ballroom and triumphal arch on national security grounds, the Trump Administration has invoked national security to justify pausing offshore wind development, barring journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, and exempting oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico from certain Endangered Species Act requirements.

The golf-course litigation raises a related question about congressional authority: Plaintiffs there have also argued that federal law requires Congress’s express authorization to erect structures on federal public grounds in Washington.

For now, the immediate question is whether a court will intervene before construction can begin as early as the coming week.

The United States government’s response to escalating cyberscams is fragmented, leaving victims with limited options to recover lost funds, according to an investigation conducted by Democrats on Congress’s Joint Economic Committee (JEC).

The investigation, led by Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, found that federal agencies do not have a consolidated or comprehensive record of how much money has been lost to cyberfraud, how much has been seized from overseas scam compounds, or how much has been returned to victims. 

The report, published Tuesday, also concludes that the government does not “incentivize” private sector actors—such as financial institutions and social media companies—to “proactively detect and address abuse of the services that they provide while also protecting user privacy.”

Read More: AI Safety and Cybersecurity Should Be Allies. Instead, They're at Odds

Online scam operations are not new, and neither is the knowledge that the issue is escalating. The FBI released an April report showing that Americans lost nearly $18 billion in 2025, amounting to more than $2 million an hour. Overall reported internet-crime losses—a broader category—reached $20.9 billion, up 26% from 2024 and roughly triple the 2021 total.

While the problem grows worse, the response to these crimes has not scaled along with it. The Congressional investigation demonstrates that only a fraction of the money lost to scams is recovered. It also points to the fact that the government fails to fully report on its existing repatriation measures.

The FBI told the committee that it returned $336 million to scam victims in 2025, and the Secret Service returned more than $770 million in seized assets to fraud victims in fiscal years 2024 and 2025—though that money had come from a range of fraud schemes, not just cyber threats. 

Suzanne Sando, a fraud analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, points out that “fragmentation” in the reporting system—including the differing time periods and fraud categories demonstrated above—complicates the government’s ability to grasp the full extent of the problem. 

“Many of the groups and entities that scam victims report their losses to operate on disparate systems,” Sando says. “The fragmented nature of these reporting entities means there’s a lack of true accounting of losses—which also means that our grasp of overall scam losses is likely less than the truth of the situation.”

The Congressional report calls on the federal government to enact new legislation to address the rising issue, including the ReportScams.Gov Act, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Hassan and Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott “to mandate a unified federal strategy to combat scams and establish a central location for Americans to find information and assistance regarding scams.” 

A more coordinated reporting system could help researchers and advocates better assess the scale of the problem. Another benefit would be helping the public stay informed about potential schemes, allowing advocacy groups to develop preventive strategies and educational materials for at-risk populations, like senior citizens and minors.

According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, Americans ages 60 and older reported losses of about $7.7 billion, a 60% increase from 2024. They reported the highest total losses of any age group, the report showed.

Individuals under 18 reported nearly $13 million in losses across 13,168 internet-crime complaints in 2025, according to the same report.

But the true extent of the losses is hard to estimate, experts say. Cyberscams are underreported because victims feel embarrassed, fear judgment, and believe recovery will be impossible. 

The last point is salient, because a stronger and more coordinated response—reaching some of the benchmarks outlined this week by members of the JEC—could give victims the confidence to report crimes in a timely manner, in turn making enforcement efforts more effective.

The report calls for legislation that would “hold accountable” countries that “enable or permit” scam compound operations, and advance federal cooperation with private sector entities like the financial institutions and social media companies at the center of these scams.

Experts note that this is a growing issue whose risk is only increasing as technology improves.

In alignment with the Congressional assessment, they tell TIME that a strategic, coordinated, and well-resourced response will be necessary if the government hopes to better protect Americans and help them recover funds lost to scams.

Online scams are on the rise

Data from the FBI and Congress show that transnational criminal organizations run massive compounds—and their reach is skyrocketing. 

According to Sando, the growing use of artificial intelligence has been partly responsible. 

Specifically, she calls out the prevalence of abuse on social media and the increasing sophistication of deepfakes—images, voices, or videos that make people appear to say or do things they did not.

“Criminals use social media to build trust through ongoing conversations and relationships, and AI has become a major part of criminals’ ability to manipulate situations and exploit victims,” she says. “Through AI, criminals can create more convincing and polished messages, fake social media profiles, and deepfake voices and videos with less time and effort.”

The manipulation tactics at the heart of these schemes have been consistent, Sando says, but criminals now have improved tools that allow them to quickly build credibility and “commit scams at scale.” 

Jake Braun, the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago, tells TIME that highly vulnerable populations are more exposed than ever before.

“You've got these, you know, super at-risk populations who just weren't online before, and now they are, and so the bad guys are taking advantage of that,” he says. “The idea that a kid had an iPhone and was on Facebook just wasn’t a reality until a few years ago.”

At the same time, technology gives individuals ready access to funding streams. “They've all got Apple Pay on their phones,” Braun points out. 

He explains that many of these scams are run by organized criminal networks operating in Southeast Asia, where scam compounds often use trafficked workers forced to defraud people online.

Why is it so difficult to recover lost funds?

It can be difficult to recover stolen funds because the issue is diffuse and widespread—spanning multiple countries, financial institutions, and criminal enterprises—and it is being addressed by a small group of law enforcement agencies that lack centralized coordination.

Braun says investigations are complicated because they affect “millions of victims across dozens of countries” and include large numbers of cases with relatively small individual losses.

“It's just incredibly complicated,” he says. “Nobody's robbing a bank and stealing $300 million. It's $1,000 bucks from somebody's grandma here, and it's $500 bucks [there], that collectively is billions and billions. That's a really hard problem to get after.”

Braun, who also served in the White House with former President Joe Biden as the acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director, says that there are just a hundred or so top law enforcement officials working on the issue.

“So they're going to focus on big fish, and try and take down big rings, but that just means that they just don't have the bandwidth to go track down hundreds or thousands of dollars that are stolen from individual people because they're trying to take down groups that are collectively stealing billions,” he explains.

When reporting investigations and recovery efforts are “siloed” into different agencies, there are two immediate consequences: The process is more confusing for the victim to navigate, and it makes it difficult for government entities to coordinate quickly on an investigation and take action.

The U.S. State Department told those involved with the JEC investigation that it has 60 employees in the U.S. and Asia who dedicate significant time to fighting overseas scam compounds and said that it “has the tools it needs to combat the threat internationally.”

TIME reached out to the State Department for comment.

What obstacles stand in the way of providing better protections for Americans?

Sando says that within the private sector, there is “a lack of clear ownership and responsibility,” making it difficult to provide more protection.

“Scams can span multiple platforms,” she says. “Preventing and detecting scams to protect consumers requires a coordinated group effort across multiple industries—including financial services, telcos, and social media.”

In a perfect world, Sando continues, the government would coordinate these efforts and set clear standards for private institutions. She describes its ideal role as “facilitating relevant information-sharing, tracking consistent scam attempts and losses, [reporting] recovery rates for victims, and [adding] measures that are working to reduce the effectiveness of scams.”

Social media companies, in particular, need to be incentivized to address “fraudulent ads and impersonation profiles/accounts,” she says. 

Braun agrees, saying that holding the companies accountable is one of the most tangible ways that governments could more aggressively address these scams before they ever happen.

“They know everything about every click that's made on their platform,” Braun says. “This problem wouldn't exist if those platforms didn't exist.”

Braun says meaningful discussions around prevention are often buried in conversations about how to address losses in the U.S.

“We should really think through the [cyber] grants we give to state and local governments from FEMA, [and having them include] a component where they're doing education for these at-risk communities: seniors, minors, migrants,” Braun says. “We’re focused on going after the ‘bad guys,’ when maybe we need to be focused on thinking about: ‘How do you specifically protect minors in this space? How do you specifically protect senior citizens?’”

He believes that these considerations must be part of any comprehensive solution to bring down the rate of cyberscams in the U.S.

Once the government has a better understanding of how specific communities are impacted by these scams, he says, it can start to “tailor” solutions to help protect each vulnerable group. 

The only thing scarier than Halloween? Getting rid of a sad looking jack-o’-lantern when it's over. 

When confronted with a rotting, deflating carved pumpkin, your first instinct might be to beeline to the trash as quickly as possible. But experts caution against doing so—warning that trashing pumpkins, and thus sending them to landfill, can release harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 

“Everybody throws them out from Halloween to right after Thanksgiving,” says Kay McKeen, executive director at Scarce, an environmental education non-profit. “It's a huge burst of methane gas that's going into the landfill all at one time.”

Why shouldn’t you trash your pumpkin?

When pumpkins are sent to landfill, they release methane, a potent greenhouse gas that, over a 20 year period, is around 80 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere when compared to carbon dioxide. 

The lack of oxygen in landfills causes pumpkins to rot “anaerobically,” which releases methane. They are also full of water, and when they mix with waste and moisture it creates leachate, a toxic sludge that can pollute the environment. 

Though a single pumpkin might not do much damage, if you consider how many pumpkins are trashed each autumn, it adds up. 

“Maybe if we had a handful of pumpkins going into that waste stream, that might be one thing,” says Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of of Illinois Extension, which organizes annual “Pumpkin Smash” events to help people recycle and compost old jack-o'-lanterns and pumpkins. “But we have millions of people who buy multiple pumpkins. We're talking about hundreds of millions of pumpkins that need to be disposed of post Halloween, and it's just a massive amount of organic material that goes into the landfill system.”

How do I get rid of my pumpkin? 

Composting sidesteps many of the harms that come with sending food waste, like pumpkins, to landfill.

“When we compost something, it's really a whole system that we're creating that introduces both water and oxygen, [and uses] microbes, bacteria, fungi, all the little decomposers,” says Enroth. “When we introduce those things, we get that aerobic composting process, so we don't produce methane, and we're able to turn those pumpkins back into organic matter that has nutrients and can be put back out into the garden.”

What’s the best way to compost? If you have a curbside compost bin or designated compost for your apartment building, you can throw it there. If not, see if there are any drop-off composting sites near you. Some areas even organize dedicated events for residents to drop off old pumpkins. Since starting “pumpkin smashes” in 2014, Scarce and Illinois Extension have saved over 1,600 tons of pumpkins from landfill. 

Don’t leave your pumpkin out for animals to eat or dump it in a park—they can be harmful to wildlife. While pumpkins are generally safe for most wildlife to eat, some small animals, like hedgehogs, can become sick, different animal species congregating together could increase the risk of disease, and it can attract predators to residential areas.

As you’re thinking about composting, keep in mind that it’s not just pumpkins that are compostable. Food is the single most common material sent to landfills in the U.S.—and wasted food is responsible for 58% of landfill methane emissions. If you’ve been thinking about starting your own home compost, now is the best time to do it, says Enroth. “We often recommend to folks thinking about starting a compost pile, to try it in the fall because we usually have leaves, grass clippings, things to get that pile started. And you could incorporate that pumpkin into that compost pile,” he says. “It's a really good combination of materials for you to get compost out of it next year.”

In a moment marked by economic anxiety, concerns over artificial intelligence, and geopolitical instability, frightening fiction is thriving. From the page to the big screen, horror has had a massive year. 

In publishing, the horror sub-genre is set to break new sales records. Readers aren’t the only ones seeking a good scare. Horror films dominated the silver screen this summer, with Backrooms and Obsession grossing more than $460 million domestically and roughly $900 million globally. Both films came from young directors who cut their teeth on YouTube, with their fingers on the pulse of this generation’s anxieties and fears. Even as major franchises like Spider-Man broke box office records, audiences turned two original horror stories into blockbuster hits.

What is it about a horror story that allows it to latch its claws into our minds and pull us in? Why would we seek out an experience that produces in us a feeling of fear and anxiety? After all, we spend most of our lives trying to avoid these emotions. 

The truth is that humans love to be scared. We spend our time sharing and consuming scary stories; we take our kids to haunted houses; we dedicate an entire season to all things spooky.  

Understanding why we crave fear helps explain more than horror’s hold on Hollywood: It reveals how we confront uncertainty, test our limits, and find a sense of control when the world feels frightening enough already.

Who loves horror

The prevailing wisdom has long suggested that our desire for a good scare comes from the adrenaline kick we get while watching a scary movie. While this does explain some of the appeal, especially among younger consumers, research shows that many people who like horror movies aren’t necessarily looking for the rush it provides. 

Curiosity, specifically about situations that can cause injury or death, is perfectly normal and common. Morbid curiosity motivates us to learn about dangers, something that all animals can benefit from.

Horror also offers a laboratory for self-learning. In my own work, I’ve found that a large portion of horror fans are “white knucklers”—people who don’t necessarily enjoy fear, but rather the opportunity to practice overcoming it. Many white knucklers report that they have learned something about themselves after a scary-play experience—for example, how they react in stressful situations, or that they should trust their instincts.  

Another group of horror fans seems to enjoy scary stories because they offer a safe opportunity to work through feelings of dread, anxiety, and other difficult thoughts. We called this group the “dark copers.” While this may sound odd at first, horror fans and morbidly curious individuals reported higher levels of psychological resilience during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, even when controlling for other personality traits and demographic factors.

The logic begins to make sense once we work through what a horror story really is: a sandbox for a potentially dangerous situation. 

The collective imagination of horror

Many animals show some curiosity for things that might be dangerous. Zebras will cautiously observe lions as they lounge, and minnows will swim up to a pike to keep an eye on it. However, humans are the most morbidly curious creatures of all because of our ability to ask “What if?” 

In horror, the human capacity for imagination really shines.

We concoct detailed stories of possible encounters with all sorts of beings, some of which we know well, and others that live only in the darkest recesses of our minds. We play out scenarios imagining what might happen if we, or someone like us, encountered a terrible situation. 

In real life, an encounter with danger is a costly way to learn. Our minds long for safe ways to learn about dangerous situations. 

Because of horror’s position as a sandbox for misfortune, consumers tend to reward horror films that reflect their generation’s anxieties. For instance, the unbelievably destructive ability of atomic bombs captured the imagination of those living in the late 1940s and 1950s. Anxiety about the future of this new atomic age spawned several radiation-borne monsters, the most famous of which was the Japanese film Godzilla (1954). 

Around the same time, paranoia was bubbling in the U.S. about surreptitious invaders, both alien and communist. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) beautifully captured these anxieties in a story about your friends and loved ones being secretly replaced by a foreign, hostile entity. 

In the 21st century, “elevated horror” has taken hold, with films like The Babadook (2014) and Hereditary (2018) portraying anxieties about trauma and mental health. And then there are films like Get Out (2017) and Parasite (2019), which took on the tense social issues of race and class. While the 2026 hits Backrooms and Obsession may seem to touch on fairly unrelated topics, each has a foothold in the minds of modern consumers. 

Horror in an anxious era

I would argue that the rise in interest in horror as a genre can be partly attributed to rising social anxieties. Backrooms is a masterclass in how terrifying meaninglessness can be. The endless hallways and rooms in the film are reminiscent of social media, which offers an endless tunnel of content, with mental health concerns lurking under the surface. Each room contains some variation of objects that aren’t quite right, like an AI rendering of an image. The haphazard placement gives the entire space a creepy, purposeless feel. 

Meaninglessness is on the minds of this generation, too. A 2025 Gallup poll reports that 39% of Gen-Z adults feel like their life mostly lacks meaning, with slightly more saying they lack a sense of purpose. Mental health outlooks are similar, with a 2024 McKinsey survey reporting that nearly 1 in 3 Gen-Z respondents in the U.S. report poor mental health. 

Over 20% of Gen-Z and Millennials in that same survey report poor or very poor social health, a topic that is explored into absurdity in Obsession. The basic plot is an old monkey’s paw-style tale: a story about a magical item granting a wish with unintended consequences. Director Curry Barker infused his story with modern anxieties about dating and social life. The main character, Bear, is a socially awkward twentysomething who can’t bring himself to tell his crush how he really feels. 

In many ways, Bear’s situation resembles men of this generation more than previous generations. One survey found that 44% of Gen-Z men did not date at all as teens, compared to 32% of Millennials and 23% of Gen-X. This may be due to a lack of confidence. A 2026 study by the Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies found that only about 1 in 3 young men express confidence in their ability to approach a potential romantic partner. 

In my view, this resonance is why horror has had such a good run over the past two decades. According to film producer and data maven Stephen Follows, the horror genre has grown faster in the past few decades than any other genre. While the infamous slasher era of the 1980s saw around 150 horror films per year, the 2020s have surpassed 1,500 horror films per year. Even when the film genre was suffering in 2020, horror was having a moment. As COVID-19 emptied theaters, horror held on, pushing its share of the Box Office to the highest it had ever been. Horror beat its own record for Box Office share again in 2025. 

To be sure, scary stories have been with us as long as any other type of story, but we seem to be in a golden age of horror, and cultural institutions are taking note. From The Substance (2024) and Sinners (2025) to Bugonia (2025) and Frankenstein (2025), dark films with horror themes are now consistently receiving critical acclaim from the Academy.

The world has always been full of things that frighten us. One way we work through these fears is by simulating scenarios. We tell stories of the things we fear and indulge in the bad outcomes that the protagonists face from the safety of our seats. 

Humans learn quite well from the mistakes of others, and horror stories trade in poor choices. In this way, horror offers us a uniquely powerful tool to process social concerns.

As our technological world enters a new area of artificial intelligence, we will unlock a whole new world of possible dangers and things to fear, and films like M3GAN (2022) will be there to help us process worries.

As we enter the unknown, we will try to prepare and cope with what comes our way in the same fashion as those before us: by diving into a good horror story.

When you’re a kid, young men going off to war look like men. When you’re a grown-up, you see that they’re really just boys. If The Mosquito Bowl gets close to any essential truth, it’s that one. This is director Peter Berg’s retelling of a true story involving young football stars who went off to fight in the Pacific during World War II, focusing on four real-life figures: Dave Schreiner and Bob Bauman (played by Tom Francis and Bill Skarsgård) were teammates and close friends playing for the University of Wisconsin; Tony Butkovich (Ray Nicholson, son of Jack) was a fullback for Purdue; and John McLaughry (Nicholas Galitzine) had graduated from Brown University and been drafted into the NFL by the time the war had started. As Berg presents it, all four of these men went off believing they could win the war the same way you win a football game, with strategy and athleticism, only to learn how far off the mark they were. The film’s title refers to a legendary football game between two Marine regiments at Guadalcanal, on Christmas Eve, 1944. A few months later, three of the four would be dead in Okinawa: Of the 65 men who played in the Mosquito Bowl, 15 were killed on the island.

There’s a lot of drama inherent in that premise, and Berg—director of films like Hancock, The Kingdom, and Friday Night Lights, progenitor of the hit TV series—takes perhaps too much time drawing it out. He introduces the main characters with moderate efficiency: Schreiner is a solid, rather quiet guy who’s given to overthinking everything; as the film opens, his team has just lost to Purdue, and he’s still simmering with resentment toward Butkovich, who appears to be something of a hothead. Bauman is the solid Wisconsin country lad, giving his younger brother instructions on holding the family homestead together. And McLaughry is intelligent and grounded, if somewhat undersketched, though he does anchor the movie’s opening scene, which gives us some sense of what these young men left behind when they went to war, things they could never get back.

Read more: The Heartbreaking True Story of War and Football in The Mosquito Bowl

After some characteristically dehumanizing basic training, the men are hauled off to Tarawa. (In real life, the four weren’t in the same regiment, though it’s a forgivable dramatic tweak.) This occasions the movie’s first protracted battle sequence, in which these newly minted Marines get a swift education in what war is about. Legs are blown off. Pinwheeling men, having been set ablaze with flamethrowers, scream in agony. Blood burbles through gaping wounds. After we, and they, have made it through this ordeal, there’s a great deal of talking among the men about the grim circumstances they’ve found themselves in. Then there’s some football—the actual Mosquito Bowl—where they get to have some fun. This is the most exhilarating section of the film. It also feels like the shortest.

Because the deadly battle at Okinawa is yet to come, and Berg will spare us no bloody detail. (The script was adapted from the 2022 book of the same name by Buzz Bissinger, who also wrote the book that the 2004 film Friday Night Lights was based on.) More limbs are blasted off, more bullets end lives instantly or with agonizing slowness, more bayonets pierce tender flesh. War is hell, and Berg doesn’t want us to forget it.

In my early film-reviewing days, even before the existence of comments sections, I would sometimes get emails from veterans telling me what I had gotten wrong in writing about this or that war film. Most of those letters had a “Listen here, little lady” tone, but I didn’t mind them. The experience of watching a war movie is hardly the same as being in combat; it’s not supposed to be. Still, these guys had been to places I hadn’t. Even if they clearly didn’t understand my job, I’d have to admit to knowing next to nothing about theirs.

But from watching lots of war films—from the time I was a kid, when my World War II veteran dad would bring me along to see movies like the 1976 Midway, because no one else would go with him—I do know that when it comes to depicting the brutality of war, less is more. You can dramatize, or allude to, some truly horrific stuff—but choose your details wisely. One well-placed depiction of a combat atrocity can be enough to haunt a viewer forever. With The Mosquito Bowl, Berg throws so much violence at us that it comes to feel like padding, while the depiction of the Mosquito Bowl itself, the core of the movie, is pure joy. War doesn’t make a boy a man so much as it knocks the boyhood out of him, fast—which may be why it’s both freeing and poignant to watch these young men escaping, if only briefly, into versions of themselves that no longer exist.

Mount Everest is the largest mountain in the world. It’s estimated that more than 7,500 people have stood on its peak, reaching an astonishing 29,031 feet above sea level in Nepal, typically climbing up the mountain’s south side. But Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary Everest: The Other Side shifts focus to the mountain’s north face. It is here that two people, ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, attempted to do something that no human being had done before. 

Morrison and Nelson met in 2015 on an expedition to Makalu, the world’s fifth-highest mountain, in the Mahalangur Himalayas. The pair developed a friendship before beginning a romantic relationship in 2017, bonding over their shared sense of adventure. “There’s a connection I don’t feel anywhere else…I love how it makes me feel alive,” Nelson says about ski mountaineering in the new film, which hit theaters on Oct. 30 following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Together, Morrison and Nelson conceived a plan: They would climb to the top of Everest’s north face, and once they’d reached the summit, become the first to ski down it. It was the ultimate proposal for a pair of adventurous thrill-seekers, but one wrong move could result in disaster. They never got the chance to take the risk together, though: Disaster struck before they embarked on the journey, a tragedy the directors capture in devastating detail in the new film.

Vasarhelyi and Chin are drawn to stories of people who accomplish extraordinary things, and they set out to capture them in a manner that fully captures their feats, like in Free Solo, Meru, and The Rescue. Everest: The Other Side is playing in both regular format and IMAX cinemas, the latter of which takes particular advantage of the breathtaking shots the filmmakers were able to capture, offering a sense of how epic Everest is, and how dangerous. 

Though most people don’t participate in extreme sports, Vasarhelyi believes there’s something inherently relatable about these feats. “I think it’s fundamental to the human paradox, which is this ability to dream audaciously, and then the mentality, psychology, mania—whatever you want to call it—to actually have the grit, determination, and diligence to get it done. I think everyone can identify with that,” she tells TIME.

A tragedy changes everything

Vasarhelyi and Chin intended for Everest: The Other Side to capture Morrison and Nelson’s historic feat. But on Sept. 26, 2022, tragedy struck. Nelson and Morrison were climbing nearby Mount Manaslu in Nepal when an avalanche swept down the slope, killing Nelson. It was a devastating moment captured on camera, one that had both the filmmakers and Morrison questioning whether they should continue with their journey, and the film, at all.
“We always knew we were making a film about Jim and Hilaree and their attempt to ski and climb the direct north face, but these films for us always had to have something deeper. The part that stayed true throughout was this extraordinary love story,” says Chin. 

Morrison had experienced tragic loss before. In 2011, he lost his wife Katie and their two children in a plane crash. “I knew about Jim’s history and the loss that he’d been through, and how he had moved through that loss and found the strength and courage to fall in love again with Hilaree. That was extremely moving to me,” says Chin. “When we lost Hilaree, we saw that again in real time. We were living it with him.”

Together, they decided that Chin, a longtime friend of the couple and an experienced climber, would step in as Morrison’s climbing partner, replacing Nelson. 

“Jimmy and I fundamentally see this differently," says Vasarhelyi of whether they would continue making the film. “It was such a tragedy when Hilaree passed, and real life has to be lived in that moment. With the decision of Jimmy stepping in as Jim’s only climbing partner, my professional interest came into direct conflict with my personal responsibilities.” At the time of filming, Vasarhelyi and Chin were married with two children. The couple divorced in 2025. 

“The question was, ‘Do you want to make that film?’ It was going to be heavier. It had to be very candid, which all our films are, but this was requiring us to go one step further in this investigation. There was also the reality of, how do you wrangle the story that was conceived one way into something that could both honor her legacy as well as honor this incredible journey that Jim would go on?” says Vasarhelyi.

Ultimately, it was Morrison who made the decision to continue filming. “In the beginning, I didn’t want to keep going to the mountains. I was devastated by the loss of Hilaree,” he says. Initially, it looked like the quest to ski mountaineer the north face of Everest was over, and there was a seven-month break in filming. “Over time,” Morrison explains, “the inner fire and the passion for this project Hilaree and I shared together became a driving force in my life. I began to call [Chai and Jimmy] to say, ‘I’m going to go back into the mountains. I’m going to go on another expedition and push myself to complete this goal for us and for her legacy and her story.” 

With Chin as his climbing partner and Vasarhelyi and Chin continuing to document the adventure, Everest: The Other Side would go on. Instead of a story of a couple facing this incredible physical feat together, it became a story of processing grief and overcoming tragedy. 

The two expeditions

The expedition on Everest’s north face occurred in 2024. Chin explains why the north side of Everest, the more challenging route up the mountain and an extremely steep, 9,000-ft. face, holds such appeal. “In terms of pure technical difficulty, it’s really challenging. Because of those challenges and because it’s a direct line, it’s really appealing to climbers.” He continues: “When you’ve spent a lifetime in the mountains, you build experience to take on more and more difficult climbs, and as a ski mountaineer, more challenging ski descents. This is the ultimate line on the tallest mountain on Earth that literally splits the biggest face on Everest.”

The 2024 expedition involved dozens of people, including climbers, camp managers, cooks, and cinematographers. The set-up involved three different camps. The climb would start at 20,000 ft. and go up 9,000 ft. to the top of the mountain. An advanced basecamp would be established at 18,100 ft., as well as three additional camps, with one right below the entrance of the Hornbein Couloir, the most challenging and steepest part of the climb.

To accomplish such a challenging climb, the climbers would do rotations, going up the mountain and back down, in an effort to build up red blood cells and acclimatize themselves to the changes in altitude as well as to bring equipment up the mountain. The process involves pushing the body to its limits, over and over again, before returning to base camp and going again. “It’s hard to sleep at 18,000 ft., so it becomes this game of acclimatizing and getting all your equipment, the rope and all the oxygen cylinders and the sherpa up the mountain,” says Morrison. 

Unfortunately, one of the climbers on the expedition, Yukta Gurung, broke his leg on the journey up Everest. With that injury and the uneasy weather conditions, the decision was made to call the expedition off. “It felt like we were walking away, and we weren’t coming back,” recalls Morrisson. Chin didn’t see it that way. “Walking through the airport terminal with Jimmy, he was like, ‘Of course you’re going to go back.’”
Chin was right. In September 2025, Morrison, Chin, and a team of 12 climbers, including a healed Gurung, returned to Everest. The expedition took seven weeks, and this time there were no injuries or unforeseen weather circumstances. On Oct. 15, 2025, they arrived at the peak. Jim Morrison, Jimmy Chin, and their team of climbers—Carla Perez, Esteban Mena Yanez, Pasang Sona Sherpa, Pemba Sherpa, Roberto Morales, Erich Reopke, Nigma Tenjing Sherpa, Pemba Gelje Sherpa, Pur Bahadur “Yukta” Gurung, and Tenging Gyaljen Sherpa—reached the summit. It wasn’t over yet: Morrison still intended to be the first person to ski down Everest’s north face.

“We got to the summit about 2 p.m.,” recalls Morrison. “We spent about 45 minutes on top. I connected with Hilaree and spread some of her ashes. There were a lot of hugs and a lot of tears. Then I started transitioning to skiing, which might take five to 10 minutes normally, but takes a lot longer on top of a mountain. Just buckling your boots at 29,000 ft. Every couple of buckles, you have to stand up and take a break to get hold of your breath. Everything becomes laborious. Then I looked over at Jimmy and my other teammates on the summit and said ‘OK, here we go.’” Any mistake, Morrison reminded his teammates, and himself, could prove catastrophic.

The epic descent

Then came what Morrison describes as “the greatest run of my life—the hardest, longest, deepest, scariest, most dramatic ski run.” It took four hours and five minutes to ski down the north face of Everest. “It wasn’t four hours straight skiing,” says Morrison. “You take it one step at a time, one turn at a time, and there’s a lot of stopping.” He compares it to running to the end of the street as fast as you can, over and over. Going down at least means more access to oxygen. “As I went further down the mountain, I was able to recover a lot quicker, and as my physical endurance wore away, I got into a more oxygen-rich environment, which helped keep me going and able to achieve this.”

Morrison explains his feelings as he reached safety as “a tidal wave of emotions.” He recalls: “I just totally broke down. I’m crying and yelling at the sky. I’m all by myself in this glacier, and it was just a tremendous overwhelming feeling that we did it,” referring to himself and Hilaree. “I felt like we did it together, and we accomplished it. It starts with Hilaree and I, but it reverberates to the other 11 people that were on the summit with me, everyone that’s below me in base camp or in camp one,  and everyone across the planet pushing their energy for us to accomplish and achieve it.”

He looks back on the scale and scope of what they all accomplished together. “I felt like it was a tremendous team effort and something that humanity helped me do.”