Here We Go Again - Maybe

Most of us voted against all that MAGA shit last week, but because our Political Memory is dysfunctional, and we're practically full-on disabled in the Political Intelligence Department, a shitload of us voted for people who have told us pretty much straight up that they intend to dismantle American democracy.

So why would Trump not decide to take another crack at it?

I think Ann Telnaes at WaPo gets it about right:

I still think Trump didn't really want to win in 2016. He wanted to be on stage dancing in the spotlight, throwing all manner of shit in the air so he could rake in piles of cash without producing anything more than a political soap opera in real time. 

And this morning, right on cue, guess what pops up in my email:

He's still dialed in on the WinRed fund raising mechanism, which pays him an enormous amount, and he's already announced his "campaign" will include fewer people and cost a lot less than last time, so taken together, he can fleece the rubes for millions, then make an excuse for not continuing (hopefully AG Garland gives him that excuse), at which time, he gets to pocket anything left in his campaign coffers as he makes his grandly magnanimous exit, aiming to become the Great Republican Mentor - the king maker - the real power behind the throne.

None of which can be true, but all of which will be considered Gospel by the MAGArube devotees.

And of course, I could be wrong - fake lord knows that's happened before - but hey, ya heard it here first.

Today In Sportsball

The FIFA World Cup kicks off in Qatar on November 20. The biggest sporting event in the world has a dark side: Qatar won the tournament by buying a large number of votes and the construction of the stadiums has killed 6,500 people, according to research by The Guardian.

Every day, coffins arrive at Kathmandu airport with deceased workers who sought refuge in one of the Gulf states. Journalist Danny Ghosen investigates why Nepalese people knowingly choose to work abroad under terrible conditions and why they also went into debt for that job. With all the consequences for the next of kin. Yet new workers report to the airport every day in search of a better life.

 vpro documentaries

People are dying for a chance to work a decent job.

Today's Reddit

Oddly satisfying

Today's Faint Glimmer

It costs me nothing to be an ally - or at least a decent person who wants everybody to enjoy the same rights and freedoms I enjoy.

It's really hard to get my brain around the concept of somebody with rights and privileges who then goes out of his way to deny others the same.

 By Jennifer Bendery

'We Have The Votes': The Senate Will Act This Week To Codify Same-Sex Marriage

With the midterm elections over, Democrats have found enough Republicans ready to join them in advancing basic LGBTQ rights.

The Senate is expected to vote this week on legislation to codify same-sex marriage and, more importantly, the bill has enough GOP support to pass, HuffPost has learned.

“We have the votes,” a source close to negotiations confirmed Monday.

A bipartisan group of senators has been trying for months to pass a marriage equality bill to protect same-sex and interracial relationships. The House passed its own legislation in July, but that proposal stalled in the Senate, where some Republicans raised concerns that it would stifle religious liberty.

Things got more complicated when, around the same time, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced a surprise deal on a massive tax and climate change bill. Republicans were so mad that Democrats were ready to pass that deal without them that some signaled they would pull their support for a forthcoming same-sex marriage bill.

But with the midterm elections over and Democrats in position to hold the Senate for another two years, it looks like some Republicans are coming back to the table.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the lead Democrat on the forthcoming bill, tweeted Monday that the Senate is “going to get this done.”

The Respect for Marriage Act will protect marriage equality and ensure individuals in same-sex and interracial marriages are guaranteed the same rights & freedoms as every other marriage.

We are going to get this done for loving families across America.

— Sen. Tammy Baldwin (@SenatorBaldwin) November 14, 2022

Baldwin also released an overview of what the Senate proposal will do.

Same-sex marriage has been legal nationwide since 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are guaranteed the fundamental right to marry under the Constitution. But after the now-conservative court struck down Roe v. Wade in June ― tossing out nearly 50 years of precedent on reproductive rights ― Democrats and some Republicans are anxious about the court’s plans for weakening other civil rights.

In terms of timing on the marriage equality bill, the Senate is expected to vote on it “later this week,” per the source familiar with negotiations.

And because the Senate plans to take the House bill and simply amend it, versus senators introducing an entirely new bill, the House only has to vote to accept the changes to their bill versus starting the process over again.

All 50 Democratic senators have said they’d support legislation to codify same-sex marriage. That means the Senate bill needs at least 10 Republicans to support it, too, in order to overcome a filibuster. So who are they?

So far, the only GOP senators saying anything about this week’s forthcoming bill are the three who are in the bipartisan group that helped get a deal on the bill in the first place: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Thom Tillis (N.C.). The Democrats they’ve been working with are Baldwin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for one, wouldn’t say either way how he’d vote.

✅ That's against my religion, so I can't do it.

❌ That's against my religion, so you can't do it.

Today's Press Poodle

Michelle Goldberg can be one of the Poodliest of the Press Poodles.

That said, she does show signs - on occasion - of pulling her head out of her ass.

Her OpEd piece today is one such occasion. Kinda.

(pay wall)

Four Stark Lessons From a Democratic Upset


By Michelle Goldberg

When I reached Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on Monday morning, the Democratic representative-elect from Washington State was sitting on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Her race against Joe Kent, a stolen-election conspiracy theorist endorsed by Donald Trump, had been called on Saturday, giving her enough time to get to Capitol Hill for new-member orientation. Because of the Republican lean of her district, Washington’s Third, her victory was widely considered the biggest upset of any House contest; FiveThirtyEight’s final forecast had given her a mere 2 percent chance of winning. “A lot of people sacrificed to get me here,” she told me, speaking with particular gratitude of all the mothers who called in babysitting favors to knock on doors for her.

I’d gone to Gluesenkamp Perez’s district in September because I saw it as a microcosm of the midterms. Kent, a Fox News regular who put a member of the Proud Boys on his payroll, had ousted Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, in the primary. Gluesenkamp Perez hoped that there would be enough moderate Republicans worried about the future of American democracy, and aghast at the end of Roe v. Wade, to offset Kent’s partisan advantage. The outcome, I thought, would tell us whether Republicans would pay any price for their extremism.

It is a profound relief to see that they have. Having spent a fair amount of time thinking about this bellwether race, I see four main takeaways from it.

1. Democrats need to recruit more working-class and rural candidates.

Gluesenkamp Perez is a young mother who owns an auto repair shop with her husband. They live in rural Skamania County, in a hillside house they built themselves when they couldn’t get a mortgage to buy one. On the trail she spoke frequently of bringing her young son to work because they couldn’t find child care. She shares both the cultural signifiers and economic struggles of many of the voters she needed to win over.

“I hope that people see that this as a model,” she told me on Monday. “We need to recruit different kinds of candidates. We need to be listening more closely to the districts — people want a Congress that looks like America.”

2. Voters can see the link between abortion bans and authoritarianism.

During her campaign, Gluesenkamp Perez spoke about having a miscarriage and being forced to make her way through a wall of protesters to get medical care at a Planned Parenthood clinic. While Kent called for a national abortion ban, she appealed to her district’s libertarian streak by including both gun rights and reproductive rights in her promise to “protect our freedoms.”

On Monday, she said that voters connected abortion bans to a broader narrative of right-wing radicalism. Even if voters thought abortion rights in Washington State were safe with Democrats in charge, the end of Roe showed that Republicans are willing to upend some basic assumptions undergirding American life. “It made people take Republicans, especially the extreme wing, seriously when they say they want to defund the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, the F.B.I.,” she said.

Heads Up: Here comes the Both Sides razor blade in the apple - although it's a tiny bit less obvious than what NYT editors usually require.

Please proceed.

3. MAGA Republicans are stuck in a media echo chamber.

A common rap on liberals is that they’re trapped in their own ideological bubble, unable to connect with normal people who don’t share their niche concerns. This cycle, that was much truer of conservatives. The ultimate example of this was the Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, the human incarnation of a right-wing message board, who lauded the Unabomber manifesto and put out gun fetishist campaign ads that made him look like a serial killer.

Kent suffered from a similar sort of insularity. He attacked sports fans, suggesting it’s not masculine for men to “watch other men compete in a silly game,” a view common in corners of the alt-right but unintelligible to normies. Gluesenkamp Perez said Kent seemed shocked when, during a debate, his line about vaccines as “experimental gene therapy” didn’t go over well, which she took as a sign that he’d spent too much time “operating in the chat rooms.”

The ultimate expression of the right-wing echo chamber was the Stop the Steal movement itself. Conservatives might have been less credulous about it if they weren’t so out of touch with the Biden-voting majority.

4. Data isn’t everything.

As FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich acknowledged on Twitter, the site’s model didn’t take into account Kent’s personal weaknesses, and included only one post-Labor Day poll. An overreliance on a few data points made Gluesenkamp Perez’s position look weaker than it really was. Democrats I spoke to in Washington State — as well as some Republicans — believed she had a decent shot, but national Democrats seem to have remained unconvinced. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee gave her no financial support.

Democrats obviously shouldn’t disregard poll numbers or data about the partisan breakdown of the electorate. But we underestimate the human factor in politics at our peril.

“You’ve got a Trump cult-of-personality acolyte, and everybody writes off the district,” Brian Baird, a Democrat who represented the Third District from 1999 to 2011, told me in September. “But up steps this young, feisty, bright, moderate woman, with a young child, trying to run a small business, and she says, ‘I’m not going to put up with this.’” Sometimes stories tell you what statistics can’t.

Mike Pence Is No Hero

Love him, or hate him, or come down somewhere in between, Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan6.

That's actually quite a lot, and we can say "Thanks for that, Mike."

We can say it once, and no more.

The problem is that he hasn't done much of anything since then.

Now, when he sees Trump is in a weakened position, he comes out and pretends he stood up to the bad man and stared him down - or some such.

Here's Beau Of The Fifth Column (Justin King) to explain.

Colorado As Microcosm

"An extinction level event"

Republicans were hoping to make gains in Colorado this election.

The party recruited more moderate and younger candidates, women, and people of color, and focused largely on pocketbook issues. And given an unpopular sitting President and Democratic control in Colorado and nationally, the focus of the media and political observers was the scope of the inroads Republicans would make.

Instead, the opposite happened. A blue wave hit Colorado and left Republicans in a worse spot, with deeper electoral losses than they ever imagined, shocking both Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Honestly I think Colorado Republicans need to take this and learn the lesson that the party is dead. This was an extinction-level event,” said Republican state Rep. Colin Larson. “This was the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaur, and in this case, the dinosaur was the Republican party.”

Larson’s pessimism is understandable. He was poised to be the incoming House minority leader after the sudden death of state Rep. Hugh McKean. Instead, Larson unexpectedly lost his own race in Jefferson County.

He was already the last Republican representing the suburban county just west of Denver. That’s a huge shift from just a decade ago when Jeffco was considered one of the swing regions of the country and a focus of both candidates during the 2012 presidential race.

Republicans lost seven seats in the state legislature, and another Republican state senator had become a Democrat prior to the election.

This leaves the party with less than a third of the seats in both chambers, the deepest Republican minority in state history.

“Frankly, it couldn't be much worse,” said Dick Wadhams, the former chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Wadhams largely blamed demographic shifts and the national Republican brand.

“And I think we put up very strong candidates who were worthy of consideration by all Colorado voters and yet they were soundly rejected in favor of Democratic candidates,” Wadhams said. “So I don't know what it's gonna take for this to come back the other way.”

And it wasn’t just the statehouse, the losses were steep at the top of the ticket as well. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis defeated Republican Heidi Ganahl with nearly 58 percent of the vote, and even won in the Republican stronghold of Douglas county where she lives.

Larson said he thinks it’s going to take a seismic shift to turn things around and said both the local and national party must fully repudiate former President Donald Trump, the January 6th insurrection, and election denialism. He believes only then would enough voters in the state even consider Republicans as a “serious viable option.”

“January 6th, we just thought it had fallen from most people’s minds,” he said. “That just was not the case. They weren’t willing to look past the party.”

Larson said it’s even difficult for him personally. Although he’s always voted for Republicans, if Trump is the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 he said he couldn’t back him.

“We don’t solve our problems with violence and insurrection and conspiracy theories,” Larson said.

Jan. 6, 2021, was a turning point for Dana Basquez, a voter from Lakewood. For much of her adult life, she was a Republican. She became a Democrat about a decade ago, but even then she said would consider Republican candidates and normally split her ticket. After January 6th that all changed.

“On January 6th it was cemented in my brain that I cannot trust these people,” Basquez said. “That our nation, everything that I hope for my grandchildren is in jeopardy.”

She grew up in a Republican family in Texas and said her father voted for Trump both times. She said he regretted it and was heartbroken at the state of the Republican party.

“They were trying to overthrow our government. He felt he had played a part in that. And that man was 86 years old, had suffered with prostate cancer for better than a year,” Basquez said. “And he was gone by May. He was just devastated by what they did.”

Some candidates did try to distance themselves from Trump, but it still didn’t help. Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet handily defeated Republican businessman Joe O’Dea, even though O’Dea broke with Trump, defended the 2020 election, and took relatively moderate positions on abortion rights, immigration, infrastructure, and same-sex marriage.Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsColorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, accompanied by his wife Celeste, tells supporters he called his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, to concede defeat on Election Day night, Nov. 8, 2022, at the Hilton DoubleTree hotel ballroom in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

Zack Roday was O’Dea’s campaign manager and said they knew going into the race that defeating Bennet in a state Trump lost by 13 points, was a longshot, but they didn’t expect the margins to be as wide as they were.

“Our polling did show that it was tightening, the public polling did show that it was tightening and history. I mean the incumbent [President] was under 50 percent in all credible polls,” Roday said. “Gravity, midterms, all of that indicates that the challenger is gonna close hard and fast."

But as the election approached the campaign started to see troubling indications about the Republican party’s brand. Roday said the campaign sent text messages and received some responses along the lines of, “I really like this guy. This is the type of guy I could support. I'm just not voting Republican right now.”

O’Dea did perform several points better than Republican gubernatorial candidate Ganahl, who courted leaders in the election denial movement, and drew attention for her embrace of “parents’ rights,” and unsubstantiated claims that children are “identifying as cats … all over Colorado” and schools are “tolerating” it.

Roday said this election showed that the Republican party’s problems are bigger than any one candidate.

“It's reality that (Trump) lost the midterms for us in 2018,” Roday said. “He lost the White House in 2020.”

Roday said that effectively put a limit on what the party could achieve, “in what should have been an extremely favorable environment in 2022. And there's only one way to move forward, and that is to shed ourselves of that cancer.”

Still, he said he was proud that O’Dea stood up to Trump publicly.

“Going toe to toe with the former president of the United States and not backing down, that is in the history books. Even with us coming up short,” he said.

Votes are still being tabulated, but by winning about 42.4 percent of the vote, O’Dea narrowly outperformed Trump’s 41.9 percent share of the Colorado vote in the 2020 general election. That race had 23 candidates dividing votes, compared to just five in this year’s Senate race. In both cases, the Libertarian candidate was the biggest third-party draw, with 1.61 percent of the vote in 2020 and 1.7 percent this year.

Republicans also narrowly lost Colorado's new 8th Congressional District and Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s race in the 3rd Congressional District is still too close to call, in a seat where Republicans hold a 9-point advantage, although she is leading her Democratic opponent Adam Frisch.

Some Democrats point to the Supreme Court and the Roe v. Wade decision as the turning point that helped them and mobilized voters. For Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who was not on the ballot, it comes down to Colorado having what he believes is one of the strongest economies in the country.

“I'm not saying it's perfect here. And there are a lot of people feeling inflation and the interest rates on their credit or credit bill or on their house mortgage, they care about that,” Hickenlooper said. “But they're also more optimistic and they feel our future's good. That's not true everywhere in America.”

But as the dust is settling, at the state level, Colorado Republicans will next have to figure out how to slow or moderate Democratic priorities in the state legislature, despite not having the votes to stop anything. Even though the party was already in the minority, Larson said with fewer Republicans, Democrats now have even less incentive to tack to the middle.

“There’s going to be a lot of negative policy outcomes from not having a sane and relevant loyal opposition party,” he said, noting that despite some strong new members, some of the more moderate lawmakers are no longer at the Capitol.

Former Democratic state Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp agrees that having more Republicans at the statehouse can be a good thing. She was term-limited in 2020 and is now a Jefferson County Commissioner. During some of her time at the Capitol Republicans controlled the state Senate.

“Actually it worked out really well. It forced people to be able to negotiate, work together, find common ground in order to get things done,” Kraft-Tharp said.

And now with Republicans out of power at the state and federal level, local races may become an increased area of focus. When Republican Congressman Mike Coffman lost his re-election bid in 2018 he went on to become the Mayor of Aurora.

“It's clear that it's a blue state statewide, and Republicans can be successful in certain districts or certain pockets of the state and city council,” said Michael Fields, the head of the conservative Advance Colorado Institute.

Fields has helped spearhead successful ballot initiatives in recent years including proposition 121 which lowers the state income tax rate from 4.55 percent of income to 4.40 percent of income. It had widespread support and passed in every county in the state except Boulder.

“We can win on issues. We just cut taxes and 65% of voters agreed with us. They're still paths to enact policy,” Fields said. “And I think policy is the most important thing. And we haven't had power for four years (when Republicans last controlled the state Senate), but we've done a lot on the policy front, regardless, as conservatives.”

Congressional Circus

Let me start with this:

    Ain't it funny how we never see the headline, "GOP In Disarray!"

The Senate stays Majority Democrat, and while the House is likely to go Republican, that's not a sure thing.

Now then - here's a money quote from WaPo's The Early, this morning:

Sen Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle, said on Fox on Sunday that “there’s no plan” and leaders want to “rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we’ve done wrong.”

But Scott was charged with retaking the majority as NRSC chair — so it’s unclear who he wants answers from. It’s a bit like the chef asking who cooked such a terrible meal.

(pay wall)

Republican leaders try to weather the storm

The House and the Senate are back in Washington for the first time in six weeks, with the Republican Party in tumult and Democrats in ecstasy over the results of the midterm elections.

Republicans in both chambers are scheduled to elect their leaders for the next Congress this week (the House on Tuesday, the Senate on Wednesday) in what promises to be a tense few days as rank-and-file members ask what went wrong, who’s to blame and what’s going to be done about it.

The midterm elections didn’t go how most expected. Democrats maintained control of the Senate, and control of the House is still unknown, which means what will happen during the lame-duck session is TBD — and the agenda for the next Congress is completely up in the air.

The House could have the slimmest majority since the 72nd Congress in 1931, when 218 Republicans, 216 Democrats and one Farmer-Labor Party representative made up the chamber.

Let’s break it down

Every competitive House Republican leadership race has been thrown for a loop.

The conference will gather today to hear from the candidates in what is expected to be a lively and interesting closed-door conversation.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is desperate to be speaker, is feeling the most heat.

If Republicans do take the House, it will be by the narrowest of margins, empowering members of both the far-right and moderate wings to seek concessions from leaders.

To secure support for his potential speakership, McCarthy is talking to many members, including the chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), according to two Republican aides who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Perry and members of the Freedom Caucus want more representation on committees and changes to the rules that empower rank-and-file members. McCarthy needs their votes.

The race to be Republican whip has also been thrown for a loop. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who ran the House Republicans’ campaign arm, is struggling to maintain his support after the midterms, especially since he told The Early on Friday that Republicans “should be extremely happy” that they won the House majority (which, let us repeat, hasn’t been called yet).

Meanwhile, critics are highlighting that Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) failed to endorse former president Donald Trump’s still-unannounced 2024 presidential run when Banks appeared on Fox News on Sunday. But Banks is planning to endorse Trump after his expected announcement Tuesday night, a person familiar with Banks’s intentions said.

Trump has become a litmus test (again), but in perhaps a different way than before. He is weakened after many blame him for the GOP’s bad midterms outcome, but he also remains the de facto leader of the party — for now. Whether to pledge allegiance to him has become more complicated for ambitious Republicans.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) — who is running for reelection as conference chair, which would make her the No. 4 Republican in the House if the GOP is in the majority — last week endorsed Trump for president, but some members are frustrated she did so before he announced and while the fallout from the midterms remains murky.

Senate Republicans

Several GOP senators are calling for a postponement of GOP leadership elections. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle, said on Fox on Sunday that “there’s no plan” and leaders want to “rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we’ve done wrong.”

But Scott was charged with retaking the majority as NRSC chair — so it’s unclear who he wants answers from. It’s a bit like the chef asking who cooked such a terrible meal.

Several senators who have backed postponing leadership elections, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), have long had grudges with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and have sidled up to Trump and the Trump wing of the party. But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a sort of weather vane for which way the political winds are blowing and a loyalist to the former president, called for a delay as well Sunday night.

Senate leadership aides said there is no intention to postpone the election and that no one has stepped up to challenge McConnell, but when Senators meet on Tuesday at their weekly lunch, they, too, are expected to have a tense discussion.

Even if he is elected leader again, McConnell will face questions about how much influence he’ll have. Trump attacks him regularly, many candidates trashed him on the trail and some of his old allies have retired. He may get the title, but what he can do with it remains an open question.

House Democrats

House Democrats are in limbo, waiting to see if they defy the odds and maintain control of the House. There will be no movement on leadership elections before the majority is called.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was expected to step down after this term, declined to say Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether she’s going to leave leadership.

“My decision will then be rooted in what — the wishes of my family and the wishes of my caucus,” she said. Pelosi said she would announce her decision ahead of the House Democrats’ leadership elections on Nov. 30.

Senate Democrats

It’s possible that every Democratic senator up for reelection will return to Washington next year — depending on whether Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) prevails in a runoff election next month — and the conference is thrilled with the election results. The Senate Democratic caucus is the most drama-free group on the Hill right now.

Democratic senators will meet Tuesday for their regular lunch, which is likely to be a celebration, and they’ll start to plot out their lame-duck priorities through the end of the year.

They won’t hold their leadership elections until December. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to be unopposed.

Today's Wonderment:

What happens if/when a few members (MTG, Scott Perry, Josh Hawley, et al) are indicted for their roles in Jan6?

News Shorts

A new thing from WaPo - listenable

(pay wall)

1) Democrats will keep control of the Senate.

• The latest: Close races in Arizona and Nevada were called for Democrats this weekend. It gives the party at least 50 seats — a majority, with Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote — for the next two years.
• What’s next? The Senate seat in Georgia is headed for a runoff election on Dec. 6.
• What else to know: Control of the House remains up in the air. Many districts where votes are still being counted expected delays because of mail-in ballots.

2 Ukraine said it found evidence of Russian war crimes in a newly liberated city.

• Where? Kherson, in the country’s south. Ukraine retook the city — the only regional capital seized by Russia since its invasion — on Friday, marking another major victory.
• What Russia left behind: Evidence of atrocities and widespread damage to infrastructure, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made a surprise visit to the city today.

3) President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this morning.

• What to know: This was their first face-to-face meeting as presidents. It took place in Bali, Indonesia, a day before a G-20 summit, a global forum of the world’s most powerful governments.
• Why this matters: The relationship between the U.S. and China is at its lowest point in decades, which has huge economic ripple effects worldwide.

4) At least three people were killed in a shooting at the University of Virginia.

• What we know: A gunman opened fire on the Charlottesville campus late last night, officials said. At least two other people were injured. None of the victims have been named.
• The latest: The university identified a 22-year-old student as the suspect. Police were still searching for him as of this morning.

5) An explosion in one of Turkey’s busiest shopping districts killed six people.

• What we know: The attack took place in one of Istanbul’s main pedestrian thoroughfares yesterday and injured at least 81 other people, authorities said.
• The investigation: Police detained 46 suspects in connection with the attack, including a woman who they said had planted the explosives.

6) Your phone can now warn you before an earthquake hits.

• How? It’s a new early-warning system called ShakeAlert. It can give you a few crucial seconds to drop, cover and hold on before an earthquake reaches your location.
• How to get it: It’s active in California, Oregon and Washington state, and Alaska could be next. Find out how to turn on the alerts on Android and iPhones here.

7) Dolly Parton received $100 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

• What to know: She’s the second winner of the Courage and Civility Award. The Queen of Country can give the money to any charity she wants. (Bezos owns The Post.)
• Why this matters: Parton has spent years giving back. Her best-known program has gifted nearly 200 million books to children since 1995.

Today's Eternal Sadness

Mighty close to home.

About a mile-and-a-half from my house

(pay wall)

Three dead in shooting on U-Va. campus

Police were searching for Christopher Darnell Jones in connection with the incident that left two others injured

Three people were fatally shot and two others were injured on the campus of the University of Virginia late Sunday, U-Va. officials said, in an outburst of violence that set off an intense manhunt in and around Charlottesville for a suspect police described as armed and dangerous.

At 5:50 a.m. Monday, U-Va. police said agencies were conducting a “complete search on and around UVA grounds at this time. Expect increased law enforcement presence.”

The university identified a student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., as the suspect. It did not immediately identify the victims.

“As of this writing, I am heartbroken to report that the shooting has resulted in three fatalities; two additional victims were injured and are receiving medical care,” U-Va. President James E. Ryan wrote in a message to the community at about 4 a.m. “We are working closely with the families of the victims, and we will share additional detail as soon as we are able.

“Our University Police Department has joined forces with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend the suspect, and we will keep our community apprised of developments as the situation evolves.”

Classes for Monday were canceled. Charlottesville City Schools and Albermarle County School District schools were closed.

At 6:09 a.m. Monday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tweeted: “This morning, Suzanne and I are praying for the UVA community. Virginia State Police is fully coordinating with UVA police department and local authorities. Please shelter in place while the authorities work to locate the suspect.”

Gunfire was reported at the garage on Culbreth Road about 10:30 p.m., the University of Virginia Office of Emergency Management said.

University police said in a tweet that they were looking for Jones “regarding the shooting incident.” Jones is 22 and may be a former football player, according to a 2018 roster. Police later described Jones as a suspect in the shooting. There was a massive manhunt for Jones into the early morning hours, involving a state police helicopter and multiple law enforcement agencies.

Police said the suspect was wearing a burgundy jacket or hoodie, with blue jeans and red shoes. They said he may be driving a black SUV with Virginia plates.

The UVA Police Department is looking for Christopher Darnell Jones regarding the shooting incident that occurred on the grounds of the University of Virginia. Call 911 if seen, do not approach. pic.twitter.com/mKcxF6ksxw

— UVA Police Department (@UVAPolice) November 14, 2022

Jones, according to a U-Va. sports website, was a freshman on the football team in 2018 but did not appear in any games. He had previously played linebacker and running back at Petersburg High School in Virginia. Before that, he spent three years at Varina High School, where he was an accomplished player. It was not immediately known whether he is still a U-Va. student, but two students said he still is listed in the U-Va. directory.

Just before midnight, the emergency management office urged students to continue sheltering in place and to “reach out to friends & family and advise of your status.” The shelter in place order was still in effect at 4 a.m.

In a message that followed about 1:15 a.m., Vice President and Dean of Students Robyn S. Hadley exhorted the community: “Please, please take the shelter in place commands seriously as the situation remains active.” Later, the emergency management office said multiple police agencies were “actively searching for the suspect.”

The report of the shootings startled students and others on campus as the weekend was winding down.

“The second we all got that message that there was an active shooter, my phone flooded with messages,” said Eva Surovell, 21, of Alexandria, Va., who is editor in chief of the Cavalier Daily student newspaper. “People are genuinely scared.”

As of 2 a.m. Monday, Surovell said she was sheltering in her room on the university’s famed Lawn. She said she had been in touch with her mom and her sister at James Madison University to reassure them. “You just don’t really think something could happen like this to your community until it does.”

Danielle Werchowsky of Arlington, whose son is a student at U-Va., said: “UVA parents are glued to our social media right now. … Parents are all on edge.” She said she urged her son in a phone call to turn off the lights in his apartment and stay away from windows.

Culbreth Road and the garage, where shots were heard, are about half a mile north of the lawn and the Rotunda and near other campus buildings.

Family and friends with questions were urged to call

UVa Emergency Hotline at 877-685-4836.

This is not the first time this year that a shooting has rocked a college campus in Virginia. In February, two campus police officers at Bridgewater College were fatally shot after they were checking out a report of a “suspicious man” near a classroom building. The suspect linked to their deaths was a former student.

Also in February, a late-night shooting at a hookah lounge near the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg left one person dead and four injured, police said. In 2007, Virginia Tech experienced one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history when an undergraduate student killed 32 people, and himself, on April 16 of that year.