Hello, and happy Friday! The last couple of months have featured some pretty big elections—most notably in Italy (which ended in a victory for the country’s far-right firebrand Giorgia Meloni) and Israel (which may well see the return of Benjamin Netanyahu, this time flanked by his once-fringe far-right allies). The next big election to watch is in the United States, where voters are returning to the polls for the midterms, the country’s first election since the disputed 2020 contest and the Jan. 6 insurrection that followed.
I can’t recall a midterm election as seemingly consequential as this one. Quite aside from the fact that this contest will determine whether the Democrats can retain control of Congress (and, by extension, whether President Joe Biden will be able to pass legislation for the remainder of his term), it will also decide who will be be in charge of overseeing future elections. Considering the fact that candidates echoing Trump’s election fraud falsehoods feature in nearly every state, the stakes are pretty high.
So to my fellow Americans, consider this your reminder to go and vote! I already have, and I had to pay £11 for the privilege. More on the challenges of overseas voting below.
What I’ve written
In the run-up to the U.S. midterms, I wrote about the potential impact of America’s most overlooked voting bloc: Overseas Americans.
These Americans are an ocean away from the political fray in Washington. But as far as many of these organizers are concerned, they have just as much of a responsibility to get involved ahead of the Nov. 8 vote. That’s because hundreds of thousands of overseas Americans across more than 180 countries turned out during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, enough to make a difference in some states. As the country prepares to return to the polls for the midterm elections—which will decide whether Democrats retain control of the House of Representatives, as well as a number of Senate seats and key governorships—they are determined to do so again. Keep reading here
As Israelis prepared to go to the polls for their fifth election in less than four years, I wrote about the intensified focus on Arab turnout and how averting the far right’s rise and Benjamin Netanyahu’s return was not the only thing on the minds of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
This contest comes just over a year after a historic alliance was formed between the centrist (and current Prime Minister of Israel) Yair Lapid, the religious ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett, and the Arab Israeli legislator Mansour Abbas—one that ultimately resulted in Abbas’s United Arab List becoming the first independent Arab party to enter an Israeli governing coalition. At the time, the move was seen as a potentially redefining moment in Arab-Jewish relations and an opportunity for Arab Israelis to have real influence in a political sphere that had long excluded them.
For them, the upcoming election will be a referendum on that coalition and whether the Israeli government can ever truly be representative of all its citizens. Keep reading here
And finally, I wrote about what you need to know about Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
That Sunak, 42, entered 10 Downing Street less than two months after losing his first leadership bid to Liz Truss may well be remembered as one of the swiftest political comebacks in British history. But it is hardly a surprise: The former finance minister was the top choice among fellow Conservative Party lawmakers to replace Boris Johnson after the erstwhile Prime Minister was toppled from power in July. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This piece on whether the midterms will be America’s last real election (The New Statesman)
Denying fair elections goes well beyond Trump. What was once an egregious aberration by the former president has become a widespread Republican strategy. We should expect whoever is the party’s candidate in the presidential election in 2024 to embrace it. It is, after all, an effective one: 40 per cent of Republican voters say they don’t believe Biden legitimately won in 2020. Already the party is laying the groundwork for denying the outcomes of these midterm elections too: six Republican candidates refused to commit to accepting the results of their races when asked by the New York Times.
This revealing article on the erasure of the Uyghur internet (WIRED)
Targeting of the Uyghur IT sector, especially website owners, keeps happening because these individuals are influential in society, says Abduweli Ayup, a language activist who has been keeping a tally of Xinjiang intellectuals who have disappeared into the camp system, a list containing names of over a dozen people working in the technology sector. “They are the leading force in the economy—and after that leading force disappears, people become poor,” Ayup says.
This cover story on what the preparation for the Qatar World Cup portends for our much hotter future (TIME)
Qatar has spent more than $200 billion on construction that offers a preview of future technologies, from outdoor air-conditioning to retractable roofs. But these games also offer a sobering preview of another future, one in which the kinds of record-breaking heat waves that roasted Asia, Europe, and North America this summer are no longer extreme events but seasonal norms brought about by a changing climate. Those rising temperatures will change the future of work, making outdoor labor increasingly dangerous to human health in the hottest parts of the year, across most of the globe.
What I’m thinking about
It’s almost Guy Fawkes Night! AKA the anniversary of one of my all-time favorite pieces.
Until next time,
Yasmeen