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      Lauren Boebert Faces Unexpectedly Tight Race in Colorado

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      The race as of Wednesday morning was too close to call in Colorado’s Third Congressional District, where Representative Lauren Boebert, a far-right Republican who heckled President Biden during his State of the Union speech, was locked in a surprisingly tight contest with Adam Frisch, a Democrat.Ms. Boebert, 35, was elected to Congress in 2020 and has attracted attention for embracing spectacle. Along with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — who was reelected — Ms. Boebert has represented a vocal component of the Republican Party that is loyal to former President Donald J. Trump, and keen on provocation.She ignored mask rules and security checks while entering the Capitol last year. She falsely claimed on Twitter that she was allowed to carry her gun inside the Capitol complex, and she boasted of carrying it to Washington. She showcased her appreciation of conspiracy theories, and her belief in the lie that the 2020 election was rigged.She also faced some demands to resign last year after she posted on Twitter information about some lawmakers’ locations during the violent siege at the Capitol. This year, Ms. Boebert shouted at Mr. Biden as he referred to the death of his son during his State of the Union speech.Before she won her seat in Congress, Ms. Boebert ran a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado’s ranch country — the Shooters Grill — where she encouraged staff members to carry firearms and defied restrictions by staying open during the Covid pandemic.In 2020, she defeated Scott Tipton, a five-term incumbent, in the G.O.P. primary before winning in the general election. But she faced a stiffer challenge in this year’s general election from Mr. Frisch, a businessman and former Aspen, Colo., city councilman. More

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      The Republican Wave That Wasn’t

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      Rachel Quester, Rob Szypko, Nina Feldman and Sydney Harper and Paige Cowett, Lisa Chow, M.J. Davis Lin and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the early hours of Wednesday, control of both the House and Senate remained uncertain.Going into the midterms, some analysts expected a repudiation of the Democrats and a surge of Republican victories. But this “red wave” did not materialize. Today, we try to make sense of the surprising results. On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.At the polls in Staten Island on Tuesday. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York held off her Republican challenger.Anna Watts for The New York TimesBackground readingAs the results continue to come in, follow the latest updates here. There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon More

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      The House Hangs in the Balance, as Fetterman’s Win Boosts Senate Democrats

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      Republican hopes of an emphatic repudiation of President Biden had morphed into a district-by-district slog by Wednesday. But the party still had multiple paths to a House majority.Democrats displayed unexpected resilience in the 2022 midterms, flipping a Republican-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania and rebuffing G.O.P. candidates in a wide array of House seats. But the party’s excruciatingly narrow margins in both chambers meant the battle for power on Capitol Hill remained undecided early Wednesday morning.In the House, Republicans have a multitude of pathways to seize control from Democrats, needing to flip just five seats, and G.O.P. leaders expressed bold confidence about their chances overnight.“When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, predicted to supporters at 2 a.m. Yet when he spoke, only a single House Democratic incumbent had been formally defeated, a sign of how the night fell far short of Republican expectations. A number of Democrats were trailing in races that were still too close to call, including the chairman of the Democratic House campaign arm, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, whom Mr. McCarthy predicted would ultimately lose. The 2022 midterms were hard-fought — over crime, inflation, abortion, immigration and democracy itself — and the results so far reflect a deeply yet closely divided nation. For Republicans, their hopes of an emphatic repudiation of President Biden and his party had morphed into a district-by-district slog.Republican majorities in one or both chambers would usher in a new era of divided government at a turbulent moment in American politics, all but freezing the Democratic policy agenda for the second half of Mr. Biden’s first term and very likely signaling the start of endless investigations into the administration.On the Friday before the election, Mr. Biden warned in unusually blunt terms what the future would look like if Republicans took both the House and Senate. “It’s going to be a horrible two years,” Mr. Biden said in a Chicago speech to donors.In the weeks before the election, Democrats had been forced to spend time, energy and money deep in blue territory, in liberal parts of California and New York, where Mr. Biden had won with ease two years ago. The tilt of the battleground map was widely seen as a sign of Mr. Biden’s unpopularity.Yet on Tuesday, Democrats mounted a stiff defense in a remarkably diverse set of geographic and demographic corners of America. Incumbents fended off Republican challengers in an upscale suburb in Kansas, a sprawling exurban district in Northern Virginia, a conservative-leaning seat that encompassed Toledo in northwestern Ohio and a district in Central Michigan that drew more than $25 million in outside spending.Representative Mayra Flores, a Republican from South Texas, began Tuesday posting an image on Twitter of a cresting red wave. “TODAY’S FORECAST,” she captioned it. Sixteen hours later, she had an update: “The RED WAVE did not happen.” She had just been defeated by Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat.Overall across the country, Election Day seemed to have unfolded smoothly for millions of Americans. But in some communities, lawsuits were filed and scattered problems were reported, including technical glitches that disrupted ballot counting in Arizona’s Maricopa County.The closeness of the races across the nation and the slow counting process in many states, including California, injected a high level of uncertainty into where the final margin in the House would land. For Mr. McCarthy, a slim majority would complicate both his path to the House speakership and his ability to govern should Republicans take control.John Fetterman and his family after winning the Senate race in Pennsylvania early Wednesday morning.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe biggest win of the night belonged to a Democrat: John Fetterman, the sweatshirt-wearing lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, who defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz in a fierce battle for Senate that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “I am so humbled,” Mr. Fetterman said after 1 a.m., delivering a victory speech in a black hoodie.His win brightened Democrats’ chances to keep hold of a 50-50 Senate where the party did not have a single seat to spare. The Pennsylvania seat that Mr. Fetterman won is currently held by a Republican, the retiring Senator Pat Toomey. Now, in order to keep the Senate majority, Republicans must flip two other Democratic-held seats, with three potential opportunities still uncalled as of early Wednesday: Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, led Herschel Walker, a Republican former football star, with nearly all of the vote counted early Wednesday morning. But Mr. Warnock was hovering shy of the 50 percent threshold he would need to avoid a runoff in December.In other key Senate races, Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, won re-election, while two Republicans whom Donald J. Trump had endorsed and helped win primaries — Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina and the best-selling author J.D. Vance in Ohio — both won as well.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, comfortably won re-election despite facing a Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, who was fueled by $73 million in campaign contributions.Florida was a bright spot for Republicans. Mr. McCarthy boasted of winning four House seats there. And Gov. Ron DeSantis coasted to re-election, with his race called by The Associated Press just minutes after the polls closed.The results cemented the fact that the once-battleground state has shifted decidedly to the right in recent years. Nowhere was that clearer than in the heavily Hispanic and populous Miami-Dade County, where Mr. Rubio and Mr. DeSantis were both ahead; Mr. Biden had carried that same county in 2020 even while losing the state.In a victory speech, Mr. DeSantis, who is considered a possible 2024 candidate for president, said Republicans had “rewritten the political map” of the state.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida greeted the crowd alongside his wife Casey after winning the Florida governor’s race during his election night party in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesTwo Democratic candidates for governor once seen as rising stars in the party — Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Stacey Abrams in Georgia — were defeated.But Democrats scored notable successes in other governor’s races, especially in presidential swing states where Republicans had nominated a candidate who had embraced the election denialism espoused by Mr. Trump. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin turned back such Republican challengers. In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, dispatched his far-right opponent.In Arizona, Kari Lake, another Trump-aligned Republican, was locked in a race that was too close to call with Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state.The Democrats also won back the governorships of Massachusetts and Maryland from departing anti-Trump Republicans.The victories came even as polls showed Democrats were battling intense national headwinds, with voters deeply concerned about the economy and inflation. Republicans sought at every turn to tie Democratic candidates to their national party, while Democrats often portrayed their opponents as far outside the political mainstream, especially on issues of abortion.Some Democratic strategists believe the party’s efforts to make abortion one of the defining issues of 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of precedent and eliminated the federal right to an abortion in June, had strengthened the party’s hand, galvanizing the Democratic base. Even before the polls closed, people close to the White House were already bracing for Republican-led investigations on Capitol Hill, as far-right members — including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats — could join the powerful House Oversight Committee, which has broad subpoena power. “There will be voters in my race who vote for change because of the economy,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey. “That doesn’t mean they’re voting for chaos. That doesn’t mean they’re voting for Marjorie Taylor Greene to spend the next two years burning down the House of Representatives.”He was trailing early Wednesday, but the race remained uncalled. More

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      DeSantis Wins Florida Re-election in a Rout

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      Ron DeSantis won a second term as Florida’s governor in a rout on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, cementing Republicans’ grip on power in a state that was once a premier battleground and his own reputation as a top contender for the presidency.Mr. DeSantis became governor four years ago in a contest so narrowly decided, by a mere 32,463 votes, that it required a recount. This time, he clobbered Charlie Crist, a Democratic former representative and governor with wide name recognition in the state. The Associated Press called the race right after the polls closed, a rarity in recent election cycles in Florida, a swing state that has shifted to the right.Unlike past statewide candidates, who moderated their positions to appeal to the center of a divided electorate, Mr. DeSantis campaigned as an unapologetic culture warrior willing to fight the “woke left” and as a brash executive eager to defy public health experts during the coronavirus pandemic.So confident was he of victory that he spent part of the past few weeks traveling out of state to attend political events for other Republican candidates.His political ascent over the past decade from a backbencher in Congress to a presidential hopeful has placed Mr. DeSantis increasingly at odds with former President Donald J. Trump, whose endorsement secured Mr. DeSantis the Republican nomination for governor in 2018. The two men did not campaign together in the days before the election, and Mr. Trump, a Florida resident, tested out a derisive nickname against the governor: “Ron DeSanctimonious.”Mr. DeSantis’s ability to position himself as Mr. Trump’s heir without his baggage has turned him into a darling of Republican donors hedging their bets against the former president, or looking for an alternative. Mr. DeSantis raised some $200 million for the governor’s race, a staggering amount that he did not come close to spending and that could seed a presidential run. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Re-Elected in Georgia

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      Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories put her on the fringes of the Republican Party when she was first elected two years ago, was re-elected on Tuesday and is poised to play a more central role in the next Congress. The race was called by The Associated Press.Ms. Greene’s win in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District was never in question. The district is one of the most Republican in the country, and The Associated Press called the race for her over her Democratic opponent, Marcus Flowers, soon after the polls closed. But her growing status and clout, coupled with the likely election of similar candidates elsewhere in the country, reflects a broader transformation of the Republican Party.When Ms. Greene won the party’s nomination in 2020, it caused consternation among mainstream Republicans who did not want to be associated with her promotion of the QAnon movement and other far-right conspiracy theories. Among other things, she had suggested that the Sept. 11 attacks were a hoax; that wildfires had been caused by space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds, the banking family used as a metonym for Jews in antisemitic conspiracy theories; and that Democratic leaders should be executed.But, after initially trying to ignore her, Republicans rallied around Ms. Greene when House Democrats stripped her committee assignments. In her primary this year, she easily defeated a more moderate Republican. Far from being a pariah, she is an increasingly influential player in the House Republican caucus.In September, she stood directly behind Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, as he described the priorities of a future Republican majority. More

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      Voting Takes Center Stage During US Midterm Elections

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      “I want to do everything I can to use my voice to create the kind of democracy that deserves to exist,” one voter said.They had been assured that they were wasting their time. That the fix was in. That a fair outcome was impossible, what with all that Democratic ballot-rigging — or was it Republican voter suppression?But millions of Americans gave voting a go anyway on Tuesday, dutifully turning up across the country to cast ballots at schoolhouses, libraries and V.F.W. posts.After a campaign marked by the direst of claims, it was, in its way, a small act of faith.“It’s going a little bit too far left,” said one voter, Lucas Boyd, 43, explaining what had brought him to a polling place in Haymarket, Va. “We are trying to bring it back to a middle ground, and that is really why I came today.”Cheryl Arnold, who was also casting a ballot in Haymarket, had a different outcome in mind. A sales worker in her 50s, she said her aim was “not furthering the Republican agenda.”But she and Mr. Boyd, a software salesman, shared at least one fundamental belief: that voting might make a difference.“I want to do everything I can to use my voice to create the kind of democracy that deserves to exist,” Ms. Arnold said.A voter dropping off a ballot in American Fork, Utah, on Tuesday.Kim Raff for The New York TimesStill, it was an Election Day of unusual tensions, in keeping with a campaign in which accusations of voting fraud were sometimes cast even before the ballots themselves were, and in which some private citizens took it upon themselves to take up arms and “guard” absentee ballot boxes.“I definitely know where the exits are,” said one poll worker in Flagstaff, Ariz., Brittany Montague. “Now more than ever, we’re so polarized, and there isn’t a lot of trust in the system.”In Arizona on Tuesday morning, reports of dozens of malfunctioning ballot-counting machines in Maricopa County prompted a surge of voter fraud claims across right-wing media.“None of this indicates any fraud,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County board of supervisors, a Republican. “This is a technical issue.”A video captured election workers trying to reassure voters.“No one’s trying to deceive anybody,” one poll worker says.“No, not on Election Day. No, that would never happen,” the person recording the video replies sarcastically.Even before the day began, more than 40 million Americans had cast early ballots, and millions more were joining them on Tuesday.In Michigan, the abortion issue was a big draw at the polls. After the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade, Michigan was one of five states that had abortion-related measures on the ballot. In Birmingham, an affluent community outside Detroit, a slow stream of people turned out to vote on Proposal 3, a ballot measure to protect abortion rights.Outside the Baldwin Public Library, where Birmingham city workers had turned metered parking into “voter-only parking” for the day, Alexandra Ayaub said supporting the measure was her main reason for voting.“Michigan should be a safe place for women,” said Ms. Ayaub, 31, who described herself as leaning Democratic.In nearby Warren, Rosemary Sobol also said the initiative was her main motivation for voting — even if she was still undecided.“I’m not completely anti-abortion, but I’m also a Catholic,” said Ms. Sobol, an 81-year-old retired principal. “It’s a very hard decision.”For some voters, it was a day to reconsider past positions.Andrew O’Connell said that he had been born into a Democratic family and that he had long taken pride in switching up his votes between the parties, but at 6:30 Tuesday morning, he could be seen standing outside a busy polling location on Staten Island holding a sign displaying all of the Republicans on the ballot. Everything changed with the social unrest in 2020, he said.“I believe safety took a back seat back when the protests were going on,” Mr. O’Connell said. “We sat back and watched that happen and some folks didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”A family voting in Miami Beach, Fla., on Tuesday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesFor other voters, it was a day to reconsider life choices — like where to live.When Albert Latta, 67, left a polling place in Kenosha, Wis., he had a weary look. The most important issue for him in this election? “Honesty,” he said.Mr. Latta said that he had voted Democratic in the races for governor and the Senate and that he was so tired of deception from Republicans — on election integrity, among other issues, he said — that he was considering picking up and moving across the state line into the blue of Illinois.“How Wisconsin goes in this election may have a lot to do with that decision,” he said. “I call today’s vote the biggest I.Q. test this country has ever taken.”For some voters, a hop across state lines, it appeared, might not do the trick.In the city of Folsom, in one of liberal California’s more conservative regions, John Butruce, 66, offered a fairly succinct synopsis of his take on things before casting his ballot.“I don’t like the taxes, I don’t like the inflation, I don’t like the crime,” Mr. Butruce said. “I don’t like the state of the country or the state of the state.”In Kenosha, where voters were deciding whether to re-elect Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, the shadow of the demonstrations and riots that tore through the city in August 2020 after a police shooting loomed large.“I just want to get him out,” said Abraham Gloria, 40. “He could have stopped what happened with the riots, and he didn’t.”But as she headed into a church in Kenosha to vote, Phyllis Sheets, 60, said she was supporting the Democrats. Democracy, she said, depended on it.“I’m tired of people co-signing foolishness,” Ms. Sheets said. “It’s like people are drinking the silly juice around here: conspiracy theories, not conceding elections, QAnon, Jan. 6. It’s not American.”Christine Grant looking over information while filling out her ballot in Detroit on Tuesday.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesNot everyone was thinking about this election, even as it was still unfolding. They were too busy talking about the next one, and news of a “very big announcement” from a Republican politician in Florida.In Warren, Mich., Mike Smith, 58, had just one quibble.“I hope he comes back sooner than 2024,” Mr. Smith said. “I still don’t accept 2020.”Word that Donald J. Trump might soon make formal what has long been expected played out at polling sites across a polarized country to a mix of elation and fear.“I am terrified,” said Liz Lambert, 57, a marketing manager in Scottsdale, Ariz., clutching a coffee cup as she headed to work after casting her ballot. “This country has been through enough. We need stability and maturity and leadership.”In Haymarket, Va., Gloria Ugbaja declined to get engaged by a possible Trump announcement about another run for president.“I thought it was a distraction,” said Ms. Ugbaja, 47, who works in health care management.“Whether he announces or not is his business,” she said. “Every American has to keep moving forward. Whether he tries to run or not, it indirectly does not affect what the average American has to do on a daily basis.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Why Wall Street Loves Gridlock in Washington

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      Stocks tend to rally after midterm elections, historical data shows. They perform even better when voters deliver divided government.“Midterm elections are one of the best historic buy signals.”Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersDivided we rise? It’s become a favorite data point among sell-side Wall Street historians: In the year after every midterm election since 1950, the S&P 500 has gone up, regardless of the party in power.“It’s no exaggeration to say that midterm elections are one of the best historic buy signals for equities we have,” Jim Reid, a markets strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a client note this morning.Even better: Stocks tend to outperform when there’s a divided government. According to LPL Financial, since 1950, the S&P 500 has outperformed (on a 52-week basis) whenever voters produce the power scenario of a split or Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic president. (The benchmark S&P has climbed 17.5 percent in those years versus an overall average annual return of 12.3 percent.) That combination is looking more likely this morning, with the polls suggesting that the Republicans will most likely take control of the House, while the Senate is a tossup.As always, past performance is no indicator for future gains (or losses). Still, it’s worth examining how politics and investor psychology have tended to influence the markets after midterm elections over the past eight decades.There are two central reasons markets rally after the midterms. First, say the LPL markets strategists Barry Gilbert and Jeffrey Buchbinder, “uncertainty associated with the election is behind us, and markets don’t like uncertainty.” More crucially, investors view the midterms as “something of a course correction from presidential elections.” If the opposing party gains ground, it’s more likely businesses and investors will see greater “prospects of a better policy balance ahead, regardless of who is in the Oval Office.”One result: ambitious tax and government spending increases would be off the table, a scenario that could buoy corporate profits, according to Brian Gardner, the chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel, an investment bank and wealth management firm. A potential drawback? It could open the door to a debt-ceiling standoff, higher odds of a government shutdown and partisan paralysis when it comes to trying to get stuff done — i.e., a fiscal spending plan to lift the country out of a looming recession.The way-too-early winners and losers view: The energy and defense sectors would do well, Gardner says. Big Pharma could also benefit, if Republicans succeed in rolling back Medicare’s ability to negotiate on prescription drug prices, a key pillar of the Inflation Reduction Act. A potential loser is Big Tech, which has critics in both parties.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Donald Trump drops a hint about 2024. The former president stole the spotlight at a rally in Ohio, telling supporters in a speech for J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate, that he would make “a very big announcement on Nov. 15 at Mar-a-Lago.” The comments fueled speculation that he was gearing up for another White House run.FTT, the digital coin tied to the leading crypto exchange FTX, plunges. The token has lost nearly a quarter of its value in the past day. It is also raising fears about more instability in crypto land, causing drops in Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. Alameda Research, the hedge fund operated by the crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, has big holdings in FTT and Solana.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Final Landscape: As candidates make their closing arguments, Democrats are bracing for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country as Republicans predict a red wave.The Battle for Congress: With so many races on edge, a range of outcomes is still possible. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, breaks down four possible scenarios.Voting Worries: Even as voting goes smoothly, fear and suspicion hang over the process, exposing the toll former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods have taken on American democracy.Nvidia starts selling a China-only chip. The U.S. chip-maker is reportedly selling an alternative to a high-end chip banned from sale in China under new American export restrictions. Meanwhile, Apple’s warning that it would not be able to produce enough iPhones for the holiday season because of Covid-19 lockdowns in China highlights how enmeshed the tech giant is there, even as many of its Western peers are shut out.The owners of Liverpool F.C. put the soccer club up for sale. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been hired to sell the franchise, one of the most popular worldwide. The club could sell for far more than the $3 billion that Chelsea fetched this year; Forbes values Liverpool at nearly $4.5 billion.Elizabeth Holmes is denied a new trial. A federal judge that the Theranos founder’s arguments for a new one didn’t introduce any new evidence. Holmes is set to be sentenced on Nov. 18 on four counts of criminal fraud.Activists at COP27 in Egypt.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMoney matters dominate COP One of the big questions to emerge so far from COP27: Who is paying for efforts to combat global warming, and is it fair? Here’s what’s happening at the gathering in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt:The Switzerland plan — pay poorer countries to reduce their carbon emissions, then claim credits toward its own carbon footprint — is drawing scrutiny.Egypt may be hosting a conference dedicated to reducing carbon emissions, but it’s eager to sell fossil fuels to Europe to raise money for its debt-ridden economy.Climate activists are protesting Coke’s sponsorship of COP27, pointing to its increasing use of plastics.A new study by Oxfam said that the world’s 125 wealthiest individuals collectively produce 393 million tons in annual carbon emissions — or 3 million tons each on average.Musk, and the power of one Is Elon Musk’s frenetic management style, which is often punctuated by a daily tweet barrage (including a now-deleted one engaging with a quote from a white nationalist), a sign of genius, or an indication that he’s in over his head? Yesterday, the prominent venture capitalist Chris Sacca, an early Twitter investor, spoke on the matter.“One of the biggest risks of wealth/power is no longer having anyone around you who can push back, give candid feedback, suggest alternatives, or just simply let you know you’re wrong,” he wrote.Musk’s management of Twitter has been chaotic. He pushed for a huge round of layoffs, only to ask some of those workers to return. He delayed the rollout of Twitter’s subscription product amid internal pushback. Advertisers have paused their spending. While Musk says Twitter usage is at a record high, others point to potentially troubling data. And just yesterday, he publicly urged independent voters to back Republican candidates in today’s midterm elections.Others are seizing on the moment: The news publisher Axios has promoted its newsletters to potential advertisers as a “well-lit alternative to Twitter,” according to an email to ad buyers obtained by DealBook.Many of his supporters remain in his corner. The investor Ron Baron, an early Tesla investor, told CNBC that the opportunities at Twitter were “gigantic.” Meanwhile, Musk allies in charge at Twitter include his personal lawyer and a crowd nicknamed “Elon’s goons.” Sacca was unimpressed: “I’ve recently watched those around him become increasingly sycophantic and opportunistic.”Sacca sees a corollary in Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder. In 2017, Kalanick resigned from the ride-hailing company after shareholders revolted over a toxic workplace culture. Other tech founders have been similarly humbled: Musk was fired from PayPal in 2000.To be clear, Sacca isn’t calling for Musk to leave Twitter. “I really want this thing to work,” he tweeted. “The only way I see that happening is if anyone around Elon can speak some truth to power and complement his bold and ambitious instincts with desperately needed nuance.”In fashion, green clashes with antitrustFashion brands are under pressure to go green. But an effort by some big houses to collaborate on sustainability initiatives has put them in the cross hairs of antitrust authorities, with European regulators claiming that some attempts may have resembled collusion, write The Times’s Lizzie Paton and Jenny Gross, and DealBook’s Ephrat Livni.The coronavirus pandemic inspired fashion to rethink its practices. During lockdowns, a group of clothing executives and designers spoke on Zoom about limiting waste, and went on to publish ambitious statements in 2020 on making the industry more environmentally friendly. But those declarations set off alarm bells in Brussels: E.U. antitrust regulators raided unnamed fashion houses in May, stating that the targets may have violated rules against price fixing and created a cartel. (People at several of the companies confirmed they had been contacted. The brands declined to comment, and the E.U. has not publicly identified them.)Many sustainability policies would end up raising prices and reducing quantity, said Hill Wellford, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department now at the law firm Vinson & Elkins. “Multiple client consortiums have called me about making agreements for environmental purposes,” he said, “and I have to say to them, ‘Those are dangerous to do.’”The clash between sustainability and competition policy is hot political fodder. “Congress will increasingly use its oversight powers to scrutinize the institutionalized antitrust violations being committed in the name of E.S.G.,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, and others wrote in a Nov. 3 letter to 51 major law firms advising clients on environmental practices. With Republicans likely to win back at least one chamber in the midterm elections, conservative lawmakers are gearing up for more of these kinds of fights.“Inside counsel at major companies who really want to be sustainability leaders see antitrust as their biggest hurdle,” Amelia Miazad, an expert in sustainable capitalism and the founder of the Business in Society Institute at Berkeley Law, told The Times. “Companies cannot continue to produce products for consumers in the future unless they’re able to collaborate.”THE SPEED READ DealsThe actor Matthew McConaughey reportedly may join a potential bid by Jeff Bezos and Jay-Z for the N.F.L.’s Washington Commanders. (N.Y. Post)Investment losses at Tiger Global’s flagship hedge fund have grown to nearly 55 percent as the firm’s bets on tech companies and on China suffered. (FT)Foxconn will invest $170 million in the electric truck maker Lordstown Motors. (WSJ)SoftBank’s C.E.O., Masayoshi Son, reportedly plans to put an end to his memorably unusual earnings presentations. (WSJ)PolicyThe Justice Department seized Bitcoin once valued at nearly $3.4 billion from a man who pleaded guilty to stealing from the Silk Road online black-market bazaar. (WSJ)Oil companies have called Britain “fiscally unstable” as its government weighs a windfall tax on the industry. (FT)The Supreme Court’s conservative justices signaled that they were open to further limiting the power of federal regulators like the S.E.C. (NYT)Best of the restJohn Tyson, the C.F.O. of the meat processor Tyson Foods, was arrested after he reportedly became intoxicated and fell asleep in the wrong house. (CNBC)British companies have an “appalling” shortfall of women in executive positions, according to new research. (FT)Inside the messy split — Rolexes and handbags held as hostages and more — of Rome’s soccer legend and his estranged wife. (NYT)John Foley, Peloton’s co-founder and former C.E.O., has found his next act: selling custom rugs directly to consumers. (Insider)Evelyn de Rothschild, who helped unite branches of his family’s banking dynasty and advised the British government and Queen Elizabeth II, has died. He was 91. (Bloomberg)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More