*By Carlo Versano*
There is an unspoken tradition in Washington that the president faces the press a day after a midterm election that revokes power from his party in Congress. When Democrats gained control of both houses in 2006, a humbled President George W. Bush called it a "thumping." In 2010, an equally-chastened President Barack Obama admitted his party took a "shellacking."
No such thing happened on Wednesday.
President Trump vacillated between subdued and combative as he called Tuesday's election ー in which Democrats took control of the House and several pivotal governorships ー a "very close-to-complete victory."
Trump took credit for the GOP's ability to maintain control of the Senate and blamed certain losses of House Republican candidates on their disloyalty. He praised Rep. Nancy Pelosi, calling her "very smart," but then warned House Democrats that he would have Senate Republicans probe their conduct, should they use their newfound subpoena power to investigate him.
In a nearly two-hour-long press conference from the East Room of the White House that began with a low-key statement but quickly deteriorated into a rollicking Q&A, the president ratcheted up his antagonism of the gathered press corps. He called CNN's Jim Acosta a "rude, terrible person" and excoriated PBS' Yamiche Alcindor for asking "a racist question" when she attempted to probe him on whether his rhetoric was emboldening white nationalists.
As the president spoke, the AP called the contested Montana Senate race for Jon Tester, one of the Democrats that Trump was reportedly most hoping to defeat.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has opened a global climate summit, saying the world is strapped to a “doomsday device.”
Activists are getting a boost from CrowdLobby to press legislators to expand New York's Good Samaritan Law to teach high school students about being proactive in saving their peers from potentially dying of a drug overdose.
The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender designation for people who don’t identify as male or female.
A group of prominent academics and activists are calling on banks and insurers to avoid the kind of systemic collapse that crippled the world economy back in 2008.
Last spring, as false claims about vaccine safety threatened to undermine the world's response to COVID-19, researchers at Facebook found they could reduce vaccine misinformation by tweaking how vaccine posts show up on users' newsfeeds.
New York City's first immersive cannabis experience, The Stone Age, is seeking to change the narrative about cannabis, just in time for legalization.
The U.N. weather agency says greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high last year and increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade.
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — and of the carefully crafted image it’s spent over a decade selling despite problems like misinformation, human trafficking, and pervasive extremist groups on its platform.
The Supreme Court is allowing the Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in place for now but has agreed to hear arguments in the case on Nov. 1.
Some investors aren’t waiting to see if former President Donald Trump’s plans for a media company to challenge the likes of Facebook, Twitter and even Disney can actually become reality — they’re all in.
