| | |  | BY CALDER MCHUGH | Presented by TSMC | With help from Joanne Kenen
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Students cheer and hold up signs for Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) at a Students for Warnock rally at Georgia Tech today. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | FEELING PEACHY — Georgians will go to the polls for the fourth time in two years to decide a crucial Senate race on Tuesday, as Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker square off in the last race of the midterm election cycle. Senate control isn’t up for grabs as it was two years ago, when Warnock won a special election to capture the seat. Democrats already hold 50 seats and the vice-presidency, which provides a tie-breaking vote. Still, the race — which has seen over $400 million in spending, making it the most expensive of 2022 and one of the most expensive Senate races of all time — will determine whether Democrats have an outright majority. As Warnock and Walker barnstorm the state making their closing arguments, POLITICO’s Natalie Allison has been in tow, speaking with voters and reporting the details on the ground from each campaign . Nightly spoke with Allison about this high-profile race in one of the nation’s most important swing states. This conversation has been edited. Much of the media coverage appears to suggest Warnock has the momentum in the final days. Why is that and how did that happen? Warnock has had a slight lead in nearly all of the public polling during the runoff. He has certainly spent more money — and had more money to spend — on paid media. And most worrying to Republicans is the fact that the major turnout Georgia saw in early runoff voting gives Warnock a significant head start. There’s rain in the forecast across much of Georgia on Tuesday, the day the GOP needs voters to show up in force. What does that huge spending advantage translate to or look like on the ground? The ground-game spending advantage is hard to tell. We’ve seen outside groups on both sides announce how much they’re investing in field operations for the runoff (for example, $7 million from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; $2 million from the Senate Leadership Fund), but there’s no way to track that in close to real-time like we can with ads. Some Republican operatives say they’re convinced Democrats have exaggerated what they’re actually spending on voter outreach. That said, yes, pro-Warnock TV ads are showing up nearly twice as much as the Walker ones. Democrats’ gross rating points have nearly doubled Republicans’ for the runoff, and through tomorrow, Dems will have spent $55 million on runoff ads, compared to the GOP’s $25 million. Warnock has also put out multiple 60-second ads in the last couple weeks — the kinds of TV spots that voters can’t tune out as easily. Where in Georgia have you been recently? What was something you saw that stood out to you? I’ve been all over Georgia the past few weeks! Walker up in the northwestern corner of the state near the Tennessee border, Walker out east in Warnock’s hometown of Savannah, a Democratic area. Warnock in Macon. Warnock on stage with Obama in Atlanta. Events in the suburbs. Perhaps what was most striking to me was seeing only a small crowd for Walker at a rally last week in Dalton, located in a Republican-heavy area of the state that saw relatively low turnout in the January 2021 runoff elections. These are the types of places the GOP really needs voters to show up this time around. I talked to a woman at that event who is a loyal GOP voter and comes out for every election — she was at this Walker event on her lunch break — but she said she sees no sign that her neighbors and friends are any more enthusiastic for this runoff. Has either campaign approached the runoff differently than the general? Is any messaging notably different? This runoff has lacked both the urgency and enthusiasm of the January 2021 race. The campaign events themselves haven’t been that interesting, and you can tell, because significantly fewer reporters were showing up to them. Neither candidate has drastically changed his message from the general, and one reason for that could be that there simply wasn’t time. This truncated runoff period — barely a month, compared to two months last time around — has been bizarre for everyone involved, and hasn’t been particularly conducive to launching a whole new campaign for either side. It has mostly felt like a continuation of the messaging and efforts of the last six months. I know Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff stepped in, getting his own 2021 runoff GOTV campaign going for Warnock, and on both sides we’ve seen high-profile figures dropping in for events in Georgia. Walker, though, seems to have no interest in former President Donald Trump’s help. Are people in the state noticing that? Trump really has kept his distance since the primary election. The last rally he did in the state was in March, when he stood on stage in Commerce and railed against Gov. Brian Kemp, who would go on to trounce Trump’s pick in the gubernatorial primary, and then outperform Walker in the general by more than 200,000 votes. There was no clamoring by Walker or Trump during the general election to have Trump come back to Georgia, and both sides, I’m told, were on the same page about that for the runoff. A poorly-attended rally right after Trump announced his presidential run wasn’t something his team was looking for, either. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh .
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| | A message from TSMC: In April 2021, TSMC broke ground on construction of an advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in Arizona. Now, 20 months later, the facility is getting ready to install the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and we are also going to announce some other special announcements tomorrow that will cement TSMC Arizona as the most advanced semiconductor process technology base in the United States, enabling next generation high-performance and low-power computing products for years to come. | | | | | EXPIRATION DATE — With a swirl of Omicron variants and subvariants out there, a veritable Greek Alphabet soup, and the concern about how they can evade some of the treatments we’ve got, we began wondering — are the rapid tests stacked up somewhere in homes around the country still good? White House Covid Coordinator Ashish Jha gave us quick and clear reassurance. “Rapid tests still work against variants,” he told Nightly contributor Joanne Kenen , the Commonwealth Fund Journalist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That’s because the at-home rapid tests, also known as antigen tests, target proteins — and the relevant parts aren’t what’s mutating. In fact, they are quite stable. In that respect, “we’ve been pretty lucky,” explained Christina Silcox, research director for digital health at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. That’s a relief. But it’s not the whole testing story, Silcox said. Rapid tests are good — but not perfect, particularly if, as some scientists think is the case, they aren’t quite as sensitive to current strains (possibly because there is less virus in our noses, not because it doesn’t recognize the virus.) So for the tests to be useful, people have to know how and when to use them. And not everyone does. These at home tests don’t pick up every infection immediately, particularly if you’ve just been exposed. That’s why the FDA is telling people that if they get a negative test, and they have symptoms or know they’ve been exposed, to test again. If you have symptoms but test negative, test again after 48 hours. If you’ve been exposed but test negative twice, take a third test after another 48 hours. (And/or get a PCR test). If you have an older test and the directions say one is enough, ignore that, Silcox said. (Positive tests are generally accurate — it’s the negatives that need to be re-tested). That’s not the only confusing thing about tests. Expiration dates have also changed — though that has nothing to do with variants. The FDA first said these at home tests would be good for a couple of months, and the dates printed on the boxes reflect that. That’s logical — if a test was only invented two or three months ago, you can’t be sure that it’s going to last a year or more. As time passed, the FDA was able to make sure they were still accurate and extend their shelf life. But again, not everyone got that message. Before you toss yours, you can check the FDA website for revised dates. (Nightly only makes house calls if you are our mother.)
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) smile together during a news conference in 2017. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik | BUDDY COMEDY — The most important thing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon to be House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have in common isn’t their New York City borough. It’s their shared leadership style: Neither top-down nor reflexively ideological, they move easily among progressives and centrists alike, write Marianne LeVine and Sarah Ferris . The similarities pretty much end there. Jeffries, raised in working-class Crown Heights, leaned into his low-key persona to build the alliances he needed to slide into Nancy Pelosi’s job when it opened last week. Schumer is the preternaturally gregarious son of an exterminator with a more freewheeling image — a former campaign arm chief who loves talking politics. Schumer, in an interview, acknowledged their “similar traits, coming from Brooklyn,” but underscored the philosophical differences between the House and Senate in predicting that he and Jeffries are “not going to be carbon copies.” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), who has known both lawmakers for years, summed up their differences the way only a House Democrat from a neighboring borough could: “Schumer’s a nagger... Hakeem is a consensus builder,” he quipped. “I think they’ll make a great team.” It will be a far different dynamic from the three-decades-old friendship between Schumer and Pelosi, who came up in the House together before the former swapped chambers. But one thing won’t change: Schumer’s famous working of the phones. The Senate majority leader, who called Pelosi as many as three to four times a day, insisted that he and Jeffries will talk daily. And they’ll have plenty to discuss, even beyond direct congressional business. “He loves Biggie. I like Big Daddy Kane,” Schumer said. “His favorite diner is Tom’s, I like Purity Diner. But we both agree that Roma Pizza is the best pizza in New York.” RANKING RASKIN — The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has endorsed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) in House Democrats’ three-way race for their top spot on the Oversight Committee, writes Jordain Carney . Raskin is running against Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) to be the top Oversight Democrat next year. Democrats will vote on who will snag their top committee positions later this month. Because Republicans won control of the chamber, whoever wins will be the committee’s ranking member. The panel is expected to be under an intense spotlight starting in January as the home of several top GOP investigations on issues such as Hunter Biden, the border and the origins of the coronavirus.
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| | | | | — Biden supports keeping vaccine mandate for troops, setting up fight with Congress: President Joe Biden and his Pentagon chief oppose any effort to repeal the vaccine mandate for troops, the White House said today, setting up a fight with lawmakers who want to roll back the policy as part of the upcoming defense policy bill. “The president agrees with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the Pentagon should continue to require all service members be vaccinated and boosted against Covid-19,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. — Giuliani defends 2020 election challenge at D.C. Bar hearing: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said today that it was his “obligation” as a lawyer to attempt to overturn the results of 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania on behalf of his then-client, Donald Trump. Giuliani was the first witness called during a hearing today in front of the D.C. Bar Board of Professional Responsibility to determine whether he violated attorney ethics rules with the federal court challenge he launched in Pennsylvania to subvert Biden’s 2020 victory in that state. — Trump denies he suggested ‘termination’ of Constitution, without deleting post: Trump today denied he wanted to “‘terminate’ the Constitution,” two days after suggesting “the termination of all rules ... even those found in the Constitution.” “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES,” Trump said today on his own social media platform, Truth Social.
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A woman holds a sign urging an embargo on Russian oil and gas during a protest gathering to demand Europe keep its promises towards supporting Ukraine in June in Berlin, Germany. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images | THE ENERGY WAR — Economic sanctions are finally hitting Moscow where it hurts, writes Charlie Cooper . One of the European Union’s toughest sanctions yet on seaborn Russian oil went into force today as the U.S. and its European allies enter a new and uncertain phase of the West’s energy war with Russia. Brussels said the import ban will apply to around 90 percent of Russian oil imports to the EU by the end of the year. The move also touches off a global reshuffling-of-sorts with implications on the global economy and international trade routes. For instance, Moscow’s oil will almost certainly now flow more freely into China and India, two countries that helped fill the immediate glut when Washington first introduced sanctions on Russian crude. The countries are among those that remain undeterred by pressure from western nations to rebuke the Russian government over their invasion into Ukraine. G-7 countries, for their part, agreed to sanctions banning imports of Putin’s oil by sea back in September and today's ban coincides with the introduction of a $60 price cap on Russian oil shipped to the rest of the world. In February 2023, another EU ban on imports of Russian oil products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel will take effect. Moscow has continued to generate billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue since Vladmir Putin’s invasion into Ukraine, underscoring the limitations of joint action to counter Moscow’s war effort. In October, Russia exported 7.7 million barrels a day — a modest decline of only 400,000 barrels relative to pre-war levels. Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at the energy research firm Rystad spoke to the limitations of Western nations’ ability to squash the Russian war effort and said “there is capacity to redirect almost all the crude that is going into Europe.”
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$1 million The cost of the most expensive ticket to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ inauguration celebration. Five donors who give $1 million to the Republican Party of Florida will be recognized as “inaugural chair” sponsors who will receive tickets to a candlelight dinner the night before the inauguration, VIP seating at the inauguration ceremony held on the steps of the Old Capitol as well tickets to the inaugural ball and a “Toast to One Million Mamas,” the campaign group put together by first lady Casey DeSantis, and a photo opportunity with the governor. |
| | | THIS LOOKS FAMILIAR — Ever wondered what you would look like as a Renaissance-style art piece or a character in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world? AI image generators such as Dall-E or Google’s DreamBooth have given new life to AI generated art. The sites allow users to create artificial depictions of anyone, as long as they have a few images handy to run through the generator. While this has inspired users to imagine themselves and others in outlandish art styles, the Toronto Star’s Kevin Jiang weighs the dangers of digital replicas and how they could impact the future of deepfakes. As the technology continues to improve on its realism, Jiang reports on ways AI generators could contribute to misinformation on a platform that is widely accessible and continues to rise in popularity.
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A nine-year-old holds a sign that reads “4 My 2 Moms” outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. The Supreme Court is hearing the case of a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here .
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| | A message from TSMC: In April 2021, TSMC broke ground on construction of an advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in Arizona. Now, 20 months later, the facility is getting ready to install the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and we are also going to announce some other special announcements tomorrow that will cement TSMC Arizona as the most advanced semiconductor process technology base in the United States, enabling next generation high-performance and low-power computing products for years to come. The investment made by TSMC for this project represents our dedication to building a semiconductor ecosystem here in the USA in order to better serve our customers. TSMC Arizona is truly historic and its success is a testament to the Grand Alliance we have formed with our customers, suppliers and partners to further collaboration and unleash innovation in the United States. Learn more | | | | |
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