You’re reading The Weekly, a Saturday morning recap of the best Dispatch content of the week, with some additional commentary from Managing Editor Rachael Larimore.
asserted
You → read → Larimore
If you’re taking little Minions and Marios and Minecrafters around your neighborhood tonight, enjoy every moment and don’t forget to collect your candy tax for your hard work.
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you → take → work
And when you get home and the kids are inspecting their hauls, here’s a pro tip from my husband: Separate the chocolate from the fruity candy.
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tip → get → candy
Reese’s Cups just aren’t as good the next day when accompanied by notes of Skittle and undertones of Twizzler.
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Cups → accompany → Twizzler
The last day of October means, of course, that the first Tuesday of November can’t be far away.
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Tuesday → mean → November
We’ve almost made it!
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We → make → it
It would be easy (and nice) to sit back and laugh about some of the weirder things we’ve seen this election cycle—President Donald Trump’s fascination with Ohio Senate nominee Jon Husted’s physique, AI slop ads, Vivek Ramaswamy’s baseball swing.
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we → sit → physique
For starters, history tells us that Trump doesn’t exactly respond well to his team losing.
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team → tell → us
And Republican losses are definitely in the forecast for Tuesday: Election prognosticators pretty much unanimously predict that Democrats will take the House, and a Senate map that initially favored Republicans has veered into, at best, toss-up territory.
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that → predict → territory
Will Trump take any steps to meddle if Democrats sweep on Tuesday?
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Democrats → take → Tuesday
Frankly, Nick Catoggio is a little surprised the president hasn’t done more to intervene preemptively.
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president → do → more
In Boiling Frogs, he runs through some potential reasons why Trump hasn’t sought to postpone the election, and he settles on the notion that it’s important to Trump that any action have a sheen of legality.
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action → boil → legality
He writes:
A movement founded on reempowering The People by ridding Washington of its rotten elites would struggle to rationalize denying The People their usual say at the polls.
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movement → write → polls
Better to hold the vote and then contrive some nonsense after the fact that the results were tainted by foreign interlopers.
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results → hold → interlopers
Likewise, a movement that revels in victimhood will find reversing a “rigged” defeat more palatable than intervening to prevent that defeat from happening.
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reversing → revel → defeat
In one case, they’re merely righting a wrong that’s been done to them; in the other, they’re engaged in the wrongdoing.
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they → right → wrongdoing
Kevin D. Williamson has seen enough from what the Trump administration has done—a preemptive lawsuit challenging the outcome of the Alaska Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses, badgering states to hand over their voter rolls, etc.—that he’s expecting a replay of the legal challenges we saw when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
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Trump → see → election
He writes:
It isn’t a crime—in the narrow legal sense of that word—for the administration to file pretextual lawsuits or to attempt to use the DOJ in unconstitutional ways.
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administration → write → ways
We’ll see what happens next week.
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what → see → ?
But in the meantime, Dispatch reporters have been out on the trail covering the campaign’s final days.
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reporters → cover → days
Grayson Logue traveled to Michigan to check in on one of the highest-profile Senate races, between MAGA Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive aligned with (though not a member of) the Democratic Socialists of America whose criticisms of Israel have prompted critics to describe him as antisemitic.
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criticisms → travel → him
Grayson found a few Republicans who were planning to vote for Rogers, though not enthusiastically:
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who → find → Rogers
Nick Myer, one of the few middle-aged attendees, told The Dispatch, “I don’t know a ton about Rogers, but what I hear about the other side, there’s no competition.”
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I → tell → side
Other supporters The Dispatch spoke with echoed the lack of enthusiasm.
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Dispatch → speak → enthusiasm
“Mike Rogers, I’m sure he’s gonna be good, but he’s not a good candidate as far as his excitement level,” Sue Simonson, a Grosse Pointe resident and local Republican precinct delegate, told The Dispatch at a Rogers tailgate for the Senate debate last week.
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Simonson → ’m → debate
“He can probably manage the job, but I don’t think people are excited about him.
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people → manage → him
I’m not even excited about him.”
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I → ’m → him
John McCormack traveled to Kansas, which typically doesn’t get a lot of attention during election season because the state is so red.
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state → travel → season
But incumbent GOP Sen. Roger Marshall is in trouble, enough that Trump has made one appearance there and will be back Sunday.
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Trump → make → appearance
He spoke to Faith Paxton, a two-time Trump voter who told him she’s embarrassed by Trump and voting “Democrat across the board, except for one person on the board of education.”
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she → speak → education
He writes:
Faith Paxton is one type of Kansas Republican who could cost Republicans a Senate seat in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the upper chamber of Congress in nearly a century.
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that → write → century
In 2024, Trump won Kansas by 16 points but took Atchison by 37.
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Trump → win → 37
Hefner, sporting a long beard and a worn Kansas City Chiefs cap, told The Dispatch he still considers himself a Trump supporter but won’t vote for Marshall this year.
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himself → sport → Marshall
“I voted for [Marshall] a long time ago when he ran, but he did not do what he said he was going to do when he got in, and he’s voted more like a Democrat than a stand-up conservative Republican,” Hefner said.
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Hefner → vote → Republican
And Michael Warren noticed while following J.D. Vance around that the vice president has been working on his messaging for that race while out stumping for midterm candidates:
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president → notice → candidates
Instead of pledging to build upon the overflowing successes of Trump’s two nonconsecutive terms, Vance reaches back to the pre-Trump political status quo, painting a picture of a bipartisan, globalist establishment that sucked Middle America dry to serve its investments and wars overseas.
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that → pledge → investments
In 2016, Trump successfully ran in a Republican primary against the presidency and legacy of George W. Bush, and it seems Vance wants to return to that well.
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Vance → run → well
Don’t forget that we all get an extra hour of sleep this weekend—we can use it.
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we → forget → it
But one reason, perhaps less obvious, is that they feel different.
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they → feel → ?
Put another way: They materially and functionally have nothing whatsoever to do with the places where they are built.
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they → put → places
…and 29 more, not listed.
The Aporia
