Contributing Writers

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Haaland v. Brackeen, a case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act and ultimately threatening the legal foundations of federal Indian law. ICWA was created in 1978 to address the systemic crisis of family separation in Native communities waged by the U.S. and requires the government to ensure foster children are adopted by members of their Indigenous tribes, as well as blood relatives, before being adopted by non-Indigenous parents.

We look at the wave of progressive prosecutors elected in Tuesday’s midterms and what the results mean for the movement to reform the criminal justice system. Voters have an “understanding that we can’t incarcerate our way to safety,” says law professor Lara Bazelon, who explains how progressive prosecutors won several key races in blue, purple and red states despite Republican candidates across the country campaigning with a focus on crime and public safety.

The balance of power in Congress is still up in the air two days after Tuesday’s midterm elections, and control of the Senate now rests on three states: Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. Meanwhile, Republicans have not yet won enough House seats to regain the majority, though there are still over 30 House races not yet decided. Many analysts say if Democrats lose control of the House, it may largely be because of New York state, where Republicans have flipped four congressional seats.

Pittsburgh community organizer Summer Lee was elected the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress after winning the state’s 12th Congressional District in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Lee, currently a state representative, faced off against Republican Mike Doyle — who happened to share the same name as the outgoing Democratic incumbent.

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says President Biden must “push back as hard as he can” if Republicans take control of even one chamber in Congress following Tuesday’s midterm elections. He says the administration needs to be clear there is no compromise on the debt ceiling, which he expects a Republican-controlled Congress would challenge, potentially triggering a repeat of the political crisis in 2011 under former President Obama.

Voters supported the right to abortion in at least four of the five states where reproductive rights were on the ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Abortion rights are deeply popular, and when you put the question before voters, they say yes,” said The Nation’s Amy Littlefield.

Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and his opponent Republican Herschel Walker will likely head to a runoff if neither candidate wins 50% of the vote needed to win the election outright. Warnock was able to capture more white and rural votes than Stacey Abrams, who lost to Georgia’s incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp, explains ​​LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund.

The balance of power in Congress is still up in the air after Democratic candidates outperformed expectations in much of the country in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Control of the Senate now rests on four states: Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. We speak with The Nation’s John Nichols, who says Democratic Senate candidate Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes could still close the gap with Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who now has the advantage.

We speak to Damon Hewitt, the head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is spearheading nationwide efforts to protect the vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Republicans at the national and state levels have tried to disqualify thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots in an effort to swing close races in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

We speak with New Yorker staff writer Sue Halpern about the Senate race in New Hampshire, where she says far-right Republican nominee Donald Bolduc is running a “vigorous campaign” against the incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan and spreading conspiracy theories that some schoolchildren were using litter boxes.

Indigenous voters in Arizona who played a key role in catapulting Joe Biden to victory in 2020 are facing a sweeping rollback of their voting rights that may swing the state back to Republicans in Tuesday’s midterms.

The climate movement warns the midterm elections will either advance or torpedo climate initiatives in the U.S. This comes as climate activists and scientists at the U.N. climate summit in Egypt cautioned that the world is heading toward climate disaster without deeper cuts in planet-heating emissions.

The family of the imprisoned Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah says they no longer know if he is still alive or if he is being force-fed, more than 50 hours after he stopped drinking water in an intensification of a six-month hunger strike. We feature an address by Alaa’s sister Sanaa Seif at the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. “The symbolic battle has been won by your show of support,” says Seif. “I just hope his body and he is not sacrificed for it.

Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Department of Homeland Security is working with private tech companies to fight online speech that undermines support for the U.S. government. We speak to one of the co-authors of The Intercept’s report, investigative journalist Lee Fang, who says the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act signed into law in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump expanded the government’s power to reshape online discourse.