Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

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November 6, 2019

Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

By remy tumin and marcus payadue

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

1. Democrats made a show of strength in states seen as a test for the Trump presidency.

Andy Beshear, above, claimed victory by about 5,100 votes in the Kentucky governor's race, and Virginia's government will be under Democratic control for the first time in a generation. Party leaders in both states vowed to increase funding for public education and health care, and Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said he would push for gun control.

Matt Bevin, the Republican governor of Kentucky, has not conceded. Instead, he formally asked state officials to recanvass voting machines and absentee ballots, which could leave the State Legislature to ultimately determine the outcome of the election.

Another winner in Virginia: The Equal Rights Amendment. The state is now likely to be the 38th to ratify the amendment, which was proposed 96 years ago.

Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press

2. Some candidates made history.

Daniel Cameron, above, a former legal counsel for Senator Mitch McConnell, won his race for attorney general of Kentucky, making him the first black person to be elected to the office in the state.

Ghazala Hashmi, who ran as a Democrat in a suburban district outside Richmond, Va., will become the first Muslim to serve in the Virginia State Senate.

In Boston, voters ushered in the city's most diverse City Council, backing progressive women and people of color.

And the woman who lost her job after giving the middle finger to President Trump's motorcade in 2017 won local office in a district that includes one of his golf courses.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

3. We have a start date: The first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump will begin next Wednesday.

Representative Adam Schiff said the House would hear publicly from three senior U.S. diplomats involved in the Trump administration's Ukraine policy. The open hearings are a sign that Democrats feel they have enough evidence to present to voters, and will almost certainly usher in an intense round of partisan warfare.

House investigators also released the interview transcript of William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, who provided one of the most damning accounts about the actions at the heart of the inquiry.

Our reporters combed through it. Here is one key takeaway: Mr. Taylor described a "nightmare" scenario for Ukraine that would ultimately benefit Russia.

Amr Nabil/Associated Press

4. Two former Twitter employees were charged with using their access to spy for Saudi Arabia. One is an American, and the other is a Saudi citizen.

The Justice Department also charged a second Saudi citizen who previously ran a social media marketing company that did work for the Saudi royal family.

We're still reporting out the story, but this is the first time federal prosecutors have charged Saudis with spying inside the U.S., and the case raises questions about the security of tech platforms.

Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

5. Flint's lead crisis is now evident in Michigan's schools.

The water contamination exposed nearly 30,000 schoolchildren to a neurotoxin known to have detrimental effects on developing brains and nervous systems. Now, about 70 percent of the students evaluated in Flint require special education services. One is Nakiya Wakes's son, Jaylon, pictured above with her.

The city's schools, stretched even before the lead crisis was made public in 2015, are struggling with demands for individualized education programs and behavioral interventions.

Herika Martinez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

6. Details are emerging about the lethal ambush that killed nine members of a Mormon family in northern Mexico.

Children endured the brunt of the massacre, but some survived — and frantically tried to save the others. A 13-year-old who saw his mother and two brothers shot dead hid six surviving siblings with branches and then trekked 14 miles to get help.

Mexican authorities said the family may have gotten pulled in to a local gang war.

An Opinion contributor responded to President Trump's suggestion that the U.S. help crush Mexico's cartel violence, saying he did not mention the vast number of American guns involved.

Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock

7. A federal judge voided the Trump administration's "conscience" rule.

The measure would have allowed health care providers to object to providing abortions, among other procedures, and would have allowed them to decline to refer patients to another provider with no such moral or religious objections. Above, a protest over the rule in Washington in August.

In other health news, doctors tested the powerful Crispr gene-editing technique to treat three people with cancer. It appears to have done no harm, though whether it's fighting the disease is not yet clear. Still, it's a major step toward editing genes to help a patient's immune system attack cancer.

8. Did Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres endorse 40 wrinkle-control and anti-aging products? They sure didn't — and now they're suing.

The stars, who have spent the last two years in a behind-the-scenes fight with fly-by-night internet companies, filed a lawsuit as part of an effort to stop fake online endorsements, a growing problem for Hollywood.

Separately, I'm Shmacked, a digital media company, promised thousands of undergraduates Instagram fame and cash from ads and selling merchandise. When the students confronted the company over the false promises, they said they were threatened and intimidated into silence.

Netflix

9. Hollywood never really knew what to do with Joe Pesci. It's time for a reappraisal.

Largely written off as a character actor, he's back in his first major on-screen role in nearly a decade. As the real-life mobster Russell Bufalino in Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman," he carries himself with a quiet self-assurance, a critic writes.

On the small screen, Peter Morgan has to think big. He's the filmmaker and screenwriter responsible for making the British monarchy relevant again with "The Crown."

"I understand why people are furious, why they want the whole institution gone," Mr. Morgan said. "But I'm quite proud we haven't kicked them out."

Sam Falk/The New York Times

10. And finally, photos that aimed to tell a story "completely and instantly."

That was how Sam Falk described his mission. When he joined The Times in 1925, photojournalism was coming into its own. By the time he retired in 1969, pictures had become an essential way of presenting the news.

Sam was one of the first photographers at the paper to experiment with the 35-millimeter format, and he forever changed The Times's visual sensibility. We went through our archives and pulled some of his best work, like the "aquashow" in 1951, above.

Have a picture-perfect night.

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