I’ve never thought of myself as a down the line supporter of criminal justice reform. But many reformers (and others, including myself) have claimed that police departments have backed off enforcement in response to criticism of police or policy changes as a kind of silent strike or work stoppage. And new data from San Francisco adds real weight to these claims. As study conducted by economists from New York University’s Public Safety Lab in partnership with The San Francisco Chronicle found that after reform DA Chesa Boudin was recalled and replaced by mayoral appointee Brooke Jenkins, traffic stops rose by 30% and “public order” stops rose by 20%. The shift was more or less immediate.

We’ve been noting that recent polling has been dominated by partisan GOP polls, both statewide polls and the national congressional generic poll. However, CNN has just released a new poll which also shows a strong shift in the Republican direction. It shows a four point Republican advantage on the generic ballot (GOP 51%- Dem 47%) versus a a three point advantage for Democrats one month ago (Dem 50% – GOP 47%). A new NPR/Marist poll, also released today, shows almost the identical result and a comparable shift from just a month ago — from D+3 to R+3 from early October to early November. Until this morning we really didn’t have premium polls confirming this shift. Now we do. Those are relatively small numerical differences but they translate into big numbers in control at least of the House.

Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu appears poised to reclaim the Israeli Prime Ministership after yesterday’s election. Indeed, it looks likely to be by a significantly larger margin than expected. The reason has to do not with questionable polls but with the particular dynamics of the Israeli parliamentary system. Exit polls last night predicated that Netanyahu’s bloc would get 61 or 62 Knesset seats, an extremely tight margin (out of 120) but enough. That was in line with most polls. But he’s now predicted to get 65 seats, a critical difference. What changed is that Meretz, a left-wing party, appears to have fallen just below the parliamentary election threshold of 3.25%. If that holds they’re excluded altogether. So four seats suddenly get pulled out of the center-left bloc and go to other parties. That’s mostly what gets you from 61-62 to 65. It’s not a huge difference. But it’s a critical one and one that stands a good chance of breaking the electoral stalemate of the last four years.

A week ago, everyone who mocking Mehmet Oz’s suggestion that decisions about abortion should be left to the woman, her doctor and “local political leaders.” Now we have a Republican House candidate who’s actually trying to get concrete about how this works in practice. Bo Hines is a Madison Cawthorn-esque candidate who is the Republican nominee in North Carolina’s 13th congressional district. He’s Trump endorsed, with all you’d expect with that. But since getting the nomination he’s apparently been trying to come more towards the political center. Part of that has been trying to work out how the Oz proposal operates in practice.

Minor point. But worth noting. I want to draw your attention to how even very small shifts in voting support could produce huge potential swings in the battle for control of the Senate. The current polls make it entirely plausible that Republicans get a 53 or even 54 seat majority in the Senate. They also make at least 52 and quite possibly 54 seats for the Democrats just as plausible. According to 538’s averages there are 8 races which are within 4 percentage points and 7 within 3. By most standards those are all a coin toss.

The Republican challenging Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers next week has openly fessed up to his plan to target elections administration in the purple state in a way that ensures Republicans permanently control it.

GOP Governor candidate Tim Michels says that if he’s elected he’ll change state election laws so that Republicans will never lose another election. “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” Michels told supporters at a campaign stop yesterday.

Israel goes to the polls today for the 5th time in three years. The general consensus is that ousted PM Benjamin Netanyahu is more likely than not to be able to form another even harder-right government. (More on that later.) But it’s by no means a certain thing. Basically they’re still in the same deadlock space they’ve been in for years. The only question is whether one side or another manages to get 61 or 62 votes to form a narrow majority coalition.

But one thing is notable: turnout is running much higher than recent elections. It’s currently running more than 6% over the last election, the highest turnout since 1999.

To understand the last six years and the years going forward you have to get your head around this stuff …

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tom Barrack, a onetime private equity executive and fundraiser for Donald Trump, traded his access to the then-president for investments from the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. prosecutor said on Tuesday during closing arguments in Barrack’s foreign agent trial.

It’s virtual, and anyone can join.

If you’ve been following my colleague Josh Marshall’s ed-blog posts the last several months, you’ve likely read a few of his pieces centered on the theory that Democrats should be putting the disastrous Dobbs decision at the forefront of their messaging campaign to voters this midterms cycle. His case has been simple: Democrats need to make the calculus clear to demoralized liberal voters. Yes, they had 50 seats in the Senate for the last two years, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the filibuster to pass Roe-like protections (or to pass any number of other Democratic priorities). Like it or not, there were two Democratic holdouts on the filibuster.

So Democrats, Josh argued, needed to go to voters with a clear promise: Give us two more senators, and help us hold the House, and we promise — we’ll restore the right to an abortion that the conservative Supreme Court took away.