Monday, November 2, 2026

it's monday november 2nd 2026 i'm albert moeller and this is the briefing a daily analysis of news and events from a christian worldview well here it is election day is coming just one day away and wouldn't you know things are getting even more interesting just when you thought you were headed into the final hours of the campaign some very unexpected things have not only happened they basically have exploded and i'm thinking here in particular the senate races in alaska and in michigan but let's start with michigan because in michigan the huge story is not so much what has taken place in the campaign itself and of course you've got the democratic candidate abdul assayed and he's running against the republican candidate mike rogers but the big story is not really at this point about mike rogers and abdul assayed it is instead about abdul assayed and the woman he defeated although just by less than a thousand votes in the democratic primary and that is now representative hayley stevens and the big story is that going into the weekend stevens and al sayed were expected to make a joint appearance and so the stevens appearance was going to be a sign of political unity in the democratic ticket and so it was supposed to be at a church it was supposed to happen just yesterday it was supposed to come with great fanfare and it was supposed to be a propulsion into the final hours of the campaign with democratic party unity and then that unity fell apart and it fell apart fast and it fell apart explosively and it fell apart in public and so one of the first things we knew is that stevens had addressed a series of demands to al sayed saying if you don't do these things i don't want to make the appearance he did not do those things and by the way they were very common sense things but it just goes to show again the extremism to which he's actually very much committed and so i'm saying that hayley stevens in this case was right and yet she then did far more than anyone expected she did what she had told many people she would not do and she appears on sunday morning so saturday the story was where she wasn't she wasn't at the appearance with the democratic nominee and then sunday the story was where she was and that's because yesterday she showed up and she publicly endorsed mike rogers now during the campaign when she was running for the democratic nomination which she so narrowly lost she had made very critical statements about mike rogers just what you would expect in terms of one party speaking about the other party but now it turns out that the one thing that hayley stevens and mike rogers are absolutely agreed upon is that mike rogers should be the new u.s senator for the state of michigan and not abdul assayed okay really interesting developments here you have a war of headlines because you've got democrats trying to say no there's no story here it's it we're still a unified party and and and al sayed is going to win the election they're absolutely certain the reality is the polling is within the margin of error and this would be a huge huge thing the democrats thought they were going to have basically a winning campaign they really thought that hayley stevens was going to be the nominee and she's not an exciting candidate but she is very much a democratic candidate in terms of the normal mode for the democratic party until now but what you have now is the rise of the democratic socialists the far left in the democratic party and abdul assayed is one of those candidates he basically is running a democratic socialist-like campaign even though he says he doesn't identify as a democratic socialist but he is also of course now even more notorious for the fact that his family has had ties to the muslim brotherhood he himself has been at least at times publicly in support of the muslim brotherhood and you've got ties beyond that even to groups that had ties to al-qaeda and others it's a very troublesome development and of course there are huge issues here and the main problem is that the muslim media is just absolutely determined to prove in every way possible that they could not be discriminating in any sense against a muslim candidate but it is also very revealing that in the closing days and hours of the campaign some in the media are saying well you know that that is kind of a legitimate issue or at least they seem to believe it might be eliza griswold wrote a piece at the new yorker entitled the final electric days of abdul assayed's senate campaign and it turned out that that electricity was at a much higher voltage even than the new yorker article seemed to indicate i'm going to say there's a lot on the line here just a lot on the line and one of the things we don't know is exactly what happened between hayley stevens and i'll say it we just don't know but we do know the public statements that she has made and we do know the public response against her coming from abdul assayed which was actually quite energetic and so it is going to be interesting to see how this plays out and one of the things we know at this point just in terms of how politics works is that an issue like this arrives with a lot of volatility and so anyone who says i know how this is going to turn out is basically making either an educated or even an uneducated guess at this point we're going to have to find out and we want to find out soon exactly how the voters of michigan are going to respond to this it is hard to believe that the voters of michigan would elect someone like dr abdul assayed as a united states senator he would be the first muslim senator by the way the first elected muslim senator in american history but as we know there's a lot more to it than that you're looking at various radical strands put together in one candidate which by the way is becoming increasingly common in the democratic party and one of the things we're going to be looking at this week is the rise of and in some cases the electoral fate of dsa openly identified candidates running at a number unprecedented in american history and certainly we see the future of the democratic party very much at stake but along those same lines the other big story was alaska and the story in alaska is really due largely to one major news report and this was a news report an investigative report that was published in the new york times so one of the things i want christians to think about is that when you have something like the new york times we know that it comes with a very liberal opinion perspective we know that it comes it comes very left or in some cases even even more clearly leftist directions at the same time we also understand that a paper like the new york times is able to do investigative reporting and frankly has the journalistic credibility for people to trust them with information such that it is very significant that the new york times comes out with this investigative report just a few days ago saying that there's good evidence the democratic nominee mary peltola that either she or her campaign was actively involved in getting someone anyone named dan sullivan on the ballot to confuse voters in terms of running against incumbent senator republican dan s sullivan so their idea was you put more than one dan sullivan on the ballot you could siphon off votes and that would lead to a victory but there's more to it than that and this is something we have to keep in mind how could you have so many people on on the ticket well that is because alaska has had a very bad experiment with what's been going on in the last two years and it's been a very bad experiment and it's been a very bad experiment and it's a formula and i won't go into the details here it simply means that you rank in terms of your voting a first choice a second choice you can even go further and that is all put into an algebraic formula in which case if you have a person even if they could win the popular vote in other words they were ranked one by more people if they were ranked two by a significant number or if you had other people who were ranked high or if you had other people who were ranked high at a certain number by this equation you could end up with the candidate who received fewer first place votes than the other actually being elected to office now one of the things you have behind this is that the left has been pushing ranked choice voting for a long time because it's not entirely this but it's at least partly this it would make it very difficult for republicans to be elected and that's just what they know and that that's why you have basically pretty liberal states that have done this but this also raises a huge issue and that is that the voters in alaska are not only going to be electing a united states senator they're also going to be voting on a ballot measure to end ranked choice voting and return to the more straightforward electoral system that the rest of us know throughout the united states in which case you'd have a republican nominee and a democratic nominee and let's just say the the risk of having two daniel sullivans on the ballot would be largely eliminated the wall street journal put it this way and cites the new york times saying that that paper reported on wednesday last week the staffers with peltola's campaign had worked with people to recruit the other sullivan as a spoiler in the race a strategy that her campaign had long denied that's what makes the story all the more interesting now by the way as of this morning no one has the smoking gun that says the candidate herself has initials on this but at the same time even the new york times piece basically said it's impossible in practical terms to believe she didn't know about this although she has now looked at a camera and said she didn't know about this and she's did not know about this we're told that this strategy had long been denied but now they're having to accept it they're having to admit it because the new york times presented just overwhelming evidence and furthermore it makes sense it makes sense that's exactly what we're looking at here the chance that someone who had never been in politics before and by some reports hadn't even voted in recent elections would decide to run against someone that just by accident had the same name in this kind of election which could only fulfill the role of a spoiler that's the only role that that's conceivable here the fact is that it's very unlikely he came up with this this. And so what you have is his denial. No, that isn't what happened. But all the dots are now being connected. And, you know, it's going to take more investigative reports. The governor of Alaska is now calling for state authorities to investigate. President Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice have said they want to look at this. It's not exactly clear what role the federal government can have in this situation. But it is at this point very clear that, again, you've got a Democratic Party that was up to absolutely no good. Now, that's not to say that when you have politics that only one party ever pulls this kind of thing. But it is really interesting. You look at the story right now in Alaska. You look at the story in Michigan. I mean, these are huge, huge stories. But speaking of the election and with, of course, so many things coming at us, let's just remind ourselves of some of the other issues, some of the other questions that are at stake. You've got voting and campaign finance laws in several places. And I mentioned the voting and campaign finance laws in several places. And I mentioned the voting and Alaska when it comes to the ranked choice voting or just the more straightforward normal election math system. And so I do hope that the majority of voters there in Alaska choose common sense over the complexity of that ranked choice voting. And by the way, one of the proofs of just how volatile and unhelpful that way of voting is, is that the average person on the street can't even tell you how it works. President Trump was made fun of by some in the media for saying that no one really understands it. But it turns out that the majority of voters in Alaska vote for the ranked choice vote. And that's pretty undeniable, as a matter of fact. And even some of the people in the media who talk about it get it wrong. It's a mess. And it's a way that really distorts our political system. And by the way, when you have a two-party system and you have a face-off between two candidates, you could have third parties, but they have to be identified as third parties. The reality is that our system increasingly works within that pattern. And you break it out of that pattern, it's very hard to tell how our politics can go forward. I mean, you look at the United States Senate right now, you've got a party that has a majority and a party that has a minority. You have a minority leader's office and a majority leader's office, but they don't even call them that anymore. Now you have a Republican leader's office and you have a Democratic leader's office. And that's because they don't move now when the parties switch which one has the majority. Instead, it just tells you basically it's a two-party system. And in the United States Senate, it's even just made clear in the furniture. Now, that's not to say there aren't some independent senators in time. It is to say the basic structure is still the two-party system. Now, there are some such as George Will, who has been a fairly conservative columnist throughout time. I think he's less conservative as he grows older, but he is writing over the weekend about the possibility of a new third party emerging. But the fact is that about every 10 years, someone sees a third party emerging, but it's never emerged very far. And it's going to be very difficult to see how it a two-party system. Now, when Abraham Lincoln was elected and Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican elected president, that meant that another party basically went into the sunset. And that can happen with either the Democrats or the Republicans in theory. It's just hard to imagine in the modern context how either one of these parties can simply at this point disappear. Well, all right, there are other big issues that are on the ballot. So that means in addition to electing the entire House of Representatives, in addition to electing about a third of the Senate, many governors in the respective states, there are other huge issues. And there's some big questions. I mentioned already, of course, in Alaska, the vote on rank choice voting and whether that's going to continue or not. But you have other issues in other states. For instance, when it comes to personal wealth and taxation, you have at least three states that are looking at pretty radical action that basically comes down to tax the rich. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong to tax the rich. I'm just saying good luck. And the reason I say that is because money can move. And so when you're talking about the rich, you've got to decide who you're really talking about. Now, in California, they're talking about billionaires. That's the word they're using, billionaires. They're saying to everybody else, just mere millionaires. Don't worry about this. California, by the way, has lots and lots and lots and lots of millionaires. And so the way the New York Times puts it is this, quote, the first of its kind measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on wealth for Californians with a net worth over $1 billion, with nearly all the revenue going to the United States. Well, taxes are imposed on the value of personal assets, even if they are not sold rather than on income or the sale of assets like stocks and bonds and property, end quote. Now, by the way, there are basic questions here about the constitutionality of that text. And so we'll see if this passes some kind of constitutional muster. We're also going to see whether or not the voters of California go for it. Now, it's a very interesting picture because what you have are some labor unions that are for it. And then you've got some others, even in the Democratic side, who aren't really for it at all. And so we're going to see if this passes some kind of governor Gavin Newsom, who, of course, is coming to the end of his term and clearly has his eyes on the White House. He also understands that billionaires, by definition, can move. And so you've already had several of them move out of the state of California. You've had others accelerate their moving because of the threat of this legislation. And so if you are a billionaire in California, it just might turn out that living in California is too expensive. Now, the other thing, and this is where a lot of people in the middle are getting, rather concerned. The problem is that if you can tax wealth this way, and you can do it saying it's just one time and only against billionaires because of a pressing need in health care, if you can do it, then I guarantee you legislatures are going to do it and do it and do it. This is the same way so many other taxes have simply exploded. This is the entire logic. When legislators find out here's a new untapped vein, they don't ever stop with just this or just that. And so pretty soon they're going to be saying, well, anyone who has, let's say, it was a billion, so let's just say 500 million. And you say, well, that's very, very wealthy people. Well, what if they say then 200 million, 100 million, 50 million? Pretty soon they're down to 1 million. And there you're looking at a lot of people, even who are retiring on pensions, who have at least a net worth of a million dollars. And you can just see how this is going to work. And by the way, there are a lot of people in California who are not currently billionaires or centimillionaires, but there are people who are nonetheless working. And this includes a lot of people who've been running, say, food trucks, and then they have a second food truck and a third food truck. And then they move up the economic ladder. Pretty soon, at least in terms of assets, they've got a million dollars. Now, it's probably set off by all kinds of other bills and all the rest. But here's the thing. If you have legislators who say, hey, don't worry, we're just going after billionaires, I can assure you, and I think a lot of people in California are very aware of this, it won't stop there. Now, as I said, there's some just huge questions about constitutionality and all of this. A tax on wealth is very different than a tax on income. And so the United States Constitution had to be amended in order to have a national income tax. And you're looking at all the rest of this. It's going to be very interesting to see where this goes. Now, Governor Gavin Newsom, who is not a conservative, let's just make that very clear, the two-term Democratic governor is a man of, let's just say, he wants to position himself as the center left. You know, he wants to be less threat than other people on the left. Of course, it comes to moral issues. He's about as threatening as it gets. But when it comes to fiscal issues, he is against this proposal in California because he understands that rich people will just move. They'll move to a state which doesn't have this. That's why he has said, no, this kind of wealth tax shouldn't be state by state, starting with California. It should be a national agenda item. Okay. Now, that means you can't move from state to state to your advantage. The problem is, and this is what everyone's in the global economy knows, that even if you say, okay, all 50 states are going to have this because it's going to be a federal policy. Well, this is one of the reasons why the extremely rich have options offshore. So I'm trying to make a distinction here. I think there's an argument that could be made about proportional taxation. And by the way, the rich do pay the majority of taxes, certainly in terms of the margins. But the reality is that we are in a global economy, like it or not. And by the way, even before there was anything like a global economy, you still had offshore investing. And so that goes back even to the medieval world, where people with a lot of wealth, they would hedge their bets. They would own property here and there, even if it was blind and hidden. They knew they had to hedge their bets, especially in an age of political volatility. Now, as I mentioned, there's some huge agenda items state by state, especially with the transgender issue, and especially as related to teenagers and children coming up, at least five states. And so, as I mentioned, there's some huge agenda items state states will be voting on this, and it has never been on the ballot this way before. And then there are abortion issues as well. And in state by state, there are certain states that have, you could argue, almost both of them. And that's because this is now the wave of social change coming in a progressivist direction. And I just mentioned you have all these candidates now on the Democratic side associated with the DSA and pretty far to the velocity on so many of these huge social moral issues to increase significantly. And that's almost how every of the elections turn out. Because even if these DSA candidates on the Democratic side lose, there's no indication the DSA is anything but a growth market in the Democratic party. So we're going to watch all of this together. And if it were not sufficiently interesting, it has just gotten a great deal more interesting. I want to mention one other big issue. especially for Christians. And so I'm going to focus here particularly on the state of Virginia. And Virginia has not been, let's just say, infamous for controversy in the 2026 election cycle. And I think that's a mistake. I think we should be focusing on Virginia in a way that many people at the national level have not. There are a couple of big ballot questions, and I'm particularly interested in ballot question one and ballot question two. So let's just face what they are. Ballot question one. Okay, so I'm going to read to you the exact question. Quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to one, protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care. Two, protect doctors, nurses, and patients from being punished for these decisions. And three, allow for restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy, except when the patient's health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive. Okay, so that's how it's being presented. Just notice how radically pro-abortion this is. You look at it, and then you even look at the language that's supposed to be restrictive. So let me get back to that last phrase, allow for restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester. Well, at least they allow for restrictions on abortion in the third trimester, but then they don't. Quote, except when a patient's health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive. And when you consider the fact that mental health is often cited as a health reason, you understand that a woman in significant distress is in a position to claim she has a right to abort a baby all the way up until the moment of birth. So this is all the way through the term. And the people who are behind this understand that's exactly what it is. And this means an amendment to the Constitution of Virginia. And just notice again, the first phrase, the first clause, protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care. You'll notice it. That this is to preserve the freedom to make personal decisions. So that means there's no external authority whatsoever. And just understand just how radical this is. And then the second phrase, protect doctors, nurses, and patients from being punished for these decisions. So this would relieve medical professionals of all moral responsibility and legal responsibility when it comes to this issue. And this includes abortion and so, so much more. Okay, that's ballot question number one. Question number two is a constitutional amendment as well. Here's the question. Quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to, one, remove the ban on same-sex marriage, two, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race, and three, require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law? Okay, so that's the measure. It's called ballot question two. I want us to note something, and that is that same-sex marriage is legal in the state of Virginia. It's legal right now. It's been legal since 2015 and the Obergefell decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. So then you ask the question, why would this be put into the Constitution? Why would this be necessary, or why would the left be pushing for this? And it is because they want to get even the language restricting same-sex marriage. They want to, and by the way, there is no such language in the Virginia Constitution. It's just that the Virginia Constitution says that marriage is a unit of a man and a woman. In the same way, everyone in the United States defined marriage consistent with human history defining marriage, and that just tells you how revolutionary and how much of a moral revolt is going on in our time. And this is so sinister because it turns it around as if the Constitution has a ban on same-sex marriage. It has no such thing, the current Virginia Constitution. What it has is a very clear statement that this is marriage, and that's what they want to be rid of. And then you'll notice something else. I want to draw attention to the second clause, number two, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race. Well, let me ask a question. If you get rid of the distinction between male and female, if you get rid of the complementary structure of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for one lifetime, if you just deny that and move on to a new, radically revised definition of marriage, how in the world do you just, let's just say, destabilize sex and gender and claim you have stability in number? Number has been a very much earlier issue of volatility. You just think of polygamy, even all kinds of examples throughout human history. And so how in the world do you draw the line saying that the Constitution should say that marriage can only be of two adults? How can you say that? If you can't say man and woman, then on what basis can you even say two? And I guess what we would say is that in this point is what's politically plausible. My guess is that those who are trying to destabilize marriage, they understand they can't go all the way with polygamy or polyamory, that they can't get rid of the number two. But you know what? If you get rid of male and female, it's just extremely unlikely, implausible that the number two can last for long. And by the way, you've already redefined marriage in the most basic way. So if two gives you some kind of comfort, you're fooling yourself. Okay. I very much appreciate the fact, a number of Baptist pastors in Virginia have been on this, and they released an open letter from Virginia pastors to the Commonwealth. And I think it's just incredibly well done. And they give a biblical reason for these things. When it comes to Amendment 1, they say that Christians should oppose it because it will bring about more destruction of human life in the womb. When it comes to the second, they say that Christians should be against it because it discards the truth of marriage and gender. And of course, that's exactly what these two amendments would do. I think it's also very interesting that you take those pastors, evangelical pastors, a good many of them Baptist, who signed that letter. There is another statement about this that comes at the journal First Things, and it is by Paul D. Scalia. That would be Father Paul D. Scalia, a Roman Catholic priest, who would happen also to be the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonine Scalia. He wrote a piece at First Things and taught a Virginia's ballot, put Caesar over God. And he describes them just, I think, extremely well. Listen to this. Proposed Amendment 1, I'm reading from his statement here, quote, seeks to embed unrestricted abortion in the Virginia Constitution. Predictably, this initiative is presented as simply codifying Roe v. Wade, going back to the good old days before Dobbs. That would be bad enough, he writes, but the proposed amendment goes much further. It would open the door to practices that would shock many who favor legal abortion. By the usual tactics of murky, elastic language, the amendment creates conditions that would permit abortion up to the point of birth, remove all parental rights, and eliminate accountability for the abortion industry. Yep, that's all. And then he says about Proposition 2, the proposed amendment number 2, quote, is promoted as removing the ban on gay marriage from the Virginia Constitution. Of course, there is no ban. Gay marriage isn't mentioned because it's not a thing. The state constitution bans gay marriage about as much as zoology bans unicorns. Rather, it simply defines marriage as what it is. Not surprisingly, the proposed amendment's language removes not only the imagined ban, but in effect, any definition of marriage whatsoever. It's under the institution itself. This has always been the end game. End quote. I wanted to read those two sections from Father Scalia's article because it's just, in the midst of all this, and in the midst of so much confusion, you've got these evangelical Virginia Baptists who show up with clarity, and you've got this Roman Catholic priest who does the same thing. And it also sounds, in this case, like he's basically very much the son of his father, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The language is clear, and crisp, and in the most appropriate way, biting. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.com forward slash albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing. you