The Final Polls Before the Midterms, and a $6 Billion Crypto Heist

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, November 2nd, here's what we're covering. You must go out. You have to go out and you have to vote Republican, just vote Republican. Last night wrapped up a chaotic final weekend of campaigning for the midterms. You know, when God made vocal cords, he didn't make him to do 30 rallies in short period of time. For Republicans, President Trump was in Kansas, closing out his last big event before Election Day. In all, he held nearly 30 rallies this campaign season, urging voters to turn out as if he personally was on the ballot. Some of the other things Trump said on the trail, though, have left people scratching their heads. I could say the stupidest things and you're slapping on, I love you so much. And a Times review of the President's speeches found that he's been more profane, longer-winded, and less coherent than he was a decade ago. Michael Dukakis, years ago, let out one murderer, Willie Horton. That's meant repeating the same story he told 30 minutes before, as he did at a rally in North Carolina. And he was running and he released a man named Willie Horton. Or commenting on men's looks. I started examining his body. Sometimes with vulgar language, as he did at multiple rallies. And I watched up and down, and I looked at his ass, and I looked at the whole. And then I looked at his hands. In response to questions from the Times, a White House spokesman dismissed concerns about Trump's comments, and said, "The American people love how authentic, transparent, and effective the president is." And for Democrats, a rift within the party burst open this weekend in a key Senate race in Michigan. "My vote for Senate is going to be with my Rogers, and I will tell you why. Because we have to stand with country." There, the Democrat who lost to Abdul El Sayed in the primary came out and endorsed his Republican opponent. Haley Stevens caught many in her party off guard with the move. She's now backing the candidate, who she previously criticized as a "rubber stamp" for Donald Trump's dangerous agenda. Her last minute flip came after months of animosity with El Sayed, and bitter disagreements between the two over Israel, which she strongly supports. Many of her fellow Democrats have now condemned Stevens' decision as potentially endangering a crucial Senate seat. Republicans, for their part, are hoping it could provide some GOP momentum in the close race. Heading into the very final stretch of all this, here's what the latest Times Sienna Poles show. Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the Senate. That includes Texas, which hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since the 1980s, and Kansas, which hasn't done that since the 1930s. One thing that we ask in every poll is what issue is most important to voters, what issue is motivating their vote, and across the seven states we saw very clearly that the economy is the single most important issue to voters. Ruth the Gellnick conducts and analyzes polls for the Times. She says they show that dissatisfaction with President Trump and frustration over how he's handled the economy are dragging down Republicans. If the polls are accurate and these trends hold, Democrats would win control of the Senate, but polls are imperfect. Six years ago, the last time Senator Susan Collins was up for reelection in Maine, she trailed in every survey before the election and still won comfortably. And there are reasons for Democrats to be concerned. There are still some undecided voters, and voters who've made their decision only in the last month favored Republicans by a significant margin. Now one last update on the midterms. In addition to the races that will determine control of Congress, voters will weigh in tomorrow on a number of major policy issues at the state level. We've been looking at a few of the trends in ballot measures this year. There are questions about new taxes on the ultra wealthy, about restrictions around trans students in school sports, and today we're looking at abortion rights, which will be up for a vote in a number of states. A key one to watch is Idaho, where it is currently a crime to perform an abortion. Since Idaho's ban on abortion went into effect four years ago, they have lost about 35% of their practicing obstetricians, and about half of Idaho's 44 counties don't have any practicing OB/GYN. Anna Griffin covers Idaho for the times. She says the sharp drop in doctors there has been a big part of the conversation ahead of election day, when Idaho voters will decide whether or not to restore some abortion rights. I've been talking to a lot of people in Idaho over the last few months, and what they say is the state of health care has fundamentally changed. Longer wait times, higher costs, even if you're not seeking women's reproductive health, because there was a ripple effect when doctors leave it affects everybody in the system. What conservative activists will say is, A, that's overblown, and B, that is worth it to end abortion in the state. But the people trying to repeal the ban say the abortion law has pushed health care to the brink of Idaho. The times will have live coverage on the results of ballot measures and congressional races, as they start to come in tomorrow evening. The world of crypto currency was shaken last week by the largest crypto heist ever recorded. In all, more than $6 billion was stolen. Now, the race is on to figure out how it happened, and to try to claw back as much of that crypto as possible. For the last few days, the times has been reviewing internal communications from Binance, the crypto exchange that was hit, and talking with experts around the industry. Here's what we know. The first sign of alarm came on Thursday afternoon when a string of unusual transactions showed that billions of dollars worth of digital coins were suddenly pouring out of Binance's accounts, essentially a high-speed bank robbery. The exchange had to halt all deposits and withdrawals to try and stop the bleeding, and it posted a series of frantic messages on X, promising it would cover any customer's losses. The whole thing was made more surreal by the fact that the company's founder was posting about the heist in real time too, using a lot of prayer hand emojis and writing, quote, "it hurts, but we will survive." Now, what's unique about a crypto heist compared to any old regular bank robbery is that, in theory, you can see exactly where the money is going, because all transactions exist on a kind of public ledger. That meant some of the transactions related to the heist could be frozen, but others moved so quickly through so many accounts that they were harder to trace. One crypto analytics firm said the hackers had used, quote, "wondering patterns we have not seen before, conducting thousands of transactions in a short period." In terms of who was behind it, the attack was quickly attributed to an elite North Korean hacking unit, something the FBI has now confirmed. North Korea has a history of targeting crypto platforms. Its hackers were also behind a $1.5 billion crypto theft last year, and Western officials say the regime uses the stolen money to evade sanctions and to fund its nuclear weapons program. And finally, back in the 1950s, when Disneyland unveiled the "autopia ride," auto-like automobile, America was really falling in love with cars. It was the dawn of the interstate, people were moving out to the suburbs with a garage for every house. These are gasoline driven, and the kids can drive for their hearts content with their parents or without their parents. But modern America's more complicated relationship with cars is now coming for "autopia." After 70-plus years of kids scooting around on the ride, putting the pedal to the metal with real gas in the engines of those mini cars, "autopia is going electric." The change is coming after the California Air Resources Board told Disney it failed to get the proper emissions certification for "autopia's cars," meaning the ride is in violation of state regulations. By early next year, Disney has agreed to swap out the gas-powered fleet for an electric solution instead. The change will be significant. "autopia is the only surviving original attraction of the Tomorrowland section of the park. It's been running pretty much uninterrupted since Disneyland opened. But the switch to other parts of the car will come in handy. Electric will likely also come with a pretty big upside. In its gas era, Atopia generated so much exhaust, it created a microclimate of smog over tomorrow land, which is expected to clear up when the new version of the ride debuts. Those are the headlines. And if you are not a time subscriber yet, the times just made it so you can access all of our midterms coverage for free through the election. You can download the Times app now to access it, pull trackers, the latest updates, and analysis, all of it. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.