The Other Elections You Should Be Watching

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The midterm elections are a week from today, or perhaps I should say the midterm elections end a week from today. In Texas, for instance, one in five ballots have been cast already. These totals aren't just unusual for a midterm. They're unusual for any election. Bear County, Texas near San Antonio says so many voters have lined up to vote early. They might shatter their 2024 presidential numbers. Now, that doesn't tell us everything. It does not necessarily favor Democrats or Republicans. But it does tell us some things, right? It tells us citizens are extremely engaged for midterms. It tells us states that are usually a sure thing in a presidential year might be totally up for grabs here. And similarly, when you look at elections around the world, they do not all translate to the American political scene, but they're also not taking place in a vacuum either. Well, today, a week out from Election Day in the US, another hugely important vote is taking place. Not here, not even in the Western Hemisphere. No, it's over in Israel. ABC's Matt Rivers is on the ground in Jerusalem. He starts us off today and that a few races I want to get to. But let's start where you are in Israel. What is happening in these elections? What's the breakdown? Well, depending on who you ask, Brad, these are some of the most consequential elections in Israeli history. But at the bare minimum, these are the first national elections that Israel has held since the October 7th attacks and since the subsequent wars in Gaza and Southern Lebanon and Iran. And ultimately, as we see that any time an incumbent's party is on the ballot, it's going to be a referendum of sorts of the leadership that we've seen over the past few years. And that's, of course, leadership from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been obviously an inescapable part of Israeli politics for decades now. Going out and voting, uncle-in-law, the grandfather and the grandmother, the neighbors, because we have to win. For better or for worse, this is a referendum on his leadership over the past few years. I think when you're asking the Israeli public what this election is about, ultimately security is always one of the top two biggest issues here. And I think for Israelis, you know, they're looking at it two ways. October 7th was an inflection point in this country. And if you are a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, you say not only did Netanyahu fail to keep us safe on October 7th, but in the subsequent years, in addition to corruption scandals, in addition to unpopular judicial reforms nationally, he's also undertaken a series of conflicts that has dramatically reduced Israel's standing in the world. That it has made Israel a pariah of sorts on the world stage after tens of thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. After more civilians were killed in southern Lebanon, after civilians were killed in Iran, they point to him as the reason why Israel's standing has been upended on the global stage. The people of Israel can't take it anymore. We want a government that works for the people. We want the government that will bring peace and security to the region. If you are a Netanyahu supporter, though, you say, well, October 7th wasn't great, but he has more than made up for that in making Israel safer by taking the fight to Hamas, by taking the fight to Hezbollah and Lebanon, by taking the fight directly to Iran, the backer of all of those proxies in this part of the world. He has taken Israel's security on his back and he has done something that no other Israeli Prime Minister has ever done, and therefore he is going to have my vote. And so, you know, the way all of this ends, Brad, is it's a referendum on Netanyahu, one of the most controversial, but certainly one of the most consequential leaders that we have in the world today. So if that's the Netanyahu side of the equation, he's not the only guy running, right? So who is the opposition here? Because it doesn't sound like it's as simple as one guy, you know, Netanyahu is pro-Iran war and the other guy is anti-Iran war. That's not what's happening here, right? No, especially because, you know, this is a parliamentary system with lots of parties in play. It's not like the U.S. where you have it's the Democrat candidate versus the Republican candidate. Right. There's obvious differences between the liberal and the conservative here. You're talking about Netanyahu, who is leading the most far right government that Israel has ever seen, but the flip side, the person who is leading the party that is leading most of the polls here is a guy named Gadi Eisenkot. He's a former IDF chief of staff. He's center right. Remember Netanyahu does not have majority. He prefers another election. He wants to trap Israel in a transitional government led by him. I will not let that happen. He says he wants to be different than Netanyahu in good governance inside of Israel. He says he wants to start an independent inquiry into the origins of October 7th. He wants to walk back some of the judicial reforms that Netanyahu has put forward, but that's domestic stuff. When it comes to national security policy, he's in favor of the war in Iran. He wants Israel to continue to have a presence in Gaza. He's not going to be retreating from that. The Americans should not expect to emerge from this contest. Somebody that's like, let's withdraw. What are we doing? Absolutely not. When it comes to the issues that Americans care about the most, which is Gaza, which is Iran, which is a potential two-state solution for Palestinians to have a state of their own, Eisenkot is right in line with Netanyahu's zero chance of a two-state solution. Palestinians would not get their own state or anything close to it if Eisenkot led the government here. He would make sure the Israeli army stays inside of Gaza, and he would very likely want to rejoin with the U.S. in striking Iran once again if he were to take the reins of power. So would he be a different leader? Yes, one thing that there would be a big difference in, I think, is he would try and rein in some of the Israeli settler violence that we've seen in the West Bank against Palestinians there. But overall, on the issues that Americans are most in tune with, Eisenkot is much more in line with Netanyahu than he is against him. Really interesting. The other reason I want to talk to you today, Matt, is not just to look ahead to the Israeli election, but we've also now seen a couple international elections in recent days, including like your stomping grounds of South America. You've been a foreign correspondent for us in Latin America before. What are we seeing in some of these elections? And I guess do they tell us anything about kind of international sentiment? Is any of that applicable to the U.S. political landscape? Yeah, it's a good question. I was actually in Brazil for the last time they had presidential elections, and it was Lula on the ballot, the left-leaning candidate, and it was a Bolsonaro on the candidate as well. Except at that time, it was Jair Bolsonaro, and now it's his son Flavio. What we've seen in that election was in the first round, and it was very, very, very close, but Lula managed to eke out a victory. I want to thank God and thank you, the many women of this country for the strength you showed. What you take from that is a couple things. One, I think it really slows the march of what had been a conservative movement really across Latin America. You saw conservative leaders elected in El Salvador, in Colombia, in Chile, in Argentina, and there was the expectation, I think, that that could happen in Brazil, which would be the biggest domino of them all. Bolsonaro was called like a Brazilian Trump. And leaned into that very much so. Jair Bolsonaro and his son, both, are accolades of Donald Trump, and I think that that's what they campaigned on. So what does that election result tell us? Well, that just enough of Brazilians don't want that, that they want a more left-leaning government, and they don't want to be Trump of the tropics, as Bolsonaro's nickname once was. But I think it also shows you just how split these societies are, just like the US, where we're going to see, sure, we might see some sort of a blue wave during the midterms. But I think overall, America is quite polarized, and it's the same thing in the second largest economy in the Western hemisphere, and that would be Brazil. Is there also a potential parallel with disputing election results? Because we're also seeing that now, Bolsonaro is actually refusing to concede that he lost to Lula here. Exactly, and what we're seeing is because of some irregularities that the Brazilian Supreme Court said they saw with people being blocked from getting to the polls by using public transportation. They actually left the polls open for two additional hours there. I will not accept the rules of the game being changed mid-game, once again by Lula's allies on the Supreme Court. What we've seen since then is the Bolsonaro campaigns they hold on. That wasn't okay. We're going to dispute these election results. Stop me if you've heard this before, a very close election. There's a presidential candidate who says, hold on, I don't agree with these results, and let's see what happens. These extremely polarized split societies, there's very little margin of error for anything to go wrong, then everything becomes suspicious, and everything's a conspiracy as opposed to just election results being what they are. Serbia just had elections and they're, you know, you hear about student protest movements, a student protest movement there in Serbia just managed to topple a long time what someone call a strong man ruler. He has conceded defeat, unlike Bolsonaro, but similar themes there with opponents talking about corruption, about being sort of more pragmatic, less isolationist, so perhaps more parallels here we'll see. Matt Rivers on a busy busy day in Jerusalem right now. Thank you so much. Thanks Brad. Next up on Start here was she fired for cause or because of her dad, the curious case of the Comey family after the break. 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One is in California where federal appeals judges have rejected a claim from the Trump administration that California needs to set aside 20,000 potential voters over claims that there are lots of non-citizens on their roles. California officials say they looked at a small sample of these names, just to see if the suit had merit, and found the vast majority of that sample aren't just citizens through citizens who were born here. Respectfully, we think that the court will find that unimpressive. Later today in Washington, D.C., another judge will weigh the case of two FBI agents charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden's laptop several years ago. Again, that judge has already cast doubt on the Trump administration's case. And if you're keeping score, yesterday you could chalk one of these firmly in the lost column for the Trump DOJ. As yet another judge recounted the case of a federal prosecutor fired just a few months in a Trump's second term. That prosecutor's name is Marine Comey, that sounds familiar, it's because she is related to Trump's nemesis, former FBI director James Comey. That judge has ruled she should never have lost her job in the first place. Let's talk to ABC's chief investigative correspondent, Amber Katerzky-Aran. Remind us who is Marine Comey, and why was she fired? Marine Comey was an assistant United States attorney, a federal prosecutor, in the southern district of New York, in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, probably the most preeminent federal prosecutor's office in the country. And she is the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, and that's why she says she was abruptly fired. Well, we can avail ourselves of the last healthy part of the American government, which is the federal judiciary. So my daughter is suing them to establish that you cannot fire a career person without cause. Even though by all accounts, she had been a rather stellar federal prosecutor on some of the most high-profile cases that we've covered in that district, the prosecution of Gillette Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's former paramor, the prosecution of Sean Combs. She challenged it, and a federal judge has just ruled that her termination was unlawful. Yes, so what was the judge's rationale in this ruling in reinstating her? The judge agreed with the Attorney General of the United States. She is authorized by law to remove an assistant U.S. attorney, but the Attorney General and anyone to whom the Attorney General delegates that authority, the judge said, is also limited by the law, namely the law that involves civil service employees. And only can fire someone covered by civil service rules, like an assistant United States attorney, in a particular manner, and only for certain reasons. The judge said those reasons, in this particular case involving Maureen Komi, just weren't there. Practically, Aaron? Does she go back to work? Now, I don't know what she's been doing in the interceding time here, but is she ready to throw everything aside and be like, "I'm back, Southern Districts," because I know it's a prestigious job, but people also have lives when they get fired, whether they think it's fair or not. In a manner of speaking, she has been reinstated to a point because she formally resigned her position shortly after it was made clear by the Trump administration that she was going to be fired. So she was ordered by the judge to be reinstated with back pay up until the point she resigned her position. She's now in private practice as an attorney in New York City. We have not heard from her, although we did reach out. I think she'd be hard pressed to return to the Southern District of New York under the current Justice Department in the Trump administration. And then this is not the first time we've seen the Trump administration fire somebody and for them to say this is a political firing, because of a case you didn't like or a relation that I have that you don't like that person. Could this open the door for other lawsuits, I guess, by former federal employees? It depends on how they're fired, because in some cases, the president does have latitude bread to hire and fire as he sees fit. But here, the judge rejected what he described as the Trump administration's sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority. The president had argued that Maureen Komey's firing was lawful, and the laws protecting civil servants were unconstitutional, and the judge said that's just not the case here. Although the Justice Department is now promising an appeal, you could see a world in which this, like many other things, that the Trump administration is challenged gets all the way to the US Supreme Court. And I don't know if the timing is coincidental or not, but yesterday also, newly unsealed court documents showed the DOJ is seeking to prosecute former FBI director James Komey for a third time, accusing him of disclosing national security information in 2016. Komey himself put out a statement in part saying, quote, "Well, they're back again, it would almost be funny if it weren't such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to," end quote. Thank you, bread. If you judge the economy based on how much money you make from work and how much that money it costs to buy things, which seems like a pretty fair criteria to me, you'd probably think the economy is not doing so great. If you judge the economy on the stock market, though, or if you have a lot of money tied up in it, you might think, eh, it can't be that bad, like stocks are still up on the year, and yet we know the reason for that. It's not because every business is doing well, certainly not because businesses that rely on oil or shipping are doing well. No, stocks are mainly doing okay because of one industry. AI? AI. AI. It's been officially changed to superintelligence or SI. Whether you've heard of it or not, the most valuable publicly traded company on Earth right now is NVIDIA, whose chips and architecture have fomented the AI revolution. We are going to have to create new technologies to advance the capabilities of AI, but we're also creating new technologies that advance the safety of AI. Well, soon, an AI company you probably have heard of is set to join them. Yesterday, anthropic, the makers of the chatbot, Claude, filed some of the paperwork that will allow them to go public, and this provided an eye-opening glimpse at how much these companies are making or not making. Let's bring in ABC's Elizabeth Solsey, who covers technology and economics. Elizabeth, how valuable is anthropic going to be here? It sounds like a huge potential opening. Incredibly valuable, Brad. This is anthropic, the company that makes Claude. Today, we are launching Claude for teachers. Basically, laying the groundwork for what could be the biggest initial public offering on record. Up until now, that would happen just a few months ago, the SpaceX IPO put the valuation of that company at about 1.8. trillion dollars. The paperwork that AnthropicFile does not disclose the official valuation, but the expectation is that it will be around that range or even higher. So we are talking about a huge, huge company overnight, the moment this starts trading publicly, which we learned it will trade under the ticker A&T on the NASDAQ exchange, Brad. But you're right. This really starts to pull back the curtain on the finances of this company for the first time. That's all. We're some pretty staggering numbers. I mean, Anthropic had $16 billion in revenue in the first six months of this year. That's up from 1.2 billion last year. So it's a huge increase in revenue. On the other hand, they did have some pretty big losses. This is not a company that's making money right now. $81 billion in losses in the first six months of this year, though some of that was an accounting kind of issue. $81 billion in what do you do that would lose you that much money? No, you heard it right. And some of this is kind of an accounting issue. We don't need to get into kind of the nitty gritty of how this isn't all money. That's like cash burning. But they acknowledge in this filing that it could be a while till they are on a path of profitability that they are spending more money than they are bringing in right now. Even though they have some pretty big investors, including Amazon and Google, they are saying that they're going to continue to spend a lot to keep developing AI. And that means that this is a huge company worth a lot of money, but it might not necessarily be making money for some time. But this is why I'm trying to figure out because my parents yesterday showed me an AI-generated photo of what me and my wife's future baby might look like. And so this is what AI is used for by a lot of people. It was generic and terrifying at the same time. And I'm like, how many gallons of water had to be used to cool down the data center that produced this monstrosity? Is Anthropic going to be used for more than this by the whole world? Or is this like a huge bubble? If I had the answer to on if this is a bubble, I think I would be very rich because that is exactly what Wall Street analysts are trying to figure out right now. What is very notable about this in these hundreds of pages of documents that were released by Anthropic is that more than 90 pages of this bread is devoted to the risk factors in this business. I think the technology has very real risks. And, you know, the mechanism how we address those risks is still under discussion. Typically when a company files to go public, they're talking about risk factors, think of things like demand slowdown or a trouble hiring talent or intense competition for rivals or, you know, external factors like the weather. Anthropic has taken a very different tack where we've been transparent about the risks. And we've proposed regulation of the technology. Anthropic does not mince words when it says exactly what the risk factors are. And they're pretty intense. They're saying some of the factors that put its company at risk are basically the end of humanity. I mean, they say there is the risk of it. The end of all this. All this goes away. This is in the filing itself, you know, a catastrophic event. I mean, this is really doubling down on these, you know, dire warnings we've been talking about now for weeks from people within the company and outside of the company. Mr. President, tell us why the world should not be concerned about AI. Why this shouldn't be guardrails. Because we have people that love our country and love the world a lot. It requires more than love, don't it, sir? No, it requires this and the smartest people in the world. But in this kind of formal notice to investors that it wants to become a publicly traded company. Anthropic is saying we know that there are a lot of factors that could basically mean we are not making money, that not only mean we are not making money, that could ban our business, put us out of business. If the government decides to put in a ban, if we see that there is this risk of models creating biological weapons, I mean, this is just a whole new level of kind of risk when you're talking about a business and it's outlook. And what does it mean, Brad, that then you will have people who potentially own shares of this in their 401Ks or, you know, a lot of people may be thinking they want to try to own a piece of this company that defines itself as the future. And all it also, you know, along with all those risks says there are so many benefits to society. So this IPO, which is now expected to happen sometime next month, really is the culmination of this very small company becoming a giant in the space of AI. We all need to work together to make sure that we win and we can win safely. You mentioned this idea of a bubble and thought big knowledge is going to spend a lot of money on computing power on all the things that keep AI running. And some investors are questioning right now, all this money is floating around out there. Is there enough value to make it worth it? That's what we will at least see when the straights publicly, where kind of the verdict comes down at least on Wall Street. Well, you wonder, Anthropic has kind of deemed itself like the moral center of this whole AI universe. Once you go public, we've heard time and time again of how companies' values kind of change because they're just trying to, you know, your investors demand you to chase the most dollars. Does that affect their business at all? All right, Elizabeth Shulzi, thank you so much. Thank you, Brad. Okay, one more quick break. Let me come back. What happened to soccer parents just making the cute tunnel with their arms at the end of the game? One last thing is next. Today, I want to tell you about our friends at Layla Sleep. When you work nighttimes, producing a daily morning news podcast, you come to really appreciate the value of a good night's sleep. So I'm excited to tell you about Layla, one of the best mattresses on the market and also one of the most affordable. It's innovative, flippable design offers something for everyone because there's a soft side and a firm side. 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Election night with so much at stake for trusted election results in real time. America turns first to abcnews and David Mure. We'll be right here with you as the results come in. Election night starting at 7 Eastern on abc. And one last thing, FIFA handed out its big annual soccer awards last night, England's Harry Kane got the ballon door, the player the year. But perhaps the most unstoppable force in the game is a three year old named Nevada. This is a video taken by the parents of Nevada Pierre in Winter Park, Florida. Yeah, his name is Nevada, but he's from Florida, Buckleup because it's only getting more confusing from here. Nevada, this tiny little boy, is buzzing around the field, ball at his feet, whizzing by kids left and right. It's clear how talented this little wonder kin is, but soon it becomes a very adult situation as she and his family are escorted away by police. He started walking at eight months and he started playing at ten months. This is Nevada's mom, Martaja Pierre, is not uncommon for Nevada to go coast to coast, scoring several goals per game within five games. Nevada has scored over 40 goals. This past weekend, on his team's second to last game of the year, the phenom picks up where he left off, but this time, he only scored one time that date. He scored a term and then they stopped the game. Instead of restarting play, other parents start conferring with a league official. Martaja says she was told Nevada is too good. Parents are asking coaches to make him sit out of the game. This is where things get weird. Number one, while Nevada is only three years old, the other kids on the field are five. He's been bumped up a couple years because he's so advanced, apparently that didn't stop these parents from becoming frustrated. The other issue here is that parents apparently want in Nevada to pass the ball more often. And this is where it's easy to forget, this is a league for five-year-olds. If you have ever seen five-year-old soccer, there is no passing. There are no plays. Generally, there's just a cloud of dust with a swarm of children around a ball. Nevada just happens to be really good at keep away. Eventually, a league director told Martaja he'd be sitting out and getting a refund for the whole season. Well, she told Nevada to keep playing and then started following the league official with a camera. No charges were filed. No one was cited. The police said everyone was compliant once they arrived. But this story has ricocheted across the youth sports landscape because it has some pretty fundamental questions. At what point do you bench a three-year-old for being too good? Should these sports be about recreation or competition? Martaja says Nevada trained with his dad for three hours a day. Don't forget he's three years old. Perhaps most importantly, is this about kids' feelings being hurt or their parents? Because in some of these videos, at least most of the kids on the field looked like they were still having fun until adults got involved. By the way, Nevada's middle name is Neymar, as in the famous soccer player. I think his parents knew what they were hoping he'd be when he got big, but he is still little right now. It's incredible to watch him. More on all these stories on ABC News Live or Evie Stream Live News. I'm Brad Milky. See you tomorrow. In the 1960s, the federal government embarked on a huge experiment. It was groundbreaking at the time. The goal? To figure out the best ways to teach. They evaluated different philosophies of education. One approach stood above the rest. But a lot of people didn't like it. One educator is called the approach to totalitarian. On the new season of Soul to Story, we investigate why. Follow Soul to Story in your podcast app. Last October's brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was shocking. Now, nearly a year out, there are still critical questions to be answered. Where did they go? And second, where did they come from? In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day. Like you've never heard them before, through the eyes of the people who lived them. On the pavements, I saw something shiny. You did see the crown. Yes, exactly. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio, available now, ad-free on Amazon Music.