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• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk donated at least $446 million ahead of the 2026 midterms.
• Musk and allied super PACs spent $224 million on Texas alone.
• In the end, he could not prevent the once unthinkable. Texas turned blue.

Elon Musk was the 2026 midterms' largest donor. He's already one of its biggest losers.

Musk, the world's richest person, donated at least $446 million ahead of the midterms. The biggest recipients of Musk's largesse were America PAC, his super PAC, and the top super PACs of Senate and House Republicans.

Musk chose to make his biggest play in Texas, his adopted home state and the headquarters of Tesla and SpaceX. In September alone, Musk donated $158 million to Senate Republicans' main super PAC, which was quickly routed to a super PAC supporting GOP candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In addition to those donations, Musk's America PAC has spent over $47 million against Democratic nominee James Talarico. All told, The New York Times reported that Musk spent roughly $224 million in the state.

As of late Tuesday night, The Associated Press has already projected that Talarico will be Texas' next senator and that state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, also a Democrat, will be the state's next governor. Democrats' decadeslong dream — and Musk's nightmare — came true: Texas is blue.

Talarico, who had increasingly targeted Musk, compared his victory to the biblical tale of David defeating Goliath.

"The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, and the entire Washington D.C. establishment," Talarico said during his victory speech. "David wasn't as big or as strong as Goliath. He didn't have as many weapons, but he had hope. He had faith, and he had a slingshot."

Musk's bets reflect his statements that the midterms offered Republicans a chance to build up a defense to Democrats potentially sweeping control of Washington in 2028. In such a scenario, Musk said he is worried that Democrats will grant Washington, DC and Puerto Rico statehood and push far-left policies like offering legalization to people living in the country illegally.

"This would result in America becoming a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word," Musk wrote on X on October 30.

Once an Obama supporter, Musk has swung hard to the right in recent years. He has quickly surpassed the Koch brothers, Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, and other megadonors to become the biggest spender in the GOP.

Musk has also indicated that he's aware Democrats are eager to haul him in front of Congress.

"Live by the sword, die by the sword," Musk wrote on X in October. "Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets …"

Musk's ROI has been mixed

In the 2024 elections, Musk spent more than $290 million, the vast majority of which was directed to helping President Donald Trump retake the White House.

For his efforts, Musk later became the effective leader of the White House DOGE office. In early 2025, DOGE's sweeping mandate helped make him one of the most powerful people in the entire government.

Musk returned to the campaign trail in 2025, spending over $20 million between himself and allied super PACs on a Wisconsin state Supreme Court election. He even donned one of the Green Bay Packers' famous cheeseheads. This time, Musk's spending wasn't enough. His favored candidate lost by more than 10 points.

Musk's midterm spending has confirmed his continued support for Republicans, something he briefly threw into question during his falling-out with President Donald Trump. In June 2025, Musk threatened to create a third party, called the America Party, but never seriously followed through on his plans.

He won't have to wait long for his next opportunity. Few races are more tantalizing for donors than presidential elections. History also shows that a big donor (even one with fewer zeros in their net worth) can keep a struggling candidate afloat long after it appears their campaign is dead in the water.

Now that the midterms are wrapped up, the 2028 presidential primaries are around the corner. Musk may want to get his checkbook ready.

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The Democrat Troy Jackson has won Maine’s US Senate race, toppling five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in one of the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterms.

Jackson, 58, unseated Collins – who has been in the Senate since 1997 – in a closely fought, and often rancorous, race characterized by mutual accusations of corruption and clashes over living costs in the predominantly rural state.

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Democrat Rob Sand has been elected governor of Iowa, the Associated Press projects, a milestone as his party seeks to rebuild its political standing in the midwestern state.

Sand, the state auditor who is the sole Democrat holding statewide office in Iowa, triumphed over Republican Zach Lahn, a political newcomer backed by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “Make America healthy again” movement.

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• Brian Chesky said building Airbnb came more naturally to him than running it as CEO.
• He said he had to rethink how he hired, managed people, and set priorities.
• Chesky said these three mistakes made him a "terrible CEO."

As Airbnb grew from a startup into a global travel company, CEO Brian Chesky said he learned that building it and running it were two very different jobs.

Speaking on Monday's episode of the "How I Built This" podcast, Chesky opened up about the steep learning curve he faced as Airbnb expanded.

"I think I was pretty much naturally a great founder, and I was naturally a terrible CEO," Chesky told podcast host Guy Raz.

Chesky said being a founder came more intuitively to him, while becoming a CEO required a very different set of skills.

"When you're a child, you're making things, you're building things. You're practicing being a founder, and so the moment you found a company is probably not the first time you try to make something," Chesky said.

He said he had been developing the instincts of a founder since childhood, from designing and taking apart toys to persuading friends to buy what he was selling.

But when he suddenly had to become a CEO, he said he found the role "counterintuitive."

Here are the three mistakes Chesky said he made:

1. Deferring to more experienced executives

Chesky said that as a CEO, he was often advised to hire highly experienced executives and get out of their way.

He said he later came to see how that approach isn't the best for a young company: "You've got to hire people just a little bit ahead of you that are smart, hungry, and you got to stay really close to them."

Chesky said he also often ignored his own instincts in favor of listening to executives with far more experience than he did, who were often much older than he was.

"The hard part for me was sometimes my intuition would tell me one thing, and they'd tell me another. And what do I do when my intuition and their experience collide? Usually I deferred, and that was usually a mistake," Chesky said.

He said that those executives who came from much larger companies often struggled to apply what had worked at a larger business to the demands of a smaller startup.

"They also come from companies where they didn't build it. They managed it. And now they have to build it," Chesky said.

2. Being a people pleaser

Chesky said he found it difficult to hold colleagues accountable when their work fell short.

He said he struggled with knowing "when to tell people what to do" and had trouble having hard conversations about an employee's performance. He was "conflict-averse to the point that if somebody wasn't working out, I would not take action," he said.

"I felt cautious about being a boss," Chesky said. "I think I was a little bit of a people pleaser. I wanted people to like me."

He said he sometimes took on employees' work himself, without realizing he might either be failing to give them enough room to succeed or be propping them up in an unsustainable way.

3. Not saying "No" enough

Another mistake Chesky said he made was not saying "No" enough, which left the company without a clear focus.

He compared executives pursuing competing priorities to passengers in a car who all want to go somewhere else.

"The right way is one way. And one way has to be your way," Chesky said.

He said that if an executive takes a team in a direction the CEO does not believe in, the company could be left dealing with the consequences long after that person leaves.

"They've gone down a path for two years. Guess what happens? They leave. You might spend five or 10 years fixing or correcting that decision that person made," Chesky said.

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Robert Garcia, the Democratic congressman set to become the next chair of the oversight committee of the House of Representatives, had two words for Republicans on Tuesday evening: “Lawyer up.”

Garcia issued his statement as a blue wave appeared to take hold across the country after voters cast their ballots in the US midterm elections. Democrats retook control of the US Senate, and are widely expected to do the same in the House.

The UK has apologised to Ukrainian child refugees who were told to study Russian in English schools, as it launched funding for a new GCSE in Ukrainian.

Ukrainian children who were forced to seek refuge in the UK after Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022 say it was “insulting” that their teachers suggested they study Russian in the absence of a GCSE in Ukrainian.

Raphael Lim

• Raphael Lim and Jamison Teng often juggle their legal tech startup with studies during finals.
• They've had to sacrifice social life, grades, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training to build up Jam & Raph.
• But it's given them an opportunity to test a startup in a place where failure is not the end of the world.

When Raphael Lim, 23, and Jamison Teng, 24, met in 2022, their time together was filled with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training and playing video games.

But now, their hangouts look different as they work through the twists and turns of running a year-old legal technology startup.

Lim and Teng are the cofounders of Jam & Raph, a startup that provides AI consultancy services to law firms.

Juggling the demands of the startup alongside their law and computer science degrees at two of Singapore's top colleges hasn't been easy, often putting their studies on the back seat.

How they got into legal tech

Lim, a second-year computer science student at the National University of Singapore, and Teng, a final-year law student at the Singapore Management University, competed in a collegiate legal tech hackathon in 2024 and placed second. This gave them the idea to start a business in the legal tech space.

"I saw that there was a lot of money being invested in the big firms like Harvey and Legora, so that's when I realized there was actually a market for this," Teng said.

Harvey, one of the most prominent legal AI startups, has conducted several funding rounds over the past year and announced a valuation of $15.5 billion in September. Legora announced a $550 million Series D round in March, at a $5.55 billion valuation.

Lim and Teng launched the company in November — finals season for both of them — with 2,500 Singapore dollars, or about $1,950, from SMU's entrepreneurship incubation program. They brought on 10 team members, all college students, and kickstarted Jam & Raph.

Their product: Running workshops for law firms to teach lawyers how to use AI tools effectively and token-efficiently. They also started offering consultations to the firms, helping them build AI products tailored to their needs.

Their workshops, which are two to three hours long, cost SG$2,000 to SG$3,000, and they charge SG$120 per hour for consultations.

They poured a little of their savings into the venture — less than $2,000 combined — but operating expenses are low, mainly their $150 monthly Claude subscriptions and email domain fees. They say they've stuck all their revenue in their company bank account for now, not paying themselves anything.

Putting out fires during finals week

Despite studying in Singapore, a country that is infamous for its rigorous and competitive academic culture, both Teng and Lim said that working on the business always takes precedence over their studies.

"My GPA took a total hit, but I think that's just the cost of doing a startup when you are in university, so that is to be expected," Lim said.

Teng said he's seen his grades improve in classes that blend tech and law. His core law classes have taken a hit, but that hasn't phased him.

"I think Singapore still places a lot of emphasis on academics, but the more we talk to people and clients outside Singapore, like Americans or Europeans, they care more about your story," he said.

But problems always seem to arise at the most inconvenient times, they said, like clients calling them about product failures during their final weeks, when they have to study for multiple exams.

It's also taken a toll on their social lives.

"We've had clients sending emails saying, 'Hey, your product is down,' while we're having drinks with friends, and we have to immediately deal with it," Lim said.

Lim said that he's missed out on a large part of the freshman college experience.

"Everyone was out partying and joining clubs, meeting new people, and I would be cooped up in my room, coding," he said.

He added that his ex-partner got angry at him when he didn't answer the phone all day while he was solving a technical issue for their product, and then had to complete schoolwork.

The duo doesn't meet to practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or play video games anymore, either, and their hangouts are all about work.

It's better to fail in college

For Teng, it was an opportunity to test out entrepreneurship in a safe space before entering the workforce.

"It's okay to fail because if you fail as a student startup founder, I think it's pretty expected; there's no real heat that you can get in terms of responsibilities," he said, adding that people are a lot warmer toward student entrepreneurs.

Lim said running a business is a good window to the world outside the classroom.

"My peers will be doing a lot of academics, research theory, but I get to see how these theories actually apply in the real world," he said.

Neither of them sees this as a replacement for a postgrad job hunt, though, with both saying that they want to get corporate work experience.

"It was more of a 'good to have,' something we built for the love of the game to bring something to the world," Lim said.

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• The early results of the 2026 midterm elections are in.
• Business and tech leaders are sizing up the outcomes.
• California's ballot measure targeting billionaires is in the spotlight.

The 2026 midterm elections delivered shocking wins for Democrats on Tuesday evening, reshaping the balance of power in Washington.

Democrats picked up key Senate seats, including James Talarico's win in Texas and Sherrod Brown's win in Ohio, and are now projected to control the chamber. Talarico became the first Democrat elected to the US Senate in Texas in decades, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spent over $150 million supporting the race's Republican candidate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

Business leaders, tech executives, and investors are now assessing what the new political landscape could mean for their industries.

In California, the results of the nation's first-ever ballot measure to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on residents with net worth exceeding $1 billion could have major implications for the state's elite. Results of that vote were not yet in as of 11:30 p.m. ET.

And some of the tech and business leaders who sought closer ties with President Donald Trump ahead of his return to the White House could soon face new congressional scrutiny.

Here's how powerbrokers in business and tech reacted to the early midterms results in the aftermath of the polls closing across the country:

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder

Reid Hoffman is a Democratic megadonor.

JP Yim/Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative

Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn and a Democratic megadonor, reacted to the party's big wins in a post on X Tuesday evening.

"Voters made clear they demand a different kind of country. Americans want an economy that can compete globally and deliver for them at home. And they made clear that they want leaders they can trust to fight for their constituents," he wrote.

"This night blew the doors off our expectations. From Texas to Ohio, Kentucky to Iowa, and South Carolina to Indiana, voters rejected the status quo. Tonight's lesson: Never discount any voter in any place," he continued.

Hoffman has been active in politics and vocal about his support for Democrats, spending tens of millions this election cycle. He also spent millions to support Kamala Harris's campaign in 2024.

Hoffman has previously said the Democratic Party had alienated Silicon Valley and was partly to blame for its shift to the right.

Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Capital CEO

Brad Gerstner is the architect of "Trump Accounts."

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Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, had thoughts on how data center buildout in the US would be affected by the elections.

In a guest appearance on the All-In podcast livestream Tuesday evening, Gerstner said fears that a "blue tsunami" could make it difficult to build new data centers are "overblown."

But he said that election results could slow down the development of the centers, and candidates like Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat who won the Texas gubernatorial race Tuesday, could "issue a moratorium on new data centers." He said this could be "really challenging for the AI infratrade."

Gerstner also said that Republicans and the AI community have "struggled with the messaging" over AI as the affordability crisis has weighed on Americans' minds.

The investor is the architect of "Trump Accounts," the investment vehicle for children in the country that launched in July.

Dylan Patel, SemiAnalysis CEO

Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis, speaks during the Raise summit in Paris, France, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. The annual conference gathers global leaders and key speakers in tech and AI. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Dylan Patel, CEO of SemiAnalysis, hinted at what he believes a blue wave could mean for the AI buildout.

"I am now bullish space datacenters," Patel said in a post on X alongside a screenshot of results out of Texas that showed Hinojosa with an early lead over incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Ahead of the midterms, some in tech expressed concern that Democratic wins would mean additional scrutiny on data centers, which have faced fierce opposition in communities across the US.

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Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, routing Republicans nationwide with historic victories that will give them powerful new leverage over Donald Trump for the remainder of his presidency.

Democrats will soon have the ability to hold up not just Trump’s legislative agenda, but also any appointments he makes to his cabinet or the federal judiciary – including the supreme court, where conservatives have a 6-3 majority.

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A public inquiry into the $368bn Aukus nuclear submarine agreement has called the plan “the worst, riskiest and most costly defence decision ever made by an Australian government”, urging its immediate termination.

Former Labor senator and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett and former chief of defence Adm Chris Barrie led the inquiry dominated by critics of the deal with the UK and US, recommending the suspension of plans for new bases and for a royal commission to be held into the agreement signed by the former Morrison government.

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Democrats are hoping to win a majority of governor’s offices across the US after marking significant victories in Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa.

One of the biggest prizes of the night was the Texas governorship, with Democratic state representative Gina Hinojosa unseating Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in a stunning upset. Hinojosa will be the first Latina governor of the state, and the first Democrat elected to the Texas governorship in 30 years.

Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton has clinched a historic victory in the US Senate race in Kansas, defeating Republican incumbent Roger Marshall. He will become the first Democrat to represent the state in the chamber since 1932.

Kansas emerged as an unexpected battleground this year as Democrats sought to regain control of the Senate. The closely watched Cook Political Report rated the race as a toss-up, noting it was one of several agriculture-heavy areas to be hit hard by high fuel and fertilizer prices because of Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

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In a stunning political upset that would have seemed improbable only a few weeks ago, Democrat Gina Hinojosa has defeated three-term governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday, shattering the Republican grip on the state’s highest and most powerful executive office.

Hinojosa’s historic victory – she will be the state’s first ever Latina governor – ended Abbott’s bid for an unprecedented fourth term, and delivered Democrats their most consequential victory in the state in a generation.

Democrat Sherrod Brown will return to the US Senate, as Ohio’s voters rejected the incumbent Jon Husted in a significant defeat for Republicans.

Brown’s bid for a comeback after being ousted from the seat he held for 18 years in 2024 became one of the marquee contests of this year’s midterm elections, and a key test of whether Democrats can regain support among the working class and rural voters who have deserted them in recent years.

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Democrat James Talarico has won the US Senate race in Texas, breaking a 38-year drought for his party in the Republican stronghold and delivering a stunning blow to Donald Trump.

Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton, the state attorney general and a staunch ally of the US president, in one of the most closely watched contests of the midterm elections to decide control of Congress.

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Xavier Becerra, the Democratic former health and human services secretary, was elected governor of California, marking the historic ascension of a longtime public servant who has vowed to resist Donald Trump’s agenda for the final two years of his presidency.

Becerra, 68, is the son of Mexican immigrants and will become California’s first Latino governor since 1875, a milestone in a state where more than 40% of residents are Latino and nearly one in two children has an immigrant parent. Becerra was the overwhelming favorite to defeat Steve Hilton, the Republican endorsed by Trump.

The African National Congress is on course for a bruising result in South Africa’s local elections on Wednesday as voters go to the polls amid deep discontent over water outages, power cuts and crumbling infrastructure.

The former liberation movement, which Nelson Mandela led to power in 1994 at the end of apartheid as South Africa’s first black president, is still likely to be the largest party. However, polls show it getting less than a third of the vote, down from 45.6% at the last municipal elections in 2021 and 40.2% in 2024’s national elections.

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• Early midterm election results show a huge Democratic surge across the country.
• Delighted X posters are now semi-jokingly declaring that DEI is so back.
• A leftward political shift could reignite DEI focus in companies, reversing previous trends.

If early election night results are any barometer, it might be time for everyone to get more woke.

So far, polls across the country show a likely blue tsunami, with traditional Republican strongholds chipped away at — or even flipped — by Democrats. Jon Ossoff won reelection in Georgia handily; South Carolina's Senate seat flipped to blue; and Democrat James Talarico is projected to be Texas' next senator.

The internet has come to its own (somewhat joking) conclusion: DEI is so back. Delighted X users spent the evening joking that pronouns will return to email signatures, whether workers like it or not.

"YOU HAVE TWELVE HOURS TO PLACE THE PRONOUNS BACK IN YOUR EMAIL OR YOU WILL BE REPORTED," one X post read. Another joked that should Democrats win 53 or more Senate seats, pronouns would have to return to email signatures. New York City Council member Chi Ossé wrote "PRONOUNS BACK IN BIOS NOW" in response to favorable projections for Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico. And yet another X post declared that there would be a new gender with every seat Democrats won.

Of course, these are flippant meme fodder, but they get at a potential vibe shift. In the wake of President Donald Trump's 2024 victory, both the federal government and, in turn, companies across the economy cracked down on DEI initiatives.

Some firms did indeed tell workers to remove their pronouns from their email signatures; others publicly pulled back on DEI initiatives and goals, leaving some workers feeling disheartened and others affirmed. Overall, it was a rapid about-face from 2020-era rhetoric and initiatives that centered on racial equity and inclusion, and a pivot that many companies embraced in an effort to not attract the ire of Trump and the federal government.

Now, though, the political landscape has been thrown into another seismic shift with the apparent leftward turn in the midterms. For the firms that have stuck with their DEI initiatives, that might be welcome news, as voters embrace a new group of leaders. And, of course, DEI never fully went away: Many companies still quietly embraced diverse hiring practices, but shirked away from the term.

There's also always the possibility that the likely Democratic gains lead to new innovation; as one X poster wrote, "We're doing double pronouns now!"

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Amy Acton was elected governor of Ohio on Tuesday – a rare victory for the Democratic party in a state that Donald Trump carried three times.

Acton, 60, led Ohio’s health department through the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. She will become the first woman to serve as Ohio’s governor. Her defeat of Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur endorsed by Trump, also ends 16 years of Republican control of the governor’s office. She is the first Democrat to win the post since Ted Strickland in 2006.

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Deb Haaland, the former interior secretary under Joe Biden, has been elected governor of New Mexico and will become the first Native American woman to govern a US state.

Haaland, a Democrat, defeated her Republican opponent Gregg Hull, 60, a businessman and the longtime mayor of the city of Rio Rancho.

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Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who campaigned on healthcare affordability, has won the race for US Senate in South Carolina, making her the first Democrat to represent the state in the Senate for over a quarter century.

Andrews had faced an uphill battle in what has been seen as a reliably Republican state against Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican powerbroker Lindsey Graham.

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Democrats have won three of the four congressional seats in Florida that Republicans redrew this year in their favor, and are narrowly leading in the fourth. It’s a surprising result that underscores how strongly Democratic candidates are performing on election night.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Republicans who control the state legislature redrew the state’s congressional map earlier this year to create four new districts – the ninth, 14th, 22nd, and 25th – that favored Republicans. Had the districts been in place in 2024, Donald Trump would have won all but one by double digits. He would have won the final district by about nine points.

An alleged attack on a One Nation supporter is not believed to have been politically motivated, Victoria police say, clarifying that a “blunt weapon” was allegedly used rather than a baseball bat as originally reported.

On Tuesday, police confirmed they arrested a 37-year-old Hampton Park man and a 14-year-old boy over the alleged attack on a 60-year-old man outside his Torquay home on Sunday night.

The rideshare behemoth Uber has suffered a bruising loss in Australia’s high court that will cost it more than $80m in unpaid taxes.

The court on Wednesday dismissed Uber’s claim it was not liable to pay payroll tax in New South Wales after it argued that it does not employ drivers and claimed that money paid to its drivers were not wages under state law.

Republican Byron Donalds will be the next governor of Florida, and its first Black leader, after defeating Democrat David Jolly in one of the country’s most-watched midterm races.

Donalds was endorsed by Donald Trump and appeared twice with the president at rallies in the campaign’s closing days despite previously appearing to distance himself. He will succeed Ron DeSantis, the former presidential candidate who will be termed out of office in January.

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Ashley Moody fended off a challenge from Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, to win Florida’s special election and retain her seat in the US Senate.

It was the first election win for the Republican, who was appointed by Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis in January 2025, when Marco Rubio became US secretary of state. Moody will serve the remainder of his term until the 2028 election.

Canada has joined a coalition of countries refusing to play ⁠ice ​hockey teams from Russia, with prime minister Mark Carney saying Russian skaters will not be able to compete in ⁠a world junior championship next month due to the war in Ukraine.

“While Russia and Belarus are supporting this illegal, unjustified, horrific ‌war in Ukraine, as long as that’s going on, there will be none of ​those athletes competing for their countries in Canada,” Carney told reporters on Tuesday.

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Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s former governor, was elected to represent the state in the US Senate, marking the first time in 10 years voters sent a Democrat to US Congress’ upper chamber.

Cooper defeated Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair, to succeed Thom Tillis, the outgoing US senator.

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Chris Pappas, the four-term Democratic congressman, has won New Hampshire’s US Senate race, protecting the open seat from a Republican flip in a closely fought contest against John Sununu, the former senator.

Pappas, 46, is a centrist voice in the US House who has at times broken with his party on major legislation. He focused his Senate campaign on serving as a bulwark against the Trump administration, which is unpopular in the Granite State. Pappas will be the first openly gay man to serve in the US Senate.

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Jon Ossoff has been re-elected to the Senate in Georgia, defeating Mike Collins, his Republican challenger.

Ossoff made his re-election campaign a referendum on the Trump administration’s misdeeds, highlighting self-serving stock trades and business deals by the president and those in the president’s orbit, as well as the consequences of the war in Iran and Trump’s trade policies on the pocketbooks of Georgia’s voters.

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Democrats are poised to take control of the US House of Representatives after two tumultuous years of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A change in House control would give Democrats a perch to conduct robust oversight of the administration for its final two years.

Republicans currently hold 218 seats in the House and Democrats have 214. (There is one vacancy in a Republican seat, one vacancy in a Democratic seat and one Republican member switched his party affiliation to independent). Democrats need to flip just three seats to gain control of the House, something they are expected to do easily.

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Canva is cutting or relocating more than 1,200 jobs, representing 22% of its global workforce, as part of a major restructure that includes laying off staff who helped build the Australian-founded design platform.

The changes mirror a trend across the technology sector, where software companies are fighting to stay competitive against cheaper artificial intelligence disrupters while aggressively embedding AI tools themselves.

Republicans are defending their majority in the US Senate against resurgent Democrats, who believe voters’ dissatisfaction with Donald Trump will put them back in control of Congress’ upper chamber just two years after being driven into the minority.

The first race results have begun trickling in, with the Associated Press calling the Virginia Senate election for Democratic incumbent Mark Warner, who was expected to win.

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Voting in US midterm elections took place relatively smoothly nationwide on Tuesday, with only a handful of reported issues as tens of millions of voters cast their ballots.

With control of US Congress in the balance, glitches at polling locations were minimal as Americans lined up to vote.

Don Feria/AP Content Services for Anthropic

• Cat Wu, who helped scale Claude Code into one of tech's most important products, has left Anthropic.
• She joined the startup in 2024 and left weeks ahead of its initial public offering.
• When asked if she's taking time off, Wu said, "post agi!"

Cat Wu, a top product manager at Anthropic and one of a small group behind the launch of its blockbuster tool Claude Code, left the company on Friday.

Wu announced her departure on Tuesday afternoon on X, thanking the Claude Code team and its users and reflecting on the tool's progress. As the head of product for Claude Code, Wu served as one of the two top leaders and evangelists for the technology alongside its original creator, Boris Cherny.

Claude Code, under Wu and Cherny's leadership, turned into one of the most important products in the AI industry's history. The tech gave Anthropic the viral product it needed to boost its revenues and access more funding for compute, and it turned the company into a bigger rival for OpenAI.

Wu did not say what prompted her departure and did not immediately respond to requests for comment. She's leaving at a crucial moment for Anthropic, as it churns toward a gargantuan initial public offering later this month. The company confirmed her departure. Thariq Shihipar, who also worked on Claude Code, announced his own departure last month.

Wu joined Anthropic in summer 2024 and tested an early prototype of Claude Code. In Tuesday's post, she reminisced on that moment: "It worked, I was hooked, and I joined the team."

Anthropic released the tool in research preview in February 2025, announcing it in a brief demo video that featured Wu and Cherny.

The two decamped to AI coding startup Cursor that summer, and then returned to Anthropic a couple of weeks later, The Information reported.

Wu and Cherny then oversaw Claude Code's meteoric rise, which ramped up at the end of 2025. The tool first grew popular as an automatic coder for software engineers, who suddenly had a product that could sprint through entire coding tasks. Tech giants' AI bills with Anthropic soared as more developers started burning through Claude tokens.

Wu also oversees Cowork, Anthropic's tool for non-coding work, which relies on the same AI models and handles knowledge work for non-software engineers.

In an interview on Lenny's Podcast in April, Wu described her role as figuring out the path to bring Claude Code to the "AGI-pilled" version that Cherny envisioned for the future — a reference to the industry term "artificial general intelligence."

In her role, Wu said she worked with marketing, sales, finance, and other teams, and hired some of Anthropic's product managers. She also regularly responded to user requests about Claude Code on social media.

One commenter wrote under her X post on Tuesday, "Are you gonna take that 6 months vacations now?"

Wu answered: "post agi!"

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Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/POLITICO (Getty)

• POLITICO was able to match 166 of California's billionaires with the state's voter file.
• The analysis offers new insights into the billionaires' make-up, political leanings, and voting propensity.
• Registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the billionaires identified.

California's 2026 election has been the year of the billionaire.

For months, a small handful of very, very wealthy people deployed their vast resources in unprecedented sums up and down the ballot. And while their spending drew widespread attention, a new analysis by POLITICO — which, like Business Insider, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — offers a more revealing look at their party affiliations and voting habits.

Some have made their politics abundantly clear.

Tom Steyer, the billionaire philanthropist, attempted this year to buy his way to the governor's mansion with an ultimately unsuccessful $200-plus million primary campaign.

SEIU-UHW's pursuit of Proposition 40, a one-time tax on the state's wealthiest residents, put billionaires on the ballot explicitly, prompting a more than $300 million opposition campaign led by Sergey Brin, one of the world's richest men, who is now positioned to act as a political powerbroker for years to come.

A separate billionaire, surgeon and inventor Gary Michelson, spent tens of millions of his personal fortune to promote his own measure, an immunology bond that would direct billions to an institute that he co-founded. Across the entire ballot, current and former California billionaires have spent a record $612 million on this year's state election.

For years, the country's richest people have wielded a growing influence on the direction and outcome of its politics. In California, this year has supercharged that trendline. But who, in fact, are they?

More than 250 billionaires call California home — or have until recently — according to Forbes. POLITICO was able to match 166 of those individuals with the state's voter file, offering new insights into their make-up, political leanings and voting propensity.

Many of the state's billionaires' names are familiar to the average voter, representing the state's major industries of entertainment and tech — music icons like Dr. Dre and Rihanna, reality TV stars like Kim Kardashian as well as Silicon Valley tech moguls like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (not to be confused with Eric Smidt, the billionaire CEO of Harbor Freight tools).

Others run their businesses in relative anonymity — Donald Friese, the former owner of a glass and glazing products company, and James Scapa, the founder of a software firm Altair Engineering, are unlikely to turn many heads when they walk down the street.

According to POLITICO's analysis, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the billionaires we identified to the California voter file, despite the number of industrial titans who have visited the White House and extended olive branches to President Donald Trump.

"Voters probably think there are more Republicans" among California's billionaire class, said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic leading political data expert in California. "That's more recency bias when you see all the tech elites around the table with Trump."

Republican consultant Mike Murphy said the numbers challenge the assumption that wealthy people are overwhelmingly Republican.

"The old model of politics equates wealth with Republican so people probably assume they've all got to be Republican if they're billionaires," he said, "and I think the data shows it's more complex than that."

Zuckerberg, who has met with Trump on a number occasions and has undergone what some have termed a "MAGA-makeover," was listed as a registered Democrat, according to voter-file data the Secretary of State's office provided in early September. Amodei, another frequent guest of the White House, was also listed as a registered Democrat, as was his AI rival, Sam Altman. Headlining California's class of Republican billionaires that POLITICO identified in the voter file are former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Golden State Warriors and Golden State Valkyries owner Joe Lacob and Trump mega donor and tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey.

But the billionaires were still less Democratic than their state's overall electorate (36% of the billionaires POLITICO matched to the voter file, compared to 45% of the statewide electorate). And they were more likely to have no party preference (39%, compared to 23% of voters statewide). Mitchell said that could reflect a prevailing disdain for the two-party political system.

"One train of thought for a (no-party-preference voter) is: 'I don't know anything about politics, I don't care, I'm just independent.' The other is: 'I'm smarter than these parties, I know what I want,'" Mitchell said. "I'm sure a lot of these billionaires fit into that camp."

Unsurprisingly, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the clear geographic centers of power among the billionaire set. More than 30 people were registered in San Francisco itself and another 15 in Los Angeles, with dozens more in the surrounding cities and suburbs. At least a quarter were born in the state, followed by 8% in New York, and at least 19% in other countries.

While billionaires have seized an outsized role in the state's politics this year, they are also generally high-propensity voters. More than 60% of the billionaires in our dataset voted in each of the last three presidential elections, a higher share than the statewide electorate in both 2024 and 2016. But although generally more engaged than the average voter, just 54% voted in last November's special election and an even lower 51% in the 2024 presidential primaries.

At least some billionaires have already attempted to flee California over the wealth tax. If Prop 40 passes, opponents say, they may not be the last.

This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• Track live results from all 50 states

It’s almost 6pm ET on Tuesday 3 November, and the first round of polls in the US midterm elections are about to close. After months of campaigning, debate and analysis, Americans have been casting their ballots in these critical elections that will take the political temperature of the nation halfway through Donald Trump’s second term – and determine the trajectory of the remainder of his presidency.

Americans, who have already voted early in record numbers and are turning out in numbers significantly outstripping the totals from the 2022 midterms, will decide the balance of power in Congress and, therefore, Trump’s ability to advance his agenda for the next two years.

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Concert tickets that surge to $1,650, an airline pocketing $75m of unused flight credits and a washer/dryer cycle that takes 25 hours have all made the dishonour roll in consumer advocacy group Choice’s annual Shonky awards.

Now in their 21st year, the Shonkys spotlight Australia’s worst products and services as decided by Choice.

In the battleground state of Maine, Todd Cox, 63, has supported the state’s incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins not once, but twice, in previous elections. Not this time.

On Tuesday, Cox, a technology professional, cast his vote for Collins’ Democratic challenger Troy Jackson – driven not by pressing local issues, but broader concern “for the direction the country is going in”, he said.

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• US midterm elections 2026: live results from Senate, House and governor races in all 50 states

Donald Trump faced a political reckoning on Tuesday as millions of Americans voted in midterm elections that could shift the balance of power in Washington and define the final two years of his divisive presidency.

Based on consistently favourable opinion polls, Democrats were optimistic about regaining control of the House of Representatives and potentially also the Senate, although the party has suffered enough anguish during the Trump era to remain wary.

Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg via Getty Images

• Canva says 1,271 employees — 22% of its workforce — will be affected by a major reorganization.
• In a 1,600-word memo, Canva's CEO wrote that it's simplifying ranks and moving more roles to Sydney.
• Employees who lose their jobs will get at least six months' pay. The company hasn't said how many will be cut.

Canva has announced a major restructuring.

On Tuesday, the design software company's CEO, Melanie Perkins, published a memo sent to employees titled "An important update on our team." In it, she said that 1,271 employees, roughly 22% of the workforce, will be affected by a reorganization. Some employees will see their roles change or relocate, she said, while others will lose their jobs.

It comes after Canva lowered its growth expectations. In August, the company changed its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%. In Tuesday's memo, Perkins said that this year has been the company's "hardest year yet" and that "growth has slowed for the first time in a decade."

Canva has also faced fresh competition from AI tools, including OpenAI's and Google's image-generating models.

Read the memo:

Why we're making these changes

What we're changing

How we approached these decisions

Supporting those who are leaving

• Everyone will receive at least six months of salary, inclusive of statutory entitlements, regardless of location.
• Removing the one-year vesting cliff for those who joined in the past year.
• Twelve months of continued healthcare coverage in countries where we currently provide this.
• Twelve months of Canva Care (our EAP), with this coverage also extending to family members.
• Dedicated career support, including one-on-one coaching, interview preparation, and one year of LinkedIn Premium. We're also dedicating a significant portion of our Talent Acquisition team to helping people review their resumes and practice for interviews to find their next opportunity.
• An opt-in alumni talent directory that we'll proactively share with our investors, partners, and wider industry network to help connect departing Canvanauts with new roles.
• Everyone leaving will be able to keep their Canva MacBook as we know not everyone has a personal laptop.

What happens next

The Reed and Fehr families

• Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr were killed in the Learjet crash on Sunday.
• Reed and Fehr fell in love fast and eventually opened up a hotel together in Roatán, Honduras.
• Former coworkers mourned the couple, calling Reed the "perfect teammate."

Rachael Reed spent decades visiting the island of Roatán. She traveled to the Honduras locale in her teens and quarantined there with her partner, Charmi Fehr, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, she and Fehr put down roots and became owners of a boutique, idyllic hotel.

On Sunday, their love story was cut short.

Reed and Fehr were traveling from Austin to the Bahamas on a private plane with entrepreneur Adam Robinson and his family, whom they called friends. The Learjet crashed near Greenacres and Palm Beach, Florida, killing all nine of its occupants.

Across social media, friends and relatives mourned the couple. They commented on memories of Fehr from his childhood in Paraguay and Reed from her high school years in Oklahoma. Whitney Pyle worked with Reed when she was an ICU nurse. She told Business Insider that Reed showed great kindness to hospitalized patients and their families in their dying days.

"That's very hard to see," Pyle said. "What once she gave to patients and their families, now her family is going through."

From nurse to brow artist

Reed graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a degree in nursing, according to her LinkedIn. While studying, Reed was a Red Cross representative. She quickly took on nursing gigs in-state and in San Diego, her profile says.

Jason Suttles worked with Reed shortly after she graduated in the mid-2010s. He considered her the "perfect teammate," attentive and receptive to feedback.

"She didn't come out of school acting like she knew everything, or that anything that we were doing wasn't interesting to her," Suttles told Business Insider. "In the nursing world, where you don't have anybody but your teammates, it's good to have good ones."

Reed described her career as spanning "diverse industries, including real estate, critical care nursing, and aesthetics" on LinkedIn.

She owned BrowBabe, an Oklahoma City microblading studio. After they worked together as nurses, Pyle said that she connected her mother with Reed for services. She "made people feel welcomed," Pyle said.

The Oklahoma City shop is now operated by Cassandra Barnes. In an Instagram post, Barnes called Reed the "original BrowBabe," explaining that she was a friend and mentor who introduced her to the world of makeup.

"A piece of her will always live on in the work I do and the passion I have for this industry," Barnes wrote.

A traveler's love story

Reed was an adventure-seeker, hiking to waterfalls and scuba diving. In 2021, she linked her globe-trotting back to another business line: real estate. "Buying a house like this is literally what opened up my world of traveling," she wrote on her sister's home listing.

The couple also renovated and sold an Oklahoma City house in 2021, and considered selling another one of her Oklahoma properties in June.

Travel also brought Reed and Fehr together. In 2019, Reed was traveling solo in Peru, according to travel blogger Madison Krigbaum, who visited the property. Reed met Fehr, who was also visiting the South American country from Paraguay, at a Peruvian hostel, the blogger wrote: "It was love at first sight."

The blogger wrote that Fehr would "later become her fiancé." In an image shared by the families, both Reed and Fehr wear rings on their left hands.

Reed had long been connected to Roatán, an island off the northern coast of Honduras. She first visited in the mid-2000s at age 15. Her mother did nonprofit work and built a school there, according to the travel blog. Reed said that she has traveled to Roatán three to four times a year ever since that first trip.

In November 2019, Reed and Fehr traveled to Roatán with their poodle, Marlie. What was initially meant to be a shorter trip extended with the COVID-19 pandemic. After a period of isolation, the couple got used to island life and made friends with their neighbors. "We take care of each other," she wrote at the time. "We bake bread for one another."

After months of boating, fishing, and meditating, Reed and Fehr returned to the United States after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted, according to the travel blog. They eventually split time between the US and the island.

Reed loved Roatán deeply. In a video posted to Facebook, their friend Bryon Robbins said that she cared for the island's children and animals alike, chasing after the motorcycle of a man who had abused a dog. They could talk and talk, he said.

"She would make a 50-minute ride to the east end feel like 15 minutes," he said.

The new hoteliers

In 2023, Reed and Fehr established a new kind of connection to the island: a 16-room hotel.

The couple co-owned Arca Boutique Hotel, a beachfront property promising gorgeous views and Caribbean cuisine. A review of the hotel from Wanderluxe said that Reed was "passionate about her adopted second home," personally helping guests book massages and find the island's best bars and restaurants.

The hotel leaned into sustainability; it was "woven into every detail," the hotel said in an Instagram post. Reed and Fehr installed energy-efficient lighting, eliminated single-use straws and food containers, and said they only worked with tour operators who showed a commitment to the island's natural beauty.

Guests seemed to love it. The hotel has a 4.9-star average on TripAdvisor. "Both of the owners were so kind and knew us by name within the first day," one reviewer wrote.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Arca said that Reed and Fehr were far more than the hotel's owners. "They were family," the hotel wrote. "They believed in us, inspired us, and gave us the opportunity to be part of something truly special."

Reed knew as well as anyone else: life can change on a dime, so you have to enjoy every moment.

"I've learned that our plans are really pretty laughable most of the time," she wrote in a pandemic-era blog post. "In the blink of an eye, things can change."