Good morning! The portal showing a two-way livestream of Dublin and a rotating host city has been relocated to Philadelphia. Things went south (read: boobs and 9/11 videos) almost immediately in New York. We'll find out soon if Philly does any better.

In other news, members of the House have now proposed more than 10,000 bills this Congress (which began in January 2023). The numbers reboot when the next Congress is sworn in on January 3, so very few of these things will ever become law. But still, the last time they hit the big five digits was way back in 1977 — when Joe Biden was serving his fourth year in the Senate.

RULES

😲 What if Trump and Harris tie?

It's a tale as old as ties. Every few years, an NFL player is confused by his team's game ending in a tie. Somebody has to win! But overtime can't go on forever. That's why ties exist. Thankfully, it doesn't quite work that way for presidential races.

To refresh our mutual memory, the Electoral College is America's presidential election system. According to the Constitution, each state gets a number of electors (read: points) equal to that state's total number of representatives and senators. So tiny Delaware, which has just one rep, gets three electoral votes. California's a big boy, though, with 52 representatives. So it gets 54 electoral votes. There are 538 electoral votes in total. A candidate needs a majority — that's 270 — to win.

• None of us are actually voting for president. We're voting for electors who will then go and vote for the candidate we chose.

• Sometimes they go off track and vote for the wrong person. While some states have laws preventing these so-called "faithless electors," doing this is legal in most of the country. That's how nine randos won electoral votes in 2016.

The Electoral College isn't what you might consider "popular." Two-thirds of Americans think we should dump it in favor of a simpler, more democratic popular vote.

• Defenders of the system say it exists to ensure candidates can't just camp out in a few large cities. They say it ensures small states still have a voice, which is the only reason they agreed to join the Union in the first place.

If nobody wins a majority, we go into election overtime (and political geeks hyperventilate). Since we usually only have two candidates, this only happens in the event of a 269-269 tie. But the rules are the same no matter how many candidates are involved.

In this situation, Congress takes over. The House picks the next president and the Senate picks the vice president. The Senate votes like normal, with every senator getting one vote for VP. But things get weird in the House.

• Each state's House delegation gets one vote. So Texas's 38 representatives decide amongst themselves who Texas wants. And Iowa's four members make their own choice.

• With 50 states, there are only 50 votes in total here. A candidate needs 26 to win. The House keeps voting and voting until they make the call.

• This has happened three times, all in the distant past: 1800, 1824, and 1836.

This tie-breaker wouldn’t happen until January. As an added bonus, it could give us a bizarre Harris/Vance or Trump/Walz administration. And really, isn't that the chaotic future we all deserve?

GOVERNMENT

💊 The Biden administration wants to force health insurers to cover the full cost of over-the-counter birth control and contraceptives. Power to make the change comes from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Due to a mandatory public comment period, however, this likely won't be finalized (that is, it won't take effect) by the time Biden leaves office in 89 days. And the next president might decide to dump this before it kicks in.

🚫 New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules targeting fake online reviews are now in effect. Buying fake reviews, suppressing bad ones, and using AI-generated fake testimonials are now banned behaviors. Buying fake social media followers is also a no-go. Breaking the new rules could land a business in hot water with fines of up to $51,744 per violation.

💰️ Everyone's favorite agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced new tax brackets and inflation adjustments for 2025. The standard deduction will jump to $15,000 for single taxpayers next year. The 22% rate will now hit (taxable) money you earn that falls between $48,475 and $103,650, while the top tax bracket — paying that thicc 37% rate — jumps to $626,350.

🕵️ The FBI is investigating a critical leak of classified intelligence documents that assess Israel's coming retaliatory attack on Iran. The docs in question, which come from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), landed on a pro-Iranian Telegram chat channel. U.S. officials made clear to Israel that the leak is being taken seriously and will not happen again.

POLITICS

📆 Harris gets celeb support as Georgia votes look good for Trump

The final pre-election fundraising numbers are in. The Harris campaign and its associated Democratic Party committees brought in an eye-popping $359 million in September, according to new federal filings. They entered October with $346 million on hand — more than enough to finish the race strong.

• The Trump campaign and its associated Republican Party committees, on the other hand, raised "just" $160 million last month. They had $283 million in the bank at the start of this month.

• Elsewhere, a legal fight is brewing over which states American citizens who live abroad should vote in.

Kamala Harris won the birthday lotto when she turned 60 on Sunday and Stevie Wonder sang her “Happy Birthday.” That’s not the only celeb support she’s getting, though. Bruce Springsteen will headline Harris's first joint rally with Barack Obama tomorrow in Atlanta before kicking off a swing-state tour. And Eminem introduced Obama at a rally last night in Detroit.

• Harris sat down for interviews with NBC and Telemundo yesterday.

• The Harris campaign is privately worried that the VP is losing North Carolina. They also see cracks in the three so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Michigan is of particular concern, as the state’s Arab voters turn on her.

• Team Harris is running ads in swing states slamming (left-wing) Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein as they try to avoid a repeat of 2016. That year, Stein took 31,000 votes in Wisconsin as Hillary Clinton lost the state by 23,000.

Donald Trump rallied for the second day in a row last night in North Carolina, where he leads in an average of polls by just 0.4%. He appeared on stage with ex-Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who announced at the event that she was joining the Republican Party due to Trump’s “leadership.”

• Trump will record an episode with podcasting king Joe Rogan on Friday.

• Trump has embraced early voting this year after eschewing it in 2020. And that support might be paying off. Some political journalists believe early voting numbers in Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada point to a Trump victory.

• The Trump campaign asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate possible illegal foreign election interference. The cause? A team of 100 U.K. Labour Party officials reportedly in the U.S. campaigning for Harris.

Elon Musk is giving $1 million per day to a random swing state voter who signs his pro-Trump online petition. But some Democrats, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, are crying foul and believe the move might be illegal.

• Meanwhile, in the battle of billionaires, Bill Gates recently tossed a pro-Harris group $50 million.

TRIVIA

The poet John Donne once said, "No man is an island." For the bargain-bin price of $72 million, you can test that theory with your very own private island on a huge freshwater lake in Montana. This 350-acre bundle of joy even comes fitted with an insane 45,000-square-foot unfinished mansion. If that’s not your thing, the U.S. is full of more populated islands. In fact, two states are mostly island by population. In which two U.S. states do a majority of residents live on islands?

Hint: Sadly, Rhode Island is not on this list.

BRIEFS

● The CDC linked a deadly E. coli outbreak to onions used on Quarter Pounders from McDonald's. Cases are mostly limited to the upper plains and Mountain West states. Presumably, this is unrelated to Trump’s recent stint manning the fryer in Pennsylvania.

● The congressional task force investigating the Secret Service's failures at the July 13 Trump rally just dropped its interim report. The basic conclusion on what caused the failure? Poor communication between the feds and local officials

● Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia election workers $150 million for defaming them after the 2020 election. Among the goods he’s gotta give ‘em? His fancy Manhattan apartment and a watch gifted to him by the president of France after 9/11.

● Amid accusations of Russian meddling, 50.5% of voters in Moldova just backed joining the E.U. The process takes time, though. The lil country in Southeastern Europe (squeezed between Romania and Ukraine) likely won't fully join the E.U. until 2030.

QUOTE

ANSWER

First on the list, coming in hot with a 100% island-dwelling population is Hawaii. It’s literally an island chain in the middle of the Pacific…

Up next is the less obvious New York. About 51% of the Empire State’s population lives on Long Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan Island.

Alaska comes in a very distant third place with about 8% of its population living on islands.