On August 25th, advocacy groups funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel opened an advertising campaign against Proposition 40, under the names Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes. On November 1st, the Hill reported the measure had split California's own Democrats, with experts raising unresolved questions about its economic impact. One day before voters went to the polls, a self-described wealthy Californian wrote in the Guardian that the tax would ease inequality and bolster healthcare without draining the state's coffers or triggering that same exodus. On November 3rd, Californians voted Proposition 40 down.

The final campaign filing closed on November 10th at $425 million spent to defeat Proposition 40, the most expensive opposition campaign in California history, outspending the measure's own backers 250 to 1.

The same day, the New York Post reported that Proposition 38 had officially passed, with more than 54 percent of the vote. Proposition 38 hands $4 billion in state money to two billionaires to run a research institute of their own choosing. Set the two numbers next to each other and the ballot reconciles itself: the billionaires' side spent $425 million of its own money defeating a 5 percent, one-time tax on itself, and collected $4 billion of the public's money on the same ballot, the same day, from the same voters. $425 million moved out of billionaires' accounts to stop a check written against them. $4 billion moved out of the state's accounts on a check written to them. The gap is not a mystery requiring a forensic accountant; it is arithmetic, filed with the Secretary of State on the same afternoon.

Today we are making an indictment that names a man who never left his cell, which is not a dish you can get over here, so I shall go slowly. You will need three men the Justice Department calls Iranian operatives, a base called RAF Fairford, twelve B-1 bombers that were there and then were not, and a telephone line out of a jail in New York.

Clive A line to a jail. I've sent verses from the box room that got a thinner reply than that.

Gary Verses. The man moved aircraft out of the country from inside a cell; you can't get the landlord round from the sofa.

Begin with September: Iranian operatives are accused of directing people to drive vans toward RAF Fairford's gates, some carrying fuel barrels, at a base housing American aircraft and crew.

That Thursday a sixth man, a dual British-Iranian national, 25, was arrested in Westminster on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts; officers searched two properties. By Saturday he was out on bail — this part of the dish never finished cooking.

Rob Let go again. That's the house rhythm — something breaks, someone's released, and we carry on as if the boiler's the crisis.

RAF Fairford itself may be taken by both ends and turned over: that same Saturday the Pentagon pulled all twelve B-1 bombers off it, back to their home stations in the United States, weeks after the threat was first identified.

Later in October, two men in London were charged under Britain's National Security Act 2023: Mohmed Abdulkarim, 24, with assisting a foreign intelligence service, and Nouman Essghir, 24, with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to Britain, at RAF Fairford, on 22 August.

Gary Prejudicial to the state. I'm prejudicial to that shed door, and I've still got a hammer waiting its turn.

Now the part people are afraid of: the architect never got near a van. The Justice Department names him as Mohammad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian and Iraqi national, who ran the plot from inside a jail in New York, passing instructions out as coded calls to his family, who passed them on to two co-conspirators to buy chemicals for it.

France 24 has the charge as 'Iranian operatives,' quotation marks left in. CBS has them at home as Iran-backed operatives; Fox News, Iran-backed suspects — no quotes either place.

You will be looking for the attack itself. There is none; the Guardian calls this a foiled attack, which is the only kind an indictment gets to describe.

This one is eaten by the Justice Department, which gets an indictment naming an architect it never has to extradite. Britain pays at Westminster Magistrates' Court, for a base the Americans had already emptied.

Keith Running the whole thing from a cell he never left. There's a format in that — no location needed, just a phone, same as this kitchen some mornings.

On 4 November, Schumer told reporters the issue was not him, that he would be reelected majority leader next month despite the dissent of what The Hill called a handful of newly elected senators. The caucus had not voted. It still has not.

The next day, the AFL-CIO filed its own number: 639 union members had won office that week, a tally the federation called a rebuke to the money spent trying to buy a different Senate. Darline Graham in South Carolina, said the Senate needed generational change on both sides of the aisle. The machinists' union, 600,000 members, wrote him a letter asking him to step aside. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked whether she would back him and declined.

On Tuesday the dissent gained two names Schumer had not counted in his handful. Bernie Sanders, who says he has known Schumer for more than 30 years, told reporters: "I like Chuck. Nobody who works harder than Chuck Schumer. But in my view, the time is now for change, and I will not be supporting Chuck to be re-elected as the Democratic leader." Elissa Slotkin of Michigan was named in the same Hill story, saying no. A handful plus Hamilton, Andrews, a 600,000-member union, and two sitting senators is not a handful. It is a count, and Schumer is the only name in it who has not released his own.

That is a condition on the caucus's next leader, stated before the caucus has chosen one.

Whoopi Goldberg told the party on television, the same day, to get its act together over that leadership fight and spend its energy on gas prices and food aid instead. It was the second time in six days she delivered that warning on the air; the first came 4 November, when she told the party to take care of business after its midterm sweep.

Schumer is still telling reporters he has the votes. The reporters have started asking the other senators instead.

The label is the whole of it, and the label is what Tennessee will not surrender. You will have read that the execution failed. The statute did not. On September 30 the state gave Christa Pike, 50, two syringes of pentobarbital, and more than two hours later she was still breathing — critical condition, her lawyers told a court on October 2, the same day Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions in the state and ordered an inquiry. Its execution chief resigned. A judge ordered the syringes preserved. Preserved, mind you, not discarded. And now the filing: let her lawyers read the supplier's label and future executions in Tennessee could grind to a halt. Which is the arrangement stated outright. Secrecy is the consideration ... the thing the supplier is paid in, and the state cannot spend it twice. Pike paid two doses for the question. The answer stays sealed.