Early voting begins, final phase of midterms is here

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On the roster: Early voting begins, final phase of midterms is here – Time Out: Star wars IRL – Report: Rosenstein suggests he secretly recorded Trump – Senate Republicans agree to some of Ford’s conditions – Dilly, dilly

EARLY VOTING BEGINS, FINAL PHASE OF MIDTERMS IS HERE
AP: “Much of the political world is consumed with a battle over a Supreme Court nominee, an expanding international trade war and President Donald Trump’s social media posts. Yet here in Minnesota, the first votes of the 2018 midterm elections are being cast. Voting machines are set up inside city buildings. A series of get-out-the-vote rallies is scheduled. And each party is spending millions of dollars to push its supporters to the polls. While Election Day 2018 is technically Nov. 6, Minnesota law allows in-person voting to begin Friday — a full 46 days early — making it the first battleground state to begin casting actual votes in the broader fight for control of Congress. Voters in every corner of the nation will soon follow. South Dakota also opens early voting on Friday, and four more states follow in the next six days, including key states including New Jersey and Missouri. California, Montana and Arizona are among seven others that allow early voting in the subsequent two weeks. It may feel early, but make no mistake: The final phase of the 2018 midterm season has begun. The commencement of voting in key states underscores the heightened significance of virtually every major development — political or otherwise — on the state and national stage in the coming days. Economic indicators, the president’s tweets, new revelations in the special counsel investigation and even the weather begin to matter much more as voters decide whether to go to the polls.”

THE RULEBOOK: EXPECTATIONS MEET REALITY
“THE erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety; and these may, in a particular manner, be expected to flow from the establishment of a constitution founded upon the total or partial incorporation of a number of distinct sovereignties.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 82

TIME OUT: STAR WARS IRL
Atlantic: “Nearly 1 million miles away from Earth, a top-hat-shaped spacecraft called Gaia has spent the past five years scanning the galaxy and studying its stellar inhabitants. In April, Gaia produced the best census of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy to date… Teresa Antoja, a scientist at the University of Barcelona … and her colleagues were examining the movements of more than 6 million stars in the census when they noticed something very strange. … [The stars] individual paths in this great rotation weren’t uniform. … The scientists saw a distinct shape overlaid against the usual distribution of the Milky Way—the delicate coils of a tight spiral, like in the shell of a snail. … The snail shape persisted, so they concluded it was a real phenomenon. And since it wasn’t a glitch, it needed an explanation. Amina Helmi, a scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and one of the study’s authors, suggested the involvement of a small galaxy called Sagittarius. Sagittarius is like a neighbor to the Milky Way. The small galaxy, consisting of a few tens of millions of stars, orbits near ours, and may have even swept past the Milky Way’s edges hundreds of millions of years ago. … The scientists hypothesized that when Sagittarius swung by the Milky Way, it disturbed some stars with its gravity, putting them on funky trajectories compared with others in the galaxy.”
 
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SCOREBOARD
Trump job performance 
Average approval: 38.8 percent
Average disapproval: 54.2 percent
Net Score: -15.4 points
Change from one week ago: down 0.8 points
[Average includes: Gallup: 38% approve – 56% disapprove; CNN: 37% approve – 57% disapprove; Quinnipiac University: 38% approve – 54% disapprove; NPR/Marist: 38% approve – 54% disapprove; Grinnell College/Selzer: 43% approve – 50% disapprove.]

Control of House
Republican average: 39.8 percent
Democratic average: 50.2 percent
Advantage: Democrats plus 10.4 points
Change from one week ago: no change in points 
[Average includes: CNN: 52% Dems – 42% GOP; Quinnipiac University: 52% Dems – 38% GOP; NPR/Marist: 50% Dems – 38% GOP; Grinnell College/Selzer: 45% Dems – 43% GOP; ABC/WaPo: 52% Dems – 38% GOP.]