• Elon Musk reportedly arranged bedrooms at Twitter's headquarters, sources told Forbes.
• The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into the reports.
• "We need to make sure the building is being used as intended," a department representative told KQED.

On Tuesday morning, Twitter employees arrived at their San Francisco headquarters to see a startling new development at the office: beds, nightstands, and comfortable armchairs.

Overnight, Musk had converted sections of Twitter's headquarters into bedrooms for "hardcore" staffers, according to Forbes. Musk was showing his support for employees who were so committed to their work they were ready to sleep at the office. 

Sources familiar with the matter told Forbes there were anywhere between 4 to 8 bedrooms per floor that looked "comfortable." 

Now, the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into the reports of Twitter's redesign, according to a tweet from Ted Goldberg, a senior editor at KQED, San Francisco's public radio station. 

"We need to make sure the building is being used as intended," a representative for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection told KQED, according to Golberg. 

Representatives for both Twitter and the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection were both not immediately available for comment.

• Trump Organization was found criminally liable for tax fraud committed by two company executives.
• Donald Trump denounced the jury outcome and claimed the trial was a "political witch hunt."
• The former president said he plans to appeal the results.

Donald Trump lamented that it's hard to be a "Trump" in New York City after a Manhattan jury found the former president's real-estate empire criminally liable of tax fraud on Tuesday.

"New York City is a hard place to be 'Trump,' as businesses and people flee our once Great City," the former President said in a statement.

The Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud on Tuesday after a Manhattan jury deliberated for a total of 10 hours, putting a close to a six-week trial. The company now faces up to $1.6 million in penalties at its sentencing on January 13.

In the statement, Trump said he was disappointed with the verdict and plans to appeal the decision.

Two top executives at the organization are at the center of the conviction: ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg and payroll executive Jeffrey McConney.

In August, Weisselberg pled guilty to 15 counts of tax fraud and other financial crimes and admitted to conspiring with his colleague McConney.

Both men however have denied that the organization stood to benefit

This story is developing. Check back for more information. 

• An Atlanta NLRB director found merit to allegations that Apple violated labor law.
• The allegations included that Apple held captive audience meetings, interrogated workers, and made coercive statements.
• The NLRB said a formal complaint will be issued against Apple if it doesn't settle the charges.

The National Labor Relations Board said Apple violated federal law at an Atlanta retail location in relation to union efforts at the store.

The board's regional director for Atlanta found merit to allegations of captive audience meetings, coercive statements, and interrogation, Kayla Blado, an NLRB spokesperson, told Insider.

Blado said the regional director will issue a formal complaint if Apple doesn't settle the charges, which would lead to a hearing in front of NLRB's Administrative Law Judge. Apple would be able to appeal any ruling from an NLRB judge, and such complaints can eventually make their way to federal court.

Apple, which did not respond to Insider's request for comment, has previously denied wrongdoing in a complaint with similar allegations concerning a New York Apple Store.

The Communications Workers of America, the union that filed an unfair labor practice report against Apple in May, accused the company of holding mandatory meetings at its location in the Atlanta Cumberland Mall that discouraged union membership, a press release from the group said.

"Apple executives think the rules don't apply to them," Tom Smith, organizing director of the CWA said in the press release. "Holding an illegal forced captive audience meeting is not only union-busting, but an example of psychological warfare. We commend the NLRB for recognizing captive audience meetings for exactly what they are: a direct violation of labor rights." 

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the NLRB, urged in a memo in April that the NLRB should find mandatory meetings, where employees are forced to listen to an employer speak about their labor rights, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. As Bloomberg notes, successfully arguing this in a case against a company would represent a change in precedent, as the meetings have previously not been considered a violation of the law.

Apple's retail chief, Deirdre O'Brien, told workers in May that they have a right to unionize, but they also have a right to decline union membership, Bloomberg reports. The company's relationship with its employees is based on "open and collaborative direct engagement," she said in a video address to staffers, according to the report.

"And I worry about what it would mean to put another organization in the middle of our relationship," she said, per Bloomberg. "An organization that doesn't have a deep understanding of Apple or our business, and most importantly, one that I do not believe shares our commitment to you."

CWA said in its press release that the evidence of anti-union practices at the Apple store in Atlanta "affirms that mandatory meetings to discourage union memberships are considered a direct violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which could help set a precedent for future infringements on workers' rights."

The Atlanta Apple Store in Cumberland Mall became the first Apple retail location to file for a union election in April. The employees in Atlanta eventually withdrew their call for a union vote days before the election, alleging intimidation from Apple. 

Apple's Penn Square store in Oklahoma City and its store in Townson, Maryland have both voted to unionize. The CWA has also filed unfair labor reports related to the Oklahoma City store against Apple that it's waiting to hear back about from the NLRB.

• AST SpaceMobile deployed a 693-square-foot communications satellite into orbit called BlueWalker 3.
• Astronomers say it's as bright as some of the brightest stars, and warn it could impact their work.
• The company plans to orbit hundreds of others to provide a space-based broadband network.

In November, AST SpaceMobile unfurled an apartment-sized satellite complete with solar panels and a giant antenna into low Earth orbit.

It is now one of the brightest objects in the sky, outshining stars, the International Astronomical Union said in a statement last week.

—Dr. Jessie Christiansen (@aussiastronomer) November 28, 2022

The 693-square-foot satellite, BlueWalker 3, is designed to provide cell phone service from orbit to Earth. AST SpaceMobile bills it as the "largest-ever commercial communications array deployed in low Earth orbit."

It's one of more than 100 satellites the company plans to launch in the next two years in order to form a constellation-like fleet of satellites moving together.

The IAU shared images that show the bright trail the giant satellite leaves across the sky:

At its maximum brightness, the satellite was almost as bright as Antares and Spica — the 15th and 16th brightest stars in the night sky, respectively — according to observations from IAU astronomers.

Astronomers are also concerned about the potential for radio interference from these "cell phone towers in space," which the IAU warned could disrupt radio astronomy research.

"We are eager to use the newest technologies and strategies to mitigate possible impacts to astronomy," AST SpaceMobile said in a statement shared with Insider. "We are actively working with industry experts on the latest innovations, including next-generation anti-reflective materials."

"We are also engaged with NASA and certain working groups within the astronomy community to participate in advanced industry solutions, including potential operational interventions," the statement read.

Satellite debris can clog our view of the cosmos and create hazards for spacecraft

Over 5,500 satellites already litter low-Earth orbit, according to a recent report by the US's Government Accountability Office. Some estimates suggest 58,000 satellites will be launched by 2030, mostly driven by swarms of satellite constellations.

Leading the way is SpaceX, which already maintains more than 3,000 satellites and may top 12,000 in the coming decade to provide low-cost internet to remote locations.

The mounting number of satellites launched into orbit also adds to dicey close encounters that happen with other orbital debris, such as defunct satellites, hunks of rocket parts, and spacecraft. In October, the International Space Station had swerve to avoid collision with a piece of Russian satellite debris.

Astronomers are also concerned about how satellite constellations contribute to the loss to "humanity's ability to experience the natural night sky," according to the IAU statement.

Already, pristine night skies are diminishing due to light pollution from satellites and other human sources. A September 2021 study found that global light pollution from satellites increased by 49% from 1992 to 2017.

When we look up at night sky, many of the bright lights might not be stars — but satellites.

• The Lensa app creates face-changing effects using machine learning and photos uploaded by users.
• Some users have received images of themselves portrayed in the nude thanks to AI-generated edits.
• The company says Lensa can be tricked into making nudes but some users say they didn't upload NSFW images.

The trending Lensa app — currently the top photo app in the Apple and Google Play stores — generates artistic edits based on user-uploaded reference photos, but its machine-learning technology appears to be creating unintentional nudes of its users.

"Ok so I put my hottest 20 pics into lensa instead of just the first 20 selfies I could find & it came back with a bunch of ai-generated nudes," one user wrote on Twitter. "To be clear, NONE of the photos I submitted included nudity, which the app specifically prohibits!"

That sentiment was echoed by dozens of others, mostly women, saying the app had automatically generated sexualized or outright nude photos of them, despite avoiding not-safe-for-work reference photos in their uploads.

While Lensa parent company Prisma Lab's CEO and co-founder Andrey Usoltsev told TechCrunch such images "can't be produced accidentally" by the app, he said it could be provoked to create nude images through "intentional misconduct," such as uploading nudes against the terms of service (which prohibit uploading content that is "obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive" or otherwise sexualized).

Though it is unclear how often the app generates nude imagery without prompting, multiple users report this was the case for them. 

"Strange thing is I didn't submit any nudes since it would go against this Lensa app's policy yet it ended up generating nudes anyway???" another user posted on Twitter.

Of particular concern among some users are whether the app somehow accessed photos from internal storage that hadn't been uploaded and if the app's privacy policy allows data generated by the app to be used by third-party companies like Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.

"Lensa users: Did you receive a highly sexualized image in your avatar package?" one troubled user wrote on Twitter. "I received a topless, full-frontal nudity image in my package, and I'm concerned. I'm worried about whether the app accessed other images on my phone and about the rights to that image."

Usoltsev told TechCrunch the tech being used to generate the photo edits is learning as it goes and — though it has some content moderation practices — can still be outsmarted by users or act in unpredictable ways, resulting in the output of nude edits.

"We specify that the product is not intended for minors and warn users about the potential content. We also abstain from using such images in our promotional materials," Usoltsev told TechCrunch. "To enhance the work of Lensa, we are in the process of building the NSFW filter. It will effectively blur any images detected as such. It will remain at the user's sole discretion if they wish to open or save such imagery."

Representatives for Prisma Labs did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

• When treasures are lost at sea, there are legal questions about who owns the remains of a shipwreck.
• The maritime law "rule of finds" and "rule of salvage" offer international guidance for such matters.
• However, the United States passed a law that claims all remnants of wrecks near its waters.

When treasures are lost at sea or begin washing up on shore — like the Yeti coolers appearing along the coast of Alaska from the Zim Kingston freighter that spilled shipping containers in rough seas last October — the legal ownership of the items comes under question.

In general, maritime law — also called admiralty law — is the default set of conventions and treaties that determines how conflicts or shipping issues at sea are handled by the international community. Under these laws, the "rule of finds" and "rule of salvage" offer international guidelines for lost items.

The rule of finds assigns the first finder of shipwrecks or treasure as the new owner and is usually referenced when an item has been lost at sea for some period of time.  The rule of salvage, however, obliges finders of more recent or valuable wrecks to attempt to return items to their original owner, though finders are entitled to compensation, according to Journal Storage, an electronic archive of leading academic journals.

Onboard, items of value are insured so their loss at sea is covered, giving businesses little incentive to try to recover their lost inventory — as is with the case of the coolers – so a general "finders keepers" mindset is frequently adopted for consumer items recently lost at sea. The problems become more complicated, however, when it comes to historical wrecks.

Critics such as scholars Paul Hallwood and Thomas J. Miceli have argued the vagueness of the rules of finds and salvage "provides inadequate incentives both to locate and properly salvage historic wrecks," and "fails to provide for the protection of the scientific value of wrecks once they are found."

"The ocean is the world's greatest museum," marine archaeologist Peter Campbell told The BBC.

In 1987, the United States implemented the Abandoned Shipwreck Act in an attempt to preserve historical wrecks, overriding maritime laws. The Act states that any shipwreck "located within three nautical miles of the US coastline and in the internal navigable waters" becomes property of the United States. 

• Sen. Raphael Warnock kept his seat in Georgia after the state's runoff elections. 
• His fourth victory in two years delivered the Democrats' 51st seat in the 118th Congress.
• The win ends a nearly two-year power sharing agreement, giving Democrats true majority rule.

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona's viselike grip on their party's priorities has loosened a bit, thanks to Georgia. 

Incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock's victory in the Peach State on Tuesday over retired football player Herschel Walker gives Democrats a true majority in the US Senate.

And while a 51-49 majority is minuscule, it's still better than what Democrats had to deal with over the last two years, when they couldn't afford to lose a single vote if they wanted to get anything done. 

"No one senator has a veto," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a memo he sent Tuesday to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "When you have 50 senators, any one senator can say, 'I'm not voting for it unless I get this, this, or this.' With 51, we can go bolder and quicker — to show Americans what Democrats stand for." 

While a 50-50 landscape gave every senator sway, the most frequent, publicly vocal defectors have been Manchin and Sinema, who refused to gut the 60-vote filibuster required to pass most major legislation. Their refusal doomed President Joe Biden's push to enact sweeping voting-rights legislation and to codify Roe v. Wade and other abortion rights into law, among other things.

In a 51-seat world, Schumer shouldn't have to stress as much about what Sinema or Manchin want "in return for trying to pass the Democratic agenda," said former Senate Democratic leadership aide Jim Manley. 

"Hopefully, the Democratic leadership doesn't have to spend all their time worrying about what Sen. Manchin is going to do to try and screw things up," Manley said. 

The return of majority rule also means Schumer won't have to waste another January cutting deals with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on how things are going to work as he did in early 2021, Manley said. 

Republicans will no longer be able to bottle up Biden administration nominees in committee, and select Democratic committee chairs will again be able to issue subpoenas. 

"It may be just a small increase in number, but it's going to make all the difference in the world to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer," Manley said.

Legislative agenda will halt

Manchin and Sinema's influence won't go away completely. Both are likely to stick to their bipartisan bona fides, particularly because they're up for reelection in 2024. They're among the two dozen Democrats up in the next cycle, compared to the 10 seats Republicans will have to defend. 

The centrist Democrats haven't changed their position on abolishing the filibuster. Biden, in contrast, has called for a filibuster carve out specifically to enshrine voting and abortion rights. Both are effectively dead in the next Congress. 

But now, as opposed to before, Democrats can afford to lose support from either Manchin or Sinema. 

"Joe Manchin is a good person; he really is," Biden said Friday at a reception for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "But Joe has a different view, and he represents a different constituency than most of us do, especially on environmental issues. And the same way with the senator from Arizona." 

Still, the logjam will go beyond the two senators. Republicans will hold the US House in the next Congress, so Democrats won't be able to pass major legislation like the hard-fought climate and healthcare bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, without the other party. 

"Expect stalemate out of Washington next year and gridlock on almost every issue," Henrietta Treyz, director of economic policy research at Veda Partners, wrote in her November 28 newsletter predicting the 51-49 Senate split.

She told Insider on Tuesday that while lawmakers might agree they need to legislate on antitrust, cryptocurrency, and social media issues, "they'll find small points of disagreement that will sink any real chance of bipartisanship." 

"I think there will be bipartisanship only where there absolutely has to be," Treyz said. "So the debt ceiling and government funding bills are really the only major trains leaving the station for the next two years." 

During Biden's first term, the president was able to get bipartisan support for infrastructure bill and gun control. But doing so again could get trickier ahead of the 2024 election, said Doug Heye, a former longtime Republican aide.

"The politics become much more difficult," Heye said. "At this point it's hard to see. You'll hear talk about energy, and you'll hear talk about immigration. But those are things that are difficult to move." 

Former President Barack Obama signed bipartisan legislation into law when Democrats didn't hold both chambers. But the legislation, on provisions for medical breakthroughs, passed as he prepared to leave office. 

Democrats can still move legislation out of committee and bring it up for a vote. Often, the Senate doesn't vote on bills that are actually intended to become law — but because they want to message their priorities ahead of the 2024 presidential election, or get the opposing party on record about a particular issue. 

"This will allow us to set the national agenda on things like minimum wage, child care, the child tax credit, challenging big monopolies, creating more jobs, taking on Big Oil to tackle climate change, ensuring legal contraception, protecting democracy, and so much more," Schumer said in his Tuesday letter to the PCCC. 

Either way, Democrats will be less likely to call in Vice President Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes on the Senate floor. The vice president has had to run those types of rescue missions 26 times over the past two years. 

Biden is also likely to lean heavily on executive action to enact his agenda. 

The risk there, however, is that a future Republican president can more easily reverse his actions. On top of that, many of Biden's executive actions will almost surely get litigated in court just like the one on student loan forgiveness.

"On any issue where he sees it being stuck," Heye said. "We'll see Biden putting pen to paper." 

Democrats can confirm nominees, oversee committees

Democrats could still use their authority as committee chairs to expand investigations into the Trump administration, particularly now that former President Donald Trump has made a 2024 White House run official. 

They'll also have other advantages. For instance, the party in charge controls the standing committees, in which leaders set hearings agendas, decide which issues to investigate, and select which administration officials or business leaders to haul up to Capitol Hill for questioning.

Under the power sharing agreement that's been in place since 2021, both Republicans and Democrats had the same number of senators serving on each panel. That meant Democrats had to hold extra votes on the Senate floor when committee votes were tied, slowing down their day-to-day work. 

Democrats will have an extra vote of wiggle room for Biden's judicial and agency nominees, giving Biden more leeway to tap his top picks, including those that might have been too controversial when facing a more narrow majority.

Last year, Manchin opposed the nomination of Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget, joining the blockade of GOP resistance to the longtime political operative, who eventually withdrew from consideration for the post over her tweeting history. She now serves as White House staff secretary, a position that didn't require Senate approval.

And this past March, the West Virginia lawmaker opposed the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin as a top banking regulator at the Federal Reserve, effectively scuttling the nomination. Later that month, Manchin, Sinema, and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona voted against David Weil's bid to lead the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division, which sank the nomination; every GOP senator also opposed the pick.

Federal judges are among the nominees who will be able to move through the confirmation process even faster. Democrats have already confirmed 90 of Biden's nominees as of Tuesday, which may sway the ideological balance of the judiciary given the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. 

It additionally opens up the possibility of Biden nominating a more liberal Supreme Court justice to the bench, should there be another vacancy. 

"It'll make life easier for the Biden administration, no doubt, but you're talking about a 51-seat majority," Heye said. "This is not something that is a runaway majority by any stretch."

• A man who spent hours treading water after going overboard a cruise was rescued in a rare success story. 
• A cruise industry expert told Insider that alcohol is a common factor in man-overboard incidents.
• "Alcohol is a major source of revenue for cruises," Ross Klein said. "It's not gonna disappear."

The likelihood of going overboard on a commercial cruise ship is exceedingly rare — industry data suggests the chances of stumbling into open water are less than 1 in a million.

Statistics, however, didn't stop 28-year-old James Grimes from having to tread water for hours after going overboard on the Carnival Valor late last month.

Grimes' thrilling survival story, in which he recounted eating bamboo and fighting off jellyfish in the shark-infested waters of the Gulf of Mexico, was the rare maritime rescue with a happy ending.

Days after the coast guard rescued Grimes following his harrowing time in the open water, he told "Good Morning America" that he doesn't remember much about the circumstances leading up to his tumble. He acknowledged having a few drinks the night he went overboard but said he wasn't drunk. Grimes did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Carnival told Insider last week that the "only way" to go overboard is to "purposefully climb up and over the safety barriers."

Whether or not it was a contributing factor in Grimes's ordeal, alcohol is a common element in many overboard incidents, said Ross Klein, an international cruise industry expert and social work professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.

"Frequently, they involve intoxication one way or another," said Klein, who also runs a website on cruise accidents and incidents. "A common thread would be that the person who has gone overboard is inebriated."

Many mainstream cruise lines offer all-you-can-drink alcohol packages that encourage passengers to over-imbibe, Klein said. After a night of heavy drinking, a person may be more inclined to engage in risky and reckless behavior, such as climbing on or over the boat's safety railings. Drunkenness may also increase the likelihood of an ill-timed fall.

"It's a problem waiting to happen," Klein said.

But the sheer prevalence of alcohol aboard most ships is unlikely to change anytime soon, according to the researcher.

"Alcohol is a major source of revenue for cruises," he said. "It's not gonna disappear. The problem is whether the serving is responsible and how often people are served more than they should be."

Brian Salerno, senior vice president of global maritime policy at Cruise Lines International Association, told Insider that bartenders on cruises are trained to pay close attention to passenger behavior.

"Someone tending bar on land is typically trained to cut someone off if they appear to be overindulging," he said. "That happens on ships, too."

Given the nebulous nature of many overboard incidents — Klein has recorded 11 suspected incidents in 2022 so far, but said there may be more that go unreported — the industry doesn't have hard data on how often alcohol is a factor in such episodes.

Alcohol is also a common factor in other onboard incidents and crimes, Klein said. It's present in more than 50% of sexual assaults reported on cruise ships, according to Klein, and is also present in many instances of physical assaults.

"It's just human behavior that occurs on ships is really similar to what happens on land," Salerno added.

While the chances of going overboard are slim, Klein said passengers should still educate themselves on the inherent risks involved in taking a cruise.

"The problem is passengers don't realize both the degree to which this is a source of income but also the risk they're at as a result of overconsumption," he said.

• A Manhattan jury found the Trump Org guilty of all counts related to its executives' tax fraud.
• Donald Trump's real-estate company now faces up to $1.6 million in penalties and felony status.
• But experts don't think the conviction is enough to tamp down his chances in the 2024 election.

The Trump Organization was found criminally liable for its executives' tax fraud on Tuesday, making Donald Trump the first former president whose business has felony status in the wake of the conviction.

A Manhattan jury found the Trump Organization guilty on a total of 17 counts, including scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud, and falsifying business records, related to the admitted tax frauds of its two top financial executives, ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg and top payroll executive Jeffrey McConney.

Tuesday's conviction adds to mounting legal scrutiny on the former president, still tasked with defending his business from a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump has also been under fire for hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at the very place he faces a criminal inquiry into sensitive documents found at his South Florida residence: Mar-a-Lago.

The Florida resort also happened to be the place where Trump announced his third run for the White House as the House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection — prompted by ardent supporters of Trump's last presidential run — weigh criminal charges against the former president.

Trump "seems to have this Teflon coating where no matter what he does, everything just sort of slides off or bounces off and he comes out on top," experts say

Trish Crouse, a practitioner in residence of political science at the University of New Haven, told Insider that the former president does seem to be losing "some of his shine" with the Republican party — evidenced by the absence of the "red wave" at the 2022 midterms.

"But at some point, the Republican party has to decide how much they're willing to overlook before they just cut him loose," Crouse said.

In terms of the Trump Organization conviction, Crouse said she doesn't believe it will significantly affect Trump because he wasn't a nominal defendant in the case, but on top of his other legal issues as well as controversial remarks, "this may could be the last straw for some of the people in the Republican party."

While the conviction may not impact Trump in the grand scheme of things, Kevin O'Brien, a former assistant US attorney at the Justice Department, said he also believes that it's a start.

"You can argue that it kind of broke the dam and now the flood waters will come," O'Brien, who now works as a a partner at Ford O'Brien Landy LLP, told Insider. "That's not really a logical analysis, that's more a poetic analysis, but I think it does have symbolic significance in that sense."

"Even though [Trump] wasn't a defendant, it's at his feet, and it can be portrayed that way by his enemies both inside the Republican party and outside the Republican party," O'Brien added. "And I think that's going to weaken his candidacy" in 2024, especially as his hold on the GOP is challenged by a potential presidential hopeful: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to officially announce a campaign but has been been favored in conservative political circles.

But the question remains, Crouse said: "Is this just another blip on the radar" for Trump?

"He's been impeached twice. Most people find him, at least partially, at fault for the insurrection," Crouse said. "At what point do we say enough is enough, that do you really want someone like that holding the highest office in the land?"

"I'm sort of flabbergasted that any Republican at this point would still be behind him," she continued. "But you know, there's people that are so strongly into that sort of MAGA movement that nothing he does is going to turn them away."

• Sen. Raphael Warnock's projected win in the Georgia runoff hands another loss to the GOP.
• The Republican Party will end the once promising 2022 cycle having failed to reach many of its goals.
• The GOP will retake the House come January, though the majority will be significantly smaller than expected.

It ended with a whimper in Georgia. This is not how the Republican Party envisioned 2022. This year was going to be a wave year to remember.  

Instead, Sen. Raphael Warnock's projected runoff win means Democrats will now have a larger Senate majority than they started the cycle with. Republicans still flipped the House. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis romped to reelection. Conservatives realized their decades-long ambition to overturn Roe v. Wade. But Tuesday's results add another disappointing note to a wave that became a ripple and a party that enters an open presidential contest poised to rip itself apart.

Herschel Walker's showing illustrates that the GOP still struggles to find candidates that can unite their base without turning off general election voters. In particular, many GOP candidates, including Walker, continue to underperform in fastly growing suburbs.

And no Republican retrospective would be complete without Donald Trump. The former president's hostile takeover of the party has turned into a popularity contest in which appeasing the reality TV show host remains paramount. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was widely mocked for once saying that the GOP needed a nominee willing to "lose the primary to win the general." Trump has developed a weakness for elevating candidates who couldn't win primaries without his support but then lose to vulnerable Democratic opponents.

It's all about the candidates

It's never a good sign when one of your own leaders says that you're scaring voters. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's early post-midterm postmortem that some of the GOP's candidates "frightened" independent and moderate Republican voters illustrates the party's struggle to pick electable alternatives. 

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the head of the Senate GOP's campaign arm, also refused to meddle in contested primaries. Trump on the other hand showed no such hesitation. In fact, he quite enjoyed all the attention he received as hopefuls pressed for his blessing.

Trump chose to elevate candidates largely in his mold: inexperienced outsiders. The lack of a voting record can actually be an asset. Congress is increasingly full of lawmakers who have not previously served in public office before. Inexperience can also put hopefuls under more scrutiny.

This is why McConnell and more establishment leaders were initially skeptical of Walker. The 1982 Heisman Trophy winner had previously written about his violent conduct toward women. Walker was besieged by unflattering revelations about his personal life, including previously undisclosed children and alleged payments for abortions. Walker strenuously denied any knowledge about abortions, but the negative headlines took their toll. It's not surprising then that Walker, who began the race as a well-liked native son, now ends with horrific approval ratings.

Still getting rocked in the suburbs

Republicans are still struggling in the suburbs. The GOP was hopeful that inflation and crime would bring back the voters that were once easily theirs. While several Republican hopefuls have illustrated that suburban voters are not unreachable, Trump-backed hopefuls have routinely struggled. Walker's performance on Tuesday mirrored his showing in November, posting impressive numbers in much of rural Georgia while failing to keep pace in the burgeoning Atlanta metro area.

The GOP can't afford to go on like this forever. The repeated lapses illustrate that this is bigger than one state, candidate, or cycle. As long as educated voters continue to be turned off by the party, margins will have to be made up elsewhere. And in many states, running up the score in rural areas will simply not be enough.

Democrats came prepared

It wasn't all Republican blunders. Warnock's performance was indicative of how Democratic incumbents fared nationwide.

Warnock, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan all entered the year knowing the GOP was coming for them. In response, they raised an obscene amount of money. Every single one of them easily outraised their eventual GOP challenger.

In open seats, the GOP didn't fare any better. Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman dwarfed Republican Mehmet Oz in donations, even as Oz spent tens of millions of his own money. And author JD Vance was outspent by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan so badly that outside Republicans had to pour tens of millions into what should have been an easy contest.

What comes next … 

The GOP now enters an open presidential contest. So far, Trump is the one major contender to announce so far. You can expect that to change, perhaps within weeks. Walker's defeat will only amplify the bah humbugs brewing for the former president. But too many challengers could leave a divided field ripe for Trump to squeak by. You might remember the last time that happened.

While the focus will be on the presidential contest. The GOP enters the 2024 cycle with a solid chance to once again flip control of the Senate. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana will be two of the most endangered incumbents. Democrats are also unlikely to find many chances to add to their now 51-seat majority.  And the incoming head of the Senate GOP campaign arm, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, has no qualms about wading into primaries — meaning the party leadership could nuke hopefuls that might turn off general election voters.