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Good morning!

Makiya Seminera here from your Chalkbeat Chicago team. The last time I wrote for our newsletter, I was hunched over reading precinct vote totals and nibbling on cold election night pizza. Now, we’re just over a week out from that consequential night, and reporters are still sifting through the results after the country’s stunning blue wave to get a sense of what to expect from national policies come next year. It’s a step up from reading the tea leaves to predict the future, but given how volatile American politics can be, it’s hard to say for sure what this new political dynamic will yield for us.

Take this story from Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat’s national editor, about how voters in two blue states — Washington and Colorado — supported ballot measures to restrict transgender students’ participation in youth athletics. As Erica writes, those two states have been “havens of inclusive transgender policy,” while more than half of U.S. states have passed laws restricting transgender rights in sports since 2020. That reputation, paired with the overwhelming victories for Democrats this midterms cycle, might make the ballot measures’ approval puzzling for some. But what it signals is nonetheless important: Democrats might not be as united on this front as expected.

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