Deutsche Welle: German parliament rows over UN Migration Compact

"Millions of people from crisis-stricken regions around the world are being encouraged to get on the road," said AfD leader Alexander Gauland. "Leftist dreamers and globalist elites want to secretly turn our country from a nation state into a settlement area."

Though the motion was swiftly rejected once the debate was over, the AfD considered it a victory to get it on the agenda at all, since the German government is under no obligation to ask for the parliament's approval to ratify the non-legally binding compact. [...]

"It should have been the task of the government long ago to explain the migration compact factually and publicly. You were silent for too long, and that allowed these conspiracy theories to start in the first place," said Stamp, a member of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP).

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Jakub Marian: Number of top-ranked universities by country in Europe

The map below shows the number of universities that are in the top 500 on the 2019 list. It should be noted that other university rankings (e.g. the QS World University Rankings) may use a different methodology, which may lead to different results. [...]

The map below solves this problem by calculating the number of students studying at top-500 universities divided by the population in thousands. For example, the figure 13.6 in Germany indicates that there are 13.6 students studying at a top 500 university per 1,000 people. [...]

As you can see, the playing field is much more level here, the champion being Iceland, which, despite its tiny size, has two top-500 universities.

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The Guardian: Don't be fooled. The midterms were not a bad night for Trump

True, some of the most strident white nationalist and white supremacist Republicans were defeated – although an open neo-Nazi like Arthur Jones still got over 25% of the vote in the third congressional district of Illinois, while openly white nationalist and pro-Confederate Corey Stewart lost the Virginia Senate race with virtually the same score as his conservative predecessor six years ago. Perhaps most painful for Trump was that Kris Kobach, a key player in his ill-fated and ill-named Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity who has a decade-long history of racial voter suppression, was handsomely defeated in the Kansas gubernatorial race. [...]

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Democratic party made modest overall advances, in terms of seats rather than votes – barely taking the House, while staying well behind a US Senate majority. That said, the party has changed fundamentally in composition. Two years after Bernie Sanders’ failed challenge for the presidential nomination, there will be almost as many democratic socialists as conservative-leaning Democrats (known as Blue Dog Democrats) in Congress. While still a minority, they will be a loud minority, convinced they represent the future of the party. [...]

Whether the Republican establishment likes it or not – and more and more are actually perfectly happy with it – the Grand Old Party is now Trump’s Party. Their fate is intertwined with his. The old conservative Republican party is dead, for now. In the coming two years they will campaign as a radical right party, led by an omnipresent leader, who will define the Republican party for a whole generation of Americans.

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The Guardian: Donald Trump's unchecked hold on power has come to an end

The exit polls gave Democrats a massive 21-point advantage among women, while Republicans scored just a two-point lead among men. White women split 50-48 for the anti-Trump movement known as Democrats. The only age group that Republicans won were 65 and older – and that was only by one point.

Just two years ago, in those same exit polls, white women gave Trump a nine-point lead over the first woman to hold a major party’s presidential nomination. Married women were pretty divided in 2016, but leaned heavily towards Democrats on Tuesday. [...]

Republicans should have sailed to victory at a time of relative peace and prosperity, with unemployment at historic lows and wages rising. But in the House – a truly national contest, unlike the US Senate – voters showed there were clear electoral limits to Trump’s rabidly anti-immigrant racism and stunningly shameless sexism.[...]

In Florida, where the Democratic disappointment in the Senate and governor’s races was profound, the changes are coming. A state that just decided two contests by less than 100,000 votes also decided to restore voting rights to 1.4 million former felons.

Yes, Ron DeSantis won the governorship despite his close ties to white nationalists. He’ll need many more of the white-sheet gang once those former felons start voting. Meanwhile, Kris Kobach in Kansas, running with the support of similarly racist friends, failed to win the governorship in a state that Trump won by more than 20 points.

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CNN: 7 takeaways from election night 2018

House Democrats placed a MASSIVE bet on women in their plan to retake the majority. Dozens and dozens of Democratic female candidates jumped into races across the country. Democrats tailored much of their messaging on health care, on taxes, on everything to female voters -- especially in the suburbs. That was clearly the right bet. Women made up 52% of the overall electorate, according to preliminary exit polls, and they went for Democratic candidates over Republicans by 20. According to the Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman, there will now be more than 100 women in the House in 2019 for the first time in history. [...]

That, by the way, is not unique to Trump. Midterm elections are almost always referendums on the president and his party. And they are almost always negative referendums. (Americans like divided government.) It's why the president's party has not lost House seats in only three midterms since the Civil War. (What years were those? 1934, 1998 and 2002.) [...]

The Ohio Democratic Senator cruised to a third term on Tuesday night against a credible opponent -- Rep. Jim Renacci (R) -- in a state that Trump won by eight points two years ago. That won't get all that much attention -- no one on either side thought Brown would lose -- but it should, as the party turns to 2020. Remember that Trump is President because of 80,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Midwest is, literally, where he built his path to the White House -- and where he will look again in 2020. [...]

If you asked Democrats going into Tuesday night which governor race they wanted to win the most, they'd likely name Florida first and then Ohio. They won neither. And there's meaning well beyond simply losing at the gubernatorial level. Both are swing states -- maybe the two swingiest states -- going into the 2020 presidential election, and it's always better to have a governor's political machine working for you rather than against you in a swing state. And Republicans will have the upper hand in redistricting in 2021 in that trio of states -- which matters a whole hell of a lot.

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