Today's five.

Trump lost the House and Senate to a Democratic wave, went to the White House, and talked about a ballroom. That's not avoidance — that's a coping mechanism with load-bearing steel. He told Fox News he has no Cabinet changes planned, insisting the Iran war was only "partly" a factor. Vance, meanwhile, posted on X that the war was the whole reason, full stop — a surprisingly direct break that Axios noted comes just as the 2028 cycle quietly begins. The Hill reported that anti-war MAGA voices are already saying they told everyone so. They did.

Deep Texas went blue, which is the kind of sentence that makes political consultants stare at their spreadsheets until something breaks. Republicans lost big in the 2026 midterms — world leaders noticed, The Dispatch is already asking where the party goes next, and The Atlantic coined "Deep Blexas" with the energy of someone who'd been sitting on that word for months. The Free Press has a theory: the Iran war, which Trump owned completely, handed Democrats the bill. When you personally guarantee the outcome of a conflict, the midterms become a receipt.

Somewhere a data center got rejected at the ballot box, and OpenAI is now very interested in your feedback. The company released a policy framework pledging to solicit community input before building, publish construction plans, protect ratepayers, and disclose water, energy, noise, and job data upfront. It also promised to stop using NDAs to keep neighbors quiet. Reason framed it as a political reckoning. CNBC led with the NDA pledge. Business Insider led with who pays for grid upgrades. The policy is voluntary, which is the part you're supposed to notice.

Amazon and Uber Eats have partnered to give Prime members free food delivery from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across the U.S., effective immediately and accessible directly through Amazon. This is Amazon doing what Amazon does: adding enough perks to make canceling feel irresponsible. For Uber Eats, it's a distribution deal disguised as a lifestyle benefit. Neither outlet framed it differently — both just reported the handshake. The fine print on what "free delivery" actually covers will be the thing people discover six orders in, usually at 10pm on a Tuesday.

Turns out $100 million buys less than it used to. Pro sports owners poured nine figures into this election cycle — a sum that could fund several mid-market franchises — and watched their preferred candidates lose anyway. The Guardian noted the irony that the same owners now hoping Democrats save them from the consequences helped build the conditions Democrats are rescuing them from: New Jersey, Illinois, and New York's sports betting booms all happened under Democratic governors. The Las Vegas Review-Journal's takeaway was simpler: Republicans drifted from their principles and paid for it. Both are right. Neither is comforting if you own a team.