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Oct. 5, 2025, 8:16 PM EDTBy Andrew GreifThe longest active losing streak in the NFL came to an end Sunday.All it took was scoring one of the wildest, unlikeliest touchdowns of the season.Trailing by as much as 21-3 in Week 5 on the road against the Arizona Cardinals, the Tennessee Titans had pulled within 21-12 with less than five minutes left when Cam Ward, the No. 1 pick in last spring’s NFL draft, let loose a pass toward the end zone. Ward’s pass was tipped, then intercepted by Arizona’s Dadrion Taylor-Demerson at the 6-yard line — and from that moment on, the play went from a straightforward turnover that might have sealed a badly needed win for Arizona into a comedy of errors that tilted the game toward Tennessee.While he was falling to the ground, trying to steady himself after the pick, Taylor-Demerson fumbled. A teammate, Kei’Trel Clark, ran in to recover the loose ball but inadvertently kicked it backward to the 3, where it caromed farther off two other Cardinals defenders into the end zone. Tennessee’s Tyler Lockett dived on the ball for a stunning touchdown that brought the Titans within 21-19. The Titans went on to win, 22-21, with a field goal on the final play of regulation, to complete a comeback that would have been memorable for any team — the Titans at one point had the lowest average win probability of any winning team since 2016, per the NFL — but particularly improbable given it was this team. Tennessee entered Week 5 with ignominious distinction. Its 10-game losing streak, dating to last season, was the longest active winless streak in the league. If it lost again and extended it to 11, it would have matched the franchise’s longest losing streak since 1994. And Ward, 0-4 to start his career, was trying to avoid becoming the latest member of an exclusive club — joining eight other QBs drafted No. 1 overall to start their careers 0-5. Tennessee left the game with catharsis. Arizona, meanwhile, left with a familiar dread. All five of the Cardinals’ games this season have been decided on the final possession — including three straight losses. Andrew GreifAndrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital.

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November 19, 2025

Nov. 19, 2025, 10:44 AM EST / Updated Nov. 19, 2025, 4:46 PM ESTBy Rob WileComputer-chip giant Nvidia reported earnings and revenue Wednesday that beat Wall Street estimates, a signal to investors that the artificial intelligence boom that has fueled 2025’s record U.S. stock market gains and backstopped the economy writ-large likely has more room to run. Sales of its trademark Blackwell AI chips “are off the charts,” while another set of key computer processing units “are sold out,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said in a statement.Shares of the world’s most valuable company were up approximately 3% in after-hours trading. Nvidia’s chips have been the catalysts for a massive build-out of data centers that have supplied a backbone to the U.S. economy amid slowdowns elsewhere. More money is flowing into building data centers than all other manufacturing facility types combined, according to the research group S&P Global.Until recently, that spending has also powered major stock indexes to record highs. Lately, however, stocks have shown signs of wobbling lately. The declines in share prices — led by tech companies — have sparked debates about whether AI-driven gains are beginning to slow. This raises a bigger question: how the broader economy will perform if it no longer benefits from all the wealth the AI boom is creating. Wall Street woes: Is the AI bubble starting to burst?02:17The U.S. economy has become “highly dependent upon three basic elements: continued consumption amongst the affluent, AI investments, and asset appreciation,” Bill Mann, chief investment strategist at Motley Fool Asset Management, said in a statement Wednesday.“The market downdraft, led by the recent high-flying tech companies, is a recognition that the expectations for AI returns may be overly optimistic,” he said.Huang said last month that his company had $500 billion in orders for its chips, for 2025 and 2026 combined.“This is how much business is on the books. Half a trillion dollars’ worth so far,” Huang said at a conference in Washington, D.C.Alongside broader concerns about the state of the U.S. economy, stock market momentum has been tripped up by worries about circular dealing among AI’s biggest players. This means the same money is being passed back and forth between several companies — even as each company’s individual value climbs.Nvidia is a fixture in the kinds of deals that are raising concerns. It recently announced a commitment alongside Microsoft to fund AI software provider Anthropic with $10 billion. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during the Live Keynote Pregame of the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 28.Jim Watson / AFP – Getty Images fileThis kind of big collaboration news would typically boost the stock prices of all the companies involved. But neither Nvidia’s nor Microsoft’s stock got a boost from the Anthropic announcement.Analysts with Deutsche Bank said this is a sign of the ongoing investor wariness about deals like this.“It goes to show how sentiment has turned more negative in the last few weeks, with the circular AI deals being treated with increasing caution as the conversation around a potential bubble has gathered pace,” they wrote in a note published Wednesday. The question now is whether the latest market hiccups represent a temporary pullback or the onset of a more permanent state of affairs. Most experts are cautiously optimistic that the market will continue to climb. “We think the investment boom has room to run,” Goldman Sachs researchers wrote in a note published Wednesday, adding that the economy writ large has remained resilient, something that should provide ongoing support to stock returns. Stock “valuations are certainly stretched, yet they remain below the extremes of the dot-com era,” Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Asset Management, wrote in a note published last week. What’s more, many firms’ high stock prices are justified by still-solid earnings growth and robust revenue prospects, she wrote. Still, “some investor skepticism about the likely return on that investment is healthy, particularly when it is impossible to quantify the scale of productivity improvement to expect,” she wrote. Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.

October 13, 2025

Oct. 13, 2025, 9:46 AM EDTBy Jay GanglaniMore than two years after they were abducted during the terrorist attack that launched the Israel-Hamas war, all living hostages have been returned to Israel from the Gaza Strip.The 20 surviving hostages were released “after 738 agonizing days in captivity,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.As part of the first phase of the U.S.-brokered peace deal, Hamas has also agreed to return to Israel the remains of more than two dozen hostages who did not survive. “Our struggle is not over. It will not end until the last hostage is located and returned for proper burial,” the hostage advocacy group said. “This is our moral obligation. Only then will the people of Israel be whole.”Here are the 20 living hostages who were released Monday with details provided by the Missing Families Forum:Alon Ohel.Hostages and Missing Families ForumAlon Ohel, 24, loves music and began playing the piano at the age of 9. He planned to begin his studies at Israel’s Rimon School of Music in October 2023, but was kidnapped at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7 along with Eliya Cohen, Or Levy and the late Hersh Goldberg-Polin.Ariel Cunio.Hostages and Missing Families ForumAriel Cunio, 28, was working as a software tester and shares a love of astronomy with his partner, Arbel Yehud, who grew up with him in kibbutz Nir Oz. He and Yehud were kidnapped together, but she was released in January under a previous ceasefire deal. His brother David Cunio was also kidnapped Oct. 7 and released Monday.David Cunio.Hostages and Missing Families ForumDavid Cunio, 35, is the older brother of Ariel Cunio and worked as an electrical technician. On Oct. 7, he held the safe room door in the family home for five hours while attackers tried to open it. His wife, Sharon Cunio, and their two daughters were also kidnapped but were released after 52 days in captivity.Avinatan Or.Hostages and Missing Families ForumAvinatan Or, 32, was born and raised in Shiloh before moving to Tel Aviv, where he worked for Nvidia. He was kidnapped from the Nova music festival along with his girlfriend, Noa Argamani, who was rescued in a military operation in June 2024. Bar Kupershtein.Hostages and Missing Families ForumBar Kupershtein, 23, was a staff member at the Nova music festival. A combat medic, he was helping victims of the Oct. 7 attack before being abducted himself. Kupershtein had taken on a greater role in his family after a 2019 accident left his father, Tal Kupershtein, unable to move or speak. Since his son’s abduction, Tal Kupershtein has been undergoing speech therapy and regained some ability to speak to aid the fight for his return.Eitan Avraham Mor.Hostages and Missing Families ForumEitan Avraham Mor, 25, worked at a coffee shop in Jerusalem and was also on the security team at the Nova music festival, where he was said to have helped evacuate wounded people before he was abducted. He is the oldest of seven siblings. Eitan Horn.Hostages and Missing Families ForumEitan Horn, 39, immigrated to Israel from Argentina as a teenager and worked in education. On Oct. 7, Horn was visiting his brother Yair Horn in kibbutz Nir Oz, where they were both kidnapped from his home. They were held together until Yair Horn’s release in February.Elkana Bohbot.Hostages and Missing Families ForumElkana Bohbot, 36, was one of the organizers of the Nova music festival, and was helping to evacuate the wounded when he was abducted. His family expressed concern for his health in May after he appeared in a video circulated by Hamas. “Everything is fine, relax,” he told his cheering family in a call ahead of his release Monday.Evyatar David.Hostages and Missing Families ForumEvyatar David, 24, was abducted from the Nova music festival along with his friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was also released Monday. His brother, Ilay David, described him to NBC News as a “brilliant guitar player” with the “kindest soul I know.” Video of an emaciated David drew an international outcry when it was released by Hamas during the summer.Gali Berman.Hostages and Missing Families ForumZiv Berman.Hostages and Missing Families ForumGali and Ziv Berman, 28, are twins and avid soccer fans who worked together in kibbutz Kfar Aza, where they grew up. They were kidnapped from the kibbutz along with their friend Emily Damari, who was released in January. Guy Gilboa-Dalal.Hostages and Missing Families ForumGuy Gilboa-Dalal, 24, was seen with Alon Ohel in a video released last month by Hamas. From a young age, Gilboa-Dalal has admired Japanese culture and anime, even studying the language. Outside of Japanese culture, he enjoys music and attended the Nova festival, where he was kidnapped along with his friend Evyatar David. His brother Gal Gilboa-Dalal, was also at the festival and survived. Maksym Harkin.Hostages and Missing Families ForumMaksym Harkin, 37, immigrated to Israel from Ukraine with his family. He is the son of a single mother who describes him as the anchor of the family. Although he doesn’t often go to parties, Harkin attended the Nova music festival with friends, two of whom were killed, and he was kidnapped to Gaza. Matan Angrest.Hostages and Missing Families ForumMatan Angrest, 22, an Israel Defense Forces soldier, was kidnapped from his tank while defending the Nahal Oz base. Earlier this year, his family released video of his capture in an effort to draw attention to his case amid concerns about his health.Matan Zangauker.Hostages and Missing Families ForumMatan Zangauker, 25, was abducted from kibbutz Nir Oz along with his girlfriend, Ilana Gritzewsky. She was freed during the first ceasefire in November 2023 and has since been fighting for his release.Nimrod Cohen.Hostages and Missing Families ForumNimrod Cohen, 21, an IDF soldier, was abducted while defending kibbutz Nirim. The three other soldiers in his tank crew were killed. Cohen is known to love solving Rubik’s cubes, and after his abduction his burned Rubik’s cube was found in the tank.Omri Miran.Hostages and Missing Families ForumOmri Miran, 47, a shiatsu therapist and gardener, was kidnapped from the safe room of his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz in front of his wife, Lishay Miran, and two young daughters, one of whom was only 6 months old at the time. Rom Braslavski.Hostages and Missing Families ForumRom Braslavski, 21, is from Jerusalem and was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival. In a video released in August by Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he appeared weak and thin. “The faith and strength I saw in his eyes back then have been replaced by sadness, depression and helplessness,” said former hostage Sasha Troufanov, who was held with Braslavski before being released in February.Segev Kalfon.Hostages and Missing Families ForumSegev Kalfon, 27, was abducted while trying to flee the attack on the Nova music festival. According to The Jerusalem Post, his family only learned he was still alive in February.Yosef-Chaim Ohana.Hostages and Missing Families ForumYosef-Chaim Ohana, 25, was abducted while trying to flee the attack on the Nova music festival with a friend. In May, he appeared in a video published by Hamas with fellow hostage Elkana Bohbot.Jay GanglaniJay Ganglani is NBC News’s 2025-26 Asia Desk Fellow. Previously he was an NBC News Asia Desk intern and a Hong Kong-based freelance journalist who has contributed to news publications such as CNN, Fortune and the South China Morning Post.

September 23, 2025

Sept. 23, 2025, 12:01 AM EDTBy Natasha Korecki and Jonathan AllenFormer Vice President Kamala Harris’ memoir of her failed 2024 campaign for the Oval Office skewers some of the nation’s most prominent Democrats — including former President Joe Biden — offers her perspective on crucial moments in the election and outlines her own regrets about her decisions and performance.Published by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday, “107 Days” zooms in on the narrow window during which Biden abruptly handed her the reins of the Democratic nomination and she lost to Donald Trump.The book is notable among election memoirs in its often candid assessments of figures who are still active in politics and in the possibility that Harris will use it as a launch pad for a third bid for the presidency in 2028. Harris also ran in the 2020 Democratic primaries but abandoned her bid before the first votes were cast.She opted this year to forgo a run for governor of California, and allies say that decision was made in no small part to keep the door open to a presidential campaign.In one newsy nugget, Harris writes that Biden first asked her whether she would be willing to take his spot atop the ticket if he stepped aside. The two were sitting in the Situation Room at the White House after a briefing on the failed July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, and Biden raised a topic he hadn’t discussed with her before.“If for any reason I had to drop out, I would support you, but only if that’s what you want. It’s occurred to me I haven’t asked you,” Biden said, according to Harris’ account. She writes that he had “clearly rehearsed the speech, it wasn’t spontaneous thought.”Harris recalls replying: “I’m fully behind you Joe. But if you decide not to run, I’m ready. And I would give it all I’ve got, because Trump has to be beaten.” She writes that Biden didn’t raise the possibility with her again until nearly a week later, when he called to tell her he was leaving the race.Biden’s spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Here’s some of the rest of what you’ll find in Harris’ new book.Resentment toward Biden Early on in “107 Days,” Harris describes her sentiments toward Biden as she spoke to her campaign staff for the first time in late July at the Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters.“My feelings for him were grounded in warmth and loyalty, but they had become complicated, over time, with hurt and disappointment,” she writes. In detailing her conversation with him when he dropped out, she recalls Biden’s wanting to wait days to endorse her so national attention would focus on him for a while — a plan she talked him out of, believing it would have hurt her ability to lock down the delegates she needed to secure the party’s nomination. When Biden spoke to the nation later that week to explain his decision, she writes, “it was almost nine minutes into the eleven-minute address before he mentioned me.” She took similar umbrage at Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. “He spoke for nearly an hour, detailing the accomplishments of our administration,” Harris writes. “It was a legacy speech for him, not an argument for me, and he was entitled to it. But if we waited for some personal stories about working with me and what qualities he had seen that led him to endorse me, they weren’t there.” Silent anguishIn the book, Harris bemoans her choice not to question Biden’s decision to run again for president. She lays out some of her reasoning at the time.”Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win,” she writes.She then refers to what became a poisonous refrain from Democratic insiders: “It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.” “We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.” Dishing on DemocratsIt’s unusual for candidates who may run again to call out members of their own party in memoirs, but Harris does just that in this book, drawing on her contemporaneous notes to detail the responses she got from fellow Democrats when she asked for their endorsements the day Biden dropped out. In some cases, like those of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, there was no hesitation.But former President Barack Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were among those who stalled or ghosted, according to Harris. From her descriptions in the book of this group: “Barack Obama: Saddle up! Joe did what I hoped he would do. But you have to earn it. Michelle and I are supportive but not going to put a finger on the scale right now. Let Joe have his moment. Think through timing.””Nancy Pelosi: I’m so sad about Joe. It’s so tragic. My heart is broken. But now it’s you! It’s important there’s a process, we have a great bench. We should have some kind of primary, not an anointment.””J.B. Pritzker: As governor of Illinois, I’m the convention host. I can’t commit.” Pritzker endorsed Harris a day later. “Gavin Newsom: hiking. will call back. (He never did.)” Newsom did endorse Harris hours later, which isn’t noted in the memoir.The wrong veep?Pete Buttigieg says Biden ‘should not have run’ after Kamala Harris calls his bid ‘reckless’01:37Harris writes that her first choice for a running mate was then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a friend who may also be a 2028 rival. “He would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man,” she writes of Buttigieg, who is gay. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”Buttigieg pushed back last week in an interview with Politico after an excerpt of the book was released, saying he was “surprised” by her take.”My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” he said.Harris ended up choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whom she describes as a balance to her in terms of background.Of the three finalists, she passed over Shapiro, whom she described as “poised, polished, and personable” in their one-on-one interview. But Harris was taken aback when, according to her telling, Shapiro said he wanted to be in the room for every decision.”I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation,” Harris writes. “A vice president is not a copresident. I had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.”And, she added, “I had to be able to completely trust the person in that role.”Josh Shapiro says he raised concerns with Biden as Kamala Harris blasts his 2024 bid03:17Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., the former astronaut, was the remaining finalist, and Harris writes that she respected his public service in the military and in government. But she worried about his ability to handle the mudslinging of a campaign.”He also hadn’t yet had an ‘oh s—‘ moment,” Harris concluded as she interviewed Kelly, whose wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., narrowly survived a failed assassin’s bullet to the brain. “I wasn’t sure how he would cope with the kind of garbage Trump would throw at him.” Dismissing Trump’s jabsHarris says repeatedly that she took some of Trump’s more personal attacks as signs that he was worried about her and that she tried not to take what she saw as bait.In July, when Trump questioned whether she is Black or Indian — her father is of Jamaican descent and her mother is of Indian descent — she didn’t like adviser Brian Fallon’s suggestion that she give a speech about race like a famous address Obama delivered during his 2008 campaign.”I was so pissed I didn’t hold back,” recalls Harris, who was aboard Air Force Two, talking to Fallon by phone. “Are you f—ing kidding me?” she says she told Fallon. “Today, he wants me to prove my race. What’s next? He’ll say I’m not a woman and I’ll need to show my vagina?”Regrets, she had a fewChief of which was her response to the ill-fated query on ABC’s “The View” about what she would have done differently from Biden: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Trump’s team jumped on the response, which would haunt her until Election Day. “I had prepped for that question; I had notes on it. There was the answer I’d given in the debate: ‘I’m not Joe Biden and I’m certainly not Donald Trump.’ I had a note that I was a new and different generation. And I had this: ‘But to specifically answer your question, throughout my career I have worked with Democrats, independents, and Republicans, and I know that great ideas come from all places,” she writes. “If I’m president I would appoint a Republican to my cabinet. But I didn’t say any of that.” Harris writes about several regrets surrounding her first interview as the Democratic nominee, a joint session with Walz, hosted by CNN’s Dana Bash. She wasn’t happy with an alignment of chairs that emphasized Walz’s physical stature over hers, and she was disappointed in her own answers to several of the questions. Most of all, she writes, she shouldn’t have agreed to appear for the first time in an interview with her running mate at her side.”Having Tim there beside me, in hindsight, was an error,” she writes. “My campaign felt we should do the interview in tandem because it was a thing that had been done by prior candidates and their running mates. But because we’d waited to do this interview, there was so much riding on it. And the plan to have him there fed a narrative that I wasn’t willing or able to go it alone.”While she wouldn’t rewrite her position on defending transgender people, she notes she could have struck back at anti-trans ads running in battleground states with more precision. “I do not regret my decision to follow my protective instincts. I do regret not giving even more attention to how we might mitigate Trump’s attacks. Character matters. I wish I could have gotten the message across that there isn’t a distinction between ‘they/them’ and ‘you.’ The pronoun that matters is ‘we.’ We the people. And that’s who I am for.”The Joe Rogan of it all Harris spends some ink explaining how the decision not to go on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast went down. At the time, there was much ado about a Rogan invite, whether she declined and whether it hurt her politically. She never was on, while Trump spent hours appearing on an episode, which today has 60 million views. “On the eve of the election, Rogan endorsed Trump. Since then, he has lied on his show, claiming we pushed for tight topic restrictions,” Harris writes. “He even claimed that the very topics we had suggested were ones we’d refused to discuss. His team says we ‘never committed,’ which is accurate, but misleading. The plain truth: I wanted to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast on October 25. He chose Trump instead.”The Biden scourgeIt seemed that each time she was grabbing momentum, Biden would derail the campaign, emerging in the news with one inexplicable misstep after another. She describes the moment Biden briefly wore a MAGA hat — in an image that then went viral. “Joe was sharing a joke with some guys in MAGA hats. One of them took his hat off and offered it to Joe.”Don’t take it.”He took it.”Don’t put it on.”He put it on.” She said that within hours, images exploded of Biden wearing the hat accompanied by a caption: ‘Biden endorses Trump over Harris.'”At another campaign high, she was coming off a speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., which drew tens of thousands of people. As she was still en route to celebrate, the news from a Biden call started circulating that he had called Trump’s supporters “garbage.” That supplied Trump with fresh fodder going into a critical weekend.Harris, though, relayed that ultimately her feelings toward Biden would remain loyal. “I was still vice president to President Biden. We had three months left of our administration. Even after the lack of support from the White House, the debate night phone call, and the MAGA hat debacle, I felt I owed him my loyalty.”No signs of what’s nextHarris reveals nothing about her 2028 aspirations except that she has learned that changing the system from within isn’t possible. “In this critical moment, working within the system, by itself, is not proving to be enough. I’ll no longer sit in DC in the grandeur of the ceremonial office. I will be with the people, in towns and communities where I can listen to their ideas on how we rebuild trust, empathy, and a government worthy of the ideals of this country.”Natasha KoreckiNatasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Jonathan AllenJonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News.

November 3, 2025

Nov. 3, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Jane C. TimmPennsylvania voters on Tuesday will decide in an unusually contentious election whether three Democratic justices should remain on the state Supreme Court for another 10-year term, a vote that could result in a deadlocked bench for years if they are removed.One of those three justices, David Wecht, warned what such a scenario would mean for the critical battleground state.“It would be disastrous. It’s extremely hard to work with a shorthanded court,” Wecht told NBC News in an interview on Friday. “I have experienced the six-member court, and a six-member court resulted in a lot of deadlocks and a lot of stalemates and a lot of increased work for the remaining six. That was just when we were one seat down with the court. If the Court were to be three seats down, there would be a lot of 2-to-2 ties.”Wecht, along with Justices Christine Donohue and Kevin Dougherty, are the three members of Democrats’ 5-2 majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who are up a retention election on Tuesday.Judicial retention elections, which happen after a decade on the bench in Pennsylvania, are yes-or-no votes that are typically sleepy downballot contests.Few Pennsylvania justices have lost their jobs in this way. But with Democrats’ majority at stake ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections, this year’s retention vote has drawn outsize money and attention. If all three justices were to lose and the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro can’t agree on temporary appointments, Pennsylvania’s high court could be deadlocked 2-2 through the end of 2027.“You would have a four-member court for two full calendar years, because there’s no way, there’s no way that this Senate is going to confirm a single nominee that Gov. Shapiro sends them,” Wecht said.A deadlocked state Supreme Court court would defer to lower courts, and even if it did decide a case, it likely wouldn’t set new precedent for the state, according to Wecht, who said four members are required to set a precedent. Unanimous decisions are very rare on the state’s top court, which typically tackles difficult questions of law.“If you have a 3-1 result in Smith v. Jones — it applies to Smith and Jones. It governs the case between Smith and Jones, but it’s not a precedent for any other case,” he said. “Precedent is the whole reason for our court. We’re not just deciding Smith versus Jones, we’re deciding a question of law that applies for now and in the future throughout Pennsylvania for everybody.”The retention elections have drawn major ad spending and attention. Former President Barack Obama and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro have publicly supported the three Democratic justices. On Sunday night, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social urging Pennsylvanians to “Vote ‘NO, NO, NO’ on Liberal Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht.'””Attention Pennsylvania: On November 4th, you can bring back the Rule of Law, and stand up for the Constitution,” Trump wrote.One conservative group’s mailer, which Wecht has vocally criticized, claimed the “liberal Supreme Court gerrymandered our congressional districts to help Democrats win,” even though the court had ruled in 2018 that a GOP-drawn map was unconstitutional.Wecht said the reaction to that ruling has contributed to the divisiveness of this election.“When you have a small child and you take away from the small child a prize plaything or toy, that small child is going to wail and scream and cause a ruckus. That’s exactly what happened,” Wecht said. “I think has been the poison that is infected the approach of some of the same partisans and their descendants who are now assailing us now in what’s supposed to be a nonpartisan election.”Jane C. TimmJane C. Timm is a senior reporter for NBC News.

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