Three weeks before the November 3 midterms, nearly all the coverage of American politics is about who wins. Very little of it is about what the winners inherit. That second question is the one CrossGov.com was set up to answer. The site covers US government at every level, mostly Washington and the federal agencies, with state and local government making up the rest, and it leans hard on the people who count things for a living: the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service and the inspectors general.

Here is the number that ought to frame every story written about Tuesday night, and won’t. Claire Valdez is now the Democratic nominee for New York’s 7th Congressional District, which means — in a district this blue, where the November election is a coronation — she is effectively the next member of Congress for some 770,000 people. She earned that with roughly 37,000 votes. Across the whole city, turnout limped in around 420,000, against more than a million in last year’s mayoral primary.

Pam Bondi is out as Attorney General. Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff, has been dismissed. Now The Atlantic reports active discussions inside the administration about firing FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. So: is it a purge? Call it what it is. A purge is not defined by the politics of the victims — it is defined by the velocity, the opacity, and the logic of elimination.

The tone coming out of Washington is shifting, and not in a subtle way. A group of Democratic members on the House Armed Services Committee, led by Congressman John Garamendi, is openly pressing for immediate public testimony from the Department of Defense regarding the ongoing U.S. military actions tied to Iran. The request, directed to committee chairman Mike Rogers, signals growing unease not just about the conflict itself, but about how little clarity Congress feels it has over its scope, objectives, and trajectory.

William J. Sanchez, former Special Counsel to President George W. Bush, has urged Kamala Harris, the current presidential candidate, to consider influential Hispanic figures for her vice presidential pick. He specifically highlighted Senator Catherine Cortez Masto as a potential candidate. Sanchez, an experienced advisor with over two decades of expertise in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, emphasized the significance of Hispanic representation in top government roles.