Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melburgh. Our top story is a midterm set of races that are now 33 days out.

And while we have covered what the candidates are saying and doing, and we'll continue to do that,

the top story is what the president today says is democracy on the ballot itself.

Because some of these candidates are so anti-democracy at a time of rising

authoritarianism that that itself is the story. Here are the latest updated facts. We can tell you

that now a majority of Republican nominees, 299, are on record running to oversee the government

and sometimes elections, but they deny the 2020

election results. If they are lying about the past while seeking power, you can bet they will

act on those lies in the future. You can see the quote here from the Washington Post. They are running

in every region of the country and nearly every state. Over half, 174, a running for what are called

safely Republican seats, while another 51 are in tightly contested races, a sobering account

from the Washington Post. The reason those numbers matter is, if you follow politics, you probably

know that while we hold these elections across the country, the midterms have every House seat, for example, up for grabs.

The numbers, the way the districts are drawn and other factors mean many of the races are all but decided because of the voting patterns.

So when they refer to those safe seats, they're referring to Republicans who are vowing in the future to do what they failed to do in the past in some sense, which is

act on the lies and say that whether they win or lose, they will work to keep their party

in power. If that lie becomes a government action, it's not only potentially illegal,

it's also the seeds of authoritarianism, the end of democracy.

As for what they're saying, here's what some of the candidates sound like on the trail right now.

He lost the election and he shouldn't be in the White House. We had a corrupt election.

I think Trump won in 2020. We're going to take our power back. We're going to seat the

electors. Everyone knows something happened in the election. I have discussed with President

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