Jimmy Barrett and Shara Fryer take you through the stories that matter on the morning of 11/06/2018, including: America is at a midterm crossroads. Today’s election will not only determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill but also will seal the fate of the Trump administration’s legislative agenda for the next two years and set the landscape of the 2020 presidential campaigns. The direction of the nation’s most contentious and consequential issues — health care, immigration, taxes, climate change, trade, gun control, ethics and campaign finance overhauls and oversight of the administration — hinges on what voters decide Nov. 6. The stakes are enormous; Voters are streaming to the polls in record numbers. Early voting figures can easily mislead. States release a trove of data about the voters — information on their party affiliations, voting history, age and so on. But no one knows what candidates they are voting for. Nor can anyone be sure whether people who vote early are the same voters who would have otherwise shown up Tuesday. In Texas, both O’Rourke and incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz suggested the state’s huge early turnout would boost their campaigns. Texas is still a deeply conservative place, and more voters coming to the polls can only mean more support for him, Cruz suggested in a CBS “60 Minutes” segment released Friday. O’Rourke said much the same on the show: “The more people who show up, the better we do.” If current trends hold, about 3 million more people will vote this year in Texas than did in the last midterm, in 2014; America is at a midterm crossroads. Today’s election will not only determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill but also will seal the fate of the Trump administration’s legislative agenda for the next two years and set the landscape of the 2020 presidential campaigns. The direction of the nation’s most contentious and consequential issues — health care, immigration, taxes, climate change, trade, gun control, ethics and campaign finance overhauls and oversight of the administration — hinges on what voters decide Nov. 6. The stakes are enormous.