I predict that Representative Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress, even worse than Crazy Liz Chaney, Cryin' Adam Kinzinger, and Marjorie Traitor Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown under stress!). They are all misfits and losers, but Massie, who is running against a great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG.
Close-to-final turnout numbers in Texas show the Democratic Senate primary had the highest number of people voting in it than for any other primary for statewide office in Texas' history. More than 2.3 million votes were cast in the primary in which state Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
We need someone who has new ideas, new energy and a new perspective to be an advocate for our community. I'm not running against a person, I'm running against the problem, and the problem is the status quo.
In perhaps a vain attempt to prove themselves moderate, the Democratic lawmakers helped override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes. Voters responded with the kind of ballot-box fury that should serve as a lesson to other incumbents. It wasn't just a case that the incumbents lost. They were buried, with several of them getting trounced by margins of 40 points or more.
They want to cheat, he said of Democrats. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that their only way to get elected is to cheat. And we're going to stop it. Trump has put action to his long-debunked claims this year, with FBI agents seizing 2020 election documentation in Fulton county, Georgia, and the Department of Justice pursuing voter data from state elections officials across the country.
State of play: As Axios previously reported,members are tailoring their approaches, though the common thread is to challenge Trump. Some plan to deliver direct addresses or attend counter-rallies, including Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Others, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), will likely skip the speech altogether. And some, like Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), might attend and cause distractions, defying House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' warning against disruptions.
The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024.
The New York Times recently reported that four conservative operatives spent the Biden years quietly building the legal and regulatory infrastructure to kill the federal government's ability to fight climate change. Russell Vought. Jeffrey Clark. Mandy Gunasekara. Jonathan Brightbill. They drafted executive orders. They got Heritage Foundation money. They solicited white papers from friendly scientists. They built the whole thing in secret so nobody could stop them before it was done.
Though only 17 of the 47 presidents were governors, only four men (James Garfield, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama) have gone directly from Congress to the White House. Among Democrats, however, the last sitting or former governor to win a presidential nomination was Bill Clinton. Indeed, the last governor to run a viable Democratic nomination contest was Howard Dean in 2004, and his signature issue was foreign policy (his opposition to the Iraq War).
Driving the news: In a memo Thursday, the Kennedy-aligned political advocacy group MAHA Action warned the chairs of the Republican Senate and House campaign committees and House and Senate leaders that the GOP "is renting MAHA voters. They haven't decided to purchase them yet." The group says Republicans could still close the polling gap with appeals to this segment, which it said could represent 10% of the electorate.
The death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, has the potential to shake the political landscape in ways reminiscent of George Floyd's killing in 2020. The Trump administration initially claimed Good weaponized her vehicle in an act of domestic terrorism, an account that appears to be contradicted by video evidence.
The New Jersey Democratic primary for the state's 11th Congressional District was plunged into uncertainty on Thursday night after Decision Desk HQ abruptly walked back its earlier projection calling a win for former congressman Tom Malinowski after a late surge by his progressive rival. The election analysis outlet had initially called the contest for Malinowski, only to retract its call hours later as election night data began cutting sharply against its assumptions.
"It has been baked in that the states are largely in charge of the election process, and that the federal government can set or override rules for that process if they wish, but it's very specific that that has to be done through Congress and not through lone executive action," said Justin Levitt, a constitutional and law of democracy scholar at Loyola Law School who was a non-partisan policy adviser for Democracy and Voting Rights during the Biden White House.
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen to receive our twice-weekly News & Politics newsletter. The Washington Roundtable is joined by Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, for a conversation about the pressures facing American democracy, the security of elections, and how these domestic tensions interact with the collapse of international norms.
Driving the news: The 13-candidate Democratic primary to replace now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey's 11th congressional district ended in a dead heat between progressive organizer Analilia Mejia and former Rep. Tom Malinowski. With several thousand provisional and late mail-in still to be counted as of Friday, Mejia led Malinowski by 500 votes, 28.75% to 27.97%, according to the Associated Press. Mejia trailed many of her opponents in fundraising, bringing in just $420,000 to Malinowski's $1.2 million.