All posts tagged: Midterms

2026 Midterms: Races to Watch Featuring Jon Ossoff, Spencer Pratt, Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, Ken Paxton

2026 Midterms: Races to Watch Featuring Jon Ossoff, Spencer Pratt, Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, Ken Paxton

Published by Sam Flores

Talarico, meanwhile, is a 36-year-old seminarian with the bedside manner of a Sunday school teacher. Republicans have sought to cast him as an effete extremist. Trump keeps saying “he wants six genders” and that he’s a vegan, a crime punishable by political death in the Lone Star state. Talarico, who is not a vegan, has cooked up a pithy riposte to this attack: “I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.” The midterm elections are upon us. Democrats are looking to win back the House and just maybe the Senate, promising to use that power to stop Trump. For Republicans, despite victories in a bare-knuckle redistricting war, the House already looks lost. They’re just hoping to hold on to the upper chamber of Congress. A year ago it would have been unthinkable for Republicans to lose the Senate, but as Trump wages an unpopular war with Iran while gas prices climb (“peanuts,” Trump says) and economic anxieties mount (“hoax,” Trump explains), his polls keep sinking. Republicans are panicking. Trump …

Democrats Sound a Bit Too Giddy About the Midterms

Democrats Sound a Bit Too Giddy About the Midterms

Published by José Betancourt

The Democratic wilderness is starting to look awfully sunny. Gone, for the most part, are the blame-casting, hand-wringing, and paralysis-by-analysis that gripped the party after Donald Trump’s reelection. Same with the constant grousing about how the party is fractured, leaderless, locked out of power in Washington, and unloved across the country. Actually, that might all still be true. But you don’t hear about it as much. Democrats are too busy being giddy with anticipation for the midterms. Examples of this hyper-confidence began popping up at the beginning of the year (“Democrats will cruise to victory, including Senate control,” the writer Brian Beutler predicted) and have proliferated since then. Nearly every day seems to bring another Democratic overperformance in a special or off-year election, or another great poll for the party, improved House or Senate forecast, or headline about how Republicans are bracing for a brutal November. Is a blue wave coming? A blue tsunami? Or another blue mirage? The causes for Democratic optimism are legitimate. The president’s approval ratings—historically a solid predictor of a party’s …

Inside Trump’s effort to “take over” the midterms

Inside Trump’s effort to “take over” the midterms

Published by Sam Flores

In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr. Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had switched votes from him to Joe Biden. With each day, Trump ratcheted up the pressure to unleash the might of the federal government to undo his defeat. Barr interrogated experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, crammed in beside top FBI officials around a cheap table. He needed the group of around 10 to answer a crucial question: Was it really possible the 2020 presidential vote had been hacked? ProPublica’s description of the previously unreported meeting comes from several people who were in the room or were briefed on the gathering. Everyone understood that the meeting represented an important moment for the nation, …

How Trump intends to hijack the midterms

How Trump intends to hijack the midterms

Published by Sam Flores

Donald Trump’s authoritarian chaos machine is running amok. Pro-democracy Americans — and those simply hoping for a return to normalcy — are pinning their hopes on a Democratic victory in November’s midterm elections. But that salvation will not be easy or cheap. Their hopes will face a coordinated effort by Trump and the anti-democracy right-wing to secure victory before a single ballot has even been counted. As the Washington Post reported on Monday, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were a trial run. Then, he “pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers, and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.” These strategies include “challenging long-established democratic norms” and making “unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.” The Trump administration has installed election deniers and other conspiracists …

Setting Up The 2026 Midterms

Setting Up The 2026 Midterms

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by J.T.Young via American Greatness, Ten months ahead of November’s midterms, political and economic crosscurrents are colliding. Which of these conflicting trends prevails will greatly shape the next two years. And possibly even longer. Midterm elections are always important. Besides gauging the country’s political mood, they have proven integral to maintaining America’s political equilibrium. They are the “ebb” to the “flow” of America’s political tide. Historically, every four years, a large tide of voters goes to the polls and elects a president. Then every two years, the large voter flow ebbs back and the president’s party suffers accordingly. This midterm is particularly important to Trump because he has proven susceptible to being baited by his opponents. After 2018, Rep. Nancy Pelosi returned to the House speakership and unrelentingly harassed Trump over the last two years of his first term. These distractions and obstructions­—especially during COVID—were undoubtedly a factor in Trump’s narrow 2020 electoral college defeat. Today’s political crosscurrents are pronounced. As already mentioned, the president’s party historically loses seats. The last two two-term presidents, George W. …