I don’t know where to begin. Last night’s election results exceeded my wildest dreams. Trump is still in the White House, but Democrats will now control both houses of the next Congress. Democrats won races all over the country. With some races still undecided, Democrats now hold 54 seats in the Senate and 228 seats in the House.
After 11 long, horrible years, we finally have an opportunity to restore democracy in America. With control of the House and Senate, Democrats can restore the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare. They can investigate the blatant corruption that has been going on in the Trump administration. They can block Trump’s judicial appointments. They can get rid of his stupid tariffs. They could impeach Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. Who knows? Some Senate Republicans might even vote to convict.
Here are just a few reactions from the pundits and knowledgeable observers.
The Democratic wave in the congressional elections on Tuesday amounted to a stinging rebuke of a deeply unpopular president after more than a decade in which he has dominated the national stage. More than any of his predecessors, Mr. Trump deliberately made the midterm contest a referendum on himself, only to pay the price.
The electoral backlash extended even into deep red states and indicated that Mr. Trump has lost his hold over the coalition that lifted him to the White House twice. Frustrated by high gas prices, an intractable war with Iran and allegations of flagrant profiteering by Mr. Trump and members of his circle, voters who previously took a chance on an outsider promising change either rejected his party or stayed home.
As of early Wednesday morning, the Democratic margin of victory in the overall national vote for House seats was expected to be about 13 percentage points, the largest that either party has lodged in a congressional election since at least 1976, according to estimates by The New York Times. It will dwarf even the margins that the Republicans won in their two big landslide victories of modern times when they defeated congressional Democrats when Bill Clinton held the White House in 1994 and Barack Obama was president in 2010.
Thanks to redistricting, that margin may not translate into as many seats as the winners gained in those watershed years. Gerrymandered House districts leave far fewer seats available for poaching by the other party than in the past. But the overall margin of Democratic victory indicates that while the president has two more years left in office and can still wield power to great effect, Americans are signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.
“It’s basically a repudiation of Trump and the Republicans and what they’ve done for the last two years,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, who was White House political director for Mr. Clinton and closely tracked the races this fall. “I do think starting tomorrow, we’re in this new phase and it’s a transition phase and it will last two years. And it will be much more volatile than the last two years.” [….]
Mr. Trump quickly tried to save face by insisting that the rout by Democrats was not really a rejection of him since he was not actually on the ballot — never mind that he told voters repeatedly to vote as if he were.
In the end, it wasn’t just a wave. It was a wipeout.
A Democrat won a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since the Herbert Hoover administration. The party picked up Senate seats in Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina. Republicans even fell short in House districts in the South where they had tried to give themselves an edge by drawing new, gerrymandered maps.
A crowd reacts as Senator Jon Ossoff speaks at his victory party.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times
The sweeping Democratic victories on Tuesday night offered a decisive rebuke to President Trump and his aggressive, often chaotic second-term agenda.
The party seized control of both houses of Congress. Voters rejected Republicans in conservative states that supported Mr. Trump by double-digit margins just two years ago, in places that had not seen competitive elections for major seats in decades.
Even some Democrats were stunned by the extent of their wins, which included defeating Greg Abbott, the three-term Republican governor of Texas; and Susan Collins, the five-term Republican senator from Maine.
“It’s a blood bath,” said Dan Sena, who was the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the last Democratic wave, in 2018. “Democrats are going to be in power in places they haven’t been in power in decades.”
And so the era of one-party rule in Washington ended with a crash, as voters pushed back on high gas prices, an unpopular war in Iran and stubbornly high inflation. As Wednesday dawned, there were signs that the country was entering a new and uncertain political time, in which both parties would be forced to consider how to navigate a post-Trump political era.
A bit more:
For years, Democrats seemed to compete on a smaller and smaller map, concentrating on fewer states, blue cities and diversifying suburbs and trying to cut their losses in rural America. But Tuesday’s results showed that the last two years had turned off voters even in deep red terrain. For Republicans, the losses were a generational defeat, giving Democrats a foothold from which to build a robust political operation in places that had been long out of reach.
In Seward County, Kan., a majority-Hispanic area, the Democratic Senate candidate, Adam Hamilton, won by double digits. Just two years ago, Mr. Trump won there by 40 percentage points.
In Iowa, a largely agricultural state, Democrats won the governor’s mansion and a U.S. Senate seat and flipped three of the state’s four congressional seats.
And in South Texas, Democrats won three heavily Latino border districts that Republicans had redrawn to be more favorable to their party.
In many states, Democrats ran candidates who offered a decidedly different brand of politics from the “resistance” ethos that characterized their response to Mr. Trump’s first term.
Instead, they focused their message on the deep economic anxiety that has roiled the country, arguing that the president and his Republican allies were enriching themselves while ordinary Americans struggled. Survey after survey showed a majority of voters, and a notable share of Republicans, offering low marks to his signature policies: tariffs, immigration enforcement and the Iran war.
What happened last night was no ordinary election. It was a mass affirmation that most Americans still believe in our nation’s basic values, and a mass rejection of a movement that wants to destroy everything our nation stands for. And no, it wasn’t just economic dissatisfaction.
Yes, Trumpflation created by tariffs and the Iran debacle helped. But an election swung by public anger over high prices looks like 2024, when Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. Last night Democrats appear to have won the popular vote by 13 -14 percentage points.
Amy Acton elected Governor of Ohio
What drove this amazing victory? Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump in 2024 in the naïve belief that he would bring prices down, turned massively against a regime that is arresting, imprisoning and deporting their friends and families. Blacks turned out in droves against a transparently racist party that is trying to take away their voting rights. Americans of every kind were repelled by the administration’s cruelty and its rampant, brazen corruption.
After 2024, large swathes of the elite rushed to prostrate themselves before Trump, somehow convincing themselves that the narrow defeat of Democrats in a year when incumbent parties were defeated almost everywhere heralded a permanent transformation of U.S. politics, that corrupt authoritarians peddling hate would rule forever. There’s a lot to be written about why oligarchs in particular were so willing to believe that small-d democratic values were a thing of the past — and one of the main things big-D Democrats need to do now is hold not just Trump’s officials, but also his enablers, accountable. But that’s a topic for another day.
The main point for now is that MAGA took 2024 as proof that Americans want fascism, and acted on that premise. But tens of millions of Americans in effect said, no, that is not what we want. That is not who we are.
The damage done over the last two years is incredible, and I don’t know how much of it can ever be repaired. But there is, at last, hope. For last night America showed that it is still America.
Gas prices, the war in Iran, data centers, health care: Americans have debated all of these subjects for weeks. But something more fundamental than control of Congress was on the ballot in these midterm elections. Americans were also voting to decide whether the United States, 250 years after its founding, would remain a democracy.
President Trump, who tried to overturn the 2020 election, did his best to manipulate this one too. Never before has the federal government demanded voter lists from states, and lost so many court cases in the process. Gerrymandering is an old tradition, but it has never before been directed from the White House. This put real pressure on state Republican leaders to redraw boundaries, in some cases with the deliberate aim of eliminating Black members of Congress. Once, the federal government helped state officials keep elections safe. This year it was the states that had to mount a defense against Washington to protect their constitutional right to run elections.
By now, most of us recognize Trump’s assault on elections as part of a pattern. Since he started his second term, the president has closely followed a playbook originally built by autocratic leaders in places like Hungary and Russia. He began with a full-scale attack on civil servants, universities, the legal profession, and scientists.
He appointed a conspiracy theorist to dismantle America’s public-health system and a narcissistic television host to run the most powerful army in the world. He used regulatory institutions to put pressure on journalists. He turned ICE into a federal paramilitary force. He let Elon Musk cut food aid and medical care for the world’s poor so abruptly and so incompetently that he wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and killed untold numbers of people in the process.
The White House oversaw assaults on America’s foreign broadcasters, cyber defense, counterintelligence. The president used the power of his office to earn money for himself, his family, and his business friends. He undermined America’s alliances, started a war in Iran, and prolonged the Russian invasion of Ukraine through diplomatic incompetence and possibly greed.
James Talarico wins Senate seat in Texas
Through this period of chaos and destruction, the Republican majority in Congress either cheered or remained silent. Instead of asserting the legislative branch’s right to check the president, control the budget, and investigate corruption, congressional leaders let Trump break laws and norms egregiously and continuously. They let the president not only impose illegal tariffs, and therefore raise prices for all Americans, but they also looked the other way when he and his entourage bet money on the stock market while doing so. They refused to block his reckless war in Iran, they refused to restrain ICE even after it killed Americans, and they refused to ask why Musk was given power over agencies that regulate his companies, or why taxes on the wealthiest Americans were cut even as poor Americans lost their health-care benefits.
The next Congress can change this trajectory. Newly elected leaders must not only investigate the president’s worst abuses of power and help Americans recover from his destructive policies, but also restore the health of the political system. We may need to rethink the role of institutions that the president has weakened, or write laws that stop people with deep conflicts of interest from making American foreign policy. We have to confront an AI industry that is unable to control its models, and a health-care system weakened by the president’s reckless policies.
That whooshing, gurgling sound you hear this morning is the power draining out of President Donald Trump’s White House.
The 2026 election results are an electoral humiliation unseen this century. They would be calamitous for any president.
They are even worse for Trump.
Trump is a singular figure in American history, a quasi-strongman leader whose particular brand of presidential power simply cannot coexist with the kind of rout his party faced last night.
Adam Hamilton wins Senate seat in Kansas
His fundamental theory of power is in ruins. The survival of his presidency now depends on him adapting to diminished circumstances in a way he has never done before.
The essential problem for Trump is that his favorite instrument of governing is fear. His second term has been a 22-month exercise in projecting invulnerability and ruthlessness, then presenting powerful people and institutions – even foreign countries – with a choice. Either live peacefully with Trump on his terms or prepare to suffer the consequences.
This proposition, imposed on the world’s largest companies and America’s wealthiest universities and oldest allies, has worked in Trump’s favor more often than not. Faced with a president returned to power from political exile, promising vengeance and brandishing the support of more Americans than had ever voted for him before, so many executives and diplomats and generals and prime ministers chose to submit.
This has been the defining dynamic of elite politics in this chapter of the Age of Trump. That is how Trump has wrangled lavish investment pledges out of foreign nations and tech giants, deterred corporate criticism of his agenda and raised money to fund a new White House ballroom, inspired the NATO secretary-general to call him “daddy” and assembled a gallery of rictus-faced billionaires at his inauguration.
And that’s over now.
The breadth and depth of Republican defeats have shredded the aura of invincibility that any strongman needs: the sense that no matter what his adversaries do and no matter what the courts say, at the end of the day he will still be there, with the apparatus of the state in his grasp, and he will remember the names of his friends and his enemies.
With his political coalition in tatters and Democrats on the march even in Texas and Kansas and South Carolina, Trump doesn’t look so permanent anymore.
Compared to that shift, losing the House and Senate is almost incidental.
I hope that’s true. Read the rest at Politico.
For now, Trump isn’t trying to fight the election results. We’ll see if he sticks to that.
President Trump said on Tuesday night that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterm elections, and was prepared to work with Democrats.
“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” he said in a phone interview with The New York Times. “We’ll probably work something out.”
Mr. Trump blamed Republican losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot, and called his decision to go to war with Iran a “very wise decision.”
Troy Jackson defeats Susan Collins in Maine Senate race.
He said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates such as Senator Darline Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, who both lost their Senate bids.
Mr. Trump spoke to The Times shortly before 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, while he was watching election results at the White House. Democrats were on track to take control of the House and the Senate….
In the short conversation with The Times, the president sounded subdued as he absorbed decisive Democratic wins across the country.
But he insisted that he regretted nothing about the first two years of his second term, despite the widespread Republican defeats. “I consider it to be the most successful two-year period in the history of any president,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s pledge to accept the results of the elections followed his sustained efforts over the last year to sow doubt about the security of elections. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a series of social media messages vowing to arrest noncitizen voters, despite the fact that the administration had struggled to find them.
The president’s comments came after he huddled inside the White House’s East Room Tuesday night with some of his top aides, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Todd Blanche and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, to watch the results come in. Some in attendance described it as a “dark” and “funereal” atmosphere.
With the midterms over, U.S. President Donald Trump is now a lame duck. Second-term presidents who lose control of Congress have to face the reality that the time for signature legislation or other domestic policy initiatives has passed. As they think about their legacy, lame ducks often turn to foreign policy, where the power of the presidency allows them to act unfettered by pesky domestic politics. It is not unusual for a lame duck to reach for a final, lofty goal abroad. U.S. President Bill Clinton, for instance, put great effort into trying to advance a proposal for a final settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the end of his presidency.
Trump’s lame-duck period will not be like those of his predecessors, however. He has already gone through what was widely considered at the time to be a lame-duck phase, between November 2020 and January 2021. He used it to contest the election outcome despite clear evidence that Joe Biden had won. Trump is the first president in the past 100 years to have served two nonconsecutive terms, and therefore the only American leader in living memory to have a second lame-duck period—this time lasting more than two years.
With Democrats soon to be in control of the House and the Senate, the threat of impeachment or investigations into the Trump family’s business dealings will likely make the president feel cornered and angry. And that’s what makes the remainder of Trump’s term so dangerous. A boxed-in Trump, with no obvious constructive foreign policy outlet to channel his energy, may well lash out internationally. And Congress, even if controlled by Democrats, will have little power over his day-to-day management of foreign policy.
There are plenty of ways Trump could act out: issuing fresh threats against Canada, launching new attacks on U.S. alliances, or colluding with Russia or China at the expense of Ukraine or Taiwan. But to turn those threats into policy would require serious effort, such as repositioning U.S. troops or painstakingly negotiating with other great powers.
So…that’s what’s happening today. There will be more assessments in the coming days. We’ll probably have to deal with more insanity from Trump. I doubt if he will really take this lying down. In the meantime, Democrats have won a huge victory, and we have hope that we can still save our democracy.
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“The promised caravans have crossed the southern border just in time! Join them at the polls tomorrow!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today’s news is filled with coverage of tomorrow’s elections. Early voting turnout is amazing here in Lousyanna. Black voters are voting in record numbers. Democrats and Independent voters in general are turning out like crazy here. But we’re not alone. Even a rainy day in Floriduh did not stop voters. It’s happening far and wide. This makes for some striking headlines.
I can’t help but gloat a bit reading this Bill Kristol headline in The Bulwark. “It Won’t Be a Blue Tsunami. It’ll Be an Orange Crush. Is this the decisive repudiation of Trump we’ve been waiting for?” We find out tomorrow evening.
We are on the cusp of a thoroughgoing defeat for Donald Trump, his administration, and his party. That is not something we could have taken for granted. On key occasions over the last decade, we’ve fallen short. In 2018, Democrats picked up forty-one seats and flipped the House—but Republicans gained two senate seats and strengthened their hold on that body. In 2020, Trump was defeated, but not in a landslide, and Republicans gained thirteen House seats. Then, following the insurrection and Trump’s impeachment, the Senate failed to convict him. And while Democrats did relatively well in the 2022 midterms, Republicans still managed to regain the House.
And about 2024, the less said the better.
In other words: Since Trump entered national politics in 2015, there’s never been a decisive electoral repudiation of him. This year looks likely to be that.
Now I’ll hasten to stipulate that 2026 is only a midterm election, and that presidential elections matter most. Still, 2026 is an unusually significant midterm. Think of what it would mean for our future if Trump had remained popular over the last two years, if his policies were viewed with relative approval, and if he were about to suffer only a minor midterm setback. Trumpism would still be an ascendant political movement.
That is not where we are. Instead, 2026 looks as if it will be a clear repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. Democrats are very likely to flip both the House and the Senate and, indeed, are likely to end up with comfortable majorities in both chambers.
For example, the final New York Times/Siena polls released last night of seven battleground Senate states—Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas—show Democrats ahead in six of those races, and effectively tied in the seventh. As the Times notes with some astonishment, Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.
As Nate Cohn put it: “In today’s polarized era, there’s no precedent for a party to fare this well in so many states that are generally safe wins for the other side.” He cautions judiciously that the polls may be overstating Democratic strength. But as he also explains at some length, they may well be understating it.
A question we all might be asking is this one answered by ProPublica. Exactly how safe and secure will this election be for voters? ““Chaos” in the Air: Five Ways Voting Could Be Disrupted on Election Day. The Trump administration has initiated a string of unprecedented actions to assert more federal control over elections. While courts have thwarted most of the plans, voting experts remain concerned about potential problems at the polls.” This a really long article but it’s worth the time to read. Jen Fifield and Peter Elkind share the lede.
As Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, voting experts are watching to see how the Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to assert more federal control over elections will play out.
The president has justified these steps by claiming, without evidence, that American elections are beset by fraud and that illegal voting is tipping the scales in favor of Democrats.
Courts have thwarted most of the administration’s plans to date, but Trump and his top deputies have kept up the pressure. Most recently, they’ve threatened to prosecute election officials who don’t reject ballots from people that the federal government has identified as likely noncitizens.
The administration hasn’t explicitly ruled out sending federal agents to the polls or seizing ballots or voting machines.
Election experts say the cumulative effect has been to ramp up anxiety about the midterms and to erode voters’ trust in the system.
“The administration has been creating a lot of noise, a lot of confusion, a lot of doubt,” said Ben Hovland, whom Trump fired as a commissioner for the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission earlier this year. He said he worries that this will make voters “sit it out” and “throw their hands up.”
In an emailed response to questions, a DHS spokesperson said Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” adding that the agency would only arrest people at the polls to address a safety threat as part of “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement.”
The DHS and the Justice Department “are laser focused on identifying, prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens,” the spokesperson added. “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.”
Before and on Election Day, it’s typical for the major political parties to mount poll-watching operations, but both Democrats and Republicans say they’ve expanded these activities in this pressurized midterm.
Republicans will focus on issues such as voter eligibility and voter-roll accuracy, according to Ally Triolo, the Republican National Committee’s election integrity communications director. Democrats will concentrate on voter intimidation and other hurdles to voting, Angelo Fernández Hernández, a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, said.
The authors elucidate 5 issues that are worrying voting rights experts. Again, go to the link to read the details There are quite a few articles up specifically on possible election problems at Propublica. This research focuses on Trump’s obsession with noncitizen voting. “Inside Trump’s Futile Hunt for Noncitizen Voters. Claiming that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were voting illegally, Trump tasked agents who usually investigate cross-border crime with uncovering proof. We followed along to find out: How many of these voters could there actually be?”
President Donald Trump has claimed that hundreds of thousands of people who are not U.S. citizens have been illegally voting in our federal elections, tipping the scales for Democrats. If there was massive fraud, reporters at ProPublica wanted to uncover it. So they followed along as federal investigators set out to find and prosecute these voters. How many were there, really?
ProPublica has researched many issues with this years elections including one JJ sent me. “Ballot Rejections Soared in Rural Counties After USPS Reduced Mail Service.” These articles are long, but you will face tomorrow more informed as you head to your polling place.
But a ProPublica data analysis shows that delays resulting from the U.S. Postal Service’s cost-cutting measures have endangered the validity of ballots cast in rural areas, not only in Washington, but across the country.
Over the past three years, as mail volume continued to plummet and annual deficits ballooned, the Postal Service started consolidating the processing of first-class mail at larger regional plants instead of at smaller hubs closer to local post offices. Then, in a little-noted switch that mostly took effect after the 2024 election, the agency cut the frequency of mail pickups in half at many post offices 50 miles or more from these processing plants, from twice daily to once.
The changes often added a day or more to delivery time and, most importantly for ballots, pushed back postmarking, which doesn’t happen until mail reaches the regional centers.
In this year’s primary, the effects of the cuts were clearest in five states that make detailed data on mail-in ballots available: Washington, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Oregon. All have or recently had grace periods allowing ballots to count if they come in after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by the deadline.
Despite all of this, the numbers geeks are still saying the Democratic candidates have the advantage and the momentum. I’m still largely fixated on the senate race but watching NW Lousyana kick out Mike Johnson and thus, end his speakership, would make me happy too. This is from the New York Times. “Democrats Show Strength in Final Days of Race for the Senate, New Polls Find, Democrats are up in Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Maine and Ohio, have an edge in Alaska and are effectively tied with Republicans in Iowa, new New York Times/Siena polls found.” Shane Goldmacher and Ruth Igielnik share the lede.
The surveys found that Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.
To win a Senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats that are currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds.
But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.
In Michigan, the lone top Senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.
Dissatisfaction with President Trump and frustration over his management of the economy are dragging down Republicans, according to the polls. Just 38 percent of likely voters approved of the president’s job performance in the seven states in the poll, a strikingly low figure given that Mr. Trump had won five of the states by double digits just two years ago.
The newfound Democratic strength was powered by growing trust in the party to handle the economy — the key motivating issue for voters this year. Democrats hold a nine-point advantage on the cost of living across the battlegrounds, and they led on this crucial measure in every single state.
If the polls are accurate and these trends hold, Democrats would win control of the Senate.
Like I said, I’m wondering if that huge surge of black voters up in the NW corner of Louisiana will manage to dethrone Mike Johnson. This is from the Federal News Network. Terry Gerton interviews Mitchell Miller the story. “Election results decide who holds power. What comes next determines how they’ll use it. “Clearly a lot of potential political drama here on the GOP side after the results come in,” said Mitchell Miller, a Capitol Hill correspondent from WTOP for his take.
Terry Gerton All right, tomorrow is election day. Everybody’s been watching early voting and polling, trying to anticipate who will win, but I actually want to talk about another set of horse races and those are for congressional leadership positions. After the election is over and we have a sense of the results, walk us through what actually happens inside the parties before the next Congress will convene.
Mitchell Miller Well, this is going to be a very interesting time and one that’s going to make a lot of people nervous, obviously, because everything is going to unfold over the next 24 plus hours. Of course, the election results will probably continue to spill out throughout the rest of the week, particularly on the Senate side. But let’s start with the House. The House Republican leadership has said that a week from election day, they will hold their internal elections. And decide who is going to remain in what positions. Now, this is really fascinating because House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has repeatedly said that they are going to defy history. Republicans are going to maintain a very small majority, but they are gonna maintain the majority. Now, if that were to happen, of course, then things are pretty straightforward, mike Johnson would likely retain the House speakership, especially because this would be so rare that he would actually have the Republicans hold the lower chamber. However, if, as many people expect, that the Republicans lose power to the Democrats, then everything starts to shift. And there’s a lot of talk about whether Mike Johnson would still try to become the minority leader, which I have to say just basically doesn’t happen after a large loss, if that’s what happens in the House. Virtually every House speaker, once there was a defeat, left that position and did seek the house minority position and in fact usually the party doesn’t want them in that leadership role after that, despite all the campaigning that Johnson has done. So who does that leave? Then you have current House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was, of course, considered for House Speaker when all that wild gyrating happened after Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) Was forced out. And you also have the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has indicated he might be interested in a leadership position. So we’ll have to see what happens when things shake out. Now, if you move down the roster of leadership, the House majority whip is Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and he has indicated he wants to stay in that position no matter what happens. And it doesn’t seem like anybody else wants to push him on that position, so he will likely stay there. So clearly a lot of potential political drama here on the GOP side after the results come in.
So, that’s all I can take reading and writing on today! We’ll see you tomorrow and hopefully with enough steam to keep a live thread going between us all! I’ll leave with a little bit of economics truth. Its a bit higher today, btw. $40,596,030,180,635 and ticking upwards every minute. Every word this man speaks is basically a lie.
What’s on Your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today? If you didn’t early vote, I hope Voting will be on your Action list tomorrow. It certainly will be on mine!
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Only 3 days to go until the midterm elections next Tuesday. Trump is ramping up efforts to interfere with voting. At the same time, record numbers of voters are turning in their ballots early. This data is from 2 days ago:
With less than a week to go until the US midterm elections – which will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years – more than 43 million Americans have already voted.
Data from the University of Florida Election Lab indicates that four to five million early votes have been cast each day, a much higher rate than in most previous elections.
Texas has seen the highest above-average turnout rate so far, says Professor Mike McDonald, who runs the database. Hispanic communities are also seeing a much higher turnout than usual.
Overall turnout appears on track to outpace 2020, and even possibly 2018, which beat the 1914 record for overall turnout in a midterm election.
Texas has already surpassed its 2022 numbers by around 1.75 million voters, says McDonald. More than 5.8 million ballots have been cast in the Lone Star state, which has emerged as a key battleground that could decide which party controls the Senate for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Data from states where voters are required to register a political affiliation during the primary elections, when voters choose their party nominees ahead of the general election, indicates an increase in votes cast by Democrats.
The number of early ballots cast by Republican-affiliated voters remain generally similar to 2022.
Early voting is also up among voters who chose to not register with a specific party, McDonald says, however the data does not show which candidates they chose.
Early voting is significantly outpacing the last midterm election, with millions more Americans casting ballots in advance and particularly sharp increases in states hosting competitive Senate races, according to an Associated Press analysis of voting data five days before Election Day.
The surge is especially pronounced in Texas, where voters are deciding closely watched Senate, House and governor’s races. More than 6.3 million Texans had voted early as of Wednesday, compared with 4.2 million at the same point four years ago, a 50% increase.
Advance voting has also increased more than 30% from the same point four years ago in Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and Kansas, states with competitive Senate races. In South Carolina, where voters are choosing a successor to the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, early voting is up 83%.
The data, compiled by the AP, offers a glimpse of early voter participation five days before an election that will determine control of Congress and other key contests.
Across the country, more than 43 million Americans had voted early in person or returned mail ballots, nearly 10 million more than in 2022. The figures cover 47 states and Washington, D.C., compared with 48 states and the nation’s capital four years ago.
In states that provide information on voters’ party affiliation, about 6.8 million Democrats and 5.2 million Republicans have cast ballots early. Those figures do not account for all early voters nationwide or indicate which candidates received their votes.
Trump is trying to rally his supporters and get them to the polls. He is also continuing his efforts to interfere with state elections.
President Donald Trump has now rescheduled two weekend rallies a day after canceling them, adding back in-person events in Iowa and Kansas on Sunday.
Trump’s political team had canceled the events on Thursday, explaining that doing so would allow the president to hold roughly 20 tele-rallies for candidates around the country.
All Cats Constitute The Same Family — From Ghosts and Goblins by Wilhelmina Harper.
Trump is scheduled to travel to Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday before spending Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. Three people with knowledge of the schedule said Trump will travel to Iowa and Kansas on Sunday for back-to-back rallies.
The rallies will be held in the locations originally planned: first, in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday afternoon, followed by Salina, Kansas, in the evening.
Trump himself drove the scheduling change, according to people familiar with the decision, who like others cited in this article were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. One adviser said the president was tired after weeks of rallies and wanted to take a day off. Another person said Trump is fascinated by tele-rally technology — in effect, a massive conference call — and strongly believes the calls, which the person said can feature tens of thousands of participants, reach more supporters than in-person events.
The shifting plans have added a sense of whiplash to an already frenetic final stretch of campaigning as Republicans fight to hold their congressional majorities.
The Republican National Committee had said Thursday night that the Iowa and Kansas events were being dropped because Republicans “were in a strong position” in each state. A day later, they were back on.
The president on Thursday told reporters he was not traveling to Kansas because Sen. Roger Marshall was doing “really well” in his race, which polls have shown is competitive.
And then there are the Trump administration’s efforts to interfere with state elections.
Very early on Wednesday morning, Dover, N.J., Councilwoman Sandra Wittner started getting messages about immigration agents. A dozen or more were gathering outside a Walgreens, according to the messages she was getting. Throughout the day, neighbors in north New Jersey saw a spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
And New Jersey is not alone. In the weeks ahead of the midterms, various cities and states across the country are reporting a notable rise in ICE activity, according to reports gathered by NPR and its member stations.
“The tactics that the administration has been deploying in communities really appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters,” says Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. Despite that, early turnout is surging.
“There was definitely a lot of apprehension and fear,” Wittner recalls. “We just really weren’t sure if something huge was about to happen. People were not feeling very comfortable or safe.” [….]
An official within New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that they have noted a surge in ICE activity in the city.
“We’re certainly witnessing an uptick in activity, and have been since the summer,” says a member of a volunteer group of neighbors in New York. She asked that NPR not use her name, as she is worried about retaliation. Her group goes to the scene where an ICE operation is happening, documents it, reminds those being detained of their rights, and alerts neighbors.
The article also reports increased ICE activity in Oregon.
Trump’s DOJ is continuing it’s efforts to find voting by undocumented people.
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution over their handling of disputes about voter qualifications.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson also ordered the Trump administration to cease demanding that election workers remove voters from statewide rolls, refuse to issue ballots to specific voters or segregate ballots cast in the midterms based on the administration’s claims that some voters are ineligible.
“Because the public has a paramount interest in ensuring that election officials and workers are able to carry out their work in accordance with federal law and election procedure, and the official day of the Elections is only a couple of days away, the balance of the equities and public interest weigh in Plaintiffs’ favor,” Thompson wrote.
Thompson, a San Francisco-based Biden appointee, issued the temporary restraining order in connection with a lawsuit brought by the Service Employees International Union and other groups. Her directive also requires the DOJ to reach out to any state or local officials who received warnings about possible prosecution and inform them that “demands and threats of prosecution to election officials and workers … have been enjoined.”
The Justice Department on Thursday sent letters to election workers in all 50 states alluding to possible prosecution if they didn’t preserve election records. DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s broad ruling.
A federal judge imposed a sweeping emergency order halting various aggressive tactics employed by the Trump administration in recent days to pressure election officials across the country.
“Although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters,” US District Judge Trina Thompson said in her opinion granting a temporary restraining order Friday evening.
She said, while her order is in place, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security cannot demand that election officials in any state segregate ballots, purge voters from voter rolls, or halt ballot processing. Thompson, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, is also blocking threats of criminal prosecutions against election officials from those agencies and said that the administration cannot take other actions that “threaten, intimidate or coerce” election officials to demand changes in ballot processing procedures on claims the voters are ineligible.
Thompson’s opinion rebuked claims the administration has made for months that it can and will prosecute election officials for not doing enough to prevent illegal voting.
By Marina Karoleva
“When state and local government employees perform the work of distributing, processing, or counting ballots or otherwise administering the 2026 midterm election” in accordance with the law, “they do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs to a registered voter alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote,” she wrote.
She is also requiring the administration inform her of any “search warrant applications, grand jury subpoenas, or other demands to access election materials or ballots” that have been issued related to lists the administration has created to allege individuals are ineligible to vote.
There’s much more at the CNN link.
The situation in Alaska is concerning. The New York Times published an article claiming that the Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola was involved in a conspiracy to confuse voters by adding a candidate to the ballot with the same name as the Republican candidate. Peltola denies any involvement in this effort. This tactic has frequently been used by Republicans and is not a crime, but the DOJ has announced a criminal investigation of Peltola’s campaign. Some Democrats are accusing the NYT of a similar tactic to their late attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016. Meanwhile, the Time completely ignore a new accusation of rape against Trump.
America is four days out from the end of an election in which America’s deeply unpopular fascist ruling party is trying to retain control of Congress. The week began with yet another new rape allegation against the president of the united states, a man who has already been found liable for sexual assault in another case. The president and his allies are frantically whipping up hatred and anger at racial minorities in a continuation of a decade-long effort to inspire and incite violence against those who oppose them. They continue to disappear people off of American streets without trial, wage a figurative war against free expression and a literal war that has driven up prices for American families, all while plundering the treasury for their own financial gain.
By Viera Patcheva
Against that backdrop, the national news media is doing everything they can to make the central story of the last days of this election season an alleged political maneuver by Alaska Democrats that was, by all accounts, legal, consistent with past behavior by both major political parties, and unlikely to have any real effect on the outcome of the Alaska Senate race. America’s dominant news companies, led by the New York Times, have literally ignored the new rape allegation against the president of the United States while breathlessly hyping the Alaska maneuver, giving Donald Trump the distraction he desperately seeks and a phony premise for his anti-democratic efforts to effectively cancel a Senate election that could determine control of the entire U.S. Senate. It is, in the most charitable assessment, a gross and feckless abandonment of the news media’s responsibility to provide voters the information they need to make considered decisions about the future of their country.
Here’s the Alaska situation: The New York Times reported allegations that people associated with the campaign of Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola recruited an Alaskan named Dan Sullivan to run for the Senate in order to siphon votes away from incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.
This no doubt strikes some people as unsportsmanlike, but it is important to understand a few things:
1) It is legal.
2) There is ample precedent for this precise maneuver, as well as countless others that are merely similar, from both political parties, both this election season and historically.
3) This particular maneuver is exceedingly unlikely to have an effect on the outcome of the Alaska senate race, because Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, which means that any Alaskan who wants to vote for the Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan but who is somehow confused about which Dan Sullivan he is on the ballot despite the fact that only one Dan Sullivan on the ballot is identified with the words “Republican” or “incumbent” can simply rank the two Dan Sullivans as first and second choices in either order and that vote will ultimately be counted for the Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan.
On Thursday night, the Republican governor of Alaska refused to commit to certifying the outcome in the Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins. Which means that if she does triumph, refusing to seat Peltola could well become a cause célèbre on the right—one that Donald Trump requires Republicans to commit to under threat of excommunication from MAGA.
Democrats are already preparing for a range of scenarios along these lines. And while this GOP gambit is very unlikely to succeed, it could get awfully nasty.
Governor Mike Dunleavy’s comments came in a discussion about the controversial report this week that Democrats conspired to get a second “Dan Sullivan” on the ballot to siphon votes from GOP Senator Dan Sullivan. The governor has ordered a criminal probe of the move, and a reporter asked him if he’ll certify the election if she’s still under that investigation.
“If we conclude that there were things that should not have happened, that are illegal, we will act on that,” Dunleavy said. “That may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate.” [….]
How bad was this plot? In my view, it’s scummy and antidemocratic conduct. But it’s routine, as ratfucking goes. Indeed, Democrats quickly cited numerous examples of Republicans engaged in lots of similar chicanery. Let’s get real: We live in a world where Trump ordered multiple GOP state legislatures to execute extreme gerrymanders for the explicitly declared purpose of holding the House, where Trump has called on congressional Republicans to seize control of state-administered elections, and where Trump still won’t commit to accepting a midterm defeat.
In that world, the Alaska saga is pretty damn small electoral potatoes. The ballot will be clearly labeled by party, and it’s unlikely to make any difference. Besides, as I wrote in my 2018 book, if only one side adheres to norms of fair play in politics, that is itself destabilizing. Generally speaking, mutual escalation of hardball tactics may be the only way to compel some kind of détente over time.
All that aside, the second “Dan Sullivan” says his decision to run was his own, and state courts (in a separate lawsuit) have already upheld his right to do so. Yet Trump’s Justice Department is already suing to force Alaska not to certify the results, insisting the second “Dan Sullivan” will invalidate any outcome (other than a GOP victory, of course).
The FBI on Friday began reaching out to donors of Dan J. Sullivan asking about potential deception, as federal authorities ramped up their investigation over the U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska who shares a name with the Republican incumbent.
An Anchorage-based FBI agent visited a boat dealership in Petersburg, a small fishing community accessible only by air or water where the candidate lives. The agent left a business card for Charles Flint, who told The Associated Press he has known Dan J. Sullivan for years as a respected teacher and musician.
The FBI visit came after federal officials confirmed the existence of a criminal probe over the candidate. The U.S. Department of Justice also pushed Friday for a court order to isolate certain Alaska ballots to investigate potential voter confusion.
Flint contributed $500 over the summer to what he considered a long-shot campaign, saying he knew Dan J. Sullivan would have expenses and respected him for “throwing his hat in the ring.” Flint said the FBI agent asked his son, who works at the dealership, whether Flint felt he had been “misled” about which candidate he was supporting.
“I don’t feel like I’ve been misled at all,” Flint, who has been out of town, told the AP in a telephone interview, adding he had no intention of calling the agent but would “let him waste his time trying to track me down.”
“I don’t think there’s any confusion,” he said, adding he intends to rank Democrat Mary Peltola first on his ballot, followed by Dan J. Sullivan. “Everybody knows who the incumbent is.”
In Kansas, Senator Roger Marshall, a vulnerable Republican, baselessly said his Democratic opponent “probably is grooming” children.
In Texas, Republicans have cast James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee, as a “freak” and insinuated he is gay, secretly a vegan, and obsessed with transgender children because he made statements supporting them in the past.
And in Michigan, Republicans have targeted the Democratic Senate nominee, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, with Islamophobic attacks. Mr. Trump has described Dr. El-Sayed as a “vicious, violent jihadist.”
Facing a backlash over rising prices and working to overcome the president’s deep unpopularity, Republicans across the country have tarred their opponents with false, inflammatory and deeply personal attacks in the final stretch of the midterm election.
In many cases, they are following the lead of a president who has repeatedly rewritten the rules of acceptable discourse in American politics. Many of the attacks have drawn little pushback from within the party, but some Republicans say they are concerned by the trend.
“It’s awful,” said former Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and critic of Mr. Trump. Mr. Flake, who is backing candidates in both parties in the midterms, said Republicans had gone down a darker road in their messaging: “We’ve gotten progressively more crass and crude and vulgar. But this seems to be a new level.”
The strategy risks turning off some moderate voters who see the rhetoric as over-the-top or offensive, political observers said. But it could be effective at energizing the Republican base. Democrats, who have widely condemned the Republicans’ attacks, worry the lines will land with some voters….
American political campaigns have long been awash in negative and dubious attacks by both parties — in debate lines, TV commercials and stump speeches — but this bitter, hard-fought cycle may set a new standard. Some political scientists said this election season had devolved into the most negative, dark campaign in modern American history.
“I think it’s the worst,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. She attributed the tone to candidates’ desire to package their message for social media, and to Republicans’ mirroring of Mr. Trump: “He’s opened a portal to the degradation of our electoral system.”
In Texas, Vice President JD Vance suggested at a rally that Mr. Talarico was gay, drawing gasps from the crowd. “A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,” Mr. Vance added, referring to Mr. Talarico’s past statements in support of transgender youth.
Mr. Talarico has a girlfriend. The attack was part of a broad effort by Republicans to portray Mr. Talarico as extreme. Mr. Trump has taken to referring to Mr. Talarico as “Talafreako.”
That’s where things stand, 3 days before election day. What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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I don’t know where to begin. Last night’s election results exceeded my wildest dreams. Trump is still in the White House, but Democrats will now control both houses of the next Congress. Democrats won races all over the country. With some races still undecided, Democrats now hold 54 seats in the Senate and 228 seats in the House.A crowd reacts as Senator Jon Ossoff speaks at his victory party.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times
Amy Acton elected Governor of Ohio
James Talarico wins Senate seat in Texas
Adam Hamilton wins Senate seat in Kansas
Troy Jackson defeats Susan Collins in Maine Senate race.
A question we all might be asking is this one answered by 
The authors elucidate 5 issues that are worrying voting rights experts. Again, go to the link to read the details There are quite a few articles up specifically on possible election problems at Propublica. 
Despite all of this, the numbers geeks are still saying the Democratic candidates have the advantage and the momentum. I’m still largely fixated on the senate race but watching NW Lousyana kick out Mike Johnson and thus, end his speakership, would make me happy too. This is from the 
Like I said, I’m wondering if that huge surge of black voters up in the NW corner of Louisiana will manage to dethrone Mike Johnson. This is from the
