02 U.S. Politics

On Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) said in Tuesday’s election, voters sent a “very clear message” to Donald Trump, rejecting his “chaos.”

Host Jake Tapper said, “We’re back with this breaking news in our national lead, the FAA set to cut flights at U.S. airports starting Friday. If the government shutdown continues.”

He asked, “Do you know how big of an impact these cuts could have?”

Shapiro said, “I think it’s going to have a huge impact. And listen, this is yet another example of the kind of chaos that Donald Trump has brought to our country. I mean, listen, Republicans control the the White House. They control the House. They control the Senate. They got to reopen the government, and they got to pay these workers who do really critical tasks for us, like keeping us safe when we’re in the skies. It’s time for them to get this over with and get people back to work, pay folks, and end this shutdown.”

The California Republican Party has announced a federal lawsuit against the state’s recently-passed Prop 50, which will potentially add 5 Democrat seats to the U.S. House.

During a press conference on Tuesday morning, State Assemblyman David Tangipa announced himself as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. He was joined by Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, and attorney Mike Columbo of the Dhillon Law Group, per KABC:

Eighteen California voters are also co-plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges that newly approved Proposition 50 “unconstitutionally gerrymanders districts in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments.”

The ballot measure created a new congressional map with the goal of giving Democrats five more of the state’s 52 congressional seats. It easily passed.

Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits in California to block Democrats’ plan with little success so far.

House Democrat Jared Golden of Maine announced on Wednesday that he will not seek reelection, citing “recent events,” including political violence, polarization, and the “grim milestone” of his own party shutting the government down for the longest period in history.

Golden is one of two Congress members from Maine, and Trump won his district by 10 points last election. Per Politico, he faces a “strong challenge” from former Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage as Democrats seek to take the House majority next election.

Axios reports that the district is “the most Republican leaning district of any House Democrat.”

Golden announced his departure from Congress on X:

“I’m confident that were I to run again, I would win. But recent events have made me reconsider whether the good I can do in Congress still outweighs the cost to my family,” he said.

We can draw a few conclusions from an off-year election, when iconic races in blue states went, as expected, overwhelmingly Democratic.

Nevertheless, there is only a year left before the midterms. So Republicans must react to even these paltry results.

1) Democrats’ chaotic nihilism still works. The chaos strategy causes so much turmoil, noise, and negative media coverage that the confused voting public simply cannot sort it all out. The public wishes the upheaval would just go away and often blames those with the most current authority—logically, the incumbent Trump and his administration.

2) Every day of Trump’s first year, there were either campus eruptions, Tesla firebombings, street violence against ICE, or crazy district judges’ injunctions.

The bedlam becomes force multiplied by unhinged outbursts from Democrats like AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, and the proverbial Squad.

Vice President JD Vance has given his response to Republican candidates recent Gubernatorial losses in New Jersey and Virginia.

Vance in a post on X shared that Republicans need to begin to focus on the “home front.”

The Vice President added the Trump administration is working on making lives of Americans a bit easier by making things more affordable but noted they inherited a disaster from Joe Biden.

Vance also noted the election losses did come in two Blue states and warned Republicans to not overreact.

Fox News broke down Vance’s comments on the election losses:

Vice President JD Vance said that Republicans need to direct their focus to the “home front” and work to make life more affordable for Americans, following the GOP losses in several key elections Tuesday.

Republicans’ ability to do so will be a key factor in how Americans show up and vote in the 2026 midterm races, according to Vance.

“I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states, but a few thoughts,” Vance said in a Wednesday social media post.

“We need to focus on the home front,” Vance said. “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

Republicans have given voters no reason to support them beyond the claim that Democrats are dangerously radical.

Well, sure. But when voters look around and see rising prices, rising crime, and no clear plan from the party in power, they turn to the other side. That’s what happened in Virginia, and it will keep happening as long as life stays unaffordable and Republicans offer nothing but excuses.

Republicans can still win — but not with hollow slogans or billionaire donors. They need to fight for affordable living, strong families, and safe communities.

Democrats’ victories in Virginia and New Jersey shouldn’t shock anyone — Trump didn’t need either state to win the presidency in 2024. What should alarm Republicans are the margins. Democrats crushed their opponents by 15 points in Virginia and 13 in New Jersey, performing better than Kamala Harris did against Trump in New York.

Two of the five wealthiest counties in the United States are in Virginia and — SURPRISE! — they’re the counties that are the closest to Washington. Fairfax County is in at number five and Loudon County is number one with a bullet. Falls Church, Virginia is an independent city that is not part of a county but in the D.C. metro  area, and it has the second highest household income in the nation.

The only thing that part of the country produces is new ways to fleece the American taxpayer. Sadly, business is booming.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A woman who previously declared she was living in the U.S. illegally won the election to become the next mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Democrat state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her emerged victorious late Tuesday night in the St. Paul mayoral election, defeating incumbent Democrat Mayor Melvin Carter after a tabulation of second-choice votes, according to election results. Her, who was born in Laos and entered the U.S. as a refugee, once claimed during a public debate that she and her family were illegal migrants, but later walked those claims back.

“I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country,” Her said in June during a Minnesota House of Representatives floor debate over Medicaid eligibility for illegal migrants.

How should we respond to the unpleasant but expected Blue Wave that washed over the country on Election Day, 2025?

The first issue is clearly that the Republican Party has a turnout problem in off-year elections. A lot of the new MAGA Trump voters are centrist or liberal-leaning independents who have joined the GOP. These voters don’t get engaged beyond the presidential elections. Republican activists must concentrate their efforts on getting them to vote more. Better campaign strategies have to invest in more than liking President Trump and wanting to reverse the damage done by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Those two are out of the picture now, and there are still serious social, cultural, and political problems that voters want resolved.

The predictive power of off-year elections is mixed, and next year’s races will play out in a much wider swathe of the country. Some things should concern Republicans about the 2026 midterm elections, while other worries are overblown.

No guarantee of 2026 blue wave

Democrats won nearly every important election this year, a near-clean sweep. The outcomes weren’t surprising since Democrats consistently led in most polls and were at least within the margin of error in the Virginia attorney general’s race, but the size of some of these wins was greater than expected.

For example, Democrats led in the New Jersey governor’s race, a state that has consistently teased and then disappointed Republicans in recent years. The GOP’s hopes for an upset rested on gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli overperforming his poll numbers like he did in a close 2021 loss. This time, the Democrats’ lead was much smaller, but Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) outperformed her poll numbers and won the governor’s race by more than 13 points.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey secured a third term, fending off Democratic Socialist State Sen. Omar Fateh.

Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting, which means a candidate must receive 50% or more of the vote.

Frey came up with 42% of the vote after the first round, with Fateh in second with 32%.

Fateh and two other challengers asked their supporters “to rank one another but not Frey, in order to make it harder for the incumbent to win.”

On Wednesday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC were riding high and drunk on power after seeing their preferred candidates sweep with socialist Zohran Mamdani’s “astonishing surge” in New York City and Democrats Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia romping to huge wins, declaring this a GOP “bloodbath” and “glimmer of hope” for Democrats in 2026 with “a guidebook” to create a blue wave.

As always, ABC’s Good Morning America led the way in liberal sycophancy. It started from the outset with co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos making sure to brand Sherrill and Spanberger as “centrist Democrats” in contrast to “democratic socialist” Mamdani.