02c U.S. Politics – Election

News Source
EXCERPT:

 

Donald Trump would never have been president without rural America. One of the greatest contradictions, or some would say con jobs, in American history was pulled off as a New York City creature passed himself off as relatable and sharing the concerns of rural America.

To anyone with a discerning eye, it was clear that Trump didn’t understand or care about rural America. Even rural Americans would admit this fact on occasion, but they liked Trump because he talked about them, and he played on their mistrust of elites by selling himself as an outsider who had been inside enough to confirm their suspicions about “the swamp.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Public domain U.S. Congress image via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized for WLTR coverage.

The Democratic advantage heading into the 2026 midterms just took a major dive.

A fresh Economist/YouGov poll still shows Democrats ahead on the generic congressional ballot, but the cushion they enjoyed earlier this cycle is shrinking fast.

That is the kind of trend line that ruins a party’s year.

News Source
EXCERPT:

 

Uh oh. Josh Kraushaar, a center-left reporter who specializes in Congress, recently acknowledged the obvious about the 2026 battle for the U.S. Senate:

This is an extraordinarily tough Senate map for the Democrats. Even though the party is in a very historically favorable national environment, the reality is it would take a tsunami for Democrats to win more than two Senate seats.

This is what I have been saying for a while. The Republicans have a 53 to 47-seat majority in the Senate, with 35 seats up this year. The Democrats need a net pick up of four seats to win control. But only two Republican seats – Maine and North Carolina – are in competitive states. The other 20 GOP seats are in states Donald Trump won by double digits. That almost never happens in Senate elections, let alone twice. In the 2025 Virginia elections, the Democrats won a landslide, but they didn’t carry a single district where Trump won with that margin.

The Democrats also must not lose any of their own competitive seats. And in the blue wave of 2018, the Democrats lost Florida. This year, they could lose Georgia, Michigan, and/or New Hampshire.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Republicans in Georgia just proved that one thing can overcome the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement: an endless stream of cash.

Health care executive Rick Jackson defeated Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday, with the help of over $100 million of his personal wealth.

Jones’ loss is a major upset for the president in a marquee battleground state, and it follows several high-profile Trump losses in 2022, when his candidates either lost their primaries or the general election. The result is also a rare blunder for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who joined Trump in endorsing Jones to be his successor ahead of Tuesday’s primary, after months of sitting on the sidelines of the race.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Washington — Rep. Mike Collins will face off against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November as Republicans look to Georgia to deliver a key GOP victory that could determine control of the Senate.

Collins won the Republican Senate runoff in Georgia on Tuesday night, CBS News projects, defeating Derek Dooley, a former college football coach.

The contest went to a runoff after no candidate secured 50% of the vote in last month’s primary, where a third candidate, Rep. Buddy Carter, was eliminated. Collins, the owner of a trucking business, has represented Georgia in the House since 2023 and finished first in the runoff with almost 41% of the vote. Dooley, an attorney who coached football at the University of Tennessee and is the son of legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, won around 30% of the vote last month.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Tuesday on MS NOW’s “The Briefing,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that if Democrats win the majority in the midterms, they will subpoena private-sector people who worked with President Donald Trump in his second term.

Host Jen Psaki asked, “Should the Senate be, should the Democrats be in the majority and decide to investigate or look into Patel? I mean, you are one of the many people who have been targeted by Trump’s Justice Department under Trump’s direction, as we’ve all seen it. One another person, who announced yesterday that he was being targeted is, of course, Governor Gavin Newsom. I know you spoke with some of my colleagues about that last night, but I wonder, as we’re thinking about because we’ve been talking about the Georgia races tonight, we’ve been talking about politics as we think about if Democrats have the majority next year, you’re on the Judiciary Committee. Trump is still going to target his political enemies. He’s not going to stop. He’s going to have people in the Department of Justice that does that. What changes what kind of Senate majority do to kind of hold them to account or even stop that?”

Schiff said, “Well, we’ll of course, to oversight of the administration. But judging from his first term, when we subpoenaed, for example, administration officials in the Russia Ukraine investigations, they basically stonewall the subpoenas. In fact, Trump was impeached in that first impeachment, not just for trying to extort Zelensky to get him to help cheat in the election, but also because he was stonewalling, congressional subpoenas. So I don’t think we can expect a whole lot from the administration, but we can subpoena the private sector and they will need to comply. So all of the crypto deals and meme coin deals, the UFC fight, all the back channeling on the Paramount SkyDance, and Warner Brothers mergers, whether there are promises made of changing editorial content, all of that kind of corruption, potential corruption, we will be able to look into.”

Follow Pam Key on X @pam

News Source
EXCERPT:

Over the last decade, California became a national leader in voter accessibility and security, expanding options for when and how ballots can be cast while also strengthening election safeguards.

But those reforms came at a cost: speed. And in a political climate where unsupported conspiracies about election fraud can run rampant on social media — pushed, at times, by top political leaders — some fear the slow vote count is becoming a liability.

Election outcomes in recent years have become more drawn out in California, most recently taking about a week to determine the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral candidates advancing to November’s runoff after hotly contested primaries. And in prior years, it’s taken even longer to determine tight U.S. House or state Senate seats.

News Source
EXCERPT:

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — President Trump’s loyalist federal prosecutor in Los Angeles — has not been shy in recent days about his intention to ferret out voter fraud in California’s primary election and criminally charge those responsible.

He has announced that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI, urged Californians on social media to submit evidence of “potential election fraud” directly to his office, and said flatly he “will be charging some people” with election fraud — just as soon as California certifies its vote count and his office “can prove some of the allegations.”

Essayli’s public callouts and promises are highly unusual and in direct conflict with Justice Department guidance on ballot fraud investigations at the federal level, which states federal prosecutors should not publicly pursue such claims amid of vote counting.

The Justice Manual — which regulates the actions of federal prosecutors nationwide — says the department “should not engage in overt criminal investigative measures in matters involving alleged ballot fraud until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded,” in part because doing so “runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Justice Department defended its authority to ensure “fair” elections in California after it launched multiple election fraud investigations coupled with litigation over voter registration.

California has long been known for liberal practices such as ballot harvesting, with a universal mail-in voting system that allows ballots to arrive a week after Election Day, and no voter ID requirements.

“The Department of Justice has statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls and monitoring returns when candidates for federal office are on the ballot,” Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the Daily Signal.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Chuck Schumer has served as a punching bag for angry Democrats for more than a year — taking flak on everything from his 2026 recruiting to his handling of government funding talks.

But with about five months until the midterm elections, the Senate minority leader is gently starting to punch back — pointing out how some of his bets are paying off as his party moves within striking distance of taking back the majority in November.

“There’s no victory lap to take in June,” he said in an interview in his Capitol office suite.

News Source
EXCERPT:

As more and more revelations come to the fore about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who just won the Democrat primary this week, many Democrats seem to have adopted a simple mantra regarding his campaign: Vote for the Nazi: It’s important.

The saying echoes a slogan from campaigns past — one that supporters of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Platner’s opponent in the general election, would do well to employ against Platner. The slogan demonstrates how Democrats will embrace a candidate — any candidate — so long as that person opposes President Trump.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.

Progressive city council member Nithya Raman has advanced to a November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, setting up an unexpected matchup between two Democrats and former political allies to run the struggling city of nearly four million people.

The outcome means Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality television personality from The Hills, is out of the running. His candidacy had drawn national attention because of his celebrity and willingness to challenge liberal governance in a city dominated by Democrats, but the buzz did not translate into enough votes to make the runoff.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The president and CEO of Democrat fundraising giant ActBlue repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination Wednesday when questioned by congressional investigators about the organization’s handling of foreign donations and fraud-prevention policies.

During a hearing before the House Committee on Administration, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones declined to answer a series of questions from Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), including inquiries about whether previous statements she provided to Congress were accurate and whether the organization weakened anti-fraud safeguards during the 2024 election cycle.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Sometimes you just have to choose the lesser of two evils, and President Trump’s recent decision reflects that.

On Wednesday, President Trump announced he has endorsed Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine’s upcoming Senate election.

Collins has been labeled by many conservatives as a RINO after she voted to Impeach Trump in 2021 for “inciting an insurrection.”

While taking questions from the press inside the Oval Office, Trump was asked if he would be endorsing Collins, who is running against Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, to which Trump responded that he would be supporting her despite the two having different ideologies.

News Source
EXCERPT:

David Flippo, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who earned President Donald Trump’s support, won the GOP primary to replace retiring Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei.

The race in Nevada’s 2nd District was a proxy war between Trump and prominent state Republicans, many of whom backed former state Sen. James Settelmeyer, including Amodei and GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo. Flippo ended up emerging victorious on Wednesday from a crowded, 13-person Republican field.

The victory continues Trump’s 2026 hot streak in GOP primary endorsements, marred only by a hiccup in last week’s Iowa gubernatorial primary. Trump backed Flippo in a Truth Social post in late May, less than two weeks before Election Day.

Flippo campaigned as a hardliner on immigration and transgender issues, and he slammed Settelmeyer as a “woke liberal” in ads. But Settelmeyer’s opponents took issue with Flippo, a longtime Las Vegas resident who only recently purchased property in Reno, attempting to run the state’s lone safely Republican district.

News Source
EXCERPT:

There can be only one reason not to count votes on a single election day: fraud. Allowing votes to be accepted and “counted” for days, or, as in California, months after election day, enables one essential Democrat cheating tactic: Democrats get to know the total of Republican votes, so they know how many Democrat votes they’ll have to manufacture to win.

This is compounded by ballot harvesting, ballot drop boxes, and mail-in ballots sent to everyone, including the dead, illegal aliens, and people who haven’t lived in the state for years. Accepting those ballots prior to election day allows Democrats not only to accept and count illegal ballots, but to suppress Republican ballots. Ballots destroyed and never counted can’t be discovered in audits, which they violently resist. Add in allowing anyone to register to vote with just about anything with someone’s name on it, and you have an anti-Republican—as in our constitutional republic—single-party state.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Legacy media don’t describe. They exist to prevent description, corralling and deflecting. In the famous description from Iowahawk, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

Four states held primary elections on June 9, and on the morning of June 10, they were either ahead in their count or about as far along in their count of ballots as California, which held its primaries on June 2. These screenshots from live election results at the NBC News website are both from Wednesday morning at 9:30 PT:

California counts far more slowly than anyone else in the country, and California’s results have the most remarkable tendency to drift: What the outcome looks like on election night has nothing to do with the final outcome. Famous 2010 election outcome summarized in a single headline about the 2010 state’s attorney general race: “When Kamala Harris lost on election night, but won three weeks later.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

O’Keefe Media Group released a photo Tuesday that it said showed multiple California ballots inside a Los Angeles County library safe days after polls closed in the state’s primary elections.

The image was reportedly taken Friday inside Stevenson Ranch Library near Santa Clarita, three days after voters went to the polls.

James O’Keefe said the photo was sent to his organization from inside the library and allegedly showed ballots stored in the same safe used by the facility for other items, including cash.

“Multiple CA Ballots Found Inside LA County Library.

We have just received this picture from within Stevenson Ranch Library near Santa Clarita, CA. The photo allegedly shows multiple ballots inside of the libraries own safe, this is where the library keeps other things such as cash.

This picture was taken last Friday. We are hopeful these ballots made it to the right processing centers.

If you have any tips about election fraud in CA or Los Angeles email us at [email protected] or text our Signal at 9144919395.

Our journalists are standing by!”

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to impose strict penalties, including deportation, on illegal aliens who vote in American elections.

According to a DHS press release, the Immigration and Nationality Act directs the removal of aliens who illegally vote or make a false claim to US citizenship.

News Source
EXCERPT:

 

Congressional Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday, and CNN’s Manu Raju has been tracking them down to ask if they have any proof to support Trump’s claim that the primary election in California was rigged.

When Raju asked the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said:

I, look, I don’t… Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that’s a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system. It is critical to maintain a constitutional republic. We’re gonna keep working to pass the Save America Act because it requires, as you know, proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote.

That, those are also 90%-plus issues in public opinion, and 70% of Democrats understand that’s, that’s necessary. We have to have free and fair elections-

Johnson seemed to be claiming that there is no proof that the California primary election was rigged because Democrats in the state are “diabolical.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) endorsed South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) in the Palmetto State’s GOP gubernatorial primary after she lost the initial primary Tuesday. “I want you to know that I’m going to endorse Alan Wilson for governor,” Mace told supporters after polls closed.  “I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to…

News Source
EXCERPT:

Socialist Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman appeared to concede defeat Tuesday night after it looked like Spencer Pratt would advance to the November runoff election against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. But then votes kept pouring in days after the Tuesday election, and by Sunday evening, Raman had taken the lead over Pratt.

The 180-degree-turn has left many scratching their heads: How does a candidate who was down by roughly 40,000 votes suddenly jump to second place after she herself publicly signaled her path to victory had all but disappeared? (Raman currently leads Pratt by more than 20,000 votes, after post-election ballot dumps have gone overwhelmingly in her favor.)

For NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, however, questions about such outcomes are apparently evidence of nothing more than public ignorance. During a Sunday interview, President Donald Trump said the 2020 election was “rigged” (and he’s right — but more on that later) and that the same rigging is happening in California.

News Source
EXCERPT:

As people watch the insane vote counting in the Los Angeles Mayor’s race, which comes just weeks after Newsom said the state had a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ plan in the event Republicans won the gubernatorial jungle primary, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is calling on Congress to cut off federal funding to California until it cleans up its ‘shady election process.’

News Source
EXCERPT:

As the Texas Senate race heats up between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey feels compelled to remind Texas voters of Talarico’s moral failings — which are anything but small.

These moral failures are reflected even in the church he attends, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, which was recently exposed by the Daily Wire for having “explicit LGBTQ books in its bookstore aimed at children.”

Stuckey calls the books “basically pornographic,” as they contained “illustrations of sexual acts.”