02c U.S. Politics – Election

News Source
EXCERPT:

During Trump’s first term, he launched a trade war with China that caused a crisis in the farming community. However, farmers didn’t learn their lesson. By the time the 2024 election rolled around, farmers had some sort of collective amnesia because they did it all to themselves again. Only this time, it is even worse.

Trump already hit farmers with his tariffs and trade wars. Trump got nearly 78% of the vote from farming communities in 2024, and the president thanked them by shutting down USAID and cutting SNAP.

A new survey of farmers for the American Farm Bureau Federation shows that things are about to get much worse for the nation’s farmers:

Conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation April 3-11, the survey shows 70% of respondents say fertilizer is so expensive that they will not be able to buy all the fertilizer they need.

More than 5,700 farmers, both Farm Bureau members and non-members, from every state and Puerto Rico took the survey. Farm Bureau economists analyzed the results in the latest Market Intel.

The analysis reveals that almost 8 in 10 farmers in the southern U.S. say they can’t afford all needed supplies this year, followed by the Northeast and West at 69% and 66%, respectively, compared to 48% of the farmers in the Midwest.

Just 19% of farmers in the South prebooked fertilizer purchases in advance of planting season. In the Northeast, only 30% of farmers prebooked, followed by 31% in the West, and 67% in the Midwest. Even with higher pre-booking rates, almost one in three Midwestern farmers still report entering the season without securing all of their fertilizer needs.

News Source
EXCERPT:

When the 2026 midterm cycle began, even Democratic operatives would have laughed in your face if you said that control of the Senate was up for grabs.

But now, less than seven months from Election Day, Democrats’ odds of wresting control from Republicans have grown as President Donald Trump’s sagging popularity—spurred by Americans’ anger over his war and its negative impacts on the economy—imperils the GOP.

Roy Cooper, former governor of North Carolina and Democratic Senate candidate, seems poised to defeat GOP candidate Michael Whatley.

Blurb:

Democratic House Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign for California governor on Sunday night following sexual assault allegations that he continues to deny.

“I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s,” Swalwell said in a social media post.

Democrats quickly abandoned Swalwell, 44, after allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. The allegations were first published Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle, and later by CNN.

Blurb:

 

Donald Trump hasn’t done interviews with neutral journalists who could challenge him in years. Trump’s venues of choice are either cell phone interviews that last a minute or two or conservative media like Fox News and Newsmax.

The Fox News interviews are heavily manufactured, usually pretaped, and edited before they air.

It takes a special level of incompetence to go on a network that is propagandistic and supportive and botch a softball question in such a friendly and managed environment.

The issue that is driving the special election results that Democrats have been dominating, and the Democratic Party’s midterm generic ballot lead that has been growing, is the economy. Inflation and rising prices are driving voter outrage directed at this president and his administration.

Blurb:

Congressional and campaign staffers for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) have condemned the recent sexual assault allegations against their embattled boss, urging the public to support the four accusers.

“As leaders of teams working for Eric Swalwell, we’re horrified by the recent reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle and by CNN,” more than a dozen staffers said in an unsigned statement on Saturday. “We stand with our former colleague, and the other women who have come forward. We believe you should stand with them, too.”

Blurb:

Driven by a desire to retain power and avoid political consequences such as impeachment, Donald Trump is pursuing three measures that could influence the upcoming midterm elections.

Late last month, the No Kings Movement conducted over three thousand large protests in all fifty states. As many as eight million concerned citizens made their voices heard, the largest protest in US history, and everyone was watching. This president and the complicit now sense their end and are rightfully frightened. The much-anticipated November mid-term elections risk sweeping a host of Trump supporters from office and Democrats becoming the majority in the House and Senate. Which risks a presidential impeachment process to follow. A third impeachment of a president has no historical precedent. Then again, there has never been a White House resident like this one.

Blurb:

 

Chris Taylor, a liberal Wisconsin judge, won a seat on the state Supreme Court on Tuesday in the latest strong election for liberals since President Donald Trump’s return to office.

Taylor, a former Democratic state representative and current state appellate judge, defeated conservative appeals court judge Maria Lazar in the race for the ten-year term. Taylor’s win expands liberals’ majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to a 5-2 split.

Blurb:

As Virginia voters take part in a closely contested redistricting referendum, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is heading toward the final tally with historically low approval numbers.

For the first time since the 1990s, a sitting Virginia governor is polling below historical norms.

According to Washington Post polling, Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47%—13 points lower than the average approval rating for Virginia governors and below a majority.

Blurb:

In case you were still wondering why the Democrats were so militant about funding Ukraine and why Democrats and RINOs are now targeting Orban.

Watch Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, lay out explosive charges that Ukrainian funds were funneled through Europe to influence U.S. elections and benefit Democrats.This major scandal has serious legal and national security implications, raising urgent questions about foreign money, campaign integrity, and the handling of U.S. taxpayer funds tied to the Ukraine war.

WATCH:

Blurb:

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was the moderate democrat who was going to change the Democrat Party. She was such a moderate; not only was her being a moderate reported by the legacy media, but it was also fact-checked by independent fact-checkers. Her getting elected was a model for how Democrats are going to win the midterms by running as moderates. It’s why she gave the response to Trump’s State of the Union.

The rub is that, according to a recent Washington Post poll, she is the least popular Virginia governor of the 21st century. Because — and this is key — like most Democrats who claim to be moderate, it’s all malarky. As soon as she was sworn in, her true socialist colors shone through. And it would appear voters are having buyer’s remorse.

Dude. It’s been less than three months. Yet, here we are.

Like all “moderate” democrats before her, she is a lying liar who lies, and once getting elected, turned hard left. Boys are going back to the girls’ bathrooms and stealing their sports scholarships. A ton of taxes are on the table to make the middle class less affordable while giving elected officials a pay raise. And relevant to our current political comment, she turned Virginia into a sanctuary state by ending all cooperation with ICE. I believe that was the literal first thing she did.

Blurb:

The mass mailing of mail-in ballots was a temporary emergency measure during the draconian COVID lockdown – another hoax. It was NEVER intended to be a permanent election fixture.

Blurb:

CNN senior data analyst Harry Enten said Thursday that congressional Democrats are under water with their own voter base.

Over 70 percent of American voters and 55 percent of Democrats believe their party’s leaders do not have the right priorities, according to a CNN/SSRS poll cited by Enten.

The party’s approval ratings stand at a historic low in comparison to past midterm elections years.

Blurb:

With less than a month before election day in Virginia, a new poll finds voters aren’t crazy about the Democrats’ plan to change the constitution in order to rig the commonwealth’s political maps.

Heritage Action’s Redistricting Poll of 814 likely Virginia voters gauges support — and opposition — for the April 21 ballot question asking whether the state’s constitution should be altered. Members of the Democrat-controlled Assembly want to “temporarily” push aside the work of a state redistricting commission so that they can rewrite Virginia’s congressional maps. They want an extreme gerrymander that aims to take out four Republican House seats and give Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

Blurb:

An estimated eight million people reportedly turned out on Saturday for “No Kings” protests. Many of the more than 3,300 protests looked the same: crowds largely made up of elderly white leftists holding signs accusing President Donald Trump of being a “dictator” or “tyrant” or, as might be guessed, a “king.”

On social media there’s no shortage of Republicans mocking the protests — and with good reason. But however stupid the message of the “No Kings” protests, the left nonetheless managed to mobilize millions of people, including current and future voters.

Blurb:

The leftists who now control Virginia’s government desperately want you to believe that ripping up a bipartisan congressional map mid-decade for naked political advantage is fair. They insist as much in the language of the absurd referendum question before the commonwealth’s voters next month.

“Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” the ballot asks.

Blurb:

Forty-seven Democrats voted against a photo ID amendment on Thursday despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer previously claiming that he was supportive of photo ID.

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) introduced an amendment to the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act that would simply require photo ID to vote. Acceptable forms of ID include an unexpired driver’s license with a photo, a valid passport, a military ID, an unexpired state-ID card, among others.

The measure needed 60 votes to pass but only received 53 “AYE’s.”

Blurb:

Illinois Governor JB Prtizker — who has long been seen as a potential presidential contender in 2028 — recently laid out his plans to launch politically-motivated prosecutions targeting Trump officials, a strategy he referred to as “Project 2029.”

While speaking with the New York Times, Pritzker framed the plan as a “forward-looking framework” for Democrats aiming to regain national power after the 2028 election. Pritzker, who has served as governor since 2019 and has frequently clashed with the Trump administration on issues including immigration enforcement, described the project as a necessary response to political lessons from recent years.

Blurb:

The Democrats have set a new record for single-month lobbyist fundraising. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported a record $4.1 million in lobbyist-bundled contributions in February, according to a Sludge analysis of Federal Election Commission filings, a dramatic increase in corporate-linked fundraising as House Democrats are campaigning on “affordability.” The lobbyist-derived cash made up nearly one-third of the DCCC’s fundraising last month.

Lobbyist bundling, in which registered lobbyists collect checks from their clients and colleagues and deliver them in a single package, is a key way that corporate interests work to gain influence with lawmakers. Federal law requires disclosure of bundled contributions above $24,000.

The DCCC’s February total shatters previous records and builds on a trend of the Democrats’ increasing reliance on lobbyist bundling for their funds. January’s $3.6 million was itself a high-water mark, and as recently as 2023, monthly lobbyist bundling reported by the DCCC was generally much lower, typically in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Blurb:

 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rolled out an energy and climate change agenda Wednesday as a preview of what Democrats have in store if they take the chamber’s majority in November’s elections.

Schumer’s five-point plan seeks to ride the national momentum on affordability, framing Democrats as the party not just of clean energy and fighting climate change, but of lower electricity bills and more jobs.

Blurb:

 

In midterm elections in which control of all or part of Congress flips away from the president’s party, a common pattern emerges.

The party out of power grows stronger on the hypothetical midterm-election ballot as the year moves toward Election Day.

A president isn’t on the midterm ballot, but his/her popularity and the perception of how the country is doing factor in to how voters vote in a midterm election.

The perception of both Donald Trump’s performance and the country’s current situation is not good.