02c U.S. Politics – Election
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Democrats hope gerrymandering Virginia will give them the edge they need to win back the House. But Tuesday’s special election is proving more competitive than they’d like.
Tight polling and concerns over voter turnout in an atypical April election have many Democratic party strategists and officials preparing for a close finish.
“I always thought this campaign would be close [and] 24 hours out, I believe that to be the case,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said on Monday, before the final day of voting.
“Anytime you’re on the ‘yes’ side of a referendum, you’ve got the burden of proof,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what the referendum is, but anytime you’re arguing for ‘yes,’ the other side is going to be arguing for the status quo.”
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Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill making Virginia the latest participant in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact last week, as the compact draws perilously close to upending our constitutional order. Every American who cherishes our republic should take notice.
For years, left-leaning pundits and politicians have campaigned to scrap the Electoral College, the method the founders gave us for choosing presidents. Their vehicle is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. With Virginia’s recent entry, the compact now includes 19 jurisdictions (18 states plus the District of Columbia) controlling 222 electoral votes. That falls short of the 270 needed to trigger the scheme, but the trajectory is clear and troubling.
Virginia’s action carries special irony. This is the state of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution. Yet in April 2026 Virginia has joined an effort that effectively rewrites a core feature of the document Madison helped design.
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A billionaire running for governor of California just released a plan so radical it makes Gavin Newsom look like a moderate.
Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire and failed 2020 presidential candidate who now leads the Democrat primary field for California governor, published a five-point immigration platform this week that calls for abolishing ICE, jailing federal immigration agents, and using state funds to bring deported illegal aliens back to California.
You read that right. He wants to arrest the people enforcing federal law and roll out the red carpet for those who broke it.
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin laid out the details:
NEW: CA gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer (D) releases an immigration platform that is radically left of Gov. Newsom. It includes:
– Abolish ICE
– Put ICE agents in jail & “treat them like the mob”.
– Bring those “kidnapped & detained by ICE back home.”
– Give CA AG power to… https://t.co/XqM8eK7Hhf— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 14, 2026
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It’s been about a week since now-former Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress after the Texas Republican admitted to having an unethical sexual relationship with at least one former aide, who later died by suicide.
Yet the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has yet to set a special election to fill Gonzales’ seat—and that silence is telling.
President Donald Trump carried Gonzales’ seat by just over 15 percentage points in 2024, according to data from The Downballot. In a normal year, that would make this seat a GOP lock.
However, this election cycle has been anything but normal.
Last year, Trump pulled New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to serve as ambassador to the United Nations because he worried her seat would be competitive in a special election. And Trump carried Stefanik’s seat by nearly 21 points—making her Upstate New York district even stronger Republican territory.
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Steve Hilton, a Republican running for governor in California, said Sunday that President Trump’s low approval rating in his state will not play a role in the outcome of the gubernatorial race. “This election is going to be about the future of California and the fact that we’re desperate for change in California,” Hilton, whom…
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The Elitist Media continue to treat the exchanges between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV as an opportunity to try to drive Catholics from the President’s coalition ahead of the midterms. And absolutely no one is more ham-handed about it than ABC News.
Watch Rachel Scott’s report rehashing the controversy, with a sprinkling of Vice President JD Vance’s remarks at a Turning Point USA Event in Georgia, as aired on ABC’s World News Tonight on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026 (click “expand” to view transcript):
WATCH: @ABCWorldNews continues to ham-handedly try to pry Catholics away from President Trump’s coalition.
DAVID MUIR: Tonight, Vice President JD Vance now warning the Pope to, quote, “be careful.” What Vance was talking about as President Trump lashes out against Pope Leo. And… pic.twitter.com/ffS1oyOuwY
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) April 16, 2026
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Republicans have expressed fears both publicly and privately that their congressional majorities are in serious danger in November, as voters angry with President Donald Trump’s war in Iran and the fact that it’s making life even more unaffordable in the United States threaten to punish the GOP at the ballot box.
But now they have moved on from merely talking about those fears to taking concrete steps that make it clear they know their prospects are dire and that they are on track to lose control of not just the House but the Senate, too.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is taking steps to ensure that Republicans will be ready to replace Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito should he choose to retire this summer, giving a little hint-hint to the 76-year-old with a lifetime appointment who was recently hospitalized with an unspecified illness.
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Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) holds a sizable cash advantage over his GOP rivals in the race for New Hampshire’s open Senate seat.
The Democrat raked in $3.3 million to his campaign account over the first quarter of the year as he vies to succeed retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). Pappas, who faces only nominal opposition for his party’s nomination, entered April with $4.2 million in his war chest, according to his Federal Election Commission filing.
Pappas’ leading GOP competitor, former Sen. John E. Sununu, raised $1.1 million directly to his campaign account and had nearly $1.9 million in cash on hand. He spent just $349,000, per his filing — a significantly lower burn rate than Pappas, who spent $2.3 million over the last three months.
Sununu’s primary rival, former Sen. Scott Brown, lagged even further behind. Brown raised a modest $321,000 and entered the second quarter with $783,000 in his campaign coffers. He spent more money than he brought in, according to his filing.
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The New York Times published a detailed article about how national Democrats are losing enthusiasm for Maine’s Senate race. Incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins is at risk, but the leading candidate in the Democratic primary is an oyster farmer with Nazi tattoos, who also trained with an Antifa-like militia. He apologized for getting the tattoo, removed it, then withdrew the apology, and now appears to suggest that his military service turned him into a Nazi, or something similar.
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Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff holds a massive fundraising advantage over the Republicans hoping to unseat him in November, giving him a head start as the GOP field remains fractured.
Ossoff, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents of the cycle, raised $14 million during the first quarter of the year and ended with more than $31 million cash on hand — a significant war chest that dwarfs the combined totals of his Republican challengers, according to filings from the Federal Elections Commission.
On the GOP side, Rep. Mike Collins led in first-quarter fundraising, raising just over $1 million and entering the second quarter with $2.1 million in cash on hand. Collins has been a front-runner in public polling of the race, but with a large share of voters still undecided ahead of the May primary, the contest appears increasingly likely to head to a June runoff.
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Maryland’s Legislature is run by Democrats, yet it refuses to gerrymander the congressional districts in its state. Virginia Democrats could learn something from the Free State.
Like it or not, Virginia is constantly comparing herself to next-door Maryland. Out of the 47 seats in the Maryland Senate, 34 are held by Democrats.
Still, those senators chose to leave mid-decade redistricting in a committee drawer rather than comply with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his nationwide redistricting campaign.
To be fair, President Donald Trump did say it would be nice if Texas — when ordered by the courts to redraw a few districts because they failed the Voting Rights Act “majority-minority” litmus test — made a few more Republican-majority seats.
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Democrats have a problem.
And it’s not just Republicans saying it.
CNN — yes, CNN — just dropped a poll that has to be sending shockwaves through every Democrat strategy meeting in the country right now. According to their own data, only 28% of Americans view the Democrat Party favorably. That is the lowest number CNN has ever recorded going all the way back to 1992….
In 2018 — the last time a Republican was in the White House during midterms — Democrats led net favorability by 12 points. In 2006, they led by 18. Those were both blue wave years.
Now? The script has completely flipped.
Take a look:
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Even CNN was just forced to report that REPUBLICANS are leading net favorability by +5 points ahead of the 2026 midterms
That is HUGE, given in 2018, Democrats were +12
“Look at this. Party ahead, midterm year with GOP president? Republicans actually AHEAD by 5… pic.twitter.com/CgfJqWYezB
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 6, 2026
And here are the raw numbers straight from CNN’s own polling:
CNN POLL
March 26-30
Choice for CongressNow Jan.
Democrat 48% 46%
Republican 42% 41%Favorable Opinion Of…
Only Republicans 28%
Only Democrats 24%
Neither party 26%
Both parties 3%https://t.co/d9m3gZSIG0— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 3, 2026
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EXCERPT:
In a Fox interview that aired on Wednesday, President Donald Trump effectively admitted that the ongoing Republican campaign to rig electoral maps in their favor to avert a wipeout in this year’s midterm elections has been a spectacular failure.
Speaking to his longtime booster and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Trump made a perfunctory statement that Republicans would “do good” in the election but then began speaking as if the party had already lost.
“When somebody gets elected president, that party always loses the midterms, I don’t know why. I don’t know why, nobody can explain it,” Trump said.
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Over the past few weeks, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who is also a Republican candidate for governor of California — has taken the unusual step of seizing ballots from a recent election, launching his own recount, and opening a criminal investigation into how the election was run.
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” Bianco said during a press conference after he and his deputies seized the ballots last month.
The premise of Bianco’s investigation is sharply disputed. Bianco has pointed to the claims of a conservative citizens’ activist group that says it found an apparent discrepancy of tens of thousands of ballots — a figure election officials and independent experts say stems from a misreading of preliminary vote data, not an actual gap between ballots cast and ballots counted.
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A new poll suggests Democrat voters are already looking beyond former Vice President Kamala Harris as the party weighs its options for 2028, with billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban outperforming the failed 2024 candidate in a hypothetical general election matchup.
The survey, conducted by the Yale Youth Poll and reported by Newsmax, found that 58% of respondents said Cuban would defeat a generic Republican candidate in 2028.
By comparison, 55% said the same about Harris, the party’s most recent presidential nominee.
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Now that Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have decided to stop ignoring Rep. Eric Swallows (allegedly) being a sleezebucket, and “encouraged” all those he was (allegedly) a sleezebucket with to make the open secret no longer secret, billionaire Tom Steyer is the new Democrat frontrunner for California Governor. And I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Brodigan, the ‘no kings’ democrap party is rallying around a billionaire? The heck you say!”
Heck! I do, in point of fact, say heck!
Steyer’s first order of business? Announcing his plan to deal with illegal immigration that essentially makes the current Gov. Gavin Siebel-Newsom look like Donald Trump. Some key points:
– Defund ICE. Obviously.
– Treat ICE agents like the mob and throw them all in jail. Yes, over the crime of enforcing immigration laws. He also wants to empower the Attorney General to send ICE agents and leadership to prison. Again…for the crime of enforcing immigration laws.
– Bring everyone, quote, “kidnapped & detained” by ICE back home. No, not to their home countries. To California, which is technically still America, where they were living illegally.
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Swalwell officially resigned from Congress on Tuesday amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has set a date for a special election to fill disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell’s seat after he resigned from Congress amid allegations of rape and sexual assault. Swalwell was forced to drop out of the California gubernatorial race as well as quit his seat due to the salacious accusations.
“I, Gavin Newsom, Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim and order that a special election shall be held on the 18th day of August 2026, within the 14th Congressional District of the State, to fill the vacancy in the office of the U.S. House of Representatives from said district resulting from the resignation of Representative Eric Swalwell,” Newsom said.
Swalwell officially resigned from Congress on Tuesday after the serious allegations against him were made public. Video showing Swalwell in compromising sexual circumstances was also released by Human Events Daily’s Jack Posobiec and Martin Shkreli showing Swalwell in bed with a woman who was not his wife.
“I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make,” Swalwell said in a statement.
“I am aware of the efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress,” he added. “I will work with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able, in my absence, to serve the needs of the good people of the 14th district.”
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President Donald Trump and Republicans are hoping to cash in politically on the extra amount of cash in Americans’ wallets this Tax Day.
Across the country, Americans are cashing in on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax provisions and receiving a boost from real wage growth in the Trump economy.
“This tax season, nearly half of all filers have claimed tax cuts that every single congressional Democrat voted against,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told The Daily Signal.
The financial relief from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now commonly referred to as the Working Families Tax Cuts by Republicans in Congress, has become a major talking point for the GOP in recent months, as the party argues that strong economic fundamentals have helped soften the economic impact of the war in Iran.