Election 2026
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Mayes Middleton addresses the media in the Texas Capitol on July 13, 2021 in Austin, Texas. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton has won the Republican runoff for Texas attorney general.
The Associated Press called the race for Middleton at 9:57 p.m. EDT when he had a 55.8% to 44.2% lead over Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
The runoff election comes after neither candidate obtained at least 50% of the vote in their respective primary races on March 3.
Despite pushing a hardline conservative agenda in the U.S. House—including authoring the SAVE America Act and co-founding the Sharia-Free America Caucus—Roy fell short of securing the party’s nomination.
While President Donald Trump has not weighed in on the race, Middleton secured endorsements from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and his former primary opponent, Aaron Reitz.
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If you were looking for a pathetic excuse for what qualifies as a “statesman” these days, look no further than the so-called “red state” of South Carolina.
In complete defiance of their voters’ wishes, a cabal of Republican state senators sided with Democrats on Tuesday in tanking a proposal that sought to redistrict South Carolina’s lone Democrat congressional seat ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Democrat seat is currently held by longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn, a former member of the U.S. House Democrats’ leadership team.
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Maine Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss isn’t a fan of Graham Platner, his party’s presumptive Democratic nominee to face off against Incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. He finds his Nazi tattoos disqualifying. It’s sad we even have to say that—I mean, no kidding, my dude. Yet, here we are. Less than 24 hours after saying that during an interview on CNN, he’s kowtowing to the Fuhrer—I mean, Platner’s camp.
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As pro-life Kansans wrap up Memorial Day weekend, we want to make you aware of an important issue ahead of the June 1 candidate filing deadline in Kansas.
Kansans for Life Political Action Committee (KFL PAC) has been outspoken in its opposition to Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt’s campaign for the Republican nomination for Governor.
Simply put, Vicki Schmidt’s record on life may be the worst record of any candidate ever to seek statewide office in Kansas.
During her time in the Kansas Senate from 2004 through 2018, Vicki Schmidt repeatedly opposed some of the most common-sense pro-life legislation ever considered in Kansas.
FINAL POLL: Ken Paxton Opens Clear Lead Over John Cornyn In Texas Senate Runoff– wltreport.com
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The last major poll before Tuesday’s Texas Republican Senate runoff shows Ken Paxton with a clear lead over Sen. John Cornyn.
The Quantus Insights survey, conducted May 21-23 among 1,018 likely GOP runoff voters, puts Paxton at 52.7% and Cornyn at 43.4%, with 3.9% still undecided.
The effective sample size was 936, with a weighted margin of error of roughly 3.5 points.
That nine-point gap is remarkable given where this race started.
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Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt filed a formal complaint Tuesday accusing Mayor Karen Bass of illegal electioneering near a ballot drop box during early voting, escalating the fight ahead of the June primary.
The complaint, sent to the Los Angeles City Clerk’s Office, claims Bass campaigned within restricted distance of a voting location while encouraging supporters to cast ballots early. Pratt’s campaign says the alleged violations were “clear, repeated, and publicly documented” in social media footage.
Attorney Peter McNulty, representing Pratt’s campaign, alleged Bass appeared in videos “soliciting votes” and “holding signs asking voters to vote for her” near a polling place and ballot drop box. The letter argues the conduct violated electioneering restrictions that bar campaigning within 100 feet of voting locations.
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During a recent appearance on the Jennifer Welch podcast, Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat running for governor of California, said that he is ‘totally’ in favor of trans athletes in high school.
I have been saying that Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the 2024 election, and this is further proof. They have every intention of returning to the same issues they supported before losing power.
Not only does the public not support the idea of trans athletes in high school sports, but the very idea of ‘trans kids’ has been soundly rejected.
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No, Jake Auchincloss did not mouth the words “I support Susan Collins and go vote for her instead,” but that’s essentially what he did yesterday with his appearance on CNN. Bad-mouthing the presumptive Democratic nominee in a Senate seat that the Democrats absolutely need to gain control of the U.S. Senate is beyond stupid. Still, it’s always worth reminding ourselves that Republicans don’t have a monopoly on stupid politicians. Almost, but not quite.
Source: Mediaite
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) trashed his party’s presumptive nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, Graham Platner, on Monday, calling the Democratic candidate’s Nazi tattoo scandal and his claims about it “personally disqualifying.”
The controversy stems from a report last year that Platner had a tattoo on his chest of a Nazi SS “Totenkopf” symbol. Platner has since covered the tattoo and denied knowingly displaying Nazi imagery, saying he got the tattoo with fellow Marines during a trip to Croatia in 2007 and did not understand its meaning at the time.
Auchincloss had previously become one of the first elected Democrats to publicly urge Platner to abandon the Senate contest against incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) after the tattoo controversy surfaced.
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Dems dug themselves a big hole with their presumptive candidate for Senate in Maine, and he proved that again during his rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Monday.
Sanders was all in, supporting Platner at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Portland, Maine.
Graham Platner gushes over Socialist Bernie Sanders:
PLATNER: “The last time, well before last night, I shared a state with Senator ‘Standers,’ it was here in Portland 13 days after we launched this campaign…to tell you the truth it still feels as surreal today.” pic.twitter.com/Ty91DOevvM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 25, 2026
“The last time, well, before last night, I shared a state with Senator Standers, it was here in Portland, 13 days after we had launched this campaign. It felt surreal then, and to tell you the truth, it still feels as surreal today.”
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Redistricting is the fight of the year as we’re getting involved in the 2026 election season; primary elections are already being held across the fruited plain, and the battle lines are being drawn for November. By and large, the redistricting efforts have favored Republicans, but there are some truly baffling exceptions.
One of those is South Carolina, where the state Senate refused to pass a redistricting bill; several Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the measure.
The Republican-led South Carolina Senate on Tuesday voted against a measure to advance a new congressional map, ending the redistricting effort in the state for now.
The failed vote was a surprise rejection of President Donald Trump, who had urged lawmakers to pass a redrawn map that eliminated the state’s single majority-Black district, represented by longtime Democratic Rep. James Clyburn.
The South Carolina House approved the map last week in hopes of putting it into place for this year’s midterm elections. As part of the effort, lawmakers also sought to set another primary election for the affected districts in August. But after early voting began on Tuesday for the previously scheduled June primary, some Republicans changed their tune, arguing it was too late to enact new district lines.
“Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” said Republican state Sen. Richard Cash, a Republican who changed his vote due to timing.
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Alabama Republicans immediately called for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a redistricting battle at a three-judge panel of a federal court.
Republicans are trying to reinstate a 2023 congressional map that would allow them the possibility of picking up a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Democrats claimed the new map would send Alabama back to the ‘1950s and 60s.’
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Lawmakers in the South Carolina House of Representatives have just passed a new U.S. congressional map that could eliminate the district of a powerful congressman with the only Democrat seat in the state.
The move is setting up a major political battle ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The Republican-led chamber approved the measure by a 74–37 vote after lengthy debate, sending the proposal to the GOP-controlled state Senate for further consideration.
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After Maryland announced an error within a massive shipment of more than 500,000 mail-in ballots, Rep. Greg Murphy had a one-word description.
“Oops,” the North Carolina Republican said during a hearing Wednesday of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections.
“What’s the deal going on with Maryland?” Murphy asked Don Palmer, a former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
“It’s a very, it’s a huge mistake. Obviously, you can point at the vendor and say, well, the vendor made this mistake, but the buck stops with the election officials,” Palmer, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the House panel.
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President Trump scored another major primary victory as Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein. Horrifying new details and livestream footage have emerged from the deadly San Diego mosque shooting. Investigators say the attackers were fueled by online radicalization and white supremacist ideology.
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The stories of troubling past comments and behavior keep surfacing in the campaign of US Senate candidate Graham Platner, a Democrat from Maine.
After an initial controversy surrounding a tattoo that appeared to depict Nazi symbolism, he attracted backlash for unearthed explicit Reddit posts that many described as disturbing.
Now, more of his previous online musings are coming to light, and these are particularly objectionable, as Breitbart reported:
“This video never gets old,” Platner wrote in a June 2019 Reddit post, referring to a viral video featuring Pfc. Ted Daniels in a 2012 firefight with the Taliban, which resulted in the soldier being shot four times and earning a Purple Heart for his injuries.
“Dumb motherfucker didn’t deserve to live,” the Democrat Senate hopeful — whose archived Reddit rants can be found on the Maine Monitor’s database — said in his since-deleted post.
Platner went on to write, “At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt.”
“Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible shit decision possible when it comes to small unit combat,” Platner added.
The unearthed posts come from a deleted, but archived, Reddit account known as “P-Hustle,” which Platner previously acknowledged was his.
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Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) will advance to a runoff in June after securing his spot in the Republican U.S. Senate primary on Tuesday night.
Since no GOP candidate in the Georgia U.S. Senate race received more than 50 percent of the votes, two candidates, including Collins, will vie for the Republican nomination in a runoff on June 16. The Associated Press (AP) called the race at 9:43 p.m. with nearly 60 percent of votes counted.
At the time, Collins had secured 41.6 percent of the votes, followed by Derek Dooley at 28.5 percent and Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) at 25.8 percent. Whoever secures the second-most amount of votes will face Collins in June.
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The Senate GOP is having a full-blown meltdown at President Trump’s decision to endorse Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate Republican primary over establishment darling John Cornyn. And it is nothing short of glorious.
Flanked by frowning members of Senate GOP leadership, Majority Leader John Thune somberly reaffirmed his support for the gun control-loving Cornyn, whom he called a “principled conservative.” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker reportedly “remained stone-faced (appeared to be intentional) for about 20 seconds” when asked for his reaction to Trump’s endorsement of Paxton. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is reported to have thrown a temper tantrum at the president’s refusal to back Cornyn.
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Billionaire Tom Steyer, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, as of Monday has donated a record-shattering $192.4 million of his personal wealth to his campaign in the lead-up to the June 2 primary.
The cash infusion dwarfs the money raised by all his Democratic and Republican challengers combined, and has fueled a torrent of political ads and a campaign infrastructure that’s kept him near the top of the opinion polls.
But Californians have dismissed rich candidates in the past, especially those who use their own fortunes to appeal to a largely middle- and working-class electorate struggling with day-to-day expenses in the notoriously costly state.
Steyer hopes to avoid the fate of former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, banki
Trump's midterm retribution crusade crescendos with Massie primary defeat: Key takeways– thehill.com
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President Trump’s retribution crusade reached a crescendo Tuesday when the president’s endorsee, Ed Gallrein, prevailed in the GOP primary to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), extending his winning streak against Republicans who have defied him. Massie, a libertarian-leaning lawmaker whose opposition to key Trump priorities has long drawn the president’s ire, is the latest victim of Trump’s revenge campaign after…
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Taya Kyle, widow of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, accused Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner of making things up regarding her husband.
During a 2024 podcast interview, Platner claimed that Kyle ran up his kill count by shooting unarmed civilians while he served in a unit known as Task Force Bruiser.
“[Kyle’s] stories about how many people he was shooting certainly tracked with the behavior I witnessed [in Ramadi, Iraq]. It’s relatively easy to get high numbers like that if you’re a little less discriminating in your fire than, say, a more professional unit would be,” Platner said.
Left-wing Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner smeared the late “American Sniper” Chris Kyle in a 2024 podcast interview, suggesting that Kyle shot innocent civilians in Iraq to inflate his kill numbers.
Platner also bristled at the fact that Kyle and members of his platoon… pic.twitter.com/UQDxEmnXjH
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 20, 2026
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is facing sharp criticism from conservatives after delivering a fiery speech in Alabama, urging northern progressives to travel to red states and become more involved in political battles across the South.
The New York congresswoman made the remarks during the “All Roads Lead to The South” rally in Montgomery.
She argued that major political and civil rights struggles remain underway in southern states and called on activists from across the country to join those efforts.
Her comments quickly sparked a wave of backlash online, with critics accusing the progressive lawmaker of promoting division and unnecessarily escalating regional political tensions.
Federal Judge Shuts Down TN Dems Over New Congressional Map– townhall.com
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Tennessee drew its new congressional map, with state Democrats filing a challenge to block its implementation. That’s likely to be the usual move as Republicans push to redraw their maps across the South following the Callais decision. The map debate caused a commotion at the state Capitol. Tennessee Democrats tried to block the map, and a federal judge put the kibosh on it (via Channel 5 Nashville):
🚨 A federal judge has declined to immediately block Tennessee’s new Republican-drawn congressional map. pic.twitter.com/ecjPsszfPC
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) May 14, 2026
🚨 NOW: A federal judge has just REFUSED to block Tennessee’s new 2026 redistricting map, which eliminates the last remaining Democrat seat and makes the state 9R-0D
ANOTHER WIN!
Democrats are melting down after EVERY court loss, their era of racial cheating has ended 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/I8Z2JmgDN5
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 14, 2026
A federal judge denied a request Thursday to temporarily block Tennessee’s newly approved congressional map from taking effect ahead of the 2026 elections.
Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. denied plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order and canceled a hearing that had been scheduled for May 20, according to a court order filed Thursday.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last week by the Tennessee Democratic Party and several plaintiffs challenging the state’s newly redrawn congressional districts approved during a special legislative session. The lawsuit argues the map unlawfully dismantles a majority-Black district and creates election confusion ahead of the August primary.