Category: Politics

A blue wave may already be cresting.

Democrats have flipped 28 Republican-held seats in state legislatures across the country over the past 14 months, a sign that the GOP is indeed at risk of losing control of the House, and maybe even the Senate, in the midterms.

Democratic wins have come even in deep red states, including Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, and often by margins that make Republican leaders uneasy.

“I’m ringing the alarm bell,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas GOP consultant who has run campaigns for Republicans in the state, including Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

The results of these state-level elections reflect the immediate concerns of the electorate, provide a launching pad for the next generation of national leaders and could influence the future makeup of Congress through redistricting. They may also give both Republicans and Democrats a preview of the midterm battles to come.

For Republicans, the results are a sign that they must do more to motivate low-propensity voters who helped carry President Donald Trump back to the White House, said a senior GOP campaign operative, who was granted anonymity because he didn’t have permission from the party to speak freely about the losses.

“We’re the party of low propensity voters now,” said the operative. “How do we turn out these Republican voters in a midterm election?”

One of the first signs that Democrats were building momentum came in August, when an Iowa Senate district swung more than 20 points to elect Democrat Catelin Drey. It was the second seat Democrats flipped in the state last year, and the moment that broke the Republican Senate supermajority in the General Assembly.

Then in November, Democrats did it again: They flipped three of the six Republican-held districts in a Mississippi special election, again breaking a GOP Senate supermajority.

“You are seeing people just vote for change,” said Brian Robinson, a GOP consultant in Georgia, where Republicans lost a seat in December.

Robinson, an outside adviser for the state House GOP caucus, says Republicans are blamed for high prices because they’re in charge.

“If it’s any one thing, it is [the] cost of living.” Robinson said, arguing that Trump will do something to reduce prices before the midterms. In recent weeks, the president has indeed taken steps, including by touting a pledge from tech companies to reduce energy costs associated with data centers and releasing 172 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Iran war, which has sent global oil prices skyrocketing, complicates that effort.

After Democrats flipped 13 Virginia seats and five New Jersey seats in November, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee went back to reassess state races around the country. They expanded their 2026 target map to 42 chambers and invested $50 million in changing the makeup of state legislatures — the widest map and largest single-year budget DLCC has ever approved.

Legislatures in Arizona and New Hampshire are now on the “flip” list, and the DLCC hopes to break or prevent GOP supermajorities in red states across the South and Midwest. Their success could give Democrats more state power over judicial nominees, protect the veto power of Democratic governors in states with GOP-led legislatures and hand Democrats greater influence over redistricting.

Republicans, meanwhile, are waiting for the funding to hit. As of January, the RNC has just over $100 million and Trump’s MAGA Inc. PAC has $300 million. State Republicans say when that cash flows into midterm races, it will enable them to get low-propensity voters to vote.

Turnout was a major point of discussion at an RNC conference call that Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming attended Tuesday, and he says Republicans will dedicate a lot of resources to motivate voters in November.

“We’ve met with the White House more than once, and they keep track of the target states pretty closely,” said Schimming, adding he also expects Trump and Vice President JD Vance to stump in key Wisconsin congressional districts closer to the election. “They are big base motivators.”

In the meantime, Democrats keep flipping state seats. The latest came Tuesday night, when Bobbi Boudman beat Republican Rep. Dale Fincher in a New Hampshire Senate seat that Trump won by 9 points.

On March 24, voters will decide in a special election who represents the Florida state House seat that includes Mar-a-Lago. Democrat Emily Gregory, a small business owner who is running against Republican Jon Maples, a businessman, saw her total campaign earnings jump by nearly 75 percent between Jan. 9 and Feb. 12.

In November, a national PAC connected Gregory with Drey, who flipped the Iowa seat in August. Drey advised Gregory to find the affordability issue that matters most to her district — the way energy costs resonate in New Jersey and property insurance does in Florida.

“In this moment, we have all of the issues on our side. We have all of the momentum on our side,” Gregory recalled Drey telling her. “It’s just up to you as a candidate to get in front of every single voter you can and communicate that message.”

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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going against retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer in the race to replace him in Maryland, teeing up what could be the last clash between the two Democratic powerhouses in their decadeslong and sometimes-frosty relationship.

Pelosi on Wednesday will endorse Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who rose to prominence testifying about the horrors of the Jan. 6 riot, in the crowded primary to succeed Hoyer, according to details shared first with POLITICO.

The California lawmaker and daughter of a powerful Baltimore family hailed Dunn’s courage and leadership during and after the Capitol attack.

“My friend Harry Dunn is a true American hero and exactly the right person to represent Maryland in Congress,” Pelosi said. He “bravely defended our democracy from Donald Trump’s violent MAGA mob. Since then, Harry’s been called to do everything he can to protect Marylanders and all Americans from extremists like Donald Trump.”

Pelosi’s loyalty to Dunn — she also backed his unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2024 — is again pitting her against Hoyer in their shared home state after the two backed different candidates for governor in 2022. Hoyer, Pelosi’s longtime No. 2 and erstwhile opponent, is backing his one-time political aide, state Del. Adrian Boafo, for the seat he’s vacating after more than four decades.

Dunn entered the race after Hoyer made his endorsement. A Hoyer spokesperson declined comment.

The dueling endorsements serve as a capstone of sorts to the decadeslong relationship and rivalry between Pelosi and Hoyer that dates back to their time as Hill interns and spans multiple leadership races as they each prepare to retire next year. The two top Democrats have battled each other politically for years — Pelosi defeated Hoyer to become House Democratic whip in 2001, while Hoyer bested her pick for majority leader in 2006 — though they eventually formed an effective partnership leading their caucus.

Dunn, in an interview, praised Pelosi as a pillar for defending democracy and taking on Trump — saying her efforts remind him of his own crusade for accountability after Jan. 6.

“Anytime that somebody with the stature and political history [of] Nancy Pelosi puts their support behind me, it’s just like ‘wow,’” Dunn said. “It just means a lot to me and that should also resonate with the people that have seen how effective she has been for decades as a fighter.”

Dunn launched a failed bid for Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District in 2024, in which he was unable to overcome millions of dollars in spending by pro-Israel group AIPAC’s super PAC to boost now-Rep. Sarah Elfreth.

He entered the race for Hoyer’s seat last month and raised $1 million over the opening eight days of his new campaign, his team said. Dunn does not currently live in the 5th District, which stretches from the suburbs east of Washington into southern Maryland and includes Prince George’s County, where he was born. But he said he plans to move back from the 8th District if he wins. Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary that’s drawn at least a dozen candidates for Hoyer’s safely blue seat will be the heavy favorite to win in November.

Pelosi and Dunn have developed a close personal relationship since Jan. 6, when Dunn faced off with Oath Keepers outside her office and endured a barrage of racial attacks — both of which he has recounted in highly publicized hearings.

Dunn, who has become outspoken about the lingering trauma he and other officers are dealing with from the riot, described the pair on Tuesday as “good friends” bonded by the attack and its aftermath. He is also among the officers who Pelosi gathers with for lunch on each Jan. 6 anniversary, according to a person familiar with the event and granted anonymity to share details of it.

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Republican Clayton Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris are advancing to a runoff in the special election to serve out the remainder of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s term in Congress.

Fuller, a local prosecutor and Air National Guard member, is heavily favored in the April 7 runoff in the deep-red northwest Georgia district. He overcame a crowded field of Republican competitors with the help of an endorsement from President Donald Trump in early February.

But his inability to win 50 percent of the vote means the seat will remain open for another month, hampering House Republicans’ already-slim majority.

The election was widely expected to head into a runoff given the high volume of interest in the seat. The crowded special election drew interest from more than 20 candidates after Greene’s abrupt departure from Congress amid her high-profile falling-out with Trump. Greene declined to throw her support behind any candidates in the race, but her legacy and public spat with the president loomed large over the race to replace her in the House.

Harris, the Democrat, unsuccessfully challenged Greene in 2024. Despite advancing into the runoff, the retired brigadier general and cattle farmer faces a steep uphill climb to overcome the district’s conservative lean.

Georgia’s 14th Congressional District stretches from Atlanta’s northwest exurbs along the state’s border with Alabama and up to its northern border with Tennessee. Greene has carried the seat by massive margins since she was first elected in 2020 — a reflection of the area’s strong conservative tilt. The seat is expected to remain out of reach for Democrats regardless of the political headwinds Republicans face nationally this year as prices rise and voters sour on Trump’s agenda, though with more than half the vote counted Harris actually led the field of candidates, the latest Democratic over-performance in a special election over the past year.

The runoff extends the seat’s vacancy in Washington, where House Republican leadership is eager to grow their razor-thin majority as quickly as possible.

But election season in Georgia, even for this seat, is hardly over. Several of the candidates who mounted special election bids have already qualified to run in the mid-May primary for a full term representing the district.

That includes former state Sen. Colton Moore, a hardline conservative and longtime Trump supporter who declined to step back from the race even without the president’s backing and finished a distant third in the race. Fuller is set for a rematch with many of the same figures he triumphed over in this special election, though he now enters that primary with the advantage of a nascent incumbency as well as Trump’s support.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled Marjorie Taylor Greene’s name.

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A political commentator who argued that white people are the victims of racism and need help protecting their “identity” withdrew his candidacy Tuesday for a senior diplomatic role in the State Department as Republican opposition placed his nomination in jeopardy.

Jeremy Carl was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in June, but his confirmation appeared precarious in recent weeks after Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) vowed to vote against his confirmation.

Lawmakers grilled Carl on his views on race and religion during his confirmation hearing in February, with Republicans and Democrats pushing him to explain past remarks about the importance of protecting “white identity” in American culture. Carl later derided the hearing as “theatrical” and “brutal” in a piece published last week in The Spectator, a conservative British magazine.

In announcing his withdrawal in a social media post, Carl thanked the administration for nominating him and praised the White House for being willing not “to simply pick nominees from the same stable of ‘business as usual’ possibilities” for the role.

“Unfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient,” said Carl, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior during Trump’s first administration. “We also needed the unanimous support of every GOP Senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.”

Civil rights and labor groups opposed Carl’s nomination, pointing to his history of inflammatory remarks about immigration and race.

Carl wrote in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart,” that white people have faced persistent discrimination and that their identity has been “erased” from American history.

Asked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to define “white identity,” Carl described the concept as “certain types of Anglo-derived culture that comes from our history.”

Carl wrote in a social media post responding to Murphy after the hearing that he was “of course, not a White nationalist” adding that “The ‘White culture’ then that I was referring to was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here” prior to 1965.

“I firmly believe that Americans of *every* race or cultural background can ultimately share in and contribute to that culture,” he wrote on X.

He also faced tough questions for agreeing with a podcast host who assailed Jews for claiming “special victim status” after the Holocaust and saying that “Hitler is always the convenient kind of bad example.”

Curtis cited those views in justifying his opposition to Carl’s nomination, writing in a statement: “I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.”

Carl is not the only Trump nominee to face backlash on Capitol Hill for divisive rhetoric.

White House official Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel last year after POLITICO reported a slate of inflammatory texts he sent to Republicans in a group chat, and Australian American MAGA commentator Nick Adams’ nomination to be ambassador to Australia has failed to gain support in the Senate.

Carl is a fellow at the Claremont Institute and a prominent voice on the New Right. He has frequently aligned himself with the national conservatism movement — which holds that national sovereignty hinges on the promotion of traditional Christian values — and defended the Great Replacement Theory, a far-right belief that there is an active effort to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants.

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A new poll is offering a state-of-play of the race that was shaken up last week with the abrupt announcement by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa that he would leave office at the end of his term.​Politics

Sen. Ted Cruz and conservative pundit Tucker Carlson are again trading barbs over Israel and antisemitism, as they renew their feud over the war in Iran.

“I believe Tucker Carlson is the single most dangerous demagogue in this country,” the Texas Republican senator said Tuesday during an antisemitism symposium in Washington hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition and National Review, before promising to directly take on the popular conservative podcast host.

“I have seen more antisemitism in the last 18 months on the right than at any point in my lifetime,” Cruz continued. “It is being spread by loud voices, the most consequential of whom is Tucker Carlson.”

Cruz’s remarks come after Carlson belittled Cruz and other Americans who trust Israeli military intelligence during his podcast last week.

“No offense to Ted Cruz or all the other dumbos who are always saying, ‘we get all this actionable intelligence, it’s so important, we need [Israel] so desperately,’” Carlson said in the March 2 episode. “Really? Let’s evaluate the quality of that intelligence.”

The ongoing feud between the two leading conservative figures — both podcast hosts and potential 2028 presidential candidates — represents the latest flare-up in a major schism within the party and a likely proxy battle ahead of the next Republican presidential primary, when discussions over the U.S.’ alliance with Israel and combating antisemitism domestically could be defining issues.

Carlson, arguably the most influential pundit on the conservative right, remains close to the White House and buzzed about as a potential presidential contender, even as many Republicans — including Cruz — denounce him. And Cruz, who finished second in the 2016 GOP presidential primary to Trump, is positioning himself ahead of a possible run in 2028.

When asked Tuesday about Cruz’s latest comments, Carlson offered a curt response. “Pretty funny,” he said via text. “He’s running for president against me, which I find amusing since I’m not in the race.”

Cruz has repeatedly criticized Carlson for hosting avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his podcast and not challenging Fuentes’ claim that the “big challenge” to unifying the country is “organized Jewry.”

Cruz has signaled that fighting antisemitism and standing with Israel could be a central part of a potential 2028 bid. “I don’t want to wake up in five years and find myself in a country where both major political parties are unambiguously antisemitic,” Cruz said Tuesday. “I think that is a real possibility, if Tucker and his minions prevail.”

The two have long held differing views on the Middle East — and have been directly sparring for months.

In June 2025, Carlson hosted Cruz on an episode of the “Tucker Carlson Show,” which consistently ranks as one of the most-streamed podcasts on Spotify. The two sparred over Iran, and Carlson said Cruz didn’t “know anything” about “the country you seek to topple.” Cruz, in return, implied Carlson’s criticism of Israel was antisemitic.

“You’re not talking about the Chinese, you’re not talking about the Japanese, you’re not talking about the British, you’re not talking about the French,” Cruz told Carlson. “You’re asking, ‘why are the Jews controlling our foreign policy?’ That’s what you just asked.”

In a subsequent episode of his own podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz” — which was the most-streamed podcast of any sitting elected official in the U.S. last year — Cruz launched a defense of his interview with Carlson, saying Carlson was “off the rails.” Later, in November, during a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit in Las Vegas, Cruz denounced Carlson as a “coward”; at a Federalist Society event in Washington days later, Cruz said many of his Republican allies are “frightened” to call out Carlson because “he has one hell of a big megaphone.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who spoke before Cruz at the symposium, seemed to downplay that concern. Though he didn’t say Carlson by name, he downplayed what he called “so-called influencers” who traffic in antisemitism. “They are not influential,” Cotton said. “They are at least not influential with Donald Trump, who continues to reject their kooky advice.”

Carlson’s anti-Israel ideas — which are the main subject of Cruz’s ire — have garnered increasing support, particularly among young Republicans. The latestYale Youth Poll found that Americans under the age of 35 are far more likely than older Americans to think that U.S. Jews “have too much power.” In the last three years, the share of Republicans under the age of 50 with a negative view of Israel jumped from 35 percent to 50 percent, pera Pew poll conducted last year.

His reply when asked if he might run for president in 2028: “Only if it’s against Cruz.”

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Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), who’s faced a firestorm over hundreds of stock trades after campaigning in 2024 on a promise to ban congressional stock trading, has insisted he doesn’t talk to his financial adviser about the activity and that he has no input on them.

But a little-noticed local radio interview from last April contradicts a significant part of Bresnahan’s line on the market moves.

When asked last spring about the trades after a New York Times story highlighted how he flip-flopped on the campaign pledge, he told the host, Bob Cordaro, “I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”

The interview — which is no longer available on the website for Cordaro’s show — is starkly different from Bresnahan’s previous statements about the trading he and his spokespeople have made on multiple occasions in the last year.

Bresnahan campaign spokesman Chris Pack said Bresnahan’s comments were “referring to 30,000 foot investment strategy and not about stock trades, and that is clear in the surrounding context of the interview.”

One Democratic operative aware of the audio, granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy, predicted that Bresnahan’s own words in the interview could be used in ads against him ahead of the November midterms when he’ll take on Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti in a highly competitive district. Cognetti lists banning congressional trading as her first issue on her campaign website.

In June, when pressed about the topic by a constituent during a tele-town hall, Bresnahan said, “I think you need to know that the trades are being executed on my behalf. I do not have any dialogues with my financial advisers.” In July, he said he provided “absolutely no investment advice or input to my financial advisers.”

A month later, he inserted a line in his Periodic Transaction Reports in which he asserted: “All investment decisions related to my personal financial portfolio are delegated to professional financial advisors. I have no role in, nor am informed of, specific investment decisions prior to their execution.” Members of Congress are required to file the reports to disclose Wall Street transactions.

During a time of public distrust of Congress, the issue of congressional stock trading has become a symbol of members appearing to enrich themselves based on inside information that they learn in office. Even President Donald Trump called for a ban on this type of trading during his State of the Union address. Both parties have competing proposals to reform the practice but action is currently stalled.

Bresnahan’s congressional spokesperson, Hannah Pope, told the New York Times in August that the trades are done by a financial adviser without his input. He learns about them when the public does through reports that members of Congress have to file on their trading, she said.

In the April interview with Cordaro, he was asked by the friendly conservative host: “Sum and substance, you’re saying, ‘Look, I did not buy and sell on information I’ve gleaned here in Congress. My adviser’s doing my trading for me, and I am duly reporting it.’ Is that fair?”

Bresnahan responded by saying, “Absolutely. Absolutely. Right hand to God on my mother’s life. Without a question.” He then said he sometimes learns about the trades on X accounts that track congressional stock trading reports. “I’m not on a day by day, minute by minute. I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”

Bresnahan then says he “actually even took it a step further” and is exiting his real estate holdings in Pittston, a city in his district, to avoid conflicts of interests in his congressional work.

Pack, the Bresnahan campaign spokesperson, called questions about his investing “a ridiculous stretch.”

“To imply that Rob having the equivalent of a routine annual 401(k) meeting with his financial advisers to discuss risk tolerance amounts to insider trading would mean that every member of Congress or congressional staffer who discusses risk tolerance as part of their retirement planning is also engaged in insider trading,” he said.

“Does this same standard apply to Goldman Sachs banker Paige Cognetti, whose financial disclosure reports list millions of dollars in investment holdings, and whether she has routine conversations with her financial adviser about long-term strategy?” (Cognetti worked for Goldman Sachs between 2014 and 2016.)

When asked about POLITICO’s reporting on Bresnahan, Ted Rossman, a principal analyst at Bankrate.com, said that different financial advisers have different ways of working with clients to maximize portfolio growth, with some talking to clients about individual stock positions and others being more general.

“But even if it’s not a direct order to buy or sell a certain amount of an individual company, just sharing thoughts on themes in the market and the economy could be problematic politically since members of Congress have information that the average public is not privy to,” said Rossman.

Bresnahan, who comes from a wealthy Pennsylvania construction family, has bemoaned the controversy, raising the question in July that if he stopped trading, he could lose money. “And then do what with it? Just leave it all in the accounts and just leave it there and lose money and go broke?”

When running for Congress in 2024, Bresnahan campaigned on a pledge to ban congressional stock trading, writing in a letter to a local newspaper that “the idea that we can buy and sell stocks while voting on legislation that will have a direct impact on these companies is wrong and needs to come to an end immediately.” But last year he was one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress, making more than 600 stock trades in 2025 before suspending the trading toward the end of the year after much criticism.

Among his trades at issue have been the sale of Pennsylvania health care-related bonds worth between $100,001 and $250,000 and stock in four Medicaid providers worth up to $130,000 before he voted on massive Medicaid cuts. Democrats seized on clips of the Bresnahan trades that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico brought up on Joe Rogan, during a discussion of how broken Washington was, and even on conservative channel OAN.

The trades have also been noticed by his constituents, with 54 percent of voters in his swing district knowing about the trades in an August Public Policy Polling poll commissioned by Democratic group House Majority PAC. House Republicans also have privately raised concernsabout the issue hurting Bresnahan, who has since introduced his own legislation to ban stock trading.

His trading has made its way into the campaign. A seven-figure TV ad campaign is already underway that cites his Medicaid-related stock trades. Cognetti, who does not own any individual stocks, featured Bresnahan’s stock trading as one of her main issues in her announcement video.

During the tele-town hall in June, one woman who said she had voted for him confronted Bresnahan, telling him, “You’re making all these trades … I thought you were supposed to stop trading,” adding, “I didn’t send you there to trade.”

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Politics and Arkansas BBQ with Gov Sanders and Jonathan Martin

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