The midterms just got totally shaken up

This scumball just became the GOP's face — and its midterm nightmare

Donald Trump loves the words sleazebag and scumball, so much so that he’s surrounded himself with the very definition of those two offensive terms. And it’s hard to be more offensive than Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, unless you’re Donald Trump, of course.Last night, Paxton, impeached, indicted, accused of bribery, and credibly alleged to have used the Texas Attorney General’s office to benefit a donor who was simultaneously employing the woman he was having an affair with, won the Republican Senate primary in Texas by a landslide.He is now the face of the Republican Party’s 2026 midterm campaign. And if you want to understand just how far the GOP has fallen, just how morally and ethically hollowed out it has become, look at Ken Paxton.Well, again, look at Trump first, because the GOP has now come full circle, putting up a guy who is as big a scumbag and sleazeball as Trump.This is a man whose career reads like a mafioso rap sheet.The scandal-plagued career of Paxton reads like someone dared crime writer John Grisham to pen fiction about every possible form of corruption into a single Southern Gothic crime lord. Bribery. Abuse of office. An extramarital affair. A wealthy donor allegedly employing his mistress as a favor.That same donor allegedly bankrolled renovations on Paxton’s home while Paxton’s office did him favors in return. His own conservative staffers, Republicans, people who worked for him, were so alarmed they went to the FBI. Not Democrats. Not liberal activists. His own people. Four of them later sued him, and Paxton ended up apologizing and cutting a $3.3 million check.Did I mention he did that with taxpayer money to make it go away? Paxton’s story reads less like a Grisham novel than a Stephen King horror tome.And still, somehow, there was more. The Republican-controlled Texas House, again, his own party, his own state, had seen enough. They drew up 20 articles of impeachment and made him only the third officeholder in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached. Twenty articles.The list of offenses was so long it needed its own table of contents. If we’re going to compare, I suppose Paxton’s list was short, given that Trump’s would entail volumes, like an encyclopedia set, if anyone knows what that is anymore.Just like if anyone in the GOP knows what moral and ethical values are.Paxton was ultimately acquitted by the Texas Senate, though that had absolutely nothing to do with his innocence and more to do with his chummy colleagues saving him.And after all of it, Donald Trump looked at this man and called him a “true MAGA Warrior” worthy of the United States Senate.This is what the bottom of the barrel looks like, and in light of slush funds, ballrooms, gas prices, the Iran war, Trump has now taken the GOP, and his “true MAGA Warriors,” about as far down as you can go.The GOP has come full circle. The party that once screamed moral outrage about Bill Clinton over a lie about an affair has now enthusiastically nominated a man whose corruption scandals make Clinton’s look like … how do I put this … child’s play, and no pun intended whatsoever.The party that used to run on “character counts” has now made Paxton the poster child of the new GOP candidate. The Republican Party in 2026 has decided that corruption, scandal, and ethical rot aren’t disqualifying. No, they’re practically credentials to be included in campaign ads, because Paxton’s scandals are the only thing he’s ever accomplished in public office.Paxton isn’t an aberration. He is a reflection. He mirrors Donald Trump almost perfectly: the indictments brushed aside as political persecution, the abuse of office recast as fighting the establishment, the personal moral failures ignored by a base that has decided winning is the only virtue that matters.The sanctimonious heathens that are Southern Christian conservatives view Paxton as a steadfast champion of religious liberty, the pro-life movement, and traditional family values, which means anti-LGBTQ+. Like Trump, Christians give Paxton a pass.If you take this theory at face value, the only thing Paxton hasn’t done is kill anyone — well, women in Texas did die trying to get life-saving abortions, but then again, that’s okay for the religious right, so he gets another pass. It never ends.Emulating Trump, Paxton watched all of this, took careful notes, and ran as a mini-me Trump in Texas and won. Why wouldn’t he? The party and its base taught him that none of it matters.And — said with glee — Paxton’s ascension is devastating for Republicans in the general election.

Trump left the door wide open for midterms with '$100 million' mistake: GOP analyst

As results came in for the Texas GOP Senate primary, CNN analysts weighed in on what the cost will be down the line.Veteran CNN correspondent Brian Todd said that President Donald Trump's decision to endorse Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a "$100 million mistake." Trump chose to endorse Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), whom political pundit Alyssa Farah Griffin described as a "monster fundraiser and big contributor to Senate Republicans."CNN anchor Anderson Cooper already pointed out that nearly $130 million has been poured into the Texas GOP primary. According to Griffin, if Paxton wins and squares off with Democrat Rep. James Talarico (D-TX), "you may be having to bail out this candidate who has tremendous vulnerabilities."Todd, meanwhile, said that one of "Paxton's biggest weaknesses is that he's a bad fundraiser." He also said Cornyn's defeat gave Democrats a "theoretical chance" of winning in the midterms, but predicted that Republicans would retain Cornyn's seat, even though doing so could be costly. Cooper described Talarico as a "phenomenal fundraiser."Political commentator Van Jones agreed. "Trump has taken a big gamble tonight," but it was "a reckless gamble," he said."He's going to wind up flushing $200 million down the drain in Texas to pull this off," Van Jones said.

HORROR: Vice President Vance Tells Story of Elderly Man Who DIED From Neglect as Medicaid Fraudster Got Rich Neglecting Him (VIDEO)

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday told a horrifying story about how fraud affects the most vulnerable among us while speaking at an anti-fraud roundtable, revealing that an elderly man was killed due to a Medicaid fraudster's neglect.  Vance, the Chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the Task Force Vice Chair, held a roundtable on Tuesday with over a dozen State Attorneys General to discuss the Trump Administration’s nationwide crackdown on federal benefits fraud. The post HORROR: Vice President Vance Tells Story of Elderly Man Who DIED From Neglect as Medicaid Fraudster Got Rich Neglecting Him (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The Factors Shaping the 2026 Midterm Elections

President Trump has sought revenge in G.O.P. primaries. Democrats have turned out to vote in large numbers. Republicans have gained a redistricting advantage.

The Fight to Contain the Ebola Outbreak in Africa Just Got Harder

THEY’VE LEARNED NOTHING: California Democrat Governor Candidate Tom Steyer Says ‘I’m Totally in Favor of Trans Athletes in High School’ (VIDEO)

Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the 2024 election and this proves it. The post THEY’VE LEARNED NOTHING: California Democrat Governor Candidate Tom Steyer Says ‘I’m Totally in Favor of Trans Athletes in High School’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The sleeping giant just woke up as angry nonvoters are about to rock midterms

This week, the president has hit the floor in his support. A new Reuters poll found that Donald Trump's approval is 35 percent. A new Q poll found that it's 33 percent. Nate Silver said it's lower than Joe Biden's was after the Disaster Debate. While there's hope his numbers will keep falling, they probably won't. A third of America is descended from the original confederates. Trump is burning up their lives and fortunes, but they're stand by their man.I could be wrong, but whether his numbers keep falling may be beside the point. The real question is whether Trump's supporters show up in defense of his administration in the coming congressional elections. Tuesday's primaries suggest an answer in the affirmative, as they knocked off Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. However, their defeats might say more about them than about Trump. Cassidy voted to removed him after the J6 insurrection. Massie has been a vocal Trump critic. Both men were marked by maga. Anyway, the point of the movement was to be anti-Republican. They show up to punish Trump's adversaries, not necessarily to support Republicans. Polls suggest that maganites are hardcore partisans, but what made maga a movement is that many are not. Trump took supporters on a decade-long moral vacation. He freed them from the ordinary constraints of decency. He vowed to punish their "enemies," especially uppity women. And he promised they would all get rich. In turn, they believed Trump would spare them from the consequences of their own desires.¹ In the end, he didn't. Their cost of living is soaring higher. The pain of tariffs and war is increasingly intolerable. And now they feel betrayed. Some of them even feel like Joe Biden was better. A recent poll found that six in 10 Americans think the economy was better under the former Democratic president. They are right. That said, the likelihood of a Trump voter picking a Democrat in November is very low, but the likelihood is very high of Trump voters returning to their natural state as nonvoters. Trump didn't woo swing voters. He amassed winning coalitions by adding people who did not vote prior to his entry onto the political scene. What they desired was Trump and everything he represented to them. That desire has backfired and now they lost hope. "They’re s------- themselves because nobody is going to vote," a Trump voter told NOTUS. "You will have your boomer Republicans who watch [Sean] Hannity and all that stuff go out and vote. But people like me, normal people, dealing with the cost of living, we’re not voting."The demoralization that's pushing maga back into nonvoter-hood is compounded by Donald Trump's other big problem – the activation of Americans who might otherwise be oriented toward the Democratic Party but who stayed home during the last presidential election. The couch can no longer hold them down, as gas prices are surging, food costs are soaring and health insurance is impossible. The magnitude is such that Mike Duggan ended his bid as an independent candidate for Michigan governor, because "our internal polling showed the intense anger over gas prices and Iran was boosting Democrats in every office nationally." Maga is demoralized. Democrat-leaning nonvoters are energized.There's room for independent candidates.I don't know if we can trust nonvoters who say they're going to vote. (CNN's Harry Enten said they are "p----- off" and "absolutely" will, while noting that only 48 percent of them said they were "almost certain to vote.") The fact remains, however, that anger is highly motivating. Beyond other considerations, anger has probably determined the outcomes of all but one presidential election since Barack Obama's victory. That year's panic brought a ton of nonvoters to his side. (A Democrat has not won Indiana since.) Moody's says odds of a recession are reaching 50 percent. It's only mid-May. Voters are mad. Nonvoters are madder. The Democrats talk a lot about how to win over Trump voters, but not about how to harness the compounding rage of nonvoters, and then turn them into Democrats. The presumption seems to be that Trump voters will stick around, but hardcore partisans, who make up his floor of support, will never vote Democratic. Trump was the reason many maganites surfaced in the first place. He's the reason they will likely go back underground. That leaves some swing voters to fight over, which is fine, but there are 90 million people in this country who did not vote in the last election. A bunch of them now say they will vote this year.The Democrats act like there's only so many voters to go around, so they have to be careful about the kind of message they send. It can't be too "anti-Trump," whatever that means, and it can't be too "progressive," whatever that means.

Rep. Thomas Massie warns GOP will be ‘very vulnerable’ in the midterms

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned on “Meet the Press” that the Republican Party will be “very vulnerable” during the midterm elections.