ATLANTA — The Republican primary for governor in South Carolina has emerged as a closely watched contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster (R). The open race in the reliably conservative state has drawn a crowded field of high-profile GOP candidates, including Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Rep. Ralph Norman. The site 270toWin aggregated…
Senate Republicans voted on Thursday morning to defeat an amendment sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to prohibit the Justice Department from establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for MAGA allies, a proposal that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers this week the administration would abandon. Notably, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Dan…
Despite Trump calling the vote “unpatriotic,” nearly 7 in 10 Americans back ending the war in Iran as soon as possible.
The Senate began voting on a bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol as Republicans split on Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted 49-50 to defeat an amendment that would ban Trump's weaponization fund. The post Senate GOP Narrowly Defeats Schumer’s Amendment to Ban Trump’s Weaponization Fund – These Three Republicans Voted with Dems appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Although independents and hardcore MAGA voters both played a role in Donald Trump's narrow victory in 2024, the former were much more conditional in their support. Independents and swing voters, many of them frustrated over the economy and inflation, were willing to give Trump another chance but lacked the intense devotion of Trump's MAGA base. Now, 16 and one-half months into his second presidency, countless polls are showing that Trump has a major problem with independents — and GOP senators, according to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, are sounding the alarm.Republican senators, Bolton reports, fear that "the GOP may be headed for a political wipeout" thanks, in part, to Trump's "weak polling numbers with independent voters.""Several Republican senators told The Hill that polling data shared at a Tuesday conference meeting by Senate Republican Conference Committee Chair Tom Cotton (Ark.) indicated Democrats have a significant polling lead among independents five months before the general election," Bolton explains in The Hill. "One Republican senator described the national polling numbers shared by Cotton as 'terrible' and 'very bad.' The data circulated among Republican senators showed Democrats with a double-digit lead among independents."Bolton adds, "Republican senators say the alarming polling numbers reflect the president's and GOP's weakening political standing in their home states. The GOP senator said independent voters, including those who supported Trump in the 2024 election, are most concerned about 'their pocketbook, their wages, inflation, and a lot of those people think that's not the top priorities of what Republicans are doing right now.'" One conservative Republican senator who candidly spoke to The Hill on the record was North Carolina's outgoing Thom Tillis.According to Tillis — who decided not to seek reelection in the midterms — unpopular Trump policies, from a proposed White House ballroom to the $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund," could doom Republican candidates in tight races in November.Tillis told The Hill, "We have headwinds we need to recognize; we got to be tight on execution. I actually think right now, the fundamentals are closer to the inverse of 2010. I think that's the kind of headwinds we're confronting."In the 2010 midterms, Democrats suffered what then-President Barack Obama famously described as a "shellacking." Republicans flipped the U.S. House of Representatives by a landslide, and Tillis fears that the GOP will suffer a similar fate in 2026.A Republican senator, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Hill, "The farm economy is really tough right now. The fact that we don't have a farm bill done, that we don't have E15 done, I think there are a lot of farmers that are feeling the pressure and they would like to see more done to get these things over the finish line."Another GOP senator, also quoted anonymously, told The Hill, "The president is definitely a headwind in some areas. He's a tailwind in a primary and a headwind in a general."
Thursday brings a consequential day for the Republican agenda, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill gather for a marathon voting session that could bring GOP priorities into conflict with those of President Donald Trump. Judging by a pre-vote statement from one senator scorned by Trump, the president faces an uphill battle. One of the most discussed votes involves the long-hindered effort to pass an immigration and border control budget reconciliation bill, which has been a thorn in the side of Republicans for several months. While it finally appeared likely to pass in the run-up to the Memorial Day recess, the sudden announcement that Trump would create a “slush fund” to pay convicted J6 criminals stalled the bill, with outraged Republicans saying they would not advance it unless the fund was killed. While the fund has since hit a number of major setbacks, it has not technically been ended once and for all. Now, many lawmakers are pushing for an amendment to the reconciliation that would pass it only on the condition that the slush fund is fully banned. When asked by CNN correspondent Manu Raju about the matter, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) shared his thoughts in no uncertain terms. “Even the AG has said that [the fund] is done, so I don’t know why we don’t just codify it so that we don’t have the Democrats raising the speculation that it could come back at some point,” said Tillis, referring to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent assertion that the fund was ended, a claim that Trump quickly contradicted. On Wednesday, it was also announced that the president would seek Blanche’s confirmation to the position permanently, an appointment that has drawn skepticism from across the political spectrum over concerns that the role will be weaponized by Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney. “The key to Todd or anybody getting through the judiciary committee would be being pretty tight on January the 6th. They better not have said for one minute that the people who beat up police officers were righteous people. You come even close to saying that you don’t even have a [chance] of getting my vote,” said Tillis. The Senator has frequently bumped heads with Trump, recently declaring that the president’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence doesn’t have a “prayer” of getting confirmed. Tillis has also called for his fellow Republicans to speak out against the White House, prompting Trump to call him a “nitpicker.” When it was pointed out that Trump and Blanche had made opposing statements about the fund, Tillis wasn’t having it. “The right hand and the left hand need to figure out what the h—— they’re doing,” he declared. “If it’s dead then we should be able to codify that and be done with it.”
The races for governor and Los Angeles mayor are among the most closely watched contests yet to be decided in California's primary elections.
President Trump is fed up with the election shenanigans in California and is taking action. The post New: President Trump Announces Investigation into California’s Extremely Slow Vote Counts Just as Suspicious Late Drops Slash GOP Leads in Two Critical Races appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.