Texas Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico announced Thursday that his campaign brought in over $3 million after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) won the GOP runoff against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) Tuesday. “In just 24 hours, working people from every corner of Texas have come together to shatter grassroots fundraising records and send a…
Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are neck-and-neck in a new poll on a hypothetical Republican presidential primary as chatter builds about who could lead the GOP in 2028. An Emerson College Polling survey found Vance with 36 percent support among Republican voters, nearly tied with Rubio at 35 percent. They were…
Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) may have shot herself in the foot: Her comment that the state's new "assault weapons" ban affects "frequently used" firearms could undercut the state's defense in lawsuits challenging the prohibition, according to legal experts. The post Spanberger's Statement on New Virginia Assault Weapons Ban Could Fuel Lawsuits Challenging Its Legality, Experts Say appeared first on .
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) said Wednesday that state Rep. James Talarico (D) is the “best” candidate he has seen during his time in Lone Star State politics. “He’s the best I’ve seen over the course of my life, running and being involved in politics in Texas,” O’Rourke told host Jen Psaki on MS NOW’s…
As strikes strain the ceasefire between the United States and Iran, at home, President Donald Trump held a cabinet meeting where he defended the war and insisted he’s not concerned with the war’s political consequences heading into the critical midterm elections. It comes as the president is threatening to "blow up" ally Oman in response to a deal in which Iran and Oman would share control of the Strait of Hormuz. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for TODAY.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said that governments might be inclined to tighten their grip on monetary authorities and stressed that upholding central-bank independence is even more important in an increasingly challenging global order.
On Monday, I went to the Stop & Shop and had that old familiar feeling. I spent over $80 on a bag of groceries. Nothing fancy, just regular groceries, not even everything I need for the week. One bag. Eighty United States dollars. Something's gotta give. Maybe it already has.The Times said last week that 61 percent of Americans are cutting back on food. Another 59 percent are cutting back on extra spending. Three-fourths have forgotten about Joe Biden and blame the current president for the disaster. Economic confidence hasn't been this low since 2022. A stunning 80 percent blame him for gas price spikes, according to a Fox poll. Donald Trump was already burning us up with tariffs, but the burn rate has accelerated dramatically since the start of the war. He won't end it, because he can't. He's a terrible war president. His idea of a deal is "I get everything; you get nothing." Iran knows this about his nature, exploits it, and here we are: in war that could stretch into the summer and fall.Yet Trump is not acting like he's in trouble. He yak-yak-yaks about ballrooms, about gas prices being "peanuts," about how the Democrats made up the word "affordability" to make him look bad. (He is hosting an ultimate fighting circus at the White House, for God's sake.) He created a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund to pay J6 insurrectionists for their service to him. His party is practically begging him to take the midterms seriously. "We need Republicans to do well in November," Thom Tillis told the Times, “but the stupid stuff is killing our chances."Stupid stuff" might be too generous. Trump will not end his illegal war. He will not end his illegal tariffs. He will not pretend to care about the hardship Americans are experiencing as a consequence of both. (Nor does he not care about the optics of asking taxpayers to pay for a ballroom when they can't pay for food.) On top of that, he's endorsing primary challengers to incumbent Republicans who would otherwise coast to victory in the coming midterms. Reporters say he's "tightening grip on the GOP." But it looks more like he's sabotaging it.After all this time, we still interpret the president through a partisan lens that attempts to explain his behavior. Everyone assumes he wants his party to keep the House, at the very least to avoid impeachment. It's because of this assumption that Republicans are growing frustrated. “The president was elected to juice the economy, to bring down inflation, to stop illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture,” a GOP pollster told the Times. “If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.”We should consider the alternative: that control of Congress is not his highest goal.Anthony Scarammuci suggested as much in an interview with Bloomberg. He was the White House communications director during Trump's first term whose tenure famously lasted 10 days. He told Mishal Husain that we're misreading the president. His personality is such that he doesn't want the GOP to succeed. Success would mean there's life after Donald Trump.And, according to Donald Trump, that's impossible."His personality is 'you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing' ... that’s Donald Trump's personality."Scarammuci added that "we try to normalize him, sane-wash him, and put him into a bucket. 'Oh, he’s a Republican, he'll want a Republican to succeed him or he’ll want JD Vance or Marco Rubio.' He doesn’t want those guys to succeed him. Let's say he has a successful remaining two years of his presidency, which seems unlikely, but let's say he did. He wouldn’t want those guys taking any credit for anything that happened in the administration. "It’s an administration of one person and there’s one spotlight on," he said.We assume Trump wants to end the war, because we assume he wants the Republicans to win in November. But what if he doesn't care about ending it any more than he cares about his party? It might even be in his interest to prolong it, as it boils the GOP down to its pure maga essence, making it even more dependent on him. Indeed, victory would suggest his party doesn't need him anymore. And that, according to Donald Trump, is impossible.During today's made-for-TV cabinet meeting, the president claimed that he had the advantage in negotiations with Iran. "They thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,'" Trump said. "I don’t care about the midterms.” We all assume he's lying. We had better hope he is. If Donald Trump really doesn't care about losing the congressional elections, the last remaining partisan constraints have fallen away. The war could go on indefinitely.
Investor expectations that rising inflation will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year are creating a political quandary for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, as well as new chairman Kevin Warsh. Bond markets show that traders see it as a fifty-fifty proposition that the central bank will raise its interest rate […]
State Attorney General Ken Paxton’s win in the Texas Senate primary exhilarated President Trump and the MAGA base on Tuesday night. But the victory also electrified Democrats, who say the seat is not just competitive but winnable with their candidate state Rep. James Talarico. Democrats for years have talked about winning a big statewide race in…