Turek’s got plenty of good stuff on his agenda although I think the prescription medication price reduction issue has been a problem raised for over two decades. Good that he’s bringing it up but I would take it further with big pharma:
-Ban pharmaceutical companies from doing any kind of advertising in the U.S.
-Limit how pharmaceutical companies can do direct selling. We want doctors, namely psychiatrists, to not have a conflict of interest when serving patients.
Fair although there are ways to restrict pharmaceutical advertising. The main thing is to prevent patients from getting caught up getting too hyped up over pharmaceutical advertising and the doctors to be more empowered to give objective views with the patients about medication.
Most countries in the world to my understanding do not allow pharmaceutical companies to do advertising or at lease significantly restrict it.
Most countries don't consider commercial speech to be governed by free speech provisions like the U.S. does, and many also prohibit hate speech. So what kinds of regulations do you think would not be struck down?
Being that there are already limitations as to what pharma can do in U.S.-based advertising, as long as the regulations give pharma the chance to profit there’s less likelihood they will complain as much. That won’t stop the lobbying though.
It’s the mediums by which pharma can advertise and sell directly to that should be questioned. As an example, the American Psychiatric Association believes psychiatrists should live comfortably (last I heard the APA say so years back) but pharma can exploit this to their own advantage and there is not enough accountability here.
Right now, it’s a bit premature to even know what pharma will try to stop regulation wise unless it’s proposed.
Don't get me wrong: I oppose the advertisement of prescription drugs to laypeople. But what limitations are you talking about? I believe they have to do with unsupported claims and the fact that they have to include a list of side effects in ads.
For the first time, I'm seeing Politico require a subscription to show more than the first few paragraphs of an article. I don't really need to read more, though.
I remember when they drew the gerrymander and multiple people warned that it was a clear dummymander, predicated entirely on the assumption that Hispanics would vote GOP forever.
It appears those people were 100% correct. The GOP got exactly what they deserved.
I think saying it'd be a dummymander isn't quite right. Even in the best case results for us it would not be a dummymander: where the new maps result in us winning more seats in the state than if they hadn't tried to (re-)gerrymander. So long as republicans enter next year with 25 or more reps in Texas, it won't have been a dummymander.
I think the 9th and 32nd will almost certainly go red, the 15th and 24th (already held by Republicans) as well as the 35th will be competitive, and the 28th and 34th will be held by their Democratic incumbents.
Crosstab analysis often yields stuff like this, think how many times you've seen something like "the candidate was down 14 with independents last month, now leads independents by 5!" When the topline result only shows them gaining like 3 points. It's usually noise, and if it seems implausible (like Dems only being up 7 with Hispanics after last November's results clearly showed the rebound had already happened) then trust your head!
I predict about 5 more will retire by May. Hern and Bice for Senate, maybe a few odd ones like Dan Webster, someone from PA, and maybe Bill Cassidy if Letlow is too difficult to defeat.
I keep hearing Webster’s name be floated as a retirement candidate. Question: if he does, who are likely candidates to replace him? That Anthony Sabatini nut? (Correct me if I’m wrong about his name. Was that the one I’m thinking of?)
Now that I’ve had a chance to read the full thing, that was very informative - I learned a lot beyond my very high-level and rudimentary knowledge of Israeli geography and now politics!
We really have to stop labelling this as something that Chuy invented. In IL alone, Bill Lipinski dropped out *after the primary* so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
Also, how would legislation like that even work? Would a sudden medical event that caused a legislator to drop out close to filing prevent a party from finding another candidate? Ralph Metcalfe died in October of 1978 and the party bosses picked a mediocre machine alderman as a replacement nominee. Would that be legal?
What is it we're trying to prevent with legislation? Dropping out too close to filing? A departing legislator putting the thumb on the scale for their preferred successor?
I didn’t say Chuy invented it. I’m of the opinion that he brought new attention to it in an environment where the leaders of our major parties are already at war with the base (Dems) or behaving in an openly anti democratic fashion (GOP), and thus are more likely to be nervous about the concept of continued primaries. In a different environment, it wouldn’t have been as toxic as it was here, although it most certainly would not have been morally right. But given the propensity for anti-democratic behavior as of late, the risk of this kind of tactic increasing in use is far greater in my opinion.
As for the legislation question, one idea I’ve seen is extending the primary filing date when an incumbent retires. I believe some states already have this.
No, that isn’t even close to what I said. I said that the political environment we live in today makes the risk of other Reps repeating similar behavior much more likely. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “after the primary”. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’m concerned about whether or not we’re going to have fair primaries going forward.
Last comment, and just the facts. By "after the primary," I mean that Bill Lipinski won the primary election for another term in March of 2004, and he dropped out of the race in August of 2004 so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
I think people who aren't from IL are a bit taken aback by this, but as we both know, both parties at every level in Illinois do this. Probably a quarter of the Chicago City Council got their seats by doing something similar, and my own state senator got their seat from their FIL in a similar manner. That doesn't make it "right" but...
I believe some states just have different filing deadlines for incumbents - i.e., they have to declare a week before everyone else or something like that. These things can be fixed pretty simply if the will is there.
It not being new does not make it justified. It’s a subversion of the entire concept of primaries, and I additionally worry about it being weaponized in an ideological fashion, as in, to prevent someone from an opposing ideology from taking the seat. That’s my problem with it.
I agree. Being that Issa did the same thing back ahead of the 2018 midterm season, it shows his priorities are not really with serving constituents but advancing anything he can do to be relevant. But that outweighs the responsibility elected politicians have when they get elected in the first place.
It’s hard to truly know unless you live in the district. Often times what we see in the news and what’s reported is typically the headlines of Issa and others grabbing attention and using hearings and floor speeches to fundraise.
As someone who always has believed in the rules of checks and balances, it’s agonizing to watch the chamber and questioning being used to fire up the troops instead of due process and true accountability.
Up until Senator Lisa Murkowski cast her YAY BBB vote, she did have priorities resembling what her constituents were asking her to do. She had warm relations with Alaskans. I think BBB has certainly damaged her political future but I’ve never seen her to possess an ego like most in the GOP.
Yeah, that is possible. We did have Nixon to kick around some more: he made that comment after losing CA-Gov in 1962 to Pat Brown (Jerry's father). It was not the end of his political career, unfortunately.
By 2027, Desmond will be 70y/o replacing a 73y/o lol
Issa was the next most senior to try succeeding Jordan on Judiciary next term, and I wouldn't have been esp surprised if he'd won it. Sidebar that I also wouldn't be surprised if Jordan asked for and was given a waiver, but he could also hop back to Oversight (where Comer is similarly term-limited).
Dumb noise about not “seriously” funding TX for a flip. If we’re actually close to dead even with men nationally then other seats are probably off the board early enough to make TX more than viable for donors
You're not kidding about the dumb. Article defines Cornyn as a moderate and says that national democrats are eyeing Montana as a better spending target. Also says we "held" Montana as recently as 2018, which is false: we won it as recently as 2018, and held it as recently as mid Jan 2025.
Fortunately (?) for us, the DSCC's fundraising is less critical than candidate fundraising. Unless Schumer and Gillibrand work to stop donors from giving to Talarico, I think he'll do OK on money. O'Rourke raised about $80m in 2018. I wouldn't be surprised to see Talarico comfortably exceed that. He probably needs $100m+ to make this credible, which should be doable with good grassroots.
If he had any self-respect and respect for actual democracy, Berger should take his lumps and accept the will of the voters.
But since he's entrenched and drunk with power, he's going to call in favors to his son and the other three justices on our state Supreme Court to throw out ballots cast by fellow Republicans. Just like the solid he did for Jefferson Griffin -- only to get spanked soundly by a Trump-appointed federal judge.
Not to the disabled community. The r-word is the equivalent of the n word for us. Much like the n word, it’s used to imply that people with mental disabilities are stupider and slower than non-disabled people.
I grew up saying it all the time. I.e. anything silly or annoying was "r-word". I have to struggle not to use it in that sense. I.e. to describe a perposterous situation, rather than directed at a person as a slur.
I get that. The word was once used quite commonly — you hear it a lot on older South Park, for instance. It’s taken on a new meaning with the increase in acceptance of disabled people.
"Less egregious than the N word" leaves a lot of room for a word to be truly awful. I don't think there's a more egregious word, term, or phrase in the English language. As noted by the fact that the vast majority of us refuse to use the word at all, even in an academic sense, and only refer to it by its first letter.
So... "less egregious" covers effectively every word out there.
That evolution is itself quite interesting. Where the word has become not only obscene but taboo. Literally unspeakable. Of course in Black dialect it remains a term of respect. (Pronouced without the hard R, of course.)
I feel like the Trump era has brought back many ugly words that should have died on the school playground in the '90s (the r-word, the six-letter f-word, "gay" as a negative descriptor) and it's really gross.
I have serious concerns about Gen-Z and Alpha (apologies to Susan Collins for stealing her signature phrase).
In the upcoming Carroll 7 New Hampshire House of Representatives special election, a district with about 13,000 people, someone has decided to create a fake website to attack the Democratic candidate. Weird, desperate behavior.
Obituaries: Former Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), who ran for several statewide and local but lost to opponents across the political spectrum, has died at 74.
Rest in peace. I still don’t get how she lost to Ige even after the whole mess with the missile alert notification, I’m not from Hawaii but it looked like she would have been a good governor.
I wouldn't say Hanabusa was seen as especially progressive.
Edit: Hanabusa was never a CPC member and was very well known as a member of NewDem leadership. She was the more moderate candidate against Schatz for Senate in 2014, Ige for Governor in 2018 and in the runoff for Honolulu Mayor in 2020, she endorsed Republican Rick Blangiardi over more progressive Democrat Keith Amemiya.
Edited - I figured that since she ran against the likes of Schatz and Ige, who can be considered more moderate than progressive, she had progressive bonafides.
Schatz has always been more progressive than her. Ige was more moderate and reinvented himself for the 2018 election and ran to her left to defend himself.
Hawaii primaries rarely sort along a neat progressive-moderate axis, same goes for the politicians themselves. The state has a strong Democratic Party culture but not so much a left-leaning ideological one. More than anything Hanabusa's big races were contests of personality and perceived record, hard to slot into the categories above, much as observers from outside the state tried to. The state has fully open primaries and there's an established history of most gen election GOP voters choosing to participate in the Dem primary instead, making even less of a distinction between these and the officially non-partisan mayor races. In recent years there's been signs of a growing leftwing movement with younger voters (Kim Coco Iwamoto toppling the house speaker was massive), but this is also a state with a huge political center of gravity among the elderly, so combined with the structural factors favoring non-ideological campaigns targeting all voters, change has been slow.
Hanabusa was a Hawaii Dem through and through, a tenacious candidate who was just the victim of bad timing and bad luck. The dominos probably start with the 2006 HI-02 primary, where she very narrowly lost to Mazie Hirono, who was attempting her own comeback after losing the previous governor election. This set up Hirono to run for senate in 2012, while Hanabusa didn't get into Congress until 2010 and then ran up against Schatz in 2014 for the other senate seat. Had 2006 gone the other way, Hanabusa very likely would have become senator in 2012 and then served with Schatz the past decade. RIP.
No one in HI and AAPI politics I've spoken to has a high opinion of Hanabusa or saw her as a more progressive option compared to any of the above lol. And Hanabusa made herself clearly distinct from progressive politics with the exception of deep connections to labor.
The only possible reason I would think a Democratic senator would vote to confirm Mullin is so they wouldn't have to hear the nonsense out of him as much on the Senate floor.
Safe blue Senator with otherwise progressive record. No excuse.
I'd go as far as to say a primary challenge should be considered for this. (There's precedent for bad votes leading to a primary -- the reason former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun originally ran for Senate was because then-incumbent Alan Dixon voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS despite the Anita Hill hearings at the time.)
Ah, so it's another case of "I'm retiring soon, who cares about my votes?" They're not facing voters so why should they care?
I wish there was something that could be done about this. Vote better Senators in, I know, but something else. Between this and the Chuy/Daines/Issa shit, it really feels like a large number of members of Congress flat out don't care about their constituents anymore.
It's more likely senate comity. The oldest senators in particular seem to be content to be bound by age old norms that do little for protecting our institutions even if adhering to that norm does actual damage to said institutions.
Senators are socially expected to vote for other senators' confirmations. Either (a) they like the person and want them to get an earned promotion, or (b) they dislike the person and want to get rid of them. Makes it easier to get along with fellow senators too.
"He’ll be confirmed; the question is whether there’s bipartisan support for him. Markwayne Mullin is competent and he’s honest, so those are two good things that Kristi Noem did not have,” Welch told CNN’s Kasie Hunt in an interview.
Trump fired Noem on Thursday and announced he would nominate Mullin, a member of the Senate GOP whip team, to head the Homeland Security Department.
“This is going to give us an opportunity to have real discussion about what’s going on with the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “Number one, we saw with that rampage in Minneapolis cannot ever happen again. You had Kristi Noem who essentially was calling two people who got killed domestic terrorists."
Personally, I'd rather Welch spend his energy going after ICE and preventing a vote until ICE is eliminated.
Sure, but he's known as a republican so less likely to be successful, or i should say that same chance to be successful as when dems do it, because we haven't been successful
But the Dems have gotten close because they are unknown quantities and can truly play the independent card. Kiley is a currently elected Republican and will be viewed as such.
I suspect that this poll shows name ID. Lasher seems to have the establishment behind him and he should do better as this race gets closer to the finish.
George Conway is a rather interesting character – and I trust him far more than his ex-wife, Kellyanne. He’s an adamant anti-Trumpist, but I’m not sure about his progressive bona fides.
Dems have raised $21M for their redistricting amendment in Virginia while the GOP has raised $300k and there are little signs of life on the No side as of yet.
I'm honestly surprised how little opposition Republicans are putting up to this. Cline, Wittman, and Kiggans have very close ties to Johnson and he seems to be hanging them out to dry with no support. I never say get too confident about an election but this one seems like it could be a foregone conclusion like the governor's race last year.
I gave to the Virginia Democratic Party myself, as I wasn't sure where to donate. (Before anyone says anything about me getting spam email, I have a separate email I use for donations/other spam so it doesn't clutter my regular email.)
Turek’s got plenty of good stuff on his agenda although I think the prescription medication price reduction issue has been a problem raised for over two decades. Good that he’s bringing it up but I would take it further with big pharma:
-Ban pharmaceutical companies from doing any kind of advertising in the U.S.
-Limit how pharmaceutical companies can do direct selling. We want doctors, namely psychiatrists, to not have a conflict of interest when serving patients.
Banning pharmaceutical advertising would require a constitutional amendment, because the decision to allow it was based on the 1st Amendment.
I wonder if packing SCOTUS could lead to a reevaluation of that case somehow.
I doubt it. They'll find commercial speech not to be speech?
Who knows. Lord knows the current Court finds an excuse for everything.
Courts that care about the constitution don't.
Fair although there are ways to restrict pharmaceutical advertising. The main thing is to prevent patients from getting caught up getting too hyped up over pharmaceutical advertising and the doctors to be more empowered to give objective views with the patients about medication.
Most countries in the world to my understanding do not allow pharmaceutical companies to do advertising or at lease significantly restrict it.
Most countries don't consider commercial speech to be governed by free speech provisions like the U.S. does, and many also prohibit hate speech. So what kinds of regulations do you think would not be struck down?
Being that there are already limitations as to what pharma can do in U.S.-based advertising, as long as the regulations give pharma the chance to profit there’s less likelihood they will complain as much. That won’t stop the lobbying though.
It’s the mediums by which pharma can advertise and sell directly to that should be questioned. As an example, the American Psychiatric Association believes psychiatrists should live comfortably (last I heard the APA say so years back) but pharma can exploit this to their own advantage and there is not enough accountability here.
Right now, it’s a bit premature to even know what pharma will try to stop regulation wise unless it’s proposed.
Don't get me wrong: I oppose the advertisement of prescription drugs to laypeople. But what limitations are you talking about? I believe they have to do with unsupported claims and the fact that they have to include a list of side effects in ads.
Salazar of "the browns" lolol
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/huddle/2021/02/26/exclusive-inside-maria-elvira-salazars-encounter-with-stephen-miller-491918
For the first time, I'm seeing Politico require a subscription to show more than the first few paragraphs of an article. I don't really need to read more, though.
You really just need to give them an email to login and nothing more.
I remember when they drew the gerrymander and multiple people warned that it was a clear dummymander, predicated entirely on the assumption that Hispanics would vote GOP forever.
It appears those people were 100% correct. The GOP got exactly what they deserved.
I think saying it'd be a dummymander isn't quite right. Even in the best case results for us it would not be a dummymander: where the new maps result in us winning more seats in the state than if they hadn't tried to (re-)gerrymander. So long as republicans enter next year with 25 or more reps in Texas, it won't have been a dummymander.
Maybe not the right word then. Definitely not an instant seat grab though.
Aren't they almost guaranteed to gain TX-32?
I meant more, instant all-seat grab. As in, they thought they’d instantly take every seat they gerrymandered, and that isn’t happening.
I think the 9th and 32nd will almost certainly go red, the 15th and 24th (already held by Republicans) as well as the 35th will be competitive, and the 28th and 34th will be held by their Democratic incumbents.
We know what they thought, but a dummymander isn't taking 1 or 2 seats, rather than 5. Plus, we have to consider what could happen in 2028.
I don't buy for a sec Dems were only up +7 with Hispanics two weeks ago.
Looks like they changed their methodology.
Crosstab analysis often yields stuff like this, think how many times you've seen something like "the candidate was down 14 with independents last month, now leads independents by 5!" When the topline result only shows them gaining like 3 points. It's usually noise, and if it seems implausible (like Dems only being up 7 with Hispanics after last November's results clearly showed the rebound had already happened) then trust your head!
"Asking for a party" 😆
I predict about 5 more will retire by May. Hern and Bice for Senate, maybe a few odd ones like Dan Webster, someone from PA, and maybe Bill Cassidy if Letlow is too difficult to defeat.
Probably some more random names too, who had Daines on their radar?
Not me. I was shocked when he dropped out literally minutes before the filing deadline ended.
I keep hearing Webster’s name be floated as a retirement candidate. Question: if he does, who are likely candidates to replace him? That Anthony Sabatini nut? (Correct me if I’m wrong about his name. Was that the one I’m thinking of?)
That is indeed the nut you’re thinking of. Something in the water in that corner of Florida
Dems might have a chance if it’s him.
Or worse, Loomer.
Thank you!
This is fascinating and exactly why I love this site and the community here in the comments, thank you for sharing.
Kildere, thanks a million for doing this!
Now that I’ve had a chance to read the full thing, that was very informative - I learned a lot beyond my very high-level and rudimentary knowledge of Israeli geography and now politics!
That's impressively exhaustive! I'm probably a bit more than half way through and will come back to this. Congratulations!
Fantastic work! Very detailed and informative.
Good read, thanks for putting it together.
Rumors are it's part of a Chuy Garcia / Steve Daines-style handoff.
Uh oh
This doesn’t seem quite as egregious as the Daines situation
WTF was the deleted post? These constant deletions are really annoying!
It was a different article showing Desmond's candidacy. My apologies. Should have edited.
No problem.
Yes, I vote for editing – especially when you already have a few replies.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-06/veteran-rep-darrell-issa-decides-not-to-seek-reelection-in-new-democratic-leaning-district-sources-say
CA-48, CA-49: Darrell Issa pulled a Chuy Garcia/Steve Daines. His Republican successor is Jim Desmond, who ran in the 49th previously.
Boy bye
This is getting ridiculous. I was upset when the Chuy thing happened for this exact reason. We need legislation to stop this insanity.
We really have to stop labelling this as something that Chuy invented. In IL alone, Bill Lipinski dropped out *after the primary* so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
Also, how would legislation like that even work? Would a sudden medical event that caused a legislator to drop out close to filing prevent a party from finding another candidate? Ralph Metcalfe died in October of 1978 and the party bosses picked a mediocre machine alderman as a replacement nominee. Would that be legal?
What is it we're trying to prevent with legislation? Dropping out too close to filing? A departing legislator putting the thumb on the scale for their preferred successor?
I didn’t say Chuy invented it. I’m of the opinion that he brought new attention to it in an environment where the leaders of our major parties are already at war with the base (Dems) or behaving in an openly anti democratic fashion (GOP), and thus are more likely to be nervous about the concept of continued primaries. In a different environment, it wouldn’t have been as toxic as it was here, although it most certainly would not have been morally right. But given the propensity for anti-democratic behavior as of late, the risk of this kind of tactic increasing in use is far greater in my opinion.
As for the legislation question, one idea I’ve seen is extending the primary filing date when an incumbent retires. I believe some states already have this.
So what Lipinski did would be okay because it was after the primary? Chuy should have just waited until after the primary?
No, that isn’t even close to what I said. I said that the political environment we live in today makes the risk of other Reps repeating similar behavior much more likely. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “after the primary”. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’m concerned about whether or not we’re going to have fair primaries going forward.
Last comment, and just the facts. By "after the primary," I mean that Bill Lipinski won the primary election for another term in March of 2004, and he dropped out of the race in August of 2004 so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
I think people who aren't from IL are a bit taken aback by this, but as we both know, both parties at every level in Illinois do this. Probably a quarter of the Chicago City Council got their seats by doing something similar, and my own state senator got their seat from their FIL in a similar manner. That doesn't make it "right" but...
If I could like this comment 100x, I would.
Huh. So it’s common in IL. IMO another argument for legislation to prevent this.
We need a law like if the incumbent drops out during the last two weeks the filing deadline will be extended another two weeks.
I believe some states just have different filing deadlines for incumbents - i.e., they have to declare a week before everyone else or something like that. These things can be fixed pretty simply if the will is there.
Issa did this before back in 2018. Nothing new.
As much as I have had distain for him since the 2003 CA gubernatorial recall election, I don’t think Issa wants his “legacy” ruined
It not being new does not make it justified. It’s a subversion of the entire concept of primaries, and I additionally worry about it being weaponized in an ideological fashion, as in, to prevent someone from an opposing ideology from taking the seat. That’s my problem with it.
I agree. Being that Issa did the same thing back ahead of the 2018 midterm season, it shows his priorities are not really with serving constituents but advancing anything he can do to be relevant. But that outweighs the responsibility elected politicians have when they get elected in the first place.
At this point, I question if there is a single Republican left whose priorities even resemble serving their constituents.
It’s hard to truly know unless you live in the district. Often times what we see in the news and what’s reported is typically the headlines of Issa and others grabbing attention and using hearings and floor speeches to fundraise.
As someone who always has believed in the rules of checks and balances, it’s agonizing to watch the chamber and questioning being used to fire up the troops instead of due process and true accountability.
Up until Senator Lisa Murkowski cast her YAY BBB vote, she did have priorities resembling what her constituents were asking her to do. She had warm relations with Alaskans. I think BBB has certainly damaged her political future but I’ve never seen her to possess an ego like most in the GOP.
Damn! So we don't have Darrell Issa to kick around anymore?
I'm OK with that...
Until he runs in the 40th in 2028 and kicks out Ken Calvert or Young Kim.
Or in Texas's 32nd. Not sure if he'd run against Jace Yarbrough, though. Maybe if Dan Barrios pulled off an upset.
Yeah, that is possible. We did have Nixon to kick around some more: he made that comment after losing CA-Gov in 1962 to Pat Brown (Jerry's father). It was not the end of his political career, unfortunately.
I wanted him defeated for re-election.
And it looks like we will never get that. Double GRRRRR
By 2027, Desmond will be 70y/o replacing a 73y/o lol
Issa was the next most senior to try succeeding Jordan on Judiciary next term, and I wouldn't have been esp surprised if he'd won it. Sidebar that I also wouldn't be surprised if Jordan asked for and was given a waiver, but he could also hop back to Oversight (where Comer is similarly term-limited).
More like Issa pulled another Issa like he did back in 2018.
This makes winning the House seat all the more easier for Democrats.
Dumb noise about not “seriously” funding TX for a flip. If we’re actually close to dead even with men nationally then other seats are probably off the board early enough to make TX more than viable for donors
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/06/democrats-james-talarico-donors-spending-texas-00815690?nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nname=playbook&nrid=aaddaad4-1b9e-4ff1-b8ab-84832729a0d9
You're not kidding about the dumb. Article defines Cornyn as a moderate and says that national democrats are eyeing Montana as a better spending target. Also says we "held" Montana as recently as 2018, which is false: we won it as recently as 2018, and held it as recently as mid Jan 2025.
Fortunately (?) for us, the DSCC's fundraising is less critical than candidate fundraising. Unless Schumer and Gillibrand work to stop donors from giving to Talarico, I think he'll do OK on money. O'Rourke raised about $80m in 2018. I wouldn't be surprised to see Talarico comfortably exceed that. He probably needs $100m+ to make this credible, which should be doable with good grassroots.
"Hold" being a term for an electoral victory by an incumbent.
That part of the article is correct.
Republican Party insiders have already indicated that they expect to spend $ 200 million or more to prevent this Texas Senate seat from flipping.
They have to spend $200 million+ to defend the seat?
Looks like TX GOP has nothing!
Phil Berger is probably gone: https://nitter.poast.org/PollTracker2024/status/2030058573921743159#m
First Tillis and now Berger.
The NC GOP of the early 2010s is dead and buried
It won't be dead and buried until Tim Moore, Paul Newby and the GOP judicial majorities go bye-bye.
If he had any self-respect and respect for actual democracy, Berger should take his lumps and accept the will of the voters.
But since he's entrenched and drunk with power, he's going to call in favors to his son and the other three justices on our state Supreme Court to throw out ballots cast by fellow Republicans. Just like the solid he did for Jefferson Griffin -- only to get spanked soundly by a Trump-appointed federal judge.
Wow, Sam Page has increased his lead more than tenfold!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-gop-senator-uses-slur-on-senate-floor-doubles-down/
WA state senator Leonard Christian (R) used the r slur on the floor of the legislature, and it's controversial.
Personally, I don't like the word and don't use it, but it's less egregious than say, the n word.
Worse than the F word though.
The context for this was troubling. He grouped the "r words" in with rapists to criticize the prison system. Clearly, they're not the same.
When in doubt, assume it’s a legislator from Spokane Valley.
Not to the disabled community. The r-word is the equivalent of the n word for us. Much like the n word, it’s used to imply that people with mental disabilities are stupider and slower than non-disabled people.
I know. My previous comment was pretty insensitive, sorry if I offended or anything of the sort.
That’s fine. I felt it was important to provide context.
You didn't say the whole word so I had only assumed you were aiming to be cautious.
I grew up saying it all the time. I.e. anything silly or annoying was "r-word". I have to struggle not to use it in that sense. I.e. to describe a perposterous situation, rather than directed at a person as a slur.
I get that. The word was once used quite commonly — you hear it a lot on older South Park, for instance. It’s taken on a new meaning with the increase in acceptance of disabled people.
"Less egregious than the N word" leaves a lot of room for a word to be truly awful. I don't think there's a more egregious word, term, or phrase in the English language. As noted by the fact that the vast majority of us refuse to use the word at all, even in an academic sense, and only refer to it by its first letter.
So... "less egregious" covers effectively every word out there.
That evolution is itself quite interesting. Where the word has become not only obscene but taboo. Literally unspeakable. Of course in Black dialect it remains a term of respect. (Pronouced without the hard R, of course.)
John Mulaney's bit about that is pretty funny. https://youtube.com/shorts/yVhIo2VgRik?si=lVdX9956FOVREsRe
I feel like the Trump era has brought back many ugly words that should have died on the school playground in the '90s (the r-word, the six-letter f-word, "gay" as a negative descriptor) and it's really gross.
I have serious concerns about Gen-Z and Alpha (apologies to Susan Collins for stealing her signature phrase).
In the upcoming Carroll 7 New Hampshire House of Representatives special election, a district with about 13,000 people, someone has decided to create a fake website to attack the Democratic candidate. Weird, desperate behavior.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/03/06/former-hawaii-congresswoman-colleen-hanabusa-dies-74/
Obituaries: Former Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), who ran for several statewide and local but lost to opponents across the political spectrum, has died at 74.
Rest in peace. I still don’t get how she lost to Ige even after the whole mess with the missile alert notification, I’m not from Hawaii but it looked like she would have been a good governor.
Ah, that’s a shame. RIP. Far too young
I wouldn't say Hanabusa was seen as especially progressive.
Edit: Hanabusa was never a CPC member and was very well known as a member of NewDem leadership. She was the more moderate candidate against Schatz for Senate in 2014, Ige for Governor in 2018 and in the runoff for Honolulu Mayor in 2020, she endorsed Republican Rick Blangiardi over more progressive Democrat Keith Amemiya.
Edited - I figured that since she ran against the likes of Schatz and Ige, who can be considered more moderate than progressive, she had progressive bonafides.
Schatz has always been more progressive than her. Ige was more moderate and reinvented himself for the 2018 election and ran to her left to defend himself.
Hawaii primaries rarely sort along a neat progressive-moderate axis, same goes for the politicians themselves. The state has a strong Democratic Party culture but not so much a left-leaning ideological one. More than anything Hanabusa's big races were contests of personality and perceived record, hard to slot into the categories above, much as observers from outside the state tried to. The state has fully open primaries and there's an established history of most gen election GOP voters choosing to participate in the Dem primary instead, making even less of a distinction between these and the officially non-partisan mayor races. In recent years there's been signs of a growing leftwing movement with younger voters (Kim Coco Iwamoto toppling the house speaker was massive), but this is also a state with a huge political center of gravity among the elderly, so combined with the structural factors favoring non-ideological campaigns targeting all voters, change has been slow.
Hanabusa was a Hawaii Dem through and through, a tenacious candidate who was just the victim of bad timing and bad luck. The dominos probably start with the 2006 HI-02 primary, where she very narrowly lost to Mazie Hirono, who was attempting her own comeback after losing the previous governor election. This set up Hirono to run for senate in 2012, while Hanabusa didn't get into Congress until 2010 and then ran up against Schatz in 2014 for the other senate seat. Had 2006 gone the other way, Hanabusa very likely would have become senator in 2012 and then served with Schatz the past decade. RIP.
No one in HI and AAPI politics I've spoken to has a high opinion of Hanabusa or saw her as a more progressive option compared to any of the above lol. And Hanabusa made herself clearly distinct from progressive politics with the exception of deep connections to labor.
Sorry to hear. She was so much better than ed case and 1 of only 3 pickups for us in 2010 along with Louisiana 2 and Delaware all.
thehill.com/homenews/senate/5771060-mullin-to-replace-noem/amp/
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) will vote to confirm Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary. I imagine his colleague, Bernie Sanders, will certainly not.
The only possible reason I would think a Democratic senator would vote to confirm Mullin is so they wouldn't have to hear the nonsense out of him as much on the Senate floor.
Senate club. Confirming one of their own.
Safe blue Senator with otherwise progressive record. No excuse.
I'd go as far as to say a primary challenge should be considered for this. (There's precedent for bad votes leading to a primary -- the reason former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun originally ran for Senate was because then-incumbent Alan Dixon voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS despite the Anita Hill hearings at the time.)
He will be 81 next election. Will probably just retire
Ah, so it's another case of "I'm retiring soon, who cares about my votes?" They're not facing voters so why should they care?
I wish there was something that could be done about this. Vote better Senators in, I know, but something else. Between this and the Chuy/Daines/Issa shit, it really feels like a large number of members of Congress flat out don't care about their constituents anymore.
It's more likely senate comity. The oldest senators in particular seem to be content to be bound by age old norms that do little for protecting our institutions even if adhering to that norm does actual damage to said institutions.
Senators are socially expected to vote for other senators' confirmations. Either (a) they like the person and want them to get an earned promotion, or (b) they dislike the person and want to get rid of them. Makes it easier to get along with fellow senators too.
It's very dumb, but not surprising at all.
Welch's statement:
"He’ll be confirmed; the question is whether there’s bipartisan support for him. Markwayne Mullin is competent and he’s honest, so those are two good things that Kristi Noem did not have,” Welch told CNN’s Kasie Hunt in an interview.
Trump fired Noem on Thursday and announced he would nominate Mullin, a member of the Senate GOP whip team, to head the Homeland Security Department.
“This is going to give us an opportunity to have real discussion about what’s going on with the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “Number one, we saw with that rampage in Minneapolis cannot ever happen again. You had Kristi Noem who essentially was calling two people who got killed domestic terrorists."
Personally, I'd rather Welch spend his energy going after ICE and preventing a vote until ICE is eliminated.
Disappointing, but as with the unanimous support of Rubio, this is a tradition far down on my list of things to get worked up about.
Yeah, this is how I feel. I don't love it, but there's so much worse things to worry about.
ROFL Rep. Kevin Kiley trying to save his job by running as a "No Party Preference" candidate. https://x.com/KevinKileyCA/status/2030096771335213064
???
How does he think that will make it better?
Basically an Independent. It likely won't save him as CA-6 is too blue.
There's still a top-2 system and he's a known quantity.
But against a Democrat in a blue seat?
Sure, but he's known as a republican so less likely to be successful, or i should say that same chance to be successful as when dems do it, because we haven't been successful
Guess it’s his own project Hail Mary, may as well try?
But the Dems have gotten close because they are unknown quantities and can truly play the independent card. Kiley is a currently elected Republican and will be viewed as such.
“NY-12 Democratic primary (Conway internal)
🟦 Jack Schlossberg: 25%
🟦 George Conway: 16%
🟦 Alex Bores: 11%
🟦 Michael Lasher: 11%
⬜ Not sure: 33%
GQR poll | 2/25-3/2 LV”
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/27776167/signal-2026-03-05-114405.pdf
*Micah Lasher
Sad Lasher isn't doing better. Seems like an all-around good candidate.
It’s a pro-Conway poll. Grain of salt.
Conway ran an ad about the poll results but conveniently left Schlossberg out, LOL.
Frankly, I don't much care for either of them.
Agree.
I suspect that this poll shows name ID. Lasher seems to have the establishment behind him and he should do better as this race gets closer to the finish.
George Conway is a rather interesting character – and I trust him far more than his ex-wife, Kellyanne. He’s an adamant anti-Trumpist, but I’m not sure about his progressive bona fides.
They're nonexistent.
I like him as a commentator (he's clearly very intelligent), but we can do better in a district that blue.
My guess is that Schlossberg probably wins on family connections/sympathy. Oh well.
I hope not.
Really? Schlossberg finally decided to put down the joint and put on a suit and he's the favorite?
I guess he had enough of posting too much on social media! /s
Ugh. Voters love to live down to up expectations.
Yep. But that district has had decades of great representation, so a disappointing replacement would be very unfortunate.
https://www.virginiascope.com/millions-flood-into-virginia-democratic-redistricting-effort/
Dems have raised $21M for their redistricting amendment in Virginia while the GOP has raised $300k and there are little signs of life on the No side as of yet.
I'm honestly surprised how little opposition Republicans are putting up to this. Cline, Wittman, and Kiggans have very close ties to Johnson and he seems to be hanging them out to dry with no support. I never say get too confident about an election but this one seems like it could be a foregone conclusion like the governor's race last year.
I gave to the Virginia Democratic Party myself, as I wasn't sure where to donate. (Before anyone says anything about me getting spam email, I have a separate email I use for donations/other spam so it doesn't clutter my regular email.)
Good!