US politics

US politics

Party leaders recruit the best option, in their eyes, and Democratic primary voters-innately terrified of risk and trusting of their leaders' judgment-fall in line. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes, like North Carolina's Cal Cunningham in 2020, the chosen ones have zipper issues. But Democrats' establishment-driven approach, contrasted with Republicans' less top-driven (and more mistake-prone) strategy for candidate selection, did give Democrats four years in the Senate majority from 2021 to 2025,

ARLINGTON, Va. Only two states, Virginia and New Jersey, hold their elections for governor the year after the presidential election and the year before the midterms. The races are often seen as a test of voter sentiment, but just weeks out from the election, two late-emerging issues in Virginia may be reshaping that state's contest. Abigail Spanberger, a former member of Congress, is the Democratic candidate, and Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate, is the commonwealth's current lieutenant governor.

When asked whether United States President Donald Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, Vice President JD Vance said this week that Trump is looking at all his options. The decision would allow Trump to deploy the US military domestically for law enforcement purposes without congressional authorisation and over the objections of state governors. list of 4 itemsend of list Vance's October 12 comment on NBC's Meet the Press was just one of many in recent months

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told an event on Wednesday that China's dramatic new restrictions on rare earth minerals and magnets demonstrated the need for the US to be self-sufficient in critical materials or rely more on trusted allies. This should be a clear sign to our allies that we must work together, and work together we will. We are not going to let a group of bureaucrats in Beijing try to manage the global supply chains.

President Trump spoke again about San Francisco at a White House news conference today thanks a lot, Benioff! spuriously claiming that "government officials" urged him to "start looking at San Francisco" for a National Guard deployment. Ironically, he claimed that San Francisco was "one of our great cities, 10 years ago, 15 years ago," clearly unaware that the city was being run by Gavin Newsom 15 years ago. [KRON4]

Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration has been preparing sweeping changes to the IRS which would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily. A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, the Journal said, with sources claiming that the administration intended to install allies of the president in the agency's criminal investigation division.

Still, confusion reigned inside the Democratic caucus on what kind of package Thune (R-S.D.) would ultimately bring to the floor, making it difficult for Democrats to settle on a final strategy. They insisted they need to know whether Thune will bring a standalone defense bill to the floor - or if he'll pair it with other appropriations packages. "If we have to vote with no clarity about that, I would vote against proceeding to the House defense approps bill," Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), an appropriator, told Axios on Wednesday.

There are some decent, honest Republicans, Sanders said. And you know, in American society, we believe in democracy. You're a conservative Republican. We disagree. So what? It's called America. We have different points of view. I gotta tell you thoughone of the things that has concerned me very, very much is that we are seeing the Republican party. Doing less of representing their districts and their states than just swearing allegiance to the President of the United States.

It's enormously disruptive to the students who are reliant on these services to answer questions and get the information they need about college enrollment and financial aid as they apply and student supports once they enroll,

The ruling, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, gives the state at least another week, until Oct. 22, to make its case in court. Without the order, the DHS could have allowed the money to be returned to the U.S. Treasury. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the agency last month, claiming the funding cut was illegal and politically motivated. Gov. Kathy Hochul joined the lawsuit, saying the decision threatened the safety of millions of daily riders.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) tried to pass the No Argentina Bailout Act on Tuesday afternoon via unanimous consent. [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent seems to be saying that the American economy can tank, and Americans can pay higher prices, but there will be no end to using American taxpayer dollars to bail out Argentina," said Warren. "For Trump, the leader of Argentina is more important than American families struggling with rising costs for health care.

Lippmann was one of the most successful people who ever lived.... No other journalist in American history has had so much influence on events, had his hand in so many state papers, been on such equal terms with the great. No other wrote books that became such famous keys to each era in turn, was able to impart to newspaper and magazine columns, with such a magisterial air of cultivation, political intelligence of the coolest and most decisive sort.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is on quite a tear. Over the past month, she's been publicly trashing her colleagues over the Jeffrey Epstein files, health care costs, regulations for artificial intelligence, and funding for Israel. This week Greene took things up a notch during an interview with the Washington Post, where she criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson's government shutdown strategy, accused him of treating Republican House members who are women unfairly, and argued "a lot of the men here in the House are weak."

Barely a week after confessing she had embezzled money from Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church, South Lake Tahoe Mayor Tamara Wallace has resigned, and encouraged her Mayor pro tem to also resign over his bar fight allegations. So Mayor Wallace is out, and South Lake Tahoe City Council will have to discuss picking a new mayor and other issues at their October 21 meeting. [KOVR]

The public release of a Young Republican group chat that included racist language, jokes about rape and flippant commentary on gas chambers prompted bipartisan calls for those involved to be removed from or resign their positions. The Young Republican National Federation, the GOP's political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40, called for those involved to step down from the organization. The group described the exchanges, first reported by Politico, as unbecoming of any Republican.

The Orange city council member comes from O.C. Republican royalty. Her grandfather, Cruz, was a Mexican immigrant and civil rights pioneer who registered with the GOP in the late 1940s after Democratic leaders wouldn't help him and other activists fight school segregation against Mexican American students in Orange County. Her second cousin, Steve Ambriz, was a rising GOP star serving on the Orange City Council when he was killed by wrong-way driver in 2006.