Though much of the recent media focus has been on Kent and Tulsi Gabbard, the onetime isolationist turned hawkish director of national intelligence, it is Vance who will ultimately have to wrangle with the political fallout of Trump's decision to attack Iran. Assuming Trump does not illegally seek a third term, all early polling - as well as history and conventional wisdom - suggests it will be Vance accepting the nomination two and a half years from now.
California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks warned in a statement that for all the state's liberal bona fides it was possible that a large Democratic field could carve up the party's primary vote into small fractions and allow only two Republican candidates to advance to the November election. The all-GOP general election is possible under California's unusual top-two primary system, which puts all candidates on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters advance to November, regardless of party.
In perhaps a vain attempt to prove themselves moderate, the Democratic lawmakers helped override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes. Voters responded with the kind of ballot-box fury that should serve as a lesson to other incumbents. It wasn't just a case that the incumbents lost. They were buried, with several of them getting trounced by margins of 40 points or more.
What a sad commentary on the Democratic Party, that the idea the American government should stand for American citizens, not illegal aliens—that shouldn't be controversial, but apparently it was to the Democrats.
Brown was sitting in a Toledo coffee shop, having just finished a roundtable discussion about rising health-care costs. A small group of Ohioans had expressed all manner of concerns about how they would afford their medical bills, co-pays, and prescriptions. This was the kind of event that Brown used to do a lot of before he departed the Senate after losing reelection in 2024.
Driving the news: In a memo Thursday, the Kennedy-aligned political advocacy group MAHA Action warned the chairs of the Republican Senate and House campaign committees and House and Senate leaders that the GOP "is renting MAHA voters. They haven't decided to purchase them yet." The group says Republicans could still close the polling gap with appeals to this segment, which it said could represent 10% of the electorate.
Though only 17 of the 47 presidents were governors, only four men (James Garfield, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama) have gone directly from Congress to the White House. Among Democrats, however, the last sitting or former governor to win a presidential nomination was Bill Clinton. Indeed, the last governor to run a viable Democratic nomination contest was Howard Dean in 2004, and his signature issue was foreign policy (his opposition to the Iraq War).
I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis, Vance began, adding: We just left Toledo, Ohio this morning for an economic messaging event. And I see this story, and I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy, and think to myself, Oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old?
