Blue Dot Drama Remains Unresolved

There is an episode of Family Ties where the character Ned Donnelly, played by guest star Tom Hanks, has become a hopeless alcoholic. Unable to lay hands on actual liquor, he drinks a bottle of vanilla. We are not sure if that actually works, but we were reminded of that subplot yesterday, thanks to the elections in Nebraska and West Virginia. Not a whole lot of drama, but when you're a politics junkie, you'll take what you can get.

The one contest that is actually of interest, as we noted on Monday, is the Democratic primary in NE-02, the D+3 district being vacated by Rep. Don Bacon (R). A victory for state Sen. John Cavanaugh over businesswoman Denise Powell would leave an open seat in the unicameral Nebraska legislature. That seat would be filled by an appointed Republican, and then the legislature would likely change the allocation of the state's EVs, such that it would be winner-take-all like all the other states (except Maine). If Maine was not able to answer back, then that would mean +1 EV for the GOP presidential candidate in 2028.

As of 1:00 a.m. PT this morning, the result in NE-02 is... still up in the air. With 89% of the ballots counted, Powell has 38.9% of the vote while Cavanaugh has 36.8%. So, the race isn't going to be called until... sometime today or tomorrow, presumably. That said, you have to guess Powell is going to triumph. It's possible to overcome a 2-point (or so) gap with 10% (or so) of the vote outstanding, but the outstanding votes have to come from voters who might skew aggressively in one direction or the other. For example, if Cavanaugh was much more liberal than Powell, then... maybe. But they're very similar politically, and the main issue in the election was whether Cavanaugh was being selfish in trying for a promotion. We have a hard time imagining that there are heavily "Cavanaugh unselfish" precincts, or towns, or whatever. So, we expect the "Blue Dot" will be safe.

Meanwhile, everything else went exactly as expected. Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE) easily won the right to run for reelection; his victim will be Lynne Walz (D), a former state legislator who is running on good governance and libertarianism lite. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) also won that right in a landslide. His opponent is nominally Cindy Burbank (D), but she was only running to take one for the team. She's going to drop out, so that it is abundantly clear that the "Democratic" candidate is independent Dan Osborn. This one could get very interesting; polling suggests it's a coin flip, as Ricketts and Osborn have been within one point of each other in 4 of 5 polls of the race (with Osborn up 47%-42% in the fifth, and most recent).

Over in West Virginia, things also went according to plan. Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R) will officially run for a third term in this very red state, having demolished the two Republicans foolish enough to challenge her. She will now move on to slaughter Rachel Fetty Anderson (D), whose positions on the issues are a little squishy. She makes clear what ends she desires (e.g., less corruption, support for the American farmer, free speech), but the devil is in the details, and it's not clear how she wants to achieve those goals. Not that her lack of specific policy ideas is going to matter.

There was one other election worth noting yesterday. It may be a "throw the bums out" year in general, but not in Newark, where Mayor Res Baraka (officially nonpartisan, but everyone knows he's a Democrat) won a fourth term in a laugher, taking three-quarters of the vote. Baraka is something of a Cory Booker clone—up to and including the fact that Booker once held that mayoralty—and is best known for being arrested while protesting at an ICE detention center. The Mayor could be someone you hear from again in the future, particularly if one of the state's two Senate seats comes open anytime soon.

Next week, we can toss the bottle of vanilla in the trash, because there's going to be some smooth sippin' whiskey in Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Oregon and Pennsylvania. (Z)

Paging Elbridge Gerry, Part II: South Carolina Republicans Hold the Line

Yesterday, the South Carolina state Senate voted on the list of things that it will do during the remainder of the current legislative session. One possible item for the list was "draw new district maps," which, if it went forward, would have led to a gerrymander that would likely have cost Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the only Democrat in the state's House delegation, his job. However, 32 votes were needed, and several Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats, with the result being that the agenda item was defeated 29-17. In theory, the legislature could try again next session, or Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) could convene a special session. But for now, Clyburn is safe.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R) gave several explanations for his opposition to re-drawing the maps. First, he said, he's a born-and-bred Southerner who doesn't like taking marching orders from Washington. Second, he fears that if the Democrats (and, by and large, the state's Black voters) are shut out of the political process, they will find ways to make the GOP pay in November. He also said that if there are no Democrats in the state's House delegation, then South Carolina will not have an "in" with the White House the next time there's a Democratic president.

These all seem fairly believable to us. It's certainly a reminder that, for many different reasons, voters (and their elected leaders) hate these kinds of shenanigans. Democrats and independents in particular, but a great many Republicans, too. It may be worth the blowback, politically, if the party is going to gain three or four or five seats in the House. But it's not worth it for one, a conclusion that Republicans in the Indiana state legislature reached about a month before their colleagues in South Carolina.

Of course, this is also a poke in the eye of Donald Trump, who most certainly wanted that extra seat in South Carolina. On Monday night, he broke away from his daily anti-Obama tirade long enough to post this to his fascist-curious social media platform:

The South Carolina State Senate has a big vote tomorrow on Redistricting. I'm watching closely, along with all Republicans across the Country who are counting on their Elected Leaders to use every Legal and Constitutional authority they have to stop the Radical Left Democrats from destroying our Country, including leveling the playing field against their decades of egregious Gerrymandering and Census Rigging. South Carolina Republicans: BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS, just like the Republicans of the Great State of Tennessee were last week! Move the U.S. House Primaries to August, leave the rest on the same schedule. Everything will be fine. GET IT DONE! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Not only does Trump want as many House seats as he and his party can steal, he particularly wants this one, because he hates Clyburn. Clyburn was a key Joe Biden supporter, and is Black, and for Trump, at least in this case, it's two strikes and you're out.

Massey appears to be a pretty shrewd operator, and so while he was pondering his moves here, he surely checked his calendar and noticed that the deadline for candidates to file for office in South Carolina for this cycle has already passed. So, Trump cannot recruit challengers, the way he did in Indiana. Trump, or his allies, could still spend money to help challengers who already filed, but Trump doesn't like to spend his money (as he sees it), and in most cases, the Republican candidate is unopposed. So, the President is largely out of luck. And if you re-read his message above, he clearly knows it. Observe that he's cajoling and trying to be persuasive, and he is not making threats. He knows he has very few arrows in this particular quiver.

And that is really the big story here. After the Indiana result, there was much verbiage about how Donald Trump's iron grip on the Republican Party has been affirmed. But we weren't so sure about that, which is why our headline that night was a question: "A Good Night for Trump?" As filing deadlines pass (and they almost all have, by now), he loses his very greatest source of influence over Republicans running for reelection. As primaries are held, he loses another source of influence. He's not likely to back a Democrat, except maybe against Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), which means Trump will soon be left with only two sources of leverage: (1) withholding his endorsement this year, or (2) threatening a primary challenge in 2027 (a few states) or 2028 (most states).

Without this leverage, will Republican officeholders do Trump's bidding, if it runs contrary to their own interests? We had our doubts last week. And what happened in South Carolina yesterday did nothing to move us off of that position.

Meanwhile, we have more thoughts on this subject, vis-à-vis Virginia. But we don't want to hit this subject too heavily on any one day, so we'll get to it on Friday. (Z)

Vance-Rubio 2028?

Speaking of 2028, there is a new, and pretty wild, poll from Republican house AtlasIntel. It reports that 45.4% of Republican voters have Secretary of State Marco Rubio as their preferred choice to be the Party's 2028 nominee, as compared to just 29.6% for VP J.D. Vance.

The reason that is pretty wild is that, in all the other polling to date, Vance has been the clear frontrunner for the nomination. The aggregator 270toWin says, on average, that Vance is the preferred choice of 39.6% of Republicans, as compared to 14.8% for Rubio. Race to the WH has it at 41.6% and 14%. Real Clear Politics (RCP) says it's 44.8% and 14.4%. In all three cases, Vance's average is 24.8 points (or more) higher than Rubios's. Indeed, RCP doesn't even think Rubio is in second place. To them, the current silver medalist, the preference of 15.3% of Republicans is... Donald Trump Jr.

Of course, the aggregators are all using a lot of old polls, some of which date back to fall of 2025. So the question is: Could Rubio really have flipped the script so aggressively, in just a few weeks? We'll want to see more polls, of course, but our gut feel is... yeah, maybe. He's clearly Trump's favorite right now, and is drawing the plum assignments, like meeting with the Pope. Despite being Secretary of State at a time when diplomacy with Iran has failed six ways to Sunday, he seems to not be taking much damage. And since Rubio is not actually MAGA, we can imagine normie Republicans flocking to his banner in hopes of getting a candidate that's at least somewhat sane.

We think that Vance, by contrast, is just an awful candidate. Putting aside his views on the issues, he's just... weird. He looks strange, he talks strange, he walks strange. He is also about the phoniest politician we've ever seen (sorry, Lindsey Graham). Yes, many politicians are chameleon-like, but with Vance it's painfully obvious that he is just saying whatever he thinks he needs to say, not what he actually believes. At least Rubio has some bedrock principles, even if some of them (ahem, the government of Cuba is evil) are rather old-fashioned. And on top of all of this, pretty much everyone knows Vance is a tool of his patron Peter Thiel.

We're not clear whether Donald Trump Sr. was, or is, aware of this particular poll. Whatever the case may be, he offered up a "solution" to the problem of "some Republicans like Rubio, others like Vance." That solution, of course, was that they should be running mates in 2028. Trump described this as a Republican "dream team." We suppose that is technically correct, in that a nightmare is a kind of dream.

Trump did not quite say who would be the presidential candidate, and who would be the vice-presidential candidate, though he seemed to vaguely imply that Vance would lead the ticket. There is no way Rubio would go for that, though. Secretary of State to VP is very clearly a demotion. At the same time, there's no way Vance would agree to sign up for another hitch as VP. Sure, John C. Calhoun did it, but that was nearly 200 years ago. And even then, he eventually got sick of it and quit.

There is no question Rubio will run, and with an eye toward the big chair. He pinch-hit for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave, last week and he wowed the crowd (admittedly, "better than Leavitt" is a low bar to clear). He also showed a video, later posted to his eX-Twitter account, that is very clearly a proto-campaign ad in which the Secretary ties himself to both Trump and St. Ronnie of Reagan.

And therein lies the problem. Trump is a wildly unpopular president, and Rubio and Vance are both joined at the hip with him. Kamala Harris struggled to distance herself from the unpopular Joe Biden, and that was with a president who surely understood that sometimes politics trumps friendship. Donald Trump most certainly does NOT understand that, and he is clearly going to muck around in Republican presidential politics until the day that he's pushing up daisies. If the 2028 GOP candidate tries to put some distance between themselves and Trump, then Trump will pounce. Meanwhile, neither Rubio nor Vance has a fraction of Trump's "charisma," so they have little hope of keeping the MAGA base fired up. All of this is also true of the other three candidates who are being polled as possible 2028 nominees, namely Trump Jr., Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Vivek Ramaswamy. Nevertheless, there are other possible 2028 candidates in the wings, including Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and former governors Glenn Youngkin (VA) and Chris Sununu (NH). Don't forget a week is a long time in politics and 2 years is forever.

What it amounts to is that we don't believe Rubio-Vance 2028, or Vance-Rubio 2028, is remotely possible. We doubt that Trump thinks that way, either—he just likes to throw crazy stuff out there and then sit back and watch the reaction. We also don't really believe that either one of them will be the nominee, even with another running mate. And if they are, well, we just don't see how they can win, unless maybe the Democrats nominate a Black socialist trans woman from California. (Z)

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary Is Out...

The rumors have been swirling for weeks, and now they have been proven correct: After a contentious 13 months in office, the head of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has rolled. His "resignation" is effective immediately.

Makary has been making the wrong kinds of headlines through virtually his entire time in office. There has been all kinds of churn among the senior leadership of his department, suggesting strongly that he's a terrible boss. He's butted heads with Congress many times. His positions on several issues do not please much of the MAGA base. This entire paragraph could describe any of half a dozen high-profile members of the administration; it's hard to know why some people like this get canned, and others keep on keepin' on. Like, for example, how is Kashyap Patel still employed? That said, we're still in prime "firing" season, so Patel and some of the other problematic folks might ultimately join Makary in the unemployment line.

That trendline—heads have started rolling at a rapid pace, after about a year of very limited high-level turnover—is the primary reason we are writing about Makary. We don't think that he himself is all that important; as long as Robert Kennedy is Secretary of Health and Human Services, that department is not going to be in the actual business of protecting public health.

Following Makary's fall, the satirical newspaper The Onion had an item headlined "Authorities Unearth Mass Grave Of Trump Advisors":

WASHINGTON—Authorities in the nation's capital reportedly unearthed the bodies of more than 150 former Trump advisors Thursday after a worker stumbled upon what appeared to be a mass grave on the grounds of the White House.

Investigators were called to the scene after a groundskeeper performing routine landscaping around the North Lawn's fountain noticed a lifeless arm protruding from a recently overturned patch of soil. Further excavation revealed a 100-foot-long grave stretching nearly to the Executive Residence and containing what experts concluded was almost a decade's worth of decayed flesh, bone, and high-level security clearance tags belonging to former senior staffers of President Donald Trump.

"Preliminary analysis suggests most of these deaths date back to around 2017, with another massive spike in volume occurring throughout 2025," said D.C. chief medical examiner Heather Jefferson...

That's another way of saying "Trump is back to his old tricks."

With this said, while the White House lawn is (apparently) full of the carcasses of those who have been cast aside, there are some folks who somehow receive Trump's grace. Just this week, for example, he nominated Kari Lake, who has failed in several runs for office, and has failed as leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to be ambassador to Jamaica. And he nominated Doug Mastriano, who has also failed in several runs for office, to be ambassador to Slovakia.

As with "Who gets fired and who doesn't?", the question of "Who gets a second chance and who doesn't?" is a tricky one to answer. Actually with Mastriano, it's fairly plain: He was being bandied about as a write-in candidate for governor in next week's primary in Pennsylvania, and that could have derailed state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is Trump's preferred pick. Now, that problem is solved. As to Lake, who knows what her special power is. Trump consistently holds her at arm's length, and consistently denies her the jobs she really wants, but he also doesn't cut her loose. Maybe she has copies of the peepee video or something. In any case, it's hard to imagine the Senate holding the line on an ambassadorship to a small, poor island nation, so it appears Lake is going to fail upwards, once again. We'll see how she manages to screw this one up. (Z)

...And Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) Might Be Done Soon...

In January of last year, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) took over the seat that had been occupied by Mitt Romney. That is just 16 months ago. And yet, Curtis is already plotting his exit strategy. Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) could seek a third term, but just announced he won't do so, and Curtis is thinking seriously about trying to be the guy who replaces him.

The fundamental problem here is that Curtis is unhappy in the Senate. He headed to Washington, DC, with the idea that he could "get things done," and quickly learned that wasn't going to happen. Bipartisanship is a near-extinct species, and any Republican who does not fall in line with MAGA knows they will reap the whirlwind. So, Curtis has basically been Romney v2.0—achieve nothing, and vote however Donald Trump tells you to vote. Indeed, Curtis is even more "loyal" than Romney was. Even though the Senator ostensibly dislikes many elements of Trumpism, he has nonetheless voted with the President 100% of the time on legislation since arriving in Washington.

In an indication that Curtis is a somewhat unusual kind of fellow, he's going to meditate on whether to pursue the governorship, and he will do so while undertaking a 250-mile walk across Utah in honor of the nation's 250th anniversary. If he does jump in, he will almost certainly face off against the very Trumpy former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who is also making noise about a run. In the absence of any hard data, you have to like Curtis' chances against Chaffetz, since Curtis has won statewide before and Chaffetz hasn't, and since LDS Church teachings and MAGA don't actually mesh all that well.

Meanwhile, one wonders if the misery of serving these days will, sometime soon, light a fire under the members of Congress. The most obvious fix would be national anti-gerrymandering legislation. That won't affect the Senate directly, but it should produce a less partisan House, making it more possible to craft legislation that can get through both chambers. Beyond that, we think killing the filibuster would also improve things, since the filibuster encourages gridlock, which is the opposite of "getting things done." Holding executive branch employees responsible for crimes and/or ethical lapses would also be a step forward, but don't hold your breath on that one. (Z)

...And So Too Might Rep. Anna Paulina Luna

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) thinks the Republican Party's HQ has become too cautious, too staid, too by-the-book. And so, she has decided that she'd maybe like to bring a touch of crazy to the place. To that end, she said yesterday that she has a "bone to pick with the RNC," and that she's thinking about running for chair of the GOP.

The Representative is being very clear about her ultimate goal. There are two very big questions that she is not answering, at least not at the moment. The first is: What's the timeline here? The current RNC Chair, Joe Gruters, has been on the job less than a year, and he wants to stay for many years more. So, maybe she's talking about shooting for the post many years from now. Alternatively, it is true that a sitting president can effectively seat any chair he wants at any time he wants. So Luna could try to get the job on a shorter timeframe by making nice with Donald Trump. But she'd have to convince him that she will be better for Trump than Gruters, who is already a hardcore loyalist. So, that's a tough sell.

The other question is whether Luna would try to keep her current job AND be chair of the RNC. It's not impossible; Tim Kaine was simultaneously chair of the DNC and governor of Virginia for about a year, while Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) was chair of the DNC and a member of the House for nearly 5 years. That said, trying to run the party and be an officeholder tends to spread a person a little too thin. Also, it can create questions about whether the party organ is treating all candidates fairly (as with Wasserman Schulz and Hillary Clinton in 2016).

The thing that is most clear is that Luna sees a bright future for herself, and she's not going to be satisfied just being one of 435 members of the House. We tend to think she's a little too wacky to win outside of her current district. And we think she's poked the establishment in the eye enough times that she'll have a hard time getting the support she needs, either from Trump or from RNC delegates, to be elected chair. Still, as with Graham Platner, it's at least possible we're looking at the opening moments of what will become the Eighth Party System. So, it's worth a mention. (Z)

Turns Out, Non-Citizens Have the Right of the Body, Too

Earlier this week, the Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals joined two other circuits and hundreds of lower court judges in striking down the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy for non-citizens. The Court affirmed the district court's grant of several habeas corpus petitions and held that the 30-year old immigration law, which applies to "applicants for admission," refers only to those arriving at the border and not those living in the country's interior. Non-citizens living in the U.S., most of whom have lived here for decades and have jobs and families, can't be detained without bond. According to the Court, the practice violates the Constitution's right to due process.

Two weeks ago, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York also held that the Trump administration cannot detain non-citizens without giving them the right to seek release on bond. The Trump administration instituted a new mass detention order last July, which requires immigration judges to deny bond hearings to anyone caught up in the sweeps wherever they are found and regardless of their status, the length of time they've been in the U.S., or lack of criminal history. Like the 6th Circuit and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, the Court found that the law only allows mandatory detentions of those who are newly arriving and detained at the border.

This decision is a split from the 5th and 8th Circuits, which upheld Trump's new interpretation. Naturally, this likely sets up review by the Supreme Court. Another appeals court, the 9th Circuit, has yet to rule on a class-action suit that also challenged mandatory detentions. We previously wrote about U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes' decision striking down the policy and requiring bond hearings for members of the class, in line with the majority of federal courts.

As we've noted before, the mass detentions have strained the courts' and the Department of Justice's resources because, without the availability of a bond hearing from an immigration judge (who is part of DHS), detainees have to file habeas corpus petitions in federal court to have any chance of being released. DoJ attorneys are being reassigned to immigration cases to handle the thousands of filings, with one lawyer famously asking the judge to hold her in contempt so she can get some sleep.

And again, most of the non-citizens caught up in the dragnet have no criminal record, have lived in the U.S. for decades, and have been granted work authorization, usually due to already having an open case seeking asylum or other lawful basis to remain. The case before the 2nd Circuit involved a Brazilian man with no criminal history who has lived in the U.S. since 2005 and has a wife and two U.S. citizen children. He applied for asylum and was granted a work authorization while his case was pending. During that time, he started his own construction business.

It's unlikely that any of these cases will reach the Supreme Court before the midterms, but they are a reminder that while ICE activity may have been somewhat pared back, the mandatory detention policy is still in place and innocent people are being swept up and thrown in prison camps with few options to get out. Trump may not have to explain these unpopular and cruel policies, but Republican candidates for the House and Senate surely will have to do so. (L)

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