© Seth Kugel for The New York Times
Former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel encouraged the Democratic Party to appeal to moderate "McCain-Romney Republicans" in an op-ed Wednesday.
"The top story from the 2026 cycle will be the electoral opening Democrats seized — and will have to maintain," Emanuel wrote for The Wall Street Journal. "Most important, the McCain-Romney Republicans, who are politically homeless, need to be welcomed into Democrats’ governing and electoral coalition."
Emanuel argued that moderate Republicans who associate their politics closer with former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and former Arizona Sen. John McCain have been dissuaded from the GOP by President Donald Trump and could be the deciding factor in the 2026 midterm elections.
LEE CARTER: 2026 ELECTION COULD ALL COME DOWN TO JUST ONE TYPE OF VOTER
Romney and McCain were the last Republican nominees for president before Trump in 2012 and 2008, respectively, losing each time to Barack Obama.
"Millions of McCain-Romney voters are redefining their political identities, and they will be most responsible for Democratic gains in November. These voters don’t want to be associated with MAGA, and they see themselves as free agents. The question for Democrats is whether we’re willing to give them a permanent home," Emanuel wrote.
The former Clinton advisor pushed back on the idea that the Democratic Party should embrace the more extreme Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members, warning that the results of the midterm elections would be less a show of support for socialism than a rejection of "MAGA" politics.
"The activists who reside in blue bubbles are sure to interpret the election results as vindication. But the party’s ascent won’t be born of some newfound enthusiasm for far-left policies such as defunding the police or offering free healthcare to illegal immigrants," Emanuel wrote.
He added that Democrats should hesitate to impeach Trump and instead be focused on passing meaningful legislation, which is what moderate Republicans support as well.
"Rather than vilifying those whose support we need, Democrats should be inviting them into our coalition. Voters willing to give Democrats a second look need convincing to trust us," Emanuel wrote.
In a comment to Fox News Digital, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle defended Trump's record and encouraged all Republicans to double down on his agenda.
"President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress. The President signed the largest working-class tax cuts in history, lowered the cost of prescription drugs, sealed the border, drove violent crime to the lowest level in nearly a century, unleashed an energy revolution, added more than a million private-sector jobs and sent Americans’ 401(k)s climbing to record highs. The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction," Ingle said.
RAHM EMANUEL WARNS DSA AGENDA DOESN'T PLAY WELL OUTSIDE 'UPPER WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN'
The Republican National Committee (RNC) also denied that Republicans could align themselves with the values of the Democratic Party.
"Democrats are the party of abolishing private healthcare, defunding the police and hammering working families with higher taxes — those are not Republican values, or American values for that matter. If Democrats had their way, our country would look more like Caracas or Moscow," RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Democratic National Committee for comment.
While speaking on the "Hang Out with Sean Hannity" podcast earlier this month, Emanuel downplayed the impact the DSA candidates have on the Democratic Party as a whole.
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"I don't believe the socialists are a wing," he said. "I think they are a separate party. They believe in defunding the police, which is not the party position. They believe in open borders and open prisons. That's not the party’s position."
© Emily Elconin for The New York Times; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr issued a threat this week that adds a sinister new dimension to the Trump Censorship Industrial Complex.
Without citing specifics, Carr decried what he called “a significant surge in entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.”
“Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations,” Carr warned Wednesday.
It’s possible Carr was referring to news this week that an obscure group called Wedgewood Polls had propagated fraudulent polling data that, despite news outlets’ due diligence, made its way into polling aggregations at several outlets, including The New York Times and MS NOW. The problem of apparently malevolent actors fudging poll numbers before an election is not something to take lightly, but responsible news organizations have been transparent with their audiences, appending corrections, editor’s notes and updating their aggregations as needed. (The commission’s lone Democratic appointee, Anna Gomez, posted to X on Wednesday, “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”)
This would hardly be the first time Carr has used his office to threaten broadcasters from airing bad news about his boss.
But Carr’s track record as an anti-free-speech warrior for Trump makes it hard to see his comments as an earnest effort to prevent the distribution of incorrect information before an election. In nearly two years as FCC chair, Carr has demonstrated that he’s an unprincipled, hyperpartisan hack who cosplays as an advocate of free speech and limited government. Examples abound of him using his office to try to silence Trump critics and strong-arm risk-averse media corporations that prioritize nothing more than their bottom lines.
More likely, Carr is helping lay the groundwork for Trump to — once again — falsely claim fraud in the event of a GOP wipeout in the midterm elections, lest Trump’s historic unpopularity be blamed for Republicans losing control of one or both houses of Congress or any number of statehouses.
In March, as it became evident that Trump’s war on Iran was destined to become an unwinnable quagmire, Carr threatened broadcasters from airing “hoaxes and news distortions” in war coverage. Those words, in MAGA-speak, typically translate to “reports that accurately reflect the president’s incompetence.”
Carr also effectively censored Jimmy Kimmel after the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk by jawboning ABC’s corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, into suspending the late-night comic, even boasting, “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” So egregious was this government gangsterism that no less a Trump lickspittle than Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, condemned it as “mafioso” behavior. When Carr wasn’t acting as the comedy police, he went after ABC’s daytime talk show “The View,” claiming the program violated the FCC’s antiquated “equal time” rules regarding political candidate interviews, despite the fact that talk shows had historically been considered exempt from that regulation.
Sadly, the FCC’s censorship campaign has been such a success that ABC’s lawyers claimed in court recently that the network’s news division has been tempering its election coverage to avoid further harassment by the Trump administration.
This spring, Carr himself bragged about how effective Trump’s authoritarian attacks on the free press have been: “Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded…[Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership. And soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well.” (Skydance, the company controlled by the Trump-friendly billionaire trust fund baby David Ellison, now owns CBS and CNN.)
The FCC’s censorship campaign has been such a success that ABC’s lawyers claimed in court recently that the network’s news division has been tempering its election coverage to avoid further harassment by the Trump administration.
Thankfully for Carr, his efforts earned him a good-boy pat on the head from Trump at an Alaska campaign rally this month, when the president praised his FCC attack poodle as “the most-feared man in government.” If you were wondering, yes, it is bizarre that the head of the historically bipartisan FCC would be attending a partisan political rally. But then, Carr — who’s known for wearing a lapel pin in the shape of Trump’s head — broke decades of precedent when he told a Senate committee in December 2025 that the FCC is not an independent agency. References to “independent” have also been removed from the FCC’s website.
Twelve former FCC officials — who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations — issued a joint statement Wednesday condemning Carr’s “dangerous and unconstitutional” attempt to “censor and control the information available to Americans as they prepare to vote.” They added, “Make no mistake: this is a direct attack on free and fair elections, which is especially concerning in the days and weeks when Americans are heading to the polls.”
In an X post Wednesday, The Bulwark’s Will Saletan aptly summed up Carr’s pathology: “Stephen Miller might look the part, but Brendan Carr is actually Trump’s most dedicated authoritarian apparatchik. In a fascist regime, he would do anything the boss ordered.”
Trump’s recent claim that Carr is the “most feared” person in government is in keeping with the president’s flattery of thugs, and Carr no doubt appreciated the ego-stroking. That’s probably overstating the case a bit — the Trump administration does have high-ranking officials who brag about committing likely war crimes, after all — but Carr is most certainly a giddy soldier in Trump’s war on the Constitution.
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STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan — President Donald Trump promised that his tariff policies would make the country richer and would bring in enough revenue to eliminate the need for income tax and to pay down the country’s debt. Instead, Trump voters in Michigan told MS NOW they feel poorer, as income tax is still on the books and the national debt has soared to $40 trillion.
Increased prices due to tariffs continue to pinch consumers across the country, and few are paying a higher price than Michiganders.
In September, a study for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a nonpartisan “small government” research group, estimated that the impact of tariffs on Michigan households since January 2025 has been somewhere between $23 billion and $26 billion, which breaks down to an estimated burden of about $6,000 per household.
“I hate them. They suck,” Dennis Walls, a three-time Trump voter who works in landscaping and is looking for a second job, said of tariffs.
Walls, who is from Imlay City, said the tariffs have made groceries more expensive and cost his landscaping business more for equipment.
“Our backpacks, leaf-blowing backpacks, stick edges, weed whackers, machines, even keep going up higher and higher,” he said.
Michigan’s exposure to Trump’s trade war is amplified by its proximity to Canada and the deep ties between their economies. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimated that Michigan exported $23.2 billion in goods to Canada in 2025. The Canadian government estimated it exported about $43.5 billion in goods to Michigan that same year.
This year, Trump imposed significant tariffs on Canada, drawing retaliation from Canada — which ended in a stalemate this September, when tariffs on billions of dollars of goods went into effect.
Kenneth Matthews, 57, is another three-time Trump voter who’s juggling work at a factory and his own lawn care business.
“I’m pissed off about them,” he said. “It’s even harder when you’re running your own business.”
Matthews said he regrets his support for Trump.
“He’s not making America great again. He’s putting us farther in the hole,” he said.
His message to the president is simple: “Knock the tariffs off. Get rid of them. We shouldn’t have them.”
Michigan’s historic automotive industry is on the front line of the trade wars Trump has picked with Canada and Mexico. But it’s the small businesses that keep the industry humming that are being hit hardest.
Andi Asliwa, 28, is an owner and mechanic at New Testament Auto Service in Sterling Heights. The entrepreneur told MS NOW that the tariffs are making his business untenable as he has to pass on higher prices for parts to his customers.
I think the richer people got richer, but the average person — no, it’s tearing us apart.”
“I used to get brake pads for $35, $25. Now they’re $70 and up,” said Asliwa, who voted for Trump in 2024. He said his brake pads are imported from China, and he’s sticking with them as they remain less expensive than domestically produced brake pads, which he said are worse quality.
Asked how the tariffs have affected the country, Asliwa said, “I think the richer people got richer, but the average person — no, it’s tearing us apart.”
Last month, Trump announced an import ban on select Canadian alcoholic beverages, and Canada retaliated, putting bars on both sides of the border on the rocks. But it’s not just the booze that’s drying up; it’s also the boycott by Canadian tourists, spurred by the escalating trade war, that’s making a dent on Michiganders’ bottom lines.
Bob Roberts owns McShane’s Irish Pub & Whiskey Bar in Detroit, which employs 32 people. Roberts, who voted for Trump in 2016, said Canadian tourists from just across the border in Windsor, Ontario, have stopped their patronage.
You would see Canadian plates everywhere. Now you walk around, you don’t see any Canadian plates at all.”
“We used to enjoy a pretty big crowd from Canada, because they have no sports teams there,” Roberts said. “You would see Canadian plates everywhere. Now you walk around, you don’t see any Canadian plates at all.”
Roberts put the damage to his revenue from the Canadian tourism boycott at about 15%, or about $30,000. He said the hospitality industry in Detroit right now is “fragile.”
“If you continue down the road that we’re on, there’s not going to be any way that I can survive as a restaurateur, and because of that, you know, I’ll go out of business,” Roberts said.
Roberts said he is still undecided on whether he will vote for Democrat Abdul El-Sayed or Republican Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan’s Senate seat.
“If these tariffs don’t get cleared up, if the Republicans win either the House or the Senate — I mean, there needs to be a dramatic change in Washington,” he said.
“Otherwise, I mean, quite frankly, we’re screwed,” he added.
El-Sayed has opposed Trump’s tariff policy from the beginning of his campaign, in contrast to Rogers, who only came out against the president’s trade war with Canada with less than a month before Election Day.
“As a politician, he came out in support of Canada and against the trade wars; in my opinion, [he] came out a little late,” Roberts said of Rogers.
“It doesn’t pass the sniff test: It smells like politics, as opposed to being genuine,” he added.
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Earlier this week, during a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, President Donald Trump admitted that Democrat Roy Cooper is “going to become your senator and it’s crazy.”
It was especially embarrassing for Cooper’s Republican opponent. As chair of the North Carolina GOP, Michael Whatley ingratiated himself with Trump to such an extent that Trump made him chair of the Republican National Committee. But Cooper, a popular former governor and attorney general, has consistently led Whatley in the polls. His current average lead is more than 10 points.
Just down the Atlantic coast, Georgia Republicans are also reeling in their Senate contest. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., is running away with the race against Rep. Mike Collins, an ultra-MAGA conservative who has come under fire for his ties to his white nationalist influencer son-in-law.
The two Senate contests, though, are just portents of much bigger problems facing North Carolina and Georgia Republicans — two state parties hollowed out in the age of Trump.
Just over a decade ago, North Carolina Republicans were riding high. After the state voted for Barack Obama in 2008, Republicans, led in part by state House Speaker Thom Tillis, took control of both legislative chambers in 2010 for the first time since 1898. In 2012, voters elected Republican Gov. Pat McCrory with a veto-proof legislature. In 2014, Tillis defeated Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.
Though McCrory narrowly lost the governorship in 2016 to Cooper, Trump won the state by nearly 4%. The state GOP largely maintained its grip in the years following until 2024, when Trump backed then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson as the party’s nominee for governor.
Democrat Josh Stein would win the race by almost 15 points against Robinson, who had a history of inflammatory remarks even as Trump won the state. Late in the race, CNN reported that Robinson “made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and expressed support for reinstating slavery.” Robinson denied writing the messages, but thanks to Stein’s margin of victory, Republicans lost the lieutenant governorship while Democrats held the attorney general’s race, their legislative supermajority and a seat on the state supreme court.
And Trump’s clash with Tillis forced the latter into retirement after they split over the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Tillis likely would have struggled in a midterm year. But Trump booting him and filling the state party with loyalists made matters worse.
The state GOP’s reversal of fortune is almost as bad in Georgia. The Republican takeover of Georgia began in 2002 when Roy Barnes lost to Sonny Perdue to become the first Republican governor of Georgia since Reconstruction. The state senate also flipped thanks to multiple party switches. In 2004, Republicans would win the state house.
Georgia has elected Republican governors, most recently Brian Kemp, ever since. Trump endorsed Kemp in 2018. But Trump turned against Kemp, who now enjoys a 70% approval rating, after he refused to help overturn the 2020 election results, when Joe Biden won the state. While Kemp easily won re-election in 2022 without Trump’s help, the latter’s endorsement of former football player Herschel Walker led to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock winning re-election.
And this year, the president boosted Collins over a Kemp-backed rival. Republicans in Georgia would likely be in trouble anyway this year, largely due to migration from other states, particularly from African Americans and suburban college-educated whites. But Trump has accelerated this trend propping up apparatchiks. Even those loyal soldiers have their limits. Look no further than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represented a deep-red district, only to quit after a public falling out with the president.
In fact, the one Republican statewide candidate doing well in Georgia right now is Rick Jackson, the self-funded businessman who beat Trump’s preferred candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Jackson now leads most polls against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. But if Bottoms somehow wins, she likely will also flip at least one chamber of the Legislature.
If Georgia and North Carolina’s state Republican parties want to see where Trump-driven hollowing out leads, they can look to Arizona. The home of Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee for president, Arizona was long a bastion of conservatism. But it has been 10 years since a Republican last won a Senate seat, when Trump’s nemesis John McCain was re-elected to his final term.
Since then, Democrats have won every Senate race. In 2022, the same year Mark Kelly won a full term for McCain’s old seat, fellow Democrat Katie Hobbs narrowly won by beating election denier Kari Lake in the gubernatorial race. Lake had famously said McCain Republicans should “get the hell out,” but she would be joined in defeat by Trump-endorsed ideologues for secretary of state and attorney general.
In 2024, even as Trump won the state, Lake’s campaign for a Senate seat ended in defeat to Ruben Gallego. Now, Hobbs is facing Rep. Andy Biggs, who tried to challenge the 2020 election results and who has Trump’s endorsement. Polling shows Hobbs beating Biggs decisively. In addition, Democrats have a good chance of flipping up to three Republican-controlled House seats and potentially both houses of the state Legislature for the first time in 60 years.
While Trump, over the past decade, has displayed a remarkable ability to survive and win elections, his acolytes in these former GOP strongholds are losing down the ballot. These two phenomena are connected: Trump has turned the Republican Party that cares about electing like-minded individuals into a party meant to support him, and him alone. In doing so, it has lost its ability to save itself.
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FORT MYERS, Fla. — Mercedes Price Harry drives a 4Runner, and with gas back above $4 a gallon in Florida, she says it hurts every time she fills up. But the chair of the Lee County Republican Party is not giving up on President Donald Trump.
“You don’t save the country giving up the ship because gas prices are high,” she said.
Not everyone here feels the same way. Trump won nearly 64% of the vote in Lee County in 2024, but Price Harry said there are “a lot of people that feel a lot of apathy and frustration right now” over the economy and the war with Iran. When the president arrives for a rally Friday, she is hoping he can reassure them.
“We’re hoping that he’s just going to remind us that he is doing all that he can to move us in that right direction,” she said. “Hopefully, he’ll make everybody feel good about the bumps that we’ve had in the last year, and that we can continue to put all of our faith in him because I think that most of us do, but not everybody is staying on the Trump train.”
Trump’s visit comes with early voting underway and Election Day less than two weeks away. Republicans are fighting to hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, and the president’s approval rating has fallen to a record low of 31%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday. The question here is whether loyalty to Trump will carry over to the Republicans he is backing, and whether he can motivate enough of his voters to turn out.
Two of those Republicans are expected to join him at Friday afternoon’s rally: Byron Donalds, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, and Jim Schwartzel, its candidate in Florida’s 19th Congressional District. Donalds leads Democrat David Jolly by just 4 percentage points in the closely watched governor’s race, according to an MS NOW/Fifty Plus One polling average.
Democrats sense an opening. Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Jolly in Florida earlier this week, his first campaign trip of the year.
Florida Republicans, for their part, have spent the year trying to make the state’s congressional delegation even more conservative. Led by outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis, GOP leaders passed a new map this spring that could leave Democrats with just four of Florida’s 28 House seats, down from eight under the old lines.
But Republicans could fall short in at least three of the seats they redrew in their favor, including a coastal district where Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz is running. About $50 million has been spent on that race since the start of July, according to AdImpact, making it one of the year’s most expensive House contests.
Trump has repeatedly said gas prices will “drop like a rock” once the war with Iran is over. As the conflict enters its ninth month, the average price of gas in Florida has climbed back above $4 a gallon, according to AAA.
“I think what voters are hoping to hear from Trump is some sort of a promise for solutions for issues of affordability,” said Bethany Conrad, an assistant professor of political science at Florida Gulf Coast University.
Eight in 10 Americans rate the economy as fair or poor, according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey, which also found Trump’s approval at an all-time low. Voters MS NOW interviewed at several of the president’s recent campaign stops echoed that sentiment, saying the economy is top of mind.
Among Florida Republicans, however, Trump’s approval rating remains high at 83%, according to an NBC6/Telemundo Station Group poll.
“I think what we’re looking for is that he’s just going to instill in us the confidence that we had in him when we voted for him in ’24,” Price Harry said.
Hunter Woodall contributed to this report.
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HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — In Florida’s race for governor, the Democrat is a former Republican congressman, and the Republican would be the state’s first Black governor. That has left Democrats in an unfamiliar position: fighting to hold on to Black voters, one of their most reliable constituencies.
The Democrat, David Jolly, made that fight the clear focus of an interfaith event this week at the Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park. Former President Bill Clinton and a lineup of Florida Democratic leaders joined him.
Speaking to a mostly Black crowd, Jolly invoked the state’s 2023 African American history standards, which said some enslaved people developed skills that benefited them. He also cited remarks his opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds, made in 2024 suggesting Black families were more intact during the Jim Crow era.
“When we are a state that actually suggested years ago that we might want to teach our kids the ‘good parts’ of slavery, or when my opponent suggests there were ‘good parts’ of Jim Crow — Folks, if the test at this moment is about our goodness, we are failing,” Jolly said with a tone that prompted Clinton to later refer to him as the “Reverend Jolly.”
During his own remarks, Clinton said, “The real story is who is unemployed and who is underemployed, and who can’t pay their bills. The black unemployment rate in the state is 8.6 percent.”
Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, was blunter. He said his remarks were aimed at Florida’s “African diaspora.”
“All your skin folk ain’t your kin folk,” he said.
Black Floridians make up only about 13% of the state’s active voters. But while Republicans have dominated Florida in recent cycles, recent polls show this race closer than many expected, likely to be decided on the margins. That gives Black voters an outsize role.
For Donalds, gains among Black voters could offset Republican slippage elsewhere. Some Latino voters have been alienated by President Donald Trump’s deportation push. Donalds has also shown weakness with rural voters: Most of the counties he lost in the August primary were in Florida’s largely rural, White panhandle.
For Jolly, the challenge is holding the party’s base. He has pointed to a recent poll showing him with 76% of Black voters, short of what the party’s last two nominees for governor won. In 2018, Andrew Gillum carried 90% of Black voters and came within less than a percentage point of defeating Ron DeSantis.
“There’s about 10% of Black voters who are currently undecided, and they might well decide the next governor of the state of Florida,” Jolly told reporters after the event with Clinton.
Both campaigns are now competing for those voters.
Donalds has long been the face of Republican efforts to bring Black voters into the party. As a Trump surrogate in 2024, he headlined several events aimed at Black men in heavily Democratic cities, including Detroit and Atlanta. His bet was that a message about economic opportunity and lower costs could overcome voters’ skepticism and mistrust of the GOP.
“It’s something I feel that Republicans should have been doing for a long time, because I think Black voters are more conservative than modern Democrats are anyway,” Donalds told MS NOW. “I think it’s important as Republicans to not just say, ‘Well, this group of people typically don’t vote our way. Let’s just focus on the votes we can get.’ I think you always have to find ways to expand your tent, expand the electorate.”
As a candidate for governor, Donalds has appeared alongside Black business and faith leaders and held town halls before largely Black audiences. Last month, at a town hall at Florida A&M University, a historically Black university, he was hammered over his support for changes to how race is taught in Florida’s public schools; the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and Trump’s immigration crackdown.
He has also been buoyed by endorsements from several Black Democratic officials. Among them was a surprise endorsement from Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut. She faulted Jolly for not choosing a Black or Hispanic running mate and cited Donalds’ chance to make history.
“Representation is not window dressing. It is respect. It is recognition. It is power. And when that power is overlooked, we have every right to call it out,” Chesnut said in a statement on her decision. “I want to see a Black governor of Florida in my lifetime, and I will not apologize for saying so.”
Jerome Gayman, 65, of Fort Pierce, voiced a similar sentiment after attending a Donalds campaign event there.
“For a gentleman like me who has a son, who was able to see the rise of Barack Obama to being president, as the first [Black] president, to see Byron coming up as potentially the first black governor of Florida, it’s historic,” he said.
Gayman, who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, said he is not alone.
“You talk about the ‘silent minority,’ that’s who we are,” Gayman said. “There’s a lot of [Black voters] that will vote for Donald without coming public.”
Earlier this week, Jolly campaigned in Eatonville, which bills itself as the state’s first all-Black, self-governing municipality. While he was there, the town’s vice mayor, Angela Thomas, endorsed Donalds. Donalds cast the endorsement as especially meaningful.
“She decided to join a growing list of Democrats in this state who have looked at my campaign, the things that we’re working on, things that we stand for, and they’re deciding to cross party lines and support me,” Donalds said.
Still, winning over a significant share of Florida’s Black voters will be an uphill battle for Donalds. Despite the occasional defection, the turnout for Jolly’s event with Clinton showed how thoroughly Jolly has consolidated support among the state’s Black Democratic establishment. His challenge is making sure rank-and-file voters follow.
Jolly has accused Donalds of pursuing an “anti-Black agenda” and of refusing to confront persistent inequities in the state.
“The difference between Byron and I is I recognize that the economic disparity between Black and White America still exists today,” Jolly said. “The disparity in education outcomes in healthcare access still exists today. The attack on education disparately impacts Black and Brown communities … We’ve tried to build a coalition and a platform to actually address that.”
Democrats’ most potent argument, though, may be a simpler one: tying Donalds to Trump. Data suggest Black Americans have borne a disproportionate share of the economic strain since the president returned to office. Nationally, Black unemployment hit 7% in September, roughly double the rate for White workers, and Black median wealth fell by about a quarter from 2022 to 2025.
Democrats have also accused Donalds of trying to obscure that connection. After his campaign made Trump less visible on its website this month, Jolly said his Republican opponent was distancing himself from the president as part of a wider effort to court Black voters.
“His scrubbing of Donald Trump from his history is singularly about the undecided Black voter,” Jolly said at a Tallahassee campaign event.
Jolly has also said that having Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate nominee, on the ticket “helps a lot” in turning out Black Floridians. Nixon, he said, is “energizing a base that is excited.”
Donalds is also working against history that suggests Republican voters have been unwilling to elect a Black state executive, as MS NOW political analyst Anthony Coley outlined.
“Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania in 2006; Daniel Cameron in Kentucky in 2023; Mark Robinson in North Carolina in 2024; and Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia in 2025. Each of those Black candidates was held up by the GOP as proof that the party is new and more diverse. Each of them lost,” Coley wrote.
But this is Florida, where no Democrat has been elected governor in more than three decades. Republicans outnumber Democrats in voter registration, and more Republicans turned out for the August primary. Donalds faces a steep climb with Black voters, but Jolly faces a steeper one against the state’s Republican tilt.
Both candidates are getting reinforcements as the race enters its final weeks. On Tuesday, Donalds released two ads featuring his mother aimed at Florida’s immigrant communities, and Trump is set to rally voters in the state Friday. Despite suggestions that he has been distancing himself from the president, Donalds told MS NOW he welcomes the visit.
“The president coming in, of course, that’s just going to be a boost of getting people excited about getting to the polls, and we love that,” Donalds said.
Jolly, meanwhile, has campaigned in recent weeks with prominent Black leaders. They include the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and former Rep. Al Lawson, whose majority-Black district was dismantled in Florida’s 2022 redistricting. On Tuesday, the Democratic Governors Association announced a $1 million investment in Jolly’s campaign. His campaign said Clinton has helped raise more than $3 million for him.
Jolly’s words and Donalds’ campaign stops point to the same bet: The race will be won at the margins.
“What I know we’re seeing in our camp, and I believe Byron’s camp is as well. I think there are two final fronts in this race. The first is the disaffected Republican,” Jolly said at the Tallahassee event. “But I would say the most important front that this entire race could come down to is that 10 percent of undecided black voters in Florida.”
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SIOUX CITY, Iowa — President Donald Trump's loyal base of supporters still have his and Republicans’ back in Iowa, but some are growing concerned over lingering issues, like the economy and gridlock in Congress, as Election Day nears.
Trump and Republicans ran on a platform of lowering inflation, halting "forever wars" and repairing an economy that they say was wrecked by former President Joe Biden and his administration. But prices are still high, and the war in Iran is still ongoing, causing a spike in fuel prices that have stuck around heading into Nov. 3.
Outside of Trump’s rally in Sioux City, Iowa, where the president was set to rile up support for Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, in a tightening Senate race against Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek, his supporters who spoke with Fox News Digital still backed Republicans but expressed hope that change would soon come.
VOTERS PREPARE TO WEIGH-IN ON TRUMP'S ECONOMY AS COSTS CONTINUE TO SURGE
Beth Fitzl, an Iowa voter, said of Trump that she didn’t "agree with everything he does, but in the end, he's here for us."
"This is the way I see it," Fitzl told Fox News Digital. "He's like the Packers, OK? They may be getting in deep, but they always pull it off in the end, and I truly think he's going to do something to turn it around. I really think he's going to pull something to turn it around."
Chuck Jones, a veteran and Purple Heart recipient who made the trek from Minnesota for the Iowa rally, was frustrated about the divisive, tribal nature of politics.
He told Fox News Digital that "these politicians, they're fighting for one thing on one side, and other people are fighting for something on the other side, but there's nobody sitting at the table in the middle."
TRUMP VOTERS REVEAL THEIR BIGGEST FEAR HEADING INTO MIDTERMS — AND IT'S NOT RISING PRICES
When asked if Republicans and Trump needed to do something different should they hold onto control of Washington, D.C., after the election, Jones said, "Well, I think it's time that we're going to have to show some difference, because people aren't happy with the way things have been in the last few years."
"And we're going to have to do something about it and decisively show the American public that you can get it done and get it done correctly," he said. "They're going to have to work together instead of fighting each other."
Hinson’s race is one of six toss-ups that Republicans in the Senate are trying to hold onto. She and Turek are vying for Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s seat after she opted to retire from the upper chamber last year.
Their race, like others during this cycle, has become surprisingly close, given that Trump won the state in 2024 by roughly 13 points and has won it each time he’s been on the ballot.
THUNE MAKES BOLD PREDICTION ABOUT REPUBLICANS' SENATE CHANCES AS GOP PULLS MILLIONS FROM KEY RACES
Dawn Stanley, an Iowa voter who has voted for Trump in each of the last three elections, still planned to support him and Hinson. She told Fox News Digital that Turek hadn’t "showed up" for Iowa and noted that he’d been absent from the state legislature "42% of the time" — Turek missed 261 votes between January and May of this year while on the campaign trail.
Still, her biggest frustration with Republicans was their inability to pass the SAVE America Act, voter ID and election security legislation that has been consistently blocked by Senate Democrats.
"I really do think it comes down to the SAVE Act," Stanley said. "I really do, because we can't have all these Democrats in there and bringing over all these illegals who are going to vote for those people and have chaos. That's what it is."
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"The United States is in chaos and I really believe it's because of the illegals and the Islamic terrorists that are coming over," she continued. "And just look at what's going on in France. I mean, it's terrible. And I don't want that for our country, and that's what Trump can stop. And that's why we need to bring in all the conservatives that we can."
Others were concerned about Democrats regaining power and feared that Republicans may not show up on Nov. 3 to support GOP candidates.
"We need to get the people out to vote," Kurt, who traveled from South Dakota for the rally, told Fox News Digital. "Republican people need to get out the vote. They stay home too much. This is a war to be won with the Left, as far as I'm concerned."
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire officials to reject student IDs as a valid form of identification when voters cast their ballots in next month's midterm elections.
A lower court judge previously found that state officials had improperly gone further than a new law restricting the use of student IDs to obtain a ballot, ruling that officials still had to consider student IDs alongside other evidence when voters lacked other means of verifying their identity.
But the Supreme Court took issue with the judge intervening this close to the elections.
ARIZONA VOTER LAW FIGHT REACHES SCOTUS AS ELECTION GROUPS WARN ‘ABSURD’ CONSEQUENCE COULD ENSUE
The high court has said orders handed down too close to an election can cause voter confusion, an idea known as the Purcell Principle. The court cited the recent legal back-and-forth over Missouri’s redistricting maps.
"Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle," the majority wrote in its opinion.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the rule did not apply since the lower court judge was helping ensure the public received accurate information.
JACKSON RIPS INTO SUPREME COURT COLLEAGUES' 'SERIOUS LEGAL ERROR' ON TRUMP MAIL-IN VOTING ORDER
"When a federal court determines that material misrepresentations are being made about a State’s election rules, an injunction to prohibit that conduct does not contribute to public confusion, it prevents that very problem," Jackson wrote. "I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes," she wrote.
This comes after Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed House Bill 323 into law in April, removing student IDs from the list of identification expressly considered valid for obtaining a ballot. The law took effect June 2. After the law went into effect, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan issued guidance to election officials about the change, and multiple trainings were held.
"New Hampshire has a responsibility to protect the integrity of its elections and ensure that election laws are applied as written," New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, a Republican, said in a statement.
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"The Supreme Court’s decision is an important victory for our efforts to defend those laws and prevent last-minute court orders from creating uncertainty for voters and election officials. We will continue to defend New Hampshire’s election laws and the safeguards they provide," he continued.
The Supreme Court's decision was not a final ruling on the merits of the case, and the underlying litigation over the law remains ongoing.
Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out whether the Department of Justice could seek to intervene in states’ midterm election certification processes, saying there are extreme scenarios that could prompt federal action.
Speaking to reporters in Virginia on Thursday, Blanche said it was not his intention to "improperly interfere with elections," but declined to rule out federal involvement if a "doomsday scenario" were to happen.
"Of course, there’s scenarios that we can all come up with hypothetically, you know, some doomsday scenario, for example, right?" he said. "So, I don’t think it’s proper to make any kind of conclusory statements about what’s going to happen in the future, because I have no idea what’s happening in the future."
Blanche said he could not say there were no circumstances under which the DOJ would get involved.
NEWSOM SPARS WITH TRUMP-APPOINTED PROSECUTOR OVER 20,000 SUSPECTED NONCITIZENS ON VOTER ROLLS
"Of course, I’m not going to say that," he said. "But am I planning my days around the election to be somewhere to not certify? Of course not, no, not at all."
The DOJ's role in elections is limited under the Constitution and federal law, allowing it primarily to safeguard civil rights and prosecute people who violate election law. Federal law does not specifically authorize the department to challenge ballots or delay a state's certification of election results.
Under the Constitution and federal law, U.S. elections are run by state and local officials rather than the federal government.
During a news conference in Norfolk, Blanche was questioned about the DOJ's litigation against states, seeking to force officials to turn over unredacted voter data and halt the counting of ballots cast by thousands of voters the federal government argues are likely noncitizens.
TRUMP ADMIN SUED OVER ALLEGED ILLEGAL COLLECTION OF SENSITIVE VOTER DATA FROM 47 STATES
Blanche said the DOJ was "not trying to create chaos" but wanted to alert officials to potential problems.
"I’m not trying to not have an election certified. Of course not," Blanche said. "What we’re trying to do is guarantee to the American people that the only people that are voting are people that are eligible to vote."
In response to Blanche's comments, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Senate Democrats "have been preparing for this for months and will be ready" for whatever administration officials try.
"As Trump and his cronies attempt to steal this election, we are fighting them at every turn," Schumer posted on X. "Our elections must always belong to the voters — not Donald Trump."
The administration sued California election officials last week, arguing they failed to act quickly enough to review names the federal government identified as likely noncitizens. The DOJ asked a judge to block the state from counting mail-in ballots from those individuals unless their eligibility could be confirmed.
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The California secretary of state's office said it was given only 48 hours to review roughly 20,000 names.
The DOJ was also weighing additional election-related litigation against states, but a federal judge this week temporarily restricted certain election-related field operations and interviews in nine states through Election Day. The judge stayed the order until Friday evening to give the administration an opportunity to appeal.
Earlier this week, Democratic leaders and election groups filed a lawsuit against the administration, accusing it of "threats and intimidation" ahead of Election Day.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said noncitizen voting poses a serious threat to election integrity, although documented instances of noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections have historically been rare.
Thursday on MS NOW’s “Deadline,” network host Al Sharpton said if Democrats win the majority in the House, “you will see hearings like you never saw before.” Host Ari Melber said, “Mr. Lewandowski is someone who is really personally close
The post Sharpton: If Dems Win Midterms ‘You Will See Hearings Like You Never Saw Before’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Eric Flores, a Republican vying to unseat incumbent Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) in Texas's 34th Congressional District, said he witnessed the realities of the border crisis firsthand in Texas during his time as a solider on Operation Guardian Support during President Donald Trump's first term.
The post Exclusive — TX GOP Candidate Eric Flores: I Saw the Border Crisis Firsthand in Texas as a Soldier appeared first on Breitbart.
Wednesday on NBC’s “TODAY,” network chief data analyst Steve Kornacki said Minnesota’s tight Senate race could move in the GOP’s favor because Democratic nominee, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, has faced a lot of criticism over the state’s massive welfare
The post Kornacki: Tide ‘Working Against’ Democrat in Minnesota Senate Race appeared first on Breitbart.
© Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
© David Robert Elliott for The New York Times
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