Free Republic

Abortion politics is threatening to roil Florida Republicans’ chances in competitive state Legislature races amid widespread voter backlash. The Florida Supreme Court upheld a 15-week limit on abortion earlier this month, paving the way for a six-week ban passed by the state Legislature last year to soon go into effect. Now, a handful of vulnerable Republican state lawmakers who supported the six-week restrictions could be imperiled in November as anger over the ban grows.

Democrats are bracing for a possible red wave as the national mood has shifted and surveys increasingly show voters seeing economy and inflation as the top issues heading into the election. But for all the doom and gloom that political watchers are forecasting for the party, Democrats could also benefit from some surprise wins in unexpected places.

This year’s midterms have already proven to be among the most unpredictable in recent history — and there could be more surprises in store for the country when results start coming in Nov. 8. From a Republican governor looking to avoid an upset in a ruby-red state, to the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm fighting for his political life in a relatively friendly district, numerous races across the country are seen as potential wild cards.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) will make an appearance at a political event in New Hampshire this week amid speculation that he’s eyeing a 2024 presidential bid. The New England Council on Monday announced Hogan would be appearing at a Politics and Eggs event on Thursday, a part of a larger series held jointly between the New England Council and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics & Political Library at Saint Anselm College. The series has been used as a forum for presidential hopefuls or those considering a White House bid to introduce themselves or expand their reach within the...

Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker (R) downplayed himself ahead of his debate with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) next month, saying “I’m not that smart” — comments that his campaign argued were sarcasm. After some haggling between the two campaigns, the candidates announced last week that Warnock and Walker would be participating in a televised debate on Oct. 14 with Savannah, Ga., Nexstar affiliate WSAV. The Hill is owned by Nexstar.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is leading Republican contender Leora Levy by 13 percentage points, according to a new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released Wednesday. The poll found that 49 percent of likely voters in the state said they would vote for Blumenthal if the election for Senate was held today, in comparison to Levy, who received 36 percent support.

New Hampshire state Senate President Chuck Morse (R), an establishment favorite, early Wednesday conceded defeat to retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc, who has espoused former President Trump’s false 2020 election claims, in the state’s Republican primary to face incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) in November. The Associated Press has not yet called the race for Bolduc, but he leads Morse by 1 percentage point with more than 80 percent of the vote reported.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) holds a narrow three-point lead over Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) in a new poll commissioned by AARP for Florida’s gubernatorial race. The poll, conducted by Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research, found DeSantis receiving 50 percent support among likely voters compared to Crist at 47 percent. The polling falls within the margin of error, effectively tying the two candidates.

Share Tweet ... More Some Republican candidates are trying to publicly distance themselves from former President Trump just as President Biden is beginning to see small signs of Democrats more openly embracing him. Trump-endorsed candidates including Pennsylvania Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz and Arizona Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh have scrubbed aspects of Trump’s presence from their Twitter accounts following their primary victories.

President Biden’s approval rating ticked up 3 percentage points in the past week, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday, as Democrats scored a major legislative win with the passage of their climate, health care and tax reform package. The poll showed that 42 percent of registered voters said they approve of the job Biden is doing as president. The same poll released last week showed Biden’s approval rating was at 39 percent.

Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law and ex-senior adviser, claims in a forthcoming memoir that former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon told him “I will break you in half” if Kushner crossed him, according to CNN, which obtained an early copy of the book. “Steve, you gotta stop leaking on Gary,” Kushner says he told Bannon in his forthcoming book, “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” referring to senior economic adviser Gary Cohn, who he says had told him that Bannon was leaking about him. “We’re trying to build a team here,” he added. Kushner says Bannon in response said, “Cohn’s...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said in an interview published on Tuesday that “more and more” people are telling him he should run for president, comments that come while he visits early presidential primary state New Hampshire this week. “More and more people are encouraging me to consider it,” Hogan told CBS News in a phone interview. “There’s a diminishing number of folks that are wanting the former president, Trump, to run. There’s a growing number of people that are looking for our kind of successful, bigger-tent politics (ME),” he added.

More than two-thirds of Texas Republican voters approve of Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) job performance, according to a poll released on Thursday, despite heat he has received from former President Trump and others over his involvement in crafting bipartisan gun safety legislation. The new Morning Consult survey, conducted June 11-20, found that 68 percent of registered Republican voters in the state approved of Cornyn’s job performance, the same percentage he received when respondents were last polled between May 14 and May 23. A slightly higher percentage of Texas Republican voters have said they disapprove of the job Cornyn is doing,...

A former Georgia election worker is set to testify in the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot’s latest public hearing on Tuesday as the panel seeks to show former President Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and his role in the riot. That official, former Fulton County, Ga., elections worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, will appear before the committee during their second panel. Georgia was among a handful of battleground states that Trump lost during the last presidential election, baselessly claiming that election fraud had been committed. Trump had urged...

YouTube confirmed on Friday that it had removed a video uploaded by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot for violating the platform’s election integrity policy. The video in question was a clip of a hearing that the committee conducted and posted to the video platform on Tuesday, The New York Times reported. Part of the video showed the former president baselessly claiming on Fox Business that “We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account,” according to the newspaper. The clip also reportedly included some testimony from former Attorney...

Rudy Giuliani was hit with an ethics charge by the Washington, D.C., Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Friday over his promotion of baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election before a federal court in Pennsylvania, jeopardizing his ability to practice law in the city. The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary arm said that he had violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct by bringing a proceeding and asserting “issues therein without a non-frivolous basis in law and fact for doing so” and engaging “in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice,” according to the filing. The complaint said that Giuliani...

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) claimed in a speech on Thursday that “the right wants a strongman daddy figure” in describing his political party while asserting that Democrats want “a powerful, nameless but supposedly benevolent bureaucracy.” “In the 2016 presidential campaign, you had two candidates with wildly different solution sets, but their fundamental diagnosis was really the same. The system’s rigged, you’re getting screwed, you’re a victim, the country is going down the tubes, you’re victims,” Sasse said while giving remarks at “A Time for Choosing Speaker Series” event by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. “The left wants a...

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) railed against the indictment of former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro while saying in an interview on Friday that “if you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you.” Gohmert, speaking to Newsmax in an interview on Friday, was asked to comment on the Friday indictment of Navarro by a federal grand jury after the former Trump official failed to comply with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. “It actually puts an exclamation point on the fact that we...

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) called for Republicans in his district to “rally behind the Republican ticket” in November after he lost the GOP primary for his seat on Tuesday. “Congratulations to @ChuckEdwards4NC on securing the nomination tonight,” Cawthorn tweeted late Tuesday. “It’s time for the NC-11 GOP to rally behind the Republican ticket to defeat the Democrats’ nominee this November,” he added.

Former President Trump on Friday criticized lawmakers for working to pass $40 billion in aid for Ukraine, blaming Democrats for advancing the legislation despite it also having support from a majority of House Republicans.“The Democrats are sending another $40 billion to Ukraine, yet America’s parents are struggling to even feed their children,” Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC.