Tony Evers Declines to Run for 3rd Term as Wisconsin Governor
A battleground-state governor who has never displayed ambitions for higher office, Mr. Evers, 73, presided over the end of Republican dominance of his state and will leave office as his Democratic Party has a chance to win a governing trifecta for the first time in 16 years.
'I'm announcing that I will not be running for a third term,' Mr. Evers said in a video posted to social media.
Mr. Evers's political legacy in Wisconsin will be more about measures he blocked than about signature progressive accomplishments. He vetoed hundreds of bills passed by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature, including a package that would have restricted voting access after the 2020 election.
During the 2021-2022 legislative session, as he was running for re-election, Mr. Evers vetoed 32 percent of the bills Republicans had passed, a figure about 10 times above what is typical, according to the state's nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
While Mr. Evers held Republican state legislators at bay, his party won three critical State Supreme Court races that flipped the court's balance of power from the conservatives to the liberals.
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Lake Election Board finalizes precinct consolidation, split recommendations
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The faction highlighting both Epstein and Israel is either nonideological (such as Theo Von, who pressed JD Vance on the Epstein files and has questioned 'why we [America] support Israel'), deeply populist and/or conspiratorial, and sometimes a combination of these categories. Tucker Carlson's two most recent podcasts, for instance, were deep dives into Epstein's history and heavy criticism of Israeli military strikes on Christian churches in Gaza — just weeks after he referenced the Epstein Mossad theory at the TPUSA conference. Alex Jones has run nonstop coverage of Epstein developments this week and on Wednesday hosted a debate with Fuentes wherein he called the Trump administration an 'absolute failure.' But shockingly, the faction that's attempted to support Trump while placating their audience has pivoted as well: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA megastar who somehow balances her support of Trump with her frequent antisemitism, went even further and called Netanyahu's actions a 'genocide.' Both Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon, whose Epstein messaging waxes and wanes, recently called the situation in Gaza a political liability for Trump. As a news event, it's impossible to ignore Netanyahu's occupation of Gaza and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, and how it's chipped away at Americans' sentiment toward the state of Israel, now at historic lows. Trump himself notably broke with Netanyahu on Monday, telling reporters that he did not believe the prime minister's claims that children were not starving in Gaza. 'Based on television … those children look very hungry,' Trump said, adding later: 'I see it, and you can't fake that.' While unclear if they would have begun criticizing Israel if Trump hadn't done it first, the influencers' pivot was inevitable if one looks at the shifting attitudes of the podcast-listening demographic. A Pew poll published last year found that only half of young Republican men between 18 and 34 were sympathetic to Israel's actions, while the other half were either opposed or unsure — a shocking statistic compared to older Republicans, who overwhelmingly supported Israel. It hasn't gotten better since: a Gallup poll released this Tuesday found that while a majority of self-identified Republicans continued to support Israel's actions in Gaza, 51 percent of men, 54 percent of white people, and a staggering 82 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 did not. Maintaining a good relationship with MAGA influencers is a rather different dynamic than maintaining their alliance with Fox News For the Trump team and the Republican Party as a whole, it's becoming clearer that maintaining a good relationship with MAGA influencers is a rather different dynamic than maintaining their alliance with Fox News. A single influencer is held accountable to their audience and the comments section, whereas if a Fox talking head goes rogue, the White House can call Rupert Murdoch — whose media empire, and particularly Fox, needs access to the White House — and wrangle them back into line. (Incidentally, over the past week, according to a Media Matters analysis published Thursday, Fox News spent a cumulative three minutes talking about Epstein, and 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney's denim controversy.) Even if the Trump administration establishes a symbiotic relationship with some influencers, with the expectation that they parrot Trump's line about Epstein (or Israel), they may find that their power to persuade only goes so far. A recent example from the manosphere demonstrates the limit of an influencer to, well, influence: earlier this month, the Nelk Boys, two Canadian right-wing bro podcasters, posted an interview with Netanyahu, whose government (and, by extension, Israel) has become increasingly unpopular with younger Americans due to his actions in Gaza. It backfired completely: their audience immediately began accusing the two of platforming a genocidal Zionist, going ballistic when the hosts admitted that the Israeli government fed them questions, and drew criticism from leftist streamer Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes during the same livestream. Their YouTube channel has lost over 20,000 subscribers since posting the interview, according to Social Blade. But being on the White House's good side does have its benefits even if one loses followers: Laura Loomer, one of the loudest voices calling for Epstein documents, has recently dialed down her trutherism and instead clung harder to the White House's official continued support on Israel: In a post criticizing Zohran Mamdani, the current Democrat nominee in the New York City mayoral race, she announced that she would never 'feel safe with Muslims holding office in America' and that she didn't care about who she offended. 'This is why I will never care about Gaza,' she added. Unconditional loyalty, however, does have its benefits: Loomer's been credited with convincing Trump to fire over a dozen officials for perceived MAGA disloyalty. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tina Nguyen Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Politics
