Latest news with #Midterms
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Tough for GOP to Get Five Seats in Texas: Convey
Erin Covey, Cook Political Report US House Editor, discusses Texas Republicans planning to redraw congressional maps in the hopes of gaining more seats in the House during the Midterms. Covey talks about how the process of gaining five additional seats is complicated, can put some Texas Republicans at risk, and why redistricting isn't an easy thing to do in Democratically lead states like California. Erin speaks with Tyler Kendall and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's 'Balance of Power.' (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump slipping with Black voters after 2024 gains
President Trump is seeing signs that his approval is slipping with Black voters after notable gains with the demographic in last year's election. Recent polling suggests African American voters, already more disapproving of Trump than other demographic groups, have been souring on the president. Decision Desk HQ aggregates find more than70 percent disapprove of his job performance, while around a quarter approve, putting him in one of the weakest positions with the group since returning to the White House. Although Black voters overwhelmingly backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in November, Trump made significant inroads for a Republican, winning about 15 percent, according to a Pew Research Center study released last month — double the percentage he took in 2020. Republicans touted the development as a sign of their expanding coalition, but the latest numbers could signal risks for Trump and the GOP heading into the midterms and beyond. 'We've seen his overall approval rating go down. And that's got to come from somewhere. The African American vote is his newest vote, and that's probably going to be the first to go,' said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ. Trump's overall approval rating sits underwater at a net score of negative 7 points, according to the latest averages, after enjoying above-water scores in the weeks after taking office. He hit a disapproval high in April, recovered slightly in May and early June, then dipped in July. Among African Americans, Trump's at a net rating of roughly negative 47 points in the DDHQ aggregate. Since mid-June, his disapproval has climbed from around 63 percent to roughly 72 percent — up nearly 20 points from his first couple of weeks back in office. Although losing some ground is to be expected, given Trump's overall score, 'the African American movement, it's measurable, it's significant,' Tranter said. 'He's about the same in where he is with Hispanics as he was on Inauguration Day, but it's very clear he's lost with African Americans.' Trump's November gains didn't occur in a vacuum or all at once. While the overwhelming majority of Black voters identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning, the party's decades-long advantage has weakened somewhat based on polling and some election results. Republicans attributed the improvements to a feeling among some Black voters that Democrats took their support for granted without specifically addressing their needs. 'President Trump's historic performance with Black voters in November marks a significant shift in our community, showing that more people are willing to look beyond party labels and focus on real, tangible solutions,' said Janiyah Thomas, who served as Black media director for Trump's 2024 campaign. She said these voters appreciated his focus on economic growth and criminal justice reform during his first term. Trump signed bipartisan legislation in 2018 called the First Step Act to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes. Thomas argued 'false media narratives' overshadow Trump's achievements, and all Americans want 'real results: safer communities, better jobs, and opportunities to build a better future,' she said. Republican strategist Melik Abdul said an uptick in Black support for Republican candidates has happened since at least 2018, suggesting the change is less about Trump and more about the party. 'We focus so much of our attention at the national level that we ignore what's happening on the state level,' he said, pointing to the inroads that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) made with Black voters in their 2022 reelection campaigns. But he argued Trump and the party have 'misread' what they should learn from the increase and wrongly presume that the new voters they gained will stay. He attributed the shift in 2024 to dissatisfaction with the Biden administration, warning the votes for Trump aren't 'static' going into the midterms next year. Abdul said he doesn't read as much into any single approval rating poll because they are often in response to the news of the day, but he isn't surprised to see a drop in support given some developments in his second term, like the Department of Government Efficiency's cuts and concerns about Medicaid cuts as a result of the Trump's sweeping tax and spending bill, which he signed into law Friday. 'You hear the concerns that people have around Medicaid, whether it personally will impact them or not,' he said. 'They hear it, and when you hear stories of people potentially losing Medicaid, obviously that's something that will impact poll numbers.' New polling from YouGov/The Economist, taken over the weekend, found 15 percent of Black voters approve of Trump, compared to 20 percent in an early June survey and 28 percent in early February. YouGov's tracker, last populated in mid-June, puts Trump's disapproval among Black Americans at roughly 86 percent, hitting the high point of his first-term ratings from the group. 'There are decisions that the Trump administration is making that could be circulating in Black communities, that could be factored in,' said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University with a focus on African American politics. She pointed to some of the administration's controversial economic moves — which have served as a drag on his overall numbers after his 2024 messaging on the economy was seen as key to his inroads with voters of color — but also to Trump's posture toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and his rhetoric on racial issues. 'You may be OK with America bombing Iran over nuclear weapons, but you may take issue with having heard that Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department pulled a lot of books about Black people off the shelves at Annapolis, or pulled down pages that honor Jackie Robinson [as] a veteran because it was deemed DEI,' Gillespie said, referencing a Pentagon-ordered review of books at the Naval Academy library and what the Defense Department said was the mistaken removal of a webpage about Robinson. Brown University political science professor Katherine Tate, however, suggested that while Trump's controversial moves on culture war issues appear to be strengthening Black opposition to Trump, it's not necessarily turning off Black supporters who sided with him in 2024. '[Black] Trump supporters are pleased with the deportations and tax cuts. I think Trump has moved these [Black voters] to the GOP,' Tate told The Hill in an email. 'While not a big number, it's more than the single digits of the 1980s. So that is a legacy for Trump: he moved some Blacks to his party.' Trump won the White House by making 'a lot of promises' and tapping into voter anger and confusion, said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. Now, he's 'essentially giving Black America the middle finger' — but that doesn't mean Democrats don't have their work cut out for them to reclaim voters who turned to the GOP last year. 'We have to look down the field as Democrats,' Seawright said. 'Just because they don't like Trump doesn't mean that they're going to automatically wrap themselves around us.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Republicans just cut Medicaid. Will it cost them control of Congress?
Republicans just delivered Donald Trump a 'big, beautiful' legislative win. Now they're fretting it will lead to some ugly electoral losses. GOP lawmakers are warning that slashing spending on Medicaid and food assistance will cost the party seats in the midterms — threatening their razor-thin House majority — by kicking millions of Americans off safety-net programs. 'You would be foolish not to worry about it,' Sen. Jim Justice ( said in a brief interview. 'If you don't keep the voters right with you, you're going to awaken to a bad, bad, bad day.' Justice voted for the megabill last week, despite his concerns over some of its Medicaid provisions — and after warning Republicans 'cannot cut into the bone.' Steep cuts, he said, would cost the GOP voters and lead the party to 'awaken to [being in the] minority.' Republicans have already lost one of their most vulnerable senators over the bill: North Carolina's Thom Tillis, who privately told his colleagues he would lose his seat over Medicaid cuts before announcing his retirement and publicly torching the public-health overhaul on the Senate floor. Another vulnerable GOP senator, Susan Collins of Maine, opposed it over the 'harmful impact' Medicaid cuts would have on low-income families and rural health care providers. 'When you don't get health care right, it tends to have probably an outsized impact on politics,' Tillis said in a brief interview ahead of the Senate's vote. He warned his party that slashing Medicaid could become a political albatross, like the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats during Barack Obama's presidency. The final bill, passed by the House Thursday, delivered a $1 trillion-plus cut to health care programs and could lead to an estimated 11.8 million people losing their insurance. House Speaker Mike Johnson privately cautioned that the deeper cuts the Senate passed could cost him his slim majority next year, though he ultimately whipped his members to support the changes. Several Republicans said the cuts would make the bill a tougher sell to their voters. Adding to the GOP angst: Democrats are preparing to weaponize the bill as they did Republicans' failed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017. That 2018 midterm election led to a GOP wipeout in the House, with the party losing 40 seats, including some districts in Trump-leaning territory. Democrats are planning to again hitch vulnerable Republicans to the cuts to social safety-net programs. 'I could have defended the House bill every day,' said GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who had raised concerns over cuts to food aid and announced he would retire from his Nebraska swing seat as the Senate prepared to deepen the cuts in the House bill. 'The other side is going to use Medicaid as an issue,' he said, even as he voted for the megabill. 'And I think the Senate [version of the bill] gives them a little more leverage to do so.' Republicans are walking a tightrope as they return to their districts to start selling the sweeping policy package. They're going to lean into the megabill's popular provisions, like eliminating taxes on tips, while trying to escape unpopular reductions to safety-net programs. The final bill slashes spending by $1.7 trillion. Voters broadly dislike the megabill; some recent polling shows a 2-to-1 margin of disapproval, according to surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Washington Post, Pew Research and Fox News. Nearly half of voters want more federal funding for Medicaid, while just 10 percent want less, according to Quinnipiac. 'What we know from past elections is that messing with people's healthcare coverage is very problematic for politicians. And it has, in the past, yielded some very, very negative views about the people who supported it,' said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. Meanwhile Democrats are rushing to capitalize on the controversy and plan to make it a centerpiece of their midterm messaging. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke on the floor for eight hours and 45 minutes, reading letters from constituents of vulnerable GOP lawmakers who could lose access to both programs. Democratic candidates followed up with post-vote statements blasting the Republicans they're looking to unseat for effectively kicking people in their districts off their health care plans. Their campaign arms and allied super PACs have already released several rounds of ads hammering vulnerable Republicans and say they plan to keep up the pace. Republicans are trying to figure out how to fight back. Their early salvos have focused on painting Democrats as supportive of tax hikes since they opposed a bill that would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts and eliminate federal taxes on tips and overtime. Republicans also argue they're protecting the 'most vulnerable' Medicaid recipients by removing undocumented immigrants and others they say shouldn't have access to the program anyway. But in a tacit acknowledgment of the potential electoral fallout, some Republicans have pledged to try to reverse provisions such as the provider tax drawdown before they take effect in 2028. 'To the extent that there's reform, and … you can legitimately argue it's the waste, fraud, abuse, that's a good position to be in,' said Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho). 'If it's just strictly a situation where you say, 'We're just cutting and spending' and it's not cognizant as to how and where, that's where we get into trouble.' Another potential security blanket for the GOP: Many Americans at risk of steep Medicaid cuts reside in deep-red swaths of the country that are unlikely to turn blue next year. But there are also high percentages of Medicaid enrollees in some GOP-held swing districts Democrats are itching to flip. The Senate's harsher Medicaid language prompted Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) to vote against the megabill, putting him in the company of deficit hawk Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Fitzpatrick, in a statement, said the Senate's changes 'fell short' of protecting constituents in his suburban Philadelphia district that has more than 100,000 enrollees. Another top Democratic target, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), voted in favor of the bill despite expressing 'several concerns' with the stricter limits on provider taxes and state-directed payments that he unsuccessfully lobbied Senate Majority Leader John Thune not to include. Valadao lost his seat in Democrats' health-care-fueled 2018 wave, when liberal groups successfully yoked him to GOP efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and won it back in 2020. Now those groups are running the same playbook in his Central Valley district that enrolls nearly two-thirds of his constituents in Medicaid — the highest percentage in the GOP conference. Valadao, who fought for months to rein in some of the changes to the program, sought to justify his vote in a statement Thursday by arguing 'it does preserve the Medicaid program for its intended recipients' and includes a $50 billion stabilization fund to offset harm to rural hospitals. New York Rep. Mike Lawler, whose lower-Hudson Valley district has more than 200,000 people enrolled in Medicaid, said in a brief interview that he 'fought extensively to make sure that there were not draconian changes to Medicaid' and that lawmakers will have time to address some of the others before they take effect. 'At the end of the day, this is about strengthening the program,' he said. As for electoral consequences: 'You just tell people what's actually in the bill, as opposed to what the Democrats have been trying to fearmonger on.' But Democrats are confident that 'putting shine on a turd' will not work, said Ian Russell, a consultant who served as the political director of Democrats' House campaign arm in 2014 and 2016. 'Republicans are running back their 2018 playbook,' said CJ Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the Democratic leadership-aligned super PAC. 'And it's once again going to cost them the majority.' Samuel Benson, Cassandra Dumay, Melanie Mason, Nicholas Wu and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
Bloomberg
02-07-2025
- Health
- Bloomberg
Democrats Push Back on Cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits
Suzan DelBene, democrat congresswoman from Washington and chair of the DCCC, says that potential cuts to Medicaid and nutritional assistance in the Trump tax bill could spur backlash and allow Democrats to retake control of the House in the midterm elections. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Minnesota attacks add to fears of rising political violence
The shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota are the latest incidents to raise worries about the threat of political violence in the U.S. Experts warn that the attacks, which follow an assassination attempt against President Trump and an arson at the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), are part of a broader pattern of political violence that could be on the rise amid heightened polarization as the midterms near. 'Each act has its own unique horror about it, and the details are uniquely awful. But in terms of the big picture, it's the latest in what's become a pattern of politically motivated attacks,' said Matt Dallek, a George Washington University historian and professor. 'For decades, we've been living in an era of partisan polarization, and the polarization has gotten worse over time, and that means that the general political climate has also coarsened and become more toxic.' Minnesota state Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, Mark Hortman, were killed in their home on Saturday in what the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota labeled 'a political assassination' and 'the stuff of nightmares.' State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were also shot and seriously injured. A specific ideological motivation remains unclear, but officials revealed that the now-arrested suspect had traveled to the homes of additional Minnesota state politicians and filled notebooks with dozens of additional lawmakers' names. The tragedy underscored the threat environment for political figures at all levels. It came just a few weeks after an arson attack at the Pennsylvania governor's residence, in which the suspect who set the fire the night after a Passover Seder allegedly 'harbored hatred' against Shapiro, according to officials. Last year, then-candidate Trump was grazed by a bullet when a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a small-town Pennsylvania campaign rally. In 2022, Rep. Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) husband was wounded by an assailant looking for the then-Speaker. In April of that same year, a man pleaded guilty to an attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 'We saw a lot of political violence in the '60s and '70s and even in the '80s, and then they kind of disappeared in the '90s and 2000s. And so this feels different, having a number of instances in the past year or so,' said Jillian Peterson, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Minnesota's Hamline University and executive director of the Violence Prevention Project. Direct cause-and-effect lines are hard to draw, but the latest incidents come against a backdrop of intense political polarization and increasingly toxic rhetoric on the national stage. 'We see increasing demonization and delegitimizing political rivals. We see increasing language that portray political rivals as an existential threat to the nation, for democracy and so on. We see increasing … animosity towards people who hold different political views,' said Arie Perliger, an expert on political violence and extremism at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. As discourse becomes more virulent, political figures are increasingly perceived as 'symbols' of policy and ideas, Perliger said, noting that Trump has been 'a major factor' in fostering that perception. Trump has repeatedly hurled names and insults onto the political stage, casting rivals as enemies and taking heat for dehumanizing language against immigrants. Across the aisle, Democrats have pitched Trump and Republican policies as a threat to democracy. 'If you are consistently portraying the other side as a threat, it's no wonder that eventually there's some people who take that to the point where they say, 'OK, if the other side is a threat, violence against the other side is justified. That's the only way to save the country,'' Perliger said. 'I think both sides could learn from becoming much more responsible.' In the wake of the Minnesota shootings, Trump joined a chorus of condemnation from both sides of the aisle, saying 'such horrific violence will not be tolerated' in the U.S. Former President Biden said 'this heinous attack motivated by politics should never happen in America.' Former Vice President Kamala Harris urged that 'the hate and division that dominate our political discourse must end.' House GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) stressed that 'no public official — or any American — should fear for their safety in their own home.' Others have called to turn down the temperature. But the flood of condemnation that comes after violent incidents, experts said, doesn't offset divisive political rhetoric year-round. The current moment seems to lack 'a particularly serious effort to seek any sort of reconciliation or unity or sustained condemnation of this kind of violence,' said Dallek. He pointed out that Trump has said he won't call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) in the wake of the incident, knocking the blue state leader as 'whacked out.' There's also a growing cultural normalization of violence across the board. Back in December, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York City. This week, a satirical musical based on Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the killing, opened in San Fransisco. 'I'm not sure if it's a great thing to make people who are murderers cultural heroes. I don't think it's the best idea, as much as we can have different views about their motivations and so on,' said Perliger. And among Trump's first moves of his second term were sweeping pardons for hundreds convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Though details are still unfolding about the Minnesota shootings, they raise warning signs and security concerns for political figures ahead of what's set to be a high-stakes midterm fight for both parties. The risk goes up 'the more that these types of really heated or hate-filled types of political rhetoric make it into the public sphere — and of course, during election cycles that happens more,' said Peterson. 'It's sort of that violence begets violence, and so if we don't start to really tone down the rhetoric … I think it's time to really take that seriously as we move into this next election cycle,' she said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
