Trump Sends Video Greetings—and a Tariff Tease—to the Pro-Growth Faction

President Trump sent a video message to the ten-year anniversary celebration of Unleash Prosperity, a pro-growth group that focuses on economic policy. It was a warm greeting, paying tribute to the group’s founders, who Trump called “four of the all time greats”—”my friend Steve Moore,” Arthur Laffer, Steve Forbes, and Larry Kudlow. Yet it also included a friendly jibe. Trump said about Moore, the group’s chairman: “I wish he believed a little more strongly on the word tariff.”

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The Definitive Midterm Voter Guide: Where the Parties Stand on 13 Key Issues

Election Day is next Tuesday. Most normal Americans have better things to do than follow politics obsessively, so we've prepared a helpful guide explaining where the major parties stand on the issues that matter most.

The post The Definitive Midterm Voter Guide: Where the Parties Stand on 13 Key Issues appeared first on .

For the VFW, Pride came before a fall



In June, the Veterans of Foreign Wars celebrated the left-wing holy of holies: LGBTQIA+ month. They paid tribute to those who fall under the ever-expanding umbrella of sexual identities and genders.

Framed as a gesture of inclusivity, the decision instead placed the VFW squarely on the opposing side of the demographic it has served for more than 125 years.

Having the right to say something does not automatically make saying it a good strategic decision.

Much of my career has been centered on reputation management and communications strategy. A painful lesson to learn the hard way is that the quickest way to lose influence is to pick unnecessary fights with your allies.

If the fight isn’t in defense of your core mission or identity, why go there and risk losing your base?

Every organization has a God-given right to say what it wants, when it wants. But the VFW seems to have forgotten something important about its members. According to Pew Research, 63% of veteran voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 35% who support Democrats.

Veterans are Americans. They fought for freedom, including the freedom of people whose beliefs and identities are different from their own. That does not mean they have to enthusiastically embrace every cause associated with the modern Pride movement or accept being branded intolerant and backward for questioning its politics.

Many veterans have legitimate concerns about taxpayer-funded gender-transition procedures, ideological brainwashing in classrooms, and military policies that could affect national security. By wading into this controversy, the VFW risks alienating its membership and its most important public policy audience: the GOP.

That is a spectacularly unnecessary political gamble, especially in an election year. The VFW could end up paying dearly if more disillusioned veterans decide to tear up their membership cards.

The VFW does not have to embrace every socially conservative position, nor should it abandon veterans who are not a part of its conservative majority. It should recognize that picking sides in contentious cultural debates carries risks, particularly when its overriding responsibility is to secure practical benefits for veterans.

Unfortunately, the communications problems extend well beyond Pride Month.

The organization has also managed to find itself in an extraordinary confrontation with Republican lawmakers over the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, a sweeping legislative package combining more than 60 veterans-related measures.

The legislation would improve access to health care, expand support for caregivers, strengthen suicide prevention programs, and address longstanding problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

These are the exact issues the VFW exists to champion.

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James Carroll/Getty Images

A Mission Roll Call survey found that approximately 71% of respondents supported TCAVA.

Its concerns are not entirely without merit. Veterans deserve fair compensation for service-connected conditions, and any proposal affecting future benefits warrants careful scrutiny. But why scuttle a sweeping package of potentially transformative reforms over provisions that could be amended?

Surely the sensible response is to fight for a better bill rather than risk throwing the whole thing onto the legislative scrap heap. Instead, the dispute has descended into a damaging public confrontation.

In July, Republican Representatives Mike Bost (Ill.) and Jack Bergman (Mich.) requested a Department of Veterans Affairs review of the VFW’s accreditation to assist veterans with benefits claims.

The VFW has every right to challenge politicians. Its independence is vital, and lawmakers should not threaten its accreditation simply because they dislike its position on legislation.

But having the right to say something does not automatically make saying it a good strategic decision. The VFW should be hammering out compromises, winning amendments, and building coalitions.

Instead, it is flying the flag of a movement many of its members oppose and getting involved in ugly public feuds with folks who are supposed to be on the same side. Who benefits from that? Certainly not the veterans waiting for better health care, improved benefits, and meaningful reform.

The VFW’s history deserves respect. Generations of veterans have depended on its advocacy, and its influence in Washington once helped secure important victories for those who courageously served their country.

That makes its current predicament all the more frustrating.

With Republicans controlling Washington at the moment, there is a golden opportunity to secure meaningful legislative victories. The VFW needs to stop fighting unnecessary battles and concentrate its firepower on the issues that really matter.

Alabama sheriff’s office spied on GOP challenger’s home, complaint alleges. Now the left wants that sheriff back.



If you're a deputy sheriff upset that your Republican boss isn't doing enough to help with immigration enforcement and you decide to run for sheriff in Alabama, prepare to be fired and apparently spied on by your political opponents.

Just ask former deputy and current Republican nominee for Lee County sheriff Cam Hunt.

'The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he'd fired me.'

After launching his bid for sheriff and making immigration enforcement a central part of his campaign, someone inside the Lee County Sheriff's Office geofenced Hunt's home during the primary, according to a state ethics complaint and screenshots of the department's taxpayer-funded tracking system provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt.

That geofence, allegedly enabled by the department's Verizon fleet GPS system, may have flagged deputies and county vehicles that visited Hunt during his campaign.

On July 1, about four weeks after Hunt filed his complaint, deputies were told to turn in their GPS units because the office had canceled its Verizon contract, according to Hunt.

The sensitive records the system is designed to collect are wiped on a recurring basis, and the state hasn't indicated that it will preserve materials related to the complaint, according to Hunt.

Hunt, a Marine veteran, beat longtime Sheriff Jay Jones in the Republican sheriff primary on May 19, seven months after Jones fired him for informing him of his forthcoming campaign against him.

Hunt says a whistleblower found his address in the geofence list shortly before that vote in May. But Hunt now faces a write-in campaign to keep Jones in office, backed by progressive activists who want a sheriff who will keep federal immigration enforcement out of Lee County.

The local Republican Party has done little to stop it, according to Hunt.

Screenshots provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt show two saved locations in the system covering Hunt's home and an adjoining lot he owns, he claimed.

One of the geofences has four vehicle groups attached, each labeled with the name of a sheriff’s office lieutenant. The screenshots do not show what those groups were used for.

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The screenshots do not show who built the geofences, when they were built, or whether any alerts went out. Hunt says a whistleblower spotted his address in the system before the primary.

"From what they could tell, User 1 created a new account. User 2 went into the new account and used it to create the geofences," Hunt told Blaze News. "Once they were established, they went back to the User 1 account and deleted the new account. So, essentially, covering their tracks."

Not long after the geofence was discovered, Jones' office canceled the Verizon contract linked to the system, according to Hunt. There has been no replacement.

"It was to micromanage," Hunt said of how the system had been run. "It wasn't about officer safety or any of that."

Hunt wrote an email to the Ethics Commission on Oct. 1 after commission staff told him the complaint was still "in line for review" by its legal team and that "no preservation request or other action has been taken." He has asked the commission to preserve the records "relating to the Lee County Sheriff's Office fleet GPS system" before they are lost.

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Jones has denied any misuse.

"The Sheriff's Office has not and would not allow the use of this system for any purpose not involved in the interest of public safety," Jones said in a September statement to WTVM-TV.

Jones and the sheriff's office did not respond to requests for comment regarding the screenshots and the contract cancellation.

Hunt beat Jones 9,301 to 8,994 in the May 19 GOP primary, denying Jones another term after a nearly three-decade tenure that began in 1998.

Jones fired Hunt in October 2025, according to a letter and statement reported by WRBL-TV. The firing occurred immediately after Hunt informed Jones of his intention to challenge him in the Republican primary.

"The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he'd fired me," Hunt said.

Hunt ran on joining 287(g), the federal program that deputizes local officers to help enforce immigration law. Jones consistently refused to sign on leading up to the primary election.

ICE's list of participating agencies shows at least 26 of Alabama's 67 sheriff's offices in the program. Lee County is not one of them.

"If we did any less, we'd be a sanctuary county," Hunt said of Jones' approach.

Jones says the program carries administrative and liability costs and that "the absence of 287(g) paperwork has never and will never stop our department from deporting illegal immigrants." His office reports 271 transfers to ICE custody in 2025 and 185 from January through September 2026.

No Democrat is running for sheriff, so Hunt is the only name on the Nov. 3 ballot. That's not stopping liberal partisans, who have taken it upon themselves to organize a write-in campaign for Sheriff Jones.

The idea surfaced in Indivisible Auburn Alabama's Facebook group the day after the primary. "Can we write in Jay Jones for Sheriff in November?" a member asked on May 20.

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"We do not need a Sheriff who has made it abundantly clear that he wants to throw Lee County in with ICE and CBP," another post reads. The poster called on Democrats to write in Jones and called federal immigration agents' actions under the Trump administration "constitutional atrocities."

On Aug. 11, the sheriff's office called claims that it doesn't cooperate with ICE "blatantly untrue" and said it "has, and will continue to, cooperate with ICE in the arrest, detention, and transfer" of people in the country illegally.

When a commenter in the group pushed back that Jones "wants ICE here," a group administrator answered that Jones "has said he would not sign a 287g agreement."

"While the letter isn't what most of us would want to hear, 287g would be worse," the administrator wrote. "I will be writing in Jay Jones."

A former Lee County deputy took the effort public in September, and supporters made signs showing voters how to write Jones in. One supporter promoted an online store selling "write in Jay Jones" yard signs, stickers, and T-shirts; the link now returns an error. Absentee voting began Sept. 9.

Jones has not disavowed the liberal write-in campaign against his own party's candidate. The Alabama GOP's sore-loser rules prevent primary candidates from running as Republicans again if they appear on the other party's ticket or endorse a write-in campaign after a primary loss.

"If people wish to organize for a write-in candidacy, I'm very humbled they would feel that way," Jones told Now Georgia in September. "People have been kind to me over the years. They would like that to continue."

Indivisible Auburn/Opelika did not respond to a request for comment.

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Jones lost the sheriff's race, but he won a seat on the Alabama Republican Party's State Executive Committee on the same ballot.

Hunt says his own party isn't standing up for him.

On the day he spoke with Blaze News, Hunt was headed to a Lee County Republican lunch where Probate Judge Jere Colley was scheduled to answer questions about write-in voting. Hunt claimed he wasn't supposed to get the invitation.

"I got the impression they weren't on board with it, but at the same time they weren't really willing to put pressure on Sheriff Jones to disavow it," Hunt said. "With the more recent things, I feel like it's a little more than that, and they're a little more complicit in it."

Lee County GOP Chairman Cole Lawson told Blaze News that Jones assured him privately he "has not been involved" in the write-in campaign and "has not asked anybody to write his name in."

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Actively campaigning against the nominee "would be grounds for removal" from the county executive committee, Lawson said, but declining to endorse is not.

“The way this would work is, if a member of the Republican Party here chose to file a formal challenge to remove Sheriff Jones from the executive committee, they would file that to the executive committee," Lawson told Blaze News. "It would come to me to be the judge of whether that line had been crossed or not."

The county party has not disavowed the write-in campaign. Lawson told Blaze News its message to voters is the same one it has pushed all cycle.

"The Lee County GOP urges citizens to get out and vote straight-ticket Republican up and down the ballot on Nov. 3, like their livelihood depends on it."

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Republicans cannot serve two masters on immigration



Eleven years after Donald Trump’s rise, the Republican Party still has not broken with the business interests that depend on cheap, abundant migrant labor. A handful of conservatives want to shut off the employment spigot and reduce both illegal and legal immigration. But too much of the party remains willing to protect longtime illegal workers in agriculture, expand guest-worker programs, or legalize workers already here when employers insist they cannot operate without them.

That’s the real fault line. Almost every Republican says border chaos is bad. The harder test comes when immigration enforcement raises labor costs for industries dependent upon a large foreign workforce.

When a party’s voters and its governing class want fundamentally different things on a defining issue, eventually the contradiction must break somewhere.

For years, Republicans have talked about focusing deportations on criminal aliens while treating workers in agriculture, hospitality, and other favored industries differently. That approach leaves the cheap labor pipeline largely intact. If employers can continue hiring illegal labor with little consequence, the incentive to come and remain does not disappear.

Republicans simply won’t protect our nation’s sovereignty. Instead, they build up a false dichotomy that points to one solution: amnesty.

Senator Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) made the tension explicit last month. He told Politico that ICE can get “carried away” and questioned “dragging people away that have lived on your street corner for 15 years.” He later issued a statement saying he supports Trump’s immigration strategy “full stop,” while emphasizing the removal of dangerous criminals.

Justice serves one of the most anti-illegal alien states. He did not endorse blanket amnesty outright. He didn’t need to. His comments reveal how quickly the politics change once enforcement reaches local industries and communities that have become addicted to illegal labor.

The same pressure surfaced in southwest Kansas after ICE operations disrupted meatpacking towns. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) complained that local law enforcement had not received adequate notice and said the operations caused “mass disruptions to local communities and businesses.” Enforcement, he said, should be done “in a responsible and secure manner.” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) likewise urged coordination with local police and said DHS told him the operation targeted people with criminal warrants.

Their complaint was about tactics and coordination, not ICE’s legal authority to remove illegal aliens. Still, the episode underscores the problem: Enforcement remains popular in the abstract until it collides with an employer’s workforce. Clearly, the problem is worse than we thought.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R) of Florida has gone further. In a campaign ad, she told Trump that some enforcement efforts had “gone too far” and said Hispanic voters who backed him in 2024 “feel betrayed.” Salazar explicitly said she was not proposing amnesty. But she has long favored a “legal-status framework” for many illegal immigrants already living and working here. In other words, amnesty.

RELATED: Kansas Republicans muddy the waters on ICE enforcement

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

The guest-worker side of the equation is even clearer.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Penn.) introduced the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act with 50 co-sponsors. The bill would allow H-2A labor certifications lasting up to three years, make it easier to transfer guest workers between employers, and let certain illegal farmworkers who were already here and had worked in agriculture apply for H-2A status. That is not citizenship, but it is a legalization mechanism tied directly to agricultural employment.

The administration has moved in the same direction on temporary labor. For fiscal year 2026, DHS and the Labor Department authorized up to 64,716 additional H-2B visas on top of the statutory cap for seasonal non-agricultural workers.

H-2A has no numerical cap. In October 2025, the Labor Department changed the methodology used to set the program’s minimum wage. The department itself estimated the rule would produce $2.46 billion in annualized wage transfers from H-2A workers to employers. A federal judge ruled the methodology unlawful in August but did not vacate the rule, leaving the wage rates in place while the litigation continues.

Whatever one thinks of the legal dispute, the economic direction is obvious: Washington is making foreign farm labor cheaper and easier to use.

In July, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) led a bipartisan letter — joined by six Republican senators and a number of House Republicans endorsed by Trump — asking the administration to reduce processing delays and structural barriers in the H-2A program. The letter did not ask Congress to raise a visa cap, because H-2A has none. It asked the executive branch to make the existing pipeline work more smoothly.

Sadly, this is not a fringe position inside the GOP. The cheap-labor lobby remains deeply embedded in the party’s agricultural and business wings.

Consider Nebraska. Gov. Jim Pillen (R) has embraced Trump’s immigration-enforcement agenda, yet a New York Times and Flatwater Free Press investigation found that Pillen Family Farms had employed undocumented workers at at least 20 hog farms. Court records showed at least a dozen workers charged with using fake or stolen IDs between 2015 and 2024. Pillen and the company say they never knowingly hired illegal workers and that the business now uses E-Verify. Still, it’s worth noting that Pillen’s farms have never been raided by ICE.

RELATED: The promise was mass deportation. The policy is carve-outs.

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Republicans often treat illegal farm labor as the least objectionable form of illegal immigration. In reality, it may be among the most transformative.

Over the past few decades, large agricultural employers have reshaped rural communities across the Great Plains by relying heavily on immigrant labor. In Schuyler, Nebraska, roughly three-quarters of the population is Hispanic, while 27% of students in the Central Nebraska school district are foreign-born — figures more commonly associated with major metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco.

The political divide is less about whether mass immigration transforms communities than about where that transformation occurs. Democratic interests tend to favor it in large cities; Republican-aligned agricultural interests have helped bring it to rural America.

When a party’s voters and its governing class want fundamentally different things on a defining issue, eventually the contradiction must break somewhere. The Republican Party itself was born in 1854 when the old party system fractured over the expansion of slavery into the territories.

If Republicans cannot choose between an immigration policy built around American workers and one built around employers’ demand for ever more labor, voters may eventually make the choice for them — and let this party go the way of the Whigs.

George Washington’s advice for the midterms



The 2026 midterm elections present a tough environment for the Republican Party, raising questions about how to campaign in such challenging circumstances. As is often the case in American politics, the economy is a central concern for voters.

In the last few weeks, prices — particularly for gas — have been too high for the comfort of any incumbent party. What have Republicans been saying to assuage voters’ concerns?

When officers and soldiers complained about not being paid, Washington did not ignore them or tell them they should consider it a privilege to sacrifice for their country.

Some have taken a kind of high road, encouraging or even admonishing voters to rise above self-interest and consider the loftier aims President Trump and his administration are pursuing. Yes, gas prices may be high, but the president is trying to end the Iranian threat to American national security. This process is taking longer and causing more economic pain than anyone would like. But it is worth it for the nation in the long run, and so patriotic voters should toughen up. So the argument runs.

This approach, however, has no shortage of critics. They think it is futile or worse to tell ordinary voters, whose economic means are increasingly limited, to grin and bear higher prices on the necessities of life. This environment, they suggest, is a recipe for electoral disaster for the Republican Party.

The critics have a point. It is never prudent for any political party — especially a pragmatic, competitive party that hopes to win elections and not just advance philosophical arguments — to appear indifferent to the ordinary self-interest of voters.

To make this error is not only to misread the present American electorate, but to misunderstand human nature, the basis of politics at all times and in all places. This is not to say that a successful political party must appeal only to narrow self-interest. Voters can respond to appeals to moral principle and national pride. Nevertheless, to neglect self-interest is to neglect one of the vital springs of human conduct.

The party that does this as a regular practice courts defeat.

This is one of the practical political lessons that George Washington, one of the greatest Americans, learned during the Revolutionary War. As the war lengthened, he pleaded with increasing urgency with Congress to provide for the army — better pay, better clothes, better food. Washington continually reminded the nation’s political leaders that without adequate provision, it would be impossible to keep the army together, much less achieve victory.

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Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images

Underlying Washington’s argument is an assumption about the nature of the men composing the army essential to securing American independence — namely, that they could not be relied upon to continue in service if they were not properly compensated.

In other words, Washington assumed that the heroes of the Revolution were governed to a considerable extent by self-interest. Washington laid out this understanding explicitly in a 1778 letter to a committee of the Continental Congress:

A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce a persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is in vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account — the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it, and we must, in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed.

It is important to emphasize that Washington is not taking a low view of human nature — he is taking a realistic view of it. Washington does not deny that human beings act on motives other than self-interested ones. He was himself a man of honor and of conscience. In his general orders to the army, he routinely appealed to lofty principles when communicating with his subordinates — officers, gentlemen, and ordinary soldiers.

In his private correspondence, Washington acknowledged that many men had joined the army out of patriotic motives. Such motives are genuine in the human heart and therefore have real influence on political life. Nevertheless, he understood that such motives cannot sustain most men, and certainly not a whole nation, on their own.

Conservatives often say that we would do well to learn from the high principles of our nation’s founders. But it is also just as necessary to learn from their realistic understanding of human nature. Without their realism about what motivates human beings, the founding generation would not have defeated the British and established a republican government in the service of lofty ideals.

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Blaze Media Illustration

Similarly, no political movement today (or at any time) can succeed in the long term without taking care of its voters’ self-interest and the common good of the country more generally.

Of course, sometimes, despite a ruling party’s best efforts and intentions, bad economic conditions will sour the electorate’s mood. What is such a party to say to its voters? Here, too, Washington provides a good guide.

When officers and soldiers complained about not being paid, Washington did not ignore them or tell them they should consider it a privilege to sacrifice for their country. He reminded his men that their long-term interests would be served by the nation’s independence; he agreed that their complaints were just and reasonable; and he assured them that steps were being taken to improve their situation.

This was a prudent and candid way for Washington to deal with his army, and it offers a model for how Republicans should address American voters today.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

CNN analyst pours cold water on Democrats' dream of a political takeover in November



Pollsters and prediction markets are prophesying overwhelming Democratic success in the midterm election, which is now seven weeks away. CNN admitted in a recent analysis, however, that those hoping for a blue tidal wave might be left greatly disappointed in November.

Doom and gloom for the GOP

Polymarket presently suggests that Democrats have a 62% chance of taking the U.S. Senate and a 92% chance of taking the House. Kalshi similarly forecasts Democrats taking over the House and Senate.

'It’s going to be close.'

According to the Economist's latest midterm forecast, Democrats have a 93% chance of flipping the House and securing a 238-197 majority, and a 59% chance of taking the Senate.

The latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Democrats enjoying an eight-point edge on the generic ballot.

A recent NBC News poll found that while the Democratic Party is viewed more negatively than both President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, 50% of respondents favored Democratic control of Congress.

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The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Pollster Nate Silver argued on Sunday that the idea of the Senate as a "toss-up" is "misaligned with the long history of strong opposition performance in midterm elections, especially when the incumbent president is as unpopular as Trump."

Blue disappointment?

In light of recent polling, the average price of gasoline sitting at an estimated $4.44 per gallon, and the sense that the midterm vote serves as a referendum on Trump's policies, hope is mounting on the left that a blue wave will wash away the Republican trifecta in Washington.

That hope may, however, be unfounded.

CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein suggested just over a week ago that Democrats might not be in a position to exploit the president's waning public approval, Americans' economic woes, and growing political discontent.

In addition to noting that many Democratic candidates are not attracting the numbers of voters who disapproved of Trump in 2018 and 2020, Brownstein wrote that despite disenchantment among some voters on the right, few appear willing to turn coat.

"The share of non-MAGA Republicans who say they are still voting for Republicans this fall is about 20 points higher than the portion who approve of Trump’s performance," Brownstein wrote, citing GOP pollster Micah Roberts' analysis of CNBC survey data.

"There are a lot of people who may think, 'I don’t like Trump but ... I don't agree with the policies of the other party and where they would take us,'" said Roberts.

While Republican voters might not cast votes for Democratic candidates, Brownstein noted that the GOP still faces the possibility that disenchanted Republican voters might decide not to vote at all — a big problem given the enthusiasm among likely Democratic voters.

Voter enthusiasm might threaten Republicans' hold on power; however, the GOP's redistricting efforts have placed breakers before any blue wave.

After all, far fewer House seats are competitive now than were in 2018, and 13 House Democrats must now defend districts where Trump netted at least five points more than his share of the national vote, said Brownstein.

The CNN analyst cast greater doubt on Democrats' senatorial ambitions, noting that "of the Republican-held seats Democrats are most seriously contesting, Maine is the only one in a state that supported Harris; North Carolina is the sole other state on the Senate map where Harris even came close. Trump prevailed by double digits in every other state whose Senate seat Democrats are targeting."

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the GOP — not similarly hard up for cash like the Democrats — also enjoys a financial advantage Brownstein reckons could be wielded to limit Democratic gains.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson told the New York Post earlier this month that instead of a blue or red wave this November, there will be "30 knife fights in 30 dark alleys."

"It’s just a handful of races, but every one of them will be decided by a few thousand votes. It’s going to be close," added Hudson.

The Cook Political Report projects that the GOP and the Democratic Party are set to win 208 and 205 House seats, respectively, and marked 21 seats as toss-ups.

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GOP civil war over race ignites after Republican posts University of Texas crowd photo



A Republican running for a statewide race in Texas has lit a firestorm on the right after noting the racial demographics of the student section at the University of Texas football game over the weekend.

On Saturday night, the Texas Longhorns hosted the Ohio State Buckeyes for an early-season marquee showdown between two top-five teams. While the Buckeyes led most of the game, the Longhorns stormed back in the fourth quarter and won, 24-23.

'Texans didn’t ask for their state to become a playground for the third world.'

As might be expected, the hometown Texas crowd was ecstatic, and one photo in particular seemed to capture the exuberance of the UT student section.

Only not everyone is celebrating it.

On Sunday morning, Bo French, a Republican running for Texas railroad commissioner, shared the photo of non-white UT students on X and remarked, "Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners. It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine."

French was swiftly inundated with condemnation by many other X users, including prominent voices on the right.

Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied, "This is the Republican nominee for statewide office. Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad."

Texas state Rep. Lacey Hull said, "Please delete this. This post breaks my heart. I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans."

Former Trump Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin commented, "This is gross. Touch grass."

Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico joined in, calling French's post "blatant racism" and adding, "Racism has no place in Texas."

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Alex Slitz/Getty Images

While accusations of racism abounded, French also has plenty of supporters who argue that native-born Americans have been unfairly edged out of public universities like UT-Austin by foreign-born students.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre quipped, "The Texas GOP is furious that Bo noticed these cowards are selling the state to foreign interests and replacing the population with Indians."

BlazeTV host John Doyle called French a "patriot," slammed Republicans for echoing Democrat talking points about "racism," and suggested that the GOP cannot survive without directly appealing to white voters:

As a matter of simple arithmetic, the Party will be destroyed when it ceases to win elections because it cannot get the votes to win. 85% of all votes cast for the Republican Party come from white Americans. Since the historic American electorate has been overwhelmingly white, it squares that the people most interested in the conservation of America would be white.

"Texans didn’t ask for their state to become a playground for the third world," he added.

According to Kalshi, on Sunday, Democrat candidate Jon Rosenthal briefly overtook French in the betting odds for the Texas railroad commissioner race, but within a couple of hours, French had retaken the lead.

French does not appear to be backing down from his comments.

By Sunday afternoon, he tweeted: "Generations of Texans have invested billions of dollars into UT. Today it is filled with foreign nationals and Leftists who boo Ted Cruz. John Cornyn says we should accept decline. The voters I talk to want to return our institutions to serving the interests of citizens."

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One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Steve Deace says the void remains: 'Felt like losing a brother'



A year after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, BlazeTV host Steve Deace is still struggling to process the loss of his friend — and the spiritual warfare that's begun escalating in his absence.

“It is still hard to believe that Charlie is gone. I still can’t believe that this really happened,” Deace says. “It’s still kind of surreal to me. Despite how many tears I’ve shed over the last year, more than I can count, more often than I can count.”

“Felt like losing a little brother to me. Just one that was more talented and better looking. But the other reason I’ve shed so many tears over the last year for this, and I mean there have been moments where I have just sobbed, it’s because I didn’t just lose a friend and a brother,” he continues.

“I understand [what] the church in our country lost with Charlie as well,” he adds, “It is, folks, it’s a gaping void that may never be filled.”


And this “dysfunction” plaguing the Republican Party, Deace explains, is happening “because Charlie’s not here.”

“And I’ve talked about this before, how much behind the scenes Charlie was keeping at bay, holding at bay,” he says.

“And a lot of the instigation and impetus for what we’ve seen, which is the stuff out of church history books, out of the Bible, just open spiritual warfare breaking out into the natural world, into the seeing realm, the trigger for a lot of it was his assassination,” he continues.

“If you were here,” he adds, addressing his old friend, “this would not be happening at the rate that it is, if at all. And I think it’s further confirmation of the apostolic calling on Charlie’s life, his martyring, and its aftermath.”

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'Relieved of command': Republican candidate tells lying Democrats where to go



One Republican congressional candidate has told Democrats where to go after they failed to support working American families.

Laurie Buckhout didn’t mince words as she left a stark message on the stage at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas Thursday: Every Democrat who voted to raise taxes on working families has to go.

‘This November, every Democrat who voted to raise taxes on working families deserves … to be relieved of command.’

Buckhout, who is running for the 1st Congressional District of North Carolina, is not an incumbent looking to maintain her seat in the House. She’s fighting against the current elected Democrat, whom she nicknamed “Do-Nothing Don Davis.”

That nickname isn’t completely accurate, even in Buckhout's estimation. Davis did something, all right, she said, but it was in opposition to the American people.

When the Working Families Tax Cuts Act was up for a vote in July 2025 as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Davis and the rest of the Democrats attempted to block it. They were unsuccessful.

But it hasn't sat well with Buckhout that Davis and other Democrats have tried to "take credit" for certain aspects of the bill nevertheless.

She claimed in her speech:

Democrats clearly have a playbook in Washington — block it in D.C., and then take credit for it back home. Vote no, then show up with the ribbon-cutting. In the Army, if you fail to keep your promises and not stand by your people, you get relieved of command. So this November, every Democrat who voted to raise taxes on working families deserves exactly that — to be relieved of command.

RELATED: Night 2 Republican Midterm Convention

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Buckhout concluded with a call to action:

I'm a soldier. I'm a businesswoman who made payroll. I'm a fighter who keeps her word. And the road to holding this majority runs through districts like mine. So stand with me. Fight with me. Let's retire every Democrat who voted against your paycheck, and let's finish the job.

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