At The New Republic, Greg Sargent argues that “In Texas, Something Seismic Is Happening—and It’s All Trump’s Fault. Thanks to the economy and ICE, Trump has lost Texas Latinos. And James Talarico is developing a humane pro-immigrant message that’s resonating—even in this ultra-Trumpy state” Sargent writes further, “James Talarico may or may not win the Senate race in Texas. But here’s something we can say right now: Given how close Talarico is coming in this red state after running such an overtly pro-immigrant campaign—which Talarico has done on and off from the outset—it should shape how Democrats handle the immigration issue going forward pretty dramatically…There’s a paradox at the center of Talarico’s spirited bid. He’s running in a state that Donald Trump carried by 14 points in 2024. Yet he’s actually leaned into the moral issues around immigration more aggressively than most other Democrats running in tough areas have this cycle, despite it being widely touted as Trump’s “strength.” Democrats can learn from this—and not in the ways they might think…Last week, during extended remarks in Austin, Talarico seized on the news that ICE shot a local Venezuelan immigrant in the back—he’s now in detention—to make an expansive moral case that immigration is good for our country. He called for “more legal pathways” for immigrants to come here and “live the American dream,” which he said would make our country “richer and stronger.”…I’ve obtained new data that drives the point home. In August, Texas Southern University polled three competitive House districts in Texas—the 15th, 28th, and 34th. These Latino-heavy districts, which abut the border’s southernmost portions, all swung hard toward Trump, heavily driving the “realignment” narrative. Yet the poll found the Democratic challenger leading the GOP incumbent in the 15th by five points and the Democratic incumbents leading their GOP challengers in the 28th and 34th by 11 and three points, respectively…” More here.
In “Courts Are Not Going to Save Voting Rights,” Jennifer Rubin writes at The Contrarian: “The courts have been, at best, imperfect guardians of voting rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s MAGA majority rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to wreak havoc with mail-in voting and turned away a MAGA re-redistricting map in Missouri…However, the MAGA majority allowed states to proceed with individual inquiries to the flawed SAVE immigration data base, which is likely to result in false flags of noncitizen voters. On this one, “Completely absent from the majority opinion is any analysis of potential harm to voters who might be incorrectly flagged as noncitizens and removed from state voting rolls,” Rick Hasen wrote. “That should have figured in the balance of the equities.” Fortunately, “this case is likely to have limited impact on the midterms, because … the NVRA prohibits mass purges of voters in the 90 days before the election … [meaning] states can still use the database now for individualized determinations.”…Above all else, the massive blow to the Voting Rights Act in the Callais decision, resulting in the evisceration of Black and Hispanic representation in the South (and elsewhere), hangs over the 2026 election and beyond…Where does this leave us? Naturally, lawyers and voting-rights advocacy groups who devote themselves to defending voting rights in court continue to sketch out what amounts to a whack-a-mole strategy: Challenging illegal executive orders on their face and again as implemented; winning at the lower courts, then scrambling to defend wins from the predations of a SCOTUS MAGA majority that draws the line only when abject chaos (e.g., Missouri maps, Post Office redesign) threatens to turn an election upside down. Well, when you have a hammer (litigation), everything looks like a nail (a court case)…But this strategy is insufficient, if not misguided.” More here.
Lucky for Republicans that their U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt (MO) is not up for re-election next month. As Rebecca Beitsch explains in “Schmitt faces fallout after debunked Jack Smith narrative” at The Hill: “Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is facing accusations he tried to launch a conspiracy tying former special counsel Jack Smith to others who prosecuted President Trump — a line of questioning that unwound when the senator apparently confused two basketball teams. ..Schmitt seemed poised for a gotcha moment with Smith when he asked him if he ever attended a February 2024 NBA game in Atlanta where the Hawks played the Golden State Warriors…Schmitt gave a sly smile when Smith first denied attending the game and later implied he was catching the prosecutor by surprise…“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff. So I’ll give you a second to process it, so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself,” Schmitt said…His staff displayed a poster of texts of Smith’s staff discussing seat numbers, and Schmitt said “for context” the date of the game was just after Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis (D) acknowledged a romance with a staffer — drama that rocked the case into Trump’s election interference in Georgia…But the demeanors of the two men changed over the course of the exchange, with Smith becoming increasingly confused and Schmitt’s staff swiftly removing a poster featuring the text exchange the senator implied proved the prosecutor’s travels…MS NOW zoomed in on Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), seated next to Schmitt, with a stunned look on her face as Smith recalled he had attended a game in Maryland where the Iowa Hawkeyes were playing.” Schmitt escaped the consequences of his gaffe in the short run. But videos of the exchange are all over the place, and they are sure to resurface in a big way if he ever runs again. Read more here.
From “The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump” by Susan Glasser at The New Yorker: “The surprise of the election is not that Republicans, faced with terrible polling numbers and a historically unpopular war, would break with a President from their party. Ask George W. Bush how that political dynamic works. Panic is infectious in politicians. The problem is that it’s much, much harder for today’s G.O.P. candidates to flee from Trump after a decade of turning their party into a virtual cult of personality. Until now, Trump managed to keep his hold over politicians who might otherwise have broken with him on an important issue because of his fervent maga base, which would loudly punish even the most minor deviations from the President’s positions, no matter how eccentric or at odds with core conservative ideology those positions may have been…But now Trump is losing a crucial part of that base—a rapid and unexpected decline best tracked in the portion of the electorate that expresses strong support for the President, which has dropped sharply to just thirteen per cent in recent surveys. “I feel like I was sold a bill of goods,” one formerly solid Trump voter told the Times’ Sabrina Tavernise. In another recent survey, sixty per cent of white likely voters without a college degree— a critical part of Trump’s base—said that they disapproved of how he is handling the cost of living. maga isn’t punishing the panicking politicians; it’s joining the panic…And this, to me, is the real surprise of 2026: the President may be brought low this fall not by the Democrats who would crawl over broken glass to defeat him but by the very voters who sent him back to the White House in the first place. Iran, it seems, may finally have done what January 6th and all the rest of Trump’s countless misdeeds could not. Has Donald Trump’s lame-duck era already begun?” More here.
