november

WASHINGTON — For much of President Trump’s second term, Republican senators have largely stayed in line, wary of the consequences of defying a president with a history of targeting those who cross him. This week, that dynamic noticeably shifted.

Senate Republicans blocked two of Trump’s legislative priorities, angered by the push to create a $1.8-billion federal fund to compensate people who claim to have been politically persecuted, including rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The revolt forced Republican leaders to pull a planned vote on legislation to fund the president’s immigration crackdown and security features for the president’s White House ballroom project.

In response, the president defended the fund and lashed out at its critics.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE”!

The president also called Republican senators who broke with him quitters who are “screwing the Republican Party.”

The friction, which has been building for weeks, is being watched as potential test to the limits of Trump’s grip on his party amid an already tense political environment heading into the midterm elections.

“This is kind of a perfect storm,” former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It may be that this time you can point to it and say this is when the great migration begins, away from some of the president’s policies and away from the fear that the president can target you.”

Whether this week marks the beginning of that moment — or simply another episode of political turbulence that fades — is the central question now handing over Trump’s second term.

Not the first break — but an escalation

This is not the first time Republicans have broken with the president. In November, Congress overwhelmingly voted to force the Justice Department to release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, an effort that Trump unsuccessfully tried to thwart for months.

The Epstein vote showed that on the right issue, under the right circumstances, Republicans could be moved to defy Trump. This week, the creation of the fund changed the circumstances again, and the number of Republican senators willing to act quickly grew.

This moment comes after months of rising costs during the war in Iran, efforts by the president to oust members of his own party and now a set of proposals that are proving hard to defend in an election year.

“What you have is basically a bunch of people who feel a bit under siege,” said Bob Olinksy, the senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress. “At the same time, they know that most of what the president is doing is unpopular, and they’re the ones who are going to be standing for reelection in November.”

Republicans push back

Senate Republicans leaders are now asking the Department of Justice to reconsider the terms of the fund, underscoring just how politically toxic the idea has become within the president’s own party.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters that the politically speaking, the fund is “unexplainable.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the New York Times the fund should be in real trouble. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) called the fund “utterly stupid” and “morally wrong.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican whom Trump has singled out for going against him, was equally unsparing, saying he opposed “using billions of taxpayer dollars to compensate convicted felons and thugs who attacked police.” He also criticized the administration for pushing domestic and foreign policy issues that he says are bad for housing and the military.

“If opposing these things makes me a RINO [Republican In Name Only], then I gladly accept that nickname,” Tillis wrote on X. “We need Republicans to do well in November, but the stupid stuff is killing our chances!”

The Republican push back comes as the concern about self-dealing runs deep across the electorate.

A recent poll Economist/YouGov poll found that 59% of Americans believe Trump is using his office for personal gain, though that belief is sharply divided among partisan lines. A CNN poll found that 37% of Americans say Trump puts the good of the country above his personal gain, while 32% say he is in touch with the problems of ordinary Americans.

Asked if the political environment influenced the actions this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that there is a “political component to everything we do around here.”

Funds and tax immunity clauses

Senate Democrats are wondering if the fund will mark a watershed moment for Republicans.

“Have Republicans finally found a bridge too far?” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters after Republicans left Washington without funding Trump’s priorities.

Democrats have called the fund an illegal abuse of power designed to line the pockets of Trump’s allies with taxpayer dollars. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called it a “pure theft of public funds.”

The fund was created as part of a settlement resolving a $10-billion lawsuit Trump personally brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Alongside it, the deal says the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing any tax claims against Trump and his businesses.

Under the tax immunity clause, Trump and his family could save more than $600 million, according to an analysis by Forbes.

The fund, however, has been the target of most of the bipartisan ire. Mostly because Trump and administration officials have not ruled out that it could stand to benefit people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6 riot.

The public funds, if disbursed, would come from the federal judgment fund, which is a Congress-approved ongoing appropriation that allows the Justice Department to settle cases and make payouts. In the past, Republicans have taken issue with the fund. The GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee characterized it an abuse in 2017.

Several of the president’s allies have already talked about tapping into the fund.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who served prison time in relation to campaign finance violations, said he plans to apply for compensation.

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and later pardoned by Trump, told CBS News he would seek a payout from the fund.

“I was targeted,” Tarrio said. “And I do believe that this fund does apply to me.”

Tuesday night, America voted in primary elections and the big winner was President Trump.

One after another, his enemies — and by that I mean anyone who has ever done anything other than grovel — were defeated in elections across the country.

Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican, was perhaps the most high-profile to go down in flames. Massie, you may recall, joined with his California Democratic colleague Ro Khanna to campaign for the release of the Epstein files, which made Trump big-mad since his name is in them a lot.

The Trump-endorsed candidate Ed Gallrein won instead.

“You are ruled by the Epstein class that cares nothing about you,” former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, also a victim of Trump’s ire, posted on social media after Massie’s loss. “Tonight the future of the Republican Party was destroyed.”

But was it? Or is it simply now crystal clear that it is a party that will follow its leader, no matter the consequence — even personal ruin? And if Trump still wields this much power over his base, what does it mean for the November general election?

“Republicans are united behind President Trump,” RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels told Politico. “While the media tries to manufacture division, Republicans remain focused on delivering results for the American people and building momentum heading into 2026.”

As much as I’d like to believe Greene has a point (I can’t believe I’m saying that), all signs instead indicate Pels is, at least mostly, right — the Republican party is alive and well, by Trump’s standards, anyway, and may be gaining momentum for a November none of us will ever forget.

Tuesday’s proof

Gallrein wasn’t the only Trump-backed Republican to win voter approval. Trump also saw his candidates win in places including Idaho, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Georgia.

And in Texas, Trump threw down another retribution bomb by endorsing state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. That race will go to a runoff next week, with Paxton’s chances significantly boosted.

And in case there’s any doubt on why Trump is choosing his favorites, just check out his reasoning in his own social media post for that endorsement. Spoiler: It has nothing to do with the good of the country or even the Grand Old Party.

Paxton, Trump wrote, is “someone who has always been extremely loyal to me,” even trying to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. Meanwhile, Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

So personal loyalty is the name of the game, and Republicans seem more than willing to play it.

Still, there has been some chatter that ousted lawmakers including Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who just lost his primary to a Trump candidate, could gum up the works for Trump in their remaining months. Cassidy voted with Democrats this week on a war powers resolution to at least slow down Trump’s Iran offensive.

Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it. Recent polls have shown Trump’s approval ratings to be down in the dumps, but not with Republicans. They still love this guy.

A poll by Echelon Insights this week found that 74% of GOP voters view Trump favorably. That’s about the same percentage of people who love Costco and NASA, and who doesn’t love Costco and NASA?

Add to that a Wednesday poll from Quinnipiac University that found that while 64% of voters disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy, 73% of Republicans actually approve — for real. They are OK with $6 gas and beef priced like gold.

Granted, that’s down from 88% of Republicans loving this economy a month ago, but still, three-quarters of Trump’s base backs this dumpster fire of financial mismanagement and looting.

In the same poll, 80% of respondents said congressional Republicans should be doing more to work with Trump, while 13% said they should be standing up to him.

Folks, Republicans are not turning away from this president — they are embracing not a party, but his one-man rule, and doing it with a big, warm bear hug.

Get to November

What does all that mean for the November election? Not a whole lot of good for Democrats, but I’ll start with one possible bright spot: Texas.

Yes, Texas — where, if Paxton does beat Cornyn, Democrats will do a happy dance. That’s because Paxton is seen as the more extreme candidate, plagued by scandal, and would be running against the increasingly popular everyman-preacher man James Talarico. If Talarico prevails, he would be the first Democratic to win a statewide office in the Lone Star state since the 1990s.

But on the national front, there is very little reason to believe any Republicans will break with Trump, as voters or candidates. That means it will come down to gerrymandering and independents, neither of which is especially hopeful for Democrats.

In the Echelon poll, 68% of independent voters said they believed the country was on the “wrong track,” with more than one-third citing the economy as their most important issue. The Quinnipiac poll found that only 26% of independent voters who responded approve of how Trump is handling the job of president.

But.

Both polls found independent voters also did not approve of the job Democrats are doing in Congress — almost three-quarters had a bad impression. Despite all of the middle-ground voter animus toward Trump and those he backs, Democrats apparently have done almost nothing to capitalize on it.

The takeaway is that the voters who will decide November — at least in the remaining places where maps are not rigged — really don’t like any of their choices, and may just hold their noses and vote for whoever seems least-worst.

If he finds a way to bring prices down, that could be Trump‘s GOP.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump’s Spring Revenge Tour Routed G.O.P. Foes. But Fall Headwinds Loom.
The deep dive: A gray wolf has entered Sequoia National Park for the first time in a century
The L.A. Times Special: San Diego attackers’ hate manifesto targeted many groups, sought ‘destruction of political system,’ sources say

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Pity poor California.

It’s not just the eye-watering price of gasoline, the absurd cost of housing, the rising price of utilities and groceries, the Trump-led assault on the state’s immigrant population and his attack on California’s long-cherished values of tolerance and diversity.

No, on top of all that voters have been subjected to — the horror! — a dull and drab gubernatorial campaign, burdened by a surfeit of C- and D-list candidates with all the electricity and elan of a tepid bath.

Where are the A-listers? Where are the lights? The cameras? The action?

That, anyway, is the perspective one gets reading a certain genre of campaign dispatch, written from the perspective that all of California, Land of Reagan and Schwarzenegger, home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, incubator of the Next Big Thing, is a stage. Woe unto those who fail to entertain, animate or amuse.

The fact that those dreary assessments have very little to do with the actual wants and needs of the vast majority of Californians — not to mention the state’s history of electing mostly dull and drab governors — should give their authors pause.

It hasn’t.

Contra all the stifled yawns and thinly veiled condescension, the contest — now in its final stretch — is the most compelling California gubernatorial campaign in decades. And not just because one of the leading contestants torched himself and his political livelihood in a bonfire of hubris and stupidity.

Come November, voters could elect the first female governor in state history, or possibly the first Latino governor in more than 150 years. (They might also install California’s first billionaire governor, a considerably less uplifting and monumental achievement, but historic nonetheless.)

Depending on the result, the election could also solidify a notable shift in California’s political power balance, from the long-reigning San Francisco Bay Area (think Govs. Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sens. Alan Cranston, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer) to Southern California (think Sens. Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla and, possibly, Gov. Xavier Becerra or Katie Porter.)

True, there’s no pyrotechnic personality in the expansive field of gubernatorial hopefuls. But this is no group of slouches.

“Look at the resumes of these people. There’s nothing embarrassing,” said Jim Newton, a UCLA historian who’s written a shelf-load of biographies of Californians as disparate as Earl Warren and Jerry Garcia. The contenders, he noted, include a former state attorney general and Biden Cabinet member, a high-profile ex-congresswoman, the aforementioned hedge-fund billionaire and men with experience running two of the state’s most populous cities. “That’s a pretty good range of backgrounds in candidates for governor.”

With no glitz, no glamour, what’s a star-seeking, celebrity-hungry voter to do? If you believe the stereotype, Californians take their political cues more from Variety and In Touch magazine than, say, their voter guide or the flood of TV ads and campaign mailers that inundate the state every two years.

In truth, the Hollywood stars elevated to the governorship, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been the exception — spaced nearly four decades apart — and far from the norm. Both political insurgents were elected under extraordinary circumstances. Reagan amid the tumult and tectonic fracturing of the 1960s Civil Rights and Free Speech movements. Schwarzenegger in an unprecedented, rapid-fire recall of an enormously unpopular governor.

Far more typical are the likes of George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis. Each was a career politician who spent decades laboriously climbing the government rungs before being elected governor. Collectively, they were featured on the cover of People magazine precisely zero times.

The three were, to use Newton’s description, “mainstream, politically tested, not flashy.” Which also happens to describe several of those currently aspiring to be governor.

Drab, but true.

Boring as it may seem, most Californians want someone who’ll focus on their workaday concerns, not jollification. For all the talk of the “attention economy” — the hearts and minds won by jokey memes, viral videos and other snackable morsels on social media — voters are much more focused on the real economy, which is to say putting food on their table, maintaining a roof over their head and keeping their car fueled and home at a bearable temperature.

“It’s not virtual reality,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime California Republican strategist and one of the state’s most astute political observers. “It’s reality reality.”

“That may not be interesting to the punditry and the East Coast,” Madrid went on, “but it still matters. Reality still matters. The performative nature that has dominated our discourse for 10 years in the Trump era is fading away.”

Imagine, for a moment, if former Vice President Kamala Harris had jumped into the governor’s race, as contemplated. The contest, for all intents, would have ended then and there, save for months of airy speculation on which Democrat or Republican would make the November runoff en route to eventual defeat. That would have been boring.

In Harris’ absence, the sprawling field of candidates has been a good and healthy thing, yielding the most competitive California gubernatorial contest in a quarter century. Fears of a Democratic shutout in June’s top-two primary and a fluky Republican being elected — which were always overwrought — have faded dramatically. Even if they hadn’t, would it really be better for politicians in Sacramento and Washington to anoint the Democratic favorite and cut voters out of the equation?

(While we’re busting myths, another is the fanciful notion that the state party or Democratic grandees like Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Jerry or Willie Brown could have cleared the field with just a phone call or two.)

This wide-open fight for governor may not be boffo entertainment or dazzling to those looking in from the outside, but it’s absorbing nonetheless. It’s destined to be remembered as one of the most volatile and surprising political contests modern-day California has ever seen.

The Humboldt County Office of Elections made an unnerving discovery Monday: a stack of 596 sealed ballots from the most recent election left at the bottom of a locked voting drop box.

The uncounted ballots would not have affected the outcome of the November statewide special election for Proposition 50, the county office said in a news release Wednesday. However, officials said they’re working hard to have all the votes legally counted.

The office discovered that the ballots were uncounted because of a staff error. When workers checked the drop box, there was a miscommunication about whether it had been fully emptied, the office said.

“That outcome is unacceptable and runs counter to the core of what this office stands for,” Juan Pablo Cervantes, county clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, said in a statement. “While the mistake occurred after an election worker did not follow proper procedures, the responsibility for what happened ultimately sits with me.”

After the ballots were discovered, elections staff confirmed that the sealed ballots had not been tampered with, and they worked with the California secretary of state to determine next steps. Under California law, the ballots should have been counted before the election was certified on Dec. 5 and destroyed six months later.

The Office of Elections said it had altered its protocols to ensure such a mistake does not take place again, implementing a new “lock out, tag out” procedure to ensure each drop box is empty and secured before election results are finalized.

“I promise you that we are taking this seriously,” Cervantes said. “We will strengthen our processes and continue pushing toward the standard our community expects and deserves.”

The discovery comes as California continues to be under a microscope for allegations of voter fraud.

Within minutes of polls opening for California’s special election in November, President Trump took to Truth Social to claim that the Proposition 50 vote — which redrew several congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates — was rigged.

“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote.

When asked later that day to explain Trump’s claims on how the election was allegedly rigged, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said California has “a universal mail-in voting system, which we know is ripe for fraud.” She also accused the state of counting ballots from undocumented immigrants.

Elections officials and Democratic leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom decried those claims as baseless. “The bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a November statement.

More recently, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco has drawn scrutiny for using his position as Riverside County sheriff to seize some 650,000 ballots in the county to determine whether they were fraudulently counted. Critics decried the move as another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters.

Humboldt County, which encompasses 4,052 square miles of rural California below the Oregon border, has largely avoided election-related turmoil in recent years. In 2008, however, Humboldt election officials discovered that software they used to tally votes had failed to count 197 ballots from one precinct.

More recently, nearby Shasta County has become a hotbed of election denialism and MAGA politics, with its Board of Supervisors voting in 2023 to end the use of Dominion Voting Systems machines in favor of pursuing a hand-counting system.

Times staff writers Hailey Branson-Potts, Jenny Jarvie and Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — As states scramble to postpone presidential primaries, election workers abandon their posts and voters worry about the risk of contagion in crowded polling places, the question of how the nation is going to pull off a general election in November has generated increasing anxiety.

Some states are much better prepared than others.

In a significant swath of the nation, however, most voters still lack the one viable option for casting ballots that doesn’t put their health at risk in a time of pandemic: voting by mail.

Now the decades-long push by advocates and many lawmakers to make that alternative universally available has gained new momentum amid a public health crisis. Backers are racing to overcome longstanding political barriers so that states that have resisted can start confronting the huge logistical challenges involved in a quick shift away from in-person voting.

“Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia and other states are showing that without vote-by-mail, states might not be able to hold elections at all,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in an email, referring to states that have postponed scheduled primaries. He and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are rallying colleagues behind their bill that would require all states to allow citizens to vote absentee.

“I understand that standing up a new election system will be a heavy lift, but in the face of this pandemic, vote by mail is the best choice we have to keep our democracy running,” Wyden said.

Casting ballots by mail — or at drop-off locations on and before election day — is a familiar habit in the West. California has allowed any adult citizen who cares to vote absentee to do so for years. Washington, Oregon and Colorado have already moved over to 100% mail or drop-off voting, with California headed in that direction.

Deeply Republican states like Utah also allow anyone to vote absentee.

Yet in 16 states concentrated mostly in the Northeast and the South, voters are expected to show up on election day unless they can claim one of a set of excuses for an absentee ballot.

Some states have been reluctant to meddle with a tradition of civic engagement on election day. More recently, states governed by Republicans have resisted a change after President Trump repeatedly — and falsely — suggested that reforms that bring down barriers to ballot access had led to widespread voter fraud by Democrats.

The rapidly spreading pandemic has some rethinking their rules. Connecticut, for example, has temporarily changed its restrictions to make concerns about the virus a valid excuse for anyone who wants to vote absentee.

But in some states, election officials are powerless to act without changes in state law or a mandate from Congress, which has the power to set rules for federal elections.

“We need emergency action now,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law scholar at UC Irvine who advocates a temporary federal requirement that every voter in America have access to a mail-in ballot for the 2020 election.

“We cannot postpone the election because there are places under lockdown. We need to have a Plan B ready.”

Election experts stress that putting off the general election until things settle down is not an option. The Constitution does not allow a president to serve beyond four years without reelection. But some officials still see a conspiracy.

“No elected official or journalist should use a potential health concern to advance his or her own political agenda,” Alabama Secretary of State John H. Merrill said last week after a local columnist charged the state’s absentee voting restrictions invite an election-day meltdown. The state Legislature there has repeatedly rejected proposals for universal vote by mail.

A proposal passed by lawmakers in New Hampshire was vetoed in September by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who warned it would erode the state’s standing as a role model of civic engagement.

“Even if people agree this is an emergency and we may need to do this, it’s hard to just wash out of your mind thoughts you have had your entire life,” Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who focuses on voting, said of skeptical elections officials.

A voter survey he conducted recently found Democrats were far more heavily in favor of universal mail voting than were Republicans. The irony, he said, is that it was GOP public officials who played a key role a couple of decades ago in seeding the movement toward voting by mail.

These days, however, the pressure on election officials is coming mostly from Democrats, who are watching in dismay as their primary election has been disrupted in nearly half a dozen states.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Tuesday implored states that have not yet held their primaries to embrace voting by mail instead of postponing their elections to a later date.

By the fall, the coronavirus crisis could have passed — or it could just be getting a second wind. In 1918, the deadly influenza pandemic that hit in the final year of World War I first appeared in the winter, subsided in the summer, then roared back in the fall, disrupting that year’s presidential campaign.

The consequences of giving voters no alternative in November but to show up at polls could be dramatic in states that continue to resist. Most poll workers are over age 60, putting them at high risk if COVID-19 is still spreading. Many may just decide not to show up, as was the case in some of the primaries held this week.

The need to sanitize machines after every voter, possibly take the temperature of voters as they enter polling places and enforce social distancing — which could lead to historically long delays in both voting and tallying votes. That, in turn, could shake voter confidence in the integrity of the election.

“Are we going to say to people they can’t vote because they have a 100-degree temperature?” said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. “I think about all the complexities involved in trying to make polling places safe for people to cast ballots, and I get very nervous.”

Until this election cycle, Gronke had been reluctant to champion a federal mandate giving all voters access to absentee ballots, worrying it would be too heavy-handed. The outbreak has changed his thinking.

“We are in an emergency,” he said.

The prospects for the Wyden bill are uncertain. There are not yet any GOP co-sponsors for the proposal, which the senator has pushed in some fashion since 2006. But even if the Senate balks, election experts are hopeful more states will aim to expand mail-in voting for November on their own.

Time is fast running out. The logistical issues involved with shifting millions of voters over to mail-in ballots are monumental. Even many states that already encourage all residents to mail or drop off their ballots will probably struggle with the deluge, said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

“There is a huge amount that needs to be done to prepare for this,” Weiser said. She pointed to everything from the lack of vendors equipped to print so many ballots, to a potential shortage of the specific paper needed, to all the new equipment states would need to count and sort the votes.

There are other components for states to wrestle with: safeguards to ensure ballots are properly collected, finding and training large numbers of workers for what could prove a complicated undertaking, and putting in place backstops to avoid system malfunctions and clerical errors that can turn election day into a mess.

Even if the Wyden bill stalls again, lawmakers still may put money in the stimulus legislation moving through Congress to help states confront these logistical hurdles. Especially when the alternative could be a lot of Americans excluded from the ballot box come November.

“We don’t have flexibility on when this election is,” said Weiser. “There will be a very large number of people who will not be able to vote in person. It won’t be safe for them to do so. They need to have this option.”

NEW YORK — Maine just sent a blunt message to the Democratic Party’s national leaders.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills was forced to abandon her U.S. Senate campaign last week, unable to generate sufficient fundraising or enthusiasm to compete against Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has never served in elected office. The announcement marked a stinging defeat for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited Mills to lead the party’s decades-long quest to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The swift eclipse of a two-term governor by a political neophyte highlighted a stark reality that has begun to take hold at a pivotal moment — Democratic voters are rejecting their party’s establishment and embracing new risks, even as their confidence grows that a blue wave is coming in November’s midterm elections.

Sometimes Democratic voters seem almost as angry at their own party’s aging, entrenched leadership as they are at President Trump.

“Rank-and-file Democrats don’t want the Democratic Party as we know it,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the Democratic resistance group Indivisible. “Rank-and-file Democrats want fighters.”

Local chapters of the group Indivisible, as well as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and other leaders from the party’s progressive wing had already lined up behind Platner, who is now almost certain to be the Democratic nominee in one of the party’s best Senate pickup opportunities in the nation.

Platner on Friday said he would continue to speak out against his party’s leadership, including Schumer (D-N.Y.), although he acknowledged that the two spoke privately the night before.

“The fact that we’ve been able to do all of this without the help of the establishment, it puts us in such an amazing position,” Platner said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.” “My criticisms of the party leadership, my criticisms of the party, they have not changed, and I’ve been very vocal about that since the beginning. But we will absolutely take the help that we can get.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are giddy — and some moderate Democratic strategists are worried — that the anti-establishment shift may undermine the Democratic Party’s effort to win back control of Congress in November.

“Chuck Schumer has officially lost the first battle in his proxy war with Bernie Sanders,” said Bernadette Breslin, spokesperson for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. “As Sanders hits the campaign trail to prop up progressives in messy Democrat primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, Schumer’s chances of getting his preferred candidates through look grim.”

Beyond Maine

Maine is far from alone.

Prominent anti-establishment clashes are playing out in high-profile Senate races in Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa, along with House races in several states.

Sanders, the country’s highest-profile democratic socialist, continues to promote Platner and other critics of the Democratic Party’s national leadership. The Vermont senator planned to campaign over the weekend in Detroit with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is running in a three-way Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

“There’s a desire to turn the page on the old guard,” Sanders’ political advisor Faiz Shakir said. “It’s not even just the Democratic electorate. There’s a populist mood in this country. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”

Indeed, McMorrow is actively working to remind voters that she would not support Schumer as Democrats’ Senate leader if given the chance.

“Frankly, I was the first person in this country to say no,” McMorrow said in a video she posted Thursday on social media. “It is a different moment. This is no longer a Republican Party we’re dealing with, it is a MAGA party that has been taken over by Trump loyalists. … You need to respond in a very different way.”

Veteran Democratic strategists like Lis Smith, who works with candidates across the country, tied the anti-establishment shift to the party’s painful losses in 2024, after President Biden abandoned his reelection bid and Vice President Kamala Harris went on to lose to Trump.

“After 2024, voters are sick of the gerontocracy, sick of the status quo, and Chuck Schumer has completely misread that,” Smith said.

Moderates are worried

Privately, Schumer’s allies downplay the impact of the anti-establishment backlash.

The Democratic leader’s preferred Senate picks in North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska haven’t faced the same challenges as Mills did in Maine. The four states represent the party’s most likely path to a majority in the chamber, which has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Mills is the oldest of the candidates and, at 78, would have been the oldest freshman senator in history. She promised to serve one term if elected. Platner is 41.

Schumer’s team is unwilling to make any apologies for backing Mills over Platner.

“Leader Schumer’s North Star is taking back the Senate,” Schumer spokesperson Allison Biasotti said. “When no one thought a Senate majority was possible just a year ago, he made it a reality by recruiting great candidates across the country and laying out an agenda for lower costs and better lives for Americans.”

Some in the Democratic Party’s moderate wing are worried.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, said that Platner’s emergence in Maine “without a doubt” will make it harder for Democrats to defeat Collins in November. He warns that it could be the same elsewhere if Democratic primary voters rally behind anti-establishment candidates.

“Our message is if you would like to beat Donald Trump’s Republicans, you better nominate people who can win,” Bennett said.

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.

For Democrats or, for that matter, anyone who believes in checks and balances, things are starting to look up.

President Trump’s days of untrammeled war-making, law-breaking and generally doing whatever he damn well pleases may finally be drawing to a close. Public opinion, history and, especially, the surging price of gasoline and groceries, all point to a Democratic takeover of the House in November’s midterm election.

There’s a direct correlation between a president’s approval rating and the way his party performs at the midpoint of his term. Anything below 50% favorability portends political trouble; right now Trump’s positive standing in polls hovers around a dismal 40%.

Then there’s the history part. Since World War II, the party out of the White House has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats in midterm elections. Democrats need to pick up just three to take control beginning in January.

(While the Republican grip on the Senate seems weaker than just a few months ago, the GOP is still favored to hang onto the chamber in November.)

There is, however, a looming threat causing nervousness among Democrats and their allies as they contemplate a celebratory fall, a landmine of sorts buried deep in the congressional election process.

Let’s acquaint ourselves with Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution.

The pertinent language written by the Framers states, “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” In other words, it’s up to the House and Senate to acknowledge and abide by the will of voters as expressed in the election returns.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if you let your paranoia run wild, quite a lot. If the election outcome is close — and probably it would have to be very close — Republican lawmakers could theoretically seize on phony claims of fraud and effectively nullify the results of enough contests to deny Democrats control of the House.

There’s plenty of skepticism that would or could ever take place. But if it were to happen, hello, national crisis!

Normally, we could count on the occupant of the White House to humbly submit to the election returns, even if it’s a “shellacking” as President Obama called his walloping in the 2010 midterm election, or a “thumpin’ ” as President George W. Bush described his electoral spanking in 2006.

Not Trump.

This president has amply demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go to overturn an honest election, siccing a violent mob on lawmakers certifying his 2020 defeat, telling endless lies and using the Justice Department to confiscate ballots and intimidate innocent election officials and others Trump deems his enemies.

He strong-armed Texas into a highly unusual, highly partisan redrawing of its congressional boundaries, an effort to net five seats and lengthen the odds against a Democratic takeover.

The move appears to have backfired, spurring voters in California and, last week, Virginia to redraw their state’s political maps to more than offset Texas and boost Democrats in November. (The Virginia results are being contested in court.)

Voters attend an Arlington Democrats redistricting vote watch party during a special election Tuesday in Virginia. A measure to redraw the state’s congressional map was narrowly approved.

(Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

That failure doesn’t take away Trump’s malign intent. And in the supine Speaker Mike Johnson, he has the perfect handmaiden to undermine the midterm vote.

In 2020, Johnson was the lead author of a Supreme Court brief seeking to overturn the results in four states that Joe Biden had indisputably won. That speaks to Johnson’s probity and integrity.

How would subversion of November’s election take place?

One theory goes like this: When the balloting is over, Johnson could appoint a House committee packed with Trump’s acolytes to investigate alleged voting irregularities. (And if you think Trump won’t be bellowing the words “rigged” and “fraud” in the face of defeat, you’ve either been in a coma or living on another planet for the last decade.)

Those hearings and the “evidence” they turn up could then be cited by election officials in key states — collaborators, if you will — as a reason to delay the certification of election results and block the seating of majority-making Democrats in the next Congress. In their place, the theory goes, Republicans could vote to fill those seats with GOP candidates who lost at the polls, keeping themselves in control.

Derek Muller, an election law expert, suggests that scenario is little more than a fever dream of doomsday devotees and overly nervous Nellies.

He said he’d be very surprised if all the election results weren’t certified by Jan. 3, when the new Congress convenes, given the legal remedies available to prevent stalling and undue delay. And, Muller said, there is no assurance Republicans would march in lockstep behind a plan to prevent the seating of Democrats.

Thwarting a duly elected Democratic majority “involves extraordinary coordination and precedents that have never occurred, with a unique convergence of factors,” said Muller, who teaches law at Notre Dame — though, he added, if control of the House came down to, say, a single seat “all bets are off.”

Far-fetched? Perhaps. Some of the spun-up theories surrounding November’s election do sound a bit like a product of political science fiction.

But what kind of president picks a fight with the pope? Plunges the world into crisis by unilaterally going to war with Iran with no exit plan? Demolishes the East Wing of the White House on an egotistical whim?

If Trump, an inveterate norm-buster, sees a way to keep his grip on unchecked power, don’t put anything past him.

SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification every time they vote in person, or use a special pin number when submitting mail-in ballots, has qualified for the November ballot, elections officials announced Friday.

The measure also would require election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, aligning with a Republican-led push for new restrictions on voters in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that undocumented immigrants are swaying elections by voting illegally.

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego has been pushing the measure for several years, while Trump and Republicans also are seeking a similar initiative at the federal level.

If passed, the California ballot measure would require a voter to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a pin number, on their ballots matching the one generated when they registered to vote.

The pin would come from ID such as a driver’s license, or could be generated from the county. The vast majority of Californians mail in their ballots in elections.

Under the measure, election officials also must ensure that registered voters are U.S. citizens by using information from government records, which could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, and maintain accurate voter registration lists.

DeMaio said the measure is different than a federal proposal, known as the SAVE Act, which stalled out in the U.S. Senate this week.

DeMaio said the state ballot measure “does not do away with mail in ballots, because voters of all political backgrounds like the convenience of mail in ballots. So we want to keep that convenience.”

The ballot measure needs a simple majority to pass.

Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.

Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, told the Times that her group is committed to fighting the measure, arguing it would make it harder for people in the state to vote.

She said that people may forget to use a pin on their mail-in ballot, leading to their vote being disqualified. Similar changes in Texas, she said, led to a rise in rejected ballots due to technical errors.

“It doesn’t really weed out illegal voting,” which doesn’t actually exist, she said, “but it does cause more ballots to be incorrectly flagged and ultimately rejected.”

ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California also oppose the measure.

DeMaio filed for the ballot initiative in 2021 and 2023, but did not move forward with the signature collection process in order to fine-tune the ballot language.

He said his ballot measure wasn’t focused primarily about making sure that undocumented people don’t vote.

“That’s one element of concern that we’ve heard from some groups, but it really is making sure that, number one, we properly maintain our voter rolls,” he said.

Democrats on Wednesday celebrated an election win in Virginia that could put them slightly ahead in the national redistricting competition that President Trump triggered in an attempt to preserve his party’s House majority in this year’s midterms, but it will not be the final round.

Now that it’s been approved by voters, the new Virginia map will have to clear additional legal hurdles. On Wednesday, the state attorney general’s office said it would immediately appeal a ruling earlier in the day from a judge in rural southern Virginia who ordered that the results of Tuesday’s vote not be certified.

Ultimately, the Virginia Supreme Court will decide whether Democratic lawmakers violated procedural rules when they referred a constitutional amendment to the ballot authorizing the new U.S. House districts that could help Democrats win as many as four additional seats in the state. If so, that could invalidate the map voters narrowly approved Tuesday.

What happens next in Florida also will matter.

The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature is to meet in a special session next week that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis called in part to draw a new map to expand the party’s congressional majority there. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to issue an opinion by the end of June in a Louisiana case that could overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and lead to redrawn political maps across the South, though almost all of those could not happen until 2028.

After voters passed the Virginia amendment, Democrats could tentatively claim that they netted 10 seats nationally from the mid-decade redistricting, compared with the nine that Republicans claim. Even if things swing again in the GOP’s favor, the net result of Trump’s campaign would be at best an incremental increase in the number of GOP-leaning House seats at a time when his approval rating is dropping and Republican anxiety over losing control of Congress in November is rising.

“We have successfully blunted Trump’s attempt to completely hijack the midterms,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Many Republicans agreed.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it,” Ari Fleischer, who was a spokesman for President George W. Bush, posted on the social media site X after the Virginia vote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.”

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, argued that it is too soon to declare one party a victor.

“It’s an ongoing process with many legal challenges pending, and it’s far too early for sweeping statements on the final outcome,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday tried to undermine the Virginia result by leveling groundless accusations of fraud similar to ones he made after losing the 2020 presidential election. He called the Virginia vote “RIGGED” and “Crooked” in a post on his social media site and added, “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.’”

Redistricting spread from Texas to other states

Redistricting is typically done every 10 years after each census, unless ordered by a court. But last summer, Trump pushed a redrawing in Texas, prodding the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to add up to five winnable House seats for his party. Trump then began pressuring other Republican-run states to follow. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have since created more GOP-leaning seats in addition to Texas.

Democrats began to fight back, even though they were more constrained because several Democratic-controlled states had maps drawn by independent commissions rather than lawmakers and governors.

To counter Texas, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, pushed the Democratic-controlled Legislature to place a redistricting initiative on last fall’s ballot. After voters overwhelmingly approved it, the measure will replace a commission-approved map with one that could gain Democrats five seats.

Democrats reclaimed the Legislature and governor’s office in November in Virginia and swiftly moved to replicate California’s move with an even more aggressive redistricting plan. It replaces a congressional map imposed by a court after the last census that had resulted in a 6-5 edge for Democrats with one that could allow Democrats to win as many as 10 seats.

“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” state Senate President L. Louise Lucas said at a news conference Wednesday.

Courts could still have a say on redistricting

In Washington, U.S. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York warned Florida Republicans, who have been openly nervous about redrawing their district boundaries and potentially spreading their core voters too thin before an election that appears to be trending against them.

“Our message to Florida Republicans right now is, ‘F around and find out,’” Jeffries said.

House Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the super political action committee aligned with House Democrats, has spent nearly $60 million to push back against Republicans’ redistricting efforts. Some $40 million of that was on the Virginia campaign.

Another obstacle in Florida is an anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment that was approved by state voters in 2010. It is likely that any new Florida map would trigger significant litigation, although six of the state Supreme Court’s seven justices were appointed by Republicans.

Nicholas Stephanopolous, a Harvard law professor, said a challenge for DeSantis is that the Florida amendment forbids drawing lines for purely partisan purposes, so he has to find some other excuse for revising the map. “Even with that sort of acquiescent state supreme court, I don’t think it’s a done deal,” Stephanopolous said.

The Virginia move comes with its own legal issues. Republicans have challenged the process that Democrats used to place the measure on the ballot and the state Supreme Court opted to wait for the vote before even scheduling arguments in the case. It is unclear when a ruling could come.

Wednesday’s ruling stopping certification came from a separate case that Republicans filed with the same lower court judge, whose initial ruling against the initiative was put on hold by the state supreme court.

“The ballot box was never the final word here,” Terry Kilgore, the Virginia House Republican leader, said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote. “Serious legal questions remain about both the wording of this referendum and the process used to put it before voters.”

The biggest legal wild card is held by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its conservative majority could throw out a requirement under the Voting Rights Act that in areas with a large minority population, mapmakers draw districts that are more favorable to the election of minority candidates.

That provision has led to the creation of several majority-minority congressional seats, especially in the South. Without it, Republicans in conservative states could shrink the number of U.S. House seats winnable by Democrats even further.

But it’s unlikely that any state other than Louisiana, which brought the lawsuit the high court will rule on, would be able to adjust its congressional lines in time for November even if the court eliminates that provision, known as Section Two. That’s because the November election is already officially underway in most states and candidate filing deadlines — and, in some cases, primary elections — have already passed.

Riccardi and Lieb write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askarinam in Washington contributed to this report.