September 4, 2026

Election 2026

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is facing sharp criticism from conservatives after delivering a fiery speech in Alabama, urging northern progressives to travel to red states and become more involved in political battles across the South.

The New York congresswoman made the remarks during the “All Roads Lead to The South” rally in Montgomery.

She argued that major political and civil rights struggles remain underway in southern states and called on activists from across the country to join those efforts.

Her comments quickly sparked a wave of backlash online, with critics accusing the progressive lawmaker of promoting division and unnecessarily escalating regional political tensions.

Federal Judge Shuts Down TN Dems Over New Congressional Map townhall.com
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Tennessee drew its new congressional map, with state Democrats filing a challenge to block its implementation. That’s likely to be the usual move as Republicans push to redraw their maps across the South following the Callais decision. The map debate caused a commotion at the state Capitol. Tennessee Democrats tried to block the map, and a federal judge put the kibosh on it (via Channel 5 Nashville):

A federal judge denied a request Thursday to temporarily block Tennessee’s newly approved congressional map from taking effect ahead of the 2026 elections.

Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. denied plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order and canceled a hearing that had been scheduled for May 20, according to a court order filed Thursday.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last week by the Tennessee Democratic Party and several plaintiffs challenging the state’s newly redrawn congressional districts approved during a special legislative session. The lawsuit argues the map unlawfully dismantles a majority-Black district and creates election confusion ahead of the August primary.

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Unsurprisingly, Democrats are willing to eliminate black-majority congressional districts through redistricting in order to gain more political power, a new poll finds. Democrat politicians and pundits have long claimed that any proposed shift away from race-based gerrymandering is racist, repeatedly weaponizing the issue to smear Republicans.

The Politico poll, conducted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act, shows “a lot of Democrats are willing to sacrifice Black voting power to beat the GOP.” At face value, respondents — who were Kamala Harris voters — said discriminatory gerrymandering to carve out special districts for black voters and other minorities is more important “even if it means Democrats draw fewer seats.”

After the Virginia Supreme Court threw out a new congressional district map that eliminated four GOP seats, progressives want to purge the court and replace it with more loyal progressives. The plan is to lower the mandatory retirement age of judges to below the youngest member of the VA Supreme Court so they can put progressive activists in to take their place.

Go Deeper

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Idea criticized by legal scholars

Democrats should push through legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of Virginia Supreme Court in order to remove justices who ruled a gerrymandered map unconstitutional, a “democracy” scholar argued.

Quinn Yeargain, who uses “they/them/theirs” pronouns and whose real name is Tyler, made the argument on Saturday. Yeargain is the “1855 Professor of Law of Democracy” at Michigan State University, according to the scholar’s faculty website.

Writing at Downballot, Yeargain said Democrats should lower the retirement age to 54, outwardly saying the goal would be to remove the youngest justice who made what the professor considers the wrong decision.

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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) canceled a campaign rally after receiving a bomb threat at the event location.

Raffensperger is running for governor of the Peach State, and his campaign was scheduled to stop at Middle Georgia Regional Airport on Tuesday. The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office confirmed there was a bomb threat at the site.

According to the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, Macon-Bibb Emergency 911 Center received a bomb threat, prompting the authorities to dispatch a bomb squad and K-9 unit that discovered a suspicious object near the airport’s vending machine. The object was determined to be non-threatening. After the bomb squad swept the area, it was determined that there was no further threat, prompting the airport to reopen.

“When you stand on principle, when you do the right thing, when you put people ahead of politics …some folks won’t like it,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “In fact, some people will hate you and want to hurt you. So yes, we are dealing with an active threat. And no, I refuse to back down.”

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Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra started a new interview Tuesday by demanding the reporter ask him softball questions as well as “some tough” ones.

Becerra sat down with local news outlet KTLA for an interview on his campaign and the political issues that concern Californians, such as homelessness, affordability and gas prices. He opened by asking KTLA reporter Annie Rose Ramos if “this is a profile piece” rather than “a gotcha piece.”

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California Democrats released an attack ad targeting Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, but the effort has backfired spectacularly, with the script reading more like a campaign ad.

The ad criticized Pratt for promising to clean up the streets rather than continue to waste taxpayer dollars on efforts to house people struggling with severe drug addiction and mental illness. It went on to attack him for wanting to flood the city with police in order to crack down on rampant crime, while insisting that Los Angeles should continue down its current path by voting for the Democrats who caused its problems in the first place.

 

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American voters asppear to not be quite so keen on Democrats as the crucial midterms loom, according to a recent CNN poll.

The percentages show Democrats sliding as the days tick by and as Republicans are also gearing up for the 2026 midterm elections.

“The poll finds registered voters closely split in their partisan preference ahead of the midterms, with 45% saying they’d support a Democratic candidate for Congress, 42% a Republican candidate, and 14% neither,” the CNN article said. “Polling on congressional preference this year, including previous CNN surveys, has largely given Democrats the advantage. Voters who aren’t sold on either party’s economic message tend to prefer the Democrats on the generic ballot, the CNN survey finds.”

A Harvard Harris poll found Republicans had shifted into a better position as they prepared for the midterms, Breitbart News reported in March:

The poll asked respondents if the congressional election were held today would they be more likely to vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress, finding likely midterm voters split down the middle. The results mark an eight-point swing towards Republicans in the Harvard Harris poll since January when 54 percent of respondents replied they would be more likely to vote for Democrats with only 46 percent opting for Republicans,” the outlet said.

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A protest sign outside Alabama’s statehouse on May 7.Kim Chandler/AP

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In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

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A key Illinois election law unlawfully requires the prioritization of race in drawing legislative districts, a new lawsuit alleges. The suit was brought in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision stripping states’ ability to use race in the redistricting process.

“States may not use race to allocate power,” said Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams, whose group spearheaded the legal challenge.

Announced on Monday, the lawsuit brought by PILF on behalf of Illinois resident Jeanne Ives contests that the state “has districting criteria that violates the United States Constitution explicitly by elevating race as a primary purpose in legislative line drawing.” Ives more specifically takes to task the Illinois Voting Rights Act (ILVRA), which she argues “mandates the creation of racial districts in violation of [her] civil rights protected by the Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (‘Voting Rights Act’).”

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South Carolina should be a state where redistricting is simple, like in Florida. The Louisiana vs. Callais decision limited the application of section II of the Voting Rights Act, which permits congressional apportionment based on race, to the point of erasure. The whole South can now be redrawn. Florida accomplished it in two days. Tennessee has followed suit, and last night, the Supreme Court gave Alabama the green light. So, what’s delaying the process in the Palmetto State? Three words: South Carolina Republicans.

 

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In today’s issue: Democrats are still in the driver’s seat toward winning back control of the House, despite suffering a major blow in Virginia on Friday and at least three GOP-controlled Southern states scrambling to redraw their midterm maps. The Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the results of the state’s redistricting referendum from last month invalidated a new congressional map that Democrats viewed as key to countering Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting efforts. …

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In Iowa, Republicans face a potential bruising that could leave the red state looking pretty purple after November.

Once a bellwether, Iowa has jagged to the right recently. In 2024, Donald Trump won it by over 13 percentage points, making for the state’s largest margin of victory in a presidential election since 1972. And two years before that, in 2022, it reelected Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds by over 18 points.

In a normal election year, a Democrat would likely have little chance of winning the keys to Terrace Hill, the governor’s official residence. But with Trump’s war of choice in the Middle East and domestic prices climbing, this isn’t shaping up to be a normal election year. In fact, Iowa’s governor race may prove to be something of a bellwether for state executives across the nation.

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South Carolina is the latest state that has moved to cancel their primary election, even though people are already voting:

South Carolina Republicans took the first step Friday to cancel the state’s June primary election — to give more time to potentially pass a new gerrymandered congressional map — as absentee voting is already underway.

A South Carolina House subcommittee voted 3-2 along party lines to advance a bill that would move the state’s June 9 primary election to August 11, with the expectation that the legislature would redraw the state’s congressional map to dismantle its lone Democratic district, represented by longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn.

The vote came after the committee heard hours of public testimony urging lawmakers to reject pressure to delay the state’s primaries and draw new congressional maps. In all, 23 South Carolina residents testified against redistricting and moving the state’s primaries. No one spoke in support of either measure.

More than 6,000 absentee ballots have already been sent out to military and overseas voters for the June primary — more than 200 of those ballots have since been returned, according to the South Carolina Election Commission (SCEC). Should the legislature approve the measure to delay the state’s primary, those ballots will be disqualified.