Senator Ted Cruz told donors at a private fundraiser that Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy would deploy his network to support a Cruz 2028 presidential campaign, according to an anonymous attendee who spoke to the Daily Mail. The claim — denied by both Cruz's office and Ruddy's team — lands just as Ruddy prepares to testify before Cruz's own Senate committee on media ownership.
The timing alone deserves attention.
Cruz chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which is holding a hearing Tuesday titled "We Interrupt This Program: Media Ownership and the Digital Age." Ruddy is a scheduled witness. The two men share a common opponent in the proposed Nexstar-Tegna merger — and if the anonymous donor's account is accurate, they may share quite a bit more.
The donor, described as someone who has contributed financially to Cruz, told the Daily Mail:
"I attended a Ted Cruz fundraiser late last year and during the fundraiser Senator Cruz mentioned that Chris Ruddy would be using Newsmax to support his candidacy when and if he runs for the Republican primary, which is expected."
Cruz spokesperson Macarena Martinez fired back without hesitation:
"Once again, anonymous sources are putting words in Senator Cruz's mouth to further their own agendas. These are obvious lies, but the media once again shows that they are ready and eager to be spun up and used at every opportunity."
She added:
"Journalists used to know how to do their jobs. Those days are clearly far behind us."
Ruddy's team issued its own denial after publication, with a spokesperson saying the Newsmax CEO "denies the 'fake news' he ever promised Senator Cruz any endorsement, and neither he nor Newsmax has made any pledge of support for any candidate in 2028."
The anonymous donor, when presented with the denial, offered a parting shot:
"I guess they don't call him lying Ted for nothing."
So what we have is a single anonymous source against two on-the-record denials. That's worth noting before anyone builds a narrative castle on this foundation.
Even if the specific claim is exaggerated or fabricated, the underlying dynamics are real — and they illuminate the early fault lines of what could be a bruising 2028 Republican primary.
Cruz has been making moves. Last week, in an episode of the Ruthless podcast first obtained by the Daily Mail, he rejected the idea of a Supreme Court appointment that President Trump had recently floated:
"My answer's not just no, it's hell no."
His reasoning was characteristically blunt:
"A principled federal judge stays out of political fights and stays out of policy fights. I want to be right in the middle of them."
That's not a man positioning himself for a lifetime of judicial temperament. That's a man who wants to run for president — again.
Then there's the leaked audio. Last month, recordings given to Axios by a Republican source captured Cruz offering a remarkably candid assessment of Vice President JD Vance:
"Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker's protégé, and they are one and the same."
That's not the kind of thing you say about someone you view as an ally. It's opposition research delivered in your own voice.
If Cruz were shopping for conservative media support, his options would be limited. A source described as close to the White House explained why Ruddy's backing — real or imagined — would matter:
"Because he's got no other conservative outlet. Everyone else is gonna be with JD."
That same source added a less flattering assessment of what Ruddy's support would actually be worth:
"Maybe the way he sees it is Ted's going to be in the primary for a month and then he'll be gone, so it's not really - it's not like he's making a long-term commitment."
The numbers bear out the skepticism. Newsmax pulls roughly one-sixth of Fox News Channel's audience. In January, Newsmax's highest-rated primetime show drew 345,000 viewers. Fox's comparable figure: 2.046 million. It's the difference between a megaphone and a bullhorn — both amplify, but one carries a lot further.
Lost in the 2028 speculation is an actual policy fight worth watching. Tuesday's hearing centers on media ownership rules in the digital age, and the Nexstar-Tegna merger sits at the heart of it.
Tegna owns 64 local television stations across 51 U.S. markets. The FCC currently prohibits broadcasters from owning stations that reach more than 39 percent of American households. An enlarged Nexstar would reach 54.5 percent — blowing past the cap.
Ruddy filed a complaint with the FCC, arguing the deal violates national ownership caps. In a November Newsmax op-ed, he wrote:
"The answer to Big Tech consolidation is not to give left-wing TV broadcasters massive consolidation and power too. We don't need anti-Trump media controlling everything."
He also took a direct shot at the administration's own FCC chairman, Brendan Carr:
"It shocks me President Trump's FCC chairman has made his main priority giving the TV broadcasters more power and control, especially over local news."
President Trump, for his part, endorsed the merger on Truth Social Saturday:
"We need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks. Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar - Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level."
That puts Ruddy and Cruz on one side of a media consolidation fight and the President on the other — a notable split that makes the alleged backroom alliance all the more interesting, regardless of whether it's real.
It also places Ruddy on the same side of the merger issue as Elizabeth Warren, Maxwell Frost, and Summer Lee. Strange bedfellows don't begin to cover it.
Cruz has tangled with FCC Chairman Carr before — particularly over Carr's September move to go after ABC's broadcast license over comments made by Jimmy Kimmel. Cruz called it what he saw:
"Dangerous as hell."
"That's right out of Goodfellas."
His concern wasn't about defending ABC. It was about precedent:
"Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again – wins the White House … they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous."
Cruz warned that if the government got into the business of policing what the media said, "that will end up bad for conservatives." It's a consistent libertarian-conservative position on media regulation, and it explains why he'd chair a hearing designed to scrutinize ownership consolidation rather than rubber-stamp it.
Strip away the anonymous sourcing and the denials, and a clear picture still emerges. Ted Cruz is not going to the Supreme Court. He's not retiring to a podcast. He's running for president — or at minimum, keeping every door open and every relationship warm.
Whether Chris Ruddy promised anything is almost beside the point. The structural reality is that a Cruz campaign would need a media ecosystem, and the major conservative outlets are likely to coalesce around Vance. If Newsmax — even at one-sixth of Fox's audience — provides a platform, it's better than nothing.
Ruddy, meanwhile, told the Daily Mail he looks forward to Tuesday's hearing and "an open and frank discussion about the dangers of media consolidation in the television broadcast industry." He did not answer directly when asked about supporting Cruz's presidential bid.
The denials are on the record. The ambitions are obvious. And both men sit down on Tuesday in a Senate hearing room where their interests happen to align perfectly — on media ownership, at least.
Everything else is just 2028 positioning disguised as 2026 policy.
Ken Paxton is pulling ahead of John Cornyn in the race for Texas's open Senate seat — and the gap isn't shrinking.
A new survey from the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs, conducted between Jan. 20 and Jan. 31, shows Paxton commanding 38% of likely Republican primary voters to Cornyn's 31%. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston sits a distant third at 17%, with 12% of respondents still undecided. Early voting starts Feb. 17 — just over a week away.
On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas leads state Rep. James Talarico by 8 points, 47% to 39%. The general election matchups, meanwhile, suggest the eventual Republican nominee won't matter much: both Paxton and Cornyn beat Crockett by 2 percentage points in head-to-head hypotheticals, and the survey found "little difference" in expected performance regardless of which candidates emerge.
Texas remains Texas.
What makes Paxton's lead notable isn't just the topline number. It's the breadth. According to the poll reported by the Texas Tribune, Paxton leads Cornyn across every key demographic group surveyed — with one exception. Cornyn edges Paxton among Latino voters by 7 percentage points in the Republican primary.
That's a real data point, but it's a narrow one. Paxton's advantage everywhere else — and the survey's indication that he'd hold a big advantage over both opponents in a potential runoff — paints the picture of a candidate whose base is locked in and whose ceiling hasn't been reached. Twelve percent undecided in a three-man race with early voting days away is real estate, and Paxton is positioned to claim it.
Previous polls had described this race as a dead heat. This one doesn't. A 7-point lead outside the margin of error — the poll carries a ±4.18-point margin — marks a genuine shift.
Crockett's 8-point lead over Talarico tracks with what you'd expect when one candidate simply owns the room. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they knew enough about Crockett to form an opinion, compared to 85% for Talarico. That 7-point awareness gap maps almost perfectly onto the 8-point vote gap. Democratic voters know Crockett, and they're picking her.
Talarico has his pockets. He leads among white voters and those with advanced degrees — the wine-track progressive coalition that runs strong in Austin and not many other places. But Crockett dominates among the voters Democrats need in a statewide Texas race. She carries 46% of likely Latino Democratic primary voters to Talarico's 37%, with 15% still unsure.
That's a problem for Talarico, who recently secured an endorsement from the state's largest Hispanic Democratic organization. Previous polls had shown him leading among Latino voters. The endorsement doesn't appear to be holding.
Here's the number that should keep Democratic strategists up at night: it doesn't matter who they nominate. Both Paxton and Cornyn beat Crockett by 2 points in hypothetical general election matchups. The survey even found Paxton could do slightly better than Cornyn against Talarico. Between 7% and 8% of likely general election voters remain unsure in those head-to-heads, but the structural reality of Texas hasn't moved.
Among the 1,502 likely general election voters polled — with a tighter ±2.53 margin of error — President Trump's approval sits at 49% to 50% disapproval. Majorities disapprove of his handling of foreign policy, the economy, international trade, and the cost of living. But 51% approve of his handling of immigration and border security, with 47% disapproving.
In Texas, immigration and the border aren't abstract policy debates. They're lived experience. That single issue keeps the floor firm under any Republican running statewide.
With early voting opening Feb. 17, the contours of both primaries are hardening fast. Twelve percent undecided on each side leaves room for movement but not transformation. Cornyn needs something to change the trajectory — and the poll offers him little to work with beyond his narrow advantage among Latino Republican voters. Hunt, at 17%, is running for a bronze medal or an exit ramp.
The real question isn't whether Paxton or Crockett wins their primaries. The polls — this one and the ones before it — have been trending in one direction for both. The real question is whether Democrats invest serious money in a Texas Senate race where their best candidate trails the Republican field by 2 points in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.
The answer to that question tells you more about the national party's resource discipline than any poll can.
Dr. Jeff Johnson, a Republican running for governor of Minnesota, has suspended his campaign after his 22-year-old daughter, Hallie Marie Tobler, was found dead from multiple stab wounds in a St. Cloud apartment Saturday night.
Tobler's husband was found at the same apartment with what St. Cloud police described as self-inflicted injuries. Police stated he will be taken to jail for suspected homicide once his injuries are treated. No formal charges have been announced.
The Republican Party of Minnesota shared a Facebook post on Monday identifying Tobler as Johnson's daughter. Johnson, a former St. Cloud city council member, suspended his gubernatorial campaign in the wake of her death.
The details are sparse, and the investigation is still unfolding. Officers responded to an apartment on 40th Avenue South in St. Cloud on Saturday night. Inside, they found Hallie Marie Tobler dead from multiple stab wounds. Her husband — who has not been publicly named — was also at the scene, injured in what police described as self-inflicted wounds, according to NBC affiliate KARE11.
Tobler was publicly identified on Monday. She was 22 years old.
The medical examiner confirmed the cause of death. Police have signaled that the husband is the suspect, stating he will be jailed for suspected homicide after receiving medical treatment. But as of the latest reports, no formal charges have been filed.
Dr. Jeff Johnson is not the same Jeff Johnson who twice sought the governor's mansion as a former Hennepin County Commissioner in 2014 and 2018. This Jeff Johnson was building a campaign from his base in St. Cloud — a city he served on the council — when the worst thing that can happen to a parent happened to him.
There is no political spin to apply here. No policy debate makes this moment easier to process. A young woman is dead. A father buried his child. The campaign he was building stopped mattering the instant he got the call.
Johnson suspended his campaign. That word — "suspended" — carries a technical meaning in political language, leaving the door open for a future return.
Domestic violence doesn't belong to a political party. It doesn't care about ideology, income, or geography. It strikes across every demographic in the country, and when it ends in death, the devastation radiates outward — through families, communities, and in this case, the political life of a state.
What makes cases like this particularly haunting is the proximity. Police found the suspect in the same apartment. The injuries were self-inflicted. The contours of this tragedy — a young wife, a husband now facing suspected homicide — trace a pattern that law enforcement and victim advocates encounter with grim regularity.
Hallie Marie Tobler was 22. She had a father who served his community and was trying to serve his state. Whatever the full circumstances turn out to be, nothing will restore what was taken Saturday night in that apartment on 40th Avenue South.
The investigation remains active. Formal charges against Tobler's husband have not been announced, and the public knows very little about the circumstances or motive behind the stabbing. St. Cloud police have committed to jailing the suspect once his medical treatment concludes, but the legal process from here will determine what charges he ultimately faces.
For the Minnesota governor's race, one less candidate is in the field — not because of polls or fundraising or political miscalculation, but because of violence that no amount of ambition or public service can shield a family from.
Dr. Jeff Johnson asked for nothing from the public except, presumably, the space to grieve. That request deserves to be honored.
A father shouldn't have to bury his daughter. He certainly shouldn't have to do it in the middle of a campaign for public office. But the calendar doesn't negotiate, and grief doesn't wait for a convenient moment. Johnson stepped away from the race because the only thing that mattered was the thing he lost.
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid unleashed a string of racially charged attacks on rapper Nicki Minaj during an appearance on "The Don Lemon Show," calling her a "house pet" for the Republican Party and accusing the GOP of using her to "put blackface on MAGA."
The tirade — dripping with the kind of language that would end careers if a conservative uttered it — targeted Minaj for her growing alignment with President Donald Trump and the broader Republican agenda.
Reid didn't just disagree with Minaj's politics. She went after her worth as an artist, her identity as an immigrant, and her standing among Black Americans — all because a Black woman dared to think for herself.
The comments are worth reading in full because paraphrasing them would soften what Reid clearly intended to be a public shaming. As Fox News reported, he framed Minaj's entire relationship with the Republican Party as a transaction built on desperation:
"The reason they want her on a leash as their house pet cuddled at Donald Trump's feet, the reason she is the new house pet is because they need, N-E-E-E-D Black people to give them 'cultural cool.' Black 'cultural cool' has always been a powerful, powerful element in the country."
"On a leash." "House pet." "Cuddled at Donald Trump's feet." This is the language Reid chose — not to describe a political disagreement, but to describe a Black woman who made a choice Reid didn't approve of.
She then dismissed Minaj's entire career by measuring her against other artists:
"She'll never be Rihanna. She'll never have a brand like Rihanna. She'll never be Beyoncé. She's a 40-some year-old, Black female rapper who clearly don't care that much about Black people or immigrants, even though she was an undocumented immigrant."
And she wasn't finished. Reid aimed at Minaj's fanbase directly:
"So the Barbs, you know, you know Nikki ain't s--- and she ain't saying nothing. And a 100 little Barbs can't tell me nothing. Y'all mad about it, be mad about it."
This is a former cable news anchor. On a podcast. Talking like this. About a woman whose crime is attending a policy summit.
Strip away the theatrics, and Reid's argument reduces to something conservatives have watched play out for decades: a Black public figure supports Republicans, and the left's cultural enforcers arrive to revoke their credentials.
Minaj joined President Trump on stage at the Treasury Department's Trump Accounts Summit on January 28 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. She has condemned cancel culture. She has aligned with the Trump administration on stopping the killings of Christians in Nigeria. She has taken on California Gov. Newsom in a scathing interview.
None of that earned a serious policy rebuttal from Reid. Instead, it earned "house pet."
Reid even preemptively attacked the next Black artist who might step out of line:
"Their next gambit is to get the Trinidadian who doesn't care about the killing of Trinidadian fishermen, the female rapper who hates other female rappers, who hates on women who are more popular than her, Cardi B."
The message to any Black artist, entrepreneur, or public figure considering a rightward move could not be clearer: we will come for you. We will question your Blackness, your relevance, your worth. The left doesn't argue with Black conservatives. It punishes them.
A thought exercise that never gets old because the double standard never changes: imagine a conservative commentator calling a Black liberal entertainer a "house pet" on a leash, "cuddled at" a Democratic president's feet. Imagine them declaring that entertainer "ain't s---" and dismissing their fans as irrelevant.
The segment wouldn't survive the hour. Advertisers would flee. Apology tours would be demanded. The word "dehumanizing" would trend for days.
Reid faces none of that. She won't, because the rules that govern racial rhetoric in American media apply in one direction only. When a liberal commentator uses imagery rooted in slavery — leashes, pets, ownership — to describe a Black woman's political choices, it's treated as sharp commentary rather than what it plainly is.
Reid mentioned "other examples of Black cultural icons who have been publicly friendly with the Republican Party in recent years," though she didn't name them. She didn't need to. The playbook is familiar enough.
Every Black figure who breaks ranks gets the same treatment — their intelligence questioned, their motives reduced to money or manipulation, their identity challenged. The left's version of diversity has always had a terms-of-service agreement: think what we tell you, vote how we instruct you, or lose your membership.
Minaj, to her credit, has shown no sign of caring. A rapper who built her career on defiance turns out to be — defiant. The left assumed the rebellion was aesthetic. It wasn't.
The White House offered a brief and pointed response to Reid's comments:
"Reid's takes are so bad even MSDNC fired her."
Short. Accurate. Reid is, after all, a former host — a detail that makes her rant land less like media criticism and more like a person shouting from the parking lot of a building she no longer works in.
Reid told on herself with one line buried in the middle of her diatribe:
"They wouldn't want her if they didn't need cultural cool. Their problem is she ain't cultural cool no more."
This is the fear. Not that Minaj is irrelevant — if she were, Reid wouldn't have spent a segment trying to destroy her. The fear is that she's relevant enough to matter. That a Black woman with a massive platform choosing Trump signals something the left's coalition cannot afford: permission.
Permission for other Black Americans to consider that the party demanding their loyalty hasn't earned it. Permission to attend a policy summit without being called a pet. Permission to care about the killings of Christians in Nigeria without having your racial identity revoked by a former cable host on a podcast.
Reid didn't attack Nicki Minaj because she's irrelevant. She attacked her because the left's grip on Black political identity is slipping — and everyone in that room knew it.
Spencer Pratt — yes, that Spencer Pratt — filed to run for mayor of Los Angeles, and his opening salvo landed squarely on Karen Bass and the city's fire leadership. The former star of The Hills is demanding the firing of multiple L.A. Fire Department officials, including the fire chief and fire battalion chief, over what he describes as a deliberate cover-up of the catastrophic wildfire response in January 2025.
In a video captured by a FOXLA reporter, Pratt laid out his case plainly:
"We're going to find out what failures the mayor and LAFD and the state parks and everyone involved to those 12 people burning alive, 7,000 structures [destroyed]. There's no looking forward until we get the answers and the people that are responsible are fired. That includes the fire chief, the fire battalion chief, that includes the mayor, it includes anybody that had anything to do with [the failed fire response]."
The celebrity-turned-candidate isn't running on vibes. He's running on fury — and on a story that should enrage every Angeleno who watched their city burn.
At the center of Pratt's campaign launch is an allegation that Mayor Bass ordered the watering down of the LAFD's after-action report on the January 2025 wildfires. As Breitbart News reported in December, the report allegedly went through several revisions designed to delete negative aspects of the city's fire response — a response that left more than two dozen people dead and thousands of structures in ashes.
Think about what that means. A city government presided over one of the worst urban fire disasters in modern memory, and instead of conducting an honest accounting of what went wrong, allegedly took a red pen to the findings. Not to fix the failures. To hide them.
Mayor Bass has offered no public response to these allegations within the reporting. Neither has the LAFD. The silence from City Hall is doing a lot of work here — and none of it is reassuring.
Los Angeles has become a masterclass in how one-party governance handles failure: spend lavishly, deliver nothing, and when the bill comes due, edit the receipt.
Pratt also aimed to reduce the city's homelessness spending, promising to audit Los Angeles's budget. The city has poured billions of tax dollars into homelessness programs, and every year the problem metastasizes. The encampments grow. The streets deteriorate. The money vanishes into a bureaucracy that measures success by inputs — dollars spent, programs launched — rather than outcomes. Anyone who has walked through downtown L.A. in the last five years can see where those billions went. Which is to say, nowhere visible.
This is the environment Pratt is stepping into. A city where the political class spends without accountability, fails without consequence, and allegedly sanitizes the evidence when someone tries to document what happened.
The instinct is to dismiss Pratt's candidacy. He's a reality TV personality, not a policy wonk. The political establishment will treat him as a punchline.
But that dismissal misses the point entirely. Pratt lost his home in the Palisades fire. He's not theorizing about government failure from a distance — he lived it. And in a city where the professional political class has produced nothing but decline, the question voters should ask isn't whether Pratt has governing experience. It's whether the people with governing experience have actually governed.
Karen Bass came into office with every institutional advantage. She had the party infrastructure, the media goodwill, and the full backing of Sacramento. And when the fires came, the hydrants ran dry, the response faltered, and more than two dozen people died. The after-action report that was supposed to ensure it never happened again was allegedly gutted on her orders.
Pratt may or may not be the right person to run Los Angeles. But he's asking the right questions — questions the incumbent has refused to answer.
The mayoral race just acquired a candidate with name recognition, a personal connection to the disaster, and zero loyalty to the political machinery that produced it. Pratt has promised a full audit of city spending and a relentless pursuit of answers on the fire response. Whether he can build a campaign infrastructure to match the rhetoric remains to be seen.
But here's what's already clear: the political establishment in Los Angeles would prefer this story disappear. They'd prefer the after-action report stay scrubbed. They'd prefer voters move on, accept the losses, and keep electing the same people who produced them.
More than two dozen people are dead. Thousands lost everything. And the city's own accounting of what went wrong was allegedly rewritten to protect the people responsible.
Someone was going to run on that. Now someone is.
Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party swept to a supermajority in Sunday's snap election, handing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — the country's first female prime minister — a commanding mandate just months after she took office. The LDP captured 316 of 465 seats in the House of Representatives, blowing well past the 233 needed for a simple majority.
Takaichi had staked everything on the gamble, threatening to resign if the LDP lost its majority. She didn't just keep it. She crushed the threshold by 83 seats.
The result lands as a major validation — not only of Takaichi's leadership, but of the broader alliance she has cultivated with President Trump, who endorsed her ahead of the vote.
Takaichi's political DNA traces directly to the late Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister during Trump's first term and one of the few world leaders who built a genuine personal friendship with the American president, according to the Washington Examiner. Abe was assassinated in 2022, but the strategic vision he championed — a stronger, more assertive Japan tightly aligned with the United States — didn't die with him.
Takaichi has picked up that mantle with deliberate symbolism. Last fall, she joined Trump aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier in Japan. In October, she gifted him Abe's golf putter — a gesture that carried weight far beyond protocol. It signaled continuity: the alliance Abe built would not only survive but deepen.
Her post-election message to Trump, posted on X, made the point explicit:
"I am sincerely grateful to President Donald J. Trump for his warm words. Our Alliance and friendship with the United States of America are built on deep trust and close, strong cooperation. The potential of our Alliance is LIMITLESS. Let us work together to ensure that our Alliance continues to bring peace and prosperity to our two nations — and beyond."
That's not diplomatic boilerplate. That's a leader who understands that the U.S.-Japan relationship is the load-bearing wall of Pacific security — and who wants Washington to know she's building, not renovating.
Takaichi's policy agenda reads like a wish list for anyone who has spent the last decade begging allied nations to carry their own weight. She has committed to ramping up defense spending and has pursued investment commitments worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. Her stated framework centers on what she calls a "responsible and proactive fiscal policy" designed to "ensure necessary investments."
This matters. For years, the conservative critique of allied nations — particularly in NATO, but also in the Pacific — has been straightforward: they free-ride on American military power while underinvesting in their own defense and offering little in return. Japan under Takaichi is moving in the opposite direction. More defense spending. Massive capital is flowing into the American economy. A tighter bilateral alliance built on mutual commitment rather than one-sided obligation.
Compare that posture to the Europeans who still treat every request for burden-sharing as an affront. Takaichi doesn't need to be dragged to the table. She showed up early and brought investment commitments.
The scale of this victory matters beyond the headline number. With 316 seats in a 465-seat chamber, the LDP holds more than a two-thirds supermajority. That is not a governing coalition held together by favors and fragile agreements. It is a mandate that gives Takaichi the political capital to move aggressively on defense, fiscal policy, and the U.S. alliance without being hamstrung by coalition partners or legislative gridlock.
She bet her premiership on a snap election months into the job — and the Japanese electorate answered with the clearest possible signal of confidence.
For an Indo-Pacific region watching China's military buildup, North Korea's provocations, and the broader contest for influence across Asia, a politically secure, pro-alliance Japanese prime minister is not a small thing. It is a strategic asset.
Trump's endorsement of Takaichi ahead of the election drew the usual skepticism from the usual corners. Foreign endorsements are supposed to be irrelevant at best, counterproductive at worst — or so the conventional wisdom holds.
Takaichi won a supermajority.
The endorsement reflected something real: a relationship between two leaders whose strategic interests are aligned and whose personal rapport is built on the foundation Abe laid years ago. Trump recognized a leader who was already doing the things he has demanded of allies — investing in defense, investing in America, and strengthening the bilateral relationship without preconditions or lectures.
In a world where allied leaders often say the right things in summits and then slow-walk their commitments the moment the cameras turn off, Takaichi is delivering. Sunday's result ensures she'll have the power to keep delivering for years to come.
The strongest alliance in the Pacific just got stronger — and the voters who made it possible weren't confused about what they were choosing.
Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada announced Friday that he will not seek reelection, bringing the total number of House Republicans stepping away from Congress this year to 30. Twenty-one Democrats have also opted not to run again, pushing the chamber toward what could be historically significant turnover heading into the midterms.
Amodei, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee, has served in the House since 2011. He framed his departure as a matter of timing, not frustration.
"After 15 years of service, I believe it is the right time for Nevada and myself to pass the torch."
The announcement lands at a moment when more than 10% of House incumbents plan to leave — the highest percentage at this point in the calendar since at least the Obama administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of retirements going back to 2013.
Amodei's language was classically valedictory, Mediaite reported. He spoke of listening to Nevadans, fighting for values, and passing the torch. Nothing in his statement suggests internal conflict or disillusionment.
"Serving the people of Nevada has been the honor of my lifetime. Nobody is prouder of our Nevada Congressional District than me. Thank you for the honor. Every achievement worth doing began with listening to Nevadans and fighting for our values."
President Trump endorsed Amodei for reelection back in November on Truth Social:
"Mark Amodei has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!"
Amodei thanked him publicly on X. Whatever prompted his change of heart came after that exchange — and Amodei isn't saying what it was.
The number 30 is large enough to demand attention but too blunt an instrument to tell you much on its own. Retirements happen for dozens of reasons — age, redistricting risk, the pull of private life, frustration with governing in a razor-thin majority where every vote is a hostage negotiation. Lumping them all under one narrative is lazy.
Some departures this cycle have been more conspicuous than others. Marjorie Taylor Greene left her seat this year amid reported tensions with the party. That's a different story than a 15-year veteran from Nevada deciding the work is done.
What the number does reveal is this: the GOP's House majority, already slim, faces a serious structural challenge in the midterms. Every open seat is a seat without the incumbency advantage. Every retirement creates a primary, and every primary creates a window for Democrats to compete in districts they otherwise couldn't touch. Republicans don't have the margin to treat 30 open seats as routine housekeeping.
It's who replaces them.
Open-seat primaries are where the direction of the party actually gets decided — not in cable news debates about the soul of conservatism, but in district-level races where voters pick the person who'll cast votes on spending, immigration, and oversight for the next two years. If the GOP recruits strong candidates who can hold these seats and govern effectively, the retirements are a natural generational shift. If they don't, the retirements become a gift to Democrats who need to flip only a handful of seats to reclaim the gavel.
The conservative project in the House — DOGE-aligned spending reform, border enforcement, accountability for federal agencies — doesn't survive a Democratic majority. Every one of these 30 seats is a line that has to hold.
Twenty-one Democratic retirements deserve more attention than they're getting. The media's fixation on Republican departures treats them as evidence of a crisis while Democratic retirements barely register as news. The imbalance in coverage is revealing — not because 30 isn't a larger number than 21, but because the framing is always "Republican party in chaos" and never "Democrats fleeing a weak brand."
Both parties are bleeding incumbents. Only one party's bleeding gets treated as a symptom of dysfunction.
Amodei says he'll finish his term. Nevada's second congressional district will have an open primary. The state's political landscape — competitive but right-leaning at the congressional level — means this seat is holdable for Republicans, but not automatically.
The broader midterm picture is the one that matters. Thirty retirements don't doom a majority, but they demand a seriousness about candidate recruitment and resource allocation that leaves no room for complacency. The majority was built seat by seat. It can disappear the same way.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard torched Sen. Mark Warner on Saturday, posting a detailed rebuttal on X after the Virginia Democrat accused her of burying a classified whistleblower complaint filed against her last May. Gabbard didn't mince words—she called Warner a liar and laid out a timeline she says exonerates her office entirely.
The complaint, filed by an unnamed U.S. intelligence official eight months ago, alleges wrongdoing on the part of Gabbard. Neither the contents nor the specific allegations have been revealed. What has been revealed is a political fight over process—specifically, how long the complaint sat before reaching Congress and who bears responsibility for the delay.
Warner says the law required Congress to receive the complaint within 21 days. Gabbard says that the requirement doesn't apply here. One of them is banking on the public not reading the fine print.
Gabbard's Saturday post was lengthy, specific, and combative. She went after Warner by name and accused him of coordinating with the media to mislead the public.
"Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI 'hid' a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie."
She then zeroed in on the custody chain—a detail Warner's framing conveniently omits. The complaint wasn't sitting in Gabbard's desk drawer. According to Gabbard, it was secured by Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson, who held possession of it for months before her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, continued the same protocols, as Fox News reports.
"I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower's complaint, so I obviously could not have 'hidden' it in a safe. Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was in possession of and responsible for securing the complaint for months."
That's a significant point. If the complaint spent the bulk of its life in the hands of a Biden-appointed inspector general, the "Gabbard buried it" narrative requires some creative rewriting of the calendar.
Warner's accusation rests on a specific legal claim: that the statute required the complaint to reach Congress within 21 days of filing. Gabbard's rebuttal rests on an equally specific legal distinction—one that matters far more than Warner seems to want anyone to notice.
"The '21 day' requirement that Senator Warner alleges I did not comply with, only applies when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent AND apparently credible. That was NOT the case here."
An inspector general representative told the Wall Street Journal that it had determined some of the allegations in the complaint weren't credible, while it hasn't decided on others. If the complaint failed the credibility threshold, the 21-day clock never started. Warner's entire legal argument collapses into a talking point.
Gabbard said she was first notified by Chris Fox on December 4 that she needed to provide security guidance on how to share the complaint with Congress. She wrote that she took immediate action and that the IC Inspector General shared the complaint and referenced intelligence with relevant members of Congress last week. Fox hand-delivered it to the Gang of 8.
Gabbard offered Warner a choice:
Either he knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he doesn't have a clue how these things work and is therefore not qualified to be in the U.S. Senate.
Both options are unflattering. Neither is implausible.
Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NPR on Thursday that the situation was straightforward:
"The law is clear."
He added that the complaint was required to be sent to Congress within 21 days of its filing and said he believed it was an effort to bury the whistleblower complaint. His office told Fox News Digital that Gabbard's post was an "inaccurate attack that's entirely on brand for someone who has already and repeatedly proven she's unqualified to serve as DNI."
Notice what's missing from Warner's response: any engagement with Gabbard's actual legal argument. She cited the credibility threshold. He repeated, "The law is clear." She named the Biden-era inspector general who held the complaint for months. He said she buried it. The accusation doesn't change no matter how many times the defense is stated—which tells you everything about whether this is a legal dispute or a political operation.
Sen. Tom Cotton reviewed the complaint and the inspector general's handling of it, then posted his assessment on X Thursday:
"I agree with both inspectors general who have evaluated the matter: the complaint is not credible and the inspectors general and the DNI took the necessary steps to ensure the material has handled and transmitted appropriately in accordance with law."
Cotton didn't stop there. He framed the entire episode as part of a broader pattern—one that should sound familiar to anyone who watched the last decade of Washington politics.
"To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president's critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don't like; it's definitely not credible allegations of waste, fraud, or abuse."
Cotton's characterization carries weight here. He's a Republican on the intelligence committee who has actually read the classified material. Warner has read it too—but Warner's public statements focus on process timelines, not the substance of what's in the complaint. That asymmetry is telling.
One U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal that disclosing the complaint's contents could cause "grave damage to national security." That's a detail worth sitting with. The same complaint Democrats are using to attack Gabbard is apparently so sensitive that its mere disclosure would be dangerous—and yet the political pressure campaign to publicize the dispute around it rolls forward without hesitation.
This is the contradiction at the heart of Warner's gambit. He wants maximum political damage from a complaint whose contents he can't discuss, filed by a person he can't name, about allegations an inspector general has partly deemed not credible. The weapon isn't the complaint itself. It's the accusation that it was hidden.
The whistleblower's lawyer accused Gabbard's office of slow-walking the complaint. Gabbard's office called the accusation "baseless and politically motivated."
Washington has a well-worn formula for this kind of fight. A classified complaint surfaces through media leaks. The substance remains hidden—conveniently immune to public scrutiny—while the process debate dominates headlines. The accused can't fully defend herself without compromising classified material. The accuser gets to imply the worst while risking nothing.
Gabbard, to her credit, engaged on the specifics. She named the Biden-era inspector general who held the complaint. She cited the legal standard Warner ignored. She provided a timeline with dates. Warner responded with a sentence fragment and a character attack.
The question isn't whether the complaint was in a safe for eight months. Everyone agrees it was. The question is whether Gabbard put it there—or whether a Biden appointee did, following standard protocol for classified material that didn't meet the credibility bar for expedited congressional review.
Warner knows the answer. He's counting on everyone else not to ask the question.
Nancy Pelosi is throwing her weight behind Jack Schlossberg, the 32-year-old grandson of President John F. Kennedy, in the Democratic primary for New York's 12th Congressional District. The 85-year-old former House Speaker's endorsement lands in a crowded field vying for the Manhattan seat vacated by Rep. Jerold Nadler, who announced his retirement after more than three decades in Congress.
The district stretches from Union Square to the Upper West Side and Upper East Side — some of the most expensive real estate in America, populated by some of the most reliably Democratic voters in the country. And yet the primary way to represent them has turned into something genuinely entertaining.
Pelosi's statement, obtained by The Post, was prepared by Schlossberg's own campaign — a detail worth pausing on. The statement highlights Schlossberg's:
The language reads less like an independent endorsement and more like a press release the candidate wrote about himself and handed to a famous person to sign. That's not unusual in politics, but it tells you something about how much of this race runs on brand rather than substance, as New York Post reports.
Pelosi served in Congress alongside several members of the Kennedy family — the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former Rep. Joe Kennedy, and former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III. The dynasty connection runs deep, and Pelosi is betting it still means something to Manhattan Democrats.
Schlossberg has been branded a "nepo baby" since launching his run, and it's not hard to see why. His mother is Caroline Kennedy, former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia. His political résumé consists largely of being a political commentator and delivering a speech at the Democratic National Convention. He is 32 years old, running for a seat held for decades by a 78-year-old career legislator, in a district where name recognition is currency.
The Kennedy name is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Strip it away, and you have a young commentator with no legislative record, backed by an octogenarian former Speaker, competing in a primary against candidates who have actually held office or built careers outside their family trees.
Among the other contenders: state Assemblyman Micah Lasher, former journalist Jami Floyd, and — in one of the more surreal entries — George Conway, described as a former Republican and the ex-husband of former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. Manhattan Democrats now get to choose between a Kennedy scion, a man whose chief public identity for years was opposing his own wife's boss, and an assemblyman who probably wonders how he ended up as the boring option.
The most interesting subplot isn't the primary itself — it's the family fracture the campaign spotlights. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Schlossberg's cousin, serves as Health and Human Services Secretary. Schlossberg called him:
"A rabid dog."
The White House pushed back on the remark. So here is the Kennedy family in 2026: one member running for Congress as a Democrat with Pelosi's blessing, another serving in a Republican administration, and the candidate publicly savaging his own relative to prove his partisan bona fides.
This is what happens when a political dynasty outlives its unifying figure. The Kennedys no longer represent a coherent political vision. They represent a last name that different family members cash in from opposite sides of the aisle. Schlossberg needs Democratic voters to see him as the "real" Kennedy — the one who stayed loyal to the party — while RFK Jr. charts his own course entirely. The family Christmas must be something.
Schlossberg's family also suffered a genuine tragedy in late December when his sister, Tatiana Schlossberg, died at age 35 from leukemia. That loss is real and deserves recognition regardless of political disagreement.
The NY-12 primary is a miniature portrait of the modern Democratic Party. The establishment — embodied by Pelosi — rallies behind legacy and celebrity. The progressive base hasn't coalesced around an alternative. And the field is cluttered with candidates whose qualifications range from "state legislator" to "famous last name" to "divorced a Republican."
For conservatives watching from the outside, the race offers a useful reminder: Democrats don't run on policy in districts where policy differences between candidates are negligible. They run on pedigree, endorsements, and who can most convincingly perform outrage at the other side. Schlossberg's signature policy contribution so far is calling his own cousin a rabid dog.
Pelosi's endorsement won't decide this race, but it reveals who the Democratic establishment wants carrying the torch — someone young, photogenic, and named Kennedy. Whether Manhattan voters want the same thing, or whether they've finally grown tired of dynasties, is the only interesting question left.
The Kennedys once inspired a generation. Now they're splitting Thanksgiving over cabinet appointments.
A longtime Biden aide just pulled back the curtain on the Democratic Party's social media operation—and what she revealed is a case study in political malpractice. Stefanie Feldman, who served in numerous campaign and official roles with Joe Biden for more than a decade, publicly shared a meme that Biden's 2020 digital team wanted to post from the official campaign account: a cartoon rabbit holding a sign that read "JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD."
Feldman vetoed it. And the fact that anyone on a presidential campaign thought it was a good idea tells you everything about where the Democratic Party's digital brain trust has been operating for years.
Newsweek reported that the disclosure arrived as former Vice President Kamala Harris rebranded her 2024 campaign account "Kamala HQ"—which boasts millions of followers on X—into a new entity called "Headquarters."
The rebrand, announced Thursday, sparked a broader reckoning among Democrats about whether their entire approach to social media has been a vanity project dressed up as strategy.
Feldman didn't mince words about the post she killed. She shared the image publicly and laid out her reasoning in plain terms:
"Here's my fav example of something the Biden 2020 digi team wanted to tweet out from the Biden campaign account. I vetoed it bc it is such an outrageously unserious reaction to a serious moment and not Biden brand. Lots of digi ppl were upset w me!"
A cartoon rabbit. For George Floyd. From the account of a man running for President of the United States.
Commentator Anthony LaMesa captured the reaction succinctly:
"This is the kind of thing that you'd imagine a white supremacist might post to ironically mock George Floyd's tragic death. Truly unbelievable. Reflects well on @StefFeldman that she wisely vetoed it."
Feldman's post was viewed 1.7 million times—far more engagement, one suspects, than most of the content the Biden digital team actually published. The irony writes itself.
Feldman's critique went deeper than one bad meme. She raised a structural problem that Democrats have been papering over with impressions counts and viral moments for years: nobody can actually prove that any of this works.
"I've yet to see digi folks measure success beyond views/likes. I've even seen them hype a post as 'effective' bc it had a huge # of impressions, when that post was ratio'd with neg content."
Think about that. Democratic digital operatives were celebrating posts that were going viral, specifically because people were mocking them—and counting that as a win. The engagement was real. The persuasion was nonexistent. But the budget kept flowing.
Feldman expanded on this point to Newsweek:
"I've seen some situations where the incentives for digital teams is just to rack up likes or impressions, and I think that spurs production of content like the piece I shared. I was asking whether anyone has figured out how to better measure the impact of digital work, because I certainly don't know the practices of every single digital shop."
This is the Democratic digital apparatus in a single paragraph: teams optimized for applause from other Democrats, producing content that makes the base feel clever while doing nothing—or worse than nothing—to persuade anyone outside the bubble. The rabbit meme wasn't an aberration. It was the logical endpoint of a machine built to generate likes rather than votes.
Into this wreckage steps Harris with her new "Headquarters" account. Lauren Kapp, who ran Harris' TikTok account during the 2024 race, previously told Newsweek the project signals deeper ambitions:
"This specifically just shows the Vice President's commitment to Gen. Z. This really is an investment into Gen. Z and people who are trying to reach young people. But this account is more than any one candidate or campaign."
An investment into Gen Z. From the party that just watched young voters shift toward Republicans in 2024. Harris foregoed a gubernatorial run in California this year and is viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate—polls currently show her as a top contender in the Democratic primary. So the rebrand isn't altruism. It's infrastructure for the next campaign, built on the same foundation that produced a cartoon rabbit for George Floyd.
Democratic strategist Matt Royer saw through it immediately:
"So in keeping with the same trend of Youth Engagement within Progressive and Democratic politics, we have made yet another Gen Z oriented organization that needs funding to work parallel to all of the other orgs that already exist and pull from the same funders? Be serious."
Even Democrats recognize the pattern: new branding, same dysfunction, another funding stream diverted into a parallel structure that duplicates existing efforts. The party's response to losing is always more apparatus, never better judgment.
Feldman said she hopes someone is working on solutions. She offered a generous assessment of the Headquarters effort:
"I am hopeful there are smart digital strategies people working on the solution right now."
"Maybe those people are even the people behind the new HQ account."
Maybe. But the evidence points in the other direction. Democrats lost in 2024 despite dominating social media engagement metrics. Kamala HQ generated enormous traffic—millions of followers, viral moments, the full suite of digital content that makes campaign staffers feel like they're winning. And they lost anyway. Kalshi betting odds currently give Democrats a 78 percent chance of taking the House and just a 36 percent chance of controlling the Senate. The digital machine keeps humming, and the actual results keep deteriorating.
Democratic strategist Andrew Mamo offered advice that landed like an epitaph for the entire operation:
"Be normal. Be yourself. Be real. If you wouldn't post it with your own two thumbs, don't let your team do it!"
Simple counsel. And yet "be normal" is the one directive the Democratic digital ecosystem seems structurally incapable of following. Normalcy doesn't generate impressions. A cartoon rabbit does—just not the kind of impressions that translate into anything resembling persuasion or electoral success.
The rabbit meme matters not because it was posted—it wasn't—but because it was proposed. It emerged from a professional campaign operation staffed by credentialed digital strategists who looked at a moment of genuine national crisis and reached for a cartoon animal. When Feldman vetoed it, they were upset with her. The instinct wasn't embarrassment. It was frustrating that the grown-up had intervened.
This is what happens when a party's digital culture rewards performance over persuasion. You end up with teams that treat politics like content creation—optimized for shares, stripped of substance, and completely untethered from the actual voters they need to reach. The content gets more polished. The memes get sharper. The losses get bigger.
Feldman deserves credit for saying the quiet part out loud. Democrats, she argued, need "to figure out better ways to measure whether social media is helping Democrats win." It's a remarkable admission: after years of being told that the left owned the internet, one of Biden's own people is standing in the wreckage asking if any of it mattered.
The rabbit held a sign demanding justice. The voters delivered a different verdict entirely.