Bloomberg.com • 21st December 2025

States Are Now the Check on America’s Executive

Thank goodness for state governments. One of the most underappreciated stories in 2025 was the role states played in checking federal overreach. As the Trump administration barreled through norms, rules and laws, state officials — sometimes from both parties — supplied the friction to slow the administration’s power grab. Trump swept into power with Republican control over both chambers of Congress, but he avoided working with Congress as much as possible. He spent the first year of his second t...

Bloomberg.com • 14th December 2025

Can Jasmine Crockett's TikTok Campaign Win Texas?

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett’s last-minute entrance into the Texas Senate race last week suggests that the most valuable political currency in this attention economy may be viral videos. But can she bank on them to win?

Bloomberg.com • 11th December 2025

What Miami’s Mayoral Election Says About 2026

Odd-year elections are not always reliable predictors of future events. But in Miami, where voters have increasingly moved right, progressive Democrat Eileen Higgins’ victory Tuesday over a Trump-endorsed rival is the latest warning sign for Republicans that, especially in communities with heavy immigrant populations, voters are frustrated with the GOP’s approach. And their frustration is leading to action. There are three main takeaways:

Bloomberg.com • 10th December 2025

Cuellar’s Pardon Shows the Art of the Unsealed Deal

For the latest bit of proof that President Donald Trump has lost his political mojo and that his era is one of political rot, look no further than the curious case of Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat. Here’s the timeline:

Bloomberg.com • 3rd December 2025

College Cancel Culture Is Getting Worse

It has been another brutal year for academic freedom. Colleges and universities have become entangled in political agendas; donors and trustees have used funding as a cudgel; and the Trump administration has withheld federal money to demand ideological compliance. America’s once-revered institutions have succumbed to intimidation, eroding the public’s confidence that they could uphold their commitments to free expression.It’s time for the US to hit reset on this trend.

Bloomberg.com • 3rd December 2025

Another Warning Sign for the GOP: This Tennessee House Race

Aftyn Behn, a Democratic state representative from Nashville, tried to flip a Tennessee congressional seat President Donald Trump won by 22 percentage points on Tuesday. She failed; Republican Matt Van Epps won with a 9-point margin. But the magnitude of the shift was another sign that even reliably Republican districts could be at play in the 2026 midterms, giving Democrats a good chance to regain control of the US House next year.

Bloomberg.com • 26th November 2025

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Voters Admire Her Courage. Will It Matter?

Marjorie Taylor Greene arrived in her district five years ago as an outsider who defeated a long list of unprepared Republicans with her acid-mouthed devotion to the then-former President Donald Trump and his conspiracies.Last week, with her surprise announcement that she is leaving the job a year early, she demonstrated a unique ability to counterpunch. The political implications of Greene’s resignation drew a mixed reaction from the members of her district I spoke with.

Bloomberg.com • 22nd November 2025

The Military Is in a Bind Created by Its Commander in Chief

When President Donald Trump claimed that members of Congress deserved the death penalty this week, he showed yet again that he doesn’t respect the rule of law. The president turned to social media Thursday morning to accuse six Democratic members of Congress of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”

Bloomberg.com • 21st November 2025

ICE Is Testing Charlotte’s Biggest Employers. They’re Failing.

The reaction by residents in North Carolina’s largest city to the immigration crackdown that began on Saturday has been empathetic and broad. The reaction by the region’s largest employers? Notably silent.This week, hundreds of students walked out of Charlotte-area schools to protest the Trump administration’s immigration raids.

Bloomberg.com • 18th November 2025

The Property Tax Fight Is a Power Grab in Texas and Florida

As affordability politics take center stage across America, at least 18 states are attempting to lower or eliminate property taxes to offset the dramatic rise in property values. It’s a worthy debate, but wiping out property taxes, or dramatically limiting them, is dangerous. It not only strips local communities of an economically efficient tax , it also erodes their autonomy, making them more susceptible to any authoritarian-leaning lawmakers at the state level. There’s littl...

Bloomberg • 12th November 2025

The Irony of the RNC’s Latest Election Lawsuit

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case brought by the Republican National Committee against Mississippi, challenging its law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day. The RNC argues that accepting mail-in ballots that were postmarked on or before Election Day, but that arrived in election offices after that date, “undermines trust in elections.” It’s a specious argument.

Bloomberg • 11th November 2025

Republicans Just Got a Wake-Up Call on Their Midterm Maps

Republicans' strategy to create new Republican-leaning districts may have backfired, as last week's election results show the party losing support from the voter groups President Donald Trump won over in 2024.

Bloomberg.com • 6th November 2025

This Georgia Upset Is the Real Preview of 2026

Pocketbook issues took center stage in Democratic victories in Virginia, New Jersey and New York Tuesday night, as well as in a usually obscure election in Georgia. Both New Jersey and Virginia lean blue, but the Georgia election may be the real bellwether for 2026. With voters unhappy about higher electric bills and prices, and dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump rising, are Georgia voters telling us something?

Bloomberg.com • 3rd November 2025

The Strange Quest to Unseat MAGA Stalwart Thomas Massie

President Donald Trump’s months-long effort to find a primary challenger to Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, a fellow Republican and MAGA devotee, is the latest proof that Republicans in Washington were never truly intent on achieving the agenda they sold to voters last year. If they were, they would be endorsing Massie as exactly the kind of anti-establishment conservative they’d want to see more of in Congress.

Bloomberg.com • 26th October 2025

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Pivot From Trump, Explained

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Georgia Republican, has been breaking ranks with President Donald Trump and the GOP leadership in Congress on an increasingly long list of issues. She's not only reflecting the concerns of her district, her move is pragmatic. “Prior to these decoupling movements, she couldn’t run statewide,” a state legislator who represents part of her district told me.

Bloomberg.com • 20th October 2025

North Carolina’s New Electoral Map Resurrects Jim Crow

North Carolina Republicans will officially enter the redistricting arms race this week when lawmakers try to heed President Donald Trump’s call to create additional Republican seats. But carving out another safe GOP seat will only further unravel the state’s already frayed democratic institutions and leave the state’s rural “Black Belt” region without meaningful representation in Washington. That’s not the representative democracy these lawmakers swore an oath to uphold.

Bloomberg.com • 16th October 2025

National Guard Troops Didn’t Sign Up for This

“Nobody signed up for this.” That’s the reaction I keep getting from military and National Guard veterans about President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to US cities over the objections of Democratic mayors and governors.They worry that the very thing military members enlist to do — to serve and protect the country — is being undermined by a president whose use of the military for a political stunt is making the nation less safe.

Bloomberg.com • 12th October 2025

Georgia Is Testing Whether Voters Still Cross Party Lines

It’s no secret that US politics has gotten more polarized. That means fewer voters split their tickets, voting for both a Democrat and a Republican. Between 2008 and 2022, the percentage of voters who crossed party lines fell from 12% to 5%, according to Daniel Moskowitz at the University of Chicago. But in Georgia, almost every candidate seems to be trying to win voters from the other party. That’s what our politics could look like if politicians had to do more than turn out their bases.

Bloomberg.com • 8th October 2025

Threats Against Judges Have Crossed the Line

The destruction of South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein’s home in a fiery inferno over the weekend immediately led to speculation that it was an act of political violence. South Carolina officials are still investigating, and they said on Monday that “there is no evidence to indicate” that the cause of the explosion “was intentionally set.” But it says something about this moment that a judge being violently targeted was so easy to imagine.

Bloomberg.com • 5th October 2025

Did Trump Notice Where His Presidential Library Will Be Built?

Presidential libraries often attempt to elevate accomplishments and whitewash failures. Donald Trump and his family think that Florida officials have given them a prime location to do just that with his library. But by choosing this setting, they have instead found the perfect way to create a permanent reminder of how Trump’s presidency tested and upended every foundational value of freedom and democracy in America.