Bloomberg.com • 26th March 2026

Rubio’s Courtroom Moment Has 2028 Implications

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified against his longtime ally David Rivera in federal court in Miami this week, it was reportedly the first time a sitting cabinet member had taken the stand in a criminal trial since 1983. Rubio’s testimony wasn’t just remarkable for breaking a four-decade streak. It also carried a potential political upside. By breaking from a friend whose legal troubles have dogged Rubio for years, he may be able to minimize a political vulnerability ahead of a likely...

Bloomberg.com • 20th March 2026

Trump’s Voting Crackdown Could Cost the GOP Votes

Senate Republicans started debate this week on the SAVE America Act, an unprecedented voting overhaul that President Donald Trump says will “guarantee the midterms” for his party. But despite the president’s pressure campaign, the bill is unlikely to pass — at least in its current form.That’s partly because Senate Republicans don’t seem to have the 60 votes to end a filibuster and overcome Democratic opposition. The other reason — the one Republicans have voiced privately — is that the act could...

Bloomberg.com • 19th March 2026

Florida’s Red Wall on Immigration Is Starting to Crack

Cracks are widening in the Republican Party’s support for the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration enforcement. The latest fissure developed this week in deep-red Florida. A panel of Republican sheriffs and chiefs of police, the backbone of Florida’s law enforcement establishment, agreed on Monday to draft a letter to President Donald Trump and congressional leaders urging them to stop rounding up immigrants who they said arrived in the U.S. “inappropriately” but have otherwis...

Bloomberg.com • 15th March 2026

Trump’s Immigration Raids Are Reshaping the Catholic Vote

It’s not normal for a priest to bring a cell phone into the sanctuary when he is celebrating Mass. But when Father Paul Haverstock heard there were masked immigration agents in the parking lot of his church in January, he said he wanted “a clear recording of me letting the agents know that we’re in the middle of a religious service.”Haverstock is pastor at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, which has a largely Spanish-speaking congregation. He never needed to do any...

Bloomberg.com • 11th March 2026

Florida’s Young Republicans Have a Hate Problem

An ugly feature of the Republican Party in the MAGA era resurfaced this month in Florida, even though the GOP has long been trying to hide it.A WhatsApp group chat for Republican students started by the secretary of the Miami-Dade County GOP was recently leaked to the Miami Herald and the conservative website The Floridian. Messages from last fall show participants spewing hatred against Jews, graphically describing violence against Black people, demeaning women and LGBTQ individuals, and even g...

Bloomberg.com • 4th March 2026

Four Takeaways From the Texas Primaries

Texas voters delivered surprises to both parties in Tuesday’s statewide primaries, signaling they may be prepared for tectonic change in November. But election night in the Lone Star State also provided a preview of how Republicans willing to elevate President Donald Trump’s unfounded rumors about widespread voter fraud might disrupt elections come November.Here are four takeaways: Texas voters delivered surprises to both parties in Tuesday’s statewide primaries, signaling they may be prepared...

Bloomberg.com • 2nd March 2026

Can State Election Officials Trust the White House?

After federal officials said last week that they didn’t plan to station immigration agents at voting locations during the midterm elections, secretaries of state from across the country had two reactions: relief and skepticism.In public comments and interviews, they said they were happy to see that the Trump administration appeared to be tamping down speculation that it would send ICE agents to polling places in the name of “verifying” voters. But they were not sure whether to believe it. After...

Bloomberg.com • 1st March 2026

A Nobel Peace Prize for Minneapolis? It’s a Worthy Idea

The city of Minneapolis and its people deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. The city was formally nominated for the prize in January by the progressive magazine The Nation, a move met with a “heck yes” by a longtime member of the editorial board at the city’s main newspaper.True, it would be unprecedented. No city has ever won. But, as the nominators wrote, these are unprecedented times and Minneapolis “has met and exceeded the committee’s standard of promoting ‘democracy and human rights and work aim...

Bloomberg.com • 22nd February 2026

The Supreme Court Just Did Congress’ Job on Tariffs

The US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs is a loud wake-up call for Congress. If the legislative branch had been doing its job last year and hadn’t ceded its taxing power when the White House embarked on this unprecedented protectionist journey, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re now in.But with its 6-3 ruling on Feb. 20, the high court not only reaffirmed the separation of powers but invited Congress to reassert itself as the branch w...

Bloomberg.com • 21st February 2026

This Trump-Voting Town Doesn’t Want an ICE Prison Camp

The people of Social Circle, Georgia, want their community to be known as “Georgia’s Greatest Little Town.” It’s a sweet descriptor which adds to the already charming name a traveler gave the community 200 years ago. But if the Trump/Vance administration gets its way, Social Circle could soon become known for something repulsive.The Department of Homeland Security is barreling forward with a plan to make this once-sleepy town of 5,000 home to the largest federal detention center on the East Coas...

Bloomberg.com • 14th February 2026

The Parkland Teens Beat the Gun Lobby — and Fear They Couldn’t Today

As the US struggles with how to respond to the violent actions of federal immigration enforcement agents, it’s a good time to remember how one small Florida community turned its tragedy into a national movement.Eight years ago on Valentine’s Day, a mentally unstable 19-year-old brought his legally obtained AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to his former high school and went on a shooting spree. As the US struggles with how to respond to the violent actions of federal immigration enforcement agents, it...

Bloomberg.com • 11th February 2026

The GOP’s Voter ID Bill Is Back and as Cynical as Ever

There’s something very cynical about Republicans’ efforts this week to pass a law requiring massive changes to the nation’s voting laws ahead of the November midterms. They must think Americans are easily fooled.The proposal, the SAVE America Act, revives a stalled 2025 effort to require Americans to show a government ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register. The measure passed the House last spring, but it never moved in the Senate. There’s something very cynical about Republicans’ effo...

Bloomberg.com • 6th February 2026

AI Has Turned Bernie and DeSantis Into Unlikely Allies

Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis don’t agree on much, but the data-center boom is a rare exception. Vermont’s Democratic Socialist senator and Florida’s right-wing governor want to slam the brakes on the hundreds of resource-intensive new facilities springing up across the country to power the artificial intelligence industry. And both point to profits, not the public good, as the real factor motivating the boom.In many ways, the convergence was inevitable. Public wariness about the data-center i...

Bloomberg.com • 3rd February 2026

Republicans Have a Problem That’s Bigger Than Texas

Two special elections last week in Texas and Minnesota demonstrated something very encouraging about America's voters right now: They are jettisoning party labels and thinking for themselves.In Texas, independent and Republican voters in a Fort Worth-area state Senate district joined Democrats on Saturday and handed labor leader Taylor Rehmet a 14-point victory in a Tarrant County district that Republicans have held for four decades. In Minnesota, voters demonstrated that even as Trump’s ICE cra...

Bloomberg.com • 31st January 2026

The FBI’s Georgia Ballot Raid Is About 2026, Not 2020

The FBI raid on the Fulton County elections center outside Atlanta on Wednesday looked to many like the latest attempt by the Trump administration to sow doubt on the 2020 presidential election. In fact, the goal is likely far more nefarious. It looks like a dress rehearsal for taking control of ballots in key states in November — when the Republican Party’s control of Congress will be at stake and the president’s ability to fend off accountability in jeopardy.

Bloomberg.com • 28th January 2026

Republican Governors Are Starting to Understand the Assignment

Republican elected officials are choosing their words carefully, but many are starting to realize the federal government’s paramilitary crackdown on Minnesota has put them in political peril. Even President Donald Trump himself is showing belated signs of pulling back.But Republicans will need to go much further if they’re going to stop the administration’s unraveling of American democracy and a less-noticed feature of the immigration raids — the assault on state sovereignty. Because of that thr...

Bloomberg.com • 25th January 2026

Cassidy’s Louisiana Senate Race Is a Test of the GOP’s Courage

What was Bill Cassidy thinking? The Louisiana senator and medical doctor ignored his doubts about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the president’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, and cast the deciding vote to confirm him. Now the same president has knifed Cassidy by endorsing his primary opponent. What was Bill Cassidy thinking? The Louisiana senator and medical doctor ignored his doubts about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the president’s nominee to run the Department of Health an...

Bloomberg.com • 16th January 2026

Tillis Is Loud Quitting. He Shouldn’t Have To

Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, took to the floor of the US Senate on Wednesday and said that he is better situated to “speak truth to the president” because he has decided not to seek a third term.Then he launched into a 10-minute takedown of what he considers some of President Donald Trump’s recent mistakes, from the Federal Reserve to foreign policy to affordability. Tillis elaborated on his vow to “oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upco...

Bloomberg.com • 14th January 2026

The White House Push to Undermine the Midterms Is Gathering Steam

The Department of Justice is assembling a first-ever national voter database. It has demanded that states turn over their complete voter registration lists — loaded with private information such as driver's license and Social Security numbers linked to names, home addresses and dates of birth. It has also turned the federal immigration database into what it calls a national “voter verification” tool to remove large numbers of voters from the rolls. Each of these moves evades federal privacy prot...

Bloomberg.com • 11th January 2026

What My Trump-Supporting Friends Won’t Say

Let’s resolve to have the courage to speak up more in 2026. I realize this is easy for me to say; I’m a columnist. But I live in Florida, where I have many friends who have been Trump supporters and who are privately queasy about what they see as brazen corruption coming from President Donald Trump and his administration. While there is widespread support for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, many wanted more transparency about the threat to our national interest. Yet, they don’...