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Bloomberg.com •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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’...
Bloomberg.com •

America Needs an Education Moonshot

America’s education system is in historic decline. According to the latest report card on 12th graders, students finishing high school have fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago. The learning losses revealed in that report, September’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, show that vast numbers of high school seniors don’t even meet the most basic thresholds in reading or math. And although the disruptions of Covid didn’t help, studies now...
Bloomberg.com •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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 •

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.
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