Bloomberg.com • 2nd May 2026

Florida Betrays Its Own Constitution to Draw New 2026 Maps

Florida this week joined the growing list of state legislatures to pass a gerrymandered map that favors the party in power. Lawmakers had to violate the state constitution to do it. Under the Fair Districts amendments, approved by 63% of the state’s voters in 2010, the Florida Constitution prohibits redistricting plans “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” Governor Ron DeSantis and his attorneys have said they think some of the provisions violate the Equal Pro...

Bloomberg.com • 30th April 2026

Epstein’s Victims Don’t Want a Maxwell Pardon

Flying home from San Francisco to Miami earlier this month, Frankie Lopez diverted his trip to stop in the rural heart of Kentucky. Dressed in a sleek suit jacket and crisp black dress shirt, he arrived in a converted barn in Williamstown as guests were gathering for the annual Grant County Republican Party dinner. Lopez pulled the featured speaker aside. “Thank you,” he told Congressman Thomas Massie quietly, “for giving voice to the victims.” Flying home from San Francisco to Miami earlier th...

Bloomberg.com • 27th April 2026

Republicans Are Tempting Fate With Florida’s Redistricting

Florida becomes the next battle in the White House redistricting wars this week as legislators begin a four-day special redistricting session on Tuesday. But the question before Republicans isn’t easy: Do they draw a new map that pleases the president but risks electing more Democrats, or do they just tinker a bit and hope to hold tight to safe seats?Florida lawmakers don’t seem to have an answer. The state is the last frontier for President Donald Trump’s crusade to manipulate congressional dis...

Bloomberg.com • 22nd April 2026

Congress Suddenly Remembers It Has Ethics Rules

The resignations of three members of Congress over misconduct allegations demonstrate that the US House — which most Americans think can’t get its act together — not only has the capacity to hold members accountable, but can also do so rapidly. At least, when it wants to.Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is the latest member to step down. The Florida Democrat announced her resignation on Tuesday, minutes before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to vote on disciplinary measures. Th...

Bloomberg.com • 17th April 2026

Can a Republican Defy Trump and Survive? We’re About to Find Out

Can a Republican congressman criticize President Donald Trump and still win his primary? We will get an answer in about a month. On May 19, Kentucky voters will decide between incumbent Representative Thomas Massie and his Trump-recruited opponent Ed Gallrein. Massie got on the president’s bad side last year when he broke with Trump over Jeffrey Epstein and a handful of other issues.Whatever you think of Massie’s libertarian-leaning conservative politics, his defeat would send a chill through Co...

Bloomberg.com • 10th April 2026

Florida’s Embrace of ICE Has Come at a Cost

Florida is dramatically — but quietly — changing the way immigration enforcement is practiced. The state’s Republican leaders have made it a testing ground for the aggressive immigration enforcement tactics championed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.And although arrests have soared, the heavy-handed approach has had little measurable effect on crime — and is destabilizing communities across the state. Florida is dramatically — but quietly — changing the way immigration enfor...

Bloomberg.com • 3rd April 2026

Florida Woman Could Blow Up Democrats’ Anti-Corruption Message

The House Ethics Committee last week found US Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 ethics violations, concluding that the Florida Democrat had misused millions of Covid relief dollars to fund her 2022 special election. The unanimous, bipartisan vote followed a seven-hour hearing which the normally secretive panel held in public. Cherfilus-McCormick has denied the allegations and said she will be exonerated.The case is more than just another political scandal. The allegations ag...

Bloomberg.com • 31st March 2026

A Crackdown on Dreamers Is a Crackdown on the American Dream

As a high-achieving college kid, Alex Vallejo wasn’t surprised by the kind of young people he met at the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers’ national conference in Salt Lake City three years ago. Like him, there were other computer-science students who were in their school robotics clubs. Like him, there were other web developers and students who worked two jobs while getting top grades. All predictably impressive.What did surprise him was how many attendees — also like him — were undocu...

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...