Bloomberg.com • 1st July 2025

Thom Tillis Knew What the GOP Refused to Hear

Earlier today, Republican Senator Thom Tillis became one of only three GOP senators to cast a vote against President Donald Trump’s budget bill. Ultimately, his vote was mostly symbolic — the measure passed on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker.But the vote has already had consequences for the two-term lawmaker from North Carolina. On Sunday, he made the announcement that he would not be running for re-election in 2026. His decision came a day after he took to the...

Bloomberg.com • 26th June 2025

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Is a Dystopian Pipe Dream, Not a Plan

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has been getting a lot of attention this week for erecting an ICE deportation camp on an abandoned airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades and calling it “Alligator Alcatraz.” In a glossy video, he suggests that the flood-prone wetland is perfect for housing detained immigrants in the heat of the summer because if anyone escapes “there’s not much waiting for them — other than alligators and pythons.”As a policy, building a tent city in a fragile sw...

Bloomberg.com • 24th June 2025

Florida Could Be Flying Blind This Hurricane Season

As the US heads into the June-to-November Atlantic hurricane season, many of the tools weather forecasters rely on to assess risk and warn the public have been weakened or all but dismantled by the Trump administration’s scorched-earth campaign to cut government services. Coastal states are going to feel the brunt of the impact.The deep cuts to the programs that supply data for the forecasts mean that meteorologists will be left “flying a plane in the clouds with no navigation system,” said Mich...

Bloomberg.com • 20th June 2025

The White House Plans for Texas Could Backfire

President Donald Trump’s push for Texas lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional districts in hopes of preserving the slim Republican majority in the US House is yet another example of the president putting his own fortune above his party’s.In an ideal world, it’s also a good idea — because it could lead to more competitive elections and a more representative democracy. Of course, that’s the opposite of Trump’s intention: He wants to make it more difficult for voters to punish him for his u...

Bloomberg.com • 15th June 2025

Pell Grants Are an Engine of Social Mobility. Don’t Cut Them.

To preserve tax cuts for the wealthy, the Republican budget reconciliation proposals moving through Congress cut programs for the neediest in ways that will lead to higher costs for everyone in the long run. The plans include not only cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, but also to Pell Grants, the program that provides federal assistance for higher education.The first Pell Grant was awarded in 1973 and since then has helped millions of low-income students attend college. The grants overwhelmingly go to...

Bloomberg.com • 8th June 2025

US Democracy Is Sicker Than Many Realize. Look at These States.

Political scientists are issuing stark warnings about the way they see President Donald Trump’s second term pushing the US into authoritarianism, with its sweeping executive orders, defiance of court rulings, threats and coercion to enforce ideology, and steamrolling of a Congress that appears only too willing to give up its power.But to focus only on the White House ignores the broader picture: the gradual rise of illiberal instincts in US politics, and especially on the right. It began with th...

Bloomberg.com • 20th May 2025

Musk’s AI ‘Colossus’ in Memphis Is Everyone’s Problem

Build a massive supercomputer housed in a plant powered by methane gas-burning turbines that emit an undisclosed amount of pollutants into a disadvantaged community. Obtain no environmental permits. Ask permission later. That’s the approach Elon Musk has taken in the city of Memphis as he rushes to build two massive data centers to provide computing power for his artificial intelligence startup xAI. It’s a scenario America might have to get used to.

Bloomberg.com • 15th May 2025

Oklahoma High Schoolers Are Getting a Dangerous Lesson Plan

The state’s superintendent of public instruction wants teachers to present unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid.

Bloomberg.com • 8th May 2025

Normie Republicans Like Brian Kemp Have It Rough

Even before Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced he would not be challenging Democrat Jon Ossoff in that high-stakes US Senate race in the state next year, he had already emerged as one of the most interesting Republicans on the national stage. Kemp knows what a liability Trump can be for Republicans and has learned how to choose his battles carefully. For the last four years, the two-term governor endured Trump’s threats and bullying because he refused to illegally overturn the 2020 election r...

Bloomberg.com • 1st May 2025

Who Can Save Florida Democrats? Former Republicans

Florida is becoming a testing ground for desperate centrists. The Democratic leader of the Florida Senate, Jason Pizzo, abruptly resigned his leadership post last week with just two weeks to go in the legislative session. “The Democratic Party in Florida is dead,” he said as he made the announcement on the Senate floor. “There are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me.” Florida is becoming a testing ground for desperate centrists. The Democratic leader of the F...

Bloomberg.com • 27th April 2025

A Baby Boom? In This Economy?

The US birth rate is near a record low, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday, with only 1.6 children born per woman, below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. This is no surprise — the birth rate has been falling since 2007. What is surprising is the inconsistent — and contradictory — set of policies the Trump administration is employing to try to address it.

Bloomberg.com • 23rd April 2025

GOP's Voting Reform Is Paperwork, Not a Solution

Listen closely to the arguments of the House Republicans pushing the so-called “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act” and you realize they aren’t interested in solving the problem the bill purports to address: non-citizens voting in federal elections.If you take the proponents of the bill at their word — that the measure is needed “to increase integrity of elections” because “non-citizen voting decreases confidence in our elections” — you’d expect a targeted proposal aimed at increasi...

Bloomberg.com • 17th April 2025

Harvard Proves the Only Choice Is to Fight

School districts across the US are now facing the same decision as institutions of higher learning: allow the government to censor their instruction or stand up for themselves and lose federal funding. As Harvard and Columbia demonstrated by taking opposite approaches, there is really only one choice: fight.That’s because the Trump administration has demonstrated it’s not negotiating in good faith. Each time an educational institution engages with the White House, the White House shifts the goal...

Bloomberg.com • 12th April 2025

The Florida Entrepreneur Suing Over Tariffs Is Right

When Emily Ley started her stationery business 17 years ago in Florida, she felt like it was the embodiment of the American dream. Today, she’s the unlikely face of opposition to a trade war against China instigated by the American president. Those tariffs threaten to extinguish Ley’s business and the operations of millions of companies like hers.

Bloomberg.com • 8th April 2025

North Carolina Courts Are Too Close to Undoing an Election

A state appeals court just dealt a blow to North Carolinians still waiting for their 2024 Supreme Court election to be resolved and, in the process, provided a template for election deniers to create mayhem in the midterm elections next year.

Bloomberg.com • 6th April 2025

This Marco Rubio Is Unrecognizable

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele may have found the best description for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new approach to dictatorial regimes: a laughing emoji.

Bloomberg.com • 2nd April 2025

Democrats Wasted Donors' Money in Florida

Tuesday marked the most consequential political report card yet in President Donald Trump’s second term. Voters in Florida gave him lower than expected — but passing — grades. It was Democrats who failed the test.

Bloomberg.com • 27th March 2025

Forget Polls. Watch the Florida Special Election Results.

Florida holds two special congressional elections on Tuesday in districts where President Donald Trump won more than 60% of the votes. They’ll be closely watched to see if that margin — which months ago seemed effortless for Republicans to sustain in the president’s home state — has melted away.

Bloomberg.com • 21st March 2025

Cutting the Department of Education Is Theater, Not a Plan

Late on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “begin eliminating” the US Department of Education. It was exactly as expected: a performative exercise that will achieve none of the president’s stated campaign promises, ​including shutting down the agency.

Bloomberg.com • 20th March 2025

North Carolina’s Ongoing Election Dispute Is Dangerous

The 2024 election still isn’t over in North Carolina. On Friday, the state Court of Appeals will hear arguments in a dispute over a judicial election for the state Supreme Court.