Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
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Time: “In the run up to the election, a handful of Senators—Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Brian Schaatz of Hawaii, Cory Booker of New Jersey—were seen as potential contenders to replace Schumer as majority leader. But in the days that followed, none raised their hand.”
“The math is just on Schumer’s side. While Sens.-elect Adam Hamilton of Kansas, Troy Jackson of Maine, and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan all said on the campaign trail that they would not back Schumer, that’s not a sizable enough bloc to end his continued leadership. Other incoming Senators like Juliana Stratton of Illinois, Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, and James Talarico of Texas have sidestepped the Schumer question for months…”
“Well before Election Day, amid talk about Democrats regaining the Senate, a compromise idea began floating around: allow Schumer to remain Leader with the understanding he’ll retire when his term ends in two years.”
“Southern Florida U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones has resigned from the Justice Department following a tumultous tenure in which he oversaw a ‘grand conspiracy’ probe of Trump’s adversaries that hasn’t produced indictments,” Bloomberg Law reports.
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“Imagine a corporation wants to spend $10 million to defeat a political candidate. Under the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling, it can spend as much as it wants provided it doesn’t coordinate with the candidate’s campaign,” CNBC reports.
“On Tuesday, Montana voted to change that.”
“In a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2024, roughly 65% of Montanans voted to approve Initiative 194 – the ‘Montana Plan’ – embracing a novel legal strategy to curb corporate political spending. If states cannot restrict political speech under Citizens United, can they instead strip corporations of the power to spend money on elections?”
“Ohio’s Democratic Gov.-elect Amy Acton said Friday that she has ‘no intention’ of speaking to Vivek Ramaswamy, her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, after he ran what she called a ‘terrible and despicable’ ad featuring her estranged mother,” CBS News reports.
Said Acton: “I have no intention of speaking to him. I do believe that leaders’ words matter, and we need to hold folks accountable.”
“President Donald Trump has promised a new security deal for Ukraine that ‘might involve all of Europe,’ after meeting a top Russian envoy on Thursday – but the proposal has few details and left European capitals puzzled,” CNN reports.
Said Trump: “It’s going to be a very big. It’s going to involve more than Ukraine, and I could even say it might involve all of Europe. It’s going to be a big, beautiful agreement, and everyone’s going to be thrilled.”
“There will be so few Republicans in the Rhode Island Senate come January that the chamber will have to change its rules requiring one GOP member on every Senate committee,” Ocean State Media reports.
“Voters chose Maggie Ellis as their next Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press,” KXAN Austin reports.
“Her campaign says it’s also a historic first for Texas, as she will be the state’s first out LGBTQ+ person to win a statewide election.”
“Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who is heavily invested in the AI industry, is leading the charge to allow tech companies to build data centers on the public lands he oversees,” ProPublica reports.
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“We may not have seen the last of Jamie Davis,” The Downballot reports.
“After coming shockingly close to winning Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race, the Louisiana Democrat is now talking about challenging the state’s Republican governor next year.”
Said Davis, at his election night party: “Jeff Landry, you’re on notice, buddy.”
“Over the course of his life, Donald J. Trump has readily embraced many identities: A hotel developer. A reality television star. A president. A firebrand,” the New York Times reports.
“Now, at 80 years old, he is confronting one he would rather not: a lame duck.”
“In the hours after voters put a check on the expansive power he has flexed in his second term, giving Democrats control of both the House and the Senate, Mr. Trump seemed to be cycling through the stages of grief. He denied that a blue wave across the country had been his fault, or a direct result of his decision to go to war with Iran. (The vice president explicitly said otherwise.) He accepted the election results.”
“And, as he absorbed the waning power he will have in his final two years in office, he bargained, saying he’d work with Democrats while clinging to his veto Sharpie.”
New York Times: “An analysis… using statistical methods, found that for most of the midterm race, prediction markets performed no better than election forecasts, which produce odds using polling and other indicators instead of betting activity.”
“But as Election Day neared, prediction markets performed better as forecasts and polling became stale.”
“Texas’s first Latina governor pledged to abandon the extreme partisanship that she said has defined politics in this deeply red state for decades. But she has also made clear her determination to quickly undo many of her predecessor’s initiatives,” the Washington Post reports.
“At a Thursday briefing where — unlike her predecessor, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott — she answered questions in English and Spanish, Gina Hinojosa said she had spoken with Abbott, who was ‘gracious’ and assured her he would ‘fully cooperate’ with the transition.”
“Brutal red-state losses are raising alarm among Republicans about the 2028 presidential battlefield,” Politico reports.
“Democrats’ midterm blowout is upending the political calculus for future presidential campaigns… Republicans are stressing the ramifications of a major tranche of once-reliably Republican Electoral College votes being in jeopardy, while Democrats are weighing how much surprise wins on red turf should reshape their electoral strategy.”
Said former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien: “Last night undoubtedly made the mechanics of winning in 2028 harder for Republicans.”
The newly-designed interactive Electoral Vote Map is updated with many more states in play than the last three presidential elections.
G. Elliott Morris: “Two things happened that helped Democrats in the South this year. First, white Mississippians, who backed Trump by 67 points in 2024, voted far less Republican this time around. And second, turnout surged among Black voters; they made up 33% of Mississippi’s electorate this year, up from 30% in 2024, according to estimates from the New York Times.”
“And that turnout boost among Black voters could be the deciding factor in Colom’s win.”
“Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom has flipped Forrest County, a once reliably Republican County named for Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest,” the Mississippi Free Press reports.
“Congress returns next week facing a renewed push for transparency over the Jeffrey Epstein files, as a top House Democrat promises new investigations following the party’s midterm victories,” Axios reports.
“The Epstein files controversy has been a recurring political issue throughout President Trump’s second term and featured prominently in the midterm campaigns. Democrats’ incoming House majority could bring fresh scrutiny of his administration’s handling of the files.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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