President Donald Trump bizarrely said on Tuesday that Venezuela gave him 1 million barrels of oil as a “gift” that he is giving to the U.S. public, which he referred to as “you people.” Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to Texas to show off a tanker that arrived at Port Arthur carrying Venezuelan crude oil to be processed at Texas refineries, government sources said.
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Donald Trump has spent years attacking the Democratic Party’s religiosity, repeatedly insisting that the party’s officials and candidates “hate God,” “oppose God,” and deserve to be seen as “godless.” As recently as last year, the president, who has never demonstrated any real interest in matters of faith, went so far as to insist that Democrats were “evil” and members of “the party of Satan.”
The rhetoric was ridiculous, but the president was hardly alone. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who was just elected governor, has repeatedly and publicly declared that the Democratic Party is “a Satanic cult,” adding, “There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.”
This nonsense was likely news to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is an accomplished Christian pastor who “stands up for God” during his weekly sermons. But as the dust settles on the midterm elections, I’m struck by just how much company Warnock will soon have on Capitol Hill:
Democratic Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton of Kansas, the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in his home state since 1932, is the senior pastor of Kansas’ largest church.
Democratic Sen.-elect James Talarico of Texas is a Presbyterian seminarian.
Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa is a Lutheran minister.
Democratic Rep.-elect Lindsay James of Iowa is a Presbyterian minister.
Democratic Rep.-elect Frederick Haynes III of Texas is the senior pastor of a Baptist church in Dallas.
Highlighting the pattern, a Vox analysis noted that these incoming lawmakers “belong to a rising tide in American politics: the emergence of a religious left that marries moderate or liberal strains of Christianity with Democratic policy and political priorities.
The Trump administration is blocking admissions for nearly every type of refugee — except for white South Africans, who make up nearly all of those admitted under President Donald Trump’s second term so far, data shows. According to State Department data compiled by economist Steve Rattner, white South Africans make up 98 percent of refugee admissions between February 2025 and July 2026.
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The Democratic Party is on track to win its biggest midterm victory since 1974, when a wave of anti-Republican sentiment followed the Watergate scandal. Pending final counts in about two dozen seats, the Democrats will emerge from the 2026 midterm elections with at least 250 seats in the House of Representatives and 54 seats in the Senate — and with as many as 260 and 56 in the House and Senate, respectively, if votes break their way.
The victory represents a monumental crackup of the coalition that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. According to a review of vote-choice estimates from the MS NOW Voter Poll among a dozen demographic groups, the Republicans lost the most ground with Latinos, young people and lower-income Americans — three groups that also swung hard to Trump from 2020 to 2024. My analysis of county-level returns also shows Democrats making disproportionate gains with these groups.
An anti-Trump re-realignment
The backlash against Trump and the Republican Party is largest among Latino voters. According to estimates calculated by the Pew Research Center, Latinos gave 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris a 3-percentage-point margin over Trump nationally in 2024. But the MS NOW Voter Poll shows Latinos giving Democrats a whopping 27-point margin last night. My best guess, based on a statistical model extrapolating the current election results to counties without final vote tallies, is that the Democrats will end up with a 14-point margin in the House popular vote, an increase from their current 10-point margin. (This could be as low as 12 or as high as 15 points, depending on how ballots break in California,
As voters facing rising living costs head to the midterm polls, the nation’s largest federation of tenant unions has released a damning report on the Trump administration’s “catastrophic failure” to rein in greedy landlords and address a housing crisis that threatens to displace millions of working people from their homes. In fact, housing justice advocates say the few housing policies…
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