by Will McDuffie | Sep 27, 2026 | elections, News
Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson and fellow Democrats are hoping to finally oust GOP Sen. Susan Collins by focusing on her decisive vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, a justice who joined the majority in the Dobbs decision.
Four years after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade shook the 2022 midterms, reproductive rights have reemerged as a central campaign issue in Maine, where Jackson aims to prevail where his party fell short six years ago. He has made the issue a core component of his pitch to voters in areas like Portland and its southern suburbs that include a healthy composition of politically moderate female voters.
“The fact that, just recently, [Collins] said that she doesn’t regret her vote on Kavanaugh says everything to me because I sure as hell do, and everybody else in this state and everybody else in this country does,” Jackson said at a town hall this week in the Portland suburb Scarborough.
But Jackson faces some headwinds in his attempts to sell reproductive rights as a core issue this fall. And he lacks potential ammunition in the form of Gov. Janet Mills, the most powerful female Democrat in Maine — who has not endorsed the Democratic nominee.
Jackson and Mills have a notoriously icy history, something Jackson was candid about during his run for governor.
“We obviously disagreed a lot — it’s no secret,” he said in April. “I mean, the governor vetoed more than 40 of my bills.”
A spokesman for Mills said Jackson hasn’t sought her support.
“Since becoming the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Jackson has not reached out to the Governor to seek her support,”
by Bram Sable-Smith | Sep 26, 2026 | Abortion, Abortion Access, elections, Missouri, News, Reproductive Rights
After Missouri voters added abortion protections to the state constitution in 2024, Kelly McCoomb decided to keep her yard sign supporting the measure in the basement of her suburban St. Louis home. Abortion access is important to McCoomb. She wants her daughter to grow up in a state where the option is available if needed, and the sign was a keepsake from the day Missourians voted to reverse…
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by James Downie | Sep 26, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate yet again surrendered one of its core constitutional powers. The chamber voted 49-50 on a war powers resolution directing President Donald Trump to halt the war with Iran. This was the 12th time a war powers resolution failed in the Senate, but the political climate was unlike any previous vote. The midterm outlook for the GOP has gone from tough to downright awful. Gas is nearly $4.50 a gallon; diesel is $6.50. Yet with one exception, vulnerable Republicans sided with the president. To the question, “Can any midterms result shake Trump’s hold on the GOP?,” we now have our answer.
In the spring, I wrote about the similarities between Trump’s second term and former President George W. Bush’s second term. Once again, a president, his party and many in the press have misread a narrow election victory as something more definitive (a windfall of “political capital” in Bush’s case, a “vibe shift” in Trump’s). Once again, the president’s political fortunes have fallen sharply. And once again, the fallout is endangering Republicans in seats that a year ago would have been considered rock solid for the GOP.
Sen. Jon Husted voted against the resolution, two days after he told Politico, “The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.”
If anything, in fact, Trump’s pre-midterm prognosis is even worse than Bush. Polling averages put the president’s net approval rating more than 20 points underwater. In the past week, he hit new lows for this term in a half-dozen polls, including CNN/SSRS, NBC News, Reuters/Ipsos, Strength in Numbers/Verasight and American Research Group. Various gimmicks — beef imports,
by Rudi Keller | Sep 26, 2026 | Congressional Map, elections, Gerrymandering, Missouri, News, Republican Party, Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday drove a stake through the heart of Missouri’s undead congressional map, ordering it be buried for the year and for voters to cast ballots in the districts they’ve used the past two election cycles. In a unanimous decision, the court said that state law rules in the case. “In short, as a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used…
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by Clarissa-Jan Lim | Sep 26, 2026 | elections, News, White House
President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on the press on Saturday morning, a day after escalating his standoff with news outlets by banning CNN from traveling with him on Air Force One.
“Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Despite my big Election Win, almost 100% of ‘TRUMP’ coverage is negative, and has been for years!”
In brief remarks to reporters later on Saturday morning, the president denied that he only wanted news outlets that support him in the press pool, telling MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner, “I want real news, not fake news — like you.” He added, “I love an open, free press. I don’t like the fake press.”
Trump’s latest affront to legitimate news outlets follows a week of attempts to bend the media to his will. Unhappy about straightforward coverage of his administration, his sagging approval rating — and its drag on his party — and the impact of his policies, he has tried to freeze out news outlets that don’t deliver the coverage he wants, upending the traditional role of the White House press corps at a pivotal moment, with just over five weeks to go before the midterm elections.
Republicans have said privately they are bracing for defeat on Election Day.
The president first announced that he would ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico last week, and the outlets’ journalists were denied access to White House grounds Saturday. In the days that followed, the three outlets sued Trump and several officials in his administration and the TV network
by Jordan Rubin | Sep 26, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, elections, Supreme Court, White House
When the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to use a citizenship database ahead of the midterm elections, the court noted a limitation on the ruling: the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, which bars states from systematically purging voters 90 days before federal elections.
Likewise, in her dissent for the court’s three Democratic appointees, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the “bright side” of the ruling is its “minimal short-term impact,” because states can only conduct individualized voter roll maintenance ahead of November.
But in a footnote to Friday’s ruling that discussed the NVRA’s limitation on states ahead of federal elections, the majority recalled that the court will consider the scope of that provision in a case this coming term, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota.
One of the issues in that case is whether the law bars states from implementing programs within 90 days of federal elections to cancel the voting registrations of noncitizens.
“The parties in this case do not ask us to address that question and have not briefed it, and we do not need to decide it here,” the court said in the footnote Friday in the database case, Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters.
So whatever impact the database ruling will have (or not have) for the midterms, it highlights that the broader issue isn’t going away in the months and years ahead.
RNC v. Mi Familia Vota is scheduled for oral argument in December, with a decision expected by July. The justices agreed to review the Republican-backed appeal in that case over opposition from Democrats and voting rights groups. It
