by Ryan Teague Beckwith | Jul 14, 2026 | 2026 election, Opinion
The location of a national political convention is a pretty big clue to a party’s electoral strategy.
Republicans met in Cleveland in 2016 as they targeted the Rust Belt, selected Charlotte in 2020 to shore up North Carolina and chose Milwaukee in 2024 to focus on tearing down Democrats’ Midwestern “blue wall.”
As Republicans plan for an unprecedented midterm convention in September, the choice of Dallas sends a very different message.
Unlike past convention sites, Texas is not a battleground state. It’s a Republican stronghold.
No Democrat has won a Texas Senate race since 1988; Trump carried the state by double digits in 2024, the GOP’s strongest showing since native son George W. Bush’s re-election. Yet incredibly, Republicans head into the midterms on the defensive. State Attorney General Ken Paxton begins the general election with just a 34% approval rating after years of ethics controversies, while Democrat James Talarico has built a commanding fundraising advantage. The open Senate seat — the first in Texas since 2012 — has become one of the GOP’s biggest concerns.
By normal political standards, then, Dallas is a startling choice. Imagine Barack Obama or Joe Biden holding the Democratic Party’s first-ever midterm convention in Los Angeles for a similar reason.
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‘At greater odds’: Trump becoming political liability for midterms as he campaigns in PA this week
July 12, 2026 / 05:08
That said, nothing about Trump’s midterm strategy is typical. Unpopular presidents usually try to fade into the background during midterm elections. They raise money behind closed doors in friendly territory to help the party, while letting candidates distance themselves from the White House and run on local issues.
Trump’s convention will do the
by Hayes Brown | Jul 14, 2026 | Opinion, White House
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams was skeptical. The case before her purported to be between the Internal Revenue Service and a group of private citizens harmed by a leak of their tax returns. The eye-popping $10 billion in relief they were seeking was wild on its own. But among the plaintiffs was President Donald Trump, who oversees both the IRS and the Justice Department lawyers who would be defending the government’s interests. Or rather they should be defending the government’s interests — because as Williams determined in a scathing ruling Monday, there was never any real conflict for her court to adjudicate.
Instead, as Williams noted in her 56-page order, Trump effectively controlled both sides of the lawsuit at all points, rendering it ineligible for relief from the court system.
The “settlement,” which authorized a $1.776 billion slush fund and granted amnesty to the president and his family from IRS audits, including any that may have already begun on tax returns for last year, was already the most likely outcome before a single brief had been filed from the defendants. In her total rejection of the case, Williams has rightly refused to allow America’s courts to be a fig leaf for Trump to enrich himself and his allies.
In her total rejection of the case, Williams has rightly refused to allow America’s courts to be a fig leaf for Trump to enrich himself and his allies.
For starters, the timing was all wrong. Trump and his fellow plaintiffs claim they were harmed when an IRS contractor stole and leaked their tax records to the press. The contractor was charged in 2023, starting a two-year clock
by Zeeshan Aleem | Jul 14, 2026 | Opinion, White House, World
After the U.S. military detained then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined a three-part plan for Venezuela: stabilization, recovery, and transition to democracy. But what the U.S. is doing to Venezuela counts as nothing but colonization.
An astonishing report by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than a dozen officials and people close to governments in Washington and Caracas, details the imperial overhaul of Venezuela’s government and economy after Trump’s ouster of Maduro. The U.S. isn’t just setting up an economically advantageous policy regime to access Venezuela’s oil, but is now directly controlling much of Venezuela’s state revenue. “The U.S. Treasury receives the revenue from most of Venezuela’s exports, then disburses it to Venezuela through the country’s banking system, a relationship akin to parents handing out allowances to children,” the Times reports. “Mr. Rubio and his team set the conditions on what that money can be spent on, and by whom.”
The U.S. is systematically stripping Venezuela’s government of its right to self-determination.arco
That’s just one of many remarkable new structures and rules that Rubio has installed to give him immense control over Venezuelan affairs. According to the Times, Rubio is administering the application of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and determining who in the country can do business with the world without getting hit by penalties. He’s helping set up U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil resources, while boxing out European companies. He’s constantly issuing edicts by text message directly to Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, who has turned to him for sign-off on major political appointments, including the minister of defense. When Venezuela issued
by Anahita Dua | Jul 14, 2026 | Congress, Opinion
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., died suddenly over the weekend after what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The following day, Sen. Mitch McConnell released a statement for the first time after three weeks in the hospital for a fall. Those two incidents are part of a broader issue. Former Sen. Dianne Feinstein spent her final years in office with multiple colleagues questioning her fitness to serve. Five members of the House of Representatives have died in this Congress alone. President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign amid persistent questions about his age and cognitive stamina. President Donald Trump has faced scrutiny about his health as well.
Enough. This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It is an American problem.
The U.S. political system has virtually no objective standards to ensure that the people entrusted with the highest offices in the country remain physically and cognitively capable of performing some of the most important and demanding jobs in the world. That is no longer acceptable.
Voters deserve transparency regarding whether the people asking for their trust are capable of performing the job.
Every profession carries responsibilities. As a vascular surgeon, if I developed a serious medical condition that impaired my judgment, concentration or stamina, I would have an ethical obligation to step away from the operating room. My patients deserve a surgeon whose complete focus is on them, not someone distracted by illness or struggling through a medical crisis. If my attention wavered at the wrong moment, a patient could die.
We accept this principle throughout society. Airline pilots undergo regular medical examinations. Members of the military must meet physical
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 14, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, Supreme Court
Republicans are yet again looking for help from the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed supermajority in placing a thumb on the scale for Republicans in future elections.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican and gubernatorial candidate, and America First Legal, the far-right law firm founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, were handed a serious setback last week when a court panel dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice, meaning they can’t file it again. The suit claimed Florida had been wrongfully denied an additional congressional seat and Electoral College vote because of the way the 2020 census was conducted.
For years, many Republicans have followed President Donald Trump’s lead in falsely claiming that the census count intentionally benefits Democrats. Liberals, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, have debunked these claims while spotlighting how the process of apportionment — that is, the delegation of congressional seats based on population — has been used to benefit conservatives.
The Florida Phoenix reported on last week’s ruling from a U.S. District Court three-judge panel. Per the outlet:
The Republicans alleged that a proper count would have given Florida an additional U.S. House seat and an additional vote in the Electoral College but for the “vast use” of a statistical method known as imputation. However, for the second time in six months, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed the case, this time with prejudice, finding that any further amendment to the pleadings “would be futile.”
The ruling was celebrated by lawyer Marc Elias, the pro-democracy attorney whose law firm helped thwart conservatives in the case. A day later, the plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
For the record,
by Jarvis DeBerry | Jul 14, 2026 | Opinion
When I was a boy in Holly Springs, Mississippi, you could stand in front of the local Women, Infants and Children office, throw a rock and hit the office of the Mississippi State Highway Department, where my dad worked on road construction crews. My mother, a seventh-grade English teacher, would sometimes bring me with her to the WIC office to pick up food items such as cheese and powdered milk on her way home from the school.
I don’t know how my mother felt pulling into WIC’s parking lot or pulling open its doors. She’s no longer here for me to ask. But I became angry on her behalf last week when Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma suggested she should have been ashamed.
I don’t know how my mother felt pulling into WIC’s parking lot or pulling open its doors.
Stitt’s state has one of the country’s highest poverty rates, one of the country’s highest child poverty rates and one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity. But he nevertheless supports the Trump administration’s cuts to food assistance programs. Those cuts have reduced the number of mothers and fathers who can discreetly purchase food in grocery stores using plastic cards connected to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In an interview with Stateline, Stitt, who also serves as the chairman of the National Governors Association, spoke longingly of the days when “there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed.”
He said, “Maybe we should
