President Donald Trump has caused an "aviation quagmire," one former airline executive and founder said about the war in Iran.

While oil executives are freaking out and gas prices are jumping, Trump has another problem with the global travel industry, CNBC reported on Thursday.

Trump's war against Iran hasn't merely stayed within the borders of Iran. In retaliation, Iran has been using drones to launch attacks all over the region, with one drone hitting Azerbaijan's airport. Another drone hit a British air base in Cyprus.

It means that the stability of any planes flying through the region must take one of two routes: south over Saudi Arabia or north over Georgia, FlightRadar shows. But after a drone hit in Azerbaijan, the southern route might be the only option for a while.

Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that Asian airlines had a 900 percent fare hike as people from all over the world are desperately trying to get out of the area.

PlaneFinder allows observers to search for aircraft by type, including drones. Users can click on the drones to see who owns them. A report on Wednesday from CNN's Natasha Bertrand revealed that Trump administration officials acknowledged during a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill that they have major concerns about Iran's drone program because they haven't been able to intercept all of them, as evidenced by the six dead American soldiers in Kuwait.

A number of corporate drones have been spotted circling Kuwait, Qatar and the U.A.E. for the past several days. It's unclear if they're being used as private security for the countries, however. One Royal Air Force military transport aircraft was spotted over Qatar on Thursday morning.

CNBC spoke to a Zoey Gong, a Chinese medicine food therapist, who was stuck in Paris, trying to get to Shanghai via Dubai via an Emirates flight. She ended up having to pay more than double the price of her original ticket for another flight home.

"She’s one of millions of travelers swept up in war and other conflicts from Iran to Mexico this year, problems that are threatening the global tourism industry that’s worth an estimated $11.7 trillion to the world’s economy," CNBC reported, citing the industry group World Travel & Tourism Council. "It’s showing that people who are far from falling missiles, drone attacks and other geopolitical flashpoints aren’t immune to ripple effects."

More than a million people have been stranded, the report said, with 20,000 flights being grounded after the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran.

“This has spiraled into an aviation quagmire,” complained Henry Harteveldt when speaking to CNBC. He is a former airline executive who founded the travel consulting firm Atmosphere Research Group.

He went on to say that the strikes have caused “the most chaotic event we’ve seen frankly since 9/11 when the U.S. chose to close its airspace. We haven’t seen anything that has had such a long and geographically widespread impact on travel.”

Donald Trump's war with Iran appears to be "accelerating" a major crack-up of the MAGA movement, and according to a new analysis from Slate, this "breaking point" could arrive at the worst possible time for the Republican Party.

Writing for Slate on Thursday, staff reporter Molly Olmstead observed that Trump's joint military assault on Iran alongside Israel is proving extremely divisive among leading figures in the MAGA and far-right political movements. Based on the vitriol being exchanged between the likes of Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Olmstead argued that the movement is no longer "pretending to be one unified coalition under Trump anymore."

"This b—— is celebrating the death of American military members and thanking their families for their blood sacrifice,” Greene wrote of Loomer in a post to social media Sunday. “But this is who Trump takes late night calls from and laps up her praise and worship. … And now Americans are once again coming home in flag draped coffins from another stupid pointless foreign war for foreign regime change on behalf of Israel.”

"How much money are you making off of Muslims?" Loomer asked in response.

"There’s something more remarkable here than just a spat between two influential conservative women," Olmstead wrote. "Their fight is just one in a sprawling ideological conflict playing out on social media, where different right-wing voices are, more than ever in recent memory, breaking with one another in open hostility. Pro-war and anti-war conservatives have been accusing each other of bigotry, idiocy, corruption, hidden ethno-religious agendas, and anti-Americanism. The conservative movement isn’t pretending to be one unified coalition under Trump anymore."

She continued: "Instead, the strikes on Iran have caused the fractures within the alliance to expand to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reclose them — a major problem as Trump tries to keep his political coalition together."

Olmstead highlighted similar infighting going on between prominent far-right figures like Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, with new divisions often breaking down between pro-Israel conservatives and those opposed to new overseas military conflicts.

Olmstead further noted that this acceleration of divisions within the MAGA movement is happening at one of the worst possible times for the broader GOP, as it will make it difficult or outright impossible for the party to convey a united front in November's midterm elections. Given that Trump's unpopular agenda was already predicted to hand Democrats substantial victories in the House and Senate, bitterly divided MAGA figureheads risk driving even more voters away from candidates that support Trump's agenda.

"Early polling has shown that these strikes aren’t popular among Republicans," Olmstead concluded. "We’re in a midterm year, as some right-wing commentators have noted with alarm. The GOP needs its influencers to reassure the MAGA faithful, rather than stoke dissent. There’s a long history of predicting voters will turn on Trump, and it seldom sticks. It’s possible that the MAGA faithful—both high-profile influencers and rank-and-file voters—will come home to Trump soon. But at this moment, the ties that bind Trump to some of his most steadfast supporters are stretched more thin than ever. And that in itself makes this a remarkable moment."

In Texas' 2026 Democratic U.S. Senate primary, voters had a choice between a centrist — State Rep. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian — and a liberal/progressive firebrand: Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is quite popular on the left wing of her party. Lone Star Democrats went with Talarico, who will go up against either incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) or far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after Republicans choose their candidate.

Conservatives are taking Talarico seriously. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) believes that the state lawmaker is capable of winning in November if Cornyn isn't the GOP nominee. A Talarico victory in the general election would be a political bombshell, as Texas hasn't had a Democratic U.S. senator since 1993. MS NOW's Chris Jansing is reporting that President Donald Trump plans to endorse Cornyn, not Paxton.

In a Substack column published on March 5, liberal economist Paul Krugman emphasizes that if Democrats are going to start winning statewide races in Texas again, they will need a thorough understanding of the state's economic complexities. And he believes that the MAGA movement is vulnerable in the Lone Star State.

"Talarico, a virtual political nobody six months ago, appears to have a good chance of winning that contest," Krugman explains. "But why has Texas been such a Democratic disappointment for all these years? And what do those disappointments portend for Talarico? Let's begin by understanding that a state's politics often follow economics…. Texas' economic growth is a major reason Democrats perennially hope that they will someday turn the state blue. For in modern America, rich states tend to vote Democratic, while poor states vote Republican: Think Massachusetts versus Mississippi."

Krugman adds, "So as Texas grows richer and more sophisticated, won't it eventually free itself of rabid, backward-looking Republicanism?"

The economist's answer to that question is: not necessarily.

"My initial thought was that economic success might indeed cause Texas to flip politically," Krugman writes. "But the more I look at it, the less convincing I find that case. Why? Because Texas' economic story isn't what many people — including Republicans who boast about it — think it is. And that's an important point even aside from politics. Why has the economy of Texas grown more rapidly than the US economy as a whole? Conservatives like to attribute growth to low taxes. But the claim that low taxes lead to rapid economic growth has been more thoroughly tested in practice than any other proposition in economics, and has failed every time."

Krugman continues, "What Texas does do right, however, is let businesses build stuff, especially housing, in stark contrast with the regulations and multiple veto points that strangle construction in many blue states…. The same openness to building that has held the cost of Texas housing down has also helped the state become by far the nation's largest producer of wind energy. Don't tell Trump."

Krugman is skeptical about Texas becoming a full-fledged blue state anytime soon, but he believes it could evolve into a swing state if Democrats understand its economy and play their cards right.

"So the point here is that while Texas could be shifting towards the blue zone, it won't come easily," the former New York Times columnist argues. "It won’t be a simple matter of a state becoming more progressive as a result of economic progress. In other words, Texas is not about to become New Jersey, or even Colorado. But with the right Democratic candidates, who can straddle the divide between urban Democrats and non-urban Republicans, it could become Georgia. And maybe, just maybe, Texas could blaze the trail for Democrats in other deep red states."

President Donald Trump has set “the world on fire,” according to a former Republican strategist who worked for President George W. Bush — and it’s entirely because of Trump voters.

In a Wednesday Substack essay titled “Why the world is on fire,” political consultant Steve Schmidt argued that America is sending the planet toward World War III but is not “branding” it or using a “marketing campaign.”

“There has been no debate, no plan, and no thought given by Donald, his stooges and politicized generals about the second-and third-order effects of their decisions,” Schmidt said. “This is escalating.”

With 15 nations involved in combat, and Russia still at war with Ukraine, Schmidt concluded that we now “have war, chaos, economic crisis, corruption and insanity served up non-stop, extolling the wrong against the right, while abusing American citizens with violence, including murder.”

As he summed it up earlier in the editorial, “We had peace, and we chose Trump.”

Last month, Schmidt and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta blasted the Supreme Court for even allowing Trump to run for president and gain as much power as he has upon taking office.

“Seems to me a part of this is … that the Supreme Court, under John Roberts, released this Frankenstein, and now they don’t know how to rein him in. They’ve tried to cut him off at the pass [on some things] but John Roberts is responsible for this mess,” Acosta said.

“The Roberts court has destabilized our American society through partisan rulings,” Schmidt replied. “We have a corrupt Supreme Court with [Judge Samuel] Alito’s misconduct, Clarence Thomas’s misconduct, flying around with all these billionaire extremist doners from here to there and everywhere.”

He added, “The court has lost its reputation for a reason, and now we have Trump’s visage looming down at the American people from the Department of Justice, which is a corrupt institution that can’t be trusted, filled with corrupt prosecutor who abuse their oath, abuse the Constitution, and abuse the American people in the name of power.”

Also last month, Schmidt pointed out in a Substack post that the world’s billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Tim Cook have decided to bend the figurative knee to Trump, but that doesn’t mean the rest of humanity must join them.

“We recognize that the world's richest people of the most powerful corporations, the big media companies, the big tech companies, the big banks have made a decision for the privilege of resting their head on a Mar-a-Lago pillow,” Schmidt said in his Substack post. “They are satisfied to live on their knees, but we are not.”

In September, Schmidt’s disgust with Trump made headlines when he threatened to rent a billboard attacking Disney CEO Bob Iger for capitulating to Trump’s demand that talk show host Jimmy Kimmel be suspended for criticizing the Trump movement.

"We will put billboards up in L.A. with Bob Iger's picture, a yellow stripe under it and the word 'COWARD,'" Schmidt said. "It's a billboard town and everyone can reflect on it as they drive by ... the cowardice is appalling."

Some Texas Republicans had signaled they hoped their nominee would face Democratic U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in a Senate race that is now headed for a runoff between incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn and embattled MAGA firebrand Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democratic state Rep. James Talarico’s win in Tuesday’s primary has further complicated matters for the Texas GOP, which now faces a grueling 12-week — and potentially $100 million — brawl to choose its nominee.

President Donald Trump has signaled he does not want that fight, and on Wednesday floated endorsing one of the GOP candidates and asking the other to withdraw from the race.

“The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively!”

“I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!!”

According to Politico, Trump is being pushed by multiple Republicans to endorse Senator Cornyn.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday that he hopes the president’s endorsement comes “soon,” remarks he made “hours after making his latest plea on Cornyn’s behalf to the president.”

Republicans have “warned Trump that if scandal-plagued Paxton becomes the nominee, it could cost Republicans a seat they have held since 1961. There’s even more GOP anxiety now that state Rep. James Talarico secured the Democratic nomination — a candidate many believe could give Democrats their best chance at flipping the seat.”

But if he puts his thumb on the scale and wipes out MAGA favorite Paxton, Trump’s MAGA base has made clear they will be furious.

Far-right influencer, activist, and provocateur Laura Loomer, who reportedly has ties inside the Oval Office, “made her choice for the GOP nominee clear in a post on X on Wednesday,” The Daily Beast reported.

“JUST IN: President Trump says he will soon endorse in the Texas Senate GOP race, & whoever he doesn’t endorse must drop out,” Loomer wrote. “Hopefully he endorses @KenPaxtonTX, because @JohnCornyn has a long record of being anti-Trump, pro-Islam, weak on illegal immigration, and anti 2A.”

Numerous other MAGA world influencers also urged the president to endorse Paxton.

“Mr. President @realDonaldTrump,” right-wing Blaze TV host Sara Gonzales wrote in a post on X. “I am one of your biggest supporters and I am urging you as someone who is in the Texas grassroots: do NOT endorse Cornyn. It will be one of your biggest mistakes.”

The Daily Beast also noted that conservative radio host Jesse Kelly “called Cornyn, who has held his Texas Senate seat since 2002, a ‘swamp rat,’ and said if Trump endorses him, it would be a ‘total scumbag move.'”

Republican former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a top Trump ally, now an “America First” activist, blasted the president.

“Trump now says he is going to endorse either Cornyn or Paxton and demands that whoever does not get his endorsement must drop out of the runoff. This is wrong and the people of Texas should be able to vote for WHOEVER THEY WANT!!! NOT the candidate Trump demands.”

“People are furious over this and if Trump does this, it could actually be the real reason Texas Senate seat flips blue,” she warned. “Stealing people’s opportunity to elect their leaders by force will definitely piss off voters and will lead to even more sitting it out.”

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to the Democratic nominee — former Vice President and ex-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) — his claim that the election was stolen from him was repeatedly debunked by numerous vote recounts. And some of the debunking came from conservative Republicans, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

But Trump, now 13 and one-half months into his second presidency, continues to double down on his false claim that he won the 2020 election. In January, FBI agents searched an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing 2020 election records.

In an article published on March 5, CNN reporters Tierney Sneed and Zachary Cohen describe ways in which the Georgia State Election Board helped pave the way for the FBI search.

"For most election administrators around the country," Sneed and Cohen explain, "the FBI's recent seizure of 2020 Atlanta-area ballots was shocking. But for some members of the Georgia State Election Board, the search was a welcome development. Led by the commission's vice chair, Janice Johnston — a retired obstetrician who, according to court filings, had no experience working elections prior to 2021 — the board's conservative majority has been relentlessly pursuing fraud theories about Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election."

The CNN journalists continue, "After subpoenaing some of the Fulton County election records themselves, the board invited the Justice Department's assistance last year, itself, resulting in a Trump Administration civil lawsuit in December that preceded the search warrant secured through a federal criminal probe. Johnston and another MAGA-aligned board member, former media personality Janelle King, were witnesses cited by the FBI in its application to justify seizing the records, as were other election deniers who have made frequent appearances before the board to allege a tainted 2020 result."

According to David Worley — a Democrat who formerly served on the Georgia State Election Board — Johnston objected when told she couldn't enter the Fulton County election center's inner storage room during the FBI search. Johnston didn't object to the search, but rather, wanted to get some credit for it and argued, "It's our subpoena."

Salleigh Grubbs, another Republican on the Georgia State Election Board, told CNN, "It's way past time for these matters to have been investigated." And she said it was "great" that the FBI search took place.

The State Department is dodging any questions about the ongoing feud between Spain and the U.S. over the use of its military bases.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, a State Department spokesperson was asked about the back and forth between the two countries, but refused to comment.

A few days ago, Spain announced that President Donald Trump's attacks on Iran violated international law and their agreement for the use of air bases.

“Spanish military bases will not be used for anything that falls outside the agreement with the United States and the United Nations Charter,” said José Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, in a Sunday interview.

However, on Wednesday, the White House press secretary suggested that Spain had backed away from the assertion.

“With respect to Spain, I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear, and it’s my understanding, over the past several hours, they’ve agreed to cooperate with the US military,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

The foreign minister responded almost immediately, telling Cadena SER radio, “The Spanish government’s position on the war in the Middle East, the bombings in Iran, and the use of our bases has not changed one iota."

“I have absolutely no idea what that could refer to or where it could have come from,” he added.

“I want to make things very clear to the Spanish people. The ‘no to war’ position remains clear and unequivocal,” he also said.

Tommy Pigott was asked, "So what is the reality?"

"Well, military operations, I will refer to the [Defense Department] and the White House. What I can say from the State Department's perspective is what we're doing to help the American people. We're focused 24/7 on that, our highest priority being their safety and security," said Pigott.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been successful in chilling the willingness of any firm to take on causes adverse to the administration.

That’s the opinion of Deborah Pearlstein, the director of Princeton University’s Law and Public Policy program. She expressed that view in an interview with Slate on the ramifications of the recent Department of Justice flip-flop on pursuing prior Trump executive orders aimed at several law firms and attorneys.

In those orders dating to last year, Trump targeted law firms and individuals that work with his opponents and causes he doesn’t support. The EO imposition of sanctions threatened to hamper legal business and deny access to federal buildings.

Four separate trial court judges ruled against the administration on the executive orders. But some law firms decided that litigating the matter wasn’t worth it, and offered up millions in pro-bono work to appease the administration.

The DOJ is still pursuing its defense of the executive orders after a brief flip-flop in which it indicated it was not going to appeal the trial court rulings.

No matter the outcome of that litigation, the underlying goal has already been realized, Pearlstein argues.

“The goal of chilling the willingness of any firm to take on causes adverse to the administration has been achieved, and then some,” Peralstein said, citing reporting and studies done so far.

“That’s one of the really important broader lessons in countering authoritarianism," Peralstein continued. "You need a whole toolbox full of tools, and litigation is an incredibly important tool for some purposes, but it doesn’t work for everything. It is entirely possible to win the litigation battle and lose the authoritarian war, and in this particular fight, that’s the direction we’re headed."

Pearlstein said the administration’s desire to enforce its executive orders is a “textbook authoritarian playbook for would-be authoritarians to try to attack any independent institutional source of power that might challenge the authoritarian’s ability to carry out his will. The same reason why the White House and the administration wanted to target major universities, media companies, and the same way they have worked to make deals with major industry that they care about.”

The fallout of the situation will impact such issues as the availability of representation to challenge administration initiatives, Pearlstein added.

Many critics of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran — a combination of Democrats and Never Trump conservatives — are urging Congress to use the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to rein him in. Trump, they argue, had no business getting the United States into a war via executive order and not getting Congress' input — and the War Powers Resolution is a tool lawmakers need to be taking advantage of.

But former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 5, emphasizes that Congress has a "far more direct way" to "intervene" in the Iran conflict: "the power of the purse."

"Few in Washington are asking the most obvious question: What has this conflict already cost, and what will it ultimately cost the American taxpayer?," Harman explains. "Between the cost of deploying carrier strike groups and more than a hundred aircraft to the region, and the expenditure of hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles at roughly $2 million apiece, the price tag is reportedly about $1 billion per day. Reuters reported, this week, that the Pentagon is working on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion focused on replacing weapons stocks."

The former House Democrat adds, "Congress should be preparing now to meet that moment, demanding a full accounting of costs and requiring the administration to define the mission's objectives and a plan to achieve them."

During her years in Congress, Harman, now 80, focused heavily on national security, serving on the House Intelligence Committee and chairing the Homeland Security Committee's Intelligence Subcommittee. Long before that, she was a counsel for the U.S. Defense Department under President Jimmy Carter.

"Both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were authorized by Congress," Harman notes, "though the intelligence on Iraq turned out to be deeply flawed…. According to Brown University's nonpartisan Costs of War project, the final bill for Iraq exceeded $2 trillion. Afghanistan cost another $2.3 trillion. Congress needs to confront Iran's costs now, keeping in mind that Iran is only the most immediate item on a much larger bill. In January, President Trump called for a 50 percent increase in the annual defense budget — from roughly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion — the largest proposed single-year jump since the Korean War. Congress should not wave these numbers through. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise and support armies and to appropriate military funds."

President Donald Trump’s administration has humbled some of the largest law firms and highest-paid individuals in the legal profession. And other businesses and individuals that potentially need his grace on their activities have to be watching and wondering if they are next.

That’s the conclusion of a New York Times opinion piece by contributor Jeffrey Toobin, which notes that bullies (i.e., the Trump administration) “are never satisfied with just a single capitulation.”

The lesson to be drawn is that government pressure is effective even when its actions are clearly unconstitutional.

What the opinion piece terms “nonstop chaos” caused by the Trump administration began last year with executive orders targeting progressive law firms that worked for Trump opponents and causes he doesn’t favor. The orders would have created insurmountable barriers to the law firms' corporate activities.

Some of the firms in the cross hairs of those orders opted to settle by offering the administration millions in pro-Bono legal work on favored causes.

Last year, four judges ruled that the executive orders targeting the law firms were unconstitutional. The Department of Justice appealed, but then decided earlier this month that it was dropping the plans.

The next day, the appeals were placed back on.

“The about-face was embarrassing, but it obscured a larger truth of this lamentable episode: President Trump had already won this fight months ago, when the American legal profession — especially its largest and richest law firms — lost. And that’s not funny at all.”

While the legal profession was initially targeted, there’s a broader application underway. The Trump administration has presented the same “extortionate choices” to a variety of targets, including universities and companies.

The implication of the administration's message is clear: “Agree to our unconstitutional demands and sacrifice your principles, or fight back and suffer our wrath in the form of lost patronage and dollars.”

In all of those cases, Toobin argues, “surrender looks — and perhaps even is — the path of least resistance.” But giving in may embolden further actions, “and you don’t have to be a lawyer to see that was a foolish choice indeed.”

Democratic insiders often joke that for their party, Texas is like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football in the "Peanuts" cartoons. Brown famously kept hoping that Lucy would finally give him a chance to kick a football only for her to repeatedly pull the football away when he was ready to kick it — and in Texas, the "football" that "Lucy" keeps pulling away from Democrats is a victory in a statewide race.

The last time a Democrat won a gubernatorial election in Texas was Ann Richards in 1990, and Texas' last Democratic U.S. senator, Bob Krueger, left office in 1993. Democrats perform well in Texas' major cities — from Austin to Houston to El Paso — and in certain congressional districts, but they struggle in statewide races.

Yet some prominent conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), Washington Post columnist George Will and former White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, believe that Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race could be in play for Democrats if incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) isn't the nominee and Democrats have the right candidate. Democrats now have a nominee in that race: centrist James Talarico, who defeated the more progressive Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in an early March primary. But it remains to be seen whether Cornyn or the far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will be the Republican nominee.

During an appearance on The New Republic's "The Daily Blast" podcast posted on March 5, veteran Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett laid out the challenges that members of his party face in the Lone Star State. Hackett believes that Talarico is electable, but he was also candid about why Texas is such a struggle for Democrats in statewide races.

"Republicans have done a fantastic job of suppressing the vote in Texas, of keeping voters at home, of making it extremely difficult to vote in the state," Hackett told host Greg Sargent. "And that's why Texas, I think, today has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. Texas also has a lot of unaffiliated independent voters out there who have tended over the years to vote Republican. Those voters, I think, in large part, make up areas in the suburbs outside of the major cities and in parts of rural Texas."

Hackett continued, "Texas has a lot of counties, and Democrats have to compete in all of those counties if they want to win. Democrats have not built the infrastructural support needed to compete in every county throughout Texas the way that Republicans have. I mean, they have 30 years of voter suppression and organization that have brought them to this point and kept Democrats out of power for 30 years. If Democrats want to win, they have to go everywhere. They have to compete everywhere. They have to maximize their voters. They have to divide Republican voters, and they have to win over the sizable number — 15 percent or more — of unaffiliated independent voters that are often in the rural and suburban parts of Texas."

Hackett emphasized that if Democrats are going to win statewide races in Texas, they will need the right coalition.

"I think the headline coming out of this primary cycle — beyond Talarico's victory, beyond Paxton and Cornyn headed to this runoff — is kind of the winning Democratic coalition being reassembled, in part thanks to Trump pushing voters toward Democrats, whether that's Latino voters who showed up big time yesterday for James Talarico, or Black voters who turned out strongly for Crockett in a lot of these key areas across Texas," Hackett told Sargent. "I think if Talarico is able to reassemble that winning coalition — if he's able to keep Latino voters on board in the general election, which honestly I think will be dependent on Trump and how he presents his agenda for the next few months — but also, if Talarico is able to make inroads and bring those Crockett voters into the fold of his coalition, if he's able to keep that message that has been resonating in the suburban parts of the state outside of these big cities, among independent swing voters across Texas, of which there are very many."

The Democratic strategist added, "He has shown that he has the ability to assemble this coalition, but he’s going to have to maximize turnout among those key constituencies —Latino voters, Black voters, and I think young voters too."

President Donald Trump is tanking the Republican Party in important special elections, according to a recent analysis — and that augurs poorly for the GOP in the upcoming midterm contests.

“Democrat Alex Holladay prevailed in a special election on Tuesday for a state legislative seat in Arkansas, marking the ninth time since President Donald Trump took office last year that the party has flipped control of a state legislative seat in a special election,” reported NBC News' Allan Smith. “In that same time, Republicans have not flipped a single state seat controlled by Democrats.”

Smith added that, in addition to Holladay, Republicans have lost seats in special elections to Democrats in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Texas.

“When adding in the flips from last fall’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats have flipped 27 total seats controlled by Republicans, while Republicans are still searching for their first flip, according to data compiled by The Downballot,” Smith wrote. He added that this trend is compelling Republicans to search “for answers on how to get their coalition to the polls without Trump on the ballot, a problem they’ve been trying to solve for years.”

Bo Renshaw, the Republican billionaire who lost the Arkansas state legislative contest to Holladay, admitted after his defeat that “I’d rather be us than them. We also know that we have to do the work. We’re not winning these elections because we’re sitting on the sidelines and letting the environment take hold.”

Perhaps anticipating that Trump’s persistent unpopularity would drag down the Republican ticket, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to postpone the special election until June, but Democrats successfully sued to force the election to March so that the seat would not remain vacant for eight months.

Overall, “since Election Day 2024, 88 special elections featuring candidates from both major parties have taken place for institutions including state legislatures and the U.S. House,” according to a report by The Conversation. Within this grouping, “on average, [Democrats] are running ahead of Harris’s 2024 margins by a whopping 13 percentage points. That’s better than they did in 2018, when they ultimately picked up 40 seats in the House and seven governorships across the country.”

Last month The New Republic's editor Michael Tomasky argued that, because the trends are so overwhelmingly negative for Republicans, Trump has a plan to “rig the midterms.” Activists close to the White House are sharing an alleged Trump proposal to declare an emergency via executive order and use it to ban mail-in voting and require voter ID by arguing China rigged the 2020 election against him.

"The premise, it almost goes without saying, is a total lie," Tomasky wrote, adding, "But Trump administration officials—including Attorney General Bill Barr — pushed the China lie aggressively. So it’s very easy for Trump today to invoke China again and lie that the threat of even greater Chinese interference in 2026 demands that he take emergency measures."

During the 2000s, Donald Trump's hit real show "The Apprentice" made him famous for the words, "You're fired." Trump went on to do a lot of firing during his first presidency and clashed with quite a few traditional conservatives who served in his administration. But Trump hasn't fired nearly as many appointees during his second presidency, as he has surrounded himself with MAGA loyalists who are unlikely to question him.

According to Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, however, one Trump loyalist is in danger of being fired: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

In a March 5 column, Sherman reports, "President Donald Trump has quietly asked Hill Republicans if he should fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the latest sign of her tenuous standing inside the West Wing, according to multiple Republicans who have spoken with the president. Even Speaker Mike Johnson speculated about the potential for a change at the top of DHS during a recent House Republican elected leadership retreat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla."

Trump, according to Sherman, called some GOP senators following Noem's early March testimony in two hearings: a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, March 3, followed by a House Judiciary Committee hearing the next day.

"Those appearances were marked by extraordinarily bitter exchanges between Noem and Democratic lawmakers, especially over Trump's harsh immigration crackdown," Sherman explains. "But some of the most notable exchanges, especially in the Senate hearing, were with Republicans. Trump was said to be especially upset about Noem’s response when Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pressed her Tuesday about a government-funded ad campaign that Kennedy said only served to boost her own personal name recognition nationally. ... Under questioning from Kennedy, Noem said repeatedly that Trump personally approved the controversial ad blitz featuring her in the lead role. This has so angered Trump that Noem's future at DHS may be at risk, we're told."

Republicans are suddenly feeling very real heat in a state that has long been viewed as one of their biggest strongholds, according to a Thursday report from The Hill, as Democrat James Talarico seems poised to give Democrats their best shot at a big Texas win in years.

Primary elections went down in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, giving shape to one of the most closely watched midterm races in the country. On the Democratic side, state Rep. James Talarico secured the Democratic nomination for the Senate, with polls indicating that he represents the party's best shot this year of winning a statewide seat in Texas. On the Republican side, no candidate received enough of the total votes, necessitating a runoff between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn is considered the safest, more traditional GOP option, while Paxton — an outspoken Donald Trump ally with a scandal-ridden tenure as AG — could be the nominee who would put the party's hold on the seat in jeopardy.

Polls have shown that a Talarico-Paxton race would be the match-up most likely to produce a Democratic victory. As that version of the race becomes more and more likely, The Hill reported that operatives within the GOP are growing extremely anxious about how things will play out. Speaking to the outlet, an anonymous party operative said that it is now imperative that the president weigh in with an endorsement, which he has not done as of yet, to tip the race in a direction the GOP can best win.

"Talarico being the nominee makes it more important than ever that President Trump endorses John Cornyn," the operative said.

There has been some optimism, however, since Cornyn secured the most votes of any candidate in Tuesday's GOP primary and outperformed internal expectations. While the results of the primary are still up in the air, some now believe that Cornyn will prevail.

“I think it gets Cornyn over the finish line,” another Republican strategist told The Hill. “I am [optimistic] only because of how Cornyn performed last night. I think everybody’s assumption was it was going to be a more conservative primary electorate, and for a whole host of reasons and variables, most notably a hundred million dollars’ worth, that changed."

They added: “Cornyn comes in with momentum, and I think that momentum also leads to a lot of pressure on the White House and the president to have to make a decision.”

Meanwhile, Dan Eberhart, a Paxton-backing GOP donor, told The Hill that a runoff does not favor Cornyn, given the more heavily conservative voters that generally turn out for them.

"This was Cornyn’s shot to fend off his challenger by getting over 50 percent and he couldn’t do it,” he explained. “The runoff voters will be even less friendly territory for Cornyn."