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In order to take control of the U.S. Senate in the 2026 midterms, Democrats will need to flip four GOP-held seats while holding all the seats they're defending. And one race Democratic strategists are feeling optimistic about is North Carolina's U.S. Senate battle — which, according to the Daily Beast's Laura Esposito, is becoming a major source of humiliation and embarrassment for President Donald Trump.

In North Carolina, Trump is backing the GOP's U.S. Senate nominee, Michael Whatley, who, according to some polls, is now trailing his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Roy Cooper, by double digits. Esposito, in the Daily Beast, emphasizes that GOP voters are feeling very disappointed by Whatley — despite Trump's endorsement.

"Trump's backing appears to be doing little to sway key voters," Esposito explains. "During interviews with MS NOW's Jack Traylor, several North Carolina voters expressed a lack of interest in — and even disdain for — Whatley."

North Carolina resident Fred Abromitis, who voted for Trump in 2024, finds Whatley's campaign ads unconvincing.

Abromitis told MS NOW, "I think they're misleading, if not full of lies. I don't like what he stands for; he says he's for lower taxes, (but) everybody can say that. But doing it is another thing."

Esposito notes that Abromitis' criticism "isn't the first time Whatley has been accused of being disingenuous."

"In May, the 'America First' Republican was called out by the Daily Beast for spending more than $1600 on campaign merchandise made in China," according to Esposito. "While it's not uncommon for merchandise to be made cheaply overseas, Whatley has loudly advocated for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. In 2021, when Whatley was still the chairman of the North Carolina GOP, he said that through Trump's 'America first agenda,' the Republican Party has been 'tough on China,' in a way that is 'making sure that our economic policies are creating jobs for the working class Americans across the board.'"

A female North Carolina voter told MS NOW that Whatley is making a mistake by running as a Trump ally at a time when the president's popularity is so low.

The voter told MS NOW, "I don't think it's wise, but he's still got a lot of people that are connected to him for reasons I don't really understand, when his approval ratings are going down."

Trump's North Carolina visit, Esposito argues, shows how worried he is about Whatley's campaign.

"Trump, for his part, has praised Whatley throughout his Senate run, calling him an 'America First Patriot' who will 'Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A.," according to the Daily Beast reporter. "Trump's desperate trip to North Carolina comes as Republicans brace for a big blue wave come November. A bombshell New York Times poll on Tuesday reinforced that belief, showing Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans with less than 50 days until the midterms. According to a New York Times/Siena University poll, likely voters favored Democratic over Republican candidates for Congress by nearly nine percentage points."

Texas' race for railroad commissioner led to a major scandal when racist social media posts by GOP nominee Bo French captured national headlines and veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said he would be voting for the Democratic nominee, Jon Rosenthal. President Donald Trump responded by attacking Rove as "RINO" (Republican In Name Only). And according to conservative New York Times columnist David French, this scandal is a prime example of the Republican Party spinning out of control.

Although Bo French had been posting racist comments on social media for a long time, the current scandal erupted over the weekend — when he responded to a Texas victory in a college football game by lamenting the fact that many of the fans were non-white. On X, Bo French posted a photo of fans and wrote, "I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn't believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined."

David French, in his Times column, writes, "(Bo) French's 'problem' was obvious. He wasn't an Ohio State fan angry that Texas won; he was a Texas fan angry that those students were who they were. Before I go any further, you need to know that this is nothing unusual from Bo French. He's one of a seemingly endless number of vicious bigots lurking within the modern right, but he stands out from the rest, even so. As Robert Downen wrote in Texas Monthly, French has 'called for the rounding up of all Muslims.' French has also posted, 'OK boys, it's time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!' and has called for America to be like Rhodesia, an African nation every bit as gross, violent and racially repressive as apartheid South Africa. So, no, Bo French does not merit the benefit of the doubt."

David French emphasizes that the Bo French scandal underscores a problem that goes way beyond Bo French himself: MAGA Republicans flaunting, not trying to hide, their racism.

"Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, the organization Charlie Kirk co-founded, and the executive producer of 'the Charlie Kirk Show,' wrote: 'America was ~80% white 40 years ago. Now it's ~50%. The demographic replacement of America is happening at a historic, truly insane pace. It's not racist to notice,'" David French observes. "Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer with an immense following, posted, 'Defend @bofrench like the Alamo' … And if you want to know why South Asians can't assimilate, then Steve Deace, a Christian talk show host, can tell you: 'Why is it a bad idea to import so many people from India? Just 2.3 percent of India is Christian.'"

David French points out that some Republicans are vehemently condemning Bo French, including Rove and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

"The battle lines of the post-Trump Republican Party are being drawn," David French argues. "There will be a renewed push to return the party to a degree of normalcy and integrity. There will be a fight against the racists and bigots of the populist right. But 10 years of Trump have changed the party, from the grass roots to its think tanks to the White House itself. As Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, wrote on X, Republicans who condemned French 'weren't prepared for the ferocious and justified pushback they got, because the New Right is not willing to assume the supine beautiful losers posture that characterized the American right for decades on questions of immigration and national identity.'"

When President Donald Trump betrayed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) by endorsing his primary rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in the latter's ultimately-successful intraparty challenge, experts speculated that the president may have politically hit himself in the face. The reasoning was that Cornyn was both electable in Texas and a diehard MAGA loyalist, while Paxton — though also hardcore MAGA — is weighed down by a number of financial and personal scandals.

Now there is another race that may go to the Democrats because of Cornyn's resentment toward the president, at least if Cornyn's retweeting of a pro-Democrat post is any indication.

On Wednesday night Cornyn retweeted a post of an editorial by Republican consultant Karl Rove which said "Why I'm Voting for a Texas Democrat by @KarlRove." Later he quoted from the editorial in a separate tweet that ”The GOP’s stables need a cleaning. This is a good place to start.“ In response journalist Molly Jong-Fast asked "Are you?" while economist Catherine Rampell posted a pair of interested eyes. The Independent's Eric Michael Garcia asked "Cornyn reposts Karl Rove's op-ed about voting for Rosenthal over Bo French. Sooooo, is Cornyn going to vote for Rosenthal too?"

By contrast, some conservatives were angry at Cornyn. Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson wrote "the sitting 'Republican' Senator of Texas, who lost by 27+ points in his primary, is now telling people to vote Democrat. Spineless. Your own voters rejected you. Now you're endorsing the party whose beliefs are antithetical to what Texans stand for. Pure betrayal. This is why we lose." Similarly right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec commented, "And there it is." Meanwhile former Trump Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo wrote that Cornyn "will not be missed."

Cornyn and Rove are endorsing Democratic Texas Railroad Commissioner nominee Jon Rosenthal over Republican Bo French because French recently posted a racist comment about University of Texas students on social media.

"In one post," recently reported The New York Times' McGaughy. "Mr. French described South Asian students at the school as 'foreigners' who had 'displaced' Americans at the state's flagship university. Mr. French's posts struck a chord in a way his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim comments have not before. The messages threatened to fracture the Texas Republicans' attempts at solidarity and tested their willingness to criticize one of their own — just weeks before midterm voting begins. Mr. French denied his posts were racist and threw the blame back on Republicans who didn't fully support his message."

McGaughy continued, "The posts have also given Democrats renewed hope to win a statewide office in Texas for the first time in a generation. While much of the national focus has been on the U.S. Senate race against Mr. Paxton, the scandal-plagued attorney general running against James Talarico, state party officials believe Mr. French and another anti-immigrant hardliner, Don Huffines, are particularly vulnerable. The hardliners on the Republican slate may help Democrats in other races as well."

President Donald Trump has made repeated overtures to annex Greenland, despite the overwhelming opposition both within that Danish territory and throughout the rest of the European Union (EU). Now one economist is reporting that the EU may be causing long-term damage to the American economy by moving its gold out of this country — and as a direct result of the United States' actions toward Greenland.

"They've done this because they're worried about what Donald Trump might do to use this against them," economist Catherine Rampell told The Bulwark's Tim Miller on Wednesday. "Now, I don't think he's, like, actually likely to tunnel underground a la Die Hard with a Vengeance and, like, literally steal the gold in dump trucks. But you don't know."

She added, "Like, he did talk about how he wanted to show up at Fort Knox and knock on the door to make sure the gold was still there in case somebody else had stolen it. He literally said that, I think, multiple times. So maybe he would do that. The more likely outcome is that he would basically say we're going to treat the EU, our friends in the European Union, the same way that we're treating Russia. And we're going to say they no longer have access to this."

Rampell continued, "We've frozen Russia's foreign exchange reserves, for example. They might well do the same thing. And by the way, Germany is considering this as well, taking the role back. And Germany had gold here partly because of Cold War reasons. Like it wasn't fleeing the Nazis. It was like making sure that the Soviets couldn't get their mitts on it. In any event, what they're worried about is like, look, there's the whole Liberace stuff within the White House."

The economist concluded, "Maybe we'll have a shortage. I don't think it's actually that. It's like they're freaked out about the invasion of Greenland or the threatened invasion of Greenland. That was a much bigger deal in Europe than American media coverage let on. Like they were totally freaked out about that. They're like, well, if he's threatening to invade a NATO ally, why wouldn't he just expropriate our assets? He talks all the time about how he wants to take the oil or in the case of Venezuela has taken the oil and not just oil, of course."

Miller then pointed out, "Gold? They said they took the gold in Venezuela." Rampell confirmed that this is indeed the case.

Speaking with AlterNet earlier in September, Dr. Richard D. Wolff — professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – broke down exactly why Europe, Canada and other nations threatened by the United States are acting like this.

"I am not surprised that our government is surprised," Wolff wrote. "Our government is busy strong-arming people around the world in every way that it can, militarily, economically, politically, and discovering time after time to their amazement, if you take them seriously, that the folks are going to resist. And that's what's going to happen."

Europe has already vowed to defend Greenland from American aggression.

“We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters at a NATO summit over the summer. “One of the reasons why we built NATO many, many years ago is if anything happens to one of us then everybody should stand up for each other.”

During that same summit, Icelandic premier Kristrún Frostadóttir declared that “the lines in the sand are clear: Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland."

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is no stranger to controversy, from the accusation of sexual harassment made by Anita Hill during his confirmation hearing to his consistent support for corporate interests and the revelation that he has accepted gifts from billionaires. Now, in a recent interview, Thomas told an interview that he has no interest in talking to legal experts before rendering his decisions.

"While [Sen. Ted] Cruz [R-TX] laments such unfair treatment, throughout the book he makes the point that Thomas is not particularly bothered by it," reported SCOTUSblog's Randy Maniloff on Wednesday. Maniloff had interviewed Cruz about his recent biography of Thomas, "Going Further." "Asked about this, Cruz told SCOTUSblog, 'He’s a strong man and he knows what he believes. He’s not looking for affirmation from others.' Cruz elaborated by sharing a story of Justice Stephen Breyer asking Thomas if he 'wants to go talk to law professors who were expressing derision toward him.' Thomas replied: 'Steve, no offense, but why would I give a d - - - what those people think.'"

Thomas' comment was particularly striking because, as a self-described constitutional originalist, he should theoretically be very concerned with what experts in the Constitution think about key legal questions. He even admitted as much to Cruz according to Maniloff.

"While Thomas was looking for an education in the law, Cruz explains that he was confronted with professors promoting a doctrine known as 'legal realism,'" Maniloff wrote. "Under this theory, laws did not have to mean what their drafters understood them to mean. Instead, laws were malleable and judges were free to change them if they believed it 'necessary' to do so."

He added, "In search of guidance, Thomas turned to older books about the origins of law and government. Cruz writes that '[w]hat struck him was how different the founders’ world looked from the abstract theories that dominated his classes.' Cruz adds: 'With every book he consumed about the United States and its founders, he became more convinced than ever that his grandfather’s ideas about the world had been correct all along.'"

In fact, Thomas has defied the will of the founding fathers on numerous occasions, most recently in a Supreme Court ruling in which he joined Justice Samuel Alito in a 7-to-2 minority opposing the majority's ruling that Trump could not suppress mail-in voting. The Constitution clearly dictates that elections are controlled by the states, despite Trump's attempts to "nationalize" them to make sure he doesn't lose the 2026 midterms.

"First of all, Clarence Thomas was just on Ted Cruz's podcast openly talking about his conservative values and his distaste and disgust at liberal society and liberal values, right?" Alex Wagner, a journalist who contributes to "The Atlantic" and wrote a book about the Supreme Court called "The Steal," told MS NOW's Chris Hayes on Monday. "That is a justice of the Supreme Court who joins Samuel Alito in this dissent. And I think the most piercing line of the dissent is when Alito writes, 'The plaintiff states invoke the practical effects of implementing the rule post-conventional elections. I take that problem very seriously, but it's not enough to convince me to deny the application.'"

President Donald Trump tried to cancel talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel last year, in an effort that boomeranged so badly on him that it helped Kimmel's ratings and even rallied some conservatives against him. Now a political scientist is observing that Trump, apparently learning nothing, may have drawn attention to Kimmel's recent interview with Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico — and, in the process, helped that interview outperform Trump's own midterms convention.

"This is a profile in boomeranging," Jason Johnson, an associate professor of communication and journalism at Morgan State University, told MS NOW's Ari Melber on Wednesday. "The effort to censor the interview we have Kimmel here has actually enhanced it only because they chose to fight. By putting it on YouTube, that puts it out to the world and, oh my gosh, we are way over the normal audience. And the intrigue — I mean, I'll tell folks, they titled it the interview the FCC doesn't want you to see. Americans don't like being told what to watch or what to think, Jason, including by right-wing overlords, even in Texas."

Later in the interview Johnson described how former talk show host and comedian, Stephen Colbert, symbolically passed the torch to Kimmel during a recent appearance on the latter's show. Colbert was recently cancelled by CBS in a move that critics allege was a cave to pressure from the network's pro-Trump management.

"This actually makes me somewhat emotional," Johnson told Melber. "This is such a huge deal because throughout his career, Stephen Colbert has been very supportive, not just of free speech rights, not just of labor and everything else like that. And so for Marvel to say, 'We're going to give you a replica shield of Captain America,' was significant. He's always had it in the background of his shows. For him to give it to Jimmy Kimmel is basically like when Steve Rogers gave his shield to Sam Wilson at the end of the Avengers series ['Avengers: Endgame']. And I can also say this, Steve Rogers' catchphrase, Captain America's catchphrase, is always, 'I can do this all day.' He fought bullies. That's what he did. He was a small-town kid who got superpowers and he fought against bullies. That's basically what Colbert is saying: 'I'm gonna let you continue this fight that I can't fight anymore against the bullies that other people can't push up against.'"

Kimmel claims that Trump's FCC pressured him to not air his recent interview with Talarico, forcing him to instead upload it to YouTube. While there it received more than 11 million viewers (at the time of this writing), nearly quadruple the 3 million people who tuned in to Trump's midterm convention. The convention didn't even win its week in ratings, as the NFL's opening game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks (a rematch of the most recent Super Bowl) drew more than octuple the convention at 25 million.

Trump's convention also suffered from low attendance, with the president urging attendees to not go to the bathroom lest it leave large empty patches that could be picked up by the cameras.

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CNN anchor Jake Tapper reports Republican policies have raised health care subsidies for Obamacare and escalated the trade war. Add to that the Iran war driving fertilizer prices and diesel prices to historic levels, and you can see why Republican Senate hopeful Ashley Hinson of Iowa is proposing to “reach across the aisle” to Democrats if elected.

“I'm Ashley Hinson, and I approve this message because working across the aisle isn't always easy, but it's how you get results,” said Hinson in her new ad.

But Tapper said Vice President JD Vance has a different kind of message as the U.SA. economy drags down the GOP with 48 days to go until the midterms.

“Don't give power to the people who caused the problems that we're fixing,” Vance told a recent audience. “Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.”

“Well, there's a bumper sticker for you: Give us another chance,” said Tapper Wednesday night, turning to Republican strategists Shermichael Singleton and Kristen Soltis Anderson. “… It sounds like a desperate boyfriend, frankly.”

“If I'm advising the president and you're going out on the campaign trail, you cannot deny the very real pain points for the American people,” said Singleton.

But strategist and pollster Anderson said Republicans’ biggest problem will not be reaching centrist voters that swing one way or another. It’s getting committed Republicans to polls at this point.

“For many Republicans, their big problem is going to be reminding their own voters, Republican voters, what is it that you sent us to Washington to do? Because if those voters are looking at DC and they're going, ‘oh, you renamed the Lake of America, uh, you renamed the Kennedy center.’ Like, that is not what voters are looking for. They're looking for things that they can feel. And even if you can't turn the titanic around in a couple of weeks and make people think the economy is wonderful, you have to at least be able to say, ‘here are the things concretely that we have done to try to make it better. Keep us here. We'll keep trying to do more.’”

Tapper then turned to Singleton and asked “what do you think Republicans are doing right?”

“You’re going to put me on the spot like that?” Singleton said jokingly.

“Hey, you said there are Republicans out there [doing it right.]” Tapper countered.

At that Singleton pointed to GOP senatorial candidate Mike Rogers in Michigan, for endorsing Trump yet straddling the line by being ‘hyper focused on statewide issues.”

“I think he and his campaign recognizes what propelled Trump and Republicans to victory in 2024 was nontraditional voters, low propensity voters,” he said, but Singelton added that getting these same voters to the polls this year “is an uphill battle.”

Anderson advised Republicans to deftly prove they’re ‘not a clone of Donald Trump,’ but she warned that daring to be a Republican who opposes Trump or his agenda “is perilous, depending upon the geography of where you sit.”

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