2026 Mid-Term Elections

[Shadowy Man]

When billionaires stop paying for airtime it will presage the attempt to refuse to seat the winners. J3 might need to be bigger than J6, if not as violent.

And they can plan openly now that they know they can just get pardoned.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Looking at the polls for Texas senate and trying to see if there are any trends that could provide us with evidence Democrats should be giddy about the polling.

In a late poll for Cruz - Allred - NY Times/Siena had Cruz up 4 pts. He'd win by twice that. White voters were 36 to 61 for Cruz, non-white 61 to 34 for Allred.
A recent poll from Marist, putting Paxton down 4 pts, White voters are 43 to 53 for Paxton, non-white are 60 to 32 for Talarico.

My main red flag is non-white voters are about the same as they were for Allred. WTF?! The shocker to me is that it is white voter sentiment that is showing Talarico in the lead. That makes me think Talarico is going to lose.

But there is a shiny glimmer here, in my pessimistic data review. Suburbs are 55-42 in Talarico's favor. I'm uncertain how possible it is to win the city, win the suburbs (by that margin), and manage to lose still. In 2024, Cruz was up in the suburbs in the last Marist poll, 54-44.

 

[Derec]

YouGov also puts NC and GA into solid blue territory, both Cooper and Ossoff at 50+% and >10 pt lead. Florida is 45 a piece. The question becomes, is Donalds a bad enough of a candidate to cost Florida the Senate seat.

Who is Donalds? The Republican candidate is Ashley Moody.
Angie Nixon is plenty bad herself. She is a typical DSA nutjob.
Nixon paid thousands to Hamas-praising staffer after years of her antisemitic posts
I Don't Wanna Pay It Back’: Socialist Senate Nominee Angie Nixon Says It's ‘Crazy’ She Has To Pay Her Taxes And Student Loans

Dems really should have gone with Alex Vindman. More moderate and has an impressive resume: a decorated Army officer and was on the National Security Council. However, he is way ...

... for the modern Democratic Party.

 

[Derec]

The Israelis are not as white as many seem to think.

And Palestinians are not as "brown" as many people think. They get "person of color" privileges imputed because they tend to be Muslim. Like Islamist and rabid antsemite Linda "Cockroach" Sarsour said, she was just an "ordinary white girl" until she put her hijab on.
Or take the blonde and blue-eyed Ahed Tamimi.

She too has her "brownness" imputed because she is an Arab Muslim.

Note that West Bank Palestinians tend to be whiter because they are settler colonists from places like Lebanon and Syria, while Gaza Palestinians tend to be darker because they tend to be from places like Egypt and even as far as Yemen. UNRWA considers all Arabs who lived in the area from 1946-1948 as "Palestinian refugees" no matter when they moved there or from where.

 

[ZiprHead]

Government can use Social Security data to identify noncitizen voters, Supreme Court rules. President Donald Trump wants to let states use a federal database that includes voters’ personal information to check for noncitizens on voter rolls.

The Trump administration can use a wide-ranging government database that includes Social Security information to help state officials identify noncitizens on their voter lists, the Supreme Court said on Friday.

The emergency ruling means the database will be accessible ahead of November’s midterm elections for states that want to use it. But the fight over the procedure’s legality will continue in the lower courts.

In an unsigned opinion, the majority said the claims made by the voters who challenged the database’s use “likely lack merit.” At issue is the inclusion of Social Security data in a system, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE).


The court wrote that, under laws covering the data, “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.”
The court’s three liberals dissented, citing the plaintiffs’ claims that the data has been shown to have errors that could lead lawful voters to being barred from casting ballots.

 

[ZiprHead]

In July, Donald Trump gave a speech saying DHS had found a combined 278,000 non-citizens on the rolls in Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Follow-up letters to each of those states weakened the claim, saying there only could be as many as 278,000 non-citizens on the rolls, including up to 15,903 in Nevada.

In August, DHS officials told staffers in the Nevada secretary of state’s office that they had reviewed the numbers and confirmed only 185 were non-citizens. DHS officials said they still needed to review more than 14,000 records.

But on Wednesday, Nevada election officials said they had reviewed the 185 records DHS sent them and confirmed they were US citizens. “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens. You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise,” Greg Ott, a deputy attorney general, wrote to DHS this week in an email obtained by the New York Times and Nevada Independent.

In other words, zero non-citizens on the voter rolls.

Nearly 200 people wrongly identified on Nevada’s voter rolls as non-citizens

State election officials said they reviewed 185 records homeland security sent them and confirmed they were US citizens

www.theguardian.com

 

[unapologetic]

Assuming he's planned to leave office after this term,

That was the assumption when he started doing whatever he feaver-dreamed. But he has since made it clear he will resist abdicating his throne.
He did not ignore the 'norm' for the reason of it being his last term. He sees it as his 'forever' term.
______
Woo "...could have curative capabilities we've ignored."
As if we ignore them out of negligence. We have abandoned them because we've found more reliable methods.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Assuming he's planned to leave office after this term,

That was the assumption when he started doing whatever he feaver-dreamed. But he has since made it clear he will resist abdicating his throne.
He did not ignore the 'norm' for the reason of it being his last term. He sees it as his 'forever' term.
______
Woo "...could have curative capabilities we've ignored."
As if we ignore them out of negligence. We have abandoned them because we've found more reliable methods.

I'm unsure what norm you're referring to. Being limited to two terms comes from the 22nd Amendment and it's clear as day and even covers the non-consecutive scenario. Therefore, it's a law.

Not that it matters one bit. Turns out that laws don't matter if they're not enforced.

I don't like cliches but "May you live in uninteresting times" is not applicable to the current situation.

 

[unapologetic]

I'm unsure what norm you're referring to.

I wasn't referring to term limits. I was referring to the legal and social norms he ignores, unafraid of consequences.

 

[bilby]

Being limited to two terms comes from the 22nd Amendment and it's clear as day and even covers the non-consecutive scenario.

It is as clear as day, and it says:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

DJT has, by his own claims, been elected to the office of President three times, and so is already in breach of the 22nd.

And the 22nd says nothing about how many terms a person may serve as President. Only that they may not be elected more than twice.

It would not be a breach of the 22nd for a President to suspend elections and continue in office indefinitely, and indeed it would be expected that this would occur in the event of a national or global emergency that rendered elections impractical or impossible (such as a nuclear war, the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, a major asteroid strike, or the President not wanting to stand down).

Of course, the decision as to whether a given circumstance rises to the level of an emergency that requires the suspension of elections, rests with the holder of the Executive Powers, that is, the President of the United States; Who will inevitably be an upstanding citizen with the national interest at heart, because anyone who was not would have been blocked from office by the fine men of the Electoral College.

So there is nothing to worry about.

 

[Elixir]

It would not be a breach of the 22nd for a President to suspend elections and continue in office indefinitely

I will be astonished if trump leaves office next January, unless he’s a total McConnell or Graham by then.

 

[Derec]

A local popularity in the USA is unlikely to be that impactful on global diesel prices.

I do not think there really are "global diesel prices". The relative price of diesel vs. gasoline varies, and also depends on local demand.

My understanding is that diesel is disproportionately impacted globally because the feedstocks for diesel were more commonly from the gulf and from Russia, both of which are now fucked up beyond all recovery.
Other sources of crude, and of refining capacity, tended to be more used for lighter (gasoline) fractions, ironically because those were seen as more profitable.

[Citation needed]
My understanding is that Arab and Russian crudes are relatively light.

Another effect is the global move towards electric and hybrid cars, which cuts gasoline demand, while having little effect on the demand for diesel. This is also moving auto manufacturing strongly towards China and away from North America.

That would not affect demand for products in the US much because adoption of EVs is pretty sluggish.

Large diesel "trucks" (by which I assume you mean Utes or Pickup Trucks used as private vehicles, rather than commercial goods haulage vehicles) were very popular here until recently, but with diesel now pushing A$3/litre, I am increasingly seeing passengers who are telling me that they are first-time bus users, because of the cost of diesel for their utes and fourbies.

Yes, from context it is pretty obvious that I mean private vehicles and not commercial box trucks and semis.
But around here, they can get pretty big, and often run on diesel. Sights like these are not uncommon, and buyers seem undeterred by diesel being >$6 per US gallon.

(humans for scale)

The number of hybrid and electric cars (mostly Chinese models such as BYD, but with a strong leavening of Teslas) is far higher now than before March, by my guesstimate as a professional driver who watches traffic all day.

We can't even buy BYDs or other Chinese cars here.

We are currently on a road trip from Queensland to Victoria, and have taken @gmbteach's hybrid Kona (5.3l/100km) rather than my 3 litre V6 Toyota (>10l/100km). Both run on 91RON ULP, which is ~A$2.40/l at the moment; We put just over A$50 in the tank today, after driving from Gunnedah to Parkes, a distance of 391km.

$2.40 AUS/l is ~$6.3 US/gal. More than 50% more expensive than here (~$4/gal in the ATL), but not as expensive as I expected to be honest. California gasoline prices are probably comparable with yours.

 

[unapologetic]

(humans for scale)

How does the youngest even get into that thing?

 

[bilby]

(humans for scale)

How does the youngest even get into that thing?

Humans, like all great apes, are adept at climbing even as juveniles. This applies even to mostly ground-dwelling species, suggesting a fairly recent arboreal ancestry in evolutionary terms.