Democrat Mike Sherrill Elected New Jersey Governor, Keeping State Blue

Democrat Mikie Sherill has won the New Jersey governor’s race, in one of the first significant victories for Democrats after Trump’s election.

NBC called the race for Sherill on Tuesday night, leading by a margin of 14 percent, with 61.5 percent of votes reported.

Sherill, a Democratic congresswoman, will succeed current term-limited Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. She handily beat Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker who narrowly lost to Murphy in 2021.

The race was projected to be close, even coming down to single-digit margins. But Sherrill quickly swept to a sizable lead that she maintained as votes poured in.

Many were watching the race as a bellwether for where Democrats stand during the second Trump administration, and their potential to gain back ground in the 2026 midterms. Because of its symbolic significance, contributors on both sides of the aisle threw money at their chosen candidate: With close to $200 million spent in total, it was the most expensive race in New Jersey’s history. Sherill received more from small donors, but 80 percent of Ciattarrelli’s donors were New Jersey residents, compared with only about 56 percent of Sherill’s.

Sherill campaigned on combating Donald Trump’s attacks on the state’s federal funding, including his decision to pause money for the Gateway Tunnel project. She also pledged to freeze utility costs, appealing to voters’ economic anxieties.

Sherill’s win comes as a relief for Democrats: Traditionally a blue state, the gubernatorial race was a test of the durability of Jersey’s rightward swing during the presidential election.

Virginia state Senator Ghazala Hashmi was elected lieutenant governor Tuesday, becoming the first Muslim woman to hold statewide office in the United States.

Hashmi, a Democrat, was projected to defeat former right-wing talk show host John Reid, according to NBC News and Decision Desk HQ.

Hashmi has served as a state senator since 2019, when she became the first Indian American and first Muslim woman ever elected to the state legislature. The 61-year-old pledged Monday to fight against the “chaos of Washington and Donald Trump,” a promise that comes amid an ongoing government shutdown that has significantly shaken Virginia’s economy.

Virginians also elected their first female governor Tuesday, Abigail Spanberger. The Democratic candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, is also projected to win, meaning Virginia will have a strong left-leaning team to stand against Trump.

Democrats made history in Georgia on Tuesday after flipping both statewide races for public service commissioner, the party’s first non-federal election victory in the state since 2006.

The state’s Public Service Commission deals with utilities, and it “has exclusive power to decide what are fair and reasonable rates for services under its jurisdiction.” Alicia Johnson defeated incumbent Tim Echols, winning 58 percent to his 41. And Peter Hubbard defeated Fitz Johnson 61 percent to 39 percent.

This victory, along with Abigail Spanberger’s gubernatorial win in Virginia, is a positive indicator for a future blue wave in the upcoming midterm elections.

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval handily defeated Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Pureval, a Democrat, trounced Cory Bowman, securing an early and humiliating lead over the Republican challenger. The final vote tally found that Purevan won 78 percent of the vote, with 51,698 votes, while Bowman seized a meager 14,383 votes, totalling just 22 percent, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

This race was called early in the night after an initial vote tally found that Pureval had won 12,694 votes, compared to Bowman’s 2,835. Pureval was first elected to office in 2021.

Vance previously endorsed his half-brother’s campaign ahead of the mayoral primary in May, with just hours left before the polls closed. “He’s a good guy with a heart for serving his community. Get out there and vote for him!” Vance wrote on X.

The vice president made no effort to plug his sibling’s campaign this time around, but posted instead in support of New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli.

This story has been updated.

Former Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears Tuesday by a margin of nine percentage points to become the next governor of Virginia. Spanberger will be the first ever female governor of the Commonwealth.

Spanberger ran a more centrist campaign centered around protecting reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, affordability, and education, while Earle-Sears’s campaign was marked by an unhinged, hard-right conservatism that doubled down on many of the culture-war issues that former Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and President Donald Trump have pushed.

Trump had also pushed hard against voting for Spanberger in the days leading up to the election. He regularly took to Truth Social to warn without evidence that voting for her would result in things such as “transgender for everybody,” increased crime rates, and increased energy costs.

Exit polls showed Spanberger winning 45 percent of men and 61 percent of women in Virginia. Along ethnic lines, she won 45 percent of white people, 64 percent of Latinos, and a whopping 90 percent of Virginia’s Black voters.

Spanberger’s historic victory in Virginia may very well serve as a bellwether for some kind of blue wave in the upcoming midterm elections.

“My fellow Virginians, tonight we sent a message,” Spanberger told the crowd at her victory rally. “That in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our Commonwealth over chaos.”

This story has been updated.

The FBI is telling federal agents enforcing the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies to start identifying themselves.

Last month, the bureau issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies warning that criminals are pretending to be Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and engaging in crimes ranging from sexual assault to robbery, reports Wired. The bulletin said that officers need to start identifying themselves and cooperate when civilians ask them to verify who they are and what agency they work for. This includes being able to contact local police.

“Ensure law enforcement personnel [adequately] identify themselves during operations and cooperate with individuals who request further verification,” the bulletin states.

The document pointed out five different instances in which people pretending to be immigration officers committed crimes and targeted members of vulnerable communities. The criminals were able to take advantage of the fact that many federal immigration agents, including ICE, cover their faces and refuse to identify themselves while conducting raids and detaining suspected undocumented immigrants.

Criminals in one case allegedly pretended to be ICE agents in order to rob the ATM at a New York restaurant, and in another case, a woman wearing an ICE T-shirt tried to kidnap her ex-boyfriend’s wife. One man allegedly attempted to sexually assault a woman in a Brooklyn stairwell and stole her phone.

Federal rules in theory require immigration officers to identify themselves and state the reason for an arrest “as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.” But ICE’s practices on the ground have made it easy for criminals to impersonate agents, while also increasing public distrust in federal law enforcement.

If the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, which are problematic enough, at least required agents to follow federal rules and laws, this wouldn’t be a growing trend among criminals. Instead, anyone dressed in combat fatigues, covering their faces, and/or openly carrying firearms can pretend to work for the government and commit crimes because actual federal agents act almost the exact same.

MAGA world is having a full-blown racist meltdown as New Yorkers are set to elect Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor.

Many of Mamdani’s loudest detractors invoked the September 11 attacks in the hours leading up to the election. “When you vote tomorrow, remember 9/11,” said one user, in a post that racked up 64,000 likes.

It’s a nonsensical comparison held together by sheer force of racism. Are they suggesting that 9-year-old Mamdani was in cahoots with Al Qaeda? Do they think he, somehow, would welcome this type of attack on the city he’s worked so hard to get a chance to govern?

Laura Loomer, the self-described “proud Islamophobe” who has the ear of the president, blamed Mamdani for bomb threats called in to polling places, saying they were “probably called in by Mamdani’s own Muslim jihadi voters.” Ah yes, the very normal “bomb my polling place in support of my currently winning candidate” strategy!

After posting a video of 9/11 with the caption, “WAKE UP NEW YORK!,” on Monday night, Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles on Tuesday afternoon posted a picture of Uganda, where Mamdani was born, managing to be racist toward the entire African country as well as Mamdani himself.

Meanwhile over on Instagram, Zionist actress Debra Messing, in what appears to be some sort of mania, has posted dozens of anti-Mamdani Instagram stories in the last 24 hours—including one that calls all Muslims scheming liars. “In Judaism and Christianity, we are commanded to speak the truth. In Islam, they are commanded to lie if it means spreading Islam.… Take a look at Mamdani. Apply that basic rule.… These two opposing civilizations cannot coexist.”

Just imagine if someone with 1.4 million Instagram followers said something like that about all Jews.

New Yorkers, understandably, have taken this racist fearmongering personally.

“As someone who grew up in New York during 9/11—who had family working in the city, and classmates pulled out of class because one of their parents had been killed in the attacks—let me just say this: a big, heartfelt FUCK YOU to anyone who dares exploit that trauma for cheap political attacks in a mayoral race,” progressive reporter Brett Meiselas posted.

Donald Trump boasts that his White House ballroom is being funded by private donors and not taxpayers. But it turns out that the donors to the $300 million monstrosity have a lot of business with the government, ranging from federal contracts to investigations into their companies.

The Washington Post reports that over half of the companies spending money on the project are dealing with federal law enforcement on actions including unfair labor practices, environmental infractions, and deceiving consumers. These companies, which include Nvidia, Google, Comcast, and Lockheed Martin, have received over $279 billion in government contracts over the past five years.

The Post cited a report from consumer advocacy group Public Citizen for its story, which focused on the more than three dozen corporate and individual donors disclosed by the Trump administration, as well as three more discovered by CBS News. Many of the companies and individuals also donated to Trump’s inauguration or other Republican projects.

None of the companies have said how much they have donated exactly, although Trump bragged at a White House dinner that some forked up as much as $25 million. The White House’s claims of transparency are further contradicted by the fact that fundraisers for Trump have told prospective donors that they have the option to remain anonymous.

The whole thing smacks of bribery and corruption, but that has never been a problem for Trump, and he isn’t likely to face any investigations or accountability over the donations. The public doesn’t even know how exactly the money is being spent on the ballroom, but is just receiving general figures. We only learn about what is happening based on the destruction we can see on the White House lawn.

President Donald Trump went rogue on Truth Social on Tuesday, contradicting his own administration’s decision a day earlier to fund SNAP benefits during the shutdown—and potentially violating a court order in the process.

“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office … will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” Trump wrote.

The Trump administration announced Monday that it would use an emergency fund to pay out SNAP benefits for November, with two major caveats: that the benefits would only be about 50 percent funded and that it may take multiple months to disperse the funds.

But Trump doesn’t seem happy with even that meager offering to hungry Americans. Instead, he brayed on Truth Social that no food stamps would be given out until the shutdown ends, playing with working people’s lives in an attempt to own the libs.

Trump’s announcement caught members of his own team off guard, with four people with knowledge of the matter telling Politico they aren’t clear whether his post means that USDA now won’t abide by the court order.

If Trump follows through on his threat, it would likely be in violation of a federal court order demanding that the government fund the program. But will the Trump administration follow the whims of the president or the USDA’s previously announced plan? USDA had no further comment for Politico, and the White House simply directed reporters to the president’s post.

From tariffs to funding cuts, contradictory policies and often-empty threats have been a hallmark of the second Trump term since day one. We all know that the president has no regard for the rule of law, but apparently he can’t even be bothered to extend any courtesy to his own appointees.

As New Yorkers go to the polls on Tuesday, Republicans in Congress pulled out every bigoted message they could think of to insult the city’s Democratic nominee and mayoral front-runner, Zohran Mamdani. 

Representative Andy Ogles posted a video on X of the 9/11 attacks in New York, calling on the city to “WAKE UP,” in a blatant attack on Mamdani’s Muslim faith.  

Representative Randy Fine, who already has a history of Islamophobia in his short congressional career, called for Mamdani’s deportation, in a speech to the Republican Jewish Committee’s Las Vegas summit over the weekend.

“The only thing I want to see him running for is his gate at JFK on the deportation flight back to Uganda,” Fine said, in a video posted on Monday. Both Fine and Ogles have called for the Department of Justice to investigate Mamdani’s citizenship. 

Also at the RJC summit, Senator Dave McCormick claimed antisemitism is “running wild on the progressive left” and that “the leaders of the Democratic Party are not confronting it, with their new star, Mamdani.”

Senator Ted Cruz called Mamdani a communist and a “Karl Marx-quoting, America-hating jihadist.”

The fact that a democratic socialist Muslim who campaigned on making New York City affordable is on the verge of being elected the city’s next mayor is too much for many on the right. Maybe these Republicans ought to worry about the government shutdown instead of the choices of voters in a city they normally denigrate.