Trump’s Redistricting Scheme Falls Apart in Yet Another Red State

Republican lawmakers in Kansas killed a weeks-long effort to expedite redrawing their state’s congressional map, delaying President Donald Trump’s push to gerrymander red states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans needed to secure a two-thirds majority approval in both chambers to call a special legislative session—circumventing Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s refusal to do so—but it looks like they couldn’t quite manage it.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins announced Tuesday night that Republicans would not vote to call a special legislative session. “Planning a Special Session is always going to be an uphill battle with multiple agendas, scheduling conflicts and many unseen factors at play,” he said in a statement.

Republicans had planned to target Kansas’s 3rd congressional district, which has been led by Representative Sharice Davids, a Democrat, since 2019. But it seems that the state’s GOP lawmakers just couldn’t get behind the mid-cycle redistricting effort that Trump had demanded, with some concerned redistricting could make red areas more competitive.

State Senate President Ty Masterson quickly promised that redistricting would be “a top priority” when the legislature resumed in January next year.

Davids, who has reportedly been eyeing a Senate run, said in a statement: “We’ve won the first round in this fight against gerrymandering.”

This isn’t the first of Trump’s redistricting schemes to fall apart in a red state. In Indiana, Governor Mike Braun happily called a special legislative session last week, but it still seems that mid-cycle redistricting lacks crucial Republican support. And in California, a Republican fretted that redistricting elsewhere could end up costing him his seat.

While progressives celebrated a historic victory in New York City Tuesday night, their MAGA counterparts were not so jazzed about the mayoral election results. But their anger wasn’t only channeled toward Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who secured more than 50 percent of the citywide vote.

MAGA also fixated on the Republican candidate in the race, Curtis Sliwa, whom they accused of splitting the vote away for a chunk of change.

“You split the fucking vote for $7 fucking million dollars [sic], you are a scumbag. I hope every New Yorker spits in your fucking face every single day,” said David Rem, Donald Trump’s childhood friend. “You fucking sold out like fucking Judas sold out fucking Jesus.… Go fuck yourself.”

Where Rem got that cash figure is not exactly clear, but Sliwa could have made more by dropping out: The Guardian Angels founder told The New Yorker Monday that he had been offered $10 million across seven different bribes to step aside in the race.

By Wednesday morning, it was clear that the results of the mayoral election wouldn’t have changed all too much even if Sliwa had stepped aside. Disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent in the race after he was squarely beaten by Mamdani during the Democratic primary, acquired 41.6 percent of the vote, while Sliwa pulled 7.1 percent. Added together in a best case scenario for Cuomo, the ousted politico still wouldn’t have had enough citywide support to squash Mamdani’s enormous win of 50.4 percent.

But MAGA Republicans couldn’t squint to see that reality.

“Fuck you @CurtisSliwa I HATE YOU, your dumb wife, that stupid Beret of yours and all your fucking cats!” posted another disgraced ex–New York lawmaker, George Santos, who left prison early last month after Trump commuted his sentence. (Santos once falsely claimed he founded an animal rescue nonprofit that saved 2,400 imaginary dogs but just 280 imaginary cats—so maybe he just hates felines in general.)

But even Santos, who pleaded guilty last year to credit card fraud and illegally receiving unemployment benefits among other crimes, found Cuomo hard to palate.

“Cuomo was by far a flawed candidate. A terrible human being,” Santos said in another post, in which he suggested that he was going to move out of the city while Mamdani is mayor.

Even people outside of the city were irate at Sliwa for daring to shoot his shot in a democratic election. Pro-Trump sports broadcaster Charly Arnolt—who does not seem to maintain a residence in New York City—also lamented the mayoral outcome, tossing vitriol at Sliwa from hundreds of miles away.

“I truly hope Curtis Sliwa is shunned in NYC,” Arnolt wrote on X. “He is a disgrace, a coward and a traitor and should no longer be welcome to walk the streets he claimed to support.”

Rumors of a multicultural Republican coalition have been greatly exaggerated.

Much was made of President Trump’s success with Latino voters after the president won a groundbreaking 42 percent of them last year, flipping blue districts even as he committed to an immigration crackdown on the campaign trail.

Tuesday’s elections showed just how flimsy that support actually was.

In New Jersey, Hudson County is a town with a large Latino population that saw a big swing to Trump from 2020 to 2024, with Vice President Kamala Harris only winning it by 28 percent against Trump, while Biden won it by 46 four years earlier. But on Tuesday, New Jersey Democratic Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 49 points, eclipsing even Biden, and beating back any gains that Trump had made with the nonwhite voters there.

“Middlesex County NJ (~61% nonwhite) is a great example of how Republican Jack Ciattarelli failed to replicate Trump’s massive gains with nonwhite voters,” political analyst Ryan Matsumoto wrote in another example. “2020 President: Biden +22, 2024 President: Harris +8, 2025 Governor: Sherrill +25.”

Latino voters didn’t just break from Trump and the GOP in New Jersey.

“The clearest sign I can find of Latinos abandoning the GOP after Trump’s big gains in 2024 is Manassas Park, Va., a city of 17,000 people with a 46% Latino plurality population,” HuffPost’s Kevin Robillard wrote. “Harris won it by 20 in 2024. Spanberger is winning it by 42 tonight.”

There was certainly reason for alarm last year over a potential Latino exodus from the Democratic Party. But whatever momentum or goodwill Trump and the GOP had with those voters has more or less been squandered. It only took nearly 10 months of violent arrests, kidnappings, shootings, pepper balls, and federal agents crashing their cars into innocent people for them to back out.

It seems that many of those voters thought Trump’s deportation crackdown would only target violent gangs, not their friends, family, and neighbors. In May, an Equis poll came out that showed that 15 percent of Latinos who voted for Trump completely disapproved of his presidential actions by that point. An additional66 percent of all Latino voters believed that his “actions are going too far and targeting the types of immigrants who strengthen our nation.”

“A very large share of Latinos believe mass deportations will ‘tear families apart, many of whom have been in the US for a long time’ (73% agree, 53% strongly) and will ‘unfairly impact undocumented immigrants who are law-abiding members of society, work hard and pay taxes’ (71% agree, 52% strongly),” the poll continued.

“We don’t really want people who have committed any type of crime, even more if they are illegals,” Cuban American and Republican Florida Representative María Salazar said in June. “But we do know that unfortunately what’s happening right now after six months of Mr. President being in office, that we’re losing thousands and thousands of workers [that] the ICE leadership has called ‘collateral damage.’”

The writing has been on the wall for a while, and has only grown more apparent with each passing month, as President Trump viciously attacks the very community that bolstered his campaign in the name of safety and anti-immigration. No one wants to see parents screaming in agony while masked men rip them away from their children—but that’s all these voters have seen, and worse. The buyer’s remorse seems to be setting in.

Groveling isn’t enough for President Donald Trump; he wants his Cabinet secretaries to cower in his presence.

While speaking to Senate Republicans at a White House breakfast Wednesday, Trump described his bilateral meeting with “tough man” Xi Jinping, heaping praise on the Chinese president’s secretaries.

“And every one of those people were standing like this,” Trump said, thrusting his arms back and his chin up. “They were at attention.”

“And I made a comment to one of them, and got no response. I said, ‘Are you gonna answer me?’ I got no response. And President Xi didn’t let him have any,” Trump said, adding: “I said, ‘I want my Cabinet to behave like that.’

“I never saw posture like that. I’ve never seen men so scared in my life,” Trump continued, as Republicans laughed uproariously at the president’s request for stoic compliance.

But Trump’s Cabinet meetings are already a well-documented spectacle of sycophancy, with each of his secretaries taking turns to hail Trump’s supposedly splendid saving of the country. In August, his secretaries took a whopping three hours to kiss the ring in a televised horror show.

“Why don’t you behave like that? JD doesn’t behave like that. JD butts into conversations. I want to have that for at least a couple of days, OK, JD?” Trump said to his vice president.

Specifically, Trump seemed to appreciate the silence of “the equivalent of a vice president,” although it doesn’t appear that Chinese Vice President Han Zheng was actually in attendance at the meeting. Those who were there included Secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Party Cai Qi, Vice Premier He Lifeng, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The 2025 special elections went exceptionally well for Democrats, with local and state candidates flipping red areas across the country.

While most of the national attention has been on Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York, and to a lesser extent Democratic gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia, victories in even more local districts reveal a lot about where the parties stand in the lead-up to the midterms.

Erie County, Pennsylvania, which narrowly supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, voted overwhelmingly for Democrat Christina Vogel in its county executive race by 24 percentage points. In Virginia’s 66th state House district, Nicole Cole defeated 36-year Republican incumbent Bobby Orrock, who usually coasted to victory in every state election and was the longest-serving Republican delegate in Virginia’s legislature.

Democrats in Georgia managed to win two statewide races for public service commissioner, their first nonfederal statewide wins since 2006. Alicia Johnson defeated incumbent Tim Echols, by a 58 to 41 percent margin, while Peter Hubbard ousted Fitz Johnson 61 percent to 39 percent. The positions deal with utilities, and have “exclusive power to decide what are fair and reasonable rates for services under its jurisdiction.”

Even in the deep Southern state of Mississippi, Democrats were able to break the supermajority in the state Senate by flipping three seats after 13 years, taking away Republicans’ ability to override the governor’s veto and easily propose constitutional amendments. These victories, coupled with Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race and the Democratic wins in Virginia and New Jersey, have predictably caused President Trump to melt down.

“‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday night. But whatever Trump and Republicans around the country are saying to themselves on Wednesday, the fact is that the GOP was soundly rejected on Tuesday. Now the task falls on Democrats to make their case for better results in 2026 and 2028.

White House deputy chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller posted an ominous, captionless threat after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election on Tuesday night. 

“Almost 50 percent of New Yorkers live in households with at least one immigrant,” the screenshot he posted from NYC.gov titled “Family Household Types by Immigration Status” read. “Over one million children, equaling 62 percent of the children in New York City, live in a household with at least one foreign-born family member.” 

It should come as no surprise that the man who has engineered President Trump’s sweeping, violent immigration crackdowns would react with vitriol to a democratic socialist Muslim immigrant winning a major mayoral election—and rebuking multiple political establishments in the process. 

“A New York family with one immigrant member, you say?” one user replied, posting an old picture of Trump and his third wife, Melania, an immigrant from Slovenia, and another of Trump and his first wife, Ivana, who was born in Czechoslovakia. (Trump’s mother was also born in Scotland.) 

“The fascist is making overt threats to deport a bunch of children because New Yorkers voted for Zohran,” Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski commented.   

By now, Americans should have realized that Republicans’ claim that they’re  “only going after the worst of the worst” was a complete lie. Miller is simply against nonwhite immigrants existing in America in any capacity, regardless of criminality, and he makes that clear here in this weird, wordless post.  

President Donald Trump’s seen the election results—and he’s pissed at Republicans.  

After Zohran Mamdani was officially elected mayor of New York City Tuesday night, sounding the death knell for Republicans’ election prospects nationwide, Trump refused to take any responsibility for the GOP’s failure. 

“‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

Trump’s name may not have been on the ballot, but his presence was felt as Democrats executed stunning victories in elections in Georgia and Virginia, where the ongoing government shutdown has significantly shaken the economy.

Plagued by seemingly endless electoral disaster, Trump turned his attention to something he could actually be proud of: his television ratings. 

“JUST OUT: The 60 Minutes interview of Donald J. Trump, on CBS, Sunday night, was the highest rated 60 Minutes IN YEARS!” Trump wrote. The president’s interview Sunday had been edited to exclude a lengthy rant he gave about his own apparent corruption. 

It seems that Trump then decided he had marching orders for embattled Republicans, writing: “REPUBLICANS, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER! GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION AND VOTER REFORM! President DJT”

“Pass Voter Reform, Voter ID, No Mail-In Ballots. Save our Supreme Court from ‘Packing,’ No Two State addition, etc. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!!” he wrote in another post. 

After spending weeks singularly blaming Democrats for the congressional stalemate over the ongoing government shutdown, Trump had turned to ordering Republicans to “INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’” by axing the Senate filibuster. The directive adds monumental pressure on Republicans, who have previously fought to maintain the filibuster, which grants significant power to the Senate’s minority.

Trump wasn’t the only one having a hard time coping—MAGA Republicans had their own social media meltdown Tuesday.

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City Tuesday night—and MAGA Republicans are not OK.

Laura Loomer, the self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe” who sits at President Donald Trump’s right hand, ran to X to lament the spate of Muslim candidates running across the country.

“We have a major Islam problem in America,” Loomer wrote. “The GOP refuses to address it because the entire party is influenced by Qatar. The Islamic takeover of America is in full swing. NYC, Virginia and Minnesota all elected Jihadi Muslims tonight.”

Loomer was referring not only to Mamdani but to Ghazala Hashmi, who became the first Muslim woman to hold statewide office in the United States Tuesday when she was elected Virginia’s lieutenant governor, and Minnesota state Senator Omar Fateh, who was running for mayor of Minneapolis. (The Minneapolis mayor race had not been called at time of publication.)

“I don’t think Americans understand how dangerous and violent our country is going to become. It’s very sad to see,” Loomer wrote.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller had a characteristically ghoulish response to Mamdani’s victory: to blame immigrants. The mastermind behind Trump’s massive deportation scheme shared a screenshot on X showing statistics from New York City’s government website stating that 50 percent of New Yorkers live in a household with at least one immigrant family member.

If Tuesday night was a good night for Democrats, it was a bad night for MAGA Republican lawmakers—specifically the racist ones.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace, who has previously flung racist attacks at her fellow lawmaker Ilhan Omar, was quick to try out lame jokes. “Bread lines about to be a real thing in New York. Congrats,” she wrote on X.

Florida Representative Randy Fine, who had called for Mamdani’s deportation just hours earlier, bemoaned the imminent destruction of New York—and beyond.

“Legal immigrants who hate America elected a Communist Muslim Jihadist. New York City has fallen,” Fine wrote on X. “America is next if we don’t stop it.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson posted a lengthy screed on X warning the consequences of New York City’s mayoral election “will be felt across our entire nation.”

“House Democrats endorsed Mamdani’s dangerous policies—including defunding the police, seizing private property, and massive tax increases. Now, every House Democrat incumbent and candidate will co-own Mamdani’s disastrous record in the 2026 midterms,” Johnson said.

Florida Senator Rick Scott claimed that he would accept New Yorkers fleeing Mamdani’s terrifying socialist policy proposals, such as free buses and rent freezes. “Florida has welcomed those fleeing communist and socialist regimes for decades. Tonight is no different—Florida will welcome all freedom-loving New Yorkers!” he wrote on X.

And right-wing commentators also leapt to get a word in on where their party had failed on Election Day.

Sean Davis, the founder of right-wing rag The Federalist, wrote on X that Republicans needed to address that “mass immigration is destroying this country.” That post was then shared by conservative radio host Megyn Kelly.

Pizzagate guy Jack Posobiec shared a post on X complaining about conservatives who’d “would rather drag us all into a purity spiral instead of beating the communists and hordes of foreigners ransacking our country.”

Former Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz tried desperately to find a silver lining to Mamdani’s success, and wrote that it was time for betrayed centrist Democrats to “wake up and join the ranks of over ten million former Obama supporters who flipped the script and embraced MAGA.”

This story has been updated.

Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City.

The 34-year-old democratic socialist won handily Tuesday, besting ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa in a historic bid for Gracie Mansion. Mamdani won 49.6 percent of the vote with 60.2 percent of ballots counted.

Cuomo had 41.6 percent, and Sliwa had just 7.9 percent.

Mamdani will be the 111th mayor in the city’s long history, but the first Muslim to assume the office.

His rise to the top of city politics has tested New York’s ability to accept its own diversity, sparking deep community reflections regarding faith, race, and political ideology. As a result, the Democratic underdog has fielded hate from both those in and outside of the city (and the party he represented on the ticket), all too often about his appearance rather than his plan for New York City.

Last month, Fox News opened its sit-down interview with Mamdani by grilling him about his take on the Israel-Palestine ceasefire, a foreign conflict he would have no control over as mayor. But even publications that have historically been friendly toward Democratic candidates have snubbed Mamdani’s candidacy. Legacy media outlets have been “weird” and “hostile” toward the Democratic candidate, reported Columbia Journalism Review.

Somehow, Mamdani didn’t need the positive press. In the final weeks of the race, Mamdani was everywhere. In an attempt to attract young voters and hard-to-reach communities, his staff organized a Hail Mary social media campaign. Mamdani held a town hall with social media influencers on TikTok, collabed on a beat with mobile music maker ari@home, and spent Halloween dancing at gay clubs in Bushwick.

His campaign tapped into festering concerns about New York City’s affordability, its housing crisis, and fears over ex–New Yorker Donald Trump’s unchallenged anti-immigration agenda.

In the end, Mamdani didn’t just win over New York’s public. He also managed to build critical ties with members of the national Democratic establishment, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, potentially paving the way for a bigger political future for Mamdani than the Big Apple.

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.