This Is How Bad Things Are For Republicans

Democratic dreams of midterm victory are alive in Mississippi and Kansas—two states that have been conservative strongholds for decades.

Republican Senator Tim Scott admitted as much while speaking with Semafor about the Kansas Senate race between Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton on Wednesday.

“It’s a very competitive state, more competitive than I’d like to see it,” the South Carolina Senator said in a surprisingly candid comment. “But the fact of the matter is that we’re going to win in Kansas.… It’ll be closer than I want it to be.”

President Trump won Kansas by about a 16 percent margin in 2024. Kansas Democrats haven’t sent someone to the Senate in more than 90 years. Scott speaking about their once in a lifetime moment of weakness in the state speaks to both Marshall’s weaknesses as a candidate and the larger, widely unpopular Trump administration record that he and every other GOP candidate is being forced to defend.

Scott’s comment comes as Senate candidate and former district attorney Scott Colom’s campaign begins to pick up steam in Mississippi, further reaffirming that even traditionally deep blue states and districts may not be as safe as they seem.

“The wave doesn’t have to be humongous for us to capture Mississippi,” Colom said to The Washington Post. He’s met with Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and Ralph Warnock. “If we try, we win these voters.… They’ve been written off, not just by Cindy Hyde-Smith but also by other people in the Democratic Party. And I’m just not going to write them off.”

While Colom and Hamilton both have uphill battles in spending and messaging, it’s clear that the tide is turning against this current iteration of the GOP. Only time will tell if the Democrats can successfully take advantage.

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The family of Renee Good, the mother of three who was shot and killed earlier this year by a federal immigration agent Minneapolis, has filed two lawsuits against the United States government and several immigration officials alleging wrongful death and other violations of federal law.

The lawsuits were filed Thursday by Renee Good’s partner Becca Good, who was targeted by the Department of Justice after she filmed the fatal shooting, and Brent Ganger, Renee Good’s brother who testified about her death in front of Congress.

The first lawsuit was filed against “the United States of America,” and alleges the wrongful death of Renee Good under Minnesota law that is “predicated on the battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence that caused Renee’s death.”

The second lawsuit alleges a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights, and was filed against Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Good in her car, as well as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her adviser and alleged boyfriend Corey Lewandowski, border czar Tom Homan, former ICE Director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and 10 unnamed federal agents.

Video footage of the January incident showed Good, who was blocking traffic, wave at the federal agents and urge them to “go around” her vehicle. Instead, the ICE agents swarmed her vehicle, pulling on the doors and demanding she “get out of the fucking car!” One witness even said that another officer ordered her to leave. When Good attempted to drive away from the group of officers, Ross shot her in the head at least three times.

The Trump administration was quick to argue that Good had deserved to die, but her killing sparked widespread backlash against the government’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

In the nearly 10 months since her death, absolutely nothing has come of the investigation into her killing. Federal law enforcement shut police and other Minnesota authorities out of the initial investigation. Later, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ Civil Rights Division, made clear that she had no intention of conducting a civil rights investigation.

This story has been updated.

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Did President Trump just lie about a massive investment from South Korea?

Trump announced Wednesday that South Korea had agreed to invest $200 billion in energy infrastructure, including a $54 billion investment in the long-discussed liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska—but South Korea claims they never committed to funding that project.

“What the Korean government agreed with the U.S. is that the Alaska project will proceed only if it is commercially viable,” said Kim Jung-kwan, South Korea’s minister of trade, industry and resources, according to Bloomberg.

“What was reported today went beyond what had been agreed,” he said, and expressed Seoul’s regrets to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

It’s not clear whether the Trump administration was aware that the commitment wasn’t set in stone, or if it believed it could manifest the funds by simply announcing them, or if—in true Trumpian fashion—it doesn’t care whether they’re real or not and this was all for show.

But I’ll tell you one person who definitely should care: Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, the vulnerable incumbent in Alaska’s Senate race.

“This is the project that is gonna keep our kids and grandkids in Alaska with a great bright future. This is the project that our state has been working on to try to get done for almost a half century,” Sullivan said Wednesday during a press conference in the Oval Office, adding that the project would create more than 10,000 jobs and provide low cost energy to Alaskans for 50 to 100 years. (The project has faced legal challenges from environmental groups concerned it will increase fossil fuel emissions and accelerate the climate crisis.)

Whether or not South Korea’s commitment is the real deal could potentially make or break Sullivan’s reelection campaign: Recent polls showed that Democratic challenger Mary Peltola has a slight lead on Sullivan.

This wouldn’t be the first time the president has lied about the amount of investment pouring in from foreign countries, The New York Times reported. Over the course of 2025, Trump claimed to have received up to $21 trillion in foreign investments—nearly twice the amount that the White House’s own tracking website states for foreign and domestic investments combined.

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President Donald Trump blocked CNN from the White House press pool Thursday morning, continuing his feud with the network despite a court order allowing them on the White House grounds.

Trump removed CNN journalists from his upcoming trip to Texas and Oklahoma after they were scheduled to fly on Air Force One in order to report on his visit to a truck manufacturing facility in Denton, Texas, and a speech in Durant, Oklahoma. CNN was also barred from traveling with the president last weekend when he went to Tennessee.

While U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly’s order last week preventing Trump from blocking CNN, Politico, and MS NOW was limited to media access on the White House premises, the president’s actions Thursday are still “a blatant violation of the First Amendment and due process,” said Theodore Boutrous, an attorney representing the media outlets, in a statement.

“The White House is persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President’s unconstitutional ‘ban on the free press’ by barring CNN from fulfilling its role as a designated television network pooler—to the detriment of CNN, its fellow pool members and, ultimately, the American public,” Boutrous’s statement said.

All three media outlets had asked a federal court Monday to continue preventing Trump from blocking their access, warning that “the White House’s words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico if allowed the opportunity.”

That was apparent last week, when Trump continued to bar media outlets from covering the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House and an official state dinner later in the day. It seems that Trump will continue to thumb his nose at the First Amendment as long as he can get away with it.

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Congressional staffers were planning to take a luxury trip to Europe, complete with stops in Milan, the Champagne region of France, and a Ferrari factory in Bologna, Italy, just weeks before the midterms, organized by a top aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Then NBC News obtained the draft itinerary for the trip, which included both Republicans and Democrats, and asked Johnson’s office about it. The trip was immediately canceled.

“Senior congressional staff of both parties routinely lead staff delegations to allied countries and trading partners for parliamentary and private sector engagements to strengthen the working relationships between our countries and their key industries,” said Johnson’s office in a statement.

According to a staff memo, the reason for the trip was “to engage European and U.S. government and industry officials related to the impact of U.S. tariffs and taxes.” Such trips are not uncommon, as congressional staffers and delegations often take fact-finding trips to learn about policy issues. But this trip has some apparent warning signs, an ethics watchdog told NBC News.

“In theory, you want members of Congress and their staff to be going into the field and learning something and maybe investigating something, getting some up-close and personal understanding of the issue that they’re supposed to be legislating on. That’s probably a good use of time in a lot of cases,” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said to the news outlet.

“But what they end up being, or at least what they look like, is just a taxpayer-funded vacation to exotic locations. You’ve got the Ferrari racetrack that you get to play around on, or the Louis Vuitton gift bag you might be getting in Milan. I’m sure those are enjoyable inducements to the whole enterprise.”

According to Johnson’s office, the trip was canceled due to a schedule conflict. But Democratic and Republican staffers traveling together when there are stark, seemingly unsolvable legislative conflicts between the two parties raises eyebrows. And such a trip, when the House is out of session until the midterms, doesn’t look good at a time when Americans are struggling with the expensive cost of groceries and sky-high gas prices, and can’t afford vacations to Europe.

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