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Can Kamala Harris Win Florida? She’s Getting a Lot of Support – Even From Republicans

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Florida hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president in over a decade. It hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in just as long. Out of the Sunshine State’s 28 U.S. House seats, just eight are held by Democrats. And it hasn’t elected a Democrat for governor since 1994.

Barack Obama was the last Democratic President to win Florida, winning the state twice.

“Florida is totally in play,” Randy Fleischer told the Florida Sun-Sentinel. Fleischer, “who’s been active for decades in Democratic politics,” added: “People are gonna come out, they’re gonna come out strong, they’re gonna really come out strong for Kamala.”

Just days after Harris became the de-facto Democratic nominee, WMBB reported, “Florida is now leading the nation with the most volunteers for Harris.”

If Florida is in play, with 30 electoral college votes at stake the Harris for President campaign isn’t taking any chances. It has called Florida a “critical” state, and it’s investing resources, working to win Democratic voters, but also working to woo “unhappy GOP,” and “persuadable independent voters,” The Palm Beach Post reports Sunday.

READ MORE: A Reporter Read Donald Trump’s Words Back to Him. Now Hugh Hewitt is Furious.

But there is also tremendous support and excitement in the Sunshine State that certainly appears to be entirely organic.

It’s been just 15 days since President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.  The “sudden and immediate grassroots groundswell of support for Harris from women,” GBH, the Boston-based partner of PBS, reported last week.

“Hours after Harris made her candidacy official, the group Win With Black Women mobilized a massive Zoom call that raised $1.6 million,” GBH noted. “That was quickly followed by other virtual events seeking fundraising and support for Harris’ candidacy, including ‘Black Men for Harris,’ ‘White Women: Answer the Call’ and ‘White Dudes for Harris’ events. There have also been calls focused on Latinas, South Asian women and other voting blocs. Harris’ election campaign said it raised $200 million in that first week alone.”

Democratic Florida state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky on Saturday wrote, “It’s not even 11am and over 200 women are fired up in Broward County, Florida, ready to hit the phones to elect @KamalaHarris as our next President!”

It’s not only women.

Florida, home to 21.5 million people, has 5.2 million registered Republicans, 4.3 million registered Democrats, and a whopping 3.5 million registered voters with no political party affiliation.

Add to that Donald Trump’s “losing streak” in the polls nationally, his highly-controversial vice-presidential running mate JD Vance, a Florida governor whose failed presidential bid exposed his extremist policies, and voter referendums on both abortion and marijuana on Florida’s November ballot, and it’s hard to think there’s not a chance a popular Democratic candidate running against a 78-year old criminally-convicted one-term ex-president might be able to win the state.

Then there’s The Villages.

Florida’s Trump-loving retirement community” of 130,00 people whose residents are mostly white (more than nine out of 10) and mostly conservative seniors, according to The New York Times.

Its golf carts for Trump became a thing back in 2016.

Now, there are golf carts for Kamala.

“Over the weekend, hundreds of golf carts paraded around the Villages in support of Harris’s candidacy, reportedly creating a traffic jam as they showed their excitement for the VP,” Vanity Fair reported of the event just one week after Harris began her run for President.

500, according to one reporter.

READ MORE: ‘Phony Baloney’: Shapiro Smacks Down Vance Over ‘Weird’ Obama ‘Insult’

“’Young people are energized and so are we,’ resident Joyce Wiegand told Villages-News. Said her friend Karen Wink: ‘Kamala isn’t just for young people, she’s for all of us. She supports Social Security, Medicare and health care. That matters to us.'”

And there is now a Florida Republicans for Harris Committee, “chaired by some familiar names,” in the Sunshine State, Florida Politics reports, including “former state Sen. Paula Dockery; Rich Logis, founder of Perfect Our Union; and Greg Wilson, who worked in GOP presidential administrations and served once as a GOP Staff Director in the House of Representatives.”

Dockery said, “I am deeply troubled by the radical transformation of the Republican Party under Donald Trump’s authoritarian grip—a party I no longer recognize. I am proud to throw my full support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, and I am honored to join the Florida Republicans for Harris Committee as its Co-Chair. Kamala Harris embodies the leadership our nation desperately needs as we fight for the well-being of all Americans across this great country.”

“Having once supported Trump wholeheartedly,” Louis said, “viewing him as a necessary disruptor, I’ve come to see the undeniable truth: his disruptions have eroded the very fabric of our democracy. We the People are one team. Donald Trump is a divider. As a uniter, Vice President Harris is best suited to lead our nation, armed with the unity and leadership we need. I am honored to join the Florida Republicans for Harris Committee as its Co-Chair, committed to rallying our community around her leadership that promises unity over division.”

Florida Politics notes current polling puts Trump above Harris by seven to eight points, but nationwide the Vice President has slashed Trump’s lead in swing states, and, according to FiveThirtyEight, nationally, Harris is beating trump by 1.7 points.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: JD Vance Wrongly Claims Trump ‘Never Said That There Were Very Good People on Both Sides’

 

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‘Disgraceful’: ICE Slammed After Allegedly Pepper-Spraying US Congresswoman

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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.

Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.

The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”

READ MORE: Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”

“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”

Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.

She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”

Critics slammed the agents’ action.

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”

“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.

“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”

Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”

“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

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Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

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A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.

Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”

Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.

“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”

“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”

Why?

“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.

“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.

He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”

Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”

“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”

READ MORE: Trump Urges Judge Aileen Cannon to Keep Jack Smith Report Secret

 

 

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Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.

Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.

“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”

READ MORE: White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability

On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”

“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.

Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.

“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.

“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”

Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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