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Talarico beat Crockett in Texas Democrat primary and Senator Cornyn at 42% edges out Attorney General Paxton in Texas Republican primary.  DJT likely to endorse Cornyn and calls for Republicans to avoid ads and infighting. $131 million spent on this Texas primary, $99 million for Republicans. Democrats are unlikely to win in Texas, but the infighting is of concern to the president because of the margin  for control in the US Senate.

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McCarthy says he is open to running for the Speaker's job. Scalise who is Majority leader and Jordan lack support of moderates who form the largest bloc of Republicans in Congress. WSJ reports that the chaos in Congress also hurts how Republicans are perceived by voters.

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House seats in New York flipped to Democrats, while House seats in California flipped to Republicans. The vote on issues of immigration, cost of living, and transgender cultural issues tend to indicate Republicans holding on to controlling the House of Representatives, according to the WSJ. DJT says Speaker Mike Johnson "has done a terrific job."

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This report in the NYT says a little known donation raising method used by the Republican National Senatorial Committee may affect Republican chances of taking control of the Senate in the US. The method is considered part of hyper aggressive methods that ask people provocative questions such as "Should Biden resign?" in millions of text messages sent out and asked to reply click YES to Donate, the amount is then processed immediately, says NYT. It was so controversial that WinRed the main Republican donation processing platform banned the practice. It appeared to be working earlier but with the cost of living crisis in 2022 donors are holding back. NYT says the digital ads to get these donations cost more than the donations in some situations. It cost $23.3 million for digital ads and expenses and raised only $6.1 million leading to a $17 million deficit, according to NYT. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now thinks it could affect chances for the Senate. The NSRC Republican group has $23 million about half what the Democrats have. ...

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Homelessness is a major issue in Portland and in the Oregon governors race in US. This and the legalization by referendum of small quantities of hard drugs has pulled Nike cofounder into the race to support a Republican Ms. Drazan. He first supported an independent Ms. Johnsons, and now has shifted support to Ms. Drazan. Republicans control only Alaska of the western states in the US. 

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Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has differences with Mr. Trump. He made this clear in recent years on many issues and has remained silent on the Trump indictment. He is the senior senator from Kentucky.

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Republicans are hopelessly divided over choice of Speaker with Steve Scalise chosen by secret ballot but a few hardliners 7-8 members intractably opposed to McCarthy, and now Scalise. 

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So many Republican districts jobs depend upon the Clean Energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act. Kasey Carpenter, Republican of Dalton, Gerogia says- “So much money has been spent building these facilities. The last thing you want to do is get it all built, and then jobs disappear.”  From August 2022 to December 2024 the private company investment in clean energy is four times greater in Republican Congressional districts than in Democratic districts. NYT provides visual graphs showing this. The investments being $118 billion Republican districts vs $35 billion in Democratic districts.These are investments under the Inflation Reduction Act one of the achievements of the Biden administration that are reflected in the strong economy in 2024. This allocation was for $390 billion for Clean Energy over 10 years. A similar situation is happening for the CHIPS and Science Act investments opf the Biden administration. Lael Brainard of the Biden administration says- "They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies."   ...

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Biden's 2024 Budget shows the contrast with the Republican candidate's policies. It is largely based on adding to investment in the economy, and in the nation's workers and families, and yet reducing the $34 trillion deficit by making corporations pay their fair share of taxes. And not increasing taxes one penny on anyone making less than $400,000 a year. It also includes investment to increase the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund to strengthen Medicare and Social Security for future generations.

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Republicans say they are for Family and Children and values that support marraige. Yet they oppose actions to reduce child poverty, paid maternity leave and women's rights that help protect women in marraiges, oppose action that would increase incomes for poor and middle class families in favor of the highest income groups. He says Biden took action that cut child poverty in half and faced resistance from Republicans. These are questions that don't go away as Democrats could do more for families and children yet Republicans aren't letting their actions match their words.

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 Tom Suozzi is elected to the US House of Representatives from New York for the seat vacated by Rep. Santos. After Suozzi is sworn in Feb. 28 Republicans will have 219 seats to Democrats 213. The majority is so slim that when 3 Republicans opposed the impeachment of Homeland Secretary Mayorkas for immigration issues Speaker Johnson could get the impeachment passed only on the second try and that only by one vote. President Biden has called for a vote immediately in the House on an Ukraine aid bill after it passed in the US Senate 70-29 with 22 Republicans joining Democrats. 

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Infighting between Senators McConnell and Scott in distribution of funds to candidates that hurt the Republicans in midterms is shown here in The Politico.

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Republicans have a narrow margin in the House of Representatives 218 to Democrats 210, with counting going on in California for some seats. 218 gives Republicans a majority in the 435 seat House. In the Senate it is 53-47 with a Republican majority.

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Republicans pursuit of infrastructure dollars in California is a good thing, a rising tide lifts all boats, and infrastructure spending is even higher under Biden's Inflation Reduction Act in states in the south and southwest.

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Iran Ceasefire shaky May 11 2026 with no willingness on the part of IRGC Iran (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps) to send all nuclear materials out of the country. Past experience has shaken American confidence in IRGC Iran's willingness to give up nuclear weapons development. Under president Obama some nuclear materials were sent to Russia, some left inside Iran which were after an agreement used by IRGC Iran to develop weapons grade enriched uranium, putting the situation back to where America started before the agreement. This is behind the DJT Republican administration's effort to get all nuclear materials out of Iran. This has wasted another decade for Iran, diverting resources needed for improving standards of living and cost of living to the weapons programs. The result is internal protests that were widespread in Iran including the middle class, not just students. So that today Iranian people are divided on the issue whether Iran should against all prevailing Middle Eastern and World opinion go for a nuclear weapon. The situation of clandestine development in North Korea and Pakistan of nuclear weapons is not existent today as the US is monitoring it constantly. Israel sees these weapons programs in Iran as a threat to its existence close to its borders in Lebanon and Iraq, which makes it unlikely that clandestine development is possible for nuclear weapons development anywhere in the Middle East. The UAE has also shifted its stance in favor of the US, Saudis want assurances, and India, Pakistan Egypt are in different ways seeking a denuclearized Middle East. This means the American DJT administration is NOT ALONE on this issue as the media in the US and Europe are presenting. Germany's Wadephul and Merz are closer to US thinking on this issue than the media says. Macron and Starmer are at popularity of less than 20% in France and the UK and do not reflect the opinion in France and Britain, and in Europe on this issue. In this sense the US is doing this for a safer world, for China, India, Brazil and EU, all the nations in the poorest parts of the world in Africa, Asia. These poorest nations which are bearing the brunt of this obsession with nuclear weapons development by IRGC Iran in a Middle East torn by 5 decades of wars from Kabul to Damascus, Baghdad to Tehran, by IRGC Iran (Revolutionary Guard Corps), as these poor nations confront lack of oil and fertilizer supplies. It does not come at a good time for even the largest nations about 3 billion people in China, India and Indonesia, Egypt which are suffering from the effects of oil shortages and fertilizer shortages when possibly at most about 40 of 90 million people in Iran support weapons programs, all others in Iran seeking a way out for better standards of living and living at peace with neighbors and the world. In that peacetime Middle East the Palestinian people could find solutions like the Irish people with the goodwill of all neighbors. ...

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WSJ on how America's political establishment lied about Covid's real origins in a Lab in Wuhan, China, after some in the American scientific community ignored prudent warnings about possible accidental release, and sent the virus from the US lab to a lab in Wuhan that was not fully prepared to handle it. In reality the Biden administration erred when it did not conduct an open assessment of what had happened, because this would have earned and kept the people's trust instead of dividing the country into vaccine believers and vaccine unbelievers.  Sections of the virologist community in the US and in China that promoted such research against the advice of others in the scientific community could have accepted their error with humility. The people of Asia have made great advances in this century- some call it the Asian century- great advances in manufacturing and in science. Yet they are not so fragile, the people in the Buddha lands and the land of Gandhi are not not so fragile that they could not accept that what they had achieved was on the shoulders of what hundreds of European scientists and inventors had done over three centuries since 1700. And that there was much to learn. The Chinese people and government can look with great self-respect for what they had achieved in the last 100 years not to need the condescension of the virologist community.  In a sense this divided the US people's perceptions of China, with half of the country skeptical about the virologist community's explanations accepted by the Biden administration. This was not in any way good for China and the Chinese people. In fact one can say that by handling this with an open mind would have clearly built more trust in China-US relations, and that China- US relations reached the lowest during the end of the Biden administration point with the Balloons incident. And recovered afterwards to this point of mutual respect under a frank president with candor and respect. This vaccine blunder also created further culture wars conflicts around the US, to ones based on race, LGBTQ, and other less consequential matters than the deindustrialization and loss of America's manufacturing base and its best jobs in huge numbers under the watch of Bush and Obama administrations, and their followers in the Republican and Democratic parties. What happened is that the country was split on race, gender, immigration, and belief in Christian values. Issues such as nuclear non proliferation (Iran) presented in ways that adversely affect the US. by calling it something else. In all such issues honesty is the best policy, dealing in a straight forward manner wiht the public is the best course, for reasons that are timeless and well recognized. Failure to do so on the part of the Elites only creates distrust of official explanations by the people of America. ...

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Weigel of the Washington Post compares how the Affordable Care Act was passed in Congress in 2012 with the push by Speaker Ryan and the Trump administration for the American Health Care Act in 2017. Republicans he says are making the same mistake as Democrats by rushing this through Congress. There is no broad consensus on whether all Americans should be entitled to health care as in Europe and Japan for their citizens, and health care is priced in a way to make it expensive for the state to provide- until the twin problems are solved by creating a new culture in the U.S. that sees things differently, politicians will come up with their own plans based on their interests and which groups they serve.

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This Washington Post analysis of the Republican tax bill gives an exceptional view of the bill's impact and provisions. This is the first major change to the tax laws since 1986. The size of the bill is $1.5 trillion, with the Joint Committe on Taxation projection that the bill will increase tax revenues over a decade by $500 billion, meaning that it will cost $1 trillion being added to the deficit. What the bill does: 1. It offers a permanent tax cut to corporations by reducing the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. Industries benefiting the most are mining, real estate, technology, manufacturing. 2. The individual tax cuts expire in 2025. They are skewed to disproportionately help highest income Americans, much less lower income Americans and much more highest income Americans compared to high income Americans. In this sense it is skewed in a an unusual way to the highest earning Americans- a sort of Trump effect in place. The top 1% get a tax break of $51,140 in 2019, middle income people earning about $100,000 get about $1000 a year in 2019, tax payers earning around $50,000 about $380, and those earning less than $25,000 about $60 a year in 2019. Taxpayers earning about 150,000 get about $2000 a year tax cut. (Tax Policy Center) 3. The basic assumption is that tax cuts are revenue neutral if there is economic growth and most of that growth comes from corporations investing in growth. The problem as Greg Ip points out in the Wall Street Journal is that countries trying thsi approach in the past such as Britain have not seen such growth materialize. Corporate profits are the highest in 15 years as percentage of GDP, according to Vanguard founder Bogle, and are now 20% of GDP compared 11% in 1980. If corporations did not invest with this level of profits how much additional investment is going to happen, ask critics, especially as demand drives growth and wages are not boosted under this plan.  4.  Because the bill's changes to current law makes it likely that 13 million less Americans will be insured over a decade- from fewer people signing up for Medicaid and on exchanges for Affordable Care Act- it will hurt lower income Americans. Skewing at both ends of the income spectrum of this type is rare in American history particularly in the twentieth century after the Depression of the 1930's, and poses risks for social cohesion, making it unpopular with most Americans. A CBS News poll taken Dec 3-5 shows 53% of all Americans opposed, only 35% support the tax bill just passed in Congress.  5. Then why did Republicans do this? Republicans needed a legislative success after failure to repeal the Obama Affordable Care law. This pressure led to passage with Republicans probably aware that this is temporary tax reform requiring a real effort by both parties working together after the midterm elections in 2018 and as the presidential election approaches in 2019.    ...

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A thin Republican majority in the single digits, many elected with an investigative mood, and 3 newcomers from New York who are moderates to be targeted at the outset by Democrats will make the House ungovernable says this analysis in the NYT of the US Congress midterms of 2022. 

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SCOTUS decision on Voting Rights Act by knocking down gerrymandered district in Louisiana, April 2026. Republican States are redrawing their maps so that they are no longer gerrymandered (altered) to favor race or gender. The US Supreme Court supports this in Louisiana and this will mean 1 seat  in Louisiana and 4 seats in Florida may be gained by Republicans for the House in the midterms.

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The Republican House Health Care pLan in 2017 relies on tax credits of between $2000 and $4000 based on age. Under the Affordable Health Care Act the elderly poor in high cost insurance areas received additional help. These people would lose over $2000 per person and may forgo full coverage or coverage entirely under the Republican House Health Care Plan. A report by Standard & Poor's estimates about 2 to 4 million people who are in 50's and 60's not yet qualifying for Medicare might lose their coverage they now have under ACA. The Republican plan also gives incentives through tax credits higher for older people, $4000 for a 60 year ol and $2000 for a 25 year old. Under the ACA the insurers are not allowed to charge more than three times what is charged for younger people, under the Republican plan this goes up to five times. 

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Only 27 of 249 Republicans in the House of Representatives have accepted that Mr. Biden won the presidential election, the rest refused to answer. And only 32 of these Republicans in the House say they will accept if this is certified by the Electoral College. The Senate is split 50 Republicans to 48 Democrats with 2 runoff elections in Georgia. In one Senate seat a Libertarian candidate too a slice of the vote denying a clear victory to the Republican Perdue for that seat. In the other election for Senate seat with  about 20 candidates running no one could secure a clear win. Mr. Biden with a very thin margin of 13,000 votes in Georgia over Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump contested the election because of the unprecedented nature of the 2020 election with mail in votes allowed in a way and in huge numbers that was not always well organized to be fault proof. With federal elections being run by state officials in 51 states and not by a national election commission as in India, and each state improvising its way of handling mail in ballots there was not a fault proof way of knowing if everything was 100% unquestionably correctly done. A national federal election commission not belonging to any party and unrelated to state or federal authority can ensure an election is free and fair better than the way it is organized in the U.S. Use of electronic machines for over 1 billion voters also ensures consistent way of doing it in India compared to the haphazard nature of the American process of vote ballots and separate counting in each state. This is the second election in which both parties differed on the election and disputed the result. The earlier one was Bush vs. Gore when Mr. Clinton was outgoing president following 2 terms in office. Yet surprisingly there are no calls for setting up a structure like that in India that would organize the vote collection under the authority of a national election commission and the use of modern technology consistently across the nation. ...

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This editorial in the WSJ after the U.S. presidential election is critical of extreme positions on immigration in the Republican party. It reminds readers that George W. Bush won 40% of the Hispanic vote with some passable Spanish and a friendly attitude on immigration, Romney managed only 29%. It says supporting immigration is a natural position for Republicans because most immigrants are culturally conservative and hard working. It call deportation in large numbers morally wrong and not workable. It also comes as immigration from Mexico is down significantly and many Hispanics are returning to Mexico. Hispanics suffered from the high unemployment in the U.S. following the 2008 crisis making it less attractive to come to the U.S. Growth is also increasing in Mexico with a large middle class and a falling birth rate.

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The party founded by Charles De Gaulle Les Republicains failed to win  5% of the vote that is needed under French election law to be compensated for half of the 17 million euros that can be spent on the campaign. Valerie Pecresse got 4.75% of the vote- that entitles her to 800,000 euros. She personally borrowed 5 million euros. She now needs 16 million euros and has appealed for donations. Pecresse failed to win the support of different factions in her party including former president Sarkozy. A similar situation faces the Greens candidate Yannick Jadot who received only 4.63% of the vote.

French election law limits legal spending to 17 million euros and does no allow corporate donations, with a personal donation limit of 4600 euros.

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The sixth Republican presidential debate in Jan. 2016 showed the main exchanges between Trump and Cruz, with some points made by Christie. The rest of the candidates Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Carson, made little headway. As Dan Balz points out in the Washington Post the Republican primaries look like a contest between Cruz and Trump, both anti-establishment candidates, both tapping into grass roots anger at the Obama administration and at establishment Republicans.