Author: FOX24 US

FOX 24 US Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise! The biggest voting rights news this week is, of course, another series of devastating developments in the battle to redistrict away minority and Democratic voting power in the South. But there’s lots more to unpack today, including an exclusive convo with Franchise readers’ favorite conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who has some delusional spin to share on why it’s actually good news that he didn’t receive the Republican endorsement in the Minnesota gubernatorial race. We’ll get into that a bit more below, but first:  On Tuesday, in a win for Republicans,…

FOX 24 US Senate Republicans’ reconciliation package in its current form includes billions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), effectively providing funding for those agencies until the end of fiscal year 2029. If the reconciliation package becomes law, the funding — combined with the money from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) — will be enough for ICE to operate at quadruple capacity for the next three and a half years. And the funding for Border Patrol, again combined with OBBB, will be more than enough to run it for the…

FOX 24 US Democrats seem to have avoided the nightmare scenario in California: with just under 60 percent of the vote in, only one Republican is currently poised to make it to the general election.  Just a couple months ago, the two Republican candidates in the race were polling first and second, threatening a Democratic lockout. In California’s jungle primary, the top two vote getters proceed to the general election regardless of party. Democrats fielded more than 20 candidates in the race, dividing voters. As of Wednesday afternoon, Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton leads with 28 percent of…

FOX 24 US The Supreme Court showed beyond a doubt Tuesday that it will never again put a stop to Republican states snuffing out the Black vote.  The six right-wing justices granted Alabama’s request for a stay, which clears the way for the state to hold its 2026 elections under a 2023 map crafted to deliver Republicans six congressional seats and Democrats only one. It does so by making Black Alabamians’ votes count for less than white ones’.  In Louisiana v. Callais, the Court made vote dilution nearly impossible to prove. It ignored Congress’ alterations to the Voting Rights Act…

FOX 24 US State Rep. Josh Turek (D-IA), a gold medal Paralympian, won the Democratic primary Tuesday and will now set his sights on the open Iowa U.S. Senate seat. While Iowa has seemed lost to Democrats since the 2010s white working class realignment, open races for Senate and governor, strong Democratic recruits and President Trump’s dismal approval rating may be enough to put the seat in reach. Turek beat state Sen. Zach Wahls (D-IA), who vowed to bring the fight to the Democratic establishment, especially Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Turek declined to say whether he’d vote for Schumer,…

FOX 24 US Last month, the Trump administration insisted that its war with Iran was over, a transparently preposterous claim aimed at sidestepping a legal requirement that Congress authorize hostilities that extend beyond 60 days.  Now, Senate Democrats are preparing to push back on the administration’s assertion.  Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are circulating a draft letter within the Senate Democratic caucus objecting to the claim that a ceasefire with Iran stopped the 60-day clock on the War Powers Resolution. Kaine told TPM that he knows “the opinion is widely shared — including among many of our…

FOX 24 US President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to muck up its responsibility to refund businesses who paid the president’s illegal tariffs. By claiming U.S. Customs and Border Protection lacks the ability to claw back tariff funds after a certain number of days, the government lays the groundwork to argue it doesn’t have a practical mechanism to repay certain importers, according to a recent court filing. The Department of Justice is also disputing the court’s ability to issue nationwide relief to affected importers. In the court filing last Friday, the DOJ said it will appeal, asking that a judge…

FOX 24 US The California Democratic primary for governor, lacking both predictability and high-caliber candidates, has seen stunning falls from grace and resurrections as it comes to a close on Tuesday.  Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), the frontrunner out of the gate, slipped and never recovered when two videos went viral this fall. One showed her berating a staffer and another her walking out of a televised interview. By early spring, Democrats started to worry that their abundance of mediocre candidates threatened the unthinkable: a Republican in the governor’s mansion. With a split field and California’s jungle primary system, the…

FOX 24 US Two young state lawmakers are competing in Tuesday’s primary for the chance to be Iowa’s next and long-awaited Democratic senator in a year where they might just have a chance.  The two candidates, state Sen. Zach Wahls (D) and state Rep. Josh Turek (D), espouse similar ideologies but took different byways to national prominence. Wahls went viral at 19, when he delivered a speech to the Iowa state legislature in defense of gay marriage (Wahls has lesbian mothers). Turek, a gold medal Paralympian in wheelchair basketball twice over, in 2022 flipped a state House seat that had…

FOX 24 US This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Republicans are focusing on one question in one of November’s top races: Is the Democrat a real man?  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched the GOP’s nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, released a new ad Wednesday —his first of the general election — accusing his opponent, state Sen. James Talarico, of being too “low-T for Texas.” “Low-T” is a reference to testosterone levels and often used as an insult by influencers…