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Thom Tillis, R-NC, is trying to bolster his pro-Trump credentials as he attempts to head off at least one primary challenger from the Right. In recent weeks, Tillis has made numerous media appearances defending the president on a multitude of topics. He now appears to be among the president’s most ardent supporters. It’s a strange about-face for Tillis, who once had a reputation for defying the president. In the past, he’s angered conservatives with legislation protecting the Mueller investigation, told an audience that he was proud to be a “RINO” and penned an op-ed condemning the president’s emergency declaration on...

One of President Donald Trump’s nominees for the federal bench has reportedly withdrawn his nomination after Sen. Josh Hawley repeatedly accused him of anti-Catholic bigotry. Attorney Michael Bogren bowed out of consideration for a federal district court position after weeks of intensifying criticism from Hawley and other Republican lawmakers who accused him of being hostile to religious liberty.

NBC announced on Tuesday the five moderators for the first Democratic presidential primary debate, set for later this month. Savannah Guthrie, Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow and José Diaz-Balart will moderate the debate, which will take place at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami over two nights on June 26-27.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis declared his opposition last week to one of President Trump’s judicial nominees – a rare defection from a freshman Republican who touts his leadership of his party’s efforts to reshape the federal judiciary. Yet North Carolina Democrats are nonetheless gearing up to hit the senator, who is up for reelection next year, on his near-perfect record in support of the president’s lower-level judicial nominees – an issue that typically flies under the political radar. “Sen. Tillis’ role in confirming a number of controversial judges will certainly be a part of our campaign,” North Carolina Democratic...

In this environment, there is serious talk amongst Virginia Republicans in NOVA about whether to embrace an agenda based on conservative principles versus embracing ideas that might appeal to liberal-leaning voters. It is a vigorous debate on whether Virginia can be restored to a red state, and if so, what sort of leaders will get it there. Virginia Senate District 13 is a microcosm of this fight. Sen. Dick Black is retiring, and a classic conservative versus establishment-moderate primary matchup will determine his successor. Senate District 13 includes parts of Loudoun County and Prince William County, which are among the...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 112 judges confirmed. 69 District Court judges 41 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices The Senate this week confirmed a number of executive nominees and also voted for cloture on several judges.

Seeking to gain a foothold in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes to sew up the young criminal vote by releasing more of them “on their own recognizance” while their cases are pending. “In so many of these cases, the accused youths cannot make bail,” de Blasio observed. “I thought, why not use the same catch-and-release approach that has worked so well for asylum seekers and let them go free as long as they promise to show up for trial. We will save the government the cost of housing these individuals and...

This article will be updated as more candidates file to run. Some elections are this year. Some have happened, others will happen. THIS IS URGENT

Immigration policy is sure to be a top issue in North Carolina’s 2020 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. For Garland Tucker III, it is part of the reason why he is challenging incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis. When Tucker appeared on The Sean Hannity Show May 8 to announce his campaign for Tillis’ seat in 2020, he said he was most concerned with Tillis’ “weak” immigration policies. “He co-sponsored a bill that not only provided amnesty, but provided a clear path to citizenship for illegal immigrants,” Tucker said on the radio show. PolitiFact reached out to Tucker’s campaign to ask what...

WASHINGTON — President Trump has utterly remade the federal judiciary, filling vacancies that had been held open by congressional Republicans during President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. Just two years into his own term, Trump has successfully installed two Supreme Court justices — something it took Obama eight years to do — and appointed 40 circuit court judges, who handle the all-important task of fielding appeals. But in recent months, the battle over judges has moved to district court, the lowest of three major rungs of the federal judiciary and where most major cases — whether concerning guns or...

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the candidate of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is leading the race ahead of the Istanbul election rerun on June 23, according to three surveys the party conducted, secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper reported Friday.  The results of the surveys showed that İmamoğlu, who won an initial vote on March 31 in Turkey’s financial powerhouse by a narrow margin, is ahead of Binali Yıldırım, the mayoral candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) by between 1.7 and 5 percentage points, Cumhuriyet said. Turkey’s election council annulled the Istanbul election on May 6 after an appeal by the...

President Trump has successfully appointed six judges to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to Trump taking office, the Ninth Circuit had 19 Democratic appointees, 6 Republican appointees, and four vacancies, and is the most overturned court of appeals in the country. In May, the U.S. Senate confirmed two Trump nominees, Kenneth Lee and Daniel Collins, the fifth and six appointed judges. Kenneth Lee The U.S. Senate confirmed Collins’ nomination by a 53-46 vote on May 21, 2019. He received commission on May 22, 2019. California’s home-state Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) and Kamala Harris (D) voted against Collins’ nomination....

State Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-Indian Springs, announced Monday his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate. Mooney is running for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Doug Jones. “Alabamians want a Constitutional Conservative who can beat Doug Jones and who will take on the Establishment in Washington. That’s why I’m running,” Mooney said in a statement. Mooney is a State Representative from north Shelby County. “I am not a career politician,” Mooney writes on his website. “I’m a conservative and an outsider. But I look around and see a rising tide of socialism on the Left...

Death and taxes are said to be the only things in life that are certain. However, I’ll add another: Democrats never accept political defeat even when that includes election losses. With that in mind, the Democrat strategy going into the 2020 election is simple. They will play the race and gender card like it is some kind of sport. They’ll drudge up reparations for slavery while claiming voter suppression continues as if we are still in the post-Civil War Reconstruction period in America in the South where black voters continued to be disenfranchised by Democrats until the passage of the...

Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz — both Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — are calling on President Trump to withdraw the nomination of a lawyer for a lifetime federal court appointment, accusing the nominee of opposing religious freedom and expressing anti-Catholic views. The nomination of Michael S. Bogren, a Michigan lawyer who was nominated to be a district judge for the District Court for the Western District of Michigan, has been met with fierce conservative resistance for the candidate’s likening of religious beliefs to the racist views of the Ku Klux Klan. Hawley, a Missouri Republican and...

Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis might have torpedoed his own 2020 re-election bid in February, when he penned an op-ed for The Washington Post in opposition to President Donald Trump’s emergency border declaration. Time will tell. Tillis’ high-profile defiance of the White House on an issue central to Trump’s election — and extraordinarily important among the Republican Party’s base — instantly spawned discussion of a primary challenge from the junior North Carolina senator’s right. Reaction from fellow Republicans was swift and severe. Congressman Mark Walker, whose 6th District includes parts of Greensboro and Guilford County, said, “Voting with the Democrats...

North Carolinians don't generally like their US Senators. Almost every election cycle starts with some incumbent Senator with a favorability rating somewhere in the mid-30s. We routinely throw out Senators after one term. Only two Senators, Jesse Helms and Richard Burr, have been re-elected in the state since 1972. This year, it's Thom Tillis who looks embattled. His approval rating is upside down and according to poll commissioned by the conservative group Club for Growth, only 45 percent of Republicans approve of Tillis. The Club wants to push Sixth District Congressman Mark Walker into a primary. Walker hasn't said no....

In the course of the past few weeks, Thom Tillis has worked to solidify his standing amongst the Trump wing of the Republican Party, insofar as there is any other wing at this point. Unfortunately for him, it looks like a lost cause. Mark Walker, the prominent conservative North Carolina Congressman, is openly weighing a primary. Some folks on the inside say he isn’t going to do it, and others say he’s 100% in. So time will tell. Either way, politicians enjoy attention and sometimes, enough chatter about a potential run leads one into the race. Mark Walker is the...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 112 judges confirmed. 69 District Court judges 41 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices

By Monica Showalter Professor Allan Lichtman of American University is a bright liberal, and his point-scale system for predicting who will win the next presidential election makes a certain amount of sense.  Now he's predicting a Democrat victory if the Democrats would just, just, just, impeach President Trump, something that gives fuel to the crazy fringe of the Democratic Party. According to Real Clear Politics, citing CNN: Professor Allan Lichtman, the man who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections, said President Trump is on track for another term unless Democrats do what is "politically right" and impeach him....