Category: Article Share

Texas may finally pass school choice in 2025

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Republicans have long dominated Texas politics. They have had a state government trifecta — control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature — since 2003. They currently have a 19-12 majority in the state Senate and an 86-63 majority in the state House. But in recent years, they have repeatedly failed to enact any kind of school choice measure. According to a recent statement by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the state Senate has passed school choice legislation five times since 2015. “It died in a Republican-controlled House each time. That is unacceptable and inexcusable,” Patrick wrote.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott named school choice a top priority in the 2023 legislative session. Both the Senate and House introduced bills that would create education savings accounts for students to use on private school tuition or alternative schooling and other education-related costs. But, at the end of the year, the House voted 84-63 to remove ESAs from House Bill 1 — a massive education bill that also included teacher raises and increased public school funding — bringing Abbott’s yearlong effort to a halt.

Twenty-one Republicans — mostly from rural areas* — joined 63 Democrats in voting to kill ESAs, and Abbott immediately began a full-court press to oust them. By the time the primaries rolled around in March, Abbott had spent $4.4 million to defeat these Republicans and repeatedly visited their districts to endorse their opponents. According to Politico, Texas’s 2024 primaries for state legislature cost a lot more than the typical amount due to the involvement of pro-school-choice donors. In fact, Abbott received more than $6 million from billionaire investor Jeff Yass, a vocal supporter of school choice.

Abbott didn’t campaign against every Republican who voted against the ESAs, but of the 10 that he targeted, seven lost their primaries. Another lost because he was targeted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (for voting in favor of his impeachment) and pro-voucher groups. And one advanced to a May runoff, only to see Abbott endorse his challenger, who eventually won the seat. Another five did not seek reelection. In total, out of the 21 Republican representatives who voted against ESAs in 2023, 14 will not be returning to the legislature next year. And their replacements were all endorsed by Abbott.

Add it all up, and Abbott now appears to have the votes to get ESAs or a similar program through the state House.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/texas-finally-pass-school-choice-2025/story?id=115865456

Cato, the Filibuster, and the Death of the Republic

Posted on by Lone Candle

Cato helped end the Roman Republic by abusing the norms of the Roman Senate to make it impossible to pass legislation. Senators today do something similar, which, rather than stopping the use of power, just incentivizes other branches to execute it with their own wills, further bending the norms of U.S. democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgD3_eBBn5o

How immigration swung voters of color to Trump

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump’s share of the Black and Latino vote increased by 8 points each between 2020 and 2024.
Analysts have proposed several different explanations for those shifts, including sexism within communities of color, pessimistic views of the economy and inflation, disinformation, social class and the ongoing ideological sorting of nonwhite conservatives into the Republican Party. While there’s probably merit in some of these, my analyses suggest that one of the biggest factors behind Trump’s growing support from nonwhite voters may be opposition to immigration.

There are two main reasons for this. First, nonwhite Americans’ attitudes about immigration moved sharply to the right during President Joe Biden’s term. That resulted in a much larger pool of Black and Latino voters who were receptive to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Second, voters of color with conservative immigration attitudes were especially likely to defect from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 — even after accounting for other plausible reasons for these changes.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/immigration-swung-voters-color-trump/story?id=116016407

The 2024 presidential election was close, not a landslide

Posted on by Lone Candle

“because of its winner-take-all nature, the Electoral College isn’t a good measure of closeness. Imagine an election where one candidate wins every state and district 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent. That candidate would romp to a 538-0 victory in the Electoral College, but that election was obviously still very close. The same principle was at play in the 2024 election: Trump won six of the seven major swing states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by 3.2 points or less. And he won Wisconsin by just 0.9 points, Michigan by just 1.4 points and Pennsylvania by just 1.7 points.

That’s important because if Harris had won those three states (plus all the states and districts she actually did win), she would have gotten exactly 270 Electoral College votes.”

…

“if Harris had done just 1.8 points better across the board — or even just in those three states (although that’s not usually how elections work) — she would be the president-elect right now.”

…

“There have been 20 presidential elections since the end of World War II, and in only six of them was the tipping-point state decided by a smaller margin than Pennsylvania was decided by this year.”

…

“the same is true if you look at the Electoral College margin, Trump’s main claim to landslide status. His likely 86-electoral-vote margin over Harris is larger than the 77 electoral votes he won by in 2016 or the 74 electoral votes that President Joe Biden won by in 2020. But it’s smaller than the 126 electoral votes that Obama won by in 2012 and the 192 electoral votes that Obama won by in 2008. And once again, it is only the 14th-biggest Electoral College victory since the end of World War II.”

…

“Another way to assess the closeness of an election is, of course, the national popular vote. While the popular vote doesn’t affect who actually wins the election, it can be relevant in discussions of how big of a mandate the winner has to govern. By this measure as well, 2024 was a historically close election. Since the end of World War II, only three elections had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current 1.6-point lead: 1960, 1968 and 2000.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/2024-presidential-election-close-landslide/story?id=116240898

Why Republicans start out as favorites in the 2026 Senate elections

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Heading into 2026, Republicans have about as favorable of a Senate map as they could hope for under the circumstances. This is true despite the fact that the incoming presidential party must defend 22 of the 35 seats that will likely be up for election (including Vance’s and Rubio’s seats). Strikingly, though, only one of those 22 Republican-held seats — held by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — is in a state that outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election. The other 21 seats are all in states that Trump won. In contrast, Democrats will be defending just 13 seats overall, but two of them are in states that Trump won this year.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/republicans-start-favorites-2026-senate-elections/story?id=116243572