Thursday, November 5, 2026
Good morning, and welcome to RedState’s “Morning Minute” — a brief glimpse at which stories are trending at the moment and a look ahead at what the day may bring. Consider this your one-stop shop for news to kickstart your day.
TOP O’ THE MORNIN’
Red-Hot at RedState
Jamie Raskin Left Fumbling After Dan Crenshaw Exposes a Dem Party Pre-Election Ploy
Democrats won both chambers. When they take over, they can put their own bills on the floor. I’d start with the parts they said were too weak in September. Did they make lawmakers sell their stocks? Did they get households a better deal on power? If all they changed was the name at the top of the bill, they’ll have made Crenshaw’s point for him.
Byron Donalds Wins Florida, and Symone Sanders Townsend Reaches for a Racial Smear
The people who put him in office will get to ask him what he’s done about both. That comes with the job, and Republicans who backed him ought to be among the first to ask. For now, Florida has elected its first black governor, and conservatives have every reason to be proud that he’s one of ours.
Abdul El-Sayed Gave His Victory Speech. He Said Something Absolutely Chilling.
“The day the Latino, African American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning,” he said. “We have the ability to take over this country and to do what is needed for everyone and to make things fair.”
It looks like they just did.
Trending Across Townhall Media
Bearing Arms — The Blue Wave’s Hidden Threat to Gun Owners
With President Donald Trump promising to use his veto powers, the states are where we’re going to see the most threats to our Second Amendment rights. And unfortunately for us, the map for anti-gun activists and the gun control lobby is a lot bigger than it was yesterday.
HotAir — Some People Are Just Too Stupid to Breathe, Yet They Have Cultural Power
It’s the midwits you have to worry about. The people who are smart enough to see a bit further than most, and dumb enough to think that means they understand things and can improve them. These people are the socialists, the technocrats, the meddlers who leave a trail of destruction.
Sure, Republicans managed to do next to nothing for the first 21 months of President Donald Trump’s second term, but is that reason enough for voters to hand Texas to the Democrats, give them a Kansas Senate seat they haven’t held for almost a century, and install a terrorist sympathizer as Michigan’s new senator and a communist as its new governor?
Townhall — Yeah, It Blows…So What? Life Is Hard. Toughen Up.
So, yes, this sucks. Yes, there are going to be consequences — the people who gave the Democrats a chance may end up getting those consequences as good and hard. And while there is the potential for the Democrats to destroy our country as we know it down the road if they build on this foundation of failure, America the day after the debacle is still the greatest country on earth.
Democrats are going to have a hard time passing their agenda with Trump’s veto power. They’re going to be even more insufferable than usual since they think voters mandated impeachments and more. They’ll do nothing to help Americans.
WHAT’S ON TAP?
Today on Capitol Hill…
I’m pretty much just sitting here tapping my fingers on the desk now, waiting for the lame duck critters to return to the Hill and get back to whatever wacky business they have in store for us for the remainder of the year. Ain’t we got fun? Meanwhile:
Schumer Tries to Take Victory Lap on GOP, Finds Out He May Get Cooked Next
John Thune Makes His Next Move After GOP’s Senate Disaster
White House What’s Up
President Trump’s schedule for Thursday includes:
- 8:00 AM — THE PRESIDENT participates in Executive Time — The White House
- 11:00 AM — THE PRESIDENT receives his Intelligence Briefing — The White House
- 12:30 PM — THE PRESIDENT participates in a Policy Meeting — The White House
- 2:00 PM — THE PRESIDENT participates in a Policy Meeting — Oval Office
- 3:30 PM — THE PRESIDENT participates in Signing Time — Oval Office
- 4:00 PM — THE PRESIDENT participates in a Policy Meeting — Oval Office
- 5:30 PM — THE PRESIDENT participates in a Policy Meeting — Oval Office
Keeping Up With the Cabinet
Sec. Homeland Security – Markwayne Mullin — Mullin continues to champion the critical work DHS and ICE are doing in order to enforce our immigration laws.
365 days per year, the hardworking men and women of ICE law enforcement are targeting and arresting criminal illegal aliens to make America safe again—this includes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Election Day. Just yesterday, @ICEgov arrested more heinous illegal alien criminals with convictions including attempted murder, aggravated assault with a weapon, and child molestation. The Trump Administration will never apologize for putting the safety of the American people first by arresting and removing these criminal illegal aliens. 🧵
— Secretary Markwayne Mullin (@SecMullinDHS) November 4, 2026
Full Court Press…
The courts apparently took a breather on Wednesday — not much in the way of notable decisions to report on. SCOTUS is done with oral arguments until next week.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
President Trump will deliver remarks at the UP Summit in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday. He is set to travel to the Philippines and China in mid-November, and in December, he’ll head to Miami, Florida, for the G20 Leaders’ Summit.
As noted above, SCOTUS will hear additional oral arguments Monday and Tuesday of next week.
MORNING MUSING
Apparently, the electoral gods weren’t listening (or didn’t care) when I implored them for a breather following the midterms. Nope, rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in on Tuesday’s election, and we had 2028’s likely presidential contenders winking and nodding to let us know they’re gearing up.
And don’t get me wrong, this includes contenders I’d probably be happy to support. It isn’t that. It’s just — I think we all could stand a moment or two of quiet and calm before diving into the next batch of chaos. Like…maybe time to relax and enjoy the holidays?
Anyway…away we go…
Ron DeSantis Delivers Scathing Post-Election Verdict – and Republicans Take the Brunt of It
Vance’s Explanation for the GOP’s Midterm Disaster Is a Little Too Neat and Tidy
History was made last night. For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with. 2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here? When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats. We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas. Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both. Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today. Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that. Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas. Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters. Corruption. Number two, 18.5%. The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%. The candidates are terrible, 7.9%. The Canada trade war, 7.6%. The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%. Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%. Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%. The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story. Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago. In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm. And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries. That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high. Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars. There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years. Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain. So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences. Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say. We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk. And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed. Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI. The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump. In the next two years, we need to do two things. One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas. So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution. And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost. There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics. For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around. And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record. Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism. People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else. But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas. We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well. When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America. It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 4, 2026
LIGHTER FARE
I only have one dog, but it’s inevitably when I’m on the phone (usually on a radio hit) that she decides to get zoomies, bark up a storm, dig to China on the couch or her dog bed while making all manner of racket, or attack the nearest squeaky toy.
#TrueStory
— Susie Moore ⚾️🌻🐶 (@SmoosieQ) November 4, 2026
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