Dan Sullivan

The Republican Senate primary in Texas has barely started, but the knives are out. Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton are tearing each other apart in a feud that’s personal, public, and growing nastier by the week. And the big question now is: Could the GOP’s demolition derby pose an opening for Democrats? Two new polls suggest it’s possible. If Paxton, the more scandal-plagued of the two, wins the GOP nomination—as current polling indicates—he could be vulnerable in a general election against Democrat Colin Allred, a former member of the House. Allred, who challenged Sen. Ted Cruz in 2024 and lost by more than 8 percentage points, has hinted he might take another swing.Texas state Attorney General Ken PaxtonOne GOP internal poll, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, showed Paxton leading Cornyn by 17 points in a primary matchup, 50% to 33%. But in a general election, the same poll had Allred beating Paxton by a stunning 15 points, 52% to 37%. A separate survey, commissioned by the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, had Paxton up 16 points on Cornyn in the primary and found that while Cornyn led Allred by 6 points, Paxton was trailing Allred by 1 point.If you’ve watched Texas politics for any length of time, you’ve seen this movie before. Every few years, Democrats hope a rising star—Wendy Davis, Beto O’Rourke, and now maybe Allred again—can finally flip Texas blue, whether it’s the governor’s mansion or a Senate seat. And every few years, they fall short.Still, Texas’ 2026 Senate election will draw national attention again. Texas is simply too big and too pivotal to ignore, and the GOP primary is shaping up to be a cash-burning brawl that could leave the eventual nominee bloodied and broke. Allred, for his part, didn’t run a bad campaign last time, and there’s every reason to believe some Democrats want him to take another swing.But let’s be real: It’s far too early to take these general election polls seriously. Also, internal polls are largely untrustworthy. The parties behind them rarely don’t have a vested interest in an election outcome, and the polls’ results are almost always disclosed to push a specific narrative.Republican Sen. John Cornyn of TexasAlso, Allred has already lost one Texas Senate race, and no Democrat has won statewide since 1994. Furthermore, hopes that the state’s growing Latino population would shift the state toward Democrats have yet to materialize. And while Paxton may be damaged, so was Cruz. A few polls even showed Allred ahead late in last year’s race—and Cruz still beat him. That said, Democrats do have reasons for cautious optimism in 2026. For now, they can sit back and watch Cornyn and Paxton tear each other to shreds in a primary that’s already toxic. It’s not just messy—it’s expensive. And it could fracture the party enough to force outside GOP groups and President Donald Trump to step in.Elsewhere in the South, the landscape is shifting. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to sit out Georgia’s Senate race just improved Democrat Jon Ossoff’s odds for reelection. In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could run for Senate, putting another Republican-held seat in play.It’s still a steep climb, though. Democrats need to net four seats to flip the Senate, but the national environment in 2026 might help. Election prognosticator Nate Silver recently pointed out that the average midterm advantage for the out-of-power party since 1994 is 4.4 points in the House national popular vote. But with Trump’s persistent unpopularity and Democrats’ overperformance in 2025’s elections, that advantage could swell, perhaps resembling the blue wave of 2018, where Democrats led Republicans by 8.6 points in the House popular vote.xDatawrapper ContentA wave like that would change the Senate map. North Carolina and Georgia would lean Democratic rather than be toss-ups, according to Silver, and while Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas would still lean Republican, none would be off the board.There are some wild cards too. In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, could attempt a comeback against Republican Sen. Jon Husted. Meanwhile, in Alaska, the state’s ranked-choice voting system gives a moderate Democrat—possibly former Rep. Mary Peltola—a fighting chance against incumbent Dan Sullivan, whose approval numbers are soft.Some races may be looking easier as well. Ossoff is surely breathing easier with Kemp out. In New Hampshire, the GOP failed to recruit former Gov. Chris Sununu, leaving the party likely to recycle Scott Brown, who has lost Senate races in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.Long term, the map looks better. As Silver noted, between 2026 and 2028, four Senate races will take place in presidential battlegrounds—one each in Maine (2026) and Wisconsin (2028), and two in North Carolina (2026 and 2028). If Democrats flip three of those four and win back the White House, he argued, they’d likely secure a governing trifecta in 2028.It won’t be easy. Texas probably won’t be the state to break the GOP’s stranglehold on the Senate. But it might, just maybe, help loosen it.Campaign Action

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as President Donald Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch.

The House Armed Services Committee will debate the package Tuesday and House Republicans expect to pass the bill in May.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives passed the bill March 26 by a vote of 208 to 125. The full Senate will consider the bill later this spring.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan shredded President Biden's energy orders stymieing Alaskan energy development, and championed plans to build a major new pipeline.

The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Elbridge Colby, President Trump’s “lightning rod” pick to serve as the Pentagon’s under secretary for policy, despite the private concerns of several Republican senators about Colby’s past statements and views. The chamber voted 54-45 to confirm the nominee, who will hold the No. 3-ranking job at the Pentagon and be [...]

Williamsport, Pa. — Crowds stood on every corner of Williamsport’s Market Square on Saturday as they joined a nationwide demonstration protesting the Trump administration.

Staffers wheel pizzas through the Capitol as the Senate prepares to begin its vote-a-rama on the GOP’s budget resolution on Friday evening.

Boosting support for the Wallops Island Flight Facility will advance Virginia's space sector, which continues to benefit Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore and surrounding areas.

I sat in the recreation room of my cellblock on a recent February afternoon. Just a few feet away, confined to a wheelchair due to a leg injury, was Dominique Castile. He’s been incarcerated in New York for three years....

Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) on Thursday reintroduced a bill to ensure that members of the military get paid during a government shutdown, a move that comes as a March 14 deadline ticks closer without a deal to extend funding. The Pay Our Troops Act would direct existing unappropriated Treasury funds to be made available to [...]

Here's what to know about the major natural gas pipeline.

So you want to build an Iron Dome. But much bigger, more complex and pricier than the one protecting Israel, right?Why it matters: President Trump's fiat for a hemispheric shield raised more questions than it initially answered, spurring debate among lawmakers, military officials, defense contractors, analysts and hobbyists.Much like Trump riffed on Ronald Reagan with MAGA, here, too, does he invoke the former president and his Star Wars ideals.This is a campaign promise made manifest and also a return to 2019, when Trump pledged to "detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anytime, anywhere and any place."To figure out what's needed to make the vision a reality, Axios consulted defense experts, tuned into timely congressional testimony and did the reading. Here's some of the consensus:Sensors galore. U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command have for years yearned for additional monitoring capabilities.Their jobs are getting no easier, with a steady drumbeat of foreign activity off the coast of Alaska.Gen. Gregory Guillot told lawmakers last week: "You can't defeat what you can't see, and the adversaries have an increasing capability of reaching us and threatening us from ranges beyond what some of our current systems can detect and track."The possibilities stretch from seabed to space, including the E-7 Wedgetail and the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer.Networks and handoffs. One of the biggest hurdles here — exemplified by Northeast drone mania — is information sharing and interdiction responsibilities.The Global Information Dominance Experiments are chipping away at this. The exercises were resuscitated by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and feed the beast that is Joint All-Domain Command and Control."We have a network of ground-based sensors that is very exquisite and very effective, but we need to be thinking about out-of-the-box solutions to get that coverage of hypersonic threats, to get that coverage of drone threats," Masao Dahlgren, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview."The sensing piece and the software needed to stitch it all together, I think, is going to be the No. 1 priority for any Iron Dome, before we even get into the conversation of what we're going to defend."A stomach for debate. Missile defense can be cast as provocative. It's partly chicken-and-egg thinking: If country A has better defense, country B wants better offense."The United States has been restrained in its development and deployment of strategic defenses with the hope that Russia and China would follow suit," Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Axios. "But that restraint really hasn't bought us anything.""Both adversaries," she said, "are developing and deploying serious air and missile defenses of their homelands."Space-based weapons are polarizing. There are widely expressed concerns about the exploitation of space and potential arms races there.Money, money, money. The executive order included no price tag or plainly stated funding source. But if the past is any indication of the future, Iron Dome for America will compete for and chew through cash."This will cost tens of billions of dollars and require a sustained commitment over at least a decade," Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Axios. (His spending breakdown can be found here.)"It will be interesting to see how the administration proposes paying for this," he added, "and whether they can advance the program enough in the next four years to make it stick when a future administration takes over."Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) filed legislation, the Iron Dome Act, that would inject billions into missile defense. During a congressional hearing, Sullivan shared a poster highlighting Long Range Discrimination Radar, Aegis Ashore and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.Humility. Perfect, impenetrable defense isn't realistic. Certain sites demand priority, and something will eventually get through.There were 350 drone detections across 100 installations last year.Both Israel and Ukraine — smaller than the U.S. and frequently tested by neighbors — miss. Saturation is deadly.There's also defense-tech graveyards littered with such grand plans.My thought bubble: Defense of Guam will be a good barometer.The Missile Defense Agency for the first time in testing intercepted a ballistic missile target from Guam. It happened last year.Catch up quick: The Space Development Agency and MDA pinged industry to see what's possible.RTX, L3Harris Technologies and General Atomics have all said they're well-positioned to win work.What's next: Government officials have less than 60 days to complete homework assigned to them by the executive order.

JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Wednesday that he would seek out a conversation with President Donald Trump about his decision to rename Denali, the tallest mountain in the U.S.

Famous places can get name changes, experts say, but they don't always last.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump’s expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaska’s economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate.

Most failed presidential candidates never seek any office again -- but when they do, they often give the presidency one more try.

TAMPA, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement that he’s appointing Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio places the Tampa area native in an exotic locale far from home. But if her personal history is any indication, she will attract notice in Washington as a hard-charging — and highly partisan — advocate for her home state. “Every day I go to ...

Pennsylvania’s rural population is expected to shrink by 5.8% by 2050. The state legislature wants to reverse the drain through a new commission.

Former Rep. Sean Duffy sat for an hourslong confirmation hearing as President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Transportation secretary, sitting before Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, here in the Senate subway in the U.S. Capitol in December, faces a competitive reelection next year. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

'He can’t be. He wasn’t born in this country,' the president-elect says.

The Alaskan mountain was officially renamed from Mt. McKinley to Denali in 2015.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is mounting a last-ditch fight to keep the National Labor Relations Board under Democratic control for the next two years under President-elect Trump. Why it matters: For big labor and big business, the NLRB is crucially important.It has broad discretion to referee disputes between employers of workers across the economy, from Amazon to Starbucks.Democrats have an opportunity to lock in a 3-2 majority, but only if they can find 50 votes to extend Lauren McFerran's tenure.Schumer filed cloture on Monday on another five-year term for McFerran, setting up a procedural vote on Wednesday.Schumer has two paths to win confirmation:He'll need GOP absences or defections, or assurances from either Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) or Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) that their concerns about the NLRB have been addressed. Those two haven't indicated how they'll vote.Driving the news: Senate Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders —have privately pressed Schumer to grandfather McFerran in as chair until August 2026, when vacancies will give Republicans a shot to create their own NLRB majority.With two weeks left in session, time is running out, raising concerns in the labor movement that the vote isn't a top priority for Schumer.Without reconfirmation, the board will likely tip in favor of Republicans early next year when Trump starts filling open seats after his inauguration. McFerran's term expires next week.What we're watching: No one seems to know if Manchin is still as angry with the NLRB when he voted against the last Democratic nominee in September 2023.But his staff isn't giving Schumer any reason to be optimistic.In that 2023 vote, Democrat Gwynne Wilcox relied on the votes of the two Alaska senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, to win confirmation.Another x-factor is Sinema's attendance. She didn't vote last week.The bottom line: Schumer has been focusing on confirming federal judges to lifetime positions before Democrats hand over the majority to Republicans next year.While judges wear their robes for life, there are nearly 1,500 of them.There are five seats on the NLRB.

Tulsi Gabbard is facing a key week on Capitol Hill as she makes the rounds with senators in an attempt to smooth over their concerns and win confirmation to lead the U.S.’s national intelligence apparatus. Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in the House as a Democrat, has flown under the radar in recent weeks, especially with [...]

Gavin Wacker Sullivan, 30, pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing child sex abuse files in October. He did not receive a jail sanction.

Lawmakers met with Trump appointees Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on Capitol Hill to discuss the framework for President-elect Trump's soon-to-be formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Democrats need to flip four Senate seats in 2026 to reclaim a majority, but have few clear targets.

Automotive experts reveal their thoughts on President-elect Trump reportedly considering a slash to the tax credit for electric vehicles.

Union at Middle Creek in southwest Lincoln, one of the city's largest affordable housing projects in recent history, is open and fully occupied.

The city's new $6.3 million compressed natural gas fueling station will now be used to fuel its 41 CNG buses and 11 paratransit buses, saving $729,000 a year.

Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird's chief of staff T.J. McDowell is leaving, and Rick Hoppe, who was former mayor Chris Beutler's chief of staff, will take his place.

City Hall: Lancaster County is considering offering bilingual employees extra money to use their skills to help customers; felons are registering to vote; low-income housing project lowers rents even further.

Construction will begin on the city's first all-inclusive playground at Mahoney Park in northeast Lincoln, the result of a grassroots-effort by moms who have kids with disabilities.

Housing in NH remains a hot topic in New Hampshire's Upper Valley, and statewide.

Eight Democratic representatives issued a letter to social media executives this week demanding clarification how their platforms will protect against "misinformation" and "disinformation" during the 2024 election.

Independent Dan Osborn is gaining unexpected traction in his bid to unseat Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.).

Welcome to At the Races! Each week we bring you news and analysis from the CQ Roll Call campaign team. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here. From concerts to campaign cash, 2024 is shaping up as a test of the crypto industry’s political strength. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles [...]The post At the Races: Crypto campaigning appeared first on Roll Call.

Are journalists to blame for Biden dropping out? This assumes that the power of the press is significant and straightforward. It’s neither.

A South Florida dive bar has been hit by backlash after displaying a joke about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on its large outdoor sign.“How do you miss a head that’s that inflated?” was arranged in large letters on the marquee outside Harry’s Banana Farm in Lake Worth Beach Monday, Miami News Times reports. The sign was taken down within 24 hours following public outcry, mostly from supporters of the former president and current GOP nominee to return to the White House.Trump was injured and a spectator was killed Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when a 20-year-old shooter climbed a roof and fired off several shots before being killed by Secret Service members.Harry’s Banana Farm manager Lou De Stout told WPTV News he has a penchant for crafting snarky signage outside the bar.ALSO READ: Ex-Republican concerned Trump is hiding medical report after attack"I thought it was just another humorous sign but apparently it struck a nerve,” De Stout told WPTV.Soon after the sign went up, Trump supporters gathered outside the restaurant Monday in protest and flocked to the business's online Yelp page, spamming it with negative reviews.The following day, the bar had a new message on the marquee."Yeah for Trump. So happy for him. You crazy b-----ds happy?"Watch the video below or at this link.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska on "Face the Nation" that aired on March 3, 2024.

The battle between former President Trump and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley for the GOP presidential nomination on Super Tuesday will likely be the focus of this week’s Sunday shows. A new NewsNation show, “The Hill Sunday,” launches this week, featuring guests including Reps. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Ken Buck (D-Colo.). Host Chris Stirewalt...

"Hopefully we can work through this and get something done in a short period of time," the Alabama senator said.

Senate Democrats are working with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and a handful of Republicans on a rarely used procedural tactic to defeat Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) blockade of more than 360 military promotions, a stalemate that has consumed the Senate for months. Democrats are looking at using a standing order resolution to move a block [...]