The Dictatorship
Loyalty to Trump could cost this GOP candidate the New Jersey governorship
Quinnipiac University published a poll this month that showed President Donald Trump’s approval rating in New Jersey stands at a meager 41%while 55% of the Garden State’s likely voters disapprove of his job performance. And yet, the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, former New Jersey General Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli, doesn’t seem to have received the memo.
The Trump-endorsed Republican repeatedly declined to criticize or distance himself from the president during a debate last Sunday against his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill. Ciattarelli offered no direct rebuttal to Sherrill’s prediction that “he’ll do whatever Trump tells him to do” or her claim that “all he does is say Trump’s right.”
Ciattarelli offered no direct rebuttal to Sherrill’s prediction that “he’ll do whatever Trump tells him to do.”
Indeed, when he was pressed to address concerns among Trump-skeptical New Jersey voters about the current administration’s indifference to BLN’s reporting that “border czar” Tom Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash in an FBI sting operation (which the White House denies, and of which Homan said: “I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal), Ciattarelli instead opted to shower the president with praise. And he did the same when he was asked to address the Federal Communications Commission’s seeming threats against television networks and the president’s pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters.
“Well, let’s talk about what the president has done for New Jersey since he took office,” he said before framing several provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as “good for all New Jerseyans.”
If this were a Republican primary campaign — in which Trump’s approval is effectively a prerequisite for the party’s nomination — such an answer might have been a master stroke. In a general election, however, and particularly in a state where no Republican has won statewide since Chris Christie’s re-election as governor in 2013 — and Trump’s approval rating is underwater — it borders on amateurish.
In many ways, Ciattarelli’s choice of words reflects the same stubbornness and lack of interest in his constituents’ wishes as is typical of the very man he is so desperate not to cross.
While polls continue to show that the majority of Americans oppose Trump’s implementing tariffsfor instance, the president recently dismissed their concerns in an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, claiming “that’s only because they don’t understand the word ‘tariff’” and falsely stating, “We have all this money, trillions of dollars pouring into our country, only because of the tariffs.” And perhaps most controversially, he continues to phrase his administration’s failure to release the Epstein files as a “dead issue,” and “merely another Democrat HOAX,” even though polls demonstrate that most Americans wish to see all documents about the disgraced, deceased sex offender made public.
Similarly, even as Ciattarelli acknowledged during last weekend’s debate that his state leans heavily Democratic, he explicitly laid the blame on “the party that’s controlled our Legislature for 25 years” and “the executive branch for eight years” as “the reason why we are today” facing numerous crises.
Ciattarelli may well have policy disagreements with his state’s opposing party, but with most polls indicating that he trails Sherrill, the strategy of simply pinning her entire party as the cause of New Jersey’s problems is unlikely to win voters over to his side.
The same is true of his uncompromising loyalty to the president. Ciattarelli’s campaign advisers need only to look at the outcomes of several Senate and gubernatorial races in swing states last November as proof.
While Trump himself won all seven swing states in the 2024 elections, Republican candidates’ strategy of forging ironclad alliances with him didn’t produce similar success down the ticket. With Trump’s endorsements, Republican Senate candidates Sam Brown, Kari Lake, Eric Hovde and Mike Rogers all handily won their primary races in Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, respectively — and all came up short in their general elections. Similarly, then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson — even with Trump’s endorsement — finished nearly 15 percentage points short of Democratic candidate Josh Stein in his bid to become governor of North Carolina, a state Trump won by over 3 points.
With considerable ground to make up on his opponent and a little more than a month remaining, the New Jersey Republican will have to shake up his strategy quickly. Otherwise, he is heading for a place on the same list as the other recent Republican runners-up and only he will know whether remaining on Trump’s good side was truly worth the cost.
Alexander Puri
Alexander Puri is the anchor producer for “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” a role he began in December 2022. Prior to joining BLN, he worked the overnight shifts on the assignment desk at ABC News.
NEW YORK (AP) — About 3 million fewer people in the United States had Affordable Care Acthealth insurance plans in February compared with the same time last year, according to new federal data.
In the reportreleased Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested the 13% drop in enrollment from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million this year could be attributed to a federal crackdown on fraudulent or “phantom” enrollment. But health analysts said it was more likely related to the Jan. 1 expiration of federal subsidieswhich caused a surge in plan costs that resulted in many people being unable to pay their premiums.
“We know that real people lost their health insurance coverage,” said Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, citing survey findings on people who had left their plans. “This coverage loss happened at the same time millions of people faced double or even triple digit increases in their premium payments.”
The new data, compiled in April but showing coverage in February, represents the government’s first official look at how people’s inability to pay their first bills this year affected total enrollment. That is because the figures capture the marketplace after a nonpayment grace period expired.
A federal estimate in Januaryshowed that about 800,000 fewer people had signed up for ACA plans compared with the same time last year, marking the first time in the past four years that enrollment had been down from the previous year at that point in the shopping window.
Cox said KFF expects the total number of people in the government healthcare program to continue to declinethroughout the year, potentially to a low of about 17.5 million. That would be a significant drop for the government’s flagship subsidized health insurance program for working-age people who do not qualify for Medicaid. In recent years, ACA plans have become a popular choice for gig workers, farmers, ranchers, hairstylists and others without health coverage through an employer.
The ACA subsidies that expired this year were at the center of a bitter fight in Congress last fall, with Democrats and some Republicans calling for their renewal. Sharp increases in health costs across ACA and other health insurance programs come as voters in the approaching November elections say affordability is among their top concerns.
Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.
Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.
Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.
Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.
In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.
Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)
Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.
Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.
Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.
The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.
“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.
“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”
Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”
The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.
The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.
“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”
Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”
Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.
Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.
“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
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