Politics
Nancy Mace knows her Epstein vote screwed her with Trump. She doesn’t care.
Nancy Mace thinks she knows why she didn’t get President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
The embattled South Carolina House Republican, who’s in the midst of a bruising race for governor, has a long history of bucking — and then cozying back up to — Trump. But her leading role in releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files was likely a bridge too far for the president, who has spent significant time and energy this year to get revenge against his GOP defectors.
Trump’s recent decision to back one of Mace’s primary opponents, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, in the crowded field will carry monumental weight in the crimson-red state. Past elections suggest that, with the president’s endorsement, Evette has all but secured her place in a runoff, as Mace and three other Republicans continue to scramble for the second spot on the ballot.
Still, the three-term representative says she has no regrets about her Epstein vote — or its consequences.
“That’s the sole reason I didn’t get the endorsement, because I voted to release the Epstein files, and I’m okay with that,” Mace told Blue Light News. “I’ve worked very hard to expose pedophiles, and child rapists, and sex trafficking in my state, and will continue to do it regardless of the outcome of the election.”
“It’s full steam ahead, no matter what. I’m not going down without a fight,” she added. “I’m still the MAGA candidate. I support all of MAGA’s policies. I support our president. I’m also an independent conservative.”
Mace is one of the few remaining Republican Epstein files defectors left standing, after the president blitzed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) out of Congress and turned on former Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
Unlike with the other figures, Trump has not publicly made this particular race about his personal dissatisfaction with Mace, staying relatively quiet until he announced his endorsement of Evette in the final two-week window of the primary. But the late Trump headwind is yet another obstacle for Mace’s campaign, which has been otherwise dogged by controversies and a serious primary field that’s already been difficult for her to navigate.
Mace’s run for governor is her highest-profile race yet — and one that will define the next chapter of her rollercoaster career. She’s had to overcome retributive political challenges from several influential figures in her own party and navigate public questions about her own mental health.
She bested a Trump-backed challenger in 2022, a consequence for condemning the president after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. In 2024, she handily defeated a primary challenge funded by allies of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who Mace voted to oust the year prior. And now, she’s back on the outs with Trump again, though she’s still trying to align herself closely with the president and reiterating her respect for him.
The White House declined to comment and instead referred Blue Light News to the president’s Truth Social post explaining his endorsement of Evette, which did not mention Mace. He instead touted Evette’s closeness to GOP Gov. Henry McMaster, a Trump ally.
Observers and Mace’s opponents in South Carolina paint a complex picture of how the race and Mace’s candidacy have shaped out.
She launched her campaign in the summer of 2025, armed with sky-high name recognition and the ability to tap into grassroots online fundraising, which paid dividends at the outset of the contest. Trump even shared a poll that showed her leading the field — one that Mace told Blue Light News last year that she personally sent to the president. But in early September, she joined House Democrats and signed onto Massie’s effort to force a vote to later release the Epstein files — an open defiance of the president’s wishes.
The tide started to shift against her in November, and not only because of the Epstein files drama.
Mace got into a public entanglement with the Charleston Airport Authority over a prearranged escort from the curb to her gate, leading to embarrassing headlines locally and nationally.
Airport authorities detailed in a report that Mace, in a profanity-laced tirade, lit into law enforcement officers and TSA agents for failing to meet her at a preordained pickup location, even as they walked her to her flight.
“I think the airport thing hurt her more than the [Epstein] thing,” said Terry Sullivan, a longtime South Carolina Republican operative, who is unaffiliated in the race. “She’s had really strong debate performances, she’s articulate, she’s right on the issues for these folks, but then she just goes a little haywire.”
Mace, for her part, defended her actions at the airport a few days after it happened in a Charleston press conference, calling the report’s release a “political hit job.”
“Did I drop an f-bomb? I hope I did,” she said at the time. The incident drew harsh criticism from fellow South Carolina Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott who published a blistering statement rebuking her language and treatment of the officials. Sen. Lindsey Graham piled on, too.
Even now, months later, Mace stands by what she did.
“I get over a thousand death threats a year, and I’m the only one that doesn’t get security when traveling. In fact, the last three times I’ve had an altercation or been accosted has been at an airport, particularly the Charleston airport, because the left has lost their mind,” she told Blue Light News.
Then, in February, she accused her ex-fiancé and several of his business partners of serious sexual crimes during a speech on the House floor. They have denied the allegations, and Mace has been representing herself in the subsequent litigation, often swapping the campaign trail for the courtroom.
Controversies aside, ad spending reveals another reason why she’s struggling to break through to the front of the race.
Mace, shockingly, hasn’t spent a single dollar on television ads at all, according to an AdImpact analysis, despite her healthy fundraising throughout the campaign. She’s only dropped $50,000 on digital advertising.
Meanwhile, overall ad spending in the Republican primary has hit nearly $28 million between the candidates’ committees and aligned PACs, nearly $2 million of which has been in negative advertising targeting her specifically. Protect Freedom PAC, an outside group aligned with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, has spent $1.4 million in positive ads on Mace’s behalf.
One candidate in particular — millionaire and political outsider Rom Reddy, who jumped into contention at the last minute — has topped all other candidates and PACs, reaching nearly $6 million in the relatively small state. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) are also in the race and spending real money.
If none of the candidates clear a 50 percent threshold — a likely scenario with five serious contenders on the ballot — the two top vote-getters will advance to a one-on-one runoff race, with a second round of voting scheduled for just two weeks later on June 23.
The weekend after Trump made his endorsement of Evette, Mace said she texted a friend who would understand her predicament: Massie. “I let him know that I didn’t get the endorsement, and we all know why,” she told Blue Light News.
But Massie had already taken to social media.
“Although virtually all Republicans eventually admitted by their votes that it was right to release the Epstein files, only three were brave enough to sign my discharge petition to force that vote. [Lauren] Boebert, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene, and Mace have paid an enormous price for doing the right thing,” he said in a post on X. Greene resigned from Congress earlier this year after clashes with Trump over Epstein and the economy, and Trump recently called for a primary challenge to Boebert after she campaigned with Massie ahead of the Kentucky primary.
Massie has already hinted that he could make some kind of comeback in 2028, whether for his old House seat in Kentucky or another federal office. Mace, should she come up short in the primary, is not so sure.
“I’m not running for Congress again,” Mace said. “I said I would do six years because I believe in term limits, and I made the promise that I would leave Congress after six years, so I won’t be running again.”
What about a political career outside of Congress? “I’m going to wait and see how Tuesday looks,” she demurred.
Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
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