Related articles
Governor Hochul Joins Local Elected Officials To Respond to Antisemitic Vandalism
Joe Brady: “Chasing Consistency” | Buffalo Bills
‘That firewall is crumbling’: Ex-GOP lawmaker slams Trump ally for defending antisemite

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) took time on CNN Thursday evening to tear into Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, for his refusal to condemn ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson for interviewing white nationalist Hitler sympathizer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Roberts' claim that Fuentes and Carlson shouldn't be deplatformed has sparked a firestorm of anger and divided staffers within Heritage itself, fracturing the organization responsible for crafting President Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda. It wasn't until after days of controversy that he finally backtracked.
"Congressman, what — I don't understand why it's a difficult question at all," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "Shouldn't — I think all Republicans would condemn Nick Fuentes' hateful comments, full stop."
"Yeah, you'd think. But remember, Donald Trump invited him ... to Mar-a-Lago to have lunch with him and Kanye," said Kinzinger. "This is crazy. I mean, look, this is — there's always been, you know, we'd have Lincoln Day dinners, right? This is like the big fundraisers for the GOP. And there'd always be a weird table. And the weird table would always have 1 or 2 people that were kind of like Nazi-ish, I guess. And that firewall, for the most part, in the GOP, held where it's like, yeah, they may be considered to the right, but they're not part of us."
Now, however, he said, "It feels like that firewall is crumbling and you hear sometimes people on the right say, we have no enemies to the right. And what they're saying is anybody that is on the right, even as far as Nazism — we have no enemies, we have to make common cause. The ultimate enemy is the left and the liberals. And so the fact that it has taken Kevin, that Heritage Foundation president or chairman, whatever, as long as it has to condemn that is enough to say like that firewall is crumbling now."
"I'll give Ted Cruz something here for speaking out as quickly as they did on this. Some of them," added Kinzinger. "But this — this has to be burned right out of the party. And unfortunately, it's taking too long to do that."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Nancy Pelosi to retire: How the Democratic leader stretched facts and became a misinformation magnet
GOP insiders fear they’re losing ‘political war’ to Dems: report

Although President Donald Trump is confident in his redistricting battle designed to keep the Republican House majority, insiders say Republicans are fretting that last Tuesday's election results gave Democrats an opening to counterstrike, NBC reports.
While one anonymous Republican strategist tells NBC that “The president understands intuitively, in a way that other Republicans don’t … that Democrats are always assaulting us, always, and mostly much of the Republican Party never fights back."
“The redistricting fight is proof that they are not that way. So this is in his DNA in a way that is not in other Republicans’ DNA,” the strategist added.
Two other strategists described as close to the White House say they don't necessarily agree, telling NBC "there are growing concerns in the party that the political war is not going as planned — that the juice may not have been worth the squeeze and could, in a nightmare scenario, result in a net gain for Democrats."
"Misgivings" about Trump's strategy heightened after California voters overwhelmingly approved Governor Gavin Newsom's Prop. 50 plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a manner that Democrats hope will flip five House seats in their direction.
“For a few weeks now, he’s had the understanding that they were going to lose Prop 50,” a Republican operative close to the White House tells NBC, adding that Trump "has been planning to sue California over the ballot measure while believing it was a bad idea to get involved in the fight."
"The stakes couldn't be higher," NBC explains, noting that Trump's legislative agenda will be "imperiled by a Democratic takeover of the House," and "also his administration would surely face myriad investigations and he could be impeached for a third time."
“With a narrow majority heading into a midterm, they need more seats for a buffer in order to hold the House. If they can ultimately net five or six seats, then it will be the story of the midterms of success for Republicans,” a GOP strategist tells NBC. “If the whole thing here was to net one seat across the country, then it will not have been worth it.”
In the wake of "strong Democratic showings in predominantly Hispanic areas of Virginia and New Jersey," Erin Covey, a nonpartisan election analyst who is the House editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, says there’s “uncertainty” as to whether Hispanic voters will show up for the GOP next year like they did for Trump in 2024, particularly in states like Texas.
“That does not bode well for Republicans banking on Hispanic voters to help them keep their majority next year — but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see Republican incumbents who would be in safe seats suddenly look vulnerable all of a sudden,” she said.
Another anonymous Republican with close ties to the president agrees and is raising the red flags, especially on Texas.
“I think ‘concern’ is a fair way to say it," they tell NBC.
GOP consultant and data scientist John Eakin puts it more bluntly,
“Nobody wants to go against Trump in this district map because they fear him. They’ve pushed the envelope and it’s going to come back to bite them in the ass,” he said. "They’re high as a f—— kite off of 2024."

