Changing the face of the culture-war debate around gender and sexuality: A tribute to Glenn DeSantis, who was elected to Congress in March 2016

In March, he signed legislation prohibiting classroom instruction and discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades, a law that opponents derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It also placed DeSantis squarely in the culture-war debate over transgender rights, a theme he has continued to address. In a debate last night against his Democratic challenger, former Gov. Charlie Crist, DeSantis gave a graphic and inaccurate description of gender-affirming care for transgender children, suggesting falsely that doctors were “mutilating” minors.

It was the governor who received the biggest cheers when he explained how he arranged for Florida to send nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that has faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges.

On the campaign trail, DeSantis doesn’t talk about Trump, but his remarks are peppered with frequent mentions of President Joe Biden in a preview of what a presidential campaign against the incumbent Democrat might look like.

Glenn Youngkin is not running for office now — he won Virginia’s governor’s race last year — but he has emerged as an in-demand surrogate for candidates at all levels of the Trump spectrum.

He embraces a lot of the issues that rally the base. He has called for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, prohibited the teaching of critical race theory, restricted transgender students’ rights and expressed anger over pandemic lockdowns. He acknowledges that Biden won the 2020 election, but has campaigned for election deniers, including Lake.

Youngkin insists that he is not thinking about a presidency in the near future. His meetings with megadonors in New York City are suggestive of that being the case.

The Rise of Donald J. Trump and the Democratic Party: After the First Two-Second Presidential Elections, CNN Investigates the “Front of the Republican Party”

Zelizer is a professor of History and Public Affairs at the Ivy League school. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment. You can follow him on the micro-Blogging site. His views are his own, not those of this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

It looks like former President Donald Trump is going to launch another bid for the White House. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to “get ready” for his return to the presidential campaign trail – and top aides have been eyeing November 14 as a potential launch date, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump, it seems, is hoping to be the first person since President Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive elections.

The news of another run by Trump would certainly have huge ramifications in the political world. Trump is arguably one of the most controversial and destabilizing political leader in contemporary US history. And as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – as well as the toxic rhetoric and support for conspiracy theories within the GOP – his presidency was enormously consequential.

Democrats, meanwhile, are pondering who will lead them toward the next presidential election in 2024. The results show that Biden was right when he said democracy was on the ballot. His political instincts are still sharp, and it paid off again. The election put some rising stars in the spotlight. Among the candidates, several whose names are not well known across the country, stood out as smart, charismatic, committed to democracy – and potentially electable.

The Republicans remain a strong united party, if the campaigns shown by the Democrats are anything to go by. Only very little can break that unity. The party did not change much after Trump left the presidency, and the “never trump” contingent did not emerge as a dominant force. The officials such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney were kicked out of the party.

The GOP is in good shape despite the fact that some of its candidates are flawed, including Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker. Democrats are racing against time to defend seats and candidates from blue states such as New York are at risk.

If Republicans do well next week and retain control of the House and Senate, members of the party will feel confident in their economic talk going into the new century. The GOP will likely be able to unite behind Trump if the numbers of election-denying candidates goes their way. Although there has been copious speculation about the rise of other Trump-like Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s likely they will look “liddle” once the former President formally reenters the political arena – as his formidable opponents learned in the 2016 Republican primaries.

A GOP midterm victory would also embolden Trump himself. He has failed to be held accountable at this point. Despite criminal investigations and a House select committee looking into it, Trump is still a political figure.

The Department of Justice is weighing the possibilities of appointing a special counsel to oversee two investigations into Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mismanagement of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago. But that’s unlikely to stop Trump; we’ve seen his relentless attacks on former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the Russia investigation. It will be harder to prosecute Trump once he is a candidate. Trump is a master of playing the victim and will claim that an investigation is done to stop him from being the next president.

If Trump avoids prosecution, he will launch a ferocious assault on the President, who may be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. If election deniers get elected and Trump doesn’t get charged, he will likely use the loyalists who have been in state and local election offices to make sure that he wins. Trump will also come to the race having been to this rodeo before, which will mean he can perfect the technique and rhetoric that put him into office in 2016. And now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, Trump could be reinstated – giving him a way to direct and shape the media conversation once again. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).

Trump and DeSantis in Miami: When the GOP gets a little more Democratic, it seems like it doesn’t matter if the GOP wins 2024

The midterms have shown that the Democrats’ focus on the radical nature of the GOP and the dangers posed to democracy are not necessarily enough to rally voters. These dangers have been outlined many times over, including in Biden’s closing speech Wednesday, but Democrats are nonetheless struggling to maintain power.

Of course, the fact that Trump poses a very serious threat in 2024 doesn’t mean he will win. Trump had turned off many independents and even some Republicans by 2020 and it remains unclear if he can win their support in crucial swing states. And as we have seen with President Barack Obama’s run against Mitt Romney in 2012, presidents who have faced tough reelection campaigns can still find a path to victory.

Dueling Florida rallies will take place on Sunday as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis battle for supremacy in the State and the heart of the GOP.

The former president will welcome supporters in Miami, the third stop in a four-city tour that has effectively made Trump a leading player in his party’s fight for control of Congress. Meanwhile, the Florida governor is headlining his own events in three counties on the state’s opposite coast – Hillsborough, Sarasota and Lee – steering far clear of Trump as he seeks to close out his bid for a second term.

The Republican official said that the two politicians in Florida are at the top of their game. They command attention, but they have their own political operations. It is already hard to talk about.

The president labeled it a mistake when Colorado Republican Senate nominee Joe O’Dea had a call made to him. O’Dea had drawn Trump’s ire by saying in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that he would “actively” oppose the former president if he ran for the White House in 2024.

The clip of Megyn Kelly predicting GOP voters would stay with Trump was shared by Trump. CNN said that Trump could launch his campaign as soon as this month.

In the first of his three events on Sunday, DeSantis made no mention of Trump or the “Ron DeSanctimonious” nickname, choosing instead to criticize President Joe Biden and the so-called “woke” left.

According to his campaign ad, where he claimed that he was created by God to fight for Florida, DeSantis stood up against medical experts and critics who said the state shouldn’t reopen because of the coronaviruses.

DeSantis looks, for all the world, like he is gearing up to use the momentum garnered from his expected win on Tuesday to launch a White House bid. He had over 90 million dollars in the bank, as well as $200 million raised for his reelection, which he announced in a video last week.

Trump’s pre-election travel is motivated at least in part by his desire to launch a third campaign for the White House, CNN reported this week. Trump told voters in Iowa to get ready for his return as president when he was in the state on Thursday. Trump stopped in Pennsylvania on Saturday – home to the tight Senate race between his endorsee, Republican Mehmet Oz, and Democrat John Fetterman – and he’ll spend election eve in Ohio, where the former president endorsed Republican J.D. Vance in the Senate race against Democrat Tim Ryan.

The rally will be held in Miami-Dade County, as Republicans are hopeful they will win the county for the first time in two decades. The party has seen gains in recent elections in the area that is home to Hispanics, and is seeing a wave of enthusiasm that is turning the state a deeper shade of red. For the first time, Republicans will hold an advantage over Democrats in voter registration on Election Day.

“There’s little doubt that his Florida success will grab the attention of voters outside the Sunshine State,” the editorial board wrote. “You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching—unhappily.”

“Biden touches it and turns into something much worse than (gold),” DeSantis said. “It’s frustrating and a lot of people, the vast majority of Americans, they think that the country has seen its best days. They think that we’re clearly on the wrong track. But you know, I think Florida provides the blueprint that other states can follow.”

On the surface, he appears to be Trump’s heir. Since winning the governorship by a whisper-thin margin in 2018, he has consciously molded himself after Trump, picking up everything from Trump’s hand gestures and speech cadence to his media-bashing and calculated viciousness. In the politics of resentment and resistance, DeSantis went after schools that taught about racism and sexuality and dumped asylum-seekers in Massachusetts as part of a publicity stunt.

The nickname “DeSanctimonious” refers to how Trump tried to bring down Cruz in order to eliminate him from contention for the GOP nomination.

During the election, Trump insisted that Cruz was sanctimonious, because he claimed that the Texas senator was short of what he said he was.

Trump is the real man of the people, who would never believe that he’s better than anyone. It seems that Trump has a big ego and often casts himself as special.

Predicting the 2022 midterm election: Donald Trump’s rebuke to the media and the establishment of a red wave

A world affairs columnist is Frida Ghitis, who was a CNN producer and correspondent. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN and also a columnist for The Washington Post. Her views are included in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

The results of the 2022 midterm election have not been fully tallied and the crucial question – who will control Congress? – has not been answered. We can draw some conclusions on this day after.

Glenn Beck, the right-wing talk radio host, expressed a desire to linger with the idea of a red wave that wiped out Republicans after Tuesday’s elections, even if he was half-joking. It was not possible for the party to linger on after their poor showing in the midterm election, even though they had many expecting an easy win.

The movement spearheaded by Trump and his campaign team did a lot worse than expected. Some of the most dramatic Republican wins looked like a rebuke to Trump.

In exit polls, 28% of voters said they chose their House vote “to oppose Donald Trump.” And just 37% said they had a favorable view of the former president, the presumed GOP front-runner, at least before this election. The party should be alarmed by that.

On election night, Trump told an interviewer, “I think if [Republicans] win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I shouldn’t be blamed at all. The evidence shows that he deserves a lot of the blame.

When Did Mehmet Oz Win the State House of Representatives? The Case for Donald Trump after the 2018 U.S. Senate Elections

For the past 100 years, the average midterm gain in the House of Representatives for the opposition party is 29 seats. This year, Republicans needed just five seats, a goal that seemed so reachable that practically every pollster predicted the GOP would easily clear it, especially given the high inflation rate and Biden’s relatively low approval. But Republicans are struggling to clear that low bar.

It’s possible they will do it. Even if the Republicans win the House, the Democrats’ performance is just as good as ever. The best performance by the party in power since 2002 was presided over by Biden.

Biden has said that he wanted to save US democracy when he decided to run for president. Given Tuesday’s results – even if his party loses control of Congress – he can take comfort in having made significant progress in achieving that goal. These elections were a victory for democracy.

In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro defeated Doug Mastriano, who was involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election and ran a campaign rife with antisemitic innuendo against his Jewish opponent. Some of Trump’s opponents lost in contests such as Michigan, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The football star Herschel Walker could still win the runoff in December. But anyone who heard him campaign or learned about his past knows he should never have been on the ballot. Trump apparently thought fame would do the trick, just as it did for him. Mehmet Oz was endorsed by him for the Pennsylvania seat. Oz lost to John Fetterman, who after suffering a stroke struggled to regain his verbal prowess, a key skill for a political candidate.

Gingrich stated on Fox & Friends that the Governor was the winner and he will become the leader of the Republican Party who wants to leave President Trump behind.

To block Kemp’s reelection, Trump persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to run against him in the primary. Perdue and Trump were humiliated by that primary vote.

Despite his poor showing, Donald Trump plans to run for president. Most Democrats find the prospect hard to stomach, but most Republicans would also like him to just focus on his golf game. He’s a threat to the party.

Murdoch is the Biggest Loser after the Trump Term: The Case for a Tilting the Scales in the 2020 Florida Tsunami

The most disruptive presidential candidate in history will most likely be campaigning for another election in the near future, a man who has shown no respect for democracy. This week, the country took a step toward sanity and that democracy did well.

Murdoch will not turn on Trump completely thanks to coverage from his media outlets. Rather, it suggests that Murdoch might use his influence to tilt the scales and push Republicans toward DeSantis if the two squared off in a 2024 Republican primary.

They were not the only ones. On the day after the election, commentators heaped praise on the new Governor of Florida and excoriated the former President. Recriminations came swiftly. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board’s headline after the election was “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” It stated that Trump now carried the stench of losing, and that the party was the biggest loser.

And The Wall Street Journal, the broadsheet owned by Murdoch, the newspaper’s conservative editorial board published a piece proclaiming the “DeSantis Florida tsunami.”

A person with knowledge of how Murdoch runs his businesses told CNN that the billionaire’s media outlets were focusing on the future of the Republican Party and not an accident.

Maggie Haberman, a reporter at The New York Times and CNN political analyst, reported recently in her bestselling book that after the 2020 election Murdoch remarked of Trump, “We should throw this guy over.”

The next few weeks will likely be a high-water mark in his bid for the presidency. The spotlight can become the hot seat in a very short time and DeSantis is an unknown as a national candidate and as a Trump adversary. Those who see an easy pivot from the era of Trump to the age of DeSantis are likely in for another wave of disappointment, both because of the particulars of DeSantis’ victory and the persistence of Trump’s power.

He has a strongman persona and is married to that political style. He has used his power as governor to target people who are against his policies. He has sent police to round up voters with felony convictions who, confused by the state’s efforts to strip their voting rights after voters reinstated them a few years ago, mistakenly voted in recent elections. He has bent the Florida legislature to his will, whipping up support for anti-gay laws, a new redistricting map and punitive legislation targeting Disney after the company criticized the state’s infamous “don’t say gay” bill.

Such actions bolstered his popularity in Florida, as did his attention to public opinion. He introduced a gas-tax holiday in the month before the election and focused on relief rather than campaigning after the storm. He has made inroads with Latino voters and Democratic voters in more liberal areas, as a result of his victory in the traditional conservatives in the state. If the dream for many was Trumpism without Trump, then the ideal politician would be Ron DeSantis.

The Democratic Party in Florida is in tatters, because it is not able to organize and mobilize voters. And Florida has a specific mix of Latino voters that is unlike most other states, weighted heavily toward immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who respond favorably to DeSantis’s attack on Democrats as socialists.

Donald Trump is a Florida resident. The Dump Trump crowd, though bigger now than at any point in the last several years, does not seem to understand how deep a cult of personality around Trump is within some parts of the party.