In an upset that rattled Republicans in Texas and beyond, a Democrat decisively won a state legislative special election on Saturday in a district around Fort Worth that President Trump carried by more than 17 percentage points just over a year ago.
The Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, a local union leader and first-time candidate, defeated the Republican, Leigh Wambsganss, by double digits — 57 to 43 — in the historically conservative district.
The contest to fill a State Senate seat had been closely followed by national leaders from both parties as a barometer of potential Republican struggles in this year’s midterm elections.
It attracted outsized attention after Mr. Rehmet, 33, performed far better than expected in the first round of voting in November and ended up in the runoff. Since then, he received a surge of support from Democratic groups, including the Democratic National Committee.
The reactions poured in.
Dem strategist Matt McDermott called it a "huge political earthquake in Texas tonight as Democrats flipped a State Senate seat from red to blue in a district Trump won by 17 points," and noted, "Trump personally waded in — endorsing the Republican and personally urging base turnout — and was dealt a massive loss."
"Democrats didn’t just see a 30-point shift in Texas and flip a State Senate seat red to blue: they did it while being outspent 20-to-1. This will send shockwaves through the Republican Party," the strategist then added.
Columnist Greg Sargent said, "Dems just flipped a Texas state senate seat in a district that Trump carried by 17 points."
"Not only that, but the win was decisive, making this an enormous swing," he added. "This, after Trump called her a 'true MAGA warrior' and personally urged 'all America First Patriots' to vote for her."
That wasn't the only race in Texas. Yesterday, Brianna Tucker (WASHINGTON POST) reported:
Democrats narrowed Republicans’ U.S. House majority and flipped a state Senate seat on conservative terrain in a pair of Saturday special election runoffs in Texas with national implications.
Democrat Christian Menefee won the special election runoff Saturday for Texas’s 18th Congressional District, paring House Republicans’ slim advantage by securing a long-vacant seat in a heavily Democratic area.
Shaukat told Newsweek that she hired Pretti as a research assistant at the Minneapolis VA in 2014, when he was looking to gain some experience in health care.
“He was very earnest and just very enthusiastic about contributing to patient care,” she said. “So we gave him a chance, we took him on. We trained him. He learned really well, he was a really valued team member.”
In 2019, Pretti became interested in going into nursing school while still working with Dr. Shaukat, who wrote a recommendation letter for him. During this time, she said he would bring “funny stories” to work from his side gig as a pizza delivery driver. He never expressed any “radical or crazy thoughts” and was “very honest and hard-working,” she added.
He returned to the same hospital, where he “rose the ranks in nursing all the way to his ICU position,” she said.
“That was really good for him and he literally just had his whole life ahead of him when this tragic event happened,” she said, describing him as a “good kid.”
Pretti found “deeper meaning” working in health care, particularly when it came to working with veterans, who are a more vulnerable population because of social and mental health challenges, she said.
He was always open about things he cared about, including the environment and helping his community, she said. Attending a peaceful protest was “very much like” him, as his community in south Minneapolis would have been the “epicenter” of what was happening, she added.
Donald Trump and his allies stayed connected to Jeffrey Epstein well after they claimed they had stopped communicating.
The president has long asserted that his close friendship with the child sex trafficker ended after the duo had a falling out over real estate in Palm Beach, ultimately nixing contact altogether after 2006, when a grand jury indicted Epstein on state charges related to prostitution. That same year, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago (though Epstein publicly denied the finale of his membership at the time).
But documents published Friday amid the Justice Department’s larger rollout of another tranche of the Epstein files indicate that Trump’s narrative is far from the entire story.
An email out of the trove, issued by Epstein to an individual named William Riley, revealed that the sex trafficker was planning to call Trump as late as 2011.
“Before I call Trump, with regard vrginina ,, are there any other alternatives,” Epstein wrote on April 18, 2011.
It is not clear who Riley is, though a decorated Iraq War veteran known as William Sascha Riley was identified in November as another one of Epstein’s victims by Substack writer Lisa Noelle Voldeng. Riley claimed his adoptive father, William “Bill” Kyle Riley, worked as a pilot for Epstein and trafficked him to the global predator.
As it turns out, Trump’s friends had similarly malleable principles. In an interview with the New York Post podcast in October, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recalled an instance in 2005 when Epstein—who was at the time his Upper East Side neighbor—invited him to tour his infamous East 71st Street townhouse.
Representative Ro Khanna, who co-sponsored a bill mandating the release of all unclassified Epstein files, noted that even as millions more documents dropped Friday, the right documents weren’t being released—specifically the “302” files, in which the victims identify their abusers, a convenient group of files to leave unreleased.
“If Blanche believes that there is no coverup, then he should release the 302 files. The 302 files are where the survivors name who these rich and powerful men are,” Khanna responded. “I’ve talked to the survivors. They say that they have named those people in the FBI witness interviews. So if those witness interviews are released, the American people can see for themselves who the survivors named … but if Blanche continues to not release the 302 statements, to not release the prosecution memos—then it’s a cover-up.”
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