On Thursday, voters across England, Scotland, and Wales head to the polls in the most fragmented set of British elections in living memory — with projections pointing to the simultaneous collapse of two-party politics across all three nations.
■ Pulse Points / Reformation Day
🏴 England — 5,066 council seats are up across 136 local authorities, including all 32 London boroughs and six directly-elected mayors (Croydon, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Watford). A recent prediction from polling group ‘More in Common’ found that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could win in excess of 1,400 of these seats, with the Greens picking up just shy of 1,000. The historic “two major parties,” the Conservatives and Labour, would lose over 2,500 seats between them, with Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party bearing the largest loss. The combined Labour-Conservative share of all English council seats already sits at 57% — its lowest point since the 1970s.
🏴 Scotland — All 129 Holyrood seats are up under the Additional Member System. More in Common’s poll shows: the far-left, long-governing Scottish National Party (SNP) 56 (−8), Reform UK 22 (up from just one seat, previously), Labour 17, Lib Dems 14 (a tripling), Conservatives 12 (−19), Greens 8. The SNP would almost certainly govern in a far-left coalition with the Greens in this scenario. YouGov’s separate polling is more bullish on the SNP at 67 and a narrow majority. Reform UK surges into being the official opposition.
🐉 Wales — The first Senedd election under the new 96-seat closed-list system across 16 six-member constituencies. More in Common’s poll: Plaid Cymru (far-left Welsh nationalism) 30, Reform 28, Labour 24, Conservatives 7, Greens 4, Lib Dems 3. YouGov has it tighter still, with Reform in the lead on 37, and Plaid on 36. Either way, Wales is heading for its first non-Labour First Minister since devolution in 1999. A far-left Plaid–Labour coalition seems the only viable route to a government.
💀 Labour Laceration — Sir Keir Starmer’s party is defending 2,500 English council seats on a 21% national share. They are projected to lose 1,500+ councillors, fall to third in Wales after 27 unbroken years of governance in Cardiff, and post the lowest Holyrood vote share for any winning party in the parliament’s history. A whopping 79% of Welsh voters say it is time for change — including 47% of Labour’s own remaining voters.
📈 Reform Realignment — A party that held just a single Holyrood seat and barely contested Wales in 2021 is now on course to be the official opposition in Cardiff Bay, second-largest at Holyrood, and the largest single winner of council seats in England. Essex County Council — Conservative-controlled for a quarter-century — is set to fall to Farage’s Reform. The party also stands a fighting chance in places never before thought possible, including the North West of England, and even some London boroughs.
🟦 Tory Twilight — Welsh Conservatives are projected just 7 seats — below the 5-seat threshold required to form a parliamentary group, barring them from chairing committees. This is an historic devastation for Kemi Badenoch’s party, which will likely hide their losses behind Labour’s even greater defeats. The Scottish Tories are projected to drop 19 seats to just 12. In London, the party hopes to recapture Westminster, Wandsworth, and Barnet — three flagship councils lost in 2022 — but the national picture is one of structural decline.
🌱 Green Ground Game — In far-left weirdo Zack Polanski’s first major electoral test as leader, the party could deliver +1,000 English councillors, mayoral wins in Hackney and Lewisham, four seats in the Senedd (their first ever in Wales), and eight at Holyrood — including their first constituency MSPs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. His recent comments, however, attacking police officers for aggressively stopping a rampaging terrorist, have caused him to sharply decline in the polls just a few days before Britain goes to the ballot.
🎯 The Big Picture — The combined Labour-Conservative national vote share now sits around 43%. Scotland’s effective number of parties is projected to hit 5.5 — the highest in Holyrood history, eclipsing even the 2003 “rainbow parliament.” No single party can plausibly expect to govern alone in Cardiff, Edinburgh, or in growing portions of England’s town halls. On these projections, two-party British politics is — at all three levels of government simultaneously — formally over. The night will likely be one of great celebration for Farage and his party, while Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Prime Minister, will likely face calls for his resignation or ouster as a result of the expected historic defeat. The National Pulse will be reporting live from Reform UK HQ on Thursday night as results come in. Follow Raheem J. Kassam on X for breaking news.
Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.Subscribe here.
show less
On Thursday, voters across England, Scotland, and Wales head to the polls in the most fragmented set of British elections in living memory — with projections pointing to the simultaneous collapse of two-party politics across all three nations.
show more
If you were to walk into a New Jersey pharmacy and ask for a year’s supply of Eliquis, a blood thinner that millions of Americans take to prevent strokes, the list price will be in the region of $7,100. The same drug, manufactured by the same two American companies, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, at the same plant, could cost you just $770… if you lived in Berlin, Germany.
Now do the same calculation with the increasingly popular Ozempic. The list price in Cleveland is $969 a month, but in Copenhagen it costs just $122. In Berlin it’s as low as $59.
None of this is a quirk, nor is it down to cunning European negotiation. It is, in fact, one of the oldest rackets in international trade.
Americans foot the bill at both ends of all this, by the way: once as taxpayers, by publicly funding organizations like the increasingly scrutinized National Institutes of Health (NIH), which underwrites scientific developments, and a second time at the pharmacy counter, by paying the prices that allow drugmakers to absorb the discounts Berlin and Paris demand as their cost of market access.
European governments operate single-payer health systems, which they use as bottlenecks: they tell pharmaceutical companies what price they’ll pay for a given drug, and the companies, unable to walk away from entire national markets, take what they can get. And in some countries the squeeze doesn’t even stop at the register: governments use “clawbacks” to reach back into the pockets of American drugmakers after the sale and demand a refund on medicines already delivered. Whatever margin is squeezed out of Germany or France inevitably gets recouped from the one large market that does not impose statutory price controls: America’s.
Brussels calls the whole process “price negotiation,” which is one of those European terms that means the opposite of what it is.
Take Germany — Europe’s largest economy and the country that lectures the loudest about “solidarity.” For years, Berlin has forced mandatory price cuts on American medicines the moment they cross its border, suppressing what American companies can charge and sending the bill for the shortfall back across the Atlantic to American patients.
LONG-TERM MALIGNANCE.
For 70 years European governments have spent below NATO defensive spending targets, redirecting the savings into their welfare states, which the United States effectively subsidizes. The same mentality drives the medicine racket: why fund your own research when the Americans will do it for you?
Europeans often lecture Americans about the supposed cruelty of America’s “for-profit healthcare,” while running an entire continent’s pharmacopoeia on profits extracted from American patients. European Union Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen condemns capitalism during Davos, but then dispatches her negotiators to enforce the price controls that depend on it. When President Trump suggested at the same conference in January that Emmanuel Macron might consider letting French citizens pay something closer to what Americans pay for the same medicines, the French presidency dismissed the comment as “fake news.” The more accurate translation is that they consider the question itself an impertinence.
Over the past year, President Trump has expended significant effort on this.
His May 2025 ‘Most Favored Nation’ executive order put the principle on paper. By December 2025, 17 of the world’s largest medicine manufacturers (accounting for about 86% of the branded drug market) had signed deals committing to align American prices with the lowest paid in comparable developed countries.
BRINGING PRICES DOWN FOR AMERICANS.
This February, TrumpRx.gov went live, with the cash price of Ozempic falling from $1,028 to around $350 and Wegovy to as low as $149. The British, to their credit, read the room: on 1 December 2025 London signed an agreement to raise the net UK price on new drugs in exchange for tariff relief. The model, in short, works, and now needs to be turned on the governments that still refuse to apply it.
Germany didn’t learn from the UK. It is racing in the opposite direction and will likely be the first EU domino to fly in the face of Trump’s policy. Earlier this month, Berlin published a new cost-containment bill that piles fresh rebates and price cuts on top of an already rigged system.
The administration’s existing Section 301 investigation into the European Union, opened on 11 March 2026, currently focuses on things like excess industrial capacity. But it should be extended (or a parallel one opened) to cover European pharmaceutical price-setting regimes directly.
The language was written for exactly this kind of behavior: foreign government practices that are “unreasonable or discriminatory” and burden the American taxpayer and the nation’s commerce.
For half a century the deal has been that Americans pay for the discoveries and Europeans enjoy them at cut rates. Under Trump, that arrangement is coming to its end. Britain has accepted the new terms. Germany is testing whether the Administration means it. France is watching. They will all likely accept these terms in time, or they will discover at last what it feels like to pay for their own science, their own medicine, and their own defense, all of which the United States has been quietly funding on their behalf for the better part of a lifetime.
show less
If you were to walk into a New Jersey pharmacy and ask for a year's supply of Eliquis, a blood thinner that millions of Americans take to prevent strokes, the list price will be in the region of $7,100. The same drug, manufactured by the same two American companies, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, at the same plant, could cost you just $770... if you lived in Berlin, Germany.
show more
President Trump will fly to Beijing on May 14, and when he sits down across the table from Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist leader will almost certainly reach for the same card he has played against every American administration for a decade.
Whenever a trade negotiation turns tough, with tariffs climbing and tempers fraying, Beijing picks up the phone and orders its state buyers to stop purchasing American farm goods. Soybeans, mostly. Beef and pork have had their turns, too. The effect is immediate and brutal. Within days, commodity prices collapse, and somewhere in the American South, a man who planted forty acres for a harvest that was supposed to ship to China in October watches his year’s income evaporate.
No U.S. president can let that stand, of course, so the checks go out. In 2018 and 2019, after Xi halted Chinese purchases of American soybeans during President Trump’s first trade fight, the Treasury cut roughly $23 billion in emergency payments to farmers — a figure larger than the annual budget of several federal departments, wired out in lump sums to compensate American families for damage inflicted by a single foreign leader. In 2025, when the trade fight resumed, Beijing ran the play again. Blocked American beef. Canceled soybean orders. Another $12 billion in aid was duly announced. Another round, another patch on a wound inflicted by a foreign adversary.
It is, if you stop and think about it for more than a moment, an astonishing state of affairs. And hardly sustainable.
The big agricultural companies shrug all of this off because multinationals with grain operations across three continents can ride out a trade war. They have the lawyers, the diversification, the patience of people who aren’t missing a mortgage payment over it. What they do not have is four hundred acres outside Decatur and a son who wants to take over the farm. The family farmer does. When Beijing freezes a purchase order, it is not anybody’s boardroom that absorbs the blow. It is a kitchen table in rural Illinois.
There is, mercifully, a bill sitting in Congress that takes the trick off the table.
It is called the Grown in America Act, and the idea is about as uncomplicated as legislation ever gets. When an American food or beverage company sources its ingredients from American farmers rather than importing them, the company gets a tax break. Buy more from American farmers, get more. Buy foreign, get nothing. That is more or less the whole thing.
What this builds, year by year and quietly, is a steady and compounding domestic market for American farm goods. A buyer that doesn’t hang up the phone when a summit in Beijing goes sideways. The soybean farmer in Iowa stops being a chess piece in a game he didn’t sign up for and becomes what he always should have been: a supplier to the American food economy, in a country that grows more than enough of its own food to feed itself. Xi’s favorite card loses its power for the simple reason that the American farmer no longer depends on him.
Will it cost the Treasury money? It will. Will it cost less than the $23 billion the Treasury was forced to write out the last time Beijing pulled this stunt? Considerably. And unlike the emergency checks, it actually buys something: a structural change that doesn’t evaporate the moment the next negotiation ends.
Which brings us to May 14.
When the President walks into that room roughly three weeks from now, he will do so in one of two conditions. Either he will walk in the way every American president before him has walked in — with American farmers dangling behind him like hostages, a fact Xi will have calculated to three decimal places before Air Force One has even landed — or he will walk in having had that weapon taken off the board by a Congress that finally understood what was at stake.
Every day this bill sits unsigned is another day Xi holds a card he is eager to play. It would be a good idea to pass it, and have Trump sign it, before the he boards the plane.
show less
President Trump will fly to Beijing on May 14, and when he sits down across the table from Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist leader will almost certainly reach for the same card he has played against every American administration for a decade.
The “doves” on the right have spent weeks being derided as “panicans.” But their warnings: that another Middle East war would spook voters, push up prices, and hand Democrats a line of attack before the midterms have all come to pass. The polling underscores how they weren’t imagining it. But the real panicans are not the anti-war voices. The real panicans are the corporate suits who see a crisis, grab a mic, and start leveraging the war for their own greed.
Take United Airlines CEO, Scott Kirby.
While President Donald J. Trump and his administration have been telling Americans that any oil spike tied to Iran will be temporary, Kirby has been out there acting like the apocalypse is hard-coded into the calendar year. He has floated a scenario in which oil hits $175 a barrel and stays there through 2027.
When the boss of a major airline goes on TV and starts pushing such long-term, worst-case scenarios, he’s trying to set expectations, telling consumers like you to get ready to pay more for the foreseeable future.
Trump has said the opposite.
“When this is over,” he told reporters this month, “oil prices are going to go down very, very rapidly.” A White House spokesman said the same last week, insisting prices would fall “rapidly” once the war in Iran ended. Indeed, on the word of a ceasefire, prices immediately plummeted to $75.
But Kirby keeps going the other way.
On March 20, he said United assumes “oil goes to $175/barrel and doesn’t get back down to $100/barrel until the end of 2027.”
That’s a deeply irresponsible, doomsday scenario that feels as tailored to garnering Democrat voters at the midterms as it does prepping consumers for supply shocks.
On March 25, he doubled down on CNBC, calling that “a reasonable assumption for us to make…” and saying prices could “stay at a high level all the way through next year.”
Then came the part aimed squarely at passengers.
“I think fares will continue to go up in line with oil prices… you’ve got to pass through the costs of inputs…” Kirby said.
There it is. Another corporate executive using a geopolitical crisis to lock in higher prices.
The Trump administration has already pushed back. On CNBC, Energy Secretary Chris Wright dismissed Kirby’s scenario as “highly unlikely” and said the country was dealing with a short-term disruption, not some new permanent reality.
That is the split. Trump is trying to calm people (and markets) down. Kirby is out there hardening the idea that elevated costs are here to stay. One side is saying the shock will pass. The other is normalizing the pain before it has even arrived in full.
That is what a real panican looks like.
Trump coined the word in 2025 for the people who panic on cue and immediately amplify the bleakest possible outcome. Kirby fits the type. So do plenty of executives in corporate America who treat every disruption as an opportunity to condition the public to accept less prosperity and more expense. And Kirby has form here.
While Trump has moved to uproot DEI preferences from government and corporate life, Kirby has embraced them. Under his leadership, United boasted that it was “the first airline to offer nonbinary gender booking options.” He also backed a policy aimed at making 50 percent of United’s graduating pilot classes women or people of color.
Then there is the personal theater. Kirby bizarrely has a history of dressing in drag as both Kesha and Taylor Swift. He’s a leftist, a weirdo, and he’s priming the pump to charge you more to fly on his increasingly awful airline.
The anti-war right did not create anxieties over war. They just spotted them early.
The people feeding the panic are the executives, analysts, and media hands who seize on every crisis and start propagandizing to Americans to expect scarcity, inflation, and decline.
Scott Kirby is doing precisely that. Giving himself PR cover to raise fares. Undercutting a White House trying to reassure the country. Telling Americans to get used to paying more.
The doves were not the panicans; the United Airlines boardroom was.
show less
The "doves" on the right have spent weeks being derided as “panicans.” But their warnings: that another Middle East war would spook voters, push up prices, and hand Democrats a line of attack before the midterms have all come to pass. The polling underscores how they weren't imagining it. But the real panicans are not the anti-war voices. The real panicans are the corporate suits who see a crisis, grab a mic, and start leveraging the war for their own greed.
Today’s The National Pulse will be a little different. In fact, it will be a little different for at least the next week, as we adjust to staffing changes and, frankly, changes in reader demand.
We’ll assess how the changes have worked after week one, and seek your feedback along the way.
Paying supporters of The National Pulse have made it clear to us that they are not so concerned with the pace of the news we provide throughout the day, but rather that we get it all accurate and readable in short bursts.
So today, instead of posting every news story we come across immediately, as we have for years, we’ll assemble an end-of-day newsletter to be distributed primarily to our paying subscribers. Because without them, frankly, we wouldn’t even exist today.
The newsletter will also go online, on this website, and will be accompanied by video content and external links where relevant.
A few years ago, many of you came with us on a journey to build a new, radically independent news experience, and that experiment was a raging success, especially during the Republican primary and general election.
But as the world changes, so too do people’s news-consumption habits. And we’re excited for those of you who will join us on this new path to providing useful and honest news content that respects your time.
Our previous arguments against Netflix as the right fit for a Warner Bros. acquisition now look even stronger. Netflix never needed Warner’s library to compete. It needed the market to be kept exactly as it is: fragmented, weaker, and miles behind.
That helps explain the latest round of Netflix price hikes, which, by our calculation, would leave the company with an eye-watering $40-a-month premium price tag by the middle of the next decade. Why anyone would pay that for Emily in Paris, and its ilk, evades us.
Indeed, in under two months since insisting a Warner deal would give consumers “more content for less,” Netflix is doing the precise opposite—because it can.
With roughly 325 million subscribers and no true rival within striking distance, Netflix flexes the kind of market dominance that turns “consumer choice” into a poor joke. Prices will continue to go up, and subscribers will lazily stay put.
The old Hollywood bargain has been torched in the process, too.
Consumers will surely continue to pay more, but writers, actors, and directors are paid less through the erosion of residuals and the casualization of creative labor. Netflix has built a commanding position not just on scale, but on the weakening of everyone around it: competitors, customers, and talent alike.
That is why the Warner Bros. deal was never the right prize for Netflix. It would not have produced a better market. It would have deepened the imbalance. And now, with the merger dead, Netflix is showing exactly what streaming supremacy looks like: higher prices, lower obligations, and no reason to pretend otherwise.
show less
Our previous arguments against Netflix as the right fit for a Warner Bros. acquisition now look even stronger. Netflix never needed Warner’s library to compete. It needed the market to be kept exactly as it is: fragmented, weaker, and miles behind.
A long list of names has emerged to replace outgoing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was dismissed by President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday.
The National Pulse has compiled a list of individuals who have been speculated about or promoted by Trumpworld insiders. President Trump’s core requirements are likely to include who can advance his political agenda, and who can be confirmed by an increasingly precarious Republican Senate majority.
The confirmation issue, requiring only a simple majority, could be especially troublesome, as Republicans hold only 53 seats to Democrats’ 47 (including two caucusing Independents). This means the votes of retiring anti-Trump Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), persistent RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and critical swing vote Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) will likely be critical, though there is potential for crossover votes like Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
To better understand the field of play, the potential nominees are divided into two categories: those who are ‘Senate Friendly’ and those who will likely draw a ‘Confirmation Fight.’ The one potential nomination that is worth pulling out from that is of the Acting Attorney General.
Todd Blanche, Acting U.S. Attorney General: Blanche is one of President Trump’s former defense attorneys and was appointed as the U.S. Deputy Attorney General on March 6, 2025. He left private practice to fight alongside Trump when few others did, or would, but he has also served in Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice (DOJ), raising some questions amongst the more spirited members of the Trump base.
After the dismissal of former Attorney General Pam Bondi this week, Blanche was named Acting Attorney General, giving him a strong case for retaining the role on a more permanent basis. He is also able to serve as Acting Attorney General for up to 210 days, and if another nominee is submitted and withdrawn or rejected, he can serve a further 210 days, and then once again, meaning Trump could possibly leave Blanche in situ as Acting Attorney General until almost the very end of his term.
SENATE FRIENDLY.
Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator: Lee Zeldin is speculated to be the favorite for the nomination. At the EPA, Zeldin has implemented President Trump’s agenda in a satisfactory manner. This has largely prevented the corporate media and Congressional Democrats from acquiring the usual political ammunition they’ve attempted to use to sink other Trump nominees. Zeldin’s amicable relationships with his former House colleagues suggest he has a similar good standing with the Senate, making Democrat crossover votes, such as Sen. Fetterman, more likely.
Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida: While Ron DeSantis is not necessarily a favorite among President Trump’s supporters, the Florida governor, who is term-limited, does have some support in Congress. While political operatives in the DeSantis camp have pushed his name for a Cabinet role since the start of Trump’s second term, an actual nomination for the Florida governor has yet to materialize. While DeSantis is an attorney—having served in the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps—he has limited private-sector experience, with his background mostly in the military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) rather than American civil or criminal law.
Andrew Bailey, Attorney General of Missouri: As Missouri’s Attorney General, Andrew Bailey has been a staunch ally of President Trump. In July 2024, Bailey filed a Supreme Court challenge against the State of New York, alleging that its handling of President Trump’s so-called hush money trial infringed on the First Amendment rights of Missouri residents. In addition, Bailey sued the former Biden government over illegal immigration flights to his state and again over allegations of election interference. Bailey is far less likely to draw Democrat cross-over votes. He’s currently the co-deputy director of the FBI, too, which makes things easier.
Eric Schmitt, U.S. Senator from Missouri: Schmitt is the former Missouri Attorney General and a current U.S. Senator. Like Bailey, Schmitt is a decent ally of Trump and, being a sitting U.S. Senator, is likely to receive support from colleagues in the upper chamber. Schmitt has been a leading figure in pushing for stricter restrictions on U.S. H-1 B visa policies.
Ashley Moody, U.S. Senator from Florida: Moody is the former Attorney General of Florida and currently serves in the U.S. Senate. Like Schmitt, she is likely to draw strong support from her Senate colleagues. However, Moody may also be less welcome by some of Trump’s stronger supporters due to her close ties with DeSantis’s political camp.
Mike Lee, U.S. Senator from Utah: Senator Mike Lee is a constitutional lawyer and a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Utah, who also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when the latter was still a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Lee, who has a strong libertarian political streak, would be an interesting choice for Attorney General, as more traditional Tea Party movement conservatives enthusiastically support him. However, Lee’s past support for mass immigration, and especially H-1B visas, could spark resistance among more populist Trump supporters. Like other members of the Senate, Lee is likely to be easily confirmed.
Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas:Ted Cruz has an extensive legal background and, before being elected to the U.S. Senate, served as the Solicitor General of Texas, arguing several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. While Cruz, on paper, has a sterling resume, his reputation as an outspoken lawmaker who has butted heads with President Trump in the past could prove too much for him to secure the nomination. Cruz is also long believed to have a relatively contentious relationship with his Senate colleagues. However, this may actually aid his nomination as some Republican and Democrat lawmakers would likely welcome his exit from the chamber.
Matthew Whitaker, United States Ambassador to NATO: The former Acting U.S. Attorney General from November 2018 to February 2019, following Jeff Sessions’s resignation during President Trump’s first term, is another likely Senate confirmable nominee. In fact, Whitaker, like Lee Zeldin, has already been confirmed by the Senate once. Another Trump ally and NATO skeptic, Whitaker, should be palatable for the 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate.
Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York: Clayton has extensive legal experience and, before being named the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2017 as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Prior to his tenure at the SEC, Clayton was a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
Jeff Jensen, Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri: Jensen has a long record of experience with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and previously served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC). Before his tenure as a U.S. Attorney, Jensen served as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent from 1989 to 1999. Notably, he was tapped in 2020 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to review the DOJ’s prosecution of former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn. Jensen concluded that the federal charges against Gen. Flynn should be dropped.
Stanley Woodward Jr., Associate Attorney General: Woodward currently serves as President Trump’s Associate Attorney General, making him one of the highest-ranking officials in the Department of Justice (DOJ). Before taking the role, Woodward built a high-profile reputation in Washington legal circles and has long been viewed as a trusted figure within Trump-world. More importantly, however, Woodward has already been confirmed by the U.S. Senate for his current post, which would make him one of the more easily confirmable nominees under consideration. He would, however, suffer the same issue as anyone else who has been deputy to Bondi until now.
D. John Sauer, Solicitor General of the United States: Sauer currently serves as the Solicitor General of the United States, one of the most prestigious legal posts in the federal government. He previously served as Solicitor General of Missouri and has extensive appellate experience, giving him the sort of polished legal résumé that would be difficult for even some skeptical senators to dismiss out of hand. While Sauer may lack the overt retail political profile of some other names on this list, his standing inside the DOJ and his reputation as a serious conservative lawyer could make him an attractive choice for a White House looking to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.
Sarah B. Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs: Rogers currently serves as the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a Senate-confirmed role she assumed in October 2025. Before entering government, Rogers built a profile as a free speech lawyer and conservative legal activist, giving her the sort of ideological résumé that could appeal to a White House still eager to frame legal fights through the lens of censorship, institutional bias, and cultural combat. At the same time, her background is much more rooted in speech law and public diplomacy than in traditional criminal prosecution or DOJ management, which would make her a more unconventional pick than many of the other names on this list. Still, for a White House looking for a loyalist with a sharp ideological edge and recent Senate confirmation, Rogers could emerge as a dark-horse option.
CONFIRMATION FIGHTS.
Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is one of President Trump’s most staunch political allies and a favorite among the President’s supporters. More importantly, however, Paxton is currently locked in a contentious Republican Senate primary race in Texas with anti-Trump Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Recent polling shows Paxton pulling ahead of Cornyn, and his presence in the Senate would provide critical support for Trump’s agenda over the next two years.
Jeff Clark, Former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights: Like Paxton, Clark is another key Trump backer and movement favorite who would likely face significant opposition from Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans in the Senate. Clark was a long-running target of Democrat lawfare, with the D.C. Bar Association recommending his disbarment last year. In 2022, Clark’s home was inexplicably raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a legal memo he wrote while serving in the DOJ advising Georgia state lawmakers on legal avenues to challenge the 2020 presidential election results. Notably, the memo only existed as a draft and was never issued. In addition, Clark was indicted, along with President Trump, by former Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was herself removed from her own prosecution for corruption, and the charges against Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were subsequently dismissed.
Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia: Jeanine Pirro, a former New York county judge, district attorney, and Fox News host, currently serves as President Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In her current role, Pirro has helped spearhead Trump’s crackdown on violent crime in the nation’s capital, which has resulted in a precipitous drop in homicides, muggings, carjackings, and assaults. Still, Pirro’s detractors are likely to accuse her of not being able to remain independent of Trump, something Senate Democrats and anti-Trump Senate Republicans insist the Attorney General nominee must be in the role.
Aileen Cannon, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida: Judge Cannon could be considered a dark horse candidate, and falls under the ‘Confirmation Fight’ category mainly because her nomination would likely draw some of the most fierce opposition from Senate Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans. Cannon, who serves on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, oversaw former Biden DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for possession of classified documents. The District Court judge, herself a Trump appointee, clashed with Smith over his penchant for overprosecution and allegations that he withheld evidence from the defense. In July of 2024, Judge Cannon dismissed Smith’s prosecution, while ruling his appointment as a special prosecutor was unconstitutional.
Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights: Dhillon currently serves in the Trump DOJ as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. While she has been highly active in addressing allegations of anti-white and anti-Asian discrimination at American universities, Dhillon is not without her detractors, even amongst Trump supporters.
Alina Habba, Counselor to the President: Alina Habba, like Todd Blanche, is one of President Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and his choice to serve as United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. However, Democrat lawfare efforts and anti-Trump judges in the state derailed Habba’s nomination and even her role as the Acting U.S. Attorney. Like the other possible nominees in this category, Habba is likely to face more than just opposition from Senate Democrats, with Sens. Tillis, Collins, and Murkowski possibly opposing her nomination as well—along with even the likes of Sen. Cornyn.
Robert Giuffra, Co-Chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell: An attorney with extensive legal and management experience, Robert Giuffra would likely receive significant support from the political establishment within the GOP. However, the Co-Chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell is likely to give Democrats a platform to revive their Russia collusion conspiracy. During the first Trump administration, Giuffra declined to represent President Trump in the Mueller investigation. However, he did represent former Deputy National Security Advisor K. T. McFarland in the same probe. Currently, he is leading President Trump’s appeal of his New York conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
WILDCARD.
Adam Candeub, General Counsel of the FCC: Candeub currently serves as General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where he has emerged as one of the administration’s most aggressive legal voices against Big Tech. A law professor by background, Candeub previously served in President Trump’s first administration at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), including as Acting Assistant Secretary, before later joining the Department of Justice as Deputy Associate Attorney General. He is perhaps best known in conservative legal circles for his arguments against Section 230 protections and for treating social media platforms less like neutral hosts than ideological actors that can and should be regulated. That record would make him a highly unconventional but intellectually coherent choice for Attorney General, though Big Tech firms would likely pour a lot of time and money into opposing him.
If you found this article useful, and value the work that goes into something like this, please consider making a donation to The National Pulse today, or joining as a monthly member for just $9, to ensure we can reach more people with bias-free, responsible journalism. We really do rely on our readers giving $5, $10, or $100 a time to sustain our work. We’re very grateful for anything you can afford. Thank you.
show less
A long list of names has emerged to replace outgoing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was dismissed by President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday.
show more
❓WHAT HAPPENED: A near record number of Republican lawmakers in the modern political era are retiring from Congress ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. As of the end of March, seven Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection to the U.S. Senate, while a whopping 37 Republicans are forgoing reelection to the House of Representatives.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: House Republicans, House Democrats, Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, President Donald J. Trump, and American voters.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The 2026 midterm elections will take place on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
🎯IMPACT: While some retirements are explainable by advanced age and health issues, as in the case of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), they are, on the whole, a foreboding signal that the GOP anticipates losing control of at least one chamber of Congress, and perhaps both.
IN FULL
A near-record number of Republican lawmakers in the modern political era are retiring from Congress ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, an exclusive analysis from The National Pulse can reveal.
As of the end of March, seven Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection to the U.S. Senate, while 37 Republicans are forgoing reelection to the House of Representatives. While some retirements are explainable by advanced age and health, as in the case of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), they are, on the whole, a foreboding signal that the GOP anticipates losing control of at least one chamber of Congress and perhaps both.
Earlier this month, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) became the 36th Republican in the House to announce he will not seek reelection. The 72-year-old Issa is an example of a trend particular to House Republicans, in which senior lawmakers retire ahead of what they believe will be a bad election cycle that will prevent them from being elevated to a committee chairmanship.
Similar to Issa, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO)—a 25-year incumbent and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee—announced late last week that he will not seek reelection, marking the 37th retirement. Graves, who is 62, is another example of a senior Republican House member whose decision to exit Congress likely revolves around the politics of committee chairmanships. Meanwhile, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) was forced into retirement after losing his primary race on March 3.
EXPECTING TO LOSE, AND FAILING TO REDISTRICT.
House Republicans have traditionally imposed term limits on their committee chairs, which forces senior lawmakers to rotate through various committees. When they believe the party will be out of the majority for at least one election cycle, these senior members will often opt for retirement since it could be a number of years before the GOP returns to the majority and they are rotated back in as a committee chairman.
The high number of House retirements—which appears to be the most in a single cycle since 1930—is at least in part explained by the committee chairmanship dynamic. However, it also likely reflects the anticipation of further Republican losses due to the failure of several states to shore up the narrow majority through mid-decade redistricting. Efforts to draw new district lines in states like Indiana failed to be adopted despite a concerted push by President Donald J. Trump, with Texas being the most successful redistricting plan, increasing Republican House margins by a significant number. Other GOP redistricting plans adopted in North Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio could add one Republican seat each, while Utah’s attempt to draw a more favorable Republican congressional map has languished amid court challenges.
The last time the GOP saw a similar number of retirements was during the 2018 midterm election cycle, when 34 House members retired. Subsequently, Democrats took the House majority, picking up 41 seats. Democrat redistricting efforts in California alone will likely net the Democrats five seats in that state.
TROUBLE IN THE SENATE?
The Senate retirements should also be of concern.
Currently, seven Republican lawmakers in the upper chamber have announced they will not seek reelection. Critically for the GOP, the only seat expected to be hotly contested is in North Carolina, which is being vacated by anti-Trump Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). The open seat will see former RNC co-chairman Michael Whatley face off against former Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC). Iowa will also have an open Senate race with the retirement of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).
The other Senate retirements include Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)—the former Republican Senate leader and outspoken critic of President Trump—who is 84 years old and has suffered a significant decline in his physical and cognitive health in recent years. Joining McConnell in not seeking reelection is Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who is 71 years old. Lumis’s retirement decision appears mostly influenced by her legislative efforts in support of cryptocurrency, with political speculation suggesting she intends to cash in on that influence as a lobbyist for the industry.
While the technical number of retirements is seven, Sen. Alan Armstrong (R-OK)—who was appointed earlier this week to fill the seat held by now-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin—is barred under Oklahoma law from running in November’s election due to his appointment. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), who announced he will run for the seat, has already received backing from President Trump and is expected to easily win the race.
Another departure is Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), though the former Auburn University football coach is instead running for Governor of Alabama and not exiting politics. Similarly, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is running for governor of her state.
However, the most surprising has been Sen. Steve Daines’s (R-MT) retirement announcement. At 63, Daines is just under the median age for a Republican senator, which currently sits at 64.5. Notably, Daines led the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) efforts during the 2024 election cycle, which saw Republicans capture the Senate majority and pick up critical seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Montana—with razor-thin losses in Wisconsin and Michigan.
VOTER DATA IS BLEAK.
Polling data continues to show voters believe the Trump administration is too focused on foreign policy and not doing enough to address domestic matters. The economy is of particular concern, along with renewed inflation fears—though the latter is primarily driven by pressure on housing and energy affordability.
While several recent surveys have shown Republican candidates remaining competitive with Democrats on the generic Congressional ballot, record-low approval ratings for President Trump could have a downward drag, swinging close races toward Democrat candidates. This has become especially evident in a slew of off-year and specialelections, in which the Democrat Party has largely won, with its candidates overperforming and Republicans underperforming prior election cycle results.
Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.
show less
show more
Share Story
FacebookTwitterWhatsappTruthTelegramGettrCopy Link
Real News Fan? Show It!
Many people are shocked to learn that because of active censorship, we currently have to spend more time making sure you can even see The National Pulse, than on producing the news itself. Which sucks. Because we do this for the truth, and for you.
But the regime doesn’t want you being informed. That’s why they want us to go away. And that will happen if more people don’t sign up to support our work. It’s basic supply and demand. So demand you get to read The National Pulse, unrestricted. Sign up, today.
We don’t sell ads, and refuse corporate or political cash. It all comes down to you, the reader. I hope you can help.
.jpg){kind=link}
