Donald Trump and maga Republicans in denial about the 2025 blue wave election- Impeach Trump Now!

Democratic wave crushes GOP candidates

"If congressional races had been held nationwide in 2025, rather than 2026, Democrats would certa"inly have taken the US House and perhaps even the US Senate", John Hood. 

Echo opinion published in the The Carolina Journal news by John Hood:  The odd-year elections yielded precisely what all the warning signs of 2025, portended: a strong Democratic wave🌊 that crushed Republican nominees in the gubernatorial races of New Jersey and Virginia, gave Democrats their largest legislative majorities in decades in both states, delivered left-wing results in various ballot initiatives, and elected a hate monger as attorney general of Virginia and a socialist as mayor of New York. (Well, I disagree with much of this lead, but more or less get the point.😬🙄)

Here in North Carolina, the GOP took a beating in both partisan and (officially) nonpartisan races for municipal office. In Charlotte, Republicans lost one of the two seats they previously held on the 11-seat city council. In Wake County, Democrats won 25 of the 27 municipal races in which they made an endorsement, including several mayoral seats previously held by Republicans or conservative independents. They enjoyed comparable success in other urban communities, too, including clean sweeps in Wilmington and Greensboro.

I won’t assert that local matters were irrelevant to these outcomes. In other circumstances, the high-propensity voters who turn out in odd-year cycles might well have chosen more right-leaning candidates over left-leaning ones based on specific issues or candidate quality. Indeed, some right-leaning candidates did prevail last week, especially in smaller cities and towns where Democratic registration has been shrinking for some time.

But to deny the breadth and depth of the Democratic victories this year in North Carolina and beyond would be to deny obvious facts. It is the appointed task of conservatives to accept reality as it is rather than as one might wish it to be.

If congressional races had been held nationwide in 2025, rather than 2026, Democrats would certainly have taken the US House and perhaps even the US Senate.☺️ If North Carolina’s legislative and county races had occurred this year, the GOP’s legislative majorities, not just its supermajority in the state senate, might have been at risk.

Like it or not — and just for the record, I dislike it intensely — our electoral politics have become nationalized. Many North Carolina voters went to the polls this year to vote against (or, to a lesser extent, for) Donald Trump, despite any meaningful connection between the president’s fiscal, regulatory, and foreign policies on the one hand and issues of municipal policy on the other.

A just-released YouGov survey for Catawba College’s Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service showed Trump with 44% approval from North Carolinians, vs. 52% disapproval. The latest High Point University poll also had Trump upside down with all adults (40% to 49%) and registered voters (44% to 48%).

To say that the 2025 elections were a signal of Democratic rejuvenation is not to say the outcomes of future elections — the 2026 midterms and the presidential cycle of 2028 — are clearly visible or unchangeable. They remain contingent on decisions made by both parties over the coming months and years.

Will the Democratic Party, for example, become more like the newly elected mayor of New York, the demagogue Zohrab Mamdani; or the newly elected governor of Virginia, centrist former congresswoman and CIA officer Abigail Spanberger❓ If the former, it will lose winnable races in the many jurisdictions more competitive than the Big Apple. This really will be a choice, by the way. Mamdani was only one of many Democratic mayors elected last week, including relative moderates defeating hard-left candidates in such cities as Detroit and Minneapolis.

As for Republicans, Trump and other candidates fared well in 2024 by running against the Biden-era surge in inflation. Exit polls confirm that the affordability of housing, food, health care, and other necessities remains a top priority for voters. The president is now underwater on that issue, too, in part because of his fondness for import taxes and their inevitable effects on consumer prices. At the state and local levels, too, GOP and center-right candidates stumble when their attention wanders away from the bread-and-butter issues important to persuadable voters.

If Republicans keep committing such unforced errors, next year’s midterms will be brutal.☺️

John Hood books: Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.

Ukrainians are fighting for freedom in the same spirit as Americans created independence 250 years ago

Echo opinion published in The Carolina Journal  a North Carolina, by Matthew Rybnicek, an intern at the John Locke Foundation.

Next year will mark the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence — the document that called for the freedom Americans later won on the battlefield. 

As we celebrate our independence and reflect on freedom, the core value of the American nation, I would like to draw attention to Europe, where another nation is fighting for its sovereignty. Honoring the foundations on which our own nation was built, I believe that Ukraine’s fight against the brutality of Russian imperialist ambition is a struggle that should resonate with every American.

In the summer of 2025, I spent two months working in the city of Lviv and visited Kyiv on a few occasions. I saw firsthand how the war was affecting the country and its people. In the fourth year of full-scale war, people there are exhausted and numb to the violence. Practically every night, Ukrainians wake up to the sounds of air raid alarms, Shahed kamikaze drones, and Kinzhal ballistic missiles. Some nights, no one is killed, but most of these attacks take the lives of dozens of civilians.

Soon after I left Kyiv on July 29, a massive Russian attack on the city killed more than 30 civilians, including five children. August 1st was declared a day of mourning.

For three years, Ukraine has resisted the full-scale Russian invasion. Propaganda and disinformation have highly politicized the war and made it seem that Russia and Ukraine are fighting upon the same moral grounds. At the start of the full-scale invasion, the Russian propaganda machine pushed the narrative that the so-called Special Military Operation was a necessary measure to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and thus counter its expansion. It is rather obvious, however, that it is the insatiable imperial appetite and the desire to restore Russian influence that are the driving forces behind Russia’s actions.

Vladimir Putin’s narratives on the artificiality of the Ukrainian state, the historical brotherhood of the Russian and Ukrainian people, and the Nazis infiltrating the Ukrainian government contradict the historic records of Russian imperialism in Ukraine. 

Russia exploits superficial and often fabricated facts in its imperialist propaganda, while simultaneously destroying evidence of Ukraine’s history and rich cultural heritage. If we want to secure Ukraine’s free future, we must protect and study the country’s history.

The regular attacks have become part of the routine for the residents of Kyiv, a city larger than New York City in physical size. No one here is guaranteed a tomorrow — so between surviving, mourning the dead, healing the wounded, and rebuilding what has been destroyed, people try to enjoy every second of their lives to the fullest. Russian drones and missiles target residential buildings. Kyiv’s air defense, while being highly efficient, is getting exhausted and requires continued support from the Western allies.

Lviv, the city where I spent the majority of my summer, is safer than Kyiv, although air raid alerts are frequent there as well. There were a couple of drone attacks on Lviv though when I was there. And when I would ask my colleagues what they felt during the night, a majority of them would state that they slept through the air raid alerts and through the attacks. As someone who was not used to this environment, at first I could not understand how it could be possible that my colleagues were not up all night terrified for their lives. I later understood that this numbness to the immediate danger was a defense mechanism that allowed Ukrainians to stay sane amid the horrors of the war.

In Lviv, I worked at a war trauma center that provides plastic and reconstructive surgery, prosthetics and rehabilitation, hearing restoration and psychological support to civilians and military injured in the war. Every day, I encountered people whose bravery, resilience, and boundless optimism ignited hope. I can guarantee that any American who could meet the patients of the center would be inspired by their perseverance in pursuit of independence which Russia has tried to steal from them — both on a personal level, by damaging their bodies, and more broadly the independence of the Ukrainian state. They stand up to their challenges with faith and humor, make plans for the future, and honor the losses.

Collective memory and the culture of remembrance is an important topic of discourse in Ukraine. It is most evident in daily rituals. Every morning at 9am, the entire country stops what they are doing. Whether working, driving on a highway, or eating, everyone stands up for a minute of silence to honor those killed in the war. Even when I was on the bus going to work, promptly at 9am the bus would stop and everyone would get out of their seats to observe this tradition. Whenever funeral processions for fallen warriors passed through the city, everyone stopped what they were doing and knelt as the convoy headed to the cemetery.

Honoring the fellow citizens killed in the war is an important part of Ukraine’s fight. Whether in grief, exhausted, or in poor health, Ukrainians cannot stop fighting. 

Everyone in Ukraine plays a role in the fight for freedom. The spirit of the Ukrainian people should inspire all Americans as we stand at the critical crossroads. We should look to the Ukrainians and stand with them as they craft their own future of freedom and democracy.

As Donald Trump attempts to negotiate with evil Russian dictator (Maine Writer - "evil attracts evil"),  Vladimir Putin, and as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our American independence, we must recognize that if the United States is to remain a true beacon of democracy and personal liberty, supporting Ukraine is essential to preserving the legacy of our Founding Fathers. 

If we fail to act appropriately and allow Ukraine to be surrendered for a quick peace, as Neville Chamberlain surrendered Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938, the world as we know it will not become safer. It will be far more dangerous, with long term consequences for generations.

For those of us who are North Carolinians, we take pride in our fight for independence and freedom. We initiated the Halifax Resolves of 1776 — the first official action by a colony calling for independence from the British Empire. As a matter of fact, North Carolina is recognized for how we secured independence through strength, courage, and stubbornness to submit to a larger power. That same spirit is evident in the Ukraine, 250 years later.

Matthew Rybnicek is an intern at the John Locke Foundation. Matthew grew up in Shelby,