2024 Elections

The National Republican Congressional Committee is recruiting Flores to make a comeback bid after U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, defeated her last year in Texas’ 34th Congressional District. The NRCC has named the seat a target for the 2024 election — its only in Texas — but Flores has not revealed yet whether she will try again.

The NRCC commissioned a poll in late May that found Flores tied with Gonzalez. A polling memo first shared with The Texas Tribune said Flores “has already proven she can win, and new polling shows she remains popular.” The memo touted the district as one of Republicans’ best pickup opportunities nationwide.

Flores said in a statement she is “praying about [a 2024 campaign] with my family, friends, and supporters, and will make a decision soon.”

“Conservatives in South Texas achieved historic gains in the 2022 election cycle, but there is still more work to do,” Flores said. “These poll results are very encouraging, and I deeply appreciate the NRCC's belief in our movement.”

Democrats dismissed Flores' chances in a 2024 bid.

"While the NRCC tries to convince Flores to run with dubious polling, the 2022 results speak for themselves," tweeted CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for House Majority PAC, adding that the 34th District "rejected [Flores'] extremism."

Flores flipped the seat in a June 2022 special election, a major breakthrough as the GOP was zeroing in on predominantly Hispanic South Texas. But redistricting made the seat more favorable to Democrats for the November election, and Gonzalez ousted Flores in a bitter battle.

Still, the NRCC sees Flores as uniquely capable of making the general election competitive. Although Flores lost to Gonzalez by 9 percentage points, she almost cut in half Donald Trump’s 2020 deficit in the redrawn district.

The poll found Flores is tied with Gonzalez in a hypothetical matchup, 42% to 42%, with 16% undecided. She leads 50% to 31% with independents. The polling memo showed Flores has a net positive favorability rating of 14 points. It did not include any information on Gonzalez’s image.

The GOP learned last cycle that South Texas can be difficult to poll. In the final weeks of the election, national GOP operatives expressed optimism about flipping as many as three seats in South Texas but captured only one.

Flores’ loss was perhaps the toughest for Republicans given her rising-star status after winning the special election months earlier. On the night of the November election, Flores lamented on Twitter that “the RED WAVE did not happen.”

Flores teased a comeback campaign shortly after her loss but has been quieter since about her plans. She has said she has enjoyed spending more time with family, and she has taken a few new jobs, including working for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Austin-based conservative think tank.

The 2024 Republican primary for the 34th District already includes Mauro Garza, a self-funding businessman who placed second in the 2022 primary for the neighboring 15th District. Garza has already run TV ads in the district and recently announced the endorsement of Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff and immigration hardliner.

Luis Cabrera, a Harlingen pastor who helped with Flores’ 2022 campaigns, has said he is preparing to run if she does not; he will support her if she does.

Carlos Cascos, the former Texas secretary of state and Cameron County judge, has been considering a run too. He said Wednesday he will decide after Labor Day.

The NRCC poll was conducted from May 24-26 by 1892, a national political consulting firm. The firm interviewed 439 likely general-election voters in the 34th District using a combination of live calls and text messages to cell phones. The margin of error was plus-or-minus 4.67 percentage points.

The left-leaning Protect Borrowers Action will target 13 U.S. House districts across California, Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania where Republicans opposed Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 for roughly 40 million qualifying student loan borrowers.

On Friday, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority, ruled that a loan servicer in Missouri, the Higher Education Loan Authority, known as MOHELA, would have its revenue threatened by the debt relief.

The complaint was filed by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), citing as evidence a story published by The New York Times in May.

That story reported that DeSantis traveled to almost a dozen speaking engagements in eight states via a plane provided by And to the Republic, a Michigan 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization, in February. The total costs of those flights are unknown. This trip was taken months before DeSantis officially declared that he was a candidate for president, although his travels across the country were hardly a secret at the time.

Casey DeSantis held a solo event with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Thursday, launching the “Mamas for DeSantis” group to mobilize mothers and grandmothers for the upcoming 2024 election cycle. At the Simpson Barn in Johnston, DeSantis told a crowd why parents should support her husband’s bid for the presidency.

“A lot of bad things going on — I can tell you with what Governor DeSantis has done, he will lead the charge, he will clean house and he will ensure that parents have the rights to be able to make the decisions that they think best for their family,” she said.

Failed Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake (R) complained on Thursday that "media attacks" were "all over" her after reports said that former President Donald Trump had "soured" on picking her as his running mate.

During an interview with War Room host Steve Bannon, Lake celebrated a federal district judge's ruling that prevents some federal government agencies from combatting disinformation on social media.

According to conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin, if the Republican Party harbors any hope of winning the Oval Office in 2024, it will require getting rid of both Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and drafting a lawmaker who can reach independents.

In her column for the Washington Post, Rubin made the case that DeSantis -- who appears to be trying to out-Trump Trump -- is fast becoming damaged goods and the GOP would be wise to look at Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia for a reset before it is too late.

Some Republicans in Wisconsin have second thoughts about choosing Donald Trump as the party's next presidential nominee.

A recent Marquette University Law School Poll in Wisconsin found Trump was losing to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by 16 points in a head-to-head matchup.

Mounting dislike between former President Donald Trump and his old ally Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been a central theme for the 2024 Republican primary – but the pair has to bury the hatchet if they want to win votes in the Sunshine State.

Trump has increasingly attacked DeSantis over how he runs the state, called him disloyal and invented demeaning nicknames for him. DeSantis has increasingly fired back, calling the former president "full of it" and promoting a virulently homophobic attack ad against Trump from his super PAC.

During an appearance on CNN on Thursday morning, conservative commentator Margaret Hoover accused the Republican National Committee of becoming a "wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc."

What drew the ire of the PBS host were the requirements set forth by the RNC for participation in the first 2024 GOP presidential candidates' debate which she maintained will hand the nomination to Donald Trump.

Speaking with co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Victor Blackwell, Hoover expressed exasperation with the headlong rush to anoint the twice-indicted ex-president as the nominee.

Asked about every candidate being required to pledge to support the eventual nominee, she replied, "I think it's terrible. I think you don't say 'We don't support Donald Trump because he is a loser,' because he is losing until he's winning. He was a loser when he came down the escalator [in 2016] and then he started winning and everyone loved him. You have to make a moral argument that this man cares more about himself and his own narcissism than the Constitution of the United States, than our national security secrets. "

Claiming the other candidates need to make the "moral argument" to stop the former president, she turned to other RNC rules for debate participation. She continued that a candidate "... has to have 40,000 individual donors from 20 different states. He has to have 1 percent in polling, by the way, from the early primary states with polls that have 800 self-identified Republican GOP voters in their sample."

"The RNC has created incredibly difficult standards," she argued. "The pledge is the least of it. Incredibly difficult standards for any candidate to reach the threshold to get on the stage. The pledge, forget it about it!"

"Chris Christie will sign the pledge and said he will take it just as seriously as Trump did in 2016," she sarcastically added. "So the pledge isn't the hard part. The hard part is the RNC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc. is making it impossible for anyone to get on stage in a fair way."

Watch the video at this link.