Politics
Inside the minds of older, left-wing women driving new voting bloc of ‘Resistance Grandmas’ opposing Trump
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FIRST ON FOX: A Trump-aligned political consulting firm set out to investigate the ideological swing of affluent, college-educated white women who were once considered moderate, but have since moved farther to the left, uncovering what researchers describe as a new voting bloc of left-wing women: “Resistance Grandmas.”
“We are so knowledgeable about everything,” one woman said in a Northern Virginia focus group video reviewed by Fox News Digital, referring to herself and the other women who joined the session while slamming President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” “When [Trump voters] start being personally impacted, that’s when I’m hopeful that a little bit of something is gonna change.”
“It’s gonna be a catastrophe,” another woman chimed in, as another middle-aged woman added, “However, they will find a way to blame Democrats.”
Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a report conducted by the National Public Affairs (NPA), the polling arm of Trump campaign-aligned American Made Media Company, in September, as well as the full two-hour focus group session in northern Virginia that showcased the beliefs of 10 white, liberal, middle-aged, college-educated, upper–middle-class suburban women.
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A 2024 billboard in Hastings, Minnesota, informing voters to “trust women and vote Democratic.” ((Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images))
The women who participated in the focus group were not informed it was conducted by a Trump-aligned polling firm, only told that they were brought in to discuss political topics for a focus group commissioned by another research firm. The researcher leading the focus group told the women at the start of the meeting that she had “no stake” in their comments “one way or the other,” and that the women “could say whatever comes to mind.”
“Pretty much anything is fair game,” the focus group leader told the women.
Fox News Digital is not publishing footage of the video or names of the women, but reviewed extensive footage of the session for the purposes of this article.
Justifying ‘ugly’ racist Virginia sign, using N-word analogy
The focus group was conducted to study how affluent middle-aged and older white women have increasingly shifted to the political left in recent years, and was sparked by a racist sign displayed outside a Northern Virginia school board meeting in August targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears.
“In the year since President Trump’s historic victory, commentators have obsessed over what they call the radicalization of young white men. But a quieter, just as revealing transformation has swept another group once known for moderation and civility: older, affluent white women. This change came into sharp focus last August in Arlington, Virginia,” NPA’s report outlines.
The Virginia gubernatorial cycle is at a fever pitch, with the election just over two weeks away pitting ex-CIA agent and former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger against Republican Earle-Sears. In August, a white woman was spotted holding a Jim Crow-era-reminiscent sign targeting Earle-Sears, who is Black, when the candidate attended a school board meeting.
“Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then blacks can’t share my water fountain,” the sign read, igniting outrage from conservatives and others who called it racist.
CALIFORNIANS EXPERIENCING A ‘RED SHIFT’ OF LOCAL DEMOCRATS BECOMING REPUBLICANS AMID MIGRANT CRISIS, CRIME
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears was the subject of a sign condemned by Virginia leaders as offensive and inappropriate. (Winsome Earle-Sears Campaign)
The women in the focus group overwhelmingly characterized the sign as written in poor taste, describing its words as “ugly,” but also justified it by arguing Republicans have “already taken it too far with their trans bans.” Another woman used the N-word while comparing the sign to those of the segregated Jim Crow era of the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries in the American South.
“What’s the best analogy for a trans person not being able to use a particular bathroom in our recent modern history?” one participant asked the group.
Another woman chimed in: “You used to have hotels that said ‘No n—-rs, no Jews, no dogs at these hotels. Is that… I don’t know if that’s the same thing.”
“Like, I don’t think I would feel uncomfortable, and I definitely wouldn’t hold up that sign,” the first woman said in response. “But this person, I think, was just trying to find an appropriate analogy.”
Recent voting history of white women
The NPA report explained that polling data since the 2012 election, which pitted former Democrat President Barack Obama against Republican Mitt Romney, showed “voting patterns among white voters and women haven’t moved much in a decade.”
The shift to the left, the report argued, is not due to gender or race, but rather income and education.
“In 2012, college graduates leaned Republican, 51-47, while postgraduates favored Democrats 55-42. By 2024, that pattern had flipped and widened: Harris won college grads 53-45 and postgrads 59-38. Non-college voters went the other way. High-school grads and those with some college, once evenly split, gave Trump a 56-43 lead,” the report found.
“Income followed suit. Voters earning under $50,000, once a 60-38 Obama bloc, shifted to a 50-48 Trump edge. Those earning over $100,000 flipped from a 54-44 Romney majority to a 51-47 Harris win,” it continued.
The report took issue with the media asking and diving into explanations on “what ‘broke’ young white men” to move farther to the right and help re-elect Trump in 2024, but argued the question should instead be: “What radicalized rich white women, and whether they even realize it.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is seen as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 31, 2025. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)
‘Luxury’ of studying the news
The women in the focus group overwhelmingly presented themselves as arbiters of knowledge, reporting that they have the “luxury” of reading news articles from different outlets, while other voters are more concerned about costs of living and putting food on the table.
DEMOCRATS ARE MAKING A CRITICAL MISTAKE — AND VOTERS ARE LETTING THEM KNOW
One woman in the group recounted that her cousin living in a Heartland state was a lifelong Democrat who announced ahead of the 2024 election that he was leaning towards voting for Trump, which the woman said made her nearly fall “off my chair.”
The cousin, a male farmer, reported to her that the Biden administration had not helped U.S. farmers.
“He doesn’t know. He’s not paying attention to China’s not buying wheat or soybeans,” the female voter said. “He’s just concerned about his daily life and making enough money to support his family. And so I don’t think they’re paying attention.”
“I think a lot of times people are just very focused on … how it impacts them on that day and not reading The Washington Post or The New York Times or other things that we all have access to and, you know, have the luxury of doing,” she added.
Scene from the Jan. 6 2021 Capitol riot. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Turning in a friend who breached U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6
Another woman reported to the group that she turned in her longtime friend after she found out she breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The FBI launched a tip line shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, where people could report those who were “instigating violence in Washington, D.C.”
“She said, ‘We were just walking around,’” the woman in the focus group recounted of the conversation with her friend about Jan. 6. “And I know she slipped. I know she didn’t mean to tell me she was in the Capitol.”
“And I said, ‘It wasn’t a f—ing open house. You weren’t, you weren’t buying the Capitol,’” she continued, as other women in the group remarked, “Wow” and “Good for you.”
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The woman said she has not spoken to her former friend since, and submitted a tip to authorities that she was in the Capitol the day of the protests.
“And then I had that whole inner turmoil of, ‘do I go on that website and say I think that she would’ …. I went back and forth on that for probably two weeks and asked some people. And finally, I just went on and said ‘she was there, and I don’t know what role she had, what it was,’” she said. “‘She was in that building by her own admission.’”
A new report published by a Trump-aligned pollster examined how educated, wealthy white women have move more to the left. (Getty Images)
A more cohesive future
“As the session ended, they voiced a small hope that the country might still find a way back to calm and common purpose. Whether that hope can survive a culture built on outrage is uncertain. But their conversation left one clear lesson. Beneath polls and party lines, the real contest for the nation’s future is over how Americans think, speak, and live with one another,” the report concluded.
The women in the group called on the Democrat Party to find cohesion and to disseminate their message to party leaders across the country in order to win upcoming elections.
“Democrats need to stop primarying for the lesser Republican. So what’s happening is … Democrats are voting between two Republican primary candidates, and they’re voting for the idiot, crazy, right-wing guy so that they don’t have to compete against this actual intelligent person. And that’s where we’re getting these nutcases,” one woman said.
Another woman said the DNC should combat everything Trump says, including when the president pinned blame on radical liberal violence for the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September.
“I think it comes from the DNC. I think they need to organize. I think they need a cohesive message. I think they need to be vocal every time Trump says something, even about Charlie Kirk. Yes. No one should be killed for what they believe in. A hundred percent. But they are turning him into a martyr,” one woman said.
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
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Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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