'TELL IT LIKE IT IS': Democrats' Midterm Sweep Sparks Debate Over Gerrymandering and Political Accountability

Talk show host James W. Thomas examines Democrats' victories in Congress, the failure of Republican redistricting strategies and the need for election reform in his Nov. 9 political commentary.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. | The sweeping Democratic victories in the 2026 midterm elections and the growing controversy surrounding partisan gerrymandering took center stage in the Nov. 9 edition of 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS', hosted by veteran broadcaster and political commentator James W. Thomas.

The program's two-part discussion examined the political consequences of the Nov. 3 elections and the arguments presented in Thomas' editorial, "Stop the Cheating," which challenges political leaders to confront partisan manipulation of congressional districts and restore public confidence in representative government.

Under the program's signature tagline, "Be Informed — Not Influenced," Thomas framed the election results as an opportunity to examine not only which party won but also what those victories reveal about the electorate's changing priorities.

Alabama rallies past No. 14 LSU 31-13, strengthens College Football Playoff hopes

Freshman quarterback Keelon Russell throws three touchdown passes as the Crimson Tide scores 21 unanswered points and its defense delivers critical fourth-down stops in Baton Rouge.

BATON ROUGE, La. | Alabama turned a third-quarter deficit into a convincing Southeastern Conference road victory Saturday, scoring 21 unanswered points behind quarterback Keelon Russell to defeat No. 14 LSU 31-13 at Tiger Stadium and strengthen its position in the College Football Playoff race.

The Crimson Tide (7-2, 5-2 SEC) trailed 13-10 late in the third quarter before Russell engineered three consecutive touchdown drives, completing a decisive scoring surge that silenced the home crowd and secured Alabama's second victory over a ranked opponent on the road this season.

Russell completed 17 of 24 passes for 206 yards and three touchdowns, connecting with Josh Ford, Cederian Morgan and Kaleb Edwards during Alabama's second-half comeback.

The victory was particularly significant because LSU (6-3, 3-3) controlled much of the statistical battle, outgaining Alabama 457-285 in total offense. But the Tigers repeatedly failed to convert scoring opportunities against a Crimson Tide defense that delivered when the outcome was in doubt.

Alabama held LSU to five conversions on 14 third-down attempts and stopped the Tigers on all four fourth-down opportunities.

The Crimson Tide also recorded four sacks and forced critical turnovers, demonstrating how defensive execution and timely scoring can outweigh a substantial yardage disadvantage.

Oregon stuns Ohio State 41-28 with 38 unanswered points, boosts College Football Playoff hopes

Dylan Raiola throws for 257 yards and two touchdowns, Dierre Hill Jr. scores twice, and Dan Lanning's aggressive play-calling fuels a stunning comeback from a 14-point deficit in Columbus.

COLUMBUS, Ohio | Oregon turned a disastrous opening quarter into one of its most consequential victories of the season Saturday, scoring 38 unanswered points to erase a two-touchdown deficit and defeat Ohio State 41-28 at Ohio Stadium.

The Ducks, ranked No. 23 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings, overcame an early 14-0 deficit behind quarterback Dylan Raiola, running back Dierre Hill Jr. and a series of aggressive decisions by coach Dan Lanning that transformed the Big Ten showdown.

Raiola completed 25 of 40 passes for 257 yards and two touchdowns, while Hill rushed for 75 yards and two scores. Freshman receiver Brandon Smith caught a touchdown pass early in the fourth quarter to complete Oregon's 38-point scoring surge.

The victory kept Oregon in the College Football Playoff conversation and delivered a rare collapse for Ohio State, which had not lost a home game after leading by 14 points in 25 years, according to Oregon's game report.

For Lanning, the comeback reflected a team that has learned to respond to adversity rather than surrender to it.

"Lot of credit to our players for really not flinching, not blinking when you're down 14, and to just keep fighting," Lanning said. "We've proven that we can be a team that's been in tough battles and can battle back."

Ohio State dominates early before Oregon finds its rhythm

Ohio State appeared poised to control the game after building a 14-0 first-quarter lead, capitalizing on Oregon's early offensive struggles and converting critical third-down opportunities.

The Buckeyes converted all three of their third-down attempts on their opening scoring possession, establishing an offensive rhythm that initially kept Oregon's defense on its heels.

But the Ducks gradually adjusted.

UCLA stays unbeaten with 34-20 victory over Minnesota behind Dieffenbach's explosive fourth quarter

Ty Dieffenbach throws for a career-high 303 yards and three touchdowns, including two 75-yard scoring strikes to Aidan Mizell, as the Bruins improve to 9-0 and strengthen their Big Ten championship hopes.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) | No. 5 UCLA needed two explosive plays to turn a fourth-quarter battle into another statement victory.

Quarterback Ty Dieffenbach connected with wide receiver Aidan Mizell on two 75-yard touchdown passes in the final period, lifting the unbeaten Bruins to a 34-20 victory over Minnesota at Huntington Bank Stadium.

UCLA (9-0, 6-0 Big Ten) remained the conference's only undefeated team, overcoming a stubborn Minnesota squad that twice erased a deficit before the Bruins' big-play offense delivered the decisive blows.

Dieffenbach finished with a career-high 303 passing yards and three touchdowns, completing eight of 16 attempts. Mizell produced a career-best 150 receiving yards and two touchdowns, accounting for half of UCLA's passing yardage on just two scoring receptions.

Running back Wayne Knight added 109 rushing yards and a touchdown, recording his fifth 100-yard performance of the season as UCLA continued its push toward a Big Ten championship and a potential College Football Playoff berth.

OPINION | EDITORIAL Stop the Cheating: How Gerrymandering Backfired on Republicans in the 2026 Midterms

Texas and Florida became symbols of a Republican redistricting strategy that sought to strengthen the GOP's grip on political power. But the 2026 election raises a bigger question: Did efforts to manipulate electoral maps ultimately undermine the party's credibility with voters?

MONTGOMERY | There is an old saying in politics: You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The 2026 midterm elections delivered a painful reminder of that lesson to the Republican Party.

After months of political maneuvering, aggressive congressional redistricting and efforts to build electoral advantages in Republican-controlled states, voters delivered a verdict that no political mapmaker could erase.

Republicans tried to redraw the playing field. Voters changed the outcome.

And nowhere was that political miscalculation more apparent than in Texas and Florida.

President Donald Trump and Republican strategists believed that redrawing congressional boundaries could help protect their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Instead, Democrats captured the House and Senate, leaving Republicans to confront a political defeat that their redistricting strategy failed to prevent.

The lesson should resonate with both political parties: Democracy works best when voters choose their representatives, not when politicians manipulate district boundaries to protect themselves.

Democrats Flip Texas Attorney General’s Office, Reshaping Legal Battles Over Trump Policies and 2028 Elections

Historic 2026 midterm gains give Democratic attorneys general greater influence over voting rights, artificial intelligence, energy policy and corporate regulation as Republicans lose a powerful legal stronghold.

WASHINGTON | Democrats emerged from the 2026 midterm elections with a major victory extending beyond congressional and gubernatorial races: a sweeping expansion of their influence over state attorneys general offices, including a breakthrough in Texas that could reshape national litigation over federal policy, voting rights, energy regulation and emerging technologies.

The Democratic Attorneys General Association, which invested heavily in recruiting candidates and building statewide campaigns, helped its party capture five Republican-held attorney general offices in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Georgia while defending competitive seats in Michigan and Minnesota.

But the most consequential victory may have come in Texas, where Democrats broke Republicans' hold on an office that had become a central force in conservative legal challenges to Democratic administrations.

Wright’s Misleading Claims About Electricity Prices in Red vs. Blue States

Wright says renewable energy mandates have driven electricity rates nearly 50% higher in Democratic-led states. Energy researchers say geography, aging power grids, wildfire costs, natural gas prices and growing data center demand explain much of the difference.

WASHINGTON | Energy Secretary Chris Wright has blamed high electricity prices in Democrat-led states on climate policies. Prices do tend to be higher in blue states than red states, but climate policies explain at most a modest portion of the price difference.

Longstanding structural and geographical factors — combined with more recent price increases from wildfires, extreme weather and, in certain areas, anticipated rapid load growth from data centers — have also contributed to high electricity prices in certain states and regions.

Wright’s recent comments have emphasized political differences between states while omitting many of these other factors, at times misleadingly blaming large price rises on climate policies.

“Electricity prices are almost 50% higher in states run by Democrats,” he said Oct. 1 on Fox News. “For 17 years since President Obama came to office, the Democrat position has been to constrict the growth of energy and drive the prices up so Americans could afford less and we would solve climate change.”

In other interviews, the secretary has suggested state-level requirements for adopting renewable energy — called renewable portfolio standards — are to blame for the price differential.

Common Themes in the 2026 Midterms

From rising gas prices and Medicare to transgender rights, rural hospitals and data centers, Republicans and Democrats used selective facts and disputed claims to influence voters in the battle for control of Congress.

WASHINGTON | Over the course of this election, we’ve monitored key toss-up congressional races, fact-checking false claims and distortions of the facts on a host of topics. But some issues have loomed larger than others.

Before the Election Day polls open, here’s a look at the major midterm themes we’ve written about and how both parties have twisted the facts in trying to garner voters’ support.

Inflation and Gas Prices

When inflation and gasoline prices spiked in the summer of 2022, the midterm election airwaves were filled with Republican campaign ads attacking Democrats on those points, as we wrote for our “major themes” story then. With annualized inflation at 3.7% and gasoline prices at $4.27 per gallon the week of Oct. 26 — higher than the metrics when President Donald Trump’s second term began — inflation and gasoline prices are again a centerpiece of the midterm elections, with the party roles reversed.

Most of the Democratic ads blame the war in Iran and Republicans’ support for it, which is a matter for political debate, and not something for fact-checkers.

But the attacks haven’t always been on the mark, as was the case in a North Carolina ad in which Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper used an out-of-date quote from his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, to portray him as out of touch on affordability issues. The economic picture was much different in July 2025 — when Whatley commented on grocery prices, gasoline prices and inflation — than they are today.

And while he isn’t on the ballot (technically), Trump has repeatedly twisted the facts on inflation and gasoline prices while stumping for Republican candidates in the run-up to the midterm elections.

In Kansas, Both Sides Twist the Facts in Accusations of Protecting Pedophiles

Democratic groups accuse Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of protecting Jeffrey Epstein's associates, while a GOP super PAC claims Democrat Adam Hamilton shielded a child abuser. Court records, congressional votes and investigative reporting reveal significant omissions in both attacks.

TOPEKA, Kan. | In Kansas’ tight Senate race, ads from Democratic and Republican outside groups are accusing the other party’s candidate of having protected pedophiles. In both cases, the attacks are misleading or unsupported by the evidence.

Ads from Democratic groups misleadingly claim Sen. Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent, helped cover up Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes by voting to keep the Epstein files under wraps while taking money from the convicted sex offender’s “associates.” 

Marshall supported the November 2025 law that required the Justice Department to publicly release the files. He previously voted against a Democratic amendment calling for the files’ release, saying he opposed attaching it to an unrelated defense bill. As for the purported Epstein “associates,” they’re people whose names appear incidentally in the files but had no documented contact with Epstein, or whose interactions with him were limited. None has been accused of wrongdoing.

An ad from a Republican group, meanwhile, claims Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a pastor, “protected a pedophile” accused of molesting teenage boys two decades ago at a camp his church ran.

According to court records reviewed by local news outlets, the boys reported the abuse but couldn’t identify the culprit, and the church didn’t notify police. It’s unclear what role Hamilton played in that decision. The next year, a camp volunteer was caught and reported to police. Hamilton has acknowledged that the church could have handled the situation better, but there’s no evidence he knowingly protected a predator.

The Cook Political Report rates the Kansas race as one of several toss-ups that could determine control of the Senate on Nov. 3. President Donald Trump campaigned for Marshall in Kansas on Nov. 1, the president’s second rally in the state in two weeks.

Talarico Ad Omits Details of Crystal Mason’s Illegal Voting Case

The Texas Democrat's campaign ad blames Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for Crystal Mason's five-year sentence, but local prosecutors brought the case years before her conviction was overturned. The dispute highlights broader concerns about voter fraud enforcement and racial disparities in Texas.

One of the closing ads from Democrat James Talarico in the Texas Senate race says that Crystal Mason received a five-year prison sentence for illegal voting “because of Ken Paxton’s crackdown on voters of color.” But there’s more to the story.

Although her vote ultimately did not count, Mason, a Black Texas resident, was convicted and sentenced by a state judge in March 2018 for illegally casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 general election. At the time, she was on supervised release following a felony conviction for tax fraud in 2011. That made her ineligible to vote under state law.

Her conviction and sentence came after Paxton, Talarico’s opponent and the state’s Republican attorney general, announced a voter fraud initiative in early 2018 involving “enforcement and education.”

However, the case against Mason, who was charged in February 2017, was investigated and prosecuted by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office — not Paxton’s office, as the ad may suggest to viewers. The judge didn’t provide an explanation for the five-year sentence.

The penalty for illegally voting in Texas, a second-degree felony, was up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Attempting to vote illegally, a different charge, is a state jail felony, punishable by up to two years in state jail.

Explaining the Case of the Two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s Ballot

A second Republican candidate named Sullivan sparked a legal battle, allegations of political manipulation and an extraordinary Justice Department intervention in Alaska's closely watched Senate contest between incumbent Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska | In the Alaska Senate race, the candidacy of retired teacher Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. — not the incumbent Republican senator, Dan S. Sullivan — has been the subject of months of legal wrangling. But the issue took on increased national prominence this past week. 

At the behest of President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice took the unusual step on Oct. 22 of filing a preemptive lawsuit arguing that if Sen. Sullivan doesn’t win reelection, and if he loses to his Democratic opponent Mary Peltola by fewer votes than Daniel J. Sullivan gets, the state should “not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.”

Then, on Oct. 28, the New York Times dropped a story saying it had uncovered evidence that “operatives aligned with Mary Peltola” helped to recruit Daniel J. Sullivan and others to run for the Senate seat in an attempt to siphon votes away from the incumbent Sullivan. The next day, in response to the Times story, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, ordered a criminal investigation to determine if any Alaska criminal laws were violated.

Trump, meanwhile, has weighed in, calling the issue “voter fraud at the highest level” and saying, “Peltola should resign from the race. I think she should be prosecuted criminally for what she did.”

On Oct. 29, Peltola denied she had any knowledge of or participation in recruiting another Dan Sullivan to run in the race.

“I just want to clear the air,” Peltola said. “I knew nothing about any other candidates on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.”

With less than a week until Election Day, we’ll lay out the facts of what’s known so far, and the legal history leading up to this point.