Republicans Brace for a Blue Wave / The Supreme Court’s Case on Religious Schools, Again

0:00A t-shirt and jeans, mac and cheese, oceans and sunsets. Some things in life are an obvious match, like RIAs and Schwab Advisor Services, the number one choice for independent advisors looking for a custodian who can help them go further. With all the wealth services, technology, and support an RIA firm needs, the difference is so obvious, it's Schwabvius. Find your match and learn why custody is just the beginning at schwabvius.com.

0:32from the opinion pages of the wall street journal this is potomac watch republicans brace for a tough night on election day 2026 mid continued debate on how much to believe the polling in historically red states like kansas and alaska plus the supreme court hears arguments on whether colorado can deny state funding to catholic preschools if they won't agree to accept families that oppose church teachings, including on sex and gender. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the WSJ's opinion pages, Kim Strassel and Nicole Ault. Nearly 60 million votes have already been cast in the 2026 midterms, with countless more being deposited by the minute as we tape this.

1:20Kim, we're midstream here, so we don't have a single result yet, but what are you seeing out there? What do you make of these early voting numbers? And how about some of the polling that suggests Republicans might lose Senate seats in places as red as Kansas? Yes. So, Kyle, I don't doubt the general trend of the polling, the suggestion that there is some real unhappiness with Republicans, because there is. But what we're seeing out there is a little murkier than a lot of the media is suggesting. I think there is some reason to be skeptical of some of the polling. especially to be careful about extrapolating broad data into individual races or even buying into some individual polls.

2:04For instance, the House. Let me talk about that for a second. The generic poll at the moment, the generic ballot shows that Democrats are favored over Republicans for House seats by eight or nine points nationally. But I was talking to Karl Rove about this on my podcast yesterday. he pointed out that if you extrapolate that down and just look at how those numbers translate into house battleground districts, the spread is more about two points. I mean, these places are battlegrounds for a reason. They tend to be pretty evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. There's also some evidence, by the way, I would note, provided by the media outlets that themselves conducted the polling to be a little skeptical of some individual Senate polls.

2:52I mean, we have now had two pieces over the past week from the New York Times laying out reasons why it wonders if its own polls might not be slightly off. And then we had this kind of amusing Washington Post piece where they said, hey, we're putting out this poll we did in Kansas, but let us tell you all the reasons why even we think that this is like really weird. And that poll showed the Democrat in the race beating the Republican in the race by nine points in red Kansas, which has not elected a Democratic senator in 94 years. And now apparently this poll is saying the Democrat is nonetheless leading by a margin similar to victories you see among Democrats in blue states.

3:34So they explained why this might be. And they said, well, Democrats are far more enthusiastic about taking the poll than Republicans were. Registered Democrats are more than twice as likely as registered Republicans to complete the survey after answering an interviewer's call, 32 percent versus 12 percent. Now, just a point on that math. I think they would have better to have said nearly three times as likely. It's really quite astonishing. And they explained that while they tried to fix this by waiting the poll, they had a great quote priceless. It said, it's possible those efforts fell short, end quote.

4:08So they're basically saying we're putting this out here, but even we think this is a very bizarre. So there's that. And the other reason I think to be a little cautious just about calling this too early is some of that early voting data. More than 57 million people have now voted early. That is a number that comes from the University of Florida Election Lab. And across the 27 states that report party registration, Democrats led by about 3 million ballots. But important to note that a significant number of those additional Democratic ballots came from California, which is obviously a very blue state and won't have much of an influence in any of these battlegrounds.

4:50In a lot of these states at the center of the fight this year, we don't see the party affiliation of who is voting. And that includes important states like Ohio or Texas, Georgia, Michigan. And they obviously don't show how people are voting either. But one thing that's interesting. You're seeing lots of headlines, Democrats. Early voting is surging and Democrats are turning out dramatically. That's a little overstated. In Kansas, you go back about five or six days ago, Democrats were beating Republicans, but there's been this surge now and now Republicans are leading in the early vote in a state where you would expect them to.

5:25Pennsylvania is kind of interesting. Republican early voting is up and Democratic early voting is down, which would seem to very much go against the grain of what we're being told about enthusiasm in this election. North Carolina and Florida, both parties, early voting is down. In Iowa, early voting soared, but with bigger gains for the GOP than for Democrats. So in that state, there's about 60 ,000 more GOP early votes this year and about 49 ,000 more Democratic votes. So this stuff is really tricky. It's still pretty murky out there. We could still see some surprises in some races. So I would hold everyone's horses.

6:02The other difficulty in particular with calling the Senate is that you could have several close races that break one way or another by, you know, a few thousand votes. And so the difference between a Republican hold of the Senate and a wipeout that gives not only Democrats control, but a pretty comfortable margin for the next two years for Chuck Schumer would not necessarily have to be that large as an actual number of ballots. But, Nicole, speaking of the overall mood, it seems that most, almost all prognosticators suggest Democrats are pretty favored to take the House. What do you think that message is then from voters to President Trump and his administration two years in now to his second term?

6:43Yeah, well, I think one way in which Republicans have hurt themselves is by not having a good policy agenda. And that's partly the fault of President Trump and the White House not leading with one. And voters care about affordability and the economy. And instead, President Trump has been pushing his tariffs that raise prices on a number of goods. That's hurting him with some of his base with farmers in Iowa. It could also hurt him in Michigan and Maine. So they're not really presenting good policy to address the issues that voters care about. And instead throwing out ideas like we'll pay you$5 ,000 if Republicans win or banning diesel exports, you know, which are not getting to the heart of the economic issues.

7:23that the country's dealing with. And that's a loss because Democrats also don't have a clear policy agenda. And if they win, they're going to push things that don't help the affordability issues that are hurting voters, like more spending and green energy subsidies and restricting oil and gas production, which will not help. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. This episode is brought to you by Hard Lessons, a podcast from Morgan Stanley. Some investing lessons only become clear after you see how a call plays out. On Hard Lessons, iconic investors sit down with Morgan Stanley leaders to go behind the scenes on the critical moments, both successes and setbacks, that shaped who they are today.

8:03Watch or listen to Hard Lessons wherever you get your podcasts.

8:11This is Matthew Hennessy, the editor of Free Expression. I want to personally invite you to come check out what we're doing. Signing up for the newsletter couldn't be easier. Just go to our homepage. Directly below the Wall Street Journal logo, you'll find the magic words. Free expression, wedged between opinion and arts. There's an option to sign up for the newsletter right at the top of our section. Just hit that button and you'll start getting the world's hardest working newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday. If you aren't a journal subscriber, the newsletter is free, but we are going to need your email address.

8:47There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox.

8:59Welcome back. Kim, maybe one signal from voters is quit losing track of the reasons that we put you in office in the first place. You can go back to the 2024 election. I mean, I think it was inflation under President Biden, price increases, also the uncontrolled border, which President Trump has solved, I think, in many people's minds, but also maybe overreached in some of these ICE actions in cities like Minneapolis. And then maybe just a loss of focus, a lot of chatter in these conversations about the midterms, about President Trump's family business dealings, cryptocurrency, his construction projects.

9:37And to that point, President Trump held a day before the election speech pretty lengthy at the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool. And what he wanted to talk about in substantial part, Kim, right before voters go to the polls was actually itself the reflecting pool. listen to this but this project should be a project that unites all americans it should be something we're very proud of we're proud of it we had to go through a long process to get it done again we uh we closed it we wanted to uh get it fixed for july 4th weekend and we did and then we were going to close it we were sort of it was sort of mandated by what happened with respect to these sick people that came around.

10:22But we've now fixed all the piping is in great shape. And that is the thing that not only gives you water input, it also is drainage. And it's also something very important in terms of the algae. It creates the bubbles and creates what's necessary that the algae doesn't form. Kim, I love a good drainage project. Drainage is an unsung hero of civilization. But what do you make of that? That does not exactly scream, this is a guy who is laser focused on, you know, the supermarket prices in my neighborhood. Yeah, I read through a lot of polling through this midterm. Never once came across algae as voters top concern.

11:03Look, the original own goal here, and it's just mesmerizing that Republicans walked into this. The original sin was this tariff policy. It has, as Nicole noted, raised the prices on a lot of goods. Also, really just the broader tariff policy caused enormous amounts of problems for key constituencies in the Republican field, in particular farmers, for instance, who are just reeling because of the loss of global markets, because of you know, China saying, so no soybeans, you know, the sort of places that they depend on to send their stuff. And that is before the crippling costs of, you know, fertilizer and every all these other inputs and what they do.

11:48Ranchers, you see this happening. There's a lot of specific industries, certain manufacturing where it's just become prohibitively expensive to get a hold of steel, autos, the list goes on. And you'd have thought Republicans, they looked at Joe Biden. And it was exceptionally clear why Biden and Kamala Harris lost this race. It was because they could not justify high prices to Americans. And so to walk into office and immediately give the Democrats the excuse they needed to say, all of these higher prices are on you. We know that some of this is a hangover from the Democratic administration that preceded it, But it gave Democrats the tool they needed to transfer ownership of this to the GOP.

12:36So that was the original problem. I honestly truly believe that if prices in general were looking pretty good, if inflation, as we have seen it, continue to go down, the Republicans might have even been able to weather, for instance, temporary gas and fuel prices as a result of the Iranian conflict. But it was just it's been too much. Think about how many months, months throughout 2026 that we have spent talking about the president's ballroom and the president's arch in Washington or his 1776 fund, which for a lot of voters did not suggest something great. It suggested the president engaging in a form of kind of lawfare, which was exactly what he said he was not going to pursue when he was in office.

13:23So I think that there's just been a lack of focus, as DeCole noted, a lack of agenda as well. And unfortunately for the GOP, the one big beautiful bill, which voters generally approve of and has been a good thing and they appreciate it, it was too far gone. And their question was, what have you done for me lately and what are you doing for me next? And those questions were not answered. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching?

14:00Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

14:27From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. Well, as Democrats and Republicans anxiously await these closing of the polls and the election results, Thankfully, we have an important distraction from the Supreme Court, which is hard at work on Tuesday. The justices, perhaps, among those casting early ballots. Nicole, the case here being heard is called St. Mary Catholic Parish versus Roy. It involves a conflict between Colorado's universal pre-K program and a group of Catholic archdioceses and a couple of parishes and a couple of parents who say they're being excluded based on their religious beliefs.

15:07Give us a sense of how the program works and what the dispute here is. Yeah, so this program started a few years ago in Colorado, and the state pays for families to have 15 hours a week of preschool, which is estimated at about$6 ,300 a year. And all kinds of preschools can sign up to provide services through the program. But the dispute is that the state requires preschools that do participate to abide by this equal opportunity mandate, which means they have to agree not to exclude students from enrolling on the basis of a number of things, including gender identity, sexual orientation and religious affiliation.

15:50So while the program does not ban religious schools from participating, that's created a conflict for these Catholic schools because they have traditional religious beliefs on marriage and sexuality and gender. And they ask families to sign something like a statement of faith and to not publicly undermine the teachings of the church. So they say that for them to be able to participate in this program, they would have to violate their religious beliefs by abiding by this mandate. We have a whole string of rulings from the Supreme Court in the past decade taking the position that when states open up public benefits to everybody who applies, they cannot exclude religious options.

16:33So we can go back to the Trinity Lutheran case. That was about whether a Lutheran preschool could get access to money that the state was giving out for playground surfacing. Then we have that extended in a couple of cases, one in Montana, one in Maine. Why is this not clearly covered? If listeners have paid attention to those cases, they may be getting a sense of deja vu. So what is Colorado saying is different here? Yeah, Colorado is arguing, well, we're not explicitly excluding religious schools. And in fact, there are a number of religious schools that do participate in this program. But the Catholic schools argue in response that the logic of these other cases should apply.

17:10You can't indirectly exclude religious schools. And they're arguing that what Colorado is doing is essentially picking religious winners and losers. Because, yes, there might be some religious schools that are happy to go along with what the state is saying they should believe on gender and sexuality. But then there are a number of religious churches that don't. And they're the ones who are excluded from the program. Let's listen to a piece of the oral argument this morning. This is Justice Sonia Sotomayor tangling with one of the lawyers. Colorado's not saying you have to teach equality. It's not saying you have to teach it's OK to be homosexual.

17:46you don't have to teach change your values in any way you can teach whatever it is you want to teach but if parents choose to subject their children to this teaching you have to accept that child is that correct well your honor for the catholic church it's not about excluding anyone based on who they are and that is in the record i pet up i don't see how that can be they're saying will exclude your children if their parents are homosexual. Because their parents are doing something you don't agree with. I thought that's, you know, you have to accept all children, regardless of their religious, regardless of their sex, race, national origin, whatever it might be.

18:35Kim, what do you make of this dispute? I think that that clip kind of lays out the conflict here, because Colorado is saying these are just neutral, non-discrimination rules. But as the petitioner is saying, as the lawyer responds there, these are schools that see themselves as communities of faith. And they require families, when they sign up, to sign some kind of statement of belief. They ask them not to publicly undermine the Catholic Church. And so this is intended to be a community that kind of believes the same thing. And it seems like you would be inserting conflict into the school if you are requiring, as a matter of law, making them take families who are publicly opposed to what they are teaching in the schools and what the church believes.

19:23Right. I mean, this is actually pretty simple on its face. Essentially, what this is dispute over is that the Catholic schools in this particular case are saying, we think that we would like you, if you are going to send your child to our school, to agree to our general community beliefs, right? Which is something that has always been an essential question of any kind of church organization. I mean, people don't go to a church that has values that they don't agree with, by and large, and they don't send their kids to those schools if they don't agree. So you want to sign up. And instead, what the dispute is here is what Colorado is saying is, no, you have to flip that on its head.

20:07If you want any kind of government money, you have to agree with what we say. We, the state of Colorado, you have to agree with the government on gay marriage. You have to agree with the government on gender transitions or else no money for you. And that's why I think in my mind, given the past cases that you have cited from the Supreme Court, this one seems to me a sort of layup. It's almost a little mind boggling that they have to do this yet again. It was pretty clear, which is that every case that has come before has been about a dispute about the fact that the state has been uncomfortable giving monies to a parish or to a school that has values that are specific to it and that they feel are not wide enough for the entire state as a whole and what the state would like to see as values.

20:59And in every single situation, the Supreme Court in these recent religious freedom cases has said, no, you cannot exclude certain schools from receiving these kind of these education taxpayer dollars because you don't agree with that particular church's value set. That is discriminatory from a state perspective. So I don't see that this is so hard. The other thing that I find really weird about this too, Kyle, is that the schools in this have noted that there is not a single instance so far on the record of an LGBTQ family seeking admission to any one of these preschools. And they make the further argument that in fact, by being very upfront about their faith and what they expect in their kind of community, it actually helps avoid unnecessary conflicts in this situation.

21:52And I think that's a very powerful point in all of this, too. Let's not pretend that if you tell the church it's going to have to go a certain direction in order to get those funds, that there isn't going to end up being conflicts with enrolled students and parents in that community. A couple thoughts to add there. One is Colorado seems to think that it helps its case that some religious schools are able to participate in its program. And the petitioner is arguing that actually makes things worse because then Colorado is picking and choosing. It is setting rules for the program. And if there are churches that don't have any theological dispute with the state's view of sex and gender, they're welcome to get this state subsidy for their religious education.

22:35And different churches that have different beliefs that are in conflict with the state are left out. And then on the point about the lack of applications, apparently, in this court record from LGBTQ families to the Archdiocese of Denver's preschools, that also makes me wonder how much this is a real conflict versus an effort by the state to leave out schools that have policies and maybe viewpoints that they don't like. I think it's worth looking at what some other states are doing, including Maine, which is where the last similar case, Carson v. Macon, took place in 2022. The Supreme Court ruled against Maine in that case, saying they couldn't exclude religious schools from their tuition program.

23:18But since then, Maine has passed a law similar to Colorado's that says schools that participate can't exclude students on the basis of things like gender identity and sexuality. And that's had a similar effect of keeping religious schools out. And it does seem like there's this clash of values and beliefs here around gender and sexuality. And yeah, many Americans ascribe to traditional views and it doesn't seem fair or in line with the First Amendment for them to be kept out of programs that everyone else is allowed to participate in because of those beliefs. Kim, we'll give you the last word as the polls start to close this evening.

23:54What would you tell listeners to look at first in terms of early states, early races that might provide a sense of where these 2026 elections are heading? If you want a good early state to look at and maybe get a sense of just how bad the night is for Republicans or good, I mean, depending on how you look at it. First place I would look would be the second district of Virginia. I'd look at Virginia in general, the second district that's around Virginia Beach. That's where GOP Representative Jen Kiggins is facing a really tough challenge from former Representative Elaine Luria, who actually held that seat for two terms before she got picked off in 2022.

24:36This is a classic battleground district. But you can also look Virginia's first district. That's where the Republican Rob Whitman. This was a district Trump won by five points in 2024. for. That race has tightened considerably in the final stretch between Whitman and Democratic challenger Shannon Taylor. If that race right away goes to Democrats, it could be a really rough night for Republicans. And then if you want to know what a really bad night looks like, maybe take a look in the fifth district of Virginia, where Republican John McGuire is in a district that Trump won by 12 points just a couple of years ago.

25:17But that race has now actually been moved to a toss up. It is against a pretty tough challenger. Again, another former Democratic rep, Tom Perriello. So we will see how that turns out. If you want a sense of redistricting, like how the GOP redistricting project went, look at North Carolina one. That was a district the Republicans really rejiggered to favor Republicans, where Don Davis, a two-term Democrat, is fighting for his existence. See how that turns out. And then take a look at Texas, finally, to see how maybe get a sense of the degree to which Hispanic voters are changing their minds this year, maybe having moved to Republicans in 2024, potentially moving back into the Democratic column.

26:03And there's a couple of districts there, the 28th, the 34th, and then the 15th, which is where Republican Monica de la Cruz is facing an unexpected hard race because of some real changes in Hispanic voter attitudes. Thank you, Kim and Nicole. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch.

26:33This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise.