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Tonight, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is apparently planning to resign from the Trump administration so he can run for president in 2028. Good luck shaking off the stink of MAGA. Harmeet Dhillon, the Republican attorney who ran the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division into the ground, apparently read the writing on the wall and handed in her resignation today, less than 48 hours after Republicans lost their majorities in Congress. Donald Trump is also trying to sneak Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth into the Senate in an attempt to give him a soft landing as Republicans blame the midterms on his cheerleading of the Iran war. And Mississippi Republicans are now plotting to throw out Democratic ballots in the Magnolia State’s razor-thin Senate race, which Democratic candidate Scott Colom is currently winning.
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The Independent is reporting that Republican insiders and senior figures in the British government are expecting Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio to soon resign from the Trump administration in order to prep for an eventual campaign for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. That expectation came after Democrats handily won majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, even flipping Republican strongholds like Kansas and Texas.
One unnamed ally of Rubio confided to the paper that the secretary of state desperately needs to “distance himself from the Iran war and pin that one on Trump,” and that he can’t run for president while he’s still serving as America’s top diplomat. Another anonymous GOP source predicted four or five members of the Trump Cabinet would soon be “running for the hills,” saying that nobody wants to stick around for the investigations and impeachment hearings that will most certainly begin in January once the new Democratic majorities are officially sworn in.
Vice President JD Vance is already trying to put some distance between himself and his boss. After Tuesday night’s results rolled in, Vance wrote a lengthy post arguing “the reason we lost is the [Iran] war,” and that Trump himself even said as much. Meanwhile, there’s mounting speculation that Trump may try to shackle his Pentagon chief with the blame for his war, and that he may try to throw Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles under the bus as well.
Rubio has experienced both sides of Trump. In 2016, the president mocked him on the debate stage as “Little Marco,” but last year gave him a level of power over U.S. foreign policy rivaled only by Henry Kissinger. Still, he’s been effectively sidelined on both Middle Eastern issues and the Ukraine war in favor of special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
And should Rubio run for the nation’s highest office, he’d almost certainly be relentlessly scrutinized over the bombings of boats in the Caribbean that have so far killed more than 200 people — which critics have described as extrajudicial executions — along with the Trump administration’s cozy relationship with Venezuela’s increasingly unpopular interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez. The White House responded to reports of Rubio’s purported plans by calling its journalists “glue-sniffing hacks.” That should tell you all you need to know about how this administration responds to legitimate questions.
MAGA activist Harmeet Dhillon — the longtime Republican lawyer who Trump appointed to run the DOJ’s the Civil Rights Division — officially handed in her resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday. Blanche heaped praise on her, saying she defended civil liberties “without fear or favor.”
Her record tells a vastly different story, to put it mildly. Under Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division refused to open a use-of-force investigation into ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot U.S. citizen Renee Good at point-blank range in Minneapolis this winter. Her office also 30 states plus Washington, D.C. in a largely futile effort to seize voter registration lists ahead of the election. Federal judges threw out 27 of those cases.
Dhillon also unsuccessfully failed to convince a grand jury to indict former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. And Dhillon’s prosecutors were also responsible for bringing criminal charges against journalist Don Lemon for covering an ICE protest at a Minneapolis church.
Stacey Young of Justice Connection described Harmeet Dhillon as “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history.” Kristen Clarke, who former President Joe Biden picked to lead the Civil Rights Division and now serves as general counsel of the NAACP, said Dhillon “destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department.” Young is now calling on the incoming Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate to use its full constitutional powers to make sure whoever comes next won’t follow in her footsteps.
No one in the Trump administration is under more pressure than his Pentagon chief. Despite Trump’s continued insistence to the public that Pete Hegseth isn’t going anywhere, the president is now reportedly considering a move that would take Hegseth out of the Defense Department and send him to the U.S. Senate as more Republicans blame Hegseth for the Iran war.
Former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri told MS NOW that Trump could feasibly convince Republican Tennessee Governor-elect Marsha Blackburn to appoint Hegseth to the Senate seat she just vacated. Blackburn is reportedly waiting until after January 3 — when the next Congress gavels into session — to appoint her replacement.
It isn’t just McCaskill who is saying this: New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman is also reporting that Trump is considering dumping Hegseth as a way to extend an olive branch to Democrats. When reporters asked the president if he was seriously considering the move, Trump demurred, but maintained Hegseth would “be very popular” in the Senate. He later told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that he was planning on keeping Hegseth in his role, though he admitted he’s been getting more calls about his Pentagon chief’s future.
Blackburn’s office is pushing back on the rumor. Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman tweeted that an unnamed source close to the governor-elect isn’t considering Hegseth for the vacant seat, adding the story was “nothing more than Washington, D.C., spin from a bunch of consultants with nothing better to do.” The source added that Blackburn “is focused on the transition, not entertaining baseless speculation,” and that “D.C. won't pick the next senator.”
There’s also a timing issue in that outgoing Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky and several others are hoping Trump will move fast so a GOP-controlled Senate can still confirm his replacement before Democrats take back the gavel on January 3. Trump also has a pattern of shuffling around people in his administration instead of outright firing them, as he did with United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz. In the wake of the Signalgate scandal in 2025, Trump transitioned Waltz out of his role as National Security Adviser job and moved him to the UN amid calls to fire him.
Tell Democrats: remove Pete Hegseth from office!
Finally, in Mississippi, Republicans are pulling out all the stops to prevent what could be the biggest upset of the midterms.
In the Magnolia State, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Scott Colom is currently leading incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by around 1,800 votes as of this writing, with a looming certification deadline of Friday, November 13. Now, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is demanding that Mississippi county election officials “separate and preserve” all affidavit ballots — which voters cast when there are issues at the polls with their voter ID.
Here’s what makes that such a big deal: Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson flagged some 230,000 voter registrations as “inactive” earlier this year, which forced massive numbers of Mississippi voters to cast affidavit ballots. Those are counted after Election Day, once voters show acceptable ID. There are still thousands of affidavit ballots that have yet to be added to the count, with most of them coming from the Democratic stronghold of Hinds County, which houses the capital city of Jackson. And because Mississippi has no recount law in place for federal races, a losing candidate’s only option is to challenge whether certain ballots will ultimately be added to the official statewide count.
Mississippi Republican Party chair Mike Hurst vowed that his party is prepared to “act swiftly.” The Hyde-Smith campaign insists the senator win another term once every “legally cast” ballot is counted. That particular phrasing could signal a potential legal challenge to certain ballots. Colom is urging supporters to make sure their ballots are verified and counted, while promising to protect the integrity of the election.
This effort is part of a pattern we’ve already seen before from the Trump Justice Department. The administration tried to stop California from counting nearly 21,000 ballots in the midterms, and also unsuccessfully attempted to block certification in Alaska’s Senate race. Both of those efforts failed in court. Litigation over similar demands in Washington state is still ongoing.
You won’t find stories like these — in which the president’s once-devoted close aides are jumping off the sinking ship and Republicans are pulling out every dirty trick they can think of to stop a deep-red state from electing a Democrat — in the lead block of David Ellison’s CBS Evening News or on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox. Raw America can cover these stories precisely because we don’t take orders from a billionaire with a Mar-a-Lago membership. We answer exclusively to our readers and that won’t ever change as long as we can help it.
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