Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster was on Capitol Hill today, speaking to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about current and emerging threats to American national security—and what policymakers should do to mitigate those threats. McMaster organized his remarks around four principal threats: an axis of hostile aggressor states, disruptive technologies, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic aggression, and political subversion and cognitive warfare. The former national security advisor called for adaptation within the intelligence community to monitor and provide early warning of these threats. In his conclusion, noting the upcoming quarter-century anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, McMaster emphasized that international terror organizations like Hamas and the Taliban remain serious threats that defense and intelligence agencies must continue to root out abroad, in partnership with allies. 

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Ohio and Florida used to be battleground states. Both went for Clinton in 96, both went for Obama twice, and even when they both went for Bush twice, they were extremely close elections (famously so in Florida in 2000). But now they're two of the most reliably ruby red states in the country, with Trump winning Florida by 14 points and Ohio by 12 points in 2024. Florida's has been more recent, as both 2016 and 2020 were quite close, but Ohio went for Trump by 8 points in 2016 and 2020.

So what changed? Did the Republicans employ some kind of strategy that turned the states into such Republican strongholds, and can the same happen in other battlegrounds like NC and Pennsylvania?