Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct errors in the review of New York's primaries.
Voters in two of the nation’s most populous states will head to the polls on Tuesday, kicking off the last month of the midterm primaries.
Florida is conducting primary elections for federal, state and local races, while New Yorkers finally get to pick their nominees for the U.S. House and state Senate. Both states feature high-profile incumbents hoping to hang on to their seats.
Both states conduct closed primaries, meaning people may only participate in the races for parties with which they are affiliated. More than one-quarter of voters in each state are unaffiliated and therefore cannot vote in the primaries.
Florida
In the Sunshine State, all eyes will be on a pair of Democratic primaries.
In one race, voters will pick a nominee to challenge Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has risen through the GOP ranks and is considered a possible contender for the White House in 2024. DeSantis is seen by many as the strongest competitor to former President Donald Trump if they both seek the nomination in two years.
Regardless of White House talk, DeSantis must face whoever emerges from the four-candidate Democratic primary for governor. The contenders include Rep. Charlie Crist (a former governor as well as state senator and state attorney general). When he held those previous positions, Crist was a Republican until becoming an independent in 2010 and then a Democrat in 2012.
Crist leads in the polls, with Nikkie Fried, a former commissioner of agriculture and consumer service, trailing. Cadance Daniel and Robert Willis are also running in the primary.
Democratic voters will also pick a candidate to challenge Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, finished second to Trump in the 2016 primaries. He will face one of four Democrats: Rep. Val Demings, Ricardo De La Fuente, Brian Rush and William Sanchez. Demings is expected to win the race.
The federal primaries will be rounded out with nominating contests in 28 House seats. Republicans currently hold the majority of seats but Democrats will hope to close the gap Nov. 8.
The most anticipated of those races is taking place in the 1st district, held by Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. He is seeking reelection with an endorsement from Trump. However, an investigation into Gaetz’s sexual relations with a minor have cast a cloud over his standing. Democratic candidates Rebekah Jones and Margaret Schiller hope to battle him in the general election.
Other races on Tuesday’s ballot include seats for Legislature and school boards.
Florida’s elections have endured many changes in the past years. The Legislature enacted a sweeping bill in 2021 that placed new limits on voting by mail, in-person voting, the use of drop boxes and voter registration; many minority groups, including Black voters, have had a harder time registering to vote and even casting a ballot.
Among the provisions in that bill:
- Officials may not proactively distribute ballots by mail.
- Drop box use is limited to business hours, and mobile drop boxes are banned.
- People may not deliver more than two ballots in addition to their own and that of an immediate family member.
These and other restrictions are making it harder for Black people to vot e in Florida, according to activists.
In 2018, voters passed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for people who complete their prison sentence, but the following year the state enacted a law requiring that people with felony convictions pay all fines and fees before regaining the right to vote. Court battles over that law continue
A bill enacted this year created an Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate possible election crimes. Under DeSantis’ direction, the agency has arrested 20 formerly incarcerated individuals for voting in Florida.
Read more about election law changes in Florida.
New York
New Yorkers will hit the polls for a rare second round of non-runoff primaries Tuesday. The state had scheduled all of its primaries for June 28 but redistricting delays required a second date be added. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s congressional and state Senate maps — configured by Democrats — were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders and needed to be redrawn. Election analysts have predicted that the new House map will result in as many as five incumbents losing their primaries.
Democrats are hoping for a shift in the political environment following the recent Supreme Court decision that removed constitutional protections for abortion rights. However, voter turnout could be low due to many New Yorkers traveling during the summer months. This has made predicting the outcomes very difficult.
Voters will pick nominees for the state’s 26 House seats. Much of the attention will be focused on the 12th district, where two incumbents, Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, are facing off for the Democratic nomination — a situation forced on by the redrawn maps. Nadler has been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York.
Another highly contested race will be decided in 10th district where Democrat Mondaire Jones is the incumbent. He will face New York Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, New York City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, and former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, and Daniel Goldman, who served as counsel to House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment proceedings.
For Republicans, the race for Rep. Chris Jacobs’ seat will be incredibly competitive. Jacobs announced he would not seek reelection after receiving backlash from fellow Republicans after embracing gun control reform following a mass shooting that occurred in his district in May. New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy and Carl Paladino are facing off for the nomination. Paladino has made several headlines in the past due to his propensity for offensive comments.
The elections process has been altered by a number of new bills that have mostly acted to improve voter access, the most noteworthy being the 2022 John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York. The legislation includes reforms that protect people of color from discrimination and expands accessibility for those not proficient in English. The bill includes many provisions that protect POC voters from intimidation, deception, and discrimination during elections.
Read more about changes to election laws in New York.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma requires primary runoffs when no candidate in a race earns a majority of the vote. Therefore, voters will return to the polls Tuesday to finalize the nominees in a handful of races, including the Republican contest to complete the term started by Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning. Neither of the two frontrunners, Rep. Markwayne Mullin and T.W. Shannon, received the majority of the vote needed for an outright win during the June 28 primaries.
Mullin currently represents Oklahoma’s 2nd district, a position that he has held since 2013. Shannon served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 2006 to 2014. The two outpaced 11 other candidates. The winner will face former Rep. Kendra Horn in November and either of the Republicans would be the only Native American in the Senate.
With Mullin seeking the Senate seat, his House district is up for grabs and no one was able to win the GOP nomination in initial primary voting. State Rep. Avery Frix and former state Sen. John Brecheen advanced to the runoff and the winner will compete with Democrat Naomi Andrews in the general election.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.