Political and environmental activist Paula Jean Swearengin won the West Virginia Democratic primary Tuesday evening.
Swearengin edged out former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda and attorney Richie Robb.

Swearengin will now face-off with Republican incumbent Senator Shelley Moore Capito in November.

"What's humbled me the most is a lot of West Virginias that had to move out of state because there were not opportunities here, they have worked on our campaign because they just wanted to come home, so it's been really incredible," Swearengin said. "I'm really humbled."

No doubt he’ll claim it is fake news, but a new CNN general election poll has President Trump lagging a massive 14 percentage points behind Joe Biden, at 41 percent to the former VP’s 55 percent. The poll of 1,259 adults also saw a significant majority of Americans surveyed say racism is a big problem in the country today and that the criminal-justice system in America favors whites over blacks.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaigns have reached an agreement that will see the Biden campaign voluntarily appoint some Sanders supporters to serve as delegates at the 2020 Democratic convention, according to a joint memo from the campaigns Thursday morning.

“While Senator Sanders is no longer actively seeking the nomination, the Biden campaign feels strongly that it is in the best interest of the party and the effort to defeat Donald Trump in November to come to an agreement regarding these issues that will ensure representation of Sanders supporters and delegate candidates, both on the floor and in committees,” the memo states.

California, during a pandemic, would be an unlikely place and time for a GOP upset. After all, Republicans haven't picked up a seat in the state since 1998 and most voters aren't enamored with President Trump's handling of the crisis. In fact, Trump's approval rating has barely budged since November 2018, when Democrat Katie Hill ousted GOP Rep. Steve Knight by seven points in California's 25th district.

But a month out from the May 12 all vote-by-mail special election to replace Hill, both parties view the race between Democratic state Assemblywoman Christy Smith and Republican former Navy fighter pilot Mike Garcia as a nailbiter.

This is a rare case in which both parties ended up with solid, impressive candidates who are straight out of central casting for the district. The 25th CD takes in northern Los Angeles County, including Santa Clarita, and has recently trended blue: four years after voting for Mitt Romney, it voted for Hillary Clinton 50 percent to 43 percent and registered Democrats now outnumber Republicans 38 percent to 32 percent.

To put Garcia's challenge in perspective, Republicans don't hold a single House seat in the country where Clinton received an absolute majority of the vote. But the 25th CD, with its reputation as a bedroom community for police and firefighters, has an independent streak and a considerable defense/aerospace industry. And so far, Garcia's biography appears to be resonating beyond the GOP base.

When the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, about half of the U.S. population said COVID-19 was a "major threat" to the health of the country, but more Democrats felt this way than Republicans, according to polling from Pew Research Center.

While the partisan divide still exists, new polling from Pew Research out Thursday shows that across the board, on both ends of the political spectrum, more Americans now consider it a "major threat" to health as the pandemic continues to rapidly spread across the United States.

I have news that many Americans are facing right now: my husband John has the coronavirus. We just got the test results at 7 a.m. this morning. While I cannot see him and he is of course cut off from all visitors, our daughter Abigail and I are constantly calling and texting and emailing. We love him very much and pray for his recovery. He is exhausted and sick but a very strong and resilient person.

John started to feel sick when I was in Minnesota and he was in Washington D.C. and like so many others who have had the disease, he thought it was just a cold. Yet he immediately quarantined himself just in case and stopped going to his job teaching in Baltimore. He kept having a temperature and a bad, bad cough and when he started coughing up blood he got a test and a chest X-ray and they checked him into a hospital in Virginia because of a variety of things including very low oxygen levels which haven’t really improved. He now has pneumonia and is on oxygen but not a ventilator.