Unfit to Print: GOP Unveils Plan To Hold Senate As CNN Data Guru Hands Them Major Lifeline
Plus: CBS's anti-ICE spin, the Charlie Kirk Files, & more
Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.
The Senate GOP is sharing its midterm spending plan, the Daily Caller News Foundation has the “Charlie Kirk Files,” the new governor of Virginia’s approval rating is tanking, and more in today’s newsletter.
GOP’S MIDTERM GAME PLAN
Senate Republicans are preparing to spend big money in a bid to protect their majority this midterm cycle.
The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) is dropping an initial $342 million ad buy across eight Senate races, the group with ties to Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced Monday.
Here’s the list of races they’re targeting (and the candidate they’ll likely be backing):
Ohio — Sen. Jon Husted: $79 million
North Carolina — Former RNC Chair Michael Whatley: $71 million
Michigan — Former Rep. Mike Rogers: $45 million
Georgia — Ongoing competitive primary with Rep. Mike Collins leading: $44 million
Maine — Sen. Susan Collins: $42 million
Iowa — Rep. Ashley Hinson: $29 million
New Hampshire — Former Sen. John Sununu: $17 million
Alaska — Sen. Dan Sullivan: $15 million
This is SLF’s largest investment ever in Michigan and Georgia and the largest since 2016 in New Hampshire. It’s also notable that this is the first time SLF has spent on offense in three swing states held by Democrats (Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire).
The ad buy comes amid positive polling signs from CNN’s data analyst, Harry Enten. Enten said Monday that Republicans are overperforming historic midterm trends.
In 2018, the last time a Republican president was in office during a midterm cycle, Democrats held an eight-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. In 2006, they held an 11-point lead.
This time around, Democrats only lead by five points on the generic ballot.
“You’d make the argument Democrats should be way ahead, and they’re just only sort of slightly ahead … I think five points is enough to take back the House, but in the Senate, five points is almost certainly not enough if you apply it to the Senate map,” Enten explained.
THE CHARLIE KIRK FILES
The Daily Caller News Foundation received heavily redacted documents in response to a records request from Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
The DCNF requested UVU Police Chief Jeff Long’s personal communications related to Kirk’s death and received 50 documents, many of which feature large black boxes over redacted info, like names, communications, and even photos of campus renovations following the assassination.
In an email sent the day before Kirk’s death, an unnamed person sent an email indicating that someone had asked to “get a message to Charlie Kirk.”
You can find the full report and link to the batch of files here.
SPANBERGER TANKING
Democrat Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating is plummeting after just a few months on the job.
A Washington Post-Schar poll found that 47 percent of voters approve of the job Spanberger is doing, while 46 percent disapprove. Spanberger’s approval rating is 13 points below the average for Virginia governors since the 1990s, at least in Post polling, and she has the lowest early-term net approval among her eight predecessors.
Spanberger ran as a “moderate,” but despite her 15-point victory in November 2025, Virginians are deeply divided on her success thus far.
Shortly after taking office, Democrat majorities in the House of Delegates and State Senate introduced a series of bills to increase taxes, limit gun ownership, and institute soft-on-crime policies. Spanberger personally rolled back a policy requiring state police to cooperate with ICE detainers for illegal immigrants.
The results have been stark: 75% of Fairfax County murders this year were allegedly committed by illegals.
Spanberger’s relative unpopularity precedes a major gerrymandering vote. Democrats in Virginia are trying to redraw the state’s congressional map to increase their representation in Congress from six seats to ten seats, leaving Republicans with just one seat.
The ballot initiative, which Virginians will vote on April 21, claims that the new map will be “temporarily adopted” to “restore fairness in the upcoming elections” until after the 2030 census.
Republican Del. Wren Williams sought to amend the ballot initiative’s language to be less skewed toward the Democrats’ position, but the Democrat majority blocked him.
CBS’ ICE Spin
CBS scored an interview with the parents of Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old whose story was used to propel anti-ICE narratives. Liam was briefly kept in the custody of ICE after his father, an illegal immigrant, ran away from ICE agents and Liam during an immigration enforcement operation.
“What I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien and then when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran,” Vice President JD Vance said at the time of the incident, which took place in Minnesota.
In the CBS interview, both of Ramos’s parents speak in Spanish. Adrian Conejo Arias, Liam’s father, denies fleeing from agents and abandoning Liam. Yet Erika Ramos, Liam’s mother, admits that she did not let Liam into her house when he knocked on the door because she was scared of being detained by officers.
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