Over the course of 2024, AMAC Newsline has worked to bring our readers informative and engaging content on the biggest stories driving conversations in everything from politics and economics to pop culture and foreign affairs. While we always base our analysis on the facts, we have also sought to provide unique and insightful perspectives on what storylines to follow. Here are 13 big stories that kept AMAC Newsline readers on the cutting edge of the key developments that shaped this year.
1. Trump Wins Big
Leading up to Election Day, most legacy media outlets were predicting either a comfortable Harris victory or a slim Electoral College win for Donald Trump.
But in early October, Newsline’s Barry Casselman picked up on subtle signs that Trump not only had an advantage, but a commanding one. “As Election Day approaches, it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain the fiction that the race is close, especially with non-establishment media and pollsters publishing their starkly different numbers,” Casselman wrote. “If the reported public polls, already in their countdown mode, continue to reveal a widening gap between the parties, this year’s election will not be that close.”
Over the final weeks of the race, that is exactly what occurred – Trump closed the polling gap with Harris and then comfortably won the popular vote on November 5. Far from a slim victory, Trump also swept all seven swing states and won a 312-226 landslide in the Electoral College.
2. Early Vote Numbers Were Bad Sign for Kamala Harris
As the first early vote totals trickled in during the last week of October, Newsline’s Walter Samuel saw worrying signs for the Kamala Harris campaign.
“If Kamala Harris was viewed as a second Obama among the African American community,” Samuel wrote, “we would expect African American voters to show up as soon as they could in order to show their support. This has not happened.”
Samuel was correct in his assessment of deeper problems for Harris. Trump made significant gains among Black voters – and Black men in particular – that helped him carry the swing states. Predictions of a brewing Black revolt against Democrats, largely dismissed by the legacy media, were indeed legitimate, and AMAC readers got the inside track on how that development might affect the race for the White House.
3. Joe Biden Was Always Doomed
President Biden didn’t officially drop out of the 2024 election until July 21, but the signs of his doom were there far earlier than that. Exactly five months earlier, on February 21, AMAC Newsline’s Andrew Shirley speculated that Biden’s presidency was in a “terminal decline.”
“With less than nine months to go until Election Day,” Shirley wrote, “Democrats’ desperate efforts to reverse Joe Biden’s flagging poll numbers have shown few signs of success, and it increasingly appears as if the embattled president is in the midst of a terminal collapse in public support.”
In May, Newsline’s Aaron Flanigan provided an update on the situation, comparing Biden to a “young lover trying to avoid getting dumped.” The Democrat Party vultures circling around Biden, Flanigan argued, were the reason why Biden’s team felt compelled to push for an early June debate with Trump – a decision that ironically sealed the fate of Biden’s re-election bid.
The manner and suddenness with which Biden withdrew from the race was indeed a surprise. But in hindsight, the inevitability of his demise was never in question.
4. Biden’s Extremism, Not His Age, Was Always Democrats’ Main Problem
Following Biden’s cataclysmic debate performance, the Democrat establishment and corporate media, after unashamedly covering up Biden’s cognitive decline for years, moved to force him out of the race.
But in doing so the liberal establishment ignored that Biden’s age was only the final nail in his coffin – it was not the coffin itself.
As Newsline’s Aaron Flanigan wrote weeks before Biden dropped out, “While most left-wing pundits and Democrat officials have claimed that the reason for Biden’s historic unpopularity is his age and strikingly senile appearance, in reality, voters first began turning away from Biden in droves because he faithfully adopted the modern Democrat Party’s extremist progressive agenda.”
This analysis proved to be exactly correct. Though Democrats would indeed replace Biden with Kamala Harris, alleviating concerns about running a man in a serious state of cognitive decline, they could not run away from Biden’s record of radical left-wing policies.
Though Biden was not on the ballot on November 5, his faithful implementation of the modern Democrat Party’s extreme left-wing agenda went a long way toward sinking Kamala Harris.
5. Drones Were a Major Looming National Security Threat
The country’s military and political leadership would have done well to keep up to date with AMAC Newsline this year. Before panic about unidentified drones violating military airspace and looming over major cities swept the country this December, Ben Solis warned back in June that drones are “America’s most urgent emerging national security threat.”
He specifically warned that drone technologies possessed by American adversaries like China and Russia now “outmatch our defense systems” and that “American critical infrastructure and military defenses lack adequate protection against them.”
Those warnings have now proven prescient as Washington scrambles to respond to drones terrorizing American citizens.
6. JD Vance Wins the Veepstakes
Once Trump locked up the Republican nomination earlier this year, Newsline’s Shane Harris compiled a list of the top contenders to be Trump’s vice presidential pick.
One of the names he identified was freshman Ohio Senator JD Vance – then thought to be a relative longshot for the job. But, as Harris wrote, “Vance’s firm grasp of populist policies, molded by his upbringing in a blue-collar rust belt town in southwest Ohio, could make him especially appealing as a vice-presidential candidate as Trump looks to retake Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania this year.”
Vance indeed became the nominee and crisscrossed the Rust Belt in the final months of the race. Trump expanded his 2020 margin in Vance’s home state of Ohio and swept Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
7. Republicans Flip WV, PA, MT, and OH Senate Seats
Back in February, Alan Jamison zoomed in on three key Senate races that would likely determine if Republicans could flip control of the U.S. Senate.
As he wrote, Democrat Joe Manchin’s retirement meant Republicans were heavily favored to win his seat in West Virginia, bringing the chamber to a 50-50 tie. Given that there were no other truly endangered Republican incumbents, Jamison predicted, control of the Senate “will likely have to come through ousting at least one of the Democrat incumbents in Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), or Montana (Jon Tester).”
Moreover, Jamison continued, all three of these incumbents were particularly vulnerable after having rubber-stamped President Biden’s unpopular agenda.
Both predictions proved spot on. Those three Democrat-held seats were indeed the likeliest to flip, as they were the only other seats that changed hands. Republicans emerged with a 53-47 majority.
8. Democrats’ Anti-Christian Bias Was a Major Factor in 2024 Elections
For months leading up to November 5, various AMAC Newsline writers predicted that Democrats’ pattern of open hostility toward Christians and Catholics would be a major factor in determining the outcomes of key contests throughout the country.
In May, Newsline’s Aaron Flanigan wrote that Democrats’ “appalling record of anti-Catholicism” was being seriously underestimated as a factor in the 2024 election.
Flanigan also reported extensively on Kamala Harris’s snub of the annual Al Smith charity dinner, a decision which sparked a flood of negative headlines and even a series of two-minute ads in battleground states highlighting Harris’s record of anti-Catholic bigotry.
Those forecasts proved accurate, as Trump won the national Catholic vote 56 to 41 percent – a ten-point improvement over his 2020 performance. Trump also once again won a large majority of evangelical voters, paving the way for his return to the White House.
9. Young People Revolt Against Kamala Harris
When Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as Democrats nominee, many media pundits projected that it would solve the party’s polling woes with young voters. But Newsline’s Ben Solis plainly predicted that Harris “won’t end Democrats’ youth vote problem.”
“Polling data and societal trends in recent years suggest that Biden’s struggles with young people are not unique to him, but are instead just one manifestation of a brewing rejection of left-wing ideology among many American youth – particularly young men,” Solis wrote.
Exit poll data proved Solis correct, as Harris won just 54 percent of voters under 30. Since 2008, winning Democrat candidates have received at least 60 percent support from that demographic. Moreover, the gender gap was especially pronounced, with Trump winning 56 percent of men under 30.
10. Conservatives Turn the Tide Against DEI
Back in April, Newsline’s Andrew Shirley wrote about “growing signs that conservatives are turning the tide in the battle against so-called ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ policies.”
That trend has only accelerated since then, with universities and major companies reversing course on DEI. In early December, the University of Michigan – a trailblazer in the DEI space – announced a “broader shift” away from its DEI policies. Conservative activist Robby Starbuck also led a successful campaign this summer forcing multiple major brands to abandon their corporate DEI mandates.
11. Supreme Court Strikes Down Chevron Deference
As the Supreme Court considered two administrative law cases back in February, Katie Sullivan reported for Newsline that the High Court “looks set to finally rein in the power of unelected federal bureaucrats and restore the Constitution’s separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.”
Specifically, Sullivan explained, comments made by the justices during oral arguments for Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo indicated the Court would likely overturn the legal doctrine known as “Chevron deference,” a precedent set by Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984). In essence, Chevron deference requires courts to defer to unelected federal bureaucrats’ interpretation of laws passed by Congress.
In July the Supreme Court did just as Sullivan predicted, overturning Chevron and checking the power of the executive bureaucracy.
12. Thune Replaces McConnell as Senate GOP Leader
Following Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he would be stepping down from his post as leader of the Republican Senate caucus, Newsline’s Shane Harris highlighted three names as the most likely to replace him: South Dakota’s John Thune, Texas’s John Cornyn, and Wyoming’s John Barrasso.
While a few other names emerged as potential candidates over the course of the year, ultimately Thune took the top post – but not without some controversy. As Harris also predicted, Thune faced serious pushback over his decision to back Tim Scott’s primary challenge to President-elect Donald Trump.
13. Virginia Was in Play
Back in May, Newsline’s Shane Harris took a dive into the polling in Virginia, pointing out a number of troubling signs for Biden, then still running for re-election.
“Multiple polls have now found that Trump has good reason to believe he can compete in the Old Dominion,” Harris wrote. “Even if Trump does not manage to secure a victory in Virginia this November, forcing Democrats to commit resources to a state Biden won by 10 points four years ago would still be a win for the former president in the broader landscape of the race.”
Biden wouldn’t end up being atop the Democrat ticket, but Virginia was indeed in play. Kamala Harris won the state by about half the margin that Biden won four years ago – an ominous sign for how the rest of the night would go for the vice president.
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As the calendar flips over to 2025, AMAC Newsline will be ready to continue bringing our readers coverage of the storylines and inside scoops that the mainstream media won’t touch. Stay tuned!
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