2026 Midterm Elections

A one-time biographer for President Donald Trump has predicted a shock Cabinet firing in the near future, and all for a surprising reason, which he said was "absolutely fatal": actually being competent at his job.

Michael Wolff is a reporter and author known for his extensive coverage of Trump over the years, including several books about the chaos of his first administration, based on his contacts within the administration. He maintains these connections now, for the second administration, and in the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he argued that his long-term exposure to the president has given him a good sense of how things will proceed in the near future.

This included a prediction about the next firing to come from the Trump administration, a top official Wolff said is making the president look bad by comparison.

"I have watched Trump operate now for way, way too long—10 years in which... Donald Trump has dominated my life, and... because he does the same thing over and over and over again, [I have become] pretty good at being able to chart the Donald Trump course," Wolff explained.

He continued: "I think he’s going to fire Marco Rubio. I mean, Rubio has now become the standout figure in this administration."

Rubio, the Secretary of State, has cleared the low bar among Trump officials for competency, and according to Wolff, is "the only guy who seems to show up for work every day and to sit down at a desk and to be capable of addressing what’s on his desk at any given time." The competency and prominence within the administration have led to increasingly loud chatter about Rubio potentially securing the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, over Vice President JD Vance, making him the de facto successor at the head of the MAGA movement.

While Wolff did not write off the possibility of Rubio running in 2028, potentially with Trump's support, he still argued that the secretary will not be in his role much longer, because of the president's fear that somebody else looks like they are in charge behind the scenes.

"In Trumpworld, this is absolutely fatal. When you become the contrast gainer against Donald Trump, you’re finished," Wolff said. "When it begins to look like you are the person who is really in charge, you’re done."

Wolff likened the situation to the one in 20217, when former adviser Steve Bannon got the axe shortly after a Time Magazine cover proclaimed him to be the "Great Manipulator" in Trump's White House.

“You cannot do this around Donald Trump,” Wolff continued. “He just won’t let you. He’ll kill you — just chop off your head.”

He further predicted that Rubio's ouster will come prior to the midterms, as part of an effort from Trump to "change the subject."

The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke with Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg on his morning podcast about the challenges President Donald Trump and the GOP face in ending the Iran war.

As the Iran war drags on past its 60-day limit and the Strait of Hormuz's closure sends fuel prices soaring, Trump appears to believe everything will suddenly end. Somehow, Iran will finally agree to the U.S.'s demands despite refusing over the past several years since Trump left the treaty.

"They also have said that they think the war is just going to end magically, right?" Rosenberg said. "Just the way that COVID ended. He kept saying COVID is just going to end one day. The war is just going to end, and things are going to snap back to the way they were. And I think that is the widespread belief in the Republican Party now, that this is a temporary blip."

The reality, he continued, is that inflation data now show it has surpassed Americans' wages. Inflation not only went up, U.S. wholesale inflation, known as the Producer Price Index, increased to 6 percent, April numbers show, according to the Associated Press. It makes it the highest increase since December 2022.

"Remember, energy inflation is different than food inflation or different than other inflation because it affects anything that is transported. That also goes up in price," Rosenberg explained. "So, it’s like a multiplier through the economy. It’s not just a singular pillar of inflation."

The impact will likely be on food prices, he added.

"Trump and the Republicans, I think, are in a place of extraordinary denial and magical thinking about the depth of the hole that he’s digging for them right now because of the war," said Rosenberg.

All of it will have a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections.

"You can win an election just on voters being sick of the party in power and have the election that you want to have. And we’ve been having test cases around the election in all these special elections and other elections over the last 16 months. And things have been going very well for Democrats," Rosenberg noted.

Trump is in China this week, and one military expert said that Trump's goal is to get Xi Jinping to help him end the war since China purchases so much oil from Iran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Trump should "realize that the person you're talking to is propping up Russia and Iran." He claimed that if China wanted, it could have more influence than any other nation in ending the war.

Trump told reporters before leaving for China, "No, I don't think we need any help with Iran."

A new CNN deep-dive poll showed Americans are fed up with rising costs, and it might be too late for Republicans to fix the problem. With GOP leaders mired in internal fights over a gas tax holiday, ballooning Iran war spending and a controversial $1 billion taxpayer-funded add-on tied to Trump’s White House ballroom, lawmakers are scrambling for a quick fix while voters blame the party in power. The result has been a lots of posturing, few concrete solutions and growing doubt that Congress can deliver meaningful relief before the midterms.

Politico reported Wednesday morning that the GOP is embroiled in "internal battles on Capitol Hill ... laying bare why Republicans are struggling to do anything about it."

Democrats proposed a gas tax holiday, which President Donald Trump indicated he supports. The problem, as one CNN panel discussed Tuesday, is that it is exceptionally rare that any legislation can pass the House and Senate despite Republicans holding the majority in both chambers. The second challenge is that Trump has been promising "checks" for Americans struggling to get by amid the crisis. None of those promises has come to fruition, CNN's Audi Cornish recalled.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) isn't certain if he supports the gas tax holiday, saying there could be “unintended consequences."

“Obviously, we all want to see gas prices come back down, and when the Iran conflict is resolved, they will, and they’ll come down quickly. I don’t think anybody disputes that," said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.)

“You’re seeing the president work really hard to try to get this resolved,” he added. “Hopefully it’s soon.”

The final piece of legislation that could pass Congress is the funding for Trump's mass deportation program through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Republicans now want to add on $1 billion in funding for Trump's ballroom under the guise that it is for "security."

Speaking to Republicans on Tuesday, the Secret Service said that the funding is more about security and training than for the ballroom itself. It's unclear why those funds weren't requested from the Secret Service when the House and Senate passed the Homeland Security funding bill on April 30 or in the 2026 budget bill passed last summer.

Only about $220 million will be used on the ballroom itself for bullet-resistant glass and the ventilation system.

House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told Politico that he doesn't doubt Secret Service wants more money, but he wanted to “reserve judgment” on the $1 billion ballroom request. He wants a more “itemized” list.

“I hope it’s narrowly tailored to getting [immigration enforcement] funded and restoring the safety and security of the American people,” Arrington said. He has previously said he wants affordability in the bill.

Things got worse on Tuesday when Defense Department officials revealed that the budget for the Iran War went up from $25 billion to $29 billion. Both sides of the political aisle have requested a line-item list of what all of that is going to.

“I don’t know that the Congress is doing a whole lot — that’s the real issue,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Politico. “My advice to Congress would be, it might be good for us to do something on cost of living. … It seems like voters are making it very clear that they want some relief.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters the optics of the ballroom against high fuel costs is "not good."

Republicans believe that 2025's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" was more than enough to help with the affordability crisis.

Senate Republicans proposed increasing permits for oil drilling to lower fuel costs. It's an idea that Trump proposed in 2024, promising Americans that within one year, he would cut their utility bills in half. The problem with fuel prices is that oil is a globally traded commodity. The larger problem isn't domestic, it's an international factor involving the Strait of Hormuz's closure. At the same time, permits might help create more drilling, but it doesn't begin immediately. It takes time to drill for oil and natural gas, refine it, and transport it. The U.S. is currently producing more energy than ever before and prices are still increasing.

“I’d just be happy if they do something,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Politico on Tuesday. He said the problem is “one or two” House Republicans.

“They’ve been holding it up since God was a baby. Their reasons for holding it up run from substantive to ‘my dog ate my homework,'" Kennedy said.

Trump was asked about the high costs Americans are suffering under due to the Iran war. The reporter questioned whether Trump was considering America's financial situation when he's thinking about solutions on the war.

“I don’t think about America’s financial situation,” Trump said. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump's ability to sway the 2026 midterms asserted itself when, on May 5, at least five of eight GOP primary challengers he endorsed unseated incumbents in Indiana State Legislature races. The incumbents Trump was angry with will not make it to the general election, but many Trump critics are warning that his ability to affect Republican primaries and his ability to affect general elections are two very different things. And according to Semafor, party insiders fear that maintaining Republican control of Congress isn't as a high a priority for Trump as it is for GOP lawmakers.

In Semafor, journalists Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett report, "Trump is still facing questions from within the GOP about how determined he is to keep control of Congress, as he seeks longer-term, legacy-defining foreign policy achievements amid declining approval ratings."

A Republican insider, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Semafor that Trump is "certainly not" motivated when it comes to the midterms "in the same way the rest of the party" is — adding, "His mission goes so far beyond one election cycle or one midterm.”

Although Trump is "increasingly engaged in the midterms," Talcott and Everett report, Republican insiders worry that his "choices won't always align with congressional Republicans' calculations" — and Trump pattern appears to be "trying to shape his legacy" rather than "anything else."

Trump, according to the insiders Semafor interviewed, appears to be focused on what benefits him personally rather than what benefits the Republican Party on the whole — including not losing either or both branches of Congress to Democrats in November. And he is being quite "selective" with his endorsements, Talcott and Everett note. For example, Trump has yet to make an endorsement in Texas' GOP U.S. Senate primary.

"Republicans might bristle at Trump choosing to stay out of certain races," the Semafor reporters observe, "but while the U.S. president has a strong hold over his party, he's not infallible. And he has his reasons for being so selective. In Texas or Georgia, it's not clear he can orchestrate a result like he pulled off in Kentucky. And the calculus is even more challenging in bluer states."

While Republicans have managed to make inroads in the Congressional maps for U.S. House of Representatives races, the U.S. Senate map is growing increasingly worse for the GOP.

Speaking to "Morning Joe" on Wednesday morning, David Drucker addressed his recent Bloomberg piece, in which he recalled the 2018 elections during President Donald Trump's first term. In that case, Democrats gained 40 seats. However, that was before GOP states were allowed to redraw and gerrymander congressional lines and blue Virginia was not.

"But the Republican majority grew by two seats [in the Senate] because they picked up some seats in red states. So, even though the president wasn't doing well in red states, he was doing just fine," Drucker said. "And that's how this election was unfolding. Democrats are looking very good in the House still. Republicans [are] looking very good in the Senate except for a couple of places."

Things are changing as problems continue in the U.S. economy.

"What we are beginning to detect in my conversations with Republicans, which — who would, you know, to be clear, prefer this doesn't happen. Is that the playing field on the Senate map is becoming perilous for Republicans," Drucker continued. "Now, the reason why Democrats shouldn't jump for joy is because if they're going to have a good election on the Senate side, it's going to be in defined red territory."

Outside of Maine and North Carolina, gains must be made in reliably red states like Iowa, Ohio and others.

Co-host Joe Scarborough asked specifically about long-shot states like Iowa and Texas, which he called "fool's gold."

Drucker explained that Texas will be heavily contested, but agreed that it isn't as likely. Where things could change is in the Republican runoff on May 26.

What he called "super interesting" is Alaska. Drucker said that it's been a spot that Republicans have been concerned about since 2024. Former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat, has already won the statewide race for the at-large congressional seat. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) appears to "know that," with a voting record that has evolved recently. He votes with the Trump administration 100 percent of the time, VoteHub showed.

Fellow Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted with Trump 90.8 percent of the time. Her numbers have been lower in the previous administration, closer to a 78 percent alignment with Trump. Whereas Sullivan has never dropped below 91 percent alignment.

COLUMBIA — The Senate on Tuesday rejected a push to redraw the state’s congressional lines just weeks before the primaries, with GOP leaders saying it’s legally unnecessary and wrong for South Carolina.

Senators’ 29-17 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority approval needed to proceed. Officially, senators refused to add redistricting to a resolution setting the rules for what the Legislature can do after the session ends Thursday.

That’s despite pressure from President Donald Trump, who called GOP senators personally over the last week and publicly prodded the majority caucus through his social media platform.

“I’m watching closely, along with all Republicans across the Country who are counting on their Elected Leaders to use every Legal and Constitutional authority they have to stop the Radical Left Democrats from destroying our Country,” the president wrote Monday night on Truth Social.

But Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said legislators need to stand up for what’s best for South Carolinians. And an overhaul that postpones congressional primaries and discards absentee ballots already cast — especially from military members overseas — to maybe create an all-GOP delegation will ultimately backfire, said the Edgefield Republican.

Overall, the confusion will lower voter turnout for a second set of primaries, he said, while motivating angry Democrats to vote in force in November.

Plus, he said, South Carolina shouldn’t just take orders from Washington, no matter who’s in the White House.

“The states are sovereign independent creatures,” Massey said, giving his colleagues a history lesson of the country’s founding and the rebel nature of South Carolinians.

“I’ve got too much Southern in my blood. I’ve got too much resistance in my heritage” to just rush through a map not created by South Carolinians, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto agreed it’s not right to take a “map someone else gave us,” which will only exacerbate political divisions. The Orangeburg Democrat called it unfair to voters and the congressional candidates who may suddenly live in a different district.

Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, noted that early voting starts in just 14 days. Other states that have changed their voting lines for the midterm elections did so months before people went to the polls.

“It’s almost impossible for us to pull this off, not without a tremendous amount of error added in,” he said. “What if we do pull it off? What do we have? Those who crafted this map had no interest whatsoever — they could care less about our communities.”

The entire effort started a week ago with a House GOP Caucus meeting. On Wednesday, the House voted along party lines to add redistricting to the off-session rules.

Legislation was fast-tracked at the president’s request.

After the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, the White House urged Republican leaders in both chambers to look at the ruling and South Carolina’s map.

As Massey spoke, shouting in the Statehouse lobby briefly got security’s attention. About 10 people paraded through yelling, “This is what democracy looks like. Don’t rig our map.” They were escorted down the steps and outside without issue.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee took up legislation on the next steps — bills that would delay the congressional primaries until Aug. 18 and advance the White House-endorsed map.

That map, which was first circulated by the House GOP last Thursday, uses “political data” to create seven GOP seats, said the map’s author, Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

According to the trust’s writers, the overhauled map gives Republicans the advantage in every district, with the smallest spread at 11 percentage points in the overhauled 6th District.

That’s the one safe seat for a Democrat, held by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn since 1992. The map would draw him out of the district he’s represented for 34 years.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin said senators are being asked to just trust the map does as advertised, with no record or testimony to back it up.

“What you think you’re getting may not be what you get,” said the Myrtle Beach Republican, who ultimately voted “yes” anyway.

House hearing

Almost everyone who testified about the House bills opposed the effort.

The exceptions were two Republicans running for governor: Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Evette, who touts her alignment with Trump, told legislators they need to do what the president’s asking.

Trump “has made his expectations unmistakable. There is no more time for hesitation or half measures,” she said. “We must finish this redistricting work now, by any means necessary.”

Wilson, in his comments, decried gerrymandering along racial lines: “But partisan lines are a very different thing.”

“I know there’s a lot of disagreement, probably a lot of frustration and anger, but I do think this is a cause worth taking up,” he added.

While the House proposal would delay primaries for South Carolina’s seven congressional seats, it would leave contests for U.S. Senate, state House and statewide elections on schedule for June 9, with runoffs two weeks later.

Holding a second set of primaries in August could also cost taxpayers more than $3 million, when factoring in almost-certain runoffs. That does not include spending by county elections offices. It also doesn’t include the redistricting process itself.

The House bill originally suggested an Aug. 11 primary. But a House panel voted Tuesday morning to bump that back a week to give the elections agency time to retool its databases and mail out overseas ballots the required 45 days in advance.

Parties would have to re-open filing for candidates between June 1 and June 5. Should a runoff be necessary, it would take place Sept. 1.

Even so, elections Director Conway Belangia warned everything would have to go exactly right, otherwise “staff would have to work probably 24 hours a day to meet the deadlines.”

Meanwhile, nearly 8,247 total absentee ballots have been mailed and 354 of those have already been turned in, according to the election commission. And early voting begins May 26.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

A Texas Republican was criticized on Tuesday for a "desperate act" of pandering to President Donald Trump after failing to secure his midterm endorsement, leading some to suspect his campaign is about to crash and burn.

Sen. John Cornyn has been running for reelection to his seat in Texas, and has faced stiff primary competition from the state's scandal-plagued attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has come after the senator from the right and positioned himself as the more heavily MAGA-aligned candidate. Paxton has also been seen as the candidate that Democrats would have an easier time beating in the general election, creating a notably tense primary standoff that will go to a runoff on May 26.

So far, Trump has declined to endorse either candidate, with some in the MAGA sphere urging him to back an ally like Paxton, while others have pushed him to back the safer choice in Cornyn. With polling and momentum slipping away from the senator, Cornyn on Tuesday announced a proposal that seemed tailor-made to curry Trump's favor: naming a highway in Texas after him.

"I am proud to introduce legislation to rename US Highway 287 as Interstate 47 in honor of our 47th President [Donald Trump]," Cornyn posted to his official X account. "My bill will upgrade one of our nation’s longest highways to a future interstate and save more than $5 BILLION in travel costs, all while honoring the most effective and influential president of our lifetime. Texas is Trump Country & this bill cements [Trump's] legacy by designating nearly 1,800 miles of open road to forever be known as the Trump Interstate."

The move was swiftly roasted as one of obvious desperation by numerous other X users.

"The internal polling must be real ugly to pull out this desperate act," Daily Kos writer Emily C. Singer wrote in a post to X.

"Things are getting desperate in the Texas primary runoff, it seems," VoteBeat editorial director Jessica Huseman added in her own post.

"Cornyn is increasingly desperate for an endorsement that seems out of reach," writer Drew Savicki posted.

Rolando Garcia, a state-level Texas Republican, roasted Cornyn's proposal by sharing a popular meme featuring actor Steve Buscemi, alongside the text, "How do you do, fellow MAGA?"

Reporter Gabe Fleisher cited overwhelming polling statistics to dismantle Cornyn's attempt at pandering to the president.

"Per Pew, only 9 percent (!) of Americans support naming things for Trump while he’s in office," Fleisher wrote. "But, of course, all that matters to Cornyn right now are the opinions of Texas GOP primary voters — or, more specifically, that of Trump himself, whose endorsement could seal Cornyn’s fate."

In deep red South Carolina, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn was fired elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. And on March 12, the liberal congressman announced that he plans to seek an 18th two-year term. But according to Never Trump conservative Bill Kristol, Clyburn could lose his seat thanks to redistricting by the South Carolina State Legislature.

Kristol, in The Bulwark, argues that MAGA Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump are badly distorting the issues at play in South Carolina's 6th Congressional District. Pro-Trump Republicans, according to Kristol, view redistricting as a revolt against the excesses of "woke" culture while failing to see the value of having a congressional district that is 47 percent Black.

"This week, the South Carolina Legislature is debating whether to redraw its congressional map to try to carve up the district and eliminate the seat of its one black congressman, James Clyburn," Kristol explains. "Why, you might ask, is this necessary? After all, South Carolina's delegation now consists of six white people and one black person. You might think that the 63 percent of the state's population who are white are amply represented. You might think it reasonable that the 26 percent of the population who are Black should have at least one representative. No. Six out of seven is not enough. One out of seven is too much."

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) is arguing that Clyburn "does not represent the rest of South Carolina, which is conservative."

"Those 47 percent African-Americans in Clyburn's district?" Kristol writes. "They aren't real South Carolinians, you see. It's the rest of South Carolina that deserves all the representation. Donald Trump agrees…. In Trump's America, having an all-white delegation for a state that is 25 percent black means that 'everything will be fine.' Getting rid of the one Black member of Congress out of seven from South Carolina is 'leveling the playing field.'"

The Never Trump conservative continues, "Some naïve Trump defenders think — or some faux-naïve Trump defenders pretend to think — that what Trump and his movement are about is getting rid of the woke excesses of the last decade or so. But James Clyburn has been in Congress since 1993. He was the first Black representative from South Carolina since 1897. It is the America of 1897 that Trump, and Norman, and their Republican Party yearn for."

As President Donald Trump continues to flub his handling of the main issue currently motivating voters, CNN reported that "cracks are starting to show" in his own base, per the findings of their new poll, which found a notable decline in his support from Republicans.

During the Tuesday morning broadcast of CNN's News Central, host Katie Bolduan shared the findings from the network's latest poll on voter sentiments pertaining to the economy. The findings, she explained, reinforced the "deep anxiety" over the cost of living that voters have been venting about for months, much to Trump's annoyance, marking another blow to what was once considered his issue, the one many believe got him reelected in the first place.

"The numbers revealing a deep anxiety about affordability," Bolduan said. "That word and growing warning signs for President Trump. Seventy-three percent describing economic conditions right now, today, as poor in the country. That's not a good outlook on what was once considered, of course, President Trump's strongest issue. His approval rating on the economy has fallen to a new career low [of 30 percent]. Americans are worried, full stop are worried, full stop, worried about paying their bills, especially surprise ones."

Roughly two-thirds of the poll respondents said that they could not "comfortably afford" an emergency expense of $1,000.

"On this most central issue of just being able to pay for everyday life, cracks are starting to show among the president's base," she added.

"Me and my husband work 12-hour days, 5 to 6 days a week, and we have to decide if we're going to buy groceries or pay for gas," one respondent, a Republican woman in her 20s living in Ohio, told CNN.

"I don't know how anyone from my generation will ever do anything except rent," another respondent, a Republican man in his 20s living in Georgia, added.

CNN's Washington bureau chief, David Chalian, said that this "bleak" and "pessimistic" outlook for the economy has been holding steady for "five years running now," ever since the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"And even while some structural things of the economy are strong, people are not feeling it in terms of what they're paying and in terms of their feeling secure in their personal economy," Chalian explained. "You noted that a top-line approval number for Trump's handling of the economy, 30 percent approve. That is a record low across his entire time in public life. As you suggested, this used to be one of his strong suits. He used to outperform his approval rating on the issue of the economy.

He continued: "That is a low. And why this matters, economy and cost of living, 55 percent of respondents in our poll say that is the most important issue facing the country. Do you see here? Nothing else comes even close to it. This is where the majority of Americans are in terms of importance of issues in their mind."

Chalian showed a ranking of issues along with the percentage of respondent who called it their top issue. The economy topped the list at 55 percent, trailed distantly by concerns about the health of democracy at 19 percent. Other issues like immigration, healthcare and crime did not top two digits.

Chalian also noted that Trump had fallen below 50 percent approval in his own party for his handling of gas prices, something he was not able to recall ever happening before.

Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its decision. Then, despite pleas from Black voters and voting rights advocates, the white Republican legislators moved their meeting to another room without allowing the public in to watch, passed the new map out of committee, and enacted it within 24 hours.

The new map has eliminated Tennessee’s one remaining Democratic district around Memphis, a city of about 610,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are Black — by cracking it into three majority-white district, one stretching hundreds of miles. The map has also divided Nashville, another city with a Black majority, into five white-majority districts.

Jones described Tennessee house speaker Cameron Sexton as the “grand wizard in chief,” explaining that “that’s what they want to do. They want to create a process that is unfair and unequal.”

Other Southern states have joined Tennessee’s rush to redistrict.

Louisiana’s governor has ordered that the state’s ongoing congressional election be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge.

At Trump’s request, Alabama Republicans have approved legislation directing the governor to schedule new primary elections this year under a GOP-friendly map that would end districts represented by Black lawmakers, if courts lift an injunction on its redistricting.

The Mississippi legislature will soon convene in a Confederate-era capitol building that it hasn’t used in 100 years, presumably to eliminate the Democratic majority in the one Mississippi district held by a Black representative.

South Carolina’s Republican majority in the statehouse voted Wednesday to extend its legislative calendar, allowing time to consider whether they should eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-majority, Black-majority district, held by long-serving representative James Clyburn.

Florida was already in a special redistricting session when the Supreme Court announced its decision, enacting a congressional map for its 28 districts that packs Black and brown voters into four districts on the south Florida coast and Orlando, eliminating every other Democratic majority.

“We’re going backwards at warp speed,” Jones told me. “In just over a week, we’ve gone from the 1965 Voting Rights Act back to the era of Jim Crow.”

I asked him what he and other Black political leaders in the South were planning to do.

“There’ll be a lot of litigation,” he said, “but we can’t be optimistic with this Supreme Court.”

“So, what’s the strategy?”

“We need the biggest voter turnout in history this fall. Every Black person, every Brown person, every Democrat, everyone who cares about the moral soul of this nation has to vote for equal voting rights. Take over Congress. Increase our power in state legislatures. This is the only way to respond.”

“I’m with you,” I said, “but I really wonder whether that’s possible.”

“How about a new Freedom Summer?” Jones responded, with a smile. “A multi-racial force of young people fanning out across the South, registering voters, getting them to the polls, just like they did in 1964.”

“I remember. I lost a dear friend in Mississippi Freedom Summer.”

“I have no direct memory, of course,” Jones said. “I was born in 1995, thirty-one years after Freedom Summer. But the South is almost back to where it was then. So, yes, it’s possible. It’s got to be possible.”

I told him I’d share his idea with you, and ask you for your responses.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

With less than six months until the general election, and state primaries already well underway, you’d think that the rules of engagement for the 2026 midterms would be set by now. But two developments last week should quickly disabuse you of that notion.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Redistricting risks confusing voters and costing states millions

First up: Multiple states are plowing ahead with redrawing their congressional districts in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. As we reported in last week’s newsletter, the flurry of mid-decade redistricting has already diluted the voting power of millions of people. But there’s another consequence to redrawing maps specifically at this late juncture: It will throw primary elections that are actively underway into disarray, confusing voters, forcing election officials to scramble, and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

For example, after the Callais decision ruled Louisiana’s congressional map unconstitutional, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, quickly issued an emergency executive order suspending the state’s May 16 congressional primary for U.S. House candidates — even though voting had already started. Approximately 42,000 voters had already cast absentee ballots with those races on them.

Under Landry’s order, the rest of the primary will go ahead, but votes in those U.S. House races won’t count.

Legal challenges to his order are still pending, voters are confuzzled, and election officials are warning that adding a second primary election just for U.S. House elections will be expensive. “This election cost about $212,000 to $215,000, and so if we still go forward … and have to add the other closed party primary, that’s going to be more money,” Louis Perret, the Lafayette Parish clerk of court, said in an interview with KADN-TV. Perret estimated the statewide cost at around $8 million.

In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a new map on May 4, county election supervisors say they’re preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending voters updated information about their new districts and clarifying where they’ll be voting. Alabama has petitioned courts to let it use a previous version of its congressional map, which would require new primary elections this summer, and a state fiscal note attached to the legislation estimates that could cost $4.5 million over two fiscal years.

Tennessee, which enacted a new map on Thursday, also enacted a law that eliminated the requirement for counties to notify voters by mail when their precincts and polling places change, according to the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, though counties can still get reimbursed by the state if they choose to send the mailings. This would save money but leave voters responsible for figuring that out themselves. “When polling places or precincts are changed, more effort should be made to reach affected voters, not less,” the coalition wrote.

In Virginia, the state Supreme Court on Friday overturned the congressional map voters passed in a referendum late last month, citing problems with the process lawmakers followed in putting it on the ballot. That means the millions of dollars the state spent on the election was essentially for naught.

It does also mean that state and local election officials will avoid the “very, very time-consuming, incredibly detailed process” of assigning voters to the new districts while preparing to administer the upcoming August primary election, said Chris Piper, who was Virginia’s chief election official until 2022.

“In order to make those changes, it takes quite a lot of work,” he said.

The feds aren’t sure what to do with Trump’s mail voting executive order

Redistricting isn’t the only thing that could turn the midterms on their head. On March 31, President Donald Trump issued a second executive order on elections that would have given the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail ballots, which immediately drew legal challenges.

Democrats, voting rights groups, and states all filed lawsuits challenging the order. In a May 1 filing in a lawsuit consolidating some of those challenges, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuits and not issue a preliminary injunction blocking the order. That was no surprise, but more notable was their reasoning for it: The department argued that the lawsuits were premature because federal agencies haven’t even started to implement the order yet.

The order called for the creation of three separate lists of potential voters, including a list of citizens over age 18 residing in each state. But as Votebeat reported, it didn’t specify what any of these lists had to do with each other or, really, anything about how the order was supposed to work.

In statements accompanying the filing, leaders at the U.S. Postal Service and Social Security Administration basically said they were still figuring out what the order means for them. And the DOJ essentially agreed with many of the order’s critics who had pointed out that the order provided no direction on what to do with the lists it created.

“The Order does not specify any particular purpose or intended use for the State Citizenship Lists,” the department wrote in the filing, “and (other than their creation by the Department of Homeland Security … and transmission to States) does not require anyone inside or outside of the federal government to do anything with those lists.”

The administration’s inaction on implementing Trump’s executive order at least makes it less likely it will change anything for voters or election officials in the 2026 election, even if the courts decline to block it. But if there’s one thing we learned this week, it’s that politicians aren’t afraid to upend election administration if their motivations are strong enough, so the status of the order’s implementation bears watching into the summer and fall.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Despite being an overwhelmingly Democratic state, a quirk in California’s election laws may result in California voters needing to choose between two pro-Trump Republicans in the upcoming governor’s race.

“The current system allows the top two candidates, regardless of party, to move on to the runoff,” reported Los Angeles Times' Dakota Smith on Monday. “That has led to instances in which two Democrats or two Republicans have faced off in the general election.”

Smith added, “The state's gubernatorial election, for example, has prompted concern that two Republicans could shut out the Democratic candidates. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton have polled high in various surveys and are facing a large field of Democrats.”

In an attempt to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future, political consultant Steve Maviglio filed an application to state officials on Friday arguing that California’s voting system should revert to a traditional primary. In Maviglio’s proposal, each party’s top candidate will appear on the ballot during the general election.

"It was extremely scary to envision the November ballot for governor with Republicans on it," Maviglio said.

Democrats continue to struggle with finding a single candidate to rally behind in the upcoming gubernatorial race. One initial frontrunner, Rep. Eric Swalwell, exited from the race in disgrace after multiple women accused him of various forms of rape and sexual misconduct. A number of other candidates remain, including billionaire Tom Steyer, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former Rep. Katie Porter and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra. Californians who do not want a Republican governor, like Maviglio, are therefore concerned that the large field of well-known Democrats could split their party’s vote in such a way that the two finalists are Hilton and Bianco.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all declined to endorse a candidate and thereby elevate them above the pack.

Bianco, though not endorsed by Trump, has closely embraced the Republican’s legacy of MAGA politics, particularly by arguing that he would be a tough on crime governor. Instead of Bianco, Trump endorsed Hilton, a former Fox News host who in 2019 told this journalist for Salon that he views Trump as a “fierce” patriot.

“In those days it was all about America: ‘We are being ripped off, America should be doing better,’” Hilton told this journalist at the time. “It’s a fierce kind of patriotism, and a belief in America, I think. ‘America First,’ therefore, is the closest thing I think you’re going to get to a defining idea of Trumpism. And that does connect trade issues and immigration issues.”

At the same time, Hilton argued that “I think the president himself would be the first to say that the notion of a sort of philosophical approach is somewhat alien for him. That’s not how he sees things. He really is, I think at heart, a pragmatist. He’s like, ‘OK, there’s a problem here. How do I fix it?'”

A Republican lawmaker has been caught on tape agreeing to a racist remark directed at House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in which he was referred to as having "cotton-picking hands."

Jeffries, the House Minority Leader since taking over from Nancy Pelosi, has been outspoken in response to the Virginia Supreme Court's latest ruling, shooting down a new congressional map designed to create four new Democratic seats. The effort, approved by the state's voters in a special ballot measure, was undertaken in order to counteract gerrymandering campaigns done in red states at the behest of President Donald Trump, with the aim of rigging the 2026 midterms in their favor.

Jen Kiggans is a Republican representative for Virginia, who on Monday appeared on the latest episode of the "Richmond Morning News" podcast with host Rich Herrera. During the interview, Herrera made a comment about Jeffries, a New York representative and a black man, staying out of Virginia politics, and included a phrase with racist origins.

"If Hakeem Jeffries wants to be involved in Virginia politics, then I suggest he does what a bunch of New Yorkers are doing," Herrera said. "Leave New York, move down here to Virginia, run for office down here. You could represent us. If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia."

"That's right, ditto," Kiggans said. "Yes, yes to that."

Virginia Democrats, opting against a nuclear option, have appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to have the new map reinstated. The court previously allowed California's pro-Democratic new district map, also passed by voters via ballot measure, to proceed against a GOP lawsuit, though that suit's reasoning alleged that the map was an unlawful racial gerrymander. The lawsuit that tanked the Virginia map, meanwhile, argued that proper procedures were not followed.

Despite the setback in Virginia, Jeffries this week remained confident that Democrats will retake the House in the midterms, albeit by a slimmer margin than they had hoped. Other election experts and observers have reached a similar conclusion, while also noting that the Senate majority is also increasingly in play.

"We remain undeterred," Jeffries wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues. "The cost of living is out of control, grocery bills are skyrocketing, gas prices are surging, healthcare has been ripped away from millions and a reckless war of choice is raging in the Middle East. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular and Republicans have failed to make life better for the American people. Instead of changing direction, GOP extremists are scheming to change the electoral composition of districts throughout the country.

He continued: "Republicans only hold a three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. This is the narrowest margin of any party since 1930. During Donald Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, House Democrats flipped 40 seats. To take control this Fall, we only need to flip a fraction of that total. That is why right-wing extremists have been in full panic mode since they passed their historically unpopular One Big Ugly Bill last July. Our effort to forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme will not slow down. We are just getting started."

Scott Jennings, the resident MAGA Republican pundit at CNN, was backed into a corner during a Monday panel discussion, getting pressed about the Department of Defense's latest attack against a Democratic senator while attempting to attack said lawmaker as publicity-seeking.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for a renewed investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, for allegedly disclosing classified information during a televised interview with CBS News's Face the Nation, where he said it was "shocking" how deeply the U.S. military has depleted its munitions amid the ongoing war with Iran. This marks the second time the Pentagon has attempted to investigate Kelly, a leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, with the last effort getting shot down in court.

"We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago and you said it would take ‘years’ to replenish some of these stockpiles. That’s not classified, it’s a quote from you," Kelly wrote in a social media post responding to Hegseth.

During a Wednesday broadcast of CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt, Alex Thompson, a national political reporter for Axios, noted how Hegseth's highly publicized attacks on Kelly have done wonders for the senator's fundraising efforts.

"Pete Hegseth has been the best political fundraiser of Kark Kelly's entire career," Thompson said. "Mark Kelly, as of the end of last quarter, had $22 million cash on hand. He's not up for reelection... until 2028. And of all the people thinking about running for president in 2028, he has the most cash on hand by a long shot. He has more cash on hand than [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or any of these other people.... Mark Kelly's political team has made the most of it."

"Every single day that the Trump administration takes on Mark Kelly is a good day for the Kelly potential presidential campaign," Jamal Simmons, the former communication advisor for Kamala Harris, added. "He goes up in stock not just in money, but also people paying attention to this. They'll sort out what happened with the, you know, who said what and which briefing. But the political problem that the trump administration has is Mark Kelly, fighter pilot, astronaut, husband of Gabby Giffords is a very tough political opponent for them."

In response to those comments from Thompson and Simmons, Jennings chimed in, arguing that the fundraising angle gave Kelly "partisan interests" for seemingly picking a fight with the Trump administration.

"This man is a United States senator. He's getting classified briefings from the Pentagon. And then he goes on television and tells our enemies around the world in great specificity which weapon systems are depleted, which need to be restocked," Jennings said. "Did he ever stop to ask himself what is in the best interest of the United States of America, and not just my own political future? Because it's obvious that he did not. A sitting senator going on television and telegraphing to our enemies and our threats around the world what we may or may not have. It's extraordinarily irresponsible, but let's not let that get in the way of a presidential campaign."

In response, host Kasie Hunt asked, if the information about the depleted munitions was so important, why Hegseth opted to state publicly that the information was classified and important, instead of quietly pushing for an investigation into Kelly. Jennings, in return, appeared flustered by the pushback.

"Look, look, right. I mean, look, Mark Kelly went on television and said, I got a classified briefing and here's what I was told," Jennings said.

"I'm just saying, it sounds like they're both doing the same thing, right?" Hunt responded. "Everyone's playing politics here... if you're going to buy into your argument that, hey, this is a senator, right? Who's running for president, and that's what we're acknowledging he's doing. Like, is Hegseth not doing the same thing?"

After what unfolded in Virginia's redistricting battle, the Democratic Party's chance of winning the 2026 midterm election isn't what it once was, CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Monday.

Speaking to host John Berman, Enten said that it's still possible, but it's a heavier lift.

Citing prediction markets, Enten said that just last month, in April, there was an 86 percent chance that the Democrats would take back the House. Today, that number has dropped by 10 percent. That said, it's still high, at 76 percent.

The job for Democrats "has become more difficult," Enten explained.

"Why is that? Because let's take a look at the national House vote margin. You know, for control, you under the current lines, you know, the ones that were fought under in the 2024 election cycle," said Enten.

"For example," he continued, "they needed to win the national House vote by less than a point. They basically just needed to win the national House vote, and they'd win a majority. But look where it is now with redistricting. Now they have to win the national House vote by somewhere between 3 and 4 points. Based, of course, upon what the rest of the redistricting cycle looks like."

He explained that regardless of how the "nut" is cracked, Democrats can still win; however, they must climb a higher mountain to take back the House than they did a few weeks ago.

The good news is that the current lead shows Democrats are still favored to win six districts more than Republicans, and they only need three to four. It's still a win, but it's a lower number than Democrats would likely prefer, he said.

"But the bottom line is this, their lead right now in the national House vote polls is higher than the margin that is necessary in order to take back the U.S. House of Representatives. Even with redistricting," he closed.

A Republican Senator serving in a solid red state is contending with an unexpected threat to his seat in the upcoming midterm elections, per The Hill, as President Donald Trump's agenda hits his state in particularly brutal fashion, and the Democrats field a notably strong opposition candidate

Dan Sullivan is a two-term Republican senator for Alaska, seeking reelection to a third in the 2026 midterms. While Alaska is far less staunchly conservative than places like Florida and Alabama, it has still consistently elected Republicans to statewide office in recent years, and Sullivan's seat might have once been seen as safe from an upset — until, that is, Trump returned to office.

According to a Monday morning report from The Hill, Alaska has "been hit hard by the healthcare cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and lapsed ObamaCare subsidies," causing prices and premiums for residents to skyrocket at a time when seemingly everything else is getting more expensive by the day. Because of this, Democrats see a rare opportunity for a surprise upset in The Last Frontier, viewing Sullivan as a "prime target" on their increasingly probable quest to flip the Senate in November.

"A Democratic ad campaign released late last month accused Sullivan of voting to raise health insurance premiums in Alaska by more than $1,800 on average, referring to his votes against Democratic bills that would have ended the government shutdown in exchange for extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax subsidies," The Hill explained in its report.

Sullivan is also staring down a Democratic challenger that observers have called that parties best option for flipping the seat: former U.S. Representative for Alaska Mary Peltola. Peltola's odds are helped by the fact that Alaska only elects one at-large representative to the House, meaning that her successful 2022 campaign helped establish her profile statewide.

"When former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola (D) launched her Senate campaign earlier this year, her announcement took a swipe at Sullivan’s support for the GOP megabill, pointing to a think tank’s projection that it would take healthcare coverage from millions of Americans," The Hill added.

The report continued: "Sullivan appears well aware of his vulnerability on the issue. In the past month, he has broken with the GOP twice to side with Senate Democrats on health provisions. The Alaska senator voted for an amendment sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposing any funding bill that failed to lower out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Sullivan also voted for another amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) that will address insurers delaying or denying care."

John-Henry Heckendorn, a partner at the campaign management firm, the Ship Creek Group, told The Hill that these late-breaking votes in the face of Peltola's campaign are likely to be too little, too late for Sullivan to right the ship.

“Given how many times he has voted for legislation or amendments that would either reduce healthcare subsidies for Alaskans or otherwise increase healthcare costs, the damage has largely been done,” Heckendorn explained. “It’s one thing to vote on your principles. It’s another thing to follow the party line until you feel like you’re in danger and then try to cover your tracks."

Heckendorn also argued that, with Alaskans already pinched by higher costs, Sullivan's latest votes run the risk of making him look like a flip-flopper "changing his mind for political expediency."

"All that damage is done, but now he’s kind of admitting that those votes were never about principle in the first place," he said.

Donald Trump is openly tying his power grab to the 2026 midterms, in a desperate effort to stop investigations into corruption in his administration that are likely if Democrats win back the House and Senate.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent welcomed Mother Jones columnist Ari Berman on the morning podcast to discuss Trump's recent move, blurting out his midterm rigging strategy while Republicans cheered it on.

With his approval ratings in freefall and polls turning brutal, the president is openly pushing aggressive gerrymandering, voting crackdowns, and power grabs to lock in GOP control of Congress. Democrats and election watchdogs are sounding the alarm: this isn't just hardball politics, it's a blatant attempt to steal the 2026 midterms before voters can boot his party out.

Last week, the Virginia Supreme Court stepped in, saying that the constitutional amendment approved by the voters would be nullified because there wasn't a 90-day waiting period between the legislature passing the bill and the vote itself.

It comes amid Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) "openly said that Florida’s prohibition on partisan and racial gerrymandering was unconstitutional," said Berman. "He basically is now daring the courts to strike down what is enshrined in Florida’s constitution. That is far more blatantly unconstitutional than whatever minor technical errors may have occurred in Virginia—and there’s obviously debate about whether there were even any technical errors that occurred in Virginia."

He mentioned Louisiana as well. The GOP-run state suspended its election after 42,000 people had already voted. But they wanted to pause the election so that they could quickly eliminate the majority-Black districts in the staet.

"So, the process has been completely different in all of these red states. They have not only not been approved by voters, but they have broken so many different norms in terms of how they’ve gone about this process," Berman said.

"I mean, look at the backdrop between Virginia and Tennessee this last week. In a matter of basically three days, Tennessee Republicans dismantled a majority-Black district that had existed for decades," Berman continued. "In fact, Memphis had had its own congressional district since 1923. So it had existed for basically 100 years. They split it into three—no opportunity for anyone to weigh in," he added.

The difference is that Virginia took months, giving voters a lot of opportunity to weigh in and, in the end, approved the redistricting survey.

"And to me, the vote by the voters in Virginia should have been the end of the discussion, right? The Supreme Court should have said, even if we have some minor qualms with the process, voters approved it and we are going to defer to the voters," said Berman.

Ultimately, he characterized it by agreeing to allow the GOP to do whatever it takes to rig the system. Whereas the Democratic Party "has a hand tied behind its back in the effort to try to counteract it. And I just don’t think that’s fair."

"Winning elections aren't enough if elections themselves aren’t fair," Berman closed. He wants to see the playing field leveled enough so that each side is playing by the same set of rules.

When Never Trump conservatives voice their disdain for the second Trump Administration, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is one of the people they cite as symptomatic of everything they dislike about the MAGA movement. Miller is a divisive figure not only among Democrats, but also, on parts of the right.

Miller, however, is an unwavering Donald Trump loyalist and has so far remained the president's good graces.

In The Atlantic, journalists Michael Scherer and Nick Miroff examine Miller's turbulent role in the Trump Administration, noting that he has had his ups and downs yet continues to hold on.

Miller, they observe, favors a "hardline" policy on immigration, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and border czar Tom Homan are trying to appear more nuanced in their approach.

"Homan, who kept an arms-length relationship with (former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem, has said that he speaks with Mullin 'every day, several times a day,'" Scherer and Miroff report. "Miller also speaks with Mullin regularly, a White House official told us. In a statement for this story, Mullin told us that he works closely with both Homan and Miller. 'Everyone's on the same page,' Mullin said. But in contrast with the legislative negotiations over DHS (U.S. Department of Homeland Security) funding last year, Homan and Mullin, not Miller, were the ones involved in talks on Capitol Hill to restore DHS funding this year, according to two DHS officials."

A senior official in the Trump Administration, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Atlantic, "The new secretary is listening to Tom Homan and Rodney Scott before he is ever listening to Stephen Miller. We just have law enforcement in charge."

But other insiders interviewed by The Atlantic, according to Scherer and Miroff, "said that it is just a matter of time before Miller is able to reassert himself with new initiatives inside the administration."

A former Trump Administration official, also quoted anonymously, told The Atlantic, "In the end, Stephen is the one who comes up with new ideas. As much as everyone loves Tom Homan, he's not going to say, 'Here's a unique authority we could use to do X, Y and Z.' But the president likes Homan's approach at the moment."

On his show "Real Time," political comedian Bill Maher argued that Democrats are "losing" the gerrymandering battle in the 2026 midterms — and he fears that Republicans could hold the U.S. House of Representatives despite President Donald Trump's unpopularity in countless polls. But Politico's Jonathan Martin, on the other hand, believes that intense GOP gerrymandering poses a substantial political risk for Republicans.

Martin notes that in at least five out of eight Republicans Trump was angry with recently lost state legislature primaries in Indiana, but Martin stresses that GOP primaries and the general election are two very different things.

"The convergence of his successful intimidation campaign in Indiana and the Supreme Court's termination of majority-minority districts will tempt the GOP to lunge for more seats," Martin writes in Politico. "But they do so at their own risk. Not only may Republicans unwittingly create more competitive races for their own members, they will energize Democrats and set back their party in ways that will linger beyond this president. To you Republicans coveting new seats and considering whether to move forward: caveat emptor."

Martin adds, "Let's give Trump his due, though: Thanks to his singular style and the failures of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the president forged a 2024 coalition that breathed new life into the GOP. He made inroads with younger voters and expanded his base of working-class whites to include more racial minorities of modest means. Had Trump installed a Cabinet and pursued an agenda to retain these voters, he would've remade the Republican Party and shattered the Democratic Party. Of course, that's not what happened and was never going to happen given who he is."

"Pre-adolescent-in-chief" Trump, Martin argues, didn't do Republicans any favor when he "frittered away" the gains of his 2024 campaign.

"Given Trump's unpopularity, the price at the pump and the precedent of most every modern midterm," Martin says, "this was already shaping up to be a forbidding election year for Republicans…. As if liberals weren’t already eager to vote."