Goodbye Libertarian Tea Party, Hello Authoritarian MAGA

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments .

Never in the history of the US has any president openly and repeatedly called for the investigation, arrest & prosecution of his political opponents. While many continue to shrug these things off and normalize them, I will never stop pointing out that this is what autocrats do. pic.twitter.com/r0dmeSvdAE

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 29, 2025

At WP, Naftali Bendavid reflects on how MAGA supplanted the Tea Party.

The current spending fight reflects the dizzying shift. The tea party’s core demand was fiscal responsibility, but Trump’s signature spending bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and passed with overwhelming GOP support. In the current dispute over the government shutdown, Republicans are pushing not for cuts but for an extension of Biden-era spending levels.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a rare Republican who opposes his party’s spending measures, said the tea party spirit has evaporated. “I think it’s largely been supplanted by something else,” Paul said in an interview. “We aren’t organized around ideas anymore. We’re organized around a person.”

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[M]any Trump policies appear to contradict tea party ideals. The tea party abhorred taxes; Trump has imposed high taxes on imports with his tariffs. The tea party revered the Constitution; Trump routinely tests its limits, for example by seizing power over spending and tariffs. The tea party championed the rule of law; Trump openly targets his opponents using the legal system.

More fundamentally, the tea party — driven by anger at President Barack Obama — called for a modest presidency to allow homegrown democracy to flourish. Trump is a dominant, attention-seizing leader who brooks no opposition and regularly pushes to expand his power.

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 The tea party and MAGA movements are linked by at least one striking quality — a fury at liberal elites who, they contend, have coddled unworthy groups at the expense of ordinary, hardworking Americans. That is evident from the two seminal moments that launched these political tidal waves. [The Santelli rant and the Trump announcement.]

A similarity:

Liberal critics charged that the tea party was motivated at least in part by racial animus, especially as a backlash against the first Black president. Others challenged its claims of grassroots credibility, noting that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch contributed substantial funds to build up the movement.

Similar criticism has been leveled at MAGA — that it is driven by racism and funded by billionaires.

 

GOP Problems in World War G

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

The California Legislature has approved a special election to redraw congressional district lines. Democrats stand to pick up five seats to offset a recent Texas gerrymander.  The war is spreading, but the GOP plans is running into problems.

Will McCarthy at Politico:

Republicans appear to have all but abandoned their efforts to defeat a Democratic gerrymander of California’s House districts one week before it goes before voters.

As Democrats pummel the state with Yes on 50 advertising, the Republican side of the battle has gone quiet. Major GOP donors and party leaders have effectively vanished from the front lines.

 Andrew Howard at Politico:

At the urging of the White House, Republicans have already drawn seven new GOP-leaning House seats via mid-decade redistricting in three states, with more on the way. But the nationwide remapping effort is losing steam, largely due to these state-level Republicans refusing to blink at the Trump team’s threats of primaries. And while cracks are forming in Trump’s strategy, Democrats are waking up to the dangers ahead, POLITICO reported this week.

The few Republicans willing to defy the president constitute a dying breed in a party that’s become solidly MAGA under Trump’s thumb.

“If they want to threaten me with something, I don’t know what it’d be,” Kansas Republican Rep. Mark Schreiber, who is among holdouts in the state, said in an interview. “I’m fine with the stance I’m at.”

As Trump desperately tries to cling to control of Congress for the remainder of his term, he’s leaned heavily on redistricting congressional lines to block Democrats from their coveted takeover of the House. They need to net just three seats to regain a measure of influence in Washington.

But despite support from within Congress and the broader base, Republicans in state houses are showing that Trump and his team cannot coerce veteran local politicians, many of whom are elderly, in safe seats and unconcerned with the national political landscape.

Trump, Politics, and the Military

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

"I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad." -- Donald J. Trump, March 13, 2019

JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS at POLITICO:

In the early hours of this morning, Trump gave another highly partisan speech to the U.S. military, hailing his own political achievements and repeatedly condemning his Democratic opponents and critics in the media.

War fighters unite: Trump was addressing hundreds of U.S. Navy personnel onboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay, Japan, about 6,500 miles from D.C. In a raucous, rambling, hourlong speech that flipped between jokey asides and fiery rhetoric, Trump told the troops that the U.S. military is “no longer politically correct” and should “defend our country whatever way we have to.”

Close your ears, Norway: Trump expressed regret that the U.S. military no longer seeks “the spoils” of war. And the rank-and-file cheered as he told them: “No enemy will ever even dream of threatening America’s Navy ... And if they do, the American sailor stands ready to crush them, and sink them, and wreck them, and blast them into oblivion.” Trump joked that such sentiments could cost him the Nobel Peace Prize. (And he might be right.)
...

But what’s most striking is Trump’s willingness to use the troops as a foil for his highly partisan rhetoric. He repeatedly condemned his predecessor Joe Biden, told his audience the 2020 election had been rigged and savaged Democratic governors who resist military incursions into their cities. “People don’t care if we send in our military, our National Guard,” Trump told the troops. “They just want to be safe.”

Trump also called out the “fake news media,” encouraging the troops to deride the gathered journalists, before admitting later, a little grudgingly: “They’re getting better. They’re not there yet.”

The new normal: This was the third politically charged speech Trump has made to members of the U.S. forces in a month, following his highly controversial address to hundreds of generals in late September and his self-described “rally” to U.S. Navy sailors in Virginia the following week. It’s a clear break from any of his predecessors of recent times, and is happening at the very moment Trump is increasingly seeking to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement here in the U.S. And it’s making some members of the military — privately — very nervous indeed.

Shutdown, Obamacare, and the Debt

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Americans are noticing.

Chris Stirwalt at The Hill:

Two big data points in the headlines this week: 1) The average cost of a family health insurance plan will be $27,000 for coverage next year and 2) The federal debt grew faster than any time other than the pandemic and surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday.

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Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

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Which is all a long way of saying that in that way, Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

Either way, when they do, Republicans will be acceding to Democrats’ demands to have the government provide more subsidies to offset the consequences of a cost spiral that itself is partly caused by … subsidies.

So Washington’s response to those two big new numbers this week will most assuredly make them both worse.

World War G: The Battlefield Expands

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

The California Legislature has approved a special election to redraw congressional district lines. Democrats stand to pick up five seats to offset a recent Texas gerrymander.  The war is spreading.

Reid Epstein at NYT:

The next front in the nation’s pitched battle over mid-decade congressional redistricting is opening in Virginia, where Democrats are planning the first step toward redrawing congressional maps, a move that could give their party two or three more seats.

The surprise development, which was announced by legislators on Thursday, would make Virginia the second state, after California, in which Democrats try to counter a wave of Republican moves demanded by President Trump to redistrict states to their advantage before the 2026 midterm elections. No other Democratic state has begun redistricting proceedings, while several Republican states have drawn new maps or are deliberating doing so.

Bruce Mehlman:

Traditionally redistricting is usually done once per decade, though this is not dictated by the Constitution or a specific law. President Trump is pushing Republican states to redraw maps in 2025 to maximize GOP advantage for 2026, and three have already done so (TX, NC, MO) with two more coming (OH, UT). Many Democratic governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom are moving to “fight fire with fire” with hyper-partisan gerrrymanders of their own. Up to 15 states in total (so far) are considering or acting: the 5 above plus CA, FL, IL, IN, KS, LA, MD, NE, SC, VA & WI.

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Democrats could be in danger of losing around a dozen districts across the South if the court strikes down Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, a case the court heard two weeks ago. “Without Section 2, which has been interpreted to require the creation of majority-minority districts, Republicans could eliminate upward of a dozen Democratic-held districts across the South.” (NYT)

Trump v. the Rule of Law

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments, such as the extrajudicial killing of people allegedly running drugs on the high seas.

Charlie Savage at NYT:

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s actions demonstrated an indifference to law that threatened to hollow it out.

“Nixon tried to keep his criminality secret, and the Bush administration tried to keep the torture secret, and that secrecy acknowledged the norm that these things were wrong,” Professor Goldsmith said. “Trump, as he often does when he is breaking law or norms, is acting publicly and without shame or unease. This is a very successful way to destroy the efficacy of law and norms.”

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Even if the Justice Department memo that somehow blesses the killings lacks much actual legal analysis and even if a future administration rescinds it, its existence essentially forecloses any prospect of future prosecutions. It is hard to prove someone intentionally committed a crime when the Justice Department itself said at the time that the action was lawful.

Two decades ago, Professor Goldsmith took over the Office of Legal Counsel and withdrew memos issued under the Bush administration that blessed the C.I.A.’s torture program. Reflecting on that period in a memoir, he called such memos get-out-of-jail-free cards.

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The administration has found a two-part hack to the system in which executive branch lawyers are supposed to independently determine the legal boundaries within which policymakers may act.

The first is that Mr. Trump has told executive branch lawyers that they may not question any legal judgment that he — or Attorney General Pam Bondi, subject to his “supervision and control” — already decided. “The president and the attorney general’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties,” Mr. Trump declared in a February executive order.

The second is that Mr. Trump has been declaring that as president, he has determined that the factual and legal scenarios exist that are necessary for him to exercise various extraordinary powers.

The two tactics combined create a gigantic loophole. Mr. Trump is able to dictate his own factual and legal realities, and executive branch lawyers who want to keep their jobs must treat them as settled. The result is that Mr. Trump can order agencies to take actions to which independent-minded lawyers might have raised legal objections.

In August, Trump said:" I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."

In February, he posted an apocryphal quotation from Napoleon: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."

In 2019, he said: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."

Trump Doing Unpopular Things

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Americans are noticing.

PRRI:

A new national survey released today by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution reveals Americans’ responses to the unprecedented actions taken so far by President Donald Trump during his second presidential term. The survey — the 16th annual American Values Survey — also examines Americans’ concerns about the economy and how democracy is working, what it means to be “truly American,” and opposition to building internment camps for undocumented immigrants and allowing ICE agents to mask their identity.

Majorities of Americans say that the Trump administration cuts in federal funding for health care (60%) and universities and research institutions (55%), the implementation of new tariffs (54%), and the increase in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (52%) have gone too far. Across all areas, independents hold views more aligned with Democrats. For example, most Democrats (90%) and independents (67%) say that cuts in federal funding for programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act have gone too far, compared with only 25% of Republicans

Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill:

A majority of Americans said in a new poll they disapprove of President Trump’s plans to demolish part of the East Wing in the White House to make room for his $250 million ballroom.

In the YouGov America poll, released on Wednesday, 53 percent of Americans said they strongly or somewhat disapprove “of the decision to demolish part of the East Wing of the White House as part of the renovations,” while 24 percent approved and 24 percent said they are unsure.

Jason Lange at Reuters:

More than half of Americans, including about three in 10 Republicans, believe President Donald Trump is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also found growing concern about U.S. political divisions nine months into his second term in office.

Some 55% of poll respondents in the six-day poll, which closed on Monday, agreed with a statement that the Republican president is using law enforcement to target his enemies, while 26% disagreed and the rest were unsure or did not respond. Some 85% of the poll respondents who identified themselves as Democrats agreed, as did 29% of the Republican poll takers.

 

Ingrassia

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Yesterday, a nominee had to withdraw after texts showed him acknowledging a "Nazi streak."

Stef  W. Kight at Axios:

Paul Ingrassia withdrew himself from consideration to serve as the head of the Office of the Special Counsel ahead of a scheduled Thursday hearing after several GOP senators warned they would vote against him.

Why it matters: Ingrassia's history of controversial statements — compounded by new reporting of racist text messages — even made some of President Trump's close allies on the Hill unwilling to back him.

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Catch up quick: Ingrassia is an attorney and 30-year-old, right-wing podcaster.

His nomination has been in jeopardy from nearly the start. He bombed an early meeting with committee staff back in July, Axios reported at the time.

Senators' concerns were only amplified by new reporting from Politico this week that he texted in a GOP text chain that he has a "Nazi streak" and that Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday should be "tossed into the seventh circle of hell."

Daniel Lippman at Politico:

Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO.

Ingrassia, who has a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday, made the remarks in a chain with a half-dozen Republican operatives and influencers, according to the chat.

“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia wrote in January 2024, according to the chat.

“Jesus Christ,” one participant responded.

Using an Italian slur for Black people, Ingrassia wrote a month earlier in the group chat seen by POLITICO: “No moulignon holidays … From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” then added: “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”

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In May 2024, the group was bantering about a Trump campaign staffer who’d been hired in Georgia and was working on outreach to minority voters, when Ingrassia suggested she didn’t show enough deference to the Founding Fathers being white, according to the chat.

“Paul belongs in the Hitler Youth with Ubergruppenfuhrer Steve Bannon,” the first participant in the chat wrote, referring to the paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany and the Republican strategist. POLITICO is not naming the participants to protect the identity of those interviewed for this article.

“I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” Ingrassia responded, according to the chain. One of the people in the text group said in an interview that Ingrassia’s comment was not taken as a joke, and three participants pushed back against Ingrassia during the text exchange that day.

From Firstpost:

He later graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022, where he served as the senior online editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.

While studying law, Ingrassia was involved in conservative student circles and wrote for right-leaning outlets such as The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit.

He was twice named a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank known for its advocacy of traditionalist and nationalist perspectives within the Republican Party.

YR Fallout

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

EMILY NGO, JEFF COLTIN and NICK REISMAN  at POLITICO:

Nationally, a sharp rift among state groups has emerged, POLITICO’s Jacob Wendler reported. Chapters are divided on how to respond to the chat — with some staying silent and others immediately denouncing the rhetoric.

The Arizona Young Republican Federation, for example, which had endorsed Peter Giunta — the New Yorker who joked “I love Hitler” in the chat — to lead the Young Republican National Federation, lambasted what it called “mob-style condemnation driven by political opportunism or personal agendas.” Giunta, who lost his job as chief of staff to state Assemblymember Mike Reilly, has expressed regret for the remarks but also questioned whether they were altered.

In New York, the state GOP’s leaders voted unanimously Friday to pull the Young Republicans’ authorization to operate statewide, POLITICO reported. Kansas — home to two chat members — disbanded its younger arm earlier last week.

In Vermont, state Sen. Sam Douglass announced he will resign his post effective today at noon, POLITICO’s Jason Beeferman reported. He was the only sitting elected official in the group chat, and his wife was also in the Telegram group.

“I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe,” Douglass said in a statement.

Beeferman also reported that elected Republican leaders outside the chat are split on how they respond.

Rep. Elise Stefanik denounced the incendiary messages when reporters reached out for comment before POLITICO published its initial blockbuster story. But after Vice President JD Vance derided criticisms of the chat as “pearl clutching,” she pivoted to attacking Democrats.

Geroge Packer at The Atlantic:

Having been given permission from the country’s most powerful person, the Young Republicans received forgiveness from its second-most-powerful. Vice President J. D. Vance refused to condemn their words, explaining: “I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive, stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.” But the authors of the texts have already grown up—they’re men in their 20s and 30s, climbing the rungs of Republican Party ladders in Kansas, Arizona, Vermont, and New York, firm in the belief that the viler their language, the higher they’ll go. One is already an officeholder.

For Vance, ethical judgment has become a pure matter of partisanship, to the point of overcoming his most personal bonds. When a DOGE member was revealed to have posted “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity” and “Normalize Indian hate,” Vance—married to an Indian American—scoffed at the ensuing outrage and demanded that the offender be rehired. But when private citizens anywhere said something ugly about Charlie Kirk, the vice president went after their livelihood. Once morality is rotted out by partisan relativism, the floor gives way and the fall into nihilism is swift.

 

No Kings

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Trump has triggered nationwide protests.

 April Rubin at Axios:

Nearly 7 million protesters gathered across the U.S. on Saturday to take part in rallies against President Trump and his administration.

Why it matters: This latest round of protests comes as the government shutdown approaches its third week and opposition to Trump's military crackdown on Democratic-led cities grows.

According to a statement from the "No Kings" protest organizers, Saturday's turnout was "one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history" with over two million more people taking part than participated in similar protests in June of this year.

Driving the news: More than 2,700 events were planned as part of the protests across 50 states as of Saturday, as well as several internationally, including in London, Paris, Rome and Lisbon, Portugal.

Organizing groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible and MoveOn.

"Across cities and towns, large and small, rural and suburban, in red areas and in blue areas millions of us are peacefully coming together for No Kings to send a clear and unmistakable message: the power belongs to the people," Katie Bethell, MoveOn executive director, said in a Saturday statement.

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The intrigue: Protests in 2025 have reached a wider swath of the U.S. than at any other point on record, according to a Thursday report from the Harvard Kennedy School.The current protest movement has reached deeper into Trump-voting areas than at almost any time during his first administration, the analysis found. Though those protests tend to be smaller than the nationwide average.

I for one do think it's possible for America to find a president better than one who, faced with claims he is dumping shit on Americans, posts a video showing himself dumping shit on Americans. https://t.co/ClCD1oZUY5

— George Conway 🇺🇸🚫👑🐸 (@gtconway3d) October 19, 2025

Shutdown Cliffs and SNAP

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The looming expiration of ACA subsidies could affect the 2026 midterm.

So could the SNAP cliff.   Helena Bottemiller Evich at Food Fix:

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday outside the White House that SNAP will run out of funds: “We’re going to run out of money in two weeks. So you’re talking about millions and millions of vulnerable families, of hungry families, that are not going to have access to these programs because of this shutdown.”

The Trump administration was able to find a fix for WIC, but that program needs somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-500 million per month to operate. SNAP is on a whole different level, with monthly costs more like $8 billion per month. That’s real money, even for USDA, which has more spending leeway (and frankly slush funds) than many federal agencies.

Anti-hunger advocates are raising alarms about all of this right now.

“USDA must ensure that funding is available for SNAP so that participants continue to receive benefits as they have done during previous shutdowns,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). “Just as the administration has found ways to protect its other priorities during this shutdown, it must also act with the same urgency to protect SNAP. USDA should utilize its contingency reserves and any additional funding sources to ensure that benefits are not disrupted.”

Contingency funds: There is a SNAP contingency fund to help bridge the gap during debacles like this — and let’s be clear, this is a debacle — but I’m hearing conflicting things about how much is available in that pot. Multiple sources told me it’s around $6 billion. But some in Washington are worried the fund is lower than that, closer to $4 billion. Either way, it’s short of the more than $8 billion USDA probably needs for November benefits.

Lots of beneficiaries live in Republican states:

 

ACA subsidies: The Ship Has Sailed, and Is Sinking

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The looming expiration of ACA subsidies could affect the 2026 midterm.

 Robert King and Kelly Hooper at Politico:

State insurance officials are warning that the longer Congress waits to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which help low- and middle-income people afford premiums, the more difficult it will be to update rates before consumers start shopping for 2026 coverage on Nov. 1.

As a result, they said, some enrollees — particularly young and healthy people — could be frightened off by the higher rates and drop coverage, even if the rates can be adjusted later. This would further undermine Obamacare by worsening the risk pool, driving up ACA costs even more.


The dire warnings come as no deal on the subsidies is in sight, stretching the government shutdown into a third week.

“The ship has sailed,” said Ingrid Ulrey, CEO of the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange. “Congress missed the opportunity to make this decision early enough for us to reset our markets for open enrollment, and to make it clean and easy for people to come in and see premiums that include the savings from the enhanced level of premium tax credits.”

Consumers are likely to see, on average, double-digit premium increases in 2026 plan offerings, according to an analysis from health policy research firm KFF. The hikes reflect rates insurers have filed under the assumption that the subsidies will expire at the end of the year and other factors such as increasing health costs.

 Benjamin Guggenheim, Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill at Politico:

The ongoing debate over soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies has reopened an old wound for Republicans: What should they do about the health care law they have railed against for more than a decade but has now taken root with their own constituents?

While some GOP hard-liners are again embracing repeal-and-replace rhetoric, the scars from the party’s failed attempt to undo the ACA in 2017 have left a broader swath of Republicans extremely wary of trying to rip out the law — even as they continue to criticize it.

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But Democrats are already seizing on the repeal talk in some corners of the GOP, with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington comparing it to the cataclysmic sinking of the Titanic.

“It is bad enough so many of them can see the iceberg coming and are saying, ‘Ah, we’ll worry about that after the ship goes down.’ But we’ve also got Republicans saying that you wish this ship had sunk earlier,” Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters. She was referring to the GOP’s refusal to extend the Obamacare subsidies before Nov. 1, at which point notices will go out alerting enrollees to massive premium hikes.

Retribution and Weaponization

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  “We are all afraid,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said this spring. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

 Politico Playbook:

We now know the lack of early activity pursuing Trump’s enemies was not by the president’s design — witness the frustration dripping from Trump’s (accidentally published) DM to AG Pam Bondi last month. Since that memo, of course, Trump’s DOJ has indicted both former FBI chief James Comey and New York AG Letitia James — with former NSA John Bolton reportedly the next Trump critic to face federal charges soon.

And Trump is going faster. Yesterday, he listed yet more targets, including former special counsel Jack Smith and former FBI counsel Andrew Weissmann (who just appeared together at an event in London); former Deputy AG Lisa Monaco; and Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff. “I hope they’re looking at all of these people,” Trump said, standing alongside Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “I’m, in theory, chief law enforcement officer … I don’t have to leave it up to them. But I choose to — at this moment at least.”

Trump’s team is feeling bullish, a White House official tells Dasha. “There’s no law that restricts the President of the United States from talking about accountability he wants to see,” they said. “It’s unprecedented, but it’s not illegal for him to talk about what the Department of Justice is doing.”

And so there’s more to come: Trump’s next move will be to harness the Internal Revenue Service, WSJ’s Brian Schwartz and colleagues scooped last night, with plans to pursue criminal charges against groups funding left-wing causes. “A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors,” the WSJ reports. This looks like weaponization going into overdrive.

YR Chats

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.

Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo at Politico:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.

...

The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.

Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.

“The more the political atmosphere is open and liberating — like it has been with the emergence of Trump and a more right wing GOP even before him — it opens up young people and older people to telling racist jokes, making racist commentaries in private and public,” said Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M sociology professor who has studied racism for the last 60 years. He’s also concerned the words would be applied to public policy. “It’s chilling, of course, because they will act on these views.”

EMILY NGO, JEFF COLTIN and NICK REISMAN at Politico:

POLITICO’s exclusive reporting on a Young Republican group chat filled with racist epithets and hateful jokes reverberated Tuesday across the country, resulting in mounting condemnation and more chat members out of their jobs.

Peter Giunta lost his post as state Assemblymember Mike Reilly’s chief of staff, Playbook reported.

Joe Maligno was out as an employee of the New York State Unified Court System.

Vermont’s Republican governor and GOP lawmakers called on state Sen. Sam Douglass to resign.

The Kansas Republican Party announced that the Kansas Young Republicans, where William Hendrix was a leader, were inactive.

That’s on top of what happened before the story published: Hendrix lost his job with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Bobby Walker’s offer to join NY-19 congressional candidate Peter Oberacker’s campaign was effectively revoked.

 

Maine and the Democrats' Age Problem

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Dan Merica at WP:

Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s campaign for U.S. Senate has reignited a contentious debate about candidates’ ages in a Democratic Party increasingly eager to inject more youth into its aging ranks.


Mills, seen as a major recruit for Senate Democratic leaders, launched her campaign on Tuesday. She is 77 and would be the oldest freshman senator ever if she wins the seat held by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Age has become a focal point for Democrats heading into the midterm elections. The party is still reeling from Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term as the oldest president in 2024, before bowing out following a disastrous debate where he appeared to lose his train of thought, heightening concerns in the party about his age and acuity. Democratic losses in 2024 have led many party activists to urge a passing of the torch to younger leaders, particularly after years of dominance by congressional leaders in their 70s and 80s.
...
Her entrance into a marquee battleground race, which has been expected for weeks, has already drawn some criticism in the party. “It just seems sort of irresponsible,” former congresswoman Susan Wild (Pennsylvania), a 68-year-old Democrat who decided not to run for Congress next year because of her age, said of Mills’s decision to run at her age. “We all talk about the importance of attracting new voters and regaining the trust of certain groups that may have fallen away from the Democratic Party, and I think when you do the same old, same old, that is the last thing you are doing.

Noting that Collins, at 72, is five years younger than the governor, Wild quipped, “So, she would be the youngster against Mills.”

Mills is not alone in being a Democratic septuagenarian Senate candidate this cycle: 79-year-old Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), 75-year-old Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) and 73-year-old Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) are running for reelection next year. But other senators, such as 78-year-old Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and 80-year-old Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), have cited their age in their decision not to run for reelection next year.

Trump's Duma

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Josh Dawsey at WSJ:

Inside the White House, top advisers joke that they are ruling Congress with an “iron fist,” according to people who have heard the comments. Steve Bannon, the influential Trump ally, likened Congress to the Duma, the Russian assembly that is largely ceremonial. When senior White House aide Stephen Miller recently held a party at the exclusive Ned’s Club to celebrate his 40th birthday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) showed up to honor Miller, the people said.

Bannon, who worked in the first Trump administration, attributed some of the faded resistance to Trump’s comeback after four years “in the wilderness,” a period that he said hardened Trump. “He’s doing things now he wouldn’t have ever considered the first time,” Bannon said. “He’s jackhammering away on levels you haven’t seen before.”

...

In Congress, some lawmakers privately didn’t want to name this year’s spending package the “Big Beautiful Bill,” but agreed to Trump’s demands. When he has called Republicans to tell them to vote for questionable nominees, they have largely acceded. Some GOP lawmakers who wanted to release the Jeffrey Epstein files backed down after getting calls from top Trump aides.

Members grew increasingly scared of being on Trump’s bad side after watching him successfully defeat so many senators and representatives in primaries, and watching him torpedo the speaker bid of Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) with a single post. He has demanded cuts that curbed Congress’s ability to regulate spending, cutting billions that Congress had already approved, to little outcry.

“People laying down their arms on the most jealously guarded power that Congress has tells you a lot about what people think their likelihood is of being successful in fighting back,” said Brendan Buck, a political strategist and onetime top aide who served under Speaker Paul Ryan.

 

Trump's Media

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses radical change in the media landscape.

Sarah Ellison at WP:

President Donald Trump has long railed against the “fake news” as an “enemy of the people.” But this week, the president showed how far he has come in finding a new use for the media: as props.

Friendly influencers were summoned to the White House on Wednesday afternoon, as they have been throughout Trump’s second term, to bolster his agenda and attack his targets of the moment. Reporters from mainstream news organizations remained part of the presentation, but mostly as silent foils and heels to be disparaged and critiqued.

“I read more of your stories than I do theirs,” FBI Director Kash Patel told the influencers, gesturing to the reporters at the back of the room, “because you guys are putting out the truth.”

Leigh Kimmins at The  Daily Beast:

ICE Barbie Kristi Noem is now starring in Trump administration airport propaganda.

A slickly produced video featuring the Homeland Security chief began airing Thursday on airport monitors across the country, blaming Democrats for the nine-day-old government shutdown that has already caused massive flight delays and left thousands of aviation employees working without pay.

“Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” Noem says in the clip, which a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to Reuters is now being blasted out in airports nationwide.

 

Obamacare Politics

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Elena Shao and Margot Sanger-Katz at NYT:

More than 23 million Americans are currently enrolled in Obamacare plans, and nearly all of them will face higher health care costs next year if extra federal funding for subsidies expires, as scheduled, on Dec. 31.

Democrats in Congress are withholding their votes on a government spending bill to demand that Republicans extend these subsidies, which lower the cost of insurance for people who buy their own health care coverage in marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. Since Congress introduced the extra funding in 2021, enrollment has doubled.

These Americans live nearly everywhere in the country, but their numbers are especially concentrated in a handful of red states whose governments have declined to expand Medicaid programs to cover poor, childless adults.

Fifty-seven percent of people with this type of insurance live in Republican congressional districts.